Mazel Tov, Activists and Anarchists -- the Latter-Day Maccabees (But with a Better Sense of Humor)

Move over Peace Now. Put away your signs and water bottles,you aging hippies who have been rallying ineffectually to "give a peace a chance" for the last forty years. Now that the Annapolis photo-op is over, get ready for the face of the future

Meet your children -- the one who are still left in Israel -- the Activists!.

In a clever and well-coordinated move (what happened to the Shabak?), seventy activists panned out through Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, and plastered 10,000 electricity cut-off notices to the residents. Of course, the cut-off notices were bogus, but they served to literally bring home to the Israelis that Gaza has been threatened by Israel with a general electricity and fuel shut-off in reprisal for shelling Sderot.

Now, the average Israeli will point out how justified Israel's actions are. I mean, let's face it, if the Israelis wanted to, they could just wipe Gaza off the face of the earth. The fact that they only hold a million human beings hostage and pressure them collectively whenever they want to (and their High Court lets them) shows how moral they are. Hell, they are the most moral country in the world. What other country would let the little b-stards lob shells into the city. I mean, Israel pulled out of their overcrowded hell-hole, didn't it? ("The better to squeeze them, my dear....")

That's what the average Israeli says, considering the responses on the websites.

Pity the average Israeli.

Read about it in Hebrew here and here and here and here and here (this has a video clip; you have to wait through a dumb commercial before you get to it, but it's worth it). And in English here

This protest action was sponsored by a coalition of lefties calling themselves, the Front for the Liberation of Gaza. They include some of the "Anarchists" who have been protesting the systematic expropriation of the lands of Bil'in every week. Lately they have also been involved in protesting the Israelis-only road 443, the most notorious of the roads of hafradah (Hebrew for "separation"; I wouldn't dignify the ideology behind it with the term "apartheid") And many other groups were involved.

Remember when Israelis justified checkpoints and closures by saying that they were "inconveniences" at worst? Well, apparently, the inconvenience of removing posters on their doors has been driving some of them nuts. Imagine what they would do if some of them had to stand in line for hours to get past a checkpoint? Of if their wives died in labor, or their children were stillborn because they did not have the right permit? Some of them would be fighting each other to sign up for the Masada suicide terrorist brigade.

Ah, ain't nothing like creative non-violent protest....And it's on the rise in Israel. From Hebron, from the Olive Harvest, from ICAHD's rebuilding demolished houses, Taayush, Mahsom Watch, Breaking the Silence, Rabbis for Human Rights, the Palestinians who protest the hafradah fence (sorry: the land grab wall) weekly....the list goes on, never enough to cover the war crimes.

My favorite response to the action, was, "Nu, higzamtem", roughly translated as "Come on guys, you exaggerated this time." They exaggerated? Israel is about to increase the pressure on an entire civilian population, and the Anarchists are the ones being accused of going overboard! Such is the moral rot in Israeli society today.

These young Israeli Gandhis can't bring peace. They can't stop the Occupation. But they can be moral witnesses. They won't have to explain themselves to their grandchildren as will we.

How appropriate that at a time when Jews are celebrating the deeds of a band of religious zealots, who fought a foreign occupying force that dimmed the lights of the Temple, a group of latter-day Maccabbees have arisen to oppose non-violently a foreign occupying force that threatens to dim the lights of Gaza.

Happy Hannukah, Activists and "Anarchists"! And Yasher Koah!

The Israel-Palestinian Victory at Bil'in -- A Sweet New Year

There are some small victories, small points of light in the dark night of occupation. But this will be a big one, if the army and the government obey the High Court of Justice.

For the last several years, Israelis and Palestinians have been protesting about the route of the separation wall in the area of Modi'in. The route was designed primarily to provide Israeli real estate developers more land to sell to Jews, to annex more land by the State of Israel, and to destroy the lives of villagers in Bilin so that there would be more land. Security, as usual, had little, if anything to do with the route of the security fence.

Does the above description sound outrageous? Not to the High Court of Justice that decided this week to direct the government to make a security fence around Modi'in, instead of the planned Lebensraum wall (the Hebrew equivalent of "Lebensraum" -- merhav mihyah -- was used by Nachum Barnea, Israel's most respected and read journalist, in his shabbat column in Yedi'ot to describe the wall. I hope, God willing, to report on what he wrote.

This is a victory for a gallant band of non-violent protesters (the rock-throwing Arabs in their midst were long ago revealed to be General Secret Service provocateurs, but that's another story).

While older Jewish supporters of the good-old-moral-Labor-Zionism have been writing their polemics in the Diaspora, a young group of protesters -- they call themselves "anarchists" mostly as an inside joke; they have no ideology besides fighting for Palestinian rights -- have been risking their lives facing the rubber bullets of the IDF.

Please read the article below, especially if you are a Peace-Now, knee-jerk, opponent of the Occupation -- the sort of person who thinks Tom Friedman knows what he is talking about. The next time you write out a check for the New Israel Fund, try to think of ways also to support the activists who are sanctifying God's name in public. (And keep writing the checks for the New Israel Fund....)

They, and other groups like Children of Abraham, Ta'ayush, Breaking the Silence, ICAHD, etc., are the future of Israel. May God grant them the strength to continue in their struggle.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/901786.html

A victory for the anarchists

By Meron Rapoport

"I remember the moment I marched among a crowd of Palestinians," said one of the Israeli activists who participated in the ongoing demonstrations near the village of Bil'in, this week. Those demonstrations led to a High Court decision a few days ago ordering the rerouting of the separation fence near the village. "I served in the army, and my first instinct was to look for the signal operator and to check if we were marching properly spaced. The Palestinians shouted 'Allahu Akbar,' which is supposed to be the nightmare of every Israeli soldier, but I suddenly realized that I was with them, that they weren't my enemies."

One must understand. Anyone who went to demonstrate in Bil'in knew that he stood more than a small chance of getting hurt somehow by "his" army: by clubs, tear gas, rubber bullets. Undoubtedly, there were a few who sought out this violence, but it also befell those who did not seek it out. It was part of the deal. The violence that the soldiers and Border Police officers employed against the Israeli demonstrators on an average Friday in Bil'in surpassed that used against the settlers during the entire evacuation of Gush Katif. Nevertheless, a few hundred Israelis made this trip every Friday, without fail, for the last two and a half years. Not all of them at once. Sometimes five, sometimes 50, sometimes 100. But they came.

Most of these people were young, sometimes very young, and they gathered under the rubric of "Anarchists Against the Fence." The Zionist left had no presence there. Not Peace Now and not Meretz (some Meretz MKs sometimes assisted the arrestees, but no more than that) - and certainly not Labor. Older organizations from the non-Zionist left were supportive, and provided logistical assistance, but the initiative still came from the anarchists. They led the struggle.

Without question, it was a rather small group. Not everyone, even the most devout leftist and vigorous opponent of the occupation, is prepared to come and take a beating, to run up and down hills, to breathe tear gas, to be arrested. But it wasn't an insignificant number either, this group of people prepared to come to blows with the establishment. In Bil'in their goal was simple and tangible: to restore the lands to the Palestinians.

It will be interesting to see what their next goal is.