commentary from Israel & the West Bank
New Pawns in the Game of Settlement Growth
Cross posted at Mondoweiss
Yesterday morning, Nefesh B’Nefesh had the first in a series of summer 2009 celebrations greeting its charter flights packed with new immigrants from North America. Nefesh B’Nefesh is a non-profit organization that encourages and facilitates Jewish immigration to Israel from North America and the United Kingdom. They expect to bring over 3,000 immigrants to Israel over the course of the summer, in addition to the 20,000 they have brought since 2002. Attending the ceremony were the Israeli Minister of Transportation, Israeli Minister of Immigrant Absorption, the Chairman of the Jewish Agency, the CEO of EL Al Israel Airlines and the two American Jewish founders of Nefesh B’Nefesh.
Nefesh B’Nefesh, along with the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government, is intentionally encouraging new immigrants to move to illegal settlements. Of the 232 immigrants who arrived in Israel yesterday, seven families were going to settle in Ma’aleh Adumim, along with a handful of people moving to Efrat inside the Gush Etzion settlement block. Both of these areas are considered to be illegal Israeli settlements according to international law. President Obama has recently called on Israel to cease all settlement growth and activity. The Israeli government has, in turn, argued that it must be able to continue what it calls “natural growth,” or building within existing settlements for the children of residents. But even using their own logic, “natural growth” certainly can’t include new immigrants from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Nefesh B’Nefesh will succeed in bringing family after family to the settlements in effect having an American based nonprofit organization directly contributing to Israeli settlement growth (click here to see upcoming Nefesh B’Nefesh events in the US). Furthermore, important staff members of the Nefesh B’Nefesh organization are settlers by their own admission.
In addition to Israel’s stalling of evacuating outposts it has itself slated for dismantlement, the Obama administration faces another crucial obstacle in its efforts to implement a freeze on Israeli settlement growth: American citizens moving there.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Joseph Dana on 08/07/2009 at 14:46, and is filed under Unarmed Resistance, West Bank. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
Palestinian Children in West Bank Summer Camp: “Break the Silence, Break the Siege”
about 5 days ago - 2 comments
This afternoon, I visited a Palestinian summer camp in the southern West Bank city of Beit Umar. The camp is named “The Freedom Flotilla Camp” and contains roughly one hundred youth aged 12 to 17 years old from the city. In addition to normal summer camp activities like swimming, playing football and general running around
A Demonstration Marking 43 Years of Occupation in the West Bank
about 1 month ago - No comments
One hundred and fifty Israelis joined about a thousand Palestinian demonstrators to commemorate 43 years of occupation in New Beit Nuba Friday. Coordinated by the popular committees in the West Bank and the Coalition against the Occupation the demonstration focused on the right of return of the those internally displaced Palestinians from the villages of
Fighting for the Olive Trees
about 4 months ago - 1 comment
Below is a reportage from a Ta’ayush activist about Beit Jala. An action took place there yesterday in an attempt to save an olive grove from destruction in order to make space for the annexation wall that Israel is building through the West Bank. Beit Jala 3/3/2010 Already when driving on route 60, we saw
Can Tax-Free Donations Fund Settlements?
about 6 months ago - 3 comments
Readers of this website know that we have been covering the actions of the American based group Nefesh bNefesh. Our argument is that Nefesh bNefesh is encouraging settlement activity through financial incentives while enjoying the benefits of nonprofit status in the United States. Nefesh bNefesh and other organizations have been gaining political clout in Israel
A Busy Weekend
about 7 months ago - 1 comment
A busy weekend in Israel for Ta’ayush and the Israeli direct action left. Above is clear video from last Friday’s Sheikh Jarrah protest. Quoted in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, Meretz Chairman Chaim Oron said “It’s unthinkable that every week left-wing protestors are prevented from expressing legitimate protest, while right-wing protestors, who violently and blatantly
Another Day, Another Attack, Another Disgrace
about 10 months ago - No comments
The following is an email I have received from a Ta’ayush member about a recent attack in Susya by settlers on the native population. A translation to follow in the comming days… פעילי תעאיוש שליוו הבוקר חקלאים בצפא, קיבלו הודעה על מתנחלים המתרכזים באזור סוסיא לקראת פינוי הצפוי להיום של מאחז “גבעת הדגל” שבסמוך. בשל
Palestinians out, Jews in
about 12 months ago - 10 comments
After receiving eviction notices last May, three Palestinian families constituting 53 people, including 20 children, were forcibly removed from their homes under High Court order at dawn on Sunday August 2. The Hanouns, the Rawis and the al-Ghawis, all families who fled their homes in West Jerusalem and became refugees during the 1948 War, have
When Do Settlers Become Violent?
about 12 months ago - 6 comments
1 August 2009 South West Bank Ta’ayush joined the Christian Peacemaker Team to help accompany children to school near the southern West Bank village of Tuwani. Children from nearby villages such as Tuba attend school in Tuwani which means that they have to walk close to the illegal settlement of Havat Maon. In recent years,
An Unshakable Status Quo With the Occupation?
about 12 months ago - No comments
Aluf Benn, senior Editor at Ha’aretz, had an op-ed piece in the New York Times last week. Without knowing it, he touched on a disturbing and difficult issue in the settlement debate, Israeli indifference. Detailing how Obama’s understanding of the Israeli public is wrong, Benn writes: “As far as most Israelis are concerned, Mr. Obama
Israeli Settlements: Obama Should Know Better
about 12 months ago - 3 comments
Cross posted at The Nation Early in the morning on July 7, an excited crowd of more than 100 gathered in Ben-Gurion International Airport to greet 232 new Jewish immigrants to Israel who arrived from North America on an El Al charter flight organized and funded by Nefesh B’Nefesh (which means “Soul in Soul” in
about 1 year ago
Hi, do you have a link to the stats on destinations of NBN olim?
Cheers.
about 1 year ago
I’ve just seen the video.
about 1 year ago
hey.
do you have any place where i can read up on nefesh b’nefesh’s encouragement for new olim to live in the occupied territories? i am not trying to be antagonistic, but i have not heard of that before. they do help place new olim in different locations, and maybe their approach has severely changed since i moved here a few years ago, but i never felt any push to move there.
thanks,
mk
about 1 year ago
Hi.
Thanks for the comment.
This is a difficult question for a variety of factors. The first is that Nefesh is iron clad when it comes to disclosing their numbers of where immigrants go to live. They have to disclose according to US law because they are a non profit but they have refused all of my requests. Secondly, if you have a basic look at their community guide it is clear that the West Bank settlements are described as the best location to live in Israel. Compared what they say about Gush Etzion and Tel Aviv. It is fun, try it. There is something to this thought pattern and the notion that an overwhelming majority of there staff people actually live in the settlements themselves.
One of the reasons that I made this video was because of the difficulty I have had in trying to get information about the settlements. I figured that I would go to the airport itself and ask the new olim where they were moving. Out of 232 passengers, seven families, large families were moving to the settlements. I do not think that this can be ignored. As the NBN person notes, they help olim in every place in Israel.
I think that if you couple that with the fact that their website is overwhelming a real estate guide for places like Gush Etzion and Ariel as well as the fact that most of their staff live in the settlements AND the fact that it is impossible to actually get their data about NBN placing new immigrants in settlements, then we have a little story that needs to be talked about.
If they wanted to disprove this notion, they could simply released their stats of immigrants and we could see what percentage move to the settlements. Until now, they have refused.
Hope that helps. Be sure to check out their community guide on the website.
All the best,
Joseph
about 1 year ago
Thanks again for your posts. So disturbing to see this, when to me it seems this issue with the settlements is at if not beyond a crisis point. A couple of years ago, I saw a program on one of the Christian networks here were they were asking people to send money to Israel so they could move orphans in South America to Israel. The reasoning behind this was not “these children need help”, but “they are part of one of the lost tribes, let’s send them home”. Anytime I see anything here in the U.S. about immigration to Israel, it always has a sort of fanatical twist to it. I wonder if maybe Israel should slow down immigration period until after they pull back the settlements?
about 1 year ago
joe and mairav,
awesomeness, thanks for interviewing american settler-types so i dont have to.
ron
about 1 year ago
These interviews and topics are brilliant. Thanks for sharing. You are clever to point out that the argument for “natural growth” is dishonest. Even at it’s most basic (growing families), it cannot justify expanding settlements that were and are illegal in the first place. If the settlements are illegal, it doesn’t matter if you are building a hospital. Occupying the land is still wrong (and there is plenty of “land” to build these communities within Israel). But by pointing out that these settlements are being populated by new Olim, it just goes to prove that the goal of the settlements is to create a reality on the ground that is harder to change with every new person that is living there. Possession is 9/10 of the law, and the settler movement knows it will be virtually impossible (even with civil war) to try to evacuate the hundreds of thousands of people living across the Green Line, and abandon the trillions of dollars of infrastructure.
I hate that so much effort has been wasted on these settlements, effort which could have been used to build a beautiful Israel and promote peaceful, respectful, symbiotic relationships the the majority of the Palestinian population.
about 1 year ago
Really good article—this is a very important issue that isn’t getting enough attention in the Jewish community worldwide. I myself made Aliyah with Nefesh B’Nefesh two years ago, to Tel Aviv. I definitely have noticed their ongoing brazen promotion of the settlements in the West Bank as great communities for English-speaking immigrants, and it really bothers me. With the current government in Israel it is only getting worse, and the voices of rational and truly liberal Israelis like myself are not being heard. I appreciate that you’ve outlined this issue so eloquently here, and I will be passing this on to my friends here.