NOVANEWS
01/08/2011:
-
The stubborn innocence of the cultural void
-
In Bil’in, protesters wear yellow stars with ‘Palestinian’ written on them
-
Brutalized
-
Who cares whether Jawaher Abu Rahmah had a previous condition?
-
A week after Jawaher Abu Rahma’s death, Bil’in continues to march
-
US gov’t official: Israelis ignore everyone in the US except Tom Friedman and Jeffrey Goldberg
-
A poem for Gaza
-
A senile ‘fixation’
-
Bizarro world: Le Pen’s nationalist daughter (correctly) lectures Israel on minority rights
-
Adidas weighs withdrawal of sponsorship of Jerusalem Int’l Marathon that goes thru occupied villages
The stubborn innocence of the cultural void
Jan 07, 2011
Eleanor K
A.’s impeccable cool is winning: a ’60s black-and white, female nude mounted on cardboard is tacked onto the wall next to the bathroom, and there is a repeated miniature-shoe motif throughout his compact, roof-top studio apartment in central Tel Aviv. The hipster greets Y. and me in colour-coordinated khaki cords and hooded sweat-top, the pristine white undershirt nicely offsetting his dark skin. A. never seems to be without his retro hat, his slender fingers holding a stubbed out spliff. An aspiring artist, the twenty-something dude has plastered the wall of his open-air, chill-out zone with several nightclub event promos, including one forSubmob crew in Israel on Friday 7 January and for Macy Gray’s upcoming concert (see boycott call: http://boycottisrael.info/content/macy-gray-performing-israel-already-political-stand-human-rights-and-cancel), abutted on one end with a minimalist Israeli campaign poster denouncing the deportation of African asylum seekers.
Restrained graffiti in thin-nibbed black marker pen adorns the wall facing the toilet, some of which Y. translates for me from the Hebrew – the son of Yemeni Jewish migrants, A. is rediscovering African power slogans. In his kitchen, hanging from a peg, is a standard issue gas mask. For a short while we hoped he might proffer a sign of solidarity with his Palestinian brothers and sisters, but on that he did not express himself, on any surface.
My friend Y. was subletting the apartment during A.’s month’s military reserve duty with an Israeli army unit, Kfir, with a bad reputation in the occupied Palestinian territory, and w considered the surreal possibility that we would face the friendly guy with the tobacco-stained teeth across the line that divides peaceful protesters against the apartheid wall in Palestinian villages and the state’s army – a row of helmeted and armed combatants – each one all but indistinguishable from the other.
S., sitting to my right on the Easyjet flight, London to Tel Aviv, loads a film on his widescreen MacPro book: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover by a favourite British director, Peter Greenaway.
I ask whether I can watch it with him, and the earnest young Israeli passes me one ear piece before deciding to just play it at full volume. We giggle at the sexually explicit scenes, which, on reflection S. remarks, make this an unsuitable in-flight movie. Greenaway’s intention to unsettle the viewer is clear: thugs smear excrement on the naked body of a man at night in a backstreet, as nearby a pack of dogs feeds on discarded offal from the kitchen of a pompously named, faux-baroque restaurant, “Le Hollondaise,” the film’s central set; the violent male protagonist physically assaults and rapes his wife, and his gangster assistant vomits into his plate of food. There is much that is visually stunning – visceral textures and vivid colours – and S. reminds me that the revered director trained as a painter. S. also tells me that he is a cinematography student in London and is back home with his family in Tel Aviv for the winter break.
Before passing through security at Ben Gurion, I am reluctant to share with anyone the details of my trip and offer only that I speak Arabic after a year in Egypt. Why would I be visiting Israel then, he asks. Then he talks about how beautiful the Negev is and how he loves spending time in the desert. I bite my tongue and inhale deeply: about the unrecognized Bedouin villages repeatedly demolished by the Israeli military I decide to remain quiet. “After I finished my military, I travelled in China and trekked with Tibetan nomads”. “Wow” I respond, while wanting to ask if he can see his own oppressed.
The elderly woman in the bus transporting me to the central bus station in West Jerusalem asks me what language I was speaking to the driver. “Arabic”, I replied. Ah, she recalls, her grand-daughter also learned the language in the army, so she could listen in to Arabic transmissions. I could tell from the ill-fitting wig and long skirt that she is a Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jew, and when she goes on to tell me that as an American citizen she moved here 13 years ago and the Arabs don’t miss any opportunity to try to murder the Jews who are only reclaiming land that belongs to them, I have little tolerance for her unfiltered racism and blindness.
In contrast, there is a temporarily seductive quality to the stubborn innocence of all grim realities that is found in the Israeli, such as A. and S., immersed in bold art and nature but apparently blind to Palestinian suffering. Last October, another British filmmaker cancelled his teaching trip to Israel in protest at the loyalty oath bill, and in support of the BDS call. The Palestinian call to culturally boycott the state of Israel will hit this culturally-savvy new generation inasmuch as it will deny them access to live cultural productions in their homeland as long as Israel continues to violate international laws.
It is also hoped that the cultural boycott will encourage Israelis to make the link between the art they consume and their own narrative of dispossession, apartheid and military occupation. All that vaunted cultural exchange, so dear to western elites is, it transpires, full of voids and disturbing silences that put into question the purported Goodness and Truth of all art in any context.
Eleanor K is a UK citizen
In Bil’in, protesters wear yellow stars with ‘Palestinian’ written on them
Jan 07, 2011
Alice Rothchild
If you are going to be tear gassed, I strongly suggest you rub Vicks Vapor Rub in your nostrils, bring an onion to smell, or alcohol swabs although fragrant baby wipes work fairly well, and don’t forget to bring a scarf and good running shoes. Needless to say, this was not on our delegation itinerary.
As you may be aware there have been weekly Friday demonstrations in the village of Bil’in seven miles west of Ramallah since 2005 to protest both the course of the separation wall and the stealing of village land by Israeli settlements. This protest has attracted international attention as a symbol of Palestinian resistance and Israeli brutality. Last week a woman named Jawaher Abu Rahmah died after a toxic exposure to tear gas at the demonstration. Her brother had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers a year earlier, also at the Friday protest, and there was a call for people to come this week to express their outrage at her death and to support the continued struggle of the people of Bil’in.
Despite my strong aversion to physical danger, my aching back and less than optimal knees, this felt important to do. Our group reviewed the dynamics of previous protests, possible IDF responses to young Palestinian men throwing rocks, the consequences of tear gas and the real risk of physical injury. Everyone wanted to come. My plan was to stay at the end of the march. Way at the end.
Our bus started out on a main road, traveling though stunning countryside, white stone terraced olive orchards, small villages, and occasional villas, but came to a flying checkpoint ( a jeep parked across the road) early on. We backed up and turned onto a bumpy dirt road through an old olive orchard on the edge of a steep rocky hill, the gorgeous views marked by a large Jewish settlement, Modi’in Illit, on the next major hilltop with over 46,000 people. Again we were met with a road block and had to turn back.
Our driver was constantly on his cell phone and talking with others on the road about strategies to penetrate the Israeli blockade. It dawned on me that a grassroots struggle means that the bus driver and every local Palestinian participates in some way, there is a tremendous sense of unity of purpose. Bil’in youth telephoned that they would lead us through the fields into the town. Once again we were winding up a rocky road, passed men praying at a mosque, more consults with a truck driver and then we could see another Israeli military vehicle ahead.
We backed away and then parked the bus out of sight and quietly got out, clambering into an old olive orchard, rows of twisted gnarly trees with silver-green leaves, rich red soil, tiny begonias and daffodils erupting in little crevices. We were breathless and climbing uphill over each terrace and on to the next rock wall, the next row of trees and then up again over the piles of stones. We are joined by local Palestinians leading us ultimately to a paved road beyond the checkpoint.
Ahead of us lay the small village of Bil’in, graced by the minaret, and the expansive Jewish settlement to the left. A taxi picked us up and drove us into the village. The march to the separation wall had already begun and we could hear boisterous political Arabic music from a loud speaker. I started meeting up with friends from the US, the Coalition of Women for Peace, Combatants for Peace, Arik Ascherman from Rabbis for Human Rights, Mustafa Barghouti from Palestinian Medical Relief Society, as well as hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis of all ages carrying banners and flags and wearing political T shirts. There was a significant press presence, including camera men and reporters in gas masks. Two ambulances awaited the injured. At least one person was taken out later.
The march went down the hill from the town to a valley and then up towards a wide loop of metal fencing. In the distance, Israeli soldiers were amassed on the right and left arms of the loop and the protesters were approaching the soldiers. I heard the pop of the tear gas firing and suddenly my eyes began tearing, my throat started to burn and there was a searing acrid smell wafting up the hill. I can only imagine how this felt to the protesters in the valley and up on the hill, directly challenging the soldiers, shouting, and throwing rocks. Tear gas canisters were sometimes shot into the air, spiraling down to hit the ground creating a huge white cloud of gas. Sometimes the soldiers shot directly at protesters, I could see them crouching and taking aim.
There was also a large white truck that repeatedly sprayed a huge arc of white liquid that smelled like a cross between skunk and feces and is apparently difficult to get off one’s body once sprayed. (I suppose this is what the defense companies mean when they say weapons are “field tested.”) When the tear gas was too thick, everyone moved back up the hill and then down again for more defiance and more tear gas. The more active protesters were directly in the line of fire, running, ducking from canisters, coughing, eyes running and red. A reporter from FOX news was even on the edge of the action and when someone handed him an onion to smell, he started chewing on it and then rubbed his eyes with it, clearly he hadn’t gotten the directions right. At one point the soldiers came through the fence as a wedge and as the protesters then retreated, some of the press got up close and personal with the soldiers. Protesters coming back from the direct interactions brought back empty tear gas canisters labeled “CTS,” a weapon made in the US.
I was crying from the tear gas and from my sorrow and rage at the Israeli government (with US support, thank you Mr. Obama) for its continued endless land grab and brutality towards its Palestinian neighbors and for Palestinians resiliently and bravely fighting back despite endless losses. They are desperately in need of international recognition and more importantly international pressure against the behavior of the Israeli government.
I was particularly pained by the many Palestinians wearing yellow stars with the word Palestinian inscribed on it, evocative of the Jews in the ghettos of Europe forced to wear yellow stars. So now in the modern western democracy of Israel, Jewish ghettos dot the West Bank landscape while Palestinians themselves are further ghettoized by the machinery of occupation and colonization.
What have we learned?
Brutalized
Jan 07, 2011
Philip Weiss
This was just posted on Youtube, I don’t know where it’s from or when. But it’s eloquent in its way. These guys are out of control.
Who cares whether Jawaher Abu Rahmah had a previous condition?
Jan 07, 2011
Philip Weiss
When I was young, I went out with a lawyer, and when we had relationship trouble and I offered some whingeing excuse about her oversensitivity or extreme demands, she said, “You must take your victim as you find her. That is a principle of common law. If you hit someone with a thin skull and it kills him, you can’t get off a murder charge by arguing that he had a thin skull.”
What does it matter whether Jawaher Abu Rahmah had a previous condition, was on medication, etc.? And why are journalists taking this defense seriously? People say the teargas, which is known to injure and kill, triggered her death. I’ve been to Bil’in. Israel spread teargas copiously over a village. It must take its victim as it finds her.
A week after Jawaher Abu Rahma’s death, Bil’in continues to march
Jan 07, 2011
Hamde Abu Rahme
The march in Bil’in. (All photos: Hamde Abu Rahme)
In the week after the killing of Jawaher Abu Rahma by Israeli military forces, Bil’in village has continued the struggle of resistance against the occupation.
At today’s demonstration, three persons were wounded, in addition to dozens of more cases of people choking on tear gas. The Popular Committee Against the Wall in Bil’in organized today’s demonstration. The march began after Friday prayers from the center of the village, towards the site of the wall.
Representatives from Bil’in as well as hundreds of Palestinians from around the West Bank participated in today’s march. Today’s demonstration was led by feminist and women’s organizations. In addition, dozens of international activists and hundreds of Israelis participated in the demonstration, chanting slogans calling for national unity, ending the occupation, and destroying the wall. Participants raised Palestinian flags and banners of the various factions, calling for liberation and national unity.
When demonstrators reached the site of the wall, they were met with a shower of tear gas and sound bombs, rubber bullets, and the use of wastewater contaminated with chemicals. Iyad Bernat, the Chairman of the People’s Committee was injured, and Mustafa Shawkat and Miss Ahmed Abu Rahma were rendered unconscious by tear gas. Dozens of people suffered from teargas inhalation, which was used intensively, and many more suffered from the use of waste water by the Israeli army.
Demonstrators managed to destroy some parts of the apartheid wall, and others attempted to stop the occupation forces when they attempted to advance towards the village. Palestinian youth threw stones at the soldiers in an effort to stop them, but were forced to retreat, where they continued confrontations with Israeli soldiers for the next several hours.
The occupation forces closed the entrances of Bil’in since dawn this morning and prevented many international, Israeli and Palestinians from reaching the village and participating in the demonstration. However, many participants took alternative routes through the mountains and managed to get past the Israeli closure.
US gov’t official: Israelis ignore everyone in the US except Tom Friedman and Jeffrey Goldberg
Jan 07, 2011
Scott McConnell
Just had a Jerusalem meeting with a US government official. Inevitably, as our group is a delegation from Churches for Middle East Peace, someone asks, “What can we do back home to most effectively advance the peace process?” To persuade Israel of the desirability of the two state solution? This time the question came after we had been given a sophisticated analysis of Palestinian prime minister Fayyad’s state-building actions, an acute explanation of how narrow his window was, and a well informed explanation of how the Palestinians have done more or less everything anyone could reasonably ask to make themselves “state-worthy”.
So how to push Israel to precipice of saying, well, yes, we actually have a partner, we don’t want to be an occupying power, let’s go for it?
The answer would be laughable if the official wasn’t extremely well informed, and if Akiva Eldar hadn’t responded pretty much the same way to the same question two days ago.
Try to influence prominent centrist American Jews, ones with strong Zionist credentials, Eldar had said, Israel listens to them. Our government official was even more concrete: When Jeffrey Goldberg or Thomas Friedman writes something, Israelis take it seriously. Everything else they feel they can ignore.
I want to follow up and ask if they would ignore a more comprehensive BDS and government abetted BDS campaign, but that isn’t part of our group’s dynamic. Next year, maybe.
I should add that Eldar did raise the possibility of something measured, pointed and sophisticated that isn’t on the BDS continuum but would surely get the attention of many Israelis. Europe, he noted, has it in its power to require Israelis to secure visas before traveling there, and could quite easily put on the visa application “Have you ever served in the occupied territories? Please elaborate.” And grant visas accordingly. A mild and elegant little proposal.
In the meantime, forget about petitioning Congress or Obama, they don’t really matter
A poem for Gaza
Jan 07, 2011
Remi Kanazi
Remi Kanazi is a poet, writer, and the editor of Poets For Palestine. His new collection of poetry & CD Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine is due out in late January. For more information, visit www.PoeticInjustice.net.
A senile ‘fixation’
Jan 07, 2011
Peter Voskamp
The unexpected French success of “Indignez vous!” (or “Cry Out”), the 30-page call to non-violent arms by 93-year-old Stephane Hessel — former member of the French Resistance, concentration camp survivor and diplomat — has been met with mild wonder.
After all, the initial run of 8,000 is now approaching 800,000 — outpacing famed French novelist Michel Houellebecq. In his essay Hessel calls for the citizenry to rise up, as he did against the Nazis, to confront the tyranny of the markets, big finance and the governments that are all too cozy and enabling of them.
But the thin tome, made up of a mere 13 pages of actual text, is not without its critics. On one of his pages, Hessel takes Israel to task for its actions in Gaza. “Jews themselves perpetrating war crimes is intolerable,” Hessel writes.
For this, the son of a Jewish father and a survivor of Buchenwald has been accused of anti-semitism. As both The Independent ( and The Jerusalem Post reported, French Jewish groups have condemned Hessel for his “fixation” on Israel.
Per JP: “We think the circumstances surrounding the publication of this book are very abnormal,” Marc Knobel, a researcher on anti-Semitism at CRIF, the French Jewry umbrella organization, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “It’s a sort of a cult around Hessel, an image of pure humanity of a man at the end of life who wants to proclaim something.”
Hessel reportedly visited Gaza in 2009 and proclaimed the results of Operation Cast Lead to be “crimes against humanity.” The discussion of Hessel’s book falls on the two-year anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, which killed an estimated 1,400 residents in Gaza, including hundreds of children. It also coincides with a U.S. diplomatic cable newly released via Wikleaks that purports Israel purposely keeps living conditions in Gaza on the brink of collapse.
Bizarro world: Le Pen’s nationalist daughter (correctly) lectures Israel on minority rights
Jan 07, 2011
Philip Weiss
I was among the American Jews who got chills about Jean-Marie Le Pen’s nationalist resurgence in France. Well, his daughter is about to take over the National Front in France. Her name’s Marine Le Pen. Haaretz interviewed her:
Q Rabbis in Israel have published a declaration calling on Jews not to rent apartments to Arabs. Do you identify with that?
A: “Those Arabs are Israeli, aren’t they? And in that case, they should be treated the same way as all the citizens. The country must decide if it is granting citizenship to its inhabitants or not, but from the moment it has done so, they must be treated equally.”
