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.

The new Right is the empty wagon that went off the rails: religious and secular Jews who have nothing but hatred of the other: the Arabs the refugee, the leftist.

That new Right manufactures the deluded settlers, because of whom we are demonstrating tonight.

Those settlers hate Jerusalem. They do not love the Jewish people and they do not love mankind. They love only themselves.

Among the settlers there are many with whom we should speak. But the settlers of Sheikh Jarrah, who sing canticles to Baruch Goldstein — they must be defeated.

The new Right created Nir Barkat. A technocrat who does not understand Jerusalem and does not care about Jerusalem. A mayor who uses administrative terror against the residents of East Jerusalem and neglects the residents of West Jerusalem, while reciting endless clichés.

If Jerusalem is a powder keg, the match that might light it is called Nir Barkat.

But we are not afraid of Barkat, nor are we afraid of the settlers, nor are we afraid of Lieberman.

We will keep coming to Sheikh Jarrah and to every place where justice is trampled by the forces of occupation and oppression.

Look around you. We are not as few as we thought! And we will win!

Netanyahu has upgraded Ahmadinejad to the dimensions of a Hitler.  Against Hitler, one fights to the last bunker.  This is what Churchill did, and Netanyahu wants so badly to be like Churchill.  His credibility—a sensitive issue—is on the table.  If he retreats, the voters will turn their back on him.  Where will he go?  In his distress, he may run forward.

—-

The Iranian horror scenario

Excerpt from column, Nahum Barnea, Yediot Friday Political Supplement, March 5 2010

Dr. Moshe Vered, a physicist by profession, deals with operations research.  He spent a sabbatical year at Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.  Last September, the center published his study [Hebrew PDF here], under the heading “The length of the war and ending conditions in a future war between Iran and Israel.”  The study did not elicit any special interest in the public, but became a hit on the computer screens of the security establishment personnel.  In the study, Vered described what would happen in the wake of an IDF attack of Iran’s nuclear facilities.  This is a worrying and thought-provoking document.  It is not intended for people with a weak heart, or those who are quick to pack their bags.

“The war could be long,” Vered warns, “its length could be measured in years.”  The cost that the war will exact from Israel raises a question mark as to the decision to go to war.

The relatively light scenario speaks about an Israeli bombing, after which Iran will fire several volleys of surface-to-surface missiles at Israel.  Due to the limited number of missiles and their high cost, the war will end within a short time.  The missiles may run out, the study states, but the war will only be getting started.

“The means that may be most effective for the Iranians is war by proxies—Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas,” Vered writes.  “(There will be) ongoing and massive rocket fire (and in the Syrian case, also various types of Scud missiles), which will cover most of the area of the country, disrupt the course of everyday life and cause casualties and property damage.  The effect of such fire will greatly increase if the enemy fires chemical, biological or radiological ordnance… massive Iranian support, by money and weapons, will help the organizations continue the fire over a period of indeterminate length… due to the long range of the rockets held by Hizbullah, Israel will have to occupy most of the territory of Lebanon, and hold the territory for a long time.  But then the IDF will enter a guerrilla war, a war the end of which is hard to predict, unless we evacuate the territory, and then the rocket fire will return…”

This is not all.  “Another possibility,” Vered writes, “is the activation of Iranian expeditionary forces that will be located in Syria as part of a defense pact between the two countries, or sending large amounts of infantry forces to participate in the war alongside Hizbullah or Syria.  Iran’s ability to do so will increase after the United States evacuates its troops from Iraq.  If the current tension between Turkey and Israel rises, Turkey may also permit, or turn a blind eye to, arms shipments and Iranian volunteers that will pass to Syria through its territory and airspace.  Israel will find it very difficult, politically and militarily, to intercept the passage of forces through Iraq or Turkey.  The participation of Iranian forces will make it very difficult for the IDF to occupy areas from which rockets are being fired.

“Along with these steps, Iran may launch a massive terror campaign against Israeli targets within Israel and abroad (diplomatic missions, El Al planes and more) and against Jewish targets.”

Iran will not attack immediately, Vered’s scenario states.  First it will launch intensive diplomatic activity, which could lead to an American embargo on spare parts to Israel.  Along with this, the Iranians will secretly move troops to Syria.  Israel will not attack the troops, for fear of international pressure.  The IDF will have to mobilize a large reserve force to defend the Golan Heights.  After the Iranians complete the buildup of their force, Hizbullah and Hamas will launch massive rocket fire against all population centers.  The IDF will try to occupy Lebanon and will engage in a guerrilla war with multiple casualties.  Hamas will renew the suicide bombings and Iran will target Israel’s sea and air routes by terrorism.  The Iranians will fire missiles at population centers in Israel, and will rebuild the nuclear facilities that were bombed, in such a way that will make it very difficult to bomb them again.

Vered bases his assessment mainly on the regime’s ideology and on the lessons of the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988.  He writes: “Half a million dead, a million wounded, two million refugees and displaced persons, economic damage estimated by the Iranian government at about USD 1,000 billion—more than twice the value of all Iranian oil production in 70 years of pumping oil—none of this was sufficient to persuade Iran to stop the war.  Only the fear of the regime’s fall led the leadership to accept the cease-fire.

“The ramifications are clear and harsh—like the war against Iraq, the war against Israel will also be perceived by the Iranians as a war intended to right a wrong and bring justice to the world by destroying the State of Israel.  Only a threat to the regime will be able to make the Iranian leadership stop.  It is difficult to see how Israel could create such a threat.”

The United States would be able to shorten the war if it were to join it alongside Israel.  Vered does not observe American willingness to do so.  He predicts the possibility of pressure in the opposite direction, by the US on Israel.

I asked to speak to Vered this week about the reactions to his study.  He requested to postpone the conversation.  I spoke to him again on Wednesday.  He asked again for a postponement, for personal reasons.

The military card

The Israeli response to Iran was already formulated in the time of Sharon’s government.  It had three facets: in diplomatic talks, the government explained that blocking Iran was in the interests of the entire world, and therefore the world must take action.  At the same time, according to foreign reports, Israel sabotaged the nuclear project by secret means and launched preparations for a military strike (the details of the strike were published in an article in the Wall Street Journal by Anthony Cordesman, an expert on strategic affairs, under the heading “The Iran Attack Plan.”  The article starts with a quote by Dan Halutz.  “When the Israeli army’s then-Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Halutz was asked in 2004 how far Israel would go to stop Iran’s nuclear program, he replied: ‘2,000 kilometers,’ roughly the distance been the two countries.”).

This triangle made sense: the Israeli contentions were gradually adopted by the US and the European Union; the covert operations, if there is truth to the foreign reports, delayed the project and gave time to consolidate sanctions; the fear of an Israeli military strike encouraged foreign governments to step up the pressure on the Iranians.

The whole world was impressed, except for Iran.

The game is now approaching the critical stage, the “money time.”  Netanyahu and Barak are waving the military card.  “All the options are on the table,” they say, accompanying the sentence with a meaningful look.  There are Israelis, in uniform and civilian clothes, who take them seriously.  The Obama administration is troubled.  It is no accident that US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen was sent here, to make it clear that the US was vetoing a military strike.  It is no accident that Barak was invited to Washington and Vice President Biden will be coming here on Monday.  He is not only coming to visit Yad Vashem.

I find it difficult to believe that Netanyahu will undertake such a weighty and dangerous decision.  It is more reasonable to assume that he and Barak are playing “hold me back.”  On the day they will be called upon to explain why Iran attained nuclear weapons, they will say, each on his own, what do you want from me, I prepared a daring, deadly, amazing operation, but they—the US administration, the top IDF brass, the forum of three, the forum of seven, the forum of ten—tripped me up.  They are to blame.

Netanyahu and Barak know: there is no military operation more successful, more perfect, than an operation that did not take place.

Netanyahu has upgraded Ahmadinejad to the dimensions of a Hitler.  Against Hitler, one fights to the last bunker.  This is what Churchill did, and Netanyahu wants so badly to be like Churchill.  His credibility—a sensitive issue—is on the table.  If he retreats, the voters will turn their back on him.  Where will he go?  In his distress, he may run forward.

The fascinating side of this story is that very few Israelis would appear to believe their prime minister.  If they believed him, they would not run in a frenzy to buy apartments in the towers sprouting like mushrooms around the Kirya.  In the event that Iran should be bombed, the residents of the towers would be the first to get it.  If they believed [Netanyahu], the real estate prices in Tel Aviv would drop to a quarter of their current value, and long lines of people applying for passports would extend outside the foreign embassies.  What do the Israelis know about Netanyahu that Ahmadinejad does not know, what is it that they know.

Kahane

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

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

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

Ben Ari

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

JDL Logo

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

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

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

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

The Sheikh Jarrah activists: A new path for the Left

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

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

Banner calling for March 6 2010 rally in Sheikh Jarrah

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

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

The struggle will continue till the Occupation ends

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

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

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

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

This is only one example of the struggle against the Occupation

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

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

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

The vacuum on the Left is being filled

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

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

The goal: Adopting the Cuban model

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

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

Ayalon

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

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

Lieberman

The sanctions against Cuba were anchored in legislation and they include a comprehensive economic embargo, along with sanctions against foreign companies in Cuba and not letting them trade with the American market, a ban on letting in top company officials into the US, and a ban on ships docking in the US. This siege, which has been imposed on Cuba for decades, badly hit the Cuban economy, stopped the country’s development and forced it to remain far behind Western countries. The embargo was imposed in 1960 and stepped up in 1962 in wake of the missile crisis […]At this time the US Congress is working on legislation to approve further sanctions against international companies that operate in Iran. Israel intends to enlist parliamentarians in other countries to enact similar legislation, to intensify the pressure on Iran.

“We are giving this more time, but are preparing alternative plans in the event that these fail,” says a government official in Jerusalem. “Israel intends to work in coordination with the US administration. Because the Americans still hope to get a resolution passed on intensifying sanctions in the UN Security Council, we are waiting, too. In tandem, we will try to persuade the Americans to support the plan, in case the resolution is not passed.”

Banner calling for March 6 2010 rally in Sheikh Jarrah

Let justice ring in Sheikh Jarrah

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

[Hebrew version here.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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It’s the world that’s crazy

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

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

True, it is only a clip, which conveys a message and is not committed to accuracy. But this is the world that it tries to depict for us: In this world, Israel is normal (not to say justified), and it is only the world that doesn’t understand it. In this world, as every Israeli learns to think, it is all a question of PR—and therefore there is always someone to blame, i.e. those who did not explain our justness properly.

But give a moment of thought to the way the real Israel is reflected in the eyes of a stranger: Yes, it has a lot of soldiers in uniform on the streets. It has a prominent and permanent presence of military characteristics: There are not many democratic states in which a visit to an Air Force squadron is newsworthy on an ordinary day; there are not many countries in which a junior military appointment, a brigade commander, is a front-page headline or a double spread in the news pages. And of course, there are not many free countries in which the chief of staff is in the front pages even if he did not do or say anything worthy of publication, just because he is the chief of staff.

This is required by the country’s situation, you say? There are also not many democratic countries that face the danger we face? True, but this is the reality, not its reflection in foreign eyes. And if we delve one layer deeper, it is also the psychological reality in which we live without noticing, to the point that we have already become accustomed to thinking that any objective interpretation of it attests to hostility.

The same view also stood out in the Israeli response to the international anger that was unleashed at us following the use of forged passports in the assassination in Dubai. Don’t preach to us, is the Israeli reaction to the natural anger of the states whose sovereignty has been violated, because you do not stand where we stand. The foreign minister, who has turned condescending superiority into a new global policy, replied to his counterparts mockingly that “you have apparently seen too many James Bond movies.” There is no doubt that this will calm the upset feelings of leaders who feel that Israel has trod on them crudely without so much as an apology.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With this endless talk of the putative Palestinian state we seem almost to believe that it already exists, or that the Palestinians are at least running their own lives. In fact, the IDF’s control over the West Bank has never been tighter, and the measures against the Palestinians have never been harsher. Few people notice this reality, because in order to understand what’s going on now, when there are almost no terror attacks in Israel, we must ask questions about rights rather than about peace.

Israeli leaders understood this long ago. That’s why they never objected to entering into negotiations with the Palestinians (at least not in the last 20 years). As long as the topics were national security and containment of violence, these endless talks only increased the international legitimization of Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories. Advocates for Israel have become experts at finding evidence for “incitement” and “propaganda” on the Palestinian side, which serve as “proof” that the other side is not interested in peace; this, in turn, gives us the right to continue occupying their land and running their lives forever. But ask Israelis and their supporters why Palestinian civilians have been tried in military courts, without due process, for more than 40 years – or ask them any other question concerning civil rights – and you start to hear some strange answers.

That’s why I hate those debates, so common in both Israeli and Jewish politics, about whether or not the Palestinians really want peace. They are pointless. Each party has an elaborate theory as to why everything is the other side’s fault, with all sorts of historical “evidence” to back it up. This whole concept of a “national desire” for peace is absurd. How can you measure such an abstract notion? But these debates do serve the current Israeli interest well – much better than discussions about civil rights, which are a simple concept that anyone can understand and measure. Even worse, the concept of civil rights is one with which anyone can identify.

Cross-posted from Promised Land Blog.

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Scroll down for update on this post.

Maariv reported on February 23 that the  Tel Aviv municipality launched  a “counselling program” to “help”  Jewish girls who date and/or marry Arab boys.

Grassroots and governmental campaigning against interfaith mingling is  nothing new in Israel: Just a few months ago there was a “task force” set up by the municipalioty of Petah Tikva, which is basically a suburb of Tel Aviv. The job of the task force was to patrol the city at night and break up Arab-Jewish dates. The London Times also covered the activities of a concerned parents’ group vigilante gang patrolling the rapidly integrating Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev, intimidating mixed couples.

On top of that, we have the activities of a huge, quasi-paramilitary group called Yad Leachim that goes on army-style”rescue operations” of Jewish women from their Gentile husbands (homegrown terrorist Jacob Teitel boasts working with them for a while, which they deny), and, lest we forget, the insane Jewish Agency campaign about non-Jewish partners kidnapping 50% of the young Jews in the Diaspora.

But this is the first time officially sanctioned racism, funded by taxpayers, has come to Tel Aviv, Israel’s liberal heartland.

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Tel Aviv: City launches program to prevent relationships between Jewish girls and minorities

Moria Ben Yossef, Zman Tel-Aviv [Maariv Tel-Aviv Weekly Magazine] February 23 2010 [Hebrew original here]

The municipal finance committee decided three weeks ago to  give NIS 250,000 [~$66,000] to what it refers to as “‘an aid program for immigrant girls at risk”. The program will be launched this month in the Shapira, Kiryat Shalom and Nevs Ofer neighborhoods. The committee said some of the project’s aims are ‘locating immigrant girls at risk… case-specific family and community intervention to locate the girls… and locating the appropriate figures in the community to treat the girls.’

The program is aimed to treat up to 120 young women under 22, and is jointly run by the Tel Aviv Municipality, the Absorption Ministry (which will sponsor 75 percent of it), and the World Congress of Bukharan Jews

…”the term ‘distressed immigrant girls’ is politically correct whitewash for the true destination of the budget,” a senior source in the municipality said. “This is a war against the trend of scores of Jewish girls getting together with minority men and with migrant workers, and then getting into trouble with their families and the families of the minority men, that often ostracize them for being Jewish.”

According to councilwoman Yael Ben Yeffet (City for All), who sits on the finance committee, municipality director-general Menachem Leibe said at the meeting that the girls in question belong mainly to the Bukhara community, who get together with criminals and minority men. “When I asked him if getting together with members of minorities constituted being at risk, Leibe replied: ‘For the families that ostracise them it is’”, Ben Yeffet said.

The decision to support the boycott appears to have resulted from lobbying by councilman Benjamin Babyuf (Shas), himself a Bukhara Jew and a resident of Kiryat Shalom. Babyuf approached some months ago mayor Ron Huldai with a request to set up a municipal organization to locate and treat the girls in question. In his request, Babyuf spoke of girls getting “assimilated,” and suggested increasing funding to part-time religious schools operate by Shas, which take up young women meeting with Arab men.

These girls come from a poor socio-economic background,” Babyouf explains. “They don’t get enough attention. Very often these are unpopular girls whose appearance is unattractive, and these men use this,” he said.

“It’s happening across the country and in Tel Aviv, too, but it’s particularly rife in Jaffa and the south of the city, where the population is more diverse,” said a Shas activists who had been running the part-time religious schools for 20 years and can only be identified as N. “They got out hunting for girls… we’re talking about local Arabs and Arabs from villages coming to Tel Aviv for work. At first they shower them with love and money, they spoil them, and then they take them back to their village – usually after getting married. From our experience we know this is where this Romeo and Juliet plot turns into an action movie. They become enslaved. We had some really hard cases of girls who approached us and we helped them. They were begging to leave but their Arab boyfriends wouldn’t let them.”

N said there were more than 10 part-time religious schools capable of taking care of the girls, but they were suffering from overload and lack of funds. “We’re collapsing. Hundreds of girls are going through this. Girl falling after girl,” he said.

“It’s a frightening thing, the girls also begin using drugs and alcohol,” said Yaffo activist David Machlouf. “About a year and a half ago I witnessed the shocking case of a 15-year-old girl. This Arab guy hit on her, she became pregnant and got an abortion, He took her to his village and they dressed her up in a galabiya (Arab Dress) but everyone treated her horrifically, calling her a Jew-Jew. At some point she complained against him so he beat her up really badly. After that we took her to an organization in Bnei Brak, but later she went back to him again.”

UPDATE: In a statement issued today, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) expressed shock at the racism of the Tel Aviv municipality, as reported in the Ma’ariv article.
Hagai El-Ad, the director of the ACRI, said: “Neither the municipality of Tel Aviv nor any other official body is responsible for ‘racial purity.’ The idea of the municipality interfering in the weaving of romantic connections is inconceivable.”

For further information from the ACRI, contact spokeswoman Nirit Moskowitz.

Phone: +972 3 560 8185
Email: nirit@acri.org.il

Yediot’s editorial page is also an ongoing venue for critical commentary. This morning, columnist Yael Gvirtz  further elaborated on the ”foreign policy gone wild” theme of  Sunday’s op-ed by Uri Misgav.

The boss has gone crazy

Op-ed, Yael Gvirtz, Yediot, February 22 2010 [Hebrew original here]

Ayalon

It is hard to keep track: the damage with Turkey has not been fixed yet, the weekly damage with the Palestinians and the Arabs of Israel has not been assessed yet, and now we have opened a new front of confrontation with the Congress in Washington. Danny Ayalon is managing to outdo even Lieberman with his diplomatic recklessness, and that is no mean feat.The government of Israel may have countless ministers, but none of them have a deputy minister the likes of the Foreign Minister’s. The damage is too great, too daily. It must stop immediately. Ayalon has to go. If Netanyahu is unable to exercise his responsibility and get Lieberman out of the Foreign Ministry, the least he can do is remove Ayalon immediately.

Without the Israeli government having a political agenda, in the vacuum where the deputy foreign minister is almost the only one (except for his minister) creating “political headlines” abroad, the assassination in Dubai and the diplomatic embarrassment over the illegal use of passports suddenly emphasize the obvious: that Israel needs a functioning Foreign Ministry, professional Israeli diplomacy and diplomatic credit with the rest of the world. It needs every drop of milk that Lieberman and Ayalon spilled down the drain in the last year. Everything built over years of steadfast work was wildly smashed in one year and is gone.

Lieberman

Until now it was a disaster, but now it is a calamity. Until now Netanyahu and Barak tried to put out the daily fires by issuing explanations that “it is not us.” Now we are talking directly about the state of Israel, the need to handle the Dubai mess, the embarrassment and the damage to our intelligence colleagues in Europe. This fire is too big for the last standing icon we have in the international scene, Shimon Peres, to put it out. Now it is plain to see that Israel does not have a Foreign Ministry. The Foreign Ministry has burned down and our credit in the world was destroyed.It is bad enough that Ayalon treats the Foreign Ministry as if he were the boss, but his declarations and actions now show that the boss has gone crazy, that the deputy minister has shot Israel’s already beaten up image to hell. Even if when he was appointed he could have been given credit for having elementary diplomatic experience, one year later it is clear that his was a radical casting error that made Israel’s foreign policy a bizarre parody. It is clear that Israel’s image and foreign relations are in the hands of a pyromaniac, just like we can be sure that the next diplomatic catastrophe of his doing is around the next corner.

When eyebrows were raised over the appointment of Lieberman and Ayalon, Netanyahu intimated that the appointment doesn’t really matter because he would be managing foreign policy himself. But as opposed to Rabin and Sharon, Netanyahu has not led any diplomatic program in the last year, so he cannot enjoy the defense claim that he served as the acting foreign minister. In fact, he abandoned the Foreign Ministry and its staff to the two bandits from Yisrael Beiteinu and let them do with it as they pleased.

The problem is that even a supposedly magician does not have a big enough magic trick to blur and cover a destructive reality. Reality always shows itself in the end and now it’s time has come. The luxury of escaping it has ended. In the present mess Netanyahu cannot allow himself to wait any longer. He has to preempt Ayalon’s next blow by pulling this thorn out of the Foreign Ministry as the first step in repairing the damage.