israelity bites

IDF Snipers - how they cope with intimate kills

2012-01-26T06:19:00.002+02:00

A recent study about snipers in Israel has shown that snipers are much less likely than other soldiers to dehumanise their enemy, the BBC's Stephanie Hegarty reports.

Part of the reason for this may be that snipers can see their targets with great clarity and sometimes must observe them for hours or even days.
"It's killing that is very distant but also very personal," says anthropologist Neta Bar. "I would even say intimate."

She studied attitudes to killing among 30 Israeli snipers who served in the Palestinian territories from 2000 to 2003, to examine whether killing is unnatural or traumatic for human beings.
She chose snipers in particular because, unlike pilots or tank drivers who shoot at big targets like buildings, the sniper picks off individual people.
What she found was that while many Israeli soldiers would refer to Palestinian militants as "terrorists", snipers generally referred to them as human beings.

There were about 20 gunmen escorting a convoy and one of them was unlucky enough to get in the sight of my scope. The distance was about 300m, almost nothing for a sniper.
A few seconds later I saw him lying motionless.
In the heat of the moment my only thought was to shoot more and more. I saw the figures rushing in panic and trying to hide.

We killed all of them, except three or four who were wounded and captured. Afterwards I blamed myself for not being cool-headed enough. I thought that if I had been calmer, I would have killed more enemies.

"The Hebrew word for human being is Son of Adam and this was the word they used by far more than any other when they talked about the people that they killed," she says.
Snipers almost never referred to the men they killed as targets, or used animal or machine metaphors. Some interviewees even said that their victims were legitimate warriors.

"Here is someone whose friends love him and I am sure he is a good person because he does this out of ideology," said one sniper who watched through his scope as a family mourned the man he had just shot. "But we from our side have prevented the killing of innocents, so we are not sorry about it."

This justification - which was supported by friends, family and wider Israeli society -
could be one reason why the snipers didn't report any trauma after killing, she suggests.

"Being prepared for all those things that might crack their conviction, actually enabled them to kill without suffering too much."

She also noted that the snipers she studied were rational and intelligent young men.
In most military forces, snipers are subject to rigorous testing and training and are chosen for aptitude. In the UK, they complete a three-month training course, with a pass rate of only one-in-four.

False Flags, Fast Friends, Bang & Boom

2012-01-13T21:37:00.000+02:00

Holy Moly. Foreign Policy magazine's Mark Perry has ruffled feathers with its exclusive investigation into Mossad/ Jundallah links and a spate of killings targeting nuke scientists inside Iran, based on some Bush-era CIA memos and follow-up reporting. Some excerpts:

the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidentalcontact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same wasnot true for Israel's Mossad. The memos alsodetail CIA field reports saying that Israel's recruiting activities occurred underthe nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital ofone of Israel's ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIAoperatives met with Jundallah officials.Theofficials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallahis ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad'sefforts..."Thereport sparked White House concerns that Israel's program was putting Americansat risk," the intelligence officer told me. "There's no question that the U.S.has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against theIranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're not inthe business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians."Israel'srelationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until theday it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel's activities jeopardizedthe administration's fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was coming underintense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also undermined U.S. claimsthat it would never fight terror with terror, and invited attacks in kind onU.S. personnel."

Israeli Dancers Defy Ultra-Orthodox Public Orders

2012-01-09T22:04:00.001+02:00

Check out this flash-mob of Israeli women who converged on the town square at Beit Shamesh last Friday to stage a protest dance and counter ultra-orthodox attempts to segregate this town by gender and ban women from singing and dancing in public. Hat tip to Peace Now for the link and kudos to Renana Levine, the producer of this video, which seems to have gone viral. And, of course, to all the unladylike ladies who gathered in the "House of the Rising Sun" to press their point of view.

Skit about how kids might prepare for life in Israel

2011-12-21T08:37:00.000+02:00

Shyne-ing Star: Moshe Levi Raps Ultra

2011-12-15T07:32:00.000+02:00

From Mexico City, the world's formost Orthodox rapper moved to Jerusalem in 2010, correspondent Karl Vick blogs in Time.com. For an ultra-orthodox Jew he seems, well, unorthodox. Read on:

Moshe Levi both fits in and doesn’t. Race is only part of it. Israeli Jews come in all shades, from the Falash of Ethiopia to the pinkest German Ashkenazi. When it comes to religious observance, however, skin color generally signals less than attire. The round felt hat, formal suit and high white stockings Levi sports is the uniform of the Ultra-Orthodox, Jews who dress in the clothes of 18th century Eastern Europe for a reason: They take great efforts to form communities removed from a modern world riven with degradations like television, the internet and, yes, rap music. As a group, they are also the poorest Jews in Israel, families often subsisting on welfare while the husband spends the day studying scripture.
That’s not Levi, who doesn’t actually read Hebrew. “I’m more of a doer than a reader,” he says.
Nor does he follow a particular rabbi, another Ultra-Orthodox norm. “I definitely try not to get into the whole gang affiliation thing,” Levi says. If on some days he wears a striped suit, other times flat black, it’s because he admires the traditions. He also jets up to Paris for Fashion Week.
“I don’t really have time to figure out their thing. I have my thing.”
His thing is not Zionism, the ideology that brought Israel into existence as a state. “Absolutely not,” Levi says. “I just said I’m absolutely not into sects or gangs. I love all human beings.”
His thing is music. As Shyne, he has completed two unreleased albums, Gangland and Messiah. Both are rap, but “totally philosophical and sophisticated,” he says. “No misogyny. None of that deranged stuff I used to be into” a decade or so ago, as a protégé of Sean “P. Diddy” Combs at Bad Boy Entertainment. He was with Combs and his girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Lopez, when the ruckus broke out in the Club New York. Combs and his bodyguard were also tried but acquitted.
“I don’t even want to be a rapper,” Levi says at one point in the interview. “I don’t listen to that music. I’m a musician. I’d rather be like Bob Marley or Leonard Cohen, one of those guys.”

Israeli democracy 'shackling freedoms' says FT

2011-12-14T21:23:00.000+02:00

“In recent weeks, the country has been consumed by an anguished debate over a series of new laws and proposals that many fear are designed to stifle dissent, weaken minority rights, restrict freedom of speech and emasculate the judiciary. They include a law that in effect allows Israeli communities to exclude Arab families; another that imposes penalties on Israelis advocating a boycott of products made in West Bank Jewish settlements; and proposals that would subject the supreme court to greater political oversight.”

so writes Tobias Buck, Jerusalem correspondent for the Financial Times. He adds that, despite the coarsening of domestic political discourse that has unleashed fury and dismay inside the Jewish state,
"the chances of Israel turning into a dictatorship are about as high as those of Saudi Arabia turning into a liberal democracy."

Faint praise, indeed. When rightwing Israeli extremists attack the IDF troops who are pledged to protect them in the West Bank, as happened yesterday, the mind boggles at their warped vigilante notion of "price tag." The entire country pays the coast of their shortsighted actions.

Israelity bites.

Core Issue: When did the Dead Sea Die?

2011-12-06T10:57:00.001+02:00

Geo-scientists are drilling for knowledge and located a pebble beach hundreds of meters beneath the Dead Sea. The BBC reports on its significance from a conference on the West Coast of America:

The Dead Sea is an extraordinary place. The surface of the inland waterway sits at the lowest land point on the planet, more than 400m below sea level...Lake dry-down happened 120,000 years ago without any human intervention.

Israel apologizes for treatment of NYT photographer- one month late!

2011-11-29T02:38:00.004+02:00

Israel's Defense Ministry apologized Monday for the treatment of a pregnant American news photographer who was repeatedly strip searched and humiliated by Israeli soldiers during a security check, the Associated Press reports.

Lynsey Addario, who was on assignment for the New York Times, had requested that she not be forced to go through an X-ray machine as she entered Israel from the Gaza Strip because of concerns for her unborn baby.
Instead, she wrote in a letter to the ministry, she was forced through the machine three times as soldiers "watched and laughed from above." She said she was then taken into a room where she was ordered by a female worker to strip down to her underwear.
In the Oct. 25 letter sent by the newspaper said Addario, a Pulitzer Prize winner who is based in India and has worked in more than 60 countries, had never been treated with "such blatant cruelty."
The ministry said an investigation found that the search followed procedures but noted that Addario's request to avoid the X-ray machine had not been properly relayed.
Addario said she made the request not to go through the X-ray machine before arriving at the crossing.
"We would like to apologize for this particular mishap in coordination and any trouble it may subsequently have caused to those involved," the statement said.
It said that security is tight on the border with Gaza "in order to prevent terror from targeting and reaching Israel's citizens."
The defense ministry has "decided to hone the procedure for foreign journalists," it said.
The New York Times bureau chief in Israel, Ethan Bronner, welcomed the planned changes but said the newspaper remains shocked at the treatment Addario received and how long the investigation took.
Foreign journalists working in Israel have repeatedly complained of overly intrusive security checks by of Israeli authorities. Israel says the inspections are necessary measures.
In March, Addario was among four reporters captured in Libya by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and held for six days. Another of the four, reporter Anthony Shadid, related later that they were bound with wire, blindfolded, hit with fists and rifle butts and threatened with death. Addario also was groped, he said.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Crossposted on Feral Beast Tweet

Female Voices and Perceived Vices in the IDF

2011-11-21T21:13:00.001+02:00

Shmuel Rosner, political editor for The Jewish Journal, sounds off in the New York Times about orthodoxy and women in the Israeli Defense Forces. (The private pictured below is evidently off duty.)

On Sept. 5th, nine military cadets of the Israel Defense Force officer training school, all Orthodox Jews, walked out of an official event marking operation Cast Lead. [Israel's three-week sustained assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-9.] A group of soldier-singers had taken the stage, but when a woman started her solo, nine cadets stormed out. Four of them refused to come back to the hall, despite being warned that they were breaching an order, and two days later were expelled from the school. Their objection? That Orthodox Judaism forbids a man from hearing a woman sing. These soldiers adhere to the strict interpretation of the expression “Kol B’Isha Erva.” This might translate as, “the voice of a woman is like nakedness.” Or as, “the voice of a woman is like her vagina.”

The rabbinical debate over the meaning of this Talmudic expression is old and complex, and the variations in its interpretation are many. For some Orthodox Jews, though, it is a clear command: thou shalt not hear a woman sing.
What’s less clear is how far the Israeli military should go to help them obey it. Israel’s draft is mandatory. Every 18-year-old boy and girl is obliged to serve (barring exceptions too complicated to explain here). Eager to make military service possible for both the religious and the secular, the Israeli military has tried to accommodate the sometimes quirky demands of Jewish religiosity. It adheres to all Jewish dietary laws of kashrut. Commanders have to make time for observant soldiers to pray. And the Jewish Shabbat is a day of rest: security-related operations continue but all military exercises and maneuvers come to a halt.
These measures seemed sufficient for a while, but three recent trends are now calling the system into question.

The first is a shift among the Orthodox. Orthodox Israelis have traditionally been divided into two main groups: the so-called ultra-Orthodox, who are more pious and want little to do with Zionism or the state, and the Orthodox-Zionists, zealot Zionists who try to balance religion and modern life by mixing with the general public while still adhering to religious rules. But in recent years, the religious Zionists have become less amenable to compromising for the sake of keeping the peace with secular society. They have become much more like the ultra-Orthodox, except that they retain their Zionist zeal.
The military, meanwhile, has grown more dependent on religious soldiers. According to one report, the number of observant infantry officers has risen from 2.5 percent in 1990 to more than 31 percent in 2007. The figure is probably even higher today. According to another report, the percentage of graduates from religious schools who serve as majors in combat units has risen from 6.9 percent to 20 percent between 1994 and 2009. For both political and religious reasons, the Orthodox-Zionists are more motivated to serve on the frontlines than any other group. The military needs them, and so it needs them to feel wanted, accommodated and appreciated.
Then add to that the uncompromising (and, of course, justified) demand of women to be treated equally. Since 1995, after Israel’s Supreme Court found that the 23-year-old officer Alice Miller should be allowed to take entry tests to join the air force flight-training course, women’s participation in all branches of the Israeli military has increased.
Hence “the problem” of shirat nashim: of orthodox men being forced to endure the singing of women. And it’s a problem that many reporters and opinion writers here have been quick to describe by way of a villain. Some have denounced as uncompromising the Orthodox men who squirm at a woman’s singing — or, for that matter, at the idea of serving with one in a crowded tank. Some have denounced the liberals for putting the right to sing over the strength of the military. Some have denounced the rigid rabbis for failing to accommodate the rest of society. Some have denounced the military for not putting the Orthodox soldiers in their place. Some have denounced the ever-denounceable politicians for letting the Orthodox gain too much power in Israeli life overall.
The truth, though, is that there is no simple way to balance these competing rights. Religious soldiers can’t be made to violate their faith. The military can’t be made to alienate its most motivated group of soldiers. And I can’t educate my daughter to serve in a military that would excise women from the public sphere to accommodate the radical demands of the super pious.
And so for now, the only compromise that seems possible is one that would require abandoning a principle all Israelis grew up to appreciate: the value of togetherness.

How about old fashioned ear plugs or noise-canceling Bose ear phones?

Political Implications of Palestinians in UNESCO

2011-11-02T19:35:00.000+02:00

On Monday, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) voted overwhelmingly to admit the Palestinian Authority as a full member -- an accession typically reserved for independent sovereign nations.

Both the United States and Israel had strongly opposed the measure, which was tied to the PA's overall strategy of seeking statehood unilaterally at the UN Security Council. UNESCO's admission of the PA at this stage, the US State Department said, was both premature and counterproductive to a permanent resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The US, which donates more than a fifth of UNESCO's annual budget, has already announced that it will cut $60 million of aid this month as a penalty. Israel, meanwhile, has announced that its response to the accession will be to fast-track the construction of 2,000 new residences in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Today, The Henry Jackson Society releases a strategic briefing, "Political Implications of the Palestinian Accession to UNESCO," co-written byMichael Weiss and Houriya Ahmed, assessing the background to this historic vote, what it means for the future of the cultural agency, the pursuit of American interests abroad and why, exactly, Israel is wary of PA membership.

Here's a summary of the report:

A diplomatic victory for the Palestinian Authority

- Admission into UNESCO is a public relations victory for the PA and a deliberate tactic of isolating countries opposed to its statehood bid at the UN Security Council-namely, the US and Israel.

- The move is part of the PA's campaign to join independent UN agencies as full members in order to create a moral and political momentum for its statehood recognition. As such, the popular support received for membership in UNESCO will make it harder for countries to oppose the statehood bid.

- As a UNESCO member, the PA can-and has indicated that it will-apply for World Heritage classification for historic sites of cultural significance in the Occupied Territories. This would include landmarks which Israel has officially declared part of its national heritage, and which could complicate future final status negotiations.

Implications for Israel

- Israel's response to UNESCO membership was negative. Israel views the PA's statehood gambit as a violation of mutually agreed upon parameters for peace negotiations and is considering "cutting all ties" and taking punitive measures against the PA, and is re-considering its ties with UNESCO.

- Israel no doubt fears that UNESCO's ability to categorise World Heritage sites will be exploited by the PA to claim ownership over contested religious and cultural landmarks in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Implications for the United States

- The US rejected the UNESCO bid and has stated that the move "undermines" international efforts in trying to achieve peace in the Middle East. The US State Department announced that it would withhold $60 million in financial support due to be given to UNESCO this month-nearly a fifth of its yearly budget.

- Despite financial cuts, the US has emphasised that its membership is not in question. UNESCO is valuable for American business and national security interests in developing countries.

Implications for UNESCO

- Unless the shortfall is made up by other donors, the closure of UNESCO operations around the world may be likely because of cuts in US aid.

- With its strong commitment to freedom of expression and information, UNESCO may come under renewed criticism for its inclusion of the PA, which has a history of curbing journalistic freedoms in the West Bank and Gaza. If UNESCO fails to hold the PA to the same ethical standards as other members, the agency could be accused of double standards.

Hat tip to the Henry Jackson Society for this guest post.

Female Soldier Jailed for Leaking IDF Assassination Policy

2011-11-01T22:24:00.000+02:00

Israel is punishing its kosher version of Bradley Manning, the fomer IDF conscript and online reporter Anat Kam, who was just sentenced to four and a half years behind bars, despite her lengthy secret house arrest. But the journalist who reported on her leaked documents about the IDF's hit list, Uri Blau of Haaretz, is presently holed up in Britain --in an odd echo of Wikileaks' Julian Assange. Blau's not as defiant, though. In a plea bargain, he has returned all confidential documents to the Israelis.

So, what is the price of speaking truth to power inside Israel? The Independent of London's Catrina Stewart reports on this crime, its punishment, and the Israeli gag order:

Israel has sentenced a former soldier to four and a half years in prison for leaking classified documents to a journalist who used them to expose an alleged army policy to assassinate wanted Palestinian militants in violation of court rulings.

Anat Kam, 24, was convicted in February for copying 2,085 military documents on to a disc as she completed her mandatory army service and passing some of them to Uri Blau, an investigative reporter with the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.
She escaped the much more serious charges of harming state security after reaching a plea bargain.
Her case provoked a domestic uproar - in part because she was held for four months under secret house arrest with the Israeli media banned from reporting on it, but also because it was viewed as an assault on the freedom of the press. The Independent was the first newspaper to report on Ms Kam's arrest.
In passing sentence yesterday, the three-judge panel elected to send a clear message to other would-be whistleblowers. "If the army cannot trust the soldiers serving in various units and exposed to sensitive issues, then it cannot function as a regular army," the judges wrote. They said that Ms Kam's motive for taking the documents was "mainly ideological". Ms Kam has already served nearly two years of house arrest, which will not count towards her prison term, and she received a further 18-month suspended sentence.

As a clerk in the Israeli Defence Forces' central command, Ms Kam stumbled across documents that appeared to point to the premeditated killing of Palestinian militants in the West Bank, despite a Supreme Court ruling that severely restricted such operations, determining that the army should arrest suspects if possible.

The photo of Anat Kam comes courtesy of SabbahReport, where reporter Gila Svirsky has probed into the scandal of the Shin Bet hit list, the gagging of the gag order, and the perils of whistle blowing.

Crossposted on Feral Beast

Sergeant Shalit is Home

2011-10-19T01:50:00.001+02:00

One concerned neighbour in Mitzpe Hila commented that Gilad Shalit, newly-released from five years in captivity in Gaza after Bibi Netanyahu agreed to swap 1027 Palestinian prisoners for him, now resembles a concentration camp victim. But though startlingly scrawny and pale, the IDF tank crewman is out at last and the nation is caught up with tears and fears and euphoria. Shalit's father told the press: "He came out of some dark pit or dark cellar and encountered such commotion out here." Presumably his Arabic language skills had improved, too. An interview with Egyptian anchorwoman Shahira Amin appeared to be opportunistic propaganda that left the confused former prisoner gasping for breath. In response to a prod about the remaining 5500 Palestinian prisoners who were not included in the trade, Shalit said he would be happy to see them released, as long as they no longer attack Israel.

The first Israeli soldier taken captive and returned alive in 26 years has made headlines worldwide. Lawrence Wright blogged on the New Yorker webpage:

In the five years since the abduction, there has been another exchange going on, not of the living but of the dead. Four hundred Gazans were killed by Israeli forces in the first few months after he was taken. Six Israeli soldiers and four civilians also died during that period. The exchange of one living Israeli for a thousand and twenty-seven living Palestinians is certainly a comment on the disparity of the value of life in each society. As long as Shalit was being held, the exchange of the dead would also continue at the same disproportionate rate. It certainly made sense for Hamas to make the deal. Whether it makes sense for Israel will not be known for decades. If the trade opens up an avenue for real peace negotiations, one that would include Hamas, then it will be a deal worth making for both sides.

But if Netanyahu reneges on his promise to free all the named Palestinians [477 were released today], there may be hell to pay. Using IDF soldiers as currency has little to recommend it as a strategy, and this seems to be a politician's gambit.

(Getty images published this shot of Shalit's interview in Egypt.)

A Thousand Prisoners for One Israeli Soldier

2011-10-13T08:16:00.002+02:00

On Sunday, June 26, 2006, at 5:40 in the morning, several Hamas militants tunneled beneath the Kerem Shalom border crossing and killed two IDF soldiers by launching a rocket grenade at their tank, then captured the young corporal Gilad Shalit and took him back inside the Gaza Strip. (In captivity, he was promoted to Sergeant.) Because Shalit holds French as well as Israeli citizenship, there has been considerable European input into the extended negotiations over his freedom. Now, post-Arab Spring, Shalit's release looks closer than ever, but cynics warn that it is not quite a done deal yet.

Reuters reported today about the reaction inside Israel to the proposed swap of more than 1000 Palestinian prisoners for the single now-famous Israeli conscript:

Tens of thousands of Israelis have visited social media websites, which were in their infancy when tank crewman Shalit was grabbed, to push their government not to make a deal with Hamas, a group sworn to Israel's destruction. It appeared an exchange would not get under way before early next week. Under Israeli law the Palestinian prisoners' names must be published 48 hours ahead of their release to allow legal appeals against granting them liberty. Israel's Justice Ministry said it intended to publish the list no later than Sunday.
Hamas and its supporters in the Gaza Strip have threatened to seize more Israeli soldiers until all 6,000 Palestinian prisoners are freed from Israeli jails.
The deal resolves one of the most emotive and intractable issues between Israel and the Palestinians, but has no obvious direct effect on peace negotiations which have been stalled for the past year, apart from potentially improving the climate for a resumption as urged by Washington and its allies.
The breakthrough pact was achieved after many false dawns in years of secret efforts to free Shalit, who was captured a year after Israeli forces withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Israel tightened its Gaza blockade after he was seized and again after Hamas took over the enclave from a rival movement in 2007.
Yoram Cohen, chief of Israel's Shin Bet internal security service, said he believed Hamas opted for a deal now because it hoped to strengthen its ties with Egypt at a time of unrest and uncertainty in Syria, where the group has its headquarters.

No one expects Ofer Prison in the West Bank and the Megiddo and Ketziot prisons in Israel to suddenly empty out. In fact, compared to California, where 30,000 inmates will get out of jail early because of overcrowding, it's a trifling number. But plenty of people on both sides are doubting that the release for prisoner exchange is a win-win situation.

Hello Yom!

2011-10-03T08:41:00.001+02:00

"Hi. This is Sarah Palin. Is Senator Lieberman in ?"

"No, Governor. It's Yom Kippur!"

"Well, Hello, Yom. Can I leave a message?"

Sigh.

Hat tip to Ms Isaacson for this topical post.

Secret Sale of Bunker-buster Bombs Revealed

2011-09-23T20:13:00.001+03:00

Timing is everything in politics and in war. What do you make of this? The news of the sale of 1000 US mini-bunker busters to Israel was broken by Tim Butcher of London's Daily Telegraph three years ago. Today, as Abbas makes his case for statehood at the United Nations, the story reemerges on the net. (Perhaps it got lost in the blizzard of American presidential election coverage at the time.)
While publicly pressuring Israel to make deeper concessions to the Palestinians, President Obama has secretly authorized significant new aid to the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs known as bunker busters, according to the Daily Beast.

U.S. and Israeli officials tell Newsweek that the GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators—potentially useful in any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites—were delivered to Israel in 2009, just several months after Obama took office.
The military sale was arranged behind the scenes as Obama’s demands for Israel to stop building settlements in disputed territories were fraying political relations between the two countries in public.

The Israelis first requested the bunker busters in 2005, only to be rebuffed by the Bush administration. At the time, the Pentagon had frozen almost all U.S.-Israeli joint defense projects out of concern that Israel was transferring advanced military technology to China.

1000 Nudes Float on the Dead Sea for Photo

2011-09-18T21:08:00.002+03:00

Out of the multitude of volunteers for Jewish-American photographer Spencer Tunick's latest art project, only one in three were deemed suitable for posing in the buff on the Dead Sea. During the Sabbath, 1000 unpaid models ranging in age from 20 to sixty-plus, mostly secular Israelis, assembled pre-dawn at Mineral Beach for the epic photo shoot in the salty brine, despite objections from some Orthodox leaders. The artist claims that his stunt demonstrates that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country with enough freedom to allow for such avant garde expression. Apparently, Spencer keeps his tunic on while in the air snapping his subjects, who risk having salt rubbed into any open wound on their bodies. They smiled anyway. The nudes posed in three different ways: in the sea, onshore and covered in Dead Sea mud. According to Ynet News:

Spencer Tunick, 44, currently is one of the leading conceptual artists in the world. Since 1994, he has photographed tens of thousands of people in nude photos shoots in 75 different public sites across the world, receiving extensive media coverage. But according to Dov Litvinoff, a local councilman..." The Dead Sea may be the lowest place on earth, but Tunick's intentions may take it to an even lower level."

Many, many moons are shown in the final photos. (The outtake shown above is from Life Magazine's webpage; click here for a full gallery courtesy of Associated Press). Some enthusiasts hope this mass posing will focus world attention on the Dead Sea, which is in the running to be included in New 7Wonders of Nature, an international online competition for tourism. Tunick wants to highlight the rate at which the water is evaporating from this famous lake-sized sea near Sodom and Gomorrah.

Rachel shops for a home in Judea

2011-09-08T20:12:00.004+03:00

Rachel Shabi, a British-Israeli and daughter of Iraqi Jews, disclosed to the Guardian how easy it is for ordinary secular Israelis to become settlers in a "national priority zone". And her undercover revelations about shopping for a new house in one of the 200 developments for Israelis in occupied territory were shortlisted for the prestigious Orwell Prize for political writing. As her friends quip: not too shabby! Here are some excerpts:

The incentives still offered to Israelis to live on Palestinian land are so considerable that, leaving politics aside, it would be silly not to take advantage of them...Almon offers enticingly priced, spacious family homes with a garden and a view. The surrounding neighbourhood, also known as Anatot, sits on a ridge overlooking the Judean hills, near Jerusalem, a blaze of cultivated greenery in the parched landscape. Residents have a relaxed air, and newcomers who have recently relocated from Jerusalem wish they'd made the move years ago...It's a short drive east of Jerusalem, and I've had to cross an Israeli checkpoint, but it's specifically for settler use – a nod, the "right" appearance and Israeli number plates get me waved through...
The separation barrier that cuts into the West Bank for around 80% of its path. The barrier route runs, in some places, up to 12 miles deep into the West Bank, but settlements on the Israeli side of it are, broadly speaking, "consensus settlements" – ones that Israelis assume will be conceded to the Jewish state in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Zionist Construction Zone: Settlements in West Bank Sextuple in 2011

2011-09-02T02:06:00.008+03:00

Construction Freeze? Not any more. In the aftermath of learning that the IDF is training and arming settlers, here's the latest. Construction in Judea and Samaria Rises a Whopping 660%! And the light railway is up and running and connecting them to Israel proper. Nearly 75,000 new homes are under construction in all of Israel right now, according to an Israeli government agency. Hat tip to Angela for the link and to reporter David Lev.

With the end of the building freeze, construction has started up in Judea and Samaria (Yesha) communities. In fact, said the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), building jumped 660% in Judea and Samaria during the first half of 2011, as compared to the previous year.

While the statistic was certainly breathtaking, the actual numbers on the ground were less impressive: Construction started on 546 new homes in Yesha communities during the period. Still, it was a sharp improvement over the number of housing starts in the first half of 2010, when only 72 housing starts were announced.

Officials of the Yesha Council said they were pleased with the increase, but that clearly many more new homes were needed. "We need at least 500 new homes a month, not just in half a year, in order to accomodate all the families who want to live in Yesha." Last week, Arutz Sheva reported on how dozens of American families who sought to buy or rent homes in Efrat were unable to do so because of the lack of housing there.

The jump in Yesha construction this year was part of a general trend in all of Israel. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, housing starts rose 14.4% overall during the first half of 2011. But certain parts of the country are set to grow far more than that number implies; for example, there are now 7,950 homes under construction in southern Israel, a 55% increase over the 2,495 home starts in the first half of 2010.

In Asheklon alone, 1,576 new homes are currently under construction – the highest number for any city in Israel. Other cities where building jumped in the first half of 2011 included Kiryat Gat (a 607% increase in housing construction starts), Ramle (252%), Ganei Tikvah (451%), Rehovot (203%), and Yavne (165%).

Even in the already ultra-expensive Tel Aviv and Jerusalem regions, construction was up 28% and 8% respectively. In the north, housing construction starts were up 11.2% during the period.

Altogether, construction began on some 22,000 new homes. The CBS said that by the end of 2011, taking into consideration construction that was started in 2010, there will be some 75,000 new apartments under construction. Those apartments are expected to come “on-line” between the end of 2012 and during 2013, helping to satisfy the high demand for housing, hopefully at more reasonable prices.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Housing Minister Ariel Attias both expressed great satisfaction at the CBS announcement.

“The increasing trend in housing starts reflects the increased successful activity by the government, which we began undertaking as soon as we took power,” Netanyahu said. “The steps we took in the real estate market, including the institution of the Housing Committees Law and the reforms we recently instituted in the Israel Lands Administration, have contributed, and will continue to contribute, to the increased availability of housing – and, as a result, a lowering of prices.”

Beck and Call - is this radio shock jock friend or foe to Israel?

2011-08-23T22:05:00.012+03:00

As Glenn Back prepares to lead his so-called "Restoring Courage" rally near Dung Gate, an appropriately named Old City venue,the US consulate cautioned its diplomats from being near the area, for their own safety:

On Wednesday, August 24, 2011, there will be a rally held near the southeast corner of the Old City. The areas between Dung Gate and Lions Gate are off-limits to official U.S. Government personnel from 4:00pm until 10:00pm on that day due to recent clashes in that area.

Hmmm. Whose courage does the tear-prone radio shock jock wish to restore? So far, the reception for Beck, who at Caesaria pointedly criticized Jews for their "2000 year old flinch" from an embrace with Christians, has been decidedly ambivalent. Some Israeli critics shrug him off as a neo-fascist comedian, and the public have far more time for actor Jon Voight, who went to Beersheba hospital to hug rocket victims in front of the cameras. (He is Angelina Jolie's daddy, after all.)

Rachel Tabachnick, a researcher documenting Christian Zionism and Millennial Jews, sounds off in Haaretz about his message:

Beck headlined this year's conference of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), founded by televangelist John Hagee. Hagee had appeared several times on Beck's show, including one where they speculated the earth as we know it would end within 20 years.

Beck's embrace by Israeli leaders is further indication to Americans that support for Israel is becoming linked to an extreme political agenda in the United States. This threatens to alienate Jews and Christians, Democrats and Republicans.

Ironically, this alienation of Israel is seen by Christian Zionists as fulfilling end-times prophecy, which, they claim, requires a second Jewish holocaust before Jesus returns. Surviving Jews must accept Jesus before a 1000-year Christian utopia, ruled from Jerusalem, can begin.

Beck's cultivation of Israeli leaders follows, step by step, the instructions Christian Zionists have used to gain access to Jewish communities and leaders. One of the most popular of these manuals is the 2001 book, "Your People Shall Be My People," by Don Finto. Finto's network of evangelists is encouraging churches around the world to "bless Israel" by supporting Messianic Jewish ministries and proselytizing Jews. His book has been promoted internationally, including by directors of Hagee's CUFI.

Finto's book provides instructions to: 1 ) avoid overt proselytizing, 2 ) vocally repent of the Holocaust, 3 ) tell Jews that Christian Zionist support is modeled after the biblical story of Ruth with no strings attached, and 4 ) emphasize that Christian Zionists are Israel's only friends in an increasingly hostile world.

Simultaneously these evangelists help to foment hostility toward Jews by teaching a narrative in which Jews hold power over the future of Gentiles.

Beck contemplated switching the location of the event away from the base of the Temple Mount because he feared “40,000 Muslims” were going to gatecrash. It's to be held down in Davidson Center, for increased security. Speaker John Boehner urged US House members not to attend the event (to avoid the appearance of joining a political event while on a policy-related trip to Israel). Consequently, both Rep. Eric Cantor and Sen. Joe Lieberman cancelled their RSVPs. And in the post-earthquake anxiety in Washington DC and elsewhere, the atmosphere is increasingly apocalyptic.

Unsettling Statistics for Israeli Economy

2011-08-16T20:06:00.005+03:00

Peace Now, the grassroots organization, has long maintained that settlements and the occupation are both a moral and economic blight on Israel. Here are the statistics to prove it, from a business study by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development) :

"The inclusion of the settlements and east Jerusalem adds about 4% to Israel's gross domestic product, but reduces the GDP per capita by a significant rate of 6.5% a year"

When east Jerusalem, West Bank settlements and Golan Heights are figured in with Israel's overall economic statistics, per capita income is reduced while inequality is increased. With the settlement population growing nearly one hundred percent between 1997 and 2009 (most recent population figures), this does not bode well for the future of the country and the street protestors griping about prices and opportunities. Sever Plocker analyses the stats in Ynet news. One wag says "gross domestic product" is a good caption for the photo above!

Social Justice advocates - What about the Occupation?

2011-08-10T10:05:00.006+03:00

Writes Joseph Dana in the LRB blog:

Largely shielded from the European and American financial crises, the Israeli economy has been growing at an astonishing rate over the past five years: 4.7 per cent in 2010 alone. But the wealth isn’t evenly distributed: most Israelis living inside the 1967 borders struggle to make ends meet because of the high cost of living and relatively high taxes, which are largely spent on security and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Last month, a group of Tel Aviv residents in their twenties set up camp in the centre of Rothschild Boulevard to protest against housing costs in the city. They didn’t have a serious plan for political change, but the protest tapped into nationwide discontent. Within a few days, hundreds more people had joined them. The momentum spread quickly through the country, with camps appearing everywhere from Eilat on the Red Sea to Kiryat Shmona on the Lebanese border.

On Saturday, 250,000 Israelis marched in Tel Aviv and 10,000 marched to the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, demanding ‘social justice’. Netanyahu, the main target of the demonstrators’ placards, was quick to paint the protests as a misdirected reincarnation of the ‘radical left’. But this stale tactic didn’t stop an overwhelming majority of Israelis supporting the protests. According to recent opinion polls, 87 per cent see the demands for economic reform as legitimate.

The protester’s working definition of ‘social justice’, however, is unclear and full of contradictions. Most glaringly, they have yet to address the question of the Occupied Territories. From the start, organisers maintained that their protests were a rare instance of ‘apolitical’ social organising. The Palestinian issue was understood to be too divisive to be included under the umbrella of Israel’s social justice revolution, and there’s no doubt that, had protesters connected their struggle for social justice to the occupation, many fewer Israelis would have joined the protests.

The rights of Israelis, however, are inextricably tied with the rights of Palestinians, both inside the 1967 borders and in the Occupied Territories. The protesters, like most of Israeli society, are operating under the assumption that they are disconnected from the Palestinians who live under Israeli military occupation. But the fact is that one regime rules the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and any discussion of the allocation of resources here, not to mention social justice, must take into account the rights of everyone who lives under the regime.

Despite the attempt to ignore the occupation, dozens of Jewish settlers from the West Bank descended on the protest camp in Tel Aviv last week. Carrying banners that say the solution to the housing problem lies in the West Bank, settlers have been shouting slogans against homosexuals and (non-Jewish) African refugees in Tel Aviv. At the other end of the camp, Jewish and Arab protesters have set up ‘Tent 1948’ to commemorate the dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians when Israel was created.

The protest as a whole will soon be forced to confront the question of the occupation. Last week the military announced that it will initiate a massive call up of reserves ahead of the United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood in September. Most of the protesters, young men and woman with reserve duty obligations, will have to decide whether to increase the pressure on the government by refusing to serve, or abandon their protest without having made any concrete gains. At the moment, the latter course seems more likely.

Hat tip to Angela for the link to this thought-provoking piece

Israelis Take to the Streets in Protest

2011-08-08T00:08:00.006+03:00

Sad irony, pointed out by my friend Meir: Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the "Israel is Our Home" (Yisrael Beitenu) party has so far offered no solution to Israel's housing problems. As 300,000 Israelis take to the streets to join the tent-dwellers of downtown Tel Aviv to complain that their rent is too damn high and the government too damn unresponsive, the Foreign minister suggests that citizens also visit Tel Aviv's upmarket cafes to see that the problem is not so serious! (Let them eat bureikas..or sushi, jibes one weary Jerusalemite.) Ynet news carries the cafe riposte here.

Jerusalem - a poem by James Fenton

2011-07-26T03:58:00.006+03:00

To hear the British poet James Fenton read this work in full, click this link here. Excerpted from New Selected Poems (2006)

Stone cries to stone,
Heart to heart, heart to stone,
And the interrogation will not die
For there is no eternal city
And there is no pity
And there is nothing underneath the sky
No rainbow and no guarantee –
There is no covenant between your God and me.
2
It is superb in the air.
Suffering is everywhere
And each man wears his suffering like a skin.
My history is proud.
Mine is not allowed.
This is the cistern where all wars begin,
The laughter from the armoured car.
This is the man who won’t believe you’re what you are.
3
This is your fault.
This is a crusader vault.
The Brook of Kidron flows from Mea She’arim.
I will pray for you.
I will tell you what to do.
I’ll stone you. I shall break your every limb.
Oh, I am not afraid of you,
But maybe I should fear the things you make me do.
4
This is not Golgotha.
This is the Holy Sepulchre,
The Emperor Hadrian’s temple to a love
Which he did not much share.
Golgotha could be anywhere.
Jerusalem itself is on the move.
It leaps and leaps from hill to hill
And as it makes its way it also makes its will.
5
The city was sacked.
Jordan was driven back.
The pious Christians burned the Jews alive.
This is a minaret.
I’m not finished yet.
We’re waiting for reinforcements to arrive.
What was your mother’s real name?
Would it be safe today to go to Bethlehem?
6
This is the Garden Tomb.
No, this is the Garden Tomb.
I’m an Armenian. I am a Copt.
This is Utopia.
I came here from Ethiopia.
This hole is where the flying carpet dropped
The Prophet off to pray one night
And from here one hour later he resumed his flight.
7
Who packed your bag?
I packed my bag.
Where was your uncle’s mother’s sister born?
Have you ever met an Arab?
Yes, I am a scarab.
I am a worm. I am a thing of scorn.
I cry Impure from street to street
And see my degradation in the eyes I meet.
8
I am your enemy.
This is Gethsemane.
The broken graves look to the Temple Mount.
Tell me now, tell me when
When shall we all rise again?
Shall I be first in that great body count?
When shall the tribes be gathered in?
When, tell me, when shall the Last Things begin?
9
You are in error.
This is terror.
This is your banishment. This land is mine.
This is what you earn.
This is the Law of No Return.
This is the sour dough, this the sweet wine.
This is my history, this my race
And this unhappy man threw acid in my face.
10
Stone cries to stone,
Heart to heart, heart to stone.
These are the warrior archaeologists.
This is us and that is them.
This is Jerusalem.
These are dying men with tattooed wrists.
Do this and I’ll destroy your home.
I have destroyed your home. You have destroyed my home.

[Hat tip to Mr Thursday-on a Monday! - for the link to these verses.]

Waste and Squandered Opportunity

2011-07-16T20:56:00.004+03:00

Just about everywhere in the Middle East there has been movement — stirring, remarkable, uneven — as the region breaks old chains of despotism and seeks its slice of the modern world. But Palestinians and Israelis remain stuck in their sterile and competitive narratives of victimhood, determined, it seems, to ensure past rancor defeats promise.

It’s been a year of terrible waste,

concludes Roger Cohen in the New York Times.
The waste is staggering and the looming train wreck appalling.

Meanwhile, as 4500 Arabs and leftists marched together in Jerusalem to support Palestinian statehood, Haaretz's Yossi Verter lambasts Bibi Netanyahu for his wobbly leadership. He points out how in the Knesset, settlers now appear to be setting the agenda by passing the Boycott Law, introduced by the rightwing MK Zeev Elkin.

MK Ahmed Tibi ‏(United Arab List-Ta’al‏) asked Elkin if his passion for enacting legislation of this kind had to do with his being beaten up as a kid. The immigrants, veterans and newcomers alike, sometimes carry unpleasant memories from Mother Russia or from the torment of trying to integrate in Israel.

As the left continues to crumble and be increasingly irrelevant, the parliamentary right is becoming ever more militant against the Arab public, “the professors,” the Supreme Court, creative artists, so-called intellectuals, donors from abroad and so on.

In the past Israel’s right wing was characterized by grace and decorum, as decreed by Revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and by grace and courage, as per the Betar anthem.

These days, Benjamin Netanyahu is not ashamed to take the floor and declare that if not for his support of the problematic law, it would not have come to a vote. If so, why didn’t the government sponsor it?

Israel vs Israel - a documentary

2011-07-05T22:50:00.002+03:00

Religious nationalism in the world's sole Jewish state sometimes rubs against the sensibilities of progressives, aka "self-hating Jews" by many of their critics. This documentary film examines some of the disparities and complexities of Middle Eastern democracy, free speech, and security. Hat tip to Angela for the link.

Birthright, Birth Left & Hormonal Mifgashim

2011-06-30T23:33:00.001+03:00

Some Israelis disapprove of her muckraking the Taglit after accepting a junket. Still, the romance of Birthright Israel captivated Kiera Feldman, who recounts her ten days on the 'love incubator' touring Israel's ethnocracy for free in the latest issue of The Nation. (Cue background music: Hava Nagila on the oudh.)

This unapologetically Zionist program originated with lefty Israeli politician Yossi Beilin, better known for the Oslo accords. Over the years, he has attracted deep-pocketed Jews to be godfathers of Birthright. Co-founder Charles Bronfman, the billionaire heir to the Canadian Seagram’s liquor empire, and Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino king who is the 5th richest American, stand out. Touting Israeli settlers' Ahava Dead Sea products seems to be a sub-plot.

Some excerpts from Feldman's piece:

A new era is dawning for Birthright. What began as an identity booster has become an ideology machine, pumping out not only Jewish baby-makers but defenders of Israel. Or that’s the hope.

'hormonal mifgashim,’”is the promotion— by turns winking and overt —of flings among participants, or between participants and soldiers. “No problem if there’s intimate encounters,” an Israel Outdoors employee told American staffers during training. “In fact, it’s encouraged!” Birthright boasts that alumni are 51 percent more likely to marry other Jews than nonparticipants.

The free trip is framed as a “gift” from philanthropists, Jewish federations and the State of Israel. Far-right Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is the largest individual donor, having given Birthright $100 million over the past five years. The Israeli government provided Birthright $100 million during the program’s first decade; Prime Minister Netanyahu recently announced another $100 million in government funding. Birthright’s budget for 2011 is $87 million, a number expected to reach $126 million by 2013, enough to bring 51,000 participants to Israel that year alone.

To apply for a Birthright trip, participants need just one Jewish grandparent—and to pass a screening interview. (Practicing a religion other than Judaism is an automatic disqualifier.) After their ten days on Birthright, participants may postpone their return by up to three months to travel in the region, and it is not unheard of for progressives to “birth left” in the West Bank afterward (as I did)— although Birthright policy is that anyone discovered to have a “hidden agenda” of “exploiting” the free trip “to get access to the territories” to promote “non-Israeli” causes can lose her spot. Birthrighters planning anti-occupation activism with the International Solidarity Movement have been dismissed.

“Welcome home” is a predominant message, a reference to the promise of instant Israeli citizenship for diaspora Jews under the 1950 Law of Return. (About 17,000 Birthright alumni now live in Israel, according to the Jerusalem Post.) It serves as a pointed riposte to the right of return claimed under international law by the 700,000 Palestinians expelled in 1948 upon the creation of the Jewish state, and their descendants.

My traveling companions were not monsters. Birthright’s overstimulation brings about a deadening of feeling. It’s hard to imagine the suffering of others when you’re having the time of your life. In Tours That Bind, sociologist Shaul Kelner contends that Birthright activities revolve around “fun and good feeling,” meaning “the group’s hedonism is thus one of the most effective checks against a determinedly critical politics.”

It’s pleasure as a medium for Jewish nationalism. In Birthright, dissent is for fun-suckers.

Birthright Israel's raison d'etre is the declining birthrate for secular Israeli Jews. Young Jews from the Diaspora are being invited to bump up the Jewish population figures.

Auschwitz memento thief is top Herzliya official

2011-06-29T07:27:00.003+03:00

Motti Posloszny and his wife were fined and given two-year suspended sentences for stealing items from the former Nazi death camp. Gili Cohen reports in Haaretz. Hat tip to Meir Javedanfar for the following:

"He said he made a mistake," one official said. "I don't know what would come over a man to make him steal from Auschwitz. It's completely insane."

"It's very sad - for him, for his family and for the municipality," the official added. "This is the largest department in Herzliya; it has everything. This is inconceivable."

Posloszny returned to Israel on Sunday after having spent a night in a Polish jail. He and his wife were fined and given a two-year suspended sentence; the Polish prosecutor said the fine would be used to help preserve exhibits at the camp, which now serves as a museum. Posloszny could not be reached for comment yesterday.

According to Reuters, the couple stole nine items - including spoons, knives, scissors and porcelain bottle stoppers - from a warehouse where the personal effects seized from prisoners at the former Nazi camp are stored. They were arrested at the Krakow airport with the items in their possession.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/auschwitz-memento-thief-is-top-herzliya-official-1.369942

Dead lawyer hounds Mea Shearim court?

2011-06-18T20:19:00.010+03:00

Every dog has its day, they say.

A Rabbinical court has ruled that the mean spirit of a secular lawyer who insulted judges 20 years ago was transferred into the body of a stray dog, reports Ynet news! This article caused a bit of headscratching among lawyers who haven't yet been reincarnated as canines. Ridiculous? PETA activists and their ilk don't think so and have unleashed their own flurry of protests. When the international press began drawing comparisons to Sharia courts and medieval justice to pariahs, many Israelis cringed. (The actions of Black Hats often seem barking mad to outsiders.)

A Jerusalem rabbinical court recently sentenced a wandering dog to death by stoning. The cruel sentence stemmed from the suspicion that the hound was the reincarnation of a famous secular lawyer, who insulted the court's judges 20 years ago.

Several weeks ago, according to the Behadrei Hadarim website, a large dog entered the Monetary Affairs Court near the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim. The dog scared the court's visitors and, to their surprise, refused to leave even after they attempted to drive him away.

One of the judges suddenly recalled that about 20 years ago, a famous secular lawyer who insulted the court was cursed by the panel of judges, who wished that his spirit would move on to the body of a dog (considered an impure animal by Halacha). The lawyer passed away several years ago.

Still offended, one of the judges sentenced the poor animal to death by stoning, recruiting the neighborhood's children to carry out the order. Luckily, the dog managed to escape.

The head of the court, Rabbi Avraham Dov Levin, denied that the judges had called for the dog's stoning. But one of the court's managers confirmed the report to Yedioth Ahronoth.

"It was ordered by the rabbis because of the grief he had caused the court," he said. "They didn't issue an official ruling, but ordered the children outside to throw stones at him in order to drive him away. They didn't think of it as cruelty to animals, but as an appropriate way to 'get back at' the spirit which entered the poor dog."

Jerusalem City Council Member and social activist Rachel Azaria sent an urgent letter to the attorney general, calling on him to "deal with the criminals". The Let the Animals Live organization filed a complaint with the police against Rabbi Levin.

Hat tip to Akiva Novick of Ynet News for this piece
UPDATE: The BBC now reports the court's denial of this dog death order, which achieved considerable coverage in the world press. "There is no basis for abuse of animals from the side of Jewish Halacha [law]," the rabbis said in a statement carried by Maariv news:
"A dog had entered the court and been removed". Intrestingly, there was no denial that a noisome lawyer had been cursed by the court.

Suddenly Last Supper...

2011-06-03T07:54:00.007+03:00

This famous Untitled piece by Adi Nes, recently on display at the Israel Museum, cheekily references Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper.' Here, secular Israeli soldiers eat in an IDF cafeteria, and if this turns out to be their last meal, there is no real sense of their impending deaths. (We can't quite discern the feelings of the po-faced chap dead centre.) A New York art blogger, KMK mused that Nes's image evokes 'The Silver Platter', a poem by Nathan Alterman, posted below.

Personally, I prefer the pop icon Last Supper, with Marilyn as Jesus and Clark Gable as her Judas Iscariot, which is often on display in a gallery window on King David street and reproduced on posters everywhere. In fact, there are myriad commercial permutations of this rather lame idea, ranging from Lego brick renditions to The Last Happy Meal!

The Silver Platter

by Nathan Alterman
(Translated from the Hebrew by David P. Stern)

...And the land will grow still
Crimson skies dimming, misting
Slowly paling again
Over smoking frontiers

As the nation stands up
Torn at heart but existing
To receive its first wonder
In two thousand years

As the moment draws near
It will rise, darkness facing
Stand straight in the moonlight
In terror and joy

...When across from it step out
Towards it slowly pacing
In plain sight of all
A young girl and a boy

Dressed in battle gear, dirty
Shoes heavy with grime
On the path they will climb up
While their lips remain sealed

To change garb, to wipe brow
They have not yet found time
Still bone weary from days
And from nights in the field

Full of endless fatigue
And all drained of emotion
Yet the dew of their youth
Is still seen on their head

Thus like statues they stand
Stiff and still with no motion
And no sign that will show
If they live or are dead

Then a nation in tears
And amazed at this matter
Will ask: who are you?
And the two will then say

With soft voice: We--
Are the silver platter
On which the Jews' state
Was presented today

Then they fall back in darkness
As the dazed nation looks
And the rest can be found
In the history books.

Netanyahu Misled US Congress about European Observers at Rafah Crossing

2011-05-26T18:55:00.008+03:00

If Israel wants a say in passage via Rafah, it should permit passage between Gaza and the West Bank, writes Gisha director, Sarah Bashi, in today's guest post about Gaza's southern border being opened by Egypt through post-Mubarak legislation. Gisha is an Israeli NGO, an acronym which stands for Center for Freedom of Movement.

Gisha welcomes the announcement that Egypt will expand the ability of Gaza residents to travel abroad via Rafah Crossing, which has become Gaza's gateway to the world, in light of Israel's closure of Gaza's airspace and territorial waters and restrictions on travel via Erez Crossing. Gisha notes the need also to permit passage of people and goods between Gaza and the West Bank, recognized by Israel as a single territorial unit whose integrity is the basis for a two-state solution.

Since the capture of an Israeli soldier in June 2006, Israel has vetoed the implementation of the U.S.-brokered 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access which gave Israel security supervision over Rafah Crossing in exchange for a commitment to permit access between Gaza and the West Bank. If Israel wants a say concerning passage via Rafah, it should implement its commitment to allow Palestinians to travel between Gaza and the West Bank.

The Egyptian commitment concerning Rafah includes longer operating hours, no numerical limit on passengers, and visa-free travel, except for men aged 18-40. Crossing for Palestinians is expected to continue to be limited to those listed in the Israeli-controlled population registry. The expansion does not appear to include passage of goods, which are restricted to the Israeli-controlled crossings and subject to prohibitions on construction materials and export.

Background – Netanyahu Mislead Congress.

Since Israel closed Gaza's airspace and territorial waters and all but closed Erez Crossing to Palestinians, Rafah Crossing has become the gateway to the outside world for 1.5 million Palestinian residents of Gaza. Crossing via Erez (on the border between Gaza and Israel) is limited to "extraordinary humanitarian cases, especially urgent medical cases", preventing Palestinians from traveling between Gaza and the West Bank.

Rafah Crossing was operated according to the U.S.-brokered Agreement on Movement and Access until June 2006, when Israel announced its suspension following the capture of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comment before the U.S. Congress that in Rafah, "the European observers evaporated overnight" failed to note that the "evaporation" was ordered by Israel, which refused to allow the EU border mission observers to reach their post and has objected to the implementation of the agreement ever since. The EU observers have been waiting in their hotel in Ashkelon for the last five years, waiting for Israeli permission to return to Rafah.

Rafah remained mostly closed from June 2006 to June 2010, when Egypt opened it in the wake of the flotilla incident for limited categories including holders of foreign passports or visas and those seeking medical attention in Egypt. Between June 2010 and January 2011, 19,000 people per month on average crossed Rafah in both directions, 47% of the number of people who crossed monthly in the first half of 2006. Crossing for Palestinians is limited to those listed in the Israeli-controlled population registry.
(Many files were destroyed in aerial assaults during Operation Cast Lead.)Since the 2005 "disengagement", goods have not been permitted to pass via Rafah, except for humanitarian assistance which Egypt occasionally permits through Rafah.

Behold- Facts on the Ground

2011-05-21T03:15:00.007+03:00

The BBC covers the latest diplomatic kerfuffle between Barack (no, the American one!) and Bibi here. Hat tip to the Beeb for the current West Bank map, which unfortunately does not show how one could make a passageway or linked border to Gaza. Any suggestions? And is it fair for all the security buffer zones to extend into non-Israeli land? Friendly neighbours should split the difference and have a DMZ of shared land.I'd like to see a West Bank map with precise borders. Here's an excerpt from the Beeb's piece:

Bibi Netanyahu: "While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines because these lines are indefensible.

"They do not take into account certain demographic changes on the ground that have taken place over the last 44 years."

Netanyahu insisted he valued Mr Obama's efforts, saying: "Israel wants peace, I want peace."

Giza recaps the problems of access for Gazans in their latest release, called "Gaza Reels". Hat tip to Nitin Sawhney for the link.
http://youtu.be/XMu3MNasH7I

Tel Aviv Pole-sitter Challenges Blaine

2011-05-19T22:17:00.007+03:00

The latest high profile endurance stunt in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square is not overly ambitious, given a historic view. True, Israeli illusionist Hezi Dean wants to outdo Brooklyn's Trump-financed endurance artist, David Blaine, and be hailed as a Hebrew Houdini. So Hezi Dean was cranked up on a 27 meter high tower in Tel Aviv yesterday morning and aims to remain there with no food until Thursday evening, for a total of 35 hours. He plans to jump off into a stack of cardboard boxes to break his fall.

Meh.

The feats of an ascetic Syrian Christian saint, Symeon the Stylite the Elder, were far more impressive! Symeon lived and prayed for 37 YEARS - not hours- on a small platform perched atop a 15 meter high pillar near Aleppo--way back in the third century. Shepherd boys sometimes scrambled up with hunks of bread,cheese,and sips of water. And Symeon, a true pillar of his community, inspired many imitators to sit on a pedestal too. He still holds the Guinness World Record for longest pole sit. For Blaine and Dean, he's a tough act to follow.

Tensions between US Words and Actions in Obama's MidEast Policy Speech

2011-05-19T20:31:00.007+03:00

President Barack Obama's Middle East policy speech today has been dissected before it's been digested. Such is the 24 hour news cycle. Today's guest post from FireDogLake highlights the focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially interesting because Bibi is there in the wings.

Obama stated clearly that the United States will reject the planned proposal for Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly. [Here's the relevant outtake from the speech]:

For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.    As for Israel, our friendship is rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values. Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempts to single it out for criticism in international forums. But precisely because of our friendship, it is important that we tell the truth: the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace.    The fact is, a growing number of Palestinians live west of the Jordan River. Technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself. A region undergoing profound change will lead to populism in which millions of people – not just a few leaders – must believe peace is possible. The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome. The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation.

So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

This is an explicit endorsement of the 1967 borders, and it does tell Israel that they basically won’t have a Jewish state if they stick to intransigence. But the rejection of the UN General Assembly vote seems to me a missed opportunity to increase that pressure. A unified Palestinian state has little negotiating power other than international acceptance. They’ve been brutalized under occupation (and Obama used that word, too) for 44 years, and basic dignity demands that they seek a solution in an international venue if one cannot come from negotiation. The intention is not solely to embarrass the opposition, but to uplift themselves.

Israeli preschool lesson: Who wants to kill us?

2011-05-05T20:50:00.004+03:00

It’s nice to think Israel’s hard-won self-determination ensured Jewish children can grow up without fear and xenophobia.

Yeah, right.

Here is a photo taken this week at a preschool in the Tel-Aviv satellite city of Holon:

Translation, from the top:

“Who wants to kill us?

Pharaoh | Greeks | Haman | Nazis | Arabs

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓

What do we need?

WE NEED A STATE

Do note that all Arabs (national group) and Greeks (in reference to assimilationist policies of the Seleucid empire) are equated to Nazis (murderous ideology). And of course, Pharaoh and Haman, the semi-mythological baddies of yore, to drive home to children under six years of age that persecution of us Jews is eternal.

Happy Independence Day.

Hat tip to +972 and journalist Dimi Reider for this guest post. Indoctrination for the nation through introductory xenophobia!

Holocaust survivor Epstein disses AIPAC

2011-05-04T00:35:00.004+03:00

The unsinkable Hedy Epstein, pictured above on an aid flotilla to Gaza, is a survivor.

I fear AIPAC’s ability to move US policy in dangerous directions. AIPAC does a disservice to the Palestinians, the Israelis and the American people. It helps to keep the Middle East in a perpetual state of war and this year will be no different from last year as it keeps up a steady drumbeat calling for war against Iran, writes Hedy Epstein

AIPAC pretends to speak for all Jews, but it certainly does not speak for me or other members of the Jewish community in this country who are committed to equal rights for all and are aware that American interventionism is likely to bring further disaster and chaos to the Middle East.

Israel, of course, would not be able to carry out its war crimes against civilians in Lebanon and Gaza without the United States — and our $3 billion in military aid — permitting it to do so. At 86 years old, I use every ounce of my energy to educate the American public about the need to stop supporting the abuses committed by the Israeli government and military against the Palestinian people. Sometimes there are people who try to shout me down and scream that I am a self-hating Jew, but most of the time the audience is receptive to hear from someone who survived the Holocaust and now works to free the Palestinians from Israeli oppression.

The vicious discrimination brought to bear against Palestinians in the occupied territories deserves no applause from members of Congress attending the AIPAC conference. Instead, they should raise basic questions with Israeli officials about decades of inferior rights endured by Palestinians both inside Israel and the occupied territories.

Hedy Epstein is a Holocaust survivor, who writes and travels extensively to speak about social justice causes and Middle Eastern affairs. She will be participating in Move Over AIPAC, a gathering in Washington, DC from 21-24 May 2011, to expose AIPAC and build the vision for a new US foreign policy in the Middle East (www.MoveOverAIPAC.org).

Fur flies over threat to Hasidic headwear

2011-04-26T04:49:00.005+03:00

Tip of the shtreimel to photographer Gali Tibbon for this hairy tale about a possible ban on animal pelts from Asia, and how it could impact the ultra-Orthodox community inside Israel. Note that there also are fake fur hats for the rain - a better look perhaps than an elasticated shower cap fastened on for protection

For Jason Koutsoukis' original article,filed from Jerusalem, click here

At dusk on the Sabbath, few things are more spectacular in Jerusalem than the passing parade of fur hats moving inexorably towards the Western Wall.
There are great furry crowns of all shades of brown, lined with velvet and leather. Some are so wide and flat they look like a sombrero made of sable; others so high you might think they were top hats made of mink.
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They are shtreimels, the traditional headwear of some Hasidic Jews worn on the Sabbath and on holidays, but not to be confused with spodiks or kolpiks, other varieties of hairy hat reserved for more revered rabbinical sages.
Once symbols of persecution, they were first imposed by 18th-century Polish kings who decreed that Jews must wear the tail of an animal on the Sabbath to show they were not working.
The tradition spread through eastern Europe, with each Jewish sect adapting the shtreimel to its own taste, and instead of being a mark of persecution it became a symbol of pride.
Standing at the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem's Old City before sunset on Friday, watching the stream of shtreimels make their way to the holiest site in Judaism, the practised eye can tell a lot about each person just from the cut of their hat — the name of the sect each Hasid comes from, and which part of Europe their ancestors hailed from.
The shtreimel is also a dead giveaway for things such as the income of the wearer, what religious texts and customs they adhere to, and even whether or not they are Zionists.
Sitting in his office at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, dressed in a black tailcoat, black vest and white shirt, Rabbi Moses had just returned from heated debate in the Knesset chamber.
"People want to ban furs imported from Asia because of the way the animal is killed there," he says. "But what does this mean for the shtreimel?"
With the proposed law carrying a punishment of a year in prison, Rabbi Moses asks who will pay for the prisons to house all the law-breaking Jews who import the wrong kind of fur.
"Today, as I told the history of the shtreimel, what it means to Jewish history and custom, I left them all wide-eyed in the Knesset. Jaws open," he said.
Rabbi Moses said that the opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, was among those who approached him after his speech, offering her congratulations. End result? The bill has been deferred to committee.
To make one shtreimel can take up to 400 tails of various breeds of mink, sable and fox — the scrap of the fur industry.
Customers are fussy... The hardest part is measuring their heads to get an exact size.
With only 10,000 shtreimels produced around the world each year, it's definitely what you would call a niche market. But at a cost of up to $4000 each, it can be a profitable one.

Happy Passover, folks

2011-04-19T07:34:00.005+03:00

And, on a pleasant Passover note, Goliath Grouper are no longer called Jewfish.
(Tip of the sombrero to Nathan Thornborgh for this timely tidbit. Goliath Grouper is pictured above, with quite a group! "Pesach same'ach" (פסח שמח); "Chag Pesach Same'ach" (חג פסח שמח)

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_say_happy_Passover_in_Hebrew#ixzz1JwQoebS4

Also breaking news from the Holy Land: Maundy Thursday might have actually been on a Wednesday. Whatev'. Big kerfuffle over this"pre-poning" of the Last Supper in the mainstream media

Why Bedouins are pining for their old lands beneath new evergreen saplings

2011-04-17T21:19:00.006+03:00

'Unrecognized' Bedouin are staking land claims in Israel.

The Jewish National Fund aims to plant a forest over the lands of al-Araqib. Co-sponsored by evangelical Christian organization God-TV, this forest would involve forcibly displacing the 300 Bedouin residents of the village, who are all Israeli citizens, from their homes. A non-profit organization in charge of forestation and Jewish settlement throughout Israel, the JNF controls approximately 13 percent of the land in Israel today. This land falls under the management of the Israeli Lands Administration (ILA), and can only be leased to Jews, or for Jewish settlement purposes.

According to Israeli activist Haia Noach, while the JNF initially denied any involvement in the destruction of al-Araqib, residents and local activists saw JNF bulldozers destroying property in the village during a demolition in early February:

“We connect them with this; they are directly responsible for what is going on there, for the fact that people lost their houses, lost their herds, their orchards,” said Noach, the Director of the Negev Co-Existence Forum, a joint Jewish-Arab organization working for Bedouin land rights in the Negev.

The destruction of al-Araqib is part of a larger Jewish National Fund project called ‘Blueprint Negev.’ Launched in 2005 at the cost of $600 million, the project aims to increase the population in the Negev area by 250,000 Jewish residents by 2013.

“Since the foundation of Israel, JNF was actually planting forests on Arab villages’ remains. And you see it all over Israel, in the North and even in the South. There will be more and more Arab villages in the Negev that are threatened by the forestation of the JNF,” Noach predicted.

Hat tip to OpenDemocracy and Jillian Kestler-D'Amours,filmmaker, for this important news. Residents were evicted by more than 1,000 riot police officers, who destroyed homes and animal pens, uprooted thousands of olive and other trees and confiscated personal property.

Hammering Cruci-fiction? Simcha nails it

2011-04-14T00:46:00.008+03:00

That Orthodox chap who calls himself the Naked Archaeologist is at it again, timing another dubious documentary to coincide with Easter. The garrulous and guileless Simcha Jacobovici claims to have dug up a couple of 2000 year old nails used to crucify Jesus, and the discovery is making serious archaeologists and Biblical scholars rather cross. It definitely is intended to spike the interest of Christendom, and Simcha called a press conference in Jerusalem to launch the publicity for his new film. Reuters reports on the controversy stirred up by the Sabra/Canuk director's latest release: "The Nails of the Cross":

"What we are bringing to the world is the best archaeological argument ever made that two of the nails from the crucifixion of Jesus have been found," he said in an interview with Reuters.

"Do I know 100 percent yes, these are them? I don't."

The film begins by revisiting an ancient Jerusalem grave discovered in 1990 which was hailed by many at the time as the burial place of the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who in the New Testament presides over the trial of Jesus.

The grave, along with a number of ossuaries, or bone boxes, was uncovered during construction work on a hillside a few kilometers south of the Old City. It has since been resealed.

Caiaphas is a major figure in the Gospels, having sent Jesus to the Romans and on to his death, and one of Jacobovici's assertions is that the high priest was not such a bad guy.

Two iron nails were found in the tomb, one on the ground and one actually inside an ossuary, and, according to the film, mysteriously disappeared shortly after. Jacobovici says he tracked them down to a laboratory in Tel Aviv of an anthropologist who is an expert on ancient bones.

And if they are indeed the same nails -- eaten away by rust and bent at the end, almost purposefully -- was their disappearance a conspiracy or a logistical slip-up?

No definite answer is offered.

Either way, Jacobovici shows why those nails could have been used in a crucifixion, which was a common practice two thousand years ago. He then offers his theory about why they may have been used in the most famous crucifixion in history.

"If you look at the whole story, historical, textual, archaeological, they all seem to point at these two nails being involved in a crucifixion," he said. "And since Caiaphas is only associated with Jesus's crucifixion, you put two and two together and they seem to imply that these are the nails."

The Israel Antiquities Authority, which oversaw the Jerusalem excavation, said in reaction to the film's release that it had never been proven beyond doubt that the tomb was the burial place of Caiaphas. It also said that nails are commonly found in tombs.

"There is no doubt that the talented director Simcha Jacobovici created an interesting film with a real archaeological find at its center, but the interpretation presented in it has no basis in archaeological findings or research," it said.

Avigdor Lieberman pans Hamas in toilet interview

2011-04-13T20:44:00.004+03:00

Avigdorable! Israel's outspoken foreign minister has chosen a novel way of making a point in a radio interview - apparently flushing his toilet live on the air. The guy knows how to put the 'Ew' in interview....and there was no indication that he bothered to wash his hands afterwards.

Avigdor Lieberman was referring to the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas, at the time.

Lieberman, who leads the right-wing Israel Our Home Party, is no stranger to controversy. He frequently upsets Israel's Arab minority and liberal groups with his blunt manner of speaking.

Now his critics say the former nightclub bouncer has sunk to new depths, by apparently flushing his toilet in a live radio interview.

Mr Lieberman's distinctly undiplomatic intervention came during a discussion about the Islamist group Hamas.

It may have been an odd way for the foreign minister to get his point across, but his methods aren't harming him in the opinion polls.

Although he is facing allegations of corruption, support for Mr Lieberman's ultra-nationalist party is growing and he is unlikely to care what his opponents think about his antics on the toilet.

Hear an excerpt of the Avigdor Lieberman interview, in Hebrew, courtesy Reshet Bet radio. Hat tip to Wyre Davies of BBC News, Jerusalem, for this guest post.

Holy Moses! Lights out at Maimonides' Tomb.

2011-04-07T00:01:00.011+03:00

It's never a wise move to stiff the power company. Apparently, that's why they pulled the plug and a holy Jewish site has gone dark in Galilee. Candles just won't do for most pilgrims. Read on:

The tomb of Moses Maimonides, one of Judaism's pre-eminent sages, has been plunged into darkness because of a debt to the Israeli electricity company totaling $11,500.
Rabbi Israel Deri, one of the managers of the site in the Galilee city of Tiberias, admitted Wednesday that the bill "fell between the cracks." As a result, the tomb — where people come to pray around the clock — is now closed to night visitors.

"We accumulated a debt. We didn't pay. And we're working on it," Deri said. Signs at the entrance announce that the site is closed at night "due to a power glitch."
Maimonides, known in Hebrew as the Rambam, was a 12th century Jewish sage and medical doctor. Born in Cordoba, Spain around 1138, he wrote famous works of Jewish law, philosophy and medicine.

He died in Cairo in 1204. According to Jewish tradition, his remains were later reburied in Tiberias, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. Though Maimonides was a rationalist who scorned superstition and the sanctification of human beings or their remains, his tomb nonetheless draws many devout.

A spokeswoman for the Israel Electric Corporation, Orna Vagman, said the company "had no other choice but to disconnect the electricity" at the site because of a debt accrued over "many months."

Hat tip to the AP's Daniel Estrin for this file.
A physician to the Muslim ruler Saladin, Maimonides composed a healers' prayer, the Jewish equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, which doctors often recite at the tomb, pictured below.

Messing around with a Jewish Housemaid

2011-04-01T22:40:00.007+03:00

Why must an Arab Israeli household agree to an act of deceit in order to get their apartment thoroughly cleaned? This humorous column by Sayed Kashua ran in the Haaretz weekend magazine and lifts the veil on the personal details of getting spic 'n span.

This is it. It's happening. Our first housemaid will arrive on International Women's Day. Our first Jewish housemaid, our first Jewish employee. When all is said and done, I wonder how many Arabs have been in a position to pay a Jew for work.

I arranged to pick her up at 8. At 7:30 I will send the kids off to school, take my wife to a friend's house and then get Tikva. It doesn't have to be complicated, there's no sign with our name at the entrance to the building. Afterward I will leave her on her own - my friend said she's very reliable - and when she's done I will return to drive her home. At which time I will also pay her. I will actually take money out of my wallet and pay the Jewish woman. Okay, my wife really let me have it, but I still think it's a type of revolution.

Now I have to hide every telltale Arab sign in the house. First I disconnected the telephone, in case my mother should phone, heaven forbid, and frighten our Tikva. Then I started to take the family photos off the walls.

"What are you doing?" my wife shouted.

"With all due respect, and you are very beautiful," I told her as I went on taking down the photos, "but still, it's sometimes pretty obvious that you are an Arab."

I hid the family photos together with a stack of children's books and a few books of poetry in the storeroom. I made a final tour of the house to ensure that no scrap of paper, workbook or other sign of Arabic remained visible. A few paintings we had received as gifts and which I was afraid suffered from "Arab taste" were also thrown into the storeroom, which I then locked. To be on the safe side, I threw out a bag of squash and a package of pitas which announced in Arabic, "Beit Safafa Bakery." "That's that," I asserted when my labors were done, my gaze scanning the empty walls. "This is what a Jewish home looks like."

Click here for full article.

Cartoon by Amos Biderman. Hat tip to Sheera Frenkel for the Haaretz link.

$5 bn Offshore Island mooted for Gaza ports

2011-03-29T23:47:00.007+02:00

Huh? Now who is being pushed into the sea?

The Israeli Transportation Ministry is working on a plan to build an artificial island off the coast of Gaza, where a Palestinian-run airport and seaport would eventually be located. Ministry spokesman Ilan Leizerovich told the Associated Press that this would allow Israel to cut all ties with Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The majority of consumer goods and people who are allowed to enter and exit Gaza utilize Israeli land crossings. "Full disengagement" would follow this fanciful plan, and within six years the demilitarized zone of this island would be patrolled by international forces.

Leizerovich said the island would be built about three miles (4.5 kilometers) off the Gaza coast and would be connected by a bridge. He said it would take about six years and cost more than $5 billion to build. The grandiose scheme would need additional government approval, Palestinian acceptance and funding.

They'll also need a bridging loan, I guess. And few people reckon on a Dubai-style high style man-made island like the rather sci-fi one pictured above. According to the news station that broke the story, Channel 2, Israel would control and oversee all construction - to prevent concrete and other materials to be appropriated for covert rocket launchers. (The state of the art short range rocket shield, the Iron Dome, was deployed today for the first time over Beersheba.) Official discussions about the possibility of annexing West Bank settlements into Israel also created controversy.

The Six-pointed Star Power of Liz Taylor

2011-03-27T19:58:00.002+02:00

In a life famously shared with seven husbands, Taylor’s relationship with Israel was one of her longest, writes Nathan Burstein in the Washington Post.

It began in 1959, when Taylor, then a recent convert to Judaism, purchased Israel Bonds in such volumes that her films were boycotted in Arab nations. The elements of the story are so mismatched — the sultry starlet and the Third World country then absorbing displaced Jews from the Arab world — that it makes your eyes pop, as Taylor did in so many of her films.

Eight years and two Oscars later, Taylor canceled a visit to Moscow to protest the U.S.S.R.’s condemnation of Israel in the Six Day War. She would later sign a letter denouncing the United Nations’ odious “Zionism is racism” resolution, and in 1976, she offered to trade places with one of the hostages held by Palestine Liberation Organization hijackers from a flight originating in Tel Aviv. (Her willingness to become a hostage didn’t lead anywhere in real life, but she eventually got to play one in a TV version of the incident, ABC’s “Victory at Entebbe.”)

She was Hollywood’s most famous Cleopatra, and she stayed involved in the Middle East long after her career slowed down. She lent her star power to Israel with a 1982-83 visit — she met with Prime Minister Menachem Begin — and by publicly supporting the right of the Soviet Union’s trapped Jewry to emigrate there.

Like her old-school glamour and professional roots in the original studio system, Taylor’s activism for Israel was, in many ways, an artifact of a different era. An increasingly cynical world challenged the actress and Israel in similar ways, with their idealized early images coming back to haunt them. Taylor, it turned out, was merely mortal, and prone to tabloid-worthy missteps despite her preternatural beauty. Israel, with its foundations in Jewish desperation and trauma, could be as dysfunctional and disappointing as any other nation.

Sarah Palin pulls out of Bethlehem visit

2011-03-21T19:13:00.004+02:00

Up against the Wall
Sarah Palin, the ex-candidate and present day minor celebrity, apparently had second thoughts about crossing an Israeli checkpoint on Monday to visit Bethlehem during a three-day visit to Jerusalem. Why didn't she cross over by foot, like most Christian tourists, and hire a Bethlehem-based guide? Conal Urquhart reports from the Holy Land for the Guardian newspaper:

The former governor of Alaska pulled up to the checkpoint run by the Israeli border police to the south of Jerusalem in a white people carrier, with her husband, Todd, her assistant and Israeli guides.

None of the occupants left the car nor did they speak to the police officers at the checkpoint, according to photographers at the scene. They then turned around and drove away. A spokesman for the Israeli police said there was no incident at the checkpoint and a spokesman for the Israeli army said that Palin's group had not co-ordinated a visit to the occupied Palestinian territory.

Palin's group then stopped at a nearby Greek Orthodox monastery before returning to her hotel in the centre of west Jerusalem from where they later continued their tour of the city.

Tourists need to carry passports to cross checkpoints into the occupied Palestinian territory and Israelis are not normally permitted to enter areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, such as Bethlehem.

From the checkpoint Palin would have been able to see the high concrete walls that separate Bethlehem from Jerusalem.

Palin arrived in Israel on Sunday night after a delivering a speech in India on a rare foreign trip. She is due to meet Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, on Monday evening.

On arriving in Jerusalem Palin visited the tunnels next to the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, which is believed to have been part of the walls of the Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans in 70AD.

Palin wore a Star of David, the symbol of Judaism, around her neck, prayed close to the wall and lodged a written prayer in a crevice, according to tradition.

Palin told reporters: " It's overwhelming to be able to see and touch the cornerstone of our faith. I'm so thankful to be able to be here and I'm thankful to know the Israel-American connection will grow and strengthen as the peace negotiations continue."

Danny Danon, the Likud party member of the Knesset who invited Palin to Israel and accompanied her to the Western Wall, said Palin was moved by being close to the wall. "The visit was educational and spiritual. She was a strong friend of Israel and she will become a stronger advocate of Israel in the future," he said.

"The main purpose of the visit was to get acquainted with Israel and the holy sites. It was her first visit but I am sure she will come again."

Munther Fahmi to be stripped of ID card

2011-03-19T19:18:00.004+02:00

Many booklovers in Jerusalem are in despair. Munther Fahmi is the founder and owner of the Bookshop at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. He has been a friend and partner to PalFest since the beginning and his bookstore is a cornerstone of cultural life in Jerusalem. He offers an incredibly wide range of titles and fights to maintain a small but vital space of free and independent thought and debate in Jerusalem. Jews, Muslims, Gentiles, Christians and tourists of all descriptions all are welcome in his store.

He is being threatened with deportation. If authorities take away his ID, and the IDF can for the most whimsical of reasons and claim that it is a security matter, Fahmi will no longer be allowed inside Jerusalem.

People across the world are collecting signatures to try and help him stay in the city of his birth. Here's the online petition

Hat tip to Matt Rees, the ex-journalist who pens detective books, for the info.

Spies and Lies, 60 years later

2011-03-04T21:28:00.005+02:00

A cold dose of Israelity came a decade after the wedding day for ten Israeli Arab women who were told about their husbands' deceit by government officials.
Mistaarvim and Mrs? Ten odd couples are revealed in a fascinating piece running in Ynet's magazine. Shin Bet orchestrated double lives for their agents, with a plausible cover story for "young vigorous men" to find spouses in Arab communities inside Israel, from Jaffa. Read about the fallout six decades later:

"Your husband is not who you think he is. He is not Arab. Your husband is a Jew who was sent into your village on a mission by the defense establishment." This was the news a few Israeli Arab women received from the head of the Mossad Intelligence Service
mission in France in 1964. This was how they discovered that the fathers of their children were serving in a top secret Israeli unit sent to spy in their villages.

Ten Jewish men assimilated into Arab communities in the early 1950s, marrying local women and starting families with them, all the while serving in the Shin Bet as "mistaarvim," (literally, masqueraders) - undercover agents posing as Palestinians.

The goal of the unit, which was established in 1952, was to have men on the inside in case a war breaks out, and the Israeli Arabs join the enemy. Shumel Moriah, a senior Shin Bet officer who came to Israel from Iraq, and had plenty of experience smuggling Jews into Israel, led the unit. He recruited 10 other Iraqi-born men for the complex mission.

The unit was disbanded over a decade after its establishment, which was when the wives were informed of the deception. Most of them converted and lived in Israel as Jews. Their children were recognized as Jews without undergoing an official conversion procedure.

The training process took one year; the men learned the Palestinian dialect, studied the Koran and espionage techniques in an Intelligence Corps base near Ramla. With a new identity and a detailed cover story, they were sent into Palestinian villages and cities. They pretended to be refugees from the 1948 war returning home. Their real families in Israel were kept in the dark about their whereabouts and activities; they were forbidden from trying to discover where their loved ones served.

Hat tip to Gideon for this link. The full story is here.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4031176,00.html

Haifa, Israel's Mellowest City

2011-02-27T02:37:00.004+02:00

Sometimes it's worth thinking about what there is to love in Israel, for a change. Donald Macintyre, of the Independent, picks Haifa as the country's mellowest city and Kalmaris as one of the tastiest restaurants. His thumbnail guide to Haifa is erudite and encouraging. What ultimately attracts Macintyre is "the vein of history, some of it ineffably sad, some tinged with what may just be a sliver of hope for the future."

Up on the Roof of a Caged House

2011-02-23T22:39:00.003+02:00

The al-Ghirayib family lives in one of the stranger manifestations of Israel's 43-year occupation of the West Bank: a Palestinian house inside a metal cage inside an Israeli settlement. The family's 10 members, four of them children, can only reach the house via a 40-yard (meter) passageway connecting them to the Arab village of Beit Ijza below. The passage passes over a road frequented by Israeli army jeeps and is lined on both sides with a 20-foot-high (6-meter) heavy-duty metal fence.
In this Associated Press photo taken Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2011 a Palestinian boy sits on his rooftop near the fenced-in house of al-Ghirayim family, between the Jewish settlement of Givon Hahadasha and the West Bank village of Beit Ijza.
Hat tip to Angela for this image.

I am Israel - Yerushalayim Vision

2011-02-23T09:01:00.001+02:00

Hat tip to Ms Max, who considers this a fine p.r. piece for her homeland. Any thoughts?

Prize novelist slams nihilism in 'the most intense place I have ever set foot in'

2011-02-21T11:54:00.008+02:00

Ian McEwan, the outspoken author, will donate his $10,000 (£6,155) Jerusalem Prize for Literature to Combatants for Peace, an organization of former Israeli soldiers and former Palestinian fighters. His recent award speech left the audience silent, reports the Guardian. His 1992 novel, Black Dogs, is widely read in Israel. Time for some atonement?

The British author Ian McEwan launched an eloquent attack on Israeli government policies in his speech accepting the Jerusalem prize for literature, saying "a great and self-evident injustice hangs in the air".

Before an audience that included Israel's president, Shimon Peres, culture minister, Limor Livnat, and Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat, McEwan spoke of the nihilism on both sides of the conflict.

Addressing his remarks at the opening ceremony of Jerusalem's international book fair to "Israeli and Palestinian citizens of this beautiful city", the novelist said: "Hamas has embraced the nihilism of the suicide bomber, of rockets fired blindly into towns, and the nihilism of the extinctionist policy towards Israel."

But it was also nihilism that fired a rocket at the home of the Gazan doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish, killing three of his daughters and a niece during the Gazan war. "And it is nihilism to make a long-term prison camp of the Gaza Strip. Nihilism has unleashed a tsunami of concrete across the occupied territories."

The author referred to "continued evictions and relentless purchases of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, the process of the right of return granted to Jews but not to Arabs, the so-called facts on the ground of hardening concrete over the future, over future generations of Palestinian and Israeli children who will inherit the conflict and find it even more difficult to resolve than it is today."

He called for an end to settlements and encroachments on Palestinian land.

Despite his stinging criticisms, to which his audience listened in silence, McEwan said he was "deeply, deeply touched to be awarded this honour that recognises writing which promotes the idea of the freedom of the individual in society".

He said that since his decision to come to Israel to accept the prize, "my time has not exactly been peaceful" – referring to demands "with varying degrees of civility" for him to boycott the ceremony.

Jerusalem, he said, was "the most intense place I have ever set foot in".

In the UK, he said, novelists were free to choose how much to write about politics. "Here, for both Israeli and Palestinian novelists, 'the situation' is always there ... It's a creative struggle to address it and a creative struggle to ignore it."

The idea of the freedom of the individual "sits a little awkwardly" with the situation in Jerusalem, McEwan said. He drew comparisons with the UK, saying: "We may have our homeless but we do have our homeland. We are neither threatened by hostile neighbours nor have we been displaced."

He referred to the Shoah, or Holocaust, as "that industrialised cruelty which will remain always the ultimate measure of human depravity, of how far we can fall, and acknowledged "the precious tradition of the democracy of ideas in Israel".

He devoted much of his speech to the nature of the novel which, he said, "has become our best and most sensitive means of exploring the freedom of the individual, and such explorations often depict what happens when that freedom is denied".

He singled out three celebrated Israeli authors – Amos Oz, AB Yehoshua and David Grossman – as "writers who love their country, and made sacrifices for it and have been troubled by the directions it has taken".

They had opposed the settlements, he said, and had become the country's "conscience, memory and above all hope".

In recent years these three writers had felt "the times turning against their hopes", he said.

The question, said McEwan, was Lenin's: what is to be done? Israel, he said, needed to harness the creativity of its writers, artists and scientists, and not "retreat to a bunker mentality".

"The opposite of nihilism is creativity. The mood for change, the hunger for individual freedom that is spreading through the Middle East is an opportunity more than it is a threat."

The prize was presented by Jerusalem's mayor, Nir Barkat, who has enthusiastically backed Jewish settlements in Arab areas of the city. Jerusalem, he said, was "open to everyone to express themselves in a free way". McEwan's writing promoted the "same tolerance as we promote here in Jerusalem," he said.

Rabbi warns against 'Barbaric Sperm' and the Single Jewish Mother

2011-01-22T21:27:00.007+02:00

Israel is breaking medical frontiers with its fertility research, and test tube babies or artificial insemination can be provided through the country's vaunted health system, paid for by the state. But inevitably, there are occasional glitches in a small country obsessed with demographics. One new single mother in Jerusalem, who asked that her name not be mentioned, points out that there is a lack of Jewish sperm available inside Israeli sperm banks. (Although young IDF soldiers began a trend to freeze sperm before going into battle so their family lines could continue!) She speculates that high demand for gentile sperm may be to prevent future incidents of incest in the case that a sperm donor made multiple deposits to the sperm bank and impregnated more than one woman.

Still, ynet news
cites Rabbi Dov Lior, who cautions against using these techniques and urges sterile Jewish couples to adopt.

Rabbi Dov Lior, a senior authority on Jewish law in the Religious Zionism movement, asserted recently that a Jewish woman should never get pregnant using sperm donated by a non-Jewish man – even if it is the last option available.

According to Lior, a baby born through such an insemination will have the "negative genetic traits that characterize non-Jews." Instead, he advised sterile couples to adopt.

Lior addressed the issue during a women's health conference held recently at the Puah Institute, a fertility clinic. His conservative stance negated a ruling widely accepted by rabbis, which states that sperm donated by a non-Jew is preferable to that of an anonymous Jew, who might pose a genealogical risk.

"Sefer HaChinuch (a book of Jewish law) states that the character traits of the father pass on to the son," he said in the lecture. "If the father in not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism! These are not traits that characterize the people of Israel."

Lior added identified Jews as merciful, shy and charitable – qualities that he claimed could be inherited. "A person born to Jewish parents, even if they weren't raised on the Torah – there are things that are passed on (to him) in the blood, it's genetic," he explained. "If the father is a gentile, then the child is deprived of these things.

"I even read in books that sometimes the crime, the difficult traits, the bitterness – a child that comes from these traits, it's no surprise that he won't have the qualities that characterize the people of Israel," he added.

Lior condemned artificial insemination and sperm donation in general, saying that they lead to waste of sperm, unclear genealogy and other Jewish law offenses. He warned against undergoing intrauterine insemination at hospitals, where the workers may mix sperm samples for one reason or another - a major halachic violation.

On the subject of women who freeze their eggs to use at a later date, the rabbi asserted that instead they should concentrate their efforts on getting married younger.

"Our public has been influenced by a part of the Western culture in which every woman, instead of becoming a mother, needs to get a Masters Degree," he lamented. "The role of women – child rearing – is not less important than an academic degree." Lior noted that there is nothing wrong with attaining a profession, but it should not be a priority.

Moreover, the rabbi spoke against single women getting pregnant.

"We can understand the desire of every woman to have a child, but according to our Torah it is impossible to address the demand of a certain woman when it can cause someone else suffering," he said.

"If a child is born without a father, he cannot be 100% normal." He stated that rabbinical literature defines these kids as "criminals and subjects of other negative phenomena."

Move over, Lucy. Meet Adam. Did modern man originate in Israel, not Africa?

2010-12-29T22:51:00.014+02:00

The proof is not in yet --because these 400,000-year-old teeth have yet to be certified as coming from homo sapiens and not Neanderthals-- but much international excitement has been mounting after a scientist chap, aptly named Avi Gopher, dug up eight teeth in an Israeli archaeological site and announced this discovery to the world (perhaps a bit prematurely, according to at least one Cambridge Don, Paul Mellars.) Without a portion of an ancient skull or jaw bone associated with the teeth, he says it is difficult to verify that these teeth are irrefutable evidence of modern man residing in Israel twice as long as in Africa, as conventional wisdom has it.
The academics are looking forward to chewing over the various scholarly arguments and weighing the evidence. (And getting more funding for further digs.) Meanwhile, it certainly increases doubts about the existence and/or efficiency of the Tooth Fairy.

Rather appropriately, given such a toothsome topic, this will be the last post on Israelity Bites for a while. Izzy Bee has been away from the Holy Land for some time and feels that biting commentary requires actual presence in the place. Even that goal can be made difficult. Note how the award-winning NPR reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro was recently detained and subjected to a strip search while trying to report on Kadima leader Tzipi Livni's presser about delegitimization. Garcia-Navarro's newly-wed husband was also pulled aside and grilled about his association with the ace radio reporter. Her Latina colouring and flashing dark eyes apparently were seen by a trigger-happy security agent as suspiciously Palestinian-like. She was holding government accreditation at the time, and graciously has laughed off the incident as an annoyance that comes with the job. The Foreign Press Association later issued a formal condemnation of the police detail's action. It bodes badly for the press coverage of Israel when reporters are routinely mistreated this way, even after years in the country. Sigh. Israelity Bites.

Israelis Outsource High Tech to West Bank

2010-12-18T20:20:00.007+02:00

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks may be stalled, but that hasn't stopped a small but steady trickle of Israeli technology companies from seeking to work with people on the other side of the decades-old conflict, writes the Associated Press. (Outsourcing beyond the security fence is proving to be quite profitable. Payroll costs for a computer engineer are halved and by telecommuting instead of being herded through checkpoints with other permit-holders, Palestinian employees have a more pleasant work day. :-)

Israeli CEOs say it's their way of bringing a little bit of peace to their troubled corner of the world. But the real reason they're hiring Palestinians, they acknowledge, is because it simply makes good business sense.

Israel's high-tech industry is among the country's crowning achievements. Israel has the most start-ups per capita in the world and has helped produce such game-changing innovations as instant messaging and Internet telephony. Many Israeli tech firms send work offshore to eastern Europe, India or China.

In the past three years, however, some have turned to Palestinian engineers and programmers. They are cheaper, ambitious, work in the same time zone, and — surprisingly to many Israelis — are remarkably similar to them.

"The cultural gap is much smaller than we would think," said Gai Anbar, chief executive of Comply, an Israeli start-up in this central Israeli town that develops software for global pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Teva.

At a previous job, he worked with engineers in India and eastern Europe, but found communication difficult. So in 2007, when he was looking to outsource work at his new start-up, he turned to Palestinian engineers. He said they speak like Israelis do — they are direct and uninhibited. Today, Comply employs four Palestinians.

Palestinian engineers have also warmed up to the idea. "I doubt you would find a company who says, 'I am closed for business'" to Israelis, said Ala Alaeddin, chairman of the Palestinian Information Technology Association.

If there is hesitation, it's in marketing Israeli products under a Palestinian name to tap into larger Arab markets off-limits to them. "We're looking for a partnership ... not one side benefits from the other side," Alaeddin said.

"We have a window of opportunity to demonstrate our skills," said Murad Tahboub, CEO of Asal Technologies, a Palestinian outsourcing company that works with Comply and a handful of other Israeli-based companies. "The more people know about us ... the more comfortable they will be in doing business with us."

This is easier said than done. Comply's office in Hod Hasharon is only about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Asal Technologies in the West Bank city of Ramallah — but they are worlds apart.

Israel's military prevents most Palestinians and Israelis from visiting each others' cities without special permits, citing security concerns.

A network of fences and concrete walls divides Israel from the West Bank, built by Israel earlier this decade amid a wave of Palestinian attacks. Travel restrictions make meetings between Israelis and Palestinians rare, and psychological barriers separate them as well.

Anbar says his company is proving skeptics wrong. One recent morning, Israeli project manager Gali Kahane chatted online in English with Palestinian programmer Mohammad Radad, sending him smiley emoticons while reviewing updates to the database software they are developing.

"At first it was a little bit strange" to work with Palestinians, but now it's like working with any other Israeli developer, Kahane said. "We are very curious what they think about us," but they never talk politics. "The only thing we talk about is when the bugs will be finished, and reaching our deadline together," she said.

Anbar says working with Palestinians is "doing something good for the world we are living in," but says the real reason he outsources to the West Bank is financial: He pays the outsourcing company about $4,000 a month per engineer, half the cost of outsourcing to an Israeli company.

While Indians or Chinese engineers cost even less, he said Palestinians are more loyal to his company than workers from distant countries — and have a dogged work ethic. Many gained experience working abroad, and stiff competition for coveted engineering jobs in the West Bank pushes those who have work to prove themselves, Tahboub said.

About 10 Israeli start-ups and international companies with centers in Israel have been outsourcing to the West Bank in the past three years, said Tova Scherr of Mercy Corps, an international aid group working to encourage these ventures. Scherr said visits by Israeli businessmen to Ramallah — with Israeli military permission — are becoming more common.

Networking giant Cisco says it was the first international corporation with research and development centers in Israel to begin outsourcing work to the West Bank. Israeli branches of Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have followed Cisco's example and begun to outsource to the Palestinian territories this year, according to Mercy Corps.

Arranging meetings is "sometimes like crossing the Red Sea," said Cisco spokesman Gai Hetzroni.

Last year's initial meeting of Palestinian and Israeli engineers was meant to take place in the West Bank city of Jericho, but an Israeli military closure forced the workers to drag their laptops into a nearby Bedouin tent they rented for the day. Hetzroni said it was an "extraordinary meeting" that convinced the firm to go forward with the partnership.

Word of the West Bank's potential is spreading: Tahboub of Asal Technologies said he received about 20 inquiries this year from Israeli companies.

"We are doing great work for our country," Tahboub said, referring to the yet-to-be-born Palestinian state. "I believe the (technology) sector will become one of the pillars of the Palestinian economy."

Palestinians, Contained

2010-12-14T10:40:00.003+02:00

Israelis credit the serpentine, 400-mile (640 km)system of fences, barricades and checkpoints with reducing terrorist attacks to almost nil since construction began in earnest seven years ago. But the Wall has done more than keep out suicide bombers. No less important, it has created a separation of the mind. Israelis say they simply think much less about Palestinians. And a generation of Palestinians is coming of age without even knowing what Israelis look like, much less the land both sides claim as their own. The absence of familiarity, names, basic knowing — the absence of the foundations of empathy — does not bode well for the chances of the two peoples one day living as neighbors in peace.

The economic consequences of the Wall are plain: it has kept out of Israel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who used to travel there every day, mostly to work. In the living room of Ramzi's father, family friend Taeser Ihmad complains that after 20 years earning 200 shekels ($55) a day as a gardener at a Jerusalem hospital, he now makes just 80 shekels ($22) building houses in Ramallah.

"I never faced a day that they were not nice to me," Ihmad says of the Israelis as Ramzi and his older brother Anis watch silently from the sofa, drinking in the adult conversation with both the silence expected of the young in an Arab household and the curiosity that betrays a less obvious effect of the barrier. Whatever lies beyond it — enemy, oppressor, kindly cashier — is largely a matter of speculation to those born in the hammock of optimism between the 1993 Oslo accords and the second intifadeh, the uprising that began in 2000 and ended after an iron curtain was drawn across the occupied territories.

Read more at Palestinians, Contained. Kudos to Karl Vick in Ein Arik

Happy Hannukah

2010-12-04T06:43:00.001+02:00

Candlelight - The Maccabeats @ Yahoo! Video

Candlelight, by the Maccabeats, helps distract from the nasty fires in the north of the country and the woefully unprepared firefighters with obsolete equipment.

Religion is No Excuse to Shirk Army Duty

2010-12-02T18:21:00.011+02:00

Jewish faith, used by some to justify cultural and social isolation, can also be a force for cohesion and patriotism, for both men and women. Hannukah is as good a time as any to examine this notion. According to an opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post:

Under pressure from Shas and United Torah Judaism, the government has backtracked on its support for a bill that would have helped fight the worrying trend of draft-dodging among young women.

Currently, a young woman can avoid two years of IDF service by simply making a declaration before a representative of the Chief Rabbinate that her religious convictions forbid her to perform military service. Unfortunately, many secular young women take advantage of this. If it had been ratified, the bill would have forced young women seeking exemption to give proof they led a religious lifestyle. But haredi MKs claimed the bill breached the religious status quo protected in the government coalition agreement. MK Miri Regev (Likud), one of the drafters of the bill, abstained in deference to the coalition, though Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i broke ranks and voted in favor.

Sadly, the government’s myopic readiness to cater to the whims of narrow religious extremism has led it to ignore the broader national interest of encouraging universal conscription. Just last week, the head of the IDF’s personnel division, Maj.-Gen. Avi Zamir, said that by 2020 some 60 percent of eligible 18-year-olds would try to dodge military service. Half already do. Zamir voiced concern that Israel’s “people’s army” ethos was in danger.

Haredi men are to blame for the bulk of the decline.

But deception on the part of young women has a part to play as well. Thirty-five percent of young women eligible for the draft seek exemption for religious reasons, but thousands lie, according to the IDF human resources department. Via Facebook, the IDF recently managed to catch about 1,000 young women who updated profiles on Shabbat, or posted photos of themselves eating in non-kosher restaurants or wearing immodest clothing.

In the past, the IDF has even hired private investigators.

These efforts underline the IDF’s need for man- and woman-power, even if it means forcibly recruiting liars.

Paradoxically, while religion has been touted as an excuse for exemption from military service, it has also served as a major motivational force, especially among religious Zionist youths. Impressive, though unsurprising, figures were published in the August edition of the IDF magazine Ma’arachot showing a sharp rise in the number of religious combat officers and members of elite units in the IDF in the past decade.

Less known, though, is a growing trend among religious women to enlist in the army.

The vast majority of religious Zionist rabbis oppose military service for women, fearing that intimate contact with the opposite sex in a sexually permissive environment will lead to a breakdown of taboos.

But attitudes are changing. Religious Zionists, who have a greater tendency not to demonstrate blind loyalty to their rabbinic leadership, are responding to the IDF’s more accommodating approach to religious sensitivities – related, undoubtedly, to the sharp rise in kippa wearing officers and commanders and a general atmosphere of multiculturalism.

One thousand religious women interested in military service attended a conference last week in Tel Aviv, compared to just 400 last year. In parallel, an organization called Aluma was established in recent years to prepare religious young women for military service and interface with the IDF during service. Numerous educational frameworks exist for women, including Midreshet Lindenbaum and Tzahali, a women-only religious pre-military academy.

And many young women actually see constructive military service as a boon to faith. A survey of 98 religious women, published in January and conducted by researchers from Sha’anan Teachers College in Haifa, found that IDF service actually strengthened their religiosity.

A third of women who served as IDF teachers felt they had become more religious thanks to their military service, compared to just a quarter of women who served as teachers within the framework of national service.

And 95% said they studied Torah during their IDF stint, compared to just 72% in national service.

Jewish faith, used by some to justify cultural and social isolation, can also be a force for cohesion and patriotism, for both men and women. This is a decidedly positive development which should be encouraged. At the same time, the right of the sincere religious female to opt for national service instead of IDF service should also be respected.

But dodging service to the country altogether is simply unacceptable. Religion is no excuse.

Checkpoint: Backscatter Fears and Naked Aggression

2010-11-21T09:10:00.007+02:00

"Don't touch my junk" has a corollary: don't zap my gonads with radiation, either.

Americans on the go are increasingly upset about the intrusiveness of pre-boarding security checks at their airports, whether by full-body scanner or an enhanced pat-down grope. Perhaps lessons can be learned by examining the health effects on Palestinians who have for years submitted to similar security checks.

More than a quarter million Palestinians live in the shadow of the Israeli's separation barrier, particularly in spots where the barrier is jig-sawed to protect hilltop settlers in what they refer to as Judea and Samaria. Ostensibly to deter terrorists, a tall electrified fence and trench system disconnects many Palestinian families living in such isolated rural pockets from their families and jobs in the West Bank. (Gaza is entirely corralled, and any patients and accompanying medical staff who are permitted to leave the enclave undergo such body scans as well.) In order for West Bank residents to reach jobs outside these restricted zones, to see friends and relatives, shop, or even make bank deposits, an Israeli-issued permit is required. All permit-holders must line up to be checked by private Israeli armed security guards or national border police before they are allowed past the separation barrier.

Crossing the Reihan/Bartaa checkpoint into the rest of the West Bank entails a full body backscatter x-ray scan, using machines similar to the bulky TSA scanners at 68 American airports which have raised the hackles of travelers this month.

Like US pilots who object to any extra doses of radiation caused by these virtual strip-searches, many Palestinian women are reluctant to undergo full-body scans twice a day, repeatedly. Even though their refusal denies them access to work or to harvest family fields that lie on the other side of the barrier, many resist.

Three years ago, I interviewed more than a dozen women at a basic health clinic in Um el Reihan run by a Western foreign aid agency. Each one said she was too scared to enter a foreign-built machine that might endanger a pregnancy or reduce her fertility.

Dr Muthanna Jabbarin , who tends the day clinic inside Um el Reihan and returns to Jenin at dusk a couple of days per week, is bothered that he has no access to data about the security equipment and the radiation hazard of malfunctions. He's unable to reassure worried patients who must go through the scanning machine twice daily about possible cancer risks. Several miscarriages, including one suffered by a woman in her eighth month, have raised his concerns. The doctor believes that the heat, the prolonged standing, and the anxiety all take a toll on expectant mothers.

In such a conservative community, many people feel violated because the security apparatus can see through their clothing and records each fold of flesh. Scars from, say, a Caesarean birth or a circumcision will be readily apparent on the screen. Every one of these scans is scrutinized by young Israeli guards. Fears that the images will be kept or photographed on mobile phones and uploaded to the internet are widespread. Numerous Palestinian seamstresses, teachers, and students have abandoned the commute from their Um el Reihan enclave into the West bank to avoid the public humiliation. Now they are marooned in this tiny hamlet which receives no services from either the Palestinian authority or the Israeli government.

Not only are the 350 Palestinian residents of Um el Reihan unable to cross the old Green Line west of their village to enter Israel but, but even if they go east and stand on line for hours, many are delayed or prevented from visiting the rest of the Palestinian territory. Reihan/Bartaa checkpoint, with its requisite body scans and searches, has mutated this little community into a Mid-Eastern gulag. After the Transport Security Administration's latest controversy over backscatter strip searches and groin-thumping frisks, a few more jet-setting Americans may empathize with the plight of these folks in the West Bank.

Jan McGirk was a special correspondent reporting from Gaza and the West Bank for The Lancet, a British medical journal. Crossposted on The Huffington Post.

Israeli security forces prepare for mass riots after possible 'population exchange'

2010-10-08T23:24:00.006+02:00

Ethnic cleansing may be on the horizon if the Avigdor Lieberman plan for population exchange kicks in, and Israel's security forces are girding for the fallout.

Doesn't anyone recall the bloody Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947? When Izzy Bee raised this worry directly to Lieberman a couple years ago, he just shrugged his shoulders ever so avigdorably and said that Cyprus was his model for a two-state solution, not the sub-Continent. Oy veh.

According to Noam on "The Promised Land" blog:

IBA Radio is reporting that Israel’s security forces concluded on Thursday a large national drill, in which the civil defense forces, police, military police, fire department and Israel’s prisons unit trained for large scale riots in the Israeli-Arab public, following a signing of a peace agreement that would include “population exchange” (transfer of Arab population to the Palestinian state).

According to Kol Israel’s report, in such an event, a large detention camp for Palestinian citizens will be constructed in Golani Junction, at Israel’s north, and all illegal aliens will be released from prisons to make room for Palestinians.

Two weeks ago, Israel’s foreign minister was criticizing for presenting his plan for population exchange in a speech at the United Nation General Assembly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later claimed that FM Avigdor Lieberman didn’t represent Israeli government policy in his speech.

—————————–

On one hand, I think we should not turn this into a conspiracy item. The fact that the security forces are training doesn’t mean that Israeli leaders have such a plan or that they have a secret deal for population exchange with the Palestinian Authority.

On the other hand, this report does teach us a lot about the way Israel views its Palestinian citizens: while Israeli leaders are praising Israeli democracy and claiming that Palestinians are equal citizens (within the Green Line borders), policy makers view Arabs first and foremost as a security threat, and as people whose citizenship might be revoked at any given moment.

Some might argue that security forces must train for every scenario, even one that is not very likely to happen, so we shouldn’t deduct much from this item.

Well, how about training for widespread demonstrations and terror attacks following the evacuation of settlements? This is something that can actually take place, but no one would ever consider preparing for mass detentions of settlers right now. The political consequences of even contemplating such idea in public would be disastrous, as they should be.

Arab citizens should be treated with the same respect.

Line in the Sand: Israeli activists defy law with Tel Aviv beach parties for Palestinians

2010-09-17T20:19:00.008+02:00

The soothing sound of the Mediterranean might do more for Israeli-Palestinian relations than endless waves of US-backed peace talks. But it takes a certain grit for Israeli women activists to spirit West Bank families across checkpoints to reach the sea and sand. Israeli and West Bank women both risk jail for organizing a fun day at the beach. Civil disobedience is rarely tolerated by the IDF, who are supposed to be attuned to any potential security breach. But the profiling they use routinely during enforcement means that settlers at checkpoints get waved through - as well as women who look a bit like settlers
These illegal trips challenge laws governing the movement of Palestinians, reports the Guardian's Rachel Shabi, who follows up a group of activists inspired by a May 7 article by Ilana Hammerman, of Haaretz.

"It's like we are using the tools of the occupation," said Irit, one of the [Israeli] drivers. "It just wouldn't occur to the soldiers at the checkpoints that Israeli women would want to do this."

As Tel Aviv nears, the Palestinian passengers silently survey the tall buildings and outdoor cafes and seem especially taken with the ubiquitous motorcycles and mopeds that speed around the city...But all the Palestinian women have just one request: to go to the sea. For most, it's their first trip to the seaside, even though it is a short drive from home.

The passengers join another carload and head to the promenade in Jaffa, the mixed Arab-Israeli city stuck to the tail-end of Tel Aviv, where the Palestinian women race to greet the waves crashing against the bright rocks. "It is so much more beautiful than I thought," said Nawal, watching her gleeful seven-year-old daughter skipping backwards to avoid being sprayed by the waves.

Hat tip to Juliette for this link. Photo from The Guardian

Tony Judt, RIP, Debunked Cliches about Israeli -Palestinian Conflict

2010-08-08T21:04:00.011+03:00

Historian Tony Judt, who died this weekend, continued to write even though he was suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease for his final two years. His eloquence and logic will be greatly missed. Earlier this summer, his incisive opinion piece in the New York Times was widely discussed. To read "Israel without Cliches", a concise summary of the half dozen perrenial talking points, click here for the original article.

It is almost impossible to discuss the Middle East without resorting to tired accusations and ritual defenses: perhaps a little house cleaning is in order.

No. 1: Israel is being/should be delegitimized

Israel is a state like any other, long-established and internationally recognized. The bad behavior of its governments does not “delegitimize” it, any more than the bad behavior of the rulers of North Korea, Sudan — or, indeed, the United States — “delegitimizes” them. When Israel breaks international law, it should be pressed to desist; but it is precisely because it is a state under international law that we have that leverage.

Some critics of Israel are motivated by a wish that it did not exist — that it would just somehow go away. But this is the politics of the ostrich: Flemish nationalists feel the same way about Belgium, Basque separatists about Spain. Israel is not going away, nor should it. As for the official Israeli public relations campaign to discredit any criticism as an exercise in “de-legitimization,” it is uniquely self-defeating. Every time Jerusalem responds this way, it highlights its own isolation.

No. 2: Israel is/is not a democracy

Perhaps the most common defense of Israel outside the country is that it is “the only democracy in the Middle East.” This is largely true: the country has an independent judiciary and free elections, though it also discriminates against non-Jews in ways that distinguish it from most other democracies today. The expression of strong dissent from official policy is increasingly discouraged.

But the point is irrelevant. “Democracy” is no guarantee of good behavior: most countries today are formally democratic — remember Eastern Europe’s “popular democracies.” Israel belies the comfortable American cliché that “democracies don’t make war.” It is a democracy dominated and often governed by former professional soldiers: this alone distinguishes it from other advanced countries. And we should not forget that Gaza is another “democracy” in the Middle East: it was precisely because Hamas won free elections there in 2005 that both the Palestinian Authority and Israel reacted with such vehemence.

No. 3: Israel is/is not to blame

Israel is not responsible for the fact that many of its near neighbors long denied its right to exist. The sense of siege should not be underestimated when we try to understand the delusional quality of many Israeli pronouncements.

Unsurprisingly, the state has acquired pathological habits. Of these, the most damaging is its habitual resort to force. Because this worked for so long — the easy victories of the country’s early years are ingrained in folk memory — Israel finds it difficult to conceive of other ways to respond. And the failure of the negotiations of 2000 at Camp David reinforced the belief that “there is no one to talk to.”

But there is. As American officials privately acknowledge, sooner or later Israel (or someone) will have to talk to Hamas. From French Algeria through South Africa to the Provisional I.R.A., the story repeats itself: the dominant power denies the legitimacy of the “terrorists,” thereby strengthening their hand; then it secretly negotiates with them; finally, it concedes power, independence or a place at the table. Israel will negotiate with Hamas: the only question is why not now.

No. 4: The Palestinians are/are not to blame

Abba Eban, the former Israeli foreign minister, claimed that Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He was not wholly wrong. The “negationist” stance of Palestinian resistance movements from 1948 through the early 1980s did them little good. And Hamas, firmly in that tradition though far more genuinely popular than its predecessors, will have to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

But since 1967 it has been Israel that has missed most opportunities: a 40-year occupation (against the advice of its own elder statesmen); three catastrophic invasions of Lebanon; an invasion and blockade of Gaza in the teeth of world opinion; and now a botched attack on civilians in international waters. Palestinians would be hard put to match such cumulative blunders.

Terrorism is the weapon of the weak — bombing civilian targets was not invented by Arabs (nor by the Jews who engaged in it before 1948). Morally indefensible, it has characterized resistance movements of all colors for at least a century. Israelis are right to insist that any talks or settlements will depend upon Hamas’s foreswearing it.

But Palestinians face the same conundrum as every other oppressed people: all they have with which to oppose an established state with a monopoly of power is rejection and protest. If they pre-concede every Israeli demand — abjurance of violence, acceptance of Israel, acknowledgment of all their losses — what do they bring to the negotiating table? Israel has the initiative: it should exercise it.

No. 5: The Israel lobby is/is not to blame

There is an Israel lobby in Washington and it does a very good job — that’s what lobbies are for. Those who claim that the Israel lobby is unfairly painted as “too influential” (with the subtext of excessive Jewish influence behind the scenes) have a point: the gun lobby, the oil lobby and the banking lobby have all done far more damage to the health of this country.

But the Israel lobby is disproportionately influential. Why else do an overwhelming majority of congressmen roll over for every pro-Israel motion? No more than a handful show consistent interest in the subject. It is one thing to denounce the excessive leverage of a lobby, quite another to accuse Jews of “running the country.” We must not censor ourselves lest people conflate the two. In Arthur Koestler’s words, “This fear of finding oneself in bad company is not an expression of political purity; it is an expression of a lack of self-confidence.”

No. 6: Criticism of Israel is/is not linked to anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews, and Israel is a Jewish state, so of course some criticism of it is malevolently motivated. There have been occasions in the recent past (notably in the Soviet Union and its satellites) when “anti-Zionism” was a convenient surrogate for official anti-Semitism. Understandably, many Jews and Israelis have not forgotten this.

But criticism of Israel, increasingly from non-Israeli Jews, is not predominantly motivated by anti-Semitism. The same is true of contemporary anti-Zionism: Zionism itself has moved a long way from the ideology of its “founding fathers” — today it presses territorial claims, religious exclusivity and political extremism. One can acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and still be an anti-Zionist (or “post-Zionist”). Indeed, given the emphasis in Zionism on the need for the Jews to establish a “normal state” for themselves, today’s insistence on Israel’s right to act in “abnormal” ways because it is a Jewish state suggests that Zionism has failed.

We should beware the excessive invocation of “anti-Semitism.” A younger generation in the United States, not to mention worldwide, is growing skeptical. “If criticism of the Israeli blockade of Gaza is potentially ‘anti-Semitic,’ why take seriously other instances of the prejudice?” they ask, and “What if the Holocaust has become just another excuse for Israeli bad behavior?” The risks that Jews run by encouraging this conflation should not be dismissed.

Along with the oil sheikdoms, Israel is now America’s greatest strategic liability in the Middle East and Central Asia. Thanks to Israel, we are in serious danger of “losing” Turkey: a Muslim democracy, offended at its treatment by the European Union, that is the pivotal actor in Near-Eastern and Central Asian affairs. Without Turkey, the United States will achieve few of its regional objectives — whether in Iran, Afghanistan or the Arab world. The time has come to cut through the clichés surrounding it, treat Israel like a “normal” state and sever the umbilical cord.

Settlement spook 'outed' in US Newspaper

2010-07-28T19:25:00.007+03:00

Hagit Ofran documents Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank with a pocket-sized camera and a deep sense of mission, often making news well beyond Israel.Her grandfather, the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibovich, taught her that Israelis deserved the oxymoronic epithet 'Judeo-Nazis' if they continued encroaching and settling. Ben Lynfield follows the sleuth.

Hagit Ofran's official title is director of the Settlement Watch Team of the dovish Peace Now organization. In practice, she is a spy operating in hostile territory, snooping, sniffing, and piecing together bits of intelligence to gauge how much illicit building is going on.

On a recent scouting trip, Ofran spotted four new trailers spread like matchboxes on a hillside of the Alon settlement northeast of Jerusalem.

The prefabricated buildings are in effect helping to fragment the heartland of a future Palestine. ''It's not that one caravan will change the chances of Middle East peace,'' says Ofran. ''But another and another and another will determine whether we can have a two-state solution to the conflict or not.''
Fluent in Arabic – and well-versed in sleuthing

Israel's conservative government now faces a crucial decision over whether or not to extend a 10-month partial freeze on settlement building that expires in September. The Obama administration is pressing for the freeze to remain in place, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition partners want it scrapped to enable a wave of new building.

''If it is not extended then the freeze may have delayed a few hundred sites for months, but it will not have caused a real change,'' Ofran says.''If work is restarted it might mean that the chances of peace are doomed, at least with this government.''

A fluent Arabic speaker, Ofran sometimes is tipped off by Palestinians about new settler building. She pores over aerial photos commissioned by Peace Now, whose settlement watch unit is funded partly by the governments of Britain and Norway, and garners information from planning meetings and official documents.

In March, Ofran learned from the Jerusalem municipality's website that officials had given permits for settler building at the Shepherds Hotel site in East Jerusalem, which is predominantly Arab. She did not keep the information to herself – though she's tight-lipped about her exact role...Settlements, though
government-sponsored, lacks transparency. Much of its activity is illegal even according to Israeli law and settler leaders prefer to avoid public debate over it. Construction also violates the Geneva Convention and runs counter to international commitments Israel made to halt settlement building, for example in the 2003 international peace blueprint known as the road map. Tellingly, there is no distinct budget for building at settlements.

Is Israel Gay-friendly or not?

2010-07-21T00:08:00.008+03:00

Recent correspondence in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the local newspaper of that liberal 'nuclear-free zone' of Santa Cruz, CA, examines whether Israel, with its secular laws and urbane tolerance inside the Tel Aviv bubble, really can be considered a refuge in the Middle East for homosexuals. The issues are across the planet but dear to the hearts of the Left Coast. A local synagogue has sent a fact-finding mission to Israel, traveling jointly with a Christian Conngregational Church group, to see for themselves the progress of the peace progress in a land of acute religious symbolism. Other than the airport, most of the delegation will give Tel Aviv a miss, unless they have packed their speedos.

Israel a mecca for gays

Amy Goodman wrote an entire column touting the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit. She stated
that the USSF defines itself as an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals and free exchanges of experiences. If this is the case, then why did they cancel the only program dealing with persecution of homosexuals in the Middle East? The advocacy organization, Stand With Us, was informed two days before the start of the conference that their scheduled presentation concerning gay rights was canceled. This forum of democratic ideas has a problem with ideas that differ from their own. The USSF was so afraid that participants might learn that Israel has an outstanding record on GLBT issues and is a refuge for persecuted gays in the Middle East. Instead, they chose to turn their backs on the thousands of gays and lesbians living in fear for their lives in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia. The USSF has the right to invite and disinvite speakers, but when they tell us that it is an open meeting place and a forum for democratic debate, they are just lying to us. Why is it so difficult for the far left to accept the fact that Israel is a mecca for persecuted gays, while the actual Mecca in Saudi Arabia is just the opposite?

Gil Stein, Aptos

Israel far from a mecca for gays

Was that headline "Israel a Mecca for Gays", calculated to be offensive on as many levels as possible? Having lived in Jerusalem from 2006 to 2009, I find it ridiculous to claim that Israel is a refuge for persecuted gays in the Middle East. Very few Middle Eastern citizens are allowed to cross borders into Israel because of the enmity between their governments. Homosexuality is legal in Jordan, Turkey and Cyprus, but openly gay Palestinians or Israeli Arabs sometimes get blackmailed into collaborating with the Israeli security services, or even into spying for one West Bank faction against another, often with fatal consequences. Despite the government brief to lure gay European tourists to campy Tel Aviv, last August a gunman shot up a night club in the lavender metropolis, killing two people and wounding at least 13. It was considered a hate crime, not a terror attack. [Translation: no Arab involvement.] Shas, an Israeli political party that has depicted homosexuals as blasphemers, annually joins forces with clergymen from Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths to condemn the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem as an abomination. Secular laws in Israel may uphold gay rights, but homosexuals are shunned by Haredi Jews, and are banished from their families if anyone learns about their transgression. In much of the Holy Land, that rainbow flag is still tightly furled.

Jan McGirk, Santa Cruz

Orthodox Rabbis Reject Diaspora

2010-07-20T20:49:00.005+03:00

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Except when he or she is not, writes Sarah Wildman on Politics Daily.
Just ask Joel Chasnoff, a man who immigrated to Israel, joined the army, fought in Lebanon, then discovered the state didn't consider him Jewish.

In 1950, Israel, the Jewish state passed the Law of Return, granting "all Jews" automatic citizenship upon immigration to Israel. It was a visceral response to the Holocaust, to a time of refugees, of statelessness, of desperation for a homeland. Immediately the question arose: Who qualifies? In other words: who, exactly, is a Jew?

In Joel Chasnoff's marvelous memoir, "The 188th Crybaby Brigade," which came out earlier this year (think "Catch-22" for the post-modern generation), the author narrates his decision, at age 24, to leave America and join the Israeli army. It's partly for love – he's fallen for an Israeli girl and wants them to be able to live in Israel, should they choose (and if they do, he feels an army experience is essential). It's partly because he was raised in a certain kind of Jewish Zionist home – he was sent to Jewish day schools, raised with the idea that Israel needed defending. And so he goes, and becomes the best soldier in his unit --only to discover, having served in Lebanon, having patrolled the borders, the state does not consider him to be a Jew. To marry in Israel, he must convert. And though he hates himself for doing it, he goes through with it.

"To make aliyah [emigrate to Israel] and join the IDF [Israeli Defense Force], the Israeli consulate requested a copy of my bar mitzvah certificate; or, if I couldn't provide that, I could supply a letter from my rabbi (who happened to be Conservative), on synagogue letterhead, stating that I was Jewish," Chasnoff wrote me by e-mail.

"A year later, during a furlough from a tour of duty in Lebanon, Dorit (my then-girlfriend, now wife) and I applied for a marriage license. On application, I stated that my mother had converted to Judaism in 1968 -- five years before I was born. Suddenly, a letter from my rabbi was no longer enough to prove I was a Jew. The Rabbinical Authority investigated my mother's conversion and declared that, because she had studied with a Conservative rabbi, neither she nor I were Jewish. The army then sent me back to Lebanon to wage its war against Hezbollah. So I went back to Lebanon knowing that if I died in battle, I would not be buried in a Jewish cemetery. As Dorit put it: Israel didn't mind if I died for the country, so long as I didn't get married there."

When Chasnoff isn't writing memoirs that should be required reading for anyone interested in army life, Israel-Palestinian relations, or lost boys, he is a stand-up comic who frequently tours through the North American Jewish world. The buzz on the ground is one of disbelief and anger, distancing and reassessment.

Gaza flotilla video mashup: Internet Killed Israeli PR

2010-07-20T07:17:00.000+03:00

Dude, Where's My Glock? Bibi's security guys check their guns and lose them

2010-07-08T10:00:00.004+03:00

Perhaps now we have an explanation about why US President Barack Obama personally escorted Netanyahu to his car. Could there have been a security concern? It became evident that "LAX security" is quite an apt name for the services at Los Angeles airport which let four Glocks pistols vanish from Israeli luggage.

Luggage belonging to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security detail crisscrossed America until finally turning up, four handguns short, U.S. sources reported Wednesday, according to the Batsheva Sobelman's blog on the LA Times. A spokesperson for Israel's General Security Services told Reuters that the handguns were part of the equipment sent ahead of Netanyahu to Washington "and got lost." The official added that Israeli and U.S. authorities were investigating.

Netanyahu's bodyguards landed at JFK, where their luggage was rechecked to continue to Washington -- including two suitcases containing seven handguns between them. But while the security guys continued on to Washington, their luggage went west, putting in an appearance at LAX before being sent back to Washington via Chicago, Reuters said. The bottom line is that four stops later, four guns -- said to be Glocks -- were declared missing-in-transit. The additional 3 pieces checked into the other of the two suitcases were recovered..

At what stage this happened isn't quite clear. American Airlines handled the luggage at JFK and LAX, said reports quoting airline officials who said they were refraining from commenting publicly so as not to hamper a security-related situation.

Losing luggage can happen to anyone. Evidently, so can losing guns. In February, the Boston Globe reported that Homeland Security personnel had 289 of their weapons stolen from them between 2005 and 2008, or lost by miscellaneous negligence such as leaving them on car bumpers and at bowling alleys.
But airports are more security-sensitive than bowling places and concerns are deep enough without having to second-guess personnel entrusted with the safety of millions. U.S. airport security has been challenged repeatedly in recent years; questions were raised again after the attempt to bomb a Northwest flight on Christmas Day. Experts have suggested that U.S. airports adopt Israeli security models.

At least one airport that briefly hosted the bodyguards' suitcases does already work with Israeli airport security experts. When visiting Israel in 2008, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed an agreement contracting Israeli experts to make two yearly visits to help with LAX security

Above: U.S. Marine Corps Col. James Cooney fires a 9-millimeter Glock 18 machine pistol . Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

It's easy to laugh at the occupation when you're the oppressor

2010-07-06T09:00:00.000+03:00

Recent uploads on Youtube, featured by Haaretz newspaper, have embarrassed the IDF and brought threats of disciplinary action against the soldiers who shared the video, "Batallion 50 Rock the Hebron Casbah". Half a dozen dancing Nahal Brigade soldiers, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, patrol as a Muslim call to prayer is heard. Then the music changes and they break into a Macarena-like dance. Not a pretty sight.

The Promised Land's Unfulfilled Promises

2010-06-17T09:20:00.001+03:00

It truly is a miracle that Israel exists. If you think of the events, the ingredients that came together to make it happen it is a phenomenon without precedent – a nation of what had been for centuries a powerless (in the collective) people.

But after creation – the paradox. The state is now in essence an unsinkable battleship. It’s as if a genie had said, “yes, I will give you your state but there will be a price. Just as you once were the eternal wanderers as individuals, so now you will be eternally under siege as a collective, though you may have any weapon you want and in any quantity. In the creation, you will gain the land, but the price is the Palestinians eternally chained to you, who will cause you to be the very thing you fled for centuries…you must become what you reviled. You will have power but you are condemned to use it oppressively.”

Can’t you almost hear it being said – what will it gain (a people) if they should gain (a land) but lose (their) immortal soul?
So Israel has a future – it exists and will exist – but at the cost of always wearing and using the iron boot? A home, but only as a prison warden, an eternal dictator to others? A home, but at the cost of always sounding the alarm? But the alarm…wasn’t that always near to Jews throughout history? And as the world moves toward multi-culturalism, Israel must by definition be exclusive and rejecting, a move backward in national development. Please tell me it is. Don’t break this heart that believes if only one thing has been learned by our species it is that all can be brothers and sisters!

So I take the opposite tack from Helen Thomas. I ask is price is too high? Come be my neighbor along with so many Jews who have full freedom to worship or not, to wear the attire they wish, to speak the language they want in a country that, though it will always have its troglodytes, also has an overwhelming majority who do not wish their neighbors ill and, most important, a young generation of all cultural backgrounds that is fiery in its defense of multi-culturalism.

If you say no then I see only one way off the battleship and that is to make the country essential to those around it, a vital dynamo for the region. But this can’t happen without risk and that risk requires backing off from being the nation that pre-empts, the nation that decides for other countries what they may or may not be allowed to have, the nation that must guide the legislators of a powerful nation to keep funds and arms flowing to it.

The state exists. The helpless are no longer. But the meek, the trusting, those who were abused and killed for being that way…now become those who are first to defy, first to slap the face of the other, first to make demands, first to strike? It is the most cruel of sentences.

Is that the fulfilled promise of the promised land?

Hat tip to Clif for this comment, posted on the South Jerusalem blog in response to an odd guest post that labelled Helen Thomas as a divisive "proto-Palin", only without the looks or, presumably, the marksmanship. It's worth noting that Thomas's octogenarian sisters have risen to her defence, and spun her notorious comments to mean that she wants Israeli settlers to get out of the West Bank and go back to whence they came - Germany, Poland, America, etc. Hmmmm. Her 100-year-old brother did not weigh in on the issue. Thomas is increasingly doddery at 89 and definitely "misspoke"; consequently she went down mouth first.

Black Hats en masse swarm Jerusalem

2010-06-11T02:34:00.003+03:00

Here's an advert for a cable channel which shows how the secular Tel Aviv bubble-bubbas view their ultra-Orthodox brethren. The integration of schools seems to be a tough issue for the insular black hat sects and leads to insoluble problems in some school districts inside Jerusalem.

Update from AP:

...one of the largest protests in Jerusalem's history [was] a stark reminder of the ultra-Orthodox minority's refusal to accept the authority of the state.

Also, the throngs of devout Jews showed to which extent the ultra-Orthodox live by their own rules, some of them archaic, while wielding disproportionate power in the modern state of Israel.

Parents of European, or Ashkenazi, descent at a girls' school in the West Bank settlement of Emanuel don't want their daughters to study with schoolgirls of Mideast and North African descent, known as Sephardim.

The Ashkenazi parents insist they aren't racist, but want to keep the classrooms segregated, as they have been for years, arguing that the families of the Sephardi girls aren't religious enough.

Israel's Supreme Court rejected that argument, and ruled that the 43 sets of parents who have defied the integration efforts by keeping their daughters from school were to be jailed on Thursday for two weeks.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said about 100,000 people converged in downtown Jerusalem in support of the Ashkenazi parents. An additional 20,000 demonstrated in the central city of Bnei Brak. He said 10,000 police were deployed.

Most of the demonstrators were men wearing the long beards and heavy black clothing typical among ultra-Orthodox Jews. "The Supreme Court is fascist," said one poster.

Esther Bark, 50, who has seven daughters, said the issue is keeping the girls away from the temptations of the modern world. "To suddenly put them in an open-minded place is not good for them," she said.

The enormous ultra-Orthodox rally today inside Jerusalem was prefaced with this 'warden message' from the US Embassy:

A large demonstration is likely to take place this afternoon,June 17th, in the City Center and Me'a She'arim areas of Jerusalem between 2:00pm and 5:00pm. Estimates of up to 100,000 people are expected to march from Yirmiyahu, Bar Eilan, and Shvtei Yisrael and Prophet Streets toward the Israeli National Police station at the
"Russian compound" where the demonstration will take place.the city entrance.

Impartiality in the Middle East?

2010-06-11T00:55:00.004+03:00

This valedictory broadcast from Tim Franks, a Jewish BBC correspondent based in Jerusalem for the past several years, ponders how to maintain professional impartiality and deal with the expectations of co-religionists while reporting from one of the hottest and holiest places on the planet.

Click here to listen and read the script.

Genetic study sheds light on Jewish diaspora

2010-06-10T00:04:00.006+03:00

Scientists have shed light on Jewish history with an in-depth genetic study, the BBC reports today. Research shows that most contemporary Jews descended from ancient residents of the Levant

The researchers analysed genetic samples from 14 Jewish communities across the world and compared them with those from 69 non-Jewish populations.

Their study, published in Nature, revealed that most Jewish populations were "genetically closer" to each other than to their non-Jewish neighbours.

It also revealed genetic ties between globally dispersed Jews and non-Jewish populations in the Middle East.

This fits with the idea that most contemporary Jews descended from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents in the Middle Eastern region known as the Levant. It provides a trace of the Jewish diaspora.

Doron Behar from Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, Israel, led an international team of scientists in the study. He described it as a form of "genetic archaeology".

"It seems that most Jewish populations and therefore most Jewish individuals are closer to each other [at the genetic level], and closer to the Middle Eastern populations, than to their traditional host population in the diaspora," he explained.

There were exceptions to this key finding, though, as Dr Behar explained.

He said that his research revealed that Ethiopian and Indian Jewish communities were genetically closer to their neighbouring non-Jewish populations.

This may be partly because a greater degree of genetic, religious and cultural crossover took place when the Jewish communities in these areas became established.

Novel analytical techniques allowed the scientists to examine the genetic samples they took in unprecedented detail.

Dr Behar says the data from this study could aid future research into the genetic basis of diseases that are more prevalent in the Jewish population.

(map credit to Norman Einstein, creative commons)

Flotilla spoof video distributed 'in error'

2010-06-07T20:00:00.006+03:00

Uh oh - not everyone got the joke on this clip, apparently. Once nine bullet-ridden corpses were added to the mix (as well an additional half dozen activists who remain missing in action) the international press corps in Jerusalem was less than amused.
Perhaps the skit, with its 25 year old tune, should have been relegated to Jew-Tube or Saturday Night Lifeless. The Guardian newspaper's Rachel Shabi reports on the questionable video which features the vitriolic Jerusalem Post scribe Caroline Glick in a keffiyah.

The Israeli government has been forced to apologise for circulating a spoof video mocking activists aboard the Gaza flotilla, nine of who were shot dead by Israeli forces last week.

The YouTube clip, set to the tune of the 1985 charity single We Are the World, features Israelis dressed as Arabs and activists, waving weapons while singing: "We con the world, we con the people. We'll make them all believe the IDF (Israel Defence Force) is Jack the Ripper."

It continues: "There's no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the biggest bluff of all."

The Israeli government press office distributed the video link to foreign journalists at the weekend, but within hours emailed them an apology, saying it had been an error. Press office director Danny Seaman said the video did not reflect official state opinion, but in his personal capacity he thought it was "fantastic".

Government spokesman Mark Regev said the video reflected how Israelis felt about the incident. "I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny," he said. "It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it."

The clip features a group led by the Jerusalem Post's deputy managing editor Caroline Glick, wearing keffiyehs and calling themselves the Flotilla Choir. The footage is interspersed with clips from the recent Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid ship, the Mavi Marmara.

The clip has been praised in Israel, where the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot said the singers "defended Israel better than any of the experts".

But Didi Remez, an Israeli who runs the liberal-left news analysis blog Coteret, said the clip was "repulsive" and reflected how out of touch Israeli opinion was with the rest of the world. "It shows a complete lack of understanding of how the incident is being perceived abroad," he said. Award-winning Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport said the clip demonstrated prejudice against Muslims. "It's roughly done, not very sophisticated, anti-Muslim – and childish for the government to be behind such a clip," he said.

A similar press office email was sent to foreign journalists two weeks ago, recommending a gourmet restaurant and Olympic-sized swimming pool in Gaza to highlight Israel's claim there is no humanitarian crisis there. Journalists who complained the email was in poor taste were told they had "no sense of humour".

Last week, the Israel Defence Force had to issue a retraction over an audio clip it had claimed was a conversation between Israeli naval officials and people on the Mavi Marmara, in which an activist told soldiers to "go back to Auschwitz". The clip was carried by Israeli and international press, but today the army released a "clarification/correction", explaining that it had edited the footage and that it was not clear who had made the comment.

The Israeli army also backed down last week from an earlier claim that soldiers were attacked by al-Qaida "mercenaries" aboard the Gaza flotilla. An article appearing on the IDF spokesperson's website with the headline: "Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be al-Qaida mercenaries", was later changed to "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers found without identification papers," with the information about al-Qaida removed from the main article. An army spokesperson told the Guardian there was no evidence proving such a link to the terror organisation.

Further Fallout from the Bloody Gaza Raid

2010-06-07T01:24:00.011+03:00

Reserve officers from the Israeli navy have urged an outside probe of the botched flotilla raid, according to a report in Haaretz. Here's an excerpt:

Navy officers denounced the commando raid as having "ended in tragedy both at the military and diplomatic levels."

"We disagree with the widespread claims that this was the result of an intelligence rift," said the officers. "In addition, we do not accept claims that this was a 'public relations failure' and we think that the plan was doomed to failure from the beginning."

"First and foremost, we protest the fact that responsibility for the tragic results was immediately thrust onto the organizers of the flotilla," wrote the officers. "This demonstrates contempt for the responsibility that belongs principally to the hierarchy of commanders and those who approved the mission. This shows contempt for the values of professionalism, the purity of weapons and for human lives.

Meanwhile, Turkish media have published photos of commandos who were carried by activists to sick bay on the Mavi Marmara ferry after being beaten up shortly after they abseiled onto the upper deck of the Turkish-flagged vessel. The images had been deleted by IDF troops, but were later digitally retrieved by the flotilla organizers. This PR fiasco has added to the diplomatic fracas between Turkey and Israel, which seems to insist on red lighting any international probe of the incident. Apparently the commandos are bloodied, but unbowed. Blockade = Block Aid, according to Irene, an Israeli Arab aidworker who is beyond despair.

(photo of commando courtesy of IHH)

The Shadow over the bubble

2010-06-06T02:19:00.005+03:00

Author Margaret Atwood, a Canadian gentile, writes poignantly about "the situation" in Haaretz:

Recently I was in Israel. The Israelis I met could not have been more welcoming. I saw many impressive accomplishments and creative projects, and talked with many different people. The sun was shining, the waves waving, the flowers were in bloom. Tourists jogged along the beach at Tel Aviv as if everything was normal.

But… there was the Shadow. Why was everything trembling a little, like a mirage? Was it like that moment before a tsunami when the birds fly to the treetops and the animals head for the hills because they can feel it coming?

“Every morning I wake up in fear,” someone told me. “That’s just self-pity, to excuse what’s happening,” said someone else. Of course, fear and self-pity can both be real. But by “what’s happening,” they meant the Shadow.

I’d been told ahead of time that Israelis would try to cover up the Shadow, but instead they talked about it non-stop. Two minutes into any conversation, the Shadow would appear. It’s not called the Shadow, it’s called “the situation.” It haunts everything.

The Shadow is not the Palestinians. The Shadow is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, linked with Israeli’s own fears. The worse the Palestinians are treated in the name of those fears, the bigger the Shadow grows, and then the fears grow with them; and the justifications for the treatment multiply.

The attempts to shut down criticism are ominous, as is the language being used. Once you start calling other people by vermin names such as “vipers,” you imply their extermination. To name just one example, such labels were applied wholesale to the Tutsis months before the Rwanda massacre began. Studies have shown that ordinary people can be led to commit horrors if told they’ll be acting in self-defense, for “victory,” or to benefit mankind.

I’d never been to Israel before, except in the airport. Like a lot of people on the sidelines – not Jewish, not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Muslim – I hadn’t followed the “the situation” closely, though, also like most, I’d deplored the violence and wished for a happy ending for all.

Again like most, I’d avoided conversations on this subject because they swiftly became screaming matches. (Why was that? Faced with two undesirable choices, the brain – we’re told -- chooses one as less evil, pronounces it good, and demonizes the other.)

I did have some distant background. As “Egypt” at a Model U.N. in 1956, my high school’s delegation had presented the Palestinian case. Why was it fair that the Palestinians, innocent bystanders during the Holocaust, had lost their homes? To which the Model Israel replied, “You don’t want Israel to exist.” A mere decade after the Camps and the six million obliterated, such a statement was a talk-stopper.

Then I’d been hired to start a Nature program at a liberal Jewish summer camp. The people were smart, funny, inventive, idealistic. We went in a lot for World Peace and the Brotherhood of Man. I couldn’t fit this together with the Model U.N. Palestinian experience. Did these two realities nullify each other? Surely not, and surely the humane Jewish Brotherhood-of-Manners numerous in both the summer camp and in Israel itself would soon sort this conflict out in a fair way.

But they didn’t. And they haven’t. And it’s no longer 1956. The conversation has changed dramatically. I was recently attacked for accepting a cultural prize that such others as Atom Egoyan, Al Gore, Tom Stoppard, Goenawan Mohamad, and Yo-Yo Ma had previously received. This prize was decided upon, not by an instrument of Israeli state power as some would have it, but by a moderate committee within an independent foundation. This group was pitching real democracy, open dialogue, a two-state solution, and reconciliation. Nevertheless, I’ve now heard every possible negative thing about Israel – in effect, I’ve had an abrupt and searing immersion course in present-day politics. The whole experience was like learning about cooking by being thrown into the soup pot...

There are many groups in which Israelis and Palestinians work together on issues of common interest, and these show what a positive future might hold; but until the structural problem is fixed and Palestine has its own “legitimized” state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.

“We know what we have to do, to fix it,” said many Israelis. “We need to get beyond Us and Them, to We,” said a Palestinian. This is the hopeful path. For Israelis and Palestinians both, the region itself is what’s now being threatened, as the globe heats up and water vanishes. Two traumas create neither erasure nor invalidation: both are real. And a catastrophe for one would also be a catastrophe for the other.

See the entire article here

IDF colonel says remaining flotilla boats 'Sabatoged'

2010-06-04T02:21:00.004+03:00

Guest post by Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement, filing from Cyprus.

On Tuesday, Colonel Itzik Tourgeman told the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that two more ships are on their way to try and break the naval blockade of Gaza. The head of research in the operations division said, "The ships have not reached their target as of today because covert action was taken against them."
We had suspicions about our two boats, Challenger 1 and 2 and their mechanical problems as they sailed toward the flotilla, but we were not going to say anything unless we could prove it. Turns out we didn't have to prove it. Israeli mouthpieces did.

The Guardian ran a piece the same day, saying,

Israel gave strong indications today that its forces had secretly sabotaged some of the ships bound for Gaza as part of the freedom flotilla.

Matan Vilnai, the deputy defence minister, was asked on Israel Radio whether there had not been a smarter alternative to direct assault. He answered that "all possibilities had been considered," adding: "The fact is that there were less than the 10 ships that were due to participate in the flotilla."

An unnamed Israeli Defence Force source who briefed the Knesset's foreign affairs and defence committee on the widely criticised armed interception of the flotilla at sea, also spoke of "grey operations" being mounted against the flotilla."

We were lucky that our two captains were superbly trained and able to offload the passengers safely.So we are going to make sure the Rachel Corrie is well protected and that Israel is put on notice that anything that happens to her, the passengers and the crew will rest with Israel. As a result of these threats, we're going to pull Rachel Corrie into a port, add more high-profile people on board, and insist that journalists from around the world also come with us.

And sabotage happens with more than deeds. It also happens with words. In today's Haaretz, Barak Ravid reported,

"A diplomatic solution seems imminent to allow the humanitarian aid vessel the Rachel Corrie to dock without incident at the Ashdod Port. According to European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials in Jerusalem, quiet messages have been exchanged over the past few days between Israel and the group operating the ship, to allow it to dock."

This, too, is sabotage in writing. We called Haaretz and the reporter. He did not return our call.We have no intention nor would we ever have any intention of ever docking in Ashdod.

American teen among Flotilla Dead

2010-06-03T21:20:00.012+03:00

According to the BBC, quoting Turkish media, the peace activists slain on the flotilla by IDF commandos include a 19-year-old dual citizen, who held both American and Turkish passports. The teenager Furkan Dogan was struck by four bullets in the head and one in the chest. All nine flotilla casualties were buried in Turkey - one in the capital, and the rest around the country.

The mood of the funeral crowds echoed remarks made by the Turkish president, who said that an irreparable and deep scar had been left in Turkey's relations with Israel.
The Israelis and their botched raid in international waters were denounced repeatedly.

The bodies arrived, along with the 450 activists, in three aircraft chartered by the Turkish government at Istanbul airport in the early hours of Thursday, after several hours of delays.Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc accused Israel of "piracy" and "barbarism and oppression". Mr Arinc said his government saluted the Turkish Islamic charity, the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), which played a leading role in organising the convoy - a charity Israel has accused of supporting terrorism.

What an avoidable blunder on all sides. Time for a rethink. As far as an independent investigation into the flotilla incident, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is adamant that the government conduct its own, but he might allows "foreign observers" to join the Israeli probe for "transparency". The fact that the illegal boarding occurred outside of Israel has not seemed to have registered.

Meanwhile, another blockade-busting ship, the MV Rachel Corrie, is heading towards Gaza with 15 activists on board and is expected to reach there on Saturday... presumably unless it is blocked by Israel. (One hopes the chopper gambit won't be reattempted.) One hopes that it lands in Egypt and the humanitarian goods are transported through Rafah. Watch this space!

Israeli Physicians Group Weighs in on Medical Aftermath of the Flotilla Raid

2010-06-02T19:58:00.004+03:00

Gila Norich, from the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is outraged by the Gaza Flotilla incident and its medical aftermath. She sent Israelity Bites this email this morning:

Waking up to Monday's events was disheartening and shocking, to say the least. Throughout the ordeal, Physicians for Human Rights- Israel has remained in constant contact with senior physicians to try and find out the status of injured and deceased victims evacuated to Israeli medical centers. Despite our efforts to help individuals from all over the world who turned to us to help locate their loved ones, it was extremely difficult on Monday and Tuesday to receive official information from Israeli hospitals. Neither PHR-Israel staff, nor affiliated physicians were allowed into hospitals to gather testimony.

As a result of the lingering uncertainty, by Monday afternoon we issued an urgent letter to the Director of Medicine of the Israeli Ministry of Health and the Director General of the Foreign Ministry asking them to set up an emergency hotline for the families of the injured and deceased. We also asked authorities to set up an emergency mechanism accessible to all the families of injured persons, especially those from countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel. In Monday's waning afternoon hours, we submitted together with Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and the Public Committee against Torture (PCATI) a Habeas Corpus petition to the High Court of Justice, demanding information about the health and whereabouts of hospitalized passengers.

As a result of our petition, a list has been provided to Adalah with the names of hospitalized Flotilla passengers. Even with this list, it's still not possible to identify all of the passengers; authorities provided names in Hebrew and did not include ID numbers or countries of origin.

Yesterday morning, the Ministry of Health informed us that 54 Flotilla passengers had been admitted to Israeli hospitals Sheba, Hadassah Ein Kerem, Rambam, Beilinson, and Barzilai and that surgeries had been/were being conducted at Sheba and at Rambam Hospitals. Last night, we received word that several patients were transferred from Beilinson Hospital to the medical facilities of the Israeli Prisons Service. In addition, according to information we've received, passengers have been made to sign off on deportation orders written in Hebrew, without understanding what they are being asked to sign.

As things stands today, we have yet to receive word from health officials regarding the establishment of an emergency hotline. We know that at least 31 flotilla passengers are still hospitalized, as well as 3 Israeli soldiers. We know that representatives from certain diplomatic missions visited hospitals both on Monday and Tuesday and that information on foreign nationals from countries without diplomatic ties with Israel is being coordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Since several individuals have undergone intensive care procedures, we feel it is crucial that families be able to reach their loved ones. For this reason, we've sent another urgent request to government officials demanding that families be notified of the medical status of their loved ones. In addition, yesterday we coordinated visits between lawyers and hospitalized Flotilla passengers at the Orthopedics Unit at Beilinson Hospital.

We believe that the violence and its tragic consequences necessitate an independent, international investigation. The Israeli government should publicize all documentation of the events, including materials that have been seized from passengers. Furthermore, as Israeli citizens, we call for the establishment of a National Commission of Inquiry to look into the decisions leading up to the events and for State actors take responsibility for their decisions.

Israel's decision to stop the Free Gaza Flotilla is further evidence of its ongoing control over the Gaza Strip. For the past three years, Israel has imposed a harsh and illegal blockade against the civilian population in Gaza amounting to collective punishment for political gain. This blockade includes limitations on the right to health, education, human and economic development, as well as a chronic dependence on foreign aid. These combined factors force the Gaza population to live their lives on the brink of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Through these actions, Israel violates the right of Palestinians to live in dignity, security, and freedom, and steers us further away from the possibility of a just and peaceful solution.
We look forward to providing additional updates in the coming days and appreciate your support.

Israeli spin vs eyewitnesses: conflicting accounts of the bloody raid on high seas

2010-06-01T20:14:00.009+03:00

This map, above, shows where the IDF intercepted the flotilla and the violence unfolded. Even the staid Financial Times has branded the aggression as piracy.

The Israeli censors are not yet allowing release of the names of the activists killed, though there are at least four Turks among them, according to Turkish authorities. In its usual wrap-up propaganda blitz following an aggressive act of "self-defence" which the world sees as disproportionate, the IDF have shown a photo of weapons supposedly found aboard the Turkish ferry. One of the IDF's volunteer cyber trolls already mentioned this in a comment posted on Israelity Bites soon after the photo became available. [That's you, "at the edge"]

The Guardian newspaper interviewed a Turkish survivor who hid with her baby in the toilet of the Turkish passenger ship Mavi Marmara and after the raid was deported to Istanbul, though all her belongings and anything like cell phone or camera which might be used as evidence were first confiscated by the IDF. She said that live bullets were first fired by the Israeli troops. The BBC is highlighting inconsistencies in the version of the raid released to the public by military spokesmen inside Israel, and say that German eyewitnesses cast doubt on the veracity. With no access to hospitalized or imprisoned activists in Israel, reporters are at a disadvantage to learn independently what happened. Aboard the Mavi Marmara was an octogenarian former US Ambassador, whose wife has not been able to reach him yet.

It is worth pointing out that five of nine previous aid flotillas had been allowed into Gaza, under Olmert. The present prime minister Bibi Netanyahu, brother of a celebrated Entebbe raider, plays hardball and must long for the past era when Israel's "surgical" military wizardry was admired around the world. Apparently, another two aid ships are attempting to run the blockade.

Israelis don snorkels to show support for commandos in botched flotilla raid

2010-06-01T10:38:00.003+03:00

Israelis wearing snorkels attend a demonstration in support of Israel following a deadly raid by Israel's navy on an aid flotilla bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip, outside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, May 31, 2010. (Hat tip to the BBC)

Gaza Aid Flotilla fired on by commandos, at least ten dead, many wounded

2010-05-31T10:07:00.021+03:00

More than 10 people have been killed after Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army says. [The deaths now number 15, later reports said; official death toll is 9. Names need to be released.]

Armed forces boarded the vessels overnight, clashing with some of the 600 protesters on board.

The exact location of the interception is unclear. Israel had warned the ships not to enter its territorial waters.

The ships are carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid to try to break a long-standing Israeli-led blockade.

Israel says its forces were attacked by activists when they got on board. Tweeters aboard the ships indicated that the troops were dropped by chopper and started firing as soon as their feet hit the decks -- including at sleeping activists.

Read more on the BBC. Video footage available; Turks are stoning the Israeli consulate in Istanbul in protest against the attack on civilian activists, who included an 85 year old Holocaust survivor and Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, the 1976 Nobel Peace laureate from Northern Ireland. Most of the dead are reported to be from Turkey.

Addendum: Death count has risen now to 15, and 41 people were treated in hospital for wounds. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after expressing his "full backing" for the raid, has returned to Israel and skipped a Washington meeting with US president Barack Obama, according to latest reports. Surviving activists deny that the sleeping activists had clubbed or knifed the raiding commandoes; speculation is that friendly fire amongst the Israeli forces may have set off the fighting. Six Israeli soldiers were injured during the botched raid. Unlike previous flotillas, this one had included people aboard who Israel identified as Hamas and pro-Al Qaeda. The attack happened in international waters - 60 miles offshore. See NY Times piece here and (rather tentative) Foreign Policy analysis here. Because Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli-Arab, is rumored to be among the casualties, analysts fear the incident may "lead to a third intifada." Organizers of the peace flotilla included Muslim Brotherhood volunteers, which alarmed some observers and irritated others. See this blogpost from Jacky Rowland, about the Monty Pyythonesque quality of the event--at least until the big guns came out.
And here's an odd report from a hack imbedded with the Israeli commandos, who reports that the naval commandoes had pistols and paint-ball rifles for sidearms, expecting "activists like at Bilin; instead, they got Bangkok!" Compare it with this file on Truthout. Will we ever know the answers?

Short-range Guided Missiles for Israel - Obama's $200m sop to Likud

2010-05-14T20:07:00.008+03:00

An advanced guided missile program, called the Iron Dome (a natural follow-up to Operation Cast Lead?), has passed all tests and will be installed later this year with US military aid. President Obama is pressing congress to come up with the extra funding. These short-range missiles will defend against assaults from Gaza and southern Lebanon, according to a BBC report. A U.S. State Department figures show that direct military aid to Israel was $2.55bn in 2009. This is set to increase to $3.15bn in 2018, which does not indicate much trust in the ongoing Middle East Peace Process. Analysts say Washington may be acting now to ease the recent tensions in its relations with Israel.

Pop goes the Wiesel - 'letter to Obama' disputed by 100 Jerusalemites

2010-05-12T21:33:00.005+03:00

Not all Jerusalemites agree with the confrontational tactics of settlers and have come out against the sentiments of Elie Wiesel, expressed in a full page ad "letter to Obama" that extolled a united Jerusalem. A hundred well-heeled Israeli Jews published their own open letter. An excerpt:

"Our Jerusalem is populated with people, young and old, women and men, who wish their city to be a symbol of dignity – not of hubris, inequality and discrimination. You speak of the celestial Jerusalem; we live in the earthly one."

Veteran correspondent Chris McGreal of the Guardian reports here. Renowned for comparing Israeli policies to Apartheid in South Africa, where he was formerly based, the journalist takes an even-handed look at the latest Jerusalem controversy.
Hat tip to the Beeb for the photo of a Jerusalem Day matron who is so mistrustful that she hides her face during a gathering in the eastern part of the city.

How Will Disclosing Whether Coriander Is or Isn't Allowed into the Gaza Strip Harm Israel's National Security?

2010-05-06T18:57:00.006+03:00

· In a court submission, the State of Israel admits that, contrary to its previous claims, it does indeed possess documents related to its policy on the transfer of goods into the Gaza Strip, including a list of "permitted" goods.
· However, the State claims for the first time that it can not reveal the documents, out of concern that allowing the public to review them would harm Israel's national security and foreign relations.
· Israel admits the existence of a "Red Lines" document that establishes the minimum nutritional requirements for residents of Gaza, but refuses to reveal it.

After 12 months of unsuccessful attempts by Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of Movement to obtain documentation from the Israeli authorities about Israel's policy concerning the entry of food and other goods into the Gaza Strip, and after claiming for many months that no such documents exist, Israel has finally admitted that it does indeed possess the information requested by Gisha, including a list of goods whose admission into the Gaza Strip is permitted. Following a petition submitted by Gisha under the Freedom of Information Act, and as a result of the Tel Aviv District Court's rejection of the State's claim that it had already provided all relevant information, the State last week submitted its response to the court. In this response the State apologized for "inaccurate statements made to the court", that it claimed were the result of a misunderstanding and admitted to the existence of four primary documents. Following this admission, however, the State refused to disclose the contents of the documents. It argued that, despite not previously raising such an objection, disclosure of the documents "…would harm national security and foreign relations". Gisha today filed its response to the court.

The documents whose existence the State now confirms are: (1) "The procedure for admitting goods into the Gaza Strip," which regulates the processing of requests for transfer of goods to Gaza and updates of the list of products allowed into the Gaza Strip, (2) "The procedure for monitoring and assessing supply in the Gaza Strip" a document which regulates the monitoring of the level of supply of goods in Gaza to prevent shortages, (3) "A list of humanitarian products approved for admission into the Gaza Strip" which outlines the products which may be transferred to Gaza, and (4) a presentation called "Food Needs in Gaza – Red Lines," a document that reportedly establishes the minimal nutritional requirements for the subsistence of the residents of the Gaza Strip. This document purportedly contains detailed tables of the number of grams and calories of each kind of food each resident should be permitted to consume, broken down by age and sex, apparently in order to establish a minimal threshold for restrictions on the admission of goods.

Regarding the first three documents, the State relied on an exception in the Freedom of Information Act to argue that it is concerned that harm would be done to Israel's national security or its foreign relations if these working documents are revealed. The State refused to explain why revealing the documents would harm national security, arguing that the facts and reasons are so confidential that it could only present them to the court on an ex parte basis, i.e. in a closed hearing without the presence of Gisha's lawyers. In relation to the "Red Lines" document, the State argued that it is not required to disclose it under the Freedom of Information Act because it is a draft document that does not serve as the basis for policy. However, this argument does not provide an answer to the question of how Israel manages to "provide effective warning of expected shortages" of goods in Gaza while continuing to insist that there is no working document that defines the minimum required quantities?

"It is not clear why Israel, instead of promoting transparency, chooses to invest so many resources in the attempt to conceal information", said Adv. Tamar Feldman of Gisha, who wrote the petition. "How is the disclosure that Israel forbids the entry of sage and ginger, yet allows in cinnamon, related to security needs? It is also hard to imagine how disclosing this information would harm Israel's foreign relations, unless the State is equating fear of harm to Israel's image with fear of harm to its foreign relations".

In the petition submitted by Gisha, the Ministry of Defense and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories were asked to answer very basic questions about Israel's policy concerning the entry of food and other vital goods into the Gaza Strip, a policy that is shrouded in thick haze that obscures the State's procedures. So, for example, it is not clear why Israel refuses to allow into Gaza products such as cans, which would allow farmers in Gaza to preserve and market their tomatoes, yet permits the transfer of packaged tomato paste manufactured in Israel. Nor is it clear how the decision to ban the import of other raw materials for industry such as industrial salt or large blocks of margarine are related to the security needs which are supposed to inform the policy for the crossings into the Gaza Strip.

For a partial list of the permitted and prohibited goods, click on the Gisha website.

For the position paper about the haze surrounding the transfer of goods into the Gaza Strip, click here.

Hat tip to Sari Bashi and her tireless advocacy team at Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, for this timely post about obstruction and obfuscation.