NOVANEWS

• 12 times in the last year Israel has shot and wounded Palestinians working to collect scrap near fence in Gaza– 12 times

• U.S. State Dep’t to American flotilla passengers: Drop dead

• “As long as the Za’atar remains. . .”

• Open letter to Gaddafi supporter Cynthia McKinney from disappointed Palestinians

• The regional implications of the planned US-Israeli missile defense command-and-control center

• Hafrada today, hafrada tomorrow, hafrada forever! (Party like it’s 1963)

• Human rights delegation investigates Western complicity in crimes of Ben Ali regime

• Non-Jewish influence (played important role in Allison Benedikt’s awakening)

• The rise and fall and vindication of Jewish anti-Zionism

• Job description

12 times in the last year Israel has shot and wounded Palestinians working to collect scrap near fence in Gaza– 12 times

Jun 22, 2011

Kate

and other news from Today in Palestine:

Land, property, resources theft & destruction / Ethnic cleansing / Apartheid / Settlers
Jerusalem
Israeli settlers attempt takeover of Jerusalem home
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 22 June — A Beit Safafa family said several members were brutally beaten by Israeli settlers on Wednesday morning, in an attack that was said to have lasted four hours starting just after midnight. The Zawahra family lives adjacent to an Israeli settler outpost known as Giv’at Hamtous, located in a Palestinian home confiscated through a court process which observers said used spurious documents showing ownership. Akram Zawahra told Ma‘an that shortly after midnight a group of settlers from the home forcibly entered the Zawahra building in what he described as an attempt to take over the home and expand the settlement. The man’s 27-year-old brother was stabbed and later run over by the settlers, causing severe bleeding and a break to his right leg. He was taken to the Makassed Hospital and then was transferred to the Hadassah Hospital for surgery, his brother said. Three other members of the family, including Akram, his wife Alaa and son Farouq were also injured, he said, noting the home sustained damages during the family’s attempt to keep he settlers out. Police arrived at the home hours after the attack began, Akram said, detaining him and three sons, who were all taken to the local police station and interrogated he said. An Israeli police spokesman said he had no knowledge of the incident. Akram said police remain in the home, which is being held pending a review by officers and border police. The neighborhood of Beit Safafa is located within the West Bank, on the eastern side of the 1967 borders, but was illegally annexed as part of Israel’s municipality of Jerusalem in the 1980s.
link to www.maannews.net
Video: Children without Jerusalem ID
AIC 22 June — The application for a Jerusalem identification card for seven-month-old Silwan resident Nouralden Abbassi was recently rejected by the Israeli Ministry of Interior. The Ministry argued that because Nouralden’s father Issa is in jail — and he is the only parent who hold Jerusalem residency rights, as Nouralden’s mother has a West Bank only ID — the family should wait until Issa is released (10 years from now) to apply for an ID card. Without an ID card, Nouralden will be unable to go to public school in Jerusalem, receive health insurance and services, and travel freely.
link to www.alternativenews.org
Jerusalem baby denied rights by Israeli apartheid / Jillian Kestler-D-Amours
EI 22 June — Smiling and wide-eyed, seven-month-old Nouralden Issa Abbassi is happily getting passed between the arms of his mother, grandmother and uncle in the living room of the Abbassi family home in the Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem. But while the family appears carefree, the reality is that Israel’s decision to deny Nouralden a Jerusalem identification card — and by extension block his right to access public health services and education — has left everyone anxious and concerned for the future.
link to electronicintifada.net
Jerusalemite MP Attoun: We will stay in Jerusalem
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC) 22 June– Jerusalemite MP Ahmed Attoun has said that the Israeli decision to revoke their residence in Jerusalem and to exile them from their native city was a political decision par excellence with no legal justification. Attoun told the PIC in an interview on Wednesday that he along with MP Mohammed Totah and former Jerusalem minister Khaled Abu Arafa chose to stage a sit-in at the Red Cross headquarters in Jerusalem to abort the Israeli policy of banishing Palestinian national leaders and cadres. He said that the Israeli occupation authority was planning to banish 315 Jerusalemite figures from the holy city but delayed the step following their sit-in.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Night clashes in Silwan
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC) 22 June — Israeli occupation forces fired rubber bullets and gas canisters at Palestinian young men in Silwan town, south of the Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, who responded throwing stones at the soldiers. The clashes on Tuesday night started when an Israeli patrol got near to the sit-in tent in the Bustan suburb and the young men threw stones and empty bottles on it, local sources said, adding that the soldiers summoned reinforcements and fired stun grenades and gas bombs at the youth. The sources said that an Israeli special unit tried to sneak into the Bustan suburb through the northern entrance but was forced to retreat because of the violent confrontations.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Elsewhere
10 wood-coal workshops demolished near Jenin
JENIN (Ma‘an) 22 June — Israeli bulldozers began to remove Wednesday several wood-coal workshops in the Jenin-area town of Barta‘a Ash-Sharqiya, located inside the Green Line but separated from its neighbors by Israel’s separation wall. Along with the destruction of the workshops, Israeli forces confiscated a number of the heavy machinery and industrial equipment on the site, owners said … “They were taken down under pretext that the smoke affects the nearby settlement and that those workshops are not licensed,” Qabha said, estimating damages in the tens of millions of shekels … The demolitions caused fires to break out on some of the properties, Qabaha said and blazed for hours before Palestinian fire crews were permitted access to the area. He added that the tractors of workshop owners Jamal Sharif Amarnah and Yasser Uthman Qabha were confiscated without cause.
link to www.maannews.net
Roadblock in Al Jab‘a replaced by gate; Palestinians still shut out
PSP 21 June — In 2002, Israeli military created the illegal roadblock to prevent the villagers of Surif and the villagers of Al Jab‘a to commute back and forth by car. The roadblock consisted of dirt, large stones, at least five massive boulders, and more than nine 2-5 ton concrete slabs and blocks. Presently, Palestinians seeking to reach their village from the neighboring village are forced to approach the barrier by car, unload their goods and crops over the roadblock, and repack them into a car located on the other side of the barrier. While this restriction is extremely difficult to navigate, there are multiple other problems. The barrier is built at the junction of a Palestinian road and a settler-only road leading towards the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, and in the opposite direction towards Bethlehem, Hebron or Jerusalem. This road leads towards many settlements, and it is partially for this reason that Palestinians are prevented from crossing it via car.
link to palestinesolidarityproject.org
Artas: Roof destroyed on Palestinian farmer’s summer home
CPTnet 20 June — On 17 May 2011, vandals, whom local Palestinians assumed to be settlers from the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, destroyed the roof on an agricultural home belonging to the family of Mohammed Saleh Abu Swai.  In the summer, Palestinian farmers often sleep in stone houses out in their fields.  Abu Swai had come out to his olive orchard two days earlier to fertilize his trees and put the roof on the house.  When he returned, he saw that the planks he had laid across his house were broken and up-ended. … Mohammed’s entire family of eleven often stays in his small home located in the middle of the olive orchard.  Before this latest destruction of the roof, the military had confiscated much of Mohammed’s land, declaring it state land.
link to cpt.org
Negev land reform to be reviewed
Ynet 22 June — The Negev land reform, which would have seen the Bedouins   receive hundreds of thousands of acres of land, will undergo another review and may even be pulled altogether, Ynet learned Wednesday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Yaakov Amidror, head of the National Security Council to reexamine the issue
link to www.ynetnews.com
The truth behind another Israeli expulsion trick / Amira Hass
Haaretz 22 June — The artificial division between Areas A, B and C was supposed to be erased from the map, and dropped from the discourse, in 1999. Instead, Israel has sanctified and perpetuated it … what about Area B? Why does Israel insist that drug and weapons trafficking should flourish in an area several dozen meters away from Ma’aleh Adumim and some three kilometers from the Judea and Samaria District police headquarters – both of which sites, as is often forgotten, are violating international law due to their location on the land reserves of Palestinian villages? … Some say the drugs and weapons dealers are collaborators, or potential collaborators, with Israel. This is why the Shin Bet and IDF are not allowing the Palestinian police to take action against them and why, according to them, Israeli security forces immediately find out about any Palestinian attempt to capture them. Some find here a strategic goal: The worse this intolerable situation gets in neighborhoods that are so close to the annexed Jerusalem, the greater the likelihood that the residents will leave and head over to Area A. In other words, it’s just another expulsion trick. Listen to the Palestinians. The subjugated excel at analyzing the implications of their ruler’s actions. And if the Palestinians are wrong, then why will the IDF not let the Palestinian police operate freely?
link to www.haaretz.com
B’Tselem: Sharp increase in home demolitions
JERUSALEM (Ma‘an) 22 June — In the first six months of 2011, a report from the Israeli rights group B’Tselem said Wednesday, Israeli forces have demolished more homes than in the 12 months of the year before. “Last week alone, 33 residential structures were demolished in the Jordan Valley and southern Hebron hills,” the report said, and cataloged the displacement of 706 individuals, including 341 minors. The report noted that the figures released included only residential structures, and not the dozens of animal shelters, water wells, storage and business structures that were also forcibly taken down.
link to www.maannews.net
Human Rights Watch – Israel: Halt home demolitions
Jerusalem 21 June —  Israel should end discriminatory policies that have forcibly displaced hundreds of West Bank Palestinian residents from their homes, Human Rights Watch said today. In demolition operations on June 14 and 21, 2011, Israeli authorities displaced more than a hundred residents of three West Bank communities, including women and children, destroying their homes and other structures. Israeli authorities should compensate the residents and provide them with housing, Human Rights Watch said… [see also HRW’s extensive documentation in the report Separate and Unequal ]
link to www.hrw.org

Ben Gurion University invites NGO to enter classrooms, promote Jewish-only settlement in Galilee, Negev
AIC 22 June — Ben Gurion University gave permission to Ayalim, a Zionist and Jewish-only association, to appear before classes in order to encourage Jewish students to settle in the Naqab (Negev) and Galilee, areas with substantial Palestinian and Bedouin-Palestinian populations. University lecturers protest racism
link to www.alternativenews.org
Activism
Bil‘in demonstrators to take down the Wall
BPC 22 June — After nearly six years of weekly protests, the army began dismantling the Wall in Bil‘in this week … The Bil‘in Popular Committee has declared Friday the 24th to be the last day of the old path of the Barrier on village’s lands, and the beginning of the struggle against the new path.  A mass demonstration will march on the Barrier to dismantle it and access the lands sequestered behind it.
https://www.popularstruggle.org/content/bilin-demonstrors-take-down-wall
We will not be uprooted — tree planting in Fasayel, occupied Jordan Valley
JVS 22 June — The community of Fasayal invites you to join them this coming Saturday at 5pm as they put down new roots in the wake of last week’s brutal attempts to ethnically cleanse them from their village. As many of you know, the Israeli Occupation Forces came to the village of Fasayel last Tuesday and demolished 18 homes and 6 other structures. Families in Fasayal have been without shelter, electricity or other basic amenities for nearly a week now, and have received no meaningful support … NGOs with the capacity to provide immediate relief for these families have failed to do so.
link to www.jordanvalleysolidarity.org
Israeli forces
Airstrike hits central Gaza overnight
TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma‘an) 22 June — The Israeli military reported Wednesday morning the launch of an airstrike on the central Gaza Strip overnight. The air force targeted a “terror tunnel,” which it said could have been used “to infiltrate into Israel and execute terror attacks.”  Medics have not reported injuries. The military said that the strike, the first since early April, was “in response to two Qassam rockets that hit the Eshkol regional council” overnight. Eshkol borders Gaza from the center to the south. The military did not specify where the projectiles landed, and no group in Gaza has claimed to have launched any attack against Israel as of press time.
link to www.maannews.net
Israeli army invades multiple towns in the West Bank, resulting in one arrest
IMEMC 22 June — …On Wednesday morning four Palestinian towns: Beit Sahour, Hebron, Jenin and Nablus were invaded by the Israeli military. In Beit Sahour two flying checkpoints were set up, stopping cars and checking IDs. Three armed Israeli military vehicles surrounded Al-Quds Open University, but left without making any arrests. Israeli military forces prevented a Palestinian journalist from taking photographs during the raid.
Israeli forces executed similar military operations in Hebron, searching homes and abducting one civilian. Israeli military forces also performed several paratrooper drills near Doura. Further north, they invaded Nablus and Jenin; however, there were no arrests reported in those areas. An Israeli military spokesman described Wednesday’s military actions as ‘routine’. [‘Cutting the grass’, as Ethan Bronner quoted an Israeli commander as calling them in 2009]
link to www.imemc.org
Israeli forces set up flying checkpoints in Bethlehem
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 22 June — Two flying checkpoints were installed by Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem on Wednesday morning, stopping cars and checking ID cards of drivers two kilometers south of the Nativity Church. An Israeli military spokesman said the checkpoints were “routine military activity,” despite a 2009 decision which handed total civil and security control to Palestinian forces in Bethlehem, Nablus and Qalqiliya.
link to www.maannews.net
Gaza
Gaza adjusts to new crossing rules
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 22 June — Crossings officials at Rafah announced that Gaza residents who signed up for travel via the terminal during the second week of June could expect to travel Wednesday, appealing to residents to respect the crossings rules. Head of police department on the crossing Salamah Barakah said that the regular crossing schedule was resuming after a pause Tuesday, which was set aside as a day for pilgrims crossing en route to Saudi Arabia to perform the ‘Umrah pilgrimage. Registration for crossings, the official added, had been closed temporarily, as the thousands applying for passage were processed and allowed through Rafah into Egypt. The ministry said Tuesday that numbers were being curtailed because of Egyptian caps set for maximum daily travelers. He said the interior ministry would announce when the registration process was re-initiated. Once names were being accepted for registration, the official added, the ministry would likely open offices in several districts of Gaza to facilitate the process. Registration offices are expected in Rafah, Khan Younis, as well as in Gaza City and a second office in the north.
link to www.maannews.net
Gaza children stage sit-in at Rafah crossing demanding its permanent opening
RAFAH (PIC) 22 June — Dozens of Palestinian children hoisting Egyptian and national flags rallied in front of the Rafah border crossing on Tuesday demanding its permanent opening. They carried placards asking the Egyptian ruling military council and foreign ministry to live up to promises and open the terminal without further delay. The children also carried flowers and gave them to Egyptian soldiers manning the border point.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Gazan Formula student team denied UK visas
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 22 June – The British embassy in Amman, Jordan denied Palestinian students visas to UK to compete in the 2011 Formula Student in London. Sources told Ma‘an the denial was due to the fact that the Palestinian Formula Student team did not have an official financer during its stay in London. Formula Student is a student engineering competition to be held in London July 14-17. The contest challenges youngsters from around the world to design, build and race a single-seat racing car from scratch. The source, who spoke to Ma‘an without revealing identity, said the students were shocked especially that they have spent a whole year designing the Formula 1-style car despite all hardships. Students in an UNRWA-run school in the Gaza Strip have built a Formula 1-style race car from mainly recycled parts.
link to www.maannews.net
Gaza family exiled to Syria and Libya looks back / Rami Almeghari
EI 21 June — Abdelhai al-Khaldi, known as Abu Mahmoud, and his wife Umm Mahmoud are an elderly Palestinian couple who live in a rented apartment in the northern Gaza Strip neighborhood of al-Saftawi. The two had lived in Libya for about 28 years, before returning to Gaza in 1995 along with their eight now adult children … Soon after the [1967] war, al-Khaldi told The Electronic Intifada at his home, “I decided to head for Jordan to complete my education. Upon arriving at the Allenby Bridge between the West Bank and east Jordan, the Israeli authorities seized my [Egyptian-issued] Palestinian ID card along with those of three bus loads of others.” From 1967 and up until the early 1990s, it was relatively easy for Palestinians to travel from Gaza to other parts of Palestine, including the West Bank, a freedom that is unimaginable today as Gaza remains under tight siege. But for the many thousands whose IDs were confiscated by the Israeli authorities, returning home once they had left became all but impossible.
link to electronicintifada.net
Video: Making sand out of ruins
B’Tselem June — Over the past year, B’Tselem has documented eleven cases in which soldiers fired at and wounded Palestinian civilians working in areas near the perimeter fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel. In these eleven cases, the gunfire struck civilians who, because of the lack of jobs in the Strip, were compelled to earn a living by collecting building materials for recycling.
link to www.btselem.org
340 truckloads of goods to enter Gaza via Israel
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 22 June — Israeli authorities gave permission for 340 truckloads of goods to enter the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, after inspecting the pack lists and determining the type and quantity of goods were in line with the Israeli policy of siege on the area. Raed Fattouh, Palestinian liaison official at the crossings, said the goods included eight truckloads of iron pipes for German Development Agency projects, 18 truckloads of cement for various international organizations and 50 truckloads of aggregate for UNRWA-funded projects. [maybe this will fool the world into thinking the flotilla is unnecessary, or so Israel hopes]
link to www.maannews.net
Saudis give $70m for Palestinian housing in Gaza
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) 22 June — A U.N. agency aiding Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that Saudi Arabia is contributing $70 million for new housing units in the Gaza Strip. Israel has authorized construction of the 1,200 new homes and 18 badly needed schools in Gaza, in what would be one of the largest housing projects in the seaside territory in years.
link to news.yahoo.com
Flotillas
Savvy flotilla prep in full swing at Athens / Mya Guarnieri
ATHENS, Greece (Ma‘an) 22 June — Non-violence training and anti-sabotage measures are in place for the volunteers, activists and media arriving in Athens as the Freedom Flotilla II prepares to sail to Gaza. In hopes of preventing sabotage which organizers said docked two boats from the 2010 flotilla, the ships for the June voyage have been moored in undisclosed locations, and press members have been asked not to release photographs of the vessels. Upon arrival, those registered to sail to Gaza and attempt to break the Israeli blockade will participate in seminars designed by flotilla organizers on how to handle expected confrontations with Israeli forces when the boats approach the Gaza shore.
link to www.maannews.net
Israel’s UN ambassador warns UN chief over planned Gaza flotilla
Haaretz 22 June — Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor calls on international community to do ‘everything in their ability’ to prevent the upcoming Gaza aid flotilla, which is set to sail later this month.
link to www.haaretz.com
Detention
Israeli forces detain Abu Asab
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 21 June — Israeli forces detained on Tuesday morning the head of Jerusalem detainees’ committee Amjad Abu Asab from Al-Suwaneh in Jerusalem and took him to Al-Maskubieh military camp. In a statement received by Ma‘an the detainees’ center said that the troops detained Abu Asab after raiding his house and taking his computer and cell phone. A detainees’ center lawyer said that Abu Asab is banned from seeing any lawyer until next Thursday.
link to www.maannews.net
Former child prisoners from Holy Land visit London schools
ICN 22 June — A group of Palestinian schoolchildren are currently on an exchange visit to London. Several of the young teenagers have experienced being in prison, and having their homes broken into by the Israeli Army. La Sainte Union and Maria Fidelis are among the nine schools hosting the visit … Last night three young people (pictured) spoke at a meeting in Kentish Town library about their experiences of having their homes broken into in the early hours of the morning and being arrested themselves, or seeing their brothers, as young as 13, being handcuffed, blindfolded and taken away for interrogation. In each case the boys report being repeatedly beaten and kept awake for hours under bright lights.
link to www.indcatholicnews.com
4 on hunger strike in Israel’s Ramon prison
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 22 June — The Ramallah Prisoners Society said Wednesday that four Palestinians detained in Israel’s Ramon prison had begun a hunger strike earlier in the week, demanding to be let out of their cells. The strike, which was said to have begun Saturday, was initiated after prison guards in Ramon had refused to allow the men out of their cells for showers, exercise or sunlight from the time they were transferred to the institution on June 13.
link to www.maannews.net
Palestinian girl seeks father’s release from Israeli jail
RAMALLAH (Arab News) 22 June: The daughter of jailed Palestinian prisoner Atif Wraidat on Tuesday urged the international human rights organizations to pressure Israel to release her father. “My father is dying and we are dying with him every day,” the nine-year-old Karin said during a joint press conference with Palestinian Minister of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Issa Qaraqi‘ and the head of Palestinian Prisoners Club (Nadi Al-Asir) Qaddoura Faris in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Wraidat’s hunger strike entered the 11th day on Tuesday. He went on hunger strike to protest his solitary confinement in the Israeli prison of Asqalan (Shikma). Karin said her father has been “suffering from several diseases,” adding that the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) “barred him from receiving proper medical treatment.”
link to arabnews.com
Detainee marks 32 years in Israeli prison
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 22 June — The Ministry of Prisoners Affairs in Gaza marked Wednesday the 32nd year in prison of a Ramallah native, commenting in a statement that Fakhri Asfour Al-Barghouti, at 57, is the second oldest Palestinian in Israeli custody. Al-Barghoughi was detained in 1978 and sentenced to a life term in prison, on charges of assisting in the organization of the killing of an Israeli soldier. He has two children, who the ministry said he got to know in prison, after they were detained by Israeli forces after the millennium.
link to www.maannews.net
Fatah, Hamas exchange names of political appointees
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) — Ashraf Jom‘a, member of the Fatah delegation in Cairo, said Wednesday that Hamas and Fatah exchanged lists of names of affiliates they consider to be political detainees, during a meeting one week earlier. The official said that the exchange was progress on the unity agreement, which stipulated that a committee be formed to deal with the lists, and determine in a fair manner which individuals were held for political reasons and should be released.
link to www.maannews.net
Political / Diplomatic / International
EU convenes Quartet over peace process
BELGIUM, Brussels (Ma‘an) 22 June — The Middle East Quartet will meet under EU chairmanship Friday, and will be asked to formulate a framework agreement for peace talks, which will persuade Israeli and Palestinian negotiators back to the table.
link to www.maannews.net
US envoy Ross: Bold steps must be taken to keep Israel Jewish and democratic
Haaretz 22 June …Speaking at the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem, Ross said the greatest danger Israel faces today is sitting aside and waiting for something to happen. In order to stop the delegitimization of Israel in the world, Ross said that Israel must return to the negotiating table.
link to www.haaretz.com
Palestinian official: Violent uprising not planned
SFEX 22 June — …”Israel was established by a U.N. resolution in 1947. I think our right is to go to the U.N. and ask them to implement the other birth certificate for the other state,” said Fatah Central Committee member Jibril Rajoub.  Rajoub, a former head of Palestinian security, indicated to the Israeli audience that the Palestinians will not insist on a physical right of return for refugees and their descendants from the war that followed Israel’s creation — millions of people — and will not seek a violent third uprising. He said violence was “not on our schedule.” … “We are not looking to make a drastic demographic change in the society of the state of Israel,” Rajoub said.
link to www.sfexaminer.com
GOP senators urge suspending aid to PA
JJ 2 June — Republican senators urged President Obama to suspend U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority unless Hamas recognizes Israel and renounces terrorism. Republican Sens. John Boozman (Ark.) and Jerry Moran (Kan.), in association with the Zionist Organization of America, organized a letter to the president signed by 16 U.S. senators.
link to www.jewishjournal.com
Loh: Abbas, Mash‘al to meet within days
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 22 June — President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader-in-exile Khalid Mash‘al will meet in the next few days, Fatah national relations official Diab Al-Loh announced. Postponing the meeting was because of some changes that occurred on the president’s agenda, Al-Loh said Tuesday.
link to www.maannews.net
Mishaal confers with Turkish FM, other officials
ISTANBUL (PIC) 22 June — Hamas political bureau chairman Khaled Mishaal conferred in Istanbul on Wednesday with Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and other officials soon after his arrival. A senior diplomat told the AFP that Mishaal discussed with the Turkish officials the Palestinian reconciliation agreement and Palestinian and regional developments. He said that the Hamas leader would leave Turkey later today. The NTV station said that Mishaal’s visit coincides with that of PA chief and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to Turkey. However, there is no scheduled meeting between the two, it added.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Fayyad: I will not obstruct unity deal
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 22 June — Prime Minister in Ramallah Salam Fayyad assured Tuesday evening that he “can’t and won’t be an obstacle to Palestinian reconciliation.” Following speculation he would publicly refuse the post of prime minister in the new transitional unity government being negotiated by Hamas and Fatah, his words fell short of the declaration, saying “I shall support to the best of my abilities any candidate Palestinian parties agree upon.”
link to www.maannews.net
Iran likely opening of embassy in Gaza, lawful
ABNA 22 June — Dean of the Faculty of Law in Tehran University welcomed the idea of Iran’s establishing a diplomatic office in Gaza, saying that it was fully legal for Iran to establish an embassy in Gaza … He noted however that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were under Israeli siege, making it difficult for Iran to establish a diplomatic office there.
link to abna.ir
Other news
Egypt-Israel gas deal exposed
Al Jazeera 22 June — An Egyptian government document obtained by Al Jazeera shows the origins of the controversial natural gas deal between Egypt and Israel. The document (pdf) is printed on Egyptian petroleum ministry letterhead and dated January 26, 2004. It empowers East Mediterranean Gas (EMG) to export Egyptian gas “in the Mediterranean region and Europe.” It specifically mentions the Israeli Electric Company as a customer.
link to english.aljazeera.net
MKs to Pollard: We’re sorry
Ynet 22 June — Knesset members send letter to Jonathan Pollard to express condolences over his father’s death, apologize for failure to secure his release … Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Pollard affair in a video posted on YouTube where he replied to questions from Israeli citizens. “What happened with Pollard is a tragedy. The State of Israel erred and should not have used agents in the US,” Netanyahu said.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Nationwide emergency drill peaks
Ynet 22 June — Week-long Home Front Command emergency exercise to reach pinnacle point with two nationwide air raid sirens, drills simulating simultaneous mass-casualty events
link to www.ynetnews.com
Erez Efrati says mistook his victim for ‘terrorist’
Ynet 22 June — Former IDF chief bodyguard convicted of attempted sodomy spins yet another story, claims he thought woman he attacked was a ‘terrorist’ causing him to ‘revert to military mode’ [Oh, so that’s what he did in the army?]
link to www.ynetnews.com
US takes on illegal Israeli kiosk workers
US authorities have decided to take a stand against the popular phenomenon of foreigners, mostly Israelis, working illegally in kiosks and stands located in American shopping malls. The US Consulate in Tel Aviv published a YouTube video to discourage young Israelis fresh out of their army service from coming to work illegally across America by telling the tales of those captured by US authorities, questioned and deported from country.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Analysis / Opinion
Political art at its worst / Sam Bahour
PalChron 21 June — For anyone closely following the Palestinian-Israeli issue, nothing is more insulting than the world’s political players peddling another peace initiative, crusaded as the ultimate formula to extract the conflict from its current abyss … The collective global memory seems to be in deep amnesia. We have been here before — at a point where half-baked initiatives and resolutions, non-compliant with international law and absent of any sense of historical justice, were touted as “the right formula.”
link to www.palestinechronicle.com
Palestinian Gandhis Part III: Activism begins at home / Yousef Munayyer
22 June — The third installment in our “Palestinian Gandhi” series highlights the work of longtime Palestinian activist Mona Al-Farra. Al-Farra, a life-long Gaza resident, is interviewed below. Pam Bailey provides this introduction: …A physician by training and a human and women’s rights activist by practice, she is a native Gazan, born in Khan Younis, in the southern stretch of the Strip. Mona was transformed into an activist at the young age of 13, during the 1967 (“Six Day”) war. She and her family hid in the basement of their home for about five days, then came face to face with Israelis for the first time – but as occupiers. From that day on, she joined the demonstrations protesting the occupation. The war had another effect – it decided her career. Mona decided to go to medical school because of what she saw during the war
link to blog.thejerusalemfund.org
groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi (listserv)
www.theheadlines.org (archive)

U.S. State Dep’t to American flotilla passengers: Drop dead

Jun 22, 2011

Philip Weiss

The State Department has issued a new travel advisory for Gaza warning Americans not to go there by sea because Israel might try and kill them. With impunity.

Three dozen Americans are now preparing to travel to Gaza by sea on the flotilla. But the State Department warning says:

The security environment within Gaza, including its border with Egypt and its seacoast, is dangerous and volatile. U.S. citizens are advised against traveling to Gaza by any means, including via sea. Previous attempts to enter Gaza by sea have been stopped by Israeli naval vessels and resulted in the injury, death, arrest, and deportation of U.S. citizens. U.S. citizens participating in any effort to reach Gaza by sea should understand that they may face arrest, prosecution, and deportation by the Government of Israel… On May 31, 2010, nine people were killed, including one U.S. citizen, in such an attempt.

That U.S. citizen was of course Furkan Doğan, a 19 year old permanent resident of Turkey who witnesses said was shot repeatedly as he attempted to photograph the commandos on the Mavi Marmara.

Ali Gharib says, “if you try to travel to Gaza, Israel might kill you.” And:

During his recent visit to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarked that “America has no better friend than Israel.” As Matthew Yglesiaspointed out , the statement is “absurd.” This seems borne out by a travel warning that tells citizens not to try to get to Gaza by sea so that they don’t risk getting shot by their country’s “best friend.”

Oh and here’s Tablet echoing the State Department: “Supporters of the blockade should be untroubled by the prospect of Israel enforcing it with precision and compassion.” Huh?

“As long as the Za’atar remains. . .”

Jun 22, 2011

Jeff Klein

Sometimes a food is more than just something you eat. The herbal condiment za’atar, a mixture of dried thyme, sumac and sesame seed commonly eaten with olive oil and bread, has become well known in recent years outside the Middle East, especially among visitors and solidarity activists. In Palestine, it is a powerful cultural symbol.
Actually “za’atar” is the name of the thyme plant, which grows wild in the hills and fields around the Arab lands of the Eastern Mediterranean. People look forward to collecting the first Zaatar in the spring, and in Palestine “making za’atar” refers to baking an oiled flat bread stuffed with newly gathered fresh thyme and green onions. For many Palestinians it is a seasonal rite as well as a communal cooking project, usually in an outdoor oven.

“Making za’atar” in a Palestinian town within ’48 Israel

Lately, Palestinians in 1948 Israel have had to buy cultivated thyme rather than collect it wild, as was the tradition. The Israeli authorities have declared za’atar a “protected plant” and forbidden its harvesting on “state land.” Whether this is a sincere conservation measure, rather than a form of cultural repression, may be doubted. Cutting the wild thyme leaves allows the roots to remain intact and grow a new crop within a short time. And, of course, what the Israeli government calls “state land” was originally the expropriated collective property of the native Palestinians.

Zionist concern for the pristine natural environment is highly selective, in any case. Altering the original landscape and destroying the indigenous flora for agricultural development – or more likely in recent years for real estate speculation – has been a relentless practice since the earliest days of Jewish colonization in Palestine. Of course, most of the country was never a “desert” and the Zionists did not make it bloom.
The obsession with “tree planting” has long been a means to lay claim to the land and remove the original inhabitants of Palestine. Pennies collected by the children of Diaspora Jews for the Jewish National Fund more often than not went to plant fast-growing pine or eucalyptus trees over the ruins of Arab villages or to forest hillsides with non-native species in a manner that did violence to the indigenous eco-systems but “redeemed” the landscape for the Zionist colonizers. One result was the devastating series of forest fires that scorched thousands of square kilometers in the Galilee last year.

Two refugees, a brother and sister, from the destroyed village of Miske, near Kfar Sava,
with the ruins hidden by Eucalyptus trees in the background.

The process of Zionist “conquering the land” never ceased within 1948 Israel and continues to this day on both sides of the Green Line. In the northern Negev/Naqab traditional Bedouin towns are struggling to survive as ”unrecognized villages,” deprived of public services, utilities, schools and roads — while under constant threat of expropriation and removal. One of these, Al-Araqib, a village of 400 people north of Beersheba, has been flattened by Israeli bulldozers more than once, supposedly to make way for a tree planting scheme partially underwritten by US Christian fundamentalists. The Arabs are being driven off their land to make way for a million trees called “The God Forest.” (On the struggle of the Bedouins to stay on their land, see this report.)

Bedouin protest at Al-Araqib, near Beersheba/Bir Sebaa

Every Sunday the villagers of Al-Araqib, some now living in tents at the site of their destroyed homes — along with many children who have been forced to move in with relatives away from the town — gather to demonstrate at a nearby highway junction for the return of their land. One of their chants goes:
Samidoun, Samidoun,
Ma baqiyye Za’atar wa Zeitoun
We are staying, we are staying
As long as the Za’atar and the Olive remain

Open letter to Gaddafi supporter Cynthia McKinney from disappointed Palestinians

Jun 22, 2011

Anonymous

Palestinians in Bil’in, West Bank protesting in support of the Libyan opposition movement

Dearest Cynthia McKinney,

Two years ago, you spoke out against Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine. You were even put in an Israeli prison after your attempts to help deliver medical supplies and humanitarian aid on a ship to Gaza in 2009. For your sacrifices, you gained respect from many Palestinians all over the world.

However, we can’t help but be irked by your recent stance on Libya. It’s fine to be against NATO intervention in Libya. You’re entitled to your own opinion. But to praise Libyan dictator Muammer Gaddafi is completely unacceptable. Anti-intervention shouldn’t equate to whitewashing Gaddafi’s crimes.
Last month, you appeared on Libya State TV, a propaganda organ of the Gaddafi regime. In an interview, you said that the “last thing we need to do is spend money on death, destruction and war… I want to say categorically and very clearly that these policies of war…are not what the people of the United States stand for and it’s not what African-Americans stand for.”
Maybe you could have garnered some legitimacy with that statement if you weren’t speaking on a station run by Gaddafi. Or even better, if you at least offered some recognition that Gaddafi is guilty of perpetrating “death, destruction and war” on his own people.
In the interview, you also claimed you were in Libya on a “fact-finding mission” to “understand the truth.” But Ms. McKinney, you were only in Tripoli, a city under Gaddafi’s control. If you were really on a trip to Libya to see the truth for yourself, why didn’t you go to Benghazi and speak to the opposition movement as well?
Not only that, you praise Gaddafi in the interview, asserting that his Green Book advocates “direct democracy.” You also declare on your Facebook page that Gaddafi was “democratically elected.” Umm, you obviously haven’t met any Libyans before your trip to Tripoli. If you did, you’d know how the majority of Libyans feel about him. And if anything, someone ruling over a country for 42 years should be a hint that they aren’t democratically elected. Claiming that Libyans wanted Gaddafi as a leader is like saying Palestinians asked for Israel to occupy them. It just doesn’t make sense.
Now, you’re on a nationwide speaking tour, Eyewitness Libya: Cynthia McKinney reports back on the Massive Bombing of Tripoli. Also speaking on the tour will be Akbar Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Brian Becker, National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition.
First of all, why aren’t there any Libyans speaking on this tour? Secondly, Nation of Islam? Really? The Nation of Islam has defended Gaddafi since the beginning of the Libyan pro-democracy protests in February. Of course, this is probably because the Libyan government has given the Nation millions of dollars over the years.
Not only are Libyans not invited to speak on your tour about Libya, but in Los Angeles, Libyans have been denied entry into the event itself.
Ms. McKinney, this is truly a disappointment. You support the Palestinians, but you are not supporting the Libyan people in their fight for freedom and dignity. What exactly is your motive? A charitable explanation is that you are just completely naïve to Gaddafi’s atrocities. Another reason is that you might support Gaddafi for ideological reasons, like Chavez or Castro. Or, worst case scenario, you could just be another tool on Gaddafi’s payroll. Whatever the case may be, we are extremely disheartened.
The Palestinian and Libyan peoples are connected, both struggling against state-sponsored brutality and political repression. Palestinians stand in solidarity with our Libyan brothers and sisters in their revolution against Gaddafi, as well as others rising up against oppressive dictatorships in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. The Palestinian movement for human rights, civil rights and equality has been invigorated and inspired by these pro-democratic movements.
Ms. McKinney, your pro-Gaddafi stance is completely hypocritical and contradictory to your support for the Palestinians.  Unless you retract your statements supporting Gaddafi, we don’t think you have any business sailing to Gaza again. We refuse to accept opportunistic support from people who advocate for murderers.
Sincerely,
A Group of (Severely) Disappointed Palestinians from Gaza, West Bank, and the US
This open letter originally appeared on the blog Yansoon. The authors of this piece are a group of 5 Palestinian youth in the US, Gaza and the West Bank who became connected through social networking sites. They chose not to name themselves because they have been targets of harassment by the FBI and Israeli security personnel for their activism.

The regional implications of the planned US-Israeli missile defense command-and-control center

Jun 22, 2011

Jimmy Johnson

The Israeli Ministry of Defense is in the process of integrating four “of the anti-missile defense systems developed in the country [plus the US’s Patriot system] into a national command and control center for the interception of enemy missiles.” Defense News quotes a US official as saying the effort will not only aid Israeli defense but that of “US allies that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.”

The faulty logic of relying upon such missile defense systems has both left- and right-wingcritics. To this we can add another problem, the forward deployment of a US missile defense network over its protectorates in the Middle East (Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc.). Many governments in the region are wary of Iran’s drive to regional hegemony (given the authoritarian structure of a most regional governments, popular opinion is less important to policy, but public opinion is mixed on the matter 1, 2 for example) as are, most vocally, the US and Israel. This regional missile defense system produces further dependency on the US to counter Iranian hegemony. Importantly, the dependency is not just on the US, but on the US-Israeli relationship.

The US alone developed the Patriot (Raytheon) missile system, one of the five to be integrated into the new command-and-control system. The US and Israel jointly developed the Arrow 2, Arrow 3 (Israel Aerospace Industries and Boeing for both Arrow models), and David’s Sling (Rafael Advanced Defense Systems & Raytheon) systems. And the US is helping to fund the Iron Dome (Rafael) system. The absence of official diplomatic relations between nations potentially covered by the system and Israel is irrelevant to the power dynamic being developed. The US-Israeli missile defense system facilitates regional bellicosity towards Iran by removing the perceived need for other nations to be neighborly and it applies only to those nations who are friendly to the US (and perhaps, not entirely unfriendly to Israel).

That no serious military analysis offers a likely situation of Iranian attack is also irrelevant. The threat Iran poses has never been a military one. It had and continues to offer a strictly defensive military posture [PDF]. Instead the threat is a political one. Iran’s differences with the US are often hard to find when it comes to economic policy and political and civil freedoms in the region (a point all too often glossed over by many activists who pose a US-Iran binary with one good and one bad when they both offer generally terrible and surprisingly similar regional programs). But the nation has been deeply opposed to US regional designs since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This is especially threatening to those nations aligned with the US that have disenfranchised Shia populations (Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are the most prominent examples).

Iran’s important offensive capabilities are almost exclusively its ballistic missile program. The US-Israeli anti-missile program thus gives license to take a more aggressive posture towards Iran with less concern about infringing upon Iranian interests (valid or not). It is a step towards creating further dependency by Persian Gulf governments on the US-Israeli military posture towards Iran and the US-Israeli relationship itself. And it’s an example of how the US-Israeli arms trade and military diplomacy has profound and deeply problematic impacts at a regional level.

This post originally appeared in Neged Neshek, a website for news, data and analysis focusing on Israel’s arms industry with a secondary focus on militarism in Israeli culture, society and politics.

Hafrada today, hafrada tomorrow, hafrada forever! (Party like it’s 1963)

Jun 22, 2011

Michael Levin

(Image: Michael Levin)

From the Haaretz article “Netanyahu: Israel needs to separate from the Palestinians“

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surprised many of the participants in the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday when he embarked on a monologue praising the idea of parting from the Palestinians and in relinquishing portions of the West Bank. Netanyahu said the number of Palestinians and Jews between the Jordan River and the sea “is irrelevant” and that it’s more important to “preserve a solid Jewish majority inside the State of Israel.”

The PM made these statements during a discussion on a report by the Jewish People Policy Institute on demographic changes among Jews and Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank . . .

“The debate over how many Jews and how many Palestinians will be between the Jordan and the sea is irrelevant,” Netanyahu said. “It does not matter to me whether there are half a million more Palestinians or less because I have no wish to annex them into Israel. I want to separate from them so that they will not be Israeli citizens. I am interested that there be a solid Jewish majority inside the State of Israel. Inside its borders, as these will be defined,” Netanyahu explained.

Hafrada is the Hebrew word for “separation.”

Human rights delegation investigates Western complicity in crimes of Ben Ali regime

Jun 22, 2011

Corinna Mullin and Azadeh Shahshahani

Mohammed Bouazizi’s desperate act of self-immolation on 17 December 2010 brought down the corrupt and brutal Tunisian despot, Ben Ali, and unwittingly sparked the conflagration that today is still spreading throughout North Africa and the Middle East. As in Tunisia, elsewhere in the region people are bravely tearing down the walls of fear so carefully erected over the years by kelptocratic regimes, often with the support of Western governments.

Though the dramatic events of the last few months have provided much cause for hope in Tunisia, many obstacles remain along the path to constructing a new polity capable of addressing not only Tunisians’ political and individual grievances, but their socio-economic and collective grievances as well.

Much of the attention on the causes of the revolution have focused on longstanding structural issues, including the government’s distorted budget priorities, with too much money invested in repressive security apparatuses and too little in infrastructure and social goods such as healthcare, education, training, job creation, etc. There were also the restrictive labour policies, suffocated public sphere, distortive wealth concentration, and the developmental gap between coastal areas and the interior.

Many Tunisians, especially those on the receiving end of Tunisia’s ‘justice’ system, including trade unionists, leftists, and, in  particular over the last ten years, those with Islamist leanings, expressed anger about the lack of due process, absence of the rule of law, widespread use of torture, and generally dismal prison conditions in Tunisia.

Often overlooked in the western press have been the collective, or one could say nationalist, grievances of the Tunisian people, expressed as frustration at Tunisia’s lack of real sovereignty in a global order enforced by international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, and under the guise of ‘economic modernization’, ‘democratization’, and, most recently, and perhaps for Tunisians most damaging, the ‘war on terror’.

It was to study these latter grievances that from March 12 to 19, 2011, we joined a group of lawyers, human rights activists, and academics, based in the US, UK and Turkey to visit Tunisia at the invitation of the Tunisian National Bar Association. The report that came out of this visit, ‘Promises and Challenges:  The Tunisian Revolution of 2010-2011,’ discusses Tunisia’s history under the disgraced Ben Ali regime and the conditions and events which led to its downfall in January 2011. In particular, the delegation was interested in understanding the role of the US and EU states in supporting the Ben Ali regime, despite knowledge of its numerous and persistent human rights violations.

Our delegation met with various organizations and individuals including those that had been on the receiving end of Ben Ali’s most brutal and undemocratic policies and practices, those that had been instrumental in contesting and resisting the gross human rights violations of the ancien regime, as well as those, including many from the former two categories, that had been instrumental in bringing down the Ben Ali government. These included heads of NGOs, labour leaders, leaders of oppositional political parties, journalists and bloggers, as well as many former political prisoners and torture victims of the deposed regime.

One grievance that was expressed repeatedly by these various political actors was the perception that western governments had been complicit in the crimes committed by the Ben Ali regime, through their provision over the years of copious amounts of diplomatic, military, and economic support, in particular in the past ten years, in the context of the ‘war on terror’. Not only did many feel that western governments had too often turned a blind eye to the depravities of their Tunisian allies in order to secure their own economic and geo-strategic interests in the region, but, even worse, many felt some of Ben Ali’s most heinous crimes were committed at the behest of these governments.

Tunisia was among several Middle East and North African states that declared its support for the ‘war on terror’ and offered substantial intelligence and strategic cooperation shortly after George W. Bush’s infamous speech of 20 September 2001, in which he warned:  ‘Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbour or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.’

In return for its cooperation in the ‘war on terror’, the US was willing to overlook the well-documented human rights violations of the Ben Ali regime, and indeed, political repression actually increased during this period.

In addition to increased security and intelligence cooperation, many of the lawyers, activists, and former political prisoners we met asserted their belief that the 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law was enacted to curry favour with the US.  Although it is unclear what precise role the US played in the wording or timing of the legislation, it is clear the Bush Administration was happy with its passage. The US State Department called it ‘a comprehensive law to “support the international effort to combat terrorism and money laundering.”’

Yet critics, both domestic and international, claimed that the law heavily violated Tunisians’ civil liberties. According to a December 2010 Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, the Tunisian legislation is based on a definition of terrorism that ‘is vague and broad, hence deviating from the principle of legality and allowing for wide usage of counter-terrorism measures in practice.’ The law resulted in the arrest and often torture of thousands of innocent men, solely because of their religious and/or political beliefs and practices.

According to former Tunisian Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, founding member of the Association for Support of Political Prisoners who was pushed out of his job due to his vocal opposition to judicial interference, the 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law was a direct result of US pressure for greater Tunisian cooperation in the ‘war on terror’. Judge Yahyaoui stated his belief that US military assistance to the Tunisian government was conditioned upon Tunisia’s counter-terror cooperation and accused the Ben Ali regime of ‘selling our sons to the Americans’ as part of this effort.

Though US president Barak Obama has now become a vocal cheerleader for the ‘Arab Spring’, it will be difficult for Tunisians to forget the many years in which successive US administrations, including Obama’s, maintained close relations with the Ben Ali regime despite their knowledge, as documented in numerous State Department Annual Human Rights Reports and confirmed by Wikileaks’ release of statements from the US ambassador to Tunisia, that it was patently corrupt and repressive.

From recent statements made by Obama it is unclear whether any lessons have been learned about the causes of the Tunisian revolution. Particularly worrying were statements made inObama’s May 24 speech to the British parliament. Despite expressing US support for democratic change in the region, he claimed that Americans ‘must squarely acknowledge that we have enduring interests in the region: to fight terror with partners who may not always be perfect.’ It seems from this statement and others that Obama has either failed to grasp, or has chosen to ignore, the collective grievances expressed by Tunisians, and others in the region, that the repression they experienced for so many years at the hands of brutal tyrants was facilitated, if not enabled, by US/western support.

It is clear that a significant gap exists between the perceptions of US government officials, who believe they were strong critics of the corruption and human rights abuses of the Ben Ali regime, and the Tunisian people, who perceived the US as supporters of that regime, complicit in its human rights abuses.  It is the conclusion of our delegation’s report that the US will fail to gain respect and credibility in this dramatically transformed region unless it recognizes this gap and honestly explores the reasons behind it. Ultimately, it is in the best interests of both Western and North African/Arab states that lessons learned from this exercise inform future relations, based on the strong foundations of equality and mutual respect.

Corinna Mullin is a lecturer in the Politics of the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and Azadeh Shahshahani is a US human rights lawyer who is the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project and serves as Executive Vice President and International Committee Co-Chair for the National Lawyers Guild.

Non-Jewish influence (played important role in Allison Benedikt’s awakening)

Jun 22, 2011

Philip Weiss

Allison Benedikt’s memoir that might have been titled, Beginning to turn against Israel, at the Awl, is one of the most important interventions in months. It crystallizes the Jewish moment. Beautifully and sincerely written, with wrenching confessions about her family’s blindness and the important influence of her non-Jewish husband (yes just as my mother-in-law who smuggled sheets into a Bethlehem hospital gave me a path on the issue), it signifies a crisis inside American Jewish consciousness that Peter Beinart and J Street and the New York Review of Books are going to have trouble catching up with.

The lies are starting to slide off the table, in a hurry, American Jews are waking up. The importance of the Benedikt piece is signalled by Jeffrey Goldberg’s pugilism. Goldberg sees his own worldview becoming marginalized, and he has launched a vituperative battle with Benedikt and her husband, John Cook. But to his credit, Goldberg has run Benedikt’s response to his own criticisms of the piece. This is Jewish history unfolding, with the help of our non-Jewish brothers and sisters. Excerpts of Benedikt’s letter. And note, about halfway down a landmark revelation of Benedikt’s that I have bolded: the revelation that Israel is not my problem….

Hi Jeffrey,
Wow, you really hated my piece on The Awl. Don’t get why such a personal, angry attack of a response, but… hey, it’s your blog.
To defend my husband, who needs no defending… John was not accepted by my parents or my sister for being a non-Jew long before they ever heard his opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian situation. They didn’t want me to date him let alone marry him because he wasn’t Jewish. (I know, you’re shocked!) He handled a lot of that with grace, not to mention being a wonderful and active partner now in raising our boys as Jews–mostly if not entirely because of how important he knows it is to me. Coming up against John’s opinions on Israel was, in a way, as shocking for me as it was for him to get close to a family whose members all believed what he did on pretty much every major political issue of the day, except for this weird thing about Israel. Good, strong liberals except for this one weird thing where, oh well, if being a real democracy means not being a Jewish state, then forget democracy.
As for your questions:
…Does she wonder why her husband hates Israel with such ferocity? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes I hate it as much as he does. (Though “hate” is the wrong word. Feel rage toward?) Sometimes I think he can’t “get it” because he has no ethnic identity. Other times I think his remove from the situation gives him clarity. Mostly, I think he is so angry, as I am (and I believe you too?), because if Israel is to claim itself a Western democracy, it should live up to certain ideals that it does not.
Does she ever try to answer for herself why Israel exists? Why it was founded or why it continues to exist? Actually, yes, on both counts. And I read about it too. None of this has led me anywhere but toward disillusionment.
Or is she happy to subcontract out her thinking about the most important questions facing Jews first to her camp counselors, and then to her husband? Happy to? No. Have I done this at times? Yes. But just on the way to figuring out what the hell I think for myself. I’m still not there, but I’m working on it! (Which is, coincidentally, what my essay is about.)
Does she ask herself whether she has a responsibility to make Israel a better, more humane, place? I don’t believe that I have that specific responsibility, no. But I have thought about it. And I think that’s a lot of the reason my sister is there, for which I give her credit (in my mind if not in my piece–because frankly her politics are her own to discuss). Of course, I do think we all have a responsibility to make the world better–but specifically Israel, because I am Jewish? No.
Does she question herself about the consequences of abandoning Israel? I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’ve abandoned Israel (did you read the essay?), but if you mean have I thought about what it would mean for there to be no such thing as a Jewish state? I have thought about this plenty of course! Who that takes this stuff seriously hasn’t? (I guess you don’t think I take it seriously, but you’re wrong.) I bet I land, uncomfortably, about where you land: If the decision comes down to brutal occupation forever to maintain the Jewishness of the state OR true democracy, which would mean no Jewish state, I would have to choose the latter–but there is nothing easy or wishful in me writing that, and I hope it never comes to that (though more and more it seems like it will).
Does she think about the sin of the wicked son in the Passover story, and how that sin might echo in her own life? This is not meant to be snide, but John and I lead a seder every year and I’ve taken to making my own Haggadah because I’m not comfortable with many of the traditional stories and blessings. The wicked child bit is something I’ve deleted. But anyway, to you, aren’t I the one who doesn’t know how to ask?

The rise and fall and vindication of Jewish anti-Zionism

Jun 22, 2011

Jack Ross

Editor: Jack Ross’s new biography of the anti-Zionist rabbi Elmer Berger, Rabbi Outcast, performs two hugely-important tasks: It painstakingly recovers a noble tradition of anti-Zionist thought inside American Jewish life that few of us know anything about, and it situates that tradition religiously, as a fulfillment of prophetic Judaism, a mode that Ross himself adopts in predicting the near-times collapse of the Israel lobby. We’ll be running a review of the book soon. Meantime, Ross is flogging his book, and here is the “stump speech” that he will be taking to bookstores, shuls, bookfairs, you name it, in the coming weeks.

What do American Jews believe? This is the question that set me on the path to write this book. Old clichés speak of two Jews having three opinions, and stereotype has it that American Jews are among the most avowedly secular of all Americans. Yet beneath the surface, probably a majority of American Jews do believe, in Maimonides’ phrase, with a perfect faith in something called “Jewish peoplehood”, really a more benign term for Jewish nationalism or Zionism. A sacred story has emerged equal to if not greater than any biblical narrative, of the exile culminating in the Holocaust followed by literal redemption in the founding of the State of Israel. It was Will Herberg, the earliest and most thorough interpreter of Martin Buber, who first compared this to the doctrine of Charles Maurras, the French fascist intellectual who called for an avowedly atheist Catholic traditionalism.

It is not only American Jews who are enrapt to this set of beliefs. For the sacred story of Jewish nationalism is also the sacred story of American nationalism. The State of Israel is, to America, the ultimate symbol of itself as a force for good in the world, representing the salvation of the Jews as the heroic outcome of the Second World War, the founding myth of the American empire. Having come of age in the wake of the September 11 attacks and all they wrought, the question nagged at me for years – can one have an affirmative American Jewish identity while being unambiguously on the side of peace and non-intervention?

Thus was the discovery of the history of Reform Jewish anti-Zionism a revelation. As the definitive statement of belief by the founders of the American Reform movement put it – “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore, expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any laws concerning the Jewish state.” Just before his death in 1900, the father of American Reform Judaism, Isaac Mayer Wise, denounced the nascent Zionist movement as “a prostitution of Israel’s holy cause to a madman’s dance of unsound politicians” – a more perfect description of the modern Israel lobby there never could be.

Zionists began to make their presence known in the Reform rabbinate by the 1920s, after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration by America’s wartime ally made the establishment of a Jewish state official policy for the western democracies. The changing politics of American Jewish identity were therefore inextricably linked to America’s rise as a world power.

At the same time, Reform Zionists such as Stephen Wise were pushing for the establishment of an official governing body of American Jewry. This was looked upon by Classical Reform with horror, seeing in it the rabbinical despotism backed up by princes of the old order which Reform Judaism had been founded in rebellion against.

The American Council for Judaism was founded over several months in 1942, after several Reform rabbis dissented from their movement’s endorsement of the Zionist scheme to raise an army of “Palestinian and stateless Jews” to be granted the status of the Free French and Belgian forces. The following year, there was held an elaborate “American Jewish Conference” that codified the existence of an “official” Jewish community constitutionally committed to Zionism. It was in response to this that the American Council for Judaism released its official platform, with its vision for a future Middle East that should be heeded now more than ever – “a democratic government in which our fellow Jews shall be free Palestinians whose religion is Judaism, even as we are Americans whose religion is Judaism.”

Elmer Berger, the ostensible subject of my book, was hired as the Executive Director of the American Council for Judaism upon its founding, having spent the preceding decade as a humble congregational rabbi in Michigan. He had been mentored by his boyhood rabbi, Louis Wolsey, who had been the driving force behind the founding of the ACJ. Berger initially became opposed to Zionism after being put off to the aggressiveness and duplicity of the major Zionist fundraising apparatus, the United Jewish Appeal, which beginning in the late 1930s came to completely dominate all American Jewish philanthropy and direct it toward a Zionist agenda. It was also the heavy-handedness of the UJA which produced the most important lay leader of the American Council for Judaism, the philanthropist Lessing Rosenwald.

Before there was AIPAC, there was the United Jewish Appeal, established when the older United Palestine Appeal was able, in the panic of the onset of the Second World War, to absorb into itself the philanthropic arm of the American Jewish Committee, known as the Joint Distribution Committee. After the founding of the State of Israel, the ACJ soldiered on in great measure because the UJA would not separate its Zionist funds from general philanthropic funds. Not only did this arrangement facilitate the complete Zionist takeover of all Jewish organizational life in America, confirming the ACJ’s worst fears, but for a whole generation after the founding of the State of Israel, a religious devotion to fulfilling the quotas of the UJA was rigorously enforced.

A viewer of the modern sensibility could be forgiven for mistaking this phenomenon for the transparent money-making rituals of certain religious cults. Indeed, in 1956, when the Reform movement finally issued what effectively amounted to a herem or writ of excommunication against the ACJ, the first and foremost charge listed was “impairing the vital work of the United Jewish Appeal in a time of dire emergency.” Earlier banishments had occurred even before the founding of the State of Israel, when the ACJ, led by Lessing Rosenwald, insisted that the idea that the Jews had to be settled into a state of their own after World War II was an insult to all the war had been fought to achieve. The successor to the American Jewish Conference, the National Community Relations Advisory Council and today the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, issued its herem in 1950 after Rosenwald and the ACJ had spoken out for the Palestinian refugees.

Even before the end of World War II, Elmer Berger was the face of the ACJ and all it represented in the Zionist imagination. Though all but forgotten today, there was a time when the very mention of his name could be expected to elicit hysteria. Berger was not the most intellectually impressive of his anti-Zionist colleagues, nor the most charismatic or accessible. A three-times-married heavy smoker and drinker, and reluctant to enter the limelight, he was not a natural candidate for the mantle of prophet. What made Elmer Berger stand out was the simple moral force of his speaking the truth as he saw it, consequences be damned. The title he gave to a published book of his travel letters from the Middle East in 1955 says it all – “who knows better must say so.”

Yet, it must be said, in his preferred policy prescriptions for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Elmer Berger was remarkably moderate. His views essentially remained throughout his life those which had been the official policies he even personally had a hand in helping craft during the early years of the Eisenhower Administration. This was simply that Israel offer a reasonable settlement of the refugee problem in exchange for Arab recognition within the borders of the 1949 armistice, and that Israel become integrated into an anticommunist regional bloc anchored in Saudi Arabia. In fact, one of Berger’s closest friends in the U.S. government was Kermit Roosevelt, who achieved certain infamy in recent years as the CIA architect of the restoration of the Shah of Iran in 1953. These policies thus bear at least as much responsibility as Israel for the crisis which began with the September 11 attacks.

The true heresy of Elmer Berger was his rejection of Zionism’s first principles, that is, that the essence of Judaism should be the political imperatives of a transnational entity called “the Jewish people”. As American Jewish life became dominated in the postwar era by institutions committed to putting that principle into practice, Berger and his colleagues became objects of unmitigated hysteria in the Zionist imagination because, believing as it does in an idealized “Jewish collective”, any individual Jewish opposition to that collective is viewed as a mortal threat. The legacy of this pathology in the controversies roiling American Jewry today is unmistakable. While the hysteria of the American Jewish establishment is most often directed toward those such as J Street, who believe in and desperately want to save Zionism and the “Jewish collective”, the greater number of progressive rabbis and Jewish youth are joining groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, which seriously question, if not flatly reject, the first principles of Zionism and the American Jewish establishment.

For history has rarely presented such an unambiguous example of prophetic dissenters who were viciously attacked and reviled in their time, only to be completely vindicated in their warnings a generation after they passed away, as Elmer Berger and his colleagues in the American Council for Judaism. Few now deny that at the heart of both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the twin crisis of American Jewry is the persistent belief, with a perfect faith, in “Jewish peoplehood”, brilliantly described by the late Tony Judt as “a characteristically late-19th century separatist project in a world that has moved on.” Indeed, this is self-evident in the increasingly erratic demand of the current Israeli government, that both the Palestinians and the world at large recognize it as “the national home of the Jewish people”, and that the threat to “the world” of such countries as Iran be viewed through this prism.

An extraordinary series of events over the last decade has served to vindicate the life’s work of Elmer Berger, but perhaps none stands out more than the publication in 2009 of Shlomo Sand’s groundbreaking work The Invention of the Jewish People. Comprehensively deconstructing Jewish nationalism with both contemporary theories of nationalism and sources with which Berger would have been very much familiar, it is probably a book that Berger himself wished he had written at the end of his life. Yet it may also be a book that shows the way forward. Before he was seized by the controversy of Zionism, the great youthful aspiration of Elmer Berger had been to use the sources on antiquity cited by Sand to prove the empirical validity of the anti-nationalist narrative of Judaism which the Classical Reform movement had trained him in.

Berger would have been stunned enough to see there has yet emerged at this late hour a progressive alternative of Jewish religion to that of the American Jewish establishment. To continue building this alternative with the knowledge of history provided by Sand, and its corollary in American Jewish history I hope to have provided with my humble book, is the most fitting tribute that can be paid to the legacy of Elmer Berger and the American Council for Judaism.

Job description

Jun 22, 2011

Philip Weiss

Remember that Abe Foxman recently said that Dennis Ross was Israel’s “advocate”– a guy who is making Middle East policy? Well here is another story about What it takes to make Middle East policy, or to get a job doing so.

Jim Zogby need not apply, Rashid Khalidi, Steve Walt, et al. How many dots do I have to connect this morning? Cynical-making. Or something-making, I fear what. From the Jerusalem Post, on Obama’s new NSC director for the Middle East…

When Steven Simon, the new US National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa, kicked off his introductory phone call with leaders of the Jewish community recently, he… mentioned having traveled to Israel several times, not only professionally but personally as well.
“Clearly he did that to establish some kind of Jewish rapport,” said one Washington Jewish official on the off-record call, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “People didn’t really know” about his experience with Israel.
The official said making such a connection was important because as opposed to the figures who preceded him in the role – Dan Shapiro, who was recently appointed US ambassador to Israel, and Elliott Abrams, who served in the Bush White House – who were familiar to the Jewish community, Simon is a relative unknown.
“Their being Jewish and Jewishly active and known commodities within the Jewish community played a role in their selection,” he said of Shapiro and Abrams. “Steven Simon is Jewish and has some Jewish contacts, but it’s on a very different level.”