In the article below from Challenge – a magazine that broadly supports the Israeli Communist Party Khadash, Yacov Ben Efrat quotes columnist Nahum Barnea as saying that ‘it smells the same’ as the racist Nuremberg Laws the Nazis introduced in 1935 against the Jews.
Despite proclaiming, as is de rigeur these days, that Israel is a democratic and Jewish state, Netanyahu and Zionist supporters know full well that this is the fundamental contradiction of the Israeli state and politics. Either Israel is a democratic state, a state of all its citizens, which does not favour one section v another or it is a Jewish state, which accords privileges to those who are Jewish, regardless of whether they are religious.
The definition is therefore a racial not a religious one, with religion as the badge of recognition. A Jewish state is not a state that prays in Hebrew nor something which wears the Jewish phylacteries (tefillin). It is Jewish because the majority of the State’s inhabitants, or at least its citizens, must be Jewish. It is an ethnic democracy, an ethnocracy, but a dictatorship over Israel’s Palestinians, in much the same way as the Nazi party came to power ‘democratically’ via parliamentary means, despite the skullduggery involved, only to impose a dictatorship upon the Jews in particular (as well as the workers and all rights of free expression etc.).
The purpose of the loyalty oath is to deligitimise and thereby ‘transfer’ Israel’s Arab population. The idea of being an Arab in Israel and swearing an oath of loyalty to the State is no different from thanking that State for having made one a refugee in 1948. It is absurd and is on a par with the demand that Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state in order that negotiations can continue. What is being demanded is for Palestinians to recognise the rightfulness of their own expulsion and/or dispossession.
Those among Israel’s liberals who now complain of course have no one but themselves to blame for the fact that Israel is now shedding all its previous democratic pretensions.
The government has approved the proposal for an amendment to the Citizenship Law, according to which anyone requesting Israeli citizenship will have to declare loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state. This amendment is perceived by many to be an unnecessary provocation against the country's Arab population, even though it is ostensibly directed towards neither Arab citizens nor Jewish citizens, but towards those seeking citizenship, including Arab spouses requesting citizenship for the sake of family unification.
Columnist Nahum Barnea described it in sharp words:
“The proposed law doesn’t just seem racist; it is racist. It compels non-Jews to declare they will be loyal to the Jewish state, but does not demand the same of Jews. Jews are exempt, because the Haredi rabbis are not willing to declare their loyalty, not to the Jewish state and certainly not to the democratic state. The results are harsh. It’s still not the racist Nuremberg laws, but it smells the same” (Yedioth Aharonoth Supplement, October 8, 2010).
In the Declaration of Independence and the Basic Laws (which serve Israel as a kind of constitution) Israel was declared a Jewish state long ago. The state’s symbols, the Star of David and the Menorah, leave no room for doubt. Thus too the other laws such as the Law of Return, and various temporary provisions and standing orders, which give preference to Jews above non-Jews. What, then, led the justice minister to propose the amendment now, an amendment which will affect just a few thousand people each year, most of whom are not Arabs and do not question the state’s Jewish character?
In fact, behind this amendment there is a hidden message regarding a debate sparked some five years ago between representatives of the Arab population and the state. The conflict began when former Knesset member Azmi Bishara set up a party under the slogan “A state for all its citizens”, which opened the way for Arab parties and institutions to challenge the state and expose the structural contradiction in its self-definition as “Jewish and democratic.” This philosophical clash between the Arab minority and the state served to oil the wheels of Avigdor Lieberman, today Israel ’s foreign minister, whose party won 15 seats in the last general elections with its slogan “No citizenship without loyalty.”
In 2006, the Arab Monitoring Committee and the Committee of the Heads of the Local Arab Councils published a document entitled “The Future Vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel .” According to this document, “The definition of the state as a Jewish state, and the use made of democracy to serve its Jewishness, excludes us from its ranks and places us in opposition to the nature and essence of the state in which we live.”
The “Vision” document raises the question of whether Israeli democracy can really include the Arab minority and treat it with full equality. The document is a response to the alienation that Israel ’s Arab citizens have felt for over 60 years. It is not the definition of Israel as a Jewish state which led the Arab leadership to challenge the state, but the institutionalized discrimination which the Arab population suffers. Democracy cannot exist in a state of institutionalized discrimination. The real issue is not about changing the national anthem or the flag, but the fate of tens of thousands of young Arabs who see their future expropriated by the state.
The violence spreading in the Arab towns and villages, the daylight murders in Nazareth and Lod, these things express the collapse of the Arab education system, the rising unemployment, the poverty, and the powerlessness of Arab local authorities who are unable to supply even basic services.
Lieberman isn’t really interested in ascertaining the loyalty of those seeking citizenship. He wants to question the loyalty of the entire Arab population. The amendment to the law is just a beginning. Last month in the UN General Assembly he already presented his vision for the state, according to which the land populated by Arabs should be transferred from Israel to the Palestinian Authority in exchange for West Bank settlements.
If Netanyahu and his government continue to provoke the Arab population they will turn the state into an Apartheid state, which will pull the rug from under the claim that Israel is both Jewish and democratic. The demand to define Israel as “a state of all its citizens” stems from the fact that in defining itself as “Jewish and democratic” Israel has failed to apply the second part of the equation. The “Jewishness” comes at the expense of democracy. Now, instead of taking the Arab demand for equality seriously, the government provokes again – not only will you not get a state of all its citizens, we intend to continue to exclude you and to discriminate against you in all areas of your life.
One could expect, perhaps, that a state recently accepted into the OECD, a state trying hard to integrate into the global economy, which presents itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” would change its attitude towards its Arab population. Reports from the Bank of Israel and various authorities, and the conclusions of the Orr Commission which investigated the events of October 2000, create the illusion that the state is in fact trying to address the problems of education, employment, health and other issues which the policy of discrimination has produced. However, between recognizing injustice and doing something to remedy it, there stands a rightwing government trumpeting a nationalist and racist ideology. The efforts of the present government to exacerbate the conflict also result in skepticism, self-seclusion and extreme nationalism among Arab citizens.
The clashes surrounding the character of the state have another aspect which has not been given sufficient attention. In fact, Israeli society is deeply divided today – not just between Jews and Arabs, but between Jews and Jews. The state advances discriminatory policies against all workers, whether Jewish or Arab: labor-contractor employees, college teachers, artists, truckers, industrial workers, and migrant laborers with their children. Their rights to a secure place of work with social benefits are withheld. “Jewish” Israel in fact serves just a rich minority, a handful of families who received property and assets from the state, and use them for their own benefit without social obligation or public responsibility. Thus, Lieberman’s position as the watchman of Jewish Israel sits happily with the fact that he is up to his ears in investigations on suspicion of corruption. And he is not alone – many politicians do likewise, on the one hand competing for the honor of most rightwing, on the other hand feathering their nests by groveling to the tycoons.
There is certainly a reason to discuss the character of the state. However, the vision that must be debated concerns the future of all the workers, Jews, Arabs and others. The only truly democratic state will be one whose resources are equally and justly distributed. Such a state will no longer need the definition “Jewish,” which perpetuates a false solidarity among Israel ’s Jews and institutionalized discrimination against its Arab citizens.
Loyalty oaths were one of the endearing features of the McCarthy period in US politics. An era that is universally accepted as being one of the ugliest in the West. It is no surprise that Israel, an ugly state at its best, should now be on the road to adopting this feature.Unlike the McCarthy era, when they applied equally if not more so to Whites, Israel’s loyalty oath will be administered to non-Jews, read Arabs from the Occupied Territories who wish to marry an Israeli Arab. And they will be extended without doubt to all Israeli Arabs at some time in the future, with the possibility of anti-Zionism Jews being forced to swear an oath.But we should take comfort that this is the action of a State on the defensive, which sees enemies everywhere and believes an answer is to resort to the mysticism and superstition of an oath.Note the dishonesty of Netanyahu who believes that an assertion of a lie renders it the truth:
‘There is no other democracy in the Middle East," he declared. "There is no other Jewish state in the world.’
What democracy insists on loyalty oaths? Which democracy insists on loyalty oaths for only one part of its population or potential population? Of course it is the very objection of Israeli Arabs to a ‘Jewish State’ which, by definition cannot be democratic as between Jew and non-Jew which has sparked the imposition of loyalty oaths.But a State that requires loyalty oaths is a state which is uncertain of its own raison d’etre. The demand that Arabs who have been expelled by the ‘Jewish State’ express their loyalty to that State, and a loyalty oath will as has been made clear, be extended to its Arab citizens, in itself demonstrates the uncertainty and lack of self-belief in the uber Zionists.As Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, made clear, the law is intended at dissident Israeli Arabs, spokespersons for the Arab population who articulate their desires and wishes will be stripped of their citizenship. So much for Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East! As Yishai stated:
"Declarations are not enough in the fact against incidents such as [MKs] Azmi Bishara and Hanin Zoabi," "Anyone who betrays the state will lose his citizenship."
And if Israel’s Arab citizens refuse to be good Zionists they will be considered to be traitors. Even the Nazis didn’t expect the Jews to be loyal Germans. Quite the contrary in fact.Tony Greenstein
Cabinet ministers on Sunday approved by a majority vote a controversial amendment which would require every non-Jew wishing to become a citizen of Israel to pledge loyalty to "the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."
Twenty-two ministers voted in favor of the amendment, including most of Likud, Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu. Eight ministers were opposed, five of them from the Labor Party and three - Benny Begin, Dan Meridor and Michael Eitan - from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud.
The divided cabinet spent hours deliberating Justice Minister Ya'akov Ne'eman's proposed amendment to the Law of Citizenship ahead of the vote, including a proposal by Ne'eman himself that the pledge apply to Jews and non-Jews alike.
Defense Minister and Labor Party Chairman Ehud Barak warned earlier Sunday that he would vote against the amendment unless the cabinet agreed to include in the draft an allusion to Israel's Declaration of Independence.
Neither of those amendments was included in the final draft passed by cabinet.
As the cabinet began its deliberations Sunday, Netanyahu reiterated his support for the amendment. "The State of Israel is the national state of the Jewish people and it is a democratic state for all its citizenship," he said. "Jews and non-Jews enjoy equality and full rights."
"Unfortunately, there are many today who tried to blur not only the unique connection of the Jewish people to its homeland, but also the connection of the Jewish people to its state," Netanyahu added.
"Democracy is the soul of Israel and we cannot do without it. No one can preach democracy or enlightenment to us," Netanyahu added. "Zionism established an exemplary national state, a state that balances between the national needs of our people and the individual rights or every citizen in the country."
"There is no other democracy in the Middle East," he declared. "There is no other Jewish state in the world. The combination of these two lofty values expresses the foundation of our national life and anyone who would like to join us needs to recognize this."
Netanyahu's Labor coalition partners believe that his support for the loyalty oath is a sop to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, aimed at winning his Yisrael Beiteinu party's support for an extension on a settlement construction freeze that expired late last month. The U.S. and EU have urged Israel to extend the construction freeze, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has warned that he will quit the current round of peace talks if the moratorium on new building in the West Bank is allowed to expire.
Controversial loyalty oath amendment sparks condemnation from a range of Israeli politicians; MK Tibi: Israel is a democracy for Jews, but not for Arabs.
Leader of the opposition and Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni condemned on Sunday the cabinet's approval of a controversial amendment to the Citizenship Law requiring non-Jews seeking citizenship to pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
"What we have seen today is politics at its worst. The sensitive issue of Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state has become subject to political horse-trading." "It is essential that we maintain Israel's status as a Jewish state with equal rights for all its citizens. This proposal contributes nothing to this goal. On the contrary, it will cause internal conflict and damage [Israel's image in the world]." Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi attacked earlier on Sunday the cabinet's approval of the amendment.
"The government of Israel has become subservient to Yisrael Beiteinu and its fascist doctrine," said Tibi. "No other state in the world would force its citizens or those seeking citizenship to pledge allegiance to an ideology." "Israel has proven that it is not equal and is a democracy for Jews and not for Arabs," he added.
The amendment is one of the promises Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made to Yisrael Beitenu in the coalition agreements. Since coming into government Yisrael Beitenu has advanced a long list of "loyalty" laws, which many consider to be discriminatory against Israel's Arab citizens.
Yisrael Beiteinu was enthusiastic over the cabinet's majority vote, calling it "an important message to all those, both inside and outside, who seek to question the State of Israel's existence as the national state of the Jewish people."
Meretz chairman MK Haim Oron also condemned the amendment on Sunday, saying that "time and again it is evident that the government has adopted Lieberman's agenda in its entirety."
Oron added that the government has sunk into a "moral and political abyss."
Hadash chairman Mohammed Barakeh blamed on Sunday Netanyahu and Barak for supporting and promoting "mega-racist legislation."
Israeli Arab MK Talab al-Sana said on Sunday that "the amendment is a serious blow to democracy and will cause the exclusion of 20 percent of the country's citizens... [It] will situate Israel as the successor of Apartheid-era South Africa."
The cabinet voted Sunday by a majority in favor of the amendment, which was submitted by Justice Minister Ya'akov Ne'eman. But ministers had been divided on the issue since it was first raised.
At the last minute, Ne'eman had suggested amending the draft to require Jews to sign a similar loyalty oath. Defense Minister Ehud Barak submitted an amendment of his own to the draft, demanding it include mention of "Jewish and democratic state in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence of [1948]."
Barak insisted that adding a reference to the Declaration of Independence "would be the best way to reflect the fundamental values of the State of Israel."
This slight change to include the declaration "would not harm the Arab minority," he said, noting that similar declarations are common in many countries in the world.
Most Labor politicians opposed the bill, including Isaac Herzog and Avishay Braverman, who lead the opposition, and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who was absent from the meeting but left a letter in which he expresses his opposition.
Minister Shalom Simhon (Labor) also skipped the meeting, as he was abroad on a business trip.
Herzog told Haaretz late Saturday that the resounding support for such an amendment showed that "fascism was devouring the margins of society."
"We are on a most dangerous slippery slope," he warned.
Likud ministers Dan Meridor and Benny Begin were expected to try and dissuade their cabinet colleagues from supporting the amendment.
Meridor led an assault on the amendment and warned that such an amendment to the law could severely damage relations with the Arab population in Israel.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin was also opposed to the bill, declaring:
"The students of Jabotinsky see no need for such bill. I am a fervent Zionist, and I need no strengthening of my belief. The establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel was an ethical act that the world recognized, and it gained great respect when we described our country as Jewish and democratic. This description is also anchored specifically in the Declaration of Independence and the Law on Elections, and any additions of this type can only be harmful."
"This law will not assist us as a society and a state. On the contrary, it could arm our enemies and opponents in the world in an effort to emphasize the trend for separatism or even racism within Israel," Rivlin said.
"I am not opposed to saying each morning and evening that we are a Jewish and democratic state, but why do we need this law?" Rivlin said.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, meanwhile, that he would propose his own bill that strip citizenship off of anyone convicted of disloyalty to the state.
"Declarations are not enough in the fact against incidents such as [MKs] Azmi Bishara and Hanin Zoabi," Yishai said in reference to two Israeli Arab lawmakers, one who is suspected of having contacts with enemy states and the other who took part in a Gaza-bound aid flotilla. "Anyone who betrays the state will lose his citizenship."
Don’t Patronise the JNF – Guardian Appeal to Miliband
Imagine if there was a British National Fund run by Israel’s good supporters in the English Defence League and British National Party.The BNF decided that in order to fulfil their dreams of ‘self-determination’ for the English and British People, it was necessary to ‘redeem’ the land of England, i.e. alienate from all non-white and non-Christian peoples.
A fantasy?Well that is what the Jewish National Fund does.Founded in 1901 by the 5th Zionist Congress, it at first bought land from mainly absentee Arab landlords, such as Sursuk of Lebanon, and then they evicted the Arab peasants from that land.Ironically the ‘socialist’ Zionist settlements, the Kibbutzim and Kvutza were established on land paid for by the Jewish bourgeoisie outside Palestine.
In so doing the Zionists pursued a mode of colonisation more akin to that in the United States and Australia, where the indigenous population was either exterminated or simply driven into reservations, than the African colonies where those driven from the land were then re-employed on that land as wage labourers.
Zionism sought to exclude primarily not exploit the labour of the Arab workers, although they also used Arab labour for the worst tasks such as draining the Hula swamps.That is what makes Zionism so virulently racist.
Between 1948 and October 1951 the JNF ‘bought’ the land of the Palestinian refugees, some 2 million dunums.Prior to 1948 it had not even purchased at market prices 1 million dunums, let alone 3 million, so it tripled its holdings overnight.The JNF agreed with the Israeli state that the purchase would be at bargain basement prices (some claim that the whole transactions were a hoax and no money was actually exchanged) but ‘legally’ at least in Israeli law they were now the legal owners.
This is why 50 of us wrote to Ed Miliband urging him not to become a Patron of the JNF. We accept that he is getting his office together and that may be why he hasn't responded to our fax and e-mails, but just to be sure that he is aware of the issues, we sent a letter to the Guardian of 7th October 2010, which they printed, urging Miliband to show that his attempt to put New Labour's imperialist war mongering behind him is more than empty words.
The JNF, which is a para-state organisation, operating on behalf of the State whilst claiming it is independent, controls, 93% of Israeli land with the Israeli Lands Administration.In 1961 a series of 4 Acts including a Covenant between the JNF and the Israeli state meantthat the JNF had an almost 50% partnership with the ILA to control and allocate all ‘national’ lands i.e. Jewish national lands.
From the mid-1990’s onwards, Israeli Arabs became increasingly vocal about their exclusion from virtually all ‘national’ land.Whilst their villages were either ‘unrecognised’ and liable for demolition or else were being strangled by the refusal to grant them more land to expand, Israeli settlements and towns flourished.Arab buildings built in defiance of planning permission are regularly demolished.West Bank settlements are never demolished and nearly always given planning permission.This is the reality of Israeli Apartheid.
Just one example of how the JNF saw things was the statements and activities of Joseph Weitz,Director of the JNF's Land Department and a hands-on person who was integrally involved in land-purchase and settlement activities.Weitz, who was described as “the originator and indefatigable champion of state seizure of Arab land”, wrote about his ethnic cleansing (Transfer) plan as early as 20 December 1940:
‘If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us...The only solution is a Land of Israel, at least a western Land of Israel [i.e., Palestine], without Arabs. There is no room here for compromises... There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them, save few.” (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, 2004)
The JNF relentlessly pursued its plans of ethnic cleansing. Meron Benvenisti, former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, stated:
“Josef Weitz of the JNF... pushed hardest for Israel to get rid of the Arabs and take possession of their land ... This man had worked for the expulsion of the Arabs with a zeal that his superiors tried to restrain. Despite that, he succeeded in mobilizing people and institutions to implement both "retroactive transfer" and the transfer that he himself had initiated …”
Nor is this just history.When the Israeli Supreme Court eventually, in the Ka’adan case ruled that the Israeli Lands Administration could not refuse to lease or rent land to Arab Israelis, the JNF asked on its web site – ‘Have the Jews dreamt for 2,000 years of living in a Jewish State or a Democratic State.’Although this has now been removed, as far as I can tell, the replacement (above) is hardly more subtle, highlighting an opinion poll that 70% of Israelis are opposed to Israel being a state of all its citizens as opposed to its Jewish citizens.
This is the organisation that the wretched racist Gordon Brown, an imperialist to his heart, with a Christian Zionist father, and the war criminal Tony Blair became Patrons of.It is an organisation that David Cameron is a Patron of.We urge Ed Miliband not to follow in the footsteps of New Labour War Criminals.
Peaceful Activists? No Such Thing All Opposition to Israel = Terrorism
An excellent article by Ha'aretz’s Gideon Levy, one of the few sane voices, along with Amira Hass, amongst Israeli journalists. Most of the rest are content, like their counterparts elsewhere, to sing hymns of praise to Israel’s leaders and the military.
Ironically when Mairead Corrigan together with Betty Williams, launched the Peace People in Northern Ireland in 1975 it was Republicans who were most opposed to them because they were undermining the struggle against the British and calling on the oppressed, the Catholics of Northern Ireland, to adopt a peaceful strategy, at a time when the British Army was occupying the Catholic ghettos, having murdered 13 people in Bloody Sunday 4 years earlier.
This time Mairead Corrigan has targeted her campaign at those responsible for the violence.
If the court indeed deports Mairead Corrigan-Maguire we'll know that our court system is also tainted to the teeth
By Gideon Levy
The photograph was recently distributed by the IDF's propagandists: Mairead Corrigan-Maguire is seen being taken off the abducted ship Rachel Corrie at Ashdod port, as a soldier from the world's most moral army holds out his hand to help the honourable woman disembark. It was not long after the IDF's violent take-over of the Mavi Marmara, and Israeli propagandists were now hastening to peddle their cheap merchandise, showing how Israel treats "real" peace activists, as opposed to the Turkish "terrorists" on the earlier vessel.
Only four months have passed since the earlier event, and the very same lady has now spent a weekend in the deportees' cell at Ben-Gurion Airport. While we were having another warm, pleasant weekend, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate sat in an Israeli jail and nobody seemed to care. We were not ashamed, we were not outraged, we did not make a sound. It was a spectacle that could only have taken place in Israel, North Korea, Burma (Myanmar) and Iran - the state imprisoning and deporting a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize - and raised no more than a yawn here.
One court has already upheld the deportation, in a characteristically automatic action, and the Supreme Court will debate it today.
The new Israel is once again portrayed as an indrawn, detestable state, with a branch of the thought police at Ben-Gurion Airport. World-renowned intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, Spain's most famous clown Ivan Prado and now Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, are deported from it shamefacedly only because they dared to visit the country. And all this is backed by pathological public indifference.
The Irish Corrigan-Maguire is the victim of state terror. A former secretary at the Guinness Brewery in Belfast, she had three nephews, all children at the time, who were killed during a British targeted assassination in Northern Ireland. Their mother, her sister, who committed suicide some time later, was also badly injured in the attack. Corrigan Maguire eventually married her sister's widower and adopted his children. The frightful family tragedy turned her into a peace activist, and she began to hoist the flag of non-violent resistance. For this she won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976 (awarded retroactively the following year).
In recent years, Corrigan-Maguire has tried to hoist this flag in Israel, which knows a lot about state terror, assassinations and killing passers-by, yet is now brutally closing its gates in her face. Corrigan-Maguire demonstrated in Bil'in a few months ago and took part in two flotillas to Gaza. This is her sin. Israel is also claiming Corrigan-Maguire "ran wild" while officials tried forcibly to put her on an airplane. It is difficult to imagine this gentle woman running wild. She herself says she only tried to resist passively in order to complete the petition procedure granted her by law.
Israel, like North Korea, must have something to hide about its occupation regime and this is why it prevents people of conscience from entering and report about it to the world. Israel, like North Korea, is afraid of anyone who tries to protest against it or criticise its regime. No terrorists will enter here, but neither will anyone who opposes terror yet dares to criticise the occupation. For safety's sake, let's call them "terrorists" too, as we falsely called the Turkish activists. It will make it easier for us to deal with them. Yes, we prefer terror, because we know well how to handle it.
All those who are preaching sanctimoniously to the Palestinians to practice non-violent resistance had better take a look at the deportees' prison in Ben- Gurion Airport. This is how non-violent protesters will be treated. A peace activist is being held there, a woman of conscience who was allowed to receive her personal effects over the weekend only after the invention of the district court in Petah Tikva. She awaits the ruling of our beacon of justice, the Supreme Court, which, one may guess, will also not dare to object to the deportation.
If the court indeed upholds the disgraceful act today, in response to the Adalah organisation’s petition, then we'll know not only what we've become - that this is how we treat those who advocate non-violence - but that our court system is also a collaborator in the treachery and is tainted to the teeth.
A Nobel Prize laureate sits in Israeli detention, a few days after Israel hijacked another Gaza-bound aid boat, whose passengers included a Jewish Holocaust survivor, an Israeli father who lost a child to terror, and an air force pilot-turned-conscientious objector. It hijacked the boat to prevent them from reaching their destination and reminding the world of the blockade. This is the portrait of Israel today.
The JNF Plans to Plant Trees Over Newly Destroyed Bedouin Village of al-Arakib
If you want to know why the Israeli State is not a democratic state, ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ as it likes to describe itself, then the demolition of a whole village for no other reason that you want to change the demographic balance of the area, the Negev, is it.The dictatorship of a majority does not a democracy make.
And when you hear comments referring to ‘minorities and criminals’ it doesn’t take much imagination to recall to mind similar comparisons made between Jewish immigrants and criminals.But in its determination to ‘Judify’ the Negev and Galilee, the State of Israel and Zionism demonstrate why they are indelibly racist.
Tony Greenstein
The State of Israel vs. Citizens of Israel
A Chapter in the War of Attrition against the Bedouin
Today an entire village was demolished in Israel; a non-recognized Bedouin village: al-Arakib in the northern Negev, a few miles north of Beer-Sheva, next to Highway 40.
Hundreds of police and Special Patrol Unit forces, bulldozers, and security personal participated in the operation. Thirty left-wing activists from different parts of the country managed to reach the site at the last moment in a sign of solidarity with the residents and to protest the destruction. But against such superior forces, crippling forces, there was not much of a chance. The police created a buffer between the Bedouin residents and their homes; they formed a human wall between the activists and residents and the homes – and while doing so arrested several activists. Women and children were removed from their homes. Then, before the eyes of the people of al-Arakib, bulldozers demolished their homes and fields.
There is nothing even similar to the demolition of a home.
We know: there is deprivation and discrimination, there is neglect and privatization – not only in Israel. Even in countries that Israeli politicians often dream they belong to, 'white and well-ordered states' – there is racism and discrimination and deprivation. But not every state wages war against its own citizens, up to demolishing their homes.
When the authorities mobilize hundreds of security forces, Special Patrol Units, and police for an operation that is to begin with the first morning light; when you bring in bulldozers to demolish the homes of civilians; when you declare them to be a potential enemy and act preemptively to prevent an imagined risk using destruction and violence – this is war. Modern war, of course: war whose arsenal includes not only tanks, but bulldozers; not only planes, but building permits and decisions of planning commissions. And the government of Israel, on behalf of the State of Israel, is waging an ongoing war against its discriminated-against citizens, against the poor and the disadvantaged. This government does not simply neglect these citizens – it dispossesses, it threatens, and it destroys.
We have to remember: It was the people of al-Arakib who, in the past, saw their fields sprayed with pesticides from the air, had their health impaired and their fields destroyed. In the Knesset, those who defended these actions argued about the exact dose of pesticides to be used. Were people really suffering from headaches and side-effects as alleged? Was it perhaps possible to use a more reasonable dose? It took several years until the Supreme Court finally decided that the spraying of these field from the air is a clearly illegal act.
The Enemy Within
So why bring upon the people of al-Arakib this destruction? Just the day before the demolitions, the recent remarks of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the proposed Loyalty Law were published. Netanyahu stated his position clearly:
"We are a nation state, which means that the overall sovereignty of the country is reserved for the Jewish people. [...] Today, an international campaign is being waged against the definition of Israel as a Jewish state. I do not want to leave things as is [without a revised loyalty oath, GA], because we are under attack on this matter. The significance of these attacks is that various elements are liable to demand their own national rights and the rights of a state within the state of Israel – in the Negev, for example, if it becomes a region without a Jewish majority. This happened in the Balkans and constitutes a real threat." (My emphases; Netanyahu’s declaration was included in Haaretz Hebrew edition (26.7.2010), but not in the English one)
The words are clear: the state belongs to the Jews, not to all its citizens. Full civil equality of its citizens – individual and collective – constitutes a threat. Then the mirror effect: imagined aggression ("under attack", "real threat") justifies actual aggression. The Bedouin in the Negev are transformed into a "real threat," because something might happen there; Netanyahu doesn’t say what but refers to the Balkans. There were several cases of ethnic cleansings in the Balkans. Proponents of ethnic cleansing often explain that they are merely defending themselves from a minority group, whose very existence is for them a threat.
What are the Bedouin accused of? How did their very existence become a "real threat"? The Negev, says Netanyahu, might become a "region without a Jewish majority.” This is truly a good one: you can move from region to the next throughout the country and discover that in a particular area within Israel, there isn’t a Jewish majority, for example between Kafr Qara' and Umm al-Fahem, or between Sakhnin and ‘Arabe. Well, then don’t we have to do something against this threat? Yes, of course, and so we do! Think about the project of establishing the city of Harish in Wadi ‘Ara, not as a solution to the housing shortage with which the current residents of the area must contend, and not as part of development plans that will benefit all residents of the region, but rather as an attempt to to use the housing shortage of the ultra-Orthodox as a tool against the Arab resident of the area – while at the same time preventing Arab citizens from developing and expanding their own communities. Just like the lookouts that were established in the North to surround and divide, to combat the "threat" of Arab communities in the Galilee.
This is an ongoing war, a war of attrition against part of the citizenry of the country, a war whose arsenal includes prohibitions of construction and orders of demolition, and whose soldiers are building inspectors and the Green Patrol.
And while all of this is going on, demands are made upon Arab citizens to perform national service and to prove their loyalty to a state that is not loyal to them. Just a few weeks ago, near Shoket Junction in the Negev, in the context of everyday home demolitions, a Bedouin Soldiers Club was demolished. So what's the message? Clearly: No service, whether military or civilian, will guarantee equal rights. The Druze of the Galilee [who perform military service] don’t exactly enjoy equality, do they?
Evict, Move, Expel, Build, Evict
Why do the people of al-Arakib have to be evicted? Why are they being driven out? The residents of al-Arakib are not ‘invaders’ of state land. Their village exists from before the founding of the state. Like thousands of other Arab Bedouin in the Negev, they were expelled, evicted, and moved "temporarily," with or without promises of being allowed to return, for a week or six months, but in fact for good – and then their lands were confiscated. The Negev is full of Bedouin communities that were evicted and transferred to different locations. It’s easy for the state to believe that the Bedouin are landless, that they are simply nomads with no rights. It’s convenient fiction the state can recite to itself in order to justify their forced transfer from place to place. In actuality, it’s the state that has retransformed the Bedouin back into what Hanna Hamdan has called forced nomadism.
People are told that the state is trying to make the Bedouin sedentary, make them "modern." In fact, it’s the state that’s busy making them nomadic again, undermining their hold on their lands. In the towns where the state is attempting to fence them in, while ignoring their way of life, their traditions, their culture, their rights – there the Bedouin will not become tied to the land. They should become a source of cheap labor.
The Bedouin can be transferred from place to place for reasons of national security, like in the early 1950’s, and then again they can be transferred for reasons of peace, like in the late 1970’s, following Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt, so that new army bases could be built in the Negev. They can be evacuated for environmental reasons, because they’ve taken hold of “open spaces” – and then these same thousands of acres can be allocated to “individual ranchers,” Jewish ranchers, of course, who will “guard the national lands,” by taking hold of these very same “open spaces.”
Indeed, without the public’s having even noticed, on July 17 the Knesset passed one of the most important bits of recent legislation: a law that retroactively legalizes massive takeovers of land and resources, and clearly illegal unauthorized settlement; a law that grants the allocation of land to intruders – but positive intruders, the Jewish “adventurers” who have established for themselves individual ranches in the Negev.
Who Are the Intruders?
For whose benefit did the people of al-Arakib have to be evicted? For the planting of forests by the Jewish National Fund. No less. Evacuate people for trees – the trees, like the Jewish National Fund had to admit, are being planted with no master plan and for no environmental or agricultural rationale. These are not beneficial trees, but rather intruding trees. Trees that are designed to ensure control.
Trees like these can be seen elsewhere. We’ve seen such trees next to settlements in the West Bank; hundreds and hundreds of saplings, sometimes simply planted in barrels, to ensure holding on to fields which Palestinian farmers are forbidden to enter. If you visit ‘Ajami (in Jaffa) or Kfar Shalem (in southern Tel Aviv), you can also see such decorative woods: woods planted to ensure control, acre by acre, to ensure the rights of real estate sharks or simply limit the use of the land by local residents. And around al-Arakib you really can see hundreds and hundreds of such trees: barren hills denuded of grass, on which stand erect, like soldiers in formation, hundreds of trees designed to prevent the people of al-Arakib from working their land. These trees are a fence, a living fence.
al-Arakib is but a single case: two additional non-recognized villages in the northern Negev, Um-Hiran and ‘Atir, where the residents have been living for more than fifty years (they were transferred here from their previous location by order of the Martial Law Authorities), are supposed to disappear so that their place will be taken by a forest – the Hiran Forest. Today, you have look really hard to see a forest there, because there are currently no trees. The forest is a project, and the present residents of the location are simply an obstacle to its fruition. But hiding behind the virtual forest a virtual community, a new community, for Jews only – Hiran. This is how the Negev is made Jewish.
The new development plans for the Negev are plans of dispossession. Bedouin Arabs were inundated by a huge wave of dispossession during the early 1950’s; they again paid the price for the peace treaty with Egypt, and were forced out of the little that remained for them, from the places to which in certain cases they were transferred by the Martial Law Authorities, to other, often unviable locations. And now we stand before the next big wave. It’s important to note that this brutal wave, destroying any alternative regional development possibilities that could benefit all the Negev’s residents for the sake of Judaizing the region –is the result of a well-planned collaboration between private capital and corporations with the state.
The future plans for the Negev (Blueprint Negev) were prepared by an American consulting firm, McKinsey & Company (the first private consulting firm whose services were used by the Israeli army); the initiative led by the Jewish National Fund of the United States (JNF-USA). This is huge partnership between the State of Israel and private, foreign capital. And, yet, these are the ones who dare demand loyalty, when their own loyalty is to overseas interests! Is it really surprising to learn that Shimon Peres pushed the plan forward with such enthusiasm? The other partner can’t be forgotten: the project is the “baby” of the JNF-USA’s chairman's right-wing billionaire Ron Lauder. And the new settlement plans are being developed by the JNF in conjunction with "Or – National Missions”, with the aim of Judaizing the Negev and Galilee.
Special police forces in al-Arakib
Those who today witnessed the evacuation of al-Arakib can easily reach the wrong conclusion and believe that the Bedouin citizens of Israel are only up against the security forces. That is not the case. They are standing up for their elementary rights. But they are facing a powerful coalition that’s working against them, composed of both state authorities and non-state players – the JNF and the security forces, private corporations and settlers. And we must stand together with them.
Behind all of this hides a basic premise that infuses every aspect of our lives here: Problems are solved by dispossession and transfer, by bringing in "strong populations" in place of "weak populations," Jews instead of Arabs (but only loyal Jews, of course!). Evacuation and construction, more evacuations and more construction, and so on, round and round it goes. This premise not only dispossesses people of their assets and offers them to other people – to the “correct” people go the “right” places – open spaces, the land, the landscape; but it also destroys the social fabric of neighborhoods and communities, by uprooting, disintegrating, and resettling. In this way they also want to dispossess the people of the non-recognized village, Dahmash, in the center of the country, between Lod (Lydda) and Ramla. This is also what they’re proposing to the residents of Ajami (in Jaffa): to be evacuated for the benefit of “strong populations.” Israeli governments believe in replacing people. We need to replace this system – not the people who live here.
It has become something of a trend for British party leaders to become Patrons of the Jewish National Fund.The JNF is the body in Israel that controls, together with the Israeli Lands Administration, some 93% of Israel’s land.Yet it will only lease or rent to Jews.Imagine a British National Fund that refused to let its properties to Jews.Anti-Semitic or what?,
A group of us have therefore got together to write to Ed Milliband, the newly elected leader ofthe Labour Party warning him off such an idea.The ghastly Gordon Brown, who used to boast and bore people with tales of his equally racist Christian father, who just loved Israel and Zionism (as most anti-Semites do) and how he supportesd Zionism as a means of hastening the end of life on Earth.
Ed Milliband will undoubtedly prove that he is an equally enthusiastic supporter of western imperialism and the ‘special connection with Washington.
Nonetheless the Zionists have expressed disquiet at the fact that Miliband was brought up in a non-Zionist left-wing household and the fact that he is not ‘on message’ as regards Zionism unlike Blair and Brown.An Israeli foreign ministry speokesman said Mr Miliband “didn’t express the type of support of Israel in his speech that some previous British leaders have.”But what can you expect when your parents are Marxist!
However given Miliband comes from the right of the Labour Party, the stupid tabloid press notwithstanding, it is likely that his willingness to get close to the Americans means that in time he will end up with the same political position as his New Labour predecessors.
We write to you in your role as the newly elected leader of the Labour Party. In your speech to Conference last Tuesday September 28th, you said that Labour's foreign policy should be “based on values, not just alliances”. We agree. For too long Britain has blindly followed the United States in its support for the State of Israel, right or wrong.
There is one, immediate decision that you can make, which will show that your election is a fundamental break with New Labour’s past, unquestioning support for Israeli actions. Many of us recall how, during the attack on Lebanon in July 2006 and at the height of the bombardment of Gaza in January 2009, a bombardment which killed 1,400 people including 400 children, the Labour Government refused to call for a ceasefire or implement a ban on arms supplies to Israel.
In your new role as Leader of the Labour Party, you will undoubtedly be invited to follow in the footsteps of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, as well as David Cameron, who all became Patrons of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Charitable Trust. Your decision as to whether to accept this poisoned chalice will be an indication as to whether your speech on Tuesday was mere rhetoric or whether you actually meant it. We urge that you decline any such invitation, as it is incompatible with what you wrote on the Labour Friends of Palestine website about achieving “Peace through Human Rights and International Law”. You would also be underwriting the illegal occupation of the West Bank and the illegal settlements.
The JNF was founded in 1901 by the 5th Zionist Congress with the aim of purchasing land ‘for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties.’ After the formation of the State of Israel the JNF acquired the land of the expelled Palestinians for a mere fraction of its value. The JNF Law of 1953 charged the JNF, nominally a non-governmental organisation, with implementing Israeli government land policies. According to the Constitution of the Jewish Agency, and Article 3(a) of the Memorandum of Association of the JNF Ltd., ‘Land is to be acquired as Jewish property and… in the name of the JNF to the end that the same shall be held the inalienable property of the Jewish people. The Agency shall promote agricultural colonization based on Jewish labour…’
When the discriminatory practices of a private organisation became the official policies of the Israeli Government, and when that organisation was charged with implementing that policy, it made the Israeli government guilty of racism. If you agree to sponsor the JNF then you should also be prepared to support a British government that legislates that all ‘national land’ should not be purchased or leased by those who are not Christian. I think we would both agree that a British government which refused to sell land to Jews or Muslims was, by definition, racist. The same applies to the JNF.
In 1995 the Israeli Supreme Court, faced with legal petitions from Adalah and the Israeli Civil Rights Association, ruled that a State body, the Israeli Lands Administration, could no longer discriminate against Israeli Arabs by denying them the right to lease or rent State lands. Israel’s Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz said that this was equally applicable to the JNF. The response of the JNF was instructive. On its web site it wrote:
‘For the first time since the State of Israel was founded, the High Court of Justice has been required to consider petitions that de-legitimize the Jewish People’s continued ownership of KKL-JNF lands. These petitions are, in fact, directed against the fundamental principles on which KKL-JNF was founded and in accordance with which it has acquired land and managed it for the past hundred years, up to the present day. The petitions constitute a demand to deprive KKL-JNF – which serves as trustee for the lands of the Jewish People – of the right to make use of these lands for the continuation of the Zionist enterprise in the Land of Israel.’
And if this was not crystal clear, the JNF explained that:
‘A survey commissioned by KKL-JNF reveals that over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.’
That is the problem. The JNF, which is responsible for implementing the land policies of the Israeli state, a state which includes 1.5 million Arab citizens, acts on behalf of just one component of Israel’s population, its Jewish citizens. Hence why it favour a Jewish State as opposed to a Democratic State that represents all its citizens.
The response of the Israeli government to pressure from the JNF was to introduce a new JNF Bill which passed its first reading on 18th July 2007 by 65-16, stating that ‘"the leasing of JNF lands for the purpose of settling Jews will not be seen as unacceptable discrimination." In an Editorial entitled ‘A racist Jewish state’, Israel’s sole liberal newspaper, Ha'aretzdeclared that:
‘Every day the Knesset has the option of passing laws that will advance Israel as a democratic Jewish state or turn it into a racist Jewish state. There is a very thin line between the two. This week, the line was crossed. If the Knesset legal counselor did not consider the bill entitled "the Jewish National Fund Law" as sufficiently racist to keep it off the agenda, it is hard to imagine what legislation she will consider racist."
Britain’s JNF Charitable Trust also plays a major role in the ongoing displacement of the Bedouin residents of Israel’s Negev region. Funds raised from British donors, including Gift Aid, is being used to establish exclusively Jewish settlements. In order to force Arab communities from their ancestral lands, their villages are classified as 'unrecognized' and under constant threat of demolition. The JNF Charitable Trust is complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Israel’s Negev region. We trust that you will not, by becoming a patron of the JNF, become a party to the ethnic cleansing of Israel’s Bedouin population.
In the light of the commitments which you have given to oppose racism and support peace in Israel/Palestine we would find it inexplicable if you were to become a patron of an openly racist and discriminatory organisation that is in the forefront of the Greater Israel movement.
We look forward to your assurance that you will decline any invitation from the JNF Charitable Trust to sponsor it. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss with you the issues we have raised.
Yours sincerely,
Jackie AlsaidProfessor Mona Baker, University of ManchesterDavid BangsDr Alex BellDr Judith BrownDr Chris Burns CoxRuth ClarkAdam DarwishJames DickinsGreg DropkinJackie FearnleyAlf FilerDeborah Fink – Jews for Boycotting Israeli GoodsPete Firming, Brent Trades Union CouncilNaomi Foyle – Brighton Palestine Solidarity CampaignKenny FrydeTerry GalloglyAnne GrayTony Greenstein, Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre/UNISONCliff HanleyDr Rumy Hasan, Bricup and University of SussexAbe HayeemRosamine HayeemBob JarrettKevin MooreProfessor Moshe Machover, Kings College University of LondonBeryl MaizellsMichael Mansfield QCZoe Mars, Chair, Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity CampaignJohn MetsonNicola OstreicherErnesto ParamoProfessor David Pegg, University of YorkDinah RahmanRoger ReeveDee ReynoldsLeon RosselsonMichael SackinProfessor Myriam Salama-Carr, University of SalfordMiriam Scharf, East London NUTMichael ShanahanRuth Tenne, Israeli Human Rights ActivistPatricia TrickerYvette VansonStanley WalinetsNaomi Wimborne-Idrissi – J-BIGIsmail Zayid Dr Monica Wusterman, University of York
I remember the Union of Jewish Student’s response to criticism of Israel.‘Shalom’ and ‘Mutual Recognition’ they said.But of course these weren’t values that they took on board but as things to counterpose to support of the Palestinians and opposition to Zionist terror & racism.As if shouting ‘Shalom’ is an answer to smashing someone over the head.
So it is with Israel today.We had Benjamin Netanyahy stating that ‘we did everything to avoid violence’ after the boarding of the Mavi Marmara and the murder of 9 activists.Only the BBC fell for that one but then they always did have a blind spot for the violence of the State (unless the British state was at war with them).
The Jewish Boat to Gaza was people by a majority of persons over 60 years of age.Unlike the Gaza Freedom Flotilla it was a tiny, symbolic boat.But that didn’t stop the use of a taser gun, which is a portable means of torture, against Yonatan Shapiro.Although the violence was less against the Internationals on board, those who were Israeli also faced considerable violence, presumably because Israel thinks any of its citizens foolish enough to oppose Zionism and its barbarities deserves anything meted out to them.That is the nature of the Jewish state.
Indeed it is the best answer to the argument for Israel that it is a refuge for Jews in the diaspora.
Below is a Report on the Jews for Justice for Palestinians web site and then testimony from
There then developed a sight which will remain with me for the rest of my life – with the frigate in the background, two gunboats, two landing craft and four high powered ribs spread out in a semi-circle speeding towards us at perhaps 35 knots, with their bow waves and wakes flashing in the sunshine. It was surreal, it was like an action movie, and entranced by the sight I had to remind myself this was actually happening – this overwhelming force for a 9.7 metre 40 yr. old boat, the majority of its Jewish occupants over 60 years old, with no weapons and a publicized policy of passive resistance.
The next we knew there were two ribs very close alongside with the commander on a megaphone again warning us of the dangers if they boarded us. I reiterated our legal rights, and for what it was worth I accelerated, just to make a point that outpacing them was fantasy. Then as planned Itamar addressed the commandos in Hebrew and English, calling on them not to obey the orders to take actions which are illegal under international law. The ribs closed in, and the boarding commenced.
All the crew and passengers (apart from myself as I was steering) held hands.They boarded us simultaneously from both sides. At that moment we cut the engines and sat over the access points to the cut offs to prevent them restarting the engines. The wheel is on the starboard side of the boat. I was surrounded by three commandos, I held on to the wheel as hard as I could. It reminded me of being on violent picket lines with the police trying to break through. One grabbed my left arm, another my right arm. The third stood by with a Tazer gun. After a struggle they managed to prize my hands from the wheel and threw me down on the floor. I managed to crawl behind them and remove the engine starter keys but one of them saw me and prized the keys from my hands.
On the opposite side of the cockpit Yonatan Shapira and his brother Itamar had been identified by the IDF commander in charge. He sought to separate them from the others. Yonatan clasped Rami in a hug to prevent himself being removed. The senior officer then moved one sideYonatan’s lifejacket covering his left breast, placed a Tazer gun in contact with his clothing and fired it directly into his heart. Yonatan let out a dreadful scream and the force of the Tazer caused him to lose control of his muscles. He was pulled off Rami and across the cockpit to the middle. He was then hit twice more by the Tazer gun, screaming out again. Both he and Itamar were forcefully pulled off our boat onto the IDF rib on port side.They were driven at very high speed over the waters, which had now become moderately rough (the wind had increased to a F4) and it would have been very uncomfortable especially for Yonatan still recovering from the Tazer shocks. They were taken to the frigate where they were treated normally, then to shore and released on bail without charges.
Meanwhile I had turned off the fuel supply to the engines. After some time (the engines only burn 1 1/2 litres per hour) when the fuel in the pipes had been used up the port engine started to fail. (The starboard fuel shut-off failed to work). After many attempts to restart the engine the IDF took the boat in tow. The boat is designed to go through the water at a maximum speed of about 8 knots. They towed us through the rough waters at 12 – 14 knots. The boat was bouncing about violently, it was dangerous for the remaining passengers and crew, including Reuvan, our 82 year old holocaust survivor. We all sustained bruises and the passage to Ashdod was exhausting. There was something like eight commandos on the boat in addition to ourselves so it was grossly overloaded. It was surprising that the boat did not begin to break up, the whole structure was groaning and making cracking sounds. It was clear that they intended to seriously mistreat the boat. During the passage they tore down all the banners and flags – including the red ensign (the UK flag) which legally has to be displayed in all foreign waters.
As a gesture of defiance I decided to cook lunch! Not easy in the circumstance but I managed to produce omlett (with garlic) sandwiches which Reuvan, Lillian and I think Eli and I shared. Whilst in the galley I took the opportunity of chucking out of the window the carving knife, the bread knife, a chisel and two hammers from the tool box, remembering that similar items had been photographed as evidence of weapons on previous boats.
I’d like to point out that in the USA it is illegal for the police or the army to fire Tazers directly into the heart as there have been a number of cases of heart failure and death as a result of such targeting.
The fact that Yonatan was released without charge makes it very clear that the use of the Tazer on him was purely malicious.
Contrary to IDF reports, there was therefore, considerable resistance, be it non-violent, to the IDF’s illegal hijacking of our boat, and there was considerable, unprovoked and very dangerous violence perpetrated by the IDF.
…
See Glyn’s full testimony below, following the report by Yonatan and Itamar Shapira
Yonatan and Itamar Shapira report
29 September 2010
Yonatan and Itamar Shapira were two of the Israelis on-board the Jewish boat to Gaza, the Irene. They above all were subjected to violence from the Israeli forces who intercepted the boat.
These are their words an hour after they returned to their family in Israel:
“The Israeli media is being dominated by army propaganda. They’re claiming that the take over of the boat was non-violet and quiet on both sides – but what actually happened was that the boat passengers were non-violent, but the Israeli Navy was very violent.
At sunrise we stopped about 35 miles from shore and put up all the flags and banners from the organisation – the boat looked so, so pretty! We then turned south-east and headed towards the port in Gaza. Film maker Vish and journalist Eli took the dinghy and took stills and video of the boat. Everyone felt a sense of excitement as we stood on deck waving goodbye to the quiet journey we had been on. We knew that soon we would be intercepted, so we used the time for briefings. Holding each other’s hands, we talked about the principles of the boat and decided on strategies of how to deal with the Navy.
When we were approximately 20 miles outside of Gaza, a big Navy warship was spotted to the north of us. At that point it was still quite far away, so we held course.As the warship drew closer they hailed us and spoke to Glyn, the captain. The Navy said that we were entering a closed area by an oil rig, so the Irene altered course slightly in response. We then saw another smaller ship in front of them. As the warship approached and drew parallel to the Irene the smaller ship remained stationary. A number of smaller vessels were spotted coming from the east. The Navy again called us demanding to know our intention – we replied that we were headed for Gaza.
The Navy responded with the exact declaration they made before attacking the Mavi Marmara :
“You are entering an area which is under military blockade and is closed under international law.”
Itamar was in charge of communicating with the Navy, and responded by reading our own declaration in English and Hebrew:
“We are a boat of the European organisation Jews For Justice For Palestinians. We are unarmed and non-violent and determined to proceed to the port of Gaza. You are enforcing an illegal blockade and we do not recognise your right to do this. On this Jews For Justice for Palestinians boat are peace activists of all ages among us holocaust survivors, bereaved parents and Israelis who refuse to collaborate with the illegal occupation of Palestine.”
We waited for them to confirm that they had heard.
The Navy repeated their message in Hebrew – then the boats started coming from all sides. Eight army vessels surrounded us – three or four of the ships had cannons.
We called the soldiers to refuse their orders:
“We call on you IDF soldiers and officers to disobey the illegal orders of your superior officers. For your information, the occupation of Gaza and the Palestinian Territories are illegal under international law; therefore your risk being tried in the international courts. The blockade as well as the occupation is inhumane and contradicts universal and Jewish moral values. Use your conscience. Remember our own painful history. Refuse to enforce the blockade. Refuse to occupy Palestine.”
Itamar read this in Hebrew and English on radio a few times as the boats came towards us. Everyone was getting ready and holding hands on the Irene, getting ready for interception. Vish was in the front taking photos and filming the whole thing.
There were more than 100 soldiers on all the military boats around our boat. Two small boats with cannons drew up on both sides, shouting and threatening us with megaphones and constantly moving closer towards us. Glynn the captain stayed calm and behaved exactly to principles of boat, staying on course and challenging the Navy.
The military spoke to Itamar directly and stated that he was responsible for the harm that would come to us and the risk that we were taking by not changing course. We understood very quickly that we were about to be boarded at any moment. The small boats came right up close and then the north side jumped on board.
ITAMAR: As i was talking to the army boat cruising alongside us with some 20 armed, and muscled navy soldiers i was amazed for the thousandth time in my life at how the army portrays the reality to themselves and to us. They insisted that it is me personally who is responsible for the violence that may happen if we do not obey and they will be “forced” to board our little boat. I cynically tried to show them how ridiculous it seems to have so many armed, strong and trained soldiers boarding a boat with 9 un-armed people, most of whom remember the second world war and civil right movement in the 60’s, who declare non-violence. How can they portray the violence as our responsibility. I reminded them of the holocaust survivor and bereaved parent on board and that we do not want any confrontation with them. I think it made them angry but reduced their possible violence to most passengers apart from Yonatan and I. It is very important to remember that the Israeli army had killed two Gazan fishermen in the passing week with minimum media attention for getting “too close” to what the IDF has decided the blockade border is. Therefore their violence toward us must be put in proportion to this.
During all the military action I was talking to Al Jazeera but I’m not sure what they have of it or what was broadcast as he was about to go on air when the phone was grabbed.
They attacked Itamar and took him to their boat. The other soldiers viciously pushed Glynn from the helm. The rest were holding hands singing “We Shall Overcome.” I think Reuven may have been playing his harmonica!
ITAMAR: At least 2 soldiers, to what i understood, were assigned to getting all recording devices. The Israeli Ch 10 reporter stood next to me and one of the soldiers just took his camera from his hand. I took the camera back without touching the soldier and put it behind my back and refused to give it to the soldiers. The soldier called another one and together tried to make me move with twisting arms and shouting and trying to reach for the camera. when they did not succeed they asked for a permission from their commander to arrest me. 4 of them dragged me to the military boat and forced me down to the boat’s floor in order to handcuff me. i did not give up until one of them pushed his fingers deep onto the artery in my neck, and then i heard Yonatan’s dreadful scream and saw him losing control of his body because of the electric shock he got. I shouted to Rami to throw the camera into the boat’s engine-room and Yonatan was brought to the military boat that i was on and we were both handcuffed and taken to a large ship.
While we were holding hands singing the soldiers started taking over everything. At that point I was sitting on the floor of the boat hugging Glynn and Reuven, trying to decrease the risk to them, then moved to sit with Rami. On each side one of the passengers turned off the engines so as not to make it possible for the navy to steer the boat to a different place.
Soldiers on boat approached me and Rami, they seemed to want to take me to a Navy boat. Me and Rami hugged each other – the strongest hug I have ever given to anyone!
The officer came towards us, pulling out his taser ordered us to stop holding on to each other. The soldier threatened if I did not let go they would hurt me, then tasered me on my right shoulder and shot twice – it was very painful – but not as painful as the next shot where he pulled aside my life jacket, put gun on my chest and fired.My whole body lost control and I convulsed like a fit, I let out a high pitched scream. Then they took me to one of their boats.
And that was the “non-violent” take over of the Jewish boat to Gaza. Of course if we were Palestinians or Muslims they would have shot with live ammo, but because we were Jews and Israelis and had world attention they did not want to do what they did to the Mavi Marmara. Of course later they took all evidence filmed by Eli and Vish and the only evidence which now exists is with the military and the military film itself. It would be amazing if somehow there was pressure for the army to release the media materials we shot – there’s no reason for them to keep it. It’s amazing footage of all 48 hours of the voyage and the messages we wrote on the masts and flags from everyone who had sent wishes. Probably the most powerful images are of the actual seconds when the Navy boarded the ship.
All our banners and flags were pulled down by the army and the boat was pulled with the rest of passengers on-board to Ashdod.
Itamar and I went to Ashdod in the big warship which took several hours. We saw the boat being towed to the port. We saw the protesters, friends, family and supporters waiting for us on the beach since the morning, and a boat of film makers with cameras that were trying to reach us but was intercepted and forced to turn back to the port.
Each one of us had an intimate body search – they touched me quite intimately but no internal search. Eventually we were taken to a police station in Ashdod and saw more demonstrators waiting for us outside.
The police station took several hours, they interrogated Rami, Itamar, Reuven, Eli and I and we were all accused of trying to enter an illegal closed zone, while Rami, Itamal and I were also accused of threatening, insulting and attacking the soldiers.We were all released around eight in the evening. It was shocking to be attacked so brutally whilst hugging and singing – the soldiers shouted at us, shook and pushed us. We were shocked to hear the army say the takeover was peaceful.
There was a big group of Israeli media and also people from Reuters and a few others waiting for us outside station. We answered their questions, then Reuven took out his harmonica and played a beautiful Jewish songs about people who pursued peace. Everyone joined in around us, as we sang together some people who were passing by shouted things like “death to the Arabs”.
If we weren’t Jews and Israelis we would have much less chance to make it out alive. I send my love and thanks to everyone for all of their support, love and efforts to help us.”
NOTE:
Yonatan was not given or offered any medical attention at any point after he was shot with the taser.
They were released on 5000 N.I.S bail to return for additional interrogation or court discussion.
It is unclear as to whether they will be charged.
Glyn Secker’s Testimony
Getting to Farmagusta was a long long trip, the longest passage we’d made – two nights and three days, and having to manually helm every minute of the way as we never managed to get the auto-pilot working. Usually after such passages there’s the expectation of being able to catch up on sleep, to relax a little and to re-charge ourselves. But we were only too aware that as the last port of call this stop was going to be be the most demanding of all: we had intentionally chosen a port which was not set up for small craft and knew that even finding a berth was going to be a challenge. Then we had an intensive schedule of press conferences, loading the boat with the aid and the banners, re-fueling and watering enough for double the length of the final passage (in case we were forced to return), getting the passengers on board, and all this under the watchful eyes of the port authorities whose attitude we were uncertain of.
We arrived as Sven-Y-Two as a tourist boat. A local fisherman allowed us to use one of his berths and then amazingly organized fuel from the town which he brought in jerry cans, and water, and helped me buy the outboard motor for the Gaza fishermen, spending most of the afternoon driving me round the town looking for a dealer open on the weekend. The port police were friendly but of course bound by their own cumbersome procedures, then surprised us by summoning other officials to come to us rather than us having to find them in town.
Meeting up with the London team and the passengers was straightforward and a mixture of hugs and kisses and anxiety and frenetic action. The press conference the next morning generated its own momentum and and it was then that I really began to feel the whole project lifting off. And it did so with a bang – the AP team were local Turkish Cypriots and as a matter of routine sought permission from the port authority to film our departure despite all the strictures to keep beneath the radar. Our hearts sank when returning to the port we were greeted by the sight of a police car. Not to arouse suspicion we had invented a story that we had just met up with a group of friends on a separate holiday and that we wished to take them for a spin around the bay. But we then discovered that the regulations required the port police to hold the passports until people return. At this point we realised the story may not hold, and we were at a loss as to what to do. After more discussion between the authorities it became clear that they had probably cottoned on to whom we really were and simply stated ‘Look, if you all just want to get on the boat and go and not return, that’s fine with us.’ ! So we were then into a frantic scramble to get away before there were any calls to higher authorities or they changed their minds. Hurriedly we laid out all the aid to be photographed, got all the banners out, got all passengers on board and within half an hour had cast off. The friendly fisherman had invited the AP media on board and as we left the port holding aloft the banners he cast off and circled us giving them the shots which went around the world and which alerted the IDF to our imminent arrival.
The weather was still very kind to us and we made better progress than expected. Not wanting to time the encounter with the IDF in the dark we slowed down and when the morning had warmed up I suggested that a good way to de-stress would be to stop the boat and for us all take a swim in the sparkling deep blue water. We put out a long line with a fender on the end and in we all plunged – a swim to remember. Reuvan was amazing, confidently swimming away from the boat and me trying to keep him within reach of the safety line! I think I was the only one who had any breakfast – home made muesli (wonderful almond nuts).
And then finally after all these days and weeks of anticipation we identified a frigate on the horizon. It shadowed us for some considerable time, keeping on our port side about five miles off. Then we saw a number of smaller craft lined up and realized that the encounter was approaching. We rehearsed our strategies and waited, with adrenalin levels slowly rising. Shortly there came a call on Ch 16 over the VHF from the frigate asking us our intentions and the flag of the boat. I informed them that we were heading for Gaza port, that we were in international waters and had no intention of entering Israeli waters. They replied that Gaza was within a prohibited area and that we should change our course. I responded by stating that that did not accord with international law, that we were unarmed, had no materials which could be put to military use, that we carried a consignment of aid for Gaza and that we expected safe passage. They then warned us that they would intercept us, that this could be dangerous for the crew and damaging for the boat. I reiterated that as a British flagged boat they had no legal right to intercept us and that we intended to maintain our course to Gaza. There was no reply and we continued on our passage for perhaps another twenty minutes – presumably they were waiting for us to cross the boundary of their unilaterally declared prohibited zone.
There then developed a sight which will remain with me for the rest of my life – with the frigate in the background, two gunboats, two landing craft and four high powered ribs spread out in a semi-circle speeding towards us at perhaps 35 knots, with their bow waves and wakes flashing in the sunshine. It was surreal, it was like an action movie, and entranced by the sight I had to remind myself this was actually happening – this overwhelming force for a 9.7 metre 40 yr. old boat, the majority of its Jewish occupants over 60 years old, with no weapons and a publicized policy of passive resistance.
The next we knew there were two ribs very close alongside with the commander on a megaphone again warning us of the dangers if they boarded us. I reiterated our legal rights, and for what it was worth I accelerated, just to make a point that outpacing them was fantasy. Then as planned Itamar addressed the commandos in Hebrew and English, calling on them not to obey the orders to take actions which are illegal under international law. The ribs closed in, and the boarding commenced.
All the crew and passengers (apart from myself as I was steering) held hands.They boarded us simultaneously from both sides. At that moment we cut the engines and sat over the access points to the cut offs to prevent them restarting the engines. The wheel is on the starboard side of the boat. I was surrounded by three commandos, I held on to the wheel as hard as I could. It reminded me of being on violent picket lines with the police trying to break through. One grabbed my left arm, another my right arm. The third stood by with a Tazer gun. After a struggle they managed to prize my hands from the wheel and threw me down on the floor. I managed to crawl behind them and remove the engine starter keys but one of them saw me and prized the keys from my hands.
On the opposite side of the cockpit Yonatan Shapira and his brother Itamar had been identified by the IDF commander in charge. He sought to separate them from the others. Yonatan clasped Rami in a hug to prevent himself being removed. The senior officer then moved one sideYonatan’s lifejacket covering his left breast, placed a Tazer gun in contact with his clothing and fired it directly into his heart. Yonatan let out a dreadful scream and the force of the Tazer caused him to lose control of his muscles. He was pulled off Rami and across the cockpit to the middle. He was then hit twice more by the Tazer gun, screaming out again. Both he and Itamar were forcefully pulled off our boat onto the IDF rib on port side.They were driven at very high speed over the waters, which had now become moderately rough (the wind had increased to a F4) and it would have been very uncomfortable especially for Yonatan still recovering from the Tazer shocks. They were taken to the frigate where they were treated normally, then to shore and released on bail without charges.
Meanwhile I had turned off the fuel supply to the engines. After some time (the engines only burn 1 1/2 litres per hour) when the fuel in the pipes had been used up the port engine started to fail. (The starboard fuel shut-off failed to work). After many attempts to restart the engine the IDF took the boat in tow. The boat is designed to go through the water at a maximum speed of about 8 knots. They towed us through the rough waters at 12 – 14 knots. The boat was bouncing about violently, it was dangerous for the remaining passengers and crew, including Reuvan, our 82 year old holocaust survivor. We all sustained bruises and the passage to Ashdod was exhausting. There was something like eight commandos on the boat in addition to ourselves so it was grossly overloaded. It was surprising that the boat did not begin to break up, the whole structure was groaning and making cracking sounds. It was clear that they intended to seriously mistreat the boat. During the passage they tore down all the banners and flags – including the red ensign (the UK flag) which legally has to be displayed in all foreign waters.
As a gesture of defiance I decided to cook lunch! Not easy in the circumstance but I managed to produce omlett (with garlic) sandwiches which Reuvan, Lillian and I think Eli and I shared. Whilst in the galley I took the opportunity of chucking out of the window the carving knife, the bread knife, a chisel and two hammers from the tool box, remembering that similar items had been photographed as evidence of weapons on previous boats.
I’d like to point out that in the USA it is illegal for the police or the army to fire Tazers directly into the heart as there have been a number of cases of heart failure and death as a result of such targeting.
The fact that Yonatan was released without charge makes it very clear that the use of the Tazer on him was purely malicious.
Contrary to IDF reports, there was therefore, considerable resistance, be it non-violent, to the IDF’s illegal hijacking of our boat, and there was considerable, unprovoked and very dangerous violence perpetrated by the IDF.
On arriving at Ashdod we were greeted by perhaps 100 people in uniforms of one sort or another within an a secure area created by ships containers. We were obliged to pass through a tent where we were subjected to detailed body searches and luggage searches. I was the last out as I insisted on making an inventory of the boat valuables, though I was unable to get any officer to countersign it it, it was taken by a female officer from I believe their foreign office, but this was not clear. Before I was allowed back on the boat to do the inventory it was searched, including the use of a dog. None of us of course had any illegal drugs, but I have to admit of a nervous moment when someone asked me if any previous owner might have stashed anything away – this hadn’t occurred to me. Whilst waiting I was approached by a Major who stated that he was in charge of Gaza boarder security and he offered to transport our aid to Gaza. He arranged for us to go onto the boat, I extracted the aid from the lockers and he placed it where he could find it later. The boat was in a state of chaos, having been ransacked by those searching it. I don’t suppose they intend clearing out the fridge and other food, so god knows what it will be like after a few weeks in what is still a hot time of year. Combined with the split bellows on the loo pump whoever goes on the boat next will need a good face mask and a strong stomach.
I was taken to the Immigration and Boarder Authority where I experienced a truly Kafkaesque moment. We were presented with a form to sign which stated that I was due to be deported being suspected of residing in Israel illegally. When I pointed out that the only reason I was in Israel at all was that the IDF had kidnapped me and forcefully brought me into Israel on the orders of the government, the reply was that it did not matter who had brought me in, but that now I was there I was there without permission and so due for deportation. They were not amused by my laughter.
The regulations allowed for a rapid departure at their expense if I signed the form, but I was anxious not to be seen to recognize the Israeli law creating the blockade and therefore the basis for deportation.Then equally bizarrely, they stated that I could add whatever statement I wished to the form and could have a photocopy, so I added a clause stating that I did not recognize the legal basis for the deportation as it had no basis in international law, and duly signed.
Eventually the lawyers then arrived – really great people. I checked that my understanding of the law was correct and that if I had opted to go to court to appeal the deportation the result would have been the same and they confirmed I had it right. The IDF had smashed up the sat phone I had hired in front of me. I hope they will explain to the insurance company why they had not just taken it so that it could be returned later.
I was then taken to the detention centre at Ben Gurion airport. Again we and our luggage were all subject to yet more detailed searches. The smallness of the minds of those whose job it is day in and day out to carry out these numbing tasks can only be guessed at. Then, I was alone with Vash, banged up for the night – banged being a very appropriate word describing the door slam behind you. Having many times visited clients in detention or prison as a social worker it was odd indeed being on the other end but my complete self confidence in the absolute correctness of our principles and our understanding of international law never deserted me.
Despite asking for water I was left without a drink for 12 hours. When I asked again in the morning I was told to drink the tap water – which was warm. Later they provided a cup of tea and a roll and a towel, so I was able to shower. The officers who were to take me to the airport were Ethiopian Jews and were required to put me in ankle cuffs for the journey. I told them it was not at all necessary – they were rather embarrassed and apologized but said they were obliged to use them. At least they carried my bag to the minibus. I was taken directly to the plane on the tarmac and had to climb a metal staircase up to the access, the cuff chain clanking on the steps – reminded me of Winton Marsarlis’s song about the chain gangs.
They removed the cuffs out of sight of the other passengers and then another Kafqeresque moment when I am welcomed aboard by the chief steward as any other passenger, informed that there will be a meal and drinks provided and wished me a comfortable journey! There was sophisticated inflight entertainment – it was a Boeing 777 – but there was no news service at all, very odd, I was in an El Al bubble.
I didn’t think anyone at home knew of my flight arrival time as I didn’t know it until I was on the plane, but the lawyers must have told Miri and it was absolutely great, in fact overwhelming, to be greeted by Vanessa and a welcome party of close friends – amazing, what a two days, never to be forgotten.
Its fantastic coming back to amazing support that’s buzzing. I’m overwhelmed with the results I think it was really successful. We made our point to the world very powerfully that there are probably hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world who are appalled at the Israeli policies to the Palestinians; the violations of their humanity and their human rights.
In the article below from Challenge – a magazine that broadly supports the Israeli Communist Party Khadash, Yacov Ben Efrat quotes columnist Nahum Barnea as saying that ‘it smells the same’ as the racist Nuremberg Laws the Nazis introduced in 1935 against the Jews.
