The Palestine-Israel Journal is an important quarterly magazine that details the reality of life in Palestine and Israel proper. Based in East Jerusalem, such Arab, Palestinian and Jewish voices are even more essential in these dark days.
Following the recent criticism of the local Zionist lobby sending journalists and politicians on free trips to Israel, today’s Canberra Times features an interesting piece by Joe Wakim, founder of the Australian Arabic Council and a former multicultural affairs commissioner:
If we are going to blow the whistle on undeclared overseas junkets by our MPs, then we need to take a deep breath before we exhale. To be fair and ethical, this issue extends far beyond Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon and his subsidised trips to China.
As a former Australian ambassador to Israel, Ross Burns, recently declared, a ”disproportionate number of visits” to Israel have been part-funded by ”Israeli lobby groups”. After China, Israel was the most frequent subsidised destination for our politicians, even ahead of the United States, according to a recent media survey. Since the last federal election 13 MPs have visited Israel.
From the perspective of Australia’s national interest, this is indeed ”disproportionate”. Neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Egypt constitute far greater sources of immigration than does Israel. Surely it would make more sense for our politicians to deepen their understanding of the previous homelands of so many fellow Australians. They would understand the demography, geography, poverty and opportunity…
Despite all the euphemisms, we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and we generally do not bite the hand that feeds us.
Despite the predictable rhetoric that ”we let them make up their own minds” and allow them to ”see for themselves”, this initiative appears to be yielding a high return for the investors.
Richard Silverstein asks the question that the mainstream media should be asking:
So here’s a question: when are IDF personnel ever held accountable for their misdeeds? Answer: only when it’s captured on video and the entire world watches via YouTube. IDF Moral: ensure there is no video documentation of its misdeeds.
Here’s a question. Should a Middle East correspondent for a major news organisation (in this case, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) have any experience in the region?
The ABC’s Anne Barker just arrived in Jerusalem and filed this piece for Correspondent’s Report:
It’s one thing to see a disaster zone on television or read about it in the papers. But no matter how good the journalism or the footage, you never really get the full picture until you’ve been there.
And that’s how it was with Gaza; nothing really can prepare you for the devastation.
It didn’t help that I’d only arrived in Israel two days before as the ABC’s new Middle East correspondent. I’d never even been to the Middle East before.
Yet here I was on my second day jet lagged, culture shocked, confused, heading to Gaza for my first assignment. And what I saw wasn’t at all what I expected.
I think I’d naively believed that life inside Gaza, before the bombs at least, wasn’t so different from life outside – in terms of the people, the buildings, the quality of life.
God help us. Yes, Anne, Gaza is just like a holiday camp, but with more bombs.
There is much to criticise in this Haaretz editorial (not least its optimism that a two-state solution is still feasible, let alone moral), but one can’t fault its determination to pressure the hardline Israeli government against trying to maintain the intolerable status-quo:
History provides very few opportunities to utterly change political realities. It seems such an opportunity has presented itself. U.S. President Barack Obama’s peace plan is giving Israel and the entire region a rare chance for real change; it must not be missed.
In the plan, whose main points were reported by Akiva Eldar in Haaretz on Friday, Israel will hold bilateral talks with the Palestinians and Syrians at the same time. It is based on the Saudi peace plan, which offers Israel normalization with the Arab world in exchange for withdrawing from the territories and the establishment of a Palestinian state. The United States, for its part, will offer Israel a security package to include a demilitarization of the territories and the stationing of a multinational force there for a few years. It is a comprehensive move to bring peace to the region, which for decades has been unable to escape the cycle of violence and bloodshed.
Now is the time for bold moves. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have been given the chance to surprise the whole world and shake off the meaningless past formulas; to respond to the initiative courageously and enthusiastically. Now that the dream of a Greater Israel has been set aside, even by some people on the right, we must hope Netanyahu will continue what another prime minister from his party started 30 years ago – Menachem Begin.
There is now a president in Washington who wants to leave his mark of change on the world. We must hope we have such a statesman in Jerusalem, too. Some Arab regimes want peace and normalization with Israel, and hope to rein in fundamentalism, as does Israel. There is no better weapon against fundamentalism than peace.
This is Netanyahu’s chance to enter the history books; a right-wing prime minister who displays leadership and shows his people and country the way to peace, security and prosperity. We must not fear the plan’s great scope and boldness; peace can be achieved with both Syria and the Palestinians. This is not the time to mention the difficulties that could block the path, it is the time to see the opportunities. So next month, when Netanyahu goes to Washington, he will have to join Obama’s impressive effort and say to his host clearly: Israel wants peace and is ready for peace now.
Imagine a world without Hitler, mass killings and maybe the state of Israel?
If not for the Holocaust, there would be as many as 32 million Jews worldwide, instead of the current 13 million, demographer Professor Sergio Della Pergola has written in a soon-to-be published article.
Independent Australian Jewish Voices blogger Michael Brull beautifully skewers the parochialism and racism within the Australian Jewish News, a paper containing countless examples of paranoid, bigoted and clueless Jews. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. This is how Jews want to be viewed in the wider community? Some clearly do. Palestinians are all terrorists. The occupation doesn’t exist. And on it goes.
Perhaps this is the funniest. After the resounding success of the recent Jeff Halper tour, Jewish academic Dvir Abramovich writes the following:
When Prof Halper travels the world and describes Israel as an apartheid state, shooting his arrows into Israel’s heart, Jews are hurt. Not only because they may disagree with his assessment, but because the fibre of deep connection, loyalty and commitment to Israel means that any attack upon it resonates as if it were an attack on our sons, daughters and brothers.
Brull concludes:
That’s right, when Halper criticises his own government, Abramovich’s feelings are hurt. More than this, Abramovich seems to consider himself a more devoted Israeli than someone who actually lives there. Why is it that people who call themselves Zionists don’t feel at all inconsistent in not moving to Israel? And why is it that Abramovich feels more loyal to a foreign government than its own citizens, on the basis of their political views?
Perhaps Dvir would like to see the real Israel, rather than some imagined country that doesn’t exist. Reading the blog by Maariv journalist Noam Sheizaf would be a good start. His words are sobering and indicate the deep racism within Israeli society. Such as:
I have often claimed here that the public atmosphere in Israel is becoming more and more racist towards Arabs. A good example of this can be found in the comments (“talkbacks”) on all major internet sites…
This morning I decided to try and break Ynet’s laws. I found this short interview with MK Ahmed Tibi – taken from Yedioth Ahronoth’s magazine for men, “Blazer” – and I sent the following fascist comment (my Italic):
“Ahmed Tibi is a typical Arab. He might talk nicely, but that only makes him more dangerous. If he could, he would exterminate us all. The problem is that for now he can’t, so, with the help of the left, he uses Israeli Democracy to destroy us all. When will we understand that all the Arabs are a threat to the state of Israel and to the life of each and every one of us? This is a Jewish state – that means a state for Jews only. It is time we start to act to defend ourselves”.
By writing this, I’m not only breaking Ynet’s Terms of Use, but might also be in violation of the 1986 law against incitement to racism, according to which I might be liable to up to 5 years in jail.
Well guess what? My comment got published (no. 330, under the nick “Avner”), and I don’t think the police will be coming for me soon. If they do, they’ll need to locate the authors of most of the other 535 comments for this article (at the time of writing) – some of them make mine look extremely mild.
How can this be? It is clear that a similar comment against Jews, Blacks or Gays wouldn’t pass the monitor. Furthermore, I had my little experiment on Ynet not just because it is the most important news site in Israel, but also since it is known to have a very strict comments policy. Other sites will allow things which Ynet wouldn’t. And even on Ynet, one can describe all the Arabs as an existential threat to Jews, and to call for collective action against them – and pass for a legitimate side in a debate (and it wasn’t even a real debate, just a profile of an Arab MK in a men’s’ magazine). On other articles you can find worse examples – expressions of joy over the murder of civilians, specific calls for violence, etc.
Yes, we should worry about upsetting Jews and hurting their feelings.
What’s one colonial state (Israel) doing with another colonial wannabe (Iran)?
Security sources say Israel and Iran are conducting rival intelligence operations in Eritrea, the poor African state on the Red Sea.
The Israelis fear Eritrea could be a flashpoint if Iranian Revolutionary Guards continue to ship arms to militants in Gaza via the Eritrean port of Assab. Israel is said to have two Eritrean bases, one a “listening post” for signals intelligence, the other a supply base for its German-built submarines.
The Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil people, in all its graphic detail.
Yet another example of a Western-backed nation using state terrorism to make its point.
Following the revelation that the BBC Trust has censured a BBC journalist for supposed bias in his Middle East reporting, the London Independent today publishes a few letters in response:
In comments on the Jeremy Bowen affair there seems a constant confusion between two different meanings of “impartial”. The first it that if two parties disagree a report should give equal weight to the arguments of each and imply they have equal strength. The second is that if an impartial look leads to the conclusion that one side has the better of the argument then there is no harm in letting that become apparent.
I am also struck by how small both supposed errors are in the context of Bowen’s work as a whole. I am astonished the BBC report did not take the opportunity to place these two points in a wider context, and to defend its Middle East reporting as a whole – particularly when any reporting not favourable to Israel is routinely subject to organised attack.
No doubt some of these attacks are consciously biased. But in my own wide Jewish acquaintance I am more struck by a degree of self-deception, of a sort for which it is hard not to have some sympathy. Such people are not simply in the usual political position of making the strongest possible claims for their own side. They rather remind me of fond parents who cannot bear to face the fact that their only child, reared after such tribulations, over such a period of time and with such care, is in danger of turning out to be a monster.
David Boll
London NW6
Robert Fisk writes: “Anyone who has read the history of Zionism will be aware that its aim was to dispossess the Arabs and take over Palestine.” (“How can you trust the cowardly BBC?”, 16 April).
It appears that Fisk is not very familiar with the history of Zionism. In November of 1947, the Zionist leadership accepted the UN partition plan, while the Arabs vehemently rejected it. They refused to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in Palestine, regardless of its size. They started a war to prevent by force the implementation of the UN plan. Had they accepted the UN plan, their state would have been 61 years old today and thousands of lives would have been spared on both sides.
To speak of the security barrier between Israel and the West Bank, without acknowledging that it was constructed in response to a flood of suicide bombings, that killed hundreds of innocent civilians, is obscene.
Dr Jacob Amir
Jerusalem
After all the hype, propaganda and dis-information over the upcoming Durban II anti-racism conference in Geneva (see here, here and here), a more measured understanding of the politics is required; it’s not pretty:
As the wreckage from Israel’s recent siege on Gaza continues to smoulder, international civil society organisations are assembling this week in Switzerland to address Israel’s crimes of military occupation and racism.
But any discussion on Israel’s actions in Palestine will be excluded from the formal framework at the Durban Anti-Racism Review Conference in Geneva Monday. Israel-Palestine has been deliberately eliminated from the official programme, structured by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR). Civil society groups believe that the United States, countries within the European Union and Israel pressured the UN to omit a review of Israel’s racial discrimination against Palestinians.
Hundreds of delegations from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and human rights organisations will converge in Geneva for the Durban Review Conference on Racism. The conference is a follow-up to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, that outlined an international legal and political concept to deal with global issues of race and human rights.
Immediately following that conference, the WCAR NGO forum recommended an international campaign of isolation towards Israel’s institutionalised “brand of apartheid and other racist crimes against humanity.”
The Durban Review Conference website states that the 2009 Geneva symposium is designed to “review progress and assess the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA).” Adopted by general consensus at the 2001 WCAR in Durban, “the DDPA is a comprehensive, action-oriented document that proposes concrete measures to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. It is holistic in its vision, addresses a wide range of issues, and contains far- reaching recommendations and practical measures.”
In order to assess and review any progress made since the 2001 WCAR in Durban, Palestinian human rights organisations planned several side events that were to take place within the schedule of the conference.
However, two weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner’s office unilaterally cancelled all side-events pertaining to Palestine issues. Ingrid Jarradat- Gassner, director of the BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Bethlehem, one of several Palestine-based organisations attending the Durban Review conference, tells IPS that BADIL and the other NGOs had organised a side-event specifically about how and why they see Israel as a “regime of institutionalised racial discrimination on both sides of the Green Line.”
Here’s a fascinating collection of Israeli bloggers talking about life as Jews in Israel. The message is depressing, namely that Arabs are virtually invisible and the occupation doesn’t exist.
Example one:
The truth is, a lot of people like me grew up in Israel, and never really mingled with Arabs. I grew up in Haifa, the “City of co-existence”. But I only saw them when I went down the hill to buy a shawarma. They lived in their neighborhoods, and I lived in mine. They went to their schools, and I went to mine.
I served in the navy, so I didn’t meet Palestinians at checkpoints, roadblocks or while enforcing curfews. Even when I was shot at by Arabs (Lebanese, in this case), I couldn’t see them, they were so far away… All in all, I led an Arab-free existence in a country predominately concerned with them.
Example two:
Many people don’t think there is such a thing as “the occupation”. That’s the unfortunate result of the Oslo Accord and the establishing of the Palestinians Authority. People don’t seem to understand that Israel is still in control of almost every aspect of the Palestinians’ lives – which, as a result, have been reduced to little more than survival.
In fact, most Israelis don’t know much about Palestinians’ lives. Unlike the years before Oslo, almost nobody visits the West Bank anymore, and Palestinians don’t enter Israel. For most Israelis, the Palestinian problem is an abstract concept, almost imaginary. The drive from some Tel Aviv suburbs to the nearest Palestinian city takes about 10 minutes, but these are two separate worlds.
