Another small step in the global campaign against Israel:
Despite Israel’s oppressive tactics against it, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has marked additional victories with many institutional investors divesting from or blacklisting Israeli military contractor Elbit Systems. One of the largest Dutch pension funds told The Electronic Intifada today that it is selling off its shares in Elbit.
The likely Mossad assassination of the Hamas official in Dubai is turning into yet another PR disaster for Israel.
Here’s Paul McGeough on Democracy Now! late last week explaining the latest and Robert Fisk on Al-Jazeera.
The lives of the six British citizens whose identities were stolen by a Mossad assassination team are in danger, and they should not even consider leaving their homes in Israel for at least two years, a former senior officer in the Israeli intelligence agency warned yesterday. The British relatives of those whose passports were used by Mossad should also be aware of the risk of revenge attacks for the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, in Dubai last month, he added.
Victor Ostrovsky, a former colonel in Mossad, said: “If they go outside the country, why wouldn’t they be a target? For Hamas, just to send a message.”
A lieutenant commander in the Israeli navy before being recruited by Mossad, the former agent and author of The Other Side of Deception – which the Israeli government tried to ban in the 1990s – said the men should not try to travel abroad: “They’re safe so to speak, until somebody kills them. I would tell them: do not travel outside the country for at least two years, under any circumstances.”
The Jewish Forward believes the Israeli government has shown itself to be wonderfully open after the Goldstone report (what are these editorial writers smoking?).
Yet in its own, painful way, the Goldstone report has been a revealing exercise. It revealed that the Israeli military has made a genuine attempt to investigate many of the charges contained in the report, and done so with welcome transparency — posting its latest response in English online, for instance. Nineteen incidents involving shootings of civilians during Operation Cast Lead have been turned into criminal cases, and two senior IDF officers have been disciplined.
Last week I interviewed author Michael Goldfarb on his book Emancipation, a story of Jewish liberation in Europe after the French Revolution.
It’s an interesting read but Goldfarb, like so many Jews of a certain age and experience, appears unwilling to extend his desire for rights towards the Palestinians. He said during our chat in Sydney and also on ABC Radio the following (when asked about his views on Israel):
Let me give you the irrational one first. Um… 5 years before I was born Auschwitz was in existence. I feel that the existence of the state of Israel is as good a guarantee as I can possibly have that that will never happen again. Not because it’s a militaristic state – a nuclear-armed Jewish state makes me feel, atheist that I am, secular and integrated as I am, assimilated, a little bit safer. I acknowledge to a very considerable degree that’s irrational.
Such comments are a few seconds after Goldfarb said he thought Jews had a moral responsiblity to lead by example and help liberate other people.
And yet, in classic Zionist form, Israel can pretty much do what it wants to Arabs.
There was no criticism of the occupation. None.
Bradley Burston in Haaretz has recently been on fire. Angry, passionate and distressed with the state of his country.
His latest is no exception, titled, “I envy the people who hate Israel“:
At times like these, I envy the people who passionately, frankly, with all their hearts, despise Israel.
Hate Israel enough, and the Jewish state’s failings and blunders, its self-satisfied blindness and its resultant self-destructive policies, cause not pain, but delight.
Hate Israel enough, and you’re spared all inclination to try to fix what’s wrong, to work to set it right. On the contrary, hate Israel enough, and you may come to believe not only that that the country deserves to be punished to the point of replacement by a different state – Israel may well do the job all by itself.
This is one of those times.
I have made my peace with the fact that this is not the same country I moved to, so long ago. I learned when I first came, that Israel was not the country I’d thought I was moving to.
But this is different. This time is a test for every Israeli, and so far, we are failing.
There was once a time when Israel longed to be a member in good standing of the community of nations. There was a time when one of its fondest goals was to end its status as a nation in quarantine, boycotted, unrecognized, unwanted, kept firmly at arm’s length.
No longer. Without asking its people, without a second thought, Israel, at its highest level, has taken an executive decision. Unable to beat the forces who want to see Israel as one of the world’s primary pariah states, it has resolved to join them.
Determined to take our fate into its own hands. Israel, at its highest level, has decided that the job of delegitimizing the Jewish state must not be left to foreigners and amateurs. Showing itself desperate to be a pariah state, Israel will now get it done on its own.
The New York Times reports on the just finished Sundance Film Festival and highlights the growing fascination with the documentary form. What is truth is always a key question:
Documentaries are hot stuff at festivals like Sundance and sometimes at the art house too, even as the discussion of their relationship to the truth often lags behind. This became clear after watching a lineup of documentaries at Sundance that also included “A Film Unfinished,” an investigation into an incomplete Nazi propaganda movie that’s sometimes mistakenly labeled a documentary, and which was shot in the Warsaw ghetto in May 1942, the year before the uprising. The director Yael Hersonski, using generous clips from the Nazi movie and excerpts from diaries written by ghetto inhabitants, illustrates how the original footage was carefully staged, as evident by multiple takes of some scenes. In one section a healthy-looking woman walks past two pitiful waifs with apparent indifference, and then she does so again.
Over the decades excerpts from this and other similar ghetto movies have been used in well-intended documentaries about the Holocaust, which invests them with a level of factuality they cannot support. These images don’t reveal the whole reality of Jewish life in the ghetto during the war; they show how the Nazi propaganda machine wanted Jewish life to be immortalized. As the historian Lucy Dawidowicz once pointed out about a 1960s British film that used such visuals, there were no Nazi films about the secret ghetto schools, libraries and political organizations and none about the “valiant men and women, boys and girls” who fought in the uprising.
Ms. Hersonski’s documentary demolishes the truth claims of those Nazi images. To an extent, it is the ineluctable weight of the Holocaust that allows her to engage such questions at all. The issue of truth, unless Michael Moore is in the vicinity, is often left off the table when it comes to discussions about documentary cinema, perhaps because critics don’t have the time, resources or inclination for the requisite fact-checking or because the issue is at odds with our postmodern age, in which the truth is said to be conditional. Part of what is so gratifying about “A Film Unfinished,” which is often painful to watch, is its ethical insistence that there are true things in the world, and that it is necessary for us to know them.
How does Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post report an attack when it’s “only” committed by a white person (instead of a Muslim?)
J Street continues to walk a very fine line between pleasing the hard Right on the Goldstone report and Iran sanctions while also demanding more open debate in America about the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Here’s Jeremy Ben-Ami’s latest statement:
I’ve just landed in the US following an exhilarating week leading a delegation of five members of Congress to Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. [1]
The trip, sponsored by the J Street Education Fund, exposed key friends of Israel in Congress to complexity on the ground, to divergent opinions and to first-hand controversy.
The Delegation visited Jerusalem, Ramallah and Amman, meeting with politicians in and out of government. We dined and debated with civil society leaders in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. We heard the first-hand powerful narratives of Israeli settlers, families in Sderot, human rights activists, Gilad Shalit’s father, and descendants of Palestinian refugees.
With one notable exception – as you may know, we were placed under a so-called “boycott” by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. On the heels of telling the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations that J Street should stop calling itself something it’s not (i.e., “pro-Israel”), Ayalon leaked to Israeli media word of a boycott of the group, supposedly preventing us from meeting with Israeli officials. [2]
Needless to say, the members of Congress were none-too-pleased, holding a press conference to express their shock and issuing a statement demanding clarification from the Government. [3]
For many – from Israeli political insiders and media to American Jewish leaders and politicians – this incident was just the latest in a series of indications that the Foreign Ministry in this Government is less an open front door to Israel than a checkpoint for ideological purity.
This week’s spat between the Ministry and our Delegation deepens concerns about the increasing inability of some in Israel and in the US to distinguish between criticism of or disagreement with Israeli policy and outright hostility to the state itself. [4]
The more supporters of Israel put themselves in a defensive crouch, lashing out at the slightest hint of criticism, the less meaningful their entreaties will be when the threats are real and the enemies truly lethal.
Thankfully, within twenty-four hours, the Government in this case backtracked, apologizing to the Delegation. (See Jerusalem Post and Haaretz coverage of yesterday’s apologies). [5, 6]
There is much beyond this controversy to share from the visit. We were struck by the disparity between the fierce urgency felt by many whose lives focus on solving the conflict and the lack of urgency felt by many others whose lives are more removed from day-to-day contact with the conflict.
We heard dramatically varying views on the state of American diplomacy – with some unsatisfied with the tactics, pace and results of the Mitchell effort to date, and others expressing great confidence in Senator Mitchell and highly appreciative of his patience, experience and skills.
We heard from those who believe that only if the threat from Iran is dealt with, can Israel with confidence turn to dealing with the Palestinian conflict – and from those for whom action on resolving Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is a step toward dealing with the Iranian threat.
The diversity of opinions is remarkable; the depth of passion unmistakable.
But I take away from the whole experience a troubling sense that beyond any particular issue of the moment – beyond Iran, Goldstone, Jerusalem, settlements, or Danny Ayalon - there is a fundamental conflict rising up to face the Jewish people as a whole.
There is in our community – and by that I include the whole of world Jewry as one people from Israel to the US and around the globe – a struggle developing between two camps with radically different visions of Jewish expression in the 21st century.
On one side of this struggle are those committed to our vision of time-honored Jewish and democratic values – grounded in respect for “the other,” a tolerance for dissent, and a willingness to sacrifice territory for peace.
On the other side are those who seem willing to muffle dissent, view all conflict as zero-sum, and place retaining captured land and territory at the center of its value system.
For a while now, it has been popular to say that for Israel there is a choice ahead between the land, being Jewish, and being democratic. Many leading Israelis have come to see that it’s possible only to have two of the three.
I think the choice for world Jewry is similarly profound and stark. As a people – do we line up with those who seek to hang on to all of “Greater Israel” and watch our Jewish and democratic values erode in Israel and in our community, or do we stand up urgently for territorial compromise and for behavior in Israel and in our community that reflects our cherished and long-held values?
More than ever, it’s clear to me that we’re not fighting simply over Israeli or American foreign policy. We’re in a larger and more significant battle over who we are as a people in this new century and how our people are defined collectively for ourselves and for others by the behavior of the country that serves as our national expression.
We’ll be in touch,
- Jeremy
Jeremy Ben-Ami
Executive Director
J Street
February 19, 2010[1] The five members of Congress who traveled with the Congressional Delegation are Reps. Lois Capps (CA-23), William Delahunt (MA-10), Bob Filner (CA-51), Mary Jo Kilroy (OH-15), and Donald Payne (NJ-10).
[2] “Deputy FM Ayalon addresses Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, February 17, 2010.
[3] “Rep. Delahunt Statement on J Street Education Fund Congressional Delegation,” February 17, 2010.
[4] “The Ministry for Isolating Israel,” by Haaretz Editorial Board. Haaretz, February 19, 2010.
[5] “Diaspora Affairs: J Street 1: Ayalon 0,” by Haviv Rettig Gur. The Jerusalem Post, February 19, 2010.
[6] “J Street: Criticism of Israel does not make us the enemy,” by Barak Ravid. Haaretz, February 19, 2010.
Press Release: J Street Education Fund Congressional Mission Leaves for the Middle East, February 12, 2010.
Sara Roy in the Nation on Gaza:
Gaza’s protracted blockade has resulted in the near total collapse of the private sector. At least 95 percent of Gaza’s industrial establishments (3,750 enterprises) were either forced to close or were destroyed over the past four years, resulting in a loss of between 100,000 and 120,000 jobs. The remaining 5 percent operate at 20-50 percent of their capacity. The vast restrictions on trade have also contributed to the continued erosion of Gaza’s agricultural sector, which was exacerbated by the destruction of 5,000 acres of agricultural land and 305 agricultural wells during the war. These losses also include the destruction of 140,965 olive trees, 136,217 citrus trees, 22,745 fruit trees, 10,365 date trees and 8,822 other trees.
Lands previously irrigated are now dry, while effluent from sewage seeps into the groundwater and the sea, making much of the land unusable. Many attempts by Gazan farmers to replant over the past year have failed because of the depletion and contamination of the water and the high level of nitrates in the soil. Gaza’s agricultural sector has been further undermined by the buffer zone imposed by Israel on Gaza’s northern and eastern perimeters (and by Egypt on Gaza’s southern border), which contains some of the Strip’s most fertile land. The zone is officially 300 meters wide and 55 kilometers long, but according to the UN, farmers entering within 1,000 meters of the border have sometimes been fired upon by the IDF. Approximately 30-40 percent of Gaza’s total agricultural land is contained in the buffer zone. This has effectively forced the collapse of Gaza’s agricultural sector.
These profound distortions in Gaza’s economy and society will–even under the best of conditions–take decades to reverse. The economy is now largely dependent on public-sector employment, relief aid and smuggling, illustrating the growing informalization of the economy. Even before the war, the World Bank had already observed a redistribution of wealth from the formal private sector toward black market operators.
The role of Ahmed Chalabi in the Iraq invasion is infamous. Friend of the neo-cons, feeder of false WMD stories, backer of war and close to Iran.
Seven years on, nothing has changed.
Interpol should help arrest the head of Mossad if Israel‘s spy agency was responsible for the killing of a Hamas commander in Dubai, the emirate’s police chief said today.
In comments to be aired on Dubai TV, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim called for Interpol to issue “a red notice against the head of Mossad … as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is likely now”.
An instructive op-ed in Haaretz by media consultant Gilad Heiman that offers the Jewish state some advice that will probably be ignored:
Israeli public relations stems entirely from the Zionist Israeli narrative, without any genuine attempt being made to learn the language of human rights, which is dominant in international public discourse. We expect the world to support us because we are more liberal, educated and democratic than our neighbors, without understanding that those very qualities cause the world to judge us more severely. The very fact that we are so similar to the Western countries leads the public in those countries to criticize us harshly, as to them we constitute an ugly reflection of themselves, as South Africa did in the past.
The time has come to change our behavior. In the contest to see who is more unfortunate, and which children are suffering more, those in Sderot or those in Gaza, we will always be the losers. Instead, we have to try to adopt the Western discourse on rights and back up what we say with deeds. The boycott of the Goldstone Commission was a mistake. Now we have to see how it can be mended.
