Israel's War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands
A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.
Part IV: Rational and Irrational Zionism – The Moderates and the Right
IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.
A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.
Part V: One State or Two, There Should Be Economic Justice – The Only State Now is Israel, It Has Obligations
IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.
A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.
Part VI: Israel’s Elite and the Far Right – Israel Sells Itself As ‘Frontline’ Against Islam
IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.
A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.
Part VII: The Boycott Israel Movement – The Reasons for Boycotting Israel
IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.
It has become impossible to supervise the defense budget … It is utterly opaque. The system does everything to deflect true supervision… [T]he army is completely opaque to us. There is no civilian supervision over the IDF.
IOA Editor: This is an important story, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, about the power of the Israeli defense industry — from the professional classes of the IDF to the private sector arms manufacturers, dealer/exporters, “consultants,” and the rest — and the inherent financial and personal interest it has in continuing the Occupation. The Occupation is an essential part of the “business environment” of Israel’s largest and most influential economic sector. Civilian financial oversight of the IDF is only one aspect of a much bigger picture. See also:
Amira Hass: Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay
Jonathan Cook: Remote-Controlled Killing
The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation
[B]anking sanctions impact quickly upon financial elites who have the clout to pressure governments to concede political change. Trade sanctions, by contrast, impact hardest on the poor or lower-paid workers, who have virtually no political influence. SWIFT will, however, only take action against Israeli banks if ordered to do so by a Belgian court, and then only in very exceptional circumstances. Such very exceptional circumstances are now well-documented by the UN-commissioned Goldstone report.
Attorney Sari Bashi, director of the NGO Gisha that closely follows the restrictions on the freedom of movement of persons and goods, says that as far as is known, the “easing” has not included construction materials or raw materials. “Continuing the restrictions on the ability to produce will also limit the [Palestinians] buying power,” she said.
In response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare.
How can we rely on those Palestinians? For 43 years, they have been building the settlers’ homes with the sweat of their brows, paving roads for them and building their fences, and then suddenly, out of the blue, a boycott? Is that the way for partners to behave? Is that how they pay us back after we educated them for so many years to be our hewers of wood and drawers of water?
The commotion over the PA’s economic campaign against the settlements indicates, more than anything else, how the colonialist mindset has been branded into Israeli consciousness. The protests over the threatened loss of the hewers of wood and drawers of water shows how hard it is to shake off the master-servant attitudes that have taken root over the last 43 years.
The Cost of the Occupation to Israeli Society, Polity and Economy
By Shlomo Swirski, the Adva Center – Updated Nov 2008 (full report)
Shlomo Swirski: It can be said that the American administration allowed Israel to conduct its military operations against the Palestinian Authority under highly favorable domestic political conditions. The government was not forced to strain the local capital market or to raise taxes, steps that would have distressed Israel’s more affluent stratum.
Lia Tarachansky interviews Israeli economists Shir Hever and Shlomo Swirski. The OECD finds Israel has the highest poverty rate in the developed world; the economists blame neo-liberal reforms.
The biggest trap is the growing gap between the general population and the layer of society that represents that population to the outside (in politics, in the NGOs, the media and culture). It is impossible to blame only the occupation for this. You don’t have to directly embezzle funds to live exceptionally well.
The biggest Swedish pension fund said Monday it had barred Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems from its investment portfolios… “The Ethical Council recommended that Elbit Systems Ltd should be excluded from each portfolio because it deems that the company can be linked to violations of fundamental conventions and norms.”
Even more interesting is the possibility… that Iron Dome was designed first and foremost for the benefit of Singapore – not for the protection of Sderot and the southern communities in Israel that suffered from Qassam rocket attacks and mortar fire… [T]he Defense Ministry may have given Rafael a development budget as a way of positioning the project as an Israeli military system that is ostensibly being used by the IDF but is really aimed at improving Israel’s chances of selling it to Singapore and other countries.
IOA Editor: Another case of Israel co-mingling “defense” budget and military armament development funds – a reflection of how war is good for Israel’s national business, the export of military systems to some of the worst regimes on earth.
See also Amira Hass: Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay
“The OECD seems to be so determined to get Israel through its door that it is prepared to cover up the crimes of the occupation,” said Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist. Israel has been lobbying for nearly 20 years to be admitted to the OECD, founded in 1961 for wealthy industrialized democracies to meet and coordinate economic and social policies. It includes the United States and most of Europe.
The Israeli parliament passed on first reading… a bill that would grant tax breaks to residents of the Golan Heights, a move likely to anger Syria from which Israel seized the territory. The bill, which needs to be approved at three further readings before becoming law, was supported by 67 of the 120 members of parliament.
IOA Editor: As most Israelis must know by now, Syria’s president Assad is ready to make peace with Israel based on the return of the Golan Heights to Syria. Now the Knesset has shown him that it is not threatened by his peace overtures, and that it would much rather have a piece of Syria than peace with Syria.
UPDATE: Syrian official: Golan benefits proves Israel doesn’t want peace
Jonathan Cook: [Israel’s] finance ministry has admitted that most of the money taken from the workers was passed to Israeli military authorities in the Palestinian territories to pay for “infrastructure programmes”. [The] co-author of the report said she believed that the ministry was actually referring to the construction of illegal settlements… In one especially cynical use of the funds, the report notes, the money was spent on portable stoves for soldiers involved in Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza last year.
The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.
IOA Editor: The influence of multi-national corporations – led by US-based entities, with extensive participation of Israeli companies, on the ME and the Occupation, is enormous: from high tech and arms-manufacturers to ‘benign industries’ like aviation and transportation – all involved in political systems that, to varying degrees, deprive their subject-citizenry of meaningful political participation.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
