Tag Archives: Israel/Zionism

East Jerusalem Jewish Settlement and “National Parks” Make a Two-State Solution Impossible – Israel Report XI

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

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My synagogue group stood on a hill near the Mount Scopus Campus of the Hebrew University looking east towards the Dead Sea. To the far right, about 7 km away, stood the Jewish settlement-city of Ma’ale Adumim (population, 40,000 Jews). To the north and adjacent to it was the last open area in the circular ring around Jerusalem called E-1 (about 12 square km – 4.6 square miles) that falls between Jerusalem and Jericho.

Beneath us down the hill and towards the two East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhoods of Isawiyya and A-Tur is another open area that Jewish settler organizations are working to declare “Mount Scopus Slopes National Park.”

Whenever the Israeli government has designated an area as a National Park, there is usually some archeological, historical or nature significance to it. This area, however, has no significance in any of these ways.

Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann explained that the primary goal in designating this area a national park is

“…to link between the inner encirclement of the Old City and its visual basin, as designated by the governmental Old City Basin Project, and the outer encirclement in Greater Jerusalem, as disclosed by the E-1 plan between Ma’ale Adumim and East Jerusalem. The new national park will be a bridge, creating [and] forging a geographical link between the Old City basin and E-1.”

Daniel Seidemann is the founder of “Terrestrial Jerusalem,” an Israeli non-governmental organization that works to identify and track the developments in Jerusalem that could impact either the political process or permanent status options, destabilize the city or spark violence, or create humanitarian crises. His organization says that

“Israel has already expropriated more than 35% of the privately owned land of East Jerusalem for the purpose of building settlement neighborhoods (in excess of 50,000 residential units for Israelis). Now, additional lands owned by the residents of Issawiya and A Tur will be, to all intents, expropriated by Israel. While declaring the site a national park does not nullify the owners’ property rights, it inevitably deprives them of the ability to exercise these rights in any meaningful way by denying them the ability to develop or sell their land. The declaration of the park will, in effect empty ownership of virtually all practical significance.”

The larger goal of the settlement groups and the Israeli right-wing is to effectively surround the city of Jerusalem with Jewish settlements and national parks and cut off direct access to the east that would allow contiguity for a future state of Palestine, thus making the achievement of two-states for two-peoples impossible.

The following short video (7 minutes) features Israeli experts in Jerusalem who show exactly how this will occur http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tuGALhavoc.

Polls indicate that the majority of Israelis accept that the city of Jerusalem will have to be shared as the capital for both Israel and Palestine. The Palestinians have stated consistently that there can be no agreement without their capital in Jerusalem. The challenge, of course, will be security, which is what negotiations are for.

Given that the sharing of Jerusalem is among the most important and central issues on the negotiating table, anything that deliberately changes Jerusalem’s status-quo until an agreement can be achieved is ill-advised. Those Israelis, aided and abetted by the settler movement and Israel’s right wing, that insist that Jerusalem cannot and should not be shared are doing everything possible to create facts on the ground that will condemn negotiations to failure and assure continuing violence and war.

See a map of the area: http://www.t-j.org.il/Portals/26/featured_maps_2011/TJ_ScopusPark_B.jpg

East Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah – A Study in Bad Policy and Injustice – Israel Report X

11 Monday Nov 2013

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In 1968, then Attorney General Meir Shamgar (who would become President of Israel’s High Court from 1983-1995), determined that the “Absentee Property Law” may not be used in East Jerusalem. All Israeli governments complied, until now.

The “Absentee Property Law,” passed during the fledgling years of Israel (1950), allows the state to seize and assume ownership of lands abandoned by Palestinians after November 29, 1947 who left to live in Arab states, the West Bank or Gaza. In their absence their forfeited property could be taken over by the Absentee Property Custodian and title could be transferred to the State of Israel.

To accommodate East Jerusalem Palestinians after the 1967 War, the Knesset passed a law (1970) excluding them from exposure to the Absentee Property Law. [Note: East Jerusalem Arabs are not “citizens” of the state of Israel, though they are entitled to vote in municipal elections.]

Ir Amim (lit. “City of Peoples/Nations”) is an Israeli non-profit and non-partisan organization that has monitored East Jerusalem neighborhoods since 2004. Its mission is “to … engage in those issues impacting on Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem and on the political future of the city.” Among its chief concerns is the status of East Jerusalem Palestinian land.

My synagogue group toured one of East Jerusalem’s neighborhoods, Sheikh Jarrah, which is wedged between formerly Jordanian held-East Jerusalem and Israeli-held West Jerusalem (1948 to 1967) on the slopes of Mount Scopus very near to the American Colony Hotel and Old City.

After the 1948 war, Jews fled the neighborhood while many Arabs remained. In 1957, the Jordanian government moved 28 Palestinian families to houses in Sheikh Jarrah who had fled their homes in West Jerusalem during the 1948 War.

Founded in 1865, Sheikh Jarrah was once home to Jerusalem’s Muslim elite. At the turn of the 20th century, 30 large homes housed 167 Muslim families (about 1250 people), 97 Jewish families, and six Christian families.

In 1972, the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Yisrael Committee went to court to justify Jewish claims of property ownership in Sheikh Jarrah using documents from the days of the Ottoman Empire. Based on a supportive Israeli court ruling, Palestinian Arab residents could remain as tenants as long as they paid rent to the Jewish community.

The Palestinians, however, also produced Ottoman Empire documents showing their ownership. Though the Absentee Property Law superseded Palestinian claims, there were no efforts to evict them from their homes based on Shamgar’s 1968 decision.

Beginning in 2008, Palestinians began receiving eviction notices initiated by Jewish settler groups. In August 2009, an Israeli court evicted two Palestinian families from two homes in Sheikh Jarrah, followed almost immediately by Jewish settler families moving in.

In applying the Absentee Property Law, Palestinians have no rights, no redress, no appeals, and receive no compensation. In contrast, relative to the same contested land, Jews have certain legal rights based on their Israeli citizenship.

In Sheikh Jarrah we met with Sara Beninga, a 30 year-old Israeli Jewish activist, and Salach Diab, a Palestinian resident, who told us the story of this small neighborhood. Sara has been the inspiration of the “Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement” (now called simply “Solidarity”) formed in 2010. She is a bright, principled and passionate Israeli who believes that gross injustice is being done to the Palestinian Arabs living in this neighborhood.

From 2010-2012 every Friday afternoon, hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians gathered on the main street of Sheikh Jarrah to protest the government’s unfair policies and the Jewish settler land grab.

As we arrived, Sara pointed out settlers returning to the house they occupy yards from Salah’s house, and Salah showed us photographs of settler violence against him and his neighbors.

Daniel Seidemann, a founder of Ir Amim and an attorney who has advocated on behalf of the Arab residents of East Jerusalem neighborhoods for the past nine years, explains the nature and importance of this property conflict:

“After 45 years, you now have 2300 Jewish settlers [living] in existing Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, [and while] that’s negligible numerically, symbolically it’s nuclear fusion, because you take the two radioactive subjects of the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, which are Jerusalem and refugees, and you fuse them…By insisting on a Jewish right of return to Sheikh Jarrah, Israel is opening the 1948 file and strengthening the Palestinian claim of a right of return to Israel.” (Reported by Sarah Wildman, visiting scholar at the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University).

Jewish settlers are clear about their larger goal; to prevent, through the establishment of facts on the ground in East Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank, an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement resulting in two states for two peoples with Jerusalem as the shared capital of each state.

I will continue this discussion of East Jerusalem neighborhoods and Israeli land policy in my next blog.

High Holiday Sermons – 2013/5774 – Ayeka? Where are You?

10 Sunday Nov 2013

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This past High Holiday season (2013-5774) I asked myself and my congregation one central question in three different ways: Ayeka? (Lit. – “Where are you?”).

The question, of course, is not about one’s location. Rather, it asks about our identity, how we think and what believe, who we are and what values are central in our lives.

Ayeka is the first question to appear in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 3:9). It was asked by God of the first humans in the Garden of Eden immediately after they ate from the forbidden tree.

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part I – American Jews

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part II – The Jewish People and State of Israel

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part III – God

I include here as well my Yizkor sermon on “The Death of Moses” based on a compilation of midrashim (rabbinic legends and commentaries).

In the context of my synagogue mission’s to Israel and the West Bank in October (2013) about which I am still writing in a series of Reports from Israel, the second sermon, in particular, informs my thinking.  All three sermons, however, ought to be considered together.

The sermons are posted on the Temple Israel of Hollywood web-site at http://www.tioh.org/worship/clergy/clergystudy

 

Not All Israeli Settlements are Alike – Israel Report Part IX

04 Monday Nov 2013

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There are three categories of Israeli settlements: [1] East Jerusalem neighborhoods forming a ring around Jerusalem, [2] large settlement blocs (i.e. small cities with more than 20,000 residents), and [3] small settlements and illegal “outposts” of a few dozen families each built strategically throughout the West Bank. 

The Israeli consensus is that categories #1 and #2 will remain in Israel with land swaps to the future state of Palestine, and Israeli settlements and outposts in category #3 will be evacuated.

The recent announcement by PM Netanyahu of construction of 1500 apartments that so infuriated the Palestinians in Ramat Shlomo, a northern Jerusalem neighborhood, concerns building in category #1. Bibi is right, that these will remain Israeli. He made the announcement, most believe, for internal political reasons, to placate right-wing members of his government who were infuriated by the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners convicted of murdering Israelis.

[Note: There is one other sub-category of settlement in East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods that I will address in my next blog.]

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, the General Secretary of the Palestine National Initiative (PNI) and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, compares the West Bank to a piece of cheese in which one side (Israel) takes bites while the other side (Palestine) is prevented from doing so. He warns that soon there will be no cheese left to share, and “Palestine” will have been eaten-up by Jewish settlements.

Is Dr. Barghouti correct? This is the question we asked of Leor Amichai, the director of “Settlement Watch” for Shalom Achshav, a liberal Israeli advocacy organization, when he took us on a tour of the hills around Ariel and Nablus deep into the West Bank.

Every year Shalom Achshav updates a West Bank map that includes brown and blue circles of different sizes, as well as small red dots. The brown circles are Palestinian cities and villages, the blue are Israeli settlements, and the red dots are Israeli “outposts” (i.e. illegal settlements according to the Israeli government). The size of the brown and blue circles is determined by population, ranging from a few dozen families to 50,000 inhabitants.

There are more than 100 blue circles speckled strategically all over the West Bank, 30 red dots south of Bethlehem, 30 more around Jerusalem, Jericho and Ramallah, 50 around Ariel, Nablus and Qalqiliya, and 6 in the far north, for a grand total of about 120 illegal red-dot-Israeli outposts.

The Israeli government has promised to remove these outposts, but has failed to do so while at the same time looking the other way as regional West Bank settlement councils provide, using Israeli tax money, the necessary infrastructure of water, electricity, gas, and security.

While on Sabbatical leave in Jerusalem two years ago, Leor took me to scout with him new outposts being built near Jerusalem. As I compare the 2011 and 2013 Shalom Achshav maps, there are many more red dots today than there were just two years ago.

Shalom Achshav says that 42% of the West Bank is currently zoned for Jewish settlements, 12% of the total West Bank population are Jewish settlers, 4% of all Israelis are settlers, and in the event of a two-state agreement, 1.8% of all Israelis (i.e. 100,000 Jews) would need to move from category #3 settlements/outposts back onto the Israeli side of the border.

Shalom Achshav and B’tzelem (another leading Israeli human rights organization) claim further that fully 33% of the land on which Israeli settlements are built in the West Bank is on privately owned and deeded Palestinian land.

Whether Israelis have the right to live anywhere they choose in the West Bank is not the issue. I believe they do assuming they accept the sovereignty of the future Palestinian state. The relevant issue today is whether it is politically wise for Israel to build settlements if doing so makes a two-state agreement more difficult to attain?

To this question, it seems to me to indeed be unwise. Category #3 settlements and outposts have become a significant political problem in negotiations, but not as yet an insurmountable one.

Of the 100,000 settlers who will need to evacuate their settlements in a peace agreement (assuming no agreement is made for them to remain under Palestinian sovereignty), 70-80% moved to the West Bank so as to purchase inexpensive homes close to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. They, likely, will move back to Israel without incident with appropriate compensation.

The other 20-30% are ideologically and religiously driven settlers, many of whom are militant. It is unclear whether they will move peacefully or not.

PM Netanyahu’s announcement of new house construction in categories #1 and #2 is, without a doubt, politically provocative to Palestinians. Hopefully, however, this construction will not affect the outcome of negotiations.

And so Dr. Barghouti is both correct and not correct – the piece of cheese is getting smaller, but all hope is not yet lost. The time for an agreement is now!

 

WOW & Anat Hoffman – The Ultra-Orthodox & Rabbi Ovadia Yosef – Israel Journal Part VIII

03 Sunday Nov 2013

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On Tuesday, October 8, Israel’s daily Haaretz featured a photograph (front page above the fold, right-hand column) of Anat Hoffman, the Chair and public “face” of Women of the Wall (WOW). Adjacent to her photo (also above the fold, left-hand column) was a photograph of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the 93 year-old spiritual leader of the Shas Party, who had died the night before.

The article accompanying Anat’s photograph reported that by a majority vote, the Board of Women of the Wall accepted a “compromise” proposal presented by Natan Sharansky, Chair of the Jewish Agency, that would grant equal rights to women’s prayer groups and egalitarian prayer services at the Western Wall (Kotel) at a third section to be located south of the traditional prayer area and under Robinson’s Arch, now a limited space and part of an archaeological park.

The Chief Rabbi of the Wall, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, agreed to the compromise and that he would have no authority over prayer in the new area.

Our synagogue group had attended WOW’s monthly Rosh Hodesh Cheshvan services on Friday morning, October 4, in which thousands of ultra-Orthodox had crowded into the prayer areas at the Kotel.

The last time I attended WOW Rosh Hodesh services was three years ago. Then, I witnessed a display of behavior by so-called “religious” Jews that was as ugly and undignified as anything I had seen anywhere in Jewish life. Ultra-Orthodox men screamed curses, filthy epithets and insults at the women of WOW as they prayed quietly at the back of the women’s section, and ultra-Orthodox women spit on them.

This October’s experience was not much better. Loud-speakers blasted prayers making it difficult to hear oneself think, and a group of religious settlers danced and screamed their prayers on the men’s side of the mechitzah just feet from the WOW women. The purpose of the loud-speakers, allegedly, was to offer prayers of healing for the very ill Rabbi Yosef, but effectively they drowned out WOW prayers (and everyone else too) thus fulfilling the “religious” prohibition against kol isha, the voice of women praying.

The women’s section was packed with hundreds of young ultra-Orthodox girls and women, a strategy the ultra-Orthodox had used in the past at the behest of Rabbi Rabinowitz to make it virtually impossible for WOW to find space in which to pray.

The juxtaposition of the photographs of Anat Hoffman and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in Haaretz was, of course, coincidental, unless you believe that “coincidences are God’s way of staying anonymous!” Regardless, that morning’s headlines visualized the culture war engulfing Israel.

My synagogue group had an appointment with Anat at 10 AM that day, but she was late because as soon as WOW made its decision, she was deluged with calls from the international press seeking comment. Under the circumstances we forgave her happily.

The WOW Board voted by a large majority in favor of the compromise; however, there are WOW members living in the United States and Canada who were angered by this decision because  they wanted prayer rights in the women’s section of the Kotel and not the “new“ area.

After voicing their criticism openly, Anat responded that the compromise, assuming all conditions are met, is the first time the government of the state of Israel recognized equal rights of women to pray openly at the Kotel, to be led in prayer by women, to wear tallitot and lay t’filin, and to chant aloud from the Torah. She said:

“This space is revolutionary. It will allow every Jew, man and woman, to pray, celebrate and hold religious ceremonies at the Western Wall. However, know that we are resolved: We will pray there only if it is built in this spirit and according to our conditions.”

There are sixteen conditions that WOW insists must be met for the compromise to go forward. (For details see “Women of the Wall issue list of demands for prayer space” – UPI.com – October 28, 2013 http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/10/28/Women-of-the-Wall-issue-list-of-demands-for-prayer-space/UPI-31671382962197/?spt=rln&or=1

This Monday, November 4th (Rosh Hodesh Kislev), marks the 25th Anniversary of Women of the Wall. The compromise agreement is a tipping-point victory not just for WOW, but for world Jewry.

PM Netanyahu, Jewish Agency Chair Sharansky and the Israeli government are to be congratulated for affirming the dignity and integrity of the Kotel, Judaism’s most sacred site, the rights of world Jewry at that site, and for affirming the principles of religious pluralism and equal rights for all Jews, as so stated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

On Tuesday, December 3rd (7:30 PM) Anat Hoffman will speak at Temple Israel of Hollywood (7300 Hollywood Blvd., LA 90046).  The community is invited at no charge. We ask that you RSVP to www.tioh.org/rsvp so we may plan appropriately.

Eritrean and Sudanese Asylum Seekers in Tel Aviv – Israel Journal Part VI

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

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Walking in a three square block area of south Tel Aviv earlier this month with Sigal Rozen, the Public Policy Coordinator for Israel’s “Hotline for Migrant Workers,” was like moving through an urban African slum. This is the neighborhood, run-down, dirty and vastly over-crowded that has been designated by the Israeli government for 35,000 mostly African migrant workers and political asylum seekers to live.

Three years ago thousands of Eritrean and Sudanese refugees began entering Israel illegally from the Sinai desert seeking political asylum. Alarmed by the large numbers and concerned that Israel could be overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands more refugees, the Israeli government began constructing a security fence along the southern border to stop the human flow. As a gauge of the dimension of the migration, in 2012, 285,142 Eritreans and 112,283 Sudanese sought asylum all around the world, and for good reason.

For years the Sudanese government has conducted a genocidal war against the people of Darfur as well as widespread human rights abuse including sexual violence against women, torture, drafting and arming children for the military.

Eritrea, a small African nation adjacent to Ethiopia, is among the world’s most egregious human rights offenders, and Eritrea’s President, Isaias Afewerki, is among the world’s most brutal dictators.

The UN reports that the Eritrean government pursues systemic and widespread human rights abuse including extrajudicial killings, shoot-to-kill orders of those attempting to leave the country, enforced disappearances of citizens without family notification, arbitrary detentions, physical and psychological torture by police and army interrogators, inhumane detention conditions, sexual violence against women and children, drafting children into the armed forces, compulsory and indefinite military service, no free speech, assembly, religion, or movement.

Sigal Rozen told us that there are currently 54,201 African asylum seekers in Israel, among which are 36,067 Eritreans and more than 15,000 Sudanese. However, no one has been granted asylum by the state of Israel despite the fact that 84% of Eritrean asylum seekers around the world are recognized as refugees. In fact, since signing the Refugee Convention in 1951, for unexplained reasons, Israel has recognized only 202 refugees in total for political asylum.

Israel claims that the Eritreans and Sudanese in Israel are “work infiltrators” who come solely to improve their quality of life, and that there is no basis upon which to grant them political asylum.

The presence of so many Africans in Tel Aviv today has provoked a strong negative public outcry by many Israelis. In response the Knesset passed an amendment to the Anti-Infiltration Law to allow the incarceration of asylum seekers for up to three years. However, on September 16 the High Court of Justice unanimously invalidated the amendment as unconstitutional because it compromised Israel’s Basic Law regarding human freedom and liberty. The Court instructed the government to examine all cases of Africans currently incarcerated (i.e. 1750 people) within 90 days.

To Israel’s credit, the government has not deported any of these refugees, most likely because Israel’s leaders understand the fatal consequences should these people be returned to their home countries.

The Israeli public’s ire against African migrants has grown and was heightened this year following two highly publicized criminal acts by Eritreans in south Tel Aviv. One case involved the alleged rape of an 83 year-old Tel Aviv woman in her home. A second was the near fatal encounter of a young Israeli husband and father who was dragged out of his car at a stop light and beaten by five Eritreans as his wife and children watched in horror. As bad as these incidents are, Sigal Rozen says that the actual crime rate among African migrants is six times lower than the crime rate among Israelis.

These refugees want badly to go home, but they fear for their lives. In Israel they quietly do whatever work comes their way in order to survive. They live crammed together in dilapidated apartments, many to a room sleeping on the floor and on boarded-up balconies. Refugee children do attend school, as required by Israeli law, and have done well, passing Israeli High School matriculating exams at high rates.

Sigal urges Israeli employers in agriculture, construction and the nursing sectors to employ these people and help relieve their hardships, and she urges the government to grant them extended work permits so they can remain in Israel legally until they feel safe enough to return home.

Judaism teaches, “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:20).

One would hope that the Jewish people and the state of Israel will treat these refugees with kindness and open hearts. As a people we have been where they are today. We know the heart of the stranger.

Why Resettlement of Bedouin Arab Israeli Citizens is a Moral and Democratic Wrong – Israel Journal Part V

27 Sunday Oct 2013

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I am one of 620 rabbis and cantors who signed a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu (http://bit.y/BedouinRabbis – “Clergy United Against Bedouin Dispossession”, organized by T’ruah and Rabbis for Human Rights) asking the Israeli government to set aside the Begin-Prawer Bill as unjust.

The bill’s authors say that the bill will settle land ownership disputes between Israel’s Bedouin Negev citizens and the state, compensate the 30,000 to 40,000 Bedouin being moved from their homes to new recognized villages, and ensure their well-being by affording them regular access to water, electricity and other services.

However, there is far more here than meets the eye.

The 190,000 Bedouin Arabs of the Negev, among the poorest in the country (71% live below the poverty line), are full citizens of the State of Israel. 90,000 of these Bedouin live in 45 villages of which 35 have not been recognized by the government and are therefore not provided the most basic services. Only ten of the 45 villages are expected to receive formal government recognition.

The bill will forcibly move these Bedouin from villages in which they have lived for generations because the state does not recognize their property claims. Why?

First, the Bedouin who lived on their land under Ottoman and British Mandate control had “understandings” with the authorities about which lands belonged to them. The formal process of regulating land ownership under the British Mandate (1917-48), however, was never carried out in the Negev, though many landholders elsewhere in the country were officially registered.

Second, the Bedouin had their own traditional system of property acquisition that was acceptable under Ottoman and British rule, and so they were given the impression that registering their land in the government Land Registry was not necessary.

Third, Israel’s War of Independence dislocated thousands of Bedouin. Immediately after the 1948 War, Israel declared the lands temporarily evacuated by Bedouins to be “abandoned land.” The IDF confiscated that land and turned it into military training zones and built yishuvim (Jewish communities) on the land of abandoned villages.

Dr. Dan Gazit, an archaeologist who has spent decades living and working in the Negev, claims that an archive in the Beersheba Municipality that existed during the British mandate era documented all land ownership data for the Bedouins of the province, but was “lost” during its transfer to the State Archive. He has written:

“The State of Israel, which disappeared the Bedouin ownership date of their lands in the Negev, is now expelling them from their land, claiming that they have no official ownership documentation.”

This is a classic “Catch 22!”

“The Begin-Prawer Plan” will force the displacement and eviction of dozens of villages and tens of thousands of Bedouin residents, dispossess them of their ancestral property, and damage the social fabric of their communities thus putting thousands of families at risk of falling further into poverty, unemployment and crime.

What is recommended instead is for the Israeli government to recognize formally the unrecognized 45 villages, all of which have met the same criteria required of new Jewish communities to be registered, and thereby afford them adequate water, electricity, plumbing, health care, education, and employment.

The unfairness of this bill is stunning in another way. There are currently 100 Jewish villages in the Beer Sheva District of the Negev with an average population of only 300, far fewer than the Bedouin villages which have between 400 and 4800 residents. Jewish villages, however, have had no difficulty attaining land and formal recognition thus affording them the necessary infrastructure from the Israeli government including water, electricity, plumbing, health care, education, and employment.

The premise behind the Begin-Prawer Plan is that Bedouin Arabs are usurpers of the land upon which they live because they lack documentation, but that is a problem created by the state of Israel, not the Bedouin themselves who are victims of bureaucratic neglect.

The Prophet Micah (2:2) warns us: “And they covet fields, and seize them; and [they covet houses and] take them away; thus they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.”

What pans out at the end of the day is that this Begin-Prawer bill is a land grab by the state of Israel of property lived on and possessed by Israeli Bedouin Arab citizens.

Jewish tradition teaches that the highest moral duty is to treat strangers and the most vulnerable in our midst with kindness and justice. The irony in the case of the Bedouin is that as citizens of Israel they are NOT strangers at all, but part of the fabric of Israel’s democracy.

If Israel is to embody the best of Jewish ethical tradition (as it does in so many areas) and the highest democratic standards, then the Knesset must defeat this bill.

The Cauldron that is Hebron Today – Israel Journal Part IV

24 Thursday Oct 2013

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I had not visited Hebron for forty years ago until my synagogue group did earlier this month. In this time so much yet so little has changed.

In 1973 the city and surroundings had 40,000 Arab Muslim residents and 150 Jews. Today, there are 250,000 Palestinians and 8500 Jews.

A holy city to both religions because of the patriarchs’ and matriarchs’ burial caves (Genesis 23 – in this week’s Torah portion Chayei Sarah) and it being located along an ancient trading route, Hebron has been vulnerable to multiple conquests and violence since the time of Abraham.

Israel has controlled the area since 1967, and as part of the Oslo process, Israel and the Palestinians signed the “Hebron Agreement” in which the city was split into two sectors: H1, controlled by the Palestinian Authority and H2 controlled by Israel.

Our group visited H2 with David Wilder, the spokesmen for the Hebron Jewish community.

Wilder is a religious settler who packs a pistol on his hip over which is draped his tzitzit. He is a passionate defender of the religious right of Jews to Hebron. He says there is no such thing as the Palestinian people, that the Arabs there have no distinct identity separate from Arabs in the Middle East, and that they have contributed nothing of lasting value to the advancement of civilization, in contrast to Judaism and the Jewish people.

While denying Palestinians their national identity he demands that they recognize our Jewish religious and national rights. He is resentful that Arabs have access to 97% of the city under the Hebron Agreement while Jews have access to 3%.

Wilder denies that he is an “extremist!” Palestinians and most Israelis don’t agree.

He opposes a two-state solution, and when challenged by evidence of settler and Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians, he said these are lies disseminated by anti-Israel and anti-Semitic groups.

Here are some of those “lies.”

In 2013 Palestinians were barred from using Shuhada Street, their principal commercial thoroughfare in H2. In recent years due to settler violence, half the Arab shops in H2 have gone out of business.

The Israeli human rights organization B’tzelem says that “grave violations” of Palestinian human rights have occurred in Hebron because of the “presence of the settlers within the city” and that there has been less than an adequate response from Israeli security forces in stopping the violations. B’tzelem cites regular incidents of “almost daily physical violence and property damage by settlers in the city.”

In 1994 the Israeli Shamgar Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israeli authorities consistently failed to investigate or prosecute crimes committed by settlers against Palestinians.

Though much of Hebron’s Arab community is thriving in business, education and commerce, still the violations continue as is clear by the testimony of many Israeli soldiers who have been stationed there, one of whom said (courtesy of “Breaking the Silence”):

My main difficulty … was the … Jewish community… The feeling was that we were protecting the Arabs from the Jews, … [and] … the Jews really did whatever they pleased and no one would care…I was standing guard duty … and I see a six-year Palestinian girl [whose] whole head was an open wound….Th[is] extremely cute [Jewish] child … would regularly visit our position decided that he didn’t like Palestinians walking right under his home, so he took a brick and threw it at [this little girl’s] head. Kids do whatever they please there. No one does anything about it. No one cares. Afterwards, his parents only praised him. The parents there encourage their children to behave this way. I had many such cases. 11-12 year old Jewish children beat up Palestinians and their parents come to help them along, set their dogs on them; a thousand and one stories.”

The violence, of course, goes both ways over a long period. The most egregious attack on Jews occurred in 1929 when Arab rioters murdered and butchered 70 Jewish men, women and children, and wounded 60. At the same time, 455 Jews survived because their Arab neighbors protected them.

As a delayed payback, in 1994 Baruch Goldstein, a resident of Kiryat Arba, entered the Mosque and machine-gunned 29 Muslim worshipers dead and wounded 130 before being killed.

Just last month, an Israeli soldier was murdered in Hebron.

I asked Wilder what he and his community would do in the event of a two-state solution in which Hebron becomes part of the State of Palestine. He said that it won’t ever happen!

If it does, and I hope that it will, both Israeli and Palestinian security forces are going to have their hands full dealing with these fanatic religious settlers.

I pray that there will be no loss of life on either side when a two-state agreement is reached, hopefully this year. However, the history of Hebron suggests that such prayers are pipe dreams.

If You Want To Be Politically Irrelevant, Support BDS – Israel Journal Part III

22 Tuesday Oct 2013

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I have much respect and personal fondness for Kathleen Peratis, and so I read with interest her thoughtful piece on Open Zion of The Daily Beast, “If You Want Two States, Support BDS.”

I share Kathleen’s sense of urgency to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before it is too late, but I categorically differ with her conclusion about the efficacy and appropriateness of the BDS movement.

I have just returned from ten days of meetings in Israel and the West Bank. I led members of my congregation in talks with Israelis on the left and right, settlers, human rights activists, journalists, and members of the Knesset, as well as with Palestinian Authority officials and Palestinian business and community leaders, excluding Hamas. Our purpose was to gain a deeper understanding of the current situation and of the attitudes of Israelis and Palestinians, as well as to express our American Jewish support for a resolution of the conflict that includes two states for two peoples.

We spent an afternoon touring the West Bank with Leor Amichai, the director of the “Settlement Watch Project” for Shalom Achsav, and saw for ourselves the extent of settlement construction in Ariel and evidence of dozens of illegal Israeli “outposts” (i.e. small settlements) that are flourishing everywhere with full infrastructure provided by regional settlement councils and are condoned by the Israeli military authority.

Seeing these settlements with our own eyes persuaded us that they are a serious challenge to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a future peace agreement, there will come a choice; either 100,000 Israelis will abandon their homes and settlements in the new state of Palestine and move into Israel across the Green Line, or, as once agreed upon by Yossi Beilin and Mahmoud Abbas during the Oslo period, Israelis will be permitted to remain in the Palestinian state if they agree to live peacefully under Palestinian sovereignty and if Palestinians are free to live anywhere in Palestine, including inside Jewish settlements.

Though Kathleen and I agree on the necessity of a two-state solution, we disagree about BDS.

Kathleen writes:

The deciders on whether there will be a two-state solution are the Israeli people. It is they at least as much as their government who should be the targets of our advocacy … any pollster will tell you that a large majority [of the Israeli people] says it favors ending occupation. But that majority neither puts pressure on its representatives nor votes in large numbers for peace candidates. Why? Because ending occupation is low on the agenda of Israeli voters, lower even than the price of cottage cheese.

She also says that American Jews should “shake Israelis from their indifference.”

I disagree that our role as American Jews is to shake up Israeli society. Such a position is presumptuous on the one hand and unnecessary on the other. There are, indeed, hundreds of thousands of Israelis represented in a number of political parties including Meretz, Avodah, Hatnuah, Hadash, Yesh Atid, Shas and even Likud who are not at all indifferent to the necessity of a two-state solution.

Even Tzahbi Hanegbi, a former Likud politician who is close to PM Netanyahu, has called for a two-state solution. Tzipi Livni, Israel’s chief negotiator to the Palestinians, who also comes from the Israeli center-right, advocates the same.

J Street’s purpose, in my view, is not to influence Israelis. Rather, the movement was formed to demonstrate widespread American Jewish support for the two-state solution to this conflict and to influence American government officials to do everything possible to assist Israel and the Palestinians in resolving their conflict.

I believe it is a serious political mistake for American Jews to support any kind of BDS (even one limited to the settlements) because we risk having our friends and allies in Congress walk away from us as pro-Israel, pro-peace advocates and align themselves with regressive, right-wing forces that do not support two states for two peoples.

If we do not get the politics right, the consequence could be a serious setback not only to the J Street movement and approach, but, most importantly, to the best long-term security interests of the Jewish democratic state of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people.

Note: My response to Kathleen’s original blog on Open Zion of The Daily Beast appeared there on October 21, 2013 – http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/21/if-you-want-to-be-politically-irrelevant-support-bds.html

 

The “Jewish and Democratic” State of Israel – Israel Journal Part II

21 Monday Oct 2013

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The Israeli journalist and scholar Bernard Avishai said in Washington, D.C. at the J Street national convention earlier this month:

For most Israelis and American Jews, the “Jewish” part of the phrase “Jewish and democratic” implies many things, which don’t necessarily work together: a Jewish majority, political representation for world Jewry, the incorporation of Jewish law into civil affairs, an historical attachment to the land of Israel,…

Ask Israelis on the street and most will just default to the idea that a Jewish majority justifies privileges for Jews, individually as well as collectively, [and that] meant that the Jewish state would give privileges exclusively to individual citizens, legally designated as Jewish owing to rabbinic decree or J positive blood.

Jewish prerogatives and democratic rights for Israeli citizens (80% Jewish/20% other within the Green Line) raise confusion about the meaning of citizenship and nationality in Israel. Avishai continues:

…the Jewish state apparatus came to recognize two forms of legal status: citizenship and nationality. Israeli citizenship entitled you to civil privileges: equality before the law in courts of law, the right to vote, etc. Jewish nationality entitled you to exclusive material privileges, privileged access to state controlled lands, housing in Jewish settlements, optional state-sponsored orthodox education, [and] national service,… Jewish nationality [as defined by traditional Jewish law – halachah] also made you subject to the ministrations of a state-sponsored national-orthodox rabbinate overseeing marriage, burial, and divorce [and therefore identity].

In other words, you are a Jewish national if you were born of a Jewish mother or you converted to Judaism. This elevated status affords rights of citizenship to any Jew living anywhere in the world under Israel’s Law of Return (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return).

The Law of Return, however, does not apply to Arabs even if they once lived in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Ramle, Tiberias, or Haifa. Those who remained in Israel after the 1948 War of Independence were offered Israeli citizenship.

Having said this, Israel’s parliament understood its duty to assure equal rights to all its citizens, even as it sought to further Jewish national and Hebrew culture. Consequently, Hebrew and Arabic became the official languages of state transactions and government (now Arabic and English are taught in non-religious state schools) and the official religion of the Jewish state is Judaism.

My synagogue delegation met with several Members of the Knesset this month in Jerusalem, one of whom was MK Issawi Frej, the only Arab member of the six-member left-wing Zionist party Meretz. MK Frej professed his loyalty to the State of Israel, but acknowledged that Arab Israeli citizens are treated as second class citizens. Arab communities receive only a third of the money available to Israeli Jewish communities despite their paying their fair share of taxes.

The inequities are most apparent in the West Bank because those territories, taken by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, have never been formally annexed or incorporated into the State of Israel. Indeed, it is those territories that are expected to be the basis of a Palestinian state.

In the meantime, the legal status of west bank Arabs is different than Israeli Arab citizens. West bank Arabs are subject to the Israeli Military Authority without the same democratic rights and protections enjoyed by Israeli Arab citizens living within Israel itself. Israeli confiscation of privately owned Palestinian land in the west bank is the most serious inequity. B’tzelem and Shalom Achshav, Israeli human rights organizations, estimate that fully one third of all land held by Jewish settlements in the west bank is built on Palestinian deeded land.

To add to the inequities in the law, Jewish settlers living in those same west bank territories enjoy all the benefits and privileges of Israeli citizenship.

Avishai put it well when he said:

A democratic state is, by definition, a state of its citizens… Israel must … stop discriminating against, or in favor, of individual citizens on the basis of religion or biology. It must graduate from the Law of Return to a proper immigration law based on naturalization; it must separate the rabbinate from the state apparatus; it must end public support for confessional schools …; it must privatize land and stop including exclusively Jewish institutions like the JNF in long term state planning.

…this does not mean a state of its citizens cannot have a Jewish character. It can protect the “Hebrew national atmosphere.” It can also have holidays and symbols that accommodate what most citizens will celebrate.

An important argument supporting a two-state agreement is that Israel would cease as an occupier of a hostile Arab population not governed by democratic principles and protections. Israel also would be able to correct legal and economic inequities relative to the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of the state thus advancing the principles of Israel’s Declaration of Independence as both a state of the Jewish people and a democracy for all her citizens.

More to come…