Israel es un Estado perverso

5 Agosto 2016, Rebelión http://www.rebelion.org (Mexico)

Gideon Levy

Haaretz

Dejen de vivir en la negación

Después de hablar del nacionalismo y el racismo, el odio y el desprecio por la vida de los árabes, el culto a la seguridad y la adicción a la ocupación, la victimización y el mesianismo, todavía hay que agregar otro elemento, sin el cual no se puede explicar el comportamiento del régimen de ocupación israelí: la maldad. La maldad pura. La maldad sádica. El mal por el mal mismo. A veces, es la única explicación posible.

Eva Illouz describió sus señales (“El mal ahora”, edición hebrea de Haaretz, 30/7/16). Su ensayo, que cuestiona la idea de la banalidad del mal, considera al grupo nacional como la fuente del mal. Usando el concepto del filósofo Ludwig Wittgenstein, ella encuentra un “parecido de familia” entre la ocupación israelí y

FORMER MOSSAD CHIEF, HALEVY, IS IRAN CONTRARIAN

September 3, 2012, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)

by Richard Silverstein

in Mideast Peace

NOTE: My web host, Hostgator, suspended my site for what seems like the tenth time over the weekend. These stoppages are agonizing and inexplicable to me. I apologize for the inconvenience to you.

Former Mossad chief, Ephraim Halevy, has–unlike some relatively new converts to the cause like Benny Gantz, Tamir Pardo, Yuval Diskin and Meir Dagan–been an Iran contrarian for years. While opposed to Iran attaining a nuclear weapon, he never believed it would be an existential threat to Israel. He never believed attacking Iran was a viable method for stopping Iran’s nuclear program. Although not opposed to sanctions, he never believed that any single method like a strike or sanctions could work absent real diplomatic engagement.

In that sense, Halevy is a throwback to a more pragmatic era in Israeli intelligence work. His assessments were not ideological like so much of which emanates from today’s Israeli political leadership. If any intelligence operative could be said to be operating out of a set of values, rather than political blinders, it would be someone like Halevy. Not that I mean to romanticize him, because Israeli cloak and dagger has had a strong element of amoral skullduggery no matter who was running it. But Halevy, today, does seem almost quaint in his strict adherence to humility and apolitical pronouncements.

That’s why his interview in Haaretz is so important. Unlike his colleagues who are a more rough and tumble lot, Halevy doesn’t seek to demonize anyone. Not Netanyahu nor the Iranians. More than anything he appears to want to present rational, reasonable alternatives to those who’ve gotten caught in the thicket of their own delusions:

“What I have to say is complex…I do indeed argue that a nuclear Iran does not constitute an existential threat to Israel. If one day we wake up and discover that Iran has nuclear weapons, that does not mean the start of the countdown to the end of Israel’s existence. Israel need not despair. We have deterrent capability and preventive capability. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Israel will be able to design a true operational response that will be able to cope with that. We will be able to prevent a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv and we will prevent a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv; so we must not talk about a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv, because prophecies like that are self-fulfilling.

Halevy cuts to the quick of the Netanyahu rhetoric in this powerful critique of the Churchillian pretentions of the prime minister:

The true Churchillian way is not to talk about the possibility of a second Holocaust, but to ensure that there will be no holocaust here. I was a boy in Britain during the Blitz. I remember vividly Churchill’s speeches blaring from the radio. He did not talk about the possibility that Britain might not survive. On the contrary: even in the direst straits he said that Britain would have the upper hand. He promised that whatever happened, come what may, in the end Britain would win. Anyone who purports to be Churchill needs to talk like Churchill and project self-confidence.

“I am absolutely appalled when I hear our leaders talking as though there were no Israel Defense Forces and as though there were no State of Israel and as though Auschwitz is liable to be repeated. As I see it, the message we should be conveying to the Iranians − and to ourselves − is that we will be here in any event and in any scenario for the next two thousand years.

I’ve noted in my own posts that the ultranationalist line of reasoning posits an Israel that is eternally threatened, eternally beset by Jew-hating genocidaires. Theirs is an Israel constantly on the brink of annihilation. You cannot build a state on such negativity. You cannot build a future when you anticipate the worst.

Churchill believed in England as a real nation and in England as an eternal value. He could never foresee either being wiped out. Nor would he ever allow his own personal pride or his faith in his country even to hint that it might. This is where Bibi differs. He lacks such self confidence either because he knows somewhere deep down that his cause is profoundly flawed or because Jewish history has so warped him that he cannot ever imagine an Israel safe, secure and at peace with its neighbors.

Halevy also warns against the false “bomb or bombing” dichotomy:

“Going to war is an absolute and irreversible act that entails high costs. Accordingly, before using force, we need to exhaust all the other possibilities. To the best of my knowledge and to the best of my assessment, the other possibilities have not yet been fully exhausted. Some of them have not even been tried. The simplistic equation of bomb or bombing led to a mistaken focus on bombing as the only response to the bomb. But the truth is that a situation is possible in which there will be both bombing and a bomb. A situation is also possible in which there will not be a bomb without bombing…

“I also think that it is right to create a bombing capability and threaten with a bombing capability. But what I am suggesting is to step out of the box now and stop thinking in binary terms, and…stop the Iranian nuclear project without engaging in an all-out war. Because an attack on Iran is liable to foment a generations-long war with Iran, it is our duty to do all we can to prevent a bomb and prevent bombing and resolve the crisis creatively.”

In the following passage, the former Mossad director does something unthinkable in the current overheated environment. He suggests actually trying to understand the psychology of Iran’s leaders and the nation. I know: it’s hopelessly reasonable and common-sensical and so will never be respected by any policymakers either in Israel or the U.S. The more’s the pity, as war will bring the devastation of which he warns, while engagement would bring a positive outcome for both sides. All the more reason for the extremists on both sides to choose to ignore principled thinkers like Halevy:

“What we need to do is to try and understand the Iranians. The basic feeling of that ancient nation is one of humiliation. Both religious Iranians and secular Iranians feel that for 200 years the Western powers used them as their playthings. They do not forget for a moment that the British and the Americans intervened in their internal affairs and toppled the regime of Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953. From their perspective, the reason why, to this day, there is no modern rail network and no modern oil refineries in Iran is that the West prevented that. Thus, the deep motive behind the Iranian nuclear project − which was launched by the Shah − is not the confrontation with Israel, but the desire to restore to Iran the greatness of which it was long deprived.

“I believe that if the West could find a way to propose to Iran alternative methods to acquire that sense of greatness, Iran would forsake the nuclear road. If Iran were offered trains and oil refineries and a place of honor in regional trade, it would consider this seriously. You say carrots? The carrots offered to Iran until now were not big enough.

…If Israel had adopted a creative, active policy, and if the international community had held up to the Iranians a far richer package of threats and enticements, I think there would have been a chance to dissuade the Iranians from embarking on the dangerous road they have taken.

…”If instead of focusing on a military solution, Israel were to succeed in mobilizing the international community for complex and sophisticated political-economic action, I believe that the results might be surprising.”

The tragedy for Israel at this stage of it’s tenuous existence is that this man, who represents intelligence and balanced discourse on this subject, is ignored by virtually anyone who has real power.

Netanyahu in all his monomaniacal megalomania treats U.S. politics as if it were his personal plaything, rather than something that involved the fate of the nation. He naively believes he can play off a supposedly hostile American president against a pliantly pro-Israel Congress. He even imagines that he may serve as the decisive force in bringing a victory for Mitt Romney. All this would be merely delusional if it were merely his own fate in the balance. But when it’s the nation’s fate too, then it becomes an even more serious matter:

it is clear that he [Halevy] is very worried. He does not like Netanyahu’s intervention in U.S. politics, and he is apprehensive about the interface that has been created between the Iranian issue and the U.S. elections this November. He thinks that Israel must on no account be perceived as having contributed to the election of one candidate or torpedoed the candidacy of another. His evaluation is that a combination of a Holocaust-influenced frame of mind and the desire to promote the election of the next American president is dangerous.

…We need to remember that we are very much dependent on the United States and not utter boastful slogans that we are sovereign and therefore will take our fate into our hands.

Here is a final bit of supremely lucid, and therefore utterly irrelevant to current decision-makers, analysis:

“What I recommend is trying to calm the Iranian-Israeli conflict and not escalate it. It is possible that, in the end, we will have no choice and will be forced to attack…But before venturing on such an extreme and dangerous action, I suggest making a supreme effort to avoid it. We must not hem the Iranians in and we must not push them into a corner. We have to try to give them an honorable way out. It’s always worth remembering that the greatest victory in war is the victory that is achieved without firing a shot.”

Bless the fact that Israel has such intelligence among it’s citizens, but curse it for ignoring them.

Ataque a Irán pondría en peligro a Israel, afirma magistrado

2 septiembre 2012, Prensa Latina http://www.prensa-latina.cu (Cuba)

 

Tel Aviv (PL) -- Un ataque a Irán pondría en peligro el futuro de Israel, afirmó Eliyahu Winograd, un exmagistrado de la Corte Suprema de este país en entrevista con la radio castrense difundida hoy.

Sobre Israel caería una lluvia de cohetes disparados no sólo desde Irán, sino por el Hizbolá (Partido de Dios, en árabe) y no parece que el país tenga suficientes refugios ni máscaras antigases para enfrentar tal contingencia, dijo Winograd, presidente del comité que elaboró un crítico informe sobre la guerra de 2006 contra El Líbano.

El Hizbolá es la única agrupación libanesa a la cual se le permitió conservar sus armas tras el fin de la guerra civil entre 1975 y 1990 y se ha anotado resonantes éxitos militares contra las tropas israelíes en el sur del país, entre ellas el rechazo a la penetración militar en 2006 a que alude Winograd

La estructura política (israelí) no consultó bien con la dirección militar la preparación de la campaña libanesa, determinó el informe de la Comisión Winograd.

El veterano magistrado se preguntó si el primer ministro Benyamín Netanyahu y el titular de Defensa israelíes, Ehud Barak, tiene en cuenta las lecciones aprendidas tras lo que describió como "la segunda guerra de El Líbano".

De no ser así, estamos en problemas, dijo el entrevistado, quien aseguró que tanto los órganos de seguridad israelíes, Mossad y Shin Bet, como los altos mandos castrenses desaconsejan un ataque contra la República Islámica iraní.

Teherán ha reiterado que una agresión en su contra resultará "devastadora" para Israel, después de trascendidos sin confirmación oficial, según los cuales Tel Aviv elaboró un plan basado en un ataque cibernético previo a sendos golpes coheteriles y de la aviación de combate contra instalaciones nucleares iraníes.

A mediado de la semana que culmina hoy, Estados Unidos anunció la disminución de su papel en unas maniobras militares conjuntas con el ejército de Tel Aviv en la cual participarán misiles y otros medios de combate ultramodernos.

FORMER INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: SHIN BET MAKES FOOL OF ITSELF AND ISRAELI DEMOCRACY

22 August 2012, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)
by Richard Silverstein

The issue of Jewish terror and how the Israeli state fights or doesn’t fight it is extremely complicated.  If you view it from a liberal Zionist perspective, as people like Shimon Peres and most American Jewish leaders do, you only understand part of the problem and you believe–or hope–that Israeli democracy will eventually right itself and enforce the rule of law.  But when you understand this issue as a symptom of the rise of the permanent far-right majority which has hijacked Israel and destroyed its democracy, you realize that Jewish terror is not something the State can or will oppose because it is an organic expression of the ideology of those who dominate the nation.  No, I am not accusing Bibi Netanyahu of being a terrorist (though a number of Israeli prime ministers were before they dressed themselves in suits and became “statesmen”).  I am accusing him of being an accessory after the fact because the Jewish terrorists are the ultimate expression of the wishes of the State.

All this by way of reporting to you about an important article by Roni Shaked, Yediot’s Palestinian affairs correspondent.  Shaked’s bona fides are impressive: in the 1970s he “ran” Palestinian agents for the Shabak.  As such, he is a Shabak man at heart, though he is now a journalist.  That means that he knows the system, knows how it works, know how it fails.  What’s even more important: when it does fail he understands why.

His article is an evisceration of the Jewish terror unit of the Shabak.  He says the department has made itself a mockery by its inability or unwillingness to address the Jewish terror underground in the West Bank.  In addition to the agency itself, he blames the prime minister for being satisfied with such a record of miserable failure.

Here is a summary of the article with my own comments interspersed:

Now in a period of relative calm regarding Palestinian terror is the time Yoram Cohen should be expected to redouble his efforts to address the rampage of Jewish terror that has afflicted Israel: the price tag attack, the 17 mosque burnings, desecration of Muslim graves, destruction of property, racist graffiti scrawled on the walls of Muslim holy sites, and even attacks on IDF bases in the Territories.  Not to mention that vast increase in armed attacks on Palestinians.

The latest of these was the brutal “lynch” of three Palestinians by a scores of drunken Israeli ultra-nationalist youth who prowled Jerusalem last weekend seeking victims.  When they found their victims they pounded one to within an inch of his life.  He remains in hospital in a coma.  It isn’t known whether he will suffer brain damage.  Yediot reported yesterday that Palestinian shop workers in Zion Square called 911 and requested that police be called to stop the incipient mob.  A policeman came and told witnesses that there was little he could do.  Eventually he left.  Shortly thereafter, the main show began and the wilding took its most brutal form.  Don’t be shocked.  Remember what I wrote above.  The job of Israeli police is not to prevent Israeli violence against Palestinians or protect Palestinians.  It’s job is to look the other way when that happens and not to prosecute it seriously if that proves necessary.  If the leaders, citizens and police, have allowed their nation to become an authoritarian racist regime, this is the natural result.  Not an anomaly, as liberals like Shimon Peres or some readers here would argue.

Some readers will argue in defense that the State has arrested eight of the hoodlums.  It had little choice.  There were scores of witnesses who also stood by and did nothing.  But the crime was far too public to ignore.  The key will be whether the suspects are prosecuted, convicted and jailed.  The key will be how much punishment, if any, they will receive.  You know what my bet is.

The State Department has just accepted the inevitable and used the dreaded “T” word in its annual nation report on the terror.  What does this mean? Very little–now.  But in the future should this pattern continue it would allow Israel itself, conceivably to be labelled a terror state.  I know, unlikely.  But the problem with terror is that when it is unaddressed it can subsume an entire country.  Israel definitely is in danger of becoming such a place.  Many would even argue it already has.

The political echelon including the president and prime minister have denounced these heinous acts and demanded that they be stopped.  But somehow they’re not.  Mosques are burned.  Suspects are detained and questioned.  A few may even have their movement restricted so they cannot congregate with their ultranationalist brethren in the settlements.  But none are charged, none are tried and none certainly convicted.  There are crimes that somehow are never solved.  Netanyahu boasts that he will use an iron hand to uproot this poison from the land.  But in truth the settler terrorists are lords of this land.

91% of incidents of Israeli on Palestinian violence which are investigated do not end with any indictment.  Only 3% of crimes against Palestinians lead to an indictment.  The rest are closed due to the failure of investigators to identify the suspects or evidence; or with the excuse that the criminal is “unknown,” “insufficient evidence,” or the file was “lost.”  These statistics should remove the sleep from the eyes of the Shin Bet, the police and justice system.

What excuse does the Jewish terror unit for its failure?  None.  It is considered a prestigious post within the Shin Bet.  It has no budget constraints and manpower has been doubled and trebled recently.  Nor are their constraints of their operations.  Despite all this, this unit fails to stop Jewish terror.  It doesn’t just fail over a limited period, its failures have extended over a long period.

The excuses offered are varied and unpersuasive: they complain that suspects are schooled in resisting interrogation and cannot be broken.  That when confronted by interrogators’ questions instead of answering, they begin reciting verses from Psalms.  Shaked correctly dismisses these as irrelevant.  What the bosses need to see is results.  If they don’t see them either you fire those who are failing or, if you don’t, accept the fact that your society does not want to end Jewish terror because it is somehow intrinsic to the State and its prevailing ideology.

Shaked, who is, while a critic, loyal to the organization and the State, believes that the Shin Bet must begin using new and better tactics.  The current methods are like a pleasant tea party.  Like “talking to the stones and trees,” in Shaked’s words.  Instead, it must treat these criminals as a terror underground and to act against it with all the measures used to stop Palestinian terror (by which Shaked implictly concedes torture and other forms of abuse used to break suspects and elicit confessions).  If the Shin Bet refuses, then Israel will soon face a 3rd Intifada.

Unlike Shaked, I don’t think the worst danger is a Palestinian insurrection.  I think the worst danger is the death of Israeli democracy.  It is already on its death bed.  Refusal to address Jewish terror is a symptom of the disease.

On related matter: Haaretz reports (and English) that a Lt. Col. and unit head with 25-years service in the Shin Bet was forced to resign for demonstrating investigatory techniques (i.e. torture) on the body of a 22 year-old IDF soldier who was his subordinate, against her will.  This isn’t the first sexual scandal in the agency’s history.  In fact, I’ve reported here on a number of them involving very high level officers.

The charges against him ended with his banishment from the Shin Bet for a period of five years.  In other words, this choice piece of humanity can return to the service of his country and harrassment of its female personnel once more after this little slap on the wrist.

In justifying its toothless punishment, the court said it was impressed by a letter written by the accused’s commander which credited his “devotion, loyalty and humanity and his many contributions made over the years to the State of Israel.”  Apparently being a good torturer trumps being a sexual harrasser in the eyes of Israel’s domestic spy agency.

 

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LATEST LUNACIES FROM THE ONLY DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

May 15th, 2012, Tikun Olam תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam
(USA)

Today’s news brings two new lunacies from our friends in the Only Democracy in the Middle East™ . In the first instance, the Israeli tax authorities impounded a shipment of copies of the Arabic language edition of Yehuda HaLevy’s seminal work of medieval Jewish philosophy, The Kuzari. They did so because the books had been printed in Lebanon, one of the few places in the Middle East that prints Arabic books. The Israeli authorities claimed that allowing the books into Israel would constitute “trading with the enemy.”

The book, originally written in Judeo-Arabic, a medieval version of Arabic written using Hebrew characters (similar in concept to Yiddish), was translated as a seven-year, uncompensated labor of love by an Israeli-Palestinian PhD student at Ben Gurion University. He explained to Akiva Eldar that Israel often looks the other way when Arabic books are imported from nations in the region with whom Israel has strained relations, including Lebanon. In this case, they decided to make an example of poor Yehuda HaLevy. Why? Who knows. It may be precisely because it was a labor of love by an Israeli Palestinian and the police wish to make an example of him. It may be because they don’t like books in general. History is full of regimes which liked to make examples of books.

Or maybe it was this particular book. After all, it tells the famous tale of the Khazar king who was persuaded by a Jewish scholar to convert to Judaism. There are those among anti-Zionists who like to argue that contemporary Jews don’t trace a direct lineage back to ancient Israel, but rather to the Khazars. This is part of the ongoing battle between Zionists who feel the need to prove such a connection in order to justify the Jewish claim on Israel; and between those who feel that severing that historical connection of the Jews to the land of Israel will weaken their historical claims.

It’s entirely possible that some Shin Bet agent has studied a little too much medieval philosophy (not enough to understand the true power of the work, but too much to ignore it), and decided that the Kuzari is part of the Palestinian project of delegitimization of Israel. As a result, Israel appears to be engaging in a cultural boycott not only of Arabic language books, but of one of the great Jewish medieval poets and philosophers.

Another terrible irony of this entire mess is that the original book and author represented the pinnacle of medieval Jewish learning and intellectual achievement. This achievement happened in good part because of the environment in which Ha-Levi lived, which allowed Jews and Arabs to co-exist peacefully, even fruitfully. Could this be yet another unconscious reason Israel feels the need to suppress an Arabic-language edition? It needs to stamp out the historical example of a Jewish book written within an Arab society and in a language that combined both Arabic and Hebrew. That much peaceful co-existence and cultural interchange could be scary to Israeli officials who prefer their state to be Arab-rein.

If this weren’t so insane it would actually be mordantly funny.

(Photo: Keeping out the immigrant hordes/AP)

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Ministry of the Environment has taken the pro-active step of commissioning scientists to examine the effect that climate change will have on Israel and the Middle East. So far so good. Until you recognize that the minister is Gilad Erdan, the very same Likud henchman who tried to skewer Meir Dagan in New York by calling him a political hack for questioning Bibi’s threats of war against Iran. Knowing that Erdan is such a lap dog will explain the mockery that his ministry has made of the science of climate change.

In this country, red-neck anti-science Republicans have similarly made a political football out of climate change. But at least they’ve made a pretense of arguing scientific principles. The Israeli report dispenses with science altogether and views climate change through the prism of the national security and the Israeli-Arab conflict:

In order to combat increased waves of illegal migration that will likely accompany climate change, Israel must secure its borders through impassable barriers, including “sea fences” along the Mediterranean and Red Sea, experts have concluded.

“The lack of water, warming and sea level rise, even if it will occur on a different schedule, will bring migration movements from all impoverished regions to every place where it is possible to escape this,” wrote a team of academics, led by Prof. Arnon Soffer and Dr. Anton Berkovsky of the University of Haifa’s Geography Department…

Among its suggestions for how to handle the geo-strategic implications of climate change, the team…called for a complete enclosure of Israel from all directions, including establishing sea fences along the Mediterranean and Red seas. In addition, the experts said that additional law enforcement will be required to deal with the ramifications of securing the Egyptian and Jordanian borders, as economic crisis might ensue for Negev Beduins who trade across these turfs. While securing Israel from all sides, however, the authorities must ensure for the safe passage of animals and plants.

…Soffer explained that the most troublesome spot in terms of migration to Israel is the Nile basin area, where a mixture of drastic climate changes and demographic explosions are pushing people to move northward. Meanwhile, they recognize that “Europe is completely under siege by the navvies,” so they cannot move in that direction.

…“I am one that fights for building fences all around Israeli borders,” he said. “We are an island – we don’t belong to this region, and we have to defend Israel from waves of migration from Egypt from Jordan and maybe from Syria. If we want to keep Israel a Jewish State, we will have to defend ourselves from what I call ‘climate refugees,’ exactly as Europe is doing now.”

After reading a passage like this you begin to wonder whether Soffer is a Stephen Colbert pseudo-scientist parody:

While the fences around Israel are necessary, according to Soffer, so too are corridors to allow the free passage of animals. Such passages, he said could be guarded by groups of soldiers for days at a time to allow the animals, such as snakes, to cross both ways.

So Israel will seal itself off from human aliens, but bestow mercy on the animals (non-human ones, that is).

Think of the psychological profile of a supposed learned scholar who thinks in such deeply paranoid ways of those surround Israel. Think of the delusional thinking that allows him to believe that the solution to an epidemic is to turn Israel into a battleship that can fight off those who threaten it. This, in effect is a transference of Israeli security policy into the realm of climate science. Just as security policy is bankrupt so is this approach to a coming major catastrophe.

Note that Soffer doesn’t propose that Israel contribute scientifically so solving the problems of climate change. He doesn’t suggest decreasing Israel’s carbon footprint or devising ways of lessening the world’s carbon emissions, all of which would help avert the crisis. Instead, he merely suggests who to weather the human storm it will cause. Soffer gives his nation, his discipline and science in general a bad name. How can such racism infect someone who’s earned a position at a major Israeli university?

Ex-chefe de segurança critica premiê de Israel e ação contra Irã

28 de Abril de 2012, Vermelho http://www.vermelho.org.br (Brasil)

Em um pronunciamento sem precedentes, o ex-chefe do Serviço de Segurança do governo israelense, Shin Bet, ridicularizou a figura do primeiro-ministro Benjamin Netanyahu e advertiu que um ataque de Israel ao Irã pode "acelerar dramaticamente" o projeto nuclear iraniano.

Em um encontro com dezenas de pessoas nesta sexta-feira (27), Yuval Diskin, que foi chefe do Shin Bet entre 2005 e 2011, disse que não confia em Netanyahu nem no ministro da Defesa, Ehud Barak, e que não gostaria que "essas pessoas" conduzissem Israel para uma ação "da dimensão de uma guerra com o Irã".

Ainda não está claro se Diskin sabia que o encontro estava sendo gravado, mas rapidamente o vídeo com seu pronunciamento começou a ser divulgado por redes sociais na internet e, algumas horas depois, as duras criticas que fez aos lideres do país se tornaram manchete dos principais veículos de comunicação.

Diskin ridicularizou Netanyahu e Barak, chamando-os de "messias de Akirov e Keisaria", em referência aos bairros luxuosos onde o premiê e o ministro da Defesa possuem propriedades. "Eu os vi de perto, e posso dizer a vocês que eles não são messias", afirmou, questionando a imagem que tanto Netanyahu como Barak tentam criar de si mesmos como "salvadores do povo de Israel".

Em termos duros, Diskin fez ataques pessoais aos principais líderes do país. "Sabemos que cachorros que latem não mordem. Infelizmente tenho ouvido latidos demais ultimamente", disse o ex-chefe do Shin Bet. Diskin afirmou que os lideres do país apresentam ao público um "quadro incorreto sobre a questão iraniana, tentando criar a impressão de que se Israel não agir, o Irã terá uma bomba atômica".

"Eles se dirigem a um publico tolo ou ignorante, dizendo que, se Israel agir, o Irã não terá a bomba, mas isso é incorreto", afirmou Diskin.

"Muitos analistas dizem que uma das consequências de um ataque israelense pode ser uma aceleração dramática do projeto nuclear iraniano. O que os iranianos fazem hoje devagar e silenciosamente, (depois de um ataque) terão legitimidade para fazer muito mais rápido", afirmou.

Escândalo
As declarações de Diskin, um dos mais respeitados militares israelenses, criaram um escândalo no país. O vice-primeiro ministro, Silvan Shalom, declarou que tem "muito respeito por Yuval Diskin, que foi um ótimo chefe do Shin Bet". "Porém seu pronunciamento foi um erro, coisas assim não precisam ser ditas", acrescentou Shalom.

O ministro dos Transportes, Israel Katz, qualificou as palavras de Diskin como "grosseiras e inadequadas".

Diskin não é o primeiro militar importante em Israel que critica o plano, atribuído a Netanyahu e Barak, de atacar as instalações nucleares do Irã. No ano passado, o ex-chefe do Mossad, Meir Dagan, qualificou o plano como "estúpido".

Na semana passada o chefe do Estado-Maior do Exército israelense, general Benny Gantz, também fez um pronunciamento que foi interpretado como discordância ao plano de ataque ao Irã. Gantz afirmou que não acredita que o Irã vá produzir armas nucleares.

Segundo o general, o governo iraniano é "racional e sabe que seria um erro enorme produzir armas nucleares". Gantz também afirmou que as sanções econômicas contra o Irã "começam a dar resultados". (Fonte: BBC Brasil)

Israeli Justice Minister Exposes Shin Bet Officers’ IDs in Knesset Speech

1st March 2012, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)

Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, exposes identities of senior Shin Bet officials

In Israel, the intelligence apparatus is sacrosanct. Among the many things you can’t do is publicly name a current or former officer (even after death). Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman seems to have forgotten that. Chaim Levinson reports in today’s Haaretz (see accompanying story) that last August, he presented to the Knesset a bill for the Protection of the Rights of the Individual which is part of revised legislation defining terror organizations. In his remarks, he publicly thanked various officials who helped him draft the new legislation. He included in these remarks two senior Shin Bet officers, Eli Bachar and Dani Geva, both legal advisors to the spy agency.

Leaving aside the irony of exposing the secret identity of government intelligence officers during a speech in which you are proposing legislation allegedly to protect rights of the individual, the punishment under Israeli law for doing what Neeman did is three years in prison (one year, for accidentally exposing the identity). Normally, the justice minister would be a Knesset member and so have immunity from prosecution for any act that happened within the scope of his job. But Neeman is not an MK and thus has no immunity. This guy is in a heap of trouble. My guess is that his days are numbered.

The Knesset is also in a bind. It is legally forbidden from censoring printed remarks of its members. So the names of the two officers are in the Knesset transcript and available on its website. In case they are removed, I’ve uploaded it here.

Geva and Bachar resigned their respective positions since August, but they were serving when Neeman exposed them and besides, it’s illegal to identify Shin Bet officers even after they leave the secret police.

But that’s not where his troubles end. Last week, the Israeli media reported there had been a secret investigation ongoing for two years into Neeman’s alleged failure to report personal income. So besides a possible criminal charge, he also faces a charge of tax fraud. Before I knew of his Knesset faux pas, I thought it was deliciously ironic that the government’s leading legal light should be accused of engaging in personally corrupt behavior. Now, even more so.

With his boss, Bibi Netanyahu, about to achieve his apotheosis meeting the president and addressing the annual Aipacalooza conference, Neeman’s troubles couldn’t come at a worse time for this government. They refocus the public’s attention on both the corruption and sheer incompetence of leading ministers. Neeman’s trademark feature was the broad knitted yarmulke that adorned his balding pate. Such yarmulkes are a “fashion statement” of the settler movement. Apparently, Neeman’s sense of Jewish morality was only skin deep.

The ultranationalist minister has also publicly said that he looks forward eagerly to the day when Israel’s secular law will be replaced by Jewish halacha (thanks to David Sheen for pointing me to this). For those of you scoring at home, that means he’s in favor of Israel becoming a theocracy. But I’ve got news for Neeman, one of the Ten Commandments says “Thou shalt not steal.” And not paying your taxes is a form of theft.

Now we come to an even larger question, which is: why should the identity of the legal advisor of the Shin Bet be a national secret? Why should anyone, whether the Justice Minister or a washer-woman go to jail for exposing such a person? The answer lies in the nature of Israel as a national security state in which all manner of opacity may be justified by the exigencies of terror. Such secrecy of course does fundamental harm to Israel as a democracy and serves as one of many reasons why calling it a democracy is a misnomer.

Tel Aviv University accused of spying on student activists

22 December 2011, The Israeli Communist Party המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית‎ (Israel)

Tel Aviv University has called on lecturers to turn in students who carried out protest activities on campus last week. Students and lecturers accused the University of resorting to "secret police" methods and oppressing legal social protest on campus.

According to "Haaretz", in a letter sent to lecturers in the history, philosophy and literature departments, the university's security department attached a YouTube clip showing students urging their friends on campus to join the social protest they were planning at the university

Student's demonstration at Tel-Aviv University (Photo: N.B.)

"I will be grateful for your handing over the students' details as soon as possible, including full name, ID number and telephone number," the TAU security head wrote to the lecturers.

"It will be helpful if beyond identifying the students, you would attach to each [one's name] the identification marks from the clip so that we can identify them in action ... since this group has already carried out and is planning illegal protest activity on campus," he wrote.

The group calls itself "The Sourasky Operation - a campus action group," after the Sourasky Library near which it had gathered. Last week, when the university's management heard the group was planning social activity in the building, it evacuated the library ahead of closing time, locked it and posted security guards at the entrance.

The several dozen students moved their social activity to the Recanati Building, where they discussed renewing the social protest with an emphasis on students' issues such as housing, tuition, cost of living and workers' rights. Prof. Eli Friedlander, head of the philosophy department, responded to the university's letter, saying: "I strongly protest the security department head's disgraceful demand in the email. There is no place for a secret police on campus." The YouTube clip sent to the lecturers shows students facing the camera and calling their friends to act for social justice.

"We are students who want to make ends meet, who want to study in dignity, to have a place to live. We want to submit papers, not only serve coffee," they said, among other things.

"In the current sociopolitical environment, it is not surprising that the university is acting like a secret police. It's a natural reflection of what is happening 'outside' and our initiative is a bid to fight these social and political injustices," says Nimrod Flashenberg, a third-year history and philosophy student who appears on the clip. "The university is oppressing sociopolitical activity on campus," he says.

The university also sent several student activists letters scolding them for their activity last week. "If any public activity takes place in the future without proper authorization, harsh disciplinary steps will be taken against the organizers and participants," the security department head wrote.

"A student found organizing or participating in illegal public activity will have difficulty receiving a permit to hold public activity on campus in the future," he added. One student said the security department told her it was following the group's activity on its closed Facebook page. This was corroborated by two of the group members who did not attend the meetings, but received warning letters all the same.

The You Tube clip (2.01 minutes, Hebrew):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vPJ81zt9THc

Former Mossad chief: Israeli attack on Iran must be stopped to avert catastrophe

1 December 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

Meir Dagan speaks out against military offensive on Iran, expresses concern that Defense Minister Barak believes Israel only has less than a year to carry out an attack.

By Amos Harel

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan warned Thursday against an Israeli attack on Iran, saying such a move would likely lead to a regional war involving Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria.

"I'm concerned about possible mistakes and I prefer to speak out before there is a catastrophe," Dagan said in an interview on the Israeli television program “Uvda."

(Mossad head Meir Dagan. Photo by: Tomer Appelbaum / BauBau)

"I think that engaging, with open eyes, in a regional war is warranted only when we are under attack or when the sword is already cutting against our live flesh. It is not an alternative that should be chosen lightly."

Dagan stressed that though he cannot predict how many casualties an attack on Iran would yield, he said, "I have to assume that the level of destruction, paralysis of every-day life, and Israeli death toll would be high."

He said that he has no interest in hiding his fervent opposition to an Israeli attack on Iran from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Dagan said he was worried about Barak's past comments on Iran, saying Barak believes Israel has less than a year to carry out an military strike.

"I am very concerned," he said. "My understanding of Barak's comments is that Israel must act within this timeframe, but I don't believe this is accurate."

Earlier Thursday, Barak responded to comments by U.S. Joints Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, who said that he did not know whether Israel would alert the United States ahead of time if it decided to take military action against Iran.

Barak said Israel isn't looking for war with Iran and said that he would be pleased if diplomatic moves and sanctions sway Tehran away from its contentious nuclear program.

Barak's comments came after Israeli intelligence sources told the Times of London on Wednesday that a recent explosion in the western Iranian city of Ishafan was not an accident, as Iranian officials had claimed, and that the local uranium conversion plant had been damaged in the blast.

The intelligence officials told the Times that updated satellite images showed smoke billowing from the direction of the conversion plant.

According to the Israeli sources, there was "no doubt" that the blast had damaged the nuclear facility, and that the explosion was not an "accident."

"This caused damage to the facilities in Isfahan, particularly to the elements we believe were involved in storage of raw materials," one source told the Times.

Read this article in Hebrew: דגן מודאג: מדברי ברק עולה שישראל חייבת לפעול באיראן תוך פחות משנה


--------------------


Former Mossad chief: Israeli strike on Iran will lead to regional war

29 November 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

Meir Dagan said in a television interview that a military strike will result in massive rocket attacks from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said in a television interview on Tuesday that if Israel attacks Iran, it will be dragged into a regional war.

According to Dagan, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas will respond with massive rocket attacks on Israel. In that scenario, Syria may join in the fray, Dagan said on the television program “Uvda”.

Dagan also followed up on recent public comments that he made on the topic, after which he was criticized for speaking out on, saying that the Prime Minister, Defense Minister and Finance Minister cannot prevent him from speaking his mind. “We are not living in an undemocratic country; in democratic countries, even people like me have the right to express their opinions,” Dagan said.

Dagan added that such a war would take a heavy toll in terms of loss of life and would paralyze life in Israel. These comments were in response to a recent remark by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in which he claimed that if a war breaks out between Israel and Iran, it would result in no more than 500 dead Israelis.

"A war is no picnic, but in any scenario there won't be 50 thousand or 5,000 or even 500 dead,” Barak told Israel Radio in an interview three weeks ago, on November 8. Barak also attacked Dagan’s outspokenness on the Iran issue. “The way in which this discussion has taken place, by including those who previously held high positions, was sometimes despicable.”

Barak added, “When the head of the Mossad unprecedentedly brings journalists to Mossad headquarters and instructs them to oppose the prime minister… I think that is very serious behavior. I would have expected him to act intelligently, without manipulations."

It was announced earlier on Tuesday that Dagan will lead a group that will endeavor to immediately alter the system of government in Israel.
Maariv reported Tuesday that the group is operating without much publicity, backed by a group of leaders in the fields of business, culture and law that has already begun to raise funds.

Former IDF Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, businessman Gad Zeevi and Herliya Interdisciplinary Center President Professor Uriel Reichman have already joined the new group.

קראו כתבה זו בעברית: מאיר דגן: ברק אמר שיהיו 500 הרוגים? יהיו הרבה יותר

A DAY IN NOVEMBER

THIS TUESDAY will be the 64th anniversary of a fateful day for our lives

26 November 2011, Gush Shalom גוש שלום http://zope.gush-shalom.org (Israel)

Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי

A day in November. A day to remember.

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted, by 33 votes against 13 (with 10 abstentions), the Palestine Partition Plan.

This event has become a subject of endless debates, misinterpretations and outright falsifications. It may be worthwhile to peel away the myths and see it as it was.

BY THE end of 1947, there were in the country – then officially named Palestine - about 1.2 million Arabs and 635 thousand Jews. The gap between the two population groups had turned into an abyss. Though geographically intertwined, they lived on two different planets. With very few exceptions, they considered each other as mortal enemies.

This was the reality that the UN commission, charged with proposing a solution, found on the ground when it visited the country.

One of the great moments of my life is connected with this UNSCOP (“United Nations Special Committee on Palestine”). On the Carmel mountain chain, near kibbutz Daliah, I was attending the annual folk dance festival. Folk dances played a major role in the new Hebrew culture we were consciously striving to create. Most of these dances were somewhat contrived, even artificial, like many of our efforts, but they reflected the will to create something new, fresh, rooted in the country, entirely different from the Jewish culture of our parents. Some of us spoke about a new “Hebrew nation”.

In a huge natural amphitheater, under a canopy of twinkling summer stars, tens of thousands of young people, boys and girls, had gathered to cheer on the many amateur groups performing on the stage. It was a joyous affair, imbued with camaraderie, radiating feelings of strength and self-confidence.

No one of us could have guessed that within a few months we would meet again in the fields of a deadly war.

In the middle of the performance, an excited voice announced on the loudspeaker that several members of UNSCOP had come to visit. As one, the huge crowd stood up and started to sing the national anthem, Hatikvah (“the Hope”). I never liked this song very much, but at that moment it sounded like a fervent prayer, filling the space, rebounding from the hills of the Carmel. I suppose that almost all of the 6000 Jewish youngsters who gave their lives in the war were assembled for the last time on that evening, singing with profound emotion.

IT WAS in this atmosphere that the members of UNSCOP, representing many different nations, had to find a solution.

As everybody knows, the commission adopted a plan to partition Palestine between an independent “Arab” and an independent “Jewish” state. But that is not the whole story.

Looking at the map of the 1947 partition resolution, one must wonder at the borders. They resemble a puzzle, with Arab pieces and Jewish pieces put together in an impossible patchwork, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem as a separate unit. The borders look crazy. Both states would have been totally indefensible.

The explanation is that the committee did not really envision two totally independent and separate states. The plan explicitly included an economic union. That would have necessitated a very close relationship between the two political entities, something akin to a federation, with open borders and free movement of people and goods. Without it, the borders would have been impossible.

That was a very optimistic scenario. Immediately after the committee’s plan was adopted by the General Assembly, after much cajoling by the Zionist leadership, war broke out with sporadic Arab attacks on Jewish traffic on the vital roads.

When the first shot was fired, the partition plan was dead. The foundation, on which the whole edifice rested, broke apart. No open borders, no economic union, no chance for a union of any kind. Only abyssal, deadly, enmity.

THE PARTITION plan would never have been adopted in the first place if it had not been preceded by a historical event that seemed at the time beyond belief.

The Soviet delegate to the UN, Andrei Gromyko, suddenly made what can only be described as a fiery Zionist speech. He contended that after the terrible suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust, they deserved a state of their own.

To appreciate the utter amazement with which this speech was received, one must remember that until that very moment, Communists and Zionists had been irreconcilable foes. It was not only a clash of ideologies, but also a family affair. In Tzarist Russia, Jews were persecuted by an anti-Semitic government, and young Jews, both male and female, were in the vanguard of all the revolutionary movements.

An idealistic young Jew had the choice between joining the Bolsheviks, the social-democratic Jewish Bund or the Zionists. The competition was fierce and engendered intense mutual hatred. Later, in the Soviet Union, Zionists were mercilessly persecuted. In Palestine, local Communists, Jewish and Arab, were accused of collaborating with the Arab militants who attacked Jewish neighborhoods.

What had brought about this sudden change in Soviet policy? Stalin did not turn from an anti-Semite into a philo-Semite. Far from it. But he was a pragmatist. It was the era of medium-range missiles, which threatened Soviet territory from all sides. Palestine was in practice a British colony and could easily have become a Western missile base, threatening Odessa and beyond. Better a Jewish and an Arab state, than that.

In the following war, almost all my weapons came from the Soviet bloc, mainly from Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union recognized Israel de jure long before the United States.

The end of this unnatural honeymoon came in the early fifties, when David Ben-Gurion decided to turn Israel into an inseparable part of the Western bloc. At the same time, Stalin recognized the importance of the new pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser and decided to ride on that wave. His paranoid anti-Semitism came again to the fore. All over Eastern Europe Communist veterans were executed as Zionist-imperialist-Trotskyite spies, and his Jewish doctors were accused of attempting to poison him. (Luckily for them, Stalin died just in time and they were saved.)

TODAY, THE partition resolution is remembered in Israel mainly because of two words: “Jewish state”.

No one in Israel wants to be reminded of the borders of 1947, which gave the Jewish minority in Palestine “only” 55% of the country. (Though half of this consisted of the Negev desert, most of which is almost empty even now.) Nor do Jewish Israelis like to be reminded that almost half the population of the territory allotted to them was Arab.

At the time, the UN resolution was accepted by the Jewish population with overflowing enthusiasm. The photos of the people dancing in the streets of Tel Aviv belong to this day, and not – as is often falsely claimed, to the day the State of Israel was officially founded. (At that time we were in middle of a bloody war and nobody was in the mood for dancing.)

We know now that Ben-Gurion did not dream of accepting the partition plan borders, and even less the Arab population within them. The famous army “Plan Dalet” early in the war was a strategic necessity, but it was also a solution to the two problems: it added to Israel another 22% of the country and it drove the Arab population out. Only a small remnant of the Arab population remained – and by now it has grown to 1.5 million.

But all that is history. What concerned the future are the words “Jewish state”. Israeli rightists, who abhor the partition resolution in any other context, insist that it provides the legal basis to Israel’s right to be recognized as a “Jewish state” – meaning in practice, that the state belongs to all the Jews around the world, but not to its Arab citizens, whose families have been living here for at least 13 centuries, if not far longer (depends who does the counting).

But the UN used the word “Jewish” only for lack of any other definition. During the British Mandate, the two peoples in the country were called in English “Jews” and “Arabs”. But we ourselves spoke about a “Hebrew” State (medina Ivrit). In newspaper clippings of the time, only this term can be seen. People of my age-group remember dozens of demonstrations in which we invariably chanted “Free Immigration – Hebrew State”. The sound of it still rings in our ears.

The UN did not deal with the ideological makeup of the future states. It certainly assumed that they would be democratic, belonging to all their inhabitants. Otherwise they would hardly have drawn borders that left a substantial Arab population in the “Jewish” state.

Israel’s declaration of independence bases itself on the UN resolution. The relevant sentence reads: “…AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, (WE) HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.”

The ultra-rightists who now dominate the Knesset want to use these words as a pretext for replacing democracy with a doctrine of Jewish nationalist-religious supremacy. A former Shin-Bet chief and present Kadima party MK has submitted a bill that would abolish the equality of the two terms “Jewish” and “democratic” in the official legal doctrine, and state clearly that the “Jewishness” of the state has precedence over its “democratic” character. This would deprive the Arab citizens of any remnant of equality. (At the last moment, in face of the public reaction, the Kadima party compelled him to withdraw the bill.)

THE 1947 partition plan was an exceptionally intelligent document. Its details are obsolete now, but its basic idea is as relevant today as it was 64 years ago: two nations are living in this country, they cannot live together in one state without a continuous civil war, they can live together in two states, the two states must establish close ties between each other.

Ben-Gurion was determined to prevent the founding of the Arab Palestinian state, and with the help of King Abdallah of Transjordan he succeeded in this. All his successors, with the possible exception of Yitzhak Rabin, have followed this line, now more than ever. We have paid – and are still paying – a heavy price for this folly.

On the 64th anniversary of this historic event, we must go back to its basic principle: Israel and Palestine, Two States for Two Peoples.

Lieberman Severs Ties With Mossad

17 November 2011, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)

I’ve been reporting here lately on reports that the Shin Bet refused to provide Avigdor Lieberman security clearances that would’ve enabled him to see top secret documents about his then portfolio as minister of strategic affairs, Iran. An authoritative Israeli source also reported on longstanding rumors that Lieberman might be a KGB mole recruited to make aliya when he was a young man.

Now comes a new report in Yediot Achronot about an explosion between Lieberman and the Mossad that caused the minister to sever ties with the agency. Supposedly, the tension involves the spymasters usurping the authority of the foreign ministry with regard to relations with other nations. There are some nations which have rendered Israeli foreign ministry personnel as persona non grata. In some of them, the nations in question actually prefer to conduct relations with the Mossad, thus creating a side-channel that avoids the ministry altogether.

The Mossad also sends its secret cables from Israeli embassies throughout the world, but prevents the foreign ministry from seeing them. This causes the MFA officials to feel the Mossad is willing to take from them but not to give in return. The article quotes a ministry source:

In some instances they operated behind the backs of Israeli diplomats abroad and damaged their status. They put us through all sorts of rigamarole and we had to put a stop to this behavior.

The straw that broke the camel’s back apparently revolved around an incident in Israel-Turkish relations. During the period when there was no ambassador there, the Mossad developed its own contacts with the Turks arousing the ire of Lieberman and his colleagues. In some cases, the Turks appeared to favor dealing with the Mossad over the MFA.

As a result Lieberman’s announced the MFA will no longer share its cables with the Mossad.

NEW BOOK EXPOSES BRUTAL TREATMENT OF PALESTINIAN PRISONERS

5 August 2011, Jews for Justice for Palestinians http://jfjfp.com (Britain)
Source: The Electronic Intifada http://electronicintifada.net (USA)

Asa Winstanley*

Shlomo Gazit, an Israeli general and the first “coordinator of government activities” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip apparently wrote a book in 1985 about Israel’s occupation policies there called The Carrot and the Stick. It is quite telling that such Israeli terminology relates to Palestinians as if they are animals. A new book about Israel’s imprisonment of Palestinians contains strong evidence that these policies have been a lot more about the “stick” of physical and psychological torture than about the “carrot” of persuasion.

Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel is a collection of essays from Pluto Press edited by Abeer Baker and Anat Matar. The contributors focus on different aspects of Israel’s system of political prisons. It is rare for such an anthology to be of such consistently high quality. Quite often essay collections can be a mixed bag but Threat is rarely less than interesting. Palestinian prisoners and the solidarity movements of their families and supporters have long been emblematic in the Palestinian liberation struggle. So the book is an important and welcome attempt to educate English-speakers on this neglected topic.

Consider, for example, this astonishing statistic: “almost half of all the prisoners held by the Israeli prison system are Palestinians who have been sent to prison by the military courts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)” (68). Furthermore, this share seems to have been consistently high over a long period: the figure stood between 45 and 60 percent during the first two decades after the 1967 occupation (72).

The contributors to this book are from a mix of Israeli, Palestinian and other backgrounds but most are lawyers, academics and professional activists for human rights groups in Israel such as Adalah (with whom Baker works as a lawyer) or B’Tselem. We can also read the words of Palestinian prisoners, recalling their own experiences.

We learn from Alon Harel and Yael Berda about what exactly “security prisoners” are. They are “deprived of many of the rights granted to non-security prisoners” (37). Yet the definition of “security prisoners” is not just those who engage in armed struggle — Palestinian political activists who do not use violence are also classified as such. Berda notes, “It is actually surprising how, under the harsh classification regimes of the security threat, many Palestinians have chosen nonviolent political and social action, even though it carries with it similar consequences to the violent actions” (54).

In reality, the Israeli secret police — the Shin Bet — decides who is a “security prisoner”. Known by its formal title the General Security Services (GSS), the Shin Bet runs a system that is “constructed and applied administratively by the GSS alone” (52). We also learn, in information relevant to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, that the closeness of Israeli universities to the Shin Bet has meant “merging the security apparatuses with bases of academic power” (52).

Apartheid behind bars
The prisoners are emblematic of the whole Palestinian struggle for many reasons, not least of which is the system of apartheid that they are fighting against. It is striking that this applied to the whole of historic Palestine, not just the occupied West Bank and Gaza. It applies to Palestinians living in Israel, too: “In January 2009, there were about 370 Israeli Arab citizens classified as security prisoners. A small number of Jewish prisoners are classified by the IPS [Israel Prison Service] as security prisoners but they are not subjected to the harsh conditions reserved for the Palestinians” (80).

Sharon Weill’s essay is a strong contender for best essay in the book. She proves that because of the separate and unequal legal systems for Israelis and Palestinians there — civil courts for Israeli Jews but military courts for Palestinians — the occupation of the West Bank is best understood as a system of apartheid. I was amazed to learn that “until 2004 the [Israeli military] judges did not need to have any legal background; they were just regular officers, usually very young” (147). She also includes a strong example of how Israeli apartheid applies to even its own (supposedly equal) Palestinian citizens: “While Israeli Jews have been excluded from the military courts’ jurisdiction as a matter of policy, Palestinians carrying Israeli IDs (especially those from East Jerusalem), committing an offense within the OPT, have always been tried there” (141).

Disturbing studies on torture and rape
There is a wide range of rich topics addressed. Palestinian sociology professor Nahla Abdo has a devastating critique of colonial feminism and the “Western Orientalist literature [that has since 2002] emerged to deal with the female military resistance” (59). Abdo shows how Western academics have tried to analyze female Palestinians fighters as a response to a supposed endemic misogyny in Palestinian society — to “wipe away the stigma of being female” as one has put it (59). She proceeds to convincingly dismantle this crude framework of assumptions. Abdo then moves on to sexism and racism in the Israel Prison Service and recounts disturbing case studies — from her own research and interviews with women prisoners — of sexual torture and rape by Israeli personnel.

If I have one reservation about the book it is its inevitable (considering the authors’ professional backgrounds) bias towards the “human rights” narrative, rather than the resistance narrative. For example, the failed case by the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din against the practice of transferring Palestinians to prisons outside the West Bank cited by Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard seemed in effect to be arguing for Israeli prisons to be rebuilt in the West Bank (197-198). The Israeli high court rejected the Yesh Din petition on patronizing and spurious grounds. But the fact that a liberal Israeli human rights organization was not instead arguing for all the political prisons to be emptied exposes the contradictions and limits of such legal activism within the system of apartheid Zionism.

The editors — and some of the authors — seem to be aware of this to an extent, and Palestinian prisoner Walid Daka’s essay concluding the book is a good antidote in this regard, since it critiques this tendency. Daka sees the Palestinian Authority as key to this transformation: “the ‘Palestinian Revolution’ was replaced by the ‘Palestinian Authority,’ the mobilization of these young people [in the PA armed forces] signals the replacement of struggle with the ‘rule of law’ and ‘resistance’ with the ‘prevention of armed chaos’ … These new slogans do not belong to a discourse of a liberation movement; they were invoked to make the movement disappear” (238-239).

I would have liked to read more from Palestinian prisoners in their own words: 8 out of the 22 contributions in the book are by Palestinians (including Palestinian citizens of Israel) who are often former or current prisoners. But to be fair, those included offer deep and insightful historical analysis as well as important and troubling eyewitness accounts of torture and ill-treatment in Israeli prisons.
Overall, there is a wealth of history, analysis, documentation and plenty of legal details in this book. And fortunately, the legal details rarely lead into dry or unreadable territory. Threat comes highly recommended.

Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist based in London who has lived in and reported from occupied Palestine. His first book Corporate Complicity in Israel’s
Occupation will be published by Pluto Press in October. His website is www.winstanleys.org.

Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel
Manufacturer: Pluto Press
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Price: $34.00

THE EXTREME RIGHT TURNED ISRAEL INTO AN ANACHRONISM

Unlike Europe, where the right has significantly grown but is still not in power, in this country the racists, the extreme and clerical right is the government, with only a vacuum opposing it.

1 August 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

By Zeev Sternhell

Slowly but surely Israel is acquiring the status of an anachronistic entity. The legislation that passed in the Knesset that dark night last week, which makes ethnic inequality a legal norm, has no parallel in democratic countries because it contradicts the very essence of democracy. In terms of the principle on which it is based, institutionalized discrimination against the non-Jewish population takes us back to the early days, when Israel’s Arab citizens were under a military government.

This had a far-reaching effect on Israeli society. Aside from the desire of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and the ruling elite not to limit their freedom of action, it was the ethnic and institutionalized discrimination that rendered impossible the writing of a constitution. In that way the Israelis, who for the first time became citizens in their own country, learned that independence did not require equality and democracy did not include respecting human rights.

In the year after Israel canceled its military government in Arab areas, the great disaster of the Six-Day War took place, and a military government was established in the territories. Over time, with the settlements, a colonial regime has been created that does not even try to conceal its nature. At a time when all Western countries have stopped ruling over other nations, Israel is creating a colony for itself, and even transferring the norms that reign in the occupied territories across the borders into the state itself.

Does the West have any such anachronism? The settlement colonialism is the main reason today, usually the only one, for the opposition, sometimes bordering on hatred, that Israel arouses among much of the Western intelligentsia. It’s not the enemies of Zionism and the anti-Semites who are delegitimizing Israel, but Israel itself, with its own two hands.

Although the extreme right has become stronger in Europe too, and the last word has yet to be said, racists don’t rule there, and they are considered a repugnant minority not only to the left, but to a substantial part of the liberal right as well. In this country, however, the extreme and clerical right is the government, with only a vacuum opposing it.

The disgraceful flight from a confrontation with the right in the Knesset will not soon be forgotten, and the center’s moral bankruptcy will be recorded as a disgrace. The greatest enemies of democracy and the sources of fascism’s strength have always been not the radical right’s independent power, but the opportunism, conformism and cowardice of the center.

And what would we say if in a Catholic country in Western Europe, the church leaders controlled political parties and dictated entire chunks of national policy? How would we react to the sight of a party leader and important government minister kissing the hand of a robe-wearing cardinal and running to carry out his instructions in the public arena? And how would we accept the news that to attain one of the most important positions in the country − chief of the Shin Bet security service − the clergy’s consent was required?

Of course, such sights would generate scorn and disgust, but in this country we have long gotten used to the fact that the settlement rabbis’ “halakhic rulings” can openly reject the rule of law and the state’s authority, and the hilltop youth are allowed to declare de facto autonomy in the areas they control. We have also gotten use to figures like Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Interior Minister Eli Yishai and MK David Rotem, the chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, whose ilk in Europe are part of a history many people are ashamed of. It’s sad to see how one of the great hopes of the 20th century has become an anachronism before our eyes.

600 Internationals to Challenge Israeli Blockade of West Bank on 8 July

6 July 2011, Alternative Information Center המרכז לאינפורמציה אלטרנטיבית
http://www.alternativenews.org (Israel)

Mark West

Approximately 600 European and American citizens, including numerous families with children, will land at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport this Friday, 8 July, in response to an impassioned 'call to action' by some 15 Palestinian civil society organizations.

Upon arrival, the activists will openly declare their wish to visit the occupied Palestinian territory and demand that Israel and the international community recognize the basic human right of entry to the occupied Palestinian territory.
Under the project title Welcome to Palestine, Mission from 8-16 July 2011, Palestinian civil society organisations have planned a week-long schedule of peaceful solidarity activities all throughout the West Bank, including a solidarity visit with the Al-Rowwad Centre of the Aïda refugee camp in Bethlehem, a tour of Hebron’s occupied and divided Old City and olive tree planting around Ramallah.

Insidiously dubbed 'the flightilla' by several Israeli media outlets, the planned solidarity visit is different from the thousands of visits by international solidarity activists since 2002 in only one respect: the plan to be open about the purpose of their visit with Israeli authorities, who control entry into the occupied Palestinian territory. Instead, the landmark event constitutes a unique international effort to promote the core idea that Israel and the international community "must recognize the basic human right of entering to Palestine by those who want to visit the Palestinian people". As such, the event falls within a wider framework of increasing non-violent popular resistance against Israeli oppression, including the Gaza flotillas and international BDS-movement, both aimed at the delegitimization and “denormalization” of the Israeli occupation and its control of Palestinian society.

Since the 1993 Oslo agreement, Israel has continuously tightened its hold on Palestinian and international movement in the oPt under the infinitely wide 'security'-umbrella. While the illegal limitations on Palestinian movement through legal constructs are widely documented, Israel has recently increased its attack on international human rights activists and tourists that want to enter the West Bank or Gaza – in particular those with Palestinian or Arab roots.

Through the use of 'Palestinian Authority Only' visas and the requirement for certain visiting internationals to sign a declaration stating they will not seek entry into the oPt under penalty of deportation and refusal of re-entry into Israel for up to ten years, the Israeli government aims to control and curtail international access to the Palestinian people.

"The Israeli government has no right to refuse us access to the Occupied Palestinian Territories," the French, Belgian, British, German, Italian and American participants write. "We are pacifists; we will have nothing dangerous in our bags. We call on our elected representatives and our governments, during the following months, to ensure that we shall be normally and properly treated on our arrival in Ben Gurion airport, as are Israeli citizens when they come to our countries."

In the face of the Israeli government’s hysterical reaction to the Welcome to Palestine Initiative, Palestinian Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh keeps his cool. "The week will continue as planned, no matter what happens," he told the Alternative Information Center. "In the unfortunate situation that all or some international participants are unable to enter, we will still continue our activities with hundreds of Palestinians."