Wish You Orwell

IDF Spokesman caught in a snafu, painting him either as a racist or an ignoramus

As a rule, junior or mid-level officers and officials, particularly spokesmen, prefer to stay behind the wall of anonymity of their office. They are termed "IDF spokesman" or an "officer in the Southern Command." They are rarely mentioned by name. However, as part of the IDF Spokesman’s victory lap after Operation Cast Ballot, in which it tries to convince the natives it won the hard battles in the burning-of-consciousness theater, it exposed some of people in its New Media unit to an article in Tablet. One of them, New Media Department Chief Lt. Sacha Dratwa, then became the focus for a cheap item in Gawker, of the kind we got used to; He’s a sensitive man, he’s a normal guy, he likes macchiatos, he posts pictures to Facebook. The people in the IDF Spokesman unit probably thought this was good for showing the human side of their hasbara warriors; good for scoring a few points, if not with their target audience, then with the dying breed of kind Hadassah aunts from the US.

But, as Eden Abergil and Avi Yakobov (Hebrew) have already learned, exposure on Facebook is a double-edged sword. Someone bothered to dig deep into Dratwa’s account, and dug an unpleasant photo: Dratwa, mud spread over his face, with the subtitle "Obama Style."

Oops. Dratwa was caught in homage to the genre of blackface shows, in which white actors would paint themselves black in order to portray blacks as caricatures. The Hadassah aunts, who still remember the golden age of the sixties fondly, are not likely to enjoy this particular sort of bad humor. Why does mud specifically of Obama? Excellent question.

Which Dratwa leaves unanswered. He writes, in an IDF-sanctioned response, that "I am, and have always been, completely candid about my beliefs and have nothing to hide – as reflected by my Facebook profile." A profile which he promptly closed to the public. The pictures, claimed Dratwa, "do not reflect my beliefs and have no bearing whatsoever on my position in the IDF." Well, if it doesn’t reflect his beliefs, what was the picture doing there? And if it has no bearing on his position, why did Dratwa close his page to the public?

The simplest answer is that Dratwa was caught expressing soft racism towards blacks, which is pretty common in Israel; it is reflected in the attitude towards asylum seekers, and even in the attitude towards Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia. Israel is one of the few countries in the world where a large segment of the population believes Obama is a secret Muslim. One wonders whether the hostility of the Israeli media towards Obama – which was expressed even before he was elected in 2008 – would reach such heights if he was a white man.

But even this is not racism on Dratwa’s part, this is gross stupidity. If you don’t know what backface is, why it is considered offensive, then you are an ignoramus who has no business being in the media business. Particularly when your target audience is largely American. The behavior of the Dratwa and the IDF Spokesman, which sticks to the position (Hebrew) that that there’s nothing to see here, as Dratwa was only using his own private Facebook account, is unprofessional. Hmmm. Another IDF Spokesman soldier, Yair Netanyahu, was ordered to remove racist posts from his Facebook page, as soldiers are not allowed to express political opinions. Is Dratwa exempt from this rule? However, this unprofessionalism does not surprise me in the least.

Seeing as Sacha Dratwa decided to lift the clock of official anonymity and become a player, not just a part of an establishment, I have something to add to his public resume. When I exposed the case of Rabbi-Colonel Qarim and his religious condoning of rape, Dratwa was the officer who called me in a rage, told me that my question "disrespects the IDF, the State of Israel and the Jewish religion," and informed the IDF Spokesman will no longer answer my question. I guess they got used to receive only questions which respect all three. I still don’t know why the IDF took upon itself to defend the Jewish religion. Mission creep?

Now, the IDF Spokesman certainly has more serious problems that Dratwa’s blackface photo. One could begin with the blatant lie they sold us during the weekend (Hebrew): the Spokesman claimed IDF forces "fired in the air" at "300 Palestinian demonstrators", some of whom were trying to plant Hamas flags on the wall in southern Gaza. As a result, one Palestinian was killed and several wounded. If you want to gauge the difference between the truth and the position of the IDF, watch the videos in the link above.

But Dratwa is important, nevertheless, because he is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with Hasbara: The fact that it is directed, even in English, to Israeli ears only; The fact that it is boorish, ignorant, tone-deaf; the fact that everything existing outside of Israel is foreign to it, and suspect.

Several years ago, the hasbara machine went into overdrive, demanding – and receiving – the head of Human Rights Watch’s military expert, Marc Garlasco. The latter exposed several war crimes by the IDF, and his finding were used by the Goldstone Committee, and the hasbara people demanded he be removed because of his hobby of collecting Nazi military memorabilia; he was described as a Nazi. However, when it is an IDF officer caught either in blatant racism (and I think the "Obama Style" subtitle clinches this argument) or stunning ignorance, suddenly we are asked to accept the excuse that he did so on his private Facebook page. Dratwa’s commanders should have sent him simply for becoming a liability, but – as usual for the IDF – they prefer that the country take damage, as long as no IDF soldier is harmed.

After all, the country is here to serve them. Not vice versa.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

As yet another military campaign ends, the IDF turns out to be, as usual, the weakest link in the chain

Operation Cast Ballot, or as it is formally known, "Pillar of Defense," is in its twilight. Childlish to the end, the Palestinian and Israelis managed to miss a cease fire yesterday, as they were quarrelling who would fire the last shell. The practice of announcing a cease fire in advance, so as to make certain that all troops will know of it in time and observe it, has been perverted into a competition of who can fire more in less time. Israel has been at it for at least three decades; I still remember how in 1982, the Israeli TV enthusiastically reported about Israeli artillerymen making use of the last hours before the cease fire to spread some more death and destruction in Beirut.

A ceasefire is being announced, and we can officially mark Cast Ballot as a failure. It is a failure as far as Binyamin Netanyahu is concerned: he could have made it to the polls with four years of relative quiet, and he chose to end his second term with Tel Aviv being bombed (for the first time since 1991), as well as Jerusalem (first time since 1970), and a terror attack on a bus to boot, seemingly a first since 2005. As in 1997, when he ordered the botched assassination of Khaled Masha’al and ended up empowering Hamas by releasing Ahmed Yassin from prison, Netanyahu – whose slogan once was "strong against Hamas" – will end yet another campaign by strengthening Hamas.

It is a failure as far as Ehud Barak, possibly the most hated man in Israeli public life, is concerned. Once more he proved he learned nothing, and that his image as a military genius is a self-perpetuated myth. He was at it before, in Cast Lead, and he knew what happened in Lebanon; he should have known that the most important thing, before opening fire, is having a solid exit policy, so that it could be quenched. He didn’t have any.

It is a failure as far as the Israeli economy is concerned. We’ve spent three billion NIS just to be where we were before it all started – during an early elections in which we go to the polls because the Prime Minister was unwilling to expose his planned budget cuts. Now we are three billion more deep in the hole, and the Treasury already found the solution. No, no, don’t be absurd – we wouldn’t raise capital gains tax or company taxes. That would shift the burden towards the rich. Can’t have that. We’re going to hike VAT again, for the second time in less than a year. No, it won’t happen until the elections – Netanyahu and Steinitz are not that dumb. You’ll be served with the bill afterwards.

And Cast Ballot is a failure, first and for most, for the holiest of Israeli behemoths, the IDF. It has proven itself, again, to be a blunt instrument incapable of carrying out its mission. As expected, the Air Force – which a common joke says is so different from the regular IDF, it ought to be considered a friendly foreign force – began the attacks by taking out quality targets. Then, after three days, it ran out of such targets, and the killing became much more random. First a family of 12 is extinguished; then a family of four, two of which are children; and on the last day of the operation, our brave flying death squad blow a vehicle sky-high, only to later find out it contained three journalists. Oops.

This isn’t new and shouldn’t surprise anyone: That’s how it went during the last round and the one before. The IAF has three days of grace, no more. And in all three conflicts, they were wasted.

The main problem is with the ground forces. They were hardly involved in the campaign. The government allowed the mobilization of 75,000 troops, 56,000 of them were actually mobilized – and then the government didn’t dare to use them. They served only as sitting ducks, deployed in open territory without much shelter. An Al Jazeera journalist noticed they were practically exposed to mortar fire, and by that observation expressed more military sense than the IDF officers who sent the troops there.

When you announce that you are mobilizing 75,000 people and then refrain from using them, you are waving an empty pistol. No one would take you seriously the next time you mobilize, and with good reason. But what could Netanyahu do with this clumsy force?

When you use ground forces in attacking a compact, dense populated region like Gaza, you have two choices: You can charge in, which means casualties. Or you can take cover, and use heavy, wild and inaccurate fire (during Cast Lead, the IDF managed to kill five of its soldiers by friendly fire – the same number lost to Hamas activity). Taking the second option leads, almost automatically, to a diplomatic defeat and a loss of the war. But the first option exists only on paper: The Israeli public is not willing to take casualties among soldiers (the death of one soldier was much more reported on than the death of three civilians), and no politician will risk dozens of military funerals – and during an elections, to boot.

War is famously merely the continuation of policy by other means; but Israel preferred renting out policy to its officers. The IDF has been the prime architect of Gaza policy, and failed at it miserably. On the other hand, when Netanyahu asked for a new Gaza policy, the State Comptroller found that the IDF torpedoed (!) any debate on it.

When a militia of some 400,000 people can’t dislodge a militia of some 20,000 people, even as the first force is infinitely more powerful in explosive tonnage and in its ability to deliver its artillery where it needs to be, then to call this a bleeding tie would be charitable to the larger militia. And I’m not at all sure such charity is in order.

The IDF, in short, failed Israel by being unable to bring a Gaza campaign to a satisfactory resolution while, at the same time, preventing a change of policy. For this stellar performance, we are now asked to pay even more money than it drains from us usually. It also managed to make it clear to anyone paying attention that our ground forces are out of shape.

This is the army that, they tell us, is about to take on Iran. Let’s take this a step further. Our dear Prime Minister, and the army as well, have been pumping up war with Iran for quite some time. The commander of the IAF is known informally as ‘commanding general, Iran front.’ Let’s extrapolate from the IDF’s performance in the last three campaigns – 2^nd Lebanon, Cast Lead and Cast Ballot – on how it will deal with Iran.

Thankfully, our ground forces won’t play much of a role. The IAF will get its three days of grace. Let’s assume it’ll manage to take out some of the more important targets. But it won’t be able to do much more than that: Teheran is much, much more distant than Gaza.

The IAF failed miserably in stopping the rocket fire from Lebanon in 2006 and from Gaza in 2008-9 and 2012. This is no surprise: It failed doing that when it was the PLO lobbing rockets into Israel from Lebanon in 1981. The only thing that stopped the fire was a ceasefire – which, as usual, was broken by Israel. We should reasonably assume that, particularly given its limited range of operations, the IAF will not be able to stop Iranian rockets from landing in Israel – and there’ll be plenty of them.

The Gazans have proven they can take much more than the residents of Israel can, and the stories of heroism Iranians tell themselves deal mostly not with the dismal Iraqi front, but with the survival of the awful years of the rocket wars, in the mid-1980s. I wish anyone who wants to awaken this old trauma and make Iranians hate Israel as their regime tell them they should all the best; just don’t tell me you’re acting responsibly.

When it comes to Gaza, Israel has some leverage. The most prominent, of course, is its ability to throttle the Strip by besieging it. Then there the Egyptians, the Europeans and even the Turks, whose interests often mesh with those of Israel. There is no such leverage with Iran, who already labors under heavy sanctions as it is. In order to force it to stop firing rockets at Israel, you’ll need either an extensive air campaign or a proper, old fashioned invasion. Israel can do neither, and I fail to see Obama volunteering for yet another land war in Asia.

We’ve known that the IDF is a broken tool, harmful to its wielders, since the Second Lebanon War. The militarist hysteria which followed managed to bury this truth, and switch the blame for what was a purely military defeat from the army to the government. Then a self-proclaimed military messiah, Gabi Ashkenazi, came along, and while using his job to undermine his civilian superiors, he was serving us with heavy-laden plates of bullshit about "reconstructing the IDF." The public was all too willing to swallow it, but anyone who was taking a closer look saw that Ashkenazi was giving us more of the same: he was preparing the IDF for yet another glorious tank campaign a la 1973. The chances that such a war will repeat itself are about as slim as those of the Polish cavalry against the German tanks. We’re in another era.

The fact that the reservists were complaining about the same problems they complained about in 2006 – lack of proper equipment, sometimes lack of food – show us just hollow were Ashkenazi’s promises. One also wonders why the IDF deploys so many reservists, if it can neither supply them properly or use them.

But fear not: the public will not ask embarrassing questions. This did not happen after 2006, when Hizbullah held its ground against four IDF divisions, and it certainly will not happen after a much smaller skirmish. The militaristic public will once more swear allegiance to the IDF and the troops, being blissfully unaware that this oath is what destroys the army.

The cold and merciless duty of a military force is to trade the lives of soldiers for the accomplishment of military goals. You can’t conquer the mountain unless there is a grave downhill, says the old poem; and no, bombing the mountain until its mother won’t be able to recognize it without dental records is not a substitute, never was. The IDF likes to pretend that the inversion of the proper roles – the fact that the public prefers civilians to die and not soldiers – is the fault of the public. It conveniently ignores the fact that it was the army who decided to fortify its bases – but not towns. It also would like us to forget it intended to use Iron Dome for defending bases, not towns, and then retreated from this under public pressure.

The public demand that no soldiers be harmed is reasonable, if you consider what the usual IDF operation has become: an armed company, complete with air support, taking out less than a squad of encircled, semi-armed, Palestinian youth. Only this isn’t a battle, this is a man-hunt; and the IDF has long forgotten how to win a battle.

And, following Cast Ballot, the public will refrain from debating this. Again.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

What we can learn from the weird orders served to 11 leftist activists – of police intimidation and the sham of "the only democratic country in the Middle East"

11 leftist activists were surprised last morning (Sunday), when they were woken up by cops. The cops, all plainclothes and in groups of three, knocked on their doors between six and seven AM, and they handed them what they claimed to be administrative restraining orders, signed by the commanding general, prohibiting them from entering four villages in the occupied West bank: Bilin, Kadum, Nialin and Nabi Salah. Activist Alma Biblash reported that the policemen entered her apartment without a warrant, taking care to video not just her but her sister as well. The cops also waved in her face a file with her name on it. In another case, the cops woke up the parents of an activist who has moved long ago. Activist Leehee Rothschild, also served with a warrant, was told they were issued under the 1945 Emergency Ordinances.

Commanding general? What the hell, you say? Oh. Despite Israeli propaganda claiming it is the only democracy in the Middle East, the 1945 Emergency Ordinances – defined by Menachem Begin, a noted leftist radical, as worse than the Nazi legislation – are still in effect in Israel. They allow the military commander (in the case of all residents of Israel proper, that would be General Commanding, Home Front) to basically what he damn well pleases, or, to be more precise, to do what his ISA (AKA Shin Beth) handler damn well pleases him to do. By writs signed by the General Commanding, Home Front, the settler Neryah Ofan was exiled from Pisgat Ze’ev, where he lived and worked; Tali Fahima was administratively arrested by such a writ; and just such a writ allows draconian measures against John Crossman (AKA Mordechai Vanunu), even though he finished serving his prison sentence eight years ago. As part of the façade of the rule of law, the courts serve as a rubber stamp for those writs, though from time to time they sigh pathetically as they do. The judges know full well which side the rabble will take, if it has to choose between the secret policemen and the general, or the judge.

What all of the above share in common is the fact they highly irritated the ISA. Ofan by riding in circles around the Jewish Department of the ISA and openly mocking them (they’ve been using administrative writs against him since 2005, but never took him to court); Fahima broke every Israeli taboo, crossed the lines, saw Palestinians as humans, and humiliated the ISA by refusing to serve as an agent; And Crossman, naturally, is responsible for the ISA’s worse debacle: failing to realize a nuclear technician is radicalized and about to leave the country and inform the world (insert insensible mantra) according to foreign media reports (end insensible mantra) that Israel has nuclear weapons.

But as the activists calmed down and actually read the papers they were served with, they were stunned to find out this was a run of the mill closed-military-zone order, and that it was signed by the General Commanding, Central Command, not his colleague at Home Front. The spokesman of the SHAI police district (Judea and Samaria, i.e. the West Bank) went on to say that his people gave out 16 such writs, and that "the serving of the writs went on without incident, and at the moment we are unaware of any plans of disturbing the peace as a result." If you say so, Sherlock.

So what just happened? The most plausible explanation would be that the cops, being Israeli policemen, were clueless of the law they were supposed to enforce, and confused the closed-military-zone orders they were serving with administrative restraining orders. Attorney Michael Sfard said, in a phone interview, that Israeli courts have already ruled several times that Israeli activists cannot stand trial for violating those orders, since they are enforceable by military courts only; and, as part of the apartheid regime in the occupied territories, Israelis are not tried in military courts. A Palestinian who violated a closed-military-zone order could be dragged to court; his Israeli comrade cannot be.

Sfard further said that as far as he knows, this is the first time that closed-military-zone orders – which are aimed at a specific territory, not specific persons – was personally delivered. So what we have here is the policemen of the SHAI district – which is outside Israel – went galomping around Israel, serving writs not written by an Israeli court but by the sovereign of the West Bank. Which, assuming Israel was not annexed to the West Bank, has absolutely no power in Israel.

This looks very much like a heavy-handed attempt at intimidating the activists: We know where you live, you’re in our sights, we have you on file, we can knock at your door at six AM. Don’t piss us off and don’t try to use the fact legally we can’t touch you, or we’ll dig something up.

Something less plausible is that administrative restraining orders were indeed issued, that the cops were aware of them, and that they may be served soon. If that would happen, we’d have the General Commanding, Home Front signing writs intended to prevent activists from disobeying orders of the General Commanding, Central Front – i.e., a clumsy attempt to indict people for violating closed-military-zone orders, which would only serve to remind us that we live in a military dictatorship which pretends, since such pretense is useful to it, that it is subservient to the law.

And Sfard’s /final remark was even more depressing; There is a strong correlation, he says, between worsening attitude towards activists in the West Bank and military action in the Gaza Strip. The IDF uses the noise of the guns in Gaza to disguise actions in the West Bank which would normally draw critical attention.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

How did ten billions simply evaporate?

Unless Netanyahu is crazier than is commonly assumed, Israel won’t attack Iran in the near future. Until quite recently, Netanyahu stubbornly claimed that Israel must attack Iran before the 2012 US presidential elections. This was a calculated attempt by Netanyahu to put pressure on Barack Obama and advance the chances of the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

This attempt psychological warfare failed utterly: Obama, ice-cold, didn’t blink; he referred to Netanyahu’s demands as "background noise," and adamantly refused to change his position. He left Netanyahu with no choice but to go to his Canossa, the UN General Assembly, and to make a retreat speech there. The bomb and fuse drawing ("this is the bomb, this is the fuse…" – possibly the lowest point ever reached by an Israeli prime minister) devoured all the attention – and camouflaged the only important part of that speech. Netanyahu announced that he postpones his threat to attack Iran to the spring or summer of 2013. Anything can happen until then – and as it looks, Netanyahu will dismiss the Knesset and go to elections before that time.

So Netanyahu’s attempt at a nerve war failed. Now we must ask how much it cost us. Let’s begin with the intangibles: How much damage will Israel suffer from a president who has to consider its PM to be a political rival or, at the least, an ally of his political rivals? How much damage will Israel take in US liberal opinion, and actually in the mind of any American patriot, when the American public will begin to understand that Israel is no ally, but at best a cross the US has to bear?

Obama’s former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, told Obama last summer that Israel is "an ungrateful ally." As part of the shadowboxing between the US administration and the government of the country it funds and arms, Gates also said recently that neither Israel nor the US has the military capability to stop the Iranian nuclear plan, and that such an attack would only hasten it. The first part is not new; Gen. Dempsey said as much back in August. The second part, however, may indicate that a faction in the US administration is moving away from supporting an attack an Iran, or may provide cover for Obama when he decides not to attack. This cannot be seen as a success by Netanyahu.

For years, Netanyahu’s supporters told us he is a master at reading the US public, but – ever since he landed in the PM’s office – he fails time after time. Well, those same people also told us he was a brilliant ambassador to the UN. Given that his last three speeches there involved waving a cartoon bomb, the plans of the death camp Auschwitz, and muttering something about a nuclear duck, we may safely assume this is another self-manufactured legend.

We cannot put a price on the diplomatic damage caused by Netanyahu’s phony war, but we do have a fiscal price tag for it. Haaretz columnist Amos Harel estimates (Hebrew) that the preparations for attacking Iran under Netanyahu and Barak cost some 10 billion NIS (some 2.5 USD). Nahum Barne’a, writing in Yediot on Friday, cites a similar sum: he writes that Netanyahu and Barak spent some 11 billion NIS (somewhat less than three billion USD) on the preparations for war with Iran. Barne’a finishes that part of the column by writing that "if I was an American president, I would conclude there is some irony in the fact that a country which receives generous military support from America and spends it in putting pressure on America. Someone may conclude Israel bites the hand that feeds it."

So, Netanyahu and Barak spend some ten to 11 billion NIS on their nerve attack. Neither Harel nor Barne’a cite their source, but I’ll take the risk and wager that it is Ehud Barak, playing his usual role of the scorpion biting the frog which carries to safety, and now attacking Netanyahu in the media (actually, counter-attacking: Netanyahu’s people spent a lot of energy attacking Barak this week.)

So, we spent at least 10 billion NIS on nothing. Money which could be spent on healthcare, on education, on our shaky infrastructure, dissipated like gas fumes. Barak and Netanyahu took our fate to the casino – their war game could easily have gotten out of hand – and lost unimaginable sums of money. And, given the fact that we give our leaders carte blanche when it comes to so-called "security" expenses, no one will ever pay the price. The public erupted in outrage when our ministers wanted a few measly millions for new fancy cars; 10 billion evaporated, and all the government has to show for it is diplomatic damage and the promotion of Israel’s image as the region’s mad dog, and no one is protesting. It should also be noted that while 10 billion is a large sum indeed, it is relatively small compared to the lakes of dollars spent by the IDF in the last 20 years on preparing for attack on Iran. We now know the IDF knows it can’t attack in Iran – it was making such noises as long back as 2006 – yet it took the money and spent it anyway. The colonels and generals responsible for this criminal waste of public money are likely to carry on their careers, and retire on a fat public pension for their dubious service.

It’s hard to disagree with Yigal Serna, who wrote passionately and well (Hebrew) that "therefore, every time they shout at you: Iran! Shout back: Pillage. Remember that Bibi’s "Iran" shout is not meant to save your lives or that of your children, but for protecting the right to pillage. Iran is merely a campaign of distraction, carried out in full cooperation between Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Netanyahu. Two loquacious-inciting politicians of many interests, one protecting the franchise holders of the Revolutionary Guards who became rich as Croesus, and the other is guarding the tycoons and the [Likud – YZG] Center members. Both sides made plenty of lucre under the nationalistic distraction."

And that’s what the coming elections should be about: How much did your scaremongering campaign cost us, Mr. Netanyahu, and what do you have to show for it?

(Yossi Gurvitz)

Former National Security Advisor Uzi Arad claims Netanyahu ordered him to refrain from providing ministers with contradictory data

Yediot Achronot’s weekend supplement published a very long and equally stunning interview with disgraced National Security Advisor, Uzi Arad. Arad, who was forced to resign last year, was interviewed by Nachum Barne’a and Shimon Shiffer, and told them about the Byzantine court surrounding Netanyahu, and exposed the shocking fact he was interrogated by the ISA for hours in the Ben Gurion Airport as he came back from a mission in the US. But there’s one point which should trouble every Israeli, which was not emphasized enough.

During the interview, Arad says twice he lost favor with Netanyahu – Arad is a long-time follower – when he began contradicting Netanyahu’s position on Iran during discussions. Even worse from Netanyahu’s point of view, he provided the government with a different assessment about Iran and the way to thwart it. After one of those occasions, says Arad, Netanyahu took him aside and ordered him to refrain from contradicting him in the presence of others. According to Arad, Netanyahu was particularly worried that Arad’s documents may serve the investigative committee which will follow the Israeli attack on Iran. Netanyahu’s bureau did not deny those accusations.

This is a point which much must be investigated. Neither the PM nor the Minister of Security command the army; the commander is the government, a collective body. A prime minister who refuses to divulge contradictory information to his ministers is a prime minister who sabotages their ability to make an informed decision on that issue.

The government’s control of the armed forces in Israel has a chequered history. To make a long story short, as long as the government controlled the army, it succeeded or at least managed to avoid disaster. When it let slip of that control = particularly when it allowed factions within the government, with the minister of security always a participant, take control – calamity was often the result. The process’ lowest point was probably in 2006, when Shimon Peres, then a minister of something or other, opposed the decision to begin the Second Lebanon War – but voted for it anyway, telling the Winograd investigative committee that “you don’t vote against the prime minister in a time of war.” Such abdication of responsibility is hardly surprising when you’re familiar with Peres’ history; yet we must not allow it to repeat itself.

Now we are being told by Arad that Netanyahu is blinding his ministers from seeing the full picture. One can hardly think of a better reason for an investigation committee, which, should it find Arad told the truth, should send Netanyahu home, and irrevocably tarnish the careers of ministers who agreed to be turned into marionettes. One Shimon Peres was more than enough.

This is particularly important as Israel and Iran are not, and have never been, in a state of war. The two countries, testified Foreign Minister David Levi a decade ago, never declared war on each other. Earlier wars and operations were declared by the governments against countries with which Israel was at war; this is not the case with Iran. This war should be debated by the Knesset – particularly if it is true that Netanyahu is misleading his ministers.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

By supporting the Assad regime, elements of Balad and CPI show they are not allies in the fight for human rights

Last Thursday, a special UN commission on Syria found that the Assad regime is committing crimes against humanity, and that senior regime officials are participants in these crimes. The commission was significantly limited in its ability to report on events as the regime denied it entry into Syria, and it had to rely on the testimonies of refugees. Even so, it’s important to take its conclusions seriously: in several previous cases the first testimonies about crimes against humanity came from refugees.

The refugees supply us with only a partial view, yet they indicate a terrible desolation, mention thousands of casualties, the systematic use of rape as a tool of terror, and prevalent torture. The number of civilians massacred by the regime in the last year is estimated in many thousands – much more, for instance, than the number killed by the IDF during the Second Intifada. Naturally, the precise number is not known, but an opposition site, considered reputable, cites 8,791 dead; another site, which also furnishes a map of the atrocities, estimates the number of dead at 9,236. Both numbers are accurate as to the time of writing of this post, and both of them reflect only the known dead, i.e. people identified by others. It’s very probable that there are hundreds more, unrecognized. (I want to thank Elizabeth Tsurkov for helping me find this information).

None of this deterred hundreds of supporters of the Assad regime from gathering on Saturday night in Haifa, in order to express their support once more. Among them were several Balad activists, including MK Said Naffa. Also present was the secretary general of the CPI, Muhammad Naffa, whom we remember from his support of the fiction of the Doctor’s Plot. Many of the protesters wore shirts with the pictures of Assad on them, others were carrying placards with the picture of the slaughterer from Damascus – admittedly, he does not rise to the level of his father – and denied anything untoward happens north of the border. They spoke of an imperialist conspiracy, some denying Assad is capable of killing his citizens (Hebrew). As if, thirty years before Homs, we didn’t witness the massacre of Hama.

I assume that to readers of this blog my position on the crimes carried out by the IDF gunmen in the occupied territories is not precisely a state secret. Even so, the crimes of the IDF pale in comparison with those of the Syrian regime. The position of Balad about the IDF’s crimes is also well known. When it comes to the Syrian regime – well, that’s when the accusations are shelved and the excuses are brought out.

Turns out, there are Arabs you may actually kill. Turns out, there are soldiers who are allowed to kill indiscriminately. Turns out, there are ambulances which you may delay in roadblocks, and some patients whose arrival in a hospital is not all that urgent. Turns out, there are cities you may shell with impunity. Turns out, there are apparati who do have the right to make people vanish. Turns out, there are some people who may exercise collective punishment, and that’s OK. Turns out, there are people with a license to torture – all you have to do is switch the sign with the three Hebrew letters with one which spells out the most hated word in Arabic, Mukhabarath, and that makes everything just peachy.

Remember that, next time Balad calls us to join it in struggle. It may be the right struggle, but we should not forget this. People who consider human rights to be just a tool in a struggle, one immediately abandoned once the true goal must be defended – that is, the failed, national-socialistic Arab nationality of the Baath party – is unworthy to join us. Those people will sell us – in fact, they already have.

After all, next time we speak of Arab-Jewish solidarity, we shall hear the mocking calls from all around us: solidarity with the supporters of the butcher of Homs? With the people who consider Syrian blood to be worthless, but keen in anguish when Jews spill Palestinian blood? Who have just rediscovered the maxim that he who saves one soul, is held to have saved the whole world? Are you an Assad supporter, Jew-boy? No, that’s not what it looks like, look, it’s complicated…

And this moment will come. Balad has barely survived its last disqualification from the polls, and the right-wing will make certain another disqualification will come. And then, of course, we will have to defend Balad – because such a move is a naked ploy to drive Israeli Arabs away from the polls. But how do we baptize ourselves, holding such a bloated critter? How do we explain ourselves, when those Assad pictures will be thrown in our faces as winding sheets? How do we speak of the future damage to Israeli democracy, when the people we try to defend have already shown how much they care about human rights?

Balad is not alone. Another participant in that rally was the secretary general of the CPI, the main faction of Hadash, Muhammad Naffa. The CPI’s position is that he was there in his capacity as a private citizen. Try the other leg, it’s got bells on. Had Naffa showed up at Netanyahu rally and offered his support, we wouldn’t be able to hear what he was saying because of the noise made by the ICBM which would have shot him away from the CPI. Assad yes, Netanyahu no?

Furthermore, the CPI’s official position is, to put it mildly, problematic (Hebrew). On the one hand, it denounces the regime and its murderous activity – and on the other hand, it denounces its opponents who ask for foreign aid in their struggle as “servants of foreign interests who […] use factionalist slogans and reject any attempt at dialogue, which will save human lives. […] The interest of the Syrian people is that the current regime stop oppressing the legitimate popular struggle, the shooting of citizens, and the use of forceful military answers to inner social and political questions.” You don’t say. That does seem to be the interest of the people, but what do they do if the regime, for unknown reasons, refuse to acknowledge this simple truth and refuse to halt the killing? How can a group of insurgents fight an organized army, bringing all its power to bear, without foreign aid?

All this, of course, does not touch on the laughable position of a communist party, supposedly promoting international brotherhood, which is suddenly shocked, shocked by the prospect of foreign intervention. I can still recall some foreign interventions which did not trouble the CPI’s conscience all that much – say, the one in Hungary in 1956, or the one in Prague in 1968. It is also worth mentioning that while it is fiercely opposed to “foreign intervention”, it has no problem whatsoever with the fact the Russian military-industrial complex is heavily involved in Syria, to the tune of 4.7 billion USD in the last four years (Hebrew). Oh, well: Russia was always the second homeland for these people.

The CPI can be very clear when it wants to. When it is waving such Jesuit dialectics at us, when its secretary general remains in office after publicly supporting Assad, progressive Israelis should abandon it. As long as it keeps its Stalinist secretary general in place, and as long as it keeps promoting a “yes and no” position towards Syria – yes to Assad, no to armed popular insurrection – it should be treated as a Stalinist party, and act accordingly.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

The Khader ‘Adnan affair showed the true face of all of the Israelis involved in the occupation, from its enablers in the courts to the Israeli mob

Khader ‘Adnan became a Palestinian national hero two days ago, and rightly so. He brought the Netanyahu government, as well as the Israeli apparatus of darkness (as Uri Avneri called it in the 1950s) to its knees. In a hastily-convened hearing in the High Court of Justice (HCJ), the prosecution offered ‘Adnan’s lawyers a classic saving-face deal: ‘Adnan would be discharged at 17^th April on the latest, the same day his administrative detention was to end, and possibly earlier. It conditioned his release on no new evidence found against ‘Adnan – as if it had any prior evidence. The Prime Minister’s office was the first to report the deal, so it may well have been cooked there, once Netanyahu understood what a colossal Hasbara disaster ‘Adnan’s death would be.

This deal is reminiscent of the military trial described by David Grossman in his 1987, “The Yellow Time”: the counsel for the defense proves that the indictment against his client is groundless, and the judge – who, says Grossman, must prevent the system from being embarrassed, or it may collapse – convicts the defendant of a felony he was not charged with, and sentences him to the same number of days he already spent incarcerated. The government cannot just discharge ‘Adnan: its honor would be besmirched. It therefore insists on releasing him on the date it set for the end of his detention.

Aside from ‘Adnan, no one comes out of this looking good. The HCJ, which didn’t find time in its busy schedule for ‘Adnan’s hearing until today, suddenly found the time for an emergency session on Tuesday – presumably in order to confirm an already agreed-upon deal – has demonstrated, in its first decision, striking indifference to the lives and the human rights of a Palestinian administrative detainee; and in the second, just how much he is a tool of the Zionist regime and its security apparatus. Keep that in mind, when next some Justice declaims about how the court is committed to human rights. These disappear at the entrance of the apparatus’ dungeons.

The prosecution also comes out badly. The slave of the apparatus, who rarely if ever has any qualms about representing any sort of injustice in the courts, was forced to admit – by its very acquiescence to this deal – that it had no evidence against ‘Adnan. Had it any, it would have pressed for a indictment. It has nothing to show, not even in the military courts, a system so corrupt it would be insulting to marsupials to call it a kangaroo court.

The apparatus comes out particularly poorly. ‘Adnan has provided the final proof that the occupation has decayed the minds of the occupiers, who are incapable of collecting evidence against people who has no rights to protect them against such collecting: whose houses are open wide to any armed goon, whose phones may be eavesdropped on without a warrant, whose computers may be confiscated without consulting a judge, and who are in practice susceptible to torture without penalty; no Israeli court ever found that a Palestinian was tortured by the ISA. Even so, all the apparatus can do is detain them without trial, hoping the torture of endless incarceration – which is the essence of administrative detention – will break the spirit of the detainee.

BTselem noted that while Israel kept 219 administrative detainees in January 2011, at the end of January 2012 their number rose to 309, almost a 50% rise. 26% of the detainees were held for six months to a year, 28.5% more than a year but less than two, 16 of them were held between two years and four and a half years, and one was held for more than five. That is, his administrative detention was prolonged no less than nine (!) times. International law permits the use of administrative as a last, desperate measure; a country that routinely holds hundreds of people in such detention cannot make that argument.

The Prime Minister’s office claimed on Twitter that ‘Adnan would be discharged “because his detention will end soon, not because he is innocent.” But of course ‘Adnan is innocent: every person who was not convicted is innocent. That’s what the word means. This is the principle of the presumption of innocence is all about. ‘Adnan was not only not convicted, he was not even charged.

The Israeli public, which now collectively moans in the comments about how they let a terrorist go and why didn’t they just let him die, has come out despicable of all. The public does not want to know how the apparatus manages the occupied territories in his name. It can’t handle the information. It blinds itself and hardens its heart. It does not want to be informed. It didn’t want to know even back in the 1970s. So now it tries every possible excuse: the man was dangerous (which is why he will be discharged in two months), he is a terrorist (precisely what the apparatus of darkness couldn’t prove), he was the subject of classified intelligence (how do you know? Have you seen it?) – anything to avoid facing what is being done in its name. The torturers, kidnappers and gunmen could make a credible defense in years to come that they were just public emissaries, that they embodies the collective will of an apathetic and terrified mob, which was willing to excuse them even for the use of children as human shields – but not of looting, something its middle-class conscience couldn’t stomach.

Khader ‘Adnan, one may hope, broke the administrative detention system. The world is looking now. The forbearance towards Israeli crimes, born of the sense of guilt following the Holocaust, is finally running out, if forty years too late.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

The High Court of Justice decided to delay the urgent appeal in the case of Khader ‘Adnan to Thursday – and may not reach a decision even then

Khader ‘Adnan is on his 65th day of a hunger strike, and today the High Court of Justice (HCJ) decided today to delay dealing with the urgent appeal in his case to Thursday. Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, which supports the appeal, noted that that would be ‘Adnan’s 69th day of a hunger strike, and there is no guarantee that the justices will bother to make their decision then. It’s a Thursday, you know, and the weekend is so close, and this is just a Palestinian in administrative detention, and he must be held for a reason. Irrecoverable dying begins on the 70th day of a hunger strike. That would be Friday.

Now, the HCJ knows, when it wants to, how to hold swift hearings. Before the evacuation of the settler outpost Amona, it held a marathon debate till morning before making its final decision. But that was an illegal outpost, built on private Palestinian land; the debate was on something important, such as the theft rights of settlers. Not something petty like the most essential rights of a non-Jew.

People tell me: ‘Adnan can stop his hunger strike whenever he wants. This is very true. He can also solve most of his other problems and simply sign whatever his interrogators want him to sign. He just has to lie to himself. Whoever makes that claim has no clue as to what human dignity is, the basic right to not have a jackboot at your throat; or, perhaps, he thinks Palestinians denuded of human dignity.

‘Adnan’s detention serves no practical purpose. He is not interrogated as he lies chained in a hospital. Even were the security apparatus to discharge him now, he will not be a danger to anyone anytime soon. He has already suffered severe damage. There is no reason to keep him detained, but one: his release will embarrass the apparatus. It will testify that there was no cogent reason to hold him in the first place. It will put the entire system of administrative detention in question.

So what we basically see is a pissing contest between a dark apparatus, the strongest in Israel and quite likely in the entire Middle East, and a sick, dying man, under guard, chained to his bed, with nothing but his faith to drive him on. The HCJ was supposed to be a bulwark of this man, stand between him and the apparatus, and defend him. That, after all, is the legend they keep telling us about the HCJ: that it is comprised of wise, all-knowing judges, standing undaunted in defense of human rights against the government. The thin line of black robes.

The court made excellent use of this legend, and used it in the political struggles of the 1990s and 2000s. Some Israelis actually received aid from him. But it never defended the Palestinian. Every Palestinian had the right to appeal to the HCJ against the demolition of his house; the court never prevented any. Not a single one. The court approved one administrative detention after another, even though this basically took us to pre-Magna Carta law. Even when the apparatus decided to exile 400 people suspected of being Hamas members to Lebanon, the HCJ approved the decision – admittedly, it held a swift hearing on the urgent appeal of the deportees.

The justices know precisely where they sit. If they hear the petition, they will also have to make a ruling. If they reject the petition, ‘Adnan’s blood will be on their hands, which can be quite uncomfortable the next time they visit Europe. If they accept it, on the other hand, they will face the wrath of the Israeli mob, which does not understand what’s all the noise about some Ay-rab. So they postpone the hearing. As the old joke went, perhaps the dog will die; perhaps the baron (the apparatus) will. Perhaps someone else will deal with this hot potato for them.

And that is evil cowardice. And that, too, should be borne in mind when we shall have our own judges’ trials.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

The demand that the NYT chief of office in Jerusalem be “unbiased” towards the Netanyahu government is the height of chutzpah

Jeffrey Goldberg, the former IDF prison guard and self-appointed gatekeeper to all things Jewish and Zionist, is not happy with the new NYT Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren. He has two problems with her.

The first, and most important, is that Rudoren had the temerity to read Peter Beinart’s new critical book about Israel and, lo and behold, support it. Goldberg whines that she is showing “bias” against Likud.

Which, I think, is perfectly fine. After all, the Likud prime minister recently said that his main enemies are the NYT and Ha’aretz. He has refused to write an oped for the NYT, snarkily saying he didn’t want to “Bibiwash” it. Once a public official takes a public stand as an declared enemy of a newspaper, I don’t think the paper should continue to treat him as any other public officials. Journalists are not, and should not be, angels. To blame the NYT bureau chief of “bias” against Likud after this is utter chutzpah and evidence of the writer being a propagandist.

Goldberg also calumnies Ali Abunimah, claiming that he is an “advocate of Israel’s destruction” and comparing him to a “settler rabbi,” and deplores Rudoren’s “chummy” relations with him. You don’t have to like Abunimah – I’m not a fan, myself – to bristle at this. Unlike settlers, rabbis or not, Abunimah is not committing war crimes by his very existence and he does not rely on the subjugation of another people for it. Furthermore, Abunimah does not “advocate Israel’s destruction”: he merely demands Israel stop being Zionist. Given that in this world, practical Zionism is racist and cannot be otherwise, this is a worthy demand which has nothing to do with the “destruction of Israel,” merely its transformation. (Yes, I can imagine an ideal world in which Zionism is not necessarily racist; if you do visit that world, please give my regards to the pink unicorn.)

And finally, Goldberg graciously grnats Rudoren his permission to not be a Zionist. One would think that, as the Jersualem bureau also deals with Palestine and Palestinians, this should be an actual requirement (otherwise, the bureau chief should prima facie be considerd biased), but I guess that after an NYT chief whose son served in the IDF, we should be grateful for small mercies.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

As Im Tirzu takes its opponents to court, a troubling picture of the inspiration of its leader emerges

Yesterday, the defense in the trial of Im Tirzu vs. the Facebook group “Im Tirzu – a fascist movement” presented its depositions. The plaintiff is the infamous right-wing group, the defendants are a group of leftist activists, the issue is libel. It began in 2010 when Ronen Shoval, chairman of Im Tirzu, sent the following email to Roy Yelin, who opened the group:

Hello Roy,

From perusal of the Facebook page “Im Tirzu – a Fascist movement” it seems you created it.

Im Tirzu is not a fascist movement, and will not suffer being defamed. I wish to inform you that if you won’t delete this Facebook group within 72 hours, we intend to contact a law firm on the folliwing Sunday and sue you personally for defamation and libel.

Just to make this clear: turning the “Im Tirzu – a fascist movement” Facebook page over to another person will not diminish your personal responsibility.

I ask you to consider the issue carefully, before we are forced to turn to legal measures.

Sincerely,

Ronen Shoval

Yalin did not fold, and the trial commenced (Hebrew). Im Tirzu demands 2.6 million NIS (about 702,000 USD) from the eight administrators of the group (full disclosure: I know some of them personally) for defaming it.

Im Tirzu always used goon tactics. For a long time, there was no page about Im Tirzu in the Hebrew Wikipedia, because Shoval threatened to sue if it was described as a right-wing movement. It shows classical hypocrisy: Im Tirzu whines about being silenced while silencing others. Its lawyer claimed the Facebook group was “an attempt to publicly assassinate Im Tirzu.” I guess a lawsuit for 2.6 million is just a nicety.

Im Tirzu is using foreign funds, particularly from the American right-wing – much of its money came from John Hagee, so I guess we can term it “rabid right wing” – and is copying the oh-so-American system of SLAPP lawsuits and bringing it to Israel.

In order for the SLAPP tactic – i.e., a suit which is intended not to win at court but to make the opponent cower and remove an annoying truth he published – to work, you need a scared opponent and a malfunctioning legal system. The Israeli one fits the bill: trials last for years, and and even if you do win, as a rule the courts award you just a fraction of your expenses. So, if are forced to go to court, you already lost, even if you win. How convenient for NGOs (or, in Im Tirzu’s case, GONGOs) who are backed by shadowy donors from abroad; how unfortunate for political activists who try to speak truth to power.

Is Im Tirzu a fascist movement? I think so. So does the world-renowned expert on fascism (and victim of Jewish terrorism) Prof. Ze’ev Sternhall (Hebrew). Comparing Im Tirzu to the 14 points of fascism is instructive; but there’s more.

Among the depositions by the defense is one by Tomer Persico, who is a researcher of religions and writer of one of the most important blogs on the issue in Israel (and, full disclosure, is a friend). Persico himself was once the victim of a SLAPP lawsuit after describing the court of a new age guru who dubbed himself “the Buddha from Orion” (I kid you not), which made him a cause celebre in the Israeli blogosphere.

In his deposition, Persico described a conversation with Shoval, which took place a few months ago as they were interviewed by Makor Rishon. In the recorded conversation, Persico told Shoval he was surprised to see clear romantic German influences on Shoval’s book, and was surprised when the latter freely admitted it. Shoval said that “in my thesis, I dealt a lot with Ficthe, Schelling, Herder and George Sorel.” The latter is considered to be one of the founders of Italian fascism, and was fascinated by political violence: he praised Action Francaise, the nationalist movement which led to the founding of French fascism, he praised Mussolini – and Lenin, too. He was also an anti-Semite who spread the blood libel (though he was on the side of the angels in the Dreyfus Affair). This is, to say the least, a rather strange inspiration for the leader of a so-called neo-Zionist revival movement. Persico said he was “stunned.”

Shoval, says Persico, claimed Persico was unkind in his review of his book, since when was using the ideas of Herder and Fichte about the organic nature of the volk, he was speaking metaphorically. Shoval said he didn’t put it quite that way in his book, since the purpose of the book “is to express simplistically ideas – I say, simplistically – ideas which are very deep… to make it clear to the multitude… the meaning of the word ‘Zionism’ today.” Persico claimed that such simplicity is dangerous and that it is typical of Im Tirzu’s activity; Shoval replied that “this is an issue of marketing strategies.”

So, in the name of marketing strategies, Shoval is injecting volkist concepts into the Israeli mindset, concepts which originally – and he claims to know the original very well – have caused untold suffering both to the people they were injected into, to the minorities living among them, and to nearby nations. Ronen Shoval is exposed as a political charlatan, who knows precisely what poisoned wells he is using, knows precisely what his goals are, but is unwilling to be stamped with the proper title – volkist fascism – because of “marketing strategies.” He and his movement do all that by getting large sums of money from abroad, which they try to conceal to the extent of the law, and when someone points out their true nature, that is calls them a fascist movement, they sue him for 2.6 millions.

The intimidation works: Persico, who already went through the nightmare of a SLAPP suit (which ended very quickly, and in his victory) decided not to publish the conversation he had with Shoval just not to risk another lawsuit. Now this conversation is a part of a legal deposition, and hence protected.

So if you believe you should support a small group of young activists fighting for freedom of expression in Israel and for the ability to speak the truth even in the face of fascist groups with plenty of money from unknown sources, and if you think people are entitled to legal representation even if their father, unlike Shoval’s, is not a multi-millionaire, go here and donate. I already did.

(Yossi Gurvitz)