“Perhaps, the best chance of unwinding the Zionist colonial project lies with the Jews themselves. Only when liberal segments of the Jewish diaspora are convinced that Zionism endangers Jewish lives, only when they act to countervail the power of the Jewish lobby in leading Western societies, will Israel finally be moved to dismantled its apartheid regime.” [item 6, below, M. Shahid Alam, “Israel: a Failing Colonial Project? “]
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Good evening dear friends,
Just 6 items in this message.
I begin with the quote above, because it reflects something that I believe and have been saying for quite some time—one of the best chances of the Zionist colonial project collapsing is when Jews lose interest in it, or become so disgusted with Israel’s behavior that they will not only ignore it but work against it, refusing to be represented by what a supposedly Jewish country does. Should Israel lose Jewish support, there will be no justification for its existence as a Jewish state. Hopefully, whatever would replace it would be a better and healthier and more just and more peaceful environment than what now exists here. I do not look forward to the blood bath that the author implies would occur if the Jewish diaspora will not “countervail” Israeli expansion, ethnic cleansing, and uses of force.
As for the remaining 5 items—I have begun with just a portion of an article, the portion that made me smile this morning at the breakfast table when I read the headline. I hope that the Knesset will indeed enact a law that will make the Orthodox branch of the religious community alone responsible for conversion! That surely will hasten the disgust of Jews in the diaspora with Israel! Indeed it will! Israel with such acts will dismantle itself. Few except Orthodox Jews will want to live in a country governed by religious law.
Item 2 tends to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Israelism. The two are not the same. The report is about a community in Sweden which evidently has a large Muslim population, which seems to not be overly friendly with Jews. Just how accurate this is, I do not know. But I find it entirely understandable that it would surely have angered Muslims when “during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. A small, mostly Jewish group held a demonstration that was billed as a peace rally but seen as a sign of support for Israel” would have angered the Muslim population. It certainly would have angered me. That is not anti-Semitism. That is anti-Israelism.
This is not to deny that there may be anti-Semites among residents of the city, but not every act against Jews is necessarily motivated by anti-Semitism. Israel’s conduct could easily become the root of anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, we have to distinguish between anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. The two are not the same.
Item 3 is positive, “Ireland seeks to block Israel access to data on EU citizens.” The reason for this is because of Israel’s falsifying passports.
Items 4 and 5 are about Gaza—the first informs us why 1000s of children will not attend schools, the 2nd, by Amira Hass, relates once again the story of the young woman lawyer who wanted to continue her studies in the West Bank and was denied. The second half of Amira Hass’s report is on the imprisonment of one of the main activists in the non-violent demonstrations in Bi’lin, Adeeb Abu Rahma. It’s very dangerous for a Palestinian to believe in non-violent resistance and to practice it. People as these are a greater threat to the Israeli powers and their policies than those who are violent. A violent act by a Palestinian is readily dealt with, by yet greater violence in return. Non-violent acts also receive violence in return, but when that does not stop the demonstrations, then the leaders have to be incarcerated so as to prevent them from organizing more non-violent demonstrations. Doesn’t help. But innocent people and their families nevertheless suffer.
Finally, item 6 asks “Israel: a Failing Colonial Project?”
All the best,
Dorothy
1. Haaretz Monday, July 12, 2010
Knesset approves preliminary reading of conversion bill
The draft will assign the authority on matters of conversion in Israel to the Chief Rabbinate; Reform and Conservative Jewish communities in U.S. protest the reform.
The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved Monday in a preliminary reading the new draft for a bill on conversion reform that has stirred a storm of protest among the Reform and Conservative Jewish communities in Israel and abroad.
The draft, which was prepared by committee chairman MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu ), would assign the authority on matters of conversion in Israel to the Chief Rabbinate.
“This bill, in its own words, clearly demonstrates that the cat is out of the bag,” the head of the Reform Movement, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, told Haaretz on Sunday.
“MK Rotem cut a deal with the Haredim according to which the Orthodox establishment in Israel will, for the first time, have a monopoly on conversion – in direct contravention of Supreme Court decisions and promises made by political leaders, and contrary to the interests of immigrants.”
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2. Haaretz Sunday, July 11, 2010
HomeJewish WorldPublished 16:36 11.07.10
Jews reluctantly abandon Swedish city amid growing anti-Semitism
The Muslim population in Malmo lives in segregated conditions that seem to breed alienation and anger directed at Israeli policies.
At some point, the shouts of “Heil Hitler” that often greeted Marcus Eilenberg as he walked to the 107-year-old Moorish-style synagogue in this port city forced the 32-year-old attorney to make a difficult, life-changing decision: Fearing for his family’s safety after repeated anti-Semitic incidents, Eilenberg reluctantly uprooted himself and his wife and two children, and moved to Israel in May.
Sweden, a country long regarded as a model of tolerance, has, ironically, been a refuge for Eilenberg’s family. His paternal grandparents found a home in Malmo in 1945 after surviving the Holocaust. His wife’s parents came to Malmo from Poland in 1968 after the communist government there launched an anti-Semitic purge.
But as in many other cities across Europe, a rapidly growing Muslim population living in segregated conditions that seem to breed alienation has mixed toxically with the anger directed at Israeli policies and actions by those Muslims — and by many non-Muslims — to all but transform the lives of local Jews. Like many of their counterparts in other European cities, the Jews of Malmo report being subjected increasingly to threats, intimidation and actual violence as stand-ins for Israel.
“I didn’t want my small children to grow up in this environment,” Eilenberg said in a phone interview just before leaving Malmo. “It wouldn’t be fair to them to stay in Malmo.”
Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, with a population of roughly 293,900 but only 760 Jews, reached a turning point of sorts in January 2009, during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. A small, mostly Jewish group held a demonstration that was billed as a peace rally but seen as a sign of support for Israel. This peaceful demonstration was cut short when the demonstrators were attacked by a much larger screaming mob of Muslims and Swedish leftists who threw bottles and firecrackers at them as police seemed unable to stop the mounting mayhem.
“I was very scared and upset at the same time,” recalled Jehoshua Kaufman, a Jewish community leader. “Scared because there were a lot of angry people facing us, shouting insults and throwing bottles and firecrackers at the same time. The sound was very loud. And I was angry because we really wanted to go through with this demonstration, and we weren’t allowed to finish it.”
Alan Widman, who is a strapping 6-foot-tall member of parliament and a non-Jewish member of the Liberal Party who represents Malmo, said simply, “I have never been so afraid in my life.”
The demonstrators were eventually evacuated by the police, who were not present in sufficient numbers to protect their rally. But some participants complained that the police’s crowd-control dogs remained muzzled.
The Eilenbergs are not particularly religious, but they have a strong Jewish identity and felt unable to live in Malmo as Jews after this episode. Eilenberg said he knows at least 15 other Jewish families that are thinking about moving away.
Anti-Semitism in Europe has historically been associated with the far right, but the Jews interviewed for this article say that the threat in Sweden now comes from Muslims and from changing attitudes about Jews in the wider society.
Saeed Azams, Malmo’s chief imam, who represents most of the city’s Muslims, is quick to disavow and condemn violence against Malmo’s Jews. Recently, he, along with Jewish leaders, have been participating in a dialogue group organized by city officials that seeks to address the issue. But Azams also downplayed the seriousness of the problem, saying there were “not more than 100 people, most under 18 years old,” who engage in violence and belong to street gangs.“There are some things I can’t control,” he said.
There are an estimated 45,000 Muslims in Malmo, or 15% of the city’s population. Many of them are Palestinians, Iraqis and Somalis, or come from the former Yugoslavia.
But the problem is not just Muslims, and not just Malmo’s.
A European Problem
A continentwide study, conducted by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, released in December 2009, found that that 45.7% of the Europeans surveyed agree somewhat or strongly with the following statement: “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” And 37.4% agreed with this statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”
“[There is] quite a high level of anti-Semitism that is hidden beneath critics of Israel’s policies,” said Beate Kupper, one of the study’s principal researchers, in a telephone interview with the Forward, citing this data and a tendency to “blame Jews in general for Israel’s policies.”
Kupper said that in places where there is a strong taboo against expressions of anti-Semitism, such as Germany, “Criticism of Israel is a great way to express your anti-Semitism in an indirect way.”
According to Bassam Tibi, professor emeritus of international relations at the University of Goettingen in Germany, and author of several books on the growth of Islam in Europe, Muslims form a significant subset of this problem. “The growth of the Muslim diaspora in Europe is affecting the Jews,” Tibi said. Among some Muslim populations in Europe — though not all — “every Jew is seen as responsible for what Israel is doing and can be a target.”
In Malmo, this population’s role in the problem is seen as significant. Most of Malmo’s Muslims live in Rosengard, the eastern part of this de facto segregated city, where the jobless rate is 80%. Satellite dishes dot the high-rise apartments to receive programming from Al-Jazeera and other Arabic-language cable networks that keep Malmo’s Muslims in constant touch with the latest Arab-Israeli developments.
Sylvia Morfradakis, a European Union official who works with the chronically unemployed, those who have been without work for 10 to 15 years, said that the main reason that 80% to 90% of Muslims between the ages of 18 and 34 can’t find jobs is that they can’t speak Swedish.
“Swedish employers insist workers know Swedish well, even for the most menial jobs,” Morfradakis said. She added, “The social welfare concept for helping without end does not give people the incentive to do something to make life better.”
But Per Gudmundson, chief editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, a leading Swedish newspaper, is critical of politicians who blame anti-Semitic actions on Muslim living conditions. He said that these politicians offer “weak excuses” for Muslim teenagers accused of anti-Semitic crimes. “Politicians say these kids are poor and oppressed, and we have made them hate. They are, in effect, saying the behavior of these kids is in some way our fault,” he said.
According to Gudmundson, some immigrants from Muslim countries come to Sweden as hardened anti-Semites.
The plight of the Jews worries Annelie Enochson, a Christian Democrat member of the Swedish Parliament. “If the Jews feel threatened in Sweden, then I am very frightened about the future of my country,” she said in an interview with the Forward.
A Chabad rabbi’s experience
Because he is the most visible Jew in Malmo, with his black fedora, tzitzit and long beard, Malmo’s only rabbi, Shneur Kesselman, 31, is a prime target for Muslim anti-Jewish sentiment. The Orthodox Chabad rabbi said that during his six years in the city, he has been the victim of more than 50 anti-Semitic incidents. An American, Kesselman is a soft spoken man with a steely determination to stay in Malmo despite the danger.
Two members of the American Embassy in Stockholm visited him in April to discuss his safety. From Keselman’s account, they had good reason to worry.
The rabbi recalled the day he was crossing a street near his house with his wife when a car suddenly went into reverse and sped backward toward them. They dodged the vehicle and barely made it to the other side of the street. “My wife was screaming,” the rabbi said. “It was a traumatic event.”
Local newspapers report that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Malmo doubled in 2009 from 2008, though police could not confirm this. Meanwhile, Fredrik Sieradzki, spokesman for the Malmo Jewish community, estimates that the already small Jewish population is shrinking by 5% a year. “Malmo is a place to move away from,” he said, citing anti-Semitism as the primary reason. “The community was twice as large two decades ago.” The synagogue on Foreningsgatan, a fashionable street, has elaborate security. Reflecting the level of fear, the building’s glass is not just bullet-proof, Jewish communal officials say; it’s rocket-proof. Guards check strangers seeking to enter the synagogue.
Some Jewish parents try to protect their children by moving to neighborhoods where there are fewer Muslims in the schools so that confrontations will be minimized. Six Jewish teenagers interviewed recounted anti-Semitic abuse from Muslim classmates. According to their families, though the incidents were reported to the authorities, none of the perpetrators was arrested, much less punished.
One victim was Jonathan Tsubarah, 19, the son of an Israeli Jew who settled in Sweden. As he strolled through the city’s cobble-stoned Gustav Adolph Square on August 21, 2009, three young men — a Palestinian and two Somalis — stopped him and asked where he was from, he recalled.
“I’m from Israel,” Tsubarah responded.
“I’m from Palestine,” one assailant retorted, “and I will kill you.”
The three beat him to the ground and kicked him in the back, Tsubarah said. “Kill the Jew,” they shouted. “Now are you proud to be a Jew?”
“No I am not,” the slightly built teenager replied. He said he did this just to get them to stop kicking him. Tsubarah plans to go to Israel and join the army.
Weak government response
Many Jews fault Swedish police for not cracking down on anti-Semitism. Most hate crimes in Malmo are acts of vandalism, said Susanne Gosenius, head of the newly created hate crime unit of the Malmo Police Department These include painted swastikas on buildings. According to Gosenius, police do not give priority to this type of crime. “It’s very rare that police find the perpetrators,” she said. “Swedes don’t understand why swastikas are bad and how they offend Jews.” According to Gosenius, 30% of the hate crimes in the Malmo region are anti-Semitic.
Members of Parliament have attended anti-Israel rallies where the Israeli flag was burned while the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah were waved, and the rhetoric was often anti-Semitic—not just anti-Israel. But such public rhetoric is not branded hateful and denounced, said Henrik Bachner, a writer and professor of history at the University of Lund, near Malmo.
“Sweden is a microcosm of contemporary anti-Semitism,” said Charles Small, director of the Yale University Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism. “It’s a form of acquiescence to radical Islam, which is diametrically opposed to everything Sweden stands for.”
A dialogue initiative
The situation has generated some points of potential light. Recently, Ilmar Reepalu, the mayor of Malmo, convened a “dialogue forum” that includes leaders of the Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as city officials, to improve social relations in the city and the city government’s response to conflicts.
During an interview in his office, Imam Saeed Azams said it was wrong to blame Swedish Jews for Israel’s actions. The wheelchair-bound Azams stressed the importance of teaching young Muslims to stop equating the Jews of Malmo with Israel. But this seemed to include an assumption that Jews, in turn, should not permit themselves to be seen as pro-Israel.
“Because Jewish society in Sweden does not condemn the clearly illegal actions of Israel,” he said, “then ordinary people think the Jews here are allied to Israel, but this is not true.”
The imam is an advocate of dialogue with Jewish leaders, and welcomed the creation of the dialogue forum. Reepalu, Malmo’s mayor, has appointed Bjorn Lagerback, a psychologist, to take charge of the newly formed forum. And Sieradzki, the Jewish community leader, was optimistic about its prospects to eventually improve relations.
Reepalu created the forum in the wake of last year’s violence against the Jewish demonstrators and his own controversial remarks that angered Jews. Saying that he condemned both Zionism and anti-Semitism, Reepalu criticized Malmo Jews for not taking a stand against Israel’s invasion of Gaza. “Instead,” he said, “they chose to arrange a demonstration in the center of Malmo, a demonstration that people could misinterpret.”
Interviewed at Malmo’s city hall, Lagerback acknowledged an “awful situation” in Rosengard, where fire trucks and ambulances are often stoned by angry Muslim youth when the emergency vehicles go there. But like the imam, he hastened to add that those engaging in violence were a small number of young people. He attributed such behavior to living conditions of poverty, overcrowding and unemployment, as well as to cultural differences.
Swedish experts agree that integration of Muslims into Swedish society has failed, and this undermines the development of a more diverse society. Many pupils in heavily Muslim schools reject the authority of female teachers.
“We are Swedish but second- or third-class citizens,” said Mohammed Abnalheja, vice president of the Palestinian Home Association in Malmo. The organization teaches children of Palestinian descent about their bond to a Palestinian homeland. “We have a right to our country, Palestine,” he said. “Palestine is now occupied by Zionists.”
Abnalheja was born to Palestinian parents in Baghdad and came to Malmo with his parents in 1996. He has never been to the place he calls Palestine.
Meanwhile, 86-year-old Judith Popinski says she is no longer invited to schools that have a large Muslim presence to tell her story of surviving the Holocaust.
Popinski found refuge in Malmo in 1945. Until recently, she told her story in Malmo schools as part of their Holocaust studies program. Now, some schools no longer ask Holocaust survivors to tell their stories, because Muslim students treat them with such disrespect, either ignoring the speakers or walking out of the class.
“Malmo reminds me of the anti-Semitism I felt as a child in Poland before the war,” she told the Forward while sitting in her living room, which is adorned with Persian rugs and many paintings.
“I am not safe as a Jew in Sweden anymore,” a trembling Popinski said in a frail voice. But unlike others, she intends to stay in Sweden. “I will not be a victim again,” she said.
Contact Donald Snyder at feedback@forward.com
This story is by: Donald Snyder, The Forward
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3. Haaretz Sunday, July 11, 2010
Ireland seeks to block Israel access to data on EU citizens
Irish government retaliates over use of forged Irish passports by alleged Mossad spies in Dubai assassination.
Ireland is seeking to stop a European Union initiative that would enable Israel to receive sensitive information about European citizens, due to concerns about the use that Israel would make of this information, the Irish minister for justice said over the weekend.
In what may be another blow to Israel’s international status, Dermott Ahern said that since Israel allegedly used forged Irish passports to carry out the hit on Hamas official Mohammed al-Mabhouh in Dubai, Israel should not be allowed access to this data. Israel has not admitted to a role in the assassination.
Under a plan put forward at the beginning of the year, the European organizations for protecting individuals’ privacy agreed that Israeli companies and European companies should be able to exchange information about customers.
For example, this would mean that an Israeli customer of a local cell phone company, say, Pelephone, would be able to use his phone to connect to the Internet, say, in Italy, and the Italian telecom would be able to receive his personal data from Pelephone and charge his account accordingly. The same would be true for people with European cell phones in Israel who wanted to use Israeli networks.
In addition, multinational corporations would be able to entrust Israeli companies to secure their databases, and the data could be stored on servers in Israel. Plus, information about employees could be passed freely between European and Israeli branches of the same company.
In agreeing to grant this access, the EU authorities decided that Israel had proper information protection systems in place.
However, the plan still needs to be ratified by the government of each individual EU member country before it can take force.
Beyond easing companies’ operations, the plan is also intended to make it easier for the authorities to catch cases of money laundering.
Currently, passing data between Israel and Europe is dependent on explicit contracts, which fund many a lawyer’s income. The initiative would do away with one of the last remaining trade barriers with Europe.
Nuha Abed Rabbo, 9, on her way to an UNRWA elementary school in eastern Gaza
GAZA CITY, 5 July 2010 (IRIN) – Thousands of Palestinian refugee children in the Gaza Strip are unable to receive adequate education, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
About 39,000 child refugees in Gaza will not attend UNRWA schools this year, since the agency is unable to build or re-build schools due to the Israeli blockade, damage sustained during the 23-day Israeli offensive (27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009) and population growth, UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness said in Jerusalem.
“My sons have trouble learning due to the large number of children, usually over 40 per class,” said Noa Ashi. Her sons Tareq, aged 9, and Mohammed, 7, attend New Gaza Elementary School (A) run by UNRWA in Gaza City. “The classrooms are small and three children share each desk,” she said, adding that Tareq and Mohammed attend school only four hours a day.
Israel imposed an economic embargo on the Gaza Strip after a Hamas takeover in June 2007 and in retaliation for the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel. Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization and says its import restrictions on items such as cement, steel and most building materials are to prevent Hamas developing weapons or fortifications.
The Israeli blockade affects every aspect of human existence and remains the biggest challenge to UNRWA in Gaza, the director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, John Ging, told IRIN. The blockade has destroyed the economy, making 80 percent of the population dependent on UN handouts, he said.
Infrastructure is also in a state of collapse: 80 million cubic litres of untreated sewage is pumped into the Mediterranean Sea each day, and 90 percent of the water is undrinkable by World Health Organization (WHO) standards, according to Ging.
To make matters worse, UNRWA is 25 percent underfunded, lacking US$100 million out of its $500 million budget, he added. The agency is only able to provide 40 percent of daily caloric needs to food aid dependent refugees, while the international standard is 76 percent.
Overcrowding
UNRWA schools run double shifts in Gaza due to overcrowding. “We are also unable to recruit new teachers due to our budget constraints,” said UNRWA’s Gunness.
“There are too many students in our school and we lack the materials to build rooms,” said Sufian Ghanem, a mathematics teacher from Jabaliyah Elementary School for Girls (B) in Gaza City run by UNRWA.
“The children are impoverished, often lacking shoes. The school lacks a library and place for outdoor activities,” said Ghanem.
The children are impoverished, often lacking shoes. The school lacks a library and place for outdoor activities.
About 60,000 structures were damaged or destroyed during the Israeli offensive, according to Gunness, who said an improved infrastructure and education system in Gaza would only come about when the blockade is lifted and the Karni crossing is opened.
Karni, the only major commercial crossing along the Gaza-Israel border, is controlled by Israel and mostly closed, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The Gaza government aims to re-build, but has been unable to import necessary construction material, Ahmed Yousef of the Hamas-led government in Gaza told IRIN. Eighteen months after the offensive three quarters of the resulting damage remains unrepaired.
There are 750,000 children living in Gaza. “On this road and under these conditions – lack of access, physical deterioration, and its psychological effect – the situation will get worse,” said Ging.
More than half of UNRWA’s budget goes on education, with over 20,000 teachers educating half a million Palestinian children in the Levant countries each day; 222,000 Gazan children are enrolled in UNRWA schools. UNRWA is responsible for providing healthcare and other services to about one million refugees in Gaza, 800,000 of whom receive food assistance; 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants are registered refugees.
es/at/cb
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5. Haaretz Monday, July 12, 2010
Israel bans Gaza woman from studying human rights in West Bank
The flow of goods into Gaza may have eased – but for Palestinians, restrictions on movement remain tight.
The day after Barack Obama praised Benjamin Netanyahu for easing the blockade of Gaza, the High Court of Justice supported the state’s position that a lawyer from the Gaza Strip should not be allowed to leave it so she can study for a master’s degree in human rights at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Justices Miriam Naor, Hanan Melcer and Isaac Amit wrote in a ruling they handed down on Wednesday, in the case of 29-year-old Fatma Sharif: “We are not convinced that under the present political and security situation, the personal circumstances [of the petitioner] justify intervention in the decision of the respondent [the defense minister].”
Since 2000, Israel has imposed a comprehensive ban on Gaza students who want to study in the West Bank, which has been upheld by the High Court. Even before instituting the formal prohibition, by the 1990s Israel had already imposed various restrictions on travel, which have become ever more stringent and led many Gazans to decide not to study at universities in the West Bank.
The academic year at Birzeit starts on August 15. Sharif wanted to get to the university by Thursday to arrange her registration, and was hoping that, with all the talk of easing the closure, the Israeli authorities would show understanding for her desire to specialize in human rights. On June 7 she asked for a travel permit, submitting her request to the Palestinian Civilian Committee, which is tasked with handing over the requests to Israel’s Gaza coordination and liaison office. But the Palestinian committee, which acts under Israeli instructions, refused to accept the request since the liaison office deals only with travel requests that fall within the category of humanitarian or urgent medical needs.
On June 8, Sharif appealed to the coordinator of government activities in the territories and to the head of the liaison administration. She was informed on June 23 that “the request has been turned down because it does not meet the criteria that are set from time to time in accordance with the political and security situation.” Sharif filed her High Court petition with the assistance of Nomi Heger, a lawyer with the advocacy group Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, but the court ruled in the state’s favor.
The court agreed with the state’s position that the June 20 statement by senior cabinet ministers about easing the blockade “did not say anything about extending the present policy about travel,” a policy that allows Gazans to leave “only in humanitarian cases, with the emphasis on urgent medical cases.”
Deputy State Prosecutor Ilil Amir said the announcement about easing the blockade referred to making things more efficient. “The relevant bodies are working to make the handling of humanitarian and medical requests more efficient from the procedural point of view,” she said, explaining that this included “a shorter waiting period for dealing with the requests, devoting more work hours to the matter, shortening the time it takes for a security check, and so forth.
This decision is not intended to extend the criteria, and certainly it does not include allowing travel so that someone can engage in academic studies for a master’s degree.” Amir said several times that the High Court has previously upheld the state’s position on this matter.
She said it was dangerous to allow students such as Sharif to travel to the West Bank because Israel has to deal with the efforts of terrorist organizations to set up “branches of the Gaza terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank.” One of the ways Israel deals with this is by “restricting movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” she said.
Apparently it makes no difference that the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, where Sharif works, is one of the independent institutions in the Gaza Strip that regularly criticizes the Hamas government’s acts of repression.
Let this be a deterrent
The Jerusalem site of the Supreme Court is not far from the Ofer military tribunal, located on land belonging to Beitunia, southwest of Ramallah. That was where military judge Netanel Benishu on Thursday – the day before the sixth anniversary of the International Court of Justice ruling against the route of the separation fence – ordered continued detention for Adeeb Abu Rahma from Bil’in. Abu Rahma, a 39-year-old taxi driver, was arrested on July 10, 2009, after participating in a demonstration against the separation fence, whose construction on village land has caused the destruction of fields and orchards that the villagers’ fathers and grandfathers had worked.
His trial took almost a year, and he was eventually found guilty by another military judge, Aryeh Dorani, of three charges (all of which Abu Rahma denied ): inciting others to attack security forces and the fence, entering a closed military zone and, as Benishu phrased it, “activities against public order, since during his participation in the unrest he clashed with the security forces and threw a bottle of water and a flag at them.” Dorani sentenced him to time served (the year he had already been in detention ) and a fine, along with a one-year suspended sentence.
Abu Rahma was supposed to be released on July 8. The military prosecution appealed what it called the “lightness” of the sentence and demanded that he remain in custody until the appeals court makes a decision.
It was not merely because of the danger Abu Rahma posed (by possibly throwing a bottle of water and a flag at the soldiers again ) that Benishu ordered the continued detention of someone who had already served his term, in contravention of a High Court decision that such a decision should be reached only in exceptional circumstances ). “The appeal is meant to establish what a fitting punishment is, in a unique case for which, so far, no general level of punishment has been established,” Benishu ruled. In other words, the Abu Rahma verdict – the first in a series of trials for those who organize demonstrations against the separation fence – is supposed to serve as a deterrent. Let those who protest the theft of their lands know the price of throwing a bottle of water at our soldiers.
Increasingly, despite its early military and political successes, Israel cannot for long endure as a colonial project. It must choose between wars – and destruction – or transition to a state for all its peoples.
In order to firmly secure its existence – as firmly as that is possible for any state – a settler state has to overcome three challenges. It has to solve the native problem; break away from its mother country; and gain the recognition of neighboring states and peoples. It can be shown that Israel has not met any of these conditions.
Consider Israel’s native problem. In 1948, in the months before and after its creation, Israel appeared to have solved its native problem in one fell swoop. It had expelled 80 percent of the Palestinians from the territories it had conquered. In addition, with the rapid influx of Arab Jews, Palestinians were soon reduced to less than ten percent of Israel’s population.
So, had Israel licked its native problem for good? Not really.
The Palestinians inside Israel pushed back with a high natural rate of growth in their numbers. As a result, despite the continuing influx of Jewish immigrants, the Palestinian share in Israel’s population has grown to above 20 percent. Increasingly, Jews in Israel see Israeli Arabs as a threat to their Jewish state. Some are advocating a fresh round of ethnic cleansing. Others are calling for a new partition to exclude areas with Arab majorities.
The Palestinians expelled from Israel in 1948 did not go away either. Most of them set up camp in areas around Israel – the West Bank, Gaza, southern Lebanon and Jordan. In 1967, when Israel conquered Gaza and the West Bank, it could expel a much smaller fraction of the Palestinians from these territories. In consequence, with more than a million additional Palestinians under its control, Israeli had recreated its native problem.
Israel’s native problem has grown worse since 1967. Already, the Palestinians equal or outnumber Israeli Jews between the Sea and the Jordan River. In the years ahead, moreover, the Palestinian share will continue to rise.
Having run out of solutions – such as rising net immigration of Jews and ethnic cleansing – Israel has been implementing draconian measures to handle its native problem. With Egyptian collaboration, it maintains a medieval siege over Gaza; it neutralizes the Palestinians in the West Bank with the apartheid wall, expansion of settlements, settler-only roads, intimidation and humiliation of Palestinians, and military control over the Jordan Valley.
However, these remedies are creating new problems. They lend support to charges that Israel is an apartheid society not a democracy. As a result, slowly but steadily, Western publics are throwing their support behind the campaign to divest from, boycott and impose sanctions on Israel.
Has Israel broken away from dependence on its mother country/countries?
In the absence of a natural mother country, Zionism worked with surrogates. Quite a few of them. Indeed, there is not a Western country – including Russia in its previous incarnation as Soviet Union – that has not served as a surrogate mother country to the Jewish colonial project.
The Jewish settlers in Palestine lost the support of Britain – their leading surrogate mother – in the early years of World War II, but retained it long enough to create their own state. Over the next few years Israel took on several new surrogates, not counting the Jewish diaspora: including the Soviet Union, France, Germany and the United States. Starting in the late 1950s, however, the United States became the leading mother country to Israel. This was the result of a powerful dynamic largely directed by Israel and the Jewish lobby in the United States.
Over the years, the United States has subsidized Israel, armed it, allowed it to acquire nuclear weapons, and gave it immunity from the sanction of international laws. Under the protection of the United States, Israel quickly gained hegemony over the Middle East: it became a law unto itself.
Still Israel is not an autonomous state.
It could not sustain its current military posture without the annual military grant of some three billion dollars from the United States and the tax-free donations from American Jews. More importantly, without the US veto at the United Nations, Israel could not continue its occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, its siege of Gaza, its pre-emptive wars against its neighbors, and its policy of assassinations against Arabs. In short, without US-backed immunity, Israel would become a pariah state.
Arguably, this dependence does not place Israel at risk, since it is primarily an artifact of the Israel lobby in the United States. Over time, however, as the damage that Israel causes to US interests filters to the American electorate, unqualified US support for Israel may be in jeopardy.
Finally, there is the question of gaining the recognition of its neighbors.
Israeli gains on this front are more apparent than real. The Arab regimes that have recognized Israel, or are eager and ready to recognize it, have little legitimacy. Should these regimes collapse, their replacements are likely to resume their early confrontational posture towards Israel.
This is not mere speculation. Under the despotic Shah Iran was friendly to Israel, but after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 Iran became an ideologically committed adversary of Israel. As the powers of the secular generals in Turkey have been clipped, Turkey too has been revising its friendly ties with Israel.
In recent years, Israel has been running into a new problem: the loss of legitimacy with growing segments of civil society in the Western countries.
Driven by the contradictions of an exclusionary settler-state, as Israel has ratcheted its violence against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, as it has tightened its siege of Gaza, as it deepens its apartheid regime in the West bank, as it threatens to strips Arab Israelis of their rights, it has slowly called forth a new form opposition to its policies.
Angry at the complicity of their governments in Israeli crimes, segments of civil society in Europe, Canada and the United States have been moving forward with calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Increasingly, despite vigorous opposition from the Jewish establishment, this movement has been spreading among academics, students, trade unions, church groups, dissenting Jewish organizations, and human rights activists. Some of them have been organizing convoys, over land and sea, to break the blockade of Gaza.
As the failure of Israel’s colonial project looms larger, its nervous leaders will increasingly seek security in new and more dangerous wars. Increasingly, Israel will become an intolerable threat – if it isn’t already – to the Middle East, the world, and no less to Jews everywhere. Zionism was founded overwhelmingly by secular Jews, but, in order to succeed, it created a new religious myth of Jewish restoration, galvanized messianic tendencies among Western Christians, and created the myth that Israel alone shields the West from a resurgent Islam and Islamicate. It will not be easy putting these genies back in the bottle.
Perhaps, the best chance of unwinding the Zionist colonial project lies with the Jews themselves. Only when liberal segments of the Jewish diaspora are convinced that Zionism endangers Jewish lives, only when they act to countervail the power of the Jewish lobby in leading Western societies, will Israel finally be moved to dismantled its apartheid regime. In the end, the alternative to this orderly dismantling of Zionism is a destructive war in the Middle East that may not be limited to the region. Whatever else happens, it is unlikely that Israel or US interests in the Middle East will survive such a war.
M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His latest book is Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Macmillan, November 2009). He can be reached at alqalam02760@yahoo.com.
