90 thoughts on “Rightist Attacks Peace Now’s Director in TV Studio, Israeli Professor Calls for His Execution – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. 1. The name Of the general manager of peace now is Yariv Oppenheimer and not oppenhime.
    2. The real issue with NGO activities in israel is that most of it is funded by the NIF (new israeli fund) which isn’t a registered NGO with the Israeli justice department. does not submit any reports as to the origins of it’s funds etc.
    you can see for yourself here:
    http://www.justice.gov.il/MOJHeb/RasutHataagidim/RashamAmutot/BatzaBaatar/AmutotViewApp.htm (search by their name or by their number 580127926, they lost their status in 1988)
    can a non profit operate in the united states without being properly registered ?

    1. The real issue with NGO activities in israel is that most of it is funded by the NIF (new israeli fund) which isn’t a registered NGO with the Israeli justice department. does not submit any reports as to the origins of it’s funds etc

      Again, you are either ignorant or a bald-faced liar. None of this is true. Not a word. NIF doesn’t fund “most” of the NGO activities in Israel. And it certainly is a legally registered NGO & submits precisely the rpts you claim it does not. In fact, I challenge you to write to NIF & demand such reports. In fact, I bet they’re even available on their website. I don’t know what document you’re linking to but it is a lie to say that NIF lost legal status in 1988 or any other time.

      A non-profit CAN operate in the U.S. w/o being properly registered as long as no one reports it to the authorities. But NIF is not illegal. Never was and isn’t now. If you continue to argue along this vein esp. w/o providing credible proof, you will be moderated. Lying is a comment rule violation.

      1. @ Richard
        1. So i am a bald face liar for linking to the site (a governmental official site) that shows the registration status of the NIF as a non profit organization ?
        2. it is legal for an NGO to operate in the US, as long as it is not being reported, – this is BS. it’s illegal on any NGO to operate in the US without being registered properly.
        You should consider changing the name of your site to “THE SPIN ZONE”.

        1. I didn’t say it was legal to operate nor did you ask that question. I said a group COULD operate until it was reported to the authorities.

          You should consider changing the name of your site to “THE SPIN ZONE”.

          If you continue with the snark, you’re violating the comment rules & may face consequences. Argue to the point & on substance. Save the insults for another site.

          1. Richard
            Maybe if you will not call me an ignorant and a liar i will not use snark.
            you use in your debate words i am sure you wouldn’t like to be directed at you.

          2. But I wouldn’t make the uninformed claims you do. Pls. go to an Israeli Palestinian village, speak w residents, see how they really live before trying to sell nonsense like all citizens have their social service needs met by the State.

          3. have you ever checked how much is owed to the Arab municipalities in back taxes by their own residents ?
            as i am sure you know Taxes are collected for the benefit of the residents themselves.
            the municipality of Taybe is under water (due to bad management and corruption), the following passage written in 2007 will give you an idea on how things are being handled in that municipality (sorry hebrew )
            04.03.07 – הקיזוזים של עיריית טייבה – צרור עצות לא מעשיות

            עובדי עיריית טייבה נקלעו למצוקה כלכלית משום שלא קיבלו משכורת במשך חודשים, ולעתים אף שנה. עיריית טייבה המציאה פטנט מקורי לשלם את המשכורות. מי שחייב ארנונה לעירייה משלם את החוב ישירות לעובד העירייה. הועבד מודיע לאגף הגבייה שקיבל תשלום וחשבון הארנונה של הנישום מזוכה.
            יש נישומים “חכמים” המבקשים הנחה תמורה התשלום. הבעיה היא, שההנחה ניתנת על חשבון העובד, ונמצא, כי העובד מממן את ההנחה, ובפנקסי העירייה נרשם סכום מלא, שבפועל לא שולם.
            המידע על נישומים שחייבים סכומים גדולים הוא נחלתם של מקורבים לצלחת. יתר העובדים מחזרים על הפתחים של שכיניהם כמו קבצנים. לאחרונה, הורה משרד הפנים לעירייה לחדול מנוהג הקיזוזים.

            amount owed in back taxes was 90 million NIS in 2007, the municipality was disband and the minister of interior is nominated Shlomo Twizer (שלמה טוויזר) to manage the city.

            similar situation and the lack of residents paying their own taxes exist in many other arab municipalities.
            that would be the first reason for lack of services they are getting.

            for example between Jun 2007 – Aug 2007, 10 different municipalities were disbanded by the Minister of Interior Roni Bar-On, all disbanded municipalities run a huge deficit, didn’t collect resident taxes etc. 4 out of the 10 were Jewish (that’s pull the carpet under the racist claims)
            Tabye – less than 70% collection on water consumption. Less than 40% collection on taxes.
            Migdal – same collection rates
            Manda Village – same collection rates
            Daburya – same collection rates
            Yarka – same collection rates
            http://www.moin.gov.il/Subjects/OperationEscort/Pages/PizurRashuyot.aspx
            as well where the city of ofakim, Mizpe Ramon, and others.
            Easy to blame the state of Israel for the situation of the resident who do not pay their own municipal taxes.
            reality of course is a bit more complicated then the partial picture you present.

          4. have you ever checked how much is owed to the Arab municipalities in back taxes by their own residents ?

            Oh, please. This is lame. Israeli Palestinian citizens get virtually no services from the State & yet that same State expects them to pay their taxes dutifully…for what? Hasbarists just like you have come here before & tried the same lame arguments contending that corruption & non-payment of taxes justifies impoverishing Arab municipalities. Look, here’s the straight skinny for you. Treat your fellow Palestinian citizens as you would have them treat you. Follow Hillel’s dictum & everything will be cool. If you don’t, then it won’t. Give them the same level of service you get & we won’t have anything to argue about. If you don’t, then nothing you say can explain or justify Israel’s racism against it’s Palestinian citizens.

          5. @ Richard
            Oh Please i come to you with facts,
            and you response with propaganda and name calling.
            i hope that reasonable people like Leonid will read this and would understand that the reality is a bit more complicated.

    2. @Ben: from what I understand from the link, it says that the New Israel Fund was registered on 3-5-1988. So it did not lose its status in 1988. Further it says that the association has been deleted from the database. This does not necesserily mean that the Israeli government revoked NIF’s status. Maybe NIF decided themselves not to be registered as an NGO in Israel, but to work with existing Israeli NGO’s.

      So you claim that what’s wrong with NIF is that NIF, being a US registered NGO, funds NGO’s in Israel, but does not submit reports to the Israeli government. My question to you is: is NIF requireted to submit those reports to Israel? Does the Israeli governemt request those reports from NIF? Is it illegal in Israel what NIF is doing?

      1. Leonid
        1. You are absolutely right, they registered in 1988 and due to own decision decided at some point (i don’t know when) not to renew the registration. as of Today they are not a registered organization and haven’t been for years.
        2. it is not illegal, but that law is in the process of being changed.
        3. those MK’s who are trying to change the law, are called racist, right-wingers nut jobs etc.
        4. i see some duplicity on behalf of an american (like Richard is) who knows, that such an operation in the US would be considered illegal( and the organization will be closed in a hurt bit) to support the operation of such organization in Israel.
        5. Thank you for actually taking the time and following the link
        6. Please note that i didn’t state what is my opinion regarding the action of professor Mor Altchuler or Dr. Keidar (if think both are wrong)

        1. Ben, do I understand you correctly:
          1. As of today, neither NIF nor Pease Now is doing anything illegal in Israel.
          2. Funding an NGO in the US, without the funder being registered in the US, is illegal, right? This one I don’t quite understand. The US government is sponsoring numerous NGOs all over the world (e.g. many human rights groups in Russia), but they make it illegal for the US NGOs to be sponsored by unregistered foreign organisations. Doesn’t make much sense to me.

          1. Leonid
            1. Yes you are right, at the moment there is nothing illegal in the actions of both organizations.
            2. The issue with foreign funding of actions withing a sovereign state, is that it is a base for actions that may not serve the grater good of the country in which the activities is being carried. to enable the US government to monitor the funding source (and few other taxation issues i assume) any organization who wishes to operate within the US needs to register and submit reports etc.
            do you see anything wrong with that ?
            i don’t. and what’s good for the goose etc…

          2. it is a base for actions that may not serve the grater good of the country

            What are you, a mouthpiece for the Likudist nutcases attempting to destroy Israeli democracy by criminalizing human rights NGOs?? Those who are not serving the greater good of Israel are precisely these nutcases & not NIF.

          3. Ben, regarding the second point, I’m not quite sure how to define the greater good of the country. Is that’s what majority wants? Well, history is full of examples where the wishes of the majority did not lead to any good. Is that’s what the governement sees as good? This is even more problematic. Why not just judge organisations based on what they actually do vis-a-vis the laws of the country. If an organisation doesn’t do anything illegal, why make a problem of its funding? If they engage in illegal activities, they can be taken to court.

          4. Leonid,
            Much easier to monitor the source of an organization funds then to monitor its activities.
            following the money trail to define exactly what activities the organization is involved with, is much harder to achieve without the organization submitting reports to the local authorities.
            as for the grater good etc. this is kind of arrogant on your behalf to think that you know what is good for the State of Israel, the residents of the state should decide that. ultimately they will be the ones paying the price for better or worse for being right or for being wrong.

          5. Ben, I am sorry, but in what I wrote I wasn’t talking specifically about Israel. I don’t pretend to know what’s good for Israel. I am just asking questions and engaging in discussion. So please, don’t call me arrogant 🙂

            I only know that every person wants to be happy and respected, wants to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with oneself, with one’s neighbors and other people. In my opinion, the point of each discussion should be how to achieve these age-old aspirations for all human beings, regardless of their religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc.

          6. Leonid, you can replace Israel with any other state in the world.
            For someone who doesn’t live in a place (and doesn’t pay the price for what he preaches) to try and determine what is good for that place is arrogant. That’s not to say that people can not have opinions or that their opinions should not be heard and taking into accounts.
            But when someone is involved with providing a society wide services trying to influence a political agenda via those activities, and that someone didn’t bother registering with the State authorities and uses foreign funds to support its activities, based on what they think is right, that someone assumes an extremely arrogant position, and in my opinion crosses the line between right and wrong.
            i do not think that residents of the state of Israel ( or any other place) who are trying to limit such activity are racist.

          7. Ben, I’m afraid that by your logic, those who help and fund human rights movements in Tibet, Burma, Iran, Russia are crossing the line between right and wrong? That the international pressure that helped to put end to apartheid in South Africa was wrong? On the other hand, Israeli government engages on a large scale in lobbying for its perceived interests in foreign countries. Will you condemn that too?

          8. Leonid, that’s an interesting question which to be honest i do not have an answer to.
            First Israel is a bit different from all the third world countries you mention and does provide all the services its citizens needs, from security to social services. as to the comparison to the South African apartheid during the years (since the first Kneset) 58 Arab Mk’s had served as members of the parliament (http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/heb/mkdetails.asp, look here by last names) , Israeli-Arabs enjoy the same social services that i do as a resident of the State.
            If you refer to the Palestinians – they should (in my opinion) get their own state within the 1967 borders with agreed upon land swaps (and despite what this site tries to present this is what most Israelis support) and not be dependent upon us for anything.
            Aipac lobbying is a bit different then the type of activities the NIF sponsor and i wouldn’t know where to start answer that questions.

          9. Israel is a bit different from all the third world countries you mention and does provide all the services its citizens needs, from security to social services.

            It provides most (but not all) the services its JEWISH citizens need. But certainly not its non-Jewish citizens.

            Telling us how many Palestinians served as MKs is meaningless. Which hasbara source did you dig that up from. The truth is that almost every Palestinian MK who has served in the past 10 yrs or so has been investigated by the police on trumped up charges of espionage, damaging the security of the state. There is a war against Israel’s Palestinian population including its elected representatives. Israeli-Palestinians do NOT enjoy the same social services as you do & you’re again either abysmally ignorant or a liar (or both). Every serious observer of Israeli knows what you’ve said is simply not so & Israeli Palestinians know it even better fr. first hand experience.

          10. Ben, I understand your point. Each country/situation is different. My opinion is that NIF, Peace Now, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, etc. and this blog too are doing important work in collecting information and providing the other side of the story both to the Israelis and the outside world. They deserve to be funded, and if they can’t find enough funding in Israel, then why not from abroad? Good night!

          11. @ Ben)

            “Israeli-Arabs enjoy the same social services that I do as a resident of the State”.

            Oh, so you’re an Arab too ? I didn’t know. Ahlân wa sahlân, ya akhî.

            You’re the new Hasbara-spinner around these days, aren’t you ?
            Either you’re totally ignorant or you’re lying. We’ve been through this discussion dozens of times before. Just google discrimination + israeli Arabs + education or health system or whatever, or look at Adalah or Acri’s websites, and you’ll see this is not true.
            And don’t be surprised if you find the word ‘Israeli Palestinians’ instead of ‘Israeli Arabs’: that’s in fact the way they consider themselves, particlularly in their interaction with the State of Israel.

          12. Ah, I see Richard already responded to Ben. In fact, I spent a long time reading a document by Zama Coursen-Neff on the generalized discrimination in the Israeli school system that you can call a Apartheid system: there’s a Jewish and an Arab system, and I read somewhere that the State spend between 3 and 5 times as much on a Jewish pupil. Is that possible ?

          13. Dear fellow commenters, may I ask you not to attack each other personally, by calling each other a liar, spinner, ignorant, etc? For how much are we then different from Moti Keidar and his “dirty weakling” and “traitor”. This doesn’t bring about understanding and only drives us further apart. Let’s discuss ideas, present facts and arguments, challenge opinions. Sorry if this sounds too politically correct 🙂

          14. @ Leonid)
            The “Israeli Arabs have exacly the same rights as Israeli Jews” is an obligatory statement, and no Israeli stating that is honest. It’s simply not possible that they believe it themselves. I suspect that most who state that know perfectly well that it isn’t true, but that they find it okay.

            Have you ever been to Israel ? Have you been to any Arab town or village ? Even a blind can see the difference, in every point of view: public buildings, public transportation, medical services, the sewage system, every kind of infrastructure. There are ‘non-existing’ Arab villages in the Galilee and the Negev without electricity and running water.
            I’m not saying the two situations are alike but in South Africa during the Apartheid era, the official slogan was “Separate but equal”.

          15. @Deir Yassin, I do not contend the facts that you present. And although I haven’t been to Arab tows or villages in Israel, I trust your word. Talking to my family in Israel (mostly well-educated and otherwise very reasonable people), I am painfully aware of their attitude toward Arabs and Palestinians in and outside Israel. At best, they don’t care, at worst they advocate their resettlement to Jordan or other Arab countries, building new settlements, etc. These are very popular attitudes. So even if the law prescribes that all citizens should be treated equally, in practice this will never work.

            My last comment was to plead with you to refrain from name calling, because this may drive people away from this blog and from the important issues discussed here.

          16. @ Leonid)
            Ben is probably around for a couple of days, maybe as part of his IDF reserve service, and I think he’s using the same script as the others before him. When did he start ? 2-3 days ago, and he’s already commented on most issues with the same procedures: a mix of supposed goodwill and plain Hasbara. I wonder whether he’s not IlanB ‘recycled’ or maybe they just followed the same debriefing at Yuri Edelstein’s office.

          17. @ Deir Yassin
            so let me see you contempt towards me (and lack of civility + Name calling) has to do with the following:
            1. I am here for few days.
            2. My approach is similar to that of other Israelis.

            and your conclusion
            1. i am doing that as part of my reserve service
            2. i must be the reincarnation of someone else.

            a true genius.
            1. when you began responding here ? weren’t you here for 2 or 3 days ?
            2. i never heard about an IDF soldier who’s service involved website surfing and debate.
            3. what is the probability that two Israeli’s (or more) will hold the same positions ? High / Low ?

            as Leonid said, you are no different then Dr Kaidar, just a different name.

          18. i never heard about an IDF soldier who’s service involved website surfing and debate.

            YOu ought to check out the archives here. The IDF chief spokesperson announced a month ago the creation of just such a unit with 150 soldiers in it.

          19. @Deir Yassin, I don’t know who Ben is, but I’d give him the benifit of the doubt. Maybe it’s naive, but I generally trust people until proven otherwise. So I assume that Ben is sincere in his comments. Of course, he has a viewpoint that he is trying to support with facts and agruments. So do I, and I don’t see anything wrong with that. All of us have “blind spots”, issues that we do not see or are unwilling to confront for various reasons. My hope is that we can understand each other better by engaging in meaningful dialogue (listening, being open, thinking critically, questioning propaganda and our own views). Mutual accusations and name calling are counter-productive.

            @Ben, I didn’t say Deir Yassin is no different than Dr Keidar. I actually respect her. I just called on all of us, including you :), to refrain from name calling so that we do not fall to the level of Keidar.

          20. @ Ben)
            Saying to someone who states that the Israeli Palestinians enjoy the same social services as the Jewish citizens of Israel that he’s either ignorant or lying is NOT namecalling. It’s the truth. Either you have absolutely no idea about the discrimination that the Israeli Palestinians suffer – and then you’re ignorant – or you know it, but pretend not to, and then you’re lying.
            And I would say exactly the same thing about a White in the Deep South pretending that Blacks ‘enjoyed equal social services’ in the 50’s or 60’s.
            You have never been to an Arab village nor have you any contact with fellow Arab citizens, or you simply wouldn’t say that. From that I deduce that you’re spinning Hasbara.

            The point on the IDF reserve duty was an ‘internal joke’ and I’m sorry if that hurt you.

            “My approach is similar to that of other Israelis”
            Exactly, that’s what I noticed too. No further comments…

          21. @ Leonid, thank you for your words.
            i don’t know if you had a chance to read the hebrew link Richard provided. Reading the talk-backs i was really disgust. i do not think they have any place in a civilized debate.
            some of them are not any different then the welcome comments i received here.

            @ Deir Yassin
            Did you happen to read the link i provided about disbanding the distressed municipalities ? Don’t you think that cities that fail to collect more then 60% on their taxes, and more then 30% on their water, will have hard time providing their citizens with the level of services residents of other cities get ?

            and now please if you can lets stick to the fact and not to opinions, please list what type of services / payment i get from the government that an Arab citizen doesn’t. Please do not include payment for active reserve duties in the mix. please don’t tell me that they can’t serve in the IDF (it’s not true and there are many who does and they volunteer) and please do not include the fact to some jobs requires military experience.

            Telling me i am ignorant without providing the information to prove that is no more then name calling.

          22. some of them are not any different then the welcome comments i received here

            Oh, you mean someone equated you to Adolph Hitler & said he’d like to behead you with an axe? Care to provide a link? I can provide you a link to those good wishes offered to me in the Talkbacks. Pls, you may not like things said about you here, but they pale in comparison & you should know it. Not to mention that the reporter who interviewed told me that scores of other comments were so much worse they weren’t even published. Shall I ask for a few of those for you to peruse so you may compare them to the intemperance you’ve suffered here?

          23. Just for futher information:
            A acquaintance of mine, Laurence Louer, wrote her doctoral thesis at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris) on “The Arab Citizens of Israel” in 2001. The thesis was later published by Ballard, 2003 “Les Citoyens Arabes d’Israël” (in French only). She spent years in Israël in various Arab communities, she wrote about the tax-problem too. The Arab citizens of Israel paid their taxes as “law-abiding citizens” for years without receiving anything in return, and started only after that to boycott taxpaying.
            In many Arab communities, people started to organize ‘communual work’ in order to do what the State was supposed to do. Pavements were established, the sewage system was improved, the schools were restaurated, all paid for and done by the citizens themselves with the withheld taxmoney.
            She brilliantly explains how certains Islamic leaders have gained a lot of popularity, particularly Raed Salah, within the Israeli Palestinian communities: they organized and collected the money for all those communal works that also gave a revival to an ancient tradition of mutual aid, brought back some hope and energy to villages that felt abandoned by “their” State.
            Other sociological studies in Arabic, Hebrew and English have worked on the same topic. Samy Smooha, the sociologist at Haifa University, for example.

          24. @ Ben)
            “DY, did you happen to read the link I provided …”
            No. I don’t read Hebrew and as I said on another file: I refuse to read your links to official governmental Hasbara.

            By the way, for someone who’s not a propagandist, you sure have a lot of ‘official’ links to offer, and your enthusiasm to convince everybody about the Israeli Paradise is amazing.
            I have much better informations than your governmantal ‘explanations’: I have family within the State of Israel, I’ve been there on various occasions, years back though, so you’re wasting your time with your list of Arab MK, ‘equal social services’ etc as far as I’m concerned.

          25. @ DY
            if you don’t read hebrew how do you know what type of link i provided ?
            if you refuse to read anything coming from the israeli government (including document written in 2007 by the office of interior, to which i linked) it shows that no real debate is possible with you.

          26. @ DY
            since i asked you to list the services i get an Arab citizen doesn’t you wrote between 400 – 500 words
            and didn’t list one such service.
            Yes you did write about the opinions of your friends etc.
            List one.

          27. Deïr Yassin, I know many like your doctor friend.
            I had a friend once who was so clueless he could not get any job in Isreal, so he went and did a doctorate in Norway on the Beduim in Israel. If this is the kind of work you rely on, no wonder this is what you think of Arab citizens in Israel.

          28. Free man, Deir Yassin described the contents of her friend’s doctoral thesis. She did not give any information about the friend. Yet rather than talk about the contents of the thesis, you choose to focus on DY’s friend, dismissing her work outright because you had a friend who went into academia when he couldn’t get a job. Are you honestly going to say to all academic researchers, “Your work is nullifed because I had a friend who couldn’t get a job outside academia”?

            DY’s summary of the tax boycott’s history is accurate. Lack of services prompted an organised boycott, and the money that was saved was put into community betterment programmes. If you would like to read about how Palestinians within Israel have tried to develop equal services for their communities, I suggest that you read ‘A Doctor in Galilee’ by Hatim Kanaaneh and ‘The Other Side of Israel’ by Susan Nathan as starting points. Kanaaneh is the director of a healthcare project in the Galilee, and the story of the project’s inception is fascinating.

            As for official government websites, I wouldn’t trust them to provide an accurate picture of life in a particular country – any country. The MoI website reflects what the current government wants people to think. It’s an exercise in PR, and there is a difference between PR and historical scholarship.

          29. Vicky
            an educated debate can occur only around facts.
            bring some facts
            what type of social services do I as a jewish citizen of israel get an an arab citizen doesn’t ?
            Is is social security ? is it healthcare ? is it child support ?
            name one service.
            as for you not trusting any governments, I’m sorry but to learn about the debt of the city of Tybe the only source i can think of is the minister of interior, they publish the data about jewish places the same way they publish data about arab places.
            You can’t just dismiss data that doesn’t serve your agenda, that’s not the way a debate should be handled.
            you bring facts, not innuendos, not opinions, and you discuss the facts.

          30. what type of social services do I as a jewish citizen of israel get an an arab citizen doesn’t ?

            Your children get superior elementary & high school educations. You & your children got/get opportunities to go to university which almost no Israeli Palestinians get. You get more & better job opportunities. You get more & better housing in nicer neighborhoods. You earn more money. You own more & better cars. YOu get more & better health care. Shall I go on? I didn’t name one service. I named 10 or so. Sorry for going overboard. Would you do me a favor: spend a single day in an Israeli Palestinian village. Visit one public school, one public health center, and have one meal in one private home and meet with one family, & then tell me that they enjoy the same privileges you do (if you can).

            These are all facts, albeit unpleasant ones for you.

          31. One service? Healthcare. Assessing the causes of the inequality, Prof. Ilan Saban of Haifa University has stated that there is governmental discrimination in the allocation of funds and the provision of services to Palestinian areas. This can be seen just by looking at the Social Welfare Index, a statistical tool that was devised to analyse the demographics of people living below the poverty line in Israel. The index number is obtained by calculating the expenditure on social welfare for each group (Jewish and Palestinian), the employment rate of both Palestinian and Jewish Israelis, and the poverty rates for both groups.

            0 represents perfect equality. A number closer to -1 favours the Palestinian Israeli community, while a number closer to 1 favours the Jewish Israeli community. As of 2006 (the last year for which I have figures to hand) the number stood at 0.4418. That’s a clear and significant discrepancy in favour of Jewish Israelis. Not innuendo, not a government PR site, not opinions – cold hard stats that are based on a large amount of data.

            To see what these numbers mean in real terms, I recommend that you read Dr Hatim Kanaaneh’s book, which I mentioned before. In the book he draws not only on his personal experience as a senior doctor in Galilee, but on governmental data (he co-operated with the government for a time) and the findings of various aid organisations and charities. It’s the most comprehensive account of healthcare discrimination within Israel that I have read, in addition to being a very moving story about how he has worked to help his community.

            Alternatively, you could just pay a visit to a Palestinian town, walk into their clinic, and compare it to your own. Jewish Israelis who insist that Palestinians receive equal treatment within Israeli society usually have next to no contact with Palestinian communities, so I’ve found.

          32. @ Ben)
            Are you a machine in Edelstein’s basement or what ?
            Though I don’t read Hebrew, I’m not a idiot, and when I see a blue link in English containing ‘knesset.gov.il’, I know who it is, and you have already posted three by now.

            Concerning your second comment:
            I never mentioned a service you get as a Jew that an Arab doesn’t get. You wrote that Israeli Arabs (as you call them) ‘enjoy equal social services’. Do you understand the difference ?
            That means that services given to Arabs are not the same, of less quality, not so developed. Ask someone to explain, I’m not a Kindergarten teacher.

            If you aren’t a Hasbarista, then I’m Lady Di.

            @ Free man
            You have NO idea what Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP) is, absolutely no clue. And Laurence Louer wrote her doctoral thesis under the direction of Gilles Kepel, a world-known scholar on Islam and the Middle East.

            Discrimination against Israeli Palestinians in the educational system:
            Neve Gordon on “Apartheid in Israel’s Schools”:
            http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_2_62/ai_83794488/
            Human Rights Watch: “Israeli School Separate. Not Equals”:
            http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2001/12/04/israeli-schools-separate-not-equal
            There is a link to the full report
            http://www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/sep05/JILPfinal.pdf

            Discrimination concerning public transportation, health system, acces to cultural activities, public libraries will be on another occasion.

          33. I never mentioned a service you get as a Jew that an Arab doesn’t get. You wrote that Israeli Arabs (as you call them) ‘enjoy equal social services’.

            Actually, my understanding is that East Jerusalem Palestinians DO receive almost no Israeli services. Almost no city garbage collection, almost no public education, etc. So you can practically say that there are few if any public services there.

          34. @ Leonid
            1. you don’t have an argument with me that israel should withdraw from the west bank, hence let’s not debate what goes over the green line, that is a foreign territory.
            2. When you come to compare the ability of refugees to go back to their home lands, you should compare the ability of arab originated Jews who were forced to leave by different reasons, as a decedent to Iraqi Jews who used to reside in harun al rashid street in the heart of Baghdad in a house they owned, i know that i have no right to return to iraq the house and other property was confiscated, and in that aspect i see similarity.
            3. if you would like to examine the “discrimination” against Israeli-arabs, you should check the government funds allocated to the communities, Using uncle google i came across the work of Dr. Tal Schachor who examined the subject in 2004 (www.geog.bgu.ac.il/fastSite/coursesFiles/bedouins/shchor-article.doc) he discovered very interesting things for example government share in municipalities budget was bigger (between the years 1994-2000) in the Arab communities then in the Jewish communities and substantially bigger in the Druz communities for instance the funding per person in 1994 was 1708 NIS in the jewish communities, 2037 in the arab communities and 3578 NIS in the druz communities in ration thats 1:1.19 Jewish to Arabs and 1:2.09 Jewish to Druz, some discrimination.
            in the year 2000 funds allocated per person came to 1748 NIS in the jewish communities, 2712 in the Arab communities and 4279 NIS in the Druz communities, in ratio thats 1:1.55 jewish – arabs and 1:2.45 jewish druz.

            of course you need to remember that generally speaking both arab and druz belong to a lower social economic group and therefore goverment funds towards these groups would be higher.
            the problem is that only part of the budget comes from the goverment, the other comes from taxes, and when your city doesn’t collect monies owed by the residents of that city, the city doesn’t have enough money to allocate towards services the residents need to get.

            Discrimination ? absolutely… against the Jews.

          35. you should compare the ability of arab originated Jews who were forced to leave by different reasons, as a decedent to Iraqi Jews who used to reside in harun al rashid street in the heart of Baghdad in a house they owned, i know that i have no right to return to iraq the house and other property was confiscated

            Something in this comment doesn’t smell right to me. When was your alleged home confiscated & by whom? What was the address? What were yr parents names. I’d like to know a whole lot more about this story before I credit it as true. Besides, this is a stupid exercise. Hasbaristas always try to create an equivalence between the alleged mistreatment of Arab Jews with the Nakba when there is no equivalency. And we’ve been over this territory before guys. So you’re just reopening a subject that’s been roundingly disproven.

            I strenuously object to using quotation marks around the word “discrimination.” Israeli Palestians are discriminated against in thousands of ways. The fact that you deny it means you deny reality that is inconvenient to yr own prejudices & ideology.

            I frankly don’t trust yr characterization of the work of any Israeli academic. Use quotations to prove yr point. And who is this academic? Where does he teach? Where did he earn his PhD? These are important factors needed to judge whatever he says. Besides, the notion that government share in Palestinian municipalities budget compared to Jewish communities is larger is so ridiculous as to be nonsensical. I would venture to say that whatever is being counted as funding to Palestinian communities compared to Jewish ones leaves out other ways in which Jewish communities far outstrip Palestinian in their funding.

            Discrimination ? absolutely… against the Jews.

            I find this statement not just snarky, but offensive. It’s a stupid, unfounded opinion. And frankly I have no patience for it.

          36. @ Ben)
            “Discrimination ? Absolutely …against Jews”

            And you still claim not to be a propagandist.

            In fact, that was the whole purpose of Zionism: to establish a State where Jews could suvereignly discriminate against fellow Jews instead of being discriminated by non-Jews.
            That’s also why 800.000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed: to give place to more Jews and thus more anti-Jewish discrimination.

            I find hard to believe that you’re of Iraqi origin. As your twin-spin collegue IlanB, you have great problems with names in Arabic: we’ve had Taybe, Tabye and Tybe by now.

            PS. The book by Laurence Louër has been published in English, I realized. “To Be an Arab in Israel”. 2007, Columbia University Press. I guess that’s where Free man’s friend published his thesis too.

          37. @Ben,

            1. I wasn’t talking about the occupied territories. I was talking about Lod (well within the green line) and the fact that Arabs there can’t get permits to build houses, while whole new Jewish neighborhoods are built on their ancestral land. Giving out building permits is a government service to its citizens, and it is being systematically denied to the Arab Israelis.
            2. Family reunion is also a service to the citizens. While Jewish citizens are provided this service, the Arab ones are not.
            3. About the right of return. I’m very sorry that at present you cannot go back to Baghdad. But things might change. In the 1970’s Soviet Jews, who emigrated to Israel, couldn’t go back to the Soviet Union. Now they can freely go back to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus. Jews can also go back to live in Germany, Poland, Hungary, etc. Giving Palestinian refugees the possibility to go back to their ancestral lands may also encourage Arab countries to let Jews go back their home cities and towns across the Middle East.
            4. I trust that you correctly and honestly report the statistics from the government. Other people here reported the other side of the tax problem. I’m not in a position to go and research things for myself. I trust Vicky’s account, because I know what she does and how she feels about the situation…

            You know I was growing up in Belarus, Soviet Union, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. On paper, the USSR constitution guaranteed equal rights and just wealth distribution for all. Yet in practice, ordinary Jews (not the ones with connections) were discriminated in subtle and not so subtle ways: it was very hard for us to enter any of the elite universities, to be allowed to get a Ph.D., to get a promotion to a higher-level position, to get a subsidized apartment, etc. My father was liked by his students and was a respected scientist in theoretical mechanics. Yet, he had to write all his scientific papers and his book in the bedroom or on the kitchen table of our 40-square-meter, two-room apartment, which he shared with his wife and two kids. He would be seen as unreliable by the university’s Communist Party committee, and hence was denied professorship and recognition for many years and died of a heart attack in his early 50’s. He’d be laughed at because of his Jewish name (Moisei Aronovich Levin), which he refused to change. And when, as a small boy, I’d come home crying because someone called me a dirty Jew, he’d tell me: don’t cry, son, tell them Karl Marx was also Jewish. People were trying to hide their Jewishness, many changed their names, many even tried to change the record in their passport that listed their Jewish ethnicity to something else, like Russian. No one mentioned the Holocaust of the 90% of the Belarusian Jews. Up until the 1990’s, there was no sign to commemorate hundreds of Jews of the small Jewish shtettl of Lapichi, in which most of my father’s family were murdered, including his elderly grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins of 10 months to 14 years old. His mother, a Yiddish school teacher, widowed after his father Aron was killed in action in 1942, would be out of work after Jewish schools were banned after the war, and would have to survive on a meager salary of a shop assistant and help from relatives.

            I’m sorry for this long story, but my point is that government records and declarations don’t tell everything. How can we measure in statistics the pain, suffering, fear, frustration, feeling of low self-worth of the oppressed? I see many parallels (as well as significant differences) between what I described above and the situation of the Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories. From my experience in talking to relatives in Israel, there is a widespread hostile racist attitude towards Israeli Arabs, Palestinians at large and Arabs in general. And I cannot fool myself into thinking that this attitude does not result in widespread and systematic discrimination and humiliation, which is being documented in detail by the aforementioned NGO’s.

        2. NIF is operating inside Israel in a perfectly legal way. And if Israeli law changes then NIF will continue to operate legally & adapt accordingly. If Israel law changes in such a way as to prevent NIF from operating legally inside the country, then it will be little better than Moldava, Belarus or N. Korea. And yes, anyone attempting to prevent NIF fr. operating legally inside Israel is a right wing anti democratic lunatic who will turn Israel into an even greater international pariah than it already is.

          NIF in Israel operates according to Israeli laws, not U.S. In the U.S. it operates acc. to U.S. law & not Israeli. This should be self evident. You can’t criminalize an NGO because it operates in the U.S. in ways that might not be legal in Israel when it DOES operate inside Israel in ways that are legal inside Israel.

          Saying Altshuler & Kedar were “wrong” is an understatement. Do you think you might come up w. an adjective that’s a bit stronger?

        3. Ben,
          Deir Yassin referred you to the academic work of Laurence Louer, which you can study for yourself if you don’t trust DY’s summary.

          Another example of unequal treatment is in the sphere of family reunion: only Jews can bring (Jewish or non-Jewish) relatives to Israel. Another obvious example is the law of return: any Jew can come to live in Israel, but a Palestinian refugee cannot come back to his/her home village or town.

          Another much publicised issue is that Palestinian Arabs are systematically being refused building permits in many areas of Israel. So the homes they build in their home towns and villages are being seen as illegal and are being demolished. Jewish outposts on Palestinian land, most of which are illegal under Israeli law, are largely tolerated and very seldom dismantled (see for example, these reports on the situation in Lod: http://www.icahd.org/?p=6722 and http://www.imemc.org/article/60826).

  2. “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” I guess the good professor eschews Micah for one of those other parts of the Bible.

  3. In any normal nation, professor Moti Keidar would be unanimously denounced and condemned by the whole academic community for his abusive language and his encouragement of physical abuse of someone with whom he disagrees. What kind of “professor” is he who calls his opponent “dirty weakling squealer” and traitor and essentially calls for his execution? If you (Moti) think that Peace Now disseminates lies, then refute the lies, start a law suit, etc. After statements like this, no self-respecting scholar will take Moti and his work seriously. I cannot fathom how a professor can fall so low and show such contempt for the high standards of human decency and ethics. This is a disgrace to Moti himself, to his University and to the movement he represents.

    1. Moti Kedar aka Mordechai Kedar is a specialist of Arabic litterature, but most known for his “Jerusalem-is-not-mentioned-once-in-the-Koran”-spin that of course is justifying the expulsion of the Palestinians from East-Jerusalem:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHpMhAzj-Tk
      He’s also the inventor of “There-is-no-Radical-Islam-or-Modern-Islam-Only-Islam”.

      1. Dore Gold is another practitioner of the “Jerusalem doesn’t appear in the Koran” theory which he wrote about in his execrable book which I had the fortune to review for The American Conservative Magazine.

        1. I saw Dore Gold in a John Pilger-documentary stating that the IDF had never killed any civilians without being threatened on their lives. He looked straight into the camera, his moustache didn’t even move, and though Pilger insisted very much on a particular well-documented case in the West Bank about an older women shot down with foreign journalists witnessing the killing, Gould was so convincing … I think he believed that Purity-of-Arms-stuff.

  4. So proud to have been part of the group that outed Moti Kedar with that banner in the picture when he came to the University of Washington!

    I don’t toss around the word fascist, but if it walks like a duck…

      1. Too bad, Richard. He was very entertaining (well, at least outside the building). Didn’t go to the talk. 🙂

        I’m sure he’ll alert us if he comes back (NOT)!

  5. RE: “What I wonder is–when such violence finally does happen, what will be the response?” ~ R.S.

    FROM WIKIPEDIA:

    (excerpts) The 2009 Tel Aviv gay centre shooting resulted in the deaths of two people and injuries to at least fifteen others at the Tel Aviv branch of the Israeli GLBT Association…
    …As of August 2010, the crime remains unsolved…
    …On the evening of August 1 at around 23:00, an unknown person with firearms entered the “Aguda” building in Tel Aviv, and opened fire on the crowd attending an Israeli Gay Youth (IGY) event, and immediately escaped thereafter. Two people were killed, and fifteen were wounded. The police had launched a search campaign to find the shooter, and in addition immediately closed most of the entertainment places for the gay community that operated during the same time of the shooting event, for fear of additional shooting.
    The gunman entered the building where a weekly event was being held (in the basement), shot in several directions and then fled on foot.[2][5][6] The building was frequented by gay teenagers who engage in social activities and listen to music.[6][11] The centre was small with one terrace; thus preventing anyone from escaping.[6] They instead hid under a bed and tables as shots were fired.[6][11] Israeli television said the crime scene was a “bloodbath”.[7] Five of the injured were treated at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, while five were treated at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.[6]
    The shooter was masked, dressed in black and used a pistol to carry out his attack.[2][5][8][11][12] It is not believed his motive was related to nationalist terror but the exact motive is currently unclear.[2] The city’s gay community stated the killer had a homophobic motive while police have cautioned people that the attack may not have been a hate crime and that the motive remains unknown

    SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Tel_Aviv_gay_centre_shooting

    P.S. Compare this to the investigation of the Itamar murders.

  6. I really don’t see what the big issue here: he said that in any “normal” country a man like Yariv would be executed. That is a valid opinion.
    Richard, you know Hebrew, right? Read some other quotes from people from the left side said about right side jews in this link: http://goo.gl/bRH0i

    1. That is an insane opinion, not a valid one. Oppenheimer would only be executed in an insane country. And any one who advocates executing him (which is what Kedar did) is himself insane.

      Don’t get cute. I don’t like it.

      I know what those on the left say about those on the right. Rightists routinely act violently against Jews on the left & Palestinians. They have murdered a number of left wing Jews. Jews on the left do not murder or engage in acts of violence against the right.

  7. @Ben,

    The most acute forms of state-originated discrimination against the Palestinian-Israelis is in

    (a) the allocation of land. Israel has, ostensibly, a separate-but-equal system for residence. The country is divided into urban areas and regional councils. The urban areas are supposedly open-to-all, although the government authorizes building projects that are then marketed to particular segments of the population (e.g., try to buy an apartment in a new development in Beit Shemesh—good luck). The regional councils are divides along multiple ethnic lines where Ashkenazi villages and kibutzim receive the most land, while Palestinian villages Mizrahi development towns are strangled from all around and don’t have much land reserves. For the Palestinian society which is traditional rural and agricultural this form of discrimination is extremely debilitating.

    Here is the map of regional councils:

    http://www.moin.gov.il/SiteCollectionImages/REZEF.jpg

    For example in the Beer-Sheva Dead Sea area you can see that the “Tamar” regional council controls all of the lucrative mining and touristic area while the closed by (Mizrahi) Dimona and Bedouin councils Kseifa, Ara’ar and Abu-Basma get no share of the pie.

    This poverty of these places in a great deal derives from the way the division lines where drawn, and more generally you can imagine how far you’re going to get as a weakened population in a regime that draws these lines around you.

    An acute case of segregation and being fenced-in can be found in the story of Jisr-A-Zarka, the only remaining Palestinian settlement on the shores of the sea that was not destroyed by Zionism. Read about it.

    (b) A second aspect of state-sponsored discrimination comes from prioritization of national infrastructure projects, which puts Arabs in the last place. For example the planning of train stations, interchanges, arterial routes, etc. all but ignores the existence of Palestinians.

    This also applies to subsidies, e.g., if you go “serve” as a teacher in Kiryat Shmona you get extra for going to the “confrontation line”, but such bonuses are reserved to Jewish workers and businesses only.

    Similarly, the state also discriminates in the ability to receive funds from abroad. While Jews can receive money from any supporter without any questions asked, the same is obviously not true for Arabs. In fact, if you make the connections to receive foreign money you’re likely to be thrown in jail for “terrorism”. The only (emerging) exception to this rule is the NIF, which is now also starting to get the state’s ire (kind of, although it’s a great fig leaf).

    (c) A third aspect of state discrimination is in the breach of privacy and the level of surveillance and meddling that the “security services” allow themselves when it comes to the Palestinian citizens. Just follow this blog for examples. Do you know that the SHABAK approves any appointment of a teacher in Palestinian communities.

    However the most inhibiting effects for the welfare of the Palestinians in Israel are actually different, IMO.

    1) The existence of the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot but result in lack of normalcy for the Palestinians. Suspicion and from there lack of ability cooperate are mutual and as the non-hegemonic minority the Palestinians will suffer from it more than the Jews.
    2) Outright racism and hatred of the Jews towards the Palestinians. Some of it is reflexive due to the years of violent struggle between the peoples and some of it goes back to the chauvinism of Judaism and the ghetto mentality.
    3) Lack of culture of grooming of the public space in the Arab street. The architecture and public landscape in Arab towns in Israel is not that different from what you’d see in other places in the Levant. Nobody in Syria pays taxes. Nobody in the Levant has ever paid taxes unless they were threatened by bodily harm to do so. It’s possible that this is the case because for the last 500 years this area has been constantly under foreign or despotic rule, so there is reluctance to work with it. Stories of local empowerment such the one Deir Yasin has told us about are very encouraging, and indeed, all communities, Arab or not should move to such a model (I’m an anarchist).

    @Richard,

    I don’t know whether Ben was “sent” here or not, you have more experience with organized hasbara. Still I thought Leonid had a great influence on the civility of this thread. Let’s give people the benefit of a doubt. As an Israeli I can tell you that I was almost blind to these forms of discrimination until I was about 30. You don’t know how easy it is to be non-critical when you’re being brought up on propaganda from day 1.

    Therefore, I was a little hurt when you doubted Ben’s claim that his family had to leave a house behind in Baghdad, my family having suffered the same fate (but in Basra). This is not to say that I agree with Ben on his position on refugees, but at least don’t discount our narrative of history, we are after all the majority of Jews in Israel so if you really believe in a peace solution, it has to be acceptable first and foremost to the Mizrahim and Palestinians, and only later to the Ashkenazi Jews of the Israel and the US who seem transitory in the Levant anyway but are very good in making lots of noise around them.

    1. @ Yossi

      1. thank you for your reply, can you provide any link that actually backs your statement, if you don’t mind I would like to see for myself.
      2. Lets examine your statements RE: Confrontation lines benefits, the following outlines the communities who’s residents receive tax benefits (i googled the term רשימת ישובי קו עימות) according to that list Arab residents receive the same benefits as Jews – it is updated to 2007 http://ozar.mof.gov.il/itc/nikuim2007_year/f_text.pdf
      according to the list, a teacher who reside in a confrontation line community will receive the same tax benefits regardless to the school he teaches at.
      3. Tax, i understand the cultural differences that prevents the Arabs from paying their Taxes – which is their fair share in providing for themselves. i see a great hypocrisy in the fact that someone who’s culture prevent him from paying taxes, the same culture doesn’t prevent him from receiving different benefits: Child Support, Elderly Support etc. You as a resident need to decide if you accept the rules or you don’t and it works on the receiving and giving ends.

      In Short Yossi it’s almost impossible to debate anyone when they state their opinions. You wish to continue the debate please provide some references.

      and last – as for me being sent here by someone, that is the dumbest notion i came across in a long long time, and while Leonid was very civilized and actually engaged in a civilized debate, i am afraid he was very much alone. it’s hard to debate those who don’t really want to listen, who discredit historical facts etc.

      1. Don’t play the victim, Ben. Like most others with your opinions, you come knocking down the doors instead of knocking on them. You apparently haven’t read this blog before you started commenting, and if my memory is correct (and it is) you called Leonid Levin ‘arrogant’. So cut the crap. You’re NOT a victim here, as you aren’t in the Middle East. What historical fact have you ever exposed ? Is that your governmental links ? Or are you talking about your manipulation of the Camp David Accord on another file. Give us a break. If you read the comment thread for the last year, you realize how predictable your procedure is. It might be the institutionalized brainwashing that make you sound like hundreds before.
        You ask Yossi to provide links. I provided links on the educational system. How come you didn’t comment them ?

      2. Hi Ben,

        (a) The maps speaks volume. Why don’t you tell me what you learned from it? Any sixth grader who can read Hebrew would have had some observations. Beyond that Adva Center is always helpful. There you go: http://www.adva.org/UPLOADED/karkaot%20tihnun%20&%20e-shivion.pdf

        Executive summary: even though Arab Palestinians are 18% of the population and even though they are a more agricultural society then the Jews, “their” councils control only 2.5% of the land (within 49 lines). There are severe restrictions on utilization of this land. Arabs are practically excluded from 80% of the land in Israel. Since 48, the Arab population grow by 6 but the area allocated to it has shrunk. In that time period about 700 new Jewish settlements have been created while 0 new Arab settlements have been created and some continue to be unrecognized by the state.

        You can look up information about the Mizrahi cases, look for information about the socio-economical between Kiryat Shmona and the Kibutsim and between Dimona and the Kibutsim of the dead see.

        (b) You’re somewhat correct that there are some Arab villages and towns that receive the confrontation line tax benefit. Thanks for bringing this information to my attention. However there is still no equality and the criteria looks arbitrarily biased to prefer Jews, to me. You see, I suspect you looked in the list and saw some Arab names and satisfied yourself that everything is OK. That’s actually how a decent person as yourself can bring yourself to believing that there is equality. You are happy with superficial appearances. So, the truth is that as Israeli Jews, we’re pretty smart, and we’re also not evil incarnate. We don’t want to be or perceived as Nazis or Afrikers, so sometimes the discrimination is subtle, but not too much… At the end of the day there are those who need to be at the end of the pile and those that need to be at the bottom, but we’ll make concessions such that it’s not so obvious..

        To the point:

        In the north, categories A and B, the criteria seems to be equal for Jews and non-Jews.

        Category C is the strip surrounding the Gaza strip and it’s Arab-rein since 1948… so technically there is no discrimination within that area.

        Categories D,E and F provide higher incentives to Jewish towns and completely omits all of the Bedouin towns and villages in the same geographic area, except for Ara’ara and Tel-Sheva. For example: Rahat is not included.

        Category G includes some other towns, one of which is mixed (Akko) and one Arab (Sheikh-Danoon), but all the other are Jewish. I’m not sure how they decided which ones to include or not, but there are quite a few northern towns included while many Arab towns in the same vicinity weren’t (there are about 35 towns in the list).

        Last benefit is a 5% tax cut to anybody serving in the security service. This discriminates against anybody who doesn’t, and particularly affects the Palestinian minority.

        (3) “Culture” of tax evasion. Look, it’s much more nuanced than what you want it to be. First, yes, many of the Palestinians see Israel and all its branches of government as the enemy and will not collaborate with it. At that point, you’d stop paying national income tax, but then all your dealings are at the black market and you’re on a roll… so the municipalities suffer as well. The best thing they can do is have an unofficial local government. It takes a lot of strength to implement that, especially that you could be almost surely accused of subversion.

        If you view the state as your enemy then yeah you may be cynical enough to milk it for social security benefits and stuff like that. It is cynical. I agree.

        Then, some would truly like to participate in the Israeli state but then they ask themselves what happens with that money… F-35, ,mansions for bloated army generals, settlements and benefits to “confrontation line” settlements which were built on land they were deported from! Then on top of that they have to pay local taxes before they start really seeing something that helps them, but the local leadership is many times corrupt (remember, you have to be a SHABAK stooge in order to move ahead…) and at any rate powerless in the halls of Israeli government (since no government will let them into the government, their electoral weight is essentially reduced to nil).

        What is it that you want to debate exactly? Are you a critical thinker? Ask yourself why is it that 20% of the population are pretty much transparent. Have you had an Arab friend, neighbor, colleague, relative?

        Here’s another exercise for you: try to look for government Web site in the Arabic language. By law they should be available and provide the same functionality that is available in Hebrew. The current state is embarrassing. In the cases I’ve tested just the firsts level pages load and then the links are broken or missing. Look at the boards of the ministry of education for example. Do Arabs represent there 20%? Healthcare? Agriculture? And these are areas where there is a strong Arab presence in the labor market. Of course I’m not expecting an Arab in the ministry of defense…

        Look, Israel cannot be a “normal” democracy even if only because Jews and Arabs are still enemies. It’s not all “our” fault (a great part of it is though…). Just recognize this and do what you can to secure a better future. What are you trying to accomplish?

        1. >> Of course I’m not expecting an Arab in the ministry of defense…

          To avoid confusion, that was sarcasm.

          Also, let’s not get started about East Jerusalem, that’s a whole different level of discrimination that affects 180,000 people.

    2. That was a great comment, Yossi. I hope you’ll stay around, and that we’ll later have the possibility to hear about your family leaving Basra, and under what circumstances.
      I really would like some inside, unbiased, information on the Iraqi Jewish exodus. I know the North African cases better, Algeria being particular, but I’m very interested in Iraq from that point of view, so if you have books or authors to recommend.

      1. Thank you Deir Yassin, I still have a lot to learn myself. Soon I will receive a book by Reuven Snir about our recent history which I heard was pretty unbiased. There is also a lot of stuff on the Web.

        What I have heard directly from my family is that they had very happy lives there, they were well connected, my grandfather knew Nuri Said, and they didn’t want to leave, and they indeed left only when a critical mass of the community left. In my mother’s words “your grandma deiced to leave when, and because, her sister Sabiha decided to leave”, and what made Sabiha leave I don’t know (as you can tell women are the decision makers in this family :-))

        After 48 their lives there became tense. My family tried to flee to Iran with some valuables but was captured and returned home. Eventually they had to leave the country only with a change of clothes and a few personal items and a passport with the stamp “rokha bala raja’a”, exit with no return…

        In Israel they went through hell. But now they feel at home, and are doing better.

        1. That’s why I think it’s problematic to try to argue that the Nakba & what happened to Arab Jews are comparable. There may be elements that can be compared. But overall they are far different.

          1. I don’t know that there are two such major events in human history which are “comparable”. They are always unique with their share of similarities and differences. Not even the stories of different Jewish communities in different Arab countries are identical.

            If you point is to say that on the whole the Palestinian refugees have suffered more and many still don’t have a country to call home than I agree with you (although the last word hasn’t been said yet in this conflict).

          2. Yes, that is precisely what I meant to say. The Nakba was a heinous act of injustice. What Arab Jews suffered was surely unjust & painful, but not based on a calculated, organized policy to deny them their property, rights & expel them forcibly. There were surely injustices in the treatment of Arab Jews, but not on the scale of the Nakba.

          3. I have a project for when I get retired: study the change in the Zionist discourse: it went from a ‘people without land to a land without people’, through ‘the Arabs refused, the Jews accepted the Partition Plan’ (we’re still mostlu there) to ‘maybe hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expulsed but so were the Jews from the Arab world’. And I’ve noticed that the numbers of Jews ‘expulsed’ from the Arab world is mostly exacly the same or even higher.
            This ‘Jews being expulsed from the Arab world’ is a relatively new propaganda trick, and my impression is that every time the New Historians debunk a Zionist myth, they have to come up with a new one.
            And when you hear Mohammed Six, and before that his father, regularly asking the Moroccan Jews to ‘come home’, comparing the two historical processes is intellectual dishonnest, but then political Zionists …

    3. I don’t automatically discount stories such as Ben’s. That’s why I asked him to provide further documentation. Had he done so I would’ve happily weighed it. I note that he has not done so (yet). There was something about this story that didn’t quite pass the smell test for me. Believe me, I’ve been told lots of stories in writing this blog. Some sound credible, some don’t, and some well, I just need to see more documentation before deciding.

      And thank you immensely for the material about treatment of Israeli Palestinians.

    4. Yossi, thanks for sharing your story and your insights into the Israeli realities. Yours is a new perspective for me. Shamefully, I don’t know much about the situation of Mizrahi Israelis. We all come to see the conflict from different angles, based on where we come from, what we think we know, what we read, who we talk too, etc. Richard’s, Deir Yassin’s, Vicky’s, Ben’s, yours and mine are unique perspectives that contribute to a whole picture. Through exchanges like this one, we can hope to get a better insight into the complex realities of the conflict, to better understand each other’s views and adjust our own. Thanks again!

  8. Richard,

    >>> What Arab Jews suffered was surely unjust & painful, but not based on a calculated, organized policy to deny them their property, rights & expel them forcibly.

    Well, at least in some cases this assertion is not true.

    All Jews were expelled from Egypt in 56 and they were very effectively pushed out of Iraq in 51 under the combined pressure of the Israeli and Iraq governments. People who had 2500 year old successful communities don’t just pack and leave, they felt the earth burning under their feet.

    I believe in Yemen the situation was not good either.

    In north Africa and Iran the situation was much better, and good stayed for much longer. But after the 67 war the Moroccan king said that he can’t vouch for the safety of Jewish citizens, can you imagine that… and then a mass exodus followed.

    Anyway I’m not going to waste my time arguing with you whether Mizrahi Jews were forcibly expelled or not. Your agenda is very clear: the Palestinians are infinitely right and the perfect victims while the Jews are the infinitely wrong perpetrators. An injustice wrought on perfectly peaceful Jews by Arabs puts a wrinkle in your dogmatic world view, so you need to minimize it.

    Like most Ashkenazis, whether from left or from the right, you use the Mizrahim as tools. Have fun.

    1. Yossi,

      I agree with you that the circumstances in which Mizrahim left their homes varied significantly from country to country. However, the fact that injustices were perpetrated against Jews of the Arab world should never be used as a reason to deny Palestinians their rights – it wasn’t the Palestinians’ fault that Yemenite Jews were pushed out, and so it makes no sense for people to try and make out that these expulsions somehow undermines the Palestinian cause. It’s also important to note that all of these expulsions took place after the Nakba, not before. It was not fair for Middle Eastern Jews to be punished for Ben Gurion’s crime – they had as little to do with him as Palestinians have to do with violent anti-Jewish Yemenis – but the injustice was clearly a reaction to the Nakba. An unjust and evil reaction, yes. But that’s still not the same as the rest of the Yemeni population waking up and deciding that Yemen is the exclusive property of an exclusive group of people, and that anybody not belonging to that group (even if they are indigenous) must be expelled.

      I hope that one day Mizrahim in Israel will be able to return to their countries of origin if they want to go back. The Middle East would be richer for it.

    2. @ Yossi)

      Did you already loose your patience ?

      Here’s book critique that Avi Shlaim, another Iraqi Jew, made of a much criticized book by Gilbert:
      http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/shlaim-im-not-a-refugee-my-family-left-iraq-because-we-felt-insecure-after-zionists-wiped-palestine-off-the-map.html

      And an short clip from an absolutely wonderful film by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan, “Route 181”. It’s on the net in Hebrew with Italian subtitles. Here with French subtitles, a Tunisian and a Moroccan Jew talking about the ‘homeland’. I’m always very moved by this clip, saying to myself “What a waste”:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqzgBHTB1nw

      I don’t know how far you are in your ‘search for the truth’, but in case you don’t know Ella Shohat and her book on “Zionism from the standpoint of its Jewish victims”, it’s interesting. As the whole movement she belongs to.

      1. Did you already loose your patience ?

        I’m hoping that Yossi was just having a bad day because normally he is more reasonable than he was in that comment. I’ve never known him to be as unfair as that comment was.

    3. You yrself said that Israel was involved in the exodus of Jews from Iraq. That in itself marks this as entirely diff. than the Nakbah.

      I’m not saying injustices were NOT committed & that those injustices should at some point be rectified or compensated in some way. I’m only saying the level of suffering & the level of physical violence & coercion was much more severe in the Nakbah.

      the Palestinians are infinitely right and the perfect victims while the Jews are the infinitely wrong perpetrators. An injustice wrought on perfectly peaceful Jews by Arabs puts a wrinkle in your dogmatic world view, so you need to minimize it.

      For someone who is as intelligent as you are this is not only unfair, it directly contradicts what I’ve written & I find it offensive. I do not allow those on my political right to mischaracterize my views nor will I allow you to do so. It is not my fault that you are so defensive that you cannot fairly paraphrase my real views. The problem, my friend, is yours, not mine.

      I’m not using anyone as a tool & the fact that you drag this non sequitur into the argument again indicates that you have personal demons & interests to work out that have nothing to do with me.

      1. Thank you Leonid. That was a great article. 972mag definitely is worth following. There is also the “Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition”, though I’ve heard it’s very marginal. I’m convinced that the Jewish- Palestinian/Arab reconciliation and coexistence passes through the Mizrahim and the Sepharic Jews. A new al-Andalus … at least the myth. I know it wasn’t all that perfect.

        1. Well, Deir Yassin, do not discount the Ashkenazim. We may also have something good to contribute in the end 🙂

  9. Richard,

    Okay, you know what, maybe I jumped to conclusions too quickly. As a person needs to be considered innocent until proven guilty, I should give you the same benefit of doubt and should not have accused you of the particular agenda that I have mentioned.

    But, you are, as a matter of fact, a holocaust denier. Now let’s not talk at all about the Palestinian Nakba. This is ancillary to the characterization of the holocaust of the Jews of the Arab countries. The Palestinian Nakba is, of course, very correlated historically to what happened to the Jews in Arab country, and is a holocaust in its own right, but on that we probably agree anyway. My bone of contention with you is that you deny the holocaust of Mizrahi Jews. Now, as I said, I have erred on attributing this denial to a particular agenda, and I was wrong to do that. Your denial could stem from other sources, such as, lack of knowledge, or an unconscious bias. All of these other possible reasons for your denial could be addressed if you clear you mind and examine the evidence vs. what you said.

    Particularly you said:

    >>> What Arab Jews suffered was surely unjust & painful, but not based on a calculated, organized policy to deny them their property, rights & expel them forcibly.

    This is factually false as an assertion can be false. The Jews of Arab countries were subjected to government-encouraged and in many cases government-mandated acts of genocide, severe discrimination, dehumanization, intimidation, expulsion, confiscation of property and denial of citizenship. As a result of these policies the entire Arab world is now practically Judenrein. Baghdad used to be, like Warsaw, half-Jewish, with a community that leaved there for 2,700 years. Like Warsaw, getting the Jews out required extreme brutality.

    Now, I will be the first to agree that the Ashkenazi Zionists had their share in encouraging these crimes. I will also not argue with you that unlike the Dalet plan, these acts were more reactionary to events in Palestine—there were little tensions before Zionism between Jews and Muslims. But, once the Arab governments went on the anti-Jewish band-wagon, they went all out and failed to provide any sort of protection to their citizens. It is important to remember that the Jews were citizens of these respective independent countries when crimes were committed against them. Instead of getting protection from the state, the state turned on them.

    The question is Richard, are you going to drag me into a debate where I have to prove my assertions about government-decreed genocide, expulsion and confiscation of property etc. or are you going to do your homework yourself and then maybe start acknowledging the magnitude of the crimes committed against the Jews of Arab counties? Why are they cheap change for you?

    The reason I’m asking is because like I said, I have no desire to have this type of argument. If you deny this holocaust because of honest ignorance about the subject matter, then fine, go and learn about it. But if your denial is rooted somewhere else then that’s not a problem I’d like to deal with.

    I’m sorry it has come down to that. You know I appreciate a lot of what you do. But I will not tolerate your minimization of the ordeal of my people. This is of course your site and you call the shots, so… it’s up to you to decide how to react to this. If you find my position untenable then we’ll just have to part ways for good (just stating the obvious).

    1. I grow more and more disappointed in you, Yossi. I thought I knew you. But I guess I didn’t. Calling what happened to Arab Jews a “Holocaust” is a vast distortion & misuse of the term. 6-million European Jews died in a real Holocaust. Are you claiming the suffering was anywhere near that for Arab Jews? Are you seriously claiming there were Eichmanns among Arab leaders working to exterminate the Jews among them? If you’re not saying this, then you’ve committed an egregious act of historical obfuscation. Calling me a Holocaust denier sounds snappy. You should circulate that among the bloggers of the Israel right. They’ll love it and take up your hue and cry as a cugdel against me.

      I’m not denying the suffering of Arab Jews. But to say it was anything like that of the European Holocaust simply beggars belief. I simply can’t take you seriously in any way and that grieves me because before this I’ve known you to be a careful, balanced person. I don’t know what’s happened. But I feel truly sad.

      The Palestinian Nakba is, of course, very correlated historically to what happened to the Jews in Arab country, and is a holocaust in its own right, but on that we probably agree anyway.

      No, I’m afraid you don’t understand my views at all. “Holocaust” is a word I don’t use in correlation with any other historical event. I don’t think the Nakba was a Holocaust, nor do I think the suffering of Arab Jews was one. The Nakba of course is a seminal event in Palestinian history, an event of enormous suffering, one seared in the consciousness of all Palestinians. It is the original sin of Israel, one that will take much expiation to remove.

      But was it a “Holocuast?” No. It wasn’t. Many Palestinians died during the Nakba. But the main point of Nakba was to expell them, to dispossess them. This was ethnic cleansing. But ethnic cleansing is different than what the Nazis did to Europe’s Jews.

      To call what happened to Arab Jews “genocide” simply has no basis in fact. Do you even understand what genocide is? Have you looked up the definition of the term? The Arab world is Judenrein? Since when? You may argue that the the wonderful vibrant Jewish communities of the Arab world are mere remnants of their former selves. But to use such a prejudicial term as “Judenrein” turns you into a propagandist rather than someone interested in discussing the historical record. Again, it’s a dramatic catchy term which is devoid of historical truth or meaning. There are still Jews in the Arab world. If Israel ever solved its conflict with the Arab world there could be even more than there are there now. But to claim Jews have been eradicated completely fr the Arab world is simply false.

      I find it extraordinary that you argue that while Israel did collude directly or indirectly in acts of Arab ethnic cleansing of Jewish populations, the primary sin belongs to the Arab regimes that refused to protect their Jews. Of course the latter deserve blame. But in the face of Israeli approval of their actions (whether tacit or explicit) it’s hard to blame Arab nations alone for these crimes.

      I am deeply offended that you would grandstand and lie about my views by claiming that Arab Jews are “cheap change” for me. I really think this debate is over. It is your rheotric which is cheap and tawdry. You deliberately mischaracterize my views and do so in ways that are unfair, and which do violence to me and my reputation. I simply won’t stand for it. Frankly, I’ve only once banned here someone I knew personally & I’m loathe to do it in your case. You are on very thin ground. If you continue with such lines of arguments in future comments your privileges may be revoked.

      The reason I’m asking is because like I said, I have no desire to have this type of argument.

      You’ve just written hundreds of words in multiple comments advancing an argument & yet have the chutzpah to claim you “have no desire” to have the argument. Do you have any sense of how ridiculous you appear in saying such a thing? Anyone can see that this is utter foolishness.

      As for your appreciating what I do, forget about it. Your alleged appreciation no longer has any value or meaning to me. I don’t care what you will or won’t tolerate. You don’t speak in such terms to me here.

      I’ve known you, though not well, & you never once spoke of your Mizrahi background, nor in yr previous comments here. Now the Mizrahi become “my people.” How convenient. I don’t doubt that you are Mizrahi or that the suffering of Arab Jews is important to you. But I find it curious that amid scores of e mail messages and a few lunches and scores of comments here, the subject never came up. And now it does.

      As for parting ways, I think that was your doing and you’ve done it.

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