NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
9 items below.
Two subjects came up more than others in my reading today: the controversy about academic freedom at Brooklyn College, and the study of Israeli and Palestinian textbooks. The first 4 items deal with the academic freedom, the next two with the report of the textbook study.
Item 1 is a petition that centers on academic freedom rather than on taking sides on the issue of bds. I believe that it is an important document—though a bit on the long side. I signed it, and hope that you will too.
If you wish to know more about the issue before deciding whether or not to sign, the next 2 items will fill you in. The NY Times in item 2 informs us that the event at issue will go on notwithstanding the criticism. Item 3 from the LA Times, “A free speech controversy grows in Brooklyn” gives a bit more details.
Item 4 is on the same subject, but its focus is Alan Dershowitz, who apparently began the opposition to the bds event taking place at Brooklyn College.
Items 5 and 6 are about the textbook study.
Item 5 is from the Forward and is quite thorough, focusing mainly on the differences of opinion among the researchers of the report. The Israeli Department of Education refused to participate in the research, and is taken down a step by one of the researchers and designer of the study: Bruce Wexler, who counters Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s Minister of Education, who “cannot see beyond the blindness that has come in to his mind.” And then adds (quite rightly) that “national leaders who have those blind spots like he does because of their national narrative make for poor and dangerous national leaders.” I doubt that this will be a consideration in Netanyahu’s appointment of the next minister of education in the upcoming government.
The LA Times comments on the study in item 6.
Item 7 is an interesting, unusual, and intelligent response to the question of “how Jews should relate to Palestine.” It will not fit everyone’s response to the question, but surely is preferable to denying the existence of or of not seeing Palestine at all.
Item 8 is another review of the movie the Gatekeepers, and while it is quite good, it makes the same mistake as the previous one did: it attributes the making of the movie to Israelis (implying the country) rather than to a single human being who happens to be Israeli, Dror Moreh, who made it, and whose idea it apparently was.
Item 9’s statistics bring us back to what is happening here in Israel: “Of 240 complaints of abuse by IDF soldiers against Palestinians in 2012: 78 probes, no indictments.”
That’s it for today. Please don’t forget to sign the petition.
Thanks,
Dorothy
+++++
1 ——- PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY——-
Hi,
I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition in relation to the recent controversy concerning the February 7th event scheduled at Brooklyn College that has arisen because there will be speakers supporting the non-violent tactics of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (the BDS movement) in opposition to the Israeli occupation and attendant policies.
Whatever your position in relation to the merits of the BDS movement tactics and/or the Israel/Palestine controversy, I hope you will at least read the petition at the link below and consider signing it as a matter of support for free speech and academic freedom. Below the link to the petition below, please also see yesterday’s New York Times editorial on this subject.
Thanks.
In solidarity and struggle for peace and justice,
David Mitchell
“Support Academic Freedom at CUNY”
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/support-academic-freedom-at-cuny/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=system&utm_campaign=Send%2Bto%2BFriend
+++++
2 LA Times
Monday, February 4, 2013
A free-speech controversy grows in Brooklyn
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-brooklyn-college-israel-20130204,0,6473097.story
By Michael McGough
“That’s a nice college you’ve got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.” That’s not too far removed from the message being sent by some members of New York’s City Council to the president of Brooklyn College, a part of City University of New York and the scene of what the New York Post calls a “Mideast War in Brooklyn.”
On Thursday, in an event co-sponsored by the college’s political science department and various campus organizations — including Students for Justice in Palestine — students will hear from two spokespeople for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that seeks to punish Israel for its treatment of Palestinians.
In a letter last week to President Karen L. Gould, 10 members of the City Council wrote: “A significant portion of the funding for CUNY schools comes directly from the tax dollars of the people of the state and city of New York. Every year, we legislators are asked for additional funding to support programs and initiatives at these schools, and we fight hard to secure those funds. Every one of those dollars given to CUNY, and Brooklyn College, means one less dollar going to some other worthy purpose. We do not believe this program is what the taxpayers of the city — many of whom would feel targeted and demonized by this program — want their tax money to be spent on.”
In muscling the college this way, the council members equate co-sponsorship with official support. Another, similarly exercised group of New York politicians expressed concern that the department “has decided to formally endorse an event that advocates strongly for one side of a highly charged issue.” But the college says co-sponsorship is an invitation to participate, not an endorsement of the speakers’ positions. (Pro-Israel students are free to call the department’s bluff by asking it to cosponsor an appearance by a pro-Israel speaker.)
Ironically, Gould has taken a position on the divestment movement: She’s against it. In a statement issued Monday, she said that “our college does not endorse the BDS movement nor support its call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. As the official host of the CUNY center for study abroad in Israel, our college has a proud history of engagement with Israel and Israeli universities.”
The co-sponsorship issue may be a red herring. What the politicians seem to find offensive is that the college would facilitate the expression of ideas that their constituents find offensive.
A related argument in this controversy is that Jewish students are being subjected to a hostile environment when such views are aired. A similar concern has been raised by politicians in California about anti-Israel demonstrations at this state’s universities.
Obviously no student should be subjected to ethnic or religious harassment. But it does no service to Jewish students — in Brooklyn or Berkeley — to try to insulate them from debate about Israeli polices, including the denunciations offered by the BDS movement. Students are made of sterner stuff than the politicians who purport to protect them.
++++
3 NY Times Monday, February 04, 2013
Amid Criticism, College Says Event on Israel Can Proceed
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/nyregion/despite-criticism-brooklyn-college-says-speakers-on-israel-can-still-appear.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
By JENNY ANDERSON
Published: February 4, 2013
Facing criticism for its decision to co-sponsor an event with speakers from an international group that advocates Israel’s withdrawal from disputed territories where Palestinians live, Brooklyn College indicated Monday that it still planned to do so — but would also host future events featuring opposing views.
.Karen L. Gould, the president of Brooklyn College, said in a statement, “Over the next two months, with the support of the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities and other campus units and community groups, we will provide multiple opportunities for discussion about the topics and related subject matter at the heart of this controversy.”
The controversy erupted last month with the announcement that the college’s political science department was co-sponsoring an event featuring two speakers with B.D.S., which stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Several student and nonstudent groups are co-sponsors of the event, which is to be held at the college on Thursday. In her statement, Ms. Gould said she did not personally agree with the group, but supported its right to speak at the college
Critics, however, said Monday that it was not enough that she did not agree; they said that the college should not co-sponsor the event.
“The issue here is the imprimatur of credibility given to this extremely hateful speech by a department of a public university,” said Lewis A. Fidler, assistant majority leader for the City Council. Mr. Fidler wrote a letter to Ms. Gould on Jan. 29 demanding that the event be canceled, or that the university revoke its co-sponsorship.
He stated in his letter that he would withhold future support for extra money for the college if it were to allow the event to move forward. In an interview he said that he had supported nearly $25 million worth of capital improvement projects for the college as a council member, but that he would be hard-pressed to do so now.
“We believe in the principle of academic freedom,” he wrote. “However, we believe in the principle of not supporting schools whose programs we, and our constituents, find to be odious and wrong.”
Ms. Gould said in her statement that the political science department would give “equal consideration” to co-sponsoring speakers of all political views.
Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor and high-profile lawyer who graduated from Brooklyn College and had critiqued the college’s decision to co-sponsor the event, said he had heard from alumni who were considering withdrawing financial support of the school. He will not do that, he said.
“I will fight against the lack of neutrality of the poli sci department,” he said, “but not against Brooklyn College.”
A version of this article appeared in print on February 5, 2013, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Amid Criticism, College Says Event on Israel Can Proceed..
++++
4 BooksRSS
Al Jazeera
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Dershowitz fights academic freedom at Brooklyn College
Alan Dershowitz’s call to boycott a Political Science department should be dismissed by anyone concerned with justice.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132417443989482.html
By Belen Fernandez
Well-known anti-Palestinian professor Alan Dershowitz has called for a boycott of Brooklyn College’s Political Science department due to its co-sponsoring a panel discussion of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement [AP]
It comes as little surprise that Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, Brooklyn College alumnus and raving apologist for Israeli crimes, has appointed himself commanding general in the assault on the college’s Political Science department for co-sponsoring a February 7 panel discussion on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
As the BDS website notes, the non-violent movement was launched by sectors of Palestinian civil society as a means of pressuring Israel “until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights”. BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti and philosopher Judith Butler are scheduled presenters.
Among the opening salvoes of Dershowitz’s war was a January 30 Huffington Post article entitled “Brooklyn College Political Science Department’s Israel Problem”, in which his familiarity with the subject matter was underscored by his use of an incorrect acronym for the BDS movement – DBS – no less than 12 times. The error has since been rectified; the article’s more profound defects have not.
Arsenal of illogic
In the introductory paragraph, Dershowitz rails against “[t]he international campaign to delegitimate Israel by subjecting the Jewish state – and the Jewish State alone – to divestment, boycotts and sanctions”. No attention is paid to the possibility that Israel’s singling out in this case is perhaps a result of the fact that most other states in this world are not presently engaged in anachronistic colonial exploits, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Unleashing his arsenal of illogic against the argument that departmental co-sponsorship of the BDS panel is consistent with the ideal of academic freedom, Dershowitz decrees that the event instead violates the academic freedom of persons opposed to the BDS movement, demanding:
Would the political science department of Brooklyn College sponsor and endorse an anti-divestment evening? Would they sponsor and endorse me, a graduate of that department, to present my perspective to their students?
Of course, Dershowitz’s line of reasoning might appear slightly more convincing were he to refrain from excising relevant bits of personal history. As Brooklyn College Political Science professor and author Corey Robin remarked in a recent email to me:
Over the years, our department has co-sponsored many public talks and events, with a range of speakers, including one Alan Dershowitz… [W]hen Professor Dershowitz was our department’s Konefsky Lecturer, he was not, to my knowledge, required – nor did he request – to share the stage with someone offering an opposing view.
This information automatically debunks Dershowitz’s suggestion that the department in question “represent[s] only its hard left faculty” and that co-sponsorship constitutes “an official endorsement” of BDS.
Illegality and immorality
Dershowitz alleges that the BDS campaign “advocates the blacklisting of Jewish Israeli academics, which is probably illegal and certainly immoral”. He then goes on to quote an anonymous Brooklyn College faculty member as follows: “[B]oycotting academics is the opposite of free speech. It symbolises the silencing on [sic] people based on their race and religion.”
Keeping in mind that “Israeli” is neither a race nor a religion, let us review the interpretation of this particular BDS transgression provided by Gawker’s pseudonymous politics blogger Mobutu Sese Seko:
It’s not totally clear what Dershowitz means by “blacklisting” of academics, but it seems reasonable to assume he refers to a BDS-related boycott of joint academic projects with Israeli universities. As the linked article notes, such a boycott has direct bearing on the Israel-Palestine conflict, as the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology developed a remote-controlled bulldozer used to level Palestinian homes to remove their tactical roof-having and standing-up abilities.
To be sure, the complicity of Israeli institutions of higher learning in the occupation of Palestinian land and suppression of human rights effectively eliminates anti-Semitism as the motive for the academic boycott.
“We won’t know if [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] is a ticking-bomb terrorist unless he provides us information, and he’s not likely to provide information unless we use certain extreme measures.”
– Alan Dershowitz, 2003
As for Dershowitz’s hysteria over things that are “probably illegal and certainly immoral”, it is worth recalling his advocacy on behalf of phenomena quite a bit worthier of such descriptions. These include Israel’s policy of “targeted killings” as well as its habitual massacres of Arab civilian populations, which our legal scholar has determined are a natural result of the creeping lack of Arab “civilianality”.
Chicken-and-egg torture
Torture – another pet topic – has according to Dershowitz been condemned to illegality by archaic international laws and agreements unequipped to deal with the current era of terrorism.
Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2002, Dershowitz presented his modernising proposal for legalised torture, according to which “no torture would be permitted without a ‘torture warrant’ being issued by a judge”. Torturous activity would be limited to “nonlethal means, such as sterile needles, being inserted beneath the nails to cause excruciating pain without endangering life”.
When asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in 2003 whether the capture of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed constituted “one of those moments” necessitating torture techniques, Dershowitz responded:
This is not the ticking-bomb terrorist case, at least so far as we know. Of course, the difficult question is the chicken-egg question: We won’t know if he is a ticking-bomb terrorist unless he provides us information, and he’s not likely to provide information unless we use certain extreme measures.
In other words: when in doubt, bust out the needles.
Aside from the chicken-and-egg scenario, other Dershowitz-sponsored pedagogical tools include the “‘Shoe on the Other Foot’ Test”, the subject of the second installment of his Huffington Post tirade, in which he brainstorms irrelevant analogies ostensibly intended to illustrate Brooklyn College’s hypocrisy in invoking academic freedom in the context of the BDS panel:
What would these [college] administrators say if the department of philosophy were to officially endorse the right to life and oppose a woman’s right to choose abortion?.. What if the department of religion were to officially condemn homosexuality?
Disguising censorship as academic freedom
Throughout his career, Dershowitz has adhered to a formula for debate that is based on projection and inverting reality. He surfaced in the midst of Israel’s latest slaughter of civilians in Gaza to declare that the IDF was “targeting only terrorists and Hamas military leaders”; now he is promoting censorship under the guise of academic freedom while accusing those promoting academic freedom of censorship.
His Huffington Post dispatches are replete with incisive analyses of his own modus operandi, projected onto others:
‘Free speech for me but not for thee’ has always been the hallmark of extremists on both the left and right. These extremists believe they know the truth and that there is no reason for supporting, endorsing or even tolerating opposing viewpoints.
Repeatedly reiterating his commitment to the sanctity of the “marketplace of ideas”, Dershowitz threatens Brooklyn College with a descent into service as a “propaganda centre… reminiscent of ‘political science’ departments in the former Soviet Union that ‘encouraged’ their students to follow the official party line”. He incites students to boycott the college’s Political Science department by ludicrously implying that failure to support BDS will affect grades and advanced educational opportunities.
As long as Harvard refuses to pull its own Soviet Union and enact a Great Purge, Dershowitz enjoys a substantial perch from which to pursue his ultimate goal, aptly summed up by Brooklyn College Philosophy professor Samir Chopra as “an end to all discussion, to be replaced by the rote recitation and memorisation of a party line written up by him”.
The man should be boycotted, divested from and sanctioned by anyone concerned with justice, human rights, and substantive discussion and debate.
Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, released by Verso in 2011. She is a member of the Jacobin Magazine editorial board, and her articles have appeared in the London Review of Books blog, The Baffler, Al Akhbar English and many other publications.
++++
5 The Forward
Monday, February 4, 2013
Dissenters on Panel Blast Study Claiming Palestinian Textbooks Don’t Vilify Jews
Prof Calls Report ‘Premature,’ Others Blindsided By Release
getty images
Blindsided: Some members of an advisory panel say they were taken aback by the release of a report that cleared Palestinian authorities of using textbooks to encourage hatred of Jews or Israel.
http://forward.com/articles/170490/dissenters-on-panel-blast-study-claiming-palestini/?p=all#ixzz2JyvFIM6a
By Nathan Jeffay
Dissenters on Panel Blast Study Claiming Palestinian Textbooks Don’t Vilify Jews
Palestinian Textbooks Don’t Vilify Jews, New Study Reveals
U.S. Funding Rigorous Study of Palestinian and Israeli Textbook Incitement
Progress Seen in P.A. Crackdown On Incitement by West Bank Imams
Banned Textbook Offers a Lesson in Mideast Politics
Controversy quickly engulfed a new study that said Palestinian textbooks do not incite hatred for Jews with Israel blasting the report — with some members of the report’s advisory panel claiming they were blindsided by its release.
Bar Ilan University Talmud professor Daniel Sperber, a member of the panel, slammed the decision to release the report when Israeli-Palestinian relations are strained and when Israel is in-between governments. “These are tense times in the Middle East and the idea [of the study] was not to increase tensions,” he told the Forward.
He added that the release was “premature” and that some of the steps that were supposed to be completed before the information went public were not. Sperber, who was among the advisory panel members who said they didn’t receive the report, also suggested that as far as the methodology of the report is concerned “considerable areas [are] certainly problematic”
Several other panel members said they had not seen the study, and were shocked to read about its release.
Jerusalem reacted furiously to a U.S.-funded study on Israeli and Palestinian textbooks, which was made public this morning.
The study cleared the Palestinians of demonizing Jews in school textbooks and contends that both Israeli and Palestinian teachers use classroom materials that distort the history of the Middle East conflict.
A statement from Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry claimed that the study’s “approach methodology and findings are highly problematic and strongly misleading.” It claimed that the study “omits important examples of incitement and delegitimization found in official PA textbooks” and that it “provides a highly-distorted depiction of the PA’s systematic efforts to educate and indoctrinate Palestinian children to hate, violence and non-acceptance of Israel’s existence.”
The Education Ministry denounced the findings in a press release, calling the study “biased, unprofessional and significantly lacking in objectivity,” adding: “The attempt to create a parallel between the Israeli education system and the Palestinian education system is completely unfounded and lacks any basis in reality.” The ministry claimed that the results of the study showed that “the decision not to cooperate with [it] was correct.”
Bruce Wexler, the Yale University psychiatry professor who designed the study, lashed back at Israel’s response to the report, singling out Israel’s Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
“Frankly I think that the minister of education is a great example of the power of these unilateral narratives,” Wexler said in an interview with the Forward. “That man cannot see beyond the blindness that has come in to his mind.”
Wexler added: “By the way, national leaders who have those blind spots like he does because of their national narrative make for poor and dangerous national leaders.”
Mohammed Dajani, a professor at Al Quds University in the West Bank and member of the study’s advisory panel, claimed that things have moved from a situation in the mid-1990s when the Palestinians refused to acknowledge problems in the textbooks they were using to one where Israeli authorities are in a “state of denial” about their schoolbooks.
In contrast to the cold Israeli reaction, the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad released a statement saying that he “expresses his satisfaction with a main finding of a study … that confirms that Palestinian textbooks do not contain any form of blatant incitement, which is based on contempt towards the ‘other’.”
The statement said that he “issued his instructions to the Ministry of Education to study the report thoroughly and to use its conclusions as a guide in the ongoing efforts to develop school curriculums aimed at keeping up to date with developments and achieving total harmony with our people’s deeply rooted principles of coexistence, tolerance, justice, and human dignity, which constitute a principal component of the system of moral values on which the independent state of Palestine will be established.” He called on Israel to do the same.
Despite the attempts by Wexler to maintain an academic tone at the press conference, another of the professors who led the research, Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University, veered in to Palestinian advocacy, prompting Wexler to react irritably and attempt to shush him. Adwan argued that in view of the hardships of life under occupation the mildness of Palestinian textbooks is “amazing.”
“Talking about the atrocities that Palestinians are living under it’s unimaginable,” he said. “I would invite all Israeli Jews to come and live with us for one day.”
Adwan commented to the Forward that he believed that the Palestinian textbooks actually lacked content about the difficulties that Palestinians have faced in the conflict, which should be described more “because you have the right to teach your own history.”
Wexler, who is Jewish, spoke of his personal sadness at Israel’s non-cooperation with the study and dismissal of its findings.
“When you’re born in 1947 you grow up reading Exodus and with Golda Meir and Abba Eban and giving money for trees to grow Israel, and you develop a deep connection with the State of Israel,” said Wexler. “On a personal level it’s very hard, painful. And it’s painful to think that the Israeli government would rather hold on, it seems, to a propaganda point that they know to be false than they would to get real change in the Palestinian books.”
He added that it was frustrating to watch Israel dig in its heels on an issue that could lead to positive change.
“We have people lining up to use their influence to make the Palestinian books better,” he said. “It’s the Israeli government that’s threatening to undermine the validity of the study that other people want to use to get Israel on the maps of the Palestinian books. That’s frustrating.”
+++++
6 LA Times
Monday, February 4, 2013
Israeli and Palestinian textbooks fail balance test, study finds
Comments
Palestinian students attend class in the West Bank city of Ramallah. A U.S.-funded study says textbooks in both Israeli and Palestinian schoolbooks largely present one-sided narratives of the conflict between the two peoples. (Majdi Mohammed / Associated Press / February 3, 2013)
http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-israeli-palestinian-textbooks-unbalanced-20130204,0,3549890.story
By Edmund Sanders
JERUSALEM – Israeli and Palestinian textbooks get failing grades when it comes to adequately and positively representing each other’s people, culture and history, according to a three-year, U.S-funded study released Monday.
On the bright side, researchers concluded that most schoolbooks on both sides were factually accurate, even though they usually described each other in negative, unflattering terms and typically cast one another as the “enemy.”
Extremely negative material, such as demonization, incitement to violence or depicting the other side as subhuman, were rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books, the report found.
Israeli officials, who frequently claim Palestinian textbooks espouse hatred, rejected the study’s conclusions as biased. Palestinian Authority officials said the study vindicated their assertion that their textbooks are as fair and balanced as Israel’s.
The report found both sides lacking in objectivity and balance.
Neither side scored particularly well in geography with 94% of Palestinian textbook maps failing to identify the existence of Israel and 87% of Israeli maps lacking any mention of Palestine or the Palestinian territories.
Neither side’s textbooks devoted adequate attention to the idea of living together in harmony, researchers said.
“Peaceful co-existence … is completely ignored,’’ said Sami Adwan, a professor at Bethlehem University, who participated in the research with Daniel Bar-Tal, a professor at Tel Aviv University, and Bruce E. Wexler, a senior research scientist at Yale School of Medicine.
Funded with a $500,000 U.S. State Department grant, the project analyzed 94 Palestinian textbooks and 74 from Israel, including some from public state-run schools and some from ultra-Orthodox institutions. Ultra-Orthodox schools have a large degree of autonomy in setting their own curriculum and now instruct nearly one-third of Israeli’s students, the study found.
The research was conducted by Israelis and Palestinians, who cross-checked each other’s work to reduce potential bias. The study was initiated by the Jerusalem-based Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, the Palestinian Authority and various Christian churches. Israel refused to take part.
A negative characterization of “the other” was common in most of the textbooks, though negative portrayals were lowest in Israeli state school textbooks (49%) compared with ultra-Orthodox textbooks (73%) and those in Palestinian schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (84%), the study found.
Israeli state school textbooks also included some of the only examples of self-criticism. An 11th-grade civics book recounts the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre as the “killing of dozens of helpless Arabs” and describes the attack as “the central cause of … the Arab exodus from captured Arab settlements.”
Similarly, a 4th-grade Palestinian textbook included a story of a Palestinian who helped rescue a wounded Israeli soldier because, he says in the text, it was “my obligation as a Muslim Arab.”
But such positive examples were the exception, researchers found.
Among the most negative examples were an Israel state school textbook reference to Arabs as “masses of the wild nation,” and ultra-Orthodox textbook descriptions of a “convoy of bloodthirsty Arabs” and a village that was a “nest of murderers.”
A 4th-grade book used in ultra-Orthodox schools called Israel “a little lamb in a sea of seventy wolves,” referring to Arab nations.
Palestinian books also included negative references about the “Zionist occupation,” and the “usurpation of Palestine.” One lesson refers to an Israeli prison as a “slaughterhouse.”
The report found both sets of books carried references to martyrdom and dying for one’s land and liberty.
Israeli officials attacked the study even before it was officially released, insisting that their textbooks were superior to Palestinians’ and should not be compared in the same study.
In a statement, the Ministry of Education called the research “biased, unprofessional and severely nonobjective. … The attempt at creating parallels between the Israeli and Palestinian education systems is ungrounded and lacks a realistic basis.”
Jerusalem physician Elihu Richter, who served on the advisory panel for the project, said Monday he withdrew his support for the report because he believed the methodology may have undercounted examples of Palestinian incitement.
Researchers defended their project, calling it the most definitive and balanced study to date on the topic. Wexler, the Yale researcher, criticized Israel’s refusal to participate.
“The Ministry of Education appears to be uninterested in facts about what is in the schoolbooks and unencumbered by facts when describing our project,’’ Wexler said.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad praised the report for examining the issue without “preconceived notions and stereotypes.” He said Palestinians would use the findings to help improve their curriculum.
++++
7 How Jews should relate to Palestine
Palestine, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river, does exist and will continue to exist. And the first people to understand this should be the Jews. For homeland and political sovereignty are two distinct concepts.
http://972mag.com/how-jews-should-relate-to-palestine/65424/
By Jeremiah Haber
+++++
8 Washington Post
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Opinion Writer_ Israel’s ‘Gatekeepers’ break their silence
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-israels-gatekeepers-raising-uncomfortable-issues/2013/02/04/c0b03dce-6ef8-11e2-8b8d-e0b59a1b8e2a_story.html
By Richard Cohen,
Feb 05, 2013
Imagine six former directors of the CIA talking with a distinguished filmmaker and confessing to the murder of two terrorism suspects, ordering the assassination of others, alleging a lack of real leadership by the president and stating to the camera and the entire world that the war in Afghanistan is an unconscionable botch — a bloody, daily slog without end or justification. This, of course, could never happen in the United States. It did, though, in Israel.
The filmmaker is Dror Moreh, and what he did, simply and astoundingly, is sit down, camera rolling, with six former heads of Israel’s security agency, the Shin Bet, and let them spill their guts. The result is the documentary “The Gatekeepers,” which is up for an Academy Award and which, it seems safe to say, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu would like to see lose. That it was partially made with government funding is, truly, an example of insult added to injury.
The six men’s tenures span the years 1980 to 2011. They served under eight different prime ministers and through a succession of uprisings by Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza, a turn-your-face-away series of terrorist attacks against civilian targets — the bombing of city buses, etc. — after which certain niceties of the law were not followed. After a 1984 bus bombing, two captured terrorists were almost beaten to death by the army — and the job was finished on the orders of the Shin Bet’s Avraham Shalom:
“So I said, ‘Hit them again and finish it.’ ”
The order was followed.
“I think he took a rock and smashed their heads in.”
Some of the other Shin Bet chiefs recount James Bond-type exploits — an exploding cellphone, for instance — and rough interrogations that may or may not amount to torture; it’s not clear. But what is clear is that some of these former spy chiefs view right-wing Jewish militancy as more perilous to Israel than the restive and seething Palestinians on the West Bank. It was a Jew, after all, who killed the revered Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 because that prime minister was determined to make peace. This was, they all concede, an event that changed history.
The film is a tough indictment of Israeli policy, particularly the continued occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of Jewish settlements there. All of the former officials are traditional Israeli secularists, and they show a commendable loathing for the religious militants that Israeli governments continuously pandered to. Above all, though, they are critical of government after government that lacks a strategy to somehow withdraw from the West Bank and instead relies on oppression. “You can’t make peace using military means,” says Ami Ayalon, head of the Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000 and a former navy commando.
Ayalon is the cliched Israeli. He is the product of the kibbutz movement, a rock-hard physical specimen with more derring-do under his belt than an entire SEAL team. He had a belief, a secular one, and it was in the wisdom and courage of Israel’s leaders. As he talks, the camera pans a wall of the prime minister’s outer office, where the requisite photos of them all hang. Ayalon recounts what he found when he finally had the stature to get to see that office . . . nothing:
“I was on the second floor and found no door at the end of the corridor, and behind the missing door, no one was thinking for me. You see that void, that . . . lack of initiative, that willingness to let things take their course.”
This has the aspect of a dream sequence. But the lack of initiative, the refusal to recognize that time ticks for the Palestinians, not the Israelis, that the world watches with growing irritation (and, for sure, anti-Semitism) are all too real. The weight of history, of fearsome geopolitical truths (so many Arabs, so few Jews, so much fear, so little hope), is crushing Israeli initiative. For those of us who love and admire Israel, “The Gatekeepers” is a squirmy 97 minutes.
And yet is there another country where the former security chiefs would say such things? Is there another country where the tough guys cite philosophers, confess their anguish, admit to the inadvertent killing of noncombatants — look the camera in its cold, unblinking eye and express second thoughts about what they did and accuse their bosses of being weak, unimaginative leaders? Having not seen the competition, I can’t say if “The Gatekeepers” deserves an Oscar. But I can say Israelis do for having made it.
+++++
9 Haaretz
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
Of 240 complaints of abuse by IDF soldiers against Palestinians in 2012: 78 probes, no indictments
Report notes that ‘the slow pace of the military law enforcement system’ means that more investigations were liable to be opened and indictments issued.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/of-240-complaints-of-abuse-by-idf-soldiers-against-palestinians-in-2012-78-probes-no-indictments.premium-1.501445
By Gili Cohen
Feb.05, 2013
A screenshot taken from a YouTube video showing IDF soldiers in civilian clothes dragging a Palestinian man, Hebron, August 14, 2012.
Of the 240 complaints regarding possible crimes committed by Israel Defense Forces soldiers against Palestinians filed with the Military Police in 2012, only 78 investigations were launched and not a single indictment was served, a report by the Yesh Din human rights group has revealed.
The authors, who based their report on data supplied by the IDF Spokesman’s Office, noted however that “the slow pace of the military law enforcement system” means that more investigations were liable to be opened and indictments issued. To that regard, the report points out that 25 investigations were launched in 2012 based on complaints filed in 2011.
The report also cites an indictment filed in November 2011 over an investigation that was launched in 2010. In that case, a military policeman was convicted of abuse and improper conduct for kicking a Palestinian prisoner in a military lockup. The ruling in that case was the only one handed down in 2012.
The report notes a slight decline in the number of complaints filed, compared to the 252 submitted in 2011, but also points to a marked drop in the number of investigations and emphasizes the lack of indictments.
In 2011, 153 investigations were launched yielding two indictments (1.3 percent of the investigations) and in 2010 there were 145 investigations, leading to four indictments (2.75 percent).
Most of the complaints were received from the military prosecutor (90), the Israel Police (45) and from human rights groups, with only six complaints filed by Palestinians to the Military Police on their own behalf. Yesh Din notes that the absence of a Military Police base in the West Bank as the reason that Palestinians who feel they have been mistreated by soldiers need to use an intermediary to file their complaints.
Of the 103 investigations launched in 2012, most involved violence or incidents in which Palestinians were wounded (55 cases, or 53 percent of the cases). This represents a drop compared to previous years, where such cases constituted about 12 percent of the total. There was also a 60 percent fewer investigations into property damage complaints: In 2012 only five probes were launched for destruction of property and one was opened for looting.
At the same time, there was a 60 percent increase in the number of investigations into deaths of Palestinians, with 15 such files opened – six for incidents in the West Bank and nine in Gaza. The reason for this could be that the Military Prosecution has instructed the Military Police to investigate every death involving soldiers in the West Bank. Sixteen more investigations were launched into what the IDF terms “improper conduct.”
The IDF Spokesman said in response to the report: “It should be clear that not all the investigations opened in 2012 have been completed. From here one can see that the statistic presented is tendentious.
“Complaints about the behavior of IDF soldiers in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza area are evaluated by the Military Police and the Military Prosecution in accordance with the policy set by the military advocate-general, which was approved in an explicit ruling of the Supreme Court. In instances where there’s suspicion that a crime was committed, a Military Police probe is opened, which is overseen by experienced investigative officers and at times legal experts from the Military Prosecution. Every decision regarding a case being investigated, whether it’s to indict, take disciplinary action or close the case, is made on an individual basis, and certainly no account is taken of any sort of statistical data.
“It’s important to stress that every decision made by the military authorities can be challenged in the High Court of Justice. Many groups, including Yesh Din, have done this more than once, and in the overwhelming number of cases the High Court found no reason to intervene in the decision made. Naturally, a report presenting statistical data on decisions made in criminal cases cannot reflect the quality and character of the decisions made in each individual case.”