Mostrando postagens com marcador Human Rights זכויות אדם. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Human Rights זכויות אדם. Mostrar todas as postagens
quinta-feira, 24 de maio de 2012
IS THERE A LINK BETWEEN ISRAELI PROFITS, ANTI-AFRICAN INCITEMENT?
May 24 2012, +972 Magazine http://972mag.com (Israel)
As Interior Minister Eli Yishai incites against African asylum seekers–leading to outbreaks of violence against Africans–his ministry issues visas to foreigners who pay tremendous amounts of money to come to Israel.
Mya Guarnieri*
Interior Minister Eli Yishai has called African asylum seekers “infiltrators” who threaten “the Zionist dream,” adding, “Jobs will root them here.”
But if foreigners are such a threat and jobs will root them here, then why does Yishai’s ministry continue to issue work visas to migrants?
It could have something to do with the fact that the manpower agencies—the companies that turn huge profits by importing foreign workers—have a strong lobby in both the Knesset and Ministry of the Interior.
But, wait, what does the MOI have to do with manpower agencies? Doesn’t the MOI just issue the visas and handle deportations?
In 2009, there was a major governmental restructuring that changed the supervision of both migrants and the manpower agencies that recruit them.
Rivka Makover was once the manager of the registration department in the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Labor. From 2004 to 2009, Makover supervised the licensing of manpower agencies, shutting down hundreds of those agencies over shady business dealings.
While Israeli labor law stipulates that agencies can charge approximately 1,000 US dollars for arranging jobs and visas, many charge far more. Chinese laborers have reported paying as much as $30,000 in fees. Indian workers usually pay upwards of $10,000; Filipinos between $5000 and $10,000.
In 2009, Makover’s position was eliminated, her responsibilities transferred to a body under the umbrella of the Ministry of Interior—putting all the power related to migrants in the hands of the MOI.
Since the restructuring, employees at both Kav LaOved and the Hotline for Migrant Workers say that enforcement of labor laws regarding manpower agencies has become noticeably lax, with some complaints against manpower agencies going completely ignored.
Maybe that’s because the MOI has been too busy issuing work visas. In 2009—the year that Israel announced it would deport children of migrant workers; the year that the government began inciting against African asylum seekers; the year that the Oz Unit attempted to take Africans out of South Tel Aviv—27,000 new migrant laborers entered Israel on state-issued work visas.
In 2010, the state embarked on a campaign against asylum seekers, including advertisements in which actors claimed that foreigners had taken their jobs. But, in 2010, Israel actually issued more work visas to bring more foreigners than it had in 2009, granting 32,000 new migrants work permits.
According to MOI spokeswoman Sabine Hadad, an additional 11,000 legal migrant workers arrived in Israel in 2011 on state-issued work visas. 2012 has seen the state bring 2300 new workers. While both 2011 and this year have seen significant drops in the number of new workers, the question remains—why bring them at all? Why not allow Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers—groups that cannot be deported and that are forced into unemployment and homelessness—to work?
Further, the current number of legal migrant workers stands at nearly 75,000. As migrants typically get 63-month work visas, it’s safe to say that most of these 75,000 have arrived in the past five years—the same time the country saw an influx of African asylum seekers. There are now between 45,000 and 60,000 African asylum seekers here. If the state wasn’t so intent on bringing new workers, if the state would draw from the existing labor pool, each and every one of those asylum seekers could have jobs. They wouldn’t be sitting around in parks in South Tel Aviv.
The big difference between those Israel gives work visas to and those that don’t? Those that pay the manpower agencies, a powerful group that has close ties to the MOI, get work visas. Those who don’t pay don’t get work visas. It’s that simple.
*Mya Guarnieri is a Jerusalem-based journalist and writer whose work has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Slate, Counter Punch, The Boston Review, and Caravan. She was a stringer for The National and Al Jazeera English and has been invited to serve as a commentator on Israel/Palestine on the BBC and Al Jazeera, among others. Mya holds a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Florida State University. Her short stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. She is currently working with an agent on a book about migrant workers in Israel.
HOW MAINSTREAM ISRAELI POLITICIANS SPARKED THE TEL AVIV RACE RIOT
May 24 2012, +972 Magazine http://972mag.com (Israel)
Noam Sheizaf*
Israeli governments have neglected the poor neighborhoods of Tel Aviv for decades. Today, Knesset members use the asylum seekers to channel the anger of local residents and score easy political points.
Eritrean refugees react less then a minute after their shop was attacked by a mob following protest against African refugees and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood on May 23, 2012.
For a moment, at around 11 p.m., it seemed that things were really getting out of control: Each report from the Hatikva neighborhood in south Tel Aviv was worse than previous ones: A couple of journalists – Haggai Matar from +972 and a reporter from Haaretz – were attacked and rescued by police; a mob of roughly 100 people tried to storm the Central Bus Station, considered a meeting place for African asylum seekers; a car was stormed by protesters, its windows smashed; at least two shops were looted; a woman holding a baby was struck in the head with a bottle, the baby to fell and both were rushed to a hospital; a man from Eritrea was chased by dozens of rioters and rescued by police.
Here is a short video of the attack on a car carrying African refugees:
After midnight, things calmed down a bit, and the night ended with several injured and 17 people arrested. It could have been much worse, if activists hadn’t warned African families to stay out of the streets, fearing violence. In daycares, notices like the one below were posted, urging parents to take their kids home early. If anything positive that can be said about last night, it’s the fact that no one was killed.
Note advising African asylum seekers to avoid the streets on May 23, 2012 (photo: Rotem Ilan)
According to most estimates, there are between 50,000 and 60,000 African asylum seekers in Israel, most of them from Sudan and Eritrea. There are around 100,000 illegal aliens in Israel with expired tourist and work permits, but this has not kept populist sentiment against the African refugees from gaining momentum in the last few weeks.
In recent years, the refugees – who crossed Israel’s southern borders, mostly from war-torn Sudan and dictatorial Eritrea – settled in the poorest neighborhoods of Jewish Israel – in south Tel Aviv, Eilat, and Ashdod. The residents of the southern town of Arad have elected a new mayor from Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu party, after she ran a campaign solely based around the promise to remove the aliens from town.
In south Tel Aviv, refugees – like the work immigrants who preceded them – moved into the area of the Central Bus Station (Shapira neighborhood), a poor area that was slowly going through early stages of gentrification. Later, Africans also settled in neighboring Hatikva, east of Shapira. Last night, the mob was stopped on the bridge over the Ayalon highway, which links the two neighborhoods.
The Jewish population in this area is very poor, and all of those neighborhoods have been neglected for years by the municipality and Israeli governments. The area around the bus station in particular has long been known as a center for drug trafficking, abuse and prostitution. In Kfar Shalem (near Hatikva), families of Sephardic Jews were evacuated from their homes recently to make way for new construction projects. The “Argazim” (boxes, in Hebrew) area nearby is one of the only places in Israel where Jews live in shacks and improvised homes, also under constant threat of evacuation. This socioeconomic foundation to the refugee problem is far more important than the statistics regarding their relatively small numbers or the actual crime rate.
Rioters smashing the window of an Ethiopian bar during a riot in Hatikva neighborhood on May 23, 2012 (photo: activestills)
Regarding crime, it’s important to note that refugees are not allowed to work in Israel. Hundreds of refugees, most of them men, are homeless, and can be seen roaming the streets at nights, and not only in the south. On several occasions when I was out late at night in the last couple of months I was approached by Africans asking for food, money or cigarettes. There is no denying that desperation among the refugees is on the rise, and so are the reports in the media on violent crimes committed by them. The emphasis is on “reports,” because numbers from the last few months are unavailable, and according to previous statistics, the crime rate among asylum seekers was much lower than among the Jewish population.
I should also say that my personal feeling is that the media hype regarding the situation in south Tel Aviv was much stronger than what I have actually felt there. I don’t live in Shapira, but both my brother and sister do, and I spend quite a bit of time there. I never felt threatened and I thought that the headlines in the Israeli media – both Haaretz and Maariv wrote last week that the atmosphere in the area is “on the verge of explosion” – were an exaggeration. The media certainly played its part in promoting xenophobia and fear of the Africans (the common term in Israel is not “asylum seekers” or refugees, but rather “infiltrators,” the same term used to describe Palestinians who tried to return their lands and homes in the 1950s, and were regarded by the government as potential terrorists).
MK Michael Ben-Ari giving a speech at a protest against African refugees and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood on May 23, 2012 (photo: activestills)
More than the media, politicians are to blame for last night. According to most reports, the protest was initially very quiet, and local residents who spoke at the event weren’t as harsh on the Africans as the Knesset members – none of them live in south Tel Aviv, by the way – who took the stage right after them.
MK Miri Regev from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party called the Africans “a cancer.” MK Danny Danon (Likud) said that they had established an enemy state, with Tel Aviv as its capital. MK Ben-Ari (Ichud Leumi, a national-religious party) called for every one of them to be imprisoned and deported. Ben-Ari used to be a member of Meir Kahane’s organization, which was banned in Israel and placed on the U.S. State Department’s terror list. He is now serving in the Israeli parliament. There was even a representative of the so-called moderate Kadima party – MK Ronit Tirosh – who also said that all of the African infiltrators need to be deported.
All of those MKs know all too well that deporting the refugees is forbidden according to international commitments Israel has taken upon itself. Coalition members speak out against their own policy: after all, the government could deport the refugees and pay the diplomatic price for it. But it effectively chooses to leave them here while inciting the public against them.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who wasn’t present at the protest himself, said that if he were authorized to use “the right measures, not one African infiltrator would be here within a year.” The Shas leader didn’t say what measures he was referring to. And above all, there is the deafening silence of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who spoke against the demographic danger posed by the “infiltrators,” but didn’t say a word about last night’s violence.
Israel has seen race riots before: In 1992, following the murder of a teenage girl by a Palestinian, local Israeli Jews stormed construction sites in Bat Yam, beating up Arab workers there. They were later joined by dozens of hooligans who wanted to help avenge the spilled Jewish blood. The police ended up completely blocking the city and the riots continued for five days. Since 2000, mobs have attacked Palestinians at least twice in the mixed cities of Nazareth Ilit and Akko, also cities with relatively poor Jewish populations. Both the mayors of Nazereth Ilit and of Akko were known for their violent rhetoric against Palestinians.
Untimely, this is what’s troubling the most about the current riot: the incitement is coming from the mainstream. Israel will soon enter a very long elections season – primaries will be held in the Likud and other parties within a year or so, and it seemed that many backbenchers have found in the refugees issue a populist theme that can promote their brand. Interior Minister Yishai, who has been losing support to Likud in all recent polls, was probably happy too last night, when he saw the signs with his name carried by the protesters in Hatikva, and heard the chants against Netanyahu (as I write this, Knesset Speaker Rivlin and Police Minister Aharonovitz ask MKs to show “restraint.” Netanyahu is still silent UPDATE: PM Netanyahu had since stated that “he feels the pain of the people of south Tel Aviv [...] but there is no room for the actions and statements we have seen yesterday”).
It’s less the size of the flames that have me worried today than the identity of those who are supposed to put out them out.
The blood of an African which was attacked during a riot in Hatikva neighborhood on May 23, 2012 (photo: activestills)
Read also:
Africans attacked in Tel Aviv protest; MKs: ‘infiltrators’ are cancer
How I survived a Tel Aviv mob attack
Using rape to justify racism
*Noam Sheizaf I am an Independent journalist and editor.
I have worked for Tel Aviv's Ha-ir local paper, for Ynet.co.il and for the Maariv daily, where my last post was deputy editor of the weekend magazine. My work has recently been published in Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth, The Nation and other newspapers and magazines.
I was born in Ramat-Gan and today live and work in Tel Aviv. Before working as a journalist, I served four and a half years in the IDF.
Noam Sheizaf*
Israeli governments have neglected the poor neighborhoods of Tel Aviv for decades. Today, Knesset members use the asylum seekers to channel the anger of local residents and score easy political points.
For a moment, at around 11 p.m., it seemed that things were really getting out of control: Each report from the Hatikva neighborhood in south Tel Aviv was worse than previous ones: A couple of journalists – Haggai Matar from +972 and a reporter from Haaretz – were attacked and rescued by police; a mob of roughly 100 people tried to storm the Central Bus Station, considered a meeting place for African asylum seekers; a car was stormed by protesters, its windows smashed; at least two shops were looted; a woman holding a baby was struck in the head with a bottle, the baby to fell and both were rushed to a hospital; a man from Eritrea was chased by dozens of rioters and rescued by police.
Here is a short video of the attack on a car carrying African refugees:
After midnight, things calmed down a bit, and the night ended with several injured and 17 people arrested. It could have been much worse, if activists hadn’t warned African families to stay out of the streets, fearing violence. In daycares, notices like the one below were posted, urging parents to take their kids home early. If anything positive that can be said about last night, it’s the fact that no one was killed.
Note advising African asylum seekers to avoid the streets on May 23, 2012 (photo: Rotem Ilan)
According to most estimates, there are between 50,000 and 60,000 African asylum seekers in Israel, most of them from Sudan and Eritrea. There are around 100,000 illegal aliens in Israel with expired tourist and work permits, but this has not kept populist sentiment against the African refugees from gaining momentum in the last few weeks.
In recent years, the refugees – who crossed Israel’s southern borders, mostly from war-torn Sudan and dictatorial Eritrea – settled in the poorest neighborhoods of Jewish Israel – in south Tel Aviv, Eilat, and Ashdod. The residents of the southern town of Arad have elected a new mayor from Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu party, after she ran a campaign solely based around the promise to remove the aliens from town.
In south Tel Aviv, refugees – like the work immigrants who preceded them – moved into the area of the Central Bus Station (Shapira neighborhood), a poor area that was slowly going through early stages of gentrification. Later, Africans also settled in neighboring Hatikva, east of Shapira. Last night, the mob was stopped on the bridge over the Ayalon highway, which links the two neighborhoods.
The Jewish population in this area is very poor, and all of those neighborhoods have been neglected for years by the municipality and Israeli governments. The area around the bus station in particular has long been known as a center for drug trafficking, abuse and prostitution. In Kfar Shalem (near Hatikva), families of Sephardic Jews were evacuated from their homes recently to make way for new construction projects. The “Argazim” (boxes, in Hebrew) area nearby is one of the only places in Israel where Jews live in shacks and improvised homes, also under constant threat of evacuation. This socioeconomic foundation to the refugee problem is far more important than the statistics regarding their relatively small numbers or the actual crime rate.
Regarding crime, it’s important to note that refugees are not allowed to work in Israel. Hundreds of refugees, most of them men, are homeless, and can be seen roaming the streets at nights, and not only in the south. On several occasions when I was out late at night in the last couple of months I was approached by Africans asking for food, money or cigarettes. There is no denying that desperation among the refugees is on the rise, and so are the reports in the media on violent crimes committed by them. The emphasis is on “reports,” because numbers from the last few months are unavailable, and according to previous statistics, the crime rate among asylum seekers was much lower than among the Jewish population.
I should also say that my personal feeling is that the media hype regarding the situation in south Tel Aviv was much stronger than what I have actually felt there. I don’t live in Shapira, but both my brother and sister do, and I spend quite a bit of time there. I never felt threatened and I thought that the headlines in the Israeli media – both Haaretz and Maariv wrote last week that the atmosphere in the area is “on the verge of explosion” – were an exaggeration. The media certainly played its part in promoting xenophobia and fear of the Africans (the common term in Israel is not “asylum seekers” or refugees, but rather “infiltrators,” the same term used to describe Palestinians who tried to return their lands and homes in the 1950s, and were regarded by the government as potential terrorists).
More than the media, politicians are to blame for last night. According to most reports, the protest was initially very quiet, and local residents who spoke at the event weren’t as harsh on the Africans as the Knesset members – none of them live in south Tel Aviv, by the way – who took the stage right after them.
MK Miri Regev from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party called the Africans “a cancer.” MK Danny Danon (Likud) said that they had established an enemy state, with Tel Aviv as its capital. MK Ben-Ari (Ichud Leumi, a national-religious party) called for every one of them to be imprisoned and deported. Ben-Ari used to be a member of Meir Kahane’s organization, which was banned in Israel and placed on the U.S. State Department’s terror list. He is now serving in the Israeli parliament. There was even a representative of the so-called moderate Kadima party – MK Ronit Tirosh – who also said that all of the African infiltrators need to be deported.
All of those MKs know all too well that deporting the refugees is forbidden according to international commitments Israel has taken upon itself. Coalition members speak out against their own policy: after all, the government could deport the refugees and pay the diplomatic price for it. But it effectively chooses to leave them here while inciting the public against them.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who wasn’t present at the protest himself, said that if he were authorized to use “the right measures, not one African infiltrator would be here within a year.” The Shas leader didn’t say what measures he was referring to. And above all, there is the deafening silence of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who spoke against the demographic danger posed by the “infiltrators,” but didn’t say a word about last night’s violence.
Israel has seen race riots before: In 1992, following the murder of a teenage girl by a Palestinian, local Israeli Jews stormed construction sites in Bat Yam, beating up Arab workers there. They were later joined by dozens of hooligans who wanted to help avenge the spilled Jewish blood. The police ended up completely blocking the city and the riots continued for five days. Since 2000, mobs have attacked Palestinians at least twice in the mixed cities of Nazareth Ilit and Akko, also cities with relatively poor Jewish populations. Both the mayors of Nazereth Ilit and of Akko were known for their violent rhetoric against Palestinians.
Untimely, this is what’s troubling the most about the current riot: the incitement is coming from the mainstream. Israel will soon enter a very long elections season – primaries will be held in the Likud and other parties within a year or so, and it seemed that many backbenchers have found in the refugees issue a populist theme that can promote their brand. Interior Minister Yishai, who has been losing support to Likud in all recent polls, was probably happy too last night, when he saw the signs with his name carried by the protesters in Hatikva, and heard the chants against Netanyahu (as I write this, Knesset Speaker Rivlin and Police Minister Aharonovitz ask MKs to show “restraint.” Netanyahu is still silent UPDATE: PM Netanyahu had since stated that “he feels the pain of the people of south Tel Aviv [...] but there is no room for the actions and statements we have seen yesterday”).
It’s less the size of the flames that have me worried today than the identity of those who are supposed to put out them out.
Read also:
Africans attacked in Tel Aviv protest; MKs: ‘infiltrators’ are cancer
How I survived a Tel Aviv mob attack
Using rape to justify racism
*Noam Sheizaf I am an Independent journalist and editor.
I have worked for Tel Aviv's Ha-ir local paper, for Ynet.co.il and for the Maariv daily, where my last post was deputy editor of the weekend magazine. My work has recently been published in Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth, The Nation and other newspapers and magazines.
I was born in Ramat-Gan and today live and work in Tel Aviv. Before working as a journalist, I served four and a half years in the IDF.
Demonstrators attack African migrants in south Tel Aviv
Likud MK describes Sudanese migrants as cancer; government prepares for mass deportation.
May 24, 2012, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
By Ilan Lior and Tomer Zarchin
Israelis protest against African migrant workers in south Tel Aviv, May 23, 2012. Photo
by Moti Milrod
Some 1,000 protesters rallied in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood on Wednesday and called for the ousting of African asylum seekers from Israel.
Demonstrators attacked African passersby while others lit garbage cans on fire and smashed car windows.
Another group of demonstrators stopped a shuttle taxi and searched for migrant workers among the passengers, while banging on the windows.
The crowd cried "The people want the Sudanese deported" and "Infiltrators get out of our home."
Likud MK Miri Regev participated in the protest and said that "the Sudanese were a cancer in our body."
The protesters expressed their dismay with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government's dealings with the "problem" of asylum seekers. Some people carried signs in support of Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who called for the detention and expulsion of all asylum seekers earlier this week.
Following the protest, hundreds of people assembled in the main street of the Hatikvah neighborhood. Several protesters smashed the windows of a grocery store that served the migrant workers community, broke the windows of a barber shop and looted it.
Police arrested 17 people during the protest, with some of them detained while beating Sudanese migrants. Those arrested will be brought in before the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court on Thursday for an extension of their remand.
Earlier Wednesday, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said he supported the mass deportation of South Sudanese migrants if an investigation will find that they are not legally entitled to refuge.
Weinstein will argue next week before the Jerusalem District Court that there is no legal obstacle to the expulsions since individual checks will establish that none of them face any threat to their lives in South Sudan.
The Jerusalem District Court recently issued a temporary order prohibiting the migrants' deportation until it rules on a petition filed by five human rights organizations against the state's intent to deport the refugees.
Weinstein, who has expressed support for sending migrants from South Sudan back home, will ask the court to lift the temporary order preventing their expulsion.
The Foreign Ministry recently outlined its position regarding 700 South Sudan nationals staying in Israel; the government says there are as many as 3,000 here.
The position is based on a report by Ambassador Dan Shaham, who was sent to South Sudan in April to examine the situation and see if it was suitable to return the migrants.
The document says returning the South Sudanese nationals in general would not constitute a breach of international law, which prohibits a state from expelling foreign nationals if returning them to their home country presents a clear and immediate danger to their life.
-----
Day after violent anti-African protest, Likud MK calls to 'distance infiltrators' immediately
Police extends remand of 17 Israeli protesters arrested during rally for attacking African asylum seekers; Danny Dannon calls to remove African migrants from city centers.
May 24, 2012, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
By Dana Weiler-Polak and Yaniv Kubovich
Following Wednesday's violent protest against African migrants in Tel Aviv, Likud MK Danny Dannon called to remove African asylum seekers from population centers in Israel.
Speaking to Haaretz, Dannon said that the immediate solution for calming the situation and for putting a stop to the violence requires the evacuation of the African migrants from south Tel Aviv.
"The infiltrators must be distanced immediately," he said. "We must expedite the construction of temporary detention facilities and remove Africans from population centers."
MK Michael Ben Ari (National Union), who makes regular appearances at protests against the migrant population of Tel Aviv, nonetheless said he was “very upset by the violence.” Ben Ari pointed out, however, that “there are things that are outside of my control, that’s the reality.”
Ben Ari expressed satisfaction that his campaign to remove the migrant population from Tel Aviv has begun to gain momentum. “Suddenly we see MK’s from Likud and Kadima showing up at protests. Suddenly I hear the Interior Minister saying things I’ve said myself,” said Ben Ari.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, called for public officials to stop encouraging passionate reactions. “When the masses are furious, public leaders must try to contain that anger and offer a solution, not to fan the flames. We must not use the same language anti-Semites use against us. We are a people that suffered a great deal of incitement and harassment, and we have an obligation to be extra sensitive and moral,” said Rivlin.
On Thursday, 17 demonstrators who were arrested during the protest were brought before the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court for an extension of their remand.
Several of those arrested were detained while beating African migrants who passed on the street and shattering windows of businesses that tend to the foreign worker community.
Some 1,000 protesters rallied in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood on Wednesday and called for the ousting of African asylum seekers from Israel.
Protesters launched attacks on African migrants who passed by, while a group of demonstrators stopped a shuttle taxi and searched for migrant workers among the passengers, while banging on the windows.
The crowd cried "The people want the Sudanese deported" and "Infiltrators get out of our home."
Also on Thursday, the remand was extended of two members of a gang suspected of systematically targeting African migrants in south Tel Aviv. Police suspects that the 11-member gang, comprised of residents of south Tel Aviv, was set up in order to attack African migrants, in particular citizens from Sudan and Eritrea. The nine other members are minors, who will be tried in juvenile court.
Danny Dannon, who participated in Wednesday's protest, told Haaretz that he condemns the violence.
"Violence is not the answer and it cannot be justified," he said. "The government neglected the residents and they are frustrated and that must be addressed. It is a ticking time bomb on the part of the infiltrators as well as on the part of the margins of society."
"I arrived at the protest relatively early. The crowd was pretty irritated – also toward me. I spoke for several minutes and the main message was deportation."
Dannon said that the immediate solution for calming the situation and for putting a stop to the violence requires the evacuation of the African migrants from south Tel Aviv. "The infiltrators must be distanced immediately. We must expedite the construction of temporary detention facilities and remove Africans from population centers."
Meanwhile, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai began a campaign on Thursday that calls to imprison and deport illegal migrants.
The campaign was initiated and funded by Huldai, who has called for implementation of the government’s decision to expel migrants to their home countries, or to relocate them to holding facilities. In addition, local authority heads are claiming that they are carrying the burdens of dealing with infiltrators, such as funding the “Mesila” organization, an acronym in Hebrew for “center for information and assistance for the foreign community.”
Six mayors have pledged to take part in the campaign, including Yehiel Lasry, Mayor of Ashdod, Yaakov Asher, Mayor of Bnei Brak, Ashkelon Mayor Benny Vaknin, Petah Tikva Mayor Yitzhak Ohayon, and Eilat's mayor, Meir Yitzhak-Halevi.
How a Tel Aviv anti-migrant protest spiraled out of control
By Ilan Lior | May.24,2012 | 12:48 PM
Demonstrators attack African migrants in south Tel Aviv
By Ilan Lior and Tomer Zarchin
May.24,2012 | 12:48 PM
Israel prepares mass deportation of South Sudanese refugees
By Tomer Zarchin | May.24,2012 | 12:48 PM
May 24, 2012, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
By Ilan Lior and Tomer Zarchin
by Moti Milrod
Some 1,000 protesters rallied in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood on Wednesday and called for the ousting of African asylum seekers from Israel.
Demonstrators attacked African passersby while others lit garbage cans on fire and smashed car windows.
Another group of demonstrators stopped a shuttle taxi and searched for migrant workers among the passengers, while banging on the windows.
The crowd cried "The people want the Sudanese deported" and "Infiltrators get out of our home."
Likud MK Miri Regev participated in the protest and said that "the Sudanese were a cancer in our body."
The protesters expressed their dismay with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government's dealings with the "problem" of asylum seekers. Some people carried signs in support of Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who called for the detention and expulsion of all asylum seekers earlier this week.
Following the protest, hundreds of people assembled in the main street of the Hatikvah neighborhood. Several protesters smashed the windows of a grocery store that served the migrant workers community, broke the windows of a barber shop and looted it.
Police arrested 17 people during the protest, with some of them detained while beating Sudanese migrants. Those arrested will be brought in before the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court on Thursday for an extension of their remand.
Earlier Wednesday, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said he supported the mass deportation of South Sudanese migrants if an investigation will find that they are not legally entitled to refuge.
Weinstein will argue next week before the Jerusalem District Court that there is no legal obstacle to the expulsions since individual checks will establish that none of them face any threat to their lives in South Sudan.
The Jerusalem District Court recently issued a temporary order prohibiting the migrants' deportation until it rules on a petition filed by five human rights organizations against the state's intent to deport the refugees.
Weinstein, who has expressed support for sending migrants from South Sudan back home, will ask the court to lift the temporary order preventing their expulsion.
The Foreign Ministry recently outlined its position regarding 700 South Sudan nationals staying in Israel; the government says there are as many as 3,000 here.
The position is based on a report by Ambassador Dan Shaham, who was sent to South Sudan in April to examine the situation and see if it was suitable to return the migrants.
The document says returning the South Sudanese nationals in general would not constitute a breach of international law, which prohibits a state from expelling foreign nationals if returning them to their home country presents a clear and immediate danger to their life.
-----
Day after violent anti-African protest, Likud MK calls to 'distance infiltrators' immediately
Police extends remand of 17 Israeli protesters arrested during rally for attacking African asylum seekers; Danny Dannon calls to remove African migrants from city centers.
May 24, 2012, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
By Dana Weiler-Polak and Yaniv Kubovich
Following Wednesday's violent protest against African migrants in Tel Aviv, Likud MK Danny Dannon called to remove African asylum seekers from population centers in Israel.
Speaking to Haaretz, Dannon said that the immediate solution for calming the situation and for putting a stop to the violence requires the evacuation of the African migrants from south Tel Aviv.
"The infiltrators must be distanced immediately," he said. "We must expedite the construction of temporary detention facilities and remove Africans from population centers."
MK Michael Ben Ari (National Union), who makes regular appearances at protests against the migrant population of Tel Aviv, nonetheless said he was “very upset by the violence.” Ben Ari pointed out, however, that “there are things that are outside of my control, that’s the reality.”
Ben Ari expressed satisfaction that his campaign to remove the migrant population from Tel Aviv has begun to gain momentum. “Suddenly we see MK’s from Likud and Kadima showing up at protests. Suddenly I hear the Interior Minister saying things I’ve said myself,” said Ben Ari.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, called for public officials to stop encouraging passionate reactions. “When the masses are furious, public leaders must try to contain that anger and offer a solution, not to fan the flames. We must not use the same language anti-Semites use against us. We are a people that suffered a great deal of incitement and harassment, and we have an obligation to be extra sensitive and moral,” said Rivlin.
On Thursday, 17 demonstrators who were arrested during the protest were brought before the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court for an extension of their remand.
Several of those arrested were detained while beating African migrants who passed on the street and shattering windows of businesses that tend to the foreign worker community.
Some 1,000 protesters rallied in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood on Wednesday and called for the ousting of African asylum seekers from Israel.
Protesters launched attacks on African migrants who passed by, while a group of demonstrators stopped a shuttle taxi and searched for migrant workers among the passengers, while banging on the windows.
The crowd cried "The people want the Sudanese deported" and "Infiltrators get out of our home."
Also on Thursday, the remand was extended of two members of a gang suspected of systematically targeting African migrants in south Tel Aviv. Police suspects that the 11-member gang, comprised of residents of south Tel Aviv, was set up in order to attack African migrants, in particular citizens from Sudan and Eritrea. The nine other members are minors, who will be tried in juvenile court.
Danny Dannon, who participated in Wednesday's protest, told Haaretz that he condemns the violence.
"Violence is not the answer and it cannot be justified," he said. "The government neglected the residents and they are frustrated and that must be addressed. It is a ticking time bomb on the part of the infiltrators as well as on the part of the margins of society."
"I arrived at the protest relatively early. The crowd was pretty irritated – also toward me. I spoke for several minutes and the main message was deportation."
Dannon said that the immediate solution for calming the situation and for putting a stop to the violence requires the evacuation of the African migrants from south Tel Aviv. "The infiltrators must be distanced immediately. We must expedite the construction of temporary detention facilities and remove Africans from population centers."
Meanwhile, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai began a campaign on Thursday that calls to imprison and deport illegal migrants.
The campaign was initiated and funded by Huldai, who has called for implementation of the government’s decision to expel migrants to their home countries, or to relocate them to holding facilities. In addition, local authority heads are claiming that they are carrying the burdens of dealing with infiltrators, such as funding the “Mesila” organization, an acronym in Hebrew for “center for information and assistance for the foreign community.”
Six mayors have pledged to take part in the campaign, including Yehiel Lasry, Mayor of Ashdod, Yaakov Asher, Mayor of Bnei Brak, Ashkelon Mayor Benny Vaknin, Petah Tikva Mayor Yitzhak Ohayon, and Eilat's mayor, Meir Yitzhak-Halevi.
How a Tel Aviv anti-migrant protest spiraled out of control
By Ilan Lior | May.24,2012 | 12:48 PM
Demonstrators attack African migrants in south Tel Aviv
By Ilan Lior and Tomer Zarchin
May.24,2012 | 12:48 PM
Israel prepares mass deportation of South Sudanese refugees
By Tomer Zarchin | May.24,2012 | 12:48 PM
terça-feira, 22 de maio de 2012
WHERE’S THE PALESTINIAN GANDHI? SOAKING IN BLOOD SHED BY SETTLERS
May 20th, 2012 Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)
Jewish settler terrorist shoots Nemer Fathi of Asiara in cold blood
Yesterday, in the northern West Bank, outside the village of Aserra, a Jewish settler shot a Palestinian boy who was participating in a demonstration. Here is the picture of the assassin aiming his rifle and there is the picture of the boy after the bullet has hit its target.
UPDATE: Sheera Frenkel has spoken to the victim’s family and tweeted to me that the bullet entered by his cheek and exist by his ear. So by the grace of God it didn’t enter his brain, though it easily could have.
Pictures like this enrage me when I think of the inane questions of liberal Zionists like Gershom Gorenberg: “Where’s the Palestinian Gandhi.” Gorenberg makes his living off asking numbskull questions like this when the answer is staring him in the face. The Palestinian Gandhi, Nemer Fathi, age 24, is pictured here soaking in his own blood. The question shouldn’t be where is the Palestinian Gandhi. The question should be what will Gorenberg and the liberal Zionists do to stop the murder of the Palestinian Gandhis. When will they stop blaming the Palestinians? When will they recognize that the blame lies solely with Israel and that the timidity of the liberal Zionists allows their countrymen to continue to live under the illusion that they’ve done enough for peace and that it’s the Palestinians who haven’t.
These settlers are terrorists, but their government will not bring them to justice. That is the crime. That is where the Gorenbergs of the world should focus all their energy. He should identity this settler and demand the police arrest him. He should bring his liberal Zionist friends to the settlement and knock on the man’s door and make a citizen’s arrest (if such a thing is possible). And if the police won’t arrest him he and his liberal Zionist friends should camp outside the police station till they do.
But it’s so much more appealing to blame Palestinians instead of looking in the mirror to see where the real problem lies. It’s also appealing to smear critics like me by calling me an anti-Zionist in the pages of American Prospect instead of dealing seriously with the criticism.
Here is B’Tselem’s report on this incident. It makes clear that not only were police and IDF present at the shooting, that they did nothing to stop it. In fact, one shooter used a military issued rifle and was likely a soldier on leave and another was likely a police officer similarly off duty (or at least not in uniform):
On Saturday, 19.5.2012, around four thirty in the afternoon, a large group of settlers descended on the eastern outskirts of the village ‘Asira al-Qibliya, from the settlement Yitzhar. B’Tselem volunteer photographers filmed the events from two angles. The video shows the settlers, some of whom were masked and armed, throwing stones at Palestinian homes, and fires beginning to burn. One of the masked settlers was armed with a “Tavor” rifle which is only used by infantry soldiers, raising the suspicion that he is a soldier on leave.
Palestinian youths from the village soon arrived and threw stones at the settlers. A few minutes later, soldiers and Border Police officers arrived at the scene. During these moments, the video records the sound of several rounds of live ammunition being fired, but does not show its source.
Around 5pm, a group of three settlers are seen standing with a soldier in front of the Palestinian youths, while all around there is mutual stone throwing. Two of the settlers seen were armed with M4 rifles, and one was armed with a pistol. One of the settlers is wearing what looks like a police cap. The video footage shows the settlers aiming their weapons at the Palestinians and firing.
The firing injured village resident, Fathi ‘Asayira, 24, in the head. He is seen being evacuated from the area by a group of youths. He is hospitalized in a stable condition in Rafidiya hospital in Nablus. About fie other Palestinians were injured by stones.
The video footage raises grave suspicions that the soldiers present did not act to prevent the settlers from throwing stones and firing live ammunition at the Palestinians. The soldiers did not try to remove the settlers and in fact are seen standing by settlers while they are shooting and stone throwing.
B’Tselem wrote urgently to the Judea and Samaria Police requesting that those involved in the violent attack are arrested and prosecuted. Additionally, B’Tselem wrote to the Military Police Investigative Unit (MPIU) requesting that a military police investigation is opened at once into the suspicion that the soldiers did not adhere to their obligation to protect Palestinians from settler violence, and that one of the attackers was a soldier on leave.
B’Tselem additionally requested that the soldiers are instructed to cooperate with the police investigation and identify the suspect in the shooting.
Here (and here) are the B’Tselem videos of the assault on the Palestinians. Though B’Tselem has demanded an investigation, we all know what the result will be–no result. A pro forma investigation in which the case will be dropped for lack of evidence or for lack of interest or for whatever reason the army and police choose. The reason: “injury while Palestinian.” Now, our big, brave pro-Israel readers will come forward and remind us that Palestinians threw rocks and therefore what should they expect. But keep in mind that the settlers, according to B’Tselem’s statement, not only threw rocks first, but had deadly weapons and used them, while the Palestinians had none.
While I do not support violence on either side, can anyone except the pro-Israel flacks not understand how homicidal behavior such as this is one of the single most incendiary elements of the conflict? Put yourself in the shoes of anyone who was at this incident. Or any Palestinian who sees the video. What would you think? What would you do? Ehud Barak already knows what he would do. He’s already said publicly in one of his rare moments of truthfulness and candor that if he were Palestinian he would be a militant. Personally, I know that I wouldn’t be. But I do know that I’d find other ways to resist. I do know that that could be me out there in the line of fire were I Palestinian.
Once again, I say that these settlers are Jewish terrorists and that a State which permits their rampant violence aids and abets terror. The State is an accessory after the fact. I pray that sometime down the line the settler leadership and military and police commanders who stood by and did nothing while this attempted murder happened will be tried before an international criminal court for their reprehensible behavior. Like the militia leaders of Croatia and Serbia during the civil war, who were tried and convicted for their collusion with ethnic killers, these Israelis too are no less guilty.
Know that the world will hold you accountable. That you do not represent Judaism as I and most Jews know it. That Jews with any moral sense renounce you just as most Muslims renounce Al-Qaeda terrorists. Any Jew or Jewish organization that does not explicitly renounce this chilul haShem is not worthy of the support of anyone in the Jewish community.
Yesterday, in the northern West Bank, outside the village of Aserra, a Jewish settler shot a Palestinian boy who was participating in a demonstration. Here is the picture of the assassin aiming his rifle and there is the picture of the boy after the bullet has hit its target.
UPDATE: Sheera Frenkel has spoken to the victim’s family and tweeted to me that the bullet entered by his cheek and exist by his ear. So by the grace of God it didn’t enter his brain, though it easily could have.
Pictures like this enrage me when I think of the inane questions of liberal Zionists like Gershom Gorenberg: “Where’s the Palestinian Gandhi.” Gorenberg makes his living off asking numbskull questions like this when the answer is staring him in the face. The Palestinian Gandhi, Nemer Fathi, age 24, is pictured here soaking in his own blood. The question shouldn’t be where is the Palestinian Gandhi. The question should be what will Gorenberg and the liberal Zionists do to stop the murder of the Palestinian Gandhis. When will they stop blaming the Palestinians? When will they recognize that the blame lies solely with Israel and that the timidity of the liberal Zionists allows their countrymen to continue to live under the illusion that they’ve done enough for peace and that it’s the Palestinians who haven’t.
These settlers are terrorists, but their government will not bring them to justice. That is the crime. That is where the Gorenbergs of the world should focus all their energy. He should identity this settler and demand the police arrest him. He should bring his liberal Zionist friends to the settlement and knock on the man’s door and make a citizen’s arrest (if such a thing is possible). And if the police won’t arrest him he and his liberal Zionist friends should camp outside the police station till they do.
But it’s so much more appealing to blame Palestinians instead of looking in the mirror to see where the real problem lies. It’s also appealing to smear critics like me by calling me an anti-Zionist in the pages of American Prospect instead of dealing seriously with the criticism.
Here is B’Tselem’s report on this incident. It makes clear that not only were police and IDF present at the shooting, that they did nothing to stop it. In fact, one shooter used a military issued rifle and was likely a soldier on leave and another was likely a police officer similarly off duty (or at least not in uniform):
On Saturday, 19.5.2012, around four thirty in the afternoon, a large group of settlers descended on the eastern outskirts of the village ‘Asira al-Qibliya, from the settlement Yitzhar. B’Tselem volunteer photographers filmed the events from two angles. The video shows the settlers, some of whom were masked and armed, throwing stones at Palestinian homes, and fires beginning to burn. One of the masked settlers was armed with a “Tavor” rifle which is only used by infantry soldiers, raising the suspicion that he is a soldier on leave.
Palestinian youths from the village soon arrived and threw stones at the settlers. A few minutes later, soldiers and Border Police officers arrived at the scene. During these moments, the video records the sound of several rounds of live ammunition being fired, but does not show its source.
Around 5pm, a group of three settlers are seen standing with a soldier in front of the Palestinian youths, while all around there is mutual stone throwing. Two of the settlers seen were armed with M4 rifles, and one was armed with a pistol. One of the settlers is wearing what looks like a police cap. The video footage shows the settlers aiming their weapons at the Palestinians and firing.
The firing injured village resident, Fathi ‘Asayira, 24, in the head. He is seen being evacuated from the area by a group of youths. He is hospitalized in a stable condition in Rafidiya hospital in Nablus. About fie other Palestinians were injured by stones.
The video footage raises grave suspicions that the soldiers present did not act to prevent the settlers from throwing stones and firing live ammunition at the Palestinians. The soldiers did not try to remove the settlers and in fact are seen standing by settlers while they are shooting and stone throwing.
B’Tselem wrote urgently to the Judea and Samaria Police requesting that those involved in the violent attack are arrested and prosecuted. Additionally, B’Tselem wrote to the Military Police Investigative Unit (MPIU) requesting that a military police investigation is opened at once into the suspicion that the soldiers did not adhere to their obligation to protect Palestinians from settler violence, and that one of the attackers was a soldier on leave.
B’Tselem additionally requested that the soldiers are instructed to cooperate with the police investigation and identify the suspect in the shooting.
Here (and here) are the B’Tselem videos of the assault on the Palestinians. Though B’Tselem has demanded an investigation, we all know what the result will be–no result. A pro forma investigation in which the case will be dropped for lack of evidence or for lack of interest or for whatever reason the army and police choose. The reason: “injury while Palestinian.” Now, our big, brave pro-Israel readers will come forward and remind us that Palestinians threw rocks and therefore what should they expect. But keep in mind that the settlers, according to B’Tselem’s statement, not only threw rocks first, but had deadly weapons and used them, while the Palestinians had none.
While I do not support violence on either side, can anyone except the pro-Israel flacks not understand how homicidal behavior such as this is one of the single most incendiary elements of the conflict? Put yourself in the shoes of anyone who was at this incident. Or any Palestinian who sees the video. What would you think? What would you do? Ehud Barak already knows what he would do. He’s already said publicly in one of his rare moments of truthfulness and candor that if he were Palestinian he would be a militant. Personally, I know that I wouldn’t be. But I do know that I’d find other ways to resist. I do know that that could be me out there in the line of fire were I Palestinian.
Once again, I say that these settlers are Jewish terrorists and that a State which permits their rampant violence aids and abets terror. The State is an accessory after the fact. I pray that sometime down the line the settler leadership and military and police commanders who stood by and did nothing while this attempted murder happened will be tried before an international criminal court for their reprehensible behavior. Like the militia leaders of Croatia and Serbia during the civil war, who were tried and convicted for their collusion with ethnic killers, these Israelis too are no less guilty.
Know that the world will hold you accountable. That you do not represent Judaism as I and most Jews know it. That Jews with any moral sense renounce you just as most Muslims renounce Al-Qaeda terrorists. Any Jew or Jewish organization that does not explicitly renounce this chilul haShem is not worthy of the support of anyone in the Jewish community.
SETTLER SHOOTING PALESTINIAN, 'ASIRA AL-QIBLIYA, 19.5.2012, RAW FOOTAGE, 2ND CAMERA
20 May 2012, B'Tselem בצלם http://www.btselem.org (Israel)
הצטרפו לעמוד הפייסבוק של בצלם: https://www.facebook.com/btselem
עוד מידע על האירוע: http://www.btselem.org/hebrew/press_releases/20120520_asira_al_qibliya
הצטרפו לעמוד הפייסבוק של בצלם: https://www.facebook.com/btselem
עוד מידע על האירוע: http://www.btselem.org/hebrew/press_releases/20120520_asira_al_qibliya
South Africa to ban labeling settlement products as 'made in Israel'
19 May 2012, The Israeli Communist Party המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית (Israel)
info@maki.org.il
The South African government decided last week to draw attention of consumers that products they buy labeled “Made in Israel” could have been made in illegal settlements mushrooming the occupied Palestinian territories, a press release issued by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said on Saturday. It said that after more than a year of joint work between Palestinian and South African organizations, South Africa’s Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies announced he will forbid false and misleading labeling of settlements products.
He said that the South African government will forbid the misleading labeling of products originating in the Jewish settlements in the occupied territory as if they were produced in Israel. According to Wafa Palestinian new agency “Consumers in South Africa should not be misled into believing that products originating from the occupied Palestinian territory are products originating from Israel," said a ministry statement. “The burden of proving where the products originate will lie with traders,” a step that will further trample attempts to obscure the origin or connection to settlements of some Israeli products.
A Palestinian activist confronts heavily armed Israeli soldiers in a weekly demonstration against the separation wall in Al-Masara, West Bank, on May 18, 2012 (Photo: Activestills)
According to the statement, the government of South Africa recognizes the State of Israel only within the 1948 borders, which do not include Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.
Mohammed Khatib, a resident of the West Bank village of Bil'in and the coordinator of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee who was involved in the efforts to promote the notice, said, “The notice is based on the recognition of the injustice done to us Palestinians by the occupation and Israeli settlements. It highlights the fact that the de-facto annexation of our lands as well as the settlements themselves are entirely illegal. The notice is an important first step, which, reason suggests, should be followed by a complete ban on the marketing of these products in South Africa, no matter how they are labeled.”
Denmark had also announced on Friday that all goods produced in the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank should have clear label of origin on them in order to differentiate them from products made in Israel proper. Denmark intended to follow European Union policy of banning settlement products from their markets because they originate from illegal locations.
This is a move that will clearly show consumers that this produce has been produced under conditions that not only the Danish government, but also the European governments have rejected," Danish Foreign Minister Villy Sovndal was quoted as saying by Danish online news-site Politken.
"Then it is up to consumers whether they are prepared to buy the produce," he added. The Danish FM said that stricter controls and labeling of settlement produce should be seen as part of the European Union's support for a two state solution. Enforcing controls on settlement produce also shows the Palestinians that the world is against illegal settlement building. The move targets illegal settlements and not Israel, the Danish FM added. In April, the Co-operative group, one of the United Kingdom's largest food retailers, decided to boycott four companies that export products from Israeli settlements.
Related: UK food retailer boycotts settlement exports
info@maki.org.il
The South African government decided last week to draw attention of consumers that products they buy labeled “Made in Israel” could have been made in illegal settlements mushrooming the occupied Palestinian territories, a press release issued by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said on Saturday. It said that after more than a year of joint work between Palestinian and South African organizations, South Africa’s Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies announced he will forbid false and misleading labeling of settlements products.
He said that the South African government will forbid the misleading labeling of products originating in the Jewish settlements in the occupied territory as if they were produced in Israel. According to Wafa Palestinian new agency “Consumers in South Africa should not be misled into believing that products originating from the occupied Palestinian territory are products originating from Israel," said a ministry statement. “The burden of proving where the products originate will lie with traders,” a step that will further trample attempts to obscure the origin or connection to settlements of some Israeli products.
According to the statement, the government of South Africa recognizes the State of Israel only within the 1948 borders, which do not include Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.
Mohammed Khatib, a resident of the West Bank village of Bil'in and the coordinator of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee who was involved in the efforts to promote the notice, said, “The notice is based on the recognition of the injustice done to us Palestinians by the occupation and Israeli settlements. It highlights the fact that the de-facto annexation of our lands as well as the settlements themselves are entirely illegal. The notice is an important first step, which, reason suggests, should be followed by a complete ban on the marketing of these products in South Africa, no matter how they are labeled.”
Denmark had also announced on Friday that all goods produced in the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank should have clear label of origin on them in order to differentiate them from products made in Israel proper. Denmark intended to follow European Union policy of banning settlement products from their markets because they originate from illegal locations.
This is a move that will clearly show consumers that this produce has been produced under conditions that not only the Danish government, but also the European governments have rejected," Danish Foreign Minister Villy Sovndal was quoted as saying by Danish online news-site Politken.
"Then it is up to consumers whether they are prepared to buy the produce," he added. The Danish FM said that stricter controls and labeling of settlement produce should be seen as part of the European Union's support for a two state solution. Enforcing controls on settlement produce also shows the Palestinians that the world is against illegal settlement building. The move targets illegal settlements and not Israel, the Danish FM added. In April, the Co-operative group, one of the United Kingdom's largest food retailers, decided to boycott four companies that export products from Israeli settlements.
Related: UK food retailer boycotts settlement exports
quinta-feira, 17 de maio de 2012
IN SUPPORT OF THE “BATTLE OF THE EMPTY STOMACHS”
May 16, 2012, Shalom Rav http://rabbibrant.com (USA)
A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen
From the Palestinian NGO, Adameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association:
After nearly a full month of fasting, around 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners ended last night their mass hunger strike upon reaching an agreement with the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to attain certain core demands...
The written agreement contained five main provisions: the prisoners would end their hunger strike following the signing of the agreement; there will be an end to the use of long-term isolation of prisoners for “security” reasons, and the 19 prisoners will be moved out of isolation within 72 hours; family visits for first degree relatives to prisoners from the Gaza Strip and for families from the West Bank who have been denied visits based on vague “security reasons” will be reinstated within one month; the Israeli intelligence agency guarantees that there will be a committee formed to facilitate meetings between the IPS and prisoners in order to improve their daily conditions; there will be no new administrative detention orders or renewals of administrative detention orders for the 308 Palestinians currently in administrative detention, unless the secret files, upon which administrative detention is based, contain “very serious” information.
This is heartening news to be sure, particularly for the families of the strikers. But on an even deeper level, this deal is a testimony to the astonishing moral/political power of fasting in response to oppression. As my colleague Rabbi Alissa Wise recently wrote:
I can not even begin to fathom the pain, the discomfort, the anguish of starving yourself to protest injustice. Their decision to take up this action surely was not taken up lightly, and neither, I imagine, (was) their decision each and every day to continue with the fast.
Nor can I think of any more basic or courageous form of resistance than the simple act of refusing food. And I can think of no greater expression of this principle than the widely published letter written by hunger striker Thaer Halahleh to his two year old daughter Lamar. (Halahleh, who has hovered between life and death for weeks, has just ended his strike at 77 days):
When you grow up you will understand how injustice was brought upon your father and upon thousands of Palestinians whom the occupation has put in prisons and jail cells, shattering their lives and future for no reason other then their pursuit of freedom, dignity and independence. You will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission, and that he would never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves without any rights or patriotic dignity.
Hunger striking is, of course, is an ancient time-honored form of protest. As a Jew, I'm particularly mindful that the Book of Isaiah passionately connects the act of fasting to the pursuit of justice:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Indeed, it is critical that we understand that the Palestinians' "Battle of the Empty Stomachs" as part of this long and honorable tradition of nonviolent resistance. As we have seen from the events of the past several months, it has lasted so long largely because it is a tactic that works.
At the same time, however, it is imperative to bear in mind what has been accomplished and what has not. While several specific demands regarding prison conditions have been met, Israel's overall policy of administrative detention essentially remains in place. Adameer's press release rightly noted this point:
Addameer is concerned that these provisions of the agreement will not explicitly solve Israel’s lenient and problematic application of administrative detention, which as it stands is in stark violation of international law.
In a recent blog post for +972mag, Palestinian journalist Omar Rahman also viewed this agreement in context of the overall Israeli/Palestinian power dynamic:
We must also remember that Israel holds all the chips. These hunger strikers have managed to pressure Israel into a level of accommodation, but only while people are focused on the issue. As soon as that attention dissipates, Israel is free to take back what it has offered. In the relationship between the occupier and the occupied, Israel is the Lord who giveth and taketh away. What will the Palestinians do? Stage another collective hunger strike only to repeat the process of give and take? The costs are simply too high to stage such a strike every time the need arises to challenge the system.
In the meantime, it seems to me, the most important outcome of the hunger strike campaign is the way in which it powerfully frames the ethical stakes of Israel's occupation. As a recent Guardian editorial stated plainly, "Israel cannot claim the moral high ground while it is holding Palestinians without charge."
And finally, as Jews, the "Battle of the Empty Stomachs" presents us with a profoundly critical challenge. Will we, who are the bearers of a tradition that bids us to call out oppression, find the wherewithal to stand with those who fast in response to their oppression by the Jewish state?
I don't know how to say it any better than my colleague Rabbi Rachel Barenblat:
When I read anything which speaks ill of Israel and of Judaism, my heart aches. I do not want to hear these things about my coreligionists. But the answer is not to silence or ignore those who are speaking out. The answer is for my fellow Jews to live up to what is best in our tradition. Detaining people without trial, without informing them or their lawyers of the charges against them, is wrong. When the only Jewish government in the world makes those choices, we are all diminished.
A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen
From the Palestinian NGO, Adameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association:
After nearly a full month of fasting, around 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners ended last night their mass hunger strike upon reaching an agreement with the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to attain certain core demands...
The written agreement contained five main provisions: the prisoners would end their hunger strike following the signing of the agreement; there will be an end to the use of long-term isolation of prisoners for “security” reasons, and the 19 prisoners will be moved out of isolation within 72 hours; family visits for first degree relatives to prisoners from the Gaza Strip and for families from the West Bank who have been denied visits based on vague “security reasons” will be reinstated within one month; the Israeli intelligence agency guarantees that there will be a committee formed to facilitate meetings between the IPS and prisoners in order to improve their daily conditions; there will be no new administrative detention orders or renewals of administrative detention orders for the 308 Palestinians currently in administrative detention, unless the secret files, upon which administrative detention is based, contain “very serious” information.
This is heartening news to be sure, particularly for the families of the strikers. But on an even deeper level, this deal is a testimony to the astonishing moral/political power of fasting in response to oppression. As my colleague Rabbi Alissa Wise recently wrote:
I can not even begin to fathom the pain, the discomfort, the anguish of starving yourself to protest injustice. Their decision to take up this action surely was not taken up lightly, and neither, I imagine, (was) their decision each and every day to continue with the fast.
Nor can I think of any more basic or courageous form of resistance than the simple act of refusing food. And I can think of no greater expression of this principle than the widely published letter written by hunger striker Thaer Halahleh to his two year old daughter Lamar. (Halahleh, who has hovered between life and death for weeks, has just ended his strike at 77 days):
When you grow up you will understand how injustice was brought upon your father and upon thousands of Palestinians whom the occupation has put in prisons and jail cells, shattering their lives and future for no reason other then their pursuit of freedom, dignity and independence. You will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission, and that he would never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves without any rights or patriotic dignity.
Hunger striking is, of course, is an ancient time-honored form of protest. As a Jew, I'm particularly mindful that the Book of Isaiah passionately connects the act of fasting to the pursuit of justice:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Indeed, it is critical that we understand that the Palestinians' "Battle of the Empty Stomachs" as part of this long and honorable tradition of nonviolent resistance. As we have seen from the events of the past several months, it has lasted so long largely because it is a tactic that works.
At the same time, however, it is imperative to bear in mind what has been accomplished and what has not. While several specific demands regarding prison conditions have been met, Israel's overall policy of administrative detention essentially remains in place. Adameer's press release rightly noted this point:
Addameer is concerned that these provisions of the agreement will not explicitly solve Israel’s lenient and problematic application of administrative detention, which as it stands is in stark violation of international law.
In a recent blog post for +972mag, Palestinian journalist Omar Rahman also viewed this agreement in context of the overall Israeli/Palestinian power dynamic:
We must also remember that Israel holds all the chips. These hunger strikers have managed to pressure Israel into a level of accommodation, but only while people are focused on the issue. As soon as that attention dissipates, Israel is free to take back what it has offered. In the relationship between the occupier and the occupied, Israel is the Lord who giveth and taketh away. What will the Palestinians do? Stage another collective hunger strike only to repeat the process of give and take? The costs are simply too high to stage such a strike every time the need arises to challenge the system.
In the meantime, it seems to me, the most important outcome of the hunger strike campaign is the way in which it powerfully frames the ethical stakes of Israel's occupation. As a recent Guardian editorial stated plainly, "Israel cannot claim the moral high ground while it is holding Palestinians without charge."
And finally, as Jews, the "Battle of the Empty Stomachs" presents us with a profoundly critical challenge. Will we, who are the bearers of a tradition that bids us to call out oppression, find the wherewithal to stand with those who fast in response to their oppression by the Jewish state?
I don't know how to say it any better than my colleague Rabbi Rachel Barenblat:
When I read anything which speaks ill of Israel and of Judaism, my heart aches. I do not want to hear these things about my coreligionists. But the answer is not to silence or ignore those who are speaking out. The answer is for my fellow Jews to live up to what is best in our tradition. Detaining people without trial, without informing them or their lawyers of the charges against them, is wrong. When the only Jewish government in the world makes those choices, we are all diminished.
Announcing: GAZA’S ARK
17 may 2012/Desertpeace http://desertpeace.wordpress.com (Israel)
We are thrilled to announce the Gaza’s Ark project and the participation of those in the United States who support the people of Gaza and the West Bank.
If you would like to know more about Gaza’s Ark and how you can support the project, join us on a conference call,
Tuesday, May 22 at 11pm Eastern. Please call
712-432-3900, access code 481417#.
Ann Wright and Jane Hirschmann are the US points of contact on the international steering committee.
Please email Ann if you are planning on calling in for the conference call– gazaarkus@gmail.com
Gaza’s Ark
Building Hope
The Canadian Boat to Gaza, in cooperation, with international initiatives in the US, Australia and other countries, is launching a new initiative to challenge the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza, the only Mediterranean port closed to shipping.
This new initiative: Gaza’s Ark, will build a boat in Gaza, using existing resources. A crew of internationals and Palestinians will sail it out of Gaza carrying Palestinian products to fulfill trade deals with international buyers.
Gaza’s Ark will be constructed in Gaza by Palestinian hands and expertise, with international assistance.
Gaza’s Ark will help revitalize the dwindling ship building industry in Gaza and help ensure the transmission of this disappearing expertise (another effect of the blockade) to the younger generations.
Through Gaza’s Ark and trade deals secured between Palestinian producers in Gaza and international businesses and NGOs a channel will be established to export Palestinian products from Gaza that are available despite the blockade.
Gaza’s Ark will also provide training to Gaza’s sailors in the use of up-to-date electronic sailing equipment and techniques which they have been denied for years as a result of the blockade.
Although it will help in a very limited manner to alleviate Gaza’s unemployment crisis by paying wages to the boat builders and providing business opportunities to traders, Gaza’s Ark is not an aid project. It is a peaceful action against the blockade which Israel unilaterally and unreasonably imposes on Gaza.
Gaza’s Ark also stands in solidarity with the Palestinian fishery in Gaza whose ability to operate in territorial waters and to derive a livelihood is threatened by the same Israeli blockade which our campaign is challenging.
Gaza’s Ark challenges the blockade by building hope on the ground in Gaza, and affirms our confidence that the Palestinians of Gaza can rebuild their economy through outbound trade that threatens no-one’s security.
With your support, the work on Gaza’s Ark will start this summer. You will be able to follow its progress with regular updates on the web (www.GazaArk.org), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/GazaArk) and Twitter (@GazaArk).
You can reach us by email at info@gazaark.org.
Gaza’s Ark is a project of US Boat to Gaza
We are thrilled to announce the Gaza’s Ark project and the participation of those in the United States who support the people of Gaza and the West Bank.
If you would like to know more about Gaza’s Ark and how you can support the project, join us on a conference call,
Tuesday, May 22 at 11pm Eastern. Please call
712-432-3900, access code 481417#.
Ann Wright and Jane Hirschmann are the US points of contact on the international steering committee.
Please email Ann if you are planning on calling in for the conference call– gazaarkus@gmail.com
Gaza’s Ark
Building Hope
The Canadian Boat to Gaza, in cooperation, with international initiatives in the US, Australia and other countries, is launching a new initiative to challenge the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza, the only Mediterranean port closed to shipping.
This new initiative: Gaza’s Ark, will build a boat in Gaza, using existing resources. A crew of internationals and Palestinians will sail it out of Gaza carrying Palestinian products to fulfill trade deals with international buyers.
Gaza’s Ark will be constructed in Gaza by Palestinian hands and expertise, with international assistance.
Gaza’s Ark will help revitalize the dwindling ship building industry in Gaza and help ensure the transmission of this disappearing expertise (another effect of the blockade) to the younger generations.
Through Gaza’s Ark and trade deals secured between Palestinian producers in Gaza and international businesses and NGOs a channel will be established to export Palestinian products from Gaza that are available despite the blockade.
Gaza’s Ark will also provide training to Gaza’s sailors in the use of up-to-date electronic sailing equipment and techniques which they have been denied for years as a result of the blockade.
Although it will help in a very limited manner to alleviate Gaza’s unemployment crisis by paying wages to the boat builders and providing business opportunities to traders, Gaza’s Ark is not an aid project. It is a peaceful action against the blockade which Israel unilaterally and unreasonably imposes on Gaza.
Gaza’s Ark also stands in solidarity with the Palestinian fishery in Gaza whose ability to operate in territorial waters and to derive a livelihood is threatened by the same Israeli blockade which our campaign is challenging.
Gaza’s Ark challenges the blockade by building hope on the ground in Gaza, and affirms our confidence that the Palestinians of Gaza can rebuild their economy through outbound trade that threatens no-one’s security.
With your support, the work on Gaza’s Ark will start this summer. You will be able to follow its progress with regular updates on the web (www.GazaArk.org), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/GazaArk) and Twitter (@GazaArk).
You can reach us by email at info@gazaark.org.
Gaza’s Ark is a project of US Boat to Gaza
quinta-feira, 3 de maio de 2012
JUSTICE REQUIRES ACTION TO STOP SUBJUGATION OF PALESTINIANS
May 1, 2012, Tampa Bay Times http://www.tampabay.com (USA)
By Desmond Tutu, special to the Times
A quarter-century ago I barnstormed around the United States encouraging Americans, particularly students, to press for divestment from South Africa. Today, regrettably, the time has come for similar action to force an end to Israel's long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory and refusal to extend equal rights to Palestinian citizens who suffer from some 35 discriminatory laws.
I have reached this conclusion slowly and painfully. I am aware that many of our Jewish brothers and sisters who were so instrumental in the fight against South African apartheid are not yet ready to reckon with the apartheid nature of Israel and its current government. And I am enormously concerned that raising this issue will cause heartache to some in the Jewish community with whom I have worked closely and successfully for decades. But I cannot ignore the Palestinian suffering I have witnessed, nor the voices of those courageous Jews troubled by Israel's discriminatory course.
Within the past few days, some 1,200 American rabbis signed a letter — timed to coincide with resolutions considered by the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) — urging Christians not "to selectively divest from certain companies whose products are used by Israel." They argue that a "one-sided approach" on divestment resolutions, even the selective divestment from companies profiting from the occupation proposed by the Methodists and Presbyterians, "damages the relationship between Jews and Christians that has been nurtured for decades."
While they are no doubt well-meaning, I believe that the rabbis and other opponents of divestment are sadly misguided. My voice will always be raised in support of Christian-Jewish ties and against the anti-Semitism that all sensible people fear and detest. But this cannot be an excuse for doing nothing and for standing aside as successive Israeli governments colonize the West Bank and advance racist laws.
I recall well the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he confesses to his "Christian and Jewish brothers" that he has been "gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;' who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom. ..."
King's words describe almost precisely the shortcomings of the 1,200 rabbis who are not joining the brave Palestinians, Jews and internationals in isolated West Bank communities to protest nonviolently against Israel's theft of Palestinian land to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements and the separation wall. We cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand as relentless settlement activity forecloses on the possibility of the two-state solution.
If we do not achieve two states in the near future, then the day will certainly arrive when Palestinians move away from seeking a separate state of their own and insist on the right to vote for the government that controls their lives, the Israeli government, in a single, democratic state. Israel finds this option unacceptable and yet is seemingly doing everything in its power to see that it happens.
Many black South Africans have traveled to the occupied West Bank and have been appalled by Israeli roads built for Jewish settlers that West Bank Palestinians are denied access to, and by Jewish-only colonies built on Palestinian land in violation of international law.
Black South Africans and others around the world have seen the 2010 Human Rights Watch report which "describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians." This, in my book, is apartheid. It is untenable. And we are in desperate need of more rabbis joining the brave rabbis of Jewish Voice for Peace in speaking forthrightly about the corrupting decadeslong Israeli domination over Palestinians.
These are among the hardest words I have ever written. But they are vitally important. Not only is Israel harming Palestinians, but it is harming itself. The 1,200 rabbis may not like what I have to say, but it is long past time for them to remove the blinders from their eyes and grapple with the reality that Israel becoming an apartheid state or like South Africa in its denial of equal rights is not a future danger, as three former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and David Ben Gurion — have warned, but a present-day reality. This harsh reality endured by millions of Palestinians requires people and organizations of conscience to divest from those companies — in this instance, from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard — profiting from the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.
Such action made an enormous difference in apartheid South Africa. It can make an enormous difference in creating a future of justice and equality for Palestinians and Jews in the Holy Land.
Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, is archbishop-emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa.
By Desmond Tutu, special to the Times
A quarter-century ago I barnstormed around the United States encouraging Americans, particularly students, to press for divestment from South Africa. Today, regrettably, the time has come for similar action to force an end to Israel's long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory and refusal to extend equal rights to Palestinian citizens who suffer from some 35 discriminatory laws.
I have reached this conclusion slowly and painfully. I am aware that many of our Jewish brothers and sisters who were so instrumental in the fight against South African apartheid are not yet ready to reckon with the apartheid nature of Israel and its current government. And I am enormously concerned that raising this issue will cause heartache to some in the Jewish community with whom I have worked closely and successfully for decades. But I cannot ignore the Palestinian suffering I have witnessed, nor the voices of those courageous Jews troubled by Israel's discriminatory course.
Within the past few days, some 1,200 American rabbis signed a letter — timed to coincide with resolutions considered by the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) — urging Christians not "to selectively divest from certain companies whose products are used by Israel." They argue that a "one-sided approach" on divestment resolutions, even the selective divestment from companies profiting from the occupation proposed by the Methodists and Presbyterians, "damages the relationship between Jews and Christians that has been nurtured for decades."
While they are no doubt well-meaning, I believe that the rabbis and other opponents of divestment are sadly misguided. My voice will always be raised in support of Christian-Jewish ties and against the anti-Semitism that all sensible people fear and detest. But this cannot be an excuse for doing nothing and for standing aside as successive Israeli governments colonize the West Bank and advance racist laws.
I recall well the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he confesses to his "Christian and Jewish brothers" that he has been "gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;' who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom. ..."
King's words describe almost precisely the shortcomings of the 1,200 rabbis who are not joining the brave Palestinians, Jews and internationals in isolated West Bank communities to protest nonviolently against Israel's theft of Palestinian land to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements and the separation wall. We cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand as relentless settlement activity forecloses on the possibility of the two-state solution.
If we do not achieve two states in the near future, then the day will certainly arrive when Palestinians move away from seeking a separate state of their own and insist on the right to vote for the government that controls their lives, the Israeli government, in a single, democratic state. Israel finds this option unacceptable and yet is seemingly doing everything in its power to see that it happens.
Many black South Africans have traveled to the occupied West Bank and have been appalled by Israeli roads built for Jewish settlers that West Bank Palestinians are denied access to, and by Jewish-only colonies built on Palestinian land in violation of international law.
Black South Africans and others around the world have seen the 2010 Human Rights Watch report which "describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians." This, in my book, is apartheid. It is untenable. And we are in desperate need of more rabbis joining the brave rabbis of Jewish Voice for Peace in speaking forthrightly about the corrupting decadeslong Israeli domination over Palestinians.
These are among the hardest words I have ever written. But they are vitally important. Not only is Israel harming Palestinians, but it is harming itself. The 1,200 rabbis may not like what I have to say, but it is long past time for them to remove the blinders from their eyes and grapple with the reality that Israel becoming an apartheid state or like South Africa in its denial of equal rights is not a future danger, as three former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and David Ben Gurion — have warned, but a present-day reality. This harsh reality endured by millions of Palestinians requires people and organizations of conscience to divest from those companies — in this instance, from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard — profiting from the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.
Such action made an enormous difference in apartheid South Africa. It can make an enormous difference in creating a future of justice and equality for Palestinians and Jews in the Holy Land.
Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, is archbishop-emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa.
segunda-feira, 9 de abril de 2012
Tikun Olam: Tzedakah to Make Israel a Better Place
April 9th, 2012, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)
Tonight, I was thinking of a particular friend who has created over the past few decades a wonderful business that is almost perfectly attuned to its community. It has provided well for his family and, I presume, enabled him to give generously to his local community, including the Jewish community.
I wrote to him an e mail which I hope he won’t find presumptuous. My motivation stemmed from the direness of the situation is in Israel. And from how great the need is to fight on behalf of Israeli democracy and combat the damage caused to it by Occupation and a rampant national security state. I can’t remember a time I felt Israel was in more jeopardy. I can’t remember a time when Israeli NGOs more needed support to combat the vicious effects of this right wing Netanyahu-Lieberman government.
I’ve made clear here in the past that I’ve lost any hope or confidence that the Israeli political system can offer any answers to Israel’s most profound war and peace issues. Nor do I believe that NGOs alone can solve Israel’s problems. But they are all that we have left. They are the teetering dyke that stands between a possible peaceful future and a catastrophic flood of ultra-nationalism and hate. As such, we owe them all the moral and financial support we can offer.
Not to mention the fact that Avigdor Lieberman has proposed draconian legislation that would limit the foreign funding any Israeli peace group could receive. This alone justifies offering the movement for justice and human rights all the support we can.
Such charitable giving is reinforced in Jewish traditions by the term, tzedakah. It means more than charity. It means a religious obligation to support causes and movements that bring justice to the world. If there is any place that needs justice right now, it’s Israel. And tzedakah compels us to do what we can to help.
Though this post is certainly meant for my regular readers, I’m hoping that someone reads this who has been as financially and otherwise blessed as my friend. Someone who may share my politics or not. But someone who feels some of the urgency I mentioned above. And who wants to invest as much of their wealth as they can in repairing the damaged land of Israel. I would welcome directing such individuals to groups like those below, and to do research on any peace group that might interest them. To promote such acts of tzedakah, I’d be delighted to help in any way necessary.
The groups in Israel and Palestine I recommend below are doing heroic work against all odds. You may or may not be aware of them. If at all possible, I hope you can devote consideration to their work. These organizations are all ones I know personally through their staff and through their cooperating with campaigns I’ve mounted here. If you give you may (or may not, as you choose) mention the blog as something that played a factor in your giving.
There are, of course, other groups doing good work in this field. But some of them are groups (like New Israel Fund, J Street and Peace Now) with which I have specific politicial, philosophical or moral disagreements and whose work I can’t endorse for inclusion on this list for that reason. There are also American Jewish groups fighting for peace and justice in Israel, but because of the urgency I wanted, with only one exception, to focus on groups working in Israel-Palestine.
The list is divided more or less according to the rubric of Israeli groups followed by Palestinian. I’m open of course to adding Palestinian groups since it’s a community whose NGOs I know less well.
Anarchists Against the Wall (donate) Israel’s leading group fighting against the Separation Wall through weekly protests that often end in violence perpetrated by the Israeli security forces against unarmed demonstrators who seek to prevent the theft of Palestinian land.
B’Tselem (donate) Israel’s leading human rights group which documents arbitrary arrests, shootings, settler violence, and IDF malfeasance.
HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual (donate)
Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement (donate) The leading NGO working against Israel’s draconian system of checkpoints and arbitrary laws which impede freedom of movement for Palestinians.
Breaking the Silence (donate) An anti-Occupation Israeli combat veterans group seeking to expose the horrors of the military experience and its impact on Palestinians and Israelis.
Combatants for Peace A group of Israeli and Palestinian combat veterans who advocate against war and violence in their respective communities
Machsom Watch (donate) a movement of Israeli women who oppose the Israeli occupation and the denial of Palestinians’ rights to move freely in their land. It documents IDF violations of Palestinian human rights at military checkpoints.
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (donate) Israel’s largest, most prominent, and most mainstream human rights organization.
Taayush: Arab-Jewish Partnership (donate) Israelis & Palestinians striving to end the Israeli occupation and to achieve full civil equality through daily non-violent direct-action.
Yesh Din (donate) a group of Israelis seeking to defend the human rights of Palestinians under Israeli Occupation
Ir Amim (donate) dedicated to documenting Israeli encroachment on Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Ir Amim wants Jerusalem to be a more viable and equitable city for the Israelis and Palestinians who share it. The group envisions a city that ensures the dignity and welfare of all its residents and that safeguards their holy places, as well as their historical and cultural heritages.
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (donate) A human rights group working in the media and through the legal system to expose egregious instances of Israeli torture of Palestinian prisoners.
Yesh Gvul (donate) Israel’s leading NGO investigating potential IDF war crimes and advocating for Israeli accountability to the laws of war.
Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (donate) An NGO that promotes awareness of Israel’s policy of destroying entire swaths of Palestinian homes for security and punitive purposes.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (donate) Engaged in providing medical assistance and advocacy that advances human rights in Israel
Rabbis for Human Rights (donate) A group of Israeli rabbis who advocate for human rights based in the Jewish tradition
Parent’s Circle (donate) An organization whose members are survivors of those Palestinians and Israelis victims murdered in terror attacks.
Gush Shalom Uri Avnery’s peace group.
Women of the Wall (donate) Religious feminist group advocating equal treatment of men and women at the Western Wall holy site
Jewish Voice for Peace (donate) The leading American-Jewish group working to promote a just Israeli-Palestinian peace. It supports BDS and refuses to endorse either a two or one-state solution to the conflict.
Seruv (donate) An Israeli NGO which supports those who refuse to serve in the IDF on moral or religious grounds.
New Profile (donate) A feminist NGO encouraging military refusal and conscientious objection.
Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity (donate) supporters of Palestinian families evicted from their East Jerusalem homes by settler squatters and home thieves
Neve Shalom (donate) A cooperative community of Israeli Jews and Palestinians devoted to showing that the two people can live and build a thriving community together.
West-Eastern Diwan Orchestra (donate) Daniel Barenboim’s groundbreaking musical ensemble of young Israeli and Palestinian musicians whose music breaks the taboos established by each society that inhibits tolerance and mutual respect.
Mada al-Carmel (donate) A Palestinian social-science institute which documents the evils of Occupation and the inferior treatment of Israeli Palestinians within Israeli society. I particularly mention it because New Israel Fund specifically defunded Mada when they refused to adhere to NIF guidelines which demanded Palestinian NGOs not advocate for a one-state solution.
Adalah: the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (donate)
Al Haq: Defending Human Rights in Palestine
Addameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Network (donate)
Al Mezan: Center for Human Rights (donate)
Badil: Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (donate) Gaza-based human rights advocacy group
MIFTAH: (donate) The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
SABEEL: the Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (donate) Canon Naim Ateek’s Episcopal movement seeking to apply the teaching of liberation theology to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Tonight, I was thinking of a particular friend who has created over the past few decades a wonderful business that is almost perfectly attuned to its community. It has provided well for his family and, I presume, enabled him to give generously to his local community, including the Jewish community.
I wrote to him an e mail which I hope he won’t find presumptuous. My motivation stemmed from the direness of the situation is in Israel. And from how great the need is to fight on behalf of Israeli democracy and combat the damage caused to it by Occupation and a rampant national security state. I can’t remember a time I felt Israel was in more jeopardy. I can’t remember a time when Israeli NGOs more needed support to combat the vicious effects of this right wing Netanyahu-Lieberman government.
I’ve made clear here in the past that I’ve lost any hope or confidence that the Israeli political system can offer any answers to Israel’s most profound war and peace issues. Nor do I believe that NGOs alone can solve Israel’s problems. But they are all that we have left. They are the teetering dyke that stands between a possible peaceful future and a catastrophic flood of ultra-nationalism and hate. As such, we owe them all the moral and financial support we can offer.
Not to mention the fact that Avigdor Lieberman has proposed draconian legislation that would limit the foreign funding any Israeli peace group could receive. This alone justifies offering the movement for justice and human rights all the support we can.
Such charitable giving is reinforced in Jewish traditions by the term, tzedakah. It means more than charity. It means a religious obligation to support causes and movements that bring justice to the world. If there is any place that needs justice right now, it’s Israel. And tzedakah compels us to do what we can to help.
Though this post is certainly meant for my regular readers, I’m hoping that someone reads this who has been as financially and otherwise blessed as my friend. Someone who may share my politics or not. But someone who feels some of the urgency I mentioned above. And who wants to invest as much of their wealth as they can in repairing the damaged land of Israel. I would welcome directing such individuals to groups like those below, and to do research on any peace group that might interest them. To promote such acts of tzedakah, I’d be delighted to help in any way necessary.
The groups in Israel and Palestine I recommend below are doing heroic work against all odds. You may or may not be aware of them. If at all possible, I hope you can devote consideration to their work. These organizations are all ones I know personally through their staff and through their cooperating with campaigns I’ve mounted here. If you give you may (or may not, as you choose) mention the blog as something that played a factor in your giving.
There are, of course, other groups doing good work in this field. But some of them are groups (like New Israel Fund, J Street and Peace Now) with which I have specific politicial, philosophical or moral disagreements and whose work I can’t endorse for inclusion on this list for that reason. There are also American Jewish groups fighting for peace and justice in Israel, but because of the urgency I wanted, with only one exception, to focus on groups working in Israel-Palestine.
The list is divided more or less according to the rubric of Israeli groups followed by Palestinian. I’m open of course to adding Palestinian groups since it’s a community whose NGOs I know less well.
Anarchists Against the Wall (donate) Israel’s leading group fighting against the Separation Wall through weekly protests that often end in violence perpetrated by the Israeli security forces against unarmed demonstrators who seek to prevent the theft of Palestinian land.
B’Tselem (donate) Israel’s leading human rights group which documents arbitrary arrests, shootings, settler violence, and IDF malfeasance.
HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual (donate)
Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement (donate) The leading NGO working against Israel’s draconian system of checkpoints and arbitrary laws which impede freedom of movement for Palestinians.
Breaking the Silence (donate) An anti-Occupation Israeli combat veterans group seeking to expose the horrors of the military experience and its impact on Palestinians and Israelis.
Combatants for Peace A group of Israeli and Palestinian combat veterans who advocate against war and violence in their respective communities
Machsom Watch (donate) a movement of Israeli women who oppose the Israeli occupation and the denial of Palestinians’ rights to move freely in their land. It documents IDF violations of Palestinian human rights at military checkpoints.
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (donate) Israel’s largest, most prominent, and most mainstream human rights organization.
Taayush: Arab-Jewish Partnership (donate) Israelis & Palestinians striving to end the Israeli occupation and to achieve full civil equality through daily non-violent direct-action.
Yesh Din (donate) a group of Israelis seeking to defend the human rights of Palestinians under Israeli Occupation
Ir Amim (donate) dedicated to documenting Israeli encroachment on Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Ir Amim wants Jerusalem to be a more viable and equitable city for the Israelis and Palestinians who share it. The group envisions a city that ensures the dignity and welfare of all its residents and that safeguards their holy places, as well as their historical and cultural heritages.
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (donate) A human rights group working in the media and through the legal system to expose egregious instances of Israeli torture of Palestinian prisoners.
Yesh Gvul (donate) Israel’s leading NGO investigating potential IDF war crimes and advocating for Israeli accountability to the laws of war.
Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (donate) An NGO that promotes awareness of Israel’s policy of destroying entire swaths of Palestinian homes for security and punitive purposes.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (donate) Engaged in providing medical assistance and advocacy that advances human rights in Israel
Rabbis for Human Rights (donate) A group of Israeli rabbis who advocate for human rights based in the Jewish tradition
Parent’s Circle (donate) An organization whose members are survivors of those Palestinians and Israelis victims murdered in terror attacks.
Gush Shalom Uri Avnery’s peace group.
Women of the Wall (donate) Religious feminist group advocating equal treatment of men and women at the Western Wall holy site
Jewish Voice for Peace (donate) The leading American-Jewish group working to promote a just Israeli-Palestinian peace. It supports BDS and refuses to endorse either a two or one-state solution to the conflict.
Seruv (donate) An Israeli NGO which supports those who refuse to serve in the IDF on moral or religious grounds.
New Profile (donate) A feminist NGO encouraging military refusal and conscientious objection.
Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity (donate) supporters of Palestinian families evicted from their East Jerusalem homes by settler squatters and home thieves
Neve Shalom (donate) A cooperative community of Israeli Jews and Palestinians devoted to showing that the two people can live and build a thriving community together.
West-Eastern Diwan Orchestra (donate) Daniel Barenboim’s groundbreaking musical ensemble of young Israeli and Palestinian musicians whose music breaks the taboos established by each society that inhibits tolerance and mutual respect.
Mada al-Carmel (donate) A Palestinian social-science institute which documents the evils of Occupation and the inferior treatment of Israeli Palestinians within Israeli society. I particularly mention it because New Israel Fund specifically defunded Mada when they refused to adhere to NIF guidelines which demanded Palestinian NGOs not advocate for a one-state solution.
Adalah: the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (donate)
Al Haq: Defending Human Rights in Palestine
Addameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Network (donate)
Al Mezan: Center for Human Rights (donate)
Badil: Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (donate) Gaza-based human rights advocacy group
MIFTAH: (donate) The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
SABEEL: the Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (donate) Canon Naim Ateek’s Episcopal movement seeking to apply the teaching of liberation theology to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
terça-feira, 20 de março de 2012
Study: ISRAEL'S SOCIAL PROTESTS CAUSED DROP IN RACIST INCIDENTS AGAINST ARABS
20 March 2012, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
Coalition against Racism in Israel says last summer's social unrest caused Israel's various ethnic groups to unite against what they said was increased institutional discrimination.
By Jack Khoury
Incidents of racism and intolerance between across Israeli ethnic groups are on the decline, a new report published on Monday concluded.
According to data compiled by the Coalition against Racism in Israel, is composed of Jewish and Arab human rights groups, the number of reported incidences of racism committed by Jewish Israelis against Arab Israelis fell from 91 in 2009 and 68 in 2010 to only 20 in 2011.
Nidal Othman, who heads the coalition, said the drop was directly related to the social protest movement that swept the country last summer, which, he said, created an atmosphere of solidarity between minority groups, including Arabs, Ethiopian Jews and Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent.
On the other hand, the report found an increase in acts of racism by state institutions, businesses, and private and public organizations against the same groups. According to the report, there were 155 such incidents last year, including 35 Knesset bills which aimed to restrict the freedom of Arab citizens of Israel, foreign workers or refugees and some 22 cases of home demolitions, 15 of them in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the Negev.
The report also noted an escalation in the intensity of attacks against religious groups, largely due to the escalation from mostly verbal slurs to vandalism and arson against houses of worship.
"The government led by Netanyahu is dragging most of the public toward a socially and politically explosive situation, which could lead to minority groups, who are the object of discrimination, taking their frustration to the streets," said Nidal.
"The refusal of landlords to rent apartments to Arabs, the demolition of Arab homes by the government, the segregation of Ethiopian students, the moves to expel [African] refugees, the eviction of homeless people, mostly Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent, from tent camps – could all together lead to a real collective explosion of rage," he added.
The coalition, in partnership with other groups and MKs, is planning to launch a campaign against racism in Israel on Tuesday, under the banner "Racism against all of us, all of us against racism." The campaign opened with a conference on Tuesday and will include demonstrations in front of the Prime Minister's Residence.
The coalition noted that its campaign would represent the first time that all the various groups that suffer from racism in Israel would unite against government discrimination, instead of struggling separately for narrow sectarian grievances.
Coalition against Racism in Israel says last summer's social unrest caused Israel's various ethnic groups to unite against what they said was increased institutional discrimination.
By Jack Khoury
Incidents of racism and intolerance between across Israeli ethnic groups are on the decline, a new report published on Monday concluded.
According to data compiled by the Coalition against Racism in Israel, is composed of Jewish and Arab human rights groups, the number of reported incidences of racism committed by Jewish Israelis against Arab Israelis fell from 91 in 2009 and 68 in 2010 to only 20 in 2011.
Nidal Othman, who heads the coalition, said the drop was directly related to the social protest movement that swept the country last summer, which, he said, created an atmosphere of solidarity between minority groups, including Arabs, Ethiopian Jews and Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent.
On the other hand, the report found an increase in acts of racism by state institutions, businesses, and private and public organizations against the same groups. According to the report, there were 155 such incidents last year, including 35 Knesset bills which aimed to restrict the freedom of Arab citizens of Israel, foreign workers or refugees and some 22 cases of home demolitions, 15 of them in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the Negev.
The report also noted an escalation in the intensity of attacks against religious groups, largely due to the escalation from mostly verbal slurs to vandalism and arson against houses of worship.
"The government led by Netanyahu is dragging most of the public toward a socially and politically explosive situation, which could lead to minority groups, who are the object of discrimination, taking their frustration to the streets," said Nidal.
"The refusal of landlords to rent apartments to Arabs, the demolition of Arab homes by the government, the segregation of Ethiopian students, the moves to expel [African] refugees, the eviction of homeless people, mostly Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent, from tent camps – could all together lead to a real collective explosion of rage," he added.
The coalition, in partnership with other groups and MKs, is planning to launch a campaign against racism in Israel on Tuesday, under the banner "Racism against all of us, all of us against racism." The campaign opened with a conference on Tuesday and will include demonstrations in front of the Prime Minister's Residence.
The coalition noted that its campaign would represent the first time that all the various groups that suffer from racism in Israel would unite against government discrimination, instead of struggling separately for narrow sectarian grievances.
domingo, 18 de março de 2012
IDF opposes the screening of Israeli documentary about West Bank legal system
18 March 2012, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
The documentary film The Law in These Parts, critical of the IDF justice system in the territories, was not authorized to be screened for IDF soldiers.
By Nirit Anderman
The IDF Spokesperson's unit has recently forbidden the screening of an Israeli documentary film about the West Bank legal system before an Israeli Defense Forces unit.
The creators of the film, which critically examines Israel's legal system in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, contacted senior officials within the IDF court system in attempts to screen the film before soldiers serving in military courts. The IDF Spokesperson's unit, however, thwarted the plan and forbade the screening.
The Law in These Parts, directed by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, was first shown at the most recent Jerusalem Film Festival, and won the prize for best documentary. Two months ago, it competed in the prestigious Sundance Film Festival where it won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in Documentary.
In the film, Alexandrowicz interviews several Israeli lawmakers who were former senior officials in the military courts, in order to better understand the development of the Israeli legal system in the territories. Alexandrowicz attempts to understand the logic used by the people who created the legal system, and determine what are the ramifications of such a court system on the principles of law and justice in Israel.
A few months ago, the creators of the film contacted officers within the IDF courts and offered to screen The Law in These Parts for the judges in the military courts at the Ofer prison, located near Ramallah. The filmmakers also offered to hold and participate in a discussion of the film and its contents with the judges, as they have done at screenings in the past.
"Despite their disagreement with a large portion of the film's contents, the officials in the unit expressed interest in our offer," said producer Liran Atzmor. "However they told us that a screening of this type can only be done with permission from the Spokesperson's unit," he added. Despite the agreement between the filmmakers and the court officials to screen the film, the IDF Spokesperson's unit did not give permission to hold the screening. The event planned for the judges at the Ofer prison was cancelled but according to sources, a small screening, initiated by a few officers with a copy of the film provided by the filmmakers, was held for a few justice officials and the Military Advocate General.
Another incident of IDF opposition to the film arose nearly two months ago, when a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem decided to show the film to his students. The professor, who preferred to remain anonymous, contacted the Military Advocate General to invite a representative to join the screening and participate in a discussion with the students. The professor's request was turned down, as the Military Advocate General's office had received "orders not to comment on this film."
In the end, an agreement was reached and the Military Advocate General sent a representative to discuss the issues presented in the film, however not as part of a screening of the film. The students saw the film a week later.
"We think that the film The Law in These Parts is very relevant to military history, and should very much interest the Military Advocate General," said Atzmor. The filmmakers were astonished that "the IDF Spokesperson's unit did not see fit to authorize the screening of the film, even in a closed setting for military officials, and refused to send a representative to an academic screening of the film."
At this point the film has been screened all over the country at more than 150 separate screenings, among them screenings for public defenders, State Attorney workers, members of the Council for Peace and Security, and law schools. Atzmon noted "that in two weeks, the film will be shown on television, which makes the attempt to keep the film under wraps that much stranger."
When asked for comment, the IDF Spokesperson's unit replied "In these matters, the IDF does not comment about the internal decision-making process to newspapers."
Read this article in Hebrew
Israeli documentary on West Bank legal system wins prestigious Sundance prize
sexta-feira, 24 de fevereiro de 2012
Settler Extremists Provoke Violence, Threaten Muslim Sovereignty Over Temple Mount, Seeking Final Day of Reckoning
22 February 2012, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)
Over the past week or so there have been some strange doings on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. As the lyrics of the old song go:
There’s something happnin’ here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I’ve go to beware
It appears that a growing band of Israeli messianic settlers have banded together to orchestrate a crisis on the Temple Mount. Their ultimate goal seems to be taking Jewish control over the sacred ground, including two of the holiest sites in Islam, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
For many years, there have been radical settler groups preparing for such a day. Ateret Cohanim maintains a yeshiva which is training priests to resume the Temple rituals including animal sacrifice. Dov Hikind’s wife earns $150,000 a year as its U.S. fundraiser. They’re also breeding cattle in the hopes of find that miraculous red heifer which would serve as a sign that God is ready to resume Jewish rites on this sacred ground.
The settlers know that for Jews to rebuild the Temple would mean a holy war in the Holy Land that would likely dwarf the Crusades for passion and bloodletting. For these Jews, such an eventuality would bring the days of the coming of the Messiah closer, thus making the human suffering not just acceptable, but even desirable.
These Temple activists are also fundraising on behalf of their messianic Armageddon. Here, they’re raising $10,000 to preserve “Jewish rights” on the Temple Mount. The website says there is no written budget because the uses to which the funding would be put would be “sensitive.” Therefore such documentation is for “internal” purposes only. You can imagine what this means. They’re likely raising a lot of their funding from the types of American Jews giving to the Hebron Fund and Central Fund of Israel.
There is a political echelon in the radical settler movement which is preparing the ground for such a Jewish takeover. It’s led by Moshe Feiglin, who recently took nearly a quarter of the vote in the Likud leadership primary by running to the right of (!) Bibi Netanyahu. Flyers were publicly posted throughout Jerusalem two weeks ago calling for Jews to make aliyah en masse to the Temple Mount. The term aliyah in the Temple context is a historic term used to denote Jewish pilgrims who went to the sacred spot for worship on Jewish festivals. In other words, it would only be used today by someone who saw himself as commanded to rebuild and renew Jewish worship there. To do this, one must first evict or destroy the Muslim holy sites there as was done by Hindu nationalists to a mosque in Ayodiyah, India.
The extremist site, The Temple Mount is Ours, calls for a mass pilgrimage ”in order to strengthen claim of Jewish sovereignty” to the site. You can see in the video above from February 19th and this one what is the result of such settler provocation. The last time such a thing was attempted, Ariel Sharon instigated the Second Intifada and propelled himself into the prime minister’s chair. Feiglin is smart enough to understand that such political grandstanding can be the making of an Israeli prime minister.
But he’s also smart enough to understand that by identifying himself too explicitly with this movement he could get himself investigated by the police and possibly jailed. So he deftly denied credit for the flyer and made his own visit to the Temple Mount earlier than the time specified in the flyer.
A Feiglin associate in this interview posted by IMRA denies that the founder of the Manhigut Yehudit ["Jewish Leadership"] movement wants to rebuild the Temple. Instead, he claims Feiglin only wants to prepare the Jews for the moment when the Messiah will come and accomplish this task. I’m afraid this sort of nuance is justifiably lost of Muslims who mistake a Jew who wants to lay the groundwork for stealing their holy site from them, with a Jewish Messiah who will actually do this. Feiglin’s representative rather ominously states in the interview that it’s the founders’ dream to “make” all Jews share in his vision, and that this is what will bring the Messiah and a rebuilt Temple.
Strangely, the representative of Feiglin’s group adamantly maintained that it had no obligation to publicly renounce the flyer. Further, he said it had no plans to file a complaint with the police about the document it claims was a fraud. This is generally diametrically opposite from the way most political parties operate in Israel. In similar circumstances, they would file a complaint and ask the police to investigate in order to clarify to the public their rejection of the message and the act of fraud. The fact that Manhifut Yehudit behaved so differently in this case raises major questions about its relationship to the flyer and those who created it.
The settler agitators are camouflaging their covert campaign for Jewish sovereignty, couching it in terms of religious liberty. No one, they seem to think, can reject a call for Jews to have the same access to the Temple Mount that Muslims enjoy. The only problem with this notion is that Muslims for generations have controlled the area. Until the type of agitation initiated by Sharon, access was relatively open. In fact, I can remember visiting both holy mosques during my stays in Israel in 1972-73 and 1979-1980. It was only after Muslims became afraid that Jews wanted to take control from them that relations went bad.
There will be some among you who will say: C’mon. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Feiglin barely has a following. Hardly anyone takes him seriously. He leads a bunch of radical kooks. No Israeli in their right mind would come anywhere near these cockamamie ideas.
That’s all well and good. But I’m not buying. History is full of examples of kooks whose ideas began by being spurned by the mainstream, until they weren’t. While this will agitate some of our friends, remember Hitler’s beer hall putsch in 1923? What did they think of him then? Crackpot, right? Threw him in jail, where he proceeded to write Mein Kampf and plan his takeover of the German state.
OK, so you don’t like that analogy. How about one closer to home? In 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank and reunited Jerusalem after the War. On Passover 1968, Rabbi Moshe Levinger held his first Passover seder in Hebron. There were no settlements then. The Greater Land of Israel was only a gleam in his eye. But every great movement begins with a small spark. And from that spark comes a terrible conflagration.
After that Seder, the messianic nationalists who founded Gush Emunim provoked a crisis. Instead of waiting for government approval, they re-established the Gush Etzion settlement which had been destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948. This had been one of the more traumatic incidents of the war in which a group of Jews had been slaughtered by the Arab army in the battle for Jerusalem. While Levinger’s re-occupation of the Etzion bloc on behalf of Israel was an enormously popular nationalist statement, it also ignited the decades of hate and mistrust that have inflamed relations with the Palestinians ever since.
Later in 1975, Gush Emunim organized the aliyah to Sebastia, where they created a new settlement, Elon Moreh. After numberous attempts were rebuffed by the IDF, the Israeli government in the form of Shimon Peres, signed an agreement legalizing the new settlement, which in turn opened the floodgates for the massive expropriations and settlement growth that followed. This was the first example of government capitulation to the settler movement and was the model the movement used in all its subsequent confrontations.
This is the history of the settler enterprise. They begin with an inch, and within a year or a decade they’ve taken not just a mile, but an entire city or nation. But they recognize that in the case of the Temple Mount they are dealing with an even more sensitive subject. One that has no national consensus as the settlement enterprise perhaps did in 1967.
National polls show that while Israeli Jews overwhelming want to rebuild the Holy Temple, only 30% are willing to see the government take active steps to do so. In other words, while most Israelis harbor vague religious hankerings to restore the glory of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Most realize that to do so would start a religious war the likes of which the region hasn’t seen for centuries. In fact, in this report Jordan, which is nominally responsible for the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem warns Israel not to attempt to change the status quo or risk grave consequences.
So the settlers must mount a carefully calibrated campaign to achieve their goal. It must start with small incremental steps that lead to larger ones. One of these is the call for full Jewish access to the sacred confines of the Temple Mount. To dramatize this, they’ve enlisted the willing help of their U.S. Jewish water carriers, the Zionist Organization of America. ZOA put out a bizarre press release calling for all the mainstream American Jewish groups to take up this cause of religious liberty by criticizing the Israeli government for its supposedly high-handed tactics in denying Jews access:
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) believes that unfettered access and freedom to pray at a holy site is a basic, universally recognized right, which certainly should be accorded to Jews in the Jewish State of Israel…Yet, Israeli police and security personnel, hoping to appease Muslim extremists including the Wakf authority on the Temple Mount, have been engaging in blatantly discriminatory and humiliating behavior toward Jewish visitors.
…The ZOA strongly urges the ADL, AJ Committee, the Orthodox Union, Emunah, AMIT, RZA and other groups to work to end bias and discrimination on the Temple Mount against identified Jews.
The group is playing the role of key interlocutor among American Jews on behalf of settler extremism. They published this press release in coordination with the flyer I mentioned above which called for a mass rally to the Mount:
…[To] purify this place of the enemies of Israel, thieves of [Holy] lands, in order to rebuild the Holy Temple on the ruins of [their] mosques
The flyer was so egregious, so incendiary that police immediately cancelled access to the site for Jews and blamed Moshe Feiglin for provoking the hysteria. As soon as Feiglin denied responsibility for the flyer, ZOA immediately took down its press release, only to republish it four days later, after the incident had blown over.
The press release and accompanying rhetoric pulls out all the guilt-inducing stops in the Jewish conscience. It accuses Israeli police, responsible for determining who and how many Jews will enter the Temple confines, with organizing “selektzias,” (the Nazi term for lining up concentration camp inmates to determine who would live and who would die) in which they line up Jews before entering the Muslim sacred grounds. Note below how the ZOA both inappropriately exploits Holocaust rhetoric and shamelessly excuses the offense at the same time:
Identified Jews are shunted to the side to wait separately in what some have come to cynically call “the selekzia,” alluding to the Nazis’ orderly process of deciding which Jews would live and which Jews would go to their demise. [While ZOA does not condone inappropriate use of Holocaust imagery, especially in matters relating to Israel, it is telling that Jews subjected to systematic abuse on the Temple Mount would even contemplate using this term.]
The ZOA claimed police were looking for “Jewish traits” in determining who could enter and who couldn’t:
Identifiably Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount are singled out for biased treatment…Remarkably, if your appearance or behavior openly shows you are a Muslim you are treated with respect [!]
All of this is meant to conjure up the Holocaust in Jewish consciousness in much the same way that settlers evacuated from Gush Katif wore orange armbands with Jewish stars that denoted they were being treated by the Israeli police and IDF the same as Jews sent to the gas chambers during World War II.
The press release also exhibits historical amnesia by erasing past incidents of Jewish and non-Jewish terror associated with the holy site contested by two major religions:
There is no security basis for targeting Jews on the Temple Mount…
Overall, this is a tremendously effective bit of political-religious theater in an Israel context. The secular government has little response to it other than invoking its own civil authority, which isn’t a very resonant concept when compared with the Holocaust. That is why the settlers have vanquished the secular authorities at every turn and all but dominated the political realm.
The current campaign for the right of Jews to freely access the Temple Mount is two-pronged. There’s a grassroots cadre who agitate on the spot by lining up and demanding physical access. Their efforts have been successful at causing serious rioting over the past few days which involved Israeli police invading the sacred confines of the mosques. This, of course, is a severe breach of the sanctity of the place, all of which the settlers want.
Israeli police official testifies before Knesset committee on Temple Mount Jewish access
The grassroots element is supported by an official political effort backed by far-right Knesset members. Members of the Interior Committee in fact, have dragged before them the senior Israeli police officer responsible for maintaining order on the Mount. They publicly excoriated him for the demeaning treatment he’s allegedly offered Jewish Temple visitors. All this serves as a pincers movement against the civil authorities. They’re beset on the one side by the activists in the street and on the other by the political leaders demanding the government take their hands off these poor Jews doing nothing worse than demanding their God-given right to visit the Holy Temple.
But given the history since 1967, we know where this will lead. The police will eventually back off. The settlers will become more provocative and brazen. Confrontations will become more violent and more frequent. Till there is some sort of defining catastrophic moment.
In 1984, the Jewish Underground attempted to foment such a crisis by bombing the Mount and destroying the mosques. Fortunately, the conspiracy was exposed and the members arrested before they could carry out their plans. Of those arrested, most were eventually pardoned, which again shows the impotence of civil authority in the face of the religious zeal of the settler movement.
We don’t know what the settlers have in mind to provoke such a crisis this time around. But the angrier they can make the Muslims in Jerusalem, the more violence they can provoke, the closer will come the Final Day of Reckoning.
Let any who dismiss this as a far-fetched fantasy beware. Such fantasies have a way of becoming not just reality, but nightmare reality in the pathological hot-house environment of the Middle East.
Over the past week or so there have been some strange doings on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. As the lyrics of the old song go:
There’s something happnin’ here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I’ve go to beware
It appears that a growing band of Israeli messianic settlers have banded together to orchestrate a crisis on the Temple Mount. Their ultimate goal seems to be taking Jewish control over the sacred ground, including two of the holiest sites in Islam, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
For many years, there have been radical settler groups preparing for such a day. Ateret Cohanim maintains a yeshiva which is training priests to resume the Temple rituals including animal sacrifice. Dov Hikind’s wife earns $150,000 a year as its U.S. fundraiser. They’re also breeding cattle in the hopes of find that miraculous red heifer which would serve as a sign that God is ready to resume Jewish rites on this sacred ground.
The settlers know that for Jews to rebuild the Temple would mean a holy war in the Holy Land that would likely dwarf the Crusades for passion and bloodletting. For these Jews, such an eventuality would bring the days of the coming of the Messiah closer, thus making the human suffering not just acceptable, but even desirable.
These Temple activists are also fundraising on behalf of their messianic Armageddon. Here, they’re raising $10,000 to preserve “Jewish rights” on the Temple Mount. The website says there is no written budget because the uses to which the funding would be put would be “sensitive.” Therefore such documentation is for “internal” purposes only. You can imagine what this means. They’re likely raising a lot of their funding from the types of American Jews giving to the Hebron Fund and Central Fund of Israel.
There is a political echelon in the radical settler movement which is preparing the ground for such a Jewish takeover. It’s led by Moshe Feiglin, who recently took nearly a quarter of the vote in the Likud leadership primary by running to the right of (!) Bibi Netanyahu. Flyers were publicly posted throughout Jerusalem two weeks ago calling for Jews to make aliyah en masse to the Temple Mount. The term aliyah in the Temple context is a historic term used to denote Jewish pilgrims who went to the sacred spot for worship on Jewish festivals. In other words, it would only be used today by someone who saw himself as commanded to rebuild and renew Jewish worship there. To do this, one must first evict or destroy the Muslim holy sites there as was done by Hindu nationalists to a mosque in Ayodiyah, India.
The extremist site, The Temple Mount is Ours, calls for a mass pilgrimage ”in order to strengthen claim of Jewish sovereignty” to the site. You can see in the video above from February 19th and this one what is the result of such settler provocation. The last time such a thing was attempted, Ariel Sharon instigated the Second Intifada and propelled himself into the prime minister’s chair. Feiglin is smart enough to understand that such political grandstanding can be the making of an Israeli prime minister.
But he’s also smart enough to understand that by identifying himself too explicitly with this movement he could get himself investigated by the police and possibly jailed. So he deftly denied credit for the flyer and made his own visit to the Temple Mount earlier than the time specified in the flyer.
A Feiglin associate in this interview posted by IMRA denies that the founder of the Manhigut Yehudit ["Jewish Leadership"] movement wants to rebuild the Temple. Instead, he claims Feiglin only wants to prepare the Jews for the moment when the Messiah will come and accomplish this task. I’m afraid this sort of nuance is justifiably lost of Muslims who mistake a Jew who wants to lay the groundwork for stealing their holy site from them, with a Jewish Messiah who will actually do this. Feiglin’s representative rather ominously states in the interview that it’s the founders’ dream to “make” all Jews share in his vision, and that this is what will bring the Messiah and a rebuilt Temple.
Strangely, the representative of Feiglin’s group adamantly maintained that it had no obligation to publicly renounce the flyer. Further, he said it had no plans to file a complaint with the police about the document it claims was a fraud. This is generally diametrically opposite from the way most political parties operate in Israel. In similar circumstances, they would file a complaint and ask the police to investigate in order to clarify to the public their rejection of the message and the act of fraud. The fact that Manhifut Yehudit behaved so differently in this case raises major questions about its relationship to the flyer and those who created it.
The settler agitators are camouflaging their covert campaign for Jewish sovereignty, couching it in terms of religious liberty. No one, they seem to think, can reject a call for Jews to have the same access to the Temple Mount that Muslims enjoy. The only problem with this notion is that Muslims for generations have controlled the area. Until the type of agitation initiated by Sharon, access was relatively open. In fact, I can remember visiting both holy mosques during my stays in Israel in 1972-73 and 1979-1980. It was only after Muslims became afraid that Jews wanted to take control from them that relations went bad.
There will be some among you who will say: C’mon. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Feiglin barely has a following. Hardly anyone takes him seriously. He leads a bunch of radical kooks. No Israeli in their right mind would come anywhere near these cockamamie ideas.
That’s all well and good. But I’m not buying. History is full of examples of kooks whose ideas began by being spurned by the mainstream, until they weren’t. While this will agitate some of our friends, remember Hitler’s beer hall putsch in 1923? What did they think of him then? Crackpot, right? Threw him in jail, where he proceeded to write Mein Kampf and plan his takeover of the German state.
OK, so you don’t like that analogy. How about one closer to home? In 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank and reunited Jerusalem after the War. On Passover 1968, Rabbi Moshe Levinger held his first Passover seder in Hebron. There were no settlements then. The Greater Land of Israel was only a gleam in his eye. But every great movement begins with a small spark. And from that spark comes a terrible conflagration.
After that Seder, the messianic nationalists who founded Gush Emunim provoked a crisis. Instead of waiting for government approval, they re-established the Gush Etzion settlement which had been destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948. This had been one of the more traumatic incidents of the war in which a group of Jews had been slaughtered by the Arab army in the battle for Jerusalem. While Levinger’s re-occupation of the Etzion bloc on behalf of Israel was an enormously popular nationalist statement, it also ignited the decades of hate and mistrust that have inflamed relations with the Palestinians ever since.
Later in 1975, Gush Emunim organized the aliyah to Sebastia, where they created a new settlement, Elon Moreh. After numberous attempts were rebuffed by the IDF, the Israeli government in the form of Shimon Peres, signed an agreement legalizing the new settlement, which in turn opened the floodgates for the massive expropriations and settlement growth that followed. This was the first example of government capitulation to the settler movement and was the model the movement used in all its subsequent confrontations.
This is the history of the settler enterprise. They begin with an inch, and within a year or a decade they’ve taken not just a mile, but an entire city or nation. But they recognize that in the case of the Temple Mount they are dealing with an even more sensitive subject. One that has no national consensus as the settlement enterprise perhaps did in 1967.
National polls show that while Israeli Jews overwhelming want to rebuild the Holy Temple, only 30% are willing to see the government take active steps to do so. In other words, while most Israelis harbor vague religious hankerings to restore the glory of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Most realize that to do so would start a religious war the likes of which the region hasn’t seen for centuries. In fact, in this report Jordan, which is nominally responsible for the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem warns Israel not to attempt to change the status quo or risk grave consequences.
So the settlers must mount a carefully calibrated campaign to achieve their goal. It must start with small incremental steps that lead to larger ones. One of these is the call for full Jewish access to the sacred confines of the Temple Mount. To dramatize this, they’ve enlisted the willing help of their U.S. Jewish water carriers, the Zionist Organization of America. ZOA put out a bizarre press release calling for all the mainstream American Jewish groups to take up this cause of religious liberty by criticizing the Israeli government for its supposedly high-handed tactics in denying Jews access:
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) believes that unfettered access and freedom to pray at a holy site is a basic, universally recognized right, which certainly should be accorded to Jews in the Jewish State of Israel…Yet, Israeli police and security personnel, hoping to appease Muslim extremists including the Wakf authority on the Temple Mount, have been engaging in blatantly discriminatory and humiliating behavior toward Jewish visitors.
…The ZOA strongly urges the ADL, AJ Committee, the Orthodox Union, Emunah, AMIT, RZA and other groups to work to end bias and discrimination on the Temple Mount against identified Jews.
The group is playing the role of key interlocutor among American Jews on behalf of settler extremism. They published this press release in coordination with the flyer I mentioned above which called for a mass rally to the Mount:
…[To] purify this place of the enemies of Israel, thieves of [Holy] lands, in order to rebuild the Holy Temple on the ruins of [their] mosques
The flyer was so egregious, so incendiary that police immediately cancelled access to the site for Jews and blamed Moshe Feiglin for provoking the hysteria. As soon as Feiglin denied responsibility for the flyer, ZOA immediately took down its press release, only to republish it four days later, after the incident had blown over.
The press release and accompanying rhetoric pulls out all the guilt-inducing stops in the Jewish conscience. It accuses Israeli police, responsible for determining who and how many Jews will enter the Temple confines, with organizing “selektzias,” (the Nazi term for lining up concentration camp inmates to determine who would live and who would die) in which they line up Jews before entering the Muslim sacred grounds. Note below how the ZOA both inappropriately exploits Holocaust rhetoric and shamelessly excuses the offense at the same time:
Identified Jews are shunted to the side to wait separately in what some have come to cynically call “the selekzia,” alluding to the Nazis’ orderly process of deciding which Jews would live and which Jews would go to their demise. [While ZOA does not condone inappropriate use of Holocaust imagery, especially in matters relating to Israel, it is telling that Jews subjected to systematic abuse on the Temple Mount would even contemplate using this term.]
The ZOA claimed police were looking for “Jewish traits” in determining who could enter and who couldn’t:
Identifiably Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount are singled out for biased treatment…Remarkably, if your appearance or behavior openly shows you are a Muslim you are treated with respect [!]
All of this is meant to conjure up the Holocaust in Jewish consciousness in much the same way that settlers evacuated from Gush Katif wore orange armbands with Jewish stars that denoted they were being treated by the Israeli police and IDF the same as Jews sent to the gas chambers during World War II.
The press release also exhibits historical amnesia by erasing past incidents of Jewish and non-Jewish terror associated with the holy site contested by two major religions:
There is no security basis for targeting Jews on the Temple Mount…
Overall, this is a tremendously effective bit of political-religious theater in an Israel context. The secular government has little response to it other than invoking its own civil authority, which isn’t a very resonant concept when compared with the Holocaust. That is why the settlers have vanquished the secular authorities at every turn and all but dominated the political realm.
The current campaign for the right of Jews to freely access the Temple Mount is two-pronged. There’s a grassroots cadre who agitate on the spot by lining up and demanding physical access. Their efforts have been successful at causing serious rioting over the past few days which involved Israeli police invading the sacred confines of the mosques. This, of course, is a severe breach of the sanctity of the place, all of which the settlers want.
Israeli police official testifies before Knesset committee on Temple Mount Jewish access
The grassroots element is supported by an official political effort backed by far-right Knesset members. Members of the Interior Committee in fact, have dragged before them the senior Israeli police officer responsible for maintaining order on the Mount. They publicly excoriated him for the demeaning treatment he’s allegedly offered Jewish Temple visitors. All this serves as a pincers movement against the civil authorities. They’re beset on the one side by the activists in the street and on the other by the political leaders demanding the government take their hands off these poor Jews doing nothing worse than demanding their God-given right to visit the Holy Temple.
But given the history since 1967, we know where this will lead. The police will eventually back off. The settlers will become more provocative and brazen. Confrontations will become more violent and more frequent. Till there is some sort of defining catastrophic moment.
In 1984, the Jewish Underground attempted to foment such a crisis by bombing the Mount and destroying the mosques. Fortunately, the conspiracy was exposed and the members arrested before they could carry out their plans. Of those arrested, most were eventually pardoned, which again shows the impotence of civil authority in the face of the religious zeal of the settler movement.
We don’t know what the settlers have in mind to provoke such a crisis this time around. But the angrier they can make the Muslims in Jerusalem, the more violence they can provoke, the closer will come the Final Day of Reckoning.
Let any who dismiss this as a far-fetched fantasy beware. Such fantasies have a way of becoming not just reality, but nightmare reality in the pathological hot-house environment of the Middle East.
On 1st Anniversary in Israeli Prison, Abusisi Charges Mossad Spirited Him from Ukraine in Coffin
21 February 2012, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)
Drawing of Abusisi and his children
Dirar Abusisi has just completed his first anniversary as an Israeli prisoner of conscience incarcerated for “crimes” he hasn’t committed and jailed without trial. He’s been offered deals by the State involving confession to charges without foundation, which would involve accepting as long as a nine-year jail sentence (remember the fate of Ameer Makhoul and Anat Kamm?). In prison, he’s suffered kidney stones, high blood pressure, heart problems and lost 60 pounds. Israel has refused him an operation to relieve the pain suffered from the kidney stones.
A fellow Palestinian prisoner who was housed next door to Abusisi and with whom he shared his ordeal, told his story (Arabic) to the Palestinian newspaper, Al Shehab. The prisoner was released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. Here is an excerpt translated from the story:
[After being detained in the Ukrainian railroad car] Dirar found himself in Kiev, bound and blindfolded. He was taken out of the car and into a villa, where he was surprised to see seven officers who did not have Ukrainian features. One of them spoke to him in Arabic, and said, “Do you know who we are? We are Israeli intelligence.”
Abu Sisi was tied in a chair, and at the beginning of the interrogation was surprised that Yoram Cohen, head of the Shin Bet, and Maj. Oscar “the dirty investigator” [ed., for more on his interrogation "skills" see pgs 35-41 of this affidavit by the Public Committee to Stop Torture in Israel] as described by prisoners in Ashkelon [prison], and those of other military ranks. They interrogated him about [Gilad] Shalit and his relationship with Al-Qassam [Hamas' military wing].
… Abusisi said “It was torture, and brutal, I was strongly beaten on the chest, and received several sharp, hard slaps on the face. I could hear voices screaming and moaning. This lasted 5-6 hours in my estimation.”
Abu Sissi was left alone in the torture chamber and afterward, a man came who bound and blindfolded him again, put him in a coffin and nailed it shut, speaking about how he was transferred to the airport in Kiev…
[After arrival in Israel] Abu Sisi was transferred to “Petah Tikva,” an Israeli detention center.
Then Yoram Cohen returned again for interrogation along with Amos Gilad, who was responsible for the Shalit security file. Then the torture was repeated.
This account has not been verified for accuracy. There are a few aspects that might be questionable, such as the claim that Yoram Cohen, then deputy chief of the Shin Bet, traveled to Ukraine to interrogate Abusisi. It would be more characteristic for the Mossad to be involved in such a case outside Israeli territory. But I have learned never to underestimate the powers of mischief of which such intelligence operatives are capable.
Also, let us not forget the extraordinary fortitude and sacrifice by Khader Adnan, who is now in his 65th day of a fast till death to protest the Israeli justice system, which has not offered any charges against him nor brought him to trial.
Dirar Abusisi has just completed his first anniversary as an Israeli prisoner of conscience incarcerated for “crimes” he hasn’t committed and jailed without trial. He’s been offered deals by the State involving confession to charges without foundation, which would involve accepting as long as a nine-year jail sentence (remember the fate of Ameer Makhoul and Anat Kamm?). In prison, he’s suffered kidney stones, high blood pressure, heart problems and lost 60 pounds. Israel has refused him an operation to relieve the pain suffered from the kidney stones.
A fellow Palestinian prisoner who was housed next door to Abusisi and with whom he shared his ordeal, told his story (Arabic) to the Palestinian newspaper, Al Shehab. The prisoner was released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. Here is an excerpt translated from the story:
[After being detained in the Ukrainian railroad car] Dirar found himself in Kiev, bound and blindfolded. He was taken out of the car and into a villa, where he was surprised to see seven officers who did not have Ukrainian features. One of them spoke to him in Arabic, and said, “Do you know who we are? We are Israeli intelligence.”
Abu Sisi was tied in a chair, and at the beginning of the interrogation was surprised that Yoram Cohen, head of the Shin Bet, and Maj. Oscar “the dirty investigator” [ed., for more on his interrogation "skills" see pgs 35-41 of this affidavit by the Public Committee to Stop Torture in Israel] as described by prisoners in Ashkelon [prison], and those of other military ranks. They interrogated him about [Gilad] Shalit and his relationship with Al-Qassam [Hamas' military wing].
… Abusisi said “It was torture, and brutal, I was strongly beaten on the chest, and received several sharp, hard slaps on the face. I could hear voices screaming and moaning. This lasted 5-6 hours in my estimation.”
Abu Sissi was left alone in the torture chamber and afterward, a man came who bound and blindfolded him again, put him in a coffin and nailed it shut, speaking about how he was transferred to the airport in Kiev…
[After arrival in Israel] Abu Sisi was transferred to “Petah Tikva,” an Israeli detention center.
Then Yoram Cohen returned again for interrogation along with Amos Gilad, who was responsible for the Shalit security file. Then the torture was repeated.
This account has not been verified for accuracy. There are a few aspects that might be questionable, such as the claim that Yoram Cohen, then deputy chief of the Shin Bet, traveled to Ukraine to interrogate Abusisi. It would be more characteristic for the Mossad to be involved in such a case outside Israeli territory. But I have learned never to underestimate the powers of mischief of which such intelligence operatives are capable.
Also, let us not forget the extraordinary fortitude and sacrifice by Khader Adnan, who is now in his 65th day of a fast till death to protest the Israeli justice system, which has not offered any charges against him nor brought him to trial.
quarta-feira, 22 de fevereiro de 2012
Tent of Nations Told to Stop Working its Own Land – Be Ready to Act!
21 February 2012, Shalom Rav http://rabbibrant.com (USA)
A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen
Friends of Tent of Nations has just shared this upsetting letter from Daoud Nasser (above left):
Dear Friends,
Today, the 14th of February at 1.30 PM and as we were working on our land, specifically in the tree of life orchard, we found on three different places , papers with maps signed by the civil administration of Judea and Samaria which is the Israeli military government.
The papers say that we have to stop working on the land specified on the map, because they declared it as a state land. According to them, this land doesn’t belong to us but it is a state land and we are cultivating it. The papers also say that if we want to challenge this order, we can appeal against it within 45 days in front of the military representative office.
It is a shock to receive something like that after 21 years of legal battle defending our land and the right to it in front of Israeli courts.
We sent those papers to our attorney in Jerusalem and he is going to appeal against it within the next days.
This is just to inform you about what happened today, please be aware that the situation might get worse, please be prepared in case actions are needed. In the meanwhile, our attorney will appeal against it and we will see what kind of reaction we receive”
We will keep you updated and will inform you about our next steps and how you can help.
Thank you so much for your support and solidarity. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
Blessings and Salaam.
Readers of my blog should be well acquainted with my friend and personal hero Daoud Nasser. Last year I wrote about Tent of Nations and my visit, together with twenty JRC congregants, with Daoud on his family farm.
This new development is just the latest in a long history of harassment courtesy of the military administration in the West Bank – an institution that provides the shameful “legal” cover for Israel’s outright theft of Palestinian lands. Please stand by – I will forward any further news from Daoud and let you know how you can act on his behalf.
← The Media Silence is Deafening – Please Voice Your Support for Khader Adnan
Report: Khader Adnan Ends Hunger Strike →
7 Responses to Tent of Nations Told to Stop Working its Own Land – Be Ready to Act!
1. Wendy Carson | February 21, 2012 at 10:12 am | Reply
terrible sad.people who fought and won the right to develop a piece of land that they can call their own has been a dream of people in many countries.to take this away is horrific and displace the people who have been living there.Please keep me informed and let them know that many care.
2. Liz | February 21, 2012 at 10:34 am | Reply
It is so important that we support Daoud and his family. We with more access and privilege than others must act on their behalf. Having met with Daoud on the JRC trip and having been a witness to these atrocities makes this even more urgent.
3. Nancy Amacher | February 21, 2012 at 10:56 am | Reply
I, too, have been to the land of Daoud and his family. It is important to make people aware of these actions and protest such land confiscation.
4. Mary Jo | February 21, 2012 at 11:29 am | Reply
I have been in contact with Bshara and will be going to Tent of Nations soon, I will let you know first hand as soon as anything new develops. Thanks for the post.
MJ
5. Elaine | February 21, 2012 at 3:19 pm | Reply
Having planted a tree in the Tree of Life orchard last year and hosted Daoud in my home a few times, I too care very much about what happens to him and his family. All of us must protest these injustices and do what we can to help.
6. Iain | February 21, 2012 at 3:27 pm | Reply
I visited the TofN last summer and was moved by their story but the peace there was over whelming. My thoughts and prayers are with them all.
7. Steve Lewis | February 22, 2012 at 6:48 am | Reply
They can’t be allowed to do this outright theft of land. Somehow make this foul play case known to the world because it showcases Israel’s ethnic cleansing in action. How I wish I could be there to protest this injustice in person.
A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen
Friends of Tent of Nations has just shared this upsetting letter from Daoud Nasser (above left):
Dear Friends,
Today, the 14th of February at 1.30 PM and as we were working on our land, specifically in the tree of life orchard, we found on three different places , papers with maps signed by the civil administration of Judea and Samaria which is the Israeli military government.
The papers say that we have to stop working on the land specified on the map, because they declared it as a state land. According to them, this land doesn’t belong to us but it is a state land and we are cultivating it. The papers also say that if we want to challenge this order, we can appeal against it within 45 days in front of the military representative office.
It is a shock to receive something like that after 21 years of legal battle defending our land and the right to it in front of Israeli courts.
We sent those papers to our attorney in Jerusalem and he is going to appeal against it within the next days.
This is just to inform you about what happened today, please be aware that the situation might get worse, please be prepared in case actions are needed. In the meanwhile, our attorney will appeal against it and we will see what kind of reaction we receive”
We will keep you updated and will inform you about our next steps and how you can help.
Thank you so much for your support and solidarity. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
Blessings and Salaam.
Readers of my blog should be well acquainted with my friend and personal hero Daoud Nasser. Last year I wrote about Tent of Nations and my visit, together with twenty JRC congregants, with Daoud on his family farm.
This new development is just the latest in a long history of harassment courtesy of the military administration in the West Bank – an institution that provides the shameful “legal” cover for Israel’s outright theft of Palestinian lands. Please stand by – I will forward any further news from Daoud and let you know how you can act on his behalf.
← The Media Silence is Deafening – Please Voice Your Support for Khader Adnan
Report: Khader Adnan Ends Hunger Strike →
7 Responses to Tent of Nations Told to Stop Working its Own Land – Be Ready to Act!
1. Wendy Carson | February 21, 2012 at 10:12 am | Reply
terrible sad.people who fought and won the right to develop a piece of land that they can call their own has been a dream of people in many countries.to take this away is horrific and displace the people who have been living there.Please keep me informed and let them know that many care.
2. Liz | February 21, 2012 at 10:34 am | Reply
It is so important that we support Daoud and his family. We with more access and privilege than others must act on their behalf. Having met with Daoud on the JRC trip and having been a witness to these atrocities makes this even more urgent.
3. Nancy Amacher | February 21, 2012 at 10:56 am | Reply
I, too, have been to the land of Daoud and his family. It is important to make people aware of these actions and protest such land confiscation.
4. Mary Jo | February 21, 2012 at 11:29 am | Reply
I have been in contact with Bshara and will be going to Tent of Nations soon, I will let you know first hand as soon as anything new develops. Thanks for the post.
MJ
5. Elaine | February 21, 2012 at 3:19 pm | Reply
Having planted a tree in the Tree of Life orchard last year and hosted Daoud in my home a few times, I too care very much about what happens to him and his family. All of us must protest these injustices and do what we can to help.
6. Iain | February 21, 2012 at 3:27 pm | Reply
I visited the TofN last summer and was moved by their story but the peace there was over whelming. My thoughts and prayers are with them all.
7. Steve Lewis | February 22, 2012 at 6:48 am | Reply
They can’t be allowed to do this outright theft of land. Somehow make this foul play case known to the world because it showcases Israel’s ethnic cleansing in action. How I wish I could be there to protest this injustice in person.
Despite video evidence, officer who shot Israeli demonstrator won’t be charged
22 February 2012, +972 Magazine http://972mag.com (Israel)
Haggai Matar*
The Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem received a notification from the military prosecution yesterday, informing it that charges will not be filed against an officer who shot an Israeli activist during a 2008 demonstration in Bil’in. B’Tselem intends to appeal the decision.
The incident took place during the weekly demonstration against the separation fence in Bil’in on March15, 2008. At the time, demonstrations used to reach the old route of the fence – which has since been found illegal by the Israeli High Court of Justice but not yet dismantled – and the army would cross the gate in the fence and chase demonstrators back into the village. A video recording of the shooting shows the soldiers marching back towards the fence, and one of them pushing away a photographer standing nearby. At this point, Israeli activist Eran Cohen, standing less than five meters away from the road, is heard shouting, “What are you doing, soldier?! Don’t touch the journalists.” At this point, one of the soldiers, apparently an officer, slightly raises his gun and shoots Cohen in the leg with a rubber-coated bullet, even though it is clear that Cohen was in no way a threat to the soldiers, and that no fighting is happening elsewhere in the area. The bullet penetrated Cohen’s knee, and was later removed in surgery after Cohen was rushed to the hospital.
At the request of B’Tselem, a military police investigation was launched by the end of that month, and the video was submitted for military inspection. Now, almost four years later, the army says the case is closed and no charges are to be filed. The military prosecution did not elaborate on the reasons for its decision.
A silent approval for unjustified violence
This is in no way a unique case in the history of the popular and joint struggle. According to B’Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli, it is safe to say that on the whole, soldiers and border policemen are not charged with the wounding or even the killing of demonstrators. “While we have countless reports of injuries and more than twenty deaths in demonstrations, and while many incidents are documented with footage, you almost never see investigations ending with indictments,” says Michaeli.
In the past, army regulations required that every death caused by soldiers prompt investigation by the military police. With the start of the Second Intifada in October 2000, the army openly canceled these regulations, which were put back to force last April. This is why most deaths of demonstrators, peaceful and stone-throwing alike, have not led to investigations, except for two very rare ones: the killing of Bassem Abu-Rahme in Bil’in (caused by a tear gas canister shot directly to his chest), and that of 10-year-old Ahmad Musa in Nil’in shot in the head with a rubber bullet by a border policeman after a demonstration). Even here, the former has yet to turn into an indictment (investigation was only launched following a long legal struggle on the family’s part), and in the latter case, the charge is negligent manslaughter. The only demonstration-related conviction activists remember in the many years of the popular struggle was that of the two soldiers who shot the cuffed and blindfolded Ashraf Abu-Rahme in the foot.
While Palestinian and Israeli activists keep documenting attacks on demonstrations, and while NGOs keep filing complaints against the use of force, the army on the whole seems untouched. In December, B’Tselem wrote the army with great concern, reporting what seems to be a constant policy of soldiers and officers on the ground to ignore the army’s own regulations, which forbid shooting tear gas canisters at a direct angle. B’Tselem have backed up this claim with extensive footage of soldiers shooting tear gas canisters in the same illegal fashion that caused the deaths of Bassem Abu-Rahme and Mustafa Tamimi. However, just last Thursday the military authorities replied, saying that “security forces use tear gas canisters only to disperse violent rioters, and only in an arched angle.”
“They are not even willing to admit that soldiers are disobeying their own regulations”, says Michaeli, “what kind of a message do you think that gives the soldiers?”
*Haggai Matar is an Israeli journalist and political activist. After writing for the short-lived Palestine Times and for Ha'ir Tel Aviv he is currently working as the municipal correspondent of Zman Tel Aviv, the local supplement of Ma'ariv, and is a prominent writer at the independent Hebrew website MySay.
In 2002 Matar was part of the Shministim (Seniors') Letter to then PM Ariel Sharon, and was imprisoned for two years for his refusal to enlist to the Israeli army. Since his release he has been active in various groups against the occupation, as well as in several class-based struggles within the Israeli society.
Contact haggai@hotmail.com
Haggai Matar*
The Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem received a notification from the military prosecution yesterday, informing it that charges will not be filed against an officer who shot an Israeli activist during a 2008 demonstration in Bil’in. B’Tselem intends to appeal the decision.
The incident took place during the weekly demonstration against the separation fence in Bil’in on March15, 2008. At the time, demonstrations used to reach the old route of the fence – which has since been found illegal by the Israeli High Court of Justice but not yet dismantled – and the army would cross the gate in the fence and chase demonstrators back into the village. A video recording of the shooting shows the soldiers marching back towards the fence, and one of them pushing away a photographer standing nearby. At this point, Israeli activist Eran Cohen, standing less than five meters away from the road, is heard shouting, “What are you doing, soldier?! Don’t touch the journalists.” At this point, one of the soldiers, apparently an officer, slightly raises his gun and shoots Cohen in the leg with a rubber-coated bullet, even though it is clear that Cohen was in no way a threat to the soldiers, and that no fighting is happening elsewhere in the area. The bullet penetrated Cohen’s knee, and was later removed in surgery after Cohen was rushed to the hospital.
At the request of B’Tselem, a military police investigation was launched by the end of that month, and the video was submitted for military inspection. Now, almost four years later, the army says the case is closed and no charges are to be filed. The military prosecution did not elaborate on the reasons for its decision.
A silent approval for unjustified violence
This is in no way a unique case in the history of the popular and joint struggle. According to B’Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli, it is safe to say that on the whole, soldiers and border policemen are not charged with the wounding or even the killing of demonstrators. “While we have countless reports of injuries and more than twenty deaths in demonstrations, and while many incidents are documented with footage, you almost never see investigations ending with indictments,” says Michaeli.
In the past, army regulations required that every death caused by soldiers prompt investigation by the military police. With the start of the Second Intifada in October 2000, the army openly canceled these regulations, which were put back to force last April. This is why most deaths of demonstrators, peaceful and stone-throwing alike, have not led to investigations, except for two very rare ones: the killing of Bassem Abu-Rahme in Bil’in (caused by a tear gas canister shot directly to his chest), and that of 10-year-old Ahmad Musa in Nil’in shot in the head with a rubber bullet by a border policeman after a demonstration). Even here, the former has yet to turn into an indictment (investigation was only launched following a long legal struggle on the family’s part), and in the latter case, the charge is negligent manslaughter. The only demonstration-related conviction activists remember in the many years of the popular struggle was that of the two soldiers who shot the cuffed and blindfolded Ashraf Abu-Rahme in the foot.
While Palestinian and Israeli activists keep documenting attacks on demonstrations, and while NGOs keep filing complaints against the use of force, the army on the whole seems untouched. In December, B’Tselem wrote the army with great concern, reporting what seems to be a constant policy of soldiers and officers on the ground to ignore the army’s own regulations, which forbid shooting tear gas canisters at a direct angle. B’Tselem have backed up this claim with extensive footage of soldiers shooting tear gas canisters in the same illegal fashion that caused the deaths of Bassem Abu-Rahme and Mustafa Tamimi. However, just last Thursday the military authorities replied, saying that “security forces use tear gas canisters only to disperse violent rioters, and only in an arched angle.”
“They are not even willing to admit that soldiers are disobeying their own regulations”, says Michaeli, “what kind of a message do you think that gives the soldiers?”
*Haggai Matar is an Israeli journalist and political activist. After writing for the short-lived Palestine Times and for Ha'ir Tel Aviv he is currently working as the municipal correspondent of Zman Tel Aviv, the local supplement of Ma'ariv, and is a prominent writer at the independent Hebrew website MySay.
In 2002 Matar was part of the Shministim (Seniors') Letter to then PM Ariel Sharon, and was imprisoned for two years for his refusal to enlist to the Israeli army. Since his release he has been active in various groups against the occupation, as well as in several class-based struggles within the Israeli society.
Contact haggai@hotmail.com
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