Tag Archive for 'Haaretz'

Anti-democratic moves in the less than Holy Land

Published on 19 March 2010 in Israel. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

An editorial in Haaretz that once again warns Israel to not run off a cliff morally. As ever, the silence of most Jewish groups in the Diaspora is telling:

The Israel Defense Forces decision to declare the Palestinian villages Bil’in and Na’alin closed military zones on Fridays for the next six months is a serious anti-democratic move. The order issued by the GOC Central Command implementing this restriction is an act against the freedom to demonstrate.

The fact that the army issued such a sweeping order, and that it is supposed to be in effect for such a long period, requires an immediate petition to the High Court of Justice asking it to block this dangerous and damaging move, which lacks any justification. The freedom to demonstrate is a basic right and an extension of freedom of expression.

In recent years, the two villages have come to symbolize the struggle against the separation fence that separates the villagers from their lands. The struggle is legitimate. It contributed substantially to the High Court order to alter the route of the fence near Bil’in, a decision that the IDF has yet to implement – which is also a blatant anti-democratic failing.

The residents of the villages and their supporters – Jews, Arabs and foreign activists – must be given the right to protest and fight for their rights.

During the years of demonstrations in the two villages, 23 demonstrators have been killed, half of them minors; no Israeli soldiers have been killed.

The demonstrations themselves have mostly been non-violent, and it was the IDF and Border Police that often exercised excessive and unnecessary force. In spite of the inconvenience, the IDF must permit this protest. The alternative could be terrorism.

The IDF decision is grave from another perspective as well: There has never been such a radical move against rightist demonstrations or settlers in the territories. While settlers run amok, burning fields and uprooting trees, damaging property and spreading terror as part of their criminal “price tag” policy, the IDF and the police stand idly by. When the left wants to protest and demonstrate, the IDF declares the area to be a closed military zone.

In this the IDF harms not only one of the basic values of democratic rule, the freedom to demonstrate, but also discriminates in its policy, granting excessive liberty to lawless settlers while being heavy-handed with leftist protesters.

The IDF order is therefore a revolting and ridiculous act, and the defense minister, who commands the IDF, must take immediate action to void it.

FInding a way back to endless talking between Arabs and Israelis

Published on 19 March 2010 in Israel. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz that Washington must back its recent comments to Israel with more than words:

Israel – addicted to the occupation, and showing symptoms of overdose and accumulated damage – has finally found a savior to rescue it from its plight. Israel’s redeemer hasn’t just stood idly by for 40 years, but has even facilitated the habit. However, it seems that change may at last be in the air.

It’s still too early to celebrate sobriety, and successful rehabilitation is by no means certain. This is a long, painful process, and the addict and its savior have yet to show adequate determination. The user is still dependent, kicking and screaming so much that the friend is likely to surrender in despair, to simply give in to pressure, having lost both interest and patience in the rehabilitation. But the measures taken by the Obama administration over the past few days prove that change is possible. Now the loyal friend must be encouraged not to give up, not to quit until the junkie is clean.

Bernard Avishai writes similarly in the International Herald Tribune:

The point is, there is a culture war in Israel now, and the only way the liberal side of it can mount an offensive is if America keeps the heat on. It is futile to treat Israel as if it were the embodiment of some big Jewish psyche in need of reassurances to regain trust in the world.

Israel has its enemies, of course, but it is not the fear of extinction that keeps it wedded to the status quo, which is a security nightmare in its own right. Rather, Israeli leaders have resisted plausible peace ideas because a large and hardened minority, perhaps a third of Jewish Israelis, regards peace as an end to the divinely self-enclosed way of life they have established in and around Jerusalem. The squishy, declining, more cosmopolitan and secular majority is unwilling to confront them for the sake of Palestinians — that is, not unless they have to in order to remain joined to the Western world.

Washington court reporter Jackson Diehl writes in the Washington Post that a group hug between the two sides may be on the horizon:

It’s beginning to look as though a week-long confrontation between the Obama administration and Israel over Jewish housing construction in Jerusalem may be winding toward a negotiated settlement. At least, that is what Israeli officials are hoping as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu prepares to reply to a series of demands relayed to him last week by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

If so, that will be a good thing for all sides in the Middle East — including the Palestinians. By seizing on the issue of Jewish settlement in Jerusalem, President Obama has, for the second time in a year, started one of the few fights that the United States cannot win with Israel. In so doing he has forced Palestinian and Arab leaders to toughen their own positions and threatened to create an impasse that would stop the indirect peace talks his diplomats just set up before they can begin.

According to press reports in both countries, Clinton demanded in a phone call last Friday that Netanyahu reverse the decision by a local council to advance the construction of 1,600 new units in a neighborhood called Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood outside Israel’s 1967 borders. Fortunately the State Department has not confirmed that position officially — though it has now been adopted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as a condition for proceeding with the talks.

Netanyahu would never take that step. First, he might be barred from doing so under Israeli law; more importantly, building new Jewish housing in Jerusalem is one of the few issues that virtually all Israelis agree on. No government would formally agree to suspend it — nor is such a suspension necessary to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. Leading Israelis and Palestinians — including Abbas — have repeatedly agreed, beginning a decade ago, that as part of any final settlement Israel will annex the Jewish neighborhoods it has built in Jerusalem since 1967, as well as nearby settlements in the West Bank. In return Palestinians will exercise sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and receive compensatory land in Israel.

The Israeli hope is that rather than continue to press this self-defeating demand, Obama will accept Israeli assurances that the new neighborhood will not be constructed anytime soon; it is, in fact, two or three years from groundbreaking. Coupled to that would be an Israeli pledge to avoid publicizing further construction decisions in Jerusalem. The result would not be a freeze, but something like a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for settlements.

It’s not clear whether Obama will accept such a fudge. But Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, who has been deeply engaged in back channel talks between the two governments, told me Thursday morning that “the goal of both sides at this point is to put this behind us, and go forward with the proximity talks as quickly as possible.” Tensions had been reduced, he said, as it has become clear that Netanyahu’s government was taking Clinton’s message seriously — it has spent days formulating its response in marathon cabinet meetings. Apart from Jerusalem, it seems the two sides are close to an accord on other U.S. requests, such as how the indirect talks will be structured.

It is, after all, peace talks — and not a settlement freeze — that has been the administration’s main goal. Palestinian and Arab leaders, too, have been quietly frustrated with the debate on settlements — they believe the focus should be on the creation of a Palestinian state, not on the construction of a few more homes in an area they have already tacitly conceded to Israel. Obama reopened this toxic issue in what looked like a fit of pique following the announcement of Ramat Shlomo’s expansion during a visit to Israel last week by Vice President Biden. He would be wise now to quickly settle and move on.

Time for the media to ask some deeper questions about Israel/American relations (ie. it’s in pretty good shape)

Published on 17 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Everybody calm down. Hillary Clinton has reaffirmed Washington’s “absolute commitment to Israel’s security”.

Jerusalem is facing growing Palestinian protests, especially since Hamas called for a “day of rage”.

Bradley Burston writes in Haaretz a completely over the top comment:

Washington is beginning to relate to the Netanyahu government as if it were Hamas.

Please. Israel has not suffered any financial or diplomatic pain from America. The occupation continues. Settlements expand. Rightists are emboldened.

Here’s food for thought:

Washington ought to remember one thing, however: The majority of Israelis wholly oppose halting construction in east Jerusalem. They may be angry over the timing of the announcement – but most want building to continue.

Latest West Bank shenanigans

Published on 16 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

The great Amira Hass, a beacon in dark times.

One:

The army has declared the West Bank villages of Bil’in and Na’alin a ‘closed military area’ until August 17, it emerged Monday.

In arresting a demonstrator on Friday, police cited a military edict closing off the two villages, where weekly protests against the barrier Israel is erecting around the West Bank have often turned violent.

Two:

The response from the Israel Defense Forces spokesman came surprisingly quickly; a mere two or three hours after the query had been sent by Haaretz, the spokesman replied orally, and then in writing, that “following the reporter’s question and after receiving most of the facts, the chief [military] prosecutor, Col. Jana Modzagbrishvili has instructed the military police to look into the matter.”

The matter, according to most of the facts, was that soldiers had beaten a civilian, who was bound and blindfolded, for several hours on January 7.

Starting in the village of al-Tawani in the southern Hebron Hills, the affair continued at the military base in Sussia. The man who was beaten was Masab Rabai, aged 22.

How many in the West know that Jews are allowed to act as they want in the West Bank?

Published on 11 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Haaretz reporter Avi Issacharoff writes, in an article headlined, “Israel policy allows settlers to rampage unchecked“, that the West Bank is lawless and mad:

In general, the decision-making body in Israel regarding building over the Green Line has become deliberately destructive, and adopted a policy of “ya’ani” (Arabic slang for something which only gives an appearance of reality, a kind of “as if”). Former minister and current Kadima MK Avi Dichter likes to say that the Palestinian culture is a “ya’ani” culture, and tells tales of his time as head of the Shin Bet security service, when it was “as if” the PA was working to fight terror, and “as if” it were arresting suspects in terror attacks. Sadly, however, the Israeli government has “ya’ani” decided to freeze settlement construction, and “ya’ani” is seeking a permanent status agreement. The government has separately approved construction over the Green Line for schools, public buildings, 3,600 housing units, 110 housing units, 1,600 housing units, a synagogue and more.

In everything connected to the settlers and settlements, the government has a “ya’ani” policy. Enforcement of the law in the territories is “ya’ani,” except when it comes to transforming the West Bank into a Garden of Eden for settler law-breakers. The hilltop youth can set fire to mosques, fields, homes and cars, beat up Palestinian farmers and damage property and people, all thanks to the “ya’ani” policy of the Israeli government.

Sane voices still exist in Israel, see below

Published on 8 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Two pieces from the weekend Haaretz newspaper that are worth sharing.

Gideon Levy:

The Israeli peace camp didn’t die. It was never born in the first place. While it’s true that since the summer of 1967, several radical and brave political groups have been working against the occupation – all worthy of recognition – a large, influential peace camp has never existed here.

…

Above all, however, the problem was rooted in the left’s impossible adherence to Zionism in its historical sense. In precisely the way there cannot be a democratic and Jewish state in one breath, one has to first define what comes before what – there cannot be a left wing committed to the old-fashioned Zionism that built the state but has run its course. This illusory left wing never managed to ultimately understand the Palestinian problem – which was created in 1948, not 1967 – never understanding that it can’t be solved while ignoring the injustice caused from the beginning. A left wing unwilling to dare to deal with 1948 is not a genuine left wing.

Avraham Burg:

Greater, unified Jerusalem is being torn apart. The Israeli – Jewish and Arab – capital is becoming the capital of the hallucinatory, dangerous fanatics. This is not the city of all its residents nor the capital of all its citizens. It is a sad city that belongs to its settlers, its ultra-Orthodox, its violent residents and its messiahs.

Rest assured, Palestinians will resist again one day

Published on 5 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Amira Hass in Haaretz asks the obvious question: “How will the next Palestinian uprising look“?

Amira Hass monitors Israeli apartheid

Published on 3 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Two recent pieces by leading Israeli journalist Amira Hass are worth reading.

First:

“The year 2009 was the quietest for Israelis from the security point of view and the most violent for the Palestinians from the point of view of attacks by settlers in the West Bank.” Just as he was saying this – as an example of one of the absurdities that characterize the political situation – Palestinian Agriculture Minister Ismail Daiq received a phone call from the Jenin district to inform him that five artesian wells in the village of Daan had been destroyed that morning. One person was shot and wounded in the abdomen when he tried to lift the pump to save it from damage. This was not an attack by settlers but a raid by the army.

…

No statistics can express the emotional and social distress that accompanies every event and non-event, such as the incarceration of 1.5 million people inside the Gaza Strip or the fact that tens of thousands still have not been able to reconstruct homes that were damaged during the Israel Defense Forces offensive in the winter of 2008-2009. Even without asking, it is possible to know that the reason for the destruction of the wells in the Jenin district is that they were dug “without a permit.” But the sovereign that destroys is also the one that controls the water resources and decides on an unequal division of water between Palestinians and Israelis. The statistics do not include the practical difficulties that stem from this discrimination or the permanent insult it creates.

In 2009, Israel destroyed 225 Palestinian homes in the West Bank and uprooted 515 Palestinians from their homes, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported. Thousands more in Area C and in Jerusalem live in constant fear that their homes will be destroyed and they will be uprooted from their places of residence.

And:

The Israel Defense Forces says it is using information on Israelis who demonstrate against the separation fence in a bid to deny them entry at nearby checkpoints. Israelis and others demonstrate every Friday at the villages of Bil’in and Na’alin.

A document was presented to a number of left-wing activists during the last three demonstrations. The activists were forbidden from crossing the Rantis checkpoint on their way to the two villages.

In the document entitled “Data of vehicles used by left-wing Israeli activists and anarchists to reach demonstrations in Na’alin and Bil’in,” registration numbers of 11 vehicles are listed.

The activists assume that the details were sent to the IDF by police who were present at recent demonstrations.

Iran is not an existential threat (repeat again and again)

Published on 28 February 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Avner Cohen wonders in Haaretz why Israel has allowed itself to be supposedly petrified of Iran’s alleged nuclear program (discounting the possibility that it pays to keep a populace petrified of an enemy):

What if Israel had treated Iran’s nuclear project as an exhibitionist, even childish, attempt by a nation mired in a deep identity crisis to exploit the prestige and mystique of nuclear power to create a national ethos of technological progress at home, as well as a diplomatic miracle cure that would enable it to challenge the West and move to the center of the international stage?

…

What would have happened if we had refused to become hysterical and apocalyptic, and had instead remained calm at the existential level, just as the Iranians are calm with regard to us? After all, the Iranians are convinced that we have nuclear weapons – and a lot of them. Yet despite this, while they see us as a military threat to their nuclear program, they do not see us as an existential threat to the Iranian nation. Adopting such a strategic view would not oblige Israel to attack Iran, because Tehran could not pose an existential threat to Israel.

Ultimately, we need to internalize the insight that even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced this week, when he said that all the talk about an Iranian bomb is irrational and meaningless. This is not simply because any Iranian attempt to destroy Israel via a nuclear bomb would kill countless Palestinians, but because it would surely lead to the destruction of Iran itself by Israel and the United States. Therefore, the idiotic claim that Iran could bring about Israel’s destruction does not hold water. While it is true that Ahmadinejad would love Israel to implode of its own accord, a self-confident and strong nation should not take such statements too seriously. And it certainly should not view them as an existential threat.

The Green Prince was a traitor to the Palestinian cause

Published on 25 February 2010 in Israel. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

A story that doesn’t really need any comment:

The son of a leading Hamas figure, who famously converted to Christianity, served for over a decade as the Shin Bet security service’s most valuable source in the militant organization’s leadership, Haaretz has learned.

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a Hamas founder and one of its leaders in the West Bank. The intelligence he supplied Israel led to the exposure of a number of terrorist cells, and to the prevention of dozens of suicide bombings and assassination attempts on Israeli figures.

…

Yousef was considered the Shin Bet’s most reliable source in the Hamas leadership, earning himself the nickname “the Green Prince” – using the color of the Islamist group’s flag, and “prince” because of his pedigree as the son of one of the movement’s founders.

During the second intifada, intelligence Yousef supplied led to the arrests of a number of high-ranking Palestinian figures responsible for planning deadly suicide bombings. These included Ibrahim Hamid (a Hamas military commander in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti (founder of the Fatah-linked Tanzim militia) and Abdullah Barghouti (a Hamas bomb-maker with no close relation to the Fatah figure). Yousef was also responsible for thwarting Israel’s plan to assassinate his father.

“I wish I were in Gaza now,” Yousef said by phone from California, “I would put on an army uniform and join Israel’s special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Shalit. That must not be done.”

Haaretz columnist writes that Israel is becoming a pariah state on its own

Published on 21 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

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.

Is Israel mature enough to understand the value of rights?

Published on 19 February 2010 in Israel. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

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.

The easy steps for Israel to kill enemies in Dubai and make many more enemies in the process

Published on 18 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The case of murdered Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai has become a global story. Perhaps the likely culprits (Israel?) are happy about this – after all, the Hamas man is dead – but I doubt it. The Jewish state is once again in the spotlight, its blatantly illegal actions throwing light on the country’s behaviour.

Australian journalist Paul McGeough, author of the book Kill Khalid, about the failed Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Khalid Mishal, provides some historical context for the Mossad essentially harvesting fake passports to carry out its activities:

Now what happened when I came across in researching the Khalid Mishal incident was that quite often what the Israelis do is they borrow the details of a passport, either as a traveller who is going through Immigration.

Or they you know on a Kibbutz or somewhere like that, several of these people are living on Kibbutz’s. They get a friendly operative within the Kibbutz to borrow the passport or simply to purloin it and (inaudible) the details and then they use it to their own end.

Now the Mossad runs what they call their passport factory, Victor Piotrowski, the Canadian-Israeli former Mossad agent wrote graphically about this in his book where he saw thousands of passports from all different countries around the world stockpiled in the passport factory where they could be called upon as need be.

The Israeli press has been having a field-day with this story. Yossi Melman in Haaretz essentially becomes a spokesman for the Mossad itself:

Unless dramatic evidence is found to definitively prove an Israeli connection, it is likely that the State of Israel will emerge from this affair unblemished and the Mossad will continue enjoying a reputation of fearless determination and nearly unstoppable capabilities.

This story in Haaretz is perhaps the strangest of all (from a journalist on the paper who looks very similar to one of the alleged suspects of the killing):

Between the tomatoes and eggplants in my local supermarket yesterday, just as I finished loudly blowing my nose and cursing my recent allergy attacks, an elderly woman approached me and tapped my shoulder. “Good for you,” she said. “You showed those Arabs.”

I nodded in agreement, quickly put away the tissue and straightened my back. After all, my new position as a high-ranking Mossad agent requires a certain dignified mien.

The first phone call came at 8 A.M., when my mother asked gently if I had recently been abroad. Then others called, congratulating me on the outstanding cover story I’d chosen as Haaretz education correspondent, and asking why I hadn’t brought them cigarettes from the Duty Free in Dubai.

Walking the streets, I noticed people were looking at differently – or at least that’s what I told myself.

My wife, of course, was less impressed by my appearance in newspapers the world over as “Kevin Daveron,” a supposed Irishman named by Dubai police as commander of the assassination squad sent to eliminate Hamas strongman Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at his hotel in the emirate.

As usual, Gideon Levy provides the moral heart of the incident:

Only a few weeks have passed since the finest security pundits were wallowing in well-orchestrated magazine cover stories and articles of appreciation for the head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan. These pieces almost totally ignored his dark past in Gaza and Lebanon and adulated his adventurism. We have long forgotten that the Mossad is supposed to be an intelligence-gathering organization, not one that sows death, and that a lawful state does not operate hit squads. To the roars of approval by the pundits, Dagan has just been given another year on job, his eighth. Why? Partly because he’s a specialist at liquidation.

But we shouldn’t complain about Dagan. He has the right to propose reckless operations to his heart’s desire, of the kind that will earn him and his organization compliments and budgets. The responsibility for liquidations lies with the person who approves them, namely Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who learned nothing from the Khaled Meshal fiasco in 1997 and has struck again (if indeed Israel did it) – yet another margin note for the debate about whether Bibi has changed, whether there’s a “new Netanyahu.”

We can believe that the Mossad actually carried out everything that has been ascribed to it, and we can even agree that Mabhouh deserved to die. It’s also possible to understand the desire to take revenge and punish him, as well as the need to combat weapons smuggling into Gaza. We can also continue ignoring, as is our wont, the motive for terrorism: the Israeli occupation. But after the liquidation of Mabhouh with a pillow, we are left in a country that not only dispatches assassins, but in which no questions are asked afterward.

Israel as a “fascist state under the cover of Zionism”

Published on 7 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Gideon Levy in Haaretz:

How can we truly know what happened in the Gaza Strip without Breaking the Silence, and how can we know what is happening in the West Bank every day without B’Tselem? But Im Tirtzu doesn’t want us to know; it wants to cover our shame. That, to it, is patriotism, but in reality that is treason. How familiar the remarks sounded this weekend by Iran’s judiciary chief, Ayatollah Sadiq Amoli Larijani, calling for fighting human rights organizations in his country because they “confuse human rights with law and order.” Im Tirtzu and Maariv couldn’t have said it better.

If you will it, Naomi Chazan with the horn on her forehead is the beautiful face of Israel, infinitely more beautiful than Im Tirtzu, which tries to put horns on us all, the horns of a fascist state under the cover of Zionism.

Israel talks about freezing settlements but keeps on building settlements

Published on 27 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The great Akiva Eldar’s new headline in Haaretz:

Only an idiot would say Israel has frozen settlement activity

Name a major Israeli party that opposes the occupation

Published on 22 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Yossi Sarid writes in Haaretz that the so-called “left” party in Israel, backed by many supposed peaceniks around the world, is just as complicit as the rest:

Labor has always been the great legitimizer of the occupation’s evils.

Getting money into Gaza is essential for the living

Published on 21 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Gaza is in ruins and Israel, now increasingly blocking access of foreign NGOs into the occupied territories, is trying to stop the flow of essential money into the Gaza Strip:

Israeli officials suspect that representatives of international organizations used their cars to bring millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip, taking advantage of their immunity. As a result, a decision has been made to intensify law enforcement regarding money laundering at the Erez border crossing in order to prevent the massive transfer of large amounts of cash to Gaza.

Recently, the Customs Authority instituted an obligation to report any sum of money greater than NIS 90,000 that is brought into the Gaza Strip in order to prevent a situation in which some of the money aids terrorism. Because most of the people who enter Gaza by car through the Erez border crossing are diplomats and employees of international organizations, a multi-party discussion was held at the Foreign Ministry several days ago about how to minimize the chances of confrontations and diplomatic incidents.

This week, the strategic department of the Foreign Ministry will convene all the foreign diplomats in order to receive a briefing from the ministry’s legal adviser about the new regulations. The legal adviser will explain the law, which views an amount of money divided among several vehicles as a single quantity, and will tell them that from now on, they have an obligation to report any amount greater than NIS 90,000.

Israelis love to have an enemy

Published on 15 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Larry Derfner in the Jerusalem Post defines his fellow country men and women as unified as a police state:

When we think of the economy, we think of “me.” But when we think of “us,” we think first and last of “them.” Of course, there are loads and loads of generous, public-spirited Israelis doing great things individually or in groups. But when we’re all together as a nation, all we see is the enemy. Stopping the enemy is the only national project we have left. It’s the only issue that gets people’s attention for more than a day.

As for the Jewish part of being Israeli, Judaism in this country is overwhelmingly tribal, to the point of belligerency. Israeli-style Judaism feeds this us-against-them mentality like nothing else except, maybe, the national cult of the military.

NONE OF this hard-assedness is new; it was always here. But until this past decade, it had competition from a less fearful, more open-minded, positive view of what it meant to be Israeli. There were people here who talked about building something besides West Bank settlements, fundamentalist yeshivot and border walls. They wanted to stop being obsessed with the enemy, they wanted to go out into the world, and they didn’t freak out every time somebody said we were treating the Palestinians badly, because they knew the critic had a point.

There were a lot of Israelis like this. They had huge demonstrations, political parties, leaders, ideas. Until this decade, there was a “peace camp,” too, not just a “national camp.” The two camps fought to determine this country’s direction, and it made for a great deal of creative tension in national life.

Until this decade, national life was interesting. Now it’s deadening. I go back to Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy’s quote from a couple of years ago: “There was a time when you’d ask two Israelis a question and you’d get three opinions. Now you only get one.”

When I try to explain Israel to Americans, I ask them to imagine that 80 percent of their fellow citizens were Republicans. Israel has become a one-party country – the war party.

We’re at war with the Middle East, with Europe, with liberal Jews in the Diaspora and with a pathetically small handful of dissenters at home. We trust no one. We see anti-Semites everywhere. We’d like to build an Iron Dome over this whole country to keep the world out.

There’s very little oxygen around here; everyone is breathing the air that everyone else has exhaled. This country has been stagnating for a decade. And we’ve never achieved such unity.

An Haaretz headline to bring warmth to the heart

Published on 14 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Zionist youth say they face financial ruin.

Israel can only show power by belittling others

Published on 14 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Israel’s attempt at humiliating the Turkish ambassador has back-fired spectacularly. It is the moves of a little nation, not a democracy, a country that wants to embarrass Jews. If they think this is showing Zionist strength, they are sadly mistaken.

The Haaretz editorial:

Israel’s fury at critics of its policies in Gaza is not new. But there is no need to be a “radical Muslim” or “a friend of Syria and Iran” to understand that imprisoning a million and a half civilians in Gaza is abuse and not policy. Even Israel’s closest friends are cautioning against continuing this brutal policy, which has already gravely damaged Israel’s interests and its close relations with Turkey.

Yossi Sarid in Haaretz:

The Israel of David Ben-Gurion intended to restore the Jewish people to history and to the family of nations. But Israel insists on being that family’s disturbed stepbrother. Lieberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are bringing us back to the sealed ghetto, surrounding us with a fence and a wall. This is not testimony to self-confidence. On the contrary: It shows a Diaspora-like weakness, as if we were still the slaves of Pharaoh. We got through Pharaoh, but it’s not at all certain we will get through this government, which seats such a low person on such a high seat. How ludicrous, how frightening.