WHY THE INCONVENIENT TRUTHS OF THE NAKBA MUST BE RECOGNIZED

May 14, 2012 +972blog http://972mag.com (Israel)

By Tom Pessah*

Limor Livnat was furious. The minister of culture was speaking at a Knesset discussion about the Independence Day arrests in Tel Aviv, following an attempt by a small non-profit called Zochrot to commemorate the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. The Israeli police surrounded the Zochrot office in central Tel Aviv, preventing the activists from exiting. One person spent a night in jail for reading aloud the names of destroyed Palestinian villages from a history book. But Livnat’s anger wasn’t directed at the police, but rather at those arrested:

I went in with my iPhone to the Zochrot association [website], and there it was. There are some details there, including places. What are the Arab villages that the Zochrot association is talking about, that it tries to present to the public? The public should know what this is about. They present a map, and the map has dots. Dots, dots, dots […] from the north of the country to its south, south of Be’er Sheva. And these dots, which are the villages we’re talking about, the points are in all the State of Israel! Not in Judea and Samaria, not in the Gaza region, not in what you call the Occupied Territories […] Here, inside Tel Aviv! I found some like that in the Tel Aviv area, dozens of dots.

During and around the 1948 war, over 400 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed by Israeli forces. Over 80 percent of the Arab population of what became the State of Israel was either expelled or banned from returning. Many of those who managed to stay were internally displaced, their village lands were given to Jewish communities or turned into parks. These are all documented historical facts, yet their discussion is considered so outrageous that the minister of culture didn’t need to explain what was wrong: for her, it was self-evident that a website mentioning destroyed Palestinian villages inside Israel (even inside Tel Aviv!) is an abomination.

Israelis, especially younger generations, approach the history of 1948 through a number of well-trodden formulas: the UN decided on a partition creating a Jewish and Arab state, the Arabs refused, neighboring Arab countries intervened, and at the end of a bloody war, some Palestinians found themselves on the other side of the border. These things, we are told, happen in wars.

I remember hearing for the first time about the expulsion of Majdal, today Ashkelon. The town had been known as the “Arab Manchester,” and several of its textile workers were affiliated with the Histadrut labor union. Despite protests from the Histadrut, the town’s inhabitants were loaded onto trucks and dumped in the nearby Gaza Strip. But this didn’t “happen in war.” It happened in 1950, after the ceasefire. When I heard this for the first time, I thought it must be a mistake: how could this have happened after the war? What was the security reason?

Israeli historian Benny Morris found a communique from the previous year by Yigal Allon, one of the senior commanders, who urged the army to transfer the town’s Arabs. For him, the Palestinian population was too close to the Egyptian front lines, and their presence could serve as a base for enemy infiltration. In June 1948, Allon thought the Arabs of Ramle would also be a threat, and gave orders to expel them. In April of that year, according to his own testimony, he used threats to push the Palestinians of the eastern Galilee to flee: their villages could have served as bases for the Syrian army. And, according to a letter he wrote to Ben-Gurion, he would also have liked to have conquered the West Bank to eliminate the security risk posed by the Jordanian army. This letter mentions a potential problem, the presence of a civilian population, but Allon reassures Ben-Gurion that “a large part, especially the refugees, will retreat eastwards as a result of the military operations… The plan for the offensive must take into account leaving an opening for the retreat of the enemy army, and the refugees following it.” Had Ben-Gurion resumed the offensive, the West Bank could have been emptied too.

When you dive into the history of 1948, certain features become familiar. Some Palestinians used violence against Jews; some generals stretched the definition of security risk to its widest possible interpretation. There were Israelis who protested: Ben Dunkelman, the commander who conquered Nazareth refused to expel its inhabitants; Rabin recalls how soldiers instructed to drive out Lydda’s population had to undergo “extensive propaganda activities.” But most Israelis didn’t object: they trusted their security forces that had successfully repelled the incoming Arab armies, and they often benefited from the vast properties the refugees left behind.

Remaining unaware of this history is a form of illiteracy: it has deeply influenced anyone living in the country or connected to it in any way. The simplistic formulas that most Israelis believe leave them incapable of understanding Palestinian experiences and expectations, and are a major barrier to reconciliation. And ignorance of the systematic expulsions enable them to continue in different forms – see, for example, current plans to displace tens of thousands of Bedouins in the Negev.

Jewish Israeli history will remain intertwined with the fate of Palestinians. Genuine awareness of our shared history is essential. Zochrot is holding another event to commemorate the Nakba: this time they invited Livnat. Perhaps one day she, or another minister of culture, will attend.

*Tom Pessah is an Israeli sociology student, currently studying the Nakba as part of his PhD

“POUR OUT YOUR WRATH!”

6 April 2012, Gush Shalom גוש שלום http://zope.gush-shalom.org (Israel)

Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי

I AM writing this on Friday night, the eve of Passover. At this moment, all over the world, millions of Jews are gathered around the family table, observing the Seder, reading aloud from the same book: the Haggadah, which tells the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

The impact of this book on Jewish life is immense. Every Jew takes part in this ceremony from earliest childhood and plays an active part in the ritual. Wherever a Jewish man or woman goes in later life, they will take with them a memory of the warmth and togetherness of the family, the magical atmosphere – and the overt and subliminal message conveyed by the text.

Whoever invented the Seder (“order”) ritual, many centuries ago, was a genius. All human senses are involved: seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting. It includes eating a ritualized meal, drinking four glasses of wine, touching various symbolic objects, playing a game with the children (searching for a hidden piece of Matzo). It ends with singing several religious songs together. The accumulated effect is magical.

More than any other Jewish text, the Haggadah forms the Jewish conscious – or, rather, unconscious - mind today, as in the past, influencing our collective behavior and Israeli national policy.

There are many different ways to view this book.

LITERATURE: As a literary work, the Haggadah is rather inferior. The text is devoid of beauty, full of repetitions, platitudes and banalities.

This may cause wonderment. The Hebrew Bible – the Bible in Hebrew – is a work of unique beauty. In many places, its beauty is intoxicating. The peaks of Western culture – Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy – are not its equal. Even the later Jewish religious texts – Mishnah, Talmud and so forth – while not so uplifting, contain passages of literary merit. The Haggadah has none. It is a text devised purely for indoctrination.
HISTORY: It’s not. Though it claims to tell history, the Haggadah has nothing to do with real history.

There can no longer be the slightest doubt that the Exodus never happened. Neither the Exodus, nor the wandering in the desert, nor the conquest of Canaan.

The Egyptians were obsessive chroniclers. Many tens of thousands of tablets have already been deciphered. It would have been impossible for an event like the exodus to pass without being reported at length. Not if 600,000 people left, as the Bible tells it, or 60,000, or even 6000. Especially if during the flight a whole Egyptian army contingent, including war chariots, was drowned.

The same goes for the Conquest. Because of acute security concerns, after being invaded once from there, the Egyptians employed a host of spies, - travelers, merchants and others - to follow closely the events in neighboring Canaan, in every single one of its towns and at all times. An invasion of Canaan, even a minor one, would have been reported. Except for the periodic incursions of Bedouin tribes, nothing was recorded.

Moreover, the Egyptian towns mentioned in the Bible did not exist at the time the event is supposed to have happened. They did exist, however, when the Bible was written, in the first or second century BC.

There is no need to point out that after a hundred years of frantic archaeological searching by devout Christians and Zionist zealots, not a shred of concrete evidence for the conquest of Canaan has been found (nor that the Kingdoms of Saul, David or Salomon ever existed).

But is this really important? Not a bit of it!

The Passover story does not derive its immense power from any claim to be history. It is a myth that grips the human imagination, a myth that is the basis of a great religion, a myth that directs the behavior of people to this very day. Without the Exodus story, there would probably be no State of Israel today – and certainly not in Palestine.

THE GLORY: One can read the Exodus story as a shining example of all that is good and inspiring in the annals of humanity.

Here is the story of a small and powerless people that rises up against a brutal tyranny, throws off its chains and gains a new homeland, creating a revolutionary new moral code on the way.

Seen in this way, the Exodus is a victory of the human spirit, an inspiration for all downtrodden peoples. And indeed, it has served this purpose many times in the past. The Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of the American nation, were inspired by it, and so were many rebels throughout history.

THE OTHER SIDE: When one reads the Biblical text attentively , without religious blinkers, some aspects gives us food for other thoughts.

Let’s take the Ten Plagues. Why were the entire Egyptian people punished for the misdeeds of one tyrant, Pharaoh? Why did God, like a divine Security Council, levy on them cruel sanctions, polluting their water with blood, destroying their livelihood with hail and locusts? And, even more gruesome, how could a merciful God send his angels to murder every single Egyptian firstborn child?

On leaving Egypt, the Israelites were encouraged to steal their neighbors’ property. It is rather curious that the Biblical story-teller, who was certainly deeply religious, did not omit this detail. And this just a few weeks before the Ten Commandments were handed down to the Israelites by God personally, including “Thou Shalt Not Steal”.

No one seems ever to have given much thought to the ethical side of the conquest of Canaan. God promised the Children of Israel a land which was the home of other peoples. He told them to kill these peoples, expressly commanding them to commit genocide. For some reason, He singled out the people of Amalek, ordering the Israelites to eradicate them altogether. Later, the glorious King Saul was dethroned by His prophet because he showed mercy and did not murder his Amalekite prisoners-of-war, men, women and children.

Of course, these texts were written by people living in times long past, when the ethics of individuals and nations were different, as were the rules of war. But the Haggadah is recited - today as before - uncritically, without any reflection on these horrible aspects. Especially in religious schools in Israel today , the commandment to commit genocide against the non-Jewish population of Palestine is taken by many teachers and pupils quite literally.

INDOCTRINATION: This is the real point of these reflections.

There are two sentences in the Haggadah that always had – and still have – a profound impact on the present.

One is the central idea on which almost all Jews base their historical outlook: “In every generation they rise against us to destroy us”.

This does not apply to a specific time or to a specific place. It is regarded as an eternal truth that applies to all places, all times. ”They” is the entire outside world, all non-Jews everywhere. Children hear this on Seder evening on their father’s knee, long before they are able to read and write, and from then on they hear or recite it every year for decades. It expresses the total conscious or unconscious conviction of almost all Jews, whether in Los Angeles, California, or in Lod, Israel. It certainly directs the policy of the State of Israel.

The second sentence, which complements the first, is a cry to God: “Pour out your wrath upon the nations that do not know you…for they have devoured Jacob and desolated his home…Pour out your wrath on them! May your blazing anger overtake them! Pursue them from under the heavens of the Lord!…”

The word “nations” in this text has a double meaning. The Hebrew word is “goyim”, an ancient Hebrew term for “peoples”. Even the ancient Children of Israel were called a “Holy Goy”. But over the centuries, the word has taken on another meaning, and is understood to refer to all non-Jews, in a very derogatory way. (As in the Yiddish song “Oy, Oy, Oy, / Drunk is the Goy.”)

To understand this text properly, one has to remember that it was written as a cry from the heart of a defenseless, persecuted people who had no means to take revenge on their torturers. To raise their spirits on the joyful Seder evening, they had to put their trust in God, crying out to Him that he should take revenge in their stead.

(During the Seder ritual, the door is always left open. Officially, that is to allow the Prophet Elias to enter, if he should miraculously rise from the dead. In reality it was to allow the Goyim to look in, so as to disprove the anti-Semitic libel that Jews baked their unleavened Pesach bread with the blood of kidnapped Christian children.)

THE LESSON: In the Diaspora, this craving for revenge was both understandable and ineffective. But the founding of the State of Israel has changed the situation completely. In Israel, Jews are far from being defenseless. We don’t have to rely on God to take revenge for the evils done unto us, past or present, real or imagined. We can pour out our wrath ourselves, on our neighbors, the Palestinians and other Arabs, on our minorities, on our victims.

That is the real danger of the Haggadah, as I see it. It was written by and for helpless Jews living in perpetual danger. It raised their spirits once a year, when they felt safe for a moment, protected by their God, surrounded by their families.

Taken out of this context and applied to a new, completely different situation, it can set us on an evil course. Telling ourselves that everybody is out to destroy us, yesterday and most certainly tomorrow, we consider the grandiloquent bombast of an Iranian bigmouth as a living proof of the validity of the old maxim. They are out to kill us, so we must – according to another ancient Jewish injunction – kill them first.

So, on this Seder evening, let our feelings be guided by the noble, inspiring part of the Haggadah , the part about the slaves who rose up against tyranny and took their fate in their own hands – and not the part about pouring out our wrath.

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.

LETTER FROM A “JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE” SUPPORTER

Jewish Voice for Peace http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org (USA)
info@jewishvoiceforpeace.org

My name is Tom Pessah. I'm an Israeli sociology student. I study in the U.S., but right now I’m back home in Israel for my research.

I’m also an activist, which is how I came to know and love Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

Here’s the truth. It’s hard for me, and for so many of my Israeli and Palestinian friends and allies, to stay hopeful. The obstacles to peace in our homeland seem huge. But I’ll tell you where we get our inspiration when we really need it: Jewish Voice for Peace.

You see, like many, I’ve come to believe the only way we can ever end all of this suffering is through a massive, united, Arab-Jewish movement for a just peace. The alternative is to let the pro-occupation, pro-war forces divide us.

From where I sit, Jewish Voice for Peace is simply crucial for this movement towards lasting peace. And their work is just amazing. That’s why I support them, and why I hope you will too by making a tax-deductible year-end donation to JVP today.

Some of the reasons that I support JVP:

• They powerfully stood (and continue to stand) against the persecution of Muslim UC Irvine students who protested against the Israeli ambassador for being complicit in the attack on Gaza.
• They were able to provide massive support for the Palestinian-led effort to desegregate buses in the West Bank. I know how important this campaign has been to my Palestinian friends.
• And they gave immense backing to the beautiful multi-ethnic coalition that formed in my school, UC Berkeley, to demand divestment from American arms manufacturers accused of war crimes in Palestine.

This is exactly the kind of work that gives me hope, and I’m certain that we are going to win. But I’m impatient: I want it to happen faster! This is where you come in. When people like you and me contribute to Jewish Voice for Peace, they actually can move faster and do more. That matters.

And if what I’ve said so far hasn’t moved you to give, I hope the excerpt below will. It’s from a letter I just sent to a Jewish-American academic, about an aspect of life in Israel not even many Israeli Jews know about. And it illustrates exactly why the JVP way of joining together with Palestinian and Arab allies is the only way.

Dear Professor,

I'm Jewish and I didn't grow up with Palestinian Arabs, even though they are 20% of the population here, because the country is so highly segregated. In Tel Aviv, I lived for twenty years without even knowing one person who had Arab friends—not schoolmates, not romantic partners, not comrades in youth movements.

Apart from the servers in cheap cafes, or strangers in Jaffa, most of the Arabs I saw were on TV. I only made some good Arab friends when I was in university, when we are finally 'allowed' to mix. I want to share what they told me about what the Jewish state is like for them. The names are fictitious, but the people are real.

I went to visit my friend Maha in Haifa a few weeks ago. We were driving and she opened the window to ask another driver some directions, in Arabic. I asked how she knew he was a Palestinian citizen of Israel, because despite growing up in Israel I can't physically distinguish most Arabs from Mizrachim (Jews of Middle Eastern descent), unless they are wearing some distinctive clothing.

She said it isn't in the physical features but in the body language: Palestinian citizens of Israel can often recognize each other through their behavior, which essentially boils down to fearfulness and discomfort.

She can see it in the face of a driver in a car on the other side of the road. Fear of politicians that constantly threaten to transfer them out of their homes, just like the government is currently displacing thousands of Bedouins in the Negev.

Or fear of protesting, or saying too much on the phone and being invited to a "friendly conversation", because the Shabak (security service) may be listening.

Maha tried to find an apartment in Tel Aviv for several months, sleeping on friends' couches. It took many weeks until they found a landlord willing to rent to an Arab—then she was fired from her job as a waitress because she talked in Arabic to the cook in the kitchen.

A couple of weeks later I visited another friend, Amal, who lives in Nazareth. She took me past the local courthouse, which for her is the place from which sharpshooters aimed at unarmed Arab protesters in 2000, when the state killed 13 of its own citizens.

She refers to Nazareth as "the ghetto", where Arabs are forced to buy flats at prohibitive prices because so much of the land around the city has been expropriated to create neighborhoods primarily meant for Jews.

Though there are open letters circulating against renting apartments to Arabs, she managed to find a house in one of those neighborhoods, with only one other Arab family in the area. Her husband is worried that they won't be able to pay the mortgage if someone burns down their house.

Professor, I'm Jewish, and I don't want to live in a state where so many people are fearful and discriminated against. I don’t want to live in a state that oppresses its Palestinian citizens in exactly the ways we were oppressed in other countries.

I don't want them to feel out of place in their own country. We Jews have legitimate concerns, Israel should stay as a haven for Jews who are persecuted, but keeping it as a Jewish state in the form it is now is just incredibly cruel.

If you don't speak up loudly and clearly and consistently about this oppression, and if you don't say a word about the refugees, who are the relatives of Maha, and Amal and would like to be able to live close to them—just as my British relatives could come to Tel Aviv and live with me—you don't enable a joint Jewish-Arab movement to develop. You don’t ally yourself with kind, generous and conscientious people like them, the best friends and fellow citizens anyone could wish for.

If you’ve read this long message, thank you. I couldn’t think of a better way to tell the story of life here and of just why Jewish Voice for Peace matters. I hope you’ll give to them. I understand that right now is the time to give—a group of donors will match every contribution dollar for dollar until December 31. They need it. We need it.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for giving.

In peace,

Tom Pessah, Jewish Voice for Peace supporter

IN OCCUPIED WEST BANK, JEWS AND ARABS SEE DIFFERENT SIDES OF JUSTICE

5 September 2011, Haaretz

The Israeli justice system in the occupied territories treats similar crimes committed by Jews and Arabs differently - impunity toward settlers, harsh repercussions for Arabs.

By Amira Hass

1. There is a law in Israel. It is the Dromi Law, named for the farmer Shai Dromi who in January 2007 shot to death Khaled el-Atrash, a Bedouin who broke into his farm in the Negev at night.

In June 2008, a law was passed that “a person will not bear criminal responsibility for an act that was required immediately in order to curb someone who breaks in, or tries to break in, in order to commit a crime.” The district court acquitted Dromi of manslaughter, however he was convicted of having an illegal weapon.

2. There is a judge in Israel. He is Colonel-Lieutenant Netanel Benishu, who is deputy president of the military appeals court in the occupied West Bank. He heard the case of three members of the Bedouin Ka’abneh family, who were arrested on July 19th of this year after Israelis attacked their tent encampment on the lands of the village of Mukhmas east of Ramallah.

No, we did not get this wrong. First the Israelis broke into the encampment and then some of its residents began throwing stones at them. And a clarification – the Bedouins did not use a gun. They also did not kill anyone.

The indictment states that one of the stones they threw hit a policeman in the chest and that an Israeli by the name of Harel Zand from the unauthorized outpost of Mitzpeh Danny was hurt in the leg.

The three Bedouin who were arrested are between the ages of 16 and 20. The military judge, Major Yehuda Lieblein, decided to leave the two older youths in detention and to release the youngest one on NIS 7,500 bail.

The military prosecution appealed the release of the minor. The defense attorney, Naji Amer, appealed the continued detention of the others. Benishu ruled that all three would remain in custody until the end of the proceedings.

3. There is a policeman in Israel’s police force at the Benjamin Station in the occupied West Bank. He is Sgt. Maj. Avi Ben Ami and he was present at the site when the Israelis broke into the encampment. He was in civvies. He said he happened to be on the spot because he had received a report that some of the residents of the settlement were planning to go to the encampment. He arrived and saw that they were arguing with the Ka'abneh family members. He says he immediately identified himself as a policeman.

However, the members of the encampment said they only realized he was not a civilian toward the end of the incident when he put a flashing blue light on his car.

His overt or covert presence did not prevent other settlers from arriving there and, according to his testimony, from shouting and starting to kick cans of milk. Then he also noticed the stone-throwers. He apparently did not see what happened then, according to the tent dwellers account to Haaretz. The Israelis began stoning them (one little girl was injured), threw a baby (wrapped in its blankets) out of a cradle and began overturning sacks of flour and rice

4. Benishu: "If we were dealing with throwing stones at civilians alone", he wrote in his ruling "it is doubtful in my eyes to what extent it would be necessary to instruct that the appellants be in the unique circumstances of the present case. No one would disagree that stone throwing is generally a crime that deserves detention because of the danger involved.”

“And indeed, from the point of view of the danger involved in releasing an accused, there is no resemblance between planned and intentional stone-throwing, and stone throwing that stems from tempers heating up during a fight to which the victim contributed quite a bit…However, the appellant deliberately harmed a policeman who was present at the scene and identified himself”

[Therefore] significant danger to the public is involved (in an act of that kind) … The stone throwing continued even after the settlers left the site … Now is the time to reject the defense attorney’s claims about the supposed discrimination that was created between the matter of the appellants and the matter of the settlers… It must be noted that an investigation has been opened against the settlers and some of them have been interrogated under caution as is required. In view of that, it is possible that action will be taken against them… Second, there is no evidence of stone throwing on the part of the settlers, and while every harmful act against property must be condemned, this cannot be compared with an act of bodily harm.”

5. A beheaded doll now lies on the land where the tent encampment of Ka'abneh once was. On July 25, its inhabitants dismantled it and left. Out of fear. That is what the inhabitants of three other nearby Bedouin encampments did as well. Had the law and order authorities defended us from attacks, they said, we would not have left.

6. Israel has a Torah. Bassam, aged 12, helps support his family by herding his relatives’ sheep in a tent encampment near the village of Jaba. He learned that the Jews’ Torah restricts their movement on the Sabbath and therefore, he thought that Saturday would be a good day to take the sheep a little further out, to the rich pasture at the Mukhmas junction. The Migron outpost overlooks the junction.

7. Thank God for security firms. On August 20, Bassam and a friend went out with the sheep at seven in the morning. It was Ramadan, and hot, and they dozed while the sheep pastured.

At around 12.30, Bassam awoke to the sound of desperate bleating from the flock. He left the cave where he had been resting and saw a group of young Israeli boys (and a few girls) attacking the sheep with stones and iron bars.

Two of the Israelis, he said, attacked him too and beat him on the head with the rods. He was also hit in the back by a stone that someone threw at him. His friend woke up and the two of them fled for their lives in the direction of Shaar Binyamin, a settlers’ services compound.

The police station is there but that is not what they were looking for. They hid and waited for a security guard whom they believe guards a wedding hall.

When he arrived, he called the police, an ambulance and a family member of the boys. He also administered first aid to Bassam whose head was bleeding. In the Ramallah hospital, doctors attended to three deep and long gashes on Bassam’s skull.

8. "Hava Nagilla” - let’s be merry. Bassam’s friend accompanied the soldiers and the policemen who went to look for the young attackers. He saw a group of young people sitting on the ground in a small stone building, clapping their hands and singing. Some of them (including some young women) left when they saw the police and army approaching. Most remained behind and continued singing. The boy saw the police arresting them.

9. At a line-up in the yard of the Beit El army base, Bassam identified three of the youths as those who had assaulted him. As far as we know at this moment, if there are suspects in the attack, they are free.

MASSIVE YOUTH MOBILIZATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

31 August 2011, Communist Party of Israel המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית http://maki.org.il

Statement of the Young Communist League of Israel (August 2011)

The huge wave of demonstrations that is sweeping Israel for the last month and half, including a demonstration of 300,000 protestors in Tel-Aviv on August 6th, presented a very clear message: The Israeli working class in general, and young people in particular, revolts against the soaring prices of housing and basic commodities, and no longer agrees to silently abide to a social system that works against the interest of the vast majority, and for the interests of the few.

This social protest movement, characterized by the setting-up of thousands of protest tents throughout the country, is led by young people, and raises demands that address the needs of the general population, but also specifically the needs of youth and students.

The wave of revolutions in the Arab countries, which saw the unleashing of creative energy, against oppression and poverty, and for democracy and social justice, has long hit Europe, where young people took to the streets in Spain, Greece, and elsewhere. Now, we are now witnessing a similar struggle in Israel: Young people, many of which have been dormant and passive, are now taking interest in politics, mobilizing massively on the streets, and are involved in democratically discussing the strategy and tactics of this movement.

The Young Communist League of Israel (YCLI) has supported this protest movement since its onset, as it expresses the interests of the great majority of young people in Israel, Jews and Arabs alike. Our commitment to social change, and our vast experience in organizing both cadres and masses, means that our Comrades are in the leadership of many local protest encampments, and are also present in the national leadership of the movement.

We have a special responsibility in broadening the scope of the protest movement, bringing it into the periphery of the country, to poor neighborhood inside the big cities, and into small towns, far off from the metropolitan areas. This is most evident in Arab towns and villages, where we are the key player in this recent wave of struggle, leading the initiatives of building protest encampments and organizing demonstrations.
As an integral part of this young, vibrant, dynamic and growing social movement, we raise immediate demands, which include:

- Young married couples cannot afford buying a flat. YCLI demands massive government housing projects, including in Arab towns and villages, and subsidization of mortgages (as was the case until the 1980s, when Neo-Liberal austerity plans were adopted).

- University and College students cannot pay the high rent. YCLI demands municipalities to adopt regulations that place a top limit for rents, to stop them from rising. Furthermore, the government should fund more dormitories in universities and colleges, to allow more students to live near where they study.

- The cost of living is on the rise, but monthly salaries remain constant. As a result, more and more workers, especially young workers who are employed in precarious jobs, cannot make ends meet. YCLI demands the government to intervene and fix prices for basic food commodities, for gas, public transportation, electricity and water, and to pay a monthly cost-of-living allowance to every worker.

- Arab towns and villages face an acute housing crisis, manifested by lack of building permits and confiscation of lands. YCLI demands an immediate stop of land confiscations, and a return of lands confiscated in the past. The regional and local outline plans for the Arab towns and villages should allocate areas for development of housing, and building permits shall be given on an equal basis. The brutal policy of house demolitions, which the government is directing not only against Palestinian in the occupied territories, but also against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, most be abolished, including in the so-called "Unrecognized villages" of Bedouin tribes in the south of Israel.

In addition to these – and other – immediate demands, YCLI contributes to the struggle on the ideological and on the political level.

Ideologically, we state, based on our Marxist-Leninist perspective, that this social struggle, in essence, is between two classes and two world outlooks: On the one hand, there's Prime Minister Netanyahu's capitalist world outlook, which is manifested in benefits for the ultra-rich, and in attacks on the rights of workers and students, under the slogans of privatization and "free market economy"; On the other hand, there is our socialist world outlook, that support an egalitarian, peaceful and socially just society, which will respect social, civil and national rights.

Politically, our contribution to this social movement is twofold:

First, we insist on making the connection between the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian people, and the enormous social, economic and moral cost that the Israeli society has to pay for marinating it. Our position that the struggle for social justice is intertwined with the struggle for peace, is becoming more accepted as people realize that the hundreds of millions of Shekels that are currently spent on building settlements and increasing the military budget, could have been spent on building kindergartens, schools, hospitals and libraries.

Second, we emphasize that the success of this movement could be achieved only through adoption of a joint Jewish-Arab character. The movement needs to address openly the unique problems of the Arab citizens of in Israel (who comprise more than 20% of its population), and must create a close cooperation, on a massive scale, between Jewish and Arab youth. This kind of cooperation can help consolidate a broad public behind our demand for complete national and civil equality for the Arab-Palestinian minority within Israel.

The protest movement brought into activism a broad layer of young people, Jews and Arabs, contributed to their politicization, and presented them with a perspective of deep social change. As such, it is a most important development that we, as Young Communists, need not only study and analyze, but also immerse ourselves in it, involve our cadre and sympathizers, and help consolidate a clear perspective on how to take the struggle forward. Doing this will contribute to the cause of Peace and Socialism, which we believe is to prevail.

To contact YCLI ycl.israel@gmail.com

Wikileaks: US Embassy officials got upclose view of marginalization and removal of Bedouins in Negev in ’05 (and said nothing publicly)

29 August 2011, Mondoweiss http://mondoweiss.net (USA)

Philip Weiss

The latest from Wikileaks (thanks to Ali Gharib). Once again, we see American Embassy officials in Israel learning intimately about an outrage back in 2005-- the Judaization of the Negev, the Israeli program to move Bedouins into a few approved townships-- and did we hear a word publicly about the outrage, no. Why do we have a State Department?

Here is the State Department Human Rights report from 2005. Its description of Bedouin conditions lacks the understanding reflected in this cable: That Bedouins are being relocated, that Jewish settlement in the Negev is being encouraged, that there are no high schools in the unrecognized Bedouin villages. The Israeli side of the story is presented carefully in the report.

The uprooting of the Bedouins has been a regular theme on this website in the last couple years. Many intrepid journalists have gone into the Negev to report on this. And from this cable we learn that the State Department was aware of these plans SIX years ago, was meeting with the Association of Forty, Bedouin leaders, and said nothing.

The cable is marked "Sensitive." Excerpts:

Summary: Emboffs met February 17 [2005] with Bedouin community representatives in two Negev desert Bedouin villages not legally recognized by the GOI [Government of Israel] to discuss issues affecting their lives and possible PD [Policy Division] small grants assistance to educational programs. The Bedouin in these two unrecognized communities live in poor, makeshift conditions, without the benefits of municipal services or basic infrastructure. Highlighting the Bedouin's tenuous residential status in the state, and GOI distrust of this segment of the population, the Jerusalem Post reported February 18 that the GOI intends to relocate hundreds of Bedouin families in illegal Negev communities near the perimeter fence of an airbase. The report draws the conclusion from unnamed Israeli military sources that the GOI fears that the Bedouin, who are citizens of Israel, may acquire anti-aircraft missiles for use against Israeli aircraft. This cable offers a snapshot of life in these illegal villages and a Bedouin perspective on the political context. End summary.

------------------------- Many Bedouin Marginalized ....

According to the Association of Forty's data, [Attia] El-Asam said, the Negev has about 45 so-called "unrecognized" Bedouin villages, with some 70,000 Bedouin residents, or half of the total Negev Bedouin population. These unrecognized villages have never been included in GOI land planning, do not qualify for provision of any public services, and therefore do not officially exist on Israeli maps. Many Bedouin are life-long residents of these communities, but are considered squatters by the GOI. Without legal status, these communities receive no government resources, including municipal services and infrastructure development.

...El-Asam highlighted that, while the Bedouin now compose about 30 percent of the Negev population, the GOI has recognized as legal only seven communities or "townships" wherein the Bedouin population can legally reside. According to The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights In Israel - Adalah, the GOI initiated a program to resettle the Bedouin in these seven townships during the 1960s-70s.

....El-Asam claimed that the GOI nonetheless provides electrical and other municipal services to 60 Jewish National Fund-sponsored single-family farms in the Negev for Israeli Jews, none of which are connected to larger communities...

No high schools exist in any of the unrecognized villages, according to El-Asam, and only 16 of the villages contain even makeshift elementary schools. El-Asam claimed that 70 percent of the children in the unrecognized villages live below the poverty line.

J14 MAY CHALLENGE SOMETHING EVEN DEEPER THAN THE OCCUPATION

7 August 2011, + 972 http://972mag.com (Israel)

Dimi Reider*

The social justice demonstrations have been accused of ignoring the key issue of the occupation. But their tremendous groundswell of solidarity and cooperation is slowly gnawing at something even more significant than that – the principle of separation, of which the occupation is just one exercise.

Placard citing the Tahrir slogan of "Go!" and reading "Egypt is Here" at the J14 rally. Photo: Oren Ziv, Activestills.org

One of the most impressive aspects of the J14 movement is how quickly it is snowballing, drawing more and more groups and communities into a torrent of discontent. Pouring out into the streets is everything that Israelis, of all national identities, creeds and most classes complained about for years: The climbing rents, the rising prices on fuel, the parenting costs, the free-fall in the quality of public education, the overworked, unsustainable healthcare system, the complete and utter detachment of most politicians, on most levels, from most of the nation.

All this has been obfuscated for decades by the conflict, by a perpetual state of emergency; one of the benefits from leaving the occupation outside the protests, for now, was to neutralise the entire discourse of militarist fear-mongering. Contrary to what Dahlia and Joseph wrote last week, the government so far utterly failed to convince the people military needs must come before social justice; Iran has largely vanished from the news pages, and attempts to scare Israelis with references to a possible escalation with Lebanon or the Palestinian are relegated to third, fourth and fifth places in the headlines, with the texts often written in a sarcastic tone rarely employed in Israeli media on “serious” military matters.

Over the past week, though, the Palestinians themselves have begun gaining presence in the protests; not as an external threat or exclusively as monolithic victims of a monolithic Israel, but as a part and parcel of the protest movement, with their demands to rectify injustices unique to the Palestinians organically integrating with demands made by the protests on behalf of all Israelis.

First, a tent titled “1948″ was pitched on Rothschild boulevard, housing Palestinian and Jewish activists determined to discuss Palestinian collective rights and Palestinian grievances as a legitimate part of the protests. They activists tell me the arguments are exhaustive, wild and sometimes downright strange; but unlike the ultra-right activists who tried pitching a tent calling for a Jewish Tel Aviv and hoisting homophobic signs, the 1948 tenters were not pushed out, and are fast becoming part of the fabric of this “apolitical” protest.

A few days after the 1948 tent was pitched, the council of the protests – democratically elected delegates from 40 protest camps across the country – published their list of demands, including, startlingly, two of the key social justice issues unique to the Palestinians within Israel: Sweeping recognition of unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev; and expanding the municipal borders of Palestinian towns and villages to allow for natural development. The demands chimed in perfectly with the initial drive of the protest – lack of affordable housing.

The demands chimed in perfectly with the initial drive of the protest – lack of affordable housing. Neither issue has ever been included in the list of demands of a national, non-sectarian movement capable of bringing 300,000 people out into the streets.

And, finally, on Wednesday, residents of the Jewish poverty-stricken neighbourhood of Hatikva, many of them dyed-in-the-wool Likud activists, signed a covenant of cooperation with the Palestinian and Jewish Jaffa protesters, many of them activists with Jewish-Palestinian Hadash and nationalist-Palestinian Balad. They agreed they had more in common with each other than with the middle class national leadership of the protest, and that while not wishing to break apart from the J14 movement, they thought their unique demands would be better heard if they act together. At the rally, they marched together, arguing bitterly at times but sticking to each other, eventually even chanting mixed Hebrew and Arabic renditions of slogans from Tahrir.

Yesteday’s mega-rally was also where Palestinian partnership in the protests came to a head, when writer Odeh Bisharat spoke to nearly 300,000 people – overwhelmingly, centrist Israelis Jews – of the grievances of Palestinians in Israel and was met with raucous applause. I’ll return to that moment a little further below, but before that, perhaps I should explain why I think the participation of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the protests has more bearing on the conflict than any concentrated attempt to rally the crowds against the occupation.

On the most practical level, if the protesters had begun by blaming all of Israel’s social and political woes on the occupation, none of the breathtaking events of the past three weeks would have happened. They would have been written off as Israel-hating lefties and cast aside, just like every attempt to get mainstream Israelis to care for Palestinians before caring for themselves was cast aside for at least the past decade.

Altruist causes can rarely raise people to a sustained and genuine popular struggle against their own governments, and attempts to rally Israelis to the Palestinian cause for selfish reasons – i.e. for our own soldiers’ sake or because of the demographic time bomb – smacked of hypocrisy and ethnic nationalism; hypocrisy is a poor magnet for popular support, while ethnic nationalism is the natural instrument of the Right, not of the Left, which wields it awkwardly and usually to its own detriment.

It should be admitted, 11 years after the second Intifada, 18 years after the beginning of the peace process, that the Israeli left has utterly and abjectly failed to seriously enthuse Israelis in the project of ending the occupation. There was never a choice between a social struggle focused on the occupation and a social struggle temporarily putting the conflict aside, because the first attempt would have flopped . There was nothing to be gained by trying the same thing again for the Nth time. There have been many important victories in battles, but on the whole, the two-state left (as opposed to the two-state right) has lost the war.

The Occupation is just part of a bigger problem
But these were the tactical considerations valid only for the beginning of the protests. Social injustice does not exist in a vacuum, most certainly not in a conflict zone – and the problem in Israel-Palestine is much wider and deeper than the occupation. The occupation may be the most acute and violent injustice going on, and, like Aziz and I wrote in our New York Times op-ed last week, it’s certainly the greatest single obstacle to social justice on either side of the Green Line. But it’s still only one expression of an organising principle that has governed all of Israel-Palestine for at least the past sixty years: Separation.

Israel-Palestine today is, for all intents and purposes, a single political entity, with a single de-facto sovereign – the government in Jerusalem, but the populations this government controls, are divided into several levels of privilege. The broad outlines of the hierarchy are well-known – at the bottom are Palestinians of ‘67, who can’t even vote for the regime that governs most areas of their lives and are subject to military and bureaucratic violence on a day to day basis; Palestinians of ‘48, who can vote but are strongly and consistently discriminated and lack collective rights (which is a Jewish privilege); and finally the Israeli Jews.

But separation runs deeper than that: It employs and amplifies cultural and economic privilege to fracture each broad group into sub-groups, separating Druze from Bedouins from Palestinians, Ramallah residents from residents of Hebron, city residents from villagers, established residents from refugees; and within Jewish society, Mizrachis from Ashkenazis, settlers from green-line residents of Israel, ultra-Orthodox from secular, Russians from native-born Israelis, Ethiopians from everyone else, and so on.

The separation system is so chaotic even its privileges are far from self evident: ultra-Orthodox and settlers are seen as the communities most benefiting from the status quo, but it is important to remember the actual socio-economic standing of both is rather weak, and many in both are not only beneficiaries, but also hostages – the ultra-Orthodox to sectorial parties, the settlers to the occupation. And the occupation itself is just an instrument of separation: Its long term purpose is to acquire maximum land with a minimum of Palestinian on it, but for the past 40 years it mainly ensured half the population under the control of a certain government would have no recourse or representation with that government on any level.

And while the issue of the occupation remains to be engaged with directly in the #j14 movement, the very dynamic of the protests is already gnawing at the foundation on which the occupation rests – the separation axiom. Haggai Matar is a veteran anti-occupation activist, with a prison term for conscientious objection to serve in the IDF and countless West Bank protests under his belt. There are few people in Israel more committed to ending the occupation than him. And yet this is how he writes of yesterday’s rally:

Odeh Bisharat, the first Arab to address the mass rallies, greeted the enormous audience before him and reminded them that the struggle for social justice has always been the struggle of the Arab community, which has suffered from inequality, discrimination, state-level racism and house demolitions in Ramle, Lod, Jaffa and Al-Araqib. Not only was this met with ovation from a huge crowd of well over a hundred thousand people, but the masses actually chanted: “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.” And later, in a short clip of interviews from protest camps across the country, Jews and Arabs spoke, and a number of them, including even one religious Jew, repeatedly said that “it’s time for this state to be a state for all its citizens.” A state for all its citizens. As a broad, popular demand. Who would have believed it.

It would be seriously far-fetched to assume the protesters are deliberately trying to pull down the entire meshwork of rifts and boundaries. But one of the many unexpected consequences of this movement – indeed, the movement itself is an avalanche of completely unexpected consequences – is that these boundaries are beginning to blur and to seem less relevant than what brings people together. We have failed to end the occupation by confronting it head on, but the boundary-breaking, de-segregating movement could, conceivably, undermine it.

Like Noam wrote earlier today, it’s still too soon to tell where the movement will eventually go, and “it can even bring Israel further to the right; it certainly won’t be the first time in history in which social unrest led to the rise of rightwing demagogue – but right now, it is creating a space for a new conversation. Limited as this space may be, it’s so much more than we had just a month ago.” The slow erosion of separation lines means there are also possibilities opening up for new conversation about the Jewish-Palestinian divide – including the occupation.

*Dmitry (Dimi) Reider is a journalist and photographer working from Israel and the Palestinian territories. His work had appeared in the New York Times,The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, and Index on Censorship, etc.

PALESTINIAN BEDOUIN A BESIEGED MINORITY OF THE MINORITY

By Elizabeth Whitman

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 2, 2011 (IPS) - Israeli policies are destroying the livelihoods of Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank and the Negev in southern Israel, activists and aid workers warn.

They have done so for years, threatening to erase the traditional ways of these indigenous people, precipitating an acute and worrisome humanitarian situation, and, some experts believe, undermining the possibility of a future Palestinian state.

Though the difficulties facing Palestinian Bedouin vary by location, many agree that Israel's policies have marginalised them, making them a slowly disappearing minority of the minority with little or no political voice to challenge their fate.

A report released Monday by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that the most effective solutions to this problem would not be the provision of short term relief but instead "substantive changes to policies and practices applied by the Israeli authorities" - in short, addressing the fundamental issues forcing the Bedouin to relocate and relinquish their traditional ways of life.

All the Palestinian Bedouin reached by IPS suggested that that the United Nations is doing some, but too little, to help, despite its knowledge and understanding of their plight, and acknowledged as well the critical absence of a unified voice representing the Bedouin community. The Palestinian Authority's authority in Area C is also extremely limited, controlling only health and educational services.

The OCHA report, based on visits to 13 Bedouin villages in Area C of the West Bank, noted that "clear patterns of displacement are occurring in the Area C communities visited, with residents being forced to move in order to meet their basic needs", and concluded that "the restrictive planning regime applied by the Israeli authorities in Area C" was the primary cause of relocation.

Bedouin are usually unable to obtain Israeli Land Administration (ILA) permits necessary to build houses and schools, and frequently face demolition orders for pre-existing structures. They also have difficulty accessing resources and services such as water, land crucial for livestock, and education, because Israeli settlements and other structures take up 70 percent of Area C.

Maxwell Gaylard, who is based in Jerusalem as U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian Territory, told IPS that he had seen one school knocked down and rebuilt four times.

"Residents report living in a state of pervasive insecurity and instability due to administrative practices implemented by the Israeli authorities," the report found. It warned that ultimately, "some of these communities may disintegrate and disappear altogether over the course of the next generation".

Bedouin in the West Bank
After the 1993 Oslo Accords, the West Bank was divided in 1995 into three parts - Areas A, B and C. With the exception of health and educational services, Israel retains full control over Area C, which comprises roughly 60 percent of the occupied territory and whose Palestinian population is a diminishing 150,000. Some 27,000 of those are Bedouin or members of herding communities.

The 300,000 Israeli settlers living in Area C particularly complicate the matter, as Israel seeks to clear out Area C to make room to construct more of the settlements that are illegal under international law.

Mohammad Al Korshan, a representative of the Area C Bedouin, told IPS that Israel wanted to relocate Bedouin from Area C into Palestinian cities mainly in Areas A and B. Without the help of NGOs or the U.N., in a few years, one will no longer find Bedouin living in the desert, he believed. Many have already been forced to sell their animals - herding is a traditional livelihood for Bedouin - because they no longer have land to graze them on.

He said the U.N. was helpful in some ways, such as by providing food or temporary work, but overall, the world body was not helping enough.

According to Gaylard, Area C is "critical to the viability of the future Palestinian state". Still, the report stated, Israel's "highly restrictive and discriminatory planning regime… completely excludes their [Palestinian] participation and contributes to poor living conditions" and stymies opportunities for the development necessary to build a future state.

Meanwhile, problems of more immediate concern include "poverty and nutrition levels" which have rendered "the humanitarian fallout… for the Bedouin and the herders… particularly acute," said Gaylard.

When asked who served as the voice of the Bedouin in the West Bank, Gaylard responded with a wry chuckle, "I think it's us." Some NGOs, both Arab and Israeli, are dedicated to defending Bedouin communities, he added.

Bedouin in the Negev
In the Negev, the desert region in southern Israel home to tens of thousands of Bedouin, many Bedouin villages go unrecognised by the Israeli government. Their residents face similar challenges to the Bedouin in the West Bank, but under different political circumstances. As Israeli citizens, they are not represented by the Palestinian Authority, yet they are not treated as equal citizens by the state of Israel.

Excluded from the state's regional development plan, Bedouin face "forced evictions, home demolitions, and other punitive measures disproportionately against Bedouin" compared to Jewish residents, said a 2008 Human Rights Watch report.

Khalil Alamour, a resident of the unrecognised village As-Sira in the Negev and activist for Bedouin rights, said, "We are now all under the threat of demolition, which can happen anytime… The situation is deteriorating."

No single entity represents Bedouin interests, he said in an interview with IPS, warning that Bedouins' unique culture and ways of life "are going disappear very soon".

Jihad el-Sana, a resident of the recognised town of Laqia who is fighting for Bedouin rights, pointed out the irony of living in the third world - the majority of Bedouin live below the poverty line, he said - in such a developed country as Israel.

He supported Alamour's claim that the Bedouin did not have one unified voice because the community was too divided by needs and circumstances - some members owned land, some didn't, while some Bedouin live in recognised villages and others in unrecognised ones. In addition to a lack of political cohesion among the Bedouin, the "United Nations is doing nothing," el-Sana added.

In a recent twist, the BBC reported last week that Israel is suing a Bedouin community in the Negev for over half a million dollars in demolition costs. Each time Israel demolishes the village, the Bedouin rebuild it. (END)

RAISING A BLACK FLAG OVER THE DESTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY

14 july 2011, Communist Party of Israel המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית http://maki.org.il

Decisions of the 14th session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Israel

July 8, 2011

The Boycott Law ("The Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott - 2011"), which has just passed in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), is an outrageous attempt by the Israeli right to silence every form of criticism of government policy and especially the policy of settlement in the occupied territories. By threatening to impose costly damages on offenders, even without proof of damage, the right wing is attempting to shut out the voices of those who resist the occupation, and call, for instance, for a boycott of consumer products produced in the settlements.

This law joins a full series of other discriminatory and racist laws that have been proposed by Netanyahu's right wing government in recent years - laws that trample upon democracy, but have been approved by the Knesset.

The CPI condemns the "Boycott Law" as a grave assault on the freedom of speech, the freedom of criticism, and the freedom of protest, and calls for the forces who would defend our democratic space to rally together to put a stop to the fascist threat and to put an end to the injustices of the occupation.

Calling for a public campaign in favor of the UN General Assembly's recognition of a Palestinian State in the 1967 borders
The Obama government and European governments are applying pressure on the Palestinian Authority, demanding that it retreat from its appeal to the UN General Assembly - due to convene in September - to recognize a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. These pressures are in service of the war-mongering policies of settlement and occupation pursued by the Netanyahu government, which are disastrous for both Israelis and Palestinians.

The Central Committee raises an alarm against the catastrophe that the next war will bring upon Israel and the regions' nations. This war is being devised by the Netanyahu government in an attempt to prevent a political settlement, that would involve retreating from all of the occupied territories, and to block the anticipated vote in the General Assembly over the Palestinian issue.

The Central Committee of the CPI stresses that the only steps that can lead to a just and stable peace agreement which can guarantee the security of the two people and their futures are: the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside Israel; the evacuation of all the settlements; dismantling of the separation wall; and a solution of the refugee problem based on UN resolutions.

The CPI congratulates the residents of Bil'in and all those struggling against the separation barrier, for their important victory in removing the fence from part of Bil'in's lands.

The Central Committee calls upon members of the party to enlist in the public campaign, initiated by Hadash, for Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state within the June 4, 1967 lines. We send our blessings to TANDI (Movement of Democratic Women in Israel) and all of the Israeli women, who initiated a similar political action in collaboration with Palestinian women in the occupied territories.

Stop the blood bath in Syria and establish a democratic regime
The CPI's Central Committee reiterates its unambiguous stance against the killings, oppression, and mass persecution of the Syrian people, who are fighting for their freedom, for democracy and for social justice. The popular demands are legitimate and just demands.

We utterly reject any attempt on the part of the United States, Israel, and their allies to intervene in Syria by saying that they are taking the side of the people against the regime. The United States and its allies never intervened anywhere for the interests of the peoples it claimed to defend: it intervened only in the interests of the corporations and in order to establish imperial hegemony.

A regime that kills its own people, who are struggling by peaceful means, cannot be progressive and cannot claim any legitimacy. Our position is clear: we stand alongside the popular movement that is fighting for democracy, social justice and civil liberties, and which rejects any foreign intervention in the Syrian issue or dependency on imperialism, and which struggles against the Israeli occupation.

The voices that issued from the meetings with the Syrian opposition held in Turkey and France, as well as during the visit of the U.S. ambassador in the city of Hama, and which invited foreign powers to intervene, do not reflect the genuine interests of the Syrian people, and are at odds with the spirit of the masses' legitimate demands. We condemn the position voiced by various circles, both within the regime and within the opposition, who are pushing to resolve the question of the Syrian popular demands by means of an understanding with the U.S. and its allies that will create dependence on those foreign powers.

We call for an immediate end to the blood bath in Syria, and for the establishment of a democratic regime that strives for social justice, and that adheres to the principle of Syrian independence, and its national and geographical unity. We reject any attempt to divide the Syrian Arab people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or any other category.

We place a great deal of faith in the Arab-Syrian people, which carries a proud heritage of resistance to colonialism and occupation, and which fulfills an outstanding role in developing a progressive and enlightened culture. We are convinced that the Syrian people will not allow its wishes and its struggle to be hijacked, and will not allow its country to become a protectorate of the West.
We call upon all the elements of the society and people in Syria to attain full democratization and bring to an immediate end the bloodshed which is being carried out by the regime against the demonstrators who are using peaceful means while struggling for their rights.

Developments in Sudan
South Sudan has declared independence, and we honor the will of the Sudanese people both in the North and in the South. Sudan, as a country containing the sources of the Nile, is one of Africa's most important states. With its land and water resources, the country has untold possibilities for developing a thriving agricultural sector, as well as tremendous potential in terms of natural resources, especially in its southern part. Therefore, Sudan's status is of tremendous economic and strategic importance.

The West, and the United States in particular, is setting its sights on Sudan. The Western powers have worked for many years to keep Sudan divided, by fueling ethnic and geographic strife, while taking advantage of the crimes of the regime in Khartoum, and its denial of the legitimate demands of the Sudanese people in the south.

The division of Sudan was realized in wake of a referendum that took place in the south, whose results were also acceptable to the regime in Khartoum. This division was not a necessary step for solving the question of the south. It was advanced as part of Western intervention and the criminal policies conducted by the government in Kharoum, which ignored the desires of the country's inhabitants.

Rise in the cost of living and erosion of wages
During the past five years, the average real wage has risen by less than 3% while the prices of food have risen by 25%, the prices of fruit and vegetables by 36% and the cost of renting or buying a flat have doubled. The wave of price hikes, which have eroded the purchasing power of working families and senior citizens, is the product of a combination of monopolistic behavior on the part of the large corporations and the privatization policies of the government in support of capital.
The CPI calls upon the Histadrut (Labor Federation) to ensure that the workers receive immediate compensation for the recent price hikes by paying a one-time cost-of-living payment of 10% of the workers' wages.

Solidarity with the strikers
The CPI stands in solidarity with the workers of Haifa Chemicals, who have been on strike for three months now to demand a collective agreement and a fair wage for all the employees of the firm, and to protest against their degraded working conditions; with the doctors, striking to improve their working conditions and to save public medicine; with the nurses, who are implementing sanctions because of the lack of salaried positions and the abandonment of patients in the hospitals; and with all those fighting against factory shutdowns, layoffs, the privatization of government companies; and employment through temporary employment agencies.

An end to home demolitions
A year has gone by since the residents of Al-Araquib, joined by Jews and Arabs, began their resolute and courageous campaign to protect the village and villagers from the repeated demolitions of their meager homes at the hands of state representatives.

The CPI condemns the house demolitions in the Negev, which are an expression of the racist, anti-Arab policies that are attempting to uproot tens of thousands of Bedouin Arabs from their lands and villages.

The CPI's 26 Convention – in December
The Central Committee of the CPI has decided to hold the party's 26th convention on the 8-10th of December 2011, and has asked the relevant party institutions and organizations to begin preparations for the convention.