EDITOR: The Boycott is spreading, as is the consciousness
Israel is no longer the object of love and admiration it has been for so long amongst those who were unaware of its brutal activities – the terrifying attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 in which more than 1500 Lebanese civilians were killed, the bloody attack on Gaza starting on December 28th, 2008, and continuing for almost a month, with over 1440 civilians murdered, the Flotilla attack in which 9 Turkish volunteers were butchered in cold blood, the many race riots against black refugees which have started last months and are still continuing – all these have brought to public view the brutality, lawlessness and inhumanity of the Israeli occupation regime. To have replaced apartheid South Africa in the public’s mind is indeed an achievement…
Israel is new South Africa as boycott calls increase: Independent
After Madonna began her world tour there last week, campaigners urge cutting of cultural ties
JONATHAN OWEN SUNDAY 03 JUNE 2012
Some of the world’s biggest stars – from Madonna to the Red Hot Chili Peppers – are being accused of putting profit before principle in a growing backlash against artists performing in Israel.
Campaigners angry at human rights abuses against the Palestinian people – symbolised by Israel’s policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinians and allowing Israeli settlers to take over their land – are demanding a boycott of Israeli venues in a campaign that echoes the 1980s protests against South Africa and the infamous venue Sun City.
Last week Madonna came under fire for her decision to perform in Israel to kick off her world tour last Thursday. “By performing in Israel, Madonna has consciously and shamefully lent her name to fig-leafing Israel’s occupation and apartheid and showed her obliviousness to human rights,” said Omar Barghouti of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Attempts by Madonna to deflect criticism by offering free tickets to local campaigners backfired, with a number rejecting the offer. Boycott from Within, an Israeli campaign group, accused the singer of “a blatant attempt at whitewashing Israeli crimes”. Mr Barghouti added: “As we’ve learned from the South African struggle for freedom, entertaining Israeli apartheid should never be mislabelled as singing for peace.” The star’s publicist did not respond to requests for comment.
Acts such as alleged war crimes during Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza and the 2010 killing of peace activists by Israeli commandos on an aid ship are fuelling the return of an anti-apartheid campaign on a scale not seen in a generation. Saeed Amireh, 21, a peace activist from Nilin in the West Bank, said: “We don’t have freedom of movement. They don’t want peace; they just want us to disappear. They are suppressing our very existence.”
Calls for a boycott are supported by hundreds of artists around the world, from the film director Ken Loach to former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters and the author Alice Walker. Artists such as Carlos Santana and Elvis Costello have cancelled shows after pressure from campaigners in recent years; Coldplay, U2 and Bruce Springsteen have declined invitations to play in Israel without supporting the boycott publicly. Paul McCartney, Elton John, Rihanna and Leonard Cohen are among those to have ignored calls not to appear there.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lenny Kravitz and Guns N’ Roses plan to play in Israel this year, prompting the campaign group Artists Against Apartheid to appeal: “As was done in the case of South African apartheid, please join us now in the cultural boycott of Israel, and help stop entertaining apartheid.” The campaign has rattled the music industry, prompting a group of US-Israel entertainment executives to set up the Creative Community for Peace last year in an effort to counter the cultural boycott.
It is also troubling senior Israeli politicians: a law passed by the Knesset last year means that people who call for a boycott could be sued in court. The Israeli government has also set up a committee to look at how to compensate Israeli promoters in the cases of “politically motivated cancellations”.
Controversy over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has provoked protests among actors, too. Emma Thompson is among more than 30 actors, directors and playwrights who condemned the Globe Theatre for including Israel’s national theatre company in its Shakespeare festival last week.
The Israeli embassy this weekend dismissed criticisms of Israel as “an anti-Israeli movement” and the Board of Deputies of British Jews claimed comparisons with apartheid-era South Africa were “a specious and desperate effort by a failing boycott campaign”. Nevertheless, Israel’s President Shimon Peres admitted earlier this year: “If Israel’s image gets worse, it will begin to suffer boycotts. There is already an artistic boycott against us and signs of an undeclared financial boycott are beginning to emerge.”
The Co-op announced a boycott of goods from West Bank settlements last month.
Far-right Europeans and Israelis: this toxic alliance spells trouble: Guardian
Migrants everywhere need to be wary when European fascists and far-right Israeli nationalists use the same racist rhetoric
Rachel Shabi
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 June 2012
Last month, demonstrations against African refugees in Tel Aviv turned violent. Protesters looted shops, broke windows and firebombed buildings, including a nursery. Days ago, arsonists torched the home of 10 African migrants in Jerusalem, injuring four, and leaving the unequivocal graffiti: “Get out of the neighbourhood.”
On Monday, Israeli TV reported that Haifa’s council had warned local businesses that they risked losing their licences if they employed African refugees, and that shopkeepers in the southern town of Sderot were refusing to serve migrants. Israeli statistics show some 60,000 African migrants have entered the country in the past seven years through the Egyptian Sinai desert – many of them asylum seekers fleeing repression or war in Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea. Israel, much like Europe, seems consumed with worry about being “swamped” by developing-world refugees – although, perhaps in part because of its location, the fears in Israel sound more visceral. So far, Israel’s approach has been to build a steel fence on the Egyptian border and a giant detention centre in the south, and to pass a law that allows the detention of migrants for up to three years. Since its creation, fewer than 150 people have been recognised as refugees in Israel.
The crude response from politicians has been as disturbing as the scenes on the streets. Last week, the interior minister, Eli Yishai, said: “Most of those people arriving here are Muslims who think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man.” He has also described the refugees as rapists and criminals. Weeks ago, Miri Regev, a Likud member of the Knesset, referred to Sudanese people in Israel as a cancer. Former TV presenter and emerging politician Yair Lapid last month lambasted some Knesset members as “inciters” leading a pogrom, and wrote: “I wonder how they have the nerve to call themselves Jews.”
The sight of Jewish Israelis – sons and daughters of refugees – echoing, pretty much window-smashing act by act and racist line by line, scenes from historic anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe, isn’t an easy one. Nor is the uncomfortable reality that hatred of refugees is so easily stoked in Israel. Having for years practised a policy of separation between Jews and subjugated Palestinians both in the occupied territories and within Israel, the country has incubated a form of casual racism and puritanical appraisal of the “other”, in which anti-migrant sentiments can flourish. Last month, the Israeli historian and commentator Tom Segev told AP: “What disturbs me most is the racist atmosphere. For several years now, Israel society has been moving in that direction.” At one protest against migrants last year, an Israeli demonstrator explained her hostility: “They aren’t Jews. Why should they be here with us?” The language itself is a giveaway: protesters, politicians and reporters alike have labelled African refugees as infiltrators – the same fear-inducing, security-conscious term used to describe Palestinians. No wonder, then, that the Prevention of Infiltration Law, introduced during the 1950s to stop Palestinian refugees returning, has just been amended to apply to Africans.
Meanwhile, gut-level anxiety over demographics are everywhere – rabbis and ministers are warning that migrants, just like Palestinians, will use a sort of birth-rate-bombing tactic in Israel, outnumbering the Jewish population and thereby sinking the nation.
The rhetoric may be ramped up, but far-right Israeli ministers are basically repeating the anti-immigration, anti-Muslim sentiments of rising far-right parties in Europe. That isn’t a coincidence because, perversely, the two have recently found common cause. In the past few years, Israeli ministers have played host to far-right European leaders and made clear the shared values on the supposed menace of Islam and (especially Muslim) migrants. Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, is one of several far-right figures to have visited Israel and met hard-right ministers there. During one trip, Wilders met the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, and spoke of Israel as a front line in the fight to counter Islam. “If Jerusalem falls,” he warned, “Amsterdam and New York will be next.”
This affiliation is great news for Europe’s far-right parties, who seek to sanitise their image, and whose history of antisemitism has been a block to gaining mainstream acceptability. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research group, has warned that far-right parties in Europe are on the rise in part because they’ve opportunistically buried antisemitism in favour of an apparently more palatable stance against Islam and Muslim migrants. How lucky for them that Jewish Israeli politicians are helping them with that.
No doubt it’s comforting for Israel’s far right to find allies that lip-synch claims of a frontier battle. But when the people who perfectly understand you are also the ones with a history of violently hating you, it’s time to worry about what exactly is in this relationship. Israel’s current attacks on African refugees are bad enough, but if this outbreak even partly signals a dovetailing agenda between European fascists and far-right Israeli nationalists, that’s a toxic arrangement – and trouble for migrants, Muslims and Jews everywhere.
Jerusalem court sanctions deportation of South Sudan nationals from Israel: Haaretz
Some 1,000 South Sudanese are believed to be in Israel, part of a larger influx of African migrants who have poured into the country in recent years; Yishai says court ruling is first of many such steps.
By Oz Rosenberg and Dana Weiler-Polak Jun.07, 2012
The Jerusalem’s District Court ruled on Thursday that Israel could deport South Sudanese nationals back to their county, thus rejecting an appeal by migrant worker NGOs against a decision by Interior Minister Eli Yishai to halt Israel’s collective defense of citizens form the war-torn country.
Yishai said in response to the ruling that he “congratulates the court’s decision, one allowing the deportation of about 1,500 infiltrators who had arrived from South Sudan,” adding he “hopes this is the first step in a series of measures allowing us to deport [migrants] from Eritrea and North Sudan.
Some 1,000 South Sudanese are believed to be in Israel, part of a larger influx of African migrants who have poured into the country in recent years. Some are refugees, while others are seeking employment.
Major violence between Sudan and South Sudan has flared recently, pushing the region to the edge of all-out war, according to news reports.
Speaking in response to the court’s ruling, Khaled, a South Sudanese national who has been residing in Israel with two of his children since 2007, said: “I really don’t know what to do.”
“It’s sending people and families to a dangerous place. I’m afraid to go back there with the kids, will they have a future in such place?” he added, saying that he didn’t think he would to hide from authorities. “It isn’t practical, I have two underage kids, I don’t want to do that to them.”
The NGOs who had submitted the court appeal also responded to the decision, saying they “regret the ruling” and “fear for the safety and wellbeing of the deportees, especially the children due to be send to a dangerous place.”
The Jerusalem court’s decision came after, late last month, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein told the court that there is no reason to prevent the deportation of South Sudanese citizens to their country of origin, as South Sudan is safe enough for them to return home.
Weinstein based the remarks on a foreign ministry report on the economic and security conditions in South Sudan, and on the possibility of deporting migrants to the country.
According to Weinstein’s remarks, the situation in South Sudan does not provide grounds to fear for the lives and physical safety of migrants who are returned to the country.
The attorney general also said that asylum applications of South Sudanese citizens will be examined individually, based on the Refugee Convention.
Weinstein’s announcements came amid mounting tensions over the issue of African migrants in Israel.
Last week an anti-migrant protest turned violent, with some 1,000 protesters in Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood calling for the ousting of African asylum seekers from Israel. Demonstrators attacked African passersby while others lit garbage cans on fire and smashed car windows.
A further anti-migrant rally is planned in south Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
At last weeks demonstration, the crowd cried “The people want the Sudanese deported” and “Infiltrators get out of our home,” and a number of MKs addressed the crowd. Likud MK Miri Regev told protesters that “the Sudanese are a cancer in our body.” Regev apologized over the remarks on Sunday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the actions of demonstrators, and MKs who were present at the rally, and promised that his government would address the issue of African migrants in Israel.
Israeli soldiers use Palestinians to train army dogs, activist says: Haaretz
Report claims IDF troops order West Bank residents to exit cars and wait, as dogs seek training explosive devices; army spokesman: Soldiers conduct searches to increase Israelis’ safety.
By Amira Hass Jun.07, 2012
Soldiers from an elite IDF canine unit have been confiscating Palestinian vehicles in order to train their explosive-detecting dogs, an activist monitoring the conduct of soldiers in checkpoints told Haaretz.
The unit in question is Oketz, directly subordinate to IDF command, and which, among other duties, trains dogs to locate weapons and explosives. Its training base is located in the Adam base west of Ramallah.
According to Tamar Fleischman, Oketz soldiers have been randomly stopping Palestinian vehicles in the last few weeks as they pass through the Jaba checkpoint, near the city of Ramallah.
The soldiers then reportedly order the passengers to exit and display their identification cards, with one soldier positioned with his weapon aimed at the Palestinians.
At that point, Fleischman said, a dog handler places an object inside the vehicle, which the dog is then sent to find, an receiving a treat upon its retrieval. The passengers then receive their IDs, and are allowed to return to the vehicle. The entire process usually takes around ten minutes.
Earlier this week, Fleischman reported that in one such session the dog was unable to locate the hidden object, prompting a soldier to crawl through the vehicle until it was found, with the passengers looking on as another soldier pointed his rifle at them.
According to Breaking the Silence, an NGO, which collects the testimonies of IDF soldiers serving in the occupied territories, the training of Oketz personnel and dogs using Palestinian vehicles has been performed in the past as well.
One testimony, given by a female dog handler, relates to the period from 2007 to 2009. She said that the soldiers were present at the checkpoints “only to train the dogs.”
“We hide something in the case…like a [rifle] magazine. In the unit we use something called a snapir [fin], a stainless steel canister holding explosives held in a net, that keeps material, but allows scent to filter out,” she said, adding that the container holds the blast in case it’s dropped, “so no one can get hurt.”
The past dog handler said that Oketz soldiers take the vessel with them “to the checkpoints, and hide it in Palestinian vehicles and then the dog looks for it…. The justification for the action is ‘deterrent,’ the passengers don’t know we’re really not inspecting the vehicle.”
“This happens all year, even if it’s raining outside,” she said.
According to testimonials, the training isn’t time-bound, with sessions sometimes lasting for an hour, sometime three.
In one instance, three of four dogs were loaded onto a pickup truck, and driven to a checkpoint near the Adam base. At the Na’alin checkpoint, used by both Israelis and Palestinians, soldiers would stop “every Arab passing by, even if his wife was giving birth.”
“Countless settlers pass through there, but you would never inspect those vehicles, she said, adding that the dog handlers made sure to ask the passengers to remove Korans and prayer rugs from the vehicles, as they they would not be defiled by the dogs.
Speaking to Haaretz, Fleischman said that dog handlers have attempted to prevent her and other activists from filming the process from the other side of the checkpoint. In one instance, they did film, but the soldiers yelled out that they were being put at risk, adding that they had security clearance. They then stopped the training, and put the dog into a special cage, releasing him and resuming the session once Fleischman and the other activists walked away.
The IDF Spokesman’s Office said in response that “following the appeal, the issue will be thoroughly examined. As a rule, the IDF conducts inspections in West Bank checkpoints as part of its routine activity, in an attempt to ensure the safety of Israel’s citizens.”
EDITOR: The PNA is still deluded…
Now that even the children of the Middle East have noticed that the two-state solution is dead and buried, the PNA minister is trying below to argue for it… It would be better if they organised the Palestinians to end the occupation, instead.
Last chance for two states, as apartheid beckons: Haaretz
The hopes and expectations embodied in the Oslo Accords of 1993 have nearly vanished completely. The occupation is fast becoming irreversible. We are facing the last chance to save the two-state solution, and Israeli leadership is urgently needed.
By Muhammad Shtayyeh Jun.06, 2012
Almost two decades ago, the world celebrated the beginning of a process that was supposed to lead to a just and peaceful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict within five years.
The Oslo Accords was designed to be the means to an end: an end already defined by international law, which would fulfill the Palestinians’ natural and legal right to self-determination, see the return of the Palestinian Territory occupied in 1967 (OPT) to its rightful owners, and a just and agreed on solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees.
Unfortunately, this process did not conclude. Instead of sowing hope, it fomented frustration and loss of faith. Over the years, Israel systematically undermined the process and implanted realities on the ground, which have methodically degraded the stated goal of the political process.
Today, the facts before us are clear: the Israeli occupation, far from being over, has instead intensified dramatically. There are now over half a million settlers, almost double the number at the onset of the Accords. The Israeli settlement and Wall regime, which is illegal in international law, dissects and fragments the OPT.
When we look at the map, we are compelled to conclude that Israel is successfully and systematically fragmenting the Palestinian Territory, while investing in the illegal settlement enterprise.
Israeli policies are carving out occupied East Jerusalem, our capital, from its natural and historic Palestinian surroundings while expanding settlement construction at an unprecedented rate. Thousands of Palestinians have been displaced by these measures, including home demolition and residency revocation. Meanwhile, the Jordan Valley, which represents almost thirty percent of the West Bank, has now been almost entirely devoured by a lucrative business-driven settlement enterprise.
Israeli control of this area, together with the illegal Wall, de facto expropriates more than half of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in addition to the Palestinians’ most valuable natural resources.
These Israeli measures have undermined the viability of our economy, our basic right to development, and the very applicability of our inalienable right to self-determination. In effect, we have hit the ceiling that Israel has imposed on us through its occupation. That’s why there are credible fears that the Israeli occupation and colonization of the Palestinian Territory has become so entrenched that it could now be irreversible.
Mr. Netanyahu has reduced the OPT to dozens of Palestinian “islands”, with their “contiguity” becoming a discussion on whether Israel should build tunnels or bridges between them. His so-called vision of peace is of a Palestine that would not have control over its air space, border crossings or natural resources while our capital would be separated from the rest of the country. This is a dangerous and unsustainable position that reflects a deep disdain regarding the two-state solution.
Furthermore, Israeli policies and actions have systematically undermined the Palestinian Authority. The PA has no real sovereignty or power over our own land. We do not control our border crossings or population registry, we are denied our own airport, our economy is stunted by Israeli policies, and the receipt of our tax revenues is subject to the whim of the Israeli government.
For twenty years, we have asked our people to believe in the prospect of peace and independence through negotiations. Yet, during these years, we, the Palestinians, have been living in a one state reality, a reality of apartheid; a state of perpetual occupation that has entrenched over the years. This is clearly untenable.
The current Israeli government coalition, whose powerbase lies in the champions of the settlement enterprise, has made it its business to invest in entrenching the occupation and undermining the possibility of a viable two-state solution. This agenda has taken the future of the entire region hostage while enjoying a culture of impunity brought on by immunity from international accountability. Furthermore, suggestions about having a Palestinian state with so-called “provisional” borders are unacceptable and confirm Palestinian suspicions that there is no Israeli partner committed to ending this occupation and achieving peace.
The way to resolve this conflict is not a mystery. It has been defined by an unprecedented international consensus. Israel’s leaders must show that they are genuinely willing to reach a negotiated and just settlement to the conflict by ending all activities contravening prior agreements and international law. These are not preconditions for negotiations; they are the internationally accepted foundations on which all prior negotiations have been based. Changing the terms of reference is as absurd as it is counterproductive.
The need for a quick and effective change of course has never been more pressing. Israelis must fight for their right to a future free from the moral corruption of occupation. The international community also has a moral and legal responsibility to act now. Speeches and statements will not undo what bulldozers and cranes are creating on the ground. Actions will.
There is still time to prevent a permanent apartheid reality. But the window of opportunity is not indefinite. The point of no return is fast approaching. The time to save our collective investment in the two-state solution is now. It is the responsible course of action. It is what we, as leaders, owe our peoples.
Dr. Muhammad Shtayyeh is a Minister in charge of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction, PECDAR, a member of the Palestinian Negotiations team and the Central Committee of Fateh. He has been involved in the Peace Process since 1991.
A stain on the Knesset: Haaretz Editorial
Israeli construction in the occupied territories is not a consolation prize for people whom the state and court have accused of serious breaches of the law.
Jun.06, 2012
If right-wing MKs don’t come to their senses at the last moment, the current Knesset will sully the reputation of Israel’s parliament with deliberations and a vote on two bills that have no place in an enlightened, law-abiding, democratic country.
Their innocuous titles – “a bill for the protection of landholders in Judea and Samaria” and “a bill for the protection of the rights of the builders of structures in Judea and Samaria” – obscure criminal intent to retroactively approve illegal and unauthorized construction on West Bank land owned by helpless Palestinians.
Moreover, the bills are designed to thwart the rulings of the country’s highest court. In their exuberance to defend intruders and unscrupulous developers, the supporters of these so-called arrangement laws are exceeding the Knesset’s authority and seeking to create facts beyond Israel’s borders.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aware of the damage laws like this would inflict on Israel’s foreign relations. He certainly understands that official approval of the confiscation of Palestinians’ property would intensify international pressure regarding the settlements that have been built with the government’s authorization.
In an attempt to counter the bills and soften criticism from the right, Netanyahu has been liberally promising compensation to settlers if they would be so good to obey the High Court of Justice’s orders. The prime minister has committed to have 10 homes built in the settlement of Beit El for every home demolished.
Israeli construction in the occupied territories is not a consolation prize for people whom the state and court have accused of serious breaches of the law. The settlements are a core issue to be thrashed out in talks for a final peace agreement. Until then, Israel should not expand settlements in areas such as Beit El east of the separation fence in the heart of a densely populated Palestinian area.
The prime minister is finding it hard to evict a few intruders to carry out a court order when he has the support of a broad coalition of 94 MKs. So the Israeli public, the Palestinians and the international community are wondering if he could ever evacuate large numbers of settlers for the sake of peace.
Avraham Burg: Even I – an Israeli – think settlement goods are not kosher: Independent
Preventing the mislabelling of products as ‘Made in Israel’ would be a giant leap for Middle East peace
AVRAHAM BURG THURSDAY 07 JUNE 2012
Amid the darkness surrounding the Middle East peace process, we now see a ray of light. Since 2009, the United Kingdom has been taking measures, in accordance with European consumer protection rules, to ensure that settlement products – goods you might find on your supermarket shelves that have been produced in the occupied Palestinian territories – are no longer labelled as “made in Israel”.
After a meeting of the EU Council of Foreign Ministers last month, several European member states now appear ready to follow the British initiative. Denmark has already announced it will do so. Member states also committed to ensure that settlement products were excluded from preferential treatment under the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
Contrary to what you may think, EU member states which take these measures act in Israel’s interest. They do so because they take steps that defend and reinforce the Green Line, the pre-1967 border between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Green Line is of decisive importance to achieving Middle East peace. It is the line that was drawn in green pencil on the maps that were on the table at the time of the cease-fire agreements between Israel and the Arab states, signed in 1949. Regrettably, this line survived only until the 1967 war.
During this war, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Ever since, efforts of consecutive Israeli governments to blur this line and, ultimately, to erase it have not ceased. The Green Line has disappeared from the official maps of the State of Israel. Schools were even prohibited from presenting it in educational materials.
The large-scale and expansionist settlement enterprise erodes the Green Line every day. Residential communities, now housing more than 500,000 settlers, were established within occupied Palestinian territory in order to make us forget the Green Line’s existence and prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. It should long have been clear to every Israeli that anything located inside the Green Line is the democratic, legal, normative Israel, and anything beyond the line is something else: undemocratic, illegal, not normative. Not ours.
But the Israeli people’s eyes are blind, their ears are deaf and their leaders are flaccid and weak. This is precisely the situation in which civilised societies urgently need feedback and intervention from the outside: to mirror the absurdity of the situation created and to focus attention on the damage of human and political blindness. To tell Israel that it is impossible to be treated as “the only democracy in the Middle East”, while it is also the last colonial occupier in the Western world.
It is not anti-Semitic and not anti-Israel to convey these messages. On the contrary: the settlers, the conquerors and their political allies – including Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel – are the real enemies of Israel’s future.
Indeed, anyone who wants to erase the pre-1967 border is essentially asking to erase the basic values on which the State of Israel was established: democracy, equality, the rule of law, secularism and modernity. Colonising Palestinian land across the Green Line goes in the opposite direction: it generates fanatic, nationalistic, fundamentalist and anti-democratic energies that threaten all civilised Israeli foundations.
I have decided to not buy any product that comes from the settlements. I do not cross the Green Line, not to promote public causes and not for family events. Because everything happening across the Green Line is the dark alter ego of Israel. Its hidden personality is manifest there. Evil, aggressive and impenetrable. This personality threatens to take over the good and humane parts of the legitimate Israel. With international help, we must return these demons to their bottles, or rather to those positive domains for which this state was established.
Preventing the mislabelling of settlement products as “made in Israel” and blocking their preferential entry into the EU seems a symbolic and minor step. However, in the present circumstances, it is a giant leap for Middle East peace, which seems more remote than ever.
Contrary to what you may be told, this is not a sweeping boycott of Israel, but a subtle and moral distinction that marks the difference between Israel’s great potential and its destructive capabilities.
If, God forbid, the Green Line will be permanently erased, from consciousness and from the ground, then Israel will also be erased. The struggle for the preservation of the Green Line is the struggle for Israel. Anyone who defends and reinforces it is a friend of Israel and keeps hope alive.
Avraham Burg was Speaker of the Knesset (1999-2003) and Chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization
EDITOR: Do you really wish to go to Israel? Think again!
Israel airport security demands access to tourists’ private email accounts: Haaretz on IOA
By Amira Hass, Haaretz – 5 June 2012
Several U.S. tourists report being asked by airport security personnel for access to their personal email accounts; Israel’s Shin Bet security service says it acted within the law.
Israel’s Shin Bet security service has been demanding access to personal email accounts of visiting tourists with Arab names, according to the testimony of three U.S. citizens who were interrogated at Ben Gurion Airport and subsequently refused entry into Israel in May.
Najwa Doughman, a 25-year-old architect from New York, landed in Israel on May 26. Doughman, who had already visited Israel three times in the past, planned to tour the country for ten days with a friend, Sasha Al-Sarabi, 24, who was visiting Israel for the first time. Both women were born to Palestinian families who were expelled from Haifa and Akko in 1948.
Around 5 P.M., approximately an hour after landing, Doughman’s interrogation began. She was questioned by a female security guard who did not divulge her name or position. Another female questioner was also present.
The first part of the interrogation began with questions like: “Do you feel more Arab or more American?” (to which the interrogation supplied her own answer: “Surely you must feel a little more Arab.”), “Will you go to Al-Aqsa?” and “Why are you coming now for the third time? You can go to Venezuela, to Mexico, to Canada. It is much closer to New York, and much less expensive!”
When Doughman responded by asking “Don’t you have other tourists who come here more than once?” her interrogator responded, “I’m asking the questions here.”
Then, according to Doughman, her interrogator said, “Okay, we are going to do something very interesting now!” As Doughman describes it, the harsh stare on the security woman’s face gave way to a slight smirk. She typed www.gmail.com on her computer, turned the keyboard toward Doughman and demanded that she log in to her personal email account.
Doughman said she that, while she was taken aback, it did not occur to her to refuse, despite the fact that this was clearly not a reasonable request.
According to a piece Doughman wrote several days later on the blog Mondoweiss, the security woman read through every email with certain key words (including “Palestine,” “Israel,” “West Bank” and “International Solidarity Movement”), reading some lines out loud as well as some chats between her and her friend regarding their upcoming trip. Then she recorded a number of her contacts’ names, emails and telephone numbers.
After some five hours of questioning, Doughman and her friend were forced to wait another three hours, after which they were told that they would be refused entry into Israel. Accompanied by a heavy cadre of security people, they were led to another part of Ben Gurion Airport, where they were photographed and their bags were searched meticulously down to the smallest objects.
Their computers and iPads were passed, twice, through an explosives-detection machine. Then they were given body searches behind a curtain.
When a metal detector beeped while being passed over a button on Doughman’s jeans, she was asked to take her pants off. She broke down in tears and refused, to which the security team responded by threatening to remove her pants by force. Instead, she was given a pair of shorts from her own suitcase and told to put them on instead of her jeans.
The two spent the night in a detention facility at Ben Gurion Airport and were flown out via France, some 14 hours after landing in Israel.
On May 21, another U.S. citizen, Sandra Tamari, a 42-year-old Quaker from St. Louis, was also asked to give airport security people access to her email before being denied entry into Israel. Her interrogation lasted eight hours. When she refused to open her email account, she was told that she was probably hiding something.
Tamari, also of Palestinian descent, has been active in campaigns for a boycott and sanctions against Israel. Her description of events was also published on Mondoweiss.
A third American citizen, who preferred that her name not be published, was also refused entry in May after refusing to allow airport security personnel to access her personal email account. She was also told that she must have something to hide.
A similar case was reported in October of 2011.
Ronit Eckstein, a spokesperson for the Israel Airports Authority, told Haaretz that the Interior Ministry is responsible for the entry of tourists to Israel, and that the security officials who interrogated the women were not employed by the Airports Authority or by Ben Gurion Airport.
The Interior Ministry said in response that the security checks are the responsibility of the Shin Bet security service.
The Shin Bet confirmed that Doughman and Tamari had been questioned by Shin Bet agents after landing in Israel, adding that the actions taken by the agents during questioning were within the organizations authority according to Israeli law.