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Posts Tagged ‘gideon-levy’

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IDF: Stealing from the Mouths of Orphans

Friday, March 14th, 2008

The readers of this blog who disagree with me and who seem to think that I relish criticizing Israel are wrong. I don’t relish bringing to your attention heart-rending stories like this one written by Gideon Levy. I wish I could bring you stories about a military attempting to use its power temperately, defensively, and wisely. Instead, you’ll read here tonight about an Israeli military which sees a threat in Palestinian charity and which steals food literally from the mouths of orphans. A military force which loots not from private homes or public offices, which would be bad enough, but from charities. Do you think I enjoy this? No. It breaks my heart as it may yours:

The ovens have been brought downstairs, into hiding. The two bagel and cake bakeries have already been closed by army order. The Israel Defense Forces confiscated the ovens in one of them, but the employees in the other bakery managed to rescue and hide theirs. The popular clothing shop Pretty Woman, in the heart of the bustling mall in Hebron, and its neighbor, Mama Care, the high-end shop for baby clothes, are about to close. The same is true of the new and spacious supermarket, the modern physical-therapy institute, the beauty salon, the barbershop and the library: Everything will be closed by order of the GOC Central Command. Local food and clothing warehouses were also emptied out by the IDF last week, with an inventory worth about NIS 750,000, designated for the impressive orphanages of the Islamic Charity Movement. The goods were loaded onto trucks and confiscated.

In the well-kept orphanage we visited this week, the hundreds of children were eating only majadera (a rice-and-lentil dish) and yogurt for lunch: There is no meat, no chicken, no fish; everything has been taken away. The gates of the movement’s new school, a handsome stone building designed for 1,200 pupils, have also been welded shut by the IDF.

The army has declared war on the Islamic Charity Movement in Hebron, in the context of the war against Hamas, the war against terror. After emptying the offices of the city’s money changers of cash reserves several weeks ago, the next strategic target is the private bakeries and shops in the city, whose owners happen to lease their places of business from the owner of the buildings: the Islamic Charity Movement.

How pathetic is an occupation army that empties out warehouses of food and clothing earmarked for orphans; how absurd is GOC Central Command Major General Gadi Shamni, who signs closure orders for beauty salons and clothing shops; how outrageous is the confiscation of industrial refrigerators in which food for children is kept; how cruel is a military regime that closes libraries used by young people; how ridiculous are the excuses that closing bakeries contributes to the war against terror; how foolish is the battle against dairies whose products are earmarked for these children; and how difficult is the situation of the Israeli occupation in the territories if it must resort to such contemptible activities in order to establish its status.

Ah, you’ll say–it’s because the Movement is run by Hamas. Right? Wrong:

The Islamic Charity Movement in Hebron was established in 1962, long before the birth of Hamas, shortly before the beginning of the Israeli occupation. Since then the organization has established a ramified network of educational and welfare institutions, and has acquired a great deal of real estate all over the city, with the declared aim of providing assistance to the needy – mainly to local orphans and the children of the poor. The legal adviser of the movement, attorney Abd al-Karim Farah, young and energetic in an elegant suit and a well-kempt beard, who does not hesitate to shake women’s hands and is now studying Hebrew at a local ulpan, says that in the early days of the occupation the Military Administration helped and encouraged the activity of the charitable movement. He himself is a product of its institutions.

Today the Islamic Charity Movement cares for 7,000 orphans and children in distress from Hebron and surrounding villages. There are 350 youngsters at its boarding schools and 1,200 pupils attending its three city schools; another six are in outlying towns. The children have lost one or both parents, or come from severely distressed homes. Only a small percentage are children of the fallen. The movement’s institutions employ 550 people, assisted by hundreds of volunteers. Their monthly budget is 400,000 Jordanian dinars, over NIS 2 million. Attorney Farah says everything is supervised by accountants and the Palestinian Authority’s welfare and education ministries. Also, the curricula in the movement’s educational institutions are identical to those of the PA, according to Farah, who emphasizes that “everything is legal.”

Most of its budget comes from donations from abroad – from Arab countries, and European and American agencies – but the charitable organization also has quite a number of independent sources of income: from buildings and modern commercial centers all over Hebron that it owns and leases to private tenants and businessmen, two bakeries, a sewing workshop and a dairy, whose products are used by the children in the institutions and are also for sale in the open market. The movement has a board of directors that is elected biannually and was headed by Dr. Adnan Maswadi, an ear, nose and throat specialist, who was recently released from detention in Israel and was forced to resign. About 30 additional employees are presently under arrest for belonging to the organization.

“I would like to emphasize,” says Farah, “that our movement has no official connection with Hamas. Perhaps some of our workers belong to Hamas, just as in other institutions such as the municipalities, but there is no formal connection. Nor are there transfers of money to Hamas, as Israel claims. Our financial reports are open and transparent. We are in no way the infrastructure of Hamas.“

The IDF has declared war on orphans. And you wonder why the IDF couldn’t defeat Hezbollah during the last war. It’s too busy carting away computers from offices like this one to learn to fulfill its mission to actually defend the homeland. How it grieves me as a Zionist to read about such shameful behavior. But the next time Israel is forced to fight a war against Lebanon or Gaza or Iran and loses as it did in 2006 think back to this incident and you’ll begin to understand why.

For those who want to read it Levy has provided the IDF’s justification for this lunacy:

The IDF spokesman’s response: “During recent weeks forces of the IDF, the Shin Bet security services and the Civil Administration have been operating in order to strike at the institutions of the Islamic Charity Movement, which belongs to the Hamas terror organization and works to increase support for the organization, to disseminate its ideas, to find and enlist activists, and to transfer money for terrorist activity.

“Hamas activity is carried out under the civilian cover of support for the population and charity, but in fact the goal of the movement is to strengthen the power and control of the terror organization Hamas, as part of the expansion of terrorist activity against the State of Israel and its attempt to increase power in Judea and Samaria.

“In the context of the activities and protests of the Islamic Charity Movement in Hebron, the movement has transferred money to terror activists and their families, educated young people in the spirit of jihad, supported the families of shaheeds [martyrs] and prisoners, and worked to disseminate Hamas principles among the Palestinian population. By these acts the Hamas terror organization has exploited the Palestinian population and its weaker elements, in order to harness them to the terror network.

“In the context of the activity, the IDF operated against a number of economic assets of the Islamic Charity Movement in Hebron, and ordered their closure and the confiscation of some of their property. These assets constituted a source of income for the Hamas terror organization, which earned substantial sums of money from them for terrorist activity. The IDF will continue to adopt all the means at its disposal against the terror organizations and those who help them, and against Hamas in particular, in order to provide security to the inhabitants of the State of Israel.”

There you have it. Not a single shred of evidence. Show us a document or anything that authenticates the claim. Besides, how likely is it that the PA would allow a Hamas charity to operate unhindered in the heart of the West Bank given the enmity that exists between Fatah and Hamas?

The Islamic Charity Movement protests that its books are open and subject to scrutiny of the Palestinian Authority and prime minister Salaam Fayyad, well-known for his probity and honesty. It says it has nothing to do with Hamas and certainly doesn’t provide any funding for it. As the cheating husband said to his wife when caught in flagrante delecto: “Who are you gonna believe–me or your lying eyes?” The IDF has been caught red-handed and expects us to believe its unsupported charges.

If you’re the Israeli army and you intend to punish orphans about the only thing you can do to justify it that sounds half-way plausible is to accuse the charity of supporting terrorists. And some credulous Israelis and their supporters will believe it. The rest of us believe our “lyin’ eyes.”

Thanks to Rupa Shah for alerting me to this article.

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Posted in Children & Family, Mideast Peace | No Comments »

Gideon Levy: Olmert Needs New Governing Coalition for Peace

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

You couldn’t find any greater “political dissident” than Gideon Levy in Israeli journalism. And even he has just come out in a Haaretz column saying that Ehud Olmert sincerely wants peace with the Palestinians:

After listening to many of his statements, some of them very impressive, one comes to recognize that Ehud Olmert perhaps truly desires peace with the Palestinians. The fact that he has not zigzagged, not even once, that he only reiterates the same things, speaking like Uri Avnery (even if 40 years late), that he does not backtrack or stutter – only reinforces this feeling. It is permissible, therefore, to succumb to the temptation and believe that the man who told Haaretz on November 28, “two states, or Israel is finished,” indeed has undergone a profound change.

It’s quite an achievement for Olmert to persuade a crusty old die hard “peacenik” like Levy that he is the genuine article. But the point that Levy makes is that it’s not enough to be sincere. You have to make difficult decisions that make enemies in order to achieve such a goal. And that’s Olmert’s problem. He wants victory but without the heavy lifting.

Levy proposes a radical solution. Fire the right-wingers in his current coalition and replace them with left-wingers:

Olmert’s first test…is to dismantle the coalition that is blocking him. He has a suitable alternative: Meretz instead of Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu, for a total of 60 Knesset seats. Another historic effort to bring the Arab factions into the government would create a stable coalition of 70 seats. A coalition that allows you to make peace.

This step is not devoid of risks…It is doubtful whether the Arabs would join. Perhaps they only would provide support from the outside. This coalition would also take a barrage of sharp public criticism. But someone who speaks in terms of “Israel is finished” cannot allow himself – or us – the luxury of preserving his cozy, safe and paralyzing coalition while Israel continues to slide toward the denouement he himself has envisioned. How can Olmert himself rationalize his inaction in light of such a terrifying vision? He failed to save the state because of Lieberman? He did nothing because of Yishai?

Of course, this very path was suggested to him by Haaretz columnists BEFORE he formed his coalition. The fact that he chose to ignore the advice and pursue a center-right coalition strategy speaks volumes about his political inclinations. So I’m not sure why Olmert would change his spots at this late in the political game.

But you just never know. Personally, I think Levy’s idea holds great merit:

With such a coalition and with the determination Olmert expressed in his speeches, an assault could be mounted toward the political goal. Thousands of prisoners could be freed, changing at once the atmosphere in the relations with the Palestinians. A voluntary evacuation-compensation bill could be passed, outposts could be dismantled, funding for the settlements could be halted and the long journey of extracting the most dangerous abscess of all from the territories could begin. The siege on Gaza could be lifted, and Hamas could be called upon to join the process, which would only benefit the miserable residents of the Strip…

A new government in Israel, whose establishment would underline the seriousness of its intentions to generate a real change in direction, would herald a historic turning point. Olmert would take a risk upon himself in forming it, but what does he have to lose? What is the alternative? To survive another year, to make lofty speeches, to flatter Bush, to sit idly and go down in history as a footnote between one calamity and another? Now is the time and this is the step: a peace government for Israel.

In addition, Olmert could open negotiations with Syria and even Hamas if he chooses.

What can he do now? He can take a dump in the crapper. That’s about all his current coalition partners allow him to do before they start braying about him betraying the Jewish people with his compromises for peace.

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Posted in Mideast Peace | 4 Comments »

Children of 5767

Sunday, September 30th, 2007
burma gaza cartoonMan reading newspaper says: “Those poor Burmese monks!” while the TV set shows “Gaza.” (cartoon: Daniella London-Dekel/Haaretz)

On Rosh Hashana, Jews do cheshbon nefesh, a spiritual accounting of their deeds during the previous year. The purpose of course is to do t’shuva and “return” from our misdeeds and set out on a new path. Gideon Levy has done his own literal accounting of the Palestinian child dead for the past year in his most recent Haaretz article, Twilight Zone–the Children of 5767. This is the kind of reckoning we all wish to avoid. But I hope you will not avoid Levy’s searing article. Those who do, are like the Israeli fretting in his breakfast nook over the bloodied Burmese monks while soldiers representing him enforce a festering Occupation on their Palestinian neighbors:

It was a pretty quiet year, relatively speaking. Only 457 Palestinians and 10 Israelis were killed, according to the B’Tselem human rights organization, including the victims of Qassam rockets. Fewer casualties than in many previous years. However, it was still a terrible year: 92 Palestinian children were killed (fortunately, not a single Israeli child was killed by Palestinians, despite the Qassams). One-fifth of the Palestinians killed were children and teens – a disproportionate, almost unprecedented number. The Jewish year of 5767. Almost 100 children, who were alive and playing last New Year, didn’t survive to see this one.

…We set out each week in the footsteps of the fighters, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, trying to document the deeds of Israel Defense Forces soldiers, Border Police officers, Shin Bet security service investigators and Civil Administration personnel – the mighty occupation army that leaves behind in its wake horrific killing and destruction, this year as every year, for four decades.

And this was the year of the children that were killed. We didn’t get to all of their homes, only to some; homes of bereavement where parents weep bitterly over their children, who were climbing a fig tree in the yard, or sitting on a bench in the street, or preparing for an exam, or on their way home from school, or sleeping peacefully in the false security of their homes.

A few of them also threw a rock at an armored vehicle or touched a forbidden fence. All came under live fire, some of which was deliberately aimed at them, cutting them down in their youth. From Mohammed (al-Zakh) to Mahmoud (al-Qarinawi), from the boy who was buried twice in Gaza to the boy who was buried in Israel. These are the stories of the children of 5767.

The first of them was buried twice. Abdullah al-Zakh identified half of the body of his son Mahmoud, in the morgue refrigerator of Shifa Hospital in Gaza, by the boy’s belt and the socks on his feet. This was shortly before last Rosh Hashanah. The next day, when the Israel Defense Forces “successfully” completed Operation Locked Kindergarten, as it was called, leaving behind 22 dead and a razed neighborhood, and left Sajiyeh in Gaza, the bereaved father found the remaining parts of the body and brought them for a belated burial.

…The day after Rosh Hashanah we traveled to Rafah. Dam Hamad, 14, had been killed in her sleep, in her mother’s arms, by an Israeli rocket strike that sent a concrete pillar crashing down on her head. She was the only daughter of her paralyzed mother, her whole world. In the family’s impoverished home in the Brazil neighborhood, at the edge of Rafah, we met the mother who lay in a heap in bed; everything she had in the world was gone. Outside, I remarked to the reporter from French television who accompanied me that this was one of those moments when I felt ashamed to be an Israeli. The next day he called and said: “They didn’t broadcast what you said, for fear of the Jewish viewers in France.”

Soon afterward we went back to Jerusalem to visit Maria Aman, the amazing little girl from Gaza, who lost nearly everyone in her life to a missile strike gone awry that wiped out her innocent family, including her mother, while riding in their car. Her devoted father Hamdi remains by her side. For a year and a half, she has been cared for at the wonderful Alyn Hospital, where she has learned to feed a parrot with her mouth and to operate her wheelchair using her chin. All the rest of her limbs are paralyzed. She is connected day and night to a respirator. Still, she is a cheerful and neatly groomed child whose father fears the day they might be sent back to Gaza.

For now, they remain in Israel. Many Israelis have devoted themselves to Maria and come to visit her regularly. A few weeks ago, broadcast journalist Leah Lior took her in her car to see the sea in Tel Aviv. It was a Saturday night, and the area was crowded with people out for a good time, but the girl in the wheelchair attracted attention. Some people recognized her and stopped to say hello and wish her well. Who knows? Maybe the pilot who fired the missile at her car happened to be passing by, too.

…And what did 16-year-old Taha al-Jawi do to get himself killed? The IDF claimed that he tried to sabotage the barbed-wire fence surrounding the abandoned Atarot airport; his friends said he was just playing soccer and had gone to chase after the ball. Whatever the circumstances, the response from the soldiers was quick and decisive: a bullet in the leg that caused him to bleed to death, lying in a muddy ditch by the side of the road. Not a word of regret, not a word of condemnation from the IDF spokesman, when we asked for a comment. Live fire directed at unarmed children who weren’t endangering anyone, with no prior warning.

…In Nablus, we documented the use of children as human shields – the use of the so-called “neighbor procedure” – involving an 11-year-old girl, a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy. So what if the High Court of Justice has outlawed it? We also recorded the story of the death of baby Khaled, whose parents, Sana and Daoud Fakih, tried to rush him to the hospital in the middle of the night, a time when Palestinian babies apparently mustn’t get sick: The baby died at the checkpoint.

…Bushra Bargis hadn’t even left her home. In late April she was studying for a big test, notebooks in hand, pacing around her room in the Jenin refugee camp in the early evening, when a sniper shot her in the forehead from quite far away. Her bloodstained notebooks bore witness to her final moments.

And what about the unborn babies? They weren’t safe either. A bullet in the back of Maha Qatuni, a woman who was seven months pregnant and got up during the night to protect her children in their home, struck her fetus in the womb, shattering its head. The wounded mother lay in the Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus, hooked up to numerous tubes. She was going to name the baby Daoud. Does killing a fetus count as murder? And how “old” was the deceased? He was certainly the youngest of the many children Israel killed in the past year.

Happy New Year.

Indeed. Thanks to Sol Salbe for sharing the cartoon.

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Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace | 16 Comments »

Gideon Levy Attacks Israeli Government Censorship Over Syria Attack

Monday, September 17th, 2007

Gideon Levy adds his voice to the Israeli media dissenters who question Israel’s performance in the aftermath of its attack against Syria last week. As I wrote yesterday, his, Yigal Laviv and Larry Derfner’s are still small voices in the sea of self-congratulation that constitutes Israel’s mainstream media. But it’s often that still small voice of dissent that turns out to be right, witness what happened here in the U.S. regarding Iraqi WMD.

Here is what one of Israel’s finest columnists has to say:

We can rely on friends like the United States: Our faithful ally has once again come to our assistance. Were it not for the American media, we would know nothing whatsoever about that mysterious night. Only because of the United States is the fog now beginning to lift. It is such a sign of weakness that 10 days after the action that was – or was not – taken by the Israel Air Force in Syria, the Israelis were fated to grope around in the dark or to rely on the American media, as if there were no local media here.

The combination of sweeping censorship and media representatives that do not fight enough on behalf of the freedom of information is dangerous. Israel attacks, or does not attack, bombs or does not bomb – who knows? And nothing is said to the people, everything is secret, without any public supervision or accountability. The public is expected to keep quiet and to blindly support its government and army, no matter what. This is an intolerable situation at all events, but the special circumstances of the incident in Syria make the blackout on it especially dangerous.

For months now, the security establishment has been flooding us with incessant warnings about an impending confrontation with Syria. The source of these warnings and the degree to which they can be trusted has never been clarified. The average news consumer knows merely that Syria has proposed peace and has cautioned against starting a war. He also knows that Israel did not relate favorably to the peace proposal and did not even try to challenge it or to examine how serious it was. The situation is explosive, the defense establishment has told us time and again.

And then suddenly one night – boom! Suspicious cargo from North Korea, according to the report in The Washington Post; North Korean know-how for enriching uranium, according to Fox News; an aerial-photography mission, according to The New York Times; or weapons systems and “a big hole in the desert,” according to CNN.

It’s any man’s guess what happened and, mainly, any man’s guess whether such an action, if taken, was at all justified. Did we once again go off on a dangerous and pointless military adventure, as some say – or perhaps it was indeed a necessary and unequaled action? Against the backdrop of the defense establishment’s own warnings about the explosive nature of the situation, such acts can have fateful significance. And if, heaven forbid, a war does break out now with Syria, what will they say? That the situation was already explosive and that that action did nothing to change it? Will we go to war when we do not even know what was, or was not, done in the skies of Syria, in our names?

There are serious doubts here. At the helm of the decision-making process in Israel today stand the prime minister, who has a proven military failure chalked up to him, and the defense minister, who has an innate tendency toward military adventurism. There is no one we can rely on with our eyes closed – certainly not on Ehud Olmert or Ehud Barak. One wants to wipe away the stains of his failure in Lebanon and the other wants to prove he is better than his predecessor. To this must be added a battered army, which is likewise trying to get people to forget its failure. And what about us? We are expected to support them and their actions with our eyes shut…

The Israeli media have unconditionally given themselves up to the smoke screen. It is not the media’s job to weigh the considerations of war; their job is to report. When they do not even try to fight for this, they are not doing their job properly. As was to be expected, the smoke screen is gradually dissipating meanwhile, but not thanks to the Israeli media. Only after everything is clarified will we know whether it was correct to jeopardize ourselves, in a situation that was so explosive, or whether we perhaps got involved in yet another adventure…

I have a number of commenters here who like to trumpet Israeli democracy as a sterling example of how Israel stands out from its neighbors. I too value Israeli democracy such as it is. But I wonder how Israeli democrats can stomach not only the government’s silence, but the ironclad censorship imposed on a supposedly free Israeli media. Any supporter of Israel should always remember that Israel is unlike all other western democracies in that a military censor vets all military related media information. In situations like this, it makes an Israeli newspaper resemble the old Pravda, where readers looked everywhere for hidden meaning to interpret the nation’s political health.

Any of my readers who are pro-Israel patriots should ask themselves whether in a wartime situation they would prefer to live here with the media coverage we provide (which admittedly can be pretty shabby) or in Israel with the utter silence that their media provides.

On Saturday night, I heard Yossi Beilin speak for the first time here in Seattle under the auspices of Find Common Ground and their local leader Barbara Lahav. He is the Meretz party leader in the Knesset and a former justice minister in Ehud Barak’s last government. There is no question that Beilin is absolutely brilliant and a master tactician with sharp analytical skills. There is no question that he has made a tremendous contribution to the prospects for peace in the region. There is also no question that he has that Israeli arrogance that admits to no weakness and bespeaks self-confidence and certitude.

But one thing turned me off big time that night. He was asked by Jeri Rice, a prominent leader of the local Jewish peace community and major funder of Israeli Peace Forum what he could tell us about the Syria attack. Now, I understand as an MK he’s privy to information that we may not be. But his answer nevertheless deeply disappointed. He said he wasn’t going to condemn the attack and had information that prevented him from doing so. He added that as long as the attack did not cause any humanitarian hardship he had no problem with it.

The upshot of his reply was that he knew something we didn’t which allowed him to feel perfectly comfortable with what the IAF had done. Something about the smugness of this irked me.

And this led me to another problem I have with Beilin. He has only one principle: ending the Occupation. Beyond that he seems to have few principles and is open to negotiating just about anything. I felt his support for the Lebanon war up until the very last minute (he turned against it after three weeks) was disastrous for the Israeli left. But I imagine he made a cold calculation that being right on the war was less important than retaining whatever credibility might be lost with the Israeli Jewish public by doing the right thing and savaging the war as he must’ve known he should have done.

I consider myself a pragmatist as well. But I have my limits. And Yossi Beilin went beyond them during the war. And he went beyond them in his rather curt dismissal of Jeri’s question.

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Haaretz: Middle East Newspaper of Record

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

Thanks to Phil Weiss for noting this terrific profile of Haaretz by Stephen Glain in The Nation. Every Israeli newspaper has its own functional niche in the country’s media marketplace and both Maariv and Yediot each have important columnists. But there really is no paper quite like Haaretz for the breadth of its coverage. It is to Israel, and even the entire Mideast, what the New York Times or The Guardian are to those respective countries. I simply could not write this blog in this format without the resource that Haaretz provides. What other media outlet has two reporters, one of whose beats is the West Bank and the other, Gaza? The latter, Gideon Levy, writes the most wrenching, disturbing and powerful profiles of Palestinian in extremis. He deserves the Israeli or even international journalism equivalent of a Pulitzer for the sheer humanity of his writing.

I read the English language website and not everything there meets the high standard that the paper’s Hebrew language edition does. Translations and grammar are skewed and sometimes even mysteriously truncated (toned down?) possibly for Diaspora consumption. Also, one has the feeling that the military censor (yes, Israel still has such a thing) tamps down debate. For example, Israel’s recent incursion into Syrian and, it appears, Turkish airspace, has been stifled by such censorship. One wishes Haaretz had a bit more of the gumption shown by the NY Times in the face of LBJ’s [correction: "Nixon's" of course] White House during the Pentagon Papers case. But one can’t lay blame for this at the doorsteps of a single newspaper when the issue is systemic and goes to the nature of Israeli democracy (or lack of it).

Glain really nails Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz’s right-wing U.S. correspondent:

Then there is Rosner’s blog, a landfall for hardliners inside Ha’aretz’s liberal archipelago. In the wake of Hamas’s Gaza takeover in June, Rosner suggested (in a piece written with Aluf Benn) that the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be ditched in favor of a Palestinian confederation or autonomous region comprising Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan. Such an alternative, Rosner wrote, “can be viewed as part of the search for a solution, but also as a whip being held over the head of the hesitant [Palestinian Authority President] Abbas.” It was a brazen proposition even within the Washington Beltway, where the goal of Palestinian statehood is embraced across much of the political spectrum.

Rosner, who worked as an editor at Ha’aretz before moving to Washington, acknowledges his minority status at the paper but says he is no outcast. “As an editor,” he says, “I’ve had to justify my decisions to colleagues, but the dialogue was always professional. I don’t agree with most of the paper’s editorials and neither do a lot of readers, but they subscribe anyway because it is so good.”

I have inveighed here about Rosner’s piss poor journalism and narrow-minded approach to Israeli and American Jewish politics. And if Haaretz is “so good” it’s not because of Rosner’s contribution. I’m not just saying this because of his politics because someone can be conservative and yet write well on this subject. But Rosner is not that person. He doesn’t bring anything to the debate. Yes, he makes AIPAC happy and perhaps that’s one of the sole reasons he’s there. But if it is, that’s a dumb reason to keep a columnist. Find someone conservative who has a voice and something important to say.

Here’s yet another example of why I find Rosner obtuse and tone deaf:

“Never trust Ha’aretz as a true reflection of the average Israeli newspaper reader,” says Shmuel Rosner, the paper’s right-of-center chief US correspondent. “For many Israelis, Ha’aretz is like The Nation. People who read it are better educated and more sophisticated than most, but the rest of the country doesn’t know it exists.”

If Haaretz wanted to be the New York Daily News of Israel, a widely read tabloid, it wouldn’t be Haaretz. And why should it try to be that? Because 90% of Americans might not know the New York Times exists does that detract from the role it plays in society? Haaretz holds out a vision not of what Israeli society IS, but what it might be on its best days. And that’s more than enough for me.

In the unlikely event that I could BE a newspaper and some of the this were on my tombstone, I’d die a happy man:

As a newspaper that succeeds with smart reporting and good writing, Ha’aretz is a model worthy of emulation for a troubled news industry worldwide….Unique among national newspapers, Ha’aretz is both public forum and chronicle of a religious and political movement that has, for good or ill, transformed a region and consumed the world. If the paper has a bias, it is less its liberal sensibility than its appeal to the possible–like Yitzhak Rabin’s “calculated risk” for a negotiated peace–over the reflexively negative of our post-9/11 world. By creating a home for opinions and values that are at odds with its own, Ha’aretz radiates security in its identity and convictions. And by supporting dialogue with Israel’s enemies, it projects confidence in the Jewish state’s ability to coexist with its neighbors as just one rational actor among many. At a time when the Zionist movement appears to be content with exchanging one ghetto for another, Ha’aretz insists on an Israel that is of the world as well as in it.

When I was a Hebrew University grad student in 1980, I read the Hebrew edition every day and it was a major language tutor for me. I felt it kept me in touch with the heart of Israeli society, politics and culture. I sometimes fantasize that if I’d made aliya working for Haaretz might’ve been one of the ways I couldn’t earned a living and made a meaningful social contribution.

So let us sing hosannas to a beacon of light and tolerance in Israel: Haaretz.

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Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 2 Comments »

Gideon Levy: ‘IDF an Army That Kills Children’

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

Aussie Dave (isn’t it churlish, Dave not to link to my blog when I’ve linked to yours; and isn’t the ‘anti-Israel’ calumny a bit tiresome by now??) and his allies commenting here are up in arms over my post about the three Palestinian children killed by the IDF. And I’m a VERY BAD Jew for allegedly caring only about Palestinian lives, and not Israeli. Hey, go ahead take your best shot. But then spend a few minutes reading what one of Israel’s best journalists has to say on the same subject. How do you defame Gideon Levy? How do you belittle his commitment to Israel? How do you frame him as a Palestinian dupe?

I don’t usually post all or even large portions of articles. But in this case, I want everyone (especially those who have attacked me) to read this because it’s important:

Again children. Five children killed in Gaza in eight days. The public indifference to their killing – the last three, for example, were accorded only a short item on the margins of page 11 in Yedioth Ahronoth, a sickening matter in itself – cannot blur the fact that the IDF is waging a war against children. A year ago, a fifth of those killed in the “Summer Rain” operation in Gaza were children; during the past two weeks, they comprised a quarter of the 21 killed. If, heaven forbid, children are hurt in Sderot, we will have to remember this before we begin raising hell.

The IDF explains that the Palestinians make a practice of sending children to collect the Qassam launchers. However, in this case, the children killed were not collecting launchers. The first two were killed while collecting carob fruit and the next three – according to the IDF’s own investigation – were playing tag. But even if we accept the IDF’s claim that there is a general trend of sending children to collect launchers (which has not been proven), that should have brought about an immediate halt to firing at launcher collectors.

But the IDF does not care whether its victims are liable to be children. The fact is that it shoots at figures it considers suspicious, with full knowledge – according to its own contention – that they are liable to be children. Therefore, an IDF that fires at launcher collectors is an army that kills children, without any intention of preventing this. This then is not a series of unfortunate mistakes, as it is being portrayed, but rather reflects the army’s contempt for the lives of Palestinian children and its terrifying indifference to their fate.

A society that holds ethical considerations in high regard would at least ask itself: Is it permissible to shoot at anyone who is approaching the launchers, even if we know that some of these people may be small children, lacking in judgment, and thus not punishable? Or are we lifting all restraints on our war operations? Even if we accept the IDF’s claims that its sophisticated vision devices do not enable them to distinguish between a 10-year-old boy and an adult, the IDF cannot evade its responsibility for this criminal action. Even if we assumed a completely distorted assumption that anyone who goes near the launchers is subject to death, the fact that children are involved should have changed the rules. Add to this the fact that the firing at launcher collectors has halted the Qassams, or even reduce their number, and you arrive at another chilling conclusion: The IDF shoots at children to wreak vengeance and punish.

No child in Sderot is more secure as a result of this killing. On the contrary.

Anyone who takes an honest look at the progression of events during the past two months will discover that the Qassams have a context: They are almost always fired after an IDF assassination operation, and there have been many of these. The question of who started it is not a childish question in this context. The IDF has returned to liquidations, and in a big way. And in their wake there has been an increase in Qassam firings.

That is the truth, and they are hiding it from us. When Gabi Ashkenazi and Ehud Barak assumed their positions, the reins were loosened. If Barak were a representative of the political right, perhaps a public outcry would have already been sounded against the IDF’s wild actions in Gaza. But everything is permitted to Barak, and even the fact that the victims are children does not matter – not to him and not to the Israeli public.

Yes, the children of Gaza gather around the Qassams. It is practically the only diversion they have in their lives. It is their amusement park. Those who arrogantly preach to their parents “to watch over them” have never visited Beit Hanoun. There is nothing there, except for the filthy alleys and meager homes. Even if it is true that those launching the Qassams are taking advantage of these miserable children (which has yet to be proven), this should not shape our moral portrait. Yes, it is permissible to exercise restraint and caution. Yes, it is not always necessary to respond, especially when the response ends up killing children.

The way to stop the firing of Qassams is not through indiscriminate killing. Every launcher can be replaced. The start of the school year bodes ill, for us and for them. Anyone who truly seeks to stop the firing of Qassams should reach a cease-fire agreement with the current government in Gaza. That is the only way and it is possible. The liquidations, the shelling and the killing of children will work in exactly the opposite direction of what is intended. In the meantime, look what is happening to us and to our army.

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IDF: They Shoot Fetuses Don’t They?

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

Since the end of the Lebanon war last summer, things have been relatively quiet between Israel and the Palestinians. It allowed some of us to hope that perhaps this lull would allow both sides to make progress toward final status negotiations. But as usual, the pessimists have been borne out. It only takes a week, a hail of Qassams and Hamas trouncing Fatah forces in the streets of Gaza for the entire delicate facade of the ceasefire to come tumbling down.

A few days ago the Cabinet gave the green light to the IDF to resume targeted assassinations (don’t you just love the “precision” in that term, as if the IDF always hits its “target” and never kills innocent civilians in the process) against Palestinian militants. But publicly at least, those to be attacked were supposed to be members of Hamas’ military wing:

The security cabinet on Sunday authorized the IDF to intensify air attacks on the Gaza Strip and targeted assassinations of senior Hamas activists. Government sources in Jerusalem said the cabinet decision called for assassinations of leaders of the military wing of Hamas, not the political wing.

al-haya gaza bombingRushing the dead and wounded to hospital from the al-Haya bombing (AFP)

With today’s results of the first serious strike we can see how laughable that claim was. The home of the leader of Hamas’ parliamentary faction, not a member of the military wing, was attacked by air and eight members of his family were killed:

The Israel Air Forces last night bombed the house of Hamas parliamentarian Khalil al-Haya in Gaza. He was slightly injured in the attack, but eight others including seven members of his family were killed, and 13 people were wounded.

He had just finished discussing a ceasefire proposal with Egyptian officials when his home was bombed:

Several family members and Hamas activists had apparently gathered in the yard of the home when the IAF struck, a little after 9 A.M. Al-Haya, who was lightly injured in attack, had just finished discussing a cease-fire with a Fatah leader at the Egyptian Embassy in the Gaza Strip…

Al-Haya, a former spokesman for the Hamas parliamentary faction in Gaza, is responsible for negotiations with Fatah and Hamas’ future membership in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Haaretz mentions that its cabinet source declared that al-Haya’s name was not on any list of those targeted for assassination. So how did he get attacked? Is it any wonder that no one with any sense of balance can believe a word coming from the IDF and intelligence agencies?

The toll of the dead:

Seven of the dead are members of the al-Haya family: Nimr al-Haya, 60; Abd al-Hamid al-Haya, 35; Bakhr al-Haya, 26; Ibrahim al-Haya, 23; Ala al-Haya, 22; Jihad al-Haya, 17; and Mohammed al-Haya, 16. The eighth man is Samakj Farauna, 27, a Hamas activist.

The IAF is killing old men and teenagers. Bravo! This is just more of that superb IDF execution which brought you last summer’s Lebanon war in which the IAF seemed better at hitting civilians than hitting actual Hezbollah fighters.

Here is the IDF’s “justification” for the bombing:

An Israeli Army spokeswoman, Capt. Noa Meir, said that according to the army’s initial findings, the army “identified and hit a five-member terrorist cell based on prior intelligence — they were the target of the attack.”

Does this sound like a “terror cell” to you?

Officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said that the dead included seven members of Mr. Hayya’s family, including three of his brothers, and a neighbor. Mr. Hayya, 44, who arrived at the hospital surrounded by supporters shortly after the attack, said his brothers were “part of the Palestinian people” and had nothing to do with politics.

What was this? It was the Shin Bet and IDF saying (and pardon my langugage but I’m pissed) fuck the military wing–we’re going after you guys where you live and we’ll kill all of you if we have to. They deliberately picked a senior legislative leader to say: “we don’t make any distinction between military or political. You’re all scum in our book.” This is yet another example of an Israeli war crime. You don’t deliberately target civilian political leaders. Did this man have “blood on his hands?” Had he participated in a terrorist bombing? I don’t hear the IDF making that claim. Nor can they reasonably do so. Unfortunately, the killing of innocent civilians who happen to be al-Haya’s sons and other relatives is the price to be paid for the IDF sending a message to Hamas that there will be hell to pay unless they call off the current bloodbath in which they are devastating Fatah forces in Gaza. Why do the innocent have to die to make such a point??

And here is the much vaunted “brilliance” of Israeli military intelligence at work (here quoting from Jonathan Fighel, an Israeli intelligence analyst):

Israel should “hit the Palestinians in a different dimension, to restore deterrence.” Israel, he said, had other options such as cutting off electricity and water supplies to Gaza and killing high-ranking Hamas members, “including ministers,”…said Fighel, a colonel in the reserves who follows Palestinian movements at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya.

“Restore deterrence?” How would killing al-Haya have done that? More likely it would’ve speeded up the process of getting IDF officers into the dock at the Hague. And how will cutting off water to a million Palestinians “restore deterence?” I swear, sometimes I think these people are living on another planet than the one the rest of us inhabit. Are they for real? Do they really find these bankrupt ideas in the least credible? Woe unto Israel if this is the best its best minds can produce.

Why Do Babies Have to Die?

Gideon Levy writes another one of his heartbreaking profiles of Gaza suffering in today’s Haaretz. This story concerns an IDF patrol that nightly invades a Palestinian refugee camp to shoot up the place. Snipers on a roof targeted the home of a Palestinian family when the mother arose to comfort her sleeping babies in the next room who were frightened by the firing:

Last Wednesday was an ordinary day in the Katouni household. The father [Rifat] went to work, the kids went to school, and in the evening everyone went to bed – the parents in their bedroom and the three children in their room in the third-floor apartment. Shortly after two in the morning, Maha [Katouni, the mother] was startled awake by the loud sounds of gunfire from the street. She didn’t even manage to turn on the light when she got up to run to the kids’ room next door, to reassure her three little boys and keep them from getting scared. The gunfire was very heavy. The window of her room was open and her bed was close to the window.

Maha got out of bed, took one step, and then the bullet struck her in the lower back. She fell onto the nightstand…Soldiers from the Nahal patrol battalion were standing on the roofs of the surrounding buildings. “Wherever we are sent – to there we go,” the poet Yaakov Orland once wrote in “The Nahal Anthem,” sung by the Nahal entertainment troupe, which also sang “The Song of Peace.”

Rifat rushed to call an ambulance. The children, who had awakened, were hysterical, especially the youngest, 3-year-old Jad, at the sight of the blood trickling from the front and back of their pregnant mother, who lay wounded on the floor. The bullet had struck her from behind, passed through the fetus’ head and the mother’s intestines and exited through the abdomen…

One of her brothers somehow managed to cross the line of fire and get to her house; he tried to stanch the gaping wound in her stomach with a towel. Her husband, Rifat, was paralyzed with shock. Umm Ibrahim says that her son, who tended to Maha, could see through the hole in her abdomen that the fetus had been wounded in the head and was dead…

The hospital staff, so inured to suffering by all the previous deaths and wounds it has tended to, still manages to stir a sense of outrage at this latest travesty brought to you by the Israeli Occupation:

Memorial posters decorate the walls of the Rafidiya government hospital in Nablus, covering earlier posters of countless young people who have been killed. But this poster is like nothing we have seen before: a fetus covered in its own blood, its tiny head blown up by the bullet that struck its mother, and the caption – “Who gave you the right to steal his life?”

…The anesthesiologist, Dr. Iyad Salim, a resident of nearby Hawara, roams the hospital corridors. On his cell phone camera is a video of the operation and the removal of the fetus. So close to being a fully developed baby, with a bullet wound to the head. The memorial poster shows the fetus bleeding from the head. The image is unbearable.

We always tend to lose sight of the real people who suffer in conflicts such as this. What were their hopes and dreams? Lest we forget, this family had similar emotions for the new life they were about to bring into the world:

They were going to call him Daoud, after an uncle, and also after a resident of the camp who was killed. At home they had everything ready: new clothes, diapers and a crib passed down from his older brothers. Daoud was buried in the camp cemetery. Only a few close family members attended the funeral of the unborn baby.

At press time, no response had been received from the IDF Spokesperson’s Office.

And what could they say that would mean anything and not make an even greater travesty??

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Bassam Aramin Mourns: ‘I’ve Lost My Heart, My Child’

Saturday, January 27th, 2007
abir araminAbir Aramin: the wages of war are death…of the innocents

I’ve written two posts about the heartbreaking death (or was it murder or negligent homicide?) of 11 year old Abir Aramin, a Palestinian schoolgirl shot dead by Israeli Border Police recently. But Gideon Levy has published a full profile of Bassam Aramin, her father and co-founder of Combatants for Peace (or as Haaretz more aptly translates, “Fighters for Peace”). In the profile, Levy offers Aramin’s own account of his daughter’s death in the fullest statement I’ve read anywhere in the media.

I’m choosing to quote a large portion of the concluding section because it is so poignant, so tragic and so damn powerful. Read it and weep, as they say. It begins below with Aramin recounting his release from an Israeli prison in which he had been held for his activities as a young Palestinian militant:

“When I was released in 1992 an atmosphere of hope had already become evident. I got married and started to have children. I would always dream about them, that they wouldn’t live the bad life my generation lived. I wanted to protect them. To explain everything to them so that they wouldn’t grow up like me, not knowing anything. That they would know what Palestinians are and what Israelis are … that they would fight against the occupation and help develop a good economy, that they would play, create and study like all the children. All the children want to be doctors; actually Abir wanted to be an engineer. That’s the way I wanted to raise my children.

“I found myself in Fighters for Peace and after the first meeting we knew that we were going to be together for a long time, and that we had a great responsibility to fight for life, for freedom, to explain the value of human life, because we are the instruments of war on both sides. To explain to the Israelis who don’t know what occupation is that their sons are becoming cruel murderers who think that they are protecting security and are doing the opposite, endangering security.

“Once a female student approached me after a lecture in Hatzor Haglilit – I was told that it was a very difficult place that had been the target of many Katyushas – and she said to me: You’re the first Palestinian I’ve met. She embraced me and said to me: ‘Now I’ve made peace with the Palestinians. I will no longer believe the news, or the government, or all the lies. I’ve simply understood.’ That greatly encouraged me, because here there was someone on the other side who understood and accepted you.”

“Last Tuesday I was still sleeping when Abir went to school. She had a math test. At 9:30 I went off toward Ramallah to work. Abir had told me a day before that she wanted to go to a girlfriend’s house to study, and I said to her: Oh no, you won’t. I’ll help you study.

“I was riding in a taxi, looking out for my daughters who were coming out of school. On the left I saw a Border Police jeep. I looked at them and thought: Why are they coming now? To abuse our children? Inshallah, nothing will happen. My daughters will only inhale gas. When I arrived at the Al-Ram intersection a teacher from the school called me and told me that Abir had fallen, and asked that her mother come to school to pick her up. I called home to tell her mother, and Arin, my older daughter, who is 12, was crying. I didn’t understand a thing. A neighbor took the phone and told me: The soldiers fired at your daughter’s head and she’s been wounded.

“I called the school and they told me they had taken her to Makassed Hospital [in East Jerusalem]. I immediately drove to Makassed, on the way I saw the Border Police jeep next to the local council building, but I thought that there was no time for speeches now. When I arrived at Makassed they told me that her condition was very critical. They told me she needed an operation. I was afraid and I told them that she had an Israeli ID and I wanted to take her to Hadassah Hospital. In order [to] speed things up I contacted the Peres Center for Peace, whose staff really helped me and sent a Magen David Adom ambulance and took her to Hadassah. There they decided that no operation was necessary. Thank God, I said to myself.

“At 7 P.M. her condition deteriorated; suddenly she needed an operation. We have to hope for a miracle, the doctors told me. I understood that my daughter needed a miracle and there are no miracles these days. I told myself that I didn’t want to take revenge. The revenge is that this ‘hero,’ whom my daughter endangered and shot at, be put on trial. Afterward she was officially declared dead.

“From what I was told I understood that the children threw stones and the Border Police threw a grenade at Abir’s head, from behind, from a distance of four meters. At first they said she had been wounded by a stone. I’m familiar with that game, but I didn’t believe that they would sink to such a despicable level – sorry for using that word – when they said on Channel 2 that Abir had been playing with something that exploded on her head. Her fingers were whole and her head exploded? They’re contemptible, I said. Liars. They send a boy of 18 with an M16 and tell him that our children are his enemies, and he knows that nobody will stand trial and therefore he shoots in cold blood and turns into a murderer.

“I’m not going to exploit the blood of my child for political purposes. This is a human outcry. I’m not going to lose my common sense, my direction, only because I’ve lost my heart, my child. I will continue to fight in order to protect her siblings and her classmates, her girlfriends, both Palestinians and Israelis. They are all our children.”

Combatants for Peace leaders (though not Bassam) will speak here in Seattle in early February:

Thursday, February 8th, 7 pm, Seattle University, Schafer Auditorium, Lemieux Library, (Columbia & Broadway)

Friday, February 9th, 8:00 am, Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 1511 East Pike

If you live here, attend and help Abir’s death have some meaning beyond the pointless tragedy that it is.

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