A year ago or so the IDF shuttered a West Bank charity for orphaned children because it was supposedly funded by Hamas. Today, the IDF has once again done itself proud by punishing children for the alleged sins of their elders:
Sixty-four kindergarten children in the Abu Tor neighborhood of Jerusalem are sitting at home though their classes were due to begin Sunday. The police commissioner sealed their building for security reasons.
The building had previously been rented by the Jerusalem municipality for the Ahmed Samech school, which was moved elsewhere, and the Najat kindergarten classes, which had operated elsewhere, were slated to open in the building instead.
But at the end of last week, the hinges on the building’s door were welded shut, and a closure order posted.
“After I became convinced that the building in Abu Tor was destined to be used for Hamas activities, I am ordering it shut until October 4, 2011,” read the order, signed by Insp. Gen. Yohanan Danino.
They’ve decided that an East Jerusalem kindergarten run by a Palestinian NGO, which is duly, legally registered with the Interior Ministry, is a terror front for Hamas. Which leaves 65 children without a school. That’s not unusual for East Jerusalem since the municipality provides almost no services for its Palestinians residents, which includes almost no public schools. That’s why this news hits especially hard.
The Jerusalem Police have resorted to the usual suspects, “confidential sources,” to decide that the NGO running the school is a Hamas front:
The Jerusalem Police, citing classified intelligence, said that “the site was meant to serve as a place of terror activity. The Najat movement is headed by known Hamas operatives, and the police commissioner ordered the location closed.”
One wonders what the nature of the classified material was? Perhaps a child’s drawing of an F-16 dropping a bomb on Gaza? Or a child singing about his love for Palestine? Or perhaps the poor children were caught being trained to produce suicide vests for their elders?
After all, the IDF is only acting on the divine teachings of Torat Hamelech, which tells us that it is permissible to kill Palestinian children because they will grow up to become terrorists who kill Jews. In that spirit, closing down the kindergarten seems only fitting, as it will without doubt become a breeding ground for terror.
You nail it. When “legal” actions may be taken (court judgments, for example) without the public presentation of evidence and a right to cross-examine, there is no justice, and there is, importantly, no reason for the so-called evidence to even exist in the first place.
We have this problem in the USA too, but I expect it is much, much worse in Israel, where the embeddedness (if I may so express it) of the ideas of anti-terrorism and the need-for-secrecy within so-called security forces (police, army, courts, prisons, militias, death squads, assassins) has gone on for a much longer time and the racism appears to be much stronger and more freely expressed.
“Security Reasons” are often no more than a legally acceptable means to make life less bearable for Palestinians in places where the master race wants them out.
RE: ” ‘Security Reasons’ are often no more than a legally acceptable means to make life less bearable for Palestinians…” ~ yankel
FROM ALISTAIR COOK, London Review of Books, 03/03/11:
SOURCE – http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/alastair-crooke/permanent-temporariness
P.S. ALSO SEE: Learned helplessness – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
P.P.S. “I ♥ Rick Perry” /// The “Rick Factor”!!!
In similar news, yesterday the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions sent out an urgent e-mail on behalf of the Khan al-Amar School, a primary school serving a Bedouin community on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The whole community faces demolition, and the school in particular is being targeted:
http://www.icahd.org/?p=7578
The purpose is to make way for the expansion of Ma’ale Adumim. ICAHD is asking people to petition Ehud Barak to stop the proposed demolitions. I don’t think this will achieve anything, but everything has to be tried. People living in Israel might also like to stop by the village to give the residents some encouragement and support. One of the best things we can do when they are facing things like this is not to leave them on their own.
Just another day in facist Israel.
When does the West wake up to the threat that faces us from these fanatics?
US shuts down volunteering organizations that support terror all the time. I haven’t seen a single post about that.
Besides that – Israel has a very good legal system that supervise this kind of stuff. Where is the legal system of the Hammas or the PLO?
Mr. Silverstein – You don’t let the facts get in your way. Good for you!
Oron, it’s true that the legal system “supervises” this kind of stuff, but it will be the level of determining that the headmaster is a “known” Hamas member, or that the school is run by an NGO that is associated or funded by Hamas, and thence automatically illegal. The court will only look to see if the source connecting it to Hamas is reliable (and then affirm the order), it will never discuss the merit of a political decision to ban anything associated with Hamas irrespective of what the NGO or charity actually does.
Israel has painted itself into a corner of absurdities that bring the real anti terrorist actions into disrepute. Does anyone really think there is danger from a kindergarden run by Hamas? And isn’t it obvious that these children will probably learn clandestinely in private houses where they will be told over and over that the nasty Israelis closed down their kindergarden. They’ll raelly grow up loving us now!
I have no doubt that Hamas is a murderous and virulently anti zionist and anti Jewish organisation with some of the worst of Israel’s enemies leading it’s ranks. But they also run, illegally, charitable organisations whose sole purpose is to help impoverished families and giving religious Islamic education in mosques and schools.
Gone are the days when conflict was all black and white and all “baddies” were completely evil like a James Bond film anti-hero. Fighting Hamas and destroying terror should not include decimating the social structure and the social welfare of the Palestinians who have no alternative to enable maintaining a daily life schedule.
If you don’t want Hamas to run the kindergarden, then supply an alternative option for them!
Many anti-zionists also think like you, Oron, from the opposite direction – everything Israel does is racist, aparthied and other complimentary epithets. They also ruin their own case by putting all the bad on the (one) Israeli side and come out looking stupid and inhuman.
One should condemn what’s wrong on both sides when wrong – and closing a kindergarden can never be right.
When slavery was legal in the U.S. one of the ways Black people were controlled was by denying them a right to education. Israel is more subtle in the ways it tries to achieve the same results. A few years ago I was helping with the olive harvest in Tekoa, an area with several illegal Jewish settlements. We visited an elementary school which had been shut down by the IDF because it was claimed a ten year old boy had thrown a stone at a tank (500 meters away) and the school was closed as a punishment. Though the weather was unbearably hot, these kids and their teachers sat on the ground in the outside yard of another school, so determined were they to continue their studies.
Very insightful! It was actually illegal to teach a slave to read and write, a fact which suggests the hypocrisy at the heart of the racist theory justifying slavery. I think some this same business can be undercovered in the current action as well. Historical analogies are useful and it is worth looking for some this same hypocrisy in the current closure of a kindergarten!
Do you realise that Shin Bet, the IDF and the Police prevented some terrible attacks last month ?
I’m sure they are more aware of the security situation than anyone else.
Adam, terrible things happen when people put such blind faith in a state and its military. The closure of kindergartens is not a new thing. During the First Intifada hundreds of educational institutions across the West Bank and Gaza were closed by the military, from pre-schools to universities. You could be arrested if you were caught in the street with books in your bag. Today, checkpoints stop children from getting to school (it can take up to six hours to cross Qalandia – there is a team of peace workers devoted to helping schoolchildren make that daily journey) and closure/demolition are real possibilities for many schools. In Nabi Samuel the students in the village’s one-room school aren’t even allowed a bathroom. The IDF keeps demolishing the toilet. It’s a little hut attached to the side of the school. All this and more is done in the name of security. Always security. Are you going to look at this and say, yes, they must have a good reason, there has to be a worthwhile explanation why little children can’t go to the toilet in dignity, it’s all OK? How about the Salesian special needs centre in Beit Jala, which is about to be destroyed when the separation barrier is built across its land? Students with profound learning disabilities will be without the specialist provision they need, and that’s ‘security’ too. What harm have they ever posed to you or to anybody? The same could well be asked about the kindergarteners in Richard’s post.
Forgive me if I am skeptical of this latest fear-mongering move by an increasingly desperate Israel. Personally I don’t believe a word of it.
Just another day in the life of Ivan…..I mean Ibrahim Denisovich. Even children are inmates of the Zionist gulag.
Oh, and I’m not sure if you’ve heard the latest: JStreet has decided to OPPOSE the Palestinian bid for Statehood. Not that it comes as any surprise to me. I’ve had them pegged since day one.
JStreet, now that’s you call HYPOCRISY with a capital “H”!
Omar Barghouti told me when J-Street first appeared on the scene that he saw the new group as nothing more than AIPAC LITE. I’m not even sure it’s LITE. Looks more like a pretty transparent scheme to dress up the original AIPAC in hopes of making it more appealing to the younger crowd.
Just finished reading in Haaretz about J Street’s approval of the U.S. government’s plan to veto. I found the following passage amusing: “In the recent days, many left-wing Jewish organizations in the United States were cautious about endorsing the Palestinian bid at the United Nations, and J Street ultimately decided to reject the move.” LEFT-WING? Hah!
Let me tell you something about hypocrisy:
Hamas forcefully taking Gaza and killed large number of PLO activists and enforce radical Islamic rules on the people of Gaza.
Then Hamas blames the Israelis for being the evil one.
In 2008, when I watched the border between Gaza and Israel, the Hamas used to send kids to the fence trying to check how alert we are.
When we searched for weapons and tunnels in the villages near the border, I was ordered to avoid hurting the people of Gaza.
I was amazed to see kids playing around us WHILE the Hamas was shooting mortars (very inaccurate weapon) into the village trying to kill someone (hopefully us). The Hamas don’t care about its people. It felt to me like we care about them more than the Hamas.
This is the truth. You can turn it any way you want and come with different arguments but unfortunately, the people of Gaza are the victims of the conflict and mainly the victims of the Hamas.
Let me remind you there was no siege on Gaza when Israel withdraw in 2005.
But don’t let the facts get in your way.
And let me tell YOU something: your comment is blatant Zionist hasbara propaganda.
“It felt to me like we care about them more than the Hamas.”
Oh really? And then you showed Gazan children your “concern” and “caring” by dropping phosphorous on them.
You know what you can do with your “caring”? Stick it where the sun don’t shine!
Oron…..your statement is stunning….
that as a soldier posted at the cage gate in 2008…y’all were so careful to not hurt the people of Gaza.!?
How refreshing that sounds.. but evidently others at higher headquarters thought differently… enough to bomb the heck out of Gaza and massacre 1400+ of those “cared for” people.
So Cast Lead which was planned months ahead of time, to Dahiya-ize Gaza once again was not part of that “we really care, Gaza” message that you delivered there at the border?
Have I misunderstood you?
I can only talk about my own experience. and YES – through out all my army service, we were ***VERY*** careful not to hurt innocent citizens.
I know it’s shocking to hear something so different than the regular brainwash you hear on the media, but I can guarantee you almost no Israeli soldiers intentionally hurt innocent citizens. There were few incidents and and these soldiers were sent to prison for a long long time.
Now let’s talk about Hamas shooting rockets at Israeli cities. How can you justify that??? Please don’t even try to…
To borrow a line from Israel’s playbook, how about “self-defense?”
Oron, I am waiting for Israel to apologize for attacking and killing Palestinian civilians following the attack in southern Israel. There has been no evidence Palestinians or anyone from Gaza was involved in attacking the Israeli military bus in Eilat, so surely you must have a problem with Israel’s pre-emptive attack on innocents. Children were killed, so I guess your IDF friends forgot they were supposed to be careful not to hurt innocent civilians.
I suppose the judges in those cases issued those famous gag orders on the sentences, that’s why nobody ever heard of Israeli soldiers being sent to prison “for a long long time” for hurting innocent Palestinian citizens (civilians, you mean?).
OFF TOPIC. Follow the comment rules, read the post & respond only to the contents of that post.
God, we’ve been over this at least 1,000 times. There was a putsch supported by the U.S. in which Fatah planned to decimate Hamas & take over both the W Bank & Gaza. Hamas pre-empted it. There was violence on both sides & I even have a video here in which Abbas tells his military commander to: “Destroy them” Qaddafi-style.
You know about as much about Hamas as I know about rocket science. This is just plain nonsense and racist besides.
There also were no negotiations by Israel that accompanied the withdrawal, hence no end to the Occupation, which is what will end the hostilities against Israel.
Mr. Silverstein,
Thanks for commenting my post.
I gave three simple examples for hypocrisy. You know things about the Hamas in theory or from what Hamas PR is telling you. I know things in practice from the combat zone. Huge difference.
Today the Hamas put a heavy shoot gun on one of the hills by the border. Then start shooting at a village on the other side. Luckily no one was hurt.
Can you please publish a post about this attack? In your post, can you please condemn it?
Dear Mary Thompson, Can you go on a ship to Gaza condemning ongoing attacks on innocent Israeli citizens?
I appreciate your dedication representing the Palestinians. I support that! But the story is far more complicated than the one sided way you present it.
Your job is not to tell me what to write about. That’s my job. Your job is to comment on what I DO write about. Understand that role please. When I need your editorial advice I’ll call for it. Till I do, read & comment on topic. Yr comment is off topic & violates the comment rules.