NOVANEWS
Dear All,
Tonight’s 8 items are a rather mixed bag—racism, education, an apology, US holding back money, etc. I have not included articles on East Jerusalem—the demolitions, the threats, the ethnic cleansing. But that does not mean that these things are not happening daily. I have also omitted the fascinating revelation that the new Mossad chief plans to apologize for use of UK passports in Dubai killing, but you can read about that in the Telegraph if you wish
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/8224391/New-Mossad-chief-to-apologise-for-use-of-UK-passports-in-Dubai-killing.html .
Interestingly, the report does not say that he will apologize to other countries for the same. I likewise have not included Israel’s Foreign Minister’s (Avigdor Lieberman’s) latest words of wisdom (‘the Turks are liars, the PA is illegitimate, and Netanyahu’s peace plan is unrealistic’), nor Netanyahu’s biting response, that he and only he represents government policy—but you are welcome to read about it if you like:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-hits-back-at-lieberman-only-pm-decides-israeli-polices-1.333091
What I have not omitted is the subject of Israel’s racism. It occupies the initial 4 items.
The first relates an episode in which 4 Muslim men and a Druze were evicted by neighbors—not because they had done anything wrong (I would not take the accusation of whistling at women seriously), but because they are not Jews. And in any event the excuses given are not different from things that racists say anywhere.
Item 2, “1932 Is Already Here” essentially says this, and posits that the situation exists because the government is weak. I agree that 1932 is already here, but not with the reason. I believe that the situation suits the government. With immigration at a stand still, and emigration apparently increasing, Jews might soon be the minority rather than the majority. Therefore, it is convenient for a demographically minded government to ethnically cleanse, and to have the help and approval of the population in the effort.
Not every Israeli is a racist, as editorials and op-eds in the newspapers show. In item 3, for instance, Ziv Lenchner in his brief op-ed tells us that the worst thing that we can do is to keep silent. And in item 4 Zvi Bar’el treats the question “can Israeli racism be eliminated through law, trial and punishment, or is it already part of the Israeli identity,” and convincingly argues that it cannot be dealt with by legal means. It is a social phenomenon.
Item 5 turns to education. Israel’s leaders spend enormous sums on arms and ‘defense,’ on expansion, and on the wall. But there is no money for education, health, social services. One result is that higher education is now primarily for the rich.
Item 6 relates Dror Feiler’s views about Turkish attitudes regarding Israel. He spoke in Turkey today on the occasion of the return of the Mavi Marmara. He participated in the flotilla but was not on the Mavi Marmara.
Item 7 reports positive news for a change: the US is holding back money for Israel—whether this is due to budget woes, as the report claims, or for other reasons, I can only wish that Obama et al. keep the lid on the money and use it at home rather than on wars and other military spending.
Item 8 is 2 parts—the first is the 2011 speaking schedule for Never Again for Anyone (referring to the Holocaust, but with respect to any Holocausts anywhere against anyone). The 2nd part is by Hajo Mayer, a Holocaust survivor, who sees parallels between what he experienced in Germany and what the Palestinians suffer today, and relates that his purpose is to challenge the dispossession and exclusivity of a Jewish state.
Hope that you will find the reading interesting.
Dorothy
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1. Ynet,
December 23, 2010
Racism on Rise
Abbas: I served in army, but they didn’t care Photo: Ofer Amram
Arabs flee home due to racist threats
Four Muslims, Druze forced out of rented flat in Tel Aviv after neighbors, who say rabbi told them Arabs must leave, vandalize their home and threaten to attach explosives to their car. ‘I felt humiliated by hatred,’ says Abbas, who served in IDF. But residents claim Arabs were less than neighborly: ‘At night we are afraid to walk around neighborhood,’ says one woman
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4003502,00.html
Hassan Shaalan
Five residents of the north, four Muslims and a Druze, were forced to leave their apartment in southern Tel Aviv due to threats and persecution by their Jewish neighbors, Ynet learned Thursday.
“I felt humiliated by the hatred,” said Ganem Abbas, the young Druze man, who has served in the IDF.
Abbas, originally from Abu Sinan in the north, came to the center of Israel two weeks ago in order to work at a construction site in Jaffa, which he says is owned by the municipality. He and his friends decided to rent an apartment nearby, in Shapiro neighborhood in Tel Aviv.
But three days ago the friends returned home in the evening to see that their main water pipe had been broken. Gas bottles had been stolen.
“The landlady told me that people from the neighborhood had threatened to torch the house and attack her if we don’t get out, because we’re Arabs,” Abbas said.
He also described a particularly humiliating moment. “The neighbors came out and started to yell that they don’t want to see Arabs in the neighborhood, and that it is for Jews only,” he recounted.
Abbas: Racism getting stronger (Photo: Ofer Amram)
“When we heard that, four of the guys decided to go back up north because they felt their lives were in danger.”
Mahmoud Dalasha, 37 from the village of Bu’eine, says the neighbors “sent their kids to swear at us”. Ganem stayed because he is Druze, Dalasha said, but the rest fled the area.
“There were dozens of people there who said they had asked the rabbi, who told them we had to be evicted,” he recounted. Dalasha added that the neighbors had threatened to attach an explosive device to his car.
Dalasha blames the government “for everything going on with racism, because I guess Arabs don’t count in this country”.
“(The government) is just working to expel Arabs from their lands, but this will never happen. We will stand up to all the racism and hatred,” he vowed.
“I came to Tel Aviv to work and support my family, not to go wild, but now I have to look for other work.”
Abbas, for his part, has reached the conclusion that “racism is getting stronger everywhere after the rabbis’ call not to rent to Arabs, and the day may come when we are expelled from the state though we are a part of it”.
“This act destroys coexistence. I feel humiliated from this intolerable cruelty. Despite serving in the army and telling the neighbors this, but they didn’t care and only gave us the evil eye. I have heard stories about Arabs who were fired for speaking their mother tongue – even that disturbs the racists.”
‘Racism against Arabs will continue’
Meanwhile, a young woman who claims that she was harassed by one of the Arabs in the narrow streets of southern Tel Aviv told Ynet: “I passed here and then he whistled at me right in my face. It was extremely uncomfortable. There are a lot of little girls here. It was the middle of the day, at night we are afraid to walk around the neighborhood.”
The woman’s father claimed that since the five Arabs arrived in the neighborhood, the situation in the area had deteriorated rapidly. “The foreign infiltrators changed the daily routine over the past few years, and the residents fear that the Arabs will do the same,” he said.
“People just want to live in peace. This is a peaceful street, we fear for our daughters. A day or two after they moved in they already started whistling at all the girls, who knows hat would have happened after that.”
He stated that his son went up to one of the Arab’s and asked him – what he would have done if a Jew would flirt with his sister? “He answered that he would have ‘broken all the bones in his body’ what do you say to that? Are Israeli girls to be abandoned?!”
Rabbi Achiad Ettinger who has been leading a campaign against foreign infiltrators in southern Tel Aviv said that he doesn’t know the specific case. But claimed that over the past few weeks there had been two stabbing incidents in the southern Tel Aviv neighborhood of Shapiro – in both cases, Arabs stabbed Jews.
“In one case, an Arab came out of a cab and picked a fight with a group of Israelis who were coming out of a pub and after they told him that they didn’t want any trouble, he jumped on one of them with a knife and fled the scene after a struggle. In another case, an Arab stabbed a Jewish woman in the chest, right here in this neighborhood.”
Landlady Ora Iwan told Ynet she had not instructed the five to leave, and that she was equally shocked by her neighbors’ behavior. “They said they would make my life very difficult if I didn’t tell the Arabs to get out,” she said.
However Iwan is fearful of filing an official complaint. “If they had weapons they would have used them. After what I saw, I think racism against Arabs will continue,” she said.
Aviel Magnezi and Yoav Zitun contributed to this report
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2. Haaretz,
December 26, 2010
1932 is already here
A non-Jew who fled Germany ahead of the Nazi occupation would certainly recall those hard days in his homeland if he were to visit Bat Yam, Safed, Bnei Brak or south Tel Aviv today.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/1932-is-already-here-1.332974
By Daniel Blatman
Sebastian Haffner was a young lawyer in Germany in 1932. As a non-Jew, Haffner could have continued to further his career in the civil service. In describing the atmosphere in his country before the takeover by the Nazi dictatorship, he wrote that “the game dragged on tedious and gloomy, without high spots, without drama, without obvious decisive moments … what was no longer to be found was pleasure in life, amiability, fun, understanding goodwill, generosity and a sense of humor …. The air in Germany had rapidly become suffocating.”
Haffner chose to leave Germany. If he were to visit the neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, Safed, Jerusalem or Bat Yam in late 2010, he would certainly recall those hard days in his homeland. He would find rabbis who sign racist manifestos against an ethnic minority and call for a policy of apartheid, fiery demonstrations against refugees from Africa, gangs of teens attacking Arabs, legislation promoting separatism and discrimination in racist and ethnic contexts, an oppressive public atmosphere, as well as violence and a lack of compassion toward people who are different and foreign.
Haffner would mainly warn against the anemic response of political institutions whose weakness and fears in 1933 led to a political reversal that could have been avoided. Of course, most Israelis do not see themselves as racist. The fact that half of Israel’s Jewish population would not want to live next to Arabs is given various excuses, as is the popular and sweeping support of initiatives designed to keep Arabs or Africans from living alongside Jews. But only a few people who give those excuses would be willing to openly state that they support ethnic and racial separation.
The wild propagandists of the right like MK Michael Ben Ari (National Union ) do not hesitate to use imagery and explanations taken from the anti-Semitic lexicon of Europe: Foreigners spread disease and take Jewish women; black refugees are violent criminals who endanger public safety.
This horrific propaganda is terrifying poor population groups who are already living with an infinite number of problems of survival. And the people who espouse this propaganda are persuading themselves that keeping foreigners out and racial separation produce hope for a solution to their problems. The historian Saul Friedlander defined this mood in Germany of the 1930s as “redemptive anti-Semitism.” A society in existential confusion lacking a political direction that gave it hope was swept up by an apocalyptic idea at whose heart was the need to keep Jews out; if not, the nation’s existence would come to an end.
Millions of people in Germany who would not have defined themselves as anti-Semites and certainly not as Nazis were swept up in the messianic and pseudo-religious public atmosphere. Israel today is becoming slowly and increasingly swept up in “redemptive xenophobia.” To an increasing number of Israelis, the Arab, the African refugee and people who are foreign in their religion, skin color or nationality are considered the most serious problem society has to solve on the road to tranquillity.
No society is immune to deterioration into violent racism. In the Israel of today, we can observe quite a few conditions whose presence in other societies and among other peoples led to racial separation, ethnic cleansing and even genocide. There are minority groups (Arabs and foreigners ) who are ostracized by the majority, a growing racist ideology, attempts to limit the political activities and civil rights of the minority, a tense security situation and strong political elements with vested interests in territorial expansion.
But this is not an edict from heaven. The task of responsible leadership is to stop this dangerous process. Benjamin Netanyahu frequently uses the imagery of 1938 regarding the international community’s attitude toward the Iranian nuclear threat. Back then, at the last moment before the world descended into a horrific bloody war, the democratic powers could have stopped Hitler, but they stuttered.
Netanyahu must understand that the domestic reality in Israel today is 1932, and his pallid speech calling on people not to take the law into their own hands cannot extricate Israeli society from the xenophobic and intolerant atmosphere that has spread. For this, a move of an entirely different magnitude is required.
The writer is a Holocaust scholar and director of Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry.
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3. Ynet,
December 25, 2010
Israeli Racism
Academy of hatred
Op-ed: Silence not an option in face of growing hatred, racism on Israel’s streets
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4004009,00.html
Ziv Lenchner
The landscapers of evil can be reassured: The seeds of racism and hatred are sprouting well and even bearing nice fruit. Following the heartwarming rabbis’ letter, which called on the faithful not to rent or sell apartments to Arab citizens, we saw an anti-Arab protest in the city of Bat Yam earlier this week.
It was a classic horror show, with the role of monsters played by the Ismaelites (who have the chutzpa to possess Israeli ID cards.) They walk our streets, shop at our malls, and try to woo our women, thereby apparently tainting our race.
Yet that was just the beginning. Against the backdrop of the polished productions courtesy of the radical, inciting Right, and certainly under the spell of its malignant inspiration, a special elite unit was operating in Israel’s capital as of late.
This gang of young Jerusalemites and settlers, most of them teenagers, pulverized random Arabs in God’s name. This devilish group, some of whose members already confessed, even employed a temptress, in the spirit of Mossad.
Had this affair not been about hooliganism under an ideological guise and the violence of many against one (and an innocent one at that, assuming anybody cares,) we could have taken pride in the dedication and resourcefulness of our fighting boys.
The trouble is that there are some people out there who feel pride despite the circumstances. “You’re our heroes,” court visitors chanted at the thugs. “You’re our heroes,” said the talkbackers, and will likely continue to scream it here too.
Yet the worst thing is not screaming. The worst thing we can do is keep silent.
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4. Haaretz,
December 26, 2010
Is Judaism a race? Ask Israelis
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/is-judaism-a-race-ask-israelis-1.332977
By Zvi Bar’el
“They should be put prosecuted. Incitement is a crime. Had the rabbis who called for Rabin’s murder been prosecuted we might not be facing this situation today,” said the law professor, a pleasant man who once held a senior position in the Military Advocate General’s Corps of the Israel Defense Forces. His stance is logical and well-argued. That evening, after our meeting, he sent me the link to a YouTube video of the demonstration. “What do you think now?” he asked. We were arguing over whether the law creates norms or reflects norms already established. In other words, can Israeli racism be eliminated through law, trial and punishment, or is it already part of the Israeli identity.
The recent demonstrations in Bat Yam, Tel Aviv’s Hatikva Quarter and Zion Square, in Jerusalem, featured a motley medley of paradoxical partners in racist positions: ultra-Orthodox rabbis and “liberal” rabbis standing together against the rental and sale of apartments to Arabs; working-class folk demanding that foreigners be deported; members of the middle class who “fear for our daughters’ welfare” and male chauvinists carrying signs that say “Jewish women for Jewish men.” This demographic array poses an impossible burden on the law: Using legal means to stifle the trend would be tantamount to putting Israeli identity on trial.
For some time, shows of Israeli purity have not been the sole property of rabbis who serve the divine will. These demonstrations formulate and express something essential within the Israeli identity. “We” Israelis are everything “they” are not. Being Israeli is no longer a territorial or a religious definition, nor even a national definition resting on religious foundations. The Israeli state might be more Jewish than democratic, but being Israeli means belonging to a separate race that also happens to be Jewish; what counts is the Israeli race.
The economic argument – that foreigners take jobs away from Israelis – is a pretext. Even if there was no unemployment Israelis would not love Arabs, Sudanese or other foreigners. Even were army service voluntary Haredim would be considered foreigners, representatives of another culture and not Israeli. Even were there peace between Israel and the Arab states, Israeli identity would still be wrapped in fear.
The Israeli race defines its identity as Zionism. Within that identity, it seems, are religion, territory, nationalism and a dream. All these components, however, are the products of ideology. Religion is neither belief in God nor what is written in the Scriptures, but rather the religion defined by the State of Israel. For that reason, Reform Judaism, for example, is rejected.
The territory is neither that which was recognized by the United Nations, nor what was promised to the Jews as a national home, nor a sanctuary from anti-Semitism. Rather, it is a boundary-less sprawl that sends satellites into the land of another people and refuses to confine itself in a defined national container. The territory that has been allocated to this Israeli entity is too small for it. The state is only the beginning of the age of redemption, not its consummation.
Israeli nationalism does not tolerate other narratives, and it is based on the fear of external threats. The dream – and this is the trick that promotes unity – refers to peace and national solidarity. Whoever is not reconciled to this mass of components is not Israeli. Anyone with a blue Israeli identity card he waves while yelling “the people of Israel lives,” and “I have no other land,” must pass an admission test. If he doesn’t pass the test, he will be regarded as a “Russian,” or “Ethiopian,” or “American” or, of course, Arab or Sudanese.
This test of belonging is not encoded in any law and the examiners change locales, from Bat Yam to Safed to Kiryat Arba. They are empowered to strip Israeli identity even from those who possess it by dint of birth, the Law of Return, military service or naturalization. They have the authority to decide who is Zionist and who is not. They are everywhere: in the apartment across the hall, at the next desk, at the supermarket or sitting at the cabinet table. Should they be tried? They aren’t inciting, they are establishing norms, defining who is a true Israeli.
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5. Haaretz,
December 26, 2010
Higher education is province of well-off Jews, report finds
According to the Adva Center’s 2009/2010 report on Israel’s socioeconomic situation, Jewish high-schoolers were twice as likely to enroll in college as their Arab counterparts.
http://english.themarker.com/higher-education-is-province-of-well-off-jews-report-finds-1.332971
By Lior Dattel
Good high schools and higher education are still the province of the country’s well-off, and reforms from the 1990s haven’t changed this, states the Adva Center’s 2009/2010 report on Israel’s socioeconomic situation.
Only one out of four people who were in high school in 2001 went on to college by 2009, found the center’s annual report, entitled “Israel, A Social report.” In addition, Jewish high-schoolers were twice as likely to enroll in college as their Arab counterparts.
“Higher education is the path to a better personal and social future,” the report states. In Israel, “the road is pyramid-shaped: Everyone starts out together on the same step, but the higher you get on the pyramid the smaller the number of people.”
The report is based on a sample of 112,000 people the researchers began tracking in 2001, when they were 17-year-old high school students. Of the sample, 75.4% studied in a high-school track that enabled them to take matriculation exams. Only 45.7% were eligible for matriculation certificates.
Even fewer earned high enough grades to apply to college: 37.3% of the original sample. And by 2009, only 26.9% of the students – 30,000 people – had enrolled at an institution of higher learning in Israel. The report does not state how many of these people earned a degree.
Of the Jewish students, 31.5% went on to college. That is more than twice the rate of their Arab peers, only 15.3% of whom went on to higher learning.
The statistics do not include ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, who do not take the matriculation exams. Nor do they include those who went on to study abroad.
In the past decade, there was virtually no change in the percentage of youth from affluent communities who went on to college, compared to their peers from poorer locales.
In 2008, 10.1% of 20- to 29-year-olds from prosperous Jewish locales were enrolled in undergraduate programs in Israeli colleges and universities. The equivalent figures for Arab communities and for Jewish towns in the periphery were 4.8% and 6%, respectively.
These numbers are similar to the figures for the year 2000.
“Even if the Education Ministry magically manages to raise the percentage of students who are eligible for matriculation certificates, the students won’t have anywhere to go because the higher education system only accepts students who do exceptionally well in high school and on the psychometric test,” said Dr. Shlomo Swirski, the Adva Center’s academic director. “If we want to raise the percentage of high-schoolers who are eligible for matriculation certificates, we need to invest in expanding the higher education system. In the meanwhile, the system runs on the assumption that only one out of every four young people will enroll in college or university.”
The report states that the 1990s higher education reform, which paved the way for opening colleges in an attempt to enable more young people from the periphery to earn a degree, did not achieve its goal.
While the introduction of new colleges did greatly increase the number of students, from 76,000 in 1990 to 237,000 in 2010, the change did not make higher education more accessible to either Jews or Arabs from less advantaged communities.
Currently 10.6% of college-aged Israelis from affluent Jewish communities are enrolled in undergraduate programs (up from 6.9% in 2002 ), compared to just 6.4% of their peers from Jewish communities in the periphery and 2.1% of their Arab age cohorts. In 2002 the figures for the latter two groups were 3.8% and 1.5%, respectively.
On average, 13.6% of Israelis between the ages of 20 and 29 are students. For affluent towns like Savyon and Omer that figure is 30%. The numbers are also high for Kfar Shmaryahu, Ramat Hasharon, Ra’anana, Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan and Haifa.
Dimona, Tirat Carmel, Or Akiva, Eilat and Jerusalem produce a below-average proportion of higher education students – from 8%-11%. At less than 5%, the rates for Haredi and Arab communities are even lower.
Matriculation eligibility rates stayed stable, at around 67%, for high-schoolers in well-off towns over the past decade, but dropped significantly for youth from poorer locales.
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6. Ynet,
December 26, 2010
‘There are Jews who care’. Feiler Photo: Reuters
Former Israeli flotilla passenger speaks at Marmara rally
Dror Feiler delivers speech during mass rally to mark homecoming of Mavi Marmara ship to Istanbul port. ‘We are here together – Jews, Christians, Arabs against blockade, this is not about religion, but about human rights,’ he says
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4004761,00.html
Aviel Magnezi
Dror Feiler, the former Israeli who participated in the Turkish flotilla to Gaza in May, delivered a speech Sunday during a large reception rally to mark the homecoming of the flotilla flagship – the Mavi Marmara – to its home port in Istanbul.
In a conversation with Ynet, Feiler explained that he does not feel like a stranger among thousands of radical Muslims chanting out “death to Israel”.
“All the speeches stress that we are here together – Jews, Christians and Arabs against the blockade, this is not about religion, but about human rights, that’s why I presented myself as a Jew,” he said.
Feiler, now a Swedish citizen, was not on board the Maramara, and when IDF commandos took over the ship he was on, there was no violent resistance.
When asked if he is bothered by calls such as “death to Israel,” Feiler explained that it was the voice of a small minority.
“What is important is the leadership and the person who is heading it – and these people talk about humanitarian objectives.
“Hot blooded people are everywhere, including Beitar Jerusalem (football) games,” Feiler noted, adding that “there are people who are extremely angry for losing their loved ones, and we must condemn such calls. But what’s important is that they understand that we are standing with them, and that just like there are good Muslims and not so good Muslims – there are also Jews who care.”
‘Martyrs not a bad word’
According to Feiler, even those who regard the flotilla victims as “martyrs” are not inciting against Israel. “It is not a negative term. They are martyrs just like Samson was a martyr.”
“They died for a larger cause, not for themselves, because they wanted to help. I also said during my speech that they are martyrs for the Swedish people and for everyone else that wants to fight for human rights in the world,” he added.
Feiler said he was received warmly by the audience. “They shook my hand, thanked me and took pictures with me. I know many people in the (IHH) organization, and to my delight they had large banners in Hebrew that read ‘It is a humanitarian mission, we support human rights; we support the Gaza residents’.
“They are happy that it’s not a question of religion, and that there are varying opinions,” Feiler added, “They want Israelis to join the struggle and want to emphasize that it is not against Israel, but against the Israeli government’s policy and what Israel represents around the world – killing civilians outside of its territorial water.
“Some find it hard to distinguish between the Israeli government and the Israeli people, and having Jews join us will help them make this distinction,” he concluded.
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7. Haaretz,
December 26 2010
U.S. may delay aid for Israel’s anti-rocket system due to budget woes
Delay comes as a result of Obama’s difficulties in pushing next year’s budget through Congress due to Republican opposition.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/u-s-may-delay-aid-for-israel-s-anti-rocket-system-due-to-budget-woes-1.332949
By Amos Harel
American aid to Israel for developing and buying additional Iron Dome anti-rocket batteries might be delayed for at least a few months due to President Barack Obama’s difficulties in pushing next year’s budget through Congress.
The delay will mean a long wait before the weapons can be bought from Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
In May, the House of Representatives approved Obama’s decision to grant $205 million in special aid to Israel to buy the additional batteries and intercept missiles. Israel has so far funded the development of only two batteries by Rafael.
Obama has had problems getting the budget passed due to disagreements with the Republicans over health care reform and other issues. So he signed a presidential order outlining the administration’s activities until March 2011.
The order extends the current budget, allowing the administration to spend one-twelfth of the 2010 budget every month until March. But under these circumstances, funding for Iron Dome will have to wait until the annual U.S. budget is approved in March.
Another benefit delayed by the administration’s budget woes is the increase of general defense aid. In June 2008, the Bush administration approved an increase in defense aid to Israel of $3 billion a year for 10 years, up from $2.4 billion. Israel was to have received $3 billion in 2011, but in the meantime it will remain at this year’s level of $2.775 billion.
The problems are expected to be solved within a few months, but they will affect defense officials’ annual planning.
The delay in Washington is not Iron Dome’s only problem. The cabinet has yet to decide on additional funding to buy more Iron Dome batteries. Lacking either Israeli or American funding, no plan or estimated timetable is in place for producing and purchasing the system.
The Israel Air Force has already received the two systems Rafael has made, but they have not yet been declared operational. The IAF reportedly prefers to conduct more tests.
Moreover, all signs indicate that the Israel Defense Forces does not intend to deploy the systems in the western and northern Negev, as politicians had initially indicated. Instead, it is likely to place them on alert at an IAF base in the south.
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[forwarded by Donna Wallach]
Never Again for Anyone 2011 speaking schedule
http://www.ijsn.net/C98/
Below is a recent article written by Hajo Meyer:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hajo-meyer/an-ethical-tradition-betr_b_438660.html
An Ethical Tradition Betrayed
January, 2010
