The picture above was taken a few weeks ago, when Ikhlas visited the Mediterranean Sea for the second time in her life. The sea is only 47km from her home (measured via Google Maps), but the Occupation regime – especially its prisonlike nature during the past decade – prevents most West Bank Palestinians from visiting it. Both of Ikhlas’ beach visits were initiated by the Villages Group. On the first time, Ikhlas and her brother Mohammed were taken to Tel Aviv to meet an Israeli eye specialist, who unfortunately confirmed that their blindness is incurable.

The second time came about after repeated appeals to military authorities, to allow the Jebara family a visit to Israel in order to breath some fresh air of freedom. The family was automatically blacklisted by the Shin Bet after the father Sa’el was murdered by a settler in fall 2004.

The cruelty of the Occupation regime is perhaps most directly illustrated via this story. The settler, a German convert with troubled history, was nonetheless given – like most settlers – an M16 automatic assault rifle by the military for his “self defense”. He then used it to murder an innocent civilian, who happened to be Ikhlas’ dad, in broad daylight. The lengthy legal proceedings end with his conviction of manslaughter. But the judge inexplicably allows the murderer a home leave before his sentence is set. He disappears without a trace, and to this day no one has found him (has anyone even looked for him?). If you find this hard to believe, here’s an account from the Israeli mainstream news site Ynet.

Meanwhile, the victim’s family having lost its father and provider without recourse to justice, is automatically labeled as a “security threat” because now they have a reason to revenge! Therefore, they are placed under even tighter confinement than other Occupied Palestinians.

This year Villages Group activists petitioned the authorities, arguing that 6 years after the murder perhaps the victims should be allowed a reprieve from their punishment, due to their good behavior. The plea was rejected. Knowing how mindless and arbitrary the Occupation system is, the activists did not give up and submitted the exact same petition again. This time it was accepted. The Jebara family was treated to a day of fun, visiting the homes of their Villages Group friends for the first time ever, and seeing the Mediterranean Sea – second time for Ikhlas and Mohammed, first time ever for their siblings.

This fall, Ikhlas will begin her M.A. studies in English literature at the Nablus University.

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It is perhaps appropriate that unlike the personal tone of Ikhlas’ first offering of songs posted last week, the songs below carry a more political message.

Ikhlas will be happy to communicate with any of the readers. Being in touch with people from faraway places does a great deal to alleviate the depression and suffocation of living under the Occupation regime. Ikhlas’s email address is ikhlas_soh@hotmail.com.

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Believe me we can not dare

Believe me we can not dare
to say that occupation is something that we can not bear
But even if we said it
they will our bodies like pieces of cloth tear
Not by human butchers
rather it has become the machine butcher’s career
Be silent my friend
and do not say whether it is cruel or fair
Because if you said this
you will be thrown in fire

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If you tried to turn your face

If you tried to turn your face
In a moment you will be in the hospital as a critical case
Occupation is willing to chase
Every person who is from the Arabic race
And the steps of history trace
Occupation has no conscience

when it the bodies of Gazan children dismember
in the last December
I am torn by pain when I remember

the bodies of children trampled under the feet
of an unworthy Israeli soldier member

Dying words on their tomb door
saying war is every where

On the heads of the poor
Palestinian life will become sore
You will live in pain more and more
Let it be forever let it be forever

When will facts chant?
When will Justice on her feet stand?
When will we together
in the face of cruelty stand?
When will we our rights defend?
When will we like a bomb explode?
When will we our rights defend ?
Or shall we wait for someone to rescue us?

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Do you know

Do you know what your life is like?
Your life is a play
if you wonder I will say
what role in this life I play

a good person I may be
as a fruitful tree
slave people I can free
if they appreciate they will agree

a source of evil I contribute to life
by carrying my sharp sword and knife
I can steal a husband from his wife
And deprive a person of his life

To me you can describe
What type you want your self to ascribe
No matter you are from this or that tribe
But what really matters is you are mature and ripe

Ever since then, we have been in touch with Muna, the widow, and her children. Ikhlas, the second of six Jebara children, is blind from birth and has last year graduated college with an English literature major. She also writes poetry in English.

Following is a first sampling of her poems; a second group will be posted later. Feel free to contact Ikhlas directly at ikhlas_soh@hotmail.com.

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To say or not to say

I wonder whether to say or not to say
To be enthusiastic
to revolve
or to obey
For God or for people to pray
Or like a refugee without home to stay
Or like a child in the streets to play
Or to pass through a narrow or wide way
Or our hopes for future to delay
Or to sit under the red x-ray
Here we are my friend
with no decision
Whether to be or not to be
we do not know
Whether to say or not to say

————————–
In our narrow street

In our calm narrow street
I followed the traces of his feet
I heard the echo of hope
when she said you should meet
you should meet
Darkness bitterness of days you should defeat

My tongue had also said no blame no blame
Forget the past and live for your dream
For hope in your eyes would gleam

No one but echo answered me
No he is not free
With him we can not be
Until the masters of the fates agree

In a dark cloudy atmosphere
Moon, sun, stars seem to be very clear
Safety… bravery… oh grasped fear
In the eyes of the sky there is no tear
Just the glimmer of hope that is so near
From them you can not flee

I bitterly answered ‘what do you claim?’
She laughed and said I will achieve my aim
Until the end of my game
I trust myself and I do not feel shame

Hope -she is so strong and stout
And she is able my fears to wipe out
She laughed with her echo-voice so loud
One day in the hands of you will be found

———————————-
Gift for those whose parents are lost

Here on that street my dad died
Death attacked him from an unknown side
What did his death for us hide ?
Grief and pain did for us decide
His death the hearts of our family did divide
Loss and departure were emphasized
While happiness at that moment seized

Here on that street my father drove
On the same street he was shot
By a settler who was provoked
From an innocent person his revenge he got

From an unknown origin he is derived
Responsible that in my family’s life

grief, pain and anger reside
But there are people of his religion who have tried
For us a new beginning to provide
They really appreciate the size of grief in our hearts

Monday in the afternoon was the opening of our wound
And it caused the broken hearts of our catastrophe to moan
At that moment the stagnant grief in our souls was grown
We lived in darkness with no fraction of dawn
A black tragedy for me was drawn
Like a nic in the neck… it is in the heart a wound

————————–
To be a graduate

Have you ever felt like a person who will graduate
Who is standing on the edge of the university and life’s gate
People are coming to say ‘we congratulate’
They within me a glimmer of hope create
I am like a king who won the state
I am a person who is loved by fate
For this day I am willing to wait

All love from my heart is sent
To my parents my sisters my brothers my doctors and friends

For you I say ‘happy new year’
I wish we will the dress of happiness wear
No matter how the last days were
The principles of a new life in this modest party we declare
The black papers of our last tragedies in our lives we will tear
The bitterness of days we no longer bear
We in the eyes of future stare
Happiness and hope we can see there

But we also notice some sort of fear
I hope that peace is near
for those whom to me are so dear
You are to me my jewels
In the siege of my heart you fell
I rang my tongue’s bell
good words for you to tell
Let us together say grief farewell
grief farewell grief farewell

Several of Israel’s leading theater companies have agreed to perform in the new cultural center in the settlement of Ariel, due to open on November 8. The companies include the Habima National Theater, the Cameri Theater, the Be’er Sheva Theater and Jerusalem’s Khan Theater.

Ariel lies 20km inside the West Bank, deeper than any other sizable settlement. The divided highway leading to it – the best road in the West Bank – is open to Israelis only, *and* lacks any signs naming the numerous Palestinian towns and villages flanking the road. According to Peace Now’s 2006 settlement land report, 35% of Ariel’s area was confiscated from private Palestinian owners by military fiat. The rest is public land. No patch of Ariel’s lands was rightfully purchased. Occupied Palestinians are allowed into Ariel only with special permits.

And to this settlement, on that highway, Israel’s highest-profile theater troupes will now travel.

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0. Hat-tips, crossrefs, etc.

A big h/t to Ofri Ilani of the influential Ha-Emori blog (Hebrew link), who first covered the story from an Israeli anti-Occupation perspective. A special kudos to Ofri for dwelling upon “Irony #2″ to be described below. Noam Sheizaf from the Promised Land blog later posted a brief summary in English.

This text itself is cross-posted on Daily Kos.

1. Something’s Fishy Here…

Major Israeli theater groups do most of their shows in Tel Aviv and other large towns, hopping to the periphery only for one-off shows once interest in the center begins to wane. It’s a combination of simple economic calculus, and a mutual cultural bias (people in small towns might hesitate to go to a theater show, unless the price is far lower than the hefty ones paid in Tel Aviv). So how on Earth does a settlement of 18,000 people, not particularly known for its high-culture afficionados, manage to land so many big-ticket shows on the very first year it opens a theater?

My guess is that there has been a lot of lobbying – read, arm-twisting – behind the scenes. All theaters receive part of their budgets from the state. The Israeli state is right now, essentially, in settler hands – right up to settler and foreign minister Yvet Lieberman, widely considered the most powerful politician in the country. Add to that a witch-hunt atmosphere against “self-hating” academics and NGOs in the Israeli street, and theater managers – always scrambling to make ends meet – need little convincing to accept this cordial invitation to baptize Ariel’s new cultural gem.

Here is a telling quote from Yossi Graber, a veteran actor of the national theater HaBima:

“I have my own reservations about the Territories, but since I act at a play receiving state funds I am not going to stage a rebellion.”

(btw, this quote somehow fell out of the English Haaretz translation. It’s only found in the Hebrew original)

In plain terms: the power of the state is now used by the right wing to nudge Israeli theaters into accepting the settlements as a normal reality. Although (see immediately below) some of them apparently don’t require much nudging.

Well, when it comes to settlements “nudging” is the name of the game anyway. There is no economic viability in an Israeli exurb that plants itself a good 40+ minutes away from most employment sources, surrounded by traditional farming communities with hostile and resentful residents. What makes Ariel even possible at all, is massive, consistent and ongoing government subsidy. Would-be residents receive generous loans and grants to buy houses on the robbed land (which, being robbed, is cheap to begin with). Then they enjoy an inflated level of public services which can only be dreamed of inside “Israel proper”, free bus passes for their kids and personal tax breaks for the virtue of living in a settlement. Businesses, too, receive immense grants and breaks if they set up shop in the settlements. Students who agree to go to Ariel’s college (now rechristened as “the Judea and Samaria University Center” in order to thumb Israel’s collective nose at would-be boycotters) are practically certain to receive a scholarship. Take all these away – or offset them via external economic sanctions – and Ariel’s mostly non-ideological residents will drift back into Israel. In fact, the town’s population has been largely stagnant in the past five years.

2. Irony, Part I

Kudos to Haaretz for bringing this story, and even more so for writing down the theaters’ official responses to the question, how come they’re hopping onto the Ariel bandwagon so fast. Here goes:

HaBima: “Habima is a national theater, and its repertoire is supposed to suit the entire population. We perform our plays wherever it is feasible to do so.”

Cameri (Tel Aviv’s city theater): “The Cameri, like all Israeli theaters, plays at any venue where there are subscribers who are lovers of Hebrew theater, including all of the country’s theaters.”

Beersheva Theater: “We play anywhere all around the country.”

Khan Theater’s general manager (Jerusalem): “There are plays that are products on one hand, and possess a universal cultural value on the other hand. Anyone who wants to watch them is invited. We do not make a stand on the political matter.”

That last response, again, was dropped from the translated article. Don’t you just love it? As if a major theater booking a play in a settlement whose mayor has turned it into a flagship for the entire project’s legitimacy, is anything but a political statement.

But the major irony here is that no theater spokesperson excluded Ariel from “the country”. Thus, they pull the rug from under a major argument against artists like Elvis Costello, who decided to skip Israel altogether until things get better there. The argument against Costello et al. is that they are engaging in “a blanket boycott” without distinguishing between “the Good Israel” inside the 1967 lines, full of peace-loving people, and the problematic settlements.

Well, it turns out that according to Israel’s leading theaters, a classic component of the “Brand Israel” project to hide our ugly underside using our pretty high culture – the pre-1967 Green Line simply does not exist. It is all “The Country”. And this comes from the bohemian theater lefties. The rest of Israel’s institutions – the bus company, the electric company, the phone companies, the water company, the national parks system, the local-government system, etc. etc. – have integrated the settlements into “The Country” decades ago.

3. Irony, Part II

And as blogger Ofri Ilani sharply noted, one of the very first plays to be staged at Ariel by the Cameri theater this fall, is Bertolt Brecht‘s “Caucasian Chalk Circle”.

Brecht himself, widely revered in Israel, was a dissident German thinker who didn’t mince words about the fascism that took over his country, and continued railing against violence and injustice from his exile. “Chalk Circle” itself is a variation on one of the stories about Solomon, with two mothers quarreling over a child. Brecht changed it into a wealthy distant mother who disappeared from the child’s life, and the poor nanny who actually took care of him all these years. The background is a corrupt failed state, where a drunk lowlife is appointed judge but surprises everyone with his just, Solomonic verdict which hands the child over to the nanny.

Indeed, a classic play to show in Israel in general and in a settlement in particular. While Israelis might claim (as our propaganda has argued for years) that the Palestinian “nanny” hasn’t taken good care of the country in the long centuries of near-total Jewish absence, it is pretty clear what Brecht would think on the matter. Ofri Ilani actually went to see the play, and reports that the present Cameri interpretation is watered down, morphed and dumbed down to the point of totally distorting the main moral-political message.

To round up the irony: for decades the Cameri had built its reputation as the home theater of the late Hanoch Levin. Levin’s plays, presenting searing criticism of brutality and oppression in general, and of Israeli militarism and Occupation in particular, had time and again placed him at odds with the Israeli street. However, he is without question considered to be Israel’s most prominent playwright. Now, the Cameri succeeds in turning both Brecht and Levin in their graves with one fell swoop, while its spokescritters cheerily chirp that they “play at any venue where there are subscribers who are lovers of Hebrew theater, including all of the country’s theaters.”.

4. Irony, Part III

The cultural center’s manager, Ariel Turgeman, told Haaretz that he fully believes the venue will be ready for opening within three months. In recent weeks, construction has been going on by night, to allow the Muslim construction workers to fast during the Ramadan month.

Yes, believe it or not: the new venue is being built by Occupied Palestinians toiling at night. It seems that Salam Fayyad’s much-trumpeted campaign to have Palestinian laborers quit their settlement jobs, is toothless. Just like the man himself, who reserves all his biting power for oppressing his own subjects. But he cannot even promise them compensation, so that they will be able to stop serving settlers for a living.

American politicians and journalists can continue falling over each other praising The Unelected Wonder from Ramallah as Palestine’s great hope. Meanwhile, Fayyad’s main contribution so far has been to make the Occupation even more convenient for Bibi and the settlers, who are now laughing all the way to the box office.

5. A glimmer of hope

Well, not everyone in the said theaters is playing along. The news were only one day old, and already two of Israel’s hottest acting stars announced they will not go to Ariel.

Yusuf Sweid, who is currently appearing in “A Railway to Damascus” at Habima, told a Channel 1 television talk show yesterday that “I would be glad to perform in settlements in several shows that have messages I’d like to deliver in many communities. But settlers and settlements are not something that entertains me, and I don’t want to entertain them.”

Well said. Sweid, a Palestinian-Israeli, is willing to engage settlers in a serious debate over the country’s future. But unlike the theater managers, he will not roll over for fear of settler power.

The other actor is Jewish-Israeli Rami Heuberger, who does not have a specific Ariel show on his schedule yet, but already stated that

“if I am asked, I believe I would have a problem with performing there. As a stage actor it is a very, very problematic issue, and I think that so long as settlements are a controversial issue that will be discussed in any negotiations [with the Palestinians], I should not be there.”

Additionally, judging by angry talkbacks on the Hebrew Haaretz story, quite a few subscribers of these theaters are considering cancellation. The typical Israeli theater-going crowd is famously left-of-center, and has a special enmity towards the settlements. Have the theater managers miscalculated by placing their fear of government power above their core audience’s sensitivities? Time will tell.

10AM PDT UPDATE: —————

This just in from Israel (Hebrew link)

Dozens of Actors and Theater Professionals Refuse to Appear in Ariel

We would like to express our disgust with theater managements’ intention of staging shows at Ariel’s new hall…

This is the opening of a protest letter sent today by dozens of actors and theater professionals to all theater management…

…The actors among us declare they will refuse to play in Ariel, or any other settlement. We call upon managements to carry on their rich cultural activities, within the sovereign borders of the State of Israel, inside the Green Line.

Besides many leading actresses and actors, signed are also leading playwrights (Sobol, Gov, Librecht) and directors.

The settlers’ Yesha council has changed its celebratory tone. Yesterday they still laughed at the 2 actors who first spoke out. Now they say:

Our response… will be very harsh. This hate letter railing against Israel’s best sons who protect [theaters] while they play on stage, requires a direct, sharp and clear response from theater managements, and we expect that. We will announce our next steps over the coming days.

So, what’s the theaters’ “sharp” response? Cameri repeats its previous mantra, while HaBima seems to start backpedalling:

This is the first time that staging acts beyond the Green Line comes up in the Israeli debate… the subject requires an in-depth inspection of all the issues it raises…

An in-depth inspection which you, in your haste to put yourselves in Lieberman et al.’s good books, kinda skipped. Thank God so many in your theater crew have some spine.

So… yes, theater managements have miscalculated. Of all professionals, Israeli theater people are perhaps the most identified with the left in general and with anti-Occupation causes in particular. There is no way they would have taken this lying down, and been able to look themselves in the mirror afterwards.

This is probably a good place to stop; the next diary will probably be about the miscalculations of the settler lobby itself – this one being just the most recent in a rather impressive string of them.

We Do Not Obey

More women follow Ilana Hammerman`s footsteps: we shall not obey illegal and immoral laws.

(posted as a paid advertisement in Hebrew on Haaretz, August 6)

On Friday, July 23, we went on a trip – a dozen Jewish-Israeli women with a dozen West-Bank Palestinian women and four of their children, one of them a baby. We drove through the interior hill country (`Shfela`) and toured Tel Aviv and Yaffa together. We ate at a restaurant, bathed in the sea and had a great time on the beach. We returned via Jerusalem and watched its Old City from afar.

Most of our Palestinian guests had never seen the sea [located less than 60 km from their homes - AO]. Most of them have never had the chance to pray in their holy places in Jerusalem/Al-Quds, and watched them longingly from Mount Scopus. None of our guests had an entry permit into Israel. We drove them through the checkpoints in our cars, knowingly breaking the `Law of Entry into Israel.` We hereby announce this out in the open.

This joint trip was organized in response to the complaint lodged with the police by the state against one of us, Ilana Hammerman, for a similar trip she took with three young Palestinian women. We have decided to act in the spirit of Martin Luther King and symbolically show that we do not recognize illegal and immoral laws.

We do not recognize the legality of the `Law of Entry into Israel`, a law allowing any Israeli and any Jew to travel freely in all parts of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, but denying the same right to Palestinians – despite the fact that this is their country too. This law robs them of the right to visit towns and villages across the Green Line – places with which they have deeply rooted family, heritage and national connections. Therefore, we obeyed the voice of our conscience and took the liberty of bringing these women to a few of these places. They and us have taken the risk together, with clear minds and strong conviction.

Thus, we Israelis have earned another great privilege: to experience in our nation, a nation living on its sword, one of the most beautiful and emotional days of our life; to get to know brave Palestinian women, full of the joy of life, to spend time with them and to be free with them – even if only for a single day.

We did not drive `terrorists` nor `enemies`, but fellow human beings. The authorities separate us with fences and checkpoints, rules and regulations. Not in order to safeguard our security, but to enshrine the hostility and perpetuate the control of land illegally robbed from its rightful owners. This massive robbery has been undertaken in contravention to all international laws and conventions; it violates universal values of human rights, justice and humanism. It is not us who break the law – the State of Israel has been the chief lawbreaker for decades. It is not us, women with a civic and democratic awareness, who have gone too far. The State of Israel has gone too far and is driving us all off a precipice, perhaps even into self-destruction.

We call upon the citizens of Israel to heed the words of Henry David Thoreau, a 19th-Century American thinker, who in his famous treatise `Civil Disobedience` wrote:

`When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.`

Listen to these words, see how well they apply to the situation into which our nation has brought itself – and do as we have done.

Ilana Hammerman, Jerusalem
Annelien Kisch, Ramat Hasharon
Esti Tsal, Tel Aviv
Daphne Banai, Tel Aviv
Klil Zisapel, Tel Aviv
Michal Pundak Sagie, Herzlia
Nitza Aminov, Jerusalem
Irit Gal, Jerusalem
Ofra Yeshua-Lyth, Tel Aviv
Ronni Eilat, Kfar Saba
Ronit Marian-Kadishai, Ramat Hasharon
Ruti Kantor, Tel Aviv

(translated by Assaf Oron)

Okay, what is this all about?

Ilana Hammerman is an Israeli literary translator, journalist and activist. In May she published a surprising and highly personal account of a special day in her life, to which the Haaretz translator gave the poetic name “If there is a heaven”, which we covered on this blog.

Aya is a young woman of about 18, whom I love. Lin and Yasmin are her cousins, and are about a year or so older. All three live in the same village in the “Land of Judea.” Let’s call it Tekoa, Bani Na’im, Beit Umar, Battir – the exact name isn’t important. One day I was sitting with Aya in front of her home in the Land of Judea, and I asked her why she was looking a little sad. She was bored, she told me. She was tired of being stuck in the village all the time, never going anywhere, never seeing new things.

“Where would you like to go?” I asked her. The slender girl, wearing a traditional headscarf that hid every last strand of hair, thought for a moment and then said, “Maybe to Istanbul.” She watched me with her large brown eyes, waiting for an answer.

“Well,” I said, “I can’t take you to Istanbul, but I can take you to Tel Aviv! And Tel Aviv is beautiful, too. There are really tall buildings,” I stretched one arm up high, “and a giant shopping mall,” I spread my hands wide, “and a gorgeous beach! Tel Aviv is always celebrating something. It’ll be very interesting. You’ve never been to the big city. We’ll have a good time.”

Sounds like fun, no? There’s a teeny problem. Aya is an Occupied West Bank Palestinian, and as such she is forbidden entry into Israel. Ilana had been down this road before (all emphases mine).

When I got home I checked the map and mentally reviewed the conditions at the checkpoints that I know in the Land of Judea. I was stopped once before at Tarqumiya with a girl I was taking to an appointment at a hospital in Israel, and her mother. The mother had a tasrih [=permit], but the daughter, who was ill, did not. The soldiers checked the mother’s ID and saw that the daughter was over 16 – meaning she was only allowed to pass through with an ID and a permit. And anyway, they said, this crossing was supposed to be just for laborers, plus Israelis can’t go through the same checkpoint with Palestinians. We should try the Bethlehem checkpoint, they suggested; maybe there they would let us through on humanitarian grounds. These soldiers didn’t deal with humanitarian issues, that wasn’t their job. But we knew that at the Bethlehem checkpoint only Palestinians are entitled to pass – if they have a permit, of course – while Israelis cannot go through.

…we tried our luck at the Al-Khader checkpoint, where we were prohibited from crossing together. I let the two off so they could take a taxi to the “Palestinian” side of the checkpoint, while I drove around to the “Israeli” side. I arrived quickly and waited by the booths, where female soldiers sit behind reinforced glass and check the papers of the people wanting to enter. But the mother and daughter didn’t show up; maybe they couldn’t find a taxi or there was a long line on the Palestinian side that was not visible from the Israeli side.

When they finally did reach the soldiers, they were told the same thing: The girl needed her own ID card as well as an entry permit into Israel. This time, too, our pleas were of no avail – nor was a document showing that the girl had an appointment at the hospital, which we were not going to make on time. We helplessly bid one another farewell from either side of the electric turnstile and went our separate ways.

So this time around Ilana knew where her best chances lay: “smuggling” the girls dressed as Israeli teenagers, through an Israelis-only checkpoint. She did just that, and shares with the readers the signs encountered there.

The signs inform people coming from Israel that they are prohibited from bringing a vehicle into the Palestinian Authority for repairs …and that the transport of animals and animal products from PA territory is illegal.

That’s one side. For those continuing on the other side – in a vehicle that is not, for example, headed for repairs inside the PA and not carrying goods or animals out of the PA – a red sign offers these caring words of caution:

“Dear Citizen!!! Due to a fear that you may be entering PA-controlled areas which Israelis are prohibited from entering by mistake/against your will, the soldiers at the checkpoint have taken down your personal and vehicle information, for your safety. This information will be kept by security officials and used for security purposes if it is discovered that you entered PA territory.

Have a good and safe trip – Command Center of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank.”

A person who passes from one side to the other at this crossing, feeling reassured by the discreet security services promised him in such a personal way, learns from the next set of signs that he is in fact invited to visit Betar Ilit, the city of Torah and Hasidism in the Judean Hills, to head south on Highway 60 to Gush Etzion, Efrat, Elazar and Neve Daniel and on to Alon Shvut and Carmei Tzur, or to continue to Kiryat Arba and Hebron – without actually knowing whether he entered or was brought into PA territory, deliberately or unknowingly.

…I was particularly interested in the yellow sign that greets those coming from the new Israel to the old Israel – i.e., the sign that would greet me, Lin, Aya and Yasmin on our way out. The sign said

“Welcome to the Betar crossing point. This crossing is designated for Israelis only. Crossing over or transporting of someone who is not Israeli is prohibited!! An ‘Israeli’ is a resident of Israel, someone whose place of residence is in the area or is eligible to immigrate in accordance with the 1950 Law of Return, as valid in Israel.”

Despite the awkward wording, I understood what was written on the sign and what was permissible and prohibited. Granted, I could be a stickler and say definitively that not only was the three teens’ place of residence “in the area,” but they had never left it, to their dismay. On the other hand, it was impossible to claim that they were Israelis or were eligible to make aliyah in accordance with the Law of Return. So, I read the sign and understood it quite well, but I did not agree. I simply could not agree with it.

And so it was. Ilana successfully “smuggled” her friends into Israel, and they all enjoyed one of the best days in their lives together. As described in detail in the article.

Well, so what? Will a little gadfly’s symbolic protest act – no matter how wittily described – matter to anyone? I mean, the Occupation is chugging right along. The military backs the settlers; the government backs the military; the US government and AIPAC back the government; and Palestinian leaders either collaborate or are written off, or both. People, especially on the right, will either shrug or laugh at Ilana. Right?

Wrong.

If the fanatics have their way, Ilana Hammerman might spend the next two years in prison.

…reading Hammerman’s account of the day in Haaretz, a settler organization began a campaign for her arrest.

And as you might guess, in Israel the settlers usually have their way. So since the Israeli police and prosecution simply have nothing more pressing to deal with, there is now a criminal indictment against Hammerman.

————————————-

Hammerman, of course, broke the letter of the law intentionally. She wanted to point out that while Palestinians are barred entry into Israel, and their movement is severely restricted even inside the West Bank – Israelis travel freely not only inside Israel, but also all across the West Bank. In April in my home visit I did just that: rode with friends in a car deep into the West Bank, near Nablus. We could have gone to any settlement, no matter how remote (and some of them are quite remote), without having been stopped once.

These severe restrictions have not always been the case for Palestinians. In 1972 Israel’s security minister, Moshe Dayan, issued a “General Movement Permit”, which formally integrated the economy of Israel-Palestine. Occupied Palestinians, like Israelis, were allowed to move throughout Israel-Palestine without permit, and also seek employment and engage in commerce.

Rather than create a new reality, Dayan was merely reaffirming the reality that had existed on the ground since June 1967. The two economies integrated almost instantly. Since the integration was a grossly unequal one both politically and economically, the Israelis had far more to gain from the Palestinians’ amazingly skilled manual labor, their cheap produce, their captive consumer market and their natural resources. According to the gapminder.org charts, to this day the years 1967-1973 represent the largest annual jumps in Israeli per-capita GDP, both absolutely and in relative terms.

This situation lasted as long as Israelis felt they were gaining from it. But with the eruption of the first Intifada in late 1987, the Palestinians ceased to be the conveniently docile “junior partner” in the deal. Over the next several years, as the Israeli public and political system grappled with the new reality and waffled about what to do, the military started squeezing away Palestinians’ freedom of movement. In 1991 on the eve of the Gulf War, the IDF issued a landmark decree: for the first time since 1972, a blanket closure was imposed on the West Bank and Gaza. The war ended with no incident from the side of the Palestinians, but closure has been the default ever since then.

This teaches another key Israel-Palestine lesson: don’t listen to the words, watch the action on the ground. It is on the ground that the Occupation has been built; in Israeli rhetoric – both internally and for foreign consumption – it still does not really exist. The military is the sovereign in the Occupied Territories, and if the military decides to confine Palestinians “for security reasons”, then the talking heads won’t stand in its way. Each particular “security” decision along the slippery slope from 1987 to this decade might seem logical and defensible on its own. But the overall result – a regime which is essentially a system of open-air prisons – is ghastly and unacceptable on any level.

Which, to return to our subject, is precisely why Ilana Hammerman chose to challenge it. In June she responded to her adversaries.

…as an ordinary citizen who is required to respect the laws of her country, I consider myself entitled, even obligated, to examine – including by means of common sense – the justice and morality of the laws that apply to me, and particularly with respect to other people who are subject to the laws of my country. …Indeed, we Jews know better than anyone how the road to the human abyss is paved with evil legislation that was properly enacted and accepted by the majority.

…The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom was enacted in Israel in 1994. It includes the following stipulations: There shall be no violation of the life, body or dignity of any person; there shall be no violation of the property of a person; there shall be no deprivation or restriction of the liberty of a person by imprisonment, arrest, extradition or otherwise; all persons have the right to privacy and to intimacy; there shall be no entry into the private premises of a person who has not consented thereto; and, all persons are free to leave Israel.

All of these rights are denied the civilian Palestinian population living in the occupied territories under Israeli military control: Their lives, dignity and property are violated; their privacy and intimacy is not respected; and their private premises are entered without their consent. But, above all, their liberty is restricted: They are not free to leave their country, to move within it or to choose their place of residence at will. …the state is persistently and systematically, in contravention of the international conventions, employing collective punishment against a civilian population.

…one can say that Israel has lost the right to be called a state of law. It has also to a large extent lost the right to be called a democratic state …what is the red line beyond which we can no longer continue to respect its laws and regulations without betraying our conscience, which requires us, just as the Basic Law of our country says, “to defend human dignity and liberty” – that is, the human dignity and liberty of every person, and not just the Jewish or Israeli person?

In an offline email, Ilana pointed out to me another glaring inconsistency. Every day, thousands of Palestinian laborers sneak into Israel or are actively smuggled by Israeli employers. Despite all efforts, Israeli economy cannot completely wean itself of Palestinian labor, so despite finger-pointing and eye-rolling, the authorities actually turn a blind eye towards this. Of course, militants and terror-act planners are the first to know about the current situation of all human-smuggling routes into Israel. Which means that the formal checkpoints, barriers, permit systems, etc., are mostly a means of oppressing ordinary people – not preventing terror.

The freedom of movement is probably the most basic of human freedoms. It is not a coincidence that what we do with convicted criminals is put them in jail. If their profession so allows, they might still engage in it while confined; for example, a carpenter can continue doing carpentry work at the prison, a writer can continue writing in her cell. Quite often prisoners are also allowed to continue to express themselves, or pursue higher education. But they are not free. They are prisoners.

Under “security” pretexts, Israel has been imprisoning an entire nation in its backyard, while – quite amazingly and with complete conviction – claiming to be a free society. This is what Ilana Hammerman is trying to remind the world. She is doing it in a very feminine way (if I may generalize) – via a celebration of life and a joining of hands.

And she is not alone. As the statement above indicates, 11 Israelis have openly joined her in action. Ilana told me that dozens more, if not hundreds, are ready to do so too. On the Palestinian side, thousands or even more are willing to engage in this pure act of freedom.

Please help spread the word. Among other things, join the Facebook group supporting this campaign of civil disobedience.

(crossposted on Daily Kos)

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I’m writing to you in the name of Fatima Nawajeh, the initiator and organizer of Susiya’s summer camp. Susiya is a Palestinian village in Southern West Bank, an area known as Massafar Yatta or South Hebron Hills.

For many years the reality of a summer camp inside their community was an unattainable dream for the inhabitants and the children of Palestinian Susiya. Their cave-dwellers’ village was evacuated by the Israeli army in 1986. Once again in 2001, the occupation army expelled Susiya’s residents and destroyed the families’ scattered dwelling places built after the first evacuation. Meanwhile, the nearby settlers of the Jewish Sussya (built and subsidized by the Israeli government on expropriated land in the 1980′s) continue grabbing more and more agricultural land from its legal owners, local Palestinians farmers.

Against all odds, under these dark and oppressive circumstances, the young generation in Susiya is feeling more and more confident about their inner powers and abilities. They strive to take responsibly for the future of their community. As part of this positive development, an energetic team of local young activists led by Fatima Nawajeh orchestrated the first ever summer camp in Susiya. The camp lasted eight days in July 2009. This summer camp was a great success and gave a big boost for Susiya’s community life.

This year, the six local activists of the organizing team seek to expand the summer camp from eight to eleven days. At hand for help, are we, the longtime friends of Susiya from the Villages Group. The Israeli branch of the Smile Liberation Front, an international clown organization, is promising to visit the 2010 summer camp for a complete day.

As in the previous year, the organizers of Susiya’s summer camp are appealing to you in a call for financial support that will secure the realization of this year summer camp. The overall budget of the summer camp is $3,000, a sum which covers the needs of meals for the kids during the time of the daily activities, materials and accessories, outfits for a new Debka dancers group, expenses for a one day trip to a park in one of the cities in the West Bank, and a modest compensation for the counselors.

Anyone among you who wants to contribute and help, please see our donation page for details. Please also coordinate with me at ksehud@gmail.com. Of course, if you would like more information please contact me as well.

All the best,

Ehud Krinis
Villages Group

Last week we continued analyzing fundamental issues in Israel’s dealing with the world. The article appeared in Ha’aretz in an online-only, Hebrew-only format. Moreover, while the Ynet article was published pretty much with the same 575 words we wrote, Ha’aretz demanded only 450, and then were arrogant enough to further cut it to 400, change the title and much of the text. Below I translate the original with commentary. In a way, our message is a progressive Israeli response to the attack on the flotilla.

Link to the Haaretz version (Hebrew) and to the Hebrew version before Haaretz mauled it.

Will We Go On Pissing from the Diving Board?

Assaf Oron and Ofer Neiman

(title changed by Haaretz language editor to “Israeli Chutzpah”)

Did anyone in the Israeli government notice the similarities between the Gaza flotilla and the “Exodus” story? After all, in 1947 it was “Exodus” that turned into the straw that broke the camel’s back, signaling the end of British mandate rule. And maybe our government does remember the “Exodus” story, but thought that it won’t happen to us. That endure a little bad PR is worth the price; it will all blow over. There seems to have been a slight miscalculation, but predicting the future is not the point of this article.

Of course, calling the flotilla attack decision “a slight miscalculation” is a good candidate for understatement of the year, possibly the decade. But if you are awash in the self-reinforcing torrents of Israeli political thought, it’s pretty easy to see where the attack idea came from. Eleven days, that’s what they told each other. We need to divert the bad PR for 11 days: from May 31 to the World Cup opening kick. From that point on, the world will be busy watching men chase a ball around the field.

A few sentences to drive home how miscalculated this cynical calculation has turned out to be. South Africa, arguably the nation most preoccupied with the upcoming World Cup, still found time to recall its ambassador from Israel in the attack’s wake. The global BDS movement has suddenly shifted from second to third gear:

• The Pixies canceled their Tel Aviv concert in the last minute, joining Elvis Costello who had done so before the attack;
• After years of foot-dragging, major Italian supermarket chains start pulling Israeli produce off their shelves for failing to comply with stated EU policy that products must be clearly marked if coming from a settlement;
• Scottish writer Iain Banks writes an interesting letter to the guardian. In the letter, he states that boycotting is an “act of hypocrisy” because it is collective punishment meted out in order to stop Israel from collectively punishing Palestinians. However, he immediately continues with
  

  …but appeals to reason, international law, UN resolutions and simple human decency mean – it is now obvious – nothing to Israel, and for those of us not prepared to turn to violence, what else can we do?

  For the little it’s worth, I’ve told my agent to turn down any further book translation deals with Israeli publishers. I would urge all writers, artists and others in the creative arts, as well as those academics engaging in joint educational projects with Israeli institutions, to consider doing everything they can to convince Israel of its moral degradation and ethical isolation, preferably by simply having nothing more to do with this outlaw state.

  (emphasis mine)

All this harvest in under two weeks, without mentioning – say – the war of words and boycotts going on with Turkey, till May 31 a favorite Israeli vacation destination. I have the feeling we’re far from done.

(breaking: Devendra Banhart also cancels, 3 hours before flying to Israel, saying “We will be overjoyed to return to Israel on the day that our presence is perceived and reported on as a cultural event and not a political one.”)

Anyway, back to our little op-ed and why we wrote it:

It is worthwhile discussing the mindset that has led to the attack on the flotilla, the mindset of “pissing from the diving board:” we do whatever we feel like doing, and someone will clean after us.

Thus far, it has worked beautifully for us: Israel destroys the Palestinian economy, sending the bill to pay for their basic sustenance – and the world pays and shuts up. Israel decides that Gazans should go on a suffocating “diet” – and the world collaborates.

There are countless more examples for this pattern. As I demonstrated with painstaking detail (Part I) (Part II) – and as will be further explored below – on the historical-time axis, the peaks in this Israeli strategy correlate with the terms of 3 Republican presidents who saw bolstering Israel’s adventuresome tendencies as an asset in some global chess game: Nixon, Reagan and W. Bush definitely took this to the extreme, affecting a change in I-P reality that is so deep and so dramatic, that people have forgotten what it was like before. Specifically with regards to Israeli policy shapers: like the 5-year-old who leaps off the roof, they truly believe they are capable of anything with no consequence.

It is for them, or rather for our fellow Israeli citizens, that we are trying to connect the dots:

Did it work because the world likes us? On the contrary. Israeli policies this past decade have been about as popular in the world as AIDS. So why are they all cooperating with us? Are we a global power? Israelis are barely 0.1% of the world’s population. Our trade balance has been continuously negative since independence, and the global economy would make do without us. Our military is strong, but without massive US financing it would be paralyzed. Our display of power depends mostly upon external support, first and foremost from the US government. And the wall-to-wall American support for Israel stems mostly from domestic American politics.

This is a key point of the article. As hinted previously, seeing Israel as a useful piece on the global chessboard has made sense for some administrations more than for others. Also, it was more plausible during the Cold War. But a remote “chess piece” whose antics generate a nuclear alert on your home soil – as happened during the 1973 war – becomes a bit questionable. Especially when this (giving trouble and headaches to your sponsor superpower) becomes a habitual pattern.

Recently, the infamous Caroline Glick (yes, that’s the mastermind behind Latma) turned philosophical and wrote a longish piece on the Jerusalem Post, reminding everyone what an amazing, unparalleled asset Israel is to the United States, and how the Obama Administration is too stupid (read: “Obama is a Jew-hating closet Jihadi”; if you don’t believe click on the Latma link and watch from minute 1:45, making sure you have a barf bag handy), too stupid to realize this. In particular, Glick said Israel “projects American power in the region”, without using a single American soldier.

mmmm. What fanstastic imagery. We “project” your power. Sounds self-evident, no? No. If Israel projects American power, it means that Israel being there and doing what it does, makes America more powerful in the region and its interests served without having to spend efforts on it directly. Ya. Exactly what we’ve been seeing. Well, actually, the opposite: it is America that projects Israeli power onto the Middle East, not vice versa. As we showed above, America works overtime, so that Israel gets its interests served without breaking a sweat.

But what do we project for you then? Israel project to the Middle East, that America hates and despises them, totally ignores their legitimate interests and grievances, and is furthermore hell-bent upon keeping them weak and divided, suffering from wars and corrupt dictatorships that America props up from Cairo to the Gulf. Way to project.

Back to the article, probably to the most touchy sentences.

Only 2% of Americans are Jews, but there are 13 Jewish Senators out of 100, and their weight in media and the economy is even greater. The only issue around which America’s Jews cooperate as a unified bloc is supporting Israel, and American politicians have learned the lesson long ago.

Whoa. I’ve reached what can be termed A Michael Chabon moment: how does one celebrate the extraordinary success of the American Jewish community, without making it sound like “Antisemitic stereotypes”? And how does one begin to discuss the impacts of that community’s Israel advocacy, without being accused of invoking “The Protocols of Zion”? I will grant this to those who don’t like reading sentences like the two above: Jewish fears about discussing these matters too openly, have very clear and painful historical justifications.

Moreover, much as I appreciate the courage of Mearsheimer and Walt in publishing their “Lobby” paper and book, I do not subscribe to their version of events, in particular the prime event which gave them the political space in which to place the book: namely, the Iraq war. Mearsheimer-Walt let Bush and Cheney off way too easy. As mentioned above, Bush has a huge culpability and a terrible legacy on I-P: like on other topics, he never cared to understand what an American President’s role should be. But on Iraq he and Cheney have pretty much sole responsibility; it was their brainchild and their crime. Yes, there were plenty of criminally idiotic (or idiotically criminal) Jewish neocons milling about, and Jewish organizations shamefully advocated for the invasion (the ADL!) – but they were little more than useful idiots in the Iraq story.

That being said, it is impossible to fathom American I-P politics and the dominant media discourse here about I-P, without acknowledging the depth of fear gripping Congresspersons and reporters. This was the first shock that greeted my arrival here in 2002-3. On Israel-Palestine, America is simply not a free country. If, on issues that are clearly controversial (the West Bank Barrier, the Gaza war), a parliament votes 403-8 or 99-0 with little debate, then for this particular issue it is little better than the parliaments of Syria or North Korea. If a New-York based director smuggles a film out of a deadly battle in her underwear defying an evidence-destroying campaign by those who had done the killing, then conducts a press conference and posts all the material online – and still gets ignored by the mainstream American media – then these media are so shell-shocked that they have forgotten the reason for their existence. They would have never given up such a good story, on any other topic.

We continue:

European government support for Israel is motivated in part by guilt about the Holocaust, but it seems that the main factor is their unwillingness to challenge America’s traditional stance. Arab rulers like Mubarak rely upon the US for the survival of their regimes, and therefore toe the line on Israel. What’s wrong about that? The problem is, that almost in every country whose government supports us, this is done against the opinions and sentiments of a solid majority of the public.

There are a lot of fantasies (and deliberate misinformation) in Israel and in right-wing Jewish circles about why world governments back us up. People keep spinning theories about interests of “moderate” Arab governments converging with those of Israel’s government. Bullocks. The Guardian’s Cairo correspondent recently wrote that “Domestically, Egypt’s role as an accomplice in Israel’s crippling siege of Gaza has long been Mubarak’s biggest political vulnerability.” Regimes, even dictatorships, don’t want to be hated by the majority of their citizens. Serving Israel’s interest does precisely that.

It doesn’t have to be like that, and we have not always been so hated. From the 1960′s to the 1980′s, European youth flocked to Israel to volunteer in Kibbutzim. Their kids are more likely to be found supporting the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, than in any display of support for Israel. The “Israel Lobby” in the US used to represent the views of most American Jews, but this has long ceased to be true. These changes are a direct result of Israeli policies.

We arrive at the surprising (and also misunderstood by most readers, I fear) punch paragraph.

Our “pissing from the diving board” strategy relies upon the support of a narrow, shrinking layer of politicians and businessmen, as we stick our tongue out at the rest of the world. Many of our ancestors in Eastern Europe have been in this position before: “The Nobleman’s Jew.” The peasants fear the nobleman, even hate him, but he is too strong. It is far easier to hate the Jew, who is totally dependent upon the nobleman and basks in his power.

So what should a Jew do?

A smart Jew will treat the peasants nicely and reasonably. An even wiser Jew will make sure to extricate herself from this position, and integrate in the surrounding community (i.e., the Middle East) in a healthier role, without depending upon the nobleman for survival.

And a brainless Jew will exploit his position to torment the peasants under his control, will grab an exorbitant piece of the pie for himself, and believe this will last forever. In short, he will “piss from the diving board.”

The sad irony is, that the leaders pushing us into this lethal Diasporic trap, have done so in the name of “security” and national pride.

Crossposted on Daily Kos

The text below, beautifully written by David, can be seen embedded in the images by clicking on this sentence (pdf)

The desire for a permanent house is a most conventional desire in our society. A house is usually conceived as a structure of four walls, a floor below and a roof above, and the desire for such a house is mostly fulfilled using the mortgage system.

But what seems to be such a conventional desire in many societies may prove rather unconventional in a society living under the conditions of prolonged Occupation. In fact, in the small Bedouin community of Umm al-Kheir, among the families who live close to the settlement of Carmel, such a basic desire for a four walls’ house is not only unconventional but should also be regarded as quite unrealistic.

In Umm al-Kheir one meets the lethal conjunction of the regular oppressive regime of the Occupation, which denies its subjects some basic human rights, and a kind of “Not in My Back Yard” syndrome – Israeli settlers from Carmel just want to see the wide open landscape of the Judea Desert and the Jordanian mountains, without the poor Bedouins stuck in the middle and blocking the view. So the Israeli newcomers of Carmel, who settled on Umm al-Kheir’s lands more than 30 years after the Bedouins arrived there as refugees, following the 1948 war; these settlers try their best to get rid of the poor people living next to them. The settlers operate the Occupation machinery, and the result is wave after wave of house demolitions which don’t spare even the toilets.

The ways the people of Umm al-Kheir chose to cope with and struggle against this seemingly hopeless situation are not limited to the more common ones, such as building their houses anew after every wave of destruction, or trying to take some juridical measures; they also express themselves in different artistic idioms.

The importance of artistic activity for the preservation of hope for better prospects in the future, and for the sublimation of pain, is manifested in the different creative ways people from Umm al-Kheir express their desire for a house.

a very creative and ambitious way of expressing this desire was adopted by Eid Hathalin, who summoned his friends, David from Israel and Malak from the U.S, to build together a complete miniature of Umm al-Kheir, one which would overcome, at least in this mini-scale model, the great limits and restrictions imposed by the occupation on the actual Umm al-Kheir.

A second no less ambitious and beautiful project, was chosen by Salma Hathalin. Salma is a 30 years old woman who has been living in a small tent in Umm al-Kheir all her life. As an unmarried woman in a society where the women usually count on the men to provide for them, Salma is seeking not only a house of four walls, but first and foremost some income. Now she succeeded in combining these two pursuits by creating a work of handcraft – a big colored picture, made of wool, of her imagined dream house (One might guess that she drew some inspiration from the very real houses of the Carmel settlers, standing right before her eyes).

You, who read this report, may find yourselves sympathizing with Salma yet realizing that you can do almost nothing to help her fulfill her dream for a house. However, Salma has created for you an opportunity to help her earn some income: this picture – which symbolizes the creative struggle of Umm al-Kheir for its survival – was offered for sale, and purchased by a couple from Leeds, England.

In April, in anticipation of Israel’s independence day, fellow Israeli activist Ofer Neiman sent us an op-ed for feedback. I ended up co-signing the article. It appeared on Ynet, the website of Israel’s largest daily. I planned to translate it to English but was too busy.

A couple of weeks ago, as the Gaza flotilla was cruising towards its tragic end, I thought up another article – a sequel if you will. This time it was Ofer who joined me as a co-author, and the article appeared in Haaretz – but wasn’t translated on their English mirror.

Both articles deal with Israel’s existential problems rather than focus on current events. The Ynet article reminds Israelis, that the deteriorating quality of our public life bears a direct impact upon the raison d’etre for the Jewish state itself. The Haaretz article tackles Israel’s recent foreign-policy philosophy (embraced by most of the public) head-on.

Neither article was received well by Israeli readers; no big surprise. At least we tried. Below is an annotated translation of the Ynet piece, with additional remarks I’ve never written before regarding my personal experience. The Haaretz article – hopefully in a day or two.

The Most Dangerous Place for Jews

Ofer Neiman and Assaf Oron, April 22, 2010

The State of Israel was established to be a safe haven for Jews, but it seems that since its establishment this has been the only place in the world where Jews are killed on a regular basis in military conflicts or terror attacks, supposedly for being Jews – but more precisely, for their affiliation with the Zionist enterprise. Generations of ceaseless self-armament, during which Israel has turned into a regional power with the strongest military in the Middle East, have not served to allay our fears. Even now many feel threatened – for example, by the potential of an Iranian nuclear weapon, or by thousands of rockets on our northern and southern borders.

While bereavement and existential fears grip the public in Israel every few years, in many other places around the world Jews live a prosperous stable life, maintain a rich community fabric, and actively participate in the surrounding local culture. The state that was set up “to prevent another Holocaust” is the only place in the world where local politicians dare threaten Jews with… another Holocaust, as the speeches during this year’s Memorial Week once again demonstrate.

[note: Israel's Memorial Week starts with the Holocaust day a few days after Passover, and continues a week later with the military and terror-victim Memorial Day, right on the eve of Independence day. Right-wing politicians like Bibi use the event to remind citizens how all the world is against us, and how grave is the existential threat du jour]

The vast majority of Israelis (at least those who are not religious fanatics) see the protection of Jews’ welfare and safety as a primary mission of the state, a mission far more important than, say, the ambition to extend the national borders beyond those recognized by the world in 1949. Therefore, it is no surprise that the citizens most at ease with the present political reality are messianic fanatics. Effi Eitam, for example, already declared that Jewish sovereignty over the entire “greater Israel” is a goal worth sacrificing human lives for. We, the rest of Israelis, must ask ourselves: are we ready to sacrifice our children and other children, when we can guarantee them a future of security and contentment somewhere else?

—————

At this point, one might think that the article’s main goal is to convince people to emigrate from Israel. Bear with us: we are being intentionally provocative. The point made by the article’s first part is that even on security proper – that major deity “justifying” pretty much every failure and crime our government commits – successive Israeli governments have actually scored very low grades. Fact of the matter is, the average Israeli would be much safer grabbing whatever foreign passport or visa they can get hold of, and emigrate to where most Diaspora Jews live, i.e. some wealthy peaceful country. From a pure security perspective, that is.

Of course, even with Israel’s higher rate of conflict-related deaths vs. the West’s, is still fortunately too low to make Israelis run for the exits en masse like Iraqis had done recently. Yet, the ongoing sense of paranoia and trauma has been quite damaging.

But there are other reasons beside security for Jews, even non-fanatics, to live in a Jewish-dominated state, and we continue by listing some of them.

—————

True, even non-fanatics can suggest answers to the question “Why live in Israel?” for example “Only here we control our destiny” or “Only here there is a sense of a shared fate”. But the validity of these answers needs to be revisited in view of recent developments.

Recently, our public sphere has been monopolized by the new-old consensus that we must live on our sword, as a “Villa in the Jungle” facing our “Barbarian” neighobors who “do not accept our existence here”. This is not controlling our destiny, but the complete opposite: fatalism and a dead end. As to the shared fate, Israel’s once-famous social cohesion has been unraveling in recent decades because of rifts between major population groups, the disintegration of the education system, cruel economic policies, and the epidemic of corruption in high places that eradicates the public’s trust in its leaders. This is not a coincidence: when all of us are consumed by an outbreak of existential fears, or are busy recovering from the previous outbreak – who has the energy to deal with society’s core problems and hold politicians accountable?

—————–

Of course, there are other answers that can be given besides the two we addressed. We could not cover all of them in a 575-word article. For example, “Participate in the re-connection of Jewish life and culture to our ancient ancestral land” (not necessarily in the religious sense). This is a very popular theme, and one which, as a history buff and former nature guide, I personally identify with. But in recent years Israelis’ collective view of the Middle East has become so hostile and disdainful. So do we see ourselves as part of it, or not? In particular, it is clear to anyone paying attention, that Palestinians have preserved much of the material culture and traditions of ancient Jews. What kind of Jewish revival in our ancient land is this, when we come to see Palestinians as inferior and repulsive – which is what, unfortunately, Israeli kids are indoctrinated into nowadays? This mindset, which after some lull in the 1990′s has re-emerged with a vengeance, is directly related to the damages we have inflicted upon the country’s natural and cultural scenery, most recently with the destruction of thousands and thousands of olive trees.

Similarly, all answers will share the same flaws we pointed out here, which boil down to this: Israel is not the same country anymore. It is not the same country I grew up in, and it is not the country you happened to visit 10 years ago. We now know that it had never quite lived up to its image, but earlier on one could argue that Israel was still in formation, that the threats were objectively more massive (e.g. the Egyptian army backed by the USSR’s power, etc.). Now the excuses have become too lame (and/or racist) to be taken seriously.

Keep in mind: we’re not discussing here who’s worse, Israel or “the Arabs”. We are discussing whether life in Israel might have become too ugly to be worth it. Blaming “the Arabs” doesn’t help; in fact, as I just showed, it makes matters worse.

Still, perhaps the strongest and irrefutable answer to the question “Why live here?” is simply “This is Home.” This is always true for any country in which one happens to grow up in. I, too, had an extremely strong sense of home in Israel until the late 1990′s and even until year 2000, and didn’t even dream of spending years on end outside the country; of raising my kids anywhere else.

And then, as the second Intifada broke out, at the most basic personal level I just could not reconcile myself with the reaction of most of my fellow Israeli Jews, and with the events that had transpired. And something in my sense of home just broke, within about 1.5 years it was all but gone. It wasn’t any fear for personal safety; our family life was very safe from terror attacks. It was the feeling that your home has become this strange place you cannot recognize anymore.

This is really hard to explain if you haven’t experienced something like this yourself. It might take a whole book to explain it. But I think this fraying of the sense of home is something that has happened to many people in many countries. It’s part of human nature and human heritage. I think it’s reversible, and in my case the sense of home had seemed to mend itself gradually at times. However, it’s really hard to bring it back completely, when the same national condition that has damaged it in the first place is only getting worse.

Our article nails down the observation that once life somewhere – anywhere – deteriorates beyond a certain stage, sooner or later many people will stop calling it home. The deterioration does not have to be absolute; it can be relative to somewhere else people feel they are able to go to. It so happens, we Jews are fortunate and blessed by the suffering and hard work of our ancestors, that nowadays most Jews including Israeli Jews have many options.

But now we stop talking about personal migration decisions, turn the entire argument on its head and spear the governing consensus with it:

—————

The immediate conclusion from all this seems depressing: those who promise us eternal anxiety and hostility with the hundreds of millions of our neighbors in the Middle East – also guarantee that there will be no essential justification for life in Israel, except for inertia. But this conclusion relies upon acceptance of this governing “truth”, that Israel really has “no choice.”

Whoever remembers some of our history, knows that Israel’s wars have mostly been wars of choice. PM Golda Meir’s disdain towards Sadaat’s peace initiatives cost us the gratuitous death of thousands in 1973. In 1982, PM Menachem Begin openly declared the invasion of Lebanon to be a “yes-choice war”. The same goes for the various wars and operations of the past decade, all of them carried out against small and irregular forces while inflicting catastrophic harm upon civilians. These operations surely were not the only options available to Israel’s governments.

As she warned us in advance about the self-fulfilling war prophecies inherent to present-day Israeli discourse, Hannah Arendt had already written in 1948:

The ‘victorious’ Jews will be surrounded by a completely hostile Arab population, closed behind always-threatened borders, consumed by physical self-defense to a degree that will overshadow all other activities and interests.

The only way to break out of this vicious cycle, is to engage in a determined struggle against the “no-choice” brainwash, and the endless parade of “yes-choice” military operations.

The Jews of Israel must decide at last, whether we prefer land (“Sharm-El-Sheikh without peace is better than peace without Sharm-El-Sheikh”), forcible control (“under any agreement, Israeli will retain a presence around the borders of the Palestinian state”), and eternal conflict (“There is no partner”) – over human life.

Only the second option, as the Torah says “and choose Life”, justifies life in this country and not overseas.

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The 3 quotes in the last passage are:

1. Security Minister Moshe Dayan explaining in 1968 why there’s no need to negotiate with the Egyptians, rather it’s better to hold on to Sinai.
2. PM Bibi in early 2010, explaining his vision for Palestinian statehood – which, rather than being “extreme” in the Israeli spectrum, reflect pretty well the security-establishment consensus.
3. PM Ehud Barak’s infamous (and dishonest) summary of the failure of the Camp David talks in fall 2000, as given in a live speech to the nation – a single phrase that destroyed the Oslo process, destroyed the Israeli left-of-center camp, and the destroyed the future of Barak’s own political party.

Let me reiterate in closing: the article is highly critical of Israeli policies and of what life in Israel has become. But the fault is not with the messenger. Rather it is the negative message upon which the Israeli Establishment bases its power, that is undermining the very essence of what Israel is supposed to be about. Our message is actually positive: urging Israelis to see beyond the cheap “no-choice” lies, that there is actually a way out of this trap.

Even more strongly: in a sense, there really is no choice. There is no other option for healing our nation and its relationship with its region, except by uprooting once and for all the deadly life of “we have no choice but to keep on fighting”. Just like the Biblical quote in our last sentence, taken from Moses’ farewell message to the nation. The choice is yours. You can choose to live ignominiously, ruled by politicians who manipulate your fears. But this choice is equivalent to a death spiral.

The only way out, as a nation, is to overcome fear and choose life.

Today (Saturday), Israeli PM `Bibi` again claimed, in rather crude terms, that the reason why the IDF killed 9 activists on Monday but today boarded the MV Rachel Corrie peacefully, is because of “…the difference between a ship of peace activists, with whom we don’t agree but respect their right to a different opinion from ours, and between a ship of hate organised by violent Turkish terror extremists…”

This continues a race-baiting campaign against the Turkish ship and IHH, which started well before Monday’s attack.

As CindyCasella’s excellent diary shows, just like in previous controversies the Israeli PR machine churns mostly lies. They are already backtracking from a claim IHH has Al Qaeda ties. But they’re still at it.

Call Bibi’s racist bluff: demand that Israel release all Mavi Marmara media taken by all sides last Monday.

Bibi’s poisoned praise today for the people aboard MV Rachel Corrie for not putting up a fight, completely banks upon the “casual” racism in Western and Israeli society. We are conditioned to expect dark and/or Muslim and/or Arab people to be more violent, and “pink” Western people to be less violent.

I admit even I have this subconscious bias, reinforced by early-life indoctrination and countless movies, books and the rest of popular culture. So surely Bibi feels like he has a winning wedge-theme here with this it’s all because the Turkish and Arab “terrorists” on Mavi Marmara, if it was only among us civilized Westerns it would have all been okay.

I do hope he’s wrong and the the West will not take the bait. But in Israel it works great. After a brief tentative embrace of multiculturalism in the 90′s, Israeli public opinion has reverted to anti-brown racism in general, and anti-Arab racism in particular, with a vengeance. The fact that there are many brown faces among Israeli Jews does not refute this sad reality, but in fact makes it worse (this is a side issue here, so I’m not following up with links – although there is plenty of evidence).

Back to Bibi and the flotilla: there are some teeny cracks in his “Israelis good, Arabs bad, Irish good, Turks bad” schpiel:

1. MV Rachel Corrie had barely 20 people on it including crew. MV Mavi Marmara had over 600 people.

2. Mavi Marmara happened first. The knowledge that people on a previous ship had been shot in the back of the head from a few cm, tends to help you make sure it won`t happen to you to, and not try anything funny. Is that the famous “deterrence” Israel keeps hoping for? Perhaps.

3. MV Rachel Corrie is an integral part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. It just got delayed a few hours en route to Gaza, and therefore was not attacked on Monday. The entire flotilla was organized by Free Gaza, with many groups taking part.

4. The clearly racist baiting of the Turkish IHH and Turks and Arabs in general, is a very shameful line of defense especially when coming down directly from the PM`s office. By its activities, the IHH is a Muslim humanitarian organization. There were accusation by a right-wing hack made 4 years ago, based on half-truths and misrepresented bits of information, that the IHH was *sometimes* used as a front for terrorism. Fact of the matter, the IHH remains legal in all countries except Israel, and is active in over 100 countries.

The IHH Wikipedia entry has been a battlefield since last weekend. I admit having participated in the “battle” before the attack on Mavi Marmara. At that point some right-wingers overran the entry trying to portray the IHH as a terror-affiliated group. I prevented that from happening before the attack. Shortly afterwards it was overrun again. Since then, it seems that some grownups have entered the fray, and a voice of reason has finally taken hold over the entry.

In truth, all the allegations against IHH are controversial at best, and come from the usual suspects. As part of this propaganda battle, the Al Qaeda claims were made and now retracted.

5. Last but not least: Mavi Marmara and other ships’ passenger testimonies now finally coming out, as well as Turkish autopsy results, do not support the Israeli version (to put it mildly). Yes, the forensic physicians carrying out the autopsy were Turks, but somehow I trust their integrity more than Bibi’s.

If we are really after the truth here, rather than try to spin today`s second shameful takeover of a Gaza flotilla ship in a racist direction, I call upon Bibi to make sure *all* media taken by Mavi Marmara passengers (video, audio, pics), and by the IDF troops attacking them, be released immediately.

This way, we will finally know the truth about Monday`s bloodshed.

Or, if you had already destroyed evidence, have the guts to admit that you don’t want the truth to be known, rather than continue propagating racist lies that ultimately undermine Israel’s long-term prospects in the Middle East.

But even I didn’t dream they would be this stupid, this brutal. As I write this, the IDF keeps changing versions about its act of piracy every few minutes. They still believe they can lie their way out of this one, too.

You know what? They might. Because the Israeli strategy known as “Pissing from the High Jump” has worked so far. For about a decade, no one in the world that Israel cares to count, has dared put their money where their mouth is and force Israel to become a better (rather, less terrible) global citizen.

Well, the time to change this is tonight. Tomorrow, Bibi is invited to visit Obama and if the latter’s global leadership means anything to him, he better dis-invite the creep right now.

Please contact the White House today. Ask that he:

Dis-invite PM Netanyahu from tomorrow’s visit

Similarly, Immediately open the West Bank to free movement of people and goods to and from Jordan.

I think that will do for a start. If you have anything to add, please write in the comments.

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Once again, President Obama shows that he is unwilling to fight for what is right, until at least one moment too late. It happened with healthcare and the public option, it happened with offshore drilling, and it is now happening with Israel-Palestine. This tragedy should have never happened. Obama himself is on record asking for the siege to be removed; he just never cared to make this request anything more than empty words.

But I still trust that Obama is a smart man who knows what’s right. When he puts his mind to something, he can get a lot accomplished.

Tonight is the night to demand from him to finally do that with the poor, bleeding Holy Land.