The first 5 items of the 8 below are about the flotilla. Item 1 actually saves you from reading half a dozen more, because it reports that the Israeli government has dropped its threat to journalists on the flotilla. The following item is one of the 6 or so that reported the threat before banned, just so that you can see how foolish this government can be. Its attack on freedom of the press was not very smart, was actually downright stupid.. But then this government is stupid to assail the flotilla at all. Israel’s government by shouting against the flotilla and threatening it has brought and will bring much more world attention to the flotilla than had Israel kept quiet. Bravo!
Item 3 essentially belies Israeli government claims that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Item 3 states that notwithstanding a building boom in portions of Gaza, the numerous ruins show that ample misery still remains.
Items 4 and 5 are statements by participants of the flotilla, both Americans. The first is by a woman who was born in Israel, who utters her disgust with what Jerusalem and Israel have become. Item 5 is a Huffington Post interview of Alice Walker, who makes strong statements about the purpose of the flotilla, and about Israel and the United States, terming both terrorists.
Following these, we turn to other matters.
Item 6 returns to Lifta, about which I posted an article a week or two ago. The plan to build an exclusive community on the ruins of the Palestinian village continues, to the displeasure of some groups, including Palestinians who lived in Lifta but were displaced when the village was attacked in 1948. Israel, which has been doing its best to erase any historical signs of Palestinian history and historical presence in Palestine, sees real estate value in the ruins. This report, however, brings into play another reason for wishing to replace Lifta, that of the ROR.
In item 7 Merav Michaeli relates that Haaretz will be running a new series that shows Israeli discrimination in sports against Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship. Racism is, of course, natural in a country built on demography and tribalism. Such communities fear ‘the other.’ Merav Michaeli is the right person to expose Israel’s discriminatory practices.
I end this message with ‘Today in Palestine,’ always worth reading for its information. This compilation includes reports on how Israel mistreats a Muslim graveyard. Never mind that Israel is always the first to squeal when anyone abroad damages Jewish headstones!
Still waiting for the better day,
All the best,
Dorothy
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1. Ynet Monday,
June 27, 2011
Gaza Flotilla
Netanyahu. Backed down Photo: Moshe Milner, GPO
Israel drops threat to deport, ban journalists
Foreign Press Association in Israel protests deportation threat against journalists boarding flotilla, prompting PM’s Office to introduce special procedure
The Israeli government has dropped a threat to issue lengthy deportation orders against journalists aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that he ordered authorities to find a formula for the reporters if they are on a flotilla that violates Israel’s entry laws.
On Sunday, Israel said any journalist caught on board could face deportation and a 10-year ban from the country.
Journalists say they should be allowed to cover a legitimate news story. Israel said the media would be complicit in an illegal breach of its naval blockade of Gaza.
A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office said: “The prime minister has instructed not to apply standard policy against infiltrators and those entering the country illegally. It was also decided to allow Israeli and international media outlets on Navy boats in order to enable transparency and credible reporting of the events.”
On Monday, the Foreign Press Association in Israel demanded that the Government Press Office retract the threat claiming it was a serious injury to the freedom of expression.
They urged a distinction between covering an event, legitimate in itself, and actively taking part in the flotilla.
Meanwhile, former US State Department spokesman Phillip J. Crowley wrote on his Twitter account: “Israel is working against its own self-interest by pressuring journalists not to cover the Gaza flotilla, clearly a newsworthy event.”
Attila Somfalvi and Yitzhak Benhorin contributed to this report
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2. Boston Globe,
June 27, 2011
Israel tells media to stay off flotilla
JERUSALEM — Israel said yesterday that any foreign journalist caught on board a Gaza-bound flotilla could face deportation and a 10-year ban from the country, in a move that threatened to worsen the nation’s already strained relationship with the international media.
Journalists said they should be allowed to cover a legitimate news story, but Israel said the media would be complicit in an illegal breach of its naval blockade of a hostile territory ruled by a terrorist group.
The announcement reflected Israeli jitters about the international flotilla, which comes just more than a year after a similar mission ended with the deaths of nine Turkish activists in clashes with Israeli naval commandos who intercepted them. Each side blamed the other for the violence.
In a separate development, the West Bank Palestinian leadership formally decided to press ahead with efforts in September to win UN recognition of a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem, in what could be a blow to efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The idea of asking the General Assembly to recognize a Palestinian state based on the cease-fire lines before the 1967 Mideast War is a reflection of Palestinian frustration with the stalemated talks.
Israel is eager to avoid a repeat of last year’s raid, which drew heavy international condemnation and prompted Israel to ease its blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Many Israelis believe that the media’s coverage of the bloodshed contributed to their country’s image problems.
In a letter to foreign journalists, the Government Press Office’s director, Oren Helman, called the flotilla “a dangerous provocation that is being organized by Western and Islamic extremist elements to aid Hamas.’’
He warned journalists that taking part in the flotilla “is an intentional violation of Israeli law and is liable to lead to participants being denied entry into the State of Israel for 10 years, to the impoundment of their equipment, and to additional sanctions,’’ Helman said.
The letter, he added, was reviewed and approved by Israel’s attorney general.
The Foreign Press Association, which represents hundreds of journalists working for international news organizations in Israel and the Palestinian territories, condemned the Israeli decision and urged the government to cancel the order.
“The government’s threat to punish journalists covering the Gaza flotilla sends a chilling message to the international media and raises serious questions about Israel’s commitment to freedom of the press,’’ the association said in a statement.
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3. New York Times,
June 25, 2011
Building Boom in Gaza’s Ruins Belies Misery That Remains
GAZA — Two luxury hotels are opening in Gaza this month. Thousands of new cars are plying the roads. A second shopping mall — with escalators imported from Israel — will open next month. Hundreds of homes and two dozen schools are about to go up. A Hamas-run farm where Jewish settlements once stood is producing enough fruit that Israeli imports are tapering off.
As pro-Palestinian activists prepare to set sail aboard a flotilla aimed at maintaining an international spotlight on Gaza and pressure on Israel, this isolated Palestinian coastal enclave is experiencing its first real period of economic growth since the siege they are protesting began in 2007.
“Things are better than a year ago,” said Jamal El-Khoudary, chairman of the board of the Islamic University, who has led Gaza’s Popular Committee Against the Siege. “The siege on goods is now 60 to 70 percent over.”
Ala al-Rafati, the economy minister for Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, said in an interview that nearly 1,000 factories are operating here, and he estimated unemployment at no more than 25 percent after a sharp drop in jobless levels in the first quarter of this year. “Yesterday alone, the Gaza municipality launched 12 projects for paving roads, digging wells and making gardens,” he said.
So is that the news from Gaza in mid-2011? Yes, but so is this: Thousands of homes that were destroyed in the Israeli antirocket invasion two and a half years ago have not been rebuilt. Hospitals have canceled elective surgery for lack of supplies. Electricity remains maddeningly irregular. The much-publicized opening of the Egyptian border has fizzled, so people remain trapped here. The number of residents living on less than $1.60 a day has tripled in four years. Three-quarters of the population rely on food aid.
Areas with as contested a history as this one can choose among anniversaries to commemorate. It has been four years since Hamas took over, prompting Israel and Egypt to impose a blockade on people and most goods. It is a year since a Turkish flotilla challenged the siege and Israeli commandos killed nine activists aboard the ships, leading to international outrage and an easing of conditions. And it is five years since an Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, was abducted and held in captivity without even visits from the Red Cross.
In assessing the condition of the 1.6 million people who live in Gaza, there are issues of where to draw the baseline and — often — what motivates the discussion. It has never been among the world’s poorest places. There is near universal literacy and relatively low infant mortality, and health conditions remain better than across much of the developing world.
“We have 100 percent vaccination; no polio, measles, diphtheria or AIDS,” said Mahmoud Daher, a World Health Organization official here. “We’ve never had a cholera outbreak.”
The Israeli government and its defenders use such data to portray Gaza as doing just fine and Israeli policy as humane and appropriate: no flotillas need set sail.
Israel’s critics say the fact that the conditions in Gaza do not rival the problems in sub-Saharan Africa only makes the political and human rights crisis here all the more tragic — and solvable. Israel, they note, still controls access to sea, air and most land routes, and its security policies have consciously strangled development opportunities for an educated and potentially high-achieving population that is trapped with no horizon. Pressure needs to be maintained to end the siege entirely, they say, and talk of improvement is counterproductive.
The recent changes stem from a combination of Israeli policy shifts and the chaos in Egypt. The new Egyptian border policy has made little difference, but Egypt’s revolution and its reduced policing in the Sinai have had a profound effect.
For the past year, Israel has allowed most everything into Gaza but cement, steel and other construction material — other than for internationally supervised projects — because they are worried that such supplies can be used by Hamas for bunkers and bombs. A number of international projects are proceeding, but there is an urgent need for housing, street paving, schools, factories and public works projects, all under Hamas or the private sector, and Israel’s policy bans access to the goods to move those forward.
So in recent months, tunnels under the southern border that were used to bring in consumer goods have become almost fully devoted to smuggling in building materials.
Sacks of cement and piles of gravel, Turkish in origin and bought legally in Egypt, are smuggled through the hundreds of tunnels in double shifts, day and night, totaling some 3,000 tons a day. Since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian security authorities no longer stop the smugglers. Streets are being paved and buildings constructed.
“Mubarak was crushing us before,” said Mahmoud Mohammad, a subcontractor whose 10-man crew in Gaza City was unloading steel bars that were carried through the tunnels and were destined for a new restaurant. “Last year we were sitting at home. The contractor I work for has three major projects going.”
Nearby, Amer Selmi was supervising the building of a three-story, $2 million wedding hall. Most of his materials come from the tunnels.
Karim Gharbawi is an architect and building designer with 10 projects under way, all of them eight- and nine-story residential properties. He said there were some 130 engineering and design firms in Gaza. Two years ago, none were working. Today, he said, all of them are.
Another result of the regional changes is the many new cars here. Israel allows in 20 a week, but that does not meet the need. Hundreds of BMWs, pickup trucks and other vehicles have arrived in recent months from Libya, driven through Egypt and sold via the unmonitored tunnels. Dozens of white Kia Sportage models, ubiquitous on the street, are widely thought to have come from the same dealership in Benghazi, Libya, that was looted after the uprising there began.
Hamas’s control of Gaza appears firmer than ever, and the looser tunnel patrols in Egypt mean greater access to weapons as well. But opinion surveys show that its more secular rival, Fatah, is more popular. That may explain why an attempt at political unity with Fatah is moving slowly: the Hamas leaders here are likely to lose their jobs. The hospital supply crisis is a direct result of tensions with Fatah in the West Bank, which has kept the supplies from being shipped here.
Efforts by fringe Islamist groups to challenge Hamas have had little effect. And it has been a year since the government unsuccessfully sought to impose tighter religious restrictions by banning women from smoking water pipes in public. On a recent afternoon in the new Carino’s restaurant — with billiards, enormous flat-screen televisions, buttery-soft chairs — women without head coverings were smoking freely.
But such places and people represent a wafer-thin slice of Gazan society, and focusing on them distorts the broader and grimmer picture.
Samah Saleh is a 21-year-old medical student who lives in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Her father, an electrician, is adding a second story to their house now that material is available from the tunnels. Ms. Saleh will get her own room for the first time in her life, but she views her good fortune in context.
“For the vast majority in Gaza, things are not improving,” she said. “Most people in Gaza remain forgotten.”
Fares Akram contributed reporting.
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4. LA Times,
June 26, 2011
Op-Ed
Getting on board with peace in Israel
An Israeli American explains why she will be among many boat passengers trying to break through Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Later this month an American ship, the Audacity of Hope, will leave Greece on a journey to the Gaza Strip to attempt to break Israel’s blockade. It will join an expected nine other ships flying numerous flags and carrying hundreds of passengers from around the world. I will be one of those passengers.
I am an Israeli Jewish American. I was born in Israel, and I grew up in a very different Jerusalem from the one today. The Jerusalem of my childhood was a smallish city of white-stone neighborhoods nestled in the elbows of hills. Near the center, next to the central post office, the road swerved sharply to the left because straight ahead stood a big wall, and on the other side of it was “them.”
And then, on June 9, 1967, the wall came down. Elsewhere, Israeli troops were still fighting what came to be known as the Six-Day War, but on June 9, as a small crowd stood and watched, demolition crews brought down the barrier wall, and after it, all other buildings that had stood between my Jerusalem and the walls of the Old City, their Jerusalem. A few weeks later a wide road would lead from my Jerusalem to theirs, bearing the victors’ name: Paratroopers Way.
A soldier helped me sneak into the Old City. Snipers were still at large and the city was closed to Israeli civilians. By the Western Wall, a myth to me until then, the Israeli army was already evicting Palestinian residents in the dead of night and demolishing all houses within 1,000 feet. Eventually, the area would turn into the huge open paved space it is today, a place where only last month, on Jerusalem Day, masses of Israeli youths chanted “Muhammad is dead” and “May your villages burn.”
It is a different Jerusalem now. It is not their Jerusalem, for it has been taken from them. Every day the Palestinians of Jerusalem are further strangled by more incursions, by more “housing developments” to cut them off from other Palestinians. In Sheik Jarrah, a neighborhood built by Jordan in the 1950s to house refugees, Palestinian families recently have been evicted from their homes at gunpoint based on court-sanctioned documents purporting to show Jewish land ownership in the area dating back some 100 years. But no Palestinian proof of ownership within West Jerusalem has ever prevailed in Israeli courts. Talbieh, Katamon, Baca, until 1948 affluent Palestinian neighborhoods, are today almost exclusively Jewish, with no legal recourse for the Palestinians who recently raised families and lived their lives there.
In his speech on Jerusalem Day, Yitzhak Pindrus, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, assured a cheering crowd of the ongoing commitment to expanding the Jewish neighborhood of Shimon Hatzadik, as Sheik Jarrah has been renamed.
This is not my Jerusalem. The tens of thousands of jeering youths that swarmed through its streets on Jerusalem Day have taken the city from me as well. That they speak my native tongue is almost impossible for me to believe, for there is nothing about them or about the society that gave birth to them that I recognize.
Did we know in 1967, in 1948, that it would come to this? Some did. Some knew even then that a society built on conquest and dispossession would have to dehumanize the conquered in order to continue to dispossess and oppress them. A 1948 letter to the New York Times signed by Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, among others, foretells much of the future. Martin Buber did not spare David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, his perspective on the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948-49.
But too many others, including members of the U.S. Congress who recently cheered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are determined to not hold the Israeli government responsible or the Israeli-Jewish society culpable.
Let us note that some Israeli Jews do stand up and protest. There are soldiers who refuse to serve, journalists who highlight injustice, and human rights organizations, activist groups, information centers. In a sense, all of us seeking justice have been on a virtual boat to Gaza all these decades. We have been trying to break through the Israeli blockade, in its many incarnations. We wish to say to the Palestinians that, yes, there are people in Israel who know that any viable future for the Middle East must be based on a just peace — not the forced imposition spelled out by Netanyahu to Congress — or else we are all doomed. We want it known that the soldier is not the only face of Israeli Jews. There are those who say to the government of Israel, “You do not represent us.” We say to the people of the United States in general and to American Jews in particular that yes, you do have an alternative. You can support peace. A true peace.
Hagit Borer moved from Israel to the United States to study in 1977. She became an American citizen in 1992 and is currently a professor of linguistics at USC.
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5. Huffington Post,
June 23, 2011
Interview: Alice Walker
The author and activist, who is setting sail for Gaza on a humanitarian mission, says Israel ‘is the greatest terrorist’ in the Middle East.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker will join the flotilla of ships next week that will try to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. She says the goal is to bring supplies and raise awareness of the situation there. Last May, during a similar attempt by activists, Israel raided six ships. On one, clashes broke out and Israeli commandos killed nine people.
Foreign Policy reached the author of The Color Purple in Greece, where she is preparing for her departure.
Foreign Policy: Why are you taking part in the flotilla mission?
Alice Walker: In 2009, I was in Gaza, just after Operation Cast Lead, and I saw the incredible damage and devastation. I have a good understanding of what’s on the ground there and how the water system was destroyed and the sewage system. I saw that the ministries had been bombed, and the hospitals had been bombed, and the schools. I sat for a good part of a morning in the rubble of the American school, and it just was so painful because we as Americans pay so much of our taxes for this kind of weaponry that was used. On a more sort of mature grandmotherly level I feel that as an elder it is up to me and others like me — other elders, other mature adults — to look at situations like this and bring to them whatever understanding and wisdom we might have gained in our fairly long lifetimes, witnessing and being a part of struggles against oppression.
FP: How long have you been involved in Palestinian activism? What drew you to it?
AW: It started with the Six Day War in 1967. That happened shortly after my wedding to a Jewish law student. And we were very happy because we thought Israel was right to try to defend itself by pre-emptively striking against Egypt. We didn’t realize any of the real history of that area. So, that was my beginning of being interested in what was going on and watching what was happening. Even at that time, I said to my young husband, well, they shouldn’t take that land, because it’s actually not their land. This just seemed so unjust to me. It just seemed so wrong. It’s really unjust because in America we think about Israel in mythical terms. And most of us have grown up with the Bible. So we think that we are sort of akin to these people and whatever they’re saying must be true — their God is giving them land and that is just the reality. But actually the land had people living on it. The people were in their own homes, their own towns and cities. So, the battle has been about them trying to reclaim what was taken from them. It’s important, when we have some new understanding — especially adults and mature adults — we must, I think, take some action so that younger people will have a better understanding of what they are seeing in the world.
FP: Is the goal of this mission, though, to just raise awareness, or is it to actually deliver supplies?
AW: Well, our boat is delivering letters. So what we’re trying to draw attention to is the fact that the blockade is still in effect. On the other boats there will probably be supplies. I haven’t checked but probably things like sewage supplies.
FP: But Egypt has partially reopened its border with Gaza. So, couldn’t you get supplies in through there?
AW: No, you can’t. You can get two suitcases. Not only that, they closed it. They opened it and then closed it. So, that has not been worked out. I know people like to rally around what they think is a positive thing, but it’s not that positive yet because it’s not firm. They limit the number of people. They close it. They say two suitcases. You can’t build a sewage system with two suitcases.
FP: Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said the stated goal of “humanitarian assistance” was a false pretext for your mission — and it’s actually designed to serve an extremist political agenda, and that many of the groups participating in the mission maintain ties with extremist and terrorist organizations, including Hamas. Your reaction?
AW: I think Israel is the greatest terrorist in that part of the world. And I think in general, the United States and Israel are great terrorist organizations themselves. If you go to Gaza and see some of the bombs — what’s left of the bombs that were dropped — and the general destruction, you would have to say, yeah, it’s terrorism. When you terrorize people, when you make them so afraid of you that they are just mentally and psychologically wounded for life — that’s terrorism. So these countries are terrorist countries.
FP: How is the United States a terrorist country?
AW: It is. Absolutely, it is. It has terrorized people around the globe for a very long time. It has fought against countries that have tried to change their governments, that have tried to have democracies, and the United States has intervened and interfered, like in Guatemala or Chile. I feel that it is so unreasonable, and I don’t quite understand how they can claim everyone else is a terrorist and they are not when so many people right this minute are terrified of the drones, for instance, in the war in Afghanistan. The dropping of bombs on people — isn’t that terrorism?
FP: Of course Israel and the U.S. aren’t the only ones that use bombs. Hamas has fired rockets at Israel in the past.
AW: Yes. And I’m not for a minute saying anybody anywhere should fire rockets. I mean, I would never do it. Nor would I ever supply such a thing to anyone. But it’s extremely unequal. If people just acknowledge how absurdly unequal this is. This is David and Goliath, but Goliath is not the Palestinians. They are David. They are the ones with the slingshot. They are the ones with the rocks and relatively not-so-powerful rockets. Whereas the Israelis have these incredibly damaging missiles and rockets. When do you as a person of conscience speak and say enough is enough?
FP: Are you concerned at all that your trip could be used as a propaganda tool for Hamas?
AW: No, because we will never see those people. Why would we see them?
FP: You don’t think you’re going to see anyone from Hamas?
AW: No. I don’t think we would. If we manage to get through with our bundle of letters we will probably be met by a lot of NGOs, and women and children, and schoolteachers and nurses, and the occasional doctor, if anyone is left.
FP: But doesn’t Hamas control the security apparatus of Gaza?
AW: They may well control it, but we’re not going to see them. It’s like everyone who comes to D.C. doesn’t see the president.
FP: I have to ask, since the previous flotilla trip ended with an Israeli raid on one of the ships and nine people dead. Are you frightened?
AW: Sometimes I feel fear. And the feeling that this may be it. But I’m positive — I’m looking at it as a way to bring attention to these children and their mothers and their grandmothers, and their grandfathers and their fathers, who face this kind of thing every day. I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like — when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism too. So, I know that feeling. And this is what they are living under. And so, if you ever lived under terrorism yourself — you know terrorism USA, Southern-style — then you understand that people don’t like it and they should not be subjected to it anywhere on the planet.
Save big when you subscribe to FP. Monica Morgan/WireImage
Robert Zeliger is News Editor of Foreign Policy.
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6. Washington Post,
June 27, 2011
Development plan for abandoned Palestinian village stirs up a troubled past
JERUSALEM — Flanked by busy highways and tucked into terraced slopes of the Jerusalem hills, a crumbling Palestinian village abandoned more than 60 years ago has become the focus of a struggle over memory and heritage.
The nearly 3,000 people who lived in Lifta fled during the war that accompanied the establishment of Israel. Experts say the old village homes, with their distinctive stonework, along with a mosque, a spring and remains of granaries and olive presses, are unique remnants of a vanished way of life.
But city officials and developers have their eyes on the site, located in a scenic valley at the entrance to Jerusalem. Their plan to integrate the buildings into a luxury housing project has prompted an outcry from preservationists, and exposed painful layers of historical memory and questions about whether and how to document the Palestinian past in Israel.
Israeli activists and former residents of Lifta who now live in East Jerusalem have gone to court to prevent the marketing of lots in the new neighborhood until proper plans to preserve the remains of the village are drawn up, with input from former villagers. But the idea of preserving the village and its way of life, perhaps as a heritage site, means recognizing what Palestinians call their “nakba,” or catastrophe, a reference to their displacement during Israel’s 1948 war of independence.
Palestinian demands for a right of return to their former homes — voiced in recent demonstrations by thousands of Palestinians who marched on Israel’s borders — have been etched in graffiti on the walls of Lifta by descendents of the villagers. But those calls are viewed as an existential threat by many Israelis, and make the marking of the Palestinian past a highly contentious issue.
“In a perfect world where we could achieve a harmonious and sustainable peace in Jerusalem, we should have heritage sites for anyone anywhere,” said Naomi Tsur, the deputy mayor responsible for planning and environment. But, she said, that’s unlikely in the current climate.
Plans for Lifta envision it becoming “prime real estate and a prime tourism site,” in which the original houses will be preserved with new additions, Tsur said. Shops, cafes, crafts studios and hotels are planned along with the homes, while preserving open areas in the valley that extends from the village spring. A key aim is “to bring income to the city,” Tsur added. “There is an economic bottom line here.”
Critics of the plan say that incorporating village houses in new homes for Israelis or Jewish visitors from abroad does not amount to genuine preservation that would document the physical remains of Lifta and the way of life of the villagers, who farmed the rocky hillsides, growing olives, vegetables and wheat.
A group of Israeli preservation experts asserted in an opinion filed in court that the plan did not meet local and international preservation standards.
A 2008 report by the Israel Antiquities Authority called Lifta “a preserve of village architecture and building technology that is gradually becoming extinct,” and concluded that residential development would “seriously harm the . . . rare types of houses preserved at the site.” The report recommended that the housing plan be reconsidered.
But preserving Lifta as it was would mean preserving its Palestinian past, an act that carries unsettling overtones for many Israelis.
“These remains are threatening,” said Yehotal Shapira, an architect who led a group of Israelis on a recent tour of the site. “We have to stop being afraid, and talk about it. We shouldn’t respond with such panic, but with respect for the culture of another people. This place carries all kinds of memories. We have to learn to respect them. Israeli society is strong enough to deal with these questions.”
Ordinary Israelis who come Lifta to picnic and take a dip in the pool near the village spring seem oblivious to its past, enjoying the cool water and the shade of the trees as they would any park. A marked hiking trail leads visitors among the ruins, which have attracted walkers and squatters who have sheltered in some of the empty buildings over the years.
But for Yacoub Odeh, 71, who remembers being evacuated from Lifta under fire as a boy and now lives in East Jerusalem, visits to the ruined village bring back painful memories.
Marketing Lifta as a housing development would “destroy our memory and our history,” Odeh said. “My strategic goal is to return to my home. But if this is impossible now, leave Lifta for history, to be a testimony to what happened, and a lesson for all of us.”
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7. Haaretz,
June 27, 2011
Not even in the (Jewish) ballpark
Starting Monday, and for the rest of the week, Haaretz is running a series of stories on sport in Arab Israeli society.
Even if you don’t usually read the sports pages, it pays to check them out this week; Starting today, and for the rest of the week, Haaretz is running a series of stories on sport in Arab Israeli society.
Recently the prime minister appointed the head of the National Security Council to deal with resolving the issue of Bedouin settlement in the Negev – thus making it clear yet again that as far as he and the Jewish state are concerned, Arabs are first and foremost a security risk. This intensifies the discrimination against and exclusion of the Bedouin in particular and Arabs in general.
At such a time, it is especially important to read these stories, which, while about sports, tell the entire story of Arab society and the Jewish state in a nutshell.
When it comes to budgets and infrastructure, discrimination against Arab sports is at least as severe as in other areas of life, if not more so, since sport is ostensibly a luxury. The only sport that still somehow exists is soccer, which has several successful clubs and players good enough to advance also to European teams. Yet they all face calls of “Death to the Arabs” when they play before Jewish crowds.
The only stadium in the Arab sector is in Sakhnin; it was built with money from Qatar. There is no Olympic-size swimming pool, no tennis courts, running tracks or basketball arenas. Only two of the 347 athletes on Israel’s Olympic teams were Arabs, less than 1 percent.
This is the way it is in sports, an area that is seemingly apolitical and supposedly non-threatening.
Reading the stories clarifies the degree to which the state excludes its Arab citizens. Exclusion is the worst kind of discrimination; it doesn’t only involve worse conditions or humiliation, it means being totally removed from the general public. Excluding someone means that for him there’s no place, no piece of the pie, no part in society or in the country.
Historian Jacob Talmon wrote that all nationalist movements were born of exclusion. “There’s a rhythm in the development of national consciousness,” he wrote. “Its first sparks are the feeling of insult and wounded pride experienced by the leaders of the group that is discriminated against from a national or cultural perspective, who had obtained access to the culture of the ruling people but are rejected by it as being inferior. Their feelings deeply hurt, they are driven to search for their roots, to discover the substance and traditions that gave the community from which they emerged the character of a special collective … fairly quickly they realize that full, unbridled self-expression includes the necessary condition of political self-determination and thus, political independence.”
It’s simple: Total rejection spurs people to find pride and self-expression in the identity for which they were rejected.
What are the Negev Bedouin meant to feel and do when, after 65 years of abuse and discrimination, they are facing total exclusion and the committee that sat for almost two years discussing their status didn’t even have a single Bedouin member? There isn’t even an effort to make it look like anyone is taking them into account. And now, dealing with the results of this exclusion being handed over to the Jew responsible for national security.
It’s so basic and human: The editor of the leading Arabic website notes that when there’s an Arab player on a national team, its ratings go up and Arab society roots for it. Think of yourselves – how much does the Eurovision Song Contest interest you when Israel isn’t represented?
Despite everything, nearly half of the Arabs polled by Haaretz Sports, in cooperation with the Dialog Institute, believe that Arab players on national teams should sing the national anthem, and 69 percent ascribe importance to having mixed Jewish-Arab sports teams. One of the stories in the supplement tells of a Jew and Arab who jointly operate a flourishing tennis school in Jaljulia, which they hope to expand to other towns.
All this and more testifies again, for the millionth time, the degree to which Palestinian Israelis are indeed Israelis, and how much they want to be Israelis. By excluding and humiliating them, we are the ones pushing them toward a different nationalism. Sports provide an example of why it is worthwhile for us, the Jews, to enable them to be citizens of equal stature. We will only benefit.
[In addition to reports about the upcoming flotilla to Gaza (towards the end of the compilation), you will learn how Israel treats Muslim graveyards, and much more. Dorothy]
