Jewish Peace News: September 2009

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Restoring the water supply

In this piece, activist David Shulman reports his experiences at a recent (and successful) action involving about 100 people attempting to restore the water supply to the town of Jinbah in the south Hebron hills by reopening the main access road to tanker traffic. The story of arbitrary road blocks and heavy-handed Israeli army control is familiar enough, but the obviously crucial nature of water resources makes lack of Palestinian control over shared resources, lack of investment in infrastructure, and deep divides in water consumption between Israeli citizens and Palestinians into a critical problem. Hebrew/Arabic speakers may like to view some footage of the action at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k2wpCZYZTE

And the Palestine Monitor maintains an informative fact sheet about water disparities at http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article14 .

Alistair Welchman

David Shulman, September 26, 2009 Jinbah, Water Convoy

Originally posted to NewProfile Google Group, but reprinted at http://kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=35871

Water—or rather the denial of water—is a potent weapon. Here in the south Hebron hills, a harsh, arid land of rock and thorn and sand, it may be the most potent of all. Without water no one can survive here more than a few hours. In the old days, before the Israeli occupation, the Palestinians scattered over these hills in caves and tiny khirbehs survived on their wells and reservoirs. By now they've lost a great many of the wells, some poisoned or stopped up or simply taken over by Israeli settlers, others filled with rocks and sand by the army during violent raids on the khirbehs in the late 90's and after. These days some water—not nearly enough—is brought in on a daily basis, more or less, by tankers that wind their way laboriously over the goat-paths. The main access route to Jinbah, a rough, rocky track that eventually links up with the main highway and the town of Yata, has been sealed off by the army—blocked, in fact, at 23 separate points by piles of rock
and earth or cut and rendered impassable where it meets a culvert. The army puts these roadblocks in place, and sometimes removes them, at will, for no apparent reason. Over a year ago they issued a document formally promising to open the track again, but they haven't done so. That's one reason we're here today.

It's expensive to bring in water by tanker to a place like Jinbah, a remote confabulation of black tents, stone goat-pens, and ruined caves. According to my friend 'Id, prices are pitched at between 150 and 200 Israeli shekels (roughly $40 to $50) just for hiring the tanker and the driver—a vast sum for these herders and peasant farmers—not including the water. One tanker-full won't last them more than a few days. If the old track were open, costs would be cut in half. We intend to open it today.

Why, you might ask, has the army closed the track in the first place? The standard excuse, which we hear from the soldiers at various moments through the day, is that they're fighting terrorism. They're always doing that, even in the absence of any living terrorists anywhere nearby. The only violence of note that afflicts the south Hebron hills comes from Israeli settlers. So maybe there's another reason. Not to put too fine a point on it, we have the general and persistent effort by the Israeli authorities, with the settlers in the lead, to dry up the Palestinian civilian population in this area—that is, to drive them from their homes. For our part, we're determined to help keep them on their land. That's the main reason we're here today.

As usual, the police and army aren't too happy about our arrival. They dog our steps repeatedly as we make our way south with two busloads of activists, some hundred people in all. At the main turn-off to Um Daraj, the road that will connect us to the water tankers and tractors already waiting for us deep in the desert, the soldiers are ready: several command cars, police vans and other vehicles, some officers, the standard grey-olive flotilla. Do they really think they can turn us back? We pour out of the buses and start walking rapidly up the road. You can see at a glance that we're too many for them, they can't possibly arrest us all, and they can't stop us. Soon we have left them far behind.

It's almost 11 in the morning and already very hot and getting hotter, and since we had to abandon our buses because of the soldiers we have a long walk past a few homes and pens for the flocks and then over the stark golden-white hills, down and up and down again. Soon we are alone in the desert, far from human habitation. The hills sweep and swirl almost as far as the eye can see; near the horizon, barely visible in the blinding light, a slight blue patch of the Dead Sea shimmers and hides, too vibrant to be real. After thirty or forty minutes, at the end of the road, the end of the world, tractors are waiting with attached metal-and-wood carts— called "platforms" in Hebrew-- to carry us still deeper in, to the glowing, desolate point where the heavy tankers are parked.

Maybe it's a mirage. I almost rub my eyes. How they did get here? I'm not used to such precision planning. Soon the caravan departs. Groaning and creaking and jiggling and shaking, veering madly from side to side, always threatening to overturn, the tractors, with tankers and platforms attached, crawl over the rocks and plow through thick layers of dust and sand. It's a long, punishing, breath-taking ride, and just when I start to feel I can't stand much more of it, we grind to a halt on a rise overlooking a steep stony descent into the wadi. Here the track has been cut. We jump down from the platforms, mill around aimlessly for a while, unsure of what should happen next. Suddenly I find 'Id, and we embrace. I haven't seen him for some weeks. How's life? Hard, as always. New houses are going up in the veteran settlement of Carmel, next to Umm al-Khair where 'Id leaves. So much for Obama's settlement freeze. The Palestinian shacks demolished some months back by the Occupation
authorities have not been rebuilt. There's no money, and no hope. Aside from that, 'Id says, if you don't identify yourself openly with one of the factions, Fatah or Hamas for example, the Palestinian Authority is likely to fire you from your job. It recently happened with about forty teachers. So it's really hard to find work. The good news is that his little daughter is starting to walk. He smiles, shy with happiness. There's nothing in the world like 'Id's smile.

A yellow back-hoe (we used to call it a bulldozer) goes into action on the slope, smoothing down what's left of the narrow track. We race down the hill to help with this rebuilding of the route; we search for heavy boulders to fill the wide gap on either side of the culvert. There is no dearth of boulders. It's hard on the back and, like much physical labor in the south Hebron hills, strangely rewarding. Finally the back-hoe rolls back and forth over the newly filled piece of track, compacting rock and dust, turning it into something akin to a road. Victorious, the back-hoe moves on, and the water tankers now slowly creep down the hill and pass us on their way to Jinbah. I feel like cheering, and I can see I'm not alone.

The black tents of Jinbah are clearly visible on the hill above us to our left. Can people really live out here in this ravishing wasteland? And assuming that the answer is yes, who in his right mind would want to drive them off, to starve them of water? At least, I say to myself, water is now on its way. But this, of course, is the moment the soldiers decide to turn up, eager to harass us. Possibly they want revenge for their failure to stop us at the turnoff. A heavy command car swoops down on us—they must have been waiting somewhere nearby—and heads straight for the back-hoe. It's immediately clear they need a victim, and they've chosen the Palestinian driver; equally clear that we have to prevent his arrest. We converge from all sides on the back-hoe. There's some shouting and arguing as the soldiers circle the machine, trying to reach the driver's cabin. We're too quick for them. I find myself climbing up, with Amiel and Assaf, to sit in the driver's seat, while the
driver himself is swiftly helped down into the protective crowd and then manages to slip away.
OK, I have to confess. I always wanted to drive one of these things. I don't have a clue how to do it, but I'm quite happy sitting there, peering down at the ruckus below, inspecting the many mysterious levers and gears. I could easily go on playing like this for some time, like my grandson Inbali when you put him behind the driver's wheel. I feel Assaf sliding something metallic and small into the pocket of my trousers: the ignition key. The soldiers mustn't find out that we still have the key, lest they impound the vehicle and drive it off to their base. That would be a true disaster: the owner of the back-hoe needs it every day, his livelihood depends on it and, once confiscated, the machine is all too likely to be parked in the army camp for four to eight weeks, as in previous cases we can remember. We are going to have to stay here to guard the machine. The soldiers, meanwhile, are angry and frustrated, since their prey has eluded them. They prowl around the back-hoe,
they bark and snarl. They must be hot: it's mid-day, and they're loaded down with an entire armory, machine-guns with grenade propellers, helmets, clips, and plenty of tear-gas canisters of different sizes and colors belted the whole length of their legs. I can't say I feel much sympathy for them at this time.

Maybe it's the relief that the driver is safe or the satisfaction we felt when the water tankers chugged by on their way to Jinbah or maybe it's the rage we feel because these soldiers have now announced to us that, by opening the track, we have committed a grave crime and will be punished. Maybe it's just a passing whim. Anyone, suddenly the desert air is resounding with the old cry of noble souls committed to doomed causes: No pasaran! I know it doesn't sound likely, but nothing is likely in south Hebron. The whole scene is a study in the surreal. I'm shouting, too. Actually, here's something else I always wanted to do. No pasaran! It's a little silly, I suppose—or is it? Anyway I'm really glad there are people here who remember what it means and who see the parallel. But our Palestinian friends are, for once, bewildered. What do these words signify? In my rusty Arabic, in the middle of all the hubbub, immersed in dust and sun, I try to explain, a two-minute historical
synopsis: once, in Spain, there was a civil war between the Fascists and people like us, who believe in freedom…..The older ones pass down my explanation to the children, there are many young children with us here today, and now they are calling it out with us, and maybe this time it will be true.

But clearly our plans are in some danger. There's all that water to be poured into the Jinbah reservoir, and there are four more khirbehs to the east and west waiting to receive their allotment. We're needed there. So the main body of activists heads off to the Jinbah encampment, leaving ten or twelve of us to guard the back-hoe with the soldiers for company.

The heat is intense. I had a liter and a half of mineral water with me, but at the height of the mini-confrontation I handed the bottle around and it came back empty. It's not clear how long we're going to have to wait things out. We make a quick inventory of our water reserves. They're dangerously low. It's another one of those south Hebron scenes, far from rare and absurd by any standard. Here we are, stranded in the middle of the desert in and around a back-hoe that we can't abandon, with no driver anywhere near but also nowhere to go, with minimal water supply, and with a jeep-full of grumpy and disoriented soldiers glowering at us helplessly. They also have no idea what to do or even, for the most part, why they are there, as we discover when we begin to engage them in conversation. Perhaps they have orders to wait here in ambush for the missing driver, who will sooner or later come back to reclaim his vehicle. The stand-off is complete: neither side can budge from its
position. It feels like a perfect condensation of the general stand-off in Palestine-Israel: terminal stasis, mental grid-lock, and no workable exit strategy. I confer with Amiel. He says he, too, can't imagine how this will end; perhaps it will be something unimaginable. All we can do is wait. Maybe Obama could solve it, I think to myself, though lately I've lost whatever hope I had that he would coerce Israel into making peace. I tell my friend Istvan, who has joined us today for the first time in the south Hebron hills, that on the basis of past experience I predict that at some point everyone will just get tired and go home, but I can't guess when this might happen. Could take hours. Istvan is in no hurry. He has brought along his Hebrew textbook, and we spend a while discussing the odd fate of vowels in Hebrew and Greek—the perfect topic for such occasions. If only I weren't so thirsty….

Suddenly, an apparition. Ezra, magically materializing, as always, out of thin air, pulls up in his car together with a tall, older man, perhaps 80 years old, who has something to say to the soldiers. His name is Benny Gefen, from Kabri in the Galilee. He doesn't waste words. In a deep voice, crisp with anger, he says to them: "For five years I served in the Palmach [the elite army before and during the 1948 war]. For twenty-nine years I did reserve duty in the paratroopers. My son was killed in the Golani reconnaissance unit on the Lebanese border. I want to tell you that today I am ashamed of the uniform I used to wear, the uniform you are wearing now. In the Palmach they always taught us: think of what the other is feeling, put yourself in his place. But you don't care what happens to the Palestinians. You deny them water, the most basic of all human needs, and you back up the settlers, who terrorize them every day. I'm ashamed." He turns away without another word, goes
back to the car, disappears, as if a Biblical prophet had wandered by for a moment. The soldiers, for the first time today, look a little nonplussed; one of them even, to my amazement and delight, appears to hang his head in shame. [See attached photo]

And after a while they clamber into their vehicle and drive away. This is our chance. We prepare to turn on the ignition and take off into the desert in the back-hoe, a dozen Ta'ayush activists and five or six Palestinian children flying toward freedom in the empty spaces as if we were in some black-comic action film. I rather like the idea, to tell the truth. Seems perfectly in harmony with the picaresque adventures of this day. But we're a minute or two too slow (none of us has driven a back-hoe before), and suddenly a new jeep full of soldiers comes bouncing over the rocks and takes its position on the hilltop above us. Too late. Stalemate resumes. We hear on the cellphones that the main group of activists has been stopped by the army just as they were about to move out to the other sites, and that the inevitable order declaring the whole area a Closed Military Zone has been issued. Clearly, a water convoy is a serious provocation. Later it turns out that Benny Gefen
emerged from the desert and delivered his sharp rebuke to the commanding officer there, too, and the officer, faced with so unequivocal a moral authority, had no choice but to back down.

Time passes, baked brittle, until at last we see one large contingent of our friends coming back to us, snaking over the track, and now the solution reveals itself: we will envelope the back-hoe on all sides and walk it past the soldiers (a driver has helpfully turned up); we will prevent them, by sheer numbers, from getting anywhere near it. It works like a charm. And though the military jeeps keep tailing us over the hills, soon we are back on a rickety platform tied to a tractor with two (not three) good wheels, jolting our way painfully and slowly over the rocks in the direction of the main road. Still thirsty: it's important on a day like this to know, in your own body, the torment of thirst in the desert. A good day's work. There's really no satisfaction quite like it. Maybe it does people good to taste the surreal—more real than anything real-- from time to time. Maybe years from now one of those soldiers will remember Benny Gefen's words, and they will change his
life. Maybe, just maybe, not all has been lost.

Our buses are ready to take us back the city, but there's one last picaresque scene. At the Al-Khadr terminal-checkpoint just south of Jerusalem, a young soldier comes aboard to check us out. "Where are you coming from?" he asks. From south Hebron. He scowls. "Jewish leftists….Pull over." He's invented a new category, a rather ugly one. There are, in his mind, good Jews (settlers and the like, and your run-of-the-mill paranoid nationalists), there are (uniformly bad) Palestinians, and there are, it now turns out, also bad Jews like us. Leftists. He wants to detain us. This is too much for Yehuda who leaps from the bus in search of the soldier's commanding officer. He's determined to lodge a complaint. The soldier refuses to give his name and serial number, as the law requires, and by now he's lost it, curses Yehuda, who responds with volcanic invective, and the verbal battle immediately spills over the huge terminal, back and forth, the cameras clicking, activists swarming
from the bus, until finally the commanding officer happens by-- a burly young Border Policeman, eager to calm things down and get the damned bus out of the terminal. The Border Police are not famous for their greatness of spirit or gentle ways, but this one surprises us. "Why are you so upset?" he asks Yehuda, disingenuous. "So what if he called you Jewish leftists? Aren't you proud of who you are? I'm a leftist myself, and proud of it, too."

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
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Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
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Sunday, September 27, 2009

Atlanta Jews and Udi Aloni React to Toronto Film Festival

With the ending of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this past week, another stage for the struggles over Israeli-Palestinian narratives has closed, for now, at least. The Toronto Declaration, the protest letter signed by more than 1500 filmmakers, artists and other culture producers, succeeded in drawing attention to the Israel government's "Brand Israel" program, a deliberate effort to deploy Israeli arts and culture into the 'winning hearts and minds' front of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the protesters were widely condemned by Jewish leaders, among others, their message -- that they were protesting the Festival's collaboration with "Brand Israel" and not Israeli films -- did get through to some. Roger Ebert, the film critic, changed his mind after initially criticizing the protesters. Ebert wrote: "I thought of [the Festival's decision to showcase Tel Aviv] as an innocent goodwill gesture, but now realize it was part of a deliberate plan to "re-brand" Israel in Toronto, as a pilot for a larger such program. The Festival should never have agreed to be used like this." (http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/09/tiff_8_the_destructive_grandst.html)

Jewish Peace News posted a few reports about the TIFF controversy in the past few weeks, including (http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/09/update-toronto-declaration-no.html) and (http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/09/jvp-response-to-attacks-on-signers-of.html).

The signers of the Toronto Declaration were accused of many things, including blacklisting Israeli filmmakers and calling for a boycott of them, delegitimizing the city of Tel Aviv, and even calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. (Jewish Voice for Peace conveniently collected these accusations onto one page, which is hosted here: http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/article_1212.shtml) I want to add to Jewish Peace News' reporting on the TIFF controversy by posting the following two responses to the accusations made against the signers of the Toronto Declaration:

1) A letter in support of Jane Fonda from Atlanta Jews "Atlanta Jews Reject Vilification and Stand Up for Jane Fonda" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-minkin/atlanta-jews-reject-vilif_b_285755.html)
2) Udi Aloni, "Seinfeld, you were wrong to condemn our Toronto protest" (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1116151.html)

Letter from Atlanta Jews:

The extremist accusations made against the Toronto Declaration signatories aren't just empty talk but have real consequences in people's lives. After the accusations - including one by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who said that "the Toronto Declaration was "nothing less than a call for the complete destruction of the Jewish state" - started to make their way around inboxes and media outlets, word got out that the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevent, or GCAPP, Jane Fonda's excellent Atlanta-based non-profit, might face repercussions. A number of prominent Jewish people in Atlanta spoke out in defense of Jane Fonda, her long relationship with Israel and important social justice work in Atlanta and beyond. The signers include prominent rabbis, a past president of the Jewish Federation, a member of the National Board of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, and others. Their statement was published on the Huffington Post and picked up by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
twice (http://jta.org/news/article/2009/09/14/1007845/past-president-of-the-jewish-federation-of-greater-atlanta-says-jewish-atlantans-reject-vilification and http://jta.org/news/article/2009/09/15/1007888/toronto-festival-calls-israeli-pr-strategy-into-question). It was published in this week's edition of the Atlanta Jewish Times.

In their statement, the Atlanta Jews focused on the need for open conversation about the state of Israel's behavior towards Palestinians. They emphasized that a person need not disagree with TIFF's decision to spotlight Tel Aviv or agree with the Toronto Declaration in order to absolutely oppose the "misrepresentations and accusations leveled against Jane Fonda" and the other signers. They say that "the claim that Fonda seeks Israel's destruction is shameless slander, pure and simple, and lobbing such an accusation makes it nearly impossible to hold an honest conversation about the present and future of Israel and the Palestinian Territories."

They defended the Toronto protesters' message that "ignoring one side's experience, no matter which side that is, is a surefire recipe for ongoing fighting and conflict. Not everyone agrees with that approach, but it's a valid one that aims for a just peace for all parties in the region."

This letter comes from the heart of mainstream Jewry and represents yet another opening in how American Jews talk about and relate to the state of Israel. It shows the willingness of this small group of people to defend an unpopular action and speak out on the very combustible issue of Israel, exposing themselves to condemnation and reproach from friends, family, community members and others. By taking a public stand against the demonizing of critics of the Israeli government, the signers of this letter have created more public space for holding real, honest conversations about Israel.

(Jane Fonda wrote her own statement clarifying her position on the issues raised in the Toronto Declaration. It's important to note that while she criticizes certain parts of the statement, she chose to keep her name signed onto it. You can read her full statement here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-fonda/expanding-the-narrative_b_286406.html)

Udi Aloni's letter:

In his response to the counter-declaration signed by Jerry Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen and Natalie Portman, among others, Udi Aloni reiterates the points he has made before, challenging Israeli artists to refuse cooperation with "the Israeli propaganda machine," to refuse to be ambassadors for Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and noting that the directors of "Waltz with Bashir" and the new international hit, "Lebanon," have yet to speak out against the occupation or address their Palestinian victims in Lebanon.

The ongoing suffering of and assaults against Palestinian is where we should be looking. Aloni explains, "I am against all forms of boycott against arts, regardless of the political view it conveys, but it is my right to protest against the cynical use of artists, us in Israel and you, the Jewish-American artists. If it is real love of Israel which is in your hearts, please help us end the occupation, advise us on reaching a worldwide audience, correct us if you think we are overdoing it at times, but don't cooperate with the occupation itself."

On the eve of Yom Kippur, I wish for all of us - JPN readers, Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and Palestinians - to be written and sealed in the Book of Life, and may our commitments to justice, human rights and peace bear fruit beyond our wildest and most positive dreams in the coming year.

Sarah Anne Minkin

Thursday, September 24, 2009

The battlefield of legitimacy

"Despite ... limitations," writes Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, "the [Goldstone] report is an historic contribution to the Palestinian struggle for justice, an impeccable documentation of a crucial chapter in their victimization under occupation. Its impact will be felt most impressively on the growing civil society movement throughout the world to impose cultural, sporting, and academic boycotts, as well as to discourage investment, trade, and tourism with Israel. It may yet be the case that as in the anti-apartheid struggle the shift in the relation of forces in the Palestinian favor will occur not through diplomacy or as a result of armed resistance, but on the symbolic battlefield of legitimacy that has become global in scope, what might be described as the new political relevance of moral and legal globalization."

Racheli Gai & Rela Mazali

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http://intifada-palestine.com/2009/09/21/why-the-goldstone-report-
matters/

Richard Falk: Why The Goldstone Report Matters

"So why did the Israeli government boycott the commission? The real answer is quite simple: they knew full well that the commission, any commission, would have to reach the conclusions it did reach."Uri Avnery (Israeli peace activist, and former Knesset member), "On the Goldstone Report" 19 Sept 2009

Richard Goldstone, former judge of South Aftica's Constitutional Court, the first prosecutor at The Hague on behalf of the International Criminal Court for Former Yugolavia, and anti-apartheid campaigner reports that he was most reluctant to take on the job of chairing the UN fact-finding mission charged with investigating allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the three week Gaza War of last winter. Goldstone explains that his reluctance was due to the issue being "deeply charged and politically loaded," and was overcome because he and his fellow commissioners were "professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation," adding that "above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war," as well as the duty to protect civilians to the extent possible in combat zones. The four-person fact-finding mission was composed of widely respected and highly qualified individuals, including the distinguished international law scholar, Christine Chinkin, a professor at the London School of Economics. Undoubtedly adding complexity to Goldstone's decision is the fact that he is Jewish, with deep emotional and family ties to Israel and Zionism, bonds solidified by his long association with several organizations active in Israel.

Despite the impeccable credentials of the commission members, and the worldwide reputation of Richard Goldstone as a person of integrity and political balance, Israel refused cooperation from the outset. It did not even allow the UN undertaking to enter Israel or the Palestinian Territories, forcing reliance on the Egyptian government to facilitate entry at Rafah to Gaza. As Uri Avnery observes, however much Israel may attack the commission report as one-sided and unfair, the only plausible explanation of its refusal to cooperate with fact-finding and taking the opportunity to tell its side of the story was that it had nothing to tell that could hope to overcome the overwhelming evidence of the Israeli failure to carry out its attacks on Gaza last winter in accordance with the international law of war. No credible international commission could reach any set of conclusions other than those reached by the Goldstone Report on the central allegations.

In substantive respects the Goldstone Report adds nothing new. Its main contribution is to confirm widely reported and analyzed Israeli military practices during the Gaza War. There had been several reliable reports already issued, condemning Israel's tactics as violations of the laws of war and international humanitarian law, including by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a variety of respected Israeli human rights groups. Journalists and senior United Nations civil servants had reached similar conclusions. Perhaps, most damning of all the material available before the Goldstone Report was the publication of a document entitled "Breaking the Silence," containing commentaries by thirty members of the Israel Defense Forces who had taken part in Operation Cast Lead (the Israeli official name for the Gaza War). These soldiers spoke movingly about the loose rules of engagement issued by their commanders that explains why so little care was taken to avoid civilian casualties. The sense emerges from what these IDF soldiers who were in no sense critical of Israel or even of the Gaza War as such, that Israeli policy emerged out of a combination of efforts 'to teach the people of Gaza a lesson for their support of Hamas' and to keep IDF casualties as close to zero as possible even if meant massive death and destruction for innocent Palestinians.

Given this background of a prior international consensus on the unlawfulness of Operation Cast Lead, we must first wonder why this massive report of 575 pages has been greeted with such alarm by Israel and given so much attention in the world media. It added little to what was previously known. Arguably, it was more sensitive to Israel's contentions that Hamas was guilty of war crimes by firing rockets into its territory than earlier reports had been. And in many ways the Goldstone Report endorses the misleading main line of the Israeli narrative by assuming that Israel was acting in self-defense against a terrorist adversary. The report focuses its criticism on Israel's excessive and indiscriminate uses of force. It does this by examining the evidence surrounding a series of incidents involving attacks on civilians and non-military targets. The report also does draw attention to the unlawful blockade that has restricted the flow of food, fuel, and medical supplies to subsistence levels in Gaza before, during, and since Operation Cast Lead. Such a blockade is a flagrant instance of collective punishment, explicitly prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention setting forth the legal duties of an occupying power.

All along Israel had rejected international criticism of its conduct of military operations in the Gaza War, claiming that the IDF was the most moral fighting force on the face of the earth. The IDF conducted some nominal investigations of alleged unlawful behavior that consistently vindicated the military tactics relied upon and steadfastly promised to protect any Israeli military officer or political leader internationally accused of war crimes. In view of this extensive background of confirmed allegation and angry Israeli rejection, why has the Goldstone Report been treated in Tel Aviv as a bombshell that is deeply threatening to Israel's stature as a sovereign state? Israel's president, Shimon Peres, calling the report "a mockery of history" that "fails to distinguish the aggressor and a state exercising the right of self-defense," insisting that it "legitimizes terrorist activity, the pursuit of murder and death." More commonly Israel's zealous defenders condemned the report as one-sided, biased, reaching foregone conclusions, and emanating from the supposedly bastion of anti-Israeli attitudes at the UN's Human Rights Council. This line of response to any criticism of Israel's behavior in occupied Palestine, especially if it comes from the UN or human rights NGOs is to cry "foul play!" and avoid any real look at the substance of the charges. It is an example of what I call 'the politics of deflection,' attempting to shift the attention of an audience away from the message to the messenger. The more damning the criticism, the more ferocious the response. From this perspective, the Goldstone Report obviously hit the bullsye!

Considered more carefully, there are some good reasons for Israel's panicked reaction to this damning report. First, it does come with the backing of an eminent international personality who cannot credibly be accused of anti-Israel bias, making it harder to deflect attention from the findings no matter how loud the screaming of 'foul play.' Any fair reading of the report would show that it was balanced, was eminently mindful of Israel's arguments relating to security, and indeed gave Israel the benefit of the doubt on some key issues. Secondly, the unsurprising findings are coupled with strong recommendations that do go well beyond previous reports. Two are likely causing the Israeli leadership great worry: the report recommends strongly that if Israel and Hamas do not themselves within six months engage in an investigation and followup action meeting international standards of objectivity with respect to these violations of the law of war, then the Security Council should be brought into the picture, being encouraged to consider referring the whole issue of Israeli and Hamas accountability to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Even if Israel is spared this indignity by the diplomatic muscle of the United States, and possibly some European governments, the negative public relations implications of a failure to abide by this report could be severe.

Thirdly, whatever happens in the UN System, and at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the weight of the report will be felt by world public opinion. Ever since the Gaza War the solidity of Jewish support for Israel has been fraying at the edges, and this will likely now fray much further. More globally, a very robust boycott and divestment movement was gaining momentum ever since the Gaza War, and the Goldstone Report can only lend added support to such initiatives. There is a growing sense around the world that the only chance for the Palestinians to achieve some kind of just peace depends on the outcome over the symbols of legitimacy, what I have called the Legitimacy War. Increasingly, the Palestinians have been winning this second non-military war. Such a war fought on a global political battlefield is what eventually and unexpectedly undermined the apartheid regime in South Africa, and has become much more threatening to the Israeli sense of security than has armed Palestinian resistance.

A fourth reason for Israeli worry stemming from the report, is the green light given to national courts throughout the world to enforce international criminal law against Israelis suspects should they travel abroad and be detained for prosecution or extradition in some third country. Such individuals could be charged with war crimes arising from their involvement in the Gaza War. The report in this way encourages somewhat controversial reliance on what is known among lawyers as 'universal jurisdiction,' that is, the authority of courts in any country to detain for extradition or to prosecute individuals for violations of international criminal law regardless of where the alleged offenses took place. Reaction in the Israeli media reveals that Israeli citizens are already anxious about being apprehended during foreign travel. As one law commentator put it in the Israeli press, "From now on, not only soldiers should be careful when they travel abroad, but also ministers and legal advisers." It is well to recall that Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions calls on states throughout the world "to respect and ensure respect" for international humanitarian law "in all circumstances." Remembering the efforts in 1998 of several European courts to prosecute Augusto Pinochet for crimes committed while he was head of state in Chile, is a reminder that national courts can be used to prosecute political and military leaders for crimes committed elsewhere than in the territory of the prosecuting state.

Of course, Israel will fight back. It has already launched a media and diplomatic blitz designed to portray the report as so one-sided as to be unworthy of serious attention. The United States Government has already disappointingly appeared to endorse this view, and repudiate the central recommendation in the Goldstone Report that the Security Council be assigned the task of implementing its findings. The American Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, evidently told a closed session of the Security Council on September 16, just a day after the report was issued, that "[w]e have serious concerns about many recommendations in the report." Elaborating on this, Ambassador Rice indicated that the UN Human Rights Council, which has no implementing authority, is the only proper venue for any action to be taken on the basis of the report. The initial struggle will likely be whether to follow the recommendation of the report to have the Security Council refer the issues of accountability to the International Criminal Court, which could be blocked by a veto from the United States or other permanent members.

There are reasons to applaud the forthrightness and comprehensiveness of the report, its care, and scrupulous willingness to conclude that both Israel and Hamas seem responsible for behavior that appears to constitute war crimes, if not crimes against humanity. Although Israel has succeeded in having the issue of one-sidedness focus on fairness to Israel, there are also some reasons to insist that the report falls short of Palestinian hopes. For one thing, the report takes for granted, the dubious proposition that Israel was entitled to act against Gaza in self-defense, thereby excluding inquiry into whether crimes against the peace in the form of aggression had taken place by the launching of the attack. In this respect, the report takes no notice of the temporary ceasefire that had cut the rocket fire directed at Israel practically to zero in the months preceding the attacks, nor of Hamas' repeated efforts to extend the ceasefire indefinitely provided Israel lifted its unlawful blockade of Gaza. Further it was Israel that had seemed to provoke the breakdown of the ceasefire when it launched a lethal attack on Hamas militants in Gaza on November 4, 2008. Israel disregarded this seemingly available diplomatic alternative to war to achieve security on its borders. Recourse to war, even if the facts justify self-defense, is according to international law, a last resort. By ignoring Israel's initiation of a one-sided war the Goldstone Report accepts the dubious central premise of Operation Cast Lead, and avoids making a finding of aggression.

Also, disappointing was the failure of the report to comment upon the Israeli denial of a refugee option to the civilian population trapped in the tiny, crowded combat zone that constitutes the Gaza Strip. Israel closed all crossings during the period of the Gaza War, allowing only Gaza residents with foreign passports to leave. It is rare in modern warfare that civilians are not given the option to become refugees. Although there is no specific provision of the laws of war requiring a state at war to allow civilians to leave the combat zone, it seems like an elementary humanitarian requirement, and should at least have been mentioned either as part of customary international law or as a gap in the law that should be filled. The importance of this issue is reinforced by many accounts of the widespread post-traumatic stress experienced by the civilians in Gaza, especially children that comprise 53% of the population. One might also notice that the report accords considerable attention to Gilad Shalit, the one IDF prisoner held by Hamas in Gaza, recommending his release on humanitarian grounds, while making no comparable suggestion to Israel although it is holding thousands of Palestinians under conditions of harsh detention.

In the end, the Goldstone Report is unlikely to break the inter-governmental refusal to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza or to induce the United Nations to challenge Israeli impunity in any meaningful way. Depending on backroom diplomacy, the United States may or may not be able to avoid playing a public role of shielding Israel from accountability for its behavior during the Gaza War or its continuing refusal to abide by international humanitarian law by lifting the blockade that continues to impinge daily upon the health of the entire population of Gaza.

Despite these limitations, the report is an historic contribution to the Palestinian struggle for justice, an impeccable documentation of a crucial chapter in their victimization under occupation. Its impact will be felt most impressively on the growing civil society movement throughout the world to impose cultural, sporting, and academic boycotts, as well as to discourage investment, trade, and tourism with Israel. It may yet be the case that as in the anti-apartheid struggle the shift in the relation of forces in the Palestinian favor will occur not through diplomacy or as a result of armed resistance, but on the symbolic battlefield of legitimacy that has become global in scope, what might be described as the new political relevance of moral and legal globalization.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Update: Toronto Declaration - No Celebration of Occupation

An update from the organizers of the Toronto Declaration.
The declaration, with the attention and support it got, and despite (or perhaps because?) of the vicious backlash, has managed to move the spotlight from Tel Aviv, to the Israel/Palestine conflict. NOT what the "rebranding Israel" campaign was hoping for...

Note that the petition initiated by Jewish Voice for Peace, encouraging activists to stand against the ugly attacks, is part of the update.
Consider signing it and forwarding to others.

Racheli Gai.

Support for the "Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation" has been tremendous. We sincerely thank every individual and organization that has joined in our efforts. We also wanted to share some important updates with you regarding the Toronto Declaration:

Although TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey vehemently denied any links between the spotlight and Brand Israel, the Canadian Jewish News reported (Sept 16/09) that the Mayor of Tel Aviv confirmed the involvement of the Israeli government in TIFF's City-to-City Spotlight. According to the report, Mayor Ron Huldai "said that while the City to City program was initiated by the festival, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was involved as part of its Brand Israel media and advertising campaign, which was launched last year." We are glad to see that the connections between the Spotlight and the Brand Israel campaign have been clarified; we had hoped these answers would come from TIFF directly.

A reminder: we are protesting because we could not stand idly by as Tel Aviv, the heart of Israelâ€™s economic and military power, was being celebrated as if this was an apolitical decision. Palestinians in Gaza continue to live under a brutal Israeli siege that has turned Gaza into what countless observers have described as an open-air prison, with access even to food and medicine greatly restricted. We protested the spotlight to call attention to a humanitarian emergency and an ongoing crime. The UN fact finding mission on the Gaza conflict led by the renowned South African constitutional court judge Richard Goldstone has just concluded that Israel indeed committed war crimes in Gaza earlier this year, and further that there is evidence that Israel may have committed crimes against humanity. This was why we said "no celebration of Occupation," facts deliberately ignored in most press reports.

As you have no doubt heard, our petition is being falsely accused of "blacklisting" Israeli filmmakers. Anyone who had read the letter knows this is untrue. The irony is that we couldn't find a single newspaper to publish our letter, despite the fact that it is now an international phenomenon. And unlike our critics, we don't have the resources to buy advertisements that reiterate the editorial line that the newspaper has already taken. And yet, despite the bullying we are all facing, we have to remember that this is only a sideshow. Many Palestinian artists and filmmakers, denied freedom of movement by Israel's Occupation and pass system, are de facto boycotted, unable to communicate with their communities or travel freely. The double standard is mind-boggling and, slowly, these are the issues we are helping to put under a spotlight.

The stated goal of the Brand Israel campaign is to change the subject from these kinds of human rights abuses to more pleasant topics like art and medicine. Thanks to your work and support, in the case of the Toronto International Film Festival, the strategy has failed miserably. The JTA, the leading Jewish news agency, just reported that, "rather than talking about Israel's rich cinematic culture, the buzz this week in Toronto has centered on the one thing Israeli officials had sought to avoid: the conflict with the Palestinians." We firmly believe that is exactly where it belongs.

Because of your courage in speaking out early, you are now inspiring others to raise their voices as well. Yesterday, the respected U.S.-based non-profit Jewish Voices for Peace launched a petition in support of the signatories of the Toronto Declaration. The petition states: "I stand with you against the bullying attacks which are attempting to silence discussion and dissent regarding Israel. Thank you for your courageous stand. You speak for me." In less than 24 hours, roughly 7,000 people have added their names. Check out the petition here and encourage your friends to sign. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/t/9047/p/dia/action/public/?action_key=1433 We're sure you will join us in thanking those signers as well.

So this is just an update to let you know that, despite all the overheated language and misinformation, our message is getting out and we are opening up the debate that should have happened at TIFF. We have managed to turn the Spotlight on the festival and asked it to take responsibility for the political choice it made to celebrate Tel Aviv and make TIFF this year, the year of the Gaza assault, a showpiece for the Brand Israel propaganda campaign.

Defamation, intimidation, and diversion won't stop us from protesting crimes that no amount of rebranding can erase. Please take the time to fight back against the misinformation: write letters, post comments, write op-eds and link to the original letter as much as you can, so people can judge for themselves.

For regular updates on the Toronto Declaration please visit: http://torontodeclaration.blogspot.com/

Thursday, September 17, 2009

If I Forget Thee O Gaza

Nine months after the assault on Gaza, a high-level UN Fact Finding Mission presented substantial evidence for the claim that Israel committed numerous, systematic war crimes in the course of the assault. Notably, the mission also claimed the distinct complicity of the international community in these crimes, through its long-term, consistent extension of impunity to Israel's governments and military. Suspected war crimes, the mission says, were also committed by the Palestinian armed groups that targeted civilians in the southern part of Israel.

The work of the mission, headed by the internationally esteemed Justice Richard Goldstone, was obstructed by Israeli authorities which barred mission members from entering Israel and the Occupied Territories. Following the report, Israeli media and officials are retrospectively debating the wisdom of this policy.

The first item below is a press release issued by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, summarizing the gist of the report and providing links to the full 574 page document.

The following items offer a glimpse of various responses to the report in the influential Israeli daily Haaretz and of the range of the topics it has tabled.

The second item links to, and quotes from, a report on the mission's findings, published September 16th in Haaretz, illustrating both the impunity highlighted and condemned by the mission and indicating some of the report's potential ramifications for individual Israeli military commanders.

The third item links to, and quotes from, an opinion piece by Haaretz commentator Aluf Ben, interpreting the report as an added leverage point through which the US may manipulate Israel. Implicitly, and without condemnation, this view in fact reiterates the mission's claim that Israel's impunity, granted by the international community, played a major role in enabling its war crimes. Ben, in characteristic "national security" tones, warned that adopting the mission's findings could endanger the US in "set[ing] a precedent against other militaries fighting terror in civilian areas". Nevertheless, he subsequently criticizes Israel's excess in the assault on Gaza, though it remains unclear whether on grounds of injustice or imprudence. Still, reflecting an awareness of a possible, ongoing shift in international public opinion, Ben concludes that, "the most serious strategic threat Israel brought upon itself with the Gaza offensive â€¦ [is] that it saps international legitimacy for a
similar operation in the future."

The last three items are link to, and quote from, opinion pieces, published September 17th, including an Haaretz editorial, admonishing both politicians and the Israeli public to recognize the gravity of the mission's findings and, moreover, to act on them decisively.

In the fourth item, Amira Hass, unpacking and refuting Israel's regular set of strategies for shouting down accusations of war crimes (whether by human rights groups or the Goldstone mission), implies that failing to recognize and act on these accusations amounts to an admission that the criminal practices described in detail by the report are in fact normal procedure for the Israeli army and leadership.

In the fifth item, Gideon Levy exposes the groundlessness of implications that Judge Goldstone's work was prejudiced by anti-Israel or antisemitic sentiments and calls on the government to issue personal arrest warrants and initiate due process against the individuals bearing direct responsibility for the criminal acts in questionâ€"that is, against the former Prime Mininster, Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff.

The last item, the September 17th Haaretz editorial, makes a clear call to appoint a state investigative commission of the highest level.

Notably, all these commentators, both those who accept the mission's findings and those who argue against them, are united in noting the severe erosion of Israel's legitimacy in international public opinion. The report, researched, compiled and presented within this context, makes a major contribution to this process of erosion. In my view, however, it remains to be seen whether the impunity granted Israel by (most important) the US and Europe will indeed erode as well and whether this will lead to a future restriction of Israel's freedom of criminalinality.

Rela Mazali

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The full report can be found on the web page of the Fact Finding Mission:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/FactFindingMission.htm

For further media information: contact Doune Porter, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Tel: 1-917-367-3292 or +41-79-477-2576. Email: dporter@ohchr.org

PRESS RELEASE
15 September 2009

UN Fact Finding Mission finds strong evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Gaza conflict; calls for end to impunity

NEW YORK / GENEVA â€" The UN Fact-Finding Mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone on Tuesday released its long-awaited report on the Gaza conflict, in which it concluded there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.

The report also concludes there is also evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes, as well as possibly crimes against humanity, in their repeated launching of rockets and mortars into Southern Israel.

The four members of the Mission* were appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council in April with a mandate to â€œTo investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.â€

In compiling the 574- page report, which contains detailed analysis of 36 specific incidents in Gaza, as well as a number of others in the West Bank and Israel, the Mission conducted 188 individual interviews, reviewed more 10,000 pages of documentation, and viewed some 1,200 photographs, including satellite imagery, as well as 30 videos. The mission heard 38 testimonies during two separate public hearings held in Gaza and Geneva, which were webcast in their entirety. The decision to hear participants from Israel and the West Bank in Geneva rather than in situ was taken after Israel denied the Mission access to both locations. Israel also failed to respond to a comprehensive list of questions posed to it by the Mission. Palestinian authorities in both Gaza and the West Bank cooperated with the Mission.

The Mission found that, in the lead up to the Israeli military assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip. During the Israeli military operation, code-named â€œOperation Cast Lead,â€ houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed. Families are still
living amid the rubble of their former homes long after the attacks ended, as reconstruction has been impossible due to the continuing blockade. More than 1,400 people were killed during the military operation.

Significant trauma, both immediate and long-term, has been suffered by the population of Gaza. The Report notes signs of profound depression, insomnia and effects such as bed-wetting among children. The effects on children who witnessed killings and violence, who had thought they were facing death, and who lost family members would be long lasting, the Mission found, noting in its Report that some 30 per cent of children screened at UNRWA schools suffered mental health problems.

The report concludes that the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population. The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.

The Report states that Israeli acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country, that limit their rights to access a court of law and an effective remedy, could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been committed.

The report underlines that in most of the incidents investigated by it, and described in the report, loss of life and destruction caused by Israeli forces during the military operation was a result of disrespect for the fundamental principle of â€œdistinctionâ€ in international humanitarian law that requires military forces to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects at all times. The report states that â€œTaking into account the ability to plan, the means to execute plans with the most developed technology available, and statements by the Israeli military that almost no errors occurred, the Mission finds that the incidents and patterns of events considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions.â€

For example, Chapter XI of the report describes a number of specific incidents in which Israeli forces launched â€œdirect attacks against civilians with lethal outcome.â€ These are, it says, cases in which the facts indicate no justifiable military objective pursued by the attack and concludes they amount to war crimes. The incidents described include:
â€¢ Attacks in the Samouni neighbourhood, in Zeitoun, south of Gaza City, including the shelling of a house where soldiers had forced Palestinian civilians to assemble;
â€¢ Seven incidents concerning â€œthe shooting of civilians while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags and, in some of the cases, following an injunction from the Israeli forces to do so;â€
â€¢ The targeting of a mosque at prayer time, resulting in the death of 15 people.

A number of other incidents the Report concludes may constitute war crimes include a direct and intentional attack on the Al Quds Hospital and an adjacent ambulance depot in Gaza City.

The Report also covers violations arising from Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, including excessive force against Palestinian demonstrators, sometimes resulting in deaths, increased closures, restriction of movement and house demolitions. The detention of Palestinian Legislative Council members, the Report says, effectively paralyzed political life in the OPT.

The Mission found that through activities such as the interrogation of political activists and repression of criticism of its military actions, the Israeli Government contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent was not tolerated.

The Fact-Finding Mission also found that the repeated acts of firing rockets and mortars into Southern Israel by Palestinian armed groups â€œconstitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity,â€ by failing to distinguish between military targets and the civilian population. â€œThe launching of rockets and mortars which cannot be aimed with sufficient precisions at military targets breaches the fundamental principle of distinction,â€ the report says. â€œWhere there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into civilian areas, they constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population.â€

The Mission concludes that the rocket and mortars attacks â€œhave caused terror in the affected communities of southern Israel,â€ as well as â€œloss of life and physical and mental injury to civilians and damage to private houses, religious buildings and property, thereby eroding the economic and cultural life of the affected communities and severely affecting the economic and social rights of the population.â€

The Mission urges the Palestinian armed groups holding the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to release him on humanitarian grounds, and, pending his release, give him the full rights accorded to a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions including visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Report also notes serious human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial executions of Palestinians, by the authorities in Gaza and by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The prolonged situation of impunity has created a justice crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that warrants action, the Report says. The Mission found the Government of Israel had not carried out any credible investigations into alleged violations. It recommended that the UN Security Council require Israel to report to it, within six months, on investigations and prosecutions it should carry out with regard to the violations identified in its Report. The Mission further recommends that the Security Council set up a body of independent experts to report to it on the progress of the Israeli investigations and prosecutions. If the expertsâ€™ reports do not indicate within six months that good faith, independent proceedings are taking place, the Security Council should refer the situation in Gaza to the ICC Prosecutor. The Mission recommends that the same independent expert body also report to the Security Council on proceedings undertaken by the relevant Gaza authorities with
regard to crimes committed by the Palestinian side. As in the case of Israel, if within six months there are no good faith independent proceedings conforming to international standards in place, the Council should refer the situation to the ICC Prosecutor.

* The members of the Fact Finding Mission are:
Justice Richard Goldstone, Head of Mission; former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa; former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Professor Christine Chinkin , Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science; member of the high-level fact-finding mission to Beit Hanoun (2008).
Ms. Hina Jilani, Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan; former Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the situation of human rights defenders; member of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur (2004).
Colonel Desmond Travers , former Officer in Irelandâ€™s Defence Forces; member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.

The full report can be found on the web page of the Fact Finding Mission: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/FactFindingMission.htm

For further media information: contact Doune Porter, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Tel: 1-917-367-3292 or +41-79-477-2576. Email: dporter@ohchr.org
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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115007.html

Last update - 14:15 16/09/2009

'UN report accusing Israel of war crimes is prize for terrorism'

By Haaretz Service

The defense establishment is making efforts to extend legal aid to officers who may face indictment on war crimes charges abroad, Israel Radio reported. â€¦

The deputy foreign minister, who is currently on a trip to Washington, told Israel Radio that the U.S. and the European Union both opposed the UN commission of inquiry. â€¦

[Deputy foreign minister] Ayalon said he planned to meet Wednesday with U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice to discuss ways to minimize the report's damage to Israel before it is submitted to the Security Council for deliberations.
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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1114919.html

Last update - 08:08 16/09/2009

Aluf Benn / In wake of Gaza probe, how can Israel go to war again?

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent

If its findings and recommendations are accepted, the International Criminal Court in The Hague could call a summit meeting between the leaders of Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority on the defendants' stand.

But the ultimate adjudicator on the report's fate will be Barack Obama, who now has another whip with which to flay Benjamin Netanyahu - if you don't freeze the settlements and agree to concessions, legal proceedings will commence against those responsible for Operation Cast Lead. â€¦

Second, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak (prime and defense ministers respectively during Cast Lead) erred in ignoring the Gazan population's suffering, and in allowing the death and destruction the IDF perpetrated during the Gaza campaign.

Lengthening the operation and choosing to send in ground forces - decisions which won widespread support among the Israeli public - wrought untold damage to Israel's international image, and bolstered the legitimacy of Hamas. â€¦

Last, and perhaps most important, the Goldstone report reinforces the most serious strategic threat Israel brought upon itself with the Gaza offensive, in that it saps international legitimacy for a similar operation in the future.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115232.html

Last update - 03:37 17/09/2009

Amira Hass / The one thing worse than denying the Gaza report

By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent

â€¦ The Goldstone Commission's findings are in line with what anyone who didn't shut his or her eyes and ears to witness testimony already knows. â€¦ [But]
Like the Serbs of yore, we Israelis continue thinking it's the world that is wrong, and only we who are right.

Israel struck a civilian population that remains under its control, it didn't fulfill its obligation to distinguish between civilians and militants and used military force disproportionate with the tangible threat to its own civilians. Air Force drones and helicopters fired deadly missiles at civilians, many of them children; the Tank Corps and Navy shelled civilian neighborhoods with weapons not designed for precision strikes; soldiers received orders to fire on rescue crews; others fired on civilians carrying white flags; and others killed people in or near their homes. Troops used Gazans as human shields, soldiers detained civilians in abusive conditions, the army used white phosphorus shells in dense civilian areas and, on the eve of withdrawing, destroyed wide residential, industrial and agricultural areas.

There is only thing worse than denial - the admission that the IDF indeed acted as has been described, but that these actions are both normal and appropriate.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115240.html

Thu., September 17, 2009

Disgrace in The Hague

By Gideon Levy

â€¦ It has become superfluous to ask whether war crimes were committed in Gaza, because authoritative and clear-cut answers have already been given. So the follow-up question has to be addressed: Who's to blame? If war crimes were committed in Gaza, it follows that there are war criminals at large among us. They must be held accountable and punished.
â€¦
Cast Lead was an unrestrained assault on a besieged, totally unprotected civilian population which showed almost no signs of resistance during this operation. It should have raised an immediate furor in Israel. It was a Sabra and Chatila, this time carried out by us. But there was a storm of protest in this country following Sabra and Chatila, whereas after Cast Lead mere citations were dished out.

It should have been enough just to look at the horrendous disparity in casualties - 100 Palestinians killed for every Israeli - to shake the whole of Israeli society. There was no need to wait for Goldstone to understand that a terrible thing had occurred between the Palestinian David and the Israeli Goliath. But the Israelis preferred to look away, or stand with their children on the hills around Gaza and cheer on the carnage-causing bombs.
â€¦
It would be better for Israel to summon up the courage to change course while there is still time, investigating the matter genuinely and not by means of the Israel Defense Forces' grotesque inquiries, without waiting for Goldstone.
â€¦
Now that the report is on its way to the ICC and arrest warrants could soon be issued, all that remains to be done is to immediately set up a state inquiry commission in order to avert disgrace in The Hague.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115243.html

Thu., September 17, 2009

A committee of inquiry is needed

By Haaretz Editorial

â€¦ the best of those offering explanations will find it difficult to invalidate the findings of the Goldstone Commission - which analyzed dozens of incidents, interviewed 188 people and reviewed thousands of documents. Moreover, a good deal of the findings are consistent with a number of reports filed by voluntary groups, which pointed out violations of the rules of warfare and of human rights during the fighting and the prolonged siege of the Strip.

The cloud of Cast Lead will not dissipate on its own. Israel benefited from the decision to appoint a commission of inquiry following the Sabra and Chatila massacre that occurred during the first Lebanon war. Instead of a futile attempt to reject the report and undermine the legitimacy of the Goldstone Commission, the government would do better to establish a state commission of inquiry to thoroughly investigate the serious accusations that were placed this week on Israel's doorstep. Such a step could prevent a more severe entanglement.

Monday, September 14, 2009

General Strike October 1st

Jonathan Cook offers an essential, and depressing, run down on the increasing repression of the Palestinian sector within Israel. As a result, a general strike has been called for October 1st, the anniversary of the date 13 Palestinians (12 of them Israeli citizens) were killed by Israeli police at the start of the second intifada in 2000.

--Rebecca Vilkomerson

(it's not clear to me where this first ran but i got it from counterpunch at http://www.counterpunch.org/cook09092009.html)

Israel's Arab Citizens Call General Strike
by Jonathan Cook

September 9th, 2009

The increasingly harsh political climate in Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government has prompted the leadership of the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens to call the first general strike in several years.

The one-day stoppage is due to take place on October 1, a date heavy with symbolism because it marks the anniversary of another general strike, in 2000 at the start of the second intifada, when 13 Arab demonstrators were shot dead by Israeli police.

The Arab leadership said it was responding to a string of what it called "racist" government measures that cast the Arab minority, a fifth of the population, as enemies of the state.

"In recent months, there has been a parallel situation of racist policies in the parliament and greater condoning of violence towards Arab citizens by the police and courts," said Jafar Farah, the head of Mossawa, an Arab advocacy group in Israel. "This attitude is feeding down to the streets."

Confrontations between the country's Arab minority and Mr Netanyahu's coalition, formed in the spring, surfaced almost immediately over a set of controversial legal measures.

The proposed bills outlawed the commemoration of the "nakba", or catastrophe, the word used by Palestinians for their dispossession in 1948; required citizens to swear loyalty to Israel as a Zionist state; and banned political demands for ending Israel's status as a Jewish state. Following widespread outcries, the bills were either watered down or dropped.

But simmering tensions came to a boil again late last month when the education minister, Gideon Saar, presented educational reforms to mark the start of the new school year.

He confirmed plans to drop the word "nakba" from Arabic textbooks and announced his intention to launch classes on Jewish heritage and Zionism. He also said he would tie future budgets for schools to their success in persuading pupils to perform military or national service.

Arab citizens are generally exempted from military service, although officials have recently been trying to push civilian national service in its place.

Mohammed Barakeh, an Arab member of the parliament, denounced the linking of budgets to national service, saying that Mr Saar "must understand that he is the education minister, not the defence minister".

The separate Arab education system is in need of thousands of more classrooms and is massively underfunded – up to nine times more is spent on a Jewish pupil than an Arab one, according to surveys. Research published by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem last month showed that Jewish schools received five times more than Arab schools for special education classes.

Mr Netanyau, who accompanied Mr Saar on a tour of schools last week, appeared to give his approval to the proposed reforms: "We advocate education that stresses values, Zionism and a love of the land."

Mr Barakeh also accused government ministers of competing to promote measures hostile to the Arab minority. "Anyone seeking fame finds it in racist whims against Arabs – the ministers of infrastructure, education, transportation, whoever."

Mr Barakeh was referring to a raft of recent proposals.

Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, announced last month that training for the diplomatic service would be open only to candidates who had completed national service.

Of the foreign ministry's 980 employees only 15 are Arab, a pattern reflected across the civil service sector according to Sikkuy, a rights and coexistence organisation.

The housing minister, Ariel Atias, has demanded communal segregation between Jewish and Arab citizens and instituted a drive to make the Galilee, where most Arab citizens live, "more Jewish".

The interior minister, Eli Yishai, has approved a wave of house demolitions, most controversially in the Arab town of Umm al Fahm in Wadi Ara, where a commercial district has been twice bulldozed in recent weeks.

The transport minister, Israel Katz, has insisted that road signs include placenames only as they are spelt in Hebrew, thereby erasing the Arabic names of communities such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Nazareth.

Arab legislators have come under repeated verbal attack from members of the government. Last month, the infrastructures minister, Uzi Landau, refused to meet Taleb al Sana, the head of the United Arab List party, on parliamentary business, justifying the decision on the grounds that Arab MPs were "working constantly here and abroad to delegitimise Israel as a Jewish state".

Shortly afterwards, Mr al Sana and his colleague Ahmed Tibi, the deputy speaker of parliament, attended Fatah's congress in Bethlehem, prompting Mr Lieberman to declare: "Our central problem is not the Palestinians, but Ahmed Tibi and his ilk – they are more dangerous than Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad combined."

Mr Tibi responded: "When Lieberman, the foreign minister, says that, ordinary Israelis understand that he is calling for me to be killed as a terrorist. It is the most dangerous incitement."

Israel's annual Democracy Index poll, published last month, showed that 53 per cent of Israeli Jews supported moves to encourage Arab citizens to leave.

Mr Farah said the strike date had been selected to coincide with the anniversary of the deaths of 13 Arab citizens in October 2000 to highlight both the failure to prosecute any of the policemen involved and the continuing official condoning of violence against Arab citizens by police and Jewish citizens.

Some 27 Arab citizens have been killed by the police in unexplained circumstances since the October deaths, Mr Farah said, with only one conviction. Last week, Shahar Mizrahi, an undercover officer, was given a 15-month sentence for shooting Mahmoud Ghanaim in the head from point-blank range. The judge called Mizrahi's actions "reckless".

This week, in another controversial case, Shai Dromi, a Negev rancher, received six months community service after shooting dead a Bedouin intruder, Khaled al Atrash, as the latter fled.

Mr Farah said the regard in which Arab citizens were held by the government was illustrated by a comment from the public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, in June. During an inspection of police officers working undercover as drug addicts, the minister praised one for looking like a "real dirty Arab".

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books).

U.S. is blind to limits of Palestinian politics

Akiva Eldar, senior political correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha-Aretz explains why the United States has never been able, since the beginning of the Oslo process in 1993 (and, in fact, long before that) to act as an honest broker in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Drawing on the writings of Aaron David Miller, a retired State Department official who spent decades on Arab-Israeli issues, Eldar explains that American officials have always been empathic and sensitive to the requirements of Israeli domestic politics. But they have understood or cared little about internal Palestinian politics. Consequently, Israeli demands have set the pace and limits of peace negotiations. Eldar argues that the Obama administration has not broken with the approach of the Clinton and Bush II administrations in this regard - Joel Beinin

U.S. is blind to limits of Palestinian politics

Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Sept. 14, 2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1114363.html

After a drawn-out and frustrated negotiation over several hundred housing units in the settlements, the Obama administration realized that instead of tasting the grapes, it is wasting its time fighting with the vineyard's gatekeeper. They also revealed that the greatest superpower came to the fight unarmed. They discovered that to threaten Benjamin Netanyahu and Moshe Ya'alon with ceasing construction in the West Bank by pain of not resuming the Oslo process, was akin to threatening them that if Israel does not remove the outposts, the United States would bomb Iran. This made reverting to the old and tried concept of "grab all you can" a near sure thing, that same concept that managed to bring the Oslo Accords, 16 years after the ceremonious signing at the White House, back to square one - at best.

In line with that concept, the peace process must be advanced slowly, if at all, and always with Israel's domestic considerations. During the 1990s, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had coalition trouble - and president Bill Clinton put up with the vast land expropriations that accompanied the establishment of Har Homa. Netanyahu's successor, Ehud Barak, warned that his coalition partners from the right were threatening to pull out if he carried out the promise to evacuate villages in the area of Jerusalem - and Clinton urged Yasser Arafat to give in. When prime minister Ariel Sharon opted for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza rather than bilateral talks on the West Bank, president George W. Bush welcomed the move. Prime minister Ehud Olmert did not meet his promise to lift the roadblocks - and Bush made do with complaining. Now, when "the new" Netanyahu agreed to talk about the borders of the West Bank, U.S. President Barack Obama gave him a pass on the issues of Jerusalem and the
refugees.

The American designers of policy, who tend to sew the peace process according to the measures of the Israeli coalition, are blind to anything having to do with the limits within which Palestinian politics operates. Over and over they offer a quilt that is too short, but which keeps the Israelis warm, only to complain that the Palestinians are the ones getting cold feet. Proof of this can be found in an article by Aaron Miller, who served for many years as deputy to Dennis Ross in the American mediation team, and which was published in the Washington Post in May 2005. Under the title "Israel's Lawyer," he wrote that "For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel's attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations."

In his book "The Much Too Promised Land" (2008), Miller revealed that he found it difficult to avoid chuckling every time he heard Ross say that the Israelis were complaining that he was an advocate for the Palestinians. According to Miller, none of the American officials who were involved in the negotiations was prepared, or able, to present an Arab point of view, not to mention fight for one. Miller admitted that empathy toward Israel prevented him and his colleagues from exhibiting firmness on the issue of the settlements and to adopt initiatives with regard to a permanent settlement, and by then, "we had missed the train." Alas, in recent days Obama, the man of change, brought Ross back to the locomotive.

True, Netanyahu has declared that his government is committed to the agreements signed by his predecessors (how could it be otherwise at a time when Israel is demanding a boycott of Hamas because of its refusal to accept those same accords?) - but he expects consideration for his position. Has the U.S. president not heard about Tzipi Hotovely? The road map, which received the backing of the UN Security Council, requires that there be negotiations on all core issues, with no exceptions, but how can Washington ignore the warning of Minister Eli Yishai that the moment Jerusalem becomes part of the negotiations, Shas will leave the coalition? Israel promised seven years ago to freeze settlement construction, including that which was meant to meet natural growth, but at the White House they certainly know that Netanyahu's deputy, Ya'alon, argues that it is the "right" of every Jew to build a home - in the middle of the Nablus casbah.

This approach only causes a loss of Arab trust in the willingness of Israeli governments to do justice by the Palestinians; it mortally undermines their trust in the willingness of the Americans to use their power and influence in order to carry out U.S. interests in the region. If Obama is worried about fighting with the gatekeeper, and so lets Netanyahu rule the vineyard, we will all eat grapes of wrath.

The Spectrum of Disobedience - an interview with Howard Zinn / zmag.org

This interview with Howard Zinn opens with a discussion of a group of Israeli refusers known as the Sministim (high school seniors).
For some years now, a number of high school seniors get together and write a letter in which they declare their refusal to serve in an occupying army. Some are pacifists who won't serve in any army, and others object specifically to Israel's 42 years of occupation of Palestinian Territories.
Some of these refusers (and well as many reserve soldiers who have become refusers) have served jail sentences.
International law requires recognition of the right of people to refuse military service, but this - like many other laws and conventions - have been ignored by Israeli authorities.

I want to draw your attention to the fact that two young Shministiot (female refusers) of the most recent "crop", are
touring the US right now. The tour is sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace, and by Code Pink. Check out whether they'll be visiting your location, and help support such great efforts to bring a young voice to a public in sore need of hearing their message.
More information about the tour can be found at: http://www.whywerefuse.org/

Racheli Gai.

http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/22380

The Spectrum of Disobedience

An interview with Howard Zinn (Part 2)
September 2009 By Gabriel Matthew Schivone

This is a continuation of a discussion with Howard Zinn on activist education; the first part, "A Joyful Insurgency", was published in the July-August 2009 issue of Z Magazine

GMS: Reuters released a report in 2007 stating that "[Israeli] Army statistics show the number of young people who do not enlist for military service has crept up in recent years to more than one in four men in 2007 and more than 43 percent of women." This past December, a groundswell of over 100 young people collectively refused the universal draft law in Israel, the Defense Service Law of 1986. Being on the board of Jewish Voice for Peace, the group which led the international campaign of support of the young Shministim refuseniks, you wrote a letter in support of their refusal. Can you talk a little about the importance of war resistance, particularly supporting the Israeli refusers in this case?

ZINN: There's no question in my mind that I should give my support to any Israeli soldier who refuses to serve, given the immorality of the Israeli attack on Gaza, and given the immorality of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. To me, the resistance and refusal of soldiers to serve in an army of occupation or in an aggressive war is extremely important. Because, while you can have many different expressions of opposition to an immoral war, there's no form of resistance more powerful, more troubling to the occupying power, or to the aggressive military power, than when their own soldiers refuse to serve. And I'm going by the history of GI resistance during the war in Vietnam. While the resistance took many different forms—and many different parts of the population joined the movement against the war—what I believe was most decisive was that the United States government could not depend on the military. The ROTC chapters were being closed and these chapters had been
supplying young officers to the battlefield. GIs in the field were becoming more and more demoralized; they were taking drugs and fragging their officers—that is, rolling hand grenades under the tents of their officers. They were engaged in violent resistance to the continuing war. Toward the end of the war, there were B-52 pilots that refused to fly planes over Ha Noi and Hai Phong.

The writer David Cortwright wrote a book about GI resistance to the war in Vietnam, Soldiers in Revolt, where he details the great number of desertions, the great number of acts of fragging, the many examples of soldiers refusing to go out on patrol; soldiers wearing black armbands in support of the anti-war demonstrations that were taking place back at home. And he comes to the conclusion that the actions of soldiers was absolutely critical in causing the United States to decide it could not continue the war.

I use this as an historical example to suggest the importance of the actions of the Israeli refuseniks—even though at this point their numbers aren't crucial enough to stop what Israel is doing. But if those numbers grow, then the Israeli government may face a very difficult decision. And the numbers can grow if these early resisters create an example. If their actions are publicized and supported.

GMS: In a speech delivered on the Boston Common in 1971, you observed that: "We grow up in a controlled society, and the very language we use is corrupted from the time we learn to speak and read. And those who have the power, they decide the meaning of the words that we use.... When nuns and priests, horrified by the burning of children [in Vietnam], construct actions that do no violence to human life, they're arrested for 'conspiracy to kidnap.' And when the government reaches into a million homes and snatches the young men out of them under penalty of imprisonment, and gives them uniforms and guns and sends them off to die, that is not kidnapping. That's 'selective service.'" How important, then, is language in political matters, and how can we do what you suggested in that 1971 speech and "restore the meaning of words"?

ZINN: I think it's very important—very educational—to ask people to examine language carefully and see how it can be used in other than ordinary ways. Why can't "murder" be applied to bombings? And, yes, "kidnapping" to conscription. And taxation of the poor as "theft." And examine "defense" carefully to see if it really is that, and if "national security" is really about security. And notice "terrorism" is used with a double standard in the "war on terror."

GMS: In your 1968 book Disobedience and Democracy, you wrote: "It is good for citizens to learn that laws, when they seriously encroach on human rights, should be violated, that some conditions are so intolerable that they may require violations of otherwise reasonable laws (like traffic laws) to dramatize them." This last word you use—the word "dramatize"—in everyday usage invokes the idea of "creating a spectacle" of sorts, representing the essence of theater and drama. Is this analogy between civil disobedience and plays and drama too far-fetched?

ZINN: I think they are all part of the spectrum of disobedience. There are all sorts of plays, some for sheer entertainment. Some are explicitly demonstrations of resistance to authority, like Arthur Miller's The Crucible or Sophocles's Antigone, or Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot. Ibsen and Shaw embody resistance in their plays—mostly indirectly. Many plays are not directly political, but make a critical statement about modern commercial society, like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman or David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross.

In the same sense, crossing a line, sitting down, violating a trespassing law, destroying property—which was done, let's say, by priests and nuns during the Vietnam War as they destroyed draft records—is the difference between these acts of civil disobedience and artistic expressions of refusal and disobedience. But they're both part of resistance to authority in a spectrum of opposition to existing policies.

GMS: You also said in Disobedience and Democracy that civil disobedience is not just to be tolerated—rather, civil disobedience "is a necessity." Can you explain?

ZINN: What I mean is that the ordinary structure of government—even a so-called democratic government like the United States—that appears to be democratic. It has a constitution, it has elections, it has a legislature. Certainly it's different than a monarchy or a tyranny or a dictatorship. And I think the same thing is true of Israel—Israel has a parliament, people are elected in Israel, it has courts, it has procedures. But those structures generally operate to maintain the status quo. If you're going to have real democracy, the will of the people is going to express itself. The will of the people very often is not represented by people who are elected to office. If the desire of people to change policy is to find expression, it will not be able to find that expression in going to the polls and voting for one candidate or another. It will not find expression in what are the deliberations of Congress, or the Knesset—or any kind of legislative body. Therefore democracy—meaning, the
participation of people in government, in decision-making—may require civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience means acts of citizens outside of the structure, but which represent the feelings or desires of the people. They must be considered necessities in order to establish what the will of the people is. Because if you only go by elections and parliamentary debates, you will omit very powerful feelings that may exist in the population, which are not represented that way. Civil disobedience is a way of bringing the feelings, the desires, the ideas of people to the attention of the public and to the attention of the government.

GMS: The Shministim today or Dr. King in Alabama 1963 or Henry Thoreau during the Mexican-American War, each committed disobedience actions and went to prison—instances of people accepting the state's unjust form of punishment as a dramatic message of protest to an unjust law. But if the punishment itself is unjust in its connection to the unjust law it serves, how does one know when to go to prison as a protest, or when to evade capture as another form of protest?

ZINN: I go back to the Civil Rights and anti-war movements. We see both instances—that is, we see Martin Luther King not trying to evade punishment, but going to prison after an act of civil disobedience. On the other hand, during the anti-war movement, while many people went to jail, we also see other people who refuse to go to jail, who go underground. Angela Davis did that in California. The Berrigan brothers did that after the raid on the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland. I would argue that, depending on the situation, you may choose one or the other. It isn't that one is more moral than the other. I think it's a matter of tactics if somebody decides to go to jail. If Martin Luther King decides to go to jail, he thinks that his going to jail will be a very dramatic act and will mobilize public opinion. On the other hand, during the Vietnam War, when Father Daniel Berrigan refused to go to jail and went underground, he was making a different kind of statement. He was making a
statement that the same authorities that made an unjust law want to enforce an unjust judicial decision and send the civil disobedient person to prison. And Father Berrigan felt that he had to continue his act of civil disobedience. Not just to engage in the initial act of disobeying a law—protesting against the war—but to carry the civil disobedience further into disobeying the judicial injunction to go to jail, not accepting the legitimacy of the state.

GMS: One of the common arguments against civil disobedience is that if we tolerate one kind of civil disobedience it'll proliferate law-breaking all over the place and crime rates will go up, etc.

ZINN: Well, of course, you can test it empirically. You can see whether a time in history when many acts of civil disobedience were committed on behalf of a political cause led to an increase in crime. And you don't find that to be true at all. In fact, I would argue the opposite. I would argue that the existence of a social movement very often draws the energy of people who might otherwise commit crimes into a social movement where the illegal acts they commit are not for personal benefit, but are for a social good. There's no evidence—as I say, empirically, historically—that acts of civil disobedience lead to a greater increase in crime.

GMS: What about the other major argument against civil disobedience, that even if it is conceded by the state it should absolutely always be nonviolent under all circumstances?

ZINN: I do not believe in violent acts of civil disobedience, but I think it's very important to define violence. I make a distinction between violence against human beings and violence against property. I don't believe that acts of civil disobedience should involve violence against human beings, even if those human beings are agents of the state—police and so on. However, I don't believe that property should be considered on the same level as a human life or the human body. I don't consider when the draft boards were raided during the Vietnam and people destroyed draft records or when people broke into nuclear facilities or places that were producing nuclear submarines and did some destruction—mostly symbolic—of nuclear warheads or poured blood on them or in some way destroyed or abused property. I don't consider those acts of violence. I think that's an important distinction.

I recall that Nelson Mandela was sentenced to his long term in prison not because he advocated violence against human beings, he did not. As a member of the African National Congress, he was advocating sabotage. And, to me, sabotage—the destruction of property which is important for carrying out the war, or which is sort of part of the apparatus of the state in forcing injustice—violence against these things should not be ruled out in acts of civil disobedience. In fact, they may be some of the most effective ways of expressing opposition to state policies.

GMS: With the odds of obedience and acquiescence stacked up so high against disobedience, where might we find optimism amid overwhelming force and ideology?

ZINN: Yes, there's a much greater history of obedience than disobedience. And we would be unrealistic and utopian if we were to claim otherwise. But, of course, that should not deter us from doing what we think is right. The power of the state, the power of the media, the economic power wielded by the people who hold the wealth of society is so great that they are able to command the minds and the obedience of large numbers of people—the majority of people—most of the time. It is a very difficult struggle against this molding of public opinion—to change the minds of people by acts of civil disobedience. I don't want to minimize the difficulty of it, but I'm suggesting that, as difficult as it is, it's an effort that must be undertaken. Especially because the establishment has so much power.

Acts which only stay within the law are not sufficient, they do not have the force to change things. Acts of civil disobedience—because of their drama, because of their power to excite people, and incite people to further acts of civil disobedience—are necessary. Despite the tendency of populations to obey authority, we have enough historical instances where people stopped obeying authority, and as a result of stopping their obedience they made changes in society. When workers stopped being obedient to their employers and went out on strike, they were able to succeed. When in the 1880s workers stopped being obedient and went out on strike all over the country, they won the eight-hour day. When in the 1930s in the United States workers stopped being obedient to their employers and engaged in strikes all over the country, including sitting down in the factories and refusing to leave, well, then they broke the cycle—the long cycle—of obedience. They won the rights to trade unions and to
changes in their conditions.

GMS: In your essay, "Respecting the Holocaust," you recount how when you were teaching at Boston University, you were invited to give a talk on the Holocaust. You spoke that night, not about the murder of six million Jews during World War II, but of the U.S.-sponsored death squad massacres of hundreds of thousands of people in Central America, which was going on at the time. Can you explain what made you want to talk on that issue? What you did caused a lot of anger.

ZINN: I suggested that we should extend our concern beyond the Holocaust that took place in Europe—not omitting it and not ignoring it—but extend it to present-day situations, so that the Holocaust that took place in Europe is not simply an event in history which comes to an end. Because if it does, if you're only concerned with that, if you stop history in 1945, what good are you doing to the world, what lesson is learned from that holocaust? Then you're just engaging in a kind of a memorial for the people who died, but you're showing no concern for people still living who may be the victims of other genocides and other holocausts. I suggested it was important not to ignore the Holocaust of World War II, but to extend our concern to the atrocities going on in our time. I gave the death squads of Central America, supported by the United States, as an example of the kind of terrible crimes being committed after the Holocaust, which should not be ignored. The best way, the most
important way, to remember the Holocaust is simply not to concentrate on the past, which is rather fruitless, but to apply your concern to things going on today.

Gabriel Matthew Schivone is a student at Prescott College and a columnist for the Arizona Daily Wildcat at UA. He is the recipient of the 2007 Frederica Hearst Prize for Lyrical Poetry, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, and a volunteer with No More Deaths. His articles have been published in Counterpunch and the Monthly Review among other publications.

Jewish Peace News

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Restoring the water supply

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Atlanta Jews and Udi Aloni React to Toronto Film Festival

Thursday, September 24, 2009

The battlefield of legitimacy

Friday, September 18, 2009

Update: Toronto Declaration - No Celebration of Occupation

Thursday, September 17, 2009

If I Forget Thee O Gaza

Monday, September 14, 2009

General Strike October 1st

U.S. is blind to limits of Palestinian politics

The Spectrum of Disobedience - an interview with Howard Zinn / zmag.org

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