| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 10:01 am Post subject: Chris Hedges: Bring Down That Wall |
| Chris Hedges: Bring Down That Wall
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20061120_chris_hedges_bring_down_that_wall/
Posted on Nov 20, 2006
By Chris Hedges
The last hope of halting Israel’s steady ghettoization of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and calculated destruction of the Palestinian economy is the imposition of sanctions against Israel, especially the revoking of the $9 billion in U.S. loan guarantees. If we allow Israel to complete its massive $2-billion project to ring Palestinians in militarized, pod-like encampments in Gaza and the West Bank with security barriers, walls and electric fences, we will condemn Israel and the Palestinians to endless cycles of violence that could ultimately, given the mounting rage and despair that grip the Middle East, doom the Jewish state.
There is little dispute about the illegality of Israel’s actions. The International Court of Justice has called on Israel to dismantle the security barrier under construction in the West Bank and asked outside states not to render any aid or assistance to the infrastructure. But this call has been ignored, although even the U.S. State Department has gently admonished Israel for its behavior. The U.S. loans that make the barrier and expansion of Jewish settlements possible were granted with the stipulation that if the Israeli government used the funds to build housing and infrastructure beyond the 1967 border known as the Green Line these funds would be deducted from the loans. In April 2003, when Congress authorized the $9 billion in loan guarantees for Israel it said that the loans could be used “only to support activities in the geographic areas which were subject to the administration of the Government of Israel before June 5, 1967.” The legislation warned that the loan guarantees shall be reduced “for activities which the President determines are inconsistent with the objectives and understandings reached between the United States and Israel regarding the implementation of the loan guarantee program.” The State Department, acknowledging the misuse of the money, has made a symbolic deduction in the amount handed to the Israeli government and reduced the loan guarantees by $289.5 million. But unless there is heavy pressure brought on Israel soon the project will be completed, made possible by Washington’s complicity and a callous disregard for justice.
Israel is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars, some reports say as much as half a billion yearly, into its colonization of the West Bank. Since 1967, Israel has spent more than $10 billion on its settlements, and the total estimated cost for the snaking security barrier, which slices deep into the West Bank and connects with settlements and security roads to create pod-like Palestinian ghettos, is at least $1.5 billion. The barrier is being used not only to annex Palestinian land but give Israel control of Palestinian aquifers and at least 40,000 acres of Palestinian farmland. It has devastated Palestinian communities, often cutting them in half or denying farmers access to farmland. Travel, even between communities on the West Bank, has become difficult, especially for men, and many have lost their jobs, plunging with their families into squalor and despair.
The spate of deadly attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel gave Israel the right to impose draconian measures. A barrier running along the 1949 armistice/Green Line, which demarcates the boundary between Israel and Palestinian-held territory, was Israel’s prerogative. But the barrier is being used as an excuse to seize Palestinian land, with 80 percent of the barrier cutting into Palestinian territory, often as deeply as 20 kilometers. The barrier, which costs about $1 million per mile, will eventually be 703 miles long. About 450 miles of the barrier are finished or under construction. When it is done the Palestinians in the West Bank, like those in Gaza, will be caged like animals, with little ability to move, even to neighboring towns, find work or live beyond a subsistence level.
The assault on Palestinian society has been accompanied by an alarming increase in Israeli attacks against Palestinians, including the current Israeli offensive in Gaza. Fifteen tank shells landed this month in the town of Beit Hanoun, killing 19 people and wounding 40. Four women and nine children were among the dead. Two Palestinians were killed Saturday as Israel continued airstrikes and ground operations against suspected militant positions in the Gaza Strip, all coming a day after the U.N. General Assembly urged an end to the escalating violence.
Israeli leaders, angered over Palestinian rocket attacks, have dismissed calls for restraint, with far-right cabinet minister Avigdor Lieberman calling for Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and other militant leaders to be sent to “paradise.”
When Yasir Arafat agreed to end his exile to return to Gaza, swallow his pride and formally recognize Israel’s right to exist, when he turned his Fatah fighters into a collaboration police force in the West Bank and Gaza, he was broke. The communist states that had once bankrolled him had collapsed. He was humbled to the Oslo peace accord, under which he took the bitter pill of accommodation with his detested Zionist enemy. Unless Israel too feels pressure it will never seek accommodation with the Palestinians, relying instead on increasing forms of repression and mounting violence. These measures, depriving Palestinians of hope and dignity, are the fuel of radical movements and ensure not peace but unending war. Israel has ignored the terms stipulated for the U.S. loan guarantees, and so we have a choice—to uphold our own demands and international law or be a party to Israeli policies that will lead to an unraveling of the region’s stability.
AP Photo / Nasser Nasser
A foreign peace activist holds on to a fence in front of Israeli security forces in riot gear during a protest against the construction of Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank village of Bil’in near Ramallah in 2005.
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Israel stole private land for settlements: report
Tue Nov 21, 2006 10:52 AM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Almost 40 percent of land held by Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians, a left-wing Israeli group that monitors and opposes settlement-building said in a new report on Tuesday.
Peace Now said it based its findings on the database of Israel's military-run Civil Administration in the West Bank. The Civil Administration declined comment on the apparent leak, pending its examination of the report.
Israel has long maintained that Jewish settlements, which are illegal under international law, were built on "state lands," or areas not registered in anyone's name, and that no private property were being seized for settlement building.
"This report is a harsh indictment against the whole settlements enterprise and the role all Israeli governments played in it," Peace Now said on its Web site.
"The report shows that Israel has effectively stolen privately-owned Palestinian land for the purpose of constructing settlements and in violation of Israel's own laws regarding activities in the West Bank," the movement said.
The Palestinians, who want all the West Bank along with the Gaza Strip for a future state, and human rights groups have long accused Israel of illegally expropriating "state land" for the purpose of building settlements.
According to the report, Palestinians privately own nearly 40 percent of the land on which settlements have been built, and 3,400 buildings have been constructed on those properties.
In addition, more than 50 percent of the land on which settlements have been constructed has been designated "state", or unregistered, land by Israel, Peace Now said.
About 2.4 million Palestinians and 260,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war but stopped short of annexing.
The YESHA settler council, responding to the Peace Now report, said in a statement Israel halted authorizing construction on privately-owned land in the West Bank after a 1979 Israeli court ruling on the issue.
Peace Now said that in spite of court restrictions, Israel continued to build settlement homes on lands it knew to be owned by Palestinians.
Some of the settlement blocs Israeli leaders have said they intend to keep in any final peace deal with the Palestinians have been built in part on private Palestinian land, the report said.
They include the settlements of Maale Adumim, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and Ariel in the central West Bank.
The World Court says settlements Israel has built on occupied territory are illegal. Israel disputes this.
Last edited by Alpha on Thu Nov 23, 2006 5:43 pm; edited 1 time in total | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 10:07 am Post subject: |
| Dems Rebut Carter on Israeli 'Apartheid'
Michael F. Brown
Neither Democrats nor Republicans are prepared to say a word in opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision to add far-right Knesset member Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party to Israel's governing coalition.
Instead, Democrats are shoring up their pro-Israel bona fides. They are strikingly anxious because of a courageous new book by President Jimmy Carter that hit American bookstores in mid-November, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. It is an extraordinarily bold--and apt--title.
Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others, forcefully criticized the book. "It is wrong," she declared, "to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously."
Lieberman, however, embodies the pursuit of "ethnically based oppression." He has called for the execution of Arab Knesset members for meeting with Hamas leaders, and he regularly talks of removing from Israel many Arab Israelis in what can euphemistically be termed a land swap or "transfer," but in more plain-spoken English is a form of ethnic cleansing.
There is a dual system of law at work in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem--one for Jews and one for Palestinians. Additionally, Palestinians are confined to South Africa-like bantustans, while Palestinian refugees are refused permission to return to homes and land from which they were expelled by Israel. Meanwhile, Jews from around the world are welcomed under Israel's Law of Return.
Some members of the American Jewish community have tried to make the case for ending Israeli domination of the Palestinians, but most members of Congress still prefer to listen to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The ADL criticized Lieberman in May, but National Director Abraham Foxman now says, "He has served Israel well in the past, and I have no doubt he will do so again." This abdication of moral authority is from the head of an organization that claims to provide "programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry."
Pelosi is very close to AIPAC, and when it comes to Israeli discrimination against Palestinians she appears to have a willed ignorance. It's as if she looked at the Jim Crow South and failed to recognize the discriminatory treatment meted out to African-Americans. How would Americans react had Pelosi claimed that there was no racism at work in the Jim Crow South or in apartheid South Africa?
The same claim of hers regarding the occupied territories is deeply troubling. Yet here we are in the twenty-first century with a generally well-informed leader saying there is no ethnic oppression by Israel at the very moment that a notorious racist is joining the government coalition. On that she is silent.
Indeed, it is hard to see how any serious American politician can fail to see the racism that courses through the thirty-nine-year Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. A partial explanation can be found in Pelosi's willed ignorance--a disbelief or bewilderment that Israel's military and political leadership could be capable of such systematic human rights violations--but some of the cause must also be attributed to lobbying efforts and the fear held by many Americans of being unfairly labeled as unfriendly to Israel or, worse, as anti-Semitic. Verbal intimidation has worked on far too many, politicians and activists alike.
Then, too, there is the peculiar belief that Palestinians were largely freed with the entry of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 and that certainly Gazans were with the unilateral Israeli withdrawal in September 2005 from the coastal strip. This ignores the fact that Palestinians do not fully control their borders, are confronted with myriad checkpoints, are still losing land to expanding settlements, do not control imports and exports, and do not even have a functioning airport or seaport in Gaza. Palestinians are cast as terrorists, while in Washington even the politicians who should know better give Israel a free ride, and billions in foreign aid, despite oppressive policies that in other locales would have American politicians incensed.
Carter's use of the term "apartheid" has even received flak from Congressman John Conyers, the next Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers stated recently that the use of the term "apartheid" in the book's title "does not serve the cause of peace, and the use of it against the Jewish people in particular, who have been victims of the worst kind of discrimination, discrimination resulting in death, is offensive and wrong."
Conyers is absolutely right about the horrific treatment dealt Jews over the years. He would be entirely right to criticize Carter if he had compared Israel's actions to those of the Nazis. But Carter simply made the case that Israel is capable of discriminating against and subjugating another people.
Nobel Peace Prize recipient Bishop Desmond Tutu has made the same connection as Carter. "I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa."
In my own experience, I was deeply struck several years ago, during intermittent stays with the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron, by the need to save dishwater in order to "flush" the toilet. In contrast, nearby Israeli settlers enjoyed swimming pools and watered their lawns in the heat of the day.
The unfair distribution of water resources between Palestinians and Israeli settlers--as well as the previously noted relegation of Palestinians to what are essentially bantustans--made it clear that Israel is capable of discriminating on a par with apartheid South Africa. Obviously it's not precisely the same, but many aspects are strikingly similar.
Late last month I called a number of offices on Capitol Hill (Biden, McCain, Obama and Pelosi) for comment on the fact that Lieberman was then poised to be named Minister of Strategic Threats (principally giving him responsibility for the Iran portfolio) and for a response regarding his hateful statements on Palestinians--both in Israel and the Palestinian territories. They either had no relevant comment or did not respond to messages.
It is clear that a prominent racist employing violent rhetoric who is part of the Israeli governing coalition is simply not on Washington's radar screen. In an alert capital, Lieberman's entry into the explosive Iranian situation would have the full attention of American leaders. This is no time for provocateurs, and Olmert should be told as much.
American leaders and journalists had this opportunity November 13, when Olmert visited Washington. Congressional leaders, the President and journalists missed a real opening to press Olmert vigorously to eject the demagogic Lieberman from his coalition and to comply with international law by ending Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
This would be in the American national interest--and certainly in Israel's national interest, though its leaders may not see the advantages of a just two-state solution until the day Palestinians in the territories begin calling not for national rights but for civil rights in a single, unified state. This is a future possibility, as there already are more Palestinians than Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. At the most basic level, however, rejecting Lieberman's racism and attaining Palestinian freedom are simply the right things to do.
Perhaps President Carter should send copies of his book to members of Congress who do not grasp the injustice of Israel's long-running oppression of the Palestinians. They might learn a thing or two about the long-festering conflict at the heart of so many of our current troubles in the region. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 5:11 pm Post subject: |
| From: James David
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 09:45:53 EST
Subject: Re: West Bank Settlements Often Use Private Palestinian Land, Study Says - washington post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112100482_pf.html
Thanks for the link, Vivian. The same article appeared in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The timing couldn't have been better because it happens to be the same time my Letter to the Editor appears. I was very pleased to see my letter get published today but even more pleased to read the letter next to mine by Joe Parko, a member of the Advisory Committee Middle East Peace Education Program of the American Friends (Quakers) Service Committee in Atlanta. Our letters were in response to Michael Jacobs, editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times, whose full column appeared in Monday's edition and attacked Jimmy Carter for his book, "PALESTINE: PEACE NOT APARTHEID."
READERS WRITE | ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2006/11/22/edletts1122.html
READERS WRITE
By James J. David, William Deneke, Toby F. Block, Joe Parko, Helen Smith, Alby Davis, Darby Christopher
For the Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/22/06
Middle East: Responses to Michael Jacobs' column "Carter's book a distorted view of Israel,'' @issue, Nov. 20
Harsh book on Israel tells it like it is
Michael Jacobs, in his criticism of Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid," tries to paint a picture of lies and distortion by the former president. In reality, the lies and distortion come from Jacobs.
Jimmy Carter is right when he refers to Israel as an apartheid state. Israel has stolen land from the Palestinians, denied them their basic human rights, destroyed their homes, murdered their children and pushed them into pitiful camps where they can merely exist.
All these crimes and abuses have occurred since 1967 and have been rewarded with ever-increasing U.S. aid to Israel. If the United States wants to promote world peace, it should get tough with Israel and stop financial and military aid.
JAMES J. DAVID, Marietta
The 'beast' is aptly named apartheid
Michael Jacobs' diatribe against Jimmy Carter's new book, "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid," is a classic example of trying to deflect attention away from the issue by attacking the messenger. Palestinians have endured a 39-year military occupation by Israel that restricts their freedom of movement, expropriates their land, forces them to live in separate reserves, imprisons them without trial and frustrates their national self-determination. This system is called apartheid, according to the International Convention on Apartheid.
The dark history of South African apartheid stands as a stark reminder of the human consequences of forcible separation of peoples and of systematic government-sponsored discrimination. The occupation, walls, military blockades, theft of land and legal discrimination set in place by Israel is clearly a system of apartheid that must be confronted by the same moral outrage that led to a free South Africa. Carter has correctly named the beast that is devouring Palestine.
JOE PARKO
Parko, of Atlanta, is a member of the Advisory Committee Middle East Peace Education Program of the American Friends (Quakers) Service Committee in Atlanta. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 12:25 pm Post subject: |
| S. African Jewish paper causes storm
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Amir Mizroch, THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 22, 2006
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The South African Jewish Report, published weekly in Johannesburg, is engaged in a heated public spat with the country's Jewish minister of intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils, and the South African Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), over the newspaper's refusal to publish a letter by Kasrils that, the paper's editor says, compares Israel's actions in the Palestinian territories to those of the Nazis during WWII.
The Report last week refused to publish Kasrils's reply to an article that questioned his stance on Israel.
SAJR editor Geoff Sifrin initially approved Kasrils's request to reply to an article by Anthony Posner entitled "Some Pertinent Questions to Kasrils."
Posner had concluded the article with the challenge: "So Mr Kasrils... now is your chance to engage in 'civilized discussion.' But perhaps this 'kitchen' is too hot for you? I am sure that the readers of the SAJR will be interested to see whether you have the ability to respond in a rational manner to all the points I have raised in this letter."
Sifrin refused to print Kasrils's reply, arguing in an editorial that it would not contribute to constructive debate and would offend the SAJR's readers.
Kasrils told The Mail and Guardian newspaper he suspected Sifrin had been pressured not to publish his views.
Sifrin rejects that claim. In a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post, Sifrin said he had initially agreed to publish Kasril's letter but that "what he sent, in my estimation, was too offensive to publish. It referred to an analogy to Nazi action in the Warsaw ghetto and Nazi action after [SS leader Reinhard] Heydrich's assassination after which the Nazis destroyed [the Czech village of] Lidice. He basically said the Israelis are doing the same, and that crossed a red line as far as we were concerned."
Sifrin said he had "agonized" over whether to publish Kasril's letter, and had consulted with the chair of the paper's editorial committee. He rejected, however, Kasril's claim that he had been pressured into not publishing the letter.
"It's not true that I came under pressure by the [South African Jewish] Board of Deputies; nobody called me to threaten me. There is an ethos of a newspaper that one operates with, there was no order from anyone not to publish it. We don't operate in a vacuum. We know our readership - some of which are Holocaust victims. The editorial committee head and I agreed we couldn't publish the letter. Its effect would be unfair to our readers, and we could not give him a platform for this view, which basically crossed a red line," Sifrin told the Post.
In an open letter to Sifrin, published by the the South African Jewish Report on November 17, Kasrils accused the paper of "stifling his words" and said the editorial and Posner's column had distorted what he had written.
"This is a shameful debasement of journalistic ethics, not to mention the questionable morality and crass intolerance that refuses to allow my right to reply to questions directly put to me in your columns," wrote Kasrils.
"You reneged on an undertaking to publish my reply and yet have the temerity to claim that 'the richness and creativity of Jewish life owes much to its acceptance of open debate, even if acrimonious.'
"Your utterances fly in the face of a cowardly action last personally experienced when anything I said or wrote was silenced by an apartheid government banning order in 1962," Kasrils wrote.
He accused the newspaper of misleading readers into believing that he was calling for the annihilation of Israel and that he was a Holocaust denier.
"On the question of my invoking the Nazi parallel with Israel, you fail to acknowledge that I have consistently and pointedly referred to certain comparable measures being employed against the people of Palestine and Lebanon," he said. "I am clearly referring to certain actions and not a total genocidal system such as the Holocaust," Kasrils wrote.
"Mr. Editor, you and the cowardly cabal behind you can ban and vilify me, but as long as I have breath I will continue to protest against Israel's fascist-style brutality and declare 'Not in my name' in the interest of the true values of Judaism and humanity and in support of justice and security for all Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Middle East and further afield."
Kasrils said it was "absolutely dishonest" of the paper to publish Posner's piece without his reply.
Despite his anti-Israel stance, it is thought that Kasrils has been providing protection from terrorist threats to South Africa's Jewish community, several Jewish leaders, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, told the Post.
"I can't comment on that, because I don't know, but it is certainly possible he uses his office to provide protection. Nobody is accusing him of being anti-Jewish. I wouldn't be surprised if he was behind the scenes doing something like that," Sifrin said.
Regarding the decision not to publish Kasril's letter, Safrin said the minister's words had the potential to promote anti-Jewish feelings in South Africa. "The general atmosphere here is pretty anti-Israel. Comments like these rub off on the Jewish community here. All the comparisons that are being made between apartheid and Israel are all over the place, and Kasrils is adding to this. But I wouldn't accuse him of being anti-Jewish in any way," Sifrin said.
"We are not excluding Kasrils from the paper, just his letter, which we couldn't publish," Sifrin said.
Kasrils, in an e-mail exchange with the Post, confirmed that he does use his office to protect South Africa's 80,000-strong Jewish community, but would not go into specifics. Asked if he thought his comments could inflame anti-Jewish sentiment, he replied in the negative.
"No, not anti-Jewish sentiment. The black population in general and the Muslim population in particular congratulate me on demonstrating that not all Jews support Israel's inhumane treatment of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. My actions help them to understand that there is a distinction between Judaism, on the one hand, and Zionism and the Israeli government on the other," Kasrils told the Post.
"I oppose the brutal treatment of the Palestinian people by successive Israeli goverments, and like your first agriculture minister, Aharon Cizling, who in 1948 said to the cabinet, 'Now we too have behaved like Nazis,' I do compare methods such as the indiscriminate bombings of civilians, collective punishment and ethnic cleansing as measures utilized by the Nazis and other fascist regimes.
"I feel it is necessary to remind your government, your military, and Jews everywhere what is being done by a people who should have learnt the dreadful lessons of the Holocaust," Kasrils said.
The South African Jewish Report is also going head-to-head with the South African Freedom of Expression Institute. In a statement released to the media this week condemning the SAJR's decision not to publish Kasril's letter, Jane Duncan, director of the institute, wrote, "The newspaper is engaging in contradictory behavior by publishing an opinion piece posing questions and then denying the person to whom the questions are being put the right to answer them. The SAJR had the right to editorial independence, but this was qualified by normal editorial ethics, which included 'the sacrosanct principle of the right to reply.'"
Duncan further wrote, "Likening certain policing or military measures that the Israeli state uses to Nazi measures does not meet the objective test [of hate speech]."
What really bothered Sifrin, however, were the following words in Duncan's press release: The Jewish Report "comes out of this incident looking like a mere extension of Zionism's repressive project... We wonder what chance ordinary members of the Jewish community have to be heard if they voice dissent against the Israeli state's policies of forced colonial occupation of Palestinian land."
Sifrin said he was writing an editorial for the SAJR's Thursday edition calling into question the institute's claim to be an independent, objective watchdog of freedom of information in South Africa, in light of Duncan's statement.
"This is supposed to be an impartial organization set up for the freedom of information. What is this doing in their media release: "Extension of Zionism's repressive project, and Israeli state's policies of forced colonial occupation of Palestinian land," Sifrin asked. "The FXI was set up several years ago by respected and well-intentioned editors, and this has what became of the organization. This is the organization that is tearing us to pieces. And I have to ask what their agenda is."
Sifrin said he was never contacted by the FXI for comment before the institute published its statement.
"The first I knew was when I read the media release on the Internet. Which again calls into question their credentials. How can they, as a respected watchdog, insert words like that? It shows their bias. They have the audacity to then tear us apart for our editorial policy. Those two phrases are damning, they state it as fact. An impartial organization would never write anything like that," Sifrin said.
Duncan sent a lengthy response to the Post outlining why, in her words, "The FXI has a bias towards poor people resisting colonial occupation."
"We recognize that freedom of expression is heavily mediated by power and politics. So in interpreting this mandate, we have taken a strategic decision to adopt a pro-poor bias, prioritizing marginalized communities who are resisting censorship, repression, colonial occupation, racism and sexism. This is because it is in these communities or sections of our populations where the bulk of freedom of expression problems generally lie. Struggling for freedom of expression in South African in the past meant taking a principled position against apartheid, because it was apartheid that gave rise to the censorship of the media, the banning of gatherings, etc. Similarly, we cannot take a pro-freedom of expression position without taking a position against any ideology or power structure that is used to justify the denial of rights (including the right to freedom of expression) of people.
"Zionism is one such ideology in that it denies various rights of Palestinians and Arabs in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory," the FXI statement said.
"Needless to say, the definition of Zionism is contested, but one constant thread is the assertion that Jews constitute a nation, and therefore have a right to national self-determination on what was Palestinian land.
"The Israeli nation is therefore not constituted by all those who live in that particular geographic area, or who have historic claim to the land in spite of the fact that they may have been rendered stateless. Israel, not being a state of its citizens but a Jewish state, is thus an exclusive, not an inclusive, form of nationalism, and therein lies the problem. In Israel, this has translated into policies that have denied many people the right to coexist and enjoy equal rights on the basis that they fall outside the definition of who should constitute the nation.
"While I am alive to the complexity of the debate about equating Zionism with apartheid, both share the common characteristic of having constructed a system of inclusion and exclusion, rights and privileges, based on ethnic exclusivity, and institutionalized this system through the state.
"Both have involved the dispossession of land and the repression of indigenous peoples. The policies can be compared credibly, and to the extent that they can, they should also be condemned as inherently censorious. To support freedom of expression is to support a democratic solution to the national question in Israel/Palestine; it therefore means opposing the exclusive nationalist solutions that Zionism has represented. We see no contradiction between calling ourselves independent, and espousing this position. Perhaps others do, but that is their problem, not ours," the statement concluded.
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This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378459829&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 9:59 am Post subject: Israel = Nazis? S. African Jewish paper vs Jewish minister o |
| b]Israel = Nazis? S. African Jewish paper vs Jewish minister of
intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils[/b]
S. African Jewish paper causes storm
Amir Mizroch, THE JERUSALEM POST
Nov. 22, 2006
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378459829&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The South African Jewish Report, published weekly in Johannesburg, is
engaged in a heated public spat with the country's Jewish minister of
intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils, and the South African Freedom of
Expression Institute (FXI), over the newspaper's refusal to publish a
letter by Kasrils that, the paper's editor says, compares Israel's
actions in the Palestinian territories to those of the Nazis during
WWII.
The Report last week refused to publish Kasrils's reply to an article
that questioned his stance on Israel. SAJR editor Geoff Sifrin
initially
approved Kasrils's request to reply to an article by Anthony Posner
entitled "Some Pertinent Questions to Kasrils."
Posner had concluded the article with the challenge: "So Mr Kasrils...
now is your chance to engage in 'civilized discussion.' But perhaps
this
'kitchen' is too hot for you? I am sure that the readers of the SAJR
will be interested to see whether you have the ability to respond in a
rational manner to all the points I have raised in this letter."
Sifrin refused to print Kasrils's reply, arguing in an editorial that
it
would not contribute to constructive debate and would offend the SAJR's
readers.
Kasrils told The Mail and Guardian newspaper he suspected Sifrin had
been pressured not to publish his views. Sifrin rejects that claim. In
a
telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post, Sifrin said he had
initially agreed to publish Kasril's letter but that "what he sent, in
my estimation, was too offensive to publish. It referred to an analogy
to Nazi action in the Warsaw ghetto and Nazi action after [SS leader
Reinhard] Heydrich's assassination after which the Nazis destroyed [the
Czech village of] Lidice. He basically said the Israelis are doing the
same, and that crossed a red line as far as we were concerned."
Sifrin said he had "agonized" over whether to publish Kasril's letter,
and had consulted with the chair of the paper's editorial committee. He
rejected, however, Kasril's claim that he had been pressured into not
publishing the letter.
"It's not true that I came under pressure by the [South African Jewish]
Board of Deputies; nobody called me to threaten me. There is an ethos
of
a newspaper that one operates with, there was no order from anyone not
to publish it. We don't operate in a vacuum. We know our readership -
some of which are Holocaust victims. The editorial committee head and I
agreed we couldn't publish the letter. Its effect would be unfair to
our
readers, and we could not give him a platform for this view, which
basically crossed a red line," Sifrin told the Post. In an open letter
to Sifrin, published by the the South African Jewish Report on November
17, Kasrils accused the paper of "stifling his words" and said the
editorial and Posner's column had distorted what he had written. "This
is a shameful debasement of journalistic ethics, not to mention the
questionable morality and crass intolerance that refuses to allow my
right to reply to questions directly put to me in your columns," wrote
Kasrils.
"You reneged on an undertaking to publish my reply and yet have the
temerity to claim that 'the richness and creativity of Jewish life owes
much to its acceptance of open debate, even if acrimonious.'
"Your utterances fly in the face of a cowardly action last personally
experienced when anything I said or wrote was silenced by an apartheid
government banning order in 1962," Kasrils wrote.
He accused the newspaper of misleading readers into believing that he
was calling for the annihilation of Israel and that he was a Holocaust
denier.
"On the question of my invoking the Nazi parallel with Israel, you fail
to acknowledge that I have consistently and pointedly referred to
certain comparable measures being employed against the people of
Palestine and Lebanon," he said. "I am clearly referring to certain
actions and not a total genocidal system such as the Holocaust,"
Kasrils
wrote.
"Mr. Editor, you and the cowardly cabal behind you can ban and vilify
me, but as long as I have breath I will continue to protest against
Israel's fascist-style brutality and declare 'Not in my name' in the
interest of the true values of Judaism and humanity and in support of
justice and security for all Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Middle
East and further afield."
Kasrils said it was "absolutely dishonest" of the paper to publish
Posner's piece without his reply. Despite his anti-Israel stance, it is
thought that Kasrils has been providing protection from terrorist
threats to South Africa's Jewish community, several Jewish leaders, who
asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, told the
Post.
"I can't comment on that, because I don't know, but it is certainly
possible he uses his office to provide protection. Nobody is accusing
him of being anti-Jewish. I wouldn't be surprised if he was behind the
scenes doing something like that," Sifrin said.
Regarding the decision not to publish Kasril's letter, Safrin said the
minister's words had the potential to promote anti-Jewish feelings in
South Africa. "The general atmosphere here is pretty anti-Israel.
Comments like these rub off on the Jewish community here. All the
comparisons that are being made between apartheid and Israel are all
over the place, and Kasrils is adding to this. But I wouldn't accuse
him
of being anti-Jewish in any way," Sifrin said.
"We are not excluding Kasrils from the paper, just his letter, which we
couldn't publish," Sifrin said. Kasrils, in an e-mail exchange with the
Post, confirmed that he does use his office to protect South Africa's
80,000-strong Jewish community, but would not go into specifics. Asked
if he thought his comments could inflame anti-Jewish sentiment, he
replied in the negative.
"No, not anti-Jewish sentiment. The black population in general and the
Muslim population in particular congratulate me on demonstrating that
not all Jews support Israel's inhumane treatment of the Palestinian and
Lebanese people. My actions help them to understand that there is a
distinction between Judaism, on the one hand, and Zionism and the
Israeli government on the other," Kasrils told the Post.
"I oppose the brutal treatment of the Palestinian people by successive
Israeli goverments, and like your first agriculture minister, Aharon
Cizling, who in 1948 said to the cabinet, 'Now we too have behaved like
Nazis,' I do compare methods such as the indiscriminate bombings of
civilians, collective punishment and ethnic cleansing as measures
utilized by the Nazis and other fascist regimes.
"I feel it is necessary to remind your government, your military, and
Jews everywhere what is being done by a people who should have learnt
the dreadful lessons of the Holocaust," Kasrils said.
The South African Jewish Report is also going head-to-head with the
South African Freedom of Expression Institute. In a statement released
to the media this week condemning the SAJR's decision not to publish
Kasril's letter, Jane Duncan, director of the institute, wrote, "The
newspaper is engaging in contradictory behavior by publishing an
opinion
piece posing questions and then denying the person to whom the
questions
are being put the right to answer them. The SAJR had the right to
editorial independence, but this was qualified by normal editorial
ethics, which included 'the sacrosanct principle of the right to
reply.'"
Duncan further wrote, "Likening certain policing or military measures
that the Israeli state uses to Nazi measures does not meet the
objective
test [of hate speech]."
What really bothered Sifrin, however, were the following words in
Duncan's press release: The Jewish Report "comes out of this incident
looking like a mere extension of Zionism's repressive project... We
wonder what chance ordinary members of the Jewish community have to be
heard if they voice dissent against the Israeli state's policies of
forced colonial occupation of Palestinian land."
Sifrin said he was writing an editorial for the SAJR's Thursday edition
calling into question the institute's claim to be an independent,
objective watchdog of freedom of information in South Africa, in light
of Duncan's statement.
"This is supposed to be an impartial organization set up for the
freedom
of information. What is this doing in their media release: "Extension
of
Zionism's repressive project, and Israeli state's policies of forced
colonial occupation of Palestinian land," Sifrin asked. "The FXI was
set
up several years ago by respected and well-intentioned editors, and
this
has what became of the organization. This is the organization that is
tearing us to pieces. And I have to ask what their agenda is."
Sifrin said he was never contacted by the FXI for comment before the
institute published its statement. "The first I knew was when I read
the
media release on the Internet. Which again calls into question their
credentials. How can they, as a respected watchdog, insert words like
that? It shows their bias. They have the audacity to then tear us apart
for our editorial policy. Those two phrases are damning, they state it
as fact. An impartial organization would never write anything like
that," Sifrin said.
Duncan sent a lengthy response to the Post outlining why, in her words,
"The FXI has a bias towards poor people resisting colonial occupation."
"We recognize that freedom of expression is heavily mediated by power
and politics. So in interpreting this mandate, we have taken a
strategic
decision to adopt a pro-poor bias, prioritizing marginalized
communities
who are resisting censorship, repression, colonial occupation, racism
and sexism. This is because it is in these communities or sections of
our populations where the bulk of freedom of expression problems
generally lie. Struggling for freedom of expression in South African in
the past meant taking a principled position against apartheid, because
it was apartheid that gave rise to the censorship of the media, the
banning of gatherings, etc. Similarly, we cannot take a pro-freedom of
expression position without taking a position against any ideology or
power structure that is used to justify the denial of rights (including
the right to freedom of expression) of people.
"Zionism is one such ideology in that it denies various rights of
Palestinians and Arabs in Israel and the occupied Palestinian
territory," the FXI statement said.
"Needless to say, the definition of Zionism is contested, but one
constant thread is the assertion that Jews constitute a nation, and
therefore have a right to national self-determination on what was
Palestinian land. "The Israeli nation is therefore not constituted by
all those who live in that particular geographic area, or who have
historic claim to the land in spite of the fact that they may have been
rendered stateless. Israel, not being a state of its citizens but a
Jewish state, is thus an exclusive, not an inclusive, form of
nationalism, and therein lies the problem. In Israel, this has
translated into policies that have denied many people the right to
coexist and enjoy equal rights on the basis that they fall outside the
definition of who should constitute the nation. "While I am alive to
the
complexity of the debate about equating Zionism with apartheid, both
share the common characteristic of having constructed a system of
inclusion and exclusion, rights and privileges, based on ethnic
exclusivity, and institutionalized this system through the state.
"Both have involved the dispossession of land and the repression of
indigenous peoples. The policies can be compared credibly, and to the
extent that they can, they should also be condemned as inherently
censorious. To support freedom of expression is to support a democratic
solution to the national question in Israel/Palestine; it therefore
means opposing the exclusive nationalist solutions that Zionism has
represented. We see no contradiction between calling ourselves
independent, and espousing this position. Perhaps others do, but that
is
their problem, not ours," the statement concluded. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
