I understand the need to keep details of a court case quiet. That’s a gag I can respect. But blacking out news of Kam’s arrest itself is a strike against free speech and freedom of the press. As Kam’s lawyer put it when I interviewed him, “these are the foundations of democracy.”
Israeli law
The policy of closing the country’s doors to visitors based on their political ideology is foreign to democratic countries. The fact that the group’s Jewish members were ultimately allowed to stay while the Swedes of Palestinian origin were not colors the affair with more than a tinge of race-based discrimination.
IOA Editor: This is part of a broad Israeli campaign against resistance to the Occupation – including the most peaceful and non-violent resistance. As noted here already, the threat of peace is Israel’s greatest fear. Any opportunity, however small, which supports a dialog is therefore promptly crushed. Equal treatment under the law cannot be expected from a state that runs a 43-year long Occupation — which is entirely racially-based, as is the state itself — and the term “democracy” simply doesn’t apply.
Richard Silverstein: “In what kind of country does a journalist simply disappear with other journalists and news outlets having no recourse to publish about it? China? Cuba? Vietnam? Iran? North Korea? Is that what Israel is aiming for? To be no better than countries ruled by despots?”
IOA Editor: When even neoconservative darling Judith Miller runs a story on Israeli censorship, you know Israel is in trouble. The media interest in Israeli censorship is legitimate, and almost commendable. However, what is glaringly missing is a direct condemnation of Israel’s assassination practices, as revealed in this only-most-recent example – both “domestically,” in the Occupied Territories, and abroad where it is an essential “foreign policy” component: murder as an alternative to peacemaking, which is entirely possible but would involve “painful sacrifices” — e.g., compliance with international law and UN resolutions — that no Israeli leader (“Left” or “Right”) is prepared to accept.
MORE: Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam blog story
UPDATE: The IOA welcomes the many new readers from “The Only Democracy in the Middle East” who cannot read this story in local media due to Israeli censorship. Please come back to read more about the Occupation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (6 April 2010)
Amira Hass: Israeli authorities on Thursday deported three Swedish citizens who arrived in the country earlier that day in a delegation of seven young people with Jewish and Palestinian roots.
IOA Editor: The threat of peace is Israel’s greatest fear. Any opportunity, however small, which supports a dialog is therefore promptly crushed.
The current Knesset is the most racist Israeli parliament since the country’s founding, according to a report published Sunday by the Coalition Against Racism and the Mossawa Center, which works to promote equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
[T]he IDF harms not only one of the basic values of democratic rule, the freedom to demonstrate, but also discriminates in its policy, granting excessive liberty to lawless settlers while being heavy-handed with leftist protesters. The IDF order is therefore a revolting and ridiculous act, and the defense minister… must take immediate action to void it.
IOA Editor: It is extremely unlikely that General Barak will void the IDF decision, which he likely pre-approved.
I will mourn on Nakba Day. And also on the day that precedes it which we call Remembrance Day and which is nothing but a day dedicated to the cult of dead flesh, at the end of which everyone goes out and grills another kind of dead flesh on open flames, sings, dances, overeats and gets drunk. I will mourn for our Independence Day that is nothing but a celebration of the triumph of closure and subjugation.
MK Taleb El-Sana (United Arab List-Ta’al): [The law] “proves the failure of Zionism, which needs to legislate a law in order to force the Zionist narrative and to rewrite history during which the Zionist movement committed crimes against humanity on the Palestinian people.”
Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, said the family was still waiting for the credible, transparent investigation Israel first promised into her daughter’s death. “I just want to say to Rachel that our family is here today trying to just do right by her and I hope that she will be very proud of the effort we are making,” she said.
[T]he battle over Jerusalem’s Mamilla Cemetery, a Muslim cemetery known in Arabic as Maman Allah, where the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center intends to build a Museum of Tolerance, … encapsulates many aspects of Israel’s approach to Palestinian rights since the conflict began.
In her appeal Dayan stated that the program aired a live recording of Captain R. reporting back to his commander during the incident saying that he had “confirmed the kill,” by firing two bullets at her at close range.
The Tel Aviv District Court rejected a petition this week against a decision to lease land in Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood for the exclusive use of members of the religious Zionist community.
A fact sheet prepared by the Center for Constitutional Rights
The activists’ lawyer described their arrest as part of a campaign by Israel to choke off weekly demonstrations by Palestinians, left-wing Israelis and foreign activists against Israel’s West Bank separation barrier as peace efforts remain at a stalemate.
“They’re using me to attack in the most blatant way the basic principles of democracy and the values of the Declaration of Independence: Values of equality, tolerance, social justice and freedom of speech,” she added. On Thursday, Chazan received an e-mail from Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz, informing her the newspaper would cease publishing her column. Chazan had provided the daily with one of its few leftist voices in recent years.
IOA Editor: Democracy for Jews only. The Declaration of Independence has been a part of Israel’s democratic facade since 1948: it never stopped Israel from robbing the Palestinian people of their homeland and turning them into refugees and third class citizens of the Only Democracy in the Middle East. In addition, unlike the US Constitution, the “Declaration” is just that: a non-binding statement without any legally enforceable powers.
An Arab-Israel student at the Ariel College in the West Bank was told to get off a bus because she “dared” to speak Arabic on her cell phone, and was also subjected to a full body search.
IOA Editor: Despite the biased tone of the report, the facts speak for themselves. As does the reality of the “Israeli-Arab minority.”
The Sheikh Jarrah vigils started as an avowedly political act – an outcry against a system which allows Jews to reclaim property held in east Jerusalem prior to 1948, but prohibits Palestinians from doing the same in west Jerusalem… Silencing the drums of Sheikh Jarrah is akin to eroding the pillars of Israel’s freedom.
IOA Editor: Written from an Israeli-centric perspective, this commentary supports citizens’ right to protest. But it overlooks a 61-year long reality where the “pillars of Israel’s freedom” never applied to Israel’s Palestinian citizens. And, no country running a four-decade long violent colonial occupation project can make any claims to “freedom.”
This new arrangement makes an already problematic situation even worse. Those same lands that the state expropriated from Arabs in the past for “public use,” and which were then added to the vast land reserves it controls, are now being privatized, meaning they are being sold to the highest bidder. As long as he’s a Jew, of course. Granted, you won’t find a sign anywhere saying “no entry for Arabs,” but aside from that, all the rules of the Wild West are in force.
IOA Editor: This is one of the most important issues in Israel today, defining the very nature of the nominally “Jewish and democratic” state. Excluding Palestinians who are Israeli citizens from land ownership has been the foundation of Israeli-statehood from 1948. (Much has been written on the subject, starting with Sabri Jiryis’ The Arabs in Israel, 1966.) This current twist is designed to continue the practice, which is anchored in a complex web of laws that are updated as circumstances change, and in order to circumvent Israeli Supreme Court rulings that threaten to undo the old order. The bottom line: the state legally bars its Palestinian Arab population – 25% of Israel’s total – from buying land in the ‘free market,’ demonstrating again that it is neither Jewish nor democratic – and how evil this very concept is.
Palestinian thief’s complaint against police abuse suggests policemen beat him, placed banana peals behind his ears while capturing all on cell phone. Five officers released after questioning, rest to face remand hearings.
IOA Editor: Israeli abuse of and violence against Palestinians is so complete, extensive, institutionalized, and far-reaching that it cannot be “explained” in terms of “battlefield” or “interrogation” conditions. It happens in wide-open spaces, on the street, and it continues once the “target” has been captured and is chained. There can be no justification for such violence, nor should any excuses for it be accepted.
MK Ahmed Tibi: “Since the foundation of the state, the Israel Lands Administration is solely used as Jewish land administration. The director of the Israel Lands Administration has used all the tactics, with the help of the Jewish Agency, to allocate state land only to Jews. Despite the bitter attempt over the decades, not even one Arab town has been established since the state’s foundation.”
In the wake of the release of the United Nation’s Goldstone report accusing Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the Gaza war, as well as efforts to issue warrants abroad for the arrest of senior IDF officers and former ministers, some Israeli officials have said the international rules of war need to be changed to better reflect the realities of asymmetric warfare… [E]efforts are being made to reach understandings with Western democracies and other countries… to adopt what some call a dynamic interpretation of existing rules of war that would be better suited to the changing realities. Such rules would not restrict armies from countering the threat of terrorism because of concern that its officers or political leadership would be accused of war crimes.
IOA Editor: As eloquently described by Daniel Machover, this new focus on international law is part of a strategy to blur the distinctions between military control of a population resisting occupation and a war against a terrorist organization such as al-Qaeda. If existing international laws of war were to undergo a “dynamic interpretation,” and be rewritten to “be better suited to the changing realities,” the occupiers will gain a far greater freedom of action – such as the ability to bomb civilian population centers and otherwise act “disproportionally,” without the threat of possible ICC charges.
“Since the foundation of the state, the Israel Lands Administration is solely used as Jewish land administration. The director of the Israel Lands Administration has used all the tactics, with the help of the Jewish Agency, to allocate state land only to Jews… [N]ot even one Arab town has been established since the state’s foundation.”
The bill, proposed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party, suggests changing the wording of the current oath taken by MKs so that instead of swearing loyalty to “the State of Israel and its laws,” MKs will be required to vow loyalty to the State of Israel as a “Jewish democratic state.”
The state on Wednesday asked the High Court of Justice to reject a petition filed by Peace Now against construction of 15 houses in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Netafim and said it would complete detailed planning which would pave the way for the authorities to grant building permits for the homes.
During the first and last days of Hanukkah, the Jerusalem police arrested drummers and clowns who believe in nonviolence, coexistence and equality between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem.
There is an internal document that has not been leaked, or perhaps has not even been written, but all the forces are acting according to its inspiration: the Shin Bet, Israel Defense Forces, Border Police, police, and civil and military judges. They have found the true enemy who refuses to whither away: The popular struggle against the occupation.
The IDF Spokespersons’ Unit said Golan issued the order against Sheikh Ra’ad Salah “on the grounds of ensuring the security of the State of Israel and maintaining public peace and order.”
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz decides to put Balad Knesset member on trial for alleged contact with foreign agent during 2007 trip to Syria when he met with PFLP number two and tried to meet with Khaled Mashaal.
Jonathan Cook: About 35,000 Bedouin residents of Israel’s southern Negev have been denied the right to hold their first local council election after the Israeli parliament passed a law at the last minute to cancel this month’s ballot. The new law gives the government the power to postpone elections to the regional council, known as Abu Basma, until the interior ministry deems the local Bedouin ready to run their own affairs. Legal and human rights groups say the move is an unprecedented violation of Israel’s constitutional principles.
[A]n all-time record for the number of Arab residents of East Jerusalem who were stripped of residency rights by the [Israeli] Interior Ministry. Altogether, the ministry revoked the residency of 4,577 East Jerusalemites in 2008 – 21 times the average of the previous 40 years… The [effort] was the brainchild of former interior minister Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) and [the head of] the ministry’s Population Administration.
IOA Editor: Depopulating the Palestinians, or ethnic cleansing, is not new for Israel. In addition to the forcible removal of Palestinians during the Nakba, the Israeli government has used a variety of tricks to “redeem” the Land of Israel from its native Arab population. The removal of East Jerusalem Palestinian residents is somewhat similar to a government practice of the early 1950s, targeting the so-called “absent present” residents: those who temporarily left their homes or land during the war, but remained within what later become Israel. They were prevented from reclaiming their property and Israel was thus able to confiscate it for the exclusive use of its Jewish citizens.
“Our research showed that the checks conducted by El Al at foreign airports had all the hallmarks of Shin Bet interrogations,” said Mohammed Zeidan, the director of the Human Rights Association. “Usually the questions were less about the safety of the flight and more aimed at gathering information on the political activities or sympathies of the passengers.”
Currently around 130 Palestinian citizens of Israel are incarcerated as security prisoners. Hamas… is concentrating on the 22 who have been in jail for more than 15 years, much longer than the average for offenders sentenced to life… None are Hamas members. Some are serving life sentences, although they were not convicted of murder or manslaughter. In most cases, a minimum term before eligibility for parole has not been set, in others it has been set at 40 or 45 years.
IOA Editor: Another example of Israeli takeover of land and property owned by Palestinian individuals or institutions by “legal” or illegal means – based on the winner’s ability to write the law. This convoluted case – based on special Israeli laws written to legalize, and thus legitimize, the takeover of “abandoned properties” left by Palestinians after the Nakba – shows how Israel’s war against Palestine continues, 61 years after 1948.
A current case, different circumstances, different legal basis, but the very same theme: HERE.
Police are investigating suspicions of document fraud involving the chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu), secretary general of the Amana settlement housing group, Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever, and prominent settlement leader Yoel Tzur.
IOA Editor: Historically, fraud has had a key role in the process of Zionist acquisition of Palestinian lands – predating statehood. It continues today, where Israel deceives the world community and international institutions; settlers and their support organizations deceive the Israeli government and public – with the support of Israeli officials and IDF officers who help from within; and, finally, Israel along with the US – its financial partner and the enabler of the Occupation, and the EU, in the guise of the “peace process,” together deceive the Palestinian people – robbing them of their land, resources, and national future.
The judge accepted the defense attorney’s claim that the youth must be “protected against justice” and said that sentencing the Nazareth citizen to prison would be contradictory to the principles of justice of the country.
