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| Hundreds of Jews in New York protest against the Zionist state of Israel. |
Boycott israHell!
Бойкот на израел и печелещите от окупацията! Boycott israHell and those who profit from occupation!
Showing posts with label Jew. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jew. Show all posts
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Hundreds of Jews in New York protest against the Zionist state of Israel.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Monday, November 18, 2013
#StopIsrael | Jewish settlers chop down 100 olives trees in Yatta town
0 COMMENTS
AL-KHALIL, (PIC)– Jewish settlers chopped down more than one hundred olive trees in Yatta town, south of Al-Khalil, on Sunday.
Ratib Al-Jabour, the coordinator of the popular committees against the wall and settlements in Yatta, said on Monday that the trees were owned by two Palestinian farmers.
He said that the settlers came from five settlements near to Wad Ma’in area in Yatta where the trees were cut down.
Jabour lashed out at settlers’ practices that aim at terrorizing citizens into abandoning their land, which would be then easily annexed by those settlers to their settlements.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Of malignant hatred and a law of theft
by Adam Keller
source mwcnews.net
Last Monday afternoon there landed in my email box a message from somebody who is in the habit of corresponding
with me every few days, expressing opinions in which moderation and tolerance are conspicuously absent. This time he wrote with glee "Look what your Bedouin friends did this time, already four deaths in the terrorist attack on the Be'er Sheba bank."Last Monday afternoon there landed in my email box a message from somebody who is in the habit of corresponding
I quickly went into the news websites and found extensive reporting on the horrific events unfolding at the Bank Hapoalim branch in Be'er Sheba.
The body of the article had nothing about the ethnic identity of the perpetrators (at the time it was thought there were two). But the talkback windows below were full of dozens of responses by people who already knew as a fact that they were Bedouins, and who were indignantly protesting that the "leftist media" was "concealing" this fact. And thence the right-wing talk back artists proceeded to make various imaginative suggestions about what should be done to the perpetrators, to their families, to their entire tribes, and to all Negev Bedouins in general.
By evening it turned out, clearly and unequivocally, that the bank killings had been the result of a revenge spree by a completely kosher Jewish citizen of Israel (and a former IDF officer, to boot) and the vocal right wingers reluctantly let go the prey they thought they had. One of them wrote, "OK, you won this time, dirty leftists”. But they'll be back, no doubt.
The outpourings of hatred against the Negev Bedouins don’t stop even for a day. You find them not only in the talk backs but also in some of the commentaries on the opinion pages themselves, and in the slant of supposedly objective news items, and also in daily conversations one overhears on a bus or at street corners. The Bedouin are thieves, The Bedouins are violent, The Bedouins build new mosques all over the Negev, The Bedouins take over state lands, The Bedouins are a demographic threat, their camels cause road accidents, Hit the Bedouin and Save Israel!. How did such a malignant and vociferous hatred spring up in the Israeli society?
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Baltzer: BDS Movement Strategic, Flexible, Diverse and Inclusive
Below is an article in The Jewish Week covering the talk our National Organizer Anna Baltzer gave this past weekend in New York on "The Jewish-American Relationship with Israel at the Crossroads" with Norman Finkelstein. You can read Anna's remarks here.
Has Norman Finkelstein, long reviled in the Jewish community as a vitriolic hater of the Jewish state, morphed into a defender of Israel’s legitimacy? And what does Finkelstein’s newfound “moderation” say about the current state of the anti-Israel left, exemplified by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement?
Over the course of three decades, Finkelstein achieved superstar status on the anti-Zionist left by writing a myriad of books and articles in which he declared Israel to be “an insane state” and charged Elie Wiesel and other pro-Zionist Jews with exploiting the memory of the Holocaust as an “ideological weapon” in support of Israel.
Given that stormy history, it was strange to attend an unabashedly one-sided discussion last Saturday afternoon at the New School in Manhattan titled “The Jewish-American Relationship with Israel at the Crossroads,” and to hear Finkelstein denounce the BDS movement for refusing to affirm Israel’s right to exist within the 1967 Green Line border. Sitting next to him on the panel was Anna Baltzer, national organizer of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and a top leader in the BDS movement.
Finkelstein argued that the movement’s failure to take a clear stance on that issue will prevent it from bringing aboard the growing number of young American Jews who, he believes, have concluded that Israel’s occupation is morally wrong and must be ended.
But while the overwhelmingly anti-Israel crowd of about 500 heard Finkelstein out respectfully, they ardently applauded Baltzer when she argued that BDS movement is growing in strength and stature despite its unwillingness to take the steps Finkelstein demands; those include official embrace of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The talk, which was moderated by Adam Shatz, an editor at the London Review of Books, and which took place before the end of the Sabbath, was supposed to have also included anti-Zionist avatar Noam Chomsky, who cancelled because of laryngitis. The event seemed conceived as an opportunity for Finkelstein to showcase the argument laid out in his recently published book, “Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End” (Or Books). In it he argues that a critical mass of young American Jews have concluded that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is morally indefensible and that many of them can be brought into the BDS movement on behalf of Palestinian rights — as long as the movement makes clear its commitment to Israel’s survival.
However, the afternoon came to feel like a symbolic changing of the guard on the anti-Israel left.
Much of the audience appeared dubious of Finkelstein’s moderation and enthralled with Baltzer; she is an articulate and attractive 33-year-old St. Louis native who turned sharply to the left and made pro-Palestinian advocacy her top cause after being disillusioned with what she saw in Israel during a Birthright Israel trip in 2000. Her polished speaking style served to temper the impact of her full-throated advocacy for the right of Palestinians to return to within the borders of pre-1967 Israel (code to pro-Israel supporters for the destruction of the Jewish state), and her defense of Palestinian-Americans and others who refuse to affirm the right of Israel to exist.
Read more at The Jewish Week
Has Norman Finkelstein, long reviled in the Jewish community as a vitriolic hater of the Jewish state, morphed into a defender of Israel’s legitimacy? And what does Finkelstein’s newfound “moderation” say about the current state of the anti-Israel left, exemplified by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement?
Over the course of three decades, Finkelstein achieved superstar status on the anti-Zionist left by writing a myriad of books and articles in which he declared Israel to be “an insane state” and charged Elie Wiesel and other pro-Zionist Jews with exploiting the memory of the Holocaust as an “ideological weapon” in support of Israel.
Given that stormy history, it was strange to attend an unabashedly one-sided discussion last Saturday afternoon at the New School in Manhattan titled “The Jewish-American Relationship with Israel at the Crossroads,” and to hear Finkelstein denounce the BDS movement for refusing to affirm Israel’s right to exist within the 1967 Green Line border. Sitting next to him on the panel was Anna Baltzer, national organizer of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and a top leader in the BDS movement.
Finkelstein argued that the movement’s failure to take a clear stance on that issue will prevent it from bringing aboard the growing number of young American Jews who, he believes, have concluded that Israel’s occupation is morally wrong and must be ended.
But while the overwhelmingly anti-Israel crowd of about 500 heard Finkelstein out respectfully, they ardently applauded Baltzer when she argued that BDS movement is growing in strength and stature despite its unwillingness to take the steps Finkelstein demands; those include official embrace of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The talk, which was moderated by Adam Shatz, an editor at the London Review of Books, and which took place before the end of the Sabbath, was supposed to have also included anti-Zionist avatar Noam Chomsky, who cancelled because of laryngitis. The event seemed conceived as an opportunity for Finkelstein to showcase the argument laid out in his recently published book, “Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End” (Or Books). In it he argues that a critical mass of young American Jews have concluded that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is morally indefensible and that many of them can be brought into the BDS movement on behalf of Palestinian rights — as long as the movement makes clear its commitment to Israel’s survival.
However, the afternoon came to feel like a symbolic changing of the guard on the anti-Israel left.
Much of the audience appeared dubious of Finkelstein’s moderation and enthralled with Baltzer; she is an articulate and attractive 33-year-old St. Louis native who turned sharply to the left and made pro-Palestinian advocacy her top cause after being disillusioned with what she saw in Israel during a Birthright Israel trip in 2000. Her polished speaking style served to temper the impact of her full-throated advocacy for the right of Palestinians to return to within the borders of pre-1967 Israel (code to pro-Israel supporters for the destruction of the Jewish state), and her defense of Palestinian-Americans and others who refuse to affirm the right of Israel to exist.
Read more at The Jewish Week
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
"Newt Gingrich puts Israel interests first" - Kristin Szremski
 |
| Szremski |
Szremski faults Gingrich with helping to inflame Islamophobia by using the pro-Israel entities behind it. Millions of dollars are being funneled into organizations bent on helping Israel maintain its occupation of Palestine, thanks to figures like Gingrich demonizing Islam in the United States by planting outrageous and false innuendos of a "stealth jihad" here, and insinuating a connection between American Muslims and overseas groups on the State Department's list of designated foreign terrorist organizations.
Newt Gingrich puts Israel interests first
Gingrich will abandon US values and safety for a chance at the White House.
December 19, 2011
AlJazeera.com
Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House who faded into obscurity after resigning in 1998 amid a sex scandal, is back and seemingly ready to say anything to become the next president of the United States - even if it means making sycophantic statements that pander to the pro-Israel lobby but that oppose US policy and the best interests of the American people.
Gingrich apparently revised history when he told Jewish reporter Steven Weiss recently that the Palestinians are an "invented" people. He willfully obfuscated the fact that Palestinians' roots in the Holy Land go back thousands of years. He ignored that Palestinians and Palestine are mentioned in the Torah and the Bible; that they are referred to in many historical documents, including the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which gave British support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".
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| Gingrich re-invented history when he said the Palestinians are an "invented" people [GALLO/GETTY] |
That Gingrich would intentionally contradict stated and long-standing US policy, which recognises the Palestinian people and their right for a state of their own, for his own self-interest is extremely troubling. But even more problematic is the fact that Gingrich told Weiss he would consider granting clemency to one of the most notorious spies ever to infiltrate our national security agencies: Johathon Pollard.
Pollard's release
Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1986 after he confessed to spying for the state of Israel. Pollard, who was a civilian research analyst with high security clearance for the US Navy, had agreed to spy for Israel for 10 years in exchange for more than $500,000.
According to a January 1999 article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh, Pollard "betrayed elements of four major American intelligence systems". He caused extensive damage to US intelligence and US national security because of the nature of the highly sensitive documents he sold to Israel. According to Hersh, Pollard gave up data dealing with specific American intelligence systems and how they worked, a "most sensitive area of intelligence". The espionage was so great that successive presidents have rejected Israel's pleas for Pollard's release.
Gingrich told Weiss he'd consider granting clemency if Pollard were no longer a security threat and also had served time within the range of people with "similar problems". To be sure, seasoned politicians often have to compromise goals - sometimes even ideals - to achieve their own. But when a potential presidential candidate so easily panders to the interests of a foreign country and its lobby here, in the United States, over the interests of his fellow countrymen, he is clearly not fit to hold public office.
And that is only one of the ways in which Gingrich is forwarding a Zionist agenda at the expense of Americans, which is readily seen in his "Clash of Civilisations" narrative that became prominent in 2010 during the controversy surrounding the Park 51 mosque project. During the controversy, the country's favourable attitude towards Muslims fell 10 points (from 40 per cent to 30 per cent), according to a study co-authored by the Centre for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Council on American Islamic Relations.
Islamophobic rhetoric
That same report says Gingrich was one of those at the forefront of fuelling mistrust and hatred of Muslims. In other words, a former Speaker of the House was working against American unity by bringing divisive Islamophobic rhetoric into mainstream discourse.
The Constitution founded the United States as a pluralistic society; the First Amendment grants the free expression of religion. Yet Gingrich behaves as if allowing Muslims that right would lead to the loss of American values and liberty.
Other credible reports - "The Great Isamophobic Crusade", by Max Blumenthal and "The Roots of the Islamophobic Network in America", by the Centre for American Progress - have exposed the link between Islamophobia and the pro-Israel entities behind it. Millions of dollars are funneled into organisations bent on helping Israel maintain its occupation of Palestine.
One way they accomplish this is by smearing anyone trying to raise awareness about Israel's continued violations of international law. Another way is to demonise Islam in the United States by planting outrageous and false innuendos of a "stealth jihad" here. Or they insinuate that there is a connection between American Muslims and overseas groups on the State Department's list of designated foreign terrorist organisations. These fallacies are then taken up and trumpeted about by unprincipled people like Gingrich.
Gingrich seems to have no qualms allying himself to pro-Israel element and selling the values and safety of the US for his shot in the Oval Office. But based upon published reports, he's failed to impress the pro-Israel Jewish voters he was trying to court. Instead, he's inflamed tensions in the Middle East where the neutrality and integrity of the US already is viewed with suspicion and in some cases hostility, and he's proven he does not care about the people who, if he were elected president, he'd be sworn to protect.
In trying to "out-Romney" Romney, Gingrich may have passed Israel's litmus test, but he hopelessly failed to show his loyalty to the US or the American people.
Kristin Szremski is the director of media and communications for the American Muslims for Palestine, a national grassroots organisation. Follow her on Twitter: @kristin_scribe
READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE...
Monday, January 17, 2011
Dozens of Jewish settlers attack mosque in Jaffa
Monday, 17 January 2011 12:30
Dozens of Jewish settlers have attacked a mosque in the city of Jaffa. The attack on Alnozha Mosque took place on Saturday evening (15 January). Palestinian sources in the city said that settlers carrying Israeli flags were roaming the streets after a march; some halted in front of the mosque and threw stones at it while chanting "death to Arabs".
Some of the worshippers inside the mosque at the time confronted the settlers, but Israeli police prevented a violent confrontation by moving the settlers away from the scene. Palestinians have accused the police of "complicity" with the settlers, as they didn't intervene until the settlers were challenged by men from the mosque. Other settlers attacked a Palestinian child near a petrol station in Alnozha Street within sight of police officers, it is claimed.
Sheikh Suleiman Alsatl, the imam of Alnozha Mosque, has threatened to respond to the settlers, "if they continue their provocation". He added his concerns about police complicity in the attack.
Some of the worshippers inside the mosque at the time confronted the settlers, but Israeli police prevented a violent confrontation by moving the settlers away from the scene. Palestinians have accused the police of "complicity" with the settlers, as they didn't intervene until the settlers were challenged by men from the mosque. Other settlers attacked a Palestinian child near a petrol station in Alnozha Street within sight of police officers, it is claimed.
Sheikh Suleiman Alsatl, the imam of Alnozha Mosque, has threatened to respond to the settlers, "if they continue their provocation". He added his concerns about police complicity in the attack.
Head of Jewish burial service in Haifa shot to death by unknown gunman
The Haifa director of the Ashkenazi Hevra Kadisha, the nonprofit organization in charge of state burial, was shot to death on Sunday near his Haifa home.
67-year-old Benny Hesse, father of four, was shot by an unidentified gunman at the entrance of his home on Sunday night, while his wife was still in the car after the two returned home together.
Hesse is a prominent figure in the religious Ashkenazi community in Haifa. Members of the religious community said that in the past, Hesse has had conflicts with other figures in Hebra Kadisha regarding the allocation of plots in cemeteries in Haifa.
Other community members said that Hesse also had conflicts with different contractors in the area regarding his work at Hevra Kadisha.
Kadisha chairman in Haifa, Rabbi Yisrael Rozental, said Sunday that Hesse "was an amazing man who was very dedicated and took care of the mourning families with great humanity."
Monday, December 14, 2009
Zionist control of Britain’s government: 1940-2009
By William A. Cook
“After so many years of setting the tone, bribing UK politicians and controlling the BBC they (Zionists) are used to being untouchable.” - (Gilad Atzmon, “Britain Must de-Zionist Itself Immediately,” Nov. 17, 2009, MWC News).
This week the British people listened to the Daily Mall’s Peter Oborne present, on Channel 4, his devastating account of the Jewish lobby’s control of their government. Now we know that virtually all the principal politicians in the UK of both parties, like their brothers across the lake in our House and Senate, take “contributions” from the Israeli lobby machine ensuring that the Anglo-American mid-east policies follow the dictates of the Israeli government. Gilad Atzmon responded to this report in his article “Britain must de-Zionise itself immediately,” noting that this control has been in place for so many years the lobby feels “untouchable.”
How many years are “many” one might ask? In 1941, the High Commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, Senior Palestine Mandate officer for the British Mandate forces in Palestine, sent the following “Top Secret” “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” to the Secretary of State, dated October 16th, a report prepared by The Palestine Police, Criminal Investigation Department:
The memorandum illustrates—indeed, brings into full limelight—the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention.
Quite obviously, MacMichael understands that the Mandatory has little power at home over the zealous actions of the Zionists as they manipulate public and political opinion even as they expand their terrorism against the British Mandate government in Palestine. This is an untenable position to be in, responsible for government control and security of those under its authority, i.e. Palestinians as well as Jews, and knowing that the Jews are set on driving the British out of Palestine, and knowing that the home government can offer little help.
The Zionists and their “gangs,” a euphemism for well equipped and well trained military forces, launched a full scale terrorist rebellion against the British by robbing banks, indiscriminate killing of British police, and the assassination of British minister-resident Lord Moyne in 1944. By the end of World War II things got even worse: “The Haganah carried out anti-British military operations—liberation of interned immigrants from the Atlit camp; the bombing of the country’s railroad network; sabotage raids on radar installations and bases of the British police mobile force; sabotage of British vessels … and the destruction of all road and railroad bridges on the borders.” All of this terrorism was conducted against the Mandate Government while the home government remained silent under the pall of Israeli Zionist propaganda (Meir Pa’il, “From Hashomer to the Israel Defense Forces: Armed Jewish Defense in Palestine,” World War II). www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/source/History/resist.htm.
But recording the acts of terrorism does not do justice to the conditions the Mandate government faced. MacMichael describes the reality of the forces aligned against the police in Palestine.
A second matter which deeply impressed me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labor certificates in connection with the immigration quota, the forced contributions to funds and the power of the Histadruth. … The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions…
Perhaps one of the most frightening observations MacMichael makes comes at the very end of his dispatch: “As matters now stand it seems to me inevitable that the Zionist Juggernaut which has been created with such intensity of zeal for a Jewish national state will be the cause of very serious trouble in the Near East.” Prophetic words indeed.
The memorandum provided by the Palestine Police Department includes approximately 50 0 pages of seized documents from the Jewish Agency and related organizations. These documents reveal the intention of the Zionists that controlled operations in Palestine as they worked to force into existence a Jewish State. “We regard it as our duty to caution you against any attempt to decide on an anti-Zionist solution … We regard it as a duty to utter another warning. Do not postpone the political solution for ten years … The Jews are a nation. The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. The Jewish State will be established. It is better that it should be established with your help and for your benefit, than against you” (The Jewish Resistance Movement, March 25th, 1946, Rhodes House Archives).
The Mandate Criminal Investigation Department was headed by Richard Catling. Catling’s memorandum begins with an understanding of the “intricate Jewish political, social and economic structure in Palestine.” A series of appendices chart these structures marking in passing that “… the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 understood ‘The Agency (Jewish) is obviously not a governing body; it can only advise and cooperate in a certain wide field.’ But allied as it is with the Vaad Leumi, and commanding the allegiance of the great majority of the Jews in Palestine, it unquestionably exercises, both in Jerusalem and in London, a considerable influence on the conduct of government.” Catling’s frustration with the actual control of the Jews over British policy in Palestine glares through this document: “This powerful and efficient organization amounts in fact, to a government existing side by side with the Mandatory Government…”
The Zionist controlled Jewish Agency actively undermined the legal authority in Palestine even as it operated to undermine support for that government in Britain, placing UK forces in harms way as they attempted to fulfill their authorized responsibilities in Palestine. It also demonstrates the determination of the Agency’s leadership in undermining the very nation that gave it a means of establishing a “homeland” in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. The wording of that declaration is rarely presented in its full form: “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” The declaration did not intend to establish a Jewish State. Indeed, the wording, “national home,” was used intentionally instead of “state.” Additionally, the first draft referred to the principle ‘that Palestine should be’ reconstituted ‘as the national home of the Jewish people.’ In the final text, the word ‘that’ was replaced with ‘in’ to avoid committing all of Palestine to the Jews only.
Now perhaps we can answer the question, “How many years has the British government been under the control of the Zionist influence?” Three score and ten, the biblical age. Perhaps it’s time that Britain is reborn, free from the shackles that bind it to this corrupt power that flouts international law, wantonly commits crimes against humanity, and in brazen arrogance tells the Nations United to shove its demands to comply with the civilized communities of the world.
(Note: Sir Richard C. Catling’s files have been released to this writer by the chief Archivist of the Rhodes House Library of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University. Some of the material presented above comes from the “Introduction” of a yet to be published book due out this coming spring.)
-- William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and serves as editor and writer for multiple Internet publications. His published books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine, and The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella. Visit: www.drwilliamacook.com.
Source: Middle East Online
“After so many years of setting the tone, bribing UK politicians and controlling the BBC they (Zionists) are used to being untouchable.” - (Gilad Atzmon, “Britain Must de-Zionist Itself Immediately,” Nov. 17, 2009, MWC News).
This week the British people listened to the Daily Mall’s Peter Oborne present, on Channel 4, his devastating account of the Jewish lobby’s control of their government. Now we know that virtually all the principal politicians in the UK of both parties, like their brothers across the lake in our House and Senate, take “contributions” from the Israeli lobby machine ensuring that the Anglo-American mid-east policies follow the dictates of the Israeli government. Gilad Atzmon responded to this report in his article “Britain must de-Zionise itself immediately,” noting that this control has been in place for so many years the lobby feels “untouchable.”
How many years are “many” one might ask? In 1941, the High Commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, Senior Palestine Mandate officer for the British Mandate forces in Palestine, sent the following “Top Secret” “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” to the Secretary of State, dated October 16th, a report prepared by The Palestine Police, Criminal Investigation Department:
The memorandum illustrates—indeed, brings into full limelight—the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention.
Quite obviously, MacMichael understands that the Mandatory has little power at home over the zealous actions of the Zionists as they manipulate public and political opinion even as they expand their terrorism against the British Mandate government in Palestine. This is an untenable position to be in, responsible for government control and security of those under its authority, i.e. Palestinians as well as Jews, and knowing that the Jews are set on driving the British out of Palestine, and knowing that the home government can offer little help.
The Zionists and their “gangs,” a euphemism for well equipped and well trained military forces, launched a full scale terrorist rebellion against the British by robbing banks, indiscriminate killing of British police, and the assassination of British minister-resident Lord Moyne in 1944. By the end of World War II things got even worse: “The Haganah carried out anti-British military operations—liberation of interned immigrants from the Atlit camp; the bombing of the country’s railroad network; sabotage raids on radar installations and bases of the British police mobile force; sabotage of British vessels … and the destruction of all road and railroad bridges on the borders.” All of this terrorism was conducted against the Mandate Government while the home government remained silent under the pall of Israeli Zionist propaganda (Meir Pa’il, “From Hashomer to the Israel Defense Forces: Armed Jewish Defense in Palestine,” World War II). www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/source/History/resist.htm.
But recording the acts of terrorism does not do justice to the conditions the Mandate government faced. MacMichael describes the reality of the forces aligned against the police in Palestine.
A second matter which deeply impressed me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labor certificates in connection with the immigration quota, the forced contributions to funds and the power of the Histadruth. … The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions…
Perhaps one of the most frightening observations MacMichael makes comes at the very end of his dispatch: “As matters now stand it seems to me inevitable that the Zionist Juggernaut which has been created with such intensity of zeal for a Jewish national state will be the cause of very serious trouble in the Near East.” Prophetic words indeed.
The memorandum provided by the Palestine Police Department includes approximately 50 0 pages of seized documents from the Jewish Agency and related organizations. These documents reveal the intention of the Zionists that controlled operations in Palestine as they worked to force into existence a Jewish State. “We regard it as our duty to caution you against any attempt to decide on an anti-Zionist solution … We regard it as a duty to utter another warning. Do not postpone the political solution for ten years … The Jews are a nation. The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. The Jewish State will be established. It is better that it should be established with your help and for your benefit, than against you” (The Jewish Resistance Movement, March 25th, 1946, Rhodes House Archives).
The Mandate Criminal Investigation Department was headed by Richard Catling. Catling’s memorandum begins with an understanding of the “intricate Jewish political, social and economic structure in Palestine.” A series of appendices chart these structures marking in passing that “… the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 understood ‘The Agency (Jewish) is obviously not a governing body; it can only advise and cooperate in a certain wide field.’ But allied as it is with the Vaad Leumi, and commanding the allegiance of the great majority of the Jews in Palestine, it unquestionably exercises, both in Jerusalem and in London, a considerable influence on the conduct of government.” Catling’s frustration with the actual control of the Jews over British policy in Palestine glares through this document: “This powerful and efficient organization amounts in fact, to a government existing side by side with the Mandatory Government…”
The Zionist controlled Jewish Agency actively undermined the legal authority in Palestine even as it operated to undermine support for that government in Britain, placing UK forces in harms way as they attempted to fulfill their authorized responsibilities in Palestine. It also demonstrates the determination of the Agency’s leadership in undermining the very nation that gave it a means of establishing a “homeland” in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. The wording of that declaration is rarely presented in its full form: “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” The declaration did not intend to establish a Jewish State. Indeed, the wording, “national home,” was used intentionally instead of “state.” Additionally, the first draft referred to the principle ‘that Palestine should be’ reconstituted ‘as the national home of the Jewish people.’ In the final text, the word ‘that’ was replaced with ‘in’ to avoid committing all of Palestine to the Jews only.
Now perhaps we can answer the question, “How many years has the British government been under the control of the Zionist influence?” Three score and ten, the biblical age. Perhaps it’s time that Britain is reborn, free from the shackles that bind it to this corrupt power that flouts international law, wantonly commits crimes against humanity, and in brazen arrogance tells the Nations United to shove its demands to comply with the civilized communities of the world.
(Note: Sir Richard C. Catling’s files have been released to this writer by the chief Archivist of the Rhodes House Library of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University. Some of the material presented above comes from the “Introduction” of a yet to be published book due out this coming spring.)
-- William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and serves as editor and writer for multiple Internet publications. His published books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine, and The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella. Visit: www.drwilliamacook.com.
Source: Middle East Online
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Palestinians in Israel forced to study Zionist anthem
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 28 July 2009
A leading Arab educator in Israel has denounced the decision of Gideon Saar, the education minister, to require schools to study the Israeli national anthem.
Officials announced last week that they were sending out special "national anthem kits" to 8,000 schools, including those in the separate Arab education system, in time for the start of the new academic year in September.
The kits have been designed to be suitable for all age groups and for use across the curriculum, from civics and history classes to music and literature lessons.
The anthem, known as Hatikva, or The Hope, has long been unpopular with Israel's Palestinian minority because its lyrics refer only to a Jewish historical connection to the land.
Saar's initiative is widely seen among Israel's 1.3 million Palestinian citizens as a further indication of the rising nationalistic tide sweeping policymakers.
Last week the ministry also announced that textbooks recently issued to Arab schoolchildren would have expunged the word "nakba," or catastrophe, to describe the Palestinians' dispossession at Israel's founding in 1948.
Hala Espanioly, who chairs the education committee of the Arab minority's supreme political body, the Higher Follow-Up Committee, told the Israeli news website Ynet: "If there is an attempt to force the Hatikva anthem on Arab schools and Arab pupils, it will be akin to a kind of attempted rape of their identity."
The issue of the national anthem, based on a 120-year-old poem by Naftali Hertz Imber and an ancient folk melody, has been a running sore between Israel's Jewish and Arab populations for decades.
Arab citizens are unhappy with its heavily Zionist lyrics, which speak of how the "soul of a Jew yearns" to return to Zion, as well as referring to "The hope of two thousand years, To be a free nation in our land."
In 2005 some legislators were outraged when an Israeli parliamentary committee considered, among possible constitution changes, revising the anthem's lyrics from "the soul of a Jew'" to "the soul of an Israeli." The change was not approved.
Saar, then an ordinary politician, led the opposition to changing the lyrics: "In two words: definitely not. I wouldn't make any changes to Hatikva. It would be a compromise on the state's identity."
The refusal of prominent Arabs to sing the anthem in public has provoked several notable controversies.
The most high-profile concerned Raleb Majadele, of the Labor party, who was appointed Israel's first Arab cabinet minister in 2007. In an interview he said that, though he always stood during Hatikva, he drew the line at singing it.
He later defended his position to Israeli radio: "Where is it written that a person appointed to be a cabinet minister in Israel must stop being an Arab, and turn into a member of a different religion and ethnicity?"
Arab players in Israel's national football squad have also admitted being uncomfortable during the playing of the anthem before games. TV broadcasts often zoom in to show that their lips are not moving.
Abir Kupty, today an elected official with the Nazareth municipality, produced one of Israeli TV's most talked-about moments four years ago when she was filmed sitting down when the anthem was played. She was the only Arab contestant in a reality show to find Israel's future leaders.
Kupty said: "This decision by the education ministry is part of the current hysterical right-wing mood in Israel. They hope they can erase our Palestinian identity by making us love the anthem."
She added that Arab pupils were already deprived of the chance to learn about their own history, culture and identity. "The curriculum in Arab schools is heavily controlled by Jewish officials and by the security services."
Sofia Yoad, the education ministry's director of curriculum development, said the anthem kits included a book and two CDs containing 40 historic recordings of Hatikva, including it being sung in a concentration camp and at the Declaration of Independence.
"It is very important to learn about the national anthem even if pupils are not Jewish," she said. "After all, this is the story of a country's independence."
Astrith Baltsan, a pianist who researched and wrote the book over three years, said she had originally been commissioned to produce it for Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations last year.
But when Saar saw it, she said, he had been keen to use it in all schools. She added that, when she played the anthem at a ministry launch party last week, even the Arab schools inspectors stood. "When you know the story of the anthem, you show it respect," she said.
The Higher Follow-Up Committee, a national political body representing Israel's Arab minority, has staunchly opposed the use of the kits. It wrote last week to Saar, warning that the initiative would "only deepen the alienation of Arab students and teachers."
Figures released by the education ministry this month show that only 32 percent of Arab students passed their matriculation exam last year, compared to 60 percent of Jewish students. The pass rate was a dramatic drop from the 50.7 percent of Arab pupils who matriculated in 2006.
Yousef Jabareen, head of Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organization monitoring education issues, blamed the poor results on growing cultural bias in the Israeli education system as well as severe budgetary discrimination.
He said the increasing weight placed on Jewish heritage and Judaism lessons put Arab pupils at a severe disadvantage, and that further alienation was caused by the state's refusal to allow the Arab education system any autonomy in selecting its own curriculum.
A report published in March, he added, showed that the government invested $1,100 in each Jewish pupil's education compared to $190 for each Arab pupil. There was also a shortfall of more than 1,000 classrooms for Arab students.
Jabareen pointed out that a committee appointed last year by the dovish previous education minister, Yuli Tamir, had recommended curriculum reforms to encourage a "shared life" and common values among pupils, including more frequent encounters between Jewish and Arab students.
In April Saar quashed the committee's report.
Opposition to the study of Hatikva is shared by ultra-religious Jews known as the Haredim. They believe the anthem should include a reference to God in the lyrics, and have proposed an alternative entitled HaEmunah.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
A leading Arab educator in Israel has denounced the decision of Gideon Saar, the education minister, to require schools to study the Israeli national anthem.
Officials announced last week that they were sending out special "national anthem kits" to 8,000 schools, including those in the separate Arab education system, in time for the start of the new academic year in September.
The kits have been designed to be suitable for all age groups and for use across the curriculum, from civics and history classes to music and literature lessons.
The anthem, known as Hatikva, or The Hope, has long been unpopular with Israel's Palestinian minority because its lyrics refer only to a Jewish historical connection to the land.
Saar's initiative is widely seen among Israel's 1.3 million Palestinian citizens as a further indication of the rising nationalistic tide sweeping policymakers.
Last week the ministry also announced that textbooks recently issued to Arab schoolchildren would have expunged the word "nakba," or catastrophe, to describe the Palestinians' dispossession at Israel's founding in 1948.
Hala Espanioly, who chairs the education committee of the Arab minority's supreme political body, the Higher Follow-Up Committee, told the Israeli news website Ynet: "If there is an attempt to force the Hatikva anthem on Arab schools and Arab pupils, it will be akin to a kind of attempted rape of their identity."
The issue of the national anthem, based on a 120-year-old poem by Naftali Hertz Imber and an ancient folk melody, has been a running sore between Israel's Jewish and Arab populations for decades.
Arab citizens are unhappy with its heavily Zionist lyrics, which speak of how the "soul of a Jew yearns" to return to Zion, as well as referring to "The hope of two thousand years, To be a free nation in our land."
In 2005 some legislators were outraged when an Israeli parliamentary committee considered, among possible constitution changes, revising the anthem's lyrics from "the soul of a Jew'" to "the soul of an Israeli." The change was not approved.
Saar, then an ordinary politician, led the opposition to changing the lyrics: "In two words: definitely not. I wouldn't make any changes to Hatikva. It would be a compromise on the state's identity."
The refusal of prominent Arabs to sing the anthem in public has provoked several notable controversies.
The most high-profile concerned Raleb Majadele, of the Labor party, who was appointed Israel's first Arab cabinet minister in 2007. In an interview he said that, though he always stood during Hatikva, he drew the line at singing it.
He later defended his position to Israeli radio: "Where is it written that a person appointed to be a cabinet minister in Israel must stop being an Arab, and turn into a member of a different religion and ethnicity?"
Arab players in Israel's national football squad have also admitted being uncomfortable during the playing of the anthem before games. TV broadcasts often zoom in to show that their lips are not moving.
Abir Kupty, today an elected official with the Nazareth municipality, produced one of Israeli TV's most talked-about moments four years ago when she was filmed sitting down when the anthem was played. She was the only Arab contestant in a reality show to find Israel's future leaders.
Kupty said: "This decision by the education ministry is part of the current hysterical right-wing mood in Israel. They hope they can erase our Palestinian identity by making us love the anthem."
She added that Arab pupils were already deprived of the chance to learn about their own history, culture and identity. "The curriculum in Arab schools is heavily controlled by Jewish officials and by the security services."
Sofia Yoad, the education ministry's director of curriculum development, said the anthem kits included a book and two CDs containing 40 historic recordings of Hatikva, including it being sung in a concentration camp and at the Declaration of Independence.
"It is very important to learn about the national anthem even if pupils are not Jewish," she said. "After all, this is the story of a country's independence."
Astrith Baltsan, a pianist who researched and wrote the book over three years, said she had originally been commissioned to produce it for Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations last year.
But when Saar saw it, she said, he had been keen to use it in all schools. She added that, when she played the anthem at a ministry launch party last week, even the Arab schools inspectors stood. "When you know the story of the anthem, you show it respect," she said.
The Higher Follow-Up Committee, a national political body representing Israel's Arab minority, has staunchly opposed the use of the kits. It wrote last week to Saar, warning that the initiative would "only deepen the alienation of Arab students and teachers."
Figures released by the education ministry this month show that only 32 percent of Arab students passed their matriculation exam last year, compared to 60 percent of Jewish students. The pass rate was a dramatic drop from the 50.7 percent of Arab pupils who matriculated in 2006.
Yousef Jabareen, head of Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organization monitoring education issues, blamed the poor results on growing cultural bias in the Israeli education system as well as severe budgetary discrimination.
He said the increasing weight placed on Jewish heritage and Judaism lessons put Arab pupils at a severe disadvantage, and that further alienation was caused by the state's refusal to allow the Arab education system any autonomy in selecting its own curriculum.
A report published in March, he added, showed that the government invested $1,100 in each Jewish pupil's education compared to $190 for each Arab pupil. There was also a shortfall of more than 1,000 classrooms for Arab students.
Jabareen pointed out that a committee appointed last year by the dovish previous education minister, Yuli Tamir, had recommended curriculum reforms to encourage a "shared life" and common values among pupils, including more frequent encounters between Jewish and Arab students.
In April Saar quashed the committee's report.
Opposition to the study of Hatikva is shared by ultra-religious Jews known as the Haredim. They believe the anthem should include a reference to God in the lyrics, and have proposed an alternative entitled HaEmunah.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Minister calls for Jewish takeover of Palestinian areas in Israel
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 6 July 2009
Israel's housing minister called for strict segregation between the country's Jewish and Arab populations last week as he unveiled plans to move large numbers of fundamentalist religious Jews to Israel's north to prevent what he described as an "Arab takeover" of the region.
Ariel Atias said he considered it a "national mission" to bring ultra-Orthodox Jews -- or Haredim, distinctive for their formal black and white clothing -- into Arab areas, and announced that he would also create the north's first exclusively Haredi town.
The new settlement drive, according to Atias, is intended to revive previous failed efforts by the state to "Judaize," or create a Jewish majority in, the country's heavily Arab north.
Analysts say the announcement is a disturbing indication that the Haredim, who have traditionally been hostile to Zionism because of their strict reading of the Bible, are rapidly being recruited to the Judaization project in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
Atias, of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas, is drawing on a model already successfully developed over the past decade in the West Bank, where the Haredim, the group with the highest birth rate in Israel, have been encouraged to move into separate settlements that have rapidly eaten into large chunks of Palestinian territory.
Several mayors of northern cities in Israel have appealed to Atias to help them "save" the Jewishness of their communities in a similar manner by recruiting Haredim to swell the numbers of Jews in the north.
Atias revealed his new drive on Thursday as he spoke at an Israeli Bar Association conference in Tel Aviv to discuss land reform plans. He told the delegates: "We can all be bleeding hearts, but I think it is unsuitable [for Jews and Arabs] to live together."
His priority, he said, was to prevent the "spread" of Arab citizens, who comprise one-fifth of the country's population and are mostly restricted to their own overcrowded communities in two northern regions, the Galilee and Wadi Ara.
Referring to the Galilee, where Arab citizens are a small majority of the population, he said: "If we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there."
Atias also revealed that mayors of several northern cities where Arab citizens had started to move into Jewish neighborhoods had asked him how they could "salvage" their cities.
One, Shimon Lankry, the mayor of Acre, where there were inter-communal clashes last year, met with the minister only last week. "He told me, 'Bring a bunch of Haredim and we'll save the city,'" Atias said.
"He told me that Arabs are living in Jewish buildings and running them [Jews] out."
The Haredim have a birth rate -- estimated at eight children per woman -- that is twice that of the Muslim population and are increasingly seen as a useful demographic weapon to stop the erosion of Israel's Jewish majority.
Atias's comments brought swift condemnation from Israel's Arab lawmakers. Mohammad Barakeh, the head of the Communist Party, told the popular Israeli website Ynet: "Racism is spreading throughout the government and Minister Atias is the latest to express it."
The key initiative proposed by Atias is the development of a large Haredi town of 20,000 homes based on an existing small community at Harish in the Wadi Ara, a region close to the West Bank.
Harish was established in the early 1990s by the housing minister of the time, Ariel Sharon, as part of a huge settlement drive inside both Israel and the OPT.
Harish and a dozen communities known as "star points" were built on the Green Line -- the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank -- as a way to erode its political significance.
Most of the communities, however, were located in densely-populated Arab areas and failed to attract Israelis.
Until recently the settler population had spurned settling in Israel and has been drawn instead either to Palestinian areas close to Jerusalem or to frontier communities deep in the West Bank.
Cesar Yehudkin of Bimkom, a group of Israeli town planners critical of government planning policy, said the goal of Harish was to occupy a large swathe of land in Wadi Ara to prevent the "natural growth" of Arab localities. "Harish is an attractive option for rapid development because the infrastructure for a large town is already in place," he said.
Atias told Israel's Bar Association that Harish was a vital way to stop "illegal Arab expansion" and that the Haredim "are the only ones willing to live there."
The Israeli media revealed two weeks ago similar plans by Shimon Gapso, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, a Jewish town established 50 years ago in the Galilee region to restrict the growth of the neighboring Arab city of Nazareth.
He announced that 3,000 homes are to be built next year for the Haredim to increase Jewish dominance of the city, which has seen a steady migration of Arabs from Nazareth and its surrounding villages desperate for a place to live.
Tight planning restrictions on Arab communities mean that there are few places for Arab citizens to build legally and they are excluded from hundreds of Jewish rural communities through vetting committees, Yehudkin said.
Gapso, who is identified with the Yisrael Beiteinu Party of the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has complained about the "demographic threat" posed by Arabs moving into Upper Nazareth.
He recently told the Israeli media: "As a man of Greater Israel, I think it more important to settle the Galilee than Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] ... I urge the settlers to come here."
Some 600 ultra-Orthodox families have already signed up to live in the new Upper Nazareth neighborhood, which has the backing of Eli Yishai, the interior minister and leader of Shas.
In a related Judaization drive, Nefesh B'Nefesh, one of the main organizations bringing Jewish immigrants to Israel, announced in December a program to offer financial incentives to new immigrants to settle in northern Israel.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Israel's housing minister called for strict segregation between the country's Jewish and Arab populations last week as he unveiled plans to move large numbers of fundamentalist religious Jews to Israel's north to prevent what he described as an "Arab takeover" of the region.
Ariel Atias said he considered it a "national mission" to bring ultra-Orthodox Jews -- or Haredim, distinctive for their formal black and white clothing -- into Arab areas, and announced that he would also create the north's first exclusively Haredi town.
The new settlement drive, according to Atias, is intended to revive previous failed efforts by the state to "Judaize," or create a Jewish majority in, the country's heavily Arab north.
Analysts say the announcement is a disturbing indication that the Haredim, who have traditionally been hostile to Zionism because of their strict reading of the Bible, are rapidly being recruited to the Judaization project in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
Atias, of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas, is drawing on a model already successfully developed over the past decade in the West Bank, where the Haredim, the group with the highest birth rate in Israel, have been encouraged to move into separate settlements that have rapidly eaten into large chunks of Palestinian territory.
Several mayors of northern cities in Israel have appealed to Atias to help them "save" the Jewishness of their communities in a similar manner by recruiting Haredim to swell the numbers of Jews in the north.
Atias revealed his new drive on Thursday as he spoke at an Israeli Bar Association conference in Tel Aviv to discuss land reform plans. He told the delegates: "We can all be bleeding hearts, but I think it is unsuitable [for Jews and Arabs] to live together."
His priority, he said, was to prevent the "spread" of Arab citizens, who comprise one-fifth of the country's population and are mostly restricted to their own overcrowded communities in two northern regions, the Galilee and Wadi Ara.
Referring to the Galilee, where Arab citizens are a small majority of the population, he said: "If we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there."
Atias also revealed that mayors of several northern cities where Arab citizens had started to move into Jewish neighborhoods had asked him how they could "salvage" their cities.
One, Shimon Lankry, the mayor of Acre, where there were inter-communal clashes last year, met with the minister only last week. "He told me, 'Bring a bunch of Haredim and we'll save the city,'" Atias said.
"He told me that Arabs are living in Jewish buildings and running them [Jews] out."
The Haredim have a birth rate -- estimated at eight children per woman -- that is twice that of the Muslim population and are increasingly seen as a useful demographic weapon to stop the erosion of Israel's Jewish majority.
Atias's comments brought swift condemnation from Israel's Arab lawmakers. Mohammad Barakeh, the head of the Communist Party, told the popular Israeli website Ynet: "Racism is spreading throughout the government and Minister Atias is the latest to express it."
The key initiative proposed by Atias is the development of a large Haredi town of 20,000 homes based on an existing small community at Harish in the Wadi Ara, a region close to the West Bank.
Harish was established in the early 1990s by the housing minister of the time, Ariel Sharon, as part of a huge settlement drive inside both Israel and the OPT.
Harish and a dozen communities known as "star points" were built on the Green Line -- the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank -- as a way to erode its political significance.
Most of the communities, however, were located in densely-populated Arab areas and failed to attract Israelis.
Until recently the settler population had spurned settling in Israel and has been drawn instead either to Palestinian areas close to Jerusalem or to frontier communities deep in the West Bank.
Cesar Yehudkin of Bimkom, a group of Israeli town planners critical of government planning policy, said the goal of Harish was to occupy a large swathe of land in Wadi Ara to prevent the "natural growth" of Arab localities. "Harish is an attractive option for rapid development because the infrastructure for a large town is already in place," he said.
Atias told Israel's Bar Association that Harish was a vital way to stop "illegal Arab expansion" and that the Haredim "are the only ones willing to live there."
The Israeli media revealed two weeks ago similar plans by Shimon Gapso, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, a Jewish town established 50 years ago in the Galilee region to restrict the growth of the neighboring Arab city of Nazareth.
He announced that 3,000 homes are to be built next year for the Haredim to increase Jewish dominance of the city, which has seen a steady migration of Arabs from Nazareth and its surrounding villages desperate for a place to live.
Tight planning restrictions on Arab communities mean that there are few places for Arab citizens to build legally and they are excluded from hundreds of Jewish rural communities through vetting committees, Yehudkin said.
Gapso, who is identified with the Yisrael Beiteinu Party of the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has complained about the "demographic threat" posed by Arabs moving into Upper Nazareth.
He recently told the Israeli media: "As a man of Greater Israel, I think it more important to settle the Galilee than Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] ... I urge the settlers to come here."
Some 600 ultra-Orthodox families have already signed up to live in the new Upper Nazareth neighborhood, which has the backing of Eli Yishai, the interior minister and leader of Shas.
In a related Judaization drive, Nefesh B'Nefesh, one of the main organizations bringing Jewish immigrants to Israel, announced in December a program to offer financial incentives to new immigrants to settle in northern Israel.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
European Union: Israel annexing East Jerusalem
European Union: Israel annexing East Jerusalem
Rory McCarthy | The Guardian
7 March 2009
40-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud al-Abbasi stands amid the rubble of his home after it was demolished by the Jerusalem municipality in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. Photograph: Gali Tibbon
A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem.
The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority’s credibility and weakening support for peace talks. “Israel’s actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making,” says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem.
The report, obtained by the Guardian, is dated 15 December 2008. It acknowledges Israel’s legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem, but adds: “Many of its current illegal actions in and around the city have limited security justifications.”
“Israeli ‘facts on the ground’ - including new settlements, construction of the barrier, discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive permit regime and continued closure of Palestinian institutions - increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede
Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank,” the report says.
The document has emerged at a time of mounting concern over Israeli policies in East Jerusalem. Two houses were demolished on Monday just before the arrival of the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and a further 88 are scheduled for demolition, all for lack of permits. Clinton described the demolitions as “unhelpful”, noting that they violated Israel’s obligations under the US “road map” for peace.
The EU report goes further, saying that the demolitions are “illegal under international law, serve no obvious purpose, have severe humanitarian effects, and fuel bitterness and extremism.” The EU raised its concern in a formal diplomatic representation on December 1, it says.
It notes that although Palestinians in the east represent 34% of the city’s residents, only 5%-10% of the municipal budget is spent in their areas, leaving them with poor services and infrastructure.
Israel issues fewer than 200 permits a year for Palestinian homes and leaves only 12% of East Jerusalem available for Palestinian residential use. As a result many homes are built without Israeli permits. About 400 houses have been demolished since 2004 and a further 1,000 demolition orders have yet to be carried out, it said.
City officials dismissed criticisms of its housing policy as “a disinformation campaign”. “Mayor Nir Barkat continues to promote investments in infrastructure, construction and education in East Jerusalem, while at the same time upholding the law throughout West and East Jerusalem equally without bias,” the mayor’s office said
after Clinton’s visit.
However, the EU says the fourth Geneva convention prevents an occupying power extending its jurisdiction to occupied territory. Israel occupied the east of the city in the 1967 six day war and later annexed it. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The EU says settlement are being built in the east of the city at a “rapid pace”. Since the Annapolis peace talks began in late 2007, nearly 5,500 new settlement housing units have been submitted for public review, with 3,000 so far approved, the report says. There are now about 470,000 settlers in the occupied territories, including 190,000 in East Jerusalem.
The EU is particularly concerned about settlements inside the Old City, where there were plans to build a Jewish settlement of 35 housing units in the Muslim quarter, as well as expansion plans for Silwan, just outside the Old City walls.
The goal, it says, is to “create territorial contiguity” between East Jerusalem settlements and the Old City and to “sever” East Jerusalem and its settlement blocks from the West Bank.
There are plans for 3,500 housing units, an industrial park, two police stations and other infrastructure in a controversial area known as E1, between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, home to 31,000 settlers. Israeli measures in E1 were “one of the most significant challenges to the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process”, the report says.
Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said conditions for Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were better than in the West Bank. “East Jerusalem residents are under Israeli law and they were offered full Israeli citizenship after that law was passed in 1967,” he said. “We are committed to the continued development of the city for the benefit of all its population.
Rory McCarthy | The Guardian
7 March 2009
40-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud al-Abbasi stands amid the rubble of his home after it was demolished by the Jerusalem municipality in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. Photograph: Gali Tibbon
A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem.
The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority’s credibility and weakening support for peace talks. “Israel’s actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making,” says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem.
The report, obtained by the Guardian, is dated 15 December 2008. It acknowledges Israel’s legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem, but adds: “Many of its current illegal actions in and around the city have limited security justifications.”
“Israeli ‘facts on the ground’ - including new settlements, construction of the barrier, discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive permit regime and continued closure of Palestinian institutions - increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede
Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank,” the report says.
The document has emerged at a time of mounting concern over Israeli policies in East Jerusalem. Two houses were demolished on Monday just before the arrival of the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and a further 88 are scheduled for demolition, all for lack of permits. Clinton described the demolitions as “unhelpful”, noting that they violated Israel’s obligations under the US “road map” for peace.
The EU report goes further, saying that the demolitions are “illegal under international law, serve no obvious purpose, have severe humanitarian effects, and fuel bitterness and extremism.” The EU raised its concern in a formal diplomatic representation on December 1, it says.
It notes that although Palestinians in the east represent 34% of the city’s residents, only 5%-10% of the municipal budget is spent in their areas, leaving them with poor services and infrastructure.
Israel issues fewer than 200 permits a year for Palestinian homes and leaves only 12% of East Jerusalem available for Palestinian residential use. As a result many homes are built without Israeli permits. About 400 houses have been demolished since 2004 and a further 1,000 demolition orders have yet to be carried out, it said.
City officials dismissed criticisms of its housing policy as “a disinformation campaign”. “Mayor Nir Barkat continues to promote investments in infrastructure, construction and education in East Jerusalem, while at the same time upholding the law throughout West and East Jerusalem equally without bias,” the mayor’s office said
after Clinton’s visit.
However, the EU says the fourth Geneva convention prevents an occupying power extending its jurisdiction to occupied territory. Israel occupied the east of the city in the 1967 six day war and later annexed it. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The EU says settlement are being built in the east of the city at a “rapid pace”. Since the Annapolis peace talks began in late 2007, nearly 5,500 new settlement housing units have been submitted for public review, with 3,000 so far approved, the report says. There are now about 470,000 settlers in the occupied territories, including 190,000 in East Jerusalem.
The EU is particularly concerned about settlements inside the Old City, where there were plans to build a Jewish settlement of 35 housing units in the Muslim quarter, as well as expansion plans for Silwan, just outside the Old City walls.
The goal, it says, is to “create territorial contiguity” between East Jerusalem settlements and the Old City and to “sever” East Jerusalem and its settlement blocks from the West Bank.
There are plans for 3,500 housing units, an industrial park, two police stations and other infrastructure in a controversial area known as E1, between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, home to 31,000 settlers. Israeli measures in E1 were “one of the most significant challenges to the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process”, the report says.
Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said conditions for Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were better than in the West Bank. “East Jerusalem residents are under Israeli law and they were offered full Israeli citizenship after that law was passed in 1967,” he said. “We are committed to the continued development of the city for the benefit of all its population.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Activists confront AIPAC donors with checkpoint outside fundriaser
Press release, Ad-hoc Coalition for Justice in the Middle East - Los Angeles, 11 March 2009
Activists set up a mock Israeli checkpoint outside the AIPAC fundraiser. (Roxane Auer)
Dozens of Los Angeles-area Jews, Palestinians and other allies erected a mock checkpoint at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) annual Valley Fundraiser in protest of AIPAC's attempt to steer US policy makers to ignore recent Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Cars were confronted by people dressed as Israeli soldiers and those attending the event were "allowed to pass through" after receiving a new program for the event that exposes AIPAC support for Israeli policies which contravene international law. A boisterous crowd also chanted "Angelenos choose a side, human rights or Apartheid!" at AIPAC donors as they approached the hotel entrance.
"At a time when President Obama's administration seeks to restart peace talks with Palestinians and Israelis, AIPAC advocates a one-sided US policy of supporting Israel at any cost," said Julie Hey, a graduate student. "As a Jewish American, I am particularly appalled that my tax dollars are funding Israel's apartheid policies."
AIPAC is self-described as "America's leading pro-Israel lobby," and as such has supported Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, including the use of military checkpoints and the erection of a 450-mile-long wall that has encircled entire communities, leaving Palestinians prisoners in their own land. The South African apartheid regime broke the country into 10 noncontiguous Bantustans made of 13 percent of the total land --"homelands" for the black population. Israel's "separation wall" and settlements have broken the Palestinian territories into 12 noncontiguous cantons representing only 12 percent of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
"Tonight we are exposing AIPAC's support of Israel's Apartheid system and are letting the high-donors and political leaders of Los Angeles know that is it unacceptable to support Israel's separate and unequal treatment of Palestinians," said Lisa Adler, an LA-based community organizer and Jewish leader. "Just as the movement for end South African apartheid required boycott, divestment and sanctions, people of conscience around the world are increasingly supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination by boycotting all things Israeli."
AIPAC also supported Israel's recent offensive in Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 5,000, the vast majority civilians. "We found strong evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day offensive," said human rights attorney Radhika Sainath, who recently returned from a fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip. "Israeli forces repeatedly violated international law by targeting civilians, blocking medical access to the wounded, and using weapons that cause needless suffering."
AIPAC wants Obama to agree to almost $3 billion in new military aid to Israel. US law forbids assistance to governments that engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights
Mostly recently, AIPAC, praised the Obama Administration's decision to boycott the World Conference Against Racism in Geneva next month, unless its final document drops all references to Israel and reparations for slavery. In 2001, Bush administration diplomats walked out of the conference in Durban, South Africa after delegates proposed a resolution likening Zionism to racism.
Many of the same participants in today's demonstration also were part of an ad-hoc group of Los Angeles Jews that shut down the Israeli consulate for three hours on 14 January 2008 during Israel's invasion of G
Press release, Ad-hoc Coalition for Justice in the Middle East - Los Angeles, 11 March 2009
Activists set up a mock Israeli checkpoint outside the AIPAC fundraiser. (Roxane Auer)
Dozens of Los Angeles-area Jews, Palestinians and other allies erected a mock checkpoint at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) annual Valley Fundraiser in protest of AIPAC's attempt to steer US policy makers to ignore recent Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Cars were confronted by people dressed as Israeli soldiers and those attending the event were "allowed to pass through" after receiving a new program for the event that exposes AIPAC support for Israeli policies which contravene international law. A boisterous crowd also chanted "Angelenos choose a side, human rights or Apartheid!" at AIPAC donors as they approached the hotel entrance.
"At a time when President Obama's administration seeks to restart peace talks with Palestinians and Israelis, AIPAC advocates a one-sided US policy of supporting Israel at any cost," said Julie Hey, a graduate student. "As a Jewish American, I am particularly appalled that my tax dollars are funding Israel's apartheid policies."
AIPAC is self-described as "America's leading pro-Israel lobby," and as such has supported Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, including the use of military checkpoints and the erection of a 450-mile-long wall that has encircled entire communities, leaving Palestinians prisoners in their own land. The South African apartheid regime broke the country into 10 noncontiguous Bantustans made of 13 percent of the total land --"homelands" for the black population. Israel's "separation wall" and settlements have broken the Palestinian territories into 12 noncontiguous cantons representing only 12 percent of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
"Tonight we are exposing AIPAC's support of Israel's Apartheid system and are letting the high-donors and political leaders of Los Angeles know that is it unacceptable to support Israel's separate and unequal treatment of Palestinians," said Lisa Adler, an LA-based community organizer and Jewish leader. "Just as the movement for end South African apartheid required boycott, divestment and sanctions, people of conscience around the world are increasingly supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination by boycotting all things Israeli."
AIPAC also supported Israel's recent offensive in Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 5,000, the vast majority civilians. "We found strong evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day offensive," said human rights attorney Radhika Sainath, who recently returned from a fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip. "Israeli forces repeatedly violated international law by targeting civilians, blocking medical access to the wounded, and using weapons that cause needless suffering."
AIPAC wants Obama to agree to almost $3 billion in new military aid to Israel. US law forbids assistance to governments that engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights
Mostly recently, AIPAC, praised the Obama Administration's decision to boycott the World Conference Against Racism in Geneva next month, unless its final document drops all references to Israel and reparations for slavery. In 2001, Bush administration diplomats walked out of the conference in Durban, South Africa after delegates proposed a resolution likening Zionism to racism.
Many of the same participants in today's demonstration also were part of an ad-hoc group of Los Angeles Jews that shut down the Israeli consulate for three hours on 14 January 2008 during Israel's invasion of G
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem
Ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem
Dr. Marcy Newman writing from occupied East Jerusalem,
Live from Palestine,
10 March 2009
An Israeli flag hangs from a Palestinian home in Silwan taken over by Israeli settlers.
Last week when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a press conference in Ramallah with Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as Palestinian Authority president officially expired on 9 January, a Washington Post reporter questioned her about the 143 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem that Israel intends to demolish in the coming weeks. She responded: "clearly, this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the roadmap." While some hailed this remark as a condemnation of Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing project, it appeared to many on the ground as callous and flippant.
Since the press conference, the number of Palestinian homes Israeli occupation forces intend to level has increased from 143 to 179. It seems that the number of homes and families who will be forced from their homes, and many from their villages entirely, increases every day. Just this past week in the East Jerusalem area, 88 homes in al-Bustan, 55 homes in Shufat refugee camp, 35 Bedouin homes on the Jerusalem-Jericho Road, and 66 homes in al-Isawiyya were slated for destruction, affecting more than 2,000 Palestinians, most of whom have lived there for generations. Ras al-Amoud, al-Abasiyya, Sheikh Jarrah and Ras Khamis appear to be next on the list of targeted areas. The affected families see this method of adding new neighborhoods to the demolition list every day as a means of making it more difficult to challenge and protest these eviction orders.
I recently visited the al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan, one of the many slated for demolition any day now. The roads into the valley where al-Bustan lies were all closed to Palestinian cars with border police blocking off almost every street. Like many neighborhoods in Jerusalem, the homes reflect a mixture of architectural styles from the Ottoman era to the present, although the Israeli government contends that these homes have been built "illegally" because they have not been granted permission to be built in the first place, a permission that is next to
impossible for Palestinians regardless of whether they have an Israeli residency ID or citizenship. Such is the logic of colonialism and ethnic cleansing in Palestine over the last 61 years. And accordingly, a number of Israeli colonists have been confiscating and taking over homes and buildings to pave the way for the wholesale seizure of Palestinian neighborhoods.
It is this history of ethnic cleansing, particularly that of the catastrophe of 1948 when three-quarters of the indigenous Palestinian population were forced from their land and property, an event termed the Nakba, that fuels the solidarity work among Palestinians in Jerusalem. Following the lead of Umm Kamel al-Kurd who put up a tent near her home in Sheikh Jarrah after she was forcibly removed from her home four months ago, other neighborhoods in Jerusalem facing a similar fate have set up such tents as spaces for organizing and encouraging others to stand in solidarity with each neighborhood. Such tents exist now on the Mount of Olives and in Ras Khamis. One of the organizers of the solidarity tent in al-Bustan, Ahmed Siam, told me "We will not let history repeat itself. We learned from history. We will not leave our land like we did in 1948. If they come and kill my son, I will not leave. This is our land. Even if they kill me and only my blood remains, it will remain on this land." The 7,000 residents of the area intend to fight for their right to stay on their land rather than see it turned into a new, illegal Israeli colony.
The Silwan community is resisting this widespread confiscation of their land – for the purposes of a tourist destination called "the city of David" as well as Jewish-only colonies already surrounding it – by remaining steadfast and staying on their land as member of the al-Bustan Neighborhood Committee Fakhre Abu Diab stated in a letter written to Clinton: "If the Israeli eviction and demolition orders are implanted it will be a catastrophe for our families, children and
elders who will suffer the most. In the face of this destruction we are refusing the municipality's plans and we will not leave our lands and houses nor our community under any circumstances."
Already the elders and children, in particular, are bearing the brunt of the trauma from the news of this latest catastrophe or Nakba. In the heart of al-Bustan the winding, narrow alleyways with homes tightly packed inside remind one of Palestinian refugee camps. The al-Qadi family who has lived down one of these alleys for 25 years, and in this neighborhood for generations, includes seven children, none of whom have attended school since the orders for their home's demolition were issued by the Israeli occupation authorities. This is indicative of
most families in al-Bustan. They explained to me that they are afraid to send their children to school because at any time they could be forcibly removed from our homes while the children are gone. Ironically, they told me, that two days ago the municipality opened a new school in their neighborhood, but they see this as part of the plan by the Israeli occupation authorities.
As the children suffer without their ability to go to school, so do the elderly. Like many families in al-Bustan, the Bedran family has lived here for centuries. Indeed, many of the houses lining the valley were built in the 1870s. Abed and Fatima Bedran built their home in 1980 on land their family has lived on for centuries; like most Palestinian families they built a new home to accommodate their expanding family. Abed, who is 82 years old, suffered from a stroke and is now bedridden after hearing the news of their eviction and house demolition orders for their neighborhood. They, too, refuse to flee their home.
These are just two of the families resisting the latest Nakba in Palestine, individuals who refuse to become Palestine's latest refugees. But the latest ethnic cleansing and colonization plans are not limited to Jerusalem. The number of homes scheduled for demolition in all of Palestine is growing every day. While the focus is on East Jerusalem in much of the international media, this week Palestinians in villages near Nablus and Hebron have also received orders to evacuate their homes. In al-Aqraba and Burin near Nablus, Palestinians are being
forced to abandon 20 homes and barns by 26 March. As with the homes in East Jerusalem, some of these pre-date the 1967 colonization of the West Bank. Likewise, in al-Baqaa, near Hebron, eight homes are scheduled to be destroyed in a village whose lands have already been stolen for the purposes of illegal colonies and Jewish-only roads. Dozens of Palestinians will become homeless once their homes are confiscated. And in the village of Nilin near Ramallah, Israeli
occupation authorities are in the process of expropriating 35.5 acres of land.
Although most of these families are separated by hundreds of checkpoints and established colonies, what the residents of these villages have in common is their steadfast determination to remain in their homes. From Nablus to Jerusalem to Hebron to Nilin they see their most potent means of resistance as remaining in their homes, refusing to live in a constant state of catastrophe, always on the brink of becoming the next refugees. Jawad Abu Ramoz, the son of a refugee from Hebron who fled to Silwan in 1948, is one of the thousands of Palestinians in al-Bustan who rejects a return to the fate of their parents and grandparents, literally and metaphorically.
All images by Marcy Newman.
Dr. Marcy Newman is Associate Professor of English at An Najah National
University in Nablus, Palestine. Her writing may be found at bodyontheline.wordpress.com.
Dr. Marcy Newman writing from occupied East Jerusalem,
Live from Palestine,
10 March 2009
An Israeli flag hangs from a Palestinian home in Silwan taken over by Israeli settlers.
Last week when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a press conference in Ramallah with Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as Palestinian Authority president officially expired on 9 January, a Washington Post reporter questioned her about the 143 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem that Israel intends to demolish in the coming weeks. She responded: "clearly, this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the roadmap." While some hailed this remark as a condemnation of Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing project, it appeared to many on the ground as callous and flippant.
Since the press conference, the number of Palestinian homes Israeli occupation forces intend to level has increased from 143 to 179. It seems that the number of homes and families who will be forced from their homes, and many from their villages entirely, increases every day. Just this past week in the East Jerusalem area, 88 homes in al-Bustan, 55 homes in Shufat refugee camp, 35 Bedouin homes on the Jerusalem-Jericho Road, and 66 homes in al-Isawiyya were slated for destruction, affecting more than 2,000 Palestinians, most of whom have lived there for generations. Ras al-Amoud, al-Abasiyya, Sheikh Jarrah and Ras Khamis appear to be next on the list of targeted areas. The affected families see this method of adding new neighborhoods to the demolition list every day as a means of making it more difficult to challenge and protest these eviction orders.
I recently visited the al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan, one of the many slated for demolition any day now. The roads into the valley where al-Bustan lies were all closed to Palestinian cars with border police blocking off almost every street. Like many neighborhoods in Jerusalem, the homes reflect a mixture of architectural styles from the Ottoman era to the present, although the Israeli government contends that these homes have been built "illegally" because they have not been granted permission to be built in the first place, a permission that is next to
impossible for Palestinians regardless of whether they have an Israeli residency ID or citizenship. Such is the logic of colonialism and ethnic cleansing in Palestine over the last 61 years. And accordingly, a number of Israeli colonists have been confiscating and taking over homes and buildings to pave the way for the wholesale seizure of Palestinian neighborhoods.
It is this history of ethnic cleansing, particularly that of the catastrophe of 1948 when three-quarters of the indigenous Palestinian population were forced from their land and property, an event termed the Nakba, that fuels the solidarity work among Palestinians in Jerusalem. Following the lead of Umm Kamel al-Kurd who put up a tent near her home in Sheikh Jarrah after she was forcibly removed from her home four months ago, other neighborhoods in Jerusalem facing a similar fate have set up such tents as spaces for organizing and encouraging others to stand in solidarity with each neighborhood. Such tents exist now on the Mount of Olives and in Ras Khamis. One of the organizers of the solidarity tent in al-Bustan, Ahmed Siam, told me "We will not let history repeat itself. We learned from history. We will not leave our land like we did in 1948. If they come and kill my son, I will not leave. This is our land. Even if they kill me and only my blood remains, it will remain on this land." The 7,000 residents of the area intend to fight for their right to stay on their land rather than see it turned into a new, illegal Israeli colony.
The Silwan community is resisting this widespread confiscation of their land – for the purposes of a tourist destination called "the city of David" as well as Jewish-only colonies already surrounding it – by remaining steadfast and staying on their land as member of the al-Bustan Neighborhood Committee Fakhre Abu Diab stated in a letter written to Clinton: "If the Israeli eviction and demolition orders are implanted it will be a catastrophe for our families, children and
elders who will suffer the most. In the face of this destruction we are refusing the municipality's plans and we will not leave our lands and houses nor our community under any circumstances."
Already the elders and children, in particular, are bearing the brunt of the trauma from the news of this latest catastrophe or Nakba. In the heart of al-Bustan the winding, narrow alleyways with homes tightly packed inside remind one of Palestinian refugee camps. The al-Qadi family who has lived down one of these alleys for 25 years, and in this neighborhood for generations, includes seven children, none of whom have attended school since the orders for their home's demolition were issued by the Israeli occupation authorities. This is indicative of
most families in al-Bustan. They explained to me that they are afraid to send their children to school because at any time they could be forcibly removed from our homes while the children are gone. Ironically, they told me, that two days ago the municipality opened a new school in their neighborhood, but they see this as part of the plan by the Israeli occupation authorities.
As the children suffer without their ability to go to school, so do the elderly. Like many families in al-Bustan, the Bedran family has lived here for centuries. Indeed, many of the houses lining the valley were built in the 1870s. Abed and Fatima Bedran built their home in 1980 on land their family has lived on for centuries; like most Palestinian families they built a new home to accommodate their expanding family. Abed, who is 82 years old, suffered from a stroke and is now bedridden after hearing the news of their eviction and house demolition orders for their neighborhood. They, too, refuse to flee their home.
These are just two of the families resisting the latest Nakba in Palestine, individuals who refuse to become Palestine's latest refugees. But the latest ethnic cleansing and colonization plans are not limited to Jerusalem. The number of homes scheduled for demolition in all of Palestine is growing every day. While the focus is on East Jerusalem in much of the international media, this week Palestinians in villages near Nablus and Hebron have also received orders to evacuate their homes. In al-Aqraba and Burin near Nablus, Palestinians are being
forced to abandon 20 homes and barns by 26 March. As with the homes in East Jerusalem, some of these pre-date the 1967 colonization of the West Bank. Likewise, in al-Baqaa, near Hebron, eight homes are scheduled to be destroyed in a village whose lands have already been stolen for the purposes of illegal colonies and Jewish-only roads. Dozens of Palestinians will become homeless once their homes are confiscated. And in the village of Nilin near Ramallah, Israeli
occupation authorities are in the process of expropriating 35.5 acres of land.
Although most of these families are separated by hundreds of checkpoints and established colonies, what the residents of these villages have in common is their steadfast determination to remain in their homes. From Nablus to Jerusalem to Hebron to Nilin they see their most potent means of resistance as remaining in their homes, refusing to live in a constant state of catastrophe, always on the brink of becoming the next refugees. Jawad Abu Ramoz, the son of a refugee from Hebron who fled to Silwan in 1948, is one of the thousands of Palestinians in al-Bustan who rejects a return to the fate of their parents and grandparents, literally and metaphorically.
All images by Marcy Newman.
Dr. Marcy Newman is Associate Professor of English at An Najah National
University in Nablus, Palestine. Her writing may be found at bodyontheline.wordpress.com.
Histadrut: Israel's racist "trade union"
Tony Greenstein, The Electronic Intifada
10 March 2009
A Zionist poster from the 1930s encourages settlers to buy only watermelons that are produced in Jewish settlements. (Israel MFA)
Histadrut has always been a strange creature. In most countries one joins a trade union which is affiliated to a national trade union federation. In Israel one first joins Histadrut and then one is allocated to a union. It is only outside Israel that Histadrut is seen as a normal trade union, the Israeli equivalent of the British Trade Union Congress or the American union movement AFL/CIO.
Less well known is the fact that Histadrut, an organization of the settler Jewish working class, was the key Zionist organization responsible for the formation of the Israeli state. As former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir remarked: "Then [1928] I was put on the Histadrut Executive Committee at a time when this big labor union wasn't just a trade union organization. It was a great colonizing agency." [1] Pinhas Lavon, as secretary-general of Histadrut, went so far as to describe it in 1960 as "a general organization to its core. It is not a trade union..." [2] Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, held that without Histadrut, "I doubt whether we would have had a state." [3]
Today Histadrut is a shadow of its former self. From a position where it was the second-largest employer, owning 25 percent of Israeli industry, the 1980s and 1990s saw the privatization of nearly all of its industries. The National Health Law of 1995, which severed the ties between Kupat Holim (Israel's National Health Service) and Histadrut, dealt the final blow. Histadrut membership plummeted from 1.6 million in 1994 to 650,000 in 1996 and its 150,000 Arab members declined to less than 50,000. [4]
Politically, Histadrut operated as an arm of Israeli and US foreign policy. In 1958, the International Institute for Development, Co-operation and Labor Studies was established as a means of furthering western interests in the third world. Half of its graduates came from Africa and a further 40 percent from Asia. [5] And in 1960 Histadrut formed the Afro Asian Institute for Labor Studies and Co operation, funded by the CIA through the AFL-CIO. It operated on behalf of the US in African countries such as Zaire and Kenya. [6]
Even the most right-wing, social democratic trade unions opposed apartheid. Histadrut was unique in actively collaborating with the South African state. Iskoor steel company, 51 percent owned by Histadrut's Koor Industries and 49 percent by the South African Steel Corporation, manufactured steel for South Africa's armed forces. Partly finished steel was shipped from Israel to South Africa, enabling the apartheid state to escape tariffs. [7]
Other Histadrut companies such as Tadiran and Soltam were equally complicit in supplying South Africa with weaponry. [8] Histadrut also helped build the electronic wall between South Africa/Namibia and neighboring African states in order to keep the guerrillas out. [9] It was a precursor of Israel's wall in the West Bank.
As its economic importance has declined, Histadrut's political role has increased in importance. Histadrut is recognized by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions as the representative of all Israeli workers. It is seen as being on the left of Israeli society, in favor of reconciliation and peace and its delegations abroad always include at least one pliant Arab member. It therefore came as a shock to people that Histadrut supported the attack on Gaza: "Israel had no choice but to respond to the repeated attacks and aggression as an act of justifiable self-defense." [10]
Pre-1948
Histadrut founded Haganah, the Zionist terrorist group, in 1920, later to become the Israeli armed forces, and Mapai, the Israeli Labor Party, in 1930, an anti-socialist party whose supreme value lay in the needs of the Israeli state. [11] David Ben-Gurion, Histadrut's first secretary-general, became in 1935 chairman of the Jewish Agency, the Zionist government-in-waiting, and in 1948 prime minister of the State of Israel.
Histadrut was formed in 1920 as the General Confederation of Hebrew Labor by the two main labor Zionist parties, Hapoel Hatzair (Young Workers) and Achdut Ha'Avodah (Union of Labor). From its inception it excluded Arab labor and thus rejected worker solidarity in favor of national exclusivism.
Histadrut's primary role was not the defense of its members' wages and conditions but the colonization of Palestine. In the absence of a Jewish bourgeoisie, it had to become that bourgeoisie. As the late William Frankel, editor of The Jewish Chronicle (London), described it, Histadrut was a capitalist union. [12]
Its enterprises included Tnuva (dairy products), Solel Boneh (building and construction), Koor (manufacturing), Hamashbir (food co-operative) and Bank Hapoalim. It established a holding company, Hevrat Ovdim, to manage these enterprises and even after 1966, it remained 100 percent Jewish-controlled.
Histadrut: an apartheid union
A Zionist poster from the 1940s reads, "Buy Local Products," referring to goods produced by Jews. (Israel MFA)
As unemployment grew in the Zionist economy in Palestine in the 1920s, Histadrut launched a campaign to promote Jewish labor (Avodat Ivrit) and Jewish produce (Totzeret Haaretz), which was essentially a boycott of Arab labor and produce. David HaCohen, former managing director of Solel Boneh, described what this meant:
"I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they should not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there...to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash Arab eggs they had bought...to buy dozens of dunums [of land] from an Arab is permitted but to sell God forbid one Jewish dunum to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild the incarnation of capitalism as a socialist and to name him the 'benefactor' - to do all that was not easy." [13]
In 1944, "the mere rumor that a cafe in the exclusively Jewish town of Tel Aviv had taken on a few Arab workers provoked an angry gathering of thousands of demonstrators...Every member of the Zionist Trade Union Federation - the Histadruth [sic] - had to pay two compulsory levies: (1) 'For Jewish Labor' - funds for organizing pickets, etc. against the employment of Arab workers, and (2) 'For Jewish Produce - for organizing the boycott of Arab produce.'" [14]
It was Histadrut which mapped the route the Zionist project would take in Palestine. From the start it excluded the Palestinians, first from the economy and later from the land itself. Class struggle was redefined as the struggle against Arab labor, as Ben-Gurion railed against "the evil of mixed labor" [15] Ben Gurion explained to those who mistook Histadrut's red flags for socialism that "Nothing is further from the mind of Jewish labor than to engineer disputes with all the material and political loss in their train. For it, the supreme charter of our generation is reconstruction and Aliyah [immigration to Palestine]...It is a charter meaningless without Jewish labor." [16] With typical colonial condescension, Ben-Gurion spoke of Arab workers acquiring "a smattering of culture" through mixing with Jewish workers. [17]
The role of the working class was a national one, to construct the Jewish state; "Socialism was never an aim in itself but a tool for the advancement of national objectives." [18] It was Ben Gurion who "coined the slogan from class to nation... both perspectives saw the role of labor as a nationalist role." [19]
Zionism was following a well-worn path. All settler colonial projects, e.g. the Boer trek in South Africa and the colonization of America began as collective endeavors. Private capital could only operate once the threat from the indigenous populace was eliminated.
As Arthur Ruppin, the father of land settlement in Palestine and a fervent believer in the racial sciences, explained: "I can say with absolute certainty: those enterprises in Palestine which are most profit-bearing for the businessman are almost the least profitable for the national effort and per contra many enterprises, which are least profitable for the businessman are of high national value." [20]
Where exclusively Jewish labor was not possible, as in government employment, Histadrut campaigned, like its South African counterparts, for higher wages for Jewish workers. Although the British refused this demand, in practice four different rates of pay for unskilled labor developed depending on whether the worker was Jewish or Arab. [21] Ernest Bevin, leader of the British Transport and General Workers' Union and former British foreign secretary, was emphatic: "No, we would be absolutely against two wages." [22] But to Berl Katznelson, Ben-Gurion's effective deputy in the Labor Zionist hierarchy, equality "was only a whip with which to scourge the concept of Jewish labor." [23]
The Union of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers (URPTW) was a bastion of the political left with a mixed Arab and Jewish membership. Histadrut sought to incorporate them in order to hive off the Arab workers into a separate national section. [24] Arab workers who joined this Arab section objected to Histadrut's Zionism, not least its policy of Jewish labor. At a meeting in Haifa in 1924, union activist Elias Asad described how Arab workers "saw on the membership card the words 'Federation of Jewish Workers' and they cannot understand what purpose this serves. I ask all the comrades to remove the word 'Jewish,' and I am sure that if they agree there will be a strong bond between us and all the Arabs will join. I would be the first who would not want to join a nationalist labor organization..." [25]
Ironically, when at the end of 1923, the leaders of the Arab Railway Workers Club filed a request with the British Mandatory Government to establish a workers' organization, the Palestinian Arab Workers' Society (PAWS),Histadrut lobbied against its recognition, denounced it for being separatist and exclusionary and thus against the spirit of workers' solidarity! [26]
In 1936 Arab workers in Palestine declared a general strike that lasted six months, one of the longest strikes in labor history. This provided Histadrut with the opportunity to replace striking Arab workers with Jewish labor. With the support of the British authorities, the Jewish Agency and Histadrut established Tel Aviv as an alternative port to Jaffa, which was strike-bound. Far from being a trade union, Histadrut was a scab organization.
The leadership of the Histadrut and Labor Zionism portrayed themselves as being lofty idealists, incorruptible. In fact Ben-Gurion and the other leaders lived the life of a labor elite, with foreign holidays and large apartments. Not only were their wages much higher than ordinary workers but they also made large loans to themselves from Histadrut funds which were quietly written off in 1926. [27] Ben Gurion's debt equalled an ordinary worker's annual salary.
Histadrut was run by a self-perpetuating elite that avoided elections. There were four years between the second and third Histadrut conventions, six between the third and fourth and nine years between the fourth and fifth in 1942. As Zalman Aranne, a member of the Histadrut Executive from 1936 to 1947 and later Minister of Education stated, the rule "is not to hold elections for years on end, and even when elections are held, we are not the ones who vote. It is some appointment committee that does the voting." [28] Even today, at its seven-year convention, less than 10 percent of the delegates are directly elected. As Frankel noted, the appointment of delegates to the Histadrut Conventions are from party lists, primarily the Zionist parties. They elect the leadership and "in national elections, the voters have no say in the choice of the individuals elected to represent them." [29]
Histadrut post-1948
Between 1948 and 1966, Palestinians living in Israel were subject to military rule. Due to Histadrut's close affiliation to the military administration of the Mapai governments, Histadrut was not popular with Arab workers. Arab members to this day are seen as opportunists and collaborators. [30]
In 1959 the Histadrut Convention decided to admit Arabs as members. They were however confined to an Arab (later disingenuously called the Integration Department) headed by a Jew. In 1966, Histadrut changed its name to the General Confederation of Labor in the Land of Israel. "Land of Israel" is a euphemism for the biblical land of Israel, which includes at least all of historic Palestine. A resolution from Rakah, the Israeli Communist Party, to change the name to General Federation of Labor in Israel was defeated.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip cannot even join Histadrut, unlike Jewish settlers, even though they inhabit what Israelis consider to be part of the "Land of Israel." [31] However, many Palestinians did work for Histadrut's construction company, Solel Boneh, which built most of the early settlements. [31] Migrant workers from the Philippines and elsewhere also cannot become members of the Histadrut.
Class struggle was always anathema to Histadrut, before and after Israel was formed. In the seamen's strike of 1951, strikers were drafted into the army with Histadrut support. Like their predecessors in the Gdud Avodah workers brigades in the 1920s, some of the most militant workers did break from Zionism. Gdud Avodah were starved into submission by Ben-Gurion in the 1920s. [33] But this was the exception, not the rule. The seamens' strike was the most violent strike of its kind in Israel, with ships being commandeered and used against the forces of the state.
In the 1969 Ashdod port workers' strike, the Histadrut accused the Jewish strikers of being equivalent to agents of Fatah, the main faction in the PLO, i.e. "terrorists" and "saboteurs." But the trial of the militants in a Histadrut tribunal backfired and it was terminated without reaching a verdict.
In February 1976, thousands of Arab citizens of the Galilee demonstrated for their rights to the land and against confiscations. In March 1976, the Arab leadership called for a general strike. In response, Histadrut's Labor Council in Haifa actively opposed the strike. Six Palestinians were shot and killed by the police and army, an event marked each 30 March by Palestinians as Land Day.
When Histadrut was a major employer, Arabs were not employed in its security industries - i.e. arms, oil, chemical, electronics, aviation, shipping, airlines, electricity, gas, telecommunications - as military service was a condition of employment. They were seen as a "security threat." This systemic racial discrimination continues to this day. [34] This was mirrored in the fact that only 0.8 percent of employees of government companies are Arabs and in 2004 only 5.5 percent of Israel's civil servants were Arabs, 56 percent of whom worked in the health ministry alone. [35]
The exclusion of Arab workers from whole sections of Israeli industry is tantamount to a color bar. Histadrut consciously did not invest or create factories in Arab towns or villages. Far from being their trade union, Histadrut was one of the primary causes of Arab unemployment and poverty, a situation that continues to this day. According to the National Insurance Institute, 52 percent of Israeli Arab citizens live below the poverty line, as opposed to 16 percent of Jewish Israelis. [36] Almost half of the Arab employed persons work in the low-wage sectors of manufacturing, construction and retail trade.
In 1985 the government of Benjamin Netanyahu's Stabilization Plan permitting "flexibility" in the labor market paved the way for globalization as the US and Israel signed a free trade agreement. Koor Industries, a holding company for hundreds of Histadrut companies, was sold off in 1991 to reduce Histadrut's debt. Haim Ramon's election as secretary-general in 1994 led to the demise of Hevrat HaOvedim, which owned Histadrut's industries. [37] In 1994, Histadrut was renamed New Histadrut.
Histadrut has never supported Arab workers' fight against racial discrimination, such as the mass layoffs of Arabs that occurred after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000 or a labor dispute of Arab and Jewish employees with the Dead Sea Hotel Nirvana in 2003, when an Arab manager was fired because he refused to forbid his co-workers to speak Arabic in front of tourists, although nominally Arabic is an official language of Israel. Likewise it has done nothing about McDonald's Israel's policy decision in 2004 not to allow Arabic to be spoken in the restaurants or the situation at a building site in the Knesset grounds in 2004 when Arab workers' helmets were marked with a red X, to facilitate assassination by marksmen in case of emergency. [38]
The occupation, Histadrut and Palestinian workers
The exploitation of Palestinian workers from the occupied territories was institutionalized by an Israeli cabinet decision of October 1970. It provided that the military administration should supervise their employment. Their wages would be distributed by the payments department of the National Employment Service. Histadrut was a partner in this arrangement. National Insurance coverage was permitted in only three areas: work accidents, employer bankruptcy and a grant on the birth of a child in an Israeli hospital. Ten percent of the wages of Palestinian workers went to a special "Equalization Fund," which was supposed to supply the population in the occupied territories with social and cultural services. In fact, this money was used to finance the occupation. The workers did not receive unemployment and disability benefits, old-age pensions, a monthly child allowance or vocational training.
In addition, each Palestinian worker had to pay one percent of his or her wages as dues to Histadrut. Workers saw nothing in return and now a fraction of this money has been returned, as a propaganda ploy, to the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions. When the Shin Bet intelligence service used work permits as a means to coerce Palestinian workers to collaborate, with those who refused being placed on a blacklist and their work permits cancelled, Histadrut again did nothing. [39]
In the last decade, new workers' organizations have arisen in Israel, such as Kav La'Oved (Worker's Hotline), Commitment, the Center for Aid to Foreign Workers, Sawt el-Amel and Workers Advice Center. It is this sector which can serve as the basis for a new union, accessible to all and not connected with the Zionist establishment.
Tony is a trade union activist, a member of UNISON, Brighton & Hove Trades Council and Secretary of Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, where he works as an employment adviser. He runs a socialist, anti-Zionist blog, www.azvsas.blogspot.com.
Endnotes
[1] Observer, 24 January 1971, quoted by Uri Davies, Utopia Incorporated, Zed Press, p.142.
[2] Moed, Histadrut Department of Culture and Education, 1963, p.3, quoted by Arie Bober (ed.), The Other Israel: The Radical Case Against Zionism, p.125.
[3] Moshe Pearlman, Ben-Gurion Looks Back in Talks with Moshe Pearlman, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1965, p.51.
[4] Sawt el-Amel, "Separate and Unequal: The History of Arab Labour in pre-1948 Palestine and Israel," December 2006, p.16.
[5] Benjamin Beit Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection, I B Tauris & Co. Ltd., p.39.
[6] Haim Hanegebi, Moshe Machover, Akiva Orr, "The Class Nature of Israeli Society," New Left Review, January-February 1971, Pluto Press, p.11. See also, Confidential US State Department Central Files, PALESTINE-ISRAEL, 1960-January 1963, INTERNAL AFFAIRS Decimal Numbers 784, 784A, 884, 884A, 984, and 984A and FOREIGN AFFAIRS Decimal Numbers 611.84, 611.84A, 684, and 684A Project Coordinator Robert E. Lester Guide Compiled by Blair D. Hydrick, accessed 8 March 2009.
[7] Sunday Times Review 15 April 1984, James Adams, The Unnatural Alliance, Quartet. Extracts from the book were serialized by the Sunday Times.
[8] Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy, South End Press, 1987, p.62.
[9] Uri Davies, Israel: Utopia Incorporated, Zed Press, p.97.
[10] "Histadrut Statement on the Situation in Southern Israel and Gaza," 13 January 2009.
[11] Zeev Sternhell, Founding Myths of Zionism, Princeton University Press, 1998, p.180.
[12] William Frankel, Israel Observed, Thames & Hudson, 1980, p.183-186.
[13] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, Nation Books, 2003, Second edition, p.185, citing Haaretz, 15 November 1969.
[14] Nathan Weinstock, Zionism: False Messiah, Ink Links LTD, 1979, p.184.
[15] David Ben-Gurion, Rebirth and destiny of Israel, Philosophical Library, 1954, p.74.
[16] Ibid, p. 79.
[17] Ibid, p. 53.
[18] Zeev Sternhell, p.177.
[19] Noah Lucas, Modern History of Israel, Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1975, p.49-50.
[20] Walter Lacquer, A History of Zionism, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, p.151, citing Arthur Ruppin, Building Israel, Selected Essays, 1907-1935, Schocken Books, 1965, p.47-9.
[21] Gabriel Piterberg, The Returns of Zionism, Verso, 2008, p.77.
[22] Josef Gorni, The British Labour Movement & Zionism 1917-48, 1983, Frank Cass, p.95.
[23] Zeev Sternhell, p.157.
[24] Piterberg, p.72-73
[25] Sawt el-Amel citing Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, University of California Press, 1996, Chapter 3: The Railway Workers of Palestine (I): The Struggle for Arab-Jewish Unity, 1919-1925 'Struggling for Unity.'
[26] Ibid.
[27] Sternhell, p.295-7, 295.
[28] Sternhell p.271, 273.
[29] Frankel, p.186.
[30] Sawt el-Amel op. cit. p.19.
[31] Michael Shalev, "The Labor Movement in Israel: Ideology and Political Economy," in The Social History of Labour in the Middle East, edited by Ellis J. Goldberg, Westview, 1996, p.4: "Membership has never been offered to the non-citizen residents of the occupied territories, even though the majority of the Palestinian working class in the territories, who are employed inside Israel's pre-1967 borders, are legally required to pay the Histadrut for At the same time, within its targeted constituency, the Histadrut is generous to a fault in opening its ranks to non-workers. Surveys of the Jewish adult public suggest that at least half of the self-employed are Histadrut members."
[32] Jewish Chronicle, 7 January 1983.
[33] Sternhell p.198-216. See also "The Left" in the Gdud Ha'avodah (Labor Brigade) and the Palestine Communist Party until 1928, Anita Shapira, Zionism Vol. 1., Massada Publishing Co. Ltd., Tel-Aviv University, 1975, p.127-156.
[34] Emmanuel Farjoun, "Class Divisions in Israeli Society," Khamsin, no. 10, 1983, p.31-35.
[35] Sawt el-Amel citing Sikkuy, "Sikkuy Report 2004-2005."
[36] Sawt el-Amel, p.2.
[37] Jewish Virtual Library entry, "Hevrat Ha-Ovedim," accessed 1 March 2009.
[38] Sawt el-Amel, p.21.
[39] B'Tselem, "Poalei Tzion: Violations of the Human Rights of Workers from the Territories in Israel and the Settlements," 1999 (Hebrew).
10 March 2009
A Zionist poster from the 1930s encourages settlers to buy only watermelons that are produced in Jewish settlements. (Israel MFA)
Histadrut has always been a strange creature. In most countries one joins a trade union which is affiliated to a national trade union federation. In Israel one first joins Histadrut and then one is allocated to a union. It is only outside Israel that Histadrut is seen as a normal trade union, the Israeli equivalent of the British Trade Union Congress or the American union movement AFL/CIO.
Less well known is the fact that Histadrut, an organization of the settler Jewish working class, was the key Zionist organization responsible for the formation of the Israeli state. As former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir remarked: "Then [1928] I was put on the Histadrut Executive Committee at a time when this big labor union wasn't just a trade union organization. It was a great colonizing agency." [1] Pinhas Lavon, as secretary-general of Histadrut, went so far as to describe it in 1960 as "a general organization to its core. It is not a trade union..." [2] Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, held that without Histadrut, "I doubt whether we would have had a state." [3]
Today Histadrut is a shadow of its former self. From a position where it was the second-largest employer, owning 25 percent of Israeli industry, the 1980s and 1990s saw the privatization of nearly all of its industries. The National Health Law of 1995, which severed the ties between Kupat Holim (Israel's National Health Service) and Histadrut, dealt the final blow. Histadrut membership plummeted from 1.6 million in 1994 to 650,000 in 1996 and its 150,000 Arab members declined to less than 50,000. [4]
Politically, Histadrut operated as an arm of Israeli and US foreign policy. In 1958, the International Institute for Development, Co-operation and Labor Studies was established as a means of furthering western interests in the third world. Half of its graduates came from Africa and a further 40 percent from Asia. [5] And in 1960 Histadrut formed the Afro Asian Institute for Labor Studies and Co operation, funded by the CIA through the AFL-CIO. It operated on behalf of the US in African countries such as Zaire and Kenya. [6]
Even the most right-wing, social democratic trade unions opposed apartheid. Histadrut was unique in actively collaborating with the South African state. Iskoor steel company, 51 percent owned by Histadrut's Koor Industries and 49 percent by the South African Steel Corporation, manufactured steel for South Africa's armed forces. Partly finished steel was shipped from Israel to South Africa, enabling the apartheid state to escape tariffs. [7]
Other Histadrut companies such as Tadiran and Soltam were equally complicit in supplying South Africa with weaponry. [8] Histadrut also helped build the electronic wall between South Africa/Namibia and neighboring African states in order to keep the guerrillas out. [9] It was a precursor of Israel's wall in the West Bank.
As its economic importance has declined, Histadrut's political role has increased in importance. Histadrut is recognized by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions as the representative of all Israeli workers. It is seen as being on the left of Israeli society, in favor of reconciliation and peace and its delegations abroad always include at least one pliant Arab member. It therefore came as a shock to people that Histadrut supported the attack on Gaza: "Israel had no choice but to respond to the repeated attacks and aggression as an act of justifiable self-defense." [10]
Pre-1948
Histadrut founded Haganah, the Zionist terrorist group, in 1920, later to become the Israeli armed forces, and Mapai, the Israeli Labor Party, in 1930, an anti-socialist party whose supreme value lay in the needs of the Israeli state. [11] David Ben-Gurion, Histadrut's first secretary-general, became in 1935 chairman of the Jewish Agency, the Zionist government-in-waiting, and in 1948 prime minister of the State of Israel.
Histadrut was formed in 1920 as the General Confederation of Hebrew Labor by the two main labor Zionist parties, Hapoel Hatzair (Young Workers) and Achdut Ha'Avodah (Union of Labor). From its inception it excluded Arab labor and thus rejected worker solidarity in favor of national exclusivism.
Histadrut's primary role was not the defense of its members' wages and conditions but the colonization of Palestine. In the absence of a Jewish bourgeoisie, it had to become that bourgeoisie. As the late William Frankel, editor of The Jewish Chronicle (London), described it, Histadrut was a capitalist union. [12]
Its enterprises included Tnuva (dairy products), Solel Boneh (building and construction), Koor (manufacturing), Hamashbir (food co-operative) and Bank Hapoalim. It established a holding company, Hevrat Ovdim, to manage these enterprises and even after 1966, it remained 100 percent Jewish-controlled.
Histadrut: an apartheid union
A Zionist poster from the 1940s reads, "Buy Local Products," referring to goods produced by Jews. (Israel MFA)
As unemployment grew in the Zionist economy in Palestine in the 1920s, Histadrut launched a campaign to promote Jewish labor (Avodat Ivrit) and Jewish produce (Totzeret Haaretz), which was essentially a boycott of Arab labor and produce. David HaCohen, former managing director of Solel Boneh, described what this meant:
"I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they should not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there...to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash Arab eggs they had bought...to buy dozens of dunums [of land] from an Arab is permitted but to sell God forbid one Jewish dunum to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild the incarnation of capitalism as a socialist and to name him the 'benefactor' - to do all that was not easy." [13]
In 1944, "the mere rumor that a cafe in the exclusively Jewish town of Tel Aviv had taken on a few Arab workers provoked an angry gathering of thousands of demonstrators...Every member of the Zionist Trade Union Federation - the Histadruth [sic] - had to pay two compulsory levies: (1) 'For Jewish Labor' - funds for organizing pickets, etc. against the employment of Arab workers, and (2) 'For Jewish Produce - for organizing the boycott of Arab produce.'" [14]
It was Histadrut which mapped the route the Zionist project would take in Palestine. From the start it excluded the Palestinians, first from the economy and later from the land itself. Class struggle was redefined as the struggle against Arab labor, as Ben-Gurion railed against "the evil of mixed labor" [15] Ben Gurion explained to those who mistook Histadrut's red flags for socialism that "Nothing is further from the mind of Jewish labor than to engineer disputes with all the material and political loss in their train. For it, the supreme charter of our generation is reconstruction and Aliyah [immigration to Palestine]...It is a charter meaningless without Jewish labor." [16] With typical colonial condescension, Ben-Gurion spoke of Arab workers acquiring "a smattering of culture" through mixing with Jewish workers. [17]
The role of the working class was a national one, to construct the Jewish state; "Socialism was never an aim in itself but a tool for the advancement of national objectives." [18] It was Ben Gurion who "coined the slogan from class to nation... both perspectives saw the role of labor as a nationalist role." [19]
Zionism was following a well-worn path. All settler colonial projects, e.g. the Boer trek in South Africa and the colonization of America began as collective endeavors. Private capital could only operate once the threat from the indigenous populace was eliminated.
As Arthur Ruppin, the father of land settlement in Palestine and a fervent believer in the racial sciences, explained: "I can say with absolute certainty: those enterprises in Palestine which are most profit-bearing for the businessman are almost the least profitable for the national effort and per contra many enterprises, which are least profitable for the businessman are of high national value." [20]
Where exclusively Jewish labor was not possible, as in government employment, Histadrut campaigned, like its South African counterparts, for higher wages for Jewish workers. Although the British refused this demand, in practice four different rates of pay for unskilled labor developed depending on whether the worker was Jewish or Arab. [21] Ernest Bevin, leader of the British Transport and General Workers' Union and former British foreign secretary, was emphatic: "No, we would be absolutely against two wages." [22] But to Berl Katznelson, Ben-Gurion's effective deputy in the Labor Zionist hierarchy, equality "was only a whip with which to scourge the concept of Jewish labor." [23]
The Union of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers (URPTW) was a bastion of the political left with a mixed Arab and Jewish membership. Histadrut sought to incorporate them in order to hive off the Arab workers into a separate national section. [24] Arab workers who joined this Arab section objected to Histadrut's Zionism, not least its policy of Jewish labor. At a meeting in Haifa in 1924, union activist Elias Asad described how Arab workers "saw on the membership card the words 'Federation of Jewish Workers' and they cannot understand what purpose this serves. I ask all the comrades to remove the word 'Jewish,' and I am sure that if they agree there will be a strong bond between us and all the Arabs will join. I would be the first who would not want to join a nationalist labor organization..." [25]
Ironically, when at the end of 1923, the leaders of the Arab Railway Workers Club filed a request with the British Mandatory Government to establish a workers' organization, the Palestinian Arab Workers' Society (PAWS),Histadrut lobbied against its recognition, denounced it for being separatist and exclusionary and thus against the spirit of workers' solidarity! [26]
In 1936 Arab workers in Palestine declared a general strike that lasted six months, one of the longest strikes in labor history. This provided Histadrut with the opportunity to replace striking Arab workers with Jewish labor. With the support of the British authorities, the Jewish Agency and Histadrut established Tel Aviv as an alternative port to Jaffa, which was strike-bound. Far from being a trade union, Histadrut was a scab organization.
The leadership of the Histadrut and Labor Zionism portrayed themselves as being lofty idealists, incorruptible. In fact Ben-Gurion and the other leaders lived the life of a labor elite, with foreign holidays and large apartments. Not only were their wages much higher than ordinary workers but they also made large loans to themselves from Histadrut funds which were quietly written off in 1926. [27] Ben Gurion's debt equalled an ordinary worker's annual salary.
Histadrut was run by a self-perpetuating elite that avoided elections. There were four years between the second and third Histadrut conventions, six between the third and fourth and nine years between the fourth and fifth in 1942. As Zalman Aranne, a member of the Histadrut Executive from 1936 to 1947 and later Minister of Education stated, the rule "is not to hold elections for years on end, and even when elections are held, we are not the ones who vote. It is some appointment committee that does the voting." [28] Even today, at its seven-year convention, less than 10 percent of the delegates are directly elected. As Frankel noted, the appointment of delegates to the Histadrut Conventions are from party lists, primarily the Zionist parties. They elect the leadership and "in national elections, the voters have no say in the choice of the individuals elected to represent them." [29]
Histadrut post-1948
Between 1948 and 1966, Palestinians living in Israel were subject to military rule. Due to Histadrut's close affiliation to the military administration of the Mapai governments, Histadrut was not popular with Arab workers. Arab members to this day are seen as opportunists and collaborators. [30]
In 1959 the Histadrut Convention decided to admit Arabs as members. They were however confined to an Arab (later disingenuously called the Integration Department) headed by a Jew. In 1966, Histadrut changed its name to the General Confederation of Labor in the Land of Israel. "Land of Israel" is a euphemism for the biblical land of Israel, which includes at least all of historic Palestine. A resolution from Rakah, the Israeli Communist Party, to change the name to General Federation of Labor in Israel was defeated.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip cannot even join Histadrut, unlike Jewish settlers, even though they inhabit what Israelis consider to be part of the "Land of Israel." [31] However, many Palestinians did work for Histadrut's construction company, Solel Boneh, which built most of the early settlements. [31] Migrant workers from the Philippines and elsewhere also cannot become members of the Histadrut.
Class struggle was always anathema to Histadrut, before and after Israel was formed. In the seamen's strike of 1951, strikers were drafted into the army with Histadrut support. Like their predecessors in the Gdud Avodah workers brigades in the 1920s, some of the most militant workers did break from Zionism. Gdud Avodah were starved into submission by Ben-Gurion in the 1920s. [33] But this was the exception, not the rule. The seamens' strike was the most violent strike of its kind in Israel, with ships being commandeered and used against the forces of the state.
In the 1969 Ashdod port workers' strike, the Histadrut accused the Jewish strikers of being equivalent to agents of Fatah, the main faction in the PLO, i.e. "terrorists" and "saboteurs." But the trial of the militants in a Histadrut tribunal backfired and it was terminated without reaching a verdict.
In February 1976, thousands of Arab citizens of the Galilee demonstrated for their rights to the land and against confiscations. In March 1976, the Arab leadership called for a general strike. In response, Histadrut's Labor Council in Haifa actively opposed the strike. Six Palestinians were shot and killed by the police and army, an event marked each 30 March by Palestinians as Land Day.
When Histadrut was a major employer, Arabs were not employed in its security industries - i.e. arms, oil, chemical, electronics, aviation, shipping, airlines, electricity, gas, telecommunications - as military service was a condition of employment. They were seen as a "security threat." This systemic racial discrimination continues to this day. [34] This was mirrored in the fact that only 0.8 percent of employees of government companies are Arabs and in 2004 only 5.5 percent of Israel's civil servants were Arabs, 56 percent of whom worked in the health ministry alone. [35]
The exclusion of Arab workers from whole sections of Israeli industry is tantamount to a color bar. Histadrut consciously did not invest or create factories in Arab towns or villages. Far from being their trade union, Histadrut was one of the primary causes of Arab unemployment and poverty, a situation that continues to this day. According to the National Insurance Institute, 52 percent of Israeli Arab citizens live below the poverty line, as opposed to 16 percent of Jewish Israelis. [36] Almost half of the Arab employed persons work in the low-wage sectors of manufacturing, construction and retail trade.
In 1985 the government of Benjamin Netanyahu's Stabilization Plan permitting "flexibility" in the labor market paved the way for globalization as the US and Israel signed a free trade agreement. Koor Industries, a holding company for hundreds of Histadrut companies, was sold off in 1991 to reduce Histadrut's debt. Haim Ramon's election as secretary-general in 1994 led to the demise of Hevrat HaOvedim, which owned Histadrut's industries. [37] In 1994, Histadrut was renamed New Histadrut.
Histadrut has never supported Arab workers' fight against racial discrimination, such as the mass layoffs of Arabs that occurred after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000 or a labor dispute of Arab and Jewish employees with the Dead Sea Hotel Nirvana in 2003, when an Arab manager was fired because he refused to forbid his co-workers to speak Arabic in front of tourists, although nominally Arabic is an official language of Israel. Likewise it has done nothing about McDonald's Israel's policy decision in 2004 not to allow Arabic to be spoken in the restaurants or the situation at a building site in the Knesset grounds in 2004 when Arab workers' helmets were marked with a red X, to facilitate assassination by marksmen in case of emergency. [38]
The occupation, Histadrut and Palestinian workers
The exploitation of Palestinian workers from the occupied territories was institutionalized by an Israeli cabinet decision of October 1970. It provided that the military administration should supervise their employment. Their wages would be distributed by the payments department of the National Employment Service. Histadrut was a partner in this arrangement. National Insurance coverage was permitted in only three areas: work accidents, employer bankruptcy and a grant on the birth of a child in an Israeli hospital. Ten percent of the wages of Palestinian workers went to a special "Equalization Fund," which was supposed to supply the population in the occupied territories with social and cultural services. In fact, this money was used to finance the occupation. The workers did not receive unemployment and disability benefits, old-age pensions, a monthly child allowance or vocational training.
In addition, each Palestinian worker had to pay one percent of his or her wages as dues to Histadrut. Workers saw nothing in return and now a fraction of this money has been returned, as a propaganda ploy, to the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions. When the Shin Bet intelligence service used work permits as a means to coerce Palestinian workers to collaborate, with those who refused being placed on a blacklist and their work permits cancelled, Histadrut again did nothing. [39]
In the last decade, new workers' organizations have arisen in Israel, such as Kav La'Oved (Worker's Hotline), Commitment, the Center for Aid to Foreign Workers, Sawt el-Amel and Workers Advice Center. It is this sector which can serve as the basis for a new union, accessible to all and not connected with the Zionist establishment.
Tony is a trade union activist, a member of UNISON, Brighton & Hove Trades Council and Secretary of Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, where he works as an employment adviser. He runs a socialist, anti-Zionist blog, www.azvsas.blogspot.com.
Endnotes
[1] Observer, 24 January 1971, quoted by Uri Davies, Utopia Incorporated, Zed Press, p.142.
[2] Moed, Histadrut Department of Culture and Education, 1963, p.3, quoted by Arie Bober (ed.), The Other Israel: The Radical Case Against Zionism, p.125.
[3] Moshe Pearlman, Ben-Gurion Looks Back in Talks with Moshe Pearlman, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1965, p.51.
[4] Sawt el-Amel, "Separate and Unequal: The History of Arab Labour in pre-1948 Palestine and Israel," December 2006, p.16.
[5] Benjamin Beit Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection, I B Tauris & Co. Ltd., p.39.
[6] Haim Hanegebi, Moshe Machover, Akiva Orr, "The Class Nature of Israeli Society," New Left Review, January-February 1971, Pluto Press, p.11. See also, Confidential US State Department Central Files, PALESTINE-ISRAEL, 1960-January 1963, INTERNAL AFFAIRS Decimal Numbers 784, 784A, 884, 884A, 984, and 984A and FOREIGN AFFAIRS Decimal Numbers 611.84, 611.84A, 684, and 684A Project Coordinator Robert E. Lester Guide Compiled by Blair D. Hydrick, accessed 8 March 2009.
[7] Sunday Times Review 15 April 1984, James Adams, The Unnatural Alliance, Quartet. Extracts from the book were serialized by the Sunday Times.
[8] Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy, South End Press, 1987, p.62.
[9] Uri Davies, Israel: Utopia Incorporated, Zed Press, p.97.
[10] "Histadrut Statement on the Situation in Southern Israel and Gaza," 13 January 2009.
[11] Zeev Sternhell, Founding Myths of Zionism, Princeton University Press, 1998, p.180.
[12] William Frankel, Israel Observed, Thames & Hudson, 1980, p.183-186.
[13] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, Nation Books, 2003, Second edition, p.185, citing Haaretz, 15 November 1969.
[14] Nathan Weinstock, Zionism: False Messiah, Ink Links LTD, 1979, p.184.
[15] David Ben-Gurion, Rebirth and destiny of Israel, Philosophical Library, 1954, p.74.
[16] Ibid, p. 79.
[17] Ibid, p. 53.
[18] Zeev Sternhell, p.177.
[19] Noah Lucas, Modern History of Israel, Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1975, p.49-50.
[20] Walter Lacquer, A History of Zionism, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, p.151, citing Arthur Ruppin, Building Israel, Selected Essays, 1907-1935, Schocken Books, 1965, p.47-9.
[21] Gabriel Piterberg, The Returns of Zionism, Verso, 2008, p.77.
[22] Josef Gorni, The British Labour Movement & Zionism 1917-48, 1983, Frank Cass, p.95.
[23] Zeev Sternhell, p.157.
[24] Piterberg, p.72-73
[25] Sawt el-Amel citing Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, University of California Press, 1996, Chapter 3: The Railway Workers of Palestine (I): The Struggle for Arab-Jewish Unity, 1919-1925 'Struggling for Unity.'
[26] Ibid.
[27] Sternhell, p.295-7, 295.
[28] Sternhell p.271, 273.
[29] Frankel, p.186.
[30] Sawt el-Amel op. cit. p.19.
[31] Michael Shalev, "The Labor Movement in Israel: Ideology and Political Economy," in The Social History of Labour in the Middle East, edited by Ellis J. Goldberg, Westview, 1996, p.4: "Membership has never been offered to the non-citizen residents of the occupied territories, even though the majority of the Palestinian working class in the territories, who are employed inside Israel's pre-1967 borders, are legally required to pay the Histadrut for At the same time, within its targeted constituency, the Histadrut is generous to a fault in opening its ranks to non-workers. Surveys of the Jewish adult public suggest that at least half of the self-employed are Histadrut members."
[32] Jewish Chronicle, 7 January 1983.
[33] Sternhell p.198-216. See also "The Left" in the Gdud Ha'avodah (Labor Brigade) and the Palestine Communist Party until 1928, Anita Shapira, Zionism Vol. 1., Massada Publishing Co. Ltd., Tel-Aviv University, 1975, p.127-156.
[34] Emmanuel Farjoun, "Class Divisions in Israeli Society," Khamsin, no. 10, 1983, p.31-35.
[35] Sawt el-Amel citing Sikkuy, "Sikkuy Report 2004-2005."
[36] Sawt el-Amel, p.2.
[37] Jewish Virtual Library entry, "Hevrat Ha-Ovedim," accessed 1 March 2009.
[38] Sawt el-Amel, p.21.
[39] B'Tselem, "Poalei Tzion: Violations of the Human Rights of Workers from the Territories in Israel and the Settlements," 1999 (Hebrew).
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