Americans detained by a friendly state

This is curious. It's from the St Petersburg Times (TampaBay.com). An American family making their way home were stopped at Tel Aviv airport and told that most of them had to go back to the West Bank, where they had been staying, and travel back to America from Jordan. Now why would Americans be treated that way by such a special friend of America?

A large Lakeland family has been split in two temporarily by complex Israeli travel restrictions that forced the mother to leave seven of her children behind when they attempted to fly home.

On Aug. 18, Wedad Yacoub and 10 of her children -- all U.S. citizens -- were returning from a family visit in the West Bank through Tel Aviv, the same airport through which they had arrived more than two months before.

Israeli officials initially tried to block the family from leaving, saying they had to go through Jordan, a travel restriction that applies to Palestinian residents of the West Bank. Officials finally permitted Wedad Yacoub and her three youngest children to fly home, but the other seven children are still in the West Bank, two weeks later with no resolution in sight.

"I can't believe that children who were born in Lakeland could have their American citizenship ignored by a country so friendly to the U.S," said Wedad.

Even Israeli officials couldn't readily explain it.

"American citizens born in America can't leave through Tel Aviv, where they came in?" asked Daniel Seaman, director of the Government Press Office in Israel. "This has to be inaccurate. This can't be."

Seaman says it will take some research to know what happened, which is what he, other Israeli officials, U.S. State Department officials and Florida congressmen are doing.

"We've called the State Department and we want to solve this, but we don't have answers yet," said Keith Rupp, a spokesman for Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow.

The journey began normally enough on June 4 when Wedad Yacoub and her 10 children entered Israel through Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, as they have done every summer for the past five years. After attending family weddings and visiting with family in the West Bank, she and the children returned on Aug. 18 to fly out of Tel Aviv.

But, to their surprise, they were stopped by Israeli security officers who said they had to exit through Jordan because of their father's Palestinian heritage. Steve Yacoub, 54, was born in the West Bank, but moved to the United States 30 years ago. He became a citizen shortly after.

"Our father's heritage can't erase that we're American citizens, born and raised in Lakeland, Fla.," 18-year old Ramy Yacoub says he told Israeli police.

But, he says, they disagreed.

Wedad, who began weeping, was allowed to leave with the three youngest children. But the other kids, ages 11 to 21, were told they had to return to the West Bank. They stayed six hours in the airport before family members arranged for a driver to get them.

"We entertained ourselves by humming theme songs from U.S. television shows," said Ibrahim Yacoub, 21. "Our favorite is the tune from Jeopardy."

A month before, the children's father, who owns a Lakeland convenience store, arrived in Tel Aviv to go to the West Bank with his U.S. passport, as he does every year. But he was told by Israeli police that he had to travel through Jordan because of an expired Palestinian ID from 28 years before.

Yacoub said that he had entered as a U.S citizen for many years but dutifully complied and embarked on a 72-hour marathon, flying back to the United States from Tel Aviv, then flying to Jordan to enter the West Bank in time for a wedding.

"But I didn't think Israeli officials would suddenly turn my American-born children into Palestinians because of it," he said.

But apparently they did, at least to some degree.

The children say they were told they must get Palestinian IDs and depart through Jordan because their Palestinian heritage trumped their American citizenship. If they are not permitted to fly from Tel Aviv, the children will forfeit their $9,100 in tickets and face the prospect of buying tickets from Jordan for $16,800.

"Coming up with about $26,000 is not easy," said Wedad, who was born in Kuwait but is a U.S. citizen.

While Israeli officials did not respond with an explanation Tuesday, a clue to their thinking came from the U.S. State Department. A spokesman provided what he called "observations" made in May by State Department officials concerning Israeli travel policies.

According to these observations: "It is possible that an American citizen born in the United States whose parents were born or lived in the West Bank or Gaza would be considered a resident by Israeli authorities."

But why this "possible" designation as a new resident of the West Bank suddenly fell upon the Yacoub children, no one seems to know, including the State Department spokesman, Steve Royster.

Royster could offer only this broad statement: "We are committed to ensuring that all American travelers receive fair and equal treatment. ... We are having a positive dialogue with the government of Israel on travel and security issues."

Broad statement? It looks like an evasion to me. So they're Palestinians. So we know why Israel treated them so badly. Israel treats those it considers racially inferior badly. But why does America allow Israel to treat its own people this way? Perhaps America could pick up the $26,000 tab or however much it turns out to be and deduct it from the billions of dollars it gives Israel to, ah, ah yes, to treat the Palestinians and their neighbours badly.

I suppose the Mrs Yacoub should be thankful that Israel didn't kill any of her children. They do that quite a lot too. They've killed an American. They've killed a few Brits now too. There's nothing Israel can't do. I think opponents of the boycott should consider that one and add it to the core lack of legitimacy of Israel and the fact that it gets such an easy ride in the media. Britain lets Israel kill its citizens and it lets America do the same thing. But being American isn't even enough to stop a person being killed and children being harassed and detained. Does this mean that plucky little Israel is the most powerful state on earth? I'm not surprised that some people think so. I don't think so. I think the plug will be pulled on this fascistic little entity in the not too distant future and a good thing too. There'll be a lot of pain between now and then but at least the majority of American Jewish youngsters won't take it as a "personal tragedy for them."

No state solution?

I just got this from the Magnes Zionist. It's a Ha'aretz report by Meron Rapoport about how Israeli anarchists did their bit to have the Israeli court order the pulling down of the wall at Bil'in:

"I remember the moment I marched among a crowd of Palestinians," said one of the Israeli activists who participated in the ongoing demonstrations near the village of Bil'in, this week. Those demonstrations led to a High Court decision a few days ago ordering the rerouting of the separation fence near the village. "I served in the army, and my first instinct was to look for the signal operator and to check if we were marching properly spaced. The Palestinians shouted 'Allahu Akbar,' which is supposed to be the nightmare of every Israeli soldier, but I suddenly realized that I was with them, that they weren't my enemies."

One must understand. Anyone who went to demonstrate in Bil'in knew that he stood more than a small chance of getting hurt somehow by "his" army: by clubs, tear gas, rubber bullets. Undoubtedly, there were a few who sought out this violence, but it also befell those who did not seek it out. It was part of the deal. The violence that the soldiers and Border Police officers employed against the Israeli demonstrators on an average Friday in Bil'in surpassed that used against the settlers during the entire evacuation of Gush Katif. Nevertheless, a few hundred Israelis made this trip every Friday, without fail, for the last two and a half years. Not all of them at once. Sometimes five, sometimes 50, sometimes 100. But they came.

Most of these people were young, sometimes very young, and they gathered under the rubric of "Anarchists Against the Fence." The Zionist left had no presence there. Not Peace Now and not Meretz (some Meretz MKs sometimes assisted the arrestees, but no more than that) - and certainly not Labor. Older organizations from the non-Zionist left were supportive, and provided logistical assistance, but the initiative still came from the anarchists. They led the struggle.

Those anarchists, they're everywhere. But let's be clear. Israel is a lawless state. The ethnic cleansing that brought it into being with a Jewish majority is still on-going in spite of its obvious illegality so the exec may well ignore the judiciary on this. Judgement is one thing, enforcement is another.

So which doctor is lying here?

There's a bit of a to-do going on at the British Medical Journal over an allegation by Doctor, indeed Professor Michael Baum that it is "a lie to suggest that the Israel Medical Association is complicit in the ill treatment of prisoners.¹" And here's the reference that the little ¹ leads us to:

Blachar Y. Medical ethics, the Israel Medical Association, and the state of the World Medical Association; IMA president's response to the open letter in the BMA. BMJ 2003;327:1107.[Free Full Text]

Ok, so it's a lie because the president of the Israeli Medical Association says it is. But let's see what another doctor, Derek Summerfield, has to say about this lie business.

[Professor Baum]...writes that “it is also a lie to suggest that the IMA is complicit in the ill-treatment of prisoners”. A lie, Professor? The reference given to support this conclusion is a response by the President of the IMA to articles of mine in the BMJ in 2003. As one doctor to another I would like to ask Professor Baum directly whether he properly examined the considerable weight of published documentation relevant to this question before he made so unequivocal a statement in the world’s most circulated medical journal.

Firstly, a major point of reference in this literature would be the 1996 Amnesty International report which concluded that Israeli doctors working with the security services “form part of a system in which detainees are tortured, ill-treated and humiliated in ways that place prison medical practice in conflict with medical ethics”. Have you read this Professor Baum, and if you have, on what basis do you dismiss it? The report was entitled “Under constant medical supervision”, an ironic reference to a statement the Israeli authorities had made in defence of conditions in interrogation suites and prisons holding Palestinian detainees. If torture was institutionalised in the everyday treatment of Palestinian men undergoing interrogation, and such men were indeed under constant medical supervision, these doctors could not be but colluding with such practices in defiance of all codes of practice and the WMA’s anti-torture Declaration of Tokyo. Indeed in 1993 a ‘fitness for interrogation’ form to be filled out by Israeli doctors in detention centres came to light- this was medical certification in preparation for interrogation accompanied by torture.

Writing in the Lancet, the head of Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), a group for whom I have the greatest respect, reported in 2003 that since 1992 they had been attempting to get the IMA to join their opposition to the use of torture, but in vain. Amnesty told me in the 1990s that they too had made various approaches to the IMA on this account and had always been rebuffed. This too has been my experience when I have published articles on this subject in the BMJ and Lancet. In response to one of these, published in the Lancet, the longstanding president of the IMA Dr Yoram Blachar- whom Professor Baum is citing with approval- actually justified the use of “moderate physical pressure” during interrogations. It is not often that the head of a national medical association uses a medical journal to defend practices which the UN Committee Against Torture considered torture. The moral position and strategic line taken over many years by the IMA was well captured by a remark made by Professor Eran Dolev, than IMA Head of Ethics (yes, Ethics!) in an interview in 1999 with a visiting delegation from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, London (headed by the founder, Helen Bamber OBE). Dolev told them that “a couple of broken fingers” during the interrogation of Palestinians was worthwhile for the information it might garner. In a letter to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, those present collectively verified what Dolev had said. Did your researches turn up this letter, Professor Baum? In the event the IMA President defended Dolev and threatened a law suit, despite the watertight evidence. Indeed 2 years earlier, after a human rights conference in Gaza, I had written to Dolev in his capacity as Head of Ethics. An Israeli physician had told me that a medical colleague had confessed to her that he had removed the intravenous drip from the arm of a seriously ill Palestinian prisoner, and told the man that if he wanted to live, he should co-operate with his interrogators. I asked Dolev to investigate but he never replied, even after reminders.

When an Israeli psychiatrist Dr Ruchama Marton, a psychiatrist, publicised the unethical role that fellow Israeli doctors were playing in detention centres by labelling seriously mentally ill Palestinian detainees as “malingerers”, and denying them treatment, the IMA charged her with slander rather than investigating the allegations.

Torture continues to state policy in Israel. The Israeli human rights documentation centre B’Tselem recently confirmed (April 2007) that almost all Palestinian detainees suffer physical and mental abuse amounting to torture, citing the testimonies of 73 men gathered between July 2005 and January 2006. The IMA maintains a studied silence.

The second major medical ethical question concerns the Fourth Geneva Convention- those sections that guarantee a civilian population unfettered access to medical services and to the essentials for life, and immunity for medical staff. Amongst the bodies who have documented the extent to which the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has systematically flouted the Convention are Amnesty International (more than 500 critical reports since September 2000), Human Rights Watch, the World Food Programme, the Red Cross, UNICEF, the UN Relief and Works Agency, the WHO, the Israeli organisations Physicians for Human Rights (PHRI) and B’Tselem, the Palestinian organisation Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute, UN Social and Economic Council and various rapporteurs, and aid agencies like Medecins Sans Frontieres. Have you taken a scholarly approach to their reports before committing yourself, Professor Baum?

Now that is an extract from a lengthy "rapid response" to Professor Baum's article. If you follow the link you might figure how the rapid response system works and maybe post a rapid response yourself. I don't know what the registration requirements, if any, are but looking at some of the ludicrous comments before and after this Summerfield chap's one, I'd say that any fool can do it.

But this Summerfield chappie is no fool it seems. Noticing that Professor Baum has not availed of the rapid response facility himself, Summerfield has made his challenge to the Professor more explicit. So let's have that challenge again: In the July 21 BMJ debate on the merits or demerits of an academic boycott of Israel,

Michael Baum, an emeritus professor of surgery, was the author of the essay against a proposed boycott. One of his points was that “it is a lie to suggest that the Israeli Medical Association is complicit the ill-treatment of prisoners”. The reference he provided for this assertion was the response by IMA President Yoram Blachar in the BMJ in 2003 to my open letter of appeal on this subject. The lie, then, was mine. To assert this, on so charged a public issue, and in the world’s most publicised medical journal, is no small matter- it is capable of reassuring those who were harbouring some doubts about medical ethics in Israel, and of increasing the sense of security and indeed impunity with which interrogations of Palestinians are conducted in Israel.(Professor Baum did not seek to rebut the other main charge against the IMA: their refusal to speak out- as the World Medical Association (WMA) mandates- on systematic violations by the Israeli military of the Fourth Geneva Convention-guaranteed rights of a civilian population to unhindered access to the essentials for day-to-day life, including medical services, and for immunity for health professionals at work).

The claim about lying is also of some bearing to my personal reputation as a doctor and human rights campaigner.

I am also one of the main proponents of the call for the expulsion of the Israeli Medical Association from the WMA, and in a lengthy and well referenced rapid response on July 25 I sought to provide a comprehensive resume of the case against the IMA. In so doing I challenged Professor Baum to justify his claim and the scholarship upon which it was based, and to reply at bmj.com for others following the debate to weigh up. I also sent a copy to his email address. 5 weeks have passed and Professor Baum has not responded. I do not know what his intentions are, but to refuse would seem in the particular circumstances to be unprofessional and unethical. What he wrote is unambiguously an unconditional exoneration of the IMA in the face of “lies” about their conduct. I again appeal to him to justify this.

Go on Professor, give it a go.

"A farmer from the area" of the wall

Here's an article that appeared in Ha'aretz just recently. It shows the impact of Israel's wall on one farmer, close up.

Sharif Omar Khaled had a little bit of satisfaction last week. His guava trees bore fruit for the first time. They had ripened relatively early, he said, because of the hot weather.

Sharif Khaled, who is known to everyone as Abu Azzam, looks like a moshavnik from days gone by. True, he doesn't have a mustache, but he has a little paunch, an old tractor with a wagon and he can talk about his trees without end: olive trees, citrus trees, avocado, apricot trees, almonds, guavas. His greatest pride is his loquat orchard: 14 dunams last year yielded 47 tons of fruit. A most impressive record.

In the past two months, Abu Azzam has seen his 3,600 trees only from a distance, from the top of the hill where his village, Jayyous, lies. When I visited this Palestinian village (not far from Qalqilyah) some four years ago, I felt as if I were in a moshav - tractors with drivers in mud-covered rubber boots filled its streets.

This feeling has dissipated. The number of Jayyous residents who engage in agriculture has decreased for a simple reason: the separation fence. In this area it was completed three years ago and it cuts off the residents of Jayyous from their lands. To reach their farm land, they require a permit from the Civil Administration, and these are given out less and less often. Only 90 of the 4,000 residents of Jayyous are today permitted to work their lands. For three years, Abu Azzam was one of the lucky ones who received a permit. On June 23, he was informed that the permit would no longer be renewed, "because of opposition on the part of security elements."

Abu Azzam is not the only person whose permit was not renewed. In the past few months, people in Jayyous say, 29 farmers have had their permits canceled, all of them ostensibly for security reasons. In Abu Azzam's case, this refusal seems surprising, in the best-case scenario, and evil in the worst case.

Abu Azzam goes abroad three or four times a year. He has been to Sweden, Britain, India and Spain. Now he can chat a little in Italian after studying for three months in Pisa. But he cannot go to his loquat trees.

The word "coexistence" has all but disappeared from the lexicon of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But not with Abu Azzam. He struck up ties with Israelis who participated in the protests against building the fence in the Jayyous area four years ago, and since then he has taken pains to nurture those ties constantly. Every year hundreds of Israelis come to help him and other farmers from Jayyous with their harvesting in fields that have remained on the Israeli side of the fence. "They don't want money and even bring along their own food," Abu Azzam says with admiration. "They simply want to help us."

Abu Azzam particularly remembers one of the Israeli acts of assistance: In December 2004, Israeli bulldozers pulled up several hundred olive trees in a private plot belonging to one of the residents of Jayyous. "The Israelis came to replant the trees," he says. "They walked several kilometers on foot because the army did not permit them to bring their vehicles to the fields. Even the elderly among them went on foot. How old is Uri Avneri? He also walked. We were altogether some 50 Palestinians, 200 Israelis and 100 policemen and soldiers. Several hundred villagers from Jayyous watched us from behind the fence. They were extremely moved. It was a very good feeling to see the Israelis planting the trees with us."

But let us not get confused. Abu Azzam is a thorn in Israel's side, albeit a small thorn. He travels a great deal abroad and on most of his trips speaks out against the "apartheid fence." He was part of the Palestinian delegation to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, as a "farmer from the area," and he says things that are unequivocal and scathing. He appears in international forums abroad, and sometimes his confrontations with Israeli representatives end in unpleasant tones. This year in February, for example, he participated in a discussion at Cambridge University. "The Palestinian delegate in Briatin did not arrive, and I was the sole Palestinian in a forum with about 10 Israelis," he says. "They asked me whether suicide bombers can be part of a peace process. I was impolite and asked them whether attacks by an Apache helicopter on schools could be part of a peace process. There was an unpleasant argument." Did these scathing remarks lead to the cancellation of Abu Azzam's permit? It is possible.

A Civil Administration spokesman responded that Abu Azzam had a hearing before a committee that considered his request to renew his permit. The request was considered "bearing in mind the security needs of the State of Israel, and it was decided to turn it down." Abu Azzam says that the committee members asked him where he had gone the last time he visited abroad. "I said that I was in Sweden in May, and then they asked me 'where were you in February?' I had the feeling they were talking about the conference in Cambridge."

Perhaps there is another reason. One of Abu Azzam's friends once warned him that eventually they would cancel his permit to work his fields. "Your problem is that you have too many contacts with the Israeli left," his friend told him.

Either way, Abu Azzam is convinced that the Israeli authorities are not in favor of ties between Israelis and Palestinians. He views the lack of ties as one of the reasons that the number of Israelis who participate in the activities he has organized has not grown. "It is as if the Israelis are not interested in knowing what is happening on the other side," he says. Is Abu Azzam indeed a security menace? Anything is possible, but on the face of it, at least, it appears that this possibility would be strange. He is 65 years old, a former Communist, and the distance between him and Hamas is very great. He has been arrested only once, 20 years ago, for refusing to evacuate part of his lands in favor of the nearby settlement of Tzofin. One of his sons was detained for nine months under administrative detention, but that was more than three years ago. Another of his sons always gets permits to go to Haifa port to fetch goods for the company he runs in Ramallah. This son, too, by the way, did not get a permit from the Civil Administration to go to the family's fields. He can travel to Haifa but not to his father's guavas and loquats.

Sources in the Civil Administration say that attempts were made on their part to persuade the Shin Bet security service to give Abu Azzam a permit, but the Shin Bet was adamant in its refusal.

Abu Azzam has a simple explanation for this persistent refusal: "They want us to forget about our lands, for us to emigrate from here."

I meant to select bits but I ended up posting the whole thing. It shows the cruelty and its purpose, ethnic cleansing. It shows Israel for what it is.

Finkelstein bows out with his head held high

How can you bow with your head held high? Well I don't know but Finkelstein seems to have managed it on the occasion of his "settling" with DePaul University. It appears that both parties have made their final statements and that's an end to it. So here are the statements in a news release from DePaul:

September 05, 2007

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Joint statement of Norman Finkelstein and DePaul University on their tenure controversy and its resolution

Norman Finkelstein and DePaul University issued the following statement today in connection with the resolution of their dispute over the University's denial of tenure to Professor Finkelstein. Except for this statement there will be no public comment regarding the resolution of our controversy or the terms of our agreement.

From Professor Finkelstein: I came to DePaul University in 2001 and was put on a tenure-track position in 2003. To get tenure I had to demonstrate a credible record as a teacher, scholar, and citizen of the university. During my six year stint at DePaul I consistently received among the highest student evaluations in my department. I have published five books to critical acclaim from leading scholars, and they have been translated into 46 foreign editions. I have been recognized as a public intellectual at many of the leading universities in the United States and Europe and have become an internationally recognized scholar in my academic specialties. Based on this record, I should have received tenure. Indeed, after extensive scrutiny of my academic credentials, my department voted overwhelmingly to tenure me as did the college-level tenure committee, which voted unanimously in my favor. The only inference that I can draw is that I was denied tenure due to external pressures climaxing in a national hysteria that tainted the tenure process. The outpouring of support for me after the tenure denial from among the most respected scholars in the world buttresses this conclusion.

Although DePaul's decision to deny me tenure was a bitter blow, I would be remiss in my responsibilities if I did not also acknowledge DePaul's honorable role of providing a scholarly haven for me the past six years. It is a fact, and I would want to acknowledge it, that the DePaul administration kept me on its faculty despite overwhelming external pressures. It is also a fact that my professional colleagues displayed rare rectitude in steadfastly supporting me. It is also a fact that DePaul students rose to dazzling spiritual heights in my defense that should be the envy of and an example for every university in the United States. I will miss them.

It is now time for me to move on and hopefully find new ways to fulfill my own mission in life of making this world a slightly better place on leaving it than when I entered it.

From DePaul: Today we have reached a resolution of our dispute with Professor Norman Finkelstein. As a part of that resolution he has agreed to resign effective immediately. With this issue behind us, we can once again turn our full attention and energy to discharging our most important duty: the education of DePaul students, who have placed in us their trust and faith.

Granting tenure is a guarantee of lifetime employment. DePaul's standards for tenure are demonstrated and sustainable excellence in teaching and scholarship as well as meaningful service to the University. Every DePaul faculty member seeking tenure is evaluated by the same standards: it is an evaluation of faculty conducted by faculty.

Throughout the tenure process, our faculty ensured that the established standards for tenure were their only consideration. Upon receiving the recommendations from the lower level faculty committees, the University Board on Promotion and Tenure - DePaul's highest academic committee - voted to deny Professor Finkelstein tenure, and the President of DePaul accepted that vote. We understand that Professor Finkelstein and his supporters disagree with the University Board on Promotion and Tenure's conclusion that he did not meet the requirements for tenure. The system is designed to give every applicant the same opportunity to achieve tenure, and has proven to be fair and effective. In every tenure case, the final decision is one of balancing the various arguments for and against tenure.

Professor Finkelstein has expressed the view that he should have been granted tenure and that third parties external to the University influenced DePaul in denying tenure. That is not so. Over the past several months, there has been considerable outside interest about the tenure decision. This attention was unwelcome and inappropriate. In the end, however, it had absolutely no impact on either the process or the final outcome.

Professor Finkelstein is a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher. The University thanks him for his contributions and service.

Both parties are satisfied with the resolution of their dispute and wish each other well in their future endeavors.

Media Contact: Denise Mattson, (312)362-6225

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So maybe we've heard the last of this now. Finkelstein ought to do ok work-wise. DePaul will come off worse out of this. Their donors will be ok for a time but their reputation will be way down.

Court win for Bil'in, victory for passive resistance

Here's a heartening report from the Guardian. Israel's Supreme Court has ruled that parts of the wall have to be uprooted from by Bil'in. I read once that Israel's Supreme Court once ordered Ben Gurion not to depopulate and demolish two Palestinian villages and that he just went ahead anyway. You might want to check that. My point here is that the court might not be the final arbiter of what becomes of a Palestinian village. But it is heartening to believe that the court may have decided as it did because of the resistance of the local Palestinians and the under-reported fact that they are joined by internationals and Israelis.

to the embarrassment of the Israeli government, the supreme court yesterday ordered the defence ministry to present a new path for the barrier and said the current route could not be justified. Chief justice Dorit Beinish said: "We were not convinced that it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bil'in's lands." In certain places it would mean the fence must be torn down.

Although not the first such decision by the court, the ruling stands out for its tough language and the fact that Bil'in, almost alone among Palestinian villages, has mounted over the past two-and-a-half years a successful campaign of peaceful resistance to the barrier. "Weapons were forbidden from the start," Mr Yassin said. "People decided we should take a prominent role with a peaceful movement because we knew that with an armed struggle we were not capable of taking back one inch of land. If we had fired one bullet, the Israeli army would have found an excuse to kill the whole village."

Demonstrators gather every Friday, march to the barrier singing and waving flags, and confront the Israeli soldiers. Stones are thrown and answered with teargas, stun grenades and often rubber-coated bullets. At least two people have been seriously injured and many others suffered lesser injuries, including Mr Yassin's son and cousin, both hit by stun grenades or rubber-coated bullets.

Yesterday, trucks and vans carried dozens of singing villagers out to the barrier again where they waved flags and rattled sticks on the metal fence in front of the Israeli soldiers. One villager shouted to the crowd through a loudspeaker: "Your steadfastness brought you here."

"Because of our protests the world knew about us and that's why we won," said Abdul Latif Yassin, 50, a school teacher. "But we still have more land beyond the barrier than has been given back to us today."

One of the protest organisers, Nasir Samarra, 27, stood in the crowd wearing a T-shirt that read: Free Palestine. "Our struggle has only just started," he said. "Now we want Israel to implement this decision, not simply to pass judgment."

Among the demonstrators there have always been foreigners and Israeli activists, so the protests have become one of the highest-profile instances of joint, non-violent action between Israelis and Palestinians.

So at least a moral victory for Palestine, for peaceful resistance and for internationalism. Next year Jerusalem!

I vainly searched but not in vain

So how did that happen? Well the born again ultra-zionist, Howard Jacobson wrote a ludicrous article in Saturday's Independent about how the left should sympathise with a successful hack like him because as a Jew he was dispossessed of his homeland a couple of millennia ago. I wrote to the Independent to protest his stupidness on the none too relevant grounds that Jews overwhelmingly are not from what we now call Israel and that we are, mostly anyway, the product of hundreds, indeed thousands of years of individual, tribal, communal and even national conversions. Well, on account of my vanity, I looked for my letter and what did I see? Well I didn't see my letter. Censorship? Er, no. There was quite a crop of letters exposing Jacobson's stupidness.

The first writer saw fit to lavish praise on Howard Jacobson, I'm guessing, for old time's sake.

I have few equals in my admiration of the nous and wit of Howard Jacobson, but he makes a great mistake in castigating Robert Fisk's comments about the tragedy of dispossession (1 September).

It is precisely because the Jews have returned to a longed-for homeland that they are a different case, and, even more poignantly, are treating the Palestinians as they were once treated themselves. Robert Fisk must surely be the expert journalistic voice when it comes to the consequences, direct and indirect, for the region and the world, of this mistreatment.

Terry Walsh

Rochester, Kent

Hmm, returned? Returned to a place we couldn't possibly prove we came from. I don't like that. It panders to tribal lore, mythology, that sort of thing. This next one gets closer to hitting the spot:

Of course Jews have the right to a homeland in Israel-Palestine – although the majority, like Howard Jacobson, prefer to find a homeland elsewhere. Jews, like the Palestinians, Brest-Litovsk Poles or Silesian Germans–we might add the Roma, Sikhs, Navaho Indians or Ethnic Fijians – all have the right to a homeland. The issue is whether they have the right to a state maintained at the expense of others.

If white Anglo-Saxon Protestants were to insist on England as a state over which they would be permanently dominant and set out to achieve this by exiling or marginalising those outside their ethno-religious grouping, then Howard Jacobson would be the first to protest. Fisk is right. Only in the case of Israel do we become misty-eyed enough to justify the unjustifiable.

The Rev Duncan Macpherson

Hampton, Middlesex

I say! a reverend. But what's this next one? My friend Georgina:

Howard Jacobson wants us to believe there is no difference between dispossessed Jews and dispossessed Palestinians. The sad difference is, of course, that dispossessed Jews have become the dispossessors of Palestinians. There is nothing suspect in putting greater emphasis on present suffering and injustice, about which something might be done, than on the suffering of the past, however real.

Georgina Baidoun

Milton Keynes

Another good one but it still incorporates this "dispossessed Jews" myth. I understand. It's best not to attack too many premises of a person's point when you write to the press. As it happens that's one of the difficulties correspondents have responding to zionists in the media. It is enormously difficult to find an honest article that promotes the zionist cause so detractors find themselves condemning every paragraph. The sheer contrariness of it all is off-putting to the non-initiated and in this case there's the having to tip-toe through the verbal minefield of saying that, yes, Jews have a right to a homeland, but no, they don't have a right to one at the expense of others. Who wants to go on record saying Jews have no right to a homeland or even seeming like they might be saying that? Oi! Anyway, here's mine.

Howard Jacobson's apparent contention that the Jews of today are the descendants of dispossessed Jews of biblical times is ahistorical nonsense. There have been individual, tribal and even national conversions into and out of Judaism since time immemorial. The Jews of today are are an ethno-religious group defined by descent but not by territory. Jews are people who either practice Judaism or are the descendants of people who practiced Judaism. The Palestinians are the people of a place, Palestine (aka Israel and the occupied territories). Their dispossession at the hands of the Zionist movement took place in the living memory of many of them and the dispossession continues.

We now have a situation where Jews from anywhere in the world have more right to a home in Israel than native non-Jews who are there or who have been driven from there. As a potential beneficiary of that colonial relationship, Howard Jacobson really can't complain.

Now why did I say "apparent contention?" It's because I couldn't bear to actually read the whole article. I just had a quick skim and fired off an even quicker letter. I simply guessed at what he was saying. Judging from the letters they did publish I guess my guess was right.

Blaming the victims?

I just checked out Harry's Place, a kind of Eustonista-cum-Engage style pro-war pro-zionist website, to see if they had anything about this George Galloway falling out with the SWP business and sure enough they did. But scrolling down I saw this post on what promises to be a ludicrous article by a British MP in the Washington Post. The MP was the organiser of a group of MPs who produced a report purporting to be on antisemitism in the UK and that's the subject of the article. Well Harry's Place wants you to

Read it all. And then compare it to the cowardly words of far-Left (and apparently somewhat unbalanced) martyr Norman Finkelstein, who said, "I am just the messenger who reports on the actions of the Jewish establishments, actions that are encouraging anti-Semitism."

Blaming antisemitism on the actions of Jews themselves? That's an old one, professor.

So read the whole load of tosh by an MP that could have been written by Abe Foxman and compare it to one line uttered by Finkelstein. Words which, taken with other things that he has written about the exploitation of the holocaust by extortionists calling themselves the World Jewish Congress and the things he has written about Israel and a certain zionist Harvard professor, are "cowardly." Now it was big of them to provide the link to where these "cowardly words" were written because the courageous words immediately above them say:

Finkelstein, himself Jewish, has been accused of fomenting anti-Semitism through his unrelenting criticism of Israel and Jewish leaders, a charge he denied to an Israeli newspaper

The "cowardly words" follow on directly from that and according to Gene at Harry's Place, they amount to "blaming anti-Semitism on the actions of Jews themselves." So there are people who blame a Jew, Norman Finkelstein, for "fomenting anti-Semitism through his unrelenting criticism of Israel and Jewish leaders." To which Finkelstein replies that it might actually be the actions themselves that are causing antisemitism rather than his reporting of those actions. And his words are cowardly and his detractors words are.... Well what are his detractors' words if not blaming a Jew for antisemitism? And how does flying in the face of the establishment on campus and in the mainstream media amount to cowardice exactly? Can these people not disagree with a person without casting aspersions on their character? Why don't they just say they don't agree? Is it to serve notice that a reasonable debate cannot be had on this? Why did they ignore the fact that some people are blaming Finkelstein, a Jew, for antisemitism? This Gene guy isn't just dishonest. This Gene guy (girl?) is a bully. It doesn't matter what Finkelstein says. He's anti-war and he's anti-zionist so he's a non-person. Normal rules of discourse don't apply. His expressed views have cost him his tenure as he must have known they might. And they will cost him jobs elsewhere too. And yet this bully boy Gene can call him a coward. He is telling the Harry's Place faithful that we don't like this Finkelstein chap so let's call him a, er, er, coward. Yes, let's encircle him in the playground, poke his chest and say "coward!"

Under the masthead at Harry's Place are the words "Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear." Liberty's a perplexing little concept. I mean is it liberty to sing "cowardly" or some other put-down in unison with the rest of the mainstream media and most western governments (and DePaul's donors) when someone says what you don't want to hear? Or is it offensive to liberty? Of course, Finkelstein can still say what this Gene chap doesn't want to hear but surely Finkelstein's "courageous" detractors get far more outlets to condemn his "cowardly words" than he does to utter them. This is a blog that says what the powerful want people to hear. Liberty for them is the power to bully and abuse those who say what the establishment doesn't want them to say. What's the point of a blog doing that? Now it wouldn't be as catchy a slogan but we might want to restate it as "Liberty is the right to have people hear what they don't want to hear." Clunky yes. But there are some who use their liberty to make so much noise that radical opinions, and even facts, get drowned out in the cacophony. This is the liberty that Harry's Place exemplifies, certainly in this wretched post. It's noise, nothing more.

New left blog

Well newish anyway. It's called "An Unrepentant Communist....". It's random posts on whatever takes the fancy of the blogger who's based in Ireland but spent some time in the UK and was involved with the Communist Party of Great Britain. Now I meant to say some stuff about what's in the blog but I've gone and distracted myself with what I just saw on the CPGB website. So go to "An Unrepentant Communist" where you can sample such delights as the Great Red Jukebox featuring Paul Robeson singing the Soviet anthem complete with fulsome praise for Comrade Stalin. But before I wander into what it was that distracted me, does anyone know why "An Unrepentant Communist...." is in quotes? Is it a quote? I think we should be told.

Now here's what distracted me:

MP George Galloway criticises Socialist Workers Party

"Unhealthy" internal relations, a lack of democratic decision-making, financial crisis and looming "oblivion". Last week, the Respect MP sent a scathing eight page document to all members of the Respect National Committee. The SWP leadership reacted furiously

Click here to read his document It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
Click here to read an extract from the SWP's internal Party Notes, reacting to the document
Of course, the next issue of the Weekly Worker (September 6) will be analysing and commenting on the document in detail

This is curious. I allowed my membership of Respect to lapse when I heard that the SWP had prevented Salma Yakoub from censuring Galloway over his Big Brother appearance. That showed a lack of democratic values, I thought. I also heard that Galloway was criticised over financial mismanagement at War on Want and that he was suspended from the UK parliament because of some financial issue over his Iraqi charity. And Galloway is accusing the SWP of financial mismanagement and lack of democracy. All we need now is for Gilad Atzmon's promoters at the SWP to accuse Galloway of betrayal. Let's just wait and see, shall we?

Israel seeks the abolition of German Jewry

According to a Ha'aretz article, Germany is considering a formal complaint to the State of Israel over the activities of Nativ, "the Israeli government agency responsible for promoting aliyah among Jews in the former Soviet Union, to the Russian-speaking Jewish community in Germany." Apparently since the end of World War II Germany has sought to resurrect its Jewish community. Israel on the other hand, isn't so keen on a flourishing diaspora because it defeats the object of zionism. And of course, Germany was the instigator and the scene of the worse crime ever perpetrated against the Jewish people so the re-emergence of a Jewish community there is something of an embarrassment to those zionists who see their role as simply building up the Jewish presence in what we now call Israel.

Germany, which has yet to receive an official notice of the government's decision, is concerned that Nativ's operations will hamper efforts to rebuild the local Jewish community decimated during the Holocaust.

According to German figures, 206,000 Jews immigrated to Germany from the former Soviet Union between 1991 and 2006, most of who remained in Germany. Less than half of them, however, are formally involved in community activities.

All German governments since the end of World War Two have publicly supported the resurrection of Jewish life in Germany, although for some 40 years after the war only tens of thousands of Jews remained in Germany. Berlin politicians therefore view the arrival of Jews from the former Soviet Union as a one-time opportunity to breathe new life into the German Jewish community.

The federal government is providing the Jewish community with financial assistance in order to help it absorb the immigrants. Next year, that assistance is expected to grow from 3 million euro to 5 million, in addition to one-time government grants for the construction of synagogues and other community institutions.

"We are constantly trying to give the Russian Jews the feeling that they are wanted here, not as guests but as permanent residents, and we don't want to see a situation in which we are competing over them with Israel," said a German official involved in ties with the Jewish community.

Despite the fact that Germany is trying to limit immigration, Jews from the former Soviet Union are being allowed to immigrate and are entitled to undergo a fast-track naturalization process.

"These are the only immigrants we want," said a German official. "They allow us to realize our dream of rehabilitating the glorious local Jewish community."

The German government is also uncomfortable with the secret nature of Nativ's activities. Nonetheless, Germany has yet to file an official protest with the Israeli government and is instead awaiting official notice.

Senior officials in the German administration involved in contacts the local Jewish community have said in off-the-record conversations that they would have expected to learn of Israel's decision from the Israeli government, instead of being informed of it by local Jewish leaders who are exposed to the expansion of Nativ's activities.

"We would have expected different behavior from a country that has such friendly ties with us, and in any event we intend to stand by the side of our community," said one of the officials. "But of course we have no legal way of blocking [Nativ's activities]."

Charlotte Knobloch, who heads Germany's Central Council of Jews, issued a complaint over Nativ's expansion during a meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem three weeks ago.

Berlin officials in charge of ties with Israel and the Jewish community see the government's decision to expand Nativ, made roughly one month ago, as the result of political demands and deals that led Olmert to transfer Nativ to the authority of Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Wikipedia has an entry on Nativ here. Its' worth considering how Nativ differs from other groups promoting the settlement of Jews in Israel as its activities go back to the Cold War, when the free movement of Jews, or anyone else, from the then Soviet Union was extremely difficult.

Jewish anarchists again

This film got such a rave review from Brian Robinson I've decided to post it again so it can be at the top of the home page for a little while longer:

Enjoy!

Why Israel kills children

Thanks again to Hulkagaard in the comments for linking to this Gideon Levy article in Ha'aretz on the Israeli army's propensity for killing children.

Again children. Five children killed in Gaza in eight days. The public indifference to their killing - the last three, for example, were accorded only a short item on the margins of page 11 in Yedioth Ahronoth, a sickening matter in itself - cannot blur the fact that the IDF is waging a war against children. A year ago, a fifth of those killed in the "Summer Rain" operation in Gaza were children; during the past two weeks, they comprised a quarter of the 21 killed. If, heaven forbid, children are hurt in Sderot, we will have to remember this before we begin raising hell.

The IDF explains that the Palestinians make a practice of sending children to collect the Qassam launchers. However, in this case, the children killed were not collecting launchers. The first two were killed while collecting carob fruit and the next three - according to the IDF's own investigation - were playing tag. But even if we accept the IDF's claim that there is a general trend of sending children to collect launchers (which has not been proven), that should have brought about an immediate halt to firing at launcher collectors.

But the IDF does not care whether its victims are liable to be children. The fact is that it shoots at figures it considers suspicious, with full knowledge - according to its own contention - that they are liable to be children. Therefore, an IDF that fires at launcher collectors is an army that kills children, without any intention of preventing this. This then is not a series of unfortunate mistakes, as it is being portrayed, but rather reflects the army's contempt for the lives of Palestinian children and its terrifying indifference to their fate.

Now in medieval times Jews were falsely accused of killing Christian children for ritual purposes. This was a bogus charge about an annual ritual. Now the State of Israel is making the killing of non-Jewish children a near daily ritual. And why? Levy goes on to point out that during the onslaught against Gaza last year (Summer Rain was the obscene name they chose for that operation) one in five of Israel's victims were children and that just lately they have closed the ratio to one in four. Is it a deterrent? It doesn't seem to be deterring. Is it a cull? Does it make Israeli Jews feel safe? Is it, as they say, good for Jews? Some Israeli decision-makers clearly believe so.

Jewish anarchists in Rio

Jewdas put on another successful do this afternoon. It was the film fest I plugged here and here. I think the best of the films they showed was the one below. It's called The Free Voice of Labour - the Jewish Anarchists. It's 57 minutes long and well worth a look at.



It comes from a very useful facility called Google video. I just googled "jewish anarchists" and up it came, in third place.

Magnes Zionist comments on comments

After a mere two months, the Magnes Zionist is already getting hassle via his comments section:

This blog has been really active for around two months, and I am starting to get a lot of comments. It's hard enough to write posts (and you will notice that I am writing fewer) without having to respond to some very lengthy comments.

One option would be to publish all comments (except the nasty ones) and then respond as I see fit. I don't mind doing that, provided that people don't complain if I don't respond. Silence is not assent.

Another option would be for me to try to summarize some long comments in my own comment. I can see the day when I am swamped by comments citing Mitchell Bard chapter and verse, and it may be helpful to do that.

So...what I am trying to say is that if I don't publish your comment, and that offends you, I am sorry. I am not trying to censor you, but sometimes I just don't have the time, or sometimes I think that I have made my point clear. If you see this as an admission of defeat, well, fine.

But I see the comments not as an opportunity for ideological opponents to get their own point across -- start your own blog for that -- but as an opportunity for me to clarify what I have to say.

Does any of that sound familiar? No comment!

Today's the day for the Jewdas film fest

As announced in an earlier post, the Jewdas film fest takes place today: Here are the details:

Sunday September 2 nd, Noon, Rio Cinema, E8, London

Entrance £5 (tickets on 0207 241 9410)

“Outside the mainstream because of their race, spiritual practices, sexuality, gender and politics, young Jews build radical communities”

Four hours of documentaries and performance that will open your eyes to an alternative way of thinking Jewish.

Political, controversial, fun, and forward-thinking, this is not a place for Streisands or Fiddlers on Roofs. From gay rights to comic books, from vegans to the Middle East, all issues for modern Jewry will be explored on screen.

The screening includes the European premiere of American doc Young, Jewish and Left and the UK’s first cinema screening of a lost classic from 1980, Joel Sucher and Steven Fischler’s “The Free Voice of Labour – the Jewish Anarchists”

Meanwhile, be entertained by music from Brighton’s Le Band Extraordinaire; comedy from Miriam Elia; and a masterclass in Jewla-hooping (aka Jewish hula-hooping). Plus taste extreme Jewish food and prepare for surprises.

The Films

Young, Jewish and Left (Dir: Irit Reinheimer & Konnie Michael Chameides) – A celebration of diversity, Young Jewish and Left weaves queer culture, Jewish Arab history, secular Yiddishkeit, anti-racist analysis, and religious/spiritual traditions into a multi-layered tapestry of Leftist politics. Personal experiences from many of today’s leading Jewish activists reframe the possibilities of Jewish identity. It presents a fresh and constructive take on race, spirituality, Zionism, queerness, resistance, justice, and liberation.

“ Proves that the legacy of Jewish socialists, anarchists, feminists, Yippies, hippies, organizers, and agitators of the past century lives on” (Jennifer Belyer)

The Free voice of Lab our – the Jewish Anarchists (Dir: Joel Sucher and Steven Fischler) - From 1980, a film about the Yiddish-speaking anarchists who played a key role in the unionization of the garment trades before World War I. Utilises interviews with actual participants, stills, newsreel footage, Yiddish songs and poems to document the movement's contribution to the U.S. Labour movement between 1880 and the First World War.

“nothing short of a treasure as the story of how a passion for a `mother tongue' and an anarchist vision produced a movement that had an important effect on the growth of the American labour movement." (American Anthropologist)

Confession – A Film about Ariel Schrag (Dir: Sharon Barnes) - Exploring 23 year-old Jewish comic-book artist Ariel Schrag's world in which she negotiates fame, obsesses about disease, and discusses the way she sees as a dyke comic book artist. Schrag's autobiographical work is of vital importance because it chronicles the underground world of teen dyke culture in all of its raw, sexual, and complicated glory- in a way that is rarely recognized or represented in mainstream art, literature, or media.

Plus other surprise shorts and archive films

Nearest station Dalston Kingsland (on Silverlink), or alternatively get a bus from Highbury and Islington

But hurry, it starts in a little under an hour and a half.

A Jew in the Moroccan jigsaw

All part of life's rich tapestry I suppose. I got a comment to the effect that Jews in such places as Morocco and Iran are only there thanks to the tradition of the "court Jew." Actually I always think that Israel plays that role vis á vis America. But leaving that to one side.... In the same thread someone posted a link to this article about a Jewish woman candidate in the forthcoming elections for Morocco's legislative assembly. The headline is Interview: Morocco's national jigsaw includes Jews:

Magharebia: Why are you standing for office in a Muslim country when you're Jewish?

Maguy Kakon: I consider myself to be a Moroccan citizen. I’m a Moroccan first and foremost. I’m not in politics to preach my religion or to say that I belong to this or that religion. My religion is an asset and a difference which will bring cultural diversity, and so much the better for that. But for me, the most important thing is to be involved as a citizen of Morocco.

Getting into politics is a right and I'm exercising it freely and without any obstacles. I'm now running my election campaign and doing so on a non-religious basis. As for my religion, it’s purely a personal faith which I put to one side. I believe religion is something inside us which shouldn’t interfere with politics.

I'm not sure how free the regime is in Morocco. Apparently the King has the ultimate authority and it's believed he would use it to thwart the aspirations of the strongest of the parties, the islamist Justice and Development Party. Still it will be interesting to see how this woman gets on.

Oh dear, the children they killed weren't terrorists after all

Well there's a thing. The Israeli army has admitted that the three children it killed on Tuesday weren't retrieving launchers for qassams after all. Here's Ha'aretz:

In the initial IDF statement after the incident on Tuesday, the army said it "wishes to express sorrow" for the "use of children in terror attacks," implying that the children had been sent by terrorists to collect the rocket launchers. The military has frequently accused terrorist organizations of using teenagers and children in this fashion.

But the probe, which was launched immediately after the incident, determined that the children were playing tag near the launchers, as revealed by army footage recording the incident. The video reportedly shows the children - who appear as figures whose age cannot be determined - approaching the launchers and then moving back, in a way that could be seen as suggesting that they were loading the launchers with rockets.

The terrain did not allow for direct observation of the area, so the army had to rely on aerial photography. The unit that launched the missile at the children used this visual feed to direct their fire, army sources told Haaretz.

The video does show one of the figures to be a child, army sources said, but this happened so close to the moment of impact that the troops were unable to abort in time.

IDF troops near the Gaza Strip are under orders to fire at rocket launchers only when terrorists approach them. The launchers themselves are easily replaceable and are of little value to the terrorist organizations, so the IDF prefers to target the terrorists who are directing the firing.

Did you see that? "The launchers themselves are easily replaceable." Doesn't that mean that people approaching them or just being near them wouldn't be trying to retrieve them?

Well really! what do Israelis know about Israel?

The UK's Zionist Federation has cancelled "by mutual agreement" an invitation to Danny Rubenstein to attend its little shindig on the 60th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine by zionist forces. Here's the Jerusalem Post:

Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein's participation in this weekend's Zionist Federation (ZF) conference in London has been cancelled by mutual agreement.

On Thursday evening, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Rubinstein, who also teaches at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, told a UN conference in Brussels: "Today Israel is an apartheid state with different status for different communities." In a meeting on Friday with ZF officials, Rubinstein confirmed he made the statement.

The ZF regularly holds meetings where a wide variety of views are expressed, and while there is no question that Rubinstein has every right to express his views about Israel, it was mutually agreed that his participation in the Zionist Federation conference became untenable

ZF Chairman Andrew Balcombe said, "Criticism of Israeli policy is acceptable. However, by using the word 'apartheid' in a UN conference held at the European Parliament, Danny Rubinstein encourages the demonization of Israel and the Jewish people. I believe he was naïve to attend the UN conference. Indeed, his own newspaper had earlier reported that Israeli and EU lawmakers had attacked the UN meeting for having a completely one-sided, anti-Israeli agenda."

I should have thought that the issue was whether or not "apartheid" is a fair or accurate description of Israel or of the occupation but of course the ZF exists to promote and to cover for the apartheid system that is the State of Israel.

Israel is an apartheid state

I try to avoid calling Israel an apartheid state because you get these smart people who love to point out that the beneficiaries of Israel's racist laws are the majority whereas in South Africa, where the expression "apartheid" was first coined, the victims were the majority. Still, see this from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

The Arab affairs editor for the Israeli newsaper Ha'aretz, Danny Rubenstein, told participants at a United Nations conference in Brussels Thursday that Israel is an apartheid state.

"Today Israel is an apartheid state with different status for different communities," Rubenstein said, according to observers at the event, which is being held at the Euroepan Parlaiment. Observers also quoted Rubenstein, a prominent columnist and member of the newsaper's editorial board, as saying: "Hamas won the election of the international community and Israel cannot ignore that."

Rubenstein was one of the few Israelis speaking among a sea of Palestinean activists at a United Nations conference entitled "International conference of Civil Society in support of Israeli-Palestine conflict."

The conference, say some attendees and Israel advocacy groups, is merely a smokescreen for anti-Israel rhetoric by the United Nations committee for Palestinean rights, which has a long history of attacking Israel and blaming all Palestinean woes on Israelis.

I don't understand why attendees would be quoting Rubenstein if he was there. And I don't understand the whingeing by Israel advocacy groups if they were they were there. Hmm.

Israel's Law of "Return"

Here's that Magnes Zionist chap again, with his take on Israel's Law of Return. It comes in two parts. Here's the intro to part one, posted August, 14 this year:

In 1950 the Israeli Knesset passed the Law of Return, which begins, “Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh.” As Joppke and Roshenhek (2001) point out, the Law of Return is not an immigration law that confers upon Jews the right to be citizens of Israel; rather it recognizes their natural right to be citizens. It is part and parcel of the view of Israel as a state of the Jewish people who are its actual and potential citizens; it is a constitutive law, and not merely a law that favors one ethnic group over the other in immigration policy. The law applies not only to Jews who have suffered from discrimination or are refugees, but also to those who wish to settler in Israel for ideological, i.e., Jewish reasons. It follows from the two central doctrines of political Zionism: that the natural place for Jews is the State of Israel, and that a viable Jewish state can be attained through massive immigration. This second doctrine points to one of the main goals of the Law of Return – to ensure a solid Jewish majority, because of the recognition that Palestine is inhabited and claimed by another people, the Palestinians.

And here's the intro to the long awaited part two, published yesterday (30/8):

In “Democratic Norms, Diasporas, and Israel’s Law of Return,” Alexander Yacobson and Amnon Rubenstein defend Israel’s Law of Return by pointing to other states, especially Germany, that accord preference in immigration to "co-ethnics" of the majority ethnic group:

Germany, indeed, provides a well-known example. In the 1950s the Germans expanded the right to automatic citizenship to include not just refugees and displaced persons, as provided in their constitution, but also any person of German extraction from the USSR and the nations of Eastern Europe. This applied to a large population of ethnic Germans living in those areas for hundreds of years, without any civic or geographic connection with the modern German state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the law was revised so that the eligibility for citizenship was limited to emigrants of German extraction from the former Soviet Union. Germany’s current policy toward ethnic Germans in other Eastern European states is to encourage them to remain where they are and to assist them in preserving their German culture.…in all the decades since its enactment, a half century in which Germany’s laws of repatriation granted citizenship to millions of immigrants of ethnic German extraction (along with considerable financial benefits), the laws of repatriation have never been challenged in the European Court of Human Rights (p. 7).

The authors suggest that there is (or was) a close analogy between the immigration practices of Germany and that of Israel. Both Israel and Germany recognize a right of return of its “co-ethnics,” some of whom never actually lived in the homeland, because of a sense of common nationhood. Germany was never criticized for it; why should Israel be? There is some merit in the analogy, provided that one does not look too closely. If one does, then not only do significant differences emerge, but Germany’s policy turns out to be more liberal than Israel’s – more liberal, indeed, than the policy advocated by Israeli liberals.

Anyway, among those of us who hold that Israel is a racist state, as distinct from a state with racists or a state with this or that racist law, the Law of Return is the centrepiece of what makes it so. I'm just putting a marker on this for now, but I do intend to, er, return to it in due course.