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)

The destruction was perpetrated on November 24 by Israeli civilian contractors (see here for a brief report in Ha’aretz). They were hired by the deceptively named “Civil Administration” – an arm of Israel’s military Occupation apparatus which poses as a legitimate governing body. The name “Civil Administration” was invented deliberately in the 1980′s by then-defense minister Ariel Sharon, in order to confuse and confound people about this body’s true nature. Its main business these days seems to be to harass, refuse permits, and eventually destroy property belonging to Palestinians, in order to “clear” them out of West Bank areas that Israel wants to eventually annex.

The civilian contractors and deceptively-named “Civil Administration” thugs were accompanied by ordinary IDF soldiers. As can be seen in the video below, throughout the demolition neither contractors, nor CA thugs, nor IDF soldiers, acted or looked like people under any form of threat or duress.

That did not stop them from arresting and carting off two female Palestinian youth: 21-year-old Sausan Hamamdeh and her 17-year-old cousin Amal. Some of the events around and immediately after their arrest are in the video, around minutes 1:30-3:00. The video was filmed by Guy Batavia, activist with Ta’ayush and Rabbis for Human Rights.

watch?v=w71Wr8IIC0s

Amal and Rasha (Sausan’s sister) gave us a detailed account of the arrest: during the demolition Sausan was stressed, realizing her home was about to be demolished without the women of the family having a chance to remove its contents. According to the present Israeli procedure of house demolitions, the removal of the house contents is carried out only by a contractor’s firm hired for this purpose. Sausan’s attempt to force her way into her home to clear out belongings led to her being pepper-sprayed in the eyes by one of the soldiers, and to her arrest.

Amal was arrested as she tried to provide Sausan a water bottle to relieve the stinging in her eyes. Water from the bottle squirted out and wet the soldier who was preventing Amal from giving Sausan the bottle, and that was the reason for Amal’s arrest.

Sausan (image on right) and Amal were then taken by army jeep to the police station at Kiryat Arba settlement. During the ride one of the soldiers in the jeep tried to sexually harass Amal and also kicked her in the belly.

After the interrogation at the Kiryat Arba police station, Sausan and Amal were driven to Jerusalem where they were placed in detention at the infamous “Russian Compound” detention center. Conditions at the facility (which they shared with another inmate) were very severe – it was a very cold week in Jerusalem and the room had an air conditioner that was cooling rather than heating the place.

Repeated requests by the women to turn it off were refused by their jailers. Amal’s stay in this room lasted five days, whereas Sausan spent a whole week there (she said it felt like a year).

On November 28th the two youngsters appeared at the Occupation’s kangaroo military court in the Ofer base. We have a full account of the proceedings, thanks to a Machsom Watch volunteer being present. Here are a few excerpts:

…the charge [for both girls] is: attacking a soldier. While the representatives of the Civil Administration, together with soldiers and Border Police came to demolish her house, Sausan picked up a stone [later described as a ‘rock’] and hit a BP officer on the hand. Sausan was arrested. Then Amal came on the scene and poured water on the officer.

This is the prosecution’s version. A CPT observer who was on the scene issued quite a different report (.doc file):

The second family’s [whose home was destroyed] 21-year-old daughter confronted the Israeli soldiers when they marched into their home and began throwing the bedding outside. When she asked what they were doing, one soldier said, “Get out of my sight.” The daughter refused; in response, the soldier threatened, “If you don’t move, we will do even more,” and sprayed her in the face with tear gas. The other solders began kicking her as she fell to the ground.

…The 21-year-old’s cousin, who is 17, tried to bring her water to soothe her eyes. The soldiers arrested them both…

The Machsom Watch account continues:

The prosecution agreed to Amal’s release that day (perhaps because she is a minor, or because squirting a soldier with water is not such a serious violation) in return for a 4000 shekel deposit. The defense explained that Amal cannot afford to pay such a sum: she is the daughter of a destitute shepherd, and besides, her house has been destroyed.

The judge’s decision: He’s willing to consider reduced bail, plus third person Israeli guarantor (me) to insure that the defendant shows up for a hearing, should one take place on 21.12.11. …The judge also ordered the Prison Authorities to provide Sausan with a coat, after seeing the girls shiver, since they were wearing the same clothes they were arrested in 4 days earlier.

I wondered how the released underage girl was going to get home that day, with no money and no proper clothes. My concern proved well founded: She was released from the Russian Compound detention center in the evening. An Israeli friend of the family who inquired where he could pick her up was told to wait for her at Qalandiya Checkpoint [north of Jerusalem]. The man waited for 5 hours only to learn later that the girl had been released at Bethlehem Checkpoint [south of Jerusalem]. Amal reached home at 10 PM.

In the end, Sausan was released on Thursday evening [Dec. 1]. This time two activists waited for her at Bethlehem Checkpoint to drive her home. But they waited in vain, because she was released at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (thus turning her into an “Illegal infiltrator” into Israel). A taxi driver took her home.

Today, Monday December 19, Sausan’s case reached a verdict. As usual in the Occupation’s kangaroo-court system, it is based on a plea bargain, whose terms are negotiated based on whatever confessions or negative testimonies the interrogators managed to get out of the defendant, vs. the level of success by the defense to demonstrate how ridiculous the original charges were (Occupation charge-sheets are invariably inflated). In Sausan’s case, the overall balance yielded a relatively mild outcome. Ehud just emailed me the verdict (pdf file, Hebrew).

I sentence the defendant to:

A. 8 days arrest, as many as she had already spent imprisoned.
B. One month arrest in the event she repeats the offense within two years.
C. A monetary fine of NIS 3,000, to be taken out of the bail posted on behalf of the defendant…

So Sausan is back home. A proper court would have thrown out the case, based on abuse in custody, lack of access to legal counsel when a (partially retracted) confession was elicited from the defendant, conflicting testimonies of the event, and several other reasons. The heavy-handedness in treating Sausan and Amal stands in glaring contradiction to the numerous assaults on soldiers by the Israeli settlers whose interests these soldiers serve – assaults that usually go unpunished. We should also call out the routine dirty trick of over-arresting and over-charging Palestinians, which then helps the judges of these kangaroo courts appear enlightened when they encourage more lenient plea bargains – when in fact, the judges have not lifted a finger towards carrying out their duties of overseeing true justice and guiding a search for the truth about events.

The fine, and the lawyer’s fees, are a very steep sum for the Hamamdeh family to pay. But at least Sausan is home and facing a relatively benign fine. Moreover, the charges against her 17-year old Amal are now almost certain to be dropped.

Finally: this story has struck a chord among people in Israel’s social-justice activism community, shinining a light upon the woeful injustice in Occupation in general and South Hebron Hills in particular, and inspiring solidarity action among female activists. Last week, after reading Ehud’s account of Sausan and Amal’s arrest on the Rabbis for Human Rights website, several organizers of this summer’s mass rallies in Israel for social justice visited the region with Villages Group activists. They filmed an interview with Sausan, and decided to take further action.

These activists are organizing a fundraising concert on Sausan’s behalf, on December 28 2011, 8:30 PM, at Beit Ha’am, in Rotschild Avenue Tel Aviv – the epicenter of the summer’s protests and the resulting movement. Top-notch Israeli Singer-songwriter Rona Keinan, a consistently brave and outspoken voice for justice and human rights in Israel-Palestine, has already pledged to appear. Emerging musician Ruth Dolores-Weiss will also appear. We will post an update about the event within a few days.

(crossposted from the Villages Group blog)

To add insult to injury, Occupation forces arrested two young women for passive nonviolent resistance (see the video below). This is not your vanilla American “Occupy” arrest-and-release, get lawyer-and-defendant-rights arrest. The girls were entered into a sealed military vehicle and carted off to an unknown location (which eventually turned out to be an Israeli jail some 3 hours drive away), without any means – or rights – to defend their obvious innocence.

On that very auspicious day, the Occupation goons also handed out demolition orders to an impoverished village’s schoolhouse. Yes, that is the very same, one-year-old school whose pictures we brought to you in the last Villages Group blog post.

Now look.

Many people are unnerved, confused, even offended, hearing the terms “apartheid” or “ethnic cleansing” with regards to Israel, or even only with regards to the Occupation dictatorship Israel insists to continue running in its backyard.

I understand.

But I also know that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. This is beyond disgusting. This is beyond apartheid and ethnic cleansing and squabbling over terminology.

In its actions, especially in “Area C” that comprises 60% of the West Bank, Israel’s government is trying to murder the soul of a people and wipe it out as a nation – leaving only “human dust” that can be blown hither and thither and molded into whatever shape its rulers feel like.

And you know what I, personally as an Israeli, find MOST insulting? Two things.

1. That all this outrage is carried out mainly in order to safeguard the petty thievery of some scraps of land and property belonging to people far poorer and less privileged than ourselves. While we have more than enough to live on, and enough places to live. A “luxury robbery”, if you will. And
2. That all the while, two generations and counting, mainstream Israel pretends that this kind of stuff is not happening on a daily basis, brushes it off, explains it away, lies about it with a straight face – and continues to maintain the ridiculous charade of cultural and moral “superiority” over the Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular.

If you are Jewish, and/or hold Israel dear, and/or don’t like reading this, WAKE UP. This is not about a specific politician, and certainly not about me or my choice of words. The actions described below are those of a fine-tuned machinery in operation for decades. It is ruthless, it is reckless, it is remorseless and it is soulless – and unless it is stopped, it will eventually leave nothing worth saving in Israel-Palestine, on all sides of whatever lines you choose to draw on that suffering land. So if you read this, you can say many things – but don’t say you haven’t been warned. Multiple times.

We will try and engage larger organizations for action on these matters. Meanwhile, you can start protesting this outrage with an email to 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). Besides the demolitions that already took place, don’t forget to mention the school that was just served with a demolition order.

The pretext for demolishing the school (“without permit”, of course – see above and below for the non-permit regime in Area C), is that it is claimed to be some 100 meters, maybe less, inside Area C, bordering on Area B. In Area B, the deceptively named “Civil Administration” has zero formal jurisdiction (don’t worry, then the Occupation’s other arms can come and carry out “security” demolitions if push comes to shove). In Area C, Israel is carrying out its newest social experiment and innovative contribution to the region in its role as “The Only Democracy”(TM): full control with zero accountability, with a generous helping of taxation-and-demolition without representation to the local Arabs. And of course, forget about building permits in Area C. Those are for Jews only.

I end my personal rant, and here is the report from Ehud, followed by some more background information for those interested and/or those in deep-freeze denial, who for some indecipherable reason still bother themselves with reading this.

Some of the events of the day have been filmed and uploaded to Youtube by Israeli activist Guy Batavia. Please watch it. There are more segments on his Youtube channel.

watch?v=w71Wr8IIC0s

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The demolitions that the Israeli Occupation forces carried out in the the same day in South Hebron Hills (Thursday, 24.11.11) show that the duration of the bureaucracy leading up to the demolition itself changes from case to case: in the instance of Muhammad Mussa Mu’ghanem from Susya it was over within a few weeks. Without legal defense , no more than two months passed from the date the orders were issued to stop the works until Thursday, 24.11 when the bulldozer, escorted by army and police forces, arrived and demolished the two temporary structures that had served the Mughanem family in the past months.

On the other hand, in the case of the cave-dweller hamlet of Umm Fakra (sometimes spelled “Umm Faghara”), the same bureaucratic process leading up to the demolition has lasted much longer: in spring 2000, the inhabitants returned to their hamlet from which they had been expelled in winter 1999. According to a High Court of Justice ruling enabling their return, they were prevented from any construction work until the final ruling in their case. The years went by and the final ruling was not given. The freeze preventing any possible development at Umm Fakra (including the forbidden connection to the power grid) became a permanent fact.

About 4 years ago, the inhabitants of Umm Fakra began to breach this freezing order and dared build a small stone mosque for their own use. At the same time, the village elder, Mahmoud Hamamde, put up a structure with two dwelling rooms on top of his cave, for the use of his growing family. The following years saw some more structures built in Umm Fakra.

The Occupation’s deceptively named “Civil Administration” has issued work cessation orders against all of these additions, shortly after their construction. The lawyers hired by the owners managed to delay the Occupation bureaucracy’s inevitable action for several years, until last Thursday (24.11.11): two bulldozers arrived at the hamlet, escorted by Occupation agents, soldiers and policemen, and completely demolished the village mosque and the living structure of the Hamamde family that served as a rabbit pen. Only one of the two rabbits at the time survived, the other died in the process. While demolishing at Umm Fakra, the Occupation forces arrested two young women of the hamlet – the mukhtar’s daughter, Sausan Hamamda, a 21-year old student, and her 17-year old relative, Amal Hamamda. The two were taken to Tel Mond prison inside Israel.

From the little information we have at this point, apparently the Israeli police intends to accuse these two young women (whose professional and academic studies we have been supporting) of serious offenses, as might cause their relatively long incarceration.

Ehud Krinis
The Villages Group

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International scholar and Taayush activist David Shulman also posted a piece earlier this month – not on these specific actions, but on the South Hebron Hills regime in general:

The senior commander from the [deceptively named] Civil Administration turned up to inspect us, together with thirteen bored, awkward soldiers. He’s the same guy I met at [Israeli outpost] Avigayil last month– easy-going, fluent in Arabic, all charm and good nature; the one who put an end to the Jibrin family’s plowing that day. He’s done it again this morning, when the Jibrin farmers attempted once more to plow near the ugly outpost.

In fact, this pattern is now well established. They manage to plow for a few minutes, the settlers come out, then the army arrives, and the cheerful man from the [deceptively named] Civil Administration plays his inevitable role. The courts have confirmed that the land belongs to the Jibrin, but they only manage to plow it bit by bit, stolen moments before the machine stirs, an ungainly beast, and drives them away.

…I suppose we should be grateful. You get used to the whole lunatic business. It even begins to seem normal, the normalcy of the Pax Israelica in the territories. That is: you become habituated to a world dominated by outright theft and all that derives from this single, organizing principle.

…One can dither about whether the term “apartheid” is appropriate for the reality of the Occupation… But can Palestinians get on an Israeli bus passing their homes in the West Bank? Can Palestinian drivers use the roads built for settlers and settlers only? Can Palestinians get a permit to add a room to their house if it’s in Area C, or even to put up a tent or an outhouse? Can they graze their sheep on their own lands without being driven off at gunpoint by settlers or soldiers or both? Can they put down a gravel road that traverses their fields without the [deceptively named] Civil Administration stopping the work and impounding their tractors? Do they enjoy even the most minimal of civil liberties? Do they have legal recourse in the not uncommon event that they are suddenly stripped of their land, their possessions, and their freedom?

Regarding Area C in general, earlier this year Amira Hass reported that in 2010, demolitions of Palestinian structures in this region had tripled.

The UN OCHA wrote about the Area C no-permit-for-Palestinians regime,

In area C, a building permit from the Israeli Civil Administration is required for all types of construction including rudimentary dwellings, pit-latrines and even fences. According to OCHA, Palestinian construction is effectively prohibited in 70% of area C, while in the remaining 30% there is a range of restrictions and administrative requisites that greatly reduce the possibility of obtaining a permit. Given the difficulties in obtaining construction permits, many Palestinians living in area C take the risk to build without a permit, therefore facing the threat of administrative demolition by the Israeli Authorities.

There’s a wealth of information all over the Web – for example, a recent Btselem report about disposession in the predominantly-Area-C Jordan Valley.

Keep in mind that Area C was conceived under Oslo as a temporary staging ground, to be rather quickly transfered to Palestinian control – pending final outline of borders on the ground (those famous elusive few-percent “land swaps”). As such, the jurisdiction of any Israeli body to tell any Palestinian what to build in Area C, where and how, is extremely questionable.

Instead, when the process faltered, Israel started behaving as if the area was its own to keep. Except, well, the democracy, basic decency and rule-of-law parts of governing. Among other things.

The thick irony is that the knee-jerk reaction in Israel to any story of such demolitions is “What do you want? The Law must be upheld!” This stupid response would have been funny, if the reality they help hide wasn’t so sad and revolting.

Please help us stop this ugly, corrupt-to-the-core madness. Thank you.

PS: In case this is the first time you read of such illegal demolitions by the deceptively named “Civil Administration”, or have a short memory –

then just here on the Villages Group, just with respect to South Hebron Hills, we reported about such vandalism (demolitions, road blockages, and other “contributions” to culture and society)
here (2008 road blockage) and
here (2008 demolition orders to the mosque that was eventually destroyed last week) and
here (home demolitions, 2008) and
here (blocking roads again, preventing water supply) and
here (building settler-only roads that blocks and damages wells and shepherding) and
here (soldier idly watch as settlers attack people and vandalizes property) and
here (another demolition order, Umm Al-Kheir 2009) and
here (Palestinians finally return under court-order to a village that was ethnically cleansed, to see the scale of destruction there) and
here (student from A-Tuwani arrested, tortured, released) and
here (play-by-play description from Prof. Shulman, of how soldiers issue an illegal “Closed Military Zone” order to drive sheperds off their legally-owned land) and
here (soldiers try to halt public work that did have a permit; fortunately Israeli activists were present and prevented the stoppage) and
here (another Shulman description of the military harrassment sheperds undergo, after a new illegal settler outpost had been set up on their land) and
here (2010 demolition of water cisterns, some of them ancient) and
here (home demolitions, Umm Al-Kheir, 2 months ago) and
here (destruction of line connecting village to Palestinian power grid, see pic).

These reports come only from a tiny sparsely-inhabited piece of land. There are many, many more such “cultural activities” carried by the Israel government, showering freedom, democracy and progress on the Palestinian residents under its total control, all across Area C.

Also, I found some more phone and fax numbers for the Ministry of Defense. Phone: +972 3 6975349 Fax: +972 3 6976218 /691 6940 / 696 2757 / 691 7915/

About one month ago we reported to you on the state of the local schoolhouse in Palestinian Susiya as its second school year opened. Visiting the school on Thursday November 2nd, 2011, we witnessed an impressive development in the construction of the school’s permanent building. These works are undertaken as a joint initiative of the NGO Action Against Hunger/ ACF International, and the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

For our modest part, we brought the school a laptop computer that will serve the teachers from now on (we would be grateful to receive and bring the teaching staff additional laptops). We hope that soon we shall be able to meet the teachers’ request to receive Hebrew language lessons – Erella, of our group, is considering taking this task upon herself and we hope that within a few weeks we can report to you that a weekly Hebrew course for the school teachers is already under way.

A little while before arriving at the Susiya school, we learned of yet another act of destruction inflicted by the Israeli Military Occupation’s “Civil Administration” arm. A bulldozer destroyed the power pylons that have lately been installed between the village of Al-Tuwani and the cave hamlet of Umm Faqara, as part of the infrastructure that was to connect Umm Faqara with the regional power grid. This act of destruction by the “Civil Administration” is perfectly consistent with the long-term policy exerted by the Israeli Occupation authorities, in order to prevent the connection of the cave hamlets in the South Hebron Hills to infrastructure such as water and power. The motivation underlying this policy is to deny the legitimacy of these Palestinian communities and to eventually eliminate their existence.

Ehud Krinis

During his visit at the Center, Park held a two-hour study workshop that opened with a presentation of the harp, a musical instrument new and unfamiliar to both students and teachers.

Most of the workshop was devoted to learning a well-known jazz standard – “Cantaloupe Island”. It was the Center students’ first encounter with this musical style. In teaching the tune, Park was assisted by Center teachers and other musicians, among them Dr. Ruti Katz from the Arts High School in Tel Aviv who has maintained close ties with the Center for the past year, and Josh Smith, a new immigrant from the United States.

Itamar and Noam – both student musicians from the high school who have already visited the Center at Salem several times in the past – also took part in the workshop. In the closing part of the workshop, students at the center played some items from their own repertoire for the guest artist. They were joined by Yusef, the singing barber from Salem and his daughter Shireen (singer and student at the Music Center) in some Palestinian folk singing.

Park’s visit at the Salem Music Center joins a series of visits by musicians from abroad and from Israel. This activity aims to open and widen the musical horizons of the students at the Center, raise public awareness of the existence and activity of this small center and create new ties between the center and its teachers and musicians who show interest in them.

Ehud Krinis

(crossposted from the Villages Group blog)

You will probably be shocked to discover that the MSM, in Israel too but especially in the US, is focusing on the wrong aspects of this prisoner-release deal, right? Right?! Duh. In this particular instance, we are fed a breathless 24/7 about the terrible dilemma of releasing dangerous murderers out in the open, and how dangerous this is. I have sympathy to families of victims who see perpetrators and the people who assisted them go out of prison. It is downright unpleasant and disheartening. But still, this storyline is a distraction.

For one, I will not be lectured about morality and “preventing terror” from the very same people who also advocate for the release of Jewish terrorists like Ami Popper. But No. Let us not bite the bait, and leave all this aside for a moment.

Because really, the pro-Occupation right wing on Israel-Palestine are top experts in the propaganda game. They always play offense. So they will push their crap lies onto you, and while you are busy refuting them point-by-point, you don’t realize they had already won by changing the conversation.

I can think of 3 great ones, right off the top of my head. And all of them have the common theme that, in fact, a different reality in I-P is not far from our fingertips.

All we need to do is realize we are not just “kibitzers”, i.e., a passive audience over-analyzing and bickering without any meaningful role to play. We are all players in this game, and need to understand our impact.

Please follow me to conversation #1: the death of the “No Partner” lie.

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Remember Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s UN speech a few weeks ago?

He portrayed Palestinian leader Abbas as a liar who talks 1967 borders, but really wants to destroy 1948 Israel. He slandered the mainstream Palestinian position that all post-1967 illegal settlements need to be dismantled, as if it was a Nazi position, explicitly using the Godwin-violating term “Judenrein”. These were just two gems in a speech designed to reinforce the decades-old Israeli dogma, temporarily suspended in the 1990′s to be embraced with a vengeance post-2000:

“Israel has no [viable/honest/credible/etc.etc.] partner for a peace deal.”

And this was Abbas, the most moderate and accommodating Palestinian leader Israel can dream of, that Bibi was dissing as if he was some incorrigible fanatic. In Bibi’s rhetoric, that gained him so many Congressional standing ovations, Hamas are beyond the pale, “worse than the Nazis.”

And here he is, the very same Bibi, barely a fortnight later: in bed with the very same Hamas, releasing over 1,000 prisoners, including some very dangerous and unrepentant people – in a deal that his more “moderate” predecessor didn’t have the stomach to sign.

WTF?!?!?!?

I’ll tell you WTF. Bibi has been lying to us all along through his teeth, and of course he knows that.

Do you know that now? Great.

But Our Problem is NOT Bibi

For progressives, Bibi is easy. He is obvious. He wears his wingnuttery on his sleeve. When I see him, I can’t help remembering his doppleganger Basil Fawlty: over-eager, over-playing his hand, and always ends up tripping on his own shoelaces. Besides being repulsive on a personal level.

When Bibi says it, it sounds extreme. But when his predecessor Olmert, in between the two – not one, two! – inexcusable and corrupt wars he started during his short term, finds the time to talk sweet conciliatory words and make empty promises – even a veteran brave anti-Occupation journalist like Gideon Levy falls in the trap. Of course, Olmert has been lying all along. As the leaked Palestine Papers show, behind the scenes he and his cronies were bullying Abbas et al., when the latter, at their nadir of weakness and isolation, practically begged Israel to agree to terms more generous than will likely ever be offered again.

And when his predecessor Sharon evacuated settlements from that least-desirable, poorest speck of real-estate in I-P, Gaza, everyone applauded the “bold sacrifice” and “encouraging step towards peace” – even though it was plain to see (if one wanted) that Sharon, a known war criminal, has never really changed his philosophy and strategy – only his tactics; Sharon has meticulously avoided any peace negotiations in his 5 years in office, despite having Fatah rather than Hamas to deal with. No, everyone fell into that trap too, and within 2 days or so of IDF’s evacuation, started hectoring and lecturing those backwards Palestinians for not having yet turned Gaza into a second Singapore.

But all this is nothing compared with Sharon’s predecessor… well, I’ll get to Ehud Barak soon. He deserves special treatment. Because he is the one who actually coined the term “No Partner”, and almost singlehandedly condemned Israel-Palestine to 11 miserable years, and counting.

Yes, unfortunately, everybody “who counts” in the West says it in one way or another: from supposedly moderate Israeli politicians and notables, to – on this side of the pond – perennial “experts for everything” like Thomas Friedman, or even good-intentioned diarists and commenters on this site, including those who sigh about this “ancient, intractable tribal feud” that has supposedly lasted milennia and will last centuries more.

No, it is Not. And these sighs are not a neutral harmless statement.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is modern. It is rational, in the sense that we have two nations quarreling over a limited set of territory, resources and controls – rather than a conflict initiated and dominated by some whacko ideology. If you are looking for examples of irrational crises fueled mostly by lunacy, then Europe’s self-destruction in the 1st half of the 20th Century would be a classic one – and the global economy’s self-destruction in recent years would be a closer-to-home example (perhaps it is the Western mind, that is in fact more prone to these irrationalities? Consider it a snark).

Look at these Hamas, supposedly the loonie, bloodthirsty, worse-than-Nazis beyond-the-pale toxic factor, whose presence and power makes any progress impossible. They took their prisoner and kept him for 5+ years. Didn’t pick his toes apart, didn’t get tempted into executing him – even, for example, as our military was pounding the Gaza homes right above their heads, dropping tons and tons of bombs every day and killing hundreds of civilians – probably including family members and close friends of Shalit’s own personal prison guards, some 3 years ago.

No. They took him in order to strike a deal. They wanted to get a deal and have been extremely rational about it. The outline of the deal has been on the table for years (that, incidentally, is the topic of Conversation #2). Israel went back and forth, hemming and hawing. They waited. And when the time came, they kept their side of the deal.

If this is how Hamas acts, you can be pretty confident – no, very confident that the PA, or a Fatah-Hamas unified negotiation team, will be quite rational and responsible and businesslike when sitting down to a deal on Occupation, refugees and the rest. They will know approximately what they can get. They will have their red lines. They might be difficult. But they are as solid a negotiation partner as you can find.

Yesterday I gave a talk on the analysis of blinding in randomized experiments using 2×2 contingency tables. As the discussion progressed, I commented that there’s a limited amount of tricks you can do to a 2×2 table. It’s just 4 numbers, after all.

Similarly, there’s a limited amount of viable political arrangements you can run through that tiny and crammed piece of the Earth, Israel-Palestine. The traumatic and dramatic displacements and immigrations of the 1940′s and 1950′s are long gone. Even the 45-year-long Settlement endeavor – Israel greatest national project since 1967, with successive government having poured billions and billions and immense efforts into robbing land, enticing Israelis to come live on it, and lying about the whole affair – even the Settlements have managed to do little beyond move the demographic lines a couple of km here or there. The Palestinians have learned the 1948 lesson; they are not going anywhere.

So the broad outline of a peace or other livable long-term arrangment in Israel-Palestine, given present-day constraints and mentalities, is well known. What is missing? The political will and incentive to do so, on the Israeli side.

Stalling Won’t Work!

Unfortunately, this thinly-veiled Israeli rejectionism can also be viewed as rational, and this is why it persists. Extremely narrow-minded and short-sighted, but rational.

First, Israeli politicians have been lying to their constituencies about Occupation, Settlements and Jerusalem for decades. Walking back those lies is a political minefield. Not to mention actually removing the masses of settlers that – yes – do need to be relocated. The last Prime Minister to start even trying to really look at the whole structure and contemplate what to do about it – Yitzhak Rabin – was murdered by an Israeli wingnut before he got anywhere.

Second, at face value Israel can sit on its lead indefinitely. After all, we control the land, sea and air. We are wealthy and powerful and free and well-connected, while the Palestinians are – well – the opposite. So we can just keep squeezing them a bit here, a bit there, and finally a second Abbas will perhaps agree to something even better than what Olmert refused to consider.

It is S-O-O much easier for Israeli politicians to continue lying to the public, to lie with even more talent and gusto and joy to Diaspora Jews and the rest of the world, and to make those settlements even more well-entrenched, so that we can parade the tragedy of their removal even more convincingly and wail “Judenrein!” till people’s ears fall off.

Finally, there is the simple dynamic of a gambler who, after having bet so much on a certain strategy, is unwilling to cut his losses. Successive Israeli governments have gambled big on the Occupation/Settlement structure, and nobody wants to be the “loser” who dismantles it, even when its dead-end, terminal-cancer nature is plain to see.

So in all these senses, the stances of successive Israeli government and the widespread support they receive in Israel, are rational.

But the prisoner deal proves that these stances will go nowhere. The time for Israel to “play for more time” is over.

Here were Hamas, as isolated, boycotted, deprived, bombed, whatever, as you can imagine. Seemingly, everything was working against them, including time. But they have stuck to their terms of the deal, very close to how it was outlined right from the start. And – 2006 bombing and lights-out, 2007 putsch attempt, 2008/9 Cast Lead, and 5 years of complete siege later – they have barely budged, until Israel finally relented and signed.

The same is true for the broader deals. The terms are more-or-less known, they will not change much in our lifetime. Also universally known is the illegal nature of the Settlement enterprise. Heck, even Israel’s government knew it was illegal from the moment they started it in 1967. And that knowledge, too, tends to affect what would be seen as a fair deal – far more than yet another 100 tired rounds of deflective spin.

The only question for us now, progressive and liberal activists interested in Israel-Palestine, regardless of familial and emotional allegiance, is how to stop helping Israeli politicians avoid and postpone the inevitable. How to bring them to sign onto the end of Occupation/Settlement pipe-dream.

But Let’s Nail it: “No Partner” has always been a lie.

As I said, Ehud Barak deserves special treatment. Without his “No Partner”, who knows where we’d be now. I am proud to say that I knew from the very first moment that he was lying. I saw him live on Israeli TV in fall 2000, saying something along these lines:

I have turned every stone in my search for peace…but we have no partner.

Yes, Prime Minister. In your short one-year tenure before this speech, you spent maybe 10%, more like 5%, on the Palestinian issue, Israel’s biggest and longest-lasting crisis. And at the time, you had de-facto peace on your hand – no terrorism, flourishing economy and tourism, and an accommodating and collaborative PA. That counts as “turning every stone” in your books.

Even worse: after promising to continue Rabin’s way, you had in fact adopted Bibi’s strategy towards the process – and when your approach hit the first snag you go and dynamite it all in live broadcast on prime time, consequences be damned.

Thanks for 11 lousy years, 10,000 needless deaths and countless shattered dreams.

I knew Barak was lying, and for this I was banished from the “respectable” mainstream of Israeli opinion. Yes, for me this speech marks the exact moment when I parted with the Israeli mainstream. I knew Barak was lying, and for this I was banished from the “respectable” mainstream of Israeli opinion. Yes, for me this speech marks the exact moment when I parted with the Israeli mainstream. To be precise, my “sin” was not so much in disbelieving Barak, as in speaking out about it; I’m sure many more suspected the same but preferred to keep mum.

Well, now the chips are down. Barak is the most despised politician in Israel, hanging on by sheer corrupt tricks to his seat as Bibi’s defense minister.

And still, most Israelis believe his “No Partner” lie!

So this is not really about Barak or about me, but about us all. There will always be liars who lie; the lies take hold, when there is a market thirsty to adopt them. A market (in Israel) afraid to walk back that political-mental minefield it has sowed and harvested for decades. A market (in Diaspora Jewry) still seeing everything through the lens of Holocaust, and clinging to Israel as a source of identity and pride in a rapidly changing world.

We need to destroy the market for those “No Partner” lies.

How about some solid evidence to help convince you? These were published in the Israeli print media last winter, to the sound of… crickets. Read for yourselves:
(emphasis mine)

The first cliche we confronted was that “Barak was ready to give everything at Camp David,” formulated by Ehud Barak and his advisers after that failed summit. The “mother of all cliches,” if you will.

We discovered that Tal Zilberstein, one of the “no-partner archbishops,” who is as far from the radical left as East is from West, already declared in the fascinating 2010 film by Uri Rosenwaks, “Dor Shalem Darash Shalom”: “I was part of the ‘no-partner’ campaign, and it’s one of the things I regret most, because I think it was a mendacious campaign … It was too successful, it became a Frankenstein monster … Ten years later, there are still people who say, ‘We gave them everything at Camp David and got nothing!’ That is a flagrant lie.”

Eldad Yaniv, another retired “archbishop” who is currently head of the National Left movement – in addition to belonging to the civil-political forum being described here – has made similar remarks in these pages ["Left standing," Haaretz Magazine, Nov. 26, 2010]: “I was one of the people behind this false and miserable spin. It may have been justified to a certain extent, to stir the Palestinians to revive the negotiations, but it’s false.” And, “I was a cynical person … I didn’t really understand what a destructive impact it could have.”

Yaniv and other former Barak advisers expressed themselves similarly at meetings of the forum that was coalescing in Ramat Gan. “I remember Haim Ramon running up to me shortly after Ehud’s ‘no partner’ speech and shouting, ‘What are you people doing? Have you gone mad?” Yaniv said. “We told him to stop talking nonsense, it was just local spin meant to solve a momentary problem. He was right and we were wrong.”

So if you have been inadvertently promoting any variation of “No Partner” – this is not just idle talk. By now, late October 2011, it should be clear as daylight, at least for progressives and liberals, that the promotion of the “No Palestinian Partner” lie in any form, shape or style helps perpetuate war and injustice, and postpone peace, perhaps even prevent us from seeing this end during our lifetime.

Just like Bush’s famous slip-of-tongue to his donors, “you are my constituency”, the constituency for the Occupation regime is not located only among Israeli voters, but also among Congress members who play it safe, and their voters who watch their every word for any sign of “anti-Israelism” creeping into their opinions.

The Occupation/Settlement consituency can also be found among American MSM reporters, who prefer to parrot Israeli-government spin or express softball euphemisms, rather than report what their eyes see. Among their executives who instruct them to do so. Among the tireless legions of CAMERA activists, who keep this cowardly system going by intimidating it with thousands of faxes, phones and emails whenever some deviation from the Jerusalem party-line is detected in the American press.

Among Jewish Federations worldwide, who have had their genuine concern for Israel’s Jews been taken for a ride.

A very long ride. Time to get off.

It’s okay, it happens to everyone. As I linked above, even Gideon Levy of all people, got fooled by Olmert in 2007-8.

But really, please open your eyes. You’ve been had.

Israel’s government can sign a workable, viable, reasonably fair peace deal tomorrow, if it only wanted.

So stop supporting its intransigence by spreading its Crap around – and start giving it the Hell it deserves, until it changes its mind.

Thanks you. And Happy Simhat Torah for those who celebrate it.

(crossposted from Daily Kos)

Hi friends

I am happy to tell you that Ibrahim Nawaja, who has run the Susiya creative and learning center, with great success , for almost a year (see also video below), has been accepted to Dar Al Kalima college (Arabic link) to study Documentary Film Making. This is a great opportunity for him.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1OoXxBrqA4&w=640&h=360]

For those who know Ibrahim, you know what an exceptional, creative and sensitive person he is and the imagination and dedication with which he approached his role in the Susiya creative and learning center (see pdf attachment).

Ibrahim is from Susiya, a small, rural village in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank. The area is a difficult one for its Palestinian residents because of the presence of the Israeli settlers and army, and the constant pressure on residents of villages like Susiya to move away from their land. Ibrahim and others have created the Susiya center as part of their attempts to resist this situation and for their community to flourish despite the difficult circumstances. A crucial part of such projects has been the engagement of people like Ibrahim in their communities to imagine something different.

Over the past few years Ibrahim has been writing poetry and running artistic activities such as theatre and improvisation workshops with the children in Susiya, bringing his creative skills in to his role as a community organiser. Ibrahim now has the opportunity now to develop his skills and to be creatively engaging in a new way.

We are trying to raise funds for Ibrahim’s tuition and part of his living expenses since he will have to move to Bethlehem. The overall cost is 3000 euros for a year. We are trying to raise 2000 Euros, and Ibrahim and his family will try and raise the remaining 1000 euros. As you read this mail, people have already pledged 800 Euros in the last few days, which will permit Ibrahim to register and be enrolled for 6 months.

If you want to help you can:

foward this mail to other people who you think want to help Ibrahim.

Give a donation –

You make a check to the “Villages Group” and send it to:

The Villages Group
po box 6023
Tel-Aviv 61060
Israel

Or make a bank transfer to the following account

Bank Name Bank Leumi
Bank Identification Code LUMIILITXXX
Routing Code IL010985
Account Name Villages Group
Account Number 98508670082
IBAN Number IL 67010985-000000-8670082
Bank Address: Ben-Gurion & Rashi, Kiryat Malachi 83036 Israel

If you make a donation, or further information, please contact David or Ehud

The Villages Group email – villagesgroup1@gmail.com
or you can contact David by phone +972-54-6597551

On behalf of the Villages Group

David

Ehud adds:

For the past four years, the on-going aid of US-Omen has enabled us to support about 20 students from South Mt. Hebron each semester. The great majority of these students study at the branch of Al-Quds Open University located in their near home town of Yatta. The cost of the scholarships provided to each of those students, one that covers most of their tuition fees, is 500 Euros (650 Dollars) on average.

As the case of Ibraim’s studies is different and exceptional both in terms of the location of the academic institute and the overall cost, we found ourselves this time in need to bring it to our friends’ attention in a separate appeal.

One of the important aspects of the work of the Villages Group is to strengthen the communities by enabling individuals to develop and realize their abilities for themselves and their communities. This is one of the Villages Group ways of defeating the Occupation – by encouraging inner strength.

(crossposted from the Villages Group Blog)

then trying the silent treatment, hoping that the Israeli public known for its short attention span will lose interest – only to get served with repeated bouts of unprecedented nationwide protests;

Prime minister “Bibi” Netanyahu tried a third trick: appoint a committee. The move won him a partial reprieve, mostly from the mainstream media. And using the quiet and the back-to-school period, local governments began dismantling the tent cities one by one.

Now the committee, headed by Prof. Manuel Trachtenberg – a well-meaning, former-Argentine-radical, but nevertheless neoliberal economist – has submitted its conclusions. They include partial restoration of some of the social safety net that Bibi has worked so hard to shred, to be funded by taxes on the rich and corporations.

Bibi brought the conclusions last week for adoption by his government cabinet. He lost the vote. Only 12 ministers, all from his own parties, voted together with him, and 15 – from all other coalition parties, plus two of Bibi’s party – voted against. Most of the vote against was because the Trajtenberg recommendations do not go far enough.

A week later, Bibi managed to pass the resolution, after modifying it to satisfy the demands of the one party who thought Trajtenberg asked for too much. Who was that? You guessed it: Israel’s de-facto Prime Minister, the man Bibi loves caving to again and again – foreign minister Lieberman. Once again, Bibi takes a fall and loses points in the public’s eyes, while “Yvet” Lieberman emerges winner, the tough guy catering to the hard-right macho crowd.

For anyone following Israeli politics, these are the unmistakable sounds of a government gradually falling apart.

I had some debates with bloggers who claimed that Bibi’s situation is solid as a rock. Some new additional Israeli laws supposedly make it harder than ever to end a government before its 4-year term is up. Well, the proof is in the pudding. Since the 1980′s, no Israeli Knesset (parliament) has lived out its term, despite various rules enacted to improve stability.

And btw, here’s a hint: if your Knesset happens to be a terrible one – and this one definitely is (just like the current US House) – “lack of stability” is not such a bad idea.

It nearly always starts the same way. First, a party that perhaps didn’t belong in the coalition in the first place, leaves (check: Labor had left). In parallel, public trust in the government fast erodes (big-time check). Remaining coalition members, and PM’s own party, begin to look around and to triangulate between the PM and the public, weakening him into a de-facto lame duck. This is where we are getting to now.

As I predicted in the original version of this post (last week on Daily Kos), after some shoving, Bibi indeed passed some version of the committee recommendations through cabinet. But his political blood has met the water. Now at every single turn, he might find most of his coalition, including elements in his own party, balking and trumping him. The next stage is the opposition beginning to craft a strategy to call early elections. Eventually, they either succeed directly, or the PM decides to pre-empt them with his own call, in order to appear in control.

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And this is just one of the ripple effects felt nowadays by the big-wigs, from the supposedly “burnt out” protest.

In other news, Zehavit Cohen, chairman of the board of the Tnuva food giant, has been forced to resign. Cohen, in her arrogance, has turned herself into the face for all that is wrong in the Israeli economy. Tnuva is a venerable brand-name that began in 1926 under the British Mandate, as a socialist farmer-owned cooperative to sell milk products. With neoliberal economy hitting Israel since the 1980′s, it has branched out into many activities, but its hold on a majority of Israel’s dairy market has continued to be its core business and claim to fame.

In 2006 the Israeli government deregulated dairy products, despite Tnuva’s monopoly status.

Within months, the international APAX private equity firm made a bid to buy Tnuva. After some haggling, and votes to approve in many kibbutzim and moshavim (two forms of formerly-socialist villages), APAX Israel became majority owners in early 2008 for a company value of $1 Billion. Cohen, CEO of APAX Israel, appointed herself chair of the board, shoved the CEO aside and began to micromanage the company.

From 2008 to mid-2011, Tnuva jacked the price of dairy like crazy. Cottage cheese went up 39%. The pretext was the rise in commodity markets in 2007; but when looking at the period 2006-2011 (click on chart in the linked Hebrew article) you can see that in 2006-2011 cottage went up 24% more than the price Tnuva pays for milk. In 3 short years Tnuva made a billion dollars for APAX, and the company’s value soared after investors realized that it was sold for a song.

It’s the same old story all over the world. Financial vultures prey on assets, usually via leveraged buy-outs. Often, the “opportunity” is made possible via a friendly government move. Then they squeeze the crap out of them, generating nice indicators that drive “shareholder value” up, and making sure that the bought-out financial “press” drools all over their brilliance. Then they find a sucker to buy the carcass at an inflated price, and fly away to kill another business. Zehavit Cohen, an Israeli who emigrated to the US before college, learned the trade and returned as a fast-track financial whiz to eventually head APAX Israel branch – placed herself, in her folly, as the face of that vulture. The financial press went gaga over her. She was elected “Woman of the Year 2010″ by the business journal Globes, and gave them a hubris-filled interview (Hebrew link). It is perhaps telling that Globes readers made a very different choice: they voted to give the title to MK Shelly Yechimovich, the politicians most closely associated with the social-justice agenda, and who was now rewarded by winning leadership of the Labor Party.

Back to billion-tossing Zehavit Cohen: she didn’t count on one thing. Even the Israeli consumers, not known for consumer activism, have their limits. People, simply, could not afford cottage cheese anymore. And that’s where the social protest began – with a boycott on cottage cheese. Later in the summer, when the general protest wave was already in full steam, a complete boycott of Tnuva was called.

To be honest, when I got the initial “boycott cottage” FB statuses and emails – many of them, indeed I’m proud to say, were from so-called “radical lefties” – this cottage thingie looked funny. With all the crap, the Occupation, etc. etc., you are boycotting cottage cheese? But that’s because I’m not there day to day, seeing commodity prices increase without bound (not to mention housing prices), while the government and the financial press celebrate Israel’s amazing GDP growth at your expense.

Perhaps more poignantly: not following business news, I hadn’t noticed Tnuva’s ghoulish transition. Tnuva had been a symbol of something from slower times, something shared, simple, basic. Something from the farm; from Zionism’s (now, sadly, largely abandoned) attempt to return the “Wandering Jew” back to work the earth. A symbol of much that was good and whole in Israel. True, over the years its image has become somewhat stale, but still – Tnuva was Tnuva. Now, those APAX vultures took that symbol and raped it in broad daylight, turned it into a sad farce, into a robotic monster preying upon the public – with the government setting up this horror via the crime of deregulation.

Faced with this symbolic abomination of a “new economy” devouring the very fabric of society, ordinary Israelis suddenly remembered that underneath the veneer of apathetic consumerism, they are still the children and grandchildren of revoluationaries and rebels and militants; of the crazy people who had built this nation up from the rubble and ashes of Jewish suffering. That they’ve still got it in them, the fight and the spirit. Not just to fight the Arabs when called upon in the fog of fear and disinformation – but also to pick their own fights for what they really believe in.

Over the summer, due to the boycotts Tnuva lost 12% in sales and its dairy market share fell from 57% to 50%. It has now announced an across-the-board 15% price cut (beyond cuts already made during the summer) – with its competitors having to follow suit.

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Another, particularly destabilizing breaking news, is that resident M.D’s in public hospitals have now submitted their mass resignation. There have been rolling doctor strikes and slowdowns for months in Israel. The medical association finally closed a deal with the Treasury, but residents felt left out. Now, the residents left negotiations with each side blaming the other for bad faith (I don’t know why, but I tend to believe the residents more than Bibi’s Treasury hacks). Hospitals across Israel are grinding to a halt. Before the social protests, this type of brinkmanship has routinely paid handsome dividends for the Treasury negotiators; not this time.

The universally-forgotten root cause, as far as I understand, for all the chronic budget and salary problems in public health services – is the undercutting of the health budget, carried out by Bibi himself in 1996 when he exempted employers for paying their share of the healthcare tax.

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So this wave of dissent is not over, not for Bibi (I dare him to bet on the public’s apathy and credulity again – it will be fun to watch…), not for Israel’s many business monopolies and their crony politicians -

- and certainly not for the social protest movement. Only fools would count it out. They plan a return to massive protest and strike action in early November.

However, the protest too is inching closer towards a moment of truth, regarding the Elephant in the social-justice Room: the Occupation. The protest movement, despite originating and receiving most of its street-crowds from the left (hence the early attempts to brand organizers as “radical leftists”), has succeeded in remaining inclusive – encompassing constituencies all the way from the genuine radical left and Israeli Palestinians, too “quality of life” apolitical settlers. As last week’s post described, members of the latter group (QOL settlers) mob-assaulted members of the former (anti-Occupation activists) a few days ago. As one of the activists wrote in a poignant self-reflective post (Hebrew, translation mine):

The most terrible thing is that we will still meet this people [who had assaulted us]. At the bank, on the street, on the bus. They are part of our society

One flank of the protest movement sees the Occupation as the biggest social-justice issue of them all; the other flank benefits directly from the Occupation, and sees its end as the end of the world. Sooner or later, the moment of truth will arrive.

Stay tuned…