“When getting used to wickedness, blindness spreads and we no longer identify evil.” [item 3 Professor Nimrod Aloni]
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Dear Friends,
The 7 items below begin with finger shaking at Israel for plans to build an additional Jewish community in East Jerusalem. But Ban Ki-Moon’s criticism is useless. Until governments apply sanctions to Israel, boycott it, divest from it, Israel will continue to thumb its nose at the world.
Item 2 relates that Finland is to chair the first international conference on establishing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East! Why not in the whole world? Besides, who is going to convince Israel to rid itself of its nuclear weapons? I wish whoever it is much luck, but am skeptical.
Item 3, ‘Israel’s Ugly Jews,” is about moral decay in Israel. I agree with Professor Aloni that “One pays a high price for evil,” even though that price might not be immediately felt or recognized.. I’m not, however, very fond of separating Jews into evil and beautiful. Jews are no different from other peoples. I conceive of humane Jews, but humane persons exist in every society, just as do the inhumane, and the multitude of inbetweens.. In Israel the moral down-slide is, as Professor Aloni implies, exacerbated by the militarism in Israel, colonization, and in my opinion mostly by living in a society grounded on a single ethnicity (Jewish), which of itself encourages always seeing the ‘other’ as inferior.
Item 4, also on the immorality of Israeli society, and likewise sees a connection between what happens in the West Bank and in Israel itself.
Item 5 reports that ADL attempts to muzzle criticism of Israel on US campuses.
Item 6 speaks of the tribulations anticipated upon the release of 2 of the Palestinian prisoners, implying that most will face difficulty in returning to ‘normal’ following their release.
Item 6 is a link to an important video—important even for those of us who know the situation here. It is called ‘Dreams Deferred,’ and takes us through meetings with Palestinians and Israelis–people like Ruth Hiller, who came to Israel as ignorant and hopeful as I did so many years ago, but then later became one of the founders of New Profile. The video includes meetings with refusers, with members of the Bereaved Family Circle, and others. And it includes sections on resistance, anti-Semitism, nonviolence, fear, curfew, and other subjects. Well worth the 68 minutes of watching and hearing. Please distribute widely.
Thanks,
Dorothy
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1. Ynet,
October 15, 2011
International Pressure
UN: New e. Jerusalem construction plans ‘unacceptable’
Israel’s plan to build 2,600 housing units in Givat HaMatos detrimental to Quartet’s efforts to restart peace talks, UN chief says
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticized Israel on Friday over reports that it plans to build 2,600 more housing units in east Jerusalem, saying further construction activity there was “unacceptable.”
“The Secretary-General is deeply concerned at continued efforts to advance planning for new Israeli settlements in occupied east Jerusalem,” Ban’s press office said in a statement.
“Recent developments in this regard have been unacceptable, particularly as efforts are ongoing to resume (Israeli-Palestinian) negotiations, and run contrary to the Quartet’s call on the parties to refrain from provocations,” it said.
Reports that surfaced earlier this week said that Israel is planning to build the housing units in the new east Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat HaMatos, beyond the Green Line, angering Palestinians who want a halt to all such projects before they return to peace talks.
‘Construction must cease’
The Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators – the United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations – has urged Israel and the Palestinians to avoid provocative actions and urged them to resume stalled peace negotiations.
“The Secretary-General reiterates that settlement activity in east Jerusalem and the remainder of the West Bank is contrary to international law,” the UN statement said, adding such activity “must cease.”
The reports about a new housing plan come as the Palestinians attempt to secure UN recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with east Jerusalem as its capital, along with full membership in the United Nations.
The Palestinian UN bid has infuriated Israel, which says it is an attempt to delegitimize it. Israel’s ally the United States has said it was prepared to veto the Palestinian UN application, which is currently being assessed by a UN Security Council committee.
If the Palestinian application to join the United Nations comes to a vote in the full Security Council, the United States has the power to veto it due to its status as a permanent member of the 15-nation panel.
The Security Council committee is expected to report back to the full council next week about progress it has made assessing the Palestinian UN application.
Diplomats on the committee, which includes all council members, say privately that little progress has been made in assessing the Palestinian request to join the world body.
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2. Haaretz,
October 15, 2011
Finland to chair international conference on nuclear-free Mideast
Conference to be held in 2012, with the aim of a achieving a Middle East free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
Finland was appointed Friday to chair the first international conference next year on establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The United Nations, the United States, Russia and Britain selected Finland as the host country and the country’s foreign minister, Jaakko Laajava, as chairman of the conference.
The UN and those countries took the decision based on a recommendation adopted at last year’s review meeting on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). A WMD-free Middle East conference was first proposed in 1995 and the NPT talks last year decided that it should be convened for the first time in 2012.
But the low-key announcement of an important conference made at UN headquarters in New York draw some criticism.
Anne Penketh, program director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) in Washington, said the announcement amounted to “burying good news” because it had taken so long to decide on the conference.
“It’s the first concrete step since the decision to convene a conference was taken at the end of the NPT review conference, in May last year, so it should be welcomed,” Penketh said. “It’s a positive sign that things are moving along, albeit too slowly.”
She said Finland will try to bring Israel and Iran to the conference. Israel, which is alleged to have a nuclear arsenal but has not admitted to possessing the weapons, is not an NPT member.
Iran signed the NPT and has denied it possesses nuclear weapons despite a widespread belief by western nations that is attempting to develop them.
A specific date for the conference has not been set.
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3. Ynet,
October 14, 2011
Moral Decay
Muslim cemetery desecrated in ‘price tag’ act Photo: Ben Kelmer
Israel’s ugly Jews
Op-ed: Religious, nationalistic thuggery becomes trademark of indifferent Israeli society
A well-known truism in the culture of morality, both the Jewish and global, is that those who mistreat others, resort to wicked gossip, lie, cheat, rob, humiliate and abuse, end up hurting not only their victims but also themselves: They became corrupt and rot on the inside, their moral fabric decays, and their dreadful reputation – a result of their flawed humanity – spreads far and wide.
Whether we believe in full retribution in the afterlife or in the constancy of “Karma”, or whether we are rationalistic and atheistic, we know that at the end of the day wickedness only gives rise to wickedness, and that moral ugliness comes with a high price.
Speaking Out
I am addressing these issues here and now especially given the “price tag” phenomenon displayed by morally corrupt Jews, but also to criticize the indifferent majority in general and our leaders in particular, who reconcile themselves with their silence to the injustices of our moral ugliness and the high prices we all pay for it.
We are seeing dozens of cases of violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians: Olive groves are being uprooted, property is being vandalized, and mosques and cemeteries are being desecrated. Numerous such acts are being perpetrated against an innocent, helpless public (this is the logic of the “price tag” policy) yet the state is barely investigating them and rarely brings the culprits to justice.
Recently, a mosque was torched in Tuba Zangaria, tombstones were vandalized at Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa, and leftist and human rights protestors were savagely attacked – yet the police are complacent and remain “on the fence.” On the other hand, in the angry protest held by victims of the mosque arson, the police showed great diligence and disproportional violence against demonstrators, as if they were not Israeli citizens, but rather, rioters and enemies in occupied lands.
Blindness spreads
Talking of ugly Jews is only possible and significant when talking mostly of beautiful Jews. Recently I spoke with a human rights activist from South Africa who shared with me his great appreciation to Jews, who constituted a majority in the struggle for the equality of blacks and democracy. Similarly, American Jews constituted a significant factor, much beyond their relative numbers, in the fight for social justice, equality between genders, and equal status for African-Americans.
We Jews justifiably take pride in our moral tradition, which repeatedly emphasizes that we shall treat the non-Jews amongst us equally and that we do everything we can to ensure that the honor and image of any person will not be undermined because of their status or weakness, certainly in respect to the weakest members of society – foreigners, orphans and widows.
This is morally, principally proper and it also adheres to the principles of mutuality and utilitarianism: After all, we were slaves in Egypt, and also persecuted and oppressed by many nations of the world.
These days we would do well to learn something from two moral champions, in other nations, and the way they coped with difficult, terrible days. The French Albert Camus, who was said to be Europe’s conscience during its dark days, and urged us not to despair or cave in to the complexities of reality and make do with sitting on the fence, but rather, choose justice in order to remain faithful to man and to the world.
Similarly, some years later, Martin Luther King, from his jail cell in Birmingham, declared that “segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality” and that we must oppose, using non-violent means, any regime whose policy contradicts universal moral laws.
One pays a high price for evil: Perpetuating the occupation, accepting the reality of apartheid, religious and nationalistic thuggery, contempt for those who demand fraternity and compassion, the trampling of human rights and seclusion of those who are different, patronizing others, the abuse of foreign workers, turning our back to the poor, discriminating against minorities and violently repressing the objectors have become the trademarks of current-day Israel.
There is apparently no divine or natural law that guarantees that the righteous would live well while the wicked suffer, yet us human beings and civilized beings are familiar with many examples and have great understanding of the terrible price of human ugliness. When getting used to wickedness, blindness spreads and we no longer identify evil. It is much harder to regain our senses and shun it. Yet it’s appropriate and better and possible to be beautiful Jews.
Professor Nimrod Aloni heads the Institute for Educational Thought at the seminar Hakibbutzim Teachers College
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4. Haaretz ,
October 14, 2011
We need help
Racism, violence, murder: things here are going from bad to worse, and it’s not hard to spot the link.
I wanted to write about four youths, two of them minors, who go out to a pub on Rosh Hashanah and, when they leave, top off their evening by allegedly beating to death a homeless person and hurting another homeless man who was fortunate enough to get away. I wanted to say that there just can’t be a connection between the surging violence, the total disrespect for the lives of those who don’t appear to belong – either because of the color of their skin, their religious faith or their economic situation, the complete indifference that young thugs show for the lives of those who look different from them – and the “price tag” operations carried out by settlers (and I hereby declare that I have no wish to come and spend a few days in a settlement to see just how wonderful and peace-loving its residents are ). The distorted justification that “price tag” operations and ordinary acts of humiliation committed by IDF soldiers and settlers toward others who do not fit into those groups, can supply to hotheaded and poorly taught teenagers is obvious. By their very nature, “price tag” operations are not much different than Ku Klux Klan actions in the United States – that is, violent acts motivated by a racist worldview.
It’s impossible to ignore that the level of violence, not just the quantity but the severity of the acts, has increased steeply among Israeli youth in recent years. Trivial matters culminate in stabbings, the explanation given for most of them being drunkenness. Teen alcoholism has also been on the rise lately. Nevertheless, in order to beat someone to death, even if the victim is an older homeless person whose rundown living conditions may make him weak, it takes a lot of blows, meted out one after the other, and the only thing that can explain the determination and persistence shown by those alleged four youths is pure hatred for someone who is just different than them.
In this they are no different from other people. People are afraid of what’s different from them. This fear often turns into racism, and the racist does not view someone who’s different from him as a potential equal.
Before the movie came out, I’d read the book “The Help,” a slightly sweet novel about relations between black maids and their white women bosses in Mississippi in the Sixties, when racial segregation was at its height. This book is important because it deals with an extraordinary period, when the bastards changed the rules and the racial laws enshrining the blacks’ total inferiority were overturned. But in the American South, many were still used to viewing blacks as slaves and treating them as inferior human beings with hardly any rights.
This book is interesting because the white mistresses, aside from one, are all very reasonable women, yet they are nonetheless accustomed to ignoring the blacks as full human beings with feelings, personal histories, desires and rights. They continue to see them as a race of service-givers, an underclass that’s somewhere between human and machine, with certain general traits. “The Negroes drink a lot” and “they’re lazy,” say the perfect Mississippi housewives. The worst manifestation of racism is how it makes human beings nonhuman. In the next stage, once we’ve made them nonhuman, we can do anything we want to them.
This is what happens to settlers who set out on “price tag” operations, and to settler girls who just like to overturn Palestinian stalls in the market, or to spit at and curse Palestinians – behavior that isn’t exactly in keeping with the Jews’ laws of modesty.
The fine women of Mississippi also close their eyes to the great violence that is done, supposedly for their protection, by their husbands toward the black men who, according to the common white fantasy, only want to rape their white wives. (This fantasy has undergone a local adaptation, with all kinds of extreme right-wing Jews asserting that women leftists feel an unusually strong sexual attraction to Arab men. “Nu, if you’re the alternative,” I once said to one hothead who directed this sort of remark to me during a shift with the Women in Black, “then is it any wonder that we prefer Arabs?” In response, he tossed a nearly-full Coke can at me. )
In a country like ours, whose inhabitants are highly sensitive in discerning that which is different from them, in which white Jewish superiority is practically self-evident, in which veteran Israelis think themselves superior to the immigrants from Russia, in which the Ethiopians are considered inferior to the Russians, in which Arab Israelis are worth more than Palestinians but a lot less than Jewish Israelis, it is no great surprise to find youths who have a home deciding that someone without one is worth a lot less than they are. Although one cringes to think what kind of homes those four murderous youths came from.
If police officers are not permitted to shoot at Jewish protesters, regardless of the severity of their violence, but are permitted to shoot to kill at Arab Israeli protesters in Wadi Ara, as happened 10 years ago; if settlers from Anatot (some of them policemen ) have no problem violating the sanctity of the holiday in order to go beat up Palestinians from Anata, and especially the peace activists who came to their aid because the peace activists are leftists – i.e., just one rung above the Palestinians; if the punishment for someone who killed an Arab will always be less than the punishment for an Arab who killed a Jew; if certain people are allowed to do as they please because they belong to a group that holds itself as above all others, and others are not allowed to do anything because they are single/poor/black/non-Jewish or homeless, perhaps it is possible to understand – though absolutely not to forgive – how it happens that while some settlers are out celebrating the holiday with a mini-pogrom, four urban youths are out getting their kicks by killing a homeless man.
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5. Al Jazeera
15 Oct 2011 14:30
Israel lobby empowers Palestinian solidarity
The ADL report targets pro-Palestinian student groups and warns college presidents they could lose funding for protests.
Police have cracked down on pro-Palestinian students on US campuses such as UC Irvine [GALLO/GETTY]
The Anti-Defamation League is at it again.
On Wednesday, October 13, the ADL issued its latest report on student activism, trying this time to reframe all work in support of Palestinian human rights as being “anti-Israel”.
The report, “Emerging Anti-Israel Trends and Tactics on Campus”, targets Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a national, grassroots nonprofit based near Chicago. Released a few days before the first national SJP conference at Columbia University in New York was set to take place, it accuses SJP chapters of fomenting “anti-Israel” programming on their respective campuses, while charging AMP facilitates the growth and development of these students’ groups. All of this combines to create an atmosphere in which Jewish students feel “insecure and unsafe”, the ADL claims.
It is important to note that SJPs are autonomous units and completely independent of AMP. Though our chairman, Berkeley professor Dr Hatem Bazian co-founded the first chapter in 1992, the student groups are not part of AMP. We offer SJPs the same help we offer others planning events about Palestine: Free materials, speakers and training.
“The ADL … equates working for Palestinian rights with delegitimising Israel.”
The ADL’s 12-page report and subsequent 57-page book “Fighting Back: A Handbook for Responding to Anti-Israel Campaigns on College and University Campuses” equates working for Palestinian rights with “delegitimising Israel”.
The ADL is trying to put activists on the defensive by shifting the argument away from Israel’s violation of international law and human rights to whether we do or do not support the state of Israel.
As media director for AMP, I conducted months-long research for an educational booklet on the ADL. What I found belies the organisation’s claim that it works to protect civil rights for all.
ADL and US security
It is true that some ADL work is positive and directly benefits society. But over the years, the organisation that was formed to fight anti-Semitism has morphed into an agency that advocates first and foremost for Israel by lobbying Congress and the media and by using intimidation and smear tactics to stifle any meaningful discourse critical of Israeli policies.
It also has a huge influence on security in this country and how law enforcement officials potentially view Arabs and Muslims by training hundreds of US police officers ever year. At least 44,000 law enforcement officers receive regular bulletins and newsletters from the ADL.
Probably most stigmatising, the ADL was caught spying on nearly 2,000 US citizens and organisations in 1993 when federal agents raided its West Coast offices and found hundreds of confidential files – many of them obtained illegally.
The ADL’s history of domestic espionage dates back to the 1930s and is still ongoing. As recently as its 2009 annual report, the ADL lauds itself on its “vast data collection” on groups and individuals with whom it does not agree.
According to its 2010 990 IRS tax form, the ADL spent nearly half a million dollars on direct lobbying in 2009. And with an annual salary and benefits package of nearly $700,000, ADL Director Abraham Foxman may have a vested interest in finding anti-Semitism where none exists, namely in student activism that advocates for Palestinian human rights.
The ADL’s report comes amid the larger context of increasing incidents of Zionist attacks on academic freedom on America’s campuses and the criminalisation of pro-Palestinian activism.
“An Israeli organisation … sent letters to hundreds of university presidents warning them they could lose federal funding if they allow pro-Palestinian events on campus.”
Earlier this year, the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights began investigating charges of anti-Semitism at two or more universities, charges made possible by the October 2010 reinterpretation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The ADL and other Zionist organisations had lobbied for this reinterpretation for seven years. If found in violation, the universities could lose their federal funding, a precedent that would have a chilling impact on Palestinian human rights advocacy on campuses across the country.
At the start of the academic year, an Israeli organisation, Shurat HaDin, sent letters to hundreds of university presidents warning them they could lose federal funding if they allow pro-Palestinian events on campus.
In September, ten California students were found guilty on misdemeanour charges of disrupting a public meeting for their role in protesting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren; and several pro-Palestinian activists were subpoenaed by the US Justice Department last year. They have refused to appear before a grand jury that is secretly investigating such activism.
Finally, the Jewish Federation of North America will be discussing its campus outreach initiative – named the Israel Action Network – in a special session with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu during its annual conference in November. The Israel Action Network is an off-shoot of the Israeli Advocacy Initiative, a program by the Federation and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs that seeks to garner support for maintaining the occupation by establishing relationships in the US government and also with other faith communalities through “interfaith cooperation”.
These are just a few examples that illustrate how difficult it has become to work in Palestinian advocacy in the United States.
But instead of demoralising us, attacks such as the ADL’s deepen our commitment for peace and strengthen our resolve for justice in Palestine – because it lets us know we’re making a difference. The movement for justice in Palestine is growing louder every day and that’s why Zionists who want to maintain the occupation are trying everything to silence it.
The ADL was once a highly respected organisation. But, sadly, today it has lost most of its credibility. The organisation can no longer be taken seriously as a protector of rights when, in its quest to support the occupation, it turns a blind eye to Israel’s rampant violations of international law and its human rights abuses of Palestinians and then vilifies anyone working to right those injustices.
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6. Independent,,
15 October 2011
Freedom for Palestine’s sons comes at a price
The 1,027 prisoners due to be freed in an Israeli swap deal face an uncertain future
The chairs are already laid out for the many guests who will come through his door in the next few days in Ras al-Amud, a suburb of East Jerusalem, all of them bearing messages of congratulation.
All that is missing is the guest of honour. Qasem’s son, Fouad al-Razem, will be released from an Israeli jail in a matter of days after 31 years behind bars, but he will be deported straight to Gaza, more inaccessible for most Palestinians these days than a foreign country.
“I feel the whole world is too small for me, such is my happiness,” beams Qasem, 85, a large portrait of his son at his feet. “But my happiness is incomplete, because he will be released in Gaza.”
The al-Razem family found out a day ago that Fouad, 54, was in the first tranche of a total of 1,027 prisoners to be swapped for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal captured by Palestinian militants five years ago and spirited into Gaza. Hamas, the Islamist rulers of the besieged enclave, published the names of the first 470 prisoners on Thursday.
Among those to be freed are Palestinians serving multiple life sentences for some of the most notorious attacks on Israeli soil, a fact that has spurred some Israelis to question angrily the price paid by the Jewish State for the freedom of a single soldier. Some 5,000 Palestinians will remain in Israeli jails, according to Hamas.
Aged 23 at the time of his arrest, Fouad was a member of Islamic Jihad, a militant group waging armed resistance against Israel. He pleaded guilty to killing two Israeli soldiers in separate incidents in the late 1970s. His family, though, is reluctant to condemn his actions, his father insisting that he did not know his son, an imam in the local mosque, was moving in radicalised circles. But they all concur that Israel only understands the language of force.
“We’ve been in negotiations [with Israel] for a very long time. And what are the results?” asks Fouad’s older sister Nabila Al-Razem, 57. “The expansion of settlements [in the West Bank], the separation wall, and land confiscations… We’ll continue this [capturing Israeli soldiers] to liberate our prisoners.”
The chances of their brother returning to normality, they fear, are slim. “If he was released here, he might lead a normal life,” his older brother, Samir, says. “But if he is released to Gaza, the likelihood of him returning to Islamic Jihad is high.”
Less than 20 miles away in the Al-A’mari refugee camp on the outskirts of Ramallah, the mood is sombre. In cramped quarters at the head of a narrow alley, the brothers of Suleiman Abu Tur, jailed already for 21 years, are also waiting for the return of their sibling, whom they have each only seen once or twice in the intervening years.
Mingled with joy at his inclusion on the list, though, is a sense of sadness because neither Suleiman’s mother nor father lived to see him freed. “It was my mother’s wish to see him before her death,” says Samih Abu Tur, 34, his younger brother. “For 10 years [until her death], she was not allowed to see him. It was her only wish.”
Suleiman’s misfortune was to hail from one of the poorest refugee camps in the West Bank. During the first intifada, much less violent than the second intifada more than a decade later, its residents were subject to almost constant curfew, camp closures and raids on their homes in response to stone-throwing. It was during one such raid that Suleiman was dragged out of his house by Israeli soldiers and beaten up so badly that he could only crawl back home.
It was after that, Samih says, that he stabbed and wounded three soldiers, earning him three life terms in an Israeli jail, reduced on appeal to 24 years. So difficult was it to contact him in prison, his brothers claim, that it was only through a newspaper that Suleiman learnt of his mother’s death four years ago.
“He will be a stranger,” says Samih, shrugging helplessly when asked where his brother will sleep in the already crowded four-bedroom house. “Most of our neighbours have left, and his parents won’t be here. I don’t know how he will adapt.”
