Coteret

This report follows the news Tuesday (April 13 2010) that Mayor Nir Barkat was attempting to renew house demolitions in East Jerusalem. Note also the repetitive framing of the story as an act of defiance of the US administration (three out of five paragraphs.)

Construction in Jerusalem: Business as usual

Roni Malul, Maariv, April 14 2010 [page 14]

Barkat

Despite the crisis with the United States about constructing in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, it appears that the municipality is supporting continued construction in the Gilo neighborhood, which was annexed to Israel in 1967.

The Jerusalem municipality’s local planning committee, which will meet tomorrow, will discuss the permits for constructing community buildings in Gilo despite the White House’s vigorous opposition to construction over the Green Line. Municipality officials commented that the plan was approved in principle in 1995 and that now, a decision was made to carry it out on the ground.

The committee’s agenda will include the final approval of a construction plan that involves the expropriation of several lots in Gilo’s Area 5 by the Israel Lands Administration for the municipality. This plan expands the neighborhood by two hundred housing units. According to the plan, a school and synagogue will also be built there.

“These are not new construction plans, and there are no actual construction plans for the public buildings yet,” the municipality spokesman said. “This is only a decision to transfer the land from the Israel Lands Administration to the municipality, as was agreed upon in the past.”

This is not the first time that construction in the Gilo neighborhood has aroused criticism in the United States. Approximately five months ago, Obama spoke against Israel’s decision to approve the construction of 900 housing units there. He said that Israel’s decision constituted an obstacle to the resumption of negotiations and did not contribute to Israel’s security.

The sustained protests, against the settlement of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and the attendant eviction of Palestinian families, have been widely applauded.  However, they have also elicited some fierce push-back. Notably, these have not come only from government and right-wing elements, but also from members of the old “peace camp.” When hearing criticism from this quarter, one is hard pressed to escape the impression that it is motivated by embarrassment. These youngsters, with virtually no resources, have pulled-off what seemed like mission impossible over the past decade: Effective mobilization of an anti-Occupation movement.

Case in point: After the success of the March 6 2010 rally at the neighborhood — which, with over 3,000 participants, could not be ignored — a number of these stalwarts of the demonstrations of 1980′s took turns slamming the absence of the Israeli flag. Recently, Nili Osherov, and Israeli editor and satirist, explained in Ynet [full translation at bottom] that this demand was a recipe for continued paralysis and that the protest leaders had a better sense of today’s reality than their critics.

I have a clear answer why the Israeli flag has not been waved there, and it has one word: tact. Sheikh Jarrah, just like the nonviolent protests at Bil’in and Ni’lin, just like organizations such as Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace, are part of a process being led by young Israelis today (and other young people like them on the Palestinian side), that could be the start of the end of the violent conflict in our area.

I have a clear answer why the Israeli flag has not been waved there, and it has one word: tact. Sheikh Jarrah, just like the nonviolent protests at Bil’in and Ni’lin, just like organizations such as Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace, are part of a process being led by young Israelis today (and other young people like them on the Palestinian side), that could be the start of the end of the violent conflict in our area. [...]

These young people understand that the endless cycle of violence created by the “kill or be killed” mentality has to simply be severed. Sheikh Jarrah is a symbol to them, a sort of a local “committee of truth and reconciliation,” from which more committees may grow in more and more places. They are neither fanatics nor blind. They know this is not a one-sided story of perpetrators and victims. They are not blaming the forefathers of Zionism, the founders of Israel nor — thank God — us, their parents, for everything.

But in the present situation, in the current balance of power between us and the Palestinians, they understand who is the weak side and who is obligated to show generosity, concessions and the willingness to swallow their pride and national honor. The Israeli flags seen today in Sheikh Jarrah are the ones waved defiantly on the homes of the settlers who heartlessly took over the Palestinian homes. [...]

Their choice to stay here and to fight an almost hopeless battle for the values of peace and humanism is commendable. Sometimes I want to ask their forgiveness for the impossible country we gave them. They do not have to wave the Israeli flag anywhere. Each one of them is to me a waving flag of humanism, compassion and true loyalty to their country and people. “To the glory of the state of Israel” — nobody deserves that phrase more than they do, even if it gives them the creeps.

Reporting on the suppression of the protest on Friday (April 9 2010), Bernard Avishai makes a mockery of any attempt to label the protesters as radicals.

The organizers of the weekly Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations are a loose, but hardly amorphous, group; no formal hierarchy, but rather a network of perhaps a dozen thirty-somethings, as closely knit as a basketball team. The ones who more or less act as the point guards are graduate students who’ve gone to school in America and have come back — Assaf Sharon from Stanford, Avner Inbar from the University of Chicago — to write theses in political philosophy. Instead, they are now practicing political philosophy. The oldest in the group, Dr. Amos Goldberg, is a Hebrew University teaching fellow in Holocaust Studies (and a former graduate student of my wife, Sidra).

Almost none in the group, I hasten to add, are leftists in the ordinary sense. Assaf and Amos are the products of the National Religious Party youth movement, Bnei Akiva, and came by their skepticism honestly. Another, Sara Benninga, is the daughter of a distinguished Tel Aviv University business professor. Most came to this issue because it could simply not be ignored. Little by little, they are becoming radicals of democratic globalism.

—-

Tact in Sheikh Jarrah

The Sheikh Jarrah demonstrators are criticized from the right and the left over the absence of Israeli flags at their demonstrations. But when you look at their considerations they are commendable.

Nili Osherov, Ynet, April 3 2010 [Hebrew original here]

“Why don’t you wave the Israeli flag?” the Sheikh Jarrah demonstrators are challenged again and again. The right wing in all of its stripes sees it as further proof of the separatism, alienation and self-hate with which the radical left is inflicted. The new Israeli left (or in a word, the right) begs: “Please wave it. Sheikh Jarrah is a good ‘case’ that could win the sympathy of the Israeli public. If only you waved the Israeli flag the whole nation would be with you.”Is that wise advice? I am afraid that the left of Sheikh Jarrah will not sweep up the Israeli nation even if it wraps itself in national flags from head to toe and decorates itself with pictures of Israel’s chiefs of staff and presidents through the ages. If the left wants the sympathy of the people of Israel I would recommend it wave slogans such as “Jerusalem is our united capital for ever and ever” or “death to the Arabs.” That would do the job better.

But since I was there, and since I know the people well enough to draw a typical profile of a Sheikh Jarrah demonstrator defined as a radical left wing activist (or simply: the true left), I have a clear answer why the Israeli flag has not been waved there, and it has one word: tact. Sheikh Jarrah, just like the nonviolent protests at Bil’in and Ni’lin, just like organizations such as Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace, are part of a process being led by young Israelis today (and other young people like them on the Palestinian side), that could be the start of the end of the violent conflict in our area. Read more…

On Friday (April 9 2010) Israeli author David Grossman made an impromptu speech [video here] at the protest against the continued evictions of Palestinians families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and their replacement with fundamentalist settlers.

I think that we are all beginning to grasp — even those who maybe don’t really want to — how 43 years ago, by turning a blind eye, by actively or passively cooperating, we actually cultivated a kind of carnivorous plant that is slowly devouring us, consuming every good part within us, making the country we live in a place that is not good to live in. Not good not only if you are an Arab citizen of Israel, and certainly if you are a Palestinian resident of the Territories — not good also for every Jewish Israeli person who wants to live here, who cherishes some hope to be in a place where humans are respected as humans, where your rights are treated as a given, where humanity, morality, and civil rights are not dirty words, not something from the bleeding-heart Left. No. These are the bread and water, the butter and milk of our lives, the stuff from which we will make our lives, and really make them lives worth living here.

Grossman spoke after police suppressed an attempt, ahead of the protest, by a group of veteran peace activists, accompanied by the young leadership of the Sheikh Jarrah protest movement, to see first-hand the homes of families already evicted and of those under immediate threat. Bernard Avishai, who was with the group, reports:

Ever since the Friday demonstrations began back in January, the police had cordoned off the homes of the displaced families after about 2 PM, so that demonstrators were unable to show solidarity directly to the people evicted, or express their disgust with the Jewish settlers. In response — a kind of outflanking operation — the group invited about 30 of us, including the author David Grossman, former speaker Avrum Burg, NIF President Naomi Chazan, Israel Prize winner Zeev Sternhell, to gather at the homes of the families at 1:30 PM, where we conducted a kind of impromptu seminar for a couple of hours (not a hard thing for writers and professors, as things turned out).

At around 3:30 PM, we all suddenly emerged onto the street with our signs, and stood across from the homes that were confiscated, kitty-corner to the others that are under threat. When the police commanders realized that we were actually behind their lines, they quickly organized and sent a phalanx of heavily armed officers to form a line behind us, and began pushing us out toward the main demonstration in a park across the street.

WE HAD ALL agreed in advance that we would not resist, or do anything to challenge police authority. As we were being pushed, we walked very slowly but steadily toward the demonstrating crowd that was gathered in the usual place. Now and then we would scold the police for pushing too aggressively. Most of the young officers seemed a little abashed to be pushing well-known sixty-somethings around, but that was the point.

Then something unexpected and chilling happened. The commander of the police spotted Assaf and recognized him as the group’s organizer. He instructed several officers to seize him and put him under arrest. Immediately, Avner, Amos, and another leader sat down, challenging the police to arrest them, too, which is exactly what the police did. The instinctive way the three sat down in solidarity, unwilling to allow Assaf to be arrested alone, touched those of us who were walking beside them in ways that are hard to explain. It reminded me of a sentence in Albert Camus’ The Plague, that there is no heroism in fighting something like the plague, just common decency.

CORRECTION: A reader was quick to point out that Uzi Dayan is a the former head of the National Security Council. The current one being Uzi Arad. See this link for more. Although active in the Likud, Dayan apparently carries no current official position, which of course greatly reduces the importance of his statements. My apologies — my only excuse, though it isn’t a good one, is that the interviewer, one of Israel’s most important journalists, also made the mistake and Dayan did not correct him.

On Monday (March 29 2010) Netanyahu was quick to publicly admonish his inner circle for telling Yediot that

“President Obama and Hillary Clinton have toed the line and have adopted a patently Palestinian line. We’re talking about something that is diseased and insane. The situation is catastrophic. We have a problem with a very, very hostile administration. There’s never been anything like this before. Even veteran officials who tended to the relations with the United States say that there’s never been an administration like this one before. This president wants to establish the Palestinian state and he wants to give them Jerusalem.”

and

“We’ve got a real problem. You could say that Obama is the greatest disaster for Israel, a strategic disaster. It isn’t only Israel that is worried about Obama, but leaders throughout the entire world are worried about him: Merkel, Berlusconi, even the Russians. Obama is damaging to the State of Israel, no matter which leader is facing him.”

Judging by the interview his National Security Council chief, Major General (Res.) Uzi Dayan, gave to IDF Radio this morning (March 31 2010), Netanyahu was criticizing the tone, not substance. Here’s some of what Dayan had to say (full transcript below):

In our case, we should tell the US President, “no, we can’t” because you start addressing issues that do not only stand for Israeli interests and values, and we are not only right about them, but we are also wise because they do not benefit the issue at hand. [...]

Furthermore, we have a real crisis with the US policy because it is appeasing and one-sided.[...]

Look, I believe he [Netanyahu] is saying that [also], but he is justifiably more cautious than I am.  I believe that the stand I am expressing here is not only the Likud view, but it is actually upheld by the majority in the Septet [Netanyahu's kitchen cabinet] and I believe that the prime minister would agree with the things I said here too.

—–

Interview with Israeli NSC Chief Uzi Dayan

IDF Radio, March 31 2010 09:13 [Click here to listen to recording]

Narrator Razi Barkai:  We wish to discuss these issues with Uzi Dayan, a major general in the reserves, former [IDF] deputy chief of staff, and current head of the National Security Council (NSC) and, I must say, No. 42 on the Likud Knesset list.  Good morning, Mr. Dayan.  We should not have been surprised.  At the conclusion of the Taba talks of 2002, we had the Clinton paper in which he said something that all the American presidents since adopted — whatever is Arab, is Palestinian; and whatever is Jewish, is Israeli — and he was referring to Jerusalem.  Why are we stunned when it suddenly happens again?

Dayan:  We are not stunned, but it is simply time for us to say, “no.”  Every nation has moments when it has to say “no” even to its friends, including strategic friends.  I think it is time for us to tell the USA and mainly its President, “no more.”

Dayan

Barkai:  Listen, [Haaretz correspondent] Ari Shavit said — and this has not yet been stated publically, except if it were raised in meetings one-on-one — that if you say “no” to the Americans (and you will soon tell us what we say “no” to), the Americans can start taking very small, secret, and painful steps such as, for example, delaying all kinds of weapon shipment, start questioning the $3 billion in aid we receive every year, or start poking us with all kids of small knives on international arenas such as the United Nations.  Does this not bother you?

Dayan:  Of course it does.  The USA is not only our primary strategic ally, but it also has the power [to do these things].  That is correct.  Still, even among friends there are lines you do not cross, which we should say politely but clearly.  In our case, we should tell the US President, “no, we can’t” because you start addressing issues that do not only stand for Israeli interests and values, and we are not only right about them, but we are also wise because they do not benefit the issue at hand.

Look, there were two prominent leaders in our history who said “no” to the United States: Ben-Gurion, when he decided to declare Israel’s independence even though Washington was against it; and Menachem Begin, when facing that trilogy of the bombing of the Iraqi reactor, the attack in Lebanon, and the annexation of the Golan Heights.  Now, we reached this state of affairs, which is not joyous of course, but a nation should know when to say “no.”  Furthermore, we have a real crisis with the US policy because it is appeasing and one-sided. Look, what happened recently?  We agreed to the solution of two states for two nations even though the Palestinians refused to acknowledge the right of the Jewish nation and despite the situation in Gaza, which lends itself at best to three states for two nations; and I am being cynical here.  In addition, we froze construction works in Judea and Samaria, which was never done before; and we agreed to hold indirect negotiations with US involvement.  Let me remind you that when I was personally involved in the process, the Americans were not even in the room with us.

Barkai:  So what are we saying no to — the Jerusalem issue?

Dayan:  Yes, to the Jerusalem issue.  You know what?  Let me add something here.  What did we gain from making these concessions?  We only received more and more demands.  It is time for us to say “no” and insist on negotiations without preconditions.  As for Jerusalem…it is so self evident.

Barkai:  The Americans say to that: Great!  Let’s go for direct negotiations without preconditions, but as we discuss the negotiations and while we conduct them, not facts shall be established on the ground.  One of those facts established, which the Palestinians find incredibly intolerable, is construction in Jerusalem.  You want to come to the table and say Jerusalem is entirely ours, and the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem are ours, and Jerusalem will remain ours in the permanent agreement?  Fine.  But do not establish facts while you are negotiating.

Read more…

Diskin

In May 2007, the current head of Israel’s internal security agency, the General Security Service (GSS aka Shabak and Shin Bet), Yuval Diskin, unilaterally revolutionized his agency’s mandate.  Disken was responding to a request by Adalah to clarify the scope of the GSS’s authority to investigate Israeli citizens, Haaretz reported:

The Shin Bet security service believes it is within its charter to carry out surveillance operations, such as phone taps, on individuals deemed as “conducting subversive activity against the Jewish identity of the state,” even if their actions are not in violation of the law.

The announcement was made a month before the 40th anniversary of 1967 war, the moment when Israel became a border-less country embroiled in a never ending internal security war. Under these conditions, it may have been just a matter of time before unaccountable security services inserted themselves into the political sphere of a nation lacking a constitution and a bill of rights. Indeed, Diskin was probably only formally publicizing a long standing practice.

Still, the fact that this development barely registered in the Israeli public debate was remarkable. Part of the explanation for the silence is that those with the power to influence this debate — Jewish Israelis — did not feel threatened. The GSS was investigating the politics of Palestinian citizens. Jews were immune. No comparison and all that, but those who remained silent then are now learning that Martin Niemoller’s lesson, as expressed in “First they came,” is applicable anywhere a society allows the freedoms of minorities to be compromised.

Even when the GSS became a tool in the latest incarnation of the government-sponsored, NGO Monitor-led, campaign to suppress the Israeli human rights community — Im Tirzu’s assault on the NIF — the “mainstream” opposition was nowhere to be found. Nor was the silence broken yesterday (March 24 2010), when politicians called on the security agency to investigate Peace Now for treason, because of the suspicion that it had leaked the embarrassing story of new East Jerusalem construction just ahead of the Obama-Netanyahu summit.

Ramon

Therefore, it is hard to resist a little Schadenfreude that a senior Kadima leader — Haim Ramon — is the latest victim of creeping fifth-columnization, now apparently a convenient weapon even in run-of-the-mill coalition-opposition fracas.

This morning’s media (March 25 2010) was a PR disaster for Netanyahu: Everywhere  the Prime Minister’s trip to US was billed as a fiasco. Everywhere, that is, except Sheldon Adelson’s Israel Hayom, whose front-page provided a scapegoat (full translated text at bottom):

The senior officials say that according to information recently obtained by intelligence agencies that was placed on the desk of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak, Ramon is working with senior PA officials to prevent negotiations from being launched between Jerusalem and Ramallah.  According to this information, PA sources confirmed this.  It was also said that other figures in Kadima might be partners Ramon’s activity.  Political sources say that Ramon has been urging Palestinian and European figures to wait for Kadima to come to power, saying that this would make it possible to launch negotiations under better conditions for them.

In 2007, by the way, the government was lead by Kadima and Ramon was one of the most influential figures in the party.

—–

Officials: Ramon working with PA to obstruct the start of peace negotiations

Matti Tuchfeld, Israel Hayom, March 25 2010 [front-page]

Kadima Council Chairman Haim Ramon is working to sabotage the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians — say high-ranking political officials.

The senior officials say that according to information recently obtained by intelligence agencies that was placed on the desk of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak, Ramon is working with senior PA officials to prevent negotiations from being launched between Jerusalem and Ramallah.  According to this information, PA sources confirmed this.  It was also said that other figures in Kadima might be partners Ramon’s activity.  Political sources say that Ramon has been urging Palestinian and European figures to wait for Kadima to come to power, saying that this would make it possible to launch negotiations under better conditions for them.

Likud sources recently said that Ramon is surrounded by a number of people with whom he maintains close friendships.   Read more…

Foxman

In a Tuesday (March 16 2010) interview with the Jerusalem Post, the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman took criticism of the US administration’s handling of the current confrontation to a new frontier

Israel should immediately battle a charge emerging in the US that its actions are endangering the lives of US soldiers, because it is a particularly “pernicious” argument that “smacks of blaming the Jews for everything.”

Later in the in the article we learn that the purveyor of this blood libel is no other than Vice President Biden himself

US Vice President Joe Biden was quoted by Yediot Aharonot last week as telling Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in an angry exchange over the Ramat Shlomo incident, that “this is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Biden was quoted as saying. “That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

Petraeus

Petraeus and the CENTCOM top brass, however, are the authors

On Saturday, the Foreign Policy magazine Web site ran a story saying that the commander of the US Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, sent a briefing team to the Pentagon at the beginning of the year “with a stark warning: America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers.”

This conflation of criticism of Israeli policies with “blaming the Jews,” is dangerous. Think of the position of the family of a US soldier in Afghanistan. They could, quite reasonably, believe both Petraeus’ anlaysis and Foxman’s assertion of its implications. Making them patriotically “anti-Semitic.”

Hopefully, mainstream Jewish-Americans have already realized that they need to curb Foxman’s recklessness and it is referenced here for a different reason: as a prelude to an account of what appears to be a coordinated and aggressive anti-Obama campaign in the Israeli media aimed at the Israeli public.

For an Israeli media consumer, Tuesday morning appeared as the launch of a focused messaging campaign: The crisis was engineered by Obama to subvert Israeli democracy and topple Netanyahu.

A prominent Jewish-American neoconservative, Elliot Abrams, led the charge in an IDF Radio interview [full transcript and link to recording below].

The administration was very hostile to the Netanyahu government. They were hostile before he did anything. So the argument you can make is that they really don’t like dealing with the Netanyahu government and that they want to see if they can get rid of it and bring down the coalition.

In parallel, the front page of Yisrael Hayom, Sheldon Adelson’s Netanyahu fanzine ran two aggressive articles by Israeli neoconservatives.

Amidror

Under the headline “Facing the international left,” Yaacov Amidror, a retired Israeli General and now a program director at Netanyahu confidant Dore Gold’s Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, asserted (full translated text here)

The administration chiefs, as well as New York and Tel Aviv reporters — those who do not like the fact that a right-wing government was elected in Israel against their will — are trying to seize the opportunity of the regrettable mistake to drive Israel to its knees.  The State of Israel, its government, and it citizens must not crack under this pressure, applied by the international left that is exploiting the mistake Israel made to besmirch and exert unfair pressure on it.

Idar

Facing Amidror’s op-ed was another by Dror Idar, Yisrael Hayom’s deputy editor and a fellow at the The Jewish Statesmanship Center for Strategic Planning entitled “Obama’s mistake” (full translated text here)

According to senior government members, the basic assumption when dealing with the crisis is that we are looking a series of premeditated events that are meant to replace the Israeli Government with one that would be more “convenient” for Obama.

Readers of the three items not another underlying message: Obama picked the wrong battle with Netanyahu. The Israeli public will rise up to support him as he singlehandedly defends Jerusalem against the foreign usurper.

—–

Interview with Elliot Abrams

Morning Newsmagazine, IDF Radio, March 16 2010 07:11 [Click here to listen to recording]

Micha Friedman: Elliot Abrams is a name that hasn’t been in the news for some months, because the man, a key figure in the George W. Bush Jr. administration, hasn’t been in the news since the administration went over to the Democrats headed by Obama. Abrams, a warm Jew, who is involved up to his ears in the Israeli-Palesitnian conflict, gave an interview today to Bar Shem Or, our foreign affairs correspondent, and says some particularly harsh things about his president, Barack Obama. Good morning to Bar Shem Or.

Elliot Abrams and an associate

Bar Shem Or: Hello Micha, good morning. Senior officials in Washington continue to attack Benjamin Netanyahu. The liberal media justified the White House’s actions, but this morning we are bringing you different voices from America. We held a special interview with Elliot Abrams, who played key roles during the Bush administration and is considered a foreign relations expert. He is also very close to the former president. Among other things Abrams served as the deputy national security adviser. He was responsible for the Middle East. He is a conservative Republican and has a lot of resentment towards the current president and his advisors, and he is a Jew. This morning he tells us the crisis between Israel and America was not created by Netanyahu’s decisions but only by Barack Obama.Elliott Abrams [English]: The Obama administration is to blame for creating this crisis. There was no real reason for it. If it continues it will turn into a strategic mistake because it will really harm the relationship between the United States and Israel.

BSO [Hebrew]: Blame for creating the crisis is all the Obama administration’s, says Abrams. Obama had no real reason to create it. Therefore if this crisis continues, it will be a strategic mistake that harms the US-Israel relationship. We asked Abrams why he thinks Obama decided to create this crisis, and here is his very surprising answer:

Elliott Abrams [English]: The administration was very hostile to the Netanyahu government. They were hostile before he did anything. So what argument you can make is that they really don’t like dealing with the Netanyahu government and that they want to see if they can get rid of it and bring down the coalition.

BSO [Hebrew]: The Obama administration was hostile to Netanyahu from the beginning, even before Netanyahu had done anything. Therefore the theory I can think of, says Abrams, is that the Obama administration simply does not like, and does not want to deal with Netanyahu, and therefore it is trying to get rid of him and to bring down his right-wing coalition. Beyond political considerations, Abrams claims that the current situation harms the peace process and toughens the Palestinians’ positions.Elliott Abrams: If the White House is saying, ‘this is terrible, this is a crisis,’ of course the Palestinians are going to say the same thing. It’s very bad for the possibility of negotiations because it means the Palestinians will demand more and more preconditions.

BSO [Hebrew]: If the White House claims that building new housing units in East Jerusoing to say the same thing. The latest admonitions by senior White House officials harm the negotiations because they actually make the Palestinians climb up higher trees and demand more preconditions. Abrams claims that during the Bush administration the term “preconditions” did not exist in the lexicon of the negotiation process. But that whole approach was invented by the current administration, and here is a very interesting point that Abrams brings up from the past, which can even be called a kind of full disclosure. When I worked in the White House, Abrams tells us, we knew that we must not demand Israel freeze construction in East Jerusalem.

Read more…

After an interlude, the Jerusalem police resumed arrests of Sheikh Jarrah protesters last Friday (March 12 2010.) On Sunday, the Jerusalem Post, like many other Israeli media outlets, ran the police statement on the incident nearly verbatim

Earlier on Friday, about 250 locals and left-wing protesters were stopped by police when they attempted to march toward Jewish houses in Sheikh Jarrah. Police declared that such a march would be illegal and ordered the protesters to return to the site of the demonstration. When they refused to do so, they were pushed back by force. They then began to chant slogans criticizing the Jewish presence in the neighborhood. Eight demonstrators were detained following the incident.

The protest organizers told a very different story and backed it up with photos and video. The media, however, are not usually inclined to fact check official statements. Note how the Post did not even add “police said,” even though the correspondent was clearly not present at the incident.

There are valuable exceptions, however. Last year, Coteret followed Globes columnist Matti Golan as he demonstrated how the IDF spokesperson had become accustomed to Israeli journalists happily filling the role of stenographers. Fortuitously, also on Sunday, Yediot published photographic evidence of blatant lying by the police regarding another incident East Jerusalem incident on Friday: The running over of a teenage Palestinian protester in Ras Al-Amud by a police vehicle. Below is a  full translation of the article, with the photos at bottom.

—–

Hit and whitewash

Ronnie Shaked and Yaron Doron, Yediot, March 14 2010 [page 6; Hebrew original here]

Who really ran over the 14-year-old youth during the demonstrations that took place on Friday in Jerusalem’s Ras el-Amud neighborhood? The police contend that he was hit by a “white Subaru, evidently driven by an Arab,” but the photos shot by Yedioth Ahronoth photographer Atta Awisat expose the truth: the youth is lying underneath the tires of a police vehicle.

When rioting broke out in East Jerusalem prior to Friday morning Arab prayers, police went into action to quell the disturbances. A police vehicle traveling at high speed rushed into one of the streets of the Ras el-Amud neighborhood, in order to catch rock-throwers. En route, the vehicle hit a youth. The police in the vehicle took off in pursuit of rock-throwers, and, after detaining several of them, noticed the youth who had been hit by the vehicle’s rear wheel hobbling away on his injured leg. It later turned out that he sustained a broken foot.

The police arrested the youth, brought him to the Russian Compound and contacted his family. “Your son is under arrest and injured,” family members were told. “Come down to the station to pick him up and take him to the hospital,” the police said. The youth’s uncle, Jamil, arrived at the station. “I entered shed No. 4, and found my nephew sitting on the floor,” the uncle said yesterday. “The investigator asked me to lift him, place him on a chair and bring him into the interrogation room. I did what the policeman asked, and he allowed me to be present during questioning,” Jamil said.

During the questioning, the youth denied throwing stones. “It was a coincidence that I was on that street,” the youth said. “A white vehicle came along very fast and hit me. The police arrested me and brought me to the Russian Compound,” the youth said.

The uncle, who was not yet aware that it was a police vehicle that had hit his nephew, asked the investigator why the police hadn’t stopped the car and attempted to identify it. He claimed that the police officer said, “We were in the middle of operational activity, and during a war we’re not interested in motor vehicle accidents, but rather the mission itself.” The investigator asked the uncle to take the youth to the hospital, and said, “because he’s injured, we won’t arrest him.” According to the uncle, when he asked why the police didn’t take the youth for medical treatment, the investigator answered, We were in the middle of a skirmish, and didn’t notice that he was injured.” From the police station, the youth was taken to Hadassah Mt. Scopus Hospital. An x-ray showed that he had a broken foot, which was put in a cast.

The photos taken by the Yedioth Ahronoth photographer clearly indicate that the youth was hit by a police vehicle, but the police assert that this is not the case. According to the uncle, the police at the station told him that he was hit by “a fast-traveling white vehicle, which then fled the scene.” One detail in this description is correct: it was a white vehicle. But there’s no denying that it was a police vehicle, according to the license plate.

In an official response, the police said: “The youth, together with several other Arab youths, were throwing stones at Border Police. In his statement to the police, the youth said he was hit by a white Subaru, evidently driven by an Arab. The vehicle fled the scene of the accident. When the youth pointed out to the investigators his minor injuries, he was released for medical treatment at the hospital.” The police also say they are looking for the driver of the vehicle in question.

Yedioth Ahronoth again contacted the police, saying they had solid evidence that the youth had been, in fact, hit by a police vehicle. But police are sticking to their story that it is falsified evidence, intended to heat up an already exacerbated situation. Is the evidence faked? The photos on these pages speak for themselves.

Yediot’s Sima Kadmon is second in stature only to Nahum Barnea and this Friday (March 12 2010) her column opened the paper’s influential weekend Political Supplement. Writing in the context of of the current US-Israeli crisis on East Jerusalem, she puts the symbolic, and more importantly, strategic significance (as opposed to the injustice) of  Sheikh Jarrah front and center on the mainstream Israeli public agenda (full text at bottom):

But beyond the destruction of the fabric of relations between Jews and Arabs, and beyond the act of penetration and takeover of Arab neighborhoods, the measures in Sheikh Jarrah put Israel into a considerable legal, political and historic bind: if Jews can sue Arabs for ownership of property before 1948, what will prevent Arabs, who own hundreds if not thousands of properties in West Jerusalem, to claim their ownership of them? What will stop them from demanding the eviction of thousands of tenants from properties that were owned by Arabs in Talbiya, Baka, German Colony, Talpiot, Abu Tor and other neighborhoods? In all of those neighborhoods, and not only in them, Jews live in houses that once belonged to Arabs.

Is it really in Israel’s interest to open up the discussion of historic rights to property from before 1948?

The reopening of 1948 is not relegated to Jerusalem. The case of the Shaya family house in Jaffa, which I wrote about here last November, is at the heart of Israel’s metropolitan center. It is also  happening on a massive scale in Haifa and the north.

Kadmon asks what will stop the Palestinians from exploiting this precedent to demand their properties in west Jerusalem. The answer, legally at least, is that Israel’s courts recognize only the Jewish “right of return,” an uncomfortable fact that has not yet been the subject of any substantial constitutional judicial debate. That, however, is only a matter of time.

The evicted families of Sheikh Jarrah have deeds to properties in Jaffa and West Jerusalem. They will go to court and work the appeals process all the way up to Supreme Court. Because they are living on the street,  the judges it will not have the luxury of dragging a ruling out indefinitely. What will they do, rule that Jews and Palestinians are not equal under the law (the “A” word comes to mind) or create an earthshaking precedent and give the plaintiffs their ’48 properties back? Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

In another time, I would also have added that the Sheikh Jarrah evictions undermine international trust in Israel’s sincerity regarding a two state solution, but I don’t think there is much of that left anyway.

It is important to note that judicial precedent gives the Israeli government the full power to step-in and stop the evictions, the issue of property rights notwithstanding. The supreme court has consistently sided with the government when it asserted that the issue is of “diplomatic importance.” There are a number of cases from the period of Rabin government’s “settlement freeze” in the ’90s.

Perhaps the most poignant, and directly relevant example is the case of Ikrit and Birim. The residents of these two villages in the Galilee were asked (literally) by the IDF to leave “temporarily” in 1948. They have since lived nearby as internally displaced refugees, while their villages remain empty and the local Kibbutzes farm their land. The Supreme Court recognized their right to return, but ruled that the government’s concern for a dangerous precedent overrode that right. A government genuinely concerned with the ongoing destruction of the two-state paradigm, would have made use of this power in Sheikh Jarrah.

’48 my love

Excerpt from column, Yediot Friday Political Supplement, March 12 2010

Make no mistake: from the beginning of his term Netanyahu has been taking various measures that mean increasing friction with the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and he’s doing it with the help of Mayor Nir Barkat. Barkat, elected with the massive support of the liberal, secular, not to say leftist public, has started to look like the nightmare of supporters of peace and coexistence.

Last Saturday night thousands of Jewish and Arab leftists gathered in the football field of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, to protest against the eviction of Palestinian families from their homes and the entry of settlers in their place. The demonstration was the culmination of weekly protests that took place in the neighborhood over the past months, in constant conflict with the police. The intervention of the Supreme Court forced the police to allow the protest and gave it greater reverberation. What began with a limited number of students got bigger the more the preposterousness became known. Read more…

Sara Benninga

In his succinct post on the March 6 2010 rally in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerry Haber at the Magnes Zionist wrote

in my opinion, the highlight of the night was a speech delivered by young Israeli activist, Sarah Benninga, who spoke about the New Left and the New Right.

I agree. It was rousing, articulating the thinking and spirit that has enabled a small group of activists to succeed singlehandedly in launching a protest movement. Sara, a 28 year-old student living in Jerusalem is one of those activists. For months, we have become used to seeing her, megaphone in hand, leading the protesters in slogans and songs, both at Sheikh Jarrah and, except for the weekend when she was arrested, outside the police holding cells during the Saturday night hearings.

Here’s the full text of the speech (slightly different translation on the group’s website)

Banner calling for March 6 2010 rally in Sheikh Jarrah

Sheikh Jarrah, March 6, 2010

There is a new Left in town!

There is a new Left and it is a Left that is not satisfied with peace talks. It is a Left that fights!

There is a new Left that knows there are things you must fight against even when they are identified with the State and even when they enjoy the protection of the law!

There is a new Left that knows that this fight will not be won on paper but on the ground, in the hills, in the vineyards and in the olive groves.

There is a new Left that is not afraid of the settlers, even when they descend on it from the hilltops, blindfolded and armed.

This Left does not surrender to the police’s political repression, and does not care what they write about it in Maariv. There is a new Left in town!

This Left does not want to be loved, does not fantasize about town squares and does not bask in the memory of the 400,000. This Left is a partnership between Palestinians, who understand the occupation will not be defeated by missiles and bombs, and Israelis, who understand that the Palestinian struggle is their struggle.

The new Left joins hands with Palestinians in a cloud of tear gas at Bil’in and gets beaten up together with them by settlers at the South Hebron Mountain.

This Left stands by refugees and labor migrants in Tel Aviv and fights against the Wisconsin Plan.

The new Left is us — all of us!

Everyone who came here tonight. Everyone who dared cross the imaginary line between West and East Jerusalem, despite the threats and intimidation.

We are all the new Left that is emerging in Israel and Palestine.

We are not fighting for a peace agreement. We are fighting for justice. But we believe that injustice is the main obstacle to peace.

There will be no peace until the Ghawi and Hanoun and al-Kurd families return to their homes. Because peace does not grow on a soil of discrimination, oppression and theft.

There is a new Left in town and that Left stands with the people of Sheikh Jarrah tonight and will continue standing with them until justice defeats fanaticism.

But there is also a new Right in town.

A Right awash with fanaticism and racism that seduces the masses with nationalist rhetoric.

The new Right does not care about the welfare and well-being of human beings. The new Right only cares about ethnic, tribal, Liebermanistic loyalty.

For the new Right charity begins at home only for Jews. And what makes a person a Jew is the fact that they are not an Arab.

The new Right has nothing to offer except for endless war.

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.