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Sheizaf: Two more families face eviction in Sheikh Jarrah; hundreds attend protests
Cross-posted from Promised Land.
Two more Palestinian families from East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood received this week eviction orders. According to Haaretz’s report, the families were ordered to leave their houses within 45 days. No alternative residency was offered to them.
“Failure to comply [with the order] will force my client to act against you with all means available according to the law [...] in such a way as may cause distress, anxiety and large and unnecessary expense,” the notices said.
The lawyer who served the order, Anat Paz of law firm Eitan Gabay, informed the families they would be liable to a fine of NIS 350 for each day the remained in their homes beyond the eviction deadline.
Each family was also ordered to pay NIS 12,000 per year for each of the last seven years. The notices did not reveal names of the claimants to the properties.
The Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah are refugees who fled their homes in Jaffa and West Jerusalem in 1948. They were offered a land in Jerusalem to build their homes on by the Jordanians in exchange for agreeing to give up their refugee status (ironically, that’s what Israel always demanded that Palestinians in Arab countries do). Israel conquered and annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 and, recently, the pre-1948 Jewish owners of the land in Sheikh Jarrah authorized a right-wing settlers group to have the Palestinians evacuated and the neighborhood settled with Jews.
Israeli courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of the Jews claiming land based on pre-1948 documents — while at the same time the Palestinians were forbidden from claiming back the houses they left in 1948. Unable to have their old houses, evacuated from their current homes — Jerusalem’s municipality plans on building there 200 housing units for Jews — the Palestinians have literally nowhere to go. They don’t even have refugee status.
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The injustice in East Jerusalem is so evident, that the struggle to stop the evacuation of the Palestinians became a new symbol for many Israelis. What has began as a very local grassroots effort by a handful of activist (many of them Anarchists) is now drawing a crowd of hundreds each week – and sometime more people and more than once a week. Here is a video from the protest two weeks ago, when some 30 demonstrators were arrested by police, and one had his arm broken.
Personally, I find the struggle in Sheikh Jarrah to be the best thing that has happened to the Israeli left in years. The number of the people present there doesn’t seem that impressive, but the crowd grows each week, and it is clear that the police and the municipality will find new evacuations very hard to carry out.
More importantly, this struggle is becoming an inspiration to many who all but gave up on political activism — and not just in Israel. And it’s happening without any political party or a left-wing organization supporting it, and under some very radical massages. For the first time I can remember in years, the left doesn’t try to “move to the center” in order to win the support of the more conservative public, or engage in all sorts of competitions in patriotism with the right — ones that we obviously will never win — but rather sticks to its principles without apologizing or justifying itself.
There is no common platform in Sheikh Jarrah except for this very specific struggle. Nobody asks if you support one or two states, if you are a Zionist, Post Zionist or anti-Zionist. People just come each Friday to Jerusalem and stand for what they think is right – and so far, it works well enough. Sometimes even I get the sense that if this thing wasn’t happening in here, it would have happened somewhere else. The energy feels bigger than this specific incident, as if there are finally enough Israelis who say that things have been going in the wrong direction for far too long — that a line had to be drawn, and it happened to be drawn in Sheikh Jarrah.
I took those two pics on the weekly protest last Friday, to which author Mario Vargas Llosa paid a visit.
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The best way to support the protest in Sheikh Jarrah is to simply come each Friday (more detailshere). If you don’t live in Israel, you can make a donation, as legal expenses for the defense of arrested activists and organizers are mounting.
Sheizaf: Chomsky affair demonstrates that the West Bank, not just Gaza, is under siege
Cross posted from Promised Land.
Much has been written on Israel’s decision not to allow entry to left-wing linguist Noam Chomsky today, and I guess even more will be written. From the official Israeli response, it is not clear who made the decision in this case — a top government official or a low level bureaucrat — and it seems that Chomsky might still be permitted to enter the West Bank, once people realize the PR damage caused to what’s left of the reputation of the only democracy in the Middle East. But that’s not the important issue here.
According to Chomsky, what bothered Israeli officials at the Allenby crossing was not only his views, but the fact that he intends to visit the West Bank, and not Israel. Later it was said that the IDF authority might end up granting him a visa. But whatever way this affair ends, it is clear that Chomsky made a better case against Israel today than in anything he said or wrote. He practically proved that the Palestinians are far from being autonomous, and that the West Bank is in reality under siege, with Israel dictating who and what can leave or enter.
When the Spanish clown Ivan Pedro was denied entry by the Shabak into the West Bank, some people tried to make a national security case out of it, claiming Pedro refused to submit information regarding his contacts in the West Bank. I hope nobody is planning the same line with the Chomsky. Israel simply decided not to let him in because he is pro-Palestinian, like it does every day to many others. The only difference is that in those cases nobody alerts Reuters.
There is no arguing that Israel is now viewing certain ideas, not just actions, as an existential threat, and is willing to make full use of its powers in order to suppress them. It is important to understand this point: Some people think that the state made a stupid mistake today, when it chose to deny entry to Chomsky. But that’s only true if you judge the affair in terms of actual security — then you conclude that making such a fuss over a speech in Ramallah by an aging linguist that no one would even notice is pure madness. But if you are obsessed with the persecution of “dangerous ideas” and constantly searching for ideological menaces, then Chomsky is a threat. In this context, not allowing him to enter your country might be logical and even legal — again, if you consider Israel’s control of all access to the West Bank legal — but it is also scary as hell.
Sheizaf: “Like Alan Dershowitz, but with a conscience”
Cross-posted from Promised Land.
Dershowitz
Yesterday, Alan Dershowitz, the attorney for OJ Simpson and IDF occupation, received another honorary doctorate, this time from my very own Tel Aviv University. Dershowitz took the opportunity to declare that “students shouldn’t have the Leftist views of professors imposed upon them,” proving again that The Simpsons got it right on the Harvard’s Professor in their 2006 Halloween special.
Krusty
Trying to return his Krusty the Clown Alarm Clock that squirts acid, Bart stumbles upon the Golem in Krusty’s prop room. The ersatz entertainer goes on to tell Bart of the tale of Rabbi Loew, the “legendary defender of the Jewish people,” who created the Golem to defend his Jewish community. “Like Alan Dershowitz,” says Krusty, “but with a conscience.”
I had the opportunity before to recommend Eyal Niv’s excellent “Truth from Eretz Israel” blog, but back then he only had a Hebrew version. For the past six months, Eyal is posting some of his stuff in English as well, and you should definitely check it out. Here is what he had to say on Dershowitz’s honorary doctorate. needless to say, I join him in every word.
Sheizaf: Settlers and Palestinians to join in protest against the separation barrier south of Jerusalem
Cross-posted from Promised Land.
An unusual protest is scheduled for Thursday in the West Bank: Settlers and Palestinians are planning to march together in protest against a section of the separation barrier Israel is constructing south of Jerusalem.
According to a report on Srugim, a national–religious news site, the protest was initiated by Eretz Shalom, a new pro-peace settlers movement. A handbill distributed by the organization (shown below), claims that the planned fence “will damage the nature in the area, hurt the residents of the [Palestinian] village of Wallaje and their fields, won’t add to the security of Jerusalem, and will be a waste of state money.”
The settlers invite all residents of the area, “Jews, Christians and Arabs”, to meet at the border police checkpoint at 4:30pm and march together in protest.
Is this more than a gimmick? It’s hard to tell. There has been some talk of peace initiatives coming from the far-right recently. Naturally, they all lead to the one state solution, with most of the settlements remaining in place and the Palestinians becoming Israeli citizens. These ideas are yet to be developed, but I wouldn’t dismiss them altogether.
Many people on the left will find it hard to accept the idea of settlers talking about peace, but we should remember that not all the Jews living in the West Bank are like the radical and violent residents of Yitzhar. Some of them are from second and third generation in the settlements, and they really struggle to find a solution that will enable them to live in peace. According to another report on Srugim, the members of Eretz Shalom are not very involved in politics, and view themselves as a grassroots, regional, initiative. I think we should wish them luck. Read more…
Sheizaf: The persecution of Haaretz
Cross-posted from Promised Land.
Editor’s note: A recent Coteret post bemoaned, in this context, the absence of satire. Eretz Nehederet has now come through with a skit. It can be viewed here (Hebrew only; H/T Richard Silverstein.)
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The persecution of Haaretz
Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily paper, has a status that exceeds its limited circulation. Israel’s supporters who whishes to portray it as a thriving democracy give Haaretz as an example; Critics of Israel use Haaretz when claiming that the US media is too easy on Israel (”The NYT would have never printed Gidon Levy’s op-ed“). Even after suffering loses during the financial crisis and going through major cuts the paper remains the best source for information on human right issues and on Israeli politics. It is also the only Israeli newspaper to have an internet site and printed editions in both Hebrew and English.
These days, Haaretz is under attack. Rightwing groups, pundits, politicians and competing media organizations go after the paper. They accuse it of being “too liberal”, “too lefty”, even “anti-Israeli”. The attack was triggered because of the Kamm-Blau affair, but the case against Haaretz is far wider and deeper, and has a lot to do with the dangerous nationalistic mood in Israel right now.
Two articles on the front page of Maariv’s weekend edition took shots at Haaretz: Ben Dror Yeminiaccused the paper of aiding “the industry which demonizes and delegitimizes the State of Israel,” and Columnist Menahem Ben simply called for the paper to be shut down and its editor and publisher arrested for treason.
After the exposure of the Kamm affair, MK Michael Ben-Ari, a former student of Rabbi Kahana, cancelled his Knesset subscription for Haaretz and called interior Minister Eli Yishay to use his authority and immediately forbid the printing of Haaretz. Surprisingly enough, Ben-Ari was joined by two MK’s from Kadima: MK Israel Hason, a former Shin Beit man, called for readers to boycott Haaretz, while MK Yulia Shmuelov wrote her own letter to minister Yishay demanding Haaretz to be shut down.
Radio Host Avri Gilad said last Sunday on the IDF station that “I mourn what happened to the Left and to the Left’s journal [Haaretz]… it is making the left irrelevant in Israel… every sensible person today understand that the Left has made the state of Israel its enemy.” There wasn’t even a slight protest heard.
And this is what rightwing columnist and editor for Jerusalem Post (who is rapidly becoming the Israeli Pravda), Caroline Glick, had to say:
By collaborating with Kamm first by publishing her stolen documents and hiring her as a reporter, and finally by covering up her crimes while suborning Blau’s perjury, Haaretz has demonstrated that leftist traitors have a powerful sponsor capable of exacting painful revenge on the State of Israel for daring to prosecute them.
In facilitating and supporting treason, Haaretz itself can depend on a massive network of supporters in Israel and internationally. Reporters, self-proclaimed human rights groups, and the leftist blogosphere in Israel and throughout the world as well as foreign governments happily swallow whole Haaretz’s manufactured stories about Israel’s purported venality.
I agree with Hanoch Maramri, Haaretz’s former editor, who wrote in The 7th Eye that Haaretz will survive this attack. The paper suffered boycott attempts during the first and second Intifada, when its editors insisted on reporting cases of abuse and illegal actions by IDF soldiers. But these were different times for journalism, and the real danger is that the delicate financial situation affecting all newspapers will make Haaretz change its line a bit so it wouldn’t bleed too many readers.
Even more important is what these events teach on the current moment in Israel. Most people outside this country fail to notice it, but we are at the dangerous turning point in which words and ideas, and not just acts, are becoming illegitimate in this country, even criminal. Haaretz won’t be the last victim.
Arrested for Post Zionism
Cross posted from Promised Land.
Editors note: Note how the charge resembles Yuval Diskin’s definition of the Shabak’s mandate.
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Chappell and Marti after their release from prison (AP)
Pay close attention to this item. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s an important one:
Two international activists, Ariadna Jove Marti (Spain) and Bridgette Chappell (Australia), who are living in Bir Zeit in the West Bank (it’s near Ramallah, and well within the Palestinian Autonomy), were arrested by the IDF last month. The two were about to be expelled from Israel, and as it happens in most cases, they appealed against the decision to the Israel Supreme Court.
As Chaim Levinson reports in Haaretz, while trying to defend the arrests and deportation, the state argued before the court that the two activists
…belong to the International Solidarity Movement, an organization “that supports an ideology that is anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian and universally revolutionary.”
There are two precedents here, and I can’t overstate their importance:
A. The main charge against the activists had nothing to do with national security, but with the ideas they expressed (the state even presented before the court quotes taken from an internet site!). The “crime” involved words, not actions.
It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first (but certainly not last) attempt to present critic of Zionism or support for the Palestinian cause as illegal, and what’s even worse is that the actual arrest was carried out not by police and under orders from the state attorney, but by the army.
It takes a very flexible definition of democracy to describe a regime which makes questioning the dominant ideology a criminal offense.
B. The arrest of the two activists took place in the Palestinian Autonomy’s territory (area A according to the Oslo agreement). Israel often claims that the situation in the West Bank cannot be labeled as Apartheid, since the Palestinians have their own state-like entity. But as we saw in this case (as well as in others), Israel does not respect this autonomy, and its security forces are acting freely within the Palestinian towns and villages, even in cases which have nothing to do with Israeli national security.
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This time, the court was very critical of the “evidence” presented by the state, and it ruled that it will hear the two activists’ plea. However, as we have come to know in the past, courts cannot hold for a long time against government or security forces’ policies. If the current trends continue, we are not that far from a day in which questioning Zionism might lead to imprisonment – something which was unthinkable not that long ago.
I really don’t think people are aware enough of what’s going on in Israel right now. The rise of racism, the rapid escalation in human rights, the attacks on freedom of speech, the campaign against human rights activists – this is a country on a very dangerous path. As Taayush’s Amos Goldberg wrote in Haaretz a few days ago, It is happening here and now.
Sheizaf: It’s not about peace
Noam Sheizaf is a freelance journalist and editor who has worked for Ha’Ir (a Tel Aviv weekly published by Shocken Group), Ynet and Maariv. The following is a lightly edited version of the article he originally posted on Promised Land, his personal blog.
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When discussing the Palestinian-Israeli political process, the most common error is setting peace as its goal. This is not only incorrect, but also counter-productive, because it serves those who wish to maintain the status quo. The key to ending hostilities is to reframe the received narrative, as it has been presented since the early 1990s.
First of all, we need to be realistic. As we learned in Gaza, an Israeli withdrawal does not promise an end to the violence. Both sides continue to have conflicting interests that might lead to military action, and on both sides there are those who will try to use violence as a means of sabotaging any agreement. It’s clear that the more good faith Israelis and Palestinians show today, the easier it will be to stabilize the region, but more than 40 years of occupation will inevitably leave plenty of bitterness on the Palestinian side even after the last soldier leaves and the last settlement evacuated. The evacuation of settlements will bring its own set of problems on the Israeli side, too; and the huge socioeconomic gap between Jews and Arabs in such a small territory won’t help, either. So we shouldn’t promise the public something that will be difficult to deliver.
Even more important is the message created by all these peace talks. For many people – and this is something I’ve noticed especially in the US – it seems as though there are two equal parties, almost two states, that are entering a diplomatic process to sort out their ongoing differences. But there is only one state here. Israel is negotiating – when there are negotiations – with the people who are under its own control, and to whom it is refusing to grant civil rights.
In other words, talking about peace hides the real nature of the problem, which is the occupation. When we set peace as our goal, it means that the absence of peace – meaning the violence – was the problem. This is true for the Israeli side, but it’s only partly true for the Palestinians. Their main concern is the lack of civil and human rights. For them, the violence they suffer is only the result of the initial problem, which is the occupation. By talking about peac,e and only peace, we are accepting the Israeli definition of the problem as well as its solution.
When we discuss peace, we say that the two state solution is the only acceptable one, since that’s how you make peace – between states. If it’s a human or civil rights problem, on the other hand, there are other solutions – such as a confederation, or “one person, one vote.” Since this idea is totally unacceptable to the vast majority of Israelis, by choosing the “peace process” the world is actually choosing the Israeli narrative over that of the Palestinians.
Delegitimization and censorship continue: JPost stops publishing Naomi Chazan’s columns
Cross-posted from Promised Land.
David Horovitz
Other recent posts on the latest wave of suppression of dissent in Israel | Essays Hadas Ziv; Hagai El-Ad; Yariv Mohar; Aeyal Gross; Dorit Abramovitch; Amir Paz-Fuchs | News and analysis IDF joins assault on Israeli human rights community;Israeli media goes after New Israel Fund: “Responsible for Goldstone Report”; Hagee and CUFI fund anti-NIF campaign organizer; Two senior Maariv reporters attack the anti-NIF campaign sponsored by their newspaper; Following the Im Tirzu campaign: First Knesset steps against NIF; Israeli McCarthyism, circa 2010; Debunking the Im Tirzu report part I: Keshev’s Yizhar Be’er; Debunking the Im Tirzu report part II: Ha’ir media critic on journalism as propaganda |
Haaretz reveals today that following the right-wing campaign against the New Israel Fund, Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz informed NIF President Naomi Chazan that the paper will stop publishing her columns.
Yesterday Chazan received an e-mail from Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz, informing her the newspaper would cease publishing her column.
Chazan had provided the daily with one of its few leftist voices in recent years. Horovitz declined to respond to questions from Haaretz last night.
This is just one of several recent cases of self-censorship in the Israeli media: Both Maariv and Yediot, two of the leading tabloids in Israel, have decided recently not to publish major articles which were critical of Israel and the IDF.
Chazan, who was the target of a Der Sturmer style ads in the Israeli media, also commented on her personal feelings following the rightwing Im Tirzu movement’s campaign against her:
“I don’t know why they chose me – I can think of plenty of human rights supporters they could pick on. But I’m ever so proud to be a symbol of Israeli democracy. No doubt about it.”
Earlier this week, the Jewish community in Melbourne canceled a scheduled event with Chazan.
Following the Im Tirzu campaign: First Knesset steps against NIF
Cross-posted from Promised Land.
Other recent posts on the latest wave of suppression of dissent in Israel| Essays Hadas Ziv; Hagai El-Ad; Yariv Mohar; Aeyal Gross; Dorit Abramovitch | News and analysis IDF joins assault on Israeli human rights community; Israeli media goes after New Israel Fund: “Responsible for Goldstone Report”; Hagee and CUFI fund anti-NIF campaign organizer; Two senior Maariv reporters attack the anti-NIF campaign sponsored by their newspaper |
Following the Im Tirzu campaign: First Knesset steps against NIF
We should see the attack on the New Israel Fund in context: this was no isolated event, but part of a widespread campaign against human rights and peace activists
David Rotem
The Knesset committee for legislation decided Wednesday to look into foreign donations to non-profit organizations operating in Israel, and among them, those received and disbursed by the New Israel Fund. The investigation will be led by the chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, MK David Rotem (Israel Beitenu,) and a special subcommittee, to be formed immediately. Meanwhile, MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima) is pushing for a special Knesset investigation aimed against all Israeli human rights organizations which testified before the Goldstone commission.
Maariv reports that in a heated debate at the Knesset legislation committee, MK Zevulun Orlev (NRP) accused the NIF, Meretz party and the Israeli left of treason, no less:
“…NIF sponsors elements which are hostile to the state, and [by doing so] it causes us an unimaginable damage, not unlike our worse enemies… Meretz party has crossed the lines… former MK Naomi Chazan, which heads the NIF, has also crossed the lines.”
Yulia Shamalov Berkovich
MK Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich from opposition party Kadima joined the attack on the NIF in saying that:
“We must say to all Israel-haters that enough is enough. We won’t sit quietly when our enemies from home try to lead an undemocratic revolution here, encouraging boycott, desertion and pacifistic refusal to serve in the IDF, based on lies and distortions. We must draw our lines and tell the traitors to our people that this is enough.”
Im Tirzu, a right-wing nonprofit organization, has launched last week a campaign against the NIF, claiming it sponsors organizations that support Hamas. In a front page story in Maariv, senior political correspondent Ben Caspit quoted a “research” by Im Tirzu, which supposedly showed how the NIF was responsible for 92 percent of the anti-Israeli evidence in the Goldstone report. Caspit went even further, and raised the notion the all the NIF activities in Israel – the fund aids more than 300 grassroots and social justice organizations – are a cover for anti-Israeli subversion.
Gilad Erdan
Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) which represented the government in the Knesset debate, praised Im Tirzu: “it is a Zionist organization, which is doing a very important and positive work.” During the debate, minister Erdan referred to judge Goldstone as “this liar”.
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One of the contributors to the progressive Jewschool blog asked yesterday how this campaign against the NIF and other nonprofits different from the smear campaigns we have seen against the left in the past.
While it is true that the Right has been attacking human rights organizations for as long as they existed in Israel, things have changed in the last few months, and those who care about Israeli politics should be aware of those changes.
Ad on page 3 of the January 31 edition of the Jerusalem Post.
For start, the nature and the intensity of the attack changed. The Im Tirzu ads against the NIF shocked many American Jews — they reminded almost everyone of anti-Semitic cartoons — but in Israel they were considered legitimate. The tabloids had no problem publishing them, and you can still catch them as banners on popular news sites as Ynet.co.il and nrg.co.il. In fact, I don’t know of a paper or site that refused to run this ad. What’s even more important is the personalized nature of the attack – specifically targeting the head of the NIF, Naomi Chazan. We haven’t seen such viscous personal attacks since the assassination of PM Yitzhak Rabin.
Second, and unlike the attack on left wing politicians during the Oslo days, this time it is not only the political right that goes after human rights activists. And it’s not just smears. We are talking official government and Knesset policies, and real measures being taken. When minister Erdan praised Im Tirzu in the Knesset, he did so as the official representative of the government to the committee. This government includes even the labor party (though some labor MK’s came out in the NIF’s defense). In fact, some of the dominant figures in the campaign against the NIF are MK’s from opposition party Kadima, which under Tzipi Livni claim to represent the pro-peace alternative to Netanyahu’s Likud! Kadima’s official website even posted Im Tirzu’s accusations against the NIF.
Going after the left is now a policy which crosses party lines in Israel, with some of Israel’s most notable media people – Avri Gilad, Yair Lapid, Ben Dror Yemini and more – making a habit of attacking human rights organizations. Gilad and Yemini specifically joined the campaign against the NIF, repeating right wing lies and distorting facts. and if that’s wasn’t enough, this morning, the Israeli Government Press Office translated and disseminated Yemini’s article. Read more…
