Wish You Orwell

The secretary general of the CPI and other apparatchiks still support the Assad regime

A few months back I wrote about the fact that the communists are at it again: Saying one thing in Hebrew and another in Arabic. The specific case was Syria and the fact that the secretary general of the CPI, Muhammad Naffa, defended the Assad regime. There was a minor storm, and MK Dov Henin made a point of telling me that the official position of the CPI is resistance to the Assad regime and the massacre it commits.

That was more than three months ago. Since that time, the number of victims of the regime has increased significantly, and Yossef Elgazi (a former long-time CPI activist who left the party in 1990 and has since diligently documented its deviations) stayed on the beat. He found (Hebrew) that Naffa kept expressing his support of the Assad regime and blaming its opponents of being agents of American imperialism. The CPI Arabic site published several articles supporting the regime, and even one supporting the Gadaffi regime, which is unusually bizarre.

Elgazi’s most interesting finding is that a quiet demonstration (it must have been particularly quiet, because the Israeli media missed it) took place in mid-September in Haifa, in front of the French consulate. The demonstration was reported in the Arabic media, and among the people present was Naffa, former MK ‘Issam Makhoul, MK Said Naffa (who was kicked out of BALAD) and other senior CPI apparatchiks. According to the demonstration’s manifest, it was intended “to show solidarity with Syria and its national leadership against the plots of imperialism, Zionism, and Arab reactionary forces.” In Hadash’s Arabic site’s description of the demonstration, Naffa was quoted as saying that “Arab reactionary forces, particularly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Emirate of Qatar, support every action intended to destroy any progressive action in the Arab world, whether we speak of the brave Lebanese resistance movement, the Palestinian resistance movement, the strong position of Iran, the strong position of Syria against the imperialistic plans of the US for the creation of a New Middle East.” I’m certain American right-wing nutjobs would be overjoyed to hear the leader of the CPI shares their fears of a “new Middle East.” Needless to say, none of this made an appearance in Hadash’s Hebrew sites and publications. Maybe it was too embarrassing.

So who represents the position of Hadash-CPI? Its official proclamations, or its SG’s statements? Communist parties are famous for their strict ideological purity, which made split time and time again, like amebas on PCP. A famous story, which may be apocryphal but makes the point, tells of an American communist who left the party and founded a Trotskist faction, left it in order to found a more pure one, and finally suffered from multiple personalities and split from himself. If the CPI wants us to take it seriously come elections day – and the options do look bleak – it can’t allow itself to keep Naffa as SG and keep his faction as part of the party. It can’t keep on writing, time and time again, one thing in Arabic and another in Hebrew.

I mean, it obviously can – but then it has to take into account that what happened to the communist parties in Europe after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia will happen to it. No Israeli of conscience may support a party strongly suspected its heart is with the Assad regime. After all, had Naffa showed up in a demonstration supporting not Assad but, say, Thatcher, or – heavens forbid – Netanyahu, he would have been kicked out of office so quickly, he wouldn’t have the time to utter “false consciousness”. If Hadash wants to be taken seriously, and not be suspected of being an agent of influence for the Assad regime or even (Flying Spaghetti Monster save and protest us) for the Gaddafi regime, then it needs to be purged.

And if it can’t, or won’t, then we have a problem.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

“Price tag” pogromchiks desecrated cemeteries in Jaffa, as part of their attempts to cause a civil war

Hoodlums whose pride is their Jewishness have desecrated last evening – according to testimonies, less than an hour before Yom Kippur – two cemeteries in Jaffa. One of the cemeteries was Muslim, the other Orthodox Christian. The hoodlums desecrated tombstones and wrote “price tag” and “death to Arabs” on them. This being Yom Kippur, the Israeli media did not report anything yet – at least not that I’ve seen. MK Ahmed Tibi confirmed the details in an email, and you can see pictures here. Tibi further said that “We are facing a rising wave of terrorist acts by Jewish extremists who act almost with no hindrance in the occupied territories, and have lately turned their attention to the Green Line in order to harm places sacred to Muslims and Christians. The responsibility lies wholly with the government and its apparati”. A protest vigil will be held tonight in Jaffa; you can find details about it here (Hebrew and Arabic).

As my colleague Larry Darfner noted, this latest wave of attacks by Jews comes on the background of an almost unprecedented calmness, security-wise. The fact that they boil over the Green Line is not accidental. These people, after all, are the disciples of Baruch Goldstein; if they had broader horizons, they could name Abu Musab Al Zarqawi as another mentor. Their whole purpose is ending this calmness. They want blood, fire and columns of smoke. When these will appear, they will lean back and say “we told you so.” Another point worth noting is the desecration of the Christian cemetery: Contrary to the myths, it proves that the hatred of mankind of Orthodox Judaism has little if anything to do with the current conflict with the Palestinians. It is the last in a long, under-reported attacks on Christian establishments in Israel.

One further wonders whether this escalation – how many more steps to the gates of hell? – is not a response, among others, to the arrest of a suspect in the burning of the mosque in Tuba Zangaria. Terror organizations often react in this way to the arrest of their members, and the whole logic of the “price tag” pogroms is to punish Palestinians for the actions of the security forces.

The guilt resides, as Tibi noted correctly, with the government of Israel. PM Netanyahu may denounce these pogroms, but he is speaking out of both sides of his mouth: He had no problem whatsoever sitting on the same platform with Dov Lior, possibly the worst of the inciting rabbis. Shmuel Elihau, the municipal rabbi of Safed, keeps drawing his government salary despite publishing illegal calls for denying apartments to Israeli Palestinians. This is the same Eliahu who openly and clearly refused to denounce the “price tag” pogroms. He is still in office. Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar – the one suspected of kidnapping and assault, not the one suspected of receiving bribes and inappropriately touching men – said this week that the burning of the mosque in Tuba Zangria “may have been a blood libel.” (Hebrew) It’s easy to imagine the uproar had, say, a Polish bishop said he opposed the burning of synagogues, but we should first ascertain this isn’t a blood libel against good Christians. Amar keeps his job as if nothing happened; we didn’t even had a proper public outcry. In short, the government of Israel looks, when trying to fight Jewish terrorism, like the Saudi government of a decade ago, facing the Salafist terrorists: It is main source of funds to the terrorists, and they can only exist because the government’s armed forces support them.

The West Bank pogromchiks has made a mockery of the IDF’s legal obligation to protect the indigent population from them. Now they are trying to make it plain to Israeli Palestinians that they, too, will not be protected by the Zionist regime – and the latter know it’s not that the regime can’t, it’s that it won’t.

The pogromchiks, like Yigal Amir and like almost all Jewish terrorists, act out of supporting communities and out of the knowledge no one will turn them in. The vast majority of the settlers and the religious community, of course, will not dare to act themselves in this way. They will simply keep a quiet support from afar. As Yoel Bin Noon, who exposed the rabbis who gave the halachic decision to murder Rabin, found to his cost, the religious have no problems treating you as an outcast; Bin Noon had to move to another settlement and hire bodyguards for a while. If the settlers were serious about denouncing the pogroms, and not just paying lip service, Dov Lior and Shmuel Eliahu would have been excommunicated ages ago. However, lighting a fire on the Sabbath will get in you in trouble in the settlements – unless that fire is in a mosque. Historians dubbed the Ku Klux Klan of the years immediately after the Civil War as the military arm of the democratic party; the pogromchiks are the military arm of the Yesha Council, and they make every effort to import West Bank mores into Israel proper.

So what can be done? We can begin by closing down the hornet’s nest, the yeshiva in Yitzhar, and ban all its teachers and students from the West Bank. The government can announce that for every “price tag” action, a hesder yeshiva – yeshivas of part-time soldiers, the mainstay of the settler movement – will be closed down. Shmuel Eliahu, and all the rabbis who signed his call to deny apartments to non-Jews, can be fired. We can, in short, present the Jewish Brotherhood with an iron wall, and inform them for every “price tag” action, they’ll pay a much more painful price tag.

But that requires resolute political will and the ability to make historical decisions. It cannot be imagined that the Netanyahu government, most of its ministers supporting the pogromchiks anyway, will be able to do so. Like the original pogromchiks, of the Czarist times, the “hill youth” know that the government has its back, and that nothing will happen to it; and that is not likely to change. Not under this government.

So maybe it is time for Israeli Palestinians to turn to the international community and demand protection, as the Israeli government can’t protect them. After all, by its actions – or rather, inaction – in the face of Jewish terrorism, the Netanyahu government is giving up a part of its sovereignty.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

One of the attackers in Anatot was identified as Yossi Ben Arush, a police investigator residing in the settlement. Police: If someone complains, Internal Affairs will investigate

An unusually violent incident took place during the last weekend in the settlement of Anatot, when large groups of settlers attacked Palestinian and Israeli peace activists on two occasions. The violence was well-documented by the activists. The first attack happened during the day, the latter at night, when the activists returned to the settlement to protest. During the second attack this person was prominent:

(The picture was taken by Activestills and is published here with permission)

In a strange attempt to move the blame away from the settlers, Rotter – a Jehovist-right-wing equivalent of Anonymous – published a post this morning (Hebrew), identifying the attacker as police investigator Yossi Ben Arush, whom it is claimed resides in Anatot. According to the anonymous writer’s somewhat confused logic, the fact that Ben Arush is a settler residing in Anatot somehow proves settlers had nothing to do with the attack.

Leftist activist Michal Sapir, who was present during the attack, told me in a phone conversation that she, too, recognized Ben Arush, as she was interrogated by him in the past. Sapir further said that she cried out to Ben Arush “What are you doing, I recognize you, you’re a cop”. From the pictures published by the Rotter poster it would seem Ben Arush has attacked at least two of the protesters: Assaf Sharon and Gil Gottglick.

It should further be noted that a significant number of the settlers of Anatot are policemen; that witnesses noted that several of the settlers tried to prevent the rioting of the others; and that there are certainly worse offenders than Ben Arush. Even so, policemen who allow themselves to attack civilians, even when not in uniform, are justly considered to be worse than mere offenders. At least, since when we are dealing with a cop who is also a settler, who attacks leftist activists, we can safely say this wasn’t a pogrom: After all, the police famously stand aside during pogroms, they do not participate in them.

The police district’s spokeswoman, asked for a comment, said that should someone lodge a complaint against Ben Arush, and should any proof be brought forward – such as the pictures – than Internal Affairs will investigate Ben Arush, which is the normal procedure. Activist Gil Gottglick responded on my Hebrew blog, saying he intends to lodge such a complaint. Developing.

Yair Lapid’s vapid comment shows us the rotten heart of the Israeli center

It’s hard to explain the position Yair Lapid holds in Israeli public life, because there’s hardly any Western equivalent to think of. Lapid, the son of former justice minister Tommy Lapid – who was a prominent journalist and columnist for ages – is the anchor of the Channel 2 Friday night magazine show, one of the most watched in the country; He also writes a weekly column in the most popular weekly supplement, Yediot’s “7 Yamim”.

On top of all this, he is expected to follow his father and announce his political ambitions. Lapid acknowledged this about a year ago, when he admitted he has such ambitions, and in the face of criticism informed the public he would quit his media positions six months before the elections – which is, alas, bullshit: Aside from the elections of 1988, no Israeli elections were ever held on time. Lapid denied recently he is about to leave his media positions soon.

He is considered, among the cognoscenti, to be the fraudest of the frauds. He claims to be a master of American culture – but it was noticed his knowledge is very shallow. He claims to be a Jewish Reform thinker, but published a book about the Bible full of embarrassing mistakes and misquotes. He is supposed to speak immaculate English – but was caught red handed by yours truly (Hebrew) at not being able to tell the difference between “forefathers” and “four fathers”. He is a lousy interviewer, a master of the softball question, whose main contribution to Israeli culture is the question “What do you consider to be ‘Israeli’?”. He is also a radical centrist, naturally – and highly telegenic. Which, naturally, makes him a serious political candidate.

As you can, I am not a fan. Why am burdening you, gentle reader, with unnecessary information about a noxious personality? Because in his latest column, composed of 50 inane resolutions for the Jewish New Year (which I don’t celebrate; it’s not really New Year if you have to ask other people when is it due), there’s a very revealing note. Resolution #14 goes like this: “I will not download movies or albums by Israeli creators. It isn’t fair.”

Now, we can argue whether abuse of copyrighted material is theft till kingdom come. My position is it is, but I acknowledge that, as a creator of content, I am biased. What is clear here is Lapid considers such abuse as “unfair” – but only towards Israeli creators. The rest, as far as he is concerned, are fair game. Are you a struggling British singer? A promising Nepalese film maker? Screw you, says Yair Lapid.

This is Israeli – or, rather, Jewish; Lapid does not write “goyim,” but he might as well – exceptionalism at its worse. Lapid is pretty certain the vast majority of his readers won’t see anything wrong with his formulation. Those who do can be easily dismissed as “self-hating”. And that, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with the Israeli center, which would be considered extreme right in most Western countries.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

How the occupation justice system saved face in the case of Samar Alawi

In his influential book about the occupation circa early 1987, “The Yellow Time,” David Grossman describes an unusual scene in a military court in the West Bank. The defense shows incontrovertible proof that the defendant cannot possibly be guilty of the crime attributed to him. This causes a problem, which Orwell first expressed in his “To shoot an Elephant”: Acquitting the defendant means the occupier can err, which may cause derision towards him; Convicting him, on the other hand, is a clear travesty which may cause unrest. The judge finds a disingenuous solution: He convicts the defendant of a crime he was not charged of, and sentences him to serve the precise number of days he already did. In this way, an innocent man is freed, but the Occupation does not lose face.

Something of the sort took place two days ago (Monday). Samar Alawi, the head of the Al Jazeera station in Afghanistan, was secretly arrested by the GSS (General Security Service, AKA Shin Beth) at the beginning of August, as he tried to cross from the West Bank to Jordan . The case was kept under a partial gag order. The GSS claimed (Hebrew) that there were “strong suspicions” against Alawi, and that “various bodies” are involved in his interrogation, possibly meaning foreign intelligence services, and therefore opposed his release.

Among other issues, Alawi complained he did not receive proper medical treatment, and Physicians for Human Rights appealed on his behalf (Hebrew) to the courts, demanding he be allowed to see an independent physician – which is the right of every prisoner. A representative of PHR told me yesterday that preventing Alawi from receiving medical care, which was criticized by the court as well, looked to them as an attempt to pressure Alawi.

In what is quickly becoming the norm when the GSS tries to break down a prisoner, Alawi was prevented from seeing a lawyer for a period of time after his arrest; his lawyer, adv. Salim Waqim, told me he was held incommunicado for 13 days. During this time, says Waqim, Alawi was put in a cell with professional informants, who – among other tactics – claimed to be members of terrorist organizations, and threatened to harm him (specifically, tear out his eyes) if he did not tell them his true role. The denial of a lawyer generally manages to extract a confession, as it did it this case. Alawi was first allowed in court eight days after his arrest; his interrogators refrained from telling him what he suspected of, and were reprimanded by the court. The usual methods were used: Unreasonably long interrogation sessions, up to 20 hours in length, during which Alawi was cuffed to the chair (which may well be considered to be a form of sleep deprivation), the threat of taking hostages (arresting family members), etc.

Alwai was released on Monday, after being convicted in a plea bargain of conspiring to provide service for an illegal association, namely Hamas. The amended indictment, says Adv. Waqim, charged Alawi of conspiring to maliciously report about US armed forces activity in Afghanistan, thereby causing support for Hamas to rise. If your brows rose when reading this sentence, you’re not alone. Note the charge of conspiracy – the indictment had to admit this conspiracy did not materialize. One of the two conspiracy charges also noted that Alawi met a Hamas representative during a press conference, which is something journalists, even Israeli ones, do on almost a daily basis. Adv. Waqim noted that Alawi was interrogated almost exclusively about Afghanistan, not his activities in the West Bank. This, along with the comment of the GSS officer, should make us wonder just how much US intelligence was involved in this case (Waqim thought about CIA agents; this looks more like DIA territory to me, but I guess we’ll never know for certain).

Adv. Waqim also said that he was approached by the prosecution on the last day his client was deprived of his right to attorney, and they offered him the usual Faustian deal: Drop all charges except two minor ones, and letting his client go free – or they could go to court, which may take a couple of years, some of which his client (whose health was in peril, remember) would spend in jail and the rest without ability to work. Waqim protested, said the deal was unfair – and then told his client he should probably take it. This method, of forcing a prisoner to choose between conviction and immediate release or a long trial, much of it spent in jail, is a favorite of the Israeli justice system in the West Bank. Alawi was promptly convicted (Hebrew), and sentenced for the 40+ days he already spent in detention. Waqim told the Israeli press that “the mountain gave birth to a mole, and even it was stillborn.”

The most noteworthy thing here is the fact that Alawi’s status – as a journalist in an international TV network – made sure his case would get plenty of coverage. The average Palestinian detainee, whose arrest (perhaps, given the regular prevention of access to a lawyer, we should write “kidnapping” instead) is laconically reported by the IDF Spokesman every mourning, has no such luck. The injustice in their cases is likely to be greater. Alawi, after all, was released after just six weeks.

And, as these lines are written and Israeli Jews sit down to their holiday dinner, the West Bank is, as per the course on every Jewish holiday, under internal curfew – Palestinians can’t move from town to town to visit their families. As in the case of Alawi, most Israelis prefer not to know what is being done in their names.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

The IDF admits that the Eilat attackers weren’t Gazans, but buries the news

Some 34 days ago, a group of terrorists attacked several points on the Israeli-Egyptian border, near Eilat. While the attack was still going on, Security Minister (the term “Defense Minister” does not capture the Soviet/Socialist undertones of the title) Ehud Barak quickly claimed that the responsibility for the attacks rests with the Gazan Popular Resistance Committees. A short time later, the PRC’s leadership was assassinated from the air.

Several hours later, however, the official version of events began to crumble (see here). Even though the IDF claimed the attackers came from the Gaza Strip – nobody explained how, precisely, that happened, and the IDF Spokesman backed down from this claim for a short while – the IDF did not publish the names of the attackers, which it generally does, and there were no signs of mourning in Gaza.

When I published those points earlier, I found myself under attack by a gaggle of Hasbara useful idiots, who claimed that Hamas could have suppressed mourning so as to distance itself from the attack – which is an interesting point, given that nobody actually blamed Hamas for the attack.

So, 34 days later, why were there no mourning huts in Gaza? Because the attackers weren’t Gazans. Quietly and without drawing attention, Yediot Ahronot published yesterday (Wednesday) a report on pg. 13, which says that the IDF’s internal investigation reached the conclusion that all of the attackers were Egyptians or residents of Sinai – and we know the three attackers killed by the Egyptians were Egyptians.

The investigation also claims that the attackers were trained by the PRC, but this looks like an excuse to whitewash the acts of the IDF in retrospect. We have facts: The bodies of the attackers are those Egyptian nationals. And then we have conjecture: That they were trained by the PRC. We have no evidence to support this conjecture, and must treat it as such – and a suspect one. I mean, the IDF has been spouting disinformation about this attack for a month now. Why should we believe what it says without proof? Also, we should remember that a few days after the attack, the IDF killed an Islamic Jihad operative, and then claimed he was responsible for funding the attack. Again, we have no proof for this. It may be the truth. It may be just an attempt to justify an attack on a Palestinian target of opportunity.

So, to sum, the IDF’s position nowadays looks like this: The attack near Eilat, which nearly sent the IDF into a major offensive in the Gaza Strip, was carried out by Egyptian nationals, trained by the PRC and funded by the Islamic Jihad. Now, this could happen – stranger things have; it is commonly heard in Israel that Australian messianic Jews of a heretical sect have once funded the campaign of a secular Israeli politician, who was once married by a Conservative rabbi and who changed his name so that it would sound more American. It could happen – but it contradicts what the IDF so stridently told us about a month ago. Then, it kept repeating the attackers were Gazans. That, afrer all, was the casus belli.

In short, the IDF and Barak – not necessarily in this order; the army may well have been trying to cover for the lies of its minister – lied to our faces, nearly dragged us into a major offensive, all of which took place during a massive social protest which put the military’s budget at risk, and protecting that budget is the army and its minister’s first priority. When the chairman of the Security and Foreign Relations Knesset Committee tried to summon senior IDF and ISA officers, the Security Minister and the Prime Minister blocked them from testifying. In a normal country, parliament would create an investigative committee and/or announce the army is out of control; In Israel, it ends with a hidden headline on pg. 13 on a day full of international news, and the army and its minister can count on the fact no one would remember, or make a fuss.

If anyone wanted to know what Binyamin Netanyahu actually thinks about the peace process, he said it clearly himself last week: According to Netanyahu, the Palestinian appeal to the UN “will gridlock the negotiations for 60 years”. So, 44 years after the occupation and 18 years after the Israeli government and representatives of the Palestinians began negotiating, Netanyahu thinks it feasible to carry on for some 60 more years, give or take. And, naturally, should anything of the sort happen, this will be the Palestinians fault. If it were up to him – who refused to accept Obama’s plan and commit himself to the 1967 borders – this would all be over by now. But those sinister Palestinians prefer going to the UN.

And with good reason. Direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, as mentioned, began 18 years ago. They were supposed to be finished by May 1999 with a final agreement. Unfortunately, we’ve been ruled by Netanyahu for three critical years during that time – and, as Netanyahu told his base, the settlers (Hebrew), he did everything possible to undermine the Oslo Accords while pretending to follow it. Then Barak was elected, Arik Sharon climbed Temple Mount, the IDF fired a million rounds in October 2000 while ignoring the government’s orders for a cease fire, the Palestinians began their great terror wave, Sharon became prime minister, and the rest is history. During this period – between September 1993 and September 2011 – the number of settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories more than doubled.

And not by accident: The West Bank settlements were Israel’s most important national project (Hebrew). During the last decade, while the government axed its support of municipal budgets in Israel proper, the budget per settler rose: It reached 951 NIS per settler per year, which the average in Israel was 303 NIS per person per year. Designated Support – another aid budget by the government – was 2,264 NIS per settler, versus 1,478 NIS per Israeli dwelling in a well-to-do city, 1,859 per person in Arab towns and 1,719 NIS per person in the “development towns”, poor Jewish towns. Furthermore, the government was responsible for 50% of houses built in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as for 35% of the funds invested in building there – as compared to 18% of the houses built in Israel proper, which were founded by the government in only 10% of the cases.

If population growth in Israel proper was 18% on average, in the occupied territories it was 47%. In the early days of the J14 movement, it was noticed that housing in the settlements was much, much cheaper than in Israel; again, this wasn’t an accident. Rather, this was the result of a long-range government plan – beginning in the days of Begin – intended to seduce Israelis to abandon Israel and move to the occupied territories, particularly the West Bank.

Given the fact that a significant part of the settlers is composed of Ultra-Orthodox, this government plan was a major success. In the 1980s, the Ultra-Orthodox were considered to be stubborn opponents of the settlement policy, with the leader of the Lithuanian faction, Rabbi Shach, defining them as baiting the nations and risking of lives. The housing crisis among the Ultra-Orthodox, which came much earlier than to most other Israelis, was quietly solved by shelving these objections and mass exodus of tens of thousands of Ultra-Orthodox to the West Bank.

To quote Ali Abu Nimeh, Israel pretends to negotiate the division of a pizza pie, while munching on the pie. Israel has already swallowed 78% of Mandatory Palestine – even the 1949 lines do not resemble the 1947 UN decision’s borders – and now it is grabbing more and more of the remains, while insisting that any negotiations must recognize “facts on the grounds”, meaning the war crimes it carried out. Anyone negotiating with an Israeli government unwilling to grant the bare minimum, a freezing of settlements during the negotiations (or, in plain English, insisting on right to grab more lands during negotiations) is an idiot. No other way to describe it.

The Palestinians have wised up. They had the sense to turn the situation into an easily understood moral play. They’ll go to the UN, and show Israel, Micronesia and the US as they are: Lepers in the international community, the last bastions of an occupation regime which, under Netanyahu, even stopped pretending it is temporary. 60 more years, remember? Remember a settler foreign minister telling the UN there will be no peace?

But, terrifyingly enough, it is not at all clear a return to the 1967 borders is still feasible. In the 1980s Miron Benbenishti presented a scandalous thesis: That given the number of settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the two state solution is a fiction; the facts on the grounds were that of a bi-national state. It did not make him many friends on the Israeli left.

When Benbenishti wrote, the number of settlers in the West Bank was about 30,000. Now it is more than 300,000. Given what happened during the Disengagement, Israel will not survive such an evacuation – if only for the reason that giving each West Bank settler the same terms granted the spoiled Gush Katif settlers will drive it bankrupt. And even if it were to offer such terms, there’s a strong chance of a military coup.

Furthermore, the settlements were built, on purpose, as mines – intended to blow up any chance of a Palestinian state. A few days ago I participated in a tour held by the Ir Amim association, which explains the complenx, not to say insane, reality in greater Jerusalem. A quick look at the map they gave us (you can see it here) says all there is to say: You can’t divide this place. Have a look: The blue line is Jerusalem’s fictive municipal border after the annexation of 1967. The blue smudges are settlements. Note the bulge of the red line eastwards – this is the plan of the separation wall, euphemistically called Otef Yerushalaim, “Wrapping Jerusalem”, intended to make the settlements of Ma’aleh Adumim, Kfar Adumim and the rest a part of “Jerusalem”.

Look to the southwest. Here we have a series of settlements – Gilo, Har Homa, and others – whose residents don’t even know they’re settlers. They’ve been taught they live in Jerusalem. They have no idea, and not by accident, that the place they live in was never a part of Jerusalem in any meaningful way. These settlements simply cannot be evacuated.

This makes the Palestinian move in the UN, which will make it clear to Israel that the current situation cannot go on, a good first move, which ought to be supported by all Israeli patriots. But, given that the Netanyahu government will remain obdurate, and will not allow the creation of a feasible Palestinian state, the second act of the Palestinians should be clear cut: They ought to demand that Israel will recognize anyone living in the de-facto country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River as an equal citizen. Because the other solution, the existence of an apartheid state while waiting for Netanyahu’s 60 years to pass is morally unacceptable.

And no, it won’t be easy. And yes, this will have a cost in blood, treasure and abandoned paradigms, foremost among them Zionism. And yes, terrorists from both sides, supported by elements of their side’s armed forces, will try to prevent such a solution. And it’s not at all clear that Jews and Muslims – and in the Middle East, of all places – can recognize others as equals. But, 44 years after the occupation, we have exhausted all other possible solutions. Time to make a decision.

As if the immolation of relations with Egypt and Turkey wasn’t enough, the Netanyahu government decided to open a new front, this time with the Israeli Bedouins.

The government approved yesterday a version of the Frawer report, which is the executive report of Judge Goldberg’s report on the Bedouin settlement in the Negev desert. The Frawer report, presented to the government in May, drew sharp criticism from human rights organizations, since it was a significant retreat from the Goldberg report – which it was supposed to implement. (I want to thank the people at ACRI and Adalah, without whose help this post wouldn’t have been written).

Judge Goldberg was the first official to use the explicit term “unrecognized villages”, instead of the euphemisms preferred by the various Zionist apparati. It was also the first to recognize that the Bedouin are full and equal Israeli citizens, who have suffered a long-term injustice at the hands of the authorities. The official position of the authorities, parroted endlessly by hasbara trolls, is that the Bedouin are squatters and nothing more. In many case, this is not the case.

The Bedouin hold their lands by Ottoman common law, recognized by the British, without official registration of lands. I want to quote here a letter sent to the Minister of the Interior on 20/10/1952 by the “inner committee for settling the question of the Bedouin lands in the Negev”, which at the time was classified as secret:

It is a well known fact that during the Turkish regime, the Bedouin tribes refrained from, and in many cases actually opposed, registering their lands in the government estate books, claiming that land registration will bring about, sooner or later, them being seized for military service, which the Bedouins strongly opposed.

As the country was conquered by the British, all of the Bedouin lands – with few exceptions – were unregistered in the estate books. Even so, the Bedouin considered all the lands they cultivated as their own, even though they did not have the deed. The authorities, both Turkish and British, recognized this fact. […] For we know well, that during the Mandate, very great expanses of lands were registered in the names of the Bedouin, after proving these lands were cultivated by them during a period of limitations, and a significant part of these lands were transferred, after being registered, to the Jewish National Fund, as well as other Jewish companies and also private Jewish citizens. So we have hundreds of precedents in this issue, and we are of the opinion the government of Israel can’t, and shouldn’t, ignore them”. Emphasis mine.

The military governor of the Negev in 1966, Sasson Bar Zvi, wrote the following to the Inspector General of Police regarding “the land problem of the Negev Bedouin”:

The lands of the Negev, unlike the rest of the country, was not registered by the Mandatory government in the estate books (the Tabu). The Bedouins, who refrained from registering their lands, did not suffer as a result, because the authorities recognized the Bedouins and their rights in the land, which was expressed in registering all the lands in the tax paying rolls (daftar habal), and in the agreement of the regime to recognize any land transfer from one Bedouin to another Bedouin or another person as a legal lease, and as agreement to register the land in the estate books as belonging to the buyer (in this way, the Jewish national Fund purchased thousands of dunums and registered them in its name.) Again, my emphasis.

What we see here is the continuation of the “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine” of the Zionist movement. When it so wishes, Ottoman laws serve its purposes in buying lands (or, in the West Bank, in stealing them); when it wishes otherwise, they are dead and gone.

There are two strange clauses in the government decision: The government will not grant lands west of Road 40, and it will not plan any Bedouin settlement west of that line; and that the agreement will not be in effect on anyone who demanded land after October 1979. The first one is particularly bizarre: Can anyone imagine that in the Jewish and democratic state of Israel, where everyone is equal before the law, the government can tell a specific public it cannot live in a designated area? Surely this is an error which will be swiftly remedied.

And, once we’ve had our bitter laugh, Dr. Thabat Abu Ras, an Adalah official and a specialist in political geography, explains this clause in a phone call: The lands west of Road 40 are important for two reasons. First, these are really good lands, very fertile, and shouldn’t be enjoyed by the Bedouin. Secondly, this entire move by the government – piloted by that noted expert on human rights and urban planning, Brigadier General Yaakov “shoot soldiers who flee battles in the head” Amidror – is intended to create a wedge between the Bedouin population in the Negev and the Palestinian population.

Israel, in short, fears a Bedouin Intifada, which is spoken about in whispers for several years. How strange, then, that it uses a policy which promotes such an Intifada. According to the estimates of Dr. Abu Ras, the government plan will uproot 40,000 Bedouins from the unrecognized village; the government speaks of 30,000, but Abu Ras notes that at least 10,000 Bedouin who are registered as living in their seven towns actually live in the unrecognized villages, as they prefer a non-urban way of life.

As far as can be ascertained – and this can change in the future – the government plan will not create a new Bedouin settlement, but will rather cramp more people into the existing towns, who are on the verge of collapse as it is. The government has promised it will spend a lot of money on the towns – several billions – but such promises are well known to human rights activists: They’ve heard them all before, often expressed in the same terms, and the money never materialized.

Oh, and that bit about October 1979? That was when the Bedouins were asked to officially claim their lands. They claimed 991,000 dunums, and the government automatically rejected most of those claims. The new decisions says the 1979 decisions could not be appealed. ACRI finds the Frawer report to suffer from several problems: Unlike the Goldberg report, it did not consult the Bedouins themselves; It suggests fuzzy planning standards, which cause a suspicion that they will serve the Zionist regime as a way to avoid its responsibilities to the evacuees; It conditions the planning of the resettlement on the Bedouins’ pre-agreement to evacuation; And while the Goldberg report said that Bedouin houses are not to be demolished until an agreed-upon solution is reached, the Frawer-Amidror plan disregards this recommendation.

Abu Ras says the Bedouins are asking for what every Jewish settlement can get, according to the National Zoning Plan: A recognition of every settlement composed of more than 50 families. After all, Israel is willing to recognize what it calls “solitary farms” – huge grants of lands to individual Jews, and only Jews – but it is unwilling to recognized the unrecognized villages, some of which predate Israel and others created by Bedouins expelled from their lands by the IDF. What is shocking here is the casual, devil-may-care attitude of the government – and with it, most of the Jewish public – to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. Then again, of course, we’re not dealing with real people; they are not Jews.

When the government decided to evacuate Gush Katif, stolen lands outside the borders of Israel, it evacuated only 8,000 people – and it gave them much, much more than it even dreams of giving the Bedouins. Even so, the Disengagement brought Israel to the brinks of armed rebellion. Abu Ras considers the government decision a declaration of war on the Bedouins in the Negev. MK Taleb A Sana says it an invitation to a Bedouin Intifada. When it comes, and given the regime’s attitude to the Bedouins there’s no good reason to think it won’t, the average Israel Jew will utter the wail of the unjust, first aptly expressed by Dickens: But we gave them so much, and yet they are so ungrateful.

The most urgent political demand in Israel is the removal of Avigdor Liberman from his position as foreign minister. Not the most original insight, I know, but it has to be said again.

Two days ago, Liberman leaked his new plan for retaliation against Turkey, which he claimed was the brainchild of senior Foreign Office officials. The plan included promoting information about the Armenian genocide, and military support of the PKK, a Kurdish militia which carried terror attacks against Turkish civilians (as well as military targets), and is considered a terror organization by the US and the European Union.

What can I say? Pure genius. The idea of fighting Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide is enough to make you vomit. I doubt there is any country in the world, Turkey aside, who did so much to deny it as Israel did. Israel’s Turkish interest led to 30 years of official denial. When former Education Minister Yossi Sarid dared to speak the verboten words, he was attacked by the security apparatus. When an Israeli Armenian was chosen to light one of the flares at the Independence Day ceremony, some 15 years back, she was under tremendous pressure not to mention the events early Hebrew journalist Itamar Ben Avi published, which Ambassador Morgenthau tried to prevent, which Franz Werfel immortalized and which gave Raphael Lemkin the concept of genocide. If to deny a holocaust is to be a partner in it, Israel is Turkey’s main accomplice.

The rapid change in Israel’s position is particularly repellent: Suddenly, it reverses course and adopts the historical truth – for its own purposes, of course, and after it made every effort to deny it and made the Jewish-American establishment do the same. One can imagine a new regime in Ankara, a more friendly one, may make Israel speedily change its position on the events of 1915-1916. George Bernard Shaw said all that needs to be said about such behaviour; Israel is merely bargaining for a better price.

The suggestion that Israel supply the PKK with arms is too delusional to debate seriously. Just thinking of our agents getting caught red-handed delivering explosives meant to blow up Turks, a casus belli against a NATO nation, is enough to make you shiver. What does it say about a country, whose foreign minister comes up with such suggestions? I guess we should consider ourselves lucky Liberman didn’t publicly advocate bombing Ankara.

FO officials angrily denied (Hebrew) that they made such suggestions. According to them, and they seem far more believable than Liberman, they suggested ways to put out the flames. Generally, I think that officials who attack their elected ministers ought to resign, but Liberman managed to bring about an hitherto unimaginable position: Officials having to defend themselves from being libeled by their minister.

Liberman, and this is not much of a secret, does not really act as a foreign minister. He skips important meetings – for instance, he wasn’t present in the urgent meeting called by Netanyahu after the Turks sent the Israeli ambassador home. And he spends much of his time in his homeland, Moldavia, or in Belarus. Well, if he misses home so much, shouldn’t he relieve himself of the burdensome offices he took upon himself?

The problem, however, is not Liberman. Or, more precisely, not just Liberman. The real problem is the prime minister, who does not rein him in. Netanyahu does not dare to treat Liberman as he treats his Likud rival Silvan Shalom, who may have been a caricature of a foreign minister, but, although he was certainly useless, caused little if any damage. The reason is, of course, is Shalim can’t bring Netanyahu’s government down, while Liberman can. The best Netanyahu can do is say he does not support Liberman’s policy. Which is to say, Netanyahu is selling Israel’s long-term interests for his personal survival in power. The responsibility for Liberman’s behavior lies with the man who appointed him and who can fire him at any time, but refrains from doing so for his own selfish reasons.

Not, again, that this is a new insight; but people ought to be reminded of it from time to time.

Why does Israel still refuse to show us the full footage from the Mavi Marmara? Perhaps because it knows what we’ll see

Last weekend saw the release of the Palmer Report (which can be read here – a PDF file) dealing the Flotilla incident and the assault on the Mavi Marmara last year. To make a simplistic summary, the report reaches two conclusions: That Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip is legal, which means is entitled (in fact, required) to enforce it; and that the assault on the Mavi Marmara was wild and lacked proportion.

The Israeli government, naturally, quickly adopted the first part and did its best to keep the second out of sight. Netanyahu even had the gall to announce Israel accepts the first and rejects the second. I’ll be dealing with the first part, but – as I think the death of nine human beings and the wounding of dozens more is more important than questions of legality – will spend most of my time dealing with the second part.

To begin with, the Palmer Report is a strange animal. The committee investigated nothing on its own and it only relies on the reports delivered by Israel and Turkey. The committee had to ascertain whether the naval blockade of Gaza is legal, and this posed some problems. The first one is that for a blockade to take place, there have to be two belligerent sides – and Israel never recognized Hamas as such. The committee solved the problem by recognizing Hamas as a belligerent (article 73). In the same article, the committee notes it is aware that “under the law of armed conflict, a State can hardly rely on some of its provisions but not pay heed to others.” Yours truly is not an expert on international law, but it looks as if the Palmer Committee recognizes the Hamas gunmen as warriors, enjoying all the rights accorded them in international law. This means Israel can no longer treat them as criminals and try them in its kangaroo courts; it must treat them as prisoners of war. This is something Israel fought against for decades. Since Netanyahu was so happy to adopt the parts of the report dealing with the blockade, one assumes he agrees to this, as well.

The report bypasses another mine on its path to legalizing the blockade, this time the demand that its enforcement be “effective and impartial”, by saying it began in January 2009 (art. 76), and ignoring the fact Olmert allowed several flotillas to reach Gaza. Article 77 shows the committee at its naïve best, when it says the policy of land siege of Gaza is unconnected to the naval blockade, and by saying the blockade is only intended to prevent the smuggling of arms. The committee ignores the fact that equipment which reaches Gaza by sea also has to pass through the Israeli checkpoints – and that Israel’s siege is not at all limited to arms. For instance, it refuses to allow the import of construction material, under the pretense Hamas may use it to build bunkers. Hamas, which controls the tunnels, has all the construction material it needs, thank you for asking; it’s the common Gazan who wants to build a house, or who wants to rebuild the school Israel destroyed, who is harmed by this policy.

The committee also says the Mavi Marmara could not have landed in Gaza, since there are no adequate port facilities (art. 78), while tacitly ignoring the fact that the port does not exist because Israel bombed it, and it is not rebuilt because Israel refuses to assure the donating countries it won’t bomb it again. Furthermore, Israel’s policy regarding Gaza has been expressed publicly in the past. It is not military, per se. It is a policy of economic pressure against the population for its support of Hamas. An American communiqué leaked by Wikileaks said that “Israeli officials have confirmed to econoffs on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”

The Gisha Center, which focuses on the siege on Gaza and its effect on Gazans and Israelis, noted in its response to the report that international law – which, as the report says, A State can hardly rely on some of its provisions but not pay heed to others” – requires Israel “Israel to allow freedom of movement for people and civilian goods to and from the Strip, subject only to individual security inspections. The Palmer Commission did not review Israel’s overall closure of the Gaza Strip, still in place today”. Needless to say, Israel does not abide by these standards.

And now for the really interesting part: What happened on the Marmara. The report strongly rebukes Israel for carrying the attack a long distance away from Gaza, for carrying it out at dawn and without the warnings common in international law – such as warnings, firing across the bow, and so on. No such warnings were given even though the IDF’s battle order said they ought to be, as well as informing the vessels prior to the assault that the navy “was obliged to take all necessary measures” (art. 110-111). The committee found that the decision to attack at dawn without prior warning derived as much from Israel’s wish to avoid publicity as from operational reasons (112). It further finds the assault, as carried out, treated the flotilla as if it was an immediate military threat, which it certainly was not (114), and reached the conclusion that the attack without warning on the ship was a major factor in the deterioration into violence (115). It says that had the IDF bothered to supply a warning – for instance, a shot across the bow – this may well have calmed tempers, and the incident may have been prevented. It also criticizes the IDF for not using non-lethal weapons.

The IDF, as you probably recall, claimed his men did not open fire until they were attacked by a raging mob. And while such a mob certainly was there, the committee finds the IDF’s claims to be reality-challenged. Bullet holes have been found in the upper decks of the Marmara, which clearly indicate being shot from above, and the committee assumes guns were fired at the ship from the helicopters. The committee also accepts the Turkish claim that the ship was also under fire from Israeli navy boats surrounding it, all of which denies the IDF’s claim of “using accurate fire”.

Another reason to dismiss this claim comes from the number of rounds fired. The IDF gunmen say (126) they fired 308 live bullets, 264 paintball bullets, and 87 beanbag bullets. Seven out of nine dead suffered a number of injuries to sensitive parts of the body. Five of them were shot from behind (at least three suffered a shot to the back of the head), two were each hit by one accurate bullet (one of them was hit between the eye, one in the throat), and at least one of them, Furkan Dogan, took a bullet to the back of the head at point-blank range after already taking bullets to the leg, face and back, and was likely lying down. The committee refrains from saying he was murdered execution style (128).

The Israeli representative failed to explain how each of the victims was harmed, and said (127) given the circumstances, Israel could not find out the circumstances of each wound – which says all needs to be said about the quality of IDF debriefings, which the army lauded. The IDF failed to provide the committee with any proof that and of the men he killed was armed (128), and one of the dead – who was shot from a passing boat – was holding at the time of his death a weapon of mass destruction cleverly disguised as a fire hose (ibid).

The committee also finds that the IDF used unnecessary violence – admittedly, non-lethal – towards people on the other ships of the flotilla, even though no resistance was offered to the boarders (132), and refers (135-145) to the abuse and looting which were suffered by the detainees by the heroes of the IDF.

If you please, may I point out an elephant in the middle of the room? During the takeover, the IDF confiscated all of the magnetic media found on the flotilla, including photos and videos documenting the assault itself. It released a few short videos it took itself, but so far – 15 months after the events – it won’t release neither its own full filming of the assault, nor the confiscated media.

After reading the report, one understands why: We would see an ecstasy of violence not just from the IHH goons, but from Israel’s finest gunmen, who fired 659 rounds of various sorts on the Marmara. Which is to say, more than one bullet per person on the ship, or – given the IDF’s claim that 30 activists resisted the boarding – more than 20 bullets per resister. This isn’t controlled fire; this is unbridled frenzy, which was possibly the result of three soldiers being taken captive by the people on the Marmara. The IDF had all the chances in the world to prove it is in the right: All it had to do was release the documentary data. It didn’t, and probably with good reason. The Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, later forbade the testimony of soldiers by the Israeli investigative committee. Again, he probably had a good reason for that.

The IDF not only assaulted the Marmara ignoring its own battle order (which said warning before the assault is required); not only did so in an unusually poor attempt to avoid publication of the attack (as if such a thing was remotely possible), and not only lost its senses when it was on board – it also ruined any chance of rebuilding our relations with Turkey. The army said time and time again that an apology would be a “humiliation of the Shayetet soldiers”, which made it impossible for Israel politicians to make such an apology.

The IDF is not alone here, of course: Binyamin Netanyahu, always willing to buy right-wing votes at the expense of Israel’s interests, refused to apologize. At first, Israeli pundits noted, he told the Obama administration he is afraid that Liberman will use the apology as a pretext for leaving the government. Once the Americans spoke with Liberman, who said he won’t resign, Netanyahu demanded he say so in public, which Liberman duly did. And then Netanyahu informed the Americans he can’t apologize, not with a social justice protest movement on his hands.

Naturally, other politicians are riding this horse – Erdogan prominent among them; he certainly could use any drop of patriotic fervor as he chucks his military leadership in prison – but it is jaw-dropping to see, once more, how a military screw-up at company level causes most of Israel to defend the military, despite the staggering diplomatic and political price.

Which, one fears, is just the appetizer before the main dish, to be served in about three weeks.