Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC
Dear Friends,
Just 5 items below. There is other news, too. For one, the person who put out the video calling for murdering the Deputy Attorney General owned up to his antics, and although he apologized and said he did not really mean to call for killing, from what he was heard saying at a parliamentary meeting shown on channel 2 news tonight, he comes out very far right though this is less evident in the report http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4012740,00.html. He is now in police custody.
Item one relates the humiliating experience of a reporter who came to a scheduled meeting with Israel’s PM. The type of experience that she endured is typical for leftists and Palestinians and other Arabs at Ben Gurion airport, but this disgusting custom has carried over now to other situations.
Item 2 reports that Israel blacklists 163 foreign charities. The ones listed in the article are all from Arab sources, but the report says nothing about the sources of most of those blacklisted.
Item 3 is along the same lines—a law is pending to force people petitioning the High Court to reveal their funding sources.
You get the idea, right? Israel’s leaders must be truly worried about ‘infiltrators.’ Israel is no longer sliding down a slippery slope. It has slid, not quite all the way to the bottom yet, but very nearly.
In item 4 Jordan’s foreign minister warns that Israel’s refusal to accept the Arab League proposal (first offered in 2002 and then again affirmed in 2007) will bring ‘the world to view Israel as a country that is racist.’
In item 5 Amira Hass’s biting commentary on the row over the new proposed Chief of Staff hits not only the army but also the courts and the government.
I’m still waiting and hoping for that better day. Please help it come by avidly supporting bds.
Thanks,
Dorothy
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1. Ynet,
January 12, 2011
Humiliating Check
Simri Diab. ‘What if I had arrived in a bikini?’ Photo courtesy of al-Jazeera
‘Shin Bet said everyone removes bra’
Al-Jazeera producer and reporter Najwan Simri Diab recounts humiliating security check before meeting with PM Netanyahu. ‘I’m being treated like an enemy,’ she tells Ynet
“I was left with just my undershirt and trousers, and no shoes. The security guard examined the bra under my undershirt. She asked me to take the bra off too. A spokesperson from the office saw me in my undershirt and asked what was going on. When I told him what happened, he said, ‘Don’t create a drama.'”
Al-Jazeera producer and reporter Najwan Simri Diab on Wednesday recounted the extensive security check she underwent Tuesday before a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign reporters.
More Humiliation
Simri Diab, 31, told Ynet she was still shocked by the incident. Three of the news network’s staff members planned to attend the Jerusalem event, she said.
“We were invited to the event and I was asked to send the names of the staff members. That’s what I did – three days in advance. I, the office head Walid al-‘Umri, and reporter Shirin Abu ‘Aqla arrived at the event according to the scheduled timetable.
“Before our arrival, I received an angry phone call from our photographer, who was asked to arrive two hours earlier. He said everyone was allowed in apart from him and that all of his equipment was taken apart, including the screws of his camera’s battery. He said he and his assistant were asked to undress.”
Upon their arrival, Simri Diab and her two co-workers were asked to stand with the other foreign journalists in a queue for a security check.
“This is the sixth time we arrive at such an event and the second time during Netanyahu’s term. When it was our turn they saw that we had Israeli identity cards, but still took us aside. We waited for half an hour and saw more Arab journalists joining our queue. In fact, they created a queue for Arabs and a queue for other journalists. I was angry.”
After waiting for more than half an hour, the producer-reporter complained that she couldn’t stand up much longer because of her pregnancy. The security guards told her to sit down and wait.
“They later took me downstairs to the security check cell. They asked me to take off my coat and then my vest. I did. Then they asked me to take off my shirt. I took a deep breath and did it. I was left with just my undershirt and trousers, without my shoes and the rest of my equipment. The female officer felt me with her hands for 15 minutes in any place possible. I told her I was pregnant and asked her not to use the manual device, but compromised on that later too.”
‘So you won’t go in’
But the extensive security check did not end here, and she was later asked to remove her bra. “After she examined the bra under my undershirt, she asked me to take it off as well. I asked why, but she insisted. Her supervisor came over later and insisted as well. I refused, and she said, ‘Everyone removed it and so will you.’ I said, ‘I’m not taking it off even if I can’t go in.’ And she said, ‘So you won’t go in.'”
According to Simri Diab, men saw her too. “A spokesperson from the office saw me in my undershirt and asked what was going on. When I told him what happened, he said, ‘Don’t create a drama.’ The woman at the security check told him, ‘She refuses to be checked.’
“They sent me aside for 20 minutes and refused to return my belongings. They checked every single paper and document in my purse. They later returned all my items inside a box, and I had to arrange them for a long time.”
The other al-Jazeera reporter, who was waiting for her own security check, said she wanted to leave the event. The bureau head said he was asked to remove his trousers. “I got the feeling that even if I had arrived in a bikini, they would have asked me to remove it.”
Meridor acted differently
Simri Diab has been working for the al-Jazeera network for about eight years. She is originally from the north and currently resides in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa.
She said this wasn’t the first time she had to undergo such a security check. “When we arrived to interview Minister Dan Meridor at the Prime Minister’s Office about half a year ago, they did the same thing and asked me to take off my trousers. They put the manual device in the most sensitive places and, what can you do, it beeped because of the zipper.”
Then, she said, the deputy prime minister intervened. “Minister Meridor saw it, was furious and told them, “If you don’t let them in I’ll take them home with me.’ So they agreed to let us in, but only with a personal escort.
“Unfortunately, we are used to having the security teams ask us to remove our trousers. A spokesman from the office told us yesterday, ‘We did the same with the Turkish team, and they do the same to me in the United States.’ So what? Am I supposed to feel better because others are humiliated?
“I felt I was being humiliated for the sake of humiliation. I went back home and saw the prime minister talking about the Iranian threat. I wanted to be there to inform him of what I had to go through. I’m being treated like an enemy. I will not give up my private space anywhere.”
The General Security Service stated in response, “All guests were subjected to a security check in accordance with the customary security procedures in such events. Three female reporters refused to be examined under these procedures and chose not to attend the event.”
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2. Haaretz,
January 12, 2011
Israel blacklists 163 foreign charities suspected of supporting terrorism
Preventing terrorism funds from infiltrating Israel is one of the goals of the Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority.
The Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority has located 163 organizations contaminated with funds related to terrorism over the past three years, and issued specific orders prohibiting receiving money from them, Defense Ministry data shows.
Preventing terrorism funds from infiltrating Israel is one of the authority’s stated goals, no matter for what purpose the funds are being transferred. The organization’s investigators are in contact with similar international organizations in the UN and the United States, and their list totals 352 organizations. Bans issued by the authority are signed by either the defense minister or the security cabinet.
The proposed parliamentary committees of inquiry are meant to investigate the overseas financial sources of organizations allegedly damaging to Israeli soldiers, and check whether these sources are connected to terrorism. But it seems the authority has already done much of the committee’s work.
For instance, the authority banned Israeli organizations from receiving money from Interpal, a British charity which says its aim is to provide Palestinians with humanitarian aid and meet their basic needs. The organization has a turnover of 5 million pounds a year. After a number of investigations on suspicion of serving as a channel for funding for Hamas, Interpal was blacklisted in Israel and is no longer allowed to hold activities in the country or transfer funds to Israel, and activists belonging to the organization will be arrested if they arrive here.
The Charity Commission for England and Wales found Israel provided no proof that Interpal was connected to terrorism, but ordered the charity to break contact with a number of other organizations.
Other blacklisted groups include the Islamic National Bank, which has opened in Gaza; the Palestinian Relief Society in Switzerland; Pakistani humanitarian organization Wafa; Pakistani trust fund Rabbit, which is believed to be associated with Al-Qaida; the Afghan Support Committee; a British-based company set up by five Libyan businessmen and suspected of organizing terrorism in Libya; the Al Taqwa Bank, based in the Bahamas with branches in Europe and suspected connections to the Muslim Brotherhood; and Qatar Charity, which has signed a multimillion sponsorship deal with the Barcelona soccer club. The Turkish organization IHH was banned after the flotilla raid in May.
Israeli organizations about to go under scrutiny have come across these prohibitions before. “We heard from someone in the United States that there was a Qatari organization ready to support clinics,” said Hadas Ziv, in charge of public activity at Physicians for Human Rights. “We wanted to get money for them for that purpose, but we ran some checks and it turned out it was illegal to receive money from them in Israel. We abide by the law.”
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3. Haaretz,
January 12, 2011
Court petitioners may be forced to reveal funding sources
Under Likud MK Danny Danon’s proposal, public petitioners to the High Court of Justice would have to state whether they receive any funding from foreign sources, and if so, for what purpose,
Public petitioners to the High Court of Justice would have to state in their petition whether they receive any funding from foreign sources, and if so, for what purpose, according to a bill that MK Danny Danon (Likud ) plans to submit to the Knesset this week.
Public petitioners are groups or individuals with no direct interest in the case’s outcome. They account for a significant portion of the petitions submitted to the High Court every year. Among the prominent public petitions filed recently are one by environmental groups against Yoav Galant’s appointment as the army’s next chief of staff and several by Peace Now demanding the evacuation of settlement outposts.
Often, public petitioners file jointly with a private petitioner, meaning someone who does have a direct personal interest in the outcome. Danon’s bill, however, would apply to all public petitioners, without exception.
Danon was also a leading advocate of the recently approved motion to establish a parliamentary committee of inquiry into left-wing nongovernmental organizations. “As part of the delegitimization campaign that has been waged for several years now against Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, hostile bodies try to influence the activities of Israel’s governing authorities via public petitions,” Danon wrote in the explanatory notes to the bill. “The parameters set in the bill will enable the court to ensure that there are no additional, non-Israeli motives or organizations behind the public petitioners.”
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4. Haaretz,
January 12, 2011
Jordan FM: Refusal of two-state vision exposes Israel as ‘apartheid’ state
Jordan FM Nasser Judeh says failure to solve Mideast conflict on basis of the Arab peace initiative would lead to increased tension and instability in the region.
[for those interested in the details of the Arab Peace Initiative first proposed in 2002 and again in 2007 see http://www.al-bab.com/arab/docs/league/peace02.htm Israel ignored the initiative, never affirming nor denying it]
By DPA
Tags: Middle East peace Arab peace initiative
Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said Wednesday that Israel’s refusal of the two-state solution would expose it to the world as an “apartheid” country.
“His Majesty the king (Abdullah II) has made it clear that if we fail to achieve the two-state solution, then the alternative will be that the world will have eventually to view Israel as a state that practices racial policies,” Judeh said.
The foreign minister was testifying before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the upper house of parliament on the latest developments of the deadlocked direct peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel, the official Petra news agency said.
Judeh said that the recent recognition of the Palestinian state by Latin American countries “will put pressure on Israel and remind it that the world will not accept its unilateral actions” in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
He expected “more states” to follow in the steps of Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay in recognizing a Palestinian state.
Judeh warned that the failure to come up with a solution for the Palestine question in accordance with the Arab peace initiative “will have dire consequences in terms of escalating tension and instability.”
The Arab peace initiative offers Israel full recognition by all Arab states if it pulls out from all Arab territories it occupied during the Six-Day War in 1967, including East Jerusalem.
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5. Haaretz,
January 12, 2011
The nation is behind you, Galant
The synergy between settlers and soldiers derives from the intimate relationship between defender and defended, and from the basic fact that the IDF is a people’s army.
The seizure of public land, unauthorized road paving, misleading testimony, double standards in land allocation – all under the cover of an army uniform. Is this a precis of the history of Israeli colonialism? Not at all. These claims are the basis of the High Court of Justice petition by the Green Movement political party against Yoav Galant’s appointment as the next Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, accusations that Maariv journalist Kalman Liebeskind has made repeatedly in investigative reports over the past two years.
In the meantime, the High Court has asked the attorney general on Monday to explain how complaints lodged against Galant have been handled. Here is an explanation that has already been written, but in invisible ink:
The IDF, the greenhouse that has nurtured Galant, is the major land broker in Palestinian areas that were occupied in 1967. All the land that private speculators have managed to purchase by cunning and stealth does not come close to the vast territory stolen on military orders signed by our finest commanders. The army’s seizure of land “for military and security purposes” quickly turned into large-scale appropriation for the exclusive benefit of Israel’s super-citizens, at the expense of the subpar species.
The IDF is simultaneously the representative and the defender of a campaign to peddle the Bible as a real estate deed. Public land, private land, rocky ground, springs, unregistered land, irrigated land, unirrigated land, built-up land, precious artifacts of agricultural and architectural traditions – it’s all the same. Military and civilian jurists alike, ensconced in the robes of knowledge and boasting degrees conferred by the finest universities, have concocted infinite stratagems and machinations to plunder all types of land.
The jurists and the military commanders, like the soldiers who tack land seizure orders or demolition orders on olive trees, are the representatives, the emissaries, of the campaign. But in a state in which military service constitutes an admissions test for a successful political career, any lines that distinguish between those who devise policy and those who implement it become blurred.
Lest there be a misunderstanding, let me state that the settlers also play the role of emissary. Even when the puppet rises against its maker and protector, it is still an instrument, and it is implementing the consistent policy of undermining the prospect of a viable Palestinian state (as compared to a state of Bantustans, of the sort that Kadima and Labor are advocating.
Generations of soldiers and commanding officers owe to the settlement enterprise their social capital – their prestige – and their livelihood in the army, politics or business. As the settlement enterprise grows, so does the number of Israeli Jews who profit from it, whether directly or indirectly. And as that dual expansion takes place, the dispossession of those who aren’t Israeli Jews also increases, as does the need for more security techniques. Israelis serving in the army – whether recent recruits, career soldiers or reservists – are depicted as altruistic, as having no agenda of their own, as the prime human material behind these security techniques.
The synergy between settlers and soldiers derives from the intimate relationship between defender and defended, and from the basic fact that this is a people’s army. In a state in which the social welfare component has long since become watered down, it is the settlements that have become the best prospect for a socioeconomic upgrade for Israeli Jews.
For Galant, the synergy appears to have gone awry; according to the complaints, his actions were a scaled-down version of what his employer, the IDF, has been doing on a macro level.
If he lived in the West Bank settlement of Ofra and he took over land in the neighboring villages of Silwad and Ein Yabrud – just as he is accused of doing to his Jewish neighbors in Moshav Amikam – those who compile a report or file a complaint about it might be subject to a parliamentary investigation.
It would be pointless to file an altogether different kind of petition: one that protests Galant’s appointment as chief of staff not because of his private actions but because of the direct responsibility that he, as GOC Southern Command, bears for the killing of hundreds of civilians in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, in non-combat circumstances.
