Jewish Israeli teens lean right, many support ‘price tag’
(
story in Times of Israel)
Jewish Israeli teens are becoming increasingly polarized in their political beliefs, with more than half identifying as politically right-wing and less than 30 percent willing to condemn attacks against Arabs, according to a poll published Tuesday.
According to the poll, 52% of Israeli adolescents define themselves as right-wing, 30% see themselves as centrist, and only 9% consider themselves left-wing.
In an alarming trend, only 28% of Jewish respondents said they condemned so-called price tag attacks associated with religious, far-right Jewish groups, with students from a traditional home surprisingly more likely to decry those attacks than their secular peers.
Such incidents of violence or vandalism target Palestinians or Israeli security forces and are asserted to be payback for actions against the settlement enterprise
Accomplice in Arab teen’s killing says main suspect pressured him
(
story in Times of Israel)
The principal defendant, Yosef Haim Ben-David, refused to testify, invoking his right to remain silent. His lawyer has consistently insisted his client is insane and unfit for trial.
One of Ben-David’s two alleged accomplices, whose identities have been withheld because they are minors, was the first to take the stand. He attributed his part in the killing to his emotional dependence on Ben-David, who he said acted as a father to him after his own father beat and disowned him the previous year.
[...]
“When [Ben-David] picked me up at my home, he told me we had to do something — a price tag attack, avenge God’s honor. It was hard for me to say no to him,” the minor said. “A war was going on in my heart. I was afraid to do something, but on the other hand I also couldn’t say no to him.”
Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence meets Obama aides in Washington
(
story in Haaretz)
Senior White House officials met this week with members of the left-wing NGO Breaking the Silence. The meeting, the first of its kind, dealt with testimonies that the organization had collected on alleged human-rights violations by the Israel Defense Forces during last summer’s war in Gaza. The meetings were held a few days after Israel’s Foreign Ministry tried to get a Breaking the Silence exhibition to be held in Switzerland canceled.
[...]
[Matt Duss, president of the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace] told Haaretz that during the meetings, Breaking the Silence presented its recent report last summer’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. Obama administration officials reacted with a great deal of interest, Duss said, asking “many questions about the vetting process of the witnesses, the testimonies and the fact-checking.”
An Obama Administration official said: “U.S. Government officials met with Breaking the Silence, as we routinely meet with a range of actors from official and non-official international groups, including from civil society.”
The State Department also responded, “Officers from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor met with a representative from the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence. The State Department regularly meets with a broad array of political and civil society organizations from various countries worldwide.”
French Telecom Executive’s Remarks on Israel Incite Furor
(
story in NY Times)
A growing global pro-Palestinian movement to boycott Israel instantly created a national furor on Thursday after the top executive of Orange, a leading French telecommunications company, said he would withdraw from the Israeli market if he could.
Mr. Netanyahu lashed out against the boycott movement on Sunday, denying that it had anything to do with Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians and saying that it instead had to do with Israel’s very existence, likening it to age-old anti-Semitic “libels.” He has made similar remarks in several meetings with foreign leaders since.
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian leader in the West Bank who has been active in advocating a boycott for years, described Mr. Netanyahu’s reaction as “hysterical” and said it was “a way of keeping his authority by spreading fear.” Mr. Barghouti said he was also disappointed with the Israeli opposition leader, Isaac Herzog, of the center left, who called the boycott trend “a new form of terrorism.”
Invoking the methods of Gandhi, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, Mr. Barghouti insisted that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was “one of the most peaceful and nonviolent forms of struggle” against the Israeli occupation and settlements, which most of the world considers a violation of international law.
The Orange episode is only “the tip of the iceberg if these policies continue,” he said.
Orange CEO calls Israeli deputy PM to apologize: I condemn boycotts of any kind, I love Israel
(
story in Haaretz)
The CEO of the French telecom giant Orange called Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom on Friday and apologized for saying Orange intends to withdraw its business from Israel.
"I'm a friend of Israel, I love Israel. My words were taken out of context and misunderstood. I apologize in my name and in the company's name for these statements. We at Orange condemn boycotts of any kind," a statement by Shalom's spokesman quoted CEO Stephane Richard as saying.
On Wednesday, Richard told a Cairo audience that his company would cut its ties in Israel “tomorrow” were it not for the “huge risk” in terms of penalties. He said the decision was in part due to the firm's relations with Arab countries.
The era of Iran is over; the age of BDS begins
(
Opinion in Haaretz - Peter Beinart)
The news that Sheldon Adelson will this weekend host a secret conference for Jewish groups aimed at countering the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is yet more evidence that “pro-Israel” activism in the United States is entering a new phase. The Iran era is ending. We are entering the age of BDS.
The BDS movement has entered this breach. It offers Palestinian activists a way to bypass their divided, corrupt, ineffectual politicians by taking the struggle against Israel into their own hands. Its three planks — an end to Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the return of Palestinian refugees—offers something for each of the three main Palestinian populations (those in the occupied territories, those inside Israel proper and refugees) and thus unites a divided people. As a nonviolent movement that speaks in the language of human rights and international law rather than Islamic theology, the movement also attracts progressive allies who would never join a movement defined by suicide bombings and the Hamas charter.
The second consequence of the rise of BDS will be to increase the prominence of Jewish Voices for Peace. Right now, many establishment-minded American Jews don’t know what JVP is. In their mind, J Street still represents American Jewry’s left flank. But as the only significant American Jewish group to support BDS, Jewish Voices for Peace will grow in prominence as the movement itself does. Already, non-Jewish BDS activists cite JVP as evidence that American Jews do not monolithically oppose their cause. The more that mainstream American Jews hear this, the more enraged at JVP they will become. How exactly that rage will express itself, I don’t know. But as JVP grows, its battles with the American Jewish establishment will make those of J Street look tame.
Inside the American Jewish establishment, the first response to the BDS movement’s challenge to Zionism has been to cry anti-Semitism. But that response conceals a dirty little secret: that many “pro-Israel” activists haven’t thought much about the tension between Jewish statehood and liberal democracy, and thus don’t really know how to justify Zionism to an audience of skeptical, progressive non-Jews.
Israel's 'war on BDS' misses the point
(
Opnion in +972mag)
Israel’s best-selling daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth and its website, Ynet, launched a special project on Monday. Under the banner, “Fighting the Boycott,” the newspaper entered “trench warfare” against the boycott Israel movement. Star right-wing columnist Ben-Dror Yemini wrote a long article claiming that the boycott movement is borne of a desire to de-legitimize the entire State of Israel, and not just the settlements and the occupation.
What is taking place in Israel these days is reminiscent of what took place in South Africa in the 1980s and in Yugoslavia in the 1990s: international pressure that is focused on a specific problem is understood by those states’ citizens as an assault against the entire country, evidenced by the world’s irrational loathing and hatred of it. As a result, nationalism grows, internal dissent is silenced, and various democratic characteristics become weaker, or are weakened.
Take for example, in South Africa, the activist movement Black Sash, a group of white women who opposed apartheid. The activists organized protests and published reports that highlighted the injustices of apartheid. For that work they were ostracized, labeled as traitors, and even suffered physical violence. As apartheid became more repressive and international pressure increased, opposition to Black Sash intensified: its members were repeatedly arrested, their protests were banned, and the violence directed toward them got worse.
South Carolina becomes first US state to take action against anti-Israel boycotts
(
story in Jerusalem Post)
The bill makes no mention of Israel directly, but prevents public entities from contracting with businesses engaging in the “boycott of a person or an entity based in or doing business with a jurisdiction with whom South Carolina can enjoy open trade.”
Beyond Springfield and Columbia, “a bloc of sponsors across 18 states has already committed to introducing similar legislation in their next legislative cycle,” according to Willem Griffioen, executive director of the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF), an organization aggressively engaged in the anti-BDS effort on the state level.
South Carolina Representative Alan Clemmons, who pioneered the legislation, commended Governor Nikki Haley for swiftly signing the bill.
“Discriminatory boycotts have historically been used as a form of economic warfare to forward the purposes of hatred and bigotry. The tactics employed by the Nazis serve as a poignant example,” Clemmons said in a prepared statement. “In this day and age, no group better demonstrates this fact than the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in its effort to harm our great ally, Israel.”
BDS is having its moment in the sun this week. There are too many pieces to excerpt, t here are links to many others I found interesting:
- The Athiest Rabbi: Easy As ABC: Adelson, Antisemitism, BDS & Campus
- Forward: Sheldon Adelson To Host Secret Anti-BDS Summit for Jewish Donors
- Guardian: Sheldon Adelson looks to stamp out growing US movement to boycott Israel
- Ari Shavit in Haaretz: Israel presents: How to fight BDS the wrong way
- NY Times: Israel's Allies in US Challenge Boycott
- Haaretz Editorial: Israel receives a wake-up call from Orange
- AP Analysis: AP Analysis: Fair to Boycott Israel? Global Momentum Grows
- Guardian: Oh, why don’t we boycott boycotts? They are pointless
- Times of Israel: Saban calls Orange liars, joins with Adelson to battle boycott ‘tsunami’
- Haaretz: Israel in drive to block EU labeling settlement products
- NY Times: French Film Latest Target of Palestinian-Led Movement to Boycott Israel
From the NY Times article:
B.D.S. activists, including the Palestinian-American blogger Ali Abunimah, have also drawn attention to Orange Israel’s sponsorship of two battalions of the Israel Defense Forces, including a tank battalion that was involved in last summer’s Gaza war, under the Israeli “Adopt a Warrior” project.
Images of Israeli soldiers clustered around Orange trucks near the front line during the fighting last year in Gaza, where they could reportedly charge their phones and get extra batteries, were shared on social networks last week by B.D.S. activists in Egypt.
As France 24 reported, last year “the French Foreign ministry warned citizens against engaging in economic activities in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem.”
In an update posted on Twitter on Wednesday, Gérard Araud, the French ambassador in Washington, reminded American readers that under the Geneva Convention, “settlement policy in occupied territories is illegal. It is illegal to contribute to it in any way.”
Unhappy Birthday to You: 48 Years of Occupation
(
B'Tselem Monthly Letter)
This week will mark 48 years since the occupation began. Only two years shy of fifty. Think of all the people who were born into this reality: Palestinians and Israelis who know no other Israel, no other Palestine. They have never known any reality other than this “temporary” situation that has existed for almost half a century, with Israel as occupier and Palestinians under occupation. This state of affairs is the only one that millions of people have ever known. I am one of them: I was born after 1967. I have known no other reality, yet I know that I can no longer bear this one.
This reality will change some day. The exact how and when cannot be foretold, but in the meantime there are lies we should stop accepting. We must refuse to keep calling this reality “democratic” – a reality in which millions of people cannot take part in deciding their future and cannot vote for the institutions that rule their lives. And, we must refuse to continue cooperating with the lie that Israel’s control of the Occupied Territories is temporary, under the legal definition of “provisional military occupation”.
Palestinians rally in Al-Aqsa to mark 48 years of occupation
(
story in Ma'an News)
Dozens of Palestinians on Friday rallied in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem to mark the 48th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War and offer support to Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.
Protesters marched through the compound with Palestinian flags and posters showing prisoner Khader Adnan, who has been on hunger strike since May 4. One sign read: "Freedom for hunger-striking prisoner Khader Adnan... the strike continues either to victory or martyrdom."
Israel’s Charade of Democracy
(
Opinion by Hagai El-Ad in B'Tselem and
NY Times)
Two months ago, on election day in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel’s Arab citizens were flocking to the polls “in droves”— a clear effort to cast the voting of one-fifth of Israel’s citizens as a danger to be counteracted. That undermined basic democratic principles, but it paled in contrast to the status of the Palestinian population living next door in territories under direct or indirect Israeli rule. They have no say at all in choosing the government of the occupying power that is in ultimate command of their fate.
Does that mean nobody in the occupied territories has a meaningful vote? No. In fact, some people do: Israeli settlers.
in August 1970, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, discussed amending the Knesset Election Law, which stipulated that Israelis — with few exceptions like diplomats on duty abroad — had to be inside Israel to vote. The amendment sought to expand the exception to include Israelis “residing in the territories held by the Israel Defense Force.” In other words, Israeli settlers could vote for the Knesset from outside Israel; their Palestinian neighbors could not participate from anywhere.
In a Knesset session discussing the amendment before it passed, one legislator and peace activist, Uri Avnery, expressed a widely held belief that peace initiatives would soon make the amendment obsolete. He expressed the hope that “it won’t be long — a year, a year and a half, two at most — before the thing called ‘the held territories’ is no more, and the I.D.F. pulls back into Israel’s borders.”
Israeli parliament debates occupation despite Speaker’s objections
(
story in Haaretz)
Despite efforts by the Knesset presidium to block it, a debate was conducted yesterday on the topic of “48 years of occupation,” marking the civil anniversary of the Six Day War, which falls this week.
The request for the debate had been submitted by Meretz MK Esawi Freige and Aida Touma-Suliman (Joint Arab List) as urgent motions for the agenda, a procedure that allows the initiators to address the Knesset for three minutes and get a response from a government minister. But Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud) and his temporary deputies deemed the matter not urgent, rejected the request out of hand, and filled the Knesset’s weekly quota for such debates with five other proposals.
The debate was tense. “Any Arab Knesset member that doesn’t recognize the State of Israel will have to show an identity card at the entrance to the Knesset,” said Likud MK Oren Hazan to the Arab MKs, adding, “I call upon them to join me in addressing the concerns of Israeli Arabs. And if you won’t join me, I call on you to move to Ramallah.”
12 Palestinian members of parliament are in Israeli prison
(
story in +972mag)
An Israeli military court decided last week to continue detaining Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Palestinian parliament, who has been imprisoned by Israel for the past two months. Jarrar was first arrested and put in administrative detention, which in effect meant that she could be held indefinitely without being charged or seeing trial. However, in the wake of a global campaign for her release, the state decided to release her from administrative detention and put her on trial.
Jarrar is not the only member of the Palestinian parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), to be held by Israel. Israel is currently imprisoning 12 other Palestinians parliamentarians, who were elected in the last democratic elections to take place in the Palestinian Authority in 2006. Some are in administrative detention, which in the eyes of the international community makes them political prisoners who are being held solely due to their political and social activities.
[Marwan] Barghouti is 57 years old, the former leader of Fatah in the West Bank, a member of the PLC since 1996 and has an MA in international relations. In 2000 he was appointed the head of the Tanzim, an armed offshoot of Fatah, and according to Israel was responsible for many terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada. He escaped several assassination attempts by the Israeli army, including a missile launched at his car, which struck his bodyguard. In June 2004 he was sentenced by an Israeli military court to five consecutive life sentences and 40 years imprisonment for his role in planning terrorist attacks against Israelis.
This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since that is the pronunciation preferred by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland.
More stories below the fold:
- U.N. report cites Israel crimes against children, no consensus on listing
- How a ban on Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women taking the wheel drove Great Britain crazy
- Secrets of the 'world's most moral army'
- In shadow of settlement, Susiya villagers vow to fight displacement
- This huge settlement will 'turn Palestinian villages into a prison'
- Israel's grip on the Palestinian tourism industry
- Israeli propaganda isn't fooling anyone – except Israelis
- When the judge is your enemy, to whom shall you complain?
- Israel grants 90 permits to Gaza businessmen for 1st time since 2007
- Israeli jets hit Gaza in retaliation for rocket attack
- US-born soldier tried for eating pork
- Deputy FM instructs Israeli embassy in Switzerland to stop 'Breaking the Silence' exhibit
- Meet Palestine's first all-female race-car team
- Slain soldier’s niece lobbies to bring down theater over play inspired by killer
- When Obama quotes American liberal rabbis, Netanyahu assumes he’s up to no good
- Education Minister Bennett visits Israeli Arab town under heavy security
U.N. report cites Israel crimes against children, no consensus on listing
(
story in Reuters)
U.N. agencies in Israel and the Palestinian territories reported an alarming number of child victims in last year's war in the Gaza Strip but were split on whether Israel should be put on a list of violators of children's rights, a U.N. document said.
The 22-page confidential country report, obtained by Reuters on Friday, was prepared by United Nations agencies on the ground for submission to the U.N. special envoy for children and armed conflict as she readied a draft of the annual list.
The special envoy, Leila Zerrougui of Algeria, included Israel's army and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the draft she sent to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has final say on the list, U.N. sources have said.
How a ban on Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women taking the wheel drove Great Britain crazy
(
story in Haaretz)
It’s one thing for religious fundamentalist leaders – whether Jewish, Muslim, or Christian – to preach that limiting the freedom and independence of women is acceptable in the name of preserving traditional values, and for women in their communities to voluntarily submit to such restrictions.
But putting such limitations on women in writing and turning them into official institutional policy in a modern Western democracy is a completely different kettle of fish.
That’s what members of the ultra-Orthodox Belz sect in London learned the hard way over the past week, after a letter they sent out forbidding students whose mothers drive to attend their schools was made public, throwing them under the glare of the international media spotlight and condemnations and under the scrutiny of their national government.
Why do female drivers pose such a threat?
(
story in the Guardian)
It was a strange and unsettling row that flared in Stamford Hill, north London, last week, when leaders of the orthodox Jewish sect Belz wrote to parents to voice concern about the number of women driving. “There has been an increase in incidences of mothers of our students who have begun driving cars,” they stated, “something that goes against the laws of modesty in our society.” From August onwards, the letter said, children whose mothers drove them to school would be barred from the classroom.
In the days that followed, Nicky Morgan, minister for women and equalities, declared the ban “completely unacceptable in modern Britain”. Dina Brawer, UK ambassador of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance told the Jewish Chronicle, “The instinct behind such a draconian ban is one of power and control, of men over women. In this sense, it is no different from the driving ban on women in Saudi Arabia. That it masquerades as a halachic imperative is shameful and disturbing.”
The distance between pixels and veils
(
Opinion in Times of Israel)
"If a man cannot look at a woman and say ‘What a healthy and handsome woman the Almighty has created,’ then I do not know what is happening to us. And I fear that if this continues, we will have to veil our faces."
These are not my words (though I’ve said them in these pages before), these are the words of Rabbanit Adina Bar Shalom, daughter of Rav Ovadia Yosef a’h.
Speaking at a conference, she said she was “greatly ashamed” that the Shas publication “Day to Day” ran a photograph of the newly elected government with the faces of female ministers blurred out.
Secrets of the 'world's most moral army'
(
Opinion in Haaretz - Yossi Sarid)
In his book, Tzahor relies on accounts by the author Yaakov Sharett, one of the founders of Kibbutz Hatzerim and the son of the second prime minister, Moshe Sharett. One day the body of one of the members of the kibbutz was found, with signs that the victim had met a violent death. The residents of the kibbutz gathered, shaken by what had happened. Two Bedouin, one of them old and the other young, were making their way along a path. They were captured and thrown in a generator shaft. As Yaakov Sharett recounted it, the two didn’t understand what the kibbutzniks wanted from them. After they were tortured and dragged outside the kibbutz fence, they were handed hoes and told to dig their own graves. Standing over the holes, they were shot and buried. To this day, the veil of silence, which we cast on a lake of tears, has not been breached.
Let’s proceed chronologically. When Be’er Sheva was captured during the War of Independence, the writer Haim Gouri was a deputy company commander. In the 1950 anthology about the history of the Palmach, Gouri provides a vague description of the killing of prisoners, of Bedouin who happened to be in the area, of women and children, in the courtyard of the city’s great mosque. In the late 1980s, Tzahor hosted Gouri for a talk at Ben-Gurion University and asked him about the slaughter. “The hall fell silent,” Tzahor says. “After a very long pause, Gouri shook his head no, and covered his face from the audience with his arms. I was sitting next to him and saw him wiping away tears.”
Tzahor, who had high security clearance due to his work with Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, was permitted to examine secret studies. In his doctoral work, Motti Golani, now a professor, discovered for the first time that after parachutists from Batallion 890 were dropped into the Mitla Pass in Sinai in 1956, under the command of Rafael Eitan, they captured 35 Egyptian laborers who had been working in the area and gathered them together. After several days, before redeploying, the paratroopers tied the laborers up, blindfolded them and killed them. Tzahor found it hard to believe this and decided to check the account out himself. He met with a colleague, who admitted, “They begged, they cried, and it wasn’t pleasant. Who carried out the killing? The officers. Just the officers. The regular soldiers were sent on ahead.”
In shadow of settlement, Susiya villagers vow to fight displacement
(
story in Ma'an News)
"Seven times they have demolished it," Susiya resident Nasser Nawaja says. "But the villagers have built it again every time." One of the 300 or so Palestinians living in the herding and shepherding community in the south Hebron hills, Nawaja is part of the latest generation of Palestinians who have inherited a decades-old struggle against forced displacement by Israel.
"People are very sad. Every night they pray to God that their homes will not be demolished, the situation is not normal," he told Ma'an. Originally displaced during the Nakba from Tel Arad -- located just 10 kilometers south but now on the other side of the Green Line -- the 25 families of Susiya were forcibly displaced again by Israel's military in 1986 after archaeological evidence of an ancient Jewish synagogue was found in the area.
This huge settlement will 'turn Palestinian villages into a prison'
(
story in Haaretz - Gideon Levy)
It’s full speed ahead at Leshem, in the northwestern part of the West Bank. While some people are still amusing – or deceiving – themselves by clinging to the idea of a two-state solution, and while every desperate Palestinian approach to an international organization of any kind is branded a “unilateral move” that violates signed agreements, Israel is building another mega-settlement in the heart of the West Bank at a rapid pace. But that’s not considered a unilateral move, no way.
Leshem’s forebears protrude from the surrounding peaks: the settlements of Alei Zahav, Paduel, Ariel and the industrial zones of Barkan and Ariel West. Alongside them, hidden in their shame, are Palestinian towns and villages with the meager land that remains in their hands after most of it was plundered: Kufr a-Dik, Brukin, Deir Balut, Rafat.
This settlement is being built by private entrepreneurs, the road leading to it lies on privately owned Palestinian land, and though the High Court of Justice intervened momentarily, construction went on unimpeded.
Israel's grip on the Palestinian tourism industry
(story in +972mag)
Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestine is not limited to its military elements — the occupation is also manifested in Israel’s use of tourism as a political tool. Tourism is used to strengthen Israel’s position as occupying power, to maintain its domination over Palestinian land and people, but also as an instrument for the dissemination of propaganda to millions of tourists, including politicians, community leaders and journalists who sometimes receive free-of-charge first-class tours to Israel.
“Millions of tourists come to Bethlehem, Palestine, every year and, without talking to a single Palestinian, return home as enemies of Palestine and ambassadors of Israel,” explains Rifat Kassis, coordinator of Kairos Palestine, a Palestinian Christian anti-occupation movement.
Additionally, the maze of unequal laws and restrictions gives Israeli tour companies an unfair advantage in their ability to provide seamless service for their groups. Israel follows a two-tiered strategy: firstly to invest millions of dollars into its tourism market in order to attract the maximum number of visitors; and secondly to cripple the Palestinian market as much as possible.
Other Israeli restrictions are applied directly on would-be tourists to Palestine. When Israeli travel agencies apply for visas for their clients, they simply submit names and passport numbers and their requests are generally met without delay. In contrast, Palestinian agencies attempting the same are met with administrative obstacles, and cannot guarantee that their visa requests will be accepted.
Furthermore, if tourists tell Israeli border control agents that they plan to visit Palestine, they are often delayed for questioning by Israeli authorities. Some deported.
Moreover, Israel has installed a web of hundreds of permanent checkpoints and other military obstacles which restrict movement both inside the West Bank and across its borders, which Palestinians and foreign tourists alike are forced to negotiate. Dozens of “flying checkpoints” are erected without warning throughout the West Bank on a weekly basis. Ra’fat al Shomali, a Palestinian tour guide, emphasizes the crippling impact of these checkpoints. Often he does not have the time to finish his tours on account of being forced to wait at checkpoints.
Israel pressing Holland to revise wording of 'insulting' West Bank travel advisory
(
story in Jerusalem Post)
Israel is asking the Dutch government to change the wording of an “insulting” travel advisory to the West Bank that besmirches an entire community by warning of sometimes violent “colonists,” a Foreign Ministry spoken said this week.
The advisory, appearing on the website of the Dutch central government regarding the Palestinian territories, reads: “There are security risks for traveling all over the West Bank, including east Jerusalem.
“Be alert when traveling there.
Demonstrations and violent incidents occur regularly. Jewish colonists live in illegal West Bank settlements and organize demonstrations regularly around and on the road. These colonists are sometimes violent. At times, these colonists throw stones at Palestinians and international vehicles so be alert when traveling around settlements of Jewish colonists, especially in the hills around Nablus and Hebron.”
Israeli propaganda isn't fooling anyone – except Israelis
(
Opinion in Haaretz - Gideon Levy)
The policy of denial and disconnection from reality is rising to a dangerous level, and the illness is getting worse. When the world starts to show encouraging signs of stirring to action, Israel further entrenches itself in its imaginary reality and erects more and more separation barriers for itself. Israel seems to think that what worked well in its society and succeeded in almost totally wiping out all consciousness and awareness, will work just as well in the rest of the world. That the brainwashing campaign that was such a dazzling success here will be just as effective abroad – it’s all just a matter of “hasbara,” the Israeli euphemism for propaganda – and of budgets, of course.
Granted, in a country full of propagandists, it has been working for close to 50 years already; most Israelis are convinced that all is really fine with us; that the IDF is really moral and the occupation is really an occupation of no choice; that Israel can live by the sword forever and be dismissive of the whole world, that it can tyrannize the Palestinians, wreck Gaza every other year, shoot children and believe that justice is on its side and that the world will see this too. That propaganda can replace any other policy.
That you can fool the whole world all the time. You can come up with all sorts of new (and strange) conditions every two or three years for ending the occupation and insisting that the spit we’re feeling is just raindrops. You can blame the Palestinians for everything and obscure the simple fact that this brutal occupation is Israeli. You can tell the world that it all belongs to us because the Bible says so and believe that anyone will take you seriously. You can be sure that the memory of the Holocaust will serve us forever, and justify any injustice.
When the judge is your enemy, to whom shall you complain?
(
story in +972mag)
“The spectrum of possible reasons for the lack of complaints may range from acceptance of the fact and a natural inclination not to complain, to disinclination to come in contact with the authorities, to fear resulting from a threat or concern of retribution, to reaching the conclusions from the lack of results in earlier complaints to the police, or the refusal of the police to deal with complaints”.
These words were spot-on when they were written in the Karp Report, presented to the Attorney General in May 1982. Back then the report broke new ground on the issue of the lack of law enforcement in the West Bank, and are even truer today, after 30 years of distrust in the Israeli law enforcement system.
Yesh Din recently published a new report, Mock Enforcement, which describes the state of law enforcement in the West Bank based on the data collected over the 10 years of the organization’s activity. The increasing refusal by Palestinians to complain to Israel Police about offenses against them should be one of the phenomena that Israeli decision-makers.
And if this weren’t enough, about a quarter of victims who refused to lodge complaints pointed to a more serious problem: they had already been victimized before, lodged complaints and felt that nothing had changed. At least one person, Farrah Abad of Jaloud, told Yesh Din that following the complaints he made, violence against him only intensified. “Now our little children live under mental duress, I have no faith in the Israeli system. I reached this conclusion after many complaints that yielded no results.”
Israel grants 90 permits to Gaza businessmen for 1st time since 2007
(
story in Ma'an News)
Israeli authorities on Friday granted Palestinian businessmen from the Gaza Strip permits for the first time since 2007, officials at the Palestinian liaison said.
An official told Ma'an that Israel granted 90 "BMG" permits to Gazan businessmen to facilitate their movement for 6 months.
Businessmen in Gaza have previously been granted "BMC" permits. A BMC permit allows its holder to enter Israel through crossings or checkpoints used by Israelis, for example to travel via Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.
190 Gazans pray in Aqsa mosque
(
story in Ma'an News)
Sources at the Palestinian liaison told Ma'an that 190 Palestinians above the age of 60 left the coastal enclave via the Erez crossing into Israel to visit to the Aqsa compound, regarded by many Muslims as the third-holiest site in Islam. Weekly access to the mosque by Gazans has become routine since October 2014 when some 500 Palestinians in Gaza prayed at the mosque for the first time since 2007, having been prevented by Israel from traveling to Jerusalem since that time.
The decision to allow Gazans to travel to al-Aqsa was reached part of the ceasefire deal between Palestinian militant groups and Israel that ended the more than 50-day war over summer in which Israeli bombardment killed more than 2,200 Gazans.
Israeli jets hit Gaza in retaliation for rocket attack
(
story in Times of Israel)
Israeli jets struck targets in the Gaza Strip early Sunday morning in an apparent retaliatory attack, hours after a rocket fired from the coastal Palestinian territory exploded in southern Israel, according to Palestinian reports.
The targets attacked were in the northern Gaza Strip, witness accounts said.
There were no initial reports of casualties and it wasn’t immediately clear what were the targets of the airstrikes.
The IDF confirmed in a statement that it had struck “terror infrastructure” targets in northern Gaza.
The army also said it would close the Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings into the Strip, in an apparent punitive measure.
US-born soldier tried for eating pork
(
story in Times of Israel)
An IDF soldier and recent immigrant from the United States was recently sentenced to 11 days in a military jail for eating a pork sandwich during military training.
When his battalion commander learned that the sandwiches were not kosher, he was called in for a disciplinary hearing, promptly tried and sentenced to jail.
The soldier, a recent immigrant from Boston, told his superiors that he was not aware of the military’s kashrut laws.
Sparing soldier over non-kosher sandwich is a slippery slope, says Israeli deputy minister
(
story in Haaretz)
Israel's deputy defense minister attacked the Israeli army's decision to go easy on a soldier caught smuggling a ham sandwich onto base.
"The state of Israel is a Jewish state, whose Jewish identity we strengthen," announced Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, the deputy minister, on his Twitter account, in response to the army's decision to cancel the 11-day sentence it had meted out to the soldier for violating its kosher regulations. Ben Dahan, a member of the right-wing Haybayit Hayehudi party, added that "we will continue" to defend the Jewish character of its institutions.
Deputy FM instructs Israeli embassy in Switzerland to stop 'Breaking the Silence' exhibit
(
story in Haaretz)
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely has instructed Israel’s embassy in Bern, Switzerland to try and cancel an exhibition by the NGO group ‘Breaking the Silence,’ scheduled to open in June in Zurich. In an announcement she made, Hotively emphasized that “the Foreign Ministry will continue to act against groups that operate against Israel from within the country and from abroad."
Justice Minister Shaked: Israel should counter boycott with boycott
(
story in Haaretz)
“There are three things propelling the BDS movement: Classic anti-Semitism, radical Islam, and simple naiveté,” Shaked said, during a debate on how to deal with efforts to exert economic pressure on Israel. “We’re talking about ephemeral organizations; we have to cut off ties with them and stop cooperating with them.”
According to Shaked, groups that boycott Israel, “are not seeking to divide Israel, but to eradicate it,” and their goal is to smear Israel, undermine its vital interests, and eliminate it as a Jewish and democratic state. “The British group that [voted to] boycott Israel [Britain’s National Student Union] refused to boycott the Islamic State. Those are the people we’re dealing with. We’re talking about a campaign based on a lack of information and lies.” Shaked also mentioned the Breaking the Silence group, which is holding an exhibit in Switzerland of testimonies by soldiers who served in the territories, saying it “slanders the State of Israel.”
“When the Palestinian Football Association wanted to suspend Israel from FIFA a few days ago, there was a huge outcry against mixing politics and sports, and that it’s forbidden to boycott others,” said MK Ahmed Tibi (Joint Arab List). “But who was the first to want to boycott another country? It was Matan Vilnai who wanted to suspend Austria from all sports activities, this is a blue-and-white invention,” he said, referring to then-Sports Minister Vilnai’s proposal should Austria include xenophobic politician Joerg Haider in its governing coalition.
Going by Ayelet Shaked's logic, Israel should boycott Obama
(
Opinion in Haaretz - Nehemia Shtrasler)
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked has an even smarter solution: “Boycott anybody who boycotts us.”
To make it easy for her, we have prepared a list of a (small) number of the entities that have boycotted us recently, and that Shaked will have to boycott back: The largest pension fund in the Netherlands; the largest water company in the Netherlands; the largest security firm in Britain; the Romanian government; the Norwegian government’s pension fund; Denmark’s Danske Bank; university lecturers’ organizations in Britain and the United States; labor unions in Europe; postal workers in Canada; a U.S. pension fund; the South African government; a labor union in Ireland; Roger Waters and 700 other artists; European countries that in 2013 urged we be removed from the EU research and innovation program Horizon 2020; buyers in Europe who refuse to buy peppers grown in the Arava and vegetables from the Jordan Valley; the countries that tried to oust us from FIFA; and, as noted, the CEO of Orange.
And mainly, Ms. Shaked, you will have to boycott U.S. President Barack Obama, who – the nerve of him – dared to say on television (ours!) that in light of Netanyahu’s refusal to recognize the two-state solution, the United States will find it difficult to veto European initiatives in the United Nations to end the occupation.
Who does that goy think he is? And we’re supposed to just let it go? We should inform him immediately that we are going to boycott him, too. We will stop sending him $3 billion a year, we’ll cut funding for the Iron Dome anti-missile system and we won’t send him advanced missiles, smart bombs, stealth planes and engines for Merkava tanks. Let’s see how he gets along all by himself, without Ms. Shaked and Mr. Netanyahu.
Meet Palestine's first all-female race-car team
(
story in +972mag)
A new documentary tells the story of five brave Palestinian female race-car drivers who must learn to challenge their own society’s norms while facing the violence of Israel’s military occupation.
Speed Sisters is a documentary film that tells the captivating story of five exceptional Palestinian women who decided that cars, driving, speed, drifting, dirt, wheels and engines simply do it for them. Together they decided to form the first all-women automobile racing team in the occupied territories. Five young women sharing the same dream: to conquer a male-dominated world and speed forward, without restraints or checkpoints.
Marah Zahalka is the champion from Jenin refugee camp. Her grandfather is a refugee from Haifa, and her father is the invisible hero who supports her dream. He works 18-hour-days to support his family and help Marah soup up the car of her dreams. I loved his theory, according to which he won’t wait for the end of the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state — like he did when he was young — because his daughter needs to do what she wants with her life, and his role is to provide her with everything he can.
Slain soldier’s niece lobbies to bring down theater over play inspired by killer
(
http://www.timesofisrael.com/...)
On August 6, 1984, on the eve of the Tisha B’av fast, IDF soldier Moshe Tamam was abducted by a group of Arab Israelis as he got off a bus a few minutes away from his home outside of Netanya. Tamam’s body was located four days later – he had been shot, and his face was badly mutilated. He was 19.
Four Arab Israelis affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were later convicted for the attack, including Daka, who in 1987 was handed a life sentence for his involvement (in 2012, then-president Shimon Peres chiseled the sentence down to 37 years).
[...]
Enter “A Parallel Time,” which centers on a Palestinian prisoner’s wedding – his efforts to construct a new jail cell, and his fellow prisoners’ attempts to smuggle in materials to build him an oud for a wedding present.
The theater manager, Adnan Tarabash, maintained the play is loosely “inspired” by Daka’s story and argued that rumors that the play was a straight adaptation of the convicted killer’s writings were “libelous.”
[...]
“Listen, I’m part of a bereaved family. My brother fell in ’68, in the war, in the War of Attrition. I’m Druze, my family is Druze,” he [theater manager Adnan Tarabash] said. “I know what it is to be part of a bereaved family. I understand it. But… people like David Magen and Almagor – they should be ashamed of themselves – they take advantage of [bereaved] people in order to silence the Arabs. To fight the Arabs.”
When Obama quotes American liberal rabbis, Netanyahu assumes he’s up to no good
(
Editorial in Haaretz - Chemi Shalev)
In recent weeks, U.S. President Barack Obama has been lecturing Benjamin Netanyahu and other Jews about Jewish values and their relevance to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When he does so, he usually refers to the venerated Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Martin Luther King’s great ally in the Civil Rights Movement. Heschel isn’t that well known in Israel, but I suspect that when Obama mentions him, Netanyahu’s probably thinks of another renowned American rabbi, but not in a good way: Judah Loeb Magnes.
For Netanyahu, Magnes is the root of all evil. The San Francisco born Reform leader who was one of the founders of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the motherlode of what Netanyahu describes in his 1995 book “A Place Among the Nations” as the “naïve belief” that the main reason for the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine is “a breakdown in communications.”
This “simplistic” view of the world, Netanyahu wrote, persisted in the face of Arab efforts to undermine the Jewish Yishuv in the 1930’s and 1940’s, gained even more adherents after the state was born, and finally “ensconced itself in power” when Yitzhak Rabin and the Labor Party won the elections in 1992. And we all know how that ended.
Netanyahu probably picked up grumblings against Magnes at home. His father, Benzion, participated in a 1932 demonstration against the Hebrew University and Magnes together with his good friend Abba Achimeir and his so-called “Alliance of Thugs” – Brit Habiryonim. They threw stink bombs to protest the launching of a new academic chair for World Peace, which they claimed should be dedicated to Hebrew Militarism instead. Magnes called the cops, Netanyahu managed to escaped but Achimeir was arrested, not before blasting the university’s discriminatory hiring practices in favor of Mapai-affilated lecturers and against those associated with the Revisionists. The narrative of the discrimination suffered by the elder Netanyahu for his political beliefs is one that is often cited to explain his residencies in the United States as well as the resentment that he felt, and passed on to his son, towards the “elites” and Mapai-dominated old political order.
The gap between Heschel’s towering figure in America and his almost total anonymity in Israel is yet another indication of how far apart Israelis and American Jews are in terms of their cultural reference points: perhaps Obama isn’t aware of this contrast.
Education Minister Bennett visits Israeli Arab town under heavy security
(
story in Haaretz)
Education Minister Naftali Bennett visited the Arab city of Tamra in the Western Galilee on Tuesday morning under heavy security. This was Bennett’s first visit to an Arab community since he took over his new post, and some local residents objected to the visit.
Nonetheless, Bennett received a very warm welcome in Tamra and held a meeting with local officials in the mayor’s office, even though some local residents held a protest outside. The head of the city’s education department, Muhammad Shamma, said before the visit that the city considered it to be a professional meeting on educational matters, not a political one. Shamma said local officials would present him a long list of educational matters related to the city’s educational system, and that it was important for Bennett to see the budgeting and infrastructure issues up close.
Bennett said he would take care to provide “the best and equal education to all Israeli students – Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze and Circassians – without any exceptions.”
One protester, Yusuf Diab, said demonstrators opposed the city’s welcome of “a politician without any restraints who is proud of killing Arabs during his military service, and is leading a policy of racism against Arabs and Palestinians. ... If the city wants to hold work meetings, they can go to his office” instead of holding them in Tamra, said Diab.
This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper. The goal is to provide a bi-weekly update on the non-violent resistance movement.
Diplomatic negotiations and actions by armed resistance groups are covered quite widely by the mainstream press and in other diaries on DKos so they will rarely be included.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since this is the pronunciation used by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland. The more familiar Palestine is the Hellenic or Roman variant. Filasṭīn refers to the geographic entity roughly encompassing Israel and Palestine. It is a likely cognate of "Philistine", the name used in the Hebrew bible to describe a rival of the Jewish kingdom of that era.
Prior diaries:
May 31, 2015: Online database "exposes" pro-Palestinian college students to "damage their careers".
May 24, 2015: Soldier pays the price for criticizing the Israel army
May 17, 2015: Despite literal "smoking gun", settlers cleared of charges for shooting
May 10, 2015: "Palestinians are beasts, they are not human" - new head of West Bank civil administration
May 3, 2015: 6 year old child arrested in Jerusalem; The Death of Compassion
April 26, 2015: No Arabs Allowed; Christian cemetery vandalized; Annual March of Return
April 19, 2015: Shooting kids in the back, segregating female soldiers, state-sanctioned theft
April 12, 2015: Yarmouk refugees, NYU divestment letter, Terrorizing Children
April 5, 2015: Segregated Streets in Hebron, Palestinians observe Land Day
March 29, 2015: A March for the Bedouin, A License to Kill & To Teach the Nakba