The 10 items below are but a small number of items that seemed worth sending today. I regret the omissions, but understand that there is just so much time in a day and so much that one can absorb when reading. So, 10 it is (item #5 is only a few lines).
Items 1 and 2 seem to me to complement one another. Item 1 relates that “Young Israelis move to Berlin in droves,” and item 2 that “Israel is aging,” i.e., 10 % of its population is over 65. Moreover the percentage is expected to grow to 20% in 20 years. Well, considering that item 1 speaks only of Berlin, while emigration may well be also to numerous other countries, and considering that Israel’s population is aging, perhaps in 10 years (if wars don’t kill more) there won’t be a problem. The Jews will have moved elsewhere except for the aged and aging.
Item 3 suggests that living in a country for Jews increases racism, or perhaps it’s just fear. One problem is that most Israeli Jews do not know Arabs and vice versa. Too bad. But I recall that in the U.S. before the days of the civil rights movement, that many white people were afraid of Afro Americans. A little education and knowing one another could eradicate most of the fear. But that’s not what Israel’s leaders want.
Item 4 reveals that even though Israel has removed some checkpoints, there is still no real freedom of movement for Palestinians. Imagine yourself having to get up at 3 AM to be at work at 8 AM, not because you live many miles from work, but because you had to wait at the checkpoint.
Item 5 shows that checkpoints or not, Palestinians without permits do manage to get into Israel. Some are caught, but not at a checkpoint or in the West Bank but in Israel. And imagine how many are not caught!!!
Item 6 relates that Netanyahu wants Israeli troops on the Palestinian border (if and when there will be a Palestinian State). How many countries would allow a military force of another country (except for UN forces) to guard its borders?
Items 7 and 8 show how readily Palestinians pay with their lives because Israeli security forces have easy fingers on the trigger.
Item 9 is a case of Civil Disobedience, where Israeli women took Palestinian women to the beach in Israel. They apparently got into Israel with no difficulty, notwithstanding lacking permits.
Item 10 would not be worth the paper it’s written on were it not for the fallacious arguments that it uses. The gentleman (the Israeli Consul General Jacob Dayan) argues against a single state. But his 2 reasons are wholly unintelligent.
The first of these is that Israeli Jews and Palestinians are totally different people having nothing in common. Had he said that Ashkenazi Jews have nothing in common with Palestinians, it might have made more sense, but even then he would be wrong. I’m Ashkenazi but have quite a number of very close Palestinian friends. And I’m not the only one. But then people like myself don’t select friends by nationality, ethnicity, or religion. Moreover, the fact that I’m Jewish does not mean that I have anything in common with many a Jew. More outstanding is the fact that Jews lived in Arab countries (and there are those who still do), and did have much culture in common with non-Jews in those countries. Besides, who said that a single state has to be restricted to 2 peoples? It should not be! Not a binational state but a state for all its citizens.
The 2nd point is that the gentleman uses Lebanon as an example of where 2 peoples don’t manage to coexist. But there are so many cases to the contrary. The United States, for instance, also underwent civil war, but all the peoples whose origins are from many diverse countries eventually became a nation. And besides, although things are far from perfect in our day, and although racism still exists and especially Islamophobia is rife, peoples of different origins, religions, etc do manage to live together in most of the Western world (to which Israel aches to belong) So if Israel wants to be Western, then it should do as its supposed compatriots do.
I personally would love to see a single state here, where one did not have to engage in civil disobedience to go to the beach, where one could choose to live wherever he/she wanted, where one’s friends could come to another’s house to visit without permits, where one could get to a hospital or doctor when needed without having to spend hours or days trying to get a permit, where the only remnants of checkpoints were in history books.
I’m not exactly an optimist, but I do still have hope.
All the best,
Dorothy
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1.[forwarded by David McReynolds
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010
Subject: [DemocraticLeft] Young Israelis moving to Berlin in droves
Young Israelis moving to Berlin in droves
City from which Hitler unleashed genocide of six million Jews now attracting small but growing community of Jews from Israel for whom it embodies freedom, tolerance, anything-goes spirit
Nirit Bialer, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, welcomes listeners in
Hebrew to a one-hour radio show of music, talk and interviews. The setting
isn’t her native Israel but a radio station in the heart of the German
capital – and hundreds of Israeli Berliners are tuning in.
The city from which Hitler unleashed the genocide of 6 million Jews is now attracting a small but growing community of Jews from Israel for whom it embodies freedom, tolerance, and an anything-goes spirit.
“Berlin has become a real magnet for Israelis – everybody wants to move
here,” said Bialer, 32, whose Friday noon “Kol Berlin,” Hebrew for “the
voice of Berlin,” started three years ago and is something of an institution
for young Israelis in Berlin.
Nobody knows exactly how many Israelis have moved here in recent years;
unofficial estimates suggest 9,000 to 15,000 – far fewer than the 120,000
Jews who lived in Berlin before the Nazis came to power in 1933.
But their presence is a powerful symbol of generational change. Years ago,
Israelis viewed emigration from their country as a betrayal of the Zionist
cause, and moving to Germany was reviled as the worst betrayal of all.
Many wouldn’t set foot in Germany even as tourists. Today, Israelis make up the second-largest group of non-European tourists coming to Berlin, after Americans. The streets of Tel Aviv feature billboards featuring Berlin’s landmark Brandenburg Gate as a tourist attraction.
The Israelis who come to stay are looking to work, study, party and make
art, and don’t seem to care much about the Nazi past. They arrive on student visas, overstay tourist permits or have German or other European ancestry that entitles them to citizenship. Many start families with German partners, far from the tensions of the Middle East.
“I love Israel, but I just couldn’t live there anymore – it’s like a small
village and so militaristic,” explained Lea Fabrikant, a photography student
who arrived two years ago.
“Most of all, I needed freedom and space, and I found it here.”
Fabrikant, 26, said she lived through the many suicide bombings in
Jerusalem, her home town, during the 1990s, and loves Berlin’s tranquility,
relaxed spirit and affordability for students and artists.
Germany’s past, she said, “doesn’t affect me at all.”
New Jewish community
On the other hand, Asaf Leshem, a 36-year-old travel guide, said his move
three years ago had much to do with his family’s past in Germany.
He has walked through the Schoeneberg neighborhood where his grandfather lived as a child before emigrating in 1938, and visited the family plot at the Jewish cemetery in Weissensee.
Leshem thinks his grandfather, were he alive, would have supported his
decision.
“The Nazis ruled Germany for 12 years and many German Jews felt like the Nazis abducted the country from them,” Leshem said. “They also had good memories, especially from their childhood in Germany, how they used to go on trips to the Baltic Sea or go for a swim in Berlin’s Grunewald forest.”
Leshem grew up in Israel but says he feels a bit German himself and
appreciates German culture.
For those who miss the flavors of home there are Israeli delicatessens,
bakeries, bars and child care groups. Berlin is friendly to gays, and the
Israelis among them throw a monthly party, called “Meshuggah” – Yiddish for “crazy.”
Udi Cohen, 32, wandered around the US and Europe for years before settling in Berlin. He opened “Luigi Zuckermann,” a bistro in Berlin’s Mitte district where he sells sandwiches and salads with an Israeli twist.
“In Israel, I couldn’t function, I couldn’t find a job, but here I’m fine
and enjoy the vibe and energy of the city,” he said.
Gal Bar-Adon, 27, learned trombone in Berlin and produces dancefloor music that he said is played in clubs across the city and beyond. “Israel is
simply too small,” he said. “There’s not enough of an audience for my kind
of music.”
Bialer said that despite Berlin’s attraction, living here also means coming
to terms with Germany’s past. She notices that sustained conversation with
Germans inevitably shifts to the Nazi era.
“It can be exhausting, it can be liberating – but it is a sure thing that at
some point we will talk about the Holocaust,” she said.
When the grandchildren of the victims and of the perpetrators meet for the
first time, the experience can be sensitive and guilt-ridden.
Living here has also made Bialer more aware of her Jewishness.
“In Israel you don’t think about what it means to be Jewish because
everybody is celebrating Shabbat or the Rosh Hashana” (Sabbath and Jewish New Year), she said. “In Germany, you suddenly realize who you are as a Jew and you’re different from everybody else around you.”
In the end, Bailer said, an Israeli influx could start to fill the void left
by the Holocaust.
“I think there’s something growing here: A new Jewish community in Berlin.”
_________________________________
2. Ynet Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Israel is aging
New data show some 742,000 citizens aged 65 or above – figure expected to double within 20 years. Most in age group satisfied with life
One in ten Israeli citizens is over the age of 65, according to data released Tuesday by the Central Bureau of Statistics to mark the International Day of Older Persons which will begin next month.
The data show that some 742,000 people aged 65 and above live in Israel. Since 1995, the percentage of this age group has remained stable, but according to forecasts up until 2030, their numbers are likely to double within the next 20 years, reaching some 14% of the population.
Of those aged 65 and above, some 89% are Jewish, compared to 76% in the general population; 8% are Arab compared to 20% in the general population; and 3% “others”.
Women, the data show, live longer than men. Nearly 57% of this age group are women, and the percentage of women in the general population increases with age. Women comprise some 62% of people aged 85 and above.
Some 57% of people aged 65 and above are married, about one third widowed. The percentage of those widowed increases with age: Some 55.2% among those aged 80 and above are widowed, with just 37.4% married. Among men aged 65 and above, some 77.5% are married, and among women of this age group nearly half (45.6%) are widowed.
Nearly half of this age group lives in Tel Aviv and the surrounding area. The West Bank has the lowest percentage of people from this age group. Some 94% of this age group lives in an urban environment.
Most people aged 65 and above report being satisfied with life (77%). However, a relatively low percentage from this age group believes life will be better in the coming years (11% compared to 54% among those aged 20-64). Nearly two thirds (64%) are satisfied with their financial situation, compared with just 55% among those aged 20-64.
The percentage of those able to cover monthly expenses such as food, electricity and telephone bills is higher among the older population: 74% of those aged 65 and above are able to cover expenses compared with 63% in the rest of the population.
===========================================
3. Haaretz,
September 22, 2010
Jerusalem mall: Where Arabs and Jews shop together
Jerusalem’s shopping centers are where Israelis and Palestinians are most likely to mix, a new report finds, but neither are pleased
The boundary between East and West in the capital is not as clear-cut as it once was. Increasing numbers of Palestinians from East Jerusalem are shopping and spending leisure time in the western part of town.
New research also reports that having Arabs in shopping malls upsets many Jews.
The research, soon to be published by the Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies, was carried out by Marik Shtern, the son of the late MK Yuri Shtern. He did the research for Prof. Shlomo Hasson, studying integration in three locations: Malha Mall, the Alrov (Mamilla ) Mall and the Old City markets.
Gideon Avrahami, Malha’s director, said 1,000 to 1,200 Palestinians come to the mall on any given day – about 3 percent of all visitors. But on Muslim holidays and Sundays, the figure rises to 25 percent.
Shtern said that 35 percent of the Jewish shoppers he interviewed at Malha expressed negative opinions about Arabs there. “If I would go to them, they’d butcher me,” one woman said. One man said the mall had “gone down hill” with the Arabs there. Some said the Arab presence didn’t bother them. Only one interviewee, a midwife from the Ramat Sharett neighborhood, said something positive: “It’s excellent. They don’t have a mall so they enjoy themselves here.”
Shtern said lower middle-class Arab shoppers come to the mall for free cultural events and the upper middle-class come for products they cannot find in East Jerusalem or the West Bank.
Arab shoppers said the security checks at the entrances were an obstacle.
The three-year-old Mamilla Mall is probably the capital’s most cosmopolitan shopping area, where Jews, Muslims, and tourists of all faiths mix in almost equal numbers. Unlike Malha, many shop workers are Palestinian, which heightens the sense coexistence. “This is a floating balloon, unconnected to anything,” a cafe worker told Shtern.
Israeli visitors seem to perceive the place as less “Jewish”; only 22 percent of those interviewed expressed a negative opinion about the presence of Arab shoppers. As for Old City markets, Shtern concludes Jews and Arabs perceive the area as an arena of conflict. Many Jews, asked whether they felt safe there, responded with an ideological declaration like “I feel safe everywhere in the Land of Israel. But they also said the presence of Arabs negatively affected their sense of safety.
Palestinians, too, felt insecure. “I’m afraid of groups of Israelis, I’m elderly and can’t speak Hebrew,” one Christian woman said. Others said armed Israelis there bothered them.
Shtern said Arabs came to West Jerusalem to shop and for leisure time (and to a lesser extent, as residents, mainly in the northern neighborhoods ) from a lack of services in East Jerusalem. “The policy of aggressiveness and inequality is pushing is toward a binational reality,” he said.
===========================
“At all of the crossings, weapons and explosives have been found on Palestinians seeking to enter Israel who were carrying documentation that would have let them through” [Jerusalem police spokesperson, below]
Would have to be a crazy or an idiot to try to get through a checkpoint with ‘weapons and explosives’! There are many easier and smarter ways to get into Israel if one wants to.
Dorothy
4. Haaretz,
September 22, 2010
MESS Report / Palestinians forced to claw their way to building Israel’s dream homes
Some arrive before 3 A.M. so that they can make it to work on time and earn NIS 200 a day.
In Bethlehem, several hundred meters from the separation fence, a vague commotion is audible. Moving closer to the fence, you can see the full, unpleasant scene.
It’s 4 A.M. and underneath the fence, hundreds of people are cramming into a corridor bounded by iron bars. The corridor is several hundred meters long and a meter and a half wide.
Young men in their 20s push their way next to others over 60. They yell, argue, hit and do whatever else they need to in order to get through the crossing as quickly as possible. Almost all work legally in Israel, building Israelis’ dream homes.
The rumble starts whenever someone starts pushing. The workers grasp the bars, trying not to be trampled and to keep their place in line.
Nowhere does the West Bank’s economic development seem further away than here, with the thousands of people desperate to cross into Israel to find work.
They come from Bethlehem, Hebron and the villages between. Some arrive before 3 A.M. so that they can make it to work on time. Taxis come one after the other to drop off workers, then return to pick up more.
On the eastern side of the road are stands selling hummus, cheese, falafel, coffee and cigarettes. Most of the products are Israeli-made.
Musa Abu Khamis waits at the far end of the corridor. “They let 10 in every time, then close the gate for a few minutes,” he says. Several bystanders say the wait can be three or four hours.
A nearby corridor set up by the Civil Administration allows women, the elderly and “humanitarian cases” to pass through more quickly.
Abu Khamis says he makes NIS 200 for a day’s work in construction, and is docked NIS 50 for every hour he arrives late. The taxi to the construction site in the upscale West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot costs him another NIS 30.
‘We’re like animals’
“What law in the world allows someone to leave home at 3 A.M. to get to work at 8? We’re standing here like animals,” says one man from Bethlehem.
Around 5 A.M., the mass of people starts to move. The gate is opened. One man displays his blood-stained T-shirt. “It happened at the beginning of the line,” he says. “They pushed the man next to me with a piece of metal. He bled on me.”
A little after 6 A.M., the tension in the corridor has diminished, and by 6:30 it’s virtually empty. Today, the gate will be closed for security reasons over the Sukkot holiday. Next week, the same disturbing scene will return.
Police: No one waits three hours
A statement from the Jerusalem District Police said, “The workers undergo a comprehensive, time-consuming security examination as part of an effort to thwart terror attacks. The inspection is performed with maximum consideration of the individuals passing through. At all of the crossings, weapons and explosives have been found on Palestinians seeking to enter Israel who were carrying documentation that would have let them through.
“We try to reduce the amount of time the inspection takes as much as possible, and no Palestinian worker is forced to wait three hours at the crossing,” the statement said.
“That said, the police do not intend to make any compromises in their security checks, as human lives are at stake.”
============================
[as this item shows, Palestinians without permits do get into Israel and are sometimes caught—not at a checkpoint but in Israel!]
5. Ynet Breaking News Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Ten Palestinians illegally in Israel caught near Netanya
Published: 09.22.10/ Israel News
share
Police arrested ten Palestinians aged 15-17 who were illegally in Israel. They were caught in a private vehicle on Highway 57, near Netanya, after the driver stopped because of a roadblock and fled. (Raanan Ben-Zur.
=================================
6. The Independent,
September 21, 2010
Netanyahu wants Israeli troops on Palestinian border
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel wants to keep its troops on the eastern border of a future Palestinian state.
Palestinians reject the idea and have proposed an international force along the West Bank’s border with Jordan as part of a peace deal.
Mr Netanyahu told US Jewish leaders in a conference call yesterday that “the only force that can be relied on to defend the Jewish people is the Israeli Defence Force”.
The premier said an international force cannot ensure Israel’s security. He fears Palestinian militants will attack Israel from within a Palestinian state if Israeli troops are withdrawn from the West Bank-Jordan border.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas maintains that an Israeli troop presence would infringe upon Palestinian sovereignty.
===================================
7. Guardian Wednesday 22 September 2010 12.26 BST
An Israeli security guard shot dead a Palestinian man this morning during clashes in a contested East Jerusalem neighbourhood.
Israeli construction in the middle of Palestinian residential areas in Silwan has caused tensions in the area.
Another Palestinian man was critically injured in the incident near a Jewish settlement in the Silwan district, the scene of frequent tensions over the presence of settlers and over municipal plans to destroy Palestinian homes to build a tourist park.
Israeli police say the guard fired shots in the air after his car was blocked and stoned by dozens of Palestinians. However, residents say that the two Palestinian men were taxi drivers on their way to or from work when they were shot by the guard.
Community leaders say that they had warned police of the dangers of allowing armed, private security contractors to patrol the streets of Silwan on behalf of Jewish settlers. Police are questioning the guard while a postmortem is carried out on Samer Sirhan, a 32-year-old father of five.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, in a move not recognised by the international community. Earlier this year, the Jerusalem municipality approved a plan to destroy 22 Palestinian homes in Silwan – a mainly Palestinian neighbourhood of some 45,000 residents close to the Old City walls – to make way for an archaeological park.
Hardline Jewish settlers refer to the heavily guarded Silwan as City of David and have in recent years been increasing their presence in the neighbourhood.
Today, tensions are running high. Tear gas and rubber bullets were used by Israeli forces to disperse angry demonstrators hurling rocks at police. Riots broke out in the area in August over Jewish settlers using a pathway alongside a neighbourhood mosque. Around 300 settlers are thought to now live in the area.
The Middle East quartet has again urged Israel to extend its partial freeze of Jewish settlements construction, which expires in days.
The quartet, which comprises the US, Britain, Russian and the EU, issued a statement, saying it “noted that the commendable Israeli settlement moratorium instituted last November has had a positive impact and urged its continuation.”
==========================
8. “Iyad Abu Shilbaya’s wife, Latifa, who was visiting relatives on the night of the raid, said that the killing of her husband was completely unexpected, because he had not behaved like a wanted man on the run. ‘He was sleeping at home,’ she said. ‘They could have shot him in the leg and arrested him.’” [below ]
Ah, but why shoot in the leg when you want to kill? There have been so many occasions when a given military shooting begs for an answer to ‘why did you shoot at all, and if you had to, why didn’t you shoot him/her in the leg or arm or other part of the body less likely to be lethal?’ If any other country had so easy a finger on the trigger respecting Jews, there would be a huge outcry. But where is the world when these acts are perpetrated on Palestinians?
————————
Washington Post Tuesday,
September 21, 2010
Killing of Hamas operative raises questions about conduct of elite Israeli units in pursuing militants
IN NUR SHAMS REFUGEE CAMP, WEST BANK Moving quietly through the alleys of this ramshackle neighborhood, the Israeli soldiers forced their way into Iyad Abu Shilbaya’s home in the early morning hours under cover of darkness.
A Hamas operative who had been detained repeatedly by the Palestinian Authority and imprisoned for two years by Israel, Abu Shilbaya was one of more tean a dozen people whose homes were raided during a sweep of arrests in the Nur Shams camp outside the town of Tulkarm on Friday.
But Abu Shilbaya was not arrested. In an encounter in his bedroom, the details of which remain murky, he was fatally shot at close range, prompting vows of revenge by Hamas and condemnation from the Palestinian Authority, which said the killing “undermines the credibility” of recently renewed negotiations with Israel.
The talks, which have broached core issues in dispute, have been accompanied by stepped-up violence from Palestinian militants opposed to the negotiations, including the fatal shooting of four Jewish settlers in the West Bank last month in an attack claimed by Hamas and rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
The killing of Abu Shilbaya came at a time of improved cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian security forces, but it was a reminder that Israeli troops still operate in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and it raised fresh questions about the conduct of elite Israeli units when pursuing militants in the West Bank.
Following classified rules of engagement, the units who carry out the most risky arrests are authorized to use lethal force, which can cause political complications.
Ghassan Khatib, the spokesman for the Palestinian government in the West Bank, said actions such as the killing of Abu Shilbaya, which he called an assassination, damaged the Palestinian Authority’s standing among its own people, giving it the image of a “sort of a subcontractor of the Israeli occupation.”
“We make no secret of our cooperation with Israel, but such Israeli activities give the impression that this is collaboration, not cooperation,” Khatib said. After Friday’s killing, Hamas was quick to accuse the Palestinian Authority of complicity in the deadly raid.
Palestinian security forces detained Abu Shilbaya for a few days earlier this month as part of a mass roundup of Hamas militants after the killing of the Israeli settlers.
The Israelis have lately praised the performance of Palestinian security forces in the West Bank. But they say they need more assurances that the Palestinians can control security before the Israeli military hands over more responsibility in the area.
Accounts of how Abu Shilbaya was killed, in an operation that an Israeli military official said was carried out by the special forces unit Cherry, or Duvdevan in Hebrew, provide a glimpse of how the unit works in the West Bank.
Muhammad Abu Shilbaya, a brother of the slain militant, said that soldiers forced their way into his house before 3 a.m. and ordered him to lead them to his brother’s home nearby. There the front door was broken open and soldiers entered the darkened home while Muhammad was ordered to turn and face a wall outside.
“I heard Iyad call three times, ‘Who’s there?’ and seconds later I heard shooting,” Muhammad Abu Shilbaya said. “Then it was quiet.” The brother said that soldiers ordered him to sit on the floor inside the house, and they opened a stretcher to take out the body of the slain man.
An army statement said that the militant, who turned out to be unarmed, had run toward the soldiers “in a suspicious way” with his hands behind his back, and when he ignored orders to halt, the troops, who felt threatened, opened fire. A medical report from a hospital in Tulkarm said that Abu Shilbaya had been shot twice in the chest and once at the base of the neck.
In the militant’s cramped bedroom two days after the shooting, a bloodied mat remained next to the bed, and blood was spattered on a bedsheet, the lower part of a wall and a radio on the floor. Three spent bullet cartridges had been found a few feet from the bed, the militant’s brothers said.
Iyad Abu Shilbaya’s wife, Latifa, who was visiting relatives on the night of the raid, said that the killing of her husband was completely unexpected, because he had not behaved like a wanted man on the run. “He was sleeping at home,” she said. “They could have shot him in the leg and arrested him.”
Relatives and neighbors said that soldiers gave no warning before entering Abu Shilbaya’s home and did not call on him to surrender.
Capt. Barak Raz, an army spokesman, said that the soldiers were given intelligence information that Abu Shilbaya might be armed and fired “when they felt their lives were threatened.” He noted that all the other arrests in Nur Shams that morning were accomplished without incident.
Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, said that it was demanding a military police investigation. B’tselem has received no response from the army to its request for a similar investigation into the killing by Cherry soldiers of three militants in December in the city of Nablus, where witnesses said that two were shot as they came out of their homes with family members.
Raz declined to discuss the rules of engagement for the special forces units.
But a former soldier in Cherry who spoke on condition of anonymity said in an interview that the rules were “very fluid” and changed according to circumstances. The veteran, a member of the group Breaking the Silence, which publishes accounts by discharged soldiers who served in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said that in close encounters with militants, members of the unit were given broad discretion to open fire.
In one operation, he recalled, soldiers were told that their objective was an armed militant, and that “if you see a weapon near him, you shoot. If he makes any strange or sudden move, you shoot. Don’t take a risk. If you shoot, you’ll have backing.”
“The culture of the unit was to arrest, but also not to take risks,” the veteran said. In some cases, soldiers were given the message that “killing the terrorist was best,” he added.
The former soldier said Cherry troops were trained for hair-trigger responses in face-to-face confrontations with militants who were usually described in pre-operational briefings as armed or likely to be armed, although many times they were not.
After bursting into a room, there’s no chance to instantly check if a militant inside is hiding a weapon, the former soldier said. So, in effect, ” your life’s already in danger the moment you’re in the room and there’s someone on a bed,” he said. “It’s an impossible situation.”
Haaretz A photograph published in an Israeli newspaper in May showed two Palestinian girls during an illegal day trip to Tel Aviv from the West Bank.
Ilana Hammerman, an Israeli author who has smuggled Palestinian women and children out of the West Bank twice this year for day trips to Tel Aviv, was questioned by police on Tuesday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports.
Ms. Hammerman has described the two trips as acts of civil disobedience designed to draw attention to the Israeli law which makes it difficult for Palestinians to enter Israel.
She published a Hebrew-language account of her first trip, with three Palestinian girls she took to a museum, a mall and a beach in Tel Aviv, in Haaretz in May. Ms. Hammerman wrote:
The end was wonderful. The last photos show them about two hours after the trip to the flea market, running in the darkness on Tel Aviv’s Banana Beach. They didn’t want to stop for even a minute at the restaurant there to have a bite to eat or something to drink, or even to just relax a bit. Instead they immediately removed their sandals again, rolled up their pants and ran into the water.
After the publication of her article, a group called the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel pressed the government to open an investigation of Ms. Hammerman. She was also contacted by several Israeli women who wanted to accompany her on a second trip. In July, a dozen Israeli women, including Ms. Hammerman, smuggled a dozen Palestinian women and four children out of the West Bank for another day of fun in Israel.
Haaretz In August they took out a large ad in Haaretz to explain what they had done and why, accompanied by another photo of Palestinian women looking at the sea.
According to a translation of the ad by Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli journalist and blogger, the women wrote:
On Friday, July 23rd, a dozen Jewish women, a dozen Palestinian women, one baby, and three Palestinian children took a trip from the West Bank in six private cars. We crossed several checkpoints, drove to Israel’s coastal plain, and toured Tel Aviv and Jaffa together. We ate in a restaurant, swam in the sea, and played on the beach. We ended our day in Jerusalem. Most of our Palestinian guests had never seen the sea….
None of our guests had an entry permit from the Israeli authorities. We are announcing here publicly that we deliberately violated the Law of Entry into Israel. …
We cannot assent to the legality of the ‘Entry into Israel Law,’ which allows every Israeli and every Jew to move freely in all regions between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River while depriving Palestinians of this same right. They are not permitted free movement within the occupied territories nor are they allowed to enter the towns and cities across the Green Line, where their families, nation, and traditions are deeply rooted.
They and we, all ordinary citizens, took this step with a clear and resolute mind. In this way we were privileged to experience one of the most beautiful and moving days of our lives, to meet and befriend our brave Palestinian neighbors, and together with them, to be free women, if only for one day.
Haaretz reported on Tuesday that Ms. Hammerman “said the possible two-year prison term for smuggling people into Israel did not deter her.”
=============================
LA Times Monday,
September 20, 2010
Israeli Consul General Jacob Dayan on the one-state solution [UPDATED]
Beirut-based journalist Ahmed Moor wrote in his Sept. 17 Blowback article that decades of colonization of Palestinian land and other maltreatment by Israelis have made a two-state solution impossible. Below is a response by Jacob Dayan, Israel’s consul general in Los Angeles:
Ahmed Moor asserts that Israel is making it virtually impossible for the reality of a two-state solution to come to fruition. His entire theory is based on the assumption that two distinctly different peoples can coexist as one in Israel. One of the reasons behind the assertion is that Moor claims Israel/Palestine is already one state and should remain so. Moor knows better. He lives in Beirut, Lebanon, and does not have to look far for an example of a failed one-state solution. For many years Lebanon was the only example in the Middle East of two people living in one state. The Muslims and Christians of Lebanon have a dreadful history in the region. Just ask the 7 million Lebanese Christians who fled the country and are currently living outside Lebanon. They know firsthand the horrors of the bloody internal war between the Muslims and Christians.
A historical perspective: Lebanese Christians experienced a backlash in 1991 after the end of the Lebanese civil war. Since the end of the war, Christians in northern and central Lebanon have been under social and political oppression by Syrian forces. And in the south, Hezbollah has its way with them. Yet the mainstream media hardly provide us with updates about the 1.5 million Christians still living and suffering in Lebanon today.
Not only is this an atmosphere in which people — Christians and Muslims — don’t trust each other; it is also an atmosphere that harbors alienation and fear from militant groups surrounding the area. That is not the kind of environment we want to create in Israel and its future neighboring state, Palestine. For the safety, security and well-being of all of its people, each state will have its own governing body and its own institutions to protect its borders. So the best possible outcome for coexistence is still the two-state solution.
Update, 9:21 a.m., Tuesday: A previous version of Dayan’s response incorrectly stated that the Lebanese civil war ended in 1985.
