Coteret

Watch this video from the suppression Friday’s  (June 4 2010) anti-Barrier protest at the West Bank village of Bilin. From 01:40 begins a scene which could have come straight from Satyricon: A group of helmeted, visored, and armored soldiers with long rectangular shields assaults a parade float of the Mavi Marmara decked with flags from around the world. They then charge down the roads at the fleeing crowd and grab an elderly lady. A protester on a wheelchair with a gas mask drives through them. A fire breaks out.

Most imagery from the village is much more banal in its horror. Like this one, of the arrest of a twelve-year old in the olive groves of the village on the same day.

Watching yesterday’s (June 6 2010) Israeli Channel Ten TV evening news, I had the dubious pleasure of watching a Caroline Glick and her merry band of Hasbaristas celebrate. They were sitting around Glick’s kitchen table, clinking champagne glasses. At one point, the hostess banged on the table and announced “finally, some Hasbara!”

The occasion was one million YouTube views of the band’s clip, “We Con the World,” whose contribution to Israeli public diplomacy efforts I assessed here.

What I found remarkable was not the grotesque scene at the home of the Jerusalem Post’s Deputy Managing Editor, but rather the TV reporter’s framing of the event: A gathering of a citizens’ Hasbara commando group, just returned from a successful raid behind enemy lines.

Not everyone in the Israeli media has completely lost his grip on reality. As the newscast ended, my copy of Globes, a conservative evening business daily, was delivered. Columnist Yoav Karni, continued his series on the strategic threat Turkey is posing to Israeli national security. This installment was a desperate call for some effective public diplomacy to counter Erdogan’s ambition. He cited Glick’s clip as an example of what not to do:

“One can follow the Jerusalem Post’s lead. A columnist in that newspaper shamed Israel’s good name when she launched satirical video mocking the plight of Gaza into the depth of the Internet.

The most popular news show on Canadian radio reported on the video with restrained rage, adding sarcastically that it gave Israel the opportunity “to do something it never does”: apologize.

Fortuitously, someone at the Prime Minister’s Office thought that the Jerusalem Post video was worthy of international dissemination. Later it had retract it. There is a human limit to expressions of of lack of empathy to the suffering of the other, even when the other is a Palestinian child in Gaza (in the satire, the Gazan child needs “a little cheese and rockets for breakfast.”)

This kind of thing makes people who are not pre-disposed to hating the country, who do not share Erdogan’s neo-Jihadist agenda, detest Israel.” These people  need a sign of remorse from Israel.

Yes, remorse. Those who have their backs to the wall have nothing to lose now, not even their dignity.”

Karni is unfair to the Jerusalem Post. They didn’t publish the video. The neoconservative operation where Glick moonlights, Latma, did. In fact, this morning’s edition of the newspaper provides some helpful context about the kind of effective public diplomacy that Latma has produced in the recent past:

Jacobson is one of three actors employed regularly by Latma, and can be seen in previous clips portraying White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel calling himself a “Capo,” and in semi-blackface (“autumn-face”) as US President Barack Obama, in whose guise he sings of his hatred for “dirty Jews” and his hope that the Koran will rule the world and the Jews will drown in the sea, before calling for Iran to strike Israel with a hydrogen bomb [from 01:33].

The editorial section provides Israelis with a balanced selection of American commentary on the Flotilla Debacle, no doubt helping them get a realistic grasp of US public opinion on the issue: Opening with Charles Krauthammer, continuing with Elliott Abrams and ending with Anne Bayefsky.

On Friday (June 4 2010,) uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic published a post entitled Israel Derangement Syndrome III. It linked to We Con the World, a remarkable video clip produced by Latma, the right-wing satire project lead by Caroline Glick, who doubles as The Jerusalem Post’s Deputy Managing Editor.

Caroline Glick, ZOA's Mort Klein and John Bolton

The video is a repulsive attempt to use satire to make Israel’s case on Flotilla Devbacle. I recommend suffering through its entirety to grasp just how much. This is not really surprising to anyone who has ever read Glick’s columns or makes a cursory inquiry into her background. She is, for example, the recipient of the Zionist Organization of America’s (ZOA) Outstanding Journalism in the Mideast award, which was presented to her in a ceremony featuring the esteemed John Bolton. Memorably, Glick was also quick to report (Hebrew), while embedded with a US unit in Iraq that she had “discovered” the first stash of WMDs.

The kind of US audience Glick appeals to is illustrated by the fact that Latma is fully funded by Center for Security Policy’s Middle East Media program, headed by Frank Gaffney, and that Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI) was quick to post the video on its website.

The growing importance of the Israeli nodes of American neo and theo conservative networks is not new and regulars readers of Coteret know that we have followed it closely. But the reception this clip has received in Israel was surprising.

On Friday, I began to see intelligent, mainstream, Israeli opinion-leaders posting the clip on their Facebook pages. I assumed they were doing so for the same reason I was: To illustrate just how misguided some Israeli public diplomacy efforts had become. A closer look revealed just how wrong I was. These posts were intended for non-Israelis. One caption, posted by a successful left-of-center Israeli PR operative on the Economist Facebook page, read “make sure you see this before making up your mind.” On Saturday, they began doing the same thing with a classic Glenn Beck segment on the Flotilla Debacle and were incredulous and argumentative when I pointed out that Beck was not exactly the most effective source to cite if one wanted to make Israel’s case abroad.

In a two-page spread, this morning’s edition of Yediot (June 6 2010, full translated text below, Hebrew original here and at bottom of post), billed the clip as an effective citizen’s initiative ”that defended Israel better than any of the experts.” It also made the following stupefying revelation:

Members of the Government Press Office who encountered it thought it was a state-sponsored clip and disseminated it overseas. After a Spanish journalist researched its sources, the GPO was forced to clarify that the parody was disseminated accidentally and that the contents of the clip did not reflect the official position of the State of Israel.

Writing about the Glenn Beck segment referenced above, MJ Rosenberg warned that American popular support for Israel is becoming increasingly restricted to the far-right. The way in which mainstream Israel perceived the public diplomacy value of Glick’s clip is a good illustration of this point. Indeed, with the Israeli media increasingly providing front and center venues for arch-conservatives such as Newt Gingrich (Israel Hayom) and Elliott Abrams (Maariv), one should not be surprised that the perceptual gulf between Israelis and most Americans is widening.

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Hasbara hit

The editor recruited her friends, the lead actor cam back specially from reserve duty and the director bought Keffiyehs

How the clip that defended Israel better than any of the experts was created

Zvi Singer and Itai Shmoscowitz, Yediot, June 6 2010 [page 8; Hebrew original here and at bottom of post]

lead actorIn a place where the official Israeli public relations failed, a popular wave has risen up and succeeded: a satiric video clip that mocks the way in which the participants in the Gaza flotilla were cast as heroes around the world, became a hit this weekend on the internet.Party

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Elliott Abrams and an associate

Last weekend, Sheldon Adelson’s Israel Hayom featured Newt Gingrinch warning Israelis that Obama’s policies could lead to “a second Holocaust.” Now, Elliott Abrams is in Israel for an event organized by Dore Gold’s neoconservative institute, the JCPA, and the competition, Maariv, interviews him on Obama’s Israel policies.

Abrams  is brutally critical of Obama. This is not surprising, since he is seems to be developing a habit of using the opportunity provided by every crisis to tell Israelis how bad the President is for them.

This type of behavior — criticizing the policies of an administration on the soil of the foreign country in question – was deemed tantamount to treason by many US conservatives when Bush was in power. Chris Suellentrop, for example, reported for the new York Times in 2006 that:

As House Democrats David Bonior and Jim McDermott may recall from their trip to Baghdad on the eve of the Iraq war, nothing sets conservative opinionmongers on edge like a speech made by a Democrat on foreign soil. Al Gore traveled to Saudi Arabia last week, and in a speech there on Sunday he criticized “abuses” committed by the U.S. government against Arabs after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A burst of flabbergasted conservative blogging followed the Associated Press dispatch about the speech, with the most clever remark coming from Mark Steyn, who called the former vice president “Sheikh al-Gore.” The editorial page of Investor’s Business Daily accused Gore of “supreme disloyalty to his country.”

Any charges of Republican double-standards could be dismissed with the argument that there is a profound difference between a speech and an interview or an op-ed. I fail to see it, however.

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Former Bush administration official: “Obama was wrong to condemn Israel”

Ben Caspit, Maariv, June 2 2010 [Hebrew original here and at bottom of post]

“The current American administration made two crucial mistakes this past week: the first was its vote in the UN Review Conference, which called on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open its installations for inspection. The second was its vote today in the UN Security Council’s condemnation of Israel, following the raid on the Turkish ship Marmara” — says the deputy national security adviser under the Bush administration Elliott Abrams, one of senior officials of the Republican administration, and the man charged with Israeli affairs at the time. In a special interview to Ma’ariv, Abrams says that under the Bush administration this would not have happened and that the chances of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians are negligible under the current policy.

Abrams arrived in Israel yesterday in order to take part in a special conference of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs directed by Dore Gold. He is expected to deliver a blunt speech and to harshly criticize the Obama administration. This opinion was also reflected in the interview he gave us yesterday: “The United States today supported a condemnation by the UN Security Council concerning the naval operation,” says Abrams, “without having provided any opportunity to check the facts. I read that President Obama asked Prime Minister Netanyahu to conduct an extensive inquiry of the facts, and I have no problem with this, but how is it that the next day he’s seen supporting a condemnation, before such an inquiry? Should not time be allowed to understand what actually transpired there, before a condemnation is voted on?”

Abrams says, “the United States ought not have voted for the resolution that called on Israel to open its nuclear facilities to inspection. This is unacceptable. In 2005 we thwarted a similar resolution, and were right to do so. Last week’s resolution singles out Israel, while ignoring countries like Iran, Pakistan and India. I read that President Obama promised Netanyahu that the United States would not vote for such a resolution. I don’t know if this is true, but in any event America must not allow such a thing to occur. This is what we did in 2005 and we also informed our Arab allies that such a thing would not stand.”

Abrams is extremely critical of the fact that Obama has ignored President Bush’s letter to Ariel Sharon, in which he stated that the US would recognize demographic changes in the territories when concluding the final status arrangement (the letter essentially recognizes the settlement blocs). “This is an extremely dangerous course of action,” he says. “It is a grave mistake not to honor the letters of President Bush. Each American president will cause damage to both himself and his successors if he leads people to understand that an unequivocal letter in print by the American president is not to be honored. President Bush’s letter was not merely a dispatch, it was phrased and signed following long negotiations between the two countries, and was endorsed by large majorities in both houses of Congress. The message we are sending the Israeli public is that it’s not worth believing us, and this is a grave mistake, because also polls in Israel show that there is a lack of trust among the Israeli public towards the American administration. How does the Obama administration expect to convince Israelis to believe him as he seeks to advance the peace process, after he has broken a clearly worded presidential commitment?” asks Abrams, “and this happened twice within one week, both on the nuclear issue and the flotilla. This is a recipe for extremely difficult problems.”

I asked Abrams what Bush would have done in similar circumstances. “On the nuclear issue I don’t need to guess, because he acted, and thwarted a similar resolution five years ago. As for the flotilla,” says Abrams, “I can only speculate. I remember the uproar that ensued after Israel killed Rantisi, and then Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In both cases we checked the facts and stated that Israel had a right to defend itself.”

Abrams expressed pessimism as to the prospects of a peace process under Obama, Clinton, and Mitchell. “The settlement construction freeze was also a grave mistake,” he says, “this was a completely impossible demand, I have no idea what was going on in the heads of Obama, Rahm Emanuel or George Mitchell when they introduced this idea. Everyone knows there’s no way you can attain this. At the time we realized that the most important thing was to prevent expansion of the settlements, and we therefore resolved with the Sharon government, as well as with Olmert, that there would be no construction beyond the present settlement’s master plan boundaries. This makes sense, this is reasonable, this ought to satisfy the Palestinians as well so long as there are negotiations. The demands on the part of the Obama administration, have caused damage to all parties,” he says.

[…]

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UPDATE 01:30PM – Haaretz reports that Turkish Airlines planes are now flying Turkish nationals out of Ben Gurion airport. It would appear then that the Turkish military planes flew only the injured out overnight, a point of fact the Maariv report confuses.

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This appears to be an extraordinary story, from this morning’s Yediot (June 2 2010, full translated text below, Hebrew original here and at bottom of post):

Yesterday, the Turkish authorities demanded that Israel release all 350 of the Turkish citizens who were among the 600 foreign detainees.  For this purpose, the Turks sent three military planes to Israel and demanded to be given all the injured and detained persons and the bodies of those who were killed.

Eli Bardenstein and Amir Buhbut expand in Maariv (Hebrew original here and at bottom of post):

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has managed to really frighten Israel. Yesterday evening Israel announced that it would deport all the Turkish flotilla detainees, including those suspected of participating in the lynch of the IDF commandos.

Through his Foreign Minister, Erdogan transmatted a message to Israel in two stages: first, he demanded that all the wounded, along with those that did not participate in the attack on the soldiers, be deported immediately; later he demanded that all the hundreds of Turkish civilians held in Beersheva — about 350 — be repatriated immediately. He even sent for this purpose two military ambulance planes and threatened that if his demand was not met, it would be impossible to repair relations between the two countries.

For over three hours, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Ministers of the Security-Diplomatic cabinet  discussed the issue. Ministers Yitzhak Aharonivitch, Yaakov Neeman and Benny Begin were against the release; Ministers Ehud Barak, Eli Yishai and Avigdor Lieberman were for it; in the end Netanyahu decided — all would be released, or deported. The result would be the same: None would be prosecuted.

The deportation was already beginning, as buses transported the Turks to Ben Gurion Airport. The minute a plane filled-up, it took off.

[...]

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Flotilla detainees to be expelled

Itamar Eichner and Alex Fishman, Yediot, June 2 2010 [page 6; Hebrew original here and at bottom of post]

At the end of a security cabinet discussion and following a firm Turkish ultimatum, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decided to instruct that the 600 foreign nationals who were arrested on board the flotilla headed for the Gaza Strip be expelled from Israel.

Yesterday, the Turkish authorities demanded that Israel release all 350 of the Turkish citizens who were among the 600 foreign detainees.  For this purpose, the Turks sent three military planes to Israel and demanded to be given all the injured and detained persons and the bodies of those who were killed.  In the security cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recommended to immediately expel all the detainees from Israel.  Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman expressed reservations, saying that legal action should be taken against the rioters.  Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein made it clear in the meeting that the security cabinet did not have the legal authority to order such an expulsion.  However, the attorney general said that the security cabinet could recommend the expulsion of everyone, except for those who were arrested and suspected of belonging to terror organizations.  He added in the discussion that if the cabinet were to recommend that he release the detainees for reasons of national interests, this could be considered favorably.

In the meeting, the decision on the matter was postponed until today, but in light of the great international pressure, particularly on the part of friendly countries such as France, Italy, Germany and the US, Netanyahu held another consultation, in which it was decided that there was no point in waiting with the decision to expel [the detainees].  “Following the security cabinet discussion, the prime minister consulted with the defense minister, the justice minister and Interior Minister Eli Yishai,” stated the Prime Minister’s Bureau, “and it was agreed that the detainees would be expelled immediately, subject to the legal proceedings required by law.”  Last night already, Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich instructed the Prisons Service commissioner to start the expulsion.  Two hundred and fifty Turkish detainees and three bodies that were identified from the nine fatalities were supposed to be handed over last night to the Turkish representatives who arrived in Israel.

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Coteret contributor Noam Sheizaf is continuing his live blogging on the immediate aftermath of the Gaza flotilla affair at Promised Land Blog.

Louis Frankenthaler moved to Israel in 1995 and lives, with his family, in West Jerusalem. He has an MA in Jewish Education, is a doctoral student and works for the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. His political writings have appeared in Zeek, Global Dialogue, the Electronic Intifada and in Ha’aretz. The opinions reflected in his essays are his own.

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Louis translated the activists’ statement, which was originally published in Hebrew on the Sheikh Jarrah blog, his commentary follows.

From the Sheikh Jarrah activists

Today is a difficult day for all of us, for the thousands who have stood over the months in protest in Sheikh Jarrah and to the tens of thousands who support this grave struggle, a struggle for the future of the society in which we live.

Today, adding to the physical police barriers in Sheikh Jarrah [the Jerusalem Magistrate/"Shalom" Court] Judge Ziskind added, in her decision, an additional barrier. Through its decision the Court is attempting to prevent core [Sheikh Jarrah] activists from taking part in any public event connected to Sheikh Jarrah for five months and even to issue a sweeping order preventing the activists from even appearing in the neighborhood during this period. With this the Court, in no uncertain terms, stands with the Jerusalem Police and has joined its efforts to repress and crush the struggle. We know now, like in the past, such repression will only strengthen us as we stand in resistance to injustice.

In the face of this newest challenge we will present the only response we have: solidarity. Solidarity with our Palestinian partners against the attempts purge the neighborhood of its Palestinian residents in favor of Jewish settlers; solidarity with our comrades in detention and against the attempts to repress their protests; solidarity with our fellow citizens/civilians who want only to live in a democratic society in which politically based law enforcement is inconceivable. All must be equal before the law. The law, when applied discriminatory, challenges is very legality [constitutionality].

In the name of solidarity we call on everyone to come to Sheikh Jarrah next Friday. Standing together we will deliver a loud and clear message to the Magistrate’s Court and to the settler’s police: You cannot kill popular resistance

This is the moment that demands of all of us to join the struggle, to call on our friends to join us as we stand shoulder to shoulder against the corruption of a law enforcement system infected by the Occupation.

Friday — 4pm/16:00 Sheikh Jarrah: We call on YOU to join us. More details to follow.

The Sheikh Jarrah Activists

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Commentary

There is little more that one can add to the morally just call from the Sheikh Jarrah activists. Over the past month or two I, normally cynical about demonstrations, have decided to frequent the neighborhood, to come out from behind my computer screen activism, my writing and my role as a full time human rights worker, to protest and to start visiting with the people beyond Friday afternoons.

The weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah are exciting and inspiring examples of a pure representation of democratic and human rights based activism. I have come by myself and witnessed (and was almost touched by) police brutality. I have come with my children (7 and 10) and faced their tough questions: “Why we are here? What is going on? Why are there so many police here and why do they have different uniforms on?” The simple answer I give them children reflects the relative simplicity of the struggle in Sheikh Jarrah. It is an answer that draws together a relatively large variety of people, mostly Israelis, some of them professors, authors, politicians but most of them regular people from regular homes in regular neighborhoods. The answer to my kids’ questions: we are here because what Israel is doing to the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah is wrong. Israel is hurting them and it is not fair. As for the police, to my children I am forced to answer them with a hint of sadness that says “normally we expect the police to protect us. If someone hurts you, you should call the police and they will protect you but today, they are helping the State do something bad.”

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