Coteret

Yossi Alpher

In this week’s (December 16 2009 issue) Forward, Yossi Alpher slams Gerald Steinberg and NGO Monitor, exposing their partisan agenda, guilt by association methodology and sheer hypocrisy.

Alpher co-edits the bitterlemons.org family of Internet publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University (now the INSS.)

Partisan agenda

It is not sticking to its Web site’s slogan of “promoting critical debate and accountability of human rights NGOs in the Arab Israeli conflict.” Rather, it seems dead set on eliminating human rights monitoring of Israel entirely and smearing anyone who supports this vital activity. In so doing, NGO Monitor is running roughshod over some important organizations that are working to maintain Israel’s integrity in the context of its ongoing occupation of the West Bank.

Guilt by association

Consider, if you will, NGO Monitor’s “October 2009 Digest,” posted on its Web site. One of the digest’s six items is titled “J Street’s NGO connections.” J Street? Isn’t that the moderate pro-Israel lobby that has received blessings from Shimon Peres and Tzipi Livni? Why is NGO Monitor looking at J Street? The item discusses the recent J Street conference. It notes, with appropriate hyperlinks, that J Street has connections with the New Israel Fund and hosted a speaker from B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

I click on NGO Monitor’s B’Tselem link and find that the organization “regularly minimizes Israeli security concerns” and that “its political agenda is evident in the minimal attention it gives to intra-Palestinian human rights abuses.” But Israeli security concerns and Palestinians killing Palestinians are not part of B’Tselem’s mandate. And even if one often disagrees with B’Tselem, as I sometimes do, it’s hard to deny that it is doing valuable work, usually in a credible fashion.

Yet NGO Monitor’s guilt by association doesn’t stop there: We began with J Street, moved to B’Tselem, then we are transported, through another link, to B’Tselem’s sources of funding, one of which is the Ford Foundation. Ford, we are told, “was among the main funders for extremist NGOs involved in the 2001 UN sponsored Durban conference” and is “still funding anti-Israel groups.” By now we are to understand, via insinuation and guilt by association, that J Street, B’Tselem and Ford are all somehow anti-Israel.

Hypocrisy

NGO Monitor and an allied organization, the Institute for Zionist Strategies, recently sponsored a seminar in the Knesset that pushed for closer government regulation of human rights NGOs that monitor the occupation and their international donors. Nothing was mentioned, of course, about those American evangelicals who — often in the name of an antisemitic, end-of-days agenda — support West Bank settlers who violate Palestinian human rights. Or about the American Jewish foundations that financially support the ideological settlers’ agenda. Nor did Steinberg and IZS’s head, Israel Harel, fess up, in the interest of transparency, that when they themselves contribute articles to my Web magazines, they gladly accept payment from monies that were provided by the E.U., Ford Foundation, OSI and SIDA — the very donors they condemn.

It’s okay when the donor money goes to right-wingers.

The past two days have witnessed some Israeli reaction to settler fundamentalism. On Sunday (December 13 2009) evening, Defense Minister Ehud Barak finally stood up to a mutiny-inciting IDF-affiliated rabbi. This morning (December 15 2009) Haaretz published a scathing exposé of how Israeli and US taxes fund Yitzhar’s Od Yosef Hai yeshiva, publisher of Baruch Hagever, an ode to Cave of Patriarchs murderer Baruch Goldstein, and, more recently, the “Handbook for the Killing of Gentiles.”

Most startling, however, is an op-ed by Ben Dror Yemini, a senior editor at Maariv, known as a leading crusader against anti-Israeli propaganda and ‘Islamofascism.’ Enraged at the damage done to his efforts by Friday’s (December 11 2009) torching of a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, he penned a full frontal assault on the attackers, the rabbis sanctioning them and the government’s of Israel lack of action on the issue (full text after the jump.)

Israel-haters worldwide were quick to celebrate the pictures of the burned mosque in the village of Yasuf…The hooligans who desecrated a mosque are the enemy because they contributed the most to the delegitimization campaign of the international radical left, led by Ahmadinezhad and Hugo Chavez.  In their acts, they actually helped bolstering those who want to turn Israel into an illegitimate, leper state.  Healthy states know how to curb such phenomena, but here, it seems, we refuse to get the point.  We exercise forgiveness instead.  Sure, the prime minister and the defense minister condemned the act, but where are their acts?  What happened to the basic understanding that the arsonists who torched the mosque are terrorists, and that the harm they inflict on Israel is as grave as terror attacks by Hamas members?  Why do we fail to realize that this is a Jewish mutation of Neo-Nazism?  Why do we not see that they are the enemy, dangerous warriors in the battle against the legitimacy of the State of Israel?…We must not refer to them as a small and marginal minority.  These people are supported by the highest echelons.  Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, the spiritual leader of the religious-Zionists, issued an edict that practically allows Jews to pick olives in plantations that belong to Arabs.

Note that Yemini neglects to address the fact that the some of the Rabbis inciting these actions are recipients of generous government funding. This is not surprising, however, because a frequent source of his, Israel’s premier expert on NGO funding, Prof. Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, contends that the practice is just a fact of life in Israel, as normal as the funding of youth movements, and does not warrant any extraordinary action. Responding to a direct question on Od Yosef Hai, he tells the Jerusalem Post’s Shmuel Rosner that

the state is used to funnel large sums of money to various sectors and institutions related to political parties  – from kibbuzim to youth movements and yeshivot —  with numerous stops in between.

Here is the Rabbi Eliyahu ruling referenced in the op-ed (quoted by Haaretz on October 25 2002)

Since the land is the inheritance of the People of Israel, planting on this land  by gentiles is planting on land that does not belong to them. If someone plants a tree on my land, both the tree and the fruit it yields belong to me.

Neo-Nazis among us

The mosque desecraters are dangerous enemies who defeat Israel in its struggle for legitimacy.  They are not alone.  Their ideology comes from the top.  Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu allowed Jews to pick the Olives of Arabs.  Those who authorize olive thefts may be comfortable when mosques are desecrated

Op-ed, Ben-Dror Yemini, Maariv, December 15 2009

They are “our boys.”  They are pioneers, salt of the earth, our own flesh and blood.  They sacrificed a life of convenience just to be out there, first in the field.  Yes, they are sometimes naughty and step out line here and there, but this no reason to make a fuss.  After all, they are on our side.

Too many among us maintain this view.  We may find it hard to conceive of the threat they post, but we are looking at a cancer.  People who act like Skinheads, Neo-Nazis, or Jihadists are just that, regardless of their faith.  There are such Christians, there are such Muslims and, in case we have not yet realized – and we should – there are such Jews too. Read more…

Rabbi Elitzur

UPDATE: Yaniv Reich provides a handbook for journalists and activists interested in exploring this issue further.

Friday’s (December 11 2009) torching of a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, did not take place in a vacuum.  The “price tag” terror tactic has been public knowledge for more than two years. Rabbis publicly sanction and encourage these attacks.

The Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar is a notable example. Its head, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg,  is the author of Baruch Hagever, an ode to Cave of Patriarchs murderer Baruch Goldstein. In early November the yeshiva’s dean, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, published the “Handbook for the Killing of Gentiles.” On December 4 he published an article with specific instructions for terror activities in response to the “settlement freeze.”

Investigative reporting by Haaretz has been following the funding sources behind the yeshiva. On November 17, it exposed generous financial support from the Israeli government. This morning (December 15 2009,) it uncovers US federal tax exemptions for its American donors and slams the US administration for sanctioning this practice.

Below is a key excerpt. An annotated full text of the report is provided after the jump. The original yeshiva report to the Israeli Registrar of Associations can be downloaded here. Mondoweiss’s investigative reporting on the Central Fund of Israel can be read here.

This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it is permissible to kill gentile babies because of “the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents.” In his latest book, the head of the yeshiva, Yitzhak Shapira, who bears the honorable title of rabbi, even permits killing anyone “who, through his remarks and so forth, weakens our kingdom” (Obama, beware!)…According to the fund’s latest financial statement, it gave some $8 million to religious organizations in 2006, earmarked for establishing synagogues and schools, aiding the needy and “urgent security needs.”…So the next time the White House spokesman condemns the torching of a mosque near Nablus, some reporter ought to ask him why respectable American citizens contribute to the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, one of whose leading rabbis wrote the following incendiary words of incitement: “[Civil] Administration inspectors have not dared to enter Yitzhar since the freeze edict. Their experience with Yitzhar, and its heat, are responsible for the fact that every entry into the settlement by hostile elements requires large forces and ends with extensive damage to army and police equipment, even greater damage to Arab persons and property, and a region that continues to burn in every direction for several days” (Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, Hakol Hayehudi, December 4, 2009).

U.S. tax dollars fund rabbi who excused killing gentile babies

Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent

The White House condemns the torching of a mosque, yet respectable Americans contribute to a yeshiva whose rabbi said it’s okay to kill gentile babies. It is no surprise that the American administration tacitly, if unenthusiastically, accepted the excuse that the map of national priority zones the cabinet approved on Sunday does not violate the decision to freeze construction in the settlements.

Read more…

Professor Aeyal Gross is a faculty member  in the law faculty of Tel Aviv University, a guest lecturer at the University of London, and research fellow  at the Human Rights  Program at Harvard Law School. His blog and full bio are available at www.aeyalgross.com. This article was commissioned by the Israeli Democracy Institute in Hebrew on the for International Human Rights Day. An annotated version, also in Hebrew, is available on Prof. Gross’s blog.

Killing the messenger

International Human Rights Day commemorates an important historic moment that occurred 61 years ago.  On December 10th 1948, after devastating years filled with violence and bloodshed, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  This day symbolizes a revolution in thought that transformed the understanding of human rights from a state’s “private matter” to an international standard of rights that each and every human being deserves.  The revolution in thought conveyed by the Universal Declaration was illustrated by the fact that, alongside the right to life, liberty, freedom of expression, of religion, of conscience and of movement; the right to health, education, housing, and just and fair employment benefits were listed with equal importance.  The Universal Declaration did not distinguish between ”civil” ” and “social” rights, and instead addressed them all as human rights.

Sixty-one years after this historic moment, the revolution proposed by the Universal Declaration has received many threats.  The Declaration’s attempt to secure equality and human rights for each and every person has been limited by national and ethnic criteria concerning those who deserve them, undermining the universality of these rights.  For example, migrant workers and Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories are not eligible for the same rights that Israeli citizens enjoy.  At the same time, among its citizens, the State of Israel discriminates against and violates the rights of many, as described by a recent report released by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in honor of International Human Rights Day, which concludes that democratic rights in Israel are “conditional.”  There is also a missing link between “civil” and “social” rights, in opposition to Israel’s Declaration of Independence which promises “total equality of social and political rights.”  Welfare rights take second place, if they are recognized at all, in Israel.  Amongst these disturbing phenomena, this year a particularly upsetting one demands our attention: the concept of “killing the messenger.”  More and more, the discussion about violations of human rights is diverted to one meant to de-legitimize those who point them out.

One obvious example is the Goldstone Report.   Read more…

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef on Muslims: “Their religion is as ugly as they are”

Avishai Ben Haim, Maariv, December 14 2009

“They’re stupid. Their religion is as ugly as they are,” Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas, said about Muslims last night during his Saturday night talk.

Read more…

This morning’s (December 13 2009) Haaretz (Hebrew edition only) runs a report by Amos Harel, which describes a new method the General Security Service (GSS) has found to crack down on settler attacks on Palestinians

Haaretz has learned that over the past three months five right-wing activists were summoned to warning talks [sic], where they were told by GSS men that they saw them as responsible for the ‘Price Tag‘ events.

Hopefully the GSS sees this a long-term law enforcement technique because, judging by this weekend’s pyrotechnics, it has yet bear fruit. The perpetrators themselves do not appear fazed. This Friday’s Jewish Voice, a weekly ‘Price Tag‘ organization leaflet (Hebrew original here,) has a monologue by one Efraim Ben Shohat describing his GSS interrogation. It ends with the following passage

But it turns out that even the General Security Service of the State of Israel, comprised of expert psychologists and the best and smartest professionals in the country cannot overcome a simple Jew who believes in blessed G-d!

In its report “A Semblance of Law,” Yesh Din describes in detail the systematic lack of law enforcement on violent settlers. One of its major recommendations is that the West Bank Police actually investigate attacks and that minimal resources be allocated for this purpose. Until that happens, “warning talks” and  hand-wringing will have to fill the gap.

Even at this juncture, it’s hard to demand diversion of law enforcement resources to the West Bank when they are stretched so thin in Jerusalem, for example. Just this Friday, dozens of officers were busy arresting 25 Israelis protesting against the Shiekh Jarah evictions who refused to disperse when ordered to.  Some of them were even forced to squirt pepper spray into the eyes of the dangerous Dr. Eyal Nir at point-blank range (video here.) Holding cells are also in short supply, full of menaces to society such as Vadim Antonevich, a documentary film-maker slapped with 25 days for walking his dog without a leash in the German Colony.

From a report in this morning’s Maariv (December 13 2009) by Amir Buhbut

“This is a religious terror attack,” said a senior officer in the Central Command. “The people who tossed the firebombs knew exactly what they were doing…Furthermore, the security establishment is voicing harsh criticism of the incitement being heard in Judea and Samaria synagogues. “Anyone allowing the distribution of leaflets that call to harm Civil Administration officials and their vehicles, should not be surprised when a mosque is set on fire,” said the source. “It is interesting to wonder what the reactions would be if it were the opposite.”

Yediot’s Zvi Zinger reports directly from the horses mouth

“The idea of a ‘price tag’ is to operate like the terror organizations,” explained one of the activists from the settlement outposts. “The activists realized that the GSS doesn’t have the capacity to prevent lone activists from executing those operations, and that is why a decision was made to take sophisticated action, without orderly leaders and without any prior organization.”

Puts the outrage over the New York Times use of “Jewish nationalists” to describe settlers into proportion, doesn’t it?

Ofer Shelah, Maariv’s defense analyst, has become a regular feature on Coteret. On November 17 2009 he told the IDF top brass they should have taken into consideration the consequences of allowing fanatical Rabbis into the combat units during the Gaza war and on November 17 2009 he was very blunt in his analysis of the IDF’s culture of lies.

This morning (December 13 2009,) he takes on the defense establishment’s pathetic attempt to bring into line Rabbi’s of affiliated yeshivas who order soldiers to refuse to move against settlements. Shelah all but says outright that these Rabbis own the IDF. Senior officers are afraid of them because of the power they hold over their future political careers. More importantly, their disciples have become so integral to the IDF’s combat forces, that taking them on might spark major disintegration. Here’s a key excerpt (full text after the jump)

In Gush Katif soldiers were spat at, but for the senior staff it was far more important to say that not only was this in fact rain, but welcome rain.

It’s fairly clear why, and its not merely that in each Israeli general’s backpack can be found the scepter of the future politician. The army’s combat units, and particularly the infantry brigades, are full of religious soldiers and officers, in numbers that far outnumber their part in the general population. Some of the hesder yeshivas today are what the kibbutzim and the military boarding schools were in the past. The military knows well that indeed only a minority among the rabbis speak in the fashion of Levanon and Melamed (an internal document following disengagement mentioned the names of two other yeshivas), but harming them could cause others to align with them, and could thus jeopardize the entire soil in which young officers are cultivated, and so it prefers to ingratiate itself to them, with the enthusiastic encouragement of the political echelon.

Who’s afraid of the Hesder Yeshivas?

Ofer Shelah, Maariv, December 13 2009

The history of the security establishment and the hesder yeshivas over the past decades is one of hypocrisy, deception, and tossing of a hot potato from one hand to another. It’s no wonder that Defense Minister Barak sent his deputy, Matan Vilnai, to a meeting with Rabbi Eliezer Melamed of Har Bracha: Barak knows when to avoid a meeting out of which no good will come. Vilnai is the last innocent who is still willing to hold the potato in his hand, while all the others just roll their eyes. Read more…

UPDATE: In a surreal twist, both Yitzhar and Tapuach (the settlement that the IDF suspects the mosque arsonists came from), are both included in the new National Priorities Map approved by the Israeli cabinet today. As a result their residents will receive a host of financial benefits. Inclusion of isolated settlements in the new map is intended as a consolation for the “settlement freeze.”

Reading some of the sanctimonious condemnations of Friday’s torching of a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, one could easily be led to believe that the “price tag” terror tactic was invented last week. A close observer of current events in the West bank would also note that no mention is made of the spiritual leadership publicly sanctioning  and encouraging these attacks.

Take Rabbi Yosef Elitzur of the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar, for example. In early November he published the “Handbook for the Killing of Gentiles.” Just last week, ahead of a revival meeting with the notorious Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg (author of Baruch Hagever, an ode to Cave of Patriarchs murderer Baruch Goldstein) he published an article with specific instructions on this type of action in response to the “settlement freeze.”

This morning’s (December 13 2009) Yediot made the connection. In a news item entitled “The people who want to set things ablaze,” Zvi Singer et al report that

A number of the settler rabbis voiced their support for that mode of action and, by so doing, increased awareness about the issue and created a type of internal buzz among the activists. For example, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur of the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar published an article in the extremist right wing newsletter called Hakol Heyhudi [The Jewish Voice] in which he explicitly called for operations like the arson at the Yasouf mosque. “Operations of reciprocal responsibility,” is how Rabbi Elitzur chose to define them. “We too have strength and we too shall use it at a time and place of our choosing,” he wrote. “If the Jews don’t have quiet—the Arabs won’t have quiet either; If the Arabs win because of violence against Jews—the Jews too will win because of violence against Arabs.”

This Friday’s (December 11 2009) edition of the Jewish Voice, entitled “Fighting the Freeze,” reiterates the importance of such attacks (full Hebrew document here)

Another important “tip” in this context: Whoever wants to win does not limit himself to protest, nor does he let the other side determine the boundaries of the battle. We need to choose for ourselves the sector of the struggle. Why, for example, wait  in the settlements for the violent-frost-forces [sic], and not send a small delegation of our own to the nearby Arab village, to check out the freeze situation there? Believe me that all the [IDF] forces will immediately retreat to the Arab village…

Yediot fails to mention that the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva is the recipient of generous government funding, perhaps because Haaretz was the one to expose this fact. According to Israel’s premier expert on NGO funding, Prof. Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, however, this is just a fact of life in Israel, as normal as funding of youth movements, and does not warrant any extraordinary action. Responding to a direct question on Od Yosef Hai, he tells the Jerusalem Post’s Shmuel Rosner that

the state is used to funnel large sums of money to various sectors and institutions related to political parties  – from kibbuzim to youth movements and yeshivot —  with numerous stops in between.

Spencer Ackerman, a popular progressive blogger (Attackerman,) is also a leader of the Washington Independent’s revival of investigative journalism. Today (December 12 2009) he demonstrates what just a little skeptical inquiry can achieve with neoconservative advocacy operations that have become accustomed to modern, cut and paste, journalism.

One of these operations, The Israel Project, issued a press release on December 9, about a 90,000-signature petition demanding tough action on Iran it had sent to world leaders. The release included a link to the actual list of signatories delivered to, among others, the Pope. Ackerman decided to take a cursory look and found, besides 220 Vince Vinces from many different states, including nonexistent ones, that

Signatory number five is listed as Comfylovely ……. — and no, those aren’t ellipses I’ve placed in for dramatic effect; that’s Comfylovely’s listed last name — from the proud city of Davao in the historic state of XX.

That’s not even the most disturbing part of the signatories. The Israel Project lists the following as enthusiastic supporters of sanctioning Iran: Viagra Kaufen Viagra Kaufen, London, N.Y. (signatory #84,570); Porn Sex Video from London, N.Y. (signatory #62,751-62,756); Stupidwhiteman V, who declined to list an address (signatory #83,780); and Xbox 360 accessories — that’s a first and last name — from New York, N.Y. (signatory #90,046).

The Israel Project’s Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi was not very quick on her feet when Ackerman called to ask about her unusual constituents.

Well worth reading the whole thing here.