• Palestinian Authority tells U.S. it will stop taking aid to avoid multi-million dollar lawsuits - U.S. News - Haaretz.com

    https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-pa-informs-u-s-it-will-stop-receiving-aid-to-avoid-multi-million-d

    WASHINGTON – The Palestinian Authority informed the Trump administration that it will stop taking any form of government assistance from the United States at the end of the month, as a result of legislation passed last year by Congress.

    The law that led the PA to make this decision is the “Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act”, known as ATCA, which makes it possible for U.S. citizens to sue foreign entities that receive U.S. assistance for past acts of terrorism.

    The Palestinian decision could lead to the end of the U.S. support for the PA’s security forces. These forces work regularly with the Israeli military to thwart terror attacks. In his last appearance before the Israeli government last week, outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot said that the security coordination between Israel and the PA’s forces helps save lives and maintain stability in the region.

    >> Trump’s ’Arab NATO’ push against Iran comes to a head, and he’s the biggest obstacle | Analysis

    During 2018, the Trump administration cut all forms of U.S. civil assistance to the Palestinians, but it did not touch the security assistance, stating that the security coordination between the PA and Israel serves American foreign policy interests. Now, however, U.S. support for the PA security forces could end at the end of January, putting at risk the continuation of efficient security coordination.

    The ATCA bill, which the PA blamed for its decision, was promoted last year in Congress in response to rulings by U.S. courts that rejected multi-million dollar lawsuits against the PA. These lawsuits were filed by American citizens who were injured or lost loved ones in terror attacks committed by Palestinians, mostly during the Second Intifada. The Supreme Court in Washington affirmed a ruling by a lower court that the American legal system does not have jurisdiction to deal with such lawsuits.

    This led members of Congress to promote the ATCA bill, which states that U.S. courts will have jurisdiction to hear terrorism-related lawsuits against any foreign entity reviving U.S. government assistance. This means that if the PA will receive even one dollar of U.S. funding, it could face lawsuits asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. The law has also created concern in other countries in the Middle East that rely on U.S. assistance. It would not apply to Israel, however, because of the specific sources of funding through which Israel receives U.S. security assistance.
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    Only after the bill passed Congress and was signed into law by President Trump, senior administration officials became aware of its possible impact on security coordination. In recent months, the administration tried to negotiate a “fix” to the law together with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. As reported in Haaretz two weeks ago, these efforts have stalled because of the ongoing government shutdown.

    The PA’s letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which was first reported over the weekend by NPR, could create a sense of urgency in Washington to solve the security assistance question.

    Two sources who are involved in the negotiations on the subject told Haaretz that a possible solution could emerge with the involvement of the CIA or the Pentagon, but its exact mechanism hasn’t yet been drawn in full. “Everyone wants a fix, but it’s still not clear how we can get it,” explained one of the sources, who asked not to be named in order to discuss politicallly-sensitive negotiations.

  • CNRS - Institut des sciences humaines et sociales
    http://www.cnrs.fr/inshs/recherche/images-archeo-syrie.htm

    Au cours de l’été 2018, l’Institut français du #Proche-Orient (#Ifpo, USR3135, CNRS / MEAE) a mis en ligne sur MédiHAL (archive ouverte de photographies et d’images scientifiques) plus de 6000 images archéologiques de la #Syrie issues de ses fonds documentaires. Ce sont plus de 8500 images scientifiques qui sont aujourd’hui accessibles en libre accès dans la collection de l’Ifpo.

    #archéologie

  • La France n’en finit pas de découvrir les violences policières
    https://ehko.info/la-france-nen-finit-pas-de-decouvrir-les-violences-policieres

    [Juste qu’ici tout allait bien] pour une partie de la France volontairement « aveugle » aux violences policières. Elle les voit actuellement. La dernière fois, c’était lors des manifestations contre la « Loi travail ». Leur particularité : la police visait des individus qui ne sont habituellement pas sa cible et faisait démonstration de sa force au coeur de Paris. De nouveau, lors des manifestations de « Gilets jaunes » qui se déroulent non pas selon le parcours classique Nation ou Bastille-République mais dans des lieux où la contestation n’a en principe pas sa place, la répression policière a été pointée. Mais ces violences ne sont pas des bavures, ni l’expression d’une « benallisation des forces de l’ordre », il s’agit de l’illustration parfaite de ce qui est attendu de la police républicaine. Dans le (...)

    • Le site semble avoir des difficultés à charger sa page, voici le contenu :
      <p><strong>[Juste qu’ici tout allait bien]</strong> pour une partie de la France volontairement « aveugle » aux violences policières. Elle les voit actuellement. La dernière fois, c’était lors des manifestations contre la « Loi travail ». Leur particularité : la police visait des individus qui ne sont habituellement pas sa cible et faisait démonstration de sa force au coeur de Paris. De nouveau, lors des manifestations de « Gilets jaunes » qui se déroulent non pas selon le parcours classique Nation ou Bastille-République mais dans des lieux où la contestation n’a en principe pas sa place, la répression policière a été pointée. Mais ces violences ne sont pas des bavures, ni l’expression d’une « benallisation des forces de l’ordre », il s’agit de l’illustration parfaite de ce qui est attendu de la police républicaine. Dans le système politique actuellement en place, le rôle des bien nommées « force de l’ordre » est de garantir l’ordre établi et la protection des intérêts des entités et groupes au pouvoir. Parler de bavures, débordements, dérives, c’est méconnaître ce rôle dévolu à la police.</p>
      <p>Alors, les ministres de l’Intérieur protègent ceux qui appliquent leur politique, y compris de la manière la plus brutale. Avant Christophe Castaner, Nicolas Sarkozy l’avait fait. Juste après la mort de Zyed Benna et Bouna Traoré, 17 et 15 ans, en 2005 dans un transformateur électrique, alors qu’ils étaient poursuivis par des policiers. Ces décès, qui ont marqué une partie de la population, ont été le départ de semaines de révoltes dans les quartiers populaires. Le ras-le-bol y explosait. Mais Zyed et Bouna étaient et restent présentés comme forcément coupables, comme toutes les victimes de violences policières de ces quartiers. Que des études d’institutions sérieuses prouvent le risque accru de contrôles et violences policières sur les hommes, noirs et arabes, de quartiers populaires, ne fait pas réagir. Dans leur grande majorité et systématiquement, les médias reprennent sans aucun recul <a href="https://sanstransition.tumblr.com/post/154500110841/les-bavures-polici%C3%A8res-en-10-le%C3%A7ons.">les propos du ministre de l’Intérieur et les déclarations policières</a>.</p>
      <p>Les deux adolescents ne seront pas les dernières victimes de violences policières en France. Selon les collectifs mobilisés sur ces questions, la police ferait 10 à 15 morts par an « des Noirs et des Arabes de 7 à 77 ans » pour reprendre les conclusions d’une étude du média <a href="https://sanstransition.tumblr.com/post/131276973351/la-police-r%C3%A9publicaine-fran%C3%A7aise-tue-des-arabes">Bastamaga> qui porte sur plus de 50 ans. En 2015, ce sera au tour d’Adama Traoré de mourir dans un commissariat. C’est ni plus ni moins qu’une affaire d’État. Lors d’un match de football en juillet 2018, des participants s’étaient émus de la présence de blindés de l’armée sur place. Ces blindés ont été aussi déployés dans des « départements et territoires d’Outre-Mer » durant des révoltes sociales, contre « la vie chère » notamment. Justement, c’est bien dans les quartiers populaires et ces territoires qu’ont été expérimentées « les méthodes de maintien de l’ordre » et avant, dans les territoires colonisés par la France – l’Algérie en tête, comme l’explique le chercheur indépendant et docteur en sociologie Mathieu Rigouste, qui a aussi établi le lien entre la gestion sécuritaire des quartiers populaire et l’ordre colonial, dont nous reproduisons l’intégralité d’une interview ci-dessous.</p>
      <p>C’est quasi mécanique, quand un Etat porte atteinte aux droits d’un groupe &#8211; surtout minorisé et vulnérable &#8211; et que le reste de la population ne réagit pas, il finit tôt ou tard par appliquer cette politique sur l’ensemble de la population.</p>
      <p>Zyed et Bouna, comme les personnes perquisitionnées après la vague d’attentat de 2015 étaient vus comme coupables, dans un « Etat de droit », où la peine de mort a été abolie, comme le sont désormais les Gilets jaunes ou le fut Rémi Fraisse – à ceci près, et la différence est fondamentale, que les premiers sont ciblés pour ce qu’ils<em> sont</em> et les autres pour ce qu’ils <em>font</em>.</p>
      <p>Mais ces violences ne sont pas prêt de cesser : si l’image de la police et de la gendarmerie qui forment les forces de maintien de l’ordre d’autres pays se fissure, un objectif demeure, énoncé lors d’une conférence au 20e salon Milipol « de la sécurité intérieure des Etats » : la France veut « devenir leader européen » voire « mondial » dans plusieurs domaines de la sécurité. « L&#8217;objectif est de doubler le chiffre d’affaires de la filière ». Ainsi, le gouvernement ne s’y est pas trompé en octroyant une prime aux policiers, maillon indispensable à la garantie du pouvoir et la mise en place de sa politique mais qui pourrait faiblir et le lâcher, dans un contexte de tension constante et d’état d’urgence.</p>
      <p><span><strong>Warda Mohamed</strong></span></p>
      <p> </p>
      <p><strong>[La questions des violences policières]</strong>, avec le mouvement des Gilets jaunes, a semblé surgir soudain, comme sans précédent. Une anomalie, une brisure dans le ciel sécuritaire républicain et serein. Pourtant, des signes avant-coureurs étaient là pour alerter. Et ces violences ne sont que l’indice d’une militarisation de la gestion de l’ordre, social, économique, politique. Alarmisme ? Exagération ? L’état d’urgence, et sa durée anormalement longue de deux ans, illustre pourtant ce tropisme sécuritaire. D’abord s’est constatée, durant l’application de ce régime dérogatoire, une utilisation opportuniste contre des militants écologistes ou les mouvements sociaux. Puis certaines mesures de ce régime ont été, avec la loi dite <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/eli/loi/2017/10/30/INTX1716370L/jo/texte">SILTa> (loi renforçant la sécurité intérieure et la lutte contre le terrorisme) , introduites dans le droit commun. L’inscription dans le droit commun de certaines mesures de l’état d’urgence a, en dehors de toute situation de terrorisme ou de danger pour la nation, offert aux pouvoirs publics une formidable machine coercitive contre tout mouvement social ou contestataire. Loi travail et loi de lutte contre le terrorisme seront votées en quasi-concomitance. Tandis qu’on prétend vouloir simplement « désépaissir » le code du travail, on épaissit, dans le mouvement inverse, le code pénal. Vases législatifs communicants qui ne sont en rien anodins.</p>
      <p>L’état d’urgence a interrogé, de façon presque automatique, les rapports structurels qu’entretiennent la violence d’État, la militarisation de la police, la mondialisation de la question du terrorisme et la gestion intérieure des populations, notamment dans les quartiers populaires. L’état d’urgence a-t-il été un laboratoire qui aura permis à l’État de tester in vivo des mesures de police administratives restrictives de libertés, bien au-delà de ce que la menace terroriste nécessitait ? Autrement dit, peut-on considérer que l’état d’urgence, tel qu’il a été prorogé quasiment pendant deux ans, ait pu servir dans un premier temps de ballon d’essai ou mise en application in vivo, en ingénierie humaine, de mesures dérogatoires ? Parce que cet état d’exception a été présenté comme une réponse à une situation exceptionnelle, qu’il a semblé provisoire dans sa durée et son ampleur, ses mesures extrêmement dérogatoires n’ont pas inquiété, en dehors de certaines ONG ou juristes. Puis, ne nous leurrons pas, pour la quasi-totalité de la population française, l’état d’urgence a été invisible, à part la présence « rassurante » de soldats lourdement armés dans les rues. Le fait qu’il ait été circonscrit majoritairement à une population musulmane, populaire, vivant déjà en périphérie sociale, économique et géographique, du reste de la population, a joué dans cette acceptation passive et reconnaissante de cet état d’urgence.</p>
      <p>L’esprit de l’état d’urgence, fait de logique de suspicion et d’ordre sécuritaire a contaminé la gestion de l’ordre. Moins protéger et mieux punir…<br />
      La « militarisation » de la gestion des mouvements sociaux se devinait dès 2008, dans le Livre blanc de la Défense. Le concept classique de « Défense nationale » y semblait lié, de façon étonnante, à la notion de « sécurité nationale ». Si cette « militarisation » intérieure s’installe, la frontière pourtant nécessaire entre défense nationale et sécurité intérieure risque de n’être plus que théorique. Un fil ténu auquel sont suspendues les libertés et droits de l’homme et tout le fragile édifice de l’État de droit. La militarisation de la gestion des mouvements sociaux, c’est aussi un monde où les exo-guerres (guerres extérieures contre des populations étrangères) se coupleront avec des endo-guerres (guerres à l’intérieur contre sa propre population). La frontière ne sera plus garante de rien, ni limite, ni protection, ni sanctuarisation.</p>
      <p>Parmi les voix qui ont alerté et alertent encore, celle de Mathieu Rigouste, chercheur indépendant, docteur en sociologie et militant anti-sécuritaire. Auteur de nombreux ouvrages, dont <em>L’Ennemi intérieur</em>.<em> La généalogie coloniale et militaire de l’ordre sécuritaire dans la France contemporaine</em> (La Découverte, 2009) ou encore <em>La Domination policière : une violence industrielle</em> (La Fabrique, 2012), il a également analysé dans son dernier ouvrage, <em>État d’urgence et business de la sécurité</em> (Niet, 2016), comment l’état d’urgence s’intègre dans une logique de gestion des populations jugées dangereuses et de capitalisme sécuritaire. Avec son aimable autorisation, nous reproduisons l’interview publiée dans le livre <em>L’état d’urgence (permanent)</em> (<a href="http://www.meltingbook.com/book-letat-durgence-permanent/">Editions Meltingbook, avril 2018, Hassina Mechaï, Sihem Zine</a>). Cette interview explique parfaitement les mécanismes qui ont mené à la gestion sécuritaire des mouvements sociaux, dont la répression du mouvement des « Gilets jaunes » a été l’illustration.</p>
      <p><span><strong>Hassina Mechaï</strong></span></p>
      <p><strong>[Ehko]</strong> compte bien travailler sur ces questions éminemment préoccupantes.</p>
      <p><span><strong>L’état d’urgence a-t-il pu servir de laboratoire in vivo de stratégie contre-insurrectionnelle, cantonné à une partie seulement de la population, avant son élargissement visiblement prévu par son inscription dans le droit commun ?</strong></span></p>
      <p>Le capitalisme a dû se restructurer face aux crises qu’il provoque. D’abord soupape, la marchandisation de la « guerre intérieure » est devenue pour lui un moyen de survie. Et, parce qu’il bénéficie de l’expérience de la gestion des territoires colonisés où il a pu développer des formes de contrôle et d’exploitation, l’impérialisme français peut l’appliquer également dans des zones intérieures, « endocoloniales », comme les quartiers populaires.<br />
      L’état d’urgence a eu une double fonction de laboratoire et de vitrine. La fonction de laboratoire a permis d’expérimenter une forme d’état d’urgence sur une longue période. Du coup, d’éprouver aussi les modalités d’une guerre intérieure. Cela a permis de faire de l’état d’urgence une vitrine pour montrer un savoir-faire français dans la guerre intérieure et la contre-insurrection. Cela permet de générer des contrats dans les marchés de la sécurité, marchés qui ne concernent pas que du matériel mais également des formations, de doctrine, de conseil et d’audit en sécurisation.<br />
      Dans la dimension de laboratoire, s’est joué également une chose très importante, que j’appelle une forme de « militarisation rhéostatique ».</p>
      <p>Le nouveau modèle de militarisation du territoire devient capable d’être en permanence nivelé, en fonction des besoins de contrôle social des classes dominantes. Comme avec le rhéostat d’un radiateur : alterner, en fonction des nécessités, des dispositifs adaptés à la guerre classique, la guerre de basse intensité, le contrôle des foules, le maintien de l’ordre ou la police quotidienne… Il s’est joué cela à travers Sentinelle et la création des nouvelles réserves de l’armée. Une possibilité de militariser instantanément le territoire et de régler le taux de militarisation en fonction de la menace perçue, désignée, établi par l’état-major. On peut ainsi envisager une militarisation sectorielle, celle des quartiers populaires à l’état de siège total. Les mouvements sociaux pourront être concernés également. D’autant plus que s’esquisse la possibilité d’une jonction entre les quartiers populaires, les étudiants et le reste des mouvements sociaux. Une forme de reconnaissance, d’interaction et d’organisation collectives a émergé depuis deux ou trois ans. Il existe des possibilités d’intersections permettant aux luttes de se rencontrer. Le pouvoir a donc d’autant plus intérêt à mettre en œuvre des mécanismes de contrôle, de division et d’écrasement des plus précarisés.</p>
      <p><span><strong>Vous parlez de fascination de l’appareil militaire et policier pour l’état d’urgence. En quoi, et pourquoi fascine-t-il ?</strong></span></p>
      <p>L’état d’urgence est un dispositif politique extrêmement symbolique. Il signale l’ouverture d’un champ de la guerre intérieure. Il sonne l’entrée symbolique sur le territoire national, avec l’opération Sentinelle, du pouvoir militaire. Évidemment, et c’est encore plus vrai avec l’avènement de la Ve République, le pouvoir militaire n’est jamais complètement écarté de la gestion du territoire. Désormais, l’état d’urgence, implicitement, annonce que toute la place est faite sur le territoire national à la possibilité de la montée en puissance du pouvoir militaire. Ne l’oublions pas, la Ve République s’est constituée sur le coup d’État du 13 mai 1958. Mais, plus largement, tout le corpus constitutionnel de la Ve République porte l’empreinte d’une possibilité de guerre contre-insurrectionnelle ou contre-subversive, comme l’article 16 de la Constitution du 4 octobre 1958, lequel prévoit qu’en période de crise les « pleins pouvoirs » peuvent être donnés au président de la République française.</p>
      <p>D’autres dispositions également considéraient que, dans le cadre de la guerre froide, la possibilité de « guerre intérieure et de guerre totale », pour reprendre le langage de l’époque, est imminente et permanente. Il fallait donc avoir constamment les moyens de suspendre la séparation des pouvoirs et que le chef de l’État puisse déclarer lui-même la guerre intérieure. Ce modèle constitutionnel a été exporté en même temps que les méthodes françaises de contre-insurrection. La Colombie, par exemple, a une Constitution très proche de la Constitution française. La plupart des anciennes colonies françaises, en Afrique subsaharienne, ont des équivalents dans leur constitution de l’état d’urgence et de l’article 16. Mais, au-delà de la Ve République et de sa Constitution, l’ensemble des systèmes juridiques dans l’histoire du droit sont basés sur l’exception. On ne crée pas de normes juridiques sans délimiter les cadres exceptionnels de l’emploi de ces normes. Plus largement, tous les États se créent sur le pouvoir militaire, sur la clôture du moment de la guerre et autour des élites militaires. Ces élites, l’État profond, sont toujours à la fondation d’un nouvel État. Ils emportent avec eux forcément un répertoire d’exception. Ils ont en général la maîtrise de la nécro-politique, la gestion de la mort, de la coercition, de la violence comme mode de gouvernement.</p>
      <p><span><strong>Comment comprendre l’état d’urgence, dans l’optique de ce capitalisme sécuritaire ?</strong></span></p>
      <p>Le capitalisme sécuritaire sous-entend l’ouverture des marchés de la sécurité. Ce capitalisme a été la soupape, puis la roue de secours, avant de devenir désormais le moyen principal de restructuration du capitalisme international. Ce capitalisme sécuritaire dérive directement des marchés militaires, qui se sont constitués à travers les deux guerres mondiales. Les complexes militaro-industriels ont alors émergé et le capitalisme occidental s’est organisé autour de la guerre permanente. Dans la période post-1968, et après la crise pétrolière de 1973, on a vu s’ouvrir des sous-marchés décalqués sur le keynésianisme militaire, des marchés de la guerre intérieure, de la sécurité. Ceux-là ont permis de restructurer le capitalisme, de le sauver aussi. Ils ont servi également à mettre en place des modèles de contre-révolution, de contre-insurrection, partout dans le monde, au moment où, en 1968, les événements ont montré aux classes possédantes que les peuples pouvaient et commençaient à se réorganiser. En somme, l’état d’urgence permet aux industriels de la violence de tirer profit de cette guerre intérieure, ainsi qu’une restructuration juridico-politique de l’État-nation.</p>
      <p><span><strong>Ce capitalisme sécuritaire, et son importance dans l’économie française, expliquerait-il les ambiguïtés de la politique étrangère française ?</strong></span></p>
      <p>Ce sont moins des ambiguïtés qu’un indice d’une politique structurelle et systémique. L’Arabie Saoudite, par exemple, depuis le début des années 1970, donc dès le début de la formation du capitalisme sécuritaire, est le principal client du complexe militaro-industriel français, qui, semble-t-il à certaines périodes, n’existe qu’en s’appuyant sur ce marché fondamental.</p>
      <p><span><strong>Dès lors l’état d’urgence n’a-t-il pas empêché et opacifié toute question sur cette politique, qui mêle si intimement diplomatie, économie et marchés militaires ?</strong></span></p>
      <p>L’état d’urgence a pu permettre d’installer une chape de plomb idéologique. Je ne suis pas certain cependant que cette chape ait été totalement étanche. J’ajouterai un bémol car, avant même l’état d’urgence, il y avait très peu de questionnement critique dans les médias mainstream. Beaucoup des grands médias, ne l’oublions pas, appartiennent à des géants de la vente d’armes et du capitalisme français. En outre, leurs structures rédactionnelles sont souvent liées à des instituts de sécurité ou de défense. Ces instituts forment des responsables qui entretiennent en permanence des relations de communication avec les médias. Cela permet une maîtrise du langage médiatique par le pouvoir militaire. Enfin, élément propre au champ médiatique, les médias dominants ne sont pas faits pour laisser passer du discours critique, et leur fonctionnement interne prohibe toute possibilité de rupture du discours dominant. Cependant, je note que, paradoxalement, dans certains milieux, en plein état d’urgence, alors que les classes dominantes pouvaient y voir une forme de pacification sociale, on observe un processus de montée en puissance de nouvelles formes de révolte et des réagencements des capacités critiques des classes populaires. L’existence de ce marché sécuritaire fondamental au cœur du capitalisme français et le lien avec ces pétromonarchies sont devenus des faits beaucoup mieux connus.</p>
      <p><span><strong>À partir de cette idée d’ennemi intérieur, l’état d’urgence ne brouille-t-il pas encore plus la notion de guerre, celle-ci pouvant être intérieure quand les guerres extérieures sont qualifiées de simples « opérations » ?</strong></span></p>
      <p>C’est là un des modes de fonctionnement du capitalisme sécuritaire. Ce dernier brouille les frontières de l’État-Nation à travers la mondialisation capitaliste. Dans la doctrine militaire, on considère qu’il n’y a plus d’« intérieur » ni d’« extérieur » et que l’ennemi « terroriste » est partout. Mais, dans la réalité, on constate bien que les frontières et leur défense sont au cœur de la gouvernementalité contemporaine. Pourtant, il y a une logique de brouillage qui est liée à un processus d’hybridation des domaines militaire et policier. Hybridation en termes industriels et économiques, dans le sens où ces marchés de la guerre permanente et de la police quotidienne se traversent et s’enchevêtrent. On peut développer des produits d’un côté ou un autre et s’en servir pour faire la guerre ou la police. Il y a un aller-retour permanent entre la guerre intérieure et la police extérieure. Cette hybridation se retrouve dans la pensée contre-insurrectionnelle, dans la pensée de l’exception et dans les mécanismes réels de développement du capitalisme militaire.</p>
      <p><span><strong>Dès lors, l’état d’urgence a-t-il été une façon pour le pouvoir politique de donner des garanties d’action et de fermeté au pouvoir militaire ?</strong></span></p>
      <p>Le pouvoir politique est complètement inféodé au pouvoir militaire. Il n’avait pas forcément besoin de lui fournir des garanties d’action. Plus largement, il y a un entrelacement, ou enchevêtrement, des pouvoirs politique, militaire, policier et économique. Sur les questions d’ouverture des états d’exception, il me semble nettement que c’est le pouvoir militaire qui décide. L’immense majorité des politiques fait une confiance absolue au pouvoir militaire, car, d’une part, ils n’y connaissent pas grand-chose et, d’autre part, parce que la fonction militaire et l’industrie militaire sont des piliers majeurs de l’économie et du système politique de la Ve République.</p>
      <p><span><strong>Comment articuler et comprendre l’état d’urgence et le fait qu’il trouve sa source dans une loi qui a été utilisée pendant la guerre d’Algérie ?</strong></span></p>
      <p>Du point de vue de l’état-major militaire, l’origine coloniale de cette loi est très bien connue. Voilà pourquoi ce dispositif a été utilisé à ce moment-là, car il appartient à un répertoire principal, une sorte de malle à outils privilégiée, tout simplement parce qu’il appartient à la structure de la société française, laquelle, historiquement, est une société impérialiste. Elle conserve donc, au cœur de ses institutions, des répertoires coloniaux et militaires qui lui servent à se restructurer, à se ressourcer quand les nécessités historiques lui imposent de créer de nouveaux dispositifs. Le répertoire colonial contre-insurrectionnel est peut-être la malle à outils la plus privilégiée par les fractions qui dominent l’état-major. Or, ce sont elles qui conseillent la haute hiérarchie politique. Il me semble également que l’état d’urgence est un moyen qui les fascine, dans le sens où il permet la montée en puissance des appareils, doctrines et personnels militaires. Cette montée en puissance est portée par le capitalisme sécuritaire, cette économie-politique qui caractérise l’ère dans laquelle nous nous trouvons.<br />
      L’état d’urgence est aussi l’indice plus large au fait qu’on donne toujours plus de place, de légitimité et de visibilité, à ces méthodes contre-insurrectionnelles, dont l’état d’urgence fait partie. Enfin, ce dispositif juridique présente un entre-deux assez malléable, qui facilite un large spectre d’actions, une grande liberté de réglage entre l’État de droit et l’état de siège. Il donne lieu à l’ouverture d’une capacité d’autonomie supérieure pour les institutions militaires, policières et de renseignement. Cette capacité élargie permet de mener des guerres de basse intensité à l’intérieur du territoire, sans avoir à placer l’ensemble de la société en état de guerre. L’état d’urgence a été créé à l’origine pour pouvoir mener la guerre coloniale sur le territoire de l’État. Il permet de mener une forme de guerre policière à une partie de la population, sans que tout le pays et toute son économie soit en état de siège.</p>
      <p><span><strong>Pourquoi l’état d’urgence a-t-il semblé viser d’abord une catégorie de la population, en l’occurrence les musulmans ?</strong></span></p>
      <p>Ils ont été visés à double titre : ils sont musulmans et ils vivent, pour beaucoup, dans des quartiers populaires. Un inconscient raciste structure aussi toute la culture dominante en France. Les appareillages militaires et médiatiques de construction de l’ennemi intérieur fonctionnent à plein régime depuis une cinquantaine d’années. Ils désignent un ennemi intérieur dans le masque du musulman pauvre. Les attentats seraient le fruit d’un « islamisme », qui serait lui-même une sorte de dérivation de l’islam. Il faudrait donc encadrer les lieux de prolifération de ces « virus subversifs », comme cela se dit en langue militaire. Or, le principal référent religieux du sous-prolétariat en France est l’islam. Les figures d’ennemi intérieur servent à diviser les classes populaires et à délimiter une partie de la « population » à dissocier et ségréguer.</p>
      <p>Puis, au-delà de l’état d’urgence, la Ve République se fonde sur, dans et à travers la guerre d’Algérie. À l’époque l’ennemi intérieur était le fellagha. Les figures de l’ennemi intérieur évoluent dans la pensée militaire française, depuis la guerre d’Algérie jusqu’au milieu des années 2000, et épousent la figure de l’immigré postcolonial. La guerre coloniale a été la matrice de l’ordre sécuritaire. De la guerre d’Algérie à la Nouvelle-Calédonie, puis aux révoltes des quartiers populaires en 2005, l’état d’urgence permet d’intensifier les moyens de la chasse aux « ennemis intérieurs », ainsi que l’emploi de dispositifs visant à paralyser la vie sociale de toute les parties de la « population » suspectées d’être des « terreaux de subversions ».</p>
      <p><strong>Propos recueillis par <span>Hassina Mechaï</span>, février 2018.</strong></p>

    • La « militarisation » de la gestion des mouvements sociaux se devinait dès 2008, dans le Livre blanc de la Défense. Le concept classique de « Défense nationale » y semblait lié, de façon étonnante, à la notion de « sécurité nationale ». Si cette « militarisation » intérieure s’installe, la frontière pourtant nécessaire entre défense nationale et sécurité intérieure risque de n’être plus que théorique.

      Pour le coup, ça ne tombe pas du ciel tout d’un coup. Quand j’ai fait mon service militaire dans les années 70s, on nous présentait les différentes composantes de la Défense nationale et, parmi elles, la #Défense_opérationnelle_du_Territoire (ou #DOT), toujours dans ses missions à ce jour.

      Si WP, nous la présente ainsi (intégralité de l’article…)
      Défense opérationnelle du territoire — Wikipédia
      https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9fense_op%C3%A9rationnelle_du_territoire

      En France, la défense opérationnelle du territoire (DOT) est selon le code de la défense, la participation des armées « au maintien de la liberté et de la continuité d’action du Gouvernement, ainsi qu’à la sauvegarde des organes essentiels à la défense de la nation ».

      Elle définit la mission confiée aux militaires sur le territoire français :
      • Protection des installations militaires en tout temps
      • Assurer la protection du territoire national et de s’opposer à un éventuel ennemi à l’intérieur de celui-ci
      • Organiser les opérations de résistance militaire en cas d’invasion.

      La pratique sur le terrain n’omettait jamais d’y ajouter la lutte contre le célèbre #ennemi_intérieur (Super-Dupont, à l’époque l’appelait #Anti-France) qu’en ces temps post-soixante-huitards il ne fallait pas chercher bien loin et que les cadres de l’armée faisait, si on leur en laissait la possibilité, commencer en gros dès le premier gréviste…

      Comme l’indique ce résumé d’une présentation de la DOT dans un article de septembre 1986 (texte pdf intégral en ligne)…

      La Défense opérationnelle du Territoire (DOT) - Alain BIZARD - Pouvoirs, revue française d’études constitutionnelles et politiques
      https://revue-pouvoirs.fr/La-Defense-operationnelle-du.html

      La Défense opérationnelle du Territoire, en liaison avec les autres formes de défense militaire et avec la défense civile et économique, concourt au maintien de la liberté d’action du Gouvernement ainsi qu’à la sauvegarde des organes essentiels à la défense de la nation (décret du 1er mars 1973).

      Sa mise en oeuvre est décrétée par le Gouvernement en présence d’une menace extérieure reconnue par le Conseil de Défense. Les moyens à la disposition de la DOT ont été récemment restructurés ; le rôle de la gendarmerie a été accru et chaque échelon territorial dispose maintenant de forces leur permettant des interventions plus rapides.
      Néanmoins, composée essentiellement d’unités créées en mobilisation, la DOT aura besoin, pour être à même de remplir efficacement sa mission, d’un matériel moins obsolète et d’un entraînement plus soutenu mené en liaison toujours plus étroite avec la défense civile.

      … la DOT était essentiellement confiée à des réservistes (rappelés à l’occasion) et était donc le GROS morceau de la formation des appelés, je veux dire en dehors d’éplucher les patates et de fournir des ordonnances aux officiers… La "vraie" guerre, contre une armée ennemie étant réservée aux professionnels, évolution qui aboutit à la suppression (je vois d’ailleurs qu’il ne s’agit que d’une suspension) du service militaire en octobre 1997 pour les jeunes nés après le 1er janvier 1979.

    • C’est clair, qu’en matière de maintien de l’ordre public il y a des moments clefs qui nous amènent à aujourd’hui : la repression des révoltes d’esclaves, celle de la commune, la conquête de l’Algérie. Il y a beaucoup de parallèles à faire entre la vision du complexe sécuritaire actuel et les « enseignements » tirés de ces moments historiques. Un jour quand je #procrastinerai moins, je mettrais par écrit la conférence que j’ai faite sur le sujet l’année passée :)

  • Khashoggi Killing Detailed in New Book: ‘We Came to Take You to Riyadh’ - The New York Times

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/world/middleeast/khashoggi-killing-book.html

    By Carlotta Gall

    Jan. 17, 2019

    ISTANBUL — A new book written by three Turkish reporters and drawing on audio recordings of the killing of a Saudi expatriate, Jamal Khashoggi, offers new details about an encounter that began with a demand that he return home and ended in murder and dismemberment.

    “First we will tell him ‘We are taking you to Riyadh,’” one member of a Saudi hit team told another, the book claims. “If he doesn’t come, we will kill him here and get rid of the body.”

    Turkish officials have cited the recordings, saying they captured the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a journalist, in his Oct. 2 visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. And intelligence officials leaked some details in a campaign to force Saudi Arabia to own up to the crime.

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    But the new book offers the most comprehensive description to date of what is on those recordings. It sets the scene as a team of Saudi operatives lay their plans before Mr. Khashoggi arrives, and then recounts what happened next.
    A security guard at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul after Mr. Khashoggi was killed there.CreditChris Mcgrath/Getty Images
    Image
    A security guard at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul after Mr. Khashoggi was killed there.CreditChris Mcgrath/Getty Images

    The three journalists, Abdurrahman Simsek, Nazif Karaman and Ferhat Unlu, work for an investigative unit at the pro-government newspaper Sabah, and are known for their close ties to Turkish intelligence. They said that they did not have access to the audio recordings but were briefed by intelligence officials who did.

    A Turkish security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed separately that the details described in the book were accurate. The book, “Diplomatic Atrocity: The Dark Secrets of the Jamal Khashoggi Murder,” is written in Turkish and went on sale in December.

  • Are U.S. newspapers biased against Palestinians? Analysis of 100,000 headlines in top dailies says, Yes – Mondoweiss

    https://mondoweiss.net/2019/01/newspapers-palestinians-headlines

    A study released last month by 416Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, supports the view that mainstream U.S. newspapers consistently portray Palestine in a more negative light than Israel, privilege Israeli sources, and omit key facts helpful to understanding the Israeli occupation, including those expressed by Palestinian sources.

    The largest of its kind, the study is based on a sentiment and n-gram analysis of nearly a hundred thousand headlines in five mainstream newspapers dating to 1967. The newspapers are the top five U.S. dailies, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.

    Headlines spanning five decades were put into two datasets, one comprising 17,492 Palestinian-centric headlines, and another comprising 82,102 Israeli-centric headlines. Using Natural Language Processing techniques, authors of the study assessed the degree to which the sentiment of the headlines could be classified as positive, negative, or neutral. They also examined the frequency of using certain words that evoke a particular view or perception.

    Key findings of the study are:

    Since 1967, use of the word “occupation” has declined by 85% in the Israeli dataset of headlines, and by 65% in the Palestinian dataset;
    Since 1967, mentions of Palestinian refugees have declined by an overall 93%;
    Israeli sources are nearly 250% more likely to be quoted as Palestinians;
    The number of headlines centering Israel were published four times more than those centering Palestine;
    Words connoting violence such as “terror” appear three times as much as the word “occupation” in the Palestinian dataset;
    Explicit recognition that Israeli settlements and settlers are illegal rarely appears in both datasets;
    Since 1967, mentions of “East Jerusalem,” distinguishing that part of the city occupied by Israel in 1967 from the rest of the city, appeared only a total of 132 times;
    The Los Angeles Times has portrayed Palestinians most negatively, followed by The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and lastly The New York Times;
    Coverage of the conflict has reduced dramatically in the second half of the fifty-year period.

  • « Grand débat » : ce qu’expriment les cahiers de doléances | Mediapart

    le plus frappant, c’est l’absence de toute référence à l’islam

    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/140119/grand-debat-ce-qu-expriment-les-cahiers-de-doleances

    Meuse et Meurthe-et-Moselle, envoyé spécial.– Évidemment, il peut y avoir un petit côté « foire à la Farfouille », l’idée du savant Cosinus qui, d’un coup d’un seul, va régler (presque) tous les problèmes. Ainsi, en mairie de Bar-le-Duc, préfecture de la Meuse, est présentée comme une « évidence » cette proposition inscrite dans le cahier de doléances : « Taxer les propriétaires de chien. » Après tout, ces animaux ne profitent-ils pas gratuitement de nos infrastructures ? À Nancy, Lætitia estime que si « toutes les décorations de Noël fonctionnaient à l’énergie solaire, ce serait déjà un progrès ». Ronaldo assure qu’il est grand temps « d’investir dans des lieux de bonheur ».

    Et puis il y a cette surprise, constatée dans la demi-douzaine de cahiers de doléances ouverts dans plusieurs mairies depuis la fin du mois de décembre et que nous avons consultés à Nancy, à Toul, à Commercy (là, les « revendications » étaient collectées par le groupe de gilets jaunes de la ville), à Bar-le-Duc, soit près de deux cents contributions en tout : c’est l’absence de toute référence à l’islam. Dur camouflet pour tous ceux qui, à l’instar de Manuel Valls, de l’extrême droite et d’une large partie de la droite, ont voulu en faire le problème central du pays.

    De même, l’immigration, les générosités supposées de l’État envers l’étranger, le trop-plein ou la « submersion » ne sont que très marginalement évoqués : dans une dizaine de contributions seulement. Et l’on y retrouve alors quelques-uns des slogans classiques de l’extrême droite lepéniste.

  • Une affaire relativement petite et technique, mais qui démontre le recul des anti-BDS aux États-Unis, pourtant pays leader en la matière :

    Les sénateurs américains rejettent la loi anti-BDS et pro-Israël
    Maannews, le 10 janvier 2019
    http://www.agencemediapalestine.fr/blog/2019/01/14/les-senateurs-americains-rejettent-la-loi-anti-bds-et-pro-israe

    Traduction de :

    US Senators vote down anti-BDS, pro-Israeli bill
    Maannews, le 10 janvier 2019
    https://seenthis.net/messages/750837

    A regrouper avec un autre recul aux Etats-Unis :

    Former legislator in Maryland sues state over anti-BDS law
    Middle East Eye, le 9 janvier 2019
    https://seenthis.net/messages/750709

    #BDS #USA #Palestine

  • Bziz, l’humoriste qui ne fait pas rire le roi du Maroc
    Omar Brousky

    https://orientxxi.info/lu-vu-entendu/bziz-l-humoriste-qui-ne-fait-pas-rire-le-roi-du-maroc,2848
    https://orientxxi.info/local/cache-vignettes/L800xH399/d907a8951b586caa5dd027bc2b33c0-e2396.jpg?1547451554

    Ahmed Snoussi — surnommé Bziz (le garnement) — est un mythe vivant de l’humour politique au Maroc, ce qui lui vaut une interdiction qui dure depuis un quart de siècle. Il vient d’être convoqué par la police judiciaire de Casablanca. Motif ? Il a dénoncé sur sa page Facebook les arrestations arbitraires des artistes du Rif lors du Hirak de 2016-2017. Un texte rédigé il y a… un an et demi. Portrait d’un artiste entêté.

  • Hamas put on the spot after Palestinian Authority withdraws staff from Rafah crossing | MadaMasr
    https://madamasr.com/en/2019/01/12/feature/politics/hamas-put-on-the-spot-after-palestinian-authority-withdraws-staff-from-raf

    A January 7 decision by the Palestinian Authority to immediately withdraw its staff from the Rafah border crossing has put Hamas in turmoil.

    Hamas sent internal affairs officers to take control of the crossing, which had been administered by PA officers since November last year as part of a PA-Hamas reconciliation deal brokered by Egypt.

    According to a Hamas source speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, its officers have ensured that the crossing’s systems are working, and prevented theft and sabotage during and since the PA’s withdrawal.

    The decision to withdraw PA employees from Rafah came as one of a series of recent PA moves against Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since winning the legislative elections in 2006. These measures suggest that the Egypt-brokered reconciliation efforts are failing.

  • Jocelyne Saab. La résistance tenace d’une cinéaste libanaise
    https://orientxxi.info/lu-vu-entendu/jocelyne-saab-poursuivre-la-resistance,2852

    https://orientxxi.info/local/cache-vignettes/L800xH399/9746327293b6c2c6ce26b26ddc8bbb-22a74.jpg?1547284992

    La cinéaste libanaise Jocelyne Saab est décédée le 7 janvier 2019 des suites d’une longue maladie. Elle laisse derrière elle une œuvre monumentale et l’exemple d’une carrière éblouissante, au plus proche des fractures historiques qui ont déchiré son pays et sa région du monde, toujours du côté de la résistance et de la liberté. Un témoignage indispensable pour l’histoire et nécessaire pour repenser l’écriture de l’histoire des images.

  • Source of pro-Israel guerrilla warriors on social media exposed – Middle East Monitor

    poursuite des révélations sur le financement des trolls antipalestiniens aux Etats-Unis.
    En profiter pour voir https://orientxxi.info/magazine/un-documentaire-interdit-sur-le-lobby-pro-israelien-aux-etats-unis,2715

    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190105-source-of-pro-israel-guerrilla-warriors-on-social-media-

    A number of prominent Jewish-American leaders are funding covert, anonymous campaigns targeting pro-Palestinian student activists, The Forward has found. The Jewish daily newspaper, which has been publishing valuable information concerning the source of funding for these hyper-aggressive and shadowy groups – which spearhead coordinated hate campaigns against critics of the Zionist state – has uncovered the identities of those behind hidden social media accounts.

    Community heads and prominent Jewish organisations with a carefully-crafted, respectable public profile have donated millions to fund secret projects targeting students and lecturers, the report has found. On a number of occasions, their blind support for Israel has seen them bankroll far-right and anti-Muslim hate groups.

    The latest pro-Israeli group to be exposed by The Forward is the campaign targeting the pro-Palestinian campus network Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). SJP is said to be the most well-known advocate of the Palestinian cause on US campuses. It has been the target of a pro-Israel group known as SJP Uncovered, which anonymously attacks student activists affiliated with SJP across the country. With more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, SJP Uncovered has gone after pro-Palestinian students by maintaining a veil of anonymity that is said to be all-but impenetrable.

    Until now, the source of funding for SJP Uncovered had been a mystery. The Forward has now been able to shed light on the organisation to reveal that the site is a secret project of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC), a Washington DC-based pro-Israel organisation tied to most mainstream funders and organisations in the Jewish community.

  • Judge Richard Goldstone suffered for turning his back on Gaza – but not as much as the Palestinians he betrayed | The Independent

    by Robert Fisk

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-gaza-war-judge-richard-goldstone-palestinian-conflict-a8709211
    https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2010/02/02/00/310761.bin

    When a hero lets you down, the betrayal lasts forever. I’m not alone, I know, when I say that Richard Goldstone was a hero of mine – a most formidable, brilliant and brave judge who finally spoke truth to power in the Middle East. And then recanted like a frightened political prisoner, with protestations of love for the nation whose war crimes he so courageously exposed.

    Now, after years of virtual silence, the man who confronted Israel and Hamas with their unforgivable violence after the 2008-09 Gaza war has found a defender in a little known but eloquent academic. Judge Goldstone, a Jewish South African, was denounced by Israelis and their supporters as “evil” and a “quisling” after he listed the evidence of Israel’s brutality against the Palestinians of Gaza (around 1,300 dead, most of them civilians), and of Hamas’ numerically fewer crimes (13 Israeli dead, three of them civilians, plus a number of Palestinian “informer” executions).
    Professor Daniel Terris, a Brandeis University scholar admired for his work on law and ethics, calls his new book The Trials of Richard Goldstone. Good title, but no cigar. ​

    Terris is eminently fair. Perhaps he is too fair. He treats far too gently the column that Goldstone wrote for the Washington Post, in which the judge effectively undermined the research and conclusions of his own report that he and three others wrote about the Gaza war. The book recalls how Richard Falk, a Princeton law professor and former UN rapporteur on human rights in Gaza and the West Bank, described Goldstone’s retraction as “a personal tragedy for such a distinguished international civil servant”. I think Falk was right.

  • Why most new immigrants to Israel aren’t considered Jewish | The Times of Israel

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-most-new-immigrants-to-israel-arent-considered-jewish

    JTA — For the first time, Israel announced that Jewish immigrants to Israel were outnumbered by non-Jewish immigrants.

    The headlines might suggest that Christians and perhaps Muslims have been moving to the Jewish state in significant numbers, but the truth is more complicated: According to numbers released Monday by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 17,700 of the 32,600 migrants who moved to Israel in 2018 came under the Law of Return but were listed as “having no religion.”

  • Palestine Under Occupation : One Village’s Resistance - YouTube

    Très bons reportages sur l’occupation israélienne de la Palestine, autour de la famille Tamini

    PART 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPhPAHaY82U

    PART 2

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJqH7_xYKi4

    Night raids, child arrests and open fire. Welcome to daily life in this tiny village in the occupied West Bank, home to Palestinian teen icon Ahed Tamimi. Collected form AJ+

    #palestine #ocupation #démolition #colonisation #résistance #tamini

  • Les États-Unis et Israël quittent l’Unesco ce lundi soir
    Gwendal Lavina, Le Figaro, le 31 décembre 2018
    http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2018/12/31/01003-20181231ARTFIG00116-les-etats-unis-et-israel-quittent-l-unesco-ce-lun

    Les deux pays exécutent une décision annoncée en octobre 2017 en réponse à plusieurs résolutions de l’organisation qu’ils jugent « anti-israéliennes ». L’Unesco regrette ces deux retraits mais minimise leurs impacts.

    Certains observateurs craignent qu’au-delà d’affaiblir politiquement l’Unesco, ces deux retraits entament sérieusement le budget de l’organisation. Un diplomate bien informé balaye cet argument de la main et rappelle que les États-Unis et Israël ne payent plus leur cotisation obligatoire depuis 2011. Leur dette auprès de l’organisation s’élève ainsi à 620 millions de dollars pour les États-Unis et 10 millions de dollars pour Israël.

    Feuilleton à plusieurs épisodes :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/636965

    #UNESCO #USA #israel #Palestine #ONU #dette #escrocs #voleurs

  • Battle brews between French and ultra-Orthodox over Jerusalem archaeology site

    Ultra-Orthodox demands to pray at the Tomb of the Kings – the grandest burial compound in Jerusalem – have kindled fears among the French of an Israeli land grab under their flag in East Jerusalem

    Nir Hasson SendSend me email alerts
    Dec 21, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-france-orthodox-jews-archaeologists-battle-over-e-j-lem-s-tomb-of-

    In recent weeks, a small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews has been gathering alongside a locked iron gate on Nablus Road in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. They pray and protest alongside the shuttered gate, periodically squabbling with the Palestinian guard, demanding to be allowed inside to pray. The guard refuses, and refers them to the body that owns and administers the site – the French Consulate of Jerusalem.
    These protests are yet another round in a long-standing historic struggle over control of one of the most beautiful archaeological sites in Jerusalem, which has been closed to the public for years. On the one side stands the government of France and on the other, Haredi and right-wing Israeli factions. Israel’s Antiquities Authority is in favor of opening the site to the public, but does share the French concerns that the site might befall the same fate of many other archaeological sites in the city, which were transformed from mere archaeology and tourism sites into holy sites and then appropriated from the public’s domain.
    To really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz
    The Tomb of the Kings, situated between the Jerusalem District Court and the American Colony Hotel, is considered the grandest burial compound in Jerusalem. The site includes a sophisticated burial cave that has a mechanism for sealing the entrance by means of a stone that rotates on a hinge. It includes a mammoth courtyard carved into the bedrock, a staircase carved into the bedrock that is the second largest in Jerusalem – the only one larger is on the Temple Mount – stone-inscribed ornamentation, an ancient mikveh (Jewish ritual bath) and cisterns.
    The site has been dated to the Second Temple period, and there are various traditions and theories regarding who is actually buried there. According to one tradition, it was the place of burial of Kalba Savua, the father-in-law of Rabbi Akiva, or of Nicodemus ben Guryon – two of the wealthier residents of Jerusalem at the start of the 1st millennium CE.
    The historian Josephus Flavius wrote that this was the burial place of Queen Helena of Adiabene, who converted to Judaism around the year 30 C.E., and some of the site’s investigators say it is reasonable to believe that this is indeed her tomb. An ornamented sarcophagus found here was inscribed with the legend, “Tzadan Malkata,” which is believed to refer to Queen (Malka) Helena. This reinforces the notion that buried on this site were other members of her royal family. The site gained fame in the late 19th century, and among its visitors were the German Kaiser Wilhelm II and Theodore Herzl.

    The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman

    The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman

    The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman
    The Tomb of the Kings is interwoven into the history of archaeology in Israel. The excavation conducted by Félicien de Saulcy in 1863 is considered the first modern archaeological dig in the country. It is also the first excavation to receive a digging permit from the Turkish sultan.
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    Pressure worked

    The Tomb of Kings archaeological site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman
    But along with modern archaeology, the protest against it was also born here. “This was the first official archaeological excavation, and also the first time in which the Jews of Jerusalem rose up against the excavation of ancestral graves,” writes a scholar who has studied the site, Dr. Dotan Goren.
    In the wake of the Orthodox Jews’ public protests in the city and pressure from the Jews on the sultan, those excavations were suspended. To the dismay of the city’s Jews, de Saulcy managed to load the queen’s sarcophagus onto a ship anchored in Jaffa port, and it is to this day displayed at the Louvre Museum. Several years ago, it appeared as part of a temporary exhibition in the Israel Museum.
    The basis for the current demand by religious and Haredi circles that the Jews ought to be granted rights over the site has to do with events that occurred following the excavation. In 1878, a woman named Berta Amalia Bertrand, a French Jew who was related to the Pereire brothers, a famous Jewish banking family, purchased the burial compound from its Arab owners. At the time of the purchase, Bertrand dedicated the site in the presence of the chief rabbi of Paris, declaring that it “will become the land in perpetuity of the Jewish community, to be preserved from desecration and abomination, and will never again be damaged by foreigners..”

    The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman
    Eight years later, however, one of Bertrand’s heirs granted the site as a gift to the government of France. At the time of the conferral of the gift, an agreement was signed between the French government and the family, under which France committed to meet several conditions. One was to erect a sign in Hebrew, French and Arabic saying that these are the Tombs of the Kings of Judah. The large sign, made of copper, can still be found set into the wall of the building.
    A few testimonies describe how the site served for prayer and pilgrimage, although it is altogether clear that it was secondary in importance to the neighboring holy site, the cave of Shimon Hatzadik. But in any event, following the battles of 1948, the site was left behind the enemy lines, within the territory of the Jordanian kingdom. “This site was forgotten or made to be forgotten, and there was no one to tell about it,” says Goren.

    An inscription at the Tomb of Kings in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman
    Following 1967’s Six-Day War, the site continued to be administered by the French consulate in Jerusalem. Most of the time, it was open to visitors, for a token entry fee. Ten years ago the consulate held a concert there, together with the Palestinian cultural organization Yabous, which advocates a boycott of Israel.
    Apparently that is what has sparked a renewed interest in the site. In 2014, the rabbinical court for “hekdesh” (sacred property) affairs appointed Yitzhak Mamo and Yaakov Saltzman as emissaries of the court in the matter of the Tomb of the Kings sacred property. Mamo is a well-known right-wing activist in East Jerusalem who for years has been engaged in the evacuation of Palestinian families and the resettlement of Jews in Sheikh Jarrah. In 2015, the two men filed a suit in the rabbinical court against the government of France, with a plea to gain possession of the site.
    The lawsuit sparked outrage in Paris and in the French consulate in Jerusalem, as well as in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A letter sent to the court by David Goldfarb of the ministry’s legal department stated that according to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, to which Israel is a signatory, consulate employees are not subject to the rulings of a rabbinical court. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also wishes to inform the honorable court that in response to bringing the lawsuit in this case, our office has received a sharply worded letter from the government of France,” Goldfarb wrote.
    The Israeli attorney general also sided with the French, and in a legal opinion submitted to the court, he argued that it was not at all clear that the site can be considered a hekdesh, since the hekdesh was created by the chief rabbi of Paris and not by the Sharia court in Jerusalem, which had been entrusted with the authority to rule on sacred property issues in the city during the period of Ottoman rule. In the wake of these developments, the religious court in Jerusalem rejected the suit.

    FILE Photo: The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem. American Colony

    FILE Photo: The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem. American Colony
    The French subsequently announced the closure of the site for renovations. In recent years, there has been practically no opportunity to visit the site. According to parties involved in the matter, the French consulate has invested about 900,000 euros (about $790,000) in a renovation that included construction of a steel apparatus to reinforce the central structure in the event of earthquake, construction of a new stairway, and preservation work.
    In September 2018, the consulate informed the Israeli Foreign Ministry that the work had been completed and that it was now possible to reopen the site. However, the French imposed two conditions: one, that Israel officially recognize French ownership of the site, and two, that they be assured no new lawsuits would be brought against them. Foreign Ministry officials have reported that discussions on the matter are now underway. In the meantime, the place remains closed and the protests have begun again.
    This time around, it was a group of Haredim led by Rabbi Zalman Grossman of Jerusalem that began to arrive on site twice a week and protest its closure by means of prayers and demonstrations. The protest has gained the support of the rabbi of the Western Wall and the holy sites, Shmuel Rabinovich, and of the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Shlomo Amar, as well as the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
    The demonstrations and the demands to be able to pray on the site have kindled fears among the French that if the site is reopened, it will take on a religious nature and essentially become an Israeli land grab under the French flag in East Jerusalem. As far as France is concerned, this would engender serious political complications with the Palestinians.
    The concerns of the French in this matter are shared by the Antiquities Authority’s Jerusalem district archaeologist, Dr. Yuval Baruch. “There is a trend of archaeological sites taking on a status of holiness, and the problem is if and when that happens, archaeology always loses out,” says Baruch.
    He is concerned about other sites, mainly in the Old City, archaeological-tourism sites that have in the past few years been converted into religious sites, where visitors not coming for ritual purposes do not always feel welcome.
    The phenomenon, incidentally, is not exclusive to Orthodox Jews. This has happened, for instance, in a large section of the Jerusalem Archaeological Park-Davidson Center, south of the Western Wall, which has been turned into the “Ezrat Israel,” a prayer section earmarked for the non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. It is happening on the Hulda steps that ascend to the Temple Mount from the south, which have become a popular prayer site among evangelical Christians. The evangelicals have also adopted the Siloam Pool in Silwan. The plaza just outside Tanner’s Gate, not far from the Western Wall, has become the province of bar mitzvah organizers, and the archaeological site at Nebi Samuel in northern Jerusalem has become a site for prayer and pilgrimage.
    “When all is said and done, there is freedom of religion and the authorities have no ability to control it, but there has to be some regulation,” says Baruch. d”As excavations in Jerusalem continue to proliferate, the more assured it is that there will be continued attempts by religious bodies, and this can be Orthodox, Conservative or Reform rabbis, or evangelicals, it matters not who, to try and take them over. The appeal of sites whose character is becoming more emphatically religious will change. I appeal to the rabbinical establishment and to the leadership of the Christian communities to show more responsibility and greater recognition of the importance of the archaeological values, as well.”
    The official response from the office of the rabbi of the Western Wall in regard to the Tomb of the Kings: “In truth, the site is a holy place for Jews. To that end, the rabbi is acting with all due sensitivity in order that the site also provide free access for Jewish prayer and that its character and its holiness be preserved.”

    Nir Hasson
    Haaretz Correspondent

  • Tunisie. La révolution à venir devra être sociale | Thierry Brésillon
    https://orientxxi.info/magazine/tunisie-la-revolution-a-venir-devra-etre-sociale,2821

    Huit ans après l’immolation de Mohamed Bouazizi et le début du soulèvement populaire parti des zones marginalisées du territoire, la question sociale semble toujours attendre sa réponse. La classe politique a-t-elle raté l’occasion de sortir la Tunisie du piège de l’extraversion, à l’origine des disparités régionales ? Le 17 décembre 2010, quand Mohamed Bouazizi s’immolait devant le gouvernorat de Sidi Bouzid, sa protestation n’était pas seulement le résultat ponctuel d’une rupture du pacte moral implicite (...) Source : Orient XXI

  • Yad Vashem teaches the Holocaust like totalitarian countries teach history

    Yad Vashem is now paying the price of the many years in which it nurtured a one-dimensional, simplistic message that there’s only one way to explain the Holocaust

    Daniel Blatman SendSend me email alerts
    Dec 18, 2018
    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-what-happened-to-yad-vashem-1.6759139

    The Warsaw Ghetto Museum, which the Polish government decided to establish eight months ago, is now at the center of a debate.
    This debate has political elements, but it’s mainly a clash between two views of what should be stressed when researching and remembering the Holocaust, and above all of what educational messages should be sent – what Israelis like to call “the lessons of the Holocaust.”
    Haaretz’s Ofer Aderet, in his article about the Warsaw museum, mainly discussed the political perspective, giving considerable space to the criticisms by Prof. Hava Dreifuss, a Yad Vashem historian. Dreifuss assailed the Warsaw museum and those who decided, despite all the problems, to take on a project whose importance is hard to overstate. This criticism deserves a response.

    First, the political context. There’s no more appropriate response to Dreifuss’ criticism than the old saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
    >> Budapest Holocaust museum: Orban’s grand gesture or a whitewashing of Hungarian history?
    Dreifuss works for an institution that in recent years has functioned as a hard-working laundromat, striving to bleach out the sins of every anti-Semitic, fascist, racist or simply murderously thuggish leader or politician like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte and Italy’s Matteo Salvini.
    My heart breaks when I see my colleagues, honest and faithful researchers of the Holocaust, giving tours of this historic museum, apparently under compulsion, to the evildoers the Israeli government sends to Yad Vashem to receive absolution in the name of Holocaust victims in exchange for adding a pro-Israel vote at international institutions. For some reason, Dreifuss has no criticism about this.
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    But for the Polish government (every Polish government, both the current one headed by the nationalist Law and Justice party and the previous one headed by a liberal centrist coalition), which is spending tens of millions of zlotys every year to preserve historical Jewish sites, Jewish graveyards and countless memorials, she has scathing criticism.
    Fear and demoralization
    A week and a half ago, Matti Friedman published an opinion piece in The New York Times about what’s happening at Yad Vashem, and it made for difficult reading. When you read his conclusions, your hair stands on end. He doesn’t quote a single Yad Vashem employee by name, because no one wanted to be identified. After all, they have to earn a living.
    Friedman described a mood of frustration, fear and demoralization among the employees because the current extremist, nationalist government has turned Yad Vashem into a political tool reminiscent of history museums in totalitarian countries.
    But the most astonishing thing Friedman reported is that the institution’s chairman, Avner Shalev – who turned the museum into an international remembrance empire, and who for years has viciously fought every attempt to present a different conceptual or research approach than that of Yad Vashem – is reluctant to retire, despite having reached the age of 80.
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    The reason for his reluctance is that many people at the institute fear that when he leaves, his place will be taken by someone nominated by the relevant minister, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who will turn Yad Vashem into a remembrance institute in the spirit of Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi party. It would be interesting to know what Dreifuss thinks about that.
    Yad Vashem is now paying the price of the many years in which it nurtured a one-dimensional, simplistic message that there’s only one way to explain the Holocaust. Today, the institution is apparently willing to place its reputation for Holocaust research, which it has built over many years, at the service of a government that has recruited it to accuse anyone who criticizes Israel of anti-Semitism. So it’s no wonder that its researchers have become partisan explainers of the Holocaust.
    It’s one thing when, at dubious conferences with political leaders whose governments include former neo-Nazis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tries to pass resolutions calling criticism of Israel the new anti-Semitism. It’s another when a research and remembrance institute doesn’t stand courageously against all such attempts.
    Thus Yad Vashem would do better not to look for evidence that other governments are attempting to distort history and dictate nationalist content – not to mention engaging in Holocaust denial, as Dreifuss charges.
    The Polish angle
    Does any of the above justify the current Polish government’s position on the Holocaust? Obviously not. The Polish government has a problematic agenda in explaining the past, which we aren’t obligated to accept and in fact should even criticize.
    But Poland’s government hasn’t interfered with the work of the museum’s employees, who have now started working, and certainly not with the development of the museum’s narrative. Had Dreifuss and her colleagues gotten involved in this effort, as they were invited to do, they would have been welcomed. Had Yad Vashem offered its help and support instead of giving the project the cold shoulder, nobody would have been happier than we at the museum.
    >> Opening Italy’s ‘closet of shame’
    And now we come to the historical issue. To take part in the effort to establish the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, one has to agree that the Holocaust can be presented and explained from perspectives other than an ethnocentric Jewish, Zionist and nationalist one.
    One has to accept that the Holocaust can be studied in a way that sees Jewish history during this period as an integral part of Poland’s history under the Nazi occupation. One has to agree that the horrific Jewish tragedy that occurred during World War II can and should be understood in part by simultaneously examining – while noting both the differences and the common elements – what befell Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and others who were murdered alongside Jews in the vast genocidal expanse that occupied Poland became.
    To set up a museum with a humanist, universal and inclusive message about the Holocaust, one has to accept an approach that sees the Warsaw Ghetto – a horrific terror zone that caused the deaths and physical and spiritual collapse of hundreds of thousands of Jews – as one element of a much bigger terror zone in which hundreds of thousands of other people suffered and fought for their existence: the Poles who lived on the other side of the wall.
    The obvious differences between the fates of these two peoples don’t absolve the research historian, or a museum depicting the history of this period, from presenting this complex message and demanding that visitors to the museum grapple with its lessons.
    Therefore, the new Warsaw Ghetto Museum won’t be Yad Vashem. It will be a Holocaust museum in the heart of the Polish capital that remembers the fate of the 450,000 Jews, Warsaw residents and refugees brought to the ghetto.
    After all, the vast majority of them were Jewish citizens of Poland. That’s how they lived, that’s how they suffered, and that’s how they should be remembered after being murdered by the Nazis.
    Prof. Daniel Blatman is a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the chief historian for the Warsaw Ghetto Museum.

  • In starkest warning yet, EU states say Trump’s Mideast peace plan risks ’being condemned to failure’

    Eight EU member states say ahead of the plan’s publication that any proposal must take into account ’internationally agreed parameters’ – namely, a two-state solution

    Noa Landau SendSend me email alerts
    Dec 19, 2018 6

    https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-eu-states-warn-trump-s-mideast-plan-risks-being-condemned-to-failu

    Eight European Union member states issued on Tuesday their starkest warning ahead of the publication of U.S. President Donald Trump’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan.

    The joint statement by France, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany and Italy follows a United Nations Security Council session on the situation in the region during which outgoing U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley praised the “thoughtful” plan.
    The EU states, all members of the Security Council, warned that any peace plan that would disregard “internationally agreed parameters,” namely a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital of both states, “would risk being condemned to failure.”

    >> Netanyahu is risking Israel’s interests by riding the European nationalist tiger | Analysis ■ U.S. evangelicals out their faith in Netanyahu as Trump readies Mideast peace plan
    They also reiterated “the EU’s strong continued commitment to the internationally agreed parameters for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East based on international law, relevant UN resolutions and previous agreements.”
    The statement went on to read: “The EU is truly convinced that the achievement of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital of both States, that meets Israeli and Palestinian security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, ends the occupation and resolves all final status issues, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 2334 and previous agreements, is the only viable and realistic way to end the conflict and to achieve just and lasting peace.”
    The member states added that the EU “will continue to work towards that end with both parties, and its regional and international partners”, and called for restring “a political horizon” on this issue.
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    Nikki Haley said earlier Tuesday that the proposed U.S. plan to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians “brings new elements to the discussion, taking advantage of the new world of technology that we live in.” However, she gave no details of what was in the plan.

  • Un intéressant éditorial du New York Times contre les tentatives du Sénat américain de criminaliser BDS

    Opinion | Curbing Speech in the Name of Helping Israel - The New York Times

    A Senate bill aims to punish those who boycott Israel over its settlement policy. There are better solutions.

    By The Editorial Board
    The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/opinion/editorials/israel-bds.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

    One of the more contentious issues involving Israel in recent years is now before Congress, testing America’s bedrock principles of freedom of speech and political dissent.

    It is a legislative proposal that would impose civil and criminal penalties on American companies and organizations that participate in boycotts supporting Palestinian rights and opposing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

    The aim is to cripple the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as B.D.S., which has gathered steam in recent years despite bitter opposition from the Israeli government and its supporters around the world.

    The proposal’s chief sponsors, Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, and Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, want to attach it to the package of spending bills that Congress needs to pass before midnight Friday to keep the government fully funded.
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    The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a leading pro-Israel lobby group, strongly favors the measure.

    J Street, a progressive American pro-Israel group that is often at odds with Aipac and that supports a two-state peace solution, fears that the legislation could have a harmful effect, in part by implicitly treating the settlements and Israel the same, instead of as distinct entities. Much of the world considers the settlements, built on land that Israel captured in the 1967 war, to be a violation of international law.

    Although the Senate sponsors vigorously disagree, the legislation, known as the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, is clearly part of a widening attempt to silence one side of the debate. That is not in the interests of Israel, the United States or their shared democratic traditions.

    Critics of the legislation, including the American Civil Liberties Union and several Palestinian rights organizations, say the bill would violate the First Amendment and penalize political speech.

    The hard-line policies of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, including expanding settlements and an obvious unwillingness to seriously pursue a peace solution that would allow Palestinians their own state, have provoked a backlash and are fueling the boycott movement.
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    It’s not just Israel’s adversaries who find the movement appealing. Many devoted supporters of Israel, including many American Jews, oppose the occupation of the West Bank and refuse to buy products of the settlements in occupied territories. Their right to protest in this way must be vigorously defended.

    The same is true of Palestinians. They are criticized when they resort to violence, and rightly so. Should they be deprived of nonviolent economic protest as well? The United States frequently employs sanctions as a political tool, including against North Korea, Iran and Russia.

    Mr. Cardin and Mr. Portman say their legislation merely builds on an existing law, the Export Control Reform Act, which bars participation in the Arab League boycott of Israel, and is needed to protect American companies from “unsanctioned foreign boycotts.”

    They are especially concerned that the United Nations Human Rights Council is compiling a database of companies doing business in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem, a tactic Senate aides say parallels the Arab League boycott.

    But there are problems with their arguments, critics say. The existing law aimed to protect American companies from the Arab League boycott because it was coercive, requiring companies to boycott Israel as a condition of doing business with Arab League member states. A company’s motivation for engaging in that boycott was economic — continued trade relations — not exercising free speech rights.

    By contrast, the Cardin-Portman legislation would extend the existing prohibition to cover boycotts against Israel and other countries friendly to the United States when the boycotts are called for by an international government organization, like the United Nations or the European Union.

    Neither of those organizations has called for a boycott, but supporters of Israel apparently fear that the Human Rights Council database is a step in that direction.
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    Civil rights advocates, on the other hand, say that anyone who joins a boycott would be acting voluntarily — neither the United Nations nor the European Union has the authority to compel such action — and the decision would be an exercise of political expression in opposition to Israeli policies.

    Responding to criticism, the senators amended their original proposal to explicitly state that none of the provisions shall infringe upon any First Amendment right and to penalize violators with fines rather than jail time.

    But the American Civil Liberties Union says the First Amendment wording is nonbinding and “leaves intact key provisions which would impose civil and criminal penalties on companies, small business owners, nonprofits and even people acting on their behalf who engage in or otherwise support certain political boycotts.”

    While the sponsors say their bill is narrowly targeted at commercial activity, “such assurances ring hollow in light of the bill’s intended purpose, which is to suppress voluntary participation in disfavored political boycotts,” the A.C.L.U. said in a letter to lawmakers.

    Even the Anti-Defamation League, which has lobbied for the proposal, seems to agree. A 2016 internal ADL memo, disclosed by The Forward last week, calls anti-B.D.S. laws “ineffective, unworkable, unconstitutional and bad for the Jewish community.”

    In a properly functioning Congress, a matter of such moment would be openly debated. Instead, Mr. Cardin and Mr. Portman are trying to tack the B.D.S. provision onto the lame-duck spending bill, meaning it could by enacted into law in the 11th-hour crush to keep the government fully open.

    The anti-B.D.S. initiative began in 2014 at the state level before shifting to Congress and is part of a larger, ominous trend in which the political space for opposing Israel is shrinking. After ignoring the B.D.S. movement, Israel is now aggressively pushing against it, including branding it anti-Semitic and adopting a law barring foreigners who support it from entering that country.
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    One United States case shows how counterproductive the effort is. It involves Bahia Amawi, an American citizen of Palestinian descent who was told she could no longer work as an elementary school speech pathologist in Austin, Tex., because she refused to sign a state-imposed oath that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel. She filed a lawsuit this week in federal court, arguing that the Texas law “chills constitutionally protected political advocacy in support of Palestine.”

    Any anti-boycott legislation enacted by Congress is also likely to face a court challenge. It would be more constructive if political leaders would focus on the injustice and finding viable solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than reinforcing divisions between the two parties and promoting legislation that raises free speech concerns.

  • BALLAST | #Violences_policières : un #élu (#PCF) raconte
    https://www.revue-ballast.fr/violences-policieres-un-elu-raconte
    @davduf
    #ambiance_dictature_fasciste
    #chiens_du_capital

    « Un policier me lance : Toi, le connard en écharpe, si tu dégages pas, je t’explose. Il brandissait son #Flash_Ball à hauteur de mon visage. »
    #lbd

    « Mon collègue Ibrahima Traoré, élu au Conseil départemental, s’est interposé et s’est fait molester. »

    Un policier municipal a tenté de mettre un coup de matraque et, ratant son coup, a crié : « Reviens, je vais te la mettre dans le cul. » Les parents étaient extrêmement choqués. L’élu en question a demandé au maire, au cours du conseil municipal, une enquête administrative et des sanctions contre ce policier, identifié. Nous avons, pour notre part, publié un communiqué appelant à ouvrir les portes du #lycée, interdire l’usage des armes contre les élèves et envoyer des médiateurs. Pas de réponse… Un policier, responsable départemental du syndicat Alliance, a pour sa part déclaré au Parisien, en date du 11 décembre : « Ce n’est pas parce que des casseurs se réfugient à côté d’élus qu’on n’ira pas les chercher. »

  • Délires d’extrême droite du Kepel

    Le Figaro Premium - Gilles Kepel : « Pour les islamistes, la fête de Noël
    qui approche est impie »

    http://premium.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/2018/12/12/31003-20181212ARTFIG00287-gilles-kepel-pour-les-islamistes-la-fete-

    Il faut se souvenir que le soulèvement des « gilets jaunes » est parti d’une augmentation insupportable du prix du carburant liée aux taxes, mais aussi aux fluctuations du marché pétrolier. La situation politique et sociale dans toute l’Europe a aussi été marquée par la révolte des classes populaires paupérisées à la suite des gigantesques flux migratoires causés par les guerres civiles qui ont suivi les printemps arabes.

  • Americans Are Increasingly Critical of Israel – Foreign Policy
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/11/americans-are-increasingly-critical-of-israel

    The firing of Professor Marc Lamont Hill as a CNN contributor after his speech at a United Nations event commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People has generated considerable debate about free speech that goes beyond the case itself—what is legitimate criticism of Israel, and what constitutes anti-Semitism. A recent University of Maryland public-opinion poll indicates that many aspects of Hill’s views are widely shared among the American public—and that these views are not reflective of anti-Semitic attitudes, or even of hostility toward Israel as such. On these issues, there is a gap between the mainstream media and U.S. politicians on the one hand, and the American public on the other.

    While many issues were raised about Hill, the part of his speech that received the most criticism was his call for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” which was seen by some as calling for the end of Israel. Hill himself clarified almost immediately that “my reference to ‘river to the sea’ was not a call to destroy anything or anyone. It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank/Gaza.” In an op-ed he penned later, he acknowledged that the language he chose may have contributed to the misperception that he was advocating violence against Jewish people—and apologized for that.

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    But, perceptions aside, are Professor Hill’s views exceptional?

    The first issue to consider is advocacy for a one-state solution, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, with equal citizenship for all, which would in effect threaten Israel’s status as a Jewish-majority state, as Arabs might soon outnumber Jews on that territory. In fact, this solution has considerable support among the American public, as revealed in a University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll, fielded by Nielson Scarborough, which was conducted in September and October among a nationally representative sample of 2,352 Americans, with a 2 percent margin of error. When asked what outcome they want U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to seek in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Americans are split between one state with equal citizenship and two states coexisting side by side: 35 percent say they want a one-state solution outright, while 36 percent advocate a two-state solution, 11 percent support maintaining the occupation, and 8 percent back annexation without equal citizenship. Among those between 18 and 34 years old, support for one state climbs to 42 percent.

    Furthermore, most of those who advocate a two-state solution tend to choose one state with equal citizenship if the two-state solution were no longer possible; the last time the survey asked this question, in November 2017, 55 percent of two-state solution backers said they would switch to one state in such circumstances. Bolstering this result is Americans’ views on the Jewishness and democracy of Israel: If the two-state solution were no longer possible, 64 percent of Americans would choose the democracy of Israel, even if it meant that Israel would cease to be a politically Jewish state, over the Jewishness of Israel, if the latter meant that Palestinians would not be fully equal.

    When one considers that many Israelis and Palestinians, as well as many Middle East experts, already believe that a two-state solution is no longer possible, especially given the large expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, it’s not hard to see why more people would be drawn to a one-state solution—or see the advocacy for two states as legitimizing the unjust status quo through the promise of something unattainable.

    Second, while most Americans have probably never heard of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement that Hill backs, our poll shows that a large number of Americans support imposing sanctions or more serious measures if Israeli settlements in the West Bank continue to expand: 40 percent of Americans support such measures, including a majority of Democrats (56 percent). This comes as senators, including Democrats, are proposing, despite continued ACLU opposition, to delegitimize and criminalize voluntary boycotts of Israel or settlements through the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, while not differentiating between Israeli settlements in the West Bank from those in Israel proper.

    Third, there is a growing sense that the Israeli government has “too much influence” on U.S. politics and policies: 38 percent of all Americans (including 55 percent of Democrats, and 44 percent of those under 35 years old), say the Israeli government has too much influence on the U.S. government, compared with 9 percent who say it has “too little influence” and 48 percent who say it has “about the right level of influence.” While the number of Jewish participants in the sample (115) is too small to generalize with confidence, it is notable that their views fall along the same lines of the national trend: 37 percent say Israel has too much influence, 54 percent say it has the right level, and 7 percent say it has too little influence.

    These results indicate neither a rise in anti-Semitism nor even a rise in hostility toward Israel as such. As analysis of previous polls has shown, many who espouse these opinions base them on a principled worldview that emphasizes human rights and international law.

    Keep in mind that, in a polarized America with deep political antagonism, it’s hardly surprising that Americans would have sharply divided views on Israelis and Palestinians. What many read as a rising anti-Israeli sentiment among Democrats is mischaracterized; it reflects anger toward Israeli policies—and increasingly, with the values projected by the current Israeli government.

    On the question of whether Americans want the Trump administration to lean toward Israel, toward the Palestinians, or toward neither side, there is a vast difference between Republicans and Democrats in the new poll: While a majority of Republicans want Washington to lean toward Israel outright (57 percent), a substantial majority of Democrats (82 percent) want it to lean toward neither side, with 8 percent wanting it to lean toward the Palestinians and 7 percent toward Israel. Still, it’s inaccurate to label the Democrats’ even-handedness as “anti-Israel.”

  • Le gilet jaune interdit de vente en Égypte
    Valérie Cantié, France Inter, le 11 décembre 2018
    https://www.franceinter.fr/monde/le-gilet-jaune-interdit-de-vente-en-egypte

    Les autorités égyptiennes restreignent la vente de gilets jaunes par peur d’une envie de l’opposition de copier les « gilets jaunes » français.

    El-Sissi a récemment accusé la révolution de 2011 d’avoir entraîné son pays dans une crise à la fois économique et politique. Les manifestations sont sensées être interdites en Égypte et El-Sissi rappelle souvent que la dureté est nécessaire à la stabilité du pays. Depuis son arrivée au pouvoir, il n’y a pas eu de grande manifestation dans le pays malgré la crise.

    C’est cohérent avec cette autre « information » : Les frères musulmans seraient derrière les gilets jaunes, d’après une consultante Cnews
    https://seenthis.net/messages/741925

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxNvKR14zss

    #Gilets_Jaunes #France #Egypte

  • Is Saudi Arabia repaying Trump for Khashoggi by attacking Linda Sarsour?

    A Saudi-owned website considered close to the royal family claimed that Sarsour, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are agents of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood who declared a ’jihad’ on Trump

    Allison Kaplan Sommer
    Dec 10, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-how-saudi-arabia-is-repaying-trump-for-his-support-on-khashoggi-1.

    There is nothing earth-shattering about seeing Women’s March leader and Arab-American activist Linda Sarsour criticized as a dangerous Islamist by the conservative right and pro-Israel advocates in the United States. But the latest attack on the activist comes from a new and somewhat surprising source: Saudi Arabia.
    Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned, pan-Arab news channel closely linked to the country’s royal family and widely viewed as reflecting Saudi foreign policy, published an article Sunday strongly suggesting that Sarsour and two incoming Muslim congresswomen are puppets planted by the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar to undermine the Trump administration.
    The feature, which profiles Sarsour, seems to cast her as the latest proxy figure in the kingdom’s bitter dispute with Qatar, and its bid to strengthen ties and curry favor with the White House.
    It also focused on two Democratic politicians whom Sarsour actively campaigned for in the 2018 midterms: Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, who are set to be the first-ever Muslim congresswomen when the House reconvenes in January.

    The Al Arabiya story on Linda Sarsour’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood, December 9, 2018.Screengrab
    Headlined “Details of calls to attack Trump by US ‘Muslim Sisters’ allied to Brotherhood,” the article is light on actual details but heavy on insinuation.
    Activists like Sarsour, and politicians like Tlaib and Omar, the Saudi publication wrote, are “mujahideen” (a term used to describe those involved in jihad) – fighting against “tyrants and opponents of Trump’s foreign policies.”

    The story says the policies they are fighting include “the siege of Iran, the fight against political Islam groups, and [Trump’s] choice of Saudi Arabia under the leadership of King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a strategic ally.”
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    Tlaib and Omar, Al Arabiya asserts, are agents designed to “restore” control of political Islamist movements on the U.S. government by attacking Trump. The article says this effort is being directed by Sarsour – who, it writes, is purportedly funded and controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood - a claim it fails to provide any clear basis for.
    Tamara Cofman Wittes, a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, Washington, says it should come as little surprise to those familiar with the region that “a state-owned Arabic news outlet would publish conspiracy theories about people whose views don’t accord with those of the government that funds it.”
    Al Arabiya, based in Dubai, but Saudi-owned, was founded in 2002 as a counter to Qatar’s popular Al Jazeera TV station – which frequently runs material sharply critical of the Saudis – as well as other Arabic media outlets critical of Saudi influence and supportive of political Islam.
    The article comes as rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar has heated up in recent times, with Qatar’s emir skipping this weekend’s Gulf Cooperation Council summit hosted by Saudi Arabia, which has led a diplomatic war on its neighbor for the past 18 months.
    Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and non-GCC member Egypt cut diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar in June 2017, charging that the country supports terrorism. Qatar denies the charges and says the Saudi boycott aims to curtail its sovereignty. Last week, the Gulf nation announced it was withdrawing from the OPEC oil cartel.
    Islamists vs Islamists
    “Democrats’ battle against the Republican control of the U.S. Congress led to an alliance with political Islamist movements in order to restore their control on government, pushing Muslim candidates and women activists of immigrant minorities onto the electoral scene,” the report states.
    The “common ground” between Omar and Tlaib, the article adds, is to battle Trump’s foreign policy “starting from the sanctions on Iran to the isolation of the Muslim Brotherhood and all movements of political Islam. Those sponsoring and supporting the two Muslim women to reach the U.S. Congress adopted a tactic to infiltrate through their immigrant and black minority communities in general, and women’s groups in particular.
    The article ties Sarsour to Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood through multiple associations with the Arab American Association of New York, which “was created by Palestinian Ahmed Jaber, a member of the Qatar International Foundation responsible for funding the association,” and also her attendance at an annual meeting of the International Network of Muslim Brotherhood in North America and Canada in 2016.
    The article compares Sarsour’s rhetoric to that “used by Muslim Brotherhood teachings and in the views of Sayyid Qutb, a scholar and co-founder of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, as well as from Abul A’la Maududi’s books ‘Islam and Ignorance’ and ‘Fundamentals of Islam.’
    “From all that is mentioned, we can touch the influence of Muslim Brotherhood in shaping the thoughts of American activist Linda Sarsour and consequently her declaring her ‘jihad’ against U.S. President Donald Trump, in addition to her call for the application of ‘Sharia,’ the rule of Islam in the United States of America,” the piece asserts.
    No one knows for sure whether Al Arabiya received direct orders from the Saudi government to attack Sarsour, Tlaib, Omar and other politically active Muslim women on the American left.
    Those familiar with Middle East media say conspiracy-minded attacks against figures in American politics aren’t particularly unusual in Arabic,
    but what is unique about this article is the fact it appeared in English on the network’s website.
    It seems to be a highly creative attempt to somehow repay the Trump White House as it deals with the fallout from the Jamal Khashoggi assassination. As Trump continues to take heat for staying close to the Saudis, they, in turn, are demonstrating their loyalty with their willingness to vilify people who were President Barack Obama’s supporters and are now Trump’s political enemies – even if they wear a hijab.

    Allison Kaplan Sommer
    Haaretz Correspondent