Autumn Part I Ragbag

The Rise of Fascism in Israel, BDS, East Jerusalem

Updates & Videos
The Rise of Fascism in Israel
Denied entry into Israel, Chomsky likens Israel to 'Stalinist
regime' by Amira Hass
Summer Camp Of Destruction: High Schoolers Assist Razing
Bedouin Town by Max Blumenthal
Israel condemned over Bedouin village demolition by Amnesty
International
Rahat mosque razed; police officers stoned by Ilana Curiel
Uprooting the Bedouins of Israel by Neve Gordon
Israeli Rabbi Preaches "Slaughter" of Gentile Babies by Jonathan
Cook
A Nobel Peace Prize laureate in prison by Gideon Levy
Harming Democracy in the Heart of Democracy by Attorney
Debbie Gild-Hayo
Becoming a GSS state by Yossi Gurvitz
Israel Forces Complete Exercise for Population Exchange between
Is., PA by Sergio Yahni
PA adopts textbook, banned in Israel, offering both sides'
narratives by Or Kashti
Top 10 worst errors Israel is about to make by Bradley Burston
Israel's right needs perpetual war by Zeev Sternhell
Israeli police recruiting from settlements for first time by
Jonathan Cook
The rotting Safed cheese by Gideon Levy
Safed man harassed for renting apartment to Bedouin by Eli
Ashkenazi
South Africa is already here by Zvi Bar'el
Israel is proud to present: The aggressor-victim by Gideon Levy
Israel has turned 'Jew' into a hollow, separatist title by Avirama
Golan
Carmiel initiative tries to prevent home sales to Arabs by Nadav
Mayost
New prize to encourage 'Zionist art' by Tomer Velmer, Roni Sofer
and Merav Yudilovitch
The Isolation of Israel
BDS Victory: Veolia Sells Shares in Jerusalem Light Rail
Alternative Information Center
In major boycott movement success, Africa Israel says no plans to build
more settlements Adalah-NY
Major Dutch Pension Fund Divests from Occupation by Adri
Nieuwhof and Guus Hoelen
UNESCO Adopts Five Resolutions concerning Palestine
Arrest fears prompt Israel to relocate strategic forum with U.K.
Public Statement of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine following
the conclusion of the London Session on corporate complicity
in Israeli violations of international law
tindersticks Cancel Tel Aviv Shows
East Jerusalem
Opinion of the Legal Advisor to the Jerusalem Municipality
Reveals Gross Intervention of the Elad Settlers Orgnization
in a Silwan Planning Scheme by Adv. Yossi Havilio
Authorities Side with Settler Groups in East Jerusalem The
Association for Civil Rights in Israel
Jerusalem Syndrome Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement
Head of settlers’ association hit Silwan children with his car
Wadi Hilweh Info Center
Life in Silwan: Unbearable for Jews and Palestinians alike by Nir
Hasson & Jonathan Lis
MKs seek ban on East Jerusalem Arabs guiding in the city by Nir
Hasson
New policies of arrest and deportation against Silwan children
Wadi Hilweh Info Center
Report: New Israeli plan to discourage stone-throwing Maan
News Agency
How the state helped right-wing groups settle East Jerusalem
by Nir Hasson
Obama: East Jerusalem building plans 'unhelpful' to peace
efforts by Barak Ravid
Gang suspected of attacks on Arabs in Jerusalem by Nir Hasson
and Shlomo Papirblat
Home demolitions to recommence in Silwan Wadi Hilweh
Information Center
Dishonesty and East Jerusalem by Henry Siegman
Netanyahu has no choice but to freeze East Jerusalem building
by Akiva Eldar
Videos
Israel: Rise of the Right Ilan Mizrahi
Defamation Yoav Shamir
Sheikh Jarrah, Ground Zero for Peace Harvey Stein
Destruction of Al-Arakib Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
Dr. Richard Falk's message to the One Democratic State Conference
Young Jews Disrupt Netanyahu at Jewish General Assembly
Controversy in Jerusalem: The City Of David 60 Minutes
The Whole World is Against Us An item on BDS broadcast on Israeli
Channel 10. The voiceover is in Hebrew but a significant part is in
English.
Seizing Control: Shows Israeli settler and government strategy to
“take” East Jerusalem
The Shift: Prof. Menachem Klein’s book-launch at The American Colony
Hotel (10 parts)

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After denied entry to West Bank, Chomsky likens Israel

to 'Stalinist regime'
Linguist Noam Chomsky was scheduled to lecture at Bir Zeit
University near Ramallah, meet PA Prime Minister Fayyad.
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, 17 May 2010
The Interior Ministry refused to let linguist Noam Chomsky into Israel
and the West Bank on Sunday. Chomsky, who aligns himself with the
radical left, had been scheduled to lecture at Bir Zeit University near
Ramallah, and visit Bil'in and Hebron, as well as meet with Palestinian
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and various Palestinian activists.
In a telephone conversation last night from Amman, Chomsky told
Haaretz that he concluded from the questions of the Israeli official that
the fact that he came to lecture at a Palestinian and not an Israeli
university led to the decision to deny him entry.
"I find it hard to think of a similar case, in which entry to a person is
denied because he is not lecturing in Tel Aviv. Perhaps only in Stalinist
regimes," Chomsky told Haaretz.
Sabine Haddad, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, confirmed to
Haaretz that the officials at the border were from the ministry.
"Because he entered the Palestinian Authority territory only, his entry
is the responsibility of the Office of the Coordinator of Government
Activities in the Territories at the Defense Ministry. There was a
misunderstanding on our side, and the matter was not brought to the
attention of the COGAT."
Haddad told Haaretz that "the minute the COGAT says that they do not
object, Chomsky's entry would have been permitted."
Chomsky, a Jewish professor of linguistics and philosophy at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had spent several months at
Kibbutz Hazore'a during the 1950s and had considered a longer stay in
Israel. He had been invited by the Department of Philosophy at Bir Zeit.
He planned to spend four days in the West Bank and give two lectures.
On Sunday, at about 1:30 P.M. he came to the Israeli side of the border
with Jordan. After three hours of questioning, during which the border
officer repeatedly called the Interior Ministry for instructions,
Chomsky's passport was stamped with "Denied Entry."
With Chomsky, 81, were his daughter Aviva, and a couple of old friends
of his and his late wife.
Entry was also denied to his daughter.
Their friends, one of whom is a Palestinian who grew up in Beirut, were
Allalowed in, but they opted to return with Chomsky to Amman.
Chomsky told Haaretz that it was clear that his arrival had been known
to the authorities, because the minute he entered the passport control
room the official told him that he was honored to see him and that he
had read his works.
The professor concluded that the officer was a student, and said he
looked embarrassed at the task at hand, especially when he began
reading from text the questions that had been dictated to him, and
which were also told to him later by telephone.
Chomsky told Haaretz about the questions.
"The official asked me why I was lecturing only at Bir Zeit and not an
Israeli university," Chomsky recalled. "I told him that I have lectured a
great deal in Israel. The official read the following statement: 'Israel
does not like what you say.'"
Chomsky replied: "Find one government in the world which does."
"The young man asked me whether I had ever been denied entry into
other countries. I told him that once, to Czechoslovakia, after the
Soviet invasion in 1968," he said, adding that he had gone to visit
ousted Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubcek, whose reforms the
Soviets crushed.
In response to the official's question, Chomsky said that the subjects of
his lectures were "America and the world," and "America at home."
The official asked him whether he would speak on Israel and Chomsky
said that because he would talk of U.S. policy he would also comment
on Israel and its policies.
He was then told by the official: "You have spoken with [Hassan]
Nasrallah."
"True," Chomsky told him. "When I was in Lebanon [prior to the war in
2006] I spoke with people from the entire political spectrum there, as
in Israel I also spoke with people on the right."
"At the time I read reports of my visit in the Israeli press, and the
articles in the Israeli press had no connection with reality," Chomsky
told the border official.
The official asked Chomsky why he did not have an Israeli passport.
"I replied I am an American citizen," Chomsky said.
Chomsky said that he asked the man at border control for an official
written explanation for the reason his entry was denied and that "it
would help the Interior Ministry because this way my version will not be
the only one given to the media."
The official called the ministry and then told Chomsky that he would be
able to find the official statement at the U.S. Embassy.
The last time Chomsky visited Israel and the West Bank was in 1997,
when he lectured on both sides of the Green Line. He had also planned
a visit to the Gaza strip, but because the Palestinian Authority insisted
that he be escorted by Palestinian guards, he canceled that part of the
visit.
To Haaretz, Chomsky said Sunday that preventing him entry is
tantamount to boycotting Bir Zeit University. Chomsky is known to
oppose a general boycott on Israel. "I was against a boycott of
apartheid South Africa as well. If we are going to boycott, why not the
United States, whose record is even worse? I'm in favor of boycotting
American companies which collaborate with the occupation," he said.
"But if we are to boycott Tel Aviv University, why not MIT?"
Chomsky told Haaretz that he supports a two-state solution, but not
the solution proposed by Jerusalem, "pieces of land that will be called a
state."
He said that Israel's behavior today reminds him of that of South Africa
in the 1960s, when it realized that it was already considered a pariah,
but thought that it would resolve the problem with better public
relations.

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The “Summer Camp Of Destruction:” Israeli High
Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town,
By Max Blumenthal, 31 July 2010
AL-ARAKIB, ISRAEL — On July 26, Israeli police demolished 45 buildings
in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, razing the entire
village to the ground to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest.
The destruction was part of a larger project to force the Bedouin
community of the Negev away from their ancestral lands and into
seven Indian reservation-style communities the Israeli government has
constructed for them. The land will then be open for Jewish settlers,
including young couples in the army and those who may someday be
evacuated from the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed. For now,
the Israeli government intends to uproot as many villages as possible
and erase them from the map by establishing “facts on the ground” in
the form of JNF forests. (See video of of al-Arakib’s demolition here).

Moments before
the destruction
of the Bedouin
village of al-
Arakib, Israeli
high school age
police
volunteers
lounge on
furniture taken
from a family's
home. [The
following four
photos are by
Ata Abu
Madyam of Arab
Negev News.]

One of the most troubling aspects of the destruction of al-Arakib was a

report by CNN that the hundreds of Israeli riot police who stormed the
village were accompanied by “busloads of cheering civilians.” Who
were these civilians and why didn’t CNN or any outlet investigate
further?
I traveled to al-Arakib yesterday with a delegation from Ta’ayush, an
Israeli group that promotes a joint Arab-Jewish struggle against the
occupation. The activists spent the day preparing games and activities
for the village’s traumatized children, helping the villagers replace
their uprooted olive groves, and assisting in the reconstruction of their
demolished homes. In a massive makeshift tent where many of al-
Arakib’s residents now sleep, I interviewed village leaders about the
identity of the cheering civilians. Each one confirmed the presence of
the civilians, describing how they celebrated the demolitions. As I
compiled details, the story grew increasingly horrific. After interviewing
more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to finally
identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more
disturbing than I had imagined.

Israeli
police
youth
volunteers
pick
through
the

belongings an al-Arakib family

Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series
of photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high
school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the
Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some
participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers
were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and
belongings. A number of villagers including Abu Madyam told me the
volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced
family photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on
the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally,
according to Abu Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers
destroyed the homes.
“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Abu
Madyam remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on
democracy, they are being raised on racism.” (The cover of the latest
issue of Madyam’s Arab Negev News features a photo of Palestinians
being expelled to Jordan in 1948 juxtaposed with a photo of a family
fleeing
al-
Arakib
last
week.
The

headline reads, “Nakba 2010.”)

The Israeli civilian guard, which incorporates 70,000 citizens including
youth as young as 15 (about 15% of Israeli police volunteers are
teenagers), is one of many programs designed to incorporate Israeli
children into the state’s military apparatus. It is not hard to imagine
what lessons the high school students who participated in the leveling
of al-Arakib took from their experience, nor is it especially difficult to
predict what sort of citizens they will become once they reach
adulthood. Not only are they being indoctrinated to swear blind
allegiance to the military, they are learning to treat the Arab outclass
as less than human. The volunteers’ behavior toward Bedouins, who
are citizens of Israel and serve loyally in Israeli army combat units
despite widespread racism, was strikingly reminiscent of the behavior
of settler youth in Hebron who pelt Palestinian shopkeepers in the old
city with eggs, rocks and human waste. If there is a distinction
between the two cases, it is that the Hebron settlers act as vigilantes
while the teenagers of Israeli civilian guard vandalize Arab property as
agents of the state.
According to residents of al-Arakib, the youth volunteers vandalized homes
throughout the village
 The
spectacle of
Israeli youth
helping
destroy al-
Arakib helps
explain why
56% of
Jewish
Israeli high
school
students do
not believe
Arabs
should be
Allalowed to
serve in the Knesset – why the next generation wants apartheid.
Indeed, the widespread indoctrination of Israeli youth by the military
apparatus is a central factor in Israel’s authoritarian trend. It would be
difficult for any adolescent boy to escape from an experience like al-
Arakib, where adults in heroic warrior garb encourage him to
participate in and gloat over acts of massive destruction, with even a
trace of democratic values.

Youth volunteers extract belongings from village homes as

bulldozers move in...and the destruction begins

As for the present condition of Israeli democracy, it is essential to

consider the way in which the state pits its own citizens against one
another, enlisting the Jewish majority as conquerers while targeting the
Arab others as, in the words of Zionist founding father Chaim
Weizmann, “obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.”
Historically, only failing states have encouraged such corrosive
dynamics to take hold. That is why the scenes from al-Arakib, from the
demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who
joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction
of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying
Israeli society as a whole to waste.
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Israel condemned over Bedouin village demolition

Amnesty International, 25 November 2010
Amnesty International has condemned the Israeli authorities following
the demolition of a Bedouin village in southern Israel for the seventh
time since July.
Makeshift homes that residents of al-‘Araqib village in the Negev had
erected after a previous demolition last month were bulldozed on 22
November by the Israel Lands Administration. The residents, all Israeli
citizens, were again evicted by riot police.
“We condemn these repeated demolitions that aim to forcibly evict the
residents of al-‘Araqib from the land they have on lived for
generations,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy
Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“The fact that the village has been demolished seven times in four
months shows that this is not some administrative mistake but a
conscious Israeli government policy of dispossession.”
The village of al-‘Araqib is one of more than 40 Arab villages in Israel
not recognized by the Israeli authorities, despite the residents’ Israeli
citizenship and their long-established claims to their lands.
Residents of these “unrecognized” villages, many of which are located
in Israel’s Negev desert, lack security of tenure and services including
water and electricity.
At least 50 of the 250 residents of al-‘Araqib village are again living in
the ruins of their homes, attempting to rebuild them. Others are
camping in tents in the village cemetery.
As in previous demolitions, no eviction or demolition order was
presented to the inhabitants. Israeli authorities have previously
detained residents and their supporters when they demanded to see a
demolition order.
Israeli media reported in early 2010 that the government had decided
to triple the demolition rate of Bedouin constructions in the Negev. As
the government does not recognize the villagers’ land tenure, it
maintains that their settlements are illegal.
Al-‘Araqib village was first demolished by the authorities on 27 July
2010, and residents were evicted by a force of over 1,000 riot police
officers. At least 46 homes were destroyed, thousands of olive trees
and other crops uprooted, and possessions including electricity
generators, vehicles and refrigerators confiscated.
Villagers refused to leave their land, and rebuilt makeshift shelters to
live in. These were again demolished by government officials
accompanied by riot police on 4 August, 10 August, 17 August at dawn
during Ramadan while the villagers were fasting, on 12 September, 13
October, and again this week.
In addition to the demolitions in al-‘Araqib, the Israeli authorities have
demolished Palestinian homes this week in the occupied West Bank,
including East Jerusalem.
On 24 November, the Jerusalem municipality demolished a home in the
al-Tur neighbourhood of East Jerusalem as well as nine structures used
by Palestinian businesses in Issawiye and Hizma. On the same day the
Israeli military demolished three buildings in Jiftlik and another in
Qarawat Bani Hassan, both villages in the West Bank.
Today Israeli forces demolished seven structures in Khirbet Yarza,
including two homes and a mosque, and another residential building in
al-Rifa’iyya; both are villages in the West Bank.
Dozens of Palestinians have been made homeless as a result of these
demolitions, while others have had their livelihoods devastated.
“The Israeli government must stop its policy of home demolitions both
in communities inside Israel, such as al-‘Araqib in the Negev, and also
in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem,” said Philip
Luther.

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Rahat mosque razed; police officers stoned

Land Administration personnel demolish mosque built in
Bedouin city without a permit; residents demonstrate, throw
stones at security forces; no injuries. Mayor: Crime committed
against entire public by wicked government
By Ilana Curiel, Ynet, 7 November 2010
Some 700 police officers secured Israel Land Administration personnel
who demolished a mosque in Rahat in the early hours of Sunday
morning. The mosque was built without a proper permit.
Hundreds of the Bedouin city's residents demonstrated against the
mosque's demolition, and some of them threw stones at police officers.
No injuries were reported, and officers used tear gas to disperse the
crowd. Five residents were detained.
Police forces have yet to leave the Negev city for fear of riots.

Hundreds of police officers securing Rahat (Photo: Roee Idan)

Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen called the razing of the mosque a
"complex and sensitive operation" and said it was carried out with
relative ease due to the officers' "high performance level."
Southern District police chief Cmdr. Yochanan Danino, who supervised
over the operation, said, "We acted with resolve to enforce the rule of
law and relayed a message that Israel Police will not ignore illegal
activity while remaining sensitive to the Muslims' feelings."
Danino noted that the courts had ruled that the mosque was
constructed illegally on public property.
However, Rahat Mayor Faiz Abu-Seheban called the mosque's
demolition a "crime committed by the State and government against
an entire public. I am shocked and furious.
The mayor declared a general strike in the city and said, "We'll bring
school children to see the rubble."
One resident urged Abu-Seheban to resign, saying, "We are not part of
the State of Israel."

Mosque ruins in Rahat (Photo: Roee Idan)

The mayor said the land on which the mosque was built is under the
Rahat Municipality's jurisdiction, "but I guess we are living in a Third
World country.
"We could have reached a compromise and the razing could have been
delayed, but this is a wicked government," Abu-Seheban said.
Police officials said the mosque was demolished after the conclusion of
all judicial proceedings.
A Land Administration official said, "The construction of the mosque on
State-owned land was funded by the Islamic Movement's Northern
Branch in violation of the law."
The Islamic Movement's representative in the city, Yusef Abu Juma,
said the mosque would be rebuilt. "Now we are all together – the
Islamic Movement's northern and southern branches. Arabs from all
across the country will come here to rebuild the mosque. There are
mosques that were built without a permit all over Rahat."
Another resident said, "How would Jews feel if a synagogue would have
been destroyed? It's the same thing."
Rahat resident Younes Abu Janem said, "Seeing the mosque being
destroyed is infuriating. They would never destroy a synagogue."
Another resident called the mosque's destruction "racist." He said the
property was previously used to conduct drug deals and that the
mosque was built to eradicate the phenomenon.

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Uprooting the Bedouins of Israel

Neve Gordon, The Nation, December 2, 2010
Despite the fact that it was the seventh demolition since last July, this
time the destruction of the Bedouin village Al-Arakib [1] in the Israeli
Negev [2] was different. The difference is not because the homeless
residents have to deal this time with the harsh desert winter; nor in the
fact that the bulldozers began razing the homes just minutes before
the forty children left for school, thus engraving another violent scene
in their memory. Rather, the demolition was different because this
time Christian evangelists from the United States and England were
involved.
I know this for a fact because right next to the demolished homes, the
Jewish National Fund put up a big sign that reads: “GOD-TV [3]
FOREST, A Generous donation by God-TV made 1,000,000 tree saplings
available to be planted in the land of Israel and also provided for the
creation of water projects throughout the Negev.” GOD-TV justifies this
contribution by citing the book of Isaiah: “I will turn the desert into
pools of water and the parched ground into springs.”
The Jewish National Fund’s [4] objective, however, is not altruistic, but
rather to plant a pine or eucalyptus forest on the desert land so that
the Bedouins cannot return to their ancestral homes. The practice of
planting forests in an attempt to Judaize more territory is by no means
new. Right after Israel’s establishment in 1948, the JNF planted millions
of trees to cover up the remains of Palestinian villages that had been
destroyed during or after the war. The objective was to help ensure
that the 750,000 Palestinian residents who either fled or were expelled
during the war would never return to their villages and to suppress the
fact that they had been the rightful owners of the land before the State
of Israel was created. Scores of Palestinian villages disappeared from
the landscape in this way, and the grounds were converted into picnic
parks, thus helping engender a national amnesia regarding
the Palestinian Nakba [5].
For several years, I thought this practice had been discontinued, but
thanks to the JNF’s new bedfellows and the generous donation of Rory
and Wendy Alec [6], who established the international evangelical
television channel GOD-TV, within the next few months a million
saplings will be planted on land belonging to uprooted Bedouins.
God-TV can afford such lavish gifts, since it boasts a viewership of
nearly half a billion people, with 20 million in the United States and 14
million in Britain. The television channel regularly features evangelical
leaders such as Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, Kenneth
Copeland and John Hagee, at least some of whom espouse Christian
Dispensationalism and believe that all Jews must convert to
Christianity before the Second Coming.
The viewers are asked to open their wallets in order to “sow a seed for
God.” In this case, the donations seem to have actually been allocated
toward sowing seeds, but these seeds are ones of hate and strife. They
are antithetical to Isaiah’s prophecy about the people beating their
swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Indeed, if
Isaiah were alive today, he would probably be among the first to lie in
front of the bulldozers in an effort to stop the destruction of the
Bedouin homes.
Links:
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/28/ethnic-cleansing-israeli-
negev
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negev
[3] http://www.god.tv/
[4] http://www.jnf.org/
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_Day
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Alec

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Israeli Rabbi Preaches "Slaughter" of Gentile Babies

by Jonathan Cook, Nazareth, 4 August 2010
A rabbi from one of the most violent settlements in the West Bank was
questioned on suspicion of incitement last week as Israeli police
stepped up their investigation into a book in which he sanctions the
killing of non-Jews, including children and babies.
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is one of the leading ideologues of the most
extreme wing of the religious settler movement. He is known to be a
champion of the “price-tag” policy of reprisal attacks on Palestinians,
including punishing them for attempts by officials to enforce Israeli law
against the settlements.
So far the policy has chiefly involved violent harassment of
Palestinians, with settlers inflicting beatings, attacking homes,
throwing stones, burning fields, killing livestock and poisoning wells.
It is feared, however, that Shapira’s book The King’s Torah, published
last year, is intended to offer ideological justifications for widening the
scope of such attacks to include killing Palestinians, even children.
Although Shapira was released a few hours after his questioning last
Monday, dozens of rabbis, as well as several members of parliament,
rallied to his side, condemning the arrest.
Shlomo Aviner, one of the settlement movement’s leaders, defended
the book’s arguments as a “legitimate stance” and one that should be
taught in Jewish seminaries.
But in a sign of mounting official unease at Shapira’s influence on the
settlement movement, the Israeli military authorities also threatened
last week to enforce a decade-old demolition order on Yitzhar’s
seminary, which was built without a permit.
Dror Etkes, a Tel Aviv-based expert on the settlements, said the order
was unlikely to be carried out but was a way to pressure Yitzhar’s 500
inhabitants to rein in their more violent attacks.
He said the authorities had begun taking a harder line against Yitzhar
only since Shapira and several of his students were suspected of
torching a mosque in the neighboring village of Yasuf last December.
“Shapira is trying to redefine the conflict with the Palestinians, turning
it from a national conflict into a religious one. That frightens Israel. It
doesn’t want to look as though it is fighting the whole Islamic world,”
Etkes said.
He added that the rabbi and his supporters were closely associated
with Kach, a movement founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane that
demands the expulsion of all Palestinians from a “Greater Israel”.
Despite Kach being banned, officials have largely turned a blind eye as
its ideology has flourished in the settlements.
“It may be illegal to call oneself Kach but the authorities are more than
tolerant of settlers who hold such views and carry out violent attacks.
In fact, what Kahane was doing in the 1980s seems like child’s play
compared with today’s settlers.”
In the 230-page book, Shapira and his co-author, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur,
also from Yitzhar, argue that Jewish law permits the killing of non-Jews
in a wide variety of circumstances. The terms “gentiles” and “non-
Jews” in the book are widely understood as references to Palestinians.
They write that Jews have the right to kill gentiles in any situation in
which “a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives” even if the
gentile is “not at all guilty for the situation that has been created”.
The book sanctions the killing of non-Jewish children and babies:
“There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow
up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed
deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”
The rabbis suggest that harming the children of non-Jewish leaders is
justified if it is likely to bring pressure to bear on them to change
policy.
The authors also advocate committing “cruel deeds to create the
proper balance of terror” and treating all members of an “enemy
nation” as targets for retaliation, even if they are not directly
participating in hostile activities.
The rabbis appear to be offering justifications in Jewish law for
collective punishment and other war crimes of the kind committed by
the Israeli army in its attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008.
Pamphlets similarly calling on soldiers to “show no mercy” were
distributed by the army’s rabbinate as troops prepared for the Gaza
operation, in which 1,400 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians,
were killed. Religious settlers have come to dominate many combat
units.
An investigation last year by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group,
found Shapira’s seminary had received government funds worth at
least $300,000 in recent years. American and British groups have also
contributed tens of thousands of dollars in tax-deductible donations.
According to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, the Yitzhar settlers have
responded to the demolition order against their seminary by
threatening to publish documents showing that the housing and
transport ministries were closely involved in the project too.
The settlers have repeatedly rampaged through nearby Palestinian
villages, most notoriously in September 2008, when they were filmed
shooting at homes in Assira al-Kabaliya, smashing properties and
daubing Stars of David on homes. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of
the time, termed the settlers’ actions a “pogrom”.
The same year a religious student from Yitzhar was arrested for firing
home-made rockets at Palestinian villages close by.
In April, Yitzhar’s settlers marched through the village of Huwara and
pelted a Palestinian family’s home with stones in “reprisal” for the
arrest of 11 of their number.
A settler from Yitzhar was questioned last month over the fatal
shooting of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Aysar Zaban, in May, reportedly
after stones were thrown at the settler’s car. The teenager was shot in
the back.
Last week, the settlers attacked Burin, shooting at villagers and
burning fields.
In most of these cases, the settlers who were arrested were released a
short time later either by the police or the courts. In January, a
Jerusalem judge freed Rabbi Shapira for lack of evidence in the arson
attack on the mosque.
Yitzhak Ginsburg, an authority on Jewish law and a mentor to Shapira,
was questioned by police last Thursday over his endorsement of the
book. In the past Ginsburg has praised Baruch Goldstein, a settler who
opened fire in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque in 1994, killing 29 Palestinian
worshippers.
In 2003 Ginsburg was accused of incitement for publishing a book that
called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied
territories, but the charges were dropped after he issued a
“clarification statement”.
A group calling itself “Students of Yitzhak Ginsburg” recently
distributed a leaflet urging Israeli soldiers to “spare your lives and the
lives of your friends and show no concern for a population that
surrounds us and harms us”.
Kach was founded in 1971 by the late Meir Kahane, an American rabbi
who immigrated to Israel. He won a seat in the Israeli parliament in
1984 on a platform of expelling all Palestinians from Israel and the
occupied territories. As an MP, he drafted legislation to revoke the
Israeli citizenship of non-Jews and ban sexual relations between Jews
and gentiles.
The political party was banned from running for the Israeli parliament
in 1988 and the movement was outlawed six years later. Although the
group is considered a terrorist organization in the United States and
most of Europe, its ideology has been Allalowed to thrive in the
settlements.
Today, dozens of rabbis espouse an interpretation of Jewish religious
law identical to or worse than Kahane’s.
Michael Ben Ari, a former Kach leader, was elected as an MP last year
for the far-right National Union party, which holds four seats in the 120-
member parliament.
Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the parliament’s third largest party and
is foreign minister, briefly joined the party before it was banned. His
own party’s anti-Arab “No loyalty, no citizenship” program includes
echoes of Kahane’s ideology.

Back to Top

A Nobel Peace Prize laureate in prison

If the court indeed deports Mairead Corrigan-Maguire we'll
know that our court system is also tainted to the teeth
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 3 October 2010
The photograph was recently distributed by the IDF's propagandists:
Mairead Corrigan-Maguire is seen being taken off the abducted ship
Rachel Corrie at Ashdod port, as a soldier from the world's most moral
army holds out his hand to help the honorable woman disembark. It
was not long after the IDF's violent takeover of the Mavi Marmara, and
Israeli propagandists were now hastening to peddle their cheap
merchandise, showing how Israel treats "real" peace activists, as
opposed to the Turkish "terrorists" on the earlier vessel.
Only four months have passed since the earlier event, and the very
same lady has now spent a weekend in the deportees' cell at Ben-
Gurion Airport. While we were having another warm, pleasant
weekend, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate sat in an Israeli jail and
nobody seemed to care. We were not ashamed, we were not outraged,
we did not make a sound. It was a spectacle that could only have taken
place in Israel, North Korea, Burma (Myanmar ) and Iran - the state
imprisoning and deporting a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize - and
raised no more than a yawn here.
One court has already upheld the deportation, in a characteristically
automatic action, and the Supreme Court will debate it today.
The new Israel is once again portrayed as an indrawn, detestable state,
with a branch of the thought police at Ben-Gurion Airport. World-
renowned intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Norman
Finkelstein, Spain's most famous clown Ivan Prado and now Mairead
Corrigan-Maguire, are deported from it shamefacedly only because
they dared to visit the country. And all this is backed by pathological
public indifference.
The Irish Corrigan-Maguire is the victim of state terror. A former
secretary at the Guinness Brewery in Belfast, she had three nephews,
all children at the time, who were killed during a British targeted
assassination in Northern Ireland. Their mother, her sister, who
committed suicide some time later, was also badly injured in the
attack. Corrigan Maguire eventually married her sister's widower and
adopted his children. The frightful family tragedy turned her into a
peace activist, and she began to hoist the flag of non-violent
resistance. For this she won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976 (awarded
retroactively the following year ).
In recent years, Corrigan-Maguire has tried to hoist this flag in Israel,
which knows a lot about state terror, assassinations and killing
passersby, yet is now brutally closing its gates in her face.
Corrigan-Maguire demonstrated in Bil'in a few months ago and took
part in two flotillas to Gaza. This is her sin. Israel is also claiming
Corrigan-Maguire "ran wild" while officials tried forcibly to put her on
an airplane. It is difficult to imagine this gentle woman running wild.
She herself says she only tried to resist passively in order to complete
the petition procedure granted her by law.
Israel, like North Korea, must have something to hide about its
occupation regime and this is why it prevents people of conscience
from entering and report about it to the world. Israel, like North Korea,
is afraid of anyone who tries to protest against it or criticize its regime.
No terrorists will enter here, but neither will anyone who opposes terror
yet dares to criticize the occupation. For safety's sake,let's call them
"terrorists" too, as we falsely called the Turkish activists. It will make it
easier for us to deal with them. Yes, we prefer terror, because we know
well how to handle it.
All those who are preaching sanctimoniously to the Palestinians to
practice non-violent resistance had better take a look at the deportees'
prison in Ben- Gurion Airport. This is how non-violent protesters will be
treated. A peace activist is being held there, a woman of conscience
who was Allalowed to receive her personal effects over the weekend
only after the invention of the district court in Petah Tikva. She awaits
the ruling of our beacon of justice, the Supreme Court, which, one may
guess, will also not dare to object to the deportation.
If the court indeed upholds the disgraceful act today, in response to
the Adalah organization's petition, then we'll know not only what we've
become - that this is how we treat those who advocate non-violence -
but that our court system is also a collaborator in the treachery and is
tainted to the teeth.
A Nobel Prize laureate sits in Israeli detention, a few days after Israel
hijacked another Gaza-bound aid boat, whose passengers included a
Jewish Holocaust survivor, an Israeli father who lost a child to terror,
and an air force pilot-turned-conscientious objector. It hijacked the
boat to prevent them from reaching their destination and reminding
the world of the blockade. This is the portrait of Israel today.
Back to Top

Harming Democracy in the Heart of Democracy

An ACRI Position Paper Ahead of the Knesset's Winter Session
by Attorney Debbie Gild-Hayo of ACRI, 5 October 2010
For links to the texts of all Knesset bills and document cited, please
view the complete PDF version of this document.
Background
Over the past two years, we have been increasingly troubled by
expanding tendencies to harm Israel's democracy. These trends are
extensively surveyed in the State of the Democracy Report – published
by The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in intermittent
chapters. The two chapters that have been published so far deal with
education system, and with the status of the Arab minority in Israel.
The three future chapters will address the Knesset and the judicial
system, free media, and freedom of protest and political activity.
A source of great concern is the fact that one of the key rings in which
the Israeli democracy is threatened is the parliament itself - the very
heart of democracy. Ahead of the upcoming opening of the Knesset's
Winter Session, we have drafted this brief review. It surveys the main
aspects of anti-democratic trends in the Knesset, focusing on anti-
democratic legislation, which includes bills that harm basic democratic
rights - mainly the freedom of expression and political protest, and
equality before the law; verbal and even physical abuse of members of
the Knesset minority factions at this time;[1] attempts to delegitimize
and infringe on the legitimate and much-needed operations of human-
rights and social-change organizations;[2] and attempts to restrict the
freedom of Israel's academy. The above are most troubling signs,
attesting to the deterioration of Israel's democratic regime.
The attacks against Israel's democracy are mainly characterized by
attempts to silence social or political minorities' views or public
criticism; attempts to delegitimize political rivals, human-rights
organizations, and minorities; attempts to restrict parties with positions
or activities that do not coincide with the political majority's desired
direction; and by presenting minorities in the Israeli society as enemies
of the State, generalizing in an attempt to infringe on their civil and
political rights.
As a result, the basic principles of the Israeli democratic system are
harmed; there is ongoing infringement on issues such as the freedom
of expression, and human dignity and equality; on the possibility of
upholding the pluralism of views and thoughts; on the freedom to
congregate and protest; and on the legitimacy of certain views and
stands. We are witnessing a reality of increasing tyranny against
social, political, and national minorities, which harms their very rights.
It should be noted that these events have been taking place against
the backdrop of a social and political reality which is always very
loaded and often very harsh. Over the past 2 years, for example, we
witnessed the continuation of the occupation and all that it entails: fire
on Israel's southern area, the military operation in Gaza, the flotilla
affair, terror attacks, and more. We believe, however, that raising the
banner of "A Self-Defending Democracy" is a cynical attempt to
infringe on a democratic right of some minority (ethnic, social, or
political) and is neither legitimate nor just. We believe that the State of
Israel and its democracy must be defended, albeit proportionally and
appropriately, and that basic rights may be denied or restricted only in
the most extreme cases - as the Israeli law currently stipulates. It is
inappropriate to legitimize the denial of minority rights as a matter of
routine.
These anti-democratic moves employ various means, most troubling of
which is the use of allegedly legitimate parliamentary tools, mainly
through legislation. In recent years, we witnessed harsh and
unprecedented remarks by senior politicians against political and
human rights organizations, as well as various minorities, coupled by a
variety of restrictive moves against them. At the same time, attempts
were made to promote legislative initiatives and bills that clearly
impair on the Israeli democracy and the rights, positions, and civil
status of parties that did not belong to the political majority at the
time.
It should be remembered that remarks and/or moves by senior
members of the Israeli political establishment, particularly members of
the Knesset, which has been a symbol of Israel's democracy and its
main upholder, have far-reaching implications on the Israeli public
stands and attitudes toward democracy, human rights, and political,
social, and ethnic minority groups. Surveys that the media carried over
the past two years indicate that the Israeli public, mainly Israeli youths,
support undemocratic and racist views.
Ahead of the Knesset's October 2010 Winter Session
The 18th Knesset's Winter Session 2010-11 will commence on October
10th. Anticipating it, we wish to warn against the troubling trend of
infringement against democracy in Israel as expressed through the
persistent promotion of anti-democratic bills, decisionmaking process,
and conduct by Members of Knesset (MK). The Knesset plenum and
committees have recently served as platforms for offensive and anti-
democratic discourse.
In July 2010, at the close of the last Knesset Summer Session, The
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) sent a letter to the prime
minister and the Knesset speaker in which we warned about the
troubling trend of infringement on democracy, pointing at the
important role the Knesset plays in defending democracy, and calling
on them to take steps to end that trend.[3]
In the letter, we presented a list of bills promoted in the Knesset to
demonstrate this troubling trend. At this time, ahead of the opening of
the Winter Session, we wish to offer an update on these bills, some of
which were not promoted while others were.
First, we wish to address bills that were listed in the aforementioned
letter, and new bills that were submitted since and were not promoted
because the Ministerial Legislation Committee rejected them, probably
due to lack of agreement among its members (additionally, we list a
bill that was passed and thus, naturally, will not be discussed in the
upcoming Knesset session).
1. Bill on MK's Pledge of Allegiance (David Rotem)
According to this bill, all MKs are required to pledge allegiance to the
State of Israel as Jewish a democratic state, to its laws, symbols, and
national anthem. The bill intends to delegitimize and even practically
prevent minority groups from partaking in the Israeli democratic
process.
Status: Not promoted due to lack of coalition agreement.
2. Bill Denying the High Court's Right to Rule on Nationalization
(Rotem and another 44 MKs)
This bill, which intends to bypass the High Court of Justice (HCJ), was
devised in the wake of HCJ discussions of the Nationalization Act,
though the court has not yet ruled against it, but probably may do so
in the future.
Status: Not promoted due to lack of coalition agreement.
3. Bill for the Establishment of a Constitution Court (David
Rotem)
This bill wishes to restrict the Supreme Court. In a democracy, the
separation of powers means that the court must defend the rule of the
law and prevent harm to human rights in general and to constitutional
rights in particular through legislation, among other things. The
proposed bill, which aims at denying the HCJ powers through a series
of acts, severely harms the principle of the separation of powers, the
protection of human rights, and the democratic system.
Status: Not promoted
4. A series of government-initiated bills that intend to restrict
the Knesset's opposition factions
Seven MKs may split from a Knesset faction to establish a new faction -
not one-third of the original faction members; increasing the quorum
needed for budget-related bills to 55 MKs; if after a vote of no-
confidence is endorsed by a Knesset majority, the new candidate for
prime minister should fail to form a coalition-based government, the
ousted government should regain its seat; a cabinet member who quits
the Knesset shall be replaced by another on his faction list.
Status: passed the first reading; it seems there is no intention to
promote further it at this time.
5. Bill or Pardoning Disengagement Offenders (Rivlin et al)
Though legislation that eases punitive measures against persons who
exercised their right to political protest is welcome in principle, this
particular bill is problematic because it makes a distinction between
political and ideological activists of various groups. Instead of
promoting a general principles of "going easy" on protesters, this bill
was promoted by the current political majority in favor of their
electorate alone .[4]
Status: the Knesset passed the bill; the HCJ is currently reading a
petition against its inequality.
6. The Cinema bill
According to this bill, the entire crew of a film that seeks public funding
will have to pledge allegiance to the State of Israel as a Jewish
democratic state, its laws, symbols, etc. This bill infringes on the
freedom of expression, protest, and artistic and creative expression -
referring only to a specific political, national, and social group.
Status: not promoted.
7. Bill on Denying an MK's Parliamentary Status (Dani Danon)
According to this bill, the parliamentary status of an MK may be
revoked by a majority of 80 MKs if he expressed his opposition Israel's
existence as a Jewish and democratic state, incited to racism, or
supported an armed struggle against the State of Israel.
Status: Not approved by the government.
________________________________________________________________________

It may be expected, however, that some of the bills that the Knesset
started promoting in the previous session will be actively promoted
further in the upcoming session. Following is a list of bills that we
believe carry high probability of promotion and even ratification, with
such or other wording, and turn into state laws in the coming Winter
Session.
1. The Nakba Bill (Alex Miller)
According to this bill, persons marking Nakba Day as a day of mourning
for the establishment of the State of Israel will be sentenced to prison.
The government endorsed the bill but, in the wake of public protests,
its wording was changed to state that persons marking Nakba Day
shall be denied public funds. Even this "minimized" version still legally
impairs on the freedom of expression, as the political majority bans a
certain political view.
Status: The bill passed the first reading and will be discussed by the
Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee ahead of its second
and third reading.
2. Anti-Incitement Bill (Zvulun Orlev)
An amendment of the existing act, according to which persons
publishing a call that denies the existence of the State of Israel as a
Jewish and democratic state shall be arrested. This is an extension of
the penal code, which intends to incriminate a political view that
another political group does not accept.
Status: Passed the preliminary reading and may be discussed by the
Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee ahead of its first
reading.
3. Nationalization, Pledge of Allegiance (David Rotem)
According to this bill, all Israeli citizens will have to pledge allegiance
to the State of Israel as Jewish a democratic state, and do a term of
military or national service.
Status: The government did not endorse this bill; a ministerial
committee rejected it in May 2010, but another attempt was made in
July to get the cabinet to endorse it and failed. Additional attempts to
promote this bill may be expected.
4. Bill on Admission Committees of Communal Settlements
(David Rotem, Israel Hason, Shay Hermesh)
According to this bill, admission committees may turn down candidates
for membership with a communal settlement if they "fail to meet the
fundamental views of the settlement," its social fabric, and so on. The
bill primarily intends to deny ethnic minorities' access to Jewish
settlements, offering the possibility to reject anyone who does not
concur with the settlement committee's positions, religion, political
views, and so on. It should be noted that ACRI filed petition against this
bill, which is pending with the HCJ. [5]
Status: The bill passed the first reading and will be discussed by the
Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee ahead of its second
and third reading.
5. Bill on Funds from Foreign Political Entities (Elkin et al)
According to the (original version) of this bill, any person or group
financed by a foreign nation must register with the party registrar and
immediately report each contribution, mark every document in this
spirit, and state at the opening of any remark they make that they are
funded by a foreign state. The bill names strict penalties too. In
practice, the bill intends to delegitimize and impair on the activities of
organizations that receive funds from, among other sources, foreign
states. Though the Israeli law already makes reporting such donations
imperative, this bill wishes to expand the existing law and force certain
civil organizations to mark their activities as subversive and
illegitimate. Furthermore, the bill practically refers to the activities of
specific civil groups, focusing on human rights organizations, implicitly
incriminating them when compared with other bodies or individuals
funded by foreign non-state entities.[6] It should be noted that we sent
a letter to the foreign minister recently warning against the state's
illegitimate intervention in fundraising by Israel's civil organizations.[7]
Status: An amended version of the bill was endorsed by the Knesset
Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee; and will soon be presented
for a first reading and then discussed by the committee ahead of its
second and third reading.
6. Bill on Infiltration (Government)
The bill stipulates, among other things, that infiltrators based on their
country of origin, and persons who assist them (!) may be sentenced to
5 to 7 years in prison. This bill follows the trend of delegitimizing
human rights and aid organizations and individuals who help refugees
and labor immigrants.
Status: The government pulled back the bill, but key points from it will
be introduced through a new bill which, to the best of our knowledge,
is currently drafted by the Justice Ministry.[8]
7. Bill Against Boycott (Elkin et al)
According to this bill, persons who initiate, promote, or publish material
that might serve as grounds for imposing a boycott against Israel are
committing a crime and a civil wrong, and may be ordered to
compensate parties economically affected by that boycott, including
fixed reparations to the tune of 30,000 shekels, freeing the plaintiffs
from the need to prove damages. If the felon is a foreign citizen, he
may be banned from entering or doing business with Israel; and if it is
a foreign state, Israel may not repay the debts it owes that state, and
use the money to compensate offended parties; that state may
additionally be banned from conducting business affairs in Israel. And if
that is not enough, the above shall apply one year retroactively.
This too is a bill that discriminates against certain political groups in
Israel, and is introduced by the political majority in an attempt to
neutralize the political opposition it is facing. Primarily, the bill intends
to reject legitimate boycotts of products of settlements, and thus
severely impairs on a legitimate, legal, and nonviolent protest tool that
is internationally accepted (including by Israel), while impairing on the
Israeli citizens' freedom of expression, protest, and congregation.[9]
Status: The bill passed a preliminary reading and the Knesset
Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee will discuss it ahead of its
first reading. It should be noted that a ministerial committee rejected
the chapters pertaining to foreign citizens and states, probably out of
consideration for Israel's foreign relations, and spiked the retroactive
clause.
8. Bill on Revoking the Citizenship of Persons Convicted of
Terrorism or Espionage (David Rotem)
This bill infringes on the basic rights of Israel's citizens because when a
citizenship (which in itself is a basic right) is denied, a series of basic
rights that follow from it are denied too. Furthermore, the Israeli Penal
Code already specifies ways of dealing with persons convicted of
terrorism or espionage.[10]
Status: The bill was discussed by the Knesset Interior Committee,
which will continue discussing it ahead of its first reading.
________________________________________________________________________

On top of these, two additional bills submitted over the past 2 months
may be promoted in the coming session:
1. An Associations Bill (ban on filing suits abroad against Israeli
politicians or army officers), according to which an association that
deals with suits against senior Israeli officials abroad may not be
established, or will be shut down.
2. Bill banning wearing veils in public, according to which, it would
be illegal to cover one's face in any public location, under penalty of
imprisonment.
________________________________________________________________________

We further wish to stress that there is a tough and intolerant approach

toward minority members and stands in the Knesset, as expressed in
plenum and committees' discussions. This trend was particularly visible
after the flotilla affair, and included verbal and even physical abuse
against MK Zuabi, as well as other Arab MKs, during and after the
plenum discussion, when the Knesset discussed the revocation of her
parliamentary rights. It should be noted that a petition was filed with
the HCJ against that revocation, under the pretext that it was an
undemocratic act.
The prevailing atmosphere is not expected to change soon, certainly
not during the current loaded period of talks with the Palestinians,
terror attacks, rocket firing from Gaza, and the debate over freezing or
not freezing construction works in the territories.
Answering our letter, dated July 2010, the Knesset speaker wrote that
he too is uncomfortable with some of the bills mentioned in our letter,
saying that he feel that "the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish
nation, and as a Jewish and democratic state, is strong enough and
needs no 'fortifications' such as those proposed by the bills you
mentioned in your letter. I believe that, often unintentionally, they
actually weaken and not bolster it."[11]
Additional Issues on the Knesset Agenda Ahead of the October
2010 Session
While dealing with anti-democratic laws, we constantly work against
legislation that impairs on human rights in all aspects of life.
At this time, we deem it particularly important to address two topical
and central issues that carry human-rights implications that the
Knesset will discuss in the upcoming session:
The Planning and Housing Reform - A new planning and construction
law is about to be introduced that has far-reaching implications that
might impact on all aspects of the Israeli residents' lives. We believe
that the currently proposed reform might impair on the public's
participation in related forums and on the protection of public
interests. Cooperating with other organizations, we work to amend and
correct the suggested reform so as to introduce tools that would
ensure appropriate representation, the implementation of the public's
participation, and that various social interests are considered.
The State Budget and the Arrangements Act - Israel's biannual budget
for 2011-12 will be discussed and sealed in the coming months. We
feel that the suggested budget contains numerous resolutions and
amendments that impair on human rights in a wide range of issues. On
behalf of ACRI and in collaboration with additional organizations, we
drafted several position papers on issues such as - impairing on the
courts' accessibility; impairing on the rights of the unemployed and
seekers of state Allalowances; harming the laborers' rights; infringing
on the residential rights of inhabitants of public housing, and so on.
Below are a few additional issues (samples only) that we handle and
which are expected to be raised in the upcoming Knesset session:
1. A long line of bills dealing with immigration and civil status is
expected to be discussed as part of the Arrangements Act, government
deliberations ahead of the forming act, the new anti-infiltration bill, and
more.
2. An amendment we initiated, banning discrimination in public
services that will not Allalow further selection at club entrances, will be
discussed by the Knesset Economic Committee in preparation for a
second and third reading.
3. An amendment of the National Health Act, adding a standing
mechanism for updating the medications basket that will ratify
continuity, which we initiated together with the Knesset Labor
Committee, will be discussed soon, having passed the first reading in
the previous Knesset.
4. A bill we initiated offering a program to replace the Wisconsin
Program, which the Knesset Labor Committee will discuss.
Summary
Anti-democratic tendencies in the Knesset are gaining momentum and,
regrettably, the Winter Session is expected to follow on the last
session's trends. We feel, however, that it is important to point out that
not all the anti-democratic bills were promoted, and that some of those
that were promoted have undergone significant changes that
minimized the damage they might cause. The last Knesset session
stood out in laying the foundations for anti-democratic legislation, but
the vast majority of the legislation processes concerning the
aforementioned bills is not yet over. In this respect, the coming session
will be a trying time. If the said bills should ripen and turn into state
laws, their potential damage to democracy would be realized; but
should the Knesset sober up and restrain itself, protecting our
democracy against the tyranny of the majority, the Israeli parliament
will pass the important test of the democracy's durability.
Even if the anti-democratic bills - some, or even all, of them - do not
eventually become laws - even then, Israeli democracy will have
already sustained a serious blow. For the issue has yet another, public
and educational, lasting aspect. The winds blowing from the Knesset,
through these legislative efforts, are already affecting the public,
helping to create a public perception of Israeli Arabs as always suspect,
of human rights activists and organizations as enemies of the State,
and of basic democratic norms as subject to the majority's whims.
Thus, the activities of many MKs, often supported by leading cabinet
members, effectively provide the public with ongoing classes in anti-
democracy.
In conclusion, we would like to cite remarks that the Knesset speaker
made on 2 August 2010, addressing Foreign Ministry cadets, as
published in Haaretz: "Certain MKs address the people's sentiments,
and in doing so create an international image of Israel as an Apartheid
state…. [Such MKs] create a wrongful discourse between Jews and
Arabs in the Knesset that reflects on the existing conflict in the Israeli
society."[12]
We hope that in the upcoming session, the MKs will sober up and
change the parliament's direction, and that the trends of tyranny of the
majority will be replaced by new approaches that will restore essential
democratic values and reintroduce the need to protect them into the
heart of our democracy. Either way - whether the Knesset mends its
ways or not - ACRI will keep guarding democratic values, monitoring
the Knesset's legislative processes, and doing everything it can to help
promoting the values of equality, social justice, and human rights.
[1] See our letter to the Knesset speaker, dated 6 June 2010, following the flotilla events, and his reply
dated 10 June 2010.
[2] See our letter to the President, the prime minister, and the Knesset speaker, dated 31 January 2010,
concerning the delegitimization of human rights organizations.
[3] See our letter dated 21 July 2010
[4] See an ACRI position paper on the issue dated 25 June 2010.
[5] See an ACRI position paper on the issue dated 21 December 2009.
[6] See an ACRI position paper on the issue dated 9 August 2010.
[7] See an ACRI letter to the foreign minister, dated 1 September 2010.
[8] See an ACRI position paper by the Refugees' Rights Forum on the issue dated 4 June 2008.
[9] See a position paper on the issue dated 7 September 2010.
[10] See an ACRI position paper on the issue dated 4 July 2010.
[11] See the Knesset Speaker's letter dated 3 August 2010.
[12] http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1182847.html. Read English translation of the article here.
Back to Top

Becoming a GSS state

Yossi Gurvitz, +972blog, 7 October 2010
The government is considering a Terror Bill, which is rather a
newfangled thing: at the moment we have that cherished British
heirloom, the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, and some bits
and pieces of it haphazardly passed into law. Unfortunately, the
suggested bill is likely to make the already unhealthy Israeli
democracy even more moribund. I wish to thank ACRI for their
definitive guide to the bill (both are Hebrew PDF files).
The bill is problematic in many ways. The destruction of “government
symbols” (pg.6) will be considered a terrorist act – i.e., if you burn an
Israeli flag, you become a terrorist; an act of legitimate protest will not
only put you behind bars, it will put you there for a particularly long
time, since one of the main goals of the bill is to lengthen the prison
terms of “terrorists.”
Another point is that the Minister of Security is empowered, using his
own judgment, to declare an organization as a terror organization (pg.
9). He is supposed to do so at the request of a service chief,
presumably the GSS (General Security Services) chief, and the latter
has to provide the support of the Counsel General; but it is an
administrative act, not a judicial one, and the members of the
organization in question have no way to defend themselves. In fact,
the first time an organization may hear it’s actually a terror
organization is when the Minister declares it so.
Admittedly, it’s somewhat difficult to summon representatives of Az A-
Din Al Qassam so that they may put forward their views before the
minister makes his decision, but this bill won’t have much to do with
military organizations; it specifically (pg. 2) refers to the Da’wa
organizations, Hamas’ charity societies and associations. And who is to
say whether a charity is in fact a Hamas front? Why, the GSS.
Suddenly, a charity finds itself on the wrong side of the law. Its bank
account is frozen, its name is libeled. When they make it to the
Supreme Court, to appeal the decision, they appear before the Court
as the representatives of a society already declared to be a terror
organization – and the judges, who happen to be mortal, will consider
them to be such.
A third point is that the law creates a circle of terror capable of almost
infinite enlargement. Let’s assume, for the sake of the argument, that
a person donates to some society. That society happens to support
Palestinian education facilities; some of those, things being what they
are, will be Hamas facilities. Bang! The society, and the donor, have
suddenly become terrorists.
Fourthly, once a person becomes suspect of terrorism, there’s a lot of
unpleasant and irregular things that may happen to him. They ought to
be enumerated, because they are, in a large sense, the core of this bill.
>> The bill Allalows for a significant increase in the use of “secret
information” - i.e. information, generally claimed to be derived from
intelligence sources and sometimes fabricated, presented to the court
with the without the knowledge of the accused. This creates a situation
in which the suspect actually has less rights than those enjoyed by a
prisoner of the Inquisition. A person arrested according to the Terror
Bill does not know what he is suspected of, he does not know who
incriminated him, and has no way of properly defending himself in
court. A person summoned by the Inquisition could, at least, name his
enemies; and if his accuser appeared on that list, the suspect would be
dismissed (and the suspected perjurer arrested himself). The bill
Allalows considers information to be secret not only if it may harm the
security of the state, but also if it may “damage Israel’s foreign
relations”. Just how wide-ranging this definition can be was seen
several weeks back, when a court refused (Heb) to provide the Muslim
residents of Jaffa with a list of the assets of the Waqf in Jaffa – because
this information may “damage Israel’s foreign relations.” This
information will be denied not just to the suspect, but also to his
lawyer; and the bill restricts the suspect’s access to a lawyer.
>>Even worse than that, the bill extends the usage of
administrative arrest (pg. 97). Though it became a part of Israeli law
in 1979, it was an emergency law and rarely used against Israeli
citizens or within the State of Israel proper. Becoming a part of
normative law will make administrative arrest much more common.
Administrative arrests creates a legal limbo, in which a person may be
detained, for years – six months at a time, then another six months,
then six months more – without the state having to prove his guilt, or
even Allalowing him to establish his innocence. By definition,
administrative arrest takes place when there is not enough evidence
for a normal criminal process, which will make it liable to rely even
more on “secret information.” After all, if the government had
evidence against the suspect, there would be no need for an
administrative arrest.
>>The new bill further Allalows (ibid) a list of other restrictions, for
a period of up to one year, against terror suspects, without
providing them with an opportunity to defend themselves in advance.
It includes a prohibition of leaving a certain area; a prohibition of
staying in a certain area; a prohibition of leaving the country; the duty
to inform the police of all of the suspect’s movements; the duty of
surrendering his passport; a prohibition to “hold certain items” or
“receive certain services”; a prohibition of meeting a specific person or
persons; limitations of the suspect’s occupation; or that general article,
which Allalows “any other restriction required by reasons of state or
public security.”
The combination of these three articles is deadly to a democratic state.
An arrest without access to a lawyer has one goal and goal only:
breaking the suspect and getting a confession. It works. In the recent
case of Amir Makhoul, the prosecution had to admit, through gritted
teeth, that it had no evidence against Makhoul, aside from his
confession, obtained after weeks of detention without access to
lawyers. This, despite the fact that the GSS (General Security Services)
confiscated his computers, and has listened to hundred of hours of his
phone conversations. It should further be mentioned that the number
of prisoners acquitted throughout the history of Israel because their
confession was extracted from them by torture is zero. This despite the
fact that the Landau Commission, in the 1980s, found the GSS has lied
systematically in thousands of cases.
And as if all this wasn’t enough, the Minister of Security (or the Army
Chief of Staff!) can, based on his own judgment, throw an Israeli citizen
into administrative detention – and keep the evidence against him
secret. He may also make certain, if he so chooses, that an Israeli
citizen loses his job or fails to find another; that he may be prohibited
from meeting with his friends and colleagues; and that he may be
prevented from leaving the country which persecutes him without
Allalowing him a proper defense.
The minister (or the general) may, at their discretion, Allalow that
person a hearing; but they may decide to do so up to three weeks after
the restrictions came into action. The suspect may demand a hearing
at a Regional Court; but one assumes this would be the GSS’s home
court, the Petah Tikva Regional Court and its pet judge, Einat Ron (who
handled both the Kamm and the Makhoul cases, and is a former
military prosecutor who tried to cover up the killing of a Palestinian
boy). Such things just happen. The bill contains many more annoying,
even dangerous, items; but compared to the above, they are indeed
immaterial.
Now, hold on, you say; who guarantees that the Minister (or the
general) will actually sign the administrative order? Who says he won’t
read the secret material with disgust, refuse to serve as Shin Bet
Director Yuval Diskin’s rubber stamp, and kick the GSS down the
stairs? There are two answers to these questions. One, the freedom of
a person ought not to depend on the reasoning of a political figure,
much less a general; and two, I cannot remember a single case in
which the GSS requested an administrative arrest order and didn’t get
it. If this bill becomes a law, the freedom of every citizen will be in
question as soon as he annoys the GSS, and even the flimsy defenses
he had so far won’t stand.
The danger, of course, is not equally spread. The good Zionist citizens,
who praise the IDF and who believe the GSS without a second thought,
will not – generally – be in any danger. But more skeptical citizens,
those with a critical bent, those whose attitude to Zionism is
problematic, will know that from now on that they can, with a few
clicks of the keyboard, lose whatever is left of their rights. That, one
suspects, is precisely the goal of the GSS, who just a few years back
informed us that its purpose includes the “suppression of subversion,”
even when this “subversion” is legal and intends to influence the
future of Israel in legal and non-violent ways. In short, this bill must not
pass.
But it will, of course.
Back to Top
Israel Forces Complete Exercise for Population
Exchange between Israel, PA
By Sergio Yahni, Alternative Information Center (AIC), 10 October 2010
The Voice of Israel Radio reported that on Thursday (7 October), Israeli
security forces completed a comprehensive security exercise
simulating the response to mass demonstrations of Palestinian citizens
of Israel following conclusion of an agreement with the Palestinian
Authority (PA). Amongst other things, the security forces ran through
scenarios of violent demonstrations following any possible agreement
for population exchange with the PA.
This exercise fits the vision of the Minister of Internal Security, Yitzhak
Aharonovitch and his party Yisrael Beitenu, which support population
exchange between Israel and the PA should a peace agreement be
signed.
In May 2004 the Chairperson of Yisrael Beitenu and then Minister of
Transportation, Avigdor Liberman, proposed the idea of population
exchange as part of his comprehensive plan for solving the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict.
The essence of this plan is that Israel would annex the settlement blocs
in the West Bank and in parallel, transfer territory in Israel's triangle
area, an area populated by Palestinians, to the Palestinian state that
would be established. According to the plan, Palestinians living in this
area would lose their Israeli citizenship, unless they would chose to
migrate to Israel in its new borders and swear loyalty to the state.
According to a 2006 study conducted by Shaul Arieli, Dubi Schwartz
and Hadas Tagari from the Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies,
approximately 148,000 Israeli citizens would lose their citizenship in
such a population exchange.
This plan is not new in the history of the Zionist movement. Already in
1937, David Ben Gurion wrote in his diary that the primary contribution
of the Peel Commission is its proposal for population exchange
between the Jewish and Arab states to be established.
Approximately 300,000 Palestinians were deported from the West Bank
during the June 1967 war and in its immediate aftermath.
To date a detailed plan for implementing Liberman's proposal has not
been published, and the exercise that concluded on 7 October is the
first time that Israeli security forces are focused on the operative
aspects of such a plan. The exercise was conducted by Israel's Prison
Authority and included participation of the Home Command, the Israeli
police, the military police and fire fighters, amongst others.
According to the Voice of Israel, in the event that the plan for
population exchange would be implemented, security forces would
establish at the Golani (Maskana) Junction in the Upper Galilee a
detention centre for citizens who oppose it.
This exercise also simulated Hamas attempts to take over the Gaza
Strip, similar to the takeover of Gaza, a renewal of Palestinian attacks,
riots throughout the prisons, and the firing of rockets and external
attacks on prisons. According to this same scenario, all Palestinians
previously detained for being in Israel without permits, approximately
1500 in number, would be immediately released from prisons in order
to ensure intake of new Palestinian prisoners within 24 hours.
The Israel Prison Services established two simulated prisons for
practicing rescue attempts. Security forces further simulated the
escape of criminal prisoners from jail, employing a helicopter for
search and seizure. Scenarios of kidnapping prison staff and
kidnappings were further conducted.
Israeli security forces conducted a similar exercise in November 2009,
on the eve of Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip. This exercise
consolidated the policy of oppression of Palestinian citizens of Israel
and Jewish activists who would protest such an attack. Conclusions of
this exercise were later implemented and expressed the strong arm of
the police against any form of legitimate protest.

Back to Top

PA adopts textbook, banned in Israel, offering both

sides' narratives
Palestinian Education Ministry's adoption of book marks first
time Israeli position is presented to West Bank
schoolchildren.
By Or Kashti, Haaretz, 11 October 2010

The Palestinian Authority's Education Ministry approved the use of a

history textbook that offers the central narratives of both Palestinians
and the Zionist movement, marking the first time that the accepted
Israeli position is being presented to schoolchildren in the West Bank.
The textbook, which has been banned from use by the Israeli
Education Ministry, is the result of a joint Israeli-Palestinian-Swedish
collaboration to promote coexistence through education. It will be
taught in two high schools near Jericho, the Palestinian Education
Ministry said.
Next week, the Education Ministry is scheduled to summon the
principal of a Sderot area high school for "clarification" after he had
permitted the use of the textbook by students in a special
supplementary educational course.
Aharon Rothstein, the head of the Sha'ar Hanegev high school, may be
reprimanded for Allalowing students to reference a textbook entitled
"Learning the Historical Narrative of the Other," a project initiated by
Prof. Dan Bar-On of Ben-Gurion University and Prof. Sami Adwan of
Bethlehem University.
"Unfortunately, the Palestinians are further along than the Israeli
Education Ministry when it comes to acknowledging the other side of
the conflict," said an official involved in administering the textbook in
the Sha'ar Hanegev school. "While [the Palestinians] approved the
project, here they are summoning the principal for clarifications. This is
a highly embarrassing situation."
Israeli officials said that the Education Ministry's order to discontinue
the use of the textbook was issued without any official vetting of the
book's contents or the supplementary coursework. It was only after the
project garnered media attention that the ministry's pedagogic
secretariat, Zvi Zameret, asked to see the textbook.
The final edition of the textbook, which was published last year, offers
both the Israeli and Palestinian historical narratives of the Middle East
conflict while also Allalowing for students to note their thoughts on the
material. The book covers the early stages of the Zionist movement all
the way through to the past decade. It has been published in English,
Arabic, and Hebrew.
Last August, a delegation of Swedish mayors visited Israel and the
Palestinian territories. During the visit, the delegation signed a
cooperation agreement with the Sha'ar Hanegev regional council and
the Palestinian Authority's Education Ministry. As part of the project, a
small group of students from each area would learn from the textbook
while the teachers would exchange information and instruction
methods.
Later this month, a delegation of Israeli and Palestinian teachers is
scheduled to take part in a workshop in Sweden as part of the first
stage of the joint project. In the second stage, 11th and 12th grade
students from Israel, the PA, and Sweden are to meet in joint sessions
to discuss the textbook.
"Ramallah approved the project only after PA officials read the
textbook, while in Israel the book was banned even though officials in
Jerusalem did not even check its contents," said one official. "From the
Palestinian standpoint, this is a breakthrough because they are ready
to teach the Israeli narrative. On the other hand, in Israel they are
hunkering down in old positions."

Back to Top

A Special Place in Hell / Top 10 worst errors Israel is

about to make
Making major mistakes: what they are, why they matter, where
they stand, and what you can do about it.
By Bradley Burston, 12 October 2010
1. The Loyalty Oath.
What it is: A proposed amendment to Israel's Law of Citizenship, which,
if approved by the Knesset, would require non-Jews seeking citizenship
to pledge allegiance to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state." The
bill does not require Jews to make the same declaration.
Why it matters: A watershed measure which has been widely
condemned as formally racist, passage of the bill, a key demand of
Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu party, could also fuel Lieberman's
drive to head the Israeli right, and eventually, run for the premiership.
Where it stands: Approved by the cabinet this week by a 22-8 vote,
with all Labor ministers and three Likud MKs opposed. To become law,
it must now pass three Knesset votes in the coming months.
What you can do: Add your voice to those working to defeat passage of
the law. The law must have the support of the Likud [27 seats] and
Labor [13] in order to pass. Write to Prime Minister and Likud Chair
Benjamin Netanyahu and to Defense Minister and Labor Chair Ehud
Barak to urge them to bar the bill from passage. The individual e-mail
addresses of all Likud MKs may be found by clicking their names on the
Knesset website. Senior Likud MKs Benny Begin, Dan Meridor and
Michael Eitan, as well as Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin have already
spoken out strongly against the Loyalty Oath. Others are believed to
have serious reservations, and may be persuaded to abstain or work to
keep the bill from reaching the Knesset floor.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has compiled an extensive and
informative listing of pending legislation with potentially anti-
democratic consequences, including bills which could strip citizenship
from people having taken part in Gaza aid flotillas and penalties for
commemorating Naqba Day, the Palestinian day of mourning for the
events of 1948.
2. Deporting Children Who Want to be Israelis
What it is: Interior Minister Eli Yishai, chair of the ultra-Orthodox Shas,
has dug in his political heels to demand that the government expel 400
children of foreign nationals working in Israel, who no longer have valid
permits to stay. Many of the children were born in Israel. Most say they
feel that Israel is their home, and that they want to remain and
become citizens.
Why it matters: Yishai has cast the deportations as holding the line
against the possibility of millions of workers flooding into Israel, posing
threats of disease and demographic dilution of the Jewish character of
the state. In practice, however, the deportations come in lieu of a
coherent policy on refugees, asylum seekers, and foreign nationals.
Beyond this, most of the children know no other home, and like their
parents, have demonstrated strikingly good citizenship.
Where it stands: Yishai said this week that the deportations would
begin in a few weeks, adding that he could have ordered another
10,000 to leave the country, but did not.
What you can do: Voice your concerns to Education Minister Gideon
Sa'ar, who has led the effort for a cabinet reconsideration of the
deportations. Also, support groups working to help vulnerable resident
non-citizens, including Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Kav Laoved
and Hotline for Migrant Workers.
3. Expanding settlement in East Jerusalem
What it is: Plans to further expel Palestinians in order to install Jews in
homes in the flashpoint areas of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, and to
create a large tourism area to promote the City of David settler tourism
enterprise.
Why it matters: Any changes in Jerusalem, in particular operations in
which the municipality and the police shield and foster settlement
expansion can have devastating consequences.
Where it stands: City officials are watching closely, waiting for protests
and U.S. scrutiny to die down, before ordering new expulsions into
effect.
What you can do: Support the protests. Attend. Monitor events. Make
your concerns known to members of congress, senators, the President.
4. Resuming Construction of the Jerusalem Museum of
Tolerance
What it is: A mammoth, contentious project of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center of Los Angeles, built on an ancient Muslim cemetery in the
heart of the Holy City's downtown.
Why it matters: The location of the excavation work, the extravagance
of the complex in a poverty-plagued city, and the insensitivity
demonstrated by Wiesenthal Center chief Rabbi Marvin Hier have
enraged Muslims and moderate Jews in the city and around the world.
Where it stands: The project has been faltering of late, following the
resignation of renowned architect Frank Gehry. But SWC has declared
its determination to go on, hastily hiring a new architectural team.
What you can do: Contact the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Jerusalem
Mayor Nir Barkat to urge that the project be put to an end.
5. Perpetuating the siege on Gaza
See Israel's 10 worst errors of the decade.
6. Using attack dogs against protesters sailing on aid boats to
Gaza
Enough said.
What you can do: See contact Defense Minister, above.
7. Barring entry and/or jailing and/or expelling additional Nobel
Peace Prize winners, intellectuals, authors, and clowns.
8. Gratuitously and intentionally angering Turkish and other
Mideastern neighbors.
9. Gratuitously and intentionally angering the U.S. and E.U.,
and giving them the impression that Israeli and Diaspora Jews
prefer settlements to peace with the Palestinians.
What you can do: Get involved with Americans for Peace Now, J Street,
the New Israel Fund, Tikkun, Ameinu, Meretz USA and any of the many
other organizations working at the local, national, and international
level on behalf of peace, democracy, and social justice in Israel.
10. Failing to indict Avigdor Lieberman for alleged money
laundering.
What you can do: Pray.
Back to Top

Israel's right needs perpetual war

In the right's view, Negotiations on partitioning the land are an
existential danger because they recognize the
Palestinians' equal rights, and thereby undermine the
Jews' unique status in Eretz Israel.
By Zeev Sternhell, Haaretz, 15 October 2010
The facts must be acknowledged: The heads of the rightist parties
have a strategic outlook and the ability to take the long view, and they
also know how to choose the right tools to carry out their mission.
The proposed new amendment to the Citizenship Law, which is aimed
at fomenting a state of constant hostility between Jews and everyone
else, is just one aspect of the greater plan of which Foreign Minister
Avigdor Lieberman is the official spokesman. The other aspect is the
foreign minister's promise to the nations of the world that our war with
the Palestinians is an eternal war. Israel needs both an external and an
internal enemy, a constant sense of emergency - because peace,
whether with the Palestinians in the territories or the Palestinians in
Israel, is liable to weaken it to the point of existential danger.
And indeed, the right, which includes most of the leaders of Likud, is
permeated with the awareness that Israeli society lives under a cloud
of danger of breakdown from within. The democratic and egalitarian
virus is eating away at the body politic from within. This virus rests on
the universal principle of human rights and nurtures a common
denominator among all human beings because they are human beings.
And what do human beings have more in common than their right to
be masters of their own fate and equal to one another?
In the right's view, that is precisely where the problem lies:
Negotiations on partitioning the land are an existential danger because
they recognize the Palestinians' equal rights, and thereby undermine
the Jews' unique status in Eretz Israel. Therefore, in order to prepare
hearts and minds for exclusive Jewish control of the population of the
entire land, it is necessary to cling to the principle that what really
matters in the lives of human beings is not what unites them, but
rather what separates them. And what separates people more than
history and religion?
Beyond that, there is a clear hierarchy of values. We are first of all
Jews, and only if we are assured that there will be no clash between
our tribal-religious identity and the needs of Jewish rule, on one hand,
and the values of democracy on the other can Israel also be
democratic. But in any case, its Jewishness will always be given clear
preference. This fact ensures an endless fight, because the Arabs will
refuse to accept the sentence of inferiority that the state of Lieberman
and Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman intends for them.
That is why these two cabinet ministers, with Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's tacit support, rejected the proposal that the loyalty oath
be "in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence." As they see it, the
Declaration of Independence, which promises equality for all regardless
of religion and national origin, is a destructive document whose real
aim at the time was to placate the gentiles and win their help in the
War of Independence. Today, in an Israel that is armed to the teeth,
only enemies of the people would want to give legal status to a
declaration that in any case few have ever taken seriously.
This is where the religious dimension naturally enters the picture. Just
as it did among the revolutionary conservatives of the early 20th
century and the neoconservative nationalists of our own day, religion
plays a decisive role in crystallizing national solidarity and preserving
society's strength.
Religion is perceived, of course, as a system of social control without
metaphysical content. Therefore, people who hate religion and its
moral content can dwell contentedly alongside people like Neeman,
who hopes one day to impose rabbinic law on Israel. From their
perspective, the role of religion is to impose Jewish uniqueness and
push universal principles beyond the pale of national existence.
In this way, discrimination and ethnic and religious inequality have
become the norm here, and the process of Israel's delegitimization has
ratcheted up a level. And all of this is the work of Jewish hands.
Back to Top

Israeli police recruiting from settlements for first time

By Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 20 October 2010

As US-sponsored peace talks have stalled over the issue of
settlements, Israel's national police force has revealed that it is turning
to the very same illegal communities in its first-ever drive to recruit
officers from among the settlers.
The special officer training course, which is chiefly aimed at discharged
combat soldiers, includes seven months of religious studies in an
extremist settlement in the occupied West Bank.
The program has provoked widespread concern among Israel's 1.3
million Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the population.
"The police have already repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to
Palestinian citizens, but this move proves that the authorities want to
extend and deepen our oppression," said Jafar Farah, the director of
Mossawa, an advocacy center for the Palestinian minority.
"Is it really credible that these religious extremists who have been
educated to hate Palestinians in the West Bank are going to behave
differently when they police our communities inside Israel?"
The first 35 cadets in the officer-training program -- known as "Believe
in the police" -- are to start their studies next month. More than 300
settlers are reported to have expressed an interest in the course so far.
The police command is said to have taken up the idea, originally
proposed by right-wing groups, in the hope of reversing years of
declining recruitment levels that have led to a national shortage of
officers.
Cadets will study for three and a half years, mostly at Haifa University
in Israel, at the end of which they will be awarded a degree and the
rank of officer.
But their studies also include seven months in a religious seminary in a
small extremist settlement, Elisha, deep in the West Bank. Although all
the settlements are illegal under international law, Elisha is one of
dozens of wildcat settlements also illegal under Israeli law.
Gershom Gorenberg, an expert on the religious settlers, said Israel's
"future police commanders" would graduate from the course after an
early lesson in law-breaking.
Yonatan Chetboun, the head of the Raananim movement, a right-wing
group overseeing the program, described to Olam Katan, a newspaper
popular with the religious community, one way the organizers might
win over settlers to a career in the police.
He said taking potential recruits on night-time patrols of Ramle and
Lod -- Israeli towns notorious for containing deprived, crime-ridden
Palestinian neighborhoods -- would quickly open their eyes to one of
"the most meaningful national issues."
The police spokesman was not available for comment.
A team of rabbis has been appointed to resolve potential conflicts
between the settlers' religious principles and their police duties, which
could involve desecrating the sabbath and dealing with "immodest"
women.
A right-wing settler activist, Hor Nizri, who has clashed with the police
in the past over the evacuation of settlements, has been put in charge
of recruiting young settlers.
He told the Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper that the program was "a
historic reconciliation," adding: "We want to fill the ranks of the police
as we fill the ranks of the army."
His comments have sparked concern among Palestinian groups inside
Israel that the program is the first phase of an attempted settler
"takeover" of the police, replicating their growing dominance of
sections of the army.
The first official figures on the number of settlers in the Israeli military,
released last month, show their massive over-representation in combat
units. About a third of all officers in such units were settlers, up from
only 2.5 per cent in 1990.
The police hope that a career in the force will be attractive to many of
the settlers after they are discharged.
However, Farah said there was plenty of evidence that religious
settlers were becoming ever more extreme in their hostility towards
Palestinians. He pointed to the growing influence of extremist rabbis in
promoting anti-Palestinian views.
Over the summer, two prominent rabbis from the settlement of Yitzhar,
near Nablus, were questioned on suspicion of incitement after
publishing a book, The King's Torah, in which they sanctioned the
killing of non-Jews, including children. In one passage, the authors
write: "There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will
grow up to harm us."
The book has been endorsed by a number of senior rabbis in the
settlements.
Similar sentiments have been gaining a foothold among army rabbis.
Early last year, in the immediate wake of Israel's three-week operation
in Gaza, it was revealed that the army rabbinate had handed out a
booklet to combat soldiers about to enter Gaza calling their attack 'a
war on murderers' and warning them against "surrendering a single
millimeter" of territory.
Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including hundreds
of women and children.
The Palestinian minority's relations with the police are already marked
by deep distrust, following the killing of 13 unarmed demonstrators
and the wounding of hundreds more in 2000, at the start of the second
Palestinian intifada.
A subsequent state commission of inquiry accused the police command
of viewing the minority as "an enemy."
Farah also pointed to the unexplained deaths of 36 Palestinian citizens
by the police over the past decade. In only two cases have police
officers been convicted.
Some Israeli observers have expressed concern that the settlers'
greater influence on the police could also make implementing the
dismantlement of West Bank settlements much harder in any future
peace deal.
Gorenberg said previous evacuations, including the 2005 withdrawal
from Gaza, had been handled chiefly by the police because so many
army units were dominated by settlers. The police, he added, "could
acquire the same weakness."

Back to Top

The rotting Safed cheese

Safed is not the main problem; the problem lies in the
response from society and the government.
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 28 October 2010
Think of a town in Austria. Or perhaps France. A mountainous, ancient
major district town, with a college situated in the middle of it, whose
students include quite a few Jews. The town priest calls an "emergency
meeting," funded by the government and held in the municipal cultural
center, attended by 400 sympathetic citizens, including 18 priests from
the area, calling for a ban on renting apartments to Jewish students.
The deputy mayor supports the meeting. The priest says sweetly: "I
have nothing against Jews, but they shouldn't live in our town. Let
them study in their yeshivas, not with us."
Residents of the town complain: "The Jews don't respect the place on
Sundays," the public park has been turned into a "pigsty," the hospital
has become a "dangerous place." Renting apartments to Jews, the
priests warn, will hurt property values, and lead to the danger that our
pure children will convert. A few young men harass Jews and beat
them up; the Jews say they live in great fear.
If this took place in France, and even more so in Germany, it sounds
quite bad. But this all happened in Safed - and against Arabs. If it had
happened in Europe, Jewish organizations would shout to the high
heavens, Israel would recall its ambassador for consultations. The
president of the country, whether it be France or Austria, would hurry
to the tainted city and do everything possible to calm things down.
They would apologize to the Jewish students and instruct the police to
see to their safety. The priests would be tried for anti-Semitism.
About 10 years ago, I found myself in Safed for a bar mitzvah
celebration. Suddenly a bearded tough guy appeared in front of me
and said threateningly: "For your own good, get out of town. We don't
want you here." Since then, I have visited Safed during its
bombardment in the Second Lebanon War and to attend the Hasidic
music festival that I enjoy, and the city has only gone downhill.
An explosive mixture of poverty and religion, desolation and
nationalism, has turned the beautiful city into Israel's ugliest. The city's
beloved artists' quarter has been replaced by a nationalists' quarter.
The famous Safed cheese has gone rotten, terrible decay has set in.
The formerly mixed city - whose Arab residents were forced to flee in
1948, never to return, including the refugee Mahmoud Abbas, their
abandoned beautiful stone houses to become pizzerias and ruins - has
become the most racist city in the country.
That is what happens when we stay silent and forgiving. Four years
ago the state dropped charges of incitement to racism against Safed's
chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, after he called for a ban on renting
apartments to Arabs and Allalowing Arab students to study at Safed
College. The rabbi was required at the time to retract his statements.
A few days ago, Eliyahu returned to the spotlight in a big way - at the
"emergency meeting" funded by the Safed religious council and held in
the cultural center named after Yigal Alon, a man who also knew a
thing or two about expelling Arabs. Rabbi Eliyahu issued a religious
ruling, warning against the "declining value of apartments" and
"assimilation," the incited crowd cheering him on.
Safed can continue to rot in its racism; it is not the main problem.
Many countries have such centers of malignancy. The problem lies in
the response from society and the government. The Arabs do not have
an "anti-defamation league," and people are not buying the fight
against anti-Arab racism like they do warnings against anti-Semitism,
which cause hearts worldwide to tremble.
Israel is silent in the face of Safed's impurity. The prime minister does
not consider visiting the town to apologize to the Arab students, the
student unions fighting against stipends handed out to yeshiva
students do not have time to engage in a solidarity struggle with their
classmates, victims of hatred. The rabbi remains at his post, no matter
how much slime he spreads.
Today it's Safed; tomorrow, Ramat Aviv. There, too, residents complain
to the owner of the neighborhood market that his delivery man is an
Arab.

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Safed man harassed for renting apartment to Bedouin

Posters plastered around the city, explicitly naming apartment
owner, 89, are latest episode in campaign to halt influx of
young Arabs.
By Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz, 3 November 2010
Safed was plastered with posters on Tuesday denouncing a long-time
resident for renting an apartment to three Bedouin studying at the
local college.
The apartment owner, Eli Tzavieli, had decided to go through with the
rental despite threats that his home would be torched.
The posters are the latest episode in an ongoing campaign waged by
certain Safed residents, led by chief municipal rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, to
halt the influx of Arab students attracted by the college.
Residents who oppose this campaign believe that, in light of a recent
incident in which three Arab students were brutally attacked, the
posters could incite an attack on the 89-year-old Tzavieli, who is
named explicitly on the signs.
Tzavieli, the posters charged, "is returning the Arabs to Safed!! It's a
crying shame!!!"
The evening before the posters appeared, Tzavieli, who immigrated to
Israel after World War II and has lived in Safed since 1950, received an
anonymous phone call from someone threatening to burn down his
home. He complained to police about the incident.
"I'm scared," he told Haaretz. "But I have an obligation toward these
lovely students ... They're in school every day and needed a place to
sleep at night."
He said that prior to the threatening call, several people whom he did
not know showed up at his house and asked him not to rent to Arabs.
He stressed, however, that the city's other old-timers back his decision.
A few months ago, Eliyahu and 17 other rabbis issued a public call to
residents not to sell or rent apartments to non-Jews. That was followed
by an "emergency convention" three weeks ago, at which speakers
lashed out against the influx of Arab students.
Then, about 10 days ago, three Arab students were physically
assaulted, one of whom was shot, though not fatally.
Two Safed residents - one of them an armed border policeman - were
subsequently indicted for the attack, which began when a group of
young Jews surrounded the students' apartment, shouting slogans such
as "Death to the Arabs" and "Stinking Muslims" and hurling rocks and
bottles through the windows. Some of the assailants apparently then
climbed through an open window to continue the attack at close range.

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South Africa is already here

The government is trying to build a protected autonomy for
the Jewish majority and a stunted autonomy for the Arab
minority.
By Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz, 31 October 2010
How could the Israeli public Allalow a few dozen racists to go down into
the lion's den of Umm al-Fahm on their own? Do Michael Ben-Ari,
Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben Gvir represent only themselves or just
the fringes of the extreme right? After all, thousands of Israeli citizens
agreed when they heard the thugs' explanations of the reasons for
their march.
Hundreds of thousands in Israel are pleased with the Citizenship Law,
glad that the bill will, when it passes - and it will pass - Allalow
discrimination against Arabs who will want to buy a home in a Jewish
community, and the majority of the public considers MK Hanin Zuabi a
traitor.
Where were all these people while the fascists marched through Umm
al-Fahm? Suddenly they are not comfortable being seen with those
who reflect precisely the zeitgeist?
Participating in this march should have been Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman, MKs Anastassia Michaeli and David Rotem, the settler
leadership, the followers of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the heads and
residents of Jewish communities in the Galilee, as well as the owners of
homes in Tel Aviv and Ra'anana who refuse to rent apartments to
Arabs. This march should have carried the banner "[National] Pride
Parade." Alas, only 1,300 participants showed up, along with the police
force that protected them.
But they are certainly not alone. They simply do not need yet another
demonstration. Israel's apartheid movement is coming out of the
woodwork and is taking on a formal, legal shape. It is moving from
voluntary apartheid, which hides its ugliness through justifications of
"cultural differences" and "historic neglect" which only requires a little
funding and a couple of more sewage pipes to make everything right -
to a purposeful, open, obligatory apartheid, which no longer requires
any justification.
In South Africa of the 1950s, the whites were afraid even of the white
immigrants, lest they bring with them liberal ideas that would affect
the local volk.
But mostly they feared the blacks. In a short period of time the insular
white community adopted a series of laws that were meant to preserve
their purity. In 1949, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act was
passed; in 1950 and 1957 the Immorality Act and amendment made
interracial sexual relations a criminal offense carrying a seven year
prison sentence. In 1950, in the Population Registration Act, each
citizen was categorized racially. In 1953 the Bantu Education Act was
passed which established that the blacks will receive a different and
lesser education than the whites, and in 1950 the Group Areas Act was
passed which determined "group regions," establishing where each
racial group could live and which led to the expulsion of 3.5 million
blacks from their homes.
This listing is presented here as a service to the racists in the Knesset,
in case they did not know what kind of legislation to propose in order
to complete their plan. This is also a public service for those who did
not participate in the Umm al-Fahm march, so that they will know what
they should require of their representatives.
With considerable delay, the South African Group Areas Act is now
being copied into Israel's book of laws. An individual can no longer
purchase land, build a home or even rent an apartment in small
communities in which the absorption committee opposes their
presence. According to Adalah - the Legal Center for Arab Minority
Rights in Israel, the law will "protect" 68.3 percent of all communities
in Israel from being "stained."
The remainder of communities, and especially the large cities, will
have to continue, for the mean time, to make do with voluntary
apartheid. But the days will also come, as they did in South Africa,
when an appropriate solution was found for its cities. It will be possible,
for example, to grant homeowners committees the authority to
determine who can buy or rent an apartment in a building. After all,
what is good about a small community should also be good in an even
smaller building. And of course a law which encourages snitching will
also be passed.
So, while the government of Israel is trying to gain Palestinian
recognition for its Jewish identity, it is building within it the double
identity of the state. A protected autonomy for the Jewish majority and
a stunted autonomy for the Arab minority.
Israel is quickly defining the borders of the Arab autonomy and through
apartheid legislation it is granting the Arab minority a legal standing of
enclaves with lesser rights; of a cultural-ethnic region which, because it
is being expelled from the broader who, can also demand international
recognition for its unique standing.

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Israel is proud to present: The aggressor-victim

Israelis have always loved victimization, not only when we
were real victims, as often was the case in our history, but
also when we were the aggressors, occupiers and abusers.
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 31 October 2010
Once upon a time the staple piece of clothing was the blue shirt of the
Labor Movement, and songwriter Mordechai Zeira sang about it: "And
it's much better than all jewels." A new generation has arrived, and its
shirt is darker. Today it's black and bears the legend: We are all the
victims of Goldstone.
Dozens of friends of the two Givati Brigade soldiers arrived wearing
these infuriating shirts at a military court a few days ago. Their friends
had been convicted of overextending their authority while risking the
life of an 11-year-old, and to be precise, of conduct unbecoming of
soldiers. The soldiers received the scandalous support of senior
officers, and the two convicted men have become heroes.
Israel is proud to present: The aggressor-vicitim. History has known
crueler and even longer occupations than the Israeli one, and there
have been much worse attacks on civilian populations than Operation
Cast Lead. But there has never been an occupier who presented
himself like that, as a victim.
From the days of Golda Meir, who said we will never forgive the Arabs
for forcing us to hurt their children, to the combatants who shot and
wept, we have set, courtesy of the Givati troops, a new record of Israeli
chutzpah: We are all the victims of Goldstone.
The victimhood, it turns out, belongs not to an 11-year-old child whose
life was put at risk and who has been suffering from insomnia ever
since, but the soldiers who ordered him to check for explosives, in
clear contradiction of a ruling by the Supreme Court.
Not the Samouni family, 21 of whose members were butchered when
the same Givati Brigade, under the same commander, bombed the
house into which the soldiers ordered the family, but the brigade
commander, Ilan Malka, whose conduct is now being investigated,
shamefully late. And certainly not the residents of Gaza, who
experienced Cast Lead with its hardships, horrors, destruction and war
crimes, but the soldiers, who share responsibility with the commanders
and politicians.
We've always loved victimization, not only when we were real victims,
as often was the case in our history, but also when we were the
aggressors, occupiers and abusers. And we don't only cast ourselves as
victims, but as the only victims. But observe our perception of our
wrongdoing. It started with denial, then changed to suppression, then
to shamelessness, then to dehumanization and demonization, until we
arrived at the current stage: A pride parade.
The soldiers taking pictures of themselves dancing with prisoners and
posing with corpses are proud of what they do. They upload the
footage onto the Web, for all to see, and friends of the two Givati
troops are equally proud of what their mates have done. They're proud
of the conduct of people who broke the law. Their solidarity may be
understandable, but it's much more difficult to understand the support
of their brigade commander, Col. Moni Katz, and Maj. Gen. (res. ) Uzi
Dayan.
What are they saying - that the soldiers acted correctly? That they
should not be punished? That they are victims? In that case, we have
little to claim from the soldiers, who were only acting according to the
spirit emanating from their superiors. But most difficult to understand
is the widespread public support for the two. Just like the Nahariya
policeman convicted of placing bombs to injure suspected mobsters,
they are local heroes and national victims to many.
Do we really want to be proud of the soldiers ordering children to risk
their lives, in violation of the law? Is this how we want the army to
behave? Will Israeli public opinion never accept that war has rules and
that if Israeli soldiers break them, they must be punished? True, they
may have been carrying out orders, they may have been jaded and
exhausted after three weeks of the assault on Gaza, as the court has
heard. But casting them as victims testifies to the chaos overtaking
Israel.
So we should go back to basics. The victims of Cast Lead are the 1.5
million residents of Gaza. The "victims" of the Goldstone report are not
the two convicts, but their own victims. The shirts worn by their friends
in court are proof that these basic truths have been blurred and
distorted beyond recognition.

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Israel has turned 'Jew' into a hollow, separatist title

The small communities are the visible tip of an iceberg of
systematic, ongoing ostracism that affects a great many
Israelis.
By Avirama Golan, Haaretz, 3 November 2010
What is so terrible, G. asked me, about people in small communities
wanting to choose their neighbors? I'm talking about the desire to live
in a clean, attractive place and give my children a values-laden
education in a high-quality community; what's so terrible about the
fact that we don't want Arabs? They are genuinely unsuited to a
community with a Jewish-Zionist character.
G. is a young computer programmer from central Israel. His wife is
pregnant. The dream of a hilltop community in the Galilee beckons
him, and he thinks he and his wife, both hard-working college
graduates, will join one.
Let's start with the fact, I replied, that you haven't a chance of being
accepted.
G. was shocked. You're Mizrahi, a Jew of Middle Eastern origin, I
explained, and your wife is the daughter of recent immigrants from the
former Soviet Union. You grew up on the periphery. Your income is
okay, but you couldn't afford to buy even a one-room apartment in the
center of the country. Your wife, who works 10 hours a day at a law
firm, will have trouble finding similar work up north. She was divorced
at a young age, and you didn't marry through the official rabbinate.
Who would take you?
And even if they did, you wouldn't be willing to give up your excellent
job in Herzliya. Therefore, you would have to drive from your new
home to the nearest railway station. But you'll be investing all your
savings in building your new home; you won't be able to buy a second
car.
These small communities are the visible tip of an iceberg of
systematic, ongoing ostracism that affects a great many Israelis. The
Arabs are indeed at the top of the list of dubious characters that this
system has created, but after them come all those who cannot afford
to live in the luxurious Gindi or Akirov Towers in Tel Aviv with "people
like us."
G. is dreaming of a small hilltop community because the government
has not freed up land near major cities, has not built affordable or
public housing in those cities and offers almost no subsidies for
mortgages. It prefers the contractors' story (construction is expensive
because of all the bureaucracy, and because there are not enough
foreign workers), and therefore comes up with reforms that will send
real estate prices even further through the roof. In this situation, the
Bank of Israel's decision to raise interest rates on mortgages will
merely make it even harder for young people who are not ultra-rich to
buy an apartment.
If G. were to be fired tomorrow and seek to retrain in one of the
building professions where demand for workers is high, he would soon
discover that he is superfluous due to the migrant workers from China,
who offer maximum labor for minimum cost, and who will soon become
submissive slaves to boot under an amendment to the Law of Entry
that was quietly slipped into the 2011-12 budget legislation.
And even if he isn't fired, he and his wife are about to have a baby.
They will then discover that they are not poor enough to qualify for
subsidized day-care, and that his wife's law firm would rather have an
unmarried intern who is willing to work for minimum wage. The Israeli
labor market, which has grown used to exploiting Palestinians and
migrants, loathes Israelis.
A cloud even hovers over the master's degree program he has begun,
thanks to the tax that is slated to be imposed on his scholarship.
G. doesn't see the system that drives all these distortions, because the
government has succeeded in confusing him. Almost all the new
communities established over the last 30 years are unnecessary from a
planning, environmental or socioeconomic standpoint. Their sole
purpose is to effect an unequal distribution of the most precious
resource of all - land. G.'s only chance of obtaining a home or a
reasonable standard of living lies in a settlement or in one of the towns
built to Judaize the Galilee.
The Arabs have been deprived of the most basic development for both
housing and industry, and they face enormous barriers in the labor
market. But the government tells G. that they are taking over land and
building illegally, just as the migrant workers (whom the government
itself imports ) are stealing his job.
So that G. will not, heaven forbid, feel solidarity with Sakhnin residents
of his own age and join forces with them to rise up against this system,
the government, under the leadership of Yisrael Beiteinu, is channeling
his frustration into the artificial channel of an ethno-national conflict.
You're collapsing under an impossible burden, it tells the lower and
lower-middle classes? The Arabs are to blame.
G. has fallen into a fascist trap that compensates him with the hollow
separatist title "Jew," while erasing his civic identity as an Israeli, so
that he will not sense how badly his situation has eroded. But how can
you fail to see, G.? After all, to all those hilltop community admission
committees, and to all those that will yet be formed, you will be the
next Arab.
Back to Top

Carmiel initiative tries to prevent home sales to Arabs

Deputy mayor backs anonymous service, saying he wants to
'maintain Jewish nature' of northern city
Nadav Mayost, Ynet, 3 November 2010

Carmiel's local paper is running an ad calling on residents of the

"Jewish, Zionist city" to email anonymous information on home sales to
Arabs. "I side with keeping the Jewish Zionist character of Carmiel
intact," says Deputy Mayor Oren Milstein.
Milstein said the email service is run by an individual who, though a
good friend of his, has no ties with the municipality. However, in an
interview with the website Besheva, he referred to himself as one of
the recipients of the emails.
"Residents of the city are welcome to write to us if they know of an
apartment in Carmiel being sold to a resident from one of the villages.
Once an Arab family buys a home in the city it will be a statement of
fact for generations upon generations," he said, adding that 30 sales
had already been prevented in this manner.
"We need to prevent unnecessary conflict between Jews and Arabs," he
explained. "We should be living one next to the other and not in such
close proximity. Carmiel already has 1,000 Arab residents, and soon
they will want a mosque."
Milstein went on to say that though he cannot legally prevent Arabs
from buying homes in Carmiel, he would prefer to bring in more Jews
from central Israel to "strengthen the city".
"The State of Israel is investing in areas that are not under national
consensus, while the western Galilee in general and Carmiel
specifically are under consensus. There are currently 580,000 residents
in the area and just 32% of them are Jewish," he said.
It was not the first time Carmiel had been flooded with such sentiment.
Recently a mass-distribution email called on residents not to rent their
apartments to Arabs or immigrants from Eastern Europe or Ethiopia.
Mayor Adi Eldar demanded that police launch an investigation,
explaining that "Carmiel Municipality had nothing to do with this ugly
and dangerous incitement, and certainly nothing to do with the
individual behind this email".
The prior email was sent from the same box as the most recent one,
belonging to Attorney Koren Neumark. But Milstein explained that his
friend's email account had been broken into and that he had not been
the distributor.
"Illegal use was made of the email account and a widely distributed
email was sent from it," Neumark said. "However, I had nothing to do
with this letter and, on the contrary, I object to its content."
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New prize to encourage 'Zionist art'

Following controversial artists' letter calling for boycott of
Ariel cultural hall, Culture Minister Limor Livnat announces
new award aimed at fighting 'de-legitimization,' says all state-
funded culture institutions will be forced to perform all over
Israel
Ynet reporters, 9 November 2010

Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat announced Monday that she
plans to force all state-funded culture institutions to perform all over
Israel as a condition for continuing their funding.
She spoke during a Knesset's Education and Culture Committee
session on the backdrop of the second artists' letter calling for a
boycott against the Ariel culture hall, which is located beyond the
Green Line.
The minister plans to extend an amendment to the criteria determining
the budgeting of all cultural institutions. A theater which refuses to
sign a commitment to perform anywhere across Israel will be deprived
of funding.
Livnat also declared her plan to grant a special annual award aimed at
encouraging "Zionist art" as a counter measure against what she
referred to "the left-wing campaign" against artists' performances in
the new Ariel cultural hall.
"The prize will be given in all fields of culture – performing arts, plastic
art, and cinema – in a bid to make it clear that we are against boycotts
and in favor of Zionist culture," the minister said.
"This move is a response to the recent de-legitimization attempts in
terms of the Ariel cultural hall. We are a democratic state, and artists
have the right to protest, but they have no right to boycott the State of
Israel's citizens and we will work to force cultural institutions to
perform across the country."
Tomer Velmer, Roni Sofer and Merav Yudilovitch contributed to this
report

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BDS Victory: Veolia Sells Shares in Jerusalem Light

Rail
Alternative Information Center (AIC), 15 October 2010
Veolia has signed a principled agreement to sell its shares in the
Jerusalem Light Rail to the Israeli transportation cooperative Egged,
reports The Marker today (15 October). This sale marks a substantial
victory for the Palestinian-led international campaign for Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
According to the agreement, Veolia will receive NIS 45 million
(approximately EURO 9 million) for its shares, which will be gradually
transferred to Egged over a five year period from the first day of the
light rail's operation. This gradual transfer ensures compliance with
conditions of the initial tender, which mandate that the light rail
operator must have a minimum of five years experience in operations.
Egged will also pay increasing percentages of the sale as the light rail
becomes increasingly profitable.
The EUR 9 million to be received by Veolia is miniscule compared to
the almost EUR 5 billion of contracts that Veolia has lost around the
world due to the BDS movement in the past two years, most
prominently a EUR 3 billion tender in Sweden.
Finalisation of the sale requires confirmation of various Israeli
authorities and the other partners in the light rail. The biggest threat to
finalization of the sale, however, was liable to come from Israel's anti-
trust laws, as this sale would make Egged the monopoly holder of
public transportation in Jerusalem. According to AIC economist Shir
Hever, "It seems probable, however, that the Israeli Anti-Trust
Authority signaled it would approve the sale, most likely due to Israeli
concern over the detrimental impact of the BDS campaign on the rail's
burgeoning costs and never-ending delays."
Veolia has been a target of the Palestinian-led international campaign
for Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) against Israel until the
latter recognizes Palestinian human and national rights and fulfills its
obligations under international law. Veolia has been trying to find a
buyer for two years already, as a result of the boycott pressure. This
political pressure has caused numerous delays in operation of the rail,
which was supposed to begin functioning in 2008 and now will not
begin before 2011.

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In major boycott movement success, Africa-Israel says

no plans to build more settlements
Adalah-NY, 3 November 2010
Africa Israel, the flagship company of Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev,
announced this week that it is no longer involved in Israeli settlement
projects and that it has no plans for future settlement activities. Africa
Israel subsequently denied that this was a political decision. However,
in the last few years numerous organizations, firms, governments and
celebrities have exerted pressure and severed their relationships with
Leviev and his companies over their involvement in settlement
construction and other human rights abuses, in response to a boycott
campaign initiated by Adalah-NY.
Israel’s Coalition of Women for Peace disclosed on Monday that in an
official letter to the Coalition, Africa Israel stated, “Neither the
company nor any of its subsidiaries and/or other companies controlled
by the company are presently involved in or has any plans for future
involvement in development, construction or building of real estate in
settlements in the West Bank.” In follow-up articles in the Israeli media
on Monday, Africa Israel said that the statement was “a description of
the business today” and that “Africa Israel builds for all the public in
Israel, and does not deal in politics or any other policy."
Ethan Heitner from Adalah-NY explained, “Following years of
settlement construction, and pro-settlement statements and activities
by Lev Leviev, the public announcement by Africa Israel that it has no
plans to build Israeli settlements is clearly a result of pressure from the
growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. This provides
concrete evidence of the way in which the BDS movement can change
companies’ behavior. But Africa Israel can’t speak out of both sides of
its mouth and expect a clean bill of health. Africa Israel must
unambiguously renounce settlement activity, and all other involvement
in violations of Palestinian rights. And Lev Leviev needs to end his
involvement in settlement construction through other companies like
Leader Management and Development, as well as his support for
human rights abuses in the diamond industry in countries like Angola
and Namibia.”
Adalah-NY began a campaign to boycott the companies of Lev Leviev
in November, 2007, which has since gained support from allies around
the world. As a result, the Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch governments
have divested from Africa Israel, as have a number of major
international investment firms. The British
government,UNICEF, Oxfam and CARE have all severed ties with
Leviev, and major celebrities have quietly disassociated themselves
from him.
From 2000-2008, Danya Cebus, the construction subsidiary of Africa
Israel, built homes in the settlements of Har Homa, Maale
Adumim (two different projects), Adam, and Mattityahu East on the
land of the West Bank village of Bil’in. In late December, 2009, Africa
Israel sold Anglo-Saxon Real Estate, a company that sold settlement
homes. Another Leviev-owned company, Leader Management and
Development, still owns and operates the expanding settlement
of Zufim, built on the land of the West Bank village of Jayyous. In what
is now Tel Aviv, Danya Cebus has supported Israeli efforts to erase
Palestinian claims and heritage, by building projects on top of the
remains of Palestinian villages like Sheikh Muwanis and Sumail that
were ethnically cleansed by Israel in 1948. Leviev has also been a
donor to two Israeli groups - the Land Redemption Fund and
the Bukhara Community Trust, both of which have been involved in
expanding Israeli settlements. Leviev has also been rumored to
donate to Elad which is taking over the East Jerusalem neighborhood of
Silwan.
As recently as 2008 Leviev expressed strong support for Israel’s
continued takeover of Palestinian land. In a March 2008 interview in
Ha’aretz Daily, reporter Anshel Pfeffer asked Leviev, “Do you have a
problem with building in the territories?” Leviev responded, “Not if the
State of Israel grants permits legally.” According to an English
translation of the same Ha’aretz interview published in the Jewish
Chronicle, Leviev explained, “For me, Israel, Jerusalem and Haifa are all
the same.” “So are the Golan Heights. As far as I’m concerned, all of
Eretz Israel is holy. To decide the future of Jerusalem? It belongs to the
Jewish people. What is there to decide? Jerusalem is not a topic for
discussion.”
Modeled on the worldwide campaign against apartheid-era South
Africa, the movement for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) against Israel, which was called for in response to Israel’s many
violations of Palestinian rights, has grown and achieved significant
successes, particularly following Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in
2009, which killed over 1400 Palestinians.

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Major Dutch Pension Fund Divests from Occupation

By Adri Nieuwhof and Guus Hoelen, The Electronic Intifada, 12
November 2010
The major Dutch pension fund Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (PFZW),
which has investments totaling 97 billion euros, has informed The
Electronic Intifada that it has divested from almost all the Israeli
companies in its portfolio.
PGGM, the manager of the major Dutch pension fund PFZW, has
adopted a new guideline for socially responsible investment in
companies which operate in conflict zones.
In addition, PFZM has also entered into discussions with Motorola,
Veolia and Alstom to raise its concerns about human rights issues. All
three companies have actively supported and profited from Israel's
occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza
Strip.
Over the past few years, activists in the Netherlands have questioned
the two largest pension funds PFZW and ABP about their holdings in
companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In
September 2009, the Norwegian State Pension Fund decided that it
would no longer invest in companies that directly contribute to
violations of international humanitarian law. By February 2010, ABP,
the largest Dutch pension fund, informed The Electronic Intifada it had
also divested from the Israeli company Elbit Systems. At the same
time, PFZW confirmed that it held shares in Elbit Systems worth 1.6
million euros.
However, the pension fund was reevaluating its investments in Israeli
companies. At the time, PFZW held shares in thirteen Israeli
companies, including four banks, several telecommunication
companies, construction companies and Elbit Systems. In November
2009, PGGM informed The Electronic Intifada that the fund would
approach divestment decisions on "Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi and
other [Israeli] companies" in a structural manner. This was based on a
"new policy on how to deal with investments in companies in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict." That month, PGGM announced that PFZW
was divesting from Africa-Israel for "technical reasons." Owned by Lev
Leviev, Africa-Israel has been involved in the building of illegal
settlements in the occupied West Bank.
On 8 November, PGGM spokeswoman Diana Abrahams confirmed in a
telephone conversation PFZW's divestment from almost all Israeli
companies. Abrahams could give no further details and referred to
PFZW's 2010 annual report, which will be published next year.
During this period, PGGM has also contributed to the development of
guidelines for the United Nations Global Compact. The Global Compact
is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to
sustainability and responsible business practices which started in
2000. The initiative is endorsed by chief executives and seeks to align
their operations and strategies with ten universally-accepted principles
in the areas of human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption.
Last year PGGM was involved in developing a guideline for business
operations in combat zones.
The decision by the Dutch pension funds to divest from Israeli
companies is yet another indicator for the success of the international
boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. It is likely only a matter
of time before these funds and others divest from the international
corporations which profit from Israel's occupation.
Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in
Switzerland.
Guus Hoelen, secretary of Werkgroep Keerpunt, involved in divestment
campaigns in the Netherlands.
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UNESCO Adopts Five Resolutions concerning Palestine

21 October 2010
This was the document submitted by the Arab Group (of states) at
UNESCO outlining the five resolutions.
Briefly, the five resolutions at UNESCO’s Executive Committee concern
1. East Jerusalem, 2. Mughrabi Gate, 3. Gaza rehabilitation works, 4.
Israel’s purported listing of Hebron (Abraham’s Tomb) and Bethlehem
(Rachel’s Tomb) on the Israeli national list, and 5. Educational and
Cultural institutions.
UNESCO's Executive Council voted strongly in favor of Palestine’s 5
resolutions. This was the first time UNESCO has taken a vote since
1985 on Palestine’s resolutions.
The Israeli Ambassador (Nimrod Barkan) made a statement after the
vote calling the result of the vote a decision by the “immoral majority”
and that this has returned UNESCO to its “darkest days” and that this
will be marked as a day of “infamy”. He further said that the Arab
Group was bullying UNESCO's membership and was converting it into
another Geneva organization (a reference to Goldstone). He concluded
by saying that the resolutions are null and void and will not be
implemented by Israel.
The Palestinian and Jordanian Ambassadors spoke in more positive
notes thanking the Director General for her efforts. The Saudi
Ambassador also responded to the Israeli Ambassador’s statement by
saying that this was a victory for the conscience of the world and for
humanity. He also said that the resolutions offered the Palestinians
some dignity in otherwise deadlocked negotiations.
The US made a statement after the vote expressing disappointment on
the outcome and explaining why they voted against. Among the
reasons cited were: the one sided targeting of the decisions against
Israel and singling it out, the undermining of UNESCO's credibility and
the politicization of its work.
Important to note is that the Jerusalem resolution urges the Director
General to appoint prominent expert(s) to be stationed in East
Jerusalem. The Mughrabi decision also contained a clause on the
binding nature of the ICJ decision on the Wall and reinforces UNESCO’s
obligation not to authorize or evaluate any Israeli designs or works in
the Old City. Concerning Gaza, there is a clear call for the end of the
blockade, and with respect to Hebron and Bethlehem, UNESCO urges
Israel to respect international law and remove the Palestinian sites
from Israel’s national heritage list.
Below is a summary of the voting results.
1-The decision on the Mughrabi ascent was adopted by a result of 31
to 5 (and 17 abstentions):
- The no vote coming from the US, Germany, Italy,
Slovakia and Denmark.
- The rest of the EU block including Belgium, France,
Greece and Spain voted in abstention-with the latter two (together with
central European states) abstaining on all texts.
2-The decision on Jerusalem was adopted by a vote of 34 to 1 (and 19
abstentions):
- Only the US opposed.
3-The decision on Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi and Masjid Bilal/Rachel's tomb
was adopted by a vote of 44 to 1 (with 12 abstentions):
- Only the US opposed. Most of the EU group supported
including Germany with the exception of Italy, Spain and surprisingly,
Greece.
4-The decision relating to Cultural and Educational Institutions in the
Occupied Arab territories was adopted by a vote of 41 to 1 (with 15
abstentions):
- Only the US opposed.
5-The decision relating to rebuilding Gaza was adopted by a vote of 40
to 1 (with 16 abstentions):
- Only the US opposed.

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Arrest fears prompt Israel to relocate strategic forum

with U.K.
U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague says Britain will soon
change a law that has threatened Israeli officials with
arrest for war crimes if they visit Britain.
Haaretz, 4 November 2010
Israel said an annual strategic forum of Israeli and British officials set
to be held in London has been relocated to Israel due to continued
fears that Israeli leaders could be arrested on war crimes charges.
The announcement came as British Foreign Secretary William Hague
wrapped up a visit to the region.
An Israeli official said the annual Israeli-British Strategic Dialogue is
being relocated to Israel this year. He spoke on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Pro-Palestinian activists in Britain have sought the arrest of senior
Israeli civilian and military figures under universal jurisdiction. The
threats have forced some Israeli officials to cancel travel to Britain.
The most recent was Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, who canceled
a trip to London, this week, for fear he would be arrested for war
crimes.
The row over the law, and Israel's fury that it has not been changed,
has overshadowed Hague's visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories
- his first since taking office in May.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was pleased by Britain's
explicit commitment to change the law.
"Israel welcomes the British government's explicit commitment to
amend the universal jurisdiction law," a statement released after
Hague met Netanyahu in Tel Aviv said.
Hague, meeting Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on
Wednesday, said the British government "will soon be putting a
proposal to change the law."
Israel had said it was postponing its strategic dialogue with Britain until
the law was amended.
"It is a real problem when Israeli officials cannot travel to Britain, and
so long as the problem exists, it will harm relations between the two
countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said on
Wednesday.
The statement from Netanyahu's office Thursday said he and Hague
had a "productive" meeting.
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Public Statement of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine following

the conclusion of the London Session on corporate complicity
in Israeli violations of international law
22 November 2010
The RTP London Session took place at the Law Society, 113 Chancery
Lane, London WC2A 1PL on 20-21 November 2010.
Over the past two days, the Tribunal heard compelling evidence of
corporate complicity in Israeli violations of international law, relating
to: the supply of arms; the construction and maintenance of the illegal
separation Wall; and in establishing, maintaining and providing
services, especially financial, to illegal settlements, all of which have
occurred in the context of an illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.
It is clear from the evidence of witnesses that this conduct is not only
morally reprehensible, but also exposes those corporations to legal
liability for very serious violations of international human rights and
humanitarian law. What distinguishes the present situation from others
in which international action has been called for, is that in this case
both Israel and the corporations that are complicit in Israel’s unlawful
actions are in clear violation of international human rights and
humanitarian law.
The first session of the Tribunal, held in Barcelona in March 2010,
found the EU and EU member states complicit in Israeli violations of
international law, including: the illegal construction of the Wall in
Palestinian territory; systematic building of illegal exclusively Jewish
settlements on occupied Palestinian territory; the illegal blockade on
Gaza; and numerous illegal military operations against Palestinian
civilians, particularly during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza (Dec 2008-Jan
2009), which constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.
Further, the RTP notes that the international community is clearly in
agreement that Israel is in flagrant disregard of its international
obligations; and further notes with deep regret that this wholly
unsatisfactory and unacceptable state of affairs has been Allalowed to
continue. Nonetheless, Israel’s continued impunity and disregard of its
state obligations as a member of the United Nations and bound by the
UN Charter, has set it apart from the rest of the international
community. Accordingly, the RTP draws to the attention of all
corporations complicit in Israel’s grave violations that their continued
business activities place them on the wrong side of international
opinion, morality and law. This clearly places both Israel and the
corporations in a position in which they are undermining the very
integrity and credibility of international law and the institutions that
underpin it.
The main questions the jury considered in London were:
1. Which Israeli violations of international law are corporations
complicit in?
2. What are the legal consequences of the activities of corporations
that aid and abet Israeli violations?
3. What are the remedies available and what are the obligations of
states in relation to corporate complicity?
Accordingly, in answering these questions, the Tribunal’s full findings
from the London Session, which will be available at the beginning of
December 2010, will both summarise the key evidence that it heard
about corporate complicity and identify specific legal and non-legal
consequences and remedies.
The Tribunal has noted the failure of states to take appropriate action
to put an end to Israel’s violations and illegal conduct, despite the
requirements of international law, or to hold to account corporate
complicity in Israeli actions, which has prompted civil society to step in
and take action to bring about policy changes that respect human
rights and international humanitarian law. This includes a very wide
range of actions in support of the Palestinian call for boycott,
divestment and sanctions (BDS).
Corporations play a very decisive role in enabling Israel to commit war
crimes and crimes against humanity. These corporate activities can,
and have been, the subject of citizen’s movements that the RTP
received evidence about, including boycotts; shareholders holding
corporations to account; divestments by pension funds of investments
tainted by illegality; and actions that continue to put corporations in
the spotlight with the purpose of bringing about change in corporate
culture. In the Israeli context, civil society is taking effective action to
enforce the law. Therefore, the RTP calls on states to protect the rights
of all those who initiate or take such lawful BDS actions.
Twelve corporations and the EU were invited to participate in the
London session but all declined. Letters were received from three
corporations and the EU, which were entered into evidence. They will
be annexed to the Tribunal’s final conclusions of the London session.
The RTP’s conclusions include its findings as to the potential legal
liability of several corporations, including the following:
a) G4S, a multinational British/Danish corporation, supplies scanning
equipment and full body scanners to several military checkpoints in the
West Bank, all of which have been built as part of the Separation Wall,
whose route was declared illegal by the ICJ in its Advisory Opinion of 9
July 2004.
b) Elbit Systems, a leading Israeli multinational, has an intimate and
collaborative relationship with the Israeli military in developing
weapons technology first used by the Israeli Army in its active combat
operations, before marketing and selling the technology to countries
worldwide. For example, Elbit supplied the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(otherwise known as Drones) that were extensively and illegally used
in the Gaza conflict. Despite this, the British Army has recently
awarded Elbit a joint contract worth over US$1 billion for the
development of the next generation of UAVs (known as the
Watchkeeper programme). The British corporation UAV Engines
Limited, a wholly owned Elbit subsidiary, will produce the plane’s
engines. A serious concern regarding the use of drones relates to their
indiscriminate nature. This is illustrated by the fact that during the
Gaza conflict, for every alleged combatant targeted by drones, there
were 10 civilian deaths. The Norwegian Pension Fund divested from
Elbit Systems as a result of this complicity in human rights violations.
c) Caterpillar, based in the US, supply specifically modified military D9
bulldozers to Israel, which are used in: (i) the demolition of Palestinian
homes; (ii) the construction of settlements and the Wall; and (iii) in
urban warfare in the Gaza conflict; in all cases causing civilian deaths
and injuries, and extensive property damage not justified by military
necessity.
d) Cement Roadstone Holdings, an Irish multinational corporation,
purchased 25% of the Israeli corporation Mashav Initiative and
Development Ltd, which in turn wholly owns Nesher Israel Cement
Enterprises Ltd, which is Israel’s sole cement producer, supplying 75-
90% of all cement in Israel and occupied Palestine. This cement is
used, amongst other things, for the construction of the illegal
Separation Wall.
e) Dexia, a Franco-Belgian corporation, finances Israeli settlements in
the West Bank via its subsidiary Dexia Israel Public Finance Ltd.
f) Veolia Transport, a French corporation, is involved in the
construction of the East Jerusalem light railway, which Veolia is due to
operate. Veolia also operates bus services to illegal Israeli settlements.
g) Carmel Agrexco, an Israeli corporation, is an exporter of agricultural
produce, including oranges, olives, and avocadoes from the illegal
settlements in the West Bank.
The Tribunal heard evidence that G4S, Elbit Systems and Caterpillar all
acknowledge and actively boast in their promotional material about the
use of their equipment during the Gaza conflict, which unlawfully
inflicted loss of life and extensive and serious damage on Palestinian
civilians and their property.
Civil claims against the above corporations, brought by victims of their
complicity, are possible in the countries where those corporations are
domiciled or have a significant presence; and corporations and
corporate actors can be subject to criminal prosecution for breach of
domestic law (for example, money laundering and/or concealment)
and/or for the commission of international crimes, including the pillage
of natural resources. In many countries domestic law incorporates
international law, including international humanitarian and human
rights law. This is without prejudice to universal jurisdiction or the
jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The full conclusions of
the Tribunal’s London Session will provide detailed examples of such
potential litigation, and also highlight and encourage civil society/BDS
actions that can achieve corporate accountability.
The Tribunal was impressed by the range and depth of the evidence
given during the sessions.
The Tribunal is extremely grateful for the time, generosity and courage
of the witnesses, particularly those that took part at considerable
personal risk.
The Russell Tribunal will hold two more sessions in the next two years.
The third session in South Africa will consider the applicability of the
crime of apartheid to Israel. After the fourth session, it will publish its
full conclusions.
The jury of the RTP was composed of the following members:
� Stéphane Hessel, Ambassador of France, Honorary President of the
RTP, France
� Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate 1976, Northern
Ireland
� John Dugard, Professor of International law, former UN Special
Rapporteur on Human
Rights in the Palestinian Territories, South Africa
� Lord Anthony Gifford QC, UK barrister and Jamaican attorney-at-law
� Ronald Kasrils, writer and activist, former Government Minister,
South Africa
� Michael Mansfield, barrister, President of the Haldane Society of
Socialist Lawyers, United Kingdom
� José Antonio Martin Pallin, emeritus judge, Chamber II, Supreme
Court, Spain
� Cynthia McKinney, former member of the US Congress and 2008
presidential candidate, Green Party, USA
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tindersticks Cancel Tel Aviv Shows

23 November 2010

“It is with sadness that tindersticks announce the cancellation of their

forthcoming concerts in Tel Aviv.
When agreeing to play our music in Israel we, perhaps naively,
believed that the music we make is beyond political considerations.
Over the past weeks, the pressure exerted on us by people and
organisations, some close to us, has shown us that this is not the case.
It is difficult to defy a rapidly growing movement with whose aims we
agree, even if we are not wholly convinced by their methods.
The songs we looked forward to playing and singing have already been
tainted and their enjoyment stifled, if not completely drowned out by
the political furore.
We sincerely look forward to a time when we, and others, can make
our music for the people in the Middle East for the pure joy of the
music itself.”

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Opinion of the Legal Advisor to the Jerusalem

Municipality Reveals Gross Intervention of the Elad
Settlers Organization in a Silwan Planning Scheme
Jerusalem Municipality
Department of the Legal Advisor to the Municipality
1 Tamuz, 5769 / June 23, 2009 Ref.: 2009-
0236-2703
To:
Mr. Pepe Allalo, Deputy Mayor
Urgent
Architect Shlomo Eshkol, City Engineer
By Hand
Mr. Ofer Manor, City Architect

From:
Adv. Yossi Havilio, Legal Advisor to the Municipality

Re: Plan 11555 – lower slopes of the Old City

City of David – Elad Association – payment to Safdie firm
Ref.: letter of Deputy Mayor Pepe Allalo, dated May 17, 2009

Deputy Mayor Mr. Pepe Allalo approached me in the letter referred to

above and requested my opinion regarding this issue.
The deputy mayor claims that, according to information that reached
him, despite the Safdie architects firm having been hired by the
municipality for the drawing of Plan 11555, the firm also received
payment for the same plan from the Elad association, who is a
proprietor of lands and buildings within the boundaries of plan, which is
inappropriate and raises suspicions of a conflict of interests. In the
course of the preparation of my opinion I was approached by Adv.
Elisheva Shaked, attorney for the Safdie firm, who also submitted to
me a written response with relevant material enclosed. Written
response and relevant material were also submitted to me by city
engineer Mr. Shlomo Eshkol and city architect Mr. Ofer Manor. My
opinion is hereby given:
Factual Background:
Hereinafter the principal relevant facts will be listed, as apparent from
the data and documents submitted to me by the city engineer and
Adv. Elisheva Shaked:
1. On December 10, 2002 the Committee for Works Planning
discussed: an application made by the Department of City Planning to
authorize the hiring of the firm 'Moshe Safdie Architects ltd.'
(hereinafter: 'Safdie firm' or 'Safdie') for the preparation of a planning
scheme for the southern Old City (City of David) (hereinafter: 'the
plan'). The proposal was brought before the committee as a single
proposal. The Committee for Works Planning did not reach a decision,
and thus it was transferred to the finance committee, no decision was
made in the finance committee either, and the item was only
authorized in a meeting of the city council.
2. On May 26, 2003 a contract was signed between the Jerusalem
Municipality and Safdie. The subject matter of the contract was the
preparation of a planning scheme for the southern Old City - City of
David (hereinafter: 'the contract' or 'the agreement'.).
3. In the agreement and its annexes the tasks to be carried out by the
planner were specified (Annex C1 and in it the description of the
project is enclosed herein). The payment for the planning was set at
NIS 775,000, and NIS 914,500 after the addition of VAT.
4. On April 13, 2007 a contract was signed increasing the scope of the
project by NIS 79570 + VAT, linked to the November 2002 index. This
was authorized by the Committee for Works Planning, the Finance
Committee and the City Council.
5. The project was financed by the Municipality, the Ministry of Housing
and the Israel Land Administration.
6. Article 17 of the contract reads: Prohibition of Private Works: The
planner is forbidden from accepting directly or indirectly, from a public
or private entrepreneur, the carrying out of any planning work,
including conceptual planning, preliminary planning, final planning and
any other planning work required for the issuance of construction
permits and/or relates to the entire or part of the area being planned
pursuant to this contract, and will not submit applications for
construction permits within the boundaries of the area planned, unless
otherwise agreed by the municipality in advance and in writing. The
above said will be in force as of the commencement of planning
pursuant to article 6(a) above, and until the plan subject to this
contract will be completed.
7. In the process of arranging the plan, numerous meetings were held
in the Jerusalem municipality. The meetings in questions include
meetings of the steering committee chaired by the then city engineer
Mr. Uri Sheetrit, as well as work meetings for the promotion of the
project. The meetings were attended by municipality employee Ms.
Hagit Cohen, who coordinated the project in the planning department
and Architect Ofer Manor. Some meetings were also attended by
additional municipality employees such as the director of the planning
department, director of the traffic and infrastructures department, and
others. The meetings were also attended by persons representing
other public bodies such as the ministry of housing and the Israel Land
Administration. The meetings were also attended by Architect Meron
Cohen of the Safdie firm. The vast majority of the meetings were also
attended by representative of the Elad association: Mr. David (David'le)
Be'eri and/or Mr. Devir Cahana.
8. Late in the year 2005 and/or early in the year 2006 an agreement
was signed for the granting of planning services between the Safdie
firm and Hamaayan Tourism Enterprises ltd. (hereinafter also:
'Hamaayan' or 'Hamaayan company'). According to the agreement, it
is for Plan 11555 for the southern Old City basin. The agreement
also states that it is "for the Jerusalem municipality via
Hamaayan company". The agreement also states that: "the
Jerusalem municipality wishes the continuation of the above
mentioned planning to be carried out by the planner via the
client" (Hamaayan company – Y.H.). The agreement specifies various
planning tasks that the Safdie firm is to carry out in relation to the
plan. The planned fee for the agreed work is $89,200. The agreement
is signed on behalf of Hamaayan company by David Be'eri.
9. During the process of the preparation of this opinion and the passing
of the letter of deputy mayor Mr. Pepe Allalo for the examination of the
city engineer, I was contacted by Adv. Elisheva Shaked, attorney for
the Safdie firm. Adv. Elisheva Shaked wished to submit to me in written
form the sequence of events related to the matter. On June 8, 2009 I
received her written response, accompanied by many appendixes.
10. The principal contentions voiced and written to me by Adv. Shaked
(without regard to the question of whether or not they are accepted by
the municipality employees) are:
a. The Safdie firm was hired for the planning of Plan 11555 by the
Jerusalem municipality.
b. The Jerusalem municipality arranged numerous meetings of the
steering committee appointed by it for the promotion of the plan.
c. The participants of the steering committee were the then city
engineer Mr. Uri Sheetrit, Architect Ofer Manor, Ms. Hagit Cohen and at
times additional municipality employees: Ms. Osnat Post, Ms. Tamar
Koch and others. The meetings were also attended by representatives
of the Ministry of Housing and the Israel Land Administration.
d. The meetings of the steering committee were regularly attended by
Mr. David Be'eri and/or Mr. Devir Cahana on behalf of the Elad
Association. During the meetings, various tasks related to the plan
were assigned to the relevant municipality workers. Other tasks were
assigned to the representatives of the Elad Association.
e. According to Adv. Shaked, the preparation of the plan required
additional tasks that were not included in the agreement between the
municipality and Safdie. Therefore, Mr. Devir Cahana proposed that the
required funding will be provided by the Elad association. According to
Adv. Shaked, this was sanctioned by the then city engineer.
f. In light of the approval by the city engineer, the agreement was
signed between the Safdie firm and Hamaayan company.
g. The draft of the agreement between Hamaayan Company and the
Safdie firm was transmitted to the municipality, and the agreement
was only signed subsequent to its approval by the city engineer.
h. The Safdie firm was issued instructions by the city engineer and by
the district planner to coordinate Plan 11555 with all interested parties
in the locality. In light of this meetings were held with Architect Ayala
Ronel, representing several house owners in the locality, Architect
Benny Levy, Architect Arye Rachmimov, planning four projects for the
Elad association in the locality, and also with several Palestinian
families who are in possession of houses in the locality.
11. Adv. Elisheva Shaked did not transmit to me a written authorization
of the city engineer, or any other official in the Jerusalem municipality
sanctioning an association between the Safdie firm and the Elad
association or Hamaayan company, and it was claimed that the
authorization was given by the city engineer orally.
12. Adv. Elisheva Shaked transmitted to me a fax message allegedly
sent by Meron Cohen to Ofer Manor. In this message, Meron Cohen
sends the draft of the agreement between the Safdie firm and
Hamaayan company to the examination of Ofer Manor, and requests
his approval. An approval by Ofer Manor or any other approval of the
agreement between Safdie and Hamaayan company was not
presented.
13. The letter of Adv. Elisheva Shaked was referred for comments to
the city engineer, Mr. Shlomo Eshkol, Mr. Ofer Manor and Ms. Hagit
Cohen. Mr. Ofer Manor replied orally and in writing that he never
received the fax or draft of the agreement between Safdie and
Hamaayan, that he was not informed about it, let alone approved it.
The city engineer, as well as Ms. Hagit Cohen also replied that they
were not informed about the agreement between Safdie and
Hamaayan company, and definitely did not approve it. Mr. Ofer Manor
and Ms. Hagit Cohen confirmed that members of the Elad associations
were de facto members of the steering committee and participated in
its meetings and in the working meeting held in the municipality
regarding the plan.

My opinion:
14. It is my opinion that in the course of the chain of events relating to
the matter in question, inappropriate acts were carried out, as will be
related hereinafter.
15. When a planner is hired by the Jerusalem municipality for preparing
a plan, any work carried out in relation to the plan or that refers to the
area being planned for another party, may raise the suspicion of a
conflict of interests. In light of this, it was explicitly stated in article 17
of the contract that:
The planner is forbidden from accepting directly in principle [sic], from
a public or private entrepreneur any planning work that relates to the
entire or part of the area being planned pursuant to this contract,
unless otherwise agreed by the municipality in advance and in writing.
The contract states explicitly that the municipality's prior and written
consent is required, and from the documents presented to me and
relying on the information given to me by the relevant municipality
employees, no written consent was given, which is inappropriate.
16. According to the documents transmitted to me by Adv. Shaked, a
request was allegedly sent to Architect Ofer Manor to sanction the
draft of the agreement between the Safdie firm and Hamaayan
company. Ofer Manor pleads he never received such a request, let
alone sanctioned it. Nor did Adv. Shaked present a written approval by
Ofer Manor or any other person.
17. As mentioned above, it is revealed from the material presented to
me that the Safdie firm's contract with Hamaayan company for the
carrying out of planning works within the area of Plan 11555 (subject of
the agreement between Safdie and the municipality) was done without
written approval form the municipality, contrary to the Safdie firm's
contract with the municipality.
18. The Elad association is a proprietor of lands and buildings in the
area of the plan. In light of this the Elad association has a direct and
significant interest in the plan and its instructions. The contract
between the Elad association (via Hamaayan company) and Safdie "for
the Jerusalem municipality," for the carrying out of planning works in
the area of the plan, and the payment, certainly of a significant sum
fixed at $89,200, to a planner hired by the Jerusalem municipality,
creates a real suspicion of a conflict of interests. The gravity of the
matter is increased when the plan in question refers to an extremely
important and sensitive area in the southern slopes of the Old City.
19. There is no evidence to the effect that the contract the Safdie firm
and Hamaayan company was approved by the municipality or was
known to any of its officials, hence I have no criticism regarding
municipality authorities involved in this matter. It is certainly
inappropriate for the Jerusalem municipality to hire planning services
for a certain area via a central interested party in the land in question,
as appears in the contract of the Safdie firm and Hamaayan company.
20. As mentioned above, the Elad association has a central interested
party in the land subject to the plan and in the instructions given in it.
From the meeting summaries that were submitted to me it is revealed
that representatives of the Elad association were present in the vast
majority of the meetings that took place in the municipality, and also
had tasks assigned to them, as if they were municipality employees.
This is inappropriate. A clear distinction must be made between
municipality employees handling a plan, or other civil servants such as
employees of the ministry of housing or the Israel Land Administration,
and persons representing a private party, regardless of their identity,
and certainly those who have an interest in the land and the plan.
21. From the material transmitted to me by Adv. Shaked, and from
what the city engineer communicated to me, the city engineer, city
architect and members of the district committee approve of involving
the public and interested parties in the drawing of plans, and these
were also the directions given to the Safdie firm. This is reasonable and
positive. However, there is a substantial difference between holding a
meeting or meetings of the planner hired by the municipality with
interested parties or their representatives, and the receipt of a
significant payment from an interested party for the planning, or the
fact that certain interested parties regularly attend the meetings of the
municipality steering committee, or working meetings between the
planner and the municipality relating to the plan. Such things were not
done with the other interested parties in the plan. This can create a
real suspicion for inequality between the Elad association and the other
interested parties in the area of the plan.
22. In the light of the above, I request that the city engineer will
examine the plan and ensure that it is a worthy plan, which is
acceptable by the Jerusalem municipality, and properly balances the
public interest with those of all interested parties. In addition, I request
that the city engineer or a person appointed by him will examine the
actions carried out by the Safdie firm according to the agreement with
Hamaayan company and will inform me whether in their opinion the
works done by it were ones that were included in the original
agreement with the municipality, or whether these are additional
works not included in the original agreement. In light of this opinion,
we will consider whether it is appropriate to take steps vis-à-vis the
Safdie firm.
23. As for the future, I request that in agreements with planners (and
with other professionals, mutatis mutandis), it will be ensured that the
agreement states explicitly that the planner will not carry out works in
the area of plan for a private party and/or will not receive from it any
reimbursement or instructions, unless this was approved in writing by
the authorized officials in the Jerusalem municipality, accompanied
with a written legal opinion. The maintenance of this condition in the
agreement must be upheld.
24. With regard to the participation of external parties, which are not
public parties sensu stricto, in a planning procedure initiated by the
Jerusalem municipality, there is no reason to prevent this, and it is also
desirable to have "public participation", which will include consultation
with various parties, including those who have interests in the land or
the plan. However, it must be seen to that this will remain in the
boundaries of a consultation and will not become a direct and active
participation in the preparation of the plan.

Yossi Havilio, Adv.,

Legal Advisor to the Municipality

Mr. Nir Barkat, Mayor.

Mr. Kobi Cahalon, Deputy Mayor and
Chairperson of the Local Subcommittee for
Planning and Construction.
Ms. Michal Shalem, Head of Personal.
Mr. Yair Maayan, Municipality Executive Director.
Adv. Shlomit Robin, Municipality Comptroller.
Adv. Esther Atzmon, Vice Legal Advisor to the
Municipality.
Adv. Eli Malka, Deputy Legal Advisor to the
Municipality.
Adv. Golan Mordechai, Senior Head of Contracts
and Tenders Team.
Adv. Shirin Barghouti-Malham, Assistant to the
Legal Advisor to the Municipality.

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ACRI: Authorities Side with Settler Groups in East

Jerusalem
5 September 2010
In-depth report finds law-enforcement authorities are failing to
protect Palestinian residents' rights in high-tension
neighborhoods
"Unsafe Space: The Israeli Authorities' Failure to Protect Human Rights
amid Settlements in East Jerusalem", a new report by The Association
for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), draws attention to an alarming reality
that is taking hold in East Jerusalem: The authorities have sided with
well-organized political groups, whose purpose is to “Judaize”
Palestinian areas of Jerusalem and especially the Old City and its
environs. The result is that Palestinian residents of the city are
increasingly subject to hostility and violence, and their rights and
needs are disregarded and violated.
Among the report's findings:
• Security guards employed byfinds the Housing Ministry, serving as a
private police force for Jewish settlers and costing tax-payers 54 million
shekel in 2010 alone, are increasingly using force and violence against
Palestinians
• Palestinians who file complaints against Jewish settlers find
themselves treated as suspects and arrested
• Cases where the perpetrators of violence were Jews are closed for
lack of evidence or public interest, even when live ammunition was
fired and Palestinians suffered severe injuries
• Teenagers and children as young as 12 are taken in the middle of the
night to the Police Station and interrogated by officers who are not
qualified to investigate minors, in violation of Police procedures
• Palestinians suffer from surveillance cameras directed into their
private homes
• Restrictions on freedom of movement are selectively applied on
Palestinian residents in their own neighborhoods
• Despite the dire shortage in Palestinian neighborhoods of schools,
playgrounds, and medical centers, the Jerusalem Municipality and
Nature and Parks Authority have given over the control of the few
vacant lots remaining to political settler groups, thus barring
Palestinians from accessing and using them
Attorney Nisreen Alyan: "Human rights in Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah and
other neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are at an all-time low as a result
of the authorities' policy to side with settler groups. The level of
tension and violence is on the rise, but the police are not providing
Palestinians with the protection they need and deserve. Law
enforcement is selective and the interests of settlers are routinely
given priority. We call on the authorities to urgently act and bring
about a much-needed policy change, which would safeguard the lives
and rights of all Jerusalem residents".

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Jerusalem Syndrome
Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, 23 September 2010
You never know what kind of a day you’ve woken up to in this city. Will
it be a lazy and serene day, the first day of a vacation that I’ve waited
so long for, or a day where the entire city turns into a Kafkaesque
story. But perhaps it’s not the city – but the people who live here. So
here’s the story: it’s about murder; the police; detainees; missing
people; hate; lies and loads of stupidity and folly. In short a typical day
in East Jerusalem.
1. The Murder: At around 4 AM one of the settlers’ private security
guards opened fire in the direction of some residents in Silwan. At least
one man was killed by the shots. 32 year old Samer Sarhan, a father of
five. These are all the facts that are certain. According to the security
guard he was pelted with stones and his life was in danger. According
to Silwan residents Samer was on his way from his home to work and
the guard prevented him from continuing, during the ensuing
argument the guard took out his pistol and fired.
2. The backdrop: The Jewish settlers in Silwan have a set up a private
armed militia for themselves, and we all foot the bill. 65 million New
Israeli Shekels ($17.5 Million) are paid out every year by the Israeli
Ministry of Housing to guard a couple of hundred Jewish settlers in the
middle of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem. The guards
are regularly briefed by the settlers, and very often are hired by the
heads of the right-wing organizations. The guards are armed only with
live ammunition. This is how an armed militia that is operated by the
settlers came to be.
These militiamen have opened with live fire at least seven times in the
last three months. And those are just the occurrences that I am aware
of, apparently there have been many more. This time it ended in
disaster.
3. Silencing: From the moment that the murder took place the
Jerusalem Police started a comprehensive operation to silence the
matter. Large police forces surrounded the event site and prevented
people from getting near. When it became known that a man was shot
in Silwan, the police spokesperson stated that it was the result of a
dispute between clans. This announcement was made hours after
police forces were at the site and had already questioned the security
guard. The pinnacle of the event for me was that the police reporters
that I talked to continued to assert during the course of the morning
that this was a case of a dispute between rival clans, despite the fact
that the guard reconstructed the event before our eyes. They sucked
up their information directly from the police spokesperson.
4. Missing people: Up until now, 18 hours after the event, nobody
knows exactly how many people were injured by the shooting. Early
rumours contended that there was another casualty, and 18 year-old
youth who was in the area. Jerusalem hospitals, the Institute for
Forensic Medicine in Abu Kabir and the Israeli Magen David Adom
refused to provide any information whatsoever regarding those injured
or killed during the event, and what their condition was. Even the
information that Samer was killed was given to his family only many
hours later. According to reporters a blanket silence such as this,
where no one is willing to provide information, many hours after the
event, was exceptional to say the least. Although we’ve already seen
situations where hospitals and Magen David Adom have been
threatened by the Israeli security forces and prefer not to become
embroiled, however, in general, after a couple of hours the information
becomes public. Not in this case. (As opposed to the conspicuous
prominence of hordes of Israeli hospital directors who are interviewed
after every Palestinian terrorist attack).
5. Arrest warrants against Israeli left-wing activists: How do you
get rid of a left-wing activist who’s in the area? For this too the police
have a creative solution. A “Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah” activist was
arrested in Silwan this morning and was taken in for a police interview
about an event that had taken place on April 30th this year. Their
timing is a bit curious, the activist was apparently to close to the crime
scene at the time that the security guard was reconstructing the
murder.
6. Meanwhile in Sheikh Jarrah…: 60 “Solidarity” activists and
Palestinian residents decided despite the events to build a sukkah in
the neighbourhood, next to one of the residents’ house. The sukkah
which was planned as part of the joint celebration of Sukkot (The
Jewish Festival of Booths) was also meant to serve as a mourners’ tent
regarding the murder in Silwan. Three building inspectors from the
Jerusalem Municipality (who apparently remembered that they are
supposed to provide services to East Jerusalem) turned up
accompanied by dozens of police and demolished the sukkah time
after time. Somehow they overlooked two giant sukkahs that the
Jewish settlers had built in the neighbourhood, not to mention
hundreds in the public domain throughout the city. And so, the peace
sukkah in Sheikh Jarrah became the only one to be destroyed during
the holiday.
7. Kafkaesque arrests: Two women activists were arrested during
the course of the inspectors’ courageous assault on the sukkah. Here
too the police achieved a new record for creativity. The arresting police
officer decided to arrest one of the activists since the Jewish settlers
might assault her in the future. And so the activist was brought into the
police station in order to ensure her safety. The brave soldier Schweik
would certainly be jealous of such a plot twist.
8. From the media: “Dozens of left-wing activists attempted to
approach the Tomb of Simon the Righteous in the area where Jews
reside in Sheikh Jarrah, the police prevented them and detained one
activist for interrogation regarding the breach of public peace and
assault against a police officer”. This is the wording of the police
announcement regarding the events in Sheikh Jarrah, which the media
hurried to parrot. This was definitely a comprehensive report regarding
an event in which activists constructed a sukkah next to a Palestinian
home, and the police destroyed it time after time. It’s interesting to
note that the Police doesn’t believe its own announcements: the proof
being that neither of the activists arrested was accused of assault.
9. At the end of the day: It’s now evening in Jerusalem. The festival
of lies, distortions and fictions has run its course. Apparently, only to
resume again tomorrow. Tomorrow will bring a new dawn, in which
each of us will have to choose between being a captive of the
“Jerusalem Syndrome” or to see one’s self as part of the hard reality,
to which the city awakes every morning.
Good night.
Back to Top

Head of settlers’ association hit Silwan children with

his car
Wadi Hilweh Information Center, 8 October 2010

Silwan, Jerusalem (SILWANIC) -- Eyewitnesses confirmed that David

Beeri, head of Elad settlement association that runs the settlements in
Wadi Hilweh and the “City Of David” settlers’ visitor centre, hit two
Silwan Palestinian children, Imran Mansour, 11, and Eyad Gaith, 10.
Imran is suffering from a head injury and a broken shoulder bone. He is
currently being prepared for surgery to clean the smashed bones in his
shoulder. Eyad broke his leg and hand. Both are being treated at the Al
Maqassed hospital.

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Life in Silwan: Unbearable for Jews and Palestinians

alike
In the latest incident of violence in the East Jerusalem
neighborhood, a settler leader hit 2 Arab children with his
car after they allegedly threw stones at it.
By Nir Hasson and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz, 12 October 2010
Life in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan has become
unbearable, both for the Jewish settlers who would like to be able to
leave home without being stoned and the Palestinians who suffer the
heavy hand of the police and the settlers' security guards.
The area is home to some 60,000 Palestinians and 500 Jews. The
pattern of Jewish settlement is unlike anywhere else, with some 70
Jewish families in 15 different locations, islands among tens of
thousands of Palestinians. The resulting friction requires the presence
of dozens of security guards and surveillance cameras.
Since Palestinian resident Samer Sirhan was shot to death before
Sukkot, hardly a day has gone by without cars belonging to Jews being
stoned. Settlers also report that their cars have been torched and they
have been harassed on the street.
Recently, settlers wrote to Police Commissioner David Cohen
demanding that he dismiss Jerusalem police chief Maj. Gen. Aharon
Franco because of what they termed his failure to protect them. The
letter said more than 60 cars had been damaged by stones, iron bars
and other objects over the past three months.
The latest downturn in the situation followed an incident on Friday in
which Silwan settler leader David Be'eri hit two Arab children with his
car after they allegedly threw stones at it. The incident changed
Be'eri's ideas about shared life in the neighborhood, according to Udi
Ragones, a spokesman for Elad, the association Be'eri heads and that
develops Silwan for Jewish settlers.
"He has understood that if we want to live here, we have to live
alongside them, not instead of them and not against them," Ragones
said.
Silwan's Jewish settlers say leftist groups are to blame for the
deterioration, because they foment unrest in Silwan.
Mahmoud Kara'in, 25, a field worker for the Association of Civil Rights
in Israel, rejected this theory.
"If there are good relations, why does he [Ragones] go around with a
pistol?" Kara'in demanded. "What kind of good relations do we have
when four people were shot over the past year, one of whom died?
Twenty-four arrests a day, that's good relations?"
Kara'in was visibly upset yesterday after right-wing spokesmen
compared the Wadi Hilweh Information Center, the group most actively
opposing Elad in Silwan, to a terrorist organization. "We have four
people shot in one year, one killed, and we're the terrorists?" Kara'in
said.
Behind the information center is a kind of community center, with a
small library, a computer room and a music room with violins and a
piano. "This is a terrorist center?" he asked.
Adding fuel to the fire, the Knesset State Control Committee has
decided to hold a meeting on illegal Arab construction in East
Jerusalem in Beit Yonatan, a building illegally constructed by settlers in
Silwan. In an angry letter to Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, MK Talab
al-Sana (United Arab List-Ta'al ) demanded the meeting be canceled,
saying holding it in Beit Yonatan was "tantamount to contempt of the
legal system by the Knesset."
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MKs seek ban on East Jerusalem Arabs guiding in the

city
Proposal sponsored by Gideon Ezra and seven other MKs, says
tourists should get Israeli viewpoint.
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 19 October 2010
A bill sponsored by MK Gideon Ezra (Kadima ) and seven other Knesset
members proposes to ban residents of East Jerusalem from serving as
tour guides in the city, potentially putting hundreds out of work. Ezra,
who said he was temporarily freezing work on the bill so as not to
damage the negotiations with Palestinians, said in the introduction to
the bill he believed Palestinian residents of Jerusalem should not be
certified guides because they did not represent Israel's national
interest well enough "and in an appropriate manner."
Ezra's bill has so far won the endorsement of MKs Uri Ariel (National
Union ), Carmel Shama and Danny Danon (Likud ), Avraham Michaeli
(Shas ), Nachman Shai and Otniel Schneller (Kadima ), as well as Ilan
Ghilon (Meretz ). Ghilon later withdrew his signature, with his aides
citing a misunderstanding.
The bill proposes that a guide leading a group of over 11 people, or
traveling in more than one vehicle, must be a citizen of Israel. Most
Arab residents of East Jerusalem have residency status but not
citizenship, and so would be banned from guiding a majority of the
tourist groups.
"Israel has valuable tourism sites," the text of the proposed bill reads.
"Oftentimes there are disagreements on the manner of the
presentation of these sites historically, religiously, culturally and more.
The city of Jerusalem, with its many historic sites, is an example of a
site about which there are such disagreements. Some of the residents
of Israel, like those in East Jerusalem, often have 'dual loyalty,' since
they vote in elections of the Palestinian Authority.
"These residents often present anti-Israeli positions to groups of
tourists that they guide. To ensure foreign tourists are exposed to the
national Israeli viewpoint, we suggest ruling that travel agencies, and
any organization providing tours for foreign tourists, ensure that the
groups are accompanied by a tour guide who is an Israeli citizen and
has institutional loyalty to the State of Israel," the bill suggests.
Samir Bahbah, chairman of the association of East Jerusalem tour
guides, told Haaretz there are some 300 Palestinian guides holding
certification from Israel's Tourism Ministry. All of them could become
the target of the bill.
Ezra decided to suspend work on the bill for the meantime, out of
concern for the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. "The
problem is a problem," Ezra said, "It's clear to me there are tour guides
hostile to the State of Israel and to Jerusalem. They are also the
cheapest. But I don't want to hurt the talks and I will not be promoting
the bill in the near future."
The Jerusalem NGO Ir Amim, which works to promote Jewish-Arab
coexistence in the capital, slammed the bill yesterday, saying: "We
know all too well which states attach state-sponsored guides to foreign
tourists. This bill is just another one bringing us closer to this kind of
state. This is not only a dangerous political clampdown, but a
desperate economic blow to the tourism resource, possibly the only
resource still available to East Jerusalemites."
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New policies of arrest and deportation against Silwan

children
Wadi Hilweh Information Center, 30 October 2010
Silwan, Jerusalem (SILWANIC) -- The Israeli security services are
carrying out a new policy against the rights of children, who they claim
are throwing stones at the private security militia that guards the
settlers of Silwan.
Undercover units of the Israeli security forces have begun arresting
children – many of them under the age of 14 – off of the streets of
Silwan, assaulting and beating them, and then hauling them in for
interrogation. They are then made to post bails of up to 2000 or 3000
NIS, to be paid by the children’s families, before being placed on house
arrest outside of Silwan. Some children are deported as far as Hebron
or Shuafat, and are placed on house arrest without taking into account
the fact that they attend school.
One parent commented that the Israeli police “are punishing children
without taking into account their social or academic conditions. The
Jerusalem Municipality does not provide them school services and
deprives them of their basic rights as children. How can the police
expect those children not to see the settlers as criminals who act with
impunity and are beyond punishment? They published photographs of
settler children and their parents side by side with Israeli soldiers
throwing stones at journalists and Palestinians, but there was no
investigation and no accountability.”
The father of Ahmed, one of the young detainees, wondered “what can
they expect from the children of Silwan, when they see the soldiers
curse their mothers at the borders? How should the children feel when
they watch soldiers spit on their parents and behave so
contemptuously toward the Palestinian human being?”
The undercover forces have begun using a new method to detain
Silwan children, acting as though they were harvesting olives until the
children pass by, then suddenly leaping out and arresting them. This is
what happened to Ahmed Hassouni, the 13-year-old who was detained
this way and then deported to Hebron on house arrest.
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Report: New Israeli plan to discourage stone-throwing

Maan News Agency, 2 November 2010
TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma'an) -- Jerusalem police are imposing high fines and
house arrest on Palestinian children in occupied East Jerusalem to
prevent stone-throwing at Israeli vehicles, the Hebrew-language daily
Maariv reported Tuesday.
Police have conducted a trial of the policy for several weeks. A senior
Jerusalem District Police officer, quoted in the newspaper, said three
children were arrested in Silwan, but a Magistrates Court refused to
extend their detention "because of their young age."
The officer told Maariv that "The idea is simple," explaining that "every
child caught will be brought to court to extend their house arrest, and
at the same time, the parents will be told to deposit various sums of
money to the court."
Parents could be ordered to pay up to 5,000 shekels (nearly $1,400)
the report said.
Apparently as part of the trial, on 17 October an Israeli court placed
12-year-old Omran Muhammad Mansour under house arrest after he
was identified in news footage being run over by a local settler leader
David Be'eri in the flashpoint Silwan neighborhood. Mansour was one
of two children seen throwing stones at the car shortly before Be'eri
ran them down.
Mansour was released on 2,000 shekels bail (around $560), and his
family was ordered to sign a further 10,000 shekels bail.
Police would continue to do undercover work and deploy troops in the
area to catch children throwing stones, Maariv reported.
On Monday, Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa
Qaraqe outlined the case of two 13-year-old Palestinian children who
were allegedly tortured by Israeli forces after they were detained from
their central West Bank homes in July.
Sixth graders Muhammad Mukhaimar and Muhammad Radwan, from
Beit Ur At-Tahta, said border guards locked them naked in the
bathroom of Petah Tikva detention center and left them for two days
with the air conditioning on.
"The most awful thing that happened, was when the soldiers went to
the bathroom, they peed on us and did not use the toilet," Mukhaimar
said, adding that one of the soldiers videotaped the incident.
Mukhaimer also said he was kicked and beaten with rifle butts during
his arrest.
The accounts corroborated testimony collected by two Israeli rights
groups B'Tselem and HaMoked, detailing the "state sanctioned ill-
treatment of interrogees" at the detention center. In a report released
Tuesday, the organizations said the testimonies of 121 detainees
"indicate a clear pattern of activity by the authorities," which
"constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment."
The report said testimonies suggested that children were treated no
differently than adults by soldiers and detention center authorities,
despite their legal status as minors.
"Only in one matter did the authorities take care to comply with a
directive regarding minors: separating them from the adult detainees.
As the minors were not spared the manipulation of transferring them to
"informer wings," the special care given to separating them from
adults is somewhat absurd: in these wings, the informer was placed in
a cell adjacent to that of the minor, and solicited him to confess to the
allegations against him through a small opening between the cells,"
the report found.

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Full Haaretz expose / How the state helped right-wing

groups settle East Jerusalem
A Haaretz investigation shows the state used a controversial
law to transfer East Jerusalem assets to the rightist
organizations Elad and Ateret Cohanim without a tender,
and at very low prices.
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 7 November 2010
On October 8, David Be'eri started his car in the East Jerusalem
neighborhood of Silwan and drove off. What happened next has been
seen by millions of viewers and surfers: Two children threw rocks at his
car. An instant later, one was thrown up onto the front windshield,
while the other was pushed aside by the car's bumper. This incident
further escalated the violence that has made Silwan a theater for
clashes between Palestinians and settlers and police for the last year.
The Elad organization, which Be'eri founded, has settled some 500
Jews at 15 sites in Silwan to date. Ateret Cohanim, which was founded
by Mati David and specializes in gaining control of assets in the Old
City in general, and the Muslim Quarter in particular, has brought 60
Jewish families to this quarter, along with hundreds of yeshiva
students.
The state has transferred hundreds of assets to both groups without
the requisite tender process. Each year, the state also Allalocates
millions of shekels for security at these sites, including security
cameras and fences that separate the settlers from the neighborhoods'
Palestinian residents.
Information revealed here for the first time provides a glimpse of the
relationship between the state and these Jewish organizations. The
information was made available to leftist activist Dror Etkes by court
order following a three-year legal battle.
Elad, arguing that disclosure would lead to bloodshed, fought to
prevent publication of the information. The state supported this claim
by furnishing cautionary opinions by security experts. But in the end,
Etkes obtained a list of 11 assets relayed by the state to Elad and
Ateret Cohanim, mainly from 2003-2008, without full transparency and
at eyebrow-raising prices.
The state has licensed Elad to manage the historic City of David tourist
site; the organization also runs archaeological excavations in the area.
Since Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar decided that each school pupil
should visit Jerusalem three times, the City of David has been
saturated with schoolchildren. The Israel Defense Forces also sends
soldiers to the site for Jewish heritage tours.
The Ir Amim nonprofit, along with a number of public figures, recently
went to court to demand that Elad not be Allalowed to operate a
national site. But for now, the City of David remains associated with
Elad, and this association lends public legitimacy to Elad.
In October 2008, David Be'eri took then-Public Security Minister Avi
Dichter on a tour of the City of David and described Elad's activities.
Parts of a transcript of this tour, documented by one of the
participants, are revealed here for the first time:
"I left the army ... and I need to purchase a home here," Be'eri, a
former deputy commander of the IDF's Duvdevan undercover unit, told
the public security minister. "So I take a Hezbollah man. He comes to
us and buys the house for us. He buys it from an Arab and sells it to us.
We finish this business and then we have a party. I see that the wife of
the Hezbollah guy keeps looking at Yaki [a Duvdevan veteran who
assists Be'eri]. After an hour or two she says to him: 'Tell me, weren't
you the beggar who lived under our window?' Do you see what kind of
world this is? ... It's very complicated ... very difficult.
"The Palestinian Authority, of course, tries to torpedo [such sales], and
it has no restrictions: threats, forgery, murder - it can do anything. And
we need to abide by the law."
Secrecy is essential, to protect the lives of Palestinian sellers, realtors
and middlemen, Elad claims. The State Prosecutor's Office, in response
to Etkes' petition, also wrote an apocalyptic warning about the possible
results of disclosure.
But Judges Dan Cheshin and Noam Sohlberg recommended that the
sides agree to a compromise under which the assets the state
transferred to Elad and Ateret Cohanim would be disclosed with certain
restrictions: The information would be incomplete, encompassing only
the date when a contract was signed between the state and the Jewish
organizations, the amount paid for the asset, the asset's size, its
general location and whether there was a tender. The sides were
forced to assent to this compromise, and Etkes received a list of 11
secret transactions between the state and these two organizations.
Five of the state's deals were with Elad and six with Ateret Cohanim.
Via rentals, sales or leases, the Israel Lands Administration transferred
buildings and land to the two groups. The two earliest deals, dating
from the 1980s, involved truly paltry sums: For example, Ateret
Cohanim paid a monthly rent of NIS 466 for a four-room apartment in
the Old City.
All the Ateret Cohanim buildings are in the Old City, apparently in the
Muslim Quarter. They include one large, 340-square-meter building
sold to the organization in October 2006 for just NIS 912,000 and a
266-square-meter building sold in April 2008 for NIS 1.241 million. In
January 2006, Elad paid NIS 433,000 to lease a one-dunam area for 49
years.
11 assets reported, only 3 identified
A Haaretz investigation has conclusively identified three of the 11
assets on the list. The first is Beit Hama'ayan. Its owner, Musa al-Abasi,
is considered an absentee, so following efforts by Elad, the state
appropriated the house in 1988. Three years later, Elad rented it for a
monthly fee of NIS 23.73. An ILA document indicates that a 1,075-
square-meter plot containing a 134-square-meter building (Beit
Hama'ayan ) was leased to Elad in June 2006 for 49 years for NIS
382,000.
When Minister Dichter's group passed by Beit Hama'ayan during its
October 2008 tour, Be'eri related the house's history and described his
organization's methods: "We purchased two rooms, this room and the
one below it, and the entrance was from the other side. I decided at
the time that we would build a visitors center here. What can you do
here with two rooms? Nothing. So then I said, we will break down this
wall, and we tore it down.
"I went to the Antiquities Authority and said: We're renovating. There
was a terrace way up there, and so [I said] we'd renovate right up to
the terrace. We started to dig up to the terrace, which was up here,
and at nights I would move the terrace ... until we got to where the
door is, over there."
The second house identified by Haaretz was sold to the organization in
July 2006 for NIS 275,000. Be'eri also told Dichter about this building
during their tour. He discovered in archives that the house, known as
Guzlan House and also as the Glass House, was purchased early in the
20th century with Rothschild money by the Palestine Jewish
Colonization Association.
"They set Guzlan there to guard the land," Be'eri said, "and he guarded
it excellently. He simply listed all the land in his own name. So then I
went to the Jewish National Fund and I said: 'You're the owner.' They
told me, 'get out of here.' I told them: 'I'll volunteer for the JNF; don't
pay me any money, and I'll return the land to you.' And I really
volunteered. I went to a lawyer and I told him, 'look, I don't have
money to give you. What I have is room on my volunteer certificate
where I can add your name ... To make a long story short, he agreed to
volunteer, and in the name of the JNF, we sued the trespassers."
Settlers first tried to enter the house in 1991, but this attempt was
foiled by media pressure. The Shamir government, which was in power
at that time, was also worried about American objections. In 1998, Elad
made another bid, but this also failed. Finally, in 2006, a few months
before Elad received full control of the building, the Guzlan family was
removed from its house.
The Guzlans subsequently filed various appeals to the courts. Among
other things, they presented an effusive letter of gratitude from Jewish
residents of Silwan praising members of the Guzlan family for saving
Jewish lives during the 1929 riots. But one after another, the family's
appeals were rejected by the courts. Today, three Jewish families live
in the house.
The third identified asset is a one-dunam plot sold to Elad for NIS
262,800 in February 2005. The City of David visitors center is built on
this asset. In the past, the land belonged to the Qari'in and Sabrin
families, and some members of these families continue to reside in the
area, living among the thousands of tourists. Like most of the assets on
the list, this plot was appropriated by the state (in 1989 ) under the
Absentee Property Law. Elad finally purchased the plot after 20 years
of renting it from the state for a monthly fee of just NIS 41.
A committee headed by then-Justice Ministry Director General Haim
Klugman was appointed by the Rabin government in 1992 to review
relations between the state and nonprofit associations. It identified 68
assets relayed to such organizations by the state. The gap between the
list of 11 assets made available to Etkes and the Klugman Committee's
figure of 68 has two possible explanations.
First, other organizations, some of them foreign, are affiliated with Elad
and Ateret Cohanim, and a number of transactions are listed in the
name of these affiliates. In at least one case, in 2007, the ILA
transferred an asset to the Hama'ayan organization, which is owned by
Elad, but there is no mention of this property in the document whose
disclosure was just authorized by the court.
Ateret Cohanim has control of no fewer than seven organizations that
are not officially registered in Israel. Some of them are registered in
tax shelters like the Virgin Islands and Guernsey.
In 2007, accountant Yamin Georgi conducted a thorough review of
Ateret Hacohanim, relying largely on the official registry of nonprofit
organizations. In his report, he wrote, "These firms have no business
activity other than purchasing and holding rights to assets in
Jerusalem."
The report added, "Security officials believe the disclosure of these
firms could endanger them, as well as the welfare of Jewish and Arab
residents of Jerusalem's Old City, and of East Jerusalem. It is thus
impossible to furnish more details about them."
Lawyers who specialize in tax shelters say the Virgin Islands and
Guernsey have lax corporate disclosure laws that Allalow companies to
sell assets without revealing the identities of either seller or buyer.
When a person sells an asset to a company based in such a locale, he
can receive compensation in stock, and thereby bypass any
requirement to record the transaction in a deed.
The second explanation for the small number of assets on the newly
disclosed list is that the ILA may have violated the court order by
failing to relay all the documents it was instructed to deliver. For
instance, an ILA press statement issued in October 2007 revealed that
a 29-dunam property in the Sheikh Jarrah area was rented to Ateret
Cohanim. Yet this property is not on the list.
Tender exemptions for all
The words "exempted from tender" appear alongside each of the 11
assets. In 1992, the Knesset passed a law obligating all state agencies
to hold public tenders on which any citizen may bid, though the law
does Allalow exemptions from the tender requirement for certain
defined purposes, ranging from expanding agricultural areas to
promoting tourism.
But Yehiel Leket, who was JNF chairman from 1998-2006 and in that
capacity a member of the ILA board, said, "I don't recall that
transactions involving the sale or transfer of land in Jerusalem to the
Elad or Ateret Cohanim organizations in a tender-exempt process were
ever brought to the ILA board."
Another former senior ILA official added, "The ILA has general
regulations on exemptions and specific regulations on exemptions, but
there is also a blanket regulation that Allalows the conferral of an
exemption in special cases that are not covered by the other
regulations. This blanket regulation is applied to parties to whom there
is a strong desire to give land - in some cases rightly so, and in other
cases wrongly."
In its 1992 report, the Klugman Committee wondered why tenders
were not held before the houses were transferred. "It appears," the
report stated, "that the true reason was stated openly in the affidavit
from Mr. Elihu Babai [an ILA official]: 'The political leadership decided
that any asset transferred to the ILA in this particular area would be
rented to Ateret Cohanim. Two people from Ateret Cohanim who
worked for the ILA were engaged to identify such assets.'"
In its transactions with these organizations, the state made excessive
use of the Absentee Property Law. This law, originally enacted to
appropriate Palestinian property left behind by refugees in 1948, has
also been applied by the state to assets in East Jerusalem. In some
cases, the owners of these assets live on the West Bank, which is not
under the jurisdiction of Israeli law.
"These are not people who moved to an enemy country," argued
attorney Shlomo Lecker, who is currently working on a case involving
this controversial application of the law that is being heard by a panel
of seven Supreme Court justices. "Instead, these are cases in which
we've decided to annex property without annexing the people who left
it. Thus two attorneys general recommended that this law not be
applied to East Jerusalem."
In its discussion of the use of the Absentee Property Law, the Klugman
Committee deemed the role played by the Custodian of Absentee
Property "extremely flawed." The report concluded that the custodian
confiscated Palestinian houses on the basis of affidavits submitted by
the two organizations, without either verifying the reliability of the
people who made the affidavits or checking whether anyone was living
in these house. It thus deprived any existing residents of the right to
present their accounts of the properties' histories and ownership.
"I remember there were minutes of meetings held at the Housing and
Construction Ministry at which Be'eri and other Elad members took part
as though they belonged to the [Klugman] committee," recalled
Shimon Dolan, who at that time was Jerusalem's assistant district
attorney and a member of the Klugman Committee. "I asked, 'how
could this be?' I'm not surprised by this list supplied by the Israel Lands
Administration."
The Klugman report resulted in the two organizations' ties with the
state being weakened, so they began to concentrate on acquiring
property directly from Palestinians.
Then, in 2004, the Sharon government authorized the Custodian of
Absentee Property to transfer assets in East Jerusalem to the Jerusalem
Development Authority. About six months later, the attorney general
ruled that the government had no authority to make this decision. But
as the ILA list shows, assets that had been transferred to the authority
during this half-year window were later handed over to the control of
these two organizations.
Elad is one of Israel's wealthiest organizations. According to its 2008
financial statements, its assets totaled NIS 104 million, of which
donations accounted for NIS 94 million. But the organization asked for,
and received, a controversial order from the registrar of nonprofit
organizations conferring confidentiality on its list of doors.
The remaining NIS 10 million came mainly from the City of David
tourism site. In addition, it gets from NIS 500,000 to NIS 1 million a
year from the Education Ministry.
Due to a decision made by Ariel Sharon when he was housing and
construction minister in the early 1990s, security at Elad assets is
funded by the Housing and Construction Ministry. The ministry hires a
private security firm for this purpose. Since these assets sprawl over a
wide area, this security work is complicated and expensive: In 2010,
NIS 54 million was Allalocated to protect Jewish settlers in East
Jerusalem neighborhoods.
After 24 years of settlement, the number of Jews in this area does not
exceed 500 - a mere 1 percent of the area's total residents. However,
Elad members insist that they control most of the land in the City of
David area and constitute half the residents.
As he has on other occasions, Be'eri claimed during his tour with the
Dichter that the settlers had good relations with their Palestinian
neighbors. "I've lived here since the end of 1991," he said. "We went
through the intifada and all that here ... I always go around with a gun,
so there will be no misunderstandings. But we have succeeded with
them, with the neighbors ... I have real relations of trust. Still, when I
enter any house, I enter it as though it were a military operation."
The ILA commented that "as far as we know, Mr. Dror Etkes received
all the information he asked for in accordance with what is stated in
the [court's] ruling. If there are questions regarding the information
relayed to him, he has the right to appeal to the official responsible for
implementing the Freedom of Information Act at the administration."
Elad said, "The Elad organization works to strengthen Jewish bonds
with Jerusalem via, among other things, settlement. The organization
did and does operate in full accordance with the law. It did and does
work to purchase rights to assets in Jerusalem in exchange for sums
that well exceed regular market prices. In such activity, the
organization (like any third-sector organization ) has to work in
cooperation with various parties and agencies, and it does so in a
responsible, transparent and honest way.
"Courts that have been asked to review transactions by the
organization have recognized their legality and validity. Opinions
submitted to the courts by the State Prosecutor's Office have
stipulated that the lives of the parties involved would be at genuine
risk in the event of a disclosure of information connected to
transactions that involve the transfer of land rights from Arabs to Jews.
And two ruling handed down by the Jerusalem District Court stressed
the need to strike the right balance between the danger posed to these
parties and the public's right to information.
"The organization believes that violating this balance is dangerous. It
regrets the fact that various parties, which oppose its work for political
reasons, chose to overlook these facts, and are not afraid to endanger
others as they seek to obtain their ends and undermine Israeli
sovereignty in Jerusalem."
Ateret Cohanim did not respond to this article.
Regarding the allegation that the state collaborated with the two
organizations in an effort to conceal information regarding the transfer
of assets, the Justice Ministry said, "The Israel Lands Administration's
position, which we represented in two [court] proceedings, was
formulated on the basis of security officials' view that transferring
details connected to the assets could pose security risks. The plaintiffs
were thus given the contracts they requested with identifying details
omitted."
Regarding the confidentiality of Elad donors, the ministry said, "Elad
was required by the registry of nonprofit organizations to submit the
names of donors who donated more than NIS 20,000 in a year. In
response, the organization submitted the names of these donors and
lodged a request that it be exempted from citing these names in its
financial report, partly on the grounds that such disclosure would harm
the organization and its donors ... After looking into this matter, and in
light of the fact that the registry did not receive any information that
raised suspicions of irregularity in the donations, a decision was made
to approve the organization's confidentiality request."

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Obama: East Jerusalem building plans 'unhelpful' to
peace efforts
EU urges Israel to 'reverse' plan for 1,300 East Jerusalem
homes; Israel also announces plans to build 800 homes in
Ariel.
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 9 November 2010
U.S. President Barack Obama cautioned Tuesday that Israel's plan to
construct 1,300 new homes in East Jerusalem could obstruct the
pursuit of peace in the Middle East.
"This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace
negotiations," said Obama, adding that he was concerned Israel and
Palestinian were not making enough of an effort to advance peace
negotiations.
He also said he did not receive a briefing on the new construction,
which was announced as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was
visiting the United States.
The European Union earlier Tuesday urged Israel to reconsider its plan.
"This plan contradicts the efforts by the international community to
resume direct negotiations and the decision should be reversed," EU
foreign policy commissioner Catherine Ashton said in a statement.
"Settlements are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle
to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible."
The U.S. State Department said it was "disappointed" after it learned
Monday that 1,300 Jewish homes had been approved for construction
beyond the Green Line in East Jerusalem. Later in the day, it emerged
that Israel had also approved second plan to build 800 homes in the
West Bank settlement of Ariel.
The U.S. administration had been trying to persuade Netanyahu to
declare a second settlement freeze in the territories. "We were deeply
disappointed by the announcement of advance planning for new
housing units in sensitive areas of East Jerusalem," said U.S. State
Department Spokesman Philip J. Crowley. "It is counter-productive to
our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties."
The plan for a new neighborhood in the western part of Ariel has been
all but completed after years of litigation. Only the approval of the local
planning and building committee is needed for the work to begin. The
municipality supports the initiative.
The construction in Ariel has been the center of controversy between
Israel and the United States. While Israel sees Ariel as part of a large
settlement bloc, the United States sees it as a panhandle sticking into
the West Bank, intended to prevent Palestinian territorial contiguity.
Last month Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman met with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv
to discuss resuming construction in the city. "You don't know what
efforts I'm making to keep Ariel," Netanyahu reportedly told him. "The
whole world is against Ariel."
The area earmarked for Ariel's new neighborhood is next to the
Palestinian town Salfit. The compound is divided in two - state-owned
land and land privately owned by businessman Avraham Shamai.
Shamai sold the land a few years ago, but the buyers did not keep up
their end of the agreement and the land reverted back to Shamai after
prolonged litigation.
Since this is privately owned land, the developer may put up fences
and forge paths in preparation for construction with the approval of the
municipal planning committee; he does not need the Defense
Ministry's approval. Once the committee approves the plan, the
construction may begin.
Nachman told the city council last month that "they approved a
development contract. It's a very big thing."
He also spoke about building in other parts of Ariel. "We've resumed
construction in the industrial area in Ariel west," Nachman said. "Plants
that were frozen are being built now .... In the Moriah neighborhood
we've begun construction. There are 100 homes there by [construction
company] Netzarim and 195 others by another company; together
that's 295."
Referring to the construction approval, Ariel council member Yaakov
Emanuel told Haaretz that "the city is thriving. This means Ariel will
stay part of Israel."
Over the weekend, the chairman of the Jerusalem District Planning and
Building Committee, Ruth Yosef, published details of a program that
will Allalow 930 housing units to be built in the Har Homa C area, with
another 48 units in Har Homa B. An additional 320 units are planned
for Ramot, also beyond the Green Line.
The plan's publication is an important step in the process of its final
approval, due in a few months.
Jerusalem's municipal planning and construction committee issued
building permits yesterday for 32 housing units in the Pisgat Ze'ev
neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
Over the past year several diplomatic incidents have occurred when
Israel published building plans in East Jerusalem around the time of
meetings with senior U.S. officials. The worst row erupted in March
during Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel over plans for 1,600
new Jewish homes in another East Jerusalem neighborhood, Ramat
Shlomo.
Since then the prime minister has imposed rigorous restrictions on
Jerusalem's planning committees to prevent further crises.
Officials familiar with planning issues said they were astonished by the
timing of the publishing of these plans - on the eve of the prime
minister's trip to Washington. Construction of the neighborhood in Har
Homa at the end of the '90s, during Netanyahu's previous tenure as
prime minister, led to a crisis with the U.S. administration.
Orly Noy, spokeswoman for nonprofit group Ir Amim, said on the plans'
publication: "Israel is continuing to dictate, inch by inch, a dramatic
reality in Jerusalem that will significantly hamper any peace solution in
the future. This is especially blatant when the prime minister appears
to be advancing a possible solution in his visit to the United States."
The Interior Ministry said the program's details had been published in
accordance with the law and were approved long before they were
published.

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Gang suspected of attacks on Arabs in Jerusalem

Young men have reportedly been roaming in and around
Independence Park seeking Arabs to attack, trying to
identify them by their accent.
By Nir Hasson and Shlomo Papirblat in Chile, Haaretz, 11 November
2010

Two Arabs have been attacked on central Jerusalem's Hillel Street

recently, near the place where a Chilean tourist was assaulted last
week, mistaken for an Arab.
The tourist, Jose Toledo, was moderately injured Thursday after he was
attacked by a group of young men as he was walking through the
capital's Independence Park.
Young men have reportedly been roaming in and around Independence
Park seeking Arabs to attack, trying to identify them by their accent.
Haaretz has learned of two attacks over the past two weeks, and the
stabbing of an Arab in July.
Annan Yagmor, 21, of Silwan, said that on Saturday night he was
approached by a group of men in Independence Park as he was
walking home. They asked him for a cigarette, accompanied him a
short way, jumped him and beat him. He said they wanted to see his ID
card and shouted "Arab, Arab." They also sprayed him with tear gas.
Adem Sabih said he was similarly attacked on October 31 in the same
area, by 20 or 30 skullcap-wearing young men. They asked him his
name and then jumped him; one shouted "kill that Arab." He said he
was smashed in the head with a rock several times before he could
flee.
Jerusalem City Councilman Meir Margalit said it appeared that "a gang
of thugs," some with large knitted skullcaps and others with black
skullcaps, were terrorizing East Jerusalem Arabs. He said he could not
"shake the feeling that if the situation were reversed, if Jews were
being attacked by Arabs, the authorities' response would be different."
The Chilean media has been in an uproar over the attack on Toledo by
what he said was a gang of youths who thought he was an Arab.
Members of Chile's parliament have also protested, and Israel's
ambassador to Santiago, David Dadon, was summoned Tuesday to the
Chilean Foreign Ministry for clarifications.
The incident was widely reported in South American media outlets.
According to the Chilean press, Toledo, 43, was attacked as he was
walking through Independence Park by eight young men who injured
him in the head and eyes. According to the reports, he was
hospitalized over the weekend.
Chilean Foreign Minister Alfredo Moreno said in a statement he
expected Israel to explain the incident.
Two Chilean members of parliament raised the issue, claiming that it
was one of a series of cases in which Chileans of Arab descent had
been attacked on visits to Israel.
Unable to ignore the protests, the Chilean Foreign Ministry summoned
Dadon to meet with the director general of the consular section, Carlos
Klammer, who asked Dadon to obtain information urgently on the
events leading up to the attack.
The case also provoked anger in Chile's Jewish community, which
released a statement yesterday protesting the summoning of the
Israeli ambassador to the Foreign Ministry. The president of the Chilean
Jewish community, Gabriel Zaliasnik, criticized what he said was the
way a criminal incident had become political. He said that "even before
the details were known, certain members of parliament said this was a
racist incident."
The incident was also publicized outside Chile. According to Peruvian
radio, "A Chilean tourist was cruelly attacked in Jerusalem because he
was believed to be an Arab." Venezuelan newspaper El Universal
reported extensively on the incident and Dadon's summons to the
Foreign Ministry, as did newspapers in Argentina, Equador and other
countries.
The Chilean press quoted Dadon as saying that it was "absurd" to think
Toledo had been attacked because he looked like an Arab, because
"half the population in Israel looks Arab, because they are of Eastern
origin, and the other half look like Chileans."
Dadon was also quoted as saying the park had seen violent incidents in
the past when men had been attacked because they were suspected of
being gay.
"The incident has been blown up here out of all proportion also by
members of parliament of Palestinian extraction who took advantage
of it to accuse Israel of racism after it was reported that he might have
been attacked because of an Arab appearence," Dadon told Haaretz
yesterday. "Following our swift and tough response, the matter was
immediately removed from the media's agenda."

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Home demolitions to recommence in Silwan

Wadi Hilweh Information Center, 12 November 2010
Silwan, Jerusalem (SILWANIC) -- The Wadi Hilweh Information
Center can reveal that the Jerusalem Municipality has given the green
light to demolish several homes in East Jerusalem after the current Eid
holidays. Amongst the properties slated for demolition are the homes
of Khalil Abbasi and Mohammed Ashour el-Razem of Silwan and Ayman
Abu Ramila of Beit Hanina.
Speaking to Silwanic.net, lawyer Sami Irsheid stated that the
municipality has recently re-enacted its policy of demolition of
barnyards and animal pens in various areas of East Jerusalem,
including el-Thuri, Silwan and Issawiya village. The policy has since
expanded to include the demolition of shops, indicative of the policy’s
next phase: home demolition. Observers have commented that the
municipality’s prior demolition of animal shelters betrays a strategy of
“testing the waters” of the local and international community’s
reaction to such practices, thereby enabling the administration to
proceed only with the demolition of homes once it is assured of no
diplomatic backlash.

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Dishonesty and East Jerusalem

By Henry Siegman, 10 November 2010
In response to President Barack Obama’s criticism of Israel’s most
recently announced building plans in East Jerusalem, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman made the following statements on
behalf of the Prime Minister: “Jerusalem is not a settlement.”
“Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel.” “Israel never agreed to
limit its construction in any way in Jerusalem.” “Israel sees no
connection at all between the peace process and building plans in
Jerusalem.”
Most, if not all, of these views have since been repeated by Netanyahu
himself.
Each of these statements is untrue and/or irrelevant. President Obama
did not object to construction in Jerusalem, but in East Jerusalem. West
Jerusalem is the internationally recognized capital of Israel; East
Jerusalem, which was unilaterally annexed by Israel’s government in
1980, is not. Indeed, there is not a single foreign embassy even in
West Jerusalem, so complete has been the international rejection of
Israel’s unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem, an annexation that not
a single previous U.S. administration has recognized.
As the “office” of Prime Minister Netanyahu knows very well, it is not
“settlements” per se that are illegal. It is the transfer of an occupier’s
population into the occupied territories that violates the Fourth Geneva
Convention, to which Israel is a signatory. Such transfers are illegal
irrespective of where they take place—whether in settlements in the
West Bank countryside or in apartment buildings in East Jerusalem. It
was not only the International Court of Justice that confirmed the
illegality of Israeli construction beyond the pre-1967 border, but
Israel’s legal advisor to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Theodore Meron,
who informed his own government in 1967, shortly after the Six-Day
War, that “civilian settlement in the administered territories
contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” East
Jerusalem is indisputably beyond the 1967 border, and that is why the
transfer of Israel’s population there is illegal. While it is true that “Israel
never agreed to limit its construction in any way in Jerusalem,” it is
irrelevant. Israel signed the Road Map for Middle East peace, which
stipulates that the Government of Israel “immediately dismantles
settlement outposts erected since March 2001” and “Consistent with
the Mitchell Report...freezes all settlement activity (including natural
growth of settlements).” Neither the Road Map nor the Mitchell Report
makes a distinction between construction in East Jerusalem and in
settlements.
The most egregiously dishonest of Netanyahu’s statements is that
there is no connection between construction in Jerusalem and the
peace process. Former–Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert, a former
“Likud prince” and head of Kadima, said that an Israeli leader who
refuses to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians and maintains he is
serious about seeking a peace agreement is lying.
That said, it really should not come as a great surprise to President
Obama that Netanyahu seems to believe it is Israel’s prime minister,
not the White House occupant, who determines U.S.–Middle East peace
policy. In the wake of President Obama’s recent proposal to lavish a
stunning cornucopia of gifts on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—
giving away Palestinian rights that were not his to give—reportedly in
return for nothing more than Netanyahu’s agreement to talk to
President Mahmoud Abbas for another two months (which Netanyahu,
in turn, disdainfully rejected because he thought he could obtain even
more), it is not an unreasonable conclusion.
How else to understand what Vice President Joe Biden told Netanyahu
on November 8 in New Orleans before a gathering of Jewish Federation
officials that differences between Israel and the United States on the
subject of construction in Jerusalem and in the West Bank are nothing
more than “tactical in nature.” Is the continuation of Israel’s military
occupation and its denial of all rights to millions of Palestinians for
nearly half a century nothing more than a minor tactical issue for the
United States? Is that what President Obama told the Arab and Muslim
world in his speech in Cairo?
President Obama will have to take his own words about the Middle East
peace process and its deep moral and strategic implications for
America more seriously than he has so far if he expects Bibi Netanyahu
to do so as well.

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Netanyahu has no choice but to freeze East Jerusalem

building
The next time the Israeli government stands aside as settlers
oust Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, the
 Americans will no longer accept the traditional answer -
that this is a civil legal dispute.
By Akiva Eldar, 23 November 2010
"There is no way we will give Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu]
a license to build in East Jerusalem," the American official said with
unconcealed anger. "Our letter will not mention, or even hint at, the
explicit word 'Jerusalem.'"
The establishment of a Jewish compound near the Old City is upsetting
the Arabs (not only the Palestinians ), and therefore the Americans, far
more than the addition of a few apartments in a settlement on the
outskirts of Ramallah. But U.S. President Barack Obama has come to
realize that there is no chance Netanyahu will officially agree to a
moratorium on construction in East Jerusalem for even a single hour.
The only arrangement that could, on a good day, satisfy both sides is
real estate quiet in combustible areas. For example, the prime minister
could ask Interior Minister Eli Yishai to instruct his officials to handle
Jewish contractors' building plans at the same speed they handle
permits for Arab contractors.
Even if Netanyahu does promise to cool the building plans in Har Homa
and Ramat Shmuel ever so slightly, for the sake of building trust with
the Americans (and the Palestinians? ), East Jerusalem will not be
taken off the agenda. Experience shows this is the time when the
family of American Jewish millionaire Irving Moskowitz, which flies the
flag from the golden shores of Florida, and its Jerusalem branch, go
into a trance. A few days after the first moratorium ended, rightist and
Moskowitz associate Aryeh King announced plans to settle another 10
Jewish families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
The settlers are relying on a Supreme Court ruling handed down a few
weeks ago, enabling the evacuation of the Palestinians living in the
western part of the Jerusalem neighborhood. At the same time, the
settlers associations are planning to put up new buildings on land
purchased by Jews in the 19th century.
When news programs around the world broadcast footage of Israeli
police officers throwing elderly Palestinian women onto the streets of
Sheikh Jarrah (or Silwan ), Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres
won't be able to recycle the explanation offered during the Ramat
Shlomo crisis - when a housing project was announced during U.S. Vice
President Joe Biden's visit to Israel in March - i.e.: "This is a
neighborhood that in any agreement will remain under Israeli
sovereignty."
In the words of the attorneys general
The decision makers in Washington have read the opinions of two of
Israel's former attorneys general - who stated the government can, and
must, prevent provocations in Jerusalem. The first of them, Elyakim
Rubinstein (now a Supreme Court justice ), based his opinion in 1997
on the recommendation of Shin Bet security service chief Ami Ayalon
to evacuate settlers from Moskowitz's compound in Ras al-Amud, for
fear of riots in East Jerusalem. That opinion, along with a bit of
pressure from the Clinton administration, convinced Netanyahu during
his first term as prime minister to remove the tenants from their
homes. Netanyahu explained that the decision serves "the unity of
Jerusalem, the unity of the nation and the continuation of the peace
process."
Two years later, Deputy Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, who
would eventually replace Rubinstein, reinforced his predecessor's
opinion. Following an appeal filed by attorney Daniel Seidemann,
founder of the non-profit organization Ir Amim - For an Equitable and
Stable Jerusalem with an Agreed Political Future, Mazuz stressed that it
was incumbent upon the government level to retain diplomatic
freedom of actions in its hands at such a diplomatically sensitive time,
"And prevent a single individual, and one who is a foreign citizen at
that, from tying its hands and dictating measures with far-reaching
diplomatic repercussions."
Mazuz did not stop there and outlined a way to avoid the next terror
attack. He wrote that it is untenable that the government is authorized
to expropriate land for the purposes of preserving antiquities or
planting trees, but is not authorized to expropriate land for diplomatic
reasons.
The state makes generous use of the tool of expropriation when it
comes to seizing property privately owned by Arabs in East Jerusalem
for the benefit of the Jewish public, but sanctifies private property
when it comes to that which was in Jewish hands before 1948.
Sometimes the state does this with the help of the Absentee Property
Law and in other cases it does so by means of another law dating from
1970.
A third attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, who preceded Rubinstein
and who makes a point of participating in the demonstrations against
the eviction of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah, notes that former
Finance Minister Yigal Horowitz used the tool of expropriation to return
the Hassan Bek mosque to its owner, the waqf (Muslim religious trust )
of Jaffa.
Ben-Yair is helping the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement prepare a
detailed plan to resolve the legal/real estate issue in that and other
neighborhoods in East Jerusalem coveted by the right. This document
will show that, if the government wants to, it can prevent the injustice
and stupidity of evicting Palestinians from their homes and erecting
Jewish settlements in their stead.
A number of cabinet ministers, among them one top minister from the
Likud, have told me that if Netanyahu decides to give up the land in
Sheikh Jarrah, they will not object. They understand that the settlers
are reopening the 1948 file and thereby subverting the demand to
recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The Solidarity people, who have often taken a beating from the police
and have been sent to jail, are hoping the inhabitants of Sheikh Jarrah
will rebut the rumor (which has appeared on the pages of Al Quds, a
daily close to the Palestinian Authority ) that the peace activists want
to evacuate the settlers from the houses so they can take them over
themselves. The peace activists want to make it clear that there is no
question about their goal: for the houses to be returned to the
Palestinian tenants.
Explaining Israel
Google the phrase "Nazi Germany laws against renting property to
Jews" and one of the first hits you will find is a report from October 20
of this year about the Safed rabbis' efforts to prevent apartment
owners

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