Coteret

Kahane

On February 14 2010, Israel Hayom published an article by Efrat Porsher suggesting that the Jewish Defense League (JDL) is reorganizing to defend Israeli speakers on campuses in the US and UK and to “prevent diplomats from enemy countries or from countries that are hostile toward Israel from speaking at university venues.”  Due to the violent history of this organization — such an endeavor should worry the US as it attempts to prevent domestic terrorist attacks.

The JDL was founded in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who then immigrated to Israel and established the Kach political party with similar ideological roots.  In 1988, Kach was outlawed under the revised Knesset Elections Law for inciting racism, having advocated for the cleansing of Arabs from Biblical Israel.  Kach and its offshoot, Kahane Chai (“Kahane Lives”) are listed by the State Department as foreign terrorist organizations.  In recent months, Knesset Member Michael Ben-Ari has asked to hold a discussion in the Knesset in commemoration of Kahane, which Israel Radio commentator Moshe Negbi compared to a memorial session for a Hamas terrorist.  In 1989, in response to the murder of Ziva Goldovsky “for nationalist reasons” by an Arab man during the First Intifada, Kahane wrote:

Let every Jewish parent remember the tragedy of this 18 year old Jewish child and look to their own. Those who love their children- know what the Arabs would do to them! See what the Arabs did to Ziva Goldovsky and know that this is what awaits our own. And look what the Jewish Left did to an 18 year old child, and make an oath never to let it happen to our own. Mapam Youth, Hashomer HaTzair, Ratz Youth, Habonim, Dror. These are the youth groups of the Left that destroy the Jewish soul on their way to murdering the Jewish body.

Ben Ari

With such roots, it is not surprising that although — explicitly — the JDL renounces terrorism and felonious acts (along with racism), numerous arrests of their leaders and members strongly suggest otherwise.One such arrest clearly indicates their status as a terrorist organization: In December 2001, JDL Chairman Irv Rubin, 56, and member Earl Krugel, 59 were arrested for planning the bombing of the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles and the San Clemente office of freshman Congressional Representative Darrell Issa, R-California. The two plotters met repeatedly during October of that year to plan the attacks, and during one secretly audiotaped meeting, Krugel allegedly said that Arabs “need a wakeup call” and the JDL needed to do something to one of their “filthy” mosques.  In 2002, Rubin – who had served as Chairman of the JDL since 1985 and had been arrested 40 times by his own count – committed suicide while in custody and in 2005, Krugel was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.

JDL Logo

With such a track record, US counterterrorism authorities should be on high alert for an attempt by the JDL to become active on campuses and other public venues where their enemies may express unacceptable views.  It would be extremely irresponsible and reckless for the US to ignore the possibility that JDL members will use violence or terror, as they have in the past.  In Israel, Yigal Amir was publicly applauded by Kahane supporters for assassinating Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.  Israel has paid a high price for allowing these elements to grow in influence and numbers.  Hopefully, official US silence on this issue is not a sign of complacency. If it is, Americans may soon pay its price.

Saturday night’s (March 6 2010) rally in Sheikh Jarrah was remarkable: Thousands of demonstrators, Jewish and Palestinian, from a wide range of backgrounds and with diverse political views came out in a show of force to protest injustice. Writing about “Sheikh Jarrah and the birth of a coalition,” Jerry Haber at Magnes Zionist captures the unique stripes of this emerging movement and a comprehensive Jerusalem Report feature provides good context.

The Ynet story below, translated by the indefatigable Sol Salbe and George Malent, completes the picture. It describes how

Behind the subversive struggle that has managed repeatedly to stymie the Jerusalem Police stands a group of young people in their 20s. They have been active for about a year and a half now, with no budget , expertise or experience, and with no lawyers or political parties standing behind them. Encouraged by the success of the campaign at the High Court of Justice, they are promising to continue the struggle. “The struggle will go on as long as the objective, which is the end of the Occupation, has not been realised.”

By fostering the most effective Israeli anti-Occupation movement in years, these youngsters have demonstrated that what is required is leadership, not resources. For an Israeli like me, approaching middle age and facing the prospect of raising two young children in this country, they have become an invaluable source of pride and hope for the future.

The Sheikh Jarrah activists: A new path for the Left

A small bunch of youngsters devoid of any legal experience succeeded in stymieing the Jerusalem police and force it to accept a large demonstration. “This is just another instance of the struggle against the Occupation, racism and discrimination”, they say. On the Left they are already being spoken of as the new hope.

Ronen Medzini, Ynet, March 5 2010 [Hebrew original here]

Banner calling for March 6 2010 rally in Sheikh Jarrah

What started out as a march of 20 youngsters protesting the entry of Jewish settlers into an East Jerusalem neighbourhood, has over the past few months turned into a political phenomenon that cannot be ignored. Several hundred activists, intellectuals and politicians gather every Friday at noon in order to demonstrate against “the major wrongdoing”. The strong-arm attitude displayed by the police only reinforced the struggle. It turned the struggle from a marginal cause to a symbolic centre that serves as a focal point for Leftists from around the country. They even dragged the State into the High Court of Justice. There they achieved a milestone when the judges authorised a large demonstration for Saturday night.The legal achievement can be credited to three students who were devoid of any previous experience in the legal sphere. One of them is Avner Inbar (29), a Ph D student in Philosophy at Chicago University who told Ynet about the petition’s course. “ We soon realised that we could not afford the services of a lawyer so we decided to write the petition ourselves. We spent two-or three days churning through it, in an intensive fashion, day and night. We studied the subject. We read previous judgment on the subject of freedom of assembly. We went down to the site to photograph the relevant area. We took down affidavits from demonstrators and neighborhood residents and wrote down the petition.

When it became clear that the police had no intention to authorise the demonstration the struggle deepened. “We planned a major event for Saturday night”, Avner Inbar told us. “The police’s refusal was immediate and was not accompanied by any explanation or reasoning — even though they are obliged by law to provide those. We recognised that this was a police campaign against the protest on site. We presented the petition on Sunday and by Thursday we were already representing ourselves. According to him, this self-representation typifies the Sheikh Jarrah struggle — unorganised, independent and not tied to any institutions.

The struggle will continue till the Occupation ends

Behind the subversive struggle that has managed repeatedly to stymie the Jerusalem Police stands a group of young people in their 20s. They have been active for about a year and a half now, with no budget , expertise or experience, and with no lawyers or political parties standing behind them. Encouraged by the success of the campaign at the High Court of Justice, they are promising to continue the struggle. “The struggle will go on as long as the objective, which is the end of the Occupation, has not been realised.”

Sahar Vardi, one of the initiators of the struggle, a 19-year-old woman from Jerusalem: “It started about a year and a half ago, when the al-Kurd family was evicted from their home. It was a small struggle, in a protest tent,” she recalls. Last August, with the eviction of two more families into whose homes Jewish settlers were installed, the struggle was renewed. “We were a group of activists who came to Sheikh Jarrah quite a lot, and we became more deeply involved activists on the issue.”

“After the last eviction in November we had a meeting and we raised ideas about what could be done — one of them was to hold a march. Within a week and a half we began — there were about 20 of us, and we marched from Zion Square to the neighbourhood. A week later we were joined by drummers, and there were about 40 of us. Then we began to send invitations more broadly,” she relates.

Over 100 people showed up at the next demonstration, and then the police moved into action and arrested people for the first time. “It was publicised somewhere, and that gave more impetus to the struggle. We got press coverage, and people became more aware of the issue.” Since then several hundred leftists have showed up at every demonstration, including intellectuals and politicians. Among the demonstrators can be found David Grossman, former Knesset Members Avraham Burg and Yossi Sarid, “but the vast majority are students from Jerusalem,” say the activists.

This is only one example of the struggle against the Occupation

The initiators of the struggle come from a different background. Vardi is one of the first signers of the letter of the Shministim who refused to join the IDF, and she has been an activist for Palestinian rights for years now. Another leader of the struggle, Maya Wind (20), comes from a background of human rights activism.

In a conversation with Ynet, Wind says that she had not imagined that the protest would gain so much momentum. “If you had told me six months ago that half the country would know about Sheikh Jarrah, I would have laughed,” she said. “We started out as a group of five or six activists in the neighbourhood – we just went to live in the neighbourhood for a certain period. Our struggle is very popular, dynamic and spontaneous, and more supporters join us all the time. We have a kind of permanent committee with neighbourhood residents – we meet once a week for brainstorming, planning demonstrations and joint thinking. It’s amazing to me that we managed to create a joint struggle like this,” she added.

According to Wind, the struggle has several objectives, which are not restricted to the tense neighbourhood. “The first and main objective is to bring about justice in the neighbourhood itself, to prevent further evictions, to return evicted families to their homes and to freeze the settlement enterprise there. But it’s not only Sheikh Jarrah, this is one of many struggles for the liberation of East Jerusalem and Palestine. Sheikh Jarrah is just another example of the struggle against the Occupation, racism and discrimination, and we raise many questions for the Israeli justice system about how it should relate to Jews and Palestinians,” she explained.

The vacuum on the Left is being filled

The young people involved in the struggle say that the main source of satisfaction is the feeling that they have succeeded in breaking the traditional small circle of the Left in Israel. And indeed, the past few months have given the impression that the vacuum that had been created on the Left is slowly being filled. “This is the best thing that has happened to the Israeli Left in recent years,” Mossi Raz, former Meretz MK and a regular demonstrator at Sheikh Jarrah, told Ynet. “They are without a doubt the biggest hope today for the struggle against the Occupation and for a more just society.”

“Sheikh Jarrah has already become the beginning of a new path for the Left. We have not seen a young and steadfast group like this in many years,” adds Raz. “They’re not getting paid, they don’t belong to any organisation or party. They’re just principled people who are standing firmly against the terrible injustice of throwing people into the street – and the Israeli stupidity of putting settlers into an Arab neighbourhood. The struggle will succeed, period. Even if it takes years and they bring in more settlers and there are further injustices. It cannot be otherwise. The State of Israel will not survive if it does not stop the Occupation. These guys deserve a prise,” concludes the former MK.

The goal: Adopting the Cuban model

Eli Bardenstein, Maariv, March 4 2010 [page 6 | Hebrew original here]

Israel is concerned that the UN Security Council decision on intensifying sanctions against Iran will be postponed, and the Foreign Ministry is already taking steps to prepare an alternative, based on the model of the sanctions imposed by the US administration on Cuba. This refers to imposing restrictions on international companies that have trade ties with Iran, who would not be able to trade with the US and companies in the US.

Ayalon

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon will leave next week for Washington, and in his meetings with administration officials, he will raise the matter with the intent of reaching an understanding between Israel and the US. Government officials say that the plan is to work in cooperation with the US administration.  If indeed it becomes clear that it will be impossible to impose harsh sanctions by means of the UN Security Council, the idea is that urgent steps will be taken against Iran, similar to those that the White House imposed on Cuba.After his meeting with the foreign minister of New Zealand on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman related to the subject and said: “There is no doubt that the main obstacle to world peace is Iran and we are concerned about developments in the international community. The meaning of recent talks in the international arena is basically that UN Security Council resolutions will be postponed to a later stage, with no clear understanding as to when and where they will be made.”

Lieberman also said: “Israel must change its policy toward Iran. We must ask the US to adopt toward Iran the model of embargo on Cuba, which proved to be effective, and which is strong enough to choke Iran and bring down the regime.” Lieberman said that broad consent was important, but that ultimately, what was more important was to stop the Iranian nuclear program and that by means of the Cuban model, the US could do this on its own.

Lieberman

The sanctions against Cuba were anchored in legislation and they include a comprehensive economic embargo, along with sanctions against foreign companies in Cuba and not letting them trade with the American market, a ban on letting in top company officials into the US, and a ban on ships docking in the US. This siege, which has been imposed on Cuba for decades, badly hit the Cuban economy, stopped the country’s development and forced it to remain far behind Western countries. The embargo was imposed in 1960 and stepped up in 1962 in wake of the missile crisis […] Read more…

Banner calling for March 6 2010 rally in Sheikh Jarrah

Let justice ring in Sheikh Jarrah

Recent events in Sheikh Jarrah are part of a wider process — the Hebronization of East Jerusalem. The only way to stop this destructive process is to protest on the streets.

[Hebrew version here.]

This Saturday night (March 6 2010) will witness one of the most important demonstrations in years, in the struggle for human rights and justice here. A struggle against injustice and dispossession, against the Hebronization of East Jerusalem, and against the anti-democratic processes undermining Israeli society. In this struggle, Sheikh Jarrah has already become a symbol. But as in any struggle for justice and equality, that has never been the goal. The goal is justice and equality, human rights and a future that embraces all human beings without distinction. Saturday night’s rally organizers hope to attract thousands and to finally make justice ring in Sheikh Jarrah. If successful, it may gradually become possible — to move beyond symbolism to the true purpose of the already months’ long Sheikh Jarrah struggle: justice.

The asymmetric legal situation in Israel, through the Absentee Property Law, makes it possible for Jews to return to property that was owned by Jews before 1948 — while Palestinian property return is completely impossible. This is both unjust and unwise. In Sheikh Jarrah, this has resulted in Palestinian refugees, originally housed in the neighborhood by the Jordanian government after 1948, becoming refugees a second time. Of course, unlike the settlers forcing the Palestinians out of their homes, the Palestinians cannot return to the homes they owned before 1948 — not in Jaffa, nor in West Jerusalem or anywhere else.

So far, four families have lost their homes: Al-Rawi, Hanoon, and the two Al-Kurd families. Many more families face a similar fate if the plans of the Simeon the Just Company materialize, to destroy their homes and instead build 200 housing units for Jewish settlers.

By itself, what is described above is already more than sufficient to require us to demonstrate against. But the injustice does not stop with that: what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is part of a larger process — the Hebronization of East Jerusalem. In the raging struggle over Jerusalem’s future, facts are already being determined on the ground, and the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are forced to pay the price upfront, their human rights violated in a great variety of ways. Inadequate to non-existent infrastructure, shortage in classrooms, social, health and mail services, revocation of residency status, lack of planning programs that would have allowed for legal construction and the constant fear of house demolitions – all these are added to the destructive processes sadly familiar to us from another city: Hebron.

As if watching the replay of a movie whose ending we have already seen, here in front of our eyes the Hebron processes are taking place once again, this time in Jerusalem: the entry of settlers to the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood, the provocations and violence, the one-sided actions of the security forces – always serving the interests of the Jewish settlers over the rights of the Palestinian residents. And then, what follows: restrictions of movement, segregation, life becoming a nightmare, and all this in the name of “security considerations”. Shuhada Street in Hebron is already closed for Palestinians for years — a street that was part of the bustling heart of one of the largest Palestinian cities, and has become a ghost road in the service of extremist settlers, the human rights of local Palestinians thrown to the roadside.

A similar process to what has already happened in Hebron is now happening in Jerusalem. Sheikh Jarrah now has police checkpoints at the entrance to the neighborhood. During certain hours on Friday the entrance to the neighborhood is generally blocked, but is open to Jewish worshipers. In contrast, Jews wishing to enter Sheikh Jarrah to express solidarity with the Palestinian families are prevented from entering the neighborhood. Violence against Palestinians ends with arrests — of Palestinians. The mechanism of dispossession and the construction of security excuses are already at work. And all this is happening right here, in Jerusalem.

In tandem, the Jerusalem Police tried to break the Israeli activists who wanted to express solidarity with the Palestinian families and protest against the injustice done to them. Only after nearly a hundred false arrests and a series of hearings at the Jerusalem Magistrate Court, did the police finally allow for the protest vigils to take place. For many weeks, each Friday, rain or cold, arrests or no arrests, hundreds of Israelis gather to protest in Sheikh Jarrah. Now, the Police is trying to keep Saturday’s planned demonstration as far as possible from the neighborhood, perhaps fearing the thought that the Palestinians will be able to hear the voices of those who consider them human beings, not objects for removal. High Court justices will hear an urgent petition on this matter Thursday morning; hopefully they will not forget the Court’s ruling in a similar context almost twenty years ago: “The location’s effectiveness is the lifeblood of a people’s assembly.”

Whether the police will succeed in distancing the demonstration or the Court will intervene in defense of freedom of speech is yet to be seen. Either way, what is at stake is the process that has not begun in Sheikh Jarrah nor will be stopped there, unless we begin to change course. It is the process of dispossession and the constant injustices against the Palestinian residents – while canonizing acts of violence. Israelis demonstrating in Sheikh Jarrah are no longer regularly arrested, but that is not the heart of the matter. The question that should concern all of us — and mobilize all of us — to demonstrate in Sheikh Jarrah this Saturday night is this: How to stop injustice and how in its stead promise a shared future, common to all people, based on foundations of human rights and equality. It is this voice that will ring this Saturday night from Sheikh Jarrah — a strong voice that we must ring for Israelis and Palestinians, a resonant voice that we must ring for the world to hear, a personal voice that we must ring for ourselves. And this can only happen in one way: for each and every one of us to come this Saturday night at 7pm to Sheikh Jarrah. Together, let us bring justice to ring in Sheikh Jarrah.

Lisa Goldman is a freelance journalist and blogger. Her articles have been published in Time Out Tel Aviv, Ynet, the Forward, Haaretz, the Jewish Quarterly, Corriere Della Sera, the Guardian and the Columbia Journalism Review. She is the author of City Guide: Tel Aviv and lives in the city.

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Over the past week, two prominent Israeli political analysts have written columns that pull no punches in portraying the current government as a collection of embarrassing buffoons at best; and dangerously paranoid at worst. Neither Haaretz’s Aluf Benn nor Maariv’s Ofer Shelah is a novice critic of the Netanyahu government. This round of criticism, however, goes beyond the normal gibes directed by cynical journalists at even-more-cynical politicians.

Their articles reveal a sense of deep disquiet over the state of the state, and how the actions of the current government will affect Israel’s future in the long term. For both, there is something deeply disturbing about a government that goes to such extreme measures to pretend that everything is fine, that Israel is a perfectly normal country, when everything is so obviously not fine.

Using the Purim holiday as a metaphor, Benn writes in the February 27 2010 edition of Haaretz that

It’s hard to imagine a more fitting ending to the first year of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s second term than the affair over the disguised assassins of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai…This was the year of the disguise for the entire country…The quiet on the borders and on the terror front, the economic growth, the stability in employment, and the lack of real political upheaval – all have isolated Israelis from the storm raging all around…There was little diplomatic activity and even the rockets drizzling in from Gaza now and then did not arouse much interest [...]

Not only did the national reality disguise itself as something else – so did its protagonists, who doffed their familiar image and dressed themselves in new threads. This process began with Benjamin Netanyahu, who came back into power with the promise that he had changed. Since then he has been wearing two get-ups. When he wanted to scare people about the Iranian threat and a second Holocaust, he as much as donned Winston Churchill’s bald pate and his cigar. And when he adopted the slogans of the left, “two states for two peoples” and “enough with the settlements,” he pasted on Uri Avnery’s beard. The public and the international community were not impressed [...]

Netanyahu’s main partner and rival, Avigdor Lieberman, disguised himself as President Shimon Peres when he asked for the foreign minister’s portfolio. At first it was expected that Lieberman would change, would assume the proper airs of a statesman and would suddenly come across as a “moderate.” But Lieberman’s costume didn’t fit him and it tore, when it turned out he is seen as a racist and a bully abroad. He threw away the mask, took off the makeup and went back to cursing and threatening as before.

In the February 24 2010 edition of Maariv, Shelah also alluded to the alternative reality Israel’s leadership seems intent on creating for the Israeli public. Using the Foreign Ministry’s latest ‘hasbara‘ campaign — an initiative to  ’recruit’ ordinary Israelis traveling abroad as volunteer ambassadors by arming them with talking points —  as a jumping off point, he writes (full text after the jump):

The new PR campaign may be intended to improve our image around the world, but in practice, its main effect is on us. It is intended to convey to us that our life is indeed normal, we are indeed justified and our sole problem is to explain our position. It strengthens the feeling, which many believe has been weakened among the Israelis, that what is happening is indeed what should happen.

Any abnormality, the campaign says, is in the eyes of the observer. It stems from his/her ignorance and moral weakness. If we would all just rally to the cause, we loyal citizens who ask no questions, and push away all doubts, all our problems will be solved.

Shelah has not been the only one to pour scorn on the new campaign. Its promotional videos (see example here), giving  the impression that foreigners are spectacularly ignorant about Israel, mistaking Independence Day fireworks for a war and believing that the camel is the most popular mode of local transportation, have drawn heaps of ridicule, domestic and international. This article in the Telegraph is one prominent example of the latter and includes a sample video.

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It’s the world that’s crazy

Op-ed, Ofer Shelah, Maariv, February 24 2010 [Hebrew original here]

You have surely seen the PR clips urging you to become PR representatives on behalf of the State of Israel. One of them particularly caught my eye: It shows a French television correspondent, describing with excitement the voices of war arising from Israel’s streets—when in practice, as any Israeli can tell from the images, this is an Independence Day celebration. The IDF parade, fireworks and IAF air show become signs of war to the non-understanding stranger. And we, says the authorized narrator, if we only surf to the right web site and learn there how to explain Israel’s position, we will be able to rectify the error and bring redemption to Israel.

Read more…

Noam Sheizaf is a freelance journalist and editor who has worked for Ha’Ir (a Tel Aviv weekly published by Shocken Group), Ynet and  Maariv.  The following is a lightly edited version of the article he originally posted on Promised Land, his personal blog.

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When discussing the Palestinian-Israeli political process, the most common error is setting peace as its goal. This is not only incorrect, but also counter-productive, because it serves those who wish to maintain the status quo. The key to ending hostilities is to reframe the received narrative, as it has been presented since the early 1990s.

First of all, we need to be realistic. As we learned in Gaza, an Israeli withdrawal does not promise an end to the violence. Both sides continue to have conflicting interests that  might lead to military action, and on both sides there are those who will try to use violence as a means of sabotaging any agreement. It’s clear that the more good faith Israelis and Palestinians show today, the easier it will be to stabilize the region, but more than 40 years of occupation will inevitably leave plenty of bitterness on the Palestinian side even after the last soldier leaves and the last settlement evacuated. The evacuation of settlements will bring its own set of problems on the Israeli side, too; and the huge socioeconomic gap between Jews and Arabs in such a small territory won’t help, either. So we shouldn’t promise the public something that will be difficult to deliver.

Even more important is the message created by all these peace talks. For many people – and this is something I’ve noticed especially in the US – it seems as though there are two equal parties, almost two states, that are entering a diplomatic process to sort out their ongoing differences. But there is only one state here. Israel is negotiating – when there are negotiations – with the people who are under its own control, and to whom it is refusing to grant civil rights.

In other words, talking about peace hides the real nature of the problem, which is the occupation. When we set peace as our goal, it means that the absence of peace – meaning the violence – was the problem. This is true for the Israeli side, but it’s only partly true for the Palestinians. Their main concern is the lack of civil and human rights. For them, the violence they suffer is only the result of the initial problem, which is the occupation. By talking about peac,e and only peace, we are accepting the Israeli definition of the problem as well as its solution.

When we discuss peace, we say that the two state solution is the only acceptable one, since that’s how you make peace – between states. If it’s a human or civil rights problem, on the other hand, there are other solutions – such as a confederation, or “one person, one vote.” Since this idea is totally unacceptable to the vast majority of Israelis, by choosing the “peace process” the world is actually choosing the Israeli narrative over that of the Palestinians.

Read more…