Tag: war crimes

Jonathan Cook: Jaffa struggles to be left in peace: IOA

JAFFA, ISRAEL–Over the past few days graffiti scrawled on walls around the mixed Jewish and Arab town of Jaffa in central Israel exclaims: “Settlers, keep out” and “Jaffa is not Hebron”.
Although Jaffa is only a stone’s throw from the bustling coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv, Arab residents say their neighbourhood has become the unlikely battleground for an attempted takeover by extremist Jews more familiar from West Bank settlements.
Small numbers of nationalist religious Jews, distinctive for wearing knitted skullcaps, have begun moving into Jaffa’s deprived main Arab district, Ajami, over recent months.
Tensions have been simmering since a special seminary was established last year in the heart of Ajami for young Jewish men who combine study of the Bible with serving in the Israeli army. Many such seminaries, known as “hesder yeshivas”, are located in the occupied territories and have earnt a reputation for turning out extremists.
Last week Ajami’s residents were dealt a further blow when an Israeli court approved the sale of one of the district’s few remaining building plots to B’Emuna (Hebrew for “with faith”), a construction company that specialises in building subsidised homes for religious families, many of them in West Bank settlements.
The Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the country’s largest human rights law centre, which petitioned the courts on the Arab residents’ behalf, called the company’s policy “racist”.
B’Emuna, which is expected to complete 20 apartments in the next few months, is applying for approval for a further 180, as well as a second seminary and a synagogue.
“We have no problem living peacefully with Jewish neighbours,” said Omar Siksik, an Arab councillor representing Jaffa in Tel Aviv’s municipality. “But these Jews are coming here as settlers.
“Like in Hebron, their policy is to weaken us as a population and eventually push us out of our homes,” he said, referring to a West Bank city where an enclave of a few dozen settlers has severely disrupted life for tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Jaffa’s fortunes have changed dramatically since early last century when it was the commercial hub of Palestine, famously exporting its orange crop around the world. During Israel’s founding in 1948, most of the town’s Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee, with the few remaining inhabitants confined to Ajami.
Today, Jaffa’s 18,000 Arab inhabitants are outnumbered two to one by Jews, after waves of immigrants were settled in empty homes during the 1950s.
Arab residents have long complained of being neglected by a municipality controlled from Tel Aviv. Ajami’s crumbling homes, ramshackle infrastructure and crime-ridden streets were on show in this year’s much-feted eponymous movie, nominated for an Oscar as best foreign-language film.
But the latest arrivals in Ajami are causing considerable anxiety, even from officials in Tel Aviv. Gilad Peleg, head of the Jaffa Development Authority, said he was “deeply concerned” at the trend of extremist organisations arriving “to shake up the local community”.
Nasmi Jabali, 56, lives in a modest single-storey home close to the olive grove where the new apartments will be built. “We’ve seen on TV how these settlers behave in the occupied territories, and don’t want them living next to us,” she said. “They’ll come here with the same attitudes.”
But despite widespread opposition, the Tel Aviv District Court last week rejected a petition from 27 residents who argued that the Israel Lands Authority had discriminated against them by awarding the land to B’Emuna, even though its policy is to build apartments only for Jews.
Yehuda Zefet, the judge, accused the residents of “bad faith” in arguing for equality when they wanted the interests of the local Arab community to take precedence over the interests of Jews.
Mr Siksik said the judge had failed to take into account the historical injustice perpetrated on Ajami’s population. “For six decades the authorities have not built one new house for the Arab population, and in fact they have demolished many Arab homes, while building social housing for Jews.”
Fadi Shabita, a member of the local Popular Committee for the Defence of Jaffa’s Lands, said the plots in Ajami being sold by the government originally belonged to Palestinian families, some of whom were still in the district but had been forced to rent their properties from the state.
“The land was forcibly nationalised many years ago and the local owners were dispossessed,” he said. “Now the same land is being privatised, but Ajami’s residents are being ignored in the development plans.
“For the settlers, the lesson of the disengagement [from Gaza in 2005] was that they need to begin a dialogue with Jews inside Israel to persuade them that a settlement in the West Bank is no less legitimate than one in Jaffa.”
B’Emuna told Israel National News, a settler website, that it was developing Jewish-only homes in several of the half dozen “mixed cities” in Israel to stem the flow of Jewish residents leaving because of poverty and falling property values caused by the presence of an Arab population.
B’Emuna has said it is looking to buy more land in Jaffa.
A short distance from the olive grove that is about to be developed is the Jewish seminary established last year. An Israeli flag is draped from the front of the building and stars of David adorn the gate at its entrance.
The manager, Ariel Elimelech, who was overseeing two dozen young men on Sunday as they pored over the Torah, said he commuted daily to Ajami from his home in Eli, an illegal settlement deep in the West Bank south of the Palestinian city of Nablus.
Mr Elimelech said he favoured coexistence in Jaffa but added that the seminary’s goal was to strengthen Jewish identity in the area. “We don’t call this place Ajami; it’s known as Givat Aliyah,” he said, using a Hebrew name that refers to the immigration of Jews to Israel.
He said the students performed a vital service by visiting schools to help in the education of Jewish children before performing 18 months of military service.
Kemal Agbaria, who chairs the Ajami neighbourhood council, said residents would launch an appeal to the Supreme Court and were planning large-scale demonstrations to draw attention to their plight.

EDITOR: Meanwhile, on the farm: The great unexplained mysterious killing in Dubai…

When apart from Lieberman’s fingerprints, everything else points to a Mossad murder, Lieberman has an alibi, he was with his wife and friends playing canasta, and ate pizza and he has the the receipt to prove it… It is really beyond belief. But, what difference does it make? Britain and Ireland are keeping mum about Israel using their passports as cover, as are the other countries in Europe. Another example of Israeli exceptionalism. By denying it in this inept manner, Lieberman provides all the proof which is needed in Israel, as one can see from the many articles appearing on all channels, there is not even a single person who doubts this was the Mossad. I suspect there are few outside Israel.

Israel refuses to rule out Mossad plot in Dubai: The Guardian

Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, says there is no proof Mossad was behind Dubai killing of Hamas commander

Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman broke his government’s silence over the Dubai assassination of a Hamas commander today and said there was no proof the Mossad intelligence agency was behind the killing.

However, he did not explicitly deny any Israeli involvement, saying his government had a “policy of ambiguity” on intelligence issues.

“I don’t know why we take it for granted that it was Israel or Mossad that used those passports or the identities of that British citizen, yes or no. It’s just not correct. Why are we in such a hurry to take all kinds of tasks upon ourselves?” Lieberman said in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio.

He was speaking after details in the case began to point back to Israel. Seven Israelis with dual foreign citizenship, six of them apparently Britons and one American, had their identities stolen to be used in the forged passports relied on by the suspected assassins. The seven, who appear unconnected, have denied any involvement in the affair and say they have no idea how their identities were stolen.

Dubai police released on Monday the passport details of 11 people – six from Britain, three from Ireland and one each from France and Germany –that they said were behind the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was murdered in his Dubai hotel room last month.

The New York Times reported this morning that the hit team included a total of 17 people, six of whom had not yet been identified.

Some Israeli commentators delivered the first criticisms of Mossad today , saying the operation was beginning to look like a blunder. One even called on the Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, to resign and suggested the incident could provoke a diplomatic row with Britain over the use of forged British passports.

But Lieberman said he believed that relations with Britain would not be damaged. “I think Britain recognises that Israel is a responsible country and that our security activity is conducted according to very clear, cautious and responsible rules of the game. Therefore we have no cause for concern,” he said.

Rafi Eitan, a former Israeli minister and intelligence officer, told Army Radio that Mossad was not behind the killing and that a foreign organisation was trying to frame Israel.

There was a mixture of praise and criticism of the Mossad in the Israeli press. Yossi Melman, a respected security correspondent for Ha’aretz, said the agency had used forged passports on operations in the past and noted that in this case all the “operatives” involved in the assassination left Dubai safely without being caught.

“As such, unless dramatic evidence is found to definitively prove an Israeli connection, it is likely that the State of Israel will emerge from this affair unblemished and Mossad will continue enjoying a reputation of fearless determination and nearly unstoppable capabilities,” Melman wrote.

However, another Ha’aretz columnist, Amir Oren, said there were now “enormous question marks” over the operation and said the Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, who he described as “belligerent and heavy-handed,” should resign. He said the case would likely bring a diplomatic crisis for Israel and added: “Even if whoever carried out the assassination does reach some kind of arrangement with the infuriated western nations, it still has an obligation to its own citizens.”

Ben Caspit, in the Ma’ariv newspaper, described the incident as “a tactical operational success, but a strategic failure”. “When it becomes apparent that the passports belong to innocent Israeli citizens, who will now be subject to an international manhunt by Interpol, the embarrassment is great,” he wrote.

Continue reading February 17, 2010

Israel’s new strategy: “sabotage” and “attack” the global justice movement: The Electronic Intifada

Ali Abunimah,  16 February 2010

An extraordinary series of articles, reports and presentations by Israel’s influential Reut Institute has identified the global movement for justice, equality and peace as an “existential threat” to Israel and called on the Israeli government to direct substantial resources to “attack” and possibly engage in criminal “sabotage” of this movement in what Reut believes are its various international “hubs” in London, Madrid, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

The Reut Institute’s analyses hold that Israel’s traditional strategic doctrine — which views threats to the state’s existence in primarily military terms, to be met with a military response — is badly out of date. Rather, what Israel faces today is a combined threat from a “Resistance Network” and a “Delegitimization Network.”
The Resistance Network is comprised of political and armed groups such as Hamas and Hizballah who “rel[y] on military means to sabotage every move directed at affecting separation between Israel and the Palestinians or securing a two-state solution” (“The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall, Reut Institute, 14 February 2010).
Furthermore, the “Resistance Network” allegedly aims to cause Israel’s political “implosion” — a la South Africa, East Germany or the Soviet Union — rather than bring about military defeat through direct confrontation on the battlefield.

The “Delegitimization Network” — which Reut Institute president and former Israeli government advisor Gidi Grinstein provocatively claims is in an “unholy alliance” with the Resistance Network — is made up of the broad, decentralized and informal movement of peace and justice, human rights, and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) activists all over the world. Its manifestations include protests against Israeli officials visiting universities, Israeli Apartheid Week, faith-based and trade union-based activism, and “lawfare” — the use of universal jurisdiction to bring legal accountability for alleged Israeli war criminals. The Reut Institute even cited my speech to the student conference on BDS held at Hampshire College last November as a guide to how the “delegitimization” strategy supposedly works (“Eroding Israel’s Legitimacy in the International Arena,” Reut Institute, 28 January 2010).
The combined “attack” from “resisters” and “delegitimizers,” Reut says, “possesses strategic significance, and may develop into a comprehensive existential threat within a few years.” It further warns that a “harbinger of such a threat would be the collapse of the two-state solution as an agreed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the coalescence behind a ‘one-state solution’ as a new alternative framework.”

At a basic level, Reut’s analysis represents an advance over the most primitive and hitherto dominant layers of Israeli strategic thinking; it reflects an understanding, as I put it in my speech at Hampshire, that “Zionism simply cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance.”
But underlying the Reut Institute’s analysis is a complete inability to disentangle cause and effect. It seems to assume that the dramatic erosion in Israel’s international standing since its wars on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009 is a result of the prowess of the “delegitimization network” to which it imputes wholly nefarious, devious and unwholesome goals — effectively the “destruction of Israel.”

It blames “delegitimizers” and “resisters” for frustrating the two-state solution but ignores Israel’s relentless and ongoing settlement-building drive — supported by virtually every state organ — calculated and intended to make Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank impossible.
It never considers for a moment that the mounting criticism of Israel’s actions might be justified, or that the growing ranks of people ready to commit their time and efforts to opposing Israel’s actions are motivated by genuine outrage and a desire to see justice, equality and an end to bloodshed. In other words, Israel is delegitimizing itself.

Reut does not recommend to the Israeli cabinet — which recently held a special session to hear a presentation of the think tank’s findings — that Israel should actually change its behavior toward Palestinians and Lebanese. It misses the point that apartheid South Africa also once faced a global “delegitimization network” but that this has now completely disappeared. South Africa, however, still exists. Once the cause motivating the movement disappeared — the rank injustice of formal apartheid — people packed up their signs and their BDS campaigns and went home.
Instead, Reut recommends to the Israeli government an aggressive and possibly criminal counter-offensive. A powerpoint presentation Grinstein made to the recent Herzliya Conference on Israeli national security actually calls on Israel’s “intelligence agencies to focus” on the named and unnamed “hubs” of the “delegitimization network” and to engage in “attacking catalysts” of this network. In its “The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall” document, Reut recommends that “Israel should sabotage network catalysts.”

The use of the word “sabotage” is particularly striking and should draw the attention of governments, law enforcement agencies and university officials concerned about the safety and welfare of their students and citizens. The only definition of “sabotage” in United States law deems it to be an act of war on a par with treason, when carried out against the United States. In addition, in common usage, the American Heritage Dictionary defines sabotage as “Treacherous action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate subversion.” It is difficult to think of a legitimate use of this term in a political or advocacy context.
At the very least, Reut seems to be calling for Israel’s spy agencies to engage in covert activity to interfere with the exercise of legal free speech, association and advocacy rights in the United States, Canada and European Union countries, and possibly to cause harm to individuals and organizations. These warnings of Israel’s possible intent — especially in light of its long history of criminal activity on foreign soil — should not be taken lightly.

The Reut Institute, based in Tel Aviv, raises a significant amount of tax-exempt funds in the United States through a nonprofit arm called American Friends of the Reut Institute (AFRI). According to its public filings, AFRI sent almost $2 million to the Reut Institute in 2006 and 2007.
In addition to a state-sponsored international “sabotage” campaign, Reut also recommends a “soft” policy. This specifically involves better hasbara or state propaganda to greenwash Israel as a high-tech haven for environmental technologies and high culture — what it terms “Brand Israel.”

Other elements include “maintain[ing] thousands of personal relationships with political, cultural, media and security-related elites and influentials” around the world, and “harnessing Jewish and Israeli diaspora communities” even more tightly to its cause. It even emphasizes that Israel should use “international aid” to boost its image (its perfunctory foray into earthquake-devastated Haiti was an example of this tactic).
What ties together all these strategies is that they are aimed at frustrating, delaying and distracting attention from the fundamental issue: that Israel — despite its claims to be a liberal and democratic state — is an ultranationalist ethnocracy that relies on the violent suppression of the most fundamental rights of millions of Palestinians, soon to be a demographic majority, to maintain the status quo. There is no “game changer” in Reut’s new strategy.

Reut is apparently unaware even of the irony of trying to reform “Brand Israel” as something cuddly, while at the same time publicly recommending that Israel’s notorious spies “sabotage” peace groups on foreign soil.
But there are two lessons we must heed: Reut’s analysis vindicates the effectiveness of the BDS strategy, and as Israeli elites increasingly fear for the long-term prospects of the Zionist project they are likely to be more ruthless, unscrupulous and desperate than ever.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

EDITOR: The preparation for the war on Iran

As Israel continues to gear up for this war, with the active support of the western nations, headed by the US and EU, with the same prapartions for tougher sanctions at the UN, which have paved the way to the attack on Iraq, the Haaretz editorial is seemingly trying to stop this war machine, more or less on its own… for the last four or five years, when they could shape the public opinion in Israel against this mad and criminal war-mongering, they were more or less absent. Now the the engines are being warmed up, they woke up. As the ‘liberal’ paper in Israel, the editors have again failed to stand outside the criminal consensus. So, now they are too late, and try hard to read the Obama nonesensical noises as a warning to Netanyahu. They are nothing of the kind. Obama is playing all the way with Netanyahu, who will do an important service for US war mongers, by attacking Iran ‘despite’ Obama’s ‘friendly warning’. It is the famous ‘a nod and a wink’ again…

Israel should heed Obama’s warning not to strike Iran: Haaretz Editorial

Israel should heed the friendly warning it received from the Obama administration, which opposes a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, warned in Tel Aviv on Sunday of the unexpected consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran, just as he did during the days of the Bush administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Qatar that Iran’s neighbors, who are worried about its nuclear plans, must rely on the American defense umbrella. And next week, Vice President Joseph Biden will visit Israel to pass on a similar message.

Both Israeli and Iranian leaders have escalated the threats they have been exchanging over the past few weeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Auschwitz about a new Amalek. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad that if Israel goes to war, “we need to put an end to the Zionist regime once and for all.” And last week, on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran will enrich uranium to 20 percent and declared that his country is capable of building an atomic bomb.

In these circumstances, the U.S. administration was right to send its senior officials to the Middle East in an attempt to calm both Israel and the Arab nations who are afraid of the Iranian nuclear threat.
U.S. President Barack Obama, after failing in his attempts at dialogue with Iran’s leaders, has toughened his stance and is now trying to recruit international support for harsher sanctions against Iran than were imposed in the past.
The likelihood that the American move will succeed is unclear, but Israel is required to give Obama a chance, for one simple reason: Israel will need full American support for any actions it may decide to take against the Iranian threat. If Israel goes to war, it will need intelligence help, prior warning, military equipment and diplomatic support from the United States.
No other country would or could aid Israel, and uncoordinated Israeli action would justifiably arouse U.S. anger, since it would endanger America’s vital interests in the region.

Thus, despite all the anger and fear that Ahmadinejad’s threats raise in Israel, for now, Israel should respond quietly and let Obama lead the effort to stop the Iranian nukes. Netanyahu has no better option.

Continue reading February 16, 2010

EDITOR: Am now back home after a week in hospital, so will try and close the gap as soon as I can; bear with me…

State of denial: Robert Fisk searches for peace in Israel: The Independent

Can peace in the Middle East be achieved while both Israelis and Palestinians refuse to give ground? Robert Fisk takes a road trip through a divided land, from Ben-Gurion’s Tel Aviv villa to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the besieged Gaza Strip
There are no armed guards on the gate of Number 17 Ben-Gurion Boulevard in Tel Aviv, just a tired, two-storey villa set back from the street and an open door that leads to a dark kitchen and a little room with a cot on the floor.

There are bricks over the window above the neat little bed – to protect its owner and his wife Paula from Egyptian bombs during the 1956 Israeli invasion of Sinai, and the 1967 war – but upstairs is the bejewelled centre of this little home, David Ben- Gurion’s library of 20,000 books. I pad through this den, scribbling in my notebook any clues to the mind of this most persuasive of Israeli leaders. Most of the books are in Hebrew – on religion, histories of the Zionist movement, research on Eretz Israel – but the creator of Israel and its first prime minister was also a linguist. There are Demosthenes and Homer in Greek, a three-volume history of the Hellenistic world, Julius Caesar in French, Duff Cooper’s life of Tallyrand, George Bernard Shaw’s complete works, a history of Vichy France, Henry Picker’s Hitler’s Table Talk (in English), Freud on psychology (in German), Guy Chapman’s The Dreyfus Case, histories of Israel (including his own), a series on Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements. Ben-Gurion learned Spanish so that he could read a new biography of Cervantes. He loved Spinoza.

Then there are the photographs. Ben-Gurion with de Gaulle, with Kennedy and with a sad and debilitated Churchill, in 1961. Ben-Gurion wanted to read Churchill’s almost forgotten essay on Moses; Churchill’s letter to him, enclosing a copy of Thoughts and Adveures, is a little classic. “I have re-read it,” Churchill wrote, “…and I would not particularly wish it to be remembered as one of my literary works.”
But it was the set of Ben-Gurion’s quotations that caught my eye: statements on the eternal morality of the State of Israel, messages from the great man – who physically was a very little man (I opened his bedroom cupboard and there were jackets and trousers of almost midget size) – in time of war. Here is Ben-Gurion, for example, during Israel’s War of Independence – the Palestinian Arab ‘Nakba’ – when he feared that Jewish forces would destroy Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, cabling on 15 July 1948. “Further to my previous order relating to the Old City – you should see to it that the special force to be appointed for guarding the Old City uses mercilessly machine-guns against any Jew, and especially any Jewish soldier, who will try to pillage or to desecrate any Christian or Moslim holy place.” In 1967, he was boasting of how, during the establishment of the state of Israel, “we did not damage any single mosque.” Yet he was already creating myths. The undamaged mosques, he wrote in the same statement, were found in villages “without a single Moslem, as all of them had already fled during the [British] Mandatory rule and before the declaration of the State…” Amid the detritus of Ben-Gurion’s life, his thick-framed spectacles, his Quink fountain pen ink (“permanent black”), the willow-pattern plates, the original 1951 Marc Chagall sketch of a rabbi with a harp, the old transistor radio in the shelter – we shall forget the elephant tusk from the president of Gabon – there are musings on the morality and nobility and purity of arms of Israel’s army. “The fate of Israel depends on two factors: her strength and her rectitude.” And again. “The State of Israel will not be tried by its riches, army or techniques, but by its moral image and human values.”

During the blood-soaked Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, an event which marked the decline of that rectitude and moral image, a wonderful Doonesbury cartoon depicted a press conference in which an anonymous voice asked an Israeli spokesman: “What has become of the Israel we knew and loved?” And the immediate rejoinder to the questioner? “Come off it, Yasser!” For in a sense, the lugubrious Arafat did adhere to Ben-Gurion’s myth-making. In the end, he even signed up for peace with the state which had already taken 78 per cent of the land he called home. He was a super-terrorist who became a super-statesman and then – after refusing to submit at the final Camp David meeting – became a super-terrorist again.

The truth is that Israel has destroyed many mosques, that the original Palestinian Arab victims of the 1947-8 war did not all flee, as Ben-Gurion suggested; many, like the doomed men and women of the Deir Yassin massacre, were murdered in their villages. The Israeli army, to some of us who have watched it in action, is a rabble, little different from the Arab armies of the Middle East. The numbers of civilian dead in the Gaza war were as much an outrage as the Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1982 when Israeli soldiers watched – quite literally – as the Lebanese militia they had sent into the refugee camps eviscerated the Palestinian civilians inside. Foreign journalists continue to prattle on about the supposed purity of Israel’s soldiers.

“Israel has already proved itself the most restrained nation in history. It has set an all-time record for restraint,” one Robert Fulford waffled in the Canadian National Post in January last year, at the height of the Gaza slaughter, when even Tzipi Livni admitted Israel’s soldiers had been allowed to “go wild”. Israel’s own rightist correspondents still portray the outside world as a dark, malevolent planet in which every criticism of Israel emerges from endemic anti-semitism, in which Nazism did not die in the embers of Berlin in 1945. The Jerusalem Post, bashes the drum of racism almost daily. “Berlin Holocaust studies professor slammed for defending Nazi mentor.” “Weisenthal slams Ukraine award to nationalist linked to Nazis.” “Dershowitz: Goldstone is a traitor to the Jewish people.”

I don’t doubt that Stepan Bandera’s Ukrainian nationalist movement was a dodgy bunch of racists – and its original adherents were indeed anti-semitic murderers in the Second World War – but where does this end? The Simon Weisenthal Centre – named after a truly honourable man whom I once met in Vienna as he campaigned for Gypsy as well as Jewish victims of the Nazis – is the same organisation which is now proposing to build a ‘Museum of Tolerance’ on an ancient Muslim graveyard in west Jerusalem. And poor old Richard Goldstone, a Jewish jurist and another honourable man whom I met in the Hague when he was investigating war crimes in ex-Yugoslavia, is a ‘traitor’ because he said that Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes in Gaza; in other words, Goldstone – for this is the point – should have allowed his ethnic origins to rule in Israel’s favour rather than abide by the rule of law.

Last week, in the dog-day resort of Herzliya, I attended much of the vast conference of Israel’s great and good – or at least the largely right-wing variety – to find out how they now saw the country that was founded amid such danger by Ben-Gurion 62 years ago. It was the same old story.

“The Palestinians are the ones who are today the naysayers” – this from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘security advisor’, Uzi Arad – and the Goldstone Report had now become part of an insidious campaign against Israel, an attempt to “delegitimise” (this is the newest cliché) the state. There were boycotts of Israeli goods. Bonfires were made of Israeli products. “I do not know anyone whose stomach does not turn” at such a sight, said Arad.

Michael Hoenlein, vice-chairman of the immensely powerful Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, ann- ounced that Obama’s “engagement” with Syria and Iran had failed. Obama’s administration had been “supportive” over Goldstone (i.e. gutlessly supine in criticising a report which it had not even read). Obama now realised it had to work with Israel. There was unanimous consent in the US Senate over Iranian sanctions. No-one mentioned settlements or colonies. I was reminded of Hannah Arendt’s observation that the congress of World Zionist Organisation’s American section in October 1944 would “embrace the whole of Palestine, undivided and undiminished”. She went on: “This is a turning point in Zionist history… This time the Arabs were simply not mentioned in the resolution, which obviously leaves them the choice between voluntary emigration or second-class citizenship.”

For the whole article, please use the link above

EDITOR: The new victims – the Israeli mock0-left and their comeuppence

In many years of the conflict, we have not heard Naomi Chazan and her followers uttering such excited noises as they now do. It may well be that they were so quiet, because it was mere Palestinians who were getting treated roughly, of course. Now, that Ms Chazan has been sacked from her job in Israel’s most right-wing paper, the Jerusalem Post, there is much commotion and accusations of McCarthyism; well, did this just start last week, really? Did Ms Chazan had much to say about the rightist and extereme positions taken by the same paper all those years? Dis Prof. Chazan go on strike or demonstrate when Palestinian universities like Bir Zeit were closed by the IOA (Israel Occupation Army) for more than four years? It seems that the degeneration of the social structure is better noticed when it affects the well-heeled sectors of the Jewish elite.

Naomi Chazan’s limp brand of liberal politics was always based on her being part of the Zionist enterprise, and what she and her friends always tried is to make things look better – to improve Israel’s image abroad, mainly. For that role, she was invaluable. Well, the style has changed, and she is no longer crucial in that role, it seems. So now she has noticed quite a lot of worrying signs… it is amazing how such sacking sharpens one’s perceptive skills:

The new McCarthyism sweeping Israel: The Independent

To disagree with the state is to ‘delegitimise’ the state: that is the increasingly strident response of the country’s political and military establishment to those who dare to criticise its conduct

It’s hard, sitting on the other side of the office table from which Naomi Chazan is picking at her modest hummus and salad snack lunch, to believe that the amiable 63-year-old university professor with a self-deprecating sense of humour has suddenly become the most discussed, not to say demonised, woman in Israel.

Ms Chazan is president of a long-established agency with large numbers of Jewish donors in the US and Britain, which is committed to fighting for “social justice and equality for all Israelis”. The New Israel Fund has over the last 30 years disbursed some $200m to around 800 charitable, social and human rights groups, and justly claims much of the credit for building modern Israel’s still vibrant civil society.

But in the last fortnight the former Knesset member who by her own account loves her native Israel “without reservation” has been sacked as a columnist on the Jerusalem Post after 14 years, had rowdy demonstrators outside her house brandishing a chilling caricature of her with a horn obtruding from her forehead, and most far-fetched of all, been accused, in a newspaper article circulated to foreign journalists by the Government Press Office, of “serving the agenda of Iran and Hamas”.

The onslaught has prompted Nicholas Saphir, the Jewish businessman who runs the New Israel Fund in the UK, to warn that the “Jewish values of social justice and our duty to tikkun olam (repairing the world) have come under serious threat in the state of Israel”.

The row has come to symbolise a new mood of establishment intolerance in Israel towards criticisms by Israeli human rights groups of such episodes as last year’s military operation in Gaza. This harsh new mood has been fuelled by ministers, right-wing politicians and military figures who have closed ranks behind accusations that the UN-commissioned report into the war, led by Richard Goldstone, which accused both sides of war crimes, is being used to “delegitimise Israel”.

The NIF’s travails began when a right-wing group called Im Tirtzu provoked accusations of latterday McCarthyism by charging that “without the NIF there could be no Goldstone report and Israel would not be facing international accusations of war crimes”. It is a charge which Abe Foxman, director of the US-based Anti- Defamation League and no great friend of the Israeli left, told New York Jewish Week was “absurd”.

Ms Chazan does not herself talk about McCarthyism –though several of her agency’s defenders, including Isaac Herzog, a Labour party minister in the governing coalition, have done so. But she told The Independent: “Every country has its own version of things but the general climate is very problematic. It’s ugly.” She said the mood reminded her of the hate-laced run-up to Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in November 1995. “But it’s different, because that was an avowedly political disagreement. This is the beginning of a rather systematic campaign against really the very essentials of Israeli democracy.”

Ms Chazan cites the arrests of Israelis at demonstrations against the encroachment of Jewish settlers in the Arab East Jerusalem district of Sheikh Jarrah. And the interrogation and fingerprinting last month of her friend Anat Hoffman, of the reform group Religious Action Centre, who for 20 years has challenged ultra-Orthodox control of the Western Wall by seeking to entrench the right of women to pray in shawls there.

“There is an assault on the basics of law and order but most important I see this as part of a very pernicious attempt to stifle alternative voices, and most seriously to equate criticism with betrayal. And there is a very strong political underpinning to that. I would go further … behind this [is] a group of people who don’t want a political settlement. They don’t want peace, so they’re trying to delegitimise the human rights movement.”

She says that Im Tirtzu “expropriated” the term Zionism while “probably acting in the most anti-Zionist way I can imagine. They forgot to read the [1948] Declaration of Independence which talks of equality of all citizens of race, colour, creed, gender, nationality, etc. They also forgot the chapters in the Declaration where Israel extends its hand to its neighbours, they forgot basic democratic principles. They are hellbent to denounce anyone who dissents from the government line. Or dissents from their definition of what being a loyal Israeli is. That is ridiculous. Democracies are all about disagreements.”

She herself is a Zionist? “Right now they debased the term. Am I someone who believes that Israel has the right to exist as a democratic state with a Jewish majority? My answer is a resounding yes. Just as the Palestinians have the right to a Palestinian state with a Palestinian majority alongside Israel. And I think in that regard I express the view of the vast majority of Israelis.”

The NIF, excoriated by a series of right-wing columnists, has seen off- – for now – the prospect of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into its activities. And Ms Chazan welcomes the alternative prospect that a Knesset subcommittee will launch a probe of foreign funding of NGOs. But she adds: “We hope, are insisting, that they investigate the funding of all NGOs, including the NGOs of the right.”

Indeed Im Tirtzu, whose chairman was a prominent opponent of Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of settlers from Gaza and has received funds from – among others – John Hagee Ministries, run by an ultra-conservative evangelical US pastor who has appeared to argue that the Holocaust was a good thing because it created the state of Israel.

The organisation’s accusations were based on a curious reading of the footnotes of the Goldstone report claiming that 92 per cent of those citing “non-official” Israeli sources came from human rights organisations supported by the New Israel Fund.
In fact NIF-supported groups account for only 14 per cent of citations in Goldstone, and many of these do not deal with Gaza at all, and even include references that are not critical of Israeli policy. Moreover while the main human rights organisations, from the Association of Civil Rights in Israel to the army veterans’ group Breaking the Silence, are supported by the NIF, as well as by European governments, they absorb less than 10 per cent of its funds, which also go to new Jewish immigrants, disabled, and women’s groups, among many others.
Human rights groups funded by the NIF were early advocates of an independent Israeli investigation. But the widely respected B’Tselem, for example, while tireless in highlighting Palestinian civilian deaths, has questioned the Goldstone conclusion that the Israeli military set out to target civilians. Ms Chazan strongly endorses the groups’ calls for the independent investigation which the Israeli government has so far resisted. “Israel has investigated every war since 1973. This is the first war where we have not set up an investigation. That’s hard to understand.”

Had the Netanyahu government helped to create the space for the right-wing onslaught on the NIF? “Look, it hasn’t denounced this vilification; and therefore draw your own conclusions.”

EDITOR: The right wing ‘think tank’ Reut, more to do with tanks than with thinking, and an arm of government, is discovering the new Elders of Anti-Zion:

Think tank: Israel faces global delegitimization campaign: Haaretz

Israel is facing a global campaign of delegitimization, according to a report by the Reut Institute, made available to the cabinet on Thursday. The Tel Aviv-based security and socioeconomic think tank called on ministers to treat the matter as a strategic threat. The report cites anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, protests when Israeli athletes compete abroad, moves in Europe to boycott Israeli products, and threats of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders visiting London.

Reut says the campaign is the work of a worldwide network of private individuals and organizations. They have no hierarchy or overall commander, but work together based on a joint ideology – portraying Israel as a pariah state and denying its right to exist. Reut lists the network’s major hubs – London, Brussels, Madrid, Toronto, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley.

The network’s activists – “delegitimizers” the report dubs them – are relatively marginal: young people, anarchists, migrants and radical political activists. Although they are not many, they raise their profile using public campaigns and media coverage, the report says. The “delegitimizers” cooperate with organizations engaging in legitimate criticism of Israel’s policy in the territories such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, blurring the line between legitimate censure and delegitimization. They also promote pro-Palestinian activities in Europe as “trendy,” the report says.

The network’s activists are not mostly Palestinian, Arab or Muslim. Many of them are European and North American left-wing activists. The Western left has changed its approach to Israel and now sees it as an occupation state, the report says. To those left-wing groups, if in the 1960s Israel was seen as a model for an egalitarian, socialist society, today it epitomizes Western evil. The delegitimization network sees the fight against the former regime in South Africa as a success model. It believes that like the apartheid regime, the Zionist-Israeli model can be toppled and a one-state model can be established.

The Reut team says the network’s groups share symbols and heroes such as the Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura, American peace activist Rachel Corrie and joint events like the Durban Conference. Israel’s diplomats overseas, meanwhile, must counter the attempts to delegitimize the country. “The combination of a large Muslim community, a radical left, influential, English-language media and an international university center make London fertile ground for Israel’s delegitimization,” says Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador in London. Prosor gives many interviews to the British media and lectures at university campuses throughout the country.

Although he says he has encountered anti-Israel demonstrations on almost every campus, Prosor has told his people to increase their campus activity. “What is now happening in London universities will happen, at most, in five years at all the large universities in the United States,” he says. The Reut report says Israel is not prepared at all to deal with the threat of delegitimization. The cabinet has not defined the issue as a threat and sees the diplomatic arena as marginal compared to the military one. “The Foreign Ministry is built for the challenges of the ’60s, not the 2000s,” the report says. “There are no budgets, not enough diplomats and no appropriate diplomatic doctrine.” Reut recommends setting up a counter-network, in which Israel’s embassies in centers of delegitimization activity would serve as “front positions.”

The report says the intelligence service should monitor the organizations’ activities and study their methods. The cabinet should also confront groups trying to delegitimize Israel but embrace those engaged in legitimate criticism. The report adds that Israel should not boycott these groups, as Israel’s embassy in Washington does with the left-wing lobby J Street. Boycotting critics merely pushes them toward joining the delegitimizers, Reut says.

EDITOR: Destroying Gaza – fishing and agriculture made impossible

The Gaza Strip used to export large amount of fish, vegetables, fruit and other food products, and this has played a crucial role in feeding the almost two million people living within its boundaries, in what is the densest human habitation on earth. Fishermen and farmers were proudly contributing to the economy, and to the sense of community so prevalent in Gaza, despite all the privations and carnage Israeli has inflicted ever since 1947. Israel has been fighting to limit the Gazan food production for decades, and quite successfully; the fishermen have been stopped from fishing by a blockade, thousands of fruit trees were uprooted under the pretence of ‘security’, and the very limited amount of bitter, salty water was further hurt by the destruction of wells. It suits Israel to have the Gazan population totally dependent on food and other imports, and makes the illegal blockade since 2006 more painful and ‘effective’. Israel is thus moving the costs, as well as the responsibility of supporting Gaza directly onto the international community. This illagal aspects of the continued occpation are not less damaging than the mass killing by force of arms. In the long run they are even more frightening, as they will maker a total starvation possible in the near future. The report below uncovers some of the aspects of this continuing war crime.

Israel bombs Gaza’s agricultural sector to the brink: The Electronic Intifada

Eva Bartlett, 15 February 2010

“If we didn’t get the wheat planted today, we would not have had crops this year,” says Abu Saleh Abu Taima, eyeing the two Israeli military jeeps parked along the border fence east of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip. Although his land is more than 300 meters away, technically outside of the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone,” Abu Taima has reason to be wary.
“They shot at us yesterday. I was here with my wife and nephews.”
Like many farmers along Gaza’s eastern and northern borders, Abu Taima has been delayed planting by the absence of water and the threat from Israeli soldiers along the border.
With most of Gaza’s border region wells, cisterns and water lines destroyed by Israeli forces during last winter’s attacks, farmers have been largely left with no option but to wait for heavier rains.

“Israeli soldiers started intensively bulldozing the land in 2003. But they finished the job in the last war on Gaza,” says Hamdan Abu Taima, owner of 30 dunams (1 dunam is approximate to 1,000 square meters) dangerously close to the buffer zone.
Nasser Abu Taima has 15 dunams of land nearby. Another 15 dunams lie inaccessibly close to the border, rendered off-limits by the Israeli military. “My well was destroyed in the last Israeli war on Gaza. Five years ago I had hothouses for tomatoes, a house here, many trees. It’s all gone. Now I just plant wheat if I can. It’s the simplest.”
Nasser points out the rubble of his home, harvests some ripe cactus fruit and shakes his head. “Such a shame. Such a waste. I knew every inch of this area. Now, I feel sick much of the time because I cannot access my land. And I’ve got 23 in my family to provide for.”

Israel imposed the “buffer zone” along Gaza’s side of the internationally-recognized “Green Line” boundary nearly ten years ago. Israeli bulldozers continue to raze decades-old olive and fruit trees, farmland and irrigation piping, and demolish homes, greenhouses, water wells and cisterns, farm machinery and animal shelters.
Extending from Gaza’s most northwestern to southeastern points, the unclearly-marked buffer zone annexes more land than the 300 meters flanking the border. Israeli authorities say anyone found within risks being shot at by Israeli soldiers. At least 13 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 39 injured in border regions in and outside of the buffer zone since the 18 January end of Israel’s attacks last year, among them children and women.

A sector destroyed
Farmers in southeastern Gaza take shelter from bullets fired by Israeli soldiers at the border nearly one kilometer away. The United Nations agency OCHA reports that roughly one-third of Gaza’s agricultural land lies within the buffer zone, its width varying from half a kilometer to two kilometers.

Ahmed Sourani, of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC), told the Guardian newspaper: “It is indirect confiscation by fear. My fear is that, if it remains, it will become de facto.”
According to PARC, the fertile farmland in and next to the buffer zone was not long ago Gaza’s food basket and half of Gaza’s food needs were produced within the territory.
In 2008, the agricultural sector employed approximately 70,000 farmers, says PARC, including 30,000 farm laborers earning approximately five dollars per day.
One of the most productive industries some years ago, farming now yields the least and has become one of the most dangerous sectors in Gaza, due to Israeli firing, shelling and aggression against people in the border regions.

Of the 175,000 dunams of cultivable land, PARC reports 60 to 75,000 dunams have been destroyed during Israeli invasions and operations. The level of destruction from the last Israeli war on Gaza alone is vast, with 35 to 60 percent of the agricultural industry destroyed, according to the UN and World Health Organization. Gaza’s sole agricultural college, in Beit Hanoun, was also destroyed.
Oxfam notes that the combination of the Israeli war on Gaza and the buffer zone renders around 46 percent of agricultural land useless or unreachable.
More than 35,000 cattle, sheep and goats were killed during the last Israeli attacks, as well as 1 million birds and chickens, according to a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) September 2009 report.
Even before Israel’s last assault, PARC reported on the grave shortage of agricultural needs due to the Israeli siege on Gaza: “saplings, pesticides and fertilizers, plastic sheets for greenhouses and hoses for irrigation are no longer available,” reads its 2008 report.

A March 2009 OCHA report lists nylon, seeds, olive and fruit tree seedlings, plastic piping and valves, fertilizers, animal feed, livestock and many other items as scarce, many of which are “urgently” needed.
The dearth of agricultural goods, combined with Israel’s policies of destruction and aggression in the buffer zone, has meant that farmers have changed practice completely, planting low-maintenance wheat and rye where vegetables and orchards once flourished, or not planting at all.
Water sources were particularly hard hit during Israel’s attack on Gaza last winter.
A UNDP survey following the attacks found that nearly 14,000 dunums of irrigation networks and pipelines have been destroyed, along with 250 wells and 327 water pumps completely damaged, and another 53 wells partially damaged by Israeli bombing and bulldozing. This is excluding the many destroyed cisterns and irrigation ponds.
Farmers now either hand deliver water via plastic jugs or wait for the heavy rains in order to salvage some of their crops. Many others have given up working their land.

Farming under fire
Mohammed al-Ibrim, 20, of Benesuhela village near Khan Younis was injured by Israeli shooting in the border region.
“On 18 February 2009, I was working with other farm laborers on land about 500 meters from the border. We’d been working for a couple of hours without problems, and the Israelis had been watching us. Israeli soldiers began shooting from the border as we pushed our pickup truck which had broken down. I was shot in the ankle.”
His injury came just weeks after cousin Anwar al-Ibrim was martyred by an Israeli soldier’s bullet to the neck. Anwar al-Ibrim leaves behind a wife and two infants.

Meanwhile, in Gaza’s north, Ali Hamad, 52, has 18 dunams of land roughly 500 meters from the border east of Beit Hanoun.
“The Israelis bulldozed my citrus trees, water pump, well and irrigation piping in the last war. No one can come here to move the rubble of my well — everyone is afraid of the Israeli soldiers at the border. So now we are just waiting for the winter rains.
All but one well and pump have been destroyed in this region.
“I haven’t watered my few remaining trees since the war. I used to water them once a week, three to four hours per session. Now, they are dehydrated, the lemons and oranges are miniature.”
Mohammed Musleh, 70, lives east of Beit Hanoun, roughly 1.5 kilometers from the border, and owns the only working well and pump in his region.
“There used to be many birds in this area, because it was so fertile, until the Israelis started bulldozing all of the trees, including mine. When people replanted them, the Israelis began destroying the water sources instead.”

Ahmed al-Basiouni, 53, owned the first well established in the east Beit Hanoun area, built in 1961.
“My brothers and I have 60 dunams of land. Many people took water from our well. It was destroyed in 2003, and again in the last Israeli war. Now when I water my remaining trees, I do it by hand, tree by tree.”
In its September 2009 report, the UNEP warned that Gaza’s aquifer is in “serious danger of collapse,” noting that the problem has roots in the “rise in salt water intrusion from the sea caused by over-extraction of ground water.” According to the report, the salinity and nitrate levels of water are far above WHO-accepted levels. Between 90 and 95 percent of the water available to Palestinians in Gaza is contaminated and hence “unfit for human consumption,” according to WHO standards.
Water has been further contaminated by chemical agents used by the Israeli army during its war on Gaza. More contamination from destroyed asbestos roofing, the toxins produced by the bodies of thousands of animal carcasses, and waste sites which were inaccessible and damaged during and after the attacks on Gaza exacerbates the situation.
Further up the lane, Hassan al-Basiouni, 54, says he has lost a quarter of a million dollars to the Israeli land and well destruction.
“My brothers and I have 41 dunams. Our well was destroyed once before this last war. The materials to make a new well aren’t available in Gaza. The 180 people who earned a living off this land are out of work.”
According to Bassiouni, it costs $200 to raise just one fruit tree to fruit bearing maturity.
“We had 1,500 citrus trees, some destroyed in random Israeli shelling and the rest destroyed during the last Israeli war on Gaza. The few remaining trees are only one year old and produce nothing.”
“This water we’re using,” says Basiouni, referring to the contamination, “actually dehydrates the trees.”

Weathering the storm
In eastern Gaza’s Shejaiye area, Sena, 74, and Amar Mhayssy, 78, are devastated. “Our land has been bulldozed four times. We have nine dunams of land in the buffer zone which we can’t access because the Israelis will shoot at us. We have 10 dunams of land over 500 meters from the border fence. Our olive trees, over 60 years old, were all bulldozed by the Israeli army.”
They persevere in the face of danger and futility.
“Now we’re growing okra and have replanted 40 olive trees. But they will take years before they produce many olives. We need to water the new trees every three days, but our water source was destroyed. So we bring containers to water them. There are 13 people in our family, with four in university. Aside from farming, we have no work.”

In al-Faraheen village, east of Khan Younis, Jaber Abu Rjila now can only work his land on a small scale.
“My chicken farm — over 500 meters from the border — as well as 500 fruit and olive trees and 100 dunams of wheat and peas of my and my neighbors’ land were destroyed in May 2008 by Israeli bulldozers. My cistern, the pump and motor and one of my tractors were destroyed. The side of our house facing the border is filled with bullet holes from the Israeli soldiers. Now, because of the danger we rent a home half a kilometer away. I’ve lost my income, how can I pay for rent?”
Since the first constraints of the siege on Gaza were imposed nearly four years ago, the destruction of Gaza’s agricultural sector and potential to provide produce and economy to a severely undernourished Strip has dramatically worsened.
With Palestinians in Gaza now largely dependent on the expensive Israeli produce that is inconsistently allowed into Gaza, the plight of the farmers reverberates throughout the population.

All images by Eva Bartlett.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who arrived in Gaza in November 2008 on the third Free Gaza Movement boat. She has been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. During Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, she and other ISM volunteers accompanied ambulances and documenting the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Continue reading February 13, 2010

EDITOR: Preparations for War: A whole series of local wars planned by Israel

It seems that Israel is preparing four wars at the same time: in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran! They plan to pick and chose the one to start at any point in time, and Israeli commentators are pointing out the links between those military adventures: a war against Iran will, by necessity, also mean attacking Hizbullah in Lebanon, for example… so at last, the US has the Sheriff it always wanted in the Middle East, spewing fire and destruction in all directions, and at the same time claiming to be the underdog, and under attack from all sides. The amazing fact is that this seems to be an efficient policy, working well on otherwise seemingly intelligent politicians, like the western leaders, without whom it could never succeed. This is hardly an accident: at a time that the west has become ever more aggressive towards the Arab and Islamic world, Israel’s value as a local terrorising agent has never been clearer, in subduing parts of the Middle East at will, assisting the greater plan. Below one can easily detect the ominous strands coming together:

Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri warns of Israel ‘threat’: BBC

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri says he is concerned about “escalating” threats posed to the Middle East by Israel.
Mr Hariri told the BBC that Israeli planes were entering Lebanese airspace every day, and he feared the prospect of another war with Israel.
He accused Israel of making a huge mistake by allegedly threatening both Lebanon and neighbouring Syria.
His comments come days after Syria and Israel exchanged hostile accusations.
The BBC’s Natalia Antelava in Beirut says that while such rhetoric is hardly new, there is concern it could lead to more serious confrontation.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Hariri said: “We hear a lot of Israeli threats day in and day out, and not only threats.
“We see what’s happening on the ground and in our airspace and what’s happening all the time during the past two months – every day we have Israeli war planes entering Lebanese airspace.
“This is something that is escalating, and this is something that is really dangerous.”
Mr Hariri also said that Lebanon was united, and that the government would stand by Hezbollah – the Lebanese militant group which fought Israel in 2006.
“I think they’re betting that there might be some division in Lebanon, if there is a war against us.
“Well, there won’t be a division in Lebanon. We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people.”
His comments come just days after the foreign ministers of Syria and Israel exchanged aggressive accusations, which fuelled both media speculation and public fear about what many in the region describe as the “imminent next war”.
Such hostile rhetoric is hardly new to the Middle East, and yet, because calm in this is region is so fragile, many are concerned that it could lead to a more serious confrontation.

Lebanese PM: We will stand united against Israeli threat: BBC

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Wednesday said that he was concerned over Israel’s “escalating” threats to Lebanon and Syria, and that if Israel were to attack, he would stand united with his own people.
“I think they’re betting that there might be some division in Lebanon, if there is a war against us,” Hariri said in an interview with BBC News.
“Well, there won’t be a division in Lebanon. We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people,” he said, referring to Hezbollah’s role in the divided country.
The Lebanese premier also said that Israeli planes enter Lebanese and Syrian air space on a regular basis.
“We see what’s happening on the ground and in our airspace and what’s happening all the time during the past two months – every day we have Israeli planes entering Lebanese airspace,” Hariri said. “This is something that is escalating, and this is something that is really dangerous.”
Hariri’s remarks follow a week of increased tensions between Israel and Syria.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responded to Hariri’s remarks Wednesday, saying, “Hezbollah murdered his father and he is in the position of being a hostage,” Channel 10 reported, quoting Army Radio.
Addressing a business conference at Bar-Ilan University last week, Lieberman warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that if his country entered a conflict with Israel, it would not only lose, but his regime would also disintegrate.
“Assad should know that if he attacks, he will not only lose the war. Neither he nor his family will remain in power,” Lieberman told the audience.
The foreign minister’s remarks come after Assad on Wednesday told Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos that Israel was pushing the Middle East toward a new war.
“Our message should be that if Assad’s father lost a war but remained in power, the son should know that an attack would cost him his regime,” Lieberman continued. “This is the message that must be conveyed to the Syrian leader by Israel.”

Israeli PM plays down minister’s Lebanon war claim: BBC

Israel’s prime minister has distanced himself from comments by a member of his cabinet who suggested Israel was heading for a new war with Lebanon.
Israel was “not seeking any conflict” with Lebanon, Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Earlier, Yossi Peled, minister without portfolio and a reserve army general, had said that a repeat of the 2006 war with Lebanon was only a matter of time.
More than 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and about 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died in the conflict.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarifies that Israel is not seeking any conflict with Lebanon,” the Israeli leader said in a statement on Saturday.
“Israel seeks peace with its neighbours.”
The statement came shortly after comments by Mr Peled were broadcast in which the minister said Israel was “heading towards a new confrontation”.
“In my estimation, understanding and knowledge it is almost clear to me that it is a matter of time before there is a military clash in the north,” he said.
In 2006 the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah launched a raid into Israel in which it captured two Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah also sent thousands of rockets into northern Israel.
Israel launched huge air and sea attacks on targets all over Lebanon, and then a land invasion.

Obama vows ‘significant’ sanctions against Iran: BBC

US President Barack Obama has said the US and its allies are developing a “significant regime of sanctions” against Iran for its nuclear programme.
He said the international community was unified over Iran’s “misbehaviour”.
Speaking in Washington, he said despite Tehran’s denials, it was clear Iran was working to build nuclear weapons.
His remarks came after Iranian state media reported that Iran had started the process of enriching uranium to 20% for use in a medical research reactor.
Russian disapproval
In an unexpected appearance in the White House briefing room, Mr Obama said the US was confident the international community was “unified around Iran’s misbehaviour in this area”.
He said the new push for sanctions on Iran was “moving along fairly quickly” and should be completed in the next few weeks.
Mr Obama also said he was pleased at Russia’s quick disapproval of Iran’s latest move.
But he said it was unclear how China would respond to a new push at the UN Security Council for another round of sanctions against Iran.
China, a UN Security Council member, has called for further talks over the issue.
China and Russia have been reluctant in the past to support international sanctions against Iran.
“How China operates at the Security Council as we pursue sanctions is something we’re going to have to see,” Mr Obama said.
The five permanent members of the Security Council – the US, Russia, China, France and Britain – have a veto over resolutions, including sanctions.
Iran currently enriches uranium to a level of 3.5% but requires 20% enriched uranium for its research reactor, which is meant to produce medical isotopes. A bomb would require uranium enriched to at least 90%.
The US and its Western allies say Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon – a charge Iran denies.
In October, a deal brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was thought to have been struck for Iran to send its uranium to Russia and France for enrichment.
But last month, diplomats said Iran had told the IAEA that it did not accept the terms of the deal – though there have since been other, conflicting messages.
Also on Tuesday, US state department spokesman PJ Crowley said the international community was willing to help Iran secure medical isotopes from abroad.
The offer would help to “build some confidence” and show Iran that enriching uranium to 20% purity was “unnecessary”, Reuters news agency quoted him saying.

Continue reading February 10, 2010

David Bellamy urged: ‘Pull out of Zionist talk’: The Jewish Chronicle

The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (Bricup) has urged botanist David Bellamy to pull out of a Zionist Federation event at which he is expected to speak about Israel’s environmental achievements.
Mr Bellamy is due to appear at the ZF’s Israel Blue White and Green seminar alongside leading Israeli scientists on Tuesday.
The event, which is primarily aimed at non-Jewish schoolchildren, is a follow-up to last year’s Israel Science Day which Bricup also attempted to disrupt.
But the group’s protests fell flat after a small group of demonstrators turned up at the venue and left after an hour.

Bricup wrote to Mr Bellamy this week saying: “We are outraged, and think you ought to be too, at the prospect of Israel presenting itself (especially to relatively unformed minds) as a champion of environmentalist virtues.
“Their university scientists, as elsewhere, have made some useful contributions. These events, however, will try to use these to ‘greenwash’ the whole state of Israel.”
The letter was signed by 97 supporters including Lord Ahmed, Baroness Tonge, Clare Short MP and Tom Hickey of the University and College Union.
Among their allegations is the claim that untreated sewage from Israeli settlements in the West Bank is being dumped into valleys, polluting Palestinian agriculture and water sources.
Bricup’s Jonathan Rosenhead said: “For Israel to be held up as the environmental ‘good guy’ while it is destroying the environment of the West Bank and Gaza is like Machiavelli posing as a supporter of open government.”
The ZF declined to comment on the letter, but said it expected the event to go ahead as planned.
Mr Bellamy was unavailable for comment.

Gideon Levy / If Israel lets ex-pats vote, what’s to stop enfranchising all Jews?: Haaretz

What rejoicing in America! How delighted they will be – Abe (formerly Avraham), Joe (formerly Yossi) and Sam (formerly Shmulik). From now on, they will be able to vote from afar.
We’ll have elections by text messages, governments chosen by remote control. We are legitimizing what used to be regarded as Israel’s great sin – emigration.
The most right-wing government in Israel’s history, which hunts down anyone who hasn’t done military service and declares war on anyone who questions its whims, is now opening its legs to those whom until recently it regarded as traitors.
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From now on, those who left Israel will be able to vote on its leadership. Tomorrow, maybe all the Jews in the world will do so. Anything to increase the support for the right-wing parties, anything to neutralize the “demographic threat.”
If worst comes to worst, maybe we’ll even let the Christian Evangelists – those friends of Israel – vote. Why make do with 5 million Israeli Jews? Let’s add another million.
Much water has flown through the Hudson River since Yitzhak Rabin called the migrants “dropouts.” Today we follow their success stories – whether real or imaginary – with envy. We read the stories about those who “made it” there, and every used car salesman on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio seems to have achieved the ultimate Israeli dream.

They come here once a year or two, stay at the Hilton and lecture us from the lobby to strike harder, to kill more, to deepen the occupation, to strengthen the settlements. It’s easy to be nationalist in Manhattan.
Now they will be our partners. War and peace, territories and settlements, subsidized medicine and Avigdor Lieberman. All these issues will be in the hands of about 1 million old-new Israelis who left shamefacedly. They will vote for racism and war, while we will eat the rotten fruit.
Israel won’t hear about a Palestinian right of return, and deprives all rights to every Palestinian who goes abroad, after his or her family lived here for generations. But it is opening its gates to people who haven’t lived here for decades. Now they will vote with their acquired American accent.

Benjamin Netanyahu knows a thing or two about them personally. Most of his uncles and cousins on his father’s side left Israel or were born to Israeli expatriates. Exemplary patriots.
Not all is clear yet. What about the ex-Israelis’ children? Will they be able to vote, too? How about their grandchildren? Are Arab Israelis included?
All this does not matter. Netanyahu and Lieberman have broken a new record for cynicism. A singer who did not serve in the Israel Defense Forces isn’t allowed to perform, left-wingers are seen as a traitors. But an Israeli who hasn’t stood in a traffic jam here for 50 years will be able to vote. Lo how the Zionism of once has become today’s cynicism.

An excellent expose of the nefarious context of the Anthony Julius publication about anti-semitism:

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Still no hope of common sense in the war against anti-Semitism: The Independent

These defenders to the end of all Israeli actions knowingly mix politics and race

One would not choose to roll around naked in a field of nettles. One learns that choosing to write on anti-Semitism is just as rash, possibly more so. Protesters and malicious maligners stalk anyone who ventures on to the subject. And for the only Muslim weekly columnist in the country (who knows for how long) to tread into that field is extreme recklessness. Or reveals a worrying proclivity for masochism. Stinging rebukes will arrive before I am awake and all manner of outrageous allegations will roam the streets of the internet, rogue rumours against which there is no defence. Every word typed can be distorted or has the potential to offend. The column will madden both hyper-Zionists and insufferable Islamicists. So divisive is the issue today that many who see themselves as “reasonable” Muslims and Jews may not be too happy either. Ah well so be it. No more procrastination. Unto the breach dear friends.

The lofty, intellectual lawyer Anthony Julius, whose most famous client was Diana, Princess of Wales, has written Trials Of The Diaspora, an erudite history of anti-Semitism in Britain. He convincingly exposes the “polite”, almost naturalised anti-Jewish attitudes still rife among genteel folk of this country. When Diana chose him as her divorce lawyer, to The Daily Telegraph Julius was a clever Jew who was unlikely to understand the “English” idea of fair play. The paper was obliged to publish a grovelling apology.
George Orwell wrote a stirring essay in 1945 on this English prejudice. Julius describes a train journey when he was a young boy. An Englishman who did business with his father praised the excellent manners of a young Jewish girl who knew his daughter, as if such good manners were remarkable and unexpected. Orwell describes such moments too and asks: “Was it a conscious effort to behave decently by people whose subjective feelings in many cases must have been very different?”

This week we had a report published by the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organisation that monitors hate crimes against British Jews. In 2009, there were 598 incidents and attacks, 56 per cent more than in 2006, another bad year. I believe both Julius and the CST. Wagner said: “I hold the Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in it.”
In a coffee shop before Christmas, I overheard a group of yummy mummies of all races going on about Bernie Madoff and how “these people” got the world into the mess it is in. It really is all around us. Just look up the Jew-haters on the internet, the neo-Nazis and Islamicists and the bloggers who say anti-Semitism is exaggerated. Across Europe, even in Sweden, Jewish citizens say hatred against them is in the air once more.

More wounding than racism itself is the denial of it, the invalidation of lived and felt experience. Racist statements and judgements are today defended with unprecedented ardour and conviction. Black and Asian people are instructed to learn toleration, to understand banter and brave free expression, to stop inventing pain and to end their wretched PC whinges. Muslims too are suspected of making up stories, imagining humiliation and “using” discrimination for unholy purposes. Ironically, Julius rejects the claim that Muslims are facing increasing hostility in Britain. I know Muslim activists who say exactly the same about the rise in anti-Semitism.
We should trust witness and victim testimonies of bigotry. But we can’t and shouldn’t become credulous. Unquestioning accommodation would be naïve. Accusations of racism are used by all vulnerable groups to deflect legitimate concerns about, say, female genital mutilation, or forced marriages, or the too many young black men sunk into drug addiction and violence, or the lack of real democracy in the Muslim world.
Julius plays that game, dextrously extending the accusation of anti-Semitism to implicate principled critics of the Israeli state. Jewish objectors, like the esteemed American Tony Judt, are also cut down with a poisoned blade. Richard Goldstone, the South African Zionist, has found himself similarly discredited by Zionists for writing a scathing UN assessment of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Similar treatment is meted out to others who try to remain scrupulously fair yet tough when scrutinising the government of Israel.

These defenders to the end of all Israeli actions knowingly mix politics and race. Their enemies do the same: when Lebanon was attacked, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “This is a war that is fought by all the Jews.” It wasn’t. To say so is iniquitous, just as bad as the Jihadis who claim all of us Muslims are on their side or must be. The much admired writer Anne Karpf points this out in a beautifully articulated column: “If the Israeli government (wrongly) elides Israel with all Jews it is hardly surprising if anti-Semites do so too.”
By reproducing this conflation in his book, the eloquent Anthony Julius undercuts his powerful case that anti-Semitism, a very light sleeper, is up again. Doubters have been given a reason to repudiate him. Oh, the pity of it all.

Continue reading February 8, 2010