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Shootout at the OK Gevald

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: August 9, 2022

In: Israel | Israeli politics | Jewish supremacism | Occupation
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Welcome back, one and all, to another installment of the #Israelex5 Blog at the Weekend Holyland Update, brought to you live, with the style for which we strive, by Kedem Productions and GangstaYid Inc, straight from the sweltering concrete jungle of southeastern Tel Aviv.

_{ye olde sweltering concrete jungle – aka my hood}

A lot has happened since our latest dispatch, and while mine own energy levels have been suffering from the stupor-inducing summer temperatures, that hasn’t stopped events from rambling on, to include a brief performance of the annual bloodletting ritual.

As all the official babble, and much of the media coverage, has blathered the usual cliches about Israel’s right to defend itself, the right of its citizens to be free of rocket fire, and blah blah some more, perhaps a brief recap of this proactive, Israeli-instigated short shoot-up show is in order:

In the early morning hours of August 2^nd, IDF forces raided the West Bank Palestinian city of Jenin (as they frequently do) and arrested several men wanted for terrorism (ditto), including one Bassam a-Saadi, an operative of the Islamic Jihad in Palestine (IJP) who, whether it was necessary or not, was documented being dragged by attack dogs as he was arrested.

Following this, Israel claimed to have intelligence of planned reprisals attacks by the IJP, and shut down traffic in the south of the country – roads, rail, summer camps, workplaces, events, the works. People in Israel were grumbling about this seemingly craven approach, and crowned the IJP the winners of this round without firing a shot.

But although Israel is stupid, it is yet to reach that nadir. Israel was planning all along (at least since arresting a-Saadi, who may have folded instantly under questioning) to assassinate a senior IJP commander in the Gaza Strip, southern sector commander Taysir al-Jaabari, which objective it carried out at 16:16 hours on Friday, August 5^th. Having preemptively made sure there would be no civilians on the road for the IJP to target with their rockets and anti-tank launchers in reprisal, Israel was free to keep hammering the Gaza Strip and making withdrawals on its target bank, to the tune of 35 casualties, of which 11 were non-combatants (IDF’s count) or 46 casualties, of which 16 were non-combatants (Gaza Health Ministry’s count). More non-combatants seem to have been killed by the 200 or so IJP rockets that fell short of Israel, within the Strip. Of the app. 1,100 that did make it across the border separating Israel from its open-air prison, 95% were reportedly intercepted by the Iron Dome system, and the rest causing only some property damage and a total of three wounded from shrapnel and some others who were treated for bruises and anxiety.

_{Successful baptism by (placing others under) fire. Lapid}

So a great success for the interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid in his first baptism by fire (well, not his personally), right? Superficially, yes. It was a well-conducted operation, as such things go, with no funerals on Israel’s side of the border, and the polls (we’ll get to them below) reflect that. But what about the long term?

Well, if you want to be an optimist, there are signs that not everything about this latest round of shootin’ down folks and blowin’ stuff up with drones was same old, same old. For one, Hamas stayed out of it. The IJP, as the distant second place movement in the Gaza Strip* can be all purist and ideological, vowing to fight to the last man with the last pipe-bomb launcher, hiding under the last pile of rubble. Hamas, as the entity in power, has to actually govern in between skirmishes with Israel, and therefore it has to somewhat listen to what its people want, and what the people in the Gaza Strip wanted this summer was a respite from skirmishing. Hell, that’s what they want most of the time. Only when Israel pushes them too far do they truly support the futile defiance of hurling metal pipes out of fireworks launchers against a country that can darken the skies over their heads with drones carrying smart bombs – basically saying “fine, but your life gonna be disrupted for a lil bit too.” This time the vast majority in the Strip, according to what I’m reading, wanted nothing of the sort. This, beyond natural fatigue with the horrors of these extended bloodletting orgies that occur once every year or two, is a product of Israel smartly focusing its recent suppression efforts on the IJP, and working quietly to drive a wedge between the two Islamist terror groups (while Hamas is the actual representative of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Palestine, IJP is a more radical Brotherhood offshoot, much closer than Hamas to global jihadi movements such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh [ISIS].)

Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar’el wrote on Sunday that it is possible that one result of Israel’s assassination of Jaabari (and his counterpart, the southern sector commander) is that younger men will be promoted to these important positions who are a) less experienced, naturally, but more importantly, b) less aligned with the organization’s political leadership, which sits in Damascus and Beirut. This prediction may be borne out by the organization’s surprisingly mild response, after the ceasefire which ended three days of one-sided ass-whooping, to a pointed question about Hamas’s refusal to join in: “There are other ways to help than fighting.” When you’ve just been stomped, you can’t afford to fight with your infinitely big brother as well, I guess.

After falling for the same trap the IJP did and braying loudly about the shameful and cowardly shut-down that preceded the op, the opposition played nice once the guns got going, and rallied behind the government during the weekend military excursion, with Netanyahu finally deigning to show up to a security briefing (it’s mandatory for him as Opposition Leader, and he’s refused to do it for a year so as not to have his cultists see him accord another man PM props). As soon as the ceasefire was declared it was back to business as usual, with all kinds of bitchmoanplainin’ about how Lapid and Defense Minister Gantz dared to be photographed doing their jobs and looking all leader-like in election time. A Bibi mouthpiece named Yaakov Bardugo tweeted stupidly that the Lapid government is leading a “stupid trend” of differentiating Hamas from the IJP. So no, dividing your enemies is actually wise. Problem is, Israel already pulled that with the PLO vs. Hamas – and didn’t use its success to actually do business with the more moderate wing of the broken wishbone. So why should we expect any different in Gaza?

Meanwhile, since the media must have its heroes after a shoot-up, even one that’s really fish in a barrel[1], the “hero” dujour is an IDF shero, who bragged to the media about shooting an unarmed man descending an IJP guard tower on the other side of the border – just shot him, for no reason, no threat, no action, no nothing. But it was open season, so it’s somehow cool. It’s a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh wounds in the world aren’t gonna change that.

So much for the shootin’. You can take a breath, a sip, a toke or whatever before continuing to the intra-Jewish politics below.

—–

[1] (if Hamas is like David compared to Israel’s Goliath, the IJP is David’s addle-brained baby brother who can barely grasp a sling, let alone use it)

Pretty Boy Fails To Revive Flagging Zionist Spirit

There’s a new alliance in town, and according to initial polls, its seemed to actually be doing its job and dragging the corpse of Yamina across the electoral threshold in the polls. But recall Ran Shimoni’s point – no union of existing actors ever exceeded its initial polling, which means there’s every chance in the world that even with Yoaz Hendel’s “Derech Eretz” party, Yamina will still fall short of the goal line. More recent polls indeed have the new bloc, titled “Zionist Spirit” polling at about 2.6% – far short of the 3.5% of the vote needed.

_{Isn’t he a fox? Pity he’s a rather airheaded nationalist cliche machine. Yoaz Hendel (Photo: Noam Rivkin Penton / Flash 90}

Who’s Yoaz Hendel, you ask? He’s a dashingly handsome naval commando alum, grew up with a knit skullcap but took it off in his youth. Worked for Bibi’s PM’s Office and resigned in protest when Bibi flouted the court ruling, that said his chief of staff Nathan Eshel, who was caught practicing the sexual offense known as upskirt photography, should be banned from public service. Eshel officially resigned but remained as an unofficial advisor to Bibi and a heavyweight power in “court,” and Hendel correctly said “Fuck that.”

But since this display of fine moral spine, Hendel’s conscience has proved far more limber in terms of political loyalty. His adventures in electoral politics began when he and the Frack to his Frick, Zvi Hauser (who likewise quit Bibi’s inner circle due to Upskirtgate) joined their new and untested “Derech Eretz” party to former IDF Chief Moshe ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon, who also formed a new party called Telem, ahead of the 2019 elections (the first of the current neverending cycle of them. There was one in ’19, two in ’20, one in ’21, and the upcomin’ scheduled for November 1^st, 2022.)

Along with Ya’alon and Telem, Hendel and Hauser then joined forces with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Benny Gantz’s “Hosen L’Israel” and another former IDF Chief named Gabi Ashkenazi, to form Kachol-Lavan (“Blue and White”) – a brand now left in the exclusive control of Gantz. This alliance vied for electoral supremacy with Bibi’s Likud with considerable success, only breaking up in the third elections (late 2020) when Gantz stabbed his partners and voters in the back and joined Bibi with about half of the unified list’s MK’s – Hendel and Hauser among them, despite their leader, Ya’alon, going the other way.

Then the two jumped ship again and joined Gideon Saar’s New Hope (“Tikva Hadasha”), and now they’re fleeing that host (which united with Gantz, who they already burned and who carries a grudge) and latching on to the dying cadaver of Yamina, which for the first time in all its iterations over the past decade or so, does not have a single religious person in a realistic spot on the list. They’re keeping the 3^rd spot open for outgoing Religious Affairs Minister, Matan Kahane – but he already spurned the offer in such disdainful terms, I can’t see him swallowing it and reneging.

Which brings us to another desertion from the listing ship of New Hope, which as the mindful reader may recall, united with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White to form the third largest bloc in Knesset, with 14 seats in the current Knesset and 11-14 in the polls for the next. MK Michal Shir, a long-time ally and follower of New Hope Chairman Saar, announced that she is taking her seat and MK’s funding unit and going over to Lapid’s Yesh Atid. Her reason, btw, is quite hilarious. “Benny Gantz is a socialist leftist” (‘scuse me, as Jimi said, while I fix to die laughin, cause Benny the Goose Boy is about as socialist as Milton Friedman; carry on) and some more shade about how he isn’t fit to be PM (which is what he is explicitly aiming for, and not unrealistically as things are shaking out) and how Yesh Atid “reminds her of the old-school Likud” (i.e. before it was taken over by thugs and religios and Judonazis).

_{“And then… she called you a socialist!” Gantz with Lapid (Photo: Menachem Kahana / AFP)}

On the left, Zehava Galon did indeed come back to stand for leadership (as predicted by this fine and friendly family feature) and save the day, and the polls give Meretz under her leadership a whole seat more than under dumbass IDF he-man Yair “Being called a lefty is like being called the N-word” Golan. I’ll be shocked if he comes close to beating her. By close I mean 40%.

The upshot of all this is, according to the polls, that if Yamina does indeed clear the bar and get in with 4 seats, or even 3[2], Bibi will have his parliamentary majority, with Judonazis as his senior partner.

Bibi Didn’t Know!

In other news: The defendant Benjamin Netanyahu was under questioning again, this time not as a defendant but under implicit warning. This questioning took place in connection with the Meron Festival disaster, where 45 pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede in April 2021 due to overcrowding, a shoddily constructed stand collapsing, and a lack of regulation and oversight undergirding both those factors. Bibi was PM at the time and despite the panel of the inquiry commission showing him more and more instances of communications to him on the subject over the years (this is an annual event that just keeps getting bigger), he kept insisting that he never saw them, that this is low-level stuff that simply doesn’t reach the actual PM’s actual eyes. Thus, even when presented with “The PM’s response to the State’s Comptroller Report,” which mentioned conditions at Meron being ripe for calamity, he insisted that “it’s called the PM’s answer, but in practice it’s written by someone in the office. I didn’t see it.”

What did he see? COVID-related stuff! As there was, somehow, no epidemiological disaster at the festival – it somehow didn’t become a super-spreader event – Netanyahu took a victory lap. And the 45 dead? That’s somebody else’s department, see.

And as us Jews continue our interminable petty squabbles about the precise flavor of the regime of Jewish supremacism in this land, we have (in addition to the spree of carnage in Gaza) continued killing Palestinians in the occupied territories at the clip of 2-3 per week (most recently: An elderly, unarmed mental patient and a 15 year-old boy), and our Supreme Court overturned its own ruling from two years ago, and in an expanded panel ruled that private Palestinian land, stolen for the purposes of creating a settlement outpost that’s illegal even under Israeli laws, does not have to be returned to its owners if settlers are already living on it, because said court ruled that the land was stolen “in good faith” (i.e. the thieves didn’t know it was private property, and thought it was merely public Palestinian land they were appropriating in the name of God’s master race.) The court did pay lip service about how future cases will be held to a high bar of “good faith,” but this one the gonifs get away with.

Post bloodletting polls:

Likud 33 (-2)

Yesh Atid (Lapid) 23 (+2)

JudoNazis 11 (+1)

Blue&White / New Hope (Gantz & Sa’ar) 12 (-)

Shas (Sephardic Ultra Orthodox) 8 (-)

United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi UO) 7 (-)

Joint List (most Arab parties) 6 (-)

Israel Beiteinu (Finance Minister and crook and possible Russian spy Avigdor Liberman) 5 (-)

Labor 5 (-1)

Meretz 4 (-1)

United Arab List (Islamists, were in the last coalition) 4 (-)

Zionist Spirit: Does not make it in 2/3 polls.

Blocs: Bibi Yay 59, Bibi Nay 51, Arabs in the Middle 10

So much for this long-delayed installment, which all you good patrons of this fine and friendly family feature have been patiently awaiting. Don’t forget to tip (be it in the form of dineros or comments, or a share on your preferred public media) on the way out. Till the next time.

[2] Mathematically possible but practically not really

Tags: bloodletting, blue&white, carnage, elections, gaza, hamas, islamic jihad, Israel, israelex, israelex5, judonazis, likud, new hope, non-combatants, palestine, shootout, war, yesh atid

Neither Two, Nor States, Nor A Solution

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: August 3, 2013

In: apartheid | Israeli politics | Jewish supremacism | Occupation | racism | Social Justice | Uncategorized
Comments Off on Neither Two, Nor States, Nor A Solution

The Holy Mideast Peace Process merry-go-round (the second longest running act on earth, the only one older being the occupation it pretends to be solving) is off for another spin. While the POTUS gets to largely keep his personal distance from the mess, he’s still invested to some degree. since Kerry’s prestige, or what’s left of it, is definitely laid on the line here, some of the White House’s is too. And while the US doesn’t have the ability to shape events that it once did, it still has enough clout that most media that wants to be recognized as “serious” has to take the charade seriously. So, let me break down why not only will these talks go no-where, but even if they did it would not lead to any good.

I’m betting you’ve heard all about how the most Netanyahu will be willing to give is still far from the minimum Abbas will be able to accept. Yet the counter for this argument is that the greatness of the opportunity will be forced upon our Bibi, and he will switch the recalcitrant Jewish Home (Settler-religious) party for Labor in his ruling coalition, and pass a deal that will actually result in something the majority of the world would be willing to call a “Palestinian State” and declare the whole bothersome business dealt with, moving on to other crap that needs attending to around the globe.

Further, intimate some reporters, Netanyahu realizes it’s his only way to keep the PM position (without the entire world letting Israel know it’s closed for business till a change in management happens) is to make some kind of deal happen this time, and he is even willing to do what Sharon did and leave the more right-wing-wing of his own Likud party behind and start a new party.

All this, we’re being told, will combine to align the stars as they were in 1977 and 1991-93, and force a real change in the ground rules. A new reality markedly better than the one preceding it.

Fine. Let’s grant that scenario, not even try to explain why it won’t happen. Not even go into whether residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (get to that in a sec) were really better off before Oslo. Flags, trumpets, ceremony galore and even a nice lil wave of Palestinian ex-pats flooding Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, saying “It’ll never be my grandfather’s ancestral home in Yaffa, but let’d build some kind of Free Filastin. Yalla.

Remember Gaza?

First, as promised, there’s the pesky lil problem of Gaza. Sure, Israel would love to cement the land-locked “free” West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip being totally and permanently separate, but it ain’t gonna hold. a) there’s too much connection between people in both places and b) Even assuming the “Dafawis” (Palestinians from the WB) give up on their sea-side brethren, anyone thinking the most densely populated place on earth (the Gaza Strip of course) can be kept forever under a boot like that without exploding is ignorant of the basic dynamics of the world.

So as promised not two but three different political entities: Israel, “Free Palestine” and blockaded Hamas-stan. I think that makes three. So the “Palestinian Problem” (remember when it was the Jewish Problem?) isn’t solved, it’s merely sliced a bit thinner and painted different. And in the spirit of “not gonna even”, I’ll forgo a long explanation about why land-locked, mineral-poor “Palestine” in the West Bank will not really be a “State” but always a glorified autonomy, unless and until it merges with Jordan in a post-Hashemite reality. So only one actual sovereign and viable state.

So far, this was easy. The “Solution” part of the promised trifecta takes more words to explain.

Israel’s other Arab problem

You know who gets screwed the most here? Israel’s citizen-Arabs. The “’48 Arabs.”

As we speak of improving relations between Israelis and Palestinians occupied since 1967, Israel is implementing a policy regarding some of its own Palestinian “equal citizens” that is unmatched in its aggression since the rough and tumble martial-law years of Israeli history’s early third so far. I’m referring to the Prawer plan, which calls for the removal of 30-40 thousand Bedouins in Israel’s south, from one part of the Negev to the other, to be packed from dozens of small utterly rural types of dwellings into the 7 shantytowns Israel has created for the Bedouin population in the 1970’s, into which about half of all Bedouin citizens have since chosen to move. The other half prefer a more country style of living, and since they were already herded into a much denser area than their grandparents used to occupy before the establishment of Israel, they figure said state can and should just leave them be and recognize the few dozen little villages they’ve sorted themselves into since said herding by State.

But the State says no. Although the Bedouins are 25-30% of the Negev’s population, and although the number of of villages (places smaller and less urban than a “town”) for Jews in the Negev is well over 50, the government will only tolerate 11 such for the Bedouin population – the eleven recently-recognized villages in the Abu Basme regional council. How recognized are these eleven? Most still don’t have electricity or running water, and in some attempts to build even makeshift schools are met with SWAT teams and tear gas. The other several dozen thousand Bedouin folk live in places slated for destruction and forced removal.

Now, Israel’s advocates will tell you that there’s compensation involved for those made to relocate, and some cash (about $100M) even slated for enlarging the seven Bedouin towns to which these Bedouins are to be relocated. True, but without even getting into whether the compensation (and the harsh terms for those who don’t take it within a certain time-frame) are fair, there are still two major problems:

1) As stated above, Bedouins (a term roughly used here as equivalent to any non-Jewish , Arab-speaking citizen living south of the Hebron-Gaza line) make up about a third of the Negev’s population. Despite this, they are already only allowed to live in a small corner of it, and have less than one half their proportionate municipal area. True, in the category “local municipalities” (places smaller than a city but densely populated and urban to suburban in nature) half are Bedouin. But there’s only one Bedouin city to more than ten Jewish ones in that area and only 11 places smaller and more thinly-populated places than a town for Bedouins compared to 70-80 for Jews.

2) These people aren’t being moved because the state needs the land for mining, or office parks, or natural reservations or anything of the sort. The state intends for people to live there – just not Arab-speaking ones. Hebrew-speaking ones. Jews. Some will say: Israel uprooted Jews too! From the Gaza Strip when it disengaged from there! Yes, true. However, that was a place Israel decided to cease to control. At least on land. It is one thing to relinquish a territory, and another to say “No, this is still totally part of my sovereign territory, and I totally intend for people to live here, but only a certain ethnicity. In fact it’s so important to me to that they live here and not them, that I’m willing to go through a massive, divisive, potentially explosive process of shipping them out and shipping them in. Instead of just recognizing them where they already are. Even though they and them are all equal citizens, see.”

So we see that Israel is refusing to create or recognize places for this population (Non-Jewish in the Negev) that are either seriously upwardly-mobile OR seriously back-country (i.e. less influential but living on more land per person). The places it does recognize for this population it under-serves and treats as a problem child at best.

And guess what? Negev Bedouins have it better than most Arabs in Israel. For the Bedouins Israel has created 7 and recognized a further 11 new places to live since its founding. For the other 75-80% of its Arab population (about 15% of the total citizenry of Israel) it hasn’t even done that. Not a single new city, town or village for Arabs has been created by the State of Israel since its founding north of the Negev. There are no current plans to my knowledge to do so.

Therein lies the rub

OK, I hear you saying. That’s f-ed up and all, but where are you going with this and how did we get here from the other Israeli-Arab thing? Glad you asked:

You know how Israel in the past 15 years or so has added a condition to its terms for peace – recognizing it as a “Jewish State”? Israel managed to make peace with two of its four Arab neighbors without that particular language. It was simply recognized. But with the Palestinians, it has to be “recognize us as a Jewish State”. Now, please note that no-where does Israel officially refer to itself internationally as “A Jewish State”. Egypt, for instance, is officially The Arab Republic of Egypt. By recognizing Egypt and agreeing to formal contact and non-hostile relations with it, you’re recognizing it as it presents itself – an Arab country. Israel did not choose to call itself The Jewish Republic of Israel. Nor has the government officially announced plans to do so, despite legislative initiatives on its right flank to define Israel as “The State of the Jewish People.” So what gives?

Answer: “Recognize us as a Jewish State” is code for “In return for us giving up on direct, on-the-ground-control of the land in both the West Bank (with land swaps yada yada yada), you agree to leave us the f— alone about anything we do regarding the remaining Ay-rabs under our control.”

After the “immense sacrifice” of giving up the West Bank (lots of territory, few actual people need to move, cause, settlement blocs and land swaps and so on), the absolute last thing the Israeli electorate (the 75-80% of it that’s non-Arab) will be willing to hear is that it needs to be considerate of any more non-Jews.

If Israel is willing to show this kind of aggression towards the part of the Arab-speaking, non-Druze/Circassian citizenry that’s most willing to coexist with the state, even while dealing with pressure about the occupation and all, just imagine what it will be willing to do to Palestinians in the center and north of the country, who mostly don’t serve in the IDF (unlike most of the Bedouins, including the ones from “unrecognized villages,” who do), with a huge “get off my back, I just made historic, heart-wrenching concessions for these @#$%! people already!” card.

Backlash, not a solution

The development needs of ’48 Arabs, already flagrantly under-served, will worsen severely. The discrimination in everything from employment to government funding per capita to municipal territories will get worse for this minority… To retain even the level of inequality today will require an enthusiastic embrace of the state and all it stands for and forswearing any outstanding grievances or identity issues. And the reflexive response of most in Israel (and many around the world) will be “Let them move to the (“free” and “equal”) State of Palestine if they don’t like it.”

Why do I say this? Again: This is happening even now, as Israel is already dealing with pressure over its treatment of millions of Palestinians who aren’t even enfranchised. About a third of the Jewish electorate (at least) already supports some kind of legislation to make it clear that Jewish citizens are more central to the state. That’s before being forced to make any kind of concessions in the sacred West Bank. How does this trend not intensify tenfold after that? Even if only say a few dozen thousand (put of 600 thousand Jews living beyond the Green Line) need to be resettled, how does that not trump any and all needs of ten times that many Arabs? Defiantly so?

So we see that even if every dream of John Kerry’s comes true within the next year or two, we will only be switching a cessation of the discrimination and usurpation of roughly 60% of the total Palestinian population between the river and the sea, on roughly 20% of the land, for the increased oppression of the other 40%, over 78% of the land (the remaining being the “third state” in the Gaza Strip.)

In any event, the wound of 1948 finds no actual solution. The locus of the inflammation merely shifts. And this time, 25 years of progressively preparing the public opinion of the Jewish majority to accept the need for some sort of compromise will only serve as a backlash – equal force, opposite direction. But that’s OK. That’ll take a few more years to blow up. Neither President Obama nor Secretary Kerry will have to deal with that.

Tags: merry-go-round, naysayer, peace process, two state solution

Willard The Dullard and The Glorified Numbers-Runner That Could

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: August 6, 2012

In: apartheid | Israeli politics | Jewish supremacism | Occupation | racism | Social Justice | Uncategorized
3 Comments

Oh Mitten, kitten, what ARE we gonna do with ya? More on that in just a sec, but never mind that right now! Kind words were bestowed upon a certain book faithful readers of this irregular fine and friendly feature may have heard of. It may have taken a few weeks for the first review to clear the bowels of a large media organ, but we couldn’t have hoped for a better one.

“Skewering [Israeli] policy with moral clarity and discomfiting honesty”

“[Israeli Dissidents] offers plenty for more keyed-in readers. […] many of the articles are well-researched, magazine-length pieces of hard-hitting journalism — usually providing far more detail than the mainstream media.”

“Idan Landau’s article on the troubling relationship between the US military industrial complex and aid to Israel is a must-read for anyone interested in the international dynamics that fund the violence here.”

“Landau’s articles on Israeli policies in East Jerusalem’s Silwan and the Jordan Valley are illuminating and incisive condemnations of the occupation’s bureaucracy that will surely leave its apologists speechless.”

There’s more, but my readers be quick on the uptake so y’all get the drift by now. Mightily pleased, although I am willing to lay good money that the one about typical snarky blog posts was directed at someone I know from around the way in the mirror… but I don’t care. As long as Idan’s work gets credit, and the rest of the authors are favorably mentioned, I’z a happy trooper.

So read the whole thing, then read the book if ya haven’t already, and see if you agree with the kind Mr. Davis, whom you should follow for informed ME stuff and general intereting-ness (Yeah it’s a word. I just said it.)

Sales spiked, btw, after the review, but we need more coverage. If you work for a media organ with serious reach or have a following of sufficient size and think the book deserves exposure, please do what you can, and the blessings of the Goddess be with you.

But enough about Israeli Dissidents and its glorious march for now, and let us turn our eyes to the pilgrim’s progress. By now you’ve all heard about the Romney camp’s trifecta of gaffes in England, Poland and the Holy Land. But for those of you who rely solely on me for incisive commentary (bad choice btw. Always vary your intel), I will repeat some of the salient points about the erroneous and offensive remarks Dullard made, mention a the leading explanations for them and offer one I haven’t seen elsewhere as of yet.

Willard, as you may recall (that’s his actual name. Mitt is a middle name), unburdened himself of a certain, um, deterministic worldview, if not a an outright bigoted one, when he said that

“I was thinking this morning as I prepared to come into this room of a discussion I had across the country in the United States about my perceptions about differences between countries. And as you come here and you see the GDP per capita for instance in Israel which is about 21,000 dollars and you compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority which is more like 10,000 dollars per capita you notice a dramatic, stark difference in economic vitality. And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States. […]

[Romney then alluded to a point made in “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” a book by former Harvard professor David S. Landes:]

“Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things. One, I recognize the hand of providence in selecting this place.”

Let’s parse this, shall we?

The standard bearer of the Republican party, when asked (by himself) to name the two key causes for the economic disparity between Israel and its occupied Paltustanian Authority, names “culture”, and “Providence”

So:

The reason Israelis enjoy a higher standard of living is that they have the more success-oriented culture, and
God likes them better.
.
Now, just to set the record straight, and withholding my usual invective, this pitifully simplistic analysis omits a few key elements:1) Israel controls all of the Palestinian territories. The sham of the Oslo-era A, B and C territories notwithstanding. Israel controls everything that goes in or out of “Palestine” and levies a hefty price for allowing things through. Where imports from Arab countries (which don’t have trade with Israel but will gladly sell to Palestinians) might adversely impact sales by Israeli manufacturers, they are seldom allowed. Security, you see. Just an example.
2) Israel controls ALL of the resources of “Palestine” – be they mineral or ethereal. Israel controls the airspace, the frequencies, the bandwith, etc. All that invisible stuff necessary for progress these days.
3) This deserves its own entry: The WATER (which, even when pumped from under Palestinian land, costs a Palestinian 20 times as much as an Israeli.) Israeli and Palestinian have neighboring enterprises, equally dependent on water. Which of them will more easily turn a profit? The one with the superior (kleptocratic) culture, of course! Not even going into the intentional dehydration of entire areas of “Palestine”. Just on the economic competitive level.
4) In fact, Israel controls the very soil. Israel operates almost all the quarries, and 94% of the soil and rock quarried in “Palestine” is used in Israel or in the settlements. (Israel’s vaunted beacon-of-the-rule-of-law High Court ruled this perfectly OK, since the Palestinian economy benefits by Palestinians working in the quarries).

I mean, just look at all the construction on this side, and over there (as Jon Stewart’s correspondent put it so well) they just choose to live in rubble! Clear case of culture inferiority. Nothing to be done about it

We’ll stop here, though there is of course much more. It’s amazing how when you control everything and anything a people do, make them pay 20 times more for their own water, systematically displace significant little chunks of them all the time, and don’t even let them use their own rocks and dirt for construction – those people suddenly don’t seem to have the right “culture” to compete.

So no, Governor. It’s not all about culture, unless by “culture” you mean rank, vicious, fanatically-inspired colonialism. In fact, if that 10K GNP number wasn’t inflated by donations, it would represent a WILD success under the circumstances. Just as Israel’s Olympic athletes are mostly HUGELY successful when you factor in how little is invested in them. Israel ranks in the absolute cellar of investment in sports per GDP. In the entire world. Countries as developed as New Zealand and as troubled as Zimbabwe invest more. For an Israeli to make an Olympic swimming final means that had his parents relocated to ANY first world country, he would have undoubtedly (barring seriously bad luck absent from the Israeli iteration) had a medal. For an Israeli to win Bronze is a sure gold for the exact same talent in any OECD country and quite a few more. A GNP/GDP of $10K under the utterly kleptocratic occupation would be astonishing.

Even as it is, there is nothing to worry about the Palestinian “culture” when it comes to making money. Palestinians, and my friends of that nation will forgive me if I mention this, are admiringly / disparagingly known as “The Jews of the Arab World”. Their business acumen built the Gulf countries. Palestinian Hi-Tech, while not as dominant as Israel’s (much of Israel’s Hi-Tech juggernaut is militarily-fueled, btw),is quite nimble, inventive and altogether admirable – especially when it has to operate under uncertain power supplies, at times. Governor Romney would know that had he bothered to make an even perfunctory visit 10 miles away.

So why did Romney – why was he even allowed by his handlers – to say such outrageous, offensive, blatantly ignorant and compromising things? I mean, forget the Israeli issue; Are you REALLY courting the crucial Hispanic vote (Hello, Sunshine State!) by saying that the US’s advantage over Mexico was a sheer result of culture? Aren’t you like half from Mexico or some shit, dipshit? (oops, sorry. I’ll try harder).

The obvious answer, much discussed, is Sheldon (the glorified little numbers-runner that could) Adelson, the man who is determined to out-Soros everyone for all time and sink a rumored $100M (either total or on top of eight figures he sunk into Newt) in the upcomin’ in order to unseat the sitting President.

We’ll get to Sheldon and his troubling and innovative role in the upcomin’, but first my own angle, offensive as it may sound to some truly decent and interesting acquaintances, as to why Romney found it so easy to say such an unnecessarily damaging thing.

Mormons are Philo-semites. It’s a thing with them to feel affinity and admiration towards the Jewish People. Joe Smith intentionally or impromptu-like modeled the forced immigration of his church on the Exodus, and no Christian sect save the Jesuits stresses learning for learning’s sake like Jews do. This is not accidental (Ken Jennings was not a fluke), nor overlooked by Mormons.

Sometimes this admiration can feel icky to Jews. Not just myself, most thinking Jews I know from a broad spectrum of opinions find it anywhere from tedious and perplexing to downright creepy at times, depending on the variety they ran into. Some of the non-thinkers are happy about it, while some of the non and thinkers alike have enough residual yid/yahudi instincts to politely accept whatever benefit but be internally wary.

Oh, and how could I forget. The mormons claim some kind of genetic or cultural link to ancient proto-Judaism because according to their mythology, around 600 BCE a Judean priest (or Levite??) named Lehi escaped the impending doom (fall of the first temple in 586 BCE) and tumbled all the way to the new world, where… (read the Book of Mormon for the rest).

Just wanted to mention this, because I believe it IS a factor. And now to THE factor:

So Adelson wants to invest as much money as he feels like to unseat the President. This, in itself, is legal and one may argue even legitimate. Odious as some (cough, cough) may find it, “Citizens United” is the law of the land in the US. The desire to unseat a sitting President in itself is most legitimate and needs no excuse. Most of the time I’d like to unseat the current bastid myself, if I could see anyone better to the right of of the sadly long-shottish Bernie Sanders (love ya, you curmudgeonly Yankee geezer).

What makes Adelson – and Willard’s subservience to him – unprecedented (on top of his unprecedented meddling in Israeli politics) is that Adelson’s chief motivation for this largesse is the benefit of a foreign power. Think about it. It’s one thing to say “I’m a businessman, my primary political concern is the benefit of my business, so I’m gonna do my tootin’ darndest to make sure there’s a President whose budgets and policies benefit me and mine”. This is what is called “the pursuit of happiness”. It is quite another to say “My chief concern is the benefit of a single FOREIGN nation and I’m going to pour in amounts that have never been poured on behalf of a single issue, to the benefit of that nation and not even pretend to be motivated by US interests unrelated to the welfare of that nation.

Of course, Adelson apologists would insist that he is the perfect patriot who just happens to see US and Hawkish-Israeli interests perfectly aligned. However, those not emotionally invested in Israel – and, shocking as it may sound, not everyone is or can be expected to be – should see that for what it is. There is no such thing as absolute accord between the interests of any two countries.

There are laws against this, and for good reason. Adelson eludes those laws because he is an American citizen and is serving as a willing, voluntary and (as far as anyone can prove) uncoordinated agent on behalf of the current Israeli administration.

However, Adelson-Romney’s conduct bodes very very ill for the American electoral system and American sovereignty. Even if you like what Adelson is pushing for, you can’t seriously believe that there won’t be an Arab Adelson. A Chinese one. A Russian one. (Yo, Mikhail Prokharov, kagdela?)

It also bodes extremely ill for American Jewry to have Israel used so blatantly as a wedge issue, by a man like Adelson. An entire generation of democrats is learning to despise both. Israel’s greatest success over the years was using its influential American minority to attain true consensus-level in American politics. It was never a wedge-issue before because differences were truly negligible. They still are, so the Republicans are going back to their religious roots and thinking up auto-de-fas.

IN FOUR YEARS, OBAMA HASN’T VISITED ISRAEL ONCE!!! screams the Adelson campaign. In 12 years, neither Reagan (Gipper on the Deck! Atten-shun!) nor Bush Sr. (still, a Republican) visited Israel once. So? Nixon did, but only in his second term, and Ike didn’t, and we weren’t around for Hoover. Mmkay?

WTF? Is Adelson insane? Never mind Romney, who’s nauseatingly willing to parrot whatever his moneybags dictates, pretending that once ensconced he won’t pursue what all first-term presidents do (a second term) by the same means that got him there in the first place – only this time with actual policy and soldiers rather than just words.

Does Adelson, for all his prattling about his Jewish pride (he famously said that he regrets serving in the US military and not the IDF. However, he apparently does not regret living the US lifestyle rather than that of the object of his burning loyalty) – does this man really have so little connection to his Jewish roots to not understand how dangerous this is? That there will be terrible consequences for the most successfully integrated yet proudly distinct Jewish diasporum ever should the slightest thing go wrong, and a fall from that crucial consensual status regardless? Does Adelson see himself or his sock-puppet Bibinocchio as the Messiah, so there will be no consequence?

This, Chief Justice Roberts, is what you have wrought. Find a way to mend it, as you will be Chief for a long time to come. As an American, I cannot believe you approve.

I had lots in store to say about internal-Israeli stuff, which is also fascinating in its unraveling into hell (Remember a few months ago when it was “King Bibi”? Well, now folks be wondering what’s ailing the man and how he screwed up so badly, and in last weekend’s social justice protests there was a wonderful sign: We Don’t Want A King, We Want A Leader. The “king” was transliterated from English, as a contempt intensifier).

However, shit be getting long and I owe that stuff to my long-neglected readers in Hebrew first. So comment, share, make some goddamn noise if you learned anything from the above or think others will, and make me want to do the next one afore it get stale.

Oh yeah, y’all recollect this? Well, seems like we gots ourselves a reader in Shin Bet Chief Yoram Cohen, who decided to stay on my good side and fessed up the ver’ next mornin’. Apparently Mr. Jawahari has been a very naughty and busy boy, allegedly not only being contacted by a Syrian Mukhabarat agent (plausible), but indeed enlisting with great alacrity and performing dazzling feats of espionage on behalf of his dastardly, horrid handlers, collecting data on tank counts, troops counts, locations of secret installations and whatnot.

Now, the Stasi KNOWS he didn’t do all this shit, save possibly being solicited by a Syrian intel agent. Maybe. So either They want to flip him and are pretending to go hard on him, or (more likely), they are punishing him, either for REFUSING to flip, or for simply not reporting that he was approached by the Syrian (which, had he done and had been found out to have done, would condemn his relatives on the Syrian side to a cruel and unusually grisly demise). I think he’s been allowed counsel by now, but not sure. Will endeavor to find out.

As always, Keyboard Radical and the Holyland Update are not responsible for any conceptions, illusions or sympathies misplaced along one of our tours. We thank you for flying the crazy skies. Please share and comment on your way out.

Tags: Elections 2012, foreign powers, George Washington, Israel, Mitt Romney, Sheldon Adelson, Treason?, United States

Yo, Shin Bet Boss! What’s up with Iyad Jawahari?

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: July 2, 2012

In: Occupation | Uncategorized
1 Comment

Yoram dude wazzup? How was your Sabbath babe? ‘dya see the Euro final or were you busy at work? Reasoמ I ask is I know you got this terribly important and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious new detainee that’s probly keeping you in the office long hours right about now.

You know who I’m talking about. Iyad Jamil al-Jawahari? The Druze doctor from Majdal Shams in the occupied (according to the entire world except Israel) Golan Heights? The one you arrested when he came back with a bunch of Druze students you allowed to study in Syria? The one you told everyone they can’t say a goddamn word about?

Yeah, that one. Yeah I’m talking about him, so listen up: I really don’t know at this point if he’s a full Israeli citizen with a blue ID card, or if he’s perhaps one of the many in the Golan who say “No thanks. We are Syrian nationals under your disputed but accepted de-facto rule. Thanks anyway for the offer.” I also don’t care. The man is not only a human and therefore deserving of certain rights (I know that don’t impress you much). He is also a legal native resident of an area the Empire itself claims as fully annexed and therefore under the full rule of civilian law.

Under this rule of law we have these things called prisoner rights, and they apply from the instant of custody. I don’t care what you say he’s done. He could have undergone super-secret training in contumaciously covert Hizballah camps deep in the inaccessible places of the Syrian desert. (And considering the batting average of the Shin Bet in cases like this, odds are not cood. Statistically, it’s far more likely that he’ll be charged with far lesser violations than whatever it is they’re telling the judge and scaring him with right now).

Where were we? Oh yeah, Yoram my main man: You will report the arrest – not just to his family who were surprised when he didn’t come through the border passing with the other students and were told he was arrested and nothing further – To all of us. Official like. And let us know he’s seen an attorney and has been told at least in general what he’s suspected of and what (in general) kind of proof there is.

Now you’ll notice I’m not saying release the guy immediately. I respect the fact that your job gives you a certain discretion to investigate, apprehend, interrogate and charge people. And I understand that your ferociously friendly court has already given you an extension of custody, and that’s all… if not fine, at least proper. As the poet put it, the ceremony of innocence has not been drowned.

But if you think for a second that we’re gonna let you keep a man – an equal subject of the Israeli Empire, as it were, by its own insistence – in total darkness and not talk about it or mention his name, you are sorely in error, buddy. We are going to be talking about Iyad Jamil al-Jawahari for at least until his full, fair and speedy judicial process is over. Maybe even longer. Depends mostly on you, actually.

Now I hope you notice, bruh, that I’m being respectful to you. Ask my readers and they will assure you that this is not a given. I am sad to say that your predecessor (distant kin of mine, but keep it between us) managed to lose whatever respect his and your disagreeable but necessary position conferred upon him.

But you’re not him, so I’m starting all fresh with you. Announce you’re holding the man and on what general charge and that he’s seen counsel. Today. You’ve already had him for quite a bit longer than the law allows, so don’t be whining that you can’t get no work done like this. If that be the case, we’ll get someone who can.

But it ain’t gonna be like that, is it dawg? We gonna be cool you and me, right? Mos’ def. You go take care of that thing and maybe we’ll hook up after, watch some Olympics and shit. Later homesץ

(This was referred to me by the indefatiguable Richard Silverstein, who unlike Iyad al-Jawahari is not a subject of the Holy Jehovah Empire, and therefore not really motivated by what my man Yoram does or does not allow folks to talk about.)

Tags: Civil Rights, Eyad, Human Rights, If I were a PM, Iyad al-Jawahari, Jawahari, Shin-Bet, Yoram Cohen

A New Way To Break Your Cherry

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: May 7, 2012

In: apartheid | Jewish supremacism | Occupation | racism
Comments Off on A New Way To Break Your Cherry

Y’all know the cute rite-of-passage story about the ancient Greek city of Sparta? How they were supposed to steal something without getting caught, so as to show they could be good fighters, and if they were caught they were punished, but for the operational failure of being detected and not for the moral failure of stealing?

Well, like many other things regarding ancient myths, the underlying truth is…gnarlier, shall we say. Oh sure, the young Spartan hoplite-trainee had to steal, but the real “punished for being caught” test was not to steal – it was to kill a man, or more precisely a Helot.

The Helots were the state-owned slaves of the Spartan regime. In order for all the full Spartan citizens to form that ideal “warrior society” and spend their lives from age 7-60 training for and fighting wars, someone else had to raise crops and clean the streets and the dishes and the homes and so on. Enter the Helots – or to be more accurate, enter the Doric Spartans, who around the 7th century BCE conquer the native Messenians and turn them into “Helots”.

Now, this sort of setup required some serious oppression to keep running. The Spartans’ main answer to this problem was a yearly ritual in which they would go through a ceremony of declaring “war” on the long-vanquished and enslaved population. Call it Operation Cast Helot or something. This prevented the Helot numeric advantage from becoming overwhelming, kept any rebelliousness in check and gave the Spartan fighters their famous battle-tested toughness.

The rest of the year the murder of a Helot was a serious offense, albeit on grounds of damaging valuable state property, and not due to the sanctity of life or any effete claptrap of the sort. So the aspiring young tough-guy was challenged to kill himself a Helot – without anyone seeing, so they wouldn’t be forced to punish him. This random, piecemeal slaughter also had a helpfully chilling effect on the Helots.

The Spartan model, although much appreciated by thinkers of a certain kind throughout the years, has never been precisely duplicated. That said, the notion of running wet training drills on your conquered natives is still with us, as evidenced by the latest little story about the most moral army. You know, the one from The Only Democracy[TM]

A few weeks ago, sharp-eyed consumers of the news noticed a cute little hed on YNET: Duvdevan Soldier Discharged For Kicking Bound Palestinian. Duvdevan is the IDF’s elite undercover unit. Members pass as Arabs and infiltrate organizations and demonstrations (and often incite them to violence and even instigate it). In short, at first blush it seemed like a story about the IDF reacting properly and swiftly to unacceptable behavior. And then you read the actual item.

Turns out the boys were out training in the village of Ramon. What do I mean training? Just that. Sneaking around in local garb in the village, in the middle of the night, trying to blend. Well, not a great day at the office for the boys. They were detected. See, Ramon has a pretty rampant crime problem. Folks there have a short fuse when it comes to their property, the nighttime and strangers.

So the stealthy commando kids are observed near the sheep-pen of the Shawakha family. Four Shawakhas run downstairs; One grabs a tire-iron, another a knife, a third a nice thumpin’ stick. They get to the street and the strangers are coming towards them. Rather than identify, or use their guns to deter, the Cherry Boys* keep walking right up to the local guys. When face to face, one of the commandos finally draws a gun. No warning, no “police/army/intelligence/Israelis”. One of the Shawakhas tries to grab the gun (held by a non-identifying plain-clothed thug and suspected thief) and gets shot in the thigh. Then the soldiers shoot another brother in the stomach. Then more shots are fired. Long after any kind of normal person would be declaring who they are and why they shouldn’t be resisted. One Palestinian dead, one severely wounded. One Duvdevan genius with a cut arm.

After all resistance to the boys in camouflage was subdued, and the Helo—Palestinians had their hands cuffed and their asses sat on the ground, one of the soldiers was still furious at them for not realizing he’s an untouchable, so he kicked one of them in the face. And that, to the Israeli embodiment of MSM, was the story. Soldier Kicks Coolie, Bounced From Unit. Not, say, Army Kills Local In Training Fiasco.

For THAT, the IDF (rightly) discharged him. But the practice of training on unwitting natives in this lovely and not-at-all dangerous manner – that, the IDF informed me, was done by proper procedure and after much consideration of all aspects of advisability.

Luckily, while the IDF has yet to reach the level of wisdom associated with giving a shit about what I happen to think, Israel’s veteran human rights NGO B’tselem speaks more softly but carries a bigger stick. After they sent a letter saying “y’all sure this is the way you wanna be?” the IDF about-faced and announced that its own Investigative MP unit would look into it. Uh-huh.

This ain’t the first time, either. I reported on this 2 years ago.

Then last week it turned out it isn’t just Helots they practice on. The good people of Tel Aviv noticed one fine morning that the air has a peculiar, sharp stank to it – above and beyond your normal megalopolis pollution. The authorities stalled for a good long time, playing dumb, and finally broke down admitting it was them doing some hush-hush crap. Who? What? Here the police, Enviro-Protection Ministry and Homeland Security started playing a lively round of Pass the Buck. I feel so much more protected now, I can’t even tell ya.

Finally, in other “Killin Ay-rabs and Getting’ Away With It” news:

A guy killed a Palestinian suspect he had already apprehended and bound. Claimed “his gun went off”. Court told him to his face it was unconvinced of this version. Sentence: Eight months. This is progress of sorts. William Zanzinger only got 6, and he wasn’t a uniformed fighter in the Hosts of the Lord.

Another guy, Colonel Ilan Malka, was found innocent of all wrongdoing in the piecemeal slaughter of the Samouni Family during Operation Poll Jum— I mean, Operation Cast Lead. The real rundown is over at Idan Landau’s blog, but that’s Hebrew. Long story short: IDF enters this neighborhood in Gaza, called Zeytun, takes over the compound owned and inhabited by the Samouni family, and herds all the surrendered civilians (about 100) into a 200 sq. meter space. The army in this case is a unit under the direct command of Col. Malka. He herded them. He knew they were there. Despite this, when he got reports on suspicious movement in that corner, he didn’t go “oh, that’s where i cordoned my tame civilians, lets make sure it ain’t one of them gathering wood for warmth cause they got no power”. He ordered to open fire. On several distinct occasions. Despite this, the IDF self-investigation finds nothing wrong.

There’s more to come, a quick wrap-up of the no good, very bad, not at all useful month Hasbara has had and a lot more… stay tuned.

Oh, while you’re waiting for part B – y’all seen The Hummus Enforcement Agency yet? Get your pita bread ready and go do so. Seriously. Bon Appetit!

Oh, almost forgot: MCA, aka Adam Yauch, AKA the ballsiest Jewboy in music, passed away as most of y’all probably know. RIP, great heart.

*Duvdevan means Cherry in Hebrew.

Tags: Cast Lead, Duvdevan, eran vered, hummus, Israel, Poll Jump, Ramon, Samouni, sparta, undercover

This Week in Israel: Thugs, Dogs and Pigs

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: March 24, 2012

In: apartheid | Jewish supremacism | Occupation | racism
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We are defending our very existence; There must have been very good security reasons; She’s a clear and present danger – but I don’t have to prove it in any way; All they want is to kill us; We have no choice

The excuses of occupation, supremacism and herd mentality never change much, nor have they in this particularly disgusting week in the JEWISH state of Israel.

In the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, protests continued unabated against the 2009 theft of the village’s spring, Ein al-Salih, despite the IDF – which abetted said theft by the settlers of Halamish – incessant attempts to intimidate them into just accepting their fate as the Chosen People’s punching bag.

Last night, Friday, marked the first time in over two weeks that the village wasn’t raided well past midnight by the IDF thugs. For 15 straight days the IDF’s brave, moral troops invaded this village every single night, waking up families, tossing their homes, and often confiscating stuff (computers and personal papers) without a warrant or without providing a receipt for the items seized. Seeing as following the Marmara incident several (brave and moral) IDF soldiers were caught looting computers, cell phones and credit cards belonging to the ship’s passengers, one can understand how the lack of a clear signed record of what was taken is cause for concern.

But the abuse doesn’t end here. I already told you last week what happened to Anan Naji al-Tamimi, and this week we got footage of the apparent theft of laptops at the home of one of the Palestinian Gandhis, Bassem Tamimi, who is currently held without charge, trial, or regular access to counsel because Israel can’t deal with his skill at organizing non-violent demonstrations. Ain’t many folks in Nabi Saleh that can get the teenagers to bottle their righteous anger and refrain from showing the invading thugs any physical defiance, thus making the army thugs show what thugs they truly are without even the excuse of kids throwing rocks.

When someone loses patience with this arrogant behavior and arranges a meeting between something heavy and hard and a ransacking IDF thug’s face, the wail will rise instantly: THEY HATE US JUST FOR BEING JEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWS.

Also from the occupied territories this week: The advent of using attack dogs against unarmed protesters, and finally this gutsy kid, who sent a kangaroo military court “judge” into a tantrum by telling him he doesn’t recognize his authority. The judge left the courtroom in a huff, warning the kid he’d screw him at sentencing. Big man, no? Most moral army.

Another lovely story from the Only Democracy this week: About 300 “fans” of the racist football club Beitar Jerusalem, following a victory by their crappy team, swarmed into the Malha shopping mall adjacent to their home field, and proceeded to beat the living crap out of about 10 Palestinian sanitation workers, yelling “Death to Arabs” and so on.

The pogromchiks quickly overwhelmed the mall security, and even the cops who were called to the scene required long minutes before they restored order and stopped the lynching.

Another lovely aspect of this little story is that while it happened last Monday, it was reported precisely nowhere in the Israeli media until Friday, and then only at Haaretz. You know how hasbara parrots love to talk about Israel’s vaunted free press? Bring this one up next time they try it. See what they have to say.

And get this: Despite the fact that the blue porkers were undeniably on the scene, they did not detain a single person for questioning. When asked why that is, a pigsty spokesperson replied that “no arrest or investigation took place because no complaint was filed.”

As my boy Bobby would say, bury the rag deep in your face – NOW is the time for your tears.

For one thing, of course, nowhere in world does a cop need a complaint to make an arrest or at least detain someone for questioning when the crime happens in front of their pink squashed snouts.

For another, though, and this naturally caught my eye, the claim that arrests and indictments can’t be made absent a victim’s complaint is false. I myself was convicted of “threats” against Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad (over a blog post, not heavy breathing on the phone…), who did not file a complaint with the police and whom we were not allowed to summon as a witness.

Jerusalem District PD Chief Nisso Shaham is proving that the Kahanists managed to get to him. Said high-ranking porker was marked as an enemy of the Jehovah-nazis when, during the disengagement from the Gaza Strip he was recorded saying “shit on them” regarding the militant settlers and their threats of violent resistance.

When he was appointed Chief of the J-M district, some had naively hoped that a new era had begun for a force that had been accurately dubbed “Kahane’s Police” by songwriter Chaim Cheffer back in the 80′s and hasn’t gotten a damn bit better since. The Judonazis of course raised a big ole wail when he was appointed, but as I say some had hoped Shaham was exactly the sort of guy to blow off their hostility and do his motherfucking job. Did I mention the word Naive?

So now Nisso is cowering from the feared wrath of the racist scum that populate Teddy Stadium’s east-side bleachers, and walking around the streets of Jerusalem with Satan’s spunk dripping from his rectal orifice.

And with that Santorum-like image, we shall now return you to your points of origin, which should be looking really good in comparison right about now or you should be looking deeply into relocation. The Weekend Holyland Update is not responsible for any misconceptions, sympathies or illusions that may have been misplaced on our tours. This tour has been brought to you free of charge courtesy of the pilot’s graphomanic disorder and high-horse syndrome, but feel free to avail yourselves of the “Donate” button over there. Also, you can buy my book, “Jewcy Story: How the Jews blew redemption the last time around” and get 500 fascinating years of Jewish history for the bargain price of $3.

P.S. The bit about “She’s a clear and present danger” refers to Hana Shalabi, a Palestinian woman who is currently on her 38th day of hunger strike, in protest of her administrative detention. Israel apparently doesn’t feel it has a case it can actually convict her with even in a kangaroo military court. Be that as it may, it is really chilling to think that these people, who run our lives and an entire nuclear state, really wish after narrowly dodging the bullet with Khader Adnan, to wind up with a FEMALE martyr who isn’t the self-admitted spokesperson of a terrorist organization. Israel’s only luck with the Adnan affair was that he sucked as a symbol (what with being a bigshot in a sick demented fanatic group). A young woman, pretty enough even with a headscarf, who isn’t self evidently guilty of at least membership in a banned org and who only demanded the simple right of her day in court and to confront her accusers and their claims? That shit will sell like hotcakes. Makes you wonder if the powers that be don’t actually WANT more Toulouse incidents… (Yeah, I said it. Got a problem? Speak the fuck up).

Tags: Beitar Jerusalem, IDF, lynch mob, malha shopping mall, nabi saleh, nisso shaham, police, racism

Israel: The Bamba Nation That Worships Gandhi

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: March 17, 2012

In: apartheid | Israeli politics | Jewish supremacism | Occupation | racism | Social Justice | Uncategorized
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Shortly after Purim, Judaism’s ancient costume festival, the masks came off in a frenzy in three completely unrelated incidents – and I’m not even talking about Israel’s calculated decision to throw a match on a dormant gas keg, throwing the lives of a million of its own people into disarray and giving the other side a free calibration test.

First came the ludicrous decision by Israel’s Olympic Committee to throw any shred of self-respect to the wind and not simply accept an ordinary corporate sponsorship, but to make a corporate logo the official Olympic mascot for Israel’s delegation to London 2012. Perhaps so short a time after Israel’s sucker population rose up last summer against “porcine capitalism” wasn’t the best of times to try that one…The collective snort of derision caused the powers that be to about-face in under 24 hours. Pity, tho. The logo in question: (A baby in a diaper with a forelock and a fresh mouth who represents the quintessential Israeli snack “bamba” [a peanut-flavored puff thingy]) is a perfect representation of Israel in its 64^th year of sovereignty.

Like the logo, Israel is a rather infantile nation. Like the logo, it has a one-track mind (the bamba baby for bamba, Israel for its occupied territories and its trauma-ridden rationale for choking itself on them). Like the logo, Israel is crassly commercial, mercantile and mercenary. Finally, the choice of the bamba baby is a perfect illustration of so many of Israel’s cherished and misguided narratives. You see, although bamba is indeed an Israeliana-laden word, the sad fact of globalism is that Ossem, the long-time purveyor of said peanut-flavored mush, is no longer a plucky Israeli company. It is, rather, a small division of the Nestle Corporation – a firm which, incidentally, did not escape the 1930’s and 1940’s with an unblemished record. Nuff said? So all in all, a most apt capsule of Israel’s true current essence.

Then came the big story of the week. Haaretz’s crack reporter Gidi Weitz uncovered that the State of Israel is currently funding the “legacy” of former Minister and transfer-advocate Rehav’am “Gandhi” Ze’evi at twice the amount of a bunch of actual fathers of Zionism and founders of the state (Herzl, Jabotinski, Ben Gurion, and Begin) combined.

A bit of background on Ze’evi. First, to dispel confusion, he acquired the moniker after appearing one morning at the Palmach mess wrapped in a bed-sheet, and not due to any pacifistic convictions. He was a long-time military careerist, peaking at Central Command General, where he was known for keeping a pair of chained lions at the entrance to his HQ. Years later a famed actress would claim that as a young soldier she was sexually assaulted by an unnamed famous high-ranking officer, “who thought he could fondle the girls the way he did his lions”.

In 1981, shortly after a notorious gangland double murder, “Gandhi” was recorded speaking on the phone with Tuvia Oshri, one of the two men later convicted of the murders. He was asked “Can you come” and answered “If you need me I’m coming.”

On the other hand, he was a very well-read man who spoke fabulous Hebrew and did much for the study and disciplines of history and archaeology in Israel. Politically, he is chiefly known as the first and primary advocate of “transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing, although of course called for “in peaceful ways”) as a solution to Israel’s dreaded “demographic problem.” He ended up being shot to death by a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while staying at an East Jerusalem hotel AND blowing off his security detail.

In numbers, Gandhi’s legacy gets about 4.9 million ILS a year. Rabin, who was actually PM and was murdered and alla that, gets around 2 million, as does the iconic Likud PM of the 70’S and 80’s, Menachem Begin. The father of political Zionism Theodore Herzl and the father of the Israeli right-wing Ze’ev Jabotinski get 250K each. So these are the express preferences of Israel today, as written in the most indelible ink there is: cash.

The third mask-shedding event of the week is still categorized as unproven, despite the first-hand nature of the source. Hosni Mubarak, the deposed tyrant of Egypt, states flatly in his memoirs that he used to pay Israeli politician Binyamin “Fouad” Ben Eliezer a cool $25K/month retainer as an “advisor”.

Now it was never a secret that Fouad was a close personal friend of Mubarak’s and an undisguised friend and advocate of Egypt within the various Israeli governments in which he served as Trade, Infrastructure, and Defense Minister. It’s also not exactly news that the guy is not completely free of any rumors of improprieties, so to speak. Still, if this is true it does set a new mark in Israeli decay, I think.

Finally, while all this was happening, and while the world gives itself a good close fingernail check as Syrians are slaughtered by their supposedly anachronistic villain dictator, the Israeli occupation of Palestine (the West Bank part of it) continues in full and innovative swing.

First to the tried-and-true methods of thuggery. You know how the IDF like to invade homes in villages all over the West Bank at 1, 2, 3 in the morning, pull everyone (including babies) from bed for a lineup, take pictures and often arrest someone for a few hours of friendly interrogation? (if you don’t know about it, you should).

So this week on March 11, at 01:45, our brave, brave troops raid the dangerous terror nest of Nabi Saleh – a village that’s only any trouble because settlers stole their spring with active IDF aid – and hit the home of the nefarious mastermind Anan Naji al-Tamimi. 11.

The resolute Israeli DEFENSE forces took Anan, blindfolded him and bound his arms, and loaded him onto a jeep. They drove a bit out of the village and proceeded to interrogate him with some “mild violence” (slaps to the back of the head) about his involvement in the use of WMP (Weapons of Mass Petrification, dismissed by the enemies of Israel as mere rocks) in the weekly demonstrations against the theft of the spring at the village.

After this time they drove back, stopped about 1 km from the village, removed the blindfold but left Anan’s arms bound, and dropped him off, leaving him to negotiate the 15-minute walk with arms bound in pitch darkness. His wrists were swollen upon his return home.

An official response from IDF spokesman has yet to arrive. Unofficial back-channels have yielded this claim: You got the wrong name, he’s 15 and not 11 (plausible from the photo too btw), he was questioned for one hour and not two and was dropped off unbound 300 meters from the village rather than 3 times that far, and this only to avoid re-igniting the village.

So according to the IDF, if he was 15 it’s ok to roust him and all his family from bed at 2 in the morning and interrogate him with no guardian or legal counsel present out in the open and then drop him off somewhere other than the front door. Gotcha.

Here’s the thing: You do that to ME? To MY boy? Police, IDF, Navy fucking SEALS of the invisible New World Order? Rocks will be the least of your worries from my side. And that’s if the unofficial version is true. If the al-Tamimi version is true? And the IDF don’t lock up the guy that was in charge of it? For his own protection, like? I find him and use a 10 pound tin can to turn his face to mush. But don’t listen to me. Remember Gilad Shalit? Yeah, he’s doin’ it right. Travelling a lot. Getting laid I do hope. Anyway, his dad’s running for Knesset in the Labor party. He said that if he was a Palestinian, he’d be trying to capture soldiers too.

Oh, I promised an innovation. Those who survived the holocaust remember with dread the German use of dogs to instill terror in their prey. Those of them still struggling to make ends meet, in the state that uses their name and traumas daily but leaves them less than table scraps are no doubt smiling in the knowledge that their own country has finally learned from those canine-related lessons as well.

And on that woof-woof note, we will now return you to you locally scheduled bullshit, which I seriously hope is tame in comparison or you should be looking into relocation. This has been a visit to the precipice of demise, brought to you by The Weekend Holyland Update, in conjunction with Brown Acid Bad Trips Inc. This excursion didn’t cost you a dime, but there’s a collection plate button thingy, if you have a mind. Also, you can buy my book: Jewcy Story: How the Jews blew redemption the last time around.

Tags: Anan Naji al-Tamimi, bamba, IDF, Israel, London 2012, Occupation, Olympics, thuggery

Talkin’ Bout A Revolution

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: July 31, 2011

In: Israeli politics | Occupation | Social Justice
2 Comments

Welcome one and all, to an unusually optimistic edition of the your weekend holyland update. Get your camping gear out, ’cause we’re taking to the streets to fight for our rights.

Doncha know, talkin’ bout a revolution? Sounds like a whisper… Actually, it’s quite louder than that. At least 150 thousand people took to the streets from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Beer-Sheba in the south, crying out that “The People Demand Social Justice”, and calling on PM Binyamin Netanyahu to resign. Over 100 thousand demonstrated in Tel Aviv, dwarfing the already huge demonstration from last week. And to conclusively put the lie to the claim by Bibi apologists, that this was merely a leftist provocation by a few stoned and unemployed spoiled brats from Tel Aviv, this time they were joined by another 50 thousand people all around the country, with Haifa, Jerusalem and Beer-Sheba adding over 10,000 protesters each.

This was the culmination of a week in which the housing and cost of living protests defied predictions and gathered steam. Earlier in the week Ofer Eini, head of the powerful umbrella labor union the Histadrut, decided that he had spent enough time with a wet finger in the air, and jumped on the bandwagon, threatening that if by the end of the Sabbath (last night) the government would not open negotiations with him regarding the demands of the protesters, he would…do stuff.

Problem is that although Eini was greeted warmly by the naïve kids running the Tel Aviv encampment, truth is he’s not at all on their side. He’s a creature of the powerful unions, the ones where a winch operator at the Ashdod harbor makes $15,000 a month (yes, that’s US dollars. 51,000 shekels), and some of his colleagues make even more. He doesn’t represent those who have trouble making ends meet. All he wants is a photo-op, followed by a quick sellout, just like he did to the strike of the social workers a couple of months back. This, after all, is the man who opposed the strike at Haifa Chemicals, where already low wages have been stagnant for years, and where tenured workers have been steadily replaced by temps with no rights. So he won’t help any.

Eini isn’t the only bandwagon jumper. MIA opposition leader Tzipi Livni was finally sighted saying something about the protests late this week and calling on Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin to postpone the parliament’s summer break so that a solution to the crisis can be found. Even Judy Mozes, whose husband is the Deputy Prime Minister and whose own family owns the country’s largest media conglomerate, is fronting like a woman of the people and tweeting that “so great to see the power with the people.” At said conglomerate, in which she owns an 8% stake, workers have no right to unionize and not much rights at all, for that matter.

Meanwhile, and regardless of Eini’s posing, Netanyahu is seriously stressing (check this out). He’s secretly talking about replacing his sock puppet of a treasury minister, Yuval Steinitz, with someone of a more “social” bend. So far there seem to be takers for the job, whose description is apparently “wanted: second sacrificial lamb. Ingratitude guaranteed.” The leading candidate, Moshe Cachlon, pointedly rejected the talk of him taking over the treasury job, but did say that Bibi must heed the calls of the people.

Likud members, fearing that this uprising will cost them at the ballot, are sweating as well. MK Miri Regev, who got one of the first headlines of this protest by clashing with the tent-dwellers, calling them “daft” and getting doused with a glass of water for her trouble, is now demanding that the party convention be called into session, to discuss the means of heading off this electoral menace. Meanwhile, even the insufficient suggestions on how to deliver relief to the masses are being blocked by ministers such as Uzi Landau, holder of the Infrastructure portfolio, who is from the racist Israel Beiteinu party and figures the uprising won’t sway any of his party’s voters.

And just this morning, the director-general of the Ministry of Finance, Haim Shani, resigned, due to unspecified “differences of opinion” with his minister – meaning with Netanyahu, whose haphazard knee-jerk reactions to the crisis managed to get on Mr. Shani’s professional nerves.

But Bibi still has one supporter he can count on – dubious gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his free rag “Israel HaYom.” The Bibiton, as it is nicknamed in Israel, correctly realized that ignoring or downplaying last night’s show of strength was not an option, so instead they went for plan B: First, they cut the number of protesters by a full third, copping to only 100 thousand protesters country-wide. Second, they ominously intoned: “The protest is social but most of the signs are political”. I’m sorry, who do YOU go to when demanding redress, if not the political establishment? However, this is still more subtle than what most in the pro-protest camp jokingly envisioned, which was the Bibiton’s leading on the front page with the whacking of a notorious organized crime boss late last night.

Far away from the tent encampments, in the occupied territories, the Israeli Occupation Force finds itself at liberty to step up the oppression of the natives. Arrests were carried out deep in Area A, a well providing water to a Palestinian business was slated to be destroyed in the Jordan Valley, and demonstrations against the larcenous separation wall are being suppressed with even greater brutality than usual, as evidenced by the picture of this Palestinian press photographer, beaten over the head with a club for violating the “closed military zone” (which accredited journalists – he is one – are exempt from), and for “unfairly depicting the security forces.”

Ah, the unfairness of reality – a reality which says that until the elephant in the room is addressed and the connection is made between the immense resources being poured down the occupation drain, replete with subsidies for housing, education and public transport, and the lack of resources for the welfare of people who choose not to subsist on the pauper’s lamb, no real progress will be achieved.

And on that grim reality note, we shall wrap it up. The Weekly Holyland Update is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

—————————

My book, “Jewcy Story”, a popular history of the 2nd Temple Era, can be bought for Amazon Kindle, for cell phone or for PC here.

Tags: bibinocchio, cost of living, economics, housing, Nabi Salah, ofer eini, protest, Tzippi Livni

Marching for Home

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: July 25, 2011

In: apartheid | Israeli politics | Occupation
Comments Off on Marching for Home

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to another excursion to the mad Middle East, where nothing – not even wide-spread housing protests – stands in the way of the continued theft of other people’s land. In this week’s installation we take you camping, have a little water fight with the powers that be, and do the creeping annexation jig. So put on your dancing shoes, here we go:

Last night Tel Aviv saw one of its largest protests in years. At least 30,000 people (I was there, I say around 50K) marched from the edge of Rothschild Boulevard to the Tel Aviv Museum Plaza to protest the insane housing prices. After the protest march, a few rowdy anarchist types stuck around and blocked one of the major intersections along the march route, resulting in a few dozen arrested, and most released this morning. The protesters played it smart and left a tent full of candy and chocolate outside Tel Aviv PD HQ, with signs “sorry for last night” and “We’ll continue to fight for you too”.

The interesting thing to watch was the newspaper coverage. Yediot and Haaretz were both pro-protesters, Maariv was more or less balanced, and Israel HaYom, the free newspaper founded by gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson for the explicit purpose of promoting and defending PM Bibi Netanyahu, is simply trying, for nigh on two weeks now, to pretend that the protest isn’t happening, or isn’t as big a deal as it is. The paper devoted 5 full pages to the massacre in Norway, and less than a page to the uprising of the serfs here at home.

Bibi himself, regressing into his Munchausen’s disease, claimed this morning to have “foreseen the housing crisis years in advance”, and blamed it on the fact that the state controls 90% of the land and poses procedural impediments to construction of new housing. Of course, he promised a reform in Israel’s Land Authority, then let it melt away. Part of it was supposed to be included in a new Planning Committees Law, the final vote on which was just postponed today. So that’s how hard ole Bibi is pushing for this reform, the need for which he foresaw.

The tent encampment protest has spread in the past week from Tel Aviv all over the country. Even my sleepy semi-rural hometown of Pardes Hannah has one. The question is whether the energy will be sustained and channeled productively, or will it dissipate. The energy last night at the march (which I attended) was weird – but not necessarily in a bad way. Some have defined it as “not angry, just resolute”. We shall see.

In a related incident, protesters stormed the meeting of the Knesset’s Finance Committee (held at Kfar HaMacabbiah in Ramat Gan, rather than in Jerusalem) and threw water at the participants, in protest of the fact that the housing crisis was not on the committee’s agenda. Shoulda used something stronger than water, says I, but nobody ever listens to me. Armenia 1999, anyone? (Kidding. Violence, particularly indiscriminate violence, is very rarely the answer, if ever. However, the thought is savagely satisfying).

Another protest gaining steam is that of the MD interns, who are subject to insane hours and extremely pathetic pay (their base pay is around $1,500 a month). Their attempt to have themselves admitted as patients so as to get around a court order forbidding them from walking off the job was foiled, but they are still striking (the entire MD community has been on a court-modified strike for weeks now). After a couple of days of dithering, the housing protesters got wise and embraced the young docs.

Turning to the place where all the money lacking for affordable housing and decent wages for MD’s is poured down the drain, Israel’s stupid government is now renouncing the policy of ambiguity which has thus far sustained its occupation. The government passed a resolution tying government support for museums in “Judea and Samaria” with that of museums in Israel proper. Give this government enough time and they’ll give us all a one-state solution…

Meanwhile the Israel Occupation Force has been pursuing a policy of land theft using an Ottoman law, saying that any private land that isn’t being cultivated can be seized by the state – but they’re doing it only for the benefit of settlements for the master race. Apparently they are heeding the call of far-right MK Aryeh Eldad to “end the Muslim occupation of the Land of Israel”.

Approaching landing, this is how the IOF recruits deal with non-violent protests. It’s not really the fault of the recruits, but that of the state that brainwashes them and throws them into impossible situations.

Finally, the departing head of the Personnel Department of the IOF, General Avi Zamir, sounded the alarm at his farewell ceremony about the religious radicalization of the armed forces. Of course it is too late for that, as reports from “Operation Cast Lead”, in which soldiers were given sermons by rabbis exhorting them to “holy war” before battle, amply prove.

That’ll do it for this week. The Weekend Holyland Update is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

My book, “Jewcy Story”, a popular history of the 2nd Temple Era, can be bought for Amazon Kindle, for cell phone or for PC here.

Tags: housing protests, IDF, IOF, land theft, medical intern protests, Occupation, settlements, welfare state

Flytilla Exposes Israel’s Bumbling Hysteria

Posted by: Rechavia Berman on: July 9, 2011

In: apartheid | Israeli politics | Jewish supremacism | Occupation
1 Comment

Welcome once again to The Weekend Holyland Update. This is WHU flight 080711, taking off to utter hysteria, land theft, necrophilia, idolatry, a rare case of accountability. Please fasten your seatbelts and remember to lie about your destination at passport check, or you’ll be deported.

The “Flytilla” has been a resounding success. First, the organizers goaded Israel into new heights (or lows) of hysteria in the week or two preceding the stunt. I’m not talking just about the massive police and secret police mobilization (to a spot that’s already one of the most heavily secured in the country), but also about immensely stupid PR efforts such as this amazing piece of gobshite, in which Israel declares “We are a paranoid, traumatized people who see threats in every rorschach ink blot” – thereby validating one of the central claims of its critics, in a loud and horribly acted manner. (Read all about it here and in the links within that article. It’s hasbara alright, even if at first folks on our side were saying it just has to be satire. Since it isn’t, I’m beginning to think we goddamn lefties have a mole in the hasbara upper echelons causing them to release these things).

Then came the big day itself. Early in the day the headlines on Israeli websites were jubilant: “only two activists landed and were deported. Most Flytilla participants denied boarding at departure points”. The writers of these headlines, of course, gave ZERO thought to the cost of Israel having its European friends suffer the airport mayhem to enforce Israel’s policies.

But then came the afternoon arrivals and showed that like the old Jewish folk tale, Israel ate the stinking fish, took a whipping AND got kicked out of town. It imposed upon its European friends, and STILL had to deal with dozens of activists who arrived anyway.

The dealing was rather inept as usual. Oh sure, most of the terribly dangerous enemies were swiftly identified and detained, pending deportation (some were flown back immediately, others will spend the w/e in jail and be returned to their ports of departure on Sunday) – but that was the point of the exercise. The activists weren’t hoping to get in, they were hoping to be refused entry and thus expose the fact that more often than not, people arriving at Tel Aviv airport declaring that they intend to visit Palestinian cities or villages are turned away unless they can prove they have relatives or business there (and of course, sometimes having relatives is the reason to be turned away too). This is all contrary to international conventions and to the Oslo agreements, which require Israel to allow the PA to enjoy incoming tourism. Israel may deny entry to specific individuals, but not to everyone declaring their intent to visit the occupied territories.

So the genius State of Israel obliged them, arresting for deportation 50 and 60 year-old activists, many of whom it had previously admitted to the country with no problem – but that was when they lied and said they were going to Tel Aviv, rather than Ramallah. But proving the flytilla’s point was not enough for the defenders of the Jewish and Democratic State[TM]. So in addition, Israel’s police, aka the Jack Booted Thuggery, stood by as Israeli citizens in the terminal attacked humanitarian activists, cursing, spitting, and in some cases physically attacking as well. When Jerusalem Post journalist Larry Derfner attempted to defend some activists from such an attack, he himself was detained shortly by Israel “Finest” (they’re not even the country’s finest thugs, since if they were they’d be making more money as actual criminals).

To top it all off, some of the activists did manage to get past the border control and reach their destination in the verbotten West Bank. I have not been able to ascertain whether they truthfully declared their destination, which would indicate a modicum of Israeli brains, or if they lied – thereby conclusively proving the original point.

On a related matter, check out Dimi Reider’s article on the Israeli Airport Authority’s form for travelling Arabs.

Related matter 2: As part of the prep for the flytilla, Israel barred the entry of two Dutch journalists who actually wanted to tell its side of the story, scheduling interviews with anti-flytilla/flotilla subjects, and coverage of Israel bringing humanitarian aid into Gaza. Heckuva job, hasbara!

Update: The foreign airlines on which the activists flew in are now saying they will have a hard time deporting the 124 people Israel wants returned immediately to Europe. “It’s the height of the travel season and all the flights are fully booked,” one senior airline exec said. The amusing silver lining of all this is that there has been a stay in the roundup of “illegal” foreign workers and asylum seekers, since the detention facilities are filled with flytilla people.

Now we have to wait and see what means of letting Israel make a damn fool of itself its opponents will think of next.

On to other matters. Last week I forgot to touch upon the case of Raed Salah, head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who was allowed into the UK only to be arrested very shortly afterwards on grounds that he was banned from the country. Apparently he managed to sneak in during the very short time-frame between the signing of the ban order and its arrival at passport control in Heathrow. Now Salah is no angel, as he is reportedly not above using classical antisemitic imagery (“We are not the ones who allowed themselves to eat a meal of bread and cheese in children’s blood”, for example…”you are monkeys, the virii of all times” for another). However, it’s kind of funny that GB would find it necessary to arrest him when even Israel allows him to be free. Also funny is the fact that the UK isn’t deporting him, but is insisting on holding him in custody. Without some solid evidence to the contrary, I really can’t blame people who see this as another case of Israel getting others to do its dirty work for it – since Israel would love to lock Salah in jail (and throw away the key) but fears the consequences.

In a rare case of accountability, a Border Police officer was convicted of abuse after she threatened a minor, whom she arrested for having three detonators in his pocket (these, while having terrorist associations, can also be used as a sort of fire cracker), with death, shoved one of the detonators in his pocket and pretended to light it, pointed a loaded and cocked gun at him, and showered racist abuse on him. In an even more heartening development, the perpetrator herself fully accepted responsibility for her acts and stated flatly that she acknowledges deserving punishment, while explaining that the pressure of dealing daily with a hostile population (not only arabs but also ultra-orthodox Jews) eventually caused her to snap as she did. This in contrast to incidents such as the two soldiers who used a 9 year-old as a bomb detector during Cast Lead. In that case the two thugs and their families went on the offensive upon conviction, screaming bloody murder and whining that the army was throwing its oh-so brave warriors under the bus. So even if Shani Sevilia is just saying what she said in hope of a lenient sentence, it would be petty and uncharitable to necessarily assume so, given the culture of opposite behavior surrounding her. So Ms. Sevilia, while you did very a bad thing, please accept a measure of respect for your subsequent behavior, and I hope you only have to serve a short amount of time in prison. Then again, since the scumbags who used a kid as a bomb detector and showed zero remorse got three months suspended sentence, it would be cruel irony if she does serve any time.

The UN has found that during the Nakba Day events, in which some (stupid) people tried to enter Israel from the Syrian border and were shot, Israel reacted with excessive and unnecessary force. Israel? Unnecessary force? Surely you jest!

Remember the rabid rabbi Dov Lior, who wrote a supportive introduction for the nazi-like tract “The King’s Torah”? The one who was summoned to answer to the police on suspicion of incitement, flouted the summons for months, was finally detained for an hour and this caused his supporters to throw a tantrum? Well, a day or two after this incident, he gave a lecture in which he stated that democracy is “the idolatry of our times”. He repeated this twice, lest anyone miss it, and compared himself to biblical Abraham, who according to Jewish legend was thrown into a furnace for breaking the idols in his father’s idol shop. To most of you this might sound as just more religious fulmination, but if you’re a religious Jew, you know that Idolatry is one of only three sins (along with incest and bloodshed) which a Jew is commanded to die rather than commit. Furthermore, a Jew is supposed to kill those who try to force it upon him (think about the story of Hannukah). That’s not even a dog-whistle. That’s plain Hebrew.

In a connected event, rabbi Yaacov Yosef, son of Shas leader Ovadiah Yosef, was also detained for questioning in the same case, after also flouting the summons to report voluntarily for months. His supporters also rioted, setting fire to the butt-ugly “string bridge” at the entrance to Jerusalem, which unfortunately did not cause the costly eyesore’s demise. His father reacted by saying that he was “stupid” and that he should have just gone when summoned and prevented the whole affair.

Israel, which in the past few years has proved itself terrified of coriander and clowns, among other things, has added necrophobia to the list of things that scare it. Israel was scheduled to return a bunch of corpses of dead terrorists to the PA. When it turned out that the list included some Hamas terrorists as well, families of terror victims got up in arms and forced Minister of the (In)defens(ible) Ehud Barak to reverse course and cancel the corpse transfer. And the fact that letting the PA take credit for getting Hamas cadavers back would give it a minor win? Doesn’t matter, because although the PA fights Hamas for Israel (yes, even after the “reconciliation”), Israel doesn’t actually want to strengthen it.

Finally, just in case you were concerned that Israel As An Occupying Entity was going soft, fear not: Israel’s government has ordered the “civil administration” in the occupied territories to steal some 45 acres of land belonging to the Palestinian village of Qaryot, in order to “legitimize” the illegal (illegal even according to Israel) oupost of HaYovel, which is part of the settlement if Eli (which is only illegal according to everyone in the world but Israel). Now, lest you get any notions about the “settlement blocks” which Israel is supposed to keep under putative future agreements, Eli is nowhere near there. It is closer to the Jordan river than it is to the Green Line. In short, despite any crap you might hear from Bibi about how he’s willing to make painful sacrifices, the truth is that the theft of Palestinian land will never stop as long as he or anyone like him is in power.

And on that grand larceny alert, the pilot will now bring her in for landing. WHU Airlines is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments* (and donations, if you’ve a mind) where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

* Please do comment. I write for feedback. Thanks!

Tags: border police, excessive force, flytilla, hasbara, Jewish supremacism, land theft, nakbe day, necrophobia, raed salah, settlements, UN

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