I was hoping to find an article in the San Francisco Chronicle or Oakland Tribune today about the ads put up at Bart stations (metro stations), or perhaps in the LA Times. But found nary a word on them. Perhaps tomorrow. Surely there will be a hue and outcry against the ads by the supporters of Israel, but they will or should have a tough time fighting the argument that the US needs money for domestic purposes, not foreign ones.
May their message spread. Obama should have used that argument from the start. It’s pure bullshit that the US has no lever with which to push Israel into ending colonization. Who else gives Israel $3billion taxpayer dollars worth of military aid every year, guaranteed for the next 10 years! WOW! That’s a lot of money—and dear American citizen, every penny of it is from your pockets.
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Today’s message consists of 3 items.
In the first one, Akiva Eldar argues that the delegitimizing is not of Israel, but only of its occupation. Well, that’s right to a degree, but if accurate is a pity. In the first place, I think that the term ‘delegitimizing’ is misleading unless it is applied to acts rather than to the country. Surely numerous of Israel’s acts are far from legitimate. But arguing over whether Israel is or is not being delegitimized draws attention from the crux of the matter: the continuing colonization of historic Palestine, the continuing ethnic cleansing, and the continuing occupation. It’s not Israel’s image that’s at stake. It’s Israel’s conduct.
Item 2 reports on Israeli Rabbis who dictate to Jews not to rent or sell living quarters to Arabs—an overtly racist attitude, of course. Goes to show that there are fundamentalist Jews, just as there are fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. Fundamentalists are, among other things, racists. However, Israel’s racism is not limited to fundamentalist rabbis. They are only a part of the reason that “Israeli-Arabs, who make up about 20% of the population of Israel, say they are facing increasing racism and discrimination” [below, end of item 2].
In item 3 Ali Abunimah relates the difficulties that pro-Israel forces are thrusting against the Electronic Intifada, an online news journal, attempting to force it to close.
All the best,
Dorothy
1. Haaretz,
December 07, 2010
Europe doesn’t delegitimize Israel, only the occupation
Massive foreign aid in battling the Carmel fire proves what former kibbutz volunteer and current Norwegian Ambassador Svein Sevje has always known.
The flying squadron of international firefighters that came to extinguish the flames in the Carmel region has poured cold water on the “they are delegitimizing us” campaign. Even Norway – which, heaven help us, keeps an open channel to Hamas and heads the list of critics of Israel’s government – offered a pair of helicopters.
It is hard to find a diplomat who epitomizes the difference between support for Israel and delegitimization of the occupation better than Svein Sevje, Norway’s ambassador to Israel.
In 1968, a few months after completing high school, Sevje answered an advertisement for young Norwegians to volunteer on kibbutzim and reported to Mishmar Ha’emek. He kept in touch with his new friends and returned to the kibbutz three years later to study Hebrew at an ulpan (intensive language course).
Sevje says he didn’t need the generous aid in battling the flames to reject the claim that European countries, among them Norway, have been casting doubt on Israel’s legitimacy. What is illegitimate, the ambassador stressed in an interview at his spacious home in Herzliya, is the occupation and the settlements, which violate international law and United Nations resolutions.
He also noted that Oslo’s criticism of the occupation is more moderate than that voiced by quite a few Israelis. Norway has never spoken in post-Zionist terms, he said with a smile.
The ambassador is vehemently opposed to any form of boycott of Israel. Nonetheless, it doesn’t surprise him that Norwegians are refraining from buying Israeli products after learning that Israel has circumvented its commitment to indicate the origin of goods produced in the settlements. Nor would Sevje be surprised if stagnation in the diplomatic process and the global economic crisis increase domestic public pressure on the Palestinian Authority’s donor countries, including his own, to transfer responsibility for funding essential services in the occupied territories back to Israel (to date, Norway has donated more than $2 billion for this purpose).
Even though he has only recently entered the ambassador’s office in Tel Aviv, Sevje swims easily in the swamp of the Israeli-Arab conflict. His CV is studded with postings in the Middle East. In the mid-1990s, he served as the first Norwegian representative to the Palestinian Authority and also as acting ambassador to Israel. He informed former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize and was at PA headquarters in Ramallah when Mahmoud Abbas told Yasser Arafat that Rabin had been assassinated and heard the Palestinian leader prophesy, “Now all red lines will be crossed.”
Before returning to the region as ambassador to Syria and Lebanon (he was in Beirut when Israeli air force planes bombed the city), Sevje served as head of the Middle East section of the Foreign Ministry in Oslo. His next position, before being sent to Israel, was special envoy for the peace process.
Sevje is familiar with the average Israeli’s attitude toward the brand name “Oslo,” which, to the veteran diplomat’s great regret, has fallen victim to abuse by opponents of compromise and hesitant leaders. His challenge is to restore a bit of warmth to Israeli society’s chilly attitude toward the land of the fjords. As part of its effort to nurture relations between the two countries, the embassy recently hosted a performance of a noted duo of jazz musicians from Norway.
This effort is why he considers it important to explain Norway’s decision to maintain relations with Hamas. “Since 1993, Hamas has been a political force, whose ideology is contrary to our belief in a peace-seeking secular state,” Sevje said. “However, if you ignore it, it isn’t going to disappear.”
In his conversations with Hamas leaders, he formed the impression that there have been missed opportunities to reach an agreement with the movement on de facto recognition of Israel in the 1967 borders. One of them was during the brief period of the Palestinian unity government.
He wonders if anyone in Israel still believes the blockade of Gaza is achieving its aim. He himself has no doubt the siege is not harming Hamas’ status.
The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah sends the Hamas government in Gaza a large cut of the money it receives from donor countries, but Sevje’s government does not transfer a single Norwegian krone to Hamas. The tunnel economy supplements the organization’s income.
Though Israel has not asked Norway to use its connections to help negotiate a deal for the return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, Oslo has discussed Shalit with Hamas as a humanitarian issue. Sevje said confidently that the considerable amount of time that has elapsed hasn’t changed the price Hamas is demanding for the soldier’s release one iota.
Israel’s silence
Based on his Syrian experience, Sevje finds it hard to believe that Syria (via Hamas) would watch tranquilly from the sidelines if a permanent-status agreement resulted in Israel leaving the West Bank and East Jerusalem but continuing to hold the Golan Heights. However, Sevje’s impression is that President Bashar Assad is committed to the principles of the Arab peace initiative (recognition and normalization in return for a withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a just and agreed upon solution to the refugee problem on the basis of UN General Assembly Resolution 194).
He was in Beirut on that day in March 2002 when the Arab League adopted the initiative, and he wonders why to this day, no Israeli government has even bothered to discuss this revolutionary proposal.
“If Israel doesn’t believe the Syrians,” he said, “why isn’t it putting them to the test and exposing the bluff?”
Before we parted, I asked Sevje if the Israel he lives in today, which hates foreigners and Arabs, arouses nostalgia for the Israel he knew 40 years ago.
“My friends at the kibbutz are very worried about this trend,” he replied diplomatically. “If Israel wants to be a normal country with its face toward the West, it has to respect universal values.”
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2. The Guardian
7 December 2010
Israel Dozens of Israeli rabbis back call to forbid sale of property to Arabs
Publicly funded municipal chiefs accused of racial incitement after signing letter in support of ultra-orthodox Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu
Safed, northern Israel, where Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu ordered his followers not to offer accommodation to Arabs. Photograph: Ariel Schalit/AP Dozens of Israeli rabbis today backed a call to forbid Jews to rent or sell property to Arabs in a move likely to further stoke tensions in some cities.
More than 40 municipal chief rabbis, whose salaries are paid from public funds, signed a letter in support of a ruling by Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu of Safed in Upper Gallilee instructing his followers not to offer accommodation to non-Jews.
Anyone doing so, the letter said, “causes his neighbour a great loss, and his iniquity is greater than can be borne”. It went on: “It is incumbent upon the seller’s neighbours and acquaintances to warn and caution, first in private and then they are entitled to publish him in public, to distance themselves from him, to prevent trade from being done with him, not to have him read from the Torah and so forth until he reverses his decision that causes harm to so many people.”
Following Eliyahu’s earlier ruling, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who rents out rooms to three Arab students in Safed was threatened with having his house burned down and was denounced as a traitor to Judaism.
Safed, which has a large conservative ultra-orthodox population, has become a focus of anti-Arab sentiment although rabbis in other cities have also warned Jewish residents against renting or selling to non-Jews.
Avishay Braverman, the Israeli minister for minority affairs, last month called for Eliyahu to be suspended from his post and investigated for incitement.
Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli-Arab member of parliament, today said the signatories to the letter should also be prosecuted for racial incitement. “Muslim clerics were recently prosecuted or fired from their jobs over far smaller things but the rabbis continue to run amok without any fear of being prosecuted,” he told Walla News.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel demanded that the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, condemn the rabbis’ letter and take disciplinary action against those employed by the state.
“Rabbis who are civil servants have an obligation to the entire public, including Israel’s Arab citizens. It is unthinkable that they would use their public status to promote racism and incitement,” ACRI said in a statement.
Israeli-Arabs, who make up about 20% of the population of Israel, say they are facing increasing racism and discrimination. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s rightwing foreign minister, has argued that they should be compulsorily “transferred” to a future Palestinian state. [The Israeli parliament has passed a law that will force non-Jewish citizens of Israel to pledge loyalty to the Jewish state. [The previous statement is incorrect. The cabinet has passed the bill, but it has not yet been presented to the Knesset, i.e., the Israeli Parliament. It is not, therefore, yet law. Dorothy]
Uri Rosenthal, the Dutch foreign minister, has taken it upon himself to investigate the source of The Electronic Intifada’s funding, at the ushering of the ‘Israel Lobby’ [EPA]
The Electronic Intifada, the online publication about Palestine that I co-founded in 2001, finds itself at the centre of a storm as a pro-Israel group applies pressure to have a grant from a Dutch foundation withdrawn.
This assault on our freedom of conscience is about much more than our website. It is part of a well-coordinated, escalating Israeli government-endorsed effort to vilify individuals and cripple organisations that criticise Israel’s human rights record and call for it to respect Palestinian rights and international law.
The latest salvo came in a scurrilous article in The Jerusalem Post based on allegations from a group called NGO Monitor, accusing The Electronic Intifada of “anti-Semitism” – without citing a single example from the almost 12,000 articles we have published. The Electronic Intifada has responded to NGO Monitor’s accusations. Of course the charge of “anti-Semitism” has long been a weapon in the hands of Israel’s apologists when they cannot find a factual basis to challenge the site’s reporting and analysis.
NGO Monitor zeroed in on a grant The Electronic Intifada has received from the Dutch foundation ICCO, which is itself subsidised by the Dutch government. Since 2006, this grant has made up about a third of The Electronic Intifada’s budget (our total expenses were around $180,000 in 2009 as our public filings show and the majority of our funding comes from donations by our readers).
In published comments, Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said he would investigate the matter personally. MP Geert Wilders, Europe’s most prominent Islamophobic politician, who has said he is proud to be compared to Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, also took aim at The Electronic Intifada in an interview with Israel’s Haaretz.
It is clear that by attempting to starve us – and other organisations of funds – NGO Monitor is trying to silence us. That The Electronic Intifada, a publication run by a handful of people, finds itself under sustained assault, only demonstrates the impact that independent online media have had by consistently reporting stories and providing analysis that mainstream media have sidelined.
While NGO Monitor poses as an independent watchdog, it is in fact an Israeli organisation with close ties to Israel’s radical West Bank settler movement, the government and military, and is supported by notorious purveyors of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda in the United States such as Daniel Pipes and Rita Emerson (who along with her husband Steven Emerson has been at the forefront of Islamophobic campaigns).
Before attacking The Electronic Intifada, NGO Monitor made its name going after Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and distinguished Palestinian human rights organisations among dozens of others. Notably it has launched a McCarthyite war from within against Israeli human rights groups and foundations such as B’Tselem, HaMoked and the New Israel Fund. Indeed, by its own indiscriminate definition, NGO Monitor could well be considered “anti-Semitic” as it spends so much effort attacking Israelis and Jews around the world, especially Zionist ones, who argue that Israel would be more viable if it had a higher regard for human rights. NGO Monitor, while calling for transparency from others, remains opaque about its own funding sources.
While NGO Monitor has been in business for years, its latest tactics fit into the strategy outlined by the Reut Institute, an influential Israeli think-tank that earlier this year called for Israel and its advocates to wage war against so-called “delegitimizers.” Reut defined virtually the entire global Palestine solidarity movement, especially the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions modelled on the South African anti-apartheid struggle, and those who call for a one-state solution, as an “existential threat” which has the potential to rob Israel of its remaining legitimacy and bring about its collapse.
On its website, the Reut Institute called for Israel’s intelligence agencies to use possibly criminal “sabotage,” and for pro-Israel groups to “attack” activists all over the world in “hubs” such as London, Madrid, Toronto and the San Francisco Bay Area. After The Electronic Intifada raised the alarm, the Reut Institute sanitised its website, although a copy of its original document remains on The Electronic Intifada, along with our report.
Reut’s call to “delegitimize the delegitimizers” and “name and shame” human rights activists has now become Israeli government policy. As part of its failed efforts to bribe Israel into renewing a largely fictitious moratorium on West Bank settlement construction, the Obama administration even promised, as Haaretz reported, to lend Israel support in the battle against “delegitimization.”
Focusing on “delegitimization” rather than trying to change Israel’s atrocious behaviour, has also become the central strategy of Israel lobby groups in the United States. In October the Jewish Federations of North America – an umbrella for 157 major pro-Israel organisations – and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs launched a $6 million initiative called the “Israel Action Network” to fight “delegitimization,” especially boycott, divestment and sanctions.
I got a foretaste of what the Israel Action Network’s tactics will likely be when Sam Sokolove, the head of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, launched a failed effort to get academic departments at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque to withdraw their support for a lecture I gave in November. Sokolove’s campaign involved publicly vilifying me in the media, likening me to a member of the Ku Klux Klan. It is probably because of the publicity the Jewish Federation gave me that hundreds of people attended my talk.
These sorts of personal attacks and attempts to sabotage the work of people committed to justice and international law are only going to escalate. But will they work?
The campaign against “delegitimizers” is based on a fundamental misunderstanding among Israel and its advocates that Israel suffers from an “image problem” which can be fixed on the one hand with better public relations, and on the other with the sorts of dirty tricks used against The Electronic Intifada and others. But Israel does not have an image problem, it has a reality problem.
Its well-documented war crimes and brutal siege in Gaza, its expanding settlements in the West Bank, its slow ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, its escalating racism against Palestinian citizens of Israel, its use of extra-judicial executions and torture and its killing of unarmed activists on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla cannot be concealed.
A fatal flaw in Israel’s plan to fight back against “delegitimization” is that it offers only justifications for these deplorable realities and no positive vision of a decent, peaceful, sustainable and just life in the future for Israelis and Palestinians. For years, the so-called two-state solution filled this void – at least rhetorically – but it has lost all credibility in no small part because Israel lobby groups were so successful at protecting Israel from any action, especially American pressure, that would bring an end to the colonisation that has destroyed any possibility of a Palestinian state.
Now, these same lobby groups find themselves fighting against growing support for the alternative their own actions have rendered inevitable: a struggle for equal rights for all the people who inhabit the land. Their war against “delegitimization” offers nothing more than anger, hatred and demonization, often in alliance with the most racist and openly Islamophobic elements in Israel and North America. That is not a vision but a dead-end. And while it will be another challenge on top of so many faced by Palestinians, it won’t stop those who have a vision for justice, equality and universal rights and who are working to make it a reality.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli Palestinian Impasse.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
