organization:israel's government

Ilhan Omar has sparked panic in AIPAC

Rep. Ilhan Omar has apologized for her inexcusably insensitive tweet. But the core issue behind her comment - whether the U.S. should continue to reflexively embrace the views of the Israeli government - won’t go away
David Rothkopf
Feb 13, 2019 2:37 PM

▻https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-ilhan-omar-has-sparked-panic-in-aipac-1.6935041

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6934483.1550062047!/image/2919236305.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/2919236305.jpg

U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has apologized for her offensive tweet that suggested Israeli influence in the U.S. Congress was “all about the Benjamins.” But that does not mean that the core issue underlying the controversy surrounding the tweet, Representative Ilhan and new voices critical of Israel in U.S. politics, is likely to fade away.

I’m not going to defend Omar.Her own apology was unequivocal and the tweet itself was, at best, inexcusably insensitive. But it is vitally important we distinguish between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. And, as importantly, we also must recognize the massive response against Rep. Omar for what it is - a spasm of fear about our changing times.

>> Aaron David Miller: No, Israel and America Aren’t Breaking Up. Don’t Believe the Hype

The entire infrastructure that has been built over the years to advance the interests of Israel in the U.S. is quaking in its boots - not because of the badly developed arguments of a rookie Congresswoman - but because of the coming generational change in U.S. views of Israel and because support for the Israeli government has been damaged among Democrats by the choice of the Netanyahu administration to so closely tie itself to Donald Trump and the Republican right wing in America.
Supporters of US President Donald Trump cheer during a rally in El Paso, Texas on February 11, 2019
Supporters of US President Donald Trump cheer during a rally in El Paso, Texas on February 11, 2019.AFP

Rep. Omar damaged her own credibility by embracing an old anti-Semitic trope. There is no place for that in American politics. But even as she should be condemned, her views of Israel need to be heard. There is no reason all American views on a foreign government should be in lockstep.

Quite the contrary, Americans who seek to protect and advance our interests should no more reflexively embrace the views of the Israeli government than they do those of a pro-Brexit UK government or an anti-refugee Italian government.

Israel’s defenders would like the relationship to be deemed so important that it must not be criticized. This echoes the position, say, of the Saudis in the wake of the Khashoggi murder. And it is just as indefensible.

A growing number of Americans realize that. Further, a growing number of American Jews feel the positions of the Netanyahu government are contrary to both U.S. interests and the values of Judaism, and thus the rationale for a Jewish state. In other words, they see Netanyahu’s actions as undermining the reasons Israel might have a special claim on their support.

Indeed, no one, in fact, has done more to damage the standing of Israel than a Netanyahu government that has actively waged war on the Palestinian people, denied them their rights, responded disproportionately to threats and refused to acknowledge its own wrong-doing.

Anti-Semites, with their stale and discredited attacks, can never do the kind of damage to the U.S.-Israel relationship that rampant Israeli wrong-doing can (especially when the Israeli government weakens the arguments against anti-Semites by embracing them, as in the case of Victor Orban in Hungary, or hugging those like Donald Trump who promote anti-Semites and anti-Semitic ideas about “globalists” or George Soros.)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban share a light moment during the reception ceremony in front of the Parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, July 18, 2017.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban in front of the Parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, July 18, 2017Balazs Mohai/AP

None of this is to diminish the real and ever-present threat of anti-Semitism. Which is why, of course, it is essential that we are careful to distinguish between it and legitimate criticism of the government of Israel.

In fact, if we in the U.S. stand for what is best about America and hope for the best for Israel, then we must welcome those who would criticize Israel’s government not as our enemies but as the true defenders of the idea of Israel, and of America’s deep investment in the promise of that country.

With that in mind, we must be careful that we do not allow the justifiable aspects of the critique against Rep. Omar to lead to a reflexive position where we silence active criticism of the Israeli government, or the worst actions of the State of Israel.

Judging from comments in the media about her that pre-dated these statements, and comments about Rep. Rashida Tlaib, and comments about the “left” becoming anti-Israel, in my view we are in the midst of a pre-emptive push to combat the coming rethinking of the U.S.- Israel relationship.
Feb. 5, 2019, photo, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., left, joined at right by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., listens to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech, at the Capitol in Washington
Feb. 5, 2019, photo, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., left, joined at right by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., listens to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech, at the Capitol in Washington.J. Scott Applewhite,AP

It will seize upon the fact that some elements who offer the critique of Israel are in fact anti-Semitic or tap into anti-Semitic rhetoric and traditions, in order to tar with the same brush those who legitimately disapprove of the behavior of the Israeli government.

That would be a mistake. Because it would not only silence a debate we need to and deserve to have, but it would undermine the ability of the U.S. to be a force for positive change in Israeli policies - change that is necessary to the future of Israel and to U.S. interests in that region.

We must combat anti-Semitism. But we should also combat those who have no tolerance for democratic processes, or who would seek a political purity test for politicians based on narrowly-defined, traditionalist, outdated guidelines.

The future of the U.S.- Israel relationship - and the future of Israel, the Palestinian people and peace in the region - depends on our willingness to look past biases of all sorts to the facts on the ground, to the justice that is required and to our interests going forward.

David Rothkopf is a foreign policy expert and author, host of the Deep State Radio podcast and CEO of The Rothkopf Group, LLC a media and advisory firm. His next book, on the national security threat posed by the Trump administration, is due out later this year. Twitter: @djrothkopf

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

►http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/.premium-1.671538

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
►http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/.premium-1.671538

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.

Barak Ravid (Haaretz) détaille les raisons qui ont conduit le président Abou Mazen à se défaire de son premier ministre: son aura internationale, son refus de la corruption et du népotisme, la jalousie qu’il éveillait chez les envieux, la rancœur du président à son égard parce qu’il avait jugé en novembre dernier que la reconnaissance de la Palestine aux Nations Unies n’avait qu’une valeur symbolique, l’affrontement des deux autour de la récente démission de Nabil Qassis, ministre des Finances. L’auteur de l’article voit dans cette démission le signe d’une désintégration de l’Autorité palestinienne et s’interroge sur l’attitude des bailleurs de fond internationaux – notamment américains -qui pourraient être réticents à l’idée d’accorder leurs aides au prochain gouvernement palestinien. Il y voit aussi le résultat de l’attitude ambiguë adoptée par Netanyahu à l’égard de Salam Fayyad : reconnaissance de ses compétences mais aussi inquiétude de voir qu’il réussissait à construire les infrastructures de l’Etat palestinien.

Fayyad’s resignation: The beginning of the end of the PA?

It was actually the PA prime minister’s successes that eventually led to his downfall. His effective management and relative popularity meant he was a threat to too many people.

By Barak Ravid | Apr.14, 2013 | 1:24 AM | 41
Haaretz

▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/fayyad-s-resignation-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-pa-1.515292

“The resignation of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Saturday is a dramatic development. Its ramifications won’t just reverberate in the part of the West Bank under Palestinian control, but also affect Israel and the Obama administration’s efforts to renew the peace process, as well as the European Union’s policy towards the Palestinians.

For Israel’s government and defense establishment, the U.S., and the EU, which both regularly provide economic aid to the Palestinian Authority, Fayyad was the go-to man. The former International Monetary Fund economist was educated in the U.S. and was a symbol of good governance and the war on corruption. His plan to build Palestinian state institutions from the bottom up received much international support.

But it was this success that itself bore within it the seeds of his demise. Fayyad, who served as prime minister since 2007, resigned after his relations with PA President Mahmoud Abbas deteriorated, reaching an unprecedented low. The crisis of confidence between the two leaders was sharp and irreparable. Abbas and the Fatah party’s old guard that surround him saw Fayyad as a political rival who needed to be eliminated.

Fayyad’s resignation is another sign of the PA’s internal disintegration and the deep political crisis it is struggling with. In order to survive, Abbas imposed a semi-autocratic regime in the West Bank styled after that of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Journalists and bloggers are sent to prison, demonstrations and criticism are suppressed with an iron fist and the government doesn’t function while the ruler travels the globe.”

#Salam_Fayyad #Obama #Mahmoud_Abbas #Fatah #Palestinian_independence #Nabil_Kassis #Netanyahu

Hackers threaten to ’wipe Israel off Internet map’ in massive cyber attack

Haaretz Daily Newspaper
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hackers-threaten-to-wipe-israel-off-internet-map-in-massive-cyber-attack.pr

The virtual campaign was launched by hackers affiliated with the Anonymous group in order to protest Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank. The organizers threatened to wage “the largest Internet battle in the history of mankind” that would eventually “wipe Israel off the map of the Internet.”

“You have not stopped your endless human right violations,” the group said in a post addressed to Israel’s government. "You have not stopped illegal settlements. You have not respected the ceasefire. You have shown that you do not respect international law.

Israel to probe birth control for Ethiopian immigrants | Maan News Agency
▻http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=570216

JERUSALEM (Reuters) — Israel’s Health Ministry has ordered an investigation into whether government employees or health workers prescribed a birth control drug to Ethiopian immigrant women as a way to control the population.

Haaretz reported on Thursday that a senior official had decided to name a team to look into charges that Ethiopian women were given Depo-Provera shots in an effort to limit the growth of their community in Israel.

Confirming the report, a ministry spokeswoman replied in a written statement that the ministry would “re-investigate the issue which was examined in the past, to ensure that there was no such directive from any governmental or other Israeli public organization.”

Suspicions that Ethiopian women had been coerced into receiving Depo-Provera arose in Israeli media a few years ago and again in a recent TV documentary linking the group’s falling birthrate to over-prescription of the injectable contraceptive.

Israel’s government already said in January it would review the case after a civil rights group accused the health ministry of racism.

The ministry has already ordered doctors not to renew Depo-Provera prescriptions unless they were convinced patients understood the ramifications, according to a letter from the ministry posted on the group’s website in January.

Ministry Director-General Roni Gamzu said at the time that the decision did not imply he accepted the allegations by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel.

In a letter to Gamzu in January, ACRI said "the sweeping use of Depo-Provera among Ethiopian women raises heavy suspicions that we are talking about a deliberate policy to control and monitor fertility among this community.

“The data ... point to a paternalistic, haughty and racist attitude that limits considerably the freedom of Ethiopian immigrants to choose the birth control that is medically suitable for them.”

ACRI said statistics from a major Israeli health provider showed it had administered Depo-Provera injections to 5,000 women in 2008, 57 percent of whom were Ethiopian.

Complaints of discrimination

Israel has denied any policy to curb the birthrate among the 100,000 Ethiopian Jews who have moved to Israel since chief rabbis determined in 1973 that the community had biblical roots.

Some Ethiopian Jews have made it into Israel’s parliament and officer ranks in the military, but complaints of discrimination in schooling and housing are common.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved Depo-Provera in 1992, its prolonged use may reduce bone density and it should only be used for longer than two years if other birth control methods prove inadequate.

The documentary, broadcast on Israeli Educational Television, shows a nurse filmed by a hidden camera saying Ethiopian women were given Depo-Provera because they “don’t understand anything” and would forget to take birth control pills.

Rick Hodes, medical director in Ethiopia for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a non-governmental group that aids immigration to Israel, denied the accusation that women are coerced into receiving the injections before leaving their country for the Jewish state.

“Injectable drugs have always been the most popular form of birth control in Ethiopia, as well as among women in our program,” Hodes wrote on Twitter.

Israel: Ethnic cleansing in the Negev
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/2012102114393741506.html

In September 2011, Israel’s government approved a plan to forcibly relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens in the Negev from their unrecognised villages to government-approved shanty towns. The Prawer Plan, as it is known, advanced again in March this year, when it was endorsed by a committee in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Around half of the Bedouin population in Israel live in 45 “unrecognised villages”, with a handful in the "process of recognition" by the state (see Israeli NGO Adalah’s “Myths and Misconceptions”). The Israeli government wants to force them out, claiming that their “squatting” is taking over the Negev. In fact, while constituting 30 per cent of the region’s population, today Bedouin are claiming "less than five per cent of the total area".

Although the law that will serve as the implementing arm of the Prawer Plan has not yet begun the legislative process in the Knesset, events on the ground indicate that the focus on demolition and displacement is already shaping policy targeting the Bedouin. In other words: Prawer is happening now.

Israel denies fiscal pressure on Greece to block flotilla boats - CNN.com
►http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/06/26/israel.gaza.flotilla/index.html

Meanwhile, the director of Israel’s government press office, Oren Helman, sent a letter Sunday to Israel-based foreign journalists warning that “participation in the flotilla is an intentional violation of Israeli law and is liable to lead to participants being denied entry into the State of Israel for 10 years, to the impoundment of their equipment, and to additional sanctions.”