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Israel about to criminalize BDS and more


Israel about to criminalize BDS

What is Israel’s reaction to the growing nonviolent movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions? Well criminalize it, of course!

We just learned new bill has been introduced in the Israeli Knesset by 25 Knesset members, that would criminalize all BDS activities or even BDS advocacy inside or outside Israel. You can find info about this in English here and with more detail in Hebrew here.

The proposed bill would target those that initiate, encourage, or provide assistance or information about boycotts against Israel.

Israeli citizens or residents of Israel could be sued by whoever was harmed by the boycott and would have to pay up to 30,000 shekels in restitution and an additional amount according to the harm established by the Israeli courts.
This provision would endanger the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace, New Profile, Boycott from Within, among others.

Those that are neither citizens nor residents of Israel would lose the ability of entering Israel for at least ten years and would be forbidden from economic activity in Israel (holding an account in an Israeli bank, owning Israeli stocks, land, or any other good that requires registration.)
It is not clear whether this provision would apply also to entry into the West Bank, although Prof. Noam Chomsky’s denial of entry may be a sign of things to come.

A group in a foreign country would also be forbidden from economic activism in Israel. This would apply to the Palestinian Authority as well.
In the case of the PA, Israel would freeze transfer of money it owes and would use it to pay restitution to those harmed in Israel.

Helen Thomas response, hypocrisy here and there

By Cecilie Surasky, crossposted from Muzzlewatch.com

It’s impossible to defend White House Grande Dame of journalism Helen Thomas’ recent off the cuff statement that Israeli Jews should go back to Germany…..or Poland. (She said Israel should get out of Palestine, but it wasn’t clear if she meant the Occupied Territories, which Israelis should get out of, or Israel behind the green line.) It was deeply offensive and wrong.

One of this country’s most important and courageous journalists said something terribly wrong, was massively criticized, apologized for it, and was forced into retirement. Exactly the way it should be, right? Wrong.

It’s hard to even chart out the hypocrisy of the whole affair. What happened in 2002 when House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on MSNBC’s Hardball? An outraged response? Nary a peep. That same year Senator James Inhofe also called for Israel to permanently retain all of the Occupied Territories, “Because God said so. “  Did he quit? No. And what to make of the fact that Obama’s White House summoned infinitely more moral outrage for Thomas’ terrible but certainly not lethal remarks, than for the death of 9 people on the Mavi Marmara, including a 19-year-old US citizen shot in the head. (One prompted “deep regret”, the other was “reprehensible”. Guess which was which.)

There’s also the glass house in which Rabbi Nessenoff lives: he’s the one who recorded the Thomas gotcha video and who, it seems, has offered the world his own offensive imitation of a Mexican priest, and believes that Palestinians all belong back home…in Jordan.

In Israel, the hypocrisy is even more painful, where it should be noted that the Israeli military recently created an order that, according to many human rights groups and Ha’aretz, “will enable mass deportation from West Bank.” Who had to retire because of that? Maybe because it wasn’t an off the cuff remark to suggest ethnic cleansing, but an actual military order to allow it, its authors escaped opprobrium.

Just this week, Likud party MK, Miri Regev shouted at Hanin Zuabi, an Arab member of the Knesset from Nazareth who went on the Gaza flotilla, “Get back to Gaza, you traitor!” Sounds familiar, as though Thomas herself could have said it. Outrage meter? Zero. Then again, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai wants Zuabi stripped of her Israeli citizenship, so telling her to go back to a place she is not from actually seems pretty mild by those standards.

Moshe Yaroni, who abhors what Thomas said, compares her treatment to Israel’s response to the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick who is surely responsible for what will go down as one of the most morally heinous pieces of agitprop in modern history:

In Israel, the premier woman journalist in the country went a hell of a lot farther, in a premeditated, rather than an impetuous fashion. And there is hardly a peep in response in her home country.

Caroline Glick is well-known to readers of right-wing e-mail lists, and of course, of the Jerusalem Post, where she is the deputy managing editor and a regular columnist. She is also a fellow at the extremist neoconservative Center for Security Policy in Washington.

Caroline Glick with fellow travelers Morton Klein and John Bolton

Glick herself is an extremist, and even those who agree with her (and who would, of course, not refer to her as an extremist) would have to agree that she situates herself well to the right of the current Israeli government. And that’s all well and good; she’s an op-ed writer, and she is certainly entitled to her opinions.

But at her web site, Latma, Glick has raised her vitriol to a whole new level. In a video overflowing with racism, a group of Israelis satirize the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla. You can see it for yourself here, if you can make it through the whole thing.

In a most contemptible fashion, almost every trope of bigotry is on display in the video, which features the contention that the massive suffering in Gaza is all an elaborate fabrication. For a quick rundown of this “fabricated” suffering, check out B’Tselem’s summary of conditions in Gaza.

This level of cruelty is truly astonishing. Even if one contends that the Gaza blockade is a necessary security measure (see my earlier article for why it has the opposite effect), it is appalling to see fellow Jews laughing about it. And don’t we know all too well the offense in denying such things?

The punch line, of course, is that because of her truly abominable and utterly vile video, Caroline Glick and is being hailed as a Hasbara hero in Israel- while one of our few truly great journalists has ended an otherwise remarkable career. Yaroni continues:

No, the real concern, the real question is where is the Israeli outrage? We wouldn’t expect it from the government, of course. In fact, the Government Press Office e-mailed the video to journalists and later apologized, saying it had been done in error. That is unlikely to say the least. Mark Regev, the Prime Minister’s Office Spokesman said “I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny. It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it.”

The courageous blog, Coteret, run by Didi Remez, blasts the video and all it represents. But in the mainstream Israeli media and commentary, there is nothing. This blatantly hateful and racist video is perfectly acceptable in Israel.

Glick, on her blog, magnifies her hypocrisy by spending a great many words blasting Thomas for her offensive remarks.

Grit Tv’s Laura Flanders may be onto something when she says:

Thomas’s crime wasn’t just Antisemitism — it was Antisemitism in defense of Palestine. That’s the true source of the outrage. The outrage that Obama and Biden and most other U.S. officials, to say nothing of the majority of the press corps, can’t seem to find for others.

I’m not sure. Had Helen Thomas made a similar remark about African Americans, for example, I’m not sure the same fate wouldn’t have befallen her. If only I could feel confident that power-brokers in the world of journalism and even my own government cared as much about my Arab and Palestinian friends as they seem to care about me… as a Jew of course.

Our 2 Op-Eds in the Israeli Press about Israel’s Future (1)

(crossposted on Daily Kos)

In April, in anticipation of Israel’s independence day, fellow Israeli activist Ofer Neiman sent us an op-ed for feedback. I ended up co-signing the article. It appeared on Ynet, the website of Israel’s largest daily. I planned to translate it to English but was too busy.

A couple of weeks ago, as the Gaza flotilla was cruising towards its tragic end, I thought up another article – a sequel if you will. This time it was Ofer who joined me as a co-author, and the article appeared in Haaretz – but wasn’t translated on their English mirror.

Both articles deal with Israel’s existential problems rather than focus on current events. The Ynet article reminds Israelis, that the deteriorating quality of our public life bears a direct impact upon the raison d’etre for the Jewish state itself. The Haaretz article tackles Israel’s recent foreign-policy philosophy (embraced by most of the public) head-on.

Neither article was received well by Israeli readers; no big surprise. At least we tried. Below is an annotated translation of the Ynet piece, with additional remarks I’ve never written before regarding my personal experience. The Haaretz article – hopefully in a day or two.

The Most Dangerous Place for Jews

Ofer Neiman and Assaf Oron, April 22, 2010

The State of Israel was established to be a safe haven for Jews, but it seems that since its establishment this has been the only place in the world where Jews are killed on a regular basis in military conflicts or terror attacks, supposedly for being Jews – but more precisely, for their affiliation with the Zionist enterprise. Generations of ceaseless self-armament, during which Israel has turned into a regional power with the strongest military in the Middle East, have not served to allay our fears. Even now many feel threatened – for example, by the potential of an Iranian nuclear weapon, or by thousands of rockets on our northern and southern borders.

While bereavement and existential fears grip the public in Israel every few years, in many other places around the world Jews live a prosperous stable life, maintain a rich community fabric, and actively participate in the surrounding local culture. The state that was set up “to prevent another Holocaust” is the only place in the world where local politicians dare threaten Jews with… another Holocaust, as the speeches during this year’s Memorial Week once again demonstrate.

[note: Israel’s Memorial Week starts with the Holocaust day a few days after Passover, and continues a week later with the military and terror-victim Memorial Day, right on the eve of Independence day. Right-wing politicians like Bibi use the event to remind citizens how all the world is against us, and how grave is the existential threat du jour]

The vast majority of Israelis (at least those who are not religious fanatics) see the protection of Jews’ welfare and safety as a primary mission of the state, a mission far more important than, say, the ambition to extend the national borders beyond those recognized by the world in 1949. Therefore, it is no surprise that the citizens most at ease with the present political reality are messianic fanatics. Effi Eitam, for example, already declared that Jewish sovereignty over the entire “greater Israel” is a goal worth sacrificing human lives for. We, the rest of Israelis, must ask ourselves: are we ready to sacrifice our children and other children, when we can guarantee them a future of security and contentment somewhere else?

At this point, one might think that the article’s main goal is to convince people to emigrate from Israel. Bear with us: we are being intentionally provocative. The point made by the article’s first part is that even on security proper – that major deity “justifying” pretty much every failure and crime our government commits – successive Israeli governments have actually scored very low grades. Fact of the matter is, the average Israeli would be much safer grabbing whatever foreign passport or visa they can get hold of, and emigrate to where most Diaspora Jews live, i.e. some wealthy peaceful country. From a pure security perspective, that is.

Of course, even with Israel’s higher rate of conflict-related deaths vs. the West’s, is still fortunately too low to make Israelis run for the exits en masse like Iraqis had done recently. Yet, the ongoing sense of paranoia and trauma has been quite damaging.

But there are other reasons beside security for Jews, even non-fanatics, to live in a Jewish-dominated state, and we continue by listing some of them.

True, even non-fanatics can suggest answers to the question “Why live in Israel?” for example “Only here we control our destiny” or “Only here there is a sense of a shared fate”. But the validity of these answers needs to be revisited in view of recent developments.

Recently, our public sphere has been monopolized by the new-old consensus that we must live on our sword, as a “Villa in the Jungle” facing our “Barbarian” neighobors who “do not accept our existence here”. This is not controlling our destiny, but the complete opposite: fatalism and a dead end. As to the shared fate, Israel’s once-famous social cohesion has been unraveling in recent decades because of rifts between major population groups, the disintegration of the education system, cruel economic policies, and the epidemic of corruption in high places that eradicates the public’s trust in its leaders. This is not a coincidence: when all of us are consumed by an outbreak of existential fears, or are busy recovering from the previous outbreak – who has the energy to deal with society’s core problems and hold politicians accountable?

Of course, there are other answers that can be given besides the two we addressed. We could not cover all of them in a 575-word article. For example, “Participate in the re-connection of Jewish life and culture to our ancient ancestral land” (not necessarily in the religious sense). This is a very popular theme, and one which, as a history buff and former nature guide, I personally identify with. But in recent years Israelis’ collective view of the Middle East has become so hostile and disdainful. So do we see ourselves as part of it, or not? In particular, it is clear to anyone paying attention, that Palestinians have preserved much of the material culture and traditions of ancient Jews. What kind of Jewish revival in our ancient land is this, when we come to see Palestinians as inferior and repulsive – which is what, unfortunately, Israeli kids are indoctrinated into nowadays? This mindset, which after some lull in the 1990’s has re-emerged with a vengeance, is directly related to the damages we have inflicted upon the country’s natural and cultural scenery, most recently with the destruction of thousands and thousands of olive trees.

Similarly, all answers will share the same flaws we pointed out here, which boil down to this: Israel is not the same country anymore. It is not the same country I grew up in, and it is not the country you happened to visit 10 years ago. We now know that it had never quite lived up to its image, but earlier on one could argue that Israel was still in formation, that the threats were objectively more massive (e.g. the Egyptian army backed by the USSR’s power, etc.). Now the excuses have become too lame (and/or racist) to be taken seriously.

Keep in mind: we’re not discussing here who’s worse, Israel or “the Arabs”. We are discussing whether life in Israel might have become too ugly to be worth it. Blaming “the Arabs” doesn’t help; in fact, as I just showed, it makes matters worse.

Still, perhaps the strongest and irrefutable answer to the question “Why live here?” is simply “This is Home.” This is always true for any country in which one happens to grow up in. I, too, had an extremely strong sense of home in Israel until the late 1990’s and even until year 2000, and didn’t even dream of spending years on end outside the country; of raising my kids anywhere else.

And then, as the second Intifada broke out, at the most basic personal level I just could not reconcile myself with the reaction of most of my fellow Israeli Jews, and with the events that had transpired. And something in my sense of home just broke, within about 1.5 years it was all but gone. It wasn’t any fear for personal safety; our family life was very safe from terror attacks. It was the feeling that your home has become this strange place you cannot recognize anymore.

This is really hard to explain if you haven’t experienced something like this yourself. It might take a whole book to explain it. But I think this fraying of the sense of home is something that has happened to many people in many countries. It’s part of human nature and human heritage. I think it’s reversible, and in my case the sense of home had seemed to mend itself gradually at times. However, it’s really hard to bring it back completely, when the same national condition that has damaged it in the first place is only getting worse.

Our article nails down the observation that once life somewhere – anywhere – deteriorates beyond a certain stage, sooner or later many people will stop calling it home. The deterioration does not have to be absolute; it can be relative to somewhere else people feel they are able to go to. It so happens, we Jews are fortunate and blessed by the suffering and hard work of our ancestors, that nowadays most Jews including Israeli Jews have many options.

But now we stop talking about personal migration decisions, turn the entire argument on its head and spear the governing consensus with it:

The immediate conclusion from all this seems depressing: those who promise us eternal anxiety and hostility with the hundreds of millions of our neighbors in the Middle East – also guarantee that there will be no essential justification for life in Israel, except for inertia. But this conclusion relies upon acceptance of this governing “truth”, that Israel really has “no choice.”

Whoever remembers some of our history, knows that Israel’s wars have mostly been wars of choice. PM Golda Meir’s disdain towards Sadaat’s peace initiatives cost us the gratuitous death of thousands in 1973. In 1982, PM Menachem Begin openly declared the invasion of Lebanon to be a “yes-choice war”. The same goes for the various wars and operations of the past decade, all of them carried out against small and irregular forces while inflicting catastrophic harm upon civilians. These operations surely were not the only options available to Israel’s governments.

As she warned us in advance about the self-fulfilling war prophecies inherent to present-day Israeli discourse, Hannah Arendt had already written in 1948:

The ‘victorious’ Jews will be surrounded by a completely hostile Arab population, closed behind always-threatened borders, consumed by physical self-defense to a degree that will overshadow all other activities and interests.

The only way to break out of this vicious cycle, is to engage in a determined struggle against the “no-choice” brainwash, and the endless parade of “yes-choice” military operations.

The Jews of Israel must decide at last, whether we prefer land (“Sharm-El-Sheikh without peace is better than peace without Sharm-El-Sheikh”), forcible control (“under any agreement, Israeli will retain a presence around the borders of the Palestinian state”), and eternal conflict (“There is no partner”) – over human life.

Only the second option, as the Torah says “and choose Life”, justifies life in this country and not overseas.

The 3 quotes in the last passage are:

1. Security Minister Moshe Dayan explaining in 1968 why there’s no need to negotiate with the Egyptians, rather it’s better to hold on to Sinai.
2. PM Bibi in early 2010, explaining his vision for Palestinian statehood – which, rather than being “extreme” in the Israeli spectrum, reflect pretty well the security-establishment consensus.
3. PM Ehud Barak’s infamous (and dishonest) summary of the failure of the Camp David talks in fall 2000, as given in a live speech to the nation – a single phrase that destroyed the Oslo process, destroyed the Israeli left-of-center camp, and the destroyed the future of Barak’s own political party.

Let me reiterate in closing: the article is highly critical of Israeli policies and of what life in Israel has become. But the fault is not with the messenger. Rather it is the negative message upon which the Israeli Establishment bases its power, that is undermining the very essence of what Israel is supposed to be about. Our message is actually positive: urging Israelis to see beyond the cheap “no-choice” lies, that there is actually a way out of this trap.

Even more strongly: in a sense, there really is no choice. There is no other option for healing our nation and its relationship with its region, except by uprooting once and for all the deadly life of “we have no choice but to keep on fighting”. Just like the Biblical quote in our last sentence, taken from Moses’ farewell message to the nation. The choice is yours. You can choose to live ignominiously, ruled by politicians who manipulate your fears. But this choice is equivalent to a death spiral.

The only way out, as a nation, is to overcome fear and choose life.

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