The Vigilante State
July 21, 2008
Ali Abunimah’s brief on Collective Punishment and Collective Impunity in Israel, for the Palestine Center Information.
The blood of the victims is screaming out at us; the blood of the innocent is calling on all of us to wake up; to make the Arabs of east Jerusalem realize that terrorism comes with a price. A painful price. A price paid by the terrorist’s family, his relatives, brothers, and brothers-in-law.
The above quote was written by an Israeli journalist in the largest circulation daily Yediot Aharonot a day after Hussam Dwaiyat, a 30-year-old Palestinian from occupied East Jerusalem, ran a bulldozer into several vehicles in Jerusalem, overturning a bus, killing three people and injuring several dozen others.1 Calling for “collective punishment,” the commentator added, “It has to be the kind of punishment that has a revenge component.” Meanwhile, dozens of Israeli protestors gathered outside the Dwaiyat family home in the Sur Bahir neighborhood chanting, “Right here, right now, destroy this house.”2
These sentiments were not marginal; they reflected the mood of Israeli political and military leaders, many of whom declared Palestinians to be collectively guilty and called for measures of collective punishment against Dwaiyat’s relatives, specifically, and the Palestinian civilian population more generally.
This paper examines Israel’s use of collective punishment of Palestinians and its affording of collective immunity to Israeli Jews who commit crimes against Palestinians.
Worse Than Apartheid
July 11, 2008
Gideon Levy on the visit to the occupied territories by ANC veterans.
I thought they would feel right at home in the alleys of Balata refugee camp, the Casbah and the Hawara checkpoint. But they said there is no comparison: for them the Israeli occupation regime is worse than anything they knew under apartheid. This week, 21 human rights activists from South Africa visited Israel. Among them were members of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress; at least one of them took part in the armed struggle and at least two were jailed. There were two South African Supreme Court judges, a former deputy minister, members of Parliament, attorneys, writers and journalists. Blacks and whites, about half of them Jews who today are in conflict with attitudes of the conservative Jewish community in their country. Some of them have been here before; for others it was their first visit.
For five days they paid an unconventional visit to Israel – without Sderot, the IDF and the Foreign Ministry (but with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and a meeting with Supreme Court President Justice Dorit Beinisch. They spent most of their time in the occupied areas, where hardly any official guests go – places that are also shunned by most Israelis.
Silent No More
June 9, 2008
‘Signs Indicate Less Fawning to Chutzpah By U.N., Quartet Officials’, reports Ian Williams.
ISRAEL’S POSTURE as a heavily armed victim is preposterous in face of the evidence, of course, but it has been remarkably successful in the mainstream U.S. media, totally successful in Washington, and almost as effective in Europe since the 9/11 attacks, when Ariel Sharon adroitly conflated Israel’s battle to hold down the Palestinian territories with Washington’s “war on terror.” Given the current demonization of Hezbollah and Hamas, it is worth remembering that the first victims of this mischaracterized vendetta were in fact Sharon’s old enemies: Yasser Arafat, Fateh and the Palestinian Authority.
The West seemed not to learn from this experience just how expedient Israel’s definition of terrorism is, and has not challenged this constant expansion of “terrorist” to any opponent of Israeli policies.
Palestine Street
May 19, 2008
Al Jazeera: The Bride in Exile — a special programme that looks at one street in Jaffa, Tel Aviv and how that street conveys the tragic narrative of the Palestinian ‘Nakba’.
Yes, it is Apartheid
April 27, 2008
‘If it runs like Apartheid, and it acts like Aparthei…’ From Yossi Sarid (via Norman Finkelstein). Also check out this April 15 editorial, entitled ‘Our Debt to Jimmy Carter‘, which states that the present situation ‘begs [the Apartheid comparison]‘.
The anchorwoman was clearly shocked: I don’t have time now to respond to what you have said, she told the former U.S. president, allowing Jimmy Carter to make a narrow escape from her clutches. Then she added that she did not want to imagine what would happen to him if he bumped into her colleague from the security affairs desk in Channel 2′s dark alley. And the pundit sitting there, sunk in deep thought as always, nodded his heavy head, confirming: He’s lucky, the bastard, that we didn’t gang up on him and cut him to shreds.
That’s how it is here: The rulers set the tone, and the media begins to gripe: Not only did Carter’s mission not help, it did damage. He alone was the reason Gilad Shalit was not ransomed out of captivity during the holiday. That’s what happens when an enemy of the human race, the twin of the Twin Towers’ bin Laden, sticks his nose where it does not belong.
Will Gordimer Shun Apartheid?
April 26, 2008
‘Facing widespread pressure, Nadine Gordimer may pull out of Israel writers meet,’ Haaretz reports. Also check out the BRICUP letter to Gordimer from Hilary and Steven Rose, and a moving one from Palestinian academic Haidar Eid.
South African writer Nadine Gordimer may pull out of her appearance next month at Jerusalem’s International Writers Festival in the face of a widespread campaign pressuring her to cancel.
The 84-year-old Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, is scheduled to make three appearances at the festival, which runs at Mishkenot Sha’ananim May 11-15.
Other writers slated to attend include Americans Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer and Russell Banks, as well as Israelis David Grossman and Amos Oz, the latter of whom is scheduled to share the stage with Gordimer on May 12.
“I am dealing with the issue now,” Gordimer told Haaretz in a telephone conversation from her home in Johannesburg on Friday. She refused to comment further on the controversy, except to say she would soon make a public statement on her decision.
Where Are the Suicide Bombers?
April 22, 2008
Strong stuff, from Amira Hass (via Norman Finkelstein)
In the middle of November a new method of “smuggling” Palestinians into Israel was exposed: in the northern Jordan Valley, two cars from East Jerusalem disguised to look “police-like” were used in an attempt to transport Palestinians without permits through the Bezek crossing. The same week a private smuggling attempt from the West Bank to Israel came to light: a woman was transporting someone concealed in her car, and by her behaviour she aroused the suspicions of soldiers at a checkpoint. This was reported in passing on the radio, as a curiosity. Neither of the two incidents represented a security danger; they were merely additional attempts by unemployed people to work in Israel. There are probably hundreds like them every month, who have not yet been discovered en route to “infiltration” into Israel in a desperate search for livelihood and food for their children. It could even be added: while heroically endangering themselves.
The discovery of a breach in the “separation wall” immediately sets off security alarms in Israeli ears. If those routes are known to workers, then they are probably also known to organizations that espouse suicide bombing. Can the fact that those routes have not been used lately to send suicide bombers be attributed only to the activities of Shabak [Israel's internal intelligence agency and security police -- trans.], or is it due in part — or perhaps mainly — to the fact that the various organizations have changed their approach? Or maybe there is something more: there are organizations and splinters of organizations that are probably looking for candidates for suicide attacks. But today, unlike in the past, the atmosphere of support for suicide attacks — which was motivated mainly by the desire to avenge the many civilians that the IDF killed immediately after September 2000 — is not prevalent.
Holy Land, Unholy Deeds
April 20, 2008
Mario Vargas Llosa, the famous Peruvian author, on ‘How Arabs have been driven out of Hebron‘. I may not like Vargas Llosa’s politics — once a progressive, he made a sharp move to the right after a fistfight with Gabriel Garcia Marquez — but he is without a doubt one of Latin America’s greatest authors.
Hebron is the image of desolation and pain. I’m talking of the H-2 sector, the oldest part of this ancient city, which is under Israeli military control and where some 500 colonos – settlers – live in four settlements. It is one of the holiest places of Judaism and Islam, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where in February 1994, the settler Baruch Goldstein machine-gunned Muslims at prayer, killing 29 and wounding dozens.
To protect these settlers, the zone bristles with barriers, camps and military posts, and is overrun by Israeli patrols. But such mobilisation will soon be unnecessary because this part of Hebron, subject to ethnic and religious cleansing, will soon have no Arab residents.
The Senator, His Pastor and the Israel Lobby
March 31, 2008
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| Senator Barack Obama addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) forum on Foreign Policy in Chicago, March 2007. (Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images) |
Excellent commentary by Ali Abunimah of The Electronic Intifada.
US senator Barack Obama was widely hailed for his 18 March speech calming the media furor about the sermons of his pastor for twenty years Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s remarks, Obama said, “expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”
It might seem odd for Obama to mention Israel and “radical Islam” in a speech focused on US race relations, especially since Wright’s most widely reported comments were about America’s historic and ongoing oppression of its black citizens.
But for months, even before most Americans had heard of Wright, prominent pro-Israel activists were hounding Obama over Wright’s views on Israel and ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In January, Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), demanded that Obama denounce Farrakhan as an anti-Semite. The senator duly did so, but that was not enough. “[Obama has] distanced himself from his pastor’s decision to honor Farrakhan,” Foxman said, but “He has not distanced himself from his pastor. I think that’s the next step.” Foxman labeled Wright “a black racist,” adding in the same breath, “Certainly he has very strong anti-Israel views” (Larry Cohler-Esses, “ADL Chief To Obama: ‘Confront Your Pastor’ On Minister Farrakhan,” The Jewish Week, 16 January 2008). Criticism of Israel, one suspects, is Wright’s truly unforgivable crime and Foxman’s vitriol has echoed through dozens of pro-Israel blogs.
