Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

 
Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem
Chair of West Midland Palestine solidarity Campaign
 

• Easter in Palestine

• ‘Commentary’ concedes Christians n Jews no longer enemies. Ergo–

• A liberal NY Jewish institution invites an ethnic cleanser and a neocon to its stage

• She was a Christian Zionist, right up to her first checkpoint

• Goldstone Report gave us a moral vocabulary to describe the conflict

• Next year in Brooklyn

• Chomsky: Racism in our literary culture is harder to eradicate than polio, and Roma are Europe’s ‘most brutalized’ population

Easter in Palestine

Apr 24, 2011

Kate

Christians in Palestine in pictures
24 Apr – not to be missed, gorgeous photos
WATCH: Miracle of the Holy Fire, Jerusalem 2011
23 Apr — Holy Saturday in Jerusalem, 2011. The Holy Fire is a thousand year old tradition where a fire miraculously appears in the tomb of Jesus on the Saturday before Easter and then is spread by candles throughout the city. [In this video people wait for the candles to appear in the streets and light their candles from them. Palestinian bagpipers play.]
Saturday of Fire: Bringing the Holy Spirit to the West Bank
After the lightning ceremony led by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theofilos III, “miraculous” by Christian tradition, candles and lanterns are sent out from Jerusalem to cities throughout the West Bank and the world. Most of the Palestinian residents have been kept in the West Bank this year due to an Israeli-enforced closure during the Easter and Passover holiday week. Some Palestinian Christians are awarded special passes, but checkpoints like Ramallah’s Qalandiya were very quiet this past week due to the closure. Palestine’s Christians, while on average wealthier than their Muslim neighbors, have felt enormous pressure since 1948, mirroring a region-wide mass exodus The Independent’s Robert Fisk calls the “Christian flight of Biblical proportions.”
WATCH: Ethiopian Easter 2011 in Jerusalem
Dir as-Sultan monastery Sepulchre Jerusalem

And more news from Today in Palestine:

Land, property, resources theft & destruction / Ethnic cleansing / Settlers
Stop privatizing national parks / Zafrir Rinat
24 Apr — In recent months a group of Knesset members, mostly from the political right, have been promoting an amendment to the national parks law which would allow the environmental protection minister to relay jurisdiction for a park to a non-profit association. Under the terms of the proposed amendment, these are associations whose goals include “perpetuation of values that have historical, archaeological, architectural or natural importance.” … one of the amendment’s main backers, MK Israel Hasson ‏(Kadima‏), has admitted that one of the main factors motivating the legislation is a High Court petition submitted by the Ir Amim non-profit organization protesting the transfer of management authority for the Jerusalem Walls national park to the Elad non-profit group. Elad is a right-wing organization devoted to expanding Jewish control over the City of David.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/stop-privatizing-national-parks-1.357824
Action opposes political archaeology in Silwan
[photos] Silwan, Jerusalem (SILWANIC)  23 Apr —  Protesters staged a sit-in outside the City of David settlement site yesterday in Wadi Hilweh district of Silwan. Demonstrators tied blindfolds over their eyes in symbolism of the countless Palestinians who have been kidnapped or arrested as opponents to settlement activity in their village of Silwan. The action was timed to coincide with the current influx of tourists and foreign visitors to the City of David, the majority of whom visit unaware of the fact that the site is on Palestinian land.
http://silwanic.net/?p=15118
Israeli troops smash Palestinian property in Baten al-Hawa
Silwan, Jerusalem (SILWANIC) 24 Apr — Violent confrontations erupted in Baten al-Hawa district of Silwan last night, with Israeli forces smashing several vehicles belonging to Palestinian residents and firing tear gas, rubber bullets and sound bombs in the streets. Young Palestinians threw Molotov cocktails at the Israeli military-occupied roof of a Palestinian building in the center of the neighborhood. No injuries were reported, but extensive damage caused to residents’ property was recorded.
http://silwanic.net/?p=15147
Jewish settler opens fire in East Jerusalem neighborhood
JERUSALEM (WAFA) 24 Apr 19:23 — A Jewish settler opened fire Sunday in the streets of Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of East Jerusalem, causing panic among the neighborhood’s Palestinian residents, according to witnesses. Moaz al-Za‘tari, director of al-Maqdesee for Social Development, said the settler acted hysterically and people stayed home in fear of being shot by the settler, waiting for the Israeli police to come and arrest him.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=15973
Video: Settler harassment of Palestinian shepherds
TaayushHebron 17 Apr – [not even the frightened animals are safe from them]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZliHco4mWao
VIDEO: Land Day in Nabi Samuel
Mahsamilim 21 Apr — Nabi Samuel النبي صموئيل is a Palestinian village whose houses and lands are coveted by the Israeli Occupation. Most of it has been ruined, its lands robbed, and the greater part of its mosque turned into a Yeshiva (Jewish seminary). The village is totally isolated. An island in the area occupied by Israel. A severe policy of restriction of movement permits makes life unbearable for its inhabitants, imprisoning them in their own village. No one comes or goes without the occupiers’ permission. No one is allowed to come and visit its two hundred Palestinian inhabitants, including relatives and friends, except for holders of Israeli IDs. No one is allowed to build, even a wall, a sewage hole, or another room for the one room school in the village. Anything can be a pretext for the Israeli authorities to withdraw the villagers’ residency status so they live in the daily fear of being denied their right to live in their own village. On “Land Day” 2011, Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and other friends came to al Nabi Samwil to visit, show solidarity, protest, and plant some trees.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQn0GUOmRWs&feature=player_embedded#at=104
Violence
Israeli settler shot dead, 4 injured in Nablus
NABLUS (Ma‘an) 24 Apr 17:14 — An Israeli settler was shot dead and four others were injured early Sunday after a group of Jewish worshipers snuck into Nablus without coordinating with Palestinian or Israeli security, officials said. Settler sources named the man killed in the incident as Jerusalem resident Ben-Yosef Livnat, a 24-year-old father of four who is the nephew of hawkish culture minister Limor Livnat, and was born in the Nablus-area settlement Elon Moreh. The shooting took place when dozens of armed ultra-Orthodox settlers entered the Joseph’s Tomb site without an Israeli military escort. The Palestinian officers told the group that they were not allowed in the area and said that in response settlers pulled out their own guns and pointed them toward the officers. Israel’s military confirmed no coordination attempts had been made.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=381521
Israelis shot in West Bank tried to break through Palestinian roadblock, probe shows
Haaretz 24 Apr 12:51 — Palestinian security forces opened fire early Sunday on three cars full of Israelis who entered the West Bank compound of Joseph’s Tomb without permission and then tried to break through a local checkpoint, according to an initial investigation by the Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinian Authority … A senior Israel Defense Forces termed the incident “a serious mishap caused by both sides.” The army is refraining from referring to the shooting as a terror attack, but has called it an unjustified attack against civilians. The Palestinian Authority opened its own investigation into the matter …Defense Minister Ehud Barak condemned the incident as “murder” and ordered the IDF to carry out an investigation of its own. He also demanded the Palestinians probe the incident quickly and take every step necessary to perpetrate those responsible. “No problem of coordination can justify an incident like this and the shooting of innocent people,” he said.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israelis-shot-in-west-bank-tried-to-break-through-palestinian-roadblock-probe-shows-1.357885
‘Murdered simply for being a Jew’
Ynet 24 Apr — …Meanwhile, the police asked the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court to remand three Breslov Hasidim, aged 19 from Jerusalem and Bnei-Brak, for five days for violating a restricted military zone order. The motion said that the three, along with 15 other hasidim, entered the Joseph Tomb compound on Sunday morning sans the proper permits. The act resulted in the shooting incident that left one Israeli dead and five others injured.  The Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court ordered to release the three under a two-day house arrest. The court permitted the three to attend prayer services with the escort of family members and ordered them to pay bail of NIS 5,000 each (about $1,400). The 17-year-old brother of one of the wounded men arrived at Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, where they have been hospitalized. “They knew what they were getting into, and the level of risk involved. But they considered it as action,” the brother told Ynet. [why does the headline have nothing to do with the story?]
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4060222,00.html
MK Limor Livnat: My nephew was killed by a terrorist disguised as a Palestinian policeman
Haaretz 24 Apr 15:49 — Hundreds attended the funeral of Ben-Joseph Livnat Sunday, who was killed and three others were wounded earlier in the day when a Palestinian security officer opened fire on their car as they were leaving the holy site of Joseph’s Tomb near the West Bank city of Nablus.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/mk-limor-livnat-my-nephew-was-killed-by-a-terrorist-disguised-as-a-palestinian-policeman-1.357901
Netanyahu: PA must take severe steps against killers of Ben-Joseph Livnat
24 Apr — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly condemned Sunday the “atrocious” killing of Ben-Joseph Livnat, a 25-year-old father of four and nephew of Culture and Science Minister Limor Livnat in the West Bank, urging the Palestinian Authority to bring those responsible to justice … Netanyahu demanded in a statement that the PA must take severe steps against the Palestinian policemen who “misbehaved” and opened fire on the Israeli worshipers.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-pa-must-take-severe-steps-against-killers-of-ben-joseph-livnat-1.357878
Report: Palestinians set Joseph’s Tomb on fire
(VIDEO – click on smaller arrow on the right to watch) – Unrest rattled the West Bank city of Nablus Sunday following the shooting of Breslov Hassidim visiting the Palestinian-controlled Joseph’s Tomb in the city.  Palestinian sources reported local Palestinian youths gathered around the Tomb’s compound shortly after the incident and set it on fire. A group of Palestinian youngsters rolled burning tires into the Tomb’s plaza, which was renovated only a few months ago. A Palestinian source said black smoke towered over the gravesite, adding the sight was “reminiscent of the days of the Second Intifada.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4060163,00.html
‘Worshippers visit Joseph’s Tomb every night’
Ynet 24 Apr — After unauthorized visit to Nablus holy site leads to fatal shooting incident, coordinator of entries to Joseph’s Tomb says difficulty to obtain permits from IDF prompts worshippers to trespass into vicinity illegally. ‘We’re allowed in only once a month. They give us 10 buses, but over half a million want to visit’
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4060258,00.html
Rightists threaten vengeance over Nablus shooting
Ynet 24 Apr — Shortly prior to the funeral of Nablus shooting victim Ben-Yosef Livnat, who was killed Sunday morning in a shooting at Joseph’s Tomb, presumably by Palestinian policemen, settlers embarked on a price tag retaliation, stoning a Palestinian car. A Palestinian child was reportedly hurt. In retaliation to that, Palestinians stoned Israeli cars, injuring an Israeli youth. Two homes and two cars were reportedly set on fire in the village of Hawara, on the funeral procession route … Right wing elements have declared that the latest price tag activities were “only the beginning” and that the settlers intend to continue taking vengeance over the Sunday morning killing.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4060202,00.html
Gaza
IOF troops open fire at Palestinian farmers
KHAN YOUNIS, (PIC) 24 Apr — Israeli occupation forces (IOF) opened machinegun fire at Palestinian farmers and their fields east of Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip, on Sunday morning. Palestinian sources said that the soldiers, stationed on the eastern borders of Khan Younis opened heavy machinegun fire as warplanes hovered overhead. They said that the farmers fled their fields due to the intensive shooting, adding that no casualties were reported.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcO
Israel destroys spying devices in Gaza
Al-Ahram 24 Apr — The Israeli air force destroyed audio-visual spying devices after they were discovered by the Palestinian resistance, Palestinian sources told Ahram Online. The sources allege that a few days ago, a number of objects in sand hills in the south of Gaza City sparked the curiosity of Palestinian resistance affiliates as they passed by. The resistance’s leadership was informed and technological experts were sent to the site. They became certain that the objects were Israeli spying devices, the sources explained. They had started to move the devices when the driver received a phone call from Israeli intelligence elements calling on him to abandon the car within three minutes before it is bombed from the air.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsContent/2/8/10721/World/Region/Israel-destroys-spying-devices-in-Gaza-.aspx
Gaza children draw to honor slain activist
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 24 Apr — Children in southern Gaza spent Saturday drawing pictures to honor slain Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni. Over a hundred children and their mothers participated in the memorial event, organized by a charity in Khan Younis. Children also wrote letters expressing their condolences to Arrigoni’s mother … “We wanted to tell, through drawings, that we are a people who love peace and what happened was nothing to do with our religion or morals,” 11-year-old Tasneim Al-Farra said. “I cried after I learned that the man had abandoned his homeland and came to defend us. He deserved to be honored, not murdered,” she added.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=381589
Gaza crossing open for limited goods
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) — Palestinian liaison official Raed Fattouh told Ma‘an that 110 trucks of goods were expected to enter the Gaza Strip. The official, who coordinates deliveries of goods, added that two truckloads of carnations harvested in Gaza would be exported to Europe via the same crossing. Limited quantities of domestic-use gas will also be allowed in the Gaza Strip.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=381532
Activism / Solidarity
Activists demonstrate, work land despite Israeli military harassment
PSP 24 Apr — On Saturday, April 23, eight Israeli activists and 24 international volunteers joined residents of Beit Ommar for an action near Karmei Tsur organized by the Beit Ommar National Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. The international contingent included volunteers from the Palestine Solidarity Project and International Solidarity Movement, as well as the Belgian group Checkpoint Singers … As the choir sang anti-oppression songs, Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals began to pull stones from the earth and add them to the rock walls bordering the field. Whenever a they approached the soldiers, the military would retreat, and soon a handful of the faster workers had pushed the IDF three-quarters of the way across the field.
http://palestinesolidarityproject.org/2011/04/24/activists-demonstrate-work-land-despite-israeli-military-harrasment/
The global wake of Vittorio Arrigoni
24 Apr — The International Solidarity Movement and activists around the globe will connect via webcast for the [Italian] funeral of Vittorio Arrigoni. The International Solidarity Movement will join synchronized funerals in Italy and Gaza for Vittorio Arrigoni. At 6pm tonight, activists, supporters and the public will converge on the Ramallah Municipality building – between the restaurants Stones and Cafe la Paix – to celebrate the life and legacy of Arrigoni, slain in Gaza earlier this month. [includes video of the launching of the Oliva].
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1772
International kidnapping
Palestinian prisoners challenges arrest by Israeli forces as ‘illegal extradition’
IMEMC 24 Apr — A Palestinian who was abducted Friday outside of Nablus in a joint operation by Israeli military and police forces has challenged his abduction on the grounds that Israeli police were acting “outside of Israel” by abducting him in the Occupied West Bank, and that this renders his abduction illegal under international law. An Israeli judge has allowed Mohamed Beni Gama’s lawyer to submit the argument, which could have broad implications for some of the 8,000 Palestinians currently imprisoned inside Israel … Palestinians are regularly abducted by Israeli forces in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), with an average of 200 taken per month into Israeli prison facilities (this number is based on a compilation of daily news reports, averaged over time). According to Beni Gama’s lawyer, Nachmi Finblatt, the use of Israeli police in the Palestinian Territories is equivalent to sending domestic police into a foreign country to arrest a suspect, asking rhetorically, “Would the police consider abducting a French national from France if they suspected him of breaking into a business in Israel?”
http://www.imemc.org/article/61127
Other news
Israel ranks 7th in ‘happiness index’
Gallup survey shows 63% of Israelis satisfied with their lives, more than residents of United States, Britain. Denmark tops list with 72% happy campers, while only 14% of Palestinian Authority residents say they’re content with situation
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4060237,00.html
Thousands of Palestinians attend 9th Aqsa child festival
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC) 24 Apr — More than 15,000 Palestinians from occupied Jerusalem and the 1948 occupied lands attended on Saturday the ninth festival of the Aqsa child and the third drawing contest for kids in the Aqsa Mosque’s courtyards. Deputy head of the Islamic Movement in the 1948 occupied lands Sheikh Kamal Al-Khatib expressed his extreme delight to see such crowds attending this event to show their attachment to their holy sites.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2
New rule on marriage in Palestinian territories boosts women’s rights
Ramallah (Gulf News) 24 Apr — A married man in the Palestinian Territories can no longer remarry unless his first wife is officially notified, according to a circular issued by the Palestinian Supreme Council of Islamic Courts on Sunday.  According to the circular which was effective immediately and distributed to the various Sharia courts in the Palestinian Territories, the courts should not and cannot conduct marriages without informing the first wife. Also the to-be-wife should be informed that her husband is married. The ruling comes after growing complaints from women demanding more rights in the instance of marriage laws.
http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestinian-territories/new-rule-on-marriage-in-palestinian-territories-boosts-women-s-rights-1.798545
Arrigoni, Mer-Khamis to receive Jerusalem honors
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) 24 Apr  — President Mahmoud Abbas announced Sunday that he would present murdered Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni and slain Freedom Theater Director Juliano Mer-Kamis with the Jerusalem Medal of Honor. Family members of both men would be presented with the medals when Arrigoni’s mother visits Palestine, Abbas said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=381708
Hebron names park after Arrigoni
HEBRON (WAFA) 24 Apr — Youth Development Society in Beit Ula, western Hebron Sunday named a park after the murdered Italian activist, Vittorio Arrigoni, in honor of his support for the Palestinian Cause. Minister of Local Government, Khaled Qawasmi, attended the inauguration ceremony and condemned Arrigoni’s assassination, stressing that the murder does not reflect Palestinian moral values.
http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/hebron-names-park-after-arrigoni/
Palestinian leadership refuses to move Arafat’s archive to Israel
Xinhua 22 Apr — A Palestinian official in Fatah movement said Thursday that the Palestinian leadership has not yet allocated the place to keep the archive of late President Yasser Arafat when they receive it from Tunisia. Secretary of the Revolutionary Council of Fatah Ameen Maqboul said that the Palestinian leadership has not yet asked for an Israeli permission to receive the archive. PNA President Mahmoud Abbas said during a recent visit to Tunisia that the new Tunisian leadership agreed to send Arafat’s archive to the PNA.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90854/7358706.html
Analysis / Opinion / Human interest
WATCH: TEDx Ramallah reminds us of creation under occupation
21 Apr — The final speaker of TEDx Ramallah, the acclaimed author and architect Suad Amiry [author of Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries], was a perfect end to an exhilarating day. You have to see her speech, embedded in two pieces throughout this post, to understand what I mean.[inspiring AND hilarious]
http://972mag.com/tedx-ramallah-reminds-the-world-of-creation-under-occupation/
Israel to Christians: Christ is a monkey on a cross / Tim King
23 Apr — Show host to monkey depicting Jesus on the cross – “You are a Nazi, Yeshu (Jesus), you are a Nazi.” So, a slutty Israeli TV show features a chick in a skimpy bikini mocking Jesus Christ by showing him as a stupid looking monkey hanging on a cross. Then using the ‘f’ word, she proceeds to tell Jewish viewers that Christians, we ‘goyam’, are ‘dangerous’ toward Jews. From there, it gets much worse. We aren’t making this up; this is Israeli television being widely viewed today. The show is called, “The History Program of Toffee the Gorilla” … So all of you who tell me how bad I am for the articles I write about Israel, let’s hear your defense for this one.
http://salem-news.com/articles/april232011/jesus-israel-tk.php
Interview: Daughter of Franz Fanon on Palestine solidarity
EI 22 Apr — Last year, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France of the Frantz Fanon Foundation testified in the trial of Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and the director of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations. In January, Makhoul was sentenced to nine years in prison for charges related to espionage and contact with “enemies of the state.” According to Makhoul, during the 22 days he was held in isolation after his arrest, the Israeli authorities used severe interrogation methods that caused him both psychological and physical harm. Mireille Fanon-Mendès France knows Ameer Makhoul through years of regular meeting while representing their respective organizations at the World Social Forum’s International Council.
http://electronicintifada.net/content/interview-daughter-frantz-fanon-palestine-solidarity/9865
Children are the best peacemakers in the Middle East / Izzeldin Abuelaish
Guardian 24 Apr — For the sake of my dead daughters, I will never cease striving for peace — I always feel great joy every time I deliver a baby. To hear that first cry gives me hope because a new person has been born, a new chance at life. There will be a fresh pair of eyes to see the world and, I hope, see it in a better way … As I continue to follow news about ongoing tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem and Gaza, I am reminded all the more of the children caught within this conflict. Having worked in Palestine and Israel, I know there is no difference between Israeli parents and Palestinian parents. Both instinctively protect their child. But in times of conflict, both must learn to understand this need about one another.Some view my lawsuit against the state of Israel sceptically.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/24/israel-gaza-children-peacemakers
Shekels as tools of the regime / Salman Masalha
24 Apr — The issuance of new bills with pictures of writers is a chance for the government to show its concern for Arab citizens – writer Emile Habibi for instance … The paper money in Israel apparently serves as an organ of Zionist propaganda. Anyone killing time in a queue can stop and scrutinize lines attributed to former President Zalman Shazar on the NIS 200 bill and consider where his tax money is headed:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/shekels-as-tools-of-the-regime-1.357825
At home and abroad, Israelis ignore the rest of the world / Gideon Levy
24 Apr — You might expect such a tourism-loving people to open its eyes and ears to what can be seen and heard around the globe. Instead, we keep walling ourselves in against what the world thinks and feels … There have been closed-in nations that traveled here and there. But this combination of complete apathy to the world and endless traveling around it is a truly Israeli invention. Why? Because as the bumper sticker says, Israeli is best, bro.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/at-home-and-abroad-israelis-ignore-the-rest-of-the-world-1.357826
Israel, remember: Gaza will be part of Palestinian state / Zvi Bar’el
24 Apr — If the Palestinian state is recognized, Abbas will be responsible for what happens in Gaza, if he does not resign first. There will no longer be room for two governments.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-remember-gaza-will-be-part-of-palestinian-state-1.357823
‘Hypocrisy-seeking missile’: Omar Barghouti’s BDS reviewed
EI 22 Apr – ” “Our South Africa moment has finally arrived,” said Palestinian author-activist Omar Barghouti in a series of speeches delivered in 2010. With the publication of BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, the first book dedicated to the game-changing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement — known by the initials BDS — has itself finally arrived … Barghouti excels in distilling the arguments surrounding BDS down to their essentials. It is precisely because of his insistent focus on these fundamental issues that it has become all but impossible to find articulate holders of opposing views willing to engage him in public debate.
http://electronicintifada.net/content/hypocrisy-seeking-missile-omar-barghoutis-bds-reviewed/9866
The Middle East’s oldest dictatorship / Marwan Bishara
AJ 21 Apr — Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst discusses Israel’s rule over the Palestinians beyond the peace rhetoric — …Unlike other colonial powers and dictatorships in recent memory, Israel took all, but gave nothing in return. The settlements, the bypass roads and the industrial zones it built, are exclusively for Jews. Israel and its various Zionist organisations have built over 600 towns, villages and other form of settlements for the Jews, but none for the Palestinians — not even those it considers part of its own citizens, who make up almost one-fifth of its population. And much like other dictatorships, it’s in denial over the damage it has caused to the people under its rule, and delusional over occupation it deems necessary, benevolent, or even divinely promised. No other dictatorship in the region has been as indifferent and destructive for so long over those it ruled, as the Zionist regime has been in Palestine.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/201142114189933416.html
Video: MLK’s beloved community
20 Apr — Interview with Prince Immanuel Ben Yehuda and other members of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, living in Dimona, Israel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CuR1g8V3fDo
Nablus stands beautiful and unvisited
NABLUS (IPS) 24 Apr — Palestine experiences a boom in tourism, as herds of tourists storm the cities of Jerusalem, Jericho and Bethlehem. Meanwhile, the West Bank city of Nablus, rich in historic and religious sites, hardly attracts visitors. “It’s an ancient city with a magnificent old town. It’s home to Jacob’s Well, the Samaritans and Sabastiya.” Salem Hantoli, manager of Nablus’ al-Yasmeen hotel, praises the various tourist attractions of Nablus, a city with 126,000 inhabitants in the northern West Bank … Aker points at Israeli measures as the main obstacle to attracting more international tourists. “When at Ben Gurion Airport you tell them you’re planning to visit Nablus, they’ll recommend you not going there because the city ‘isn’t safe’. And surely they’ll make it harder for you to actually enter Israel,” says Aker.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55366
My travels: Mark Thomas on walking Israel’s West Bank barrier
Guardian 23 Apr — Comedian Mark Thomas found his idea of rambling along the Israeli barrier in the West Bank even more fraught than it sounds — The dubious honour of being the first person to walk the length of Israel’s barrier in the West Bank, to the best of my knowledge, belongs to, well, me. Admittedly it’s not a hotly contested title. Israel’s massive barrier covered in watchtowers, wire and soldiers is hardly a hiking trail but it will become one eventually. That is the fate of military follies, from the Great Wall of China to Hadrian’s Wall: they are destined to a future of tea shops and tour guides.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/apr/23/mark-thomas-rambling-israel-barrier
Iraq
Saturday: 2 US soldiers, 9 Iraqis killed, 6 wounded
At least nine Iraqis were killed and six more were wounded in light violence. Two U.S. soldiers were killed during operations in southern Iraq as well. Although there were no large-scale attacks reported, a spate of shootings in the capital targeted government or security officials. Also, protests continued in at least two cities.
http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2011/04/23/saturday-9-iraqis-killed-6-wounded-2/

‘Commentary’ concedes Christians n Jews no longer enemies. Ergo–

Apr 24, 2011

Anonymous

Amid some actually quite pleasant ruminations on Easter at Commentary, the neoconservative flagship, there was this little comment at the end of a post byD.G. (David) Myers about the calendrical confluence of Judaism’s Passover and Christianity’s Holy Week:

What might also be recognized at this season is that Christians and Jews are no longer enemies, but the intended victims of a new enemy who is common to both.

Leaving aside the jab at Islam, so thinly veiled that no public ban would be necessary, the comment (and the post) raises interesting political, religious and philosophical questions about Zionism and Christianity.

It is my decidedly not expert understanding of Zionism that the notion of Jewish self-determination in the Holy Land — as opposed to just Jewish presence there by religious justification — is based at least somewhat on the perceived dangers Jews face when solely in the Diaspora. Anti-Semitism could lurk behind any turn of history, and Jews would need a place to go as a permanent refuge.

Some might wonder why a secular, democratic, pluralistic and inclusive America (or other Western country) would not provide the same kind of refuge sans the exclusivist nationalist flair. The response, so far as I can tell, is the idea that even America — despite the virtual eradication of anti-Semitism and a meritocracy that has allowed American Jewry to flourish — remains potentially unsafe for Jews. After all, German Jewry were probably just as if not more entrenched in the establishment during the Weimar Republic as their contemporary American counterparts. Beyond historical analogues, anxiety also springs from America’s overwhelming Christian character, due to that faith’s sordid history with anti-Semitism. The goyim, and particularly the Christians, can never be fully trusted.

But if, as Myers contends in Commentary, those dreadful days are behind us, one must wonder why the need for an exclusivist Jewish state in the Middle East remains so strong. If Christians have now awoken from the drunkenness of anti-Semitism, might Jews just be suffering its hangover, manifested in the fear of rising annihilationist sentiment in the West?

Commentary, I’d venture to guess, would offer up the potential of secular leftist ‘new anti-Semitism’ as a risk for Diaspora Jews. This would bolster the odd marriage of Evangelicals and neoconservatives at the right-wing of the pro-Israel lobby. Commentary, in fact, is central in trying to force critical liberal Zionist voices out of the pro-Israel tent, often promulgating the theory that the lost support can be made up for by the legions of Christian Zionists. But that raises additional questions: If Christian Zionists are enough to keep Jews in Israel safe, then why can’t they do so in the old red, white and blue?

A liberal NY Jewish institution invites an ethnic cleanser and a neocon to its stage

Apr 24, 2011

Philip Weiss

Every once in a while I get on my high horse, oh I’d say only three times a day, and right now is one of those times. Here is the tragedy of American Jews. It’s all you need to know.The 92d Street Y is hosting the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, who has overseen an operation of ethnic cleansing of Palestinian neighborhoods, to speak in New York; and who is his interlocutor– Bret Stephens, the neoconservative at the Wall Street Journal.

It fills me with despair. This is the discourse? Oh my god. This is why this website is so vital, because all god’s chillun got wings, including Palestinian and non-Zionist Jews. But only the rightwingers are allowed inside the Jewish tabernacle these days. I love the Jews, they’re mine, they’re my root; but their leadership is today deeply deeply deluded, by a messianism as profound and wrong-track as the Shabbatai Zevi. Remember this is the same 92d Street Y that lately disinvitedIzzeldin Abuelaish, the Gaza doctor whose three daughters were slaughtered by the Israelis, after the Jewish author who was to appear on stage with him and thereby give him hecksher (kosher him) dropped out of the event. Oh the blindness, oh the selfishness.

Thanks to Ali Gharib, who tweeted sarcastically: “I expect Bret Stephens to really grill Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat at 92Y.”

She was a Christian Zionist, right up to her first checkpoint

Apr 24, 2011

Philip Weiss

For Easter, here is a portion of a great piece by Alicia von Stamwitz published on America, a Catholic weekly, in February. It describes her conversion in college to Zionism as a born-again Christian, and her trip to Israel and Palestine last year, in a faith-based tour for Christian journalists. And in the occupied territories, she had an awakening. Here’s an excerpt. Her amazement at the settlements is just what James North said stunned him when he went to Palestine: nothing in the American press prepared me for this. I don’t care about the politics, by the way, von Stamwitz is on the road. Once you’re on the road, well just ask the disciples what happened on the road to Emmaus… von Stamwitz:

A tour hosted by Palestinians?

I was skeptical at first, but a few e-mail messages confirmed that it was a legitimate event backed by the U.S. Agency for International Develop-ment. It was part of a new initiative to revive the Palestinian economy, beginning with the tourism industry. Even the Israelis were on board under the banner of “economic peace” in the Middle East.

So I went. But almost immediately I found myself fretting about unexpected things. Like the Jewish settlements. When the guide announced that our bus was passing a settlement on the left, I leapt out of my seat on the opposite side for a better view. At first, I couldn’t locate it. Then the guide pointed to a massive compound straddling a hilltop in East Jerusalem.

It was disorienting. My mental image of a settlement was of a humble farming community in an uninhabited desert place, not a modern city of 40,000 on prime real estate. It is probably an exception, I thought to myself. But I could not help wondering: Is this where my Zion tree ended up—on one of these “fallow hills”?

Then there was the separation wall. The 440-mile concrete and coiled wire barrier was an arresting sight from either side. The guide claimed it choked commerce and isolated Palestinian families: “It’s like living in a prison or a ghetto.” I bristled at his choice of words. A more balanced account would have allowed that the wall prevented terrorist attacks, I thought. Still, it was an eyesore.

As the days passed I grew increasingly irritable. The guide’s monologues on the suffering of the Palestinian people, confiscated lands and bulldozed trees were annoying. I was here to see the holy sites of Judaism and Christendom, not to listen to propaganda.

By the time Israeli soldiers boarded our bus at a checkpoint outside Ariel, I was in no mood for political games. At all the other checkpoints, soldiers had merely glanced at our passports and waved us on. This time we were asked to disembark with all our personal belongings.

Grumbling, I collected my bags and followed my companions across the steaming asphalt to a cinderblock security station. We queued up to file through the lone metal detector, then waited to be interrogated by a stone-faced senior officer as she rifled through our bags. “Where have you been?” she asked. “Where are you going? Why are you going there?” An hour later we were permitted to return to the bus but were denied passage.

“Why wouldn’t they let us pass?” I asked the U.S.A.I.D. representative accompanying our group as we headed back to our seats.

“They won’t allow our Palestinian guide through,” he said carefully, picking his way through the words. “There are Jewish settlers up the road, and the soldiers believe our guide could be a threat.”

“So what’s the problem,” I blurted impatiently. “Can’t we just go on without him?”

I regretted my words at once. After an awkward silence, the U.S.A.I.D. rep answered, “We don’t want to do that. He hasn’t done anything wrong.” He was right, of course. I reddened and slunk into my seat.

What was happening to me? My ire should have been directed at the Israeli soldiers who had blocked our passage in order to protect the—for the first time I saw the need for a descriptive adjective—illegal settlers. Instead, I had turned on the Palestinian guide.

I was tired and a long way from home, yes; but a more accurate explanation of my agitation is that I was much further from the familiar stories of my college days. My misty Zionist narrative did not mention fortress-like settlements, graffiti-streaked walls and checkpoints. And it did not include indigenous Palestinians. In fact, it had explicitly denied their existence: “A land without people for a people without land.”

Goldstone Report gave us a moral vocabulary to describe the conflict

Apr 24, 2011

Philip Weiss

Adam Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner, and I wrote a piece for the Nation this past weekon the Goldstone reconsideration. Sorry it’s taken me a few days to pick it up (horn-tooting-muting issue) but here’s the heart of the piece:

Indeed, the largest lesson of the controversy has been that the world is not prepared to forget these hundreds of thousands of killed, injured and “deeply affected” civilians – or the report that documented their suffering. If Gaza was a contemporary Guernica, the report fit the battle by describing riveting horrors: the children forced to sleep next to their parents’ bodies for days on end as ambulances were denied access to neighborhoods; the 15-year-old boy whose mother sought to save him by sewing up the bullet hole in his chest with a needle sterilized in cologne; the mother and daughter, 65 and 37, shot and killed amid a crowd of civilians carrying white flags as they walked from a village in search of safe harbor; the student who calmly told Human Rights Council interviewers, “My legs were exploded away” by a shell that killed several members of his family. These images will haunt anyone who has read the report.

No less powerful is the moral vocabulary the report provided to describe the outrage of these events.

This language was drawn from the realm of international law and carried the promise of legal repercussions for the wrongs committed—by Israel and Hamas—during Cast Lead. Thanks to the report there were names, and consequences, for the suffering inflicted on the people of Gaza, as well as the people of southern Israel. The attack on Gaza’s only functioning flour mill became an example of Israel’s intentional destruction of the area’s civilian infrastructure, while the siege of Gaza, which deprived civilians of the means of sustenance, was correctly classified as a form of collective punishment. Both are war crimes, and both require criminal prosecution of those who planned and orchestrated them.

This moral vocabulary has now permeated the global discourse about Israel-Palestine. Israel’s apparent impunity has galvanized the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and inspired grassroots efforts to use universal jurisdiction to hold Israeli leaders accountable where the international community has failed to do so. This too is the achievement of the report: it has retold the story of the Israel-Palestine conflict and reshaped the contours of the debate.

 

Next year in Brooklyn

Apr 24, 2011

Yonah Fredman

This Pesach promises to be my last major holiday here before I make yerida back to Brooklyn and since I cite the “Next Year in Jerusalem” chant at the end of the seder to prove the Zionistic motif existent in “preZionist” Judaism it is a bittersweet occasion for me.  Being near my aging parents was certainly the overwhelming immediate cause of my aliya four and a half years ago and so guilt about abandoning them is a major element of my thinking these days.  But if they had retired to Florida, Australia (or Uganda) I would not have moved to be near them, so being in Israel was the overwhelming underlying cause for my aliya and so guilt about abandoning Israel is also a major element of my thinking these days.

This is my fifth Pesach in Israel (this “visit”) and it was the fourth Pesach that my parents, two youngest sisters and their husbands and kids gathered on Kibbutz Shluchot for the seder where my oldest sister, her husband and children live.  This will probably be the last get-together of the extended clan before I exit.  (My ultra Orthodox brother is a clan onto himself who avoids away games and thus celebrates his seder in Jerusalem separate from the modern Orthodox clan that gathers in Shluchot.)

Shluchot is in pre 67 Israel, but it is located less than two miles south of Beit Shean and thus the quickest route from Jerusalem to there is via the Jordan Valley and thus through the occupied West Bank.  (Except for three intentional visits to the occupied territory and numerous visits to East Jerusalem and numerous uses of Highway 443, my trips to Shluchot are the  most significant times of passing through the O.T.)

We were slaves in Egypt and God freed us is the quick summary of the seder and the essence of the Pesach/Passover holiday.  There is a tension between the freedom and the Us portion of that sentence in today’s Israel, but that tension is not highlighted at all at the family seder.

One of my idiosyncrasies is to think of the Holocaust on Passover.  At the seder itself I mentioned it at the ceremonial breaking of the middle matza known as “Yachatz”.  After the middle matza is split, the bigger half of it becomes theafikomen saved for the end of the meal and stolen by kids the world over and held for ransom.  And the smaller half of it is the “showbread” for the “This matza we eat because…”, or “This is the poor bread that our fathers ate…”  And I like to mention that in “the camps” the ability to split a piece of bread exactly in half was considered a useful talent, for if half a piece of bread was the price between inmates for whatever, he who split the slice did not get to choose and if he had the ability to break it exactly in half, he would get to keep exactly half after the other inmate had chosen.

In Shluchot in general I do not think of Palestinians or the Ultra Orthodox as I do constantly in Jerusalem.  But once when I opened a closet there I was “attacked” by twofold ghosts that resided in the closets.  Most of the original members of the Kibbutz were survivors who had lost their entire families in Europe before coming to Israel.  And the ghosts of that closet were both the Holocaust dead that had haunted the founders coupled with the exiled Palestinians that had lived nearby before they had been exiled by the founders of Israel.

 

Chomsky: Racism in our literary culture is harder to eradicate than polio, and Roma are Europe’s ‘most brutalized’ population

Apr 24, 2011

Philip Weiss

When I was in Boston recently I learned that Chomsky towers over both sides of the river, and there was frustration that he refuses to acknowledge the power of the Israel lobby. My response since I don’t live there is that he towers differently from New York, he’s a great tower, and let’s celebrate his vision. Here’s a piece at Tom’s Dispatch that while pointedly ignorant about the religious/ideological sources of American policy in the Middle East– no it’s all about oil (again as if Zionism had no claim on Chomsky’s own heart, and it did)– is wonderful about the global economic forces shaping our lives. (thanks, John Haines)

Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other commodities since Ronald Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement and would change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost $2 billion, mostly in corporate funding. Small wonder that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is angry and frustrated, but as long as the Muasher principle prevails, that doesn’t matter.

While wealth and power have narrowly concentrated, for most of the population real incomes have stagnated and people have been getting by with increased work hours, debt, and asset inflation, regularly destroyed by the financial crises that began as the regulatory apparatus was dismantled starting in the 1980s.

None of this is problematic for the very wealthy, who benefit from a government insurance policy called “too big to fail.” The banks and investment firms can make risky transactions, with rich rewards, and when the system inevitably crashes, they can run to the nanny state for a taxpayer bailout, clutching their copies of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

That has been the regular process since the Reagan years, each crisis more extreme than the last — for the public population, that is. Right now, real unemployment is at Depression levels for much of the population, while Goldman Sachs, one of the main architects of the current crisis, is richer than ever. It has just quietly announced $17.5 billion in compensation for last year, with CEO Lloyd Blankfein receiving a $12.6 million bonus while his base salary more than triples.

It wouldn’t do to focus attention on such facts as these. Accordingly, propaganda must seek to blame others, in the past few months, public sector workers, their fat salaries, exorbitant pensions, and so on: all fantasy, on the model of Reaganite imagery of black mothers being driven in their limousines to pick up welfare checks — and other models that need not be mentioned. We all must tighten our belts; almost all, that is.

Teachers are a particularly good target, as part of the deliberate effort to destroy the public education system from kindergarten through the universities by privatization — again, good for the wealthy, but a disaster for the population, as well as the long-term health of the economy, but that is one of the externalities that is put to the side insofar as market principles prevail.

Another fine target, always, is immigrants. That has been true throughout U.S. history, even more so at times of economic crisis, exacerbated now by a sense that our country is being taken away from us: the white population will soon become a minority. One can understand the anger of aggrieved individuals, but the cruelty of the policy is shocking.

Who are the immigrants targeted? In Eastern Massachusetts, where I live, many are Mayans fleeing genocide in the Guatemalan highlands carried out by Reagan’s favorite killers. Others are Mexican victims of Clinton’s NAFTA, one of those rare government agreements that managed to harm working people in all three of the participating countries. As NAFTA was rammed through Congress over popular objection in 1994, Clinton also initiated the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border, previously fairly open. It was understood that Mexican campesinos cannot compete with highly subsidized U.S. agribusiness, and that Mexican businesses would not survive competition with U.S. multinationals, which must be granted “national treatment” under the mislabeled free trade agreements, a privilege granted only to corporate persons, not those of flesh and blood. Not surprisingly, these measures led to a flood of desperate refugees, and to rising anti-immigrant hysteria by the victims of state-corporate policies at home.

Much the same appears to be happening in Europe, where racism is probably more rampant than in the U.S. One can only watch with wonder as Italy complains about the flow of refugees from Libya, the scene of the first post-World War I genocide, in the now-liberated East, at the hands of Italy’s Fascist government. Or when France, still today the main protector of the brutal dictatorships in its former colonies, manages to overlook its hideous atrocities in Africa, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns grimly of the “flood of immigrants” and Marine Le Pen objects that he is doing nothing to prevent it. I need not mention Belgium, which may win the prize for what Adam Smith called “the savage injustice of the Europeans.”

The rise of neo-fascist parties in much of Europe would be a frightening phenomenon even if we were not to recall what happened on the continent in the recent past. Just imagine the reaction if Jews were being expelled from France to misery and oppression, and then witness the non-reaction when that is happening to Roma, also victims of the Holocaust and Europe’s most brutalized population.

In Hungary, the neo-fascist party Jobbik gained 17% of the vote in national elections, perhaps unsurprising when three-quarters of the population feels that they are worse off than under Communist rule. We might be relieved that in Austria the ultra-right Jörg Haider won only 10% of the vote in 2008 — were it not for the fact that the new Freedom Party, outflanking him from the far right, won more than 17%. It is chilling to recall that, in 1928, the Nazis won less than 3% of the vote in Germany.

In England the British National Party and the English Defence League, on the ultra-racist right, are major forces. (What is happening in Holland you know all too well.) In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin’s lament that immigrants are destroying the country was a runaway best-seller, while Chancellor Angela Merkel, though condemning the book, declared that multiculturalism had “utterly failed”: the Turks imported to do the dirty work in Germany are failing to become blond and blue-eyed, true Aryans.

Those with a sense of irony may recall that Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, warned that the newly liberated colonies should be wary of allowing Germans to immigrate, because they were too swarthy; Swedes as well. Into the twentieth century, ludicrous myths of Anglo-Saxon purity were common in the U.S., including among presidents and other leading figures. Racism in the literary culture has been a rank obscenity; far worse in practice, needless to say. It is much easier to eradicate polio than this horrifying plague, which regularly becomes more virulent in times of economic distress.

I do not want to end without mentioning another externality that is dismissed in market systems: the fate of the species. Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. Business leaders who are conducting propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax understand full well how grave is the threat, but they must maximize short-term profit and market share. If they don’t, someone else will.