Messing around with a Jewish Housemaid

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.

Spies and Lies, 60 years later

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

Is this monstrosity gonna come down? Wall-eyed Shabak chief drops hints

There's no pressing security reason for completing the pricey and famously hideous separation barrier, begun in 2002 in the midst of the 2nd Intifada, at least according to the Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin (quoted by BBC reporters.) Most Israelis however credit it with stopping the rash of suicide bombers. Palestinians have viewed it as a means to grab land , having little to do with public safety.

But be aware that the secret police chief is hardly urging "Mr Netanyahu, tear down this wall!" Uh-uh.
Because 90 per cent of this barrier was built on West Bank property and serves to protect Israeli settlers on occupied land, the Hague ruled it to be against international law. Pope B-16 used it as a backdrop in Bethlehem. And now even the Shin Bet say they have other, better ways to stop potential terrorists. Like Operation Cast Lead, I presume. And being alert for Facebook fiends.

Watch this space. Israelity bites

Al-Qaeda in Jerusalem? Alarming arrests

Hebrew U seems a highly unlikely campus for an Al-Qaeda cell, but apparently the Shin Bet security swooped in and arrested half a dozen Arab students there who allegedly were surfing Al-Q linked websites and uploading cell-phone snaps of the landing pad where President Bush's chopper was supposed to touch down earlier this year. Other charges are that these Islamic radicals were setting up a Jerusalem-based Al Qaeda cell and the vague "attempts to solicit for a terrorist group." Could these bored guys have just been messaging and macho-posturing online?
Is joking about shooting down President Bush's helicopter punishable by rendition and an open-ended stint in Gitmo?

According to Ynet news, the suspects are:

Ibrahim Nashef, 22, of Tayibe, a physics and computer sciences student at the Hebrew University; Muhammas Najem, 24, of Nazareth, a chemistry student at the Hebrew University; Yusef Sumarin, 21, of the Jerusalem village of Beit Hanina; Anas Shawiki, 21, of the Jerusalem town of Jabel Mukaber; Kamal Abu Kwaider, 22, of Jerusalem's Old City; and Ahmed Shawiki, 21, of the Jerusalem town of Shuafat.

All the suspects were charged with membership in a terror organization. Some of them will be tried for aiding the enemy at a time of war, possessing propaganda material in favor of a terror organization, soliciting and attempting to solicit others to join a terror organization.

According to the indictments filed against them Friday, the six used to meet at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

It's a bit alarming how scanty the evidence seems to be for these recent arrests. A gag order was lifted today, and little is known except for what the security agency has press-released. One wonders if this is just a belts-and-braces overkill in the run-up to candidat Barack Obama's visit next week. There is no indication of any funding from Saudi or the Gulf for these students. So the extent of vague "Al-Qaeda links" are a mystery. Is it the Islamic connection? Card-carrying al-Qaeda do not exist. And although a couple of anti-Western thugs in Gaza have blown up internet cafes and Christian bookshops, so far there has not been a single direct link between Palestinians and the feared urban Jihadis who once trained in in Afghanistan. (Best to keep it that way, I agree.)
There were also a couple of Bedouin boys who were picked up last month for allegedly pointing out online some high-value targets such as the Tel Aviv international airport and the swanky Azrieli cylinder, triangle, and square high rises downtown (knowledge which was not exactly top-secret.)

Frankly, these round-ups smack of thought police. One of the most heartening aspects of life in Israel is its lively free-ranging discussions, but this freedom apparently does not extend to Arab Israelis or Palestinian residents in Jerusalem.
Israelity bites.

From Triumph to Torture

Israel's treatment of an award-winning young Palestinian journalist is part of a terrible pattern, writes John Pilger in the Guardian.

Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Awarded in memory of the great US war correspondent, the prize goes to journalists who expose establishment propaganda, or "official drivel", as Gellhorn called it. Mohammed shares the prize of £5,000 with Dahr Jamail. At 24, he is the youngest winner. His citation reads: "Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless." The eldest of eight, Mohammed has seen most of his siblings killed or wounded or maimed. An Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while the family were inside, seriously injuring his mother. And yet, says a former Dutch ambassador, Jan Wijenberg, "he is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel".

Getting Mohammed to London to receive his prize was a major diplomatic operation. Israel has perfidious control over Gaza's borders, and only with a Dutch embassy escort was he allowed out. Last Thursday, on his return journey, he was met at the Allenby Bridge crossing (to Jordan) by a Dutch official, who waited outside the Israeli building, unaware Mohammed had been seized by Shin Bet, Israel's infamous security organisation. Mohammed was told to turn off his mobile and remove the battery. He asked if he could call his embassy escort and was told forcefully he could not. A man stood over his luggage, picking through his documents. "Where's the money?" he demanded. Mohammed produced some US dollars. "Where is the English pound you have?"

"I realised," said Mohammed, "he was after the award stipend for the Martha Gellhorn prize. I told him I didn't have it with me. 'You are lying', he said. I was now surrounded by eight Shin Bet officers, all armed. The man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: 'Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.' He said, 'This is nothing compared with what you will see now.' He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said, 'Why are you bringing perfumes?' I replied, 'They are gifts for the people I love'. He said, 'Oh, do you have love in your culture?'

"As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror."

An ambulance was called and told to take Mohammed to a hospital, but only after he had signed a statement indemnifying the Israelis from his suffering in their custody. The Palestinian medic refused, courageously, and said he would contact the Dutch embassy escort. Alarmed, the Israelis let the ambulance go. The Israeli response has been the familiar line that Mohammed was "suspected" of smuggling and "lost his balance" during a "fair" interrogation, Reuters reported yesterday.

Israeli human rights groups have documented the routine torture of Palestinians by Shin Bet agents with "beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation". Amnesty has long reported the widespread use of torture by Israel, whose victims emerge as mere shadows of their former selves. Some never return. Israel is high in an international league table for its murder of journalists, especially Palestinian journalists, who receive barely a fraction of the kind of coverage given to the BBC's Alan Johnston.

The Dutch government says it is shocked by Mohammed Omer's treatment. The former ambassador Jan Wijenberg said: "This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life ... I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future."

While Mohammed was receiving his prize in London, the new Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Proser, was publicly complaining that many Britons no longer appreciated the uniqueness of Israel's democracy. Perhaps they do now.

If you want to sign a petition in protest of this treatment, follow this link.

On Omer's popular blog, called Rafah Today, you can see a message he managed to send to the webmaster on June 24:

"I am stuck in Jordan and Israel is not allowing me to get back home. this is frustrating. I am not sure what will happen. this is frustrating for me."

(cross posted from Feral Beast)

Spy or die! Shin Bet seeks ailing informers

Israeli group Physicians for Human Rights alleges that since last June — when Hamas took control of Gaza from its Fatah rivals loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas — at least 30 other patients seeking urgent medical help were denied passage by Shin Bet because they refused to act as informers. In the past, most collaborators worked from within Fatah, and when they were chased from Gaza last June, it was a blow to Israeli intelligence..."This violates all conventions against torture," says Miri Weingarten, spokeswoman for the Tel Aviv-based Physicians for Human Rights. Israeli authorities deny carrying out such practices at Erez and dismiss them as Palestinian propaganda.

According to Time Magazine reporters, who interviewed several patients who claim to have been denied urgent medical care by intelligence agents at the border, dozens of Gazans have been pressured to spy since last summer's coup by Hamas. If these accusations are true, this deplorable practice should be re-examined and an investigation launched.

Hamas and Israel seek each other's destruction, and the devastated landscape of blasted-out buildings and shell craters around Erez bears the scars of this conflict. As one Erez security official says: "We're the last line of defense against the suicide bomber coming into Israel."

Israelity bites.

Shin Bet's snoop blog & cybergeography

Approved official blogging arouses Izzy's suspicions. When the intelligence corps enters into the cybersphere so openly, is the goal recruitment or disinformation? If you log on or register, will your computer get tapped? Paranoid, some would brand me, but this cyber-spy enterprise, with its glamourous mock silhouettes, feels bogus. Shin Bet is the Israeli equivalent of the FBI or MI5. Its motto is "מגן ולא יראה", which translates as "Defender (Shield) who shall not be seen". But apparently it wants to be heard in cyberspace, a place where screams are routine. The BBC blogger, Tim Franks, is quite intrigued with Agent Aleph's Hebrew-blogging quartet.

Shin Bet says Israelis are keen to learn more about their life.
The Israeli secret service has launched a new venture: it has started to carry an internet diary, or blog, written by four of its agents.

The agents discuss how they were recruited, and what sort of work they perform; they also answer questions sent in by members of the public.

The tone of the blog is chatty, at times even facetious.
The agents from Israel's internal security service, the Shin Bet, are shown in silhouette.

Agent Chet is the sole woman among them. She works in hi-tech.
She says she went to the agency because it offered her a better "work-life balance" than her previous job in the private sector.

There are parts of her job, she says, which she can't discuss even with her husband - but then again, at home, they don't much like talking about work.
Agent Aleph, dubbed "the expert" on the blog, attempts to debunk a few myths.

"We don't work in a basement," he says. "We don't spend the day wearing earpieces."
"And we don't get to have flashing blue lights for our cars. We have to sit in traffic jams like everyone else."

The blogs are intended to draw members of the public into other areas of the Shin Bet website - in particular the recruitment section.Some of the positions are advertised with a red star and the slogan "hot job".There is the opportunity to work on what are described as "irregular missions"; to work on one's own; and to acquire a variety of "special skills".

A Shin Bet official told the BBC that the idea was to inform the public that the agency offers work beyond just stopping Palestinian paramilitary attacks.

The official said that the agency had been cheered by the feedback from members of the Israeli public - keen to find out more about the jobs within Shin Bet, the pay and even the food.

Meanwhile, over on Facebook, Israeli settlers have questioned and expanded the computer's automatic listing program. Their demands that the social networking website list them as residents of Israel, even though they might physically be deep in the West Bank, have been met. There is no such country as Palestine, the settlers pointed out in a coordinated email campaign. Previously, Facebook automatically tagged all Jerusalem residents as living in Israel; now, alerted to political sensitivities, Facebook friends have the option of listing Israel or Palestine as the homeland in cyberspace. Online battles over cyber-turf have been underway for quite awhile. Advocacy websites routinely orchestrate corrective comments campaigns and many target Jihadist or anti-Semitic websites and blogs. And vice versa.

Here's a sample of this cyber-groundwork from the Israel Project:

The glorification of terrorists and terror activity is rampant throughout the World Wide Web. All major terrorist organizations maintain modern Web sites, where they proudly communicate the details of their attacks against civilians. Facebook groups are dedicated to lauding the mass murderers of Yeshiva students or glorifying Hassan Nasrallah. The leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which fought a war in July 2006, has 3,315 members in his Facebook group.

Iran-backed terrorist groups such Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah publish their own sites, many of which link back to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which provides hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to the groups, as well as weapons and terrorist training.

The terrorist groups’ Web sites are: Hamas’s Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades,Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah

The Israel Project Founder and President Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi insists, “Facebook should be a safe space for people to network, not a recruitment and glorification tool for terrorists. It is sad and cynical that there are those who are using a site geared to connecting young people around the world to celebrate the murder of young people in a school.”

Interestingly, Israel Project has its own Facebook group as "part of its efforts to work for peace." They also provide chopper tours of eretz Israel for incoming foreign correspondents.

Avi Dichter stays put in Israel after war crimes arrest threat in London

Whew. A senior Israeli minister declined an invitation to visit Britain because of fears he could have been arrested on war crimes charges arising from the "targeted assassination" of a top Hamas military commander five years ago. It was hardly a surgical strike, because the powerful bomb dropped on his house killed over a dozen Palestinian civilians. A veteran spook, Dichter heeded the intel reports and stayed clear of the counter-terrorism seminar in Londonistan to spend a happy hanukkah at home.

According to Don Macintyre of the Independent,

the Israeli foreign ministry advised Avi Dichter, the Public Security minister, that what it described as an "extreme leftist" group was likely to file a legal complaint about the July 2002 bombing attack in Gaza on Saleh Shehadah which killed at least 13 civilians.

Mr Dichter, who had been due to speak at a seminar in King's College London, was at the time head of the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, which helped to plan the attack. The bombing, which was internationally criticized – including by the US – because of the civilian loss of life, was described after an internal Israeli investigation as a "mistake".

While Mr Dichter is the first minister to have cancelled a trip for such reasons, the official advice to him followed other cases in which senior generals have refrained from visiting Britain because of similar fears of private legal actions leading to the issue of an arrest warrant.

Asked about the Shehadah bombing before he entered politics, Mr Dichter said it had never been intended to kill civilians and insisted that several previous attempts on the life of the Hamas leader were postponed because of intelligence that "he was surrounded by innocent people". In the event the victims included Mr Shehadah's wife and three children.

Dichter, a longtime supporter of assassinating terrorist leaders and erecting the security barrier to stymie suicide bombers, opposed Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan. When he finished his stint as Shabak leader, Dichter was courted by the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington, where he stayed three months, before returning to the Promised Land.

Teenage Bride nabbed as bomber-to-be

Among yesterday's terror arrests was a teenage bomber-bride from Nablus, who was picked up at dawn with six others in a raid on her West Bank refugee camp. The story of this potential "femme fatale" from Palestine is troubling. She may have been trying to escape a dismal arranged marriage by pretending to be a terrorist. This morose wanna-be martyr could hardly be called feisty or drop-dead gorgeous. From all indications, the girl's preference would be to curl up and die.

Newlywed Najwa Hashash, just 19, despaired of married life with her increasingly feeble bridegroom. The honeymoon was definitely over, because the teenager was required to do the chores of a nurse and orderly along with the housework in cramped quarters. She was desperate to find a way out. Her husband, much older, had little chance of recovering from his debilitating illness according to this article in Ynet. Najwa was arrested yesterday by IDF paratroopers, after rumours circulated during the past three weeks that she planned to strap on an explosive belt and cross the closest checkpoint. Earlier, she'd been detained by the Palestinian Authority and released after questioning. Apparently, they deemed Ms Hashash incapable of anything so hush-hush.

In fact, Najwa's neighbours inside the Balata refugee camp in Nablus suggested that the bride had the blues and spread this malicious gossip herself, hoping to be arrested and jailed as a potential suicide bomber. It was just an escape gambit which would leave her "honor" intact and spare her being murdered if she managed to run away from a bad marriage. But others reckon that a recruiter for the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades took advantage of her misery and persuaded Najwa that if she planned to end her life, she might as well take out some Israelis with her. Why not be glorified as a martyr and get a stipend for her family? (Unsurprisingly, the al-Aqsa Brigades deny any contact with her.)

The Israeli army raided West Bank houses at dawn Tuesday and hauled Najwa in along with two dozen other terror suspects in an ironic twist to Palestine's annual Prisoner Day. They'd released 500 inmates in a good will gesture the previous afternoon, although at least 7600 more-- including 362 children and 82 women-- still are in lockup inside Israel. About ten per cent are held in protective custody indefinitely, without charges against them.

The IDF is not expected to be lenient with Najwa, and there is little hope that she'll be tried quickly. They say Palestinian women are increasingly taking an active part in the conflict, including kidnaps and stabbings. Motives don't really matter. Two of five suicide bombers last year were female, and one was a grandmother. IDF and Shin Bet forces recently arrested 19 Palestinian women suspected of terror activities against Israel. Ten of these women were allegedly affiliated with Fatah and the remainder with Islamic Jihad. Violent female militants are not the only threat. Women tend to serve as messengers, and frequently carry cash for militant groups. So did Najwa accomplish her plan by getting arrested? Did the IDF thwart a deadly attack or enable an adolescent scheme to replace the lonely prison of marriage with actual jail time? Was this girl ever an actual threat?

('Suicide Barbie' blonde bombshell poster is by the conceptual artist Simon Tyszk.)