Once again, the mainstream American press is missing the story, lock stock and barrel. This not about King Bibi and his political wizardry (although he has certainly become more proficient over the years). With all due respect to Bibi – and very little is due – performing the political feats he has accomplished has become as easy as taking candy from a baby. The real story should be: how weak, compromised and downright farcical the Israeli political system has become.

Of course, when it comes to Israel and the American press, there will always be those who try put lipstick on any pig, at all costs. One fellow Krauthammer even equated last week’s “unity government” deal with Israel’s first unity government, formed in May 1967 when Israel faced a siege imposed by the mighty Nasser, leading a military coalition of 3 of its neighbors backed by the Soviet Union. So now, according to Charlie K., just like in 1967, Israel’s leaders valiantly rise above petty politics and unite for the national good in the face of lethal danger.

It’s a great text, that Krauthammer column, but none of it is true and it bears zero relation to reality. Just ask the Israeli public – they don’t buy that crap:

Haaretz poll: Israelis see Netanyahu, Mofaz motivated by political gain

Most Israelis believe the Likud-Kadima unity deal was driven by personal and political considerations rather than the national good, and few believe the new 94-MK coalition will carry out the promises its leaders made Tuesday, a Haaretz-Dialog poll has found.

Evidently, Tuesday’s lengthy press conference by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz failed to convince the public, which remains suspicious and skeptical of all their talk about national responsibility: Only a quarter of respondents said they believe the two were motivated by the good of the country.

Of course, only fools would expect anything except crass shilling from dear ol’ Krauthammer. But even respectable Israeli columnists have aggressively pushed a 2-pronged message of “nothing to see here, just move right along and be grateful for what you’ve got”. The 2 prongs are:

1. The expanded coalition (nearly 80% of the Knesset parliament) will allow Bibi to tack back from right to center, and eventually embrace bold diplomatic moves.

What a fine example of wishful thinking! Even the two clowns themselves, in their above-mentioned lengthy news conference, never promised anything of the like. Rather, they focused on the second-tier wedge issue of imposing national service on certain sectors of Israeli society. This issue, which rises periodically whenever some politician thinks s/he can squeeze some mileage out of it, is roughly the domestic-politics analogue of the gay-marriage issue here in the US.

Bibi and Mofaz also threw in some lip-service about “reforming the system of government” – a morsel that some pundits swallowed as if it was manna from heaven. I really don’t understand: aren’t pundits supposed to educate the public against stupid credulity? In the best of cases, nothing will come out of that lip-service – because I really don’t want anyone dear to me to be subject to whatever these wackos at the government cook up under the title “reforming the system of government.” The “reforms” we’ve seen so far from Bibi’s coalition, usually supported or even sponsored by members of Kadima (who were supposed to be in the opposition), included all manners of curbing opposition and civil-society activities, with wording carefully calibrated to punish only activities on the left side of the map – or new legislation gnawing away at the tattered remnants of checks-and-balances in the Israeli system. So one can only imagine, what bright ideas might emanate from these freedom-loving luminaries, when they set their sights directly on “government reform.”

The second mainstream-pundit prong to sell the deal to us is 2. There’s nothing unusual here. Major Israeli parties have repeatedly over the years, tried to lure smaller parties into or out of the coalition (the 1990 “Stinky Deal” was such a case), or even poach individual Knesset (Parliament) members off of each other.

This, at least, is a true statement. But that single nugget of truth is a fig-leaf for a swarm of fallacies and distortions. So… like countless parents and teachers before me, let me remind the Serious People of Israel that just because “everybody’s doing it”, doesn’t mean it’s ok. Poaching undermines democracy. In fact, in order to combat the phenomenon the Knesset itself enacted a law that prevents poaching of any number of MKs smaller than one-third of a faction. This has hardly solved the problem. It only turned poaching into a big-game sport: poaching complete parties.

Right after the 2006 elections, Kadima poached the “Retirees’ Party” – a highly successful fraud that managed to come out of nowhere and clean out 7 seats, by promising to fight against the system on behalf of those neglected old folks. Instead, the “Retirees’ Party” had completely dissolved itself overnight into Kadima in exchange for two government cabinets, and was never seen or heard since. Of course, in 2006 too the pundits told Israeli citizens (including some quarter-million voters who thought they were empowering a new clean anti-Establishment force) to move right along, nothing to see here.

But Bibi is the undisputed poaching champion: he has two parties and one half-party under his belt, just from this term. Which leads me to the issue of quantity, frequency and manner of poaching. Yes, Knesset members have been poached before. But never before had the largest party in the Knesset and the anchor of the parliamentary opposition been poached in the middle of the night by the government, in its entirety – without the slightest knowledge of most of that party’s leadership. Moments before being told of the deal, Kadima’s MKs were sure they were voting for dissolving the Knesset and an early election – a motion put forward by the government itself and supported by all factions. The next moment, they became part of the government.

In fact, Bibi’s current term at Israel’s helm has – start to finish – been created and sustained via stinky back-room deals with individual corrupt party heads, in flagrant contempt of their colleagues and the voters. To be precise, 3 such deals. The first 2 with Labor leader Ehud Barak (one to set up the government, one to split up the Labor Party) – and now with Mofaz. It is easy to forget, and most people have forgotten – but Bibi’s party actually came in second in the last elections, with 27 seats (out of 120) to Kadima’s 28. If it wasn’t for all those back-room deals, he’d have to settle for a power-sharing agreement with Tzipi Livni right from the start, or go to another election much earlier and under far less convenient circumstances.

There are two main lessons to be highlighted here. First, this is not how a democracy operates. If one party head can always buy off corrupt heads of other parties in shady back-room deals in order to grab power, if all that 80% of Knesset members care about is getting into the coalition, regardless of the coalition’s policies and values – then the existence of parties, parliament and elections is rendered meaningless. Even worse, the elections and party slogans become a charade that serves to hide the real machinations of power.

Frankly, it is amazing that such a statement of the obvious is even needed. But the mainstream discourse in (and about) Israel is a strange beast, and therefore you will have to search very hard to find any trace of this basic truth in the many thousands of words already spilled about the Super-Stinky Deal.

For anti-Occupation gadflies like me, the entire affair is no coincidence. It is not in the halls of Knesset that Israel’s democracy was killed, but on the ground in the Occupied Territories. Stinky Deals like this are only the inevitable icing on the cake, or the nails in the coffin (pick your metaphor!). Needless to say, such a straightforward reasoning is also laughed out of any “respectable” Israeli discourse nowadays. But here’s the beauty: the specific chain of events leading up to the apparent dissolution of the government and its resurrection via “the Deal”, has started directly from an Occupation court case, a land-robbery case in which the government has been found in contempt of court decisions. In other words, I rest my case. This also proves, that even small activist groups in the political fringe – such as Yesh Din, the Israeli human-rights NGO that helped the Palestinian land owners fight for their rights – can affect the entire national trajectory.

And the second lesson: Kadima, the largest party in the last two Knessets, a party who controlled the government in 2006-2009, has never really been a party in any meaningful sense. All along, Kadima itself has been one big “Stinky Deal”, a cruel hoax perpetrated upon the public by politicians and the media. There is no There There.

Because you see? There was a reason why it was so easy for Bibi to poach Kadima. Most of its members were simply dying to be poached. Despite their surprise to learn about the deal, they eagerly jumped on the bandwagon and approved it. Because all Kadima has ever been about, was the meeting point between a disingenuous political marketing trick, and a great shortcut for politicians to get some government jobs.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And now, the “party” was over for Kadima (lame pun intended). The pre-election polls released before the Super-Stinky Deal had forecast their mighty 28-seat faction to contract almost to single digits, and – who knows – as the campaign rolls maybe even go extinct. So it was time to join the new national sports: “Bibi, Buy Me!”

The Israeli mainstream media has a very good reason to tell citizens to move on and not pay attention. After all, they were chief collaborators in pretending that “Kadima” is a genuine political party, a party that has some sort of identity somewhere, or perhaps even a hint of a spine. But it doesn’t.

This is of course intimately tied with the first lesson. The vast majority of Kadima’s politicians have remained Likudniks in heart and soul. The entire “Kadima” thing has been a trick to lure left-of-center voters to elect those Likudniks. This is yet another way in which the Israeli political system, since late 2000, has turned into a charade and a farce, a pretense of democracy rather than the real thing.

The sad truth is, that since 2001 there has been no real mainstream opposition party in Israel. The opposition has been relegated to the fringes, mostly outside the formal political system. Since the right-wing fringe is rather close to power, and constantly plotting Armageddons – this leaves us, the anti-Occupation progressives (I count myself as a geographically remote member of that fringe) – all alone, trying to hold the whole thing together somehow.

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Here is a brief history of the land-robbery case that has almost led to the government’s downfall. I strongly recommend reading the entire account on the Yesh Din website. All quotes are from there.

The case revolves around an expansion of the Israeli Bet El settlement near Ramallah; a neighborhood called (by the developers?) “Ulpana Hill”. Ulpana is an Orthodox religious girls’ school. As settlements do, Bet El wanted to expand. The teeny problem was that a large chnuk of the expansion was onto private land still owned by Palestinians, and all the expansion was into area completely outside the municipal limits of Bet El (note: of course, any “municipal limits” decided by Israel’s government for any settlement are illegal by definition – but this neighborhood, again as is very common, was built even outside those limits).

The construction of five permanent buildings slated for evacuation on May 1, 2012 (and not the entire neighborhood) in the Jabel Artis complex, on land that belongs to residents of the Palestinian village of Dura al-Qara, began in 2006. Immediately after the construction began, the Civil Administration issued a final order to stop the work and demolish the illegal construction outside of the jurisdiction of the settlement of Beit El and without an outline plan.

Yes, a demolition order was issued. but was it carried out? Was it?

Come on, are you kidding me? This Ulpana Hill is in Bet El, and the (fraudulently named) “Civil Administration” sits all the way yonder, in…

Bet El.

Yes, the HQ of the body issuing the demolition orders sits at the vary same settlement where this brazen robbery happened under its nose – yet for years and years it couldn’t get around to demolish the buildings.

I guess the “Civil Administration” schmucks were too busy with The Arabs. You know, the daily grind of refusing all those building permit applications for Palestinian homes and structures on Palestinian-owned land, and then sending forces to demolish those “illegal Palestinian structures”.

Or perhaps they are too busy tracking down the dangerous, subversive, and of course, illegal phenomenon of Israelis, Palestinians and internationals joining forces to establish unique renewable-energy installations on Palestinian-owned land. Needless to say, demolition orders for these abominations were issued, and surely the forces, time and budget can be found to carry them out.

So pity on the poor, poor folk at the “Civil Administration”. How could they ever find the time and resources to demolish those Ulpana Hill buildings?

Meanwhile the settlers came to the rescue. First, by issuing transparently phony sale documents for the land. But even the “Civil Administration” officers could not do much with those crude forgeries:

* The purchase agreement was fictitious: “The name of the seller on the purchase documents presented is not the registered owner of the plot nor was he the registered owner in the past.” (State response to HCJ, January 2010)

* Amana knew that the “seller” was not the legal owner of the land: “We should add that the purchasing company knew the name of the seller was not identical to that entered in the land registry.” (Letter from deputy staff officer for land, February 2010)

* The seller was seven years old when the land was registered and therefore could not have been entered as its owner (Letter from deputy staff officer for land, February 2010).

Then, after a final High Court ruling in September 2011 told the “Civil Administration” to pucker up and demolish the dang things already, the settlers turned to their signature move: twisting the arm of government. And twist they did. In fact, nowadays they don’t need to go very far to do the twisting, because there are so many settlers holding government cabinet posts that I’ve stopped counting them.

So Bibi et al. started finding excuses, pretexts and distractions to avoid carrying out the demolition order. But even the newly appointed, right-wing Orthodox High Court chief has had enough, and told the government in early May in no uncertain terms that they are in contempt.

At this point, the innocent reader might wonder: WTF? Israel has nearly 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, 500,000 if one counts East Jerusalem. Give up those five idiotic buildings and get done with it. Clearly, our innocent reader does not think like a settler.

Israel’s settler lobby is the mental and political twin of America’s “Tea Party” right-wing base. They take no prisoners. They embrace no compromise. If a politician defies them, they never forgive and never forget. And Israeli politicians know that.

There is also a more cool-headed rationale for avoiding evacuation. There are hundreds, no thousands of cases like “Ulpana Hill”. True, the High Court likes to posture (i.e., actually do justice to Palestinians) on a single cherry-picked case, in order to help distract from those thousands of cases, which might be slightly less perfectly documented, or the plaintiffs received somewhat less talented legal aid, etc. In the bigger picture, as far as the Court is concerned, the settlement enterprise – despite massive evidence for its inherent land-robbery nature – is probably safe.

But from a pro-settler government’s perspective, giving in on the Ulpana Hill might still open a political and diplomatic Pandora’s Box. After all, there is very little daylight between Ulpana Hill and any other West Bank settlement. So this little case might turn out to be like the proverbial crack in the Dutch dike.

This is why the government is still trying to find ruses and excuses not to implement the demolition order.

Faced with this “Ulpana Hill” scandal, a few other settlement-evacuation no-win situations, and annoying political posturing from some coalition partners over the civil-service bill, Bibi decided to go to election. This in itself (despite some ridiculous reporting I heard on NPR) is no news. The last 7 Israeli elections in a row have been early elections. The timing, too, was perfect for Bibi – a summer campaign, helping pre-empt the revival of last summer’s massive protests. He was ahead in the polls (although not as devastatingly so as the media would have us believe), and the opposition was confused and divided.

But then the final Ulpana Hill ruling came out. Bibi faced the even less appetizing scenario of having to actually evacuate and demolish “dear Jewish families from their homes, like in the times of the Pogroms” – right in the middle of the election campaign. Last week, he was ambushed at his own Likud party assembly meeting, heckled, humiliated and hounded out by settler supporters.

Buying off the Knesset’s largest “party”, he knew, would be a piece of cake compared with facing these fanatic nutcases whom he has helped raise and nurture. In fact, Kadima leader Mofaz had already sent out feelers offering himself up for sale.

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I am leaving off writing the (very short) history of the Kadima “party”, and why it is a “party” with quotation marks and not a genuine political party, for another time. Maybe by next week it will implode anyway, and then it will be even more fun to dissect the subject.

(This is a modified and updated version of a text originally posted on Daily Kos)

Below is a story told by Sunita Staneslow on the new friendship and the start of musical cooperation between her, an Israeli harpist, and Yasmin (Ikhlas) Jebara, a young Palestinian poet and graduate student living under Occupation in the village of Salem near Nablus. In the shorter run, the connection between Sunita and Yasmin began at the Music Center in Salem, a center we have helped develop ever since the idea hatched in the mind of its founder (and current director) Jubeir Ishtayya a couple of years ago .

In the longer run, the story of Sunita and Yasmin is deeply connected with the story of our relationships with Yasmin and her family since the murder of her father almost eight years ago. This story and its dramatic twists of pain and hope, suffering and joy, despair and perseverance, and above all — friendship — is told below, after Sunita’s account, by Erella, as translated by our fellow activist Tal Haran.

Ehud Krinis, Villages Group

———————————-

The Story of Yasmin’s Harp,

Sunita Staneslow, 28th April 2012

I first met Yasmin last autumn when I visited the Salem Music Program with my harp to explore the possibility of a workshop with a visiting jazz harpist. Our guest harpist at the First Israeli Harp Festival, Park Stickney, wanted to work with Palestinian musicians during his trip. A seminar was organized for the Music Center several weeks later. It was then that Yasmin told me that she would like to learn to play the harp. She fell in love with the sound. “It sounds like water—like the sound of the sea!”

Harps can be expensive; there are no harps in Palestine (that I know of) and no teachers nearby. But, the seed was planted for Yasmin’s wish.

Park Stickney is one of the worlds’ most innovative harpists and he divides his time between New York City and Switzerland. Park is also brilliant at improvising and his workshop at the Salem Music Center started with a jam session between Park and the instructors. Park later told me that it was the best way for musicians to introduce themselves and find a common ‘language’. Yasmin was the primary translator for the class, and Park taught the kids to play a jazz tune. It was amazing to see the kids learn a classic American jazz tune using their voices, oud, violins, drums, and keyboards.

Park Stickney played on my large classical harp and we gave Yasmin a chance to sit behind the harp and glide her fingers up and down the strings. Yasmin reminded me that she would love to learn to play the harp. I told her that I would help her get a harp and teach her, not knowing how we would ever find the money to buy her a harp.

My husband, Fred Schlomka was certain that if we tapped into our mailing lists and sent out a request for contributions, we really could buy a harp for Yasmin. I am a professional harpist and tour in North America several times a year, and am part of the international harp community. Fred, through his company, Green Olive Tours, has contacts around the world of people interested in helping to bring peace and justice to the Middle East. We sent out a request with a beautiful photo of Yasmin at the harp. At first, money came in from harpists, friends and family in amounts of$15-100. The Colorado Harp Society pooled money and sent a check for $300. But, it was a couple from England who were so taken with Yasmin’s photo that they sent 11,000 shekels to buy the harp immediately. In total, over 40 people contributed towards Yasmin’s dream to learn the harp and welcomed Yasmin into the international harp family.

On Saturday, the 28th of April, I drove from Kfar Saba to meet with Ehud and other members of the Villages Group, and present Yasmin with her harp. The harp is made of wood, has 34 strings and is similar to the style of a Celtic folk harp. Several hundred years ago, there was a tradition in Ireland of blind harp players that travelled across Ireland on horseback to perform to the wealthy landlords. The most celebrated of these blind harp players was Turlough O’Carolan. Many of his beautiful melodies have become standards in the harp repertoire.

In the harp tradition, we have this connection between making beautiful music and being blind, although the modern harp is designed for those who can see the patterns made by the different colored strings. It isn’t like piano, where you feel the pattern of the notes between the different size and shape of the keys. So, for Yasmin, I glued beautiful stickers in the shape of jewels to mark the different colored strings.

There is another complication with the harp. Each string can be more than one tone, and there are levers that shorten the strings by half a step in order to change keys. Small bands were placed on the levers so Yasmin could feel the difference between them.

Our first lesson was spent learning how to make sense of how the harp is organized. Yasmin learned how to tune the harp, how to move the semi-tone levers and learn all the names of the strings. I was impressed with how quickly she understood. Her first assignment is to explore the harp and compose a short piece. She wants to play music that sounds like the sea in the key of C!

It takes me about an hour to drive from my home near Tel Aviv to Yasmin’s house in Salem. I cross through a checkpoint from Israel to the Palestinian Territories and drive alone on a road that most Israelis would never dream of driving on without an armored car. But, it would be impossible for Yasmin to get a permit from the Israeli army to take lessons in my home, so that is not an option. This is an exciting opportunity for me to ‘cross the veil’ into Palestine and develop a friendship with an amazing young woman.

I plan to teach Yasmin every other week. Together, we will work on melodies develop our own arrangements. I will teach Yasmin any melody she loves from my international repertoire, and she will teach me melodies from her tradition. This will be a musical journey that we will explore together and learn from each other. The harp is not a Middle Eastern instrument and the word for a harp in Arabic is either an adaptation of the English harp (harb) or Hebrew Nevel (nebel). Yasmin may be the first Palestinian to have a harp, and certainly the first one who is blind.

We spoke of dreams for the future when Yasmin can teach other Palestinian students to play the harp, perhaps even in the Barenboim Center in Ramallah. Someone asked her if she ever imagined that she would really get a harp. Yasmin gave us a big smile and said, “I am a very optimistic person.”

Yasmin is interested in connecting with blind harp players around the world. She may travel to the USA in September and I will try and arrange meetings for her with other harp players. Her musical journey has begun!

Sunita Staneslow

www.sunitaharp.com
Tel: +972-(0)54-212-5159
Fax: +972-(0)9-777-0020
USA fax: 800-809-7913

Yasmin

Erella Dunayevsky (Translated by Tal Haran)

I have been sitting for hours staring at the empty computer screen.

Walking the paths of this story is like pursuing a single trail that splits into many, each splitting again, like blood vessels. I know I mustn’t venture into this maze because my reader might get lost inside, and I also know that if I don’t, the blood of this story will not reach the heart of its readers.

Mid-morning. August. Hot.

Uri and I walk along a bumpy road. Holes yawn at us in spots where the asphalt is worn out and are filled with gravel and dirt and glass shards of bottles that someone may have hurled in anger.
This, more or less, is how most roads look in Salem village, 2004.

We’ve been walking the roads of this village for two years now, visiting homes and getting to know a growing number of the villagers. Every week the number of our friends grows in direct proportion to the number of victims of the Occupation’s violent hand. Every week sees more villagers who have heard of us, and get used to our presence simply because we show up, again and again – every week, almost.

Mid-morning. Saturday. October 2nd, 2004. Hot.

Uri and I climb a bumpy road. We are on our way to pay a condolence visit to the Jbara family. Abed, native of this village, our old friend, accompanies us.
Sael Jbara was murdered five days ago. He was murdered while crossing a smooth road, free of potholes. It, too, is bumpy, though. A road that discriminates. An apartheid road, as local jargon would have it.
Sael drove a cab that hardly sustained his family at times of closures and barriers. (Salem drivers could deliver their passengers only up to the many checkpoints closing in on the village and preventing their passage even to Nablus and the neighboring villages, let alone other regions in the West Bank).
Five days earlier, Sael drove passengers to Beit Furiq checkpoint, hoping that perhaps this time they would be allowed through to Beit Hassan, a village sprawled south of Salem beyond the apartheid road. The soldiers at the checkpoint would not let him through. Sael was determined to bring his passengers home and put some bread on his own family table. Like all the indigenous inhabitants of this area who know the lay of the land as closely as they know their mother, Sael found a dirt track bypassing the checkpoint. Three meters of an asphalt road separated Sael and his passengers from the rest of this ancient dirt track leading to Dajjan Valley and Beit Hassan. The road has not only been paved upon the village farm lands, it is also a road that only ‘the lords of the land’ are allowed to use. Experience has taught Sael that if the soldiers catch him, they would force him back to the village (with or without getting beaten, depending on the soldier), or detain him for interrogation.
Sael took the risk and didn’t know that a settler from Itamar would take his life.
While crossing the road, Sael was shot in his heart, point blank.

The world of his wife and six children blacked out. The world of his two blind children was doubly darkened, for their daddy had promised to do everything to brighten their eyes and souls.

Saturday. Mid-morning. Hot.

Uri and I drag ourselves with Abed along the village’s bumpy road, the one with the torn asphalt, going to pay a condolence visit to the Jbara family.
Luckily my identity does not include nationality, religion, state and other characteristics normally expressing one’s identity. (One had better not confuse identity with its manifestations). I am thus exempt of guilt feelings and shame for one of my own nation having perpetrated this murder. My heart is free to meet the full power of pain over the loss of life, free to look directly at the poisonous fruit of blind souls who seek their remedy in ideologies of hatred and pettiness, free to feel the paralyzing pain of helplessness.
As I make room for this difficult encounter and pray that they themselves will not regard me as one who has come to apologize for her fellow nationals, we arrive at the bereaved home.
Vines shade the mourning area in the yard. A few people are now seated inside. None of them is familiar to us.
We are invited to sit down. We gingerly accept the invitation.
I sit in a chair next to Yasmin, Uri sits next to Mohammad.
The eyes of the seeing see the eyes of the blind.
Yasmin sits upright, her head slightly bowed. Her face is soft and lovely. And I, next to her, take a long look at her. I see that her blind eyes see a lot.
Some years later, I will be writing to her: “… Dear Yasmin, I know that your vision is deep and focused. Much more precise than many people whose eyes see but are in fact totally blind. The ability to see starts with the heart…”
But now we are in the mourning tent.

Mohammad, his body larger than his twelve-years of age would indicate, sits withdrawn. Uri speaks with him in Arabic.

“My name is Erella” I say to Yasmin, in Arabic as well.
“My name is Yasmin” she answers me in English.
“I am with you in your pain” I continue in English.
“I will not be able to go on living”, she answers. “Father was everything to me”. Silence.
“Hope, too”, she adds.
I place my hand on hers and say that this is how one feels at first. That it’s natural. It’s permitted. When my father died I was nine-years old and I thought life was over forever. Somehow I even wanted it to be so.
“When was that?” she asks, wishing to know me by touching my face.
“A long time ago”, I answer, directing her hand.
“How old are you?” she asks, sailing along my face somewhat hesitantly.
“Fifty-seven”.
“Your voice is young and your skin smooth, I thought you are twenty.”
“And you?” I asked.
“I’m seventeen. I have another year until I graduate high school. But now I don’t know what will happen.”
I hugged her. I whispered to her that after mourning, one can choose to live again. That life wants us to live it.

Nearly six years later, when we leaf back through the pages of this first meeting, Yasmin will remind me that I told her also that in order to live she should be independent and free, and that a higher education will be of great help to her. She will remind me that a week later we came to visit once more and I brought her a jasmine plant. I told her to plant it in her garden, so it would remind her of life.
She suggests I open my story as follows:
“Ten days after the mourning, a child of love was born named Yasmin. She was born of the Jasmine planted in her garden and blooming to this day”.

Since that condolence visit, the Jbara family entered our circle of friends.
Yasmin graduated high school and matriculated.
That year we helped her and Mohammad fulfill their father’s dream – bring them into Israel for a medical examination by a senior eye expert.
It was easy to set up the medical examination but hard to obtain their permits to enter Israel, for after their father was murdered, the children and their mother were black-listed, entry-prevented. This is the status assigned a Palestinian injured by a soldier or settler, and all of his family relations down to the tenth generation of descendants – even if the injury is lethal.
Anticipation was great, hearts trembled. On a rainy winter day Yasmin and Mohammad, escorted by Muna, their mother, made their way to Tel Hashomer Hospital. Uri and Edna drove them, supporting, escorting them.
The doctor examined them. Slowly, thoroughly. Finally, he gave his verdict, delicately, painfully: “They will never see”.
Heavy-hearted Mohammad and Yasmin were cheered a bit when Uri and Edna took them to the beach. It was their first time ever to see the sea. Or rather hear its roar, taste it, feel its water.
Salty sea drops blown by a strong winter wind dripped over the wounds of their heart and gave them a moment of respite.
They would return to this sea. At a more southerly beach, in the summer, in days that were not yet born.

In the meantime, another summer.
It’s hot.
Again we drag ourselves along the bumpy road to the Jbara home. This time we tell them the State has brought the murderer to trial. An exceptional event in the life of the nation. For a moment it seems justice might be done. David, present at the court sessions, learns all the details and updates the family.
Muna is taken up with her mourning and raising her children. She is grateful to David for what he is doing.
It is important for the family that the murderer be punished for what he had done. Not that any of them – neither old nor young – numb their pain with thoughts of vengeance. And still, the thought of such murderers behind bars could instill a measure of physical and emotional security. After all, the family knows that their occupier is a progressive democratic state run by law as other nations in this world, even enlightened occupiers.
In this summer of 2005 the verdict has been issued at the murderer’s trial: manslaughter. But the judge sent the defendant home until the sentence is issued. The State prosecutor poses no objection. The defendant does what he had been enabled to do – he runs away. No state institution – not a living soul – really takes the trouble to look for him. The seal is set.

Sael was murdered yet again. Once by Yehoshua Elitzur, a German convert to Judaism from Itamar settlement, and again by the justice system of the State of Israel.

The family mourns again. We stay with their pain, contain it, and together with them lick again the seething wounds of helplessness.
At this time, Yasmin is getting ready for her first year at university.
She spent her first ten years of school at a special school for the blind in Ramallah. Her last two years of high school have been successfully accomplished at the normal high school in her village.
But university is an altogether different matter.

In spite of her full fluency in Braille, in spite of her talent and the stable part of her personality that enables her to recover time and again, Yasmin is anxious before starting off her academic studies. A small tape recorder which we give her for the lectures she will be attending helps a bit to assuage her fears. But this does not begin to meet the needs for independent movement. This has not been taught at the special school for the blind.
For two long years Yasmin grapples with her need to be escorted on her daily journey from Salem to Nablus and back, and in the large university campus itself. She learns to transform the shackles of constant debt to her helpers into the liberating state of gratitude.
When Yasmin learns, at the beginning of her first semester, that most of the professors mail their lectures to the students electronically, we engage in finding a special computer for her with a particular program for the visually impaired.
As always, this time, too, we have gambled. The challenge is met by a Jewish Israeli citizen who donates money to buy the computer.

Saturday, early summer 2006. It’s hot.

After walking up the bumpy road, full of potholes, we gather at the Jbara home – Noa and her partner Ehud, who look to the professional aspect of the computer; Qassem, computer-store owner from Nablus, where the computer was purchased. He has never before been in Salem, four minutes ride from his shop; Fadi, the blind installment technician (Palestinian citizen of Israel from Sha’ab village in the Galilee); Yasmin and her family and ourselves, of course.
We all crowd into the small living room to celebrate another phase in Yasmin’s coping with her boundaries.
Silence fills the room. Some of the people deliver a few modest and celebratory words on this occasion. So does Yasmin. Then silence wraps us again.

A Palestinian from Nablus, Jews from Israel, a Palestinian from Israel (arriving on the bumpy road, without the potholes, receiving a special permit to enter through the military checkpoint), visit a Palestinian home in Salem. They all sit in one room from which the curtain has momentarily been lifted. For a borrowed moment they witness the order of Creation as nakedly self-evident as when it was eternally born – serving each other with the measure of love needed to heal pain. Love manifesting itself in various modes of one identity – a human at the shrine of the deity.
Muna serves heaps of stuffed vine leaves. We eat, laugh, weep, chat, take leave. Each of us goes home, having to cross the army checkpoint again on our way out (no other possibility when the order of things loses its obviousness).

Mohammad, who, until now, has attended a special school for the blind in Jenin, is transferred to a similar school in Bethlehem. Yasmin is finishing her sophomore year at Al Najah, and is moving to Nablus to live at a special hostel for blind students, going home on weekends. Muna cannot resist the pressures of her family and neighbors and the computer, waiting for Yasmin at home, becomes everyone’s business and is in a state of disrepair. Our attempts to convince Muna to move the computer to the hostel are resisted, We don’t understand the reason for this. Nor do we understand why Yasmin, who usually knows how to hold her ground, does not veto this. But we do realize there are things beyond our comprehension.
Perhaps these are social, family or neighborhood codes unfamiliar to us. Whenever I touch the thin line separating that which is in my hands from that which isn’t, I am deeply saddened. It’s an existential sadness that opens its arms to me, and I surrender to it until the pain eases.
It happens this time, too…

Muna is a woman of valour. A brave navigator in stormy seas. Sometimes in a tsunami. Only occasionally, here and there, are the skies are partly cloudy or clear.
As the family now has no breadwinner, Muna makes good use of her wisdom and the special knowledge that the impoverished use in order not to drown. With the meager funds that the Palestinian Authority allots bereaved families, and the meager help of her extended family, she somehow navigates the ship. Her nights unravel her worry. How will she ensure the future of her children – Suhad, the eldest, not yet done with her technology studies at Nablus’ Hajawi College; Yasmin still faces another three years, almost, until she completes her B.A. in English; Sharif, already seventeen, does not want to continue his schooling and has been looking for work – so far in vain; Mohammad has yet another three years until matriculation. Then he plans to go to the university in order to acquire a profession he can qualify for with his blindness; Beautiful Assala, just twelve, already knows she will be a lawyer when she grows up; Yahya, the youngest, is still a long way from maturity and independence.

In July 2007 the family wins its civil suit, pressed against the State by an attorney. The State of Israel pays them damages which can never be enough to hide the naked obscenity, but still provide Muna some relief.

The family breathes more freely now. It shows in Suhad’s shy smile, completing her studies; in the walls of the home, freshly painted by Sharif; in Mohammad’s daring to return home and begin, for the first time ever, a year of normal high school; in Asala, an outstanding student, and in Yahya who now enters adolescence.
In the meantime, without any emotional privileges, Yasmin ripens into young womanhood. Along with her ripen her poems.
A love crisis slashes her spirit in late summer 2009. Yasmin recites for us a poem born of this crisis. (As always, since childhood, writing, her openness and her ability to share help her rise all the stronger from the pitfalls on her way).

“In our silent, narrow street
I followed his footsteps…

In a dark and cloudy mood
Moon, sun, stars
Look so bright,
Confidence… courage… Oh fear
Not even a teardrop in heaven’s eyes
Only a spark of hope so close
That even escape will not defeat”…

——————————————–

January 2010. Cold. Rainy.

Danny, Ehud and I navigate the bumpy, potholed road, now muddy too, trying not to trip. We walk to Yasmin’s house, to give her a private party of our own, celebrating her graduation as a Bachelor of Arts in English.

In honor of the occasion, Yasmin writes:

“Have you ever felt
What it is like to be a person
Soon graduating,
Standing at the university gates,
Facing the threshold of one’s life?
People coming to congratulate me
Light within me a spark of hope.
Like a king who has won a kingdom
I am a woman loved by her fate…”

A few weeks later Yasmin calls us, profoundly depressed. No school. No Nablus. No hostel. No friends. Yasmin is home again. This secure nest no longer fits her size. Yasmin wants to break out, spread her wings and take off – away from the arms of her mother and little village. She wants independence, she wants to own herself. But she has no mobility skills and no job. Muna is resourceful and tries to use this time to enable Yasmin more independence in performing household chores – cooking, laundry, cleaning… Yasmin cooperates but, at the same time, sinks into a deep black pit.

Ehud suggests we mobilize our friends abroad, especially in England, to call her on the phone and keep her busy conversing and exercising her English, and especially to give her a sense of contact with the ‘world out there’.
Dear Nancy from faraway Edinburgh takes charge. With so much attention and empathy she keeps calling. At first because we asked her to. Then, because Yasmin’s personality fascinates her, invites her to love. What a gift Yasmin is. If only she could trust her strength, rely on the beauty of her garden.
“Jasmine blooms in winter”, I remind her in our frequent support calls and visits.
Nancy has managed to arouse the interest of her friends in Yasmin’s story. They have transformed their obvious empathy into donations for purchasing a new computer for Yasmin (laptop, this time), including a modern program for the blind. The computer that was out of order will now be repaired, and will serve Mohammad in his next year of studies, his matriculation time. (Our many attempts to revive the computer with Tel Avivian knowhow were futile. Recently the solution was found in Nablus. Masters of improvisation).

On a Thursday in February, 2010, as on every normal Thursday (if there is such a thing) we are in the South Hebron Hills. While our friends from Umm Al Kheir show us the ruined fence in their farmland (the tracks of its destroyer lead to Carmel, the nearby Jewish settlement), my cell phone rings. It is Nancy from Edinburgh calling. She joyously tells me Yasmin has been summoned for a work interview in Ramallah, by an NGO called “Stars of Hope”. My spirit cannot share her joy. One part of it is still caught in the broken fragment of that ruined fence, and the other part is twice-shocked – first, realizing that news of Yasmin reaches me via Edinburgh, and second – wondering how anyone in “Eastern Palestine” even knows of some Yasmin in Salem village looking for work. This is the “gamble” that has reached some haven and has been picked up.

The story of Yasmin, which we have made public by email several months earlier in an attempt to help her in her despair, has reached the Ramallah NGO through one of its workers whom Ehud met at one of the Jewish-Palestinian conferences we attend occasionally. At her request, Ehud added her address to the list of our contacts.

Between winter and spring, in March 2010, Yasmin begins her training in the Palestinian society for the advancement of disabled Palestinian women – “Stars of Hope”.

She goes to live in Ramallah, is nearly independent and is earning her own livelihood for the first time in her life. Yasmin’s joy soars and is blessedly gathered into the lap of a soft, embracing heaven. Then her rage crashes against a tight, parched ground in a painful emergency landing. She is fired after one month.

Her insult is as deep as the bleeding pain of her ripening understanding of the existence of elements that interfere with her fate, which she has no way of directing or affecting.
She is home again, restoring the debris of her life. The school for the blind in Ramallah has notified her that she will not be appointed teacher in the coming school year. Yasmin realizes she must expand her employment opportunities, and decides to proceed with her graduate studies in English, specializing in translation.
This will happen only in October, and in the meantime – a long and exhausting summer lies ahead.

Summer 2010. Hot. Humid.

I climb up the bumpy potholed road to the Jbara home.
Between tea and stuffed vine leaves (that Muna prepares, knowing I like them), Yasmin sows an idea as old as our acquaintance: “I would so much love to visit you at your home”, she says.

Typing her family data on my keyboard, a slight shadow creeps into my mind. I try to ignore it but it grows insistent until there is no escaping it. I feel it hammering in my head: “They will not be issued permits”, “they will not be struck off the black list”, “there’s no chance”, “Occupation never changes”. Then I hear my heart: “No doubt they’ve been taken off the black list”, “even brutality has its limits”, “it’s been six years”, “after all, perhaps the regime is building trust by making mobility lighter”. And again the hammers strike, again the heart speaks. Hammers… heart… The mail to Buma (our ‘permit’ friend) is on its way. Two weeks go by. Buma calls. The answer has arrived. No permits. All this family’s children are ‘prevented’ (denied entry into Israel-proper) by the Shabak secret police, formally known as the General Security Services.

No hammers, no heart-voice. Only the blunt ache of helplessness spreads throughout my body and what remains of my sane mind. Nothing has changed. Nothing changes. Six years are like the forty-three years of Occupation. My heart goes crazy, my mind leaps out of itself. I cry.
In my mind’s eye I already see myself arriving at Salem this weekend, on the bad road without the potholes, how I’ll climb on foot to their home on the bad road with the potholes, and tell them, face to face, that they have no permit to be free.
Buma suggests suspending the answer. He has filed an appeal, requesting permits once again for the family in spite of their being blacklisted. “You know how it is”, he says. “This whole business is arbitrary. Perhaps the second request will be treated with a different arbitrariness”. And indeed a different arbitrariness is applied.

“Thank you for the right to freedom that loses its freedom by being granted, let alone granted by the mean insolence of arbitrariness that leaves not the slightest doubt who is just and who evil…” my soul wants to cry out. I transform the outcry into a wish: “I wish for you, the blind, that one day,” I say in my heart, “your eyes will open to see”… my soul, tamed to transform, relents, tired but grateful for this wish that has transformed a raging fire into the light that enables me to tell what is in my hands from what isn’t. Freedom itself is embodied in this aching acknowledgement. Freedom that can neither be granted nor robbed, for freedom of the heart can never be dependent on anything. When I do the deeds that bring me in the way of blunted hearts and other damages of blindness,
I do them of my own free will. I use my fullest freedom when I choose to come in touch with the realms of suffering of the other one, and to be a true healer. After all, I could choose not to be present on such occasions.

Summer. August. Hot. Humid.

The Jbara family walks the narrow paths of Kibbutz Shoval. Danny, Ehud and I lead them to our home.
In a little while we’ll drive to the beach. Zikim beach. They will be sitting in the waves that lick the shore, abandon their bodies to the water’s warm caress, taste salt, laugh with their whole being as they’ve never done before, at the thrill of a first encounter.

Only Yasmin and Mohammad will remember that their first was five years ago, in winter after a medical examination. The rest will have no memory. The first time on the beach that is no further from their home than it is from mine. We will look at them lovingly. Our souls will laugh and cry, and so will theirs, when the sun will set into a hazy horizon, patient and soft, reminding us of the order of Creation, self-evident.

Erella Dunayevsky, Villages Group, May 2012. Translated by Tal Haran

(Crossposted from the Villages Group Blog)

As we do every week, last Thursday April 5 2012 we went to visit several Palestinian localities in the South Hebron Hills, with whom we have been in contact for some years now. Two members of our little group – Hamed and Erella – just got back that day from a Britain tour as representatives of the Villages Group. So this week’s small visitor team consisted of Ehud and Danny.

We began with a short visit to the preschool (nursery school) in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir. This preschool, opened nearly a year ago, is located in an old building with several rooms renovated with the aid of UNRWA, close to the Saraya of Umm al-Kheir (a term that during the Ottoman Empire days designated a government structure). Two local teachers run the preschool with about twenty children, and receive their salary through the Villages Group. The preschool has undergone a significant change lately – one teacher is now in charge of the younger children (two-three year olds) in the room used as the ‘bustan’ (pre-preschool), while her colleague is in charge of the older children (four-six years old), in the other room that serves as ‘rauda’, preschool.

From the hill where the Umm al Kheir preschool is located, the young children can see the present and future prospects arranged for them by the Israeli Occupation regime. Heavy equipment is busy developing and expanding the new neighborhood at the nearby Jewish settlement Karmel (Carmel) – a development doubtlessly paid for by the Israeli and American taxpayer. Together with an additional neighborhood planned to emerge soon, the settlement will eventually surround the dwellings in this part of Umm al Kheir from three directions (north, west and south).

This stranglehold is an integral part of the Occupation’s policy. The “Civil Administration”, that regime’s arm supposedly entrusted with providing services to Palestinians, has issued demolition orders on nearly all structures belonging to the Bedouin families living in this part of Umm Al Kheir – including outhouses, sheds etc. Many of these orders have already been carried out. We have written extensively here, both about Umm Al Kheir’s demolitions and about the vicious, discriminatory and fraudulent nature of the “Civil Administration” itself. Well-known literary translator and humanist Ilana Hammerman wrote a feature article about Umm Al Kheir and Karmel, with interviews of both Bedouin and settlers. The article was published a few months ago in Ha’aretz.

From the relatively new preschool at Umm al Kheir, we drove down the road and dirt track winding into the Judean desert for a short visit to the oldest operating preschool in the area. This preschool opened its doors about six years ago, at the Bedouin locality of Hashem al Daraj.

About 30 children crowd into the rickety one-room structure of this preschool together with their teacher, Huda, a native of Umm al Kheir who lives at Hasham al Daraj. Huda has been devotedly running the preschool since its founding, determined to overcome its harsh physical conditions. We first became acquainted with this preschool over two years ago . Since that first visit we took it upon ourselves to raise funds that would ensure Huda of a regular, decent salary, compared to the irregularly-paid pittance she had earned until then. We also connected Huda and her preschool with volunteers from the MachsomWatch organization. They have been coming to the preschool ever since. Jointly with Huda and the artist Eid from Umm al Kheir, The MachsomWatch volunteers hold an arts and creativity workshop for the preschool children every two weeks. Danny’s gesture in the picture show our reluctance to leave Huda’s place where we were so warmly greeted by the children – as we needed to fit visits to other localities into our tight schedule.

In the picture above, the children of Huda’s preschool look out towards the new and much larger building that UNRWA has been erecting for them nearby. Although it is already in an advanced stage of construction, completion is delayed. It is unlikely that the children and their teacher would move in before the end of the summer vacation, when the next school year opens. Much of the credit for the recent progress in constructing pre-school facilities at the region’s Bedouin localities goes to Hamed.

After visiting Huda’s preschool at Hasham Al Daraj, we left the Bedouin part of the South Hebron Hills (the eastern-most part of the region), and headed towards the small cave-dweller hamlet of Tuba. Jewish settlements Maon and Havat Maon had disconnected Tuba years ago from the road to nearby Yatta town. Nowadays access to Tuba is only possible via a much longer roundabout dirt track that leaves the Bedouin area and winds its way over the rocky hills. As we climbed this track in Danny’s jeep, the magnificent sight of the cave-dwelling hamlet area, locally called ‘massafer Yatta’/ ‘massfarat Yatta’ (Yatta’s hinterland) came into view.

After several drought years, the current winter has been relatively wet and the short spring that is about to end has yielded especially beautiful wild-flower expanses and a healthy growth of crops in the small fields scattered along the central track of the cave region. See previous posts describing the general conditions in this region and its hardships.

Tuba is a typical cave-dwellers’ hamlet – in its small population that hardly exceeds a few dozen, the affiliation of its families to larger clans whose life-center is Yatta, the main town of the South Hebron Hills, and in the ongoing, perpetual threat of the Israeli Occupation rule and its agents – soldiers and settlers – over the inhabitants’ lifestyle. Talk of the day in Tuba was the wandering tank that startled the residents out of their night sleep as it lost its way among the wadis of the region, designated by the Occupation authorities as military maneuver zone.

Life in the cave-dwellers area has many typical characteristics. Here we describe two of them: First, the custom of parents and brothers to build toys for the little children by recycling various objects. On our current visit, our camera caught the toy that Ali Awad of Tuba built for his young son, Ism’ail.

Residents of the cave dwelling region, Tuba among them, had lived without electricity or any refrigeration until recently. The local goat-milk cheese is known for its high salinity, a means of preservation for a lengthy period of time without refrigeration. On our visit, we saw blocks of this traditional salty cheese placed to dry near the solar plates installed in Tuba two years ago by the Israeli-Palestinian team of COMET-ME.

COMET-ME is our sister organization. In 2008, renewable-energy experts among Villages Group activists started installing stand-alone solar and wind electricity generators in South Hebron hills communities. A year later, the initiative began to operate independently as COMET-ME, and quickly attained worldwide recognition and support.

Among other benefits, the renewable power units installed by COMET-ME enable residents to increase production and improve the preservation of their dairy products. Unfortunately, the “Civil Administration” has recently threatened to demolish many renewable power installations placed by COMET-ME. About the international struggle now taking place against this travesty, see the organization’s website.

At the end of our Tuba visit, we returned from the caves dwellers area to the Bedouin part and to Umm al Kheir. Unlike the local rural population that has evolved its cave-dwelling lifestyle for centuries, the Bedouins of the region are originally tent-dwellers and do not live in caves. In view of the consistent house demolition policy applied in the part of Umm al Kheir nearest to the Jewish settlement Karmel, a large number of the local residents are forced to continue living in tents. Among others, we visited the tent of the family elder, Hajj Shueib (photographed alongside his youngest daughter Rana and Ehud).

Later we also visited widow Miyaser, whose straw and stones house has been recently demolished by official thugs of our time. Some of you, especially those who support the Villages Group in Durham, Britain, have already had the opportunity to help Miyaser and her seven children by purchasing her embroidery work (in the photograph, Khulud, Miyaser’s daughter, displays her mother’s new embroidery).

We will continue to shine a light upon the ways in which this “Administration” misgoverns Palestinian life. A future post will discuss the demolition orders on solar-wind energy systems installed at rural Palestinian communities by our friends, the Israeli NGO COMET-ME; systems funded with the help of donors and governments across the world.

Meanwhile, enter another player, stage right. In late February, an Israeli NGO called “Regavim” submitted a High Court appeal, together with the Sussya settlement, against the military – claiming that it should demolish more Palestinian homes in the region, and faster! We kid you not. Here is the original appeal (Hebrew, pdf).

The mysterious-sounding Regavim NGO presents itself in the appeal as “an a-political movement… to prevent illegal takeover of national lands by certain bodies”. However, its own publicized record reveals that its main business is 1. To force the government’s hand to destroy Palestinian structures, whether in the West Bank or in Israel itself, 2. To identify and suggest to the government new opportunities for such demolitions, and 3. To try and stop demolitions and evictions of unauthorized Israeli-settler structures in the West Bank. “A-political”, indeed. To cap the irony, Regavim’s head Rabbi Yehuda Eliyahu himself lives in an unauthorized settlement-outpost in northern West Bank. Their main field worker, Ovadia Arad named as a co-plaintiff, is a settler as well.

Regavim is emblematic of a trend in Israeli far-right circles. Since they recognize the power and appeal of basic human rights and justice, they have been setting up phony and mendacious imitations of respected human-rights organizations working on Palestinian human rights issues. These imitations turn the human-rights terminology on its head, in order to leverage the moral authority associated with it, while confusing and misleading the general public.

In the appeal, Regavim and the Sussya settlers refer to themselves as “residents of the area” and “farmers”. That is, they – who settled in the 1980′s as part of a heavily-subsidized takeover of Palestinian lands – pretend to be the indigenous, original residents. The A-Nawwajeh family of Palestinian Susiya (named as defendants 4 through 34), having lived in the area for generations, suddenly become – in Regavim’s upside-down terminology – the squatters who had set up “illegal outposts” arround the “poor settlers”; trouble-makers who should be evicted to the town of Yatta.

Of course, this is a bald-faced lie, one of dozens of distortions and outright lies in this frivolous Regavim appeal. Even the Israeli authorities have already conceded that the A-Nawwajeh, like other Palestinian South Hebron Hills residents, are the legal owners of their land. Unlike the settlers of Sussya, they have to live on the land with no government assistance, and against the continued restrictions from the military and physical harassment from the settlers. Here are a couple of pictures from our recent visit to the A-Nawwajeh hamlet.

Apparently, truth or justice are not a goal of Regavim, or of the Sussya settlers who have unfortunately joined this appeal, and possibly even pushed Regavim to submit it. As far as these ideological settlers are concerned, all of life in Israel-Palestine is a negative-sum game, in which the overarching goal is to retain exclusive control of the entire country, while squeezing more and more Palestinians into smaller and smaller enclaves – and if possible push them out of the country altogether. It is a sad and immoral world-view, but unfortunately its holders are very close to the corridors of power nowadays.

At other places and times, many settlers at Sussya and elsewhere have extolled their “good neighborly relations” with local Palestinians, and complained that only the media, or human-rights activists, are seeing and brewing trouble where there isn’t any. Many settlers also repeatedly claim that they only wish to live peacefully on these sacred hills, not to lord over others.

However, this court appeal on which the entire settlement of Sussya is signed as a co-plaintiff, reveals a very different perspective. The plaintiffs view their neighbors who have lived in the area long before them, as illegitimate and criminal. They accuse their neighbors of guilt-by-association, in completely unrelated terror attacks that took place at other parts of the West Bank 20-30 km away from Susiya (clause 10), and in thefts of livestock from Sussya settlement, even though these were admittedly carried out by persons from Yatta (clause 11: “…it can be assumed that the thefts were aided and abetted by accurate information… collected by the A-Nawajeh, living in illegal structures and making observations into the settlement”).

What is more disturbing to us, is that the Sussya settlement leadership has no qualms about exploiting the settlers’ structurally privileged citizenship status and the Palestinians’ discriminated status as subjects of a military regime. In this appeal, the settlers explicitly attempt to leverage that regime to punish and evict their neighbors in ways that would have been impossible, had the two population groups enjoyed equal legal and political status.

The future vision of settlers and Palestinians living together as equals, is plausible in principle both for us and for many Palestinians. Unfortunately, the Sussya settlers in submitting this appeal, and in this appeal’s foul language, reject this vision outright.

——————————–

Frivolous lawsuits like this one can actually help the “Civil Administration”. The differences between the “Administration” and ideological-settler bodies like Regavim are only of style and nuance. Both the settlers and the “Administration” are determined to reduce and, if possible, eradicate Palestinian life in “Area C”, in the apparent hope of making permanent the Israeli control of this vast region. Unlike settlers, the “Administration” is bound by the need to maintain a facade of respectability and legalistic pretexts. Thus, the Regavim appeal can present the “Civil Administration” in the public mind as even-handed or pro-Palestinian, and exaggerate its disagreement with ideological settlers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But amazingly, the court appeal itself presents concrete evidence that exposes this charade for what it is.

Clauses 40-49 deal with Regavim’s attempts to obtain information about Palestinian structures already destroyed by the “Civil Administration” for “security reasons.” The “Administration” refused to release detailed data, saying laconically that “all demolitions are due to security reasons”. Data were obtained by Regavim indirectly via other government arms. Here’s what they found (translation, emphasis and comments by Assaf):

44. In parallel, the plaintiff has obtained via a separate FOIA request the GIS layer containing all illegal-construction cases in the Palestinian sector. Combining the two sources brings to light the reality of “structures” destroyed by the Civil Administration in 2008-2011, allegedly for being a “security risk.”

[45. Data table ]

….46. These data show, that while the defendants claim all structures destroyed in the Palestinian sector in 2008-2011 were destroyed for being a security risk – out of 195 such structures, only 28 were actual buildings, while 51 “security risk structures” were cisterns, 68 “security risk structures” were sheds, chicken coops and livestock pens, and 12 “security risk structures” were improved agricultural fields.

47. This clearly indicates, that despite clear instructions from the government to focus on security-related demolitions, the Civil Administration avoids destroying such structures, and instead focuses on destroying cisterns, sheds, chicken coops, livestock pens and agricultural fields – in order to present a statistical balance with destruction in the Jewish [settler] sector.

48. It should be noted that from a separate FOIA request by the plaintiff about construction permits awarded in the Palestinian sector it turned out that in 2008, 74 such permits were issued, in 2009 six permits, and in 2010 only 7 permits were approved for the entire Palestinian sector of “Area C”. It is well-known that every year, thousands of structures are built in that sector… the message internalized by the Palestinian public is that there is no need to apply for permits…

It is rare to see far-right settlers, in an open legal document, confirm word-for-word what Palestinians and the human-right community have been arguing for years:

- That “security” is usually a ruse by Occupation authorities, used to mask the true motives,
- That recently Palestinians have been virtually blocked from obtaining building permits,
- and that these policies undermine any remaining semblance of legitimacy that the “Civil Administration” might have had a right to claim.

One might wonder how Regavim still thinks that this is somehow evidence for discrimination against what they call “the Jewish sector” – the state-funded, state-built settlements whose residents wield immense power and occupy several seats in the Israeli cabinet. One might also wonder, whether Regavim thinks that 150,000 Palestinians should be allowed to construct buildings to live in at all (the answer seems to be “no”) – or whether Regavim feels fine with the “Civil Administration” refusing to issue any permits to Palestinians whatsoever (the answer seems to be “yes, as long as they also make sure to destroy all those thousands of unapproved Palestinian structures”). The permit numbers in the appeal also confirm the escalation in anti-Palestinian “Area C” policies since the establishment of Netanyahu’s current government in early 2009. We have reported and analyzed this escalation from the start.

The Regavim appeal is a clumsy attempt to shift the debate towards how stringent or lax “Civil Administration” policies should be. However, the information presented, and the reality of unequal treatment as known to anyone with even a basic knowledge, turn their appeal into valuable supporting evidence for the following conclusions:

1. This outdated Israeli military body, the so-called “Civil Administration”, should not be allowed to run Palestinian life anymore, and

2. The situation of fully-privileged citizens living side-by-side with rightless subjects of military rule, is unacceptable and must stop.

We welcome the sudden interest of settler groups in fairness and government accountability. They should be forewarned, though, that the quest for the truth, fairness, transparency and good governance – if carried out properly to its logical conclusion – will most likely lead to outcomes diametrically opposed to their political goals.

Assaf Oron and Ehud Krinis

(Crossposted from the Villages Group Blog)

The Palestinian Authority minister of prisoners affairs said Tuesday that Israel intends to release hunger striking prisoner Khader Adnan after he completes his current administrative detention term.

In return, Adnan agreed to end his strike, according to Issa Qaraqe, the prisoners minister. The term will end April 17, he said. Adnan has not confirmed he intends to end the hunger strike, but prisoners rights group Addameer said one of Adnan’s lawyers negotiated a deal with the Israeli military prosecutor freeing him on April 17 instead of in May.

He also received guarantees the term will not be extended, the group said.

…Israel’s Justice Ministry confirmed the deal to end the strike. “There is a deal. (Khader Adnan) will stop his hunger strike. They will not extend his administrative detention and he will be free on April 17,” an Israeli Justice Ministry spokeswoman told Reuters.

Khader Adnan’s strike was a central theme of The Troubadour’s diary yesterday about the Occupation’s military “justice” system. And soysauce wrote diaries specifically on Khader’s strike, here and here.

Make no mistake: Adnan’s strike and his victory are an integral part of the Arab Spring.

The Joys of “Administrative Detention”

Distractors would have you believe this is about “security” or “extremism”. In the past Adnan was convicted in military court and served in prison for being a spokesman for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group responsible for some notorious terror attacks. Here’s the thing: for the present arrest, Mr. Adnan wasn’t charged. He is held under a six-month arrest without charges, known in Israel via the Orwellian term “Administrative Detention”. At any given point in time since 1967, there have been Palestinians in Israeli prisons under that ruse – especially since the start of uprisings in 1987. According to the Palestinian NGO Addameer dedicated to prisoner’s rights,

…in late 2002-early 2003, there were over one thousand Palestinians in administrative detention. Between 2005 and 2007, the average monthly number of Palestinian administrative detainees held by Israel remained stable at approximately 765. …As of 1 February 2012, there were at least 309 Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem being detained in administrative detention, of which 24 were members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

According to Btselem, the all-time record number of Palestinian prisoners without charges (a.k.a. “Administrative Detainees”) in Israeli jails, was close to 1,800, in November 1989 at the height of the First Intifada. Around that time, civic figures such as Faisal Husseini and Sari Nusseibeh (yes, he of the Ayalon-Nusseibeh peace initiative) were also “administratively detained.” Currently, there are 17 Palestinian prisoners who have been in Israel’s jails without charge for over 2 years – including one who’s imprisoned for over 5 years now.

Why, one might ask, would a country claiming to be a democracy, a country whose Prime Minister has said from the Congress podium “Israel is what’s right about the Middle East” to standing ovations – continue to chuck hundreds and hundreds of people into prison for a half-year at a time, without bothering to write up a charge sheet?

Why?

Very simple: because it can.

If you’ve ever been in charge of any human system, you know how much easier it is to run things when you don’t have to ask anyone for any permission or buy-off, and can just do as you please, calling all the shots all the time. And once you’ve gotten used to it – you will fight tooth and nail to keep enjoying this privilege. Israel’s Shabak secret police and military feel the same way about the set of lovely toys in their Occupation toolbox, such as “Administrative Detention”. And the Israeli public, with all its democratic self-image, cannot for the life of it understand what’s wrong with that.

All this – And YOU, the Western Reader

The Occupation dictatorship that my government, my economic system and my civil society have chosen to set up and maintain over milions of Palestinians is, in its basic nature, no different from Mubarak’s or Assad’s regime. For a quick primer, see my 2009 diary describing it. The Occupation regime’s distinction is that it has stellar connections with the West, which for the past 20-plus years, once the Occupation stopped being as profitable as it initially was, has essentially bankrolled it financially and propped it up diplomatically. Unlike Arab client regimes like Mubarak and Ben Ali, the Israeli social-economic-political elite is seen by Western elites as one of their own.

Another key distinction is that the Occupation has extensively used lies to mask its true nature, first and foremost from Israeli citizens themselves. See, Mubarak could never credibly claim he was running a “democracy”. If he could – he certainly would. The Occupation uses Israel’s more attractive features as a front to hide and confuse everyone in the outside world, regarding what’s going on in the back yard.

The rationale of the “Brand Israel” project with its Pinkwashing and Greenwashing flanks – is the same rationale that drove the Soviets to prop up their sports, sciences and arts. Everything that might make one proud to be an Israeli, is now being prostituted in order to con the world into supporting our Occupation. And so far, in the West, the lies have worked. Hasbara, contrary to constant qvetching in Israel about its “failures”, has in fact been an unbelievable success. First it had sold ethnic cleansing as historical justice, and now – for 44.5 years and counting – it has been selling a thieving racist dictatorship, as if it was some accidental set of no-choice measures temporarily used by an enlightened democracy. Better yet, more often than not Israel’s propaganda manages to sell its Occupation regime as thin air! Something whose very existence is ignored or impatiently denied.

The most favorite lie in the arsenal is of course “security”. What a joke. The Occupation system had been set up when Occupied Palestinians were considered docile as sheep, when they were building and cleaning Israeli homes, tending Israeli crops and gardens, cooking and washing dishes in Israeli restaurants, fixing Israeli cars. They had done that for 20 solid years, while patiently and meekly petitioning for their rights, and seeing them trampled and their lands robbed. More than any other factor, it is the Occupation itself that has transformed Palestinians from docile subjects to “dangerous objects”. As my friend Ishai Rosen-Zvi had once put it, that regime has been the perfect greenhouse for raising homegrown terror groups such as Islamic Jihad – whose statements and actions then serve as perfect fodder for the “security” hoax.

But just like in North Africa, all it takes is a single determined subject of that dictatorship, to expose its inherent weaknesses. Even more poignantly, Khader Adnan like the activists of Tunisia and Egypt before him, is exposing the hypocrisy and deliberate impotence of Western governments. For decades, the latter have issued lip-service about this or that specific Occupation policy – with no discernible effect. Along comes one Khader Adnan, a 33-year-old baker from some two-bit small town in the West Bank backcountry, who’s been in and out of Israeli prisons and secret-police interrogation chambers, and with his hunger strike not only cuts short his own imprisonment, but also exposes the entire structure of repression and trans-continental lies.

Indeed, the Occupation has become so morally bankrupt, its nature so tyrannically lazy – that an Islamic prisoner who (to my knowledge) had never bothered to – say – pledge nonviolence, on the contrary – has nevertheless just managed to score a moral victory over it.

It’s the same pathology wherever you turn. The Occupation’s military “Justice” system, even when it does bother to run a trial, deals out Draconian punishments, including to children, mostly via confession/snitching-driven plea bargains – then never bothers to release anyone even a day early on parole (Israeli prisoners get the last 1/3 off as a default). To add insult to injury, the regime then turns a deaf ear towards its pocket underlings who do its bidding, Abbas and Fayyad, when they beg for some meaningful prisoner release. Guess, then, what happens? An Islamic organization such as Hizbullah or Hamas takes an Israeli prisoner, and eventually there’s a prisoner deal. The Islamists score a political victory over both Israel and their moderate Palestinian foes, and the prisoner-release list, instead of being composed of the thousands who had barely done anything wrong and rot in prison for years – is heavily stacked with real terror masterminds.

Indeed, it is no coincidence that things finally come to a head around that pinnacle of Israel’s Occupation hypocrisy, its “justice” system. I hope the Sundance-winning film about this system, The Law in These Parts, together with the efforts of activist-prisoners like Adnan and human-rights organizations, finally coalesce into the perfect storm that brings it down.

Adnan, by the way, has known exactly what he’s doing all along. He started his strike on the first day of his arrest, and here’s how he explains it in a letter from the Israeli hospital:

I started my battle offering my soul to God almighty and adamant to go ahead until righteousness triumphs over falsehood. I am defending my dignity and my people’s dignity and not doing this in vain.

The Israeli occupation has gone to extremes against our people, especially prisoners. I have been humiliated, beaten, and harassed by interrogators for no reason, and thus I swore to God I would fight the policy of administrative detention to which I and hundreds of my fellow prisoners fell prey.

…Here I am in a hospital bed surrounded with prison wardens, handcuffed, and my foot tied to the bed. The only thing I can do is offer my soul to God as I believe righteousness and justice will eventually triumph over tyranny and oppression.

I hereby assert that I am confronting the occupiers not for my own sake as an individual, but for the sake of thousands of prisoners who are being deprived of their simplest human rights while the world and international community look on. It is time the international community and the UN support prisoners and force the State of Israel to respect international human rights and stop treating prisoners as if they were not humans.

Time will tell whether Adnan has succeeded in his mission on behalf of all other Palestinian prisoners. But in the Arab world, everyone knows what is the original inspiration for the Arab Spring: the first Palestinian Intifada that began in 1987. Khader, like the Palestinian youth protests that finally forced the inept/corrupt Fatah and Hamas leaderships to forge a unity deal over the past months, reminds the world that the Palestinians are not going to sit out of this one. They will not put up with remaining enslaved and imprisoned, while their neighbors are gaining their freedom using the methods they themselves have pioneered.

Will the West and Israel, especially the liberal-progressive sectors of those socieities, be ready to finally do right in Israel-Palestine? Or will we be shamefully dragged, kicking and screaming and hemming and hawing, together with the regime we have been propping up, just like has happened to other Western-backed dictatorships in the region?

(A much shorter version of this post appeared yesterday on Daily Kos)

————– Last words:

A favorite theme in the Israeli press and its Diaspora-Jewish copycats has been that Adnan is “just a scumbag terrorist who has found an original way to get his own ass out of prison.” Or something of the sort. Besides being laughable – someone fasting 66 days to death’s door portrayed as a sleaze looking for an easy way out – this talking point, as usual, misses all points.

I don’t personally know Adnan or his views. Anyone who knows anything about the military-court system, can easily conclude that Israel has never had evidence against him for operational involvement in terror – otherwise he would have long ago been jailed for a double-digit sentence. According to Adnan’s wife quoted on his Wikipedia entry, he has since ceased his involvement with Islamic Jihad and instead has been active in intra-Palestinian reconciliation efforts between the various factions.

But suppose for a moment that he hasn’t left Islamic Jihad. No less than 4 Israeli Prime Ministers – Rabin, Begin, Shamir and Sharon – had been active in armed underground militia before 1948. Not as spokesmen like Adnan, but as militants who actually killed people. In fact, one of them – Shamir – is widely reputed to had assassinated one of his own militiamen when the latter “went astray”. Two of them – Begin and Shamir – were the chief leaders of radical militia fully committed to terror against civilians. Just like Palestinian militants today, they were wrong to target civilians. But just like today’s Palestinian activists – militant or nonviolent – they were right about the main thing that mattered in their day: trying to deliver their people from tyranny and injustice. And in both cases, their people have been grateful for that.

So, dear mainstream-Israeli and Diaspora-Jewish pundits, please spare me the moral hypocrisy. When a nation is trampled underfoot for decades and generations, its young men go out and try to fight to reclaim its pride. That’s human nature, that’s the nature of human society. Adnan is a man who fights with his words and with his passive resistance – which, given the situation on the ground, are weapons far more potent than the petty games of armed militia. The last thing he cared about was his own ass.

Only a few weeks later, the Occupation regime’s fraudulently named “Civil Administration” handed down demolition orders to the school.

In a rare direct expression of an Occupied Palestinian voice in the Israeli printed press, the school’s prinicipal Muhammad A-Nawwajeh published an editorial in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper about the demolition order on his school. Unlike most of Haaretz op-eds, this article was apparently not translated to the newspaper’s English site. We provide the translation below.

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What Will You Tell My Students?

Muhammad Jaber Hamed A-Nawwajeh

Our elementary school at Susiya is small. It has two classrooms, in which a total of 35 pupils – girls and boys – study. The staff includes four teachers and the principal, who is also the English teacher. The school opened in late 2010. Before we established our school, local children had to walk 4 km each way, every day, to reach the nearest school. To avoid this, many had stayed with relatives during the school week, without seeing their parents, causing severe psychological problems. No doubt, it is far better for young children to live with their families and attend a school near home.

Our school has no electricity, no running water and no schoolyard. Still, students arrive each day with excitement. When they grow up, they want to be doctors, police officers, teachers. Even though the school is in an area under Israeli control, it is not the government of Israel that built it. We, the residents of Susiya, have built it ourselves, with the help of the Spanish organization ACF and the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

Our elementary school, whose area is 100 square meters, is the only structure of this size around Palestinian Susiya. All students live in caves. Before the school structure was erected, we had used five tents. We live in a hilly high-altitude region with cold winters. First water leaked into the tents, then a strong storm blew them away.

Our new school might be demolished at any moment now, without any justifiable cause. The “Civil Administration” has issued a demolition order against it. Among the pretexts for the demolition order, the “Administration” cites the presence of “portable bathrooms” and a cistern that we had dug with our own hands, so that the children will have water to drink.

If the Israeli government demolishes the school, it will deny education to our children. More than half the students will stay at home and not go to school anymore. All the world’s children are entitled to education. It is a basic right enshrined in the United Nation’s Human Rights Charter. I am trying to comprehend: what would Israel accomplish by demolishing our school? What is the position of Israel’s Education Minister? What do Israeli teachers think? How will they explain to their own students the destruction of our little school at Susiya?

Mr. A-Nawwajeh is the principal of Susiya’s elementary school.

(Translated from Hebrew by Assaf Oron)

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At the Villages Group, helping Massafar Yatta (South Hebron Hills) residents in their efforts to realize the right to education for their children has been one of our central missions over the years. Until 2010 when the Susiya school opened, we helped arrange student transportation from Susiya to Tuwani. In 2010 we brought a report about a tent school in a neighboring village, where teachers tried to educate under conditions much like the ones described above by Mr. Nawwajeh. Here are a few pictures from that visit, illustrating the learning conditions which we then described as “the worst in the Middle East”.

Please do not let the Occupation force these disgraceful conditions upon the children of Susiya. Please don’t let them rob these children of their dreams, and rob teachers, volunteers, and donors of the fruit of their hard labor.

The formal authority presiding over the deceptively-named “Civil Administration”, that pretends to be “the legal authority” in the area – is Israel’s Defense Ministry. Here are a few contact details:

Israel’s defense minister, sar@mod.gov.il or pniot@mod.gov.il, fax +972 3 6976711 (they are said to hate faxes), or the ministry’s US outlet (info@goimod.com, fax 212-551-0264).

Israel’s Education Minister whom Mr. Nawwajeh mentions in his article, will quite likely deny any responsibility. Personally, I (Assaf) think that the fraudulent “Civil Administration”, and all other arms of Israel’s government, should just keep out of West Bank Palestinian civil affairs, on which they have no genuine jurisdiction – if they ever had one, they have long lost it due to policies such as this. The Israeli authorities have proven that they are unwilling and ill-equipped to provide the needs of Palestinians in Area C.

But Mr. Nawwajeh has a point. Israel’s Education Ministry, after all, constructs and heavily subsidizes schools in the Jewish settlements all around Susiya, and pays for teacher salaries. The minister himself, a politician named Gideon Sa’ar, is a rather vocal proponent of the ideology that all of Israel-Palestine belongs to the Jews. Well, with ownership comes responsibility. Since the government behaves in the West Bank’s “Area C” (where Susiya is located) as if it is Israel’s to keep, it should provide the same level of education infrastructure to that area’s Palestinians, as it lavishes upon the Jewish settlers.

In short, here’s a link to the Education Ministry’s main contact. The Minister’s email addresses are sar@education.gov.il, dover@education.gov.il and info@education.gov.il. Phones – 072-2-5602330/856/584, 972-3-6935523/4/5. Faxes: 972-2-5602246, 972-3-6951769. And finally, here’s an online comment form.

Feel free to let Mr. Sa’ar know what you think about this blatant discrimination, and about the criminal neglect of, and the atrocious assault upon, right to education of children in what he calls “The Land of Israel”.

And please help spread Mr. A-Nawwajeh’s words far and wide.

Thank you.

(crossposted from the Villages Group Blog)

No, this is not the home the Occupation authorities is building for Miyaser in compensation for the 2008 demolitions. These are villas being built only a few minutes walk away, expanding the Carmel (Karmel) settlement, on land confiscated and/or denied from the local Bedouins and Palestinians. This construction is underway with heavy subsidies from the Israeli government, whose political pretext for the expansion is “natural growth of the settlements.”

After the 2008 demolitions, Miyaser’s extended family at Umm al-Kheir built for her and her children a small house – or rather, a hut – made of mud and stones:

Yet, even this extremely poor dwelling place was too much in the eyes of the Occupation regime. Last week, on January 25 2012, while the heavy machinery keeps swallowing the hill near Carmel settlement in order to make room for the building of spacious new houses for Umm al-Kheir’s Israeli neighbors, a “fellow bulldozer” made its way to the indigenous village – not for construction, but for demolition work that left once again Miyaser’s home in ruins. It should be noted that the past few weeks in Israel-Palestine have been very cold and wet. Umm-Al-Kheir sits some 800m above sea level, with nightly temperature near freezing.

Over the last weekend, the Hatheleen family of Umm al-Kheir and activists of the Taayush movement erected together a small tin home for Miyaser and her children.

A different, yet effective way of helping Miyaser, even by those of you who live far way, is suggested by us here: Miyaser is a skillful embroider. She is willing to sell her embroidery art, such as table maps and runners.

During the last year we have been able to sell several of Miyaser’s embroidery pieces here in Israel, and also in Durham, United Kingdom (by the help of our friends there, Shlomit and Alison). Anyone who wants to help Miyaser and her family by buying her embroidery works (or in another creative way), is invited to contact us at our Villages Group’s address: villagesgroup1@gmail.com. We will ship Miyaser’s art to you. If you live in the UK, Villages Group activists are due to visit Shlomit and Alison soon and bring them a new collection of Miyaser’s embroidery.

Ehud Krinis on behalf of the Villages Group (with additions from Assaf)

PS: this recent demolition is part of a broader pattern, that has been continuing for years but escalating recently. For more background about the current wave of Occupation vandalism in South Hebron Hills, and in West Bank Area C in general, see this post from November, and this one from 2009.

(crossposted from the Villages Group Blog)

Because of this relative obscurity, Adelson’s political exploits in Israel remain unexplored. Robert Scheer might wonder about the details of the “business” transaction between magnate Adelson and candidate Gingrich. For a casino billionnaire, it is amusing to see Adelson put his pocket change ($10M and counting) on such long odds. His bet in the Israeli scene has been much larger – yet far safer and more successful. Well, over there you can apparently buy the entire gambling house. NYT laconically tells us that

Over time, Mr. Adelson made his conservative views felt not only within the committee, but also in Israel. He started a free daily newspaper in 2007, Israel Hayom, that is widely viewed as supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close friend who shares his hawkish outlook.

Can you taste the sugar(coating)? Ah, the wonderful world of NYT, where every story on Israel must present that country in a respectable light – lest angry mobs burn down the house. This is yet another case, where the reality is so much more fun than its sanitized NYT version.

Adelson’s investment in Israel Hayom far exceeds his Gingrich bets. But perhaps “investment” should be understood in the metaphorical sense, because it doesn’t appear there’s a chance to ever make money with a daily-issue sale price of (0). This business article (Hebrew link) estimates that Adelson had lost NIS 250M ($70M) on the paper in 2007-2010. It is now 2012.

Rather than making money off a newspaper, Adelson’s “Israel Hayom” mission has been to reshape Israel’s politics and media, and in this he has succeeded, wreaking damage that is possibly beyond repair.

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The price of daily newspapers in Israel is no chump change: it is well over $1. After adjusting for the lower average salary, you can see that Israelis need to pay 3-5 times or so more per issue compared with Americans. But even at that price, the 3 main dailies – centrist mammoth Yediot, center-right challenger Maariv (both tabloids), and high-brow “NYT clone” Haaretz – have struggled to keep afloat in recent years.

Add to this a free-for-all political culture, with nearly no checks, balances, or awareness of what these strange beasts are – and you’ve got a wide-gaping hole for someone with billions to spare and a crass political agenda.

Competing directly on Maariv’s market niche, Israel Hayom was massively distributed from the get-go – first at train stations, and then at bus stations, supermarkets, malls, etc. etc. – for free. Maariv’s market share plummeted, its #2 position easily captured by Israel Hayom. For the past couple of years the word “bankruptcy” has been hovering over Maariv. In a lame effort to compete, it has slanted its reporting even farther to the right. Because you see, Israel Hayom has never made its leanings secret, to the point that quickly earned it the common nickname “Bibiton” (“Bibi’s Newspaper”). For example, on Independence Day 2008 Israel Hayom published a special issue, whose centerpiece was a lengthy, fawning interview with then-opposition leader Netanyahu. Maariv’s Rogel Alpher, writing about this interview (Hebrew link), claims that in fact it was Netanyahu who had urged his friend Adelson to use his vast pockets and set up a newspaper to fight the rest of Israel’s media – whom he deems hostile to him. As this article reminds us, the vast majority of Israel Hayom readers are scarcely aware of all these machinations – they are just happy to get a shiny full-size newspaper for free every day.

Here’s how Israeli media researchers described the newspaper’s actions during the 2009 election campaign:

A study conducted by Moran Rada showed that while competing newspaper’s coverage of Netanyahu was “not especially fair”, Yisrael Hayom’s coverage was biased in favor of Netanyahu in most editorial decisions, that the paper chooses to play down events that don’t help to promote a positive image for Netanyahu, while on the other hand, touting and inflating events that help promote Netanyahu and the Likud. Oren Persico reached the same conclusion after the 2009 Knesset elections, writing that throughout the campaign, Yisrael HaYom published only one article critical of the Likud, and tens of articles critical of Kadima.

Recall that Kadima won 28 seats in the 2009 elections (out of 120), vs. Bibi’s Likud’s 27. Had the margin in Kadima’s favor been a couple of seats larger, we’d be talking today about PM Livni and her centrist coalition, rather than PM Bibi and his far-right wingnut circus. The Occupation would have probably been intact; but relations between US and Israeli governments would surely have been far smoother than they are now. And almost as likely, we could have avoided some signature Bibi moves such as the deadly takeover of the Gaza flotilla (his predecessor allowed a smaller flotilla through in 2008) and the ensuing ugly propaganda battle and souring relations with Turkey.

With mainstream Israel deeply under the spell of short-attention-span media consumption, I’d like to hear someone arguing that NIS >250M of free campaigning posing as a “legitimate newspaper”, had made no difference in the 2009 elections and in bolstering Bibi’s position since then. Well, actually, that’s exactly what I’ve heard from Israelis when I raised the point, as recently as last week. No one likes to think they’ve been manipulated and suckered.

Well… sorry to break it to you: a large sector of mainstream Israelis are among the most volatile sucker voter populations on the planet. For example, in 2003 Israelis catapulted the anti-religious Shinui party to 3rd place with 15 seats. By the next election (2006) the party was wiped out (yes, 0 seats) due to corruption and dysfunction. Half as many “protest voters” then turned around and chose an obscure party advocating retirees’ rights, awarding it 7 seats. Within months that party, as well, has turned out to be a cruel hoax, and by 2009 it had evaporated.

In view of this volatility, the size of “sucker votes” up for grabs, and the closeness of the 2009 elections – it is highly likely that using his “Bibiton” as a propaganda vehicle, Adelson has essentially bought the present government of Israel – lock, stock and barrell.

No anti-trust investigation has been launched against what appears to be Israel Hayom‘s flagrant violation of predatory pricing laws in the newspaper market. One reason is that apparently, Israel has no predatory-pricing law. After the devastating impact both on competing newspapers and on the political map became evident, there were several attempts by non-Likud politicians to pass such a law; the attempts failed. Meanwhile, according to its Wikipedia entry, Israel Hayom has now surpassed Yediot. Starting in summer 2010 – a mere 3 years after its launch! – this free-propaganda Adelson gamble posing as a newspaper has the #1 spot in weekday market share. In 2011 it has further cemented its position: it now publishes a lengthy Friday edition (Israel’s analogue to the Sunday papers), which is already running second to Yediot. If recent trends continue, it will take over the #1 weekend spot pretty soon.

And Adelson, bless him, is not the type to use this immense clout in a refined manner. In 2011, when Israeli TV channel 10 aired an unflattering story about him, he forced the anchors to go on air and issue a humiliating apology written by his cronies – prompting the head of Channel 10 news to resign in protest.

It was not enough for Adelson. When this financially struggling channel requested additional time for debt payments, the government committee surprisingly denied it – and Channel 10 was about to shut down last month. Legal authorities intervened and gave Channel 10 a lifeline of the type that has kept it afloat till now, but the story is not over. Similarly, the story is far from over for Adelson’s thuggish meddling in Israeli politics, and for mainstream Israelis’ frightening blindness to it.

I end with the funniest (or saddest) part.

Israel Hayom has no printing presses. So who prints their papers? Haaretz – yes, that would be the champion of liberal-progressive values, both through its daily and through its rabble-rousing economic tabloid “The Marker”. According to the Hebrew article linked in the intro (posted by “The Marker”s competitor, of course), the Israel Hayom payments make up some 15%-20% of the Haaretz-The-Marker group’s revenue stream.

Recently, Haaretz protested loudly when PM Netanyahu made snide remarks about their being “adversaries to Israel” or something like that. You worry about the right-wing’s chilling effect on Israel’s media freedom? Well, how about stopping those Israel Hayom presses for a while?

I’d hate to be in Haaretz’s position, having to decide between going under (Haaretz was fairly close to that in the mid-2000′s), and serving the interests of those trampling upon what you hold most dearly. But sometimes one does need to walk the walk. It might be that this Israel Hayom deal has made Haaretz owners more amenable to a second shocking deal, in which 20% of the paper was sold to right-wing Russian oil oligarch Leonid Nevzlin. Such a sale would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

Well, Haaretz might find itself dumped by the wayside anyway – in recent months Israel Hayom started publishing some of its volume in the presses of defeated rival Maariv.

(this is an updated and expanded version of a Daily Kos post)

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Music is a gift for our minds and our hearts. It is a jewel that we lost and we feel happy when we find. It is the motivation that encourages us to live. It is a tool by means of which our minds and spirits operate.

By the effort of the Villages Group and members of the village, the idea of the music center materialized, converted from imagination to reality. Despite the short period since it was established, it has achieved great success and has become one of the popular centers in the village. The idea of the center started from the point of teaching children in village how to strengthen their role in society through music. In fact, the center aimed at providing a sense of pleasure since children felt that there is something they lack. So from the founders’ point of view, this lack is filled by music.

The center has been working for two years, and it was able to achieve popularity in the children’s as well as their parents’ minds. So the parents started to send their children to the center to learn how to use various musical instruments. During the last two years two groups of children graduated, and the center ended its second activity year with a concert. A big number of people attended and saw how children became creative in using musical instruments.

The event started with the coordinator of the center greeting the attendants and thanking the funders as well as the founders. Then the Palestinian national anthem was presented by the children. Then followed a series of songs which were played and sung by the pupils of the center. At the end of the concert there was a big ceremony in which the children were given certificates and the founders (who are really peace makers) were given thank-you gifts by a representative of the village council, the head of the center and a representative from the Villages Group.

Eventually, although the center is still modest it seeks for more development in order to increase the number of children and to have a crucial role in developing the village as well as empowering its children. Among our aspirations, we would like to have an independent house for the music center, so the center can grow.

Ikhlas Gebara, Salem

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We would have loved to end the Villages Group update from Salem here. Unfortunately, on the night between January 1 and 2 – a couple of days after the concert – the Israeli Occupation’s military forces raided the house of the Center’s founder and director, Jubeir Ishtayya.

The pretext was a search for weapons. As you can see in the pictures, the soldiers caused much damage to the new home, and deeply upset Jubeir and his wife and terrified his three little children. On the following Friday, Villages Group activists paid a solidarity visit to the Ishtayya family.

(crossposted from the Villages Group blog)

The first court session in Amal’s trial took place Sunday, Jabuary 15th 2012, at the military court and prison base of Ofer, in the West Bank north of Jerusalem. Charges pressed by the military prosecution against Amal include throwing water and spitting at a soldier, and swearing at the security forces. The defense, by Amal’s attorney Neri Ramati (a Jewish Israeli lawyer, partner at the Gabi Lasky law firm), decided to admit pouring water on the soldier, and reject the allegations of spitting and swearing.

On the day of the arrest, while in transit to the Kiryat Arba police station, Amal was sexually harassed by one of the soldiers sitting with her in the army jeep. At the police station, the interrogators took advantage of her inexperience and lack of access to counsel (martial law is *very* convenient for interrogators and prosecutors), and managed to make her confess to throwing water at a soldier during the demolition. The next court session in Amal’s trial has been scheduled for February 5th, 2012.

It should be noted that in our experience, it is very rare to arrest and charge women in this context of protesting or resisting demolition of their homes (such protesting commonly occurs, it is a natural reaction when seeing one’s home demolished). At first we had thought these arrests were a random local initiative by the IDF officers at the site. Whether or not this is true, the fact is that now the military prosecution has stepped up and decided to throw the book, or rather, invent a book from thin air in order to intimidate these young women. This might be related to the intesification of the Occupation’s general campaign to intimidate West Bank “Area C” residents in the hope of driving many of them out and eventually annexing their land to Israel. This campaign has finally caught some mainstream attention due to a recent European Union report (see, e.g., this story from The Independent). We have been witnessing this creeping ethnic-cleansing campaign, and trying to stop it on the ground for years.

Below are two photos of Amal and her family, taken by Efrat Nakash during our visit at the family cave in Mufakarah, last Thursday.

On Wednesday, December 28th 2011, at Beit Ha’am on Rothshild Blvd. in Tel Aviv, an evening program of solidarity with Amal and Sausan was held, attended by about 150 people. This event was initiated by a group of activists in Israel’s massive social-justice movement, that uses Beit Ha’am as one of its activity centers. Among the evening’s organizers were Galia Tanai, Shelly Ben Shahar and Shani Solomon (who also visited Amal and Sausan in Mufakarah). The program, held in cooperation with Rabbis for Human Rights and the Villages Group, included a video interview with Sausan (at that time we still thought Amal’s charges would be dropped).

Activists of both organizations spoke and reviewed several aspects of reality in the South Hebron Hills in general, and Mufakarah in particular. Musicians Rona Kenan and Ruth Dolores Weiss gave a voluntary performance, one song of which is shown in the video in this link. The proceeds will go to help cover Amal and Sausan’s legal defense.

Ehud Krinis and Assaf Oron
The Villages Group

(crossposted from the Villages Group blog)