This is how the editor of the Jerusalem Post, David Horowitz, views the recent oh so mild pressure from America:
By deliberately inflating the [settlement] Ramat Shlomo issue into a public crisis of faith in its ally, the Obama administration has encouraged Israel’s enemies.
A minor step in the right direction, though of course, if history is any guide, the settlements will expand while intense “negotiations” commence:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is leaving for Washington tonight, has promised the Obama administration Israel will make several goodwill gestures toward the Palestinian Authority in response to Washington’s demands.
For the first time since Operation Cast Lead, Israel has agreed to ease the blockade on the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Netanyahu has agreed to discuss all core issues during the proximity talks, with the condition of reaching final conclusions only in direct talks with the PA.
Netanyahu also agreed to discuss the core issues in the dispute – including borders, refugees, Jerusalem, security arrangements, water and settlements – already during indirect talks, although summations would be made in direct talks with the PA president.
Netanyahu responded to Washington’s demands during his telephone call with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday night. Clinton said on Friday that Netanyahu’s response “was useful and productive, and we’re continuing our discussions with him and his government.”
Netanyahu refused to revoke the building project in Ramat Shlomo or freeze construction in East Jerusalem. He also promised a better oversight system to prevent embarrassing incidents such as the one that triggered the crisis with the U.S. during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit.
Senior officials in Jerusalem said that the prime minister’s gestures include relieving the blockade on Gaza and enabling the UN to transport construction materials to rebuild sewerage systems and a large flour mill, and build 150 apartments in Khan Yunis.
Netanyahu also agreed to release hundreds of Fatah-affiliated prisoners as a gesture to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in keeping with the view of the defense establishment on the effect this will have on the release of Gilad Shalit.
Netanyahu is scheduled to leave for Washington tonight with Defense Minister Ehud Barak to attend the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington. Opposition leader MK Tzipi Livni and Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau will also attend the convention.
Netanyahu is slated to address the convention tomorrow at 7 P.M. (Israel time), then meet Clinton, who is also to speak at the AIPAC gathering. No meeting has been set yet between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, but Israeli officials believe such a meeting will take place on Tuesday in the White House, and contacts are progressing in this regard.
Israel’s Washington envoy Michael Oren said yesterday that outsiders cannot force peace on the Middle East, and any final settlement will have to be initiated by the Israelis and Palestinians themselves. Oren spoke in an interview with U.S. television station PBS. Oren said Israel was not interested in having the White House present its own peace plan, in view of the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Any attempt by the United States to impose a peace deal would be like “forcing somebody to fall in love,” Oren said.
Asked if Israel wanted Washington to present its own peace plan, Oren said: “No. I think peace has to be made between two people sitting across a table. America can help facilitate that interaction.”
It’s encouraging that Palestinians in Gaza are peacefully protesting their situation and we should salute their bravery:
alestinians on Saturday entered 50 meters into the Israeli army’s buffer zone east of As-Salqa in central Gaza, near the Israeli military post at Kisufim.
Mahmoud Az-Zeq, one of the activists, described the rally to Ma’an as “clear, popular, daring, and a real breakthrough,” adding that Israeli forces did not open fire at protesters, despite being carried out “directly next to Kisufim.”
Protesters waved Palestinian flags, with young men reaching the barbed wire which separates Gaza from Israel by only 50 meters.
“The goal of this peace action is to re-guide the compass of the popular struggle toward the Israeli occupation, in addition to get Palestinians out of the state of despair and frustration in Gaza,” Az-Zeq added.
On Thursday, Israeli forces opened fire on Popular Committee Against the Buffer Zone march as the group continued to test the military’s policing of the no-go area.
At the time, an Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers identified “rioters” in what is considered a prohibited area and said they were hurling rocks at the soldiers. “A single warning shot was fired in the air,” she said.
Palestine People’s Party politburo member Walid Al-Awad told Ma’an that “these peaceful rallies are a confirmation of the continuation of these protests against the creation of the no-man zone that the Israeli occupation is trying to impose 300 meters along the border fence, which is confiscating 20 percent of agricultural land in Gaza.”
He added: “Despite the barbed wire and the separation wall, these rallies come to affirm that the Palestinians are unified in confronting the occupation and settlements. These peaceful rallies will continue weekly across all Gaza districts.”
Swiss-based journalist Shraga Elam comments on the growing problems inside Switzerland, in a speech he gave in Geneva on 19h March:
The huge wave of Islamophobia rolling over Switzerland should be compared to other forms of racism prevailing in this country especially with Judeophobia, with its long history.
It would be wrong to speak in this context about an equation, although there are crucial similarities and common roots and traits.Xenophobia in Switzerland was and still is an essential part of the dominating rural sub-cultures according to which even the inhabitants of the next village were and sometimes still are considered to be foreigners. Not to speak about recent strong animosities between the various language regions and between Protestants and Catholics. On the other hand, there were and are strong cosmopolitain tendencies even in the countryside. Accordingly, many students in Zurich at the beginning of the last century were Jewish Russian women, and radical leftist Russian politicians like Vladimir Lenin and Mikhail Bakunin found refuge in the Helvetic Confederation. And my catholic spouse comes from a village and not only she but all her 7 siblings married foreigners.
Jews as citizens were anything but welcomed in the Alps confederation. In its editorial from 12.3.2010 the Jewish weekly Tachles reminds that the Swiss authorities did not want to naturalize or even to allow poor Jews from Eastern Europe to stay. After the Nazi racial laws were ratified in Nuremberg in 1937 hardly any Jew was allowed to be naturalized here. Tachles writes accordingly that this dark chapter in the Swiss history should sharpen the Jewish understanding for fellow sufferers. (Gisela Blau, The Red Pass and its Dark Past , Tachles 12 March 2010).
The president of the anti-racism commission, Prof. Georg Kreis, a non-Jew, went in the same direction after declaring in a TV debate on 8.12.2009 that the Swiss People’s Party (SVP or UDC) that had pushed the anti-minaret vote and actually supported an anti-Islamization initiative would have supported an anti-Judaization (Anti-Judaisierung) initiative in the 1930’s. This statement ignited a fierce debate and Swiss conservatives requested Kreis’ resignation for this comparison. This historian was wrong only in one point. There was no need for such an anti-Jewish initiative in the ’30s for the simple reason that once “threatened” with a wave of Jewish refugees as of 1938 the Swiss government decided to close its borders for Jews precisely in order to prevent the alleged danger of “judaization”. And there was no initiative to cancel that anti-human decision.
It is important to note that on the one hand some leaders of the Jewish community also supported the governmental decision, mainly because they had internalized the prevailing anti-Jewish sentiments, especially against Eastern European Jews (Ostjuden). On the other hand many Swiss Christians opposed the border closure. Some of them, like the courageous president of the socialist party, Werner Stocker, were humanists and anti-racists and even acted illegally against the official inhumanity. But some of them, like the journalist, Johann Baptist Rusch, were Judeophobes. For them the Nazi anti-Jewish measures went far too far and they pleaded therefore for a liberal asylum policy towards the threatened Jews. Among them were those who argued either that the rescued Jews would convert to Christianity (the so called “refugees mother” Gertrud Kurz) or that they would proceed to other countries with the next possible opportunity.
Just like today with the anti minaret initiative, it is impossible to say that all those who opposed the anti-Jewish asylum policy were not racists. Similarly many present-day Swiss who are against the minaret ban maintain that position because they believe that the measure is an ineffective way to deal with the alleged Islamic “threat”.
It is also important to note in this connection that some of those who support the ban do not consider themselves to be racist but just anti-clerical or atheists.
Judeophobia was mainly religiously-motivated as part of a primitive and racist understanding of Christianity and like today with Islamophobia was often maintained by persons who never met a Jew in their life or had just one bad experience with a single Jew and then generalized.
Insofar as Islamophobia and Judeophobia express prejudices against “strangers” on cultural and religious bases there are strong similarities between the two and therefore parts of the Swiss Jewish community demonstrates its solidarity in the struggle against the Islamophobia.
But there is a very different and even opposing political background for the two forms of racism which sometimes renders Islamo-Jewish cooperation difficult if not impossible.
The trigger if not the main reason for the present Islamophobia and Arabophobia is a political campaign launched in the mid-1980’s as a coproduction of the US and Israeli military industrial complexes (MIC) which needed a new enemy as it was becoming clear that the “cold war” was going to end and the Communist enemy would soon disappear.
One cannot overlook the large presence of Jews among the so called neo-conservatives in the US, playing the spearhead of the Islamophobia campaign on behalf of the MIC. And they have their representatives in Europe like the philosophers Andre Glucksmann or Bernard Henri-Lévy in France and the journalist Henryk M. Broder in the German speaking countries.
These Jews, like many Zionists, are not looking for conciliation with the Arab and Muslim world but for an ever escalating conflict. They believe they have found the necessary justification for their belligerent attitude in the militant Muslim factions as a kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.
Another hurdle for Muslim-Jewish cooperation is the Islamo-Judeophobia, the counterpart of the Judeo-Islamophobia. Many Arabs and Muslims find it difficult to distinguish between Jews and militant Zionists. So one can hear often on demonstrations against Israeli war crimes slogans like “Khaibar, Khaibar ya Yahud”, meaning figuratively “death to the Jews”.
It is obvious that the Middle East conflict burdens the Jewish-Muslim relationship in Switzerland too, and the necessary common struggle here against racism and for freedom of religion must include the Middle East as well.
More killing in the name of Zionism:
Two Israeli aircraft appearing to be spy planes flew near Budapest’s international airport last week but did not land there, Hungarian media reported Thursday. According to the reports, the planes were on a “spy mission” that may be connected to the assassination of a Syrian national in his vehicle Wednesday in the Hungarian capital. The two Gulfstream planes, reportedly equipped with the IDF’s finest intelligence means, flew through Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania before entering Hungary’s airspace, the media outlets said. The aircraft were said to leave Hungary after completing their mission, without ever landing in the country. Responding to media questions, a spokesman for the Hungarian Defense Ministry said that the Israeli planes were on a diplomatic mission.
Meanwhile, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry said that air traffic in the country is under the jurisdiction of the local aviation authority. The Ministry refused to address questions regarding the nature of the mission that prompted the Israeli planes to arrive in Hungary. The identity of the Syrian national assassinated in Budapest had not yet been published. Hungarian police officials said an unknown assassin shot the 52-year-old Syrian while he was driving his car. The shooter grabbed a black briefcase from the vehicle before fleeing the scene of the attack, police said.
A fine and internationally recognised journalist from Gaza, Mohammed Omer, is trapped in diplomatic limbo:
Effectively canceling a planned speaking tour, the US consulate in the Netherlands has put an extended hold on the visa application of award-winning Palestinian journalist and photographer Mohammed Omer, scheduled to speak on conditions in Palestine, on 5 April in Chicago.
In 2008, Omer became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, for his firsthand reportage of life in the besieged Gaza Strip. As his prize citation explained, “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless … Working alone in extremely difficult and often dangerous circumstances, [Omer has] reported unpalatable truths validated by powerful facts.”
Upon attempting to return to Gaza following his acceptance of the Gellhorn award in London, Omer was detained, interrogated and beaten by the Shin Bet Israeli security force for over 12 hours, and eventually hospitalized with cracked ribs and respiratory problems. He has since resided in the Netherlands and continues to undergo medical treatment there for his subsequent health problems.
The US consulate has now held his visa application for an extended period of time, effectively canceling a planned US speaking tour without the explanation that a denial would require. In recent years, numerous foreign scholars and experts have been subject to visa delays and denials that have prohibited them from speaking and teaching in the US — a process the American Civil Liberties Union describes as “Ideological Exclusion,” which they say violates Americans’ first amendment right to hear constitutionally protected speech by denying foreign scholars, artists, politicians and others entry to the United States. Foreign nationals who have recently been denied visas include Fulbright scholar Marixa Lasso; respected South African scholar and vocal Iraq War critic Dr. Adam Habib; Iraqi doctor Riyadh Lafta, who disputed the official Iraqi civilian death numbers in the respected British medical journal The Lancet; and Oxford’s Tariq Ramadan, who has just received a visa to speak in the United States after more than five years of delays and denials.
Fellow Gellhorn recipient Dahr Jamail, expressed his disbelief at Omer’s visa hold. “Why would the US government, when we consider the premise that we have ‘free speech’ in this country, place on hold a visa for Mohammed Omer, or any other journalist planning to come to the United States to give talks about what they report on? This is a travesty, and the only redemption available for the US government in this situation is to issue Omer’s visa immediately, and with a deep apology.”
Omer was to visit Houston, Santa Fe and Chicago, where local publisher Haymarket Books was to host his Newberry Library event, “Reflections on Life and War in Gaza,” alongside a broad set of interfaith religious, community and political organizations.
Rather than cancel the meeting, organizers are calling on supporters to write letters and emails calling for the US consulate’s approval of Omer’s visa. They are also proceeding with the event as planned, via live satellite or skype, if necessary.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visiting the Palestinian territories:
Let us be clear. All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped.
Ali Abunimah digs up a document from 1988 that reminds us how the US government was as reluctant to impose serious sanctions on South Africa as they are today against apartheid Israel.
Here’s a comment by John C. Whitehead, then Deputy Secretary of State:
Sanctions are the wrong tool because South Africa has the resources to resist an economic siege and has been preparing for such a contingency for many years.
Popular conservative American blogger Glenn Reynolds:
If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I’d do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible.
The Forward reports on a development in American perceptions of Israel. Washington’s attitude towards the Jewish state is talking tough but still offering billions of dollars every year to fund the worst excesses:
Shoshana Bryen, senior director for security policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, argued that blaming America’s difficulties in its Middle East war zones on Israel’s approach to the Palestinian issue is “a fraud of the largest order.” Arab Gulf countries, she said, are reluctant to cooperate militarily with the United States because of their own internal problems, and they use the Palestinian issue as an excuse. “It is a canard to hang it on Israel,” she added.
Suggestions that Israeli policies might threaten American national security thus far seem not to have gained much traction among lawmakers, said an official with a pro-Israel organization in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said that the prevailing attitude on Capitol Hill is still that Israel is a security asset in the Middle East, not a burden.
Jonathan Tasini is a Jew who grew up in Israel and is a Democrat candidate for the US senate. He calls here for the end of the Gaza blockade.
Yet another small but significant Jewish voice in the US that simply doesn’t believe in the myth of Zionist solidarity:
Two more notable stories in the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli occupation.
A controversial UC Berkeley student senate bill opposing UC investments in companies providing military support to Israel has once again added a local twist to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Although the bill is labeled “UC Divestment From War Crimes,” it focuses on the conflict in the Middle East and human rights violations by the Israeli Army in Gaza and the West Bank.
The bill’s critics contend that singling out Israel as a perpetrator of war crimes is unfair, given the vast number of human rights violations that go on elsewhere in the world.
…
The Berkeley campus has been rocked by altercations between pro-Israel and pro-Palestine student groups from time to time, some of which were caused by alleged incidents of hate speech, graffiti and vandalism.
“The bill cites facts, such as from the UN’s Goldstone Report, that should be disregarded,” said Cohen, as she boarded a flight Friday to leave for spring break. “It’s blatantly anti-Israel. I was told that the bill is not divesting from Israel, it’s divesting from war crimes. But then we should not have any reference of Israel in it. This is just dividing the community in Berkeley.”
Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, a second-year Economics Ph.D. student who co-authored the bill, said that Israel had been used as a case study to highlight the ethics violations being committed by its government on Palestinian settlements.
“What about the war crimes in other countries—China, Sudan, Afghanistan?” Cohen asked. “They are trying to make it about war crimes but it’s not about war crimes. If they cared about war crimes then the bill would have mentioned other countries. They are trying to dissolve the State of Israel.”
Oatfield said that the ASUC senate has a long history of taking strong action to divest funds from countries involved in war crimes.
“We have singled out Sudan, we have singled out South Africa in the past,” said Huet-Vaughn. “It’s our job to condemn unethical treatment. We want to make a statement about what can be done with student government funds. But the more significant thing is we don’t want our university to support war crimes.”
The bill specifically calls for ASUC and UC to stop investing in two American companies—General Electric and United Technologies—which are providing Israel with weapons.
Oatfield said that although the bill is focused on conflicts in Israel, it also asks the ASUC to create a commission which will investigate war crimes in Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
“The immediate action is pertaining to two companies, but it also has long-term goals,” Oatfield said.
E-mails supporting or denouncing the senate’s action started flying about right after the final vote, with author and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz being one of the first to issue a statement.
“Divesting from Israel is immoral, bigoted and if done by a state university illegal,” Dershowitz said. “It encourages terrorism and discourages peace. Any university that would actually divest from Israel will be subjected to countermeasures—financial, legal, academic and political. We will fight back against this selective bigotry that hurts the good name of the University of California. This misuse of the university’s name does not represent the views of students, faculty, alumni and other constituents of the greater Berkeley community. Instead it represents the hijacking of the university for improper ideological purposes. It must be rejected immediately and categorically.”
BDS leader Omar Barghouti emails and writes: “The South Africa spirit is in the air.”
H&M is a Swedish store chain planning to open seven stores in Israel. This boycott/divestment campaign is initiated by Swedish solidarity groups with Palestine and they are looking for international endorsement:
This campaign builds on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) call made by the Palestinian civil society in 2005 and the international BDS movement that followed. Inspired by the non-violent struggle against the Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestine, we acted when we heard that H&M were about to open seven stores in Israel. To buy into the occupation and oppression is not fashionable and it shouldn’t be profitable. Make your voice heard – tell H&M not to invest in Israel until Israel respects international law and human rights!
On the 11th of March H&M is opening its first store in the Azrieli Mall in Tel Aviv. The second store will open on the 16th of March in Malcha Mall in Jerusalem. We will keep you updated.
Here’s the Facebook group.
This clip from CNN (via Mondoweiss) is interesting. Highlighting the undoubted anger in America over recent Israeli actions, it’s a small but significant debate over the amount of money Washington gives the Jewish state every year. Let’s have an open and public debate about the rights and wrongs of this or should Israel just be protected from such discussions?
Youtube poster Media Matters Action Network says that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was “surprised” by Jack Cafferty’s viewer criticisms of Israel, and this is the case. Cafferty takes an atypically-sober tone, cautiously criticizing the Israel-US special relationship, suggesting that we should “start cutting back on the approximately 2.5 billion in aid we give to Israel every year….” and quoting Maureen Dowd saying that the White House is “appalled by Israel’s self-absorption.” Then he polls viewers. The letters Cafferty reads are critical of Israel, 6-1. The 1 is repulsive: “We should be helping Israel occupy as much Arab land as possible.” “You got a lot of emails?” Blitzer asks. “And most of it was anti-Israel, you would say?”
Cafferty then says this was a helluva way to treat Biden, the 1600 new settlements. Blitzer agrees: “I think a lot of people were very, very upset about it, including by the way in Israel.” The former JPost reporter, playing the role of Israel apologist, to the end.
Leading Australian thinker and academic Scott Burchill comments on the recent revelations that American General David Petraeus is publicly linking the Middle East conflict and Washington’s failures in the Muslim world:
Assuming that [Mark] Perry’s report is accurate – and it apparently is – it’s quite a significant development. If the Pentagon decides to flex its muscles, there could be real pressure on Israel to carry out at least cosmetic changes, meeting some if not all of Clinton’s demands. All Petraeus et al have to do is go public with the charge that these upstart Jews are endangering our brave boys In Iraq and Afghanistan, etc, and the country could be swept by a wave of anti-Semitism. The generals have already taken this message to Congress. The power of the Israel lobby is not as great as the volume of its spruikers. It has nothing on the Pentagon lobby.
The situation is reminiscent of 20 years ago when Yitzak Shamir – arrogant, self-righteous and obnoxious – so irritated James Baker by purposeful humiliation that Bush the First’s administration imposed light sanctions. Israel got the message. Shamir was replaced by the supreme cynic Shimon Peres, who is much better attuned to Western hypocrisy. Things smoothed over. Same policies, but more politely pursued.
It’s not quite as easy this time because the ultra-nationalist and fundamentalist religious right (not identical – Shas is really unworldly) are much stronger now, and Western-oriented sectors in Israel are much weaker.
Interestingly there is apparently a split among elites in the US. The Washington Post seems to be demanding the Obama follow the Joe Lieberman line (“we are all one family”), but the New York Times and other centrist Democrats (like the Boston Globe) are calling for Obama to stand his ground, or there will be trouble.
Israel has decisive power in Congress. Arabs have oil, money and can make life difficult for US expeditions in the Middle East and Central Asia. Flip a coin. Netanyahu isn’t very bright, Obama loathes him but he remains a very resolute reactionary and Washington has a grave dilemma with him. They may try to finesse his coalition but there is no guarantee Kadima would play ball.
Interesting times.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest synagogue movement in the US, urges Israel to halt building in East Jerusalem (not stop, mind you, merely postpone).
With Israel under intense pressure to wind back its colonial project, the role of dissident Jews is vital, to make the wider community knows that we don’t support the actions of the Jewish state. Jews don’t speak with one voice.
It’s important, therefore, that the mainstream media is noticing. Take this piece in today’s Sydney Morning Herald by columnist Hamish McDonald:
The coolness didn’t last long. Along with standing firm on ”border security” and opposing higher taxes, our politicians find it hard to maintain any indignation, let alone anger or rage, against Israel.
This week the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, was buttering up Israel and its local lobbyists again, by staging a special press conference and media opportunity at Parliament House to ”receive” a written report and set of recommendations on boosting relations.
This was handed over by Albert Dadon, the new mover and shaker in Australia’s Jewish community, on behalf of the Australia Israel Leadership Forum, a second-track diplomacy venture started two years ago on the model of businessman Phil Scanlan’s longer-running Australia America Leadership Dialogue.
Kevin Rudd was a regular at Scanlan’s annual talkfest. Julia Gillard was a founder-member of Dadon’s one, joined by the opposition’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, and various other political, academic, business and media figures.
The Israeli forum seems already to be well into the uncritical boosterism of which Scanlan’s group gets accused in some circles. It has chosen this time to suggest that along with more trade, agricultural and scientific exchanges and so on, Australia develops military-to-military ties with Israel.
Smith said he was ”very happy” to receive this report, which would get ‘’serious consideration” from the Prime Minister, adding: ”The friendship between Australia and Israel is longstanding and it is enduring, and that will continue. Despite recent events, which have been the cause of public commentary between Australia and Israel, that friendship will endure.”
The, ahem, recent events include the use of forged copies of Australian passports in the recent assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai, and the ”insulting” (US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s word) action of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in announcing more Jewish housing in disputed East Jerusalem as the US Vice-President, Joe Biden, arrived in Israel and US-brokered ”proximity talks” between Israel and the Palestinians were about to start.
Australian Federal Police agents have been sent to Israel to inquire about the passports, and ASIO has been put on the case too. But no-one is expecting the AFP to find a link to Mossad, unless the Israeli intelligence agency has been very careless indeed.
Some longer coolness about East Jerusalem would have been in order. Netanyahu, who included a smarmy letter in Dadon’s report, has been trying to weasel his way out of the row with Washington by blaming the timing, but not the substance, on his interior minister and the Jerusalem mayor.
Australia’s rebuke was mildly worded. ”I share the view that this is a bad decision at the wrong time and it’s not a helpful contribution to the peace process,” Smith said, adding that Israel was undoing the ”very hard work” of the US and others to get the two sides working towards a ”two-state” solution.
But the two-state solution that seemed a real prospect at the high water of the Oslo peace process in the 1990s has come to look more and more like a mirage, as power slips away from moderates on both sides.
Netanyahu has backed away from the offer made by his predecessor Ehud Olmert in the dying days of his leadership, when he was a caretaker prime minister under a corruption cloud. His right-wing-religious government pays only lip-service to the two-state goal.
Many of the Palestinians, as the Israeli commentator Ehud Yaari notes in the current issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, are starting to think of separate statehood and sovereignty as a new form of imprisonment. Instead, they turn to continued struggle and faith that demographics will eventually yield dominance over the entire former Palestine Mandate. The rocket attacks out of Gaza have started again.
Israel meanwhile is steadily losing the sympathy that it once had as a beleaguered underdog threatened with extinction by hostile neighbours. Now it rains destruction with high-tech American weaponry at little risk to its own personnel (many of its 13 deaths in the Gaza operation were friendly-fire accidents; some 1300 Palestinians died). Its population, swollen by Russian immigrants accustomed to talk of Muslims as ”chyornaya zhopa” (black-arses) is now losing its old interest in the Arabs, with whom older Israelis grew up. They’re now away behind a high wall.
Meanwhile groups like Peace Now in Israel itself, J-Street in Washington, and individuals like Antony Loewenstein try to revive Jewish liberalism, to much vilification as ‘’self-hating Jews”. But even a hard realist like Yaari is worried about the trend: he suggests a short-circuit to endless haggling over the ”final status” agreement by recognition of a Palestinian state now, to take up negotiations, a suggestion that will shock some of the Jewish diaspora organisations that have brought him out on tour.
Behind its profession of undying support for Israel, the Rudd government has put a bit more detachment into our policy, ending our previous lining up with a bunch of tiny American client states in United Nations votes on the Middle East. In November 2008, it supported UN resolutions calling for a halt to settlements in the occupied territories and for adherence to the Geneva Convention in those areas. Last year it switched our vote from abstain to favour on the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. In February it went from oppose to abstain on a resolution calling for both Israel and the Palestinians to investigate possible war crimes in the Gaza conflict.
It doesn’t seem to be having any impact on Netanyahu and has opened Rudd to opposition sniping that he’s selling out Israel to win Arab votes for the UN Security Council seat. Both sides of our politics could do well to adopt the Rudd-Confucian doctrine of the ”zhengyou”, the ”true friend” (in Chinese) who can point out shortcomings.
So:
Almost half of all U.S. voters believe that Israel should be made to cease all settlement construction as part of a future peace deal with the Palestinians, a Rasmussen Reports poll said on Wednesday.
The American institute claimed that a recent poll showed 49% of voters approved of forcing Israel to stop settlement construction, with only 22% of voters disagreeing, saying Israel should not be required to stop building those settlements. Another 29% were not sure.
But Isi Leibler, Zionist and backer of the entire colonial project, thinks America’s current stance is deeply unfair. I can just imagine him fuming and wondering why the poor, little Jews can’t just be allowed to do what they want (which is essentially what’s been happening for decades, even if the latest reports allege that Netanyahu has been “humiliated” by his government’s back-down over settlement expansion):
There are certain red lines which no government of Israel may cross. Netanyahu, on this occasion, must stand firm. The current crisis transcends political or ideological differences between Likud, Labor and Kadima. All mainstream parties should unite and convey to President Obama that Israel is a sovereign state and will not automatically bow to diktats of the US administration. They need to make the US administration and public understand that no government of Israel will agree to freeze construction in Jerusalem, the heart and soul of the Jewish people.
Edward Said’s wife, Miriam, cautions critics of Israel to be careful what they’re boycotting and why:
On 28 January 2010 the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) issued a statement to the Qatari government calling for a boycott of Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (WEDO) and condemning the Qatari Ministry of Culture for hosting the orchestra in Doha. The statement goes so far as to accuse Daniel Barenboim of being an ardent Zionist. I would like to point out that the PACBI policy is “to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel.” It does not call for a boycott against all Israelis, but those affiliated with institutions that support the Israeli state and its policies and who do not express support for the Palestinian struggle against occupation. Daniel Barenboim and WEDO do not meet any of those criteria.
WEDO is but one of the many educational programs of the Barenboim-Said Foundation (BSF) which was founded by Daniel Barenboim together with my late husband, Edward Said. It is registered in Spain and the regional government of Andalusia is the main partner in this project.
WEDO is not a project for normalization. The yearly workshops in Spain are advanced musical summer courses. When students from Arab countries and Israel attend the same courses at any university around the world where the professor’s competence is the reason for which they enroll, it is considered furthering their education, not normalization.
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.
This is how Israel makes friends:
…Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, said he had boycotted meetings with [Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva] because the Brazilian president did not pay a visit to the grave of Theodor Herzl, one of the founders of Zionism.
