Settlement spook 'outed' in US Newspaper

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.

Bloodbath in "Hell Aviv" Gay Club caused by lone gunman clad in black

Hot or Not.




Being gay wasn't an option for us, comments Paul Bentley, in shock after learning that two people were killed in a gay Tel Aviv teen club and at least 11 more wounded by a masked gunman spraying bullets around the room from his automatic pistol. Police said the bloody incident was more likely criminal activity, not a terror attack. [Translation: no Arab involvement.] The city is reeling.

Israeli friends of mine are horrified by Saturday's shooting. They thought their country had come further than this. One of them is disappointed because after urging British non-Jewish friends to visit Tel Aviv for years, now he knows they won't.

But they forget where Tel Aviv is – just half an hour by car from Gaza and 20 minutes away from Bnei Brak, one of the most ultra-orthodox areas in Israel. There is a bus you can get from the beach in Tel Aviv to Bnei Brak. The journey begins with string bikinis and boys in tight shorts. Half an hour later the bus is full of long skirts and black hats. And the genders are segregated; men at the front, women at the back.

Five years ago, I spent four months of my gap year studying Talmud at a biblical college in Maalot Daphna, an ultra-orthodox area of Jerusalem. The Rabbis at the college were kind but their views were entrenched. We argued about the role of women and the dangers of assimilating with non-Jews but we never discussed homosexuality. It wasn't an option for us to be gay so there wasn't anything to talk about. I hadn't yet come out as gay and there was no way I was going to declare my abominable secret.

Nothing illustrates the ideological divide in Israel between dati'im and chilonim – the orthodox and secular – better than the difference in attitudes of people in the country's two largest cities, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv – or "Hell Aviv" as my Talmud teachers called it.

Guest commentator, crossposted from The Independent of London. Meanwhile, the Independent's correspondent Ben Lynfield adds:

Leaders of Shas, a party that has depicted homosexuality as blasphemy evoking divine retribution, condemned the attack but stressed that the motives were unclear.

Conditions for gay Israelis have improved in many ways over recent years. Gay couples es have been recognised by the courts, gay soldiers serve openly in the military and openly gay musicians and actors are among the country's most popular. Rainbow flags are often seen flying from apartment windows in Tel Aviv. Mr Tsror, the league spokesman, said that the number of Israelis coming out has been on the increase in recent years.

But accompanying this has been an incitement to violence. Last year, a lawmaker from Shas declared in parliament that earthquakes were divine punishment for homosexual activity. Earlier, another MP from the same party said that a homosexual is "worse than a beast". In 2005, an ultra-orthodox youth stabbed three people at a gay pride parade in Jerusalem. In May this year, a group of youths attacked a man during a gay pride parade in the southern city of Eilat.