Los Angeles Jews Respond Positively to Neve Gordon’s Call to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions

This has got to be one of the funniest stories of the dog days of August. Never Gordon, a leftwing professor at Ben-Gurion University, published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, supporting the BDS movement (that's boycott, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel. In other words, Gordon called for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel here.

Some Los Angeles Jews have responded by threatening to cut-off donations to Ben-Gurion University.

which is, of course, what Gordon was calling for!

So maybe this should now be the tactic of supporters of BDS in Israel: Get leftwing academics from all the universities to call for boycotts, and then angry Jews will response by cutting off funds from their university.

I know, I know. Gordon is not the first Israeli academic to join the BDS movement. Let's not forget Ilan Pappe when he was still at Haifa, and the late Tanya Reinhart, who did the same while at Tel Aviv. And there are others.

But Gordon is the first Israeli academic to get an op-ed in a major metropolitan newspaper with a major Jewish community, and the largest concentration of Israelis outside of Israel (I think). If the LA Jews don't give their money to BGU, maybe they can be convinced not to give their money to any of the Israeli universities.

Except to Bar-Ilan and the pseudo-university, the College of Judea and Samaria.

"Why the Two-State Solution Solves Nothing"

My favorite pair of analysts, Hussein Agha and Rob Malley, have published an important Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled, "The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything." I will print it in full below. But before I do, here are some comments:

Agha and Malley point to an Oscar Wildean irony in the Israel-Palestine mess. Since there is an international consensus for a two-state solution, and that includes the parties to the Israel-Palestine dispute, the likelihood that there will be an agreement on two states is close to zero. You know this must be the case when both Israel's Bibi and Hamas' Khaled Mashal agree.

This has nothing to do with the question whether three hundred thousand settlers can be moved back to the State of Israel (or whether 80% of them remain in settlement blocs). Let's assume that there is absolute agreement on the issue. (There, you see, I said that the settlers are not the major obstacle to peace. Please make a note of that.)

The real problem is that the core problems remain, not only from 1948, but from before.

In diplomatic language, and without using the "Z-word", the last paragraph of the article says it all:

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

This does not seem a promising opening for the policy-driven, 'where-do-we-go-from-here' folks. Like the New Englander who said, "You can't get theyah from heyah" I read Malley and Husseini as saying that we may have to go way back in order to get to where we want to go. And that is not going to make supporters of the 1948 state happy.

Malley and Agha see that the conflict is now, as it always was, about one thing – how to define a Jewish state in Palestine. They are not raising the question how an outmoded ethnic-nationalist state can liberalize into a state of all its citizens. I think they are raising the core question of what it means to have a Jewish state in Palestine. Heck, they are not going back to 1948, they are going back to the 1930's and 40's. This is a breath of fresh air for the liberal Zionist New York Times, both its editors and its readers. Times readers take the State of Israel as a given and then ask, "What sort of Palestinian state can accommodate that given"? And that is the wrong approach.

I have some caveats about the article I would have, indeed, liked less "balance" between two totally imbalanced sides, and more focus on the problems of compromise when one side has all the power. But this is, after all, the New York Times, where dogma dictates that there are two sides to every question. Henry Siegman would have done it differently, and I would have liked him better. But I think the duo's approach is not bad, given the venue and its readership.

August 11, 2009

The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything

By HUSSEIN AGHA and ROBERT MALLEY

THE two-state solution has welcomed two converts. In recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas's political bureau, have indicated they now accept what they had long rejected. This nearly unanimous consensus is the surest sign to date that the two-state solution has become void of meaning, a catchphrase divorced from the contentious issues it is supposed to resolve. Everyone can say yes because saying yes no longer says much, and saying no has become too costly. Acceptance of the two-state solution signals continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle by other means.

Bowing to American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu conceded the principle of a Palestinian state, but then described it in a way that stripped it of meaningful sovereignty. In essence, and with minor modifications, his position recalled that of Israeli leaders who preceded him. A state, he pronounced, would have to be demilitarized, without control over borders or airspace. Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and no Palestinian refugees would be allowed back to Israel. His emphasis was on the caveats rather than the concession.

As Mr. Netanyahu was fond of saying, you can call that a state if you wish, but whom are you kidding?

As for Hamas, recognition of the state of Israel has always been and remains taboo. Until recently, the movement had hinted it might acquiesce to Israel's de facto existence and resign itself to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. This sentiment has now grown from hint to certitude.

President Obama's June address in Cairo provoked among Hamas leaders a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. The American president criticized the movement but did not couple his mention of Hamas with the term terrorism, his recitation of the prerequisites for engagement bore the sound of a door cracked open rather than one slammed shut, and his acknowledgment that the Islamists enjoyed the support of some Palestinians was grudging but charitable by American standards. All of which was promising but also foreboding, prompting reflection within the Hamas movement over how to escape international confinement without betraying core beliefs.

The result of this deliberation was Hamas's message that it would adhere to the internationally accepted wisdom — a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967, the year Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas also coupled its concession with caveats aplenty, demanding full Israeli withdrawal, full Palestinian sovereignty and respect for the refugees' rights. In this, there was little to distinguish its position from conventional Palestinian attitudes.

The dueling discourses speak to something far deeper than and separate from Palestinian statehood. Mr. Netanyahu underscores that Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state — and recalls that the conflict began before the West Bank or Gaza were occupied. Palestinians, in turn, reject recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, uphold the refugees' rights and maintain that if Israel wants real closure, it will need to pay with more than mere statehood.

The exchange, for the first time in a long while, brings the conflict back to its historical roots, distills its political essence and touches its raw emotional core. It can be settled, both sides implicitly concur, only by looking past the occupation to questions born in 1948 — Arab rejection of the newborn Jewish state and the dispossession and dislocation of Palestinian refugees.

Both positions enjoy broad support within their respective communities. Few Israelis quarrel with the insistence that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state. It encapsulates their profound aspiration, rooted in the history of the Jewish people, for a fully accepted presence in the land of their forebears — for an end to Arab questioning of Israel's legitimacy, the specter of the Palestinian refugees' return and any irredentist sentiment among Israel's Arab citizens.

Even fewer Palestinians take issue with the categorical rebuff of that demand, as the recent Fatah congress in Bethlehem confirmed. In their eyes, to accept Israel as a Jewish state would legitimize the Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy. It would render the Palestinian national struggle at best meaningless, at worst criminal. Their firmness on the principle of their right of return flows from the belief that the 1948 war led to unjust displacement and that, whether or not refugees choose or are allowed to return to their homes, they can never be deprived of that natural right. The modern Palestinian national movement, embodied in the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been, above all, a refugee movement — led by refugees and focused on their plight.

It's easy to wince at these stands. They run against the grain of a peace process whose central premise is that ending the occupation and establishing a viable Palestinian state will bring this matter to a close. But to recall the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian clash is not to invent a new battle line. It is to resurrect an old one that did not disappear simply because powerful parties acted for some time as if it had ceased to exist.

Over the past two decades, the origins of the conflict were swept under the carpet, gradually repressed as the struggle assumed the narrower shape of the post-1967 territorial tug-of-war over the West Bank and Gaza. The two protagonists, each for its own reason, along with the international community, implicitly agreed to deal with the battle's latest, most palpable expression. Palestinians saw an opportunity to finally exercise authority over a part of their patrimony; Israelis wanted to free themselves from the burdens of occupation; and foreign parties found that it was the easier, tidier thing to do. The hope was that, somehow, addressing the status of the West Bank and Gaza would dispense with the need to address the issues that predated the occupation and could outlast it.

That so many attempts to resolve the conflict have failed is reason to be wary. It is almost as if the parties, whenever they inch toward an artful compromise over the realities of the present, are inexorably drawn back to the ghosts of the past. It is hard today to imagine a resolution that does not entail two states. But two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored. The ultimate territorial outcome almost certainly will be found within the borders of 1967. To be sustainable, it will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948. The first step will be to recognize that in the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians, the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews.

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

Hussein Agha is a co-author, with Ahmed S. Khalidi, of "A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine." Robert Malley, the director of the Middle East Program at the International Crisis Group, was a special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001.

 

   

 

Adam Kirsch’s Problems With Cultural Zionism

Literary critic Adam Kirsch has made a career of taking potshots at cultural Zionists like Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein. Like the Mapai-niks of old, he dismisses the more humane Zionism they represented, or to be precise, he insinuates that they were Zionists manqués.

So before I get to his Zionist "take" on Einstein, let's recall the standard statist Zionist criticisms against cultural Zionists like Magnes and his circle.

They were naïve intellectuals.

They could not find an Arab partner for peace.

They foolishly believed that the Arabs would agree to Jewish immigration if the Jews promised not to have their own state.

They were assimilated Jews who worshipped Jewish powerlessness.

They assumed, wronglyת that the declaration of the Jewish state would provoke a war that would eliminate the Jews in Palestine.

And my favorite:

They didn't understand that a Jewish State could live in peace with the Arabs and provide equal rights for their Arab citizens, were it not for blind Arab intransigence and anti-Semitism.

This is the view of the Magnes-circle that is dominant in Zionist historiography. It places Magnes on the left and revisionist Zionism on the right, with the Mapai, statist labor Zionism taking the moderate center. This view was eminently reasonable for the first few years of the state. After all, the Jews were not thrown into the sea; on the contrary, they actually conquered more land than allotted to them by the UN Partition Plan – and their state was more independent of the Arabs than provided for in the Partition Plan. True, there was the problem of the refugees, but it was only natural that the Arab countries accept their brothers and sisters. And the mass exodus of Arabs provided opportunities and housing for another exodus, that of the Jews from Arab lands. An Israel that was Jewish and democratic would offer great opportunities for its citizens, its neighbors, and the region.

History has proven otherwise. After sixty years, Israel is considered, in the eyes of much of the world, a pariah or failed state – and if not a failed state, then one in danger of becoming one (according to Foreign Policy's 2009 Failed State index.) Far from living in peace with the Palestinian Arabs, it has made their lives miserable, reducing some of them to second-class citizens who are forbidden to learn their own history, and much of whose land was taken away from them; the others to stateless subjects without basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Thank God, there was not a massacre of Jewish Palestine in 1948, but there was a War of Independence that claimed many Jewish and Arab lives, and created the Palestinian refugee problem. And since that date, many more Jews have died in Israel and because of Israel, than all other places combined; the "new" anti-Semitism, from which Jews around the world, and especially in Europe, suffer, is really anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism in disguise.

But none of this fazes Kirsch, an America Jew raised on classic Zionist dichotomies of "power vs., powerlessness," "assimilationists vs. proud Jews," "realists vs. dreamers." Kirsch sticks to the standard Zionist take on the Magnes circle in his review of Einstein on Israel and Zionism, an anthology of Einstein's writings published in Germany and translated into English. Now, Einstein was a cultural Zionist, who, like other cultural Zionists, became increasingly disenchanted with the brand of Zionism that took over the Zionist movement. Since Einstein was a liberal nationalist, he found many problems with the idea of a Jewish state, and he also knew that such a state would inevitably clash with the native Arabs of Palestine. Like others of his kind, including Buber, Magnes, Scholem, and Simon, and mostly because of the Holocaust, he became reconciled with the state as a fait accompli. But this did not turn him into a statist Zionist.

All this is beyond Kirsch's intellectual ken. He does not see how somebody can be a Zionist, and deeply committed to the cause of Jewish nationalism, and yet not support the idea of a Jewish nation-state. So he really doesn't know what to do with the book or Einstein. Rather than try to understand Einstein's position, much less attempt to justify it, he argues with him, as he did with his New Yorker piece on Hannah Arendt. Kirsch writes:

As a result, [Einstein] is totally unable to face the truth, which is that Arab and Jewish visions for Palestine were incompatible. Einstein insists, for example, that the Jews then languishing in European DP camps be allowed to enter Palestine, contrary to British policy. One British expert asks Einstein, "What would you do if the Arabs refused to consent to bringing these refugees to Palestine?"—as, of course, they did, just as they had violently resisted Jewish immigration since the 1920s. "That would never be the case if there were no politics," Einstein replies. There is Einstein's fallacy in a sentence: his response to a desperate political problem is to wish that there were no politics, which is to say, no conflicting desires, no clash of rights, no power.

Note that Kirsch, himself a statist Zionist, identifies statist Zionism as the Jewish vision for Palestine, thus delegitimizing other competing Jewish visions as not Jewish. Note also that he views the conflict as a case of a conflict of national rights. But Einstein did not wish away politics, nor did the greatest scientist of modern times commit a fallacy. Einstein was implying that that it was politics, i.e., precisely the desire for political independence and control on both sides, that destroyed the possibility of the increased immigration of Jews. And Magnes, because of this, was willing to restrict Jewish immigration rather than to plunge Palestine into war.

Kirsch's polemic continues:

But surely the lesson of Jewish history is that powerlessness is not a solution for the Jews, but the most dangerous problem. The same conclusion can be drawn from another valuable document in this book, an account of Einstein's 1952 meeting with an Egyptian journalist, Mohamed Heikal. Jerome interviewed Heikal in 2006, and he remembered his long-ago visit to Princeton to see Einstein. There the great man spoke with anguished sincerity about his desire to make peace between Jews and Arabs, and tried to use to Heikal to open up back-channel talks with Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's new ruler. Clearly hoping to find common ground with Heikal, Einstein said that "when it comes to people like Menachem Begin and his massacre of Arabs in the village of Deir Yassin … these people are Nazis in their thoughts and their deeds."

And what was Heikal's response? "Ben-Gurion is no less a Nazi than Menachem Begin." Here we see the ugly reality behind Einstein's dream of a binational state, and Jerome's present-day anti-Zionism. There was, in 1948, no way to ensure the survival of Jewish Palestine without a Jewish state, which meant an army, a flag, borders, and all the insignia of sovereignty that Einstein detested. Likewise, there is no way to establish a true peace in Palestine today as long as so many Palestinians, elite and ordinary, are committed to Israel's destruction. Still, Einstein has one advantage over his new editor: his reservations about Israel were voiced from the standpoint of his unquestionable commitment to Zionism. For that reason, he makes a less useful ally than [editor] Fred Jerome appears to think.

The Magnes circle indeed had a particular animus towards Begin, who was a Jewish terrorist, but they disagreed no less strongly with Ben-Gurion. But so what? The real issue is whether there was, as Kirsch claims, no alternative to the survival of Jewish Palestine besides the declaration of the Jewish State? How would he know this? Because the Arabs had declared their intention of driving the Jews into the sea? But wasn't that because they knew that what the Jews wanted was a Jewish state and control over Palestine?

And here is the real question that Kirsch never considers. Had the Zionist movement not adopted statist Zionism, had it been willing from the beginning to struggle for national group rights within a secular Palestinian state, would indeed the existence of a Jewish cultural center in Palestine been endangered? Of course, the question is unanswerable; some will point to Arab massacres of Jews during the Mandate and others to the close friendships and relations between Jews and Arabs during this period of Zionist settlement.

But at the very least, one would expect Kirsch to grapple with the claim that the very concept of statist Zionism endangered Jewish Palestine because it set the yishuv on a collision course with the nationalist aspirations of the native majority. This Kirsch cannot do, because he, like so many other Zionists, accepts the myth of Jewish powerlessness – that the actions of Jews do not have an effect on the actions and views of others, and if they do, the effect should only be benign because the Jewish agents are benign.

Kirsch cites Einstein's remark, "I believe that the existence of a Jewish cultural center will strengthen the moral and political position of the Jews all over the world, by virtue of the very fact that there will be in existence a kind of embodiment of the interests of the whole Jewish people" and then comments, "The case for Israel has seldom been better put." But Einstein was not making the case for Israel, not for the Israel of 1948, with the Jewish cultural giants of that time (all European), and certainly not for the state that is currently slashing budgets for the humanities and Jewish studies and funding settlements – and where the average age of the World Congress of Jewish Studies participants in Jerusalem (which I am attending) seems to be over sixty.

Einstein was making the case for something that never came to be – "a cultural center that would strengthen the moral and political position of the Jews all over the world." The statist Zionists, of course, claim otherwise; the moderates among them see no contradiction between the two sorts of zionism, and claim that, on the contrary, only a strong Jewish nation state guarantees the possibility of cultural Zionism. Yet there was a thriving Jewish cultural center in Palestine before the establishment of the state, and nothing would be lost to that center would the State of Israel become the nation state of all its citizens.

A final note: Kirsch begins his review by noting that the book is at war with itself because it paints Einstein as anti-Israel and yet refers to his Zionism Ironically, it is Kirsch's review that is at war with itself. The title of the review is "Relatively Speaking, a Zionist" and yet Kirsch refers to Einstein's "unquestionable commitment to Zionism".

How abolutely committed was he, Adam?

Palestinians Out, Jews In

Joseph Dana and Mairav Zonszein have made a must-see video about the expulsion of the Palestinian families from their homes (see below) in Sheikh Jarrah, where they have lived for over fifty years, and the entrance of the settlers. For an explanation of the situation see my post below on Israel's Hamas, and their post at the ibn ezra blog here. Please wait until the end of the video to hear the reaction of the Israeli religious woman to the expulsion. We'll see how the apologists try to dismiss here.She's not drunk, she's not American, and she's not shouting obscenities. Nor are the others in the video.

Landes on the Blogosphere as a New Terrain in the Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israeli Battle

The World Congress of Jewish Studies, currently held in Jerusalem, had a session cosponsored by the rightwing think-tank, the Jewish Center for Public Affairs. Richard Landes, professor of medieval studies at Boston University, and rightwing blogger at the Augean Stables, was to talk on the "Blogosphere as a New Terrain in the Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israeli battle". Of course, I got very excited. Like any blogger, I was hoping for my few seconds of fame, ok, maybe a mention, or if not me, then at least my buddies, ok, if not my buddies, then at least somebody I had heard of.

So I actually went to the session, sat through a talk by Manfred Gerstenberg, and got my little tape recorder ready.

What a disappointment. Instead of a talk on the blogosphere, Prof. Landes trotted out the same talk on Mohammad ad-Durrah's death and its cynical manipulation by those pesky Pals and their anti-Semitic (Jewish and gentiles) buddies that he has been peddling on college campuses for the last few years.

My first reaction was that this is a disgrace to the field of Jewish Studies. Why is this session being held here? There is no new research, there is nothing that you couldn't get off the web.

But then Landes ends with the thesis that the blogosphere today is like the print medium in the sixteenth century. Bloggers pose a challenge to the established print media, and this makes him optimistic that truth will out via the bloggers. Just as the bloggers pushed the "truth" with ad-Durrah, so too they can win the war against the anti-Israeli media.

Ah, the delusions of the academic-in-his-pajamas-blogging- at-2-am! How well I know the syndrome! Sure, bloggers can make a difference. But it cuts both ways, Prof. Landes. There is a progressive blogosphere out there, and an Arab blogosphere out there, and all bunch of bloggers who are speaking their own truth to power.

The name of the game is not the blogosphere, but the connections that the bloggers can forge with mainstream media. Already you have mainstream journalists who blog and vice-versa. Presumably, those folks will be on all sides.

But far be it from to dampen the optimism of a rightwing blogger. Usually, those guys are full of doom and gloom.

 

 

Israel’s “Hamas”

On the Voice of Israel this morning there was a news item about the eviction of the al-Ghawi and al-Hanoun families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in order to make way for Jewish settlers.

The item ended as follows:

"Jewish families entered the two houses after the Palestinians who had squatted there were evicted. The eviction was done on the basis of the High Court's ruling."

לשני בתים בשיח ג'אראח נכנסו משפחות יהודיות לאחר שפונו מהן פלסטינים שפלשו לשם. הפינוי נעשה על פי פסיקה של בגצ.

That one line contains in a nutshell the lies and moral rot of the current Israeli regime, and the thinking behind it. And some would say, though I am not yet ready to, the lies and moral rot of the Zionist enterprise – or, more precisely -- of the thinking that became dominant within the Zionist enterprise with Ben-Gurion.

Let us start with the characterization of the families as "squatters".

Would you call a squatter somebody who was resettled in houses that were legally purchased by the United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency to resettle refugees, and who lived there for over FIFTY YEARS? And why? Because disputed deeds were produced that claimed that prior to 1948 the Jews had owned the homes? If you would, then for God's sake, thousands of Jews living in South Jerusalem, and throughout the country, are squatters. For what is the difference between the UNRWA resettling Palestinians in Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, who had been driven from their homes in West Jerusalem, and the ILA resettling Oriental Jews in Arab homes in West Jerusalem who had driven from their homes in Arab countries – besides the obvious one that the Jews were indoctrinated to think that they were returning home. If the Arabs are squatters then the Jews are squatters.

And in this case, the families who were evicted are precisely the ones who fled their homes in West Jerusalem. So they have been thrown out of their homes by Israel twice.

But, we are told by our prime minister, Jews should be able to live anywhere in Jerusalem because East Jerusalem Arabs can live anywhere in Jerusalem. Haaretz sets the facts straight.

According to Israel Land Administration rules, residents of East Jerusalem cannot take ownership of the vast majority of Jerusalem homes.

When an Israeli citizen purchases an apartment or house, ownership of the land remains with the ILA, which leases it to the purchaser for a period of 49 years, enabling the registration of the home ("tabu"). Article 19 of the ILA lease specifies that a foreign national cannot lease - much less own - ILA land.

Attorney Yael Azoulay, of Zeev and Naomi Weil Lawyers and Notary Office, explains that if a foreign national purchases an apartment they must show the ILA proof of eligibility to immigrate to Israel in accordance with the Law of Return. Non-Jewish foreigners cannot purchase apartments. This group includes Palestinians from the east of the city, who have Israeli identity cards but are residents rather than citizens of Israel.

Most residences in West Jerusalem and in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are built on ILA land. All the neighborhoods built after 1967 - Gilo, Pisgat Ze'ev, Ramot, French Hill and Armon Hanatziv - are built on ILA land. Even in the older neighborhoods of Kiryat Hayovel, Katamonim and Beit Hakerem, tens of thousands of apartments are built on ILA land and cannot be sold to Palestinians. In the ultra-Orthodox central Jerusalem neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim, as well as in Rehavia and Talbieh, there are homes built on private land - mainly owned by one of the churches or purchased in the past by Jews.

It goes without saying that a Palestinian seeking to purchase an apartment in a Haredi area would be rejected out of hand, and Rehavia or Talbieh would in any event be out of the range of most East Jerusalemites' budget.

The worse thing about the secrets and lies is that the liars begin to believe their own lies. So the rightwing reporter, Nadav Shragai, writes,

In Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem such as Armon HaNatziv, Neve Yaakov, Tzameret HaBira, and Pisgat Zeev, the fringes of the neighborhoods have many Palestinian Arab residents, either through purchase or rental of apartments. In some of the buildings along Rehov HaHavatzelet in the center of the city, a similar change is taking place. Jews and Arabs also live together in the neighborhood of Abu Tor, and there are several streets in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, such as Rehov HaGai, where a similar situation is gradually developing. In short, as certain parts of eastern Jerusalem have become ethnically diverse, it has become impossible to characterize it as a wholly Palestinian area that can easily be split off from the rest of Jerusalem.

The "Jewish neighborhoods" to which Shragai refers here are all over the Green Line. In other words, to show that Jerusalem has ethnically diverse neighborhoods, and hence there cannot be a simple division, he cites cases where Jews "squatted" in territories over which they have no legal rights. That is a good trick: occupy territory, transfer (illegally) your citizens there, and then claim that no withdrawal is possible because of the ethnic diversity.

One blatant example of injustice is the Old City. By law, no Arab is allowed to purchase, or rent an apartment, in the post-67 Jewish Quarter. The law was upheld by the High Court and Haim Cohen, one of Israel's great "liberals," defended the discrimination by using an affirmative action argument – Jews had not been allowed to live in the Old City under Jordanian rule. Well, and good. But if Arabs cannot live in the (vastly expanded) Jewish Quarter, and some were actually evicted from their homes for that), then justice requires that Jews cannot live in the Muslim Quarter. But Jews are allowed to live and own property in the Muslim Quarter? And why? Well, why shouldn't Jews be allowed to live there, blah, blah, blah.

The injustice of all this shrieks to high heaven. Look, if you are a Jewish fundamentalist, then you have no problems. All of the land belongs to the Jews; let the others go to Hell. If you are a good old–fashioned nineteenth century nationalist, you also have no problem: to the military victors belong the spoils.

But if you are a decent human being, you cannot but shout, My God, how long will this robbery – or to use the Biblical Hebrew word, this Hamas—continue?

Isn't what we stole after 1948 and 1967 enough?

The Foreign Ministry Releases Its Version of the Gaza Op

The Israel foreign ministry has released a hundred and fifty page defense of the IDF's "Operation Cast Lead".

You can read about it here.

But I can tell you basically what it says in a few lines about any accusation, 'X'.

1. We didn't do X.

2. If we did X, it was legal.

3. If we did X, and it wasn't legal, then we are investigating those cases.

4. In any event, we will try not to do X again, if we can.

Just take your favorite war crimes – use of human shields, white phosphorus – and substitute it for 'X'.

I am not exactly sure of Israel's strategy, if it has one. It has now made its definitive case before the Goldstone Commission publishes its report, thus giving Goldstone ample time to examine the Israeli report. If Goldstone makes extensive mention of the report, then Israel will not be able to say that Goldstone ignored its side of the story. Of course, there will be those who say that this is not enough (a replay of the ICC verdict on the so-called security fence, where Israel only made its case in writing, which gave American Judge Thomas Burgenthal enough of a rope to partially exonerate Israel.)

This story "broke" yesterday. Since then I haven't seen it in any of the world media outlets. Ynet and Haaretz and Jerusalem Post. C'est tout.

Compare that with the sensational and instantaneous effect of the Breaking the Silence testimonies two week ago.

Ah, but as we Israelis like to say, the world is against us. Interesting that Israel can lose the hasbara war outside Israel to a small organization of IDF veterans.

That must drive the Israeli government nuts.

Reflections on the Ninth of Av, 2009/5769

 

Gaza scene, January 2009

 

My eyes shall flow without cease

Without respite

Until the Lord looks down

And beholds from heaven …

(Lamentations 3:49, JPS trans.)  

1. On the Hurban of Gaza

For three weeks we rained bombs and fired artillery shells on an helpless civilian population. We punished them for their rocket fire, which was their punishment for our siege, which was our punishment for their election results, which was their punishment for Fatah's corruption, and so the story goes one. What should we have done? We should have negotiated – a cease fire, a prisoner exchange, a withdrawal from Gaza. We should have talked with them. Instead, we treated them like flies, whose lord we were. And so we bombed, killed, and maimed, using them as human shields, raining down phosphorus as weapons, finishing only when we were forced to stop. At the end of the nightmare, in additional to the tens of thousands of lives ruined, there were over 1400 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians, and 13 Israelis dead, mostly soldiers.

The death and destruction should have been unbearable for all decent human beings. But with deep sadness I can only say that relatively few in my country of Israel were disturbed. "They started it." "They deserved it" "What would you have done?" As if what Israel did was the last resort.

Every Ninth of Av as long as I live will remember the latest in the Jewish catastrophes that have befallen the Jewish people – when our hearts were Cast into Lead.

 

2. On the Hurban of Jerusalem and al-Quds

For thirty-five years I have lived in Jerusalem, the so-called "United Jerusalem." I have seen it grow into a sprawling and overbuilt megalopolis where the building never stops. Part of the development is based on developer's greed; part is based on Israel's never-ending struggle to de-Arabicize Jerusalem (which now includes banning the Arabic word for Jerusalem from street signs). So rightwing Jewish groups join hands with Jewish bingo moguls and government officials to buy up, legally and fictitiously, parts of East Jerusalem, or when that fails, to get tracts of land zoned for "archaeological parks" run by rightwing settler groups, despite the intervention of the High Court.

Jews should be allowed to live anywhere in East Jerusalem, we are told, and Arabs should be allowed to live nowhere in West Jerusalem.

Not a day goes by without more revelations, for which one can read the Ir Amim website here. The idea is clear – to surround the Old City with as many Jews as possible – and to convince the Israelis that East Jerusalem, including Arab East Jerusalem, is part of the Jewish state.

Let us not forget that according to the UN and the world, the State of Israel is not sovereign over West Jerusalem, and let us hope that, speedily in our days, Jerusalem will be internationalized. Till then you will see the continual sprawl and growth that has choked the city, destroyed its center, and, together with the inflated prices of real estate due to absentee owners, sent many of its educated young people into exile.

 

3. On the Hurban of the Jews.

"The Jews, as a majority in their state, will be judged by how they treat their own minorities." Well, judging from the present situation, I give my state a D-. Consider the plight of foreign workers. They are imported to Israel, work often under horrible conditions, and then expelled. If they marry Israelis they may or may not become citizens; it is up to the decision of the Minister of Interior. But even if they don't, then they and their children born on Israeli soil, are liable to be deported. Now the press, politicians, and an impressive list of intellectuals and religious leaders (with only one orthodox rabbi, of course, Rabbi David Rosen) are trying to avert the decree of deporting the children, who have known no other homeland besides Israel.

What other country deports children in this way? And why Israel? Because, you see, it has no real process of naturalization for non-Jews. I would like to know what other state besides Israel does not have a process for naturalizing eventually children of foreign workers born on their soil. Even Germany now has one,and think of all the foreign workers there.

"Do not afflict the stranger for you were a stranger in the Land of Egypt." Well, how quickly we have become hard-hearted Pharaohs. And don't think for a moment we are going to stop importing new foreign workers. And what will be with their children? For a cry of decency, read Haaretz's editorial here

And here's another minority, this one much smaller – asylum seekers from problem areas in Africa. Israel cannot turn them away, but it can make life miserable for them and subject to unfair restrictions and discrimination. And why? Because we are Jews and we have our hands full taking care of our own. And don't throw the "boat people" at me, either. Because you do a mitzvah years ago – a mitzvah that any civilized country would do – you never have to act like a mentsh again? From Haaretz's editorial here:

The Interior Ministry's newly created Immigration Authority is a vital mechanism. To this day Israel has not drawn up an immigration policy, because anyone who isn't a new immigrant under the Law of Return is seen as a temporary visitor whom the state has no interest in naturalizing. The entrance of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, only some of whom have left, has brought the state to its senses.

It is regrettable that the authority's first step was to round up a few hundred asylum seekers from Africa in south Tel Aviv, in what appeared to be a senseless demonstration of ostentatious bullying. Most of the detainees had been brought into Israel by the army at the Egyptian border. They met the representatives of the United Nations refugee agency and have been granted temporary protection due to the danger and persecution they were subjected to in their countries of origin, such as Eritrea and Sudan.

These detainees are protected from deportation, so one must assume the Immigration Authority intended to intimidate and deter other asylum seekers from coming to Israel, in addition to enforcing the problematic procedure forbidding them from living and staying in the area between Gedera and Hadera. Instead of engaging in intelligence activity to find people staying in Israel illegally, the authority's inspectors chose the easy route and filled the prisons with fugitives from disaster and massacre areas.

It is no credit to the Jewish state that only around 400 asylum seekers who entered its gates have been recognized as refugees by the Interior Ministry. The status of refugee entitles its holder to rights, mainly medical insurance and a work permit. The authorities' slow handling of the refugees' applications for this status is immoral in a country that was established by refugees. So is incarcerating asylum seekers in Ketziot Prison for months. The Immigration Authority was not set up to persecute the persecuted

I will discuss the Palestinian Israeli minority in another post.

On my way to shul I heard A. B. Yehoshua say, once more, that one can only be a Jew in the full sense of the term in the State of Israel. I once believed that.

But this Tisha B'Av, when we read about destruction and exile, I ask the question that was the title of Akiva Ernst Simon's last book: "Are We Still Jews"? And to Buli Yehoshua I ask, how can one still be Jewish and live in Israel 2009 – unless one lives in constant despair and depression?  

The Dutch Government Has No Intention of Cutting Funding for Breaking the Silence

Question: What are the words for "Foreign Ministry spin" in Hebrew?

Answer: "Barak Ravid"

 

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1103217.html

 

Dutch officials deny Israeli complaints over funding of leftist group

By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz Correspondent

Diplomats from the Netherlands denied reports that they had received complaints from Israel over Dutch funding for a controversial Israeli human rights group. But Israeli officials insisted the complaints were made, as reported on Sunday by Haaretz.

Meanwhile, Holland's biggest pro-Zionist body said the organization in question, Breaking the Silence, "could deserve funding" from the Dutch government.

The article in Haaretz said that Israel has asked the Netherlands for clarifications about financial aid given to the human rights group Breaking the Silence, which recently released a collection of anonymous accusations of alleged human rights abuses by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

The Volkskrant, one of Holland's largest papers, published a reaction by the Dutch foreign ministry which said no such complaint has been made, and that there was no reason to stop the subsidy.

According to a close colleague of the minister in The Hague, the subsidy is in line with the human rights policy of Maxime Verhagen, the paper reported, adding the Israeli embassy in Hague was made aware of this position.

The Israeli embassy in Hague was not available for a comment, but an Israeli diplomat said the complaint was conveyed as reported. "Maybe the two countries have a different definition of the concept of complaint," he added.

Haaretz reported that Breaking the Silence received 19,995 euros from the Dutch embassy in Tel Aviv, and that had this figure been higher by five euros, then it would require approval from the foreign ministry in Hague, headed by Verhagen, who is seen as a staunch supporter of Israel.

But the Volkskrant quotes Dutch diplomats as saying the organization received 24,000 euros. Ronny Naftaniel, the head of Holland's largest pro-Zionist group, says this is a pivotal issue.

"It is not right for the organization to receive funding without the public knowing about it," he said. But Naftaniel, a long-time supporter of Arab-Israeli coexistence and of the two-state solution, said he had no objection to the Dutch funding of Breaking the Silence as a principle.

"This organization could deserve funding from the Netherlands," Naftaniel told Haaretz. "Human rights organizations like this and like B'Tselem play an important role in Israeli society and can be of importance in making Israelis think critically about Israel."

Naftaniel added that Breaking the Silence's anonymous report rested heavily on hearsay. "The Israeli army behaves much better than most countries in combat conditions, but criticism is needed to prevent this from being taken for granted," he concluded

Silencing “Breaking the Silence” I – Lieberman Continues Down the Slippery Slope

Avigdor Lieberman's Foreign Ministry is trying to silence the IDF veterans group, "Breaking the Silence." For five years the group has been publishing testimonies of IDF war crimes and inappropriate behavior towards Palestinian civilians without government interference. The last few years it has received money from several sources, including the New Israel Fund, the European Union, and the governments of Great Britian, Holland and Spain. In this it is no different from other human rights groups that receive money from European governments and human rights foundations. B'Tselem, for example, has received money from the Norwegian foreign ministry. "Breaking the Silence" used the money from the Dutch consulate to finance its booklet of Gaza testimonies, which you can download here. As you will see, the booklet acknowledges the support of BtS's donors.

When Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman read of this, he had a fit. So he instructed the Israeli Ambassador to the Netherlands to demand that the Dutch Foreign Ministry cut off funding for BtS. Haaretz Barak Ravid, whose job in Haaretz, as my readers know, is to front for "informed sources" in the Foreign Ministry, wrote about it today here.

Lieberman's reason?

According to a senior Israeli official: "A friendly government cannot fund opposition bodies. We are not a third world country."

"Breaking the Silence" is not an opposition body, but rather an ngo made up of Israeli veterans that publish IDF soldiers' testimonies. It has no ties to any opposition party. It is no more political than B'Tselem.

And Israel is a third-world country as of today, if not much earlier, because this is what dictatorial third-world countries do: attempt to block the funding of its ngos.

Now, there is indeed a legitimate debate whether Israeli human rights ngos should be funded by foreign governments, whether such funding hurts or helps its message. That is very different from the government heavy-handedly trying to cut off its funding by trying to strong-arm the governments, a tactic that the Israeli foreign minister may have learnt in his native Russia.

But can we expect anything less from an ultra-right wing foreign minister whose party's platform calls for the banning of political parties and the suppression of free speech in Israel?

The First of Av –BtS Testimony 50

Here is another testimony about rules of engagement, or lack thereof, in the Gaza campaign. The BtS booklet can be downloaded here.

Testimony 50 -- Rules of Engagement

... I can tell you about a specific case, where a man passed by our house: our instructions were to take down anyone going by, a lookout. There was a case of a man speaking on his cell phone while he held a white flag. Again, you should realize we kept receiving these specific alerts down to the details of a man on a motorcycle arriving at this or that trail at a certain speed. There were alerts about people with explosive charges and white flags. There was a case of a man speaking on a cell phone close to our house and he also held something white. I didn't see him. I was further back inside the house. I know for certain that this guy was shot in the leg. In hindsight, i cannot prove or verify this, but I heard he died. He was not removed by us and I cannot prove it.

He was not removed?

He limped along and got out of our sight.

But there are rules of engagement, aren't there?

When we hold an outpost on normal security duty, there are rules of engagement. But when we got in there, the feeling was you're going to war and such and such numbers of casualties are expected in the battalion. While we were outside, at the beginning of the operation, there was this atmosphere, something really strong, everyone's eyes shining. It felt like being in a movie, I didn't anticipate what we'd get into. I was expecting combat. We had aerial photos and were told that here's an explosive charge, there's a tunnel. What rules of engagement? We were under the impression we were going into battle, not some outpost routine procedure. While we began to enter we realized this is not what we had expected. You said you heard this from someone else, it felt very much like maneuvers meaning there was all this spectacular fire, a Lau missile here and there, all sorts of things.

In your official briefing by the battalion commander before you went out, what were you told?

We were told soldiers were to be secured by fire-power. The soldiers were made to understand that their lives were the most important, and that there was no way our soldiers would get killed for the sake of leaving civilians the benefit of the doubt. We were allowed to fire in order to spare our lives.

Even when it comes to the individual soldier?

Yes. and that means very aggressive entry. Fire power. it means that as we go in, if people are outdoors, the soldiers shoot them. again, these are cases where I wasn't present myself so i don't want to discuss them. But yes, there were cases of people, civilians who were killed by our own fire.

Light arms? Also.

Did you talk about it? Telling civilians apart from terrorists, and by which criteria? What are incriminating signs?

There is no suspect arrest procedure in wartime. There's exercise of judgment. People were not instructed to shoot at everyone they see but they were told that from a certain distance when they approach a house, no matter who it is – even an old woman – take them down.

What distance are we talking about here?

That depends. Could be a situation where a guy is 40 meters away, entering an area that is out of your sight, where you can't do a thing, as he reaches a house.

There were no official definitions as to who is considered innocent?

The definitions were that an armed person must be shot dead, anyone talking on a cell phone – that's incriminating. People walking around with white rags were not to be shot. But if they would approach a house then deterrent fire was to be shot overhead or beside them, and then just shoot.

Was this clarified? Say the battalion goes in, lots of fire, civilians getting killed as well in other cases, weren't things made clearer?

There was not much friction with the civilian population and I don't recall a clarification to the point of actual rules of engagement.

But because this was left up to the judgment of the individual soldier, wouldn't a commander say that if such and such happens, exercise discretion because there are civilians here.

There was a bit 'do whatever you want' but those were the definitions... Not specific definitions but exercise of judgment. No clarifying beyond that into something resembling ordered procedures.

No one asked about this?

The atmosphere wasn't right to start looking for that. The soldiers were eager and not exactly looking for limits. it wasn't crucial.

Did they feel safe? If you're afraid, you shoot at anything. Was it like this?

The atmosphere was not one of fear but rather people too eager to shoot other people.

Did you see other cases of non-combatant population, such as the one with the cell phone and the white flag, people who...

Again, I can't say whether he died or whether he was passing on information. It's a case that shows how lax the rules of engagement were.

What incriminates a person? People walking towards you from a certain distance? A cell phone that might be used to report things? Someone with a notebook, binoculars?

Binoculars is the same as a cell phone. So what do you do?

Same thing. Exercise your own judgment, and the definition is straight fire. When the guy was shot in the leg, it's because he was holding a white flag, but the atmosphere was not such as to believe that anyone carrying a white flag is all right, because there were alerts.

But you said, for example, that people walking along holding white flags were clearly not to be shot?

Yes. But white flag and cell phone, you notice that. If he really approaches the house, you shoot him.

If they raise their hands up in the air, is that like a white flag? Yes.

You're saying you saw civilians...

No, don't confuse this. There was hardly any encounter with the civilian population. in general, the city was a ghost town. Once in a while you saw a person, during ceasefires when people walked around.

And then?

We held our fire for a few hours. The Red Crescent came around, picked up bodies. They passed by us too, under the house, i mean closer than they were meant to be.

Do you recall the distance which had to be kept from the house? 20-30 meters, something like that.

Wounded were evacuated only during humanitarian ceasefires? Technically yes, but there was not much evacuation of wounded but mostly there was of fatalites.

Prominent Israeli Intellectuals, Writers, Artists, Entertainers: Investigate Gaza Op Now

Today's Haaretz featured a front-page petition, signed by well-known Israeli writers, artists, entertainers, and intellectuals on the center-left side of the political spectrum, calling for an independent investigation into the IDF's conduct of the Gaza Operation. The signatories are not the sort of people you see supporting the anarchists in Bil'in, or the Free Gaza boats; they are what anybody would call mainstream Zionist left. The call for an investigation is tied to the release of the soldiers' testimonies by the IDF veteran's group, "Breaking the Silence", whose booklet can be read here.

I hope the petition helps stop the delegitimization and the demonization of the "Breaking the Silence" publication by the IDF and certain Jewish organizations abroad. I also hope it helps break the silence of those who are not willing to read, much less come to grips, with the testimonies. Those who claim that the testimonies are inauthentic or fabricated should realize that the signatories below – who know a little about Israel and its army – disagree.

The petition in Hebrew can be read here. If you are Israeli, you can add your name to the petition. An article by Tal Rabinovsky summarizing the petition and naming a few of the more prominent writers appears in Ynet English here. But, for the record, I am transliterating the Hebrew names. (I apologize in advance for getting the transliteration wrong.)

Gal Uchovsky, Shulamit Aloni, Rona Blair, Orna Banai, Assaf Gavron, Professor Dafna Golan, Yonatan Gefen, David Grossman, Nurit Gertz, Yael Dayan, Ruth Dayan, Rami Heuberger, Ariel Hirschfeld, Prof. Alon Harel, Natan Zach, Prof. Shimon Sandbank, Prof. Naomi Hazan, Amir Lev, Haggai Levy, Ronit Matalon, Sami Michael, Prof. Avishai Margalit, Amos Oz, Ari Folman, Eytan Fox, Yehoshua Kenaz, Orli Kastel Blum, Yehudit Katzir, Yehudit Karp, Yossi Sarid

 

How the Landgrab System Works

Akiva Eldar writes in today's Haaretz that the government is considering creating a sewage treatment system near Ofra that would serve Palestinian villages and Jewish settlements.

Now isn't that a heartwarming story? The Occupier is finally taking care of the occupied.

Not quite. This is a textbook case of how the Occupier steals land, then builds a settlement on it, then pollutes the villages next to the settlement, then steals more land to build on it a sewage treatment facility. Here's how it works.

Step One. The settlement of Ofra is built illegally on Palestinian public and private land. ("Haaretz reports in that 179 of the 600 buildings in Ofra are considered illegal by the Israeli administration, a somewhat surprising statistic since the infrastructure was provided by the government, which also provided preferential mortgages.")

Step Two. The illegal settlement of Ofra illegally seizes Palestinian private land to put up an illegal sewage treatment facility. Before then, Ofra's sewage was polluting the neigboring village of Ein Yabrud.

Step Three. A resident of Ein Yabrud and the human rights organization Yesh Din petition the High Court to remove the sewage treatment plant.

Step Four. The government issues a demolition order, does not carry out the demolition order, and at the same time, announces its intention of exploring the possibility of expropriating the private land for a facility that would serve Jews and Palestinians together. (It seems that the High Court has ruled that if private land is expropriated for public works, then the Palestinians have to benefit.)

Step Five. For the facility to serve the Palestinian village of Ein Yabrud, a highly-expensive pumping facility needs to be built (on Palestinian land?). Nothing like that has ever been built on the West Bank, and the chances of its being built are near zero.

According to the government announcement:

"After the legal picture was clarified and a demolition order was issued for the facility, an order was given to suspend state funds to the plant, and it has not received a permit to connect it to the power supply. The sewage treatment plant was initiated by the Shomron Union for Ecology and the Environment Ministry, after the settlement's sewage polluted the environment and endangered groundwater sources," the announcement says.

So…either the illegal settlement will connect its illegal sewage treatment plant illegally to the power supply. Or the illegal settlement will illegally pollute the neighboring village of Ein Yabrud.

And that, Rivkele, is how the corrupt system works.

Last Joke Before the “Nine Days”of Av

Tonight is the First Day of Av, which initiates a nine-day semi-mourning period that culminates in the Ninth of Av. During that period, merriment is not allowed. So here is my last joke before the period's onset.

A Jew walks into a bar with a parrot on his head

"What can I get for you?" asks the bartender.

The parrot says, "Awk! We are going to remove all the illegal outposts"

The bartender says, "Yeah, I know, you say that every time you come in here. But what can I get for you?"

The parrot says, "Awk! We are going to remove all the illegal outposts"

The bartender says, "Look you said that yesterday and the day before yesterday and the day before that. What can I get for you?"

The parrot says, "Awk! But this time we are going to remove all of them in one day."

The bartender bursts out in uncontrollable laughter, doubles over and drops dead.

The parrot looks down at the Jew and says, "Now can I have a gin and tonic?"

Yoel Marcus has a "scoop" in this morning's Haaretz that Ehud Barak has a plan to remove all the illegal outposts in one day. (Read about it here if you have nothing better to do, like staring at the ceiling.) There was a military exercise last week, apparently, along these lines. Meanwhile, the army admits that secrecy is going to be difficult, since many of the soldiers are either settlers or have relatives there. And now the settlement rabbi Dov Lior has permitted using the telephone on the Sabbath to warn people of the impending evacuations.

Since there is no way that the IDF can evacuate one or two outposts, much less thirty-two, and since these outposts are usually just extensions of the mother colonies, and since every time an outpost is evacuated it pops-up again, wouldn't it be better for the government to just say to the Americans, "We can't really do this." Well, it would if politicians were honest. But it seems that the real purpose of floating these trial balloons is to give some of the Israel-advocates ammunition to slow down the administration's push.

The real bosses of the West Bank, those who decide what outposts stay and what outposts go, are the Council of Settlements in Judaea and Samaria. I heard Pinhas Wallerstein on the radio a few minutes ago. He is not going to go gently into the dark night. He basically nixed the whole thing.

So does this mean that the story is what we call here "Israbluff"? Not necessarily. A huge operation, even if unsuccessful, would convince the Americans that Israel is trying to do its bit. That reminds me of all those times Arafat "clamped down" on Hamas to show the Americans that he was making a good faith effort to control terrorism. There is something commendable about the effort. But it can't succeed.

And maybe it shouldn't succeed. Yesterday an outpost was removed and settlers went on the rampage against Palestinians, burning olive trees and throwing rocks at the Palestinians and the IDF. The IDF's response was to close Palestinians roads "for their own protection".

The beauty of the demand to remove the outposts, like the demand to freeze settlements (or the demand of Arafat to clamp down on Hamas) is that it is unrealizable. You demand something that you know you cannot get. Then when Israel fails to meet that demand (because it can't) you use that as an opportunity to move in yourself.

I hope that is what is behind Obama's thinking.

Rabbis for Human Rights Launch Gaza Website

After the initial IDF campaign to delegitimize the IDF soldier Gaza testimonies, some of the Israeli human rights groups are speaking out in support of the group behind the controversy, "Breaking the Silence." B'Tselem published its support here, pointing out that the soldiers testimonies were similar to the testimonies taken from Palestinians. Rabbis for Human Rights have launched a Hebrew website with testimonies and calling for an independent investigation. The latter is particularly well-done (yes, I am indeed jealous), and even if you don't read Hebrew you should look at it here

In the meantime, I tried to access the website that Stand With Us announced with such fanfare the other day, the soldiers' testimonies that said that the Gaza operation was all hunky-dory, etc. Only problem is that the website has been down for some time. http://www.soldiersspeakout.com/ When I accessed the site that was in my cache from the other day, I saw – lo and behold – most of the testimonies had nothing to do with Gaza! Some were three years old!

So this is my thinking: somebody in the Stand With Us organization got caught with his or her pants down when the BtS testimonies came out. They rushed to do damage control by putting up mostly old testimonies. Now their site is down while they are trying to get new testimonies.

Why didn't they ask me? I could have given them testimonies from soldiers who did not experience what the BtS soldier testimonies experienced. The vast majority of the soldiers serving in the IDF see no moral dilemmas arising, or if they do, they say that it is not of Israel's making. Just like the Vietnam Vets against the War inspired a counter-organization, so too Breaking the Silence. And what is wrong with hearing those guys' testimonies.

The problem with the loonies of the left and the right is that the former say that everything Israel does is wrong and the latter say that nothing Israel does is wrong. Now what serious person is going to believe that? That is what is so arresting about the BtS Soldiers Testimonies. Most of them don't just say that what the IDF is wrong; many of them see a certain complexity. But obviously, if these soldiers went to Breaking the Silence, they had something on their mind that they wanted to say.

And that's the main difference between the Breaking the Silence testimonies and the other group's testimonies (when they get their act together and post them.) The latter is a reaction to the former, but the former is a reaction of the Gaza Operation. People are asking why it took six months for BtS to publish testimonies. They should be asking why Soldiers Speak Out took six months and a few days ((whenever they get their act together))

It's not as if people didn't know about the IDF war crimes in real time.

Another day, another testimony. No testimonies on Shabbat, because no mourning is allowed.

TESTIMONY 46 - VANDALISM

 

In primary searches for weapons, we go in and then suddenly a guy opens a cupboard, sees china and begins to throw it all on the floor. There are such cases, people who did this sort of thing. it's the kind of guys who talk about having to really show it to the Arabs, that they have less of a regard for family belongings. Little things, but not as extreme as burning things or throwing stuff out the windows. Little things.

 

Did this stop?

 

It stopped and then began again. Writing on the walls.

 

What would be written there?

 

"How long yet?" or stuff about the platoon, or "We'll show those terrorists."

 

What causes this, do you think? After all, it wasn't just one soldier in every battalion.

 

Writing on walls doesn't stem from hating Arabs that much, but from the fact that you're a soldier – you write

 

But you're still inside someone's home.

 

That's right. You need to think about that in order not to do it. But you don't feel it. Take for example the house we were in – it was abandoned and you go about it as if you own it. You break floor tiles to make sand bags, you break stuff to prepare an outpost. it becomes. You don't think about this at all. You don't consider this a home of a family that will be back.

 

Did you use their belongings? Are there rules for entering such a house?

 

There's a general instruction not to touch the family's gear, not to sit on their sofas and so on. But one disregards this. You're in a house and you enter without a sleeping bag, at most you have a warmer shirt and neck warmer, and it's cold at night. So you use mattresses and blankets that are there.

 

Where do you think this all originates? You find it wrong to smash china, but you talked about people eager to do this, or to leave inscriptions on the walls. What do you think motivates this?

 

it's the heat of operation, as well as racism. Those who smashed stuff did it because it belonged to Arabs, as well as because of the general army atmosphere. You're in your own shit and writing on a wall doesn't seem so terrible to you. if I was the guy who came back to his own house and saw the wall with the writing, I would be a lot more upset about the fact that my whole orchard was gone. This was an operational need – to raze the area and prevent infiltration of Qassam launching crews. in the midst of all of this, the other stuff doesn't look that bad.

 

 

Was there a lot of destruction around? What was destroyed?

 

Mainly orchards. Houses – some were demolished by D-9s, like the part in (the film) Waltz with Bashir where the tank moves backwards and crashes into a house? Same thing happened to 'our' house with a D-9 bulldozer. It made a hole in the first floor, and you also saw results of the previous shelling.

 

The D-9s were working around the clock? Yes, nearly.

 

What did they raze?

 

First of all, the orchards. then houses too, nearby, to open routes, to prevent shelter in the whole immediate area of the house we were in. The D-9 clears a path for the heavy ApCs, a path that did not exist before. there were orchards and hothouses there once. next to our house, at the edge of the neighborhood,

 

The bulldozer created an earth mound so that when you came out, you couldn't be fired at from the distant houses. They actually kept changing the terrain.

 

 

The Breaking the Silence Testimonies Booklet is Available for Downloading

Breaking the Silence has posted the booklet of soldier testimonies in English here

Here is also the link http://www.shovrimshtika.org/oferet/ENGLISH_oferet.pdf

Do yourself a favor – go to any one of the websites that have comment sections, where the BtS testimonies are discussed, and just leave the link in the comment section. I have seen many people over the last day try to discredit the testimonies with arguments taken from the IDF's hysterical reactions – without having read the booklet.

You may not agree with the testimonies. But do yourself a favor and read them. If you want to read the testimonies that have been quickly engineered by the ultra right wing Stand With Israel organization, read them, too.

And look at some of the videos on the BtS site when you get a chance.

Today’s Breaking the Silence Testimony

I promised a testimony a day until Tisha B'Av. Today is about vandalism, not looting. There has been ample testimony of vandalism. I blogged about it in real time (see some of the posts on my Top Magnes Zionist posts). The only people who don't believe these testimonies are those in denial. These are the sort of people who would defend the IDF Spokesperson no matter what he says, and no matter how many time he changes the story.

Testimony 35 Vandalism

... He (one of the soldiers) was in the room. I was in the position, and looked through the window, sitting. He opened a child's bag. The family was not there, they had run away. He took out notebooks and text books and ripped them. One guy smashed cupboards for kicks, out of boredom. there were guys arguing with the platoon commander before we left the house a week later, over why he wouldn't let them smash the picture hanging there. they think he was being petty with them. It should be noted that the deputy company commander at the debriefing yelled at them that they're dealing with non essential issues and we've got a humanitarian issue here.

Do you recall anything else related to vandalism?

The deputy company commander's staff wrote "death to Arabs" on their wall.

You said earlier they wondered why they weren't being allowed to smash another picture, too.

This "too" is due to an atmosphere of... After getting out of there, i heard about the letter that reservists wrote (to the Palestinian family that lived in the house they occupied), saying they were sorry. i thought it was a different world, because of the atmosphere on the ground. i didn't regard this house either as a house that I should respect and leave neat behind me. For example, once I shat on the roof because i had nowhere else to do it. Leaving this house clean was just not the first thing on my mind. There was simply this atmosphere. But about stealing: the company commander, apparently under orders of the battalion commander, held a shame parade to check if stuff was stolen. How did he do it? He didn't tell the commanders to check each individual soldier. He said: "You (soldiers) pair up, everyone checks his mate for stuff taken. then you don't have to yell out if you find anything, just come to me discretely, or to the platoon commander and sort it out." Obviously either this company commander is a total idiot or he just didn't want such stuff to be found out.

So there was a shame parade where everyone checked his buddy?

It was bullshit. And I'm sure there was looting. I can't tell you anything more specific.

 

Shabbat Shalom

 

 

Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem – Against Haredim

Cooler heads have prevailed, and the Haredi mother who allegedly starved her youngest child, has been released from police detention and sent into "house arrest." Her arrest set off big Haredi riots against police, burning trash, smashing things, etc.

I tend to distrust news reports about Haredim the same way I distrust news reports about Palestinians; both are hated sectors in Israeli society (though the haredim that participate in the state are much more privileged.) The woman's cause has been taken up by the non-Zionist Edah Haredit (though not officially) and anti-Zionist Neturei Karta (a group that exists, in Israel, mostly on paper; I doubt that there are more than a couple of hundred "card-carrying" members. ) Some of the more active protesters have come from the Toledot Aharon hasidim; I can't remember which branch.

Why is this happening now? It is an interesting combination of many factors. First, there is the ultra-Haredi distrust of the secular state, its social service agencies, and its law enforcement; second, the omnipresent feelings of victimization; third, the resentment over the secular mayor's decision to keep a parking garage open on the Sabbath (and their subsequent failure to stop it); fourth, the failure over stopping the Gay Rights parade; fifth, the confidence that you can get away with rioting against Jewish police; sixth, the belief that the arrest is bogus because the child has cancer (denied by the hospital) and the mother was taking care of her child.

Oh, and seventh, it's vacation time for yeshiva bachurim, and it's hot outside. Those of us who have lived in Jerusalem for a long time and remember the Shabbat wars over the road to Ramot, Bar-Ilan street, the archeological digs, etc, will recall that protests of this sort are a summer activity.

Today's Haaretz editorialized against the municipality's decision not to collect trash from the Haredi neighborhoods. They called it "collective punishment," and they were right. Of course, with a ex-Kadimah mayor, collective punishment comes easy.

I have been hearing from my modern orthodox/religious Zionist friends, Haredi-bashers, that they are particularly offended that the anti-Zionist Neture Karta has been involved. I have heard more than one person saying, "Why do we let those guys stay here anyway? Let's ship them to Gaza or Iran, where they consort with the enemies of Israel." (Of course, it is a tradition in this country to kick out people who were living here before the Zionists came.)

But seriously, the whole episode raises questions about the level of "inter-vtribal" hate and intolerance. A liberal society cannot tolerate rioting, but a smart society can try to figure out how to negotiate so that it doesn't come to that. Being right doesn't mean being smart.

No more protests until…tomorrow, when the parking garage opens. Let's keep our fingers crossed that nothing else major happens until the 1^st of Elul, when the vacation is over.

Now They’re Shooting at the Messenger-Shooters

When the message of Israeli war crimes in Gaza was delivered yesterday in the form of a 110-page booklet of IDF soldiers' testimonies, the knee-jerk response of the rightwing government and the IDF was to 'shoot the messenger', the IDF veterans group, Breaking the Silence. But now sensible folks are beginning to weigh in. Amos Harel, who has close knowledge and ties with the military, wrote a good piece this morning here.

A new wave of damning testimonies by Israel Defense Forces soldiers who took part in the recent fighting in Gaza has unleashed a knee-jerk reaction from the already sensitive Israeli public. (Leading the charge was Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who on Wednesday demanded that all criticism in military matters be directed at him, not the soldiers.)

The testimonies were released by "Breaking the Silence," an organization of former soldiers who use personal experiences to illustrate what they perceive to be the folly of Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories. Once again, the organization has been singled out for rebuke. …

The nay-sayers should simmer down. The men behind the testimonies are soldiers, that is certain. Three of them met with Haaretz, at the paper's request. While there is no definite way of vouching for the credibility of their reports, it is safe to say that they did fight in Gaza and that they provided enough authentic detail to prove that they are not imposters.

The refusal to disclose their identities, especially for those witnesses still completing their mandatory military service, stems from a fear of possible retribution, both from their commanders and from their peers.

Telling their stories to outside organizations, in particular the media, is seen as tattling. It was enough for these soldiers to hear from graduates of a pre-army prep course about the onslaught they faced after previous Cast Lead testimonies - vehemently denied in the Military Advocate General's subsequent report - to understand that their fears are not unfounded. It will be interesting to hear the full version of events once these soldiers are discharged.

On the flip side, Breaking the Silence, founded in 2004 by veterans of the second intifada, has a clear political agenda, and can no longer be classed as a "human rights organization." Any organization whose website includes the claim by members to expose the "corruption which permeates the military system" is not a neutral observer.

The organization has a clear agenda: to expose the consequences of IDF troops serving in the West Bank and Gaza. This seems more of interest to its members than seeking justice for specific injustices. The fact that the material was published just six months after the end of the conflict will diminish its impact in the eyes of a public supportive of their troops.

But this does not mean that the documented evidence, some of which was videotaped, is fabricated. It goes without saying, however, that the vague contextual descriptions hamper the possibility that the IDF could use such testimonies in a criminal investigation.

Harel is not a supporter of BtS, and he does not share BtS's skepticism that the IDF is incapable, in a long-term occupation, of acting as a professional army with moral standards. Well and good. But he knows better than to dismiss the testimonies as false, fabricated, or of no value.

And Nahman Shai, former IDF spokesperson and now a Kadima member has called for forming an independent commission which would include both internal and external investigators, to investigate the claims of Breaking the Silence. Such a committee would be able to examine the testimonies and determine their veracity. Read it here

It may be that Shai is just grandstanding, especially since he knows that neither the IDF nor the government will hearken to his call. (Opposition members of parliament do that all the time.) But the fact remains he criticized explicitly the IDF reaction to the report (I heard him on the radio – the IDF radio station – with Ilan Dayyan this morning, where he said that the report should be taken seriously.)

White Phosphorus Use In Gazan Inhabited Areas Confirmed by Israeli Soldiers

The illegal use of white phosophorus weapons by the IDF in Operation Cast Lead has now been confirmed in one of the soliders' testimonies, published yesterday. Of course, people have know about it for the last six months. But the lesson to be learned from the story is how the IDF uses a forbidden weapon and lies about it when discovered.

Let's recall the timeline here:

January 5. The Times of London reports use of white phosphorus by IDF.

January 6. IDF Spokesperson contacted by HRW first claims that its use is to mark targets, and then denies all use.

January 8. The Times publishes photographs of white phosphorus munitions.

January 13. IDF Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi tells a Knesset committee: "The IDF…does not use white phosphorus."

January 13. The IRC says that white phosphorus can be used to create a smokescreen or illuminate a target.

January 17. Mark Regev, Israeli government spokesperson, says that Israel has been cleared by the IRC. IRC denies this.

January 19. Ashkenazi announces IDF commision of inquiry to determine whether white phosophorus has been used.

April 22. "The probe, conducted by artillery officer Col. Shai Alkalai, revealed that white phosphorus weapons were used strictly in open fields and not in urban centers. The weapon was also not used against terrorists, but for marking and ranging when the forces targeted Kassam rocket cells operating in open areas. The IDF said it knew of only one case when white phosphorus was used for its burning capacity. That incident also took place in an open field, to burn away shrubbery and uncover tunnel openings" Jerusalem Post article, April 22.

And now, the soldier's testimony:

July 15: "... another case we had in our designated area was some house that according to intelligence information was said to be booby-trapped, that it contained a tunnel and the like. in other words, it was said to be highly dangerous. Troops did not enter it because it could be mined and if there were tunnels then there was the risk of soldiers being kidnapped etc. So several shells were fired at it and no explosions were heard on the scale that would have indicated that it did contain whatever it was suspected to contain. Then some order arrived to ignite it. The way to do that was to actually fire phosphorus shells from above. What the phosphorus does is to let out an umbrella of fire over the target and naturally that ignites the whole house. Finally we also saw all kinds of secondary blasts going, and two Qassam rockets flew out of there towards Israel, probably aimed and charged. There were lots of other things there and more secondary blasts, but that was the only time in our own area when phosphorus was used. But in this case there was definitely use of phosphorus ammunition." Soldier Testimony 42.

Now, some readers will dismiss this last testimony, along with the testimonies of the human rights organizations and the international media. My question to them is:

What would it take for you to believe that white phosphorus was used in inhabited areas, in cases where house demolition was considered to be a military necessity, and no other way had worked?

Shooting the Messenger

On a day when the Loonies of the Right (David Bernstein, Mark Regev, AIPAC) went after Human Rights Watch (for good rebuttals, see here and here and here), some of the same Loonies and others (like the NGOMonitor) went after Breaking the Silence for releasing the Soldier Testimonies from Gaza.

What were some of the criticisms? That the testimonies were not representative, that they were made anonymously, that some of the accusations were based on hearsay, and, finally, that if BtS had wanted to stop the practices, then it would have simply given the names, rank and serial numbers of each interviewee (including the ones who broke IDF policy by talking to BtS), to the IDF. And the most moral army in the world would have investigated each story.

All the above misses the point. BtS did not issue a human rights report. It issued a collection of testimonies. Are they representative? How the hell does anybody know? BtS certainly did not make that claim in the booklet. Did the interviewees include hearsay evidence? Of course, they did; they spoke honestly about what they knew, what they didn't knew, and what they heard. Clearly any intelligent reader will treat each claim with the respect and skepticism it deserves.

What the IDF apologists are doing is deliberately looking through the booklet and saying, "Ha! This is something that was not directly witnessed." They carefully omit anything that doesn't serve their cause.

That is the difference between them and BtS. I read the interviews, and the thing that struck me the most was – these were real soldiers talking about their experiences. Some of them defend what they did, and some of what they did was defensible. It's all in the booklet.

One of the testimonies, as I reported here yesterday, was about the use of white phosphorus. Remember, the IDF initially denied all use of white phosphorus. Then it retreated, when clear evidence was provided, to making two claims: a) all white phosphorus use was legal; b) any use that may not have been legal would be investigated.

Now, here is one testimony that nobody claims is "representative." We are not talking about defecating in the living room of Gazan houses. All you need is one soldier witnessing one use of white phosphorus in a inhabited area, and you have prima facie evidence of a serious war crime.

And this brings me to my final point. The little big brouhaha in Israel (actually, the big big brouhaha today was the haredim demonstrating in Jerusalem) was over BtS's going to the goyim outside Israel with its reports. If the ex-soldiers who head BtS were really interested in reforming the IDF, they would have gone to the IDF. Hence, all that interested them was blackening IDF's name.

Well, I am not a member of BtS, and I DO NOT SPEAK for the organization. But I do know something about its history.

BtS was founded about five years ago, during the Second Intifada. It started with a photo exhibition of IDF soldiers in Hebron. That exhibition made front page headlines. At one point, the IDF seized the pictures and said it would try the soldiers who had participated in illegal activities against the Hebronites. After the pictures were returned to the group by an embarrassed IDF, the group was invited to the Knesset to present the exhibition. They were invited to military preparatory programs to talk about their work. They were almost national heroes. And the group thought, naively, that things would change.

They didn't. The IDF's conduct only worsened.

I don't think that the IDF, under the present circumstances, can be seriously reformed. The problem is not with the IDF; it is with Israeli society that tolerates the IDF's "secrets and lies". The IDF will always find a way to make its war crimes kosher. They even have Asa Kasher as their in-house ethicist. Only when they are caught on tape do they change their story. On the other hand, I don't view the IDF folks as inherently evil. I think that they just don't get what it means for an army to act morally. As I said earlier today, if they simply dropped the "most moral army" claim, if they recognized the failings, that would be a first step. But they are in deep denial.

BtS's audience is the public and not even the entire public, but the moral public. Their real audience are the moral people, on the left and on the right, inside and outside Israel, who will begin the discussion about how to bring about change to Israeli society. That will not be easy.

Still, consider the following: the group collected more testimonies this time around than ever before. They may not have credibility with the Hasbarah types and the apologists for "the most moral army in the world."

But they clearly have credibility with a growing number of soldiers who were deeply troubled by what they witnessed and what they heard, including the IDF spokesperson's lies. (See Testimony 1). And these soldiers know that BtS will let them tell their story, in their words, and will present that story to Israel and to the world.