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J’ai pas accès à l’article entier mais quand un sioniste américain, passé par l’aliyah et par Tsahal, vient écrire dans Haaretz qu’il s’est trompé et qu’Israël est bien un état d’ #apartheid, c’est un sacré signe. Entre la radicalisation d’Israël et le long travail des militants anticolonialistes, le mot d’ordre de fin de l’apartheid a finalement gagné une véritable légitimité. Finie l’époque d’Oslo et le mythe des deux camps partageant leur responsabilité. Les serviteurs de Netanyahu auront beau faire tous les procès en antisémitisme qu’ils veulent, Israël devient indéfendable.

It’s Time to Admit It. Israeli Policy Is What It Is: Apartheid - A Special Place in Hell -
I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. Not anymore.

Bradley Burston Aug 17, 2015

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What I’m about to write will not come easily for me.

I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country’s settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply.

I’m not one of those people any more. Not after the last few weeks.

Not after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a family, murdering an 18-month-old boy and his father, burning his mother over 90 percent of her body - only to have Israel’s government rule the family ineligible for the financial support and compensation automatically granted Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included.
I can’t pretend anymore. Not after Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, explicitly declaring stone-throwing to be terrorism, drove the passage of a bill holding stone-throwers liable to up to 20 years in prison.
The law did not specify that it targeted only Palestinian stone-throwers. It didn’t have to.
Just one week later, pro-settlement Jews hurled rocks, furniture, and bottles of urine at Israeli soldiers and police at a West Bank settlement, and in response, Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rewarded the Jewish stone-throwers with a pledge to build hundreds of new settlement homes.

This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for Us, and one to throw at Them. Apartheid.
We are what we have created. We are what we do, and the injury we do in a thousand ways to millions of others. We are what we turn a blind eye to. Our Israel is what it has become: Apartheid.
There was a time when I drew a distinction between Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies and this country I have loved so long.
No more. Every single day we wake to yet another outrage.
I used to be a person who wanted to believe that there were moral and democratic limits – or, failing that, pragmatic constraints - to how low the prime minister was willing to go, how far he was willing to bend to the proud proponents of apartheid, in order to bolster his power.

Not any more. Not after Danny Danon.

Not when the prime minister’s choice to represent all of us, all of Israel at the United Nations, is a man who proposed legislation to annex the West Bank, effectively creating Bantustans for Palestinians who would live there stateless, deprived of basic human rights.
The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations, the man who will speak to the Third World on our behalf, is the same man who called African asylum seekers in Israel “a national plague.”
The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations is the same politician who proposed legislation aimed at crippling left-leaning NGOs which come to the aid of Palestinian civilians and oppose the institution of occupation, while giving the government a green light to keep financially supporting right-wing NGOs suspected of channeling funds to support violence by pro-settlement Jews.
What does apartheid mean, in Israeli terms?
Apartheid means fundamentalist clergy spearheading the deepening of segregation, inequality, supremacism, and subjugation.
Apartheid means Likud lawmaker and former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter calling Sunday for separate, segregated roads and highways for Jews and Arabs in the West Bank.
Apartheid means hundreds of attacks by settlers targeting Palestinian property, livelihoods, and lives, without convictions, charges, or even suspects. Apartheid means uncounted Palestinians jailed without trial, shot dead without trial, shot dead in the back while fleeing and without just cause.
Apartheid means Israeli officials using the army, police, military courts, and draconian administrative detentions, not only to head off terrorism, but to curtail nearly every avenue of non-violent protest available to Palestinians.
Late last month, over the explicit protest of the head of the Israeli Medical Association and human rights groups combatting torture, Israel enacted the government’s “Law to Prevent Harm Caused by Hunger Strikes.” The law allows force-feeding of prisoners, even if the prisoner refuses, if the striker’s life is deemed in danger.
Netanyahu’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who pushed hard for passage of the bill, has called hunger strikes by Palestinian security prisoners jailed for months without charge or trial “a new type of suicide terrorist attack through which they will threaten the State of Israel”.
Only under a system as warped as apartheid, does a government need to label and treat non-violence as terrorism.
Years ago, in apartheid South Africa, Jews who loved their country and hated its policies, took courageous roles in defeating with non-violence a regime of racism and denial of human rights.
May we in Israel follow their example.

It’s time to admit it. Israeli policy is what it is: Apartheid - Bradley Burston Aug 17, 2015 2:23 PM
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What I’m about to write will not come easily for me.

I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country’s settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply.

I’m not one of those people any more. Not after the last few weeks.

Not after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a family, murdering an 18-month-old boy and his father, burning his mother over 90 percent of her body - only to have Israel’s government rule the family ineligible for the financial support and compensation automatically granted Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included.

I can’t pretend anymore. Not after Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, explicitly declaring stone-throwing to be terrorism, drove the passage of a bill holding stone-throwers liable to up to 20 years in prison.

The law did not specify that it targeted only Palestinian stone-throwers. It didn’t have to.

Just one week later, pro-settlement Jews hurled rocks, furniture, and bottles of urine at Israeli soldiers and police at a West Bank settlement, and in response, Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rewarded the Jewish stone-throwers with a pledge to build hundreds of new settlement homes.

This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for Us, and one to throw at Them. Apartheid.

We are what we have created. We are what we do, and the injury we do in a thousand ways to millions of others. We are what we turn a blind eye to. Our Israel is what it has become: Apartheid.

There was a time when I drew a distinction between Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies and this country I have loved so long.

No more. Every single day we wake to yet another outrage.

I used to be a person who wanted to believe that there were moral and democratic limits – or, failing that, pragmatic constraints - to how low the prime minister was willing to go, how far he was willing to bend to the proud proponents of apartheid, in order to bolster his power.

Not any more. Not after Danny Danon.

Not when the prime minister’s choice to represent all of us, all of Israel at the United Nations, is a man who proposed legislation to annex the West Bank, effectively creating Bantustans for Palestinians who would live there stateless, deprived of basic human rights.

The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations, the man who will speak to the Third World on our behalf, is the same man who called African asylum seekers in Israel “a national plague.”

The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations is the same politician who proposed legislation aimed at crippling left-leaning NGOs which come to the aid of Palestinian civilians and oppose the institution of occupation, while giving the government a green light to keep financially supporting right-wing NGOs suspected of channeling funds to support violence by pro-settlement Jews.

What does apartheid mean, in Israeli terms?

Apartheid means fundamentalist clergy spearheading the deepening of segregation, inequality, supremacism, and subjugation.

Apartheid means Likud lawmaker and former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter calling Sunday for separate, segregated roads and highways for Jews and Arabs in the West Bank.

Apartheid means hundreds of attacks by settlers targeting Palestinian property, livelihoods, and lives, without convictions, charges, or even suspects. Apartheid means uncounted Palestinians jailed without trial, shot dead without trial, shot dead in the back while fleeing and without just cause.

Apartheid means Israeli officials using the army, police, military courts, and draconian administrative detentions, not only to head off terrorism, but to curtail nearly every avenue of non-violent protest available to Palestinians.

Late last month, over the explicit protest of the head of the Israeli Medical Association and human rights groups combatting torture, Israel enacted the government’s “Law to Prevent Harm Caused by Hunger Strikes.” The law allows force-feeding of prisoners, even if the prisoner refuses, if the striker’s life is deemed in danger.

Netanyahu’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who pushed hard for passage of the bill, has called hunger strikes by Palestinian security prisoners jailed for months without charge or trial “a new type of suicide terrorist attack through which they will threaten the State of Israel”.

Only under a system as warped as apartheid, does a government need to label and treat non-violence as terrorism.

Years ago, in apartheid South Africa, Jews who loved their country and hated its policies, took courageous roles in defeating with non-violence a regime of racism and denial of human rights.

May we in Israel follow their example.

Obama Accused of Using ’dark, Nasty Stuff’ Against Jewish Critics Like Schumer West of Eden Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News
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Obama - I kid you not – was using “dark, nasty stuff we might expect to hear at a white power rally” according to the Jewish [Tablet] magazine.

La Cour suprême américaine rejette une proposition d’obliger le président à reconnaître Jérusalem comme capitale d’Israël

U.S. Supreme Court decision : Small step for presidency, big blow for Jerusalem - West of Eden
The massive effort to use Zivotofsky’s passport petition for recognition of Israel’s capital only made things worse.
By Chemi Shalev | Jun. 9, 2015
Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
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The U.S. Constitution gave the president the authority “to receive ambassadors and other public ministers.” Ever since the Founding Fathers first thrashed it out in 1793 over George Washington’s wish to muzzle an irksome envoy of revolutionary France, the so-called “reception clause” has been interpreted as giving the President wide powers in making foreign policy. Monday’s Supreme Court decision further cemented his (or her) exclusive authority over recognition of foreign countries and their sovereignty over geographical areas, or, in this case, lack thereof.

By a 6-3 majority, the Court decided, that this presidential prerogative encompasses American-issued passports and their contents. Therefore, the judges noted, a clause in a 2002 Congressional bill that sought to compel the administration to allow Jerusalem-born Americans to have “Israel” registered in their passports as their country of birth was unconstitutional. The court rejected the petition brought by Benjamin Zivotofsky, born shortly after the law was enacted, ruling that his passport would continue to list a country-less Jerusalem as his place of birth.

The decision had nothing to do with the specific legal status of Jerusalem or with the consistent refusal of successive U.S. administrations – from Harry Truman through Ronald Reagan and George Bush all the way to Barack Obama – to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the city. Rather, the judges dealt with the eternal dilemmas of the American constitutional regime, including separation of powers and the conduct of foreign affairs: Where the constitution doesn’t grant it a foothold, the judges ruled, Congress cannot barge in.

It was not a victory for Barack Obama, but for the office of the presidency, and a limited one at that: The Court did not rule, as administration lawyers had suggested, that the president has exclusive control of the country’s entire foreign policy. Thus, for example, the decision has little legal bearing on the upcoming battle over the Iran nuclear deal: First, because the Constitution gives Congress considerable say about foreign treaties and second, because that issue was dealt with in the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act legislated last month.

Legalities and technicalities aside, however, the decision was nonetheless a considerable public relations blow for Israel and for perceptions of its status in Jerusalem. Together with myriad Jewish organizations fighting for the cause, Israel had sought to exploit Zivotofsky’s understandable request to have his country of birth registered in his passport, conducting a legal battle that lasted over a decade, consumed millions of dollars, raised hopes sky high and ended in a thundering crash. The world’s media are bound to dwell less on the debates between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the conduct of America’s foreign policy and more on the ruling’s bottom line. If you hadn’t known until now that Israel’s greatest ally refuses to recognize its sovereignty over its capital in either East or West Jerusalem, you’re certainly aware of it now.

Israel and the Jewish groups who turned the Zivotofsky case into a cause celebre turned out to be too clever by half. They thought that by combining strong Congressional support, persuasive amicus briefs submitted by well-respected Jewish groups and a personal story bound to spark sympathy they might circumvent long standing U.S. policy and get in through the back door. A clear majority of the judges – including all the liberal ones, whose positions may have been colored, for all we know, by their attitude towards current Israeli policies – decided to slam the door on their toes. 

Most observers believe that Israel has already lost the battle over a nuclear agreement with Iran as well, if and when one is signed – it just doesn’t know it yet, or at least is unwilling to concede. It’s been a recurring theme in recent years, especially in the government’s ties with America: Why try to cut your losses when you can emerge from the fight not only bloodied and beaten, but tarred and feathered as well?

The obvious and curious South African angles of Israel’s FIFA challenge - West of Eden - -
The irony of history: Former ANC leader and anti-apartheid activist Tokyo Sexwale is pegged to monitor Israeli policies towards Palestinian footballers.
By Chemi Shalev | May 30, 2015 Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
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Former South African cabinet minister and African National Congress (ANC) leader Tokyo Sexwale figured prominently in Friday’s political drama at international soccer’s FIFA conference in Zurich. Palestinian football chief Jibril Rajoub explicitly mentioned Sexwale as having played a critical role in his decision to withdraw the motion to have Israel expelled. And FIFA President Sepp Blatter, shortly before being reelected to a fifth term in office, unilaterally appointed Sexwale from the podium to head the monitoring committee that will deal with Palestinian grievances, including the demand that five West Bank teams be barred from participating in official Israeli soccer leagues.

In their rush to declare victory following the frustration of Rajoub’s plan to expel Israel outright, most Israeli politicians and analysts seemed to ignore the potential symbolism and irony of putting a prominent anti-apartheid activist to adjudicate Palestinian claims of Israeli racism and discrimination. The lapse is significant in light of the fact that Palestinians and the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement view the international boycott of apartheid South Africa – in which sports played a pivotal role – as a precedent and inspiration for their own anti-Israeli campaigns.

In fact, though white South Africans were stung far more by subsequent boycotts in rugby, cricket and the Olympics, soccer was one of the first arenas in which non-white South Africa together with the rising Africa-Asian bloc of non-aligned nations scored initial victories against the apartheid regime. FIFA’s first suspension of South Africa in 1961 was temporarily lifted at the behest of Blatter’s apartheid-condoning predecessor, the English Stanley Rous, but was shortly reinstated thereafter until 1976, when the Pretoria regime was expelled altogether following the Soweto Uprisings. South Africa was only reinstated in 1992, after it abolished apartheid.

Sexwale’s role in Israel’s FIFA drama seems far from straightforward. The 62-year-old Soweto-born ANC leader, who spent 13 years alongside Nelson Mandela in the Robben Island prison, is a former provincial premier, presidential candidate and cabinet minister. As head of his own foundation’s Global Watch, dedicated to fighting discrimination in sports, Sexwale recently toured the West Bank together with Rajoub in order to see the plight of Palestinian footballers first hand. But despite the Israeli government’s reluctance to facilitate his visit as well as a reported scuffle with Israeli soldiers in Hebron, Sexwale’s summation was markedly evenhanded: “What we saw in Palestine in relation to what is happening in Israel is shocking. Palestine is a swollen cheek with tears, but so is Israel. They are two cheeks on the same face, and a resolution to the problem has to be found beyond sport.” 

Sexwale’s relationship with Blatter himself seems equally complex: In 2011 he helped save Blatter’s career by allowing himself to be photographed with the FIFA president, who was facing harsh criticism at the time after claiming that there was no racism in soccer, and if there was, it could be solved with handshake. More intriguing and current, however, is the fact that Sexwale was a member of the South African organizing committee of the 2010 World Cup that is now figuring prominently in the U.S. indictments of top FIFA officials on charges of corruption. While Sexwale has since assured South Africans that they were justly and legally awarded the right to host the coveted games, speculation is rampant about the identities of “Co-Conspirator #15” and “Co-Conspirator #16”, two “high-ranking South African football and government officials” who are suspected of offering cash for votes in order to make sure the World Cup was held in South Africa.

According to the indictments, the two suspects served on both the 2010 World Cup organizing committee and on the 2006 South African World Cup bid committee. The reports in South Africa suggest there are only two other officials, in addition to Sexwale, who fit the bill.

Sexwale also has another Israeli connection: according to press reports, he made a fortune at one time in the diamond and mining business and was involved in a convoluted joint venture in the Congo with controversial Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler, who has himself been at the focus of several criminal inquiries, including those related to former Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. And his financial records have now been subpoenaed by his one time advocate and subsequent wife, with whom he is now embroiled in a widely covered and messy divorce.

Politics and sports

Though most historians dispute the narrative that economic sanctions “brought South Africa to its knees," as its proponents claimed, no one denies the devastating influence of the boycott in sports on the white public’s morale: In a 1977 poll, white South Africans listed the lack of international sports as one of the three most damaging aspects of apartheid. Sports are important everywhere, of course, but in mid-20th century South Africa, as in Australia and New Zealand at the time, they often attained a semi-religious status. In apartheid South Africa, the all-white teams were a source of national pride and racial defiance.

Throughout its 30-year battle to maintain racially pure squads, the South African government used a slogan frequently uttered by Israeli officials and their FIFA defenders in recent days: “Keep politics out of sports.” Their non-white challengers, also South African, countered with a slogan that Palestinians have also adapted and adopted as their own: “No normal sports in an abnormal society.”

Of course, despite the efforts of BDS supporters to draw a direct analogy between the two, Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians, arguable immorality notwithstanding, is no successor to South Africa’s racially motivated white supremacist regime. In fact, without detracting in any way from the existence of rampant racism in Israeli soccer in general and in teams like Beitar Jerusalem in particular, Israeli Jews and Arabs probably mix and collaborate in the Israeli football leagues more than they do in most other sectors of society. And while countless Israelis are soccer crazy, sports in Israel is viewed as no more than a hobby, as its international results attest. If FIFA had expelled Israel on Friday it would have dealt a stinging blow to Israel’s national pride, not necessarily to its sporting convictions.

Nonetheless, the fear that Israel has reached the point that expulsion by FIFA seemed possible if not imminent is an ominous harbinger of things to come. As the South African precedent proves, sporting arenas offer infinite possibilities for activists to hassle Israel and its teams, in professional associations, official tournaments and bilateral matches, both official and friendly.

Israelis have conveniently forgotten that their national soccer teams had already been placed in unofficial quarantine in the Asian arena after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and were only accepted to Europe’s UEFA soccer group in 1994 in the wake of the goodwill generated by the previous year’s Oslo Accords. With the current government’s record on peacemaking and general popularity, however, the credit accrued then seems to have finally run out.

Don’t advocate for Israel one more day, until you’ve done this - A Special Place in Hell

Whatever your politics, you should know this: These soldiers and the people of Breaking the Silence are Israeli patriots. They are advocating for Israel.
By Bradley Burston | May 5, 2015 | Haaretz
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You don’t know me. I’m just a guy from California who once fell in love with Israel, and stayed. But if you’re a person who advocates for Israel in California or anywhere else outside of here, I have a message for you.

It’s the same message whether you belong to StandWithUs or J Street, the Republican Jewish Coalition or the New Israel Fund, AIPAC or Americans for Peace Now, the ZOA or Ameinu: Before you advocate for Israel one more day, you owe it to yourself and to Israel to do this: Download and open a report called “This is How We Fought in Gaza: Soldiers’ testimonies and photographs from Operation ’Protective Edge’ (2014).”

Read it until you can’t go on. Then read it some more. Don’t go back to advocating for Israel until you’ve read it to the end. It’s not that long. Length is not the problem. Nor is language. It’s just people talking.

Honesty is the problem. The calmly shocking honesty of scores of brave and deeply scarred soldiers who served in that war last summer. It won’t be easy to read this, nor should it be.

Whoever you are, whatever your politics, you need to know what happened in Gaza. You need to be able to begin to explain – first of all to yourself – why at least half, and perhaps many more than half, of the some 2,200 Palestinians killed in the war, were civilians, many of them children.

You need to begin to sense the scope of the devastation in large areas of the Strip, in case after case the direct result of IDF policy and directives from the higher echelons of government.

You need to begin to know what happened. You need answers. For your own sake.

When you advocate for Israel, you need to make up your own mind. You need know that the answers you give are honest. Real. Complete.

There will be people – lots of people – who will tell you not to read “This is How We Fought in Gaza.” They will tell you that these soldiers are traitors, or defeatist radical activists, or dupes, or made up.

If you hear someone saying this, you’re being flat-out lied to. Not only that, the person that tells you this is spitting on Israelis who were willing to give their very lives to defend their country and their loved ones.

There will be people who will slander and denigrate and deceive and misrepresent the organization which gathered the soldiers’ stories – Breaking the Silence, itself a project of former and reserve IDF officers and soldiers.

There will be people who make their living suggesting that Breaking the Silence is part of a vast, dark, international conspiracy aimed at destroying Israel. 

If you’re honest about advocating for Israel, you need to think for yourself.

Les résultats des élections en Israël ont ouvert la voie à une autocritique très sévère de la société israélienne dans ses médias (mais peut-être moins au sein de la population…). La parole se libère

Première tare : le racisme polymorphe de la société israélienne

Racism in Israel cuts much deeper than black and white - Routine Emergencies - Israel News | Haaretz
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You might think that the creation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition and the sniping between Israel’s government and the White House would be at the forefront of post-election public discussion in Israel today.

But no - across social media, on radio talk shows, on the street and around water-coolers - the conversation has been overwhelmingly about race.

Deep-seated prejudices and resentments, always simmering below the surface, exploded into view during the hard-fought election campaign. And over the week since the polls closed, it has proven impossible to put the racial genie back into the bottle.

Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, like many overseas pundits, missed the many layers of Israel’s race issue in his post-election analysis. Comparing Netanyahu’s warning that “droves of Arabs” were voting to get out the right-wing vote to racist Republican scare tactics aimed at white voters in the U.S., Meyerson joked that “perhaps Likud and the Republicans can open an Institute for the Prevention of Dark-Skinned People Voting.”

Would that racism in Israel was as simple as skin color: it is a far more complicated mix of nationalism, religion and culture.

For example, it’s hard to find skin fairer than that on the wounded, tearful countenance of Lucy Aharish, a successful television anchor who also happens to be a Muslim citizen of Israel and who was the first to publicly demand that Netanyahu apologized for his remarks. Aharish hosts a mainstream “The View”-style program in Hebrew on Israel’s highest-rated station, Channel 2, and also broadcasts news in English on i24 News, a Tel Aviv-based international news channel. Raised in the southern Jewish town of Dimona, she straddles two worlds and cultures, and takes flak from both sides. In the midst of the election campaign, Aharish was chosen as one of the torch-lighters in the annual Independence Day ceremony. To many right-wing Jewish Israelis, she is an unwelcome interloper. To others on the far left - including Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy - she is considered something of an Uncle Tom, or as the locals put it disparagingly, a “pet Arab.”

Appearing on “Meet the Press” on Saturday, Aharish didn’t hesitate to show the Israeli audience the personal pain Netanyahu’s remarks caused her. On the brink of tears, her voice was quavering and she shook her head in disbelief: “It’s horrifying, because hell - I am a citizen of this state. I’m a citizen who just can’t believe that their prime minister stood up and spoke that way … the prime minister of Israel who is supposed to be the prime minister of all of the citizens of Israel cannot allow himself to speak the way he spoke. It just can’t be that he would incite against 20 percent of his population.”

Netanyahu seems to have forgotten, she chided, that “only months ago” Jewish yeshiva students were killed because they were Jews, and shortly afterward a Palestinian boy was murdered because he was Arab. “The next time an Arab is murdered, it’s going to be as if the prime minister gave that murder a kosher stamp” of legitimacy,” Aharish said.

One doubts that Netanyahu’s subsequent half-hearted expression of “regret” to Israel’s “minorities” (in the remarks described as an apology, he neither used the word “apology” nor the word “Arab”) has done much to mollify Aharish. It will be interesting to see how she uses her torch-lighting platform during the Independence Day ceremony next month.

But Netanyahu was not the only face of racism in Israel this week - in fact, he wasn’t even the front-runner. That honor belonged to one Yoram Hetzroni - a communications professor who looks more like an aging refugee from an 80’s heavy metal band than an academic.

Hetzroni is no stranger to controversy - he was removed from his position at Ariel University for remarks he made against female victims of sexual assault, which he claims represent a political vendetta against his left-wing views. The fact that he has little to lose professionally must have played into his choice to toss lighter fluid on the flames of post-election ethnic tensions, insulting Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent who make up Netanyahu’s core supporters in a fiery appearance on a morning chat show.

“It wouldn’t have been terrible if your parents had been left to rot in Morocco,” he told fellow guest Amira Bouzaglo. It must be noted that Bouzaglo had just called him a fascist and a racist for his stand against Israel’s Law of Return and policy of encouraging Jewish immigration, which he suggested was ultimately responsible for the ingathering of the riff-raff whose votes had kept Netanyahu in power.

Even in the no-holds-barred world of Israeli political debate, his remarks were judged by the host of the show to have crossed the line - and Hetzroni was summarily dismissed from the television studio after declining an opportunity to apologize.

The Hetzroni incident added to the existing fury of the anger sparked during the campaign when artist Yair Garbuz, a speaker at a pre-election anti-Netanyahu rally, railed against “amulet-kissers, idol-worshippers and people who prostrate themselves at the graves of saints” whom he charged were controlling the State of Israel.

Both Garbuz and Hetzroni touched on historic sensitivity of Moroccan, Iraqi, Yemenite and other “dark-skinned” groups who feel that their pride, culture and religious beliefs have been trampled for decades by a condescending, secular, “white” Israeli Ashkenazi elite. This resentment has long been politicized, with lighter-skinned Israelis identified with leftist Labor, and darker-skinned Israelis with right-wing Likud.

Usually, the members of the left-leaning elite who do, in fact, scorn their counterparts are too polite or politically savvy to express their disdain openly. But the high stakes and strong emotions of this election season pulled sentiments which most Israelis would rather bury above ground. Some libertarian types defended Hetzroni’s right to express his politically incorrect views - but in mainstream Israel, it created such a furious backlash that the police announced that they were “examining his statements” to see if they “constituted a crime.”

Where will Hetzroni be when Aharish lights her torch? Far away, presuming there are no actual charges filed against him. Unrepentant, Hetzroni announced on television that he is packing his bags and “leaving all this garbage behind and getting out of here” after concluding that “I’m too logical, intelligent and successful for this place: this is an emotional, hot-tempered and Levantine country.”

And, it can be added, one that won’t miss him very much.

As an Israeli, I am ashamed that my prime minister is a racist - A Special Place in Hell - Israel News | Haaretz
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This week, push came to shove.

This week, we saw how things really work. How our prime minister really thinks. What he’s willing to do, how far he’s willing to go, how many of us he’s willing to sell out, slander, abuse, for the sake of hanging on to the thing that matters to him more than anything: his job.

After this week, we can never again say that we didn’t quite know who Benjamin Netanyahu is.

As an Israeli, I am ashamed that my prime minister is a racist.

On Election Day, knowing that the whole country would see it or hear about it, he warned on a range of social media, “The rule of the Right is in danger. The Arab voters are moving in droves toward the polling places. The NGOs of the Left are bringing them in buses.”

How should Jews respond to the threat of Arab hordes advancing on ballot boxes? The posts were explicit: Rush to the polling places, grab your loved ones and get them there as well, to vote Likud.

“With your help, and with God’s help, we will put up a nationalist government which will safeguard the state of Israel,” my prime minister wrote.

Lest there be any question of how we should view this, when he took the stage for his victory speech lateTuesdaynight, Netanyahu invited singer Amir Benayoun to come up and join him. The prime minister’s message was clear: If you are religious and write a racist song ("Ahmed Loves Israel," which refers to Arabs as scum and murderers), a song so incendiary that President Reuven Rivlin feels he must revoke your invitation to the President’s Residence, your place is right here, right now, by my side.

I am ashamed to know that the prime minister of Israel is either a racist, which is a horrible thought, or that he incites racism in others for the sake of votes - which is worse.

I am ashamed that my prime minister is a cheat. I am angry that in order to win, on the eve of the election, his campaign defied a judge’s ruling and knowingly defrauded thousands of Israelis into thinking that rival Kulanu party leader Moshe Kahlon was messaging them to switch their vote to Netanyahu.

I am ashamed that my prime minister can humiliate and exploit Moshe Kahlon, an earnest and honorable man, and get away with it.

As an Israeli, I am ashamed that my prime minister is a liar, a huckster, a calculating, desperate coward, a schmaltz merchant.

Now we finally know what he meant, just last October, when he told President Obama that he remained “committed to the vision of peace of two states for two peoples.”

He explained it allon Mondaynight, when, standing behind bulletproof glass in the square where Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, he addressed a rally of thousands of right wing Jews, many of them bused in from the West Bank at the expense of the Israeli taxpayer.

Just after telling the crowd that they should avoid incitement, that he was prime minister even of Israelis who don’t agree with him, and that “We pride ourselves on upholding the unity of Israel,” he made it all clear:

There are already two states for two peoples. There are the People of Us - that is Zionists, which is to say Jews who are right-wing, who prize settlements above all else, and who resist all compromise, forswear any concession, oppose all negotiation, and who will vote for Benjamin Netanyahu when he declares that there will be not one settler uprooted, even from outposts which Israel itself has declared illegal.

And then there are the People of Them. All of the rest of us. People he calls anti-Zionist. People whom he describes as haters of Israel. Dark forces, treacherous, in league with foreigners.

“Yes,” the uber-secular prime minister told the crowd, suddenly putting himself forward as the pious, commandment-keeping, mezuzah-kissing SuperJew, explaining who “We” are: “We keep the traditions of Israel.”

Then the man who is bought and paid for by a gambling billionaire took it up a notch. "They have V 15, but we have the People." They have the money, but we have something more important, he concluded.

“It won’t be money that decides this. Rather, it will be heart, soul, belief.”

We’re all going to need it.

I am ashamed that my prime minister believes - and is quietly pleased - that many young people who love their country, have served their country, have endangered their lives for our sake, but who are not part of Us - not settlers, not ultra-Orthodox, not right-wing, and in many cases, not Jewish - will solve their own problems of housing and providing for a new family, by leaving Israel.

I am ashamed that my prime minister perceives, and accepts, that many people who are indigent, elderly, chronically ill, will meet the challenges of a neglected and failing health care system, by dying.

I am ashamed that my prime minister is declaring that millions of Palestinians are unentitled to rights, beginning with the right to have a say as to the kind of government and country they want to live in.

Most of all, I am ashamed that what my prime minister does, works. I am ashamed that racism works here, with my people. As a Jew, I believe that if all we are left with, is bigotry and fear, it will be the end of us.

All this week, Benjamin Netanyahu made us one consistent promise: In his coming term as prime minister, there will be no hope.

It is one promise that we have all come to believe he can keep.

Netanyahu speaks for all Jews whether they like it or not
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If the Jews living outside of Israel didn’t want Netanyahu speaking and acting on their behalf, they should have called him out years ago, privately and if necessary also in public. Save for a few commentators and fringe organizations, they were silent. At the same time, they feted Netanyahu at every opportunity and acquiesced to hiring like-minded figures, who rarely if ever criticized him in public, to head major national and international Jewish organizations.

U.S. blocks Palestinians at UN while cementing support for 1967 borders
Kerry lobbies hard to thwart French move to nudge Washington aside and take center stage in peace-making efforts.
By Chemi Shalev | Dec. 31, 2014 Haaretz
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Kerry lobbies hard to thwart French move to nudge Washington aside and take center stage in peace-making efforts.
By Chemi Shalev | Dec. 31, 2014

Berlin, 1933 and Jerusalem, 2014: When racist thugs are on the prowl - The gangs of Jewish ruffians man-hunting for Arabs are a manifestation of the dangerous evil that will surely triumph if good men continue to do nothing.
By Chemi Shalev | Jul. 2, 2014 | Haaretz
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several parts of Berlin a large number of people, most of whom appeared to be Jews, were openly attacked in the streets and knocked down. Some of them were seriously wounded. The police could do no more than pick up the injured and take them off to hospital,” the Guardian reported. “Jews were beaten by the brown shirts until blood ran down their heads and faces” the Manchester Guardian noted. “Before my eyes, storm troopers, drooling like hysterical beasts, chase a man in broad daylight while whipping him,” Walter Gyssling wrote in his diary.

I know: you were outraged before you even finished the paragraph above. “How dare he compare isolated incidents here and there to Nazi Germany,” you are thinking to yourself. “This is an outrageous trivialization of the Holocaust.”

You are right, of course. My intention is not to draw any parallel whatsoever. Both my parents lost their families during World War II, and I need no convincing that the Holocaust is a crime so unique in its evil totality that it stands by itself even in the annals of other premeditated genocides.

But I am a Jew, and there are scenes of the Holocaust that are indelibly etched in my mind, even though I was not alive at the time. And when I saw the videos and pictures of gangs of right-wing Jewish racists running through the streets of Jerusalem, chanting “Death to the Arabs,” hunting for random Arabs, picking them out by their appearance or by their accents, chasing them in broad daylight, “drooling like hysterical beasts” and then beating them up before the police could arrive - the historical association was automatic. It was the first thing that jumped into my mind. It should have been, I think, the first thing that jumped into any Jew’s mind.

Merci à @OrientXXI pour cette salutaire mise en contexte.

►http://orientxxi.info/magazine/violences-a-gaza-et-impasse,0540

Selon un porte-parole du Djihad islamique, un cessez-le-feu à Gaza aurait été négocié par l’Egypte mais Israël dément. À supposer qu’il soit établi et respecté, il faut savoir qu’il ne sera que provisoire. Tant que les territoires palestiniens resteront occupés, tant qu’il n’y aura pas d’État palestinien, il ne peut y avoir de paix stable. Or les négociations israélo-palestiniennes sont dans l’impasse. Et, à chaque étape, le gouvernement israélien invente une nouvelle condition pour un accord, la dernière étant que l’Autorité reconnaisse Israël comme État du peuple juif.

[...]

Il faut aussi noter que, malgré le retrait des troupes israéliennes de Gaza en 2005, ce territoire reste occupé, comme le reconnaît l’ONU. Non seulement pour des raisons légales, mais parce que la vie des Palestiniens de Gaza est décidée par ses geôliers, même si ceux-ci campent à l’extérieur. Deux exemples parmi tant d’autres : 35 % des terres cultivables et 85 % des eaux pour la pêche sont partiellement ou totalement inaccessibles aux Gazaouis à la suite des restrictions imposées par Israël. D’autre part, le territoire reste soumis à un blocus qui aggrave la situation et qui amène les Nations unies et la communauté internationale à accepter et à gérer l’inacceptable.

[...]

D’autre part, comme à chaque escalade, que ce soit en 2008, lors de l’invasion israélienne de Gaza, en novembre 2012 ou aujourd’hui, ce sont des raids israéliens visant des militants qui ont entrainé une riposte d’organisations palestiniennes. Or, à chaque fois, l’Union européenne et la France reprennent le récit israélien sur la responsabilité, confirmant une nouvelle fois leur alignement sur Tel-Aviv.

[...]

Il suffit de jeter un œil sur ces cartes pour mesurer combien, au cours des décennies, le territoire palestinien a été conquis, rongé, colonisé. C’est la négation de la promesse, toujours reportée, de la création d’un État palestinien, de la reconnaissance du droit des Palestiniens à l’autodétermination qui reste la cause de l’instabilité.

Jewish muzzling of pro-BDS speakers only makes them stronger - West of Eden Israel News | Haaretz
By Chemi Shalev | Feb. 25, 2014
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Critics, rivals and even outright enemies of Israel can take their shoes off. Relax. They don’ t need to exert themselves. They don’t have to launch recruitment drives. They don’t really require any infusion of funds. They can sit back and let self-professed Israel-defenders do their advertising and marketing work for them.

This, after all, is probably the most lingering effect of the ever-expanding onslaught against proponents of Boycott, Disinvestment (BDS), Israel-bashers, anti-Zionists and others of their ilk. By closing the door on BDS supporters - and, more importantly, by chucking them out after they’ve already gained entry - these self-anointed guardians of the gate are providing their enemies with the kind of free publicity, automatic sympathy and sexy allure that money just can’t buy.

Take Franz Kafka, for example. Were it not for Israel’s hyperactive and overzealous chaperones, no one but his most loyal fans would have known or cared that BDS champion Judith Butler had been invited to participate in a March 6 New York Jewish Museum discussion about the early-20th Century Prague-born author. Butler, after all, is a widely respected philosopher and literary theorist who is eminently qualified to speak about Kafka, while Israel, BDS and the future of Zionism were not supposed to be on the agenda for the March 6 event.

Nonetheless, an anti-Butler campaign was launched, a brouhaha ensued, angry letters were written, donors got annoyed and Butler was duly axed. “While her political views were not a factor in her participation, the debates about her politics have become a distraction making it impossible to present the conversation about Kafka as intended”, the museum said in a statement.

And what were the spoils of this big victory? The Jewish Museum was humiliated, those supposedly acting in Israel’s name were seen as intellectual-muzzling brutes, BDS received tons of exposure and free publicity it did nothing to deserve and Butler was cast as an heroic academic victim persecuted for sins she did not commit. The next time she comes to town, even for BDS, you can rest assured that her star power will be greater than ever – especially in the eyes of the young and impressionable.

It is the Book of Genesis, remember, that shows us the seductive taste of forbidden fruit, even in the Garden of Eden, while the Book of Proverbs extols the unbearable sweetness of stolen waters. Things that are considered boring and humdrum when they are conducted freely and out in the open turn alluring and enticing when they are prohibited or censured or hidden from view. Younger people are inevitably drawn to the values their elders eschew: maintaining the status quo is usually considered tedious as hell.

Jewish groups and organizations are under no obligation to invite anti-Israel speakers to their forums, but once they do so, they should stick to their guns. Succumbing to outside pressure casts their own management in a bad light, tarnishes the image of the pro-Israel community and puts a powerful spotlight on the very issues that their critics wish to suppress.

This was true last year, when a BDS debate at Brooklyn College that no one had heard of turned into a national cause celebre because of ill conceived, politically motivated attempts to shut it down. It was true last month, when the Jewish Community Center of Washington D.C. disinvited David Harris-Gershon, author of What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife? because he had once said something vaguely supportive of BDS.

And, in a prime example of zealous overreach and the slippery slope of stifling free speech, New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage this week invited then disinvited then once again re-invited journalist/historian John Judis. What was his sin? He has written a new, revisionist history book about Harry Truman’s attitude towards Israel. You know who isn’t complaining about the kerfuffle? Judis’ bank manager and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, who published his book.

The same dynamic is playing out in college campuses across the U.S., where the Hillel powers that be are trying to clamp down on rogue Hillel chapters that have chosen to invite BDS supporters to speak. Whatever the merits of a Hillel-wide policy of refraining from inviting BDS supporters – and there are such merits – this is a faceoff that the “establishment” can only lose, especially if it maintains its heavy-handed my way or the highway tactics: it comes across as authoritative and narrow-minded, the renegade Hillel chapters are viewed as daring and non-conformist and the entire Judeo-Israeli complex is seen as being too defensive and too weak to withstand a few rounds of healthy debate.

As the wily dwarf Tyrion Lannister says, in brutal Game of Thrones style, in George R. R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings: “When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”

Bennett’s horror show: Israel’s retreat from the civilized world - Strenger than Fiction Israel News | Haaretz

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Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi and the rest of Israel’s extreme right obviously has a new political plan: he’s in favor of Israel’s disengagement - not from the West Bank, but from the civilized world. Last week Motti Yogev from his party called the US Secretary of State Kerry an anti-Semite, and this week Bennett and his MKs storm out of the plenum in the midst of a speech by President of EU Parliament Martin Schulz. Motti Yogev, stars, once again, by shouting that Schulz is supporting someone who supports exterminating the Jews. Bennett doubles up in his Facebook page and emphasized that these words were said in German - picking up his cue from Likud MK Moshe Feiglin who said in advance that he would not attend Schulz’s speech because it would be held in German.

’A New York Times reporter in Israel is invariably called an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew’

Haaretz
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Clyde Haberman recounts the time a member of Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations – “A president of something or other,” as he puts it – got up and said: “Every morning when I read you, I get sick to my stomach."

“Your health is everything,” the veteran New York Times journalist responded. “You should stop reading."

It is a rare moment of ire in Haberman’s otherwise bemused reflections, over lunch in Manhattan, on his 37 years at the Times and on the four years he spent in the early 1990’s as the paper’s correspondent in Jerusalem. “As if I’m not a human being,” he snarls. “As if I don’t have feelings, so you can call me a no-good, self-hating anti-Semite (several expletives deleted) straight to my face.”

Haberman, 68, has just parted ways with the Times, much to the regret of legions of fans of the smart New York City columns that he’s written for the past 18 years. Before that he reported for the Times on several major and historic national and international news stories, from Japan to Jerusalem, from the fall of Saddam to the fall of communism, and was also the Times’ bureau chief in Tokyo and Rome.

But his stint in Israel during the tumultuous days of the Oslo Accords was undoubtedly special for the Orthodox-born-and-raised Haberman, in more ways than one.

“Throughout my career,” he says, “I’ve had my fair share of “you’re an idiot” letters, but many more letters of praise as well. Israel is the only assignment I ever had in which in four years I never once got a letter that said “nice job.” If I would have gotten one, I would have had it embossed and put it on a wall, like a business does with the first dollar bill it makes.”

This, he says, is the lot of most New York Times’ reporters in Israel, as well as other prominent American journalists who have agreed to an Israel posting. I ask whether sending a Jewish reporter is hence a good or bad idea. “All other things being equal,” he replies, “it is probably better to send a non-Jew rather than a Jew – just as I would probably prefer to send a non-Indian to India. It’s better to avoid that extra component.”

Le match de boxe entre le gouvernement israélien et le parrain américain peut-il prendre fin ? En tout cas, les Israéliens se croient invincibles et aiment jouer à des jeux dangereux.

U.S. seizes on Ya’alon insult to tone down Israeli criticism of peace efforts and Iran policies - West of Eden Israel News | Haaretz
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Right-wing Israeli politicians can be excused for believing that the Obama Administration suffers at times from the diplomatic equivalent of battered wife syndrome. The U.S. has enhanced and expanded its security cooperation with Israel in recent years, but is nonetheless subjected to a steady barrage of slights, aspersions and insults by the Israeli right, especially when American officials are engaged, as they are these days, in promoting a peace process with the Palestinians.

The Americans usually prefer to look the other way and turn the other cheek, but in rare and extraordinary circumstances, such as those that converged Tuesday on Defense Minister Ya’alon, they can also lose their cool. They have insisted on a clear cut condemnation by Prime Minister Netanyahu and a straight out apology by Ya’alon himself, which was duly offered on Tuesday night.

After all, an Israeli defense minister who is the beneficiary of unprecedented U.S. military assistance vital to Israel’s security and well-being is supposed to be the last Israeli minister to badmouth an American Secretary of State, especially one who is going all out to achieve the two-state solution that Israel ostensibly seeks. So when Ya’alon describes John Kerry as “obsessive and messianic”, and when he does so at such a critical juncture in Kerry’s peacemaking efforts, the conditions are set for the perfect storm that erupted yesterday in U.S.-Israeli relations.

Ya’alon’s remarks, reported by Yediot Achronot and not denied, are the zenith of what seems to be a concerted campaign of off-the-record slaps in the face and not-for-attribution kicks in the teeth that unnamed Israeli sources have been waging against Kerry in recent weeks. Under the guise of disagreements over security arrangements in the Jordan Valley, opponents of the peace process have been trying to undermine Kerry’s hope to present a framework of principles for an Israeli-Palestinian deal.

In the wake of Foreign Minister Liberman’s recent conversion from enfant terrible to responsible adult, Ya’alon has emerged as the standard bearer of Kerry’s critics on the right. By making a federal case out of Ya’alon’s remarks yesterday, the U.S. hopes not only to draw a line in the sand about what can and cannot be said within the framework of “legitimate disagreements between friends” but to also deter other senior Israeli officials from following in Ya’alon’s outspoken path.

The irony, of course, is that the expansive eulogies to Ariel Sharon in recent days should have served as a warning sign to Ya’alon. As defense minister, Ya’alon can ill afford to be declared persona non grata as Sharon was in 1991, when James Baker decided that it was the then Construction Minister who had crossed the line in his attacks on American peacemaking.

The Americans may also be sending a shot across the Israel’s bow in another area altogether – the battle over the Iranian nuclear negotiations and the additional sanctions bill that is now before the U.S. Senate. By slapping down Ya’alon hard now, the U.S. may be warning Israel not to go too far in urging U.S. lawmakers to approve legislation that the Administration so adamantly opposes.

In recent years, the Obama Administration has learned to live with right wing Israeli politicians, including senior members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition, who either take the “special relationship” between the two countries for granted, or presume that the Republican Party together with the pro-Israel lobby will clean up their mess, or are simply and insanely willing to sacrifice the special ties on the altar of more and more Jewish settlements. The Americans have also learned to absorb countless allegations and insinuations against President Obama and his plot to do harm to the Jewish state.

Ya’alon just happened to say the wrong thing, at the wrong time, about the wrong person. He is now channeling all the pent up frustration and anger that U.S. officials have amassed in many long months of control and restraint. Under the circumstances, Prime Minister Netanyahu may be left with no choice but to rap his defense minister’s knuckles and to declare time out before allowing his ministers to once again lash out at America in the manner they’re used to.

Ben-Gurion didn’t recognize Israel as the nation state of the entire Jewish people
By Chemi Shalev | Jan. 8, 2014
| Haaretz
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But here’s the thing: I don’t know what Netanyahu’s demand is doing for Abbas, but it is making me increasingly uneasy. The more I think of the demand to recognize Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people," whatever that is, the less I like it. In my eyes, Muslims and Christians who were born in Israel and live there are Israelis; Jews who live in Tulsa or Tashkent are not. Jews around the world may worship Israel but that does not make it theirs.

My position is this: “The name Israel differentiates between the sovereign Jewish people in its homeland, called by the name of Israel, and the Jewish people in the world, in all the generations and in all the land, who are called the “Jewish people” or the “people of Israel." That’s what David Ben-Gurion wrote to Brandeis historian and philosopher Simon Rawidowicz in 1954.

Rawidowicz – a towering Jewish intellectual whose memory has faded to the extent that he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry in English to his name – was a champion of the “equal status” of Israel and Diaspora Jewry, which he described as “Jerusalem and Babylon”. He objected to the name Israel that Ben-Gurion had chosen for the state because it excluded Diaspora Jews, and, in essence, relegated them to a second-tier status.

While denying charges of “negation of the Diaspora," as it was known then, Ben-Gurion, in effect, agreed with Rawidowicz: Diaspora Jews can worship Israel and can very well call themselves “the people of Israel” if they wish, but they are not Israelis, and Israel is not their country unless and until they choose to live there.

Former Israeli envoy’s diplomatic gaffe on Buenos Aires bombing -
By Barak Ravid | Jan. 4, 2014
Haaretz
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They say that a rock tossed by a single fool into a well cannot be retrieved even by a hundred sages. But over the weekend, more than a few diplomats with the Foreign Ministry attempted to salvage the rock tossed by the former ambassador to Argentina, Itzhak Aviran.

Argentina’s Jewish news agency published an interview on Friday with Aviran, in which he spoke about the attacks against the Israel embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and against the city’s Jewish community building (AMIA) in 1994. Israel has placed the blamed on both bombings with Iran and Hezbollah.

Aviran, who served as ambassador at the time of the attacks but retired 15 years ago, said that “a majority of those responsible for the act (the 1994 bombing) are no longer alive, and we took care of this on our own.”

Aviran hinted, it seems, at the assassination of Hezbollah’s chief of operations Imad Mughniyah in 2008, who was suspected of involvement in planning and carrying out the attacks.

Even though Israel never claimed responsibility for Mughniyah’s assassination, Hezbollah has pointed its finger at Israel and threatened revenge.

The comments by the retired ambassador stirred up a storm in Argentina. Alberto Nisman, the Argentinian special prosecutor of the case of the 1994 bombing, hastened to respond and demanded Aviran be summoned for investigation.

“I was very surprised to hear these things,” Nisman said in an interview with a local television station. “We would like to know how he knows these things, who are these people and what evidence he has in his possession.”

Argentinian Foreign Minister Hector Timerman angrily charged Israel with concealing information about the identity of the attack’s perpetrators from Argentina’s justice system.

“Israel prevented the gathering of new evidence that could shed light on the affair,” he said. “If there had been cooperation, as mandated by international agreements, the perpetrators may have now been serving out their sentence.”

Timerman said he plans to summon Israeli ambassador in Buenos Aires Dorit Shavit to reprimand her and demand explanation for Aviran’s remarks. He added that Avrian’s comments explain why Israel opposes the agreement signed a year ago between Iran and Argentina for a joint investigation of the attacks.

The Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office tried at first to disregard Aviran’s interview, hoping the whole affair would blow over. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor decided on a short response on Friday, calling Aviran’s words “complete nonsense.”

However on Saturday, Jerusalem was forced into a corner and compelled to give a sharp official response that would distance itself from the retired ambassador. The following response was published in Hebrew, Spanish and English and was distributed to international media.

“The statements by former ambassador Aviran, who has been in retirement for some 15 years, are completely disconnected from reality. These remarks, made on no authority nor knowledge, are pure fantasy and do not reflect in any way events or facts such as he pretends to depict. Israel continues to cooperate in full transparency with Argentina in investigating the bombings which took place in Buenos Aires against the Embassy of Israel (1992) and the AMIA Jewish Community Center (1994).”

Israël approuve un projet d’annexion d’une rive du #Jourdain - Le Nouvel Observateur
▻http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde/20131229.REU9250/israel-approuve-un-projet-d-annexion-d-une-rive-du-jourdain.htm

Le gouvernement israélien a approuvé dimanche un projet d’annexion de la rive occidentale du Jourdain, en #Cisjordanie occupée, dont les Palestiniens veulent pourtant faire la frontière orientale d’un futur Etat.

Cette décision du comité législatif du gouvernement, composé de certains ministres, a été prise à l’initiative de la frange la plus à droite du Likoud, le parti du chef du gouvernement, Benjamin Netanyahu.