Short Takes Before Shavuot

1. Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish People on Mount Sinai. It is also the agricultural feast of the first fruits. In the last few years, some people have observed the custom of staying up all night and going to lectures on Judaism. Even secular Jews have started attending some of these talks. Not yours truly. I will stay home and learn texts till midnight, go to sleep, and go to shul at 6:30 in the morning. Then I will come home, read, and take it easy until lunch, when the children and grandchildren are coming over. I don't get the custom of staying up all night, since it usually wrecks people for the next day (not to mention for the morning prayer service.)

2. Despite the unusually gloomy picture, small victories can be celebrated (and larger losses mourned.) On Thursday, the High Court of Justice ruled that "Breaking the Silence" can resume their tours of Hebron and the West Bank. As their attorney, Michael Sfard, pointed out in Thursday's Haaretz here, these tours had been suspended after a group on one of the tours was attacked by the Hebron settlers. The government lost this one. Of course, now the settlers are going to ask the High Court to suspend the tours, but they don't have a chance there. Unfortunately, Gisha lost its petition to the High Court to bring relief in Gaza.

3. Speaking of Michael Sfard, I am reading the new book by him and by Shaul Arieli, of the dovish Council for Peace and Security. The book is called in Hebrew Homah u-Mehdal, "Wall and Failure" (a play on the phrase Homah u-Migdal, "Wall and Tower," the watch-cry of the Zionist settlements. The book's title in English translation is "The Wall of Folly." Anyway, this is the first book-length treatment of Israel's land-grab wall. Basically, Sfard shows how illegal the wall is and Arieli shows how the wall damages Israel's security. Since nobody in the world who is not Israeli or a Zionist thinks that the land-grab wall is legal, much of Sfard's part of the book is like shooting fish in a barrel. But I will speak more about the wall later. (The reason why I don't call the land-grab wall a "security fence" is because it has nothing to do with Israeli security. In fact, there is no evidence that it has increased Israeli security, since there is no evidence linking the wall with the drop in suicide bombing. Those who argue that the wall stops suicide-bombing are guilty of the elementary post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. But I have discussed this elsewhere. There is abundant evidence, of course, that the route of the wall was chosen to annex land, both to the settlements today and to Israel tomorrow, despite Israeli denials. Even the High Court has accepted that evidence.

Needless to say, the book is being translated into English. You can read about it here

4. A fascinating book that I have been waiting to appear for a long time is Chaim Gans's book, A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State. I will have a lot to say about that book after the Shavuot holiday. Stay tuned.

5. And Walt and Mearsheimer are appearing at Hebrew University this week, the guests of the Department of Political Science. After the disgusting ritual of the candidates at AIPAC last week (see Jon Stewart for his take), they will have a lot to talk about.

Police Bar "Breaking the Silence" Tour Group From Entering Hebron

This just in from Haaretz: The Israeli police in Hebron (a.k.a. the military wing of the Hebron settlers) have prevented Bne Avraham/Breaking the Silence from giving tours of Hebron. These tours have been going on for three years without much incident. But emboldened by their violence last week, the Hebron settlers (a.k.a. the pseudo-Jews, or the Judaeo-Nazis) have convinced the police that the balagan the settlers make can be avoided by barring the "outside agitators."

I know, I know, this is small potatoes compared with some of the other stories from Haaretz, such as the millions of liters of raw sewage that are polluting and poisoning the water of the Gazans, due to the ongoing siege of Gaza, or the humiliation of Palestinians by Border Police.

The Hell only gets worse. Happy Birthday.

Still, with any luck, Michael Sfard will get a court order instructing the police to allow the tours to go on. And if the courts rule against the group, well, heck, I will be back at the end of May, and I will be happy to drive to Hebron and give the same tour.

Leftist group: Police barring us from monitoring Hebron settlers By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondent

The group "Shovrim Shtika" (breaking the silence) said that the police have recently begun barring the organization from touring Hebron to monitor the actions of settlers. The main reason for this, according to the group, is the fact that the police has surrendered to the policies of the settlers in Hebron and Kiryat Arba.

The police, for their part, describe the "Shovrim Shtika" tours as a "platform for extreme left-wingers to enter the Jewish territory and create an imbalance in the area." The police maintain that they have not done anything that deviates from the law.

An altercation erupted Thursday between activists and settlers from Hebron and Kiryat Arba. Yehuda Shaul of "Shovrim Shtika", who has been organizing tours of Hebron for three years, said that he arrived in Kiryat Arba and turned with his group to show them an outpost outside the settlement and was then stopped at the entrance by a group of settlers who surrounded the vehicle he was in.

The right wing activists tell a different story: Noam Arnon said he and his friends were among the few people at the scene who did not surround the vehicle. He said that the car shaul was in had driven backwards in efforts to run over another activist.

A police officer who arrived at the scene forbade the group from touring Hebron, even though the tour was already coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces and the police, and despite the fact that the settlers can travel freely anywhere in the area.

According to Shaul, this was the third such incident this week. He explained that this kind of restriction was a part of a growing trend. Attorney Michael Sfard said that the police behavior in these incidents has become "the executing arm of the Jewish settlement in Hebron, and if this behavior doesn't change, legal action will be taken."

Another Method of Stealing Land From the Arabs

The theft of Arab land by Jewish settlers has been going on for over a century, but as Uri Zohar used to sing, 'Ha-rosh ha-yehudi mamzi lanu patentim" ("The yiddishe kopf invents new devices"), and I am always intrigued by the methods used to steal land belonging to individual Palestinians and the Palestinian people.

This land theft is at the heart of the Zionist enterprise and, in my opinion, will be the ultimate reason why that enterprise will fail. Call me a religious fanatic, but I believe that over the long term (sometimes a very long term), justice is done, especially when the injustice is blatant. I believe in a God of vengeance, and that God (through natural processes) uprights the apple cart when it has been overturned by the rotten apples. OK, so it didn't work with other native peoples. But who says that the crimes against the Native Americans will not come back to haunt America, until some modicum of justice is done?

But enough of theology.

This land grab method is rather simple: a settlement sees what lands it wishes to take over, allots the land to one of its members for land use, prevents the Arabs owner from cultivating the land, and then after a few years claims ownership of the land, on the grounds that it had not been cultivated by its Arab owners. Lack of cultivation was one of the tricks used by the infamous Peliah Albeck to declare private land "public land" and parcel it out to the yuppie community of Efrat.

Read about it here in Haaretz

Court case reveals how settlers illegally grab W. Bank lands

By Meron Rapoport

West Bank settlements have expanded their jurisdictions by taking control of private Palestinian land and allocating it to settlers. The land takeover - which the Civil Administration calls "theft" - has occured in an orderly manner, without any official authorization.

The method of taking over land is being publicized for the first time, based on testimony from a hearing on an appeal filed by a Kedumim resident, Michael Lesence, against a Civil Administration order to vacate 35 dunams (almost 9 acres) near the Mitzpe Yishai neighborhood of the settlement. Official records show the land as belonging to Palestinians from Kafr Qaddum.

Lesence's lawyer, Doron Nir Zvi, admitted at the hearing that the land in question was private Palestinian property. However, Lesence claims ownership on the grounds that he has been working the land for more than a decade, after he received it in an orderly procedure, complete with a signed agreement, from the heads of the Kedumim local council.

Affidavits from Civil Administration officials stated that Lesence began cultivating the land only in the past six months.

Attorneys Michael Sfard and Shlomi Zecharia, who represent the Palestinian landowners on behalf of Yesh Din - Volunteers for Human Rights, insist their clients continued to work the land, and that the army and settlers from Kedumim are denying their access to it.

Kedumim residents who testified before the board said that the Palestinian have no problem reaching their lands. However, a visit to the area reveals a different picture: The guard at Mitzpe Yishai announced that "it is forbidden to allow Arabs in" to the lands abutting the neighborhood. After the Palestinians approached their property on foot, an army patrol arrived and moved them off. When the commander was told they have Civil Administration documents proving they own the land, the commander replied: "Documents don't interest me."

The land-takeover method was developed in Kedumim and neighboring settlements during the mid-1990s, after the Oslo Accords, and continues to this day.

Zeev Mushinsky, the "land coordinator" at the Kedumim local council, testified as to how it works: Council employees, Mushinsky in this case, would map the "abandoned lands" around the settlements, even if they were outside the council's jurisdiction, with the aim of taking them over. The council would "allocate" the lands to settlers, who would sign an official form stating that they have no ownership claim on the m, and that the council is entitled to evict them whenever it sees fit, in return for compensating them solely for their investment in cultivating the land.

Kedumim's former security chief, Michael Bar-Neder, testified that the land "allocation" was followed by an effort to expand the settlement. Bar-Neder said that once the settlers seized the lands, an application would be made to the military commander to declare them state-owned, since under the law covering the West Bank, anyone who does not cultivate his land for three years forfeits ownership of it.

Giving "Peace" a Rest II -- Michael Sfard vs. Yair Sheleg

Once again I was unable to find an English version of a Hebrew op-ed in Haaretz. Either I am visually challenged (considering the typos in my posts, that is a reasonable assumption) or Haaretz did not bother to translate it.

The op-ed was by one of my heroes, Michael Sfard, a prominent Israeli Jewish lawyer who represents Palestinians in suits against the settlers. It was a response to another op-ed by Haaretz journalist, Yair Sheleg, who represents the views of the moderate religious right. Sheleg asserted that he was willing to concede territory for the sake of a peace agreement, and he even conceded that ruling over a people against their will was morally defective. What concerned Sheleg was that instead of focusing on peace, and on the benefits it would bring Israeli society, the Israeli leftwing concentrates on the damage wrought by the settlers. Sheleg finds this incomprehensible; as a group, the settlers are no more violent or break the law than other sectors of Israeli society. The example that Sheleg gives is of the secularists who sell merchandise at busy intersections on Shabbat.

Sfard, in the subsequent paragraphs of his op-ed, rips Yair Sheleg's arguments and comparison to shreds. Talk of peace but leave the settlers out? Not when a necessary condition of peace is stopping the organized and ideological crimes of the settlers, often under the protection of the army, against the Palestinians. Sfard lists crime after crime of the settlers, crimes that are familiar to any reader of Haaretz, certainly to Sheleg. How one can talk of peace and not talk about the illegality and immorality of the settlers? From land theft, to physical brutality, to the simple attitudes of lordship over the Palestinian population -- all these are much more important to discuss than peace.

"One serious and forthright discussion about the crimes of the violent sector of the settlers is preferable to countless speeches about "peace". The Israeli public does not need more slogans about how wonderful it will be here if peace would only come. What it needs is a public, penetrating internal examination that will deal with the fascist and racist ideology that guides most of the ideological settlers (and not just the loonies of the outposts), the creation of an organized crime that undermines the sovereignty of the Israeli government, and, of course, a discussion about the moral depths to which the settlers are leading all of us."

Sfard goes on to classify the crimes of the settlers as "hate crimes". Their perpetrators are not thinking of ways how to circumvent the law, as are those who sell merchandise on the Sabbath, which is illegal in Israel. The settlers violate the law with pride.

The criminality of the settlers is different from the criminality of those who sell at crowded intersections on the Sabbath (if one can call that criminality.) Whoever believes in the defense of human rights and making progress towards coexistence between peoples, cannot be satisfied with phantasies of peace. He first has to stop the madness of the settlers.

Many of my readers will think that the above is self-evident. It is a pity that you don't read the "talk-backs" to Sfard. It is not self-evident to many Israelis. It is not self-evident to Yair Sheleg, who is not a Kahanist or a blatant racist. It is not self-evident to AIPAC and the Israeli lobby.

What I believe Sfard is saying is "ENOUGH OF THE TALK ABOUT PEACE." Peace is not the main issue; it is, or should be, the sideshow.

Not Peace Now, but Justice Now, Morality Now, Dignity Now.

One of the first songs I learned as part of my Zionist indoctrination was "Ba-Shanah ha-ba'ah, Neshev al ha-Mirpeset." "Next year, when peace comes, we will sit on the porch counting birds...oh, how good it will be when peace comes....."

The belief in the peace that will come "next year" is a secular Israeli substitution for the traditional Jewish belief in the future Coming of the Messiah -- a point emphasized by the right wing, who likes to talk about the false messianism of Peace Now. And they are correct -- it is a false messianism, because it allows us to postpone dealing with the present state of injustice as long as we concentrate on the future state of peace.

The dirty truth about messianism is that all messianism is false messianism. As Yeshayahu Leibowitz used to say, the traditional Jew believes with all his heart that the Messiah WILL come, but the traditional Jew almost never believes that he actually comes -- and when he does, it ends disastrously for Judaism.

Where was Peace Now -- where was I -- during the Oslo years, when thousands of dunams of land were confiscated and expropriated from the Palestinians for the building of "temporary bypass roads" -- the first step in the horrible and immoral unilateral separation (again, much worse that S. African apartheid) that has been taking place, and is taking place? All this was justified by the "exigencies of peace." How many times have we heard the claim that only when peace comes will we be able to remove the walls, normalize relations? How many times have we heard that we can hardly expect us Israelis to behave decently to the Palestinians when we are war with them?

But we are always at war with them. We have been war with them for sixty years. Our national existence is defined by that war.

I don't believe that doing the right thing can be postponed indefinitely. War is hell, and by its very nature immoral. Sometimes it is necessary, I know; I am not a pacifist. The internment of Japanese Americans in WWII was a horrible stain on the United States, and cannot be eliminated. But the crime lasted for five years. We are now talking about a sixty year war, a sixty year occupation, the last forty of which has not even a scrap of legitimacy.

It is time that people stop promising to put away the bullets one day and start biting them now. And the bullet that I am prepared to bite now is this:

If I thought for a minute that there was no alternative for the State of Israel than to preserve the status quo until peace came, then the State of Israel would OBVIOUSLY be illegitimate. A no-brainer. For no state, no people, has the right to self-determination in the form of a state, at the expense of another people with at least equal claims. It certainly does not have the right to rule over another people by force. If the alternative is packing it up, and closing the shop on the regime founded in 1948,then I cannot understand how any moral person would not choose that alternative.

No Zionist leader, from Herzl to Jabotinsky, ever envisioned a situation in which the Jews, in order to have a safe and secure state, would need to keep millions of Palestinians without human and citizen rights. No British government would have proclaimed a Balfour Declaration; no UN would have agreed to a Jewish State. Nobody would have considered it legitimate. Why, then, now?

Fortunately for me, since I love Israel, I don't believe that there is no alternative to the status quo. There are many alternatives, some more risky than others. But there is no worse alternative than the status quo. Better be a victim than a perpetrator. That is part of the essence of Judaism. And better be neither.

As for my critical comments about Peace Now -- I know that the peaceniks are good, moral people, and I don't want to cast aspersions on their morality or their dedication. I know that they want to end the Occupation and that they work hard to do so, harder than I do.

But Justice Now, Dignity Now, Morality Now -- these are the "nows" that are in my blood. I can live without peace. I cannot live knowing that my right to self-determination must come with such a cost.

Sorry for the emotional tone. I haven't written for close to a week, and all that stuff exploded on the screen....