Democratic Deficit

Ya’alon still in New Zealand

ratcatcher2 — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:43:09 +0000

Ya’alon still in New Zealand, despite arrest warrant for war crimes

Despite reports to the contrary, former Israel Defence Forces chief of staff Lieutenant General (res.) Moshe Ya’alon remained in New Zealand after a warrant was issued for his arrest for alleged war crimes, he said Friday. The charges have since been dropped.

“I am continuing to travel in New Zealand,” Ya’alon told Army Radio on Friday. “I did not run away from anywhere and I don’t intend to run away.”

The New Zealand Justice Ministry issued the warrant on Tuesday, several days after a request by a New Zealand resident that was co-signed by various local and international human rights organizations. Officials at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said they had received confirmation from the embassy in New Zealand that the charges have been dropped.

The warrant names Ya’alon for ordering an Israel Air Force attack on the home of senior Hamas official Salah Shehada in the Gaza Strip in 2002. Shahada, the founder of Hamas’ military wing, and one of his aides were killed in the attack along with 13 civilians.
Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz and Major General (res.) Doron Almog have evaded similar charges in Britain over the past two years.

Diplomatic ties between Israel and New Zealand have been rocky in recent years.

In 2004, two members of Israel’s Mossad espionage agency were imprisoned in the country for illegally trying to obtain New Zealand passports.

Moshe Ya’alon (Lior Mizrahi / BauBau)

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

02/12/2006

UN Human Rights Violations

ratcatcher2 — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:18:08 +0000

Draft resolution on human rights violations emanating from Israeli military incursions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including the recent one in Northern Gaza and the assault on Beit Hanoun

Source: United Nations Human Rights Council

Date: 14 Nov 2006

The Human Rights Council,

Affirming the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civil Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, to the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem,

Gravely concerned at the continued violation by the occupying Power, Israel, of the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,

Recognizing that the Israeli military incursions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the recent incursion in Northern Gaza and the assault on Beit Hanoun, constitute a collective punishment of the civilians therein and exacerbate the severe humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,

Taking note of the statement of the Secretary General of 8 November 2006 in which he stated that he

“was shocked to learn about the Israeli military operation carried out early today in a residential area in Beit Hanoun, which has resulted in the deaths of at least 18 Palestinians, including 8 children and 7 women.”,

Emphasizing that the Israeli targeting of Palestinian civilians including women and children constitutes a gross violation of human rights law and international humanitarian law,

Affirming that under international humanitarian law, the medical personnel and means of transport of the Palestine Red Crescent Society must be protected and respected in all circumstances,

1. Expresses its shock at the horror of Israeli targeting and killing of Palestinian civilians in Beit Hanoun while asleep and other civilians fleeing earlier Israeli bombardment;

2. Condemns the Israeli targeting and killing of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, as well as medics in Beit Hanoun and other Palestinian towns and villages, and calls for bringing the perpetrators thereof to justice;

3. Denounces the Israeli massive destruction of Palestinian homes, property and infrastructure in Beit Hanoun;

4. Expresses its alarm at the gross and systematic violations of human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory by the occupying Power, Israel, and calls for urgent international action to put an immediate end to these violations including those emanating from the series of incessant and repeated Israeli military incursions therein;

5. Calls for immediate protection of the Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in compliance with human rights law and international humanitarian law;

6. Decides to dispatch a high level fact-finding mission urgently to Beit Hanoun.

The War for Israel`s Soul

ratcatcher2 — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:40:27 +0000

The War for Israel’s Soul

September 29, 2008 – By: Weiss, Philip

Further evidence of the war within Israeli society: The tragedy of the occupation has brought about “an unprecedented number of young people who are choosing to go to jail rather than serve in the Israeli army,“

says a Refuser Solidarity group. And the government of Israel is trying to shut down New Profile, a leftwing feminist group that supports these young “shirkers,” New Profile reports. The group describes the spiritual despair that the occupation, and the Nakba before that, has caused inside Israel.

And mentions soldier suicides as the leading cause of death:

Four generations and over six decades of repeated, unending “military solutions” have engendered an expanding movement of young people who experience and express excruciating inner struggles and rifts in face of the legal duty to serve. …
For some young people, [these crises] involve highly dangerous levels of personal distress and indeed, in recent years, suicide has claimed the lives of more Israeli soldiers than all other causes-of-death combined.
Rather than listening to the voice raised by these future citizens, rather than fathoming the social change it reflects and responding with changed, innovative policies, Israel ‘s state institutions have chosen to wage a “war” against these youths and the developments they represent.

***

Wake Up! (Leftwing Israeli Injured by Pipe-Bomb Warns of ‘Disintegration of Democracy’)

A truly disturbing and shocking story from Israel of an attack on leftwing prof/columnist Ze’ev Sternhell (lately quoted by Eric Alterman in the Nation). He walked out of his door in Jerusalem at midnight and a pipe bomb went off. Police suspect Jewish extremists connected to settlers. Sternhell from his hospital bed:

“the very occurrence of the incident goes to illustrate the fragility of Israeli democracy, and the urgent need to defend it with determination and resolve.”

For me, so far away, this is a story about Reality and Denial. What is the crisis in Israel’s soul brought on by occupation and apartheid? Who in the States is talking plainly about this new reality (besides Lustick, Alterman, Mearsheimer)? What can progressives and lovers of human rights do to change that society? How long will the Israel lobby deny it? Where is Bernard-Henri Levy with his sable tresses?

Says my tipster:

“The sad truth is, the situation in Israel only gets worse with time. This is a country in real trouble. And the American Jewish community, at least the part that cares the most about Israel, will respond by sticking its collective head deeper and deeper into the sand. How could such a smart and accomplished people be so foolish!”

The NYT has a great piece of reporting by Isabel Kershner on radicalised settlers and the war they promise inside Israeli society over withdrawal from the West Bank. The piece begins with the Sternhell pipe bomb attack in Jerusalem. Kershner’s fundamentalist Jews are nuts; and Israeli government is, as always, stymied and does nothing:

In Jewish settlements like Yitzhar, an extremist bastion on the hilltops commanding the Palestinian city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, a local war is already being waged…
[At Annapolis] the Israelis agreed to freeze all settlement activity and immediately remove settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

In practice, only a handful of the 100 or so outposts, at least half of which were erected since 2001, have been removed, and construction in the official West Bank settlements goes on.

Philip Weiss lives in New York and is an investigative journalist who has been a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, Jewish World Review, The New York Observer and other mainstream publications as well as being as being a contributing editor to Esquire and Harper’s Magazine. Weiss is the author of the 2004 book “American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps.” He is now working on a book about Jewish issues. He writes a blog for the New York Observer, Mondoweiss.

Filed under Israeli politics, Opinion Editorials, Israeli Palestinian relations, Settlements, Palestinian society, Zionism – on

conscientious objectors, military IDF, Nakba, suicide, Israeli lobby,

Refuser Solidarity group

New Profile, a leftwing feminist group that supports these young “shirkers,”

It Can Happen Here! by Uri Avnery

ratcatcher2 — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:17:39 +0000

It Can Happen Here!

September 30, 2008

The German name Sternhell means “bright as the stars.” The name fits: the positions of Professor Ze’ev Sternhell indeed stand out sharply against the darkness of the sky. He warns against Israeli fascism. This week, Israeli fascists laid a pipe bomb at the entrance of his apartment, and he was lightly injured.

The choice of victim seems surprising at first. But the perpetrators knew what they were doing.

They did not attack the activists who demonstrate every week against the Separation Wall in Bil’in and Na’alin.
They did not attack the leftists who mobilize every year – this year, too – to help the Palestinians pick their olives near the most dangerous settlements.
They did not attack the “Women in Black” who demonstrate every Friday, or the women of “Machsom Watch,” who keep an eye on events at the army checkpoints.
They attacked a person whose entire activity is in the academic field.

The struggles on the ground are essential. But their main purpose is to influence public opinion. That is the main battlefield, and there the man of letters has an important part to play.

On this battlefield, two visions confront each other, two visions that are as far apart as the West is from the East.

On the one side: An enlightened Israel, modern, secular, liberal, and democratic, living in peace and partnership with Palestine as an integral part of the region.
On the other side: a fanatical Israel, religious, fascist, cut off from the region and civilized humanity, a people that “dwells alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations” (Numbers 23:9), where “the sword will devour forever” (2 Samuel 2:26).

Ze’ev Sternhell is one of the outstanding guides of the enlightened vision. His positions are bright as the stars, resolute and incisive. Not a surprising target for the neo-Nazi pipe-dreamers and pipe-bombers.

The field of Sternhell’s academic expertise is the origins of fascism, a subject that has occupied me all my life. The reasons for our interest are similar: Nazism left an indelible stamp on our childhood and fate. As a child, I witnessed the rise of Nazism in Germany. As a child, Sternhell saw it in Poland, when, after the death of his father, he lost his mother and sister in the Holocaust.

“He who has been scalded by boiling water is cautious even with cold water,” a Hebrew adage goes. Those who experienced fascism bursting into their lives in childhood are sensitive to the slightest symptom of the outbreak of this disease. In 1961 I wrote a book called The Swastika (which exists only in Hebrew), in which I tried to crack the code of the roots of Nazism. At the end of the book I posed the question: Can it happen here? My unequivocal answer was: Yes, indeed.

Because of this, I am sensitive to every warning sign in our society. As a journalist and magazine editor, I shone the searchlight on all such signs. As a political activist, I fought against them in the Knesset and in the street.

Sternhell, on his part, after a military career, is a pure academic. He uses the instruments of academia: research, teaching, and publication. He strives for exact definitions, without seeking popularity or avoiding provocation. In one of his articles years ago he asserted that the violent response of the Palestinians to the settlements is quite natural. By this he attracted the lasting wrath of the settlers and the extreme Right, which made an effort to prevent him from receiving the Israel Prize, Israel’s highest distinction.

Now the pipe bombs are speaking.

Who laid the bomb? A lone individual? A group? A new underground? The terrorists from the settlements? That’s for the police and the Shin Bet to find out.

From the public point of view, the matter is much more simple: it is quite clear in which flower bed these poisonous weeds grow, which ideology serves as fertilizer, and who is spreading it.

Israeli fascism is alive and kicking. It is growing in the flower bed that produced the various religious-nationalist underground groups of the past:

the group that tried to bomb the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount,
the underground that tried to assassinate the Palestinian mayors,
the “Kach” gang,
the perpetrator of the Hebron massacre Baruch Goldstein,
the murderer of peace activist Emil Gruenzweig,
the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin, and
all the underground groups that were uncovered at an early stage before their deeds could bring them to public notice.

These acts cannot simply be attributed to individuals or “rogue groups.” There exists a definite fascist fringe at the margin of Israel’s political society. Its ideology is religious-nationalist, and its spiritual leaders are mostly “rabbis,” who formulate its worldview and the practical application. These Jewish idolaters do not work in secret. On the contrary, they offer their wares on the open market.

This sector is concentrated in the “ideological” settlements. That does not mean that all settlers are fascists. But most fascists are settlers. They are concentrated in certain well-known settlements. By accident or not by accident, all these settlements are located in the heart of the West Bank, beyond the Separation Wall. The first of these, in the Hebron area, were installed with the help of “leftist” leader Yigal Allon, and in the Nablus area by “leftist” leader Shimon Peres.

During the last months, there has been a marked increase in the number of incidents in which settlers attack Palestinians, soldiers, policemen, and “leftists.”

These acts are committed openly, in order to terrorize and deter. Settlers riot in the Palestinian villages whose lands they covet, or for revenge. These are “pogroms” in the classical sense of the term: riots by an armed mob intoxicated with hatred against helpless people, while the police and the army look on. The Pogromchiks destroy, injure, and kill. These days it is happening more and more frequently.

In the few cases when the army or the police intervene, they do not turn on the settlers, but on the Israeli peace activists who come to help the beleaguered Palestinian farmers. The spokesmen of the security establishment and the commentators try to sound balanced and speak about “rioters from the Left and the Right.” That is a false even-handedness, which itself belongs to the fascist arsenal of tricks.

The settlers’ pogroms are violent by nature, both in thought and deed, while the peace activists are non-violent on principle. If there is violence, it comes from the army and the border police, the pretext being that local boys have been throwing stones. What is not mentioned is that the well-protected soldiers and border policemen pursue the Palestinian demonstrators into the alleys of their villages.

The “boldness” of the extreme right-wing thugs – or “rightist activists,” as the media insist on calling them courteously – is increasing by the day. They do whatever they want, knowing full well that no harm will befall them. The police do not interfere, since anyhow the courts will not mete out meaningful punishment.

Anybody who knows the history of Nazism is familiar with the shameful role played by the courts and the other law-enforcement agencies in the German republic vis-à-vis the lawbreakers whose declared purpose was to put an end to the democratic system. The judges imposed ludicrously light penalties on Nazi rioters, whom they considered “misguided patriots,” while treating Communist rioters as foreign agents and traitors.

Now we are experiencing this phenomenon here. The lawbreaking settlers get symbolic sentences, while Palestinians who are accused of much lesser offences get harsh penalties. Nowadays, even a settler who sets his dog on a company commander goes free, as does a settler who breaks the bones of a battalion chief.

The army’s internal justice system can only be called monstrous:
the commander who held up a bleeding woman in labour at a checkpoint, causing the death of the child, was punished with two weeks detention.
The commander who told a soldier to shoot a handcuffed Palestinian prisoner in the leg was “transferred,” meaning that this war criminal can serve in another unit.

Does the increase in the number and severity of such incidents testify to the increasing power of Israeli fascism? At first sight, one might get this impression.

However, on second thought, I think that the opposite is true.

The fanatical settlers know that they have lost the support of public opinion in Israel, and that ordinary people consider them dangerous thugs. Their actions, as seen on television, arouse distaste, even abhorrence. The vision of “All of Eretz-Israel” has not only lost altitude – it has crashed on the ground of reality. The Zealots are acting out of weakness and frustration.

Much as the Nazis hated the German republic, these fanatics are starting to hate the state of Israel. And with good reason. They see that they have no place in a national consensus that is solidifying around the concept of “Two States for Two Peoples,” whether it is being accepted for negative reasons, such as demographic fears or the burdens of occupation, or for positive reasons, such as the hope for peace and prosperity after the withdrawal from the occupied territories.

The discussion about the borders is still going on, but the majority sees the Separation Wall as the future border. (As we made clear right from the beginning, the wall was not really being constructed in order to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers, as was claimed, but as a future border between the two states.)

The Israeli establishment wants to annex the lands between the wall and the Green Line, and is prepared to give the Palestinians Israeli areas in return. What does this tell the settlers?

Most settlers live in settlements near the Green Line, which according to this concept will be joined to Israel. These are, not by accident, the non-ideological “lifestyle” settlers, those who were looking for cheap apartments and “quality of life” at a short distance from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. These settlers will, probably, agree in the end to any peace that leaves them in Israel.

The great majority of the extreme settlers, those motivated by a religious-fascist ideology, live in the small settlements east of the wall, which must be dismantled when peace comes. This is a small minority even among the settlers, supported by a radical minority on the extreme Right. That is where violent Israeli fascism is growing.

Once upon a time it seemed that a Red Line ran parallel to the Green Line – that nationalist-religious terrorism would hurt “only” Palestinians, not Israelis. Even Rabbi Meir Kahane, a born fascist, said so.

That illusion was shattered with the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. Israeli fascism was found to be like any other classical fascism, which thunders against the “foreign enemy” but directs its terrorism against the “enemy within.” The pipe bomb at the entrance of Sternhell’s home must turn on all the red lights, as it joins the murder of Emil Gruenzweig and the threats on the lives of other conspicuous peace activists.

The decisive battle, the battle for Israel, is entering a new phase – much more violent, much more dangerous. But more serious than any danger to individuals is the danger to Israeli society as a whole. Especially if it does not mobilize all its resources – government, police, security service, the law, the courts, the media, and the educational system – for an all-out battle against this danger.

I do not believe that fascism will win in our society. I believe in the strength of Israeli democracy. But if I am pushed into a corner and asked: “Can it happen here?” I am bound to answer: “Yes, it can.”

by Uri Avnery

My TAGS:-

*8 ;Avnery settlers Fascist bombing houses activism demonstrations apartheid.separation.Wall olive.tree academic :AntiWar Sep’08 Israel terrorism 2008 pogrom Zionist Rabin Rabbi

“Machsom Watch,”

“Women in Black”

the “Kach” gang

Olmert warns of ‘evil wind’ of extremism in Israel

ratcatcher2 — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:45:47 +0000

Ehud Olmert warns of ‘evil wind’ of extremism in Israel

Monday September 29 2008

A resurgent ultranationalist religious underground movement is threatening Israel’s democracy, the nation’s outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, warned yesterday.

Olmert lashed out at the extreme right for the first time in his two-and-a-half-year premiership after a prominent Israeli critic of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank was violently attacked last week.

“A bad wind of extremism, hate, evil, violence and contempt for state authorities is blowing through certain sectors of the Israeli public and threatening Israeli democracy,”

said Olmert in his opening remarks to the weekly cabinet meeting.

Olmert said the police and the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, were searching for members of the movement.

Olmert compared the attack on Prof Zeev Sternhell, a political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to the 1995 assassination of the then prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, by a Jewish ultranationalist, and to a hand grenade attack that killed a Peace Now activist in 1983.

Sternhell, a vocal opponent of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and a Holocaust survivor, was wounded when assailants planted a small pipe bomb outside his Jerusalem home.

Police also found posters in Sternhell’s neighbourhood offering one million shekels (£159,000) to anyone who killed a member of Israel’s Peace Now movement, which also opposes Jewish settlements.

The attack on Sternhell follows numerous reports from Israeli human rights groups that the settlers’ use of violence against Palestinians and Israeli police and soldiers, who are charged with protecting the illegal colonists, is growing.

Yesterday police were investigating the latest alleged attack by settlers against a Palestinian.

The body of a 19-year-old Palestinian shepherd was found in a ravine, with 20 gunshots to his neck, in a remote area of the West Bank on the weekend.

Toni O’Loughlin in Jerusalem

My TAGS:-

*8 threat Israel democracy national religion Olmert settlers hate.speech evil violence extremist police Shin.Bet Security IDF assassination Rabin PeaceNow :Guardian Sep’08 Digg

Read it and weep

ratcatcher2 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:42:45 +0000

Read it and weep

Another facet of Israel’s regime in the occupied territories has come to light – and it’s tearing families apart

Friday September 12 2008

A disturbing report published this week highlights yet another facet of Israel’s regime in the occupied territories that is seeing Palestinian lives ruined and families torn apart. As if the alienation of the Palestinians from their pre-1948 homelands wasn’t crushing enough to those affected, the Hamoked-B’Tselem study reveals an alarming increase in forcible transfers of West Bank residents to the Gaza Strip, effectively making refugees twice over of those falling victim to this punitive policy.

Palestinians whose registered address is in Gaza are now prohibited from living in the West Bank, regardless of how long ago they made the move eastwards. Thanks to Israel’s flouting of the Oslo agreements, the process of updating Palestinians’ addresses on the population registry has been indefinitely frozen, making criminals of everyone who falls foul of the rule.

The effect has been to separate husbands from their wives and parents from their children, and to add yet another layer of hardship to the already gruelling circumstances in which the Palestinians live.

According to the authors of the paper, the reason behind the Israel authorities’ recent escalation of enforcing this law is based on a desire to do everything within their power to drive a wedge between the West Bank and Gaza, and to turn them into separate entities. This is, again, in direct contravention of the Oslo Accords, which state that the two areas are to be treated as one geographical unit; but at the same time it is entirely in keeping with Israel’s strategy of cutting off Gaza as a way of punishing the Hamas government.

B’Tselem’s Jessica Montell, who presented the findings at a press conference on Wednesday, pointed out that Israel is not acting alone when attempting to isolate and demonise Hamas: “The United States and Europe worked closely with Israel to form a united position towards the Hamas government, and the siege on Gaza [which] stemmed from that”. Montell described the latest moves to clamp down on so-called “illegal aliens” in the West Bank as an “exacerbation” of this ostracising approach towards the Hamas leadership.

However, as was shown by way of written and video testimony from Palestinians affected by Israel’s increasingly heavy-handed tactics, it is ordinary civilians who are suffering the most. Hadeel al-Bardawil, a 22-year-old mother of two, has been forcibly separated from her husband for over a year, during which time their second child (whom her husband Jamal has never seen) was born. Neither she nor her husband can convince the Israeli authorities to grant them permits to visit one another in either the West Bank or Gaza, and the impact on the entire family has been immense.

“My children now run to their uncles and call them ‘daddy’”, she said. “I want them to be with their father like other children; all that I ask for is to live my life in dignity with my family”.

Her story is by no means unique. Another man described his plight as “abnormal – I haven’t seen my daughter for over a year”. When asked by the interviewer whether he had phone contact with her, he replied bitterly “We’re sick of the phone; everyone always cries”. Dozens of similar cases have been brought to the attention of Hamoked although, according to Montell, the number of people affected by the policy could run into “many thousands”.

On top of the denial of permits for families to be reunited, there has been a spate of forcible transfers of Gaza-registered civilians out of the West Bank and into the Gaza Strip, by way of house-to-house searches and other methods of tracking down so-called “illegals”.

Article 49 of the Geneva conventions expressly forbids occupying powers from “forcible transfers, as well as deportation of protected persons [to anywhere else]… regardless of the motive”.
Amnesty International go further in their condemnation of the practice, stating that forcible transfer also violates article 33 of the Geneva conventions, which prohibits collective punishment.

However, Israel’s penchant for ignoring the statutes of international law is nothing new;

the current policy being only the latest in a long line of contraventions, and those enforcing it are unlikely to be swayed by censure from human rights groups and NGOs.

Instead, pressure should be brought to bear by those who, at present, are bankrolling and rubberstamping Israel’s ever-more exacting regime in the occupied territories. Governments that declare themselves champions of human rights and staunch defenders of victims of abuse are, in effect, giving Israel carte blanche to proceed at will in their denial of basic freedoms to the Palestinians.

As one desperate Palestinian mother put it during her testimony, “[Why don't they just] put me in a cage? At least I’ll know I’m in prison, and that I’ve got a problem; and then I’ll give up. Where [else] in the world does a wife have to live apart from her husband for no reason?” Her life in limbo is a constant nightmare, and every government cosying up to Israel, while it attempts permanently to divide the West Bank and Gaza, is just as responsible for her plight as the Israeli authorities themselves.

Seth Freedman is a writer living in Jerusalem. He grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb and worked as a stockbroker in the City for six years, before moving to Israel. He served for fifteen months in a combat unit of the IDF, between 2004 and 2006, and has worked as a writer ever since.

My TAGS:

;S.Freedman citizenship.law, OPT, Palestine, B’Tselem, West.Bank citizen criminal children :Guardian Sep’08 Gaza Israel human-rights blockade separation @Wordpress Amnesty, Geneva Conventions, collective punishment, International law, victims of abuse, Oslo Accords, report, 1948, Nakba, refugee, forcible transfers, Hamas, USA, EU,

Article 49 of the Geneva conventions

forcible transfers

The wrong sort of immigrants.

ratcatcher2 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:48:22 +0000

The wrong sort of immigrants

Israel encourages immigration by Jews from Europe and the US, but those from Ethiopia are now less welcome

Tuesday August 19 2008

The Israeli government’s decision to halt immigration from Ethiopia prompted angry scenes in Jerusalem on Sunday, during a protest outside the prime minister’s house. Around 5,000 demonstrators voiced their condemnation of the authorities’ actions, with the chairman of the Organisation of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel describing the situation as “a crime against Zionism, and the original Zionist idea of saving Jews from around the world”.

Israel is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to absorbing new olim [immigrants], largely thanks to the small print in the country’s immigration policy.

Mirroring Hitler’s assertion that anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent was to be considered untermenschen, the founding fathers of Israel declared that anyone with similar ancestry would therefore qualify for full citizenship of the newborn state.

Over the years, millions of Jews have taken up this offer, and today around 15% of Israel’s seven million population is made up of first-generation olim. Of that number, the vast majority come from the former Soviet Union, and the next largest group hail from Ethiopia, a country which has seen a mass migration of its native Jews to Israel dating back to the 1970s.

The most famous airlift of Ethiopian émigrés was in 1991, with the country on the brink of collapse as rebels closed in on the capital, Addis Ababa. Operation Solomon saw more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews flown to safety in the space of a day and a half, heralding a new wave of Ethiopian immigration that has continued unabated to the present day.

During one of my pre-barmitzvah trips to Israel, my family and I stumbled across an incredible scene in the streets of Jerusalem, as thousands of grateful participants in Operation Solomon flooded the city, marching jubilantly through the centre of town declaring their thanks for their salvation. The atmosphere was electric and highly-charged, their presence seemingly a sign of the lengths to which the Israeli authorities would go in order to rescue any imperilled Jew, regardless of where in the world they lived, or the colour of their skin.

Less than two decades on, it is clear that Israel’s relationship with its incoming Ethiopian brethren has soured somewhat. Human nature seemingly dictates that bad blood often exists between different ethnic groups, and Israel is no different. Despite being a largely homogeneous country, in terms of religious background at least, the spectre of racism rears its ugly head between the various types of Jew making up the populace.

As one Ethiopian girl commented, when I interviewed her last summer,

“There’s racism everywhere [in Israel] – against Filipinos, and against Yemenis; although we seem to have replaced the Yemeni these days.” Her words echoed those of the Ethiopian boys with whom I served in the army, many of whom complained of their lack of prospects in a country that simply “sees us as no better than the Arabs”.

Of course, there is no denying that absorbing the hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians who have made it to Israel’s shores has sapped huge sums of money from the country’s coffers, with the average cost of integrating an Ethiopian immigrant estimated to be around £60,000. However, cost alone cannot play a part in deciding which Jews can or can’t qualify as olim, according to the principles on which the state was founded.

Government ministers declare their intention to end Ethiopian immigration in one breath, and with the next announce plans to “invest vast resources in increasing the scope of aliyah [immigration]“, which gives a clue as to quite the type of immigrant the authorities would rather encourage. Rich westerners are the flavour of the month, with both the government and private organisations throwing thousands of dollars at potential olim from the US, the UK and mainland Europe. These immigrants cost far less to the Israeli taxpayer, and are generally seen as a beneficial influence on both the country’s economy and society as a whole.

In the meantime, thousands of Ethiopians with Jewish roots still languish in refugee camps in Gondar, desperately praying that the Israeli government will relent and allow them too to come to the Jewish state. Israeli authorities have used the smokescreen of disputing the authenticity of their Jewishness as reason to abandon them, despite the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel declaring that calling a halt to their immigration is fundamentally wrong under Jewish law.

Israel has set itself up to have, in essence, an open-door policy to world Jewry in the same way as the EU allows freedom of movement throughout its realm to all citizens of member states. By taking a stance such as Israel is maintaining now, its government is beginning to resemble a spin-off of Italy’s anti-Roma leaders seemingly prepared to rewrite the rules on the basis of which type of immigrant is most desirable to its people. In doing so, Israel’s rulers are ripping up the rule-book on which the state was founded, to the detriment of thousands of Ethiopians left out in the cold.

Seth Freedman is a writer living in Jerusalem. He grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb and worked as a stockbroker in the City for six years, before moving to Israel. He served for fifteen months in a combat unit of the IDF, 2004 and 2006, and has worked as a writer ever since.

My TAGS:-

*8 ;S.Freedman Israel immigrants citizen population Jews Ethiopia USA UK EU economics society money refugee citizenship.law Aug’08 :Guardian

Organisation of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel

Racist’ marriage law upheld by Israel. [Citizenship Law]

ratcatcher2 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:49:37 +0000

‘Racist’ marriage law upheld by Israel

Monday, 15 May 2006

Israel’s High Court has narrowly upheld a law denying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza married to Israeli citizens the right to live in the country with their spouses.

The judges voted by six to five not to cancel a four-year-old amendment to the Citizenship Law which outlaws “family unification” in Israel between Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel.

It was passed as a one-year emergency measure in 2002 on the ground that it was needed to protect Israeli security. But the amendment, described yesterday by the Knesset member Ran Cohen, of the left-wing Meretz party, as “rooted in racism”, has been renewed every year since then.

Israel’s Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, sided with the minority on the bench, declaring:

“This violation of rights is directed against Arab citizens of Israel. As a result, therefore, the law is a violation of the right of Arab citizens in Israel to equality.”

Muad el-Sana, an Israeli Arab lawyer who is married to a Palestinian woman from the West Bank town of Bethlehem and works for Adalah, one of the agencies bringing the case, declared:

“This is a very black day for the state of Israel and also a black day for my family and for the other families who are suffering like us. The government is preventing people from conducting a normal family life just because of their nationality.”

While the court had granted el-Sana’s wife, Abir, a university lecturer, a temporary injunction preventing her deportation, Mr el-Sana said the high court’s ruling would make it almost impossible for the couple and their two children, aged 2 years and five months, to continue living together.

Their individual petition said that he has no right to live in Bethlehem and she has no right to live with her husband in the Negev.

Mohammed Barakeh, a prominent Arab Knesset member on Sunday said the ruling “gives racism a shady alibi.” He added:

“The fact that the ruling was opposed by several of the judges is a ray of light that does not illuminate the darkness of the court’s decision and the Knesset’s legislation.”

Official figures show that of 22,000 applications for such reunification since the Oslo accord in the mid 1990s only 6000 have been granted. Adalah said yesterday that the state had said that it had interrogated only 25 of these “for alleged involvement in terrorist activities” and that the state anyway had ample capacity to carry out security checks during the staged process towards legal status. Adalah said last night that in 1980, at the height of apartheid, a South African court had refused to approve orders similar to the present Israeli law “because they contradicted the right to a family.”

Last year the then Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz slightly modified the law by widening ministerial discretion to award legal status to Palestinian spouses. Yesterday Haim Ramon, Israel’s Justice Minister, indicated he would be seeking to recast the law to apply equally to all ethnic groups but warned that no country was obliged to admit citizens form an authority with which it was in conflict. He added:

“We have to remember that this law was legislated during the Palestinian uprising, when several people who received citizenship through family unification carried out attacks.”

The outgoing judge Michael Cheshin, who voted with the majority, said during a debate in February:

“The Palestinian Authority is an enemy government, a government that wants to destroy the state and is not prepared to recognize Israel… Why should we take chances during wartime? Did England and America take chances with Germans seeking their destruction during the Second World War? No one is preventing them from building a family but they should live in Jenin instead of in [the Israeli Arab city of] Umm al-Fahm.”

* The Israeli army said it had killed at least seven Palestinian militants in the West Bank yesterday. One of the men killed was Elias Al Ashkar, blamed for suicide attacks including the one in Tel Aviv on 17 April which killed 11.

By Donald MacIntyre in Jerusalem

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