The Magnes Zionist

What Kristof Should Have Written

2008-07-24T13:54:00.001-07:00

Nicholas Kristof published an op-ed in the New York Times today that sounds like it could have been an editorial for…Haaretz! Kristof attempts to answer his critics in the sort of liberal Zionist way that is no longer satisfying for me. So I thought I would follow his answers with my own.

Tough Love for Israel? By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

On his visit to the Middle East, Barack Obama gave ritual affirmations of his support for Israeli policy, but what Israel needs from America isn’t more love, but tougher love.

Particularly at a time when Israel seems to be contemplating military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, the United States would be a better friend if it said: “That’s crazy” — while also insisting on a 100 percent freeze on settlements in the West Bank and greater Jerusalem.

Granted, not everybody sees things this way, and discussions of the Middle East usually involve each side offering up its strongest arguments to wrestle with the straw men of the other side. So let me try something different.

After I wrote a column last month from Hebron in the West Bank, my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground , was flooded with counterarguments — and plenty of challenges to address them. In the interest of a civil dialogue on the Middle East, here are excerpts from some of the readers’ defenses of Israel’s conduct in the West Bank and my responses:

Jews lived in Hebron for 1,800 years continuously ... until their community was murdered in 1929 by their Arab neighbors. The Jews in Hebron today — those “settlers” — have reclaimed Jewish property. So I don’t see what makes them illegitimate or illegal. (Irving)

True, Jews have deep ties to Hebron, just as Christians do to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but none of these bonds confer any right to live in these places or even visit them. If Israel were to bar American Christians from Jerusalem, that would not be grounds for the United States to send in paratroopers and establish settlements. And if Israel insists on controlling the West Bank, then it needs to give citizenship to Palestinians there so that they can vote just like the settlers.

Jerry’s turn: The analogy with American Christians is bizarre. What Kristof should have said is that, yes, Jews have a claim to live in Hebron. But the Palestinians have always been a majority in Hebron and in the West Bank, and they have the greater claim to sovereignty over all these areas. If the Jews want to press their claims to live under Palestinian sovereignty, that’s their business. If they are afraid they are going to be massacred, let them leave. But if they press historical claims, then the same should apply to the Palestinians going back to Palestine. (Hence, I am in favor of Jews living in Hebron, and of Palestinians returning to Palestine.)

One side is a beautiful, literate, medically and scientifically and artistically an advanced society. The other side wants to throw bombs. Why shouldn’t there be a fence? (Mileway)

So, build a fence. But construct it on the 1967 borders, not Palestinian land — and especially not where it divides Palestinian farmers from their land.

Jerry’s turn: Please, Mileway, save your racist and condescending comparisons for some colonialist “paradise” like Algiers or apartheid South Africa There have been “literate, medically and scientifically and artistically advanced societies” that committed genocide. One side throw bombs, the other side has planes that drop bombs. As for the fence, build it on the border – but not before you have made restitution for the colonialist exploitation of the Occupied Territories. When Israel withdraws it will have an ongoing and historical responsibility to help create a strong and vibrant Palestinian state.

While I do condemn this type of violence, it pales in contrast to Palestinian suicide bombers, rockets and other acts of terror against Jews. (Jay)

B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, reports that a total of 123 Israeli minors have been killed by Palestinians since the second intifada began in 2000, compared with 951 Palestinian minors killed by Israeli security forces.

Jerry’s turn: And, Jay, don’t play the intention game. Israel intends to beat the other side into submission. Each side blames the other side. The stronger party carries the most blame.

To withdraw from the West Bank without a partner on the Palestinian side will find Israel in the same fix it has once it withdrew from Gaza: a rain of daily rockets. Yes, the security barrier causes hardship, but terrorist attacks have almost disappeared. That means my kids can ride the bus, go to unguarded restaurants and not worry about being blown up on their way to school. Find another way to keep my kids safe, and I’ll happily tear down the barrier. (Laura)

This is the argument that I have the most trouble countering. Laura has a point: The barrier and checkpoints have reduced terrorism. But as presently implemented, they — and the settlements — also reduce the prospect of a long-term peace agreement that is the best hope for Laura’s children.

If Israel were to stop the settlements, ease the checkpoints, allow people in and out more freely, and negotiate more enthusiastically with Syria over the Golan Heights and with the Arab countries on the basis of the Saudi peace proposal, then peace might still elude the region. But Israel would at least be doing everything possible to secure its long-term future, rather than bolstering Hamas.

Jerry’s turn: Laura, I am going to be blunt – if the price for your children’s safety is the suffering of Fatima's children, of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, then the moral answer is to come up with a solution that maximizes both sides’ children’s safety. Your children cannot be safe at the expense of their children. Your children are more important to you than theirs are to you – but your children, or my children, for that matter, are not more important than theirs are.

Neither Israel nor Zionism is worth a damn if it cannot be implemented without massive suffering on the other side. Now, I know that there are mafia-morality Jews who will say, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?” I fully expect most people not to care at all about the other side. Common-sense says that Laura’s first concern will be rightly with her children. That’s the same with the Serbs and the same with every group. But I can expect disinterested parties to stand up and say, “Laura, we understand why you don’t care about those folks, but you should understand why we care about them. Because their children deserve nothing less than do your children.

To paraphrase Hillel, if I are only for myself, then what the hell am I?

If there is no two-state solution, there will be a one-state solution — and given demographic trends, that will mean either the end of Israeli democracy or the end of the Jewish state. Zionists should be absolutely clamoring for a Palestinian state.

Laura is right about the need for a sensible Palestinian partner, and the failures of Palestinian leadership have been legion. At the moment, though, Israel has its most reasonable partner ever — Palestinian President Mahmud Abbes — and it is undermining him with its checkpoints and new settlement construction.

Peace-making invariably involves exasperating and intransigent antagonists and unequal steps, just as it did in the decades in which Britain struggled to end terrorism emanating from Northern Ireland. But London never ordered air strikes on Sinn Fein or walled in Catholic neighborhoods. Over time, Britain’s extraordinary restraint slowly changed attitudes so as to make the eventual peace possible.

I hope Mr. Obama, as a candidate or as a president, will be a true enough friend of Israel to say all this, warmly but firmly.

Jerry’s turn: Scripture says, “Seek and pursue peace”..but. it emphasizes “Justice, justice you shall pursue” And without a strong, vibrant, Palestinian state, and an equitable solution for all the refugees, there is no justice. Those two conditions are the sine qua non of a justifiable Jewish state.

Close Shave During the Three Weeks?

2008-07-22T22:54:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, a few minutes before 2, I dropped a friend off on Washington St. in Jerusalem, and then headed to a meeting. Washington St. winds around the YMCA, where there is now a construction zone. As I drove on the narrow road – mine was the only car around – through the construction site, a tractor crossed my path and stopped. I squeezed behind the tractor. As I did so I thought to myself three things: "I hope he sees me, because if he goes into reverse, that's the end of the car" and "I hope that I am not p-ssing him off because he has to wait for me" and then "Hey, this is a public road, he probably expects cars."

Around five minutes later, when I was way out of the area, the same tractor went on a rampage smashing cars. (I assume that it was the same tractor because the map in Haaretz this morning had the tractor/bulldozer starting right at the place where I had squeezed by.) You can read about it here.

If you live in Jerusalem long enough, you have a "close shave" story. I have two; the last time was when I happened to get to the scene of a bus explosion before the ambulances, but after the police had blocked the street.

Well, I have no lessons to draw from this story, except, perhaps, that I should drive a bit more defensively. If the driver wanted to have backed into me, he could of.

(To my non-orthodox Jewish readers – the not-such-good-taste title of this post refers to the Jewish law of not shaving during the Three Weeks before the Ninth of Ab.)

Acts of Injustice and the Three Weeks

2008-07-22T08:32:00.001-07:00

In the Jewish calendar we have now entered the period of the Three Weeks. This is a semi-mourning period beginning on the Seventeenth of Tamuz and that will end on the Ninth of Av, the day the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. (and later, the day(s) that Herod's Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E.)

As an orthodox Jew, I believe that there is a God, and that in some way there is divine providence. And my tradition teaches me that acts of injustice will not go unpunished eventually. The Three Weeks should remind of us that.

What do I mean by acts of injustice? Well, the Torah says "You shall have one law for the stranger and for the native; for I am Hashem your God." Strangers are always at a disadvantage merely by being part of the out group. Not only does the Torah forbid afflicting the stranger, but it also mandates that one law apply to both native and stranger. When we discriminate in terms of fundamental human rights, we are unjust. So how are we in Israel doing in that regard?

1. Akiva Eldar reported a few days ago in Haaretz about a Palestinian family named Khurd that is being evicted from its home in East Jerusalem. It seems that the building belonged to Jews before 1948, and when Israell took control of the area, the Jewish owners (or their agents) sued to have that ownership recognized. The court ruled in the Jewish owners' favor, but allowed the Palestinian residents to stay, provided they pay rent. They are now in default on their payments, and they will be evicted. (All this, according to the article in Haaretz. )

What gives the story its special poignancy is that the Palestinian family lived in West Jerusalem until 1948 and they owned property there. They are now being evicted from their homes to make way for Jews, but they cannot get restitution for their own property, which they left during the 1948 fighting. Some estimates say that the Palestinians owned as much as 62% of property in West Jerusalem. Even if that is an exaggeration, Palestinian ownership was considerable.

Now, I ask you – why is a Jew allowed to reclaim Jewish property in East Jerusalem whereas a Palestinian, who lived, perhaps, two blocks away from that Jew, is not allowed to reclaim Palestinian property in West Jeruasalem? If you argue that it is not the right time for Palestinians to make claims for property abandoned sixty years ago, then wouldn't it be right to postpone Jewish claims until the same right time?

But that's not the way Israel works. Because we have the power.

I learned this a while back, when I lived in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. After 1967, the Israel government threw Palestinian families out of an expanded Jewish Quarter that never existed prior to 1948, and whose legal segregation was justified by the liberal Supreme Court Chief Justice Haim Cohen. Since Jews, he wrote, were discriminated against in housing in the Old City, they could now have their special (expanded) quarter as a sort of affirmative action. The "Quarter" System was supposed to ensure that each group would have its own homogeneous quarter. Fair enough.

But then Israel turned around and let Jews reclaim Jewish property in the Muslim Quarter. Why? Because we have the power.

The Torah says "You shall have one law for the stranger and for the native; for I am Hashem your God."

Well, so much for the Torah.

2. Haaretz and Ynet published a story about the shooting of a bound Palestinian protester. By now the pattern is familiar; soldiers abuse Palestinians; nothing happens unless the abuse is caught on camera; the politicians and the military brass condemn the incident; once things quiet down, nothing is down about it. From experience we know that the IDF spokesperson routinely lies to cover its tuches.

You will ask, if abuse is routine, then why don't we hear about it more often? Three reasons: First, most Israelis are insensitive to the suffering of the Palestinians. (The same is true vice-versa. Collectively speaking, neither community could care less about the other.) So what most people consider abuse, most Israelis consider "minor inconvenience at best." Second, most people, and certainly most Jews, are moral chauvinists – they consider themselves morally superior to the other. I have yet to meet an Israeli Jew who doesn't consider himself or herself morally superior to an Arab. That is true of all cultures, but Judaism, in my opinion, suffers in a unique way from moral chauvinism.

Third, we are individualists when we come to our side and collectivists when we come to the other side. Our army is pure except for a few bad apples, we say. But the Palestinian people as a whole glorify violence, we say.

The Jerusalem Post ended its editorial on the shooting by saying that, "We must not allow Palestinians' glorification of violence to brutalize us." Hah, it that isn't the case of the pot calling the kettle black!. As if we are any different from the Palestinians or they from us. The only difference is that we have the power and they don't. So we can and do hurt more of them than they do us. That is the only difference. Oh, sure, educated people on both sides react differently from simple folks on both sides. But let's face it – if we were under occupation, and we thought that only through violence could we liberate our homeland, we would do whatever it takes.

Not a whole lot of Zionists were pacifists. What kept Ben Gurion and some Zionists in check was the pragmatic, usually displomatic consequences of the Jews' actions. I am not belittling this; pragmatism is important.

But just ask yourself, supporter of Israel, just what you would be willing to do for the survival of the Jewish State. Where would your "red line" be?

3. Speaking of moral chauvinism, there has been a lot of that lately surrounding the prisoner exchange. You know, the self-congratulatory "We-don't-dance-on-the-rooftops-we-don't-dip-our-hands-in-the-blood-of-lynch-victims we-don't-trade-in-corpses-we-don't-cause-mental-anguish-to-the-families-of-prisoners" kind of thing.

But some of those things we do, and other things that they never do we do – because we have the power to do them and they don't. How many Jews have been humiliated by Palestinians on a daily basis? When the Palestinians don't like our elected government, how long are we kept under siege? How many Israeli Jews have lived for a second, much less sixty years, subject to the total control of the Palestinians? We have almost all the cards in our hand, and yet we kidnap civillians; we barter with corpses; we detain five thousand Palestinians in jails, many of them without charge, none of them after trials in courts by a jury of their peers.

And yet, we say to ourselves, "Look at the difference between us and them. We will move heaven and earth -- we will free murderers to get back our soldiers, dead or alive. Whereas they are willing to let many of their terrorists rot in Israeli prisons rather than hand back Gilad Shalit."

But suppose that they were holding 5000 Israelis, and the only card we had was a single Palestinian soldier. Would we trade that soldier for, say, only half of ours? Would we be able to look in the eyes of the parents of the soldiers who were not released and say, "We had to be flexible"

Yes, there is a difference between us and them. The difference is that on the day we release their prisoners, we can round up more. We can squeeze them economically; we can reduce their water and electricity; we have absolute control over their lives. And they have no control, nada, over our lives.

If there is a difference, it is between us and us, and between them and them – between the us (and them) that feel it necessary to draw the line when it comes to unjust behavior, and between the us (and them) who say that en guerre comme la guerre. And, yes, where the line is drawn will be different for us and for them , because of the asymmetry of power –but there are some norms that all are bound to.

Moral chauvinists beware – you are destroying the Temple by your baseless hatred.

Gans vs. Gavison: Nationality-Based Preference, Rather than Ethnic Rights, in Immigration to Israel

2008-07-16T07:14:00.001-07:00

Prof. Chaim Gans devotes the last chapter of his recent book, A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State, to the question of Jewish hegemony in immigration to Israel and in other domains. In previous chapters his argument had entailed that "the realization of the right to national self-determination does not itself require the existence of a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel." (115). However, he had also argued that the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict, and the persecution of the Jews, does justify the aspiration for a Jewish majority, as long as those circumstances exist. Since one should aspire to settling the conflict, and reducing persecution of the Jews, one should also be committed to reducing some aspects of Jewish hegemony in the future.

One way of helping to ensure a Jewish majority is to have immigration laws that make naturalization automatic for Jews and virtually impossible for non-Jews (although, strictly speaking, the Israeli Law of Return is not an immigration law, but rather a law recognizing the "natural right" of every Jew to be a citizen in the Jewish state.)

The Law of Return discriminates on the basis of nationality criteria that are "religio-racist". If you are Jewish or you have one grandparent who is Jewish, you have the right to become a citizen; you have no such right, nor can you ever have one (unless you convert). Now this is patently discriminatory. Can such discrimination be justified?

Well, one can play the "affirmative action" card and argue that since Jews were traditionally discriminated against, and since their efforts toward self-determination were thwarted (according to the Zionist narrative), they are entitled to "affirmative action" in immigration. Just as today's whites and men pay the price for the historical discrimination against women and people of color, so, too non-Jews pay the price in terms of eligibility for Israeli citizenship for the historical discrimination of the Jews. Yet the analogy is flawed. Whatever moral justification "affirmative action" possesses derives from the fact that white, male society benefited historically from discrimination against females and people of color, and that they were the agents of that discrimination. But this is not the case with the Palestinians, who were not responsible for the persecution of the Jews or the thwarting of their national aspirations throughout history. More fundamentally, the purpose of affirmative action is to level the playing field for groups in a society; it is not to foster a certain group's culture at the expense of another.

According to Gans, the liberal way to justify nationality-based preferences in immigration is to claim that a national group has a justifiable interest in preserving and fostering its national culture, especially in the case of a people that had recently been decimated; hence, immigration policies that facilitate members of that nationality to join the majority, though discriminatory, are justifiable. Add to this the assumption that liberal nationalists make – that an individual's identity is often enriched by possessing natural culture and heritage – and one can allow for nationality-based preferences immigration.

Gans argues that it is one thing to talk of nationality as a factor in immigration; it is quite another to make it the only factor. The Law of Return says that if you are a Jew you have a right to citizenship ; if you are a non-Jew you have no right (and, practically speaking, you cannot become a citizen.) No other country in the world, even countries that have ethnonationality-based preferences in immigration, go that far. Gans would substitute the following principles for the current religio-racial principle embodied in the Law of Return: 1) Nationality-based motivations of potential immigrants should bear considerable weight; 2) national groups may admit the number of members into their homelands that is required in order to maintain their self-determination; 3) states have a duty to take in refugees and persecuted members of specific national groups that have a right to self-determination within these specific states. (Gans adds that states have a duty also to grant priority to refugees among the other groups that make up the immigration quota.)

Of course, there are other ways to ensure a Jewish majority in the Jewish State. One could encourage Arab emigration (the Kleiner bill), or reduce Arab family size through incentives and/or sterilization. If one allows for some forms of discrimination, why not others?

A few days ago, Prof. Ruth Gavison, wrote an op-ed in which she defended the exigency amendment of the Citizenship Law that denies Palestinian residents of the occupied territories and their Israeli family members the right to live together in Israel. Most people who defend the amendment appeal to security considerations. But Gavison will have none of those. Even if there were peace between Israel and Palestine; even if there were no terrorism, the mandate for a Jewish majority overrules an Israeli citizen's right to live with his or her spouse. Gavison noted that citizenship is not a right; other countries have denied citizenship to spouses of citizens who belonged to groups outside of the state's ruling culture, such as Holland, which ruled against fundamentalist Muslim spouses. (One could add to this the recent French Supreme Court's decision upholding the denial of citizenship to a Muslim citizen's spouse, on the grounds that her values were not those of the French "community.")

Gans argues that a person's right to marry whomever he wishes, and to live with his or her spouse in the place where that person has lived, is a fundamental human right. The amendment of the Israeli citizenship law violates that right, and violates that right based on race. Yes, a state does have a legitimate concern with fostering a national culture, but that concern cannot override its citizens' basic human rights.

Note the important differences between the French and Israel case. For one thing, the French Supreme Court denied the Muslim spouse citizenship, not residency, whereas Gavison would say to an Israeli Palestinian: you can only live in Israel if a) you marry an Israeli Palestinian, or b) you live apart from your spouse, or c) you leave your home. For another, and this may not be so clear, the French notion of "values of the community" are not ethnonationally based; they are not even religiously based, but are rather liberal values. (Having said this, I, Jerry, am not happy with the French Court's decision, for obvious liberal reasons.)

Indeed, the ethnonational interpretation of "communauté" in France – the sort of interpretation that Gavison would apply to the Jewish community in Israel – is a legacy of the Nazi-supported Vichy regime: the regime that said that a French Jew could not really be a member of the "communauté," since they were not ethnically French. There are many ethnonationalists who believe this; Israel isthe only "liberal democracy" that enshrines such a notion in law.

For my criticisms of Gans I refer my readers to Zionism Without an (ethnonational) Jewish State. Let me conclude with a hypothetical situation. Suppose that a distinguished member of the Jewish Studies faculty at Hebrew University is Christian. Suppose that this person, after a lifetime of service to his students and to his field, after having written important books and articles about Jewish history, after having won the Israel prize for Jewish Studies, and for his highschool textbooks, wishes to become a citizen. According to the present Law of Return, he could not become one, unless by special fiat of the Ministry of Interior. This is somewhat similar to the situation of those privileged Jews who achieved residency or citizenship in Europe before emancipation. Now, let us assume that Israel, as a nation-state of all its citizens, has a special obligation to foster the cultures of its dominant groups, though not necessary an equal obligation (size counts). Couldn't one establish as a factor in priority in immigration "significant contribution to the national culture(s)"?

You see, once liberal nationalism justifies itself through the effects of a flourishing national culture on an individual's identity and well-being, rather than simply being part of an ethnic group -- once ethnicity becomes subordinate to, and justified in terms, of a flourishing national culture -- then one can allow a more flexible (and liberal) notion of group membership than, say, the Nuremberg laws.

I have no problem with Israel as a "Jewish state," provided that "Jewish state is not defined in the ethnonationalist sense of the founders of Israel, but in the sense of a dominant (though not domineering) culture – language, calendar, culture. And, of course, not in an exclusivist sense.

Such as state would give some priority to Jews and to Palestinians in immigration – "some priority," though not blanket. Refugees from Africa, for example, would have higher priority, all things being considered, than Jews from Brooklyn.

Israel and "Jisrael"

2008-07-13T14:31:00.001-07:00

Don't you hate it when you accept an invitation to a wedding or bar mitzvah, and then remember that you have tickets for something that same night?

So what do you do? Try to get rid of the tickets? Try to wheedle out of your social obligation? Try to attend both?

Well, after my wife and I purchased tickets to this evening's screening at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, we realized that we had also accepted an invitation to a bar/bat mitzvah celebration. You know, family friends from the US on a bar/bat mitvah tour....So my wife, who is native Israeli, went to the Cinemathèque, and I, the native American, went to the Bar/Bat Mitvah event.

Geographically, we were ten minutes walking-distance from each other. Psychologically we were in different worlds

I was in a world or country that I shall call "Jisrael" – Jewish Israel. Jisrael is a country that exists in the consciousness of Jews living outside Israel, and of those Anglos who come to live here. It is the Israel of the English-speaking subculture in Jerusalem, Raanana, Beit Shemesh, and the bedroom yuppie communities of the West Bank like Efrat, Alon Shvut, etc. In Jisrael, Hebrew is spoken, if at all, with an American accent. Most of the inhabitants of Jisrael nowadays are orthodox. In Jisrael, nobody is surprised when the bar and bat mitzvah from America give speeches celebrating their heroes, King David and Golda Meir. Everybody expects them to profess their love for Israel and Eretz Yisrael, and their father to speak with that American religious-zionist twinge of guilt for living in Suburban Maryland and not here. At the reception, the tables for the guests had Jisraeli place names including Masada, Hebron, and Kever Rachel. Now in Israel these places are, respectively, the past home of Jewish terrorists, the present home of Jewish terrorists, and an holy place invented during the Byzantine period, and then appropriated by the Muslims, and later by the Jews. (I don't know many things I, but I know that the odds of the matriarch Rachel being buried in Kever Rachel are one in a zillion.)

Most importantly, in Jisrael the only Arabs are street cleaners, construction workers, or terrorists. They aren't doctors, lawyers, teachers, or professionals. They aren't people you socialize with.

My wife, ten minutes away, was in the country of Israel. She was quite literally sitting in Gehenna, since the Jerusalem Cinematheque is in the valley identified by archaeologists as Gei Ben Hinnom, the Gehenna of the New Testament (and who knows if they are right?). But emotionally she was sitting in another Gehenna, because she was watching ten short films on Jerusalem. Sponsored by the Jerusalem NGO, Ir Amim.

Hebrew readers can read about the films here

While I was singing Hava Nagila and Oseh Shalom Bimromav, my wife was seeing films about four Palestinian brothers who support their families by selling chewing gum to Jewish motorists at intersections. She saw a short film about Said al-Haradin, who wakes up at the crack of dawn each day to embark upon a journey of several hours to get to al-Quds university in Abu Dis – a ten minute walk away from his refugee camp. Or a documentary by a Palestinian film student about how an Arab cab driver took into his home a Jewish woman with her family after they had been evicted from their flat.

The most powerful film was about the hideous "creatures" that for years have terrorized Palestinians, destroying their homes, building walls around and through their lands, and making life miserable for them. Last week, for the first time, the same creatures turned against the Jews. I refer, of course, to the Caterpillar bulldozers.

The films were not, on the whole, heavy-handed or propagandistic. There were no films about Israeli soldiers beating up Palestinian civilians, or about suicide bombers, or about Shin Bet infiltrators. The emphasis was on how normal people live abnormal lives in the shrinking Gehenna that is Palestinian Jerusalem

What would the Jews from Jisrael had felt had they attended the film screening? Some would have been deeply affected and deeply perplexed. Others would have pointed fingers at the Palestinians and would absolve the Israeli Jews of responsibility. But most would have had great difficulty recognizing Israel because of the Jisrael they had created.

What room was there for hope? Only this – the Jerusalem movie theater was filled with Jews and Palestinians, speaking to each other, relating to each other, talking about their experiences. My wife could not remember ever attending any event in Israel where Palestinians and Israeli Jews mingled freely, on the same footing. It gave her some hope for Israel.

As for Jisrael – well, I lost hope for that "imagined community" a long time ago.

ANC Delegation: Israeli Hafradah is “Worse Than Apartheid”

2008-07-11T05:32:00.001-07:00

Well, the interminable argument over whether the Israeli system of hafradah ("separation") between West Bank Jews and Palestinians constitutes apartheid is now over. The experts were called in, and they have ruled: It's not apartheid.

According to some of them, it's worse.

A high-ranking delegation of ANC veterans, some of whom were jailed under apartheid, just completed a fact-finding mission of the West Bank. The delegation included Jews and non-Jews, Whites, Blacks, and Colored, a former deputy minister, and a high court justice..

I will reproduce here two articles that have appeared on the subject. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate those who organized the mission, both in Israel and in South Africa.

To call hafradah apartheid is an insult against apartheid and the White supremacist regime of South Africa.

The first article is from the Independent.

'This is like apartheid': ANC veterans visit West Bank

By Donald Macintyre in Hebron
Friday, 11 July 2008

Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle said last night that the restrictions endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under white rule in South Africa.

Members of a 23-strong human-rights team of prominent South Africans cited the impact of the Israeli military's separation barrier, checkpoints, the permit system for Palestinian travel, and the extent to which Palestinians are barred from using roads in the West Bank.

After a five-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, some delegates expressed shock and dismay at conditions in the Israeli-controlled heart of Hebron. Uniquely among West Bank cities, 800 settlers now live there and segregation has seen the closure of nearly 3,000 Palestinian businesses and housing units. Palestinian cars (and in some sections pedestrians) are prohibited from using the once busy streets.

"Even with the system of permits, even with the limits of movement to South Africa, we never had as much restriction on movement as I see for the people here," said an ANC parliamentarian, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge of the West Bank. "There are areas in which people would live their whole lifetime without visiting because it's impossible."

Mrs Madlala-Routledge, a former deputy health minister in President Thabo Mbeki's government, added: "While I want to be careful not to characterise everything that I see here as apartheid, I just do find comparisons in a number of places. I also find differences."

Comparisons with apartheid have long been anathema to majority Israeli opinion, though they have been somewhat less taboo since the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, last year warned that without an early two-state agreement Israel could face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights.

Fatima Hassan, a leading South African human rights lawyer, said: "The issue of separate roads, [different registration] of cars driven by different nationalities, the indignity of producing a permit any time a soldier asks for it, and of waiting in long queues in the boiling sun at checkpoints just to enter your own city, I think is worse than what we experienced during apartheid." She was speaking after the tour, which included a visit to the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem and a meeting with Israel's Chief Justice, Dorit Beinisch.

One prominent member of the delegation, who declined to be named, said South Africa had been "much poorer" both during and after apartheid than the Palestinian territories. But he added: "The daily indignity to which the Palestinian population is subjected far outstrips the apartheid regime. And the effectiveness with which the bureaucracy implements the repressive measures far exceed that of the apartheid regime."

Members of the delegation – the first of its kind – visited Nablus as well as towns and villages bordering the separation barrier, including Na'alin where a temporary curfew was imposed after joint Israeli-Palestinian demonstrations against the barrier.

The visit was organised by Israeli human rights groups which co-operate with Palestinians committed to non-violent campaigns against Israeli occupation.

In Hebron's main Shuhada Street, the South African delegation was plunged into a confrontation after one of the local settlers' leaders disrupted the tour by unleashing a barrage of abuse through a megaphone at one of the Israeli guides. Amid angry arguments, police arrested three of the Israeli guides.

Mrs Madlala Routledge exclaimed: "This is ridiculous. Why are they arresting our guides and leaving the man with the megaphone?"

Dennis Davis, a high court judge and one of the South African delegation's several Jewish members, told the extreme right-wing Hebron settlers' leader Baruch Marzel: "These provocations didn't come from us. I'm Jewish and I look at this and I say to myself, how can I feel fear from other Jews?"

Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC parliament member, said that the visit to Yad Vashem had been "extremely moving" because his mother had been a Holocaust survivor who lost many members of her family. "As you walk into Yad Vashem you see a quote that says in effect you should know a country not only by what it does but what it tolerates," he said. "So I found it very shocking to then come and here and see footage of teenagers heaping abuse on Palestinian children as they come out of school, and throwing stones at them. And that this should be done in the name of Judaism I find totally reprehensible.

"What the Holocaust teaches us more than anything else is that we must never turn our heads away in the face of injustice."

The delegation's final formal statement made no mention of comparisons with apartheid and Judge Davis said he thought the use of the term in the Middle East context was "very unhelpful".

He added: "The level of social control I've seen here, separate roads, different number plates [between Palestinian and Israeli cars] may well be more cynically pernicious than what we have ever had. But this is a country that is really about how there is going to be divorce and we were always a marriage." Ms Hassan herself said she thought the apartheid comparison was a potential "red herring".

Israelis point out there are no South-African-style laws segregating Israeli East Jerusalem Arabs from Israeli Jews in public spaces.

The delegation yesterday urged international support for the "new and small movement of Palestinian-Israeli joint non-violent struggle". And its members stressed their understanding of Israeli security needs. Mr Feinstein said: "I completely understand the fears of Israelis ... but at the same time we have seen for ourselves and been told about all sorts of measures that don't seem to be in terms of security and in some instances could if anything undermine security of state."

The delegation also visited the Parents' Circle – a joint organisation of Israeli and Palestinian families bereaved by the conflict. Ms Hassan said this had been at once the most "depressing and inspiring" visit of the trip.

And our own Gideon Levy, God bless him, here

'Worse than apartheid'

By Gideon Levy

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.

On Monday they visited Nablus, the most imprisoned city in the West Bank. From Hawara to the Casbah, from the Casbah to Balata, from Joseph's Tomb to the monastery of Jacob's Well. They traveled from Jerusalem to Nablus via Highway 60, observing the imprisoned villages that have no access to the main road, and seeing the "roads for the natives," which pass under the main road. They saw and said nothing. There were no separate roads under apartheid. They went through the Hawara checkpoint mutely: they never had such barriers.

Jody Kollapen, who was head of Lawyers for Human Rights in the apartheid regime, watches silently. He sees the "carousel" into which masses of people are jammed on their way to work, visit family or go to the hospital. Israeli peace activist Neta Golan, who lived for several years in the besieged city, explains that only 1 percent of the inhabitants are allowed to leave the city by car, and they are suspected of being collaborators with Israel. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a former deputy minister of defense and of health and a current member of Parliament, a revered figure in her country, notices a sick person being taken through on a stretcher and is shocked. "To deprive people of humane medical care? You know, people die because of that," she says in a muted voice.

The tour guides - Palestinian activists - explain that Nablus is closed off by six checkpoints. Until 2005, one of them was open. "The checkpoints are supposedly for security purposes, but anyone who wants to perpetrate an attack can pay NIS 10 for a taxi and travel by bypass roads, or walk through the hills.

The real purpose is to make life hard for the inhabitants. The civilian population suffers," says Said Abu Hijla, a lecturer at Al-Najah University in the city.

In the bus I get acquainted with my two neighbors: Andrew Feinstein, a son of Holocaust survivors who is married to a Muslim woman from Bangladesh and served six years as an MP for the ANC; and Nathan Gefen, who has a male Muslim partner and was a member of the right-wing Betar movement in his youth. Gefen is active on the Committee against AIDS in his AIDS-ravaged country.

"Look left and right," the guide says through a loudspeaker, "on the top of every hill, on Gerizim and Ebal, is an Israeli army outpost that is watching us." Here are bullet holes in the wall of a school, there is Joseph's Tomb, guarded by a group of armed Palestinian policemen. Here there was a checkpoint, and this is where a woman passerby was shot to death two years ago. The government building that used to be here was bombed and destroyed by F-16 warplanes. A thousand residents of Nablus were killed in the second intifada, 90 of them in Operation Defensive Shield - more than in Jenin. Two weeks ago, on the day the Gaza Strip truce came into effect, Israel carried out its last two assassinations here for the time being. Last night the soldiers entered again and arrested people.

It has been a long time since tourists visited here. There is something new: the numberless memorial posters that were pasted to the walls to commemorate the fallen have been replaced by marble monuments and metal plaques in every corner of the Casbah.

"Don't throw paper into the toilet bowl, because we have a water shortage," the guests are told in the offices of the Casbah Popular Committee, located high in a spectacular old stone building. The former deputy minister takes a seat at the head of the table. Behind her are portraits of Yasser Arafat, Abu Jihad and Marwan Barghouti - the jailed Tanzim leader. Representatives of the Casbah residents describe the ordeals they face. Ninety percent of the children in the ancient neighborhood suffer from anemia and malnutrition, the economic situation is dire, the nightly incursions are continuing, and some of the inhabitants are not allowed to leave the city at all. We go out for a tour on the trail of devastation wrought by the IDF over the years.

Edwin Cameron, a judge on the Supreme Court of Appeal, tells his hosts: "We came here lacking in knowledge and are thirsty to know. We are shocked by what we have seen until now. It is very clear to us that the situation here is intolerable." A poster pasted on an outside wall has a photograph of a man who spent 34 years in an Israeli prison. Mandela was incarcerated seven years less than that. One of the Jewish members of the delegation is prepared to say, though not for attribution, that the comparison with apartheid is very relevant and that the Israelis are even more efficient in implementing the separation-of-races regime than the South Africans were. If he were to say this publicly, he would be attacked by the members of the Jewish community, he says.

Under a fig tree in the center of the Casbah one of the Palestinian activists explains: "The Israeli soldiers are cowards. That is why they created routes of movement with bulldozers. In doing so they killed three generations of one family, the Shubi family, with the bulldozers." Here is the stone monument to the family - grandfather, two aunts, mother and two children. The words "We will never forget, we will never forgive" are engraved on the stone.

No less beautiful than the famed Paris cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, the central cemetery of Nablus rests in the shadow of a large grove of pine trees. Among the hundreds of headstones, those of the intifada victims stand out. Here is the fresh grave of a boy who was killed a few weeks ago at the Hawara checkpoint. The South Africans walk quietly between the graves, pausing at the grave of the mother of our guide, Abu Hijla. She was shot 15 times. "We promise you we will not surrender," her children wrote on the headstone of the woman who was known as "mother of the poor."

Lunch is in a hotel in the city, and Madlala-Routledge speaks. "It is hard for me to describe what I am feeling. What I see here is worse than what we experienced. But I am encouraged to find that there are courageous people here. We want to support you in your struggle, by every possible means. There are quite a few Jews in our delegation, and we are very proud that they are the ones who brought us here. They are demonstrating their commitment to support you. In our country we were able to unite all the forces behind one struggle, and there were courageous whites, including Jews, who joined the struggle. I hope we will see more Israeli Jews joining your struggle."

She was deputy defense minister from 1999 to 2004; in 1987 she served time in prison. Later, I asked her in what ways the situation here is worse than apartheid. "The absolute control of people's lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw."

Madlala-Routledge thinks that the struggle against the occupation is not succeeding here because of U.S. support for Israel - not the case with apartheid, which international sanctions helped destroy. Here, the racist ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South Africa. "Talk about the 'promised land' and the 'chosen people' adds a religious dimension to racism which we did not have."

Equally harsh are the remarks of the editor-in-chief of the Sunday Times of South Africa, Mondli Makhanya, 38. "When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid.

"The apartheid regime viewed the blacks as inferior; I do not think the Israelis see the Palestinians as human beings at all. How can a human brain engineer this total separation, the separate roads, the checkpoints? What we went through was terrible, terrible, terrible - and yet there is no comparison. Here it is more terrible. We also knew that it would end one day; here there is no end in sight. The end of the tunnel is blacker than black.

"Under apartheid, whites and blacks met in certain places. The Israelis and the Palestinians do not meet any longer at all. The separation is total. It seems to me that the Israelis would like the Palestinians to disappear. There was never anything like that in our case. The whites did not want the blacks to disappear. I saw the settlers in Silwan [in East Jerusalem] - people who want to expel other people from their place."

Afterward we walk silently through the alleys of Balata, the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, a place that was designated 60 years ago to be a temporary haven for 5,000 refugees and is now inhabited by 26,000. In the dark alleys, which are about the width of a thin person, an oppressive silence prevailed. Everyone was immersed in his thoughts, and only the voice of the muezzin broke the stillness.

Chaim Gans' "A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State"

2008-07-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

I have in my hands -- well, next to my computer -- not only one of the most interesting books ever written about the morality of political Zionism (and the morality of Israel's policies), but one of the most sensible and sensitive books ever written about Israel and Palestine. Although I don't agree with many of the author's arguments or conclusions -- he still cuts political Zionism and Israel too much slack, in my opinion -- I have no hesitation in giving him and his book a moral "heksher"/seal of approval.

In A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State (2008, Oxford University Press), Tel-Aviv University law professor and moral philosopher Chaim Gans presents a defence -- albeit a limited one, as we shall see -- of the right of the State of Israel to continue to exist as it was founded, and of some of Israel's controversial laws and policies, e.g., the law of return. His arguments position him to the the left of the Israeli-Jewish consensus (including much of the Meretz party), but to the right of the post-Zionist crowd. Gans is a liberal nationalist, that is, he believes that nationalism is defensible because a common national heritage has great possibilities for enriching the lives and identities of individuals in a liberal state. So if you're a post- or anti-nationalist, this book is not for you. In fact, what I like about most about the book it that is assumes, for the sake of argument, the truth of the Zionist narrative of Jewish history and the legitimacy of liberal nationalism. The author then explores what justifiably follows from such assumptions. And his answers will not make make most Israel advocates happy, those who, like most of us, are content with fallacious and self-serving moral arguments.

Because of its importance I plan to discuss the book in a series of posts. I have also put a widget on the right side of the page for the convenience of people who want to buy the book. Let me say this upfront: if you are reading this blog, you should read Gans' book. And that includes anti-Zionists, non-Zionists, and ultra-rightwing Zionists. The only people who shouldn't read the book are those who don't like to follow, or can't follow, a philosophical argument, or those who don't care to read anything written by an Israeli. Whatever pennies I get from Amazon Associates I will donate to leftwing Israel-Palestine causes, so if you are a rightwinger, you may want to get the book directly from Amazon.

Here are some lines from the Introduction:

The purpose of this study is to present a philosophical analysis of the justice of contemporary Zionism as realized by the State of Israel, including Israel's territorial and demographic aspirations and the way it conceives of itself as a Jewish state. Specifically, I will examine the justice of contemporary Zionism in the light of the gap between a particular version of Zionist ideology that oculd be considered just and the situation today, which is a consequence of both current Israeli policies and the Zionist past. I will mainly focus on three components of this situation: the Palestinian refugee problem...; the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip...; and the policies of the State of Israel toward the Arab minority living within Israel's pre-1967 borders.

What Gans does in the book is to attempt to establish what is morally defensible and and reasonable about Zionism, and then compare it with the principles and policies of the Zionist state founded in 1948. Thus, for example, he argues from a liberal Zionist perspective in chapter one that the Jews constitute a people with a legitimate claim to national self-determination and self-rule -- but that this does not confer on them automatically a right to Jewish hegemony in a Jewish nation-state. Such a hegemony is only justifiable "circumstantially" and only applies to restricted domains of demography and security, and then in much more limited ways than implemented now. Nor must there always be a need for a Jewish nation-state in order to realize Jewish self-determination.

While Gans defends some of the special considerations that the Jewish state gives to its Jewish citizens, for example, in the sphere of immigration, he sharply restricts these special considerations and declares them in principle undesirable as permanent policies. Most of the time he picks apart the classic arguments used by liberal Zionists to defend Zionist policies of preference and discrimination. Those passages are, of course, my favorite parts of the book.

One final word: on the back cover there are two blurbs, one by American Jewish political thinker, Michael Walzer, and the other by Israeli philosopher, Avishai Margalit, both liberal Zionists. Margalit praises Gans' fairness; Walzer, Gans' meticulous presention of the arguments. Neither endorse the positions taken by the author, and I think that this is significant. It is a pleasure to read a book where, agree with the thesis or not, one can admire the intelligence and the moral sensitivity of the author.

Criticisms will follow.

Sane People in Sodom

2008-07-06T00:57:00.001-07:00

I spent my Shabbat troubled by the fact that I hadn't heard people speak up against Israel's intentions to destroy the house of the Palestinian tractor-driver from last week. Oh, sure, the usual suspects on the left (guilty as charged) will raise their voices sooner or later, but I wanted people who were a bit more mainstream than the human-rights advocates to weigh in. And I wanted the arguments to be moral ones.

My wife told me that the voices would emerge, that people were waiting a bit for the lynch mood to die down. She is usually right, so let's hope so.

In the meantime, here are some voices that qualify for the "Sane People in Sodom" award, not the "Righteous People in Sodom" award. Their arguments are not moral ones, but if they can save the family's house from the mob, I will give them two cheers.

On Friday Haaretz had a "carefully balanced" editorial whose bottom line was: "Politicians, stop acting like a mob." You can read it here. The crumbs the editorial threw to the mob was painful, such as criticizing the perpetrators' family for suggesting that the whole thing was an accident, as if any of that is relevant. The editorial is not what I would have written, but If it helps save the house…

Then there was a well-meaning piece by Haggai Efrati in NRG Judaism (in Hebrew here). Efrati is a member of an organization, if it still exists, called "Realistic Religious Zionism," which is moderate on the issue of the territories and whose members have more moral qualms than your average Israeli religious Jew. The article blasts rabbis who rush to declare in the name of Jewish law that it is a mitzvah to destroy the houses of the famlies of perpetrators, or wipe out the villages, etc. In my opinion, the article illustrates well the confusion of "Realistic Religious Zionism." Instead of attacking the rabbis as moral monsters, they basically attack them for speaking out on matters over which they have no special expertise. That is an argument that resonates well with the modern orthodox community, which loves to bash its rabbis when they interfere with their autonomy, and I am sympathetic to it. Not what I would have written, but if it helps save the house….

I certainly don't count among the righteous people folks like Amnon Straschnov, retired chief military judge advocate who argues in today's Haaretz that legally Israel has the right to tear down homes, only that practically it is a bad idea. See here. When he writes,

House demolition, both as a punitive gesture aimed at the perpetrators of acts of terror, as well as for military needs and deterrence, are based on extremely firm legal foundations, such as regulation (1)119 of the defense regulations in times of emergency, 1945, and the Fourth Geneva Convention

that's the sort of bullshit argument that one expects of lawyer, a fortiori military lawyers. Note the qualifier "extremely" in the phrase "extremely firm legal foundations," (mistranslated in the English version as "fairly") Anybody familiar with the Fourth Geneva Convention knows that this is wrong. Wikipedia says it best:

The use of house demolition under international law is today governed by the Fourth Geneva Convention, enacted in 1949, which protects non-combatants in occupied territories. Article 53 provides that "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons ... is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations."^[11]

Israeli use of house demolitions has been particularly controversial. However, Israel, which is a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, asserts that the terms of the Convention are not applicable to the Palestinian territories on the grounds that the territories do not constitute a state which is a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention.^[12]^[13]^[14] This position is rejected by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, which notes that "it is a basic principle of human rights law that international human rights treaties are applicable in all areas in which states parties exercise effective control, regardless of whether or not they exercise sovereignty in that area."^[1]

So much for the "extremely firm legal foundations" that may allow Strachnov to sleep at night and to write an article to salve his guilty conscience. It's certainly not what I would have written.

But if it helps save the house….

Revenge By Any Other Name

2008-07-04T09:39:00.001-07:00

The rampage of the Arab tractor-drive this week in Jerusalem, which killed several people and wounded many more, is rightly condemned. Yes, it is important to try to understand motives, and yes, it is important to think rationally on how to prevent the reoccurence of such events. But understanding is not excusing, much less justifying. You can say the same thing for the rampage of the student at Virginia Tech last year, which killed more people. Even if a person is driven to do something by mental illness, or by some sort of exculpating factor, the harming of innocents is to be condemned. The motives are not relevant. Death by Caterpillar is death.

But no less condemnable are the acts of revenge contemplated by Israeli officials against innocents, either the tractor-driver's family (destroying their house) or his neighborhood (revoking their residency.) In fact, they are arguably more barbaric because they are premeditated actions of a state, illegal by international law, and immoral by any morality save that of the mafia.

What is chilling about the contemplated acts of revenge by Israel politicians like Barak, Netanyahu, Oimert, Ramon, is that they are just that – revenge. Nobody is even trying to argue that destroying or sealing up the family's house is punishment or deterrence. Nobody holds the family or the neighborhood responsible (are we back in the Bible?), and since 2005, the IDF has explicitly said that blowing up houses is not an effective deterrent.

So the only reason for hurting Palestinian innocents, according to the Israeli government, is the same reason that the truck-driver presumably had for hurting Israeli innocents (which could easily have included Palestinians) – revenge. We know even less about the truck-driver's motives than those of Barak, Netanyahu, and Ramon.

Just read the following statement from the Haaretz article today

Ramon also told Army Radio that he felt, as opposed to the prime minister and his fellow ministers, that demolishing the home of the terrorist's family would not prevent the next terror attack. However, he said that the house should be demolished anyway, if the law allows it.

"I doubt that demolishing the house will achieve what it aims to achieve, though if possible, the house must be razed. The laws must be made to fit the policy and we mustn't give up," Ramon said. "What we are permitted to do, we must do as soon as possible."

What Ramon seems to be saying is that because Israel legally can demolish the house, it should demolish the house, despite there being no purpose in destroying the house. We've got a much bigger tractor than that guy did, and it is legally registered.

The Arab perpetrator drives a tractor; our perpetrators run the government. I can't see any other difference.

And please don't argue that one is under occupation and the others aren't. That gets to the understanding part, not the justifying part. Not for me, anyway. Please check your Fanon at the door of this blog.

P.S. Of course, if punishing innocents were an effective deterrent, it would still be patently immoral, wouldn't it. If you don't think so, please re-read Kant.

Two More (Palestinians) for the Road – The Ethnic Cleansing Continues

2008-06-27T09:20:00.001-07:00

Anybody accusing me of dual loyalty would be right: as a citizen of both America and Israel I pledge allegiance to two countries and enjoy the rights and responsibilities of both countries, traveling between them as much as I want, and spending time in them without having to wait in long lines at the airport and apply for visas.

If I were a Palestinian, and spent some time out of the country, then I could lose my residency rights in Palestine. If I were a Palestinian who lived all my life in Jerusalem, and then married a Palestinian from the US, who lost his residency privileges in his native Palestine, then ipso facto I would lose mine – even if I spent most my time in the land where my family has lived for generation. Just marrying a Palestinian living in the US would jeopardize my status in my native land.

That is what is known as "ethnic cleansing lite". The Zionists have always done their best to rid Israel and the Occupied Territories of Palestinians – not so much through murder, rape, or torture, which would be ethnic cleansing of the sort we expect in Rwanda or Bosnia, as through more banal methods, such as telling a Palestinian-American like Sam Bahour, who moved to Israel during the Oslo period, and who has been living in the West Bank with his wife and two daughters, and who during that time has had to renew his "tourist" visa every 3 or 6 months, that he will not be able to renew it again -- and that he will have to separate from his family. Oh, and about that "tourist" visa; you see, that's the best a Palestinian who comes to live in Palestine can do in the Palestinian territories, whose population is controlled entirely by Israel.

Some part of me wants this policy to be part of a master Israeli plan in which Palestinian Americans, and upper middle-class Palestinian professionals, are deliberately driven from the territories in order that they become centers for poverty, terrorism, and Islamic fundamentalism. Such centers will ensure the requisite number of Jews being blown up in order to justify Israel's continuing existence before the world as an ethnonationalist state that controls and settles the territories. I say that some part of me wants this policy to be part of such a plan, only because that would indicate some degree of intelligence on the part of those who framed such a policy.

But no, I really think that there is no master plan; it is simply bureaucratic evil, an expression of the need to humiliate Palestinians. Otherwise I cannot explain why Israel has gone to such lengths to stick to this policy, despite US "pressure" and despite its promises to work out "humanitarian" solutions.

The first letter is from Mona Nasir Tucktuck; the second from Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison, who happens to be the daughter of Hanan Ashrawi. For these two there are many, many more, of course.

Dear Friends and Family,

I am writing to share a little about what is happening in my life lately. As most of you know, I have been in Jerusalem since March 18 with Ramzi who at the time had barely turned 5 months. We left Habib and made the sacrifice to be apart for the coming 4 months for the sake of preserving my Jerusalem ID, to keep my residency status. I know this might sound strange, but as a Palestinian who has lived her whole life in Jerusalem, and despite the fact that my family has lived in Jerusalem and Palestine for centuries, according to the Israeli law, Palestinians living in Jerusalem are only residents but not necessarily permanent residents, and therefore are at risk all the time of losing their residency rights.

For the past 3 years, I have been married to Habib, a Palestinian by blood but an American by citizenship, because Habib's Jerusalem residency was revoked in 2004- although Habib was born in Jerusalem, and has lived there until his adult life. Anyways, now it was my turn to renew my entry visa to "Israel" (yes, I needed a visa in my own country)- I met with a lawyer who asked for a substantial amount to help me renew my entry visa, which would preserve my residency until the next time I have to renew (a maximum of 3 years), but this time the Israelis refused to renew it and instead told me that since I made the decision to marry an "American", who can't reside in Jerusalem, I have made a decision to seek residency in a foreign country and am therefore "choosing" to abandon my residency rights in Jerusalem. (Palestinians are not allowed to have dual residency or citizenship, a law that is not applicable to Israelis who are able to hold dual or multiple citizenships.) To make a long story short, I lost my residency rights in my own country!!!! I can only go back to visit as a tourist, and have to acquire a tourist visa from the Israeli embassy!! The ironic thing is that all my family still live there!! But I can never join them, I don't have a choice in the matter. We, the people of the land are being thrown out!!!

On my way back from the lawyer's office, I was stopped by Israeli soldiers who asked to see my papers- they spoke Russian- I thought to myself, these immigrants know nothing of this land they are serving and protecting- they don't even know the language- They come from Russia, Europe, Africa, the US, and other places and choose to reside in my country- and they can!!!! Not only that but they can limit my movement in my country, and even kick me out of it! When I complained to my lawyer about this injustice he simply answered, " Mona, this is occupation!!!" Not at all the legal answer I was looking for at- there is no human law that can protect me, or preserve my rights. Needless to say, I have lost my right to return, to my country.....to the only country I ever belonged to, the only place I ever called home.

As an adult who has been living under occupation for the past 33 years, I was upset but I can't say that I was surprised by what happened to me. However, what surprised me was what is happening with my 7 month old, Ramzi. Ramzi was born in the US and therefore got an American passport. Although he is the son of two full blooded Palestinians who call Jerusalem and Palestine home, he was denied residency rights in Jerusalem and was given a tourist visa. I asked the lady at the airport when we first arrived if she could give Ramzi (then 5 months old) a 4 month Visa, rather than the traditional 3 month visa, I showed her my residency card (at the time I still was considered a resident), and showed her our return plane tickets. She said no, and said that I should apply for an extension for Ramzi at the ministry of interior. To avoid conflict and to make my life easier I asked the lawyer to apply for an extension for Ramzi..... to my surprise Ramzi was denied. The Israeli government refused to grant a 7 month old baby an extension on his visa, not even with the help of our lawyer and all his connections!!! So, now I have to face the choice of leaving with Ramzi early and change our vacation plans, or stay with Ramzi here as planned until July 25th, and have my 7 month old be illegally overstaying his welcome in the land of his ancestors. The ironic thing is that this poor little baby can't even say mama or baba, yet he is pausing a security threat to Israel that they denied him a one month extension on his visa!!

So now, my little family of three are added to the millions of Palestinians who lost their right to reside in their country and have been kicked out of their homes. We now are

residents of Las Vegas, but I will always refer to Palestine as my home. Since the 1948 diaspora of our people, the Palestinians in the world have been waiting for a just solution, that would give them the right to return to their homeland, and now 60 years later the list gets longer everyday with people just like the 3 of us who were driven out of our country. I will never give up the hope that one day I would have the choice to live in Palestine, and I will make sure that Ramzi also knows that he has a right to return!

Mona

I am Palestinian – born and raised – and my Palestinian roots go back centuries. No one can change that even if they tell me that Jerusalem , my birth place, is not Palestine , even if they tell me that Palestine doesn't exist, even if they take away all my papers and deny me entry to my own home, even if they humiliate me and take away my rights. I AM PALESTINIAN.

Name: Zeina Emile Sam'an Ashrawi; Date of Birth: July 30, 1981; Ethnicity: Arab. This is what was written on my Jerusalem ID card. An ID card to a Palestinian is much more than just a piece of paper; it is my only legal documented relationship to Palestine . Born in Jerusalem , I was given a Jerusalem ID card (the blue ID), an Israeli Travel Document and a Jordanian Passport stamped Palestinian (I have no legal rights in Jordan ). I do not have an Israeli Passport, a Palestinian Passport or an American Passport. Here is my story:

I came to the United States as a 17 year old to finish high school in Pennsylvania and went on to college and graduate school and subsequently got married and we are currently living in Northern Virginia. I have gone home every year at least once to see my parents, my family and my friends and to renew my Travel Document as I was only able to extend its validity once a year from Washington DC . My father and I would stand in line at the Israeli Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem , along with many other Palestinians, from 4:30 in the morning to try our luck at making it through the revolving metal doors of the Ministry before noon – when the Ministry closed its doors - to try and renew the Travel Document. We did that year after year. As a people living under an occupation, being faced with constant humiliation by an occupier was the norm but we did what we had to do to insure our identity was not stolen from us.

In August of 2007 I went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC to try and extend my travel document and get the usual "Returning Resident" VISA that the Israelis issue to Palestinians holding an Israeli Travel Document. After watching a few Americans and others being told that their visas would be ready in a couple of weeks my turn came. I walked up to the bulletproof glass window shielding the lady working behind it and under a massive picture of the Dome of the Rock and the Walls of Jerusalem that hangs on the wall in the Israeli consulate, I handed her my papers through a little slot at the bottom of the window.

"Shalom" she said with a smile. "Hi" I responded, apprehensive and scared. As soon as she saw my Travel Document her demeanor immediately changed. The smile was no longer there and there was very little small talk between us, as usual. After sifting through the paperwork I gave her she said: "where is your American Passport?" I explained to her that I did not have one and that my only Travel Document is the one she has in her hands. She was quiet for a few seconds and then said: "you don't have an American Passport?" suspicious that I was hiding information from her. "No!" I said. She was quiet for a little longer and then said: "Well, I am not sure we'll be able to extend your Travel Document." I felt the blood rushing to my head as this is my only means to get home! I asked her what she meant by that and she went on to tell me that since I had been living in the US and because I had a Green Card they would not extend my Travel Document. After taking a deep breath to try and control my temper I explained to her that a Green Card is not a Passport and I cannot use it to travel outside the US . My voice was shaky and I was getting more and more upset (and a mini shouting match ensued) so I asked her to explain to me what I needed to do. She told me to leave my paperwork and we would see what happens.

A couple of weeks later I received a phone call from the lady telling me that she was able to extended my Travel Document but I would no longer be getting the "Returning Resident" VISA. Instead, I was given a 3 month tourist VISA. Initially I was happy to hear that the Travel Document was extended but then I realized that she said "tourist VISA". Why am I getting a tourist VISA to go home? Not wanting to argue with her about the 3 month VISA at the time so as not to jeopardize the extension of my Travel Document, I simply put that bit of information on the back burner and went on to explain to her that I wasn't going home in the next 3 months. She instructed me to come back and apply for another VISA when I did intend on going. She didn't add much and just told me that it was ready for pick-up. So I went to the Embassy and got my Travel Document and the tourist VISA that was stamped in it.

My husband, my son and I were planning on going home to Palestine this summer. So a month before we were set to leave (July 8, 2008) I went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC , papers in hand, to ask for a VISA to go home. I, again, stood in line and watched others get VISAs to go to my home. When my turn came I walked up to the window; "Shalom" she said with a smile on her face, "Hi" I replied. I slipped the paperwork in the little slot under the bulletproof glass and waited for the usual reaction. I told her that I needed a returning resident VISA to go home. She took the paperwork and I gave her a check for the amount she requested and left the Embassy without incident.

A few days ago I got a phone call from Dina at the Israeli Embassy telling me that she needed the expiration date of my Jordanian Passport and my Green Card. I had given them all the paperwork they needed time and time again and I thought it was a good way on their part to waste time so that I didn't get my VISA in time. Regardless, I called over and over again only to get their voice mail. I left a message with the information they needed but kept called every 10 minutes hoping to speak to someone to make sure that they received the information in an effort to expedite the tedious process. I finally got a hold of someone. I told her that I wanted to make sure they received the information I left on their voice mail and that I wanted to make sure that my paperwork was in order. She said, after consulting with someone in the background (I assume it was Dina), that I needed to fax copies of both my Jordanian Passport and my Green Card and that giving them the information over the phone wasn't acceptable. So I immediately made copies and faxed them to Dina.

A few hours later my cell phone rang. "Zeina?" she said. "Yes" I replied, knowing exactly who it was and immediately asked her if she received the fax I sent. She said: "ehhh, I was not looking at your file when you called earlier but your Visa was denied and your ID and Travel Document are no longer valid." "Excuse me?" I said in disbelief. "Sorry, I cannot give you a visa and your ID and Travel Document are no longer valid. This decision came from Israel not from me."

I cannot describe the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach. "Why?" I asked and Dina went on to tell me that it was because I had a Green Card. I tried to reason with Dina and to explain to her that they could not do that as this is my only means of travel home and that I wanted to see my parents, but to no avail. Dina held her ground and told me that I wouldn't be given the VISA and then said: "Let the Americans give you a Travel Document".

I have always been a strong person and not one to show weakness but at that moment I lost all control and started crying while Dina was on the other end of the line holding my only legal documents linking me to my home. I began to plead with her to try and get the VISA and not revoke my documents; "put yourself in my shoes, what would you do? You want to go see your family and someone is telling you that you can't! What would you do? Forget that you're Israeli and that I'm Palestinian and think about this for a minute!" "Sorry" she said,"I know but I can't do anything, the decision came from Israel ". I tried to explain to her over and over again that I could not travel without my Travel Document and that they could not do that – knowing that they could, and they had!

This has been happening to many Palestinians who have a Jerusalem ID card. The Israeli government has been practicing and perfecting the art of ethnic cleansing since 1948 right under the nose of the world and no one has the power or the guts to do anything about it. Where else in the world does one have to beg to go to one's own home? Where else in the world does one have to give up their identity for the sole reason of living somewhere else for a period of time? Imagine if an American living in Spain for a few years wanted to go home only to be told by the American government that their American Passport was revoked and that they wouldn't be able to come back!

If I were a Jew living anywhere around the world and had no ties to the area and had never set foot there, I would have the right to go any time I wanted and get an Israeli Passport. In fact, the Israelis encourage that. I however, am not Jewish but I was born and raised there, my parents, family and friends still live there and I cannot go back! I am neither a criminal nor a threat to one of the most power countries in the world, yet I am alienated and expelled from my own home….

Well, Molech needs his sacrifices, doesn't he? Every Palestinian who is harrassed into leaving, or who is not allowed to come to Israel, is a bargaining chip, a hostage in the demographic numbers game.

Sixty-one years and counting….

Baka Lefties Again

2008-06-23T06:51:00.001-07:00

In my post on Baka Lefties, I challenged the progessives who live in Baka (myself included) to recognize the morally problematic nature of living one's life in a house whose owners were expelled, and who will never receive compensation, at least not in our lifetimes. That post generated a certain amount of comment, although I must say that the only "Baka Lefty" I know of who responded was Deborah Greniman, and she raised some good points, which I will address below.

In my post I suggested that it would be a good idea to have the owners who have moral qualms about living in areas where the Palestinian owners were expelled to try to organize and to reach out to the original Palestinian owners, or more probably, their heirs, or, for that matter, the Palestinian people as a whole, and try to arrange some sort of interim settlement, symbolic or otherwise. I realize that there are many problems with the suggestion. But I wanted to open a discussion of what can be done.

I was misunderstood on several fronts, so here are some clarifications. But first, a story:

I have a friend who has become "green". But he drives every day to work, and that makes him feel guilty. He could take the subway but it would take him twenty minutes longer to get to work, and, frankly, it is not as convenient. He recently sold his SUV (his green consciousness is pretty recent) and got a Toyota Prius hybrid. But he still drives.

Now some people would say that my friend is hypocritical: if helping the environment were that important to him, he would not drive to work at all, they say. In fact, there are probably many things that he could do to reduce his carbon footprint. I mean, some people will die because of the environment, and he will be, in effect, helping to kill them and crying about it later.

I feel sorry for people who use that sort of argument against my friend. They don't realize – at least not when they are engaged in polemics -- that morality covers an enormous amount of grey area, that for most of that area there is no simple moral calculus to determine what is right and wrong, and that there can be areas of moral agreement and disagreement. There is a large area covered by "moral qualms," or "moral unease", which is weaker than "moral disapprobation," and over which there will be a lot of disagreement.

I used to drive on Highway 443, a highway that connects Jerusalem to Modi'in which was built on Palestinian land, and which is effectively closed to Palestinians, causing them enormous inconvenience. After thinking about the road, I decided that given the way I feel, I shouldn't use it. At first, I avoided the road unless there was a traffic jam on Highway 1, in which case I went back to 443. After all, does my use of the road make a single bit of difference to the Palestinians who can't drive on it, or to the other Israelis who can? I asked myself. Lately, however, I have been sitting in traffic jams at Sakharov rather than take the alternative route. (Serves me right for reading Gideon Levy.) But I may go back to the road, some day. Hypocritical? Yes, I suppose. But only if I feel that not using that road under any but emergency circumstances is a clear-cut moral imperative. Only if I criticized others for using it and then proceeded to use it myself.

Now, I am sure that there are people who won't buy houses in Baka because their Palestinian owners were never compensated. I salute such people, just as my friend who bought the Prius salutes those who don't drive to work at all. But there are many reasons why we do the things we do, and there are lots of factors that we weigh, when we choose neighborhoods or cars.

It is clear to me that the responsibility – legal and moral -- for compensation to the Arab refugees who left abandoned property devolves on Israel as a whole, not on the individuals living in Arab houses or on Arab lands throughout the country. Just how that compensation is to be paid and to whom is a matter for a whole different post. If you don't think the question is complicated, then you haven't been following the question of Holocaust reparations, or for that matter, the case of the Native Americans against the US government for misusing their trust funds , which is an even more egregious crime than appropriating people's houses.

I don't criticize others for not sharing my moral qualms. But I would still argue that accepting the status quo and not trying to do something about it is morally insufficient. Or, to be more modest, I still don't see how it is morally sufficient.

Let's look at this another way. Suppose there is a young Pole who learns that the house he bought, from another Pole, who bought it from still another Pole, was originally the property of a Jew, who never got compensated for it. And suppose that this young Pole feels some moral qualms about it. And suppose, finally, that he attempts to locate the owners, or that he makes a documentary film about the house, or something of this sort. Would we Jews be so quick to dismiss this guy as hypocritical or as acting from impure motives or even as acting inappropriately? When we invited him to show his film at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, would we argue that the idea of making a film was wrong, that what he really should have done was to influence the Polish government to recognize its collective responsibilities?

Or would we have said that this is a good Pole. He didn't have to do what he did, to be sure, but we admire him for doing it.

Now, to Deborah's comments:

"The responsibility isn't individual; it is collective." On that I agree. But I believe that there is a greater obligation – or if that is too strong, greater cause for moral unease -- on the part of those who benefit more from the expulsion than those who don't, especially if they view it as expulsion. The way that this unease is expressed need not, of course, be in reaching out to the original owners or to their representatives. But why not make this a person-to-person initiative, especially if the people on the other side are receptive? As I wrote, I know of somebody who came to an agreement with the owners. Is what he did wrong-headed?
"Living in Baka makes me feel a little less self-righteous with respect to the settlers. Like them, I too, live on contested land." The fact that the settlers and we Baka lefties are in some respects in the same boat should make me more critical of myself, and not less critical of them. My Prius–driving friend doesn't criticize his SUV-driving friends less because he didn't give up his car. Being self-righteous is never a good thing. But cutting someone too much slack in order to salve your conscience isn't great either.
"It makes more sense to focus energies on better ways of making life liveable for Palestinian Jerusalemites." Amen to that. I am sure that there are lots of things more pressing than reaching out to people who abandoned their property sixty years ago. I wasn't offering my proposal as "drop-everything-let's-do-this". All I wished to do was to get people to start thinking about how we can help raise the consciousness of folks on this issue, beginning with ourselves. Zokhrot is one answer, but not the only answer.

There is every reason in the world to prefer addressing present injustices than to deal with past injustices. But if we Baka Lefties deny or rationalize the past injustices, for which we are not responsible, but from which we indirectly benefit (and all of us humans indirectly benefit from injustices, no matter how hard we try), then aren't we missing an opportunity here?

Michael Oren’s Purim Torah in June

2008-06-19T14:47:00.001-07:00

If you need to have a good laugh before Shabbat, read Michael Oren's take on the Israel-Hamas truce/cease-fire agreement in the Wall Street Journal here

I have no problem with the title, "Israel's Truce with Hamas is a Victory for Iran." I am sure that Oren would have liked Israel to repeat America's success in Iraq with a "rolling, multi-month operation."

No, what amuses me so much is Oren's narrative of the "tragedy". Here is what he writes:

"The roots of this tragedy go back to the summer of 2005 and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The evacuation, intended to free Israel of Gaza's political and strategic burden, was hailed as a victory by Palestinian terrorist groups, above all Hamas.
"Hamas proceeded to fire some 1,000 rocket and mortar shells into Israel. Six months later Hamas gunmen, taking advantage of an earlier cease-fire, infiltrated into Israel, killed two soldiers, and captured Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
"Hamas's audacity spurred Hezbollah to mount a similar ambush against Israelis patrolling the Lebanese border, triggering a war in which Israel was once again humbled. Hamas now felt sufficiently emboldened to overthrow Gaza's Fatah-led government, and to declare itself regnant in the Strip. Subsequently, Hamas launched thousands more rocket and mortar salvos against Israel, rendering parts of the country nearly uninhabitable.
"In response, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) air strikes and limited ground incursions killed hundreds of armed Palestinians in Gaza, and Israel earned international censure for collateral civilian deaths and "disproportionate" tactics. Israel also imposed a land and sea blockade of Gaza, strictly controlling its supply of vital commodities such as a gasoline. But the policy enabled Hamas to hoard the fuel and declare a humanitarian crisis."

Like most Israeli apologists, Oren denies the Jews effective agency in their encounter with the Palestinians. Jews almost never take the initiative; they only respond. Hence it is wrong to look for the roots of the tragedy in the Israeli support of Hamas during the eighties by the Israelis, or the war against Hamas during the nineties, or the response of the Israelis to the Second Intifada, which crippled Fatah, or the sanctions against Hamas after they won democratic elections promoted by the US and Israel. These points are unimportant because the Palestinian actions and attitudes toward Israel are independent of anything Israel may do to them; they are born of MUSLIM ANTISEMITISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM that needs no external impetus. From Oren's account, it would seem that Israel never fought against Hamas before 2007, or even pressured them. Only after Hamas took over the Gaza strip – "emboldened by Israel's failure in Lebanon" (apparently, Hamas has no internal-Palestinian agenda, either)-- did Israel launch air strikes.

Oren doesn't talk about targeted assassinations, or sanctions, or shelling, or incursions, or about Israel's virtually complete control over the economic life of the Gaza strip. He doesn't talk about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza from 2000 on. He doesn't talk about Israel's kidnapping soldiers (or violating Lebanese sovereignty with fly overs.)

The Gaza evacuation is the exception that proves the rule -- because that was a deliberately unilateral move that excluded the Palestinians. Oren can make a silly statement about Hamas leaders being able to walk freely in Gaza while children in Sderot cower in bomb shelters. If there are Hamas leaders like that, it is only because the four previous generations of Hamas leaders were blown apart by Israeli shells.

I know enough not to listen to Oren's new and revisionist history. I read the papers when the events happened. But some Israelis actually believe this junk.

I am going to keep Oren's article for when Obama pulls out of Iraq. Now, that will be a victory for al-Qaeda, right?

Prominent Israeli Writers, Law Professors, and Intellectuals Back "Breaking the Silence"

2008-06-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

On the front page of the print edition of yesterday's Haaretz, the following advertisement appeared:

"Enforce the Law in Hebron!

"For the past three years activists of the "Breaking the Silence" organization have been conducting tours in the city of Hebron.

"More than 5000 people have participated in one of the 300 tours that the organization has conducted in the last three years. The aim of the tours, conducted by veterans who have served in the city either as regular or reservist soldiers, is to expose to the Israeli public what is happening in the city of the patriarchs. This activity has encountered from the outset violent opposition from the setters in the Hebron, and has had to overcome difficulties from the security forces. Over the last few days, certain persons in the Israeli Police, including the commander of the Hebron District, Avshalom Peled, have called the activists, "provocateurs," "militants," and "lawbreakers." Assertions such as these, which aren't supported with any real facts or evidence, arouse the suspicion of political persecution. The background for these absurd statments is the weakness of the police, and its unreadiness to discharge the state's commitment, within the framework of the petition against obstructing the tours, submitted recently to the High Court of Justice. In response to the state's commitment to the court to permit a renewal of the tours, the settlers increased their attacks, and they continue to obstruct physically the tours. Caving in to the settlers's violence, the police have prevented the tours from being conducted. As always in Hebron, violence pays.

"We demand that the Israeli Police retract their scandalous and unsubstantiated assertions.

"We demand that the Israeli Police enable "Breaking the Silence" to conduct the tours in Hebron.

"We demand that the Israeli Police enforce the law with respect to the Hebron settlers.

"We call upon the Israeli public to take part in these important tours and to see for themselves the horrible reality in Hebron."

[Signed] Shulamit Aloni, Michael Ben Yair, General (res.) Shlomo Gazit, Ruth Dayan, Michal Zamora Cohen, A. B. Yehoshua, Prof. Yirmiyahu Yovel, Shomo Cohen (former chairman of the Israeli Bar Association), Amos Oz, Sami Michael, Colonel (res.) Paul Kedar, Yair Tzaban, Yehoshua Kenaz, Prof. Mordecai Kremnitzer, Judith Karp, Yair Rotloy, Yossi Sarid

Police: Leftists in Hebron More Dangerous than Right-Wing Counterparts

2008-06-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

The police, working in tandem with the settlers, are doing their best to demonize "Breaking the Silence" and "Bne Avraham" as outside agitators and provocateurs.

Why do I say "working in tandem with the settlers." Consider this:

Ynet has a video documenting the "illegal" demonstration in April. From the narration, it appears that the video was shot by the police. Aside from the fact that it merely shows a sit-in and nothing more, the video was shot by settlers, not the police.

In the Ynet article,a "senior Shai District Police official" is reported as saying,

"Organizations such as Bnei Avraham (which is committed to 'disturbing the occupation, disrupting the segregation and apartheid regime') and Breaking the Silence are wolves in sheep's' clothing",

Now that's a picturesque metaphor, isn't it? And wouldn't you know, it is taken almost directly from the Hebron's settlers' petition last Thursday to the High Court of Justice. You can read the appeal here

אנחנו טוענים שהמשטרה יודעת אל נכון וגם הפרקליטות יודעת אל נכון, שאנשי השמאל הקיצוני הם בעצם נמר בעור של כבש

All right, so the settlers' appeal has "tiger" rather than "wolves". But it is hardly coincidental that the "senior Shai District Police official" uses the same language as Orit Struck, the settler's spokesperson and legal representative.

And now a curious fact about the settler's video of the Breaking the Silence demonstration:

Surprise! None of the leaders of Bne Avraham or Breaking the Silence are in the video! You see, the famous "demonstration" that took place in April was really a the end of a tour organized by the BTS folks for other activists groups against the Occupation. The people who staged the non-violent sit-in were none other than the Anarchists! (In the article the police say that BTS are worse than the Anarchists. Actually, what they meant to say was that the Anarchists are worse than the Anarchists!)

All right, so maybe in retrospect the idea of holding a tour for all the leftwing activists in Hebron was a bit de trop. But if you have to kick anybody out of Hebron for being a nuisance, at least kick out the right guys! (Don't get be wrong; I am a big fan of the Anarchists. Look at what they have done in Bil'in)

There is a simple and reasonable solution to all this. The Breaking the Silence organization has agreed to do tours, and no demonstrations, in coordination with the police. The State's Attorney's Office agreed. That was the compromise. (By the way, the April demonstration only became one when the police would not allow the tour to continue.) You know what else? Limit the number of people who can tour. You know what else? Make sure that the people on the tour are not anarchists or other leftwing activists.

The police/settlers don't want this, of course, And can you blame them? I mean, if you lived in a town like Tombstone, where the bad guys are in charge, and can do what they like with impunity, would you want to allow the good guys to have tours for the world to see what you are doing?

Anyway, as I have written before, this has got to be win-win for Breaking the Silence. If the guys are allowed to have the tours, they win. If they are prevented from having the tours, they win. They are getting more publicity for less effort than they have had in the three years they have of getting the tours.

Last but not least, a big yashar koah to Meretz MK Zahava Galon and to Peace Now for speaking out against the police. Peace Now's Yariv Oppensheimer has called for the suspension of Avraham Peled, the Hebron District Commander and the settlers' unofficial spokesperson.

Stay tuned.