In a move that calls to mind Ronald Reagan’s famous speech that marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, anti-Occupation activists toppled a section of the Separation Wall separating the Palestinian villages of Nilin and Bilin from their farmland to the west. It was a bold and dramatic move that was met by the typical IDF response, hosing a foul spray smelling of feces and corpses upon the demonstrators.
The IDF would do well to remember this passage from Regan’s speech which could just as easily apply to Israel’s Wall:
As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner, ‘This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.’ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”
The U.S. president perhaps did not realize how prescient his words would be and how soon realized. In a similar way, those Palestinians who toppled a section of the Separation Wall were doing so on faith that eventually the entire thing would topple in a frenzy of Palestinian jubilation.
Scores of East Germans gave their lives trying to flee to freedom. For the Palestinians, it is slightly different since the Wall separates them from what is rightly theirs, i.e. their own land. But they are no less willing to die for their own freedom and the IDF thugs have obliged with several cold blooded murders and maimings. Perhaps the IDF should remember what happened to those East German guards who shot their fleeing fellow citizens. They eventually faced justice just as I hope IDF officers will who gave the order to fire on unarmed Palestinian villagers and international peace activists.
Mr. Netanyahu, tear down this wall. Otherwise, just as in East Berlin in 1992, the Palestinians will begin by tearing it down for you.
Ethan Bronner gets it wrong on Hamas (Center for Study of Ethics, Utah Valley University)
Not an article Ethan Bronner writes goes by without the obligatory claim that Hamas is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Today’s story about the tension in Gaza between Islamizers and moderates within the Islamist movement is true to form:
It [Hamas] rejects Israel’s right to exist and remains doctrinally committed to its destruction. However, its leaders have said several times that if Israel were to leave all land taken in the 1967 war, Hamas could accept a Palestinian state limited to the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem…
If Hamas would accept a Palestinian state consisting of the current Occupied Territories, then ipso facto it does not reject Israel’s existence nor can it be committed to its destruction. In fact, many Israeli political, military and intelligence analysts concede that Hamas’ acceptance of a hudna is a tacit acceptance of Israel’s existence.
In fact, no senior leader of Hamas for several years has put forward the incrementalist notion that it may accept a hudna as a creeping process leading to Israel’s destruction and absorption into Palestine. Are there Palestinians who wish this outcome? Certainly, just as there are many Israeli Jews who wish Israeli Palestinian Arabs could be expelled from Israel. But the notion that Israel’s Arab citizens will be transferred out of the country is as far-fetched as the notion that Hamas will or can cause Israel’s destruction.
It’s long past time for Bronner to get with the program and acknowledge the myriad interviews of senior Hamas officials like Khaled Meshaal and others who have documented the moderating of the movement’s positions on these matters. Let’s put it plain and simple for him: Hamas currently does not reject Israel’s right to exist nor is it committed to its destruction (and for those of you out there who are anti-Palestinian partisans clamoring to bring up the Hamas charter, please point me to any evidence that any Hamas leader pays any attention whatsoever to it). The fact that Bronner stays stuck in the past is yet another proof that his reporting is neither careful nor balanced.
Yet another proof of this is a recent profile he wrote about the weekly Bilin demonstrations at the Separation Wall. He interviewed IDF officers and peace activists about their respective views of both the Wall and the demonstrations. But curiously, he noted the IDF claim that 170 soldiers had been wounded over time there (part of the claim that the demonstrators are not non-violent peace activists, but violent hoodlums). But Bronner somehow forgot to mention the Palestinian casualties at the Wall, which include one murdered Palestinian and one American left in a vegetative state by IDF fire in the past four months alone. Altogether, 19 Palestinians have been killed during demonstrations against the Wall. Why wasn’t this fact even whispered in Bronner’s article? Because he wanted his readers to focus on the flesh wounds suffered by Israeli soldiers when a few odd rocks are thrown their way by young Palestinians who violate the discipline invoked during these protests? Why did Ethan Bronner forget Palestinian suffering?
Susan Sarandon, Denise Rich & Isabella Rosselini at Leviev opening (Scott Wintrow/Getty Images)
I hope that title grabbed your attention. They shouldn’t have anything in common, right? The first a progressive, the second a troglodyte. Well, unfortunately they do. They both like diamonds. Nothing wrong with that you might say. Unless the diamonds come from African conflict zones and unless their proceeds are used to build West Bank settlements on confiscated Palestinian land. All of which is true.
Susan Sarandon has a taste for diamonds and the high life and so attended the glittering opening of Lev Leviev’s new Madison Avenue jewelry emporium. She was joined in the crowd by other celebrities like Isabella Rosselini, Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Denise Rich (maybe she was there to arrange a “pardon” for Leviev as she did for her ex, Marc Rich). Problem was that to enter the store Sarandon had to cross a picket line established by Adala NY, a group of human rights adherents who oppose the Israeli Occupation. Despite the cause, Sarandon crossed. Not only that. Jewish Voice for Peace wrote a subsequent letter asking her to voice her opposition to Leviev’s pro-settlement activities. The response–silence. Well, not exactly. The NY Post’s Page Six quotes a representative saying that Sarandon has no “tie” to Leviev and thus nothing to renounce. Which is basically a casuistic non-answer.
Roman Abramovich & Lev Leviev, Tel Aviv (Nir Keidar/Getty Images)
Lev Leviev grew up in Tashkent as a member of the Bukharan community. He came to Israel as a teenager and eventually joined the Israeli diamond industry producing polished diamonds. He has become wealthy in his chosen profession by trafficking in Angolan diamonds. Walter Ruby, writing in Jewish Week, notes that Forbes lists him as the 210th richest person in the world worth $4.1 billion (Zev Chafets says that Leviev’s associates estimate his real worth as closer to $8 billion). He also funds the Chabad-dominated Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia.
Also disturbing is Leviev’s participation in the Land Redemption Fund, which purchases land under false pretenses from Palestinian owners in order to transfer them to settlement ownership. Leviev’s development company is also building several settlements including a $230 million project on land confiscated from the Palestinian village of Bilin, which is in the international news because of weekly protests there against the Apartheid Wall. Leviev and the LRF use Palestinian stooges to approach Palestinian farmers, many of whom can no longer farm their land anyway due either to the Wall or settler intimidation, offering to pay many times what the land is worth. As far as the farmers know the land is being purchased by a fellow Palestinian. Instead, the land reverts to LRF and then becomes land that Leviev can build settlements on, further increasing his empire after selling the homes to settlers.
The residents of Bilin and Jayyous recently wrote to Sarandon asking her to take up their cause against settlements encroaching on their land.
I should amend my post title by acknowledging that Lev Leviev is not a member of the Russian mob. He’s way beyond that. His money has bought him respectability that every shady character craves, even as he continues pillaging poor Palestinian farmers as he makes hundreds of millions of dollars and perverts the chances for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Recently, Leviev decided to expand his diamond and real estate business to New York, where he owns property worth well over $1 billion including the Plaza Hotel and New York Times building ($525 million). The store opening and accompanying protest was covered by The Forward and JTA, which indicates a rapidly changing political climate in the American Jewish community. Until recently, such a story would’ve been met with skepticism or derision by much of the Jewish community and press. It also indicates that Adalah NY had created dramatic protest imagery that would appeal to New York’s mass media.
As the photo above indicates, Leviev is linked with former Russian mobster and now oligarch, Roman Abramovich in the diamond business. Abramovich, in attempting to smooth his path into international business and social circles also purchased the Chelsea football club. Leviev, not to be outdone, also owns an Israeli football club. According to Haaretz, Leviev and Abramovich are among the two largest donors to Elad, whose goal is the “Judaize” East Jerusalem by buying up Arab property and transferring it to Jewish ownership. Elad refused to disclose its donor list publicly and is in danger of being dissolved by the government.
Surprisingly, the NY Post’s Page Six has kept the story alive with periodic updates–probably because the right-wing paper seeks to embarrass the progressive Sarandon. What is a shame is that with a short note to the public Sarandon could reaffirm her commitment to support ending the Occupation and tell the world she knew nothing about Leviev’s right-wing agenda and had no intention of shopping in his store again. Instead, she’s trying to fudge the issue.
As for Dershowitz, ever the entertaining clown, Dersh must’ve seen the brouhaha and decided he needed to get a slice of Sarandon’s PR. So he went down to the Leviev showroom and came out swinging his shopping bag as if it contained Norman Finkelstein’s head. All of which is quite interesting when you consider that during his Democracy Now debate with the latter he said that he opposed Israeli settlements. How quickly they forget. After watching Dershowitz’s pathetic primping performance in this video you realize that he’s nothing more than an ambulance chaser for political notoriety, a Jewish Ann Coulter.
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Susan Sarandon, Denise Rich & Isabella Rosselini at Leviev opening (Scott Wintrow/Getty Images)
Roman Abramovich & Lev Leviev, Tel Aviv (Nir Keidar/Getty Images)
