New Uri Avnery and Naomi Klein Articles

Here are a couple of great articles by two strong progressive voices. They deal with issues that precipitated the events in Gaza last week.

Uri Avnery is the head of the Israeli peace movement, Gush Shalom, and a former member of the Israeli Knesset.

Naomi Klein is the author of "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies" (Picador) and, most recently, "Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate" (Picador). Her new book, "The Shock Doctrine", will be out in September.

Crocodile Tears

Uri Avnery

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=23041

WHAT HAPPENS when one and a half million human beings are imprisoned in a tiny, arid territory, cut off from their compatriots and from any contact with the outside world, starved by an economic blockade and unable to feed their families?

Some months ago, I described this situation as a sociological experiment set up by Israel, the United States and the European Union. The population of the Gaza Strip as guinea pigs.

This week, the experiment showed results. They proved that human beings react exactly like other animals: when too many of them are crowded into a small area in miserable conditions, they become aggressive, and even murderous. The organizers of the experiment in Jerusalem, Washington, Berlin, Oslo, Ottawa and other capitals could rub their hands in satisfaction. The subjects of the experiment reacted as foreseen. Many of them even died in the interests of science.

But the experiment is not yet over. The scientists want to know what happens if the blockade is tightened still further.

WHAT HAS caused the present explosion in the Gaza Strip?

The timing of Hamas' decision to take over the Strip by force was not accidental. Hamas had many good reasons to avoid it. The organization is unable to feed the population. It has no interest in provoking the Egyptian regime, which is busy fighting the Muslim Brotherhood, the mother-organization of Hamas. Also, the organization has no interest in providing Israel with a pretext for tightening the blockade.

But the Hamas leaders decided that they had no alternative but to destroy the armed organizations that are tied to Fatah and take their orders from President Mahmoud Abbas. The US has ordered Israel to supply these organizations with large quantities of weapons, in order to enable them to fight Hamas. The Israeli army chiefs did not like the idea, fearing that the arms might end up in the hands of Hamas (as is actually happening now). But our government obeyed American orders, as usual.

The American aim is clear. President Bush has chosen a local leader for every Muslim country, who will rule it under American protection and follow American orders. In Iraq, in Lebanon, in Afghanistan, and also in Palestine.

Hamas believes that the man marked for this job in Gaza is Mohammed Dahlan. For years it has looked as if he was being groomed for this position. The American and Israeli media have been singing his praises, describing him as a strong, determined leader, "moderate" (i.e. obedient to American orders) and "pragmatic" (i.e. obedient to Israeli orders). And the more the Americans and Israelis lauded Dahlan, the more they undermined his standing among the Palestinians. Especially as Dahlan was away in Cairo, as if waiting for his men to receive the promised arms.

In the eyes of Hamas, the attack on the Fatah strongholds in the Gaza Strip is a preventive war. The organizations of Abbas and Dahlan melted like snow in the Palestinian sun. Hamas has easily taken over the whole Gaza Strip.

How could the American and Israeli generals miscalculate so badly? They are able to think only in strictly military terms: so-and-so many soldiers, so-and-so many machine guns. But in interior struggles in particular, quantitative calculations are secondary. The morale of the fighters and public sentiment are far more important. The members of the Fatah organizations do not know what they are fighting for. The Gaza population supports Hamas, because they believe that it is fighting the Israeli occupier. Their opponents look like collaborators of the occupation. The American statements about their intention of arming them with Israeli weapons have finally condemned them.

That is not a matter of Islamic fundamentalism. In this respect all nations are the same: they hate collaborators of a foreign occupier, whether they are Norwegian (Quisling), French (Petain) or Palestinian.

IN WASHINGTON and Jerusalem, politicians are bemoaning the "weakness of Mahmoud Abbas".

They see now that the only person who could prevent anarchy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank was Yasser Arafat. He had a natural authority. The masses adored him. Even his adversaries, like Hamas, respected him. He created several security apparatuses that competed with each other, in order to prevent any single apparatus from carrying out a coup-d'etat. Arafat was able to negotiate, sign a peace agreement and get his people to accept it.

But Arafat was pilloried by Israel as a monster, imprisoned in the Mukata'ah and, in the end, murdered. The Palestinian public elected Mahmoud Abbas as his successor, hoping that he would get from the Americans and the Israelis what they had refused to give to Arafat.

If the leaders in Washington and Jerusalem had indeed been interested in peace, they would have hastened to sign a peace agreement with Abbas, who had declared that he was ready to accept the same far-reaching compromise as Arafat. The Americans and the Israelis heaped on him all conceivable praise and rebuffed him on every concrete issue.

They did not allow Abbas even the slightest and most miserable achievement. Ariel Sharon plucked his feathers and then sneered at him as "a featherless chicken". After the Palestinian public had patiently waited in vain for Bush to move, it voted for Hamas, in the desperate hope of achieving by violence what Abbas has been unable to achieve by diplomacy.

The Israeli leaders, both military and political, were overjoyed. They were interested in undermining Abbas, because he enjoyed Bush's confidence and because his stated position made it harder to justify their refusal to enter substantive negotiations. They did everything to demolish Fatah. To ensure this, they arrested Marwan Barghouti, the only person capable of keeping Fatah together.

The victory of Hamas suited their aims completely. With Hamas one does not have to talk, to offer withdrawal from the occupied territories and the dismantling of settlements. Hamas is that contemporary monster, a "terrorist" organization, and with terrorists there is nothing to discuss.

SO WHY were people in Jerusalem not satisfied this week? And why did they decide "not to interfere"?

True, the media and the politicians, who have helped for years to incite the Palestinian organizations against each other, showed their satisfaction and boasted "we told you so". Look how the Arabs kill each other. Ehud Barak was right, when he said years ago that our country is "a villa in the jungle".

But behind the scenes, voices of embarrassment, even anxiety, could be heard.

The turning of the Gaza Strip into Hamastan has created a situation for which our leaders were not ready. What to do now? To cut off Gaza altogether and let the people there starve to death? To establish contacts with Hamas? To occupy Gaza again, now that it has become one big tank trap? To ask the UN to station international troops there - and if so, how many countries would be crazy enough to risk their soldiers in this hell?

Our government has worked for years to destroy Fatah, in order to avoid the need to negotiate an agreement that would inevitably lead to the withdrawal from the occupied territories and the settlements there. Now, when it seems that this aim has been achieved, they have no idea what to do about the Hamas victory.

They comfort themselves with the thought that it cannot happen in the West Bank. There, Fatah reigns. There Hamas has no foothold. There our army has already arrested most of Hamas' political leaders. There Abbas is still in power.

Thus speak the generals, with the generals' logic. But in the West Bank, too, Hamas did win a majority in the last elections. There, too, it is only a matter of time before the population loses its patience. They see the expansion of the settlements, the Wall, the incursions of our army, the targeted assassinations, the nightly arrests. They will explode.

Successive Israeli governments have destroyed Fatah systematically, cut off the feet of Abbas and prepared the way for Hamas. They can't pretend to be surprised.

WHAT TO DO?

To go on boycotting Abbas or to provide him with arms, to enable him to fight for us against Hamas? To go on depriving him of any political achievement or to throw him some crumbs at long last? And anyway, isn't it too late?

(And on the Syrian front: to go on paying lip service to peace while sabotaging all the efforts of Bashar Assad to start negotiations? To negotiate secretly, despite American objections? Or continue doing nothing at all?)

At present, there is no policy, and no government which could determine a policy.

So who will save us? Ehud Barak?

Barak's victory in this week's Labor Party leadership run-off has turned him almost automatically into the next Minister of Defense. His strong personality and his experience as Chief of Staff and Prime Minister assure him of a dominant position in the restructured government. Olmert will deal with the area in which he is an unmatched master - party machinations. But Barak will have a decisive influence on policy.

In the government of the two Ehuds, Ehud Barak will decide on matters of war and peace.

Until now, practically all his actions have had negative results. He came very close to an agreement with Assad the father and escaped at the last moment. He withdrew the Israeli army from South Lebanon, but without speaking with Hizbullah, which took over. He compelled Arafat to come to Camp David, insulted him there and declared that we have no partner for peace. This dealt a death blow to the chances of peace, a blow which still paralyzes the Israeli public. He has boasted that his real intention was to "unmask" Arafat. He was more of a failed Napoleon than an Israeli de Gaulle.

Will the Ethiopian change his skin, the leopard his spots? Hard to believe.

IN THE dramas of William Shakespeare, there is frequently a comic interlude at tense moments. And not only there.

Shimon Peres, the person who in 55 years of political activity had never won an election, did the impossible this week: he got elected President of Israel.

Many years ago, I entitled an article about him "Mr. Sisyphus", because again and again he had almost reached the threshold of success, and success had evaded him. Now he might feel like thumbing his nose at the gods after reaching the summit, but - alas - without the boulder. The office of the president is devoid of content and jurisdiction. A hollow politician in a hollow position.

Now everybody expects a flurry of activity at the president's palace. There will certainly be peace conferences, meetings of personalities, high-sounding declarations and illustrious plans. In short - much ado about nothing.

The practical result is that Olmert's position has been strengthened. He has succeeded in installing Peres in the President's office and Barak in the Ministry of Defense. In the short term, Olmert's position is assured.

And in the meantime, the experiment in Gaza continues, Hamas is taking over and the trio - Ehud 1, Ehud 2 and Shimon Peres are shedding crocodile tears.

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Laboratory for a Fortressed World

Naomi Klein

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070702/klein

Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president's chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hezbollah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith.

At a glance, things aren't going well for Israel. But here's a puzzle: Why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it's 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China's?

Thomas Friedman recently offered his theory in the New York Times. Israel "nurtures and rewards individual imagination," and so its people are constantly spawning ingenious high-tech start-ups--no matter what messes their politicians are making. After perusing class projects by students in engineering and computer science at Ben Gurion University, Friedman made one of his famous fake-sense pronouncements: Israel "had discovered oil." This oil, apparently, is located in the minds of Israel's "young innovators and venture capitalists," who are too busy making megadeals with Google to be held back by politics.

Here's another theory: Israel's economy isn't booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines but because of it. This phase of development dates back to the mid-'90s, when Israel was in the vanguard of the information revolution--the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953. Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners.

Within three years, large parts of Israel's tech economy had been radically repurposed. Put in Friedmanesque terms: Israel went from inventing the networking tools of the "flat world" to selling fences to an apartheid planet. Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom--a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world.

Discussions of Israel's military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country--US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel's huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2 billion in "defense" products to the United States--up dramatically from $270 million in 1999. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products--well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.

Much of this growth has been in the so-called "homeland security" sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion--an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems--precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories.

And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror."

It's no coincidence that the class projects at Ben Gurion that so impressed Friedman have names like "Innovative Covariance Matrix for Point Target Detection in Hyperspectral Images" and "Algorithms for Obstacle Detection and Avoidance." Thirty homeland security companies were launched in Israel in the past six months alone, thanks in large part to lavish government subsidies that have transformed the Israeli army and the country's universities into incubators for security and weapons start-ups (something to keep in mind in the debates about the academic boycott).

Next week, the most established of these companies will travel to Europe for the Paris Air Show, the arms industry's equivalent of Fashion Week. One of the Israeli companies exhibiting is Suspect Detection Systems (SDS), which will be showcasing its Cogito1002, a white, sci-fi-looking security kiosk that asks air travelers to answer a series of computer-generated questions, tailored to their country of origin, while they hold their hand on a "biofeedback" sensor. The device reads the body's reactions to the questions, and certain responses flag the passenger as "suspect."

Like hundreds of other Israeli security start-ups, SDS boasts that it was founded by veterans of Israel's secret police and that its products were road-tested on Palestinians. Not only has the company tried out the biofeedback terminals at a West Bank checkpoint; it claims the "concept is supported and enhanced by knowledge acquired and assimilated from the analysis of thousands of case studies related to suicide bombers in Israel."

Another star of the Paris Air Show will be Israeli defense giant Elbit, which plans to showcase its Hermes 450 and 900 unmanned air vehicles. As recently as May, according to press reports, Israel used the drones on bombing missions in Gaza. Once tested in the territories, they are exported abroad: The Hermes has already been used at the Arizona-Mexico border; Cogito1002 terminals are being auditioned at an unnamed US airport; and Elbit, one of the companies behind Israel's "security barrier," has partnered with Boeing to construct the Department of Homeland Security's $2.5 billion "virtual" border fence around the United States.
Since Israel began its policy of sealing off the occupied territories with checkpoints and walls, human rights activists have often compared Gaza and the West Bank to open-air prisons. But in researching the explosion of Israel's homeland security sector, a topic I explore in greater detail in a forthcoming book (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism), it strikes me that they are something else too: laboratories where the terrifying tools of our security states are being field-tested. Palestinians--whether living in the West Bank or what the Israeli politicians are already calling "Hamasistan"--are no longer just targets. They are guinea pigs.

So in a way Friedman is right: Israel has struck oil. But the oil isn't the imagination of its techie entrepreneurs. The oil is the war on terror, the state of constant fear that creates a bottomless global demand for devices that watch, listen, contain and target "suspects." And fear, it turns out, is the ultimate renewable resource.

June 9th Day of Action

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who organized and mobilized this past weekend for the June 9th Day of Action against Chapters-Indigo and their relationship with the Heseg Foundation.

I was in Ottawa for a wedding and stopped in on those handing out fliers in front of the Rideau street Chapters store. I thanked them then for doing what they were doing and I gave them "hellos" and encouragements from their counterparts in Toronto and around Canada.

If you want any information, including details of how Heather Reisman and her partner Gerry Scwartz, along with Robert Pritchard (head of media conglomerate Torstar which publishes the Toronto Star) and Professor Irving Abella (Professor at York University and husband to Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella) are associated with alleged War Criminals, visit the CAIA website here:

http://www.caiaweb.org/node/137

A response to Jason...

Jason commented on my last blog posting writing...

"Would you care to explain how it is wrong to be pro-Israel when the position includes support for an independent and free Palestine? The only requirement is that the Palestinian government stops attacks against Israel."

8:22 AM

I thought it would be better if I brought this discussion (which I think will quickly turn back into a monologue) out into the open and not relegate it to the comments section of my posts.

For Jason:

Before I say what I’m going to say I want to thank you Jason in all sincerity for commenting on my last blog post. You’ve explained a few questions I had in my head, but have also left me wondering about others.

What troubles me so deeply about your callous moral equivocations is that you’re making them on a day when two Palestinian children were shot dead by the IOF in Gaza while they played with kites. Now I’m sure that you’ll suggest that maybe the whole story isn’t being told, that the kite may have held some sort of sophisticated weapon, or that Human Rights groups are notoriously biased. But as a small “l” liberal – as I assume you purport to be – I’m sure human rights play SOMEWHERE in your consciousness. An Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published their report this year and stated that 141 Palestinian children were murdered by the Israeli military, while Palestinian terrorists murdered one Israeli child. Now you can accuse me of moral equivocations but a 141:1 ratio of child deaths may be relativism, but its also mass murder. Its ethnic cleansing.

So you can pretend that marching with the UJA – who’s slogans on the giant billboard just down the street from my office here reads: “Together with Israel”, and who’s inclusion of the Canadian flag in said ad attempts to suggest that Canada “stands” with a habitual human rights abuser – isn’t necessarily standing “against” a Palestinian State. But you and I and anyone who knows anything about this issue knows that such a position is bullshit. Which is why I now have nothing but contempt for the Liberal Party. At least the Conservatives are honest about their position.

Do I want to see Israel “not exist”? Actually no. I would love to see it as an actual democracy (but we know this is increasingly less-likely). Instead I want Israel to give back the thousands of dunams of land that the State of Israel (the one you marched together with last weekend) it STOLE from the Palestinian farmers who have lived there for decades if not centuries and millennia. The Apartheid Wall – and that’s what it is – is a tool of annexation. So I would love an Israeli State whose borders were faithful to the 1967 green-line, or international law, or even their own!

But what about you? You’re an active member of the Liberal Party of Canada. I assume that you are also a small “l” liberal. Your brilliant runner-up leader argues that wars should be started against chronic Human Rights Abusers, and yet he marches in togetherness with a government that includes a man who advocates the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel? How do you feel about Avigdor Lieberman?

I work on issue related to the Occupation with Jewish women here in Toronto who have been spat upon by people walking in your UJA march. Brave women who protest the Occupation every week and who, under taunts of the most fascist sort, continue to testify to the brutality of the Occupation . You can hate me for calling you out on your fake liberalism, but why don’t you try and seek these people out? Or have you?

Maybe I’m attacking you too personally. I think its your last statement that really got me – that “The only requirement is that the Palestinian government stops attacks against Israel”. The homemade rocket attacks that kill some and frighten so many are hardly a pre-condition for peace. The Israeli state, in terms of violence, is totally unmatched when it comes to "Palestinian Terrorism". Bombings in Tel Aviv, or the launching of homemade projectiles against Sderot, are abhorrent, but luckily for my position, the latter is almost unheard of now, and the former is hardly the military workings of a powerful "government" as you would suggest. On the other hand, the "precision targeting" of civilian areas by one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world has resulted in mass civilian deaths. The economic boycott and theft of millions of Palestinian tax dollars by the Israelis has promoted lawlessness in Gaza - much to the benefit of Israel.

The abject poverty (as reported by such bastions of socialism – the UN, the World Bank) that has been inflicted upon 1.4 million people in Gaza is collective punishment. The rockets fired at Sderot are shot by how many people? How many terrorists would it take for you to justify breaking the Geneva Conventions and punishing all of the people of Gaza? Tell me what’s the number of terrorist that justifies the destruction of the Gazan infrastructure to the point where people literally drown in pools of flowing human shit? 1000 Terrorists? What’s the number?

Tell me then Jason what have YOU done to alter Israel's policies towards the Palestinians? You march with the UJA and hide behind the rhetoric of "I support a Palestinian State", but how? In the Bantustans of Barack's proposal? Will you and the Liberal leaders you associate with make an appearance this weekend at nation-wide protests in front of Chapters-Indigo stores, in solidarity with the Palestinians murdered by the Israeli army?

Tell me - what have you done that is "pro-Palestinian"? I would genuinely like to know. Maybe it will keep me from thinking that the Liberal party is populated with people who are just deeply confused and not morally bankrupt politicians pandering for votes.

Oh what a Love-In! Jockeying for votes at the UJA March

Jason Cherniak is a Liberal Party blogger and his recent posts have dealt with the Liberal Party and their position on Israel.

This past weekend the annual UJA (United Jewish Appeal) "Walk with Israel" took place in Toronto and judging by the pictures on Jason's Blog - which I've attached here - the Liberals are clamoring to be seen as pro-Israel partisans.

What is even more astounding to me is how there seems to be a race between the Conservative Party of Canada and the Liberals to see who can appear to be more "pro-Israel". Want proof of this? Just read the comments below - the debate isn't about whether or not attending a pro-Israel march is a legitimate act of a Canadian Politician, its which federal party is the most uncompromisingly "pro-Israel".

http://jasoncherniak.blogspot.com/2007/05/israel-is-dion-priority.html

Oh and FYI: Here's Jason's helpful list of Liberal Party MP's who made it out to support the Israel and the UJA...

"As a personal matter, I would like to thank Stéphane Dion, Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, Gerard Kennedy, Ken Dryden, Martha Hall Findlay, Joe Volpe, Anita Neville, Irwin Cotler, Carolyn Bennett, Susan Kadis, Judy Sgro, Mario Silva, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Senator Art Eggleton, Senator Jerry Grafstein, Bonnie Crombie, Deborah Coyne, Minister Caplan, Minister Kwinter, David Zimmer and Mario Racco for joining us."

I'd like to thank Jason for making a list of Liberals I will encourage others not to vote for. Thanks Jason!

So here are the pics: nothing like seeing our politicians (hey - all Caucasians by the way!) celebrate a racist state!

Everyone smile! What a cute kid. Too bad they haven't heard:

141 kids were murdered by the Israeli Army last year.

Some children's lives are worth more.

"See! I'm wearing a t-shirt and waving a flag - we Conservatives love Israel too!"

(Oh, sorry, not from the UJA march)

Nahr al-Bared

This is an excerpt from a recent Robert Fisk report from the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared as the Lebanese Army fires into the camp in an attempt to root out Fatah al-Islam militants.

What, I kept asking myself yesterday, have we unleashed now? Well, you can ask Suheila Mustafa who stood yesterday at the bedside of her 45-year-old sister, Samia, so terribly wounded by army shellfire in the face that she could neither talk nor focus upon us with her bloated left eye. "We had just woken up when we heard the first barrage of gunfire," she said. "My sister was beside me and fell down with her head bleeding. She hemorrhaged from 5.50 in the morning till 3 in the afternoon. At last my brother brought us all out in his car. But let me tell you this. The Palestinian people have heard Walid Jumblatt and we say 'thank you' to him and let us have more shelling. And I would like to thank Prime Minister Siniora, and say thanks - really thanks - very much to George Bush and to Condoleezza Rice. I really want to thank them for these shells and these wounds we are suffering. And if Rice really wants to send more materiel to the Lebanese Army, she had better hurry up. There is a woman still in the camp who is very pregnant and the child in her womb will be born and will grow into a man - and then we'll see!"

The reports coming out of Lebanon state that Fatah al-Islam is about 700 fighters strong, but that only 3% of them are actually Palestinian. That's 21 of 700. And just a reminder: Fatah al-Islam is NOT "Fatah" - the fifty year old Palestinian Liberation Movement, Yasser Arafat's organization that represented Palestinians legitimate struggle for national liberation.

Out of Bounds - Haaretz Article

This morning my co-worker asked if I liked the blogspot interface and I told him "not really" but that I hadn't posted anything in months (which my mother also reminded me of this past week). He responded that it was a shame.

So here I am.

I'm catching up on old messages from listservs that I'm a subscriber of. Here's an interesting story from Haaretz about a Jerusalem neighbourhood.

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

18/05/2007
Out of bounds

By Lily Galili

On Tuesday of this week, convoys of vehicles made their way through the streets of Jerusalem. From early in the morning, thousands of celebrants ascended to the capital for the 40th anniversary of the city's unification. This time even the traffic jams did not annoy the inhabitants, whose nerves are often wracked by the plethora of events that are held in their city.

A few kilometers from the city's center stretched another traffic jam, this one caused by a number of buses that had set out from the Shuafat refugee camp for the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe of 1948) commemoration in Ramallah. This year the two events took place on the same day. The other cars were just stuck at a roadblock. It should be noted that the Shuafat refugee camp is also within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem and its 20,000 inhabitants hold the blue identity cards of residents of the city.

There is, of course, nothing new in these two pictures, which represent a polarized reality. Only the fact that both of them occurred simultaneously, that on the day that the 40th anniversary of Jerusalem's re-unification was commemorated the Nakba was also marked, afforded them for a moment a sad, cynical, despairing significance. "On days like this I don't like to leave the camp,"
says Hader Dibs, 43, the secretary general of the refugee camp services committee. "At times like this I prefer to remain off to one side, temporarily. Altogether, we are temporary people."

Within this temporariness, Jerusalem is the more constant factor in Dibs' life, as it is in the lives of his fellow refugees in the camp.
Every several years, the hand of fate seems to descend and move them from one place to another, like pieces on a chessboard. In 1948 his family was expelled from Beit Latif, near Beit Shemesh, and settled in the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1966 they were transferred to the Shuafat camp, under an agreement between Jordan, which ruled the city at that time, and the United Nations. They were promised an improvement in their living conditions, but in fact they were sent to live in small hovels.

Over the years the 540 families in the camp became 20,000 people, living on 203 dunams (roughly 500 acres), and now they are once again slated to be moved. This time the intention is not to move them physically, but rather to move the separation wall in the area in a way that will put the camp outside the municipal jurisdiction of Jerusalem. Despite the blue Israeli identity cards held by residents of Shuafat, the Israeli authorities have now decided that they are not in fact Jerusalemites.

Were the situation not so sad, it might be quite funny: Just when the negative immigration from Jerusalem is being totted up and the number of leavers is being counted (17,000 men and women this year), 20,000 people are waging a determined struggle for their right to remain in the capital.

But these people, Palestinians, are not wanted. There is no better proof of this than the separation fence that is planned to cut the neighborhood off from Jerusalem. In the meantime their case is being clarified in the High Court of Justice, the Ir Amim association is helping them in their public struggle and the fence at their doorstep is standing unfinished.

Truth be told, Shuafat residents don't get much from being part of Jerusalem. Everyday matters in the camp are run by the UN, not by the Jerusalem municipality. Perhaps it is better thus: The inhabitants of adjacent Ras Hamis, also residents of Jerusalem who are about to be transferred to the territories by the fence, are served by the municipality. That is to say, they aren't served. Many of them leave their garbage on the boundary between their neighborhood and the refugee camp so that the UN will collect what the municipality ignores.

Dibs says that in fact he would like to celebrate Jerusalem Day, but not the one that is being celebrated now. "To be a Jerusalemite - for me that's everything," he says. "I was born here and I grew up here and all my family is from here. I have someone in every neighborhood of the city - Beit Safafa, Beit Hanina, Jabal Mukaber. There is no road that I don't know and not a day goes by when I don't go up to pray at Al-Aqsa. I know all that talk about how we want to remain Jerusalemites because of the National Insurance, because of the benefits. That's nonsense. We pay more than we get. I don't want money, I want control. I want Jerusalem as my capital city. I want the Palestinians to control it, not the Israelis and not the Jordanians. Just us. And I am talking about the 1967 borders, not about the whole city. I heard that [Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert says that the camp is not part of Jerusalem. What is that supposed to mean? The camp is part of Shuafat and Shuafat is Jerusalem. Where is he bringing that history from? I am more of a Jerusalemite than he is."

'The good cop'

As we walk around the camp, the inhabitants frequently address Dibs, whom they know as "Abu Amir," regarding all kinds of issues. He has status here by virtue of his position on the services committee and also by virtue of his struggle against the occupation, a struggle that led him to spend a year and a half in an Israeli prison. From the neighborhood activity and from the arrest he acquired two acquaintances. One, a man known as Abu Samer who spent a lot of time moving around the neighborhood, would play table tennis with the inhabitants and would also invite them to interrogations by the Shin Bet security service. Years later Dibs saw Abu Samer on television, and he was none other than MK Israel Hasson of Yisrael Beiteinu. The second acquaintanceship was "Amir," the interrogator who questioned him at the jail at the Russian Compound. Dibs named his eldest son after him. "He was the good cop," he explains.

Ibrahim Bakri also has a pedigree in the camp. His father was the first of its inhabitants to be sent to prison because of membership in the Palestine Liberation Organization. Bakri, who was born in 1948, remembers well the day the Jordanians and the UN moved them from the Old City to the camp. He remembers the trucks that came to take them away, the people who were forcibly taken out of houses and the dinar that each truck received for carrying out the task. "No one in the world needs us," says Bakri sadly. "Not the Arab world, not the Western world. All we have is this land where two peoples are now living in fear, and instead of living together are competing as to who will get rid of whom. It isn't Jerusalem Day that is being celebrated today, it's the occupation of Jerusalem."

Bakri, a welder who has done a lot of work in West Jerusalem, has a practical suggestion: With part of the new budget of $1.5 billion that was approved for Jerusalem this week, a new Temple will be built, at a location somewhat distant from the Al-Aqsa Mosque. This seems to him a plan that is far preferable to the construction of the fence that will once again transform the inhabitants of the camp, all of whom are Jerusalemites, into de facto refugees.

What have we come to?

Is this is the global punishment for Gazans because they voted for the wrong party?

Lift the embargo now!

Gaza cesspool wall collapses; 5 dead

Five people died Tuesday when an earth embankment around a cesspool collapsed in the northern Gaza Strip, sending a flash flood of sewage into the village.

The victims included two women in their 70s, two toddlers and a teenage girl, said the Palestinian Health Ministry.

At least 25 people were injured when the flood of waste spilled into the village of Umm Naser, 25 homes were destroyed and dozens more houses damaged, said officials.

A local official blamed shoddy infrastructure for the disaster as angry residents mobbed government officials and reporters at the scene. One minister's bodyguards had to fire shots in the air to disperse the angry crowd.

Rescuers, along with members of the militant group Hamas, rushed to the scene to search for people buried by the sewage.

The governor of north Gaza, Ismail Abu Shammala, blamed Israel, saying the problems started when Gaza was under Israeli control 20 years ago, said Reuters.

The Israeli army offered humanitarian assistance to help clean up the spill, but there was no word on whether the offer had been accepted.

Ziad Abu Farya, head of the village council, described the scene as "our tsunami."

UN warning

A 2004 UN report warned that the sewage facility was at maximum capacity and flooding was inevitable unless a new waste treatment plant was constructed. It said the effluent lake was a breeding ground for mosquitoes and waterborne diseases, posing a serious health hazard.

The treatment facility served two heavily populated areas, Beit Lahiya and Jabalya.

A spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said funding has been secured to build a new waste treatment plant, but Israeli-Palestinian violence has delayed construction.

The community is about 270 metres from the Israeli border and the site of Palestinian rocket attacks, and Israeli artillery fire and aircraft attacks.

The Palestinian Authority has also faced a severe cash crunch since Hamas formed the government last year. A number of Western nations and Israel cut humanitarian aid to the government until Hamas renounced violence and recognized Israel.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/03/27/gaza-sewage.html

Iraq 101: Mother Jones

The American Magazine Mother Jones has published a pretty solid primer on Iraq and the war. I recommend you all check it out.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_101.html

Here's a sample of what you'll read:

With Friends Like These

41 cents of every dollar of American reconstruction money is spent on the Iraqi military or police.
3 cents goes to “democracy building.”
A newly recruited Iraqi soldier makes $60 a month.
Iraqi units report that half of their soldiers go awol when sent to new combat areas. The Pentagon says it’s trying to instill “a more deployable mindset.”
Of the 323,000 members of Iraq’s security forces, 1/3 are considered “technically proficient” and only 10,000 are “politically dependable.”
American trainers report that 70% of the police force has been infiltrated by militias.
90,000 rifles and 80,000 pistols supplied to the Iraqi security forces cannot be accounted for.

Haaretz: Largest Settlement to be built in the West Bank since 1967

Haaretz is today reporting that there are plans in the works to build the largest Israeli Settlement in the West Bank since the 1967 war. This is a horrible development at such a tenuous time. Again we need to ask ourselves this: while we demand Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist, when will Israel recognize Palestine's right to exist?

This development certainly indicates that Israel does not recognize Palestines right to exist.

Also, it is being reported in Haaretz that another illegal settlement in the West Bank is being built by two Canadian companies: Green Mount Homes and Green Park Homes. I urge you to read this article and make your objections known to these two Canadian companies that what they are doing is not only illegal according to international laws, but is worsening the crisis in the Middle East.

service@greenparkhomes.com

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/829740.html

***

From Haaretz Online:

Gov't promoting plan for new ultra-Orthodox East Jerusalem neighborhood

By Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondent

Government bodies have been promoting a preliminary plan over the past few weeks to build a neighborhood of 11,000 units for the ultra-Orthodox near the East Jerusalem airport.

The plan also calls for the construction of a tunnel under a Palestinian neighborhood to connect the new quarter to one of the settlements in the Beit El area east of Ramallah.

MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima) said Tuesday that the Housing Ministry is the body that developed a plan to erect a massive new ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The ministry denied any knowledge of the project.

Schneller also said Tuesday that the Jerusalem municipality was "happy with the idea."

In response to Schneller's claims that the housing ministry hatched the plan, they said, "the ministry has no knowledge of this plan. At most, only the Jerusalem district of the ministry knew about it."

The plan has not yet been submitted to the various planning committees since, according to Schneller, "it is only in the idea and feasibility stage."

The new neighborhood is to be built close to the separation fence near the Qalandiyah road block, which separates the Palestinian neighborhoods of north Jerusalem from Ramallah. If approved, it would be the largest building project over the Green Line in Jerusalem since the 1967 Six-Day War.

The neighborhood, which will apparently be built on state or Jewish National Fund land would sit in the heart of one of the most crowded urban Palestinian areas in the West Bank.

The architectural firm planning the project, Reches Eshkol, refused to divulge which government body had commissioned the plans. Despite the Housing Ministry's response, Haaretz has learned that the plan was presented a number of times to various official bodies, and that the director of the Housing Ministry's Jerusalem district, Moshe Merhavya, was present at least at one such instance.

Schneller said of the project: "I saw the plans in the programs division of the Housing Ministry and I very much enjoyed seeing them."

Schneller explained that even though the Safdie Plan to construct housing in the western part of Jerusalem has been shelved, the need to build in Jerusalem still exists. "The ultra-Orthodox public needs its solutions," he said. "There is the possibility that it will conquer the inner city, and that this city will then become an ultra-Orthodox-Arab city, which I would not want to happen."

Schneller, who is the former head of the Yesha settlement council and now serves as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's liaison to the settlers, said he has not yet spoken to the prime minister about the plan. "But from what I know of the government's position, there is an Israeli interest in establishing a neighborhood in Atarot.

The plan proposes connecting the new neighborhood to the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Kokhav Yaakov east of Ramallah, which is at present outside the planned route of the separation fence. To this end, a tunnel a few hundred meters long would be dug beneath the Palestinian village of Aqab and under the separation fence.

The idea to build an "eastern fence" to separate the settlements of the Jordan Valley and the mountains from large Palestinian communities like Ramallah had been raised in the past. The construction of the tunnel might be the first step in this direction. "If it is someday decided that Kokhav Yaakov will be part of the 'Jerusalem envelope' it would be logical to create such a link, but it has not yet been decided," Schneller said.

The municipality said that "when the plan is officially presented to the municipality, it will be discussed and a decision will be made about it."

Some of the neighborhoods built around Jerusalem after the Six-Day War were planned by the Housing Ministry and were established over the objections of then-mayor Teddy Kollek. Meron Benvenisti, who served as deputy mayor at that time, said that the area has complex problems: prior to the Six-Day war some of its land belonged to municipalities like al-Bireh, which are today in the Palestinian territories. "It is complete insanity to place tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the heart of a densely populated Arab area," he said. "No one thinks about how they will live there. It's like living in the middle of Ramallah."

Attorney Danny Zindman of the Ir Amim association says such a plan will lead to the "balkanization" of Jerusalem.

Voices of Jewish Opposition to the Occupation

This, as you can see, is a very long post.

I wanted to post a number of articles I have read in the past few weeks, all written by prominent Jews from around the world, all about the increasingly hostile atmosphere within the Jewish community towards Jewish voices for human rights. Especially, of course, those who oppose Israel's brutal policies in the Occupied Territories.

Work your way through these articles and get a taste of the growing dissent against the institutional Jewish organizations who incorrectly assert that they speak for the Jewish communities.

***

Winnipeg Free Press

February 24, 2007

Criticizing Israel is not an act of bigotry

By Jason Kunin

A grassroots revolt is underway in Jewish communities throughout the world, a revolt that has panicked the elite organizations that have long functioned as official mouthpieces for the community. The latest sign of this panic is the recent publication by the American Jewish Committee of an essay by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, entitled Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism, which accuses progressive Jews of abetting a resurgent wave of anti-Semitism by publicly criticizing Israel.

This is the latest attempt to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism in order to silence or marginalize criticism of Israel. This approach is widely used in Canada. Upon becoming CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie Farber declared that one of his goals was to "educate Canadians about the links between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism."

It is misleading for groups like the CJC to pretend that the Jewish community is united in support of Israel. A growing number of Jews around the world are joining the chorus of concern about the deteriorating condition of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories as well as the inferior social and economic status of Israel's own Palestinian population.

In a world where uncritical support for Israel is becoming less and less tenable due to the expanding human rights disaster in the West Bank and Gaza, leaders of Jewish communities outside Israel have circled their wagons, heightened their pro-Israel rhetoric, and demonized Israel's critics. These leaders imply that increased concerns about Israel do not result from that state's actions, but from an increase in anti-Semitism.

Despite this effort to absolve Israel of responsibility for its treatment of Palestinians, Jewish opposition is growing and becoming more organized. On Feb. 5, a group in Britain calling itself Jewish Independent Voices published an open letter in The Guardian newspaper in which they distanced themselves from "Those who claim to speak on behalf of Jews in Britain and other countries (and who) consistently put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of the occupied people." Among the signatories of the letter were Nobel-prize winning playwright Harold Pinter, filmmaker Mike Leigh, writer John Berger, and many others.

This development follows the emergence of similar groups in Sweden (Jews forIsraeli-Palestinian Peace), France (Union Juive Francaise pour la paix, Rencontre Progressiste Juive), Italy (Ebrei contro l'occupazione), Germany (Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost), Belgium (Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique), the United States (Jewish Voice for Peace, Brit Tzedek, Tikkun, the Bronfman-Soros initiative), South Africa, and others, including the umbrella organization European Jews for a Just Peace and the numerous groups within Israel itself. In Canada, the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians (ACJC) has been founded as an umbrella organization bringing together Jewish individuals and groups from across thecountry who oppose Israel's continued domination of the West Bank and Gaza.

Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, nor does it "bleed into anti-Semitism," a formulation that says essentially the same thing. Some genuine anti-Semites do use Israel as a cover for maligning the Jewish people as a whole, but it is fallacious to argue that anyone who criticizes Israel is anti-Semitic because anti-Semites attack Israel. There are some anti-Semites who support Israel because they are Christian fundamentalists who see the return of Jews to Jerusalem as a precondition for the return ofChrist and the conversion of Jews to Christianity, or because they are xenophobes who want to get rid of Jews in their midst. Anti-Semites take positions in support of and in opposition to Israel.

It is wrong to criticize all Jews for Israel's wrongdoings, yet Israel's leadership and its supporters in the Diaspora consistently encourage this view by insisting that Israel acts on behalf of the entire Jewish people. This shifts blame for Israel's crimes onto the shoulders of all Jews. But Jewish critics of Israel demonstrate through their words and deeds that the Jewish community is not monolithic in its support of Israel.

Defenders of Israel often argue that Israel is forced to do what it does -- to destroy people's homes, to keep them under the boot of occupation, to seal them into walled ghettos, to brutalize them daily with military incursions and random checkpoints -- to protect its citizens from Palestinian violence. Palestinian violence, however, is rooted in the theft of their land, the diversion of their water, the violence of the occupation, and the indignity of having one's own very existence posed as a "demographic threat."

To justify Israel's continued occupation and theft of Palestinian land, the state and its defenders attempt to deny Palestinian suffering, arguing instead that Palestinian resentment is rooted not in Israeli violence, but rather in Islam, or the "Arab mentality," or a mystical anti-Semitism inherent in Arab or Muslim culture. Consequently, pro-Israel advocacy depends upon on the active dissemination of Islamophobia. Not surprisingly, engendering hatred in this manner inflames anti-Jewish sentiment among Arabs and Muslims. None of this is a recipe for making Jews safe.

Jewish people can help avert the catastrophic effects of Israeli behaviour, but only by taking a stand in opposition to it.

Jason Kunin of Toronto is a member of the administration council of theAlliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians. This article was written with helpfrom other council members, including Cy Gonick and Dr. Mark Etkin, both ofWinnipeg, Andy Lehrer of Toronto, Sid Shniad of Vancouver and AbrahamWeizfeld of Montreal.

***

WOMEN IN BLACK-LOS ANGELES HOLDS SUCCESSFUL VIGIL OPPOSING ISRAELI APARTHEID IN PALESTINE

Los Angeles,

Monday, February 5, 2007

In the hour and a half before Monday's Los Angeles performance of the Israel Philharmonic at Disney Hall, candle light illuminated more than 60 black-clad protestors standing silently in front of downtown's Disney Hall with signs saying "End Israeli Apartheid in Palestine and Boycott Israel Philharmonic".

With the parking garage closed, the entire audience had to walk by the protestors, and, while most ignored the leaflet offered by one of the organizers, none was able to ignore the protestor' message.

In the week before the performance, the L.A. Philharmonic had tried to move the protest away from Disney Hall. They even asked for, and got a resolution from the Los Angeles City Council, closing the sidewalk in front of DisneyHall. But once attorneys Jim Lafferty and Carol Smith from the National Lawyer's Guild-Los Angeles Chapter made it clear that they would sue on constitutional grounds, Disney Hall agreed that the protestors could use the public sidewalk. And use it we did, to great effect.

The vigil, organized by Women in Black-Los Angeles, was the culmination of four months of organizing that began with a letter to the musicians of the Israel Philharmonic asking them to take a public stand against Israel's 40-year occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, following the example of famed Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim.

The letter was signed by more than 1,000 supporters worldwide, but their plea was not honored with a reply from the musicians. A written request tothe L.A. Philharmonic management asking them to either cancel the Isareli group's perfomances or make an announcement in opposition to the occupation before each performance met with refusal, so the organizers began their protest in January with silent vigils at matinee performances of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. On Tuesday, Feb. 6th, 20 protestors returned for a second night of silent vigil.

In addition, six brave souls in New York held a vigil during the January 3oth performance at Carnegie Hall, and people attending couldn't miss them. Dispite some insults from the crowd, they stood in silence with their signs and the letter to the Philharmonic in their hands. One of the vigilers said, "We will not remain silent as long as there is so much injustice in the world."

The letters and photos of the vigil can be found at http://www.wib-la.org/.

In addition to Women in Black-Los Angeles, the vigil was supported by the ANSWER Coalition, Middle East Fellowship and Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid

***
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2005881,00.html

The Guardian

Monday February 5, 2007

Prominent Jews call for open debate on Israel

• Pinter and Farhi among signatories to open letter
• Institutions accused of not representing community

By Julian Borger

A group of prominent British Jews will today declare independence from the country's Jewish establishment, arguing that it puts support for Israel above the human rights of Palestinians.

Independent Jewish Voices will publish an open letter on the Guardian's Comment is Free website calling for a freer debate about the Middle East within the Jewish community. Among the more than 130 signatories are Stephen Fry, Harold Pinter, Mike Leigh, Jenny Diski and Nicole Farhi, as well as leading academics such as Eric Hobsbawm and Susie Orbach.

"We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole," the letter says. Jewish leaders in Britain, it argues "put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of an occupied people" in conflict with Jewish principles of justice and compassion.

The statement does not name the institutions it is criticising. But one signatory, Brian Klug, an Oxford philosopher, writing an accompanying article on Comment is Free, singles out the Board of Deputies of British Jews for calling itself "the voice of British Jewry" while devoting "much ofthe time and resources of its international division to the defence ofIsrael".

Mr Klug also criticises Britain's chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, for telling a pro-Israeli rally in London last year: "Israel, you make us proud."

"Others felt roughly the opposite emotion," Mr Klug writes.

The emergence of the group, which calls itself a "network of individuals"and can be found at www.ijv.org.uk comes at a time of ferment over attitudes towards Israel, stoked by the war in Lebanon and the bloodshed in the occupied territories. The question of whether radical opposition to Israeli policies necessarily amounts to anti-Semitism is central to the debate.

The row was brought to a head in recent weeks by the resignation of board members of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (IJPR) after it emerged that its director, Antony Lerman, had voiced support for the merging of Israel with the Palestinian territories into a single bi-national federation and a repeal of the "law of return" giving the right of anyone of Jewish descent to Israeli citizenship.

Stanley Kalms, the former head of the Dixons Group, stepped down as the IJPR's honorary vice president, saying Mr Lerman's views made his position "untenable". Writing in the Jewish Chronicle, Lord Kalms called his views "dangerous and unacceptable" and "contrary to my concept of the role of the diaspora - to support the State of Israel, warts and all".

The row has brought furious exchanges to the Jewish Chronicle's letter pages. "Some of our biggest mailbags lately have been prompted by prominent Jewish public figures voicing dissenting views of Israel, which typically provokes angry rebukes from other members of the community," David Rowan, the editor, said.

A parallel struggle is under way in the US where the American Jewish Committee published an article accusing liberal Jews such as the historian Tony Judt of fuelling anti-Semitism by questioning Israel's right to exist.

The essay by Alvin Rosenfeld said that "one of the most distressing features of the new anti-Semitism" was "the participation of Jews alongside it".

Prof Judt told the New York Times: "The link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is newly created." He feared the two would become so conflated that references to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust would be seen as "just a political defence of Israeli policy".

***

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/independent_jewish_voices/2007/02/hold_jewish_voices_statement.html

The Guardian

February 5/2007

A time to speak out

There is a need for alternative Jewish voices to be heard - especially in the light of the grave situation in the Middle East.

We are a group of Jews in Britain from diverse backgrounds, occupations and affiliations who have in common a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights. We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole. We further believe that individuals and groups within all communities should feel free to express their views on any issue of public concern without incurring accusations of disloyalty.

We have therefore resolved to promote the expression of alternative Jewish voices, particularly in respect of the grave situation in the Middle East, which threatens the future of both Israelis and Palestinians as well as the stability of the whole region. We are guided by the following principles:

1. Human rights are universal and indivisible and should be upheld without exception. This is as applicable in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as it is elsewhere.

2. Palestinians and Israelis alike have the right to peaceful and secure lives.

3. Peace and stability require the willingness of all parties to theconflict to comply with international law.

4. There is no justification for any form of racism, including anti-semitism, anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia, in any circumstance.

5. The battle against anti-semitism is vital and is undermined whenever opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded asanti-semitic.

These principles are contradicted when those who claim to speak on behalf ofJews in Britain and other countries consistently put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of an occupied people. The Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip face appalling living conditions with desperately little hope for the future. We declare our support for a properly negotiated peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people and oppose any attempt by the Israeli government to impose its own solutions on the Palestinians.

It is imperative and urgent that independent Jewish voices find a coherentand consistent way of asserting themselves on these and other issues of concern. We hereby reclaim the tradition of Jewish support for universal freedoms, human rights and social justice. The lessons we have learned from our own history compel us to speak out. We therefore commit ourselves to make public our views on a continuing basis and invite other concerned Jews to join and support us.

Dr Lisa Appignanesi
Sir Geoffrey Bindman
Lady Ellen Dahrendorf
Dr Edie Friedman
Uri Fruchtmann
Rabbi David Goldberg
Dr Anthony Isaacs
Ann Jungman
Anne Karpf
Dr Brian Klug
Prof Francesca Klug
Dr Tony Klug
Prof Susie Orbach
Prof Jacqueline Rose
Leon Rosselson
Prof Donald Sassoon
Prof Lynne Segal
Gillian Slovo
Henry Stewart
Janet Suzman

Plus many others. The full list of signatores can be found at www.ijv.org.uk. For more information email press@ijv.org.uk

Click here for a full list of articles in the Independent Jewish Voices debate.

***

The Guardian

Monday February 5, 2007

No one has the right to speak for British Jews on Israel and Zionism

We will not accept the vilification of those who protest at injustices carried out in the name of the Jewish people

By Brian Klug

If there is one thing on which Jews can agree, it is this: it's good to argue. Jewish culture has thrived on argument - frank, sincere disagreement- ever since Moses disputed with God. But today an oppressive and unhealthy atmosphere is leading many Jews to feel uncertain about speaking out on Israel and Zionism. People are anxious about contravening an unwritten law on what you can and cannot discuss, may or may not assert.

It is a climate that raises fundamental questions: about freedom of expression, Jewish identity, representation, and the part that concerned Jews in Britain can play in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to find their way to a better future.

As the situation in the Middle East deteriorates yearly, more and more Jews watch with dismay from afar. Dismay turns to anguish when innocent civilians - Palestinians and Israelis - suffer injury and death because of the continuing conflict. Anguish turns to outrage when the human rights of a population under occupation are repeatedly violated in the name of the Jewish people.

No one has the authority to speak for the Jewish people. Yet during Israel's war with Lebanon last summer, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, told an American audience: "I believe that this is a war that is fought by all the Jews." His belief is not based on evidence: it is an article of faith, a corollary of the doctrine that Israel represents Jewry as a whole - in Britain included.

This is a fallacy; and, moreover, a dangerous one, since it tars all Jews with the same brush. Yet this misconception is reinforced here by those who, claiming to speak for British Jews collectively or allowing that impression to go unchallenged, only ever reflect one position on the Middle East. Onits own account, the Board of Deputies of British Jews (which calls itself "the voice of British Jewry") devotes much of the time and resources of its international division to "the defence of Israel". When a "solidarity rally" was held in London last July in the midst of the conflict with Lebanon, it was the board that organised it.

All of which suggests that British Jewry, speaking with one voice, stands solidly behind the Israeli government and its military operations.

Two things are wrong with this suggestion. First, it's false. Jews were deeply divided over Israel's campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon last year. Certainly, there were those who shared the sentiment of the chief rabbi, SirJonathan Sacks, who, addressing the rally, said: "Israel, you make us proud." Others felt roughly the opposite emotion.

Second, the board has no business taking a partisan position on the Middle East. Let groups such as the Zionist Federation or perhaps the Israeli embassy organise solidarity rallies. The role of the board is to promote the welfare of British Jews in all their variety, not to defend Israel. Similarly, the chief rabbi is entitled, ex officio, to bring a religious perspective to political matters, but it is not his role to act as political spokesman for his flock.

Faced with this state of affairs, a group of Jews in Britain has come together to launch Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). We come from a variety of backgrounds and walks of life. Some of us are religious, some not. A number feel a strong attachment to Israel as Jews, others feel none. We do not all share the same vision for the Middle East. We are a network of individuals, not a movement or political party.

But we are united by certain fundamental commitments. These are set out in our launch statement, published today on the Guardian's Comment is Free website and in advertisements placed in the Jewish Chronicle and the Times. They include: putting human rights first; giving equal priority to Palestinians and Israelis in their quest for a peaceful and secure future; and repudiating all forms of racism aimed at Jews, Arabs, Muslims or whomever.

We believe that these commitments - not ethnic or group loyalties - define the limits of legitimate debate. We invite like-minded Jews in Britain to add their names to the list of IJV signatories.

Jews abroad who are confronted with the same climate are taking similar steps to make their voices heard. The Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians has been formed to promote "an alternative public Jewish voice" on Israeli policies. Last July "concerned South African Jews" appealed to "all who share our commitment to a common humanity" to call for Israel to stop its bombardment of Lebanon. In the past few years, Jewish groups speaking out against Israel's violations of human rights have proliferated, notably in the United States, but especially in Israel itself.

We are not setting ourselves up as an alternative to the Board of Deputies or any other body. But we challenge the standard concept of "the Jewish community" as a collective entity for which the board is the secular voice and the chief rabbi the religious voice. This system was developed in another era - though it is being used today as a template for other minorities. It pictures "the Jewish community" as a single bloc that, whatever its internal complexity, presents a common face to the outside world via its ambassadors.

There is an affinity between our initiative and the New Generation Network, which was launched in the Guardian last November. A diverse group of Britons questioned the idea that the pie of British society (or that portion consisting of "minorities") can be divided into neat ethnic or religious slices: discrete "communities" with authoritative "leaders". For many of us, this model is suffocating and goes against the grain of our experience.

Among other things, it places a premium on keeping disagreement "in the family". For Jews, this ethos is especially stifling if the subject is Zionism or Israel. Some people, rightly condemning demonisation of the Jewish state, do not hesitate to demonise fellow Jews who, when expressing their views on these subjects in public, cross an invisible line of acceptability. We reject any attempt to suppress legitimate public debate and we abhor the culture of vilification.

The slur of "traitor" or "self-hating Jew" is especially noxious. For, if we feel compelled to protest against injustice to Palestinians, this is partly because of the lessons of our own history: the Jewish experience of marginalisation and persecution. Furthermore, when the language of human rights is spoken, many of us (secular and religious) hear the voices of those Hebrew prophets, rabbis, writers, activists and other Jewish figures down the centuries for whom Judaism means nothing if it does not mean social justice.

So, when we speak out against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, or the bombing of Lebanon, or discrimination against Palestinians within Israel itself, we are not turning against our Jewish identity; we are turning to it. Some of us, recalling that nearly 40 years have passed since Israel's occupation began, hear a resonance. This was the length of time the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, near the end of which Moses gave them a directive: "Justice, justice shall you pursue" (Deuteronomy 16:20). It is a compass bearing for all humanity, especially when we are trying to findour way - or help others to find theirs - to a better future.

· Brian Klug is senior research fellow in philosophy at St Benet's Hall, Oxford, and associate editor of Patterns of Prejudice

www.ijv.org.uk

***

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/04/INGFLNSJQJ1.DTL

San Francisco Chronicle

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Silencing critics not way to Middle East peace

By Joel Beinin

Last Sunday in San Francisco, the Anti-Defamation League sponsored "Finding Our Voice," a conference designed to help Jews recognize and confront the "new anti-Semitism." For me, it was ironic. Ten days before, my own voice was silenced by fellow Jews.

I was to give a talk about our Middle East policy to high school students at the Harker School in San Jose. With one day to go, my contact there called to say my appearance had been canceled. He was apologetic and upset. He expected the talk would be intellectually stimulating and intriguing for students. But, he said, "a certain community of parents" complained to the headmaster. He added, without divulging details, that the Jewish Community Relations Council of Silicon Valley had played a role.

[Editor's note: Diane Fisher, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Silicon Valley, says that although she left a message for the school principal, she never actually spoke to him, and any suggestion that the council was responsible for the cancellation of Beinin's appearance at the school is inaccurate and an "unlikely inflation of JCRC's influence."]

I was raised a Zionist. I went to Israel after high school for six months to live on a kibbutz. I met my wife there. We returned four years later thinking we'd spend our lives on a kibbutz, working the land and living the Zionist dream. Why did the council feel the need to silence me?

In fact, this was not our first run-in. I have long advocated equal rights for the Palestinians, as I do for all people. I criticize Israeli policies. I seem to have crossed the council's line of acceptable discourse. Because I am a Jew, it is not so easy to smear me as guilty of this "new anti-Semitism." Instead, hosts like the Harker School, and others, are intimidated, and open dialogue on Israel is censored.

In 2005, Marin's Rodef Sholom synagogue caved to the council and revoked my invitation, unless my talk could be accompanied by a rebuttal. Roy Mash, aboard member, resigned in protest. He asked in his resignation letter whether "given Judaism's long and deep tradition of concern for justice and ethics, a Jewish venue is (not) precisely the setting most appropriate for a speaker like Dr. Beinin?"

I was indeed raised to believe that being Jewish meant being actively committed to social justice. I moved to Israel expecting to pursue that ideal. Yet much of what I saw there called this into question.

I tended livestock on Kibbutz Lahav, which was established on the ruins of three Palestinian villages. The Palestinian inhabitants had been expelled and, because they are not Jewish, were unable to return. One day, we needed extra workers to help clean manure from the turkey cages. The head of the turkey branch said we should not ask for kibbutz members to do the work because, "This isn't work for Jews. This is work for Arabushim." "Arabushim" is an extremely derogatory racial term.

I had participated in the civil rights movement in America, picketing Woolworth's stores that wouldn't serve African Americans. Yet in Israel I discovered the same, stark racism. How could this bring peace between Palestinians and Israelis? While still living in Israel, I began to speak out for equal rights for Palestinians, as I had done for blacks in America.

Organizations claiming to represent American Jews engage in a systematic campaign of defamation, censorship and hate-mongering to silence criticism of Israeli policies. They hollow the ethical core out of the Jewish tradition, acting instead as if the highest purpose of being Jewish is to defend Israel, right or wrong.

No one is spared. New York University Professor Tony Judt also moved to Israel with notions of justice. Judt learned, as I did, that most Israelis were "remarkably unconscious of the people who had been kicked out of the country and were suffering in refugee camps to make this fantasy possible." In October, the Polish Consulate in New York canceled a talk by Judt after pressure from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.

Even former U.S. presidents are not immune. Jimmy Carter has been the target of a smear campaign since the release of his latest book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Carter's most vociferous critics have not challenged him on the issues. Rather, they discredit him with personal attacks, even insinuating that the man who has achieved more than any other American president in Arab/Israeli peacemaking is anti-Semitic.

Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? I believe it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts. An honest discussion can only lead to one conclusion: The status quo in which Israel declares it alone has rights and intends to impose its will on the weaker Palestinians, stripping them permanently of their land, resources and rights, cannot lead to a lasting peace. We need an open debate and the freedom to discuss uncomfortable facts and explore the full range of policy options. Only then can we adopt a foreign policy that serves American interests and one that could actually bring a just peace to Palestinians and Israelis.

Joel Beinin co-edited "The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel,1993-2005." Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com

***

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467841906&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The Jerusalem Post

January 29, 2007

The problem, Benny Morris, is Zionism

By Yakov M. Rabkin

Benny Morris is an honest man. He was one of the first to expose the history of Zionist dispossession and expulsion of the Palestinians. He later honestly regretted that the ethnic cleansing had not been radical enough: The United States had done a better job in cleansing the country of its previous inhabitants.

Recently he published a heart-rending prophecy of doom to the effect that the entire Zionist enterprise in the Land of Israel is facing annihilation from an Iranian nuclear strike. His article ("This Holocaust will be different" The Jerusalem Post, January 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ysoxrw) is not pleasant to read. It contains graphic violence. But it must be read.

Benny Morris, professor of history at Ben-Gurion University, compares Israel's current predicament with the Holocaust. His depiction of the tragedy of European Jews is blood-curdling. Dismissing Israel's presumed nuclear arsenal as "unusable," he is truly desperate as he contemplates missile strikes against Israel's population centers and estimates that the casualties may reach the number of victims claimed by the Nazi genocide.

Morris appears to perpetuate the prophetic tradition that inspires quite a few Jews these days. Some denounce Israel's treatment of the Palestinians; some question the Zionist nature of the state; all believe that they are speaking truth to power. They propose solutions, advocate positions and defend opinions.

Morris does none of the above. He mourns the country he chose to live in and in which he has raised family. He does not say how to save the inhabitants of the State of Israel. In this sense, he may be closer to the authors of Greek tragedies than to the Bible prophets, who invariably point to a way out. This is why the Book of Jonah, in which repentance averts catastrophe, is read on the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when Jews stand in awe of divine judgement.

MORRIS'S FATALISM is explicable. Zionism has been a rebellion against Diaspora Judaism and its cult of submission, humility and appeasement. It has been a valiant attempt to transform the humble Jew relying on divine providence into a intrepid Hebrew relying on his own power. This transformation has been an impressive success. Israel has acquired the mightiest military in the region, but this has brought her neither peace nor tranquillity.

Morris could have concluded his essay by quoting a Bible prophet: for it is not by strength that man prevails (Samuel I 2:9). Intimately familiar with the history of the creation of modern Israel, he could have proposed ways to recognize the injustice done to the Palestinians for the sake of establishing and expanding the Zionist state. He could have called on his compatriots to seek ways to correct the injustice and thus assuage the grievances of the Palestinians that have plagued Israel throughout her history.

Morris would then be pointing a way out of the violent impasse. As it stands now, his prophecy may only legitimize military strikes against Iran and further escalation of violence in the region. Once again Israel may come out victorious, but the Israelis will continue to live in fear of the next enemy.

Several Jewish thinkers have warned of this predicament. One of them prophesied during the War of Independence in 1948: And even if the Jews were to win the war, the "victorious" Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded inside ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defense. And all this would be the fate of a nation that - no matter how many immigrants it could absorb and how far it extended its boundaries - would still remain a very small people greatly outnumbered by hostile neighbors.

This warning came from Hannah Arendt who understood the perils of establishing a state against the will of local inhabitants and all the surrounding nations. Secular and Orthodox thinkers alike feared that Ben-Gurion's version of Zionism would endanger both physical and spiritual survival of the Jews.

NOWADAYS, when no Arab state poses a military threat to Israel it is Iran that many Israelis fear. Just next to Iran, which is as yet far from acquiring a nuclear potential, lies Pakistan, an unstable regime with a strong Islamist movement and a real, not imaginary, nuclear arsenal. Just as Arendt prophesied, there may be no end to existential threats if Israel stays its course. Benny Morris may have indeed written a Greek tragedy, a fatalistic turn of events that neither humans, nor gods, can alter.

Fatalism, just as multiple gods, is alien to Judaism. A Jewish reference to the eternal hatred of the nations is the talmudic saying: "Esau hates Jacob." Yet some rabbis, including Rabbi Naphtali Zvi Berlin (the Netziv), emphasize that in the future the two will love one another deeply, as did Rabbi Judas the Prince and the Roman Emperor Antoninus.

In the light of this interpretation it is easier to grasp why many community leaders took their inspiration from the story of Esau and Jacob before negotiating with unfriendly authorities: They were attempting to turn an enemy into a friend.

This is what the anti-Zionist rabbis of today claim they are doing when they travel to Iran and embrace President Ahmadinejad. Unlike Benny Morris, they are trying to find a way to prevent a tragedy from coming true. They may not succeed, but they should not be condemned for trying.

The author is professor of history at the University of Montreal. His latest book is A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism.

Parental Love

I'm sorry I haven't made a post in a few weeks.

I've done a couple more talks on Palestine in the past month (and I got married!), so I think you'll understand my absence.

My talks have been given entirely to United Church audiences and, though varying in length, I've tried to give some historical context, some anecdotal evidence about the Occupation, and an analysis of the anti-Occupation movement in the United Church of Canada.

I've been overjoyed with the reception I've received from the audiences. While I've had to address one or two difficult questions, I think I've been able to respond to them with the conviction that has driven me to speak out in the first place.

I want to thank especially the congregation at Riverside United Church in Ottawa where I spoke and engaged in a fruitful discussion for nearly two hours.

I'll try to post a bit more on some of these talks but for now I wanted to post this recent article by Gideon Levy, who I used as an inspirational introduction to my (accidentally) near-noteless presentation in Ottawa last Sunday.

This happens to be a recent article, and I direct it towards the question I received this past Sunday about the idea that if only Palestinian parents would love their children more, there wouldn't be this conflict. I reminded the audience that such a suggestion is racism of the simplest kind - the same racism that suggests Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims are savages or animals, less human than their Israeli counterparts. I then reminded the audience that the logic of this argument is also flawed for it ignores the reality that parents living in the diaspora routinely send their teenage children from the safety and security of North America or Europe to risk their lives serving a foreign army in an illegal military occupation. And while senseless to me I wouldn't suggest that these parents don't love their children.

We need to remember that parents here too will put on a brave face when their son or daughter is killed fighting for their country. That there death is honourable seems never to be questioned.

When a Palestinian is killed (as a victim of the Occupier or engaged in a violent act) parents sometimes put on a brave face and make nationalist and religious claims. This is in front of the media (how we can come to question their love for their children) and in front of their neighbours. But to suggest that when the western media leaves the mourning tent, or the neighbours clear out of the family home, that that parent feels no sense of loss, no mourning for the death of their child, indicates an absence of logic and humanity in the person that first suggests such a thing.

***

Ha’aretz

February 11, 2007

The Twilight Zone / Victims of the fence

By Gideon Levy

A still-life image: a building covered with Jerusalem stone, a large memorial poster hanging high up on one of the floors, and below, a sign in broken English over the "Paradise Cafe." Second image: a makeshift soccer field, empty, on which a huge puddle formed on Sunday of this week. Across the road a barbed-wire fence encircles the abandoned airfield of Atarot, once touted as "Jerusalem's international airport." Along the fence runs a ditch - into which the boy fell and, according to witnesses, bled for a long time until he died. He was struck by a bullet in the leg and lay there, dying in agony.

Was he only playing soccer? Did he just run to get the ball, which had fallen into the ditch along the fence, as his friends say? Or did he sabotage the fence and try to take the metal for his family's livelihood, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the next day?

What difference does it make? What does make a difference is the appalling question of what prompted a soldier, or a Border Policeman, to open fire from a long way off at the boy and then to leave him bleeding on the ground until he died. What goes through the mind of the shooter, in the moments before and after he takes the life of an adolescent, who was in no way putting anyone at risk - even if he touched a fence that must not be touched? Three fences surround the abandoned airport, and last Sunday we saw no hole in any of them, three days after the unnecessary, criminal shooting.

In this terrible place the children of Qalandiyah and its surroundings are killed like flies. At least eight have been killed here in the past few years, along the death fence. In this space we wrote about 11-year-old Yasser and his brother, Samar, 15, the two children of Sami Kosba, who were killed at the fence a month apart, in February, 2002; about Omar Matar, 14, killed in April, 2003; and about Ahmed Abu Latifi, 13, in September, 2003. And there was Fares Abed al-Kader, 14, killed in December, 2003. Now there is also Taha Aljawi, February, 2007.

It's said that he was a good boy, the kind of boy who goes with his father to pray in the morning and evening. And he was Jerusalem-born, the bearer of a blue ID card, like us. Taha Aljawi, a nice kid from Jerusalem, not yet 17 at his death.

The Hamas memorial poster shows dripping blood. In the Fatah poster the photograph is more recent: Taha looks a little older and has the shadow of a mustache. The Al-Aqsa Mosque appears in both posters - a rare instance of Palestinian national unity these days, in the paradisical cafe in Kafr Aqab, a Jerusalem neighborhood whose residents carry blue ID cards and pay municipal taxes, but which has nevertheless been fated to be on the other side of the separation fence, north of the capital, on the way to Ramallah.

The men sit in the big space of the cafe, which has been transformed into a mourning room, and eat lamb with rice in yogurt, as is the custom. Two weeks ago we were offered the same fare in nearby Anata, on the occasion of the killing of an 11-year-old girl, Abir Aramin, by the Border Police.

Taha's bereaved father, Mahmoud Aljawi, worked for the Jerusalem Municipality part-time for 11 years as a school janitor, until he was forced to take early retirement a few months ago. He is 48 and the father of six children, including the dead Taha, who was the second child. To supplement his income, Mahmoud also made leather garments in the Old City, and had a kiosk that sold sweets at the Qalandiyah checkpoint. He learned basic Hebrew at a beginners' course at the Gerard Behar cultural center on Bezalel Street in Jerusalem. Until three years ago the family lived in the Old City, but because of the overcrowding moved to Kafr Aqab. Their rented apartment is above the Paradise Cafe.

Last Thursday, Mahmoud went to the offices of the National Insurance Institute (NII) in Jerusalem, to arrange for his unemployment insurance. Taha had a free morning: In the past few weeks the authorities lengthened the school hours on the first four days of the week and canceled classes on Thursdays. He was a 10th-grader at the school for orphans in the Old City, opposite Al-Aqsa, an educational institution for the children of poor families. He got up at 5 every morning and went with his father and his two brothers, Mohammed, 18, and Suleiman, 8, to the adjacent mosque to pray, and then at about 7:30 left for school via the checkpoints. It was 40 minutes each way, if there were no problems.

Taha wanted to learn the printing profession. He was weak in English and also got into problems with the teacher. Not long ago his father had a talk with him and explained that if he wanted to work in the print industry, he would have to be articulate in both English and Hebrew. Taha was thinking about enrolling in Hebrew lessons at a center near the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem.

Last Thursday Taha returned from the mosque at 7 A.M., after his last prayer, as it turned out. Mahmoud made breakfast for his son and at 7:30 his friends came by and asked him to play soccer with them on the field on the other side of the Ramallah road. The word "road" is a bit misleading: It's actually an intercity route peppered with potholes and puddles, flanked by garbage on both sides, on which traffic moves slowly.

According to the testimonies of Taha's friends, as related to the grieving father, shortly after the game started, the ball flew over another road that abuts the improvised playing field. Taha ran to retrieve the ball and then the kids heard a few shots. They say they ran in panic, but saw Taha slump into the ditch. No one knows for sure what happened after that. The children told Mahmoud that the shots had come from the direction of the skeleton of a tall building, which is under construction next to the soccer field. They say that the soldiers hid high up in the building and that they opened fire at Taha. Usually, they said, there are no soldiers in that building - only on that particular day.

The bullet slammed into Taha's left leg, above the knee. At the time, his father was near the government compound in East Jerusalem, on the way to the NII. Mahmoud's brother, Kamal, phoned him to say that Taha had been wounded.The two brothers rushed to Kafr Aqab. They tried to call Taha on his mobile phone - Mahmoud says he got his son a phone so he would always know where he was - but the boy didn't answer. Next to the house, people had already gathered; they related that Taha had been taken to the hospital in Ramallah. Kamal set out for Ramallah, while the distraught Mahmoud said he felt he had to stay with the mother and other children to calm them.

At the hospital, Kamal was told that Taha had been dead on arrival. He saw his nephew's body - with one bullet hole above the knee. In most cases, abullet in the leg will kill you only if it causes a massive loss of blood. Taha apparently lay in the ditch for a long time: The children told Mahmoud that at least an hour went by before the soldiers arrived to collect their victim and take him to the Qalandiyah checkpoint. From there a Palestinian ambulance was summoned - even though Taha was Israeli - to take him to Ramallah. Kamal called his brother and told him to come to the hospital to identity his son's body. Taha was buried that evening in the cemetery on Saladin Street in East Jerusalem, next to the post office.

"I always made sure that my children were with me. I watched over them, like over my eyes," Mahmoud says. "On Fridays I would walk with them to pray at Al-Aqsa, go by the grandparents' place, have a bite to eat, always staying close together. Everyone who knows me knows how I watched over them. I hear a lot from people: You have good children - they pray, they are getting a good education, they have no problems, quiet children. Sometimes people would ask: Who is Taha's father? Good for you, having a well-educated boy like that. In the winter he went to play computer games, in the summer he went to the Casablanca Pool in Ramallah, and other than that he was with me. Maybe 18 hours a day with me. We are a family that respects its children and the children respect their father.

"How can we know what he was doing there, next to the fence? It's not important. A boy of that age, he didn't endanger the soldiers - a shy boy, not violent, quiet. I didn't see what he was doing next to the fence. I didn't see, but what if he even cut the fence? And why should he cut the fence? He has a blue ID card. I always taught him to keep away from things like that."

The response of the IDF Spokesperson's Office: "On February 1 during the morning an IDF force spotted four suspicious youths next to the Qalandiyah refugee camp south of Ramallah, while they were still engaged in sabotaging the security fence and trying to breach it. The force fired at the lower body of one of the youths and hit his leg. Minutes later an IDF medical team arrived, which worked to stabilize the wounded person's condition, but without success."

We go out to the killing field. Mahmoud hasn't been there since his son fell by the fence. It's empty, even though people live all around it. We stop at the road, looking at the fence from a distance and at the ditch where Taha bled to death. Within seconds a Border Police Jeep barrels out of the abandoned airport terminal - a long way from us - and we scatter, in panic.

Ontario Teachers criticize Israel - and get threatened for it.

Support OSSTF District 12's RIGHT to have a Democratice Debate on Israel!

Support DEMOCRACY not HATE!

One District of the Ontario Teachers Union has decided to raise the issue of Israel's horrific abuses in the Occupied Territories, and have been threatened for it. Once again, we see that ANY criticism of the Occupation brings out the worst in human nature.

So while B'Nai Brith and the Jewish Defense League mount a campaign of intimidation, the Union tries to pass a benign motion that criticizes Israel. Read the document below, as well as OSSTF's response to the intimidation from B'Nai Brith and the JDL. And also check out these links to Jewish Groups who maintain that B'Nai Brith and the JDL DO NOT REPRESENT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY!!!

This sort of thing again reminds us the national communities in the diaspora are often FAR MORE fanatical than those living in the actual state. Please defend OSSTF's right to criticize a brutal State's abuse of an indigenous community.

http://www.hostultra.com/~jwceo/jwceo4/

http://www.jfjfp.org/

The Motion:

BIRT District 12 STBU Council endorse the following motion for AMPA 2007:

“BIRT AMPA 2007 urge the Provincial Executive to express OSSTF’s criticism of Israel’s continued violation of the human rights of Palestinians as well as its belief that the achievement of justice for the Palestinians will help bring peace to the Middle East and to the people of Israel by taking the following actions:

a) Request the provincial Human Rights Committee to develop an educational campaign for its members as well as curricular materials for the classroom, to be ready for September’s Provincial Council, on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, Palestine’s role in this conflict, the role of Canada in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the international community’s response.

b) Request the Human Rights Committee to devise a campaign to materially and morally
support the students of the occupied territories unable to receive an education due to the occupation and make links with teacher unions and student organizations both in the occupied territories as well as Israel who are seeking a just and peaceful solution to this region’s conflicts.

c) Write a letter to the prime minister as well as to the leaders of the oppositions parties, urging them to:

i) Pressure Israel to comply with international humanitarian law including the
decisions of the International Court of Justice and the Fourth Geneva Convention;
ii) Call for Israel’s withdrawal from all occupied territories;
iii) Demand the removal of Israel’s “separation wall” which has resulted in the
annexation of Palestinian land and extreme hardship in the daily lives of Palestinians;
iv) Pressure Israel to restore the revenues collected by them to their rightful owners,
the Palestinian Authority;
v) Publicly criticize Israel’s aggression against Gaza and Lebanon and
vi) End Canada’s sanctions against the democratically elected government of Palestine
which has resulted in the paralysis of the civil service and the extreme impoverishment
of the Palestinian people.

d) Develop ways OSSTF can demonstrate its support of the growing international call for
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.”

Estimated cost: to be determined

J. Kunin, Vaughan Road Academy/H. Hulays, Harbord CI

***

Press Release - January 17th 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Teachers’ Union Defends Right to Freedom of Speech

The Executive of District 12 Secondary Teachers Bargaining Unit unanimously condemns B’nai Brith and the Jewish Defense League for what it believes amounts to a bullying campaign launched against OSSTF and its members.

On January 12th, B’nai Brith launched an all-out assault on OSSTF by sending an e-mail "alert" to its members urging them to pressure OSSTF members to disengage from a debate scheduled to take place at this Thursday’s regular monthly Council Meeting. Today, the Jewish Defense League announced its intention to rally outside of the OSSTF office during the meeting.
"This can be seen as nothing short of an attempt to intimidate our membership" said Doug Jolliffe, President of OSSTF District 12 Toronto.

"What seems to be missing, as indicated by the actions of these two organizations, is an understanding, despite an explanation from me to B’nai Brith before this alert was released, that as a democratic organization, OSSTF must entertain debate on any motion duly moved and seconded, as long as it does not ask for support of an illegal action or an action which breaches our own Constitution, Policies or Bylaws" explained Jolliffe.

"The Executive can not quash debate, nor can the Executive control what items Members feel worthy of debate, nor as a democratic organization should we."

Each month, OSSTF Toronto Teachers hold a Council Meeting the purpose of which is in part to consider motions. Unless passed by a majority vote, the motions belong only to the Mover and Seconder. Motions are brought forward for debate in order to ascertain whether the idea contained therein has broad enough acceptance and support among the Membership to become the Union’s official position by a majority vote. It is only through the support of a majority of its representative Council that a motion can be approved.

"The Executive understands the emotional response these kinds of ideas provokes. We have had to grapple with that ourselves as voting Members of this meeting, and certainly we know that our Membership is not a monolith when it comes to these motions, or in fact any other motion that might come before our Council for debate. However for an outside organization to encourage and engage in this kind of heavy-handed, intimidating action before a decision as to whether these motions are ones we can support, is absurd."

"Make no mistake about it. Whether the motions are carried or defeated, it will be a reflection of the will of the majority of our Members, and that’s as it should be."

For further information contact:

Doug Jolliffe President

OSSTF District 12
(416) 393-8900, Extension 240

***

Response to B'nai Brith Alert
By STBU Executive
Jan 15, 2007, 08:45

On Time Motions

Posted on our website are the On Time Motions to our Council Meeting. On time motions are those received, in accordance with our rules, by the deadline.

An On Time Motion is not owned by the Union, nor does it reflect the position of the Executive or the Union. An On Time Motion reflects the position of the people who brought it forward.
OSSTF is a democratic organization. Therefore, in accordance with acceptable meeting practice principles (see Robert’s Rules of Order), if two members of our some 6000 members feel an issue is something they want their organization to consider and discuss, they put that issue forward in the form of a motion. They own the motion and its ideas - not the Union.
As a democratic organization, unless the ideas in the motion are illegal (ultra vires) or form a breach of the established Policy or Bylaws of our Union, the subject of the motion is considered to be In Order and therefore debatable.

The Executive can not quash debate.

Calling our office to tell us not to debate a particular subject is therefore a useless waste of your time, and ours. Neither as a group, nor as individuals do we have the right, or authority, to tell our Members what topic of discussion the organization will or will not entertain, regardless of our personal position or opinion about that topic.

The Motions coming to January Council, as they stand right now, are simply that - Motions; the ideas of two people who wish to see whether their opinion has broad enough acceptance and support among their colleagues and fellow Members that it might become the Union's official position.

A motion only becomes official OSSTF action/policy IF it is passed by a majority vote. This has not occurred.

Why Do Teachers Engage in Debates about Controversial Issues?

Many people ask why teachers are even discussing such issues. The answer, in part, is that many teacher members of our union would share the very same concern underlying that very question. That is the thing about democracy. Not everyone agrees. So, some people feel we should be looking at this particular international human rights issue. Others feel we should not. The debate will occur, and the majority will rule.

B’nai Brith Interference in OSSTF Democratic Processes

With regard to B’nai Brith’s alert, it is our belief that B’nai Brith should refrain from interference in the democratic processes of other organizations. We further feel that it is irresponsible for B’nai Brith to council people to become involved in a bullying campaign to try to force Members of a duly constituted, legal organization into not discussing an issue of interest to its Members. Our organization provides equal opportunity for those Members both in favour of and opposed to any motions being debated to state their opinion and participate in the voting process. We feel that pre-judging the topics of another’s debates is repressive.

Of interest to some may be that the information B’nai Brith provided in its most recent alert is incorrect. They indicated in their e-mail that it was as a result of community response to their last alert that the motion for December's meeting was withdrawn. In fact that motion was withdrawn prior to their alert. Had they called to check their facts, they would have been told that.

As a result of the last community alert by B’nai Brith, we had to turn off our phones because the staff who answer our phones were taking so much horrible abuse from callers, that one was actually in tears. Many of the callers motivated by B’nai Brith’s last alert were abusive.
Further, the e-mails we received as a result of B’nai Brith’s alert showed an astonishing lack of understanding of the meaning of tolerance, and some were outright hate-filled. OSSTF found it interesting to note that ignorance can breed this kind of behaviour, regardless of which community is doing the behaving.

Finally, the District 12 STBU Executive understands that discussions dealing with the middle east can provoke highly emotional responses. However we believe that no one has the right to interfere in the right of others to hold open discussion and debate, provided the topics being debated do not contravene the law and will not lead to illegal action.

© Copyright 2006 by OSSTF District 12

Ilan Pappe on the Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians

Please listen to the following speech given by Israeli Prof. Ilan Pappe at Northeastern University in Boston on November 19, 2006. Prof. Pappe is a Professor at Haifa University in Israel and the author of numerous works on the history of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Here, he describes the Zionist planning and execution of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians which started in 1948 and continues to this day. Professor Pappe makes a plea to the people of America and Europe to put a halt to Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian people.

http://kabobfest.com/interview/IlanPappe111906.mp3

Cliometrics

B'Tselem, the Israeli Human Rights Organization has released it's casualty report for 2006. You can navigate to their home page by following the link on the right hand side of this page.

Here is how the numbers breaks down for 2006...

Palestinians killed 17 Israeli CIVILIANS in the Occupied Territories and in Israel proper in 2006. This includes 1 minor. Palestinians also killed 6 members of the Israeli "Security Forces".

Israelis Killed 660 Palestinians. This includes 141 minors. B'Tselem estimates that at least 322 of these Palestinians were uninvolved in any hostilities when they were killed.

So lets look at these figures head to head:

Total Israelis Killed = 23
Total Palestinians Killed = 660

Thats 28 Palestinians for every Israeli life lost.

Total Israeli Children Killed by Palestinians = 1
Total Palestinian Children Killed by Israelis = 141

Thats 140 Palestinians Children for every Israeli Child killed.