Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Dear Friends, 

Three of the 4 items below deal with the problems that Palestinians having Israeli citizenship face.  The first and the last of the items begin with the terror being inflicted on the Bedouin in the Negev—all for the sake of Judaizing the Negev.  The 2nd reports that anti-Palestinian graffiti is increasing in Israel.  Item 3 is a brief comment on Gaza.

 

The first item is more than just a report on the Bedouin (many of whom have served in the Israeli military).  It takes apart the notion that Israel is a truly democratic society, that Israel’s Palestinians enjoy equal rights with its Jewish citizens.  And Davidson does the job well.

 

Likewise, the final item is not merely a report.  It is an open letter to “EU High Representative and Foreign Affairs Ministers ahead of the Foreign Affairs Council Regarding the Eviction of Naqab Bedouins.”

 

Please distribute these items widely. 

 

Thanks,

Dorothy

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From: Sonja Karkar

Date: Sun, Oct 9, 2011

 

Israel and those “real democratic rights”

 

http://www.tothepointanalyses.com/

 

by Lawrence Davidson

 

sent by author

9 October 2011

Part I – What “Real Democratic Rights”?

 

In his speech to Congress on 24 May 2011 Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted that “Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.” This is, of course, a variation on the oft cited claim that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Leaving aside places like Lebanon and now potentially Tunisia and Egypt, one can ask just how “real” are these democratic rights the Prime Minister claims for Israel’s Arabs? Here is some recent evidence that speaks to this question.

 

1. At the end of September 2011 the Israeli government announced “a plan to displace 30,000 native Bedouin Arabs [all of whom are Israeli citizens]…from their homes [in the Negev].” This would constitute “the biggest dispossession plan of Palestinians issued by Israel since 1948. It would forcibly relocate about half of the Bedouin population from their existing villages, which are older than the State of Israel itself….”

 

Why should Israel do this to the Bedouin? Is it to facilitate their

enjoyment of their “real democratic rights”? Well not quite. According to

head of the Regional Council of Ramat Ha-Negev, a Zionist settlement in the region, the reason goes like this, “I want the Negev to be Jewish….Jewish settlement must grow, must continue…..What do you mean by ‘they [the Bedouin] also have rights’! You know what–after all this it is no longer possible to conceal the core problem, which is the struggle over the land. Who does this land belong to–us or them?”

 

2. At the Beginning of October 2011 leaders of the Jewish settler movement announced their intention “to turn Palestinian population centers into another Srebrenica.” This was their reaction to the prospect of

international recognition of a Palestinian state. Initiating Balkan style

killing fields would represent a marked escalation of ongoing lower level

terror tactics which have seen the destruction of Palestinian crops, the

harassment of Palestinian adults and children, the practice of arson against

mosques, and the occasional outright murder. While this threat was directed mainly at the Palestinians of the West Bank, the Israelis are bound by international law to see to their civil rights as well. And since

Netanyahu’s vaunted claim implies Israel’s civilized, law-abiding status

relative to the Arab states, that Palestinian population must be taken

account of.

 

To show the extent of their respect for the rights of the Palestinians,

settler rabbis have evoked the memory of their American-Israeli “saint and

hero,” Barach Goldstein, whose claim to lasting fame is the massacre of

Muslims at prayer in Hebron back in 1994. And, there has been much

recapitulating of the message delivered in October 2010 by “the spiritual

leader of Shas, the powerful religious political party….that the status of

non-Jews is similar to that of beasts of burden….” And just how many “real democratic rights” do the animals of Israel have?

 

3. Just in case you think that these threats are hyperbole, take a look at

reports and video on the recent pogrom-like violence near the settlement of

Anatot. On 30 September 2011 Palestinians along with Israeli allies came to help a Palestinian farmer plant trees on land he owns near the settlement.

They were attacked and beaten by settlers some of whom were armed policemen. The attackers have been accurately described as “nearly a lynch-mob.” Then on 3 October 2011 a mosque in the upper Galilee village of Tuba -Zangariyye was set on fire by arsonists who left behind the message “Price Tag.” This is a terrorist tactic used by Israeli right wing extremists. Every time the Israeli government gets in the way of their racist and expansionist ambitions (which really is not often enough) they retaliate with acts of terror against Palestinians.

 

Part II – Woeful Ignorance

 

The truth is that Arab-Israelis have always been second-class citizens,

suffering systematic and state sanctioned discrimination. Most of them are

effectively segregated out from the majority Israeli Jewish citizenry. In

this way their “real democratic rights” are rendered largely symbolic. The

only reason they are allowed to vote is because their votes cannot change

the system that discriminates against them. The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are even more vulnerable. They are not citizens at all and, even if Israel annexes the West Bank they never will be. This is because making them citizens would greatly enhance the likelihood that Arab-Israeli votes might, in fact, become sufficient to alter the system. The Zionists will never let that happen. If the choice is between democracy and keeping Israel a Jewish state, the Israeli establishment will jettison democracy without thinking twice. In fact, there is a portion of Israeli Jews who have already jettisoned any regard for “real democratic rights,” even for themselves.

 

It is interesting to note that 95% of the U.S. Congress seems oblivious to

all this. Indeed, a good number of them recently went off on an all expenses paid (illegal) junket to Israel which objective observers might consider the equivalent of giving material aid to a terrorist organization. There is good reason to believe that this oblivious state of mind is not shared by many of their constituents, who are slowly but surely being educated about the criminal nature of Israeli behavior. Unfortunately these constituents have not, as of yet, made their representatives’ slavish attachment to Zionist lobby money and influence a voting issue. When will they do so? Perhaps soon after it is brought home to them that Israel, the “democracy,” has an unsavory resemblance to Alabama or Georgia in the 1930s and 1940s. If the settler rabbis have their way this likeness will grow rapidly and thus become harder to hide. Through their sacrilegious misreading of the Talmud, these holy men appear anxious to bless lynching on all days of the week except the Sabbath.

 

It is not only American Congressmen who are ignorant of Israel’s

deteriorating national character. One might ask just how many Israeli Jews

know how close they are to the precipice of pogrom violence or worse. Some of course do. In a 14 June 2011 piece by Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman they tell us “We believe that unless immediate, serious and dramatic action is taken to improve the situation of the Arab minority and majority-minority relations, great dangers are in store for Israel. It is no exaggeration to say that domestic stability, Israeli democracy and future

Israeli-Palestinian peace could all be undermined by a continued

deterioration in Arab-Jewish relations in Israel.” But polls of Israelis

show that the majority, caught up as they are in the dominant culture of

victimhood and fear of the Arabs, are either ignorant of or unconcerned

about the dangers of which Peleg and Waxman warn. Indeed, most of them want the Arabs segregated or just kicked out and therefore have no problem with their society’s deteriorating majority-minority relations.

 

Part III – The National Skinner Box

 

All of this raises some serious issues:

 

1. For most citizens the national environment is like a great big Skinner

Box. In other words it is a hothouse of indoctrination. Americans were

taught to hate and fear communists, Russians were taught to hate and fear

capitalists, and Israeli Jews are taught to hate and fear Palestinians.

Nation states do a good job at such indoctrination–making it part and parcel

of the acculturation process. And, under the right circumstances, whole

populations can easily move from hatred and fear to actual mayhem.

 

2. This sort of deep seated indoctrination results in nationwide habits of

thought that are remarkably hard to change. Think of the inertia of a large

body, say a planet, moving through space. It is going to take a lot of force

to overcome that inertia, usually force of catastrophic intensity. To put it

another way, whole populations trained to seeing the world one way, usually do not shift perceptions unless something really bad happens to them. That something can be military defeat, deep and unbridgeable societal divides leading to civil war, or the severe costs of isolation and economic boycott visited on them by the outside world. The severity of these forces are testimony to just how stubborn indoctrinated populations can be.

 

Any way you look at it, the situation for those Palestinians under Israeli

domination is likely to get worse before it gets better. And it is going to

take a force of catastrophic intensity to really change Israeli behavior. My

money is on BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

 

Dr. Lawrence Davidson is the co-author of “A Concise History of the Middle East and author of “America’s Palestine: Popular and Official from Balfour to Israeli Statehood”.  He is a member of West Chester University’s history  faculty since 1986.  He earned his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University and completed his master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Georgetown University and the University of Alberta in Canada, respectively.[email protected]

www.tothepointanalyses.com

LINK: http://www.australiansforpalestine.net/52516#more-52516

 

Sonja Karkar

Editor

http://australiansforpalestine.com

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2.  Haaretz Monday,

October 10, 2011

Israel sees increasing incidents of anti-Arab hate graffiti

Hate-graffiti reported across Israel after Tuba-Zangaria mosque arson last week; Police Commissioner meets with Muslim, Christian community leaders after tense weekend in Jaffa.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-sees-increasing-incidents-of-anti-arab-hate-graffiti-1.389051

 

By Ilan Lior and Yaniv Kubovich

Jaffa was quiet on Sunday following a tense weekend in which vandals spray-painted slogans such as “Death to Arabs” in two cemeteries – one Muslim and one Christian – and hurled a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue.

 

Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino sought an urgent meeting with the leaders of Jaffa’s Muslim and Christian communities on Sunday, and the meeting was quickly set for that evening in Jaffa. By the time it occurred, police had also learned about similar graffiti in nearby Bat Yam, along with new slogans such as “There will be no Arabs on Maccabi Haifa” (a soccer team) and “Death to Russians.” But Bat Yam residents say this graffiti is more than two weeks old.

 

Police said that ever since last week’s torching of a mosque in Tuba-Zangaria, in northern Israel, they have been receiving reports of hate-graffiti from all over the country.

 

Prior to their meeting with Danino, Jaffa leaders met among themselves to formulate a list of demands they planned to present to him with the goal of bolstering security in the city. They agreed that the city’s Arabs felt threatened, and some even said they feared Arabs would soon be attacked en route to prayers at local mosques.

 

Danino prepared by receiving a briefing on the investigation from Tel Aviv and Jaffa police officers. The police’s current thinking is that even though one of the spray-painted slogans was “price tag,” a phrase usually associated with right-wing extremists, the vandalism was not ideologically motivated, but was rather the work of local hoodlums, possibly soccer fans.

 

Danino opened his meeting with Jaffa’s leaders by telling them, “I was born in Jaffa and spent much time there as a child. I’m very familiar with the city’s coexistence and fabric of life.”

 

He then said the force has have recently been working to “bolster policing and service in Arab communities.”

 

“We view the incident that took place here as a grave one,” he said. “The incident will be dealt with at the highest level; we’ll make every effort to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice. Our top people will be devoted to this matter. I ask the community to continue to aspire to coexistence and a shared life while upholding law and order.”

 

The community leaders said afterward that they would prefer less talk and more action.

 

Earlier yesterday, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai also met with leaders of Jaffa’s Arab community and denounced the cemetery vandalism harshly.

 

“I expect the hands of those who commit such acts to be chopped off,” he said, speaking figuratively. “But our job as public figures is to sit together and resolve the issues, as we have invested enormous efforts in recent years in maintaining life as usual here. The Jaffa public was always more mature than all the extremists, and we’ll find a way to return to normal, despite the provocations.”

 

Sheikh Saliman Setel, who heads the Islamic Movement in Jaffa, termed the meeting with Huldai positive and pledged to do his best to calm tempers in the city.

 

“For now, the situation is calm; there’s nothing special happening,” he said. “We don’t want this to be temporary. Such things happen every year or two, and it’s not acceptable to anyone. We live in coexistence; we don’t want problems. Just as we respect everyone’s holy sites, we want others to respect our holy sites.”

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3.  Gaza Gateway

Facts and analysis about the crossings

 

From Gaza with lulav

October 10, 2011

http://gazagateway.org/?p=2457

Ahead of the Jewish festival of Sukkot which begins this Wednesday, lulavs, palm fronds used in religious rituals of the holiday, are in big demand in Israel. A minor crisis arose therefore when Egypt announced that it will not be exporting lulavs to Israel this year. In response, the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture quickly announced that special licenses would be issued to allow the import of lulavs from Spain, Jordan and even the Gaza Strip! However the crisis was not yet averted – the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture in Gaza subsequently responded that it would not permit the export of lulavs to Israel due to a disease affecting palm trees in Gaza. Eventually, as the festival of Sukkot drew nearer, the import of lulavs from Jordan was approved, and Israel breathed a sigh of relief.

 

This bizarre story highlights the absurd nature of Israel’s policy regarding the export of produce from the Gaza Strip. For the past four years, Israel has imposed tight restrictions on exports from Gaza. The export of agricultural produce has been permitted only to Europe, only in winter, and in negligible amounts. Since May 2011, not a single truck of produce has left the Gaza Strip. The reasons behind these policies remain unclear as Israel has not gone to the trouble of providing any official explanation. In the meantime however, entire industries in Gaza that traditionally relied on export have collapsed or now stand on the verge of collapse.

 

Yet suddenly, as a festival approaches, Israel is willing to accept produce from the Gaza Strip. But if lulavs are permitted, why not clothes, furniture or vegetables? Apparently, the need to drive down the price of lulavs was all it took for a hasty amendment to the export ban. This summer, it was the high price of cottage cheese that helped spark widespread social protests across Israel. Could we be looking at the next exception to the ban?

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4.  Forwarded by Yael Korin

 

Open Letter to EU High Representative and Foreign Affairs Ministers ahead of the Foreign Affairs Council Regarding the Eviction of Naqab Bedouins (5 October 2011)

Dear High Representative,

Your Excellencies,

 

As human rights NGOs concerned with the promotion and protection of human rights of Palestinian people, we, the undersigned organizations, urge you to stop the eviction of 30,000 Palestinians citizens of Israel living in 14 localities north, east and south of the town of Beer Sheba (Beer Al- saba’).

 

On 11 September 2011, the Israeli Government approved the Prawer Plan1, which recommends the destruction of fourteen (14) villages in the Beer Sheba (Beer Al-saba’) district located in the Negev (Naqab), effectively displacing 30,000 Palestinians from their homes. These plans for displacement cumulatively constitute an Israeli policy of forced population transfer against the indigenous Bedouin Palestinians. We urge you to call upon Israel to comply with its international human rights obligations with regard to its indigenous population.

 

The Prawer Plan, named for its Head of Committee, Ehud Prawer, a member of Israel’s National Security Council and the head of the Strategic Planning Division in the office of the Prime Minister, seeks to implement the recommendations of the Goldberg Committee. The Goldberg Committee issued its recommendations to the Israeli government on 11 November 2008 and proposed that indigenous Palestinian Bedouins remain in their homes and on their lands. The Prawer Committee, which did not include, nor consult, any adversely affected stakeholders, rejected these recommendations and proposed that 30,000 indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel be forcibly removed from their homes and transferred to several recognized settlements, referred to by the Israeli government as “concentration towns”.

 

The Prawer Plan, referred to as the “final solution” for Israel’s Bedouin population is a continuation of Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies pursued since its establishment. The 180,000 Bedouins in the Naqab today are pastoral nomads who are the descendants of 19 tribes whose population was reduced to 11,000 in the aftermath of Israel’s establishment. In 1953, eleven (11) of the nineteen (19) tribes were forcibly removed from their homes and transferred to a reservation in the northeast of the Negev known as the “Enclosed Zone” or the Sayig. As a result of the Absentee Property Law, the pre-1948 Bedouins lost 90% of their lands and property.

 

Having confiscated the Bedouin’s ancestral lands, the Israeli government then set about settling them sparsely throughout the Sayig in order to make room for Jewish settlements and army bases. The National Planning and Building Law (1965) excluded Bedouins from official recognition despite their existence prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948. In 1966 the State released a Master Plan that did not recognize dozens of the Bedouin villages rendering them invisible to the government and denying them basic services like electricity, water, sewage systems, and health care otherwise provided by the State. Further, the Master Plan sought to Judaize the (Naqab) and support the expansion of Jewish settlements, which enjoy substantial state funding allocated through building plans.

 

The State seeks to forcibly remove the population of 75-90,000 Bedouins living in 40 unrecognized villages from their ancestral homes and their agricultural livelihoods and into overcrowded townships characterized by urbanization. Its tactics have included denial of basic services to the Bedouins and in many cases it has involved the violent and repeated destruction of their homes, villages, and agricultural lands.

 

Israel views its indigenous population as trespassers. Consider the statement by Ortal Tzabar, the spokesperson for the Israeli Land Authority. In an interview with IRIN News Service regarding the repeated destruction of Al-Araqib, a Bedouin village in the Naqab, Tzabar comments, “This case is not about demolitions; these people are criminals. This land has been deserted since 1950, when it was taken by Israel.”2

 

The forcible displacement of indigenous Palestinian Bedouins violates several human rights provisions, including the right to self determination (common art. 1 to ICCPR, CESCR), the principle of non-discrimination (see art 2 of ICCPR and ICESCR and art. 1 CERD); the right to leave a country and to return to one’s country (art. 12 ICCPR); the right to work (art. 6 CESCR); to education (art. 13 CESCR); and to adequate housing (art. 28 CESCR). Finally, the Plan amounts to ethnic cleansing deemed a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia.

 

We urge you to call upon Israel to refrain from its human rights violations, discrimination and plans to transfer the Palestinian Bedouin population of the Naqab. We also urge you to call upon members of the international community to pressure Israel to disavow its recommendations enumerated in the Prawer Plan in accordance with human rights norms and obligations.

 

Organizations endorsing the statement:

 

– BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

– Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA)

– The Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI) consisting of:

 

• YWCA-YMCA Joint Advocacy Initiative (JAI)

• Alternative Information Center (AIC)

• Alternative Tourism Group (ATG)

• Defense for Children-Palestine Section (DCI)

• Environmental Education Center (EEC)

• Golan for Development (GvD)

• Land Research Center-Jerusalem (LRC)

• Arab Center for Human Rights in the Golan Heights Al-MARSAD

• Union of Health Work Committees

• Methaq for Development

• Jerusalem Centre for Women (JCW)

• The East Jerusalem YMCA- Beit Sahour Branch

• Phoenix Center

 

– Cooperating Body of Palestinian Associations Operating in Lebanon/ Lebanon

– Popular Aid for Relief and Development/Lebanon

– Palestinian Refugee Executive Office

 

———————–

Notes:

 

1. The main recommendations of the Prawer Plan are that over half a million dunums of Palestinian Bedouin land be confiscated through a variety of methods and that special legal, policing and administrative mechanisms be established to facilitate and accelerate this process.

 

2. Israel: Opportunity Gulf between Bedouin in the Negev, IRIN (14 August 2011) available at http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93389.

 

  Palestinian Refugees and IDPs: Background

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