Thursday, September 30, 2010

Collectively Addicted to Occupation and Apartheid? The Benefits of Avoiding Peace

Jonathan Cook presents a compact introduction to the intricate web of special interests that sustain Israel's occupation policies. The crux of his presentation is that large and influential sectors of Israeli society, not just that obvious political target known as 'the settlers', benefit from the occupation. In fact, the Israeli elite, which comprises many secular, Ashkenazi citizens, and is considered the most dovish sector of Israeli society, may be the champion of all profiteers: Israel's hi-tec industries, many of them focused on sophisticated "security" products, are an essential component of the country's successful endless-war/no-peace economy. No wonder that most voters belonging to this sector of society have easily found their way to the no-different-from-Likkud Kadima party, which does not even pretend to be a proponent of urgently needed progressive social reform or a real ending of the occupation, not to mention reconciliation with our neighbors (causes to which the
moribund Labour party has at least been paying lip service).

For a more elaborate presentation of the themes in Cook's article, please read chapter 21, "Losing the Peace Incentive: Israel as Warning", in Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine":
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/part7/chapter21

For further information about that intricate web of profiteering, please see the Israeli database
"Who Profits from the Occupation?" http://whoprofits.org/

This information is highly relevant to the ongoing debate on the desirable scope of sanctions against Israeli policies. A coalition of diverse interest groups - not just the ideological settlers in Ofra and Kiryat Arba but also those secular CEO's of software companies in Tel-Aviv who regard the former as loonies and their places of residence as remote lunar colonies - now have a common interest: maintaining the status-quo! Many Israelis have become structurally dependent, albeit in an indirect manner, on severe, endemic human rights violations, for their high standards of living. This amounts to a form of collective addiction, and rehab has been long overdue. If this is the case, the comprehensive campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, which targets much more than the so-called 'settlement industry', may be justified.

Ofer Neiman

Rela Mazali and Racheli Gai add:
We'd like to draw special attention to the role of the military and related "security" outfits, and their connection to the US. The myriad US companies making a killing off of the occupation have, of course, inherent interest in keeping it going.

"The ranks of Israel's career soldiers, and associated security services such as the Shin Bet secret police, have ballooned during the occupation.

The demands of controlling another people around the clock justifies huge budgets, the latest weaponry (much of it paid for by the United States) and the creation of a powerful class of military bureaucrat.

While teenage conscripts do the dangerous jobs, the army's senior ranks retire in their early forties on full pensions, with lengthy second careers ahead in business or politics. Many also go on to profit from the burgeoning "homeland security" industries in which Israel excels. Small specialist companies led by former generals offer a home to retired soldiers drawing on years of experience running the occupation.

Those who spent their service in the West Bank and Gaza Strip quickly learn how to apply and refine new technologies for surveillance, crowd control and urban warfare that find ready markets overseas. In 2006 Israel's defence exports reached $3.4bn, making the country the fourth largest arms dealer in the world."


http://www.counterpunch.org/cook09282010.html

Too Heavy a Price for Israeli Elites?

JONATHAN COOK: Reasoning Against Peace / Counter Punch

September 28, 2010


With the resumption of settlement construction in the West Bank yesterday, Israel's powerful settler movement hopes that it has scuttled peace talks with the Palestinians.

It would be misleading, however, to assume that the only major obstacle to the success of the negotiations is the right-wing political ideology the settler movement represents. Equally important are deeply entrenched economic interests shared across Israeli society.

These interests took root more than six decades ago with Israel's establishment and have flourished at an ever-accelerating pace since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the 1967 war.

Even many Israeli Jews living within the recognised borders of Israel privately acknowledge that they are the beneficiaries of the seizure of another people's lands, homes, businesses and bank accounts in 1948. Most Israelis profit directly from the continuing dispossession of millions of Palestinian refugees.

Israeli officials assume that the international community will bear the burden of restitution for the refugees. The problem for Israel's Jewish population is that the refugees now living in exile were not the only ones dispossessed.

The fifth of Israel's citizens who are Palestinian but survived the expulsions of 1948 found themselves either transformed into internally displaced people or the victims of a later land-nationalisation programme that stripped them of their ancestral property.

Even if Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, signed away the rights of the refugees, he would have no power to do the same for Israel's Palestinian citizens, the so-called Israeli Arabs. Peace, as many Israelis understand, would open a Pandora's box of historic land claims from Palestinian citizens at the expense of Israel's Jewish citizens.

But the threat to the economic privileges of Israeli Jews would not end with a reckoning over the injustices caused by the state's creation. The occupation of the Palestinian territories after 1967 spawned many other powerful economic interests opposed to peace.

The most visible constituency are the settlers, who have benefited hugely from government subsidies and tax breaks designed to encourage Israelis to relocate to the West Bank. Peace Now estimates that such benefits alone are worth more than $550 million a year.

Far from being a fringe element, the half a million settlers constitute nearly a tenth of Israel's Jewish population and include such prominent figures as foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Hundreds of businesses serving the settlers are booming in the 60 per cent of the West Bank, the so-called Area C, that falls under Israel's full control. The real estate and construction industries, in particular, benefit from cut-price land -- and increased profits -- made available by theft from Palestinian owners.

Other businesses, meanwhile, have moved into Israel's West Bank industrial zones, benefiting from cheap Palestinian labour and from discounted land, tax perks and lax enforcement of environmental protections.

Much of the tourism industry also depends on Israel's hold over the holy sites located in occupied East Jerusalem.

This web of interests depends on what Akiva Eldar, of the Haaretz newspaper, terms "land-laundering" overseen by government ministries, state institutions and Zionist organisations. These murky transactions create ample opportunities for corruption that have become a staple for Israel's rich and powerful, including, it seems, its prime ministers.

But the benefits of occupation are not restricted to the civilian population. The most potent pressure group in Israel -- the military -- has much to lose from a peace agreement, too.

The ranks of Israel's career soldiers, and associated security services such as the Shin Bet secret police, have ballooned during the occupation.

The demands of controlling another people around the clock justifies huge budgets, the latest weaponry (much of it paid for by the United States) and the creation of a powerful class of military bureaucrat.

While teenage conscripts do the dangerous jobs, the army's senior ranks retire in their early forties on full pensions, with lengthy second careers ahead in business or politics. Many also go on to profit from the burgeoning "homeland security" industries in which Israel excels. Small specialist companies led by former generals offer a home to retired soldiers drawing on years of experience running the occupation.

Those who spent their service in the West Bank and Gaza Strip quickly learn how to apply and refine new technologies for surveillance, crowd control and urban warfare that find ready markets overseas. In 2006 Israel's defence exports reached $3.4bn, making the country the fourth largest arms dealer in the world.

These groups fear that a peace agreement and Palestinian statehood would turn Israel overnight into an insignificant Middle Eastern state, one that would soon be starved of its enormous US subsidies. In addition, Israel would be forced to right a historic wrong and redirect the region's plundered resources, including its land and water, back to Palestinians, depriving Jews of their established entitlements.

A cost-benefit calculus suggests to most Israeli Jews -- including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu -- that a real solution to their conflict with the Palestinians might come at too heavy a price to their own pockets.

................................................................
--------
Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Friday, September 24, 2010

Armed Militias Loose in Silwan and the “Illegality” of a Peace and Mourning Tabernacle in Sheikh Jarah

Armed Militias Loose in Silwan and the "Illegality" of a Peace and Mourning Tabernacle in Sheikh Jarah

Jerusalem or Gaza - where is it worse to be Palestinian? The question was posed by veteran journalist Amira Hass two weeks ago. Surprisingly (or not), her detailed answer is that things are worse in East Jerusalem:

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/jerusalem-or-gaza-where-is-it-worse-to-be-palestinian-1.313485 . The following eyewitness accounts by prominent Israeli activists corroborate her findings.

In her article, Hass discusses a recent report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI):
Unsafe Space: The Israeli Authorities' Failure to Protect Human Rights amid Settlements in East Jerusalem: http://www.acri.org.il/eng/story.aspx?id=763. The obvious conclusion from this report is that when it comes to East Jerusalem, the Israeli police are simply the settlers' police (with government backing). In Silwan, the grip of the settlers' police is especially tight. One has to visit this very densely populated village come town, on a steep hill, resembling a Brazilian favela from a distance, to see the contrasting living conditions for most of its 55,000 local inhabitants, on the one hand, and 300 pampered settlers, on the other hand. For background on Silwan, and details about a recent protest action there, see Joel Beinin's report: Confronting Settlement Expansion in East Jerusalem -http://www.merip.org/mero/mero021410.html.

The settlers in Silwan are also served by militias in the form of private "security" contractors (whose nefarious conduct is being funded by the Israeli tax payer). Both policemen and armed citizens can roam around the place surrounded by an aura of impunity. The fatal shooting incident on Wednesday 22/9, when Samer Sarhan, a 32 year old father of five was killed by one these "security" personnel, is only one of the tips of the iceberg (although this iceberg has been documented quite well in reports such as ACRI's).

It should be noted that developments on the ground in Silwan (or the "City of David" according to Israeli propaganda-speak) have far-reaching geopolitical implications. In a recent interview, Israel's Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, outlining his tenets for a final status agreement, referred to Silwan in the context of a "special regime":
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/barak-to-haaretz-israel-ready-to-cede-parts-of-jerusalem-in-peace-deal-1.311356
This means that Israeli officials now feel that the encroachment in Silwan has progressed to a point where global recognition of Israeli control, perhaps even sovereignty, can be demanded.

As for the following two accounts, the first one was written by Daniel Argo, a young Jerusalemite, a physician and a dedicated, courageous activist. He can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOwQL7w_Rg

being arrested and severely beaten by the police during the demonstration held in Silwan on 1/9/2010 (see Joel' Beinin's report). The report was first published on the Sheikh Jarrah - Solidarity group's website. Daniel's report reflects activists' frustration with the fact that Israeli mainstream media ignores conclusive evidence presented by peace activists and willingly serves as a mouthpiece for the police and for the army, even when their claims are ridiculous and mendacious.

The second report was written by David Shulman, a veteran activist and a professor of Indian studies at the Hebrew University. His excellent reports from Mount Hebron and other places in the occupied Palestinian territory have been published in the anthology "Dark Hope - Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine": http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/755748.html . David recounts the day's events in another locus of protest, Sheikh Jarrah, where the settlers' police actions were certainly less fatal, but no less grotesque.

The people of Silwan, as well as those Israeli activists trying to assist them, need our help in making their voices heard.

Ofer Neiman

---------------------------------

http://www.en.justjlm.org/226 (Sheikh Jarah - Solidarity group's website – recommended)

Jerusalem Syndrome

by Daniel Argo

You never know what kind of a day you've woken up to in this city. Will it be a lazy and serene day, the first day of a vacation that I've waited so long for, or a day where the entire city turns into a Kafkaesque story. But perhaps it's not the city – but the people who live here. So here's the story: it's about murder; the police; detainees; missing people; hate; lies and loads of stupidity and folly. In short a typical day in East Jerusalem.

1. The Murder: At around 4 AM one of the settlers' private security guards opened fire in the direction of some residents in Silwan. At least one man was killed by the shots. 32 year old Samer Sarhan, a father of five. These are all the facts that are certain. According to the security guard he was pelted with stones and his life was in danger. According to Silwan residents Samer was on his way from his home to work and the guard prevented him from continuing, during the ensuing argument the guard took out his pistol and fired.

2. The backdrop: The Jewish settlers in Silwan have a set up a private armed militia for themselves, and we all foot the bill. 65 million New Israeli Shekels ($17.5 Million) are paid out every year by the Israeli Ministry of Housing to guard a couple of hundred Jewish settlers in the middle of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem. The guards are regularly briefed by the settlers, and very often are hired by the heads of the right-wing organizations. The guards are armed only with live ammunition. This is how an armed militia that is operated by the settlers came to be.

These militiamen have opened with live fire at least seven times in the last three months. And those are just the occurrences that I am aware of, apparently there have been many more. This time it ended in disaster.

3. Silencing: From the moment that the murder took place the Jerusalem Police started a comprehensive operation to silence the matter. Large police forces surrounded the event site and prevented people from getting near. When it became known that a man was shot in Silwan, the police spokesperson stated that it was the result of a dispute between clans. This announcement was made hours after police forces were at the site and had already questioned the security guard. The pinnacle of the event for me was that the police reporters that I talked to continued to assert during the course of the morning that this was a case of a dispute between rival clans, despite the fact that the guard reconstructed the event before our eyes. They sucked up their information directly from the police spokesperson.

4. Missing people: Up until now, 18 hours after the event, nobody knows exactly how many people were injured by the shooting. Early rumours contended that there was another casualty, and 18 year-old youth who was in the area. Jerusalem hospitals, the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Abu Kabir and the Israeli Magen David Adom refused to provide any information whatsoever regarding those injured or killed during the event, and what their condition was. Even the information that Samer was killed was given to his family only many hours later. According to reporters a blanket silence such as this, where no one is willing to provide information, many hours after the event, was exceptional to say the least. Although we've already seen situations where hospitals and Magen David Adom have been threatened by the Israeli security forces and prefer not to become embroiled, however, in general, after a couple of hours the information becomes public. Not in this case. (As opposed to the
conspicuous prominence of hordes of Israeli hospital directors who are interviewed after every Palestinian terrorist attack).

5. Arrest warrants against Israeli left-wing activists: How do you get rid of a left-wing activist who's in the area? For this too the police have a creative solution. A "Solidarity Sheik Jarrah" activist was arrested in Silwan this morning and was taken in for a police interview about an event that had taken place on April 30th this year. Their timing is a bit curious, the activist was apparently to close to the crime scene at the time that the security guard was reconstructing the murder.

6. Meanwhile in Sheik Jarrah…: 60 "Solidarity" activists and Palestinian residents decided despite the events to build a sukkah in the neighbourhood, next to one of the residents' house. The sukkah which was planned as part of the joint celebration of Sukkot (The Jewish Festival of Booths) was also meant to serve as a mourners' tent regarding the murder in Silwan. Three building inspectors from the Jerusalem Municipality (who apparently remembered that they are supposed to provide services to East Jerusalem) turned up accompanied by dozens of police and demolished the sukkah time after time. Somehow they overlooked two giant sukkahs that the Jewish settlers had built in the neighbourhood, not to mention hundreds in the public domain throughout the city. And so, the peace sukkah in Sheikh Jarrah became the only one to be destroyed during the holiday.

7. Kafkaesque arrests: 2 women activists were arrested during the course of the inspectors' courageous assault on the sukkah. Here too the police achieved a new record for creativity. The arresting police officer decided to arrest one of the activists since the Jewish settlers might assault her in the future. And so the activist was brought into the police station in order to ensure her safety. The brave soldier Schweik would certainly be jealous of such a plot twist.

8. From the media: "Dozens of left-wing activists attempted to approach the Tomb of Simon the Righteous in the area where Jews reside in Sheik Jarrah, the police prevented them and detained one activist for interrogation regarding the breach of public peace and assault against a police officer". This is the wording of the police announcement regarding the events in Sheik Jarrah, which the media hurried to parrot. This was definitely a comprehensive report regarding an event in which activists constructed a sukkah next to a Palestinian home, and the police destroyed it time after time. It's interesting to note that the Police doesn't believe its own announcements: the proof being that neither of the activists arrested was accused of assault.

9. At the end of the day: It's now evening in Jerusalem. The festival of lies, distortions and fictions has run its course. Apparently, only to resume again tomorrow. Tomorrow will bring a new dawn, in which each of us will have to choose between being a captive of the "Jerusalem Syndrome" or to see one' self as part of the hard reality, to which the city awakes every morning.

Good night.

------------------------------------

September 22, 2010 Sheikh Jarrah, Succot

by David Shulman

It may sound unlikely, but we're in 'Uthman ibn 'Affan Street in Sheikh Jarrah and, together with Salah and other Palestinian friends from the neighborhood, we're building a succah. The Succot holiday, my favorite, starts tonight. Religious Jews build little booths covered with palm fronds and eat and sleep in them for seven nights, a memory of the forty years of wandering in the desert and a reminder of the precariousness of all that exists, all that we value and love. You're supposed to be able to see the stars through the fronds that provide a make-shift roof; honored guests, beginning with the Patriarchs and ending on day seven with King David, are invited to visit each day.

But why build one in Sheikh Jarrah, in the street where the al-Ghazi and al-Kurd houses have been taken over by Israeli settlers and the Palestinian owners driven out? Mr. Al-Kurd, dignified and calm as always, is watching over the construction. New and surprising forms of Palestinian-Israeli friendship have sprung up in this neighborhood in the course of the ongoing struggle, with its weekly demonstrations—often violently suppressed by the police (over a hundred demonstrators have been arrested during the last eight or nine months). The demonstrations are usually on Friday afternoon, but last week's was cancelled because of Yom Kippur. Two nights before the fast, however, there was a joint prayer session in Sheikh Jarrah, and the exquisite texts of the Selichot—supplications for forgiveness—were read out together, in Arabic and Hebrew, by the activists and the evicted families, standing on this same tortured street, with the settlers jeering at them. I heard that many of our
people had tears in their eyes.

There's no question that the Jews have a lot to ask forgiveness for. There's something shocking to me, still, in the High Holiday time in Israel. I live in a mixed neighborhood that has, over the years, like most neighborhoods in Jerusalem, becoming increasingly right-wing. Many of my neighbors are religious and, of course, strident nationalists, and some of them are even what I would call soft-core racists. They find it convenient to hate Palestinians, or Arabs in general, and they feel no compunction whatsoever about the Israeli settlement project and the ongoing theft of Palestinian land, on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, proceeding apace day by day. So how is it, I ask myself—you have to forgive my stubborn innocence—that these same neighbors can spend Yom Kippur praying for forgiveness for their sins without even noticing that we, the people of Israel, are guilty of terrible crimes against our Palestinian brothers and sisters? Why bother going to the synagogue at
all if you are so blind to the suffering of others, if you are living a lie? I know I'll never understand.

So here we are building together a succat shalom, a Succah of Peace—another resonant phrase from the prayer book—and the police are, of course, here in force together with the Jerusalem municipality's building inspectors, and they've given us notice that what we are doing is illegal and they will destroy the succah as soon as it's built. You should know that the city is absolutely filled with succot, thousands of them, many of them built (without permits, of course) on sidewalks and other public thoroughfares (in some areas, such as Nahlaot, you can barely negotiate your way along the street), and none of them, it goes without saying, is in danger of being demolished—since they are good Jewish succot, after all, respectable appurtenances of the tribe. But a Palestinian-Israel Peace Succah, that's clearly another matter. There's no way the police will let it stand. It's a public menace. It might disturb for a few moments the proper order of a world in which
Palestinians can be ruthlessly driven from their homes, and those who protest against this cruelty will be thrown in jail. It might even make some ordinary person stop and think when he or she reads the inscription on the cloth panel forming one of the succah's sides: "The Sheikh Jarrah Succah of Peace." Who knows what unsettling thoughts this rickety structure of poles and tinsel decorations might engender? Besides, we're building it right outside the houses the settlers have stolen, and the pious settlers might take offense.

It's somehow comforting to engage in these doomed, purely symbolic actions; it feels right. The very futility of it all makes it all the better, all the more necessary, even fun; in fact, the more absurd the better. Credo quia absurdum est. And there is the friendship infusing this moment and giving it meaning. We were here ten days ago for a joint 'Id al-Fitr/Rosh Hashana party, and Mr. Al-Kurd spoke with his usual gracious forbearance, thanking us for standing beside them, and a little Palestinian girl took the microphone and said, "We are tired of the settlers' stealing our homes and our toys." I have to confess, though, that today, as the afternoon wears on and the succah is destroyed, not once but twice, I'm also feeling very angry. This has been a tough day. In the early hours of the morning, a security guard employed by the Jewish settlers in Silwan, under the walls of the Old City, shot and killed a 32-year-old Palestinian man, Samir Sirhan, a father of five. I wasn't there
to see it, I don't know exactly how it happened, but I can say with confidence that if there were no Israeli enclave planted by force in the heart of Palestinian Silwan, with an armed mercenary militia to "protect" it, Samir would probably still be alive. Another two, at least, were wounded (the police have clamped down a news blackout, no one knows for sure how many were hurt). Amiel got there early and was, of course, arrested. (You can be quite sure that nothing will happen to the security guard who shot and killed.) Silwan, meanwhile, has erupted in violent protest. It wouldn't take much to spark off another Intifada, especially the way things are going, with Netanyahu refusing to renew the "freeze" on building in the settlements. If the talks collapse over this, as they may, or over some other piece of wicked foolishness, another round of violence is all too likely: that was the Chief of Staff's assessment, as of yesterday. You have to remember, too, that every single
housing
unit that goes up in the territories is a crime under international law as well as a crime against ordinary human decency and against God, if there is a God.

So our succah is also planned as a Booth of Mourning for Samir, as is customary among Palestinians—another reason, no doubt, for the authorities to attack it. The Sheikh Jarrah protest, perhaps the most hopeful development in the Israeli peace movement in recent years, is closely allied with grass-roots Palestinian protest in Silwan. Three weeks ago we held a medium-size demonstration in Silwan against El'ad, the settler organization that effectively rules the village and that has been given responsibility for the archaeological site there, which they call the City of David, the most sensitive such site in the country (another unthinkable outrage, possible only in Israel). Every year El'ad runs an archaeological conference and tour in Silwan, open to the public, and we were there to protest. We managed to make ourselves heard, at considerable cost; Daniel, standing right beside me, was brutally battered, kicked, and trampled by the police, without provocation, and taken off,
bleeding profusely, his glasses shattered, to jail; Ram was seriously wounded in the foot by a border policeman; several others were also hurt, and eight arrested. I found it more depressing than usual, though in our terms these days the demonstration counts as a success. I had just returned from India, and the renewed encounter with hard-core monotheists was something of a shock.

For the record, and in brief, here is how the Succah comes crashing down. It's standing there on the sidewalk, miraculously held together by strings and poles, as a Succah should be, and gaudily decorated with paper cut-outs and bright paintings and shiny flowers which we prepared together with the Palestinian children. Looks not bad. Nissim says we should apply to the annual competition for the Most Beautiful Succah prize. It huddles under a large fig tree whose branches spill over the courtyard wall; indeed, the Succah could easily be taken as no more than a slight extension of this beautiful tree. We're rather proud of it. We stand inside it as the police advance, and of course it's not very sturdy so within about three minutes it's been ripped apart, the poles strewn over the street, the palm fronds snapped, the decorations mangled and torn. At just this moment one of the settlers walks into the courtyard of his stolen house carrying a large palm frond for his succah,
which, I assure you, no one will demolish; he wishes us a happy holiday. I can also assure you that ours is the only succah to be destroyed by the municipality this year.

Silan is arrested during this short altercation. As soon as it's over, we start again. This time we forget about the poles on the sidewalk; we will hang the cloth panels down from a few wooden rods resting on the enclosure wall and reaching into the fig tree. There's even room for a few more decorations. Salah works happily, defiantly, at making this half-succah fit the classical model, more or less, and after half an hour or so it is, indeed, a passable specimen, and even less of an Obstruction to the Public than its noble predecessor. However, it quickly shares the former's sad fate.

Before the police move in the second time, I take my stand inside this lovable little booth; it's where I want to be. Hillel is standing beside me; he knows Jewish law inside out, so when I say that I'm afraid that this is not quite a kosher succah—for one thing, you definitely can't see the sky (to say nothing, in theory, of any stars)-- he laughs and at once confirms this thought. Still, I decide that since I've helped build it, and I believe deeply in the almost hopeless idea that it embodies, I might as well say the holiday blessing. You're supposed to utter it sitting down, but there's nowhere to sit in the Palestinian-Israeli Succah of Peace in its final moments, so I change the formula just a little: "Blessed art Thou, Lord of the Universe, who has commanded us to stand in the Succah." You know what, maybe He does, after all, exist. Hillel, who knows I've been away in India, asks me if I'm back to stay a while, and I say yes and, a little bitterly, quote
the old Zionist song: "I've come up to the Land to build and be built." I wave my arms at our fragile, tacky, quixotic creation. "As you can see," I say, "so far it's not going very well."


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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
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Rachel Marcuse's report on her "Birthright" trip to Israel.

Rachel Marcuse spent 10 days in Israel as part of the Taglit-Birthright program -- a fully sponsored trip for young North American Jews to learn more about the country. She went to bear witness and ask questions about the Israeli state's treatment of Palestinians, and to learn about other complex issues in Israel today. After the program, she spent another 10 days elsewhere in Israel and the West Bank of Palestine talking to Israeli Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel, international activists, and Palestinians in the occupied territories. . This series first appeared in rabble.ca .

"Birthright" trips are a major tool employed in an effort to influence how young Jews feel about Israel.
In addition to reading Rachel Marcuse's account of her experiences on the trip, I got to hear in the last couple of years from a few trip participants.
What struck me as particularly interesting in all these accounts is that the way the trips are structured and planned creates conditions that keep participants constantly tired and when there is free time - it's spent in bars, in what seems like an attempt to minimize opportunities to debrief and engage in introspection.
Due to her level of political awareness and willingness to stick her neck out, Marcuse's trip was characterized by a level of engagement with the reality of the Israel/Palestine conflict - which, while small and fleeting, still stands out as unusual. My impression based on other stories is that for the most part
anything to do with these issue is completely hidden from view.
In all, participants are encouraged to form emotional attachments to each other and to the country, while their critical faculties are kept in a more or less constant haze.

Racheli Gai.


http://mondoweiss.net/marcuse?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=5d7fd1cc1a-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email

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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
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Reuven Kaminer queries PACBI on Israeli artists

Reuven Kaminer, whose essay appears below, is one of the elder statesmen of the Israeli left. He was born in Detroit in 1929 and emigrated to Israel in 1951. His wife, Dafna, is a co-founder of the anti-Occupation groups Women in Black and The Coalition of Women for Peace, and his grandson, Matan, is an Israeli military refusenik who recently spent two years in prison for refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. Reuven is a member of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, typically denigrated as an "Arab party" in the Knesset, but he has also in the past been a member of Peace Now, and, as a moderate, he has for example rejected <http://bit.ly/cSvi14> leftist historian Ilan Pappe's critical view <http://bit.ly/adLKU5> of the historic Geneva Accord and Oslo Accord. On the other hand, he has reportedly also opposed the current peace negotiations conducted by the Obama Administration because they aren't grounded in international law, and hence may simply reinforce the existing power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians. His publications are numerous, and include his 1996 book, "The Politics of Protest: the Israeli Peace Movement and the Palestinian Intifada."

Kaminer writes, in what follows, about the criticism leveled by some Palestinian activists against Israeli theater artists who recently declared their refusal to participate in any cultural activities in the West Bank. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) recently surprised some on the left by issuing a sharply critical response <http://bit.ly/bTt1M1> to these dissenting artists. The Israeli artists had received support from a group of 150 prominent American and international theater and film figures -- organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, as the New York Times recently reported <http://nyti.ms/bpprRa> -- and PACBI subsequently issued another communique <http://bit.ly/awKAa1> encouraging these international film and theater people who have rallied around the Israeli artists.

But why has PACBI not similarly defended and encouraged the Israeli artists themselves, who have jeopardized their careers by publicly refusing to perform or exhibit in the Territories? While Kaminer doesn't presume to judge PACBI's motives for criticizing Israeli artists who take risks to undermine the occupation, he does offer some hard-won wisdom for Israelis, Palestinians, and indeed everyone on the left critical of the Israeli occupation: "Solidarity can only be constructed on the basis of mutual respect and a deep understanding of the difficulties of the left opposition in both nations."

--Lincoln Z. Shlensky

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http://reuvenkaminer.blogspot.com/2010/09/pacbi-palestinian-campaign-for-academic.html

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

PACBI – Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel Criticizes the Boycott by Israeli Theater People on Ariel*

As we know, some 60 Israeli theater people came out a few weeks back with a declaration that they will refuse to appear at the Ariel "Culture" Hall located in the occupied territories. It is important to stress that actors-artists are employees subordinate to the administrative and financial owners of the theater who are their employers in every sense. So, we are not speaking only of taking a courageous stand, but an act which puts the actor on a collision course with his boss. And we are not speaking of any kind of profession. An actor, without the theater, cannot work, create or make a living. Therefore, most honest people tend naturally to honor and applaud the brave tens of theater people for their act of protest.

It is also natural that the Israeli theater people received support from abroad. Indeed 150 central cultural figures, mainly from the US and the UK expressed their admiration for the courageous stand of the Israeli theater people.

This chain of events is yet another component in a broad movement in Israel and abroad serving to delegitimize the occupation regime and overall Israeli policies. It is important to note that this movement is itself composed of a variety of various, independent, groups and organizations, each of which has a record of long and difficult struggle against the occupation and its evils.

Boycott in Principle

For quite a while a serious debate has been taking place in our circles and in the broad public as to whether the boycott is an appropriate instrument for our struggle. There are those who argue that any boycott against Israel is unjust, really an act of anti-Semitism. But this is a rather naïve position of those who refuse to recognize the suffering and the deprivation of the Palestinian under Israel occupation. Those who support peace and are struggling against the occupation cannot reject any non violent activity aimed at advancing the struggle against the occupation. It is necessary to add that by virtue of its emotionally charged nature, boycott is never a simple affair. It is always a complex mechanism and should be employed with caution and wisdom. Boycotts should be aimed at a definite goal and should be accompanied with detailed political explanation on the cause and the goals of the boycott.

In general, the left in Israel supports boycott activity that conforms to the aforementioned reservations.

PACBI - The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Those who follow Palestinian politics know that we are talking about a small and energetic group of activists who have a very explicit political agenda. They see in boycott activity a political instrument with a clear and definite message. This message is revealed in the first statement of their program, which declares the purpose of the boycott: "the elimination of the colonization of all Arab lands" <http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=66>. This formulation expresses the position of the group, which negates the existence of the state of Israel. In of itself, there is nothing illegitimate about this position. We are talking about leading intellectuals who are members of a nation oppressed by Israel for decades. Difficulties arise on the strategic level. Within the framework of BDS activity, the PACBI people represent a determined line, which demands that boycott activity should conform to their principled position. It is worth being clear on this question from the onset: they do
not support activity against the occupation in and of itself because they see such activity as a diversion from the main issue. Their hard-line interpretation that all Israel must be considered territory under occupation brought them into conflict with important leaders of the peace movement such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein.

I confess that I am not enthused about getting into a critical discussion about PACBI. I have no doubt regarding the noble intentions of members of the group and their devotion to non-violent struggle against the occupation as they perceive it. However, when they decide to deride the brave struggle of Israeli members of the peace movement and at the same time demonstrate their lack of understanding of our conditions, it is necessary to comment on this. Precisely out of concern for the campaign of the Israeli left against the occupation it is necessary to come out clearly against Palestinian friends who desire to insult with callousness and derision courageous and effective protest.

PACBI Against the Theater People and their International Supporters

We cannot know why PACBI issued, in the space of two days, two separate declarations that deal with the Israeli protest action against the "Cultural" Hall in Ariel. We will deal first with the declaration dated 7th of September <http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=66>. There is nowhere in this text a good word about the activity of the Israeli theater people, and the declaration gives us a detailed and lengthy explanation for this. "While we welcome acts of protest against any manifestation of Israel's regime of colonialism and apartheid, we believe that these acts must be both morally consistent and anchored in international law and universal human rights." These words serve as an introduction to a text in which PACBI explains that the action by the theater people does not meet these criteria.

These are the faults in the behavior of the theater people:

"First, we believe that the exclusive focus on settlement institutions ignores and obscures the complicity of all Israeli academic and cultural institutions in upholding the system of colonial control and apartheid under which Palestinians suffer. PACBI believes there is firm evidence of the collusion of the Israeli academic and cultural establishment with the major oppressive organs of the Israeli state. Focusing solely on obviously complicit institutions, such as cultural centers in a West Bank colony, serves to shield mainstream Israeli institutions from opprobrium or, ultimately, from the growing global boycott movement that consistently targets all complicit institutions. Furthermore, the cherry-picking approach behind targeting a notorious colonial settlement in the heart of the occupied West Bank diverts attention from other institutions built on occupied land. Supporters of this peculiarly selective boycott must be asked: is lecturing or performing at the Hebrew University,
whose Mount Scopus campus sits on occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, acceptable?

The PACBI people go on to submit a list of "test questions" to the theater people: why did they refrain from taking a position against the suffocation of Palestinian cultural institutions in conquered Jerusalem? The PACBI people continue the test questions: "If the artists' and intellectuals' role as voices of moral reason is behind this most recent call to boycott Ariel, where were these voices when academic and cultural institutions were wantonly destroyed in Israel's war of aggression on Gaza in 2008-2009?"

In all seriousness, there is no sincerity and no honesty in referring these questions to these people in these circumstances. The theater people under discussion were never a separate and organized movement but only an ad hoc formation. At the same time, among the theater people there are indeed those who protested the war on Gaza, against the occupation of East Jerusalem and the like. In any event, the "cross examination" style is not appropriate here.

The Second Document

As we have noted PACBI published a second declaration on this subject <http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1353>. The second document, issued two days after the first, is different in that it is in the form of an open letter to the American and English cultural figures who cam out in support of the cultural boycott against the Israeli settlement of the West Bank. Their letter praises and commends the theater, film and television people following their declaration of support of those boycotting Ariel. Reasonably, PACBI calls on the artists abroad to deepen and expand their steps for yet a more comprehensive boycott. However, it is a bit strange to praise and to commend people abroad on their declared support for peace-loving Israelis, while the Israeli activity in itself is not considered worthy in PACBI eyes.

The explanation for this is contained in a paragraph which presents a set of "test questions" similar to those addressed to the Israeli theater people. PACBI wants to know why the cultural figures abroad refuse to act in good time: "In light of this inspiring history, we cannot but ask, why haven't you taken your taboo-breaking position in response to appeals by the overwhelming majority of Palestinians, including almost all leading artists? Why did you have to wait for a relatively small number of dissenting Israeli artists and academics to initiate a boycott, a peculiarly selective and morally-inconsistent one at that? Do authentic voices of the oppressed, especially those in the besieged Gaza Strip, incarcerated in the world's largest open-air prison, also count?" PACBI concludes its letter to the artists abroad that they act according to the spirit of its positions.

In Summary

PACBI, as important as it is, is not the only political factor in Palestinian society, but only one of many Palestinian organizations. While all Palestinians support, in principle, actions against the occupation and against Israeli policies, there are discussions and debates all about the vital issue of strategy and tactics. PACBI represents a version that causes unnecessary difficulties for building the unity of all peace loving forces, who support the Palestinian right of self determination. The recent appearance of an important coalition built on the parties of the Palestinian left and on the political initiative of a grouping around Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is of tremendous importance. This group has criticized the defeatism of Abu Mazen and his people while continuing its support for a just peace. And in respect to our concern here it is important that this coalition supports cooperation on the basis of mutual respect between themselves and the democratic and peace forces in Israel
.
Solidarity can only be constructed on the basis of mutual respect and a deep understanding of the difficulties of the left opposition in both nations.


*This article was written and published originally in Hebrew. I was concerned that its publication in English might needlessly intensify the debate. However, a number of good friends, who are sincerely devoted to BDS activity, requested an English translation, and convinced me of its value.


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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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Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Friday, September 10, 2010

Zochrot: Summary of a Testimony by Amnon Neumann.

Summary of a Testimony by Amnon Neumann - who was a 19 years old soldier during the 1948 war - the Nakba.
It was given at a public hearing organized by Zochrot, on June 17, 2010. The audience consisted of about twenty people. Initiated and organized by Amir Hallel. The testimony was video-recorded by Lia Tarachansky. Miri Barak prepared the transcription. Eitan Bronstein edited, summarized, and added footnotes. Translated to English by Asaf Kedar.

Warning: The testimony is highly distressing at points.

Part of what's so interesting about this is that the old man who testifies, Amnon Neumann, is having an inner conflict about whether to tell his story; which parts to tell and which parts to withhold; and the meaning of what he's telling. He is wrecked with feelings of guilt, even as he expresses certainty that what he did had to be done. At the same time he doesn't feel that as a 19 year old soldier he had the capacity to understand what he was doing.

This story is one of many collected by Zochrot, and organization working to make information about the Nakba known to Israelis.

http://zochrot.org/index.php?id=844


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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
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Avi Shlaim reviews Martin Gilvert's "In Ishmael's House" / The Financial Times

I'm sending this review by Avi Shlaim not in order to promote the particular book under consideration, but because I think that what Shlaim says about Jewish life in Arab and Muslim countries is of great interest.
While Martin Gilbert pursues a version of history where the suffering, discrimination and degradation Jews suffered is what's most emphasized, Shlaim believes that "...the record of tolerance, creative co-existence and multi-culturalism in Muslim lands ...constitutes the best model we have for a brighter future."

Racheli.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8ae6559c-b169-11df-b899-00144feabdc0.html?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=117bd9f06c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email


Avi Shlaim reviews Martin Gilbert's In Ishmael's House

August 30 2010

In Ishmael's House: A History of the Jews in Muslim Lands, by Martin Gilbert, Yale University Press RRP£25, 320 pages


The Jews have a fair claim to be the most persecuted minority in human history. Salo Baron, the American Jewish historian, coined the label "the lachrymose version" for the conventional accounts of Jewish history as a never-ending chain of discrimination, degradation, persecution and suffering, culminating in the Holocaust.

In his new book, historian Martin Gilbert tackles a relatively neglected but fascinating subject: the history of the Jews in Muslim lands. The end result, however, is essentially an extension of this lachrymose version from Europe to the Near East.

The book is ambitious in scope, covering 1,400 years of Jewish-Arab history. The narrative covers the period from the rise of Islam in the 7th century to the present day. It includes the fraught relationship between the Jews of Medina and the Prophet Muhammad, the Crusader conquest of the Holy Land, the Ottoman Empire, the impact of Zionism in the first half of the 20th century and the creation of Israel in 1948. The emphasis throughout is on the fundamental uncertainty of life under Muslim rule: the dual prospects of opportunity and restriction, protection and persecution.

Jewish life under Muslim rule naturally invites comparison with that under Christian rule. Here Gilbert quotes with approval the eminent Jewish scholar Bernard Lewis, who concluded that the situation of the Jews living under Muslim rulers was "never as bad as in Christendom at its worst, nor ever as good as in Christendom at its best". Lewis observes that "there is nothing in Islamic history to parallel the Spanish expulsion and Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, or the Nazi Holocaust". But he goes on to point out that there is nothing in the history of the Jews under Islam "to compare with the progressive emancipation and acceptance accorded to the Jews in the democratic West during the last three centuries".

Gilbert is an anecdotal historian, not an analytical one. He has produced a lively chronicle of the Jews in Muslim countries from Morocco to Afghanistan. He has rich materials at his disposal and he is attentive to the human voices of individuals. But his account is both highly selective and narrowly focused on the Jews. What is missing is the wider political, social and economic context to enable the reader to place the Jewish minority in each Muslim country within its proper historical perspective.

Some examples of Muslim openness, tolerance and courage are given by Gilbert. The bulk of the book, however, consists of examples of Muslim hatred, hostility and cruelty towards the Jews.

Some of the episodes related in the book are blood-curdling, such as the Ba'thi regime's arrest, torture, conviction and public hanging of nine Jews in Baghdad in 1969 on trumped-up charges of being Zionist spies. But episodes of this kind are the exception rather than the rule. By piling one horror story on top of another so relentlessly, Gilbert paints a misleading picture of the life of Isaac in the house of Ishmael. The reality was far more complex. As even Lewis conceded: "The Jews were never free from discrimination, but only rarely subject to persecution."

Nowhere is Gilbert more strikingly one-sided than in his account of the consequences of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In the course of this war, the name Palestine was wiped off the map and 726,000 Palestinians became refugees. In its wake, around 850,000 Jews left the Arab world, mostly to start a new life in the newborn State of Israel. For Gilbert, these Jews are simply the other half of the "double exodus" and he persistently refers to them as "refugees". With few exceptions, however, these Jews left their native lands not as a result of officially sanctioned policies of persecution but because they felt threatened by the rising tide of Arab nationalism. Zionist agents actively encouraged the Jews to leave their ancestral homes because the fledgling State of Israel was desperately short of manpower.

Iraq exemplified this trend. The Iraqi army participated in the War for Palestine, and the Arab defeat provoked a backlash against the Jews back home. Out of a population of 138,000, roughly 120,000 left in 1950-51 in an atmosphere of panic and peril.

I was five years old in 1950 when my family reluctantly moved from Baghdad to Ramat Gan. We were Arab Jews, we spoke Arabic, our roots went back to the Babylonian exile two and a half millennia ago and my parents did not have the slightest sympathy with Zionism. We were not persecuted but opted to leave because we felt insecure. So, unlike the Palestinians who were driven out of their homes, we were not refugees in the proper sense of the word. But we were truly victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Despite all its shortcomings, Gilbert's book is an illuminating and a moving account of the history of the Jews in Arab lands. But he is psychologically hard-wired to see anti-Semitism everywhere. The picture he paints is consequently unbalanced.

By dwelling so persistently on the deficits, he downplays the record of tolerance, creative co-existence and multi-culturalism in Muslim lands which constitutes the best model we have for a brighter future.

Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of 'Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations' (Verso)

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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
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The BDS Movement: a JPN Exchange

The following is an exchange between editors (and a guest-editor) of Jewish Peace News on the topic of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement. The exchange was precipitated by a blog posting on August 31 by Mitchell Plitnick on the subject, and the responses below, written over the past few days, are by Lincoln Shlensky, Rela Mazali, and Ofer Neiman (our guest editor). The exchange is presented from top to bottom in chronological order, except that Mr. Plitnick's original blog post referenced in this exchange is included at the end, as is customary in JPN dispatches. As readers will see, the views expressed strongly differ on the subject of BDS. Jewish Peace News, as an editorial group, does not take a position for or against specific BDS or other political programs; each editor, however, is free to present an opinion, and we place a high value on such editorial diversity.


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Mitchell Plitnick, a former editor of Jewish Peace News and former co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace, who has worked for the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem and now is blogging for Examiner.com, Meretz USA, and other sites, writes informatively in a recent blog posting <http://bit.ly/bzK7Xg> about recent successes of the BDS movement -- and also about the movement's weaknesses.

He cites as an example of the BDS movement's successful tactics the recent decision by the government of Norway to divest from Danya Cebus Ltd. and Africa-Israel Investments because of the companies' involvement in building Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Norway's decision to divest would have been unlikely, Plitnick maintains, were it not for the BDS movement's activism. He rightly points out, however, that what's really hurting the illegal Israeli settlements economically is not divestment by small Skandinavian countries but rather an increasingly stringent boycott of settlement products by the Palestinian Authority. This has sharply cut into the settlements' industrial and trading profits, according to the settlers themselves.

But what distinguishes the PA boycott from other more conspicuous BDS efforts is that the Palestinians have explicitly stated that they are boycotting settlement products -- and not other Israeli products in general. Such a clear distinction between Israel and the settlements is at odds with the strategy of most activist groups associated with the BDS movement, because the BDS movement's agenda has become, by and large, a one-state program. That program implicitly anticipates the end of Israel as a predominantly Jewish, democratic state and therefore serves to radicalize Jewish Israelis against it and to make its aims unacceptable to almost all Western governments --as well as to most Palestinians, the majority of whom demand a separate Palestinian state.

Plitnick argues that it's time for those who seek a democratic and peaceful Israel, and particularly for those who object to Israel's reprehensible occupation of the Palestinian territories, to participate emphatically in the time-honored nonviolent tactic of boycott -- and to do so while clearly drawing a distinction between the settlements and Israel proper. Such a strategy can succeed if the occupation, and not the existence of Israel itself, is the clear target. So far, boycott and divestment have not been nearly as successful as they could be because such tactics have been taken up bluntly rather than, as Plitnick prefers, in a broad-based yet focussed campaign against the settlements. I fully agree that such a well-defined yet inclusive campaign by peace groups and religious and civic organizations against the settlements is increasingly necessary -- and, if articulated potently and cogently, it's attainable.

--Lincoln Z. Shlensky


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I take serious issue with Plitnick's categorical claim that the tool of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions "was taken up by one-staters who believe the only way to address the historic, and massive, injustice done to the Palestinians is by promoting a single state where Jews lose their political self-determination and quickly become a minority in the area in question." As a member of the group supporting BDS from inside Israel and a public supporter of BDS since the early years of this decade, I fail to see any evidence supporting this empirical claim. While prominent members of the BDS movement may concurrently believe in, and support, a one-state solution, there is no necessary link between that and supporting BDS. Many others may support two states while some, in fact, systematically reject the question altogether, concentrated instead on how to end the relentless oppression and dispossession of Palestinians. See, for instance, Michele Warshawsky's formulation, in a piece featured last October on JPN and introduced by editor Joel Beinin, "whether the final result of … de-colonization will be a one-state solution, two democratic states (i.e. not a 'Jewish State'), a federation or any other institutional structure is secondary."

However, implicitly and misleadingly establishing such a link-by-association (through claiming that it just happens to be the fact that supporters of BDS are supporters of one state), provides an easier means of discrediting the 2005 Palestinian Civil Society call for inclusive BDS. It allows opponents such as Plitnick, who supports selective BDS of settlements only, to taint the campaign for inclusive BDS as a tactic of those who reject "Israel's very existence" or those who would totally forfeit "political self-determination" for Jews in Israel. The opposite, self-determination and (supposedly) ensured existence, are in turn erroneously and implicitly equated with "a Jewish Israel," as if this link too were a self-evident fact. These scare allegations, then, serve to sidetrack legitimate debate about the grounds for, and effectiveness of, general BDS.

Resisting that, I propose to return the debate to the actual issue at hand: as is very obvious from the meticulous work and website of "Who Profits?", numerous major players in Israel's economy profit directly and substantially from the violent military oppression and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Other thorough research (such as that of Shlomo Swirsky) has identified the prolonged conflict as a major means of averting social unrest inside Israel, accordingly allowing widespread exploitation of Israel's underclasses. This further benefits major economic players. In resisting the exploitation of Palestinians and their resources, BDS therefore targets Israel's occupation-based economy as well as the cultural structures and patterns enabling and often camouflaging this profiteering, aiming to affect the complacency of Israeli elites. Accordingly, in my view, the convenient compartmentalization proposed by selective boycott and sanctions, may be more catchy and more
"marketable," but in fact misses much of the point.

Finally, to comment briefly, nevertheless on Plitnick's scare claims, I would like to point out that there isn't and never has been "a Jewish Israel." What there is, what I live in, is a Jewish-controlled Israel. Which is not a democracy.

Rela Mazali


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[Ofer Neiman is a contributing editor to Occupation Magazine and The Only Democracy? website. In the near future, we hope to welcome Ofer to the existing list of editors already contributing to Jewish Peace News. Meanwhile, as Ofer is also an activist with the group inside Israel supporting the Palestinian call for BDS, JPN has asked him to add his comments on Plitnick's piece. This is his response:]

The Palestinian BDS call is first and foremost a call for the promotion of universal principles of human rights. From this universal perspective, it should not be difficult to see that there is something inherently flawed about Israel's entire constitutional fabric when it comes to the treatment of its Palestinian citizens, not to mention the specific policies pursued by successive Israeli governments on this issue. Public support for many of these policies has been strong.

Is this situation a result of Israel's construction of settlements, or is the construction of settlements a symptom of a fundamental, collective Israeli ailment? A recent statement issued by Peace Now supporter and Israeli Professor, Yossi Ben Artzi ("I too believe that settlements are the source of all evil in Israel") should serve as a warning sign to us all. Israel will not necessarily become a model society once the settlements are dismantled (and certainly not if they are partially dismantled, under the "settlement bloc" schemes). Uzi toting sheriffs who currently terrorize the inhabitants of the West Bank may end up doing the same in the Negev or in the Galilee under some Judeaization program initiated by a government eager to "compensate" the erstwhile lords of the land for their "humiliation". As responsible Israeli citizens (or concerned Jews all over the world), we must try to preempt such disastrous developments by addressing all the maladies of Israeli society. This means that even the most unpleasant topics should be on the table, including the ongoing plight of the Palestinian refugees since the ethnic cleansing of 1948. The Palestinian BDS call's focus on not one but three issues (Occupation, Discrimination of Israel's Palestinian citizens and Israel's responsibility for the Nakba) is thus morally justified.

Is the BDS call a call for a one state solution? Well, these lines are being written by an Israeli citizen who supports the Geneva Initiative and believes that no BDS campaign can be effective if the only option presented to Israelis is the dismantling of their entire state. Indeed, the BDS call, as Mr. Plitnick admits, is not a call for a single state solution. Do those Palestinian leaders of civil society who are behind the BDS call support a one-state solution? Some of them do, perhaps most of them. If the aforementioned flaws of Israel are incurable, they may even be right. In any case, it should be stressed that there is a difference between the call and its proponents. And when the discussion of UN resolution 194 is implicitly presented by Mr. Plitnick as a bête noire from any pragmatic point of view, it should be noted that even the Geneva initiative presents an agreed upon implementation of this resolution in the framework of a two-state solution. It is also unfortunate that Plitnick puts a statement like "the root of the problem in the Middle East is Israel's very existence." in the mouths of "radical" BDS activists, when these people tend to be the ones who see the broader picture, including the destructive consequences of US meddling in the Middle East, or the non-democratic conduct of reactionary Arab regimes in the region.

If the Palestinian BDS call's moral foundations are accepted, one should still discuss its practical value. Should the boycott campaign be aimed only at the settlements? The Israeli government has indeed expressed concerned over the Palestinian authority's boycott measures. However, a great deal of the protest is related to what Israeli officials and settlers, high on hubris, see as Chutzpah on behalf of what they view as a subordinate authority. The boycott actions are an independent move by the Palestinian Authority, but the muscles it is flexing have atrophied long ago. After all, the global BDS movement's success is due to the fact that the Palestinian Authority has been consistently co-opted by Israel and the US. The Israeli actors' refusal to perform in Ariel has also generated some public debate. However, these recent developments should be put in perspective. The settlers (including those living in East Jerusalem) make up only 7% of Israel's citizens. Most of the settlements are small communities, and many of their inhabitants make their living either through work in Israel (west of the green line) or as state employees in their communities. Therefore, a selective boycott against settlement products will not affect all these settlers. Moreover, Israel can relocate factories currently operating in the West Bank to nearby industrial zones inside the green line borders.

In a 2009 Haaretz article, Journalist Aluf Benn wrote: "Only one thing does bother the Israelis, according to the polls: fear of a diplomatic embargo and an international boycott." It seems that the average Israelis who are concerned about an international boycott are fearful of the broader BDS measures more than they are fearful of selective measures, which may have no impact on their pockets or on their sense of normalization with the outside world.

Ofer Neiman


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Rela Mazali responds to Mitchell Plitnick's blog posting, and implicitly to my endorsement of it, by rejecting any claim that the BDS movement is necessarily linked to one-state positions that deny Israel's legitimacy in its current form. But Plitnick's point, with which I concur, is that folded into the premises of the most prominent elements of the BDS movement is the deeply held notion that Israel cannot remain a legitimate, predominantly Jewish, state without compromising the universalist principles of democracy.

The BDS movement's foremost advocates demonstrate this in their unswerving support for the right of Palestinian refugee return, which, if literally (whatever that means) put into practice, would end the current demographic majority of Jews in Israel and precipitate a further massive displacement of population. It's inconceivable that an actual "return" of refugees and their descendents would do otherwise. Of course, one way that those who support the right of return have tried to evade this issue is to suggest that through negotiations, refugee return might only entail a quasi-symbolic gesture involving the actual repatriation of a small number of Palestinian refugees with the rest receiving monetary or other compensation. But in that case, the "right" of return is not really a right, after all. And who is to say whether most of those refugees who wish to return would be satisfied instead to receive a different form of compensation?

Although I support the general idea that refugees of conflict should be allowed to return whenever possible, it becomes clear, in the complicated and protracted context of Israeli and Palestinian history, that the question of Palestinian refugees cannot simply be resolved by demanding their right to return. The same could be said of analogous cases elsewhere in the world (for example, in the US and Canada), where indigenous peoples who were forcibly transferred from their land will never regain it, but yet must be compensated (that is, assured justice) in other negotiated ways. So to continue to speak of the "right of return" is, strictly speaking, to anticipate indirectly (or through obfuscation) the end of Israel in its current form -- precisely what Plitnick is concerned the BDS movement does.

The problematic focus of the BDS movement on the Israeli state itself, above and beyond Israel's immoral settlement policy, was demonstrated yet again in the past two days. Yesterday, 150 well-known American actors and directors, organized by the group Jewish Voice for Peace, issued an unprecedentedly powerful statement in support of Israeli academics, artists, and actors who recently declared their refusal to participate in any cultural events in the settlements <http://bit.ly/dqYwHp>. Then today, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) just as quickly upbraided these cultural figures and their supporters for taking a stand against Israeli cultural productions in the settlements but not equally against all other cultural events and academic institutions within Israel itself <http://bit.ly/bTt1M1>. It strikes me as astounding that PACBI would decide that artists and intellectuals who support a boycott of the settlements and are willing to put
their careers on the line for it deserve not encouragement but rather a scolding. Such are the dilemmas of the BDS movement at present.

--Lincoln Z. Shlensky


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http://mitchellplitnick.com/2010/08/30/408/

The Power and Weakness of Boycott
August 30, 2010
by Mitchell Plitnick

Recently, Norway announced that a major Israeli company and a subsidiary were to be excluded from its national wealth fund's investment list. The reasons were past activity in building settlements in the West Bank and working on construction of the Separation Barrier.

Before I go into what this means for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), let me say I applaud this action. Continued development of industry in the settlements only entrenches their presence. It is crucial that foreign governments and corporations stop supporting that development and make it clear that settlement industries cannot expect "business as usual" and, most importantly, that those companies are not in Israel. That is a line that must be drawn clearly, in the boldest green. The message must be sent in no uncertain terms that the settlements are NOT ISRAEL!

Predictably, supporters of the BDS movement have been declaring how this incident proves their strategy is working, that their "movement" is making real progress. But that is really overstating the case.

This is, indeed, a victory for the BDS movement, but not nearly the one they will,understandably, purport. The two companies are part of the corporate group owned by billionaire Lev Leviev, who actively promotes settlement expansion. Leviev has been targeted by BDS activists spanning the spectrum from anti-occupation groups to anti-Israel ones for years.

European companies have, for years, divested from Israeli companies seen as doing the business of settlement or occupation expansion. This has been, and remains, a limited trend, but some European companies will stop doing business with Israeli businesses when involvement with the settlements or occupation is brought to their attention (it often requires some investigation to find these things out). So, yes, this is the sort of thing activist groups can do, though it happened with less frequency before the BDS movement really rose up.

Still, this was certainly caused by the BDS activities. And they can rightly take credit for it.

But the larger impact that is being felt in the settlements is not the result of this movement's efforts. It's the result of the Palestinian Authority doing what it should have done a long time ago—cut itself off as a market for settlement products.

The PA boycott of settlement products has been very meticulous. They have specified which products are made in settlements so that the boycott does not affect Israeli businesses located inside the Green Line. They have acted to stop Palestinians from working in the settlements as well. This is what is hurting the settlement businesses that, perversely, do a very large amount of business by selling to Palestinians.

Two factors have allowed this tactic to succeed and to resonate well in Europe. The Palestinians have effectively communicated their goals and strategy behind this boycott in Europe, where they tend to be heard far better than in the United States.

But the major factor is that the PA, and specifically Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, has gotten the point across clearly that this boycott is aimed at the settlements and not at Israel. Europe is not going to boycott Israel, for many reasons. But there is a lot less tolerance in Europe for the settlements than there is in the US, and a good opportunity to strike at the settlement project alone is likely to win at least some European support.

The BDS movement is diverse and different people and groups in it have a wide variety of views on many issues. But, despite the fact that not all of the groups who engage in BDS activism hold to these views, the movement as a whole has become associated with one-state ideologies and support for the Palestinian Right of Return, two points that fall well outside the international diplomatic consensus and are non-starters for most of Europe's elites.

This is why the Netanyahu government is able to twist a legitimate protest tactic into an attack on Israel's very existence—because it is being employed by some who do indeed believe that the root of the problem in the Middle East is Israel's very existence.

Economic actions like boycotts and divestment are legitimate and time-honored non-violent tactics to express protest and to try to take concrete action against policies people believe are wrong. There is nothing inherently wrong with employing such economic action against the occupation and the siege of Gaza. The test of such tactics is whether or not enough people will come to agree that the policy in question is wrong; if they do, the tactic will be effective, otherwise it will not.

Unfortunately, a targeted program of economic action was not pursued by those who realize that the problem is the settlements, and that peace with two states, one of which is a Jewish Israel, is possible. The tactic was taken up by one-staters who believe the only way to address the historic, and massive, injustice done to the Palestinians is by promoting a single state where Jews lose their political self-determination and quickly become a minority in the area in question.

Now, it's harder to take up the tactic, despite the fact that, from talking to many two-staters, both activists and politicians, I know that many such folks now realize that a well-orchestrated campaign targeting the settlements could very well be effective.

The PA, however, has proven it can be done. And a handful of artists and performers in Israel have also given us an opportunity to pursue an effective campaign against the settlements. A pro-Israel, pro-peace boycott campaign has the potential not only to really affect the status quo but also to bring back many Jews who feel less and less affinity to an Israel whose identity is increasingly being radicalized by the settler movement.

Thus far, Diaspora Jewish peace groups have been largely silent on this issue. That's understandable, because there will be considerable political fallout from it. But this is a real opportunity to back and Israeli initiative, brought by ordinary Israelis not career leftists or radicals. This is a chance to back an Israeli initiative that clearly targets the settlements from within Israel.

It would be a shame if Israeli and American peace groups let this chance go by. They screwed up once by leaving a powerful tactic in the hands of those who cannot possibly use it to maximum effect. One hopes they don't make the same mistake again.

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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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Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Monday, September 6, 2010

Ha-Aretz on BDS

The verdict is in for Ha-Aretz's neo-liberal economic analyst, Nehemia Shtrasler. BDS works, even though the economic cost to Israel is not yet high. Many BDS proponents have argued that the sphere in which BDS is most likely to succeed is with respect to Israel's international image. Here Shtrasler hits the nail on the head: international anger against Israel is not because Israel's violations of human rights are necessarily worse than those of several other countries in the region. Rather, it is because Israel "demanded special terms of the world" and "played on their feelings of guilt, for standing idle while six million Jews were murdered… then came the occupation, which turned us into the evil Goliath, the cruel oppressor... And now we are paying the price of presenting ourselves as righteous and causing disappointment: boycott." This raises an interesting question. If a mainstream economic analyst "get's it" so clearly, what prevents other Israelis
from understanding the dynamic that has made Israel a global pariah (outside the USA, it is always necessary to add)? – Joel Beinin


Ha-Aretz, September 5, 2010 http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/anti-israel-economic-boycotts-are-gaining-speed-1.312210

Anti-Israel economic boycotts are gaining speed

The sums involved are not large, but their international significance is huge. Boycotts by governments gives a boost to boycotts by non-government bodies around the world.

By Nehemia Shtrasler

The entire week was marked by boycotts. It began with a few dozen theater people boycotting the new culture center in Ariel, and continued with a group of authors and artists publishing a statement of support on behalf of those theater people. Then a group of 150 lecturers from various universities announced they would not teach at Ariel College or take part in any cultural events in the territories. Naturally, all that spurred a flurry of responses, including threats of counter-sanctions.

That was all at the local level. There's another boycott, an international one, that's gaining momentum - an economic boycott. Last week the Chilean parliament decided to adopt the boycott of Israeli products made in the settlements, at the behest of the Palestinian Authority, which imposed a boycott on such products several months ago.

In September 2009, Norway's finance minister announced that a major government pension fund was selling its shares in Elbit Systems because of that company's role in building the separation fence. In March, a major Swedish investment fund said it would eschew Elbit Systems shares on the same grounds. Last month the Norwegian pension fund announced that it was selling its holdings in Africa Israel and in its subsidiary Danya Cebus because of their involvement in constructing settlements in the occupied territories.

The sums involved are not large, but their international significance is huge. Boycotts by governments gives a boost to boycotts by non-government bodies around the world.

New world

Human-rights organizations in Europe are essentially running campaigns to boycott Israeli products. They are demonstrating at supermarkets, brandishing signs against Israeli goods. Worker organizations, with millions of members, send circulars to their people calling on them to forgo Israeli products.

I talked with farmers who say there are retail chains in Europe no longer prepared to buy Israeli products. The same is true for a chain in Washington.

The world is changing before our eyes. Five years ago the anti-Israel movement may have been marginal. Now it is growing into an economic problem.

Until now boycott organizers had been on the far left. They have a new ally: Islamic organizations that have strengthened greatly throughout Europe in the past two decades. The upshot is a red and green alliance with a significant power base. The red side has a name for championing human rights, while the green side has money. Their union is what led to the success of the Turkish flotilla.

They note that boycott is an especially effective weapon against Israel because Israel is a small country, dependent on exports and imports. They also point to the success of the economic boycott against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The anti-Israel tide rose right after Operation Cast Lead, as the world watched Israel pound Gaza with bombs on live television. No public-relations machine in the world could explain the deaths of hundreds of children, the destruction of neighborhoods and the grinding poverty afflicting a people under curfew for years. They weren't even allowed to bring in screws to build school desks. Then came the flotilla, complete with prominent peace activists, which ended in nine deaths, adding fuel to the fire.

But underlying the anger against Israel lies disappointment. Since the establishment of the state, and before, we demanded special terms of the world. We played on their feelings of guilt, for standing idle while six million Jews were murdered.

David Ben-Gurion called us a light unto the nations and we stood tall and said, we, little David, would stand strong and righteous against the great evil Goliath.

The world appreciated that message and even, according to the foreign press, enabled us to develop the atom bomb in order to prevent a second Holocaust.

But then came the occupation, which turned us into the evil Goliath, the cruel oppressor, a darkness on the nations. And now we are paying the price of presenting ourselves as righteous and causing disappointment: boycott.


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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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Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Neve Gordon: Assault on academic freedom -- and liberal values

The anti-liberal and anti-democratic agenda of the American right and the Israeli right are forging closer connections than ever, as Dr. Neve Gordon, a professor of politics at Ben-Gurion University, points out in the following article about threats to academic freedom in Israel. The McCarthyite tactics of those in Israel who wish to suppress dissenting views of professors (and students) is remniscent of incidents such as The David Project's notorious "Columbia Unbecoming" film, Daniel Pipes's "Campus Watch" project to recruit students to spy on American professors critical of Israel, and the drumming out of Norman Finkelstein from his academic post at DePaul University. Neve Gordon explains, however, that as Israel is becoming ever more polarized, its most worrisome right-wing extremists have moved closer to the center of political power. In their witch-hunt against leftist dissenters, who are increasingly portrayed as "traitors," organizations like Im Tirtzu have received support
from American backers such as the Rev. John C. Hagee and Alan Dershowitz. (But Hagee recently was forced to drop his support for Im Tirtuz, in what Didi Remez calls a "neocon-theocon proxy war" <http://bit.ly/bYlYTV>.) Gordon's article on the erosion of academic freedom appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, suggesting that American academics are concerned about the rapid fading of civic discourse in Israel and about threats to the intellectual autonomy of their Israeli colleagues.

--Lincoln Z. Shlensky


http://chronicle.com/article/An-Assault-on-Israeli-Academic/124158/

August 26, 2010

An Assault on Israeli Academic Freedom—and Liberal Values
By Neve Gordon

On May 31, I joined some 50 students and faculty members who gathered outside Ben-Gurion University of the Negev to demonstrate against the Israeli military assault on the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid toward Gaza. In response, the next day a few hundred students marched toward the social-sciences building, Israeli flags in hand. Amid the nationalist songs and pro-government chants, there were also shouts demanding my resignation from the university faculty.

One student even proceeded to create a Facebook group whose sole goal is to have me sacked. So far over 2,100 people (many of them nonstudents) have joined. In addition to death wishes and declarations that I should be exiled, the site includes a call on students to spy on me during class. "We believe," ends a message written to the group, "that if we conduct serious and profound work, we can, with the help of each and every one of you, gather enough material to influence ... Neve Gordon's status at the university, and maybe even bring about his dismissal."

Such personal attacks are part of a much broader assault on Israeli higher education and its professors. Two recent incidents exemplify the protofascist logic that is being deployed to undermine the pillars of academic freedom in Israel, while also revealing that the assault on Israeli academe is being backed by neoconservative forces in the United States.

The first incident involves a report published by the Institute for Zionist Strategies, in Israel, which analyzed course syllabi in Israeli sociology departments and accused professors of a "post-Zionist" bias. The institute defines post-Zionism as "the pretense to undermine the foundations of the Zionist ethos and an affinity with the radical leftist stream." In addition to the usual Israeli leftist suspects, intellectuals like Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm also figure in as post-Zionists in the report.

The institute sent the report to the Israel Council for Higher Education, which is the statutory body responsible for Israeli universities, and the council, in turn, sent it to all of the university presidents. Joseph Klafter, president of Tel-Aviv University, actually asked several professors to hand over their syllabi for his perusal, though he later asserted that he had no intention of policing faculty members and was appalled by the report.

A few days later, the top headline of the Israeli daily Haaretz revealed that another right-wing organization, Im Tirtzu (If You Will It), had threatened Ben-Gurion University, where I am a professor and a former chair of the government and politics department. Im Tirtzu told the university's president, Rivka Carmi, that it would persuade donors to place funds in escrow unless the university took steps "to put an end to the anti-Zionist tilt" in its politics and government department. The organization demanded a change "in the makeup of the department's faculty and the content of its syllabi," giving the president a month to meet its ultimatum. This time my head was not the only one it wanted.

President Carmi immediately asserted that Im Tirtzu's demands were a serious threat to academic freedom. However, Minister of Education Gideon Sa'ar, who is also chairman of the Council for Higher Education, restricted his response to a cursory statement that any move aimed at harming donations to universities must be stopped. Mr. Sa'ar's response was disturbingly predictable. Only a few months earlier, he had spoken at an Im Tirtzu gathering, following its publication of a report about the so-called leftist slant of syllabi in Israeli political-science departments. At the gathering, he asserted that even though he had not read the report, its conclusions would be taken very seriously.

Although the recent scuffle seems to be about academic freedom, the assault on the Israeli academe is actually part of a much wider offensive against liberal values. Numerous forces in Israel are mobilizing in order to press forward an extreme-right political agenda.

They have chosen the universities as their prime target for two main reasons. First, even though Israeli universities as institutions have never condemned any government policy—not least the restrictions on Palestinian universities' academic freedom—they are home to many vocal critics of Israel's rights-abusive policies. Those voices are considered traitorous and consequently in need of being stifled. Joining such attacks are Americans like Alan M. Dershowitz, who in a recent visit to Tel-Aviv University called for the resignations of professors who supported the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli goods and divestment from Israeli companies until the country abides by international human-rights law. He named Rachel Giora and Anat Matar, both tenured professors at Tel Aviv University, as part of that group.

Second, all Israeli universities depend on public funds for about 90 percent of their budget. This has been identified as an Achilles heel. The idea is to exploit the firm alliance those right-wing organizations have with government members and provide the ammunition necessary to make financial support for universities conditional on the dissemination of nationalist thought and the suppression of "subversive ideas." Thus, in the eyes of those right-wing Israeli organizations, the universities are merely arms of the government.

And, yet, Im Tirtzu and other such organizations would not have been effective on their own; they depend on financial support from backers in the United States. As it turns out, some of their ideological allies are willing to dig deep into their pockets to support the cause.

The Rev. John C. Hagee, the leader of Christians United for Israel, has been Im Tirtzu's sugar daddy, and his ministries have provided the organization with at least $100,000. After Im Tirtzu's most recent attack, however, even Mr. Hagee concluded that it had gone overboard and decided to stop giving funds. The Hudson Institute, a neoconservative think tank that helped shape the Bush administration's Middle East policies, has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Institute for Zionist Strategies over the past few years, and was practically its only donor. For Christians United and the Hudson Institute, the attack on academic freedom is clearly also a way of advancing much broader objectives.

The Hudson Institute, for example, has neo-imperialist objectives in the Middle East, and a member of its Board of Trustees is in favor of attacking Iran. Christian United's eschatological position (whereby the Second Coming is dependent on the gathering of all Jews in Israel), includes support for such an attack. The scary partnership between such Israeli and American organizations helps reveal the true aims of this current assault on academic freedom: to influence Israeli policy and eliminate the few liberal forces that are still active in the country. The atmosphere within Israel is conducive to such intervention.

Nonetheless, Im Tirtzu's latest threat backfired, as did that of the Institute for Zionist Strategies' report; the assaults have been foiled for now. The presidents of all the universities in Israel condemned the reports and promised never to bow down to this version of McCarthyism.

Despite those declarations, the rightist organizations have actually made considerable headway. Judging from comments on numerous online news sites, the populist claim that the public's tax money is being used to criticize Israel has convinced many readers that the universities should be more closely monitored by the government and that "dissident" professors must be fired. Moreover, the fact that the structure of Israeli universities has changed significantly over the past five years, and that now most of the power lies in the hands of presidents rather than the faculty, will no doubt be exploited to continue the assault on academic freedom. Top university administrators are already stating that if the Israeli Knesset approves a law against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement for Palestine, the law will be used to fire faculty members who support the movement.

More importantly, there is now the sense among many faculty members that a thought police has been formed—and that many of its officers are actually members of the academic community. The fact that students are turning themselves into spies and that syllabi are being collected sends a chilling message to faculty members across the country. I, for one, have decided to include in my syllabi a notice restricting the use of recording devices during class without my prior consent. And many of my friends are now using Gmail instead of the university e-mail accounts for fear that their correspondence will in some way upset administrators.

Israeli academe, which was once considered a bastion of free speech, has become the testing ground for the success of the assault on liberal values. And although it is still extremely difficult to hurt those who have managed to enter the academic gates, those who have not yet passed the threshold are clearly being monitored.

I know of one case in which a young academic was not hired due to his membership in Courage to Refuse, an organization of reserve soldiers who refuse to do military duty in the West Bank. In a Google and Facebook age, the thought police can easily disqualify a candidate based on petitions signed and even online "friends" one has. Israeli graduate students are following such developments, and for them the message is clear.

While in politics nothing is predetermined, Israel is heading down a slippery slope. Israeli academe is now an arena where some of the most fundamental struggles of a society are being played out. The problem is that instead of struggling over basic human rights, we are now struggling over the right to struggle.

Neve Gordon is a professor of politics and the author of Israel's Occupation (University of California Press, 2008).

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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
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net