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.
The Institute for Palestine Studies has a post by Keith Feldman at Berkeley exploring the decades old relationship between black rights organizations in the US (SNCC, Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter) and Palestinian organizations.
Black Power’s Palestine made claims on what was knowable, and how, about Palestine in the United States. Such claims were produced in loose (and sometimes uncited) consultation with Arab and Arab-American organizations. SNCC’s August 1967 statement on the “Palestine Problem” repurposed a fact sheet produced by the Beirut-based Palestine Research Center. Throughout the late 1960s and intensified in the 1970s, the Black Panther Party Intercommunal News Service routinely carried articles by and about Fatah and PFLP spokesmen. The paper reported on Black September in 1970 and the October 1973 War. In 1974, the paper published the Party’s position on the Middle East.
Interest in the Palestinian cause was sparked partly by its similarity to other anti-colonial movements across Africa. Nelson Mandela for example was pretty explicit about the reasons for his support of Yasser Arafat and the PLO. The relationship has changed along with concerns and Feldman notes that:
from an earlier moment in which membership organizations like SNCC and the Black Panther Party connected to formalized Palestinian political organizations; to the contemporary moment, in which activisms are more contingent, geographically dispersed, and horizontally articulated, and Black and Palestinian organizers and activisms are more intentionally interwoven. And the media through which such expressions are produced have shifted dramatically: from analog pamphlets, newsletters, and newspapers to digital productions that circulate rapidly on social media.
The article is prompted by the video below, and an open letter titled Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine, signed by over 1,000 Black activists, artists, scholars, students, and organizations.
The Forward and Haaretz, are reporting that Amos Oz has been quietly boycotting official events organized by Israeli embassies in his honor. Here’s a statement he made to the Jerusalem Post:
“I am often invited by my publishers abroad to take part in the launching of translations of my books.
Following the radicalization in the policy of the present government in various areas, I told my hosts abroad that I prefer not to be a guest of honor in events organized for me by Israeli embassies,” he toldThe Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
“However, I strongly oppose the BDS [movement] and I strongly oppose the idea of boycotting Israel. My decision is aimed against the government not against my country,” he said.
Yedioth Ahronoth provides some background:
A few months ago, Oz also commented: "The Netanyahu government…is leading the people of Israel into a war against the whole world. From a historical perspective we are already at war with the world and it will not end well.
"You don't need to be a prophet to see that the day is coming when employees at European airports will refuse to deal with El Al flights and when people will refuse to buy Israeli produce. It's already happening today."
The Institute for Palestine Studies has made a number of articles on the Balfour declaration available to readers online this month, to mark the 98th anniversary of the 1917 declaration.
"The four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land." - Arthur James Balfour
In a lengthy piece, Peter Beinart analyses the positions of many presidential candidates when it comes to the rights of Palestinians. They range from outright support for ethnic cleansing, to the widespread belief that Israeli concerns supersede Palestinian rights. With respect to Hillary Clinton, Beinart concludes:
The lesson Hillary learned, and has remembered ever since, is that in American politics, associating yourself with the Palestinian cause never pays.
He contrasts this with Obama’s views:
When Obama traveled to Israel in 2013, he affirmed Palestinian humanity again. He asked his mostly Jewish Israeli audience to “Put yourself in their [the Palestinians’] shoes. Look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own. Living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements not just of those young people but their parents, their grandparents, every single day.” Why won’t Hillary say anything like this? Partly, I suspect, it’s because her overall foreign policy outlook is simply more hawkish.
Beinart believes Hillary willing to let US positions be guided by Netanyahu. With respect to Palestinian demands for sovereignty and the Netanyahu’s discussion of “autonomy”, he writes that Hillary has begun to use the term “autonomy”:
Or, put another way, it’s the individual and national rights that sovereignty might bring. “Autonomy,” by contrast, is what Israeli leaders have periodically offered in lieu of a state. “Would the Palestinian Arabs accept autonomy?” asked Netanyahu in a 1994 Jerusalem Post op-ed entitled “The Alternative is Autonomy." He wrote: “My answer is that they would accept it if they knew Israel wouldn’t give them an independent state.”
+972mag has a review of a documentary titled “Oriented” about the lives of three gay Palestinian men who provide a view on their lives. +972mag also analyses Netanyahu’s proposal to revoke the residency of about 100,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem suburbs. These individuals would then have limited access to Jerusalem, the move follows decades in which residency has been revoked for tens of thousands of East Jerusalemites on flimsy pretexts.
Amira Haas has a long piece in Haaretz discussing the situation in Hebron, and the manner in which the old city has been segregated by Israeli forces to privilege the settlers who live there. The segregated roads and checkpoints were put in place after the 1994 terrorist attack in which Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians at prayer. Since then, 75% of the businesses in central Hebron have shut down as travel restrictions and IDF enforced closures have made them arduous to reach. Over the past month, Israeli security forces have forced all Palestinian residents to register as “permanent residents” and prevented other Palestinians from visiting. No such restrictions have been imposed on Israeli settlers living in Hebron, which is in the West Bank.
The registration of Old City residents, the declaration of its neighborhoods as a closed military area and the forced closure of Palestinian shops in downtown Hebron are among the steps the army has taken to contain the recent escalation in violence since concluding that Hebron is the epicenter of this escalation. But the Palestinians don’t see these steps as measures that will calm down the situation.
On the contrary, such steps merely bolster their conclusion that Israel is exploiting the situation to execute yet another phase of a plan to empty central Hebron of Palestinians and to inject it with new clusters of settlements and settlers. It’s impossible to understand the situation in Hebron without taking into account the constant fear that Israel intends to expel all Palestinians from the Old City.
But what currently overshadows even the fear of expulsion from the Old City is fear of the soldiers. Women say they’ve stopped crossing checkpoints with any kind of bag, lest the soldiers suspect them of carrying knives and execute them.
The Israeli supreme court has ordered a synagogue illegally built on Palestinian land close to Jerusalem be demolished. Numerous rabbis, including the head of Shas and Ashkenazi rabbis have initiated a campaign to encourage IDF soldiers to refuse demolition orders. The government has requested a stay to the demolition arguing “Police believe that demolishing the building is likely to lead to violent acts by extremist right-wing actors against Arabs and Muslim religious symbols.” +972mag notes the implication of the stay is both the administration and the judiciary agree that right-wing terrorism works:
If a group of Palestinians had publicly declared that they were willing to die and threatened to use explosives (gas canisters) in a confrontation with Israeli security forces, they would probably not come out alive and if they did, they would be tried in military courts, put into administrative detention or sent into exile.
When it comes to Jews doing the same, there is a long tradition of precedent for getting away with such threats and violent reprisals scot-free. In the early 1980s, in the final days of Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, members of Meir Kahane’s Kach terrorist group barricaded themselves inside the settlement’s synagogue, booby trapped it with gas canisters and said they would rather die than give up the land. They were not killed. They were not prosecuted.
Netanyahu visited DC, to meet with Obama and address various organizations. There are reports that he asked Obama to recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights given the civil war in Syria, the White House said no. Chemi Shalev writing in Haaretz ridicules Netanyahu’s claim the meeting with Obama was “wonderful”, noting that American officials have said it was “OK” and that no commitments were made. Israel’s president Reuven Rivlin is scheduled to visit the White House in December and that visit is expected to be far warmer. The IPS covered Netanyahu’s visit in some detail.
Netanyahu addressed organizations on the left and right. The warmest reception he received was at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. He also visited the Center for American Progress. The visit was controversial with many CAP staff publicly declaring they opposed the visit, and describing past instances where their work on Palestinian rights had been censored or revised by CAP leadership under pressure from AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbying groups. Other groups voiced similar complaints. The Guardian reports on his visit in the context of the current violence and highlights this exchange:
“The question of Jerusalem, specifically the Temple Mount, I think is insoluble,” he said. “It has to remain under Israeli sovereignty and that’s the only way to prevent it from exploding,” Netanyahu told one questioner, Morton Halperin, the president of liberal lobby group J Street.
Netanyahu’s statements were fact-checked extensively and as expected, there were falsehoods. Peter Beinart evaluates Netanyahu’s visit and concludes he lived up to his moniker as an “armor-plated bullshitter”.
CAP President Neera Tanden asked Bibi about his statement, on the eve of Israel’s election earlier this year, that, “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.” Netanyahu responded that, “You should know that Arab voted for me… they voted for me in considerably larger numbers than they voted for the Labor Party. I was not referring to going to vote, I was speaking about a specific list that was opposed” to my policies.
The European Union has issued guidelines for labeling products made in settlements, and various Israeli ministers have pronounced them “anti-semitic”. Netanyahu said the EU “should be ashamed”. The Knesset also passed a bill that would deny entry to Israel to anyone calling for a boycott of Israeli goods or services. The NY Times has a story on the EU labeling guidelines and as part of it, they’ve trotted out their useful interactive guide to West Bank settlements published back in March of this year.
The Times of Israel has a review of Jonathan Sacks’ new book condemning religious violence and recognizing our “common humanity”.
An extensive poll of the Israeli population finds that 37% of Israeli Jews want their government to encourage the emigration of Palestinians.
An IDF enquiry into the shooting death of 18 year old Hadeel al-Hashlamoun concluded her death could have been avoided and that she was emotionally disturbed. The inexperience of the conscripted soldiers at the checkpoint could have played a role in the killing. Israeli forces have been conducting raids on hospitals in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to capture suspects, they killed the cousin of a suspect in one such raid which has garnered a lot of attention for the manner in which a hospital was stormed by Israeli forces in disguise. The PA says they will send the ICC a video recording of an Israeli agent harshly interrogating a 13 year old suspected of participating in a stabbing.
+972mag interviewed a number of journalists of Palestinian heritage who work in the West Bank and they report an increase in abuse and violence directed towards them. In some cases, they believe Palestinian journalists are being targeted for abuse and mistreatment while Israeli journalists are permitted to work unmolested by security forces. Both Israeli and Jewish journalists report feeling threatened by mobs prone to violence.
Haaretz writers offered a great set of opinion pieces this fortnight. Bradley Burston minces no words:
The occupation makes Israelis stupid. Because they know where it's leading us. They know that it will cost us in children, children drafted to enforce the occupation, children endangered because of the evils of the occupation, children who leave Israel because they don't want their children to be victims of occupation.
Late last month, when Benjamin Netanyahu finally unveiled his fundamental prediction of the Israel to come (" … we need to control all of the territory for the foreseeable future … we will forever live by the sword …") it was the occupation speaking, clear as day. It was, in fact, an unintentional echo of former Alabama Governor George Wallace's 1963 inaugural address, in which he declared "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
On the subject of denial, Eva Illouz notes that Israel and Israelis are in “national denial” about the routine, everyday oppression of Palestinians. She notes this denial has various forms, including an official policy that seeks to minimize, deny or suppress the Nakba (including criminalizing it’s commemoration). She believes this denial makes Israelis unreasonably optimistic about their future and worst of all, complicit and blind to injustices perpetrated on Palestinians in their name. Amira Haas diagnoses widespread denial in both Israeli and Palestinian society. Yossi Gurvitz writes in Yesh Din’s blog that Israel has ignored repeated violence perpetrated by the settlers in the illegal settlement of Adei Ad. Demolition orders issued by the Israeli High Court against all the structures in the settlement have not been carried out. The Israeli government has put forward plans to retroactively authorize the settlement. Zvi Bar’el writes that it really isn’t worth trying to scare Israelis with the prospect of a bi-national state:
We’ve been living for 67 years now in a binational state, with Arab Israelis. We are experts at excluding minorities, removing them from the public sphere, denying them their rights and delegitimizing them. No Israeli government will annex 5.5 million more Palestinians, not including East Jerusalem, which in any case they want to empty of Palestinians.
Israel’s Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked has presented a bill in the Knesset that would permit children as young as 12 to be given jail sentences for murder or attempted murder. Their analysis notes that the US is the only western democracy that comes even close to lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 12. In a separate report, +972mag notes that Israeli police have been illegally arresting and interrogating Palestinian children as young as 6 or 8 years old, often without informing their parents. An IDF soldier and an Israeli civilian were arrested after their beating of a Bedouin man was caught on camera.
A poll finds a majority of Jewish Israelis believe Palestinians suspected of terrorism should be executed on the spot. Israeli security forces have been accused of carrying out numerous such extrajudicial killings of suspects when they posed no danger. In the same poll, 80% said the family homes of Palestinians who carry out such attacks should be demolished. 53% said the homes of Jews who carry out terrorist attacks should not be demolished (Israel does not demolish the homes of Jewish terrorists).
Finally, Avi Shlaim writes in the Guardian that despite his inconsistencies and inarticulateness, Yitzhak Rabin did leave behind a political legacy.
Paradoxically, Rabin may yet go down in Israel’s history as the only true disciple of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the spiritual father of the Israeli right. Jabotinsky was the architect, in the early 1920s, of the strategy of “the iron wall”. The essence of this strategy was to deal with the Arab enemies from a position of unassailable military strength. The premise behind it was that an independent Jewish state in Palestine could only be achieved unilaterally and by military force.
There were two stages to this strategy. First, the Jewish state had to be built behind an “iron wall” of Jewish military power. The Arabs, predicted Jabotinsky, would repeatedly hit their heads against the wall until they despaired of defeating the Zionists on the battlefield. Then, and only then, would come the time for stage two: to negotiate with the Palestine Arabs about their status and rights in Palestine.
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:
- XXVII) Nov 1, 2015: On 20 anniversary of Rabin's killing, Haaretz says current vision is apartheid state.
- XXVI) Oct 18, 2015: The Intifada won't be televised, it's on Whatsapp
- XXV) Oct 4, 2015: Violent clashes across West Bank after terror attacks in Jerusalem/WB kill four Israelis
- XXIV) Sep 27, 2015: 17,641 nights into the occupation, 51% of West Bank opposes two-state solution
- XXIII) September 20, 2015: The best hope for change on the West Bank? Keep those cameras rolling
- XXII) August 23, 2015: Palestinian Christians and Priests clash with Israeli police over separation wall
- XXI) August 16, 2015: Jimmy Carter: "Zero chance of the two-state solution"
- XX) August 9, 2015: Father of toddler dies of injuries sustained in arson attack
- XIX) August 2, 2015: Palestinian infant dies in arson attack, nine prior attacks went unprosecuted by Israel.
- XVIII) July 26, 2015: Filastin: "Do you know what Obama coffee is?"
- XVII) July 19, 2015: Israeli military judge says a Palestinian can defend his home, too
- XVI) July 12, 2015: Citizen Odeh: The Arab leader who feels the Jews' pain