NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
.
These begin with the notification that big brother is keeping his eye on “foreign left-wing organizations.” My educated guess (but still only a guess) is that the MI has its eye on domestic organizations also. Fascism, my dears, is here in Israel, and it promises to worsen. Already tomorrow there will probably be a vote on a racist bill (item 6).
Item 2 relates that at the UN, Richard Falk today accused Israel of ethnic cleansing. Interestingly, this did not make TV news tonight, but did make Haaretz.
Item 3 is a brief video of Omar Barghouti on bds. Worth listening to.
Items 4 and 5 keep you up to date on events in the OPT.
Item 6, as I said is a racist bill that will allow certain kinds of communities to reject whomever they do not want to live among them. As a Jew who in my early married life in the 50s experienced segregation of this kind in the United States, and as a human being, I find it disgusting that Israel is so racist!
Let’s hope that the killing in Libya and Yemen and Syria stops, and soon!
Dorothy
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1. Fascism is here!
Haaretz Monday,
March 21, 2011
‘Military Intelligence monitoring foreign left-wing organizations’
Israeli sources say department created several months ago dedicated will work closely with government ministries.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/military-intelligence-monitoring-foreign-left-wing-organizations-1.350713
By Barak Ravid
Military Intelligence is collecting information about left-wing organizations abroad that the army sees as aiming to delegitimize Israel, according to senior Israeli officials and Israel Defense Forces officers.
The sources said MI’s research division created a department several months ago that is dedicated to monitoring left-wing groups and will work closely with government ministries. In recent weeks, the head of the new unit has been taking part in discussions in the Prime Minister’s Office about how to prepare for the possible arrival of a Gaza-bound flotilla in May.
The undefined and potentially broad scope of such a venture, which IDF sources say is focusing on how to respond to maritime convoys aimed at breaching Israel’s Gaza blockade, has some Foreign Ministry officials concerned that the army is overreaching.
“We ourselves don’t know exactly how to define delegitimization,” said one ministry official. “This is a very abstract definition. Are flotillas to Gaza delegitimization? Is criticism of settlements delegitimization? It’s not clear how Military Intelligence’s involvement in this will provide added value.”
Military Intelligence officials said the initiative reflects an upsurge in worldwide efforts to delegitimize Israel and question its right to exist.
“The enemy changes, as does the nature of the struggle, and we have to boost activity in this sphere,” an MI official said. “Work on this topic proceeds on the basis of a clear distinction between legitimate criticism of the State of Israel on the one hand, and efforts to harm it and undermine its right to exist on the other.”
The new MI unit will monitor Western groups involved in boycotting Israel, divesting from it or imposing sanctions on it. The unit will also collect information about groups that attempt to bring war crime or other charges against high-ranking Israeli officials, and examine possible links between such organizations and terror groups.
MI decided to create the unit in the wake of investigations of Israel’s deadly takeover in May 2010 of a maritime convoy aimed at breaking the Gaza blockade, which found that the country’s intelligence agencies failed to provide information that could have helped Israel adequately prepare for the violent resistance that naval commandos encountered aboard the Mavi Marmara.
The unit’s other spheres of responsibility have yet to be clearly defined, but are expected to involve pinpointing the subjects that Israel’s other intelligence agencies should investigate, sources said.
The quality of intelligence information about groups aimed at delegitimizing Israel has improved and the quantity has increased in recent months, said an official in the Prime Minister’s Office.
“There is a demand for such information,” he said. “Officials need information on such topics, and it hasn’t always been available in the past, because there was a lack of awareness pertaining to this topic in the intelligence community. The new unit’s orientation will be to collect information and carry out intelligence research for the Foreign Ministry and other government ministries.
The unit has the support of Brig. Gen. (res. ) Yossi Kuperwasser, the director general of the Strategic Affairs Ministry and a previous head of MI’s research division. During the second intifada, he pushed for the intelligence community’s large-scale involvement in public advocacy and diplomatic matters, a stance that was criticized by other MI officers.
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2. Haaretz,
March 21, 2011
UN investigator: Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing
U.S. academic Richard Falk spoke to UN Human Rights Council as it prepared resolution condemning settlement building in East Jerusalem and West Bank; Israeli, Palestinian UN envoys clashed during discussion about murder of family in Itamar.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/un-investigator-israel-engaged-in-ethnic-cleansing-1.350938
By Reuters
Tags: Israel news
Israel’s expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and eviction of Palestinians from their homes there is a form of ethnic cleansing, a United Nations investigator said on Monday.
United States academic Richard Falk was speaking to the UN Human Rights Council as it prepared to pass resolutions condemning settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The “continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation” in the part of the city previously controlled by Jordan, he said.
This situation “can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing,” Falk declared.
Israel declines to deal with Falk or even allow him into the country, accusing him of being biased.
In a related discussion on Israeli policies towards the lands it seized in the 1967 war, Israeli and Palestinian delegates clashed over the recent killing of members of a Jewish settler family in the West Bank.
Israeli ambassador Aharon Leshno Yaar called on Palestinian leaders to condemn the March 11 murders of three children, including a baby, and their parents “without caveats or hedging” in Arabic to their own people.
Almost as shocking as the killings, “in the days following the massacre many Palestinians took to the streets celebrating the deaths of this family,” Leshno Yaar said.
But Palestinian envoy Ibrahim Kraishi said the killings had already been condemned by the Palestinian Authority as “an act of terrorism” that was not part of his people’s culture. “Rather, it is the culture of the occupying power,” he added.
In his speech, Falk said he would like the Human Rights Council to ask the International Court of Justice to look at Israeli behavior in the occupied territories.
This should focus on whether the prolonged occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem had elements of “colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing inconsistent with international humanitarian law,” the investigator declared.
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3. Omar Barghouti “As our South African comrades did in their fight against apartheid, we must go to international civil socitey”
Video about 5 minutes of Omar Barghouti explaining bds and why
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree
The talkbacks, except for one or two, are right-wing and bring up the usual trash. Perhaps you might want to want to write something more sensible.
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4.
4. Don’t say we did not know #254
On Wednesday, 2nd March, 2011, IDF forces again came to the Palestinian village Khirbet Tana, in the West Bank, near Beit Furiq. They were accompanied by four bulldozers. They demolished the village in its entirety, including all homes and animal shelters. Except that this time they didn’t demolish the school.
Questions & queries: amosg@shefayim.org.il
אל תגידו לא ידענו
ביום רביעי, ה-2.3.2011, שוב באו כוחות צה”ל, מלווים בארבעה דחפורים, והרסו את כל מבני המגורים ודירי בעלי החיים בכפר הפלסטיני חירבת טאנא בגדה המערבית ליד בית פוריק. הפעם לא הרסו את מבני בית הספר.
שאלות וברורים: amosg@shefayim.org.il
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5. Ynet,
March 21, 2011
Report: Two Palestinians shot after stone throwing incident
Beit Omar residents lightly wounded after driver responds to stone throwers with gunfire. Palestinian Authority rushes to criticize Israel
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4045495,00.html
Yair Altman
Two Palestinian residents of the village of Beit Omar who were throwing stones at Israeli vehicles, were injured when the driver of the car, a settler, opened fire at them, the Palestinians reported. The two men were lightly wounded and transferred to a hospital in Hebron for medical care. Police and IDF forces were en route to the scene.
The Palestinian Authority rushed to issue a statement criticizing Israel and said that “the Israeli government is responsible for settler violence against Palestinians.” The Palestinians also said that the injured men weren’t throwing stones at the time.
Yosef Abu Maria, a resident of Beit Omar, told Ynet: “Two Palestinians aged 39 and 55 were in the village attending a funeral. A settler arrived at the cemetery and started shooting at them and wounded them.”
He also said that IDF forces could have prevented the incident. “The IDF has an observation post from which they could see everything. The soldiers saw everything and didn’t intervene. After the shooting the settler fled.”
Abu Maria added that things heated up after the shooting as dozens arrived at the scene. According to Abu Maria, IDF and police forces arrived in the village and used crowd dispersal means against the protest.
Earlier on Monday it was reported that Mahmoud Awad, a 25-year-old man from the village of Hirbet Tuba in south Mount Hebron was stabbed in the chest several times by a veiled man near Havat Ma’on. He sustained moderate wounds.
An apparently Jewish suspect fled the scene. Police suspect the attack was nationalistically-motivated. The victim was taken to the Alia hospital in Hebron, despite the Civil Administration’s offer to take him to an Israeli medical center.
Kamal Moussa Rabai, a resident of the village of Tawana in the West Bank witnessed the attack and said: “I was in my home on the edge of the village when I heard screaming. I went outside and saw Awad riding a donkey.
“A masked man approached him and stabbed him several times on the left side of his body.” Rabai added that the man then ran towards Havat Ma’on and disappeared.
Rabai noted that this wasn’t the first time in he last few days that Palestinians were being targeted. He said that a group of masked men who came from Havat Ma’on threw rocks at them. He also said that on Saturday a group of settlers, some masked, hurt their sheep.
Elior Levy contributed to the report
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6, http://972mag.com/knesset-to-pass-separate-but-equal-communities-bill-tomorrow/
March 21 2011Independent commentary from Israel & the Palestinian territoriesCategories
News Analysis Life Images Activism Voices
Monday, March 21 2011|+972blog
Knesset to pass “separate but equal” communities bill
The new law will allow Jewish communities, built on state land, to reject non-Jews who wish to purchase properties within them. Needless to say, no such settlements are built for Arabs
Dr. Nimrod Luz
Perceiving ourselves as true liberals and humanists is a nice image we like to see reflected in the mirror. Some of us regard those values as the very essence of Jewish philosophy. Notwithstanding, reality strikes back and many a time puts our faith in basic equality among humans into question. This fundamental truth – that all people were created equal – seems somewhat jaded in contemporary Israel.
As I write to you now, the Israeli Knesset is preparing to vote on Tuesday and approve a bill which will standardize and legalize the practices of communal villages’ acceptance committees in the Negev and the Galilee. According to the proposed law, these committees will enjoy a great deal of latitude and discretion in their accepting or rejecting of candidates, especially Arab candidates, who wish to make a home for themselves on predominantly state-owned land. While referred to as “screening” or “acceptance” committees, in reality they serves as a selection tool operating with no transparent criteria and with full authority to reject candidates at a whim. They are the tool through which Israeli lawmakers are placing in our law books the notion of segregation, even though we’ve all learned the lessons of history – that a segregation policy can never really be “separate but equal.”
This bill is but another move towards a more segregated and discriminatory Israel, and falls in line with such recent initiatives as the Loyalty Oath Bill. Its instigators flagrantly deny that their bill is aimed at banning or denying any part of Israeli society its legal rights. However, this initiative is a belated response to a previous Supreme Court ruling which forced a Jewish communal village to reverse its own ‘selection committee’ decision to reject an Arab-Israeli family from joining the village as full-fledged members, and to build their house on a public lot allocated by the state. This initiative is corroborated by communal villages in the Galilee and in the Negev which, in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, began to alter their own ideological communities’ manifestos, peppering them with highly evocative slogans such as that its residents vow to “preserve” Jewish heritage, or “be loyal” to the “Zionist vision;” virtues which were never part of the official charter of these places thus far.
Patriotic and idealistic clichés aside, in reality this law will enable the chosen few, mostly upper-middle class, Jewish, white, heterosexual and privileged sectors of Israeli society, to discriminate against their fellow citizens and deprive them of their very basic right to reside on public land. Over the past 30 years these many villages scattered all over the Galilee have successfully created highly homogeneous communities by actively and consistently rejecting members of Israeli minority (Arabs), single parent families, new immigrants, mentally or physically challenged people, the poor, and other “misfits” of the Jewish majority from entering their villages. And now, should this law pass the Knesset, in its frenzy of pseudo-patriotic hysteria, these selective communities would be granted the legal prerogative to prevent “others” their basic rights of building or buying houses simply because they were not approved by their own vetting committees.
Over the last two years human rights organizations, publicists, intellectuals, members of the Israeli academia as well as civil society NGO’s have been fighting against this bill. I, myself, am a part of an initiative formed by members of such communal villages who could not keep silent anymore and voiced their indignation against this bill, allegedly advanced in our names. I stand proud among my friends from Atid Misgav (‘future for Misgav’, visit us at www.atidmisgav.org) in this struggle against this inflammatory and superfluous law. Indeed, it is dire times when the state actively works to discriminate its own citizens. Those here and abroad who care to see an Israel that promotes equality, those of us in Israel who wish to see ourselves as true humanists, should know that this bill is doing exactly the opposite, and do what we can to stop it before it’s too late.
The writes is a member of Atid Misgav – a civil society organization in Israel’s North opposing communal villages’ acceptance committees in the Negev and the Galilee
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Tagsatid misgav, knesset, racism, segregated communitiesFile UnderNews
