Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat on Thursday rejected municipal recommendations and cut funding for a toddler health-care center in East Jerusalem, while approving aid to a similar center in a Jewish neighborhood.
The funds would have gone to opening a branch of the "Drop of Milk" (Tipat Halav) program, which provides prenatal and toddler health-care services in Silwan, an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
Last year, authorities from the Jerusalem municipal offices recommended to the mayor to open the aid center in Silwan, which would service around 100,000 residents.
Authorities also recommended opening a similar center in a Jewish neighborhood that is home to around 7,000 residents.
During discussions on the 2010 budget, Barkat decided to cut the aid that would open the center in Silwan while simultaneously approving the aid to open the same center in a Jewish neighborhood - a move that outraged residents of Silwan.
"I don't understand why there is a 'Drop of Milk' center in the mayor's neighborhood while there is none in ours?" asked Silwan resident Fakhri Abu Diab. "Why does he deserve one and we don't? Are my children different from his children?
"Soon, Hamas will open a 'Drop of Milk' center and we will go there," Abu Diab added.
Jerusalem city councilwoman Laura Wharton condemned the decision.
"This decision is caused by discrimination against the Arab population and I hope that we will succeed to reverse it," Wharton said.
As opposed to most of Israel, the 'Drop of Milk' program in Jerusalem is under municipal authority.
Like other health services in Jerusalem, including toddler care, there is a wide gap in services provided to residents in East and West Jerusalem.
Other Jerusalem areas under public jurisdiction contain a total of 25 'Drop of Milk' centers, while East Jerusalem, with its 250,000 residents, is home to just four Drop of Milk centers.
Many residents of East Jerusalem have difficulty taking their children long distances in order to receive care. This results in many children not receiving vaccinations as well as a delay in services for sick children living in East Jerusalem.
In response, the Jerusalem municipality said that they are working to improve services provided to the residents of Silwan and they still intend to build a 'Drop of Milk' center in the Arab neighborhood in the future.
Source:
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Rabbis versus Christmas: Religious rivalry in Jerusalem benefits no one
The 'Lobby for Jewish Values' is trying to exorcise Yuletide festivities from the streets of Jerusalem.
On the streets of Jerusalem, the religious war on Christmas is on. Last week, the "Lobby for Jewish Values" started handing out fliers condemning the holiday and inciting the public to boycott restaurants and hotels that sell or put up Christmas trees and other "foolish" Christian symbols.
Backed by rabbis, and with the self-righteous air of the American Christian right, lobby chairman Ofer Cohen told the Israeli media that he had considered publishing a list of businesses bold enough to put up Christmas decorations, call for a boycott against them, and - with a little help from Jerusalem Rabbinate - revoke the kashrut certificates of said hotels and restaurants.
According to the Israeli media, the fliers distributed by the Lobby for Jewish Values contain the following call to arms:
"The people of Israel have given their soul over the years in order to maintain the values of the Torah of Israel and the Jewish identity. You should also continue to follow this path of the Jewish people's tradition and not give in to the clownish atmosphere of the end of the civil year. And certainly not help those businesses that sell or put up the foolish symbols of Christianity."
It's unclear exactly what is considered "foolish symbols of Christianity," and, on top of that, how displaying them can result in withdrawal of the certificate confirming you adhere to Jewish dietary laws.
Is it really necessary for rabbis and Jewish lobbies to issue a naughty list and play the kashrut card? Is it not enough to encourage people to avoid hostelries with Christmas displays, or are brightly lit Christmas trees invisible to Jewish eyes?
The Lobby for Jewish Values and the Jerusalem Rabbinate say that Christmas - the birth of Jesus - is just not kosher. That rules out the manger scene and all things nativity. But what about the traditional Christmas tree - a pagan ritual interpreted by fundamentalist Christians as a heathen practice and thus forbidden? Should pine trees be banned in Israel? What about Santa Claus and his elves? And what if the Christmas tree has been certified kosher?
In Israel, where there is no division of synagogue and state, religion - and religious muscle - rules, but to what end? Samuel J. Scott, an American former journalist now working at the Refuah Institute in Jerusalem raises an important question.
"The secular, Westernized celebration of the holiday season - and the rabbinical efforts to clamp down on the phenomenon - is yet another example of one of the central paradoxes facing Israel," he writes.
"The Jewish state wants to be two things: a Jewish state and a free, democratic state. But what is the solution when these competing priorities conflict? If all Israelis start celebrating Christmas (either as Christians or as secularized revelers), then it will arguably no longer be a Jewish state. If the government bans everyone from having anything to do with the holiday, then it will no longer be a free state."
Whether the Jewish state becomes a nation of Christmas revellers or not, today's battle is being waged in Jerusalem, a city with a Christian population of two percent, and dropping. This is not a boycott of Christian symbolism, but of the Jews that cater to the tens of thousands of Christian tourists who amass in the Holy Land every December.
The boycott advocates would do well to remember that if Christian cash is not welcome in Jerusalem, it's greeted with open arms in Bethlehem.
Source:
On the streets of Jerusalem, the religious war on Christmas is on. Last week, the "Lobby for Jewish Values" started handing out fliers condemning the holiday and inciting the public to boycott restaurants and hotels that sell or put up Christmas trees and other "foolish" Christian symbols.
Backed by rabbis, and with the self-righteous air of the American Christian right, lobby chairman Ofer Cohen told the Israeli media that he had considered publishing a list of businesses bold enough to put up Christmas decorations, call for a boycott against them, and - with a little help from Jerusalem Rabbinate - revoke the kashrut certificates of said hotels and restaurants.
According to the Israeli media, the fliers distributed by the Lobby for Jewish Values contain the following call to arms:
"The people of Israel have given their soul over the years in order to maintain the values of the Torah of Israel and the Jewish identity. You should also continue to follow this path of the Jewish people's tradition and not give in to the clownish atmosphere of the end of the civil year. And certainly not help those businesses that sell or put up the foolish symbols of Christianity."
It's unclear exactly what is considered "foolish symbols of Christianity," and, on top of that, how displaying them can result in withdrawal of the certificate confirming you adhere to Jewish dietary laws.
Is it really necessary for rabbis and Jewish lobbies to issue a naughty list and play the kashrut card? Is it not enough to encourage people to avoid hostelries with Christmas displays, or are brightly lit Christmas trees invisible to Jewish eyes?
The Lobby for Jewish Values and the Jerusalem Rabbinate say that Christmas - the birth of Jesus - is just not kosher. That rules out the manger scene and all things nativity. But what about the traditional Christmas tree - a pagan ritual interpreted by fundamentalist Christians as a heathen practice and thus forbidden? Should pine trees be banned in Israel? What about Santa Claus and his elves? And what if the Christmas tree has been certified kosher?
In Israel, where there is no division of synagogue and state, religion - and religious muscle - rules, but to what end? Samuel J. Scott, an American former journalist now working at the Refuah Institute in Jerusalem raises an important question.
"The secular, Westernized celebration of the holiday season - and the rabbinical efforts to clamp down on the phenomenon - is yet another example of one of the central paradoxes facing Israel," he writes.
"The Jewish state wants to be two things: a Jewish state and a free, democratic state. But what is the solution when these competing priorities conflict? If all Israelis start celebrating Christmas (either as Christians or as secularized revelers), then it will arguably no longer be a Jewish state. If the government bans everyone from having anything to do with the holiday, then it will no longer be a free state."
Whether the Jewish state becomes a nation of Christmas revellers or not, today's battle is being waged in Jerusalem, a city with a Christian population of two percent, and dropping. This is not a boycott of Christian symbolism, but of the Jews that cater to the tens of thousands of Christian tourists who amass in the Holy Land every December.
The boycott advocates would do well to remember that if Christian cash is not welcome in Jerusalem, it's greeted with open arms in Bethlehem.
Source:
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Police shoot U.S. student's laptop upon entry to Israel
A welcome to Israel Message from the Israeli Authorities
Sussman's destroyed laptop.(Lily Sussman)
Israel Border Police officers shot at an American student's laptop as she entered Israel via Taba, Egypt, two weeks ago.
Lily Sussman, 21, wrote on her blog that border police subjected her to two hours of questioning and searches prior to shooting her Apple Macbook three times.
"They had pressed every sock and scarf with a security device, ripped open soap and had me strip extra layers. They asked me tons of questions?where are you going?" Sussman wrote, describing the experience.
"Who do you know? Do you have a boyfriend? Is he Arab, Egyptian, Palestinian? Why do you live in Egypt? Why not Israel? What do you know about the 'conflict' here? What do you think? They quizzed me on Judaism, which I know nothing about," she continued.
Sussman said that she then heard an announcement on the loudspeaker. "It was something along the lines of, 'Do not to be alarmed by gunshots because the Israeli security needs to blow up suspicious passenger luggage,'? she wrote on her blog.
Moments later a man came to her and introduced himself as the manager on duty. "I'm sorry but we had to blow up your laptop," Sussman said he told her.
"The security officers did not ask about my laptop prior to shooting it," Sussman told Daily News Egypt. "They used the word 'blew up' when they told me they destroyed my laptop. I don?t know why they shot it."
Sussman said the guards also looked through the photos saved on her camera, flipped through her journal and asked her about a map a friend had drawn for her that pointed out a main street, central bus station and the hostel where she was planning on stayig in Jerusalem.
She added that she had also been carrying an Arabic phrasebook, stamps from Syria, Qatar and the UAE and a Palestinians in Palestine guidebook.
The Israel Airports Authority said in response to the story: "A check that the lady's luggage underwent raised an indication that required security figures to act according to procedures. A police, who carried out the stated operation, was called to the scene. We suggest that the Israel Police be approached for any additional information."
Sussman managed to salvage the hard and guards gave her an address where she would be reimbursed for her mangled laptop, she told Daily news Egypt. "I'm going through the process of compensation," she said. "It supposedly will take about one month to receive the money."
Source:
Akiva Eldar / U.S. tax dollars fund rabbi who excused killing gentile babies
The White House condemns the torching of a mosque, yet respectable Americans contribute to a yeshiva whose rabbi said it's okay to kill gentile babies. It is no surprise that the American administration tacitly, if unenthusiastically, accepted the excuse that the map of national priority zones the cabinet approved on Sunday does not violate the decision to freeze construction in the settlements.
How can President Barack Obama object to furthering education in a settlement like Yitzhar, located in the heart of the West Bank? After all, his own tax revenues contribute to the flourishing of the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, the settlement's crowning glory.
This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it is permissible to kill gentile babies because of "the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents." In his latest book, the head of the yeshiva, Yitzhak Shapira, who bears the honorable title of rabbi, even permits killing anyone "who, through his remarks and so forth, weakens our kingdom" (Obama, beware!).
On November 17, this column reported that the Education Ministry's division for Torah institutions transferred more than NIS 1 million to this yeshiva in 2006 and 2007. The Welfare Ministry made do with a mere NIS 150,000.
A report on donations submitted by the yeshiva to the registrar of nonprofit organizations revealed that the American public also participates in financing the message coming out of Yitzhar. It states that in 2007 and 2008, the yeshiva received NIS 102,547 from an American foundation known as the Central Fund of Israel.
The American investigative reporter Philip Weiss says on his web site (mondoweiss.net) that money given to this fund is considered a tax-deductible donation. That means the thousands of shekels the fund sent to the settlement of Yitzhar were deducted from the donors' annual tax payments to the American treasury.
According to the fund's latest financial statement, it gave some $8 million to religious organizations in 2006, earmarked for establishing synagogues and schools, aiding the needy and "urgent security needs."
The fund's headquarters are located on the third floor of the Marcus Brothers Textiles store on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Its director is Jay Marcus, a resident of the settlement of Efrat.
His mother, Hadassah, is the fund's president and his father, Arthur, is vice president. Both parents live in New York.
The Washington Post's David Ignatius recently reported that according to statements filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, funds like that of the Marcus family sent some $33.4 million, tax free, to organizations affiliated with the settlements in 2004-07.
'Large forces, extensive damage'
So the next time the White House spokesman condemns the torching of a mosque near Nablus, some reporter ought to ask him why respectable American citizens contribute to the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, one of whose leading rabbis wrote the following incendiary words of incitement: "[Civil] Administration inspectors have not dared to enter Yitzhar since the freeze edict. Their experience with Yitzhar, and its heat, are responsible for the fact that every entry into the settlement by hostile elements requires large forces and ends with extensive damage to army and police equipment, even greater damage to Arab persons and property, and a region that continues to burn in every direction for several days" (Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, Hakol Hayehudi, December 4, 2009).
At the same time, U.S. officials could consider how a tax exemption for donors to Friends of Ateret Cohanim and The City of David jibes with official American policy regarding the presence of right-wing Jewish organizations in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem's Holy Basin.
Human rights organizations and Jewish peace activists in the United States have started giving information to the authorities about foundations that support dubious right-wing organizations in Israel. They are asking why the administration only shuts down funds that send charitable donations to associations affiliated with Hamas.
Cut off from their families
Gilad Shalit's prolonged isolation from the outside world is one of the most serious and justified complaints Israel has against his captors in Hamas' leadership. But last week, Israel's Supreme Court gave its stamp of approval to a prolonged lack of contact between hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and their parents, children and grandchildren.
For two and a half years, starting shortly after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli authorities have barred relatives of more than 500 prisoners from entering Israeli territory.
But a panel of three justices unanimously rejected a petition from a group of prisoners and 13 human rights organizations that argued, among other things, that the Fourth Geneva Convention entitles every prisoner "to receive visitors, especially near relatives, at regular intervals and as frequently as possible." Whenever possible, prisoners should be allowed to visit their homes in "urgent cases," the convention adds.
The petitioners also noted that paragraph 1 of the Prisons Ordinance states that visits are one of the most important means of contact between the prisoner and his family and friends. A visit can make it easier for a prisoner to endure his confinement and encourage him in times of crisis.
Regular visits
Following a ruling by the European Court of Justice, the petition pointed out, Turkey allowed family members to pay weekly visits to Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the Kurdish PKK organization, whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and who is detained under special security conditions.
But nevertheless, there is a difference. Unlike Gilad Shalit, who in three years has received only one or two letters from his parents, the Palestinian prisoners are visited regularly by the Red Cross and are in mail and telephone contact with their families.
On the other hand, unlike Hamas - which many countries define as a terrorist organization - Israel is committed to upholding international treaties and is supposed to abide by different humanitarian rules.
Source:
How can President Barack Obama object to furthering education in a settlement like Yitzhar, located in the heart of the West Bank? After all, his own tax revenues contribute to the flourishing of the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, the settlement's crowning glory.
This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it is permissible to kill gentile babies because of "the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents." In his latest book, the head of the yeshiva, Yitzhak Shapira, who bears the honorable title of rabbi, even permits killing anyone "who, through his remarks and so forth, weakens our kingdom" (Obama, beware!).
On November 17, this column reported that the Education Ministry's division for Torah institutions transferred more than NIS 1 million to this yeshiva in 2006 and 2007. The Welfare Ministry made do with a mere NIS 150,000.
A report on donations submitted by the yeshiva to the registrar of nonprofit organizations revealed that the American public also participates in financing the message coming out of Yitzhar. It states that in 2007 and 2008, the yeshiva received NIS 102,547 from an American foundation known as the Central Fund of Israel.
The American investigative reporter Philip Weiss says on his web site (mondoweiss.net) that money given to this fund is considered a tax-deductible donation. That means the thousands of shekels the fund sent to the settlement of Yitzhar were deducted from the donors' annual tax payments to the American treasury.
According to the fund's latest financial statement, it gave some $8 million to religious organizations in 2006, earmarked for establishing synagogues and schools, aiding the needy and "urgent security needs."
The fund's headquarters are located on the third floor of the Marcus Brothers Textiles store on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Its director is Jay Marcus, a resident of the settlement of Efrat.
His mother, Hadassah, is the fund's president and his father, Arthur, is vice president. Both parents live in New York.
The Washington Post's David Ignatius recently reported that according to statements filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, funds like that of the Marcus family sent some $33.4 million, tax free, to organizations affiliated with the settlements in 2004-07.
'Large forces, extensive damage'
So the next time the White House spokesman condemns the torching of a mosque near Nablus, some reporter ought to ask him why respectable American citizens contribute to the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, one of whose leading rabbis wrote the following incendiary words of incitement: "[Civil] Administration inspectors have not dared to enter Yitzhar since the freeze edict. Their experience with Yitzhar, and its heat, are responsible for the fact that every entry into the settlement by hostile elements requires large forces and ends with extensive damage to army and police equipment, even greater damage to Arab persons and property, and a region that continues to burn in every direction for several days" (Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, Hakol Hayehudi, December 4, 2009).
At the same time, U.S. officials could consider how a tax exemption for donors to Friends of Ateret Cohanim and The City of David jibes with official American policy regarding the presence of right-wing Jewish organizations in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem's Holy Basin.
Human rights organizations and Jewish peace activists in the United States have started giving information to the authorities about foundations that support dubious right-wing organizations in Israel. They are asking why the administration only shuts down funds that send charitable donations to associations affiliated with Hamas.
Cut off from their families
Gilad Shalit's prolonged isolation from the outside world is one of the most serious and justified complaints Israel has against his captors in Hamas' leadership. But last week, Israel's Supreme Court gave its stamp of approval to a prolonged lack of contact between hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and their parents, children and grandchildren.
For two and a half years, starting shortly after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli authorities have barred relatives of more than 500 prisoners from entering Israeli territory.
But a panel of three justices unanimously rejected a petition from a group of prisoners and 13 human rights organizations that argued, among other things, that the Fourth Geneva Convention entitles every prisoner "to receive visitors, especially near relatives, at regular intervals and as frequently as possible." Whenever possible, prisoners should be allowed to visit their homes in "urgent cases," the convention adds.
The petitioners also noted that paragraph 1 of the Prisons Ordinance states that visits are one of the most important means of contact between the prisoner and his family and friends. A visit can make it easier for a prisoner to endure his confinement and encourage him in times of crisis.
Regular visits
Following a ruling by the European Court of Justice, the petition pointed out, Turkey allowed family members to pay weekly visits to Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the Kurdish PKK organization, whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and who is detained under special security conditions.
But nevertheless, there is a difference. Unlike Gilad Shalit, who in three years has received only one or two letters from his parents, the Palestinian prisoners are visited regularly by the Red Cross and are in mail and telephone contact with their families.
On the other hand, unlike Hamas - which many countries define as a terrorist organization - Israel is committed to upholding international treaties and is supposed to abide by different humanitarian rules.
Source:
Monday, December 14, 2009
What Christians Don't Know About Israel
By Grace HalsellAmerican Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? President Bill Clinton as well as most members of Congress support Israel-and they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers.
The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere-among those who support Israel but don't really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel-and Zionism-often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.
I am one of those. I grew up listening to stories of a mystical, allegorical, spiritual Israel. This was before a modern political entity with the same name appeared on our maps. I attended Sunday School and watched an instructor draw down window- type shades to show maps of the Holy Land. I imbibed stories of a Good and Chosen people who fought against their Bad "unChosen" enemies.
In my early 20s, I began traveling the world, earning my living as a writer. I came to the subject of the Middle East rather late in my career. I was sadly lacking in knowledge regarding the area. About all I knew was what I had learned in Sunday School.
And typical of many U.S. Christians, I somehow considered a modern state created in 1948 as a homeland for Jews persecuted under the Nazis as a replica of the spiritual, mystical Israel I heard about as a child. When in 1979 I initially went to Jerusalem, I planned to write about the three great monotheistic religions and leave out politics. "Not write about politics?" scoffed one Palestinian, smoking a water pipe in the Old Walled City. "We eat politics, morning, noon and night!"
As I would learn, the politics is about land, and the co-claimants to that land: the indigenous Palestinians who have lived there for 2,000 years and the Jews who started arriving in large numbers after the Second World War. By living among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, I saw, heard, smelled, experienced the police state tactics Israelis use against Palestinians.
My research led to a book entitled Journey to Jerusalem. My journey not only was enlightening to me as regards Israel, but also I came to a deeper, and sadder, understanding of my own country. I say sadder understanding because I began to see that, in Middle East politics, we the people are not making the decisions, but rather that supporters of Israel are doing so. And typical of most Americans, I tended to think the U.S. media was "free" to print news impartially.
"It shouldn't be published. It's anti-Israel."
In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that editors could and would classify "news" depending on who was doing what to whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed dozens of young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of torture.
Israeli police had come in the night, dragged them from their beds and placed hoods over their heads. Then in jails the Israelis had kept them in isolation, besieged them with loud, incessant noises, hung them upside down and had sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not read such stories in the U.S. media. Wasn't it news? Obviously, I naively thought, U.S. editors simply didn't know it was happening.
On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank Mankiewicz, then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I had taped interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured. And I'd make them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone calls. Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms. Cohen, who said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began to realize what I hadn't known: had it been Jews who were strung up and tortured, it would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were "lost" at WETA.
The process of getting my book Journey to Jerusalem published also was a learning experience. Bill Griffin, who signed a contract with me on behalf of MacMillan Publishing Company, was a former Roman Catholic priest. He assured me that no one other than himself would edit the book. As I researched the book, making several trips to Israel and Palestine, I met frequently with Griffin, showing him sample chapters. "Terrific," he said of my material.
The day the book was scheduled to be published, I went to visit MacMillan's. Checking in at a reception desk, I spotted Griffin across a room, cleaning out his desk. His secretary Margie came to greet me. In tears, she whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. When we were alone, she confided, "He's been fired." She indicated it was because he had signed a contract for a book that was sympathetic to Palestinians. Griffin, she said, had no time to see me.
Later, I met with another MacMillan official, William Curry. "I was told to take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for mistakes," he told me. "They were not pleased. They asked me, ‘You are not going to publish this book, are you?' I asked, ‘Were there mistakes?' ‘Not mistakes as such. But it shouldn't be published. It's anti-Israel.'"
Somehow, despite obstacles to prevent it, the presses had started rolling. After its publication in 1980, I was invited to speak in a number of churches. Christians generally reacted with disbelief. Back then, there was little or no coverage of Israeli land confiscation, demolition of Palestinian homes, wan ton arrests and torture of Palestinian civilians.
The Same Question
Speaking of these injustices, I invariably heard the same question, "How come I didn't know this?" Or someone might ask, "But I haven't read about that in my newspaper." To these church audiences, I related my own learning experience, that of seeing hordes of U.S. correspondents covering a relatively tiny state. I pointed out that I had not seen so many reporters in world capitals such as Beijing, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Paris. Why, I asked, did a small state with a 1980 population of only four million warrant more reporters than China, with a billion people?
I also linked this query with my findings that The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post-and most of our nation's print media-are owned and/or controlled by Jews supportive of Israel. It was for this reason, I deduced, that they sent so many reporters to cover Israel-and to do so largely from the Israeli point of view.
My learning experiences also included coming to realize how easily I could lose a Jewish friend if I criticized the Jewish state. I could with impunity criticize France, England, Russia, even the United States. And any aspect of life in America. But not the Jewish state. I lost more Jewish friends than one after the publication of Journey to Jerusalem-all sad losses for me and one, perhaps, saddest of all.
In the 1960s and 1970s, before going to the Middle East, I had written about the plight of blacks in a book entitled Soul Sister, and the plight of American Indians in a book entitled Bessie Yellowhair, and the problems endured by undocumented workers crossing from Mexico in The Illegals. These books had come to the attention of the "mother" of The New York Times, Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
Her father had started the newspaper, then her husband ran it, and in the years that I knew her, her son was the publisher. She invited me to her fashionable apartment on Fifth Avenue for lunches and dinner parties. And, on many occasions, I was a weekend guest at her Greenwich, Conn. home.
She was liberal-minded and praised my efforts to speak for the underdog, even going so far in one letter to say, "You are the most remarkable woman I ever knew." I had little concept that from being buoyed so high I could be dropped so suddenly when I discovered-from her point of view-the "wrong" underdog.
As it happened, I was a weekend guest in her spacious Connecticut home when she read bound galleys of Journey to Jerusalem. As I was leaving, she handed the galleys back with a saddened look: "My dear, have you forgotten the Holocaust?" She felt that what happened in Nazi Germany to Jews several decades earlier should silence any criticism of the Jewish state. She could focus on a holocaust of Jews while negating a modern day holocaust of Palestinians.
I realized, quite painfully, that our friendship was ending. Iphigene Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to meet her famous friends but, also at her suggestion, The Times had requested articles. I wrote op-ed articles on various subjects including American blacks, American Indians as well as undocumented workers. Since Mrs. Sulzberger and other Jewish officials at the Times highly praised my efforts to help these groups of oppressed peoples, the dichotomy became apparent: most "liberal" U.S. Jews stand on the side of all poor and oppressed peoples save one-the Palestinians.
How handily these liberal Jewish opinion-molders tend to diminish the Palestinians, to make them invisible, or to categorize them all as "terrorists."
Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger had talked to me a great deal about her father, Adolph S. Ochs. She told me that he was not one of the early Zionists. He had not favored the creation of a Jewish state.
Yet, increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the ethical instructions of all great religions-including the teachings of Moses, Muhammad and Christ-stress that all human beings are equal, militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does not count.
Over five decades now, Zionists have killed Palestinians with impunity. And in the 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Qana, Lebanon, the Israelis killed more than 100 civilians sheltered there. As an Israeli journalist, Arieh Shavit, explains of the massacre, "We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own."
Israelis today, explains the anti-Zionist Jew Israel Shahak, "are not basing their religion on the ethics of justice. They do not accept the Old Testament as it is written. Rather, religious Jews turn to the Talmud. For them, the Talmudic Jewish laws become ‘the Bible.' And the Talmud teaches that a Jew can kill a non-Jew with impunity."
In the teachings of Christ, there was a break from such Talmudic teachings. He sought to heal the wounded, to comfort the downtrodden.
The danger, of course, for U.S. Christians is that having made an icon of Israel, we fall into a trap of condoning whatever Israel does-even wanton murder-as orchestrated by God.
Yet, I am not alone in suggesting that the churches in the United States represent the last major organized support for Palestinian rights. This imperative is due in part to our historic links to the Land of Christ and in part to the moral issues involved with having our tax dollars fund Israeli-government-approved violations of human rights.
While Israel and its dedicated U.S. Jewish supporters know they have the president and most of Congress in their hands, they worry about grassroots America-the well-meaning Christians who care for justice. Thus far, most Christians were unaware of what it was they didn't know about Israel. They were indoctrinated by U.S. supporters of Israel in their own country and when they traveled to the Land of Christ most all did so under Israeli sponsorship. That being the case, it was unlikely a Christian ever met a Palestinian or learned what caused the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This is gradually changing, however. And this change disturbs the Israelis. As an example, delegates attending a Christian Sabeel conference in Bethlehem earlier this year said they were harassed by Israeli security at the Tel Aviv airport.
"They asked us," said one delegate, "‘Why did you use a Palestinian travel agency? Why didn't you use an Israeli agency?'"
The interrogation was so extensive and hostile that Sabeel leaders called a special session to brief the delegates on how to handle the harassment. Obviously, said one delegate, "The Israelis have a policy to discourage us from visiting the Holy Land except under their sponsorship. They don't want Christians to start learning all they have never known about Israel."
* Washington, DC-based writer Grace Halsell is the author of 14 books, including Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics.
Source:
South Africa slams El AL for stringent security checks
The flight route between Israel and South Africa is in danger of being cancelled, El Al airline said on Monday.
The Israeli airline was criticized by the South African government for its stringent security checkups, as documented on a South African television research show.
A reporter with a hidden camera filmed an El Al security guard allegedly discriminating against dark-skinned passengers at the airport check in.
As a result of the broadcast the South African government issued a request that Israel change its security procedures in the country, which El Al has denied on the basis that they are part of the company's flight regulations.
El Al released a statement in response saying "the Foreign Ministry is responsible for this subject, and they are taking care of the matter."
The statement also stated that "the airline hopes that the diplomatic crisis with the South African government will be resolved shortly."
El Al is currently the only airline with a direct flight between the two countries.
Source:
The Israeli airline was criticized by the South African government for its stringent security checkups, as documented on a South African television research show.
A reporter with a hidden camera filmed an El Al security guard allegedly discriminating against dark-skinned passengers at the airport check in.
As a result of the broadcast the South African government issued a request that Israel change its security procedures in the country, which El Al has denied on the basis that they are part of the company's flight regulations.
El Al released a statement in response saying "the Foreign Ministry is responsible for this subject, and they are taking care of the matter."
The statement also stated that "the airline hopes that the diplomatic crisis with the South African government will be resolved shortly."
El Al is currently the only airline with a direct flight between the two countries.
Source:
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Jewish town won't let Arab build home on his own land
Aadel Suad first came to the planning and construction committee of the Misgav Local Council in 1997. Suad, an educator, was seeking a construction permit to build a home on a plot of land he owns in the community of Mitzpeh Kamon. The reply he got, from a senior official on the committee, was a memorable one.
"Don't waste your time," he reportedly told Suad. "We'll keep you waiting for 30 years."
For Suad it's now been 12 years of fighting the committee's red tape to build a home on his own land. The reason, as far as he and his family are concerned, is singular: The local council doesn't want Arabs, with or without the legal amendments legalizing such objection that passed preliminary reading in the Knesset this week.
"We didn't invade the plot and we didn't take over the land," Suad says. "My grandfather has been here since the Turks. We have a land registry document proving ownership of three acres."
Suad's plot is on the northern edge of the hilltop community, founded in 1979. In 1984, Suad's land, along with others, was redefined as a development area rather than agricultural land. The land was divided into two plots. Suad and his family, who have been living in shacks on the site, were not informed.
"In 1990 we got a notice to pay capital gains taxes on the land, and they only told us about the changes when we asked for an explanation," he says.
The plots were split between the family and the Israel Land Administration. Only one plot was owned by the family - half an acre, minus half a square meter owned by the ILA.
Having paid the tax, Suad asked for a written confirmation of the change. "This usually takes a couple of days," he says. "They dragged it on for 8 months." While repeatedly refusing to sell the land or swap it for a plot outside Kamon, Suad was told that his plot is jointly owned by the ILA, because of the 50 square centimeters.
"They asked me for a document stating the ILA was giving up their part in the plot," Suad says. "It took the ILA another 4 years."
In 2007, the planning committee finally gave the construction permit, under four conditions: Suad would promise to demolish his shack, the future house would be moved by some 12 meters, Suad would contribute a part of the land to public needs, and he himself would ensure the house is connected to all infrastructure. Suad agreed to everything, but then found that no sewage line extended to his land. His suggestion to install a cesspit was rejected, despite this being a common practice in the community.
"I even offered to pave the 150 meters of the road at my own expense," Suad said. "We were supposed to meet about it on December 8, but then they told me the meeting was off."
"It's clear that the threat I heard in 1997 is coming true. They don't want us here. But I'll keep fighting until my children and I live on our private land," he said.
The Misgav Local Council rejected the accusations. The council said Suad's plot is located far from the other homes of the community and has no roads, sidewalks, lighting, water or sewer. All these would need to be connected through other plots, some of which are privately owned, the council said.
The council also said Suad's construction permit was conditioned on coming up with a plan to connect the plot to infrastructure, which he failed to produce in sufficient detail, or to accompany it with permits.
Source:
"Don't waste your time," he reportedly told Suad. "We'll keep you waiting for 30 years."
For Suad it's now been 12 years of fighting the committee's red tape to build a home on his own land. The reason, as far as he and his family are concerned, is singular: The local council doesn't want Arabs, with or without the legal amendments legalizing such objection that passed preliminary reading in the Knesset this week.
"We didn't invade the plot and we didn't take over the land," Suad says. "My grandfather has been here since the Turks. We have a land registry document proving ownership of three acres."
Suad's plot is on the northern edge of the hilltop community, founded in 1979. In 1984, Suad's land, along with others, was redefined as a development area rather than agricultural land. The land was divided into two plots. Suad and his family, who have been living in shacks on the site, were not informed.
"In 1990 we got a notice to pay capital gains taxes on the land, and they only told us about the changes when we asked for an explanation," he says.
The plots were split between the family and the Israel Land Administration. Only one plot was owned by the family - half an acre, minus half a square meter owned by the ILA.
Having paid the tax, Suad asked for a written confirmation of the change. "This usually takes a couple of days," he says. "They dragged it on for 8 months." While repeatedly refusing to sell the land or swap it for a plot outside Kamon, Suad was told that his plot is jointly owned by the ILA, because of the 50 square centimeters.
"They asked me for a document stating the ILA was giving up their part in the plot," Suad says. "It took the ILA another 4 years."
In 2007, the planning committee finally gave the construction permit, under four conditions: Suad would promise to demolish his shack, the future house would be moved by some 12 meters, Suad would contribute a part of the land to public needs, and he himself would ensure the house is connected to all infrastructure. Suad agreed to everything, but then found that no sewage line extended to his land. His suggestion to install a cesspit was rejected, despite this being a common practice in the community.
"I even offered to pave the 150 meters of the road at my own expense," Suad said. "We were supposed to meet about it on December 8, but then they told me the meeting was off."
"It's clear that the threat I heard in 1997 is coming true. They don't want us here. But I'll keep fighting until my children and I live on our private land," he said.
The Misgav Local Council rejected the accusations. The council said Suad's plot is located far from the other homes of the community and has no roads, sidewalks, lighting, water or sewer. All these would need to be connected through other plots, some of which are privately owned, the council said.
The council also said Suad's construction permit was conditioned on coming up with a plan to connect the plot to infrastructure, which he failed to produce in sufficient detail, or to accompany it with permits.
Source:
Meretz chair: Netanyahu itching for a fight with the U.S.
The cabinet's approval Sunday of a plan to pump millions of shekels into West Bank settlements stirred fierce anger among members of the opposition and the left-wing parties, who accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of shirking his declared commitment to a Middle East peace process.
"The cabinet decision teaches us that the political process is not on the national list of priorities, and that Netanyahu and his cronies are itching for a fight with the American government and the international community," said Meretz Chairman Haim Oron.
The left-wing Meretz faction submitted a motion of no-confidence in response to the plan.
The opposition Kadima party on Sunday lashed out at the cabinet for approving the plan, saying it in effect "canceled out any declaration made by Netanyahu regarding two states for two peoples."
The plan to widen Israel's map of 'national priority' areas was approved after Netanyahu decided to review the list of communities for which funds were earmarked.
All of the ministers from the Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas parties voted in favor, following a five-hour debate on the matter at the weekly cabinet meeting; Labor's five ministers opposed.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the Labor chairman, attacked the plan during the discussion, warning that some of the money would end up in the hands of right-wing extremists.
"I don't think that we need to award them a prize in the form of including them in the national priority map," said Barak, referring to the plan.
A spokesman for Labor Minister Avishai Braverman said that while "the increase in the Arab population included in the map from eight per cent to 40 per cent is an important accomplishment," he could not support the plan if settlements known to house extremist settlers were included.
Netanyahu's decision to review the move appeared to be a compromise on the matter. The plan sparked a barrage of criticism since the premier decided to implement the move despite a freeze on new construction in the territories.
The Labor ministers said Netanyahu had agreed to hold a cabinet discussion on the plan and to form a panel to examine which communities should be included.
Netanyahu's decision to review the move appeared to be a compromise on the matter. The plan sparked a barrage of criticism since the premier decided to implement the move despite a freeze on new construction in the territories.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, a close ally in Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party said on Israel Radio the added funds would show settlers that despite the freeze, Israel "also supports and reinforces" them.
Source:
"The cabinet decision teaches us that the political process is not on the national list of priorities, and that Netanyahu and his cronies are itching for a fight with the American government and the international community," said Meretz Chairman Haim Oron.
The left-wing Meretz faction submitted a motion of no-confidence in response to the plan.
The opposition Kadima party on Sunday lashed out at the cabinet for approving the plan, saying it in effect "canceled out any declaration made by Netanyahu regarding two states for two peoples."
The plan to widen Israel's map of 'national priority' areas was approved after Netanyahu decided to review the list of communities for which funds were earmarked.
All of the ministers from the Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas parties voted in favor, following a five-hour debate on the matter at the weekly cabinet meeting; Labor's five ministers opposed.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the Labor chairman, attacked the plan during the discussion, warning that some of the money would end up in the hands of right-wing extremists.
"I don't think that we need to award them a prize in the form of including them in the national priority map," said Barak, referring to the plan.
A spokesman for Labor Minister Avishai Braverman said that while "the increase in the Arab population included in the map from eight per cent to 40 per cent is an important accomplishment," he could not support the plan if settlements known to house extremist settlers were included.
Netanyahu's decision to review the move appeared to be a compromise on the matter. The plan sparked a barrage of criticism since the premier decided to implement the move despite a freeze on new construction in the territories.
The Labor ministers said Netanyahu had agreed to hold a cabinet discussion on the plan and to form a panel to examine which communities should be included.
Netanyahu's decision to review the move appeared to be a compromise on the matter. The plan sparked a barrage of criticism since the premier decided to implement the move despite a freeze on new construction in the territories.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, a close ally in Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party said on Israel Radio the added funds would show settlers that despite the freeze, Israel "also supports and reinforces" them.
Source:
Saturday, December 12, 2009
West Bank student Berlanty Azzim's deportation upheld
Berlanty Azzam was blindfolded and handcuffed during her deportation The court ruled that the Israeli army had the right to deport Berlanty Azzam, 22, from Bethlehem in the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.
The Israelis say Ms Azzam holds a Gaza ID card and entered the West Bank illegally.
She was due to finish her studies in business management later this month.
"I am very disappointed, and I don't understand why Israel is preventing me from continuing my studies," Ms Azzam said, quoted in a press statement issued by the Israeli human rights group Gisha on Wednesday.
The court was reported as ruling it could not dismiss the fact that she had resided in the West Bank illegally for four years.
She was in breach of the pass given to her at the time allowing her cross between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank for religious purposes only, not study.
Without a student pass, the court had "no choice but to rule that she stayed in the West Bank illegally. Her schooling is not a sufficient reason for this court to rule in favour of her return," Israel News quoted the three-judge panel as ruling.
Blindfold
Ms Azzam was stopped at a checkpoint in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers at the end of October.
When they saw that the address listed on her identity card was in Gaza, she was detained for six hours, then blindfolded, handcuffed and told she would be taken to a detention centre in the southern West Bank.
After the car stopped and the blindfold was lifted, she saw she was at the Erez crossing to Gaza. She was then forced to enter the territory without being given the chance to speak to a lawyer.
Gisha warned that if Ms Azzam's deportation were permitted, an estimated 25,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank who had Gazan addresses on their identity cards risked being removed.
They say Israel has raised no security concerns about Ms Azzim.
The human rights group said lawyers acting for Israel in the case did not provide any evidence to the court to show Ms Azzim was in the West Bank illegally.
She travelled to the university in 2005 on a valid entry permit and then made every attempt to change her address through the correct channels, the organisation said.
"I cannot imagine why the state of Israel is so insistent on preventing Palestinian young people, against whom it makes no security claims whatsoever, from accessing higher education," Gisha lawyer Yadim Elam said.
The Israeli government did not immediately comment on the decision of the court.
Source:
Friday, December 11, 2009
Abbas slams 'brutal' settlers for attack on West Bank mosque
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday said that Israel must rein in settlers' 'brutal' actions, after assailants vandalized a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, torching furniture and spraying Nazi slogans in Hebrew on the premises.
"The torching of the mosque in Yasuf is a despicable crime, and the settlers are behaving with brutality," said Abbas, who called the act a violation of religious freedom.
"The settlers' unruly behavior must be stopped," Abbas added after meeting on Friday with United Arab List-Ta'al chairman Ahmed Tibi in Amman.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak earlier on Friday condemned the vandalization of the West Bank mosque, allegedly at the hands of settlers protesting Israel's temporary freeze on settlement construction.
"This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government's efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel's future," said Barak.
The U.S. State Department also denounced the attack on Friday, saying, "We condemn this attack in the strongest terms and call for the perpetrators to be brought to justice."
Investigation into the incident points to the likelihood that settlers from nearby Tapuah are behind the attack, police said, but the vandals have not yet been caught.
Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces near Yasuf Friday, after the moque was damaged.
Some rioters hurled rocks at the troops, wounding one police officer.
Settler extremists have recently attacked Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government moves to curb settlement construction. These protesters have dubbed the attacks the "price tag" policy.
Israel Defense Forces officers in the West Bank have expressed concerned that settlers may escalate their acts of opposition to the temporary freeze on settlement construction by targeting the Palestinian population.
The assailants entered the village of Yasuf before dawn Friday, according to Israel Police and Munir Abushi, the Palestinian governor of the district where the village is located.
They burned prayer carpets and a book stand with Muslim holy texts, and left graffiti on the floor reading, "Price tag - greetings from Effi." Effi is a Hebrew name.
The vandals escaped. The IDF said it views the incident gravely and is investigating along with the police.
After villagers discovered the damage, they briefly threw stones at Israeli forces that entered Yasuf, Abushi said. He said two villagers were hurt in the skirmish.
Abushi met with Israeli police and army officers and expressed his dismay over repeated settler attacks.
"Israeli security forces have done little to protect Palestinian civilians from the settlers," he said.
In an apparent attempt to placate settlers over the construction slowdown, Netanyahu has proposed including tens of thousands of settlers, including many living in isolated settlements deep in the West Bank, in a government program that bestows monetary incentives on residents and businesses.
The move has drawn criticism from Netanyahu's coalition partner, the
Labor Party, which has indicated it will vote against the move at a Cabinet meeting next week.
Source:
"The torching of the mosque in Yasuf is a despicable crime, and the settlers are behaving with brutality," said Abbas, who called the act a violation of religious freedom.
"The settlers' unruly behavior must be stopped," Abbas added after meeting on Friday with United Arab List-Ta'al chairman Ahmed Tibi in Amman.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak earlier on Friday condemned the vandalization of the West Bank mosque, allegedly at the hands of settlers protesting Israel's temporary freeze on settlement construction.
"This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government's efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel's future," said Barak.
The U.S. State Department also denounced the attack on Friday, saying, "We condemn this attack in the strongest terms and call for the perpetrators to be brought to justice."
Investigation into the incident points to the likelihood that settlers from nearby Tapuah are behind the attack, police said, but the vandals have not yet been caught.
Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces near Yasuf Friday, after the moque was damaged.
Some rioters hurled rocks at the troops, wounding one police officer.
Settler extremists have recently attacked Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government moves to curb settlement construction. These protesters have dubbed the attacks the "price tag" policy.
Israel Defense Forces officers in the West Bank have expressed concerned that settlers may escalate their acts of opposition to the temporary freeze on settlement construction by targeting the Palestinian population.
The assailants entered the village of Yasuf before dawn Friday, according to Israel Police and Munir Abushi, the Palestinian governor of the district where the village is located.
They burned prayer carpets and a book stand with Muslim holy texts, and left graffiti on the floor reading, "Price tag - greetings from Effi." Effi is a Hebrew name.
The vandals escaped. The IDF said it views the incident gravely and is investigating along with the police.
After villagers discovered the damage, they briefly threw stones at Israeli forces that entered Yasuf, Abushi said. He said two villagers were hurt in the skirmish.
Abushi met with Israeli police and army officers and expressed his dismay over repeated settler attacks.
"Israeli security forces have done little to protect Palestinian civilians from the settlers," he said.
In an apparent attempt to placate settlers over the construction slowdown, Netanyahu has proposed including tens of thousands of settlers, including many living in isolated settlements deep in the West Bank, in a government program that bestows monetary incentives on residents and businesses.
The move has drawn criticism from Netanyahu's coalition partner, the
Labor Party, which has indicated it will vote against the move at a Cabinet meeting next week.
Source:
Thursday, December 10, 2009
U.K. government urges businesses: Label products from settlements
The British government has issued an official recommendation urging business owners to mark Israeli products produced in West Bank settlements so that consumers who want to boycott such items will find it easy to identify them.
The recommendation is not binding, but this step marks an escalation in the country's attitude toward Israel's settlements.
Foreign Ministry official Naor Gilon passed along Israel's harsh condemnation of the move to officials at the British Embassy in Israel on Wednesday.
According to European Union law, many types of products, especially food products, that are imported from outside the Union, by law must be labeled with the country of their origin. The British government issued its recommendation after several NGOs and marketing chains asked for guidelines regarding the differentiation between settler products and Palestinian products from the West Bank.
According to the new guidelines, the British government recommends indicating whether the product was made by Palestinians or Israeli settlers on the label of every product originating from the West Bank.
The government recommendation goes further to say that labeling a product from a settlement as having been manufactured in Israel would be considered a criminal offense as it is misleading to the consumer public.
Israel's Foreign Ministry voiced its rage at this move, saying that this was a severe escalation of the existing protocols regarding the labeling of West Bank products. The Foreign Ministry added that this recommendation promotes boycotts of Israeli products.
"This is a capitulation of the British government to the Palestinian and pro-Palestinian organizations," said Foreign Ministry official Yossi Levy. "This only harms the Middle East peace process, and will hinder Israel's and the world's efforts to renew the diplomatic process at such a critical stage, and that is doubly disappointing."
The British embassy in Israel issued a statement clarifying that this move was not a boycott. "This is a recommendation, not a binding order," the embassy stressed. "The British government is opposed to any kind of boycott of Israel."
Source:
The recommendation is not binding, but this step marks an escalation in the country's attitude toward Israel's settlements.
Foreign Ministry official Naor Gilon passed along Israel's harsh condemnation of the move to officials at the British Embassy in Israel on Wednesday.
According to European Union law, many types of products, especially food products, that are imported from outside the Union, by law must be labeled with the country of their origin. The British government issued its recommendation after several NGOs and marketing chains asked for guidelines regarding the differentiation between settler products and Palestinian products from the West Bank.
According to the new guidelines, the British government recommends indicating whether the product was made by Palestinians or Israeli settlers on the label of every product originating from the West Bank.
The government recommendation goes further to say that labeling a product from a settlement as having been manufactured in Israel would be considered a criminal offense as it is misleading to the consumer public.
Israel's Foreign Ministry voiced its rage at this move, saying that this was a severe escalation of the existing protocols regarding the labeling of West Bank products. The Foreign Ministry added that this recommendation promotes boycotts of Israeli products.
"This is a capitulation of the British government to the Palestinian and pro-Palestinian organizations," said Foreign Ministry official Yossi Levy. "This only harms the Middle East peace process, and will hinder Israel's and the world's efforts to renew the diplomatic process at such a critical stage, and that is doubly disappointing."
The British embassy in Israel issued a statement clarifying that this move was not a boycott. "This is a recommendation, not a binding order," the embassy stressed. "The British government is opposed to any kind of boycott of Israel."
Source:
Barbie's 50th anniversary Islamic makeover
From Barbie Beach to Pilot Barbie to Hard Rock Barbie, the glamorous and iconic doll has undergone many makeovers since her creation 50 years ago, but none of her previous outfits has probably stirred as much buzz as her latest Islamic look.
It's Barbie in a burka, as it's been dubbed by the yellow press.
Wearing the traditional Islamic dress with a mesh eyehole, she went under the hammer along with 500 other Barbie dolls dressed in unique outfits at an auction in Florence, Italy, at the renowned auction house Sotheby’s to raise funds for Save the Children.
The auction, held in late November, was part of the celebrations put on for Barbie this year as she celebrated her 50th anniversary.
In her new look, Barbie also appeared in a line of stylish turquoise, lime-green, orange-colored Burkas and regular head-covering Muslim veil, known as Hijab.
The set of multicultural Barbies, including the burka-clad one, was dressed by the Italian designer Eliana Lorena in a project backed by Barbie's owner, Mattel.
Opinion has been divided on Burka Barbie.
Fan Angela Ellis, who has a collection of more than 250 Barbie dolls, thought it was a good idea to introduce a veiled Barbie. That way, children living in conservative Islamic countries would have a doll they could identify with.
“Bring it on, Burka Barbie," Britain’s the Sun newspaper quoted her as saying. "This is really important for girls, wherever they are from, they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them.”
But not everyone shared such excitement over Barbie’s new conservative Islamic look.
Critics such as Barbara Kay in Canada slammed Barbie’s Muslim dress as a “symbol of oppression” and ripped Ellis’ commentary in an article recently published in Canada’s the National Post newspaper.
“I have seen some pretty tawdry advertising campaigns in my time, but I must say this one takes the cake for insensitivity. What's next in dolls that are 'important for girls' to play with? ‘Illiterate Barbie’? ‘Forced-Marriage Barbie'?" she wrote.
Instead, Kay branded Burka Barbie a “mockery of disempowered women” who, she said, have been “stripped of human dignity."
She felt the doll had no place in Mattel’s line of “diversity” Barbies.
“There can be no parallel between these travesties of multiculturalism and other 'diversity' Barbies -- brown Barbies, native-dress Barbies, pilot Barbies -- avatars that reflect the natural appearance and truly traditional garb and career choices of free women,” she wrote.
The Barbie also has managed to stir the pot in the blogosphere.
Responding to a post on the blog Kabobfest, which argues that "it's kinda somewhat cool" of Mattel to put out a veiled Barbie, one commentator sarcastically suggested the Barbie makers introduce a line of “neocon pro-freedom Barbies" to balance out Burka Barbie.
Burka Barbie is not the first Islamic-styled doll for girls.
Back in 2003, the United Arab Emirates-based company Newboy launched the Muslim doll Fulla, resulting in some fierce competition for Barbie.
Unlike the skimpy and revealing outfits of blond and blue-eyed Barbie, dark-eyed Fulla wears more modest clothes and hairdos, to the delight of the authorities in conservative Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran who previously targeted the original Barbie in crackdowns.
In 2003, Saudi Arabia called Barbie a “symbol of decadence to the perverted West” and banned the doll. Last year, Barbie came under fire in Iran when Iranian prosecutor Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi said the dolls were “destructive culturally and a social danger.”
Barbie's veiled rival has become a smash hit in the Middle East, with more than 1.5 million dolls sold in the first two years of its making.
-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut
Source:
It's Barbie in a burka, as it's been dubbed by the yellow press.
Wearing the traditional Islamic dress with a mesh eyehole, she went under the hammer along with 500 other Barbie dolls dressed in unique outfits at an auction in Florence, Italy, at the renowned auction house Sotheby’s to raise funds for Save the Children.
The auction, held in late November, was part of the celebrations put on for Barbie this year as she celebrated her 50th anniversary.
In her new look, Barbie also appeared in a line of stylish turquoise, lime-green, orange-colored Burkas and regular head-covering Muslim veil, known as Hijab.
The set of multicultural Barbies, including the burka-clad one, was dressed by the Italian designer Eliana Lorena in a project backed by Barbie's owner, Mattel.
Opinion has been divided on Burka Barbie.
Fan Angela Ellis, who has a collection of more than 250 Barbie dolls, thought it was a good idea to introduce a veiled Barbie. That way, children living in conservative Islamic countries would have a doll they could identify with.
“Bring it on, Burka Barbie," Britain’s the Sun newspaper quoted her as saying. "This is really important for girls, wherever they are from, they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them.”
But not everyone shared such excitement over Barbie’s new conservative Islamic look.
Critics such as Barbara Kay in Canada slammed Barbie’s Muslim dress as a “symbol of oppression” and ripped Ellis’ commentary in an article recently published in Canada’s the National Post newspaper.
“I have seen some pretty tawdry advertising campaigns in my time, but I must say this one takes the cake for insensitivity. What's next in dolls that are 'important for girls' to play with? ‘Illiterate Barbie’? ‘Forced-Marriage Barbie'?" she wrote.
Instead, Kay branded Burka Barbie a “mockery of disempowered women” who, she said, have been “stripped of human dignity."
She felt the doll had no place in Mattel’s line of “diversity” Barbies.
“There can be no parallel between these travesties of multiculturalism and other 'diversity' Barbies -- brown Barbies, native-dress Barbies, pilot Barbies -- avatars that reflect the natural appearance and truly traditional garb and career choices of free women,” she wrote.
The Barbie also has managed to stir the pot in the blogosphere.
Responding to a post on the blog Kabobfest, which argues that "it's kinda somewhat cool" of Mattel to put out a veiled Barbie, one commentator sarcastically suggested the Barbie makers introduce a line of “neocon pro-freedom Barbies" to balance out Burka Barbie.
Burka Barbie is not the first Islamic-styled doll for girls.
Back in 2003, the United Arab Emirates-based company Newboy launched the Muslim doll Fulla, resulting in some fierce competition for Barbie.
Unlike the skimpy and revealing outfits of blond and blue-eyed Barbie, dark-eyed Fulla wears more modest clothes and hairdos, to the delight of the authorities in conservative Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran who previously targeted the original Barbie in crackdowns.
In 2003, Saudi Arabia called Barbie a “symbol of decadence to the perverted West” and banned the doll. Last year, Barbie came under fire in Iran when Iranian prosecutor Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi said the dolls were “destructive culturally and a social danger.”
Barbie's veiled rival has become a smash hit in the Middle East, with more than 1.5 million dolls sold in the first two years of its making.
-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut
Source:
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
High Court: Gaza student cannot complete studies in West Bank
To deny a young man or woman the right to get their degree with only 2 months left is very chicken to me. I would not loose any sleep if Israel was to be attacked and defeated.
The High Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday to deny a Palestinian student from Gaza who has been studying in Bethlehem permission to complete her university degree in the West Bank.
Berlanty Azzam , 22, has been in the West Bank since 2005 and has only two months of studies left in order to complete her Bachelor's degree in business administration. In late October, however, the Israeli authorities expelled her back to Gaza claiming that that she was illegally staying in the West Bank.
Azzam petitioned against her expulsion with the assistance of Gisha, a legal center for freedom of movement, but the High Court accepted the Israeli authorities' decision to deny Azzam a chance to remain in the West Bank to continue her education.
The authorities did not claim security charges against Azzam.
Regarding the assertion that she is an illegal alien in the West Bank, Gisha said that she had moved to the region legally with an entrance permit into Israel issued to her by the IDF commander on the scene after a meticulous security check.
The High Court accepted Israel's claim that Azzam entered the West Bank illegally, due to the fact that the permit entitled her entrance into Jerusalem, not the West Bank.
During the four years she lived and studied in the West Bank, Azzam placed several requests to change her address from Gaza to Bethlehem.
According to the Oslo accord, the Palestinian Authority has the power to change its' citizen's addresses in their identity cards, and is only required to notify the Israel authorities.
But ever since the accord was implemented, Israel has refused to accept the PA's authority to register change of address from Gaza to the West Bank, and has retained a monopoly over the acceptance or denial of an address change request.
Since the year 2000, Israel has also refused to allow Gaza residents to study in the West Bank. It is believed that there are currently over 25,000 Palestinians who were born in Gaza and are currently living in the West Bank, all of whom have been disallowed to change their address on their identification certificates.
Most of them have been living in the West Bank for many years. They have raised their families there, and have been working in the region, but are under the constant threat of expulsion.
Source:
The High Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday to deny a Palestinian student from Gaza who has been studying in Bethlehem permission to complete her university degree in the West Bank.
Berlanty Azzam , 22, has been in the West Bank since 2005 and has only two months of studies left in order to complete her Bachelor's degree in business administration. In late October, however, the Israeli authorities expelled her back to Gaza claiming that that she was illegally staying in the West Bank.
Azzam petitioned against her expulsion with the assistance of Gisha, a legal center for freedom of movement, but the High Court accepted the Israeli authorities' decision to deny Azzam a chance to remain in the West Bank to continue her education.
The authorities did not claim security charges against Azzam.
Regarding the assertion that she is an illegal alien in the West Bank, Gisha said that she had moved to the region legally with an entrance permit into Israel issued to her by the IDF commander on the scene after a meticulous security check.
The High Court accepted Israel's claim that Azzam entered the West Bank illegally, due to the fact that the permit entitled her entrance into Jerusalem, not the West Bank.
During the four years she lived and studied in the West Bank, Azzam placed several requests to change her address from Gaza to Bethlehem.
According to the Oslo accord, the Palestinian Authority has the power to change its' citizen's addresses in their identity cards, and is only required to notify the Israel authorities.
But ever since the accord was implemented, Israel has refused to accept the PA's authority to register change of address from Gaza to the West Bank, and has retained a monopoly over the acceptance or denial of an address change request.
Since the year 2000, Israel has also refused to allow Gaza residents to study in the West Bank. It is believed that there are currently over 25,000 Palestinians who were born in Gaza and are currently living in the West Bank, all of whom have been disallowed to change their address on their identification certificates.
Most of them have been living in the West Bank for many years. They have raised their families there, and have been working in the region, but are under the constant threat of expulsion.
Source:
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Amira Hass / How Israel manipulates its citizens
Would any of the settlers who opposed the Civil Administration inspectors this week be living in the territories had the governments of Israel not established and encouraged them? Would the Gush Katif evacuees have moved to mobile homes in Ariel in the expectation of spacious permanent housing had the government clearly declared that this was forbidden - because the settlements will be evacuated in the near future for a peace agreement - and that evacuation-compensation money would not be paid to anyone who moves to the West Bank?
Do the settlers clashing with the forces of law and order not know that those who have committed crimes - from racist threats and blocking roads, to wholesale cutting down of trees, arson and beating and murdering Palestinians - have not been investigated or have been forgiven and forgotten with a wink?
The settlers' feeling of betrayal is natural. Haven't the state and its institutions taught us that the settler is superior to everyone else?
Yes. The settler, in fact, is us.
The freeze orders will not change what exists now: an elite state for Jews and a sub-space for Palestinians - truncated, cut up, asphyxiated.
The distinction in the mind nowadays between the state of Israel and the settlers is artificial.
So is the distinction between the bad and the good, the violent and the law-abiding, the residents of the Migron outpost and the residents of Etzion Bloc settlements and the territories that have been annexed to Jerusalem, or those who live to the West of the separation fence.
Those who laud the freeze orders are thinking about relations with the United States.
The subordinated and occupied do not factor into their calculations. And indeed the land that was stolen from them in Beit Jala (for the benefit of Gilo) is like the land of Qalqilyah that Alfei Menashe coveted and is coveting.
The legitimacy of the settlement blocs exists only in the Israeli consensus. In reality, it is these blocs and Ma'aleh Adumim that are destroying the chance of a fair peace, because they and their separated roads are laying the groundwork for a crippled Palestinian political entity.
There is a lot of ingratitude in the media assault on the settlers, who have been manning barricades for the sake of a reality from which many Israelis are benefiting and accept as natural.
Had the governments of Israel been interested in containing the Golem they had created on time, they would not have cynically exploited the Oslo agreement to accelerate building and lure more and more Israelis with settlers' benefits.
Former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin would have evacuated the Hebron and Kiryat Arba settlers after the massacre Baruch Goldstein committed in the Tomb of the Patriarchs / Ibrahimi Mosque.
His government and subsequent governments would not have strangled Bethlehem with the Tunnels Road and with the "moderate" settlement of Efrat that snakes and twists along the hills.
They would have prepared the public for a just scenario by which to bring all the settlers back home and would have apologized for having lured them to transgression.
However, in 1993 we missed a one-time opportunity to develop as an entity, the aim of which is not territorial expansion at the expense of another people - who were prepared for very painful concessions for the sake of its independence and for the sake of peace.
We missed an opportunity to expel the deed of disposession from our state's institutional and mental chromosomes.
It is no wonder the setters are saying there is no difference between Kibbutz Baram and Psagot, between Givat Shaul and Alon Moreh.
Precisely in the shadow of diplomatic negotiations, Israel chose a policy of accelerated settlement in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
It is expelling Palestinian inhabitants from their homes there by various methods.
In this way, Israel is drawing a straight line between Kiryat Shmona and Beit El, between Tel Aviv and Givat Ze'ev. It has made settlers of us all.
Source:
Do the settlers clashing with the forces of law and order not know that those who have committed crimes - from racist threats and blocking roads, to wholesale cutting down of trees, arson and beating and murdering Palestinians - have not been investigated or have been forgiven and forgotten with a wink?
The settlers' feeling of betrayal is natural. Haven't the state and its institutions taught us that the settler is superior to everyone else?
Yes. The settler, in fact, is us.
The freeze orders will not change what exists now: an elite state for Jews and a sub-space for Palestinians - truncated, cut up, asphyxiated.
The distinction in the mind nowadays between the state of Israel and the settlers is artificial.
So is the distinction between the bad and the good, the violent and the law-abiding, the residents of the Migron outpost and the residents of Etzion Bloc settlements and the territories that have been annexed to Jerusalem, or those who live to the West of the separation fence.
Those who laud the freeze orders are thinking about relations with the United States.
The subordinated and occupied do not factor into their calculations. And indeed the land that was stolen from them in Beit Jala (for the benefit of Gilo) is like the land of Qalqilyah that Alfei Menashe coveted and is coveting.
The legitimacy of the settlement blocs exists only in the Israeli consensus. In reality, it is these blocs and Ma'aleh Adumim that are destroying the chance of a fair peace, because they and their separated roads are laying the groundwork for a crippled Palestinian political entity.
There is a lot of ingratitude in the media assault on the settlers, who have been manning barricades for the sake of a reality from which many Israelis are benefiting and accept as natural.
Had the governments of Israel been interested in containing the Golem they had created on time, they would not have cynically exploited the Oslo agreement to accelerate building and lure more and more Israelis with settlers' benefits.
Former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin would have evacuated the Hebron and Kiryat Arba settlers after the massacre Baruch Goldstein committed in the Tomb of the Patriarchs / Ibrahimi Mosque.
His government and subsequent governments would not have strangled Bethlehem with the Tunnels Road and with the "moderate" settlement of Efrat that snakes and twists along the hills.
They would have prepared the public for a just scenario by which to bring all the settlers back home and would have apologized for having lured them to transgression.
However, in 1993 we missed a one-time opportunity to develop as an entity, the aim of which is not territorial expansion at the expense of another people - who were prepared for very painful concessions for the sake of its independence and for the sake of peace.
We missed an opportunity to expel the deed of disposession from our state's institutional and mental chromosomes.
It is no wonder the setters are saying there is no difference between Kibbutz Baram and Psagot, between Givat Shaul and Alon Moreh.
Precisely in the shadow of diplomatic negotiations, Israel chose a policy of accelerated settlement in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
It is expelling Palestinian inhabitants from their homes there by various methods.
In this way, Israel is drawing a straight line between Kiryat Shmona and Beit El, between Tel Aviv and Givat Ze'ev. It has made settlers of us all.
Source:
Monday, December 7, 2009
Life in Jerusalem's city of three faiths
Jerusalem's Old City is a district containing a number of holy sites venerated by Muslims, Christians and Jews. The BBC's Heather Sharp, who moved into a home within its walls last year, reports on daily life in a dense tangle of narrow, winding alleyways.
Jerusalem's Old City is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims
Our first night was a disaster.
We had finally got the keys to our new home. A wiry teenager had wheeled our bed on a handcart through the narrow, carless streets.
But as we turned out the light, Arabic pop music, cheers and whistles blasted in through the window of our new flat as neighbours celebrated a wedding.
And after just a few hours sleep we were jolted awake by the sound of a massive, room-shaking bang.
We eventually worked out that it was not the start of the third intifada, or Palestinian uprising. It was just a cannon fired to signal the start of the day's fast during the Muslim month of Ramadan.
Uneasy truce
Jerusalem is a divided city in a divided land. And at its heart, is the Old City, itself divided into Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Armenian quarters.
It is home to Judaism's holiest site, Islam's third holiest and the spot where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified.
Control of the area is one of the toughest issues facing anyone trying to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
But even so, an uneasy coexistence is lived out day-to-day, albeit under the watchful eyes of clusters of armed Israeli police.
Jerusalem's Old City is part of a wider political struggle
Orthodox Jews in black coats and fox fur hats pick their way through shouting Palestinian street hawkers, as they go to pray at the Western Wall.
There are single shops where tourists can pick up a Jewish menorah, an olive wood crucifix, or a plate depicting al-Aqsa mosque.
And I have watched two young men who run neighbouring coffee shops, one Muslim, one Jewish, tease and hug each other in an open display of friendship.
But relations are not often so cordial.
At politically volatile times, like Muslim Friday prayers during the Israeli operation in Gaza, the police presence multiplies dramatically, and tensions with it.
Pungent aromas
I once showed two Israeli guests the route to see my favourite rooftop view. "When do we get kidnapped?" they half-joked anxiously, as we walked through the Muslim quarter.
Carts are often the only way of moving goods through the narrow streets
*
We live in the Christian quarter, home to Palestinian and Israeli-Arab Christians.
Nearby is one solitary house displaying an Israeli flag. Skull-capped children play behind high fences, watched by security guards. It is part of the political struggle, house by house, for control of the old city.
And when the Jewish residents and the Palestinians who live next to them meet on the streets they pass in stony silence.
But while controversy is never far away, the sights and sounds of the Old City are often far more mundane.
There are cats everywhere. From mangy, yowling toms to adorable, defenceless kittens, they especially like to roam the meat market, with its bewildering array of animal innards.
And there are the smells, incense wafts from churches mixing with the aroma of roasting Arabic coffee, and the pungent reek of rotting vegetables.
Car-free streets
The only vehicles that can navigate the narrow streets are hand carts and small tractors, which groan their way up special concrete ramps on the stone steps.
When we recently moved to a larger flat, we hired one of these tractors, piled our possessions into its trailer and watched them lurch their way to our new home.
Without car access there is a lot of carrying to do. We decided to start a roof garden. The locals looked on in bemusement as we slogged past carrying armfuls of foliage and backpacks filled with sacks of compost.
And there was the time I found myself trying to lug an electric radiator through crowds of South Korean Christian pilgrims, as they were reflectively walking the route Jesus is said to have taken to his crucifixion.
An acquaintance recently rang up and heard clanging monastery bells in the background. "You live in the Old City? How do you stand all that religious noise?" he asked.
We hear the bells from the Holy Sepulchre church, the horn announcing the start of the Jewish Sabbath, and at dusk every night the Muslim call to prayer echoes over the forest of rooftop satellite dishes.
Most of the time it is part of the furniture in this unique place where the world's three major monotheisms meet.
But I have to admit, when Ramadan came round again, and the massive, unexpected boom of the cannon erupted, a few very unholy words passed my lips.
Source:
Friday, December 4, 2009
Kingdom summons Israel envoy over Jerusalem church
If you think Israel only has it in for Muslims, THINK AGAIN!
AMMAN (AFP) - The Foreign Ministry summoned Israeli Ambassador Nevo Dani on Thursday to demand a halt to "unilateral" work carried out by Israel on the outer walls of Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
"The ambassador was summoned today to the Foreign Ministry where he was handed an official letter of protest expressing deep concerns and rejection of unilateral measures in the outer western walls of the church," a senior official told Agence France-Presse.
The government demanded Israel "immediately halt such actions and restore the status quo", according to the letter.
"Israel's measures are illegal and violate international laws because Israel is the occupying force in the West Bank and East Jerusalem," the official said.
Another official said the Israeli authorities "have removed iron bars around a gate in the walls that has been sealed since the British mandate of Palestine [which ended in 1948] and opened the gate".
The official, who declined to be named, said that the Israelis "claimed that they were doing renovations but nobody asked them to do anything".
"This is unprecedented and dangerous," the official said, noting that anything to do with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is "very sensitive".
In Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, which looks after the holy places on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church and liaises with other Christian denominations, also protested against what it said was a unilateral Israeli action.
"The work presently being carried out by the Israeli Antiquities Authority [IAA] on the ancient sealed door known as Mary's Gate, which is located on the Christian Quarter road in the Old City of Jerusalem, is the sole and entire initiative of the same Israeli Antiquities Authority," it said in a statement.
"The Custody of the Holy Land never asked the IAA to do this work nor did the Custody give its permission. In fact the representatives of the Custody informed representatives of the IAA of the sensitive nature of this door.
"It must be stated that the Custody asked that no change to this door be made, and that the iron bars protecting the door be left in their present state, precisely because behind this sealed door is the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre Church.
"The Custody would like to state for the record that the status quo regarding this ancient door must be left unchanged."
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is shared uneasily by six Christian denominations - Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Egyptian Coptic, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and Roman Catholic.
It is regarded by most Christians as the holiest place in Christendom.
Church sources in Jordan told AFP that Israel started work on the walls on November 23.
Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, stressed in the letter the "need to maintain the status quo between all Christian denominations".
Source:
AMMAN (AFP) - The Foreign Ministry summoned Israeli Ambassador Nevo Dani on Thursday to demand a halt to "unilateral" work carried out by Israel on the outer walls of Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
"The ambassador was summoned today to the Foreign Ministry where he was handed an official letter of protest expressing deep concerns and rejection of unilateral measures in the outer western walls of the church," a senior official told Agence France-Presse.
The government demanded Israel "immediately halt such actions and restore the status quo", according to the letter.
"Israel's measures are illegal and violate international laws because Israel is the occupying force in the West Bank and East Jerusalem," the official said.
Another official said the Israeli authorities "have removed iron bars around a gate in the walls that has been sealed since the British mandate of Palestine [which ended in 1948] and opened the gate".
The official, who declined to be named, said that the Israelis "claimed that they were doing renovations but nobody asked them to do anything".
"This is unprecedented and dangerous," the official said, noting that anything to do with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is "very sensitive".
In Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, which looks after the holy places on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church and liaises with other Christian denominations, also protested against what it said was a unilateral Israeli action.
"The work presently being carried out by the Israeli Antiquities Authority [IAA] on the ancient sealed door known as Mary's Gate, which is located on the Christian Quarter road in the Old City of Jerusalem, is the sole and entire initiative of the same Israeli Antiquities Authority," it said in a statement.
"The Custody of the Holy Land never asked the IAA to do this work nor did the Custody give its permission. In fact the representatives of the Custody informed representatives of the IAA of the sensitive nature of this door.
"It must be stated that the Custody asked that no change to this door be made, and that the iron bars protecting the door be left in their present state, precisely because behind this sealed door is the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre Church.
"The Custody would like to state for the record that the status quo regarding this ancient door must be left unchanged."
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is shared uneasily by six Christian denominations - Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Egyptian Coptic, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and Roman Catholic.
It is regarded by most Christians as the holiest place in Christendom.
Church sources in Jordan told AFP that Israel started work on the walls on November 23.
Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, stressed in the letter the "need to maintain the status quo between all Christian denominations".
Source:
American Jews eye Obama's 'anti-Israel' appointees
Every appointee to the American government must endure a thorough background check by the American Jewish community.
In the case of Obama's government in particular, every criticism against Israel made by a potential government appointee has become a catalyst for debate about whether appointing "another leftist" offers proof that Obama does not truly support Israel.
A few months ago, boisterous protests by the American Jewish community helped foil the appointment of Chaz Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, citing his "anti-Israel leaning."
The next attempt to appoint an intelligence aide, in this case, former Republican senator Chuck Hagel, also resulted in vast criticism over his not having a pro-Israel record.
American Zionists are urging Obama to cancel Hagel's appointment because of what they call a long and problematic record of hostility toward Israel.
The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton A. Klein, described Hagel's nomination as such: "Any American who is concerned about Iran's drive to obtain nuclear weapons, maintaining the Israeli-U.S. relationship and supporting Israel in its legitimate fight to protect her citizens from terrorism should oppose this appointment."
Republican Jews have also protested Hagel's appointment, citing an incident in 2004 when Hagel refused to sign a letter calling on then-president George Bush to speak about Iran's nuclear program at the G8 summit that year.
In August of 2006, Hagel refused to sign a letter requesting the UN declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
In a speech at the conference of self-declared "pro-peace, pro-Israel" lobby J Street, Hagel spoke about his views on the issue of Israel and the Middle East.
"The United States' support for Israel need not be - nor should it be - an either-or proposition that dictates our relationships with our Arab allies and friends. The U.S. has a long and special relationship with Israel, but it must not come at the expense of our Arab relationships," Hagel said.
The latest round of heated debate has been over the nomination of Hannah Rosenthal to head the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in the Obama administration.
Rosenthal, who is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, served as a Health Department regional director under the Clinton administration, and held positions in different left-leaning Jewish organizations.
Between 2000 and 2005, Rosenthal was the head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs; she was also the executive director of the Chicago Foundation for Women. In recent years, she has served on the advisory board of the J Street lobby.
The president of Americans for Peace Now lauded Obama's appointment of Rosenthal. Even Anti-Defamation League chairman Abraham Foxman came out in support of Rosenthal's appointment.
"This appointment signals the continued seriousness of America?s resolve to fight anti-Semitism," Foxman said in a statement.
Shortly after the announcement of Rosenthal's nomination, conservative Jewish web sites began to attack her, some of them declaring that Obama appointed an anti-Israeli to fight anti-Semitism.
Rumors brewed that she had accused Israel of systemically strengthening anti-Semitism. Bloggers argued that her appointment would cause Jews and Israelis to cast doubt on Obama and his relationship with Israel.
In one of her articles, Rosenthal criticized conservative voices in the Jewish community who she accused of taking over the discourse regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"It's a scary time, with people losing the ability to differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what's going on in Israel," Rosenthal said.
In an interview with the new online Jewish magazine, Tablet, Rosenthal said that she loves Israel.
"I have lived in Israel. I go back and visit every chance I can. I consider it part of my heart. And because I love it so much, I want to see it safe and secure and free and democratic and living safely," Rosenthal said
Source:
In the case of Obama's government in particular, every criticism against Israel made by a potential government appointee has become a catalyst for debate about whether appointing "another leftist" offers proof that Obama does not truly support Israel.
A few months ago, boisterous protests by the American Jewish community helped foil the appointment of Chaz Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, citing his "anti-Israel leaning."
The next attempt to appoint an intelligence aide, in this case, former Republican senator Chuck Hagel, also resulted in vast criticism over his not having a pro-Israel record.
American Zionists are urging Obama to cancel Hagel's appointment because of what they call a long and problematic record of hostility toward Israel.
The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton A. Klein, described Hagel's nomination as such: "Any American who is concerned about Iran's drive to obtain nuclear weapons, maintaining the Israeli-U.S. relationship and supporting Israel in its legitimate fight to protect her citizens from terrorism should oppose this appointment."
Republican Jews have also protested Hagel's appointment, citing an incident in 2004 when Hagel refused to sign a letter calling on then-president George Bush to speak about Iran's nuclear program at the G8 summit that year.
In August of 2006, Hagel refused to sign a letter requesting the UN declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
In a speech at the conference of self-declared "pro-peace, pro-Israel" lobby J Street, Hagel spoke about his views on the issue of Israel and the Middle East.
"The United States' support for Israel need not be - nor should it be - an either-or proposition that dictates our relationships with our Arab allies and friends. The U.S. has a long and special relationship with Israel, but it must not come at the expense of our Arab relationships," Hagel said.
The latest round of heated debate has been over the nomination of Hannah Rosenthal to head the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in the Obama administration.
Rosenthal, who is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, served as a Health Department regional director under the Clinton administration, and held positions in different left-leaning Jewish organizations.
Between 2000 and 2005, Rosenthal was the head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs; she was also the executive director of the Chicago Foundation for Women. In recent years, she has served on the advisory board of the J Street lobby.
The president of Americans for Peace Now lauded Obama's appointment of Rosenthal. Even Anti-Defamation League chairman Abraham Foxman came out in support of Rosenthal's appointment.
"This appointment signals the continued seriousness of America?s resolve to fight anti-Semitism," Foxman said in a statement.
Shortly after the announcement of Rosenthal's nomination, conservative Jewish web sites began to attack her, some of them declaring that Obama appointed an anti-Israeli to fight anti-Semitism.
Rumors brewed that she had accused Israel of systemically strengthening anti-Semitism. Bloggers argued that her appointment would cause Jews and Israelis to cast doubt on Obama and his relationship with Israel.
In one of her articles, Rosenthal criticized conservative voices in the Jewish community who she accused of taking over the discourse regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"It's a scary time, with people losing the ability to differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what's going on in Israel," Rosenthal said.
In an interview with the new online Jewish magazine, Tablet, Rosenthal said that she loves Israel.
"I have lived in Israel. I go back and visit every chance I can. I consider it part of my heart. And because I love it so much, I want to see it safe and secure and free and democratic and living safely," Rosenthal said
Source:
Thursday, December 3, 2009
U.S. falls short in bid to gain support for Israel's settlement freeze
Kudos to Russia for standing up against Israel and the United States. They have done what is right. Why should Israel be awarded the land that they are building settlements on which is illegal to do by International Law.
The United States fell short in its efforts to gain a declaration of international support for Israel's temporary settlement construction freeze. The Americans were hoping that its partners in the Quartet - Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - would agree to such a declaration, but Moscow expressed a series of reservations and foiled Washington's effort.
Last Thursday, a day after the security-political cabinet decided to put a moratorium on construction in settlements for a 10 month period, a conference call was held at the highest levels among Quartet members. In addition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Europe's outgoing foreign affairs chief, Javier Solana, and Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, were also on line.
Clinton proposed that the Quartet issue a joint statement of support for the Israeli decision to freeze construction. The other participants agreed and decided to let officials from each side formulate the announcement.
Heading the team tasked with formulating the statement was U.S. diplomat, David Hale, deputy to U.S. special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell.
Hale initiated exchanges with his colleagues in the EU, the UN and Russia, but it quickly became clear that there was no agreement on the content of the statement.
Senior Israeli and American officials say that Russia was responsible for foiling the announcement, by expressing many reservations to the text proposed by the Americans - which was reportedly very short. At the crux of the Russian objections were two points that were very important to the U.S. administration: the Jewish identity of the State of Israel, and that the future border between Israel and the Palestinians would reflect developments on the ground.
The Americans proposed that the Quartet's announcement be based on the statement issued by Secretary of State Clinton last week, supporting the announcement of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the freeze.
The proposed version called for the resumption of negotiations without preconditions so that an agreement could be reached which "would fulfill the Palestinian goal of establishing an independent, viable state, based on the 1967 borders, agreed upon exchanges [of territory], and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect the developments [which occurred on the ground] and which fulfill the Israeli security requirements."
The Russians argued that they did not agree with stating that Israel will be a Jewish State, and that the borders will be altered on the basis of "developments" on the ground, namely Israeli annexation of the large settlement blocks.
The Russians stressed that such formulation of the Quartet's text predetermines the results of the negotiations.
Once efforts to convince the Russians failed, the Americans decided that there was no point in issuing a statement. A senior U.S. administration official told Haaretz that the without a consensus among the members of the Quartet, it would be impossible to issue a statement for the whole group.
Source:
The United States fell short in its efforts to gain a declaration of international support for Israel's temporary settlement construction freeze. The Americans were hoping that its partners in the Quartet - Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - would agree to such a declaration, but Moscow expressed a series of reservations and foiled Washington's effort.
Last Thursday, a day after the security-political cabinet decided to put a moratorium on construction in settlements for a 10 month period, a conference call was held at the highest levels among Quartet members. In addition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Europe's outgoing foreign affairs chief, Javier Solana, and Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, were also on line.
Clinton proposed that the Quartet issue a joint statement of support for the Israeli decision to freeze construction. The other participants agreed and decided to let officials from each side formulate the announcement.
Heading the team tasked with formulating the statement was U.S. diplomat, David Hale, deputy to U.S. special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell.
Hale initiated exchanges with his colleagues in the EU, the UN and Russia, but it quickly became clear that there was no agreement on the content of the statement.
Senior Israeli and American officials say that Russia was responsible for foiling the announcement, by expressing many reservations to the text proposed by the Americans - which was reportedly very short. At the crux of the Russian objections were two points that were very important to the U.S. administration: the Jewish identity of the State of Israel, and that the future border between Israel and the Palestinians would reflect developments on the ground.
The Americans proposed that the Quartet's announcement be based on the statement issued by Secretary of State Clinton last week, supporting the announcement of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the freeze.
The proposed version called for the resumption of negotiations without preconditions so that an agreement could be reached which "would fulfill the Palestinian goal of establishing an independent, viable state, based on the 1967 borders, agreed upon exchanges [of territory], and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect the developments [which occurred on the ground] and which fulfill the Israeli security requirements."
The Russians argued that they did not agree with stating that Israel will be a Jewish State, and that the borders will be altered on the basis of "developments" on the ground, namely Israeli annexation of the large settlement blocks.
The Russians stressed that such formulation of the Quartet's text predetermines the results of the negotiations.
Once efforts to convince the Russians failed, the Americans decided that there was no point in issuing a statement. A senior U.S. administration official told Haaretz that the without a consensus among the members of the Quartet, it would be impossible to issue a statement for the whole group.
Source:
I have no brother
By Yossi Sarid
"The settlers are our brothers," Prime Minister Netanyahu said this week, trying to convey their holy wrath. But let me make it clear: T hey are not my brothers. I don't have any brothers like that, or sisters.
It's hard to be a Jew. Recently it's been even harder, and not because the whole world is against us, but because we are against the whole world. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was right. It's important what Jews do - and what we did was cut ourselves off, like an errant planet that has strayed out of orbit. The settlers have cut us off. The world is looking at us through its telescope and asking "Is this Israel?" I am also asking the same question.
Unless we were switched at birth, or there was a horrible case of mistaken identity. This is not our imagination. We don't belong to the same family. When I see them burning with desire to use improper means, setting fields alight, chopping down olive trees, hitting children on their way to school, beating soldiers and chasing away inspectors, I immediately look at myself to make sure that they are not me. I deny any kinship. I am not part of them.
When I see a Jew running over a wounded Arab terrorist again and again, I am absolutely certain that any connection between us is coincidental, happenstance, and that I'm obligated to sever it completely. I have to save my human image before I, too, am run over by that silver Mercedes. And when I see Jews expelling Palestinians from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah - evicting and taking over, getting into warm beds that haven't even had a chance to cool, leaving entire families in the cold - I am filled with disgust.
What do I have to do with these people? Brothers we are not, but rather strangers in the night. It is said that there are judges in Jerusalem. Where are the judges? What happened to them? Were they also born into this?
It is actually those who preach but don't practice love of one's fellow Jew who show a greater readiness to commit hate crimes. Actually he who at every opportunity mentions that "we are all Jews" is the one who relies on blood ties and ignores common values.
True, we are not responsible for the blood type running in our veins. Dad and especially mom are responsible for it. We were born like that, born and that's how it is. We have no reason to complain about it; we never wanted to be otherwise. It's good for us to have our no-fault-of-ours Judaism, but it's a bitter pill to be in the company of scoundrels who justify their deeds through race theory.
Why don't they part ways with us, ridding us of responsibility for them? Why don't we part company from them before their heresy brings the house down on our heads?
The connection based on values and culture is our responsibility, and we don't always recognize the full gravity of our responsibility.
This requires me to say: it is better to have a close or distant neighbor than a very distant brother beyond the hills of darkness, and with whom I have no dealings.
A connection by blood is not a condition or guarantee of a common language regarding a few values. And not every one of our compatriots is an ally; sometimes he has his own interests.
Let Shimon Peres stand up and give us his views. What will we do with the rebel state he founded in Sebastia in the West Bank, which is now endangering the existence of another state - the one Herzl and Ben-Gurion founded before him in Basel and Tel Aviv?
Source:
"The settlers are our brothers," Prime Minister Netanyahu said this week, trying to convey their holy wrath. But let me make it clear: T hey are not my brothers. I don't have any brothers like that, or sisters.
It's hard to be a Jew. Recently it's been even harder, and not because the whole world is against us, but because we are against the whole world. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was right. It's important what Jews do - and what we did was cut ourselves off, like an errant planet that has strayed out of orbit. The settlers have cut us off. The world is looking at us through its telescope and asking "Is this Israel?" I am also asking the same question.
Unless we were switched at birth, or there was a horrible case of mistaken identity. This is not our imagination. We don't belong to the same family. When I see them burning with desire to use improper means, setting fields alight, chopping down olive trees, hitting children on their way to school, beating soldiers and chasing away inspectors, I immediately look at myself to make sure that they are not me. I deny any kinship. I am not part of them.
When I see a Jew running over a wounded Arab terrorist again and again, I am absolutely certain that any connection between us is coincidental, happenstance, and that I'm obligated to sever it completely. I have to save my human image before I, too, am run over by that silver Mercedes. And when I see Jews expelling Palestinians from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah - evicting and taking over, getting into warm beds that haven't even had a chance to cool, leaving entire families in the cold - I am filled with disgust.
What do I have to do with these people? Brothers we are not, but rather strangers in the night. It is said that there are judges in Jerusalem. Where are the judges? What happened to them? Were they also born into this?
It is actually those who preach but don't practice love of one's fellow Jew who show a greater readiness to commit hate crimes. Actually he who at every opportunity mentions that "we are all Jews" is the one who relies on blood ties and ignores common values.
True, we are not responsible for the blood type running in our veins. Dad and especially mom are responsible for it. We were born like that, born and that's how it is. We have no reason to complain about it; we never wanted to be otherwise. It's good for us to have our no-fault-of-ours Judaism, but it's a bitter pill to be in the company of scoundrels who justify their deeds through race theory.
Why don't they part ways with us, ridding us of responsibility for them? Why don't we part company from them before their heresy brings the house down on our heads?
The connection based on values and culture is our responsibility, and we don't always recognize the full gravity of our responsibility.
This requires me to say: it is better to have a close or distant neighbor than a very distant brother beyond the hills of darkness, and with whom I have no dealings.
A connection by blood is not a condition or guarantee of a common language regarding a few values. And not every one of our compatriots is an ally; sometimes he has his own interests.
Let Shimon Peres stand up and give us his views. What will we do with the rebel state he founded in Sebastia in the West Bank, which is now endangering the existence of another state - the one Herzl and Ben-Gurion founded before him in Basel and Tel Aviv?
Source:
Israeli Confessions
For the list of sources of the quotes please go to: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note...
If one wants to know why and how the conflict started in Palestine more than 60 years ago, the "confessions" of Israeli and Zionist leaders should make it very clear.
700,000 Palestinians (more than half of the Palestinian population at the time) were expelled in 1948.
More than 600 towns and villages were ethnically cleansed.
Thousands were killed and maimed.
... the crimes continue to this date, and so does the unjustified condoning attitude of "civilized" governments.
If one wants to know why and how the conflict started in Palestine more than 60 years ago, the "confessions" of Israeli and Zionist leaders should make it very clear.
700,000 Palestinians (more than half of the Palestinian population at the time) were expelled in 1948.
More than 600 towns and villages were ethnically cleansed.
Thousands were killed and maimed.
... the crimes continue to this date, and so does the unjustified condoning attitude of "civilized" governments.
Ethnic cleansing, pure and simple
Israel stripped over 4,500 Jerusalemite Palestinians of their “residency rights” in 2008.
This marks a huge acceleration of a policy that has been in force since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. In these 41 years, Israel has now stripped over 12,000 Palestinians of their “permits” to live in Jerusalem, 35 per cent or so of those in 2008 alone.
It also maps out exactly where the current right-wing Israeli government, which has made no secret of its wish to Judaise Jerusalem, a travesty of history if ever there was one, is heading.
The policy shows many things about Israel to anyone who wants to see. One is this: Israel does not even bother to pretend to adhere to any kind of international law or internationally accepted standards for behaviour towards a population under occupation.
East Jerusalem, Israel’s unilateral and unrecognised annexation notwithstanding, is occupied territory (indeed, all of Jerusalem remains, under international law, a corpus separatum). As such, the residents of Jerusalem and their descendants have their right of residency guaranteed under international law.
They cannot be stripped of that right simply because of some arbitrary rule that Israel made up about having to prove your “centre of life” is in Jerusalem and not being absent for too long. After all, what kind of uproar would there be if Jews who live in Israel were similarly stripped of their residency rights in America, Poland, Germany or wherever they are originally from?
But of course, the key here is that the Palestinians of Jerusalem are not Jews. And that is what this is all about. There is no way to sugar coat what Israel is doing here. It is ethnic cleansing, pure and simple. It is not quick and dramatic like in 1948, when many people were forced to flee at the point of a gun. Rather, it is slow and administrative, forced out by the stroke of a pen.
There is no excuse for this kind of behaviour. There is certainly no excuse for international inaction over the issue. Israel will claim that Palestinians in Jerusalem would not face this problem if they accepted Israeli citizenship rather than the “residency permit” the colonising power is issuing the indigenous population. But that is tantamount to forcing Palestinians to accept an illegal occupation of their land.
What next? All visitors to Jerusalem will have to sign a paper acknowledging Israel’s “eternal right to Jerusalem” before being allowed to enter?
Israel needs to be held accountable for its racism before it becomes a precedent for other countries to follow.
Source:
This marks a huge acceleration of a policy that has been in force since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. In these 41 years, Israel has now stripped over 12,000 Palestinians of their “permits” to live in Jerusalem, 35 per cent or so of those in 2008 alone.
It also maps out exactly where the current right-wing Israeli government, which has made no secret of its wish to Judaise Jerusalem, a travesty of history if ever there was one, is heading.
The policy shows many things about Israel to anyone who wants to see. One is this: Israel does not even bother to pretend to adhere to any kind of international law or internationally accepted standards for behaviour towards a population under occupation.
East Jerusalem, Israel’s unilateral and unrecognised annexation notwithstanding, is occupied territory (indeed, all of Jerusalem remains, under international law, a corpus separatum). As such, the residents of Jerusalem and their descendants have their right of residency guaranteed under international law.
They cannot be stripped of that right simply because of some arbitrary rule that Israel made up about having to prove your “centre of life” is in Jerusalem and not being absent for too long. After all, what kind of uproar would there be if Jews who live in Israel were similarly stripped of their residency rights in America, Poland, Germany or wherever they are originally from?
But of course, the key here is that the Palestinians of Jerusalem are not Jews. And that is what this is all about. There is no way to sugar coat what Israel is doing here. It is ethnic cleansing, pure and simple. It is not quick and dramatic like in 1948, when many people were forced to flee at the point of a gun. Rather, it is slow and administrative, forced out by the stroke of a pen.
There is no excuse for this kind of behaviour. There is certainly no excuse for international inaction over the issue. Israel will claim that Palestinians in Jerusalem would not face this problem if they accepted Israeli citizenship rather than the “residency permit” the colonising power is issuing the indigenous population. But that is tantamount to forcing Palestinians to accept an illegal occupation of their land.
What next? All visitors to Jerusalem will have to sign a paper acknowledging Israel’s “eternal right to Jerusalem” before being allowed to enter?
Israel needs to be held accountable for its racism before it becomes a precedent for other countries to follow.
Source:
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
L.A. synagogue shooting might be tied to Israeli organized crime
LAPD detectives are investigating whether the shooting of two men at North Hollywood synagogue in October is the work of Israeli-connected organized crime.
The Oct. 29 shooting ignited fear that it was a hate crime, but Los Angeles police officials quickly ruled that out. In the last few weeks, LAPD investigators have concentrated their resources on the idea that the shootings were designed to silence someone.
"It is something we are looking at, but we have made no definitive conclusions," Deputy Chief Michael Downing, chief of the LAPD's Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, told The Times.
Downing in recent days on a trip to Israel was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying, "The two victims had been kneecapped. That's not indicative of terrorism. It resembled a targeted, surgical strike," the Post reported. "They were targeted as part of a stern warning linked to a criminal organization."
But in an interview with The Times, the deputy chief said no one has absolutely decided the shootings were related to organized crime. Several law enforcement sources, however, say the investigation into the shootings has been focused on criminals within the Israeli immigrant community. They say that one of the men shot in the attack was believed to be the target of the shooting, and the other was shot because he was in wrong place at the wrong time.
The shooting occurred at 6:19 a.m., after the victims parked their cars in the underground garage of Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic Synagogue, a small congregation on a quiet residential street. Morning services were underway. A young gunman, dark-skinned and wearing a dark hooded sweat shirt, approached one man near a stairwell and tried to shoot, police said, but his gun jammed.
The second congregant noticed the commotion and approached the gunman, who then shot both men in the legs.
LAPD sources, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because the investigation is ongoing, said that the shooting has sparked fear in the temple community and that detectives are struggling to get cooperation from some parties.
Source:
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
EU envoys: Israel trying to sever East Jerusalem from West Bank
A classified report drafted by European consuls in East Jerusalem and Ramallah slams Israeli policy in East Jerusalem and recommends that the European Union take steps to strengthen the Palestinian Authority's status in the city. It also advises taking various measures to protest Israeli policy in the city, as well as sanctions against people and groups involved in "settlement activity" in and around it.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz, is updated annually by EU representatives to the PA. This year's report was completed on November 23 and presented to EU institutions in Brussels a few days ago.
Due to the sensitivity of the document, the EU has never before published it, and in previous years Israel pressed the EU hard not to do so, for fear the publication would further undermine the European public's already negative view of Israel.
Senior Foreign Ministry officials said this year's report "left a harsh impression" in Brussels and helped Sweden promote its plan to have the EU formally recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.
The report accused both the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipality of working deliberately to alter the city's demographic balance and sever East Jerusalem from the West Bank. It said that both bodies assist right-wing organizations, such as Ateret Cohanim and Elad, in their efforts to implement this "strategic vision," especially around the Holy Basin area. These organizations buy houses in Arab neighborhoods, and make "attempts to implant further Jewish settlements into the heart of the Muslim Quarter."
The municipality, the report continued, discriminates against the city's Arab residents with regard to building permits, health services, education, sanitation and more.
"During the past years, Palestinians have received fewer than 200 building permits per year," it said. "Based on the population growth, permits for another 1,500 housing units annually would be necessary to cover the housing needs." For instance, the EU report noted, the village of Silwan has received only 20 building permits since 1967.
Though 35 percent of Jerusalem residents are Arab, only 5 to 10 percent of the city's budget goes to Arab neighborhoods, it continued. As a result, these areas present "a sharp contrast" to "West Jerusalem neighborhoods and East Jerusalem settlements where Israelis live."
A significant portion of the report deals with archaeological excavations in Jerusalem, especially near the Temple Mount. These digs, it charged, focus mainly on Jewish history.
"Archaeology in this case has become an ideologically motivated tool of national and religious struggle carried out in a manner that modifies the identity and character of the city and threatens to undermine its stability," the report said.
On another issue, it stated: "The expansion of Israeli settlements has sparked a trend of settler violence against the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem. Such criminal actions have been witnessed by Israeli police but are not met with adequate intervention."
Israel's closure of Palestine Liberation Organization and PA institutions in the city was also blasted in the report: "The general sense of neglect felt by many East Jerusalemites and the absence of Palestinian state-sponsored institutions and secular organizations are paving the way for Islamic religious organizations to expand their influence."
The European consuls proposed several measures to strengthen the PA presence in the eastern part of the city and pressure Israel to stop harming the Arab population. They include the following:
"Ensure EU presence at Israeli court cases on house demolitions or evictions of Palestinian families" and "when there is a risk of demolition or eviction of Palestinian families."
EU "celebrations, commemorations and national or Europe day events to be held in East Jerusalem."
"EU missions with offices or residences in East Jerusalem to regularly host Palestinian officials for dinners with senior EU visitors."
"Avoid having Israeli security accompany high-ranking officials from member states when visiting the Old City or East Jerusalem."
"Refraining from meeting Israeli officials in their East Jerusalem offices."
"Information sharing on violent settlers in East Jerusalem to assess whether to grant entry to the EU."
Source:
The report, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz, is updated annually by EU representatives to the PA. This year's report was completed on November 23 and presented to EU institutions in Brussels a few days ago.
Due to the sensitivity of the document, the EU has never before published it, and in previous years Israel pressed the EU hard not to do so, for fear the publication would further undermine the European public's already negative view of Israel.
Senior Foreign Ministry officials said this year's report "left a harsh impression" in Brussels and helped Sweden promote its plan to have the EU formally recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.
The report accused both the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipality of working deliberately to alter the city's demographic balance and sever East Jerusalem from the West Bank. It said that both bodies assist right-wing organizations, such as Ateret Cohanim and Elad, in their efforts to implement this "strategic vision," especially around the Holy Basin area. These organizations buy houses in Arab neighborhoods, and make "attempts to implant further Jewish settlements into the heart of the Muslim Quarter."
The municipality, the report continued, discriminates against the city's Arab residents with regard to building permits, health services, education, sanitation and more.
"During the past years, Palestinians have received fewer than 200 building permits per year," it said. "Based on the population growth, permits for another 1,500 housing units annually would be necessary to cover the housing needs." For instance, the EU report noted, the village of Silwan has received only 20 building permits since 1967.
Though 35 percent of Jerusalem residents are Arab, only 5 to 10 percent of the city's budget goes to Arab neighborhoods, it continued. As a result, these areas present "a sharp contrast" to "West Jerusalem neighborhoods and East Jerusalem settlements where Israelis live."
A significant portion of the report deals with archaeological excavations in Jerusalem, especially near the Temple Mount. These digs, it charged, focus mainly on Jewish history.
"Archaeology in this case has become an ideologically motivated tool of national and religious struggle carried out in a manner that modifies the identity and character of the city and threatens to undermine its stability," the report said.
On another issue, it stated: "The expansion of Israeli settlements has sparked a trend of settler violence against the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem. Such criminal actions have been witnessed by Israeli police but are not met with adequate intervention."
Israel's closure of Palestine Liberation Organization and PA institutions in the city was also blasted in the report: "The general sense of neglect felt by many East Jerusalemites and the absence of Palestinian state-sponsored institutions and secular organizations are paving the way for Islamic religious organizations to expand their influence."
The European consuls proposed several measures to strengthen the PA presence in the eastern part of the city and pressure Israel to stop harming the Arab population. They include the following:
"Ensure EU presence at Israeli court cases on house demolitions or evictions of Palestinian families" and "when there is a risk of demolition or eviction of Palestinian families."
EU "celebrations, commemorations and national or Europe day events to be held in East Jerusalem."
"EU missions with offices or residences in East Jerusalem to regularly host Palestinian officials for dinners with senior EU visitors."
"Avoid having Israeli security accompany high-ranking officials from member states when visiting the Old City or East Jerusalem."
"Refraining from meeting Israeli officials in their East Jerusalem offices."
"Information sharing on violent settlers in East Jerusalem to assess whether to grant entry to the EU."
Source:
Sioux Falls, SD - At Trial: Rubashkin Admits Mistakes, Denies Crimes
Published on: Nov 05, 2009 at 03:06 PM
Sholom RubashkinSioux Falls, SD – Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin insisted today that he never intentionally violated federal fraud or immigration laws as the head of an eastern Iowa kosher meat plant, but acknowledged that he “made mistakes.”
The former top executive at Agriprocessors Inc. attributed his plant’s questionable financial practices to his own oversights or actions by other employees. He said he was “trying hard to comply with the law” at the plant, but he grew visibly annoyed when grilled by a federal prosecutor.
“I made mistakes,” he said. “I’m a human being. I took the information people gave me and sort of went with it without really drilling down to see if it was for real or not.”
Rubashkin’s statements came during his 91-count financial-fraud trial in Sioux Falls, S.D. The 50-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges of bank-, mail-, and wire-fraud, money-laundering and ignoring an order to pay cattle providers in the time mandated by law.
The trial comes more than a year after federal agents raided the Postville slaughterhouse and detained 389 illegal immigrants. The plant slipped into bankruptcy, and prosecutors say further investigation by a court-appointed trustee unearthed evidence of a massive fraud scheme.
Rubashkin told jurors he never read the agreement for a $35 million credit line to the plant, which he signed.
The revolving loan from First Bank Business Capital is a major component of the alleged fraud scheme. Former Agriprocessors employees have testified that Rubashkin told a customer service worker to falsify sales invoices to collect larger advances.
Assistant U.S. Attorney C.J. Williams confronted him about a statement he allegedly made to Elizabeth Billmeyer, the plant’s human resources director. Billmeyer testified last week that she warned Rubashkin about illegal immigrants working the plant. She said Rubashkin told her: “It’s my company, and I’ll run it the way I want.”
“Did you say that?” Williams asked.
On the stand, Rubashkin shook his head and said he was offended.
“First of all, Agriprocessors is not my company,” he said. “I don’t talk like that. I never, ever made a statement like that. It’s not me.”
Defense lawyers have argued that Rubashkin’s father, Aaron, was the company’s sole owner while Sholom Rubashkin handled day-to-day operations.
Williams asked Rubashkin about $1.5 million in customer checks deposited to Citizens State Bank in eastern Iowa. Executives with First Bank Business Capital, the plant’s lender, testified last month that the money should have gone to a different bank in Decorah, which would then route the money to them.
Rubashkin frowned. “You’re not giving a clear picture to the jury,” he said.
Williams replied: “If your counsel wants to ask you a question, sir, he can do it. I need you to answer mine.”
Defense lawyer Guy Cook walked Rubashkin through his upbringing in the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, then asked about his family and faith as a Hasidic Jew. Prosecutors objected to the narrative nine times in the first 25 minutes of testimony.
Rubashkin spoke in rapid-fire bursts, and veered off subject several times as attorneys grilled him. Williams at one point asked Rubashkin the same question four times.
Rubashkin also likened himself to a “pioneer of the West” who helped build a strong Chabad Lubavitch Jewish community his northeast Iowa town.
“In the beginning, it was quite a task to get one or two people to come there, and someone to teach,” he said.
News Source: des moines register By GRANT SCHULTE
Sholom RubashkinSioux Falls, SD – Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin insisted today that he never intentionally violated federal fraud or immigration laws as the head of an eastern Iowa kosher meat plant, but acknowledged that he “made mistakes.”
The former top executive at Agriprocessors Inc. attributed his plant’s questionable financial practices to his own oversights or actions by other employees. He said he was “trying hard to comply with the law” at the plant, but he grew visibly annoyed when grilled by a federal prosecutor.
“I made mistakes,” he said. “I’m a human being. I took the information people gave me and sort of went with it without really drilling down to see if it was for real or not.”
Rubashkin’s statements came during his 91-count financial-fraud trial in Sioux Falls, S.D. The 50-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges of bank-, mail-, and wire-fraud, money-laundering and ignoring an order to pay cattle providers in the time mandated by law.
The trial comes more than a year after federal agents raided the Postville slaughterhouse and detained 389 illegal immigrants. The plant slipped into bankruptcy, and prosecutors say further investigation by a court-appointed trustee unearthed evidence of a massive fraud scheme.
Rubashkin told jurors he never read the agreement for a $35 million credit line to the plant, which he signed.
The revolving loan from First Bank Business Capital is a major component of the alleged fraud scheme. Former Agriprocessors employees have testified that Rubashkin told a customer service worker to falsify sales invoices to collect larger advances.
Assistant U.S. Attorney C.J. Williams confronted him about a statement he allegedly made to Elizabeth Billmeyer, the plant’s human resources director. Billmeyer testified last week that she warned Rubashkin about illegal immigrants working the plant. She said Rubashkin told her: “It’s my company, and I’ll run it the way I want.”
“Did you say that?” Williams asked.
On the stand, Rubashkin shook his head and said he was offended.
“First of all, Agriprocessors is not my company,” he said. “I don’t talk like that. I never, ever made a statement like that. It’s not me.”
Defense lawyers have argued that Rubashkin’s father, Aaron, was the company’s sole owner while Sholom Rubashkin handled day-to-day operations.
Williams asked Rubashkin about $1.5 million in customer checks deposited to Citizens State Bank in eastern Iowa. Executives with First Bank Business Capital, the plant’s lender, testified last month that the money should have gone to a different bank in Decorah, which would then route the money to them.
Rubashkin frowned. “You’re not giving a clear picture to the jury,” he said.
Williams replied: “If your counsel wants to ask you a question, sir, he can do it. I need you to answer mine.”
Defense lawyer Guy Cook walked Rubashkin through his upbringing in the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, then asked about his family and faith as a Hasidic Jew. Prosecutors objected to the narrative nine times in the first 25 minutes of testimony.
Rubashkin spoke in rapid-fire bursts, and veered off subject several times as attorneys grilled him. Williams at one point asked Rubashkin the same question four times.
Rubashkin also likened himself to a “pioneer of the West” who helped build a strong Chabad Lubavitch Jewish community his northeast Iowa town.
“In the beginning, it was quite a task to get one or two people to come there, and someone to teach,” he said.
News Source: des moines register By GRANT SCHULTE
Israel stripped thousands of Jerusalem Arabs of residency in 2008
"The State of Israel pays billions of shekels a year in stipends to people who don't even live here. We sent notices to every one of them about the intention to revoke their residency; we gave them time to appeal. Those who appealed weren't touched" (Some more Israeli bullshit! )
Last year set an all-time record for the number of Arab residents of East Jerusalem who were stripped of residency rights by the Interior Ministry. Altogether, the ministry revoked the residency of 4,577 East Jerusalemites in 2008 - 21 times the average of the previous 40 years.
In the first 40 years of Israeli rule over East Jerusalem combined, from 1967 to 2007, the ministry deprived only 8,558 Arabs of their residency rights - less than double the number who lost their permits last year alone. Thus of all the East Jerusalem Arabs who have lost their residency rights since 1967, about 35 percent did so in 2008.
According to the ministry, last year's sharp increase stemmed from its decision to investigate the legal status of thousands of East Jerusalem residents in March and April, 2008. The probe was the brainchild of former interior minister Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) and Yaakov Ganot, who headed the ministry's Population Administration.
The ministry said the probe uncovered thousands of people listed as East Jerusalem residents but were no longer living in Israel, and were therefore stripped of their residency. Most of those who lost their residency for this reason did not just move from Jerusalem to the West Bank, but were actually living in other countries, the ministry's data shows.
Those deprived of their residency included 99 minors under the age of 18.
Attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel of Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual said the 250,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem have the same legal status as people who immigrated to Israel legally but are not entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return.
"They are treated as if they were immigrants to Israel, despite the fact that it is Israel that came to them in 1967," he said.
A resident, unlike a citizen, can be stripped of his status relatively easily. All he has to do is leave the country for seven years or obtain citizenship, permanent residency or some other form of legal status in another country, and he loses his Israeli residency automatically.
Once a Palestinian has lost his residency, even returning to Jerusalem for a family visit can be impossible, Ben-Hillel said. Moreover, he said, some of those whose residency Israel revoked may not have legal status in any other country, meaning they have been made stateless.
"The list may include students who went for a few years to study in another country, and can now no longer return to their homes," he said.
Officials at Hamoked, which obtained the ministry data via the Freedom of Information Act, said they were concerned that some of those who lost their residency rights may not even know it.
"The phenomenon of revoking people's residency has reached frightening dimensions," said Dalia Kerstein, Hamoked's executive director. "The Interior Ministry operation in 2008 is just part of a general policy whose goal is to restrict the size of the Palestinian population and maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem. The Palestinians are natives of this city, not Johnny-come-latelys."
Sheetrit, however, insisted that the operation was necessary. "What we discovered is just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "The State of Israel pays billions of shekels a year in stipends to people who don't even live here. We sent notices to every one of them about the intention to revoke their residency; we gave them time to appeal. Those who appealed weren't touched."
The ministry data shows that 89 Palestinians got their residency back after appealing. Sheetrit said the probe revealed very serious offenses - such as 32 people listed as living at a single address that did not even exist.
Source:
Last year set an all-time record for the number of Arab residents of East Jerusalem who were stripped of residency rights by the Interior Ministry. Altogether, the ministry revoked the residency of 4,577 East Jerusalemites in 2008 - 21 times the average of the previous 40 years.
In the first 40 years of Israeli rule over East Jerusalem combined, from 1967 to 2007, the ministry deprived only 8,558 Arabs of their residency rights - less than double the number who lost their permits last year alone. Thus of all the East Jerusalem Arabs who have lost their residency rights since 1967, about 35 percent did so in 2008.
According to the ministry, last year's sharp increase stemmed from its decision to investigate the legal status of thousands of East Jerusalem residents in March and April, 2008. The probe was the brainchild of former interior minister Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) and Yaakov Ganot, who headed the ministry's Population Administration.
The ministry said the probe uncovered thousands of people listed as East Jerusalem residents but were no longer living in Israel, and were therefore stripped of their residency. Most of those who lost their residency for this reason did not just move from Jerusalem to the West Bank, but were actually living in other countries, the ministry's data shows.
Those deprived of their residency included 99 minors under the age of 18.
Attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel of Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual said the 250,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem have the same legal status as people who immigrated to Israel legally but are not entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return.
"They are treated as if they were immigrants to Israel, despite the fact that it is Israel that came to them in 1967," he said.
A resident, unlike a citizen, can be stripped of his status relatively easily. All he has to do is leave the country for seven years or obtain citizenship, permanent residency or some other form of legal status in another country, and he loses his Israeli residency automatically.
Once a Palestinian has lost his residency, even returning to Jerusalem for a family visit can be impossible, Ben-Hillel said. Moreover, he said, some of those whose residency Israel revoked may not have legal status in any other country, meaning they have been made stateless.
"The list may include students who went for a few years to study in another country, and can now no longer return to their homes," he said.
Officials at Hamoked, which obtained the ministry data via the Freedom of Information Act, said they were concerned that some of those who lost their residency rights may not even know it.
"The phenomenon of revoking people's residency has reached frightening dimensions," said Dalia Kerstein, Hamoked's executive director. "The Interior Ministry operation in 2008 is just part of a general policy whose goal is to restrict the size of the Palestinian population and maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem. The Palestinians are natives of this city, not Johnny-come-latelys."
Sheetrit, however, insisted that the operation was necessary. "What we discovered is just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "The State of Israel pays billions of shekels a year in stipends to people who don't even live here. We sent notices to every one of them about the intention to revoke their residency; we gave them time to appeal. Those who appealed weren't touched."
The ministry data shows that 89 Palestinians got their residency back after appealing. Sheetrit said the probe revealed very serious offenses - such as 32 people listed as living at a single address that did not even exist.
Source:
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