NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
5 juicy items below.
In item one Gideon Levy tells us something that many of us knew, and it really is not new news, but perhaps it is for some of you: many Israelis either have or want to have a foreign passport. Why? Well for a country that has seen 12 wars/military campaigns in less than 62 yrs no wonder (Israel celebrated its 63 this year, but not much to celebrate). Here life is under constant threat, real or imagined. So just in case you have had enough when the next war comes, nice to have elsewhere to go to.
Item 2 reveals some of the comments Israel’s fascists have towards Muslims and leftists. These home-grown Nazis are Jews!
In item 3 Netanyahu promises that on Sunday when Palestinians plan to repeat what they did on May 15, that ‘Israel will defend its sovereignty.’ Of course! All that Israel knows is the use of force, and it has often in the past used it over and over again on innocent unarmed people. I can only hope that my fears are unfounded.
Item 4 relates that the Rafah crossing that all waited for in anticipation ain’t what we thought or hoped it would be. It has not changed the situation for most Gazans. Seems as if those in power are still playing tootsie with Israel to keep the Gazans locked up.
I’ve saved the best for last. In item 5 Richard Falk, who never minces words, expresses my feelings exactly, but so much better than I could, and with authority, to boot. When I heard that Ban ki-Moon was working to stop the upcoming flotilla, arguing that humanitarian aid should be by land, I could hardly believe my ears. And when I copied the article and distributed it, I said something to the effect that it’s not the aid but the blockade that is the main purpose of the flotilla. Falk does not speak gently to Ban ki-Moon. Thanks Richard Falk. I hope that Ban ki-Moon takes your words to heart!
All the best,
Dorothy
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1. Haaretz,
June 02, 2011
Fear is driving Israelis to obtain foreign passports
More and more Israelis apply for a foreign passport, not for easier travel but because something has gone terribly wrong here.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/fear-is-driving-israelis-to-obtain-foreign-passports-1.365454
By Gideon Levy
The numbers are climbing rapidly and the phenomenon is intriguing: Many Israelis are longing for a second passport. If Shimon Peres (now president ) once promised “a car for every worker,” a second passport is now becoming the object of desire. If our forefathers dreamt of an Israeli passport, there are those among us who are now dreaming of a foreign passport.
A Bar-Ilan University study published in the journal Eretz Acheret has found that roughly 100,000 Israelis already hold a German passport. Over the past decade, the trend has strengthened and some 7,000 more Israelis join them every year. To these should be added the thousands of Israelis who hold foreign passports, mostly European countries. The excuses are strange and diverse, but at the base of them all are unease and anxiety, both personal and national. The foreign passport has become an insurance policy against a rainy day. It turns out there are more and more Israelis who are thinking that day may eventually come.
In recent years the Israeli passport has become useful and effective. It opens the gates of most countries of the world, except for parts of the Arab and Muslim world. It is hard to believe that those applying for a second passport are doing so in order to vacation in Tehran, tour Benghazi or take in the sights of San’a. The alibi that a European passport makes entering the United States easier cannot fully explain the phenomenon, which has no equivalent in other developed countries.
It should not be condemned, though. It reflects a mood, a natural and understandable consequence of the real and imagined fears that have been sown here. When Avrum Burg boasted of his French passport several years ago, a public outcry arose, but in vain. Presumably some of those who cried out did so because they do not have the option, like he does, of obtaining an additional passport for themselves. The others may have since crowded onto the line at one embassy or another.
The fact that Germany, of all places, is the passport provider of preference should also no longer touch off feelings of anger or shame. For many Israelis, Germany has long since become a country like any other: Our cabinet ministers ride in Audis, and the washing machines we import from there excel in their German quality. The scare campaigns have been effective, and the passport applicants are responding in an intelligent and sensible way. It turns out that they are far more rational than their leaders: If the leaders so want to scare us of the Iranian bomb, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the hooligans from Gaza, if everything threatens to become a “Holocaust,” then it really does make sense to equip oneself with suitable means of protection. An additional passport, for example.
Anyone who believes an additional passport is a national shame and a social disgrace is invited to have a look at why Israelis desire them. If we had a leadership worthy of the name, one that instead of sowing anxieties did something to reduce them, and instead of terrifying us instilled hopes in us, then the lines at the German Embassy would have become shorter long ago. Instead of condemning the passport seekers, let us ask honestly and courageously: Why are they doing this? They are doing this because someone is scaring them, and no less so, because there is someone endangering our future here.
Passports? If the Palestinian people already had one real passport, maybe the Israelis wouldn’t need two. If Israel were to try at long last to be accepted in its region, with all that entails, then maybe the region would open to it by means of a single, blue and white passport. If Israel were also to take the advice of its friends in the world, especially in the countries of Europe, then perhaps we wouldn’t need their passports.
Israel is strong and established and ostensibly its passport should be sufficient for its citizens. The fact that it is not sufficient for many of them testifies, more than a thousand passports, that something has gone deeply wrong here. Israel, after all, arose to become a haven for the Jewish people, mainly from the horrors of Europe, yet in an irony of history, Europe is in fact becoming a haven for Israelis.
Anyone who can obtain an additional passport is of course invited to do so, but on the way back from the embassy he should ask whether his country has done everything in its power to ensure he will not need it. The answer to this is a resounding no. Still, I personally have no intention of applying for a second passport.
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2. Ynetnews,
June 02, 2011
Jerusalem Day [Wednesday, June 1, 2011]
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4077292,00.html
[to see the video, use the link]
Rightist arrested in Jerusalem Photo: Reuters
Rightists in Jerusalem: Muhammad is dead, butcher Arabs
Right-wing activists marching in Old City to celebrate Jerusalem Day Wednesday filmed chanting ‘Death to leftists,’ singing ‘Muhammad is dead’; police detain at least 15 people, both Jewish and Arab, during tense day in capital
Yair Altman Published: 06.02.11, 08:14 / Israel News
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Dozens of right-wing activists marching through Jerusalem Wednesday were filmed chanting inflammatory messages and singing provocative songs in the capital, including “Muhammad is dead,” “May your village burn,” “Death to leftists,” and “Butcher the Arabs.”
The disturbing utterances were made during the traditional “Flag Dance” on the occasion of Jerusalem Day, which drew tens of thousands of Israelis to the capital to celebrate its unification following the 1967 Six-Day War. צילום: תנועת סולידריות
World criticism: Netanyahu’s ‘PR process’
Commentators from news publications around world slam Congress’s rapturous approval for Netanyahu address. ‘US Jews don’t like finding themselves in position of choosing between their president and Israeli PM,’ says one
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3. Haaretz,
June 02, 2011
Netanyahu: Israel will defend its sovereignty during planned border protests
Prime Minister says Syria, Iran behind Nakba Day mass protests earlier this month, adding that the same elements were pushing for riots in rallies scheduled for Sunday.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-israel-will-defend-its-sovereignty-during-planned-border-protests-1.365571
By Barak Ravid
Tags: Syria Iran Benjamin Netanyahu Lebanon
Israel will be decisive in protecting its borders against infiltrating protesters, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, warning Syria and Lebanon ahead of upcoming Naksa Day border protests.
“Like any country in the world, Israel has the right and duty to guard and defend its borders. Therefore my instructions are clear, to act with restraint, but with the necessary decisiveness to protect our borders, our communities and our citizens,” Netanyahu said in a speech.
The prime minister added that Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas were behind last month’s deadly demonstrations, saying “in the next few days those groups will retry to challenge Israel’s sovereignty.”
The IDF ha already accused Iran of orchestrating two waves of fighting along its northern borders, as Palestinian protesters tried to infiltrate from Syria and Lebanon during demonstrations to mark Nakba Day, which commemorates the “catastrophe” of the creation of the State of Israel.
Palestinians are planning to stage a similar protest on Sunday, which comes in response to another call on Facebook to cross Israel’s borders on the 44th anniversary of the start of 1967 Middle East War in which Israel captured East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Golan Heights.
Earlier Thursday, it was reported that the Lebanese Army declared the area around the country’s border with Israel a closed military zone, a move aimed at preventing Palestinian protesters from demonstrating in the area this weekend, a Lebanese army source said.
“The Lebanese Army declared the area a closed military zone to stop any escalation at the Lebanese border with Israel that could take place on Naksa Day,” a source said.
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4. Washington Post Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Egypt limits crossings at Gaza border
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/egypt-limits-crossings-at-gaza-border/2011/06/01/AGQKieGH_story.html
By Joel Greenberg,
JERUSALEM — Egypt reimposed restrictions Wednesday on the number of Palestinians allowed to enter from the Gaza Strip at the Rafah crossing, days after permanently opening the border point in a move to ease Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory.
Hatem Aweidah, who is in charge of border crossings for the Hamas government in Gaza, said that Egyptian officials had set a limit of 350 to 400 travelers who would be granted entry each day, on the grounds that border personnel could not handle more.
A similar daily limit had been imposed in the months before the permanent opening on Saturday.
Hamas officials said that the number of people crossing into Egypt had dropped sharply Tuesday and that there were further delays Wednesday before differences over other proposed restrictions, such as submission of travelers’ names a day in advance, were resolved.
Under its blockade of Gaza, Israel allows in limited quantities of goods and bars the movement of people except for a restricted number of Palestinians receiving medical treatment or doing business in Israel.
Sari Bashi, executive director of Gisha, an Israeli rights group that monitors freedom of movement in Gaza, said that the latest restrictions at Rafah showed that Saturday’s reopening did not adequately offset the blockade.
“Rafah is an important but partial solution for Palestinians seeking to travel abroad, but it does not resolve the need for allowing passage through the Israeli-controlled crossings, especially to the West Bank,” Bashi said.
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5. Al Jazeera,
June 02, 2011
A UN Secretary General vs Freedom Flotilla 2
Humanitarian ships to sail to Gaza again, despite current UN disapproval and a previous attempt that turned deadly.
Richard Falk
Freedom Flotilla 1 ships were intercepted by the Israeli navy, thereby denying Gaza of much-needed humanitarian aid following Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 to January 2009 [GALLO/GETTY]
It is expected that at the end of June, Freedom Flotilla 2 will set sail for Gaza, carrying various forms of humanitarian aid, including medical, school, and construction materials. This second flotilla will consist of 15 ships – including the Mavi Marmara from the first flotilla – sailing from Istanbul, but also vessels departing from several European countries, and carrying as many as 1,500 humanitarian activists as passengers. If these plans are carried out, as seems likely, it means that the second flotilla is about double the size of the first that was so violently intercepted by Israeli commandos in international waters on May 31, 2010, resulting in nine deaths on the Turkish lead ship.
Since that shocking incident of a year ago, the Arab Spring has changed the regional atmosphere, but it has not ended the unlawful blockade of Gaza, or the suffering inflicted on the Gazan population over the four-year period of coerced confinement. Such imprisonment of an occupied people has been punctuated by periodic violence, including the sustained all-out Israeli attack for three weeks at the end of 2008, during which even women, children, and the disabled were not allowed to leave the deadly killing fields of Gaza.
It is an extraordinary narrative of Israeli cruelty and deafening international silence. The silence was broken only by the brave civil society initiatives in recent years that brought both the symbolic relief of empathy and human solidarity, as well as the token amounts of substantive assistance in the form of much needed food and medicine. It is true that the new Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing a few days ago, allowing several hundred Gazans to leave or return to Gaza on a daily basis, but Rafah is not currently equipped to handle goods, and is available only to people, and so the blockade of imports and exports continues in force, and may even be intensified as Israel vents its anger over the Fatah/Hamas unity agreement.
Secretary General: No Flotilla
As the Greek coordinator of Freedom Flotilla 2, Vangelis Pisias has expressed the motivation of this new effort to break the blockade: “We will not allow Israel to set up open prisons and concentration camps.” Connecting this Gazan ordeal to the wider regional struggles, Pisias added, “Palestine is in our heart and could be the symbol of a new era in the region.”
A highly credible assessment of the Israeli 2010 attack on Freedom Flotilla 1 by a fact finding mission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council concluded that the Israelis had violated international law in several respects: by using excessive force, by wrongfully attacking humanitarian vessels in international waters, and by an unacceptable claim to be enforcing a blockade that was itself unlawful. Such views have been widely endorsed by a variety of respected sources throughout the international community, although the panel appointed by the UN Secretary General to evaluate the same incident has not yet made public its report, and apparently its conclusions will be unacceptably muted by the need to accommodate its Israeli member.
In light of these surrounding circumstances, including the failure of Israel to live up to its announced promise after the attack in 2010 to lift the blockade, it shocks our moral and legal sensibilities that the UN Secretary General should be using the authority of his office to persuade member governments to do their best to prevent ships from joining Freedom Flotilla 2. Ban Ki-moon shamelessly does not even balance such a call, purportedly to prevent the recurrence of violence, by at least sending an equivalent message to Israel insisting that the blockade end and that no force be used in relation to humanitarian initiatives of the sort being planned.
Instead of protecting those who would act on behalf of unlawful Palestinian victimisation, the UN Secretary General disgraces the office by taking a one-sided stand in support of one of the most flagrant and long lasting instances of injustice that has been allowed to persist in the world. True, his spokesperson tries to soften the impact of such a message by vacuously stating that “the situation in the Gaza Strip must be changed, and Israel must conduct real measures to end the siege.” We must ask why were these thoughts not express by the Secretary General himself and directly to Israel? Public relations is part of his job, but it is not a cover for crassly taking the wrong side in the controversy over whether or not Freedom Flotilla 2 is a legitimate humanitarian initiative freely undertaken by civil society without the slightest credible threat to Israeli security.
Appropriately, and not unexpectedly, the Turkish Government refuses to bow to such abusive pressures even when backed by the UN at its highest level. Ahmet Davutoglu, the widely respected Turkish foreign minister, has said repeatedly in recent weeks when asked about Freedom Flotilla 2, that no democratic government should claim the authority to exercise control over the initiatives of civil society, as represented by NGOs. Davutoglu has been quoted as saying, “[N]obody should expect from Turkey… to forget that nine civilians were killed last year […] Therefore we are sending a clear message to all those concerned. The same tragedy should not be repeated again.” Underscoring the unresolved essential issue he asked rhetorically, “[D]o we think that one member state is beyond international law?” Noting that Israel has still not offered an apology to Turkey or compensation to the families of those killed, Davutoglu makes clear that until such reasonable preconditions are met, Israel cannot be accepted “to be a partner in the region”.
Liberating Palestine: Arab Spring’s second stage
We should not overlook that further in the background of this sordid effort to interfere with Freedom Flotilla 2 is the geopolitical muscle of the United States that blindly (and dumbly) backs Israel no matter how outrageous or criminal its behaviour. And undoubtedly, this geopolitical pressure helps explain this attempted interference with a courageous and needed humanitarian initiative that should have been affirmed by the UN rather than condemned. It needs to be kept in mind that despite the near universal verbal objections of world leaders, including even Ban Ki-moon, to the Israeli blockade, no meaningful action has been yet taken by either governments or the UN in the face of Israel’s undisguised refusal to respect the requirements of belligerent occupation of Gaza as set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the First Additional Protocol appended thereto in 1977.
Liberating Palestine from occupation and refugee regimes should be a core, unifying priority of this second stage of the Arab Spring. Nothing could do more to manifest the external as well as the internal turn to democracy, constitutional governance, and human rights than displays of solidarity by new and newly reformist leaders in Arab countries with this unendurably long Palestinian struggle for justice and sustainable peace. It would also offer the world a contrast with the subservience to Israel recently on display in Washington, highlighted by inviting Binyamin Netanyahu to address an adoring US Congress, a rarity in the country’s treatment of foreign leaders paralleling the pandering speech given by president Obama to AIPAC, the Israeli lobbying organisation. It is unprecedented in the history of diplomacy that a leading sovereign state would so jeopardise its interests and abandon its values so as to avoid offending a small allied partner. It is in the American interest, as well as in the interest of the peoples of the Arab world, particularly the Palestinians, to unravel this mystery, and if not, to move the resolution of the conflict from Washington to the more geopolitically trustworthy auspices of Brazil, Turkey, Nordic countries, and even possibly Russia or China.
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).
He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
