View the film on the BBC link below. Seeing is believing.
Israel rejects police abuse probe: BBC
Israeli border police officers who were filmed apparently abusing Palestinian civilians will not face charges, an Israeli state prosecutor has ruled.
An appeal calling for an investigation was rejected and the police’s actions dismissed as “only light blows”, said human rights group, Yesh Din. The three videos show Palestinian civilians being struck, grabbed and humiliated by uniformed officers.
The incident allegedly took place in East Jerusalem in 2008. Israeli police have refused to comment on the ruling.
‘Wink of consent’
The Yesh Din group was set up in 2006 to provide legal assistance to Palestinians in the occupied territories.
It described the ruling a shocking decision:
“This shows a reality where soldiers feel that it is permissible to harass and beat civilians. Criminal law forbids assault.
“It is a wrong and dangerous wink of consent.” The group quoted Israeli Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan as justifying the officers’ actions within the law: “They were light blows that do not cause real damage, are not illegal.” It is not clear how the footage was made public, but reports suggest it was recorded on a mobile phone that was then lost. In one of the videos, an Israeli officer is seen hitting a young Palestinian man, then striking him on the back of the neck – an action that is culturally an insult. The officer then dishevels the man’s clothes and knees him in the backside. In another video, a Palestinian is made to salute the officer before being released. The Israeli Department for the Investigation of Police Officers had announced in January 2009 that it was not going to seek prosecution against the officers. The latest ruling was a rejection of Yesh Din’s appeal against that decision. The human rights group said it would consider further legal means to challenge the decision.
Below, you can read about the love which never falters, the only true love story in the entire universe – that of Uncle Sam and Miss Israel… and this after Turkey called off the NATO excercise because of Israel, so the lone lovers continue unabated:
Israel joins US for defence drill: BBC
Israel and the US are due to begin a two-week military defence exercise, thought to be the largest of its kind in Israel’s history.
The exercise will focus on providing a joint defence against a simulated co-ordinated missile attack on Israel.
Up to 2,000 joint military personnel are believed to be taking part, along with at least 15 American ships.
The Israeli army said the exercise was not a “response to any world events” but had been planned for a while.
It is thought that a highly sophisticated new American radar, based in the Israeli desert, will be central to the exercise.
Two-fold significance
The simulation will involve elements such as barrage of missiles fired on Israel from all points south, east and north.
The BBC’s Middle East correspondent Tim Franks said many observers inside Israel believed the exercise carried a two-fold significance.
This included sending a message of deterrence to any would-be attackers of Israel – whether they were in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or Iran. It was also possibly an attempt to reassure Israel’s people that the US took the country’s security seriously – especially at a time when the US has expressed increasing concern about Iran’s nuclear programme, although Tehran insists it is purely peaceful. Analysts say use the manoeuvres could also serve to make Israel feel more secure, and therefore encourage a return to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Last week, Turkey, one of the few Muslim countries with whom Israel has had good contacts, cancelled a joint air force exercise with Israel.
Israel, Turkey and the US countries took part in a joint exercise in the Mediterranean Sea, off Haifa last year.
Tim Franks said Turkish-Israeli relations have become strained this year, since Turkey heavily criticised Israel’s war in Gaza.
The exercise, which is entitled Juniper Cobra, is due to finish on 5 November.
Palestinian woman stabs Israeli guard at West Bank checkpoint: Ha’aretz
An Israeli security guard was moderately wounded on Sunday when a Palestinian woman stabbed him in the stomach at the Qalandiya checkpoint north of Jerusalem.
The guard, 28, was taken to the trauma unit at Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital for treatment. The assailant, a 21-year-old resident of Ramallah was arrested on the spot. She was detained for questioning at the Jerusalem Police’s juvenile unity.
According to the Magen David Adom paramedic who treated the guard at the scene, the wound was deep and caused by a short-bladed knide. “He was bleeding and very pale, but fully conscious and told us that he had been stabbed by a terrorist,” said the medic. The medic was able to curb the bleeding at the scene before evacuating the casualty to hospital. The stabbing came after a day of clashes at the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, where at least 28 people – 25 Palestinians and three Israel Police officers – were wounded. Police detained at least 15 Palestinian protesters over the course of Sunday.
Israel Police battle Arab rioters on Temple Mount; PA official arrested: Ha’aretz
Stone-throwing Arab youths wounded three policemen on the Temple Mount on Sunday as Jerusalem police, firing water cannons and stun grenades, raided the holy site in a bid to quell repeated bouts of rioting. At least 25 Palestinians were wounded over the course of the day. Police stormed the compound twice; the first time was in response to Arab youths who pelted officers with rocks and poured oil on them. Later Sunday morning, about 100 Arab youths renewed rioting at the Temple Mount, after which Border Police and regular policemen raided the site again, using stun grenades to disperse the rioters.
Police were attempting to completely clear the compound of worshippers. Officers arrested some 16 people during the disturbances. During the clash, police arrested Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ adviser on Jerusalem affairs, Hatam Abd al-Qadir, on suspicion of disorderly conduct. Police said he attacked officers and urged worshippers to hold a protest march. Ali Abu Sheikha, a senior official from the northern faction of the Islamic movement was also arrested during the clashes. Police said Abu Sheikha was at the Temple Mount disrupting the peace and inciting the youths. Early Sunday morning, police were patrolling near the Temple Mount, in the Old City of Jerusalem, when the youths began to hurl stones at them. Officers subsequently stormed the compound and arrested 12 people on suspicion of disorderly conduct.
A large wall of riot police, holding glass shields, closed in on the crowd, sending many of the rioters running into the mosque for cover. Arab youths hurled a firebomb at police during clashes at the site, but no one was wounded. A Jerusalem police spokesman, Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police did not enter the Al-Aqsa mosque atop the compound. The violence came after Jerusalem police announced Saturday that they would beef up their forces on Sunday around the Temple Mount, after Muslim leaders urged Arabs to defend Jerusalem against “Jewish conquest.” There have been repeated rumors among Palestinians that Jewish extremists are planning on harming the holy site. No such attempt has been made. Earlier in the month, Police clashed sporadically with Muslim protesters in and around the compound. No one was seriously wounded, but in the past deadly violence has erupted at the site.
Below you can read Ali Abinimah, reprting on his most successful derailing of the Olmert USA lecture tour, with much support from US students and faculty:
Why I disrupted Olmert: The Electronic Intifada
Ali Abunimah, 23 October 2009
If former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had merely been a diplomat or an academic offering a controversial viewpoint, then interrupting his 15 October speech at University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall would certainly have been an attempt to stifle debate (Noah Moskowitz, Meredyth Richards and Lee Solomon, “The importance of open dialogue,” Chicago Maroon, 19 October 2009). Indeed, I experienced exactly such attempts when my own appearance at Mandel Hall last January, with Professor John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein, was constantly interrupted by hecklers.
But confronting a political leader suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot be viewed the same way.
The report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict last winter, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, found that Israel engaged in willful, widespread and wanton destruction of civilian property and infrastructure, causing deliberate suffering to the civilian population. It found “that the incidents and patterns of events considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions” and that many may amount to “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” If that proves true, then the individual with primary responsibility is Ehud Olmert, who, as prime minister and the top civilian commander of Israel’s armed forces, was involved in virtually every aspect of planning and execution.
The killings of more than 3,000 Palestinians and Lebanese during Olmert’s three years in office are not mere differences of opinion to be challenged with a polite question written on a pre-screened note card. They are crimes for which Olmert is accountable before international law and public opinion.
Israel, unlike Hamas (also accused of war crimes by Goldstone), completely refused to cooperate with the Goldstone Mission. Instead of accountability, Olmert is, obscenely, traveling around the United States offering justifications for these appalling crimes, collecting large speaking fees, and being feted as a “courageous” statesman.
In their 20 October email to the University of Chicago community, President Robert Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum condemned the “disruptions” during Olmert’s speech. “Any stifling of debate,” they wrote, “runs counter to the primary values of the University of Chicago and to our long-standing position as an exemplar of academic freedom.”
Was it in order to promote debate that the University insisted on pre-screening questions and imposed a recording ban for students and media? In the name of promoting debate, will the University now invite Hamas leader Khaled Meshal — perhaps by video link — to lecture on leadership to its students, and offer him a large honorarium? Can we soon expect Sudan’s President Omar Bashir to make an appearance at Mandel Hall?
When I and others verbally confronted Olmert, we stood for academic freedom, human rights, and justice, especially for hundreds of thousands of students deprived of those same rights by Olmert’s actions.
During Israel’s attack on Gaza last winter, schools and universities were among the primary targets. According to the Goldstone report, Israeli military attacks destroyed or damaged at least 280 schools and kindergartens. In total, 164 pupils and 12 teachers were killed, and 454 pupils and five teachers injured.
After the bombing, Olmert and Israel continued their attack on academic freedom, blocking educational supplies from reaching Gaza. Textbooks, notebooks, stationery and computers are among the forbidden items. In September, Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, publicly appealed to Israel to lift its ban on books and other supplies from reaching Gaza’s traumatized students.
Israel destroyed buildings at the Islamic University and other universities. According to the Goldstone report, these “were civilian, educational buildings and the Mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility or their contribution to a military effort that might have made them a legitimate target in the eyes of the Israeli armed forces.”
Gaza’s university students — 60 percent of them women — study all the things that students do at the University of Chicago. Their motivations, aspirations, and abilities are just as high, but their lives are suffocated by unimaginable violence, trauma, and Israel’s blockade, itself a war crime. Olmert is the person who ordered these acts and must be held accountable.
Crimes against humanity are defined as “crimes that shock the conscience.” When the institutions with the moral and legal responsibility to punish and prevent the crimes choose complicit silence — or, worse, harbor a suspected war criminal, already on trial for corruption in Israel, and present him to students as a paragon of “leadership” — then disobedience, if that is what it takes to break the silence, is an ethical duty. Instead of condemning them, the University should be proud that its students were among those who had the courage to stand up.
For the first time in recorded history, an Israeli prime minister was publicly confronted with the names of his victims. It was a symbolic crack in the wall of impunity and a foretaste of the public justice victims have a right to receive when Olmert is tried in a court of law.
Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. This article was originally published in the University of Chicago’s Chicago Maroon newspaper and is republished with permission.
Only when such war criminals as Olmert will be put on trial, will we see the beginning of justice done. Remember Milosevic! Remember Karadjic!
Below an excellent article by Jonathan Cook, again exposing the illegal and immoral occupation regime in its shenanigans:
Israeli intelligence pose as Arabs to spy on citizens: The Electronic Intifada
Jonathan Cook, 21 October 2009
Civil rights groups in Israel have expressed outrage at the announcement last week that a special undercover unit of the police has been infiltrating and collecting intelligence on Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority by disguising its officers as Arabs. It is the first public admission that the Israeli police are using methods against the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens that were adopted long ago in the occupied territories, where soldiers are regularly sent on missions disguised as Palestinians. According to David Cohen, the national police commissioner, the unit was established two years ago after an assessment that there was “no intelligence infrastructure to deal with the Arab community.” He said that, in addition, undercover agents had been operating in East Jerusalem for several years to track potential terrorists. Israel’s Arab leaders denounced the move as confirmation that the Arab minority was still regarded by the police as “an enemy” — a criticism made by a state commission of inquiry after police shot dead 13 unarmed Arab demonstrators inside Israel and wounded hundreds more at the start of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000.
In a letter of protest to Israeli officials this week, Adalah, a legal rights group, warned that the unit’s creation violated the constitutional rights of the Arab minority and risked introducing “racial profiling” into Israeli policing. Although the police claim that only Arab criminals are being targeted, Arab leaders believe the unit is an expansion of police efforts to collect information on political activists, escalating what they term a “climate of fear” being fostered by the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Awad Abdel Fattah, general secretary of the National Democratic Assembly party, whose activists are regularly interrogated by the police even though the party is represented in the national parliament, said there was strong evidence that undercover units had been operating in Arab communities for many years.
“The question is, why are the police revealing this information now? I suspect it is designed to intimidate people, making them fear that they are being secretly watched so that they don’t participate in demonstrations or get involved in politics. It harms the democratic process.” Secret agents disguised as Arabs — known in Hebrew as mista’aravim — were used before Israel’s founding. Jews, usually recruited from Arab countries, went undercover in neighboring states to collect intelligence. The Haaretz newspaper revealed in 1998 that the secret police, the Shin Bet, also operated a number of mista’aravim inside Israel shortly after the state’s creation, locating them in major Arab communities.
The unit was disbanded in 1959, amid great secrecy, after several agents married local Arab women, and in some cases had children with them, in order to maintain their cover. But the mista’aravim are better known for their use by the Israeli army on short-term missions inside Arab countries or in the West Bank and Gaza, where they have often been sent to capture or kill local leaders. Famously Ehud Barak, the current defense minister, was sent to Beirut in 1973 disguised as an Arab woman to assassinate three Palestinian leaders. More recently, however, the army’s mista’aravim have come to notice because of allegations that they are being used as agents provocateurs, especially in breaking up peaceful protests by Palestinians in the West Bank against the wall.
In April 2005, during a demonstration at the village of Bilin, north of Jerusalem, Palestinians throwing stones at soldiers were revealed to be mista’aravim. They were filmed blowing their cover shortly afterwards by pulling our pistols to make arrests. The army later admitted it had used mista’aravim at the demonstration.Palestinians claim that stone-throwing by mista’aravim is often used to disrupt or discredit peaceful demonstrations and justify the army’s use of rubber bullets and live ammunition against the protesters in retaliation.Last week Jamal Zahalka, an Arab member of the parliament, warned other legislators of the danger that mista’aravim police officers would adopt similar tactics: “Such a unit will carry out provocations, in which the Arab public will be blamed for disorderly conduct.”Abdel Fattah said there were widespread suspicions that mista’avarim officers had been operating for years at legal demonstrations held by Israel’s Arab citizens, including at the protests against Israel’s winter attack on Gaza. He said they were often disguised as journalists so that they could photograph demonstrators. He said a woman activist from his party had been called in by the police for interrogation after a demonstration last year in the Arab town of Arrabeh. “The officer told her, ‘I know what you were saying because I was standing right next to you.’ And he then told her exactly what she had said.”In his testimony to a government watchdog, the police commissioner, Insp. Gen Cohen, said he had plans for the unit “to grow” and that it would solve a problem the police had in infiltrating Israel’s large Arab communities: “It’s very hard for us to work in Umm al-Fahm, it’s very hard for us to deal with crime in Juarish and Ramle.”
Several unnamed senior officers, however, defended their role in monitoring the Arab community, claiming the commissioner was wrong in stating that the use of mista’aravim inside Israel was new. One told Haaretz: “Existing units of mista’aravim have operated undercover among this population for about a decade.”
Orna Cohen, a lawyer with the Adalah legal group, said the accepted practice for police forces was to create specialized units according to the nature of the crime committed, not according to the ethnicity or nationality of the suspect.
She warned that the unit’s secretive nature, its working methods and the apparent lack of safeguards led to a strong suspicion that the Arab minority was being characterized as a “suspect group.” “Such a trend towards racial profiling and further discrimination against the minority is extremely dangerous,” she said.
Comments two years ago from Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet, have raised fears about the uses the police unit may be put to. He said the security services had the right to use any means to “thwart” action, even democratic activity, by the Arab minority to reform Israel’s political system. All the Arab parties are committed to changing Israel’s status from a Jewish state to “a state of all its citizens.”
Abdel Fattah said: “This is about transferring the methods used in the West Bank and Gaza into Israel to erode our rights as citizens. It raises questions about what future the state sees for us here.”
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Olmert visit sparks Palestine movement at US university: The Electronic Intifada
Emily Ratner writing from New Orleans, US, Live from Palestine, 20 October 2009
On 13 October, Tulane University, an elite university in the southern United States, hosted former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a featured speaker. Forced from office due to corruption charges and under indictment in his own country, Olmert’s speaking engagements at respected American universities should at the very least raise questions as to the propriety of such events. That he and members of his military and political cabinet have been accused of war crimes during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and last winter’s invasion of Gaza requires people of good conscience to raise their voices in dissent. In response to his visit, a coalition of students, teachers, activists and community members — Muslims, Jews, Christians, Palestinians and their allies — rallied in opposition and protest inside and outside the event. Despite much hostility, they also found a great deal of support and more momentum for their organizing efforts.
Although outnumbered, we were more powerful than the war criminal and his Mossad protectors and stronger than his security checkpoints and his electronically amplified lies. We strapped red tape to our bodies and stashed fake-bloodied clothes in our packs. Those of us who had the required documents, who had student IDs from New Orleans universities, passed through the checkpoints while our barred friends and allies gathered outside, armed with truths painted on poster board and voices amplified by our growing numbers. With less than two weeks’ notice, we had formed a broad coalition that planned a multi-phased action to reclaim the same campus that is home to TIPAC (the Tulane-Israel Public Affairs Committee). In 2007, the university hosted conservative commentator Ann Coulter for “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” in 2007 and had invited Olmert for a brief respite from international and Israeli courts. As Tulane University constructed a safe-haven and solicited interviews and meetings on behalf of its delinquent guest, dozens of our neighbors began to organize. And scores more responded to the call for action.
Tulane has long been an unwelcoming environment to our broader community, as well as to Muslim and Arab students. Olmert’s strategists and local friends chose the city’s most Zionist and “secure” nonreligious institution for his visit, and many activists questioned the wisdom of challenging a hostile student body and a sometimes even more hostile private police force. Tulane voices have been almost entirely absent in a great many community dialogues and meetings about Palestine solidarity work, and the prospect of initiating a campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Tulane’s campus has always seemed laughable. But New Orleans is a city where so many feel linked to the Palestinian struggle through shared themes like the experience of diaspora, the right of return and near-daily racist violence and oppression by police and military authorities. There is no space in our city where Israeli war criminals will not be challenged.
Tulane was as hostile an environment as we expected. Hundreds of Tulane students showed up to hear Olmert speak, and many laughed and applauded when he made jokes about the comments of overwhelmed Palestinians who threw up their hands in exasperation at his remarks (i.e., lies) and walked out of the building. Many of our own group were only kept silent by the red tape we’d hidden on our bodies and then used to cover our mouths when Olmert first walked onto the stage. Scrawled on the tape were words that enumerated some of Olmert’s administration’s crimes, such as “human shields,” “illegal settlements,” “white phosphorous” and “occupation.”
We breathed deeply and sat through an onslaught of racist lies about our Palestinian friends and family, until Olmert began to talk about the mistake Israel had made in “withdrawing” from Gaza. Then, one by one, our jaws aching from biting down on our testimonials of what we have seen with our own eyes and what our families and friends continue to suffer, we rose from our seats throughout the auditorium, slowly made our way to the aisle, and walked out.
Olmert’s audience became our own for a moment. They gasped and whispered as more than 20 individuals stood glaring at Olmert and his guards and then marched out of the auditorium. As we left, we heard the chants of our friends, and breathed freely for what felt like the first time in over an hour. The hostility inside was palpable, but we were embraced by our friends outside whose numbers had easily tripled since we’d last seen them. They’d been shouting for two hours now, competing with calls of “Heil Hitler” and “Palestinians are Nazis” from students passing by. A Muslim woman in a hijab (headscarf) was hit with plates of food thrown from an adjacent third floor balcony while campus police looked on.
Within 20 minutes we’d set up the next phase of our action: four persons dressed in bloodied clothes laid down on the ground in front of the auditorium, and we placed cardboard grave markers with the numbers of massacred Palestinians and Lebanese around them. As students began to flow out of the auditorium, we handed out fliers detailing Olmert’s war crimes and tried to stop passersby from spitting on our friends on the ground. We were mostly successful, and prevented a student from urinating on one of the participants.
We were not at all surprised by the hostility we faced, but we were surprised by the positive responses of far more Tulane students than we expected. Members of Tulane Amnesty International, Tulane American Socialist Students United and individual undergraduate and graduate students were active in every phase. They were joined by students from the General Union of Palestine Students and Amnesty International of University of New Orleans and students from Loyola University. As a result of this action, the challenges we face in our local solidarity work seem more surmountable. Indeed, Olmert’s visit marked the beginning of Tulane’s Palestine solidarity movement.
Emily Ratner is an organizer and mediamaker based in New Orleans. She is a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and a graduate of Tulane University (class of 2007). In June, she joined a New Orleans delegation to Gaza. She can be reached at emily A T nolahumanrights D O T org.
Arab MK: Israel provoking a billion Muslims over Temple Mount: Ha’aretz
An Israeli Arab lawmaker warned on Sunday that Israel was “provoking” the Muslim world by cracking down on Arab rioters on the Temple Mount in Jeruslaem. “Israel is provoking a billion Muslims around the world, who will not hesitate to protect the Temple Mount with their own bodies,” said MK Talab Al-Sana (United Arab List-Ta’al).
Earlier Sunday, Stone-throwing Arab youths wounded three policemen on Sunday, after Jerusalem police raided the holy site in a bid to quell repeated bouts of rioting. Al-Sana said: “Israeli police initiate avoidable riots that will end in blood shed, when they enable extremists to desecrate the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” He was referring to repeated rumors among Palestinians that Jewish extremists are planning on harming the holy site. No such attempts have been made.
The lawmaker warned that the situation could deteriorate to a complete loss of control and that the government is entirely responsible for any possible outcome. “The Al-Aqsa mosque is under Israeli jurisdiction, and it is therefore the job of Israeli police to protect one of the holiest sites in the Muslim faith,” he added.
Meanwhile, Police Commissioner David Cohen arrived at the scene to witness the riots. He said the leaders responsible for the incitement were on location, provoking the rioters. “There are large groups of East Jerusalem Arabs there who are being encouraged by the Islamic Movement leaders,” said the commissioner. “The police will forcefully clamp down on those responsible for disrupting the peace at the Temple Mount.”
Cohen added that Israel’s policy is to keep the Temple Mount open to both Jewish and Muslim visitors “today and on every other day.”
For those still shaken by the disgusting performance of Nick Griffin on the BBC few nights ago, go no further – here is the Israeli version:
Eli Yishai is just Jean-Marie Le Pen with a beard: Ha’aretz
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz Correspondent
Nineteen years after his murder, Meir Kahane’s spirit is alive and kicking. Not only in the lunatic fringes of the radical right and the settlers, not only in the shameful graffiti smeared on every corner. We’re dealing with an established political party, whose leader is deputy prime minister and Israel’s interior minister. Eli Yishai is the ultimate Israeli xenophobe, Jean-Marie Le Pen with a beard, Jorg Heider in a skullcap, a mizrahi Kahane.
They, however, are notorious, while Yishai is seen as an acceptable legitimate statesman whom no one thinks of ostracizing. A member of the security cabinet, he is also one of the major decision-makers, a senior statesman.
Yishai’s legitimacy is a mark of disgrace on Israeli society and politics. Had anyone like him served as a deputy prime minister in a European state, Israel would have severed diplomatic ties with it abruptly.
Advertisement
Yishai gives Kahanism a bad name. While the racist rabbi from America made do with nefarious incitement against the Arabs, Yishai has extended racism and hatred to all foreigners. Yishai is an internationalist – all non-Jews are equal in his eyes and their sentence is one.
The man who said only seven years ago in an interview with Haaretz: “Israelis are displaying buds of xenophobia … I don’t want under any circumstances to see in Haaretz a picture of a woman with a baby in her arms crying while policemen deport her,” has become the head of the deportation army’s thugs, heading the ugly front against foreign workers. Their 1,200 wretched children, who have no other country or tongue, are to him no less than a “demographic threat,” an “assimilation danger” and an “infringement on the state’s Jewish identity.” In Germany such statements would be taken as sheer racism. But in this complacent, indifferent country they were uttered by a respectable statesman.
Had Shas espoused racial purity and xenophobia as its causes, maybe it would be treated differently. But Shas is Kahane in disguise, the “National Front” in a mask. It ostensibly champions social causes, while inflaming dark emotions under that deceitful banner.
It’s hard to believe: A movement that pretends to speak for the needy and downtrodden is leading the incitement and instigation against the most needy and downtrodden of all – the foreign workers and the Palestinians. Yishai calls to deport the former and brutally attack the latter.
The Goldstone report cites Yishai, and for good reason, saying “we should bombard thousands of houses in Gaza, destroy Gaza. As simple as that.” If a deputy prime minister talks like that, and nobody thinks of firing him for incitement to war crimes, why should we think the IDF did not act in his spirit?
Once, when the shadow of his charismatic predecessor Aryeh Deri still hovered over him, Yishai spoke differently. He said “yes to Oslo, yes to evacuating Hebron and yes to Arafat.” But since he found that inciting his voters against foreigners and Arabs – the weakest and most oppressed – is a sure recipe for electoral success, he has cynically become more extreme.
Yishai’s attitude is not restricted to strangers. He reveals his appallingly dark inner world in his treatment of another group of Jews: gays. This is another winning card used by all the racist movements in the world. But it is doubtful whether any of Europe’s racists would dare go so far as to say,”Gays and lesbians are sick people. It’s definitely a disease. They haven’t invented a cure for it yet, but I hope they will.”
Israel’s deputy prime minister, don’t forget, is also the leader of a male chauvinist party.
Kahane is preferable. True, he proposed that only a member of the Jewish people may be an Israeli citizen, just like Yishai would probably want. But we ostracized Kahane, the Knesset plenum used to empty when he gave his hate speeches and nobody thought of interviewing him. This is true even though Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin is now considering holding a session in his memory, calling his opinions “legitimate.”
Unlike Kahane, Yishai managed to penetrate the heart of the consensus and is wreaking havoc. He is poisoning generations of Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern descent) and young ultra-Orthodox, inflaming hatred of the foreigner and the other, and encouraging open racism and nationalism while enjoying his lofty status. That says much more about us than about him.
As occupier, Israel must face up to Goldstone report: Ha’aretz
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz Correspondent
Goldstone was born in June 1967. I am not referring to the judge from South Africa, but to his report, or more precisely, the notion that Israel needs a synonym for the soul-searching it must carry out after 42 years of occupation. In the 575 pages of the report that is loaded with details, names, numbers, a list of weapons, interrogation methods and articles of international law, three paragraphs hide among the conclusions on pages 521 and 522, numbered 1674 to 1676. Here lies the explanation for the tragic results of Operation Cast Lead.
In those paragraphs Goldstone uses the term “continuum” to establish that the operation cannot be understood on its own without assessing it as part of a chain of events, which also includes the complete closure of the Gaza Strip for three years, the policy of razing homes, the arrests, the interrogations and torture, not only in the Gaza Strip but also in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In short, Operation Cast Lead is not an “incident.” It is a link in a chain as old as the occupation itself.
The equation Israel is demanding – between those wounded in the Gaza operation and those wounded in Sderot, between the Qassams and the F-16s, between the mortars and the tank that killed three of Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish’s daughters, between Hamas and Israel – betrays a poor understanding of the report’s essence. Goldstone puts the symptom under the microscope and derives the illness. The result is a textbook whose title should have been “A manual for the occupier in the fifth decade.”
Unfortunately for us, the publication of this tome, not its content, has given rise to competition between Israel and other countries: The issue that concerns Israel is no longer the shocking description of the events, but if and where the report will be deliberated, and who will vote for or against. Israel has a score to settle with everyone except itself. Israel is fighting against the microscope.
And the medicine? That, too, is typical. After blaming the messenger, there is a need to look for a real culprit, who has already been found. The occupied and their violent messengers are to blame. They are the ones who attack from schools and mosques, who carry bombs in ambulances and who dare to oppose the occupation using unacceptable means, leaving no option but to kill them without discrimination. If this is so, then it is not the nature of warfare that needs to be changed but the laws that limit it. To legalize the illegitimate war. And a strategy to this end is taking shape called “asymmetric warfare” – an army against groups, an army against civilians; all that is left is for an army of legal experts to develop new legislation and provide new legitimacy to kill indiscriminately, sending Goldstone to the trash bin.
It is interesting that only after the Goldstone report has the question of the laws of warfare been raised. Why was there no initiative after tragic strikes like the one in the southern Lebanese village of Qana? Why not after the Israeli bombing that produced the story about the “slight shudder on the wing” that brought down an apartment building housing civilians in the Gaza Strip? Why not after the no-limits bombing of Lebanon? In part because at that time there was still a sense of clarity that there must be an uncompromising standard to establish what is and is not allowed, and that this distinction cannot be blurred. But this distinction is increasingly becoming blurred. Were it not, a commission of inquiry would have already been set up in Israel, not to impress the world’s nations after the publishing of a condemning report, but to bolster the standards of humanity.
One more matter is puzzling. Why has the issue been directed against Israel and not, for example, the United States or Britain? Many Iraqi, Afghani and Pakistani civilians – their numbers are uncertain – have been killed in indiscriminate bombings by foreign armies. No official international investigation committee has been set up to examine the conduct of the U.S. or British armies. The reason is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan enjoy international legitimacy, to some extent in the eyes of the local people. More importantly, the occupation in Iraq has a defined termination date. The Israeli occupation, on the other hand, gives off signs of being eternal. Disgust at this is powerful enough to affect even our friends.