Dear Friend,
The following article in the Guardian summarizes the essence of the quagmire in Isr/Pal.
One state, two states, it makes no difference, if historic claims to the "land" are disregarded, if mutual respect for human dignity and "rights" are trampled.
There will be one land, with diverse peoples, each with "democratic" rights; not the preference for the exclusive Jewishness of the land that is being insisted on now by the party in power.
The talk of "two states" for two peoples is a front, a cover up for more settlements by Jewish "extremists" who intend to crush Palestinian aspirations (and call opposition to their plans Islamic terrorism, to be further asphyxiated. JRK
West Bank: slowly, determinedly, settlers bid to build new town
In the first of a series of exclusive reports examining settlements in the West Bank and their role in the middle east peace process, Rory McCarthy meets a group of Israelis who want to 'redeem' a patch of land near the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour.
Nadia Matar, a leader of the settler group Women in Green, puts an Israeli flag on a hilltop near the former Israeli army post Shdema, where activists are claiming the land. Photograph: Gali Tibbon
Early in the morning, Nadia Matar drove to the hills south of Jerusalem, near the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, and turned into a dusty, unmarked road. There she planted a sign which read "Welcome to Shdema". She drove on, stopping every few metres along the route to jam into the rocky ground a series of fluttering blue and white Israeli flags. Israeli soldiers let her pass unhindered as she drove up to the concrete ruins of what was until a few years ago the Israeli military base of Shdema.
Here, just a stone's throw from Palestinian homes and only a few minutes from the city of Bethlehem, Matar and her friends are intent on building a Jewish community, the next settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank.
It is a glaring challenge to the Obama administration, which is trying to halt all Israeli settlement growth as a precursor to renewed peace talks. But recent history suggests it is the highly-motivated settlers like Matar, 43, a mother of six born in Belgium and now living in the settlement of Efrat, who may in the end triumph on this particular dusty patch of land.
Monday, August 24, 2009, the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu arrives in London for a series of key meetings, including four hours of discussions on Wednesday with the White House's special envoy, George Mitchell, and talks with Gordon Brown tomorrow. The continued colonisation of the West Bank, an extraordinarily successful project over the past 40 years, will dominate the agenda. Settlement on occupied land is regarded as illegal by the rest of the international community, but nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Shdema is even beyond Israel's West Bank barrier, which runs deep into Palestinian territory and which many believe will one day be the final border of Israel.
Matar's goal is "redemption of the land". In her view, the land on which the Palestinian homes sit belongs by Biblical and historical right to the Jewish people and is, for now, "temporarily under Arab occupation". She is trying to build a "Jewish Shdema" and to prevent the land from remaining Palestinian. After the military evacuated the base there were plans, since shelved, to build a hospital for Palestinians. "They want more pieces of land that belong to the Jews. They want to take it away from us," Matar said.
"The Land of Israel was given by God to the people of Israel," she said. "Some will tell you God gave it to us, others will say Jewish history of 4,000 years is our historical right … You don't have to be a religious Englishman to see London belongs to the British."
This is a rare insight into how outposts get built: with determined settlers and eventually complicit Israeli authorities.
At first, after the army withdrew from the base three years ago, soldiers closed the area off and prevented all settlers from approaching. But the settlers sneaked in and kept coming. Eventually Matar, a leader of the group Women in Green, and her supporters convinced the military to allow them in just once a week, on a Friday. They cleaned the buildings up, painted over graffiti, tidied the rooms and held workshops and discussions. Sometimes they have stayed the night, sometimes they have been allowed to come twice a week and eventually, they believe, settlers will begin to live here.
Similar struggles take place every week on other hilltops across the West Bank. All this is happening even though the Israeli government says in public it will allow no new settlements.
"At the beginning we fought against the army to come up here," said Matar. "But when they saw we were adamant they let us come on a Friday … But it's not enough for us. We don't want to ask permission to be in our homeland."
Now every time they come the army far from preventing them in fact provides them with security, deploying several soldiers and armoured vehicles but not interfering with their activities. In April the military also halted the construction of a Palestinian park, part funded by the US government, because it was at the foot of the hill claimed by the settlers at Shdema.
Already the settlers have produced a glossy brochure with architectural plans of the Shdema they would like to see: it has grassy lawns, lines of trees, a cultural centre and a small but thriving Jewish community.
On this day around 30 settlers of different ages gathered, among them several children, a rabbi and at least two women carrying discreetly holstered pistols. They sat in one room on plastic chairs as Tomer Karazi, 34, a rabbi with five children, discussed a Biblical text and the importance of building a new village in this Biblical land.
Later Karazi said he and his wife Hannah were ready to move from their home in the settlement of Nokdim to Shdema as soon as possible. "It's our duty not to escort the process of redemption from the outside but to be involved and active from the inside," he said. "We don't need to wait for things like water and electricity. And we really love the place. It's beautiful."
Then out came large tubs of white emulsion paint and several brushes and the group began painting over the grey concrete walls, stopping occasionally for glasses of water and slices of watermelon.
Yosef Ziggerman, 18, a settler from Efrat had been involved in several other, often unsuccessful, attempts to establish new outposts on nearby hills. "I believe every single piece is ours and I don't see many pieces of land as beautiful as this," he said. "We aren't doing anything crazy or fanatic. We're painting and making it look nice."
Several spoke of their frustration with other Israelis who enjoy the more secular lifestyle of cities like Tel Aviv or Eilat but who seemed not to understand or endorse the settlers' millenarian ideology and their effort to claim the West Bank as their own. Since Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza four years ago, many fear more compromises and would rather take a more radical and practical stand to expand Jewish settlement of the West Bank.
They described themselves as a frontline in a wider struggle against what they see as radical Islam, insisting that settler outposts protect the larger settlement blocs, which in turn protect Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and which in turn protect the Western world.
"People like to present us like crazy lunatics," said Matar. "But one day these people in the West will see. The Muslims are taking over there too. You better be on our side for your sake, but you guys in Europe are not. Those who curse Israel will be cursed, and those who bless Israel will be blessed."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/23/west-bank-israeli-settlements
Monday, August 24, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism
Repentance is just below the surface of this diatribe against the excesses of "Zionism".
Go beyond weeping and press for treating "the stranger" with respect and decency, out of which justice and mercy may flow. JRK
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism
By HELENA COBBAN
I've never met Dov Yermiya, a Jewish Israeli peace activist who is now 94 years old. But I read of course the book he published in 1983 in which he wrote with anguish about the torture and other gross mistreatment of civilians he witnessed directly during Israel's invasion of Lebanon the year before.
I have it in my hand now.
I just learned, from an open letter published by Uri Avnery, that Yermiya, recently renounced the ideology and practice of Zionism with these stirring words:
“I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel,
“Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.
“... for 42 years, Israel turned what should have been Palestine into a giant detention camp, and is holding a whole people captive under an oppressive and cruel regime, with the sole aim of taking away their country, come what may!!!
“”The IDF eagerly suppresses their efforts at rebellion, with the active assistance of the settlement thugs, by the brutal means of a sophisticated Apartheid and a choking blockade, inhuman harassment of the sick and of women in labor, the destruction of their economy and the theft of their best land and water.
“Over all this there is waving the black flag of the frightening contempt for the life and blood of the Palestinians. Israel will never be forgiven for the terrible toll of blood spilt, and especially the blood of children, in hair-raising quantities.. . “
Go beyond weeping and press for treating "the stranger" with respect and decency, out of which justice and mercy may flow. JRK
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism
By HELENA COBBAN
I've never met Dov Yermiya, a Jewish Israeli peace activist who is now 94 years old. But I read of course the book he published in 1983 in which he wrote with anguish about the torture and other gross mistreatment of civilians he witnessed directly during Israel's invasion of Lebanon the year before.
I have it in my hand now.
I just learned, from an open letter published by Uri Avnery, that Yermiya, recently renounced the ideology and practice of Zionism with these stirring words:
“I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel,
“Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.
“... for 42 years, Israel turned what should have been Palestine into a giant detention camp, and is holding a whole people captive under an oppressive and cruel regime, with the sole aim of taking away their country, come what may!!!
“”The IDF eagerly suppresses their efforts at rebellion, with the active assistance of the settlement thugs, by the brutal means of a sophisticated Apartheid and a choking blockade, inhuman harassment of the sick and of women in labor, the destruction of their economy and the theft of their best land and water.
“Over all this there is waving the black flag of the frightening contempt for the life and blood of the Palestinians. Israel will never be forgiven for the terrible toll of blood spilt, and especially the blood of children, in hair-raising quantities.. . “
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Addressing Human Rights Abuses (from an Israeli)
Jeff Halper, a Jewish human rights worker in Israel, makes a strong case against "terror" whether of HAMAS or (the Israeli) state-supported kind. JRK
Right of Reply: Protecting human rights is never 'interference'
Aug. 12, 2009
Jeff Halper, THE JERUSALEM POST
The article entitled Spain funds 'summer camp' for foreign volunteers to rebuild demolished illegal Palestinian homes, which merited the front page of The Jerusalem Post(August 10), would seem somewhat of a non-story. After all, Israel and the US funded NGOs assisting Jews in the Soviet Union.
Israel went so far as to argue that the human rights provisions of the UN Charter granted it the right to speak and act on behalf of persecuted Jews even if they were not Israeli nationals. Anyone approaching Jerusalem encounters the "Sakharov Gardens," named for Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet human rights figure who could not have survived without the political support of outside governments - a close friend, by the way, of Natan Sharansky, whose own release from the Gulag was made possible by the intervention of foreign governments.
Israel has long and openly justified its interventions in countries like apartheid South Africa and Argentina under the military dictatorship as a way of defending the local Jewish communities. So-called pro-Israel organizations in the US are well known for advocating support for pro-democracy groups in Iran and Egypt. And doesn't Israel intervene deeply in American internal politics when, through AIPAC, its lobby in Washington, it attempts to get "friends of Israel" elected to Congress and de-elect more critical members?
HERE I will say something that may surprise: Israel should intervene in situations when human rights are threatened, be they of Jews or of any other people. Indeed, Israel was one of the first countries to urge the governments of the world to employ universal jurisdiction in prosecuting Nazi war criminals. In doing so it recognized the essence of human rights - the notion that they are universal. "Universal jurisdiction" means, as Israel pointed out in the wake of the Holocaust, that safeguarding the rights of individuals and peoples is not the exclusive domain of the government involved, but is the business of the entire international community.
In urging universal jurisdiction on the international community, Israel rejected categorically the contention that the treatment of one's own citizens or people under one's control is a "domestic, internal matter." This was the argument used by the most nefarious of regimes: Hitler's claim that Germany's "Jewish problem" was an internal issue and that foreign governments should "butt out" is the most notorious, but it's been repeated by Russia in regard to Chechnya, China in regard to Tibet and the Serbs in their campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia to mention just a few. Human rights organizations are the favorite targets of oppressive regimes.
One of the major instruments in enforcing universal human rights is the Fourth Geneva Convention, approved by the UN in 1949 and ratified by Israel. It provides a double layer of protection for people living under occupation: The occupying power is held responsible for the well-being of the people under its control, but so is the entire international community. While Israel refuses to apply the Fourth Geneva Convention to the occupied territories, denying that it even has an occupation (a position rejected by every country in the world, including its American patron), in fact all governments and court systems are required under universal jurisdiction to prosecute violations of human rights and to intervene on behalf of the peoples being oppressed.
This is no mere academic issue. Had the Fourth Geneva Convention been adopted and enforced by the international community in 1939 instead of 1949, the worst of the Holocaust could have been averted.
SO WHAT'S wrong with Spain supporting human rights organizations such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), Breaking the Silence, Rabbis for Human Rights, the Coalition of Women for Peace and ACRI, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel? Just as it is absolutely appropriate for Israel to intervene when Jewish human rights are threatened abroad, so too is it absolutely appropriate for the Spanish government to intervene to strengthen human rights in Israel while offering protection to the Palestinians whose homes are being demolished.
But it isn't enough.
While I'm grateful that countries like Spain pursue their international responsibilities as guarantors of human rights, the occupation is robbing Israel of its soul. The fact that government officials and the media criticize "foreign intervention" yet ignore the reasons for it - in this case Israel's demolition of more than 24,000 Palestinian homes in the occupied territories since 1967 with no "security" justification at all - puts our country in the company of disreputable regimes under which Jews have traditionally suffered or against which they have struggled. If we cannot end this occupation on our own, I would ask Spain and the rest of the international community to intervene even more forcefully. Forget the pointless negotiations.
Merely enforcing the Fourth Geneva Convention would cause the occupation to collapse of its own illegality and immorality.
As for all those Israeli officials who nevertheless complain about foreign intervention in Israel's "internal affairs," I would simply point out a geographical and political fact: Neither the occupied territories nor their Palestinian residents are "internal" to Israel. Both are external. Our oppression of the Palestinians has nothing to do with the State of Israel. It is rather disingenuous, therefore, to argue that Spain, by supporting ICAHD's rebuilding of Palestinian homes illegally demolished in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention is somehow "interfering."
Finally, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev crosses a line of libel when he accuses me in the article of "justifying terror." My views are well known and readers can view many of my presentations on YouTube. I always condemn terrorism, the killing or harming of innocent civilians. But, again, I take the human rights approach which condemns all forms of terrorism, whether that of non-state actors like Hamas or that of states, certainly including Israel.
Let's start taking responsibility for our policies and actions so that other countries - who are not our enemies - will not find it necessary to "intervene."
The writer is director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418590065&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Right of Reply: Protecting human rights is never 'interference'
Aug. 12, 2009
Jeff Halper, THE JERUSALEM POST
The article entitled Spain funds 'summer camp' for foreign volunteers to rebuild demolished illegal Palestinian homes, which merited the front page of The Jerusalem Post(August 10), would seem somewhat of a non-story. After all, Israel and the US funded NGOs assisting Jews in the Soviet Union.
Israel went so far as to argue that the human rights provisions of the UN Charter granted it the right to speak and act on behalf of persecuted Jews even if they were not Israeli nationals. Anyone approaching Jerusalem encounters the "Sakharov Gardens," named for Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet human rights figure who could not have survived without the political support of outside governments - a close friend, by the way, of Natan Sharansky, whose own release from the Gulag was made possible by the intervention of foreign governments.
Israel has long and openly justified its interventions in countries like apartheid South Africa and Argentina under the military dictatorship as a way of defending the local Jewish communities. So-called pro-Israel organizations in the US are well known for advocating support for pro-democracy groups in Iran and Egypt. And doesn't Israel intervene deeply in American internal politics when, through AIPAC, its lobby in Washington, it attempts to get "friends of Israel" elected to Congress and de-elect more critical members?
HERE I will say something that may surprise: Israel should intervene in situations when human rights are threatened, be they of Jews or of any other people. Indeed, Israel was one of the first countries to urge the governments of the world to employ universal jurisdiction in prosecuting Nazi war criminals. In doing so it recognized the essence of human rights - the notion that they are universal. "Universal jurisdiction" means, as Israel pointed out in the wake of the Holocaust, that safeguarding the rights of individuals and peoples is not the exclusive domain of the government involved, but is the business of the entire international community.
In urging universal jurisdiction on the international community, Israel rejected categorically the contention that the treatment of one's own citizens or people under one's control is a "domestic, internal matter." This was the argument used by the most nefarious of regimes: Hitler's claim that Germany's "Jewish problem" was an internal issue and that foreign governments should "butt out" is the most notorious, but it's been repeated by Russia in regard to Chechnya, China in regard to Tibet and the Serbs in their campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia to mention just a few. Human rights organizations are the favorite targets of oppressive regimes.
One of the major instruments in enforcing universal human rights is the Fourth Geneva Convention, approved by the UN in 1949 and ratified by Israel. It provides a double layer of protection for people living under occupation: The occupying power is held responsible for the well-being of the people under its control, but so is the entire international community. While Israel refuses to apply the Fourth Geneva Convention to the occupied territories, denying that it even has an occupation (a position rejected by every country in the world, including its American patron), in fact all governments and court systems are required under universal jurisdiction to prosecute violations of human rights and to intervene on behalf of the peoples being oppressed.
This is no mere academic issue. Had the Fourth Geneva Convention been adopted and enforced by the international community in 1939 instead of 1949, the worst of the Holocaust could have been averted.
SO WHAT'S wrong with Spain supporting human rights organizations such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), Breaking the Silence, Rabbis for Human Rights, the Coalition of Women for Peace and ACRI, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel? Just as it is absolutely appropriate for Israel to intervene when Jewish human rights are threatened abroad, so too is it absolutely appropriate for the Spanish government to intervene to strengthen human rights in Israel while offering protection to the Palestinians whose homes are being demolished.
But it isn't enough.
While I'm grateful that countries like Spain pursue their international responsibilities as guarantors of human rights, the occupation is robbing Israel of its soul. The fact that government officials and the media criticize "foreign intervention" yet ignore the reasons for it - in this case Israel's demolition of more than 24,000 Palestinian homes in the occupied territories since 1967 with no "security" justification at all - puts our country in the company of disreputable regimes under which Jews have traditionally suffered or against which they have struggled. If we cannot end this occupation on our own, I would ask Spain and the rest of the international community to intervene even more forcefully. Forget the pointless negotiations.
Merely enforcing the Fourth Geneva Convention would cause the occupation to collapse of its own illegality and immorality.
As for all those Israeli officials who nevertheless complain about foreign intervention in Israel's "internal affairs," I would simply point out a geographical and political fact: Neither the occupied territories nor their Palestinian residents are "internal" to Israel. Both are external. Our oppression of the Palestinians has nothing to do with the State of Israel. It is rather disingenuous, therefore, to argue that Spain, by supporting ICAHD's rebuilding of Palestinian homes illegally demolished in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention is somehow "interfering."
Finally, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev crosses a line of libel when he accuses me in the article of "justifying terror." My views are well known and readers can view many of my presentations on YouTube. I always condemn terrorism, the killing or harming of innocent civilians. But, again, I take the human rights approach which condemns all forms of terrorism, whether that of non-state actors like Hamas or that of states, certainly including Israel.
Let's start taking responsibility for our policies and actions so that other countries - who are not our enemies - will not find it necessary to "intervene."
The writer is director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418590065&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Obama Administration Praised for Strong Stand
The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) is one of our longtime contributors. They weigh in here with this press release The settlement issue is the "wedge" that shows the "Achilles Heel" of Israeli occupation; an occupation that must end. By not ending it, Isr/Pal is surely moving toward a "One-State" solution, where the outcome will be equal rights and full citizenship for ALL people who live there. Bantustans just won't finally cut it, historically, internationally, or from the standpoint of "justice". JRK
Washington DC, August 5 -- The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) today welcomed the firm stance taken by the Obama administration against Israel's eviction of 58 Palestinians from homes in East Jerusalem in which they have been living for many decades. The homes were immediately occupied by Israeli settlers. Israel argues that the homes had been Jewish-owned before 1948, and that the Palestinian families had "violated the terms of their leases."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the evictions as "deeply regrettable," and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman told Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who was summoned to receive Washington's official protest of the act, that the evictions were "provocative" and "unacceptable," and violate Israel's obligations under the Roadmap. ATFP said it agreed with the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz that, "The government must immediately return the Palestinian residents to their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and cancel the eviction orders that have been issued against additional houses. And the neighborhood's fate must be determined via diplomatic negotiations."
ATFP President Ziad J. Asali said, "We are gratified that our government has taken a strong stance against these unjustifiable evictions, and we strongly agree with Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary Feltman that they were indeed regrettable, provocative and unacceptable. We urge the Obama administration to continue to try to ensure that Israel avoids further provocative measures, especially in Jerusalem. We also urge the Israeli government to recognize the significant damage to the credibility and viability of peace negotiations caused by actions that prejudice the outcome on Jerusalem. Building conditions for an end of conflict agreement requires that all parties focus on their broader, long-term interests and refrain from actions and statements that undermine the prospects for peace. We strongly feel that Israel should not take or allow actions in Jerusalem that are bound to complicate building the conditions for a viable, permanent peace agreement."
Washington DC, August 5 -- The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) today welcomed the firm stance taken by the Obama administration against Israel's eviction of 58 Palestinians from homes in East Jerusalem in which they have been living for many decades. The homes were immediately occupied by Israeli settlers. Israel argues that the homes had been Jewish-owned before 1948, and that the Palestinian families had "violated the terms of their leases."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the evictions as "deeply regrettable," and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman told Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who was summoned to receive Washington's official protest of the act, that the evictions were "provocative" and "unacceptable," and violate Israel's obligations under the Roadmap. ATFP said it agreed with the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz that, "The government must immediately return the Palestinian residents to their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and cancel the eviction orders that have been issued against additional houses. And the neighborhood's fate must be determined via diplomatic negotiations."
ATFP President Ziad J. Asali said, "We are gratified that our government has taken a strong stance against these unjustifiable evictions, and we strongly agree with Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary Feltman that they were indeed regrettable, provocative and unacceptable. We urge the Obama administration to continue to try to ensure that Israel avoids further provocative measures, especially in Jerusalem. We also urge the Israeli government to recognize the significant damage to the credibility and viability of peace negotiations caused by actions that prejudice the outcome on Jerusalem. Building conditions for an end of conflict agreement requires that all parties focus on their broader, long-term interests and refrain from actions and statements that undermine the prospects for peace. We strongly feel that Israel should not take or allow actions in Jerusalem that are bound to complicate building the conditions for a viable, permanent peace agreement."
Monday, August 3, 2009
Palestinian Youths Commit to Nonviolence
Palestinian Youth Embrace Nonviolence
In the West Bank city of Hebron, the unemployment rate is hovering around 28%. Seventy-eight checkpoints, monitored by Israeli soldiers, make even the shortest of trips difficult and time consuming. Four Israeli settlements inside the Hebron city limits, and another five just outside of the city are home to some of the most aggressive and dangerous settlers in the West Bank. In the midst of the violence and desperation, a dozen young Palestinian men and women sit in a circle and read the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They have come because of their refusal to accept defeat and because of their conviction that there is a way forward that does not involve violence, but chooses to draw its strength from love. They are the July 2009 participants in the Nonviolence Youth (NV Youth) Hebron training program, and they are joining their voices with thousands throughout the Palestinian territories and millions around the world who have already been convinced of the potential to create change through nonviolent resistance to injustice.
NV Youth is a project of Love Thy Neighbor (LTN), a nonprofit organization based in Bethesda, MD. Since 2007, LTN has sponsored nonviolence summer camps for children and nonviolence trainings for young adults, and, in fall of 2009, will inaugurate a follow-up leadership training program for graduates of its introductory courses. Through music, literature, art and role play, participants are given the opportunity to build and practice their nonviolence and conflict resolution skills. Discussions about largely nonviolent resistance movements around the world, including the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the South African Anti-Apartheid movement and the Indian Independence movement provoke creative thinking about how new ideas and different strategies can be incorporated into the Palestinian nonviolent struggle against the occupation.
Demand for these programs is high, not because LTN and NV Youth are introducing a new and foreign concept, but because of the long history of nonviolent resistance that is woven throughout Palestinian society and culture. According to LTN’s executive director, Tarek Abuata, the organization has been able to achieve what it has only in partnership with the many other nonviolence initiatives that are already an active part of Palestinian culture. The camps and training programs build on that tradition and set out to expand participation in the movement and provide its leaders with the needed resources that are difficult to obtain under occupation. By empowering young people, LTN and NV Youth are working to ensure that the next generation of Palestinian leaders will be grounded in the tradition and history of nonviolent struggle in their homeland and around the world.
In a society so deeply scarred by injustice and inequality, the message of nonviolence contains an element of hope that offers welcome relief from the daily struggle. Unfortunately, it is a message that is all too often lost on a media that prefers to report on bloodshed and strife. And so it is without fanfare and recognition that the young people of Hebron gathered last month. But they, and thousands like them, will continue to gather and raise their voices against oppression and violence. It is in this stubborn refusal to succumb to injustice or violence that one finds possibilities and hope.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, the unemployment rate is hovering around 28%. Seventy-eight checkpoints, monitored by Israeli soldiers, make even the shortest of trips difficult and time consuming. Four Israeli settlements inside the Hebron city limits, and another five just outside of the city are home to some of the most aggressive and dangerous settlers in the West Bank. In the midst of the violence and desperation, a dozen young Palestinian men and women sit in a circle and read the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They have come because of their refusal to accept defeat and because of their conviction that there is a way forward that does not involve violence, but chooses to draw its strength from love. They are the July 2009 participants in the Nonviolence Youth (NV Youth) Hebron training program, and they are joining their voices with thousands throughout the Palestinian territories and millions around the world who have already been convinced of the potential to create change through nonviolent resistance to injustice.
NV Youth is a project of Love Thy Neighbor (LTN), a nonprofit organization based in Bethesda, MD. Since 2007, LTN has sponsored nonviolence summer camps for children and nonviolence trainings for young adults, and, in fall of 2009, will inaugurate a follow-up leadership training program for graduates of its introductory courses. Through music, literature, art and role play, participants are given the opportunity to build and practice their nonviolence and conflict resolution skills. Discussions about largely nonviolent resistance movements around the world, including the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the South African Anti-Apartheid movement and the Indian Independence movement provoke creative thinking about how new ideas and different strategies can be incorporated into the Palestinian nonviolent struggle against the occupation.
Demand for these programs is high, not because LTN and NV Youth are introducing a new and foreign concept, but because of the long history of nonviolent resistance that is woven throughout Palestinian society and culture. According to LTN’s executive director, Tarek Abuata, the organization has been able to achieve what it has only in partnership with the many other nonviolence initiatives that are already an active part of Palestinian culture. The camps and training programs build on that tradition and set out to expand participation in the movement and provide its leaders with the needed resources that are difficult to obtain under occupation. By empowering young people, LTN and NV Youth are working to ensure that the next generation of Palestinian leaders will be grounded in the tradition and history of nonviolent struggle in their homeland and around the world.
In a society so deeply scarred by injustice and inequality, the message of nonviolence contains an element of hope that offers welcome relief from the daily struggle. Unfortunately, it is a message that is all too often lost on a media that prefers to report on bloodshed and strife. And so it is without fanfare and recognition that the young people of Hebron gathered last month. But they, and thousands like them, will continue to gather and raise their voices against oppression and violence. It is in this stubborn refusal to succumb to injustice or violence that one finds possibilities and hope.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Israelis "Terrorist"
July 30, 2009
West Bank Settlers Send Obama Defiant Message
By ETHAN BRONNER
NERIA, West Bank — In this land of endless history and ethereal beauty, several thousand Jewish settlers gathered on a dozen West Bank hills with makeshift huts and Israeli flags over several days this week to mark an invented anniversary and defy the American president, conveying to his aides visiting Jerusalem what they thought of his demand for a settlement freeze.
Eleven tiny settler outposts were inaugurated, including one next to this settlement in the rugged Samarian hills. A clearing encompassing a generator and a hut with a corrugated metal roof and a ritual mezuza on its doorpost now bears the name Givat Egoz. This is how nearby Neria, with 180 families, got its start 18 years ago.
“We are rebuilding the land of Israel,” Rabbi Yigael Shandorfi, leader of a religious academy at the neighboring settlement outpost of Nahliel, said during the ceremony. “Our hope is that there will be roads, electricity and water.” The message to President Obama, he said, is that this is Jewish land. He did not use the president’s name, but an insulting Hebrew slang for a black man and the phrase “that Arab they call a president.”
None of the hundreds gathered — mostly couples with large families, but also armed young men and teenagers from other outposts — objected. Yitzhak Shadmi, leader of the regional council of settlements, said Mr. Obama was a racist and anti-Semite for his assertion that Jews should not build here, but Arabs could.
Mr. Shadmi said the ceremonies across the West Bank this week honored a moment in 1946 when Zionists established 11 settlements in the northern Negev of Palestine in defiance of the British rulers before Israel was created. It was important for the new outposts to be established while Washington’s emissaries were visiting, he said. George J. Mitchell, the special envoy for the Middle East, who is pressing the settlement freeze, was in the West Bank at the start of the week.
The national security adviser, James L. Jones, and a White House adviser on the region, Dennis B. Ross, held meetings in Jerusalem on Wednesday as part of the negotiations, which also include attempts to get Arab governments and Palestinians to reciprocate if the Israelis agree to the freeze.
“We wanted to do this while they were here,” Mr. Shadmi said. “We’re saying, ‘Mitchell, go home.’ ”
When the settlement of Neria was created in 1991, it had a similar purpose. Yossi Dermer, spokesman for the settlement, said it was known slyly to intimates as “the James Baker settlement” because it was set up to convey a message of defiance before a visit by James A. Baker III, secretary of state for the first President George Bush.
Because West Bank settlements officially require Israeli government approval and the new outposts did not obtain it, the Israeli police have dismantled several of the new ones already. But just as quickly, they are being rebuilt, sometimes a bit bigger. At nearly every outpost, the ruins left by past police actions lie next to newly built huts.
“We’ll build and build, and every time they destroy it we will build bigger and better and prettier,” asserted Tirael Cohen, a 16-year-old girl who lives at Ramat Migron, an extension of the unauthorized Migron outpost, not far from Ramallah, a large Palestinian city in the West Bank. Ruined corrugated metal and pieces of wood were strewn on the ground nearby.
Tirael has lived at Ramat Migron for a year and a half with 10 other girls, and, at a religiously modest distance away, 10 boys live in a separate structure. The girls cook, the boys build and maintain, and all study at nearby religious academies.
About 40 religious girls from within Israel and West Bank settlements spent three days at Ramat Migron last week in what they called “spiritual preparation” for coming battles over the land.
On the outside wall of the kitchen is a rabbinical quotation about the need to redeem the land of Israel. It says “bare mountains and deserted fields cry out for life and creation,” and adds: “An internal revolution is taking place here, a revolution in man and the earth. These are the true pains of salvation.”
The Migron outpost itself is expected to be taken down because it is built on land that, according to a court case, belongs to private Palestinian families. Centuries-old olive trees dot the landscape.
The Obama administration is hoping to help establish a Palestinian state in nearly all of the West Bank next to Israel. One major challenge is what to do with the 300,000 Israeli Jews who have settled here over four decades, often at their government’s urging.
Many could be incorporated into Israel through a border adjustment; others say they would move if compensated. But some, like these outpost settlers, say they will never move because they believe they are fulfilling God’s plan with every hut they put up. They are likely to be a major stumbling block to any attempt to find a two-state solution.
At the Neria outpost celebration, Noam Rein, a father of 10, looked out across the hills at Ramallah and called its presence “temporary.”
He added: “The Torah says the land of Israel is for the Jewish people. This is just the beginning. We will build 1,000 homes here. The Arabs cannot stay here, not because we hate them, but because this is not their place.”
Among the religious leaders who spoke at the ceremony, Rabbi Yair Remer of Harasha, a nearby outpost, noted that Thursday was the Ninth of Av, a Jewish day of mourning commemorating the destruction of the ancient temples. He suggested that the best way to cope with the tragedy of Jewish history was to do what the young builders of this outpost were doing.
“The land rejoices because its children are returning to her,” he said, referring to Jewish settlers, making no mention of the 2.5 million Palestinians here.
Tirael, the teenager from Ramat Migron, put it another way: “I believe that every inch of this land is us, our blood. If we lose one inch, it is like losing a person.”
West Bank Settlers Send Obama Defiant Message
By ETHAN BRONNER
NERIA, West Bank — In this land of endless history and ethereal beauty, several thousand Jewish settlers gathered on a dozen West Bank hills with makeshift huts and Israeli flags over several days this week to mark an invented anniversary and defy the American president, conveying to his aides visiting Jerusalem what they thought of his demand for a settlement freeze.
Eleven tiny settler outposts were inaugurated, including one next to this settlement in the rugged Samarian hills. A clearing encompassing a generator and a hut with a corrugated metal roof and a ritual mezuza on its doorpost now bears the name Givat Egoz. This is how nearby Neria, with 180 families, got its start 18 years ago.
“We are rebuilding the land of Israel,” Rabbi Yigael Shandorfi, leader of a religious academy at the neighboring settlement outpost of Nahliel, said during the ceremony. “Our hope is that there will be roads, electricity and water.” The message to President Obama, he said, is that this is Jewish land. He did not use the president’s name, but an insulting Hebrew slang for a black man and the phrase “that Arab they call a president.”
None of the hundreds gathered — mostly couples with large families, but also armed young men and teenagers from other outposts — objected. Yitzhak Shadmi, leader of the regional council of settlements, said Mr. Obama was a racist and anti-Semite for his assertion that Jews should not build here, but Arabs could.
Mr. Shadmi said the ceremonies across the West Bank this week honored a moment in 1946 when Zionists established 11 settlements in the northern Negev of Palestine in defiance of the British rulers before Israel was created. It was important for the new outposts to be established while Washington’s emissaries were visiting, he said. George J. Mitchell, the special envoy for the Middle East, who is pressing the settlement freeze, was in the West Bank at the start of the week.
The national security adviser, James L. Jones, and a White House adviser on the region, Dennis B. Ross, held meetings in Jerusalem on Wednesday as part of the negotiations, which also include attempts to get Arab governments and Palestinians to reciprocate if the Israelis agree to the freeze.
“We wanted to do this while they were here,” Mr. Shadmi said. “We’re saying, ‘Mitchell, go home.’ ”
When the settlement of Neria was created in 1991, it had a similar purpose. Yossi Dermer, spokesman for the settlement, said it was known slyly to intimates as “the James Baker settlement” because it was set up to convey a message of defiance before a visit by James A. Baker III, secretary of state for the first President George Bush.
Because West Bank settlements officially require Israeli government approval and the new outposts did not obtain it, the Israeli police have dismantled several of the new ones already. But just as quickly, they are being rebuilt, sometimes a bit bigger. At nearly every outpost, the ruins left by past police actions lie next to newly built huts.
“We’ll build and build, and every time they destroy it we will build bigger and better and prettier,” asserted Tirael Cohen, a 16-year-old girl who lives at Ramat Migron, an extension of the unauthorized Migron outpost, not far from Ramallah, a large Palestinian city in the West Bank. Ruined corrugated metal and pieces of wood were strewn on the ground nearby.
Tirael has lived at Ramat Migron for a year and a half with 10 other girls, and, at a religiously modest distance away, 10 boys live in a separate structure. The girls cook, the boys build and maintain, and all study at nearby religious academies.
About 40 religious girls from within Israel and West Bank settlements spent three days at Ramat Migron last week in what they called “spiritual preparation” for coming battles over the land.
On the outside wall of the kitchen is a rabbinical quotation about the need to redeem the land of Israel. It says “bare mountains and deserted fields cry out for life and creation,” and adds: “An internal revolution is taking place here, a revolution in man and the earth. These are the true pains of salvation.”
The Migron outpost itself is expected to be taken down because it is built on land that, according to a court case, belongs to private Palestinian families. Centuries-old olive trees dot the landscape.
The Obama administration is hoping to help establish a Palestinian state in nearly all of the West Bank next to Israel. One major challenge is what to do with the 300,000 Israeli Jews who have settled here over four decades, often at their government’s urging.
Many could be incorporated into Israel through a border adjustment; others say they would move if compensated. But some, like these outpost settlers, say they will never move because they believe they are fulfilling God’s plan with every hut they put up. They are likely to be a major stumbling block to any attempt to find a two-state solution.
At the Neria outpost celebration, Noam Rein, a father of 10, looked out across the hills at Ramallah and called its presence “temporary.”
He added: “The Torah says the land of Israel is for the Jewish people. This is just the beginning. We will build 1,000 homes here. The Arabs cannot stay here, not because we hate them, but because this is not their place.”
Among the religious leaders who spoke at the ceremony, Rabbi Yair Remer of Harasha, a nearby outpost, noted that Thursday was the Ninth of Av, a Jewish day of mourning commemorating the destruction of the ancient temples. He suggested that the best way to cope with the tragedy of Jewish history was to do what the young builders of this outpost were doing.
“The land rejoices because its children are returning to her,” he said, referring to Jewish settlers, making no mention of the 2.5 million Palestinians here.
Tirael, the teenager from Ramat Migron, put it another way: “I believe that every inch of this land is us, our blood. If we lose one inch, it is like losing a person.”
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Is President Obama the "Enemy" of Israel?
Dear Friend,
Wise words to Israelis from the Jewish perspective (albeit, the more "liberal" Ha'aretz newspaper),
With thanks to our correspondent on the ground, Doug Dicks, Your servant, JRK
Painting Obama as an enemy will hurt Israel badly
by Zvi Bar'el
Ha'eretz -- Sunday - July 26, 2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1102815.html
In light of the public brawling between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, we can expect to start seeing graffiti saying things like "America, get out," "Obama is an Arab" and "Neither a broker nor honest."
In the new Israeli debate, America is slowly beginning to be perceived as an enemy - and the dispute is going personal: Our prime minister versus their president. Yesterday, he simply demanded that Israel adopt the two-state solution, then called for a freeze on construction in the settlements (without agreeing to settle for "only" the completion of projects already underway), and now he wants to divide Jerusalem. Not Netanyahu - Obama.
The tension already prodded U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into making a hasty declaration that the United States is placing similar pressure on the Arabs. Washington, too, it would seem, has been infected by the terror of the Israeli right, which seeks to portray it as a pro-Arab, Muslim-loving, aggressive intruder jeopardizing the Zionist enterprise in the territories. And how can we continue to believe the American promise to guarantee Israel's security when every day new headlines trumpet yet another dispute between the White House and Jerusalem?
To back up its claims, the right points to a long list of U.S. foreign-policy failures: the desire to open a channel of dialogue with Iran; the lifting of the boycott on Syria; the willingness to permit Hamas to take part in the peace process, albeit with restrictions; and, of course, the pressure on Israel regarding the settlements and Jerusalem. The right is using this distorted balance sheet, in which Israel is purportedly being asked to give "everything" and the Arabs "nothing," to present the Israeli public with a paradigm in which being "for Obama" means being anti-Zionist, and being against the settlements means being for Obama. A vicious circle in which images replace facts and slogans stand in for policy.
The equation should be familiar to Israelis. Before January it was the sole province of the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular. They were the ones who viewed America as the enemy, and former president George W. Bush as a representative of right-wing Zionism. They were the ones who claimed the United States demanded "everything" from them and "nothing" from Israel. As such, being a Palestinian nationalist meant being first of all anti-American.
Since the roles are now reversed and the Palestinians see Obama as their savior, the Israeli right is rushing in to adopt the Palestinian equation. The right doesn't have to persuade the public to support the settlements or the eternal unity of Jerusalem; in fact it no longer has to sell any ideology at all. It's enough to paint Obama as an enemy, or at least as a suspicious object, to create the holy hostile unity. The task is a relatively easy one, especially vis-a-vis the U.S. administration, which is no longer willing to use vague expressions to achieve foreign policy goals.
But the implications of this anti-Americanism are much more dire than the dismantling of a settlement, or even than serious damage to the peace process. It could put Israel in the same pit as the tiny number of states that have sought to oppose the United States.
The remedy lies in reviewing the facts. Obama did not invent a new American policy. The United States has long held that the settlements are illegal; the same is true for the status of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The Americans are sticking to the same road map drawn up seven years ago, it's just that Israel apparently didn't notice that the Palestinians have fulfilled the first article in the document almost completely. Military action against Israel has stopped, even from the Gaza Strip, and an increasingly effective Palestinian force in the West Bank is taking action against terror organizations. Israel, in contrast, has not met its road map obligations and continues to argue over the terms of the agreement - as if it never adopted it. Nor can Israel rely on its demand that the Arab states normalize relations with Jerusalem: The obligation of normalization is conditioned on Israel's withdrawal from all occupied territory.
There is one thing, however, that the United States has changed: its diplomatic behavior, and its tone. But it is truly difficult to complain about someone no longer willing to stand for the verbal contortions and the lies that Israel has been feeding Washington.
Wise words to Israelis from the Jewish perspective (albeit, the more "liberal" Ha'aretz newspaper),
With thanks to our correspondent on the ground, Doug Dicks, Your servant, JRK
Painting Obama as an enemy will hurt Israel badly
by Zvi Bar'el
Ha'eretz -- Sunday - July 26, 2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1102815.html
In light of the public brawling between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, we can expect to start seeing graffiti saying things like "America, get out," "Obama is an Arab" and "Neither a broker nor honest."
In the new Israeli debate, America is slowly beginning to be perceived as an enemy - and the dispute is going personal: Our prime minister versus their president. Yesterday, he simply demanded that Israel adopt the two-state solution, then called for a freeze on construction in the settlements (without agreeing to settle for "only" the completion of projects already underway), and now he wants to divide Jerusalem. Not Netanyahu - Obama.
The tension already prodded U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into making a hasty declaration that the United States is placing similar pressure on the Arabs. Washington, too, it would seem, has been infected by the terror of the Israeli right, which seeks to portray it as a pro-Arab, Muslim-loving, aggressive intruder jeopardizing the Zionist enterprise in the territories. And how can we continue to believe the American promise to guarantee Israel's security when every day new headlines trumpet yet another dispute between the White House and Jerusalem?
To back up its claims, the right points to a long list of U.S. foreign-policy failures: the desire to open a channel of dialogue with Iran; the lifting of the boycott on Syria; the willingness to permit Hamas to take part in the peace process, albeit with restrictions; and, of course, the pressure on Israel regarding the settlements and Jerusalem. The right is using this distorted balance sheet, in which Israel is purportedly being asked to give "everything" and the Arabs "nothing," to present the Israeli public with a paradigm in which being "for Obama" means being anti-Zionist, and being against the settlements means being for Obama. A vicious circle in which images replace facts and slogans stand in for policy.
The equation should be familiar to Israelis. Before January it was the sole province of the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular. They were the ones who viewed America as the enemy, and former president George W. Bush as a representative of right-wing Zionism. They were the ones who claimed the United States demanded "everything" from them and "nothing" from Israel. As such, being a Palestinian nationalist meant being first of all anti-American.
Since the roles are now reversed and the Palestinians see Obama as their savior, the Israeli right is rushing in to adopt the Palestinian equation. The right doesn't have to persuade the public to support the settlements or the eternal unity of Jerusalem; in fact it no longer has to sell any ideology at all. It's enough to paint Obama as an enemy, or at least as a suspicious object, to create the holy hostile unity. The task is a relatively easy one, especially vis-a-vis the U.S. administration, which is no longer willing to use vague expressions to achieve foreign policy goals.
But the implications of this anti-Americanism are much more dire than the dismantling of a settlement, or even than serious damage to the peace process. It could put Israel in the same pit as the tiny number of states that have sought to oppose the United States.
The remedy lies in reviewing the facts. Obama did not invent a new American policy. The United States has long held that the settlements are illegal; the same is true for the status of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The Americans are sticking to the same road map drawn up seven years ago, it's just that Israel apparently didn't notice that the Palestinians have fulfilled the first article in the document almost completely. Military action against Israel has stopped, even from the Gaza Strip, and an increasingly effective Palestinian force in the West Bank is taking action against terror organizations. Israel, in contrast, has not met its road map obligations and continues to argue over the terms of the agreement - as if it never adopted it. Nor can Israel rely on its demand that the Arab states normalize relations with Jerusalem: The obligation of normalization is conditioned on Israel's withdrawal from all occupied territory.
There is one thing, however, that the United States has changed: its diplomatic behavior, and its tone. But it is truly difficult to complain about someone no longer willing to stand for the verbal contortions and the lies that Israel has been feeding Washington.
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