organization:universitat in berlin

  • Growing Up Privileged in Apartheid, Colonial Israel - Shir Hever on Reality Asserts Itself (1/5) | TRNN 2014-07-09

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BqNlSpD7g

    La trace écrite via http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12088

    Shir Hever is an economic researcher in the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli organization active in Jerusalem and Beit-Sahour. Hever researches the economic aspect of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory, some of his research topics include the international aid to the Palestinians and to Israel, the effects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories on the Israeli economy, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel. His work also includes giving lectures and presentations on the economy of the occupation. He is a graduate student at the Freie Universitat in Berlin, and researches the privatization of security in Israel. His first book: Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation: Repression Beyond Exploitation, was published by Pluto Press.

    [...]

    HEVER: I was born in Jerusalem, and I was born into a lefty household, a critical household. And the most important thing that I think my parents taught me and raised me with is this idea that I have to be aware of my own privileges and to take responsibility for them, because Israeli society is extremely divided and extremely hierarchical, and I am lucky to have been born male, white, Jewish, Ashkenazi, so in all of these categories in which I had an advantage, and my parents told me this is an unfair advantage.

    [...]

    JAY: Now, just because it’s an interesting kind of historical note, there’s kind of two types of Zionist fascists. There are Zionists who are simply very aggressive against Palestinians and people called them fascists, and then there are Zionists who loved Mussolini.

    HEVER: Yeah, I’m talking about the second kind. I’m talking about real—people who really adopt this kind of Zionist—or this kind of fascist ideology that the state is above everything, and that we all have to conform to a certain idea, and that we should find our great leader. So that kind of Zionism is not mainstream, actually, and it’s not in power. In many demonstrations that I had the chance to go to, people tend to shout that fascism will not pass.But, of course, when you look at it from a more academic point of view, there’s a difference between fascism and other kinds of repressive regimes, and I would say Israel is a colonial regime, a colonialist regime, in which there’s apartheid, there’s very deep entrenched repression.

    But in a colonialist system there’s always fear. And you grow up with this fear also. You always know—.

    JAY: Did you?

    HEVER: Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I would go to certain areas or when I took a taxi with a Palestinian driver, then even my closest family would get nervous about it. And then it made me wonder: how come you taught me that everybody’s equal but you’re still afraid of Palestinians?

    [...]

    (M)y close family, my immediate family, they were very supportive of my opinions. And we had many political debates at home—sometimes arguments, but in the end I think for the outsider it doesn’t seem like we’re that much far apart. When you go a little bit further to the extended family, then that’s a whole different story. And most of the family on my mother’s side stopped speaking with me after I decided not to go to the army. And so, yeah, my mother’s parents, who were fighters in the Palmach, they had a completely different worldview and a very Zionist right-wing perspective in which they believe that all of these policies against Palestinians were completely justified.

    JAY: And your grandparents, were any of them—when did they come to Israel? Did you have direct family that were killed during World War II?

    HEVER: Yeah. So this is actually the exact—the interesting intersection of two stories, because my mother’s side of the family came to Palestine before the Holocaust, before the Second World War, and participated in the Nakba against Palestinians. And my father’s family—.

    JAY: So they came during the ’30s or ’20s?

    HEVER: Yeah, over some time, but yeah. And my father’s family came right after the war. They escaped from the Nazis in Poland. And the vast majority of the family in Poland was exterminated by the Nazis. So they escaped to the Soviet Union, where they lived pretty harsh years during the war. And then the family scattered again, and that part of the family that chose to go to Palestine, to Israel, happened to be my side of the family.

    [...]

    HEVER: That is a concept called Hebrew labor, and it was done very openly and without shame because there was at that point of time no concept that such structural and comprehensive racism against a particular group of people is something that Jews should also be worried about. I mean, it wasn’t something that was even in people’s minds so much, because Palestinians were part of the scenery, part of the background, and not treated as the native inhabitants of Palestine. But it has to be said also that during those fights it wasn’t—even though it was a colonial situation, in which Zionists were supported by foreign powers in coming and colonizing Palestine, it wasn’t clear if they were going to succeed or not, and it wasn’t clear until 1948 whether they would succeed or not. So from the personal stories of these people, they saw themselves as heroes or as overcoming a great adversity, and not as people who had all their options and decided that here’s a little piece of land that we want to add to our collection. From their point of view, this was their chance to have their own piece of land, and when looking at the colonial powers, the European colonial powers operating all of the world, they didn’t think that what they were doing was so strange or peculiar.

    [...]

    HEVER: And during the ’90s there was—the Oslo process began. There was a coalition between Yitzhak Rabin from the Labor Party and Meretz, which was the part that they supported. Meretz was the liberal party for human rights, but still a Zionist party. And this coalition started to negotiate with Yasser Arafat and to start the Oslo process. But at the same time, they would implement these policies that were just completely undemocratic and—for example, to take 400 people who were suspected of being members of the Hamas Party without a trial and just deport them. And at that point my parents had a kind of crisis of faith and they decided not to support his party anymore. And I would say this is the moment where Zionism was no longer accepted.

    [...]

    HEVER: I think the moment that I made that choice is actually much later, because it’s possible to have all these opinions but still play the game and go to any regular career path. But after I decided not to go into the army and after I decided to go to university, in the university I experienced something that changed my mind.

    JAY: But back up one moment. You decide not to go into the army. (...) That’s a big decision in Israel.

    HEVER: Well, I was again lucky to be in this very interesting time period where Netanyahu just became prime minister, and he was being very bombastic about his announcements, and a lot of people started doubting the good sense of going into the army. So it was a time where it was relatively easy to get out. At first I thought, I will go into the army, because I went to a very militaristic school. My school was very proud of all the intelligence officers that used to come out of it. So I thought, okay, I don’t want to be an occupier, I don’t want to be a combat soldier in the occupied territory, but if I’ll find some some kind of loophole that I can be a teacher or do some kind of noncombat work for the army, I’ll do that.

    [...]

    And I used to support the Oslo process, because I used to read the Israeli newspapers, and it seemed like Israel is being very generous and willing to negotiate, when in fact—. But my mother, I said that she was working for the government. She would bring me some documents about the Oslo process, and there I would be able to read about the water allocation and about land allocation and say, well, this is certainly not a fair kind of negotiation. But then, when the Second Intifada started, it was repressed with extreme violence by the Israeli military, by the Israeli police. And that was also a moment in which I felt that even living in Israel is becoming unbearable for me. But there’s always kind of the worry, is it going to get to the next step? I think this immediate tendency to compare it with the ’30s in Germany is because it’s a Jewish society.

    [...]

    –-----

    oAnth :

    Palmach

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmach

    The Palmach (Hebrew: פלמ"ח, acronym for Plugot Maḥatz (Hebrew: פלוגות מחץ), lit. “strike forces”) was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach was established on 15 May 1941. By the outbreak of the Israeli War for Independence in 1948 it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units. With the creation of Israel’s army, the three Palmach Brigades were disbanded. This and political reasons led to many of the senior Palmach officers resigning in 1950.

    Hebrew Labor

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_labor#Terminology

    "Hebrew labor" is often also referred to as “Jewish labor” although the former is the literal translation of “avoda ivrit”. According to Even-Zohar the immigrants of the Second Aliyah preferred to use the word “Hebrew” because they wanted to emphasize the difference between their “new Hebrew” identity and the “old Diaspora Jewish” identity. For them the word “Hebrew” had romantic connotations with the “purity” and “authenticity” of the existence of the “Hebrew nation in its land”, like it had been in the past.

    Related to the concept of “Hebrew labor” was the concept of “alien labor”. Ben-Gurion wrote about the settlers of the First Aliyah: “They introduced the idol of exile to the temple of national rebirth, and the creation of the new homeland was desecrated by avodah zara”. According to Shapira avodah zara means both “alien labor” and, in a religious sense, “idol worship”. Along with bloodshed and incest this is one of the three worst sins in Judaism. Application of this concept to the employment of Arab workers by Jews depicted this as a taboo.

    Meretz

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meretz#Ideology

    Meretz defines itself as a Zionist, left-wing, social-democratic party. The party is a member of the Socialist International and an observer member of the Party of European Socialists. It sees itself as the political representative of the Israeli Peace movement in the Knesset – as well as municipal councils and other local political bodies.
    In the international media it has been described as left-wing, social-democratic, dovish, secular, civil libertarian, and anti-occupation.

    –----------------------------------

    #Palestine #Palästina
    #Israel

    #histoire #Gechichte #history
    #20e_siècle #20th_c

    #Meretz #Palmach #Hebrew_Labor
    #Intifada
    #Apartheid

    • Fear and Loathing in Israel- Shir Hever on Reality Asserts Itself (2/5) | TRNN 2014-07-10
      http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12093

      HEVER: I think there’s something to be said about stereotypes, and there is a kind of stereotype about Jews that—there used to be a stereotype about Jews as being a very weak and frail kind of people who are supporting human rights because they don’t have the strength to defend themselves. And that’s obviously a racist stereotype, just as much as the stereotype that says that Jews are violent brutes that just want to kill Palestinians and are inherently hateful towards Palestinians. And this is something—I mean, I grew up, like anyone in Israel, learning the story of the Holocaust and repeating it year after year. But I learned it in the sense of the Holocaust is a universal story. So the Germans were not particularly evil. They were—these were circumstances that made a certain atrocity come into this world. And it’s unfortunately not unique. This kind of dark side exists in all human beings.

      And so the Zionist movement has attracted some of the worst Jews around the world, those people who wanted to use force to get more property and more land. It also attracted people of completely different ideals; it also attracted very progressive people; but those were, unfortunately, somewhat sidelined, because Israel became this kind of very authoritative country—state in which Palestinians have very little if any rights.

    • [ @Kassem, merci pour avoir continué les extraits! ]

      Israel, World Capital of Homeland Security Industries - Shir Hever on Reality Asserts Itself (3/4) | TRNN 2014-07-10

      "... so the attacks become demos ..."

      http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12101

      [...]

      HEVER: [A]ctually, Israel is now the world capital of homeland security industries. They’re selling security cameras, surveillance equipments, drones, riot gear. That is the sort of technology that governments need in order to control their citizens. And it comes not just with the actual technology; it comes also with an ideology. It comes with the ideology that, look what Israel is doing, how Israel is controlling Palestinians and every aspect of their lives, and decides who can pass and who gets a permit and so on, and uses this technology to leave Palestinians no option to resist, and why don’t we sell that to other governments around the world. For example, Brazil bought a lot of that technology in order to repress the favelas in preparation for the World Cup. We see that in India, not just in the area of Kashmir, but mainly there along the border with Pakistan, and in East Europe. And we also see that with extreme-right governments, like Berlusconi in Italy that was worried about asylum-seekers coming from Africa, and using Israeli drones and Israeli technology to try to block that, but also not just buying the technology, but also buying the legitimacy, saying Israel is a wonderful country. Berlusconi was a big pro-Israeli spokesman. And if Israel is allowed to do it, we can do it too.

      [...]

      Ehud Barak, he has done many political mistakes in the last couple of years, and it seemed that he is not going to be able to get into the government again. So he said, I’m now going to do what I actually like to do best: I am going to the private sector. And then it becomes apparent that he has many friends who own these security companies, and he can open doors for them, and he can get a lot of money from them. So, obviously, these security companies’ business model is built on the occupation. These are companies that their motto when they go to arms trade shows and show their equipment, they say, this has already been tested by the Israeli army on actual people. You can only have that because of the occupation. So every new weapon is first sold to the Israeli army, shot at Palestinians. Then you can sell it.

      JAY: Yeah, and they probably have nice little sales videos showing how this all works.

      HEVER: Of course. Yeah. After this invasion of Gaza that we were talking about, there was a trade show that the Israeli army did where they showed how each and every of these new inventions were used in the attack on Gaza, completely shamelessly.

      JAY: So the attacks become demos.

      HEVER: The attacks become demos, and these companies make a profit out of it, and then these companies are hiring senior Israeli officials. I don’t think that means that they want to end the peace process or sabotage the peace process; it means they want to continue it forever, because as long as it continues, they can continue these periodic attacks and they can continue the occupation.

      JAY: Yeah, ’cause the peace process is a process of never come to an agreement about peace.

      [...]

    • An Occupier’s Peace or a Just Peace - Shir Hever on Reality Asserts Itself (4/4) | TRNN 2014-07-13
      Mr. Hever says the occupiers always want peace - one that strengthens the status quo

      http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12105

      [...]

      HEVER: I think the vast majority of the Israeli public wants peace. But a famous German military thinker, Clausewitz, has once said the occupier always wants peace. Peace means the status quo. That’s why Palestinians don’t call for peace, they call for a just peace. And that’s also why the Israeli peace movement has collapsed, because the peace movement had this kind of idea that if Palestinians would be offered peace, they would just accept that the current situation will continue. And, of course, that’s a completely false premise. But there are, of course, people in Israel who do have an incentive to end the occupation and to end the injustice. A lot of Israelis are suffering because of the massive cost of security that is needed to repress the Palestinians. I would say the majority of Israelis are losing in their standard of living because of this continued repression of Palestinians, because of the continued conflict. So they have a real interest even in a just peace, but their voices are not heard and they cannot be heard within this kind of colonial system, which is dominated by those elites who are actually profiting

      [...]

      Jay: [I]f you were going to try to create a model that would be, one, sellable, not just just. I mean, you can imagine a just model, which is pretty straightforward. It’s a Democratic, single secular state and everybody gets to vote and it’s, you know, a modern country. But right now that’s not a sellable proposition. So some people, like, just as example, some people have talked a possible federated state, where you have a province or a state within a Federation which is primarily Jewish. Hebrew would be the language. You would have another one, another state, which is primarily—Arabic is the primary language, and so on, or some configuration. You must have thought about this. What might be possible?

      HEVER: It’s not only that I’ve thought about it, that this is also almost an obsession, but not just for me, but for political activists, for leftists for years. But I want to answer you in two parts. The first part, I have to say, again I have to be very sensitive to my own position of privilege. Being an Israeli Jew and saying well, this is the solution is not going to work, and it shouldn’t be, it shouldn’t work. Palestinians should not get their solution from some Israeli. They have to come up with their own platform for political change. And therefore I have to be very careful in how I answer that sort of question.Having said that, let me tell you what voices I hear from my Palestinian friends about what they’re saying. And among these voices, you can hear a lot of those ideas of a federation, a confederation, two separate states, three separate states, one democratic state, joining with Egypt. You can hear a lot of interesting ideas. But the voice that comes out the clearest in the last few years is the voice that says, we don’t care about that. All of these ideas are legal demarcations, are some kind of—where you put the border here or there. That’s not important. The important thing is to talk about rights, talk about how we have the right to move wherever we want, to say whatever we want, to have a government that represents us, to organize, to practice our religion, to trade freely. That’s what it means to be free. And then it doesn’t matter so much exactly how many borders you’re going to stretch across this territory. If we’re practical about it, historically Palestine is a country that was divided by the UN, but in fact there has never been a Palestinian state there. There’s always been one powerful force of Israel and some areas that were temporarily held by Egypt and Jordan, and then Israel occupied these parts as well. Now we have a situation in which there’s one state under Israeli domination with a population of 12 million, 49 percent Jews, 49 percent Palestinians, 2 percent others. And it’s an apartheid state.

      [...]