En Israël, un parfum de « fascisme » sur la campagne électorale - L’Orient-Le Jour
▻https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1162466/en-israel-un-parfum-de-fascisme-sur-la-campagne-electorale.html
(La suite de ça... ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/768330)
Dans une vidéo, la ministre de la Justice détourne les images convenues des pubs pour les produits de luxe. A la fin du clip, elle se saisit d’un flacon sur lequel il est écrit « fascisme » en anglais et le vaporise voluptueusement sur elle. « Pour moi, ça a le parfum de la démocratie », dit-elle.
Une nouvelle vidéo de campagne montrant une ministre en tailleur élégant se parfumer avec une fragrance « fasciste » fait le buzz sur les réseaux sociaux en Israël, dernier épisode de la bataille des clips que se livrent les candidats aux élections parlementaires. Les publicités politiques à la télévision n’étant autorisées que deux semaines avant le scrutin du 9 avril, les partis s’en remettent plus que jamais aux réseaux sociaux.
Dans l’esprit d’une campagne qui ne fait guère de place à la subtilité, le clip de la ministre de la Justice, Ayelet Shaked, a atteint son objectif, s’il s’agissait de faire parler d’elle et de la liste Nouvelle droite (droite nationaliste) où elle figure en deuxième position. Il a été vu des centaines de milliers de fois sur internet.
La vidéo tourne en dérision les accusations de fascisme de ses détracteurs contre celle dont le nom, à 42 ans, est cité comme premier-ministrable, un jour.
Noir et blanc et clair-obscur, ralenti, regards par en dessous et descente d’escalier cossu main sur la rampe au son du piano.... La photogénique Mme Shaked détourne les images convenues des pubs pour les produits de luxe. A la fin du clip, elle se saisit d’un flacon sur lequel il est écrit « fascisme » en anglais et le vaporise voluptueusement sur elle. « Pour moi, ça a le parfum de la démocratie », dit-elle.
Le message : n’en déplaise à ses adversaires, la politique qu’elle défend depuis quatre ans comme ministre de la Justice et son programme de « révolution » judiciaire si elle est reconduite dans son poste après les législatives, sont la quintessence de la démocratie.
Grande pourfendeuse de la Cour suprême qui s’est signalée ces dernières années par des décisions défavorables à la droite sur la colonisation ou l’immigration, Mme Shaked montait encore au créneau dimanche contre la disqualification, par cette même cour, du chef de file d’un parti d’extrême droite largement accusé de racisme, et la validation au contraire d’une liste arabe.
« Le far-west »
Pas sûr cependant que tout le monde ait compris.
« Tous ceux qui ne savent pas que la gauche accuse souvent Shaked de fascisme comprendront qu’elle soutient le fascisme en le présentant comme la démocratie », affirme sur Twitter Eylon Levy, journaliste de la chaîne i24. « J’ai eu honte, comment avez-vous pu laisser faire une chose pareille », a tweeté Yehoudit Shilat, figure du parti nationaliste religieux Foyer juif.
Mme Shaked a aussi été critiquée pour alimenter les clichés sexistes.
Pour Haim Har Zahav au contraire, journaliste à la radio publique, « ce clip est l’un des moments les plus honnêtes de la campagne, enfin une personne qui affiche ses idées, bravo ».
Les sondages suggèrent que la Nouvelle droite pourrait ne pas s’en tirer aussi bien qu’anticipé aux élections.
D’autres partis se font entendre comme ils peuvent dans une campagne tapageuse. « C’est le far-west », dit Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, du think-tank Institut d’Israël pour la démocratie, « il n’y a pas de réglementation »
(...)
Face aux critiques, M. Netanyahu a déclaré que ce clip était une erreur et ses concepteurs ont été remerciés.
]]>Israel’s justice minister sprays ’Fascism’ perfume in provocative campaign ad - Israel Election 2019 - Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/israel-s-justice-minister-sprays-herself-with-fascism-perfume-in-provocativ
▻https://youtu.be/0XvIvYAtuX8?t=44
Israel’s Justice Minister Sprays ’Fascism’ Perfume in Provocative Campaign Ad
A new election ad featuring Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked in sultry poses, spraying herself with a perfume labeled ’Fascism,’ has the look and feel of a satiric sketch, but it’s no send up.
A new election ad for the far-right Hayamin Hehadash party featuring Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked in sultry poses, spraying herself with a perfume labeled “Fascism,” has the look and feel of a satiric sketch, echoing the 2017 “Saturday Night Live” send-up of Ivanka Trump in a mock commercial for the scent “Complicit.”
But the Shaked ad was no send-up: The images are accompanied by the seductively whispered phrases (in Hebrew) “Judicial reform,” “Separation of powers” and “Restraining the Supreme Court” — all meant to highlight her efforts to weaken the activist courts and give more power to the legislative branch.
]]>If Palestinians have 22 states, Israeli Jews have 200
The notion that the Palestinians have 22 states to go to is a blend of malice and ignorance: The Palestinians are the stepchildren of the Arab world, no country wants them and no Arab country hasn’t betrayed them
Gideon Levy
Mar 16, 2019 1
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-if-palestinians-have-22-states-israeli-jews-have-200-1.7023647
Here we go again: The Palestinians have 22 states and, poor us, we have only one. Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t the first to use this warped argument; it has been a cornerstone of Zionist propaganda that we’ve imbibed with our mothers’ milk. But he returned to it last week. “The Arab citizens have 22 states. They don’t need another one,” he said on Likud TV.
If the Arab citizens of Israel have 22 countries, the state’s Jewish citizens have almost 200. If the prime minister meant that Arab citizens could move to Arab countries, it’s obvious that Jews are invited to return to their country of origin: Palestinians to Saudi Arabia and Jews to Germany.
Netanyahu belongs in the United States much more than Ayman Odeh belongs in Yemen. Naftali Bennett will also find his feet in San Francisco much more easily than Ahmad Tibi in Mogadishu. Avigdor Lieberman belongs in Russia much more than Jamal Zahalka belongs in Libya. Aida Touma-Sliman is no more connected to Iraq than Ayelet Shaked, whose father was born there. David Bitan belongs to Morocco, his birthplace, much more than Mohammad Barakeh does.
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The notion that the Palestinians have 22 states to go to is a blend of malice and ignorance. Underlying it are the right wing’s claims that there is no Palestinian people, that the Palestinians aren’t attached to their land and that all Arabs are alike. There are no greater lies than these. The simple truth is that the Jews have a state and the Palestinians don’t.
The Palestinians are the stepchildren of the Arab world. No country wants them and no Arab country hasn’t betrayed them. Try being a Palestinian in Egypt or Lebanon. An Israeli settler from Itamar is more welcome in Morocco than a Palestinian from Nablus.
There are Arab states where Israeli Arabs, the Palestinians of 1948, are considered bigger traitors than their own Jews. A common language, religion and a few cultural commonalities don’t constitute a common national identity. When a Palestinian meets a Berber they switch to English, and even then they have very little in common.
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The suggestion that Israel’s Arab citizens move to those 22 states is despicable and mean, well beyond its reference to a common language. It portrays them as temporary guests here, casting doubt on the depth of their attachment to their land, “inviting” them to get out. The amazing thing is that the ones making such proposals are immigrants and sons of immigrants whose roots in this country still need to withstand the test of time.
Palestinians are attached to this country no less than Jews are, possibly more so. It’s doubtful whether the hysterical clamoring for foreign passports would seize the Arab community as it did the Jewish one; everybody was suddenly of Portuguese descent. We can assume that there are more people in Tel Aviv dreaming of foreign lands than there are in Jenin. Los Angeles certainly has more Israelis than Palestinians.
Hundreds of years of living here have consolidated a Palestinian love of the land, with traditions and a heritage – no settler can match this. Palestinians have za’atar (hyssop) and we have schnitzel. In any case, you don’t have to downplay the intensity of the Jewish connection to this country to recognize the depth of the Palestinian attachment to it.
They have nowhere to go to and they don’t want to leave, which is more than can be said for some of the Jews living here. If, despite all their woes, defeats and humiliations they haven’t left, they never will. Too bad you can’t say the same thing about the country’s Jews. The Palestinians won’t leave unless they’re forcibly removed. Is this what the prime minister was alluding to?
When American journalist Helen Thomas suggested that Jews return to Poland she was forced to resign. When Israel’s prime minister proposes the same thing for Arabs, he’s reflecting the opinion of the majority.
From its inception, the Zionist movement dreamed of expelling the Palestinians from this country. At times it fought to achieve this. The people who survived the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the expulsions of 1967, the occupation and the devil’s work in general have remained here and won’t go anywhere. Not to the 22 states and not to any one of them. Only a Nakba II will get them out of here.
]]>Israeli Arab slate, far-left candidate banned from election hours after Kahanist leader allowed to run
Jonathan Lis and Jack Khoury Mar 07, 2019 7:07 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-far-left-lawmaker-banned-from-israeli-election-for-supporting-terr
Arab political sources say the move is evidence of racism and the delegitimization of Arab society in Israel, accusing Netanyahu’s Likud party of anti-Arab incitement
The Central Election Committee disqualified the Arab joint slate Balad-United Arab List and Ofer Cassif, a member of politicial alliance Hadash-Ta’al, from running in the election on Wednesday, opposing the opinion of Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit.
Michael Ben Ari and Itamar Ben-Gvir from the Kahanist, far-right Otzma Yehudit party had petitioned against both lists. The committee approved Ben Air to run in the election earlier Wednesday.
The decisions will be referred to the Supreme Court on Sunday for approval. A ban against a party slate may be appealed in the Supreme Court, which holds a special “election appeals” process, while a ban on an individual candidate automatically requires approval by the Supreme Court if it is to take effect.
Arab political sources described the disqualification of the Balad-United Arab List slate as evidence of racism and the delegitimization of Arab society in Israel and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party of anti-Arab incitement.
MK David Bitan petitioned on behalf of Likud against Balad-United Arab List, and Yisrael Beitenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman petitioned against Cassif. Petitioners claimed both lists and Cassif supported terror and ruled out Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and Democratic state. Mendelblit said he opposed all the petitions.
Ben-Gvir presented the committee with findings he claimed should disqualify the Hadash-Ta’al slate. He mentioned a call from Ta’al chairman Ahmed Tibi to annul the Declaration of Independence, and quoted a Facebook post by Ayman Odeh, the head of Hadash.
In the post, written following a meeting with Fatah member Marwan Barghouti at an Israeli prison, Odeh compared Barghouti to Nelson Mandela. “The meeting was moving, as well as speaking to a leader who shares my political stances.” Ben-Gvir noted Odeh defined Ahed Tamimi as an “excellent girl,” and said she showed “legitimate resistance.” Tamimi, a Palestinian teenage girl, served time in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier in 2018.
Cassif was accused of equating Israel and the Israel Defense Forces with the Nazi regime, and it was noted that he called to fight “Judeo-Nazism,” expressed support for changing the anthem, and called Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked “Neo-Nazi scum.” He did not attend the session, but was called after committee chairman Justice Hanan Melcer insisted on his presence.
“I come from an academic background, and my area of expertise is among other things the subject of Fascism, Nazis and nationalism in general,” said Cassif, explaining his comments. “When I speak to a friend or write a post as a private person, I use metaphors. When I used the aforementioned terms – they were metaphors.”
In an interview last month, Cassif said Israel conducts a “creeping genocide” against the Palestinian people.
The top candidate on the slate, Mansour Abbas, said he had expected that most of the representatives of the Zionist parties on the election committee would support the move to disqualify the slate, but added: “We are a democratic Arab list that is seeking to represent Arab society with dignity and responsibility.”
Commenting on Benny Gantz, the leader of Kahol Lavan, which is ahead of Likud in recent polls, Abbas said: “There’s no difference between Benjamin Netanyahu and Benjamin Gantz.”
Mtanes Shehadeh, who is No. 2 on the Balad-United Arab list slate said the decision to disqualify his slate was expected because he said the Central Election Committee has a right-wing majority and “is also controlled by a fascist, right-wing ideology.”
His Balad faction, Shehadeh said, “presents a challenge to democracy in Israel” and challenges what he called “the right-wing regime that is controlling the country.”
Sources from the Balad-United Arab list slate said there is in an urgent need to strip the Central Election Committee of the authority to disqualify candidates and parties from running in elections. The considerations that go into the decision are purely political, the sources said.
Balad chairman Jamal Zahalka said the decision to disqualify the slate sends a “hostile message to the Arab public” in the country. “We will petition the High Court of Justice against the decision and in any event, we will not change our position, even if we are disqualified.”
Earlier Wednesday, the Central Elections Committee approved Ben Ari, the chairman of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, to run for the Knesset.
Meretz, Stav Shaffir (Labor) and the Reform Movement, who filed the petition to the Central Elections Committee to ban Ben Ari from running for Knesset, all said they would file a petition with the High Court of Justice against the committee’s decision.
Prior to deliberations, Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit submitted his opinion to the comittee, stating he was in favor of disqualifying Ben Ari from running for Knesset on the grounds of incitement to racism.
In November 2017, for instance, at an annual memorial for Rabbi Meir Kahane, Ben Ari gave a speech in which he said of Israeli Arabs, “Let’s give them another 100,000 dunams [of land] and affirmative action, maybe they’ll love us. In the end, yes, they’ll love us when we’re slaughtered.”
In May 2018, Ben Ari gave another speech in which he said, “The Arabs of Haifa aren’t different in any way from the Arabs of Gaza. How are they different? In that they’re here, enemies from within. They’re waging war against us here, within the state. And this is called – it has a name – it’s called a fifth column. We need to call the dog by its name. They’re our enemies. They want to destroy us. Of course there are loyal Arabs, but you can count them – one percent or less than one percent.”
]]>The Knesset candidate who says Zionism encourages anti-Semitism and calls Netanyahu ’arch-murderer’ - Israel Election 2019 - Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium.MAGAZINE-knesset-candidate-netanyahu-is-an-arch-murderer-zionism-e
Few Israelis have heard of Dr. Ofer Cassif, the Jewish representative on the far-leftist Hadash party’s Knesset slate. On April 9, that will change
By Ravit Hecht Feb 16, 2019
Ofer Cassif is fire and brimstone. Not even the flu he’s suffering from today can contain his bursting energy. His words are blazing, and he bounds through his modest apartment, searching frenetically for books by Karl Marx and Primo Levi in order to find quotations to back up his ideas. Only occasional sips from a cup of maté bring his impassioned delivery to a momentary halt. The South American drink is meant to help fight his illness, he explains.
Cassif is third on the slate of Knesset candidates in Hadash (the Hebrew acronym for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), the successor to Israel’s Communist Party. He holds the party’s “Jewish slot,” replacing MK Dov Khenin. Cassif is likely to draw fire from opponents and be a conspicuous figure in the next Knesset, following the April 9 election.
Indeed, the assault on him began as soon as he was selected by the party’s convention. The media pursued him; a columnist in the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Ben-Dror Yemini, called for him to be disqualified from running for the Knesset. It would be naive to say that this was unexpected. Cassif, who was one of the first Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the territories, in 1987, gained fame thanks to a number of provocative statements. The best known is his branding of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked as “neo-Nazi scum.” On another occasion, he characterized Jews who visit the Temple Mount as “cancer with metastases that have to be eradicated.”
On his alternate Facebook page, launched after repeated blockages of his original account by a blitz of posts from right-wing activists, he asserted that Culture Minister Miri Regev is “repulsive gutter contamination,” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an “arch-murderer” and that the new Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, is a “war criminal.”
Do you regret making those remarks?
Cassif: “‘Regret’ is a word of emotion. Those statements were made against a background of particular events: the fence in Gaza, horrible legislation, and the wild antics of Im Tirtzu [an ultranationalist organization] on campus. That’s what I had to say at the time. I didn’t count on being in the Knesset. That wasn’t part of my plan. But it’s clear to me that as a public personality, I would not have made those comments.”
Is Netanyahu an arch-murderer?
“Yes. I wrote it in the specific context of a particular day in the Gaza Strip. A massacre of innocent people was perpetrated there, and no one’s going to persuade me that those people were endangering anyone. It’s a concentration camp. Not a ‘concentration camp’ in the sense of Bergen-Belsen; I am absolutely not comparing the Holocaust to what’s happening.”
You term what Israel is doing to the Palestinians “genocide.”
“I call it ‘creeping genocide.’ Genocide is not only a matter of taking people to gas chambers. When Yeshayahu Leibowitz used the term ‘Judeo-Nazis,’ people asked him, ‘How can you say that? Are we about to build gas chambers?’ To that, he had two things to say. First, if the whole difference between us and the Nazis boils down to the fact that we’re not building gas chambers, we’re already in trouble. And second, maybe we won’t use gas chambers, but the mentality that exists today in Israel – and he said this 40 years ago – would allow it. I’m afraid that today, after four years of such an extreme government, it possesses even greater legitimacy.
“But you know what, put aside ‘genocide’ – ethnic cleansing is taking place there. And that ethnic cleansing is also being carried out by means of killing, although mainly by way of humiliation and of making life intolerable. The trampling of human dignity. It reminds me of Primo Levi’s ‘If This Is a Man.’”
You say you’re not comparing, but you repeatedly come back to Holocaust references. On Facebook, you also uploaded the scene from “Schindler’s List” in which the SS commander Amon Goeth picks off Jews with his rifle from the balcony of his quarters in the camp. You compared that to what was taking place along the border fence in the Gaza Strip.
“Today, I would find different comparisons. In the past I wrote an article titled, ‘On Holocaust and on Other Crimes.’ It’s online [in Hebrew]. I wrote there that anyone who compares Israel to the Holocaust is cheapening the Holocaust. My comparison between here and what happened in the early 1930s [in Germany] is a very different matter.”
Clarity vs. crudity
Given Cassif’s style, not everyone in Hadash was happy with his election, particularly when it comes to the Jewish members of the predominantly Arab party. Dov Khenin, for example, declined to be interviewed and say what he thinks of his parliamentary successor. According to a veteran party figure, “From the conversations I had, it turns out that almost none of the Jewish delegates – who make up about 100 of the party’s 940 delegates – supported his candidacy.
“He is perceived, and rightly so,” the party veteran continues, “as someone who closes doors to Hadash activity within Israeli society. Each of the other Jewish candidates presented a record of action and of struggles they spearheaded. What does he do? Curses right-wing politicians on Facebook. Why did the party leadership throw the full force of its weight behind him? In a continuation of the [trend exemplified by] its becoming part of the Joint List, Ofer’s election reflects insularity and an ongoing retreat from the historical goal of implementing change in Israeli society.”
At the same time, as his selection by a 60 percent majority shows, many in the party believe that it’s time to change course. “Israeli society is moving rightward, and what’s perceived as Dov’s [Khenin] more gentle style didn’t generate any great breakthrough on the Jewish street,” a senior source in Hadash notes.
“It’s not a question of the tension between extremism and moderation, but of how to signpost an alternative that will develop over time. Clarity, which is sometimes called crudity, never interfered with cooperation between Arabs and Jews. On the contrary. Ofer says things that we all agreed with but didn’t so much say, and of course that’s going to rile the right wing. And a good thing, too.”
Hadash chairman MK Ayman Odeh also says he’s pleased with the choice, though sources in the party claim that Odeh is apprehensive about Cassif’s style and that he actually supported a different candidate. “Dov went for the widest possible alliances in order to wield influence,” says Odeh. “Ofer will go for very sharp positions at the expense of the breadth of the alliance. But his sharp statements could have a large impact.”
Khenin was deeply esteemed by everyone. When he ran for mayor of Tel Aviv in 2008, some 35 percent of the electorate voted for him, because he was able to touch people who weren’t only from his political milieu.
Odeh: “No one has a higher regard for Dov than I do. But just to remind you, we are not a regular opposition, we are beyond the pale. And there are all kinds of styles. Influence can be wielded through comments that are vexatious the first time but which people get used to the second time. When an Arab speaks about the Nakba and about the massacre in Kafr Kassem [an Israeli Arab village, in 1956], it will be taken in a particular way, but when uttered by a Jew it takes on special importance.”
He will be the cause of many attacks on the party.
“Ahlan wa sahlan – welcome.”
Cassif will be the first to tell you that, with all due respect for the approach pursued by Khenin and by his predecessor in the Jewish slot, Tamar Gozansky, he will be something completely different. “I totally admire what Tamar and Dov did – nothing less than that,” he says, while adding, “But my agenda will be different. The three immediate dangers to Israeli society are the occupation, racism and the diminishment of the democratic space to the point of liquidation. That’s the agenda that has to be the hub of the struggle, as long as Israel rules over millions of people who have no rights, enters [people’s houses] in the middle of the night, arrests minors on a daily basis and shoots people in the back.
"Israel commits murder on a daily basis. When you murder one Palestinian, you’re called Elor Azaria [the IDF soldier convicted and jailed for killing an incapacitated Palestinian assailant]; when you murder and oppress thousands of Palestinians, you’re called the State of Israel.”
So you plan to be the provocateur in the next Knesset?
“It’s not my intention to be a provocateur, to stand there and scream and revile people. Even on Facebook I was compelled to stop that. But I definitely intend to challenge the dialogue in terms of the content, and mainly with a type of sarcasm.”
’Bags of blood’
Cassif, 54, who holds a doctorate in political philosophy from the London School of Economics, teaches political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Sapir Academic College in Sderot and at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo. He lives in Rehovot, is married and is the father of a 19-year-old son. He’s been active in Hadash for three decades and has held a number of posts in the party.
As a lecturer, he stands out for his boldness and fierce rhetoric, which draws students of all stripes. He even hangs out with some of his Haredi students, one of whom wrote a post on the eve of the Hadash primary urging the delegates to choose him. After his election, a student from a settlement in the territories wrote to him, “You are a determined and industrious person, and for that I hold you in high regard. Hoping we will meet on the field of action and growth for the success of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state (I felt obliged to add a small touch of irony in conclusion).”
Cassif grew up in a home that supported Mapai, forerunner of Labor, in Rishon Letzion. He was an only child; his father was an accountant, his mother held a variety of jobs. He was a news hound from an early age, and at 12 ran for the student council in school. He veered sharply to the left in his teens, becoming a keen follower of Marx and socialism.
Following military service in the IDF’s Nahal brigade and a period in the airborne Nahal, Cassif entered the Hebrew University. There his political career moved one step forward, and there he also forsook the Zionist left permanently. His first position was as a parliamentary aide to the secretary general of the Communist Party, Meir Wilner.
“At first I was closer to Mapam [the United Workers Party, which was Zionist], and then I refused to serve in the territories. I was the first refusenik in the first intifada to be jailed. I didn’t get support from Mapam, I got support from the people of Hadash, and I drew close to them. I was later jailed three more times for refusing to serve in the territories.”
His rivals in the student organizations at the Hebrew University remember him as the epitome of the extreme left.
“Even in the Arab-Jewish student association, Cassif was considered off-the-wall,” says Motti Ohana, who was chairman of Likud’s student association and active in the Student Union at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. “One time I got into a brawl with him. It was during the first intifada, when he brought two bags of blood, emptied them out in the university’s corridors and declared, ‘There is no difference between Jewish and Arab blood,’ likening Israeli soldiers to terrorists. The custom on campus was that we would quarrel, left-right, Arabs-Jews, and after that we would sit together, have a coffee and talk. But not Cassif.”
According to Ohana, today a member of the Likud central committee, the right-wing activists knew that, “You could count on Ofer to fall into every trap. There was one event at the Hebrew University that was a kind of political Hyde Park. The right wanted to boot the left out of there, so we hung up the flag. It was obvious that Ofer would react, and in fact he tore the flag, and in the wake of the ruckus that developed, political activity was stopped for good.”
Replacing the anthem
Cassif voices clearly and cogently positions that challenge the public discourse in Israel, and does so with ardor and charisma. Four candidates vied for Hadash’s Jewish slot, and they all delivered speeches at the convention. The three candidates who lost to him – Efraim Davidi, Yaela Raanan and the head of the party’s Tel Aviv branch, Noa Levy – described their activity and their guiding principles. When they spoke, there was the regular buzz of an audience that’s waiting for lunch. But when Cassif took the stage, the effect was magnetic.
“Peace will not be established without a correction of the crimes of the Nakba and [recognition of] the right of return,” he shouted, and the crowd cheered him. As one senior party figure put it, “Efraim talked about workers’ rights, Yaela about the Negev, Noa about activity in Tel Aviv – and Ofer was Ofer.”
What do you mean by “right of return”?
Cassif: “The first thing is the actual recognition of the Nakba and of the wrong done by Israel. Compare it to the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa, if you like, or with the commissions in Chile after Pinochet. Israel must recognize the wrong it committed. Now, recognition of the wrong also includes recognition of the right of return. The question is how it’s implemented. It has to be done by agreement. I can’t say that tomorrow Tel Aviv University has to be dismantled and that Sheikh Munis [the Arab village on whose ruins the university stands] has to be rebuilt there. The possibility can be examined of giving compensation in place of return, for example.”
But what is the just solution, in your opinion?
“For the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.”
That means there will be Jews who will have to leave their home.
“In some places, unequivocally, yes. People will have to be told: ‘You must evacuate your places.’ The classic example is Ikrit and Biram [Christian-Arab villages in Galilee whose residents were promised – untruly – by the Israeli authorities in 1948 that they would be able to return, and whose lands were turned over to Jewish communities]. But there are places where there is certainly greater difficulty. You don’t right one wrong with another.”
What about the public space in Israel? What should it look like?
“The public space has to change, to belong to all the state’s residents. I dispute the conception of ‘Jewish publicness.’”
How should that be realized?
“For example, by changing the national symbols, changing the national anthem. [Former Hadash MK] Mohammed Barakeh once suggested ‘I Believe’ [‘Sahki, Sahki’] by [Shaul] Tchernichovsky – a poem that is not exactly an expression of Palestinian nationalism. He chose it because of the line, ‘For in mankind I’ll believe.’ What does it mean to believe in mankind? It’s not a Jew, or a Palestinian, or a Frenchman, or I don’t know what.”
What’s the difference between you and the [Arab] Balad party? Both parties overall want two states – a state “of all its citizens” and a Palestinian state.
“In the big picture, yes. But Balad puts identity first on the agenda. We are not nationalists. We do not espouse nationalism as a supreme value. For us, self-determination is a means. We are engaged in class politics. By the way, Balad [the National Democratic Assembly] and Ta’al [MK Ahmad Tibi’s Arab Movement for Renewal] took the idea of a state of all its citizens from us, from Hadash. We’ve been talking about it for ages.”
If you were a Palestinian, what would you do today?
“In Israel, what my Palestinian friends are doing, and I with them – [wage] a parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggle.”
And what about the Palestinians in the territories?
“We have always been against harming innocent civilians. Always. In all our demonstrations, one of our leading slogans was: ‘In Gaza and in Sderot, children want to live.’ With all my criticism of the settlers, to enter a house and slaughter children, as in the case of the Fogel family [who were murdered in their beds in the settlement of Itamar in 2011], is intolerable. You have to be a human being and reject that.”
And attacks on soldiers?
“An attack on soldiers is not terrorism. Even Netanyahu, in his book about terrorism, explicitly categorizes attacks on soldiers or on the security forces as guerrilla warfare. It’s perfectly legitimate, according to every moral criterion – and, by the way, in international law. At the same time, I am not saying it’s something wonderful, joyful or desirable. The party’s Haifa office is on Ben-Gurion Street, and suddenly, after years, I noticed a memorial plaque there for a fighter in Lehi [pre-state underground militia, also known as the Stern Gang] who assassinated a British officer. Wherever there has been a struggle for liberation from oppression, there are national heroes, who in 90 percent of the cases carried out some operations that were unlawful. Nelson Mandela is today considered a hero, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but according to the conventional definition, he was a terrorist. Most of the victims of the ANC [African National Congress] were civilians.”
In other words, today’s Hamas commanders who are carrying out attacks on soldiers will be heroes of the future Palestinian state?
“Of course.”
Anti-Zionist identity
Cassif terms himself an explicit anti-Zionist. “There are three reasons for that,” he says. “To begin with, Zionism is a colonialist movement, and as a socialist, I am against colonialism. Second, as far as I am concerned, Zionism is racist in ideology and in practice. I am not referring to the definition of race theory – even though there are also some who impute that to the Zionist movement – but to what I call Jewish supremacy. No socialist can accept that. My supreme value is equality, and I can’t abide any supremacy – Jewish or Arab. The third thing is that Zionism, like other ethno-nationalistic movements, splits the working class and all weakened groups. Instead of uniting them in a struggle for social justice, for equality, for democracy, it divides the exploited classes and the enfeebled groups, and by that means strengthens the rule of capital.”
He continues, “Zionism also sustains anti-Semitism. I don’t say it does so deliberately – even though I have no doubt that there are some who do it deliberately, like Netanyahu, who is connected to people like the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, and the leader of the far right in Austria, Hans Christian Strache.”
Did Mapai-style Zionism also encourage anti-Semitism?
“The phenomenon was very striking in Mapai. Think about it for a minute, not only historically, but logically. If the goal of political and practical Zionism is really the establishment of a Jewish state containing a Jewish majority, and for Diaspora Jewry to settle there, nothing serves them better than anti-Semitism.”
What in their actions encouraged anti-Semitism?
“The very appeal to Jews throughout the world – the very fact of treating them as belonging to the same nation, when they were living among other nations. The whole old ‘dual loyalty’ story – Zionism actually encouraged that. Therefore, I maintain that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same thing, but are precisely opposites. That doesn’t mean, of course, that there are no anti-Zionists who are also anti-Semites. Most of the BDS people are of course anti-Zionists, but they are in no way anti-Semites. But there are anti-Semites there, too.”
Do you support BDS?
“It’s too complex a subject for a yes or no answer; there are aspects I don’t support.”
Do you think that the Jews deserve a national home in the Land of Israel?
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘national home.’ It’s very amorphous. We in Hadash say explicitly that Israel has a right to exist as a sovereign state. Our struggle is not against the state’s existence, but over its character.”
But that state is the product of the actions of the Zionist movement, which you say has been colonialist and criminal from day one.
“That’s true, but the circumstances have changed. That’s the reason that the majority of the members of the Communist Party accepted the [1947] partition agreement at the time. They recognized that the circumstances had changed. I think that one of the traits that sets communist thought apart, and makes it more apt, is the understanding and the attempt to strike the proper balance between what should be, and reality. So it’s true that Zionism started as colonialism, but what do you do with the people who were already born here? What do you tell them? Because your grandparents committed a crime, you have to leave? The question is how you transform the situation that’s been created into one that’s just, democratic and equal.”
So, a person who survived a death camp and came here is a criminal?
“The individual person, of course not. I’m in favor of taking in refugees in distress, no matter who or what they are. I am against Zionism’s cynical use of Jews in distress, including the refugees from the Holocaust. I have a problem with the fact that the natives whose homeland this is cannot return, while people for whom it’s not their homeland, can, because they supposedly have some sort of blood tie and an ‘imaginary friend’ promised them the land.”
I understand that you are in favor of the annulment of the Law of Return?
“Yes. Definitely.”
But you are in favor of the Palestinian right of return.
“There’s no comparison. There’s no symmetry here at all. Jerry Seinfeld was by chance born to a Jewish family. What’s his connection to this place? Why should he have preference over a refugee from Sabra or Chatila, or Edward Said, who did well in the United States? They are the true refugees. This is their homeland. Not Seinfeld’s.”
Are you critical of the Arabs, too?
“Certainly. One criticism is of their cooperation with imperialism – take the case of today’s Saudi Arabia, Qatar and so on. Another, from the past, relates to the reactionary forces that did not accept that the Jews have a right to live here.”
Hadash refrained from criticizing the Assad regime even as it was massacring civilians in Syria. The party even torpedoed a condemnation of Assad after the chemical attack. Do you identify with that approach?
“Hadash was critical of the Assad regime – father and son – for years, so we can’t be accused in any way of supporting Assad or Hezbollah. We are not Ba’ath, we are not Islamists. We are communists. But as I said earlier, the struggle, unfortunately, is generally not between the ideal and what exists in practice, but many times between two evils. And then you have to ask yourself which is the lesser evil. The Syrian constellation is extremely complicated. On the one hand, there is the United States, which is intervening, and despite all the pretense of being against ISIS, supported ISIS and made it possible for ISIS to sprout.
"I remind you that ISIS started from the occupation of Iraq. And ideologically and practically, ISIS is definitely a thousand times worse than the Assad regime, which is at base also a secular regime. Our position was and is against the countries that pose the greatest danger to regional peace, which above all are Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and the United States, which supports them. That doesn’t mean that we support Assad.”
Wrong language
Cassif’s economic views are almost as far from the consensus as his political ideas. He lives modestly in an apartment that’s furnished like a young couple’s first home. You won’t find an espresso maker or unnecessary products of convenience in his place. To his credit, it can be said that he extracts the maximum from Elite instant coffee.
What is your utopian vision – to nationalize Israel’s conglomerates, such as Cellcom, the telecommunications company, or Osem, the food manufacturer and distributor?
“The bottom line is yes. How exactly will it be done? That’s an excellent question, which I can’t answer. Perhaps by transferring ownership to the state or to the workers, with democratic tools. And there are other alternatives. But certainly, I would like it if a large part of the resources were not in private hands, as was the case before the big privatizations. It’s true that it won’t be socialism, because, again, there can be no such thing as Zionist socialism, but there won’t be privatization like we have today. What is the result of capitalism in Israel? The collapse of the health system, the absence of a social-welfare system, a high cost of living and of housing, the elderly and the disabled in a terrible situation.”
Does any private sector have the right to exist?
“Look, the question is what you mean by ‘private sector.’ If we’re talking about huge concerns that the owners of capital control completely through their wealth, then no.”
What growth was there in the communist countries? How can anyone support communism, in light of the grim experience wherever it was tried?
“It’s true, we know that in the absolute majority of societies where an attempt was made to implement socialism, there was no growth or prosperity, and we need to ask ourselves why, and how to avoid that. When I talk about communism, I’m not talking about Stalin and all the crimes that were committed in the name of the communist idea. Communism is not North Korea and it is not Pol Pot in Cambodia. Heaven forbid.”
And what about Venezuela?
“Venezuela is not communism. In fact, they didn’t go far enough in the direction of socialism.”
Chavez was not enough of a socialist?
“Chavez, but in particular Maduro. The Communist Party is critical of the regime. They support it because the main enemy is truly American imperialism and its handmaidens. Let’s look at what the U.S. did over the years. At how many times it invaded and employed bullying, fascist forces. Not only in Latin America, its backyard, but everywhere.”
Venezuela is falling apart, people there don’t have anything to eat, there’s no medicine, everyone who can flees – and it’s the fault of the United States?
“You can’t deny that the regime has made mistakes. It’s not ideal. But basically, it is the result of American imperialism and its lackeys. After all, the masses voted for Chavez and for Maduro not because things were good for them. But because American corporations stole the country’s resources and filled their own pockets. I wouldn’t make Chavez into an icon, but he did some excellent things.”
Then how do you generate individual wealth within the method you’re proposing? I understand that I am now talking to you capitalistically, but the reality is that people see the accumulation of assets as an expression of progress in life.
“Your question is indeed framed in capitalist language, which simply departs from what I believe in. Because you are actually asking me how the distribution of resources is supposed to occur within the capitalist framework. And I say no, I am not talking about resource distribution within a capitalist framework.”
Gantz vs. Netanyahu
Cassif was chosen as the polls showed Meretz and Labor, the representatives of the Zionist left, barely scraping through into the next Knesset and in fact facing a serious possibility of electoral extinction. The critique of both parties from the radical left is sometimes more acerbic than from the right.
Would you like to see the Labor Party disappear?
“No. I think that what’s happening at the moment with Labor and with Meretz is extremely dangerous. I speak about them as collectives, because they contain individuals with whom I see no possibility of engaging in a dialogue. But I think that they absolutely must be in the Knesset.”
Is a left-winger who defines himself as a Zionist your partner in any way?
“Yes. We need partners. We can’t be picky. Certainly we will cooperate with liberals and Zionists on such issues as combating violence against women or the battle to rescue the health system. Maybe even in putting an end to the occupation.”
I’ll put a scenario to you: Benny Gantz does really well in the election and somehow overcomes Netanyahu. Do you support the person who led Operation Protective Edge in Gaza when he was chief of staff?
“Heaven forbid. But we don’t reject people, we reject policy. I remind you that it was [then-defense minister] Yitzhak Rabin who led the most violent tendency in the first intifada, with his ‘Break their bones.’ But when he came to the Oslo Accords, it was Hadash and the Arab parties that gave him, from outside the coalition, an insurmountable bloc. I can’t speak for the party, but if there is ever a government whose policy is one that we agree with – eliminating the occupation, combating racism, abolishing the nation-state law – I believe we will give our support in one way or another.”
And if Gantz doesn’t declare his intention to eliminate the occupation, he isn’t preferable to Netanyahu in any case?
“If so, why should we recommend him [to the president to form the next government]? After the clips he posted boasting about how many people he killed and how he hurled Gaza back into the Stone Age, I’m far from certain that he’s better.”
]]>Des Israéliens blessés par balles en Cisjordanie (armée)
▻https://www.romandie.com/news/Des-Isra-liens-bless-s-par-balles-en-Cisjordanie-arm-e/978371.rom
Jérusalem - Plusieurs Israéliens ont été blessés par balles dimanche dans une attaque près de la colonie d’Ofra, dans le nord de la Cisjordanie occupée, a annoncé l’armée israélienne dans un communiqué.
Parmi les victimes, une femme enceinte a été grièvement blessée, selon une porte-parole d’un hôpital de Jérusalem.
« Les tirs ont été effectués à partir d’une voiture palestinienne en direction de civils qui se trouvaient à une station de bus », a indiqué l’armée.
« Des soldats ont tiré en direction de la voiture qui s’est éloignée et les forces de sécurité poursuivent le véhicule », a-t-elle ajouté dans le communiqué.
]]>A Palestinian vineyard annihilated with chainsaws, with a chilling message in Hebrew
Gideon Levy, Alex Levac | May 24, 2018 | 6:53 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-farm-terror-palestinian-vineyard-annihilated-with-chainsaws-1.6115
The grapes are shriveled. The vineyard is dead. Reduced to a large, dried-out, yellowing stain in the heart of the verdant region along Highway 60 where the road runs past the town of Halhoul, north of Hebron. The “yellow wind” that David Grossman wrote about 30 years ago is a dying vineyard here. Two plots of land, with hundreds of vines that were slashed, their stems and shoots sawed off – and within a week everything here had withered and died.
This is a particularly horrible sight because all the damage was wrought by the hand of man. A wicked, loathsome hand that hates not only Arabs but despises the land itself. In fact, we can assume that it wasn’t just one individual who raided and destroyed this vineyard late Tuesday night last week. To saw off that many plants in such a short time requires a few pairs of nasty hands. And someone also had to smear the threatening words in Hebrew on a rock: “We will reach everywhere.” All before first light illuminated the dark deed.
When dawn broke, the owner of the vineyard, Dr. Haitham Jahshan, a hematologist, arrived and couldn’t believe his eyes. His vines had been ravaged. First he saw one sawed trunk, then another and another – a sea of butchered vines, whose grapes were grown to be eaten, not for wine – until the full scale of the calamity hit home.
For his part, Musa Abu Hashhash, a field researcher for the B’Tselem human rights organization, says he’s never seen an act of so-called agricultural crime on this scale.
When we visited on Monday, Highway 60 was as busy as ever: As the major traffic artery running the length of the West Bank, it serves both Palestinians and settlers. The vineyard lies right next to the road, which has very narrow shoulders at that point. West of the highway looms a fortified Israel Defense Forces observation tower, an Israeli flag flapping above it, where soldiers are present day and night to protect all the local residents and safeguard their property. A network of security cameras covers the road from all directions – yet apparently no one saw anything on that night last week, no one heard the insidious infiltrators or the sounds of the sawing.
The butchery was obviously done with electric saws – the cuts are precise and sharp, from trunk to trunk, from shoot to shoot, nothing was left untouched, probably to ensure that nothing would remain. Almost all the slashing was done at the same height, about 40 centimeters (15 inches) above ground. A professional job. Many of the trunks look whole, but on closer examination, they too turn out to be cleaved. Some sway between heaven and earth, hanging in space, cut off from their bottom sections and roots. Wounded, scarred, cut in two – nearly 400 slashed vines, according to the owner, Jahshan.
We follow him, bending over as we pass through row upon row of truncated vines, beneath a ceiling of low iron lattices on which they are tangled and twined. There’s no way to raise your head here, no way to stand up. The soil is clear of stones and has been plowed: Those tending the land here turned the earth over using an all-terrain vehicle on the day after the spoliation, hoping a miracle would occur and the vineyard would begin to revive itself. But the miracle hasn’t happened. It’s clear now that it will be necessary to uproot the entire vineyard and to plant a new one in its place. It will then take three to five years for the first fruits to appear, and some 15 years – the age of the destroyed vineyard – for the crop to reach its optimal yield.
Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard, and so did Dr. Jahshan.
Though he lives in Halhoul today, Jahshan, 42, studied medicine in Jordan and from 1999 to 2006 did his residency in hematology and molecular genetics at the Hadassah Medical Center and the Herzog Medical Center, both in Jerusalem. Now he runs a blood-disease clinic at Al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron, but also devotes time to working the land from which his family earns a living. The vineyard covered five dunams, 1.25 acres – 5,000 square meters, he explains.
During the days that passed between the mutilation of the vineyard and our visit, everything withered, shriveled up. The leaves crumble between one’s fingers, the buds have been reduced to dust. This week’s hot, dry winds finished everything off.
On his cellphone, Jahshan shows us a photograph of the vineyard from last week, on the day after the assault: still green, like the vineyards to the left and right of his property.
Last Tuesday, Jahshan, together with his father, uncle and two of his brothers, sprayed the vineyard with pesticides, working from early in the morning until the early evening. They didn’t manage to complete the job and decided to return at first light. They left at about 6 that evening and were back at 6 the next morning – only to be dumbstruck by a sight that they will never forget.
An empty bag of chocolate milk from the Kibbutz Yotvata dairy lies on the ground amid the vines; perhaps the vandals drank chocolate milk as they savaged the vineyard, sucking and slashing. Their car must have been parked on the narrow shoulders of the highway, visible to everyone and seen by the security cameras.
In one part of the vineyard the raiders left a row of vines intact, perhaps fearful of being seen and caught. By the time they reached the southern section of it they were more confident, and wreaked total havoc. Great hatred must have driven them, complete meanness of spirit. The closest settlements are a few kilometers from here – Karmei Tzur to the north, Kiryat Arba and Givat Haharsina to the south. The immediate suspicion falls on their residents.
This is the highest spot in the West Bank and the terroir is excellent, the physician-vine grower tells us; he only watered the vineyard once or twice a year from a well at its edge, otherwise depending on rainfall. A few types of grapes were grown here, white and dark. From each sundered trunk, the yield was usually 10-15 cartons of fruit, about 150 kilos of grapes.
We take refuge from the heat in the shade of a peach tree in a nearby plot that has begun to yield fruit. “It was a vineyard at the height of its yield: 10 tons of grapes a year,” Jahshan tells us. In the years ahead, he won’t be harvesting the leaves, either, which sell for 25 shekels ($7) a kilo in the Hebron market. The harvest was due to begin in September – it starts later here, in the Hebron Hills – but now it’s been postponed indefinitely.
“Maybe I’ll plant pakos [Armenian cucumbers] instead of grapes,” he muses, and then immediately corrects himself. “Of course I’ll plant grapes again.” If he or someone from his family come to the vineyard after dark, he adds, the army or the police arrive within minutes: “They see everything, but somehow they didn’t see the vandals.”
Jahshan estimates the damage done to him and his family at about 250,000 shekels ($70,000), though it’s quite clear that the money is not his prime concern. He feels that there is no one to protect him and his property.
When he and his relatives arrived Wednesday morning they didn’t see anything amiss at first. The vineyard was still green. Even after he saw one vine cut, he never imagined that the whole vineyard had been ruined. They went immediately to the Halhoul Municipality, and from there called the Israeli-Palestinian District Coordination and Liaison Office to file a complaint. They called the police and the Israel Defense Forces, too, and were asked to go back to the vineyard, where police and army officers met them to survey the damage at about 11 o’clock.
A tracker examined footprints, photographs were taken, and Jahshan and the others were asked to go to the Kiryat Arba police station to file a complaint. It was the police who discovered the black inscription, “We will reach everywhere,” hidden amid the rocks. Jahshan hadn’t noticed it. Since then he hasn’t heard anything from the authorities.
Shlomit Bakshi, spokeswoman of the Judea and Samaria District of the Israel Police, told Haaretz, “Upon receiving the complaint, the police launched an investigation and several actions were taken. At this stage, the investigation is still underway.”
Jahshan comments drily that he hopes the police will find the culprits and bring them to justice, but adds, “If a child here had thrown a stone, they would have caught him already.”
Perhaps the intensive investigation will get an essential boost from Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who on Tuesday tweeted, “Ratcheting up the uncompromising war on agricultural crime. No longer mild punishment without deterrence Yesterday, a bill I sponsored was passed [by the Knesset] in the first vote [of three], stipulating that a police officer can levy a stiff fine in offenses involving agricultural crime. That way the criminal will receive immediate painful economic punishment.”
Agricultural crime, stiff and painful punishment – Shaked was undoubtedly referring also, perhaps even mainly, to the ongoing, routine agricultural terror perpetrated by Jewish vandals against Palestinian farmers.
]]>Israël vote une loi facilitant le processus décisionnel pour l’entrée en guerre | The Times of Israël
La Knesset approuve la clause controversée de la nouvelle loi qui autorise Netanyahu à lancer des opérations militaires de masse en ne consultant que le ministre de la Défense
Par SUE SURKES, RAOUL WOOTLIFF et AFP
▻https://fr.timesofisrael.com/israel-vote-une-loi-facilitant-le-processus-decisionnel-pour-lentr
Le Parlement israélien a voté lundi en faveur d’une loi permettant au Premier ministre et au ministre de la Défense de décider d’entrer en guerre sans réunir le gouvernement, sur fond de tensions croissantes entre Israël et certains de ses voisins.
Cette loi, votée à 62 voix contre 41, donne la responsabilité au cabinet restreint de sécurité de décider d’une opération militaire ou d’une guerre sans se concerter avec le reste du gouvernement.
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Mais un paragraphe précise qu’en cas de « conditions extrêmes », le Premier ministre et son ministre de la Défense, seuls, pourront décider d’une telle opération.
La loi ne précise pas quelles sont exactement ces « conditions extrêmes », ou qui les déterminera, en indiquant seulement que la décision s’appliquera, « si la question est nécessaire en raison de l’urgence ».
Des soldats de l’armée israélienne à Hébron, le 17 juin 2014. (Crédit : AFP Photo/Hazem Bader)
Le projet de loi initié par la ministre de la Justice Ayelet Shaked est un amendement d’une loi fondamentale qui, auparavant, donnait au gouvernement uniquement la possibilité de décider de lancer une opération militaire avec la présence de la majorité des ministres.
Présenté par Netanyahu depuis l’année dernière – le projet avait été rejeté plus tôt dans la journée par les membres de deux comités clés de la Knesset : Droit et Justice, et Affaires étrangères et Défense. Il a toutefois été soumis à nouveau par Avi Dichter, membre du Likud et président de la Commission des Affaires étrangères et de la Défense, lors des deuxième et troisième lectures d’un amendement plus large et a été voté dans ce cadre législatif plus large.
Cet amendement plus large permet au gouvernement de déléguer le pouvoir de déclarer la guerre dans des circonstances normales, ou de se mobiliser pour une opération militaire majeure, à un forum composé « d’au moins la moitié » de tous les ministres du Cabinet.
Le président de la Commission des affaires étrangères et de la défense, Avi Dichter (D), dirige une réunion de la Commission à la Knesset, le 30 avril 2018. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Il y a environ huit ans, Netanyahu et Ehud Barak, alors ministre de la Défense, avaient chargé le chef d’état-major et le chef du service de renseignement du Mossad de placer l’armée en état d’urgence, mais ces derniers lui ont répondu que cela était illégal car cette action n’avait pas été dûment approuvée et pouvait mener à la guerre.
Cependant, à de nombreuses occasions, des décisions de même nature ont été prises par le seul Cabinet de sécurité, un petit groupe de ministres chargé d’élaborer des politiques en matière de guerre et de paix, ou d’autres petits groupes de ministres.
Onze ministres sont membres du cabinet restreint de sécurité actuel sur les 22 ministres qui composent le gouvernement Netanyahu.
Yaakov Amidror (à droite) avec le chef d’état-major général de Tsahal Benny Gantz (Crédit photo : Miriam Alster/Flash90).
Un comité créé en 2016 sous la direction d’un ancien conseiller à la sécurité nationale, le major-général Yaakov Amidror, pour examiner le fonctionnement du cabinet de sécurité et la manière dont il informe et met à jour les ministres a recommandé de mettre la loi en conformité avec ce qu’il a dit être devenu la « pratique normale ». En juin de l’année dernière, le cabinet a voté en faveur d’une modification de la loi.
Ayelet Shaked a justifié l’amendement en expliquant devant le Parlement que « dans la situation sécuritaire actuelle, il faut pouvoir rendre plus efficace le travail du gouvernement et du Cabinet ».
Deux députés de l’opposition – Omer Bar Lev de l’Union sioniste, officier de réserve de l’armée israélienne ayant le grade de colonel et ancien commandant de l’unité d’élite Sayeret Matkal, et Ofer Shelah de Yesh Atid, commandant de compagnie de la Brigade de parachutistes de réserve qui a perdu un œil pendant la guerre du Liban de 1982 – ont averti les comités que le libellé de la nouvelle législation pourrait permettre au Premier ministre d’exclure les députés opposés à une opération militaire et de soumettre une telle opération à un vote en l’absence de ces derniers.
Le député Ofer Shelah (Yesh Atid) s’exprime lors d’une conférence de presse sur ce que l’on appelle la « loi sur la conscription » à Tel Aviv le 12 septembre 2017. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Ils ont également déclaré que permettre au Premier ministre et au ministre de la Défense de décider quand une situation est considérée comme « conditions extrêmes » leur donnerait le plein pouvoir de déclencher une guerre sans aucun contrôle.
Shelah a ensuite accusé les membres de la coalition d’avoir voté « contre leurs propres opinions, en matière de vie et de mort » à cause de la pression exercée par Netanyahu.
« Le mépris de Netanyahu pour tous ceux qui l’entourent et pour tout ce que nous avons appris au cours de nos nombreuses guerres a pris le pas sur la considération de nombreux membres compétents et expérimentés de la Knesset », a-t-il dit.
L’Institut israélien pour la démocratie a soumis une série de réserves aux commissions au sujet du projet de loi, notamment en exigeant l’approbation du Premier ministre, du vice-Premier ministre et des ministres de plusieurs ministères clés et en suggérant de définir les activités militaires qui nécessitent l’approbation du Cabinet et celles qui ne le sont pas. Aucune des recommandations de l’institut n’a été acceptée.
Bien qu’ils se soient opposés sans succès au projet de loi à la Knesset, les partis d’opposition ont déclaré lundi soir au Times of Israel qu’il n’y avait aucun projet de recours contre le projet de loi devant la Haute Cour.
Cette loi est votée dans un contexte de tensions avec les Palestiniens alors que, depuis le 30 mars, des manifestations dans la bande de Gaza, le long de la frontière avec Israël, ont donné lieu à des affrontements avec les forces israéliennes dans lesquels 45 Palestiniens auraient été tués.
Par ailleurs, le ministre israélien de la Défense Avigdor Liberman a averti jeudi que son pays s’en prendrait à toute tentative d’“implantation militaire” iranienne en Syrie, après une attaque dans ce pays le 9 avril attribuée à l’Etat hébreu.
Tout en veillant à ne pas se laisser entraîner dans le conflit syrien, Israël a mené des attaques contre des positions du régime syrien ou des convois d’armes présentés comme provenant d’Iran et destinés au groupe terroriste chiite libanais du Hezbollah qui soutient le président syrien Bashar el-Assad.
EN SAVOIR PLUS SUR :
Israël Inside Cabinet de sécurité Armée israélienne Députés de la Knesset Benjamin Netanyahu Avigdor Liberman Ministère de la Défense Commission des affaires étrangères et de la défense de la Knesset Avi Dichter Loi fondamentale Ehud Barak Mossad Agence de renseignements israéliens Benny Gantz Yaakov Amidror Likud Union sioniste Yesh Atid Omer Bar-Lev Ofer Shelah Institut israélien de la démocratie Haute Cour de justice Ayelet Shaked Gadi Eizenkot
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]]>Zeev Sternhell : « En Israël pousse un racisme proche du nazisme à ses débuts »
Dans une tribune au « Monde », l’historien spécialiste du fascisme, face à la dérive du nationalisme israélien, se lance dans une comparaison entre le sort des juifs sous les nazis avant la seconde guerre mondiale et celui des Palestiniens en Israël aujourd’hui.
LE MONDE | 18.02.2018 à 06h35 |
En savoir plus sur ▻http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2018/02/18/zeev-sternhell-en-israel-pousse-un-racisme-proche-du-nazisme-a-ses-debuts_52
Tribune. Je tente parfois d’imaginer comment essaiera d’expliquer notre époque l’historien qui vivra dans cinquante ou cent ans. A quel moment a-t-on commencé, se demandera-t-il sans doute, à comprendre en Israël que ce pays, devenu Etat constitué lors de la guerre d’indépendance de 1948, fondé sur les ruines du judaïsme européen et au prix du sang de 1 % de sa population, dont des milliers de combattants survivants de la Shoah, était devenu pour les non-juifs, sous sa domination, un monstre ? Quand, exactement, les Israéliens, au moins en partie, ont-ils compris que leur cruauté envers les non-juifs sous leur emprise en territoires occupés, leur détermination à briser les espoirs de liberté et d’indépendance des Palestiniens ou leur refus d’accorder l’asile aux réfugiés africains commençaient à saper la légitimité morale de leur existence nationale ?
La réponse, dira peut-être l’historien, se trouve en microcosme dans les idées et les activités de deux importants députés de la majorité, Miki Zohar (Likoud) et Bezalel Smotrich (Le Foyer juif), fidèles représentants de la politique gouvernementale, récemment propulsés sur le devant de la scène. Mais ce qui est plus important encore, c’est le fait que cette même idéologie se trouve à la base des propositions de loi dites « fondamentales », c’est-à-dire constitutionnelles, que la ministre de la justice, Ayelet Shaked, avec l’assentiment empressé du premier ministre, Benyamin Nétanyahou, se propose de faire adopter rapidement par la Knesset.
Shaked, numéro deux du parti de la droite religieuse nationaliste, en plus de son nationalisme extrême, représente à la perfection une idéologie politique selon laquelle une victoire électorale justifie la mainmise sur tous les organes de l’Etat et de la vie sociale, depuis l’administration jusqu’à la justice, en passant par la culture. Dans l’esprit de cette droite, la démocratie libérale n’est rien qu’un infantilisme. On conçoit facilement la signification d’une telle démarche pour un pays de tradition britannique qui ne possède pas de Constitution écrite, seulement des règles de comportement et une armature législative qu’une majorité simple suffit pour changer.
« IL S’AGIT D’UN ACTE CONSTITUTIONNEL NATIONALISTE DUR, QUE MME LE PEN N’OSERAIT PAS PROPOSER »
L’élément le plus important de cette nouvelle jurisprudence est une législation dite « loi sur l’Etat-nation » : il s’agit d’un acte constitutionnel nationaliste dur, que le nationalisme intégral maurrassien d’antan n’aurait pas renié, que Mme Le Pen, aujourd’hui, n’oserait pas proposer, et que le nationalisme autoritaire et xénophobe polonais et hongrois accueillera avec satisfaction. Voilà donc les juifs qui oublient que leur sort, depuis la Révolution française, est lié à celui du libéralisme et des droits de l’homme, et qui produisent à leur tour un nationalisme où se reconnaissent facilement les plus durs des chauvinistes en Europe.
L’impuissance de la gauche
En effet, cette loi a pour objectif ouvertement déclaré de soumettre les valeurs universelles des Lumières, du libéralisme et des droits de l’homme aux valeurs particularistes du nationalisme juif. Elle obligera la Cour suprême, dont Shaked, de toute façon, s’emploie à réduire les prérogatives et à casser le caractère libéral traditionnel (en remplaçant autant que possible tous les juges qui partent à la retraite par des juristes proches d’elle), à rendre des verdicts toujours conformes à la lettre et à l’esprit de la nouvelle législation. Mais la ministre va plus loin encore : elle vient juste de déclarer que les droits de l’homme devront s’incliner devant la nécessité d’assurer une majorité juive. Mais puisque aucun danger ne guette cette majorité en Israël, où 80 % de la population est juive, il s’agit de préparer l’opinion publique à la situation nouvelle, qui se produira en cas de l’annexion des territoires palestiniens occupés souhaitée par le parti de la ministre : la population non-juive restera dépourvue du droit de vote.
Grâce à l’impuissance de la gauche, cette législation servira de premier clou dans le cercueil de l’ancien Israël, celui dont il ne restera que la déclaration d’indépendance, comme une pièce de musée qui rappellera aux générations futures ce que notre pays aurait pu être si notre société ne s’était moralement décomposée en un demi-siècle d’occupation, de colonisation et d’apartheid dans les territoires conquis en 1967, et désormais occupés par quelque 300 000 colons. Aujourd’hui, la gauche n’est plus capable de faire front face à un nationalisme qui, dans sa version européenne, bien plus extrême que la nôtre, avait presque réussi à anéantir les juifs d’Europe. C’est pourquoi il convient de faire lire partout en Israël et dans le monde juif les deux entretiens faits par Ravit Hecht pour Haaretz (3 décembre 2016 et 28 octobre 2017) avec Smotrich et Zohar. On y voit comment pousse sous nos yeux, non pas un simple fascisme local, mais un racisme proche du nazisme à ses débuts.
Comme toute idéologie, le racisme allemand, lui aussi, avait évolué, et, à l’origine, il ne s’en était pris qu’aux droits de l’homme et du citoyen des juifs. Il est possible que sans la seconde guerre mondiale, le « problème juif » se serait soldé par une émigration « volontaire » des juifs des territoires sous contrôle allemand. Après tout, pratiquement tous les juifs d’Allemagne et d’Autriche ont pu sortir à temps. Il n’est pas exclu que pour certains à droite, le même sort puisse être réservé aux Palestiniens. Il faudrait seulement qu’une occasion se présente, une bonne guerre par exemple, accompagnée d’une révolution en Jordanie, qui permettrait de refouler vers l’Est une majeure partie des habitants de la Cisjordanie occupée.
Le spectre de l’apartheid
Les Smotrich et les Zohar, disons-le bien, n’entendent pas s’attaquer physiquement aux Palestiniens, à condition, bien entendu, que ces derniers acceptent sans résistance l’hégémonie juive. Ils refusent simplement de reconnaître leurs droits de l’homme, leur droit à la liberté et à l’indépendance. Dans le même ordre d’idées, d’ores et déjà, en cas d’annexion officielle des territoires occupés, eux et leurs partis politiques annoncent sans complexe qu’ils refuseront aux Palestiniens la nationalité israélienne, y compris, évidemment, le droit de vote. En ce qui concerne la majorité au pouvoir, les Palestiniens sont condamnés pour l’éternité au statut de population occupée.
POUR MIKI ZOHAR, LES PALESTINIENS “SOUFFRENT D’UNE LACUNE MAJEURE : ILS NE SONT PAS NÉS JUIFS”
La raison en est simple et clairement énoncée : les Arabes ne sont pas juifs, c’est pourquoi ils n’ont pas le droit de prétendre à la propriété d’une partie quelconque de la terre promise au peuple juif. Pour Smotrich, Shaked et Zohar, un juif de Brooklyn, qui n’a peut-être jamais mis les pieds sur cette terre, en est le propriétaire légitime, mais l’Arabe, qui y est né, comme ses ancêtres avant lui, est un étranger dont la présence est acceptée uniquement par la bonne volonté des juifs et leur humanité. Le Palestinien, nous dit Zohar, « n’a pas le droit à l’autodétermination car il n’est pas le propriétaire du sol. Je le veux comme résident et ceci du fait de mon honnêteté, il est né ici, il vit ici, je ne lui dirai pas de s’en aller. Je regrette de le dire mais [les Palestiniens] souffrent d’une lacune majeure : ils ne sont pas nés juifs ».
Ce qui signifie que même si les Palestiniens décidaient de se convertir, commençaient à se faire pousser des papillotes et à étudier la Torah et le Talmud, cela ne leur servirait à rien. Pas plus qu’aux Soudanais et Erythréens et leurs enfants, qui sont israéliens à tous égards – langue, culture, socialisation. Il en était de même chez les nazis. Ensuite vient l’apartheid, qui, selon la plupart des « penseurs » de la droite, pourrait, sous certaines conditions, s’appliquer également aux Arabes citoyens israéliens depuis la fondation de l’Etat. Pour notre malheur, beaucoup d’Israéliens, qui ont honte de tant de leurs élus et honnissent leurs idées, pour toutes sortes de raisons, continuent à voter pour la droite.
]]>In Israel, growing fascism and a racism akin to early Nazism
Zeev Sternhell Jan 19, 2018 2:00 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-in-israel-growing-fascism-and-a-racism-akin-to-early-nazism-1.5746
I frequently ask myself how a historian in 50 or 100 years will interpret our period. When, he will ask, did people in Israel start to realize that the state that was established in the War of Independence, on the ruins of European Jewry and at the cost of the blood of combatants some of whom were Holocaust survivors, had devolved into a true monstrosity for its non-Jewish inhabitants. When did some Israelis understand that their cruelty and ability to bully others, Palestinians or Africans, began eroding the moral legitimacy of their existence as a sovereign entity?
The answer, that historian might say, was embedded in the actions of Knesset members such as Miki Zohar and Bezalel Smotrich and the bills proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The nation-state law, which looks like it was formulated by the worst of Europe’s ultra-nationalists, was only the beginning. Since the left did not protest against it in its Rothschild Boulevard demonstrations, it served as a first nail in the coffin of the old Israel, the one whose Declaration of Independence will remain as a museum showpiece. This archaeological relic will teach people what Israel could have become if its society hadn’t disintegrated from the moral devastation brought on by the occupation and apartheid in the territories.
The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here, the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people. The interviews Haaretz’s Ravit Hecht held with Smotrich and Zohar (December 3, 2016 and October 28, 2017) should be widely disseminated on all media outlets in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. In both of them we see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.
Like every ideology, the Nazi race theory developed over the years. At first it only deprived Jews of their civil and human rights. It’s possible that without World War II the “Jewish problem” would have ended only with the “voluntary” expulsion of Jews from Reich lands. After all, most of Austria and Germany’s Jews made it out in time. It’s possible that this is the future facing Palestinians.
Indeed, Smotrich and Zohar don’t wish to physically harm Palestinians, on condition that they don’t rise against their Jewish masters. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression, or equal rights in case the territories are officially annexed to Israel. For these two representatives of the Knesset majority, the Palestinians are doomed to remain under occupation forever. It’s likely that the Likud’s Central Committee also thinks this way. The reasoning is simple: The Arabs aren’t Jews, so they cannot demand ownership over any part of the land that was promised to the Jewish people.
According to the concepts of Smotrich, Zohar and Shaked, a Jew from Brooklyn who has never set foot in this country is the legitimate owner of this land, while a Palestinian whose family has lived here for generations is a stranger, living here only by the grace of the Jews. “A Palestinian,” Zohar tells Hecht, “has no right to national self-determination since he doesn’t own the land in this country. Out of decency I want him here as a resident, since he was born here and lives here – I won’t tell him to leave. I’m sorry to say this but they have one major disadvantage – they weren’t born as Jews.”
From this one may assume that even if they all converted, grew side-curls and studied Torah, it would not help. This is the situation with regard to Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers and their children, who are Israeli for all intents and purposes. This is how it was with the Nazis. Later comes apartheid, which could apply under certain circumstances to Arabs who are citizens of Israel. Most Israelis don’t seem worried.
]]>Une importante tribune de l’histoirien Zeev Sternehll
In Israel, growing fascism and a racism akin to early Nazism
They don’t wish to physically harm Palestinians. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression
Zeev Sternhell 19.01.2018
I frequently ask myself how a historian in 50 or 100 years will interpret our period. When, he will ask, did people in Israel start to realize that the state that was established in the War of Independence, on the ruins of European Jewry and at the cost of the blood of combatants some of whom were Holocaust survivors, had devolved into a true monstrosity for its non-Jewish inhabitants. When did some Israelis understand that their cruelty and ability to bully others, Palestinians or Africans, began eroding the moral legitimacy of their existence as a sovereign entity?
The answer, that historian might say, was embedded in the actions of Knesset members such as Miki Zohar and Bezalel Smotrich and the bills proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The nation-state law, which looks like it was formulated by the worst of Europe’s ultra-nationalists, was only the beginning. Since the left did not protest against it in its Rothschild Boulevard demonstrations, it served as a first nail in the coffin of the old Israel, the one whose Declaration of Independence will remain as a museum showpiece. This archaeological relic will teach people what Israel could have become if its society hadn’t disintegrated from the moral devastation brought on by the occupation and apartheid in the territories.
The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here, the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people. The interviews Haaretz’s Ravit Hecht held with Smotrich and Zohar (December 3, 2016 and October 28, 2017) should be widely disseminated on all media outlets in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. In both of them we see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.
Like every ideology, the Nazi race theory developed over the years. At first it only deprived Jews of their civil and human rights. It’s possible that without World War II the “Jewish problem” would have ended only with the “voluntary” expulsion of Jews from Reich lands. After all, most of Austria and Germany’s Jews made it out in time. It’s possible that this is the future facing Palestinians.
Indeed, Smotrich and Zohar don’t wish to physically harm Palestinians, on condition that they don’t rise against their Jewish masters. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression, or equal rights in case the territories are officially annexed to Israel. For these two representatives of the Knesset majority, the Palestinians are doomed to remain under occupation forever. It’s likely that the Likud’s Central Committee also thinks this way. The reasoning is simple: The Arabs aren’t Jews, so they cannot demand ownership over any part of the land that was promised to the Jewish people.
According to the concepts of Smotrich, Zohar and Shaked, a Jew from Brooklyn who has never set foot in this country is the legitimate owner of this land, while a Palestinian whose family has lived here for generations is a stranger, living here only by the grace of the Jews. “A Palestinian,” Zohar tells Hecht, “has no right to national self-determination since he doesn’t own the land in this country. Out of decency I want him here as a resident, since he was born here and lives here – I won’t tell him to leave. I’m sorry to say this but they have one major disadvantage – they weren’t born as Jews.”
From this one may assume that even if they all converted, grew side-curls and studied Torah, it would not help. This is the situation with regard to Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers and their children, who are Israeli for all intents and purposes. This is how it was with the Nazis. Later comes apartheid, which could apply under certain circumstances to Arabs who are citizens of Israel. Most Israelis don’t seem worried.
Zeev Sternhell
Haaretz Contributor
]]>Israeli Settler Shot and Killed in Drive-By Shooting
IMEMC News | January 10, 2018 9:37 AM
▻http://imemc.org/article/israeli-settler-rabbi-shot-and-killed-in-drive-by-shooting
An Israeli settler, identified as 35-year old Rabbi Raziel Shevach, was shot and killed Tuesday while driving on an Israeli settler-only road near a colonial outpost in the northern part of the West Bank, near Nablus.
update 9:40 am January 10th 2018:
Israeli Education Minister, Naftali Bennett, the head of the ‘Jewish Home’ right-wing party, called for legalizing Havat Gilad outpost, and for conducting massive construction and expansion of Israeli colonies, in the occupied West Bank.
“It is not enough to apprehend the shooters, we need to take direct action by building and expanding the settlements,” he said, “Mahmoud Abbas needs to understand the heavy price the Palestinians will pay because of these attacks.”
Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked also called for harsh measures, and said that Israel needs to expel the families of Palestinian attackers, and demolish their homes.(...)
]]>Netanyahu agrees to exclude settlements from economic deal with European Union - Israel News
Deal would award tens of millions of euros to initiatives across Mediterranean ■ EU policy states funding cannot be allocated to territories occupied by Israel in 1967
Noa Landau Dec 14, 2017
read more: ▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.829063
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given approval in principle to a cooperation agreement with the European Union that contains a provision excluding the settlements.
To really understand the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz
Netanyahu approved the wording of a cabinet resolution on the subject this week. If no ministers object to the resolution by January 1, it will be approved automatically. If so, Israel will effectively have consented to EU funding that is contingent on a boycott of the settlements.
The resolution has now been signed by all the relevant government offices, including those of Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi), two of the most vocal settlement supporters in the government.
The agreement, known by the acronym ENI CBC Med (which stands for “cross-border cooperation in the Mediterranean), awards tens of millions of euros in funding to ventures that entail cooperation with the 14 Mediterranean Basin countries that aren’t EU members. These include Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
]]>Israel: Apartheid under the law
If a genuine opposition existed in Israel with a worthy leader, it would shout from every platform that the policy of theft and dispossession is destroying whatever chance remains of a two-state solution
Zeev Sternhell Nov 23, 2017
read more: ▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.824732
In the past, a story was famously told in Israel about a clash between Golda Meir and Justice Minister Haim Tzadok, who disagreed with her in a cabinet meeting. At the end of the meeting, she went over to him and told him she thought they were friends. Yes, he replied, but I’m also the justice minister of Israel.
His words reflected the governmental culture of yore, a culture that current Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and her post-fascist party deem infantile. But the crude violence she propagates is much more dangerous than the primitive vulgarity of Likud’s Miri Regev, David Amsalem or Oren Hazan.
This is all nothing new. What’s new is the way the attorney general is kowtowing to the will of the justice minister and her party. Shaked wanted Avichai Mendelblit from the beginning, apparently because she knew from what cloth the former cabinet secretary was cut regarding issues critical to the government – the occupation, the settlements and Palestinian rights.
And now he’s supplying the goods. How is the heir to Haim Cohen, Aharon Barak and Yitzhak Zamir not embarrassed to revoke his professional opinion concerning the “illegal outposts” – as if the rest were legal – while brazenly sanctioning the minister’s request to steal Palestinian land, both private and public, for the “public need” of the settlers; i.e., to pave roads for Jews only? This is what the rule of law has come to in Israel.
Based on the figures reported by Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth last Friday, an extensive amount of territory is to be expropriated and, for the convenience of the occupiers, construction will be prohibited “only” on some of it. This isn’t the first intolerable act of an apartheid system that receives a legal seal of approval. High Court petitions against the move will surely be filed, but they may not be enough to bring this policy to an enduring halt. Settlement advocates dominate in the government and the army, so there’s no real way to stop it.
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So there is no recourse but to call on public opinion, the media and the universities to apply pressure. There is an urgent need for a broad campaign on American and European campuses, and in EU institutions, against this apartheid. The Israeli public is an equally important target, and in the absence of an active opposition party, the social justice organizations must reach this audience.
If a genuine opposition existed in Israel with a worthy leader, it would be shouting from every possible platform that the policy of theft and dispossession is destroying whatever remains of the possibility of separating from the Palestinians via the establishment of a Palestinian state. Who will fight this government? Certainly not someone who thinks that groveling and ideological kowtowing to the right are the recipe for getting elected.
It’s important to stress that there’s a big difference between appealing to groups that, for historical reasons, can’t identify with Labor, and signing on to the right’s crude nationalism. This nationalism is a violent and destructive European phenomenon that has nothing to do with the culture of North African Jewry, any kind of Jewish identity or the Jewish religion. To win the hearts of the people who live in the country’s outskirts, it’s not necessary to support the occupation and settlements, which does nothing to redress social injustice – just the opposite.
Thus a party that wants to replace Likud in power must first convince people that it has an alternative national policy. This goal will not be achieved by making foolish statements about how peace can be reached with the Palestinians without evacuating a single settlement, or by being complicit in turning Judaism into a means of control and oppression of people who had the misfortune not to be born Jews.
Zeev Sternhell
Haaretz Contributor
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]]>Explained: How Israel is trying to break Breaking the Silence – and how it could backfire
What happened after a former Israeli soldier confessed he assaulted an unarmed Palestinian
Judy Maltz Nov 21, 2017
read more: ▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.824227
Following a relatively swift investigation, a former Israeli combat soldier was cleared of allegations that he assaulted an unarmed Palestinian during a tour of duty in Hebron.
It might have been cause for celebration, had the soldier not been the one to bring the allegations against himself.
So last week, when the State Prosecutor’s Office alleged that Dean Issacharoff, spokesman of the soldiers’ anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence, had lied about his actions, Israeli right-wing leaders naturally rejoiced.
>> To whitewash occupation, Netanyahu crew casts Breaking the Silence whistle-blower as bogeyman | Opinion
The findings, they claimed, were further evidence of what they have been saying for years – that Breaking the Silence is an organization of liars and traitors bent on defaming the State of Israel and the Israeli army.
skip - IDF soldier accused of accosting Palestinian man
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As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a Facebook post: “Breaking the Silence lies and slanders our soldiers around the world. Today this fact received further proof, if anyone had a doubt. The truth wins out.”
But in the latest twist in a case that has gripped the nation in recent days, Netanyahu’s declaration of victory appears to be premature.
According to brand new evidence, the state prosecutors who pronounced Issacharoff a liar may have been investigating the wrong incident and questioning the wrong victim.
Breaking the Silence spokesman Dean Issacharoff, who confessed in a video to beating up a Palestinian in the West Bank while in the Israeli army.Breaking the Silence
Newly unearthed footage, broadcast on two of Israel’s most popular evening news programs Monday, suggests that the Palestinian whom Issacharoff claims to have assaulted was not the same Palestinian questioned by state investigators.
It also appears that the Palestinian questioned by state investigators, the one who testified that Issacharoff had not assaulted him, had been referring to a completely different incident.
In the clip, filmed three-and-a-half years ago by a Hebron resident employed by another Israeli human rights organization, Issacharoff is seen escorting a handcuffed Palestinian who appears to have bruises on his face. How he received the bruises and the circumstances of his arrest are not clear from the footage.
An account published Tuesday morning in Haaretz by Amira Hass raises further questions about the credibility of the state prosecutors’ findings. In his first interview since the findings were published, Hassan Joulani, the Palestinian questioned by investigators about the incident, said that contrary to what state prosecutors reported, he had indeed been assaulted during his arrest – although by Border Police and not by Issacharoff.
The blows, he said, were received during a separate incident – not the one cited by Issacharoff in the videotaped account that prompted the investigation.
Joulani was arrested and beaten, according to this interview with him, in February 2014, during a demonstration marking the 20th anniversary of the mass murder of Palestinians at Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs by settler Baruch Goldstein.
The assault reported by Issacharoff, however, took place after a routine round of stone-throwing.
On one level, it boils down to the simple question of whether or not a former Israeli soldier lied.
On a whole other level, however, the case of Issacharoff raises more fundamental questions about Israel’s 50-year-old occupation and its corrosive effects on society, among them: Who is to blame when soldiers serving among a hostile population in occupied territory act badly – the soldiers or the state that sent them there? Should Israeli soldiers speak out about the atrocities they witness during their service at the risk of tarnishing the image of the state? Can an investigation launched by a right-wing politician who harbors hostility toward anti-occupation organizations – in this case, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked – really be undertaken with neutrality?
]]>Dear Europe, take note: If you want to, Israel can be pressured - Palestinians - Haaretz.com
A recent case involving Dutch solar panels shows how friendly states can make Israel back down when it violates international humanitarian law
Amira Hass Oct 23, 2017
read more: ▻https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-1.818549
The High Court justices once more found an escape hatch; once again, they would not have to discuss the basic, outrageous fact that Israel is not connecting thousands of Palestinians (on both sides of the Green Line) to the national electricity and water infrastructure. This time the way out was found in the village of Jubbet ad-Dhib at the foot of Herodion, southeast of Bethlehem. It needed a hybrid (solar plus diesel) electrical system that was installed by the Comet-ME Israeli-Palestinian aid organization, because Israel had not met its international obligation to connect it to the electrical grid.
All those who accuse the High Court of being leftist can relax. It has missed hundreds of opportunities to rule that withholding water and electricity is illegal according to international law, illegal according to Israeli law, and unacceptable according to Jewish law. Hundreds of times – to count by the number of petitions that have been submitted – the court had the opportunity to instruct the state to connect the Palestinian communities to the water and electrical infrastructure, but it avoided doing so, often citing technicalities. Back when current Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was still a toddler, the court was already repeatedly missing opportunities to salvage the reputation of Jewish morality from downing in the sludge of nationalism and the lust to expel.
The escape hatch in Jubbet ad-Dhib was shown to the justices by Brigadier General Ahvat Ben Hur, but it was none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who created that opening. The Dutch government, which had funded the hybrid electrical system, was furious over the confiscation of the solar panels, and Netanyahu promised the Dutch in writing that the panels Israel had confiscated from the village in late June would be returned. And then what does Ben Hur, the direct commander of the confiscators from the Civil Administration do? He informs the state prosecutor, which informed the High Court, that he’d decided to return the panels.
Ben Hur did not do so to honor the state’s obligation to a protected population. Rather, he cited a technicality. The panels were confiscated eight months after they had been installed and operate, he explained. Thus, the petition written by attorneys Michal Sfard and Michal Pasovsky was rendered redundant. That’s a shame. It would have been interesting to see what contortions the justices would have got into in response to the arguments (also accepted by the Dutch government) that denying access to electricity and destroying electricity systems are offenses that violate international humanitarian law.
Ben Hur’s statement enabled the state prosecutor and the justices to also avoid addressing the fact that the Civil Administration had made improper use of a military order. The seizure orders that were given to the Jubbet ad-Dhib residents on the day of the confiscation cited Article 60 of the order regarding security provisions. This article makes seizure contingent upon a criminal offense having been committed using the equipment slated for seizure. The confiscation order did not specify what offense was supposedly committed with the solar panels. The lawyers’ inquiries to the Civil Administration about this went unanswered. Presumably, then (also based the COGAT spokesperson’s response to journalists), the suspected offense is related to planning and building laws. But this is an administrative offense that does not come under the military order regarding security provisions. The procedures for dealing with it are different – cease work orders and demolition orders, hearings, arguments against the orders, appeals, negotiations, a petition to the High Court.
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]]>Israël décide de « pourrir la vie » d’Amnesty International
Nissim Behar, Libération, le 12 septembre 2017
▻http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2017/09/12/israel-decide-de-pourrir-la-vie-d-amnesty-international_1595757
L’Etat hébreu va appliquer la loi « anti-boycott » votée en 2011 : il reproche à l’ONG d’appeler à ne pas consommer des produits de la « Cisjordanie occupée ».
Jusqu’à présent, les attaques israéliennes visant les organisations hostiles à l’occupation des territoires palestiniens étaient virulentes mais restaient purement verbales. Ce mardi 12 septembre marquera donc un changement majeur puisque le gouvernement de Benyamin Nétanyahou a décidé d’appliquer pleinement la loi « anti-boycott » votée par la Knesset en juillet 2011 pour punir les ONG appelant à ne pas consommer des produits de « Judée-Samarie » (la Cisjordanie occupée).
La première ONG visée par les sanctions sera Amnesty International, que les officiels israéliens accusent de « mener une campagne injustifiée et proche de l’antisémitisme » contre les colonies de l’Etat hébreu. A en croire l’entourage de la ministre de la Justice, Ayelet Shaked (extrême droite), et de son homologue des Finances, Moshé Kahlon (droite), de « nombreuses plaintes » visant la campagne lancée par Amnesty International à l’occasion du 50e anniversaire de la guerre des Six Jours (juin 1967) auraient en effet été enregistrées à Jérusalem. Ce qui justifierait un examen attentif et l’application de la loi.
De fait, les plaintes existent. Mais elles émanent d’organisations d’extrême droite favorables à l’annexion des territoires palestiniens, d’associations de colons, ainsi que de chefs d’entreprise installés dans les différentes zones industrielles des territoires occupés, lesquels redoutent évidemment de perdre des commandes. En vertu de la « loi anti-boycott », les ressortissants israéliens effectuant des dons à Amnesty International ne bénéficieront plus d’un abattement fiscal et la branche locale de l’organisation perdra également tous les avantages et réductions diverses qui auraient pu lui être accordés.
Le mouvement BDS visé
Lors du vote de cette loi, ses promoteurs ne cachaient pas que leur objectif principal était de « pourrir la vie des organisations ennemies d’Israël » en réduisant leurs rentrées financières et en rendant plus compliqué leur fonctionnement journalier. Ce qui sera le cas pour la branche israélienne d’Amnesty, désormais marquée du sceau d’infamie.
En mars, la Knesset a par ailleurs voté une autre loi interdisant l’entrée du territoire aux partisans déclarés du boycott des produits « made in Israël ». Essentiellement des militants du mouvement BDS (« Boycott Désinvestissement Sanctions ») et de ses satellites dûment identifiés par un département spécialisé du ministère de la Sécurité intérieure. Mais des responsables de l’ONG Human Rights Watch ont ensuite été ciblés par la même mesure et au sein du ministère de la Justice, des juristes ont été chargés d’étudier la possibilité d’ajouter ceux d’Amnesty International à la liste.
]]>The Israeli Right Will Bring About Justice for the Palestinians
When the right gathers the courage to declare a one-state solution, the world will gain the courage to declare a war on its regime
Gideon Levy Sep 24, 2017 1:35 AM
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.813768
Perhaps the right will be the one to bring about true, egalitarian justice in Israel. Maybe it will bring about the only possible solution left. After the right proved that only it dares to evacuate settlements, maybe the next stage will come and the right will once more prove it can do so, even if unintentionally. That would be a huge irony of fate. Those who insist on not returning to the Palestinians 22 percent of their land will give them (and us) all of it, egalitarian and just, on the silver platter of both peoples.
The road is long, of course, and even its beginning is not yet in sight. But the defeated and desperate speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday proves there’s a chance this is the direction.
Abbas spoke of one state as a possible solution and of equal rights for all inhabitants of historic Palestine. As far can be remembered, he never publicly made such a statement before. Bound by his historic way and the establishment he heads, he has not yet given up the two-state solution for good. But he also knows, like any politician who recognizes reality, that the two-state solution has expired and only the declaration of its death remains. Some Europeans and perhaps even also the Americans know this, but don’t dare admit it. President Donald Trump mumbled something about it, possibly inadvertently.
Abandoning the two-state solution is a fateful reboot. It is not simple to do. But when Abbas and the others finally resolve to cross the Rubicon, the wildfire they ignite could spread with amazing speed.
When the Palestinians abandon the “two states for two peoples” solution and move on to “one person, one vote,” the world will not remain indifferent. It will begin with the Palestinians, 57 percent of whom already don’t believe in the two-state solution, according to a recent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll, and will then move on to Israeli Arabs, most of whom still hold fast to that solution.
The easy-to-grasp message will then go out to the world. Just and familiar from another historic struggle: “One man, one vote.” Who can oppose it? And what can Israel say in its own defense? Jewish-democratic? Where? A just apartheid?
This revolution might also blow away the smokescreen and confusion around the arbitrary and baseless division Israel has made between an “Israeli Arab” and “Palestinian” – sometimes members of the same family; between East Jerusalem and residents of the West Bank; between residents of the West Bank and Gaza; it will reunify the people that Israel maliciously cut apart. It will also eliminate the confusion around the artificial distinction between the Jewish democracy with the Arab High Court of Justice and the third largest party in the Knesset, and zero human rights for most of the other members of that people, who live under the government of that same state, in the same country. It will cancel out all discrimination and all privilege, from the Law of Return to the right of return. Can any true democrat oppose this?
The left will not do so. It is bound by slogans of the past – two states – most of the left was never serious about anyhow. The right wing, which talks more and more about annexation and non-occupation, is taking giant steps toward this state. Of course, it doesn’t mean democracy or equal rights – what does the right have to do with that?
But when the right gathers the courage to declare a one-state solution, the world will gain the courage to declare a war on its regime, against the new apartheid state in the 21st century. What other choice will the world have in the face of a declared apartheid? It will be a much more determined struggle than the hollow one against the establishment of the outpost in the “illegal” expansion of Mitzpeh Rehavam Gimel.
The racist MK Bezalel Smotrich is doing more for justice and the Palestinian people than Labor Party leader Avi Gabbay. The nationalists, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, are doing immeasurably more than Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid or even the peace-seeking Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Galon.
The right is moving ahead on the only solution. We should keep our fingers crossed.
]]>The Zionist tango -
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.810226
Why the racist honesty of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is preferable to the fake views of the Israeli left
By Gideon Levy | Sep. 3, 2017 | 2:28 AM
Ravit Hecht attributes a “fragrance of true love” for my “honest, brave princess,” Justice Minister Shaked, in her op-ed “When Gideon Levy fell in love with Ayelet Shaked.” [ ▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.810167 ] Hecht knows my taste in women is slightly different than that, and that, despite what she writes, I don’t know how to dance the tango. But my appreciation for Shaked and her ilk is that they do not deceive: they openly acknowledge their nationalism and racism.
They don’t hide their belief that the Palestinians are an inferior people, indigenous inhabitants who will never gain the rights Jews have in the Land of Israel-Palestine; that no Palestinian state will ever be established here; that Israel will ultimately annex all of the occupied territories, as it already has done in practice; that the Jews are the Chosen People; that Zionism is in contradiction to human rights and superior to them; that dispossession is redemption; that biblical property rights are eternal; that there is no Palestinian people and no occupation; and that the current reality will last forever.
Many of these views are also held among the Zionist left, Hecht’s ideological camp. The only difference is that the Zionist left has never admitted it. It envelops its views in the glittering wrapping paper of peace talks, separation and hollow rhetoric about two states, words it has never really meant and has done precious little to realize.
That’s why I prefer Shaked. With her, what you see is what you get – racism. In its actions and deeds, the Zionist left has done everything to implement Shaked’s views, only in polished words and without acknowledgement. The Zionist left is embarrassed by things Shaked and her colleagues are not ashamed of. That doesn’t make the left any more moral or just. It has merely been quasi-Shaked in its actions.
The occupation was no less cruel under left-wing Israeli governments, which was the founding father of the settlement enterprise. Those princes of peace Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin established more settlements than Shaked and caused the deaths of more Arabs. The left has enthusiastically defended every military action Israel has carried out and every brutal act committed by the Israel Defense Forces. It hasn’t just sat silent in the face of such acts; it has been supportive. Always.
Operations Cast Lead and Protective Edge in Gaza (in 2008-09 and 2014, respectively) involved thousands of senseless deaths, and most of the Zionist left supported them. The majority of those on the left supported the siege on Gaza, the checkpoint executions, the nighttime abductions, the administrative detentions, the abuse, dispossession and oppression – the left remained silent throughout.
But the truth is that it’s not Shaked and it’s not the left. It’s Zionism. Havoc has been wreaked, as Hecht herself wrote. But instead of trying to repair the unstable foundations, all of Israel – and not only the right wing – has done everything to undermine them even further.
Yes, this involves the 1948 War of Independence, which has to be discussed even though it’s uncomfortable. The spirit of 1948 has never stopped blowing here and, in this respect, Shaked and Hecht are in the same boat. According to this view, there is only one people here that needs to be considered, only one victim, and it is entitled to do as much harm as it wishes to the other people. That is the essential evolution of Zionism.
It could and should have been rectified, without derogating the Jews’ right to a state. But the Zionist left has never done this. It has never acknowledged the Nakba suffered by the Palestinians, and never did anything to atone for its crimes. This never happened because the Zionist left believes in exactly what Shaked believes in.
It is true there are many other issues in which the right causes national disasters the left never would have created. But on the other side of the line lives a people that for the past 50 years – the past 100, actually – has been suffering and oppressed. Not a day goes by without horrible crimes being committed against it. We can’t say, “Be patient. We’re busy at the moment with the status of the Supreme Court.”
And on the truly crucial issue that overshadows all others, Shaked and Hecht are performing a perfect tango together, with a fragrance of true love exuding from them both – a Zionist tango.
]]>Defend Israel’s anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence -
Justice Minister Shaked is investigating the spokesman for the army veterans’ group for breaking the silence on what he did in Hebron – nobody else among the countless veterans who’ve told similar stories and worse, just him
Iris Leal Jun 27, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.797950
I arrived at the train station in central Tel Aviv last Wednesday and, as usual, got lost. I was en route to the Palestinian village of Sussia to attend an unusual book launch for the Hebrew edition of “Kingdom of Olives and Ash,” a collection of essays about the occupation written by authors from around the world. The ceremony took place in the most appropriate possible place, a hut in a Palestinian village whose residents have been uprooted from their land seven times, while across the road the settlers of Jewish Susya lie in ambush for them night and day, casting covetous eyes on their land.
As usual, I didn’t manage to find “Venice,” the bus rented by the Breaking the Silence organization, which was waiting at the entrance to the parking lot. A pleasant young man with a beard came to my rescue: Dean Issacharoff, as he introduced himself, the organization’s spokesman.
The next day, two weeks after Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked urged the attorney general to open an investigation against him, the Hebron police rose to the challenge and, with permission from State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, questioned Issacharoff at length under caution, as a suspect in a crime.
Issacharoff, a former officer in the Nahal Brigade and a man of honor, did the deed that lies at the heart of the organization to which he belongs: He broke the silence. A video clip disseminated by a group called Reservists on Duty shows him telling about how, during his military service in Hebron, he beat a Palestinian who threw rocks at him. His testimony confirmed what everyone knows at differing levels of denial and self-deception: There is no sterile occupation. Violence is an inseparable part of our military presence in the territories.
Shaked, who did everything she could to erase Breaking the Silence from our lives by passing legislation to harass left-wing organizations, found a roundabout way of abusing Issacharoff. She didn’t, heaven forbid, order investigations into the piles of complaints about attacks on Palestinians. She displayed no interest in other stories by soldiers about the violence that was an integral part of their military service. Instead, she targeted this case only and hastened to write the attorney general that “in light of the great importance I attributed to preserving Israel’s good name and that of Israel Defense Forces soldiers, I saw fit to ask you to look into the veracity of this incident. If it turns out to be true, the full force of the law must be applied immediately.”
]]>Enquête policière sur un responsable de ’Breaking the silence’
Jacob Magid et AFP 23 juin 2017,
▻http://fr.timesofisrael.com/enquete-policiere-sur-un-responsable-de-breaking-the-silence
La police a ouvert une enquête pour agression jeudi contre le porte parole de l’organisation ‘Breaking the Silence’ Dean Issacharoff après qu’une vidéo dans laquelle il décrivait les coups brutaux qu’il avait donnés à un manifestant palestinien désarmé à Hébron est devenue virale.
Cette investigation suit une demande soumise au procureur général Avichai Mandelblit par la ministre de la Justice Ayelet Shaked d’ouvrir une enquête sur le porte-parole de l’ONG israélienne, soupçonné de crime de guerre.
« Dans cette vidéo, Dean Issacharoff affirme qu’il a frappé sans aucune raison apparente au visage et à la poitrine un Palestinien, qui a saigné et perdu connaissance et ce devant ses supérieurs et d’autres soldats », a indiqué un communiqué du ministère de la Justice.
Un des fondateurs de l’ONG, Yehuda Shaul, a précisé à l’AFP que l’incident impliquant le porte-parole à Hébron avait eu lieu en 2014.
Toutefois, le procureur de l’état a nié que sa décision d’enquêter sur Issacharoff ait eu quelque chose à voir avec la demande émise par Shaked, précisant qu’elle était venue du procureur général militaire.
Shaked avait déclaré à la radio militaire au début du mois qu’elle cherchait à savoir si Issacharoff avait dit la vérité lorsqu’il avait décrit un incident présumé survenu dans la ville de Cisjordanie de Hébron ou s’il mentait dans le but de discréditer l’armée israélienne.
« Le porte-parole de ‘Breaking the Silence’ se lève pour dire qu’il a lui-même commis un crime contre un Palestinien et qu’il l’a roué de coups », a dit Shaked. « Si c’est véritablement ce qu’il s’est passé, une enquête doit être ouverte et il doit être puni. Si ce n’est pas le cas, l’état doit officiellement déclarer que ce n’est pas arrivé ».(...)
]]>Conforming to Israel’s malignant occupation - Opinion - Israel News | A.B. Yehoshua toes the line by subdividing the Palestinians into various categories and thus overlooks their general predicament.
Amira Hass Jan 01, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.762478
Author A.B. Yehoshua (“Reducing the malignancy of the occupation,” Haaretz, December 31) was right when he attached the word “malignancy” to the occupation. But under cover of innovation, daring and humanitarian considerations, his proposal for a temporary and partial easing of the malignancy conforms to traditional Israeli policy: to split the Palestinian people into various bureaucratic categories, in separate and divorced enclaves, and of course without asking their opinion.
In order to seem daring, but to propose something that is just what the government of Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (both of Habayit Hayehudi) wants, some of the facts Yehoshua cites became distorted. Following are several of the distortions:
* “A binational space.” There is no need to go as far as the poverty-stricken neighborhoods engineered by Israel in East Jerusalem in order to toy with the idea of a “laboratory” for a binational life. It’s true that the Palestinian people have been scattered since being expelled from their homeland in 1948. But they didn’t stop being a nation for that reason, including the 1.5 million Palestinians who are presently Israeli citizens. Israel in its recognized boundaries is a binational space, regardless of its definitions and its discrimination against its Palestinian citizens.
]]>Facebook and Israel Agree to Tackle Terrorist Media Together - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/facebook-and-israel-agree-to-tackle-terrorist-media-together
At a meeting Monday in Tel Aviv, Facebook Inc.’s Joel Kaplan and Monika Bickert heard Israeli ministers loud and clear: the social network must do more to eliminate the incitement of terrorism on its pages.
“The internet can’t be allowed to become an incubator for terrorism,” said Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who participated in a meeting with Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of U.S. public policy, and Bickert, its head of global policy management and counter-terrorism.
Many of the Palestinians arrested after attacking Israelis in the past year said they were influenced by content on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other online platforms, according to a statement from Erdan and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.
BDS, c’est valable aussi pour les réseaux sociaux, quittez Facebook !
Au passage, cela fait des années que les pages (pro)palestiniennes ou celles de la résistance sont fermées.
Supreme Court orders outpost demolished, Justice minister tries to bypass it
▻http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4849665,00.html
Supreme Court President Miriam Naor decreed Thursday that the structures in the Way of the Patriarchs outpost, set up on private Palestinian land, be torn down by March 2018; amid much criticism from the right, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked promises to work with the Ministry of Defense to stop the houses’ demolition.
]]>Leading Israeli journalist says Israel is an Apartheid state – Mondoweiss
▻http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/israeli-journalist-apartheid
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.
]]>Trying to Drive a Wedge Between ’Good’ and ’Bad’ Arabs
The law to oust Arabs is designed precisely to avert the day in which Jewish Israeli society realizes that its dispossession-settlement legacy is dangerous to Arabs and Jews alike.
Amira Hass Mar 02, 2016 6:00 AM
Haaretz.com
►http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.706443
Apparently we’ll have to start getting used to the Knesset minus our representatives from the Joint Arab List. Without Aida and Jamal, without Haneen and Dov, without Ahmad and Ayman. It won’t be easy, because their presence there provided a sliver of hope that sanity was still possible; the sanity of a state that exists for all its citizens, who belong to two national groups.
The so-called Suspension Law, which passed its first Knesset vote on Monday, aims to cause a rift between “good” and “bad” Arabs. Suspending Balad party members from Knesset sessions, and outlawing the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, were added episodes in the series of exclusions, and passed fairly easily. But as list chairman Ayman Odeh pointed out, if the “bad” ones (Balad) are expelled, it will be difficult for him to remain in the Knesset. We, their voters – Arabs and Jews alike – will be deterred from voting for the ones Uri Ariel, Avigdor Lieberman and Ayelet Shaked, in their Judeo-democratatorship generosity, approve as “good.”
The law to expel Arab Knesset members also aims at the left (Jewish and Arab). It seeks to drive a wedge not only between “good” and “bad” Arabs but between the left and the liberals-lite. The law very likely will not target the social feminists of the Labor Party; even without it, they are very gingerly when talking about blood, Gaza Prison and the settlements.
]]>Trying to Drive a Wedge Between ’Good’ and ’Bad’ Arabs - Opinion - Haaretz - Israeli News Source Haaretz.com
►http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.706443
The law to oust Arabs is designed precisely to avert the day in which Jewish Israeli society realizes that its dispossession-settlement legacy is dangerous to Arabs and Jews alike.
Amira Hass Mar 02, 2016 6:00 AM
Apparently we’ll have to start getting used to the Knesset minus our representatives from the Joint Arab List. Without Aida and Jamal, without Haneen and Dov, without Ahmad and Ayman. It won’t be easy, because their presence there provided a sliver of hope that sanity was still possible; the sanity of a state that exists for all its citizens, who belong to two national groups.
The so-called Suspension Law, which passed its first Knesset vote on Monday, aims to cause a rift between “good” and “bad” Arabs. Suspending Balad party members from Knesset sessions, and outlawing the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, were added episodes in the series of exclusions, and passed fairly easily. But as list chairman Ayman Odeh pointed out, if the “bad” ones (Balad) are expelled, it will be difficult for him to remain in the Knesset. We, their voters – Arabs and Jews alike – will be deterred from voting for the ones Uri Ariel, Avigdor Lieberman and Ayelet Shaked, in their Judeo-democratatorship generosity, approve as “good.”
The law to expel Arab Knesset members also aims at the left (Jewish and Arab). It seeks to drive a wedge not only between “good” and “bad” Arabs but between the left and the liberals-lite. The law very likely will not target the social feminists of the Labor Party; even without it, they are very gingerly when talking about blood, Gaza Prison and the settlements.
No law would be enacted forbidding “incitement” against CEOs, or against the owners of companies that pay disgraceful wages to female employees. The Jewish discourse allows such subversive statements as long as pay remains low, and the corporate chieftains continue to get extraordinary tax breaks. The members of Meretz can even continue to proudly and freely represent the interests of the LGBT and secular communities in Israel. It isn’t sure, though, that Zouheir Bahloul (Zionist Union) can bite his tongue forever, or that Esawi Freige (Meretz) will concentrate on expanding the Kafr Qasm industrial zone and nothing more in order to be deemed kosher by Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi).
On Monday, Revital Swid (Zionist Union) said, rightly, “Hatred of Arabs is blinding the MKs into passing a law that no attorney general supports.” Indeed, Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit, formerly the IDF’s chief military advocate, called the law problematic, but also clarified that the problem is not constitutional. The law is legal, just as it is legal to demolish Umm el-Hiran and expel its Bedouin residents again, like it is legal not to supply water and electricity to “unrecognized” Palestinian villages (on both sides of the Green Line), and it is legal to expropriate their land.
Swid also told the chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice committee, MK Nissan Slomiansky: “The day will come that it [the law] gets used against you. One day there will be a majority here who decides that anybody who does not condemn the hilltop youth and support the kingdom of Israel is subverting the State of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state. What will you do on that day?”
That’s the thing: Once the psychosis of expulsion gains momentum, we have to brace for an even crazier, rightward-leaning, repressive stage. The law to oust Arabs is designed precisely to avert the day in which Jewish Israeli society realizes that its dispossession-settlement legacy is dangerous to Arabs and Jews alike.
The Joint Arab List, despite and because of its tensions within, represents a chance for genuine normalcy in our binational state. Yes, with contradictions, with problems that haven’t been solved yet, with resentments and differences in viewpoints. The fact that Palestinian MKs represent Jewish voters (however few we may be) and that a Jewish MK represents Palestinian voters, too, laid the groundwork for a different future. This future is now looking all the more illusory.
]]>Israel pessimistic on Syria ceasefire, talks up sectarian partition | Reuters | Sun Feb 14, 2016
▻http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-israel-idUKKCN0VN0C4
Israel voiced doubt on Sunday that an international ceasefire plan for Syria would succeed, suggesting a sectarian partition of the country was inevitable and perhaps preferable.
@nidal : "comme si la partition était une conséquence inattendue de la guerre"
@souriyam :
►http://seenthis.net/messages/459465
“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““
Israël pessimiste quant au cessez-le feu en Syrie (médias)
Par i24news - Publié : 14/02/2016
▻http://www.i24news.tv/fr/actu/international/moyen-orient/102852-160214-israel-pessimiste-quant-au-cessez-le-feu-en-syrie-medias
Les responsables israéliens ont exprimé des doutes dimanche quant au fait qu’un cessez-le feu international en Syrie pourrait fonctionner et considèrent qu’une division de la Syrie serait une meilleure solution.
Des officiels du gouvernement israélien nous font savoir quelles sont leurs préférences politiques concernant les territoires de leur environnement régional et le sort des Etats arabes du Proche-Orient.
Ayelet Shaked, qui suggérait de faire assassiner les mères des « terroristes » palestiniens, ci-devant Ministre israélienne de la Justice, souhaite un Etat kurde indépendant :
▻http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_israel-calls-for-independent-kurdish-state_410092.html
Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked has called for an independent Kurdistan, a move which she says will weaken Israel’s rivals in the region.
“We must openly call for the establishment of a Kurdish state that separates Iran from Turkey, one which will be friendly towards Israel,” Shaked told a conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, according to a Times of Israel report.
Her call reflects a growing desire in Israel to foster robust relations with the Kurdish community in Iraq, and even promote the process of founding an independent state by the Kurdish people.
Earlier this month, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani spoke to diplomats from more than 30 countries in Arbil, Iraq about Kurdish plans to hold a referendum, as part of an effort to seek international backing for a decades-old Kurdish bid for a state of their own. Barzani instructed his party officials in December last year to speed up preparations to hold a referendum on whether to secede from Iraq.
Quant au ministre israélien de la Défense, Moshe Yaalon, à tout prendre il préfère encore Da’ich que l’Iran en Syrie et note que les intérêts de l’Etat d’Israël et des pétromonarchies du Golfe sont convergents :
►https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/19/israeli-defense-minister-if-i-had-to-choose-between-iran-and-isis-id-choose-isis/?tid=sm_tw
Speaking at the Institute for National Security Studies’ (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv on Jan. 19, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon made a bold statement: If he had to choose between Iran and the Islamic State, he told the audience, he’d “choose ISIS.”
Ya’alon reasoned that Iran had greater capabilities than the Islamic State and remained the biggest threat for Israel. He argued that if Syria were to fall to one of the two powers, he would prefer it were the Islamic State rather than Iran or Iran-backed groups. “We believe ISIS will be eventually defeated territorially after the blows it has been suffering, and in light of the attacks on its oil reserves,” he told the conference, according to Ynetnews.
Ya’alon said that current problems in the Middle East showed the region was at the “height of the clash of civilizations.” He also added that Israel shared common interests with the regional Sunni Muslim powers , who were also threatened by the Shia Muslim Iran.
Voilà, mais on est bien d’accord que l’idée que l’accroissement des tensions sectaires dans la région, l’idéologie du clash des civilisations et la fragmentation politique selon une ligne ethnico-confessionnelle des États arabes voisins seraient dans l’intérêt d’Israël, et feraient l’objet d’une action politique et diplomatique en ce sens des sionistes en Israël et dans leurs relais en « Occident », est une abominable théorie du complot antisémite...
#Israel #clash_des_civilisations #EI #Daech #Iran #Grand_Moyen-Orient #Syrie #Irak
]]>Israel Bans Novel on Arab-Jewish Romance From Schools for ’Threatening Jewish Identity’ - Israel News - Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.694620
Move comes despite the fact that the official responsible for teaching of literature in secular state schools recommended the book for use in advanced literature classes, as did a professional committee of academics and educators.
Or Kashti Dec 31, 2015 12:57 AM
Israel’s Education Ministry has disqualified a novel that describes a love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man from use by high schools around the country. The move comes even though the official responsible for literature instruction in secular state schools recommended the book for use in advanced literature classes, as did a professional committee of academics and educators, at the request of a number of teachers.
Among the reasons stated for the disqualification of Dorit Rabinyan’s “Gader Haya” (literally “Hedgegrow,” but known in English as “Borderlife”) is the need to maintain what was referred to as “the identity and the heritage of students in every sector,” and the belief that “intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threatens the separate identity.” The Education Ministry also expressed concern that “young people of adolescent age don’t have the systemic view that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the people and the significance of miscegenation.”
The book, published in Hebrew by Am Oved about a year and a half ago, tells the story of Liat, an Israeli translator, and Hilmi, a Palestinian artist, who meet and fall in love in New York, until they part ways for her to return to Tel Aviv and he to the West Bank city of Ramallah. The book was among this year’s winners of the Bernstein Prize for young writers.
A source familiar with the ministry’s approach to the book said that in recent months a large number of literature teachers asked that “Borderlife” be included in advanced literature classes. After consideration of the request, a professional committee headed by Prof. Rafi Weichert from the University of Haifa approved the request. The committee included academics, Education Ministry representatives and veteran teachers. The panel’s role is to advise the ministry on various educational issues, including approval of curriculum.
According to the source, members of the professional committee, as well as the person in charge of literature studies, “thought that the book is appropriate for students in the upper grades of high schools – both from an artistic and literary standpoint and regarding the topic it raises. Another thing to remember is that the number of students who study advanced literature classes is anyhow low, and the choice of books is very wide.”
Another source in the Education Ministry said that the process took a number of weeks, and that “it’s hard to believe that we reached a stage where there’s a need to apologize for wanting to include a new and excellent book into the curriculum.”
Dorit Rabinyan.David Bachar
Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s office said: “The minister backs the decision made by the professionals.”
Two senior ministry officials, Eliraz Kraus, who is in charge of society-and-humanity studies, and the acting chair of the pedagogic secretariat, Dalia Fenig, made the decision to disqualify “Borderlife.”
At the beginning of December, the head of literature studies at the ministry, Shlomo Herzig, appealed their decision, but his appeal was recently denied.
]]>Israël : projet pour durcir le fonctionnement des ONG financées par l’étranger - AFP - 27 décembre 2015
▻https://fr.news.yahoo.com/isra%C3%ABl-projet-durcir-fonctionnement-ong-financ%C3%A9es-l%C3%A9tr
(...) « C’est une avancée préoccupante dans les efforts de la droite pour délégitimer ces organisations et les réduire au silence », affirmait dans son éditorial le quotidien Haaretz, proche du centre-gauche. Le projet, porté par la ministre de la Justice Ayelet Shaked, étoile montante de la droite nationaliste religieuse, « porte un rude coup à la liberté d’expression », estime le journal.
Une fois approuvé par ce comité ministériel, le projet de loi sera soumis au Parlement en trois lectures.
Lors de la publication du texte, Mme Shaked l’a justifié en affirmant que « les interférences flagrantes de gouvernements étrangers dans les affaires internes israéliennes sont pléthore et sans précédent ».
Elle a notamment pris comme exemple une enquête de l’ONU sur la guerre de l’été 2014 qui a conclu à de possibles crimes de guerre d’Israël dans la bande de Gaza. Selon la ministre, les Nations unies se sont basées sur des preuves recueillies par B’Tselem, Adalah et Breaking the Silence, des ONG israéliennes qui reçoivent des fonds étrangers.(...)
]]>Don’t Shoot Down Breaking the Silence, It’s Just the Messenger - Israel News - Haaretz -
Amos Harel Dec 19, 2015
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.692603
Breaking the Silence was founded in the spring of 2004. Four freshly released soldiers from the Nahal Brigade, who served long tours in Hebron during the height of the second intifada, organized an exhibition that documented their experiences, which was displayed at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Although some people were outraged by the exhibition, the discussion about the soldiers’ claims was conducted far more calmly than it is today – despite the fact that, back then, suicide bombers were still blowing themselves up on buses in Israeli cities.
The current Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, was the commander of all IDF forces in the West Bank at the time, and he raised a concern: Why did the founders of the organization not oppose the army actions while they were serving, or at least report on them in real time? His argument was unconvincing. In most cases, a corporal will have a hard time going before the company or battalion commander in real time and saying, “That’s not allowed.” They are not equals. Few soldiers – particularly during regular service – have the ability to make such complaints, especially at a time when military casualties are high and the atmosphere is charged.
As the years went on, the IDF made two other, more substantial claims. The first regarded the difficulty in translating the soldiers’ testimonies into legal or disciplinary proceedings. Breaking the Silence has always maintained the testifiers’ anonymity, in order to protect them. And during cases where the military prosecutor was interested in investigating, such probes generally ended without results. IDF officials got the impression that publishing the testimonies was more important to Breaking the Silence than any legal proceedings. The IDF’s second claim pertains to the organization’s activities abroad. One can assume that this activity is mostly done for fundraising purposes, but holding exhibitions abroad and making claims about Israeli war crimes certainly offended many.
This week, there was a new low point in the public campaign against the organization. This combined two trends, only one of which was open and obvious. The first is the direct attack on Breaking the Silence by the right, comprised mostly of McCarthyesque attempts to silence it. These attacks have a sanctimonious air to them. In the eyes of the attackers, the international community is ganging up on Israel, and Breaking the Silence is the source of all our troubles – everything would be fine if it weren’t for this group of despicable liars slandering Israel’s reputation.
It is hard to shake the suspicion that the attacks against Breaking the Silence aren’t the act of an extensive network operating with at least a degree of coordination. What began as some accusations on Channel 20 continued with a venomous video published by the Im Tirtzu movement, which was immediately followed by demands from the My Israel group (founded by Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked) to prohibit Breaking the Silence representatives from visiting schools. Somehow, Education Minister Bennett succumbed to their demands within a day. In the background, there was also a blatant attack on President Reuven Rivlin. At first, they tried to link him to Breaking the Silence. That failed, because the president made sure to defend the IDF’s moral standing at the HaaretzQ conference in New York. And then the “flag affair” happened, involving Rivlin, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and the Israeli flag.
As usual, Im Tirtzu delivered the most extreme elements of the assault. Its ubiquitous video showed the word “Shtulim” – Hebrew for implanted, or mole – above pictures of four left-wing activists who looked like they’d been plucked from a “Wanted” list. The video didn’t leave much room for the imagination: “Shtulim” is another way of saying “traitors.”
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02u_J2C-Lso
Im Tirtzu accuses leftist activists of being foreign agents. YouTube/Im Tirtzu
When one of the four featured activists, Dr. Ishai Menuchin – executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel – says he felt as if the spilling of his blood was being permitted, you can understand why he reached that conclusion. (By the way, Menuchin did reserve duty until an advanced age – in the Givati Brigade, of all places.) The claims that these four organizations are “collaborating with the enemy” have been rejected by the two previous military advocate generals, Avichai Mendelblit and Danny Efroni. Indeed, the two told Haaretz that they are often assisted by these human rights organizations.
The mainstream media has provided the complementary side of the trend by airing Im Tirtzu’s videos. As journalists, they cluck their tongues and mock the style of the videos, but reap higher ratings. This approach works well in conjunction with media coverage of the current terror outbreak, which is treated relatively superficially and is often an attempt to tackle these issues without providing any broader context. Here, the goal is not to damage the left-wing organizations, but rather marketing a slant on the current reality for Israelis – as if we have the exclusive capability to both maintain the occupation indefinitely and remain the most moral army in the world. But the truth is, it’s impossible to do both. Also, there’s no empirical proof that the IDF is the most moral army in the world (a cliché Rivlin himself employed earlier this week).
In many cases, the IDF makes an effort – and sometimes a tremendous effort. But it is still a giant war machine. When it is forced to act to defend Israeli civilians and advance into crowded, urban Palestinian territory – as it did last year in Gaza – it causes lots of casualties, which will include innocent civilians. And its control of the occupied territories involves, by its very nature, many unjust acts: limiting movement, entering civilians’ homes, making arrests and humiliating people.
It is a reality that every combat solider in the West Bank, regular or reservist, rightist or leftist, is aware of. I can attest to it myself: For more than 10 years I was called up to serve in the West Bank many times, as a junior commander in a reserve infantry battalion – before and during the second intifada. I didn’t witness anything I considered to be a war crime. And more than once, I saw commanders going to great lengths to maintain human dignity while carrying out complex missions, which they saw as essential for security. Even so, many aspects of our operations seemed to me, and to many others, to fall into some kind of gray area, morally speaking. In my battalion, there were also cases of inhuman treatment and abuse of Palestinian civilians.
Those who believe, like I do, that much of the blame for the lack of a peace agreement in recent years stems from Palestinian unwillingness to compromise; and those who think, like I do, that at the moment there is no horizon for an arrangement that guarantees safety for Israelis in exchange for most of the West Bank, because of the possibility that the arrangement would collapse and the vacuum be filled by Hamas or even ISIS, must admit: There is no such thing as a rose-tinted occupation.
Breaking the Silence offers an unpleasant voice to many Israeli ears, but it speaks a lot of truth. I’ve interviewed many of its testifiers over the years. What they told me wasn’t the stuff of fantasy but rather, descriptions from below – from the perspective of the corporal or lieutenant, voices that are important and should be heard, even if they don’t present the whole picture. There is a price that comes with maintaining this abnormal situation for 48 years. Covering your ears or blaming the messenger won’t achieve anything.
The interesting thing is that when you meet high-ranking IDF officers, you don’t hear about illusions or clichés. The senior officers don’t like Breaking the Silence, but they also don’t attack it with righteous indignation (although it’s possible that sentiments for the organization are harsher among lower ranks). In recent months, I’ve been privy to closed talks with most of the chain of command in the West Bank: The chief of staff, head of Central Command, IDF commander in the West Bank, and nine brigade chiefs. As I’ve written here numerous times recently, these officers speak in similar tones. They don’t get worked up, they aren’t trying to get their subordinates to kill Palestinians when there is no essential security need, and they aren’t looking for traitors in every corner.
Last Tuesday, when Im Tirtzu’s despicable campaign was launched, I had a prescheduled meeting with the commander of a regular infantry brigade. In a few weeks, some of his soldiers will be stationed in the West Bank. Last year, he fought with them in Gaza. What troubles him now, he says, is how to sufficiently prepare his soldiers for their task, to ensure that they’ll protect themselves and Israeli civilians from the knife attacks, but also to ensure that they won’t recklessly shoot innocent people, or kill someone lying on the ground after the threat has been nullified.
The picture painted by the brigade commander is entirely different to the one painted by Channel 20 (which posted on Facebook this week that “the presidency has lost its shame” following Rivlin’s appearance in New York). But it is also much more complex than the daily dose of drama being supplied by the mainstream media.
Another victory for Ya’alon
Last Sunday, the cabinet approved the appointment of Nir Ben Moshe as director of security for the defense establishment. The appointment was another bureaucratic victory for Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, part of a series of such appointments over the past year. The pattern remains the same: Ya’alon consults with Eisenkot; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reservations, delays the process or even opposes outright; Ya’alon insists, but takes care not to let the rift become public; and in the end Ya’alon gets what he wants.
Ya’alon isn’t generally considered a sophisticated bureaucrat. His political power is also rather limited. He has almost no sources of power within the Likud Central Committee. The fact that he remains in his position, despite the close coordination with Netanyahu and the joint positions they held during the war in Gaza last year and during the current strife in the West Bank, seems to hinge only upon Netanyahu’s complex political considerations. Still, through great patience it seems the defense minister ultimately gets what he desires.
Ben Moshe’s appointment was first approved by a committee within the Defense Ministry last month. Ya’alon asked that the appointment be immediately submitted to the cabinet for approval, but Netanyahu postponed the decision for weeks before ultimately accepting it. This is partly because of the prime minister’s tendency to procrastinate, which also played a part in the late appointment of Yossi Cohen as the next Mossad chief. But in many cases, there are other considerations behind such hesitations, with the appointment of the current IDF chief of staff a prime example: Ya’alon formulated his position on Eisenkot months before the decision was announced. Eisenkot’s appointment was brought before Netanyahu numerous times, but the prime minister constantly examined other candidates and postponed the decision until last December – only two and a half months before Benny Gantz’s term was set to end.
Even the appointment of the new military advocate general, Brig. Gen. Sharon Afek, which had been agreed by Ya’alon and Eisenkot, was delayed for months by Netanyahu’s reservations – which, formally speaking, should not be part of the process. Here, it seems the stalling was due to claims from settlers about Afek’s “left-leaning” tendencies, not to mention the incriminating fact that Afek’s cousin is Michal Herzog – the wife of opposition leader Isaac Herzog.
Over the next month, numerous other appointments to the IDF’s General Staff are expected, but Eisenkot will call the shots and Ya’alon needs to approve his nominations. The chief of staff is expected to appoint a new naval commander; a new ground forces commander; new head of the technology and logistics directorate; new head of the communications directorate; and new military attaché to Washington. In most cases, generals will make way for younger brigadier generals. Eisenkot will likely want to see a more seasoned general assume command of the ground forces, though, and could give it to a current general as a second position under that rank. However, this creates another problem – any general given this job would see it as being denied a regional command post, which is considered an essential stop for any budding chief of staff.
]]>German MPs Implore Netanyahu to Bury NGO ’Transparency’ Bill -
Barak Ravid Dec 03, 2015
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.689735
Four leading German legislators who head the German-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group in the Bundestag, and who represent Germany’s large parties, sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday expressing their concern about a bill that would restrict the activities of left-wing NGOs in Israel.
The four wrote that if the bill, being promoted by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, is passed, it would make it difficult for Israel’s friends in Germany to help Israel fend off boycotts and attempts at delegitimization, and asked Netanyahu to “rethink” the proposed legislation.
(...) The four – friendship group chairman Volker Beck of the Greens Party, deputy chairwoman Gitta Connemann of the ruling Christian Democratic Party; deputy chairwoman Kerstin Griese of the Social Democratic Party, and Jan Korte of the Left Party – are considered the leaders of the campaign on Israel’s behalf in Germany. Only recently they protested to the Berlin-based KaDeWe department store when it removed settlement products from its shelves, which evidently was a factor in leading the store to reverse its decision.
]]>France to Push for UN Security Council Resolution on West Bank Settlements - Diplomacy and Defense - Haaretz
French FM Laurent Fabius told Quartet meet 10 days ago that France intends to advance resolution and hopes to convene follow-up conference in Paris on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Barak Ravid Oct 11, 2015 4:53 AM
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.679785
The French government intends to advance a United Nations Security Council resolution on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to senior officials in Jerusalem and Western diplomats.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius made a comment to that effect 10 days ago, at a meeting in New York of the foreign ministers of the Middle East Quartet. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made use of the comment to convince right-wing members of his cabinet that new construction in the settlements in response to the recent wave of terrorism would cause Israel severe diplomatic damage.
The September 30 meeting in New York was due to include the foreign ministers of the Quartet countries — the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations — as well as those from Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The French foreign minister had other plans, however. Two Western diplomats and two senior officials in Jerusalem said Fabius demanded to participate in the meeting as well and exerted strong pressure on the Americans and on EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.
In the wake of the pressure, it was decided initially that France, Britain and China, all of which are permanent members of the Security Council, would also be invited, even though they are not direct members of the Quartet. The prospect of their participation, however, led other countries, such as Germany, Norway, Japan, Italy, Spain and others, to demand a place at the table as well. It turned into a conference of 30 foreign ministers from around the world, discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without a single Israeli or Palestinian representative.
A statement in summation of the meeting — mainly ceremonial and with short statements by each of the participants — was agreed upon in advance. Fabius again surprised the gathering by presenting a French diplomatic plan with steps that he said would break the deadlock in the peace process.
According to Western diplomats present and the meeting as well as senior Israel officials briefed on the details, Fabius said he was interested in convening a follow-up conference in Paris to which countries interested in advancing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be invited, but not the two sides themselves.
Immediately afterwards, he uttered a sentence which has caused a lot of nervousness in Jerusalem over the past ten days. According to the diplomats, Fabius said there were many parties pressing for a vote on a Security Council resolution on the settlements and the subject was being explored. Reports of Fabius’ statement reached Israeli diplomats and Netanyahu, who was in New York at the time, within a few hours.
Like most of the participants at the Quartet meeting, Netanyahu and his advisers were surprised by the process Fabius proposed in his remarks. The Israeli leader’s advisers were quick to speak to associates of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and others who were present at the Quartet parley.
The following day, Netanyahu raised the issue at a meeting with Kerry and expressed great concern. The Americans said they do not know what Fabius intends and had no additional information on the subject. A senior Israeli official noted that from inquiries made in subsequent days, it turned out that it was apparently a process that was only in its initial stages.
Fabius’ short, vague sentence regarding a Security Council resolution on Jewish settlements became a central element of a meeting of the Israeli inner cabinet last Monday, a day after Netanyahu’s return from New York. In the face of pressure that was applied by Education Minister Naftali Bennett, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Immigrant Absorption Minister Ze’ev Elkin to announce construction in settlements in response to the wave of terrorist attacks, Netanyahu and his adviser Isaac Molho presented information about the French plans.
Despite the fact that there is no draft or proposed text of a French resolution, Netanyahu, Molho and other participants at the meeting contended that it would state that the settlements are not legal. They presented Fabius’ initial idea as a highly dangerous process that could bring about a wave of boycotts and withdrawal of investment from any Israeli entity operating directly or indirectly in the settlements; serious international isolation; and a risk of a trial at the International Court in The Hague against any entity connected to the settlements. They argued that construction in the settlements at this time would provide backing for Fabius’ initiative and cause Israeli serious diplomatic damage.
Channel 2 reported that Netanyahu and Molho also told the ministers that they had received an American ultimatum that an announcement of new construction in the settlement would cause President Barack Obama to refrain from vetoing the French resolution if it would come to a UN Security Council vote. According to several ministers who attended the inner cabinet meeting, Molho said that Kerry had left him threatening voice-mail messages. Senior American officials denied both the existence of an ultimatum and Molho’s story about Kerry’s threatening messages.
Even if Fabius’ plan does take shape, it would not be the first time that the Security Council adopted a resolution on the settlements. Resolution 465 in 1980, which was passed unanimously without an American veto, stated that the settlements built beyond the 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem, were not legal. The resolution also called for all countries to refrain from providing any form of assistance to construction in the settlements.
]]>Israel’s Security Cabinet Sets 4-year Minimum Sentence for Stone-throwers
Cabinet also clarifies rules of engagement, which now allow police to open fire when lives of officers or civilians are at risk, Netanyahu says.
Barak Ravid 24.09.2015 20:27
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.677421Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.677421
The security cabinet has decided to issue a temporary order that would set a four-year minimum sentence for stone- and firebomb-throwers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bureau said Thursday. The order is to remain in effect for three years.
Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein voiced opposition to legislating minimum sentencing for such crimes, instead recommending a temporary order that would remain in effect for a year. However, the cabinet decided to issue the order for three years at Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s insistence.
Officials who took part in the meeting noted that the ministers accepted the attorney general’s position that the minimum sentencing would only apply to adults who throw stones and firebombs. They also accepted his recommendation to leave a loophole that would allow judges to deviate from the minimum sentence as long as they can justify it.
The prime minister’s bureau noted the minimum sentence constitutes just a fifth of the 20-year maximum sentence for throwing stones and firebombs.
At the conclusion of Thursday’s meeting, Netanyahu said that his cabinet wishes to change what has become the “norm,” where one "can hurl these lethal and murderous objects without response and without being foiled."
According to the prime minister’s bureau, part of the meeting focused on clarifying the rules of engagement, and conveying these rules to the police. The ministers were presented with scenarios in which opening fire is justified, i.e. when the life of a police officer or a civilian life is at risk. The ministers were also explained the limitations of opening fire.
“Until recently, police officers would open fire when their own lives were at risk,” Netanyahu said. “From now on, they will be allowed to open fire – and they will know they have a right to do so – when anyone’s life is in danger.”
The cabinet also decided to take measures against minors over the age of 14 who throw stones, as well as their parents. The measures include revoking stipends of parents whose children are sentenced to prison. The cabinet will examine the legality of fining parents to minors aged 12-14, and imposing bail on parents to minors under the age of 12.
At the end of the meeting, Netanyahu addressed the unrest on Temple Mount, asserting that Israel is maintaining the status quo.
“Any claims about our intentions to harm sites holy to Islam are nonsense,” he said. “We are not the ones to change the status quo. Those who take pipe bombs to mosques are the ones changing the status quo.”
He said Israel will take action to maintain law and order and called on the Palestinian Authority to “stop the wild incitement.”
]]>#Israël : les fusils #Ruger autorisés contre les lanceurs de pierres
▻http://www.i24news.tv/fr/actu/international/moyen-orient/86116-150917-israel-les-fusils-ruger-autorises-contre-les-lanceurs-de-pierre
Les fusils Ruger ont été utilisés en Cisjordanie pendant la deuxième #Intifada. Ils ont cependant été interdits pendant quelques années après qu’un certain nombre de jeunes Palestiniens ont été tués par des tirs de Ruger. Aujourd’hui, leur utilisation est à nouveau autorisée.
Une interdiction qui était peu respectée en fait
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/335649
Assawra - الثورة : Israël relâche en plein désert des centaines de clandestins africains désemparés
Israël a relâché mardi en plein désert des centaines de clandestins africains, en vertu d’un jugement qui leur rend la liberté, mais les laisse désemparés devant cette question : où aller ?
"Il n’ y a rien à fêter ! On ne sait pas où aller, où on va dormir ce soir", dit Salah, un Soudanais de 33 ans devant le centre de rétention de Holot, le plus important du pays, situé dans le désert du Néguev (sud).
Comme des centaines d’autres (750 selon l’autorité pénitentiaire), Salah, arrivé en Israël il y a neuf ans, a été libéré après une décision de la Cour suprême qui a ordonné le 11 août que les demandeurs d’asile détenus depuis plus d’un an soient relâchés sous deux semaines.
Au total, 1.178 personnes doivent être libérées mardi et mercredi, a indiqué à l’AFP Sivan Weitzman, porte-parole de l’autorité pénitentiaire.
Il s’agit du troisième coup porté en deux ans à la politique des gouvernements successifs de droite de Benjamin Netanyahu qui cherche à limiter l’arrivée de migrants, majoritairement originaires d’Erythrée et du Soudan.
Devant un paysage de barbelés et de baraquements avec le désert à l’horizon, la liberté a pris un goût d’incertain pour tous ceux qui sont sortis en tirant de grosses valises, une couverture sous le bras. Une fois sortis, certains rejoignent des abribus, montent dans un car, peu importe sa direction.
Fissel Sidig Adam, un Soudanais du Darfour âgé de 28 ans, arrivé en Israël il y a 8 ans, est reconnaissant envers la Cour suprême. Mais il attendait « plus », "une vraie solution de l’Etat, de l’aide, pas les 64 shekels (16,5 USD) et le sandwich qu’on nous a donnés".
Holot est un centre ouvert où les détenus, libres la journée, doivent venir émarger à 22H00, explique la porte-parole de l’autorité pénitentiaire. Ils ont droit à un pécule mensuel de 600 shekels par mois s’ils ont fait acte de présence tous les soirs, moins dans le cas contraire.
Après les départs de mardi et mercredi, ils devraient rester 550 personnes dans le centre.
Ceux qui sont libérés partent après un petit-déjeuner, avec leur allocation, éventuellement des ordonnances s’ils ont besoin de soins, mais aussi avec un document restreignant leurs déplacements.
"On nous a donné un papier avec marqué « interdit d’aller à Eilat ou Tel-Aviv », et c’est là qu’on connaît des gens. J’ai pas d’argent pour louer un appartement. Où je vais maintenant ?" s’inquiète Salah.
Tel-Aviv et Eilat accueillent de fortes concentrations de clandestins africains. Leur présence suscite des tensions avec la population. Mais en interdisant ces villes aux détenus de Holot, les autorités les privent d’un point de chute où retrouver des proches, ou un travail au noir peut-être.
Le débat autour de la question de l’immigration est loin d’être apaisé. Récemment, la ministre de la Justice, Ayelet Shaked, a posté une vidéo montrant l’agression d’une passante par un homme de couleur noir avec la mention : « la vie insupportable des habitants du sud de Tel-Aviv ». La vidéo avait en fait été filmée en Turquie.
Pour ces immigrants, Israël représente, à défaut de pouvoir rallier l’Europe, le plus proche espoir d’une vie meilleure accessible à pied.
Selon l’ONU, le pays abrite 53.000 réfugiés et demandeurs d ?asile, la plupart entrés illégalement via le Sinaï égyptien. Parmi eux, 36.000 sont venus d’Erythrée, 14.000 du Soudan. Israël ne leur accorde le statut de réfugiés qu’au compte-gouttes, laissant l’immense majorité à la marge.
Cette immigration date de plusieurs années. A la différence de l’Europe et compte tenu de sa situation géopolitique, Israël n’est pas confronté à de nouvelles vagues en provenance de Libye ou de Syrie, pourtant toute proche, dit à l’AFP Sabin Hadad, porte-parole du ministère de l’Intérieur.
Les détenus relâchés de Holot ne devraient pas grossir les flux à destination de l’Europe, tant sortir d’Israël serait une gageure.
Sur le parking de Holot transformé par la sortie des prisonniers en un marché où des marchands vendent de la nourriture et où l’on fume la pipe à eau, des conciliabules se forment. Les hommes sortent leur portable pour improviser des plans d’urgence. Personne ne croit vraiment qu’ils ne finiront pas par gagner Tel-Aviv ou Eilat.
▻http://assawra.blogspot.fr/2015/08/israel-relache-en-plein-desert-des.html
#israel#migrants#clandestins
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.
]]>Ayelet Shaked, qui a appelé au génocide des Palestiniens, est nommée ministre de la Justice d’Israël
▻http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/2015/05/10/185768
L’Israélien Benjamin Netanyahu, récemment réélu Premier ministre pour la quatrième fois, a nommé Ayelet Shaked ministre de la Justice. Cette décision en a fait tiquer certains en raison des opinions ultranationalistes de Shaked. Elle est en effet membre du parti d’extrême droite HaBayit HaYehudi (“le Foyer juif”) et a fait les gros titres l’an passé pour avoir appelé au génocide des Palestiniens sur Facebook. Source : Global Voices
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