Tag Archive for 'settlements'

CNN oh so briefly allows debate on US funding for Israel

Published on 20 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

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.

What will it take for the love affair with Israel to cool?

Published on 20 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

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.

Remind us who really likes and backs West Bank colonies

Published on 19 March 2010 in Israel. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .

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.

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.

Pressure on Israel grows, but what will be the real response?

Published on 19 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , .

The latest court gossip about the Israeli/American relationship.

Wake me up when the Jewish state actually reverses any of its occupation.

The Guardian:

King Abdullah of Jordan added to pressure on Israel over its settlements policy today, demanding the international community take firm action over what he called the “red line” of Jerusalem.

Abdullah, a close ally of the US and Britain, demanded “firm, swift, direct and effective action to stop Israel’s provocative measures in Jerusalem that seek to change its identity and threaten holy sites”.

“Jerusalem is a red line and the world should not be silent about Israel’s attempts to get rid of Jerusalem’s Arab residents, Muslims or Christians,” the king told Lady Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, according to a palace statement.

The BBC:

The EU’s new foreign policy chief has arrived in Gaza on one of the highest level visits there by a Western official since Hamas took power.

Baroness Ashton’s trip comes amid a new push by the EU and US to revive stalled Middle East peace talks.

The international quartet of Middle East mediators – the EU, US, UN and Russia – is to meet in Moscow later.

As Lady Ashton arrived, militants in Gaza fired a rocket into Israel, killing a man, Israeli officials said.

The rocket struck the Netiv Ha’assera kibbutz in southern Israel killing a foreign agricultural worker, according to reports.

Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian:

Don’t expect the US to suddenly cancel military and financial aid to Israel, or to stop sharing intelligence. But Washington can display its displeasure in many small but incremental ways, from a critical statement at an international meeting Clinton is attending in Moscow this week to a snub for Netanyahu when he is scheduled to visit DC next week, or an abstention in a United Nations resolution critical of Israel.

Melanie Phillips in the Spectator:

Are we seeing the beginning (heaven forbid) of the Obama intifada?

The escalating Arab rioting today in Jerusalem and the West Bank is undoubtedly being stoked up by the fact that the Obama administration has turned so viciously against Israel. Doubtless as a result the Arabs now smell victory within their grasp and may now unleash another wave of violence against Israelis.

Every single one of their recent ‘grievances’ is not just fabricated but stands history and justice on their heads. The ostensible cause of today’s rioting, the re-opening yesterday of the ancient Hurva synagogue in the heart of the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, is a typical example of this fanatical moral and historical inversion. The Hurva has been under reconstruction for years. The Palestinian campaign of incitement over it carries the message that Jews cannot build places of worship in their own city. And before anyone says any of Jerusalem is ‘occupied Palestinian territory’, it is not and never was ‘Palestinian’. In every single attempt to resolve the Middle East impasse, Jerusalem was always regarded as a special case on its own; and from the mid 19th century onwards it has had uninterruptedly a Jewish majority.

…

Middle America, those millions of mainly Christian souls who are Israel’s staunchest supporters in the world, should be made aware of what their President is doing – turning the United States into a betrayer of democracy, human rights and the Jewish people to become no less than an accessory to terror.

The Daily Beast:

The flare-up between the U.S. and Israel is sorely testing relations between the two countries. It’s also rousing a group of Americans who have been largely out of the headlines in the Obama era: the religious right, which is rallying to the Netanyahu government’s defense.

Gary Bauer, who advised John McCain on outreach to evangelical groups in 2008 and ran for president himself in 2000, just returned from the Jewish state, where he led 700 supporters in a rally for the Israeli government. Bauer, who now leads the advocacy group American Values, is upset that the Obama administration’s decision to take Israel to task over the new settlements. Perhaps no group has been as unflagging in its back of Israel than evangelicals in the U.S.

“I continue to think it’s odd that the U.S. is suggesting to Israel that there are neighborhoods in Jerusalem where more Jews are not allowed to live,” Bauer told The Daily Beast. “This is the first black president, and that is called segregation.”

Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren:

Israel and America enjoy a deep and multi-layered friendship, but even the closest allies can sometimes disagree. Such a disagreement began last week during Vice President Joseph Biden’s visit to Israel, when a mid-level official in the Interior Ministry announced an interim planning phase in the expansion of Ramat Shlomo, a northern Jerusalem neighborhood. While this discord was unfortunate, it was not a historic low point in United States-Israel relations; nor did I ever say that it was, contrary to some reports.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no desire during a vice presidential visit to highlight longstanding differences between the United States and Israel on building on the other side of the 1949 armistice line that once divided Jerusalem. The prime minister repeatedly apologized for the timing of the announcement and pledged to prevent such embarrassing incidents from recurring. In reply, the Obama administration asked Israel to reaffirm its commitment to the peace process and to its bilateral relations with the United States. Israel is dedicated to both.

…

To achieve peace, Israel is asked to take monumental risks, including sacrificing land next to our major industrial areas and cities. Previous withdrawals, from Lebanon and Gaza, brought not peace but rather thousands of rockets raining down on our neighborhoods.

Though Israel will always ultimately rely on the courage of its own defense forces, America’s commitment to Israel’s security is essential to give Israelis the confidence to take risks for peace. Similarly, American-Israeli cooperation is vital to meeting the direst challenge facing both countries and the entire world: denying nuclear weapons to Iran.

Israel appreciates President Obama’s commitment to a comprehensive peace that guarantees Israel’s security and Jewish identity, and provides for a Palestinian state. To ensure that such a state is peaceful, Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that it must be demilitarized and that Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, just as Israel is asked to recognize a future Palestinian state as the nation-state of the Palestinians.

The Independent:

Ask Rabbi Sam White what he thinks of the global political row over plans to expand the community in which he lives, prays and studies, and he answers bluntly: “I don’t see the problem. God gave us the land of Israel.” The notion that the location of Ramat Shlomo, on land occupied after the 1967 Six Day War and officially expropriated six years later, might belong to another people is wholly alien to the 32- year-old Salford-born rabbi. “There’s no question. It’s in the Torah, which says that God gave the land to the Jewish people.”

We are talking in a gabled brown brick house which, incongruously set amid the rows of plain white multi-storey apartment buildings in this hilltop settlement of some 18,000 in the north of Jerusalem, looks as if it might have been transplanted from another country. Which in a sense it was. For this is the Chabad House, the community base of the famous Hasidic sect which still reveres the leadership of the late Lubavicher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, its architecture a replica of the movement’s world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

And Rabbi White is as opposed to territorial compromise of any part of the greater “land of Israel” – stretching, in his view, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean – as his spiritual leader was throughout his long life. “Look what happened in Gaza, when they took the people from Gush Katif [the main settlement bloc in the territory dismantled by Ariel Sharon in 1995],” he says. “An Israel in pieces is not an Israel at peace.”

Israel is being asked to consider a “settlement freeze” in East Jerusalem, which will in all likelihood be as farcical as the “settlement freeze” in the West Bank. ie. building will continue while the rhetoric will change:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been presented with a new proposal according to which construction in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem that are located behind the Green Line will be reduced, while Jewish construction in Arab neighborhoods will be frozen altogether, Ynet reported Thursday.

A similar proposal was brought before the “forum of seven ministers,” but was apparently rejected by right-wing members of cabinet. President Shimon Peres, who met with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton on Thursday, supports the proposal.

Jewish construction in east Jerusalem has gained momentum since Mayor Nir Barkat took office.

The Israel lobby strikes back

Published on 18 March 2010 in General. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Speaking of “journalists” who love Israel like an old wine; juicy if you know where to lick but corrupt to the core. Over to you, Murdoch columnist Greg Sheridan:

The Australia-Israel relationship, normally a byword for geostrategic stability and enduring human warmth, has had some stormy passages lately.

The use of Australian passports by the agents, presumably from Mossad, who assassinated a Hamas terrorist in Dubai led to unusually strong criticism of Israel from Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith. Australia changed its vote from oppose to abstain at the UN on a resolution requiring Israel and Hamas to investigate alleged war crimes as demanded in the widely discredited Goldstone report. This was a clear if unstated punishment of Israel for the passports breach.

Then there were needlessly energetic comments by Foreign Minister Smith condemning Israel over the recent announcement of 1600 new housing units to be built in East Jerusalem, on which more later.

This makes it all the more remarkable, and reassuring, that Smith yesterday hosted a bipartisan ceremony to accept a report – prepared by the Australia Israel Leadership Forum, founded by Melbourne businessman Albert Dadon – with recommendations for enhancing the Australia-Israel relationship.

The forum, in which I have participated, brings together a range of Israelis and Australians for annual strategic dialogue in the broadest sense. The Australian delegation in its two meetings has been led by Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a letter endorsing the work of the forum and saying he will consider its recommendations.

The report makes four important suggestions.

The first is that Australian military staff colleges should host Israeli officers. This is a brilliant idea. Our staff colleges routinely host Arab officers and this is all to the good. We deploy a lot of Australian forces in and around the Middle East and, as a result, we have developed effective working relations with a number of Arab militaries. But we are a strategic and political ally of Israel. The absence of Israelis from these courses is a serious gap and has a small but ongoing effect on our military culture.

Arab and Israeli officers routinely attend US staff colleges together. It’s good for both of them. They have to put up with each other if they want the benefit of American military staff colleges. It helps dialogue all around and it gives expression to the true nature of the US-Israel relationship. There is absolutely no reason Australia should not do this.

I would add a recommendation the report leaves out. Australia should have an annual or biennial full strategic dialogue with Israel. We do have very high level intelligence exchanges but, given the depth of our investment in the Middle East, we should also exchange deep and wide strategic views. We could learn something, and perhaps we could teach something. Our military work in Afghanistan is overwhelmingly among civilian populations, just as is most of Israel’s military involvement. Operationally, ethically, in every way we have things to talk about.

Recommendation No 2 is for a free trade agreement. This is also a brilliant idea. Australian trade with Israel is small, just about $1 billion a year. But Israel is a world leader in innovation and commercialisation. We could and should do much more together.

Third, Israel’s experience with improving Bedouin health and Australia’s struggle to do the same with Aboriginal health ought to be the basis for co-operation, comparison and mutual teaching.

Finally, the report recommends auditing and giving life to the plethora of bilateral agreements that have become moribund through the years. This is a practical and very useful document.

Smith reiterated at its launch that despite recent controversies there has been no change in Australia’s deep friendship with and commitment to Israel.

Smith did the right thing by accepting the report, committing the government to considering it seriously and reiterating Australia’s support for Israel.

And Opposition Deputy Leader Julie Bishop supported him on behalf of the Coalition.

Overall, the Rudd government displays only marginally less solidarity with Israel than the Howard government did. It has changed a couple of Australian votes at the UN, but not many. No one seriously doubts that this is an attempt, almost certainly forlorn, to curry favour with the Arab League in our quixotic and pointless quest for a non-permanent UN Security Council seat. This worthless bid is distorting our foreign policy, but so far mainly at the margins.

Similar considerations probably animate Smith’s overreaction to the 1600 Israeli apartments to be built, in three years, in East Jerusalem. This is in some eerie ways a minor imitation of the Obama administration’s gross overreaction. Whereas the Rudd government is courting votes for a tawdry UN election, Barack Obama plainly sees the quest to redefine the US relationship with the Muslim world as central to his historic mission, and part of this involves dumping on the Israelis.

Thus the Palestinian Authority for 12 months refused to negotiate with Israel; that was fine. It then named a square after a female suicide bomber who killed 37 civilians, including 13 children. No hint of a US rebuke there. But Israel announcing the apartments is apparently the end of Middle East peace as we know it.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the Israeli government was extremely stupid to announce the apartments while US Vice-President Joe Biden was visiting Israel. But Netanyahu’s temporary freeze on building in the West Bank never included East Jerusalem. There are Jewish parts of East Jerusalem that every serious player knows will stay with Israel in any peace deal. They were staying with Israel under the Bill Clinton mandated offer to the Palestinians in 2000, and under the even more generous plan put by Ehud Olmert in 2008.

In other words, as usual, Israel got the public relations and political management wrong but the substance right. The Obama administration was notably unmoved by rape and murder as a political tactic in Iran; is offering endless concessions to Syria, which treats Washington with studied contempt; and will never criticise the Palestinian Authority. It is developing a very bad tendency to constantly flatter its enemies in the fantastical hope of engaging and converting them, while abusing its friends, to show its even-handedness.

Canberra has no need to go down that same road.

This useful report helps it choose a better road instead.

Australian mainstream newspaper dares to say a few things about East Jerusalem

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

For the Sydney Morning Herald, yesterday’s editorial is pretty strong. A sign, perhaps, that the Zionist lobby isn’t always running the agenda in the corporate media:

Stephen Smith, the Foreign Minister, is right to be outraged by Israel’s announcement last week of plans for 1600 houses for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem. Venturing beyond Australia’s usual safe diplomatic language on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Smith called it “a bad decision at the wrong time” and “not a helpful contribution to the peace process”. The timing – just as Joe Biden, the US Vice-President, arrived in Israel to help restart peace talks – could hardly have been worse. Smith was still smarting from unresolved tensions with Israel over the use of forged Australian passports in the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai, widely believed to be the work of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Even more than that episode, the tactless announcement over East Jerusalem highlights Israel’s apparent disregard for the role of goodwill in relations with even its closest allies.

Palestinians see East Jerusalem as their future capital, should a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict ever come to pass. Yet the housing plan is just one more event in a process by which the Israeli government has been busily remaking East Jerusalem in Israel’s own image, often disregarding Arab heritage. Jewish tourist parks, conservation areas and archaeological digs have sprouted in Palestinian districts. There are reports that Israel plans to build another 50,000 housing units in East Jerusalem over the next few years. Shocked, angered and embarrassed enough just by hearing of the plan for 1600 houses, Biden condemned it as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now”.

The undermining was a product of the inability of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to control his coalition of right-wing and religious parties since he took power a year ago. The housing announcement came from Eli Yishai, the Interior Minister, who is head of the right-wing Sephardic-Orthodox party, which champions Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. Israel’s defence ministry quickly deplored the announcement as “unwarranted”. Yet however deep the divisions are among Israelis themselves, Netanyahu’s failure at least to reprimand his minister publicly leaves questions over how serious he is about pushing ahead with a peace deal.

The affair has harmed prospects for the so-called “proximity talks”, in which Israelis and Palestinians are to meet separately with American mediators. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, has threatened to pull out, saying Palestinians have been “given the finger by Netanyahu”. Since late 2008, Australia has supported a freeze on Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. We must now follow this through and bring what pressure we can on Israel to grasp the goodwill so vital to the peace process.

A letter in the SMH to counter Zionist spin

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

Following yesterday’s article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Zionist lobbyist Vic Alhadeff, I submitted the following unpublished letter:

Once again we have the sorry sight of an Australian Zionist spokesman, Vic Alhadeff (15/3/10) seemingly incapable of condemning Israel’s ever-expanding colonisation of the West Bank. While the international community is becoming increasingly intolerant of the Jewish state’s insistence that a two-state solution is the ideal while building illegal settlements on Palestinian land, Zionist leaders try to tell us that black is white and Palestinians should simply accept Israel’s right to exist. A two-state solution is dead and buried. One-state is fast approaching and the Jewish state will only have itself to blame.

Jews have a noble tradition of questioning official doctrine on a host of issues, from religion to abortion to reproductive rights. Only Israel brings an intellectual bankruptcy that must support every action of the Zionist nation. Let Mr.Alhadeff prove me wrong.

Readers should know that many Jews do not support Israel’s right to be an apartheid state, a term now widely used by virtually every human rights group on the planet.

Obama has no issue with settlements (if he did, he’d pull money)

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

Just in case it wasn’t clear that America essentially approves Israeli building in East Jerusalem, read here. The sound and fury coming from Washington is purely for show. And it means nothing on the ground.

Meanwhile, the US Zionist lobby is getting angry with the Obama administration. How dare you say anything critical of Israel, you anti-Semites:

Amid continued tensions between Washington and Jerusalem after an Israeli government announcement last week during the goodwill visit of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that it would approve the construction of 1,600 new Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, the influential pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) says recent U.S. criticism of the Israeli government  is “a matter of serious concern” and has called on the Obama administration to defuse tension with Israel.

The AIPAC statement comes in advance of the group’s major annual strategy conference in Washington starting next weekend, at which both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are due to speak.

It follows Biden’s condemnation of the housing announcement while on a goodwill trip to Israel last week, and a 45-minute follow up call by Clinton to Netanyahu Friday in which she blasted the housing announcement, saying it undermines trust and confidence in the peace process and in American interests.

White House advisor David Axelrod told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday the White House was insulted by the Israeli announcement, and considered it “an affront,” coming just two days after the Palestinians had agreed to go into U.S.-mediated indirect proximity talks with the Israelis.

Netanyahu on Sunday said the timing of the announcement was “regrettable” and “hurtful,” but done in innocence. A Jerusalem planning committee also reportedly canceled this week’s planned construction-related agenda items, although not the project itself that was the source of the latest controversy.

Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell is slated to return to the region on Tuesday to try to salvage the proximity talks.

“What happened to Vice President Biden this week in Jerusalem was egregious but hardly new,” former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, now vice president of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, wrote at The Daily Beast Saturday. “Right-wing governments in Israel have regularly embarrassed high-level U.S. officials by making announcements about new settlement activity during or just after their visits.”

AIPAC statement below the jump:

“AIPAC CALLS RECENT STATEMENTS BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT “A MATTER OF SERIOUS CONCERN” URGES OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO WORK TO IMMEDIATELY DIFFUSE THE TENSION WITH ISRAEL The Obama Administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern. AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to diffuse the tension with the Jewish State. Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East. The foundation of the U.S-Israel relationship is rooted in America’s fundamental strategic interest, shared democratic values, and a long-time commitment to peace in the region. Those strategic interests, which we share with Israel, extend to every facet of American life and our relationship with the Jewish State, which enjoys vast bipartisan support in Congress and among the American people. The Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel, with whom the United States shares basic, fundamental, and strategic interests. The escalated rhetoric of recent days only serves as a distraction from the substantive work that needs to be done to with regard to the urgent issue of Iran’s rapid pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the pursuit of peace between Israel and all her Arab neighbors. We strongly urge the Administration to work closely and privately with our partner Israel, in a manner befitting strategic allies, to address any issues between the two governments. As Vice President Biden said last week in Israel, “Progress in the Middle East occurs when there is no daylight between the United States and Israel.”

How many American Jews are upset with Israel?

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

The Jewish Forward newspaper is unhappy (sure, it’s pitifully weak, but unlike the Australian Jewish News, Israel can occasionally step out of line):

There were the expected handshakes and bear hugs, the slaps on the back and supportive words amiably expressed before the media. Just what ought to happen when Israel welcomes the vice president of the United States, the second in command of its greatest ally and the highest-ranking official of a still-new administration to visit Jerusalem.

Then, dafka, the proverbial stab in the back.

Hours after Vice President Joe Biden declared that there is “no space” between Israel and the U.S., the Israeli government announces the approval of 1,600 new housing units in contested East Jerusalem, expanding the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood for ultra-Orthodox Jews on land that Palestinians also claim. The announcement from the Interior Ministry, run by the head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, claimed that the expansion has been in the works for years (true) and that the timing was just a coincidence (hard to believe).

The day after, press reports said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was surprised and embarrassed by the timing of the announcement. If true, that suggests he is incapable of managing his sprawling administration, so packed with patronage that it is the largest in Israel’s history — hardly an encouraging thought.

In any case, this is no way to treat a guest. The timing and the substance of the announcement left Biden in a terrible spot, forced to condemn his host’s behavior even as he was trying to launch a new round of indirect negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis.

As Americans, we feel insulted. Contrary to the spin generated in some quarters, the Obama administration has gone out of its way to support Israel and the Netanyahu government. As the Forward has reported, cooperation between the two nations is flourishing — the Obama administration has worked hard to bolster Israel’s qualitative military edge, which had eroded during the final year of the presidency of George W. Bush. America continues to do the heavy lifting required to fend off unfair criticism of Israel in unfriendly venues. And American Jews continue to pour money, resources and energy into ensuring Israel’s future.

Some Jews believe that all of Jerusalem belongs under Israeli control, but that is a political position, not an indisputable fact. Another people also lays claim to this holy city. This is why negotiations are so desperately needed — and why expanding Ramat Shlomo by fiat may serve the narrow purposes of a political agenda, but it obstructs the broader goal of a negotiated settlement. As Israeli writer (and Forward contributing editor) Uri Dromi wrote the day after this debacle: “By expanding settlements, instead of separating from the Palestinians while we still can, we Israelis are dooming ourselves to lose the Jewish and democratic state that has been won with so much sacrifice.”

But our reaction to this announcement is more personal. The American vice president was placed in a humiliating position. Note to Israel: That’s not how you treat your best friend.

Australians demanding our government defend citizens in Palestine

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

The following article by Pip Hinman appears in this week’s Green Left Weekly:

Bridget Chappell, an Australian solidarity worker in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, was arrested by occupying Israeli forces on February 7 and threatened with deportation for simply engaging in peaceful protests alongside Palestinians.

Solidarity activists have asked Australia’s foreign affairs department to intervene in support of Chappell to allow her to continue her work in the West Bank.

Chappell was arrested in a pre-dawn raid for alleged “visa irregularities” — even though she had a valid bridging visa.

At the time, Chappell’s arrest featured prominently in the Australian media. But since the Israeli Supreme Court declared her arrest illegal and released them on bail on February 9 the case has faded from view.

Chappell is fighting to be able to continue her work in the West Bank with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) — a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using non-violent direct action.

She is also fighting attempts by the Israeli government to have her deported — the fate of other ISM volunteers.

Israel’s “war on protest” — as Israeli daily Haaretz put it — is intended to undermine a joint non-violent campaign by international activists and Palestinian villagers challenging a land grab by Israel as it builds the separation wall on farmland in the West Bank.

The arrests are in response to those organising protests against the wall.

The last major confrontation between Israel and the ISM resulted in deaths and injuries of international activists at the hands of the Israeli army. The horrendous case of US ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie, who was run down and killed by an army bulldozer in 2003 as she attempted to stop a home demolition in Gaza, is the most well known.

On March 10, the Haifa District Court began hearing eyewitness testimonies in a civil lawsuit filed by Corrie’s family against the state of Israel for her unlawful killing.

Chappell told Green Left Weekly that she is very worried about being able stay. She said Israel does not want people, like herself, bearing witness to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, and its continued settlement building.

She is concerned that Australia’s consular assistance has been minimal. Given the Australian government’s close relationship with Israel, a number of people have signed a letter, drafted by the Sydney Stop the War Coalition, urging the foreign affairs department to assist Chappell.

The letter states that Chappell was not participating in “illegal riots”, as claimed by the arresting officials, and that she “was certainly not involved in the dirty business of scamming passports to assassinate political leaders – as agents of the Israeli state have allegedly been recently caught out doing”.

The statement concluded: “We would like to know what Australian consular officials are doing to assist Ms Chappell. She should be allowed to return to the West Bank; she should not be deported.”

Signatories include (organisations listed for identification purposes only): John Pilger; Antony Loewenstein; Archdeacon Philip Newman; Dr Jake Lynch (Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Sydney University), Peter Slezak (School of History amd Philosophy, UNSW), Vivienne Porzsolt (Jews Against the Occupation), Cathy Peters (Marrickville Greens councillor), Ned Curthoys (Australian National University), Peter Boyle (Socialist Alliance) and Sonja Karkar (Australians for Palestine).

[You can read the full letter, and add your name, at Stopwarcoalition.org. Pip Hinman is an activist in the Sydney Stop the War Coalition.]

The marriage made in hell: Christion Zionists and Jews get down and dirty

Published on 13 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The recent Christians United for Israel conference in Israel was a unique opportunity to see up close the growing Christian Zionist movement (and their desperate Jewish mates) defend every Israeli action. They’re a threat and should not be ignored. They’re loving Israel to death.

Max Blumenthal provides some other details about CUFI’s John Hagee:

Hagee’s ceremony featured a 15-minute film highlighting the recipients of donations from John Hagee Ministries that totaled $58 million since 2001. The recipients included Jewish settlements from the West Bank like Gush Etzion and Shomron, which was involved in promoting an “Obama Hilltop project” that promoted more settlement building and compared Obama to Pharoah. Hagee also announced funding for a pressure group run by the settlers evacuated from Gush Katif in Gaza in 2005. During Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2009, a group of Gush Katif residents lobbied the Israel government to allow them to resettle the Palestinian coastal region.

Many Israelis Jews don’t believe Arabs should be treated equally

Published on 13 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

While non-violent resistance is growing in the West Bank – a threat to Israel and its backers because the vast majority of its adherents are simply demanding equal rights with Jews – it’s hard not to read this and despair. On the other hand, Israel’s true face is being revealed more every day. And we want to remain close to this country?

Nearly half of Israel’s high school students do not believe that Israeli-Arabs are entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel, according to the results of a new survey released yesterday. The same poll revealed that more than half the students would deny Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset.

The survey, which was administered to teenagers at various Israeli high schools, also found that close to half of all respondents – 48 percent – said that they would refuse orders to evacuate outposts and settlements in the Palestinian territories.

Nearly one-third – 31 percent – said they would refuse military service beyond the Green Line.

New York Times prefers to view the Middle East as a balanced tiff between two old mates

Published on 12 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The New York Times editorialises about the Middle East with its usual “he said/she said” mentality. Both the Israelis and Palestinians must work towards peace but why the hell should anybody in the Middle East see America and Barack Obama as anything other than a nearly unquestioning friend of Israel?

Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. used rare and decidedly undiplomatic language on Tuesday to upbraid Israel after it announced plans to build 1,600 new housing units in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem. “I condemn the decision. …,” he said in a statement.

The Obama administration is understandably furious. Mr. Biden was in Israel working to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The word came after he had spent the day vowing the United States’ “absolute, total and unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.”

Aides say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blindsided by the announcement from Israel’s Interior Ministry, led by the leader of right-wing Shas Party. But he didn’t disavow the plan. And it is hard to see the timing as anything but a slap in the face to Washington.

There were conflicting reports on whether the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would go ahead with “proximity talks” — in which George Mitchell, the Middle East envoy for the United States, is supposed to shuttle between Jerusalem and the West Bank in hopes of making enough progress to revive direct negotiations on a two-state solution. Mr. Abbas should stick with the talks.

President Obama seriously miscalculated last year when he insisted that Israel impose a full stop on all new settlement building, only to have Mr. Netanyahu refuse. The goal was — and is — just. The Palestinians are legitimately fearful that the more Israel builds in the West Bank or East Jerusalem the less likely it is to ever negotiate away any disputed territory. A settlement freeze could well have jump-started serious negotiations.

But one of the basic rules of diplomacy is that American presidents never publicly insist on something they aren’t sure of getting — at least not without a backup plan. By the time Mr. Netanyahu finally acceded to a 10-month partial halt that exempted Jerusalem, the Palestinians felt so burned that the peace effort collapsed.

It must be noted that Mr. Obama and Mr. Mitchell also failed to persuade Arab leaders to agree to make any gestures to Israel in return for a settlement freeze.

The Obama administration worked hard to get Mr. Abbas to agree to renewed talks, arguing that more stalemate was not in the Palestinians’ interest. And it made some rare headway with Arab leaders, persuading them to endorse the American proposal for talks — giving Mr. Abbas needed political cover. Suggestions that Arab leaders might now renege on that support are worrisome.

Mr. Mitchell will have to keep working all sides to move this ahead. He must continue to press Israel on the settlements issue. And if Israel is to make real concessions, it will need more than gestures from the Arab states.

Mr. Biden said on Wednesday that the administration would hold both Israelis and Palestinians “accountable for any statements or actions that inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of talks.” That would be a very important start. We also hope that if progress lags, the administration will be ready to put forward its own proposals on the central issues of borders, refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.

Mr. Obama has another chance to move the peace process forward. This time he has to get it right.

This is how the US deals with its wild child, Israel

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

Take news from the Middle East in the last 24 hours. Despairing, infuriating and tragic.

This:

The Palestinians pulled out of a new round of indirect peace talks last night, even before they had begun, as a protest at Israel’s decision to announce approval for hundreds of new homes in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

The decision to pull out, announced in Cairo by Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League, represents a major setback to months of diplomacy by the US administration and comes after the US vice-president, Joe Biden, delivered an unusually strong rebuke to Israel.

And this:

Some 50,000 new housing units in Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the Green Line are in various stages of planning and approval, planning officials told Haaretz. They said Jerusalem’s construction plans for the next few years, even decades, are expected to focus on East Jerusalem.

Most of the housing units will be built in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods beyond the Green Line, while a smaller number of them will be built in Arab neighborhoods. The plans for some 20,000 of the apartments are already in advanced stages of approval and implementation, while plans for the remainder have yet to be submitted to the planning committees.

The planned construction includes the 1,600 homes in the ultra-Orthodox East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo that were approved Tuesday. Saying the decision undermines peace talks, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has publicly condemned the move, which the Interior Ministry announced during his visit to Israel.

Then this:

The U.S.-Israel bond is unbreakable, but the United States will keep both sides accountable for their actions, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said.

Biden’s address Thursday at Tel Aviv University, meant to have been an expression of friendship, was altered in part by Israel’s announcement this week that it planned to build 1,600 new housing units in disputed eastern Jerusalem.

Biden started by reaffirming the “unbreakable bond” between Israel and the United States, as he had done after his arrival earlier this week. The bond was “impervious to any shifts in either country and in either country’s partisan politics,” Biden said to applause.

He said it was critical for the international community to understand the bond: “Every time progress is made, it’s been made when the rest of the world knows there’s no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security, none — no space.”

Biden was blunt, however, when it came to his anger at being blindsided by the announcement of the housing starts, when he was in the West Bank meeting Palestinian leaders. “That decision undermined the trust required for negotiations,” Biden said, and under instructions from President Obama, “I condemned it immediately and unequivocally.” He added, to applause: “Sometimes only a friend can deliver the hardest truth.”

Biden accepted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s explanation that he too was caught unawares by the announcement and praised Netanyahu for offering to set up a mechanism to prevent future such surprises.

Biden said such actions will have consequences. “The United States will continue to hold both sides accountable for any statements or any actions that inflame tensions and influence these talks,” he said.

And finally this:

Israeli police are improperly arresting Palestinian boys in nighttime raids in Jerusalem that involve assault rifle wielding security forces handcuffing minors and interrogating them without lawyers or parents, an Israeli rights group charged Tuesday.

Most of the youths were accused of hurling rocks at Jewish settlers and damaging their property in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where tensions are high between settlers and Palestinian residents. Some of them have since been charged. Police say the arrests were legal, and a matter of law and order.

“They are using military-style night raids to extract children as young as 12,” said Sarit Michaeli of rights group B’tselem, which says the raids are an inappropriate method to detain children. They also argue the raids defy Israeli law, which demands children be accompanied by guardians while being arrested.

In affidavits to B’tselem, six boys aged between 12 and 14 years old described arrest raids involving around a dozen heavily armed military police surrounding their homes, handcuffing them and leading them to cells where they were slapped, kicked and told by interrogators to confess if they wanted to go home.

Some 40 boys have been taken into custody over the past year, and around half were 14 or younger, B’tselem said.

One of the boys, Ahmad Saim, 12, was arrested at around 3 a.m. on Jan. 10.

“I was made to kneel and face the wall and every time I moved a man … slapped me across the neck,” said Saim in an affidavit. Saim said an interrogator pushed him into the wall, causing a nose bleed.

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.

Another handy reminder of who runs the Middle East conflict

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

US Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel has been, in the words of the Daily Beast, “disastrous“:

Just as Biden arrived in Israel, the Interior Ministry announced the construction of 1,600 new housing units for Jewish residents in East Jerusalem, a move many, including many in the Obama administration, have interpreted as a deliberate provocation.

…

It’s hard to see the awkwardness of Biden’s visit so far having a broader political impact. But it does contribute to the impression, fair or unfair, that President Obama is presiding over an era of diminished American influence, in which allies and rivals alike feel comfortable thumbing their noses at a White House focused above all else on its domestic priorities.

The OECD may once again be ignoring Israel’s elephant in the ro

Published on 10 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

Who said brutally occupying another people is a barrier to global acceptance?

An exclusive club of the world’s most developed countries is poised to admit Israel as a member even though, a confidential internal document indicates, doing so will amount to endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories.

Israel has been told that its accession to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is all but assured when the 30 member states meet in May.

But a draft OECD report concedes that Israel has breached one of the organisation’s key requirements on providing accurate and transparent data on its economic activity.

The information supplied by Israel, the report notes, includes not only the economic activity of its citizens inside its recognised borders but also Jewish settlers who live in the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan in violation of international law.

Washington approves of Israeli settlements but kind of disapproves, too

Published on 9 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

A classic example of American news-speak:

The United States said on Monday that Israel’s approval of building 112 new Jewish homes in the West Bank did not violate a limited Israeli settlement freeze but was the kind of act both sides should be cautious about as they embark on indirect peace talks.

“On the one hand, it does not violate the moratorium that the Israelis previously announced. On the other hand, this is the kind of thing that both sides have to be cautious as we move ahead with these parallel talks,” U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters.

Israel and South Africa, feel the similarities

Published on 4 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner doesn’t mince words:

“As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, it will be an apartheid state.”

Those are the words of Ehud Barak, defense minister and former prime minister, at last month’s Herzliya Conference, the country’s highest-profile gathering of VIPs. Barak’s statement begs the question: Seeing that Palestinians in the West Bank haven’t been able to vote in Israeli elections since the occupation started in 1967, isn’t he saying Israel has been an apartheid state since then?

So, putting Barak’s statement in the context of this week’s news, should people really be so outraged that a few dozen colleges overseas are staging “Israel Apartheid Week”?

Myself, I prefer the term “colonialism” to “apartheid” when comparing Israel’s rule in the West Bank to other regimes in world history. There are important differences between the occupation and apartheid – for one, apartheid was based on race, the occupation is based on nationality. Yet there are important, obvious similarities, too, the main one being that in both apartheid South Africa and the West Bank, one group of people harshly, systematically and “legally” keeps another group of people down.

Anyway, however different from apartheid the occupation may be, it’s definitely more like apartheid than it is like democracy.