Israel tells schools not to teach nakba
Jonathan Cook | The National | August 21, 2010
NAZARETH // Government officials warned Israeli teachers last week not to cooperate with a civic group that seeks to educate Israelis about how the Palestinians view the loss of their homeland and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
Israel’s education ministry issued the advisory after Zochrot – a Jewish group that seeks to raise awareness among Israeli Jews of the events of 1948, referred to as the “nakba” by Palestinians – organised a workshop for primary school teachers.
The ministry said the course had not been approved and told teachers not to participate in Zochrot-sponsored activities during the coming school year.
In a letter to the education ministry protesting against Zochrot’s activities, the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, an advocacy group for Jewish settlers, had called the group’s educational materials “part of a criminal vision to wipe Israel off the face of the earth”.
It was unclear whether participants in the workshop for primary school teachers would be punished, but a teacher identified as a trainer for the seminar might be investigated by the education ministry, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The warning is the latest move by the education ministry, headed by Gideon Saar, a member of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, to use school curricula to advance a more strident Zionist agenda.
In March, for instance, the ministry banned Israeli schools from distributing a booklet for children about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Critics had objected to parts of the declaration that refer to freedom of religion and protection of asylum-seekers.
The ministry’s latest move involves the controversies that still swirl over the events that led to the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 – what Israelis describe as their “War of Independence” and what Palestinians call the nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe”.
Eitan Bronstein, Zochrot’s director, said the ministry was trying to “frighten off” teachers from learning about a period in Israel’s history that until now, he said, had been presented in schools only from a “triumphalist perspective”.
The group, which was founded eight years ago and whose Hebrew name means “remembering”, has provoked controversy by organising visits to some of the hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed by the Israeli army during and after the 1948 war.
Zochrot members place signposts at the former villages using their original Arabic names, and bring Palestinian refugees back on visits, upsetting Jewish residents who live in communities built on those lands.
In recent months, Zochrot has concentrated on developing a programme on the nakba for schools, allowing teachers to address the subject from a Palestinian perspective for the first time.
Mr Bronstein said more than 300 high school teachers had asked for Zochrot’s information kits over the past year, and a few primary school teachers had started to show an interest too. That has provoked a backlash from education officials and right-wing groups.
“A small but growing number of teachers are curious about the nakba and want to find out more,” he said. “The problem is that the education authorities see this development as threatening and are prepared to intimidate teachers to stop them from getting involved.”
Last week’s workshop was the first Zochrot had arranged for primary school teachers.
Hebrew textbooks focus chiefly on the success of Israel’s troops during the 1948 war. The books say that the 750,000 refugees either left voluntarily or were ordered to leave by Arab armies. Most historians now say that Israeli troops either physically expelled the Palestinians or frightened them so much that they fled.
In 2006 an Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, published a popular book in English – but little read inside Israel – that went farther, arguing that Israel had implemented a military plan to “ethnically cleanse” Palestinians even before Israel’s founders declared statehood.
A year later Yuli Tamir, the dovish education minister, provoked public outrage by approving for the first time the use of the word “nakba” in an Arabic textbook for the quarter of the school population who belong to the country’s Palestinian minority.
The book was banned last summer by Mr Saar, Ms Tamir’s successor.
Mr Saar has also backed legislation to punish groups and individuals who commemorate the nakba. The bill, which enjoys wide support, is working its way through the parliament.
Zochrot’s kit includes teaching units on life among Palestinians before and after the 1948 war, personal stories from refugees, a tour of a destroyed village, and a discussion of the refugees’ right of return.
Amaya Galili, Zochrot’s educational coordinator, said that although the group offered complete lesson plans, most teachers incorporated only elements of the programme so that officials would not notice they were using Zochrot’s material.
A history teacher in Jerusalem, who did not want to be identified, said she was one of half a dozen in the city who had participated in Zochrot’s courses.
She said, however, that her new-found understanding of the nakba had had almost no impact on either the curriculum or the pupils at the school.
“There are many other ways for the school to make sure that an atmosphere of fear prevails towards Palestinians. It’s easy to insert a nationalistic and religious agenda into the classroom – and, after all, I am just one teacher.”
The changes at the education ministry have become increasingly apparent since Mr Saar’s appointment nearly 18 months ago.
Earlier this year, the ministry demanded that its logo be removed from a joint Hebrew and Arabic website called Common Ground, which aims to promote greater understanding between the country’s Jewish and Palestinian citizens. Officials had objected to Zochrot’s posting of a story written by a Palestinian girl about the nakba.
Ms Galili said the ministry’s response to Zochrot’s work contrasted strongly with its encouragement of private initiatives by right-wing groups.
One, called Gush Katif week, brings former Jewish settlers from Gaza into 400 schools to celebrate life before Israeli troops and Jewish settlers withdrew from the Strip in 2005. Another, Mibereshit, run by a far-right rabbi and financed by evangelical Christians in the US, offers pupils tours of the country, including the settlements, in a bid to “strengthen Zionist education”.
“Many of these programmes sound superficially reasonable. They’re presented as ‘instilling positive values’ or ‘learning to love the land’. But, in fact, they are cover for dubious initiatives by religious and settler groups”, Ms Galili said.
Over the past year, Mr Saar has emphasised courses on Zionism, Jewish heritage and Judaism. He also has increased pupils’ visits to Jerusalem’s Palestinian districts and introduced a programme to bring soldiers into the classroom to help enlist pupils into the military.
A case of decency deficit: Israel’s sickness goes beyond one soldier and her Facebook pictures
By Lawrence Davidson | 22 August 2010
It is true that in any given population there will always be a range of decency. Some might use the term morality instead of decency, but morality is loaded with too many disputed meanings. The term decency, hopefully, has a broader recognizable footprint. At the lowest end of any range of decency are those who are so egocentric or perverted that they not only act in ways that are harmful to others, but they do so as a form of enjoyment.
In extreme cases, such people usually end up in prison, or even asylums for the criminally insane. They have committed serial murders or some other form of horrible physical abuse. They have robbed their elderly neighbours for the fun of it or set fire to the local hospital or what have you.
Yet, it is a strange quirk of our way of doing things that such degenerates can actually find a place in society where there is an accepted scope for their particular attitudes and actions. That place would have to bring them into contact with people outside the community and toward whom their society is hostile, a place where the “rules of engagement”, as the phrase goes, is much more flexible and fuzzy than back home. That place is the military in times of war. This is not to say that every soldier is suffering from a severe case of “decency deficit”. However, if one has been in the military, particularly in a combat environment, one will most likely recognize the type. While everyone else is scared and counting the days until they can get out of an essentially inhuman environment, these people are enjoying themselves.
There has been a recent case of moderate decency deficiency involving a 20-year-old female Israeli soldier by the name of Eden Abargil. Ms Abargil had her picture taken as she “guarded” Palestinian prisoners who were bound and blindfolded. She stands there with her rifle and smiles at the camera. She is not the only one who comes away from serving in Israel’s occupation army with such photographic trophies. What makes her special is that she posted this and other pictures on Facebook, under the title “The army, the best time of my life”.
According to the Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence, these sort of trophy pictures are such a “widespread phenomenon” that taking them constitutes “a norm”. Why so? Because it is the “necessary result of a long term military control of a civilian population”. No doubt this is true, though if you are sufficiently decency deficient your exposure does not have to be “long term” at all.
Ms Abargil gave an interview on Israeli Army Radio on 17 August. She proclaimed herself “mystified” by those who were upset at the postings. She asked the audience: “What is wrong with that [putting the pictures on Facebook]?” After all, she continued, “there was no violence in the pictures” and “they reflect the military experience”. Abargil seems to have decency deficit problems. If nothing else she cannot see that there is in fact violence in her photos. The Palestinian men whom she is so gleefully guarding have obviously suffered violence simply by being bound and blindfolded for resisting illegal occupation. In fact, these scenes scream violence to anyone who can see them within a context of an occupation which itself is violent on a daily basis – anyone who is aware of the Geneva conventions, UN resolutions, the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, plain human decency. Yet, that is the rub. Eden Abargil cannot see it. Why not?
Well, her problem might be a personal one. That is, she may be one of those small number of people found worldwide who are incapable of recognizing the difference between right and wrong. If so we can compare her to another young lady whose psyche might qualify for this condition. This woman was also in the military, but she is a 28 year old American. Her name is Lynndie England. She was one of 11 soldiers court marshalled in 2005 for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Here too it was trophy pictures that exposed the smiling England romping among horribly abused captives. Ms England said that she was just following orders.
In the case of Eden Abargil there is yet another possibility. How can you tell if you have a behaviour problem or are simply misunderstood by outsiders, when you live in a community were decency deficiency is normal? After all, if Breaking the Silence, and other Israeli human rights organizations (whose memberships are quite small but collectively an important humane voice) are right, the taking of trophy pictures is “a widespread phenomenon, not an aberration caused by a single soldier”. In this regard it should be noted that the Israeli army appears upset with Abargil, whose action it has labeled “crude”, not because she had “the best time of my life” posing for such pictures, but because she was indiscrete enough to display them to the world via the web.
To clarify the above question, consider the environment in which Eden Abargil was born and raised. It is an environment in which most Israelis are taught from childhood that the world is against them. When informed that her Facebook postings might “injure Israel’s image in the international arena”, Abargil responded: “We shall always be attacked. Whatever we do, we shall always be attacked.” Many Israelis are convinced that the Palestinians are barbarians, “beasts walking on two legs”, who want to “push the Jews into the sea”.
The answer to this alleged threat is to convince the Palestinians that they are “a defeated people”. Yet they never seem to get this message and so Israel’s destructive power never gives its citizens the security they crave. On the other hand, many Israelis believe that to compromise with the enemy is to encourage them to keep trying to “push the Jews into the sea”. So they just continue on an illogical path of trying to humiliate the Palestinians into total surrender.
The majority of Israelis have this problematic worldview reinforced throughout their lives by their parents, their schoolmates and teachers, their friends and co-workers, and their compatriots in the military. They even get it from their rabbis. Under the circumstances it is very difficult to avoid the taint of racism. So, is Eden Abargil’s decency deficiency a personal problem, or is she simply an acculturated, “normal” member of a society that is collectively deficient of decency?
If it is the former, the answer might be therapy, parole of one year to live in an Arab-Israeli town, or just keeping Ms Abargil indefinitely away from guns and cameras. If it is the latter, the first step to a cure is the isolation of the entire Israeli society on the model used against apartheid South Africa.
Personally, I agree with Breaking the Silence. The problem goes beyond Eden Abargil. In fact she is only the latest public symptom of an indecent state and ideology (Zionism). For a long time both have done nothing but harm to the Jewish people and religion. It is for their sake, as well as for the long-suffering Palestinians, that the treatment of isolation must be attempted.
Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.
Canadian court dismisses Bil’in claim
Ma’an – 21/08/2010
RAMALLAH — A Quebec Court of Appeal dismissed a case brought by Bil’in against Canadian companies involved in illegal settlement construction on the West Bank village’s land, legal rights group Al-Haq reported.
The claim was based on Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits an occupying power from “transfer[ing] parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
The case against Green Park International Inc and Green Mountain Inc – which marketed, constructed and sold houses on the Modi’in Illit settlement – was dismissed on 11 August when the court ruled “the authorities of another country [Israel] are in a better position to judge the claim.”
Bil’in’s lawyers claimed that as Israeli courts refuse to rule on the issue of legality of settlements in occupied territory they could not decide the case.
The Quebec court responded that insufficient evidence was presented to demonstrate that claim.
Al-Haq said the court failed to grasp that this was not a dispute over private land, but over the legality of settlements in occupied territory.
The legal rights group added that “The Bil’in case is a glaring example of the importance of upholding the principle that domestic courts must hold their companies to account for actions which violate international law.”
The separation wall, which cuts through Bil’in, separates villagers from around 60 percent of their land, on which Modi’in Illit has been built.
Bil’in is well known for its non-violent resistance, organizing creative, peaceful rallies against the wall every Friday for more than five years.
The Persistence of Missile Defense
By TOM SAUER | August 21, 2010
What to do with a defense instrument that does not work in practice, agitates neighboring regional powers, and costs a lot of money in times of economic crisis? Common sense would suggest you abandon it. NATO, however, has a different idea. As part of the NATO Strategic Concept Review to be finalized at the end of November at the Lisbon Summit, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has proposed to adopt missile defense as a mission.
Initially, NATO’s Star Wars was linked to the withdrawal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Since European allies perceive the nuclear umbrella as a symbol of transatlantic solidarity, opponents of the withdrawal required an alternative burden-sharing instrument: missile defense. Replacing offensive by defensive weapons system might even be easier to sell to a skeptical European public.
Even though the withdrawal of U.S. nukes has not yet taken place, missile defense is likely to move forward anyway.
The Obama Plan
If missile defense is accepted as a “new mission” in Lisbon, President Obama’s missile defense plans that were made public in September 2009 will be merged with NATO’s Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defense system. The latter, designed to protect NATO troops in the field against short-range ballistic missiles, is supposed to be finished at the end of this year. If the new mission is accepted, NATO’s objective significantly expands beyond protecting troops in the field to protecting all of NATO’s territory. For this expansion to take place, NATO’s system will be plugged into the U.S. facilities in Europe initially established to protect the United States alone.
Obama rejected Bush’s plan to install 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic. However, Obama’s replacement plan does not significantly differ in magnitude from the Bush vision. The Obama administration plans to put into place SM-3 interceptors on Aegis ships in the Mediterranean, two of which have already arrived. In the next stage, the administration plans next year to build an X-band radar station either in Bulgaria or in Turkey and a warning center in the Czech Republic. In 2015, the United States would then station interceptors on land, probably in Romania. These defensive interceptors are supposed to defend against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.
Beginning in 2018, the United States would place more powerful interceptors against intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Poland. The plan would be finalized in 2020 with defensive missiles capable of intercepting intercontinental missiles.
Why the Plan Doesn’t Work
There are, however, two objections to a NATO missile shield. The technology is not ready, and Russia is angry about missile defense on its borders.
The missile shield doesn’t work. Every country with offensive ballistic missiles can easily produce countermeasures like decoys or false warheads, which makes it nearly impossible for defensive interceptors to strike targets outside the atmosphere (exo-atmospheric). Both the SM-3 missiles on Aegis ships and on European territory face this problem.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency claims that the tests with the Aegis SM-3 missiles have been successful. Everything depends of course on how “success” is defined. The Patriot missiles — which are endo-atmospheric and therefore less sophisticated — were touted as successfully destroying Saddam Hussein’s scuds in 1991. But only three out of more than 50 Patriots effectively destroyed their targets. Formally, the Pentagon had defined “success” as “a Patriot and a Scud that passed in the sky.” Similar misleading practices disguise the real performances of the SM-3 missiles, the backbone of the missile shield in Europe. According to recent scientific analysis by George Lewis (Cornell University) and Ted Postol (MIT), published in the magazine Arms Control Today, nine out of 10 “successful” intercepts with SM-3 missiles were not successful. Sometimes the interceptors hit the offensive missile, but failed to destroy the warhead. Often these warheads then continued on their way in the direction of the target.
Even if this system encounters such technical problems, Russian strategists have to assume that they work. When Obama talks about a phased approach, which would extend the system in the future, Russian fears only mount. The Russian nuclear arsenal is both quantitatively and qualitatively small compared to U.S. capabilities. According to one estimate, if the Russian arsenal is not on alert, Russia will only have six surviving nuclear weapons after an American first-strike. If U.S. nuclear primacy is bolstered by a missile defense shield, it would not be surprising that some Russian planners are panicking.
In short, the proposed NATO’s missile shield does not improve geostrategic stability. Further bilateral nuclear arms reductions with Russia may be hampered as well. This reasoning applies even more to China, which has a nuclear arsenal less than one-tenth of Russia’s.
American taxpayers have spent $150 billion for a system that has yet to work in real time. NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen now wants European NATO member states to contribute to this system for the first time. Are we Europeans expected to bail out NATO’s $600 million budget deficit and sponsor Star Wars as well? In times of economic and financial crisis, especially in Europe, this money can be spent more wisely than on another Maginot Line.
Tom Sauer is assistant professor in international politics at the Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium), author of Nuclear Inertia: US Weapons Policy After the Cold War and the forthcoming book Nuclear Elimination: The Role of Missile Defense.
Israeli firm desecrates Beersheba cemetery to build shopping mall
Ma’an – August 21, 2010
JERUSALEM — The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage said Friday that Israeli bulldozers entered a Muslim cemetery in Beersheba’s Old City, razing tombstones to make way for a commercial complex, a statement read.
The foundation described the demolitions in what residents call the Turkish Cemetery as a violation of sanctity and said it will “urgently seek to stop the violation and strive to prevent the building of the commercial complex on the cemetery’s land.”
The statement said foundation member Farhoud As-Sayed spoke with the Israel Antiquities Authority inspector monitoring the bulldozing, who reportedly said “we know there are a few [Muslim] graves and we have maps that confirm their location. We are aware of them, but the bulldozing with not include them.” The official added that the Beersheba Municipality provided all the necessary permits for the demolitions, according to the Waqf.
The report follows demonstrations on Wednesday against the destruction of several tombstones and grave markers by the Jerusalem Municipality in the 12th century Maman Allah cemetery.
Bushehr plant to be launched on Saturday
Press TV – August 21, 2010
Iran’s first nuclear power plant, which is located in the southern port city of Bushehr, is scheduled to be loaded with nuclear fuel on Saturday.
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Director Ali Akbar Salehi and Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency Director Sergei Kiriyenko will be attending the inaugural ceremony of the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Nuclear fuel will be transferred to the Bushehr reactor under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The startup of the plant will mark an important step in Iran’s efforts to produce nuclear electricity, and it is expected that Iranians will be using nuclear-generated electricity two or three months after the launch.
AEOI spokesperson Ali Shirzadian said the Bushehr reactor will be fully loaded with nuclear fuel by September 22.
He added that the plant is set to produce 500 megawatts of electricity in the initial stage, and its production capacity will increase to 1000 megawatts in the near future.
Despite the accusations by the United States, Israel, and certain other Western countries that Iran is pursing a military nuclear program, non-proliferation experts believe the Bushehr nuclear power plant is not a proliferation risk.
“Bushehr is not a proliferation risk as long as it is run to produce power for electricity generation,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert in non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
“It would be a risk if Iran operated it differently, i.e. for short periods at low burn-up in order to produce weapons-usable plutonium — but in this case the IAEA would know,” he told AFP on Friday.
He added that IAEA inspectors will be in Bushehr to oversee the introduction of the fuel into the reactor core.
And the plant is also under full agency safeguards, meaning inspectors will always be keeping a close eye on Bushehr during the start-up phase and when it is finally up and running, he noted.
In conclusion, Fitzpatrick said, “Condemning the start-up of Bushehr sends the wrong signal to the Iranian people because it wrongly implies the West is against any nuclear technology in Iran.”
Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed, saying that “theoretically, any power reactor is a ‘proliferation threat’ in the sense that its spent fuel can be diverted from IAEA safeguards, reprocessed, and the plutonium used to make bombs.”
Nevertheless, over the past 50 years “no proliferator has ever diverted power reactor fuel from IAEA safeguards to make bombs in a hurry,” he added.
In addition, on Friday the founding director of the Center for Energy and Security Studies in Moscow, Anton Khlopkov, told the Russian radio station Vesti FM that the Bushehr nuclear power plant is a totally peaceful nuclear center and does not endanger international security.
The IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted to nuclear weapons production.
Western corporations began the construction of the Bushehr facility in the 1970s. However, following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Western companies reneged on their commitments and pulled out of the project due to political pressure imposed by Washington.
Iran then turned to Russia to complete the project. In 1992, Tehran and Moscow signed a deal to complete the construction of the nuclear power plant.
The Bushehr plant was originally scheduled to be completed in 1999, but its start-up has been repeatedly delayed.
Israel refuses to lift ban on family unification
The Electronic Intifada, 20 August 2010
Jerusalem-born Firas al-Maraghi has been holding a hunger strike outside the Israeli embassy in Berlin, Germany, since 26 July, protesting a decision by the Israeli government to prevent his newborn daughter from being registered as a Jerusalem resident. Al-Maraghi, who is married to a German citizen, temporarily moved to Berlin to accompany his wife as she completed her doctoral thesis, and was informed by the Israeli embassy that the couple’s daughter, Zeinab, would not be granted the identification and residency papers needed to live in their home when the family moved back to Jerusalem.
During his temporary stay in Germany, al-Maraghi has frequently traveled back to his home in Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem, while refusing to apply for any travel visas or passports that may strip him of his Israeli-issued laissez-passer. The laissez-passer is a special travel document specifically for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem in the stead of Israeli passports, since those Palestinians are not recognized as citizens of the State of Israel but rather “legal residents” of the area.
Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq stated in a 12 August press release that the decision to refuse Jerusalem residency rights to the couple’s newborn daughter “breaches Firas’ right to live in Jerusalem with his family” (“Palestinian on Hunger Strike in Berlin for Family Rights in East Jerusalem).
“Firas has been on hunger strike … drinking only water, refusing to end his strike until the Israeli embassy in Berlin revokes its denial of registering Firas’s daughter as Jerusalem resident,” the statement added.
Family unification frozen
Al-Haq remarked that this policy of disallowing family unification and residency status in occupied East Jerusalem is not new, nor is al-Maraghi’s case an isolated incident. “Since 1967, Israel has engaged in a deliberate policy of reducing the number of Palestinians residing in East Jerusalem while facilitating the increase of the Jewish population in the city,” al-Haq said. “To this end, Israel has used various legal and administrative means aimed at preventing the unification of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem with non-resident spouses and children.”
Al-Haq stated that in the past, Palestinians of occupied East Jerusalem were able to apply for family unification documents for their spouses and children through the Israeli interior ministry, in order to legally live in East Jerusalem and Israel with their families. They point out that this requirement does not apply to Jewish citizens and immigrants, who are free to marry Jewish Israelis and can easily obtain all residency, citizenship and travel documents required by the state.
However, in the past decade, Palestinians like al-Maraghi and his family have been subjected to administrative procedures aimed at thinning out the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. “In 2000, Israel de facto suspended all family unification procedures, impacting tens of thousands of Palestinians and their foreign spouses,” Al-Haq stated. “Moreover, since 2003, the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) has regularly extended the discriminatory ‘Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law of 2003’ (most recently on 21 July 2010). This law formally denies family unification of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem with their spouses and children from other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories or abroad. Consequently, these families are prevented from living together in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, resulting in the separation and forced relocation of such families.”
On 29 July, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) officially urged Israel to lift its draconian ban on family unification laws, as the group found “a large number” of violations of Israel’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. UNHRC stated that it “reiterates its concern with the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, which adversely affects the lives of many families, remains in force and has been declared constitutional by the Israeli Supreme Court. The law should be revoked and Israel should review its policy with a view to facilitating family reunifications of all citizens and permanent residents without discrimination” (“UN Human Rights Committee Urges Israel to Revoke Ban …,” Adalah news update, 4 August 2010).
Israel has neither lifted its ban, nor responded to the United Nations’ appeal.
Ma’an News Agency reported that a letter “was also delivered to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, calling for rapid intervention by Israeli authorities and for the government’s respect of the human rights declaration” (“Jerusalem man on hunger strike over residency rights,” 15 August 2010).
Meanwhile, solidarity activists in Germany have requested portable heaters to help keep al-Maraghi warm during regular, seasonal thunderstorms, as his hunger strike enters its fourth week.
Widow deported
At the same time, in Washington DC, US citizen Bettye Brown faces an ongoing battle with the Israeli government as she fights for her rights after the death of her husband, Muhammed Nijjab, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank.
Brown, 71, told The Electronic Intifada that after the death of her husband of nearly fifty years, Israel has denied her entry from the West Bank. Brown inherited land in the village of Jibya that is threatened with further land confiscation to a nearby settlement colony.
“My husband had gone back to Jibya to retire about ten years ago,” Brown said. “I stayed in the Washington DC area, but when he got sick in 2005, I went to the West Bank to take care of him.” Nijjab was a research chemist, and developed silicosis from years of inhaling toxic substances. Brown said that she stayed in the village until his death in 2006, and inherited about 85 acres of the family’s land.
“It would have been a lot more, if the Israelis hadn’t confiscated a third of the original parcel of land for the settlement back in the 1908s,” Brown added.
Earlier this year, Brown said she intended to visit her land in Jibya and was subsequently deported from the country after enduring eight hours of humiliation and interrogation by Israeli soldiers in a detention cell at the Jordanian border.
“They didn’t give me any food or water, and they took me back while two women and a man interrogated me and screamed at me,” Brown said. “At some point, they fingerprinted me, took a mug shot and stamped ‘denial of entry’ on my passport. I went back to Amman.” She’s been back in Washington, DC since May.
Brown told The Electronic Intifada that she believes that Israel’s intentions to confiscate more land in her husband’s village contributes to their decision to deny her entry. “It’s a very small village, on the top of a small mountain. It’s beautiful. What they’ve done is redraw the map, designating an area to be under Israeli control, which I think is their plan to grab more land. [My husband’s] family has had the land surveyed and registered, in an attempt to protect it.”
In the meantime, Brown told The Electronic Intifada she has consulted an attorney and is appealing to her congressional representatives, as well as working with the West Bank-based advocacy group, Right To Enter (www.righttoenter.ps), which focuses on the protection of the rights of foreign passport holders and residents who have been denied entry by the Israeli authorities. She is also continuing her small business of selling handmade Palestinian and regional crafts to local community organizations and churches for fundraising events.
“My husband never got over not living in Jibya,” Brown remarked. “All his life, he talked about Jibya and how much he loved it. The people there are lovely. I’m the only non-Muslim in the village, but it doesn’t matter.”
In a related story, Ma’an reports that a Palestinian father from the West Bank was stopped at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem and prevented from accompanying his wife to a Jerusalem hospital when she developed serious complications during labor. Safi Abdul Hamid al-Tamimi told Ma’an that his wife gave birth earlier this month but he has not seen her nor his newborn baby yet, as he didn’t have a permit to enter Jerusalem when his wife was transfered. Israel has rejected his application to obtain a permit “without explanation” in the days following the birth (“Father says denied permit to visit wife and newborns,” 16 August 2010).
Israel Can’t Win a War against Itself
By Greg Felton | August 17th, 2010
If the sign of a healthy, living organism is its ability to develop and mature in harmony with its surroundings, then Israel must be declared dead, or at least terminally moribund.
Its politicians, generals and armies of hasbarats regurgitate the same tired boilerplate to justify Israel’s strangulation of Palestine, and are still obsessed with sabotaging discussion of the Holocaust® and the dispossession of Palestinians in 1947–1948 that led to the creation of the Zionist entity.
In 1997, I wrote a column called “Israel can’t hide from its history forever,” and in the intervening 13 years Israel has shown no signs of moral or political growth, much less the ability to outrun its past. In fact, it is plumbing ever-greater depths of depravity to prevent the world from discussing why Israel continues to deprive Palestinians of the basic necessities of life, humiliate them, murder their children, and steal their land.
Like the grotesque picture of Dorian Gray locked away in the attic, Israel gets uglier with each act of cruelty, and no amount of canned hasbara or phony “anti-Semitism” conferences can make it look pretty. What Israel was and what it did in 1948 is being revealed in what Israel is and is now doing. The reason Israel can’t hide from its history is that it has stagnated and history has caught up with it.
The murderous excesses of Cast Lead and the piratical assault on the international aid flotilla have rightly appalled the civilized world, even alienating growing numbers of Jews and Jewish groups. Inside and outside Israel, Jews are taking the lead in condemning Israel’s brutality, and joining the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement. The delicious irony now is the greatest existential threat to Israel comes not from Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran or the mythical “al-Qa‘ida,” but from Jews.
As welcome as this development is, it is rather slow in coming since Israel has been committing war crimes against Arabs over its entire history, and for the most part the world has let Israel get away with murder. Dr. Ilan Pappé, a Jewish professor at Tel Aviv university who fled to England after receiving death threats for his defence of Palestinians, said that although some Zionists are willing to criticize Israel’s post-1967 expansionism, the period 1882-1967 is still off limits.
As Israel persecutes these honourable Jews, especially academics like Drs. Pappé and Norman Finkelstein, the very concept of Israel as a “Jewish State” becomes exposed as a moral and political absurdity, and this invites further questioning of the image of Israel as the po’ l’il Jewish state as the perpetual victim of aggression.
As history catches up with Israel, its “self-defence” propaganda also becomes risible and disgusting. The most recent act of fraud involves the complicity of hasbarats at the BBC, whose show Panorama glorified the Israeli military and spread disinformation that the aid ship Mavi Marmara represented a military threat. The fact that this odious fraud comes out so long after the event destroys any pretense to credibility and betrays a pathetic desperation.
Similarly desperate is the president of Tel Aviv University’s craven decision to review the syllabi for several sociology courses. According to Ha’aretz, The Institute for Zionist Strategies (!?) alleged that a “post-Zionist” bias was creeping into the departments. The institute defines post-Zionism as “the pretense to undermine the foundations of the Zionist ethos and an affinity with the radical leftist stream,” but since Zionism has no ethos, and since “radical leftist stream” is gratuitous name-calling, this must be seen as yet another attempt to keep Israel’s real history hidden.
Hasbara is fundamentally non-cognitive because it is not meant to communicate meaningful information or relate to any specific event. Hasbara is analogous to a cant that is intoned by religious mystics. Hasbarats and government hasbaratchiks chant the same generic slogans, invoke the same generic stereotypes, and recite the same generic falsifications all in the name of buttressing a pseudo-reality of their own making. Hasbarats do not expect understanding; they demand belief, and so what they regurgitate for public consumption does not qualify as language in any meaningful sense of the word.
A good example of this is the thoroughly stupid behaviour of Israel’s president Shimon Peres during his recent visit to London. In an obvious response to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s July 27 equation of the experience of Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip to that of a prison camp, Peres uttered this fusillade of folly:
“[The British] abstained in the [pro-Zionist] 1947 UN partition resolution… They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s… They had a defense treaty with Jordan, they always worked against us…They think the Palestinians are the underdog… Even though this is irrational.” (Note that Peres makes no direct reference to Cameron’s comment.)
The definition of “irrational” is an Israeli president whinging about events 60 to 70 years old like a paranoid Don Quixote. What did he hope to accomplish? In the end, even Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Romain, spiritual leader of Maidenhead Synagogue, had to speak out against Peres’s stupidity: “It is a sweeping statement that is far too one-sided… The tolerance and pluralism here make Britain one of the best countries in the world in which to live.”
The more Israel fights the same war against the same invisible enemy, the more its history catches up to it. In my 1997 article I wrote that if myths are used to prop up ideologies and false histories, they will sooner or later tear a country apart. It seems I have been proven right.
Greg Felton is an investigative journalist specializing in the Middle East, Canadian politics, the media, and language. He holds a Master’s Degree in political science from the University of British Columbia and speaks French, Russian, and Mandarin. He is author of The Host and The Parasite: How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg’s website.
Peace Talks in the Shadow of Demolitions
BADIL | August – 2010
While President Barack Obama pressures Palestinians to re-engage in direct peace talks, and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu loftily counsels President Mahmoud Abbas not to miss the opportunity, recent demolitions within the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel continue unabated and unaddressed.
According to OCHA, July and August have marked the highest number of demolitions this year. As of the end of July, OCHA reports Israeli forces have destroyed over 230 structures effectively displacing and/or affecting over 1100 Palestinians, including 400 children since the beginning of 2010. Over 50% of said destruction has taken place in July alone. OCHA further comments that the Israeli Civil Administration will be stepping up demolitions in the West Bank per orders by the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
In the Jordan Valley, Israeli forces have demolished the village of al Farisyia twice within the span of 10 days; first on July 19th and again on August 5th. These have resulted in the destruction of 116 structures and the displacement of 129 people, 63 of whom are children. In the second round of demolitions, 10 structures not previously harmed were demolished along with 27 structures and materials provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Israel has flagrantly disavowed its peace rhetoric by issuing additional demolition orders to be meted out on August 15th & 16th.
Moreover, Israeli authorities are proving complicit in vigilante activity among Jewish settlers in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City in Jerusalem. In the early morning hours of July 29th Jewish settlers stormed the Kirrech house, home to 9 Palestinian families, without sanction. Of these families, only one has been allowed restitution to their home by court order. The other eight families continue to be displaced while waiting for their case to be tried in court.
While UN bodies have condemned these demolitions, absent actionable measures, the condemnations alone fall short of the United Nations’ obligations to maintain peace and security and to ensure respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Under international law the State is obliged to prevent, investigate, and provide remedy, and when it fails to do so the international community becomes responsible for providing victims with effective protection. Violence by non-state actors (settlers) should not be seen merely as provocative actions; but as part of an overarching policy backed by State authority. By stopping at rhetoric, the United Nations, States, and international organizations fail to adequately respond to Israel’s human rights abuses that both fuel the humanitarian crisis and undermine the peace process.
In fact, even if Netanyahu’s recent statements were to be considered sincere, Israel’s actions are a flagrant rejection of the peace process and its underlying documents including the Oslo Accords which reserve settlements as a final status issue and the Road Map which outright prohibits settlement expansion.
Under the cover of its calls for the resumption for peace talks, Israel is also infringing on the rights of its own Palestinian citizens. Israeli forces have demolished Al Araqib, a Bedouin village in the Negev, 4 times from July 27th to August 17th, displacing 300 Palestinian citizens of Israel at the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan forcing them to endure a recent heat wave living in the open air atop their cemetery. According to MK Talab al-Sana, “This is a test for democracy in Israel; and democracy is failing. Al Araqib is a test of how much Israelis can live in peace with their own Palestinian citizens; so, how can [Israel] live in peace with Palestinians [within Palestine].”
Demolitions and the denial of basic human rights, such as shelter, are features of Israel’s apartheid regime and are indicative of the root causes of the ongoing humanitarian crises in the OPT. At best, Israel’s recent demolitions can be considered attempts at colonization, at worst they can be interpreted as ethnic cleansing.
Taking these actions into account, one cannot help but be confused by the good faith underpinning the most recent calls for peace’ talks. We call upon States, UN bodies, international organizations, and the international community at large to reconcile peace talks with humanitarian and human rights law in an effort to create an environment where peace may actually be sought instead of paying lip service to peace in the shadow of demolitions and displacement.
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70 Neocons Petition Congress To Effectively Allow Israel To Say When The US Should Attack Iran
By Damian Lataan | January 10, 2014
Seventy senior Israeli-centric neoconservatives have written an open letter to Congress imploring them to do more to ensure Iran complies with the conditions of any agreement finally reached with the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear program.
While the neocons are ostensibly asking Congress to ensure compliance, it is clear that their real aim is to convince members of Congress to support the bill currently passing through the Senate which calls for tighter sanctions against Iran in the event of any waywardness on Iran’s part.
The neocons are eager to see the bill currently passing through the Senate with enough support to make it veto-proof, not so much because they are concerned about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program – there’s still not a skerrick of hard evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program – but, rather, because embedded within the bill is this clause:
… if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapon program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with the law of the United States and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence…
Essentially, the clause is an automatic trigger for the US to attack Iran at any time the Israelis choose to launch a first strike – regardless of whether President Obama is in favour or not.
Partial list… continue
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