NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
Israel cannot compete with Syria nor with Ed Snowden, the latest whistle-blower, and so there are only 4 items today. That should give you time to read Today in Palestine, where you learn about what is happening on the ground here in quite some detail.
Israeli newspapers and last night’s news programs all carried articles on Yoram Kaniuk, a well known Israeli author who died two days ago. The most informative article is the BBC one below. Interesting that the 2 Israeli articles on him (the links below) stressed his disappointment with what Israel has become.
Item 2 is aggravating! It reports that the EU and Israel have signed an ‘open skies’ pact that will bring more flights to Israel and perhaps save passengers money. I also am glad to pay less for flights. But the pact is with Israel! Instead of imposing sanctions on Israel, the EU gives it a prize.
In item 3 Richard Falk calls for an investigation in Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners. Will his call be heeded? Obama is more and more annoying. He calls for Falkner to be relieved of his position in the UN as Special Rapporteur, and additionally tells the American people that one cannot have 100% security and 100% privacy. What nonsense! There is no excuse for a government spying on its citizens—though I am quite certain it happens here too.
Item 4 is Today in Palestine for Sunday, June 9, 2013.
That’s it for today.
Dorothy
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1 The Guardian Monday, June 10, 2013
Yoram Kaniuk obituary Israeli novelist who became disillusioned with his homeland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/10/yoram-kaniuk
[see also Honoring Kaniuk, a disappointed Zionist http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/honoring-kaniuk-a-disappointed-zionist.premium-1.528796
And a Haaretz editorial ‘Kaniuk’s Legacy’ http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/kaniuk-s-legacy-1.528795 ]
Daphna Baram
In 2011 Yoram Kaniuk won his legal battle to change the religion clause on his ID card from ‘Jewish’ to ‘no religion’. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images
The novelist Yoram Kaniuk, who has died aged 83 of bone marrow cancer, belonged to the generation that created the state of Israel. He fought in the 1948 war from which it emerged independent, but, along with some other writers of his generation, he became disillusioned with his homeland, disenchanted with its very spirit. “The state I took part in founding had ended long ago and I am not interested in what it has become. It is ludicrous, blunt, vile, dark, sick, and it will not last. We used to think it would be different.”
In the half century up to his death, he published 29 books, most of them novels, with subjects ranging from the 1948 war, the Holocaust and the occupation of territories gained in 1967 to parent-child relationships and ageing. Among his best-known are Hemo, King of Jerusalem (1968), the story of a wounded soldier in a Jerusalem hospital; Nevelot (Carcasses, 1997), about three old men who go on a murderous rampage against young people on the streets of Tel Aviv; Confessions of a Good Arab (1984), recounting the life of a man of Israeli-Palestinian descent; and His Daughter (1988), telling how a senior army officer’s daughter goes missing, and he goes on a journey to find her, and himself.
In terms of style, Kaniuk is identified not so much with his own generation as the next one, and many of his books were adapted for cinema by young Israeli film directors. In the international production of his 1971 novel Adam Resurrected (2008), directed by Paul Schrader, Jeff Goldblum plays a circus entertainer from prewar Berlin leading the death camp survivors in an Israeli asylum. Kaniuk’s last book, Ba Bayamim (An Old Man), in which a widow asks a lonely old painter to produce a portrait of her dead husband, was published a few weeks before his death.
Born in Tel Aviv, Kaniuk was the epitome of Israeli “aristocracy”. His mother, Sarah, had come from Odessa. His father, Moshe Kaniuk, born in Galicia, went from Berlin to Palestine in the late 1920s and became personal secretary to Tel Aviv’s first mayor, Meir Disengof, who was assassinated in 1936. Later he became the first administrative director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Yoram joined Palmach – the combat arm of the Zionist militia Hagana – in the period that saw the end of the British Mandate, the UN resolution on partition, and the outbreak of the 1948 war. He took part in some of the battles around Jerusalem: in one, the battle of Nabi Samuel, he and his platoon were abandoned by their commander, a defining moment which reappeared in his writing.
A week later he was injured while fighting on Mount Zion. Once he had recovered, he started working on a ship that brought Holocaust survivors from Europe to Israel.
He was encouraged by one of the period’s most acclaimed artists, Mordecai Ardon, to study painting in the Bezalel art academy. In 1951 he continued his studies for a year in Paris.
After another voyage as a sailor, he lived in the US for 10 years, and from there pursued adventure, searching for gold in Mexico and diamonds in Guatemala, and gambling in Las Vegas. He got involved in jazz and cinema circles, where he got to know Marlon Brando, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday and the dancer and choreographer Lee Becker, who became his first wife. He described those years of the 1950s as, alongside the 1948 war, the most influential on his life and work. “It was the time of the revolution that changed America, and everybody paid for it. It was a powerful experience, the love of jazz, the efforts to become a writer and a poet, the encounters with all the people whom I have hurt, and who’ve hurt me,” he told the daily Ma’ariv in 2003.
He parted from Becker after five stormy years. In 1958 he married Miranda, and went with her back to Israel. They had two daughters, Aya, a writer and political activist, and Naomi, a Tai Chi therapist.
In 2011 Kaniuk, defiant to the end, won his legal battle when the district court in Tel Aviv accepted his appeal to change the religion clause on his Israeli identity card from “Jewish” to “no religion”. Kaniuk explained that while he did not want to convert to another religion, he had never identified as a religious Jew. In addition, following his marriage to a Christian woman, his grandson had been registered as having “no religion”. He wanted his registration to match his grandson’s.
The ruling is a constitutional milestone in Israel’s constitutional law. The distinctions between religion, nationality and ethnicity carry vast political implications in the state that defines itself as “Jewish”.
He was equally uncompromising about the manner of his exit: there will be no funeral, since Kaniuk donated his body to scientific research and asked for his remains to be burned. “I don’t want to leave any bone dust behind. We constitute a chain: one exits, another enters,” he wrote in his last blog entry.
He also left a few paragraphs of painful reproach to the Israel he had left behind: “We got trapped. We founded a state on a religion, rather than on the nation that we have nearly become. On our way we have not stopped at the hallway of civilisation, and religion has stuck to us like a leech, as that’s its only way to survive, and here it is. It is back. We have not become a nation.”
This autumn his memoir of the war, Tashah (“1948”, first published in 2010), will appear in French, English, Spanish and German translations.
He is survived by Miranda and his daughters.
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2 Haaretz Monday, June 10, 2013
Israel and EU sign Open Skies pact to boost flights and reduce airfares
After delays and protests, the recently signed pact will open air travel to more competition. The deal will increase the number of airlines operating in Israel and encourage others to expand routes and flights.
http://www.haaretz.com/business/israel-and-eu-sign-open-skies-pact-to-boost-flights-and-reduce-airfares.premium-1.528937
By Zohar Blumenkrantz
An El Al airplane in flight. Photo by Archive
Overcoming months of political turbulence and a strike that briefly shut down Ben Gurion Airport in April, Israel and the European Union on Monday finally signed the controversial Open Skies agreement that promises to bring down airfares and increase flying options.
Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz attended the signing ceremony in Luxembourg, together with 27 EU transportation ministers.
“Today’s agreement is very important for further strengthening the overall economic, trade and tourism relations between Israel and the EU. We expect to see more direct flights to and from Israel, lower prices, more jobs and economic benefits on both sides,” said Siim Kallas, an Estonian who is the European Commissioner for Transport, and also a vice president of the European Commission.
The European Commission estimates that once it is fully implemented, Open Skies will yield cost savings of some 350 million euros a year by opening up air travel to more competition. But some of those savings will inevitably come through cost-cutting at carriers such as El Al Israel Airlines, whose staff walked out in April in an effort to block the treaty.
The EU is Israel’s biggest aviation market, accounting for 57% of scheduled international air passenger movements. In 2011, EU-Israel traffic accounted for 7.2 million passengers, an increase of 6.8% from 2010. Talks between Israel and the European Commission on Open Skies began in 2008 but both sides didn’t actually agree on a plan until last July.
In fact, concerns about the cost to Israeli airlines caused the government to get cold feet over approving the agreement, whose approval by Israel had to wait until after the January election. In the end, the government succeeded in removing opposition from Israeli airlines and their unions by agreeing to step up subsidies for the added security checks they need to conduct. The added security costs threatened to make Israeli carriers less price-competitive under Open Skies.
The agreement will go into effect gradually over five years, starting this year, to give Israeli airlines time to adjust. Meanwhile, an inter-ministerial committee began last week reviewing demands by Israel’s airline companies to equalize their operating conditions with those of European carriers.
Under Open Skies, seven weekly flights to each European destination will be added annually. The annual increase, however, will be limited to just three flights a week at a limited number of European airports that serve as transportation hubs and are already experiencing heavy traffic. This also provides Israeli airline companies with a degree of protection during their period of adjustment.
The treaty will replace all existing bilateral passenger aviation agreements between Israel and the EU countries and gradually cancel all limits on the numbers of carriers serving routes, the frequency of flights, passenger loads and the types of aircraft permitted to fly between Israel and the EU. It also aims to boost the number of foreign airlines operating in Israel and encourage those already operating in Israel to expand the number of routes and flights.
Today, there are scheduled direct passenger flight connections between Israel and 18 EU member states.
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3 BBC Monday, June 10, 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22847461
A UN expert has called for an international inquiry into Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners, alleging torture and other abuses.
In a report, Special Rapporteur Richard Falk said Israeli violations were happening “on a massive scale”.
He also said Israel’s blockade of Gaza must end, describing it as “collective punishment” of Palestinians.
Israel, which accuses Mr Falk of being biased against the Jewish state, has so far not commented on the document.
Last week, the US – which has also expressed concerns about Mr Falk’s alleged bias – called for his removal from the post.
Richard Falk drew criticism for comparing Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis ‘Drastic changes’
“The treatment of thousands of Palestinians detained or imprisoned by Israel continues to be extremely worrisome,” said Mr Falk.
His annual report, presented at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, accused Israel of subjecting Palestinian prisoners to serious violations.
These included detention without charges, “torture and other forms of ill, inhumane and humiliating treatment,” and solitary confinement, including of children, said the report.
Mr Falk, a Princeton University law professor, said the situation was extremely worrying, and called for an international investigation.
There are currently about 4,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and the UN estimates that more than 700,000 Palestinians have gone through detention in Israeli jails since the 1967 Middle East war.
Mr Falk also urged an end to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, saying that it amounted to “collective punishment of 1.75m Palestinians” in the territory.
“With 70% of the population dependent on international aid for survival and 90% of the water unfit for human consumption, drastic and urgent changes are urgently required if Palestinians in Gaza are to have their most basic rights protected,” Mr Falk was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
In 2008, Mr Falk drew widespread criticism for comparing Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis.
Israel – which last year stopped co-operating with the UN Human Rights Council over its alleged unfair criticism – was not present at the Geneva meeting.
But Arab countries and some non-aligned states welcomed Mr Falk’s report, suggesting it shed light on a human rights situation which required international scrutiny, reports the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva reports.
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4 Today in Palestine for Sunday, June 9, 2013