person:yigal amir

Drame de Douma en Cisjordanie occupée : des extrémistes juifs arrêtés - moyen orient - RFI
▻http://www.rfi.fr/moyen-orient/20151203-israel-palestine-drame-douma-cisjordanie-occupee-extremistes-juifs-arre
Avec notre correspondante à Jérusalem,Murielle Paradon

En Israël, les services de sécurité ont annoncé ce jeudi 3 décembre l’arrestation d’extrémistes juifs, quatre mois après un incendie criminel ayant décimé une famille palestinienne dans sa maison en Cisjordanie occupée. L’affaire avait déclenché la colère des Palestiniens et passe pour être l’un des éléments déclencheurs des violences actuelles dans la région.

Les arrestations concernent des jeunes soupçonnés d’appartenir à une organisation terroriste juive, selon les services de sécurité intérieurs israéliens. Ces jeunes seraient impliqués dans l’incendie criminel qui a décimé une famille palestinienne, les Dawabsheh, l’été dernier en Cisjordanie occupée. Le nombre et l’identité des suspects n’ont toutefois pas été dévoilés.

Depuis le début, une chape de plomb entoure cette affaire. Il y a eu des arrestations, la mise en détention de suspects sans inculpation, puis plus rien. Il y a eu aussi des déclarations confuses d’un ministre israélien laissant à penser qu’il connaissait les coupables sans pouvoir les faire arrêter.

Tout cela a renforcé le sentiment déjà présent chez les Palestiniens d’une justice à deux vitesses dans laquelle les extrémistes juifs pourraient commettre des crimes en toute impunité.

Le drame de Douma, du nom du village où l’incendie a eu lieu, a profondément choqué l’opinion publique. Un bébé de 18 mois est mort brûlé vif, ses parents ont succombé à leurs blessures. Un enfant de quatre ans reste hospitalisé dans un état grave.

#Palestine

No matter how far right Israel moves, Abbas stays the course - Palestinian leader’s gradualist strategy, blocking nonviolent protest against occupation, is endlessly adaptable to Israeli radicalization.
By Amira Hass | Dec. 5, 2014 |Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.630120

The growing extremism in Israel and the assumption that the next government will be even more rightist and extreme than the outgoing one are not likely to change the Palestinian leadership’s positions and tactics. Nor is the prevalent assumption that the caretaker government will take a harsher line against the Palestinians expected to encourage the leadership in Ramallah to change the rules that have developed over the 21 years of the Oslo process.

Since Yigal Amir murdered Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the Palestinian leadership has distinguished between the Israeli government and the public, believing Israelis to be peace seekers. Now the Palestinian leadership recognizes that most Jewish Israelis have rightist or extreme rightist inclinations. This constitutes a dramatic change in the discourse at the top.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki predicted that the changes in Israel will bring other states or parliaments to recognize the Palestinian state. In an interview with the official daily Al Ayyam this week, Maliki said the Palestinian leadership will continue efforts to have the UN Security Council set a timetable to end the occupation.

Palestinian official Saeb Erekat, who attended a debate organized by Masarat – the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies in Ramallah, also spoke of the diplomatic UN track. This includes bringing the occupation to UN votes and getting the nearly 200 states that have signed the Geneva Convention to take up the Palestinian issue.

He said Palestinian officials were engaged in talks with France about advancing the latter’s initiative to set principles for ending the occupation and concluding peace negotiations within two years.

According to the Masarat report, participants noted the contradiction between setting a schedule to conclude the negotiations and setting a schedule in the United Nations to end the occupation. The two senior officials in fact spoke of contradictory tracks. The Palestinians see negotiations as synonymous with preserving the status quo, postponing any decisions and giving up on real international pressure on Israel.

On the other hand, the diplomatic route – “setting a timetable to end the occupation” – as is practiced by the Palestinian leadership, excludes other ways of defying the occupation that would bind the leadership and public.

The policy led by PA President Mahmoud Abbas is based on several foundations. These include running the PA and its institutions as the “state in progress”; dependence on international – mainly Western – assistance and faith in the United States’ support for establishing a Palestinian state; an authoritarian government that restricts criticism; opposing any military escalation and the use of arms against the occupation; paying lip service to an unarmed popular struggle while in fact restricting it and promoting a diplomatic strategy in the United Nations and the world.

These foundations fit in with the Palestinians’ adjustment to living in the enclaves (areas A and B in the West Bank and Gaza) and bolster the de facto renunciation of East Jerusalem and Area C (which includes the settlements). Combined, the foundations are conducive to a high level of adjustment – of both the official leadership and the public – to any Israeli right-wing radicalization.

The Palestinian public is skeptical about its leadership’s goals and intentions. The question always hovering in the air is whether Abbas’ diplomatic strategy is intended to end the occupation, or to prolong the PA life and justify its existence, with all the perks for the ruling strata that this involves.

The same questions were posed regarding the leadership’s long-standing adherence to the negotiations with Israel, even after reaching the conclusion that Israel was using the talks not to reach an agreement but to expand the annexation and thwart a Palestinian state.

Pinning hopes on diplomacy, UN

Indeed, the Palestinian leadership is pinning its hopes on diplomacy and the United Nations. It is striving to take the “Palestinian cause” (rather, the problem of Israeli occupation and oppression) out of the bilateral Israeli-Palestinian route and return it to the international arena. So every ceremonial vote on recognizing its statehood is presented as a great Palestinian achievement.

The leadership believes the diplomatic course is working and advancing the Palestinians toward statehood. At the same time, the diplomatic strategy is a substitute for unarmed civilian rebellion in the occupied territories.

Advancing a diplomatic strategy while maintaining ambiguity about resuming the negotiations with Israel enables the PA to continue to receive international assistance, albeit reduced. The assistance balances and neutralizes the economic and humanitarian disasters caused by the occupation and its draconian restrictions on freedom of movement between the West Bank and Gaza and the use of Palestinian territory and natural resources.

The financial assistance softens and contains the impact of poverty and unemployment. The money also enables the Western states to make do with verbal warnings to Israel, while refraining from actually imposing sanctions on it.

The international funds maintain the Palestinian middle classes and public sector that are directly and indirectly affiliated with the PA. Like the official leadership, these groups know full well that civilian rebellion will bring an end to their lifestyle, which includes freedom of movement in the West Bank and travel abroad, leisure activities, study options, social and political gatherings, limited economic enterprises and more.

Such a way of life is based on basic human rights. But since the PA is in fact a protectorate that depends on Israel, Israel holds this way of life hostage, seeing these human rights as “gestures” that depend, as in prison, on the prisoners’ good behavior.

Any changes the Palestinians can make in the long overdue Oslo agreements to reflect their resistance to the occupation will evoke immediate Israeli retaliation against the Palestinian leaders and the normal lifestyle of the middle class, which is the authority’s backbone. Such changes by the PA may include ending the security coordination with the IDF and Shin Bet, building in Area C, drilling for water in the western areas of the West Bank or organizing mass processions to Jerusalem headed by Palestinian elders.

So the PA leadership’s declarations about continuing the diplomatic course in the United Nations should be seen in the shadow of a collective Israeli revenge and the prospect of the PA’s collapse. The UN diplomatic course indicates that even when an extreme-right wing is taking over in Israel, the Palestinian leadership is still adhering to the reality created by the Oslo process.

Israeli teachers balk at state curriculum on Rabin: No mention of Yigal Amir

Several schools contacted by Haaretz said they aren’t using the ministry kits and are preparing their own lessons on democracy and public controversies.
By Yarden Skop | Nov. 4, 2014 Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.624494

Many teachers are not using the study kits provided by the Education Ministry to mark this week’s anniversary of the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, saying the kits focus too much on Rabin himself and barely touch on the circumstances of his assassination.

Teachers say the materials, prepared by the Education Ministry’s Headquarters for Civic Education and Shared Living, together with the Yitzhak Rabin Center, don’t describe the background to the assassination, don’t mention the events that preceded it, and don’t even mention assassin Yigal Amir’s name.

The kits, entitled “What to remember? How to remember?” only hint at the history in the introduction. For example, “The murder of Yitzhak Rabin has a significant place in shaping the identity of Israeli society, because it serves as a warning sign to all of us, attesting to what is liable to happen if we allow disagreements to threaten the joint social fabric.”

There is also a reference to the events of this past summer, which included “harsh responses of intolerance, racism, and violence that went as far as undermining public order and the rule of law. These serious phenomena, like the expressions of incitement that preceding Rabin’s murder, strengthen the need for us as a society to observe the limits of discourse even during a dispute, and not to lapse as a society into acts of extreme violence that put our existence as a Jewish and democratic state at risk.”

Yet none of these issues come up in the activities the kits suggest be conducted with the pupils.

“Based on these materials, Rabin was a great guy, a nice guy, and suddenly he was murdered,” said I., a principal in the Sharon region. “It isn’t clear from the materials why he was murdered. Maybe he was on the street and got caught in a gang war; maybe he owed someone money – we don’t know who killed him. We don’t know the background to his murder. There’s just a vague statement that he wanted peace and for that he was murdered.”

N., a teacher in a northern elementary school added, “I think that the issue has to be not the man himself but democracy. The kits talk about the person. … It gets worse every year, this dealing with the person and not the substance of the issue. For young children it’s especially important to speak about how to resolve conflicts and disagreements.”

R., a teacher in Jerusalem, agrees that the kits lack historic background, but thinks they still have a positive side. “What’s good about the kits is that they leave a lot of room for the pupil; they don’t preach but remain open for his approach. … I like the way they raise the dilemma of whether there even should be a memorial day and how to mark it, because the kids talk about this.”

Several schools contacted by Haaretz said they aren’t using the ministry kits and are preparing their own lessons on democracy and public controversies. Some schools, primarily ultra-Orthodox and state religious schools, don’t hold any special lessons or events related to Rabin at all.

The Education Ministry said, “Every year another topic is chosen for the focus of the class materials. This year it was decided to deal with the issue of remembering the various aspects of the life and work of Yitzhak Rabin the leader, so that the younger generation could get to know him.”

Puisque la presse française en parle, voici un article à propos de cet « agent » du Mossad qui se serait « suicidé » en prison alors qu’il était détenu en Israël dans le secret.

ABC report reveals alleged identity of ’... JPost - National News
▻http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=303121

The ABC piece says that Zygier was kept in the same isolation cell built to house Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin Yigal Amir, and was kept under constant surveillance until his “apparent suicide.” The report quotes an unnamed source as saying that Zygier was working for the Mossad after being recruited as a new immigrant. It also says some that some time after he moved to Israel, Zygier took out a new Australian passport under the name of “Ben Allen," and hints that this may have been so he could travel more inconspicuously in countries hostile to Israel.

In addition, Foreign Minister Bob Carr is quoted by ABC as saying that Australian authorities were never contacted by Zygier’s family while he was in custody, and no formal complaints was ever presented by them either.

Foreign sources have also reported that Zygier is the son of Geoffrey Zygier, the executive director of the Victoria Jewish Community Council and one of the leaders of the Melbourne Jewish Community.

After Zygier hung himself, his body was flown back to Melbourne and buried in a Jewish cemetery in Springvale on December 22, 2010, according to the report. The report states that the program has evidence that a death certificate was issued for Zygier at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, ruling the cause of death as asphyxiation by hanging, and that his body was at Ayalon jail.

What would Chuck do?
▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SwqTY1oJcjs

In an unprecedented move, the legendary actor, Mr. Chuck Norris, created this audio, showing his support for the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and The Likud Party in the general elections in Israel : “Vote for Benjamin Netanyahu because a Strong Prime Minister is a strong Israel”