EDITOR: Apartheid marches on unhindered in Israel
Well, Israelis seem to say, if we are going to have Apartheid, let us have a proper Apartheid… so a short time after women were allocated the back of the bus, now it is special buses for blacks. “They are smelly”, says the Tel Aviv Shas party councilman, and he should know… Once it was the Jews who were smelly, now they decide who is smelly, so obviously, this is progress in action. It is a Jewish Democracy all right… Ant-Semites will love this, of course. How depressing to think of the distance we traveled in few generations, since my grandparents were destroyed as untermentschen by the Nazis, to Israel having its own untermentschen. Other reports, only in Hebrew, are blaming the African workers for spreading diseases… Are we soon to read they are also poisoning wells and sucking the blood of Jewish children? This is too awful for words, but totally consistent with the racism which is behind daily life in Israel on all levels.
TA councilman calls for separate buses for ‘smelly’ foreigners: +972
Saturday, February 18 2012|Mya Guarnieri
A Tel Aviv city councilman is appealing to the state to allocate separate buses for African refugees and migrant workers, according to an article published on Mynet on Thursday
Last week, Tel Aviv City Councilman Binyamin Babayoff (Shas) sent a letter to Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, Minister of Transportation Israel Katz, and Dr. Moshe Tiomkin, a Tel Aviv councilman and the head of the city’s Transportation, Traffic and Parking Authority. In an excerpt published by Mynet (local online Hebrew news affiliated with Ynet), Babayoff wrote that “illegal foreign workers fill the buses…” leaving no room for Jewish Israeli residents of South Tel Aviv. He added that “foreign workers… give off a bad smell and they might, God forbid, cause all kinds of diseases.”
Reminding of Jim Crow laws, Babayoff proposes that the state introduce separate buses for migrant workers and refugees or limit their access to buses during peak hours of heavy traffic, thus giving preference to Jewish Israeli residents.
Speaking to Mynet, Babayoff claimed that his proposal was not racist. He said that Jewish Israelis in South Tel Aviv “live a life of hell” because of the foreigners in the neighborhood. He added that his letter was a response to the appeals of “scared” residents.
In a comment to Mynet, the Tel Aviv Municipality condemned Babayoff’s proposal and called it “racist,” adding that it is committed to “caring for immigrant workers and their basic health needs, education, and welfare…”
(Though they’re not migrant workers, homeless African refugees might beg to differ with the city’s statement).
After Babayoff embarked on a campaign against migrant workers and refugees in the summer of 2010—calling on South Tel Aviv landlords not to rent to these “infiltrators” and claiming that doing so violates Jewish religious law—25 area rabbis signed an “Edict Forbidding the Rental of Apartments to Infiltrators.” Shortly thereafter, 10 South Tel Aviv real estate agents signed a petition stating they would not rent to illegal residents.
Later that year, hundreds of Israeli rabbis across the country signed a religious edict forbidding the rental or sale of property to Palestinian citizens of the state.
In 2010, Babayoff also participated in a campaign against opening a new kindergarten in the South Tel Aviv neighborhood of Kiryat Shalom. While the school was planned to accommodate migrant workers’ and refugees’ children, it would also provide education to Jewish Israeli students.
In addition to his issues with non-Jews, Babayoff has also publicly voiced homophobic sentiments, referring to Tel Aviv’s Gay Pride Parade as a “shame parade.”
Palestinian hunger striker appeals to Israel’s Supreme Court: Haaretz
Catherine Ashton says EU is following Khader Adnan’s case ‘with great concern’; Adnan has been on hunger strike for 63 days to protest his administrative detention.
A Palestinian waging a hunger strike for an unprecedented 63 days has appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court, demanding to be released from months-long detention without trial, his lawyer said Saturday.
Khader Adnan is fighting a provision that allows Israel to hold detainees for months or even years without trial or formal charges. Israeli officials say they use so-called “administrative detention” to guard against immediate threats to the country’s security.
Adnan, a member of the militant group Islamic Jihad, has continued his hunger strike longer than any Palestinian detainee before him. His doctors warned this week that the 33-year-old might die soon.
“We are hoping … the Supreme Court hears this case urgently,” said Mahmoud Hassan, one of Adnan’s lawyers. “He could die before the court hearing happens.”
The court has not set a date for the hearing. Hassan said in previous cases, the high court at times reduced the sentence of administrative detainees on appeal, but rarely ordered them freed outright.
The hunger strike has transformed Adnan into a Palestinian hero, with thousands protesting in support of the once obscure bearded baker. The Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad has vowed revenge if Adnan dies, possibly by firing rockets into Israel from Gaza. The group has killed dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks. Adnan was once a spokesman for the group. It’s unclear if he ever participated in any attacks.
Adnan is under guard in an Israeli hospital, where officials are monitoring his condition.
He is taking liquid infusions of salts, glucose and minerals, said the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights on Wednesday, citing his doctor. The group is overseeing his medical care.
Adnan is still lucid, but he has shed some 66 pounds (30 kilograms), his hair is falling out, his muscles have atrophied and he is in immediate danger of death, said the group’s doctor.
Adnan is serving four months in administrative detention. Israeli military judges can imprison defendants for up to six months at a time, with the possibility of renewing the detention order repeatedly. Defendants and their lawyers are not shown the alleged evidence against them.
An Israeli military judge rejected an appeal by Adnan last week, saying he reviewed the evidence and found the sentence to be fair.
On Saturday, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the bloc was following Adnan’s case with “great concern.”
“Detainees have the right to be informed about the charges underlying any detention and be subject to a fair trial,” Ashton said in a statement.
Israeli military officials generally use administrative detention to hold Palestinians who they believe are an imminent risk to the country’s security. They say if the evidence against the accused was made public, it would expose Israeli intelligence-gathering networks in the Palestinian Territories. They say the process is under full judicial review by Israel’s military and the Supreme Court.
Annan began his hunger strike on Dec. 18, a day after he was seized from his home in the northern West Bank town of Arabeh.
He told his lawyers that he was beaten and humiliated during arrest and interrogation.
Also Saturday, Palestinian militants fired three rockets from Gaza into Israel, officials said.
Israeli police spokesman Shmuel Ben Ruby said the rockets landed in an open area, causing no damage.
A years-old understanding between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers have halted much of the rocket fire from the coastal territory.
Twilight Zone / ‘One man against the state’: Haaretz
Khader Adnan, who is protesting his detention and humiliating treatment, is about to set a record for Israel’s longest hunger strike.
By Gideon Levy
A weak, starving Palestinian man lies in Internal Medicine Department B at Safed’s Rebecca Sieff Hospital. His condition is deteriorating, one of his hands and both his feet are shackled to the bed, and prison wardens guard him day and night. He has been on a hunger strike for months. His life is in danger, and he is at risk of doing irreversible damage to his body and mind.
Khader Adnan, 33, is protesting the abuse and humiliation he says he suffered while being interrogated, as well as his long detention without trial. Next week Adnan, an Islamic Jihad activist from Arabeh, will set a new Israeli record for the country’s longest hunger strike, longer than that of peace activist Abie Nathan (45 days ), and of a group of security prisoners who went 65 days without eating in 1970.
His hunger strike is arousing considerable interest abroad. Solidarity demonstrations have been held in places around the world, as well as in Tel Aviv – but most Israelis have heard almost nothing about this. Daily solidarity protests in the West Bank go mostly unreported in Israel, as does the fact that 14 prisoners and wardens have reportedly joined his strike.
On Monday, the 58th day of Adnan’s strike, we visited his home in Arabeh accompanied by Physicians for Human Rights’s mobile clinic coordinator Saleh Haj Yihyeh. At that moment, Adnan’s wife Randa was updating the tally of days her husband had been not eating, displayed on a poster in the living room. “My honor is more important than my food,” declares the caption at the bottom of the poster, which bears the prisoner’s image. With his thick beard and round glasses, he looks like a settlement rabbi.
Arabeh is surrounded by lush green fields. Randa is raising her two small daughters, 4-year-old Ma’alia and 18-month-old Bissan, in the family home, which spans several stories. Before speaking with us, she dons a white veil that covers her face and black gloves that cover her hands.
Khader Adnan was arrested on December 17. Israeli soldiers came to this house in the middle of the night. This was his seventh detention or arrest by Israel. The first time was in 1999, when he was held for half a year without trial. After that, he spent eight months in detention in 2000; he was arrested again in 2002-2003; detained in 2004; detained for 18 months in 2005-2006 and six months in 2008.
In 2010, the Palestinian Authority arrested him for 12 days. Then, too, he went on a hunger strike, for the first time in his life. Between arrests, he worked at a pita bakery in Qabatiya and was an Islamic Jihad activist. His family says he is a political activist.
After midnight on December 17, Randa heard voices outside. Large groups of soldiers encircled the house for several hours. A bit before 3 A.M., when Adnan’s father left to start his workday as a vegetable merchant, he ran into the soldiers, who burst into the house. Adnan woke up and fled to his parents’ apartment on the second floor. Randa and the little girls remained in their apartment on the ground floor.
The soldiers immediately ran up to the second floor and pulled Adnan from the bathroom. He asked to get dressed, and they let him. Then they bound him and blindfolded him, and took him out from the house. Randa says an officer promised him that this time, his detention would be brief. While previous arrests had included a violently conducted search of the house, this time the soldiers simply arrested Adnan.
He was brought before a judge after being interrogated for 18 days at the Al-Jalama facility. The judge, at the military court in Salem, extended his remand. Randa came to court, where her husband told her the soldiers had beaten and kicked him after they detained him, as he lay on the floor of their Jeep. He told the court how he had been humiliated during interrogation: The interrogators had cursed at him, pulled his beard and told him his daughters were not his own.
The day after his arrest, Adnan launched his hunger strike to protest his lack of trial and the humiliation he suffered. That was two months ago. In the meantime, he has been sent to four months of administrative detention.
After the interrogation, Adnan was transferred to the Israel Prison Service’s medical facility in Ramle. A few days later, when his condition deteriorated, he was taken to a hospital. In recent weeks he has been shuffled through various Israeli hospitals – Bikur Holim in Jerusalem, Mayanei Hayeshua in Bnei Brak and now Sieff Hospital in Safed.
IPS spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said Adnan was being moved due to a shortage of beds. This whole time, he has been bound by one hand and both feet to his bed, and prison wardens have been guarding him around the clock.
His family says he drinks one liter of water a day, without salt. The IPS says he has agreed to accept an intravenous drip. He does not take food in any form. Last week, when his condition deteriorated, the Shin Bet and the IPS agreed to allow his wife and his daughters to visit him at the hospital, hoping they would persuade him to stop his strike. This came after a long campaign by Physicians for Human Rights.
Last week on Tuesday, Randa, Bissan and Ma’alia went to Safed. The wardens kept them from entering Adnan’s room even though the visit had been coordinated in advance. Randa recalls that several wardens were present in the room, and that her husband told her not to come in so long as they were there. Finally they compromised, and allowed two wardens to remain. Adnan hugged his daughters with his free arm and asked what was happening outside.
After 10 minutes, the wardens said the visit was over, but when Randa asked her husband to end his strike, they gave her 10 minutes more.
Adan replied firmly: “God is supporting me. Don’t request that again.”
Ma’alia asked why he was shackled, and Adnan told her to ask the wardens.
Randa says her husband is being neglected. His clothing is filthy, his nails are long and his hair is falling out, she says. He is not being untied even for prayers. He has lost about 40 kilos and is very feeble and weak, she adds.
Before she said good-bye she heard him whisper: “These are my last days. I will never forgive those who did not stand by me.” He was referring to the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli people, she says.
He is psychologically strong, “even when you can see the tears in his eyes,” she says. Her husband will agree to eat only if he is released from prison.
His lawyer, who visited him this week, told her that Adnan is already hooked up to a cardiac monitor.
“His situation is grave and very dangerous. We fear that at any moment he will become a martyr,” she says from behind her veil.
Adnan’s father, Mussa, is 72 and wears a kaffiyeh. For years Israel has been preventing him from visiting his son when he has been in prison.
“Israelis, Arabs, [French President] Nicolas Sarkozy, [British Prime Minister] David Cameron, [U.S. Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton and [U.S. President] Barack Obama – no one who tried to obtain Gilad Shalit’s release is intervening on behalf of my son. This is a power struggle of one man against a whole state, the State of Israel,” says Mussa.
“Are you Israelis in favor of a hunger strike? People are rotting in administrative detention. We fear for his life but we think he is doing the right thing. Every person must defend his honor and his freedom. No man of honor would allow his wife to be cursed the way the interrogators cursed her. The hunger strike is the prisoner’s only weapon.
“Israel is a democracy? Where is its democracy when it arrests people without trial? Gilad Shalit was abducted while fighting as a soldier in Gaza. My husband was arrested alongside his wife and daughters.”
The Israeli nonprofit organization Physicians for Human Rights took up Adnan’s case when he began his hunger strike. PHR is fighting his imprisonment without trial and has filed numerous petitions concerning his case, asking to have a physician from the organization visit him after Adnan refused to let doctors from the hospital or IPS examine him. This request was eventually granted, and a PHR doctor has been checking in on him every day for a week now.
The organization is also calling on the prison authorities to allow him to be unshackled. Chaining down a prisoner in his condition violates the IPS’s own procedures, PHR claims, and the hospitals that allow a patient to be treated this way are violating medical ethics.
“The decision to to use restraints on a patient in custody lies with the law enforcement authority responsible for him,” a Sieff Hospital spokeswoman told Haaretz.
Israel Medical Association ethics committee chairman Prof. Avinoam Reches wrote to PHR that after such a lengthy hunger strike, two wardens and no shackles should be enough. The head of Mayanei Hayeshua, Prof. Mordechai Ravid, also told PHR that he opposed shackling hospitalized prisoners, but that Adnan is no longer at his hospital.
PHR also filed a petition in the Petah Tikva District Court. In response, the IPS said Adnan was being shackled to preserve public safety.
This week, hearings over his release were held in his hospital room, due to his grave condition. For previous hearings, he was brought to the court in a wheelchair.
Dr. Calin Shapira, deputy director of Sieff Hospital, told Haaretz that he could not release details about Adnan’s condition in order to preserve medical confidentiality. Hospital spokeswoman Yael Shavit told Haaretz: “His condition is not good … we fear for his health.”
According to the Israel Medical Association, a person on hunger strike could die after 45 days. What will happen if Adnan loses consciousness and is about to die? Weizman, the IPS spokeswoman, said this week that the hospital’s ethic’s committee is responsible for deciding on treatment.
She added: “Following further examination, the Prison Service decided that the prisoner would be detained without shackles in the hospital. The service conducts frequent appraisals of prisoners’ situations, and makes decisions after reviewing all the circumstances.
“In exceptional cases, for humanitarian reasons, the service allows visits by family members and clerics. In addition, we allow visits by PHR doctors and Red Cross representatives. The hospital where the prisoner is being detained was chosen based on the facilities it offers and the availability of beds in the internal medicine ward.
“For the last two weeks the prisoner has been treated at the Sieff Hospital in Safed, in conjunction with [representatives from] PHR. As far as we know, no treatment has been administered against the prisoner’s wishes.”
EDITOR: The Emperor’s new underpants…
For years, all Palestinian citizens of Israel have been treated like terrorists in both Israeli and foreign airports, en route to Israel, which, as some people know, is in Palestine… Now some nice people in Haaretz Editorial board noticed this, at last. Good, but someone should tell them it is an inseparable part of military colonial occupation – you cannot end one, without ending the other, its reason and context. You never know, one day they might start writing about ending the occupation?… well, not soon, I don’t think.
Airport security can’t treat Arab Israelis like suspicious objects: Haaretz Editorial
Israeli bouncers at airports treat Arab Israelis exactly like a ‘target’ and a fifth column – this must stop.
Yara Mashour wanted to return to her home in Israel. A natural-born citizen and the editor of a popular Israeli weekly, she arrived at an El Al counter in a Milan airport this week, her passport and an airline ticket in hand. What happened next is what happens to almost every Arab Israeli traveler: She was singled out, put through rigorous security checks, asked ridiculous, humiliatingly intimate questions and had her baggage thoroughly searched. But when it reached the stage of a body search, Mashour, a proud citizen, refused, choosing instead to give up her flight.
Her story, reported in Thursday’s Haaretz by Jack Khoury, is familiar to most Arab Israelis who have flown from or to Ben-Gurion International Airport via El Al. Yossi Sarid wrote in Thursday’s Haaretz about an eerily similar incident that happened to Yara and her father, the late journalist Lutfi Mashour, 27 years ago. Nothing has changed since then.
Nobody questions the need for airport security checks. But what happens at Israel’s airports, and at El Al counters overseas, goes way beyond what is necessary to ensure passenger safety: It entails unnecessary humiliation and being singled out on account of one’s ethnic origin.
Every Arab Israeli passenger is greeted with this unwelcome and outrageous reminder: He is a second-class citizen in his own country. All the justifications and excuses offered by El Al and the security services cannot whitewash this intolerable situation. An Arab Israeli is not a suspicious object, and must be treated exactly the same as other Israeli citizens.
Shin Bet security service chief Yoram Cohen recently said Arab Israelis “aren’t Shin Bet targets; they aren’t a fifth column, and we don’t treat them as if they were.” He also noted that Arab Israeli involvement in terrorism has declined. But the behavior of the Israeli bouncers at airports stands in glaring contradiction to his words: They treat Arab Israelis exactly like a “target” and a fifth column.
Promises to introduce high-tech equipment that will obviate the need for such security checks no longer suffice. The same goes for the buck-passing between El Al and the security services. An immediate change is necessary – less one of conduct than of consciousness: Every passenger must be treated respectfully and equally.