Israeli organ harvesting, settlements, climate change and Christmas topped the agenda of the Palestinian Authority (PA) cabinet meeting on Monday, in which ministers joined together in calling the Bethlehem Christmas tree a symbol of Palestinian unity and peace.
On the recent reports in the Israeli media allegedly confirming the theft of Palestinian organs in the 1990s, the PLO Central Council delegated Minister of Prisoners Affairs Issa Qaraqe to launch an investigation into the issue and follow up with the government. The appointment was followed by a unanimous condemnation of the reported acts, and a call on the international community to help protect the rights and dignity of Palestinian prisoners.
The cabinet sent thanks to the EU for their firm statements against the continued construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and requested that the union take practical steps to see the construction halted. Ministers reiterated their position that the 10-month partial moratorium on settlement construction on only settlements in the West Bank not including East Jerusalem was a false promise and a tactical claim. They cited Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s statements earlier in the week saying settlers could begin building in full force after the 10-month period.
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad debriefed the ministers on his recent visit to Copenhagen where he spoke at the UN conference on climate change. He gave a summary of his speech, including notes on the effects of climate change in the Middle East, as well as the international responsibility to ensure Israel abides by its Road Map obligations so Palestinians can take control over their own environment. Fayyad explained the Israeli expropriation of Palestine’s natural resources, the deprivation of water faced in the West Bank and the lack of materials for containing sewage in Gaza, leading to seepage into the Mediterranean.
Fayyad called for the creation of a fund for countries who face obstacles in protecting their natural resources and limiting their environmental impact, saying Palestine would be a prime candidate for projects.
Some Israelis are getting het up about the ‘ideology’ now introduced by the new Education Minister, Gideon Sa’ar. This is quite bizarre – there was nevera time that education in Israel was less ideological than that in the Third Reich, or Stalinist USSR. Did it take all this time for some people to notice this?
The Education Ministry is introducing a study unit on the 12 underground fighters who were hanged or committed suicide in prison during the British Mandate in Palestine.
The 12, known as “Olei Hagardom” (“those hanged on the gallows”), belonged to the pre-state militias Etzel and Lehi.
The program, intended for eighth and ninth grades, will include lessons plus a national competition for essays, poems and drawings on subjects such as “an imaginary conversation I had with one of Olei Hagardom in his last moments in prison” or “the last letter of a condemned man to his family.”
The new unit is already proving controversial.
“Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar is advancing ideological matters close to his heart in the education system,” a ministry official charged. “His ideology is entering the curriculum.”
“It’s worrying that the Education Ministry is conveying a message sanctifying death and portraying it as sublime,” added a senior university historian.
Until now, details of the 12 Olei Hagardom – nine Etzel combatants and three Lehi fighters – were taught as part of history lessons, ministry sources said.
In a letter announcing the new program, Sa’ar wrote, “I hope the program, recounting Olei Hagardom’s devotion to the struggle for Israel’s independence, will bolster the students’ ties with their people and heritage … and that their devotion will serve as an ideological model for our youth.”
The ministry also instructed teachers to “encourage students to take part in the competition and guide them in presenting their projects.”
The essays, poems and drawings entered in the competition will be evaluated by a committee comprised of Education Ministry officials and staffers from the Uri Zvi Greenberg Heritage Center and the Menachem Begin Heritage Center.
“It’s important to learn about the ideology of Zionist leaders, like [Theodor] Herzl and [Ze’ev] Jabotinsky,” said a veteran high school history teacher from Tel Aviv. “But in this program, the justification is the underground fighters’ actions, and especially their end … There are moral and philosophical questions that should be addressed when you teach 14-year-olds about people who chose to die rather than accept a pardon or negotiate with the British authorities.”
“The new program embraces martyrdom and worships the victim for being a victim,” added the senior university historian. “If they want to teach this subject, it must be in the context of the fight against the British. You can’t start out by asserting that because they were hanged, they’re martyrs. Their being victims does not justify turning them into a subject for study.”
The education system intends to mark Jabotinsky Day next week, as required by a law enacted in 2005, the Education Ministry said Monday. Schools were instructed earlier this month to prepare ceremonies and special activities, including lessons about Jabotinsky’s character and work. Sa’ar himself will give a civics lesson on Jabotinsky in a high school in the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
A Palestinian boy walks past a house in Beit Lahiya damaged during Israel's three-week offensive. Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters
The EU should commit itself to ending the blockade of the Gaza Strip and put its relations with Israel on hold pending tangible progress, 16 humanitarian and human rights organisations say today in a report marking the first anniversary of the war.
Amnesty International, Oxfam International, Cafod, Christian Aid, Medical Aid for Palestinians and 11 other agencies criticise Israel for banning the import of materials urgently needed for reconstruction but also lambast world powers for not doing enough to help after last year’s three-week Cast Lead offensive, in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens fromindiscriminate rocket attacks, the report says. But “punishing the entire civilian population of Gaza for the acts of a few is a collective punishment which is unacceptable and violates international law”.
The report calls on the EU to take “concerted action” and its new high representative for foreign policy, Britain’s Lady Ashton, to pay an urgent visit to Gaza. Only one EU foreign minister, Sweden’s Carl Bildt, has visited since the war, which began on 27 December last year. Tony Blair, the envoy of the Middle East Quartet, went to Gaza for the first time in March this year, two years after he was appointed.
The territory has been blockaded by Israel since June 2007 when the Islamists of Hamas took over from the western-backedPalestinian Authority. Restrictions have been tightened since the war. The border with Egypt is also strictly controlled.”Securing an immediate opening of the Gaza crossings for building materials to repair ruined homes and civilian infrastructure as winter sets in would be an important step towards an end to the blockade,” say the NGOs.
Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, also warns not enough is being done: “Tough sounding declarations are issued at regular intervals but little real pressure is applied,” he writes in today’s Guardian. “It is a scandal that the international community has sat on its hands in the face of this unfolding crisis.”
Preferential agreements between the EU and Israel “will be brought into question if there is no rapid progress”, Clegg adds.
Jeremy Hobbs, Oxfam International’s executive director, said: “It is not only Israel that has failed the people of Gaza with a blockade that punishes everybody living there for the acts of a few. World powers have also failed and even betrayed Gaza’s ordinary citizens. They have wrung hands and issued statements, but have taken little meaningful action to attempt to change the damaging policy that prevents reconstruction, personal recovery and economic recuperation.”
The report also urges Hamas and others to maintain their de facto cessation of violence and permanently cease all indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel. All Palestinian factions need to intensify their dialogue to pave the way for a reunified government able to provide for the needs of its civilian population.
The blockade has sharply increased poverty, helping make eight out of 10 Gazans dependent on aid. Businesses and farms have been forced to close and lay off workers. An almost complete ban on exports has hit farmers hard. The Israeli offensive wrecked 17% of farmland and left a further 30% unusable.
Hopes for easing the siege currently rest on a deal under which captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is expected to be swapped for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Amnesty International’s UK director, Kate Allen, said: “The wretched reality endured by 1.5 million people in Gaza should appal anybody with an ounce of humanity. Sick, traumatised and impoverished people are being collectively punished by a cruel, illegal policy imposed by the Israeli authorities.”
Aid agencies have strongly criticised the international community for failing to help bring an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
The charities made the accusation in a report published just ahead of the anniversary of Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The aid agencies condemn not just Israel, but the world community.
In the words of Oxfam’s director, Jeremy Hobbs, “world powers have failed and betrayed Gaza’s ordinary citizens”.
The charities call for more pressure to be exerted on Israel to end what they describe as its illegal collective punishment of Gazans.
Israel imposed a tightened blockade after the Islamist Hamas movement seized power two-and-a-half years ago.
That was bad enough, say the aid agencies.
Matters became that much worse after the destruction caused by the Israeli offensive in Gaza earlier this year.
The report points to an acute shortage, in particular, of building materials.
A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister told the BBC that Israel remains committed to humanitarian supplies of food, medicine and power.
But he said that sanctions will remain in place as long as Hamas is committed to destroying Israel and killing Israelis.
The suffering is shocking. And nobody will benefit from the radicalism that confinement engenders
Nick Clegg Tuesday 22 December 2009
On 27 December last year, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, an overwhelming exercise of military force aimed at silencing the Hamas rockets which had terrorised Israeli towns and villages. The immediate effects of the invasion are well known: 1,400 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians, with many more wounded or displaced; 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians killed, dozens more injured; and thousands of families in southern Israel forced to flee to other parts of the country. The rocketfire from Gaza into Israel has slowed but has not entirely ceased. Hamas is still in power.
What is less well-known is the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The legacy of Operation Cast Lead is a living nightmare for one and a half million Palestinians squeezed into one of the most overcrowded and wretched stretches of land on the planet. And as Israel and Egypt maintain a near total blockade against Gaza, the misery deepens by the day.
This is not only shocking in humanitarian terms. It is not in Israel’s or Egypt’s interest, either. Confining people in abject poverty in a tiny slice of territory is a recipe for continued bitterness, fury and radicalism.
And what has the British government and the international community done to lift the blockade? Next to nothing. Tough-sounding declarations are issued at regular intervals but little real pressure is applied. It is a scandal that the international community has sat on its hands in the face of this unfolding crisis.
No doubt the febrile sensitivities of the Middle East have deterred governments, caught between recriminations from both sides. No doubt diplomats have warned that exerting pressure on Israel and Egypt may complicate the peace process.
But surely the consequences of not lifting the blockade are far more grave? How is the peace process served by sickness, mortality rates, mental trauma and malnutrition increasing in Gaza? Is it not in Israel’s enlightened self-interest to relieve the humanitarian suffering?
The peace process is in serious trouble right now. Internal Israeli politics limits any meaningful room for manoeuvre, illegal settlement activity in the West Bank continues, and leadership of the Palestinians is divided and incoherent. A two-state solution, long the accepted bedrock of any agreement, is being openly questioned.
But paralysis in the peace process cannot be an excuse for the inhumane treatment of one and a half million people, the majority of them under 18 years old. No peaceful coexistence of any kind is possible as long as this act of collective confinement continues.
According to a recently leaked report by the UN office of the humanitarian co-ordinator, Gaza is undergoing “a process of de-development, which potentially could lead to the complete breakdown of public infrastructure”. A report released today by a group of 16 humanitarian and human rights groups further spells out the effects.
Family homes destroyed in the invasion lie as shattered as ever. The embargo on construction materials means they will stay that way. Local hospitals and clinics were left devastated by the invasion, and those suffering health problems wait longer than ever to get out of Gaza for treatment. Many have died waiting. Bed-wetting and nightmares are endemic among children.
Half of those under 30 are unemployed. These young people are trapped in a broken land with little hope of economic opportunity. The blockade’s restrictions on Gaza’s fishermen mean they can sail only three nautical miles from the coast, impoverishing their families. Meanwhile, 80m litres of raw and partially treated sewage is pumped out into the sea every day.
Most disturbingly of all, the lack of access to materials means that basic water infrastructure simply cannot be repaired or improved; 90 to 95% of Gaza’s water fails to meet WHO standards. The extremely high nitrate level in the water supply is leaving thousands of newborn babies at risk of poisoning.
The insistence by some that aid should come into no contact whatsoever, even indirectly, with Hamas means NGOs are prevented from repairing basic water and sanitation facilities in schools.
There is a clear moral imperative for Israel and Egypt to end the blockade, as well as it being in their enlightened self-interest to change course. But if they do not do so of their own volition, it is up to the international community to persuade them otherwise.
The EU has huge economic influence over Israel, and it believes the blockade must be lifted. At the same time as exercising leverage over Hamas, it should make clear that the web of preferential agreements which now exists between the EU and Israel – from Israeli access to EU research and development funds to recently improved access for Israeli agricultural products – will be brought into question if there is no rapid progress.
Equally, the US, as by far the largest bilateral donor to Egypt, should press President Mubarak to allow in the humanitarian and reconstruction materials that are so desperately needed.
What will be the state of Gaza’s drinking water by next December? Of the health of its children? Of the economy? The attitude of its people towards Egypt and Israel? The risk of waiting another year is too great. Gordon Brown and the international community must urgently declare that enough is enough. The blockade must end.
Help to stop the next war! Support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of the Israeli regime
Support Palestinian universities – spread the BDS campaign – it is what people under the Israeli jackboot ask you to do!
Israeli War Criminals – to the International Criminal Court, NOW!
Make Zionism History!
The anniversary of the Gaza Carnage by Israel’s murderers is in one week! We shall not forget!
For those who were taken in by the Israeli attacks on the Swedish journalist who exposed organ harvesting in Israel, when Netanyahu demanded to put him on trial as an antisemite, you will be interested to read the evidence from the Horse’s Mouth – the ex-head of the Pasthological Service in Tel Aviv, which includes a full admission, and back up the accusations made…
Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families – a practice it said ended in the 1990s – it emerged at the weekend.
The admission, by the former head of the country’s forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called “antisemitic”.
The revelation, in a television documentary, is likely to generate anger in the Arab and Muslim world and reinforce sinister stereotypes of Israel and its attitude to Palestinians. Iran’s state-run Press TV tonight reported the story, illustrated with photographs of dead or badly injured Palestinians.
Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab MP, said the report incriminated the Israeli army.
The story emerged in an interview with Dr Yehuda Hiss, former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic who released it because of the row between Israel and Sweden over a report in the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet.
Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.
The Israeli military confirmed to the programme that the practice took place, but added: “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer.”
Hiss said: “We started to harvest corneas … whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.”
However, there was no evidence that Israel had killed Palestinians to take their organs, as the Swedish paper reported. Aftonbladet quoted Palestinians as saying young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli forces and their bodies returned to their families with missing organs. The interview with Hiss was released by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley who had conducted a study of Abu Kabir.
She was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that while Palestinians were “by a long shot” not the only ones affected, she felt the interview must be made public, because “the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, [is] something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered.”
Israel demanded that Sweden condemn the Aftonbladet article, calling it an antisemitic “blood libel”. Stockholm refused, saying that to so would violate freedom of speech in the country. The foreign minister then cancelled a visit to Israel, just as Sweden was taking over the EU’s rotating presidency.
Hiss was removed from his post in 2004, when some details about organ harvesting were first reported, but he still works at the forensic institute.
Israel’s health ministry said all harvesting was now done with permission. “The guidelines at that time were not clear,” it said in a statement to Channel 2. “For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law.”
• This article was amended on 21 December 2009. The original misspelled a name as Nancy Sheppard-Hughes. This has been corrected.
Don’t say I did not warn you! The next report is a classic one; having killed over a thousand Palestinians in Gaza, Israel is now waging war on Mac laptops! If you doubt this, please read on:
Israel Border Police officers shot at an American student’s laptop as she entered Israel via Taba, Egypt, two weeks ago.
laptop destroyed by Israeli police
Lily Sussman, 21, wrote on her blog that border police subjected her to two hours of questioning and searches prior to shooting her Apple Macbook three times.
“They had pressed every sock and scarf with a security device, ripped open soap and had me strip extra layers. They asked me tons of questions?where are you going?” Sussman wrote, describing the experience.
“Who do you know? Do you have a boyfriend? Is he Arab, Egyptian, Palestinian? Why do you live in Egypt? Why not Israel? What do you know about the ‘conflict’ here? What do you think? They quizzed me on Judaism, which I know nothing about,” she continued.
Sussman said that she then heard an announcement on the loudspeaker. “It was something along the lines of, ‘Do not to be alarmed by gunshots because the Israeli security needs to blow up suspicious passenger luggage,'” she wrote on her blog.
Moments later a man came to her and introduced himself as the manager on duty. “I’m sorry but we had to blow up your laptop,” Sussman said he told her.
“The security officers did not ask about my laptop prior to shooting it,” Sussman told Daily News Egypt. “They used the word ‘blew up’ when they told me they destroyed my laptop. I don’t know why they shot it.”
Sussman said the guards also looked through the photos saved on her camera, flipped through her journal and asked her about a map a friend had drawn for her that pointed out a main street, central bus station and the hostel where she was planning on stayig in Jerusalem.
She added that she had also been carrying an Arabic phrasebook, stamps from Syria, Qatar and the UAE and a Palestinians in Palestine guidebook.
The Israel Airports Authority said in response to the story: “A check that the lady’s luggage underwent raised an indication that required security figures to act according to procedures. A police, who carried out the stated operation, was called to the scene. We suggest that the Israel Police be approached for any additional information.”
Sussman managed to salvage the hard and guards gave her an address where she would be reimbursed for her mangled laptop, she told Daily news Egypt. “I’m going through the process of compensation,” she said. “It supposedly will take about one month to receive the money.
Apparently the police started an inquiry, when it was discovered that despite the fact they shots at the Mac 3 times, it it still works – the disc has survived this ordeal! There will now be special training, I suspect, to make sure the Israeli Police can kill a Mac in less than ten shots.
The moral of this story is: If you must go to Israel, take a PC. On the other hand, soon they may also shoot at Windows machines, so maybe the best thing after all is to go to Spain instead, where this habit of shooting at people and computer is not prevalent. Unless, of course, you like adventure. The rest of us will just support the BDS campaign.
Tzipi Livni managed to get away this time, and stay in Israel, rather than being arrested in the UK. Below David Miliband explains how shocked he is that she had a arrest warrant waiting for her. Maybe he should not be so shocked – he may himself (As may Mr. Tony Bliar) face the same fate soon when travelling abroad, for the British war crimes in Iraq!
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Tuesday called opposition leader Tzipi Livni to express his shock over an arrest warrant issued against her in Britain for alleged war crimes in Gaza and vowed to address the matter immediately.
Livni clarified that she doesn’t view the arrest warrant as a personal offense, but rather one that affects Israel as a whole. She added that it also harms efforts to operate jointly against threatening elements.
Livni stressed that Israel and Britain must work to solve the problem according to agreements outlined when she was foreign minister.
Miliband earlier on Tuesday denounced the arrest warrant issued for Livni as insufferable, after Israel warned that the matter could harm bilateral ties.
Miliband made the comments during a meeting with Israel’s ambassador to Court of St. James, Ron Prosor. The Israeli envoy asked to discuss the matter with Miliband on Monday, following news that Livni had canceled her trip to Britain after a warrant was issued for her arrest.
Prosor told Miliband that the British government must work immediately to combat the grave phenomenon of arrest warrants being issued against senior Israeli officials.
The foreign secretary said he had spoken with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and with Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw in order to try to resolve the problem.
Miliband called Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday and expressed concern over the arrest warrant, saying he and other British parliamentarians found it unacceptable. Miliband also planned to call Livni.
He told Lieberman that solutions must be found in order to prevent this situation from repeating itself in the future.
Lieberman expressed disappointment over Britain’s abstention during the United Nations vote on the Goldstone report, which accuses Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes in Gaza, and the Swedish proposal to recognize Jerusalem as a shared Israeli and Palestinian capital.
Also Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry summoned the British envoy to Israel to rebuke him over the warrant.
Israel views the arrest warrant with utmost gravity, Naor Gilon, deputy director at the Foreign Ministry in charge of Western Europe, told British ambassador Tom Phillips.
Gilon also called on Phillips to urge his government to change the law that allows for arrest warrants to be issued against senior Israeli officials over alleged war crimes perpetrated in Gaza during the winter conflict between Israel and Hamas. Netanyahu: We won’t allow our leaders to be tried for war crimes
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday issued a statement saying that Israel will not agree to have its leaders be recognized as war criminals.
“We will not agree to a situation in which Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the defendant’s bench,” Netanyahu said.
“We will not agree that IDF commanders and soldiers, who – heroically and in a moral fashion – defended our citizens against a brutal and criminal enemy, will be condemned as war criminals. We reject this absurdity outright.”
Netanyahu instructed National Security Adviser Prof. Uzi Arad to deliver a clear message on this issue to British envoy Phillips.
Dr. Arad spoke with Ambassador Phillips and made it clear to him that Israel expects the British government to act against this immoral phenomenon, which is trying to impair Israel’s right to self-defense.
A statement from the British embassy in Israel said the U.K. is determined to work for peace in the Middle East and to be a strategic partner to Israel.
“To do this, Israel’s leaders need to be able to come to the U.K. for talks with the British government. We are looking urgently at the implications of this case.” The embassy statement said.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry earlier Tuesday called on the British government to end the “absurd situation” in which arrest warrants were being issued to Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in Gaza, warning that ties between the two countries could suffer as a result.
“Only actions can put an end to this absurd situation, which would have seemed a comedy of errors were it not so serious,” said the Foreign Ministry.
The ministry warned that in indulging the arrest warrant, the British government was hampering its own efforts at playing a role in Middle East peace negotiations.
“We appreciate the British government’s desire to play a central role in the Middle East peace process, and thus we expected it to translate the importance it gives its relations with Israel into actions,” said the ministry.
“Israel urges the British government to once and for all honor its promises to take action to prevent anti-Israel forces from exploiting the British legal system to act against Israel and its citizens, the ministry said. The absence of resolute and immediate action to redress this distortion harms relations between the two countries,” it added.
Vice Premier Silvan Shalom urged the ministry to make “real diplomatic” efforts to make it clear that Israel would not accept such behavior.
“We are all Tzipi Livni,” he said. “The time has come for us to move from the defensive to the offensive. We must use real diplomacy here, to tell Britain, Spain and all those other states that we will not stand for this anymore.”
Livni: World can judge us, but don’t equate IDF with terrorist
In response to the warrant, Livni said Tuesday that she would not accept any accusation that compared Israel Defense Forces soldiers to terrorists.
“I have no problem with the fact that the world wants to judge Israel,” said Livni. “We are part of the free world. The problem starts when they equate terrorists and Israeli soldiers.”
Senior officials in Israel confirmed reports on Monday that a British court issued the warrant against Livni for her role in orchestrating Israel’s military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip nearly a year ago. The request for the warrant was submitted by a pro-Palestinian organization.
British sources reported late Monday that though a British court had issued an arrest warrant for Livni over war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza while she served as foreign minister, it annulled it upon discovering she was not in the U.K.
The incident was the latest in a string of attempts by pro-Palestinian activists to have Israeli officials arrested.
Pro-Palestinian lawyers attempted earlier this year to invoke the universal jurisdiction law to arrest Gaza war mastermind Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, but his status as a Cabinet minister gave him diplomatic immunity.
In 2005, a retired Israeli general, Doron Almog, returned to Israel immediately after landing in London because he was tipped off that British police planned to arrest him. The warrant against Almog – who oversaw the bombing of a Gaza home in which 14 people were killed – was later canceled.
Other Israeli leaders, including former military chief Moshe Ya’alon and ex-internal security chief Avi Dichter, have also canceled trips to Britain in recent years for the same reason.
Israel has reacted angrily to the issuing by a British court of an arrest warrant for the former Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni.
The warrant, granted by a London court on Saturday, was revoked on Monday when it was found Ms Livni was not visiting the UK.
Ms Livni was foreign minister during Israel’s Gaza assault last winter.
It is the first time a UK court has issued a warrant for the arrest of a former Israeli minister.
Ms Livni said the court had been “abused” by the Palestinian plaintiffs who requested the warrant.
“What needs to be put on trial here is the abuse of the British legal system,” she told the BBC.
“This is not a suit against Tzipi Livni, this is not a law suit against Israel. This is a lawsuit against any democracy that fights terror.”
She stood by her decisions during the three-week assault Gaza offensive which began in December last year, she said.
Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the UK’s ambassador to Israel to deliver a rebuke over the warrant.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the situation was “an absurdity”.
“We will not accept a situation in which [former Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defence Minister] Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the defendants’ chair,” Mr Netanyahu said in a statement.
“We will not agree to have Israel Defence Force soldiers, who defended the citizens of Israel bravely and ethically against a cruel and criminal enemy, be recognised as war criminals. We completely reject this absurdity taking place in Britain,” he said.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners have tried several times to have Israeli officials arrested under the principle of universal jurisdiction. ‘Cynical act’
This allows domestic courts in countries around the world to try war crimes suspects, even if the crime took place outside the country and the suspect is not a citizen.
Israel denies claims by human rights groups and the UN investigator Richard Goldstone that its forces committed war crimes during the operation, which it said was aimed at ending Palestinian rocket fire at its southern towns.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas has also been accused of committing war crimes during the conflict.
Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday: “Israel rejects the cynical act taken in a British court,” against Ms Livni, now the head of the opposition Kadima party, “at the initiative of extreme elements”.
It called on the British government to “act against the exploitation of the British legal system against Israel”.
Addressing a conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Ms Livni did not refer specifically to the arrest attempt.
But she said: “Israel must do what is right for Israel, regardless of judgements, statements and arrest warrants. It’s the leadership’s duty, and I would repeat each and every decision,” Israeli media reported.
‘Strategic partner’
Israel says it fully complies with international law, which it says it interprets in line with other Western countries such as the US and UK.
PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS TO ARREST ISRAELI OFFICIALS
Oct 2009: Former military chief Moshe Yaalon cancelled a UK visit because of fears of arrest for alleged war crimes
Oct 2009: Filed attempt to raise warrant against Defence Minister Ehud Barak. Court ruled he had diplomatic immunity
Sept 2005: Arrest warrant issued for a former head of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip Gen Doron Almog. He received warning before disembarking from an aircraft at Heathrow Airport, and flew back to Israel
On Monday Ms Livni’s office denied the reports that a warrant had been issued and that she had cancelled plans to visit the UK because of fears of arrest.
It said a planned trip had been cancelled two weeks earlier because of scheduling problems.
The British foreign office said it was “urgently looking into the implications of the case”.
“The UK is determined to do all it can to promote peace in the Middle East, and to be a strategic partner of Israel,” it said in a statement. “To do this, Israel’s leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British government.”
Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 people were killed during Israel’s Cast Lead operation between 27 December 2008 and 16 January 2009, more than half of them civilians.
Israel puts the number of deaths at 1,166 – fewer than 300 of them civilians. Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.
The BBC’s Tim Franks says that, privately, senior Israeli figures are warning of what they see as an increasing anti-Israeli bent in the British establishment.
In turn, our correspondent adds, there is clearly concern among British officials that should further arrest warrants be issued, relations with Israel could be damaged.
A most important document in support of the BDS campaign, released this week:
Press release, Palestinian BDS National Committee, 11 December 2009
Today, prominent Christian Palestinian leaders are releasing a historical Kairos Palestine Document, calling on churches around the world “to say a word of truth and to take a position of truth with regard to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.” Unambiguously endorsing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as one of the key nonviolent forms of solidarity that international faith-based organizations are urged to adopt, the document affirms: “We see boycott and disinvestment as tools of justice, peace and security …”
Kairos is an ancient Greek term meaning the right or opportune moment. The Kairos Palestine Document is inspired by the liberation theology, especially in South Africa where a similar document was issued at a crucial time in the struggle against apartheid. Informed by a lucid vision based on the universal principles of “equality, justice, liberty and respect for pluralism,” Palestinian Christians issue this document today to explore a morally sound way out of the “dead end” reached in the Palestinian tragedy, “in which human beings are destroyed.”
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) salutes the moral clarity, courage and principled position conveyed in this new document, which emphasizes that resisting injustice should “concern the Church” and is “a right and a duty for a Christian,” adding that it is “a resistance with love as its logic.”
The BNC keenly notes the importance of releasing this historical call on this day, 11 December, which marks the 61st anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, issued in 1948, calling for the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes of origin “at the earliest practicable date.” Whereas Palestinian refugees are still awaiting their return six decades later, we share the message of hope in today’s Palestinian Kairos: “One of the most important signs of hope is the perseverance of the generations and the continuity of memory, which does not forget the Nakba (catastrophe) and its significance. This land is our land and it is incumbent upon us to defend it and reclaim it.”
Particularly praiseworthy is the Kairos’s emphasis on urging all churches to positively respond to the call by Palestinian civil society, including religious institutions, for “a system of economic sanctions and boycott to be applied against Israel,” which, the document clarifies, “is not revenge but rather a serious action in order to reach a just and definitive peace.”
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) Member organizations: Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine,
General Union of Palestinian Workers, Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), Palestinian National Institute for NGOs, Palestinian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (PFITU), Palestine Right of Return Coalition, Occupied Palestine and Golan Heights Initiative (OPGAI), General Union of Palestinian Women, Union of Palestinian Farmers, Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (STW), National Committee for Popular Resistance, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba, Civic Coalition for the Defense of Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem (CCDPRJ), Coalition for Jerusalem, Union of Palestinian Charitable Organizations, Palestinian Economic Monitor, Union of Youth Activity Centers-Palestine Refugee Camps
The Israeli cabinet has decided to include some West Bank settlements in a national scheme that will entitle them to millions of dollars’ worth of funds.
They are being designated as national priority zones, meaning they will qualify for grants, tax benefits, and other forms of aid.
The move comes amid anger by Jewish settlers at a government-imposed curb on new building in settlements.
The Labour Party leader warned some of the new money might go to extremists.
On Friday a mosque in the West Bank was set on fire, and sprayed with Hebrew graffiti.
Labour leader Ehud Barak said: “I don’t think that we need to award them a prize in the form of including them in the national priority map.”
His five ministers in the coalition government voted against the plan. The other three right-wing parties in the coalition – Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas – voted for it.
Arabs to benefit
The national priority zones plan is designed to funnel money into deprived areas. About two million Israelis live in those areas – approximately 110,000 of them in West Bank settlements.
The international community considers all settlements in Israeli-occupied Palestinian land as illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
A senior government official said far more Israeli Arabs than Jewish settlements – eight times as many – would benefit from the programme.
But opposition parties denounced the inclusion of settlements, saying it proved the government was not committed to a peace process with the Palestinians.
The Kadima Party said it “cancelled out any declaration made by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu regarding two states for two peoples”.
The left-wing Meretz faction submitted a motion of no-confidence in response to the plan.
But Mr Netanyahu denied the change had any implications for the peace process.
“We will determine the future of settlements only within the framework of a permanent agreement [with Palestinians],” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to seek cabinet approval for a new map of “national priority” zones does not contradict Israel’s declaration of a 10-month construction freeze in West Bank settlements, the prime minister’s bureau assured senior United States administration officials late Thursday.
The new map would enable another 110,000 settlers – most of whom live outside the major settlement blocs – the economic benefits conferred on residents of zones already included on Israel’s list.
Senior U.S. administration officials told Haaretz earlier Thursday that the prime minister’s bureau had provided satisfactory explanations as long as the benefits plan was in keeping with the freeze and that money would not be transferred for new housing in the settlements.
All Labor Party ministers are expected to vote against the proposed revision of the country’s national priority zones at Sunday’s cabinet meeting. The ministers are objecting to the fact that the new map confers national priority status on several isolated settlements. Designation as a national priority zone entitles a town to various economic benefits.
Several Labor ministers said that even party chairman and defense minister Ehud Barak would not be able to vote for the map in its current form.
At a meeting of Labor ministers on Thursday, the inclusion of the isolated settlements – outside the major settlement blocs – was harshly criticized. The ministers said they were particularly furious that when Eyal Gabai, the director general of the Prime Minister’s Office, presented the map to Labor’s Knesset faction on Monday, he did not mention any of the isolated settlements it included.
Gabai, they said, merely told them that the sole criterion for determining which West Bank settlements to include was security. As a result, no questions were asked.
The ministers added that they had been pleased by the map’s heavy focus on communities in the Negev and Galilee, as well as the fact that Arab towns were well represented. The only problem, they said, is the settlements.
Thursday’s meeting ended with a decision to make an all-out effort to get the map changed before Sunday’s vote.
“It’s wrong to include settlements in the heart of the West Bank in the priority zone map,” explained Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog at a conference of southern mayors Thursday. “Such a move contradicts the desire to divide the land under a future peace agreement. But in everything related to advancing the Negev and the Galilee, the map has clear advantages [over the one currently in force].”
Some Labor MKs, such as Ophir Pines-Paz, urged the ministers Thursday to make the settlements’ removal from the map a non-negotiable condition of Labor’s continued presence in the government.
Pines-Paz added that he found it “hard to believe” that Barak “was not a partner in drafting the map.”
Below you can read about the escape of the Israeli war criminal Tzipi Livni from arrest in the UK, through a leak in the London Metropolitan Police. What a pity! Still, soon those rats will be frightened to leave their holes and come to Europe – not a bad start for BDS:
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni on Monday canceled her participation in a Jewish function in London, after a warrant for her arrest was issued over part in last winter’s Israel’s Gaza offensive, Arab-language media have reported.
Al-Quds Al-Arabi claimed that Scotland Yard advised the organizers of the Jewish National Fund conference in northwest London that the former foreign minister had canceled her scheduled address to the assembly over threats of a possible lawsuit by pro-Palestinian groups.
The Al-Quds Al-Arabi report also said that a group of about 100 anti-Israel protesters rallied outside the Hendon Hall Hotel on Sunday, just as delegates arrived at the JNF meet.
Israel’s ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, conferred with officials in the British Ministry of Justice who told him that they were unaware of any criminal complaint or arrest warrant against the former foreign minister.
Livni’s office said in a statement following the report that her appearance at the London event was canceled two weeks ago due to a scheduling conflict.
Livni’s office also said that the opposition leader was proud of all the decisions she made as foreign minister during the Gaza war, an operation which she said achieved its goal of bring security to Israel.
A United Kingdom court two months ago deferred until further notice an appeal by local pro-Palestinian groups to issue an arrest warrant against visiting Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
A similar appeal was issued in 2004 against Israel’s then defense minister, Shaul Mofaz. At the time, Mofaz was granted immunity from international arrest and trial – a precedent set by the British court, which until then had given such protection only to foreign ministers or premiers.
December 14, 2009
Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni cancelled a visit to Britain this weekend over fears pro-Palestinian lawyers would seek to have her arrested.
Ms Livni had been due to speak at Sunday’s JNF Vision 2010 conference in Hendon, north-west London. She had also been expected to meet Prime Minister Gordon Brown for private talks.
But she pulled out of the trip for fear of lawyers obtaining an arrest warrant.
She is the latest senior Israeli politician to avoid Britain. In October, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon was advised by a special inter-departmental team working with ministers to pull out of a JNF dinner in London.
Experts on international law from the foreign and justice ministries, and the IDF Attorney-General’s department, have advised cabinet ministers with a security background and senior IDF officers not to visit Britain, Spain, Belgium or Norway, while lawyers in these countries are seeking to arrest Israelis on charges of alleged war crimes through “universal jurisdiction” laws.
Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor, speaking at the JNF conference, said Israel was fighting the laws “tooth and nail” and would “not be shut down”.
A group of around 100 anti-Israel protestors demonstrated outside the Hendon Hall Hotel venue as delegates arrived.
Another excellent piece by Gideon Levy, about the Israeli theocracy, which fits so well in the middle east with so many other one around it; why indeed not a Jewish theocracy, with so many muslim one around? : it fits the region well!
The storm over remarks made by Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman is in many respects a tempest in a teapot, which has for a long time taken on holier aspects than it seems. Neeman wants Torah law, or in other words, he wants Israel to be a country governed by Jewish religious law, halakha. In any event, Israel is already a semi-theocracy. The Israelis who were frightened by the minister’s remarks and who love viewing their country as liberal, Western and secular are forgetting that our life here is more religious, traditional and halakhic than we are prepared to admit.
Between Stockholm and Tehran, Israel of 2009 is much closer to Tehran. From birth to death, from circumcision to funeral, from the establishment of the state to the establishment of the last of the illegal outposts in the West Bank – we are operating in the shadow of the commandments of religion. We should be honest with ourselves and admit it already: The country is too religious. Neeman just wanted to take this one step further, something one can and must come out against; but the religious-nationalist campaign began a long time ago, and it is still going strong.
It begins, of course, with the fact of our presence here. Among other things, it is based on theological reasoning. Abraham the Patriarch was here, so we are, too. He bought the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, so we, too, are in Palestinian Hebron. People who are entirely secular also cite religious and biblical explanations for the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. We can’t even say whether Judaism is a religion or a nationality – and in any event, there is no other country in the Western world where religion has its holy iron grip on the state as it does in Israel.
We don’t need Neeman. There are no civil marriages or divorces, and there are almost no secular funerals. The Law of Return and the definition of who is a Jew – the most fundamental and significant of Israeli precepts – are based on halakha, even without our religious justice minister.
Only 44 percent of Israelis define themselves as secular, as opposed to 64 percent of Swedes who define themselves as atheists; and this is reflected in all aspects of our daily life. A mezuzah on the doorpost of almost every home, and the pagan custom at almost every one of those houses of kissing it. Eighty-five percent of Israelis hold a Passover seder, fervently recalling the plagues – pestilence, boils, death of the first-born. Sixty-seven percent fast on Yom Kippur, which in Western eyes is the strangest of days. The absence of bus or train service on Shabbat, the observance of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) in every public institution, and Sabbath elevators in every hotel and hospital – these too are not exactly the vision of a secular state. A bar-mitzvah for almost every boy, matza in nearly every home on Passover, and the kiddush blessings.
Torah sages of various kinds make decisions on fateful political issues – at the homes of miracle workers, magicians and those passing out amulets – and the lines outside their doors are growing, made up mostly of those who argue they are fervently secular. They are lying to themselves and to others. Expressions of racism and arrogance, too, based on the concept of the “chosen people,” are uttered. And between you and me, who doesn’t believe this (a little)? You don’t need the newly religious and the newly secular. A large portion of secular people are “traditional,” which means religious, but just a little.
In the Bible study of our youth, we put on skullcaps. When, God forbid, the Bible fell on the floor, we would kiss it, with great reverence – secular people like us, as it were. And what happened during morning roll call? The quotation of the day from the Bible. None of us had ever heard of the New Testament, and no one would have dared teach it as part of the education we are trying to glorify. We were also afraid to even enter a church.
The Western Wall is holy to everyone – who has not placed a note with a wish in its crevices? Most Israelis’ reasoning for the continued occupation of “holy” East Jerusalem is also based on religious faith. It is not only the “hilltop youth” of the West Bank settlements who revere every stone. Not only Gush Emunim, the bloc of the faithful, believes in the baseless connection between sanctity and sovereignty. Most of us believe it. Admit it.
Let’s admit that we live in a country with many religious and halakhic attributes. Let’s remove the concocted secularist guise with which we have wrapped ourselves. Shocked by Neeman’s remarks? They are not so far removed from the reality of our lives. Israel is not what you thought. It’s definitely not what we try to present to ourselves and the rest of the world.
Many of you will remember the the groundbreaking Dispatches C4TV programme last month, exposing the powers and methods, as well as the financial resources of the Zionist Jewish lobby in Britain. Below you can read ofa typical twist in this saga, combining silencing, threats and lies. In order to punish Prof. Newman of BGU, who, despite his deep commitment to Zionism, and his struggle against the BDS campaign in the UK, played a central part in the programme, a wealthy Zionist backer, Michael Gross (nowm sometimes the name fits the man…) has taken it upon himself to curse the academic and ask for his urgent removal, both from BGU and the face of the earth… What is clearly criminal behaviour when taking plce in Britain, is fine when used in this way against those Zionism dislikes! It is nothing short of ‘hate speech’, and calling for the death of Prof. Newman. While I am an apponent of Newman, and disagree with him intensly on BDS and other matters, I would fight for his right to academic and other freedoms, even if he humself is less than energetic in calling for the same rights for Palestinians!
British businessman sends threatening emails to Israeli university lecturer who contributed to programme accused of antisemitism
A battle involving money and politics, academic freedom and threatening emails has hit an Israeli university after one of its academics took part in a Channel 4 documentary which has been accused of encouraging antisemitism.
At the centre of the dispute is Michael Gross, a prominent member of Britain’s Jewish community, a long-time donor to Ben-Gurion University (BGU) and a member of its international board of governors.
After seeing the Dispatches programme last month, Gross emailed Professor David Newman – a British-born lecturer who has emigrated to Israel – and wrote: “I saw your disgusting contribution to the Dispatches programme. I will use whatever influence I have at BGU to have you thrown out… I hope you perish.” In a second message, he said: “The sooner you are removed from BGU and the face of the earth, the better.”
The programme, presented by the British journalist Peter Oborne, was billed as the inside story of “Britain’s Israel lobby”, which the broadcaster’s blurb described as “little known” but “wielding great influence among the highest realms of British politics and media”. In fact, it acknowledged that the membership of groups such as Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel was well known. But Jewish community leaders were angered by the programme’s tone and that almost all of those interviewed were sharply critical of Israel.
Last week, 120 BGU faculty members attacked Gross’s email. In a letter to Roy Zuckerberg, the chair of governors, a US philanthropist and former Goldman Sachs partner, they said Gross’s “hate mail” was a challenge not only to Newman but also to academic discourse and free speech. Saying that Gross should have “no place in the BGU community”, they urged Zuckerberg to demand that Gross apologise or sack him from the board. One academic said yesterday that he had signed the letter not only to support Newman, but because there was growing political pressure on many left-of-centre academics both from within Israel and major diaspora communities.
Gross told the Observer that he regretted “the language, but not the sentiments” in his attack on Newman. “I was furious. It was intemperate.”
He said that his threat to try to get Newman fired was “because I wanted to upset the guy. I wanted him to be as upset as I was.” But he added: “I am not going to apologise to him, because he deserves what he gets.”
Gross said he had “exploded” because of the fundraising implications for the university of one of its lecturers appearing on an “anti-Israel” programme. “We’re trying to mount a campaign to increase support for the university, and a guy like that just walks us back five years,” he said.
Gross qualified as an accountant in London, but went on to get a Harvard Business School degree and returned to Britain build up a successful property business in the 1980s. In Jewish community life, he became an often outspoken participant in debates on the religious direction and leadership of the community, as well as an advocate of strong support for Israel. In recent years, he has spent most of his time in Israel.
Newman revealed that he had lodged an official complaint against Gross with the Community Security Trust (CST), the body that monitors threats against British Jews. “If someone had written to any member of the Anglo-Jewish community with words like that, it would immediately have been reported to the police, and they would have wanted to know why it wasn’t being dealt with,” he said.
The academics say the issue is academic freedom. Gross’s emails, their letter said, “signal an attitude of total disdain for the principles of academic discourse based on open debate, and for free inquiry of any kind”.
One of Gross’s fellow governors said yesterday that Rivka Carmi, the university’s president, would be “caught between a rock and a hard place”. “She has to keep the faculty happy,” adding that in BGU and other Israeli universities there was no prospect of a professor getting sacked over political views. “On the other hand, she has to keep her supporters happy to give money to the university.”
Another governor, British lawyer Harold Paisner, said the tone of Gross’s emails was unacceptable. “It is one thing having a difference of opinion. But because you disagree with someone’s political views, to wish them dead and curse them – this is appalling. I am horrified.”
In his appearance on the programme, Newman, a political geographer who is editor of the international Journal of Geopolitics, did not directly criticise Israeli policy. In fact, after seeing the programme, he said he regretted having taken part. In a column for the Jerusalem Post several days after its broadcast, he said that the programme had been very one-sided.
Israeli universities increasingly rely on support from overseas donors. But diaspora leaders, particularly in Britain, feel they are facing an increasingly anti-Israel and antisemitic tone in politics and the media, causing tension with left-of-centre voices in Israeli faculties.
You may have read much about the ‘freaze’ on settlements in the Occupied Territories of Palestine (well, the whole of Palestine is occupied…)a much vaunted achievement of that famous Nobel Prize winner for Peace, Jesus Christ of Washington. From the pieces below you can see what will happen there, and straight from the horse’s mouth – the war criminal Ehud Barak:
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday attacked a controversial plan to pump an additional NIS 110 million into West Bank settlements, saying that some of the money would end up in the hands of right-wing extremists.
“I don’t think that we need to award them a prize in the form of including them in the national priority map,” said Barak, referring to the plan. Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting, the defense minister cited the desecration of a West Bank mosque on Friday as an example of the rightists’ activity. He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s map of communities slated to receive state funds included a disproportional number of settlements. Barak’s comments came after Labor ministers said on Sunday that Netanyahu had agreed with the defense minister to review the plan. The move appeared to be a compromise on the matter. The plan sparked a barrage of criticism since the premier decided to implement the move despite a freeze on new construction in the territories. The Labor ministers said Netanyahu had agreed to hold a cabinet discussion on the plan and to form a panel to examine which communities should be included.
At the start of Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said: “The government wants to provide an answer to those who carry on a daily basis the economic and security burden.” Barak, however, stressed that, “The Israel Defense Forces ensures the security of Israelis everywhere; even though the security situation in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] is inestimably better today than in previous years. “The priority of the Labor party is the Galilee, the Negev, and the periphery; period.” Netanyahu added that a decision would be reached on the subject after a discussion, but did not say when that would happen. The prime minister apparently gave in to pressure from the Labor and Shas parties over the move, and decided to form the committee as a temporary solution. The proposed list included for the first time six West Bank settlements with a total population of about 110,000. Figures close to Barak said Saturday that Netanyahu is expected to accept Barak’s request to postpone the vote on the issue for a week. “Apparently there will be a discussion only, rather than a vote,” a source said. But sources in the Prime Minister’s Bureau said yesterday that Netanyahu is to examine revising the map and that it was expected to be submitted for a vote at today’s cabinet meeting. “There will be a vote, but there will be a discussion about Ashkelon, Ma’aleh Adumim and any other proposal for changes in the [national priority] map,” a source in the bureau said.
What Barak forgot to mention, is that this is exactly what happened over the last four decades – the illegal financing of the illegal settlements, building the powerbase and foundation of the right wing in Israel, of which both Brak and Netanyahu are the joint leaders, and the main beneficiaries. Like King Oedipus, Netanyahu and Barak are conducting a campaign against the criminals which they have become.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday ordered Israel’s security branches to find the “criminals” who vandalized a mosque in a West Bank village, joining other Israeli leaders in condemning the incident.
“Expose the criminals as soon as possible, and put them on trial,” Netanyahu told officials. His comments came shortly after President Shimon Peres urged officials to do everything in their power to bring to justice the people behind attack on Friday, which he said ran contrary to Israel’s fundamental values. “The government, the security forces and the law enforcement institutions must take every measure, with the utmost urgency, to find the perpetrators and put them on trial in accordance with the gravity of the acts,” Peres said in a statement.
The assailants torched furniture at the mosque, in the village of Yasuf, and sprayed Nazi slogans in Hebrew on the premises. They are suspected of being settlers protesting Israel’s temporary freeze on new construction in West Bank settlements. Peres added: “It can’t be that an extremist group endangers the status of Israel as a state that abides laws and respects religions.” On Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Israel must rein in settlers’ “brutal” actions, in response to the incident.
“The torching of the mosque in Yasuf is a despicable crime, and the settlers are behaving with brutality,” said Abbas, who called the act a violation of religious freedom. “The settlers’ unruly behavior must be stopped,” Abbas added after meeting on Friday with United Arab List-Ta’al chairman Ahmed Tibi in Amman.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, on Friday condemned the act as a bid to thwart the peace process with the Palestinians. “This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government’s efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel’s future,” said Barak. U.S. denounces attack
The U.S. State Department also denounced the attack on Friday, saying, “We condemn this attack in the strongest terms and call for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.” Investigation into the incident points to the likelihood that settlers from nearby Tapuah are behind the attack, police said, but the vandals have not yet been caught.
Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces near Yasuf on Friday, after the moque was damaged.
Some rioters hurled rocks at the troops, wounding one police officer. Settler extremists have recently attacked Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government moves to curb settlement construction. These protesters have dubbed the attacks the “price tag” policy. Israel Defense Forces officers in the West Bank have expressed concern that settlers may escalate their acts of opposition to the temporary freeze on settlement construction by targeting the Palestinian population. The assailants entered the village of Yasuf before dawn Friday, according to Israel Police and Munir Abushi, the Palestinian governor of the district where the village is located.
They burned prayer carpets and a book stand with Muslim holy texts, and left graffiti on the floor reading, “Price tag – greetings from Effi.” Effi is a Hebrew name. The vandals escaped. The IDF said it views the incident gravely and is investigating it along with the police. After villagers discovered the damage, they briefly threw stones at Israeli forces that entered Yasuf, Abushi said. He said two villagers were hurt in the skirmish. Abushi met with Israeli police and army officers and expressed his dismay over repeated settler attacks. “Israeli security forces have done little to protect Palestinian civilians from the settlers,” he said. In an apparent attempt to placate settlers over the construction slowdown, Netanyahu has proposed including tens of thousands of settlers, including many living in isolated settlements deep in the West Bank, in a government program that bestows monetary incentives on residents and businesses. The move has drawn criticism from Netanyahu’s coalition partner, the
Labor Party, which has indicated it will vote against the move at a Cabinet meeting next week.
More abour racism and antisemitism in Israel and the Occupied Territories of Palestine:
Security officials say they fear that the torching of a mosque near Nablus on Friday could lead to reprisal attacks by Palestinians on Jews. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered Israel’s security services to find the people behind the arson, which Jewish extremists are suspected of perpetrating.
After the attack at the village of Yasuf, Palestinian residents scuffled with members of the Border Police, a few of whom were lightly wounded. Several Palestinians were also hurt.
The arson prompted army and Border Police commanders to increase their presence in the Nablus area to prevent further attacks by Jewish extremists and reprisals by Palestinians. Security sources said such reprisals were a concern because the arson attack offended Palestinians’ religious sentiments.
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“The attack on the mosque was a dangerous provocation that could cause a further and unnecessary conflagration,” one security official said.
Israel Defense Forces officers in the West Bank say that some settlers may escalate their opposition to the temporary freeze on settlement construction by targeting the Palestinian population – the “price tag” policy.
Attacks like the arson have provoked similar attacks by Palestinians, which the Shin Bet security service calls “popular attacks.” These include acts that require little planning like stabbings, stone throwing and the hurling of Molotov cocktails.
The assailants – whose acts drew condemnations from U.S., Palestinian, Israeli and settler leaders – entered Yasuf before dawn Friday, according to the police.
They burned prayer carpets and a book stand containing Muslim holy texts, and left graffiti on the floor reading “Price tag – greetings from Effi.” The vandals escaped. Police officials said they had no definite leads. The Shin Bet declined to discuss the investigation.
“We condemn this attack in the strongest terms and call for the perpetrators to be brought to justice,” the U.S. State Department said.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak has condemned the act as a bid to thwart the peace process with the Palestinians. “This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government’s efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel’s future,” he said on Friday.
President Shimon Peres urged officials to do “everything in their power to bring to justice” the people behind the attack, which he said ran contrary to Israel’s fundamental values.
“The government, the security forces and the law-enforcement institutions must take every measure, with the utmost urgency, to find the perpetrators and put them on trial in accordance with the gravity of the acts,” Peres said in a statement.
According to opposition leader Tzipi Livni in a speech in Herzliya on Friday, “while a human rights march goes on in Tel Aviv, in Samaria extremist elements set fire to a mosque in a severe, despicable act of provocation.”
In a statement yesterday, the secretary general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, added that the “profanation of the mosque and the torching of copies of the Koran found in it, and the spraying of racist graffiti on the mosque’s walls against Islam and Muslims represent blatant aggression against the sanctity of sacred places.”
Danny Dayan, who heads the Yesha Council of settlements, said the vandalism was “a wrong and foolish act.” He added that “whoever did this does not wish for the good of the settlements in Judea and Samaria.”
But far-right activist Itamar Ben-Gvir said that “Netanyahu must freeze these racist edicts to calm the atmosphere.”
MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) added that “those who wish to wipe out the Jewish people must not expect us to identify with their symbols and centers of incitement. I ran out of condemnations when the synagogues at Gush Katif were burned.”
It is instructive to listen to the settelers speaking for themselves. Located somewhere between an extreme proponent of apartheid, and a Nazi antisemite, this typical setteler speaks clearly, describing the master plan – making the whole of Palestine Arabrein.
Daniel Pinner, whose monologue follows, lives in the settlement of Kfar Tapuah, which was founded in 1978 by a core group of members of Moshav Bareket belonging to the Hapoel Hamizrachi movement and is defined as a “religious communal” settlement. In 1990 Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane (the son of Meir Kahane, founder of the extreme right-wing Kach party, which was banned in 1994) moved there; he was murdered, together with his wife Talia in 2001, in a shooting on a highway south of the settlement of Ofra. Following the younger Kahane, others identified with the Kach movement moved to Tapuah. He headed a yeshiva there, and the entire settlement became known for its extremism.
In recent years, as a result of an expansion of the settlement, it is less identified with Kach, and at present it has mostly young families. The rabbi of the settlement, Rabbi Shmuel Cohen, is identified with the Shas movement.
Pinner says that he does not in fact officially represent the settlement in which he lives or the settlement movement. Some of his ideas have few supporters. He is not the leader of a community or an outpost. He is known on the fringes of the right, mainly to veteran activists. It is doubtful whether the youngsters who occasionally sing his song about Yitzhak Rabin (in which every stanza ends with the words: “He went to hell”) even know who he is.
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But there are dozens, if not hundreds more like Pinner, who represent only themselves; who believe in an ideology that is not the product of any yeshiva or any specific book. In that sense, his good friend, the suspected Jewish terrorist Yaakov Teitel, resembles him. Teitel is also not the product of an organized ideological or philosophical system, but picked up his ideas and his caprices here and there along the way.
Pinner was interviewed at his home a few weeks ago.
The spokesperson for Kfar Tapuah responded to this article as follows:
“The community of Kfar Tapuah has 170 families today, and has grown and developed over the past few years. The community has been transformed significantly on many levels and today residents are modest people, civil servants, army officers, farmers and educators who contribute to the community. In Kfar Tapuah there are no thought police and diversity of opinion is our strength. We try to be tolerant of views like those expressed in this article, with which most of us certainly do not identify, and even disagree.”
Pinner’s story
“My name is Daniel Pinner. I’m 43 years old and live in Kfar Tapuah. I’m an electrician, a dog trainer, a mechanic, a performer at weddings. I immigrated to Israel from England 22 years ago, because every Jew belongs in the Land of Israel. There’s no complete Jew and complete Judaism outside the Land of Israel. When I immigrated to Israel I lived at first in Jerusalem. Ten years ago I moved to Tapuah.
“Jerusalem is all built-up asphalt. There you walk down the street and see a street that could be anywhere in Texas or in England. Here in Kfar Tapuah I see Nablus, where Jewish history began. From another side of Tapuah I see the Jordan Valley, the hills of Transjordan, which for now are under the illegal Hashemite occupation that was invented by Great Britain. I look at the other side and see the air pollution of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and I remember why I don’t live there.
“I got married five and a half months ago. I was exceptional in being single for so long. Nobody believed I would marry. They said I was afraid of commitment. I said that I simply wouldn’t commit to the wrong woman. And the fact is that I met the girl who is my wife.
“For 10 years I’ve had a dog named Cazador. It means hunter in Spanish. She’s from a species developed in South Africa 100 years ago for hunting lions. I trained her in English, Hebrew, German and Arabic. They say: “To Arabs and dogs I speak in Arabic.” She can distinguish between an Arab and a Jew. If I’m in the car and go in to get gas, if it’s a Jew she barks when he touches the car. If it’s an Arab she roars. I have no idea how.”
Jack and I
“I knew Yaakov Teitel. [Teitel is under arrest on suspicion of being a terrorist]. Twenty years ago we were together at a yeshiva in Jerusalem. Afterward he helped me a little with my computer. I taught him a little Hebrew. I was in his house. He’s nice, helpful. Generous.
“I know that the media report so many things that the Shin Bet security services said that have no connection to reality. They say a lot of things. They say that he reconstructed events, but I don’t know whether he did or not. I was once interrogated by the police about setting fire to a Meretz headquarters in Jerusalem. I said, I’m willing to reconstruct, I’m willing to tell: I was standing there when I saw the newspaper headline. Not that I had any connection to it, but I can reconstruct what I experienced.
Baruch and I
“I knew Rabbi Kahane personally, I spoke to him, I attended his Torah classes. I was in his house once. He had a great influence on me. When you hear the truth and see the truth there are two possibilities: either to ignore it or to be influenced, and I didn’t want to flee from the truth. I describe myself as a Jew who wants to observe Torah and mitzvoth and Rabbi Kahane had a great influence on me and I learned important things from him. When Rabbi Kahane was murdered I was in the army, I felt terrible. I felt that my mentor had been murdered. It was very hard for me to function that day. I asked for leave from my commander, without telling him the reason. I was at the funeral, in uniform.
“I knew Baruch Goldstein [an American Jewish settler who shot and killed 29 Muslim worshipers in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Purim, in February 1994]. We met many times. I first met him as a doctor in Kiryat Arba; afterward he would often visit the Jewish prisoners and I had at least two friends there: Nachshon Walls and Yoram Skolnik. I used to go to visit them and I would meet Baruch. We were in contact many times, we would coordinate when to come. That Purim I heard that a Jew had entered the cave and carried out a massacre and there were a great many casualties. My first thought was that it was a shame that instead of celebrating Purim, Goldstein would be busy with the casualties. When I heard it was Goldstein I was amazed, because he was very gentle, very quiet, very modest. The total opposite of violent. That was the last person I would expect to do such a thing. It wasn’t a massacre, only one person was murdered, Goldstein. Since the State of Israel is a state of law, there is only one body allowed to declare that a person is a murderer, and that only in an official courtroom. Baruch Goldstein, may God avenge his blood, was not brought before a court, so it’s impossible to say legally that he murdered. On the other hand, there’s a death certificate that is an entirely legal document. It says there that the cause of the death of Baruch Goldstein is murder. Legally it is clear that he was murdered and it’s impossible to say that he’s a murderer. Had there been another 10 incidents like Baruch Goldstein, God forbid, and had there been another nine instances of Jews murdering Arabs – and I strongly oppose that – the intifada would have ended immediately and all the attacks by Arabs against Jews would have ended, and God forbid that Jews would have murdered Arabs.
“I knew Eden Natan-Zada, may God avenge his blood [an AWOL soldier who opened fire in a bus in the Arab town of Shfaram in April 2005]. Even a truly wicked Jew, who betrayed his people, and was murdered by an Arab – I would say: “May God avenge his blood” even about him, because it’s a desecration of God’s name for an Arab to murder a Jew. He was in Tapuah for a little while. I didn’t know him so well. I really don’t know what happened to him. There were many strange things. What was he doing with a weapon? There are so many questions. Like, how did he get to Shfaram? And if he wanted to kill Arabs then why there, when there are 150,000 Arabs here nearby? Why on a bus of all places? What I can say is that someone who wanted to tamper with evidence did a good job when he tied him up and threw him to the Arab riffraff.
“I knew Asher Weizgan [who murdered four Palestinians after the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005]. I had a business supplying dog food and he was a customer. That was all. I can’t say much about him. He was in a bad state. But I can’t judge a man who committed suicide in prison.
“I know hundreds of people. And these people are a small number of all those I know. If I take a list of the entire extreme left, like [Yariv] Oppenheimer from Peace Now, Tzali Reshef, Yossi Sarid, I assume that you know many of them. If I take all those who gave weapons to Palestinians, then every leftist knows many of them. That doesn’t mean that he’s connected to the act. Everyone has his own social circle. I know such people and if they were to put everyone who gave weapons to terrorists on trial, then half the residents of Ramat Aviv Gimmel would know dozens of people sitting in prison for collaborating in murder or treason.”
Prison
“In Gush Katif there was an abandoned hotel on the Neve Dekalim beach. There was a plan to renovate the hotel so that the building would serve as a center of opposition to the mass expulsion from Gaza. In order to renovate the place they needed all kinds of workers – plumbers, electricians, house painters. I’m an electrician, so I was there. On Shabbat we walked together on the beach, I and my dog Cazador. Fifty Arabs attacked us with stones. I was armed with an Uzi so I fired two or three shots in the air in order to scare them away. They withdrew, I withdrew. I returned to the hotel. A few days later I returned to Tapuah and was arrested.
“They brought me to a Shin Bet office in Petah Tikva. There they interrogated me for 10 days, gave me the ‘full terrorist treatment.’ They imposed a total information blackout, the media were not allowed to report that someone had been arrested. I wasn’t allowed to meet with an attorney. It was hard, but interesting. Very interesting mind games. They didn’t torture me, I think that I tortured them with my answers. A guy who can’t say three words without my correcting his grammar is a kind of torture. The interrogator would shout at me: ‘If you understood how serious your situation is …’ and I would correct him. ‘It’s not: “If you understood” it’s: “If you were to understand.”‘ I hope that I traumatized some of them. By the way, in the interrogation I confessed that together with Avraham Stavsky I murdered Haim Arlosoroff. He said: “Ahhhh.” [Arlosoroff, a Zionist leader, was murdered in Tel Aviv in 1933.]
“The cell in the detention center is 2 by 2.5 meters, it’s stone like spritz [like stucco]; do you know the best thing about it? That you can scratch yourself against the wall and it’s the best back scratching. There’s one corner of the cell with a toilet. And next to it there’s a sink; you push the button and it sprays water for 10 seconds. In one corner there’s something like a chair glued to the wall, next to it a table and three mattresses. And the light is on 24 hours a day in the cell. On one mattress I would sleep, the second mattress I would fold to keep out the light and the third I leaned against the wall, where the toilet is, so my eyes wouldn’t be on the toilet. They took away my watch. You don’t know when it’s day and when it’s night. It bothered me, because I didn’t know when the prayer times were. I could estimate according to the food what time it was. I can’t tell you that it was a fun experience. But I can’t say that I really suffered. I was at several more Shin Bet interrogations, but I prefer not to go into that.
“In the story from Neve Dekalim, some Arab named Nasser Wafi claimed that he had been shot in the foot. He brought a document that looked like a joke, in which it was stated that someone had come to the hospital claiming that he had been shot, that the entry wound and the exit wound were one centimeter in size. They put me on trial. We began with four counts: attempted murder, carrying a weapon without a license, carrying ammunition without a license and firing in a residential area. At the trial they changed the charge from attempted murder to injury with serious intent. They also eliminated the charge of firing in a residential area. It’s ridiculous, because it was in the dunes. I had a license for a weapon, but the charge was that the license is valid only in Tapuah. I brought proof that I was once delayed by the police in the Old City in Jerusalem and was armed. I sued the police for false detention. The court asked whether I had a license for a weapon, and the court decided that the license was valid in Jerusalem.
“The Be’er Sheva District Court, the Honorable Judge Rachel Barkai, sentenced me to two years in prison. According to law, anyone who disparages a judge can expect imprisonment of up to five years. And I don’t want to embarrass her. A more cynical person would say that this judge will want to be a Supreme Court justice, maybe the president of the Supreme Court, and if she wants to be promoted she is obligated to hand down decisions that the decision makers will like. But that’s only someone more cynical than I.
“I was detained until the end of the proceedings, 10 and a half months in all. After the sentence I filed an appeal and submitted a request for a postponement, and surprisingly I was released. I was high, I was drunk, they made a huge party for me here. What I enjoyed most was the darkness in the house. In prison there’s no total darkness, finally I could sleep. I was released until the appeal. And then they rejected the appeal and took me back to prison. They allowed me to return to prison after the holidays. The day after the holiday I received the news that my mother had died during the night. They postponed my return to prison by another two weeks. They took off a third for good behavior. And I was released.”
Rabin
“On the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War I gave a Torah lesson from a historical point of view, as to what the greatest miracle in the war was. I said that the greatest miracle was that 10 days earlier the chief of staff collapsed, which enabled Ezer Weizman to plan the victory.
“I don’t mention the name of Abu Yuval [referring to Yitzhak Rabin, the father of Yuval Rabin], on the same level that I don’t curse and don’t use dirty words. There’s a Torah prohibition against mentioning the name of other gods. The Rabinists made a god of Abu Yuval, and I tend not to mention his name. Anyone whose entire worldview is to destroy Jews, which is a unique level, I say: ‘May his name be erased’ after his name. After the name of Abu Yuval I say: ‘May his name be erased.’
“The killing of that man did not change much in the situation, because the government continued on the same path of cooperation with the terrorists. The government continued with the same Oslo agreements of death and murder. The left continued with the same murderous hatred against religious Jews and against Judaism in general. I was opposed to the murder when he was alive and I’m opposed to the murder after his death. I was opposed to the treason when he was alive and I continue to oppose it after his death. I was opposed to cooperation with terrorists and I’m opposed after his death. Even the killing of that man didn’t change my mind. I was the only one in the country with a sticker saying: ‘Haver, ata lo haser’ (‘Friend, we don’t miss you’). That’s not provocation. If it’s provocation then: ‘Proud to be a Jew’ is also provocation. If the Rabinists are allowed to miss that man and to declare it in public, then I’m allowed too.
“As far as Yigal Amir [Rabin’s assassin], I didn’t know him. I’ll tell you a joke: Two policemen were walking down the street. One asked the other: ‘What do you think of Yigal Amir?’ And the second one said: ‘I think just like you.’ So the policeman replied: ‘In that case you’re under arrest.’
“Had you asked me 16 and a half years ago whether a Jew could murder a Jew for ideological-nationalist reasons in the present sovereign State of Israel I would have said no. But after the Oslo death agreement, when I saw that not just any Jew from the street but the prime minister of Israel was cooperating in the most active way with terrorists so that they would murder Jews, after that I began to believe that a Jew could murder.
“In the past I wrote a song about an imaginary character that I invented for entertainment purposes only. And any connection or parallel between him and a real-life figure is only coincidental. The song begins like this:
He was born to be a great leader of a country
He was a courageous hero as a soldier in the Haganah
He fled from the battlefield and avoided war
He went to hell.
“That’s a somewhat funny, somewhat amusing song. No more than that. No person’s name is mentioned in that song. If someone decides to attribute the song to any prime minister, then he’s the one who is using those unfortunate expressions to describe that man: murderer, traitor, informer, et al.”
Occupation
“My mother of blessed memory fought in the Gadna, afterward she was in the Golani Brigade. She fought to liberate Sheikh Munis from the Arab occupiers who were there; she was 17 years old at the time. She described to me how it was in Sheikh Munis, that was two days after independence [in May 1948]. Today the area is called Ramat Aviv Gimmel, where the most extreme leftists live, including Mr. Shimon Peres [in Hebrew the acronym for Mr. Shimon Peres is ASHAF, the Hebrew term for the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization], and they dare to call me an occupier because I live in an area where there wasn’t a single Arab. That same Peres, who never bore arms, dares to call me an occupier when he lives in a place that my mother captured. I grew up with the most devout Zionism.
“There is no Arab village and no Arab city in the Land of Israel, but only Jewish villages where Arabs are living for the time being. Nablus is not an Arab city but a Jewish one, a place where Arabs are living temporarily. [Former prime minister] Ariel Sharon said: “The fate of [the Gaza Strip settlement of] Netzarim is the fate of Tel Aviv,” and I say that the fate of Nablus is the fate of Sheikh Munis. What my mother did to Sheikh Munis, what Ben-Gurion’s Haganah did to Sheikh Munis, we will do to Nablus, as well as Ramallah and Bethlehem, and Hebron and Umm al-Fahm. Incidentally, Umm al-Fahm began in the 13th century, when Arabs came from Transjordan to settle there. They are the foreign settlers who came from outside the region.
“At the moment I have no problem with Arabs moving to Transjordan, although that is also the Land of Israel. I’m not looking to go to war to redeem the lands in Transjordan, but as long as the Arabs there are really in peace we won’t try to realize our total right to be on those lands. If the Arabs of Umm al-Fahm move to Transjordan there will be peace, and they’ll continue to be occupiers on our land.
“About eight years ago, an incident that I remember because I was involved in it, at the gate [in Kfar Tapuah] someone had ordered Tnuva. The Tnuva truck arrived with a driver and his assistant was an Arab. We didn’t let him in and there was an argument there and we almost came to blows. We told him to come in, but without the Arab. The driver was embarrassed and I understood him. We told the driver, we’ll bring people to take the merchandise, but the Arab isn’t coming in. And we didn’t let him in because that’s the eyes and ears of the next terrorist, and now they’re not here.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday said that Israel must rein in settlers’ provocative actions, after assailants vandalized a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, torching furniture and spraying Nazi slogans in Hebrew on the premises.
“The torching of the mosque in Yasuf is a despicable crime, and the settlers are behaving with brutality,” said Abbas, who called the act a violation of religious freedom.
“The settlers’ unruly behavior must be stopped,” Abbas added after meeting on Friday with United Arab List-Ta?al chairman Ahmed Tibi in Amman.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Friday condemned the vandalization of the West Bank mosque, allegedly at the hands of of settlers protesting Israel’s temporary freeze on settlement construction.
“This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government’s efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel’s future,” said Barak.
Investigation into the incident points to the likelihood that settlers are behind the attack, police said, but the vandals have not yet been caught.
Settler extremists have recently attacked Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government moves to curb settlement construction. These protesters have dubbed the attacks the “price tag” policy.
Israel Defense Forces officers in the West Bank have expressed concerned that settlers may escalate their acts of opposition to the temporary freeze on settlement construction by targeting the Palestinian population.
The assailants entered the village of Yasuf before dawn Friday, according to Israel Police and Munir Abushi, the Palestinian governor of the district where the village is located.
They burned prayer carpets and a book stand with Muslim holy texts, and left graffiti on the floor reading, “Price tag – greetings from Effi”. Effi is a Hebrew name.
The vandals escaped. The IDF said it views the incident gravely and is investigating along with the police.
After villagers discovered the damage, they briefly threw stones at Israeli forces that entered Yasuf, Abushi said. He said two villagers were hurt in the skirmish.
Abushi met with Israeli police and army officers and expressed his dismay over repeated settler attacks.
“Israeli security forces have done little to protect Palestinian civilians from the settlers,” he said.
In an apparent attempt to placate settlers over the construction slowdown, Netanyahu has proposed including tens of thousands of settlers, including many living in isolated settlements deep in the West Bank, in a government program that bestows monetary incentives on residents and businesses.
The move has drawn criticism from Netanyahu’s coalition partner, the
Labor Party, which has indicated it will vote against the move at a Cabinet meeting next week.
Fire attack on West Bank mosque: BBC
Palestinians inspect fire damage at the Yasuf mosque
A mosque in a village in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank has been damaged in an arson attack.
Attackers set fire to bookshelves and a large area of carpet in the mosque, and sprayed graffiti in Hebrew on a wall.
Palestinian residents of the village of Yasuf clashed with Israeli soldiers investigating the attack. Eyewitnesses say settlers were responsible.
Attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers are increasing. A number of incidents have been captured on video.
One of the slogans sprayed on the wall of the mosque in Yasuf read: “Get ready to pay the price,” Israeli public radio reported. Another read: “We will burn you all.”
Some hard-line settlers advocate a “price tag” policy under which they attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.
The village is located near the Jewish settlement of Tappuah.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it “views the incident gravely” and that security forces were working to locate the perpetrators.
But the local Palestinian governor, Munir Abushi, accused the Israeli security forces of doing too little to protect Palestinians from settler attacks.
A settler organisation in the area denied that settlers were behind the attack.
Meanwhile one rabbi from the south of the West Bank, Mechachem Froman, has offered to help renovate the mosque, saying attacks against holy buildings were against Jewish law.
Israeli human rights groups have accused the police and army of running inadequate investigations into attacks by settlers on Palestinians.
One group reported that nine out of 10 investigations into alleged attacks on Palestinians by settlers ended without anyone being charged.
Settlement curb call
On Wednesday, thousands of Jewish settlers and their supporters staged a rally in Jerusalem in protest at a recently announced curb on settlement building in the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a 10-month lull in permits for new settlement homes in the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem.
The order followed US and Palestinian calls for a total freeze in settlement building.
Palestinian officials have refused to rejoin peace talks until a total freeze is imposed.
All Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
Press release, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, 3 December 2009
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) released today [2 December 2009] a new report which exposes the shifts in Israel’s combat doctrine as evidenced in the prosecution of operation “Cast Lead” and from numerous public oral and written statements made by high ranking military officers and senior Israeli government officials.
The report, “No Second Thoughts: Changes in the IDF’s Combat Doctrine In Light Of Operation ‘Cast Lead’,” demonstrates Israel’s application of a new combat doctrine during the hostilities in Gaza, which is based on two principles:
“Zero Casualties”: The complete prioritization of avoiding IDF [Israeli army] casualties while disregarding the increased risk to Palestinian civilians. The implementation of this policy is evident in the massive use of fire power, the use of white phosphorous weapons in densely populated areas, and in firing at Palestinians in the streets, with no discrimination between combatants and civilians, this even after the IDF would order the evacuation of residents from civilian homes.
“Dahiyah Doctrine”: named after the residential Dahiyah district in Beirut, where Hizballah enjoyed support and also had its headquarters. The district was massively bombed by the IDF during the Second Lebanon War. The doctrine promotes targeting civilian infrastructure in order to cause widespread destruction and suffering among the civilian population so as to foment popular opposition to Israel’s opponents (namely Hamas and Hizballah).
As a result of the implementation of these principles, the fighting in the Gaza Strip caused intentional and large-scale damage to civilian infrastructure as well as the killing of hundreds of non-combatant civilians (despite the absence of an official policy to intentionally kill civilians). Israel’s actions directly contradict official statements claiming that the IDF acted in accordance with international humanitarian law and took every possible measure to avoid harming non-militant civilians.
This combat doctrine morally stains the citizens of Israel. It may lead to increased international isolation of Israel and to a situation where Israeli soldiers, officers and leaders will face arrest outside of Israel and be charged with war crimes. The writers of the report summarize: “So fundamental a shift in the IDF’s combat doctrine, which has such a far-reaching impact, shouldn’t be considered only in the closed forums of the General Headquarters and the Security Cabinet, but demands substantial public discussion.”
Press Release, Gaza Freedom March, 4 December 2009
The Gaza Freedom March that will take place in Gaza on 31 December is an historic initiative to break the siege that has imprisoned the 1.5 million people who live there. Conceived in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and nonviolent resistance to injustice worldwide, the march will gather people from all over the world to march — hand in hand — with the people of Gaza to demand that the Israelis open the borders.
Marking the one-year anniversary of the December 2008 Israeli invasion that left more than 1,400 dead, this is a grassroots global response to the inaction on the part of world leaders and institutions. More than 1,000 international delegates from 42 countries have already signed up and more are signing on every day.
Participants include Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, leading Syrian comedian Duraid Lahham, French Senator Alima Boumediene-Thiery, autthor and Filipino Parliament member Walden Bello, former European Parliamentarians Luisa Morgantini from Italy and Eva Quistorp from Germany, President of the US Center for Constitutional Rights Attorney Michael Ratner, Japanese former Ambassador to Lebanon Naoto Amaki, French hip-hop artists Ministere des Affaires Populaires, and 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein.
We also have families of three generations, doctors, lawyers, diplomats, 70 students, an interfaith group that includes rabbis, priests and imams, a women’s delegation, a Jewish contingent, a veterans group and Palestinians born overseas who have never seen their families in Gaza.
The international delegates will enter Gaza via Egypt during the last week of December. In the morning 31 December, they will join Palestinians in a nonviolent march from northern Gaza to the Erez/Israeli border. On the Israeli side of the Erez border will be a gathering of Palestinians and Jews who are also calling on the Israeli government to open the border.
Inside Gaza, excitement is growing. Representatives of all aspects of civil society, including students, professors, refugee groups, unions, women’s organizations, nongovernmental organizations, have been busy organizing and estimate that at least 50,000 Palestinians will participate. People from the different sectors will march in their uniforms — fishermen, doctors, students, farmers, etc. Local Palestinian rappers, hip-hop bands and dabke dancers will perform on mobile stages.
