commentary from Israel & the West Bank
Settlers Attack as a Palestinian Villagers try to Secure Water in the South Hebron Hills
Aug 19th
Israel and the West Bank are experiencing record temperature this week. The heat always brings the issue of water access to the forefront of Palestinian minds in the South West Bank. The issue of water in Area C of the South Hebron Hills in the West Bank is a major one. Because the area is under full Israeli military and civil control, the Israeli government at the request of the Israeli army often denies water infrastructure for Palestinians villages. The idea is slowly starve the villages in order to pressure the residents into moving to major city centers such as Yatta and Hebron. Dramatic images of a Palestinian child holding on to his father as he is arrested by Israeli soldiers for ‘stealing water’ surfaced some weeks ago made international news.
Ta’ayush activists were on the ground in the South Hebron Hills last Saturday helping Palestinians create a water station for the village of Bir al Eid. What was captured on tape (below) are settlers verbally and physically attacking the activists and the Israeli soldiers that almost always accompany Ta’ayush activists in order to harass them. After the settlers rampage of destruction, the army turned to the Ta’ayush members with a closed military zone order. The struggle for water continues in the South Hebron Hills as settler violence shows no sign of slowing.
Israeli Conveyor Belt Justice at the Ofer Military Court
Aug 19th
Early this week, in the middle of a extreme heat wave, I found myself sitting in the open air pen which is known as the waiting area of the Ofer military court in the West Bank. The Ofer military court is one of the main court facilities in the West Bank run by the Israeli military. It acts as a legal arm of the occupation dealing with many cases in connection with the Palestinian unarmed Resistance. Israeli citizens have the opportunity to witness trials there but few outside of a dedicated group of activists visit the facility. The court system does not operate efficiently or even on time. It operates as a symbol of the occupation complete with the soul crushing attitudes of prison guards and army officers that work there and the endless waiting which is a part of every visit. If one wanted a series of Eden Abergil photos, the Ofer military court would be the first place that I would send them.
On Tuesday morning, Adeeb abu Ramha had his appeal before the military court at Ofer. Usually, appeal trials begin two to three hours late but on this day it began only after a ten minute delay. Perhaps this was due to do with the fact that the British Council, Spanish government and European Union all sent representatives to oversee the Israeli ‘conveyor belt justice system’ at work in Ofer.
Adeeb abu Rahma is a taxi driver and father of nine from the village of Bi’ilin. On 9 July 2010 he was found guilty of incitement of violence against Israeli security forces due to his participation with the Popular Struggle committee against the wall in Bi’ilin . On the day of his sentence, abu Rahma had been in jail for exactly one year. Adeeb was sentenced to one year by the court. If the military court system worked according to legal precedent , Adeeb would have been released the same day as his verdict. However, the army appealed the decision in an attempt to keep him in jail for as well as possible.
The appeal hearing began with legal adv. Gabi Lasky attacking the court for using a bizarre understanding of the law which in reality had nothing to do with the legal system but was rather an instrument of occupation. During the course of four hours, Lasky systematicaly showed how the court allowed impermissible evidence in the conviction of abu Ramha (such as testimony gleaned from children held in horrible conditions in Israeli jails. See Amira Hess’s excellent report from yesterday’s Haaretz) and ignored previous court percents as well as soldier testimonies. The judge was dismissive of most claims brought up by Lasky and acted unsurprised when the military persecutors were unable to respond directly to claims of misconduct in the proceedings.
After the five hour hearing, the feeling among the defense lawyers was the abu Ramha would be charged with a sentence of fourteen months and released so that the army would maintain a semblance of fairness to the law. Nothing will be read about this trial in the mainstream media. Outside a few ‘activist’ websites, little will be discussed about how the Israeli occupation legal system just crushed another possible Palestinian Gandhi.
Violence in al-Walaja as the Weekly Protest Against the Wall Grows
Aug 14th
Israeli violence is growing in al-Walaja as the village continues to grow its resistance to the building of the Separation Wall on its land. Yesterday, Israeli forces attacked non-violent demonstrators with stones, sound bombs and tear gas. Two Palestinians were arrested violently and the protest was repressed with unnecessary violence. The following video captures the demo better than words.
Mazin Qumsiyeh PhD witnessed the events and wrote the following report of the demo:
On the first Friday of Ramadan, thousands of Palestinians tried to reach the Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem for prayers in Al-Aqsa mosque. But only some men above 50 and some women above 45 year old were allowed to enter through the checkpoints in the apartheid wall. Some of those left behind participated in demonstrations. Al-Walaja demonstration was particularly inspiring and faced the might of the apartheid system. The Apartheid wall here is being built to surround Al-Walaja on all sides. We marched from the mosque towards the village entrance and along the main road; here the wall facing Al-Walaja village is ugly concrete and the side of it facing the illegal colony of HarGilo is decorated with Jerusalem stone. We stopped at the village entrance as planned, beat drums and chanted things like “1234 Occupation no more… 5678 stop the stealing stop the hate”, several military and police vehicles and dozens of heavily armed apartheid warriers prepared to attack us. Ali chanted in Arabic, I spoke in English, and then Ali spoke in Hebrew. We addressed the gathering and the soldiers telling them this was a peaceful demonstration against land confiscation. We explained that this village lost 80% of its land in 1948 and is now about to lose the rest. The officers came and gave us five minutes to disperse but then started attacking us within five seconds with stun grenades and tear gas. They arrested Ali Al-Aaraj and then they ran into the nearby house and arrested his cousin Ma’moun (who was not participating in the demonstration) . Some colonial racist settlers showed up with an Israeli flag and waved uit and cheered their storm troops on. They also violently attacked people injuring several (I personally saw them toss a man down against a concrete wall injuring him in the leg). Those abducted were released a few hours later thanks to good legal support.
The “banality of evil” and Israel’s destruction of al-Araqib (with Video)
Aug 11th
In the early hours of 10 August, Israeli forces destroyed — for the third time — the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the northern Negev desert. Israel had first destroyed the village on 27 July as EI reported, and each time the villagers have attempted to rebuild.
We arrived in the darkness. The horizon was blurred from the desert night sky and all that could be seen was ruin. Piles of concrete, steel reinforcing bars and wood in places where the village once sat. In this maze of construction material there were small makeshift living spaces, barely suitable for the harsh desert climate. Simple tent structures consisting of four wood shafts and a black tarp was the only remains of this village.
We, Israeli and international activists, were invited to sit in these tents through the night and sip coffee in the cool desert night with the villagers. They told us about their livelihood now that the village is constantly facing demolition. Some talked about their military service in the Israeli army and their disbelief that the country they served could behave in such a way as to destroy their entire village. Others expressed hope that at least some Israelis understood the grave nature of their government and were standing arm in arm with them.
As the night closed and the light began to change, the first sounds of the demolition crew could be heard far off in the distance. Before we had time to blink, 200 fully clad police officers were on microphones telling us to leave and that any violence would be met with harsher violence. As soon as the voices on the microphones stopped, the bulldozers began to work. The place we had been sitting and having coffee through the night was leveled before our groggy, disbelieving eyes. We barely had time to register the fact that the village was being leveled, as the police began pushing us away from the living structures with extreme force.
A Bedouin woman sits in front of her rebuilt home in al-Araqib after it was destroyed by Israeli forces, again. (Joseph Dana)
The demolition crew worked efficiently and without pause. Every structure that served some form of life in the village was leveled and all the building materials from it were trucked away. As we were pushed further from the village, a couple of activists tried to sit inside or in front of the tents. This was met with violence by the police as people were thrown to the ground like rag dolls. At one point in the chaos, a professor of medieval history at Tel Aviv University was grabbed by a police officer, who quickly wrenched his hand behind his back. The professor was held like this for a number of minutes and then arrested. It is still unclear under what terms.
Finally, the police confined us to a hilltop and had us look over the village as it was destroyed. The water canisters, which are needed because Israel refuses to give the villagers water pipes, were broken and then placed on flat bed trucks to be carted away. The image of massive bulldozers flanked by heavily armed riot police destroying makeshift Bedouin living structures is something that no one would be able to forget. As soon as the forces left, the villagers began rebuilding what little they have left. Every week, their resources shrink and yet they rebuild. They have no choice.
All of the police officers and members of the demolition crew this morning were simply following orders. It was another day for them and due to the Israeli cultural understanding of the Bedouins and Palestinians as “nearly people,” they will probably not lose a wink of sleep this evening. However, the complete destruction of the village of al-Araqib is yet another powerful example of the Israeli banality of evil.
Cross posted on Electronic Intifada
Two Arrested During Nabi Saleh Demonstration
Aug 9th
From the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
Residents of Nabi Saleh defied the army and the unbearable heat in another week of resilient resistance to the occupation and the theft of their lands. No less than a hundred people took to the black asphalt streets of Nabi Saleh in the blazing heat of an August high noon after the midday prayer, marching down to Ein alQous, the water spring that settlers have been trying to take over. As the villagers and their Israeli and international supporters marched down the main street, soldiers have already took positions at a junction inside the village, stopping all traffic in and out of the village, and the three other villages that depend on the junction. The village’s children were the first to get to the soldiers and taunted the force’s commander. Eventually, clashes ensued with tear-gas, concussion grenades and rubber bullets-coated from the army’s direction and stones from the village’s youth.
At some point, a fire was struck by a tear-gas projectile that landed in the garden of one of the village’s houses. As people were busy trying to put out the fire, a group of soldiers stormed into a house from which people were bringing water, in a failed attempt to arrest one of the village’s youth. Unsuccessful, they attacked a Danish activist – bashing his head against the wall – and arrested an Italian activist.
More than an hour after the fire began, one fire truck was finally allowed through the blocked intersection, and put out the fire. Clashes, however, continued, with soldier using constantly increasing violence, and periodically invading deeper into the village with armored jeeps and on foot, then retreating and then invading again.
An Israeli activist who was taking pictures was arrested by soldiers in one of these incursions, and later framed of stone throwing. The Italian activist was taken to the nearby Jewish-only settlement of Halamish, and released with no charge five hours later. The Israeli activist was taken to the police station, and after a short questioning was kept on remand for the night. The residents of Nabi Saleh have been holding regular demonstrations against the creeping confiscation of their lands by the adjacent Jewish-only settlement of Halamish since December 2009. Protest was sparked after settlers, abated by the Army, forcefully took over a natural spring belonging to the village.
The hilltop village of Nabi Saleh is home to approximately 550 residents and is located 30 kilometers northeast of Ramallah along highway 465. Residents have been holding regular demonstrations against the creeping confiscation of their lands by the adjacent Jewish-only settlement of Halamish since December 2009. Protest was sparked after settlers, abated by the Army, forcefully took over a natural spring belonging to the village.
One year in, the Sheikh Jarrah movement faces its biggest challenge – Zionism
Aug 9th
Last Friday marked exactly one year since the beginning of the protests against the eviction of Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah. The protest has grown from a handful of Israelis and some international activists to hundreds of Israelis that attend weekly Friday demonstrations. Unlike one year ago, key Israeli political and cultural personalities associated with the Zionist establishment such as Avraham Burg and David Grossman now make weekly appearances addressing the crowd with passionate speeches about the future of the Israeli left. Going into its first year, the movement in Sheikh Jarrah now faces its biggest challenge – Zionism.
Despite the enormous recognition of the struggle in Sheikh Jarrah in Israel and abroad, the movement is beginning to split over important questions about its character and future aspirations. Many of the original Israeli protesters are growing disenchanted with the current direction of the movement. They feel that the movement is transitioning from a joint Palestinian-Israeli struggle to a fight to save the Zionist soul. An example of this tension can be found in the coordination committees which run the protest and it’s strategy. From the beginning, a joint Israeli-Palestinian coordination committee has been meeting weekly to discuss upcoming and previous actions as well as media strategy. Since last fall, another committee which is only Israeli has been meeting as well in order to plan the actions from the Israeli point of view. As the protest has grown to include more and more Israelis, the Israeli committee has increased in size dramatically and slowly taken over the guiding duties of the movement. The character of the Israeli committee is becoming a Zionist one as political parties such as Meretz have begun to take central roles in the protest movement. Some of the “official” spokespeople of the Sheikh Jarrah protest do not even attend the joint Palestinian-Israeli planning committee instead preferring to organize solely from the Israeli side. This gulf between the committees presents one of the most profound challenges to the future of the joint struggle.
Internal issues have often destroyed leftist movements in Israel. Due to schisms that arose about the direction of the Peace Now protests in the nineties a new direct action left was created by groups like Ta’ayush and the Anarchists Against the Wall around the time of the second intifada. To this day, these groups refuse to take joint positions on major political questions and theory instead preferring to focus on joint Palestinian-Israeli action in the field. Zionist rhetoric is also completely absent from their few political manifestos.The Israeli involvement in Sheikh Jarrah was largely started by people associated with these groups. The ability to maintain the philosophy of direct action in the streets of Sheikh Jarrah is now a decisive issue among the Israeli protesters as the Zionist left has found a more visible role in the movement.
Despite internal issues of character and identity, the protests have served to galvanize the Israeli left. Many people in Jerusalem and even Tel Aviv, who would have never thought about entering East Jerusalem, now make regular weekly visits to Sheikh Jarrah and bear witness to the Israeli government’s policy of unequally application of the law. Israelis have a psychological barrier when it comes to the West Bank, East Jerusalem and other Palestinian areas. Maybe it is the army or the education system but the thought of entering a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem is simply beyond the comprehension of reality for many mainstream Israelis. Sheikh Jarrah has helped to break down this barrier and people that before would have feared for their life in East Jerusalem attend demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah on a weekly basis. Because of Sheikh Jarrah there is a ‘new blood’ in the Israeli left and many Israelis are now joining groups like Ta’ayush in other demonstrations in the West Bank. Ta’ayush, the Arab-Jewish partnership group who have been conducting direct action demonstrations in the South Hebron Hills since 2002, has seen a dramatic increase in the levels of participates for their weekly activities as a result of the popularity of the Sheikh Jarrah movement.
Sheikh Jarrah has become the gateway drug for a new breed of Israeli leftists which are slowly understanding that the walls between Israeli and Palestinian society are not high and can easily be brought down. In the landscape of the direct action Israeli left, Sheikh Jarrah is also unique because of the age range of people that have joined the struggle. While a core component of the movement is made up of young university age people, many older people from all segments of Israeli society have become regular fixtures in the movement. Often, older participants in Sheikh Jarrah harbour stronger Zionist politics than the younger protesters thus helping to reinforce the tension with Zionism in the movement.
For many Israeli activists in Sheikh Jarrah, the past year has brought profound psychological changes. One of the core activists involved in Sheikh Jarrah, who did not wish to be named, told me , “I am a law-abiding citizen. I pay my taxes. I come from a good family and have never done anything illegal in my life but in Sheikh Jarrah I am criminal in the eyes of the police. Why? Because I am non-violent activist standing with Palestinians. In Sheikh Jarrah, I realized for the first time in my life that the police were against me because of my political views and this is scary.” This story is not uncommon among protesters in Sheikh Jarrah and helps explains the incredible growth of the movement. Once Israelis are confronted with the uncomfortable reality that their state does not represent them and is in fact against them, returning to normal life becomes very difficult. Continued protest is often the only way to maintain sanity.
According to one of the earliest Israeli activists in the Sheikh Jarrah struggle, the growth of the movement is incredible. She told me that, ‘I never expected to see this day, when hundreds of Israelis would go to East Jerusalem and risk arrests or personal violence in order to protest on behalf of solidarity and co-existence with Palestinians.” Despite her positive views on the protest growth, one can see the tension in her eyes about the types of Israelis which are joining the protest. She is worried that the protest will lose its character as a Palestinian struggle which Israelis can assist. At one point in our conversation she told me that on certain protest days she would prefer to have five hundred less Israelis in order to maintain the Palestinian character of the protest.
Zionist leftists associated with grassroots groups or political parties such as Meretz are beginning to see Sheikh Jarrah as an outlet for Israelis to deal with internal issues. Sheikh Jarrah has become a symbol of the nature of the Israeli legal system and the unequal application of law. Most Israelis understand that violent elements in society (e.g. settlers) control an unusually high amount of state resources and attention. Until now, there has not be an public outlet for expressing this criticism in a popular way. Sheikh Jarrah has become that outlet but at the cost of joint Palestinian-Israeli character of the struggle. Zionist parties are looking to hijack the struggle as proof that Israel has the ability to be a vibrant democracy. They want to use the movement to help establish the character of Israeli society which does not necessarily have anything to do with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. The clarity of the injustice that is taking place in Sheikh Jarrah against Palestinians coupled with the fact that it is centrally located in Jerusalem, has made the protest movement a fertile ground for the recreation of the Israeli left.
Zionism is involved in a fight to save its soul both in Israel and abroad. Israelis have lived with the uncomfortable reality that Zionism is at odds with issues of human rights, liberalism and equality for as long as the state has existed but have been ignored them successfully with an obsession with ‘security’. A change is under way in Israel as the country is taking a turn to the right in terms of its leadership and it’s view on the outside world. Many Israelis who still believe in Zionism as containing some form of classical liberal theory but are uncomfortable about its current/future application have found a voice in the Sheikh Jarrah movement. They look to Sheikh Jarrah as a chance to show themselves and perhaps the world that Israel does have the ability to exist democratically and extend basic rights to even its enemies. They are able to use the movement as a struggle against rightist elements associated with Zionism such as the settlers and the armed forces of the state. The movement is becoming a place where the contours of a more equitable state of Israel are discussed with incredible hope amond Zionist leftists.
The difficulty in all of this is that the more Sheikh Jarrah becomes ‘a fight for the Zionist soul’, the less it is about a Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. Zionism has not yet learned co-existence with Palestinian society, and especially not with unarmed Palestinian resistance. Sheikh Jarrah is becoming an example of one of the most perverse forms of Zionist domination – the hijacking of a Palestinian struggle in order to play out internal issues of Zionist practice within Israeli society. Non-Zionist Israeli leftists have realized this trend a long time ago and left the movement. The challenge facing the Israeli left will be to deprioritize their own Zionist struggle, and instead embrace the ideas of Palestinian solidarity that the movement was founded on. If these political movements can co-exist in Sheikh Jarrah, the struggle will be truly revolutionary.
In the next year, the Israeli left will have to face difficult questions about the parameters of its political philosophy. The protests will continue to grow while more and more Israelis descend on the neighbourhood on Friday afternoons. Zionist left parities such as Meretz will continue to use Sheikh Jarrah as an example of Israeli aspirations of democratic excellence while minimizing the Palestinian character of the struggle. The challenge for the Israeli activists who began this incredible movement will be how they deal with the forces of Zionism in the demonstrations and in the planning committees. For the model to grow, issues of Zionism will have to be dealt with directly at the risk of alienating large segments of the Israeli population that are curious about joining the movement. The forces of Zionism see an opportunity in Sheikh Jarrah to exploit the work of a group of dedicated Israelis and Palestinians that believe in co-existence and co-habitation. The strength of the movement will be seen in whether they can weather the Zionist storm that has already begun to take over the movement.
Ni’ilin Marks the Killing of a Seventeen Year Old Boy by Israeli Soldiers with a Protest against the Separation Wall
Aug 8th
The West Bank village of Ni’ilin has been struggling against the creation of the Israeli separation wall on its lands for two years. During the time of their struggle, five people have been killed by Israeli army forces. This past Friday marked the second anniversary of the killing of seventeen year old Yousef Amireh by Israeli soldiers. Below is a first hand report of the protest by Saeed Amireh, a resident of Ni’ilin and son of the jailed popular struggle leader Ibrahim Amireh.
Today was the second anniversary of the death of 17-year-old Yousef Amireh. An Israeli soldier shot him in the head with a rubber bullet and killed him. Also, 10-year-old Ahmed Mousa was killed two years and two days ago by the Iraeli military. Both children are from Ni’lin. The people of Ni’lin demonstrated together with Israeli and international peace activists demonstrated. To mark this painful anniversary, everyone in town put down their work and mourned for 6 hours. After the Friday prayers, we marched towards the Apartheid wall, holding pictures of the two boys. We chanted slogans and told the soldiers that we will never forget that they murdered two innocent children. And that we will remain steadfast and protest until they tear down the wall and remove it from our land.
The Israeli soldiers started shooting a lot of tear gas into the crowd. 5 protesters suffered couldn’t breath and were injured due to the inhalation of the toxic tear gas. Then, as always, Israeli soldiers came towards our village and started chasing protesters and fired tear gas at them and tried to hurt and arrest us. The demonstration continued until 4 o’clock pm. Luckily, no one other than the 5 who inhaled the tear gas, git hurt.
About Yousef Amireh, who was murdered 2 years ago:
Yousef was 17 years old. He was shot in the head with a rubber bullet on 4.8.2008 by an Israeli sniper from the Border Patrol Unit, while he was demonstrating in solidarity with the 10-year-old Ahmed Mousa, who got killed only 2 days earlier.
Today, on this very painful anniversary, members of Ni’lin’s Son’s Society visited the family to stand by them while they mourn the loss of their son. On this occasion, Yousef’s mother said, that we will continue to stand steadfast and that nothing will stop our protests against the apartheid wall. Even if the Israeli military aims to kill all of us, we will not go down. Yousef’s brothers said that they will never surrender and will always honor what Yousef died for: a free and peaceful Ni’lin. For every one of us who gets killed, thousands will stand up and refuse to surrender to the inhuman forces that insult life and try to deny us a peaceful and dignified existence. No person on this planet should be denied freedom and peace and dignity. For this, we will always stand up and struggle
Sheikh Jarrah Turns One while Dozens are Attacked with Tear Gas in Bil’in
Aug 7th
Another week of demonstrations across the West Bank with one very important milestone. It has been exactly one year since the stuggle in Sheikh Jarrah began with the forcible eviction of Palestinians from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood. To mark the day, protests in the name of solidarity were held in eight locations throughout Israel including a 700-person strong demonstration in Tel Aviv. At four in the afternoon, the protests culminated in a peaceful demostration in Sheikh Jarrah. It is unclear where this struggle will lead in the coming year but what is clear that Shiekh Jarrah has opened a new space of protest for the Israeli left. Despite my personal feeling that the Sheikh Jarrah protest is increasingly becoming a place for the Zionist left in Israel to continue its program of double speak, I tip my hat to the truly courageous activists who have poured their heart and soul into the grassroots movement in Sheikh Jarrah. These people inspire me and I believe that they will be able to keep at bay sinister elements which are trying to hijack the protest movement in Jerusalem in the name of Zionism.
While Sheikh Jarrah was celebrating its first year, dozens were met with tear gas in Bi’ilin. According to the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee press release:
Dozens of demonstrators marched against the wall and in solidarity with Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah, and were attacked by soldiers with rubber-coated bullets, tear-gas and concussion grenades. Three were injured. Dozens of demonstrators marched against the wall and in solidarity with Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah, on the two-year anniversary to the state-sponsored eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes by Jewish settlers. The protesters, Palestinians, Israelis and internationals as one, marched through the village’s streets on their way to the wall, carrying flags and pictures of the prisoners of the popular struggle, chanting slogans of national unity and against the occupation and specifically the attack on Jerusalem. As they arrived to the gate in the wall, demonstrators found soldiers in large forces positioned both behind concrete barricades, seemingly ready for battle, and right behind the gate, which they have shut closed with razor-wire. Three people were lightly injured as a result of the army’s attack – two in the arm from tear-gas projectiles and one in the head from a baton blow.
Similar demonstrations were held in Ma’asara on Friday:
Roughly sixty people marked Hiroshima Day in the weekly demonstration in alMa’asara today, but were prevented from reaching their lands, which were declared a closed military zone. This week’s march was joined by many solidarity activists from around the world, including delegations from France and Canada. As the march descended from the village into the road leading to the path of the Wall, protesters were met by a small group of soldiers who presented them with a closed military zone order and tried to stop the procession. The demonstrators ignored the soldiers and continued walk, overwhelming them with their numbers, but were soon after met by a much larger contingent of soldiers and armored military jeeps. As they could advance no more, protesters sat on the ground, making speeches, chanting and singing. The demonstration then dispersed with no incident.
The question remains in my head; where we will be a year from now? Will there be a ‘new’ Shiekh Jarrah? Will Shiekh Jarrah grow into a center-left Zionist animal? Will the spirit of solidarity grew between Israelis and Palestinians and spread throughout this region? Who knows but we should count the last year of protest in Sheikh Jarrah and its growth as a success.
Building a Road to Save a Village in the South Hebron Hills
Aug 5th
Last Tuesday, my friend Noam Sheizaf and I gave a tour of the South West Bank to some friends from Europe and the United States. One of the many issues that we explored with our guests was the reality of daily life for Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. Noam wrote today about the incredible shortage of water for Palestinians living in the village of Susya. This story is a simple one but reflects a core of the Israel’s control over the West Bank. One of the most difficult obstacles in reporting from the West Bank is to convey the simple experience of occupation. The water issue reflects the difficulty of daily existence due to the Israeli infrastructure of permits required for virtually any Palestinian project whether it be securing water or building a road.
Below is a video that I made a few months ago in Umm El Hir, the South West Bank village from which Nikolas Kristof filed his highly influential reports recently. In this video, Palestinians and Israelis work to repair a dirt road in the middle of the village. Within minutes, Israeli soldiers arrived armed with a ‘closed military zone’ order and demanded that the work to be stopped. The reason for the ‘closed military area’ order? Repairing the road was ‘illegal’ because the Palestinians did not have a work permit. Umm El Hir is in area C (according to the Oslo accord) of the West Bank which means that all control, civil and military, is in the hands of the Israeli military. Any water pipe or road work is subject to Israeli approval. While permits exist in theory, in practice they are impossible to obtain. When permits are issued they often come with the caveat that Israeli security forces must accompany Palestinian workers in case of a confrontation with Israeli settlers. The kicker is that the Israeli security forces are often ‘too busy’ to provide the necessary assistance thus rendering the work permit invalid.
Israelis with groups such as the Anarchists Against the Wall and Ta’ayush often assist Palestinians with the needed construction. The outcome is always the same; soldiers arrive to the scene, issue a ‘closed military zone’ order and arrest those who do not stop working within ten minutes. Slowly, Palestinians living in villages throughout the south West Bank are forced to give up on their villages and move to major city centers like Yatta or Hebron. Their villages are then absorbed into neighboring Israeli settlements which do not suffer any shortages of water or building permits. In this way, the occupation continues and classic models of colonialism are successfully employed by Israeli military strategists. Round up the native population in city centers and create settlements that ring around those population centers. This is the method that Israel has been using for years in the South Hebron Hills and it does not look like it is losing steam anytime.
Revenge Of The Nerds: Partying With The Boys Of Im Tirtzu
Aug 20th
Posted by Joseph Dana in Villages
11 comments
This piece was co-authored by Max Blumenthal
Tamir Kafri, Ben Gurion University campus coordinator for Im Tirtzu
Fresh off a campaign of nationwide intimidation against the New Israel Fund, countless damaging personal attacks against leftists and professors condemned as insufficiently Zionist, and anendorsement from Israeli Education Minister Gideon Saar, the self-proclaimed “moderate” student group Im Tirtzu gathered for a night of celebration. The venue was “Theodore,” a swanky bar in the wealthy Tel Aviv suburb of Herzilya named for the man who Im Tirtzu claims as the inspiration for its “Second Zionist Revolution:” Theodore Herzl. The evening’s agenda: to fire up the troops for the upcoming boycott targeting Ben Gurion University’s supposedly anti-Zionist faculty.
At the door of the bar stood a glowering young man munching on a slice of pizza. He was Erez Tadmor, Im Tirtzu’s director of media relations. Tadmor approached us and asked who we were. We described ourselves as clueless Jewish American tourists who were simply curious about his student group. “We just heard there was some kind of party here,” we said in English.
Without bothering to introduce himself, Tadmor discussed his man-size persecution complex. “At Hebrew University I did so much damage to the professors I can’t even walk around freely on campus anymore,” he remarked. “Most of the academics here are anti-Israel and anti-Zionist. They have the audacity to say that Israel is an apartheid state, that we’re colonizers, that we kill kids. And so we are simply trying to defend our Zionist values against what they’re doing.”
Despite the subversive culture on campus, Tadmor was confident he would crush the evil-doers: “The elites are on the losing side. They only represent like 3 percent of the population who are radical leftist. But we have 70 to 80 percent of the people on our side.”
Who is Tadmor? The scion of the only secular family in the fanatical Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, Tadmor now lives in the settlement of Efrat with his wife and two children. He made his name directing the student cell that fought the evacuation of the settlement Gush Katif, then turned his attention to assailing cultural critics of Israeli maximalism. “The [Oscar-nominated Israeli film] Waltz With Bashir is a vehicle to destroy Zionism,” Tadmor once declared. “The director should have made a film about Herzl in the place of this.”
In an interview with Maariv, a leading Israeli newspaper, Tadmor admitted to stealing small-scale explosives and ammunition magazines from the army during his service. Despite insisting that he needed the weapons for “personal security,” Tadmor was stripped of his rank and slapped with a 45-day prison sentence for “breaking the trust” of the army.
During Operation Cast Lead, Tadmor orchestrated a series of violent confrontations between Im Tirtzu activists and Palestinian Israeli students at Hebrew University. An Im Tirtzu banner warned the Arab students, “We will burn your villages and see you during our reserve duty.” Tadmor was implicated for physically attacking female students who called him a “Nazi.” The riots sparked by Tadmor and Im Tirtzu were only quelled when university administrators demanded the deployment of Border Police and special Yassam forces on campus.
Im Tirtzu's Tamir Kafri, presumably performing in a production of "Rocky Horror"
After chatting with Tadmor, two Im Tirtzu activists approached us to discuss campus politics in the United States. One of them, a chubby, slouching young man with a crew cut, asked, “Have you ever read ‘The Professors’ by David Horowitz? Horowitz was a former leftist so he knows the truth about the left in your country.” With his failed “Academic Bill of Rights” campaign, which would have allowed conservative students to sue their professors, and his annual “Islamofascism Awareness Week,” the ex-Stalinist Horowitz seemed like a natural role model for Im Tirtzu’s McCarthyite missions.
The other activist, Tamir Kafri, a bespectacled and chipper student with a long ponytail and newly budding facial hair, mentioned another American inspiration: “You should read the book, ‘Liberal Fascism,’” Tamir said, referring to neocon writer Jonah Goldberg’s screed linking American liberalism to Hitlerian fascists. “I’m not saying all liberals are fascists, but on campus here in Israel, the liberal professors really are.”
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