I apologize for giving you a day off yesterday—not because there was no news. We visited friends yesterday in the OPT to see them and to help with the olive harvest. Towards evening when on the way home we listened to the news, which depressed me so that I wanted to hear no more nor read any. I’d anyhow had very mixed feelings about the day. Not that I didn’t want to harvest or visit. We are very close to this family—the whole extended family. We were involved 6 years ago in a kidney transplant of one of the members— a child at the time 3 years old. [If you don’t know about it, you might be interested to read the final update after the transplan thttp://teeksaphoto.org/Levant2006/OtherResources/AboutLinaNaor.html ]The child,
Lina, is now 9 years old, and beautiful, and since the transplant she and her older brother have had 2 new sisters come into the family. My guilt feelings emanated from the fact that we were with a family in an area that till now has not been pestered by settlers and very little also by the army. The village is small, only about 1500 inhabitants, and sits high on a hill, which might explain why till now the inhabitants have enjoyed relative quiet.
I felt guilty, thinking that spouse and I should have been where the going is rough, where Palestinians and also those who come in solidarity to help are harassed by colonists and the Israeli military. For the most part spouse’s and my olive harvesting days are over. I no longer can walk long distances (not due to age but to a bad back and knees), and from my previous experiences usually the harvest is some distance from where we’d leave our vehicles. Nevertheless, I felt we should be helping where it’s really necessary rather than enjoying ourselves with family we love and in a pastoral setting. It was so peaceful, friendly, and family-like that I kept thinking ‘this is what it could be like,’ ‘this is what it should be like,’ and felt more resentful and angry at the situation here that our Zionist elected officials throughout the years have created, making life impossible. The end result was that I forwent reading after we returned home. So I also had nothing to send.
Today’s message has too much. Do your best. Also, has too much depressing. The final items will probably change before I send this message, or slightly after. But you probably will read about them in your local papers. There will undoubtedly be more responses to today’s IAF killings in Gaza . I only hope that not many or any will suffer harm from the responses, and hope that the IAF keeps its bloody planes at home, too! Not likely, however. Likely is that Israel will as a result threaten not to release the additional prisoners. That’s the way it goes here. Israel ’s leaders could not have been happier after the Palestinians shot a single missile 2 days ago, which landed in a n open field and caused neither damage nor injury. But it was enough an excuse for Israel to take it out on the Palestinians. Of course, the military arms in Gaza also know no other response than more violence—and although their missiles cause less losses in life and property than do Israel ’s IAF pilots and drones, nevertheless, they give Israel excuse to do more damage to the Palestinians. And so it goes.
The initial item of the 9 below uses the Shalit case to reveal Israel ’s superiority complex and racism.
Item 2 and 3 speak about Palestinian education–#2 about education for children of Palestinian citizens of Israel , #3 about the right to education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories . Israel is attempting to disallow Palestinian children to learn their history and culture. Imagine that in the United States or elsewhere Jews were not allowed to have Hebrew schools or Sunday schools where their children are taught not only religion but also their culture and history!
Item 4 is an interesting report on Jews requesting German citizenship. This applies primarily to Jews whose families were German prior to WWII. Not a few of these have been from Israel . Very likely that during the years when the numbers of Israelis requesting citizenship were higher than at present were due to the Russian immigrants who had used Israel as a passage way to Europe.
In item 5 Dov Weissglass, Sharon ’s prime aide, assails Netanyahu for not making peace.
In item 6 Ilana Dayan, an investigative reporter, says that free press in Israel is only ostensibly free.
Items 7 and 8 report tonight’s events in Gaza and the Israeli south.
Item 9 is ‘Today in Palestine ’ for October 27th.
And item 10 reports on a 4-year old child who was shot in the neck by a stray IOF bullet, and, consequently, has lost the use of her arms and legs.
Hoping for a better day tomorrow,
Dorothy
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1. Haaretz
Friday, October 28, 2011
Shalit deal reveals Israel ‘s superiority complex
As of October 2011, in the Israeli market, the price of one Jew equals 1,027 Arabs, and the price increases every day.
One Israeli soldier for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. This equation has fostered more or less the following logic : The life of an Israeli is more valuable than that of a Palestinian. How much more valuable? Much more. In fact, 1,027 times more valuable. After the prisoner exchange, when nobody was looking, there were displays of self-satisfaction. We patted one another on the back and reflected on how sensitive and humanitarian we are. And look at them, we mused.
Yet behind this feeling of superiority lurked a murky, inverted truth. The fact is, the release of one Israeli soldier for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners is not normal; certainly it does not represent an inferior love felt by a Palestinian mother for her son compared to an Israeli mother.
As it turns out, such price lists and equations reflect the Israeli consciousness and what’s inside. In the Israeli consciousness, the relation between the life of a Palestinian and the value of a Jewish Israeli is derived with mathematical certainty, 1:1,027, meaning that an Israeli life is as important as that of 1,027 Palestinians. This equation derives from the way we, not Hamas, view reality: 1,027 Palestinians are worth one Jewish life not because the Palestinians minimize the importance of their own lives, but because we diminish the value of their lives. This is a mirror image of the prejudice we Israelis harbor and which has enabled the immoral activities we have sponsored for dozens of years.
The source of this equation isn’t to be found in the Shalit affair, since that affair just skims the surface of a deeper reality. The source is to be found in our daily lives, where cameras don’t penetrate. After the mass release last week, thousands of Palestinian prisoners remain in Israeli jails. This number, especially the way many prisoners are “collected” into cells in the middle of the night after arbitrary IDF raids (most of them violent, without the option of consulting an attorney ), says something about our disdain for the value of their lives.
Anyone who visits military courtrooms gets a sense of the automatic ease with which the detainees from the territories (many of them minors ) have their detention extended. More importantly, such a visit reveals the incomprehensible truth that the state maintains two separate justice systems for two populations. The military-legal framework gives expression to Israeli prejudice and prolongs the occupation without the occupiers suffering any undue guilt feelings.
Hamas figured out how to exploit these feelings of superiority. If the Jews view themselves as worth more than the Arabs, lots of “Arab goods” can be demanded in exchange for a small portion of “Jewish goods.” By the same token, if the Jews so easily collect “Arab goods” and confine them in their prisons, clearly they will not have a hard time offloading such “goods.”
The equation inherent in Gilad Shalit’s release is a trivial by-product of market economics that features the price of a Jew and the price of an Arab, according to how these values are rated by the wealthy buy-side, the Israelis. This is the capitalism seen in the cottage cheese controversy, only this time it features human beings. Its racist foundations are exploited by the oppressed side to gain bargaining power.
The Shalit deal is, in fact, a public display of Israel ‘s racist price index. The ceremony occurs every few years, and the index is designed to update the market values of the region’s various races. As of October 2011, in the Israeli market, the price of one Jew equals 1,027 Arabs. And the price increases every day.
2. Haaretz Friday, October 28, 2011
Arab schools watchdog draws up educational plan for ‘Palestinian minority’ in Israel
Education Ministry: We will not allow the material to be taught in schools.
The Arab Pedagogic Council has recently completed the formulation of a statement of principles under the heading “The Aims of Education and Teaching of the Palestinian Minority in Israel .” The council was established by 30 academics more than a year ago, with the encouragement of the heads of Arab local councils and the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee.
The introduction to the document states: “Like the other peoples of the world they [the Palestinians] based the building of Palestine in the city and the village … Then the Nakba [the Palestinian ‘catastrophe’ of 1948] occurred, and is still happening. The Zionist movement’s project to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine by means of violent and racist actions of scaremongering, uprooting, demolishing, stealing and ethnic cleansing have brought destruction down on the Palestinian people. This process has led to the development of new and intersecting Palestinian experiences and identities, both in the diaspora and in the homeland.”
The document lists 10 aims constituting “a practical step toward the fulfillment of the national, cultural and linguistic uniqueness of the Palestinian minority in Israel ,” and its authors intend to distribute it in Arab and Jewish society and to schools.
Among the aims presented in the document: “To deepen the Arab-Palestinians identity as a national identity, taking pride in its culture, and maintaining constant and effective contact with its Arab and Islamic roots. This identity will be based on solidarity among members of the Palestinian people, on the strengthening of the Palestinian memory and narrative, on holding firmly to the historic and political rights of the Palestinian people and on cultural, religious and social pluralism. To instill the values of dialogue with the Jewish Israeli other and the search for a horizon of a joint life in a single homeland, without the control or supremacy of any side.”
The document further states: “The purpose of this educational project is on the one hand to combat the discrimination on the part of the state and its obstructive effects on Palestinian society in Israel, and on the other hand it is also a struggle against the violence of certain patterns of thinking and behavior, and against some of the ills in Arab society … In order to achieve these goals it is necessary to develop an independent Arab Palestinian educational and cultural system.”
The Education Ministry has responded: “The document has not been submitted for professional approval at the ministry. Therefore the material has not been approved for teaching in the education system.”
According to Prof. Muhamad Amara, the chairman of the council, “If the Education Ministry ignores us and refuses to conduct a dialogue on the matter, we will conduct it in other circles of Israeli society. The education system does not reflect or ignores the culture and history of the Arabs, and therefore there is a feeling of estrangement and alienation from the system.”
“We are calling on the ministry to adopt the principles and recognize the Arab Pedagogic Council,” says council member Dr. Ayman Agbaria. “It has risen as an alternative civic body in response to the ministry’s ignoring of the need to establish a council within the ministry itself and under its supervision, similar to the state religious education council.”
3. Right to Education
CALL TO ACTION: Right to Education International Week of Action – 15th-22nd November 2010
CALL TO ACTION, Right to Education Campaign, 14 September 2010
CALL TO ACTION: Right to Education International Week of Action
15th-22nd November 2010
We demand that Palestinian rights are recognised.
We demand that the international community insist on Israel ‘s compliance with international law.
We demand that Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is applied to the education of Palestinians as it should be applied without prejudice to any other citizen of the world.
Since the 1970’s the Right to Education Campaign has worked towards the realization of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) Article 26, that states, “Everyone has the right to education”. We now call upon student groups who stand in solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian rights to participate in the Right to Education International Week of Action, a vision which emerged from the recent Right to Education International Student Conference held on the 27th – 28th of July at Birzeit University , Palestine .
A primary goal of the Week of Action is to allow Palestinian students and academics a platform to share knowledge and experience of the Palestinian struggle for education and to call for an end to the denial of Palestinian educational rights as an objective of Israel ‘s occupation of Palestine . These events may include a speaking tour by Palestinian students, documentary screenings, stunts and visuals, demonstrations, lectures and discussions and video conferences with students in Palestine .
The Week of Action will include a unified Day of Action (November 16th, 2010), during which all student groups participating in the call will take part in a common event or demonstration on their respective campuses (details TBA).
To participate in the week, receive additional information, materials or advice, or to submit ideas for the Week of Action, please contact the Right to Education Campaign – Birzeit University .
An increased number of American children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have applied in recent years for the German citizenship stripped from their family members by the Nazis. Many are interested in settling elsewhere in the European Union. But one family has found a new home in Berlin .
When Donna Swarthout was a little girl growing up in New Jersey she remembers asking her grandparents about the country they, as Jews, had fled more than two decades before. What, she would ask, what it was like in Germany ?
They had made new lives for themselves in New York . Her grandfather drove a cab, her grandmother made clothes for dolls. Their son, Donna’s father, had graduated from City College and was an engineer. They didn’t want to talk about their lives in Altwiedermus, a village near Frankfurt where the family had owned a tannery. Or about the years they spent in Frankfurt trying to escape Nazi persecution by blending into the larger Jewish community there.
“They didn’t want anything to do with Germany again,” says Swarthout, 52.
But her own interest in Germany remained. And last year, Swarthout did what an increasing number of American Jews of German descent have done in recent years: She applied for German citizenship.
“I’ve always felt German,” she says. “Probably more German than Jewish.”
Under Article 116 of Germany’s constitution, known as the Basic Law, anyone who had their citizenship revoked during the Nazi regime for “political, racist, or religious reasons” is eligible to reapply for German citizenship. The provision also makes allowances for the descendants of Nazi victims, and does not require them to give up the citizenship of their new home countries.
‘Looming Above Everything’
It’s been an option for American Jews with German roots for years, but the number of applicants nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008 and has remained high, according to statistics from the German Federal Office of Administration in Cologne . In 2010, there were 815 such applications from the US . There were more applicants from Israel , but the number has steadily declined — from 3,505 in 2003 to 1,459 last year.
Nathalie Tauchner, director of the German Citizen Project in New York, which has helped more than 120 families apply for German citizenship, says only a fraction of those applicants have wanted to move to Germany itself. More want the option — for themselves or their children — of living in English-speaking EU countries.
Swarthout’s focus, however, has always been on Germany . She learned the language in high school and went on to study it at the University of California , Berkeley . When she met her husband, Brian, himself the grandson of German Jews, it became their private language. They would write notes and e-mail to each other in German. Last year, Swarthout and her husband decided to move temporarily with their three children to Berlin .
Deidre Berger, director of the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), says more and more young American Jews are coming to Berlin and learning German. In the decades after the war, she says, the Holocaust was “looming above everything.” Now, “it’s maybe easier for young people to start posing these questions,” she says. ” There’s a lot of interest and curiosity.”
One major motivation is to learn more about private histories that may have gone unspoken for years. “Among the people I know who are interested, there certainly is a preoccupation with their own family background,” says Berger. “No one does this lightly.”
‘Why Is Mommy Crying?’
Swarthout has focused on her own family history since she moved to Berlin : She’s retraced her father’s family roots in Altwiedermus and those of her mother, Rena Cahn Adler, the daughter of a successful Hamburg exporter who fled to New York and settled on the city’s Upper West Side .
Rena now lives in Montana , but when Donna told her about a visit to Hamburg in February, it triggered an early memory: She remembered sitting in the harbor with her parents, waiting for the ship that would take them to New York . It was 1938, and the five-year-old Rena looked up at her father and asked, “Why is Mommy crying?”
It’s a story Swarthout relates on her blog called “Full Circle,” which she says she created, in part, to give American Jews a more favorable view of Germany. But it also details her path to German citizenship for anyone who sets out on a similar project. “They need to be prepared that it could be a very emotional experience,” she says.
The process — which German officials say takes an average of seven months — requires family documents, such as German passports from the 1930s, which in some cases were confiscated or destroyed years ago. Swarthout’s application process has not been without bureaucratic stumbling blocks and delays, including a period of months when German authorities claimed her file, including some original documents, was lost. After being asked to hand over additional original documents, Swarthout says, she ended up in a local bureaucrat’s office in tears.
“I said, ‘I cannot understand why the German government asks me for these documents when they took everything from my father,'” she says.
Recently, she received an e-mail telling her that, after 15 months, her application for citizenship had been approved. She still is waiting for official confirmation to arrive in the mail.
A Bar Mitzvah in Berlin
Though she does not yet have the official certification of her citizenship, Swarthout and her family recently made their ties to the country stronger as they celebrated her son Avery’s bar mitzvah in Berlin .
Avery chose to have the rite of passage in the German capital, and on the anniversary of his grandfather’s bar mitzvah in 1942. He wore his grandfather’s prayer shawl, or tallit, during the service. It was the first bar mitzvah in her family for two generations, and the first to be held in the city’s Jewish Orphanage since the Holocaust, she says.
The event, already laden with religious significance, took on added meaning for the Swarthout family. “It’s a connection to our ancestral past, but I think it is a reestablishment of our family as Jews on German soil, so it has tremendous significance for the future as well,” she says.
For Swarthout, it was also a defining moment. ” It was the first time,” she says, “I felt more Jewish than German.”
5. Independent.co.uk Saturday, 29 October 2011
Sharon’s right-hand man attacks Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister accused of wasting opportunity for peace with Palestinians
The former top aide in Ariel Sharon’s administration has blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for squandering an opportunity to make peace with the Palestinians, slamming a policy to marginalise the Palestinian Authority as both “dangerous and stupid”.
The attack by Dov Weissglas, Israel’s most influential political advisor during the Second Intifada, is all the more powerful coming from the man most closely attuned to the innermost political thoughts of Mr Sharon, the hardliner who was prepared to make difficult concessions before he suffered a massive stroke in 2006.
The former aide warned that Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian leader, has been near-fatally weakened by a lopsided prisoner exchange deal to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit that strengthened the hand of Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza, and said that it was in Israel’s own interests not to jettison the best partners for peace that the country has ever had.
Mr Abbas, who has done much to restore the Palestinian cause in the eyes of the international community since the demise of Yasser Arafat seven years ago, is reportedly convinced the prisoner deal was timed to punish him for his drive last month to seek recognition of a Palestinian state in the United Nations.
Whether that was the case or not, Mr Weissglas said there should be a counterbalance to the prisoner exchange. “The present government’s policy of weakening the PA [Palestinian Authority] is both stupid and dangerous. I think approaching the UN was a mistake… but I prefer Palestinian resistance in diplomatic measures [to] other modes,” he said. “The PA today is something we dreamed of 10 years ago.”
Mr Weissglas joined Mr Sharon’s government as bureau chief in 2002 during Operation Defensive Shield, the military offensive against the Palestinian uprising. At the same time, Israelis were facing suicide bombers on their own streets. Offering an insight into the man seen as one of the toughest leaders in Israel ‘s history, Mr Weissglas said: ” Sharon said he would resume negotiations after only seven days of quiet. Now we have had not seven days, but seven years of quiet.”
It was, he said, to the credit of Mr Abbas and his Western-educated Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, that they were able to stop the terror and convince Palestinians that “non-violence pays”. “A great deal is down to Israel ‘s efforts, but a great deal is also down to Palestinian efforts. In my view , as a graduate of those five horrific years, the present Palestinian government is the best,” he said. “I know the efforts they [Mr Abbas and Mr Fayyad] made, how difficult it was to stand up and speak loudly and clearly against terror when it was very unpopular in Palestine .”
But, he warned, the current calm is fragile, and a leader who is unable to take “courageous” decisions will end up adopting a “more radical position” and demonstrating “less flexibility”, potentially paving the way for renewed violence. “Nobody feels like going back to the old days, but this stability [in the West Bank] is tied together with shoelaces. It’s like a leaf: all you need is one blow and it’s gone,” he said.
It is the Israeli military, fearful that the PA could collapse entirely leaving Israel responsible for West Bank security, that is calling loudest for Mr Netanyahu to bolster the PA, either by releasing prisoners affiliated to Fatah, Mr Abbas’s party, or by transferring more territory in the West Bank to Palestinian control.
But the appeals have so far fallen largely on deaf ears, and Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s ultranationalist Foreign Minister, claimed this week that Mr Abbas was the “greatest obstacle” to Middle East peace for trying to undermine Israel internationally in the UN, and that his resignation would be “a blessing “.
Profile : Dov Weissglas
A lawyer, Dov Weissglas (here with Ariel Sharon ) became friends in 1983 with Israel’s hawkish prime minister, representing him in the investigation of his role in the massacres of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon that nearly ended Mr Sharon’s career. Nearly 20 years later, Mr Sharon brought Mr Weissglas into his government (2001-06) as bureau chief during the Second Intifada, and he was his right-hand man until Mr Sharon’s massive stroke in 2006.
6. Haaretz
Friday, October 28, 2011
What free press?
While landmark court decisions seem to protect freedom of expression in Israel , power and money impose a very different reality on reporters; in a new book, legal analyst Moshe Negbi warns that this censorship is threatening the democratic foundations of the state.
Ostensibly, there is freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Israel, entrenched in a sophisticated protective system that any society could be proud of: enlightened Supreme Court rulings; a media environment that for years has been celebrating pluralism and competition; the daily routine of fearless journalists who insist on exposing and writing and objecting and investigating and pushing the powerful to the wall , and demanding that we hear what we ought to know. Anyone who reads Moshe Negbi’s book, “The Freedom of the Journalist and Freedom of the Press in Israel ,” learns a lot about those protective systems – about law and practice, and about the major events that fortified an important bastion of Israeli democracy, freedom of expression and of the press. Anyone reading Negbi’s text receives a full, up-to-date picture of journalistic freedom in Israel, from the case of Kol Ha’am [a 1953 Supreme Court decision supporting a free press] to the 2010 case of Anat Kam [an Israeli soldier who allegedly gave secret documents to a reporter]; from the libel laws to the laws of sedition and incitement; from military censorship to censorship by wealthy capitalists, the laws of cross-ownership of broadcast and print media and the code of ethics.
Negbi leaves no stone unturned. Like a diligent student of architecture, he carefully traces the outlines of the impressive structure built here to protect freedom of the press. And readers are likely to be impressed. Where else would you find such a young and threatened country that insists on maintaining the power of the press and the freedom of its reporters in this way? But those who are listening carefully will also hear the writer’s concern. Ostensibly everything is all right, Moshe Negbi tells us, but only ostensibly.
Glorious foundation
The memory of that encounter, at the Tel Ad Studios in Jerusalem , remains clear and sharp in my mind. It was 7 P.M., and the chair of the Central Elections Committee, Justice Theodor Or, had arrived at the studios especially to view a report that we were about to broadcast that evening. Less than two hours remained until the broadcast. The Meretz faction had petitioned the Elections Committee to demand that we be prevented from screening a report about Rabbi Yitzhak Kadouri, an influential kabbalist who had joined the Shas election campaign. Director Doron Tsabari had filmed the famed rabbi hopping by helicopter from one rally to the next, distributing blessings and amulets and flying off to the next event. We were certain that we had fascinating, original – and, primarily, important – documentation here. The way Shas activated its rabbis and cast a spell on its voters was a central issue in the 1996 election campaign. Not for a moment did we think that this report would be interpreted as election propaganda for Shas.
I explained that passionately to his honor the judge. I was sure that we were creating journalism, not propaganda; that rejecting a news report was a last resort; that preventing the broadcast in advance, certainly according to the Supreme Court precedents, was inconceivable except in genuinely extreme cases. Justice Or interrupted me politely. He decided quickly and explained briefly. The report would not be broadcast. In the balance between exalted legal principles and the frothing election campaign, it was clear to him that he had to decide against us. I would have stayed to argue with him if I’d had the time, but, an hour and a half before the broadcast, the most important thing was to find a reasonable substitute for Tsabari’s report.
The report on Rabbi Kadouri was screened later, two weeks after Shas swept up 17 seats in the Knesset elections. Deri and his disciples achieved a dizzying success without any help from us, but that nerve-racking evening in May 1996 became a kind of watershed for me, a moment of swift sobering up.
Only three years earlier I had returned from studies at Yale University . There I had breathed the great decisions regarding freedom of expression in America : the unforgettable texts of justices Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and later William J. Brennan – who coined the phrase “marketplace of ideas,” envisioning a debate that should be “robust, uninhibited and wide open.” Those concepts became the beating heart of freedom of expression in the U.S. and the basis for our Supreme Court’s defense of freedom of expression and of the press in Israel .
Justice Or knew that better than I. But he also knew a thing or two about room to maneuver on the eve of elections. The festive rhetoric of constitutional law does not always dictate the reality. Sometimes it only helps to create an illusion. Negbi does not put it like that, but I believe that that’s the covert message in his book, a message whose main point is the gap between the lofty words and the worrisome reality.
The Supreme Court laid a glorious foundation of rulings that entrench freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Israel . Justice Shimon Agranat did that in the affair of the Communist newspaper Kol Ha’am, when he informed the interior minister that although the law presumably gave him unlimited power to close a newspaper, such power is unacceptable in a democratic society. Without a written constitution, without basic laws, without a well established tradition and without knowing how the government would react to such a harsh challenge, Justice Agranat wrote what may be our most important legal decision – a decision whose every line exudes a spirit of freedom and progress.
“No official yet born on this earth is wise enough or generous enough to separate good ideas from bad ideas, good beliefs from bad ones,” wrote Agranat, citing respected U.S. political columnist Walter Lippmann – and refused to revoke the license of a newspaper that was based entirely on opposition.
Justice Aharon Barak did the same in the case of Universal Studios, when he overturned the decision of the Israel Film Council and permitted the screening of the provocative 1988 film “The Last Temptation of Christ” (because “a society that is based on social pluralism must enable an exchange of ideas, even if that could hurt the feelings of those opposed to those ideas” ).
Barak did it again in the affair of Avneri vs. Shapira, when he permitted the publication of a book despite the fear that it contained libel against a public figure (“It is impossible to maintain freedom of expression, and it is impossible to grant freedom of expression its central place in our system, if publication can be prevented through injunction, even before a decision about the publisher’s responsibility. Such a regime of injunctions would undermine the role of the press and of literature, poetry and the other means of expression” ).
And the same Barak did it once more in the case of HaIr editor Meir Schnitzer vs. Chief Military Censor, when he informed the chief military censor that he could not prevent the publication of an article critical of the head of the Mossad only because the censor said there was “a danger of harm to state security.”
“In a democratic society, leveling criticism against people who serve in public positions should be permitted,” stated Barak passionately, adding: “There is no free regime without a free press. Therefore the press should be allowed to fulfill its function, and only in exceptional and special cases, where there is near certainty that genuine damage will be caused to state security, is there room to forbid the publication of reports in the press.”
The “near certainty” test was born in the Schnitzer ruling, and it is also implemented there with great determination. Barak rejects the claim of the military censor that a discussion in the press of the date when a Mossad head will be replaced is liable to harm his personal security; states that that is an unfounded claim unsupported by any data; asks why there couldn’t be cautionary measures to reduce the risk ; and sums up that, in this case too, the censor did not sufficiently value freedom of expression: “Freedom of expression is also freedom to criticize and freedom to pester those in power with bothersome questions.” Strong words. Yes, the rulings are glorious, well constructed, even breathtaking. Certainly considering the circumstances under which they were handed down.
Agranat wrote the Kol Ha’am ruling in 1953. The state was just five years old and the sense of siege was both fresh and justified. A ruling that supports a subversive opposition is not only courageous, it is almost inconceivable.
Barak wrote the Schnitzer ruling in 1988. Only two years earlier the Supreme Court had approved pardons for the Shin Bet members who were central to the Bus 300 affair. The expression “state security” still mesmerized both judges and presidents. The head of the Shin Bet was known as Y. and the head of the Mossad was called N.; neither their names nor their faces could be published. The text written by Aharon Barak landed like a slap on the face of the censor and the entire government establishment. The decisions were not self-evident.
In the Schnitzer ruling, the Supreme Court actually completed the project launched by Agranat in the Kol Ha’am case. An enormous and dramatic enterprise was now in place: protection for freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Ostensibly everything was all right. But only ostensibly.
The tough question is what remains of the lofty rhetoric, what portion of it has become part of the journalist’s reality. We should not make light of the value of the Schnitzer ruling, but we can wonder what is left of it. And it seems to me that very little is left.
Do all the news items that have been rejected for publication since Schnitzer fall into the category of the “near certainty” test? Is it possible that the courts have learned to treat this test flexibly, and to make it far less friendly to freedom of expression than it was in the hands of Aharon Barak ? And is there a genuine and profound connection between the impressive texts in these rulings, and the daily reality of Israeli journalism?
Private censorship
On Ibn Gvirol Street in Tel Aviv, in an ordinary building with a sleepy doorman and an old-fashioned elevator, sits the chief military censor, Brig. Gen. Sima Vaknin-Gil. She is a wise, enlightened woman who is making a genuine effort to walk between the raindrops, between the people who put the epaulets on her shoulders, and the journalists who try to expose the blunders of those very same people.
Only God, Sima and I know how many phone lines we tied up in interminable arguments: I passionately believing that publication was worthwhile, even essential; she insisting on rejecting it, out of an honest belief that the rejection was essential for the security of the country (“This time it won’t work, Ilana, I’ve received clear indications from those involved that the consequences of publication are liable to be very grave.” “There’s no near certainty here, Sima, nothing even close, and you know it!”; “I can’t allow the publication of this report and I can’t explain to you the damage that is liable to be caused”; “You’re a captive of the VIPs who are pressuring you, they know that the exposure relates to them, it’s no wonder that they prefer to strangle publication!”; “You have no idea how angry they are at the previous item I allowed you to publish, I don’t work for them, but I don’t work for you either” ).
The chief military censor is not a benighted person. But she is part of a system that still sometimes prefers the dark, and has the means of turning out the light. The Schnitzer ruling did not change that. It only created an illusion of change. As with Kol Ha’am, as with Universal Studios, as in other rulings that deal with the press and its freedom to criticize and publish – the texts touch the heavens, while the reality, in many instances, is stuck deep inside the earth.
Our basic, almost sacred duty, to publish what is worthy of publication (responsibly and cautiously, of course ) is battered time after time against the wall of everyday reality. It can be censorship in the name of state security, it can be an arbitrary interpretation of the “substantial truth” defense in the libel laws, it can be a frustrating disregard of the principles of journalistic immunity that were decided in the Supreme Court.
And in the past 20 years, another wall has gone up, censorship in a new garb, which represents what Negbi calls “private censorship” : the censorship likely to be imposed by the owners of the big, strong media outlets.
This new censorship is worthy of attention, not only because of the threat that Negbi sees in the wealthy businessmen who buy newspapers and broadcasting stations; but mainly because of the profound, clandestine connection between this new censorship with the power of money, and the old censorship with the power of authority.
In an era when the large media outlets are in private hands, the new threat no longer wears a uniform, as we know. He buys himself a newspaper, or a franchise , or a radio station. Does the businessman quash news items that don’t suit his business interests? Not necessarily: Sometimes the “spirit of the commander” is clear to the soldiers even without a need to shout it aloud; sometimes the desire for popularity is the most effective censorship of all. It will guarantee avoidance of the controversial issues; it will arrange comfortable and uncritical journalism for the owners.
And then everything is ostensibly all right, but only ostensibly. We ostensibly have a large number of newspapers and stations and lots of investigative programs, even a few real investigative journalists, who here and there release a stunning expose and manage to disturb the complacency of the self-satisfied.
Here’s a personal testimony: “Uvda” (“Fact”), the investigative program I anchor, enjoys tremendous journalistic freedom in Keshet broadcasts. Raviv Drucker proved he enjoys similar freedom when he publicized the investigative report on the prime minister’s travels, “Bibi-Tours,” on Channel 10.
In general, our situation on the commercial channels is far better than that of our colleagues on some of the major newspapers. But the recent affair of Sheldon Adelson and the apology on Channel 10 once again proved how brittle and fragile this freedom is. When I saw Guy Zohar that Friday night, speaking in a tremulous voice about a “black flag” and announcing that he would no longer present the weekend news show “Hashavua,” I could hear the sound of the crackup beneath our feet.
The facts in this drama are not sufficiently clear, but we should present what we do know: In January, a profile of Sheldon Adelson was aired on Channel 10. The billionaire, a close friend of the prime minister, claimed there were inaccuracies, demanded an apology, and threatened to sue. The text of the humiliating apology aired September 9 was forced on the channel’s journalists. The head of Channel 10’s news division, Reudor Benziman, program editor Ruthie Yovel, and anchor Zohar all resigned.
There are quite a few issues that fall under the category of “unclear”: What was the role of another billionaire, Ron Lauder, who is also close to the prime minister, and holds shares in Channel 10? What happened during the course of the investigation itself, and was there an error in the report that was broadcast? And if so, doesn’t Adelson deserve an apology, despite the fact that he has a lot of money and connections?
It’s very important to pay attention to this point. We are committed to reporting the truth, to making corrections when we are mistaken and to apologizing when we have insulted someone unnecessarily. Yes, the journalist must make a supreme effort to avoid any factual error. But his editorial staff will sometimes be measured by their ability to defend him just when he has erred; certainly if he erred in good faith in an attempt to reach the truth in a matter of major public importance.
In America , this rationale led to a law that makes it virtually impossible for a plaintiff who is a “public figure” to succeed in a libel case, even if the report was false, because he must prove malicious intent. As a society, we should prefer “to err on the side of freedom of speech,” wrote one of the greatest American justices, William J. Brennan , and thus entrenched in legal decisions one of the central tenets of freedom of the press in the United States: Libel laws are supposed to protect the journalist even from his own fears; to ensure that his hand won’t shake when he criticizes people with money and power; to protect him when he has made an innocent mistake.
The law in Israel is different. It does not include such extreme protection, although it does include other protections, as well as important rulings and marvelous rhetoric. But that’s not enough. Sometimes it even makes no difference. The Adelson affair was decided long before it reached the courtroom. Before the errors, if any, were examined, before the protections, if any, were invoked. Once again we learned that in a place where the ethos is pushed to the wall , the law won’t rescue it.
Once again “ostensibly” is attacking us from all sides.
Sword of censorship
We ostensibly have marvelous court decisions that protect us from the old-time uniform-wearing censorship, and we even have the first signs of decisions limiting “private” censorship. But it’s as if the monumental rulings were floating in a parallel, sterile and perfect universe, which only rarely affects the sweaty reality of everyday life – in which news items are blocked by the sword of censorship, and others are trampled by a random judge’s miserly interpretation of the law or groan beneath a sea of economic interests and the self-censorship of an editor or reporter who took the hint.
Moshe Negbi does not write about himself in this book, but somehow he is a present absentee in its 360 pages. The talented legal commentator, who defied his publisher at the daily Maariv and paid for it with his job, bears the scars of this reality. This stubborn man has continued for decades to broadcast the voice of sanity to us from Jerusalem , even when ill winds are blowing on his government-owned radio station. You don’t have to agree with his opinions on every issue and all the time, but there is probably nobody who embodies the story he has come to tell as well as he himself. Negbi, you should realize, is personally familiar with the two greatest enemies of freedom of expression : the one that comes with the power of money, and the one that comes with the power of power.
That is why he is concerned. He is concerned by the behavior of the authorities in the Anat Kam affair (Anat Kam was accused of copying documents while doing her compulsory military service and passing them on to Haaretz ), and he is concerned by the weak response of the press in that affair.
And in the last pages of the book his most important insight emerges out of this concern. It turns out there is a connection between the old censorship (which wears a uniform or is practiced on behalf of the government ) and the new censorship (which purchases newspapers and media outlets ). What dictates the behavior of the media today – even in the crucial field of defense coverage – “is not necessarily or mainly the public interest,” according to Negbi, “but first and foremost the desire of its owners-controllers to maximize their profits. A newspaper or a commercial TV station that criticizes the army and the Shin Bet security services and publicizes information about their injustices or blunders is liable to send away readers or viewers, and mainly advertisers, because such criticism annoys the readers and the viewers and disturbs their complacency.”
So the two censorships become combined into one: Military censorship lost in the battle over Schnitzer, but won the war. The military establishment manages to prevent many reports that are inconvenient for it , with the explanation (sometimes unfounded ) that they are “harmful to state security.” “Private” censorship finds it even simpler to achieve a similar outcome.
