Israel - a post-democratic state?

How should Diaspora Jews react to the new Israeli government? Some of the most important figures in the incoming government are indicted (Netanyahu) or convicted criminals (Deri, Ben Gvir). This coalition is the most right-wing in Israel's history, and there are still more hateful characters who will be in important ministries. 

Benjamin Netanyahu, who will be prime minister, is on trial on a series of corruption charges. His wife, Sara Netanyahu, was "convicted in 2019 of misusing public funds and in 2016 for abusing public servants." Aryeh Deri, the head of the Sephardi Haredi party, Shas, was in prison for two years on bribery charges. Recently, "In a plea deal signed in January, 2022, he admitted to defrauding the state by reporting to tax authorities a falsely undervalued estimation of a Jerusalem property he sold to his brother." This makes him ineligible to be a minister in the government. Itamar Ben-Gvir, a convicted felon and Kahanist, leader of the Jewish Power party, will be the national security minister, in charge of the police, the fire service, and the Border Police.

From Noga Tarnopolsky in the Daily Beast, on the incoming Israeli government:

Netanyahu’s legal troubles have manacled him. Most leaders of Israeli political parties refuse to sit in government with an indicted criminal. The parties willing to help him form a majority coalition out of the Knesset’s 120 seats are those who believe they have no other avenue to power: the ultra-orthodox Jewish religious parties and an agglomeration of previously marginal extremist groups who have until now been rebuffed by Israel’s mainstream.

The deal offered by Netanyahu goes something like this: his partners will back a slate of “judicial reforms” that will effectively dismantle Israel’s judiciary, and Netanyahu, in turn, will reward them with real power.

This is the political jam which has brought Israel to the cusp of saluting Defense Minister Bezalel Smotrich, 42, a self-described “proud homophobe” and a segregationist who believes Jews and Arabs should not have to mingle, who aspires to impose the “the law of the Bible,” and who evaded his own military service.

Israel’s incoming justice minister has not yet been named, but neither Smotrich nor Ben Gvir are expected to be warmly received—or welcomed at all—by their cohorts among Israel’s closest allies.

Deri is rumored to covet the finance ministry, in which he'd impose upon fellow citizens the same taxes he was recently convicted of evading.

As things stand, he cannot legally be made any sort of minister. In a plea deal signed in January, 2022, he admitted to defrauding the state by reporting to tax authorities a falsely undervalued estimation of a Jerusalem property he sold to his brother. 

His appointment is certain to be challenged in court, where he is expected to lose. He has a simple answer: “The public knew everything there was to know about Netanyahu, me and the entire bloc, yet we received a large majority and the public expects us to govern,” he said on Israeli radio. So I hope they [the Supreme Court] will not interfere with this matter.”

But if it does, he warned, “it will be the government's first test of governance.”

Netanyahu, in fact, cannot form the barebones skeleton of his new government without overriding the supreme court. Without Deri or the extremists, he has no majority. With no majority, his trial proceeds ahead. The plan, according to numerous Israeli media outlets, is for the Likud, Netanyahu’s party, to install a new Knesset speaker by next week. Then they would rush legislation imposing an override act, followed by a new law permitting a minister to serve even if he is on probation from jail, as Deri is. Thanks to the override act, the supreme court would not be able to declare the new law illegal.

Israel could cease to have an independent judiciary in a matter of days– a transformation driven by indicted and convicted political criminals.

Why was Yaser Murtaja killed?

Why was Yaser Murtaja killed, and why were six other Palestinian journalists wounded on Friday, April 6, 2018? Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man writes on +972 on the IDF frequently targeting Palestinian journalists:

The circumstances are that the Israeli military, which insists it doesn’t target journalists, has a highly discouraging record of failing to hold its soldiers and pilots and generals accountable for targeting and killing journalists in Gaza. That includes the 2012 assassination of two journalists who were traveling in a car clearly marked “TV,” numerous airstrikes on media and broadcast offices, and more. 

The circumstances are that, week in and week out, Israeli security forces consistently fail to differentiate between Palestinian journalists and the protests and events they are covering, using violence against both without distinction. In countless cases, documented and undocumented, journalists have been clearly targeted by troops — and the army often brazenly defends that violence.

This is the beginning of Omer-Man's article:

A State-Sponsored Mass shooting 

On a day when military snipers shot hundreds of unarmed demonstrators, the army declares that ‘the circumstances in which journalists were wounded are unknown.’ The circumstances couldn’t be clearer.  

Palestinian protesters take cover behind a dirt mound as Israeli soldiers open fire from across the border in the distance, east of Jabaliya, Gaza Strip, April 6, 2018. Israeli snipers have killed over 30 people and shot over 1,000 others since The Great Return March began a week earlier. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills.org)  

Israeli army sharpshooters and snipers have shot over 1,000 unarmed Palestinian protesters inside the Gaza Strip in the past week, killing more than 30 people. This past Friday, at least six Palestinian journalists were reportedly among those shot at the Great Return March. One of them, Yasser Murtaja, a photographer for “Ain Media” who was reportedly wearing a helmet and vest clearly marked “PRESS” when he was shot, later died of his wounds.

Go to +972 to read the entire story.

Rasmea Odeh, convicted terrorist, pleads guilty to immigration fraud

In the recent annual conference of Jewish Voice for Peace, Rasmea Odeh, a convicted terrorist, was one of the featured speakers in the closing plenary session. She pleased guilty today of immigration fraud and she will be stripped of her American citizenship and deported. As many others have noted, JVP disgraced itself by having Odeh speak, thereby giving support to a person who murdered two young Israeli men in 1969.

As Legal Insurrection reports, Rasmea Odeh acknowledged in her guilty plea that she lied on her visa application and her application for naturalization, asserting that she had never been charged or convicted of any crime, when in fact she had been arrested and convicted in Israel of taking part in a bomb attack on the Supersol supermarket on Agron St. in Jerusalem, which killed two young men. The attack occurred in 1969 and she was convicted in 1970. The two young men, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, were students at the Hebrew University at the time.

At the time of the bombing and conviction in Israel, Rasmea was a military member of the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Rasmea was so important to the group that Leila Khalid, the first female airplane hijacker, formed to Rasmea Odeh Brigade to try to free her. Rasmea also was on the list of prisoners whose release was demanded by the Black September terrorists who took Israeli hostages at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Yet Rasmea’s supporters would have you believe she was just an innocent political activist. 

Rasmea didn’t serve her life sentences in Israel, however. In 1979 she was released in a prisoner exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in Lebanon. She made her way to Lebanon, then Jordan, then to the U.S. in the mid-1990s, when she lied on her visa application by denying any prior convictions or imprisonment, or being a member of a terrorist group. 

Rasmea again lied on her naturalization papers, denying that she “EVER” (caps and bold on application) was convicted or imprisoned. She also falsely stated that she never was a member of a terrorist group or was involved in terrorism....

After an initial conviction in November 2014 for obtaining naturalization unlawfully, Rasmea was given a new trial so a psychologist could testify on her behalf that Rasmea falsely answered the immigration questions because she was suffering from PTSD as a result of alleged Israeli torture. That claim was ludicrous on its face, but it was enough to earn her a new trial. That new trial was supposed to take place in May 2017.

Instead of taking the case to trial again, and obviously fearing a lengthy prison sentence, Rasmea accepted a plea deal. While Rasmea’s supporters claim the deal was a victory because it would keep her out of jail, in fact is almost identical to the plea deal Rasmea was offered and rejected in 2014.

The following is an excerpt from the plea agreement, as posted by Legal Insurrection on Scribd (https://www.scribd.com/document/346364164/Rasmieh-Odeh-Case-Plea-Agreement#from_embed):

Defendant Admits That the Following Facts Are True:

In 1969, Defendant Rasmieh Odeh was arrested and charged by an Israeli Military Court for participation in placing two bombs. One bomb had been placed in a supermarket. The other had been placed at the British Consulate. In 1970, Defendant Odeh was convicted of the charges and sentenced to life imprisonment, although she was released in 1979 after having served approximately ten years. 

In December 1994, Defendant Rasmieh Odeh submitted an application for United States Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration, Department of State form 230. Question 21 of the Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration required Odeh to list all places she had "lived for six months or longer since reaching the age of 16." Defendant Odeh's full response falsely stated that she had lived in Amman, Jordan, from 1948 onward, thereby intentionally omitting the fact that following her release from prison she had lived in Lebanon for approximately three years. 

Question 33 of the Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration asked whether Defendant Odeh ever had been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude, or of two or more offenses for which the aggregate sentences were five years or more imprisonment. Defendant Odeh falsely checked the box marked "No." 

Question 31 of the Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration asked if Defendant Odeh had ever been "arrested, convicted, or ever been in a prison[.]" 

Defendant Odeh falsely checked the box marked ''No." 

On June 4, 2004, defendant Odeh filed an application for naturalization (Form N-400) with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to afford her the status of a United States citizen. On November 3, 2004, an immigration officer interviewed Defendant Odeh regarding her naturalization application at the USCIS office in Detroit, Michigan. In defendant's naturalization application defendant made the following material false statements, which she reiterated and reaffirmed during her naturalization interview: 

1. Defendant falsely stated that she had never been arrested, cited or detained by any law enforcement officer or military officer. 

2. Defendant falsely stated that she had never been charged with committing any crime or offense. 

3. Defendant falsely stated that she had never been convicted of a crime or offense. 

4. Defendant falsely stated that she had never been in jail or prison. 

5. Defendant falsely stated that she had never given false or misleading information to any U.S. government official while applying for any immigration benefit or to prevent deportation, exclusion or removal. 

At the time she made the false statements, Defendant knew the statements were false. Defendant also admits that all of these false statements were material, in that they had a natural tendency to affect the decision of the State Department and USCIS. She made the false statements intentionally and not as a result of any mistake, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or any other psychological issue or condition or for any innocent reason, and notwithstanding any other statement or testimony Defendant Odeh may have made at any other time regarding those answers. At the time she made the false statements, Defendant knew that it was unlawful for her to provide false information to the United States Department of State and to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services in connection with her application for immigration Visa and her application for naturalization.  

On December 9, 2004, defendant was sworn in as a United States citizen in an oath ceremony conducted by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan. 

Defendant procured her citizenship by virtue of the false statements, because she would not have been granted citizenship had she revealed the truth.

What are the goals of the Palestinian Academic Boycott of Israel?

According to the website of PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, the goals of the BDS movement are threefold:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Of these three goals, the first two are compatible with the continued existence of the state of Israel, although the existence of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and in the area of municipal Jerusalem outside the Green Line (in the area annexed by Israel after the 1967 war) complicates matters, and is one of the primary subjects of the current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. If Israel withdraws from the lands conquered in the Six Day War in 1967, the state will continue to exist with a Jewish majority. If the state of Israel treats Israeli Palestinians as equal citizens, it will be fulfilling the promises of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, issued in 1948:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

Israel has not, in fact, ensured complete equality of rights to all of its inhabitants. Between 1948 and 1966, the Arab citizens of Israel lived under military rule. Even today, there is governmental discrimination in the allocation of funds to predominantly Arab towns and cities, and there is discrimination in housing and employment against Arabs (sometimes government imposed, sometimes not – for example, in the last couple of years, the government has been pushing for employers to hire Arab college graduates, who have generally had a very hard time getting hired in certain professions).

It is the third demand of PACBI that is the problem – that Israel agrees to “respect, protect, and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return their homes and properties.” Refugees from the 1948 war numbered about 711,000 people. As of 2012, 30,000-50,000 were still alive. Their descendants, as of 2012, are estimated to number 4,950,000, with a total number of 5 million people (according to UNRWA). If the PACBI demand covers only the people who themselves are refugees from 1948, then there would be no particular problem in those 30,000-50,000 people returning to what is now Israel. Since the places that they live are probably now occupied by other people, Israel would have to find comparable places for them to live. The problem is that the demand of return covers the descendants as well. If all of those people go to Israel, the population will become majority Arab-Palestinian, and the country will no longer be majority Jewish.

If the goals of BDS, as articulated by PACBI, are met, the state of Israel will cease to exist as a Jewish state, and the Jews living within its boundaries will become a minority.

The claim is often made that a “one-state solution” is ideal – that Jews and Arabs should live together in one state where the rights of each group will be safeguarded. There is no evidence from the history of the Jews in the surrounding Arab states that such a thing could be possible. For example, in Egypt, there are very few Jews left, perhaps about a hundred. There are probably no Jews left in Syria. The Jews of the Arab world, who numbered about 900,000 in 1948, have dwindled to tiny minorities in all of the Arab states. They were driven out or fled because of anti-Jewish persecution. Many of them went to Israel in the late 1940s and 1950s, while others went to France, other European countries, and the United States. Is there any reason to suppose that a new state with an Arab majority will treat its Jewish residents any better than the other Arab states?

If the ultimate goal of PACBI and the BDS movement is to make Jews a minority in an Arab dominated state, I see no reason why anyone with a concern for justice would support this movement.

Destruction and Starvation in Palestinian refugee camp in Yarmouk, Syria [See update]

Harry's Place just published an absolutely horrendous photograph from a Huffington Post article about the horrors being visited upon the people living in the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk, in Damascus (the photograph is below - click on it get the full impression). Update - apparently this was photoshopped. See photos below that come from the UNRWA website.

From the Huffington Post article:

A sea of hungry, haunted faces looks out from a massive queue that snakes through the bombed out Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Syria. In the photo, taken on Jan. 31 of this year in Damascus' Palestinian refugee camp, men, women, and children are on line for aid that includes desperately needed food and medical supplies. There are more than 18,000 people in the Yarmouk camp, and many are starving to death. 

The camp was originally built in 1948 to house Palestinian refugees fleeing the Arab-Israeli war. Since the start of the Syrian conflict the area has become a humanitarian disaster zone as fighting between government and rebel forces hinders attempts to deliver food and medical treatment to those within. 

Dozens have died in the camp from malnutrition, with reports of those trapped in Yarmouk sometimes resorting to eating grass and cats in order to survive. Aid from the United Nations has trickled in slowly since January 2014, sometimes only 60 parcels a day, and when it does arrive it results in the harrowing scenes such as the one you see in this photo. 

The United Nations has set up a special site to donate to the people of Yarmouk, which you can visit here.

For more information on what is happening in Yarmouk, I found many articles on the Electronic Intifada site - Search for Yarmouk. The Ma'an Palestinian news agency just published an AP article (using the same photograph) about apocalyptic scenes in Yarmouk refugee camp. The New York Times also published an AP article on Yarmouk with the same information, but as part of a longer article about Al Qaeda in Syria, and without this shocking photograph.

The AP article says:

On Tuesday, the chief of the United Nations relief agency supporting Palestinian refugees spoke of a rare visit he paid a day earlier to the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk in Damascus. 

Filippo Grandi, the Commissioner General of UNRWA, said the extent of damage to the refugees’ homes in Yarmouk was shocking. “The devastation is unbelievable. There is not one single building that I have seen that is not an empty shell by now,” he said in neighboring Beirut. 

The state of those still in the camp was even more shocking. “It’s like the appearance of ghosts,” he said of the people coming from within Yarmouk near a distribution point he was allowed to reach. “These are people that have not been out of there, that have been trapped in there not only without food, medicines, clean water — all the basics — but also probably completely subjected to fear because there was fierce fighting."

 [snip]

Yarmouk, located in southern Damascus, is the largest of nine Palestinian camps in Syria. Since the camp’s creation in 1957, it has evolved into a densely populated residential district just five miles (eight kilometers) from the center of Damascus. Several generations of Palestinian refugees have lived there. 

Grandi said around 18,000 of the camp’s original 160,000 Palestinian refugees are still inside Yarmouk.

Gene, of Harry's Place, has donated to the UN refugee agency that is trying to help the people of Yarmouk (link above), which I would urge people to do too.

Update:

Apparently the above picture was Photoshopped (Gene has updated his post to reflect that). See here: http://www.unrwa.org/galleries/photos/distribution-food-parcels-yarmouk for some genuine photos of the UN's distribution of food in Yarmouk. Here are several, which are heart-rending enough:

Israel: strikes, Palestinians, and Iranians

More Israel news.

We're not just sitting around and waiting for Bibi to decide to bomb the Iranians.

We're also waiting around to see if there will be a general strike on Wednesday. The Histadrut is negotiating with the Treasury about improving the working conditions of contract workers (for example, people who clean buildings but are not employed by the building owners, or the businesses in it, but by a cleaning contractor, or security guards who work for a contractor and not for the place they're guarding). If the strike happens on Wednesday, then all government offices will close, hospitals will run on a Shabbat schedule, administrative staff at all the universities will strike, the airport will be closed from 6:00 a.m. to noon, the ports will strike, the water authority will strike, museums will close, the banks will be closed, plus the post office, the Tel Aviv stock exchange, the national lottery - you get the idea. The buses will run on the usual schedule, however.

It would be interesting to experience a general strike in the US, the bastion of capitalism.

And what's happening with the Palestinians? The PA and Hamas have ostensibly come to a unity agreement, in which Abu Mazen will be the caretaker prime minister. Let's see - the last time they announced it, nothing happened. I don't see this as making it any more likely that Israel will negotiate with the Palestinians - but then, Bibi doesn't want to negotiate with them anyway, so this will just provide him an easy excuse.

Oh, and back to the Iranians. Niall Ferguson, who is a professor of history at Harvard, is leading the cheerleading for an Israeli attack on Iran. He writes:

It probably felt a bit like this in the months before the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel launched its hugely successful preemptive strike against Egypt and its allies. Forty-five years later, the little country that is the most easterly outpost of Western civilization has Iran in its sights.

Really? You mean after Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran, and built up its army in Sinai near the Israeli border, and it didn't seem like anyone else was interested in saving Israel from its enemies?

He seems to think that the US would immediately jump up (upon news of an Israeli strike on Iran) and join in with its bunker busters.

What is the most disgusting part of the essay is the last sentence: "It feels like the eve of some creative destruction." How can he rejoice in what would almost certainly be the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Iranians? He's living a comfortable life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which will not be bombed if Israel attacks Iran. He won't have to suffer the consequences. My friends here in Israel will have to dodge Iranian, Hezbollah, and Hamas rockets and missiles, on the other hand.

Oh, enough gloom and doom. Time to go watch Eretz Nehederet, the Israeli political satire TV show.

UPDATE: Religion Dispatches has a good article on Ferguson's  immoral proposal, by Haroon Moghul. He talks about the possible results for Iranians (for example, if the current government collapses in the face of an attack and nothing replaces it) and for the Middle East as a whole.

Notes on the Gaza Flotilla

Alice Walker: Why I'm sailing to Gaza

Highlights

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?

There is a scene in the movie "Gandhi" that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.

Unexpectedly, I find myself being moved by some of Alice Walker's words here - in particular, her memory of the non-violent Indian protests against the British Empire. If Palestinians had been able to act like this decades ago, there might now be a Palestinian state.

When I lived in Israel from 1987-1989 (I was a visiting graduate student at the Hebrew University), I went to many demonstrations against the occupation and in favor of negotiations between Israel and the PLO. (At that point it was illegal for Israelis to meet with representatives of the PLO, so this was a radical demand). My second year, I got involved with a group called "The 21st year of the occupation." A good friend of mine was involved, and I decided to join as well in supporting them in non-violent civil disobedience against the occupation. [For a glimpse at what it felt like to be involved with Israeli anti-occupation groups during the late 1980s, during the first intifada, see an article by Milton Viorst in Mother Jones, December 1988 - on Google Books].

Before I came to Israel in 1987, I had been part of a group in Boston called "Pledge of Resistance," which was a nationwide group founded to protest against the policies of the U.S. government in central America, in particular against the threat of a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua. We trained in tactics of civil disobedience, and those involved pledged either to engage in civil disobedience (which could lead to arrest) or to support those doing the civil disobedience. I chose to be a supporter - I was afraid of being arrested. There was one big protest that I remember taking place at the Federal Building in downtown Boston, where people blocked the doors of the building and were arrested en masse - about 500 as I recall. Several friends of mine were arrested, and I remember going to the bail hearing later in the day. Those who refused to identify themselves (including my friends) were kept in jail for a couple of days until they were released.

The "21st year of the occupation" had similar actions in mind - public civil disobedience, with certain people risking arrest, and others watching out for them and supporting them. As in the U.S., my choice was support, not to risk arrest - especially since I was living in a foreign country. I went early one morning in Jerusalem to a training session in civil disobedience along with another friend.

The first and as it happened only action of the "21st year" that I took part in was an aborted attempt in May, 1989, to visit a Palestinian family in Qalqiliya, on the West Bank - one of the sons of the family had been arrested and was accused of being a terrorist, and in response the IDF was going to seal off one of the rooms of the house (this was a common punishment at that time - I don't know if the IDF continues to do this). The group's intention was not to engage in civil disobedience - no one planned to get arrested. Our goal was to express support for the family.

We set off for Qalqiliya and at the entrance of the city we were halted by the local IDF commander, who told us that we were forbidden to enter a "closed military zone." A foreign film crew was waiting outside the city, presumably to film us. We turned around, and some people left (including Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli Knesset then and a founder of B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group). Instead of going back to Jerusalem, however, we sneaked into Qalqiliya by going through the orchards around the city (something impossible to do now, because the city is surrounded by the separation wall, an apt name in this case). We ended up in a main square of the city, and asked some passersby how to get to the street of the family we were going to visit. We started in that direction, and then an IDF patrol came upon us and asked what we were doing. They then ordered us to leave. Since the group had decided not to engage in civil disobedience, we started to walk out of the city. There were a number of local Palestinian residents watching us, and one of the men of the group decided to give them the "V" sign for solidarity. The soldiers saw the gesture, and went up to him and told him not to do that again, or he would be arrested. He made the sign again, and they started to arrest him. Then another man in the group did the same thing.

Reuven Kaminer, in his book "The Politics of Protest: the Israeli peace movement and the intifada" (1996) writes of this moment (p. 129): "It seems that everything was going to end quietly when one of the protestors flashed a 'V' sign to the local residents (later, the 'V' sign became the basis for the charge that the 27 had incited the local population to rebellion....)." The IDF charged later that we yelled "להמשיך באינתיפדה" - "continue the intifada" - but this was an invention to support the charge of incitement to rebellion. Kaminer continues, "The officers were incensed and began arresting; first, several men in the group, and then all the women who refused to abandon them." (Women were the majority of the group). Kaminer then writes, "In a matter of minutes, 27 demonstrators were being held in the local police station and a chain of events was set in motion which forced the 27 to remain in prison for five full days."

I was not one of them. At the last minute, as I was about to get into one of the police trucks, one of the leaders of the "21st year" shouted out - "You don't have to get arrested if you don't want to be." I didn't want to, and dropped off the back of the truck with two other people who also didn't want to get arrested. The soldiers told us to leave the city, and we started to walk out the main entrance. Fortunately for us, the film crew was still there, and they gave us a ride to the bus station in Kfar Saba, the closest Israeli city to Qalqiliya. When we got to Jerusalem I went home and called the office of Dedi Zucker to let him know what happened.

As Kaminer reports, those arrested spent five days in jail before being released. I went to the court at least a couple of times as a supporter during hearings for the arrested protestors, bringing clothing to my arrested friend. They were eventually brought to trial in the fall of 1989, but charges were dismissed because it turned out that the order the IDF commander was holding for a "closed military zone" had never been signed.

The feeling I was left with after the whole incident was over (including court hearings, publicity, demonstrations, etc.) was that the members of the "21st year" simply weren't prepared to engage in civil disobedience both because they/we didn't really understand what civil disobedience was, nor the possible consequences to ourselves of it. Did the two men who flashed "V" signs know that they were doing something that could provoke the soldiers to arrest them? They certainly displayed no awareness of this risk. The group members in Qalqiliya were not prepared to get arrested - in fact, after the soldiers ordered us all to leave the city, we had a short discussion on whether to engage in civil disobedience, and decided that we had not come with that purpose. As Kaminer points out in his book, a number of the arrested women were mothers with children at home who did not want to risk a stay in jail. Those arrested were not prepared for conditions in the jails, nor for the (initial) seriousness of the legal charges against them.

Compared with those who risked their liberty and their lives in the American civil rights movement, we were rank amateurs. For example, the people who were involved in the 1960 sit-ins that desegregated lunch counters in the South (for example Diana Nash in Nashville) prepared themselves physically, spiritually, and psychologically for their non-violent struggle. From the Wikipedia article about Diana Nash:

After experiencing such shocking discriminatory events, Nash decided to search for a way to challenge segregation, Nash began attending civil disobedience workshops led by Rev. James Lawson.^[2] James Lawson had studied Mahatma Gandhi's techniques of nonviolent direct action and passive resistance while studying in India.^[9] By the end of her first semester at Fisk, she had become one of Lawson's most devoted disciples. Although originally a reluctant participant in non-violence, Nash emerged as a leader due to her well-spoken, composed manner when speaking to the authorities and to the press.

I don't know if a strong religious faith is necessary for effective civil disobedience, but I think that it helps a great deal in standing up to the difficult circumstances that participants may have to confront. Thorough training in how to remain non-violent when faced with a violent reaction is an absolute necessity. Our group had neither of these advantages.

Are the members of the Gaza Flotilla really prepared for what may happen to them? Alice Walker talks a good line, but have she and the other Americans on the "Audacity of Hope" trained for how to respond if the IDF decides to board their boat? Are they all really committed to nonviolence? How would they have behaved if they had been on the Mavi Marmara last year? How would they have responded to the IHH activists on the boat who prepared to fight off the IDF commandos? Have the passengers on the boat organized themselves to resist nonviolently? Walker suggests in her essay that all of the responsibility for possible violence is on the shoulders of the IDF - but what if it turns out that some of the passengers do want to resist violently? I hope that the passengers have discussed these issues thoroughly. While I don't support the flotilla, I have no desire to see the passengers injured or killed - and both the passengers on the boats and the IDF have a responsibility to make sure that there is no violence.

The Syrian role in Yom ha-Naksa

[Note: "Yom ha-Naksa" means "Day of the setback" - referring to the anniversary of the Six-Day War, which in 1967 began on June 5. "Naksa" is an Arabic word that means "setback" and is apparently the term that Palestinians use to refer to the Six Day War].

In order to get to the border at Magdal Shams and Quneitra, the Palestinian/Syrian protestors had to pass by Syrian army checkpoints. They were waved through on Nakba Day (May 15) and on Sunday, but not yesterday. Clearly, the Syrian government has the power to foster or prevent these protests as it wishes - as we have all been witnessing, the government does not hesitate to use force against those it views as enemies.

Isabel Kershner, in her New York Times article today, reports on the possible motives of the Syrian government:

But Israel said the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria was exploiting the Palestinian issue by sending unarmed protesters to the frontier in order to divert attention from its own antigovernment uprising and the bloody attempts to put it down.

In a rare convergence of Israeli and Palestinian sentiment, that sense of exploitation may at least in part explain the markedly muted reaction in the Palestinian territories to Sunday’s deadly confrontation in the north.

Leaders in Hamas-run Gaza condemned the killings of the protesters but, unusually, did not go as far as to call for revenge. The mainstream Fatah movement and other political factions also issued condemnations, but there were no official statements from the office of President Mahmoud Abbas or other Palestinian Authority leaders in the West Bank.

And then yesterday there were still more tragic consequences of the protests at the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. There were funerals for those who had been killed the day before, and fourteen of the mourners were shot dead, not by Syrian troops, but by Palestinian security guards.

Palestinian security guards reportedly killed 14 Palestinians Monday in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria. According to witnesses, an angry crowd of mourners began to charge toward leaders of Palestinian factions, prompting their security guards to open fire. 

The mourners accused the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) of endangering their lives during Sunday's protest on Israel's border, by encouraging them to put themselves in the line of fire.

The crowd chanted slogans against Maher al-Taher, PFLP spokesman and politburo member, and set fire to the PFLP headquarters. There are additional reports that Khaled Meshal, Hamas political leader in Damascus, arrived at the camp but was forced to leave.

Nakba Day protests - what do they mean?

I don't really know what to say yet about the Nakba Day protests today. I find what happened today to be really frightening - the idea that thousands of protesters could cross the Syrian and Lebanese borders with Israel, without using arms, and surprise the Israeli army. Did the IDF have any idea that this was going to happen? Earlier this week I was reading articles online that they were preparing for riots in Israel and the West Bank - and they seemed well-prepared for them. But I don't remember anything being mentioned about their preparations for possible protesters coming over the borders. If they had, they might have had less lethal methods for dealing with the protesters, like water cannons or using rubber bullets instead of live rounds.

This is the report from Haaretz about what happened in Magdal Shams, on the Golan:

This was the first serious incident on the Israel-Syria border, Israel's calmest frontier, in 36 years. Despite extensive preparations, IDF intelligence anticipated the main point of friction would be the Quneitra border crossing, which was beefed up with reinforcements, while only two jeeps with 10 soldiers were securing the fence when it was breached.

The army estimated that the demonstration taking place on the Golan's "Shouting Hill," a popular place for protests in recent years, would proceed without unusual incident, and was taken completely by surprise when some 1,000 people, including women and children, began sliding down a steep slope towards the fence.

The unit had clear orders not to shoot without authorization by the brigade commander.After using their few riot control munitions, the army said the soldiers held their fire until the demonstrators began surrounding the jeeps. The order to fire live rounds was given by the brigade commander, Colonel Eshkol Shukrun, who arrived at the scene.

He said yesterday he feared situation would get completely out of control, and ordered the troops to fire toward the lower body of the protesters. One person was killed on the Israeli side of the fence and three on the Syrian side, 40 were injured, and all but the 137 already on the Israeli side fled.

"I realized that this was spinning out of control and that we needed to do something before 10,000 infiltrators made their way to Majdal Shams," said Shukrun, who was injured in the face by stone throwers. "It became clear that we needed to shift it into higher gear."

Shukrun gave the order to his soldiers to shoot at the lower extremities of those who crossed into Majdal Shams.

"That was when the whole [flow of infiltrators] stopped," he said. "Whoever was on the fence ran away in fear and those who crossed into Majdal stayed there."

After the infiltrators protested in the main town square, the IDF sought to coordinate their return to Syria with UN forces stationed on the Golan Heights. By 5:00 P.M., all of the infiltrators were loaded onto buses and taken back to Syria via the Quneitra crossing.

I'm also suspicious about the protesters coming from Syria and Lebanon. As Jeffrey Goldberg and others have mentioned, this couldn't happen without the Syrian government or Hezbollah permitting it. Goldberg writes:

Consider: These borders, in particular the Syria-Israel border, have seldom, if ever, seen demonstrations like this. The Syria-Israel border is a notably quiet place; Hafez al-Assad, the late dictator, and his son, Bashar, the current dictator, have kept the border quiet for decades. But now there is widespread revolt in Syria, which threatens not only the Syrian regime, but its ally, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. So far, Bashar's security forces have slaughtered almost a thousand Syrian citizens. So what would you do if you were a cynical Syrian dictator, or a cynical ally of the cynical Syrian dictator? Change the subject. To what, you might ask? Well, Israel, of course.

Andrew Exum, whom Goldberg quotes, also has an interesting analysis - "Just Another Sunday in the Levant." See also Michael Totten, whom I always find gives insightful analysis on what is happening in the Middle East, especially Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria - "Nakba Day's Deadly Political Theater."

The occupation is not benign

Interesting article by Michelle Goldberg of Tablet on the soldiers of "Breaking the Silence" - exposing how the Israeli occupation brutalizes the soldiers who enforce it and the Palestinians who suffer from it.

Website of Breaking the Silence: Shovrim Shtika.

Article by Mikhael Manekin, co-director of Shovrim Shtika, in +972 (web magazine), against the Knesset investigation into NGOs.

Fire in Silwan, East Jerusalem

Earlier tonight a helicopter started to circle around somewhere nearby, and I kept hearing the sounds of ambulances. When my neighbor came home, I went out to talk to her and we saw the helicopter coming in our direction with searchlights aimed from it towards the north, towards the Old City. It's not normal to hear helicopters flying around in Jerusalem - it's usually a sign that something unusual is happening. During the day, if I hear them when I'm at the National Library, which is near the main government buildings, it's probably because of some dignitary visiting the city or possibly because of a big demonstration.

I went to the Hebrew website of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, and found an article that revealed the reason for the helicopter. What follows is my translation.

Fire in Silwan: They are abusing the residents of the house of Abu Nab

Left-wing activists and residents in the east Jerusalem neighborhood told Ynet that the violent disturbances began when guards broke into the house of Abu Nab, which right-wing activists have threatened to clear out soon. “They fired in every direction,” they said.

The violent confrontations that broke out tonight in Silwan in east Jerusalem perhaps hint at the disturbances which are likely to flame up if right-wing activists execute their threats to clear out the house of Abu Nab themselves; in the past the house was a synagogue. In the confrontations six policemen and four security guards were lightly injured. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), tens of Palestinians were injured by inhaling smoke.

According to left-wing activists and Arab residents in Silwan, tonight’s events began after private security guards came into the new “House of Contention,” the house of Abu Nab. According to the residents, the security guards attempted to break into the house, and when they found it locked, they began to fire tear gas inside it. In the end, they succeeded in breaking past the doors, and a few minutes, many residents of the village began to confront them.

Avner, one of the leftwing activists who is in contact with the Arab residents, said to Ynet that this was a provocation by the police, who are trying to inflame the area to prevent the evacuation of Beit Yehonatan. “The residents there were dragged into a violent confrontation, the police and Border Police have been wandering around in the last few days and trying to incite the area after the quiet demonstration we held in the place on last Friday,” he said.

Nasrin Elian from ACRI said that “The security guards from the settlers confronted the residents, in the context of the threat of MK Uri Ariel, that if the house of Abu Nab isn’t cleared by July 4, they will clear it out by themselves. What happened is that once again there were provocations by the security guards near Beit Yehonatan and Beit Ha-Dvash. Many young people gathered together, and the guards began to fire in all directions. Everyone who came near to the house, they shot in his direction.”

Elian also said that the security forces fired tear gas into the house of Abu Nab. “All of the residents, about 40 people, were suffocating and went outside, among them a girl of five who fainted and lost consciousness, and a pregnant woman who also fainted. There was a helicopter in the air with a light beam that lit in every direction, and the ambulances were coming back and forth loading injured people. The residents report about tens of injured, among them two severely.” The police report that they do not know about the injured.

The chairman of the Meretz faction in the Jerusalem city council, Joseph (Pepe) Alalu, who resigned from the coalition after the mayor, Nir Barkat, advanced the King’s Garden plans, blamed him for the disturbances: “When the hammer throws a stone in the water, after that even a hundred wise men can’t take it out from there. We knew, we warned, and the thing that is the worst is that even Nir Barkat knows the sensitivity of the situation. The residents of Silwan, at the moment that the discussions began about the plan, saw themselves deceived again and again. They proposed their own plan, but the municipality did not deal with it at all. It’s a shame that because of a plan like this disturbances have begun now.”

See also the report in Haaretz: East Jerusalem fracas.

Hagit Ofran of Peace Now just reported on these events in Silwan in an article in the Huffington Post - her report covers a wide range of what's been happening in east Jerusalem, the provocations of the settlers and the Wild West actions of the Border Police.

Correction: Netanyahu did not know about announcement of new housing

I guess Sullivan was right: PM demanded no surprises from Yishai during Biden visit.

US Vice President Joe Biden left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "hanging" for no less than an hour and a half, as the latter, along with his wife Sara, were waiting for him at the dinner table. The sole explanation for such extreme tardiness in American diplomacy is that it was an expression of discontent over the Ministry of Interior's approval of 1,600 new housing units in disputed east Jerusalem earlier Tuesday – and the harsh condemnation that followed.

The embarrassment proved even bigger, as the prime minister was not informed of the decision. Ynet learned Tuesday evening that although Interior Minister Eli Yishai's claimed the decision's timing was coincidental, Netanyahu requested to be informed about construction permits in Jerusalem and the West Bank on several occasions in the past.

Despite Netanyahu's repeated requests, he was not updated vis-à-vis the latest plan, and the government was unable to avoid a last minute rift with the Palestinian Authority, just before renewing negotiations.

After several past incidents relating to construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the prime minister instructed the ministers supervising construction in "sensitive areas" to remain alert and avoid political embarrassments that could severely damage future relations with the US and the Palestinians.

Netanyahu asked Yishai and Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias to be involved in decision making, in order to prevent "surprises".

The prime minister assured the US vice president that the timing was coincidental, and was not meant to impede the political process with the Palestinians. "The prime minister is not ashamed of the construction in Jerusalem," said a source close to Netanyahu,

"However, he certainly is not interested in creating a political debacle. It is important to create a good atmosphere, and avoid disagreements with Washington – especially during the vice president's important visit."

Senior cabinet ministers said on Tuesday that they were uncertain whether the step was a mistake on the part of the Interior Ministry or an intentional move. "If it was intentional, this is very serious," said one Labor minister.

Minister Isaac Herzog said, "This is a serious failure. Netanyahu must make sure it is not repeated. It is not clear who is responsible for this, but what is certain is that this will cause harm to anyone seeking the peace process."

Elements in the political establishment criticized Netanyahu's conduct and one source said, "If Netanyahu and his ministers don't know about their ministries, this is a joke. Time after time scandals occur that harm the State. This should raise questions as to Netanyahu's conduct and his ability to control the ministers and the government."

MK Yoel Hasson (Kadima) said, "It seems the Netanyahu government has its sights set on getting Israel in trouble with one of our biggest friends in the world. Humiliating the vice president of the US, Joe Bidden, is far worse than the humiliation of the Turkish ambassador by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.

"They humiliated the Turkish ambassador with a low chair, but the US vice president they humiliated with 1,600 housing units. Netanyahu runs the government amateurishly, in a way that is reminiscent of the way a Likud branch is run in some godforsaken town."

Jerusalem news - Sheikh Jarrah and Temple Mount

The situation seems to be heating up in Jerusalem again. Leftists who have been protesting Jewish settlers in neighborhoods of Arab east Jerusalem demonstrated today against those settlements, and there was a haredi counter-demonstration as well

Approximately 3,000 people gather in east Jerusalem neighborhood to protest evacuation of Arab families from their homes. Meanwhile, dozens of haredim hold prayer in Tomb of Simon the Just

Ronen Medzini
Published: 03.06.10, 20:43 / Israel News (Ynet)

Some 3,000 Jewish and Arab left-wing activists rallied in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in east Jerusalem Saturday in order to protest against the settlement of Jews in the area and the evacuation of Arab families from their homes. The protesters gathered in a soccer field in the neighborhood and waved Israeli and Palestinian flags before marching towards the Tomb of Simon the Just.

"I'm glad to see there are still leftists in the country," left-wing activist Yoram Sorek told Ynet. He noted that "any political agreement will require Jerusalem's division and these settlements are aimed at preventing peace."

The religious site also attracted dozens of ultra-Orthodox worshippers and right-wing activists who came in order to pray and protest the High Court of Justice's ruling enabling the leftist demonstration. Police forces were deployed at the site.

The rightists chanted "Halacha state" and waved signs reading, "Leftists = Traitors".

Leading the right-wing protest National Union chairman MK Yaakov Katz said, "We are very glad the marchers are shouting and coming. Any esoteric protest of Israel-hating Arabs and 'Peace Now' against Jewish heritage plays to our advantage."

Katz added that "10 years ago they protest in Har Homa, now there are 20,000 people there. They demonstrated in Kedumin and Beit-El and there also are thousands of people."

A haredi demonstrator said, "These are a bunch of pathetic Jews who come to defend Arabs who throw people out. They don’t study the Torah, they have no clue, they are the greatest villains."

Knesset Member Arieh Eldad (National Union) who arrived at the scene said, "The audacity of Israeli leftist groups has led them to betrayal in cooperation with Israel's enemies.

"This time they are disregarding the fact that any Jewish settler in the neighborhood is doing so backed by a court order."

The protest was made possible after the High Court granted the motion of Sheikh Jarrah residents who petitioned against the police's decision to ban the demonstration. According to the court ruling, the protest was to be held in a restricted area, while 300 activists were to be allowed to rally in the street for half an hour.

Ha'aretz also reports on the rally in Sheikh Jarrah.

And riots have started again on the Temple Mount, beginning on February 28:

Hebron tension spreads to Jerusalem: Youths barricaded in al-Aqsa Mosque since Saturday evening throw stones at passerby, prompting police forces to enter compound. Stones hurled at police in Old City as well; Four police officers and 18 protestors injured; seven suspects arrested

Efrat Weiss
Published: 02.28.10, 09:05 / Israel News (Ynet)

Morning of clashes in Jerusalem's Old City: Police forces entered the al-Aqsa Mosque plaza at the Temple Mount on Sunday morning after dozens of Arab youths who barricaded themselves in the mosque on Saturday night began hurling stones at passersby entering the Temple Mount compound.

Two policemen and two Border Guard officers were lightly injured by stones hurled in the Old City's alleys. They received medical treatment on site and resumed their activity. At least 18 protestors were injured and seven were arrested.

Sources in the mosque reported that at least eight worshippers were hurt by tear gas. According to the Palestinians, hundreds of policemen encircled the mosque, demanding that the youths evacuate themselves.

The police reported that some 30 Arab youths had barricaded themselves inside the mosques and that efforts made by the Waqf (the council managing Muslim sites) to remove them had failed. Police entered the mount's plaza following the stone throwing and closed its gates, and the youths fled into the mosque.

The police then opened the mount's gates to worshippers, but restricted entrance to the site to male worshippers with Israeli identity cards over the age of 50 and to female worshippers of all ages.

The mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority condemned the police forces' entry to the mosque compound, which he said was aimed at allowing extremists to enter the area. He warned against the serious implications of the police's entry.

Waqf sources said that Jewish worshippers had entered the compound and were protected by the police. A Jerusalem Police official strongly denied the claim, saying that "this is a lie. Some 1,000 visitors have entered the Temple Mount compound since the morning hours, both Jews and non-Jews."

Visits to the site continue as usual, although stones are occasionally being thrown from the mosques towards the police forces stationed at the entrances.

Stones were occasionally thrown at police officers in the alleys of the Old City, including near the Antonia Fortress, which is one of the entrances to the Temple Mount. There were no reports of injuries. Seven suspects were detained for questioning.

Some 100 girls who attempted to launch a protest march in the Sultan Suleiman area in east Jerusalem were stopped by the police.

It is estimated that Sunday's events at the Temple Mount come following the tension that arose over Israel's decision to include the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem to its list of national heritage sites.

Members of the Waqf and various Islamic organizations, including the Islamic Movement, urged Muslims over the weekend to flock to the Temple Mount, claiming that "radical Jewish organizations have called on their followers to arrive at the mount today and on Tuesday in an attempt to lay the cornerstone for the temple."

The Islamic organizations also called on Muslims to be on high alert around March 16, when they said extreme Jewish organizations were planning to mark the global day for the temple's reconstruction.

There was more trouble on March 5 (yesterday) after Friday prayers. Palestinians threw stones at Israeli police at the Mughrabi gate and at Jews praying at the Western Wall. There were also Palestinian protests elsewhere in the West Bank.

Police forces raid site to stop Muslim worshippers hurling stones at Western Wall, seize control of courtyard using stun grenades. Some 20 officers, 60 Palestinians injured. Five police evacuated to hospital in light condition.

Efrat Weiss
Published: 03.05.10, 13:27 / Israel News (Ynet)

Police forces on Friday raided the Temple Mount to stop youths hurling stones at passersby at the Western Wall after their weekly prayers. Dozens of police officers and worshippers were injured.

According to an initial report, Arab worshippers hurled stones at police forces at the Old City's Mugrabi Gate. Police forces removed the rioters and took over the Temple Mount courtyard using stun grenades.

Twenty police officers were lightly injured from the stones hurled at them. Five officers received initial medical treatment at the scene and were evacuated to Hadassah Medical Center and Shaare Zedek Medical Center in the city. Fifteen other officers who sustained light wounds were treated by emergency service crews at the scene.

Source in the Waqf and medical sources reported that at least 60 Palestinians were injured in the clashes. The Palestinians reported that the worshippers were hurt by tear gas, stun grenades and gas inhalation. According to the Palestinian, the forces entered the al-Aqsa Mosque and used force even in areas free of riots.

Following the clashes, dozens of youths fled into the al-Aqsa mosque. The police did not enter the mosque. A number of adult worshippers remained in the Temple Mount courtyard to try and calm the youths.

After making contact with the Waqf, the police retreated from the compound toward Mugrabi Gate to allow the older worshippers to exit the site.

Police generally restrict entrance to the Temple Mount compound to worshipers over the age of 50 when receiving information on planned riots. This week, however, police decided not to restrict entrance to the site.

Last week riots at the Temple Mount escalated, partly due to the cabinet's decision to include the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem in Israel's national heritage site plan.

Some 20 Arab youths from east Jerusalem barricaded themselves in the al-Aqsa mosque last week and refused to exit it. Six police officers and two Border Guard officers were lightly injured in clashes that broke out in the Old City. A number of Arab protesters were also injured, and seven rioters were detained.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and the Syrians blamed the Israelis alone for the clashes on the Temple Mount.

According to a special statement released by the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, "Today's events were aimed at damaging the chances of resuming the peace process and Israel is crossing all the red lines – after the Arab League's monitoring committee recommended that the negotiations between the sides be resumed."

The statement also said that Abbas, who was being updated on the events in Jerusalem, had called on the American administration to "stop the adventure which may ignite a religious war in the region" and demanded that the international community "take responsibility and stop the Israeli recklessness, which may have serious implications on the entire region and on peace and security in the entire world."

Syria said Friday it "condemns the Israeli aggression" at the Temple Mount which showed the Jewish state rejected efforts to relaunch the peace process. "The desecration of Arab and Islamic sanctities comes as the Arab League accepted the launch of indirect negotiations... which is further evidence of the seriousness of Israel's quest for peace," said a foreign ministry statement. "It's also proof that the Israeli policy rejects the peace process and seeks to liquidate the Palestinian cause."

The clashes began as Arab worshippers began hurling stones at the Western Wall plaza and police forces stationed at the Mugrabi Gate in Jerusalem's Old City. The police forces removed the stone throwers and stormed the Temple Mount compound, using stun grenades. Dozens of youths fled into the al-Aqsa Mosque following the clashes. According to the police, the forces did not enter the mosque.

Unless there's something I'm missing here in these reports, the Israeli police did not decide to go arrest people on the Temple Mount - they acted because Arabs on the Temple Mount began throwing stones at police and at Jews at the Western Wall. The police reacted. Why does this mean that Israel is "crossing red lines"? If Abbas were talking about Israeli settlements in Arab east Jerusalem, he would have a good case, but he's not correct about this most recent incident at the Temple Mount.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference backed up Abbas and Syria with even more inflammatory remarks today:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference Saturday accused Israeli police of sacrilege by entering Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque and called for international intervention to "end Israeli aggression."

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the Jeddah-based pan-Islamic body, said in a statement that Friday's fighting between Muslims and Israeli police at the Temple Mount compound in east Jerusalem, which injured dozens, was "a sacrilegious act of profanation of the holy Islamic site."

The police action was "a violation of international law and a flagrant attack on the freedom of religion of the nature that could take the region into a war between religions," he said in the statement.

Ihsanoglu called on the international community and the Quartet on Middle East peace -- the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations -- to "pay heed to the gravity of the Israeli violations and the threat they pose to the region now and in the future." He called for "an international intervention effective at every level to end Israeli aggressions and make Israel respect international law."

Of course, Mr. Ihsanoglu didn't mention the desecration of a Jewish holy place by rioters throwing stones at Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall. But that's probably because he doesn't believe that Jews have any rights to pray, much less live or have sovereignty, in Jerusalem.

What was the "Palestine Conference"?

Another point to make about Stephen Sizer's attendance at the Palestine Conference is that it reveals some of the company he keeps. According to the poster he put up on his blog (see above), his fellow speakers included Azzam Tamimi and Daud Abdullah. The conference was organized by the student association of Islamic groups on British campuses (FOSIS) and cosponsored by the Palestinian Return Centre, Interpal, the British Muslim Initiative, and the Friends of Al-Aqsa.

Harry's Place has written quite extensively on Tamimi and Abdullah. See this recent article on some of Tamimi's extreme statements on Israel and Jews. The author writes, "Support for Hamas suicide bombings is a consistent theme in Tamimi’s public talks, alongside the idea that Israel must disappear – either peacefully or through force."

A report in the Jewish Chronicle (of Feb. 11) covers a recent talk he gave at a prestigious university in London:

Palestinian academic Azzam Tamimi, who has advocated suicide bombing, has told students he “longs to be a martyr” and that Israel “must come to an end”. Dr Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, spoke to students at London’s School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) on Tuesday. On Monday, he addressed Cambridge University’s Islamic Society and is also due to speak at the Federation of Student Islamic Societies’ Palestine Week at Manchester University this weekend.

At SOAS, he praised Hamas and said: “Today Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation because that’s what the Americans and Israelis and cowardly politicians of Europe want, but what is so terrorist about it?

“You shouldn’t be afraid of being labelled extreme, radical or terrorist. If fighting for your home land is terrorism, I take pride in being a terrorist. The Koran tells me if I die for my homeland, I’m a martyr and I long to be a martyr.”

He criticised calls for a two-state solution and said: “Why are the Jews superhuman and better than anyone else that God would give them a homeland? Is God a racist? A god who would prefer people because of their race is not a god I want to associate with. Claiming they are being given the land of God is a racist idea.

“If the world felt so guilty about the Holocaust, the Jews should have been compensated, not brought to my country at the expense of my people. “Israel does not belong to my homeland and must come to an end. This can happen peacefully if they acknowledge what they did — or we will continue to struggle until Israel is no more.”

He also urged students to continue hosting debates, despite calls to ban controversial speakers from campuses. He said: “I want to encourage you not to be intimidated by the pro-Israel lobby. The Zionists tell a pack of lies.

Dr Tamimi spoke alongside Ben White, author of Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide, who urged students to boycott Israeli goods.

On Abdullah, see this article at Harry's Place: Daud Abdullah, the Royal Navy and Jihad.

Why is a Christian theologian, of all people, associating with Azzam Tamimi and Daud Abdullah?

Ethan Bronner and the Public Editor of the New York Times

The Public Editor of the New York Times is calling for Ethan Bronner, the New York Times chief correspondent in Israel, to be reassigned for the period when his son is serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Fortunately, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, disagrees.

The concern of Hoyt (the Public Editor) seems to be not that Bronner would actually be biased in his research and writing, but that some readers would perceive him as being prejudiced. As Keller makes clear in his reply to Hoyt, the New York Times is endlessly scrutinized for its Israel/Palestine coverage, and people on both (or many) sides of the issue are quick to criticize them for it. I've had Jewish friends accuse the Times of being anti-Israel, and I've had other friends claim that the Times is reflexively pro-Israel (one such conversation included the awkward claim that the Times was pro-Israel because the owners of the newspaper are Jewish - my interlocutor, whom I had thought was a friend, was unaware of the newspaper's shameful role during WWII in downplaying the gravity of the Holocaust). For an example of the claim that the Times' reporting is reflexively pro-Israel, see the first comment to Keller's response, which comes from Alison Weir, who is convinced that Israel can never do anything right.

Keller asks very cogent questions about who it is that should be trusted to report the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Readers, like reporters, bring their own lives to the newspaper. Sometimes, when these readers are unshakeably convinced of something, they bring blinding prejudice and a tendency to see what they want to see. As you well know, nowhere is that so true as in Israel and the neighboring Palestinian lands. If we send a Jewish correspondent to Jerusalem, the zealots on one side will accuse him of being a Zionist and on the other side of being a self-loathing Jew, and then they will parse every word he writes to find the phrase that confirms what they already believe while overlooking all evidence to the contrary. So to prevent any appearance of bias, would you say we should not send Jewish reporters to Israel? If so, what about assigning Jewish reporters to countries hostile to Israel? What about reporters married to Jews? Married to Israelis? Married to Arabs? Married to evangelical Christians? (They also have some strong views on the Holy Land.) What about reporters who have close friends in Israel? Ethical judgments that start from prejudice lead pretty quickly to absurdity, and pandering to zealots means cheating readers who genuinely seek to be informed.

He also gives examples of other Times reporters who have a personal involvement of some kind in the area they are reporting about - for example, he brings up the case of Nazila Fathi, the Times correspondent in Tehran. Should she not be permitted to report on Iran because the Iranian regime hounded her out of the country?

Nazila Fathi, our brave Tehran correspondent, was hounded out of her native country and into exile by the current regime. Does that “conflict of interest” disqualify her from writing about Iran? Or does that, on the contrary, make her more qualified, knowing as she does how that regime operates? Would you prefer to have a correspondent in Tehran who had NOT been persecuted by the Iranian government?

It seems to me that Hoyt is calling for an impossible standard which would lead to an absurdity - reporters who do not care at all about the place or topic they are reporting on. One of the things I had noticed over the years about the Times' reporting on Israel is that every few years they would send a new person to be the chief correspondent. They did not have as their chief correspondent someone who actually lived in the country for a long time - nor did it seem they even had Israeli or Palestinian correspondents (perhaps some stringers). I think it is a good thing that the Times is now employing reporters who know Israel thoroughly because they are Israelis or have lived in the country long term. (For example, Isabel Kershner, whom I first read in the Jerusalem Post probably about twenty years ago, is now reporting for the Times pretty regularly). Perhaps if they are worried about the appearance of bias, they should be careful to employ a Palestinian reporter to write regularly for the Times on an ongoing basis (the reporter they used in Gaza last year during the Gaza War seemed excellent to me).

Tablet Magazine has just weighed in on this issue, on the side of Hoyt - "Hoyt and I agree that Bronner has been fair-minded. But Hoyt and I also agree with Alex Jones, a Pulitzer-winning Harvard press expert. He told Hoyt: 'The appearance of a conflict of interest is often as important or more important than a real conflict of interest. I would reassign him.' Such a move, frankly, is unfair to Bronner, 'but the newspaper has to come first,' he added."

I repeat that this is an impossible standard for the newspaper. Does this mean now that the excellent Gaza reporter the Times had last year for the Gaza War shouldn't work for them because of her inevitable personal stake in the course of the war? In Iraq the Times also employs many Iraqi staffers, some of whose names actually even show up as bylines. Should they be fired because they also have a stake in the ongoing fighting there? I imagine that some are Shi'ites, some are Sunnis, some are Kurds, some are Christians - all groups that are struggling over what is going to happen in Iraq. I think it is actually a plus for the Times to have reporters who are from a particular place - as long as they can adhere to journalistic standards. I have not seen any reporting from the local reporters in Iraq or Gaza or Israel that has led me to believe that they are violating journalistic standards.

And why is Tablet Magazine piling on in this argument? It's a Jewish publication - do they believe that an Israeli Jewish reporter would be incapable of reporting on Israel/Palestine fairly? What about Isabel Kershner, who is an Israeli and who writes for the Times? She immigrated to Israel from Britain and is an Israeli citizen. She used to report for the Jerusalem Report (and I think also for the Jerusalem Post). NPR employee Linda Gradstein, who is an American Jewish immigrant to Israel, has reported for them for at least 15 years. I don't think she's served in the IDF, but her husband may have. Does that mean she's incapable of reporting fairly on Israel/Palestine?\

Jeffrey Goldberg has written two good posts on this issue - Pandering to Zealots, in which he says:

.....reporters are capable of actually separating out their personal interests from their coverage. I've worked with Palestinian reporters in Gaza and the West Bank, many of whom have had family ties to Fatah and, in one case, even to Hamas, but without fail they've functioned as professional news-gatherers interested only in getting the story before the competition. I don't think the Times should stop using Palestinian reporters in the West Bank and Gaza, because if it did so, its coverage would suffer. And its coverage of Israel would suffer immeasurably if the Times bent to the pressure of anti-Israel propagandists and removed Ethan Bronner from his post. I'm just glad Bill Keller is the editor of the Times, and not Clark Hoyt. 

Amen to that point. His second posting is in response to a reader's inquiry about "Why not have Jewish reporters cover Gaza? Why not have Palestinians cover Israel?" He answers:

A good question. Two answers: First, Jewish reporters do cover Gaza. And Palestinians do, in fact, cover Israel. Anyone who has been in the Knesset press room knows that Palestinians, working for Arab outlets, as well as European and American publications, are busy covering the main issues of the day. Answer number two: There could always be more of this cross-cultural coverage. I, for one, would love to read a Taghreed al-Khodary [who has reported for the New York Times] profile of Bibi, or Gabi Ashkenazi, or whomever, not only because she's a great reporter, but because she would draw out different responses from these men, based on her background and knowledge, than I could. I trust her to be fair and accurate, so why not?

Indeed.