Bad & bizarre news from Iran

First the bizarre

Iran’s vice president used the lectern of an international antidrug conference here Tuesday to deliver a baldly anti-Semitic speech, blaming Judaism’s holiest book, the Talmud, for teaching how to suck blood from people and for causing the spread of illegal drugs around the world.....

Mr. Rahimi, second in line to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the Talmud teaches to “destroy everyone who opposes the Jews.”

The “Zionists” are in firm control of the illegal drug trade, he said, asking foreign dignitaries to research his claims. “Zionists” is Iran’s ideological term for Jews who support the state of Israel. 

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will pay for anybody who can research and find one single Zionist who is an addict,” Mr. Rahmini said. “They do not exist. This is the proof of their involvement in drugs trade.”.... 

Mr. Rahimi, who spoke after Mr. De Leo [UN Office on Drugs and Crimes representative in Iran], told stories of gynecologists killing black babies on the orders of the Zionists and claimed that the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was started by the Jews, adding that mysteriously no Jews died in that uprising. 

He said the Talmud teaches the Jews to think they are a superior race. “They think God has created the world so that all other nations can serve them,” he said. 

Halfway through the speech, Mr. Rahimi said there was a difference between Jews who “honestly follow the prophet Moses” and the Zionists who are “the main elements of the international drugs trade.”

And now the bad:

With the failure of negotiations between Iran and six world powers last week, the Islamic regime now says it has the right, under international law, to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil tanker traffic should an embargo on Iran’s oil go into effect July 1. 

The third round of talks between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany ended in Moscow without any agreement on Iran’s illicit nuclear program. Iran continues to insist that the only way out of the impasse would be for the West to accept its nuclear program. 

Hossein Shariatmadari, the chief editor of the Iranian Keyhan newspaper, which is directly under the supervision of the supreme leader, warned in a commentary on Saturday that not only will Iran not back down on what it sees as its right to become a nuclear power but that it has the ability to stop oil tanker passage through the strait should new sanctions take effect.... 

“It is noteworthy that should the oil embargo on Iran by the European Union take effect on July 1st, then the Islamic Iran has the right to retaliation as the waters of the Strait of Hormuz are located within Iranian territory,” Shariatmadari said. “According to the Geneva 1958 Convention and the Jamaica 1982 Convention, which touches on the legality of the international waterways, Iran can close down the Strait of Hormuz to all oil tankers and even other commercial vessels if it is barred from selling oil.” The conventions allow passage of all vessels so long as the security of any country is not threatened. With these new sanctions, Iran would consider its security threatened.

Second letter from Gita Falkon Kagan to my grandfather Mark Falcon Lesses

April 7, 1937

Dear Mark,

I received your letter from March 2 this year on the days of Pesach, when I was very busy because of the holidays. Although I did not have time to respond to you immediately I was very happy to hear about the birth of your son. We congratulate you and your lovely wife Helen - raise your kids only for joy and never know sorrow - we wish you all a joyful and happy life.

The Pesach holidays my husband and I spent pretty well, our children did not interfere, though they do not keep it. If you keep holidays - I also congratulate you with Pesach. My husband and I had a great desire to visit Uncle Falcon, but this unfortunately was not possible. How and where do you plan to spend this summer? How is Helen, has she recovered? How is your newborn son? What is his name? How is the oldest one?

News about you and your family pleased me extremely; I am glad to hear and to know about you.

My son has now graduated from a second institute. In 1922 he graduated and obtained his first diploma of Electrical Engineer. In order to expand his professional opportunities, he graduated from another institute and obtained a second diploma of Mechanical Engineer.

My son-in-law also graduated from an institute and obtained a diploma of Technological Engineer.

I personally regret that none of my children chose to become a doctor.

I wonder why your sister and my niece Gertrude never wrote me - isn't she interested in her father's relatives at all?

Per your request I am sending you a random homemade photo. There you can see me, my husband, and our youngest daughter Anna, who is working as an economist. The photo was cut off from a big group one that you would generally not be interested in.

Dear Mark, you write that as physician you cannot help me at a distance. I regret it very much, I would probably be your faithful and diligent patient.

Is there any hope for our meeting, will you visit us one day?

I am finishing my letter by wishing you all the best. Please write, do not forget about us.

Loving you and your family,

Aunt Gita

Sincere regards from my husband and children to you and your family.

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I have the photo that Gita sent with this letter, but my scanner isn't working so I can't post it right now.

Letter from Gita Kagan Falkon to my grandfather, Mark Falcon Lesses

As I have written about in the past, my grandmother, Helen Rosenman Lesses, preserved letters that were sent to my grandfather, Mark Falcon Lesses, during the 1930s and into 1940, from his relatives in Europe. The letters from two people were in English - Sima Shlosberg and Mordechai Falkon (my grandfather's uncle). The letters from his aunt, Gita Falkon Kagan, were in Russian. Two of the letters had English translations with them, but two did not.

I brought the letters with me to Israel and I have met several times with a cousin-by-marriage (Sima Shlosberg is a common cousin for us) who made aliyah to Israel from Russia about thirty years ago. She was eager to see the letters, especially those from Sima, and she was so kind as to offer to translate the two Russian letters into English for me. She did this before Pesach and I'm only now managing to type them up. The first one is in this posting and the second one will be in the next one.

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A letter from my great-great-aunt Gita Kagan to her nephew, my grandfather, Mark Falcon Lesses

Moscow, 23/IX 36 (September 23, 1936)

My dear nephew - greetings to you and your wife and your glorious little son!

Thank you very much for the letter I received recently. In that letter you wrote me only a couple of words - why I did not answer your previous letter - but for these few words I am very grateful to you, because these few lines have shown me that in your heart you truly have sincere friendly affection for me and want to keep our relationship. I am happy to answer you, and, like all of us, my husband and my kids, we always would like to get from you only the best and joyful news about you and your lovely family. On your very first letter I responded, so we certainly have received it. I am very sorry that I did not respond to your second letter immediately. We left Moscow for the dacha for almost four months. Our dacha is 19 kilometers from Moscow; it is linked to Moscow by electric trains. Living outside Moscow and poor health knocked me out of a rut very much, and I have in my mind the need to answer your letter quite a long time (ago) still faced with the fact of my debt to you.

I promise to be more accurate in future and write you regularly upon receipt of your letters.

In last months my brother and your uncle Falcon from Libau strongly requested the possibility of my husband's and my entry to Libau for two months visit. He sent us a visa already and my husband and I, we'll maybe go to Libau. I have not seen your uncle from Libau since World War I, since the year 1915. Now he is very old and weak. Recently, my husband's sister wrote us that he is seriously ill. Your uncle in his letters writes nothing about himself and recently he writes to us very rarely (not more than once a month) and very very tersely. You can realize of course, my dear Mark, that we are not young anymore, and all sorts of diseases, short letters, or not receiving them in time causes morbid anxiety in the heart.

My own health is poor, I already wrote you about it. My husband also does not feel well. But you're a doctor yourself so you probably say to your patients: what is aging - it is getting decrepit and you cannot put a new heart in the body.

You wrote us that one of your hospital nurses would visit Moscow in the summer. But nobody visited us. Maybe she did not come at all.

My children have no special news. They are all as usual.

I still have a great desire to see you, my dear nephew, personally. I would like to look at you, to hug and to kiss you.

I am looking at my grandchildren, they are cousins to each other and they are really close to each other. Though they are still small, but they instinctively feel their proximity and show it. You, my dear nephew, are in the same relationship to my children, but unfortunately you are separated by the ocean and by many years of living in different hemispheres. I would like to wish that no ocean or hemisphere or even different languages would be a barrier for contact with you.

The way from America to Moscow was recently laid by our pilot Levandovsky. I would like this way to connect our two hemispheres as quickly as possible, so I could see all of you.

Once again I send my very best wishes to you, your wife and son. Also, I send my sincere greetings to your mother, father, and brother. I welcome Gertrude with her family. Why does she never write anything?

Truly yours,

Aunt Gita Kagan

My husband, our children and grandchildren send you their greetings and kisses. Our photos I'll send somehow. I still hold onto the photographs because I hope to look better but to tell you honestly my hopes have not come true yet.

Druze on the Golan are now asking for Israeli citizenship

Some real news, highlighted by Elder of Ziyon - "The protest against Assad: The Druze on the Golan are asking for Israeli citizenship." The story is from Israel's Channel 2 news of June 21, 2012 (for the Hebrew, go to: חדשות 2 - המחאה נגד אסד: הדרוזים בגולן מבקשים אזרחות ישראלית). My translation follows:

The thirty-year old ban that the Druze majority on the Golan imposed on the residents of the villages that agreed to receive Israeli citizenship - has ended. In opposition to Assad's regime, and in order to show that it no longer rules over the villages on the Golan, the leaders of the community lifted the ban imposed on those who accepted Israeli citizenship.

... Thirty years after the Knesset decided to grant Israeli citizenships to the residents of the Golan, the ban has ended which the leaders of the community decreed against the residents who agreed to accept Israeli citizenship.

In contrast with the Druze who live in other parts of Israel, the Druze on the Golan see themselves first of all as citizens who are loyal to Syria. Therefore, the Druze sheikhs decided to place a ban on anyone who accepted Israeli citizenship - their families were shunned, they could not marry their children, and they were not honored at funerals of their loved ones.

Senior officials in Israel tried for years to put pressure on the Druze sheikhs to change their policy without any success. It took events occurring over the border, in Syria, to bring a change. In defiance of Assad's regime, Druze on the Golan are now asking to take advantage of the right that was given to them by the law and to add Israeli citizenship. This step has been taken, among other reasons, to show Assad that he does not rule any longer over the Druze villages on the Golan.

This is really a major step. There remain close ties between the Golan and the Syrian Druze, and the Golan Druze have not wanted to seek Israeli citizenship in order to ensure that those ties continue. They have also done so out of the consciousness that if they accepted Israeli citizenship, and the Golan went back to Syrian rule, they would be regarded as traitors and treated accordingly.

My first thought is - if this is how the Druze on the Golan feel - why should the Golan ever go back to Syria?

SYRIA – A Journey to Hell

Here in Israel we hear the news from Syria every day - how many people have been killed by the Syrian security forces. We hear about the massacres and the deaths of many children. There has been very little activism about Syria here - just a few demonstrations by Israeli Arabs, some of them in favor of Assad, and recently against him. I do not know if there have been any other demonstrations by Israeli Jews against the Syrian regime which tortures and murders its people. It is frightening to think that all of this is happening not very far from where I sit in Jerusalem.

I just read a harrowing account by Pierre Piccinin, a Belgian historian and political scientist, who has visited Syria three times since the beginning of the revolt against Baathist rule there. The first two times he went with the approval of the Syrian government. The latest time he went in without approval, spent some time with the rebels, and on his way into another town, supposedly with government troops' approval, he was arrested, tortured quite horribly, and thrown into a cell with political prisoners from all over the world. He was lucky enough to get word to the Belgian embassy and back to his home. He was tortured for a day, and freed after six days, but he witnessed much worse torture of others, who died under the treatment.

From glancing at his publications he seems to be quite leftwing; for example, he wrote an article for Counterpunch on August 4, 2011 entitled "Syria - the  Hama Affair (How 10,000 Protestors Multiply Overnight to be 500,000)" and then another one on March 6, 2012 entitled "The Syrian Mirage - From the Alawite Fantasy to the Surrealism of the UN."

His opinions have now changed totally about what must be done in Syria. He writes.

Until now, as far as Syria goes I have always defended the principles of Westphalian law and those of national sovereignty and no intervention. I have denounced neo-colonial wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq or in Libya, led by economic motives and geostrategic considerations, whose “humanitarian” aims were no more than crudely dressed-up pretences.

But in view of the horror I have witnessed, for each of those men I have seen atrociously mutilated by barbarians serving a dictatorship whose outrages and degree of ferocity I could never have imagined, I now join in their call for military intervention in Syria, which will overthrow the abominable Baath regime: even if the country has to sink into civil war, if that terrible descent is necessary, it must be pursued in order to put an end to forty-two years of an organised terror, of whose proportions I had no idea. 

I would never pretend to speak for the Syrians. I am merely passing on the unanimous message which was given me by the fighters of the SLA, the prison companions tortured to death, the friends in Bab al Musalla.... 

Syria has no economic value to attract the western powers and motivate them to intervene. Quite the opposite: from a geostrategic view the government of Bashar al-Assad has the actual support of the United States, which has been conducting a policy of rapprochement since 2001; of Israel which congratulates itself on this outspoken neighbour but provides it with a strong frontier along the Golan; of the European Union which purchased 98% of Syrian oil and looks anxiously at the destabilisation of this pivotal power in the middle East; of China and of Russia, for whom Syria is the only remaining Arab ally, and with a window on the Mediterranean. 

A western military intervention, which would force the Russian position, would certainly represent a unique case of the engagement of powers in an enterprise from which they could acquire no profit whatsoever. Incha’Allah.

For the complete report, see SYRIA – A Journey to Hell: in the heart of the Syrian Intelligence Service Prinsons by Pierre Piccinin. It has been published in Le Monde, L'Espresso, and Le Soir.

Warning: explicit descriptions of torture and murder.

הצבע ארגמן - "The Color Purple" in Hebrew translation

By searching around a bit on the internet I discovered that "The Color Purple" has indeed already been published in Hebrew, in 1986. M. A. Orthofer of "The Literary Saloon" posted about the translation and even provides an image of the cover of the book in Hebrew, which I reproduce here.

I just checked on the website of the National Library of Israel to see if the book is found there, and indeed it is, under the catalogue number S 87 A 2447. I've ordered it and hope to look at it today when I'm in the library. It was translated into Hebrew by Shelomit Kedem (שלומית קדם). The publisher was Leduri (לדורי). 

Alice Walker refuses to have "The Color Purple" translated into Hebrew

This is no surprise, but it's still sad. Alice Walker refuses to authorize the publication of a Hebrew translation of her book "The Color Purple" because "Israel is guilty of apartheid." (For more on her views about Israel, Zionism, and Jewish self-determination, see my posts on her - Alice Walker).

Her opposition may not, in fact, prohibit the book from being published in Hebrew. Haaretz reports:

It was not clear when Yediot Books, an imprint of the daily Yediot Achronot newspaper, made the request, or whether Walker could in fact stop translation of the book. At least one version of the book has already appeared in Hebrew translation, in the 1980s.

The letter she wrote to Yediot Books refusing to let her book be published was posted on the PACBI website. Apparently when the book was made into a movie, the question arose as to whether it should be shown in South Africa, during the years of apartheid. She decided that it shouldn't be because "there was a civil society movement of BDS aimed at changing South Africa’s apartheid policies and, in fact, transforming the government." Walker is convinced that Israel is worse than both apartheid-era South Africa and the segregated South in which she grew up, particularly in how Israel treats the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and in how Arab citizens of Israel are treated.

I cannot speak to what it felt like to grow up in the segregated South as an African-American. I am white, and grew up in Massachusetts. My only taste of segregation was when I visited my grandparents in Washington, DC. What disturbed me was not the visible signs of segregation (for example, water fountains marked separately for "white" and "colored"), because I didn't see them, and they might have already been taken down by the time I was visiting. What disturbed me were the casual racist attitudes I encountered. And it's not as if there was no racism in the north - I lived in the Boston area throughout the period when the federal courts decided that the Boston schools should be integrated through busing. The courts did this because the Boston School Committee steadfastly refused to integrate the schools. It had members who engaged in the crudest racist demagoguery.

Despite what Israeli government spokespeople will tell you, the position of Israeli Arab citizens is not equal to that of Jews. As far as I can tell, the situation is quite mixed. Israeli Arab towns and villages suffer from decades of neglect by the government - the infrastructure in most of them is decidedly inferior to that in mostly Jewish cities and towns. Because most Israeli Arabs do not serve in the IDF, they have a great deal of difficulty in finding jobs in areas of the economy where IDF service is required. (Druze and Circassians are drafted into the IDF, and many Bedouin volunteer, but very few other Arab men serve in the IDF).

From what I can tell, the situation is improving slowly - the government is now running a program to encourage Jewish employers to hire Arab university graduates. There have been advertisements on the radio (and television also, I assume) urging Jewish employers to consider Arab applicants, and the government is also given monetary incentives to employers who hire Arab graduates. Arab Israelis go to colleges and universities (for example, the local college in Safed has a majority of Arab students, probably because of the large Arab population in the Galilee, where Safed is located). Hebrew University, which I am most familiar with, has Arab students - I don't know what percentage of the student population they are, but they are certainly visible on campus.

I do not think it is accurate to describe the situation of Arabs within Israel as "apartheid," or even "segregated" - I think it is accurate to say that they suffer from some discriminatory government policies and from widespread suspicion of them by Israeli Jews, which can lead to discrimination in employment or housing. The situation is hardly ideal, but it is not as bad as the segregated South or apartheid South Africa.

As for the description of the situation of Palestinians in the West Bank as "apartheid." I assume that is meant is the existence of separate, government-built infrastructure for Jews, including separate communities and roads. For example, Rte. 443 goes from Jerusalem to Modi'in through the occupied West Bank. There are parts of 443 that Palestinians are not permitted to drive on, for security reasons. (Israeli cars and cars belonging to West Bank Palestinians have different-colored license plates, so it's easy to tell - the Israeli ones are issued by the Israeli government, and I assume the Palestinian ones are issued by the Palestinian Authority). Is this apartheid? It definitely makes me feel uncomfortable, and I try not to drive on 443.

When I was first living in Israel in the late 1980s, as a graduate student, there were a lot fewer Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and there were no separate roads built to get to the settlements. If you wanted to ge to the Gush Etzion settlements, close to Bethlehem, you had to drive on roads that went through Palestinian towns. With the outbreak of the first intifada in December 1987, this became increasingly dangerous. I don't know when exactly the separate roads started to be built - the second intifada, which started in 2000, might have been the real impetus for the construction of separate roads, because it was so much bloodier than the first intifada.

In my opinion, the situation in the West Bank is getting close to apartheid, in the sense of government-imposed separation and favoring of one group (Israeli settlements) over another (Palestinians). This is one of the many reasons that I favor Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state with full sovereignty (unlike the partial control given to the Palestinian Authority in certain parts of the West Bank). I think that some of the settlements should become part of sovereign Israel, while others will remain under Palestinian state control - in other words, returning to the borders as of June 4, 1967, "with land swaps," as President Obama put it.

Is any of this relevant to whether Alice Walker's book should be published in Hebrew? I think that she should davka publish it in Hebrew, with a forward explaining her current political views. The book is very powerful, and I think that it could be influential, with sufficient publicity - not only with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also to the current disgraceful treatment of African refugees in Israel. If she refuses to publish it in Hebrew, she's taking herself out of any anti-racist and pro-peace movement in Israel, and that seems like a complete waste.

Racism poisons Israeli society

Good article from Shiraz Socialist on how Racism poisons Israeli society.

“Garbage”. “Poison”. “Cancer”. These are some of the words used by Israeli politicians to describe African migrants in the last month, which has seen racist riots, assaults and firebombings in working-class neighbourhoods of south Tel Aviv, encouraged and partly orchestrated by the “mainstream” right. 

The real cancer in Israeli society is racism, running riot as Israel entrenches its domination over the Palestinians, Israeli society is further militarised and brutalised, and Israeli politics shifts further and further to the right. 

To give a flavour of the kind of things being said about migrants and refugees, one Knesset member (MK, like MP), Aryeh Eldad has argued that “Anyone that penetrates Israel’s border should be shot— a Swedish tourist, Sudanese from Eritrea, Eritreans from Sudan, Asians from Sinai. Whoever touches Israel’s border — shot.” He describes people who oppose such a policy as “bleeding hearts”. 

Eldad is a member of a small nationalist party. But politicians from the government party Likud were instrumental in sparking the riots. Meanwhile the government has refused to condemn attacks on Africans and instead used them as an excuse to step up its anti-migrant agenda. This includes 

• a new law allowing refugees to be jailed for three years, and those who help them illegally to be jailed for up to 15 years; • seeking to immediately deport all refugees from South Sudan, with raids across Israel since the start of June, on the spurious pretext that now it has separated from Sudan it is safe (ironically for the Israeli right, this will hardly lessen the number of refugees in Israel, since the vast majority come from Sudan and Eritrea, to which they cannot legally be returned); • building a 150-mile fence along the border with Egypt; • building a giant detention centre, with accommodation made out of cargo crates, in the Negev desert. 

Naturally such measures will — in addition to directly producing a lot of death and suffering — boost racism and lead to further attacks on those who remain in the cities (and probably black Jewish Israelis — this has already happened in at least one case).
There are 60,000 African migrants in Israel, out of a population of almost 8 million. Yet anti-African racism is even more widespread than anti-Arab racism, and seems to be rapidly becoming a new cutting edge for political reaction in Israel. Likud MK Miri Regev described African migrants as “a cancer in our body” — and one poll suggests just over half of Jewish Israelis agree with her. One third sympathise with the recent attacks. Even among Arab Israelis, 23 percent sympathise with the attacks, though “only” 19 percent agree with the “cancer” description. 

Left-leaning and secular Israelis are much less likely to hold anti-African views. But no large political organisation has spoken out in defence of migrants. The Israeli Labor Party is typically speaking out of both sides of its mouth, condemning (in the words of its leader Shelly Yachimovich) “inflammatory and shocking racial incitement against foreigners” but also saying that “the government has failed… and let the slums be flooded by migrant workers and refugees, thereby helping to kindle wild passions” and asserting the need to “protect the country from facing a huge mass of migrant workers”. It has set up a “panel of experts” on the issue, headed by a former head of the Israeli national police’s serious crime department. The Histadrut union federation seems to have remained quiet.....

This is an article cross-posted from the Workers Liberty website.  The Alliance for Workers Liberty is a small far-left wing party in Britain that, unlike the other far-left-wing parties and organizations in Britain, actually supports Israel and a two-state solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. This article reflects accurately what is happening in Israeli society today.

Photos from the Galilee

I went on a visit with friends to the Galilee over the weekend - here's a link to my photos. Click on the picture to be taken to the album on Picasa.

Today's Headlines

Another revolting policy of the Israeli government:

Israel admits it revoked residency rights of quarter million Palestinians since 1967

Israel stripped more than 100,000 residents of Gaza and some 140,000 residents of the West Bank of their residency rights during the 27 years between its conquest of the territories in 1967 and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. As a result, close to 250,000 Palestinians who left the territories were barred from ever returning.

More ugly vandalism:

Vandals slash tires, spray racist graffiti in East Jerusalem neighborhood

Vandals slashed the tires of seven cars in the Arab neighborhood Shuafat in East Jerusalem early yesterday - one car was sprayed with the word "Ulpana," the part of the Beit El settlement where the High Court has ordered homes demolished. 

"We got up in the morning and that's what we saw," said Ibrahim Salah, a resident of Shuafat. "The people here are simple folk who want to live in peace. I don't understand why people are doing this. This country is becoming racist .... Now foreign laborers are being targeted as well. Racism is rife in Jerusalem because of radical Jewish groups." 

Late Thursday night, vandals slashed the tires of 14 cars and sprayed racist slogans on three of them at the Jewish-Arab village Neveh Shalom near Latrun. Graffiti was also scrawled on the entrance to the community's bilingual Arab-Jewish school. 

The slogans included "Death to Arabs," "Revenge," and "Ulpana." The secretary of the Neveh Shalom Association, Gideon Suleimani, sees the vandalism as "an attack on the idea of coexistence - the political idea on which the village was founded." The police are investigating the incident.

Yad Vashem desecrated with antisemitic slogans

Vandals spray-painted anti-Semitic slogans at the entrance to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center in Jerusalem on Monday. 

At least 10 slogans were found on the walls outside the museum, with slogans such as: "Hitler, thank you for the Holocaust", "If Hitler did not exist, the Zionists would have invented him", and "Zionists! You declared war on Hitler in the name of the Jewish people, you brought upon the Holocaust." 

Some of the slogans were signed with the words, "The World Zionist Judaism."
Jerusalem Police suspect that those responsible for the graffiti are anti-Zionist Haredi Jews, similar to the vandalism that was found at Ammunition Hill memorial site earlier this year.

I just looked at the photos of the vandalism at Ammunition Hill, which was done just before Yom ha-Zikkaron and Independence Day, and it looks to me that it's the same handwriting. The messages are similar, too.

The graffiti included slogans slamming President Shimon Peres, as well as praise for German poet Gunter Grass. The slogans that were found included: “The evil Zionist regime will fall,” and “Gunter Grass – be strong and brave.” 

Graffiti included curses against Peres, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai, calling Yishai a “Zionist Mizrahi.” 

I presume the police have noticed that the handwriting is the same, and are using this information to find whoever has done this.

Festival of Light in Jerusalem

Tonight I went to the "Festival of Light" in the Old City, and here are some photos of it!

A beautiful column by Amira Hass

When I'm in the United States, it's easy only to see the threats that Israel faces, both the military ones (for example, from Iran), and the cultural ones (for example, the movement for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel), and be moved always to defend Israel against those who defame it and see only the bad side of the country.

When being here, I find that I can't just adopt that defensive posture. I can't just defend Israel against its detractors. I have to pay attention to the bad things that happen here, whether initiated by the government (for example, the settlement policies of the Netanyahu government, which seem to be intended to destroy any possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) or by private individuals, religious and cultural organizations, or corporations. Israel, like any country, is a mixture of good and bad - and that mixture gets lost when one is out of the country and isn't participating in life here. It's all too easy either to see Israel only through rose-colored glasses, or through shit-covered glasses - without very much in between.

Which brings me to today's column in Haaretz by Amira Hass: Otherwise occupied / Religious restraints. I know that supporters of Israel in the US often find Hass's columns (and Gideon Levy's) incredibly aggravating, and attack her for never saying anything good about the country. She focuses on Palestinian life in the occupied territories, and documents the horrible things that the government, the army, and the settlers are doing in the West Bank. Before the disengagement of Israeli military forces and settlers from Gaza, she lived in Gaza for a period of time and reported from there.

But I find that if I can calm down the part of me that is defensive on behalf of Israel, I can learn a lot from her columns. Her humanistic spirit shines through in the best of them. This column deals with three topics: about a lecturer at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank who hung up cartoons caricaturing polygamy and the burqa; whether Israeli reporters should write about "oppressive (or not) social customs in Palestinian society"; and how she answers when Palestinians ask her if she believes in God.

On the first topic, she wrote:

A young friend thought that I shouldn't write. That I shouldn't write what? That students at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah threatened a lecturer who hung caricatures on his office door about polygamy and the burqa (the robe that covers a woman from head to toe ). The lecturer himself refused to talk - as I heard indirectly - and the university's public relations department thanked me for my interest, but said it was a very minor internal issue that was being handled.... 

One caricature showed Superman with a beard, with a woman next to him who wanted to marry him. "I'm sorry," he says to her, "but on our planet we can only marry four." The second shows a man talking to a curtain, thinking that it's his wife, who always wears the burqa.... 

At a very early stage in the crisis the university established an investigative committee. About a week ago the students and teachers received its decisions in an e-mail from the president's office. First of all, said the message, the teacher explained that the illustrations he had hung in no way meant to mock Islam, but were an invitation to a critical discussion of certain social customs. Second, the committee will keep track of the complaints submitted by the dean against the students suspected of threatening the teacher. Third, there are ways of deciding on an academic curriculum, and doing so by e-mail is unacceptable. And fourth, the university adheres to freedom of research, teaching and opinion, respect for religions and beliefs, and condemns any use of violence or threats.

On the second topic, she wrote:

The young friend who suggested that I refrain from writing said: "They'll say that an Israeli reporter supports the teacher and his opinions, and that will work against him." This reporter also writes about the popular struggle against the occupation and about courageous activists, residents of the villages of Al Nabi Saleh and Bil'in such as Nariman Tamimi and Abdullah Abu Rahma. Is that supposed to work against them among the Palestinian public? 

Were it not for the fact that the event in Bir Zeit points to a phenomenon of silencing opinions with the excuse that they offend religious sentiments, there really would be no reason to mention it. And incidentally, a few years ago students in the Arab American University-Jenin brought about the removal of a teacher who taught selections from "Persepolis," the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. They claimed that one of the Iranian-French artist's caricatures offended religious sentiments. 

Of course, the natural place for discussing oppressive (or not ) social customs in Palestinian society is not in an Israeli newspaper. Even if there is a similarity to Israeli tactics for silencing other discussions. There is also logic in the implicit question as to whether an Israeli reporter suffers from a shortage of issues that touch directly on her society, but for reasons of lack of public interest do not come to the knowledge of Israeli readers. For example: the blocking of the road that connects Kufr Qaddum to its agricultural land and Nablus. The village holds a weekly demonstration because of that, and the Israel Defense Forces disperse it by force. Every week people are wounded.

And on the third topic she wrote:

Long ago I learned that it's hard to answer Palestinians directly when they ask "Do you believe in God?" I couldn't lie when I was asked this question by Shukriya Abdul Hadi, from the village of Nebi Samwil, which is besieged and cut off, and groaning under prohibitions against construction and movement. 

This woman, who is in her 70s, has spent most of the past 45 years protecting what's left of her land, which like most of the village land was confiscated by Israel and was replaced by security fences and a national park, or fell into the hands of bogus owners. In response, I cited to her what a (Jewish) female acquaintance says when she hears about another of the methods of our foreign rule: "There's no question, our place in hell is assured." 

"Aha," Abdel Hadi said to me. "I understand. You don't believe in God, but you believe in hell."

Amira Hass doesn't write columns to incite her readers to be reflexively anti-Israel - she writes columns to make us think, to realize that Palestinian society is complex and diverse, and to realize that the actions of the Israeli government and military are not injuring a group of faceless victims, but rather people who are living ordinary lives and trying (some of them) to build a better society for themselves and others, in the face of Israeli oppression and the struggles within their own society.

New archaeological finds in Israel

I've let my other blog ("The Land and the People") languish for a few months, even though I intended to post interesting stories about Israel on it. Recently, however, I've posted three stories about archaeological finds:

Today: Ancient Roman treasure found near Kiryat Gat.

May 23: Bulla with "Bethlehem" on it found in Jerusalem. The article also explains what a "bulla" is.

May 23: More ancient jewelry, this time from Megiddo, which is 3100 years old

The "Merchant of Venice" in Hebrew

A beautiful article by David Hirsh about the Habima production of the Merchant of Venice at the Globe Theatre in London. He addresses the play itself and offers a very interesting interpretation of it, intertwined with his observations on the antisemitic protestors who tried to disrupt it in the name of supporting Palestinian rights.

About the play he writes:

When I see a production of the Merchant of Venice, it is always the audience which unsettles me. The play tells two stories which relate to each other. One is the story of Shylock, a Jewish money lender who is spat on, excluded, beaten up, and in the end mercilessly defeated and humiliated. The other is an apparently light-hearted story about an arrogant, rich, self-absorbed young woman, clever but not wise, pretty but not beautiful, and her antisemitic friends. Shakespeare inter-cuts the grueling detailed scenes of the bullying of Shylock, with the comedic story of Portia’s love-match with a loser who has already frittered away his large inheritance. 

Shakespeare offers us an intimately observed depiction of antisemitic abuse, and each time the story reaches a new climax of horribleness, he then offers hackneyed and clichéd gags, to see if he can make us laugh. It is as if he is interested in finding out how quickly the audience forgets Shylock, off stage, and his tragedy. And the answer, in every production I’ve ever seen, is that the audience is happy and laughing at second rate clowning, within seconds. And I suspect that Shakespeare means the clowning and the love story to be second rate. He is doing something more interesting than entertaining us. He is playing with our emotions in order to show us something, to make us feel something....

[The audience] was there to face down those who said that Israeli actors should be excluded from the global community of culture, while actors from all the other states which had been invited to the Globe were celebrated in a festival of the Olympic city’s multiculturalism. So, the audience was happy to laugh loudly and to enjoy itself. We saw on stage how Shylock’s daughter was desperate to escape from the Jewish Ghetto, the darkness and fear of her father’s house, the loneliness of being a Jew. We saw how she agreed to convert to Christianity because some little antisemitic boy said he loved her, we saw how she stole her father’s money so that her new friends could spend it on drunken nights out. And we saw Shylock’s despair at the loss and at the betrayal and at the intrusion. Perhaps his unbearable pain was also fueled by guilt for having failed his daughter since her mother had died. 

And then the audience laughed at silly caricatures of Moroccan and Spanish Princes, and at Portia’s haughty and superior rejection of them. And now, not representations of antisemites but actual antisemites, hiding amongst the audience, unfurl their banners about “Israeli apartheid”, and their Palestinian flags, and they stage a performance of their own. How embarrassing for Palestinian people, to be represented by those whose sympathy and friendship for them had become hatred of Israel; to be represented by a movement for the silencing of Israeli actors; to be represented by those who show contempt for Jewish Londoners in the audience, who de-humanize them by refusing to refer to them as people but instead simply as ‘Zionists’. And a ‘Zionist’ does not merit the ordinary civility with which people in a great city normally, without thinking, accord to one another....

The day after the performance, one of the leading boycotters, Ben White, tweeted a picture of the beautiful Jewish face of Howard Jacobson, an opponent of the exclusion of Israeli actors from London. White added the text: “If you need another reason to support a boycott of Habima, I present a massive picture of Howard Jacobson’s face”. 

Faced with this, it is hardly controversial to insist that ‘criticism of Israel’ can sometimes be antisemitic.   

And here is a photo of Howard Jacobson's "beautiful Jewish face" (from the Telegraph):

More on desecration of Tiberias synagogue

Haaretz also reported today about the vandalism of the Tiberias synagogue: Vandals desecrate ancient Tiberias synagogue; authorities suspect Haredim.

The fourth-century Hamat Tiberias Synagogue was desecrated Monday night by vandals who sprayed graffiti on the walls and tore up the mosaic floor. The Israel Antiquities Authority suspects extremist ultra-Orthodox Jews who say the authority damages ancient graves during excavations. The vandalism was discovered yesterday morning by employees of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

Similar acts have been carried out at other archaeological sites; one slogan sprayed Monday night read "A site for every grave [desecrated]." Another read "For Shuka," probably referring to Shuka Dorfman, the head of the antiquities authority.

One employee burst into tears yesterday when viewing the vandals' work. "Afghanistan is right here," another added.

Tiberias police are investigating the case, while the authority is trying to tally the damages and figure out if anything can be restored.

The synagogue, in Hamat Tiberias National Park, was discovered in 1921 by writer and translator Nahum Slouschz. It was uncovered in the first major archaeological dig led by Zionist Jews in the Holy Land.

"The most beautiful part of the mosaic from the fourth century was severely damaged," said Dror Ben Yosef of the Antiquities Authority. "The perpetrators drilled a hole in the drawing of the holy ark and damaged the menorah drawing as well. It seems they worked very hard trying to take apart the floor."

A zodiac wheel drawn on the mosaic appears to have been hit by a pickax. "There are Haredim who believe that if a zodiac wheel is drawn there, it can't really be a synagogue," Ben Yosef told Haaretz. "The zodiac wheel, in this case, is actually a Judaized Hellenistic motif." One corner of the mosaic was completely taken apart. Ben Yosef added that the synagogue was "probably the site where the Jerusalem Talmud was completed" and that the mosaic contained important symbols such as a holy ark with an ornamental curtain, along with a menorah, a shofar, a ceremonial palm frond and a coal pan.

The mosaic included inscriptions in Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin. Ben Yosef said extremist Haredim have threatened other sites. "We'll protect the sites," he said. "Whoever vandalized it desecrated its holiness. These people damaged our historic heritage."

Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the Antiquities Authority said conservation and restoration work would be carried out, but this wouldn't be enough. "It will never be the same mosaic that people prayed on 1,600 years ago," she said. "You can feel and learn here how people once lived, prayed, studied and talked. It will never be the same. We're facing a vandalist drive against heritage sites that's gaining momentum. Something has to be done to stop it."

In the past two months several other archaeological sites have been damaged. A mosaic was vandalized at Hurvat Hanut near Jerusalem, a 1,300-year-old furnace was damaged near Yavneh, and a container holding artifacts was set on fire in Afula. "Public servants who safeguard our historical heritage have also been threatened recently," Avshalom-Gorni added. "It's definitely a frightening situation."

Here's a photograph of the damage:

For comparison, two photographs of the undamaged site (from Artstor):

1) The menorah, lulav and etrog, fire pan, and coal pan.

Depiction of the Torah ark:

This is not the only location vandalized recently. A few weeks ago, I went to Hirbet Madras, in the Valley of Elah, with friends. One of the archaeological sites there is an ancient church, found last year (2011), which was briefly opened to the public by archaeologists before they were going to close the site again and cover up the antiquities. The night before they were going to do that, vandals came in and destroyed the beautiful mosaic floor of the church. Jim West, of the Zwinglius Redivivus blog has a short account of the destruction and photographs of the church before and after the damage was done - Despicable Destruction. The suspicion in that case also is that ultra-Orthodox Jewish fanatics destroyed the mosaics.

I hope they catch the vandals responsible for the damage at both places and lock them up for a good long time.

Vandals damage the Zodiac mosaic in Tiberias

I just read a really shocking story from the AP - Vandals damage the Zodiac mosaic in Tiberias.

JERUSALEM — Vandals badly damaged a rare 1,600-year-old mosaic in the northern Israeli city of Tiberias that formed the floor of an ancient synagogue, smashing parts to rubble and scrawling graffiti, antiquity officials said Tuesday. 

Experts suspect extremist Jews who object, sometimes violently, to excavations they claim involve ancient grave sites. There was no claim of responsibility. Police are investigating. 

Guards found the damage on Tuesday morning, said archeologists involved in the site.
The mosaic, dating 400 years after the birth of Jesus, was one of the best preserved and beautiful of its period, according to archaeologists. 

It featured illustrated zodiac signs and the traditional symbolism of a fourth-century synagogue: ritual candelabras and palm fronds. The synagogue's ruins, including its ancient mosaic floor, were in a fenced-off area of a national park in Tiberias, next to the Sea of Galilee. 

It listed the names of the synagogue's chief patrons in ancient Hebrew, Latin and Greek. 

Israel Antiquities Authority deputy director Uzi Dahari said a fringe group of ultra-Orthodox Jews were suspected of causing the damage, much of it irreversible. Dahari said the graffiti scrawled across parts of the archaeological site and previous threats against the Antiquities Authority suggested they were the perpetrators. 

Photographs issued by the Antiquities Authority showed parts of the mosaic floor reduced to gray chunks of rubble. Other photographs showed blue spray paint scrawled over the mosaic, covering ancient Hebrew and Greek letters spelled out in blue, red and beige tiles. Graffiti was also scrawled along rock walls beside the mosaic. Perpetrators also punched a hole in the mosaic between two candelabras. 

"On every grave, a site," one neatly written Hebrew slogan said. 

Dahari and other archaeologists said it referred to constant accusations by a tiny Jewish hard-line group that the Antiquities Authority was digging up Jewish graves. Disturbing Jewish graves is a deeply offensive act for devout Jews. 

Archeologists said they have found similar graffiti on other sites. The Hebrew word for "site" is also shorthand for an archaeological site, as in English. 

An archaeologist who frequently works in the Galilee area, Gilad Kinamon, said ultra-Orthodox Jews frequently turned up to his sites to demonstrate against his work. 

"It was the best of Jewish art of its time, of the late Roman and early Byzantine period," said Dahari. They ... destroyed what was in front of them without thinking," he said.

Shavuot and S. Y. Agnon

On Shavuot night this year I went to a tikkun (an all-night study session preparing for the Torah reading in the morning, which recounts the giving of the Torah at Sinai) organized by a group called Solidarity, which was held at congregation Kol HaNeshama. The first speaker was Professor Rachel Elior, with whom I studied at Hebrew University and who was one of the advisors for my dissertation. She gave a wonderful talk, which I wish I could recall in its entirety. Part of it was about a story written by S.Y. Agnon, the Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, about a mystical experience he had on Shavuot eve of 1943, just after he had received the news that the Jews of his town, Buczacz, had been destroyed by the Nazis.

Arnon Shimshoni, in Haaretz, discusses this story ("The Sign") and the other characters who appear in it, who were based upon real people whom Agnon knew in Jerusalem.

Agnon describes a mystical experience that he had on the eve of Shavuot 1943 in the wake of the first reports about the destruction of his birthplace, Buczacz. According to Elior, Agnon’s description of the experience both imitates and continues the prophet Ezekiel’s description of the mystical revelation that he had on the eve of Shavuot, and similar experiences that prominent kabbalists such as Joseph Karo, Nathan of Gaza and Moshe Chaim Luzzatto experienced on the same date.

The Sign describes two challenges and two worlds, both of which make their appearance in the opening sentence: “In the year when the news reached us that all the Jews in my town had been killed, I was living in a certain section of Jerusalem, in a house I had built for myself after the disturbances of 1929 (5629 – which is equal, numerically, to ‘The eternity of Israel’).” “My town” is the Galician town of Buczacz, which was destroyed utterly, and whose memory is preserved in the layers of memory. “A certain section of Jerusalem” is the neighborhood of Talpiot, of which Agnon was one of the earliest inhabitants.

Buczacz, with its halls of religious study and large synagogue, is destroyed, its Jews dead. To the author’s sorrow, in the story they gradually vanish from his memory. It takes a mystical experience, the mobilization of the poet Solomon ibn Gabirol on Shavuot eve, to give Agnon a sign so that he will not forget the town’s name. On the other hand, the neighborhood of Talpiot, in whose synagogue Agnon had the mystical experience on Shavuot eve, is real. “From the day we were exiled from our country, only thorns and thistles grew from this soil. Now that we have returned, it has been built up with houses and trees and bushes and flowers.” The year of the riots, when Talpiot was attacked, Agnon’s rented apartment was looted and his books scattered to the four winds – was 1929: in gematria [a system that assigns numerical values to a Hebrew word or phrase], the Hebrew letters denoting the year 1929 are equivalent to the biblical phrase “netzah Yisrael” [the eternity of Israel]. After the riots, Talpiot was rebuilt, and Agnon’s new home was built there.

Scholarship on the #14 bus in Jerusalem

I was taking the #14 bus back home from the National Library today, uncomfortably crammed into a small seat, and listening to the conversation between two people facing me, one who teaches at the Hebrew University and the other at the Schechter Institute (run by the Masorti movement, the Israeli version of the Conservative Jewish movement - religious, not political), when a young man got on the bus, dressed in a military uniform and carrying a backpack. He started to listen to the professors talking with each other and then entered into the conversation - he had a scholarly question he wanted to ask them. He asked them about how a classic work on the Pharisees by Louis Finkelstein had been received by other scholars. It turned out he had already corresponded with the Hebrew University professor on another topic and even received an answer for a paper he was writing. The two professors gave him advice and he continued talking eagerly with them.

So nice to see an eager student!

The game of chicken between Iran and Israel

Somehow I'm just not believing Iran's denials that it's trying to create nuclear weapons. Today's report is that uranium enriched to 27% has been detected at the Fordow centrifuge site near Qom. Haaretz reports:

The UN atomic agency has found evidence at an underground bunker in Iran that could mean the country has moved closer to producing the uranium threshold needed to arm nuclear missiles, diplomats said Friday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has found traces of uranium enriched up to 27 percent at Iran's Fordo enrichment plant, the diplomats told The Associated Press.

That is still substantially below the 90-percent level needed to make the fissile core of nuclear arms. But it is above Iran's highest-known enrichment grade, which is close to 20 percent, and which already can be turned into weapons-grade material much more quickly than the Islamic Republic's main stockpile, which can only be used for fuel at around 3.5 percent.

The diplomats, who demanded anonymity because their information is privileged, said the find did not necessarily mean that Iran was covertly raising its enrichment threshold toward weapons-grade level. They said one likely explanation was that the centrifuges that produce enriched uranium initially over-enriched at the start as technicians adjusted their output.

Much as I would like to believe that the current talks about Iran's nuclear program will succeed in persuading them to stop enriching uranium to levels above those needed for peaceful use, and stop working on the other aspects of creating a nuclear weapon, like figuring out how to make a trigger for the nuclear fuel (which they have been accused of doing at the Parchin military base), I'm not getting the impression that Iran is serious at all about these talks. I think they're stalling until they've gone past the point of no return. Instead of putting forth some kind of goodwill gesture of their own (like temporarily stopping the enrichment of uranium to 20% at Fordow), they demanded first that sanctions should be halted, before they're prepared to do anything at all.

Do they really want the Israelis to attack them? Because, frankly, I think that Netanyahu and Barak are prepared to send the planes to bomb Iran, especially now that there is such a big government coalition. I think it would be both stupid and wicked for them to do so, but these talks are not giving them any incentive not to send the bombers. I hope that the US and the EU realize that if there isn't serious progress, soon, in these talks, that they're risking a disastrous war in the Middle East.

Vicious mob attack on African migrants in south Tel Aviv

Last night, in Tel Aviv, a protest against African migrants to Israel turned from a demonstration into a murderous riot targeting the migrants and anyone else the mob saw as an enemy. The migrants have come from countries like Sudan and Eritrea - some as asylum seekers (especially people from Darfur), others seeking work that they can't get in their desperately poor homelands. They've been coming for the last decade, and there are now about 60,000 of them living in Israel. They come over the Egyptian border, smuggled in by Bedouin gangs that they pay to get them over the border (the gangs sometimes imprison and torture them in order to get their relatives back home to pay more money for the smuggling).

Once they get into Israel, they are taken to temporary detention facilities in the Negev, registered, released, and taken into buses to central Israel, where they go to poor neighborhoods that already house thousands of refugees. The government doesn't give them work permits, nor does it do anything to support them. Small human rights organizations do their best to take care of them, as do groups organized by previous migrants to help their fellow countrymen. The neighborhoods they live in, like the Hatikva and Shapira neighborhoods in south Tel Aviv, were already poor and badly served by the government, and the government has done nothing to help the migrants integrate with the residents - it has provided no new resources whatsoever for either the veteran residents or the migrants. The situation has been boiling over in the last couple of months - a child care center for the children of the African migrants was firebombed, and there have been other attacks on the migrants. Last night was when the anger broke out into open, murderous violence that would have ended in someone's death if the police had not been on the scene.

The demonstrators were incited by members of Knesset who made xenophobic and dehumanizing statements about the migrants. Miri Regev, a Likud member of Knesset, said that "the Sudanese are a cancer in our body." Danny Danon, another member of Knesset from Likud said, "For this terrible situation that was created here, for this situation in which entire neighborhoods have turned into refugee camps, there is only one solution, and we must talk about it, and it's forbidden to be ashamed: We must expel the infiltrators from Israel, deportation now!" Another member of Knesset, from the National Union party, Michael Ben Ari, said to the demonstrators: “There are rapists and harassers here. The time for talk is over." And indeed, soon after he spoke, the demonstration turned into a riot.

From today's article in Ma'ariv by Yuval Goren (my translation):

Things began to heat up a short time after Knesset member Michael Ben Ari (National Union) began to speak. The crowd cried out after him - "Sudanese to Sudan!" The disturbances, whose like has not been seen in the neighborhood for a long time, started, however, in another place: during his (Ben Ari's) speech, one of the residents of the neighborhood attacked members of the social protest who were demonstrating close to the residents' protest, and said to the enraged crowd that these demonstrators were the same people who brought petitions to the High Court of Justice against the expulsion (of the migrants) and supported the organizations who helped the foreigners. 

Less than five minutes after that one of the demonstrators recognized a leftist activist who stood close to the group of demonstrators, and she began to shriek at him and to blame him for "throwing rocks at soldiers." In seconds, tens of young people surrounded the activist and a journalist who stood next to him [a writer for Haaretz named Ilan Lior, who also wrote about his experience], and they began to hit them. Hundreds of the demonstrators who saw the uproar began to run to the place where it was happening and after that the youth marched quickly to the Haganah bridge, where they called to their friends to come to the central bus station. "Deport them now!" they yelled. [The neighborhood of the old central bus station in Tel Aviv is the center of life for foreign workers and migrants, legal and illegal]. 

A police force that had apparently prepared beforehand for the possibility of disturbances did not succeed in quickly preventing the demonstrators from advancing, close to the train stop on the Haganah bridge. At that same time hundreds of youth from the neighborhood stood on the road. All of sudden, one of them saw that two young men with dark skin were sitting in one of the cars that was stopped and waiting for the traffic to resume - men who were apparently foreign workers. 

For the hundreds of aroused and angry young people there was no need for anything else. Within minutes they took apart the car around the people sitting in it (there's no other way to describe this).  Some of them smashed the windows with their hands and with rocks, while others kicked at the car, bent the plastic, and tried to attack the passengers. "I am not from Sudan, I am not from Sudan!" the driver tried to tell the attackers, but no one at this stage even paid attention.

This was only the beginning. Hundreds of young people made their way back to the neighborhood, and began to survey the stores belonging to the migrants and asylum seekers. There are not a few of them on Etzel Street. Close to a branch of Avazi [a restaurant], on Etzel Street at the corner of Avital, the young people found a store of Eritreans. They broke the display windows and made names for themselves [I this means they looted the store]. The streets of the neighborhood, that on other nights had been deserted because of fear, were suddenly filled with hundreds of residents, young people as well as older ones, who struggled with the (regular) police and the Border Police. 

According to the owners of the shop products were stolen from it. The rioters broke the glass on the refrigerators, turned them over and scattered much the contents on the floor - all in front of the owners of the store and their friends, who were left helpless and hoped that they themselves would not be injured. "I don't understand why they did this to us," one of the store's owners said. "I don't understand what I did, why anyone would have a problem with me." Despite the difficult experience, the same man said that he was not afraid, as his friends also said. "This looks to me like war, and if someone causes me trouble, I'll give him trouble in return," said one of them, only 15 years old. "We are not afraid because we've already seen everything, we've seen Christians, we've seen Arabs, we've seen Bedouin, my enter back is full of scars, this is not what frightens us."

Next to the entrance to one of the alleys in the shuk, when groups of young people passed in front of us running wild, I encountered Oved Hugi, who has worked for thirty years for the improvement of the neighborhood. Only yesterday he had warned me that the frustrated young people were likely to take the law into their own hands. "See, tonight you have the evidence," he said to me. "And what happened tonight is only the beginning, from here this only goes downhill, because people are fed up, and to my regret the state only understands violence, and now the young people also understand this."

For other reports, see Ilan Lior's own personal account:  How a Tel Aviv anti-migrant protest spiraled out of control. Mark Tracy of Tablet has a good summing up. An African migrant named Adam Ibrahim writes his own story in Haaretz.

Celebrating Jerusalem Day the racist way

Haaretz reports - For second straight year, marchers chant anti-Arab slogans during Jerusalem Day

Hundreds of Jewish youths participating in the Jerusalem Day flag procession shouted anti-Muslim slogans like "Mohammed is dead" at Palestinians holding a rally in the capital's Old City to protest the march.

The marchers yesterday also attacked three left-wing protesters trying to document the flag procession, the activists said. One said dozens of marchers surrounded them, shouting "Death to the leftists," and that a marcher broke the handle of an Israeli flag on her head. The left-wing activists also said the marchers spit at them and threw things at them.

Border Police protected the activists and escorted them away after 10 minutes.

Police also clashed with hundreds of the Palestinian protesters near Damascus Gate. They arrested 10 marchers suspected of shouting anti-Muslim and anti-Arab slogans, and five Palestinians suspected of throwing objects at the marchers.

Organizers of the march had pledged that unlike last year, participants would not shout incendiary statements. But while the organizers said only a few outliers failed to adhere to that standard, hundreds of young people spent hours shouting at the Palestinians protesting near Damascus Gate.

Among the refrains were "The Temple will be rebuilt, the mosque will be burned." The marchers also shouted that Arabs were "sons of whores" and applauded Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler who massacred 29 Muslim worshipers at the Cave of the Patriarchs during the Purim holiday in 1994.

A large police contingent was deployed at the event, which started in downtown Jerusalem, entered the Old City through Damascus Gate, continued into the Muslim Quarter and ended at the Western Wall.

Some left-wing protesters gathered at Damascus Gate to protest the holding of the march in Arab neighborhoods. Police separated the protesters from the marchers before the confrontations could escalate.

Most businesses on Hagai Street, the main road in the Old City's Muslim Quarter, closed before the march began, to avoid clashes with the marchers.

Throughout the day, groups from yeshivas and high schools paraded through the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, waving Israeli flags and singing songs about Jerusalem.

Police had planned to change the route of this year's event to avoid incidents. But they ultimately agreed to allow right-wingers to pass through the Muslim Quarter after speaking to the organizers, who pledged to prevent last year's ugly scenes.

Knesset members on the Temple Mount

Haaretz reports:

Earlier Sunday, as part of Jerusalem Day events, National Union MKs Uri Ariel and Michael Ben-Ari arrived at the Temple Mount accompanied by a group of about 20 right-wing activists to conduct a tour of the site.

Originally, Ariel and Ben-Ari were supposed to be joined by fellow National Union MK Aryeh Eldad, along with Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) and Otniel Schneller (Kadima), who all cancelled at the last moment.

During the tour, four or five of the activists, including Ben-Ari himself, kneeled to pray on the Temple Mount, with a nearby police force preventing them from doing so.

However, as a result of the questioning of two the group's participants following the act, the tour's leader, Yehuda Etzion, a one-time member of the Gush Emunim Underground, sat on the ground and refused to move on.

He was then forcibly removed by police and arrested, with MK Ben-Ari confronting police officers to try and prevent the arrest.

Yehuda Etzion was one of the leaders of the Jewish underground who plotted the blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount, but was fortunately stopped by the police. Gershom Gorenberg wrote about him in his book, End of Days.

What I don't understand is why they knelt to pray - Christians kneel in prayer, not Jews (except for one prayer on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur).

Today is "Jerusalem Day"

More on the activities planned for today to mark Jerusalem Day - Haaretz reports (my translation, I couldn't find the article in the English version of the paper online):

A group of Knesset members from the right are expected to go up in the morning to the Temple Mount, in order to mark Jerusalem Day there. Among the Knesset members: Zeev Elkin (Likud), Aryeh Eldad (National Union), and Michael Ben Ari (National Union). Also Knesset members Otniel Schneller (Kadima) and Uri Ariel (National Union) confirmed that they were coming, but at this point it’s not clear if they will take part in this.

The ascent of the Knesset members this morning to the Mount is being done at the initiative of the members of the “Foundation for the Heritage of the Temple Mount.” “From our perspective this is the repair of a historical injustice,” Yehudah Glick, one of the heads of the Foundation, said to Haaretz. “The paratroopers who conquered the Temple Mount went up to the Mount, and then returned to the Kotel. We ascend today in order to remain.”

Later on, a different group for the Temple Mount is expected to go from Ammunition Hill in a march of flags – the “Temple Mount Faithful.” “We call this a ‘March for the liberation of our holy hill and for the wholeness of Jerusalem and the land of our fathers,” says Gershom Solomon, one of the initiators of the march tomorrow. “The emphasis, of course, is on the Temple Mount in the context of our fight to change the status quo, for Jewish rule over the Temple Mount.” Solomon expects several hundred to participate in the march.

In contrast to the central parade of flags which is expected to occur much later, the march of the “Temple Mount Faithful” did not receive police permission to enter through the Damascus Gate. Despite this, the route that was allowed for them did not entirely omit east Jerusalem, and the marchers were permitted to go by way of Sheikh Jarrakh. From there they will return to Bar-Lev Road and enter the Old City through Jaffa Gate. “The difference between us and the parade of flags is that they end at the Western Wall and we object to this,” Solomon continues. “We would like to arrive at the Temple Mount itself.” Nonetheless, according to the approved route for the “Temple Mount Faithful,” the march will end at the plaza next to the Jaffa Gate, where the marchers will hold a rally to mark Jerusalem Day.

The other event that draws much attention is the “Dance of flags,” in which tens of thousands of youth march, most of them from the religious Zionist (camp), into the Old City with flags. Last year hundreds of participants in the march took advantage of the occasion to make racist cat-calls against the Palestinian residents, and 24 youths were arrested, Jews and Arabs. In light of this, the Israel Police sought to change the path of the march, but after negotiations with the organizers a route that goes through Damascus Gate and the Muslim Quarter was permitted. The organizers, on their part, promised to act to prevent a repetition of the images from last year. Against the march a demonstration by leftist activists is being organized.

In addition to the provocations from the Israeli right wing, inciters from the Palestinian side have also been stirring the pot of strife. Khaled Abu Toameh of the Jerusalem Post reports:

The Palestinian Authority mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, warned against attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians, especially in the Old City. He also voiced concern that Jews would try to storm their way into the Temple Mount during Sunday's celebrations.

The mufti said that the Israeli authorities would be held fully responsible for clashes that could erupt between Palestinians and Israelis during the "provocative" marches, especially inside the Old City.

Another senior Islamic religious official, Sheikh Yusef Idais, warned that Israelis were preparing to perpetrate "massacres" against Palestinians during Jerusalem Day celebrations. Idais urged Palestinians to converge on Jerusalem Sunday to "confront the extremist settlers."

He pointed out that in previous years settlers who took part in celebrations inside the Old City had chanted "Death to Arabs" and insults against Prophet Mohammed. Idais predicted that Jerusalem would witness "violent confrontations" during the celebrations and called on Arab youth in the city to put up "strong resistance."

Other east Jerusalem Palestinians expressed more rational fears:

Palestinian shopkeepers in the Old City rejected instructions from the Police to close down their shops on Jerusalem Day on Sunday....

Representatives of the Palestinian merchants in the city issued a statement in which they said that the purpose of the Sunday celebrations was to "make Jerusalem a Jewish city and provoke the feelings of Muslims and Christians."

Fakhri Abu Diab, member of the Committee for Defending Silwan, condemned the authorities' decision to block several roads and neighborhoods during Jerusalem Day, noting that this would disrupt normal life and prevent people from going to work and students from attending school.

Abu Diab said he expected Sunday to be a "dangerous and difficult" day for Arabs in the city.

"Jerusalem Day"

Tomorrow is the anniversary (in the Jewish calendar) of the Six Day War, when Jerusalem was reunited under Israeli rule (it was divided from 1949-1967, with west Jerusalem Israeli and east Jerusalem Jordanian). There's an Israeli march every year to celebrate the victory, going from the center of west Jerusalem into the Old City. I've never been to it, and I'm not planning to go tomorrow.

Haaretz writes about last year's march:

In recent years, the procession has become a show of defiance against Palestinians and residents of East Jerusalem. Last year, tensions came to a head as 24 youths, both Jewish and Palestinian, were arrested in conjunction with violent clashes.

Tensions over last year's march reached their zenith, however, as hundreds of youth shouted slogans like “death to Arabs,” and “Mohammed is dead,” along with other racist slogans, while marching through the narrow Muslim Quarter streets. The event’s organizers renounced and condemned the phenomenon, stating that the slogans and songs were the actions of only a handful of participants.

As a result of the disgusting racism and violence of last year, the Israel Police were originally not going to permit the marchers to go through Sheikh Jarrakh (in east Jerusalem), the Damascus Gate, and the Muslim Quarter. As a result of political pressure upon the police, they agreed to let the march go through the Damascus Gate and the Muslim Quarter, which runs the risk of more trouble this year.

In addition to a healthy dose of nationalist triumphalism and racism, once the marchers reach the Old City, they will also be separated by sex. "According to the approved route, the group of girls will march from the city center to the Jaffa Gate, while the boy’s group will march through the Damascus Gate."

A group known as the "Tag Meir Forum" is protesting this route. "Tag Meir" is a response to right-wing attack on Arabs that are called "Tag Mechir" (Price Tag). The Tag Mechir attacks are made against Palestinian targets, usually in the West Bank, after the Israeli Army has acted in some way to curb violent settlers, protect Palestinians, or destroy illegal Jewish settlements.

“We think that to march through an Arab neighborhood while singing songs of vengeance is no worse than ‘price tag’ attacks, we’re worried about the procession in the Muslim Quarter, and hope everyone behaves responsibly,” said a representative of the organization.

Obama Backs Same-Sex Marriage!

Much to my surprise, I now see that President Obama backs same-sex marriage. About time!

Here in Israel, Monday night we thought there was an agreement to have early elections on September 4, but when we woke up yesterday morning, there was a new unity government! The question is - unified for what? I've read many learned analyses in the Israeli press and no seems to know - except for Shaul Mofaz's motives - as the leader of Kadima, he was about to see his party lose big time in the September elections, and this now saves the jobs of about 20 Knesset members for the next 18 months. Other than that, who knows?

New York Times coverage of Auschwitz

A comment on an earlier post about the British POWs who were held in one of the Auschwitz camps just wrote: "And the article's reference to the Red Cross reaction to rumours about Auschwitz reinforces the difficulty of verifying conditions at camps. Indeed, the Red Cross had some difficulty separating the German picture of life in POW camps from the harsh reality even at those they visited."

By the summer of 1944, however, quite a lot was known and the Red Cross, it seems to me, would have had full access to all the information known outside Nazi-occupied Europe. While the New York Times dragged its feet considerably about reporting on the extermination camps, by the summer of 1944 they were publishing reports about what was happening in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This report was published on July 3, 1944, on page 3.

INQUIRY CONFIRMS NAZI DEATH CAMPS

1,715,000 Jews Said to Have Been Put to Death by the Germans Up to April 15

by Daniel T. Brigham

By Telephone to The New York Times

GENEVA, Switzerland, July 2 - Information reaching two European relief committees with headquarters in Switzerland has confirmed reports of the existence in Auschwitz and Birkenau in Upper Silesia of two "extermination camps" where more than 1,715,000 Jewish refugees were put to death between April 15, 1942 and April 15, 1944.

[Note: These figures are too high - according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "At least 960,000 Jews were killed in Auschwitz. Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma (Gypsies), and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war; and 10,000-15,000 members of other nationalities (Soviet civilians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, French, Germans, and Austrians)"].

The two committees referred to are the International Church Movement Ecumenical Refugee Commission with headquarters in Geneva and the Fluchtingshilfe of Zurich, whose head, the Rev. Paul Voght, has disclosed a long report on the killings.

The article goes on to give estimates of the number of Jews killed in Auschwitz, and then refers to what was then the ongoing killing of the Jews of Hungary.

To this must now be added Hungary's Jews. About 30 percent of the 400,000 there have been slain or have died en route to Upper Silesia. Discussing "malicious, fiendish, inhuman brutality" in the treatment of Hungarian Jews, the Ecumenical Commission says:

"According to authenticated information now at hand, some 400,000 Hungarian Jews have been deported from their homeland since April 6 of this year under inhuman conditions to Upper Silesia. Those that did not die en route were delivered to the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau in Upper Silesia, where during the past two years, it has now been learned, many hundreds of thousands of their co-religionists have been fiendishly done to death."

After a fortnight to three months' imprisonment, during which they were "selected" or worked to death, the Jews were led to the execution halls, it was said. These halls consist of fake bathing establishments handling 2,000 to 8,000 daily.

Another report was published in the Times on July 6, 1944, giving more details about the camp and the deportation of the Hungarian Jews, with the title "Two Death Camps Places of Horror," by Daniel Brigham.

An article from July 5 also discussed the deportations from Hungary, and includes this statement:

Information received by the World Jewish Congress leaves little doubt that the Germans are waging two wars - one against the enemies of Germany, the other against the Jews - and that, with Germany's defeat imminent, they are preparing to wipe out European Jewry. It is estimated conservatively that they have already massacred 4,000,000 of Europe's 7,000,000 Jews.

This article is called "Hungary Deports Jews, Eden Says." Eden was the British Foreign Secretary.

Later, on September 15, 1944, the Times reported on a German communique broadcast from Berlin. One sentence reads: "Enemy bomber and fighter formations yesterday attacked in the west and south of the Reich as far as central Germany. Terror raids were directly mainly against the towns of Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Osnabrueck and Auschwitz."

An earlier report, from June 20, 1944, reports on the killing of Czech Jews taken from Terezin to Auschwitz.

LONDON, June 19 - The Czechoslovak State Council disclosed today that, according to a report it has received from inside Europe, 7,000 Czechoslovak Jews interned in the fortress of Terezin have been killed en masse.

The report said that the victims were dragged to gas chambers in the notorious German concentration camps at Birkenau and Oswiecim. 

 Confirmation of the existence of these gas chambers and the execution of there of uncounted thousands was brought to London recently by a young Pole who had been imprisoned in both camps.

The first report in the New York Times of the liberation of the camp by the Red Army came on February 3, 1945, several days after the camp had been liberated (January 27).

 Saved from "Murder Factory"

MOSCOW, Feb. 2 (U.P.) - The newspaper Pravda reported today that the Red Army had saved several thousand tortured, emaciated inmates of the Germans greatest "murder factory" at Oswiecim in southwest Poland.

Pravda's correspondent said fragmentary reports indicated that at least 1,500,000 persons were slaughtered at Oswiecim. During 1941, 1942 and early 1943, he said, five trains arrived daily at Oswiecim with Russians, Poles, Jews, Czechs, French and Yugoslavs jammed in sealed cars.