Identity and Collective Denial - Lia Tarachansky on RAI (3/3)

Nothing much to say for this piece of the interview. I only wanted to put this interview here to show how much Israel is a racist society, devoid of any & all social mobility among people. There are many Jewish groups in Israel, who are treated just like caste system in India, and at the same time, Israel needs Palestine & this ongoing conflict with Palestine to keep itself alive.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS36Io_3LOA

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: How does it get to that point? What is it about–where, in terms of the evolution of the Israeli identity, does this absolute overt racism come from? ...

LIA TARACHANSKY, ISRAEL-PALESTINE CORRESPONDENT, TRNN: As an Israeli Jew, this is the stuff that keeps me up at night. Also, literally, I’ve been robbed of my anonymity on many fronts. And there’s a lot of it that creeps into your life.

But the way I understand it is, like, it’s a combination of two things. I think what you’re seeing on the streets today in Israel, with the constant street-level violence and racism and attacks on anyone who questions anything, attacks on leftists, attacks on Palestinians, that it is the natural conclusion of the Zionist idea coming to its most screeching, screaming peak in having to defend itself. And this is part of the ethnocracy we’re talking about. This is the natural conclusion.

What is Zionism? Zionism is the idea that the Jews have a homeland in historic Palestine, in the ancient land of Canaan. That’s spiritual Zionism. Practical political Zionism means that the Jews have more right to be on this land, and then they must be a Jewish majority on this land. How do you do that in a place that was never empty, in a place that, first of all, was already home to competing national movements, that was already engaged in very rich and ancient culture, both from the Ottoman Empire and the Arab invasions, and was–this place is the crossroads of human migration. How do you come to this place, which is in the middle, between Asia, Europe, and Africa, and you say, no more, here’s our walls, and we’re building a wall with Syria and Lebanon and Jordan and Egypt, and no one but Jews can get in? As I’m sure you know, there’s no immigration to Israel unless you’re a Jew. You can’t immigrate, you can’t come in. It’s a state for Jews and only Jews, and we will eventually get rid of anyone who is not a Jew. That is political Zionism today.

And the disparity between understanding that this is what it is here in North America as I’m touring my film and I’m realizing how few people understand what it is and the reality on the ground, this idea playing itself out to its screeching peak, is–the disparity is astounding and playing itself out is incredibly violent and intense. And so, today, if I was to talk to you on the bus or I was out walking down the street with you and I was saying all these things, there’s a very good idea that we would be beaten by the time we get to the end of the street, because there is now so much threat to that idea surviving. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is colossal disappointment over the so-called peace process finally completely dying. There was a little bit of hope with Obama, Kerry, a little bit of hope with George Mitchell. It was kind of like no one really believed that they would do anything. A lot of people said, well, at least something’s happening. America, having taken the side of Israel on all of the peace negotiations, having put all its capital on the side of the Israeli negotiators, all of its weapons on the side of Israel’s negotiators, and then sat in the middle calling itself the unbiased mitigator in this negotiation, which we’re doomed to end, gave us a false sense of hope. It has built endless institutions in Palestine. It built a government called the Palestinian Authority. It gave that Palestinian Authority billions in donations. And it’s based on hot air and nothing else.

And that thing finally collapsing now, over the last year, and the taking root of nonviolent movements, effective nonviolent movements, such as the fight of the Palestinian political prisoners with ongoing hunger strikes, such as the boycott movement and the antifascist movement inside of Israel, and the most important of which, the rising of national identity amongst Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and inside Israel, and the linking of these three peoples irregardless of who are their leaderships, this is the most important element in the picture.

So the total disappointment with the peace process and the collapse of hope that the conflict will ever end gave rise to a new kind of wave of understanding the conflict is never going to end. The generals and the capitalists that are sitting over there and are making money off the war don’t give a shit about us. Israel saw a huge social justice movement that we’ve covered here on The Real News for two years. That social justice came and fell, and nothing changed except there was a huge change in the public identity, in the public, the way people see Israel, and the way that the people see that their fight is not just with the Palestinians, it’s also with the government, and it’s also with each other. It has further segregated us inside Israel.

And so all these things together burst out. And ... people look at this war that happened this summer, this attack on Gaza, and they say, oh, it was really the worst attack on Gaza so far. They were right. But this attack was not just this summer. What happened this summer was, yes, 51 days of war, but it actually started not even with the teenagers getting kidnapped; it started with the Palestinian hunger strikers in the beginning of the year.

What we were seeing in January a year ago is that the African refugees were rising up, demanding freedom, because they were being shipped off to a massive prison in the south of the country, something very similar to a concentration camp for African refugees. So they were rising up demanding freedom. The Palestinian hunger strikers went on a hunger strike and were very close to getting achievements with that hunger strike. Hamas was on the verge of signing unity with Fatah, which would’ve been the last thing that would’ve saved it. And this was when we went to war.

So, since then, and if you were actually following what’s happening on the ground like we were on The Real News, that’s when the street-level violence started. And the war ended at the end of August, but the street-level violence never ended. In fact, it’s getting worse day to day to day. You know, a few weeks ago, a Palestinian bus driver, who drives an Israeli bus in an Israeli bus company called Egged, was beaten to death and hung in the bus that he was driving, because he’s Palestinian. This is one of the things.

Now, there’s no doubt in any Palestinian’s mind that I’ve met that he was beaten to death and hung. But the police was claiming that he killed himself, and most Israelis believe that he killed himself. And this sparked a wave of bus drivers rising up against insecurity on the job, demanding that the bus company either separate them from the people who get on the–the passengers, or get a security guard, because the Palestinian bus drivers in the Israeli bus come company were saying that they were experiencing daily racist attacks, daily racist assaults. And the company refused. And forty of them have quit. So a third of the Palestinian workers who worked in the Israeli bus company quit because of racism and violence.

That’s where we are today. So six months of endless street-level violence.

JAY: Are there internal factors that you can see amongst Jewish Israelis that will change things? I mean, like, I interviewed quite a few families who lost people in 9/11 in New York, and I was told at least half the families either joined or supported the Not In My Name campaign. They didn’t want revenge. There were saying, don’t start another war, this is not going to bring my loved ones back. And they started getting their head around the context of why it happened. And there’s other examples in the world, including Palestinians, who have lost children, but they get the context. They don’t just want blind revenge.

But one gets the feeling that in Israel there’s been kind of a tipping point where the majority, even a preponderance of people are saying, they’re out to kill us, let’s kill them first, kind of end the conversation.

TARACHANSKY: Yeah. The consensus in Israel has now gotten so bad that the general consensus debate’s between expel the rest of them or kill the rest of them.

JAY: It’s a real fascistization of public opinion.

TARACHANSKY: Well, we saw, during the war, protests where ... people holding up signs during the protest, reading “one nation, one army, one leader”.
...

So I think that in America, in North America, there’s a lot of this mentality of there’s a problem, what’s the solution. We are light years away from resolving the conflict. I think a lot of people here in North America think that we’ve always been in conflict. But if you look at the history of Israel-Palestine, the history of this specific geographical spot, conflict over the centuries has actually been an exception. Peace and coexistence has been the rule. And our conflict is only about 70 years old, and we’ve already gone through huge changes as societies. And so let’s think a little bit before we start talking about solutions.

But what I can tell you is that profound changes are happening inside Israeli society, putting aside the Palestinian conflict for a second or the conflict for the Palestinians. Israel ... is a very segregated society. You have the Russians here, you have the Ashkenazis there, you have the Mizrahim here, and then you have the Orthodox there, and Ethiopians here, and so on and so forth. And inside the Mizrahim you have the Persians, and then you have the Iraqis, and you have the Moroccans. And there’s very little mixing. Israel has almost zero social mobility. If you are born poor, you will die poor. You will not come out of the ghetto. And the media in Israel focuses on a couple of neighborhoods in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. And that’s it. What happens outside of these communities, what happens of Haifa, what happens in Palestinian majority towns, what happens in poor peripheral Mizrahi neighborhoods–completely absent.

That doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening. What is happening is that these segregated communities–and I think it’s a result of the social justice movement that was in 2011, 2012, when we saw the biggest protests in the country’s history, half a million people on the streets in Tel Aviv one night in a country of 7 million people. That’s a lot of people on the streets. As a result of that, people started looking around them, and for the first time identity politics is becoming something that is on the fore. So the Mizrahim are saying that–the Jews that came from Arab countries are saying, we’ve been oppressed all along for the Zionist Ashkenazi project. What about us? To the level of forcing the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, to apologize for Ashkenazi European condescendence towards the Mizrahim, something that would have been unimaginable. We’re seeing the Orthodox digging their heels further as new laws inspired by Yair Lapid’s party are forcing the Orthodox to go to the army, makes them more united and further in conflict with the society.

So a lot of these groups, for various complex reasons that we don’t have time to discuss here, are getting more insular and more against each other. And so this is–I think this is a very important change. It’s because for so many years, with the illusion of the peace process, we were not looking at the real problems inside Israel.

JAY: Well, I was going to say, somebody once told me, ... that if it wasn't for the external fight with the Palestinians, Israel would rip itself to shreds, especially the secular-Orthodox split.

TARACHANSKY: Yeah. And this is what we’re seeing. Israel is now ripping itself apart. And fascism is celebrating in the ruins.

An Occupier's Peace or a Just Peace - Shir Hever on RAI

The decades-old conflict in Middle East, between Israel & Palestine, won't end so easily, as the Global West perceives it to be, because a "just peace" have to be brought in for everyone living there. In a society, where there's "just peace," people need to have equal rights & obligations.

The current conflict will continue on until the occupying force, Israel, only wants peace on its terms, & of course, the conflict itself is helping to line the pockets of influential people in Israel & around the world. Political & military elites, & esp. the conservatives in North America & Europe want this conflict to continue on because they are profiting from it immensely. Of course, the average joe in Israel & the occupied territories of Palestine merely wants peace where everyone has equal rights.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWYeWeoQ-uQ

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: So if you're going to talk about what the future might look like, what a peace, if possible, might look like, you've first got to talk about, well, who actually wants peace, and on what basis do they want peace? ... There are a few people in Israel who are doing extremely well out of the current situation. There's a stratum of multimillionaires and billionaires, a political stratum. I mean, why would they want anything other than what they got?

SHIR HEVER, ECONOMIST, ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER: I think the vast majority of the Israeli public wants peace. But a famous German military thinker, Clausewitz, has once said the occupier always wants peace. Peace means the status quo. That's why Palestinians don't call for peace, they call for a just peace. And that's also why the Israeli peace movement has collapsed because the peace movement had this kind of idea that if Palestinians would be offered peace, they would just accept that the current situation will continue. And, of course, that's a completely false premise.

But there are, of course, people in Israel who do have an incentive to end the occupation and to end the injustice. A lot of Israelis are suffering because of the massive cost of security that is needed to repress the Palestinians. I would say the majority of Israelis are losing in their standard of living because of this continued repression of Palestinians, because of the continued conflict. So they have a real interest even in a just peace, but their voices are not heard and they cannot be heard within this kind of colonial system, which is dominated by those elites who are actually profiting.

JAY: So talk a bit about the elites because it's a very small group that own the dominating, commanding heights of the Israeli economy.

HEVER: Yeah. And I would say the major forces that push Israel in this direction of continued conflict and continued occupation are actually outside of Israel. These are the forces--the U.S. government and right-wing groups within the U.S.--that fund the most extremist and violent political movements inside Israel. Sheldon Adelson in the U.S. has opened up a free newspaper in Israel in order to make sure that Netanyahu keeps winning the elections with a massive investment that no one on the other side can match. So that sort of support makes sure that the hawks continue to dominate the political structure.

Sure, there are also Israeli security companies and military companies that are very powerful and very influential. In fact, there was a meeting in 2011 of 80 of Israel's biggest capitalists but not from the security sector, which said, if Israel will continue on this path, we're going to get to the situation of South Africa, we're going to be boycotted by the world, we have to do something. They had this emergency meeting. But they couldn't actually do something. It shows that even capital has its limits. They couldn't find a way to convince the government to act differently because there's just no historical precedent for that. There is no historical precedent of a colonial power which just stops in its tracks and says, this is wrong, we should allow these people freedom and equality.

JAY: Would you say if outside of the security-military-industrial complex, if you will, the rest of the majority of big capital would actually like to see a resolution of this?

HEVER: Yes, yes. And they've tried a couple times to fund their own candidates for prime minister and spent a lot of money on that. The public didn't vote for these candidates. The public wants a strong leader that can say--a sort of security person who can say--I will be a representative of your national pride, I will make sure Israel is safe, I will fight Iran, and so on. And when somebody says, if we end the occupation it's actually good for the economy, this sort of argument doesn't get--.

JAY: But if their heart was really in it--and they being these other big capitalists--I mean, they could match Sheldon Adleson and they could have their own TV stations and their own newspapers. I mean, they could really go at it. Is their heart really in it? They're doing so well the way things are.

HEVER: I think they estimate that if they do that, people will not see that, won't watch that television or will not read the newspaper. And they're right because people don't like to read that they're in the wrong, and that things have to change, and that political power has to be shared. They don't want to read that.

JAY: Alright. ... what is a model that if you could even think ten, twenty, thirty years out, if you were going to try to create a model that would be, one, sellable, not just just. I mean, you can imagine a just model, which is pretty straightforward. It's a Democratic, single secular state and everybody gets to vote and it's a modern country. But right now that's not a sellable proposition. So some people have talked a possible federated state, where you have a province or a state within a Federation which is primarily Jewish. Hebrew would be the language. You would have another one, another state, which is primarily--Arabic is the primary language, and so on, or some configuration. You must have thought about this. What might be possible?

HEVER: It's not only that I've thought about it, that this is also almost an obsession, but not just for me, but for political activists, for leftists for years.

But I want to answer you in two parts. The first part, I have to say, again I have to be very sensitive to my own position of privilege. Being an Israeli Jew and saying well, this is the solution is not going to work, and it shouldn't be, it shouldn't work. Palestinians should not get their solution from some Israeli. They have to come up with their own platform for political change. And therefore, I have to be very careful in how I answer that sort of question.

Having said that, let me tell you what voices I hear from my Palestinian friends about what they're saying. And among these voices, you can hear a lot of those ideas of a federation, a confederation, two separate states, three separate states, one democratic state, joining with Egypt. You can hear a lot of interesting ideas. But the voice that comes out the clearest in the last few years is the voice that says, we don't care about that. All of these ideas are legal demarcations, are some kind of--where you put the border here or there. That's not important. The important thing is to talk about rights, talk about how we have the right to move wherever we want, to say whatever we want, to have a government that represents us, to organize, to practice our religion, to trade freely. That's what it means to be free. And then it doesn't matter so much exactly how many borders you're going to stretch across this territory. If we're practical about it, historically Palestine is a country that was divided by the UN, but in fact there has never been a Palestinian state there. There's always been one powerful force of Israel and some areas that were temporarily held by Egypt and Jordan, and then Israel occupied these parts as well. Now we have a situation in which there's one state under Israeli domination with a population of 12 million: 49% Jews, 49% Palestinians, 2% others. And it's an apartheid state.
...

JAY: What I'm getting at, ... if there's going to be rights, there's going to have to be at some point some kind of buy-in by enough Israeli Jews to go along with this, I mean, unless you think there's going to be some military defeat of the Israeli state, and it's hard to imagine that right now. Even if the American policy was to significantly shift, you still have a mass of Jewish-Israeli public opinion that is where it is. I mean, it's in not a very good place. There's got to be some kind of understanding of how that's going to be dealt with to create a model that's at least the next step.

HEVER: There's this famous British general that once said in Zimbabwe, whatever happens, we have machine guns and they don't. And they lost. So the military defeat is not so unimaginable, but, of course, it'll be further down the road. It's not going to be in the next few years.

I think the fact is that a Jewish state is not sustainable. It's a concept that doesn't fit the 21st century. It barely fits into the 20th century. It's a racist idea.
...

JAY: Well, I was about to get to that, 'cause then you get to the campaign for boycotting, disinvestment, and sanctions. It's clearly having some influence. It's hurting the Israeli economy. If it was stronger, it could precipitate more self-interest in some kind of change in Israel. But don't you then still have to have--okay, then what does that look like? 'Cause if you get to a point of real rights the way you're talking about, this can't be a Jewish state anymore.

HEVER: Exactly. Yeah. It cannot be a Jewish state. It's going to be--I mean, even if there will be a separate Palestinian state according to what we call the two-state solution, then the battle will continue. The struggle for equal rights in Israel will continue, because Israel cannot be a Jewish state; it has to be a state for all its citizens, one way or another. And the way that this defeat comes, it comes very suddenly. And, of course, the model is South Africa, where one week before apartheid collapsed, 90% of white people in South Africa supported apartheid. One week after apartheid collapsed, they all say we were always against it. And the Israeli minister of justice, Tzipi Livni, just said a couple of weeks ago, in response to the BDS movement, she said, I went to South Africa and spoke to some Jewish people there about their experiences from this era of the fall of apartheid, and the main thing they told me is it came unexpectedly, it came suddenly. There is a moment in which you lose courage, you lose your faith that you can continue to repress other people forever. And that moment may not be as far as we believe. I'm hopeful.
...

The Quantum Mechanics of Israeli Totalitarianism

A great opinion piece, detailing how Israel controls Palestinians.

With that much control, even little kids & teens start to rebel against their own parents, who love them dearly. Israel, after all, is an occupying force, occupying illegally (per several UN resolutions) & would love to even control how much air Palestinians breath (it already controls their water).

It's funny how the Western, developed world still think that Israel is a democratic country, surrounded by authoritarian regimes. As the opinion piece points out very nicely that "the unending occupation, the sheer chutzpah with which the Israeli government continues to expand its presence in the West Bank while sieging Gaza, the escalating protests by minorities inside the country's 1967 borders, & the composition of the new government, all put the lie to such claims today," that it's a democratic country.

What was astonishing for me in reading this commentary was the intro to few processes & procedures Israel has put in place to control the Palestinians. And, these procedures are put in such a way, that an untrained eye would not be able to see the oppression & control Israel exerts on Palestinians.

Then the developed world complains a few rockets were fired in Israeli territory by Palestinians. The developed world should ask the question to themselves, before blaming & complaining about Palestinians, is what would you do if someone (your boss, your parents, your spouse, your neighbour etc.) watches & control your every move? Would you feel relaxed in that environment or would you violently lash back, keeping in mind that moving out of that job / family / relationship / neighbourhood is not an option?
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/05/quantum-mechanics-israeli-totalitarianism-150507072609153.html

With the coalition government formed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu easily the most ultranationalist & conservative government in Israel's history, even the most cockeyed optimist would shrink from imagining that Oslo can still be revived, if only the right treatment were concocted.

The problem today is not that anyone but the most self-interested Israeli, Palestinian or US officials still pretends that the peace process is functioning. Rather, it's that hardly anyone in a position of power can explain precisely when, how & especially why it died. To do so requires moving far more deeply into the dynamics of the endlessly troubled peace process than most policy-makers or commentators are willing to delve, into what I term the "quantum mechanics" underlying Oslo's fatally flawed structures.

Israel has long claimed uniquely democratic credentials in a region besot with authoritarian regimes.
The unending occupation, the sheer chutzpah with which the Israeli government continues to expand its presence in the West Bank while sieging Gaza, the escalating protests by minorities inside the country's 1967 borders, & the composition of the new government, all put the lie to such claims today.

Matrix of control

What's still poorly understood by most non-Palestinians is just how deep the level of control has long been. Even if you've spent decades travelling through the West Bank & Gaza, the intensity of that control remains hard to grasp.

As I walked through the Jordan Valley last month near the front-line village of Fasayel, I began to understand how one reason why it's been so difficult to explain the intensity & all-encompassing scope of Israel's "matrix of control" over the Occupied Territories is that even its critics don't use strong enough language to describe it.

Israel is not just an "occupier" or a "coloniser". However democratic it may (or may not) be inside its 1967 borders, in the Occupied Territories Israel's rule is nothing short of totalitarian.

In calling Israeli rule totalitarian, I am not arguing that the government mimics the worst policies of thought control & ideological purism practised by the 20th century's Fascist & Communist states such as Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia or Maoist China (although Israel's constant harassment & imprisonment of Palestinian activists does reflect a desire to control how Palestinians think and act, at least publicly).

Rather, I'm talking about a much deeper level of control, at what can only be described as the quantum level of Palestinian daily life.

To understand how it feels to live as a Palestinian today you need to think like a particle physicist, not a social scientist. Moving through the space of Israel/Palestine involves negotiating a host of forces that the average Palestinian has about as much control over as the average electron or proton does of the nuclear & quantum forces determining its path. And it's through this near total control of the space that Israel is able, in George Orwell's description of totalitarianism, to "control the past as well as the future".

Israeli geographer Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) coined the "matrix of control" to describe these forces. The name evokes numerous overlapping layers of control, including the physical infrastructure of settlements & their security corridors & zones, bypass roads, closed military areas & even "nature reserves". The matrix also includes the bureaucratic & legal/planning levels, & the use of large-scale violence & imprisonment to control people's behaviour & movement.

With its matrix of control, Israel has achieved an unparalleled & uniquely successful synergy of "bio" & "necro"-politics, controlling life & death at most every scale of Palestinian existence. The matrix is continuously adjusted with as much care as Israel has adjusted the caloric intake of Gazans during its periodic intensifications of the Gazan siege.

Three, four & five dimensions

A look at the group of detailed maps created by ICAHD reveals upwards of two dozen parameters of control that can intersect at any given coordinate on the map. But the map is only a two dimensional representation of a multidimensional & multi-levelled reality. It's not just various forces meeting on the ground. When you're walking through the 97% of the West Bank that is in Areas B or C & thus under Israel security control, you realise that the matrix extends both under the ground you're walking on & above your head.

Below ground, Israel controls all the water resources in the West Bank, &d for 50 years has systematically taken most every possible well, stream, aquifer or other water source from Palestinians (in direct violation of international law, it must be remembered).

It also controls the airspace above Palestinians' heads, as the constant buzz of Israeli fighter jets training overhead in the Jordan Valley, & the ubiquitous presence of drones & helicopters almost everywhere at any time, & the prohibitions on building new floors on existing structures makes clear.
In whatever direction Palestinians look or want to step or reach - left or right, forwards or backwards, above or below them - the land, air & water surrounding them is largely outside their permanent control.

Blink of an eye

But it is not just that most of their territory is out of Palestinian hands. The quantum physics of Israel's matrix of control also has its own Heisenberg, or uncertainty principle.

In quantum mechanics this principle asserts that it is impossible to know with precision the exact state of a particle because the very act of observing it changes its state. In the same way, merely by changing their location Palestinians change the state of territory upon which they are moving.

On the one hand, despite the rockiness of the landscape, the geography of the West Bank can be among the most liquid on earth. It changes as one moves through it, depending on who you are - Jew or Palestinian, settler or refusnik, soldier or international. Spaces that seems open & free can suddenly be surrounded by military forces & closed off, declared off limits for any length of time for a variety of reasons merely because Palestinians moved into & through it or used it for grazing, water, or other normal activities.

Moreover, their very movement through the geography can change it not just for a moment, but permanently. At the same time, the uncertainty principle can also operate with a time lag. If Palestinians decide to walk through a Jordan Valley village, for example, or to plant trees on their land in the hills around Hebron or Jenin, it's not at all uncommon for the Israeli military to issue demolition or confiscation orders a few days later.

In particular, the movement of Jews has an even more profound effect than Palestinians especially when establishing an outpost or settlement. Once land is claimed even on the flimsiest of pretexts the military usually moves in & declares a still larger area a security zone, making it impossible for Palestinians to access the land for months, years or even decades.

And so, it seems that land in Palestine can change states from liquid to solid almost instantly, freezing in place whatever Israel decides it wants frozen, from people to legal categories. The quantum physics of Palestinian geography can thus produce permanent changes not just in the three normal dimensions of space, but in the conflict's "fourth dimension" as well, namely time.

But however many dimensions one considers, the goal remains the same: to achieve, in the words of the Palestinian-Israeli hip-hop group DAM, "Maximum Jews on maximum land; minimum Arabs on minimum land."

Neoliberal policies

There is even a fifth, economic dimension in which the physics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict operates. The neoliberal policies imposed on the Occupied Territories under Oslo have ensured that when Palestinians aren't being displaced by Israeli settlers or bombs, they are fixed in place as objects of development, whose economic life is confined to small spaces that remain largely under Israeli control. The possibility of their becoming subjects able to shape their own destinies is, it seems, outside the laws of physics operating in the Holy Land.

It is the changing nature of the political, physical & economic geographies of the Israeli-controlled Occupied Territories that has made it so difficult for Palestinians & their supporters internationally (including in Israel) to develop effective strategies of resistance, never mind transcending the occupation.

With Oslo's final demise, Palestinians don't just need new strategies for resisting an occupation without end; what's needed is an entirely new physics as well.

Indeed, it has long been argued that Palestinians are still waiting for their Ghandi. It might well turn out that to overcome decades of totalitarian Israeli rule, a long-dead peace process, & ineptitude, corruption & authoritarianism internally, Einstein would be a far more useful figure.


Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle Eastern History at University of California, Irvine, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Lund University.

Israeli soldiers cast doubt on legality of Gaza military tactics

Well, Muslims already dislike Israeli occupation of Palestine, but reading these kinds of stories / articles, I wonder how come others still support the occupation, wholeheartedly. Heck, saying anything against the Israeli occupation is considered "anti-Semitic" & many developed countries are outlawing it, outright (Canada, included). And then the whole world considers the developed countries of the West as fair, just, & humane?

But then, is it fair to solely blame the West for supporting Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine? After all, the leader of the country, where Islam's 2 holiest sites are located, who is also known as, "custodian of the 2 holy mosques," collaborated with Israelis against Iran, for its own geopolitical agenda.

It was not that surprising to read the gung-ho, radicalized, extreme hateful attitudes of the Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians. It wasn't surprising to read how bombings were conducted or civilians were killed ("shoot in memory of our comrade" who was killed by friendly fire). It was not surprising that how sites which should not have been bombed (UN schools being used as refugee centers, for example) were bombed & reported in the world media that they were never bombed (because the firing order was given for a few hundred meters out of the supposedly-protected site, & then given a "correction order" to fire again at the site, & only the first firing order is logged in the records, not the "correction fire.")

It wasn't surprising, at least to me, & I assume that to millions more around the world, because these kinds of stories about Israel are not uncommon. There are news articles, opinion pieces, movies, etc. for as long as I can remember. Heck, with internet, it's becoming even easier to spread these kinds of stories around. But, the situation on the ground have only gotten worsen in the past half century, & not become better in any way.

Be it any war waged by anyone (US, UK, NATO, Israel etc.) for any reason (usually to kill a threat), it usually achieves the opposite. The threat never goes away & actually, increases much more. Because, the person whose innocent family has been killed off right before him/her, has no reason or hope to keep living. Then, that person becomes a suicide bomber & joins a party which allows it to take revenge.

On top of that, actions like these by countries waging wars make their own populace further insecure, since now, they don't know if & when that person will strike back. This was all very nicely portrayed in a Canadian movie, "Inch'Allah". It even showed how adversely these hardline tactics affect Israeli soldiers themselves, since their hearts know what they are doing is wrong (assuming they are conscientious enough), but they have to follow orders. This long-term conflict between the hearts & minds give them PTSDs. So nobody is winning with this illegal occupation of Palestine.

People who have their eyes closed will keep defending Israel & dismiss stories like these, even though, these are accounts of the war from soldiers who were themselves involved in that uni-lateral Gaza war of 2014. These people don't just stop there but take away anyone's right to criticize Israel, too.

As George Orwell said, "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/04/israeli-soldiers-cast-doubt-on-legality-of-gaza-military-operation

Testimonies provided by more than 60 Israeli soldiers who fought in last summer’s war in Gaza have raised serious questions over whether Israel’s tactics breached its obligations under international law to distinguish & protect civilians.
 
The claims – collected by the human rights group Breaking the Silence – are contained in dozens of interviews with Israeli combatants, as well as with soldiers who served in command centres & attack rooms, a quarter of them officers up to the rank of major.
 
They include allegations that Israeli ground troops were briefed to regard everything inside Gaza as a “threat” & they should “not spare ammo”, & that tanks fired randomly or for revenge on buildings without knowing whether they were legitimate military targets or contained civilians.
 
In their testimonies, soldiers depict rules of engagement they characterised as permissive, “lax” or largely non-existent, including how some soldiers were instructed to treat anyone seen looking towards their positions as “scouts” to be fired on.
 
The group also claims that the Israeli military operated with different safety margins for bombing or using artillery & mortars near civilians & its own troops, with Israeli forces at times allowed to fire significantly closer to civilians than Israeli soldiers.
 
Phillipe Sands, professor of law at University College London & a specialist in international humanitarian law, described the testimonies as “troubling insights into intention & method”.

“Maybe it will be said that they are partial & selective, but surely they cannot be ignored or brushed aside, coming as they do from individuals with first-hand experience: the rule of law requires proper investigation & inquiry.”

Describing the rules that meant life & death in Gaza during the 50-day war – a conflict in which 2,200 Palestinians were killed – the interviews shed light for the first time not only on what individual soldiers were told but on the doctrine informing the operation.
 
Despite the insistence of Israeli leaders that it took all necessary precautions to protect civilians, the interviews provide a very different picture. They suggest that an overarching priority was the minimisation of Israeli military casualties even at the risk of Palestinian civilians being harmed.
 
While the Israel Defence Forces Military Advocate General’s office has launched investigations into a number of individual incidents of alleged wrongdoing, the testimonies raise wider questions over policies under which the war was conducted.
 
Post-conflict briefings to soldiers suggest that the high death toll & destruction were treated as “achievements” by officers who judged the attrition would keep Gaza “quiet for 5 years”.

The tone, according to one sergeant, was set before the ground offensive into Gaza that began on 17 July last year in pre-combat briefings that preceded the entry of 6 reinforced brigades into Gaza.

“[It] took place during training at Tze’elim, before entering Gaza, with the commander of the armoured battalion to which we were assigned,” recalled a sergeant, one of dozens of Israeli soldiers who have described how the war was fought last summer in the coastal strip.

“[The commander] said: ‘We don’t take risks. We do not spare ammo. We unload, we use as much as possible.’”
 
“The rules of engagement [were] pretty identical,” added another sergeant who served in a mechanised infantry unit in Deir al-Balah. “Anything inside [the Gaza Strip] is a threat."
 
The area has to be ‘sterilised,’ empty of people – & if we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming: “I give up” or something – then he’s a threat & there’s authorisation to open fire ... The saying was: ‘There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.’ In that situation, anyone there is involved.”
 
“The rules of engagement for soldiers advancing on the ground were: open fire, open fire everywhere, first thing when you go in,” recalled another soldier who served during the ground operation in Gaza City. The assumption being that the moment we went in [to the Gaza Strip], anyone who dared poke his head out was a terrorist.”

Soldiers were also encouraged to treat individuals who came too close or watched from windows or other vantage points as “scouts” who could be killed regardless of whether there was hard evidence they were spotting for Hamas or other militant groups. “If it looks like a man, shoot. It was simple: you’re in a motherfucking combat zone,” said a sergeant who served in an infantry unit in the northern Gaza strip.

“A few hours before you went in the whole area was bombed, if there’s anyone there who doesn’t clearly look innocent, you apparently need to shoot that person.” Defining ‘innocent’ he added: “If you see the person is less than 1.40 metres tall or if you see it’s a lady ... If it’s a man you shoot.”

In at least one instance described by soldiers, being female did not help 2 women who were killed because one had a mobile phone. A soldier described the incident: “After the commander told the tank commander to go scan that place, & 3 tanks went to check [the bodies] ... it was 2 women, over the age of 30 ... unarmed. They were listed as terrorists. They were fired at. So of course they must have been terrorists.”

The testimonies raise questions whether Israel fully met its obligations to protect civilians in a conflict area from unnecessary harm, requiring it not only to distinguish between civilians & combatants but also ensure that when using force, where there is the risk of civilian harm, that it is “proportionate”.

“One of the main threads in the testimonies,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer & legal adviser to Breaking the Silence, “is the presumption that despite the fact that the battle was being waged in urban area – & one of most densely populated in the world – no civilians would be in the areas they entered.”

That presumption, say soldiers, was sustained by virtue of warnings to Palestinians to leave their homes & neighbourhoods delivered in leaflets dropped by aircraft & in text & phone messages which meant – in the IDF’s interpretation – that anyone who remained was not a civilian.
 
Even at the time that view was deeply controversial because – says Sfard & other legal experts interviewed – it reinterpreted international law regarding the duty of protection for areas containing civilians.
 
Sfard added: “We are not talking about a [deliberate] decision to kill civilians. But to say the rules of engagement were lax gives them too much credit. They allowed engagement in almost any circumstances, unless there was a felt to be a risk to an IDF soldier.”

If the rules of engagement were highly permissive, other soldiers say that they also detected a darker mood in their units that further coloured the way that soldiers behaved. “The motto guiding lots of people was: ‘Let’s show them,’ recalls a lieutenant who served in the Givati Brigade in Rafah. “It was evident that was a starting point. Lots of guys who did their reserve duty with me don’t have much pity towards [the Palestinians].”

He added: “There were a lot of people there who really hate Arabs. Really, really hate Arabs. You could see the hate in their eyes.”

A second lieutenant echoed his comments. “You could feel there was a radicalisation in the way the whole thing was conducted. The discourse was extremely rightwing ... [And] the very fact that [Palestinians were] described as ‘uninvolved’ rather than as civilians, & the desensitisation to the surging number of dead on the Palestinian side. It doesn’t matter whether they’re involved or not … that’s something that troubles me.”

And the testimonies, too, suggest breaches of the IDF’s own code of ethics – The Spirit of the IDF – which insists: “IDF soldiers will not use their weapons & force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, & will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity & property.”

Contrary to that, however, testimonies describe how soldiers randomly shelled buildings either to no obvious military purpose or for revenge.
 
One sergeant who served in a tank in the centre of the Gaza Strip recalls: “A week or two after we entered the Gaza Strip & we were all firing a lot when there wasn’t any need for it – just for the sake of firing – a member of our company was killed.

“The company commander came over to us & told us that one guy was killed due to such-and-such, & he said: ‘Guys, get ready, get in your tanks, & we’ll fire a barrage in memory of our comrade” … My tank went up to the post – a place from which I can see targets – can see buildings – [and] fired at them, & the platoon commander says: ‘OK guys, we’ll now fire in memory of our comrade’ & we said OK.”

How Israeli forces used artillery & mortars in Gaza, says Breaking the Silence, has raised other concerns beyond either the rules of engagement or the actions of specific units.
 
According to the group’s research during the war, the Israeli military operated 2 different sets of rules for how close certain weapons could be fired to Israeli soldiers & Palestinian civilians.
 
Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, & himself a former soldier, explains: “What our research during this project uncovered was that there were 3 designated ‘Operational Levels’ during the conflict – numbered 1 to 3. What the operational level was was set higher up the chain of command. Above the level of the Gaza division. What those levels do is designate the likelihood of civilian casualties from weapons like 155mm artillery & bombs from ‘low’ damage to civilians to ‘high’.

“What we established was that for artillery fire in operational levels 2 & 3 Israeli forces were allowed to fire much closer to civilians than they were to friendly Israeli forces.”

Ahead of the conflict – in which 34,000 shells were fired into Gaza, 19,000 of them explosive – artillery & air liaison officers had been supplied with a list of sensitive sites to which fire was not to be directed within clear limits of distance. These included hospitals & UN schools being used as refugee centres, even in areas where evacuation had been ordered.

“Even then,” explains Shaul, “we have a testimony we took that a senior brigade commander issued order how to get around that, instructing that the unit fired first outside of the protected area & then calling for correction fire on to the location that they wanted to hit.

“He said: “If you go on the radio & ask to hit this building, we have to say no. But if you give a target 200 metres outside then you can ask for correction. Only thing that is recorded is the first target not the correction fire.”

And in the end, despite the high number of civilian casualties, the debriefings treated the destruction as an accomplishment that would discourage Hamas in the future.

“You could say they went over most of the things viewed as accomplishments,” said a Combat Intelligence Corps sergeant. “ “They spoke about numbers: 2,000 dead & 11,000 wounded, half a million refugees, decades worth of destruction. Harm to lots of senior Hamas members & to their homes, to their families. These were stated as accomplishments so that no one would doubt that what we did during this period was meaningful.

“They spoke of a five-year period of quiet (in which there would be no hostilities between Israel & Hamas) when in fact it was a 72-hour ceasefire, & at the end of those 72 hours they were firing again.”

Without responding to the specific allegations, the Israeli military said: “The IDF is committed to properly investigating all credible claims raised via media, NGOs, & official complaints concerning IDF conduct during operation Protective Edge, in as serious a manner as possible.

“It should be noted that following Operation Protective Edge, thorough investigations were carried out, & soldiers & commanders were given the opportunity to present any complaint. Exceptional incidents were then transferred to the military advocate general for further inquiry.”

'Grueling & hazardous': HRW exposes Palestinian child abuse in Israeli settler farms

So, apparently, the Holocaust allows Israelis to employ Palestinian children as low-wage workers, & the world stays silent on it, because Palestinians need to suffer now for the suffering of the Israelis in the Holocaust.

Now, some may say, why am I bringing up the Holocaust in an article about child labour in Israel. The reason is that you say anything, which seems to be against Israel, & the answer is always, from Israelis & Zionist supporters, is that Jews have suffered a lot from the Exodus to Holocaust. Although, that is nothing to do with the topic at hand, the answer is always the same.

So, apparently, everyone else, regardless of whether they ever did anything to any Jew or Israeli, need to suffer now.

It's funny how Israelis always find a nice loophole. Child labour is illegal in Israel BUT if child labourers are employed through a middleman contractor, then it's all legal.
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http://rt.com/news/249281-child-abuse-israeli-farms/

Human Rights Watch has heavily criticized the abuse of Palestinian children working on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that children are working in hazardous conditions & in violation of Israeli & international law.
 
The report, called “Ripe for Abuse,” said that children as young as 10 are working on the settlement farms in the Jordan Valley, sometimes in conditions that are harmful to their health.
 
HRW also said that much of the produce cultivated & harvested by child labor is exported to Europe & the US.
 
"Israel’s settlements are profiting from rights abuses against Palestinian children. Children from communities impoverished by Israel’s discrimination & settlement policies are dropping out of school & taking on dangerous work because they feel they have no alternatives, while Israel turns a blind eye," HRW's Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement.
 
The head of the settlement community in the Jordan Valley dismissed the HRW report as “lies.”

"They've made up lies. The entire goal of this organization is to sully Israel's image. If they'd show me a farmer employing a child, I'd report it to police immediately," David Elhayani, a former farmer, told AFP.
 
He insisted he would lose his exporting license if he were caught employing child labor, although he did acknowledge that the Palestinian contractors he works with use middlemen who could employ children without a farmer knowing about it.
 
HRW interviewed 38 children & 12 adults to research their report in the Palestinian communities of the Jordan Valley who were employed by settlement farms in the area. HRW acknowledges that children are the minority of workers employed on settlement farms, but says that they do so because of a lack of any real alternatives.
 
Israel’s policies throughout the occupied West Bank restrict Palestinian access to land, water & fertilizer as well as their ability to transport & sell their goods.

“Ask [the children] if they have any bread in the house,” a Palestinian middleman who supplied Palestinian workers to settlement farms told an Israeli human rights worker.
 
The researchers found that most of the children working on settlements had dropped out of school & the rest were working part time while still attending school.

“It’s very obvious which kids go to work in the settlements, because they are exhausted in class,” a school administrator told HRW.
 
On average, children said they began working at the settlements when they were 13 or 14, but HRW found one boy who said he started working when he was 10. Work starts at 5:30 a.m. or 6 a.m. & lasts for 7 to 8 hours, which increases to 12 hours during harvest time, often for 6 or 7 days a week.

“The work that children perform can be both grueling & hazardous,” the report says. Some children complained of skin rashes, dizziness & vomiting after spraying crops with pesticides without adequate protection while others were injured by sharp blades & machinery used to cut crops.
 
Temperatures can exceed 50 degrees Celsius in summer & so many of the children as well as the adults are susceptible to heat stroke.
 
The children working in settlements are paid very low wages, far less than the Israeli minimum wage, which is $6.20 an hour. Most of the children interviewed by HRW earned $16 to $19 a day.
 
Israeli & Palestinian law makes it illegal to work if you’re under 15. Under military orders issued by Israel in the West Bank, Israel’s domestic minimum wage law is applicable to Palestinian workers in settlements.
 
But the practice of using middlemen to hire workers means there’s mostly no contract linking an employee child or otherwise to their employer.
 
Workers are paid “in cash, [get] no pay slips, & there are no [work] permits, so there is no paper trail to demand severance pay or anything else,” a Palestinian middleman told HRW.
 
Children working in Israeli settlements not only violate Israeli & Palestinian law but also international law. Both Israel & Palestine are party to the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which protects children from being economically exploited & from performing work which is hazardous or interferes with their schooling.
 
HRW also called on the US & Europe to stop importing produce from the settlements, much of which is given preferential tariffs.
 
"The EU has moved to exclude Israeli settlement products from the preferential tariff treatment it provides to Israeli goods... but [member states] have not instructed businesses to end trade with settlement-based entities. The US in practice continues to grant preferential treatment to Israeli settlement products under the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement," HRW said.

Nightmare: Masked IDF troops interrogate & traumatise Palestinian kids

Didn't you know stones are a very dangerous weapon of mass destruction? (sarcasm)

When IDF (Israeli Defence Force) is going to treat Palestinian kids like this, then will these kids think of Israelis (civilian & military) as their saviour & respect their lives? Obviously, they won't. Then, they are going to attack Israel after growing up. And when they do that, the Western media will run with the story that Palestinians are radicalizing their children & training them to be suicide bombers & telling their kids to kill innocent Israelis.

Just like wrongful prison sentences grew hatred among African-Americans for the law enforcement & the judiciary, which spilled out, & still spilling out, in city-wide, state-wide, & country-wide anger, in US, then how can the people in the West think that treating children like this (interrogating them in the dead of night, arresting them, & harassing them ... for merely throwing stones at armed soldiers) is going to earn Israeli soldiers & civilians any sympathy from these children?

"The arrested children are tied & blindfolded" ... like Gitmo adult detainees. US is maligned all over the world for the abusive treatment of Guantanamo detainees. How many in the world are maligning Israel for its abusive treatment of Palestinian children?

But, hey, we Canadians can't criticize Israel at all. After all, under the auspices of Stephen Harper, Israelis can criticize Israel for its actions, but if Canadians do it, then we will be imprisoned for hate speech.

Isn't the West so fair & balanced? (rhetorical question) !!!
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http://rt.com/news/244477-palestine-children-night-interrogation/

Videos have emerged exposing masked IDF soldiers raiding Palestinian homes in the dead of night to interrogate children suspected of throwing stones at the Israeli military. Hundreds of underage are prosecuted each year in the occupied territories.
 
B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, has posted two videos to the web showing what it claims are masked Israeli soldiers searching Palestinian homes at night in Hebron on February 23 this year.
 
The soldiers, in full combat gear & with Tavor assault rifles at the ready, order to all kids in the house be brought out, ignoring protests of the parents that the children are fast asleep.
 
The company officer explains that the soldiers came at such an hour because stones are thrown at Israeli service personnel “all day long.”

The officer tells an indignant Palestinian father that he doesn’t need to “explain his schedule” to him & orders the unit to “use your barrels right on the rooms you haven’t yet checked or opened.”
 
“Do you sometimes throw stones here?” a nine-year-old boy is asked.
 
Children on the videos are of varying ages, from 8 to 16. The officer orders all children to be photographed when the procedure is over.

“The children were shaking with fear,” Mirvat Qafishah, 37, a mother of six, told B’Tselem field researcher Manal al-Ja’bari about the soldiers’ search of her home.

“My children were really scared,” Nayef Da’na, 53, a father of seven, also told B’Tselem field researcher Manal al-Ja’bari about the armed soldiers’ entry into his home.
 
It is not out of the ordinary for children to suffer mistreatment from the Israeli military.
 
IDF soldiers are subduing young suspects on arrest; there is at least one piece of video evidence of Israeli soldiers setting a dog on a Palestinian youth.
 
Though the military promised a full inquiry into that incident, human rights activist Bill Van Esveld told RT he has no doubt that the incident is going to be dropped.

“The incidents we know of have had no kind of inquiry,” he said.
 
The military cannot treat civilians as though they are potential criminals, nor is the military permitted to use its soldiers as a deterrent against civilians, B'Tselem wrote in an article dedicated to the incident, calling the Israel security forces’ policy of entering the homes of Palestinian civilians by night “unjust & terrifying.”
 
“The Israeli military, unfortunately, has a very poor record for accountability. There is no indication that the night arrests of children, which is a policy that has been going on for years, & that is clearly approved by the higher echelons,” Van Esveld revealed, stressing that the problem is not the soldiers carrying out such orders, but the officials who order this policy to be implemented.
 
Bill Van Esveld believes that mistreatment of children won't stop soon. Only “serious international pressure” could force Israel to put an end to unlawful policies of using attack dogs on kids & breaking into homes.
 
The statistics of mistreatment of youngsters in the West Bank is disturbing.
 
According to Defense for Children International Palestine, up to 700 youngsters 12-17 years old are prosecuted in Israeli military courts every year, which is about two kids more in custody every day.
 
The underage of the West Bank are arrested, interrogated & detained by the Israeli army, police or security agents. The arrested children are tied & blindfolded.
 
Then they are taken to interrogation centers, some of which exist on the territory of settlements on the occupied territories. They are not given the right to be accompanied by a parent during interrogation. When questioned, the children are rarely informed of their rights.
 
The interrogation techniques include “intimidation, threats & physical violence with a clear purpose of obtaining a confession.” The documents presenting to children sometimes are in Hebrew, a language not many Palestinian children speak, the organization informed.
 
It is estimated that over 15 years, around 8,000 children have been detained & prosecuted.
 
The majority were charged with throwing stones.