Today, there was a massive, tragic accident in the Israeli Negev. Eight Bedouin women were killed in a bus crash with oversized agricultural vehicles. They had been returning from a pilgrimage to the Al Aqsa mosque. Unfortunately, Israeli mainstream media has concealed the most important, and shocking aspects of this tragedy.
There is an Israeli police unit (Yoav) whose mission is to expel Negev Bedouin from their native villages. The ultimate goal is, as in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, to Judaize the thinly settled Negev with new Jewish communities modeled after settlements. Part of their responsibility is to raze villages whose residents return after they’ve been expelled. Another aspect is to destroy the ability for the Bedouin to earn a livelihood from their traditional grazing of livestock on open land. The police do this by plowing under such fields which Bedouin have planted with grain, with huge excavators.
Activist Michael Kaminer wrote on his Facebook page:
Tractors of Death
What they never told you on today’s newscast. The Original Sin. Israeli police brought a dangerous tractor trailer carrying tractors onto a road on which it was forbidden them to travel. Their intent was to plow up the harvest and fields of the Bedouin in order to damage their livelihood. They were attempting to advance the racist Prawer Plan and prevent the Bedouin from working their fields.
Two police vehicles accompanied the trailers, one before and another behind. The racist Yoav police unit whose purpose is to take all measures necessary to restrict the Bedouin, is guilty for this murder and many other additional crimes over the years against them.
This picture shows the tractors after the fatal accident, and after they’d plowed up the grain field today…You can see on the arms of the tractors fragments of the window shades of the bus which they struck killing the victims.
Two such excavators were traveling on a road for which they had no permit (because they were oversized). In doing so, they struck the bus and sliced it completely down one side, killed eight riders and injuring 20 more. This is a micro-tragedy due to the deaths of these women, but a macro-tragedy in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Bedouin from their ancestral lands.
The Hadash Party posted today on its Facebook page that they’ve long complained to transportation officials about the extreme danger of this road, on which there have been 37 deaths and 1,400 injuries in the past few years. The government has dragged its feet and this tragedy is the result. Why would authorities want to spend money on a highway largely serving “Arabs” and the “periphery” (the Israeli term for “the sticks”)?
Here are some ‘redolent’ comments from Israelis on the same page:
[Dead] Arabs. It’s all good.
Mabrouk.
Thank God no Jews were hurt.
May there be many more such accidents in Israel!
Not to worry, they’re Arabs.
I don’t understand. They’re Arabs? What’s the big deal? On to the next story…
So the Muslim women who curse Jews on the Temple Mount got what they deserved. Allah is indeed Great!
It’s all right. They’re Bedouin. Too bad they didn’t get the entire bus.
Now I’d like to offer some commentary directed at the negligent fools of this police unit who murdered these poor women. Though their unit is called “Yoav,” (יואב) it should really be called “Ahab” (אחאב). It was King Ahab who was so enamored of the vineyard of his neighbor that he had him killed in order to inherit his land. In 1 Kings, Elijah denounces Ahab: “Have you first murdered [Naboth] and stolen his land as well?” The historical record is an apt reflection on today’s horrid news: the police first steal the Bedouins lands and now they’ve even stolen their lives in an act of flagrant negligence.
Those of you following the plight of the Bedouin may’ve thought that the Israeli government had scraped the controversial Prawer Plan to relocate 40,000 indigenous residents from their villages to slum towns like Rahat, which are meant to concentrate the Bedouin in a more western, urban environment, i.e. to civilize them. In reality, Rahat has few jobs, few services, little infrastructure and inhabitants have turned to crime, drugs and other avenues to eke out a living. Though temporarily scrapped, as the settlements have shown, lack of an official plan or authorization has never stopped a determined Israeli ethnic cleanser from pursuing plans to rid the Negev of non-Jews.
This accident and Israel’s treatment of the Bedouin is a schandeh: a deep and shameful national disgrace.
A curious question. Why is the plow part in a vertical position in the topmost picture, but in a horizontal position in the lower picture? In the topmost picture, the plow looks dangerous, in the lower picture, it looks harmless.
Did someone fail to put the plow in the proper, horizontal, position before transportation? Did the plow shift while it was being transported (with the tractor)? Would the police have been responsible for failing to put the plow in it’s proper position for transportation or was the contractor responsible? Should we be calling people murderers at this point?
@krausen – I’m not an expert but I’m pretty sure these are two different models. The one you see vertical is newer machinery which is much wider and thus can plow more efficiently and transport more efficiently in the vertical position. The one involved in the accident is an older model where it can just be lifted but not tilted.
@RS – What is your proof for any of these allegations? What connects the tractor or the plow to the police? I read through Michael’s comments on his Facebook page but except of repeating it again and again, he doesn’t show anything to support his claim.
@Ariel
I see what your saying, but Michael Kaminer says, “This picture shows the tractors after the fatal accident..”, with apparent reference to lower picture and the lower picture is the only picture that appears on his Facebook account. It seems as if Kaminer has misidentified the tractors (and plows), which is odd, since he offers details of the accident that no one in the media has provided.
It is defiantly NOT the same tractor. The one with the vertical plow has pairs of back wheels vs the one from accident which have singles.
Ariel: “The one with the vertical plow has pairs of back wheels vs the one from accident which have singles.”
That would be the tractor that is leading the teeny-tiny convoy.
What about the tractor that is just behind it, and partially obscured by the one that you are obsessing over?
Or could it be that you have gone over that photo with a magnifying glass and STILL don’t realize there are two tractors there?
@Yeah, Right – this whole conversation is not really relevant for anything. Who cares if these are the same tractors or not, right? Regardless, the truck carrying the tractors was on it way away from the area. Also, both tractors in the picture has the vertical type on equipment, not to mention the damage to the plow seems to be beyond repair.
There in nothing in the second picture to connect it with the Bedouin and could have been taken anywhere in the Negev or even in another country.
Too funny….
Ariel (earlier): “I’m not an expert but I’m pretty sure these are two different models.”
Ariel (doubling-down): “It is defiantly NOT the same tractor. The one with the vertical plow has pairs of back wheels vs the one from accident which have singles.”
I then point out that he was looking at the wrong tractor, presumably because he hasn’t notice that there are TWO tractors in that photo.
Ariel (now): “this whole conversation is not really relevant for anything. Who cares if these are the same tractors or not, right?”
Riiiiiiiiight.
So if you didn’t care about that then why did you spend two posts minutely dissecting the identity of that tractor?
Honestly, why not just admit that your entire argument just blew up in your face?
@yeah, right – argument? About what? What difference does it make where did the picture was taken?
Ariel: “What difference does it make where did the picture was taken?”
[chortle]
When an apologist for the IDF (you know, someone like Ariel) wants to wade into some situation where The IDF Has Left A Trail Of Dead Bodies Behind It then they have a play-book that they always use.
And that play-book stresses the need to obsess about some unimportant minutiae, all the better to drag the discussion into an endless and pointless argument about something that is really quite inconsequential.
And they’ll keep doing that until they can finally shout their triumphant “PALLLLLLLYWOOD!” then sit back hi-fiving each other because they’ve “proved” that this was all just a fabrication.
Unless, of course, their attempt to fixate on some minutiae causes them to end up with egg on their face, as just happened to Ariel.
At which point they’ll wipe that egg off their face even all they whine something along the lines of, oh, say, “What difference does it make where did the picture was taken?”
Beyond Pathetic.
@Yeah, Right – seems like you learnt from the best. Just scream ‘Hasbaridiot’ and all your problems will disappear.
Instead of calling me names, can you explain what difference does it make whether if this was taken on the way to plant cherry-tomatoes or demolish illegal Bedouin field (according to Israeli law)?
Can you see anywhere a ‘trail of blood’ b/c all I can see is clear sky, sun and a lot of dust.
Leave Pallywood arguments to cases like Bitunia where it was proven to be authentic or the reuse of pictures from any conflict around the world where it is fake.
@ Ariel: The word “Pallywood” is offensive, racist and forbidden here. Don’t use it here again. And yes, in case you or anyone asks there are words used by the other side that are forbidden as well.
@Richard – I am not sure why you direct this comment to me. Yeah, Right is the one to bring it up.
@ krausen: Again, read carefully all the links I offer in my post. You’ll see that Kaminer’s information comes from an eyewitness, someone living in Al Araqib who took the photograph and knows how the accident unfolded. The link to this is in my post, which you clearly neglected.
Yeah. I know. Kaminer credits an Arab guy for the pic, but since I don’t understand Arabic I don’t know what the photographer’s Facebook account says about the pic or the road accident.
Ha’aretz confirm it was with Yoav police but says the load wasn’t oversized.
@ krausen: Readers take note of the approach adopted by krausen and Ariel here in the thread. They ignore the major arguments of the post and focus their attention on minute, barely relevant data regarding the authenticity of the photographs, the equipment, its supposed positioning, etc. All the while they abscond from the moral & political issues involved. This is a perfect lesson in the “art” of hasbara!
@Richard “They ignore the major arguments of the post” – usually you don’t like to rehearse the same arguments.
Richard : They are like “Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals”
Hasbaridiot: “This is totally different – we know that for at least 4,000 years people had ownership on the land (Abraham in Hebron) but almost no Nomadic Bedouins have any papers to prove ownership. Even if Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals had a concept of land ownership, it was completely different then how Europeans thought of it”.
Richard: This is “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Bedouin from their ancestral lands”
Hasbaridiot: ancestral lands??? What make it their ancestral lands? They have never purchased it and both Brits and Ottomans didn’t recognize it as theirs (if they ever had).
Richard: This is “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Bedouin from their ancestral lands”
Hasbaridiot: Grazing of livestock on open land doesn’t entitle anyone to ownership even after generations.
Richard: This is “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Bedouin from their ancestral lands”
etc’ etc’
Am I missing something?
Just to clarify, this comment is specifically about the Bedouin, nomadic culture. Many Palestinians have rightful ownership of houses and land.
@ Ariel: Are you missing something? Try everything. Do you know anything about nomadic tribes or indigenous peoples. Do you think such peoples keep meticulous records? Do you think they maintain tribal archives of land sales? That they maintain a conventional capitalist economic structure involving buying & selling of land and maintenance of deeds of sale and ownership?
As for whether Abraham had a deed of sale 4,000 years ago…ask me how relevant that is to anything today? Not at all.
As for “ancestral lands” there is a western concept of ownership by continuous use. This doesn’t require a deed of sale. The Bedouin have been grazing this land for generations, if not centuries. Therefore they have even more right to it than you or I.
Wrong. Besides which, I don’t think the Bedouin care about ownership. That’s your hang-up. They want and deserve and have legal right to the USE of the land. You will have to get used to this concept, much as it disturbs your European colonialist view of things.
We’ve already been over this same concept of nomadic peoples. I detest repeating myself. And you’ve made me do it. Don’t do it again.
@Richard
“Besides which, I don’t think the Bedouin care about ownership.”
Wrong. Bedouin law recognizes individual ownership of land.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=wta3vIxJiZoC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=clinton+bailey+bedouin+slavery&source=bl&ots=daxLAsl6fq&sig=yHw9NraRHf6Nps11NXctFutp_fY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lyXTVLL9OuqwsASwm4LICQ&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=land%20sell&f=false
But Bedouin do not recognize national ownership of land nor does the Israeli state recognize Bedouin forms of ownership.
@Richard – “They ignore the major arguments of the post and focus their attention on minute” and “We’ve already been over this same concept of nomadic peoples” – So what should I comment on?
@ Ariel: Try focusing on the real substance of the post instead of whether a tractor is the model that destroyed the bus.
No. Richard.
I’ve ignored the major argument, that ‘the police murdered these women’, because I don’t have the facts.
Ariel and I found inconsistencies with a photo which purports to show the tractors involved in the accident. You and Kaminer have rushed to judgment and ignored inconsistencies in the reporting of the accident.
How come when the government evicts and demolishes a neighborhood in South Tel Aviv, it’s ‘urban renewal’, but when the government evicts and demolishes Negev Bedouin, it’s ‘ethnic cleansing’?
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Givat-Amal-houses-leveled-as-8-families-evicted-from-north-Tel-Aviv-shanytown-386080
That was an interesting link to the ‘urban renewal project’ in South Tel Aviv.
I would like to hear your comment on this observation by one of the people involved:
One resident, David Lahiani, threw his hands up and said the state had written off the people who called the community home. “This was our home and now they’re throwing us out like Arabs.”
He noticed something about Israeli society that you seem blind to, but he also seems to think he deserves different treatment because he is not ‘ Arab’.
Very interesting indeed. Comment?
The ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of Palestine is the Zionist national project, has been from before 1948 and remains so today. It was the only way to ensure a Jewish majority then and now. It’s the Prawer Plan, the systematic undermining of the Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem, the destruction of Palestinian hamlets for ‘military training’, settler assaults on Palestinian agriculture, the demolition of Palestinian homes, etc etc.
It is the committed hasbarist’s role to deny this, in the face of overwhelming evidence.
@stretch
What are you stretching? The truth or something more personal?
Completely nonsensical comment. Please explain.
BTW your name means ‘scum on top of beer’. Shall we discuss that? Is that a relevant topic, you think?
Or is that too ‘personal’?
Please just go away if this is the level of your contributions here. This is really bad hasbara.
Foam, not scum.
Ah, I guess that was too personal.
@krausen: foam or scum, it’s in the eye of the beholder!
Tractors are evil instruments in Israeli hands (http://whoprofits.org/bulldozers). One thinks of the deliberate provocations with armoured tractors in the no-man’s land between Israel and Syria preceding the 1967 war (testimony of Dayan, testimony of UN armistice officer Jan Mühren), the murder of Rachel Corrie, (http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/rachel-corrie-verdict-highlights-impunity-israeli-military-2012-08-28), the countless house demolitions, sometimes leading to extra-judicial killings, and now the ethnic cleansing of the Negev.
It is well known that the Presbyterian Church, after a decade long attempt by people with a conscience to get it to disinvest from Caterpillar, among others, in June last year finally decided to do so.
Arie. You forget how Arab terrorists have made bulldozers their lethal weapon of choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBAHFqIWgzI
http://www.timesofisrael.com/attempted-tractor-terror-attack-in-jerusalem/
Infantile comment. Once more: Your level of hasbara is too low. It is counterproductive here. Go somewhere else if you want to be effective.
@krausen – it is with much sorrow that I say – Elisabeth is actually right. Some of your comments have very little to do with the subject. What does Kiryat Amal of NORTH Tel-Aviv have to do with this? or the fact some Palestinians have used in the past tractors to terrorize the streets on Jerusalem?
This article is actually pretty balanced and stating real facts. RS didn’t even put too much of that secret sauce of his.
@Ariel
My comments are on point. Richard called the demolition and eviction of a small minority of Negev Bedouin ‘ethnic cleansing’. In truth, these Bedouin are no different from the ‘holdouts’ from Givat Amal, whose Tel Aviv shantytown is being bulldozed same as the illegal Bedouin shantytowns are being bulldozed in the Negev.
Arie said, ‘Tractors are evil instruments in Israeli hands’ and I responded with instances of Arabs using tractors in an evil manner.
How can I be ‘off subject’ when I’m responding directly to Richard and Arie’s comments?
How is Richard’s article ‘well balanced’ when he uses a traffic accident as reason to call the police ‘murderers’?
Did Richard or Michael Kaminer mention anywhere that this particular highway is very dangerous and has claimed something like 10 lives in the past year? Did the police murder these accident victims as well?
@ krausen: A “small minority” of Bedouin are to be evicted? 40,000 are a small minority? What planet do you live on?
First, I believe that the poor are being driven out of Tel Aviv’s poor neighborhoods for the sake of developers gentrifying. Those evicted are being treated brutally & cruelly. THis especially happens in Palestinian neighborhoods in Jaffo. But in Jewish neighborhoods as well.
Nevertheless, the situation is entirely different in the Negev. The Bedouin are indigenous. Their presence not only predates the State itself, but predates the arrival of most Israeli Jews. That entitles them to specific indigenous rights.
Your insistence on equating an act of sheer negligent homicide by Israeli police destroying Bedouin land to a terror attack is objectionable. I haven’t decided whether to moderate you yet because of this, but I’m leaning toward that. If you don’t understand how obnoxious that is, then someone will have to teach you.
As for the highway, did you mention that Hadash has complained multiple times to State authorities about the dangers of this road and the State did nothing about it, largely because it’s a road serving “Arabs” & the periphery?? So yes, if officials have been apprised of deadly danger and ignore it then it is negligent homicide at least and murder at worst.
@krausen – I completely disagree with the Givat Amal example as it is Jews vs Jews and replying to Arie Brand is useless.
Usually Richard has much bigger holes in his articles which are fun to highlight. This time, it is pretty accurate. If you will be disturbed every time he write murdered, you will get a hard attack soon. You can use the “Israel-Blackwash Eng-Eng dictionary” which will help you understand some of the language used.
@ Ariel: This may be one of those few times of the month or year we agree on something. BTW, it isn’t “secret sauce,” but it is patented!
@ Richard
There are presently a quarter of a million Bedouin living in Israel, so yes, 30,000 Bedouin is ‘a small minority.
The claim of ‘indigenous rights’ by the plaintiff’s in the al Uqbi case is dubious. Why?
Because the plaintiff, Al-Uqbi tribe, migrated to the Negev when there was already Ottoman rule in the area. A genuine ‘indigenous rights’ claim should come from a minority group which had been en situ before the arrival of a foreign power.
Arie said, “Tractors are evil instruments in Israeli hands..”,and I provided instances where tractors were evil instruments in Arab hands.
Moderate me for what? Mirroring Arie?
@ krausen: no sorry. One in six Bedouin ethnically cleansed is not a “very small minority. It is a very significant minority. Not to mention that ethnic cleansing is a violation of international law whether it’s 500 or 40,000. Your argument rule has already been used here before & I detest hasbara regurgitation. I don’t care whether the Bedouin came to the Negev with Adam or Lawrence of Arabia. They are indigenous & predate you. So they have prior rights of possession.
@Richard
“habara regurgitation”?
Sorry pal, but the plaintiff’s own expert in the al Aqbi case, Prof. Oren Yiftachel’s, opined that the Al-Uqbi tribe came to the Negev around 200 years ago.
And BTW, I didn’t say “very small minority”, I said “small minority”.
“They are indigenous and pre-date you”
So pray, Richard, tell us which definiton of ‘indigenous peoples’ are you relying on?
I had thought that the final version of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007, did not include a definition of an indigenous people (mainly because the relevant U.N. bodies were unable to agree on the matter).
See. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, G.A. Res. 61/295, U.N. doc. A/RES/61/295, Sept. 13, 2007.
@ krausen: Perfect hasbara: mystify, obscure & confuse by resorting to minutiae. Everyone here knows what an indigenous person is. Everyone here knows the Bedouin are indigenous. It’s not something I need to prove using legal minutiae or hocus pocus. It isn’t something I need to consult learned tomes. Nor will I. I will not get dragged into such stupid, inane discussion. You are done in this thread. Move on.
” You are done in this thread. Move on ”
Argumentum ad baculum.
@ krausen: You’re already moderated. The next step is banning. That’s Rule 16.b in Intergovernmental Hasbara Management Directive vol. XIV no. 13. You can look it up!
from The Age newspaper, 5 November 2011: “Bedouin face bulldozers as Israel reshapes the desert” (headline)
“Israel’s long-term goal of evicting between 30,000 and 40,000 indigenous Bedouin from their lands in the Negev in order to create new Jewish settlements was cemented on September 11 with the adoption of the Prawer Plan.” (from the article)
from The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 Dec 2011: “Bedouin dislodged by Israeli expansion” (headline) “About 20 Bedouin communities between Jerusalem and Jericho are to be forcibly relocated from the land on which they have lived for 60 years under an Israeli plan to expand a Jewish settlement.”
“The relocation plan is the first phase of a longer-term program to remove about 27,000 Bedouin Arabs from “Area C”, the 62 per cent of the West Bank under Israeli military control.”
“The area on which the Jahalin live has been designated by Israel for the expansion of Ma’ale Adumim.”
This appears to me, as negligent homicide. The Israeli Department of transportation, police, and government officials are responsible for the death of these women, as far as I am concerned.
As I see it, when media, withhold available information, publish statements by institutions-agencies, facts and circumstances, or do not present events, comprehensively, cause, effect, accountability is left ‘blowing in the wind” ( for lack of an adequate expression, right now).
Hats off to all, working to get answers, present information and facts, expose corruption, lies, propaganda or cover ups.
The parties, responsible for this horrible tragedy and the deaths of these 8 Bedouin women, must be held to account.
Thank you, Richard.
More like, reckless homicide.