Love, Money and Power at the AIPAC annual convention

Phillip Weiss goes to the AIPAC convention and is stricken by how much love is in the air. He is also stricken by how much power and money are in the air.

I wish Weiss would think more deeply about the way these three connect. And Weiss does drink a shot of Kool-Aid when he imagines AIPAC and the Olmert government working for peace. Nevertheless, Weiss goes were few if any American journalists have gone before. That's welcome. He even said 'colonization'. GASP!

here are some choice bits:

...the first surprise was how blatant the business of wielding influence is. The conference makes no bones about this function, the most savage expression of which is the Tuesday dinner at which AIPAC performs its “roll call,” where the names of all the politicians who have come to the conference are read off from the stage by three barkers in near auctioneer fashion. The pols try to outdo one another in I-love-Israel encomia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surely won the day when she teared up while dangling the dogtags of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and Hamas two years ago.

The second big surprise was that apart from coverage of the headline speakers, the AIPAC conference is a media no man’s land. It would be hard to imagine a more naked exhibition of political power: a convention of 7,000 mostly rich people, with more than half the Congress in attendance, as well as all the major presidential candidates, the prime minister of Israel, the minority leader, the majority leader, and the speaker of the House. Yet there is precious little journalism about the spectacle in full. The reason seems obvious: the press would have to write openly about a forbidden subject, Jewish influence.

...At most conventions, people gather out of self-interest. Therein lies my admiration: the AIPAC’ers didn’t come for selfish reasons. They are devoutly concerned with the lives of people they don’t know, very far away. Yes, people with whom they feel tribal kinship. ...

AIPAC makes sure the Israeli line is America’s line by cultivating politicians before they reach the national scene. Victor ...warned the audience that 10 percent of Congress will be new next year because so many seats are open: “Do we know them? Do they know us? Have they been to Israel? Do they understand the issues we care so deeply about? ..... Ladies and gentlemen, the success or failure of the pro-Israel community rests on three words, our personal relationships.” And people accused Walt and Mearsheimer of fostering a conspiracy theory.

....AIPAC’s change of heart cannot be ascribed to the good thinking of American Jews. They’re not thinking at all. They have passed on their full powers of judgment to the Israeli government. In that sense, the Zionists in that hall might best be compared to Communists of the ’30s and ’40s, .... On my train ride back to New York, a little rich kid of about 14, traveling with his uncle in the seat behind me, called his parents to complain that Obama’s views on Israel seemed “tailored” and “he’s never really stood up for Israel.” Indoctrination, pure and simple.

The great sadness here is that American Jewry is the most educated, most affluent segment of the public. Yet on this issue there is little independent thinking. The obvious question is whether they don’t have dual loyalty. As a Jew, I feel uncomfortable using the phrase, given its long history, but the facts are inarguable. Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic speaks of everything “we” should do to make peace with the Palestinians.... and when the national anthems are played, one cantor sings the “Star Spangled Banner,” but the “Hatikvah” has two cantors belting it but, with the audience roaring along. (The American Conservative, June 30th, 2008)

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One more thought about the love. Perhaps this advice to a young lady attributed to Scott Fitzgerald would help Weiss understand AIPAC better: "don't marry for money, go where the money is, then marry for love."

Support Namibian workers striking against Leviev

Workers at a diamond polishing plant in Namibia belonging to Israeli settlement magnate Lev Leviev are on strike, and are looking for support from international labour and solidarity groups. Adalah-NY, COSATU, and a coalition of Palestinian groups including labor unions have issued a joint statement in support of the strikers:

Support Striking Namibian Workers at Lev Leviev Diamonds!
Protest Firing Threats, Abusive Managers

Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East,
Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU),
Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign National Committee (BNC)

July 5, 2008

Management at Lev Leviev Diamond Polishing Company (LLD) in Windhoek, Namibia is threatening to fire 153 diamond polishers who have been on strike since June 19th protesting abusive managers as well as overdue job appraisals, promotions, wages and outstanding overtime pay. The company, owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev, whose companies are already a target of global condemnation for building Israeli settlements in the West Bank in violation of international law, has suspended the 153 strikers and is threatening to begin disciplinary hearings to fire them, claiming the strike is illegal.

Growing global solidarity reaches from Palestine to Southern Africa and the US targeting Lev Leviev’s human rights abuses and war crimes.

Adalah-NY, COSATU and the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) urge unions, supporters of human rights, and all other social justice groups to send messages of protest to LLD management, demanding that the strikers not be fired and that their demands be met (addresses and phone numbers to send messages to are below).

Namibia:

In Namibia, the workers started their labor action on June 19, setting up a round-the-clock protest camp a few hundred yards from the factory gates. Among the workers’ demands is the removal of LLD Namibia’s general manager Mike Nesongano. Workers have documented a range of hostile actions by Nesongano, including use of abusive language, disregard of labor law, threatening workers, unfair dismissals, unequal treatment and having a demoralizing attitude towards his workforce. The employees also accuse Nesongano of poor administration and favoring European administrators brought in by Leviev. They also point to intimidation by the company’s lawyer at meetings between workers and management.

Diamond polishers at LLD earn Namibian $450 (US$56) a month, after deductions. This corresponds to less than two U.S. dollars a day, the figure most commonly used by international agencies to define the global poverty line.

LLD has a history of exploiting its workers. In 2006 the company, which only offered its workers temporary status, tried to force workers to sign contracts stating that they would not be paid until they reached certain production quotas. Only the workers’ struggle forced them to nullify the contracts.

LLD's Managing Director, K. Kapwanga, refuses engagement with the workers on fair terms. He has publicly threatened that "[t]he relevant employees will be issued with notices to appear before a disciplinary hearing committee, upon which if found guilty they may face severe penalties and possible dismissal." Enraged by the threat, workers have announced that they will boycott the disciplinary hearings, and have threatened to disrupt the operations of the company should the company fail to heed their demands.

Palestine:

Lev Leviev got his start by supporting Apartheid in South Africa, and reaping profits from that regime's diamond industry. Today his support is directed at Israeli apartheid where the profits are no less handsome. His construction companies build settlements that steal water and key agricultural areas from Palestinians, carve up Palestinian areas of the West Bank into isolated enclaves, and cut off Jerusalem from the West Bank. His most recent settlement construction projects - Mattityahu East in Modi’in Illit, Zufim, Maale Adumim and Har Homa - are central to Israel’s efforts to seize control of and annex strategic areas of the West Bank.

The people of Jayyous, the Palestinian town on whose lands the Zufim settlement is built, have addressed the world calling for a boycott of Lev Leviev because his settlement activities on the properties annexed by Israel's Apartheid Wall destroy their land and livelihoods. As one Jayyous farmer has put it: “85% of our people were farmers working in their fields or tending cattle. Today only 45 out of 3800 people can reach their lands and provide for the livelihoods of their families. Out of the 8,050 people from Jayyous, 3,250 already live abroad. Those of us who have stayed must struggle daily to defend our lands and rights.”

Adalah-NY, the Coalition for Justice in the Middle East in cooperation with the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign National Committee (BNC), a wide coalition of the largest Palestinian mass organizations, trade unions, networks and organizations, has been campaigning against Lev Leviev’s companies for their building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank in violation of international law, as well as his abuses of workers and communities from Angola to New York City. The BNC is the body set up by Palestinian civil society to coordinate the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign launched in July 2005 with the initial endorsement of over 170 Palestinian organizations. One fruit of the campaign initiated by Adalah-NY has been UNICEF’s announcement on June 20th it would no longer accept donations from Leviev, which followed a similar decision by Oxfam International.

Angola:

In Angola, New York Magazine reported in 2007 that “A security company contracted by Leviev was accused this year by a local human-rights monitor of participating in practices of ‘humiliation, whipping, torture, sexual abuse, and, in some cases, assassinations.’”


New York:

At the Apthorp building in Manhattan, 50% owned by Leviev's company Africa-Israel, 88 tenants protected by rent-regulation laws are threatened with losing their apartments as Leviev and the smaller shareholders convert it into an expensive condominium building.

Adalah-NY, the BNC and COSATU urge unions, supporters of human rights for Palestinians, and all other social justice groups to send messages of protest to LLD management, demanding that the strikers not be fired and that their demands be met (addresses and phone numbers to send messages to are below).

Send messages of support for the strikers at LLD Polishing Company in Namibia to:
K. Kapwanga, Managing Director, LLD
Tel.: +26 461 386 150
Fax: +26461 249 253
Cell: +264811 247 249

Send copies of your messages to:
Mineworkers Union of Namibia at mun [at] mweb.com.na
and to Adalah-NY at: info [at] adalahny.org
For more information, contact Adalah-NY at: info [at] adalahny.org

The letter also includes separate statements from the Namibian workers, COSATU, and says more about who's supporting the Namibian workers in Palestine.

For some interesting background material on Leviev in Namibia, see this July 23, 2004 oped by Alexactus T. Kaure in The Namibian, "How Namibia Supports Israel's Palestine Occupation."

Demonstrators religiously oppress Israeli Soldiers

The Palestinian village of Na'alin is protesting against the Apartheid Wall which encroaches on their land. Protests are a non-no. So the Herrenvolk Army of Israel responds with tear gas, rubber bullets, siege and curfews.

Shots sounded from the West Bank village of Na'alin on Sunday as locals marched in defiance of a daylight curfew imposed by the Israel Defense Forces troops who sealed off the area on Saturday.

One resident said up to 50 people were hurt by tear gas and rubber bullets. The IDF said a soldier was wounded and declined to comment on any casualties among civilians on a third day of clashes and a clampdown that has kept journalists out. (Haaretz, July 6th, 2008)

The army explained that "These protests have been getting increasingly violent, and they must be stopped." One humane way of dealing with protests is letting protesters dies of wounds. I don't know if the Herrenvolk Army of Israel pioneered this method, but it is certainly very methodical in using it.

Casualties and other patients were prevented from leaving the village for treatment, said Salah al-Khawaja, spokesman for the Ni'lin Committee for Resisting the Wall.

But there is more. Israeli Jewish culture is known for having transformed self-pity and whining into a high art form. Israel's fourth Prime Minister Levi Eshkol even coined a phrase, "Shimshon der Nebechdiker," (Samson the pushover) to mock this tendency among his generals. But I guess even he would have been overwhelmed by the beauty of the following IDF statement. If whining were classical musical, this statement would be Beethoven's ninth symphony.

After the blockade was declared, some 200 demonstrators travelled to Na'alin. The army said in response to this that the protestors were forcing it to violate the Sabbath in order to maintain order. (Haaretz, July 6th, 2008)

Jews are prevented from observing the Saabath! AGAIN! Perhaps A French court is ready to hear this case of blatant twenty-first century antisemitism.

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And my question to the Herrenvolk Army:

Who forces you to violate the other nine commandments?

Do Israeli soldiers kill civilians including children?

It's a simple enough question but it seems to have the academics at Engage in a bit of a spin. It all started, this time, with this post by Mira Vogel on the case of Mohamed Omer who was permitted by Israel to go to Holland to collect a journalism award and "emerged emotionally and physically battered" after being detained at the Israeli border for four hours.

A bit of background here. Engage is a website which exists to defend Israel from people who think states should be for all of their people and/or people who campaign against the occupation. It's own self-description is that it is simply a resource against antisemitism but this doesn't stack up unless we define antisemitism sometimes too broadly, to mean the belief that Jews are not superior to everyone else, or too narrowly so as to exclude verbally bullying people for an occasional use of Yiddish. Let's just say it doesn't stack up unless we define antisemitism consistently wrongly or not consistently, but in a way that suits a given argument at a given time.

So, where were we? Ah yes, Mira Vogel of Engage is saying that Mohamed Omer needs to be investigated "swiftly and properly". In the interests of justice? Er no. It needs to be investigated because:

There is so much flagrant and one-sided misreporting about Israel, sometimes with horrific repercussions, that to have unqualified belief in any of it has become practically impossible. The most important example is the myth-making around footage of Mohammed Al-Dura, emblematic for people who push the idea that the Israeli army deliberately kills civilians. Although the IDF initially assumed responsibility, there was no evidence that he was even dead.

We can avoid the fact that most of the one-sided misreporting on Israel in the mainstream English language media is in Israel's favour and cut to the liberties being taken by Vogel over Mohamed al-Dura and the Israeli army's killing of civilians.

Film footage of Mohamed al-Dura was shown around the world and the Israeli army admitted its own responsibility whilst moving with obscene haste to destroy the infrastructure around where the boy was killed. Israel has killed over 850 plus children since that incident but that one was captured on film so some zionists, including Engage it seems, took the view that if they could just discredit that report then they get away with the other 850 plus. The case for Israel's innocence in the al-Dura case rests on the perverse result of a French libel case where the court decided that if you seem to be acting in good faith when you accuse someone of wrong-doing, then no libel has been committed. It's a strange one but it does nothing to change what we know about the al-Dura case. He was killed, on film, by Israel. Any myths then are being concocted by the pro-Israel side. Engage posted a link to the outcome of the al-Dura case without comment but they seem to be coming closer to the unfounded Israel is innocent position. Check out Wikipedia for the current state of play on all this fun and games.

But Mira goes even further than trying to muddy the waters on the al-Dura case. Note her reference to "people who push for the idea that the Israeli army deliberately kills civilians." This brings us to the comments. First up is Ben White:

Mira, this makes it sound like you're saying the Israeli army does not deliberately kill civilians. Is this what you're saying?

Mira doesn't directly answer the question. The direct answer would have been "yes" or "no":

I think if the IDF had policy to murder civilians evidence would have come up in 5 years of UCU boycott campaign.

Fairly neat dodge this. Does she means evidence of the killing, for which there is much or does she mean evidence of a policy for which there is also much but probably not a policy document or announcement which I suspect is the only thing she would accept. Next we have a Brian Goldfarb asking for evidence:

Ben, are you saying that the IDF does _deliberately_ kill civilians? If so, may we have your evidence, please? You will note that the Mohammed Al-Dura case is unravelling at the seams. This is not to say that the boy isn't dead; what evidnece there is does point to him being dead, unfortunately. However, the evidence that the IDF shot him, accidentally, deliberately, or even with a ricochet, is fast vanishing into the ground. So, it seems quite reasonable to ask you to produce the evidence for the assertion in your statement that the Israeli army does deliberately kill civilians.

To put it rather more pointedly, not to say crudely: put up or shut up.

Note the reliance again on the al-Dura case which does nothing to exonerate Israel and the implicit denial of the fact that the Israeli army does indeed kill civilians. And then there's another call for evidence and a not so subtle hint that the al-Dura case exonerates Israel which of course it doesn't.

Ok, you can check the comments yourself but I was getting a bit frustrated by the fact that Ben hadn't come back with any evidence. There were more comments all supporting the position that Israel doesn't kill children or civilians. The curious point in all this is that the main man at Engage, Dr Hirsh, has claimed that it is ok to criticise the behaviour of states but not their right to exist with a specific structure. Ok, he doesn't actually say that about states in general, he says it about Israel. But here is an Engage contributor (and many commenters too) covering up for Israel's appalling behaviour. But where's Ben.

Hurrah! Here he is more than half a day and several bogus comments later:

@ Mira
I didn't realise that you considered the UCU boycott campaign such a reliable source of information about Palestine/Israel.

It seems Mira is not the only one who thinks Israeli soldiers have not deliberately killed civilians. But this is just some of the evidence available:

Sister and brother Asma and Ahmad al-Mughayr, aged 16 and 13 respectively, were both killed with a single bullet to the head “within minutes of each other on the roof-terrace of their home” as they took clothes off the drying line and fed the pigeons. [1] Yet the Israeli army immediately claimed that Asma and Ahmad had been killed by an explosion caused by Palestinian fighters. At the hospital in Rafah, there was anger at the way in which Israel lied about the killings:

"Dr Ahmed Abu Nkaria, who pronounced the Mughayar children dead, insists on proving the manner of their killing. He pulls Asma's body from the mortuary's refrigeration unit and fumbles through the teenager's hair to reveal the hole where the bullet entered above one ear and ripped a much larger wound as it emerged above the other.

‘The Israeli propaganda is that they were killed in a work accident. These are the kinds of lies they tell all the time,’ he says. ‘They say all the dead are fighters. They say they do not deliberately kill children, but about a quarter of the dead from the first day of shooting are children. The evidence is here in the morgue. Does this girl look as if she was blown up by a bomb?’" [2]

In the first weeks of the Intifada, Palestinian doctors were noting with despair that Israeli soldiers seemed to be shooting to kill, or leave maximum damage. At the Shifa hospital in Gaza in October 2000, the head of the emergency services talked of how “‘In this time, there is a change of method”, adding that “the Israelis are trying very much to kill very many people’”. [3] The same article noted that “doctors at St John’s hospital in Jerusalem have treated 18 Palestinians shot in the eye”.

A particularly appalling incident was the murder of 13 year old Iman al-Hams, a school girl from Rafah. In October 2004, she entered an area declared out of bounds by the Israeli army and shortly afterwards, was riddled with bullets from automatic gunfire. [4] In the subsequent investigation, Israeli television broadcast a recording of internal communications between the soldiers, as Iman was first identified as a child and then shot:

"Iman, a short, slight girl wearing a school uniform and carrying a schoolbag, had entered an off-limits area and was spotted about 100 yards away from an Israeli position during the Oct. 5 incident in Rafah, Gaza Strip. After the ‘verification,’ the company commander, identified only as Captain R., sums up by telling his soldiers: ‘Anyone that moves in the zone, even if it is a 3-year-old boy, should be killed.’" [5]

While this incident seems exceptional for its cold-blooded brutality, the same report later cited a B’Tselem staff member who pointed out that “‘disregard for human life and being trigger-happy is not exceptional at all’” and that “‘the exceptional part here is that it was documented’”.

Incredibly, however, the army acquitted the commander of Iman’s death, accepting his defence that “he fired into the ground near the girl after coming under fire in a dangerous area” – though without explaining “why the officer shot into the ground rather than at the source of the fire”. [6] An army statement declared that “‘the investigation concluded that the behaviour of the company commander from an ethical point of view does not warrant his removal from his position’”.

In fact, in an extra twist, the commander in question was later compensated to the tune of over £10,000, as well as having all legal expenses reimbursed. [7] Ha’aretz noted that “the judges who acquitted Captain R accepted his version of event [sic], in which he stated that the shots that he fired were not aimed directly at the girl’s body…and that he believed that the young girl posed a serious threat”. He has since been promoted to major.

In a report issued early on in the Second Intifada, Physicians for Human Rights described how their “analysis of fatal gun shot wounds in Gaza reveals that approximately 50% were to the head”, such a high proportion suggesting that “soldiers are specifically aiming at peoples’ heads”. The report went on to note that based on “the numerous head and eye injuries, the high proportion of thigh wounds and fatal head wounds” PHR documented, IDF soldiers are firing “to injure and kill, not to avoid loss of life and injury”. [8]

Finally, since some of you mentioned Al-Dura specifically:

"Al-Dura became a symbol because his killing was documented on videotape. All the other hundreds of children were killed without cameras present, so no one is interested in their fate. If there had been a camera in Bushara Barjis’ room in the Jenin refugee camp while she was studying for a pre-matriculation test, we would have a film showing an IDF sniper firing a bullet at her head. If there had been a photographer near Jamal Jabaji from the Askar camp, we would see soldiers emerging from an armored jeep and aiming their weapons at the head of a child who threw stones at them…it is certain that the IDF has killed and is killing children." [9]

[1] ‘Israel/Occupied Territories: Killing of children must be investigated’, Amnesty International, MDE 15/055/2004, May 25 2004
[2] 'Palestinian doctors despair at rising toll of children shot dead by army snipers’, The Guardian, May 20 2004
[3] 'Palestinians' tell-tale wounds expose shoot-to-kill tactics’, The Guardian, October 5 2000
[4] ‘Gaza girl death officer cleared’, BBC News, October 15 2004
[5] ‘Israeli army under fire after killing girl’, The Christian Science Monitor, November 26 2004
[6] ‘Gaza girl death officer cleared’, BBC News
[7] ‘IDF officer cleared in death of Gaza girl to receive compensation from state’, Ha’aretz, December 14 2006
[8] ‘Evaluation of the Use of Force in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank’, Physicians for Human Rights, November 3, 2000
[9] ‘Mohammed al-Dura lives on’, Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz, October 7 2007

There you go, evidence. That's what they were asking for, evidence. Is it good enough? Well, I think it must be because a Toby Esterhase changes the subject completely:

You forgot Little Saint Hugh, Ben.

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/journal/index.php?journal_id=12&article_id=42

I don't think that one has ever been properly investigated.

This was a cue for still more wacky comments until Mira comes back with, not a thank you for the evidence she asked for and got but this:

When somebody gets murdered, you go through the suspects and you look for vested interests. What your theories, Ben? Why would the IDF want to kill Palestinian children?

No Mira, when someone gets killed, you look for who did it. In the cases Ben White shouldn't have had to outline above, we know the killers, the Israeli army. Why look for a motive?

Just before Mira's latest, a Jonathan Romer raises an issue that Fred responds to:

Jonathan,

"It sounds like you want to take the probable fact that some Israeli soldiers, like some soldiers in every war, have done brutal, illegal things, and then pass it off as IDF policy."

What happens then when the system doesn't hold those soldiers to account? If soldiers aren't punished when they do illegal things, what does that say about policy?

http://www.btselem.org/English/Accountability/Investigatin_of_Complaints.asp
This change in policy has led to a drastic fall in the number of Military Police investigations. From the beginning of the current intifada (29 September 2000) to 14 February 2007, the Military Police investigated only 239 cases involving shooting by soldiers. Only 30 of these investigations resulted in the filing of indictments. During this period, 3,963 Palestinians were killed, among them 814 minors (under the age of 18). Some of those killed were indeed killed while fighting against Israeli soldiers or civilians, however hundreds of others were not involved in the fighting.


http://www.btselem.org/English/Accountability/
Since the outbreak of the second intifada, Israel has increasingly avoided accountability for the serious violations of the human rights of residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for which it is responsible. This avoidance is seen, in part, in its policy not to open criminal investigations in cases of killing or wounding of Palestinian who were not taking part in the hostilities, except in exceptional cases, and in its enactment of legislation denying, almost completely, the right of Palestinians who were harmed as a result of illegal acts by Israeli security forces to sue for compensation for the damages they suffered.

Ah, so it is starting to look like policy.

I haven't pasted all the comments here, you can see them for yourself by following the link above but this last comment from Saul to Fred sums up the Engage position on this:

Fred,

What you say is no doubt correct. However, Ben is saying something different; Ben is claiming that Israel has a deliberate policy of killing civilians.

It is unfortunately the case that, as with Northern Ireland (where the UK did have a "shoot to kill" policy), states vary rarely hold their troops to account (even or, rather, especially, in cases of extremity). In the wake of Mai Ling, only one US serviceman has ever been convicted (and, as you are no doubt aware, Vietnam was never a "legal" war). A similar picture appears in relation to the crimes of Abu Graib.

None of these facts is to justify Israel's refusal to investigate, nor to stop or undermine demands that guilt be legally apportioned followed by appropiate punishment. Rather, that on this matter, as with many others, contrary to Ben's accusation, Israel is far from unique in its State's protection of wrongdoing.

It would help all of use concerned with such matters, both in Israel and elsewhere, if people like Ben did not add fantasy to an already diffuclt reality.

Now this is downright silly. First up, Ben didn't say it was policy. He asked Mira is she thought that the Israeli army does not kill civilians. He was challenged for evidence which he provided. You might not see the word "antisemitism" in the comments but sure enough, the invoking of the blood libel by Toby Esterhase was an allegation of antisemitism. Fred was indeed saying something different from Ben. Again, since so many academics have failed to understand, Ben asked Mira is she was saying that the Israeli army does not kill civilians. Fred was pointing to the fact that it does indeed look like policy. So Saul is transposing Ben and Fred's comments whilst dodging the central question. Is Mira Vogel saying that the Israeli army does not kill civilians? Simple enough, yes or no?

FLEEING OR FLYING?

Here is a post by Ruth Tenne in response to Lyn Julius's recent Comment is free piece titled Jewish nakba

Lyn Julius's account of the alleged ethnic cleansing of Jewish people by Arab countries (Comment is Free , Guardian 25 June ) seems to be a sheer prevarication. As an Israeli born and bred I remember vividly the well-planed operations which aimed to strengthen the size of the Jewish population in the fledgling Israeli state by flying en masse Jewish communities from Arab countries. Needless to say that in Israel those Arab-originated communities suffered from well-documented discrimination in terms of housing ,education, social mobility and access to the the media, the judiciary system and elitist echelons of the Israel society - indeed this form of discrimination continues to the present day (though in a much less overt way).

The Jewish Virtual Library has documented two of the most prominent 1951 operations which were instigated and organised by the Jewish Agency with the full cooperation of the involved Arab governments. Thus, perhaps the so-called "Jewish Nakba" was no more than a well-planned Aliyah operation of ascendance/immigration to Israel - as the documents below proudly acknowledge.

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Operations Ezra & Nechemia: The Aliyah of Iraqi Jews

Some 130,000 Jews arrived in Israel in Operation Ezra and Nechemia. Flying the Iraqi Jews to Israel lasted several months, and started after the Iraqi Government passed a special bill permitting their emigration in 1951. The Iraqi Jews were mostly wealthy and the local authorities gave them special privileges. When the Jews learned about the special permit they had been given, thousands arrived in Baghdad and gathered in registration centers where they registered for immigration to Israel.

According to Iraqi law, the Jews had to sell their property and liquidate their businesses before they could leave. Many sold large properties for ridiculous sums in order to win the right to immigrate.

Waiting in Baghdad was a tense and difficult period. Some 50,000 Jews signed up in one month, and two months later there were 90,000 on the list. This mass movement stunned the Iraqi Government, which had not expected the number of immigrants to exceed 8,000, and feared that administrative institutions run by Jews might collapse. At the same time, the Zionist movement issued a manifesto calling on the Jews to sign up for immigration. It started with the following: "O, Zion, flee, daughter of Babylon," and concluded thus: "Jews! Israel is calling you — come out of Babylon!"

The first planes flew to Israel via Cyprus in mid-May 1951. Several months later, a giant airlift operated directly from Baghdad to Lod airport. Operation Ezra and Nechemia ended at the beginning of 1952, leaving only about 6,000 Jews in Iraq. Most of the 2,500-year-old Jewish community immigrated to Israel.

Operation “Magic Carpet”

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In May 1949, when the Imam of Yemen agreed to let 45,000 of the 46,000 Jews in his country leave, Israeli transport planes flew them "home" in Operation Magic Carpet. The Yemenite Jews, mostly children, were brought to Israel on some 380 flights. This was one of the most wonderful and complex immigration operations the state has ever known. British and American planes airlifted the Jews from Aden, the capital of Yemen, when they reached the city from all over Yemen after extremely dangerous and risky journeys. The operation was secret and was released to the media only several months after its completion.

The year 1949 saw massive waves of immigration to Israel. Some 250,000 Jews who arrived that year alone were placed in military barracks and tent camps, and were later moved to ma'abarot [transit camps]. The state nearly collapsed under the burden. Calculations made that year showed that the state needed some $3,000 for the absorption of each immigrant, which meant that the state required about $700,000 for the whole campaign; the entire state budget was less than that. Yet, despite everything, the young state was more than willing to do all that was necessary to absorb the immigrants, believing that this was the reason for its establishment in the first place.

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Ruth Tenne is an Israeli peace activist living in London. She is a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

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A few people have told me that they were impressed with Ruth's response to some of the comments so I am adding the response here now (14:45 11/7/08):

RESHAPING HISTORY


I did not intend to respond to the comments about my piece -"Fleeing or Flying?" -as I thought the text is self-explanatory. However, having seen some of the postings I felt that I should try perhaps to explain , in plain language what the piece is all about.

Having drawn on my own personal experience , I set out to demonstrate that the so-called "thoroughly ethnically cleansed " Jews from Arab countries (re. Lyn Julius CIF 27 June ) were in effects immigrants whose Alyiah (ascendance to Israel) was instigated and organised by the Jewish Agency in the 50s- with the full cooperation of the governments of their host Arab countries. The documents I posted ,as well as other official Israeli documents, show that the so-called refugees made Alyiah as result of a massive operation by the representatives of the Jewish Agency who promised them a bright future in Israel where they could live among their co-religious Jewish people - "the Zionist movement issued a manifesto calling on the Jews to sign up for immigration. It started with the following: "O, Zion, flee, daughter of Babylon," and concluded thus: "Jews! Israel is calling you — come out of Babylon (re. the Aliyah of Iraqi jews - Jewish Virtual Library )"

However , those newcomers soon realised that the future in Israel was not so promising . I clearly remember the transfer camps (Mabarot) which stretched along the Haifa-Tel Aviv coastline where the new emigres were "housed" in temporary constructs of sheet metal - isolated completely from the (European) core of the Israeli society. In those "Quarantines" they went through all sorts of medical tests and procedures before being transported to border settlements where they were marginalised from the host society - deprived of appropriate housing, education, medical and social services as well as job opportunities to help them integrate into Israeli life (indeed my kibbutz , which welcomed east European immigrants in the 50s, did not have even one Jewish newcomer from Arab Countries, except for two Syrian girls who were wrenched-out of their own close family with whom they were brought to Israel) .

A number of Israeli commentators documented this period. I seem to remember that the Israeli writer -Tom Segev - threw some light on the Jewish Agency's operation of shifting en masse Jewish communities from Arab countries to Israel (Re. 1949: The First Israelis, 1998).

It may be quite expedient, in my view, for the campaign for Jewish refugee to address the UN Human Rights Council by a "Libyan Jew who fled in 1967 in fear of her life (re. Lyn Julius). Such testimony should be, however, weighed against the testimonies of thousands of Palestinian refugees who had to flee the West Bank in the wake of the 1967 and who were heavily shelled and bombarded by the Israeli forces when they tried to return to their homes and families in the West Bank - (Re. Ed -Nandita Dowson and Abdul Wahab Sabbah, The First Six Days, 2007). But, of course, the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees is insignificant when compared to that of Jewish people - be them refugees from Nazi Germany, or émigrés from Arab countries. The accusation (e.g. slur, libel, slander, defamation) of antisemitism is there to prevent anyone from making such "unholy" comparison.

Ruth Tenne

Also I should say that in addition to her activism with JfJfP and PSC (mentioned above) she is also a member of Camden PSC, J-BIG and Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association.

Michael Warschawski has a very very very good idea

Michael Warschawski gave a talk at recent The Haifa Conference on the Palestinian Right of Return. The talk is available on the Alternative Information Center website. Every word of what he says is worth reading twice, so go read it.


But let me highlight the end:

To conclude, I have a practical suggestion. In order to be accepted as a member state in the United Nations, in 1949, Israel was required to endorse General Assembly Resolution 194, which recognizes the right of return of the Palestinian refugees and commits itself to the return of all “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours”(700,000 in total at the time), to its sovereign territory.

Israel accepted, was made a member state and immediately after announced it has no intention of implementing the UN resolution. The Palestinian national movement and the international solidarity movement should initiate a long-term campaign for the suspension of Israeli membership in the United Nations until Israel complies with its formal commitment concerning the return of the refugees. Such a campaign will again put the refugee issue in its legitimate place, at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and the heart of its solution.

Ditto!

Islamophobia?

Here's Peter Osborne in today's Independent:

Islamophobia – defined in 1997 by the landmark report from the Runnymede Trust as "an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination" – can be encountered in the best circles: among our most famous novelists, among newspaper columnists, and in the Church of England.

Its appeal is wide-ranging. "I am an Islamophobe," the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee wrote in The Independent nearly 10 years ago. "Islamophobia?" the Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle asks rhetorically in the title of a recent speech, "Count me in". Imagine Liddle declaring: "Anti-Semitism? Count me in", or Toynbee claiming she was "an anti-Semite and proud of it".

Anti-Semitism is recognised as an evil, noxious creed, and its adherents are barred from mainstream society and respectable organs of opinion. Not so Islamophobia.

Its practitioners say Islamophobia cannot be regarded as the same as anti-Semitism because the former is hatred of an ideology or a religion, not Muslims themselves. This means there is no social, political or cultural protection for Muslims: as far as the British political, media and literary establishment is concerned the normal rules of engagement are suspended.

"There is a definite urge; don't you have it?", the author Martin Amis told Ginny Dougary of The Times: "The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. Not letting them travel. Deportation; further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or Pakistan. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children." Here, Amis is doing much more than insulting Muslims. He is using the foul and barbarous language of fascism. Yet his books continue to sell, and his work continues to be celebrated.

The article provides quite a contrast to this report in the Telegraph about 18 months ago. I recall the glee with which the article, titled, Jews far more likely to be victims of faith hatred than Muslims was greeted in certain zionist circles with it's claim that:

One in 400 Jews compared to one in 1,700 Muslims are likely to be victims of "faith hate" attacks every year. The figure is based on data collected over three months in police areas accounting for half the Muslim and Jewish populations of England and Wales. The crimes range from assault and verbal abuse to criminal damage at places of worship.

But consider this from the Independent piece:

An investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches programme discovered many violent episodes and attacks on Muslims, with very few reported; those that do get almost no publicity.

And what about when an innocent Muslim gets shot in the shoulder by the police? does that qualify as faith hatred? Or how about a Brazilian being shot eleven times in the head after being mistaken for a Muslim? Does that count in the stats? And yet Ken Livingstone saying to a Jewish reporter words to the effect of "give a man a uniform and he thinks he's Hitler" almost definitely did qualify as an antisemitic "incident". I also thought I remembered a UK cabinet minister saying that Muslims could expect more attention from the police than other communities. Any takers on that one? Would it count in the stats if she (if I'm right, I think it was Ruth Kelly) did?

1st candidate for the Villlage Idiot Award of 2008

OK, what's the Village Idiot award? It's just my way of rewarding web commentary that goes well beneath anything I could have ever imagined. And my imagination can go pretty low.


So the first Village Idiot 2008 candidate is
[Music gets louder, Hillary Clinton opens the envelope ] .....

James Taranto from the Wall Street Journal

For the following priceless insight about yesterday's attack in Jerusalem:

Where would anyone come up with the twisted idea of using a tool of construction as a weapon of murder? We actually may have an answer to that. On March 16, 2003, ... A misguided 23-year-old American named Rachel Corrie, as a "protest" against Israel's self-defense, interposed herself between an IDF bulldozer and a tunnel....Anti-Israel activists accused the soldier of deliberately running Corrie over. .... It is possible that in the process they were giving ideas to future terrorists.

On Hasbara and Brotherhood

Yesterday a Palestinian construction worker from Occupied East Jerusalem drove an earth moving bulldozer down the main street of West Jerusalem, causing havoc and killing three people. It was a horrific scene.

Hussam Duwiyat, 30, from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Zur Baher, was shot dead by security forces after stealing a bulldozer from the construction site where he was working and driving it into a bus and a number of cars on Jaffa Street in downtown Jerusalem. Three people were killed and dozens were wounded. ( Haaretz, July 3rd, 2008)

But this rare horrific scene in West Jerusalem was no more horrific than scenes that Palestinians experience daily under occupation. Here's one randomely chosen example, not even particularly gruesome as these scenes go:

15 Israeli tanks entered the village of 'Izbet 'Abed Rabba, west of Beit Hanoun and east of Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, with aerial cover provided by the Israeli Air Force. Upon entry to the village, Israeli ground forces engaged in random gun fire despite not being fired upon. At approximately 9:15 am, 17-year-old Hamdi Salemeh Khader was riding his bicycle on al-Karama Road near the local cement factory when he was shot twice... by machine gun fire emanating from the tanks, killing him instantly (Al Haq, 19th May 2008 )

What's the difference? I'd say the difference is this. On one side--an act of anger by a fed-up man who lived all his short life as an untermensch under Israeli Apartheid. On the other side--an organized crime, funded by a budget, sustained by international support, and carried out in cold blood and professionalism by trained agents of the state, with clear orders and a chain of command that goes all the way up to Israel's "democratic" sovereignty.

For reasons that escape me, Israelis expect to carry out the latter and yet be sheltered from the former. This is not how it works.

Truly revolting, however, is the rush of Israel's Hasbara machine to make a lemonade from the bloody lemons Israel willfully cultivates. The blood was still warm on the asphalt when Israel's representative at the U.N. asked the Security Council to condemn the deed. Now the Security Council is not responsible for repairing your dishwasher or preventing theft of heavy machinery. Its functions are outlined on the UN. website. Which of them does Israel perceive as relevant to what happened yesterday in Jerusalem?

# to investigate any dispute or situation which might lead to international friction;
# to recommend methods of adjusting such disputes or the terms of settlement;
# to determine the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression and to recommend what action should be taken

The security council has already investigated the "situation" many times, and recommended that Israel end the occupation and return to its 1967 borders. Yasser Arafat agreed to that. Mahmoud Abbas agrees to that. Hamas agrees to that. Syria agrees to that. Only Israel doesn't agree. What more investigation and recommendation does Israel want?

# to call on Members to apply economic sanctions and other measures not involving the use of force to prevent or stop aggression;

I assume Israel isn't demanding to be boycotted. So what is it demanding? Sanctions on Gaza? Been there, done that! Does it want to extend the siege of Gaza to Occupied East Jerusalem? Even the Security Council can see that this would seal the fate of the Palestinian Authority.

# to take military action against an aggressor

Perhaps that's it. Israel wants an international force assembled and sent to destroy the house of Duwitat's family and also perhaps rough up his sister-in-law and beat his father. but why? Are the Border Police on mass vacation? Surely Israel doesn't need international help to carry out one more human rights violation.

I do harbor a nagging suspicion that the real power of the Security Council Israel wishes to invoke is:

# to recommend the admission of new Members;

Israel would like to see the village of Sur Baher accepted as a full new member of the United Nations, so it can invade and annex it in a defensive, existential future war.

Mind you, Israel rushing to the Security Council to whine about Palestinian violence is like Al Capone going to court to sue over a stolen bottle of Whiskey. This is the state that shamelessly argued in front of the International Court of Justice that NONE of the treaties establishing international law applies to its actions in the Occupied Palestinian territories. That's right: None. The IV Geneva convention doesn't apply, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also do not apply. In fact, there is not a single piece of international law that Israel accepts to be bound by in its treatment of Palestinians. It so pissed the ICJ that it lectured Israel that "a treaty must be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to its terms in their context and in the light of its object and purpose." This comes close to saying Israel's legal arguments are so much rotten sophistry that even presenting them in court might be unethical.

Should we have a special convention against the reckless driving of Bulldozers in civilian areas? There are good reasons to believe Israel would refuse to sign it.

But the Hutzpa of Israel's U.N. representatives is dwarfed by Bradely Burston, who is paid by Haaretz to put the daily lipstick on the Israel's porcine face.

No sooner the attack happened, Burston sat to his keyboard and wrote an invective against....boycott activists in the U.S. Yes that's right. The way to end violence in Jerusalem is to attack a global non-violent grassroots initiative, led by Palestinians who support non-violence, and intended to force Israel to respect international law. Burston btw "supports" international law. He just doesn't want Israel to be forced to live by it. I'm sure AL Capone also was in favor of law and order as long it was kept optional.

I would like to hear them now. Just once. I would like them to divest from terrorism. Not understand it as the natural outgrowth of the crimes of occupation. For once, I would like my sisters and brothers on the left to be every bit as hard on their comrades the Palestinians for taking a bulldozer and crushing Jews, as they are on Israel for bulldozing homes.

Dear Bradely, you may be many things, but you're not on the left and you're neither my brother nor my sister. Being to the left of Shaul Mofaz doesn't count as being on the left. As for brotherhood, you use this word in vain. If you were my brother you wouldn't have said "their comrades the Palestinians." You would have at least said "my Palestinian comrades." You could go to Bilin occasionally to see how brothers and sisters behave. here's a picture for your instruction.

But let's go over all the half truth you peddle.

On a quiet and clear morning in Jerusalem, a woman is driving toward the heart of the city, her infant with her in the car. There is nothing to fear....It is not a military area, it is not a sector of occupation, it is not a settlement

Allow me to parse this gem. You build an Apartheid city in an Apartheid state, with zones for Jews and zones for Palestinians, with laws for Jews and laws for Palestinians, with budgets for Jews and a middle finger for Palestinians, with rights for Jews and prisons for Palestinians. You build as many Jewish homes as you can and destroy as many Palestinian homes as you cam. You crowd Palestinians in ghettos and build walls and checkpoints around them. You declare the zones where Palestinians live as 'war zones' and 'closed military areas' in which life is cheap and nobody, neither Palestinians nor Western visitors, can have any expectation of safety. And then you pump yourself with moral indignation when violence refuses to respect the neat boundaries of the Apartheid system you designed?

Except for the man behind the wheel of a bulldozer, who has taken it upon himself to kill Jews. Not Israeli security force personnel, not occupation troops, not the Shin Bet. Jews. Women and children and the elderly and the infirm. Jews who may be in favor of an independent Palestinian state. Jews who have nothing against Arabs. Jews who may work to end the occupation. Jews.

Again. You build a state in which "Jewish" means privileged. You make sure every official document contains enough information to determine whether one is or isn't Jewish. That way you can be sure that soldiers, employers, landlords, bank tellers, mortgage brokers, municipality clerks, policemen, and everyone who needs it can easily discriminate against the right people. And then you're shocked that one of those who lived all their lives as a lesser human being for the sole reason that they were not Jewish might lump people together as Jews instead of judging them each as a unique individual? I mean really, where would he get such a crazy idea?

I would like to hear them now. Just once. I would like them to divest from terrorism....

Sorry to disppoint, but analogies need to have some minimal basis in reality. The IDF uses bulldozers and Hussam Duwiyat used a bulldozer. They also both use tooth brushes, and that's an equally specious analogy. the IDF buys its bulldozers and plans how to use them as a weapon against civilians. Caterpillar sells the IDF a weapon that the IDF uses to commit crimes. Western governments are complicit in the funding and permitting of these sales which are illicit. Churches own stocks in these companies and therefore receive profits from these crimes. That is why they can divest from them. They cannot divest from Hussam Duwiyat because they never invested in him. The demand to "divest from terrorism" is idiotic. I am sure you are not stupid, but you should respect your readers more.

...Not understand it as the natural outgrowth of the crimes of occupation.

Sorry no can do. You cannot wish away reality. The violence of the occupation indeed engenders more violence, such as what happened yesterday. That you could even suggest that it doesn't speaks volumes about the intellectual Jurassic park in which you live. You need to get out more.

Can 600 Rabbis be wrong?

From the European Jewish Press, July 1:

In Brussels, the Rabbinical Center of Europe (RCE), which represents around 600 communal rabbis across Europe, deplored that "certain organizations are prepared to sacrifice starving children for their own parochial and political interests."

"Although most of these children would have no idea about Adallah’s political interests, they are the ones who will bear the consequences of this decision," the RCE said in a letter sent to UNICEF.

The RCE added:“As seen from the famous philanthropy of Jewish entrepreneurs around the world, the Jews as a people believe in giving and assisting the needy from all nations.”

Where is Anthony Julius when you need him? Is this not a blood libel against Adalah-NY? "Sacrificing starving children" -- that's pretty grisly stuff. So who exactly is the RCE? Would you believe it, the RCE is a Chabad-run organization started in 2004 to rival the pre-existing European orthodox grouping, the Conference of European Rabbis. RCE's Russian member of the board is none other than Berel Lazar, widely viewed as Leviev's man in Putin's court. According to Ha'aretz on July 2, Berel "owes his job to his extraordinary ability to get close to former President Vladimir Putin and win the patronage of Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich."

Maybe the villagers of Jayyous, under physical and economic strangulation by the combination of Israel's wall & Leviev's settlement Zufim, which uses the wall to expand, can explain to the RCE what all the fuss is about:

"More than 70% of Jayyous' farmers are now denied access to their land, which in many cases happens to be the very area where Leader plans to expand Zufim. As a result, our once-prosperous farming village of 3,400 hundred souls, which once provided food for 60,000 Palestinians, is now impoverished and dependent on external food aid. 57% of Jayyous' families now depend on food aid... [while] 70% of families, are in great need of food aid, and this number is constantly increasing.

Leviev's settlement and Israel's wall have impoverished our village to such a degree that 103 out of a total of 195 students in grades 7-12 were compelled to drop out of school. [Students'] dreams of attending universities now seem impossible. In 2002, before Israel began construction on the wall, 180 high school graduates from Jayyous were enrolled in university studies. That number has now dropped to 50. We understand that Leviev contributes to fundraising events in France benefitting UNICEF programs to educate girls in Senegal. We ask why UNICEF, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of children worldwide would accept Leviev's support in educating Senegalese children while his companies are destroying the lives of Palestinian children in places like Jayyous?"

Why Indeed? And Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Against the Occupation, & The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions are all wondering the same thing. Nu, does the RCE have an answer for them?

__________________________

Other Leviev-related news today:

--7 Groups Call on Susan Sarandon to Follow UNICEF & Cut Ties with Leviev.

-- Gulf News: Arab League may blacklist Levant Jewellery stores

Rationalizating Israeli racism

Richard Silverstein from Tikun Olam also blogged about the same issue of racism in Kiryat Gat. His post covers the story well, and of course it is a story worth covering. But Silverstein also follows it with some questionable commentary.

First, he quotes one Zvi Solow explaining that Kyriat Gat is a conservative and prudish place because it is home to Mizrahim (Jews from Arab countries) and lots of unemployment and social neglect. This supposedly explains racism in Israel as a product of poverty and ignorance. It is allegedly the domain of unemployed mizrahim living in problem towns, Russian immigrants, etc. Blaming racism on the poor is a liberal gambit that never fails. And the poor in this case are themselves from Arab origins. Hence, Silverstein essentially implies, probably without even being aware of it, that Arab culture is the source of Jewish racism against Arabs in Israel. This is "blaming the victims" raised to the power of two.

It is also flat wrong. The poor always need to be educated by their masters in the ways of racism. In the U.S. it took decades of work for the large slave-owners to inculcate racism in order to break the common struggles of African and English servants. A similar process of teaching the poor and working class to hate Arabs happened in Israel. It began in the 20s with the laborite "conquest of labor" campaign, which instituted the first Apartheid regime in Palestine. Then in the 50s, Mizrahis were sent to development towns built near the borders, thus guaranteeing that they, and not the more affluent ashkenazis, would suffer most from border conflicts (as they still do, witness Sderot). And finally, the conquest of the West Bank allowed a new system of Apartheid and segregated labor to take hold so that poor Jews's social mobility was made dependent on the occupation. To these practical measures was added a constant journalistic, political, literary etc. hegemonic discourse about Arabs and the danger they pose. What is going on in Kiryat Gat is an egregious example of that continued process. This is crystal clear: Kiryat Gat's "problem" is that Jewish school girls, namely Mizrahi, conservative, poor, etc. ARE NOT RACIST ENOUGH. Hence, police officers, educators and state agents combine with a religious NGO to indoctrinate the young girls about the racist attitudes they SHOULD have, but obviously don't, at least not to the required degree.

It is certainly true that in Israel racism is more visible in poor communities. There are a number of reasons for that. The simplest is that affluent Jews are well isolated from Palestinians. Arabs make about 20% of the population in Israel, but only 4% of the population of Tel-Aviv, the most affluent town in Israel. Add to that the barriers of social status and it is easy to see why affluent Israeli Jews don't need to teach their daughters not to date Palestinians. It just doesn't happen. But learning not to date Arabs, and especially teaching the poor not to date Arabs, is very much an elite concern. Consider for example A.B. Yehoshua, one of Israel's most important "left wing" novelists (and a staunch supporter of wars and war crimes). Yehoshua's best known novel is 'The Lover.' The novel tells the story of a Jewish garage owner who befriends a young Palestinian worker, but the relationship ends after the young Arab protege sleeps with his daughter. It is of course a very "educational" novel, teaching the proper boundaries for Arab-Jewish interactions and imparting a lesson about the price of crossing them. Not surprisingly, The Lover is a staple of high school literature classes in Israel. And the ADL recommends it for American Jews as well. (In the original version of this paragraph I wrote erroneously that Adam, the novel's central character, kills the Palestinian worker. This was probably my memory mixing together the plot of Yehoshua's novel and the plot of a 1982 Israeli film called Hamsin. Of course, the central issue remains--mainstream Israeli culture is very much engaged in policing the border between the communities.)

It would be interesting to investigate in this context who exactly the good folks at Yad L'akhim are. Yad L'akhim is both the NGO in charge of providing the racist indoctrination and apparently a group that lobbies for this kind of projects. Their website is a bit coy about their identity. But they certainly don't look like poor Mizrahi unemployed folks from Kiryat Gat. The Chairman is one Rabbi Lipshitz, a family name hailing from Westephalia. And they have offices in Bnei Brak and Brooklyn. I may be wrong but I very much doubt many unemployed residents of Kiryat Gat are among their undisclosed donors.

Blaming racism on poverty and on marginalized cultures is a way of rendering racists a service while deceiving oneself that one is acting against it.



Second, Silverstein finishes with

Let’s keep in mind that not only are these Bedouin citizens of the State, they also serve important roles in the IDF as trackers. They are as loyal and willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their country as Jews.

That sounds to me like criticizing racists for not being good fascists.

There's a place just outside Lisbon

I know I'm a little late for explaining why it was all eyes on Ireland just recently but I didn't have anything within the remit of the blog to go on until someone emailed me this letter. Now cop this:

An Taoiseach, Mr. Brian Cowen T.D.
Department of the Taoiseach,
Government Buildings ,
Upper Merion Street ,
Dublin 2.

c.c. Mr. Michael Martin T.D., Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Mr. Javier Solana, EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy
Mr. Jose Manuel Barroso, President of EU Commission
Mr. Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament
All Irish MEP's and all media.

Re: Treaty of Lisbon

Dear Taoiseach,

We are writing to you today in order to ensure that you are fully aware of the reason why we campaigned against the Treaty of Lisbon.

We did so because of our deep concern at proposals within the Treaty regarding EU FOREIGN POLICY. The Treaty of Lisbon allows for the creation of an EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy. The Treaty would end Ireland 's Sovereign Right thereafter to espouse an independent foreign policy. This threatened both our neutrality and our sovereignty.

One issue, above all others, is a source of outrage to large sections of the Irish Electorate - EU support for Israel , which breaches the Geneva Convention and countless UN Resolutions. In what appears to be complicity with US Policy on the Middle East , the EU has negated all principles of democracy and human rights. The EU rewards Israel - the illegal Occupier, while punishing the Occupied – the Palestinian People. This is manifestly obvious from the EU-Israel Association Agreement for Israel and sanctions for the Palestinian People. The failure of the EU to penalise Israel for repeated breaches of the Agreement, shows that it operates a double standard and ignores the terms of binding Agreements.

Article 2 of the Agreement makes it conditional upon Israel respecting human rights. In the face of blatant disregard for Article 2, the EU is preparing to strengthen ties with Israel . This double standard represents a real danger to democracy, the rule of law and respect for humanity in the world today.

We, the 'Lisbon Campaign for Middle East Justice and Peace', have little faith in the direction of EU foreign policy and even less in EU rhetoric on democracy and on human rights. The EU must enforce the terms of binding Agreements. Ireland must retain the sovereign right to formulate and espouse its own foreign policy.

Yours Sincerely

Sean Clinton,
Coordinator
Lisbon Campaign for Middle East Justice and Peace

So Ireland is the place just outside Lisbon and long may it continue.

Solid evidence that not all Israeli Jews are racists

Despite 60 years of racist indoctrination that teaches Israeli Jews that Arabs are dangerous, dirty, and violent, some Jewish schoolgirls in the Southern municipality of Kiryat Gat choose to date Bedouin young men.

I don't know how many do, but their number is high enough to drive the racist municipal and state institutions to action.

A new program launched in Kiryat Gat schools has the expressed purpose of preventing Jewish girls from becoming romantically involved with Israeli Bedouin.

The program enjoys the support of the municipality and the police, and is headed by Kiryat Gat's welfare representative, who goes to schools to warn girls of the "exploitative Arabs."

You can go to Haaretz to see excerpts from the "educational" video the program uses, titled sleeping with the enemy. In the video the official representative of the welfare department of the town of Kiryat Gat describes these relationships as "an unnatural phenomenon." He then compares his message to the work of lifeguards who warn beach goers about dangerous sea conditions.

Lots of people in the U.S. and Europe believe Israel is a democracy and Israelis "share their values." That may be because Israel indeed shares these people's values. Or it can be because they are badly misinformed about Israel. I don't know. But in case they missed, these are the values taught in Israel's state schools with the blessing of the police and elected officials.

Don't say it in Gat; don't announce it in the streets of Ashkelon, but the day when Nazism and Zionism are studied comparatively are not far off.

BTW, The NGO spearheading this turd campaign is the organization Yad L'achim (hebrew: hand to the brothers). Contrary to what the name may suggest, Yad L'akhim is not a society for group masturbation. It is something a lot more sinister. Their website is very, very instructive (don't forget the barf bag). As you ambulate through their web pages (there is an English version), do remember that this is not a group of flat-earthers. They are the partner of the Israeli police, the elected municipality of Kiryat Gat and the state education system.

(Thanks to Henry Lowi for bringing this to our attention)

---

This blog may be known for its negativity. But we also want to commend the (rare) good side of Israel:

Daughters of Kiryat Gat, keep sleeping with the enemy! Jewssansfrontiers salutes your intelligence and good taste!

Police dive on diva

She looks like Melanie Phillips and sounds a bit like her when she talks, but can Mad Mel sing? I can't embed the video but you can see and save it here. Unbelievable the way zionists can mobilise tens of thousands of people in London and Manchester and yet they are thrown into blind panic when one person criticises them through a megaphone.

The Indymedia write up on this is here.

Silverstein on M & W on the telly

Richard Silverstein had a Comment is free piece out yesterday on a Dutch documentary on Mearsheimer and Walt, which I haven't actually watched yet, though I did read Richard's article. Here's the doc:


Silverstein applauds the fact that the documentary was made at all and thanks youtube for uploading it (over a year ago!). The strange thing that Silverstein says is this:

There probably should've been a few more voices critical of the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis like Alan Dershowitz for the sake of balance. But no matter, Perle played the role and did his feeble best, and they gave him plenty of time to try to undermine the Israel Lobby critique. Interestingly, no member of Congress was willing to be interviewed for the programme.

Here's my comment in case it disappears:

Richard - I haven't yet found that 50 minutes to watch the doc but a critical voice from Alan Dershowitz would hardly amount to balance now, would it? Unless M & W are accusing Israel of stealing cheese from the moon, in which case Dershowitz can say that it's Israel right because it's actually been Jewish cheese from time immemorial.

The M & W thesis is that there is an Israel lobby that stifles and distorts debate on Israel in America and that the lobby's influence had been decisive in determining American policy on the middle east. So it's a two part thesis.

There are many critics of Mearsheimer and Walt but no serious criticism denied the actual existence of the lobby as Dershowitz does from his standpoint of being a major player in the lobby. Finkelstein, Massad, Chomsky, Richard Seymour at the Lenin's Tomb blog, all have criticisms of M & W that don't degenerate into false allegations of antisemitism. I think each of these could have provided real balance to the assertion that the lobby distorts debate and therefore foreign policy. It does the former, I think, but not the latter. The establishment wants to support Israel so it allows the lobby to flourish. Of course it stifles debate and this is why M & W have to be thanked for their courageous stand but if the thesis is debatable, and it is eminently so, then it needs to be critiqued seriously. People who have an interest in stifling the debate that M & W have initiated shouldn't be invited to participate in it.

Anyway, I'll try to look at the documentary today and I'll look forward to an exposé of the Israel lobby that is currently flourishing in the EU and UK. Attention to that is well overdue even if it isn't quite as successful as its American counterpart.

See how long the comment lasts. For the life of me I don't know why he'd want Dershowitz on the show. I'm going to walk the dogs and think about that one. I'm starting to think it was simply to have Dershowitz make himself look ridiculous.

Zionazi medal II

Look what Lenni Brenner found:


I already posted on the first find of the silver or silver plated medal and the fact that I don't really like that expression "zionazi" but that was the name of the first file I got on this.

Anyway, during discussions about the medal there was puzzlement at the use of the term "nazi" by a, erm, nazi to describe himself. Well here's Lenni Brenner to explain:

There is no doubt about the medal's authenticity, But Zionist fanatics deny the reality of both the medal and Nazi patronage of Zionism. One such fool insists that "Wikipedia says German National Socialists never referred to themselves as 'Nazis' because it was a pejorative term coined by Hitler's opponents. If this is true, why does the inscription on that medal read 'EIN NAZI FAHRT NACH
PALASTINA' ("A NAZI TRAVELS TO PALESTINE")?"

Except that Ein Nazi farht nach Palestina is also the title of the 1st of von
Mildenstein's articles, in the 9/27/34 Angriff. Whatever the 'National Socialists thought about 'Nazi,' they used it. Anyone doubting this can get a photocopy of his German article from me.

I think I'll email him for a scan right now.

Comedian found guilty of Blasphemy

No, not in Saudi Arabia. This happened this week in France, a country where it is OK to publish offensive cartoons of Mohammed hiding a bomb in his hat but not ok to publicly criticize the holocaust industry.

A court of appeal confirmed French Commedian Dieudonné's conviction for "public defamation of of a group of people on account of their race, religion or origin".

Dieudonné is a stand-up comedian who indeed said many an outrageous thing, outrageous in a good way--breaking taboos, insulting to power, etc.. He is also on record with less than deep political commentary; lamentable perhaps, but not something terribly damning for a comedian. But the slander machine that goes into gear the moment a well-known person breaks a political taboo went after him like a velociraptor. The attacks made him radioactive, and the French intellectual kiss-ass demi-monde is not getting near him these days. The manufactured affair even crossed the Atlantic as the New-Yorker Magazine published a smelly hatchet job full of misquotes, innuendos and the wisdom of the great Montmartre poseur Bernard-Henri Levy. Jonathan Miller took The New-Yorker to task for the malpractice. It is worth a read!

So what exactly caused the French magistrates to hyperventilate?

According to the news reports, Dieudonné core offense was that he described the way the holocaust is memorialized as "remembrance porn."

Dieudonné is dead accurate.

Not only have Israel and its supporters used the images of the holocaust to justify decades of human rights abuses committed by Israel.

Not only have the state of Israel and Jewish organizations used the holocaust to blackmail and extort money, enriching themselves while the few true holocaust survivors must take to the streets to pay their grocery bills.

Not only is the political class of the West debasing the memory of victims of the Nazis by invoking them routinely to justify their foul military adventures.

Not only are the Jewish guardians of the holocaust memory often the first to deny and to diminish every other crime against humanity, from the Armenian Genocide to the Nazi murder of homosexuals.

But to top it all, thousands of Israeli students just about to enlist in the Herrenvolk army of Israel are sent every year on a trip to Auschwitz to learn why they should brutalize Palestinians and to celebrate their entrance into manhood with necrophilia, strippers and hooliganism.

The way the holocaust is remembered is indeed pornographic. Like pornography, it is intended to trigger a physical reaction that bypasses the intelligence. The force of imagery is used to make one feel, in a way that makes all reflection superfluous, that Nazis are a unique and unfathomable evil, and Jews eternal victims that can do no wrong and are beyond criticism. The goal is an orgasm of righteousness.

Of course this isn't a point about Jews. Few Jews are responsible for the WW-II porn channel. Public memory is chiefly the work of elite institutions, in this case the state of Israel, Yad Vashem, the various wealthy elite organizations who claim to represent Jews in the West, and very crucially, Western political elites who find the kitsching of the Nazi era a made-to-order smokescreen for modern political realities. But those who take an active role in this pimping of their history and the profiteering commerce in the blood of parents and relatives really scrap the bottom of human existence.

Finally, a bucket of goat manure for the court of knaves that fined a jester for telling it like it is.

Not nice but not a nakba?

There was a response on Comment is free yesterday to Lyn Julius's nasty little piece "on" the departure of Jews from Arab states following the establishment of the State of Israel. It's by Rachel Shabi, who the blurb says

is a Guardian contributor. She currently lives in Tel Aviv and has written a book on Israel's Oriental Jews, to be published early next year. She was born in Israel to Iraqi parents, and grew up in the UK.

Anyway, here's what she says:

Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) thinks that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinian refugees should somehow be offset against each other – the rights of one side counterbalancing the rights of the other. It's a neat argument: Jews were forced to abandon material assets and leave Arab countries; Palestinians similarly fled or were expelled from their homes. Ergo, the region witnessed an exchange of populations and if Palestinian refugees are to be compensated by Israel, so too must the Jewish "refugees" from the Middle East, by the Arab nations that expelled them.

Nice try, but there are many reasons why this formula is all wrong. First off (as David Cesarani points out), it's tasteless. There is no need for the fate of these two peoples, Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians, to be so fused materialistically. Middle Eastern Jews may indeed have a claim to lost assets, but those genuinely seeking peace between Israel and its neighbours should know that this is not the way to pursue it.

Second, defining Jews from Arab lands as "refugees" is problematic – and many Middle Eastern Jews would be angered by it. Countless Israelis recount leaving former homes in Arab countries and illegally, dangerously migrating prior to 1948. Such experiences do not include a component of expulsion: they left because they wanted to.

Broadly, you could say that any Middle Eastern Jew ("Oriental" or "Mizrahi" Jew) who defines their migration to Israel as "Zionist" cannot also be a refugee: the former label has agency and involves a desire to live in the Jewish state; the second suggests passivity and a lack of choice. Demanding the refugee label to bloc-define this group denies every other scenario: such as that Jews weren't all driven out of the Arab world; that they didn't all want to leave; or that many actually chose to do so.

What's more, if you take the line that Zionism both caused Palestinians to leave their homes and brought Middle Eastern Jews to Israel, then the refugee offset equation is, as the Israeli professor Yehouda Shenhav puts it, a form of "double-entry accounting".

Jewish Agency officials knew that their activities in Palestine could imperil Jews in the Middle East (see the work of Israeli historian Esther Meir-Glitzenste). They chose to carry on with those actions and committed to "rescuing" those Jews if things did take a turn for the worse. If Zionist officials themselves worried about a backlash in the Arab world, how can Israel then be absolved of responsibility for the Jewish exodus from those countries?

But let's get to the heart of the matter. What JJAC seems keen to establish is that Arab countries treated Jewish citizens with contempt and cruelty, fuelled by antisemitism. This formulation perpetuates the myth of Arabs and Jews as polar opposites, destined to be eternal enemies. It shirks the plain fact that Jews lived in Arab counties for over two millennia, for the most part productively and in peace. Even historians like Bernard Lewis say that. Sure, there were hostile periods, but nothing like the waves of anti-Jewish persecution experienced in Europe. The conflict between Arab nations and nascent Israel made it practically untenable for most Jews in the Middle East to stay put – and both sides of the conflict are to blame for that. In other words, Oriental Jews weren't simply "pushed" out of Arab countries; they were also "pulled" towards Israel.

"Pulled" because by the early 1940s Zionist emissaries were operative in the Middle East. They helped set up underground organisations that sought to inspire Jews to migrate to then Palestine.

Scores of Middle Eastern Jews recall that Jewish Agency officials dazzled them with stories of a better life in Israel. Many of them felt betrayed when they set foot in the new Jewish state – and continue to feel that way today.

But Oriental Jews were equally "pushed" out because, often, Arab governments did little to encourage them to stay. For instance, the Iraqi government passed a series of anti-Zionist laws during the 1948 war with Israel, but it didn't properly define Zionism so the laws were wide open to abuse and often experienced as anti-Jewish. The government, a British puppet and under constant threat amidst Iraqi nationalist calls for independence, used the Palestinian issue to deflect attention – sacrificing its Jewish community to this end.

Middle Eastern Jews were stuck between two opposing currents, Zionism and Arab nationalist anti-colonialism – and squeezed out in a pincer manoeuvre.

But this situation at national level did not always sour relations on the ground. Talking to Middle Eastern Jews now in Israel, there are many positive tales about former days in Arab countries: good lives; full rights; friendly Muslim neighbours. These recollections jar with the picture JJAC paints, of a rampant Arab antisemitism during this period.

Of course, we could only focus on the bad and write what the Jewish historian Salo Baron called a "lachrymose" version of events. But what's the point? The Middle Eastern Jewry comprises many threads and, compared with European Jewry, has a distinct history, heritage and culture. This legacy, in all its dimensions, should not be hijacked to fuel further rage and acrimony in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The comments are pouring in including this one by Professor Geoffrey Alderman:

Dear Ms Shabi

You do however agree (don't you?) that where it can be proved that Jews living in Arab lands were persecuted and/or had their property confiscated, they should be compensated and that this compensation must come from the respective Arab governments?

Geoffrey Alderman

There are a few pats on the back for the professor's perfectly reasonable question but I was a little anxious about what the professor omitted from his question as I see him as quite an extreme zionist who has expressed satisfaction about the holocaust in that, he says, it led to the establishment of the State of Israel. Here's me (Ilan):

Geoffrey Alderman raises half of a very important point. If people have fled persecution or they have been the victims of ethnic cleansing, they should be offered compensation or the right of return. I presume he means where it can be proved in specific cases then compensation will be due in those specific cases. If he doesn't mean that then we could be back to Lyn Julius's grotesque racist idea of "trade-off" in which case how many Anglo-Saxons would give up their homes to incoming settlers on the grounds that Anglo-Saxons have deprived people of their homes abroad?

Where either Arabs or Jews have been forced out of their respective homelands they should of course be entitled to compensation. They should also be offered the right to return to their homeland. It is that latter that doesn't feature in Geoffrey Alderman's question. If Arab states are denying Jews the right of return then that is to be condemned and rectified. Likewise, if Israel is denying Arabs the right of return, that too is to be condemned and rectified.

Now between this article and the one by Lyn Julius, a consensus is emerging. I think all agree that whatever it was that caused Arabs to leave Palestine and Jews to leave Arab countries, the idea of a trade off is a racist obscenity. That leaves us with compensation and the right of return both of which should be offered to both Arabs and Jews.

Let's not forget though, that whilst Arab regimes have been stupid and cruel in their treatment of Jews, Israel's existence as a Jewish state (or more correctly, a state for Jews) is predicated on its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. In fact I think it is the only state today that owes its existence to the combination of on-going colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and racist laws. Put another way, whilst Arab (and other) countries have had boundaries and dictatorships imposed on them, Palestine has had a whole colonial settler population imposed on it and it has had most of its native population removed.

Back to the question of either compensation or return this should be the choice of the victims, not the perpetrators. For example, if Syria was to say that it will compensate members of its former Jewish population where it can be proven that they left under duress this would not do. They must offer the right to return. Similarly, Israel should offer (or be compelled to offer) the victims of its ethnic cleansing either compensation or the right of return, depending on what they, the victims, want, as per UN General Assembly resolution 194.

Finally, like Professor Alderman, I would like to hear Rachel Shabi's views on these two issues of compensation and return.

She hasn't come back yet and nor has the prof. She's either being sensible and waiting to deal with all queries at once or she's being even more sensible and staying away from the open zoo that is the comment section at comment is free.

Still the comments are still open if you want to have a go.