12 al 18 de noviembre 2011, La Jiribilla -- Revista de Cultura Cubana
http://www.lajiribilla.cu (Cuba)
Lo que EE.UU. e Israel no aceptan, es la identidad cultural del pueblo palestino
Ernesto Gómez Abascal
Desde finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX, los fundadores del sionismo, proclamaban: “Palestina es una tierra sin pueblo”, y con este argumento, iniciaron un movimiento internacional para, basándose en citas bíblicas, promover la emigración hacia allí de población judía de todos los rincones del mundo. Hasta entonces, el concepto de “judío” tenía fundamentalmente, una connotación religiosa y cultural, no nacional. El sionismo, utilizando textos del Antiguo Testamento de la Biblia, retoma las ideas del “pueblo elegido por Dios, a quien este le otorgó la tierra prometida”, que según el libro de Génesis (capítulo 15, versículo 18), reza: “A tu simiente daré esta tierra, desde el Río de Egipto hasta el río grande, el Río Eufrates”.
Estas ideas constituyeron las bases para la creación del Estado de Israel. La dirigente sionista Golda Meir, una de las fundadoras de ese estado, argumentaría después la no existencia de los palestinos afirmando que: “¿Cómo vamos a devolver los territorios ocupados? No hay nadie a quien devolverlo. No hay tal cosa llamada palestinos. No era como se piensa que existía un pueblo llamado palestino, que se consideraba él mismo como palestino y que nosotros llegamos, los echamos y les quitamos su país. Ellos no existían”.
Es evidente que los dirigentes sionistas, con su política de expansión de los asentamientos, establecimiento de muros, destrucción de casas y aldeas palestinas, continúan poniendo en práctica su viejo empeño de limpieza étnica. No aceptan la existencia del pueblo palestino, niegan su identidad cultural y hacen todo lo posible para imponer estas ideas a la comunidad internacional. Es como si continuaran repitiendo con Golda Meir: “No hay tal cosa llamada palestinos”.
Sin embargo, la identidad del pueblo palestino está profundamente enraizada en esa tierra considerada santa y tiene manifestaciones importantes en todas las ramas de la cultura. El gran poeta palestino Mahmoud Darwish, registra esto magistralmente en un conocido poema, del cual reproducimos un fragmento:
“Inscríbeme:
soy árabe,
mi nombre es muy común
y soy paciente
en un país en que hierve la cólera;
mis raíces…
fijadas están del nacimiento de los tiempos,
antes de la eclosión de los siglos,
antes de los cipreses y los olivos,
antes del crecimiento vegetal.”
La idea mesiánica y peligrosamente extremista, de considerarse un pueblo elegido y designado a cumplir una misión especial, está hoy presente en los discursos de fanáticos dirigentes de EE.UU. e Israel, quienes en no pocas ocasiones se han autonombrados como destinados a “salvar a la humanidad”. En ambos, existe un razonamiento fundamentalista que los une, es el “sioimperialismo”.
En junio del 2003, en una entrevista con el dirigente palestino Abu Mazen en Sharm el Sheikh, George W. Bush, le afirmó: “Tengo una misión de Dios. Él me dijo: George ve y lucha contra esos terroristas en Afganistán. Y lo hice. Y entonces me dijo: Ve y lucha contra la tiranía en Irak. Y lo hice”. En aquella ocasión el presidente estadounidense también afirmó: “La palabra de Dios ahora viene a mí: Da a los palestinos su estado y a los israelíes la seguridad. Y logra la paz en el Oriente Medio. Y por Dios que lo voy a lograr”.
Con motivo de la agresión a Libia, el presidente Obama ha dicho cosas parecidas, incluso ha hablado también de su empeño en la creación del Estado Palestino, aunque actúa en contra de esta posibilidad al amenazar con vetar en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU la propuesta de su aceptación en esa Organización. Ya se opuso a su ingreso en la UNESCO, y le retiró su contribución económica como reacción a la voluntad ampliamente mayoritaria de sus miembros que lo aceptaron.
Bush no cumplió con Dios: no le dio a los palestinos su estado y lejos de lograr la paz en el Oriente Medio, lo que hizo fue llevar más guerras y sufrimientos a la región. Obama sigue el mismo camino belicista e Israel no podrá obtener su seguridad, pues es imposible alcanzarla sobre la base de la agresión a otros países y la ocupación de tierras ajenas. La agenda trazada por los mesiánicos de Washington y Tel Aviv, que parece dirigida ahora contra Siria e Irán, podría generar un conflicto de consecuencias incalculables. Se menciona con razón la posibilidad de que pueda provocar el estallido de una Tercera Guerra Mundial, donde incluso el arma atómica, que Israel hace años mantiene en su arsenal, podría ser utilizada.
Tal desgracia, que afectaría a toda la humanidad, podría evitarse si se toma conciencia de este peligro y se movilizan en contra de estos macabros designios, todos los indignados del mundo, que somos más del 99% de los 7.000 millones que ya lo habitamos. Levantemos entonces la consigna: “INDIGNADOS DE TODOS LOS PAÍSES, UNÍOS”.
quarta-feira, 16 de novembro de 2011
sexta-feira, 11 de novembro de 2011
Israël commet le crime d’apartheid et la persécution qui est un crime contre l’Humanité
9 novembre 2011, Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) http://www.france-palestine.org (France)
Tribunal Russel pour la Palestine
Au cours de deux jours d’intenses travaux où se sont succédés à la barre pas moins de 25 experts et témoins, le Tribunal Russell sur la Palestine (TRP) a examiné la question suivante : « Les pratiques d’Israël envers le Peuple palestinien violent-elles l’interdiction internationale de l’apartheid ? ».
Le crime d’apartheid
Le Jury, composé de personnalités internationales connues pour leur intégrité morale, appuyé par des experts juristes spécialisés en droit international, a conclu à l’existence d’un régime institutionnalisé de domination qualifié d’apartheid selon les critères définis par le droit international.
Ce régime discriminatoire prend des formes et des intensités différentes selon les lieux où vivent les Palestiniens. Les Palestiniens, soumis à la réglementation militaire coloniale dans les territoires, sont sujets à une forme aggravée d’apartheid. Les Palestiniens citoyens d’Israël, bien que disposant du droit de vote, ne font pas partie de la nation juive telle que définie par la loi israélienne, ils sont donc exclus des bénéfices de la nationalité juive et sont sujets à une discrimination systématique par la violation de leurs droits fondamentaux. Le Jury a conclu que les Palestiniens quel que soit l’endroit où ils résident sont soumis collectivement au même apartheid.
L’État d’Israël est tenu à respecter l’interdiction du crime d’apartheid tel que le prévoit le droit international. La définition légale du crime d’apartheid comporte trois éléments :
• deux groupes raciaux distincts peuvent être identifiés;
• des "actes inhumains" sont commis à l’encontre du groupe dominé;
• de tels actes sont commis systématiquement dans le cadre d’un régime institutionnalisé de domination d’un groupe sur l’autre.
La notion de «groupe racial» est davantage définie comme sociologique que comme biologique.
La notion d’actes inhumains comprend : les assassinats à large échelle ou ciblés lors des incursions militaires ; la torture et les traitements dégradants de prisonniers ; la privation systématique des droits humains empêchant les Palestiniens, y compris les réfugiés, d’exercer leurs droits politiques, économiques, sociaux et culturels. Il en résulte une fragmentation territoriale et la création de réserves et d’enclaves qui séparent Palestiniens et Israéliens. Une politique décrite par l’État d’Israël lui-même comme « Hafrada » ce qui signifie en hébreu séparation.
La notion de régime systématique et institutionnalisé renvoie à des législations différentes pour les Palestiniens et les Israéliens.
La persécution comme crime contre l’Humanité
La notion de persécution est définie comme une privation intentionnelle et grave des droits fondamentaux des membres d’un groupe identifiable dans le cadre d’attaques larges et systématiques contre des populations civiles. Notamment: le blocus de Gaza comme châtiment collectif, l’attaque de civils lors d’opérations militaires, la destruction de maisons non justifiée par des nécessités militaires et l’impact du Mur sur les populations et la démolition des villages bédouins.
Les conséquences juridiques
En commettant des actes d’apartheid et de persécution, Israël engage sa responsabilité internationale, doit mettre fin à ces agissements criminels et doit réparer complètement les dommages causés par ceux-ci. Les États et les organisations ont aussi la responsabilité d’agir afin de pousser Israël à arrêter ces actes d’apartheid et de persécution. Ils doivent aussi s’abstenir de porter aide et assistance à Israël et mettre en œuvre des poursuites judiciaires à l’encontre de cet État.
Recommandations
– Le TRP demande instamment à l’État d’Israël de démanteler immédiatement son système d’apartheid, de mettre fin aux lois et pratiques discriminatoires et d’arrêter la persécution des Palestiniens;
– Tous les États doivent coopérer en vue de mettre fin à cette situation illégale;
– Le Procureur de la Cour pénale internationale (CPI) doit accepter la plainte déposée par l’Autorité palestinienne et lancer une enquête sur les crimes internationaux susmentionnés;
– La Palestine doit être acceptée comme Partie au Statut de Rome de la CPI;
– La société civile doit recréer l’esprit de solidarité qui a contribué à la fin du fin du régime d’apartheid en Afrique du Sud notamment par le moyen de la campagne Boycott, désinvestissement, sanctions (BDS);
– L’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies doit recréer un comité spécial des Nations Unies contre l’apartheid concernant le peuple palestinien;
– L’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies doit demander un avis consultatif à la Cour internationale de Justice afin d’étudier la nature de l’occupation prolongée des territoires palestiniens et la politique d’apartheid;
– Le Comité des Nations Unies pour l’élimination des discriminations raciales doit inclure la question de l’apartheid dans sa prochaine analyse du cas israélien;
– Le gouvernement sud-africain, comme hôte du TRP doit s’assurer qu’aucune forme de représailles ne soit exercée par l’État d’Israël contre les témoins présents lors des travaux du TRP.
Pour toute information complémentaire:
Pour d’autres informations sur le Tribunal Russell sur la Palestine:
www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en
http://www.facebook.com/russelltribunal
Tribunal Russel pour la Palestine
Au cours de deux jours d’intenses travaux où se sont succédés à la barre pas moins de 25 experts et témoins, le Tribunal Russell sur la Palestine (TRP) a examiné la question suivante : « Les pratiques d’Israël envers le Peuple palestinien violent-elles l’interdiction internationale de l’apartheid ? ».
Le crime d’apartheid
Le Jury, composé de personnalités internationales connues pour leur intégrité morale, appuyé par des experts juristes spécialisés en droit international, a conclu à l’existence d’un régime institutionnalisé de domination qualifié d’apartheid selon les critères définis par le droit international.
Ce régime discriminatoire prend des formes et des intensités différentes selon les lieux où vivent les Palestiniens. Les Palestiniens, soumis à la réglementation militaire coloniale dans les territoires, sont sujets à une forme aggravée d’apartheid. Les Palestiniens citoyens d’Israël, bien que disposant du droit de vote, ne font pas partie de la nation juive telle que définie par la loi israélienne, ils sont donc exclus des bénéfices de la nationalité juive et sont sujets à une discrimination systématique par la violation de leurs droits fondamentaux. Le Jury a conclu que les Palestiniens quel que soit l’endroit où ils résident sont soumis collectivement au même apartheid.
L’État d’Israël est tenu à respecter l’interdiction du crime d’apartheid tel que le prévoit le droit international. La définition légale du crime d’apartheid comporte trois éléments :
• deux groupes raciaux distincts peuvent être identifiés;
• des "actes inhumains" sont commis à l’encontre du groupe dominé;
• de tels actes sont commis systématiquement dans le cadre d’un régime institutionnalisé de domination d’un groupe sur l’autre.
La notion de «groupe racial» est davantage définie comme sociologique que comme biologique.
La notion d’actes inhumains comprend : les assassinats à large échelle ou ciblés lors des incursions militaires ; la torture et les traitements dégradants de prisonniers ; la privation systématique des droits humains empêchant les Palestiniens, y compris les réfugiés, d’exercer leurs droits politiques, économiques, sociaux et culturels. Il en résulte une fragmentation territoriale et la création de réserves et d’enclaves qui séparent Palestiniens et Israéliens. Une politique décrite par l’État d’Israël lui-même comme « Hafrada » ce qui signifie en hébreu séparation.
La notion de régime systématique et institutionnalisé renvoie à des législations différentes pour les Palestiniens et les Israéliens.
La persécution comme crime contre l’Humanité
La notion de persécution est définie comme une privation intentionnelle et grave des droits fondamentaux des membres d’un groupe identifiable dans le cadre d’attaques larges et systématiques contre des populations civiles. Notamment: le blocus de Gaza comme châtiment collectif, l’attaque de civils lors d’opérations militaires, la destruction de maisons non justifiée par des nécessités militaires et l’impact du Mur sur les populations et la démolition des villages bédouins.
Les conséquences juridiques
En commettant des actes d’apartheid et de persécution, Israël engage sa responsabilité internationale, doit mettre fin à ces agissements criminels et doit réparer complètement les dommages causés par ceux-ci. Les États et les organisations ont aussi la responsabilité d’agir afin de pousser Israël à arrêter ces actes d’apartheid et de persécution. Ils doivent aussi s’abstenir de porter aide et assistance à Israël et mettre en œuvre des poursuites judiciaires à l’encontre de cet État.
Recommandations
– Le TRP demande instamment à l’État d’Israël de démanteler immédiatement son système d’apartheid, de mettre fin aux lois et pratiques discriminatoires et d’arrêter la persécution des Palestiniens;
– Tous les États doivent coopérer en vue de mettre fin à cette situation illégale;
– Le Procureur de la Cour pénale internationale (CPI) doit accepter la plainte déposée par l’Autorité palestinienne et lancer une enquête sur les crimes internationaux susmentionnés;
– La Palestine doit être acceptée comme Partie au Statut de Rome de la CPI;
– La société civile doit recréer l’esprit de solidarité qui a contribué à la fin du fin du régime d’apartheid en Afrique du Sud notamment par le moyen de la campagne Boycott, désinvestissement, sanctions (BDS);
– L’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies doit recréer un comité spécial des Nations Unies contre l’apartheid concernant le peuple palestinien;
– L’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies doit demander un avis consultatif à la Cour internationale de Justice afin d’étudier la nature de l’occupation prolongée des territoires palestiniens et la politique d’apartheid;
– Le Comité des Nations Unies pour l’élimination des discriminations raciales doit inclure la question de l’apartheid dans sa prochaine analyse du cas israélien;
– Le gouvernement sud-africain, comme hôte du TRP doit s’assurer qu’aucune forme de représailles ne soit exercée par l’État d’Israël contre les témoins présents lors des travaux du TRP.
Pour toute information complémentaire:
Pour d’autres informations sur le Tribunal Russell sur la Palestine:
www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en
http://www.facebook.com/russelltribunal
From the American South to the West Bank: A Freedom Rider Bears Witness to Human Rights in Israel/Palestine
8 November 2011, Rav Shalom http://rabbibrant.com (USA)
by Rabbi Brant Rosen
On November 15, Palestinian activists will attempt to board segregated Israeli settler public transport headed to occupied East Jerusalem in an act of civil disobedience inspired by the Freedom Riders of the US Civil Rights Movement.
Fifty years after the US Freedom Riders staged mixed-race bus rides through the roads of the segregated American South, Palestinian Freedom Riders will be asserting their right for liberty and dignity by disrupting the military regime of the Occupation through peaceful civil disobedience. Organizers say this ride to demand liberty, equality, and access to Jerusalem is the first of many to come.
Ta'anit Tzedek - Jewish Fast for Gaza will stand in solidarity with the West Bank Freedom Riders with a very special conference call on the day of the demonstration. Please join us Tuesday, November 15 at 12 pm Eastern Time to join our conversation with Ellen Broms, one of the original Freedom Riders for civil rights in the American South and currently an activist for a just peace in Israel/Palestine.
During our call, Ms. Broms will talk about her own experiences as an activist/demonstrator for civil rights in the 1960's and why her activism has led her to take a stand on behalf of Palestinian human and civil rights.
Ellen Broms is a retired state worker who resides in Sacramento, CA. Her involvement in the civil rights movement began when, as a student at Los Angeles City College, she demonstrated at Woolworth lunch counters in support of similar sit-ins by students in the South.
In June 1961, Ms. Brom attended a freedom rally at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the keynote speech. After hearing a freedom rider speak, she was inspired to participate in the rides herself. On August 11, Ms. Brom was arrested with other freedom riders after they sat down and demonstrated in a Houston coffee shop.
In her words:
The police arrived, having been summoned by the owner and we were charged with unlawful assembly and taken to the Houston city jail. We were fingerprinted, mugged, and classified at the city jail and then transferred to the Harris County Jail. Ironically, I was booked as a "Negro" because of my dark hair and complexion. We declined to state "race" and they classified me as "High Yellow". Marjorie, a very fair skinned, green eyed female rider of African American descent was classified and booked as white. I was placed in the "tank" for black wo men and Marjorie went to the white women's tank. If we did nothing else during that ride, we did succeed in briefly integrating the jail.
After spending eight days in jail, Ms. Brom was released. The riders were found guilty of "unlawful assembly" by an all-white jury and fined $100 each. Their case was eventually appealed to a higher court and overturned.
Ellen Broms has since been honored by Congress, the state of Texas and the city of Houston for risking incarceration and violence as a Freedom Rider. She continues to work as an activist for peace and justice, particularly in the area of a just peace in Israel/Palestine. She is actively involved in the Sacramento branch of Jewish Voice for Peace and is campaigning on behalf of the West Bank Freedom Riders.
To participate in the call:
Dial Access Number: 1.800.920.7487
Enter Participant Code: 92247763#
There will be opportunities for questions and answers during the call.
Please click here for more information about how you can get involved in support of the West Bank Freedom Riders. Please share this information with others you think may be interested in participating.
We looking forward to your joining the call!
by Rabbi Brant Rosen
On November 15, Palestinian activists will attempt to board segregated Israeli settler public transport headed to occupied East Jerusalem in an act of civil disobedience inspired by the Freedom Riders of the US Civil Rights Movement.
Fifty years after the US Freedom Riders staged mixed-race bus rides through the roads of the segregated American South, Palestinian Freedom Riders will be asserting their right for liberty and dignity by disrupting the military regime of the Occupation through peaceful civil disobedience. Organizers say this ride to demand liberty, equality, and access to Jerusalem is the first of many to come.
Ta'anit Tzedek - Jewish Fast for Gaza will stand in solidarity with the West Bank Freedom Riders with a very special conference call on the day of the demonstration. Please join us Tuesday, November 15 at 12 pm Eastern Time to join our conversation with Ellen Broms, one of the original Freedom Riders for civil rights in the American South and currently an activist for a just peace in Israel/Palestine.
During our call, Ms. Broms will talk about her own experiences as an activist/demonstrator for civil rights in the 1960's and why her activism has led her to take a stand on behalf of Palestinian human and civil rights.
Ellen Broms is a retired state worker who resides in Sacramento, CA. Her involvement in the civil rights movement began when, as a student at Los Angeles City College, she demonstrated at Woolworth lunch counters in support of similar sit-ins by students in the South.
In June 1961, Ms. Brom attended a freedom rally at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the keynote speech. After hearing a freedom rider speak, she was inspired to participate in the rides herself. On August 11, Ms. Brom was arrested with other freedom riders after they sat down and demonstrated in a Houston coffee shop.
In her words:
The police arrived, having been summoned by the owner and we were charged with unlawful assembly and taken to the Houston city jail. We were fingerprinted, mugged, and classified at the city jail and then transferred to the Harris County Jail. Ironically, I was booked as a "Negro" because of my dark hair and complexion. We declined to state "race" and they classified me as "High Yellow". Marjorie, a very fair skinned, green eyed female rider of African American descent was classified and booked as white. I was placed in the "tank" for black wo men and Marjorie went to the white women's tank. If we did nothing else during that ride, we did succeed in briefly integrating the jail.
After spending eight days in jail, Ms. Brom was released. The riders were found guilty of "unlawful assembly" by an all-white jury and fined $100 each. Their case was eventually appealed to a higher court and overturned.
Ellen Broms has since been honored by Congress, the state of Texas and the city of Houston for risking incarceration and violence as a Freedom Rider. She continues to work as an activist for peace and justice, particularly in the area of a just peace in Israel/Palestine. She is actively involved in the Sacramento branch of Jewish Voice for Peace and is campaigning on behalf of the West Bank Freedom Riders.
To participate in the call:
Dial Access Number: 1.800.920.7487
Enter Participant Code: 92247763#
There will be opportunities for questions and answers during the call.
Please click here for more information about how you can get involved in support of the West Bank Freedom Riders. Please share this information with others you think may be interested in participating.
We looking forward to your joining the call!
La RESCOP invita a José Mercé a mantener un encuentro con representantes de la Red y con personas del pueblo palestino
SEGUNDA CARTA ABIERTA DE LA RED SOLIDARIA CONTRA LA OCUPACIÓN DE PALESTINA (RESCOP) A JOSÉ MERCÉ
La RESCOP invita a José Mercé a mantener un encuentro con representantes de la Red y con personas del pueblo palestino
11 noviembre 2011 Rompiendo Muros http://rompiendo-muros.blogspot.com (España)
Reitera su petición al cantaor gaditano para que cancele su concierto en Israel
Estimado José Mercé:
Nos dirigimos a usted por segunda vez tras haber leído su respuesta a nuestra petición de que cancele su concierto en Israel, previsto para el próximo 29 de noviembre. En primer lugar, queremos agradecerle su amabilidad al haberse hecho eco de nuestra propuesta y manifestar su postura con respecto a ella en lugar de guardar silencio. Solo a través de la palabra, el debate y la confrontación de ideas se pueden crear mecanismos de transformación social para lograr un mundo más justo, libre e igualitario.
En la citada respuesta ratifica su intención de llevar a cabo la actuación y la enmarca en los actos culturales entre el Estado español e Israel que se llevan a cabo en estas fechas con motivo del vigésimo quinto aniversario del establecimiento de relaciones diplomáticas. Asimismo, señala que su concierto puede ser un mensaje “de paz y solidaridad, radical contra la violencia y la injusticia” y que el flamenco constituye “una posibilidad real de diálogo y coexistencia”.
(Ver respuesta de José Mercé completa en
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jos%C3%A9-Merc%C3%A9/264390610264218)
Reiterando de nuevo el máximo respeto por su obra y por su persona, desde la Red Solidaria contra la Ocupación de Palestina (RESCOP, plataforma que aglutina a 36 de las principales organizaciones de apoyo al pueblo palestino del Estado español) queremos comunicarle que no compartimos los argumentos que expone y, por tanto, le seguimos solicitando que suspenda su recital.
A través de esta misiva le invitamos también a mantener un encuentro con representantes de la RESCOP y con personas palestinas, para poder explicarle de primera mano el porqué de nuestra petición y para que escuche, a través de sus protagonistas, las historias de exilio, opresión y desposeimiento del pueblo palestino.
El masivo intercambio cultural y de espectáculos –también económico- organizado entre Israel y el Estado español para conmemorar el aniversario de las relaciones diplomáticas encubre, precisamente, el más absoluto fracaso de la diplomacia. En lugar de ejercer una acción diplomática contundente y firme para obligar a Israel a cumplir con la legislación internacional y los principios generales de los Derechos Humanos, el Gobierno del Estado español –como muchos otros gobiernos de las autoproclamadas ‘democracias avanzadas’- se presta a colaborar en este ejercicio de hipocresía que oculta el sometimiento del pueblo palestino bajo un velo de falsa normalidad.
El Estado de Israel conoce perfectamente el poder de la cultura y la utiliza para dotarse de esa apariencia de ‘normalidad’. Tras la Masacre de Gaza de 2008 y 2009, en la que el ejército israelí asesinó a más de 1.400 personas, entre ellas más de 400 niñas y niños, el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores destinó dos millones de dólares a mejorar la imagen de Israel a través de la cultura y el espectáculo.
“Enviaremos por el mundo a nuestros novelistas y escritores más conocidos”, señaló tras la matanza Arye Mekel, director general de Asuntos Culturales del citado Ministerio, “compañías de teatro, exposiciones… De esta forma mostraremos el rostro más amable de Israel y evitaremos que se nos identifique únicamente en un contexto de guerra” (recogido por The New York Times, 3 de marzo de 2009).
Con respecto a la posibilidad de que su arte pueda suponer “una posibilidad real de diálogo y coexistencia” y la tarea de buscar “una vía de comunicación para resolver el conflicto entre Israel y Palestina”, debemos decirle que el sometimiento del pueblo palestino no es una cuestión de diálogo, coexistencia y comunicación. Lo que sucede en Palestina no es un conflicto entre dos bandos iguales agravado por una falta de entendimiento o por la ausencia de una voluntad de diálogo. Ese es el argumento falaz de la equidistancia.
En Palestina no hay un enfrentamiento entre dos rivales simétricos en su antagonismo. Lo que hay es una parte colonizadora y otra colonizada; una parte opresora y otra oprimida; una parte ocupante y otra ocupada… Por eso, no puede haber paridad moral entre esas dos partes, como no la había en la Sudáfrica del Apartheid1 entre la mayoría negra oprimida y la minoría blanca opresora. A nadie se le ocurrió decirle a la población negra que lo que ocurría en Sudáfrica era producto de la falta de diálogo o comunicación.
Así lo han entendido las millones de personas que en todo el mundo se han sumado a las campañas de Boicot, Desinversiones y Sanciones contra el Estado de Israel (BDS, www.bdsmovement.net) y la Campaña Palestina para el Boicot Académico y Cultural a Israel (Pacbi, www.pacbi.org). Estas campañas cuentan con el apoyo de miles de israelíes que están rotundamente en contra del sometimiento del pueblo palestino y que son los primeros que le piden a usted que cancele su concierto en Israel.
Sin otro particular, esperando que reconsidere su postura y reiterándole la propuesta de mantener un encuentro, reciba de nuevo un fuerte abrazo.
RED SOLIDARIA CONTRA LAOCUPACIÓN DE PALESTINA (RESCOP)
AcsurLas Segovias
AsociaciónAl Quds de Solidaridad con los Pueblos del Mundo Árabe(Málaga)
Asociación Hispano Palestina Jerusalén (Madrid)
AsociaciónPaz Ahora
AsociaciónPaz con Dignidad
Asociaciónpro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía
AsociaciónPro Palestina Campo de Gibraltar (PROPA)
BDSGaliza
Boicot Preventiu (Barcelona)
Castellóper Palestina
Comitéde Solidaridad con la Causa Árabe (CSCA)
Comunidad Palestina de Canarias
ComunidadPalestina de Cataluña
Coordinadora de apoyo a palestina rioja (La Rioja)
Ecologistasen Acción (Madrid, Valladolid)
Fundación IEPALA
FundaciónMundubat
Interpueblos(Cantabria)
ISMCataluña / Valencia
IzquierdaAnticapitalista
KomiteInternazionalistak (Euskal Herria)
MEWANDO (Euskadi)
Mujeresen Zona de Conflicto - M.Z.C.
Mujerespor la Paz y Acción solidaria con Palestina(Canarias)
Palestinarekin Elkartasuna (Euskal Herria)
Plataforma Palestina Ibiza
PlataformaSolidaridad con Palestina (Sevilla)
Plataformade Solidaridad con Palestina de Valladolid
Redde Jóvenes Palestinos
Redde Judíos Antisionistas - IJAN
Sodepau
SodepazBalamil - Valladolid
Sodepaz
TaulaPer Palestina (Baleares)
Xarxad’enllaÇ amb Palestina (Barcelona)
XarxaSolidaridad Palestina (Valencia)
1 El Tribunal Rusell sobre Palestina, reunido en Sudáfrica este mes de noviembre y en el que han participado, entre otras personas, Stephane Hessel y Martin Pallin, ha dictaminado que el Estado de Israel somete a la población palestina a un régimen de Apartheid según la definición de este concepto que hace Naciones Unidas.
La RESCOP invita a José Mercé a mantener un encuentro con representantes de la Red y con personas del pueblo palestino
11 noviembre 2011 Rompiendo Muros http://rompiendo-muros.blogspot.com (España)
Reitera su petición al cantaor gaditano para que cancele su concierto en Israel
Estimado José Mercé:
Nos dirigimos a usted por segunda vez tras haber leído su respuesta a nuestra petición de que cancele su concierto en Israel, previsto para el próximo 29 de noviembre. En primer lugar, queremos agradecerle su amabilidad al haberse hecho eco de nuestra propuesta y manifestar su postura con respecto a ella en lugar de guardar silencio. Solo a través de la palabra, el debate y la confrontación de ideas se pueden crear mecanismos de transformación social para lograr un mundo más justo, libre e igualitario.
En la citada respuesta ratifica su intención de llevar a cabo la actuación y la enmarca en los actos culturales entre el Estado español e Israel que se llevan a cabo en estas fechas con motivo del vigésimo quinto aniversario del establecimiento de relaciones diplomáticas. Asimismo, señala que su concierto puede ser un mensaje “de paz y solidaridad, radical contra la violencia y la injusticia” y que el flamenco constituye “una posibilidad real de diálogo y coexistencia”.
(Ver respuesta de José Mercé completa en
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jos%C3%A9-Merc%C3%A9/264390610264218)
Reiterando de nuevo el máximo respeto por su obra y por su persona, desde la Red Solidaria contra la Ocupación de Palestina (RESCOP, plataforma que aglutina a 36 de las principales organizaciones de apoyo al pueblo palestino del Estado español) queremos comunicarle que no compartimos los argumentos que expone y, por tanto, le seguimos solicitando que suspenda su recital.
A través de esta misiva le invitamos también a mantener un encuentro con representantes de la RESCOP y con personas palestinas, para poder explicarle de primera mano el porqué de nuestra petición y para que escuche, a través de sus protagonistas, las historias de exilio, opresión y desposeimiento del pueblo palestino.
El masivo intercambio cultural y de espectáculos –también económico- organizado entre Israel y el Estado español para conmemorar el aniversario de las relaciones diplomáticas encubre, precisamente, el más absoluto fracaso de la diplomacia. En lugar de ejercer una acción diplomática contundente y firme para obligar a Israel a cumplir con la legislación internacional y los principios generales de los Derechos Humanos, el Gobierno del Estado español –como muchos otros gobiernos de las autoproclamadas ‘democracias avanzadas’- se presta a colaborar en este ejercicio de hipocresía que oculta el sometimiento del pueblo palestino bajo un velo de falsa normalidad.
El Estado de Israel conoce perfectamente el poder de la cultura y la utiliza para dotarse de esa apariencia de ‘normalidad’. Tras la Masacre de Gaza de 2008 y 2009, en la que el ejército israelí asesinó a más de 1.400 personas, entre ellas más de 400 niñas y niños, el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores destinó dos millones de dólares a mejorar la imagen de Israel a través de la cultura y el espectáculo.
“Enviaremos por el mundo a nuestros novelistas y escritores más conocidos”, señaló tras la matanza Arye Mekel, director general de Asuntos Culturales del citado Ministerio, “compañías de teatro, exposiciones… De esta forma mostraremos el rostro más amable de Israel y evitaremos que se nos identifique únicamente en un contexto de guerra” (recogido por The New York Times, 3 de marzo de 2009).
Con respecto a la posibilidad de que su arte pueda suponer “una posibilidad real de diálogo y coexistencia” y la tarea de buscar “una vía de comunicación para resolver el conflicto entre Israel y Palestina”, debemos decirle que el sometimiento del pueblo palestino no es una cuestión de diálogo, coexistencia y comunicación. Lo que sucede en Palestina no es un conflicto entre dos bandos iguales agravado por una falta de entendimiento o por la ausencia de una voluntad de diálogo. Ese es el argumento falaz de la equidistancia.
En Palestina no hay un enfrentamiento entre dos rivales simétricos en su antagonismo. Lo que hay es una parte colonizadora y otra colonizada; una parte opresora y otra oprimida; una parte ocupante y otra ocupada… Por eso, no puede haber paridad moral entre esas dos partes, como no la había en la Sudáfrica del Apartheid1 entre la mayoría negra oprimida y la minoría blanca opresora. A nadie se le ocurrió decirle a la población negra que lo que ocurría en Sudáfrica era producto de la falta de diálogo o comunicación.
Así lo han entendido las millones de personas que en todo el mundo se han sumado a las campañas de Boicot, Desinversiones y Sanciones contra el Estado de Israel (BDS, www.bdsmovement.net) y la Campaña Palestina para el Boicot Académico y Cultural a Israel (Pacbi, www.pacbi.org). Estas campañas cuentan con el apoyo de miles de israelíes que están rotundamente en contra del sometimiento del pueblo palestino y que son los primeros que le piden a usted que cancele su concierto en Israel.
Sin otro particular, esperando que reconsidere su postura y reiterándole la propuesta de mantener un encuentro, reciba de nuevo un fuerte abrazo.
RED SOLIDARIA CONTRA LAOCUPACIÓN DE PALESTINA (RESCOP)
AcsurLas Segovias
AsociaciónAl Quds de Solidaridad con los Pueblos del Mundo Árabe(Málaga)
Asociación Hispano Palestina Jerusalén (Madrid)
AsociaciónPaz Ahora
AsociaciónPaz con Dignidad
Asociaciónpro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía
AsociaciónPro Palestina Campo de Gibraltar (PROPA)
BDSGaliza
Boicot Preventiu (Barcelona)
Castellóper Palestina
Comitéde Solidaridad con la Causa Árabe (CSCA)
Comunidad Palestina de Canarias
ComunidadPalestina de Cataluña
Coordinadora de apoyo a palestina rioja (La Rioja)
Ecologistasen Acción (Madrid, Valladolid)
Fundación IEPALA
FundaciónMundubat
Interpueblos(Cantabria)
ISMCataluña / Valencia
IzquierdaAnticapitalista
KomiteInternazionalistak (Euskal Herria)
MEWANDO (Euskadi)
Mujeresen Zona de Conflicto - M.Z.C.
Mujerespor la Paz y Acción solidaria con Palestina(Canarias)
Palestinarekin Elkartasuna (Euskal Herria)
Plataforma Palestina Ibiza
PlataformaSolidaridad con Palestina (Sevilla)
Plataformade Solidaridad con Palestina de Valladolid
Redde Jóvenes Palestinos
Redde Judíos Antisionistas - IJAN
Sodepau
SodepazBalamil - Valladolid
Sodepaz
TaulaPer Palestina (Baleares)
Xarxad’enllaÇ amb Palestina (Barcelona)
XarxaSolidaridad Palestina (Valencia)
1 El Tribunal Rusell sobre Palestina, reunido en Sudáfrica este mes de noviembre y en el que han participado, entre otras personas, Stephane Hessel y Martin Pallin, ha dictaminado que el Estado de Israel somete a la población palestina a un régimen de Apartheid según la definición de este concepto que hace Naciones Unidas.
‘International week against the Apartheid Wall’ seeks to rally the ‘global 99%’
10 november 2011, Mondoweiss http://mondoweiss.net (USA)
Anna Baltzer*
US Campaign National Organizer Anna Baltzer with #Occupy protesters
On October 25th at Oakland City Hall, barricades and riot police had replaced the hundreds of committed activists who had inhabited Oscar Grant Plaza since Occupy Oakland began. Helicopters swarmed above. The atmosphere was tense and thick with teargas. Earlier that day, Scott Olsen, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, had been shot in the head with a projectile and hospitalized.
Oakland native Tristan Anderson met a similar fate in 2009 when the Israeli military shot him in the head with a U.S.-made high-velocity tear gas canister while he nonviolently protested Israel's Apartheid Wall in the West Bank village of Ni'lin. Bassem Abu Rahmah was fatally wounded the following year when the Israeli army fired a tear gas canister at his chest as he protested the wall in the West Bank village of Bil'in. His sister Jawaher died in January after inhaling U.S.-made tear gas, which the Israeli military fired aggressively during a protest against the wall, which still annexes huge swaths of Bil'in's land.
The connections between the struggles of Palestinians and the #Occupy movement are unmistakable: the spotlight on privilege and inequality, the mass imprisonment, the police repression, and the people's steadfastness. As the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) wrote in a statement of unity with the "global 99%":
Our aspirations overlap; our struggles converge. Our oppressors, whether greedy corporations or military occupations, are united in profiting from wars, pillage, environmental destruction, repression and impoverishment. We must unite in our common quest for freedoms, equal rights, social and economic justice, environmental sanity, and world peace.
The 9th Annual International Week against the Apartheid Wall is November 9 - 16, 2011. What will you do to nonviolently bring down systems of oppression both here at home and in support of Palestinians struggling to bring down the Apartheid Wall?
The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign is calling on people around the world to "Stand with the Palestinian popular resistance" and pressure our "governments, institutions and corporations to stop their support of Israeli apartheid" by organizing in four key areas. Below are ideas and resources for you to take action in your community.
Awareness-raising campaigns about the Wall and settlements
Action idea: Construct a "mock wall" on your campus, at your local city occupation, or elsewhere to educate passersby about the effects of Israel's Apartheid Wall and the connections between oppression of Palestinians and racist border practices targeting immigrants in the United States. Click here to see the new Mock Wall Campaign Toolkit created by students at the University of Arizona and Brown University.
Awareness-raising campaigns on Israel's repression of Palestinian popular resistance
Action idea: On November 15th, activists from the March 15th Palestinian Youth Movement will attempt to board segregated Jewish-only settler buses bound for Jerusalem as an act of civil disobedience. Worldwide activists are mobilizing to shine a light on Israel's repressive tactics and show solidarity for Palestinian popular resistance. Click here to sign up for information and a toolkit developed by coalition member group Jewish Voice for Peace to help local groups put together unique and exciting local actions in solidarity with the Palestinian Freedom Riders on November 15th.
Boycott and divestment campaigns against companies building the Apartheid Wall
Action idea: Hold a teach-in about boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) at your nearest city occupation, spotlighting Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer, which produces the surveillance equipment and unmanned vehicles that monitor both the Israeli Apartheid Wall and the U.S./Mexico border. Click here to download member group Grassroots International’s fact sheet about Elbit's involvement in Israel’s oppressive policies targeting Palestinians and racist practices on the U.S.-Mexico border. Get TIAA-CREF to divest from Elbit and other corporations profiting from Israeli occupation by joining the growing "We Divest" Campaign.
To help build your case for local BDS campaigns, check out our BDS FAQs here.
Consider also distributing the BNC's moving statement of solidarity with the #Occupy movement. Click here to download the two-page handout.
Support the Palestinian call for a comprehensive and mandatory military embargo on Israel
Action Idea: Join our organizing campaign to end military aid to Israel by signing up to receive an organizing packet in the mail with fliers, fact sheets, postcards, and petitions. With this packet, you’ll have everything you’ll need to educate and organize people at your local #Occupy or other community event to end $30 billion in tax-payer funded weapons to Israel and redirect that money to unmet needs here at home.
Please email your planned events and actions to Mallory at Stop the Wall mallory@stopthewall.org. You can also read the call to action and find excellent resources on the Apartheid Wall here.
The night after Scott was shot, thousands of activists reclaimed Oakland’s public spaces for “the 99%” by breaking down the fences with which the city government had encircled the plaza, as Palestinians continue to struggle to tear down Israel's Apartheid Wall to reclaim their land and destinies.
As we struggle for justice here at home, let us remember that everyday Palestinians struggling under occupation are part of "the 99%." Join the International Week against the Apartheid Wall!
*Anna Baltzer is the National Organizer of US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation where is is crossposted.
Anna Baltzer*
US Campaign National Organizer Anna Baltzer with #Occupy protesters
On October 25th at Oakland City Hall, barricades and riot police had replaced the hundreds of committed activists who had inhabited Oscar Grant Plaza since Occupy Oakland began. Helicopters swarmed above. The atmosphere was tense and thick with teargas. Earlier that day, Scott Olsen, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, had been shot in the head with a projectile and hospitalized.
Oakland native Tristan Anderson met a similar fate in 2009 when the Israeli military shot him in the head with a U.S.-made high-velocity tear gas canister while he nonviolently protested Israel's Apartheid Wall in the West Bank village of Ni'lin. Bassem Abu Rahmah was fatally wounded the following year when the Israeli army fired a tear gas canister at his chest as he protested the wall in the West Bank village of Bil'in. His sister Jawaher died in January after inhaling U.S.-made tear gas, which the Israeli military fired aggressively during a protest against the wall, which still annexes huge swaths of Bil'in's land.
The connections between the struggles of Palestinians and the #Occupy movement are unmistakable: the spotlight on privilege and inequality, the mass imprisonment, the police repression, and the people's steadfastness. As the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) wrote in a statement of unity with the "global 99%":
Our aspirations overlap; our struggles converge. Our oppressors, whether greedy corporations or military occupations, are united in profiting from wars, pillage, environmental destruction, repression and impoverishment. We must unite in our common quest for freedoms, equal rights, social and economic justice, environmental sanity, and world peace.
The 9th Annual International Week against the Apartheid Wall is November 9 - 16, 2011. What will you do to nonviolently bring down systems of oppression both here at home and in support of Palestinians struggling to bring down the Apartheid Wall?
The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign is calling on people around the world to "Stand with the Palestinian popular resistance" and pressure our "governments, institutions and corporations to stop their support of Israeli apartheid" by organizing in four key areas. Below are ideas and resources for you to take action in your community.
Awareness-raising campaigns about the Wall and settlements
Action idea: Construct a "mock wall" on your campus, at your local city occupation, or elsewhere to educate passersby about the effects of Israel's Apartheid Wall and the connections between oppression of Palestinians and racist border practices targeting immigrants in the United States. Click here to see the new Mock Wall Campaign Toolkit created by students at the University of Arizona and Brown University.
Awareness-raising campaigns on Israel's repression of Palestinian popular resistance
Action idea: On November 15th, activists from the March 15th Palestinian Youth Movement will attempt to board segregated Jewish-only settler buses bound for Jerusalem as an act of civil disobedience. Worldwide activists are mobilizing to shine a light on Israel's repressive tactics and show solidarity for Palestinian popular resistance. Click here to sign up for information and a toolkit developed by coalition member group Jewish Voice for Peace to help local groups put together unique and exciting local actions in solidarity with the Palestinian Freedom Riders on November 15th.
Boycott and divestment campaigns against companies building the Apartheid Wall
Action idea: Hold a teach-in about boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) at your nearest city occupation, spotlighting Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer, which produces the surveillance equipment and unmanned vehicles that monitor both the Israeli Apartheid Wall and the U.S./Mexico border. Click here to download member group Grassroots International’s fact sheet about Elbit's involvement in Israel’s oppressive policies targeting Palestinians and racist practices on the U.S.-Mexico border. Get TIAA-CREF to divest from Elbit and other corporations profiting from Israeli occupation by joining the growing "We Divest" Campaign.
To help build your case for local BDS campaigns, check out our BDS FAQs here.
Consider also distributing the BNC's moving statement of solidarity with the #Occupy movement. Click here to download the two-page handout.
Support the Palestinian call for a comprehensive and mandatory military embargo on Israel
Action Idea: Join our organizing campaign to end military aid to Israel by signing up to receive an organizing packet in the mail with fliers, fact sheets, postcards, and petitions. With this packet, you’ll have everything you’ll need to educate and organize people at your local #Occupy or other community event to end $30 billion in tax-payer funded weapons to Israel and redirect that money to unmet needs here at home.
Please email your planned events and actions to Mallory at Stop the Wall mallory@stopthewall.org. You can also read the call to action and find excellent resources on the Apartheid Wall here.
The night after Scott was shot, thousands of activists reclaimed Oakland’s public spaces for “the 99%” by breaking down the fences with which the city government had encircled the plaza, as Palestinians continue to struggle to tear down Israel's Apartheid Wall to reclaim their land and destinies.
As we struggle for justice here at home, let us remember that everyday Palestinians struggling under occupation are part of "the 99%." Join the International Week against the Apartheid Wall!
*Anna Baltzer is the National Organizer of US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation where is is crossposted.
“YOU ARE FED UP?”
12 november 2011, Gush Shalom גוש שלום http://zope.gush-shalom.org (Israel)
Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי
“YOU CAN lie to all of the people some of the time, and to some of the people all of the time, but you cannot lie to all of the people all of the time.”
This slightly altered quotation from Abraham Lincoln has yet to be absorbed by Binyamin Netanyahu. He thinks it doesn't apply to him. Actually, that is the core of his entire political career.
This week, he was given a very instructive lesson. After being treated to dozens of cordial encounters between Netanyahu and Nicholas Sarkozy, Israeli TV viewers got a glimpse of reality. It came in the form of an exchange of views between the presidents of the US and of France.
Sarkozy: “I cannot stand him (Netanyahu). He is a liar!”
Obama: "YOU are fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day!"
That came after it was leaked that Angela Merkel, the German prime minister, told her cabinet that “every word that leaves Netanyahu’s mouth is a lie.”
Which makes it more or less unanimous.
BEFORE PROCEEDING, I must say something about the media angle of this affair.
The dialogue was broadcast live to a group of senior French media people, because somebody forgot to turn the microphone off. A piece of luck of the kind that journalists dream about.
Yet not one of the journalists in the hall published a word about it. They kept it to themselves and only told it to their colleagues, who told it to their friends, one of whom told it to a blogger, who published it.
Why? Because the senior journalists who were present are friends and confidants of the people in power. That’s how they get their scoops. The price is suppressing any news that might hurt or embarrass their sponsors. This means in practice that they become lackeys of the people in power – betraying their elementary democratic duty as servants of the public.
I know this from experience. As an editor of a news magazine, I saw it as my duty (and pleasure) to break these conspiracies of silence. Actually, many of our best scoops were given to us by colleagues from other publications who could not use them themselves for the same reason.
Luckily, with the internet now everywhere, it has become almost impossible to suppress news. Blessed be the online Gods.
A FEW weeks after Yitzhak Rabin was elected Prime Minister (for the second time) in 1992, I met Yasser Arafat in Tunis.
He was, of course, curious about the personality of the newly elected Israeli leader. Knowing that I was meeting him from time to time, he asked what I thought of him.
“He is an honest man,” I replied, and then added: “as much as a politician can be.”
Arafat burst out laughing, and so did everybody in the room, including Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Abed Rabbo.
Ever since Sir Henry Wotton said, some four centuries ago, that “an ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country,” it is generally assumed that diplomats and politicians may be lying, and not only abroad. Some do so only when necessary, some do it often, some, like Netanyahu, do it as a rule.
In spite of the general assumption of mendacity, it is not good for a leader to be branded as a habitual liar. When leaders meet personally, in private and face to face, they are supposed to tell each other the truth, even if not necessarily the whole truth. Some personal trust is of great advantage. If a leader loses it, he loses a precious asset.
Winston Churchill said of one of his predecessors, Stanley Baldwin, that (quoting from memory) “the Right Honorable Gentleman sometimes stumbles upon the truth, but he always hurries on as if nothing has happened.” One of our ministers said about Ariel Sharon that he sometimes tells the truth by mistake. People asked how you could tell when Richard Nixon was lying: “Easy: his lips are moving”.
Rabin was basically an honest man. He hated lying and avoided it as much as he could. Basically he remained a military man and never became a real politician.
LAST WEDNESDAY was the 16th anniversary of his assassination, according to the Hebrew calendar.
The event was marked in Israeli schools by speeches and special lessons. What these citizens of tomorrow learned was that it is very bad to murder a prime minister. And that, more or less, was that.
Not a word about why he was killed. Certainly nothing about the community the assassin belonged to, or what campaign of hatred and incitement led to the murder.
The Ministry of Education is now firmly in the hands of a Likud minister, and one of the most extreme. But the trend is not confined to the education system.
In Israel it is practically impossible to obtain a picture of Rabin shaking the hand of Arafat. Rabin and King Hussein? As many post cards as you might wish. But Rabin’s peace with Jordan was an unimportant matter, like the US peace with Canada. The Oslo agreement, however, was a historic watershed.
Only people branded as “extreme leftists” – one of the worst insults these days – dare to raise the obvious questions about the assassination: Who? Why?
There is tacit agreement that the only person responsible was the actual assassin: Yigal Amir, the son of Yemenite Jews, a former settler and a student of a religious university.
Would he have acted without the blessing of one or more rabbis? Most certainly not.
Amir was led to do what he did by months of intense incitement. An unprecedented campaign of hatred dominated the public sphere. Posters showed Rabin in the uniform of an SS officer. Religious groups publicly condemned him to death in medieval ceremonies. Demonstrators in front of his private home shouted: “With blood and fire / we shall remove Rabin!”
In the most (in)famous demonstration, in the center of Jerusalem, a coffin marked “Rabin” was paraded around, while Netanyahu looked on from a balcony, in the company of other rightist leaders.
And most tellingly: not a single important right-wing or religious voice was raised against this murderous campaign.
By general tacit agreement, nothing of all this was mentioned this week. Why? Because it would not be nice. It would “split the nation”. Honorable citizens do not do this kind of thing.
Rabin himself cannot be acquitted of all blame. After the incredibly courageous act of recognizing the PLO (and thereby the Palestinian people) and shaking hands with Arafat, he did not rush forward to create an irreversible historic fact of peace, but hesitated, dithered, held back and allowed the forces of war and racism to regroup and counter-attack.
When the Kiryat Arba settler Baruch Goldstein carried out his massacre in the “Cave of Machpela”, Rabin had a golden opportunity to clear out the nest of fascist settlers in Hebron. He shrank back from taking on the settlers. The settlers did not shrink back from killing him.
WHAT HAPPENED next? This week a very revealing document was leaked.
It appears that on the day of the assassination, Netanyahu spoke with the American ambassador (and Zionist Jew) Martin Indyk. Netanyahu, remembering his part in the incitement, was obviously in panic. He confided to the ambassador that if elections were to take place immediately, the entire Israeli right-wing would be wiped out.
But Shimon Peres, the new Prime Minister, did not call immediate elections, though several people (including myself) publicly urged him to do so. Netanyahu’s assessment was quite correct – the country was outraged, the right-wing was generally blamed for the assassination, and if elections had taken place, the Right would have been marginalized for many many years. The entire history of Israel would have taken a different turn.
Why did Peres refuse to do so? Because he hated Rabin. He did not want to be elected as the “executor of Rabin’s testament”, but on his own merits.
Unfortunately, the public did not have the same high opinion of these “merits”.
During the next few months, Peres committed every conceivable (and inconceivable) mistake: he approved the killing of a major Hamas militant which led to a flood of deadly suicide bombings all over the country. He attacked Lebanon, which led to the Kafr Kana massacre, and had to withdraw ignominiously. And then he called premature elections after all. In his election campaign, Rabin was not even mentioned. Thus Peres managed to be (narrowly) defeated by Netanyahu.
I once wrote that Peres suffered his most grievous insult just a few minutes before the assassination. Amir was waiting at the foot of the stairs from the tribune, his pistol ready. Peres came down the steps, and the assassin let him pass, like a fisherman contemptuously throwing a small specimen back into the sea. He was waiting for Rabin.
The rest is history.
Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי
“YOU CAN lie to all of the people some of the time, and to some of the people all of the time, but you cannot lie to all of the people all of the time.”
This slightly altered quotation from Abraham Lincoln has yet to be absorbed by Binyamin Netanyahu. He thinks it doesn't apply to him. Actually, that is the core of his entire political career.
This week, he was given a very instructive lesson. After being treated to dozens of cordial encounters between Netanyahu and Nicholas Sarkozy, Israeli TV viewers got a glimpse of reality. It came in the form of an exchange of views between the presidents of the US and of France.
Sarkozy: “I cannot stand him (Netanyahu). He is a liar!”
Obama: "YOU are fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day!"
That came after it was leaked that Angela Merkel, the German prime minister, told her cabinet that “every word that leaves Netanyahu’s mouth is a lie.”
Which makes it more or less unanimous.
BEFORE PROCEEDING, I must say something about the media angle of this affair.
The dialogue was broadcast live to a group of senior French media people, because somebody forgot to turn the microphone off. A piece of luck of the kind that journalists dream about.
Yet not one of the journalists in the hall published a word about it. They kept it to themselves and only told it to their colleagues, who told it to their friends, one of whom told it to a blogger, who published it.
Why? Because the senior journalists who were present are friends and confidants of the people in power. That’s how they get their scoops. The price is suppressing any news that might hurt or embarrass their sponsors. This means in practice that they become lackeys of the people in power – betraying their elementary democratic duty as servants of the public.
I know this from experience. As an editor of a news magazine, I saw it as my duty (and pleasure) to break these conspiracies of silence. Actually, many of our best scoops were given to us by colleagues from other publications who could not use them themselves for the same reason.
Luckily, with the internet now everywhere, it has become almost impossible to suppress news. Blessed be the online Gods.
A FEW weeks after Yitzhak Rabin was elected Prime Minister (for the second time) in 1992, I met Yasser Arafat in Tunis.
He was, of course, curious about the personality of the newly elected Israeli leader. Knowing that I was meeting him from time to time, he asked what I thought of him.
“He is an honest man,” I replied, and then added: “as much as a politician can be.”
Arafat burst out laughing, and so did everybody in the room, including Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Abed Rabbo.
Ever since Sir Henry Wotton said, some four centuries ago, that “an ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country,” it is generally assumed that diplomats and politicians may be lying, and not only abroad. Some do so only when necessary, some do it often, some, like Netanyahu, do it as a rule.
In spite of the general assumption of mendacity, it is not good for a leader to be branded as a habitual liar. When leaders meet personally, in private and face to face, they are supposed to tell each other the truth, even if not necessarily the whole truth. Some personal trust is of great advantage. If a leader loses it, he loses a precious asset.
Winston Churchill said of one of his predecessors, Stanley Baldwin, that (quoting from memory) “the Right Honorable Gentleman sometimes stumbles upon the truth, but he always hurries on as if nothing has happened.” One of our ministers said about Ariel Sharon that he sometimes tells the truth by mistake. People asked how you could tell when Richard Nixon was lying: “Easy: his lips are moving”.
Rabin was basically an honest man. He hated lying and avoided it as much as he could. Basically he remained a military man and never became a real politician.
LAST WEDNESDAY was the 16th anniversary of his assassination, according to the Hebrew calendar.
The event was marked in Israeli schools by speeches and special lessons. What these citizens of tomorrow learned was that it is very bad to murder a prime minister. And that, more or less, was that.
Not a word about why he was killed. Certainly nothing about the community the assassin belonged to, or what campaign of hatred and incitement led to the murder.
The Ministry of Education is now firmly in the hands of a Likud minister, and one of the most extreme. But the trend is not confined to the education system.
In Israel it is practically impossible to obtain a picture of Rabin shaking the hand of Arafat. Rabin and King Hussein? As many post cards as you might wish. But Rabin’s peace with Jordan was an unimportant matter, like the US peace with Canada. The Oslo agreement, however, was a historic watershed.
Only people branded as “extreme leftists” – one of the worst insults these days – dare to raise the obvious questions about the assassination: Who? Why?
There is tacit agreement that the only person responsible was the actual assassin: Yigal Amir, the son of Yemenite Jews, a former settler and a student of a religious university.
Would he have acted without the blessing of one or more rabbis? Most certainly not.
Amir was led to do what he did by months of intense incitement. An unprecedented campaign of hatred dominated the public sphere. Posters showed Rabin in the uniform of an SS officer. Religious groups publicly condemned him to death in medieval ceremonies. Demonstrators in front of his private home shouted: “With blood and fire / we shall remove Rabin!”
In the most (in)famous demonstration, in the center of Jerusalem, a coffin marked “Rabin” was paraded around, while Netanyahu looked on from a balcony, in the company of other rightist leaders.
And most tellingly: not a single important right-wing or religious voice was raised against this murderous campaign.
By general tacit agreement, nothing of all this was mentioned this week. Why? Because it would not be nice. It would “split the nation”. Honorable citizens do not do this kind of thing.
Rabin himself cannot be acquitted of all blame. After the incredibly courageous act of recognizing the PLO (and thereby the Palestinian people) and shaking hands with Arafat, he did not rush forward to create an irreversible historic fact of peace, but hesitated, dithered, held back and allowed the forces of war and racism to regroup and counter-attack.
When the Kiryat Arba settler Baruch Goldstein carried out his massacre in the “Cave of Machpela”, Rabin had a golden opportunity to clear out the nest of fascist settlers in Hebron. He shrank back from taking on the settlers. The settlers did not shrink back from killing him.
WHAT HAPPENED next? This week a very revealing document was leaked.
It appears that on the day of the assassination, Netanyahu spoke with the American ambassador (and Zionist Jew) Martin Indyk. Netanyahu, remembering his part in the incitement, was obviously in panic. He confided to the ambassador that if elections were to take place immediately, the entire Israeli right-wing would be wiped out.
But Shimon Peres, the new Prime Minister, did not call immediate elections, though several people (including myself) publicly urged him to do so. Netanyahu’s assessment was quite correct – the country was outraged, the right-wing was generally blamed for the assassination, and if elections had taken place, the Right would have been marginalized for many many years. The entire history of Israel would have taken a different turn.
Why did Peres refuse to do so? Because he hated Rabin. He did not want to be elected as the “executor of Rabin’s testament”, but on his own merits.
Unfortunately, the public did not have the same high opinion of these “merits”.
During the next few months, Peres committed every conceivable (and inconceivable) mistake: he approved the killing of a major Hamas militant which led to a flood of deadly suicide bombings all over the country. He attacked Lebanon, which led to the Kafr Kana massacre, and had to withdraw ignominiously. And then he called premature elections after all. In his election campaign, Rabin was not even mentioned. Thus Peres managed to be (narrowly) defeated by Netanyahu.
I once wrote that Peres suffered his most grievous insult just a few minutes before the assassination. Amir was waiting at the foot of the stairs from the tribune, his pistol ready. Peres came down the steps, and the assassin let him pass, like a fisherman contemptuously throwing a small specimen back into the sea. He was waiting for Rabin.
The rest is history.
segunda-feira, 7 de novembro de 2011
Race to a million "mixed" couples
7 November 2011, Alternative Information Center (AIC) המרכז לאינפורמציה אלטרנטיבית
http://www.alternativenews.org (Israel)
Uri Yacobi Keller for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Jewish Israelis who advocate for separation between Jews and Arabs feel threatened by mixed couples, like the one on the Israeli reality show "Race for the Million." How might romantic connections and chance encounters between Jews and Palestinians happen in Israel, which is increasingly becoming openly racist?
Participants in the Israeli reality TV show, "Race to a Million."
Walla! Culture recently ran a story pointing out that one of the couples competing in the popular Israeli reality TV show, “Race for the Million,” is “mixed”. Meaning: a male, Muslim Palestinian citizen of Israel and a Jewish Israeli woman who dare to openly flaunt their romantic relationship on prime time television.
But before this couple came to Walla!’s attention, they were under fire from an organization called LEHAVA (“flame” in Hebrew, it’s an acronym for “Preventing [Jewish] Assimilation [with non-Jews] in the Holy Land”), which has published a pamphlet calling for a boycott of the show.
In a short interview with Walla! Culture Benzi Goopstein, the chairman of LEHAVA, remarked, “[Jewish] assimilation is the continuation of the Holocaust.” He also claimed that mixed couples result in violence against women.
However, Mr Goopstein did concede that “allegedly” the mixed couple “looks nice” on TV.
Suffice it to say that Mr Goopstein’s comparing romantic relationships between Jews and Arabs to the systematic genocide of millions of people is, at the very least, a slight exaggeration. And never mind that banning “mixed” romantic relationships between Jews and Germans was a fundamental of the Nazi regime’s discriminatory, anti-Semitic policies.
What I would like to expand on here is this: the very day I heard about the whole thing I went, as I often do, to a certain bar in downtown West Jerusalem. This bar is owned by Jews and Palestinians and its customers are Jews and Palestinians. And it is not uncommon to hear English, Spanish, German, French and other languages there. On the evening that I went, I noted two Palestinian girls chatting in Arabic over beers, some Arab guys, a few Germans, and many Jewish Israelis in various stages of drunkeness.
The place opened about a year ago during the football world cup. Without anyone forcing them, Jews, Palestinians, and “others,” sat down together to watch men chasing balls across a field. The bar has been running ever since.
But it’s just a bar. The fact that Jews and Palestinians drink beer there together, have some sort of fun, flirt with each other and, perhaps, do even more than that, is not artificial or encouraged by anyone. Nor is it very interesting or important to anyone. It happens because they’re young people doing what young people do.
That, more than any demonstration, is threatening to the likes of Mr Goopstein.
This bar is still far from representing the vast majority of the Jerusalem or Israeli nightlife. The Israeli public is, most definitely not on “our” side--it remains a base for the mainstream Israeli politicians who seek to continue occupation. But that same public also watches television where, in reality shows, there happen to be Jews and Palestinians who share their lives in peace. And that same public includes young people who go to bars to have fun where they might end up meeting Palestinian youth who are there for the same reason.
The road from randomly drinking beer together to a meaningful, substantial reduction in racism in Israeli society is still extremely long. And as long as these social meetings between Jews and Palestinians remain as nothing more than “fun” (or reality television) and are not accompanied by loud political contemplation, they hold little importance or political interest.
But if it annoys the likes of Mr Goopstein, it could be some sort of start.
Translated by the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
http://www.alternativenews.org (Israel)
Uri Yacobi Keller for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Jewish Israelis who advocate for separation between Jews and Arabs feel threatened by mixed couples, like the one on the Israeli reality show "Race for the Million." How might romantic connections and chance encounters between Jews and Palestinians happen in Israel, which is increasingly becoming openly racist?
Participants in the Israeli reality TV show, "Race to a Million."
Walla! Culture recently ran a story pointing out that one of the couples competing in the popular Israeli reality TV show, “Race for the Million,” is “mixed”. Meaning: a male, Muslim Palestinian citizen of Israel and a Jewish Israeli woman who dare to openly flaunt their romantic relationship on prime time television.
But before this couple came to Walla!’s attention, they were under fire from an organization called LEHAVA (“flame” in Hebrew, it’s an acronym for “Preventing [Jewish] Assimilation [with non-Jews] in the Holy Land”), which has published a pamphlet calling for a boycott of the show.
In a short interview with Walla! Culture Benzi Goopstein, the chairman of LEHAVA, remarked, “[Jewish] assimilation is the continuation of the Holocaust.” He also claimed that mixed couples result in violence against women.
However, Mr Goopstein did concede that “allegedly” the mixed couple “looks nice” on TV.
Suffice it to say that Mr Goopstein’s comparing romantic relationships between Jews and Arabs to the systematic genocide of millions of people is, at the very least, a slight exaggeration. And never mind that banning “mixed” romantic relationships between Jews and Germans was a fundamental of the Nazi regime’s discriminatory, anti-Semitic policies.
What I would like to expand on here is this: the very day I heard about the whole thing I went, as I often do, to a certain bar in downtown West Jerusalem. This bar is owned by Jews and Palestinians and its customers are Jews and Palestinians. And it is not uncommon to hear English, Spanish, German, French and other languages there. On the evening that I went, I noted two Palestinian girls chatting in Arabic over beers, some Arab guys, a few Germans, and many Jewish Israelis in various stages of drunkeness.
The place opened about a year ago during the football world cup. Without anyone forcing them, Jews, Palestinians, and “others,” sat down together to watch men chasing balls across a field. The bar has been running ever since.
But it’s just a bar. The fact that Jews and Palestinians drink beer there together, have some sort of fun, flirt with each other and, perhaps, do even more than that, is not artificial or encouraged by anyone. Nor is it very interesting or important to anyone. It happens because they’re young people doing what young people do.
That, more than any demonstration, is threatening to the likes of Mr Goopstein.
This bar is still far from representing the vast majority of the Jerusalem or Israeli nightlife. The Israeli public is, most definitely not on “our” side--it remains a base for the mainstream Israeli politicians who seek to continue occupation. But that same public also watches television where, in reality shows, there happen to be Jews and Palestinians who share their lives in peace. And that same public includes young people who go to bars to have fun where they might end up meeting Palestinian youth who are there for the same reason.
The road from randomly drinking beer together to a meaningful, substantial reduction in racism in Israeli society is still extremely long. And as long as these social meetings between Jews and Palestinians remain as nothing more than “fun” (or reality television) and are not accompanied by loud political contemplation, they hold little importance or political interest.
But if it annoys the likes of Mr Goopstein, it could be some sort of start.
Translated by the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Documentário: “DIFAMAÇÃO: A INDÚSTRIA DO ANTISSEMITISMO”
3 novembro 2011/Vermelho http://www.vermelho.org.br (Brasil)
Assim como Norman Finkelstein, um professor estadunidense (e judeu) escreveu um livro no qual expõe como funciona o que ele chama de “A indústria do holocausto”, Yoav Shamir, um cineasta israelense (e judeu), realizou o filme documentário Defamation (Difamação) que revela o que poderíamos chamar de “A indústria do antissemitismo”.
Por Yoav Shamir, no Redecastorphoto
Trata-se de um filme imprescindível para entender os interesses que movimentam essa “indústria”.
A verdade, como podemos depreender deste documentário, é que o antissemitismo passou a ser a fonte de riqueza e poder para muitos grupos oriundos das comunidades judaicas estadunidenses que, aliados aos interesses da extrema direita israelense, não desejam seu fim, nem seu abrandamento.
Muito pelo contrário, para desfrutar de seus privilégios (e para justificar suas políticas antipalestinas, no caso de Israel), esses grupos procuram fazer de tudo para que o antissemitismo nunca deixe de estar em pauta.
Se não houver mais o perigo real (como o documentário nos dá a entender que é o que ocorre na prática), é preciso recriá-lo através de todos os mecanismos emocionais possíveis.
O documentário também deixa claro que há muitos judeus, religiosos ou não, que não concordam com a manipulação do sofrimento de seus antepassados para o benefício espúrio de grupos de poder da atualidade.
Assistam o filme:
Assim como Norman Finkelstein, um professor estadunidense (e judeu) escreveu um livro no qual expõe como funciona o que ele chama de “A indústria do holocausto”, Yoav Shamir, um cineasta israelense (e judeu), realizou o filme documentário Defamation (Difamação) que revela o que poderíamos chamar de “A indústria do antissemitismo”.
Por Yoav Shamir, no Redecastorphoto
Trata-se de um filme imprescindível para entender os interesses que movimentam essa “indústria”.
A verdade, como podemos depreender deste documentário, é que o antissemitismo passou a ser a fonte de riqueza e poder para muitos grupos oriundos das comunidades judaicas estadunidenses que, aliados aos interesses da extrema direita israelense, não desejam seu fim, nem seu abrandamento.
Muito pelo contrário, para desfrutar de seus privilégios (e para justificar suas políticas antipalestinas, no caso de Israel), esses grupos procuram fazer de tudo para que o antissemitismo nunca deixe de estar em pauta.
Se não houver mais o perigo real (como o documentário nos dá a entender que é o que ocorre na prática), é preciso recriá-lo através de todos os mecanismos emocionais possíveis.
O documentário também deixa claro que há muitos judeus, religiosos ou não, que não concordam com a manipulação do sofrimento de seus antepassados para o benefício espúrio de grupos de poder da atualidade.
Assistam o filme:
“HOLD ME BACK!"
5 november 2011/Gush Shalom גוש שלום http://zope.gush-shalom.org (Israel)
Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי
EVERYBODY KNOWS the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. “Hold me back!” he shouts to his comrades, “Before I break his bones!”
Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran.
Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb. We cannot allow this. So we shall bomb them to smithereens.
Binyamin Netanyahu says so in every one of his countless speeches, including his opening speech at the winter session of the Knesset. Ditto Ehud Barak. Every self-respecting commentator (has anyone ever seen a non-self-respecting one?) writes about it. The media amplify the sound and the fury.
“Haaretz” splashed its front page with pictures of the seven most important ministers (the “security septet”) showing three in favor of the attack, four against.
A GERMAN proverb says: “Revolutions that are announced in advance do not take place.” Same goes for wars.
Nuclear affairs are subject to very strict military censorship. Very very strict indeed.
Yet the censor seems to be smiling benignly. Let the boys, including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense (the censor's ultimate boss) play their games.
The respected former long-serving chief of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, has publicly warned against the attack, describing it as “the most stupid idea” he has ever heard”. He explained that he considers it his duty to warn against it, in view of the plans of Netanyahu and Barak.
On Wednesday, there was a veritable deluge of leaks. Israel tested a missile that can deliver a nuclear bomb more then 5000 km away, beyond you-know-where. And our Air Force has just completed exercises in Sardinia, at a distance larger than you-know-where. And on Thursday, the Home Front Command held training exercises all over Greater Tel Aviv, with sirens screaming away. All this seems to indicate that the whole hullabaloo is a ploy. Perhaps to frighten and deter the Iranians. Perhaps to push the Americans into more extreme actions. Perhaps coordinated with the Americans in advance. (British sources, too, leaked that the Royal Navy is training to support an American attack on Iran.)
It is an old Israeli tactic to act as if we are going crazy (“The boss has gone mad” is a routine cry in our markets, to suggest that the fruit vendor is selling at a loss.) We shall not listen to the US any more. We shall just bomb and bomb and bomb.
Well, let’s be serious for a moment.
ISRAEL WILL not attack Iran. Period.
Some may think that I am going out on a limb. Shouldn’t I add at least “probably” or “almost certainly”?
No, I won’t. I shall repeat categorically: Israel Will NOT Attack Iran.
Since the 1956 Suez adventure, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered an ultimatum that stopped the action, Israel has never undertaken any significant military operation without obtaining American consent in advance.
The US is Israel’s only dependable supporter in the world (besides, perhaps, Fiji, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.) To destroy this relationship means cutting our lifeline. To do that, you have to be more than just a little crazy. You have to be raving mad.
Furthermore, Israel cannot fight a war without unlimited American support, because our planes and our bombs come from the US. During a war, we need supplies, spare parts, many sorts of equipment. During the Yom Kippur war, Henry Kissinger had an “air train” supplying us around the clock. And that war would probably look like a picnic compared to a war with Iran.
LET’S LOOK at the map. That, by the way, is always recommended before starting any war.
The first feature that strikes the eye is the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which every third barrel of the worlds seaborne oil supplies flow. Almost the entire output of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Iraq and Iran has to run the gauntlet through this narrow sea lane.
“Narrow” is an understatement. The entire width of this waterway is some 35 km (or 20 miles). That’s about the distance from Gaza to Beer Sheva, which was crossed last week by the primitive rockets of the Islamic Jihad.
When the first Israeli plane enters Iranian airspace, the strait will be closed. The Iranian navy has plenty of missile boats, but they will not be needed. Land-based missiles are enough.
The world is already teetering on the verge of an abyss. Little Greece is threatening to fall and take major chunks of the world economy with her. The elimination of almost a fifth of the industrial nations’ supply of oil would lead to a catastrophe hard even to imagine.
To open the strait by force would require a major military operation (including “putting boots on the ground”) that would overshadow all the US misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can the US afford that? Can NATO? Israel itself is not in the same league.
BUT ISRAEL would be very much involved in the action, if only on the receiving end.
In a rare show of unity, all of Israel’s service chiefs, including the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, are publicly opposing the whole idea. We can only guess why.
I don’t know whether the operation is possible at all. Iran is a very large country, about the size of Alaska, the nuclear installations are widely dispersed and largely underground. Even with the special deep penetration bombs provided by the US, the operation may stall the Iranian efforts – such as they are - only for a few months. The price may be too high for such meager results.
Moreover, it is quite certain that with the beginning of a war, missiles will rain down on Israel – not only from Iran, but also from Hizbollah, and perhaps also from Hamas. We have no adequate defense for our towns. The amount of death and destruction would be prohibitive.
Suddenly, the media are full of stories about our three submarines, soon to grow to five, or even six, if the Germans are understanding and generous. It is openly said that these give us the capabilities of a nuclear “second strike”, if Iran uses its (still non-existent) nuclear warheads against us. But the Iranians may also use chemical and other weapons of mass destruction.
Then there is the political price. There are a lot of tensions in the Islamic world. Iran is far from popular in many parts of it. But an Israeli assault on a major Muslim country would instantly unite Sunnis and Shiites, from Egypt and Turkey to Pakistan and beyond. Israel could become a villa in a burning jungle.
BUT THE talk about the war serves many purposes, including domestic, political ones.
Last Saturday, the social protest movement sprang to life again. After a pause of two months, a mass of people assembled in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. This was quite remarkable, because on that very day rockets were falling on the towns near the Gaza Strip. Until now, in such a situation demonstrations have always been canceled. Security problems trump everything else. Not this time.
Also, many people believed that the euphoria of the Gilad Shalit festival had wiped the protest from the public mind. It didn’t.
By the way, something remarkable has happened: the media, after siding with the protest movement for months, have had a change of heart. Suddenly all of them, including Haaretz, are sticking knives in its back. As if by order, all newspapers wrote the next day that “more than 20,000” took part. Well I was there, and I do have some idea of these things. There were at least 100,000 people there, most of them young. I could hardly move.
The protest has not spent itself, as the media assert. Far from it. But what better means for taking people’s minds off social justice than talk of the “existential danger”?
Moreover, the reforms demanded by the protesters would need money. In view of the worldwide financial crisis, the government strenuously objects to increasing the state budget, for fear of damaging our credit rating.
So where could the money come from? There are only three plausible sources: the settlements (who would dare?), the Orthodox (ditto!) and the huge military budget.
But on the eve of the most crucial war in our history, who would touch the armed forces? We need every shekel to buy more planes, more bombs, more submarines. Schools and hospitals must, alas, wait.
So God bless Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Where would we be without him?
Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי
EVERYBODY KNOWS the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. “Hold me back!” he shouts to his comrades, “Before I break his bones!”
Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran.
Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb. We cannot allow this. So we shall bomb them to smithereens.
Binyamin Netanyahu says so in every one of his countless speeches, including his opening speech at the winter session of the Knesset. Ditto Ehud Barak. Every self-respecting commentator (has anyone ever seen a non-self-respecting one?) writes about it. The media amplify the sound and the fury.
“Haaretz” splashed its front page with pictures of the seven most important ministers (the “security septet”) showing three in favor of the attack, four against.
A GERMAN proverb says: “Revolutions that are announced in advance do not take place.” Same goes for wars.
Nuclear affairs are subject to very strict military censorship. Very very strict indeed.
Yet the censor seems to be smiling benignly. Let the boys, including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense (the censor's ultimate boss) play their games.
The respected former long-serving chief of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, has publicly warned against the attack, describing it as “the most stupid idea” he has ever heard”. He explained that he considers it his duty to warn against it, in view of the plans of Netanyahu and Barak.
On Wednesday, there was a veritable deluge of leaks. Israel tested a missile that can deliver a nuclear bomb more then 5000 km away, beyond you-know-where. And our Air Force has just completed exercises in Sardinia, at a distance larger than you-know-where. And on Thursday, the Home Front Command held training exercises all over Greater Tel Aviv, with sirens screaming away. All this seems to indicate that the whole hullabaloo is a ploy. Perhaps to frighten and deter the Iranians. Perhaps to push the Americans into more extreme actions. Perhaps coordinated with the Americans in advance. (British sources, too, leaked that the Royal Navy is training to support an American attack on Iran.)
It is an old Israeli tactic to act as if we are going crazy (“The boss has gone mad” is a routine cry in our markets, to suggest that the fruit vendor is selling at a loss.) We shall not listen to the US any more. We shall just bomb and bomb and bomb.
Well, let’s be serious for a moment.
ISRAEL WILL not attack Iran. Period.
Some may think that I am going out on a limb. Shouldn’t I add at least “probably” or “almost certainly”?
No, I won’t. I shall repeat categorically: Israel Will NOT Attack Iran.
Since the 1956 Suez adventure, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered an ultimatum that stopped the action, Israel has never undertaken any significant military operation without obtaining American consent in advance.
The US is Israel’s only dependable supporter in the world (besides, perhaps, Fiji, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.) To destroy this relationship means cutting our lifeline. To do that, you have to be more than just a little crazy. You have to be raving mad.
Furthermore, Israel cannot fight a war without unlimited American support, because our planes and our bombs come from the US. During a war, we need supplies, spare parts, many sorts of equipment. During the Yom Kippur war, Henry Kissinger had an “air train” supplying us around the clock. And that war would probably look like a picnic compared to a war with Iran.
LET’S LOOK at the map. That, by the way, is always recommended before starting any war.
The first feature that strikes the eye is the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which every third barrel of the worlds seaborne oil supplies flow. Almost the entire output of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Iraq and Iran has to run the gauntlet through this narrow sea lane.
“Narrow” is an understatement. The entire width of this waterway is some 35 km (or 20 miles). That’s about the distance from Gaza to Beer Sheva, which was crossed last week by the primitive rockets of the Islamic Jihad.
When the first Israeli plane enters Iranian airspace, the strait will be closed. The Iranian navy has plenty of missile boats, but they will not be needed. Land-based missiles are enough.
The world is already teetering on the verge of an abyss. Little Greece is threatening to fall and take major chunks of the world economy with her. The elimination of almost a fifth of the industrial nations’ supply of oil would lead to a catastrophe hard even to imagine.
To open the strait by force would require a major military operation (including “putting boots on the ground”) that would overshadow all the US misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can the US afford that? Can NATO? Israel itself is not in the same league.
BUT ISRAEL would be very much involved in the action, if only on the receiving end.
In a rare show of unity, all of Israel’s service chiefs, including the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, are publicly opposing the whole idea. We can only guess why.
I don’t know whether the operation is possible at all. Iran is a very large country, about the size of Alaska, the nuclear installations are widely dispersed and largely underground. Even with the special deep penetration bombs provided by the US, the operation may stall the Iranian efforts – such as they are - only for a few months. The price may be too high for such meager results.
Moreover, it is quite certain that with the beginning of a war, missiles will rain down on Israel – not only from Iran, but also from Hizbollah, and perhaps also from Hamas. We have no adequate defense for our towns. The amount of death and destruction would be prohibitive.
Suddenly, the media are full of stories about our three submarines, soon to grow to five, or even six, if the Germans are understanding and generous. It is openly said that these give us the capabilities of a nuclear “second strike”, if Iran uses its (still non-existent) nuclear warheads against us. But the Iranians may also use chemical and other weapons of mass destruction.
Then there is the political price. There are a lot of tensions in the Islamic world. Iran is far from popular in many parts of it. But an Israeli assault on a major Muslim country would instantly unite Sunnis and Shiites, from Egypt and Turkey to Pakistan and beyond. Israel could become a villa in a burning jungle.
BUT THE talk about the war serves many purposes, including domestic, political ones.
Last Saturday, the social protest movement sprang to life again. After a pause of two months, a mass of people assembled in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. This was quite remarkable, because on that very day rockets were falling on the towns near the Gaza Strip. Until now, in such a situation demonstrations have always been canceled. Security problems trump everything else. Not this time.
Also, many people believed that the euphoria of the Gilad Shalit festival had wiped the protest from the public mind. It didn’t.
By the way, something remarkable has happened: the media, after siding with the protest movement for months, have had a change of heart. Suddenly all of them, including Haaretz, are sticking knives in its back. As if by order, all newspapers wrote the next day that “more than 20,000” took part. Well I was there, and I do have some idea of these things. There were at least 100,000 people there, most of them young. I could hardly move.
The protest has not spent itself, as the media assert. Far from it. But what better means for taking people’s minds off social justice than talk of the “existential danger”?
Moreover, the reforms demanded by the protesters would need money. In view of the worldwide financial crisis, the government strenuously objects to increasing the state budget, for fear of damaging our credit rating.
So where could the money come from? There are only three plausible sources: the settlements (who would dare?), the Orthodox (ditto!) and the huge military budget.
But on the eve of the most crucial war in our history, who would touch the armed forces? We need every shekel to buy more planes, more bombs, more submarines. Schools and hospitals must, alas, wait.
So God bless Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Where would we be without him?
The danger of legalizing Israel as a state of Jews
MKs and ministers who object to Dichter's bill must make an extraordinary effort to battle the bill entitled 'Basic Law: Israel - the Nation-State of the Jewish People' using all legitimate means.
7 november 2011/Haaretz EDITORIAL Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
On Sunday, Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon made it clear to Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and his deputy, MK Mohammed Barakeh, that there were no grounds for blocking a bill entitled "Basic Law: Israel - the Nation-State of the Jewish People" from being submitted to the Knesset. Rather, he said, there should be both a public and parliamentary debate on the bill because of the broad implications it had for Israel's constitutional status.
In response, Rivlin announced that he would not conduct any further debate on the issue in the Knesset Presidium, claiming that the bill does not contravene the essential definition of Israel as a democratic country. He did, however, express his objections to the bill, which states that Israel's democratic regime would be subordinate to the state's Jewish identity, and which drops Arabic as an official language.
Both Jewish and Arab MKs from the left-wing parties, as well as other public figures, have expressed deep concern about the bill, sponsored by MK Avi Dichter (Kadima ), which, in practice, does away with the State of Israel's constitutional foundation. They argue, justifiably, that the bill contravenes the Declaration of Independence and its principles, and threatens the delicate balance between the state's national identity and its democratic and civil character.
The bill is making MKs in Dichter's own faction uncomfortable, with party chairman Tzipi Livni expressing her vehement opposition to it. Several Likud lawmakers and government ministers are also upset by the initiative, and certainly by the bill's wording.
But mouthing objections isn't enough. The bill may very well meet the technical requirements for submission to the Knesset, but it is a very risky venture. If it passes, it would be a watershed for Israeli democracy. It is liable to totally breach the dividing line between the principles of a democratic regime and the categorical, indisputable preference for the Jewish majority that will only deepen the growing distrust that Arab citizens have for the state.
MKs and ministers who object to Dichter's bill must therefore make an extraordinary effort to battle it using all legitimate means. It will be an important test for Livni, and for the entire legislature.
7 november 2011/Haaretz EDITORIAL Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
On Sunday, Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon made it clear to Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and his deputy, MK Mohammed Barakeh, that there were no grounds for blocking a bill entitled "Basic Law: Israel - the Nation-State of the Jewish People" from being submitted to the Knesset. Rather, he said, there should be both a public and parliamentary debate on the bill because of the broad implications it had for Israel's constitutional status.
In response, Rivlin announced that he would not conduct any further debate on the issue in the Knesset Presidium, claiming that the bill does not contravene the essential definition of Israel as a democratic country. He did, however, express his objections to the bill, which states that Israel's democratic regime would be subordinate to the state's Jewish identity, and which drops Arabic as an official language.
Both Jewish and Arab MKs from the left-wing parties, as well as other public figures, have expressed deep concern about the bill, sponsored by MK Avi Dichter (Kadima ), which, in practice, does away with the State of Israel's constitutional foundation. They argue, justifiably, that the bill contravenes the Declaration of Independence and its principles, and threatens the delicate balance between the state's national identity and its democratic and civil character.
The bill is making MKs in Dichter's own faction uncomfortable, with party chairman Tzipi Livni expressing her vehement opposition to it. Several Likud lawmakers and government ministers are also upset by the initiative, and certainly by the bill's wording.
But mouthing objections isn't enough. The bill may very well meet the technical requirements for submission to the Knesset, but it is a very risky venture. If it passes, it would be a watershed for Israeli democracy. It is liable to totally breach the dividing line between the principles of a democratic regime and the categorical, indisputable preference for the Jewish majority that will only deepen the growing distrust that Arab citizens have for the state.
MKs and ministers who object to Dichter's bill must therefore make an extraordinary effort to battle it using all legitimate means. It will be an important test for Livni, and for the entire legislature.
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