The statement above is so true, yet so seldom heard or regarded. It at once puts things in order and allows us to decide whether we are Zionist, Jewish, or both. Israel includes Jewish customs, but it is clearly a Zionist state rather than a Jewish one. Read Lawrence Davidson below (item 1) to see the logic behind the division.
Rest assured, this division enables you to be as critical of Israel as you believe necessary yet remain a good Jew, or Christian, or Muslim, or secular! Zionism is one thing, religion or ethnicity another. Zionism is a political movement. It has nothing to do with religion or culture or ethnic customs. The Zionism that is Israel is militaristic, nationalistic, and colonialist. No wonder it has to fight so many wars.
There are 3 additional items.
Item 2 reports more about Karmiel, a city in which Arabs are not wanted. That is happening also in additional cities in Israel. In Tsfat [Safad], for instance, a Rabbi instructed residents not to rent to Arabs.
As an individual who experienced racism as a Jew in the United States when I was growing up, I am super-sensitive to Jews doing to others what I would not wish to have done unto me. But this is the way Israel is going.
Items 3 and 4 are about prisoners and prisons and the Shabak (called also Shin Bet, and in English the General Security Service, or secret police, if you wish).
Item 3 reports that the Israeli Shin Bet is asking the court to continue a regulation that will allow the Shin Bet to detain ad infinitum a Palestinian without trial. No Habeas Corpus here. With respect to Palestinians, Israeli courts regard them as guilty until proven innocent!
Item 4 is about just such a case. And not only is the man being held without trial, he is being kept in isolation. There is more than a little truth to the contention in 4 that “the Israeli courts are merely an arm of the occupation . . .” [the highlighting is Elana’s, with which I wholly agree]
If you have time after reading these 4 items or before you read them, please glance at the statistics in the current ‘If Americans Knew’
Michael Oren is the Israeli ambassador to the United States. This means he stands in a line of foreign diplomats who are often quite out of the ordinary. For one thing they may well be ex-Americans. Oren (nee Bornstein) was born in upstate New York and grew up in West Orange, New Jersey. He switched countries in 1979. For another, Israeli ambassadors do not hesitate to engage in public debates aimed at swaying American public opinion. Actually, this is very un-diplomatic behavior and you don’t see the ambassadors from China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay or Liechtenstein, ad finem, doing that sort of thing. Yet Oren has done this several times by sending op-eds to the New York Times. On October 13 he did so again with one entitled, “An End to Israel’s Invisibility.”
It is an odd title, for if there is one thing Israel is not, it is invisible. But the ambassador is arguing from a peculiar point of view. Essentially, he claims that the Palestinians have yet to officially acknowledge that Israel is a “Jewish state.” For Oren it is the Jewish aspect of Israel that remains “invisible.” As odd as this sounds, the ambassador’s complaint echos a current theme across the political spectrum in Israel. At the same time that he put out his op-ed, Ari Shavit, the center-right contributor to Ha’aretz, published a piece that made a similar argument but extended the failure of recognition accusation to Europe and beyond. It appeared on October 14 and is entitled “The Core of the Conflict.”
All of this might appear as something of a mystery. Doesn’t the entire world already know that Israel is a “Jewish state?” Oren, however, expresses profound insecurity over the issue. “The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the refusal to recognize Jews as a people, indigenous to the region and endowed with right of self-government.” Here Mr. Oren, who is certainly not “indigenous to the region,” is practicing a bit of plagiarism by taking a long standing Palestinian argument and asserting it as an Israeli one. Thus, for 62 years the Palestinians have claimed that the core of the conflict is the refusal of Israel to recognize them as indigenous to the region and endowed with the right of self-government.
At this point the mystery takes another twist. For Oren insists that this recognition of the Palestinians has already been pledged by Israel and now it is the Palestinians’ turn to reciprocate. “Just as Isreal recognizes the existence of the Palestinian people with an inalienable right to self-determination in its homeland, so, too, must the Palestinians accede to the Jewish people’s 3,000 year connection to our homeland and our right to sovereignty there.” No doubt the first part of this sentence is a reference to the Oslo Accords, which the Israelis have spent at least the last ten years describing as a dead and buried. So are we to believe that the ambassador now takes this pledge seriously? Hardly. The assertion of recognition of Palestinian rights is but a weak red herring. The only way the Israelis recognize the existence of the Palestinian people is by evicting them daily so as to clear the way for their illegal colonization of conquered land.
Finally, why should millions of Palestinian refugees buy into the ambassador’s insistence that “Jewish right to statehood is a tenet of international law”? Every one of Israel’s governments has made a profession of violating international laws such as those embodied in the Geneva Conventions. So, this claim is simply hypocritical . Why should anyone give credence to Israel’s assertion that it be accorded rights it has systematically denied others?
So, what is going on here? Why, at this particular time, do we get an evidently improvised emphasis on Israel as a “Jewish state?” Perhaps we should see it as a negotiation tactic. If you can get the Palestinian Authority to buy into this recognition you automatically negate, at least in prospective treaty terms, the right of return. And indeed, the Israelis have come pretty close to pulling off this gambit. Thus, Mahmoud Abbas stated on October 17 that once the Palestinians have a state of their own in the lands occupied by Israel after 1967, they will “end all historic claims against Israel” within the 1967 borders.
One would think that if the Israeli government is serious about the Jewish recognition issue they would take Abbas up on this offer and negotiate non-stop to close the not very large gap between the two positions. To date there has been no move in that direction. That certainly undermines the negotiating tactic argument and supports those who say the demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state is not designed to shape negotiations, but to end them.
That last interpretation might have some truth to it, but I do not think it tells the whole story. There is still another way of interpreting the recognition theme that is presently being promoted. A suggestion of this alternative motivation comes in the Shavit piece mentioned above. Shavit offers “seven reasons why the demand to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is a legitimate one.” None of them are any more convincing than Oren’s arguments, but one does stand out as revealing.
Shavit claims that the recognition being demanded will cause a halt to the assault on the legitimacy of Israel. It will stop a process that has caused “Ehud Olmert’s Israel” to be seen as less legitimate than “Yitzhak Shamir’s Israel.” Shavit describes this process as an “avalanche” implying that he sees the attack on legitimacy as getting worse as time goes by.
What this means is that the present emphasis on Israel as the Jewish state is aimed not only at complicating negotiations with the Palestinians, but also at undermining the growing boycott movement that seeks to isolate Israel and call into serious question the legitimacy of a state designed exclusively for one ethnic or religious group. The efforts of Oren, Shavit and others are testimony to the fact that the boycott movement is working, and the Israeli government knows it.
To tell the truth, Oren and Shavit have it wrong about Israel. It is not a Jewish state. Rather it is a Zionist state. For 93 years (counting from 1917 and the Balfour Declaration) the Zionists have sought to make the two synonymous. But they are not the same. Judaism is a religion that, at its best, demands tolerance and acceptance of the other. Zionism is a political ideology the ethnic exclusiveness of which leads, almost inevitably, to apartheid.
More and more Jews are coming to understand this and that too is part of Shavit’s feared avalanche. In the end it is the practice of Zionism, and not lack of recognition of its alleged Jewishness, that is causing Israel’s legitimacy crisis. Demanding that the Palestinians, or indeed the whole world, call Israel the Jewish state cannot mask its real nature.
Lawrence Davidson is a Professor of History at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
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2. From Sol Salbe ,
October 25, 2010
Middle East News Service comments: Small-time examples of racism are sometimes more powerful than the big-picture . Who, among those who saw it, would forget the ambulance being turned away in Apartheid South Africa because it was the “wrong colour”? Israel’s discrimination against its own Palestinian Arab citizens is also most blatant when it is banal.
The following is taken from the local supplements to Yediot Acharonot in various parts of northern Israel. Read it and decide for yourself. But if you think that in a free country there is a limit on how much private activity can be stopped, consider the paper’s reaction. On the website it gave people a chance to vote on the council’s “dobber-inner”. The question was
Do you agree with the “dobber-inner” initiative?
*Yes, Karmiel is a Jewish City and the “dobber-inner” is an effective and legitimate means to prevent the buying of flats by Arabs in the city.
*No, the “dobber-inner” is a racist initiative reminiscent of dark regimes. Citizens have the right to live wherever they wish.
Perhaps a better question is “what does asking the question say about Israel (and the newspaper)?”
Many thanks for Daphna Baram for her quick translation of this article.
Sol Salbe http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=523794418
You do not want Arabs in Karmiel? Report to Purple Email!
Karmiel’s Deputy Mayor, Oren Milstein, does not want any Arabs in his town. Therefore he urges the public to report real estate deals with Arabs to a special email address, and his bureau assists the anti-Arab initiative. Milstein: “The email address is operated by a private person”.
Nadav Mayost
Residents of Karmiel are invited to report Arabs who intend to buy flats in the town, said Karmiel’s deputy Mayor, Oren Milstein, in an interview on the Internet site “Besheva”. In the same interview he mentioned a weekly ad in the local press which calls on residents to report such information to a special “purple email address”. Milstein went on to say, using the first person: “Residents are welcome to turn to us the moment they become aware of a flat which is about to be sold to someone from one of the [surrounding Arab] villages. Once a flat in Karmiel is sold to an Arab family – it is a solid fact for generations to come”.
Milstein intimates that the selling of 30 flats has already been prevented in this way. In the interview Milstein mentions the “Taatzumot Israel” (“the Prowess of Israel”) association. The association’s website says it concerns itself with “settling the Land of Israel”. It is registered in Karmiel and its director is a resident of Karmiel. The Deputy Mayor’s office does not hide its support for the anti-Arab initiative, but denies a direct connection to it. We received a great deal of assistance there this week in our attempts to get the “purple email address”, and there was also an effort to get information out of us. We have approached the Deputy Mayor’s bureau because we wanted to fathom out who‘s behind the initiative, which is why we claimed to have information about a person who intends to sell his flat to an Arab.
The Deputy Mayor’s secretary tried at first to find the relevant email address for us, but she also tried to persuade us to provide her with the information. “I need to know who this neighbour of yours is, and I’ll pass it on to the person who deals with it.”
“I have no problem giving you the email address. What I know is that you need to provide the neighbour’s details, his name, address, telephone number. I know that they call him and plead with him and try to hook him up with alternative buyers by putting him in touch with estate agents. They’d try every possible way”. The secretary was anxious to find out whether it was already too late. She asked: “The contract has not been signed yet, has it?”
A concerned Karmiel resident We asked who is behind the venture and were told “send the email, ask your questions, you will get answers”. The secretary gave us the email address: lo.le.mechira@gmail.com, and suggested we write in and await a response. [Lo Lemechira means not for sale.]
Following Milstein’s recommendation we have emailed the address we were given, introduced ourselves as a “concerned Karmiel resident ” and said the deal might take place as early as three days hence. We received the following answer: “Dear Karmiel resident, I am a Karmiel resident just like you. Our aim is amicable and we cannot impose anything on anybody. We would like to have your phone number in order to discuss matters. Best wishes from the Purple Email”. This email came from an address entitled “My Home is My Home”. But our detailed questions seem to have aroused suspicion, as the next email to arrive was from the “Israel’s Prowess” Association.
It said “Your questions lead us to believe that your aim is not to prevent sales of property to Arabs but to investigate in the opposite direction… Our intention is not to act against Arabs but against breaking the status quo in the town, which was set up as a Jewish town in a sea of Arab villages. Respectfully, the fund for the encouragement of settlement”. In the end it noted “your email has been forwarded to the Deputy Mayor, Mr Oren Milstein”.
A senior political figure in Karmiel said in response: “It is worth noting that in the past other regimes urged snitches to contact them and tell them where Jews were hiding. Such phenomena should be condemned [one can’t but wonder why such a senior political figure does not condemn under his own name. DB]. Uri Avnery of the Gush Shalom movement said: “I grew up in Germany and as a child I saw the Nazis come into power. This is the beginning of a slippery slope. It worries me that they believe that the residents of Karmiel would support such a racist and fascist approach.
In Germany there were towns and villages where people put up signs “there are no Jews here” and if someone wanted to sell to a Jew the local population prevented it, until in the end there was legislation that stopped it altogether. It is worrying that Karmiel is the pioneer. That it is done openly, without shame”. The municipality responded: “Karmiel municipality has no involvement in this private venture, therefore it should not be the one to respond.”
We have approached Milstein with detailed questions as to the nature of his involvement in the “purple email” venture. Among other things he was asked why responses from Purple Email come under the logo “My Home” – the name of his political faction in the municipality. His response: “It is my understanding that the Purple Email is operated by a private person. The municipality building has nothing to do with it. My position is that any person is entitled to sell his property as they wish. However sometimes a situation arises when a property is on the market but not sold for a while. I think connecting such sellers to investors from Israel and abroad is a step to be encouraged. Practically, this is free mediation service between residents”.
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3. Haaretz,
October 25, 2010
Shin Bet [General Security Service] requests extension of order which allows detention of Palestinians without a hearing.
‘Security situation in Israel has not changed over the past three years and there is therefore a need to extend the temporary order,’ says top Shin Bet official.
A top Shin Bet official on Monday asked the Knesset to extend a temporary order that allows the security service to detain Palestinian prisoners for four days without a hearing.
“The security situation in Israel has not changed over the past three years and there is therefore a need to extend the temporary order,” the Shin Bet’s head of investigations told the Knesset’s legislative committee.
The investigations chief also asked the committee to restore Section 5 of the temporary legislation, which was struck down by the High Court and had allowed the Shin Bet to hold hearings on prolonging detention without the suspect being present.
“If in the past there was a fear that this law would be misused, I am proud to say that the figures show great moderation in its enforcement, and we continue to operate that way,” the official said.
The law technically applies to all arrests in Israel and the West Bank but in practice is applied almost exclusively to Palestinian detainees.
“The work of the Shin Bet isn’t carried out in the dark, but under the scrutiny of the judicial system, the state prosecution service and the attorney general.”
The Shin Bet official was responding to testimony before the committee by human rights groups, who claim the law harms prisoners’ rights.
“The fact that interrogation takes place without due procedure, and that a person is held under conditions which in themselves constitute a means of pressure, undermines fair judicial process and produces false confessions,” said Leila Margalit, a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
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4. [forwarded by Elana]
From: Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat [mailto:info@freeahmadsaadat.org]
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010
To: elanaw@post.tau.ac.il
Subject: Occupation Courts Sentence Sa’adat to Six Months More of Isolation – Take Action!
Occupation Courts Sentence Sa’adat to Six Months More of Isolation – Take Action!
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat +www.freeahmadsaadat.org + info@freeahmadsaadat.org In yet another outrage and attack upon the humanity of Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian people, Ahmad Sa’adat was sentenced to an additional six months in isolation inside Israeli prisons, an extension that will last until April 21, 2011. As actions and events took place throughout Palestine and around the world – in the United States, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Ireland, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere – in support of Sa’adat’s struggle to end isolation and hundreds of letters and petitions were delivered to prison officials from concerned human rights advocates around the world, the Israeli authorities have sentenced this Palestinian leader to another six months barred from human contact.
Sa’adat has been held in isolation for over 500 days, since March 19, 2009. He has been confined without access even to the other prisoners in the isolation unit and deprived of basic human rights. His personal books have been confiscated and he is routinely denied access to media and reading material in any language other than Hebrew. He has been denied family visits, including from his wife Abla, and his lawyers have several times been barred from visiting him. His recreation time has been limited repeatedly.
Isolation and prevention of human contact is widely understood by human rights advocates to be ill-treatment that amounts to torture and/or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Ongoing and repeated isolation that will now stretch to over two years, justified by vague declarations of “security” needs, indicate that the Israeli regime is dedicated to attempting to isolate Sa’adat not only from his fellow prisoners, but to isolate and silence his voice among the Palestinian people.
Sa’adat’s ongoing isolation only serves to make clear time and again that the Israeli courts are merely an arm of the occupation, dedicated at all levels to maintaining the oppression of the Palestinian people and providing a “legal” pretext for ongoing brutality and human rights abuses.
Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has been held in Israeli jails since March 14, 2006, when he was abducted from Jericho prison, where he had been held in a Palestinian Authority prison under U.S. and British guard. While imprisoned in the PA jail in Jericho, he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison on December 25, 2008 by an Israeli military court for his political activity, and has spent over 500 days in continually-renewed isolation at the present time.
[What valid justification is there for the continued imprisonment of Ahmad Sa’adat let alone in solitary confinement? He is an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and was sentenced to 30 years in prison in an Israeli military court FOR WHAT??? for his POLITICAL ACTIVITY.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat salutes the human rights and Palestine solidarity activists around the world who have rallied to struggle for Sa’adat and the approximately 7,000 prisoners held in the jails of the occupation. This work defeats the occupation’s plans – it refuses to allow the Palestinian prisoners, on a Palestinian, Arab or international level, to be isolated. The voices of Ahmad Sa’adat and the Palestinian prisoners will be heard, and no bars or isolation will prevent that.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat calls upon all to confront this outrage – to continue to write, speak out, demonstrate, and demand that Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners achieve their freedom. Isolation will not silence Ahmad Sa’adat, the Palestinian prisoners or the cause of the Palestinian people!
TAKE ACTION TODAY!
1. The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat calls upon all supporters of justice and human rights to write to U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel. The U.S. is responsible for Sa’adat’s kidnapping – demand it end now!
Write here: http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/action4.html
2. The Campaign in Solidarity with Ahmad Sa’adat in Palestine is calling upon all supporters to write letters to the Israeli Prison Service and demand they end the practice of isolation, end human rights violations, and free Palestinian prisoners. Send an email to the Bureau of the Minister of Public Security at sar@mops.gov.iland to the Public Complaints Department at mevaker@mops.gov.il, and copy the following:
Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister, 3, Kaplan Street, PO Box 187, Kiryat Ben-Gurion, Jerusalem, Israel, Fax: +972- 2-651 2631, Email: pm_eng@pmo.gov.il
Mr. Menachem Mazuz, Attorney General, Fax: + 972 2 627 4481; + 972 2 628 5438; +972 2 530 3367
Brigadier General Avihai Mandelblit, Military Judge Advocate General, 6 David Elazar Street, Hakirya, Tel Aviv, Israel, Fax: +972 3 608 0366, +972 3 569 4526, Email: arbel@mail.idf.il, avimn@idf.gov.il
Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations Office and Specialized Institutions in Geneva, Avenue de la Paix 1-3, 1202 Geneva, Fax: +41 22 716 05 55,
You may use our online form at: http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/action3.html. 3. Write a letter to Ahmad Sa’adat. Letters of support are important and demonstrate solidarity with Ahmad Sa’adat and Palestinian prisoners – let him know that the world is demanding his freedom. Email the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat at info@freeahmadsaadat.org with your letters, or use our contact form at: http://freeahmadsaadat.org/contact.html. We will send all letters received to Palestine. We also encourage you to write to him directly using this address: Ahmad Sa’adat, Ramon Prison, Ramon area, PO Box 699, Postal Code 80600, Israel.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org
