Author: shergald

At the author’s request, the title of the article presented below, The Gestapo and Wehrmacht of Our Time, was retained. The author is Khalid Amayreh. It was written for The People’s Voice and is based on the remarks of a German Catholic Bishop, who visited Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories on March 5th of this year. He compared Israel’s oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank with Nazi oppression of Jews at Ghetto Warsaw. (The photo above shows the Warsaw ghetto left, and the “Ramallah ghetto” right.)

Khalid Amayreh’s article takes the Bishop’s remarks further by giving them additional substance.

The Gestapo and Wehrmacht of Our Time

I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on the top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath. I regret this situation very much because my sympathy has always been on their side.
Harry Truman

When a conscientious German Catholic Bishop visiting Israel and the Occupied Territories on 5 March compared Israel’s oppression of Palestinians with Nazi oppression of Jews at Ghetto Warsaw, Israeli apologists got furious.

Gregor Maria Franz Hanke of Eichstatt couldn’t suppress his rectitude and human decency when he was brought face to face with the affronting ugliness of the “separation wall” which has already morphed Palestinian population centers into modern-day concentration camps.

Upon seeing the misshapen creature, which is as ugly and as deformed as the Nazi-like mentality that gave birth to it, the German bishop said the following:

“This morning we saw pictures of the Warsaw ghetto at Yad Vashem and this evening we are going to the Ramallah ghetto.”

Unfortunately, we don’t have many religious leaders, let alone politicians, who are willing to call the spade a spade, especially when it happens to be in Jewish hands.

But this man said it as it is, preferring to be at ease with his conscience at the expense of standing accused and vilified by the holocaust cult.

There are many reasons and motives for western flaccidity toward Israel and Zionism. Some westerners believe that the holocaust, which was perpetrated by Europeans, should justify anything and everything Israel does to the Palestinians, including crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Many other westerners, especially North Americans, are simply scandalously ignorant of the Nazi-like nature of the Israeli state. Others know the facts very well, but are too cowardly and dishonest to speak up for fear of Zionist intimidation and retaliation. Others are simply malicious and believe that Israel, by virtue of being powerful militarily, has the right to pursue Nazi-like policies in order to serve its goals and interests. This is the same folk who would have embraced the Third Reich soul and heart because power is their God and “realism” is their religion.

I believe that people like the honorable bishop and all other free-minded voices that speak up in defense of truth, that don’t flinch from calling the spade a spade and refuse to cringe or cower in the face of evil, are the salt of mother earth and the crème de le crème of humanity. It these sporadic candles of light that keeps our world from plunging into moral nihilism.

Hence, we must salute them for their courage and morality and never allow ourselves to betray them or let them down. We must seek to emulate them in their courage and honesty and moral defiance in the face of evil, because in the final analysis life itself is a moral stand and is too short to be squandered and exhausted in the zigzags of political correctness. The Quran states:

“By the passage of time, man is indeed in a state of loss, except for those who believe, and do good deeds, and counsel each other to truth and counsel each other to patience.”

Of course, the bishop of Eichstatt is not inventing anything. He simply saw this diabolical, gigantic structure meandering around Palestinian population centers all over the West Bank, from Jenin in the north to Dahiriya in the south, cutting of neighbor from neighbor, and creating ghettos congested with poverty, misery, hunger and oppression.

In fact, had the bishop gone a little deeper and a little further, the overwhelming ugliness of Israel’s shame would have shocked him even further. I am saying this because Israel has not stopped at merely converting Palestinian towns and villages into virtual detention camps, but went many steps further by making sure that the tormented souls in these ghettos are constantly and relentlessly hounded and surrounded.

Indeed, not a day passes these days without the Israeli occupation army and the Gestapo-like Mishmar Gvul (Border Police) carrying out several raids into Palestinian towns and villages. During these criminal rape-like forays, innocent people are killed, injured and arrested, and their property is destroyed.

This writer witnessed an incursion at the village of al-Kum, 20 kilometers west of Hebron on Saturday, 10 March.

Around 2: a.m., numerous Israeli troops and paramilitary policemen stormed the small village (pop. 3000), placed it under curfew amid loud explosions of stun grenades meant to terrorize the people. Then the forces spread all over the village, vandalizing property and smashing glass and turning furniture upside down. After that, the mostly undisciplined soldiers used an elderly man, in his early 70s, as a human shield. Then they raided the local mosque, arrested three young men in their early mid 20s and left seven hours later.

Around the same time, a Palestinian driver, who reportedly transferred Palestinian laborers into East Jerusalem was beaten to death by the grandchildren of the Holocaust. According to eyewitnesses, Israeli Border Policemen ganged up on the man, identified as 32-year-old Wael Yousef Karawi, beat him on the head with the butts of their rifles, causing him a massive brain hemorrhage. The man collapsed and died on the spot. Then a few hours later a mendacious statement coming out of the Israeli mill of lie claimed that the man died of “natural causes.”

A day earlier, another poor Palestinian worker was killed in Gaza as he sought to enter Israel to find work. Israel has been starving Palestinians en mass by preventing them from accessing work and food. This manifestly criminal policy is carried out by barring Palestinians from fishing off the Gaza shore “for security reasons.” Today, as I write this piece, an Israeli naval patrol opened fire on two fishermen, injuring them both. More to the point, Gazans are not allowed to travel abroad for work or even medical treatment, because the so-called “border terminal” between Gaza and Egypt (Gaza’s only exit to the outside world) is kept closed by Israel nearly all the time for no reason other than tormenting an already thoroughly tormented people.

None the less, Israel still has the audacity to tell the world that it has ended its occupation of Gaza. You see God’s lying people.

Two weeks ago, the Israeli occupation army murdered two people in Nablus, including a young boy who hurled a stone toward (not on or at but toward) an Israeli Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) rampaging through the streets of the city. The other man was shot dead as he stood at his rooftop to fix a TV antenna. Responding to charges of cold-blooded murder, an Israeli army spokesperson said rather tersely that the “incident is being investigated.”

Of course, this is a lie, nothing is being investigated, and even if there was an investigation, it would blame the victims and declare the killers `innocent of any wrong doing” because they acted in accordance with outstanding army instructions.!!!! Well, even the Gestapo and SS were also acting in accordance with outstanding army instructions.

In the meantime, the Israeli state keeps swelling its dungeons and detention camps with young Palestinians. The declared reason is “security,” but the real reason is to keep as many Palestinians as possible behind bars in order to use them as bargaining chips in any prospective negotiations with the inherently weak Palestinian Authority.

According to both Israeli and Palestinian sources, the Israeli army rounds up an average of 15-20 Palestinians per days. Now the number of Palestinian detainees and internees in Israeli jails and detention camps stands at 10,000-11,000.

On Friday, 9 March, an Israeli military court sentenced Hebron MP Hatem Qafisha, to six months of “administrative detention,” without charge or trial. The six months are renewable depending on the mood of the Shin Beth officer in charge of the Hebron region. There are Palestinian detainees who have been languishing in Israeli dungeons for 80 or even 90 months without charge or trial. Usually, the mantra of security is always ready to be evoked in defense of the Nazi-like justice system.

In fact, Qafisha has already spent 93 months in Israeli jails first for “harboring extremist views” and second for “competing in legislative elections under the banner of a terrorist organization,” a clear allusion to Hamas.

Well, didn’t Israel and the United States consent to the participation of Hamas in the elections, which took place in 2006? If so, why arrest these people, including democratically-elected lawmakers, cabinet ministers, and even the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council Aziz Dweik, and dump them in detention camps for lengthy terms? If they have committed any crime, let them be tried before a genuine court of law, not before the court of the occupation for which a Palestinian is guilty even if proven innocent…just as the Nazi courts viewed Jews as guilty even proven innocent.

Are the Zionists the Nazis of our time? Is the Israeli army and police the Wehrmacht and Gestapo of our time? This is a question for Jews to answer. Maybe they will come to the realization that this sick and sickening state is corroding their humanity. Just maybe.

I introduced Khalid Amayreh’s article with the idea that the Nazi analogy to Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians is the most hated comparison of all. Essays and diaries appearing on blogs that propose such an analogy are greeted fast and furiously with condemnation of the author, who is immediately overwhelmed with charges of anti-Semitism, and every measure taken to disturb discussion of just how it might be applicable, if it is. Mixed in with the condemnations one can also find charges against the Palestinians, that they send suicide bombers into Israeli pizzerias to kill innocent Israeli civilians and engage in similar atrocities, while conveniently failing to mention the inciting causes of such acts.

However, let us suppose that the Bishop’s analogy is incorrect. Most Americans, who are really ignorant of the reality of life in the West Bank and Gaza, the true history of the conflict, and the real purpose of Israel’s 40 year military occupation of the Palestinian people, i.e., to confiscate their lands, would certainly not find that hard to believe. From what most Americans know (been told), Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is (portrayed as) the victim of Palestinian terrorism. “Terror, terror, terror,” was the way Ariel Sharon often put it, and what the Israeli propaganda machine, which now has the full complicity of the US State Department, keeps repeating.

But if the Nazi analogy is incorrect, by how much is it incorrect? Before any suicide bomber entered Israel during the second Intifada, Israel soldiers had killed many innocent Palestinians. Included among them were 27 innocent children, aged 4 months to seventeen, most of whom were shot in the head by live ammunition. What kind of people engage in or condone such behavior? As Khalid Amayreh addressed it, “This is a question for Jews to answer.” Actually, this is a question for Israelis to answer. Jews in organizations like Not In Our Name and Jewish Voice for Peace and dozens of other activist organizations in Israel, Palestine, the US, and around the world already seem to know the answer.

The above article originated on http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org – Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit, © By Khalid Amayreh for thepeoplesvoice.org, is attached and the title and text remain unchanged.

This version was reprinted with permission from: http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

From the perspective of Palestinians living in the South Hills of Hebron, it appears that the State of Israel is determined to act on its policy of destroying their villages. As reported in the Israel newspaper, Haaretz, on the weekend of March 9-10 dozens of buildings were demolished by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) under the pretext that the residents lacked building permits in four different locations: Qawawis, M’neizel, Um el Cheir, and the Cubeita family, near the settlement of Yatir. Such acts only reinforce the obvious reality that the sole purpose of the military occupation is the confiscation of more and more land belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank.

The majority of the demolished structures served as residences, bathroom facilities, and in some cases they had agricultural purposes. In spite the fact that most of the buildings were only temporary structures, the military destroyed them and the lives of families already made difficult by the occupation. In addition, last week the residents of the village Jinba received military orders instructing the demolition of 20 more buildings. One of the orders provided an excellent example of the military’s cruelty as it included the demolition of a small bathroom facility located within a cave used by one of the families.

In spite of the adversity caused by these demolitions, the farmers of the South Hebron Hills are refusing to be ethnically cleansed from their ancestral grazing land.

In reaction to this event, a coalition of Israeli, Palestinian, and international activists joined with the farmers to rebuild their homes in the South Hills of Hebron. The rebuilding activity was co-sponsored by Ta’ayush, International Solidarity Movement, Rabbis for Human Rights, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Gush-Shalom, Coalition of Women for Peace, Machsom Watch, Yesh-Gvul, Shalom Achsav (student’s organization in Beer-Sheva), Meretz (student’s organization in Beer-Sheva).

Because the rebuilding effort required financing that the local Palestinians did not have, the materials were purchased on credit so that the villagers could live in houses again as soon as possible. In the meantime, a drive to raise money for material costs is being conducted. The villagers have been living in tents on their land since the demolitions.

Last weekend, the activists began the rebuilding effort with four homes in Qawawis. They also helped repair a damaged house in Imneizil. Israeli groups Rabbis for Human Rights and Ta’ayush arranged buses for volunteers coming from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Beer Sheba, with around 50 helping on Friday and 70 on Saturday.

The photos show the volunteers mixing cement, building walls, and placing corrugated iron roofs on top of the walls.

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/03/11/qwawis-rebuilding/

To pay for materials, the International Solidarity Movement issued an appeal one week ago.

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/02/28/south-hebron-appeal/

If anyone would like to contribute to this house rebuilding effort, you can send your check in any amount, made out to “ISM-USA,” to:

ISM-USA
PO Box 5073
Berkeley, CA 94705

Reproduced by permission of ISM.

Amal A is Arab-Palestinian woman, whose blog,  Improvisations: Arab Woman Progressive Voice provides news and commentary on “Arab Women, Palestine, Cultural Politics, and Everything in Between.” She describes these improvisations as neither a manifesto nor a treatise, because she believes that life is too complicated for either. She is an Arab-Palestinian woman with “a progressive point of view always under construction,” as she puts it, “because (she) often finds herself caught between anti-Arab racism and arab reactionary politics, both of which threaten to gag (her). I’m raising my voice against both, hoping in the process to contribute an improvised note to a progressive Arab blogosphere.”

Yesterday I saw this interesting presentation by Amal entitled, East is East and West is West?, dated Saturday, March 17, 2007, which expresses the frustration that occurs when, in the political climate that Bush and company have served up for us since 9/11, Arab and Muslim women (and men) have had to defend themselves against antiArab prejudices and rediculous Islamophobic stereotypes.

East is East and West is West?

This

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/16/AR2007031601941.html

is an annoying and shallow article by Genivive Abdo in The Washington Post. According to her, the Muslim world is becoming more Islamic instead of more Western. In presenting her evidence, she lumps together everything Muslim or Islamic: political parties (Hamas, Hizbollah, Muslim Brotherhood), Islamic feminists, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), women wearing hijab on Cairo streets, young Muslims in America embracing religious symbols–all are examples to show how Muslims are not moving towards secularism. She predicts that the future will be even more Islamic.

Hence her advice that instead of trying to convert Muslims to secularism and instead of supporting the small minority of secularists that held a Secular Summit recently, the US should try to listen to the majority of Muslims who are becoming more Islamic as we speak. The representative in the US of this majority is CAIR.

There are several problems here:

First, she is falling for an either/or logical fallacy: There is the secular West on one side and there is the Muslims on the other. The Muslims are not part of the secular West (they are visiting on temporary visas; no wonder people tell them to “go home” whenever they are angry with them). The West is all secular and there is a western consensus as to where religion belongs. Christians and Jews can embrace their religious symbols in the West without being seen as anti-secular. Christian kids in the US can attend Christian summer camps without anybody thinking twice that maybe they do not belong to this country. Only Muslims are the odd ones out. Her essay reinforces this faulty perception big way.

Second, she is giving me two options; no wonder I feel I’m suffocating: either Ibn Warraq and co. or CAIR. Frankly, I don’t care for either group. Ibn Warraq and co. don’t represent secularism as much as they do a political agenda that uses secularism to bash Arabs and Muslims, and CAIR doesn’t represent all Muslims in America as much as they would love to believe they do.

Third, she takes the neo-conservatives as representatives of the “Western attitude to Islam.” In reality, things are more complicated, and the neo-conservatives are being challenged in the US and in other parts of the western world. Unlike Bin Laden, I don’t believe there is a western conspiracy against Islam. ACLU is western, those demonstrating against the war are western, the first amendment that protects CAIR is western, and Rachel Corrie is western. On the other side, some of the closest allies of the US are self-identified Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Forth, while she feels confident making glib generalizations about were the Arab world is heading (what are her qualifications exactly?) and how Muslims are becoming more Islamic, she doesn’t bother give any explanations for any of this. It’s all happening in a historical vacuum. But who needs an explanation for what everybody always already knows: i.e. the Muslims are becoming more religious!! When did they really stop being that when seen through “western” eyes? Muslims, by definition, are religious and can’t be anything else. This is why no explanation is offered. Just her advice: give it up; these people will never change. Hence the precious conclusion:

“What all this means is that Western hopes for full integration by Muslims in the West are unlikely to be realized and that the future of the Islamic world will be much more Islamic than Western.”

There is nothing original here. E. M. Forster said it many years ago: “East is east, and west is west, and never the twain will meet.”

Well, they’ve been meeting, clashing, embracing, screwing, and breeding for centuries.

Amal’s blog may be read here:

http://www.arabwomanprogressivevoice.blogspot.com/

Anna Baltzer describes herself as a young Jewish-American Columbia graduate, Fulbright scholar, and two-time volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service, a human rights organization based in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Since the Summer of 2005, she has been touring around the United States and abroad making presentations at high schools, colleges, and universities, educating people about the true nature of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people. She has written a book, Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied territories,  (cover to the right) describing her personal experiences, observations, and photographs over a five month period in which she documented human rights violations by the Israeli occupying force. She actively supports Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent resistance against the Occupation and is presently engaged in this activity in the West Bank.

Anna also writes articles about her day-to-day experiences in the West Bank that are posted on her blog, AnnaInTheMiddleEast, which often appear in electronic media such as the Electronic Intifada.

http://www.annainthemiddleeast.com/

Anna gave permission to reprint some of her work on political blogs in the USA. This article captures what Anna refers to as the “bizarre” world of military occupation, and was entitled, Assassination in Bizarro World. It was posted on Wednesday, February 07, 2007. I hope that Anna will consider crossposting her writings about Palestinian life under military occupation and her work as a peace activist in the future.

Several days ago while attending an embroidery workshop for local women, we received a frantic call from the north about a killing. We called around to see if any other human rights groups had internationals in Jenin, but it seemed everyone had headed south to document settler violence around Hebron. The next day, we traveled to Rumani, a village on the northwestern edge of the West Bank. We brought along our friend Ashraf translate for us, a soft-spoken Palestinian nonviolent activist studying at the American University in Jenin. When we arrived in the village, we were told that the family we’d be visiting was very religious, so Ashraf would have to stay with the men while we took the report from the victim’s wife, the only adult witness. My colleagues and I were guided into a room full of women from the village, sitting with somber faces around the victim’s mother and wife. I realized this was the Palestinian equivalent of “sitting Shiva” in the Jewish tradition, when family and friends gather right after a death to mourn and comfort the next of kin.

The mother was expecting us and made room on both sides of her for us to sit down, spreading her blanket across us when we did. Not knowing what to do, I whispered “thank you” and sat with the women in silence for a while. Eventually I cleared my throat and explained, who we were and why we’d come. Several women smiled weakly and thanked us. One who was holding a baby stood up and brought the baby over to me to hold. It was a tiny 30-day-old girl who breathed deeply as she slept in my arms. The victim’s brother Saber, who had just arrived to translate, motioned to his brother’s wife before speaking up: “This is their first, and last, child.”

Saber invited us to move next door to get the report from his sister-in-law in private. There she began to tell her story, which Saber translated:

“Three nights ago William and I were walking home from this house after visiting with family. Since there is no electricity in the village, we could not see that there were people hiding in the bushes outside our home. When we got to our door, three men in civilian clothes jumped out and demanded to see William’s ID. They were speaking to each other in Hebrew. William showed them his ID and they took out a gun and shot him in the chest. He fell to the ground and then they shot him twice more in the head.

“Then they took our child from my arms and lay her next to William’s body. They took off my headscarf and pulled me by my hair away from my child. They told me that if I cried out they would kill me and my baby too. Then they walked away and I could see the Army jeeps on the main road turn on their headlights to light the way through the forest that surrounds our house. I was so scared that I did not scream.”

I asked Saber if they knew why William was targeted. Saber explained that their brother, Ra’ad, had been arrested exactly one year before for his support of Islamic Jihad. William had been accused of having hid his brother when the Israeli Army came to capture him. They had tried everything–undercover salespeople, women visitors in civilian clothes, etc–and blamed William for making Ra’ad’s capture so difficult. Saber said there could be only one explanation for his brother’s assassination: “Revenge.”

We asked the family if they had contacted a lawyer and they said they were afraid it would only make things worse. Ra’ad had a lawyer, and felt that the more publicity his case received, the worse his treatment became in jail. He was tortured until he couldn’t see straight, and has continued to suffer from health problems after spending more than four months in interrogation. Saber said they move Ra’ad around to different jails constantly so he’s unable to develop or maintain friendships.

Since stories like Ra’ad’s are so common I hardly took note. My colleagues and I call this the “Bizarro World Syndrome,” where outrageous policies suddenly become perfectly acceptable. How has anyone come to see as normal assassinating a man accused of protecting his brother? Even if he were guilty of harboring a threat, or even if he were a threat himself, since when is it acceptable to hunt a suspect down and murder him in cold blood? If a suspect in the US were planning an attack against civilians, would we advocate someone going to his home and shooting him dead? Or should he be arrested, and put on trial to determine whether or not he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? But “innocent until proven guilty” does not exist for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories under Israeli law. Even if spared assassination, Palestinian prisoners are rarely given a trial, and even more rarely a fair one. (Sound like somewhere south of Florida you know?)

Israeli-occupied Palestine is a bizarro world indeed. Since when–outside of Guantanamo, lest we forget–is it normal to torture prisoners, many of them never even told what they are being held for? How can the world stand by as a foreign Army kidnaps a third of the democratically- elected parliament? What would we do if Iran’s army came in and captured a third of our government, claiming–rightfully, perhaps–that our representatives were a threat to their safety? (Don’t say celebrate, lefties–that’ s not how democracy works!) The parallel of course assumes that Hamas is in the midst of plotting an attack on Israelis, hard to argue given that the party has held to an almost unwavering unilateral ceasefire for two years. Let us also not forget that according to the Israeli military orders that govern the West Bank and Gaza, it’s actually illegal to be a member of ANY political party, including Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP (the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party), and others. So really anyone who adopts an opinion on the political issues that govern their lives can be a target for assassination, arrest, or even home demolition.

This morning we received a call from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) that two Palestinian homes were being destroyed in East Jerusalem. We were too far to make it in time, but it’s not hard to guess the reason–either the family did not have a building permit (permits are given out freely to Jewish families but almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain), or the demolition was punitive. Two years ago the Army declared it would halt punitive demolitions since they are ineffective at deterring attacks (other good reasons could have included that they are illegal and a form of collective punishment), but they continue in Gaza so I can only assume that goes for the West Bank as well.

One such demolition attempt in Gaza recently received widespread media attention: a man, after hearing that the Army would demolish his home in ten minutes, ran and gathered friends and family to flood his home so that demolishing the home would mean running over hundreds of people as well. Their organized direct action was successful and the bulldozers eventually retreated–who says nonviolent resistance is not alive and thriving in Palestine?

Hearing the story, some people sympathized with Israel. Apparently, the man was involved in shooting Qassam rockets at Israeli towns, threatening Israeli civilians. Bizarro World Syndrome. Yes, any country has a right to defend its own citizens. But since when does this right extend to bulldozing people’s homes? Israel’s punitive demolitions aren’t just the homes of suspects or confirmed criminals themselves; it’s also the homes of their families. After the Oklahoma City bombing, did the FBI bulldoze Timothy McVeigh’s home? Did they bulldoze the home of his parents, and his siblings, and his cousins? Should they have? It’s astounding the way Israeli security hysteria–some, but not all, of it justified, in my opinion–has warped many people’s sense of what is okay and what isn’t. It doesn’t take more than switching the names and ethnicities around to expose the underlying inconsistencies.

The settlements complete the bizarro world. I think my colleague Amy articulated it best in her blog (www.travelingamy. blogspot. com):

“Pretend are Canadian and you went to Sweden. Maybe you bought some land there and built some houses and sold them to your other Canadian friends. Maybe you even built a little fence around your compound. But is it okay to raise the Canadian flag, impose immigrant restrictions, have the Canadian military protect you, and announce it to be part of Canada? The same thing is happening here and some people think it’s just fine.”

The parallel assumes that settlers are even buying land in the West Bank and Gaza, which they are not, at least not from the land’s rightful owners. They are stealing it, or more accurately, their government is stealing it and encouraging citizens to move onto it. The irony is that although Israeli flags, soldiers, and families are ubiquitous in the West Bank, Israel is careful not to officially claim the West Bank to be a part of Israel, because then it would have to extend rights to the people living there. Giving Palestinians in the coveted West Bank equal rights to the people who live all around them in Jewish-only towns and cities would eventually render Palestinians a majority in Israel, and Jews a minority. If it wanted to be a democracy, Israel would have to evolve from being the state only of the Jews to being a state of its citizens and occupants. But this remains a radical idea for many.

Occupation is not transitional stage; it’s a strategic limbo between annexation and withdrawel in which the occupier reaps the benefits of controlling territory (in this case land, water, and other resources) without having to grant inhabitants equal rights and freedoms. But although the economics of the Occupation are sustainable, the injustice is not; oppressed people will always resist. Territorially, it is not in Israel’s interest to end the Occupation, but for security and basic decency, I believe, it is. Time will tell which interest will prevail.

In struggle,

Anna

Lest anyone believe that Jewish world opinion towards Israel’s rightist project to achieve a more nationalistic or extreme Zionist conception of Israel is singular, read below. A kind of rebellion among “Independent Jewish Voices” heard not only in Israel, but around the world is probably more common than is realized. It just doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

When it comes to human rights and social justice, no people, except perhaps Black people in America and other oppressed peoples around the world that momentarily come to mind, know those lessons better than Jewish people. The Holocaust will forever burn in our memories. While some Israelis may have gone astray and found themselves in powerful positions dictating a different, illiberal worldview, “some” is still a minority no matter how powerful and controlling it becomes. My impression is that we are now seeing the upsurge of liberal voices like these coming from Britain, speaking the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum. They are heard here in America as well. We hope that they keep speaking up. People who know the difference between right and wrong, the bringers of human rights and social justice, shall win in the end.

The text below was issued as a Press Release from Independent Jewish Voices on February 9, 2007

One hundred high-profile British Jews, wishing to state their independence from institutions in Britain which, claiming to represent all Jews,who support Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, reject it.

http://www.ijv.org.uk/

We are a group of Jews in Britain from diverse backgrounds, occupations and affiliations who have in common a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights. We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole. We further believe that individuals and groups within all communities should feel free to express their views on any issue of public concern without incurring accusations of disloyalty.

We have therefore resolved to promote the expression of alternative Jewish voices, particularly in respect of the grave situation in the Middle East, which threatens the future of both Israelis and Palestinians as well as the stability of the whole region. We are guided by the following principles:

1. Human rights are universal and indivisible and should be upheld without exception. This is as applicable in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as it is elsewhere.
2. Palestinians and Israelis alike have the right to peaceful and secure lives.
3. Peace and stability require the willingness of all parties to the conflict to comply with international law.
4. There is no justification for any form of racism, including anti-Semitism, anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia, in any circumstance.
5. The battle against anti-Semitism is vital and is undermined whenever opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded as anti-Semitic.

These principles are contradicted when those who claim to speak on behalf of Jews in Britain and other countries consistently put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of an occupied people. The Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip face appalling living conditions with desperately little hope for the future. We declare our support for a properly negotiated peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people and oppose any attempt by the Israeli government to impose its own solutions on the Palestinians.

It is imperative and urgent that independent Jewish voices find a coherent and consistent way of asserting themselves on these and other issues of concern. We hereby reclaim the tradition of Jewish support for universal freedoms, human rights and social justice. The lessons we have learned from our own history compel us to speak out. We therefore commit ourselves to make public our views on a continuing basis and invite other concerned Jews to join and support us.

The list of signatories available from the site is very impressive and includes Tony Kushner, Harold Pinter, and many other dignitaries.

Portions reprinted from the Electronic Intifada with permission:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6540.shtml

Jason Kunin of Toronto is a member of the administrative council of the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians. He wrote this article last month about the growing disenchantment of western Jews with the right wing Zionist government of Israel, in particular, the tactics of representatives taking control of popular Jewish organizations in western countries and using them to fulfill its goals. In America, that would refer to organizations like the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) which supports a hard-line Likud party “no state” solution, but its influence might even extend to peace activist groups like Peace Now-USA, whose agenda has shifted in recent years to supporting a two state solution, albeit with the critical settlements issue resolved by negotiation rather than withdrawal.

In this article, Jason Kunin reviews the growing opposition among western Jews to the Likud and Kadima perspectives of the Israeli right wing government and its dissemination outside of Israel through conservative Jewish organizations, as well as the backlash, the growth of organized opposition groups, which has developed.

This (revolt) is the result of Zionist “Emergency Cabinets” being placed in control of the most of the formerly Jewish organizations throughout much of the West, creating powerful Zionist Lobbies, instead of organizations acting for the good of the Jewish communities in those countries. These efforts, while exponentially altering Government policies (exposing the effect Lobbyists have on politicians), have alienated and angered Jews throughout the West.

Criticizing Israel is NOT an Act of Bigotry

Jewish people can help avert the catastrophic effects of Israeli behavior, but only by openly opposing it.

By Jason Kunin
February 27, 2007

A grassroots revolt is underway in Jewish communities throughout the world, a revolt that has panicked the elite organizations that have long functioned as official mouthpieces for the community. The latest sign of this panic is the recent publication by the American Jewish Committee of an essay by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, entitled Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism, which accuses progressive Jews of abetting a resurgent wave of anti-Semitism by publicly criticizing Israel.

This is the latest attempt to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism in order to silence or marginalize criticism of Israel. This approach is widely used in Canada. Upon becoming CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie Farber declared that one of his goals was to “educate Canadians about the links between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.”

It is misleading for groups like the CJC to pretend that the Jewish community is united in support of Israel. A growing number of Jews around the world are joining the chorus of concern about the deteriorating condition of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories as well as the inferior social and economic status of Israel’s own Palestinian population.

In a world where uncritical support for Israel is becoming less and less tenable due to the expanding human rights disaster in the West Bank and Gaza, leaders of Jewish communities outside Israel have circled their wagons, heightened their pro-Israel rhetoric, and demonized Israel’s critics. These leaders imply that increased concerns about Israel do not result from that state’s actions, but from an increase in anti-Semitism.

Despite this effort to absolve Israel of responsibility for its treatment of Palestinians, Jewish opposition is growing and becoming more organized. On February 5, a group in Britain calling itself Jewish Independent Voices published an open letter in the Guardian newspaper in which they distanced themselves from “Those who claim to speak on behalf of Jews in Britain and other countries (and who) consistently put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of the occupied people.” Among the signatories of the letter were Nobel-prize winning playwright Harold Pinter, filmmaker Mike Leigh, writer John Berger and many others.

This development follows the emergence of similar groups in Sweden (Jews for Israeli-Palestinian Peace), France (Union Juive Francaise pour la paix, Rencontre Progressiste Juive), Italy (Ebrei contro l’occupazione), Germany (Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost), Belgium (Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique), the United States (Jewish Voice for Peace, Brit Tzedek, Tikkun, the Bronfman-Soros initiative), South Africa, and others, including the umbrella organization European Jews for a Just Peace and the numerous groups within Israel itself.

In Canada, the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians (ACJC) has been founded as an umbrella organization bringing together Jewish individuals and groups from across the country who oppose Israel’s continued domination of the West Bank and Gaza.

Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, nor does it “bleed into anti-Semitism,” a formulation that says essentially the same thing. Some genuine anti-Semites do use Israel as a cover for maligning the Jewish people as a whole, but it is fallacious to argue that anyone who criticizes Israel is anti-Semitic because anti-Semites attack Israel. There are some anti-Semites who support Israel because they are Christian fundamentalists who see the return of Jews to Jerusalem as a precondition for the return of Christ and the conversion of Jews to Christianity, or because they are xenophobes who want to get rid of Jews in their midst. Anti-Semites take positions in support of and in opposition to Israel.

It is wrong to criticize all Jews for Israel’s wrongdoings, yet Israel’s leadership and its supporters in the Diaspora consistently encourage this view by insisting that Israel acts on behalf of the entire Jewish people.

This shifts blame for Israel’s crimes onto the shoulders of all Jews. But Jewish critics of Israel demonstrate through their words and deeds that the Jewish community is not monolithic in its support of Israel.

Defenders of Israel often argue that Israel is forced to do what it does — to destroy people’s homes, to keep them under the boot of occupation, to seal them into walled ghettos, to brutalize them daily with military incursions and random checkpoints — to protect its citizens from Palestinian violence. Palestinian violence, however, is rooted in the theft of their land, the diversion of their water, the violence of the occupation, and the indignity of having one’s own very existence posed as a “demographic threat.”

To justify Israel’s continued occupation and theft of Palestinian land, the state and its defenders attempt to deny Palestinian suffering, arguing instead that Palestinian resentment is rooted not in Israeli violence, but rather in Islam, or the “Arab mentality,” or a mystical anti-Semitism inherent in Arab or Muslim culture. Consequently, pro-Israel advocacy depends upon on the active dissemination of Islamophobia. Not surprisingly, engendering hatred in this manner inflames anti-Jewish sentiment among Arabs and Muslims. None of this is a recipe for making Jews safe.

Jewish people can help avert the catastrophic effects of Israeli behavior, but only by taking a stand in opposition to it.

This article was reportedly written by Jason Kunin with help from other council members, including Cy Gonick and Dr. Mark Etkin, both of Winnipeg, Andy Lehrer of Toronto, Sid Shniad of Vancouver and Abraham Weizfeld of Montreal.

This work was placed in the public domain by the author.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/03/364749.html

This is brief but remarkable story about a Palestinian and his family, who for years refused to be ethnically cleansed off of their ancestral lands in the West Bank of Palestine. It’s the saga of Ibrahim Attallah, who today sits alone, isolated in the nearly destroyed village of Khallet Sakariya. His family is now surrounded by barbed wire and the observation posts that double as sniper towers, inside of the Israeli Gush Etzion Settlement bloc, which was built illegally on southern Bethlehem lands.

A last holdout, Mr. Attallah affirms his intent to stay. To people in the area, it is known as “the house of Khirbat Sakariya.”

An article about Ibrahim Attallah and his family appeared in a recent edition of the Palestinian News Network, which captured his experience in the title, Nonviolent resistance to occupation: family refuses to leave despite being surrounded by settlements (posted Tuesday March 13, 2007 by Najib Farag).

http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1904

After prohibiting any development, construction or renovation, Israeli forces expected that the Attallah family would depart, leaving the land to the settlers. It has worked in many Palestinian towns were life has become too intolerable to live there anymore, due to restrictions, the settlements, and the Wall.

The road from Bethlehem City to the village is not an easy one, with about 15 kilometers driven on the settlement roads of Gush Etzion, the settlement that was built on thousands upon thousands of dunams (1/4 acre) of southwestern Bethlehem lands. The Israeli government built the settlement bloc as part of its policy to overtake Jerusalem through settlement and Wall construction, and land confiscation. Gush Etzion is positioned to be included within the limits of “Greater Jerusalem.”

IIbrahim Attallah was born in 1910. Since the 1967 war, his life has been a continuous struggle against Israeli settlements and the rule imposed by the Israeli military occupation. The village of Khirbat Sakariya sits atop a mountain, from which the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is visible. Beginning in 1967 as Israeli occupation became to difficult to bear, many left. Mr. Attallah’s family of 50 was the exception. They had lived for centuries on the family’s land of 800 dunams which, after confiscation by Israeli settlers and soldiers, dwindled down to just 50 dunams. The family size, however, increased to just over 500.

Attallah said,

We have stood as strongly as possible in the face of soldiers and settlers or else we would not have been able to keep any of our land with us. What we were able to keep are our homes in semi-demolished states and a path as a way of preserving our presence here.

Mr. Attallah recounted past efforts to retain his lands. When Moshe Dayan was Israeli Security Minister and allegedly friendly with local Arabs was approached, Dayan proposed that he accept a larger piece of land in return for relinquishing his own. Mr. Attallah refused. Numerous other Israelis tried to mediate a deal to coerce the Attallah’s into giving up their land. In 1980 the Israeli commander of the Bethlehem occupying force offered local landowners 300,000 Jordanian dinars to leave. Although others accepted, Attallah again refused. He stated he would not leave his land under any circumstance.

This nonviolent resistance won him the admiration of Palestinians throughout the West Bank, who know Attallah as a sort of folk hero.

Remaining steadfast, however, has cost the Attallahs harassment. They are surrounded from every side by Israeli settlers and soldiers and have had to endure stone throwing from settlers, theft of chickens and sheep, and destruction of their crops. The soldiers have also demolished their homes and buildings.

According to Mr. Attallah, “they play a game of cat and mouse with us. They demolish something and we rebuild it. The spirits of generations of family are here.”

A glimpse of what life is like for Mr. Attallah and his family suggests that it is harsh and tense. He reported that the Israelis installed cameras that record the movements of residents from all directions 24 hours a day. The earth is dry because it cannot be replenished easily as the Israelis will not allow renovations to the water supply system. The local mosque is falling apart, half of it demolished by the Israeli authorities, which will not allow it to be repaired. The Israeli settlers come into the village and try to enter the mosque, which they claim is sacred to them.

The educational system in the village is in shambles. Although the Education Ministry has sent a few women teachers, they eventually leave because there are not even any bathroom facilities. He points out that the settlement surrounding them has large schools with “toilets, laboratories, and swimming pools.”  The Palestinian Authority has been unable to help. The local economy depends on dairy farm production. Milk and cheese is sold in Bethlehem, and even to some settlers. Mohammad, Mr. Attallah’s 48 year-old son, ran a small store for a time, but the trip to the city to replenish supplies proved too costly and time consuming.

In spite of all the hardship, Mr. Attallah’s wife put it this way, “We live on our land, despite the difficulties. We live here and we will die here.”

In the April-May 2007 issue of The Link *Volume 40, Issue 2), Shulamit Aloni, Israel Prize laureate for 2000, who served as Israel’s Minister of Education under Yitzhak Rabin, pronounced,

                  Yes, There Is Apartheid in Israel.

This article was published in Hebrew in Yediot Ahronot (Latest News), Israel’s largest circulating newspaper, and was translated into English by Sol Salbe, an Australian editor and peace activist associated with the Australian Jewish Democratic Society located in Melbourne. Salbe’s comments are in parentheses. It was subsequently published on the website of Americans for Middle East Understanding.

In this article, Aloni speaks for himself. When finished, there is the implication that he is chastising Israelis and perhaps others for having strayed from the basic lessons of life: the simple appreciation of right and wrong. Apartheid is wrong and the case that it is practiced in Israel, from Aloni’s words, is strong.

Jewish self-righteousness is taken for granted among ourselves to such an extent that we fail to see what’s right in front of our eyes. It’s simply inconceivable that the ultimate victims, the Jews, can carry out evil deeds. Nevertheless, the state of Israel practices its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population.

The US Jewish Establishment’s onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: through its army, the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp. All this is done in order to keep an eye on the population’s movements and to make its life difficult. Israel even imposes a total curfew whenever the settlers, who have illegally usurped the Palestinians’ land, celebrate their holidays or conduct their parades.

If that were not enough, the generals commanding the region frequently issue further orders, regulations, instructions and rules (let us not forget: they are the lords of the land). By now they have requisitioned further lands for the purpose of constructing “Jewish only” roads. Wonderful roads, wide roads, well-paved roads, brightly lit at night–all that on stolen land. When a Palestinian drives on such a road, his vehicle is confiscated and he is sent on his way.

On one occasion I witnessed such an encounter between a driver and a soldier who was taking down the details before confiscating the vehicle and sending its owner away. “Why?” I asked the soldier. “It’s an order–this is a Jews-only road,” he replied. I inquired as to where was the sign indicating this fact and instructing [other] drivers not to use it. His answer was nothing short of amazing. It is his responsibility to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here and let some anti-Semitic reporter or journalist take a photo so that he can show the world that Apartheid exists here?

Indeed, Apartheid does exist here. And our army is not “the most moral army in the world,” as we are told by its commanders. Sufficient to mention that every town and every village has turned into a detention center and that every entry and every exit has been closed, cutting it off from arterial traffic. If it were not enough that Palestinians are not allowed to travel on the roads paved “for Jews only,” on their land, the current GOC found it necessary to land an additional blow on the natives in their own land with an “ingenious proposal.”

Major-General Naveh, renowned for his superior patriotism, has issued a new order. Coming into effect on 19 January, it prohibits the conveyance of Palestinians without a permit. The order determines that Israelis are not allowed to transport Palestinians in an Israeli vehicle (one registered in Israel regardless of what kind of number plate it carries) unless they have received explicit permission to do so. The permit relates to both the driver and the Palestinian passenger. Of course none of this applies to those whose labor serves the settlers. They and their employers will naturally receive the required permits so they can continue to serve the lords of the land, the settlers.

Did man of peace President Carter truly err in concluding that Israel is creating Apartheid? Did he exaggerate? Don’t the US Jewish community leaders recognize the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination of 7 March 1966, to which Israel is a signatory? Are the U.S. Jews who launched the loud and abusive campaign against Carter for supposedly maligning Israel’s character and its democratic and humanist nature unfamiliar with the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 30 November 1973? Apartheid is defined therein as an international crime that among other things includes using different legal instruments to rule over different racial groups, thus depriving people of their human rights. Isn’t freedom of travel one of these rights?

In the past, the U.S. Jewish community leaders were quite familiar with the meaning of those conventions. For some reason, however, they are convinced that Israel is allowed to contravene them. It’s OK to kill civilians, women and children, old people and parents with their children, deliberately or otherwise without accepting any responsibility. It’s permissible to rob people of their lands, destroy their crops, and cage them up like animals in the zoo.

From now on, Israelis and International humanitarian organizations’ volunteers are prohibited from assisting a woman in labor by taking her to the hospital. (Israeli human rights group) Yesh Din volunteers cannot take a robbed and beaten-up Palestinian to the police station to lodge a complaint. (Police stations are located at the heart of the settlements.) Is there anyone who believes that this is not Apartheid?

Jimmy Carter does not need me to defend his reputation that has been sullied by Israelophile community officials. The trouble is that their love of Israel distorts their judgment and blinds them from seeing what’s in front of them. Israel is an occupying power that for 40 years has been oppressing an indigenous people, which is entitled to a sovereign and independent existence while living in peace with us. We should remember that we too used very violent terror against foreign rule because we wanted our own state. And the list of victims of terror is quite long and extensive.

We do not limit ourselves to denying the (Palestinian) people human rights. We not only rob them of their freedom, land and water. We apply collective punishment to millions of people and even, in revenge-driven frenzy, destroy the electricity supply for one and half million civilians. Let them “sit in the darkness” and “starve.”

Employees cannot be paid their wages because Israel is holding 500 million shekels that belong to the Palestinians. And after all that we remain “pure as the driven snow.” There are no moral blemishes on our actions. There is no racial separation. There is no Apartheid. It’s an invention of the enemies of Israel. Hooray for our brothers and sisters in the U.S.! Your devotion is very much appreciated. You have truly removed a nasty stain from us. Now there can be an extra spring in our step as we confidently abuse the Palestinian population, using the “most moral army in the world.”

So what is it that keeps many Israelis and some American Jews blind to the reality, in denial, or just disposed to lie, as the soldier above, to keep the truth from being known. More and more people like Aloni are speaking out and more and more people are learning what that truth is.

Link: http://www.ameu.org/page.asp?iid=271&aid=585&pg=1

Reprinted by permission of AMEU.

When Uri Avnery, founder of the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom (The Peace Bloc), won the Carl-von-Ossietzky-Prize in 2002, honoring the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who was murdered by the Nazis, he stated,

“I shall accept this honor on behalf of all the Israeli peace fighters, who continue their struggle in these dark times, at great risk, with full confidence in the victory of peace, human rights, and democracy in our country.”

In the citation the jury said: “Avnery’s life work in the fight for peace, human rights, and democracy follows in the footsteps of von Ossietzky.” Two months earlier, a Swedish jury awarded him the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” together with Gush Shalom and Rachel Avnery, his wife, and before that, four other international prizes: the Erich-Maria-Remarque Peace Price (“All Quite on the Western Front”), the Aachen Peace Prize, the Lower Saxony Price (awarded by Gerhard Schroeder) and the Austrian Kreisky Prize.
Uri Avnery has spent decades in Israel trying to convince the Israeli public to turn away from the treacherous path their right wing politicians have been steering them for the past 40 years that Israel has been sustaining a military occupation of the Palestinian people, while it colonizes their lands.

Before starting Gush Shalom, Uri Avnery (shown above with Arafat), who is old enough to have fought in the war of 1948, was a member of the Israel’s Knesset and worked as a journalist. He writes, often weekly, articles that reflect his broad and intimate knowledge of the Israeli government, politics, and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this article he discusses Olmert’s recent admission during an inquiry that the Lebanon invasion, as many suspected, was long in the planning just waiting for a pretext.

Olmert’s Truth was published on March 10, 2007 and is here reprinted by permission of Gush Shalom.

IF GOD wills, even a broomstick will shoot. That is an old Yiddish adage. One could add now: If God wills, even Olmert can sometimes tell the truth.

The truth, according to the Prime Minister’s testimony before the Inquiry Commission headed by Judge Vinograd that was leaked to the media yesterday, is that (the Lebanon invasion) was not a spontaneous reaction to the capture of the two soldiers, but a war planned a long time ago. We said so right from the start.

Olmert told the commission that immediately after assuming the functions of acting prime minister, in January 2006, he consulted with the army chiefs about the situation on the northern border. Until then, the prevailing doctrine followed Ariel Sharon’s decision – logical from his point of view – not to react in force to provocations in the north, so that the Israeli army could concentrate on fighting the Palestinians. But this enabled Hizbullah to build up a large stockpile of rockets of all kinds. Olmert decided to change that policy.

The army prepared a two-pronged plan: an operation on the ground aimed at the elimination of Hizbullah, and an aerial offensive, aimed at the destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure, in order to put pressure on the Lebanese public which in turn would put pressure on Hizbullah. As the Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, said at the beginning of the war: “we shall turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years.” (a rather modest aim, compared to the famous proposal of an American colleague: to “bomb Vietnam back to the stone age”.) The Air Force was also tasked with destroying Hizbullah’s rocket arsenal.

But nowadays it is not proper anymore to attack a country without a convincing reason. Already before the First Lebanon War, the Americans demanded that Israel attack only after a clear provocation that would convince the world. The necessary justification was provided at the right time by the Abu Nidal gang, which tried to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London. In the recent case, it was decided in advance that the capture of Israeli soldiers would constitute such a provocation.

A cynic might argue that this decision turned Israeli soldiers into bait. It was known that Hizbullah wanted to capture soldiers in order to force a prisoner exchange. The regular Israeli army patrols along the border fence were, in a way, a standing invitation to Hizbullah to carry out their evil design.

THE CAPTURE of the soldier Gilad Shalit by Palestinians near the Gaza border fence turned on a red light in Israel. Olmert said in his testimony that from that moment on, he was convinced that Hizbullah was about to try to carry out a similar exploit.If so, the prime minister should perhaps have ordered the army to halt the patrols along the northern border, or to reinforce them in a way that would deter Hizbullah.

That was not done. The poor members of the fateful patrol set out on their way as to a picnic.The same cynic might argue that Olmert and the army chiefs were interested in a pretext in order to execute their war plans. They were convinced, anyhow, that the soldiers would be brought home in a jiffy. But, as the British royal motto says, Honi soit qui mal y pense – Shame upon him who thinks ill of it.

Anyhow, Hizbullah attacked, two soldiers were captured, and the planned operation should have started rolling smoothly. But that did not happen. The war did indeed break out, as planned, but from then on almost nothing went according to plan. Consultations were hasty, the decisions confused, the operations indecisive. It now appears that the plan was not yet finalized and confirmed.

The Vinograd commission is supposed to find the answers to some tough questions: If the war was planned such a long time in advance, why was the army not ready for war? How come the army budget was reduced? How come the emergency arsenals were empty? Why were the reserve forces, which were supposed to carry out the operations on the ground, called up only when the war was already in full swing? And after they were finally deployed, why did they receive confused and contradictory orders?

All these show that Olmert and the generals were grossly incompetent in their military decision-making. But they also lacked any understanding of the international scene.

HASSAN NASRALLAH has openly admitted that he made a mistake.He did not understand that there had been a change in Israel: instead of Sharon, an old war-horse who was not looking for action in the north, a new man had arrived, an inexperienced politician itching for war. What Nasrallah had in mind was just another round of the usual: the capture of some soldiers and a prisoner exchange. Instead, a full-blown war broke out.

But Ehud Olmert’s mistake was even bigger. He was convinced that the United States would give him a blessing for the road and allow him to roam in Lebanon at will. But American interests, too, had changed.In Lebanon, the government of Fuad Siniora has succeeded in uniting all pro-American forces. They have loyally carried out all of Washington’s orders, have driven out the Syrians and have supported the investigation of Rafiq Hariri’s murder, which is to provide the Americans with a pretext for a massive strike against Syria.

According to Olmert’s leaks, Condoleezza Rice called him just after the outbreak of the war and conveyed to him the up-to-date American orders : it was indeed desired that Israel should deal a crushing blow to Hizbullah, the enemies of Siniora, but it was absolutely forbidden to do anything that would hurt Siniora, such as bombing Lebanese infrastructure outside Hizbullah’s territory.

That emasculated the General Staff’s plans. The main idea had been that if the civilian population in Lebanon was hurt sufficiently, it would put pressure on the government to act decisively against Hizbullah, enough to liquidate the organization or, at least, to disarm it. It is very doubtful whether this strategy would have succeeded if it had been carried out, but because of the American intervention it was not carried out.

Instead of the massive bombardment that would have destroyed the basic industries and facilities, Halutz had to be satisfied – after Condeleezza’s phone call – with bombing the roads and bridges that serve Hizbullah and the Shiite population (including the supply lines for Syrian arms to Hizbullahland.) The damage was extensive, but not sufficient to bring Lebanon to its knees – if that was at all possible. Apart from that, the air force succeeded in destroying some of the long-range missiles, but the short-range missiles were not hit, and it was those that created havoc among the population in northern Israel.

On the ground, the operation was even more confused. Only during the last 48 hours of the war, when it was already clear that the cease-fire was about to come into force, was the major offensive, in which 33 Israeli soldiers died, set in motion. What for? In his testimony, Olmert asserts that it was necessary in order to change some points in the UN resolution in Israel’s favor. We know today (as we said at the time) that these changes were worthless and they remained on paper.

THE INTERVENTION of Condoleezza Rice in the conduct of the war is interesting also in another respect. It sheds light on a question that has been engaging the experts for some time now: in the relationship between the United States and Israel, do American interests override Israeli, or is it the other way round?

This discussion came to a head when the American professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, published their research paper, according to which Israel imposes on the United States a policy that is contrary to the American national interest. The conclusion upset many who believe the opposite: that Israel is but a small wheel in the imperial American machine. (I permitted myself to argue that both versions are right: the American dog wags its Israeli tail, and the Israeli tail wags the American dog.)

When Condoleezza Rice encouraged Israel to go to war but vetoed an essential part of the war plan, it seems that she proved the two professors wrong. True, Olmert got American permission for his war, which served American interests (the elimination of Hizbullah, which opposed the pro-American Siniora government, though it officially belonged to it), but only with severe limitations (in order not to hurt the Siniora government).

THE SAME principle is now operating on the Syrian front.Bashar al-Assad offers Israel peace negotiations without prior conditions. This way, he hopes to avert an American attack on his country. Like the two professors, he believes that the Israeli lobby rules Washington.Almost all the important experts in Israel are in agreement that the Syrian offer is serious. Even in “security circles” some are urging Olmert to seize the opportunity and achieve peace in the north.

But the Americans have put an absolute veto on that, which Olmert has accepted. A vital Israeli interest has been sacrificed on the American altar. Even now, when Bush is already entering into some kind of a dialog with Syria, the Americans are prohibiting us from doing the same.

Why? Very simple: the Americans are using us as a threat. They hold us on a line, like an attack dog, and tell Assad: if you don’t do as we wish, we shall release the dog.If the Americans reach an agreement with the Syrians, using this threat among others, it is they who will garner the political profits from any accord we reach with Syria in the end.That reminds me of the events of 1973. After the October war, Israeli-Egyptian cease-fire negotiations started at km 101 (from Cairo). At some stage, General Israel Tal took over as the chief of the Israeli delegation. Much later, he told me the following story: “At a certain point, General Gamasy, the Egyptian representative, approached and told me that Egypt was now ready to sign an agreement with us. Full of joy, I took a plane and rushed to (Prime Minister) Golda Meir, to bring her the happy news. But Golda told me to stop everything immediately. She said to me: I have promised Henry Kissinger that if we arrive at an agreement, we shall transfer the whole matter to him, and he will tie up the loose ends.”

And that is what happened, of course. The negotiations at km 101 were stopped, and Kissinger took control of the scene. It was he who reached the agreement, and the US was credited with it. The Egyptians became loyal followers of the US. The Israeli-Egyptian agreement was postponed for five years. It was achieved by Anwar Sadat, who planned his historic flight to Jerusalem behind the backs of the Americans.

Now the same may happen on the Syrian front. In the best case. In the worst case, the Americans will not reach an agreement with the Syrians, they will prevent us from achieving an agreement for ourselves, and thousands of Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese will pay the price in the next war.

Link: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1173578966/

As a consequence of the invasion, over 1,000 innocent Lebanese civilians: men, women, and children, a few hundred Hezbollah militants, and dozens of Israeli citizens and soldiers, died, cluster bomb-lets continue to maim and kill Lebanese children, and Lebanon’s southern infrastructure and its beautiful coast line were devastated. Politically, Hezbollah has grown stronger, the Siniori government was weakened, and Israel was viewed as having sustained a military defeat at the hands of a band of guerillas. With these results, it would not seem to matter who wagged whose tail.

Reporting on Israel’s Bedouin people is a sad and most disturbing experience. That ongoing events reported about Israel’s treatment of its Bedouin population could be happening in modern times is inconceivable. Our friends the Israelis could not be acting so callously toward the rights of other human beings, in this case, its own Arab citizens.

The first section of this diary covers the latest injustice reported by the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages (RCUV) in the Negev, Israel, which circulated the following news and photos on March 7, 2007. The second section provides a history of the plight of the Bedouins since the birth of Israel.

A person that dies, dies only once. But they make us die every month: live again and die again, over and over again.

If this statement by Yeela Raanan of RCUV reflects anything, it is the frustration that the Negev Bedouin people have experienced month after month, year after year, decade after decade as they stubbornly cling to their ancestral lands in the face of Israeli bulldozers. Almost from the birth of Israel, Israel has targeted the Bedouins in the Negev, making laws that essentially dispossess them of their lands.

The photos show how Aqil Talalqa looks today after the Israeli government demolished this small village for the third time in three months!

Again, hundreds of police congregated by the city of Rahat. Again, they accompanied the demolishing bulldozers. Again they drove by the train tracks on their way to the village of Twail Abu-Jarwal. And again – the destruction, the violence, and the pain they leave behind.

Is it not yet obvious that the villagers have no other options? Wouldn’t five waves of demolitions, two of which demolished the entire village, have convinced anyone who had options to leave? Evidently, the government is not yet sure that these people cannot still be convinced, so provide yet another lesson, maybe you will be convinced this time. Again the village was completely demolished: 15 structures, including the sheep dens, and eleven tents. Everything was destroyed. The tents they took.

Aqil Talalqa, the village’s elected head, sat with governmental officials, in an attempt to find some kind of compromise for his tribe, about 500 people, who have no place to build a home. With the lack of any other options they returned to their ancestral lands several years ago, and now are subject to the cruel repetitive demolitions. The compromise the government offered was a neighborhood in the Bedouin town of Laqia, on another family’s land. One wonders, why would the government suggest such an impossible solution? Scores of years ago, the government confiscated land from Arabs in the Negev in order to sell it to other Arabs. For the years that passed, no Arab has been willing to build his house on another Arab’s confiscated land. And this is the land that is suggested to Talalqa. The Authority for the “Advancement of the Bedouins” knows well that building a home on another’s land brings about serious conflicts. Sadly, it seems Aqil’s answer makes sense: “They want to create conflict between families and tribes, all sorts of conflicts. For them this is fun.”

Tonight again over 100 people will be without a roof over their heads, in the cold desert night.

Thanks for this report, Yeela. We feel your frustration.

For more information about the Bedouin injustice, contact Yeela Raanan, RCUV, 86 Trumpledor St, Beersheva, Israel. The RCUV (English) site where an email address is found may be linked here:

http://www.rcuv.com/site/detail/detail/detailDetail.asp?detail_id=233630&depart_id=23392

The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Arab Villages in the Negev (RCUV) is a democratically elected body, chosen to represent 45 of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev. The primary goal of the RCUV is unconditional governmental recognition of Arab Bedouin (unrecognized) villages, which have been completely excluded from any form of governmental support or recognition. There are several other rights organizations also focused on Israel’s treatment of the Bedouins.

The history of this unfortunate and continuing episode reminds one of the great injustices that befell the American Indian in America. The techniques used by the Israeli government to confiscate Bedouin lands through arbitrary laws, in particular, are quite similar. Both stand as outrageous and deceptive displays of official government discrimination and racism.

The recent history of the Bedouin people and their confrontation with the government of Israel is available from downloadable reports from the Arab Association of Human Rights.

http://www.arabhra.org/factsheets/factsheet4.htm

There are over 100 Palestinian Arab villages in Israel that the government does not recognize officially. Over 70,000 Palestinian Arab citizens live in villages that are threatened with destruction, prevented from development, and are not shown on any map. Despite the fact that most of the “unrecognized villages” existed before the establishment of Israel, state policy considers their inhabitants as lawbreakers. It prevents them from repairing existing homes or building new ones; withholds basic rights, such as drinking water and health clinics; and in certain cases even fences off whole villages. These measures coincide with a wider policy of concentrating Palestinian Arabs and “redeeming” their lands for new Jewish settlements. Many of these settlements are built next to their unrecognized neighbors, often illegally, yet with the complete provision of services. The Bedouin problem constitutes another dimension of the apartheid policies that infect Israel society.

The Arab Bedouin are the indigenous inhabitants of the Negev and represent approximately 12% of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel. Prior to 1948, they lived from agriculture and raising livestock. During the 1948 war, the majority of the Negev’s Bedouin was driven out or fled the state’s borders. The remaining tribes were rounded up and spent the next 18 years under military rule in an enclosure zone. During this period, a number of laws were used to dispossess them of their traditional lands. Today approximately 110,000 Arab Bedouin live in the Negev, half in the poorest recognized localities in Israel. The other half of the Bedouin population lives in villages unrecognized by the state. They are denied all forms of basic services and infrastructure, and are unable to build or develop their communities in any way.

Since the mid 1960s, the Bedouin of the Negev have been subject to a forcible process of “sedentarization” into urban townships. This relocation policy, designed to “modernize” the Bedouin, has been conducted without consulting them and in manner that is culturally inappropriate. Like policies enacted on other indigenous peoples, it has had two main aims:

1. To concentrate the Bedouin and make their traditional lands available for settlement programs for Jews only.
2. To domesticate the indigenous Bedouin economy and create a cheap source of labor for the Jewish economy.

The methods of pressure on the Bedouin used to enact this policy include cutting the Bedouin off from their own culture and making life as difficult as possible until they move into the townships.

British mandate (pre1948) records list 12,600,000 dunams (.25 acre) in the Negev as used by the Bedouin. Today the Bedouin are struggling to avoid eviction from the 240,000 dunams of this area remaining to them. Although Bedouin land rights and tribal boundaries were respected by Ottoman and British authorities, the State of Israel’s sedentarization policy has been accompanied by the registration of Negev lands as state property. Unlike the rest of mandatory Palestine, no formal registration process of Negev lands was undertaken during the mandate period.

The state of Israel has been able to develop a legal process that makes Bedouin land claims invisible. This process has been achieved through three principal laws:

1. The Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts & Compensation) Law (1953) states that land that was not in the possession of its owner in April 1952 could be registered as state property. It facilitated a massive transfer of lands in the Negev, since at the time the Bedouin had been transferred by the state into the enclosure zone. Although some tribes returned to their lands after the enclosure zone was lifted, they found that, since the land was now registered with the state, they either had to lease it or “trespass.” Consent to lease has been taken in court as proof that the land was never theirs.
2. The Land Rights Settlement Ordinance (1969) classified all mawat lands (Ottoman term) as state property, unless a formal legal title could be produced. Mawat (literally dead) land was defined as unworked and more than 1.5 miles from the nearest settlement. The last opportunity for the Bedouin to register their lands against mawat status had been in 1921, at a time when their rights were not challenged by anyone. The category became a major means for expropriation in the Negev because, although Israeli courts acknowledged that Bedouin had been living in the areas they claimed, they did not recognize Bedouin tents as constituting settlements in terms of the law. Further, they defined working the land as changing it; pastoralism was an unrecognized form of living. The law abolished all previous conflicting registrations.
3. The Negev Land Acquisition (Peace Treaty with Egypt) Law (1980) facilitated large-scale confiscation orders of Bedouin lands to build military bases and an airport in the wake of the peace treaty with Egypt. No appeal against the confiscation was allowed, and the compensation terms offered ranged between 2%-15% of the terms granted to relocated Jewish Sinai settlers. The military base at Im Tinan (56,000 dunams taken) was never built, and in 1994 was turned over for use by Jewish farmers.

In 1976 the Land Settlement Department opened to finally settle Bedouin land claims, according to the following deal: it would recognize 20% of the total claim (with documented proof), would offer compensation for 30% (at 65% its value) and would expropriate 50%. To date agreements on these terms have been reached for 160,000 dunams; claims on 743,327dunams still remain outstanding.

Just over half of the Bedouin living outside the townships live in unrecognized villages. Under the Law of Planning and Construction (1965) their houses can be demolished. To speed up the sedentarization process, in 1986 the Markovitz Committee on unlicensed building, which did not consult any representative of the Negev Bedouin, recommended the demolition of 6,601 existing homes and all new buildings in the Negev. Subsequent governments have maintained this policy.

Aerial photographs of the villages are taken to check for new buildings. When a new construction is discovered, the owner is served with an administrative order to demolish the house. If they fail to do so, they are criminally prosecuted for unlicensed building. The policy turns homeowners into criminal defendants and makes the history of land ownership irrelevant. Defendants are fined and have to pay the costs of the demolition. As the Markovitz Committee recommended, these are double the cost of the house. After demolition, no consideration is given to where the evicted family will live.

According to the Association of Forty, there are currently 22,000 unrecognized houses in the Negev. In 1998, 370 houses were demolished by the authorities. Approximately 1,700 cases are currently being prosecuted in court. These figures do not include those houses demolished by the owners themselves.

Prior to 1948, approximately 90% of the Bedouin in the Negev earned their living from agriculture and 10% from raising livestock. Today over 90% live from wages earned through labor. It has been policy since 1948 to prevent the Bedouin from maintaining their ties to the land by making their traditional lifestyle unworkable, according to the following methods:

1. Restricting Access to Land and Water: While handing large areas of former Bedouin land over to Jewish farmers on long-term leases, the state will only lease lands to Bedouin farmers for a three month period, never the same land twice in a row, and will not permit any permanent cultivation. Bedouin farmers are either not given water quotas, or are charged at domestic rates (12 times agricultural ones). No assistance is given for drought years.
2. Flock Restrictions: The Plant Protection (Damage by Goats) Law (1950) requires Bedouin shepherds to get a permit from the Ministry of Agriculture to graze their goats outside of their privately owned land on surrounding state lands (mostly military areas). Permits are issued on the condition that the state is not responsible for any casualties, and at the discretion of Ministry officials. Since the mid 70s, it has been policy to seize unregistered flocks and reduce the flocks registered by 10-15%.
3. Green Patrol: The Green Patrol is an environmental paramilitary unit established by Ariel Sharon. It mobilizes for special operations to pull down Bedouin tents, seize flocks, and destroy crops planted without the appropriate permit. During its first three years, Bedouin flocks were reduced from 220,000 to 80,000. Physical coercion of Bedouin farmers has led to hospitalizations and a number of deaths. In 1997 the Green Patrol was expanded to help speed up the sedentarization process.

In order to put pressure on the Bedouin to leave the unrecognized villages, official policy is to deny these communities basic services and prevent them from developing infrastructure. Planning laws are used to prevent villagers from building any permanent constructions or even repair existing temporary ones. Connection to water and electricity networks is prohibited.

Approximately 55,000 Bedouin now live in seven townships in the Beersheva area, which are listed as the poorest municipalities in Israel. They have no sewage systems, few paved roads, and a lack of local employment opportunities. Unlike the facilities offered to neighboring Jewish communities, there is no provision for maintaining livestock or engaging in agriculture. Five townships have government appointed councils and only two townships are able to elect their own local representatives. Thus far, half the Bedouin have refused to be relocated there.

The villages were de-legalized by the enactment of the (1965) Planning and Construction Law. This law set down a framework of regulations and a national outline plan for the country’s future development. It zoned land for residential, agricultural and industrial use, and forbade any form of unlicensed construction or construction on agricultural lands. The unrecognized villages were not incorporated into the planning schemes.

The Planning and Construction Law allows the planning authorities to prosecute homeowners for building without a permit and to demolish their houses when it is deemed to be in the public interest. Moreover the law allows the courts to issue demolition orders retroactively. This is significant because 95% of the houses in the unrecognized villages were built before this legislation was enacted.

The political use of these legal powers was amplified following the report of the Markovitz Committee on unlicensed construction in the Arab community, which made three main recommendations:

1. Demolition of 1,000 existing unlicensed houses immediately, and the administrative demolition of all new unlicensed construction.
2. Classification of 4,419 houses (i.e., those of the unrecognized villages) as “gray” houses, which are slated for demolition at a later date and in the meantime are not entitled to any services and cannot be repaired.
3. Granting powers to administrators of regional planning committees to issue demolition orders without going to court; and the establishment of a “gray” unit empowered to implement these administrative demolition orders.

In the wake of the Markovitz report, article 238A was amended to allow officials to issue administrative demolition orders on houses within a month of their completion. Consequently, planning officials maintain monthly check ups of the villages through aerial photographs and visits. Villagers have been prosecuted for extensions, repairs and even fitting a toilet.

Home demolition is a planning policy choice rather than a legal requirement. Article 97A allows for retroactive approval for buildings established on agricultural land, and was used to retroactively legalize the illegally built settlements. Equally, the demolition policy is implemented unevenly: A 1997 Interior Ministry report on house demolitions admitted that it focused on “open” (unrecognized) areas. Between 1993-1996, 1440 Palestinian Arab houses were demolished, 624 of them outside of any court process. During this period, Arab homes accounted for 94% of all demolitions, despite forming only 57% of all recorded unlicensed building.

In court appeals, villagers have found that all building in the unrecognized villages has been defined as against the public interest. They are usually required to demolish their own homes, which then go unregistered in the statistics. Should they fail to do so, they are fined for contempt of court and can be imprisoned for up to a year. Equally the authorities can implement the demolition order at the cost of the homeowner. Once issued, demolition orders cannot be cancelled. However, since the “gray houses” cannot be repaired, and houses that are found to be hazardous can be demolished immediately, the authorities implement orders randomly, and wait until the other houses become unlivable.

Beyond the consequences of a very high population density within the unrecognized villages, with an average of 10 people per house, there is also a clear policy to make the villages unlivable through depriving their residents of basic rights and services. For example, a 1993 internal report for Misgav Regional Council on how to concentrate the residents of 22 unrecognized villages includes the following methods of pressure: obstructing villagers’ farming, neglecting to provide school transport from the villages, failing to meet the residents’ needs for health services and withholding drinking water.

This policy is entrenched in law under article 157A of the Planning and Construction Law, which prohibits national utility companies from connecting a building to national electricity, water or telephone networks if they have no building permit. It was designed specifically to dislodge residents from the unrecognized villages.

According to Association of Forty surveys, the consequences of these policies on 150 unrecognized localities are as follows:

Water: 130 localities are not connected to the water network. The residents transport water from neighboring villages. The quality and quantity of water available for each resident is far below normal health standards. Following a 1992 International Water Tribunal ruling that the government policy was illegal, one tap has been fitted for each village.

Health & Sewage: Health services are only available in 4 Galilee villages and in 1 village in the Negev. None are connected to a sewage network. Many homes do not have bathrooms and cannot build them. Outbreaks of jaundice and diarrhea among children have occurred due to polluted water.

Electricity: Only one village is connected to the electricity network. Most villages run private generators that provides sufficient electricity for lighting only.

Access: None of the villages are connected to the main road network, whereas nearby Jewish settlements are connected. Some villages have fences placed around them, to prevent the villagers from gaining access to their traditional lands.

Education: Schools were closed in three unrecognized villages in the North, and only one remains. In other villages, students travel 10-15km to school. Due to distance and the lack of a suitable study environment at home, achievement levels are low and there is a high student dropout rate. In Arab El-Naim (pop. 400), only one student has ever completed high school.

In the early 90s, the government agreed to recognize nine of the unrecognized villages in the north and center, and to partially adopt some of the solutions of the Association of Forty plan. Despite this decision, none of the meaningful effects of recognition have yet been carried out. Budgets that were put aside in 1996 to implement recognition still have not been released by the government finance committee. In some villages, areas to be recognized have been reduced to 20% of the original area and in others up to 40% of the existing houses have been left off the approved plan. In all the villages, demolition orders are still outstanding, and in some new ones have continued to be issued.

If you read this history, your conclusion is probably not different from my own. The Bedouins of the Negev remain an oppressed people in spite of their status as citizens of Israel.