Hadash: the coming elections are about fighting for equality, social justice and a just peace

26 october 2012, The Israeli Communist Party http://www.maki.org.il (Israel) (Israel) info@maki.org.il   Neo-liberal and right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and fascist Foreign Minister Ivette (Avigdor) Liberman have agreed to join forces for a general election in the new year. Netanyahu and Liberman said Thursday they will present a joint list for the January 22 election without merging their respective parties, Likud and Yisrael Beitenu. Foreign Minister Liberman calls for expelling, by means of a land swap, hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens simply for being Arab. He ran an election campaign highlighted by the slogan, "Only Lieberman understands Arabic." He was a member of Kach in the late 1970s, which he understandably denies but which Kach veterans from that era swear to. He’s fantasized aloud in the Knesset about executing Arab MKs and threatened to bomb Egypt’s Aswan Dam. He has been under Israel Police investigation for corruption for nearly 15 years, and could face indictment pretty soon.

(Hadash and Communist Party of Israel demonstrators in Tel-Aviv, June 2012: "For Peace and Social Justice."/Photo: Hadash)

Thursday’s union between the Likud and Yisrael Beytenu parties has resulted in a tie between the rightist and the centrist-leftist blocs, a preliminary poll released after the announcement found. The centrist-left, however, includes Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Communist Party of Israel) and two Arab parties. Hadash leader Dov Khenin said that a Netanyahu-Liberman government, would open three war fronts: "One on Iran, a second against the Arab-Palestinians in Israel and another on democracy." Therefore, Khenin continued, "the coming elections are about fighting for equality, social justice and against the occupation and for a just peace with the Palestinian people."

AICafe 15 May: THE ONGOING 1948 NAQBA WITH AMJAD MITRI OF BADIL

14 may 2012, Alternative Information Center http://www.alternativenews.org (Israel)

Please join us at the AICafe on Tuesday 15 May at 8.00 p.m for The 1948 Ongoing Naqba, with Amjad Mitri of Badil: Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights.

Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons represent the largest and longest standing case of forced displacement in the world today. The Naqba, the Palestinian catastrophe, is the destruction of Palestine and the massive displacement of Palestinians by Israel during and following the 1948 Middle East war.

Join us on this Naqba Day, the 15th of May, in commemorating the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 and in learning how the Naqba is not only an historical event, but an ongoing process that affects the lives of Palestinians wherever they are.

Amjad Mitri is the legal researcher with Badil: Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights.

Please join us for this important event!

The AIC is a joint Palestinian-Israeli activist organization engaged in dissemination of information, political advocacy and grassroots activism. The AICafè is a political and cultural café open on Tuesday and Saturday night from 7pm until 10.30 pm. Every Thursday at 8 PM, the AICinema screens films from the Arab World and beyond.The AIC is located in the Alternative Information Center in Beit Sahour, close to Suq Sha’ab (follow the sign to Jadal Center). We have a small library with novels, political books and magazines. We also have a number of Films in DVD copies and the AIC publications which are aimed to critically analyze both Palestinian and Israeli societies, as well as the conflict itself.

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

Israel, wake up and smell the coffee

18 December 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

Years of rioting against Palestinians, uprooting of trees, vandalism, arson, destruction, dispossession, theft, rocks and axes didn't cause a ripple, but one rock to the head of a deputy brigade commander made all the difference.

By Gideon Levy

If I could, I'd send a modest bouquet of flowers as a gesture of thanks for the work of the rioters - the ones who infiltrated the Ephraim Brigade base in the West Bank last week. They achieved, at least for a moment, what others had failed to do: stir Israeli public opinion and maybe even the army and government against the West Bank settlers.

Good morning, Israel. You've woken up? Years of rioting against Palestinians, uprooting of trees, vandalism, arson, destruction, dispossession, theft, rocks and axes didn't cause a ripple here. But one rock to the head of a deputy brigade commander, Lt. Col. Tzur Harpaz, made all the difference.

An all-out riot. Jewish terrorism. There are militias in the West Bank, settler-terrorists in a no-man's-land. And all this due to a rock that drew a few drops of sacred Jewish blood.

Here they are again: arrogance and nationalist ideology. How is it possible that terrorism has arisen from the Chosen People? How could a few drops of blood from one person shock more than streams of other people's blood? How did the rock that scratched Harpaz's forehead reverberate immeasurably more than the teargas canister that ripped through the forehead of Palestinian Mustafa Tamimi, killed four days earlier by soldiers from the army Harpaz serves in?

No, the right wing's hilltop youth haven't endangered the State of Israel. They haven't even distorted its image, as it's now popular to proclaim. What do you want from them? They've been made accustomed to think that anything goes. Enough with the self-righteous clucking of tongues. Enough with the "condemnations" and expressions of bogus and belated shock. There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the settlers. It's not a "new level" of activity, and it doesn't involve the crossing of "red lines." The only line that has been crossed, perhaps, is the line of apathy.

We've been reporting for years about the settlers' misdeeds, week after week. We've recounted how they have threatened Palestinians, hit their children on their way to school, thrown garbage at their mothers, turned dogs on elderly Palestinians, abducted shepherds, stolen livestock, embittered their lives day and night, hill and vale, invading and taking over. And it never touched a soul.

Now all of a sudden there is shock. Good morning, Israel. Why? What happened? You can't chastise those young people after years of not only apathy toward their parents' misdeeds but also the warm embrace of most of society and sweeping support from the IDF and every Israeli government. You can't speak about them as brother-pioneers, give them huge budget allocations, promise they'll be allowed to remain where they are forever, view them as a legitimate, not to say principled, segment of society, and then suddenly turn your back on them, condemning and attacking them. And all due to a rock.

You can't change the rules that way, one fine day. And the rules were set long ago: It's their land, the land of the settlers; they're the masters of it and can do anything there. Only a distorted double standard would permit a change in the rules due to a minor injury to the Israel Defense Forces. Only in the name of a distorted double standard could you be shocked about the recent acts, which were by no means the most serious or cruel.

Of course Israel has the right (and duty ) to change the rules, but such a change must be revolutionary and be carried out across the settlement enterprise, halting it entirely and changing the illegal, unethical and intolerable reality that exists in our backyard. The government isn't interested in such a change. The IDF isn't either, and it's doubtful most Israelis want such a change. But anything less than that is hollow lip service, nothing more than a small wave on the hull of this decades-long enterprise.

Until that happens, let's leave them alone. There's no point evacuating a chicken coop at the Mitzpeh Yitzhar outpost while the settlement of Efrat is lapping at the edge of Bethlehem. There's no point waging war against the "illegal" outposts while the "legal" settlement of Ofra has been built on stolen land. And there's no point issuing restraining orders to keep out a clutch of rioters while it never occurs to Israel to issue similar orders against all their brethren.

The violent demonstrators at the Ephraim Brigade base are the opposite of anarchists, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called them. They just want to preserve the existing order, just as most Israelis, led by the prime minister, do. Flowers for the rioters? On second thought, they haven't done a thing.

“WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE…”

17 December 2011, Gush Shalom גוש שלום (Israel)

Uri Avnery

MY GOD, what a bizarre lot these Republican aspirants for the US presidency are!

What a sorry bunch of ignoramuses and downright crazies. Or, at best, what a bunch of cheats and cynics! (With the possible exception of the good doctor Ron Paul).

Is this the best a great and proud nation can produce? How frightening the thought that one of them may actually become the most powerful person in the world, with a finger on the biggest nuclear button!

BUT LET’S concentrate on the present front-runner. (Republicans seem to change front-runners like a fastidious beau changes socks.)

It’s Newt Gingrich. Remember him? The Speaker of the House who had an extra-marital affair with an intern while at the same time leading the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton for having an affair with an intern.

But that’s not the point. The point is that this intellectual giant – named after Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist ever – has discovered a great historical truth.

The original Newton discovered the Law of Gravity. Newton Leroy Gingrich has discovered something no less earth-shaking: there is an “invented” people around, referring to the Palestinians.

To which a humble Israeli like me might answer, in the best Hebrew slang: “Good morning, Eliyahu!” Thus we honor people who have made a great discovery which, unfortunately, has been discovered by others long before.

FROM ITS very beginning, the Zionist movement has denied the existence of the Palestinian people. It’s an article of faith.

The reason is obvious: if there exists a Palestinian people, then the country the Zionists were about to take over was not empty. Zionism would entail an injustice of historic proportions. Being very idealistic persons, the original Zionists found a way out of this moral dilemma: they simply denied its existence. The winning slogan was “A land without a people for a people without a land.”

So who were these curious human beings they met when they came to the country? Oh, ah, well, they were just people who happened to be there, but not “a” people.

Passers-by, so to speak. Later, the story goes, after we had made the desert bloom and turned an arid and neglected land into a paradise, Arabs from all over the region flocked to the country, and now they have the temerity – indeed the chutzpah – to claim that they constitute a Palestinian nation!

For many years after the founding of the State of Israel, this was the official line. Golda Meir famously exclaimed: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people!”

(To which I replied in the Knesset: “Mrs. Prime Minister, perhaps you are right. Perhaps there really is no Palestinian people. But if millions of people mistakenly believe that they are a people, and behave like a people, then they are a people.”)

A huge propaganda machine – both in Israel and abroad – was employed to “prove” that there was no Palestinian people. A lady called Joan Peters wrote a book (“From Time Immemorial”) proving that the riffraff calling themselves “Palestinians” had nothing to do with Palestine. They are nothing but interlopers and impostors. The book was immensely successful – until some experts took it apart and proved that the whole edifice of conclusive proofs was utter rubbish.

I myself have spent many hundreds of hours trying to convince Israeli and foreign audiences that there is a Palestinian people and that we have to make peace with them. Until one day the State of Israel recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the “Palestinian people”, and the argument was laid to rest.

Until Newt came along and, like a later-day Jesus, raised it from the dead.

OBVIOUSLY, HE is much too busy to read books. True, he was once a teacher of history, but for many years now he has been very busy speakering the Congress, making a fortune as an “adviser” of big corporations and now trying to become president.

Otherwise, he would probably have come across a brilliant historical book by Benedict Anderson, “Imagined Communities”, which asserts that all modern nations are invented.

Nationalism is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. When a community decides to become a nation, it has to reinvent itself. That means inventing a national past, reshuffling historical facts (and non-facts) in order to create a coherent picture of a nation existing since antiquity. Hermann the Cherusker, member of a Germanic tribe who betrayed his Roman employers, became a “national” hero. Religious refugees who landed in America and destroyed the native population became a “nation”. Members of an ethnic-religious Diaspora formed themselves into a “Jewish nation”. Many others did more or less the same.

Indeed, Newt would profit from reading a book by a Tel Aviv University professor, Shlomo Sand, a kosher Jew, whose Hebrew title speaks for itself: “When and How the Jewish People was Invented?”

Who are these Palestinians? About a hundred years ago, two young students in Istanbul, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the future Prime Minister and President (respectively) of Israel, wrote a treatise about the Palestinians. The population of this country, they said, has never changed. Only small elites were sometimes deported. The towns and villages never moved, as their names prove. Canaanites became Israelites, then Jews and Samaritans, then Christian Byzantines. With the Arab conquest, they slowly adopted the religion of Islam and the Arabic Culture. These are today’s Palestinians. I tend to agree with them.

PARROTING THE straight Zionist propaganda line – by now discarded by most Zionists – Gingrich argues that there can be no Palestinian people because there never was a Palestinian state. The people in this country were just “Arabs” under Ottoman rule.

So what? I used to hear from French colonial masters that there is no Algerian people, because there never was an Algerian state, there was never even a united country called Algeria. Any takers for this theory now?

The name “Palestine” was mentioned by a Greek historian some 2500 years ago. A “Duke of Palestine” is mentioned in the Talmud. When the Arabs conquered the country, they called it “Filastin”, as they still do. The Arab national movement came into being all over the Arab world, including Palestine – at the same time as the Zionist movement – and strove for independence from the Ottoman Sultan.

For centuries, Palestine was considered a part of Greater Syria (the region known in Arabic as 'Sham'). There was no formal distinction between Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Jordanians. But when, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the European powers divided the Arab world between them, a state called Palestine became a fact under the British Mandate, and the Arab Palestinian people established themselves as a separate nation with a national flag of their own. Many peoples in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America did the same, even without asking Gingrich for confirmation.

It would certainly be ironic if the members of the “invented” Palestinian nation were expected to ask for recognition from the members of the “invented” Jewish/Israeli nation, at the demand of a member of the “invented” American nation, a person who, by the way, is of mixed German, English, Scottish and Irish stock.

Years ago, there was short-lived controversy about Palestinian textbooks. It was argued that they were anti-Semitic and incited to murder. That was laid to rest when it became clear that all Palestinian schoolbooks were cleared by the Israeli occupation authorities, and most were inherited from the previous Jordanian regime. But Gingrich does not shrink from resurrecting this corpse, too.

All Palestinians – men, women and children – are terrorists, he asserts, and Palestinian pupils learn at school how to kill us poor and helpless Israelis. Ah, what would we do without such stout defenders as Newt? What a pity that this week a photo of him, shaking the hand of Yasser Arafat, was published.

And please don’t show him the textbooks used in some of our schools, especially the religious ones!

IS IT really a waste of time to write about such nonsense?

It may seem so, but one cannot ignore the fact that the dispenser of these inanities may be tomorrow’s President of the United States of America. Given the economic situation, that is not as unlikely as it sounds.

As for now, Gingrich is doing immense damage to the national interests of the US. At this historic juncture, the masses at all the Tahrir Squares across the Arab world are wondering about America’s attitude. Newt’s answer contributes to a new and more profound anti-Americanism.

Alas, he is not the only extreme rightist seeking to embrace Israel. Israel has lately become the Mecca of all the world’s racists. This week we were honored by the visit of the husband of Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front. A pilgrimage to the Jewish State is now a must for any aspiring fascist.

One of our ancient sages coined the phrase: “Not for nothing does the starling go to the raven. It’s because they are of the same kind”.

Thanks. But sorry. They are not of my kind.

To quote another proverb: With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Book: “FREEDOM JOURNEYS”

The Shalom Center http://www.theshalomcenter.org (USA)
office@theshalomcenter.org

Written by Rabbi Arthur O. Waskow and Rabbi Phyllis O. Berman, Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness across Millennia calls us to rethink the story of Pharaoh, the Exodus, Sinai, and the Wilderness to learn from it ways we can address our modern-day enslavements like the new "Plagues" of climate crisis, the treatment of Hispanics and Muslims as pariahs—and how we can use the wisdom in these stories to free ourselves and shape new planetary communities. Published by Jewish Lights, www.jewishlights.com

Freedom Journeys is a deep meditation on the timeless—and timely—relevance of the Exodus narrative. In the grand tradition of mystical exegesis, Waskow and Berman reflect upon Exodus not only as an event that happened “then” and “there”, but a paradigm of movement that is happening here and in the now, for all of us, Jew and Muslim, Black and White, male and female. —Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies, University of North Carolina.

Israel is still far from achieving social justice

The recommendations of the Trajtenberg Committee approved by the cabinet are truly historic, but we must not ignore other measures that were not approved.

20 December 2011, EDITORIAL Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed determination on Sunday when he voted in the cabinet meeting for most of the recommendations on increasing competitiveness in the economy suggested by the Trajtenberg Committee.

The recommendations approved by the cabinet are truly historic. They include establishing metropolitan authorities to manage cities' public transportation, increasing competition in public transportation, taking the gas stations away from big energy companies and giving broader powers to the Antitrust Authority to break up companies that wield too much economic power. These structural recommendations are of unparalleled importance and will increase competition in Israel.

(Cabinet session on the Trajtenberg committee, Dec. 18, 2011. Photo by: Alex Kolomisky)

But we must not ignore other Trajtenberg recommendations that were not approved. The section on economic competition also discusses increasing imports: limiting the powers of the Standards Institute, which currently blocks such imports, and restricting the authority of the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry to levy tariffs.

These two recommendations were not discussed at all. If we add the compromise that has delayed the reduction in import duties, then the most important step for competition - exposing the economy to imports - has not made progress.

The important structural steps the cabinet approved will extensively change the economy only in the distant future. In contrast, opening the economy to imports would increase competition and bring down prices immediately. It's disappointing that the measure that could have responded quickly to the cost-of-living protesters did not come to pass.

The disappointment could increase in light of the Trajtenberg report's main section, which has yet to come up for discussion in the cabinet: early childhood education. That's the report's crowning glory, a response to the social protesters' demand to ease the burden on the middle class and improve the state's services to its citizens. This issue is in doubt unless the prime minister decides to cut the defense budget.

Cutting defense spending is indeed a big decision, but due to the urgent social and civilian needs, the prime minister must show true grit and make that decision.

Read this article in Hebrew

Next Friday: HUMAN RIGHTS MARCH IN TEL-AVIV AND HAIFA

3 December 2011, Communist Party of Israel המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית http://maki.org.il
The March המצעד http://themarch.org.il (Israel)

Next Friday, December 9, will be at Tel-Aviv and Haifa the annual Human Rights March, organized by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), an one important event of the Israeli human rights and social change community. Hundreds of organizations, communities, and activists – all come together to say: "It’s our right, to all human rights, for all human beings." Among them: Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), the Communist Party of Israel, TANDI (the Democratic Women's Movement in Israel) and Hagada Hasmalit (Progressive Culture Center in Tel-Aviv and radical website).

According to ACRI "the March has room for all the different flags, for all the groups and initiatives that view human rights as the moral and social foundation for change. Many voices that are not frequently heard, or even not heard at all – thousands of activists for freedom of expression, protest, and movement, for the right to privacy, for human dignity; activists for migrant workers, asylum seekers, homeless persons, the unemployed, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and Palestinian citizens of Israel; for the adequate housing, health, and education that we all deserve. Once a year, just before International Human Rights Day, we join forces: all of the rights, all the activists, all the groups and organizations, all the believers come together".

And more: "Anti-democratic winds are sweeping through Israel, but last year’s Human Rights March proved that Israeli civil society is wide awake, working and struggling to protect human rights and democracy. The winds are blowing and anti-democratic legislation continues to be promoted, as though the people never flooded the streets in a demand for social justice. And yet the Israeli society has now changed – we are more united, we know how to protest, we know how to demand. So join us in the Human Rights March – this is your stage!"

Meeting point in Tel-Aviv at Habima Square,10:00 am. Rally in Rabin Square, 12:00 pm.

Read more in the March Blog in English: http://themarch.org.il/?cat=38
Attend and share the Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/tpFL55


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SPREAD THE RUMOR – MARCHING IN HAIFA!
The March המצעד http://themarch.org.il (Israel)

ehud בקטגוריה English 1/12/2011

Two weeks ago, on the phone, Matan was dead-serious: "After what we did this summer, it is obvious we will hold the Human Rights March in Haifa as well".

We couldn't resist the committed volunteers – and we are proud to hold the March in haifa, for the first time!

For the Haifa march on FB - http://j.mp/sSymCV
For the Tel Aviv march on FB - http://j.mp/vlqXDO

Haifa is a binational and multicultural city. More than 250,000 residents of the city are regularly creating endless affinit/identity groups, and most of them are keenly aware of their common interest in establishing an equal environment , based on human rights and mutual respect.

A multitude of people in haifa's neighborhoods demonstrated over the summer, demanding fulfillment of basic rights in education, housing and welfare- the goals of a just society.

Residents of haifa and its environs understood that they have human rights that can neither be denied, undermined or repealed.

Basic, human, elemental rights- it doesn't matter how you name them, and therefore, it is only natural that for the 1st time , the international day of human rights will be celebrated in haifa too.

This past summer, people went out into the streets, not for a higher standard of living, but for a better quality of life. The difference between these to goals may seem slight and insignificant, but it is really meaningful and important. People did not ask for free cable t.v. , for a bigger car, of for a more advanced air conditioner. They demanded that their rights be honored, that the be related to as human beings, that the authorities change their agenda, and place the human element in front of their eyes, instead of the economy and intellectual paradigms.
This protest began and continues by the people: people of different viewpoints and groupings, but with shared rights for all – the residents of b'nai david, wadi nisnas, halissa, hadar, neve yosef and carmel.

The International Day of Human Rights and the march of organizations for social change reflect a direct continuation of the events of the summer.

We are looking forward to a reality of citizens that work for social change, reject injustice and acceptance of indignity, who will struggle for equality, friendship and freedom against he anti democratic legislation currently before the knesset and for assuming a shared responsibility for our future.

COME TO MARCH – HAIFA OR TEL-AVIV!
הוספת תגובה »

Wake up. Rise up. Struggle. Demonstrate. Come to the Human Rights March in Tel Aviv on December 9, 2011.

מאת ehud | בקטגוריה English 2011 |‏ 23/11/2011
מתוך: הקונספירלה; גיא בר נבון

If this past summer proves something, it is this: we are a part of the world. Israel's tent protest did not begin in Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard, it started in Tunisia and in Tahrir Square; and it didn't end with the demonstration in Rabin Square, it still echoes here and on Wall Street, in Puerta del Sol in Madrid, and on the steps of St Paul Cathedral in London. Human rights – and within them the right to the most basic elements of a dignified life: health, housing, education, and welfare – these rights have always been universal. In recent months, people from more and more nations have taken to the streets to struggle for these very rights, demanding that their elected officials act to fulfill their responsibilities and stop betraying their trust. What us currently happening in so many cities expresses our shared humanity; and in this, we too are a part of this world.

If this past summer proves something, it is this: we are not a part of this world. It would be senseless to try and lead a protest for human rights in Israel that is somehow limited only to the space west of the Separation Fence. In addition, even in this limited space – the protests that took place in the summer sometimes preferred to ignore institutionalized aspects created by social gaps based on national identity, which are the foundation for other forms of discrimination. Affordable housing is affordable housing, but if you're an Arab citizen ofIsrael, for over 60 years the state has preferred to thwart your ability to build legally. Dealing with these issues without recognizing their origins, as though they carried the same weight of the struggle for regulation of apartments for rent in Tel Aviv (an important struggle in and of itself) – doing so is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem. This kind of approach, which separates justice from the social justice storm, is what separates us from the rest of the world.

And if so, then just where are we living?

On December 9th, one day before International Human Rights Day, the Human Rights March will be carried out, for the third consecutive year . The march will pass through familiar streets – the same streets that witnessed unprecedented protests this past summer. And perhaps, after this summer, these streets are no longer the same as they were? Part of the world or not part of it, time will tell.. In any event, the reality here, in certain ways, has already changed.

The hundreds of thousands of Israelis, who demonstrated over the summer, set an international record for nonviolent, popular protest. Could there be anything more democratic than that? The fact that a middle class protest for affordable housing grew into a widespread social protest was an exceptional display of human solidarity, which is at the basis of every society aspiring for equality. The fact that after two years of raging racism against the Arab citizens of Israel, which has been led by the government and is intensifying in the Knesset– the fact that after all that, the biggest demonstrations in Israel's history placed universal, social principles at the front, rather than nationalist principles, Is not something to be ignored.

This summer was a beginning. Social justice and civil protest are a powerful beginning. In this past summer, hundreds of thousands of Israelis together did something great, and we have additional, great challenges ahead of us. Some of these challenges might seem unsurmountable at times, but who would have imagined only several months ago that the people would have enough of privatization, corporations, and a neoliberal economy? Or that from protesting the price of cottage cheese we would go to demanding a welfare state and direct employment?

In the Human Rights March, we will express all of these challenges: social justice and an end to the occupation, complete civil equality and freedom of expression, a substantive democracy and human rights for all – for refugees and for migrant workers, for women and for men, for Palestinians and for Israelis, all the 100 percent of human rights for all human beings. Nothing less. This, precisely, is the essence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This, precisely, is the essence of International Human Rights Day. And precisely for all this we are holding the Human Rights March.

Several weeks ago, during the last (for now) social justice demonstration at Rabin Squarein Tel Aviv, a young man stood on the stage and said that for him, the summer has not ended. He said: “This summer we shouted together 'no more'.” He said: “Our joint struggle is the struggle for a different future, one future, a better future for all those who live here.” He said: “Wake up, rise up, struggle, demonstrate. We will have a new society, more democratic, more just, more equal.”

These words – spoken by Rabea Fahoum, a sociology student atTelAvivUniversity– could be wishful thinking or a passing illusion; or they could be our future, a future for all of us. In order for this to happen, we must wake up, struggle, demonstrate; not for specific rights to specific people, not each group for its own interests, but together, with enough room for each of the many problems that we must confront and with a unified and universal voice, the voice of all of us for the shared vision that we shape with our actions.

So wake up. Rise up. Struggle. Demonstrate. Yes, there will be a new society here, more democratic, more just, more equal. And precisely for that, come to the Human Rights March on December 9th.

Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director, ACRI

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About the Human Rights March, Tel-Aviv 2011
מאת ehud | בקטגוריה English 2011 |‏ 14/11/2011

Once again, we will take to the streets to call out: It's our right!

On Friday, 9 December 2011, we will walk together in the annual Human Rights March.

Join the event on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/tpFL55
Meeting point at Habima Square, Rothschild st. Tel-Aviv at 10:00.

Rally at the Rabin Square at 12:00.

The March has room for all the different flags, for all the groups and initiatives that view human rights as the moral and social foundation for change. Many voices that are not frequently heard, or even not heard at all – thousands of activists for freedom of expression, protest, and movement, for the right to privacy, for human dignity; activists for migrant workers, asylum seekers, homeless persons, the unemployed, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and Palestinian citizens of Israel; for the adequate housing, health, and education that we all deserve. Once a year, just before International Human Rights Day, we join forces: all of the rights, all the activists, all the groups and organizations, all the believers come together.

This past summer, the streets of Israelwere filled with believers. A belief that we can change things, that we should and we must – bring about a new policy, a new culture regarding the state's treatment of its citizens, a new approach regarding the state's obligation to promote the rights of all of us.

This belief has empowered many, who thought they were a few and alone and suddenly discovered that we are a mass. This past summer, the flag of social justice has been raised, but this is only the beginning of change, of raising consciousness to the fact that all human rights must be afforded to every human being.

Anti-democratic winds are sweeping throughIsrael, but last year's Human Rights March proved that Israeli civil society is wide awake, working and struggling to protect human rights and democracy.

The winds are blowing and anti-democratic legislation continues to be promoted, as though the people never flooded the streets in a demand for social justice. And yet the Israeli society has now changed – we are more united, we know how to protest, we know how to demand. So join us in the Human Rights March – this is your stage!

The March, organized by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), is the flagship event of the Israeli human rights and social change community. Hundreds of organizations, communities, and activists – all come together to say: It's our right, to all human rights, for all human beings!

Human rights march in Tel Aviv to counter anti-NGO legislation

1 December 2011, + 972 http://972mag.com (Israel)

The true essence of the foreign funding bill is its subjugation of all Israeli civil society organizations to the government’s whims. On Friday, December 9, 2011, Israeli civil society fights back at the human rights march

By Ehud Uziel*

Originally published at HaOkets

The revised Akunis-Kirschenbaum foreign funding bill backed by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Lieberman is genius. Their proposed amendment to the income tax law will obligate a 45% taxation rate on donations from “a foreign state entity” to Israeli nonprofit organizations. The amendment will leave room for only one type of exemption for NGOs: those that also receive funding from the government. Those who do not already receive government funding must refer to a special Knesset “exemptions” committee that will decide whether to grant the tax exemption or not. This bill is genius because it doesn’t contribute a single thing to the Israeli public but makes all the headlines.

It’s genius because it redefines what is central and what is marginal in Israeli society, without drawing too much opposition, since it doesn’t impact the majority. It’s genius because it destroys civil society in Israel, but directs the public debate to focus exclusively on “NGOs that are anti-Israel.”

The essence of the bill is not a war on human rights organizations, or on criticism of government policy and the occupation, or even on foreign government donations. The true essence of the law is making all civil society organizations in Israel that seek foreign donations subordinate to the state and its government – since those organizations that aren’t also funded by the state will have no choice but to refer to the special Knesset “exemptions” committee and request the state’s benevolence. If this law is passed it will become much more difficult for an NGO to remain independent and not depend on the state’s generosity, whether it focuses on women’s rights, disability rights or the rights of Palestinians under military law.

The subjugation of civil society organizations to the state takes place in many countries, and NGOs fear the state in many countries. These are not democratic countries and their regimes are much more concerned with themselves than with their citizens. Proposed laws such as the Akunis-Kirschenbaum bill seek to divert the debate from legitimate criticism of policy to a struggle over the very ability to voice criticism; from a fundamental discussion about social justice and freedom and questioning military control of another people – to an inane conversation about the legitimacy of donations being made to human rights organization by the European Union, and whether these 2 million Euros are different from the 150 million Euro donated by the EU to scientific research in Israel.

The best response we can provide is the human rights march next Friday, December 9, 2011. All those who continue to demand social justice will be there. All those who demand freedom and human rights will be there and all those who continue to demand the sustenance and expansion of Israeli democracy will be there. Everyone who understands that freedom of expression, thought and ideas – even those ideas which are most critical and unaccepted by society – are what constitute the most profound foundation of democracy.

In a letter sent by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) to the Foreign Minister last week, we cautioned against his misleading the public by comparing this bill to legislation in the US and Canada. The differences are huge. For example, the US only requires transparency and reports on donations from foreign entities, which already exists in Israel, and there is no clause in the US regarding taxation rates.

ACRI also helped draft and encouraged Members of Knesset from all factions to push a new bill, “Basic Law: Social Rights” onto the legislative table in the Knesset. This meticulously drafted bill obligates the state to provide basic services to all its residents. We cannot only react but rather we must continue to combine opposition with initiatives. It is not sufficient to protest “Enough!” (of the witch hunt) but we must also demand “More!” (social justice).

The Human Rights March will transform the defense of democracy into the demand for social and civil justice. The march is the place to be for all those who care about what is really important: cultivating a healthy civil society with social legislation, the guarantee of freedom and the maintenance of Israeli democracy.

*Ehud Uziel is Campaign Director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

JOINT LEFT-WING PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELI PARTIES AND GROUPS STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE SOCIAL STRUGGLE IN ISRAEL

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

A large group of left-wing Palestinian and Israeli parties, unions and civil society groups has issued an unprecedented joint statement in support of the Israeli struggle for social justice. The signatories demand unity in the struggle against occupation and racism.

(Half-million protest in Tel-Aviv, last Saturday, September 3, 2011/Photo: Activestills)

For the first time since the launch of social justice J14 movement in Israel, and perhaps for the first time in regional history, official Palestinian parties and NGOs are showing their support for an Israeli civilian struggle against neo-liberalism and capitalism. Alongside their general statement of support, signatories mentioned the influence Arab revolutions have had on the Israeli movement, and stressed the importance they see in the ground-breaking widespread cooperation between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel.

In addition, the signatories call upon J14 to connect their struggle with the one against the illegal settlements and the occupation, and to stop the Israeli government’s from attempting to sideline the struggle in the face of “outside security threats” such as the upcoming vote on recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN on 20 September.

Beyond these messages of support, the statement reaffirms the signatories’ commitment both to the Palestinian Authority’s attempt to gain UN recognition for a Palestinian state, and to the joint popular struggle against the occupation. Yet another notion on the agenda is the message of solidarity with all peoples of the region who are currently fighting for freedom and independence from totalitarian regimes.

The statement full text

Together for putting an end to occupation and racism, in support of the struggle of the Palestinian people to attain their national rights and against national and social oppression

Even in light of the encouraging developments in the Middle East, the wave of social protests and the awakening of the peoples’ struggles for freedoms and the right to live in dignity, the Palestinian people still live under the yoke of the Israeli occupation, despite their persistent and on-going struggle for freedom. The international community, for its part, demonstrates its helplessness and does not lend a hand to support the Palestinian struggle for liberation and justice.

The protest movements and the winds of change blowing in the Arab world have aroused excitement throughout the world amongst freedom seekers, encouraging many to adopt the model of popular struggle. These protest movements have had a deep impact on various groups in Israel, amongst both Jews and Palestinians, and made an important contribution to the rise of the popular protest movement within Israel for social justice.

Moved by our aspiration to attain a just and fair peace in the region, a peace that is truly essential for the peoples of the region and can assist in promoting the struggle for justice and progress for everyone, we – Palestinian and Israeli social and political forces, representatives of women’s associations and young people from both sides of the Green Line – emphasise the need for a joint struggle, with the goal of liberating the peoples of the region from colonialism and hegemony, particularly that of Zionism, halting the occupation and Israeli military aggression and supporting the just struggle of the Palestinian people for fulfilment of its right for self-determination in accordance with the decisions of the international community.

We look forward to the liberation of all the region’s peoples from dictatorship, ruling tyranny and from all forms of national, social and economic oppression. Therefore, we the signatories on this document, emphasise:

1. We support the Palestinian September initiative in the United Nations, the body which carries responsibility for laying the foundations of peace internationally, in order to demand full membership for Palestine in the UN and recognition of a Palestinian state in the borders of 4 June 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital, and to strengthen the efforts to end the occupation of the Palestinian people’s lands, with preservation of the right of the Palestinian people to oppose the occupation and the right of return of the refugees in accordance with United Nations Resolution 194. In this context, we emphasise that the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) is the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, deriving its legitimacy both from the Palestinian people in the homeland and exile and from the recognition it received from the Arab League and the United Nations.

The UN initiative is a legitimate step. The United Nations must fulfil its responsibility to realize its responsibility to establish peace and justice on the international level. This is a step that strengthens the rights of the Palestinian people and in no way represents a threat to Israel, despite the great efforts of the Israeli government to present this step to the Israeli people as a declaration of war or harming the legitimacy of the existence of Israel.

2. We understand that one of the primary reasons for the social and economic distress of citizens in Israel, in addition to the capitalist economic policies, is the continuation of the occupation and excessive security budgets, which Israel’s government seeks to justify as needed for defending the security of the settlements on the one hand and the state borders on the other. We therefore believe that an end to the occupation and establishment of a fair and just peace are essential for a life of peace and welfare.

We welcome the participation and integration of the Palestinian population in Israel in the social protest. This is an important opportunity to present before various groups within Israeli society the distresses of the Palestinians and the injustices caused to them, so that these groups can take responsibility in the struggle against the marginalizing policies and on-going discrimination against the Palestinians in Israel, for putting an ending to confiscation of lands and full equality, and an end to the occupation of the Palestinian lands that were occupied in 1967.

We warn again the familiar attempts by the occupation government to evade the crises and its internal crises and the pressure of the protest waves through the politics of fear which point to an external threat: Whether by presenting the Palestinian appeal to the UN as a “danger” or by military actions, as we have witnessed in the past few days in light of the harsh escalation in bloodletting of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

3. We recognize the right of the Palestinian people, living under occupation, to make use of all the legitimate forms of resistance in accordance with international norms for removing of the occupiers from its land and for self- determination. In this context, we emphasise the importance of the joint popular struggle of Palestinians and Israelis. A popular joint struggle is one of the central guiding principles in the struggle against the occupation, the settlements, racism, colonialism, against policies of exclusion, weakening, impoverishment, and racist separation within Israel.

Association of Palestinian Democratic Youth (Palestine)

Association of Progressive Students (Palestine)

Communist Party of Israel

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Palestine)

Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Hadash (Israel)

Democratic Teachers’ Union (Palestine)

Democratic Union of Professionals in Palestine (Palestine)

Democratic Women’s Movement in Israel (Israel)

National Campaign for Return of the Bodies of Arab and Palestinian Martyrs Captured by the Israeli Government (Palestine)

Palestinian People’s Party (Palestine)

Popular Campaign for the Boycott of Israeli Products (Palestine)

Progressive Workers’ Union (Palestine)

Tarabut-Hithabrut – Arab-Jewish Movement for Social and Political Change (Israel)

The Alternative Information Center (Palestine/Israel)

Union of Palestinian Farmers’ Unions (Palestine)

Union of One World for Justice (Palestine)

Union of Palestinian Working Women (Palestine)

Workers’ Unity Bloc (Palestine)

WHAT WAY FORWARD FOR MASS SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ISRAEL?

7 September 2011, World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org (Australia)

Nearly half a million people poured into the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and towns and cities across Israel on Saturday to raise the banner of “social justice” and protest against low wages and the rising costs of housing, food, transportation, education and other basic social necessities that are rendering life intolerable for the majority of the population.

Fueling the mass anger behind these protests is Israel’s ever-increasing social inequality that has handed huge profits to a handful of billionaire “tycoons,” even as millions face social deprivation. It is widely recognized that the policies of the right-wing regime of Benyamin Netanyahu are dictated by the interests and demands of a tiny plutocracy.

The sheer scale of the protests Saturday—encompassing 5.5 percent of Israel’s population of 7.75 million, the equivalent of 18 million people protesting in the US—underscores the movement’s profound historical significance.

More than six decades after the founding of the Israeli state, following continuous wars against neighboring Arab countries and more than 44 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the demonstrations have served to undermine a central Zionist myth. They have exposed the fact that in Israel, as in every other country, it is the class question that is fundamental, not nationality, race, religion or ethnicity.

Moreover, Jewish workers in Israel are responding to the same historic crisis of global capitalism that produced the mass revolts that have swept the Middle East, toppling the Western-backed dictatorships of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. Many of the protesters who pitched tents on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard and took to the streets of other towns and cities compared themselves to the Egyptian masses who occupied Tahrir Square.

This involves the embryonic consciousness that workers in Israel, just like in Egypt, are entering into a struggle that is international in its scope and that cannot be resolved within the confines of the national borders dividing the Middle East.

However, those in the leadership of these protests along with the Zionist union federation, Histadrut, which has backed them, and the various pseudo-left organizations that follow in its wake are determined to divert this movement back into the safe channels of Israel’s existing political setup.

This has been the significance from the outset of the insistence of the protests’ organizers on “no politics.” It had the same significance as similar proscriptions offered by the organizers of protests by Spain’s indignados: reinforcing the domination of the existing politics of the parties of the ruling elite and their servants in the union bureaucracy.

The leaders of the protest, together with the bureaucracy of Histadrut, have explicitly rejected any struggle to bring down the Netanyahu government. Instead, they have indicated their willingness to negotiate with this government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, which has formed a committee for the purpose of presenting some cosmetic “reforms” based on moving around spending within the exiting Israeli budget, while leaving untouched the existing system of capitalist exploitation and social inequality.

In Israel, of course, the proscription of politics has additional and even more fatal implications. It excludes from a struggle waged in the name of equality and social justice the deep social oppression arising from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; the fate of the millions of Palestinian refugees driven from their land; and the unequal status of Israel’s Arabs, 20 percent of the population, under a state that defines itself as Jewish.

It also leaves this movement defenseless in the face of the Netanyahu government’s invocation of alleged threats to Israel and appeals for Zionist unity to stifle social unrest. Netanyahu even exploited the protests over housing prices as the pretext to push ahead with more Zionist settlements around occupied East Jerusalem.
Finally, it prevents any real challenge to the vast diversion of social wealth into maintaining Israel’s massive military complex, which serves to intimidate the Palestinian people and all the countries of the Middle East.

In the wake of the fatal ambushes near the Sinai border last month, the following weekend’s protests were called off by the organizers. And it appears that the huge demonstrations last Saturday will not be repeated.

The decision to wind up this movement in September is hardly an accident. It coincides with a steady drumbeat of warnings from the Netanyahu government that the attempt this month by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to secure recognition from the United Nations of Palestinian statehood will be accompanied by widespread violence.
As Israel’s reactionary foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, put it recently, “The Palestinian Authority is planning a bloodbath.”

In reality, it is the Israeli military apparatus that is preparing for a bloodbath and a new round of war. There is no evidence that Palestinian workers and youth see the bourgeois Palestinian leadership’s maneuvers at the UN as of vital import. This UN resolution will do no more to better their conditions than all the ones that have preceded it. And even if the UN were to grant statehood—which it will not—a national entity created on the irrational and economically unviable borders left by the carve-up of Palestine would resolve none of the social and democratic demands of the Palestinian people.

The Israeli regime makes such threats because it fears above all the undermining of the ideological basis of its rule, and an explosion of the class struggle throughout the Middle East. To forestall the threat of a unified struggle of the Jewish and Arab working class against imperialism, it is willing to take the most desperate and reckless measures, including war—a situation that highlights the deep political significance of a struggle to unify the workers of the Middle East.

The mass protests in Israel have shown that there exists the objective basis in the Israeli working class for such a policy. However, carrying forward these struggles against the ruling class’s policy of social reaction and war requires elaborating a new political program and forging new mass organizations of the working class on the perspective of socialist internationalism. This means building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Israel and Palestine, in Egypt, Tunisia and throughout the region, committed to a common fight a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.

Some 450,000 Israelis march at massive 'March of the Million' rallies across country

3 September 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

Protests held in major cities across Israel represent biggest rallies in country's history; protest leader says 'we have chosen to see instead of walking blindly toward the abyss.'

By Oz Rosenberg, Ilan Lior and Gili Cohen

Over 450,000 protesters attended rallies across the country last night calling for social justice in what was the largest demonstration in Israeli history.

The main protest took place in Tel Aviv's Kikar Hamedina, where some 300,000 people gathered after marching from Habima Square about two kilometers away. Protest leader Yonatan Levy said the atmosphere was like "a second Independence Day."

Protest leaders Daphni Leef and National Student Union Chairman Itzik Shmuli both addressed the Tel Aviv crowd. "Mr. Prime Minister, the new Israelis have a dream and it is simple: to weave the story of our lives into Israel. We expect you to let us live in this country. The new Israelis will not give up. They demand change and will not stop until real solutions come," Shmuli said.

"My generation always felt as though we were alone in this world, but now we feel the solidarity," said Leef. "They tried to dismiss us as stupid children, and as extreme leftists," but last night's countrywide protest proved otherwise, she said.

Dr. Shiri Tannenbaum, a medical resident leading the young doctors' protest against the recent collective wage agreement signed between the government and the Israel Medical Association, also spoke at the Tel Aviv rally.

In Jerusalem, an unprecedented 50,000 people filled Paris Square and the surrounding streets, almost twice the number that attended previous protests this summer.

Actress and comedienne Orna Banai told the crowd in the capital: "I am not amused that there are hungry children here; that we have a soldier rotting in captivity for five years; that Israel is one of the poorest examples there are of human rights."

The chairman of the Hebrew University Student Union, Itai Gotler, said: "We changed this summer. The voice of the mother, the teacher, the student, have been heard...The fire of protest was lit in Tel Aviv, but the tent city in Jerusalem shows that the protest belongs to all of us."

Gotler said the Jerusalem tent city was closing down, but pledged to continue the struggle.

Yehuda Alush, 52, from Be'er Sheva, among a group of protesters from the Negev who marched to the capital, said: "This protest must not stop or we'll lose." In Haifa, the protest drew 40,000 people, many of whom waved red flags.

The Haifa protest focused on the issue of discrimination against Arabs. Shahin Nasser, representative of the Wadi Nisnas protest tent in Haifa said: "Today we are changing the rules of the game. No more coexistence based on hummus and fava beans. What is happening here is true coexistence, when Arabs and Jews march together shoulder to shoulder calling for social justice and peace. We've had it. Bibi, go home. Steinitz, go and don't come back, Atias, good-bye and good riddance," he said, referring to the prime minister, the finance minister and the housing minister, respectively.

The chairman of the University of Haifa's student union, Yossi Shalom, told the crowd, gathered at the foot of the Bahai Gardens in the city's German Colony, "There is no more beautiful sight than social solidarity. As a student, this is the most important lesson I have learned in recent months." At the protest in Afula the numbers reached 12,000; in Rosh Pina, 7,000 and in Kiryat Shemona, 7,000.

Meanwhile, in the south, a total of more than 1,000 people took part in rallies in Mitzpe Ramon and Arad. Ya'akov Laksi, an organizer of the protest in Arad, told the crowd: "Social justice means Arad will no longer be called an outlying town. We need to bring people work."

Laksi said organizers had expected only 100 protesters.

"We want the government to increase funding, not take from someone else," Eyal Adler, an organizer of the protest in Mitzpe Ramon said.

A protester who gave her name as Ruthie, said: "We are far from the eye of the media, but we deserve no less funding and a change in the funding map of Israel."

Concerns over possible rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip led the Home Front Command to issue a directive prohibiting demonstrations in Be'er Sheva, Ashdod and Ashkelon.

Eli Ashkenazi and Yanir Yagna contributed to this report.

More on this topic
• What’s next for Israel after the ‘March of the Million’
• Netanyahu: Israel government has duty 'to correct social disparities'
• Ahead of the March of the Million, Israel’s social protest leaders are put to the test
• In Israel, the future can come down to just one night

ISRAELIS, GO PROTEST!

2 September 2011, Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com

Saturday the power of a society will be tested - a society that has finally come alive and grown up after decades of slumber.

By Gideon Levy

As the social protest enters its eighth week and the demonstration planned for Saturday is set to be the greatest in Israeli history, it's time to issue an emergency mobilization order. All people who care about their lives in this country must, simply must, report for duty.

All people who thought they could do nothing but grumble and discovered it can be completely different have a duty, not only a right, to go outside and come to the square.

Rightists and leftists, Jews and Arabs, women and men, young and old, religious and secular, northerners and southerners - everyone must be in Kikar Hamedina Saturday night.

Saturday the power of a society will be tested - a society that has finally come alive and grown up after decades of slumber. If the masses flood the square, their outcry will be heard. Nobody, not even Benjamin Netanyahu's government, could ignore hundreds of thousands of Israelis demanding change and social justice.

Size matters, but it's not the only thing. From the protest's first day, from the first large demonstration on July 23, it was marked by an enthusiasm we never witnessed at any other demonstration, perhaps since the birth of the state. Winds of change like that haven't blown since the night the state was declared, when we danced outside the old Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard.

The day after the first demonstration, I wrote here that a new spirit had emerged. At the second demonstration, I was proud to be an Israeli, more than I had been for years. At the third demonstration, the largest ever, I felt that Israel was celebrating its renewed independence.

A wind has blown through the country in recent weeks, changing the language, agenda and tone. Instead of a bunch of cynical, cliche-reciting and deceiving politicians, we have a group of plain-speaking youngsters who have set the agenda and tone. Instead of a group of greedy, ostentatious tycoons we have humble tent-dwellers. These winds of change must blow Saturday too, but more powerfully.

All eyes will be on Kikar Hamedina Saturday, not only those yearning for success, but also the worried, frightened eyes of people fearing change in the existing order, which was so good to them. The protest's enemies, few but powerful, will stay home hoping that the demonstration will bomb.

These are most of our politicians, tycoons and owners of big companies and their relatives. People who overprice and overcharge, who drive to their minimum-wage factories in their black Mercedes, like the chairman of the ailing Pri Hagalil plant in the north. Also staying home will be the army of high-paid conservative commentators. They're all lying in wait, hoping that the revolution will fail.

In the next two days, every Israeli should remember what the state and society looked like before the first tent was set up, what people talked about and dealt with. We should compare it to what we're dealing with today. We should think of the reduced prices, the rich who suddenly have adopted more modest ways, the government that appoints committees, reduces companies' profits and uses, at least outwardly, a new language. We should think especially about our politicians, who suddenly seem so pale and shabby beside the impressive appearance of Daphni, Stav and Itzik Shmuli.

Anyone who wants this music to end Saturday should stay at home. Anyone who thinks this music must not be stopped must show up. Nine o'clock at the square. That's the time, that's the place.

More on this topic
52 days later, Israel's social protest faces its biggest test

IN FINAL PUSH, J14 TO HOLD ‘MILLION-PERSON’ MARCH

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

Mairav Zonszein*

Protest organizers are running against the ticking September clock to get the turnout this Saturday night to be the largest the country has seen – however difficult questions remain about the future of social justice reforms

With September quickly upon us and reports coming out that the army is training settlers in the West Bank for “Operation Summer Seeds” (the name given to the army’s plan to respond to potential “mass disorder” during Palestinian demonstrations in September), the tent protest movement, almost two months old, is making one final push for a large demonstration this Saturday night before the country’s media becomes entirely consumed by the September events.

What is being called the “million-person march” is expected to take place in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Beer Sheva, and is being heavily marketed on Facebook and through other social media. The J14 organizers have set up a “situation room” in an apartment next to the tent encampment on Rothschild Boulevard to encourage people to get involved. It is manned 24-hours a day by volunteers and although leaders continue to claim that the show of large numbers is not what matters, they are pushing every person to bring 5 friends to the protest on Saturday night.

There have also been promotional videos going around online, one especially dramatic one which asks viewers to imagine a scenario in which the protest movement dies out (Hebrew). In the video, there are hypothetical headlines in major newspapers portraying a sort of social justice armageddon, starting with the forceful evacuation of all tents on September 4th, moving on to the privatization of healthcare and annulment of minimum wage, and ending with the social gaps in Israel surpassing those in the US next summer 2012.

Even if the turnout this Saturday exceeds the largest of the tent protests that saw 300,000 people in the streets across the country, critical questions remain:

1) What will happen to the tent cities themselves?

2) Will the leaders of this movement form a national entity that will continue to function and will a political party come out of it?

3)Most importantly, (if and) how will the protests translate into policy changes?

None of these answers are clear, although there have been reports the tent cities will be taken down following Saturday’s march and efforts at establishing a nation-wide leadership have so far been mired in disputes regarding leadership and the decision-making process, and the question of disproportionate power held by original tent organizers. As for reforms, the Trajtenberg Committee appointed by the prime minister, which many tent protestors have disqualified as partisan, has been taking suggestions from the public and promises to produce recommendations before the holidays (end of September).

I actually overheard a J14 activist today telling someone that the first phase of the protest – taking tents into the street to wake up the public and get media attention – was very successful but is now over. Now is the time to do the hard work of sitting on your computer and in meetings in order to make sure that the protests translate into changes in policy.

*Mairav Zonszein is an Israeli-American journalist, translator, editor and academic. Her research focuses on contemporary Jewish identity politics, which she has been grappling with since attending private Jewish schools as a child in New York City.

Mairav’s work has appeared in Haaretz, Ynet, The Forward, The Nation and Dissent, among others.

Mairav has been living in Israel for over a decade and is active with Ta'ayush, a direct-action Arab-Jewish group whose activism focuses on the impoverished Palestinian communities of the South Hebron Hills.

Israeli intellectuals back Palestinian state; Women to march in Qalandia

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

A newly established cooperation between Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol and Arab-Palestinian poet in Israel Taha Muhammad Ali has led to a petition calling on intellectuals on both sides to support the foundation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

According to Sobol, the petition – distributed by email in recent days – has been signed by more than100 artists and academics, Jews and Arabs. It says that "the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 border, which will live in peace with Israel, is a crucial interest both for Israel and the Palestinians.

(June 4, 2011 demonstration in Tel-Aviv for a Palestinian state. Photo: Al Ittihad)

"All Arab countries and most of the world's countries support this solution for the conflict. According to the Arab Summit Conference in Beirut in 2002, all Arab countries and 60 Muslim countries would recognize the State of Israel and establish diplomatic relations with it if Israel were to recognize the '67 borders as the borders of just, comprehensive and sustainable peace with the future Palestinian state.

"These borders will gain the recognition of the UN and the countries of the world, as well as international guarantees." Sobol and Muhammad Ali warn in the petition that the ongoing political stalemate will create fertile land for extreme forces, who they say seek to drag the region's people into bloodshed and disastrous wars, which "create destruction, perpetuate backwardness and prevent any option of normalization of life and furthering social justice."

Talking about social justice, the two say that the recent popular protests movements in Arab countries and Israel express the aspirations for normalization of life that will exist in the region in times of peace, which will guarantee the fulfillment of the existential interests of the citizens of Israel and the Palestinian state and allow economic prosperity and social justice for all of the region's nations.

"For all these reasons, we the undersigned welcome the establishment of a Palestinian state within the '67 borders, including east Jerusalem, and call on its leadership and on the Israeli leadership to resume – immediately upon the foundation of the Palestinian state – the negotiations for ending the conflict based on UN resolutions and the international legitimization of a sustainable peace settlement between the two countries."

A women's march to be held in Qalandia checkpoint
Thousands of peace and left-wing women, from Israel and Palestine are expected to march through Qalandia checkpoint in east Jerusalem, Saturday, September 17 at 11 am. Among them Hadash, Communist Party of Israel and Tandi (Women's Democratic Movement in Israel) members, in support of an independent Palestinian state ahead of a declaration of statehood at the UN.

The demonstration will call for recognition of the Palestinian right to an independent state, with Jerusalem as its capital. The demonstration will be held in the two sides of the Qalandia checkpoint, with the participation of the General Union of Palestinian Women activists. March organizers were expecting thousands of Israeli and Palestinian women to participate.

On June 4, some 25,000 people marched through the streets of Tel Aviv in a demonstration calling for the creation of a Palestinian state. Setting out from the city’s central Rabin Square, protesters affiliated with the Hadash, Meretz, Peace Now, the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement and the Geneva Initiative slowly made their way along an unusually long route to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where a rally was held. Speakers included MKs from the Hadash, Meretz, Labor and Kadima parties.

Accompanied by a small but loud amateur marching band composed of youths from the Communist Party, activists carrying Israeli, Palestinian and red flags marched past Dizengoff center, making their presence known with amplified chants of: “Israel and Palestine, two states for two peoples”; “Yes we ‘ken’” (the Hebrew word for “yes”); and “Bibi and Barak, peace isn’t a game,” referring to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by his nickname.

(in Hebrew and Arabic): http://2states.org.il/independent

New Israel Fund Alone in Funding Israel Protests

The Jewish Daily Forward http://www.forward.com (USA)

26 August 2011, issue of September 02, 2011

Leaders Reluctant to Take Help, Despite Shared Social Justice Goals

(Getty Images/Struggle Continues: As the protests in Israel continue, the New Israel Fund has been virtually alone in raising money to help. But leaders of the social movement want to maintain their independence.)

By Nathan Guttman

Washington — Since mid-July, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated for “social justice” in what have been called the nation’s largest protests on domestic issues in recent memory, and organizers promise more. Yet the leaders of most major American Jewish organizations have been noticeably silent about these protests — with one exception.

And that organization, the New Israel Fund, which so far has raised $35,000 on behalf of the demonstrators, has been shunned by some of the very protesters it is trying to support.

This dynamic illustrates the way that the protest movement that began on July 14 has scrambled the conventional relationship between Israelis and the American Jewish establishment. Eager to show that the tent cities and marches throughout the country are a grassroots effort, some Israeli organizers are reluctant to accept American funding, especially from a politically charged organization like the NIF. At the same time, it seems, some U.S. leaders are reluctant to endorse a movement that, while it says it is avowedly non-partisan, could serve to weaken the Netanyahu government.

“The Rothschild Boulevard tent camp and leaders of the protests are cautious about working with us,” acknowledged Yuval Yavneh, director of the NIF grants department. “People on the right were successful in portraying us as a left-wing group, and the organizers are afraid of any political identification that might deter supporters.”

Nonetheless, NIF mobilized as soon as the tent cities popped up in Tel Aviv and later across the country. On August 8, after 150,000 Israelis took to the streets in the first of what would become a series of mass demonstrations, a fundraising appeal was sent out by Rachel Liel, NIF’s executive director in Israel. “Stand with these Israelis. Stand for social justice and for democracy,” the e-mail urged, linking supporters to an online donation website. Since then, of some $35,000 that has been raised, NIF officials have disbursed more than $21,000 in small grants to activist groups on the ground. The grants, up to $1,000 each, were provided only to certain elements within the Israeli movement and are based on two criteria: assisting protesters from the so-called periphery, outside Tel Aviv, and helping activists from smaller groups connect to the broader national protest movement. As part of this effort, grants were provided to groups of Ethiopian immigrants, Israeli Arabs, the handicapped, foreign workers and Russian-speaking Israelis. The NIF also provided money for tents and electric generators for protesters in areas other than the main tent city on Rothschild Boulevard.

“We want our money to go where it is needed the most,” said Yavneh, adding that the Tel Aviv protesters have other funding sources, including the national student movement. NIF did not provide funds for the two mass demonstrations that took place in central Tel Aviv but did support smaller demonstrations in Haifa, Jerusalem and in front of the Knesset.

In addition, professionals from Shatil, NIF’s social activism arm, have volunteered in 40 of the 65 tent cites across Israel, helping protesters organize, connect and resolve disputes.

Because the protest movement is so decentralized, it is difficult to assess what NIF’s share represents. Still, it is emerging as one of the largest funders, alongside the national student organization and a couple of labor-oriented youth movements. Costs of the protest have been kept to a minimum, and the only big-ticket expense — the mass Tel Aviv demonstrations — was paid for from donation jars that were passed around the crowds.

NIF’s offer to help was met with a mixed response on the ground in Israel. On the one hand, the group received a stream of requests for grants from the tent encampments and social change organizations representing minority groups. But leaders of the mainstream protest movement, especially those in Tel Aviv, the movement’s epicenter, chose to steer clear of the group.

“Everyone is saying that we are supported by the New Israel Fund, but we don’t work with them directly or indirectly,” Orly Weisselberg, one of the protest organizers, said in a phone interview. “We are not willing to have any groups that are getting involved in order to promote their own agenda or to direct the movement toward their own interests. We welcome any kind of support, but our condition is that they have no conditions.”

NIF’s support for the protest movement, although limited in scope, triggered a barrage of criticism from Israel’s right wing. In blog posts and newspaper articles, opponents argued that the protest movement was no more than a front for the NIF. “We’re rather bemused by the extreme right in Israel ‘crediting’ it to the New Israel Fund,” said NIF spokeswoman Naomi Paiss, who stressed that the protest “is an authentic grassroots movement.“

Whatever NIF’s role, it stands in stark contrast to the relative silence of other Jewish groups, which are normally quick to issue a press release anytime there is news from Israel. The Anti-Defamation League, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, J Street — all have said nothing. The American Jewish Committee did not issue a statement, but did offer an analysis that took no position on the protests. Only the Reform movement and the left-leaning Ameinu issued statements of support.

The Jewish Federations of North America issued a carefully worded press release pledging support for “those who raise their voice in the public forum for the good of Israeli society, whether protest tent-dweller or member of Knesset.” At the same time, JFNA urged protesters and the government to continue their dialogue until reaching an agreement.

Other groups expressed their support from afar. Rabbi Steve Gutow, president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an organization known for its strong stance on social issues, said the demonstrations raised real concerns regarding economic disparity in Israel. “Social justice in Israel is something we care about deeply,” Gutow said, while adding that his group still wishes to give time for the commission set up by Prime Minister Netanyahu to issue its recommendations. “The fact that the government is seen as responding gave us a sense of pause,” Gutow said.

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com

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• Massive Housing Protests Shake Israel Government
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• ‘Social Suitability’ Nears OK As Israeli Housing Criterion

Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/141891/#ixzz1WWhPdCEM

DICHTER'S LAW

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

Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי

“THE PEOPLE Demand Social Justice!” 250 thousand protesters chanted in unison in Tel Aviv last Saturday. But what they need – to quote an American artist - is “more unemployed politicians”.

Fortunately, the Knesset has gone on a prolonged vacation, three months. For as Mark Twain quipped: “No man’s life or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”

As if to prove this point, MK Avi Dichter submitted, on the very last day of the outgoing session, a bill so outrageous that it easily trumps all the many other racist laws lately adopted by this Knesset.

“DICHTER” IS A German name and means “poet”. But no poet he. He is the former chief of the secret police, the “General Security Service” (Shin-Bet or Shabak).

(“Dichter also means “more dense”, but let’s not dwell on that.)

He proudly announced that he had spent a year and a half smoothening and sharpening this particular project, turning it into a legislative masterpiece.

And a masterpiece it is. No colleague in yesterday’s Germany or present-day Iran could have produced a more illustrious piece. The other members of the Knesset seem to feel so, too – no less than 20 of the 28 members of the Kadima faction, as well as all the other dyed-in-the-wool racist members of this august body, have proudly put their name to this bill as co-authors.

The very name - “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” - shows that this Dichter is neither a poet nor much of an intellectual. Secret police chiefs seldom are.

“Nation” and “People” are two different concepts. It is generally accepted that a people is an ethnic entity, and a nation is a political community. They exist on two different levels. But never mind.

It is the content of the bill that counts.

WHAT DICHTER proposes is to put an end to the official definition of Israel as a “Jewish and Democratic State”.

He proposes instead to set clear priorities: Israel is first and foremost the nation-state of the Jewish people, and only as a far second a democratic state. Wherever democracy clashes with the Jewishness of the state, Jewishness wins, democracy loses.

This makes him, by the way, the first right-wing Zionist (apart from Meir Kahane) who openly admits that there is a basic contradiction between a “Jewish” state and a “democratic” state. Since 1948, this has been strenuously denied by all Zionist factions, their phalanx of intellectuals and the Supreme Court.

What the new definition means is that the State of Israel belongs to all the Jews in the world – including Senators in Washington, drug-dealers in Mexico, oligarchs in Moscow and casino-owners in Macao, but not to the Arab citizens of Israel, who have been here for at least 1300 years since the Muslims entered Jerusalem. Christian Arabs trace their ancestry back to the crucifixion 1980 years ago, Samaritans were here 2500 years ago and many villagers are probably the descendents of the Canaanites, who were already here some 5000 years ago.

All these will become, once this bill is law, second-class citizens, not only in practice, as now, but also in official doctrine. Whenever their rights clash with what the majority of the Jews considers necessary for the preservation of the interests of the “nation-state of the Jewish people” – which may include everything from land ownership to criminal legislation –their rights will be ignored.

THE BILL itself does not leave much room for speculation. It spells things out.

The Arabic language will lose its status as an “official language” – a status it enjoyed in the Ottoman Empire, under the British Mandate and in Israel until now. The only official language in the Nation-State etc will be Hebrew.

No less typical is the paragraph that says that whenever there is a hole in Israeli law (called “lacuna”’ or lagoon), Jewish law will apply.

“Jewish law” is the Talmud and the Halakha, the Jewish equivalent of the Muslim Sharia. It means in practice that legal norms adopted 1500 years ago and more will trump the legal norms evolved over recent centuries in Britain and other European countries. Similar clauses exist in the laws of countries like Pakistan and Egypt. The similarity between Jewish and Islamic law is not accidental - Arabic-speaking Jewish sages, like Moses Maimonides (“the Rambam”) and their contemporary Muslim legal experts influenced each other.

The Halakha and the Sharia have much in common. They ban pork, practice circumcision, keep women in servitude, condemn homosexuals and fornicators to death and deny equality for infidels. (In practice, both religions have modified many of the harsher penalties. In the Jewish religion, for example, “an eye for an eye” now means compensation. Otherwise, as Gandhi so aptly said, we would all be blind by now.)

After enacting this law, Israel will be much nearer to Iran than to the USA. The “Only Democracy in the Middle East” will cease to be a democracy, but be very close in its character to some of the worst regimes in this region. “At long last, Israel is integrating itself in the region,” as an Arab writer mocked - alluding to a slogan I coined 65 years ago: “Integration in the Semitic Region”.

MOST OF the Knesset members who signed this bill fervently believe in “the Whole of Eretz-Israel” – meaning the official annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

They don’t mean the “One-State solution” that so many well-intentioned idealists dream about. In practice, the only One State that is feasible is one governed by Dichter’s law - the “Nation-State of the Jewish People” - with the Arabs relegated to the status of the Biblical “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.

Sure, the Arabs will be a majority in this state – but who cares? Since the Jewishness of the state will override democracy, their numbers will be irrelevant. Much as the number of blacks was in Apartheid South Africa.

LET’S HAVE a look at the party to which this poet of racism belongs: Kadima.

When I was in the army, I was always amused by the order: “the squad will retreat to the rear – forward march!”

This may sound absurd, but is really quite logical. The first part of the order relates to its direction, the second to its execution.

“Kadima” means “forward”, but Its direction is backward.

Dichter is a prominent leader of Kadima. Since his only claim to distinction is his former role as chief of the secret police, this must be why he was elected. But he has been joined in this racist project by more than 80% of the Kadima Knesset faction – the largest in the present parliament.

What does this say about Kadima?

Kadima has been a dismal failure in practically every respect. As an opposition faction in parliament it is a sad joke – indeed, I dare say that when I was a one-man faction in the Knesset, I generated more opposition activity than this 28-headed colossus. It has not formulated any meaningful stand on peace and the occupation, not to mention social justice.

Its leader, Tzipi Livni, has proved herself a total failure. Her only achievement has been her ability to keep her party together – no mean feat, though, considering that it consists of refugees (some would say traitors) from other parties, who hitched their cart to Ariel Sharon’s surging horses when he left the Likud. Most Kadima leaders left the Likud with him, and – like Livni herself – are deeply steeped in Likud ideology. Some others came from the Labor Party, arm in arm with that unsavory political prostitute, Shimon Peres.

This haphazard collection of frustrated politicians has tried several times to outflank Binyamin Netanyahu on the right. Its members have co-signed almost all the racist bills introduced in recent months, including the infamous “Boycott Law” (though when public opinion rebelled, they withdrew their signature, and some of them even voted against.)

How did this party get to be the largest in the Knesset, with one more seat than Likud? For left-wing voters, who were disgusted by Ehud Barak’s Labor Party and who dismissed the tiny Meretz, it seemed the only chance to stop Netanyahu and Lieberman. But that may change very soon.

LAST SATURDAY’s huge protest demonstration was the largest in Israel’s history (including the legendary “400,000 demo” after the Sabra-Shatilah massacre, whose real numbers were slightly lower). It may be the beginning of a new era.

It is impossible to describe the sheer energy emanating from this crowd, consisting mostly of 20-30-year-olds. History, like a gigantic eagle, could be felt beating its wings above. It was a jubilant mass, conscious of its immense power.

The protesters were eager to shun “politics” – reminding me of the words of Pericles, some 2500 years ago, that “just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean that politics won’t take an interest in you!”

The demonstration was, of course, highly political – directed against Netanyahu, the government and the entire social order. Marching in the dense crowd, I looked around for kippa-wearing protesters and could not spot a single one. The whole religious sector, the right-wing support group of the settlers and Dichter’s Law, was conspicuously absent, while the Oriental Jewish sector, the traditional base of Likud, was amply represented.

This mass protest is changing the agenda of Israel. I hope that it will result in due course in the emergence of a new party, which will change the face of the Knesset beyond recognition. Even a new war or another “security emergency” may not avert this.

That will surely be the end of Kadima, and few will mourn it. It would also mean bye-bye to Dichter, the Secret Police poet.

Over 80,000 protest in Israel's periphery

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

More than 80,000 people on Saturday evening attended protests against the cost of living and soaring housing prices in the southern city of Beersheba, northern cities of Haifa and Afula and many other cities across the country. The rallies' participants included the leaders of the Tel Aviv protest city, youth movement members, leading members of Hadash, social activists, worker committees' representatives and famous artists.

The huge rally in Haifa (Photo: Al Ittihad)

The largest was in Haifa, more than 30,000 Jews and Arabs marched from the Kiryat Eliezer neighborhood to the German Colony, chanting: "We want social justice" and "The government is responsible for the crisis." Hundreds of red flags were carried by activists all over the country. Some 12,000 protestors gathered in Beersheba and 15,000 in Afula.

Thousands of people staged smaller rallies in Rosh Pina, Beit Shean, Nazareth, Nahariya, Netanya, Hod Hasharon, Ramat Hasharon, Natanya, Rishon Lezion, Petah Tikva, Modiin, Beit Shemesh, Ashkelon, Dimona and Eilat. Thousands of Arabs joined the social protest for the first time since it began with rallies in the cities of Sakhnin, Tayibe and Umm al-Fahem. The National Student Union sent some 50 buses carrying students from academic institutions in central Israel to the different rallies in the southern and northern cities.