NOVANEWS
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Independent: How Israel takes its revenge on boys who throw stones
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Kinky Friedman supports Rick Perry because of– (wake me up when this is over)
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‘J Street’ comes to Syracuse
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Why Israel (and Jeffrey Goldberg) are championing the Kurds
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AIPAC prepared congressional ‘airlift’ to go back home and explain why we’re spending $ on Israel
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Why I’m a progressive
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Democratic cong’l candidate uses Israel issue to pander to rightwing Republicans
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‘Moral dilemma’– or how a woman rationalizes rejecting a graduate student as a babysitter on racial basis
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More doubts emerge over claim that Eilat attackers came from Gaza
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How would you redesign our comment section?
Independent: How Israel takes its revenge on boys who throw stones
Aug 26, 2011
Henry Norr
Palestinian boys throwing stones (AFP)
Today’s UK Independent carries a searing story about Israeli treatment of young Palestinians arrested for throwing stones. Reporter Catrina Stewart somehow got to see a video recording the interrogation of a 14-year-old Palestinian named Islam Tamimi. (Stewart doesn’t say so, but the video must have been made by the Israeli authorities themselves.) Her story begins:
The boy, small and frail, is struggling to stay awake. His head lolls to the side, at one point slumping on to his chest. “Lift up your head! Lift it up!” shouts one of his interrogators, slapping him. But the boy by now is past caring, for he has been awake for at least 12 hours since he was separated at gunpoint from his parents at two that morning. “I wish you’d let me go,” the boy whimpers, “just so I can get some sleep.”
During the nearly six-hour video, …. Tamimi, exhausted and scared, is steadily broken to the point where he starts to incriminate men from his village and weave fantastic tales that he believes his tormentors want to hear. … Shown a page of photographs, his hand moves dully over it, identifying men from his village, all of whom will be arrested for protesting.
Stewart goes on to explain how these cases usually end, regardless of whether or not the children arrested actually threw stones:
In most cases, children as young as 12 are hauled from their beds at night, handcuffed and blindfolded, deprived of sleep and food, subjected to lengthy interrogations, then forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, a language few of them read.
…most children are frightened into signing a confession, cowed by threats of physical violence, or threats against their families, such as the withdrawal of work permits.
When a confession is signed, lawyers usually advise children to accept a plea bargain and serve a fixed jail sentence even if not guilty. Pleading innocent is to invite lengthy court proceedings, during which the child is almost always remanded in prison. Acquittals are rare. “In a military court, you have to know that you’re not looking for justice,” says Gabi Lasky, an Israeli lawyer who has represented many children.
At the end of the piece Stewart provides some statistics about such arrests. Most striking to me:
62 The percentage of children arrested between 12am and 5am.
Go read the whole article. And as I’ve said to several people active in the Palestine solidarity movement: if you ever have a moment of doubting why we do this work, just go back and re-read this piece.
Kinky Friedman supports Rick Perry because of– (wake me up when this is over)
Aug 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
Kinky Friedman at the Daily Beast. Oh god.
As a Jewish cowboy (or “Juusshh,” as we say in Texas), I know Rick Perry to be a true friend of Israel, like Bill Clinton and George W. before him. There exists a visceral John Wayne kinship between Israelis and Texans, and Rick Perry gets it. That’s why he’s visited Israel on many more occasions than Obama, who’s been there exactly zero times as president. If I were Obama I wouldn’t go either. His favorability rating in Israel once clocked in at 4 percent. Say what you will about the Israelis, but they are not slow out of the chute. They know who their friends are. On the topic of the Holy Land, there remains the little matter of God. God talks to televangelists, football coaches, and people in mental hospitals. Why shouldn’t he talk to Rick Perry? In the spirit of Joseph Heller, I have a covenant with God. I leave him alone and he leaves me alone. If, however, I have a big problem, I ask God for the answer. He tells Rick Perry. And Rick tells me.
So would I support Rick Perry for president? Hell, yes!
‘J Street’ comes to Syracuse
Aug 26, 2011
Pat Carmeli
The last time I attended an event on Israel at Temple Concord in Syracuse, I angered the audience when I confronted Ido Aharoni, the Consul General for the State of Israel. It wasn’t so much my alluding to dead babies and white phosphorous, but my brazen proffering that the average age of the audience was around 75 years, a comment made in the context that the younger Jewish population, not represented at the event, is far less tied at the hip to Israel as the older generation.
So before last night’s event (8/25) which hosted the J Street Northeastern Regional representative, Melanie Harris, I promised our group (CNY Working for a Just Peace in Palestine/Isreal) that I would be there in “silent solidarity”. And I meant it. I had no intention of putting the audience or the speaker on the offensive. Harris was there to introduce the audience to J Street with the aim of opening up a chapter in Central New York.
When J Street first emerged on the scene a few years ago, I was put off by their “Pro Israel, Pro Peace” motto. I’d have preferred Pro Human Rights for all, but it’s not my gig. When J Street organizers gave the brush off to Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun at one of their earlier conferences, I wrote them off as duplicitous and shallow. However, over the past couple of years my opinion of them has changed and I’ve often participated in their petitions and have sent financial contributions. I appreciated their ability to reach the hardcore Israel-supporting audience that my group rarely penetrated and I began to perceive them as the counter-balance to AIPAC, slowly siphoning off the large lobby’s membership and money.
So it was with this belief that I and my daughters as well as several members of our group attended the event last night. We didn’t want to challenge the speaker. If she would be able to crack through the “Israel right or wrong” mentality, we’d be happy.
Harris began her presentation by explaining that J Street’s objective is to widen the dialogue within the Jewish community, thereby breaking through the not-so-subtle prohibition on questioning Israeli leadership or policy.
It encourages political participation of its members to encourage continued US political commitment towards achieving the objective of a Two-State solution. She explained that a Jewish State alongside a Palestinian State is the only way to assure Israel’s survival as “Jewish and Democratic”. J Street supported continued US military aid to Israel, a demilitarized Palestine, and borders somehow based on ’67 lines with land swaps to denote settlements which aren’t going to be dismantled. She commented that the “policy of Israel right or wrong mentality is damaging for the US and Israel”. J Street wants participation from its membership to “show that there is a base of support for President Obama’s positions” as outlined in his March 2011 speech. She urged the audience to reach out to their officials to show support for these policies. She spoke of the Jewish values she was raised with and her personal desire to “take back the conversation from the extremists”. She wished for “pragmatism, rational thought…not bogged down in the history of the conflict”.
Zingo. Let’s open the conversation, but not that far.
Troubling to me was the fact that J Street wants to open up the conversation and abandon the “Israel Right or Wrong” mentality, but not pose the question: “Zionism, right or wrong?” Harris explained that the organization isn’t eager to get bogged down in history, but can this context be omitted from an in-depth discussion of the conflict? Harris spoke of a suffering friend in southern Israel worried about rocket attacks, but omitted any mention of the Palestinians of Gaza, the Wall, expropriated lands, the inability for Palestinians to travel, to arrive at hospitals, or get an education. She stressed the need for the “Palestinians to abandon their right of return because it would pose a demographic problem for the Jewish State” and made no mention of the ever growing population of Palestinians within Israel or how the Jewish state will deal with that messy demographic conundrum down the line.
Before attending last evening’s event, I opined to my group members my belief that J Street, while quietly as outraged as we are over Israel’s human rights abuses and outright murderous actions, is being “tactical” to garner the support of the Jewish community. I believed that there is more than one path to the ultimate objective of peace and justice for Israel and Palestine. I was left, however, with the notion that J Street is very much like AIPAC in the sense that they advocate for continued US involvement, political support, and US tax dollars, but only as long as our elected officials advocate on behalf of the continued existence and strength of the militarized Jewish State. I felt a total disconnect and even denial by the speaker of the constant trampling on Palestinian human rights. They were represented merely as a demographic problem with terrorist tendencies.
Perhaps I was wrong to keep my pledge of silence during Q & A, but my daughter made no such promise and she asked a three-part question which was basically met with “we advocate for a Zionist State”. So much for opening up dialogue.
After the event I spoke to Melanie Harris about my concerns and she suggested I attend the first meeting of the new J Street chapter in Syracuse next month. (I had already registered) I think I will attend, but only to see if in a smaller, more intimate environment the J Streeters are more open to real and meaningfully conversation and whether the group advocates justice for all, or merely a strong Jewish Israel totally supported by US policy and money.
Why Israel (and Jeffrey Goldberg) are championing the Kurds
Aug 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
The other day Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic championed the Kurds against Turkey, a post headlined, “Turkey Kills Dozens of Kurds, World Shrugs.” Goldberg wrote, “I’d organize a flotilla in support of the Kurds, but I’m afraid no one would join.”
I would never suggest that Goldberg’s positions are orchestrated–no, the majorettes cut their own moves–but isn’t it interesting that according to this Asia Times’ analysis by former Indian ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, Israel is trying to pressure its former ally Turkey, which now supports the Palestinian statehood initiative, by making common cause with two populations Turkey has oppressed, Cypriotes and Kurds! Here’s some of the Kurd analysis (thanks to Mark Wauck):
Leading Israeli defense specialist David Eshel commented in August about the upsurge of Kurdish insurgency in Turkey’s eastern provinces:
“The entire Kurdish people could take advantage of the ongoing Arab Spring and prepare the ground for a long-anticipated Kurdistan, linking up with Iraq’s ongoing autonomy, the Iranian Kurdish enclave and perhaps even the Syrian Kurdish minorities … With the Arab world in total turmoil, lacking any orderly leadership, the Kurds could finally achieve their sacred goal for independence, after decades, if not centuries of desecration and oppression … the ongoing ‘Arab Spring’ could eventually shift into a ‘Kurdish Summer'”.
Israel estimates, however, that the Kurdish problem makes Ankara vulnerable to American and European pressure tactic and an exacerbation of this could politically weaken Erdogan and bring him to his knees.
And here’s the Cyprus part:
The two-day visit by the Foreign Minister of Cyprus, Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, to Tel Aviv, which ended on Thursday, was much more than a routine call. The minister had just assumed charge in Nicosia and headed for Israel as soon as her customary first visit to Athens was out of the way.
Quite obviously, Nicosia and Athens (which has an ancient grudge to settle with Ankara) put their heads together and assessed that Israeli regional policies are on a remake. Cyprus and Greece have had indifferent ties with Israel, but a compelling commonality of interests is sailing into view. …
The statement issued by Netanyahu’s office virtually underscored that Israel has a convergence of interests with Cyprus with regard to Ankara’s perceived belligerence. Netanyahu said Israel and Cyprus had “overlapping interests”. The statement said Netanyahu discussed with Kozakou-Marcoullis “the possible expansion of energy cooperation given that both countries have been blessed with natural gas reserves in their maritime economic zones”.
…The Israelis are pinning their hopes on Cyprus turning out to be a prize catch, being a member of the European Union, which works by consensus and is shortly expected to evolve a common stance apropos the expected Palestinian move at the United Nations General Assembly session in New York in September, seeking recognition for their “state”.
This explosive diplomatic issue haunts Tel Aviv (and Washington) and the stance that Cyprus takes at Brussels could be a diplomatic windfall when the mood in Europe is increasingly empathizing with the Palestinian case for statehood.
AIPAC prepared congressional ‘airlift’ to go back home and explain why we’re spending $ on Israel
Aug 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
I love honest journalism. Joshua Mitnick in the Christian Science Monitor on the neverending scandal: Why one-fifth of the Congress spent their summer recess in Israel, the “virtual airlift” of Congresspeople to Israel by AIPAC affiliate American Israel Education Foundation.
While such visits are routine, the unusual size of this year’s delegation reflects several factors ranging from the UN vote and rising criticism of White House policy toward Israel, to the bumper crop of freshman representatives who don’t have to spend the summer campaigning for reelection. AIPAC wants to use the visit to make the case to newcomers for continued US foreign aid of about $3 billion at a time of fiscal austerity.
“The question isn’t so much going away with a different attitude, it’s going away with more information,” says David Kreizelman, who heads AIPAC’s office in Israel. “They have to go back to their constituents who are saying, ‘We want [government help] and you are voting to give money to Israel.’ “
And remember what my congresswoman, Nan Hayworth, wrote to her constituents?
It can certainly be said that the cost of deployment of an Iron Dome unit is far lower in dollars than the cost of the damage from a terrorist rocket. The savings in lives is, of course, incalculable. Iron Dome is an example of how smart technology can help us to defeat evil without bloodshed. We need to do a lot more of this in a lot of places in the world, and we can, but if we’re going to afford it we need to manage our American resources better.
Why I’m a progressive
Aug 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
Some here see the issue through the lens of Alabama’s history, including Lawton Higgs, 71, a retired Methodist minister.
“And I’m a recovering racist, transformed by the great fruits of the civil rights movement in this city [Birmingham],” he says.
–Debbie Elliott reporting 3 days ago on Alabama’s new immigration law for NPR.
Most surprising is how far same-sex couples have dispersed, moving from traditional enclaves and safe havens into farther-flung areas of the country. Consider, for example, the upstarts on the list [of the top ten cities in the proportion of same-sex couples]: Pleasant Ridge, Mich., a suburb of Detroit; New Hope, Pa.; and [Rehoboth] this beach town in southern Delaware.
[Among the top four counties in the country for same-sex households are] Hampshire County, Mass., Monroe County, Fla., and Multnomah County, Ore…
–Sabrina Tavernise reporting yesterday in the New York Times
Democratic cong’l candidate uses Israel issue to pander to rightwing Republicans
Aug 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
As regular readers know, I believe that the heart of “the special relationship,” the undying love between the U.S. and Israel, is American Jewish political action. I tend to pooh-pooh Christian Zionists. Here’s some evidence against my theory.
Kate Marshall is a Democrat from Reno and the Nevada State Treasurer. A former Peace Corps volunteer, she is now running for Congress in the vast second district (not Shelley Berkley’s). Well lately she released a speech “on an issue she’s never talked about,” expressing unwavering support for Israel in the face of attacks and by mistake left in the staff memo about why such support is politically important.
The pandering was to reach out to rightwing Republican voters who dig Glenn Beck! Tim Mak at Politico:
her aides accidentally left in a “background” section at the bottom that explained why it would be “useful to express support for Israel.”
The section, which was first reported by the Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston, explains that putting out the statement would “demonstrate some foreign policy prowess” during a time when “Israel has been in the news.”
The notes that were supposed to remain private also went on to say that a statement on Israel would be timely because of Glenn Beck’s recent Rally to Restore Courage event in Jerusalem. The section alludes to the fact that Republicans are generally supporters of Israel, noting that Marshall could gain by siding with Israel “in an R district.”
From Las Vegas Sun version of speech:
Kate Marshall Issues Statement of Support for Israel as Violence Escalates…
“I am proud to consider Israel a friend and I reiterate my unwavering support for its fundamental right to exist and the absolute necessity for Israel to secure its people from outside threats. I stand ready and willing to assist Israel in defending itself against all acts of terrorism….
“[Memo portion] Background: Israel has been in the news lately, and will be even more in the news with Beck’s “Rally to Restore Courage” in Jerusalem. In an R district, it will be useful to express support for Israel and demonstrate some foreign policy prowess while it is a timely topic – especially for people who are likely paying attention to Beck’s event.
‘Moral dilemma’– or how a woman rationalizes rejecting a graduate student as a babysitter on racial basis
Aug 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
I get the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and a few months back they published this amazing story by Awatef Sheikh (a former aide to a Palestinian member of the Knesset). It wasn’t online when the magazine showed up, but now it is. (You should all subscribe to the Washington Report). It begins with an incident as related by a Jewish Israeli mother, Karni Eldad, in an article in Haaretz. These are just excerpts:
The Jewish Israeli mother posted her ad at a café on Mount Scopus adjacent to her neighborhood, the French Hill. Both are located in East Jerusalem, occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed by Israel in violation of international law. [Karni] Eldad was fortunate: a woman called to express interest in the job. She described the caller as an intelligent and amazing person, a mother with two children, thus giving her credentials as an experienced babysitter.
But there was a problem: the caller’s name was Suha and she lived in Isaweyeh, a Palestinian slum-like neighborhood in East Jerusalem, just a few hundred yards away from Eldad’s pleasant, well-maintained neighborhood. Eldad rejected Suha and told her and Haaretz readers why: Grappling with her conscience, Eldad confessed she was “afraid to employ an Arab woman.”
“I tried to imagine an Arab caregiver for my son,” Eldad wrote. “No problem. She sounded delightful…..But what if…” she went on to reflect. “What if she duplicates the key and gives it to her cousin who will steal the car/computer/wallet/gun? Or what if she really is an honest and nice person and innocently tells a relative in Taibeh (or for the sake of argument, in Ramallah) that she’s looking after a cute baby? Will that person kidnap him? Or extort money from us? Or worse? And what if none of this, but I always have the feeling that maybe, maybe yes?”
The author explained what she described as her “moral dilemma”: she succumbed to her fears and wondered whether this means she is racist. She questioned what has changed; her parents had had an Arab cleaner when she was young….
I was in Jerusalem recently and ran into the pseudonymous Suha, an old acquaintance from university. Her actual name is Aswan; she is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, originally from Nazareth, a single mother of two children. She is doing her Ph.D. in philosophy at the Hebrew University, has a master’s degree in educational anthropology, a diploma in management of not-for-profit community centers, and is a former manager of one. She is a qualified group facilitator with experience in facilitating conflict resolution discussion groups of Jewish and Palestinian participants, and is qualified in mediation and trust-building practices. Aswan lives with her two children at the Hebrew University’s Student Village in the French Hill—not in Isaweyeh, as Eldad stated in her article.
Why, then, did Eldad specify Isaweyeh? Because in order to justify her “moral dilemma,” Eldad required the typical image of a Palestinian—the sneaky, untrustworthy one…
Aswan explained to me that she tried to convince Eldad to meet, but failed. “Do you want to meet, and then you can see there is nothing to be afraid of?” she suggested. Eldad declined. Aswan then suggested meeting to discuss Eldad’s fears, regardless of the job. Attempting to end the conversation, Eldad said: “I couldn’t hire you even if I wanted to. My dad is a member of the Knesset and, according to the law, his children can’t hire an Arab babysitter for security reasons.”
While there are more than 20 laws in Israel which discriminate against Palestinian citizens, none forbid Jewish MKs from hiring Palestinian citizens as babysitters—at least, not yet.
Aswan is not alone in this experience (nor, sadly, is Eldad in her views)….
When I asked Aswan how her experience with Eldad affected her as a citizen, she replied: “We face racism and Israeli supremacy on a daily basis, in the smallest details of our daily lives. But this was hard to deal with: I was rejected as a human—but I refuse to see myself as a victim. On the contrary, Eldad is the victim.”