Coteret

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. Cross-posted from her personal blog.

Editor’s note: Lisa’s full photo set from the May 7 2010 demonstration at An Nabi Salih can be viewed here. Another set, by Philip Touitou, the photographer pictured at the end of the post can be viewed here.

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On Friday afternoons in Nabi Salih, it starts like this. A few Israeli and foreign activists arrive at the village around noon, gathering at the home of Bassam Tamimi. His door is open, so there is no need to knock. Inside, villagers and visitors socialize, use the washroom and help themselves from the huge spread of homemade food laid out on the kitchen table. Bassam’s children run between the guests’ legs; and Sameeh, a neighbour from Jaffa, picks one of them up and tickles him. The atmosphere is relaxed, jovial and friendly. Most of these people see one another every Friday, under the same circumstances.

Bassam’s mother (or perhaps mother-in-law) sits on one of the chairs, her legs pulled up in a near-squat, observing the visitors through half-blind eyes. She looks like a Palestinian grandmother out of central casting, with her long white veil, embroidered traditional dress, deeply wrinkled face and thin, arthritic hands. I greet her by clasping one of them and muttering something in mangled Arabic. She responds by telling me to eat — a word I understand because the Arabic and Hebrew roots are the same (AKL), and also because that’s what grandmothers tend to do, the world over — urge you to eat.

After we have eaten and drunk our tea, Bassam says, “So, shall we start?”

Village boys and some older men congregate at the top of the village’s main road. Some carry Palestinian flags. They start to walk down the path, clapping their hands and chanting rhythmically. There are a couple of Palestinian news cameramen, looking prepared for trouble with their gas masks, flack vests and helmets – and a sprinkling of non-Palestinian freelance photojournalists. Some of them have gas masks, too. The non-Palestinians – maybe 10 Israelis and a handful of Europeans – walk on the sides, observing but not participating. The photojournalists and cameramen walk backwards down the hill as they photograph and film the demonstrators. There are no reporters for the Israeli media.

The goal of the march is to reach the spring across the road, maybe 300 meters away, next to the religious settlement of Halamish, a settlement that was created in the late 1970s on expropriated Nabi Salih agricultural land. The cluster of stone village houses is divided by a smooth, new blacktop road from the rows of identical white settlement houses. The villagers continued, for years after Halamish’s cookie-cutter houses were erected, to cultivate the fields next to the settlement. Until one day, a few months ago, the settlers decided to expropriate the spring that is located on that land. Gideon Levy explains that the settlers say they want to use the spring for a spa. They planted an Israeli flag next to it, then used threats of violence to prevent the Nabi Salih villagers from cultivating the farmland upon which the spring was located.

For the army, the goal is not to mediate or to serve justice. The goal is to keep things quiet. So, rather than adjudicating between the residents of Halamish and Nabi Salih — e.g., by telling the settlers to take their flag away from the spring and stop preventing the villagers from farming their land – the army declared the area a closed military zone. They did not tell the settlers to take down the flag or to stop threatening the Palestinians who wanted to continue cultivating their fields. Instead, the army prevented the Nabi Salih farmers from reaching their land, because that would make the settlers angry, and when the settlers get angry they get violent, and if there was violence the peace would be disturbed. That is why, on Friday afternoons for the past five months, the villagers have been marching toward the spring. And that is why, each Friday afternoon, the army prevents them from doing so. This is the story of how the army stops the villagers from reaching the spring.

Two minutes into the demonstration, with a violent abruptness that never fails to shock, a caravan of noisy armoured vehicles roars into the village. The back doors slam open even before the vehicles screech to a halt. Border police, dressed in full riot gear, leap out of the back, race forward and shoot tear gas in loud volleys. They also lob sound grenades that explode upon impact with a fearsome bang that makes the village sound like a battlefield.

The demonstrators are still well inside their own village. They are not carrying any weapons – not even stones. The group include small children; one has Down’s Syndrome. Everyone scatters to get away from the tear gas. I am standing a few meters away, behind a stone wall that surrounds a private house, which has become a target for several tear gas canisters all at once. The familiar bitter taste and prickling sinuses remind of how disgusting tear gas is; and I back away to avoid getting a full dose from the next barrage. But too late. Pop! Pop! Pop! Ping! One of the canisters lands right near me and I’m groping in my bag for a scarf and a bottle of water.

A young man standing just inside the doorway of the house looks at me and says, in Arabic-accented English, “Get in!”

Inside, a middle-aged woman wearing a hijab and a long dress sits nervously on a couch. Her son and daughter, maybe 5 and 7 years old, sit next to her, in silence. The boy is playing a game on his mobile phone, while the girl just sits on her pink plastic chair, looking occasionally at her mother for reassurance. The mother smiles at me and indicates that I should sit down. She brings me a glass of orange juice on a tray, and half an onion to hold up to my nose as an antidote to the tear gas. Every few minutes she gets up and turns on the fan to disperse the gas, which seeps in through the cracks around the windows and doors, but that doesn’t always help.

At one point her son stands up abruptly, goes wordlessly into the kitchen and fetches another onion, slices it in half and returns to the couch, holding half for himself and the other half for his little sister. To distract them, I take their photos and show them their images. The boy smiles a little, but then another volley of tear gas lands outside their front door and he stops smiling.

Outside, the local boys were throwing rocks at the border police, who continued to fire tear gas. Many had wrapped scarves around their faces, partly to ward off the tear gas and partly to disguise their identity so that Israeli security forces, which videotape the demonstrations, would not be able to target them for arrest during the night-time raids. The IDF raids the village several times a week, arresting teenage stone throwers and keeping them in detention for extended periods.

This is the image that frightens and angers Israelis: a muscular teenage Palestinian, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, a keffiyeh wrapped around his face and a rock or a slingshot in his hand. It’s a classic shot that has appeared on the front page of Israeli newspapers on many occasions.

And there, at the bottom of the road, is the image that frightens and angers Palestinians: armed soldiers inside their village, eager for action and not very disciplined, shooting tear gas, throwing sound grenades and sometimes adding some plastic or rubber bullets and skunk gas as well.

The Palestinians define these demonstrations as non-violent because they don’t throw stones unless the army shoots first. There are those who argue that demonstrators cannot call themselves non-violent if they are throwing stones – even if the targets are wearing helmets and carrying riot shields. And then there is the argument that if the villagers don’t throw stones in response to the tear gas, then there will be no media coverage at all.

Well, I don’t know. Perhaps if the villagers had all sat down on the road and just allowed themselves to be asphyxiated by tear gas or dragged away to jail, there would have been some media coverage. Or perhaps not. Then again, the stone throwers did not hurt anybody. But on the other hand, the images coming out of that demo – the classic ’scary Palestinian’ shots of boys with keffiyeh-covered faces throwing stones – are the ones that will make the biggest impact on Israelis. Once they see that image, which elicits such primordial responses of fear, they are highly unlikely to ask what the villagers were protesting, or why the army is breaking up a demonstration that is taking place inside the village and not harming anyone, and whether or not the Palestinians have the right to demonstrate – and if not, why not?

Anyway, things quieted down for a few minutes so I left the home in which I’d taken shelter and started walking toward the olive grove at the foot of the road. But then there was another round of tear gas. A voice from the roof above my head said in English, “Hello! Come up here. You can see better.”

So I entered the house and walked upstairs, where teenage Zeynab and her sisters, who seemed to range in age from 10-14, had an excellent view of the soldiers and the local rock throwers, three of whom were crouching behind a wall. Cat-and-mouse.

Zeynab said quietly, “Something so evil is happening here.” After a few minutes she gestured toward the local boys and called out to them in Arabic, pointing toward the soldiers who were waiting below, in the olive grove. I looked down and saw sunlight glinting on the barrel of a tear gas dispenser as it was aimed directly at us on the roof. “Ya banaat!” I shouted, but there was no way to beat the tear gas. It exploded on the roof. We rushed down the stairs, with the smaller girls retching loudly. One of them slammed the door to the bathroom and sounded as though she were throwing up, while another called out that their living room window had been shattered by the impact. The younger brothers raced into the kitchen, sliced onions and passed them out to all of us. A boy who looked about 8 years old warned me to stop rubbing my eyes, because I would just spread the tear gas deeper.

We sat on cushions in the living room, wiping the mucus and tears with tissues and laughing a little as we recovered. After awhile there was a lull outside, so I said goodbye and left, after photographing one of the girls in front of the shattered living room window. She giggled as she wrapped her brother’s scarf around her face and posed.

Read more…

Foreign Ministry considering stopping lectures

Eli Bardenstein, Maariv, May 6 2010 [page 16; Hebrew original here and at bottom of post]

Foreign Ministry officials are considering stopping the lectures by senior figures around the world, particularly in Britain.  The reason: The outspoken verbal attacks by students and pro-Palestinian activists, which render them ineffective.  The attacks peaked last week, when demonstrators assaulted the Israeli deputy ambassador to Britain at the end of a lecture she gave at the University of Manchester.

Ma’ariv has learned that Israeli diplomats stationed in the US have significantly reduced the number of public lectures that they give to students, as a result of the frequent heckling.  The last [lecture] was given by Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren in February at the University of California.

“It seems that giving lectures in public halls at universities in Britain is becoming ineffective in terms of PR.  The pro-Palestinian students cause major disruptions and prevent any dialogue.  In the worst case, the lecture is simply stopped,” a Foreign Ministry source said, “in the end, the heckling and the incitement get the newspaper headlines, and not the message that the lecturer wanted to convey.”

The Foreign Ministry has raised several alternative ideas.  One of them is to increase the use of social networks as a means of PR.  The Foreign Ministry has several staff members who are considered experts on public diplomacy using the Web, including Deputy Director of the Training Bureau Yaron Gamburg and Ilan Sztulman of the Public Affairs Department.  Another alternative is to allow the lectures to continue only in closed forums of lecturers and teachers.

Last week, it was reported that the Deputy Israeli Ambassador to London, Talya Lador-Fresher, was attacked at the end of her lecture at Manchester University by violent pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

As soon as she stepped out of the lecture theater she was stormed by the demonstrators, until security was able to smuggle her back inside the room. Afterwards, she was escorted out in a police car, but the demonstrators surrounded the vehicle and even climbed on top of the bonnet.

Israeli Ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, believes that the public lectures must not be cancelled, despite the attacks. Even Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, who suffered disruptions throughout his lecture in February, believes that “We have to appear in every forum open to us, despite the disruptions. We cannot leave the floor open to enemies of Israel. If we show weakness, and show that their violence and shouting is working, they will continue like that everywhere we go”.

Read more…

Actually, Burnat got off lightly. Advocacy on behalf of the unarmed protest movement in the West Bank (termed “Popular Terror” by the IDF) is a crime punishable by incarceration. Here are a few recent examples:

• July 2009: Mohammad Srur, a Naalin activist, arrested after testifying before Goldstone commission.
• September 2009: Head of Bilin Popular Committee Abdallah Abu Rahma indicted for displaying spent ammunition casings used by IDF against village demonstrators.
• January 2010: Bilin councilman, Mohamad Khatib, arrested following Ynet interview in which he predicted a new Intifada.

Shabak bars protester from Bil’in from traveling to conferences in Europe

Iyad Burnat wanted to cross the Allenby Bridge to travel to conferences in Switzerland and Italy. He waited at the crossing for three hours until he was told: “You’re going back”

Amira Hass, Haaretz Online, May 1 2010 [Hebrew edition only, original here]

Arrest of Iyad Burnat in Bilin

Burnat, 37, married and the father of three sons and a daughter, came to the bridge this morning with his four-year-old daughter. The border crossing to Jordan is under full Israeli control and Palestinians are allowed to cross only with Shabak permission. The officer at passport control instructed him to sit and wait right after he entered his personal information on the computer.

Burnat told Haaretz that three hours later an Israeli wearing civilian clothes, who did not identify himself or his office, appeared and said: “You’re going back.” Burnat asked other Israelis stationed at the border crossing why he was prevented from crossing and he was told these were Shabak orders and that the reason is “security.” He asked to meet the Shabak officer at the crossing but was refused.

One of the conferences in which Burnat was supposed to participate was organized by the mayor of Geneva Rémy Pagani and its subject is the Geneva conventions.

The popular struggle activists believe the prevention of travel is one of the measures taken by the security authorities to suppress their movement. The measures include mass arrests, raids on houses, declaring villages as closed military areas and holding leading activists in custody for months. All this is beside the massive force used to disperse demonstrations.

Burnat was arrested and tried for his activity in the first intifada and jailed for two years. In the five years of fighting against the separation fence he has been arrested a few times at home after demonstrations but he was never indicted or tried. The last time Burnat traveled abroad was in April 2009.

In the weekly report of his activities that he distributes by e-mail, Burnat wrote about the demonstrations that took place in Bil’in yesterday, with the participation of Palestinian trade union activists in honor of May 1.

The Shabak today (Saturday) barred a resident of Bil’in, active in the struggle against building the separation fence in the village, from crossing Allenby Bridge to travel to conferences in Switzerland and Italy. Iyad Burnat was supposed to speak at the conferences about the popular struggle against the separation fence.

At bottom is a set of photos is from page 8 of this morning’s (April 28 2010) Haaretz (Hebrew edition only; download as PDF here.) Caption reads:

Pepper spray into the eyes of the Palestinian protester, at point-blank range

A 15 year-old Palestinian was arrested yesterday by Border Policemen during a demonstration against construction of the separation fence near the village of Wallaje, and was sprayed with pepper gas at point blank range during the arrest. About 60 demonstrators protested against construction of the fence south of Jerusalem. According to one of them, at one point the teenager saw the the Border Policemen were documenting the event and panicked. “He jumped off the bulldozer, ran home and stumbled into a policeman by accident., He tried to continue running but the policemen jumped on him, beat him murderously and sprayed him with pepper gas, after they had got him under control. The Border Police responded: “The arrest was made after the suspect disturbed the peace, attacked the policemen and even resisted arrest. During the arrest, pepper spray was legally used. In any case, the photo will be transferred to the Police [internal] Investigations Department [at the Justice Ministry] through the [police] Public Appeals Officer for further examination. (Liel Kyzer)

The photo is not very ambiguous: Point blank range is certain and it would be hard to claim that the protester was not incapacitated when the spraying occurred. I would be more skeptical if this was an isolated incident. It is not.

As Emily Schaeffer pointed out yesterday, unnecessary use of force by Israeli security forces in suppressing unarmed protest is the norm. A recent Coteret post asserted that the new term “Popular Terror” was useful in creating the dehumanization necessary for Israelis to accept this phenomenon.

Emily W. Schaeffer is an American-Israeli human rights lawyer and activist based in Tel Aviv, born and raised in the Boston area. Click here (or scroll to bottom of post) to read a profile of Emily in Ode Magazine, which selected her as one of 2009′s 25 Intelligent optimists for her work in Bil’in.

Cross-posted from The Only Democracy?

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Some of us have become so used to West Bank demonstrations meaning major Israeli army presence, and, typically, the use of weapons, that we have forgotten what demonstrations in a democracy look like. We’ve forgotten that a protest against oppressive working conditions in downtown New York City, or against oppressive abortion policies in Fredericton, Canada, or against wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in cities including London, Sydney, Paris, San Francisco and Toronto — means police presence only when the protests become so large that they overcrowd public spaces and need direction, when they damage city property, or (get this) when the protesters themselves might be at risk from onlookers with opposing views.

And so we attend demonstration after demonstration — from Bil’in to Al-Ma’asara to Hebron to Nabi Salah,and more — and we are enraged time and time again by the unjustified, disproportionate, immoral response of the army and border police.

But we hardly ever ask ourselves: Why are they even here?

What would happen if the army didn’t show up one Friday in Bil’in, for instance? If the army hadn’t shown up on Friday, April 23, at the 5th Annual Conference Demonstration, then Eymad Rezqa (also spelled Imad Rizka, dedicated Palestinian-Israeli activist) would not have been shot in the head with a tear gas canisterand rushed to surgery; 2 Italian demonstrators, one Israeli activist, 2 Bil’in residents, a Palestinian woman from Bethlehem and a Palestinian journalist would not have been lightly injured by direct shots or shrapnel of tear gas and shock grenade canisters, and as it is rumored from a new type of weapon; 3 Israelis, one Mexican citizen, and one Palestinian would not have been arrested and detained for nearly 12 hours, released on the condition that they post bail and stay out of Bil’in and Ni’lin for 15 days; hundreds would not have suffered from the horrible feeling of tear gas inhalation (which studies show may damage reproductive organs, among other risks); and several pre-teens and teens might not have risked being caught by army cameras today only to be arrested out of their beds tomorrow and called in for interrogation for stone-throwing, likely to be given months of jail time for an offense that in most countries would bring a fine or perhaps a few weeks’ community service.

The army has repeatedly claimed that their use of dispersal tactics (that have proven lethal) against the demonstrators is based on 3 main factors: 1) the demonstrations in and of themselves are illegal, as according to Israeli military orders a gathering of more than 10 people with a political or ideological purpose is an illegal assembly (and as of the latest military order it is illegal for Israelis to be within 200 meters of the wall); 2) they are responding to the dangerous stone-throwing by demonstrators, and in fact several soldiers and border police have been injured by these stones; and, 3) they are protecting the wall.

So technically when 10 Palestinians sit in a courtyard and discuss over tea the fact that they couldn’t access their fields yesterday they are committing an illegal act and should be tear gassed and/or arrested. Why does this sound logical to any thinking person? But let’s bring it to the more common example — the demonstration. Popular protest exists all over the world. Occupation is a scenario that logically leads to protest, and in fact under international law it is fully justified. Now Israel can compare itself to plenty of brutal occupations and dictatorships and perhaps still come out on top; but that’s not what Israel proclaims itself to be. Rather, Israel claims to be a democracy with the most moral army and occupation in the world. Under that paradigm, how can we reconcile the suppression of popular protest? Moreover, how can we justify it for 43 years and counting?

Read more…

From the onset, in addition to protesting the injustice of the evictions, the activists at Sheikh Jarrah sought to leverage the demonstrations into direct action: Protecting the evicted Palestinian families, camped on the street outside their homes, from settlers using Friday afternoon “prayer meetings” as a launch point for attacks. The presence of Israelis at the family tents during this crucial time slot deterred some of the attacks and, in a few cases, even embarrassed the police into doing its job.

The Jerusalem police was having none of it. At some point in the fall of 2009 a decision was made: The protests would be suppressed. Over one hundred arrests ensued over the following months. The highhandedness of the police backfired. It brought media attention and, with it, local and international support. The courts also consistently sided with the activists and police disrespect for the rule of law became increasingly unsustainable. In February, commanders ceased dispersing the Friday protests.

Police still blocked the activists —  now organized as a movement called “Just Jerusalem” — from actually standing with the families, corralling them in a playground a few hundred yards away. Instead of declaring victory and moving on, the youngsters redoubled their efforts to reach the tents. Arrests resumed. One activist was taken from the Friday night family dinner table. In mid April, a group of intellectuals led by author David Grossman witnessed a police assault and spoke out. More Israelis joined the protests.

On Friday (April 23 2010) the police broke. At 4:00pm most of the demonstrators gathered in the playground, a few dozen activists appeared out of nowhere outside the Hanoun family home. The new local commander (the top brass had apparently had enough of his predecessor) approached the group and ordered them to disperse. Their response: This is a legal vigil and we’re not moving. The police force stood down. Later, as the group joined the main body, Sara Beninnga, the indefatigable cheer leader of the protests, announced on her megaphone that the action would be repeated every week and replicated at other Jerusalem hot spots. On Sunday, as settler extremists marched through Silwan, the Sheikh Jarrah activists were there to lead the counter-demonstration.

Just Jerusalem’s has become a symbol for Israel’s anti-Occupation activists. Against all odds, lacking resources and organizational backing, the movement demonstrated the power of conviction and tenacity. Writing in this Saturday’s edition of the Financial Times, Tobias Buck, allowed recognition of this achievement to seep through his skepticism:

Six months, dozens of arrests and hundreds of newspaper headlines later, the small band of Israeli peace activists has surprised itself by taking on the appearance of a full-blown political movement.

The regular demonstrations have broadened into protests against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in general. Some Israelis also come to register their disapproval of police action against the gatherings, adding freedom of speech to the other grievances.

As a result, the protesters’ ranks are now studded with some of Israel’s most prominent intellectuals and writers.

The signatures of many of these intellectuals, including Israel Prize laureates Avishai Margalit and Zeev Sternhell, are among the ninety-nine at the bottom of an open letter taking Elie Wiesel to task for his sheer chutzpah in presuming to speak for those who actually live Jerusalem in his controversial full-page Washington Post ad, calling for a halt to US diplomatic action on the city (full letter here and at bottom of post; Haaretz report here.)

For more than a generation now the earthly city we call home has been crumbling under the weight of its own idealization. Your letter troubles us, not simply because it is replete with factual errors and false representations, but because it upholds an attachment to some other-worldly city which purports to supersede the interests of those who live in the this-worldly one. For every Jew, you say, a visit to Jerusalem is a homecoming, yet it is our commitment that makes your homecoming possible. We prefer the hardship of realizing citizenship in this city to the convenience of merely yearning for it.

Read more…

Cross-posted from Promised Land.

An unusual protest is scheduled for Thursday in the West Bank: Settlers and Palestinians are planning to march together in protest against a section of the separation barrier Israel is constructing south of Jerusalem.

According to a report on Srugim, a national–religious news site, the protest was initiated by Eretz Shalom, a new pro-peace settlers movement. A handbill distributed by the organization (shown below), claims that the planned fence “will damage the nature in the area, hurt the residents of the [Palestinian] village of Wallaje and their fields, won’t add to the security of Jerusalem, and will be a waste of state money.”

The settlers invite all residents of the area, “Jews, Christians and Arabs”, to meet at the border police checkpoint at 4:30pm and march together in protest.

Is this more than a gimmick? It’s hard to tell. There has been some talk of peace initiatives coming from the far-right recently. Naturally, they all lead to the one state solution, with most of the settlements remaining  in place and the Palestinians becoming Israeli citizens. These ideas are yet to be developed, but I wouldn’t dismiss them altogether.

Many people on the left will find it hard to accept the idea of settlers talking about peace, but we should remember that not all the Jews living in the West Bank are like the radical and violent residents of Yitzhar. Some of them are from second and third generation in the settlements, and they really struggle to find a solution that will enable them to live in peace. According to another report on Srugim, the members of Eretz Shalom are not very involved in politics, and view themselves as a grassroots, regional, initiative. I think we should wish them luck. Read more…

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 Yediot report expands on yesterday’s (January 5 2010,) which revealed that a senior IDF delegation to UK was cancelled at last minute for fear of arrests. At bottom is a Maariv news item on the attempt by British Attorney General Patricia Scotland, currently visiting Israel, to placate the local elite.

Note that Colonel Virob is also in hot water for testifying that the beating of Palestinian detainees in the West Bank constituted normative behavior in the IDF. A Haaretz report from February 2009 describes Brigadier Halevi as a “brilliant officer, who also excelled in combat [who] categorically refuses to open the Pandora’s box of moral debate [regarding the Gaza war.]“

Halevy and Weirob are among officers who didn’t go to England

Yossi Yehoshua and Itamar Eichner, Yediot, January 6 2010 [page 9]

Itai Virob

Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that Brig. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Colonel Itai Virob were part of the military delegation that was supposed to leave for Britain last week.

Herzi Halevi

As reported yesterday, Israel canceled the planned visit by the military delegation to the UK after British authorities said they could not guarantee that the IDF officers would not be arrested. Brig. Gen. Halevi was the commander of the Paratroopers Brigade during Operation Cast Lead, and Colonel Virob, formerly the commander of the Kfir Brigade, also entered the Gaza Strip in the course of that operation with one of his battalions. Meanwhile, the British attorney general, who is visiting Israel at present, said yesterday that the UK would take urgent action to change the policy that allowed for arrest warrants to be issued against high-ranking Israeli officials [More on UK AG's statement in Maariv item below].

British Attorney General: We’ll change the system

Eli Bardenstein, Maariv, January 6 2010 [page 6]

Patricia Scotland

British Attorney General Patricia Scotland said last night in a lecture at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem: The government understands the urgent need to change the system in order to prevent lawsuits against Israelis, and is determined to enable Israeli leaders to travel freely to Britain.

Among the people came to hear Scotland were Supreme Court President Judge Dorit Beinish, Supreme Court Judge Edna Arbel and British Ambassador to Israel Tom Phillips.

The British attorney general said that there should not be a safe haven for war criminals in any democratic country, but it should also be ensured that the law would not be used for the sake of one political campaign or another.  Scotland emphasized that until the law was amended, the policy according to which judges could issue arrest warrants against senior Israeli figures would not change.

Earlier in the day, Scotland met with Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman.

The shock and indignation expressed in the article indicates just how difficult it is for the Israeli elite to come to terms with this new reality. This may help explain why there appears to be no coordinated strategy, with a variety of initiatives acting at cross puposes:

1. Israel announces it will set up a limited internal investigation in order to stem the “political and economic tsunami” caused by the Goldstone report.
2. A European pro-Israel group attempts to use the Goldstone report to indict Hamas leaders in Belgium.
3. Jewish groups in the US support a suspected Somali human rights violator for fear of Israeli war crimes culpability (completely oblivious to the moral price they are exacting from all Jews.)

Officers’ trip to UK canceled due to concern of arrest

Itamar Eichner, Yediot, January 5 2009

At the last minute, Israel canceled a work visit of Israeli officers to the UK due to concern that arrest warrants would be issued against them.

The Israeli delegation, comprised of officers ranking colonel, lieutenant colonel and major, was invited by the British army to examine military cooperation. Due to concern that warrants of arrest would be issued, Israeli officials contacted British government officials in advance and demanded that they guarantee that the officers would not be arrested. This is after two weeks ago, a warrant of arrest was issued against Opposition Chairwoman Tzippi Livni and earlier there were attempts to have a similar warrant issued against Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

To the great astonishment of the Israelis—the British announced last week that they could not guarantee that the officers would not be arrested. Consultations were held in Israel among the top echelons and it was decided: under the present circumstances, no risk should be taken, and the visit was canceled. Read more…