‘Mossad agents’ expelled from Mauritius
Eichner
Three Israeli men have been turned out of Mauritius on suspicion they were there on a secret mission to spy on tourists from Dubai, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.
The three arrived on the island, an exotic tourist destination in the Indian Ocean, in order to conclude their trip to the Soccer World Cup.
But they never made it to the turquoise beaches. As soon as they landed immigration officers, who were convinced they were Mossad agents who had come to the island to disturb the peace, placed them under arrest and submitted them to hours of intensive interrogations.
The three 30-year old men all reside in Tel Aviv. Ido and Roee Reicher, a pair of twins, are computer engineers and their friend, Avi Levinstein, owns a sushi restaurant. They had been planning their trip for six months.
“We heard it was paradise. It’s cold in South Africa, and we were told it’s hot in Mauritius, so we decided to spoil ourselves and come back with a tan,” Roee said.
He said they had arrived Saturday on a British Airways flight, and were held up at passport control. “They looked at our passports, flipped through them, and then began to speak in French, saying, ‘Israelis, Israelis’,” Roee said.
Unfortunately, a flight from Dubai had landed on the island just moments before theirs had arrived. The immigration officers, fearing a case similar to that of the Mabhouh assassination, prevented them from passing.
They were taken to another room where, they say, the officers began to yell at them. “They claimed our passports were fake and didn’t believe a word we said,” Roee recounted.
“They didn’t understand why we hadn’t booked a hotel for the first night, and asked if we had any money. We showed them credit cards, but they just kept saying, ‘Israeli, Israeli’ as if we had done something wrong.”
Roee, Ido, and Avi were then placed in three separate rooms and interrogated further. “They asked us where we had traveled in the past, and refused to believe that young Israeli men could have visited so many places,” Roee said, adding that he had been to 40 different countries.
“Avi forgot to mention he had been to Zurich, and they took that as proof that we weren’t who we said we were. They kept yelling, ‘Where were you? What did you do? Who are you?'”
‘Go talk to president of Mauritius’
Exhausted, the three called the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, but were told they would only receive assistance on Monday because Israel does not have an embassy in Mauritius. “They recommended we leave the country,” Roee said. “I was really angry at this reply. We paid a lot of money to go there.”
After hanging up, Roee and his friends insisted upon staying on the island. “They replied that we would be detained for six months because we tried to enter with fake passports,” he said.
The immigration officers also refused to call the Foreign Ministry in order to ascertain the identity of the young men. “I told the one in charge I wanted to speak to someone above him. He said, ‘Go talk to the president of Mauritius’,” Roee said.
Furious, the three were placed on a flight back to South Africa. They had spared no expense to enjoy their vacation, and paid for first-class seats on the way to the island, Roee said, but ended up spending just a few infuriating hours in the airport.
Mauritius is a small island, with a population of around 1.2 million people, which thrives on agriculture and tourism. Historically it is connected to Israel, as the British used it as an interim camp for Holocaust survivors attempting to reach the shores of Palestine.
Recently tension developed between the two countries when Mauritius refused to approve the nomination of a non-resident ambassador because his office would be the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, which they claim the UN does not recognize as Israel’s capital.
In response, the ministry cut back on aid to the island, which included sending over specialists, accepting foreign students and interns into courses in Israel, and backing the island’s nominees for UN positions.
A man has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after telling a woman that he was also Jewish
A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew.
Sabbar Kashur, 30, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday after the court ruled that he was guilty of rape by deception. According to the complaint filed by the woman with the Jerusalem district court, the two met in downtown Jerusalem in September 2008 where Kashur, an Arab from East Jerusalem, introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship. The two then had consensual sex in a nearby building before Kashur left.
When she later found out that he was not Jewish but an Arab, she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault.
Although Kashur was initially charged with rape and indecent assault, this was changed to a charge of rape by deception as part of a plea bargain arrangement.
Handing down the verdict, Tzvi Segal, one of three judges on the case, acknowledged that sex had been consensual but said that although not “a classical rape by force,” the woman would not have consented if she had not believed Kashur was Jewish.
The sex therefore was obtained under false pretences, the judges said. “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated,” they added.
The court ruled that Kashur should receive a jail term and rejected the option of a six-month community service order. He was said to be seeking to appeal.
Segal said: “The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls. When the very basis of trust between human beings drops, especially when the matters at hand are so intimate, sensitive and fateful, the court is required to stand firmly at the side of the victims – actual and potential – to protect their wellbeing. Otherwise, they will be used, manipulated and misled, while paying only a tolerable and symbolic price.”
Gideon Levy, a liberal Israeli commentator, was quoted as saying: “I would like to raise only one question with the judge. What if this guy had been a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim and had sex with a Muslim woman?
“Would he have been convicted of rape? The answer is: of course not.”
Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel’s population, but relationships between Jews and Arabs are rare. There are few mixed neighbourhoods or towns, and Arabs suffer routine discrimination.
Israeli MPs are considering a law requiring prospective Israeli citizens to declare loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish, democratic state”. Many Arabs would balk at swearing allegiance to a state which they see as explicitly excluding or marginalising them.
Dan Meridor, a deputy prime minister in Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, is opposed to the proposal. “Why does every bill need the word ‘Jewish’ in it – to show the Arab citizens that it doesn’t belong to them? Then we’re all shocked when they radicalise their stance.
“The majority doesn’t need to remind the minority that it is in fact a minority all the time,” he added.
source
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
As the Israelis are becoming conscious of their inevitable tragic circumstances, a final desperate attempt to rescue the Zionist project has come to life. Astonishingly enough it is the Israeli right that is now pushing for ‘one binational State.’ It is pretty staggering to find out that while the Israeli so-called ‘left’ is locked within the 1967 territorial paradigm that is fueled by Judeo centric racial ideology, it is actually the hawkish Zionist thinkers who are willing to move the discourse forward.
In a mind provoking piece Noam Sheizaf outlines in Haaretz the new revolutionary Israeli idea. However, I will maintain at this stage that the new Zionist call for ‘one binational state’ suggests that Zionist ideology is on its last leg. Israel has come to realise its inevitable end. And amidst its terminal conditions Israel tries to buy time.
Israel should apply its law to “Judea and Samaria and grant citizenship to 1.5 million Palestinians,” says Moshe Arens, a former Israeli defense minister, a top leader in the Likud party and a political patron of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Arens is not put off by those who slander him for promoting the idea of a binational Jewish-Palestinian state. “We are already a binational state,” he says.
This approach is now being advocated by leading figures in the Likud and amongst the settlers. A year ago, Uri Elitzur, former chairman of the Yesha Council of Settlements and Netanyahu’s bureau chief in his first term as prime minister, published an article in the settlers’ journal Nekuda calling for the onset of a process, at the conclusion of which the (West Bank) Palestinians will have “a blue ID card (like Israelis), yellow license plates (like Israelis), National Insurance and the right to vote for the Knesset.” Emily Amrousi, a former spokesperson for the Yesha Council, also takes part in meetings between settlers and Palestinians and speaks explicitly of “one land in which the children of settlers and the children of Palestinians will be bused to school together.”
This Zionist political novelty doesn’t take me by complete surprise. Unlike the Jewish left that is tribally orientated both in Israel and in the West, the right wing Zionist philosophy was grounded on a dream of an eternal bond between the Jew and the alleged ‘promised land’. In Zion the Jew was supposed to transcend oneself beyond the race and the tribe. Israel was there to demolish the ghetto wall. As it happened, in practice, Israel had become the biggest ghetto in Jewish history.
However, there is a clear trap here. As much as the peace loving Zionist hawks seem to champion Palestinian civil rights, the vision of a ‘one binational state’ is still totally Judeo centric. The Israeli advocates of the one binational state are not talking about a neutral “state of all its citizens”, nor about “Israstine” with a flag showing a crescent and a Shield of David. One state still means a sovereign Jewish state, but in a more complex reality, and inspired by the vision of a “democratic Jewish state” without an occupation and without apartheid, without fences and separations.
One may wonder at this stage what the notion of “Jewish democratic state” stands for. It is obviously an empty signifier, there is no such a thing as Jewish democracy. As far as I remember Democracy was born in Athens rather than Jerusalem. And yet, the dream is compelling. In such a state, “Jews will be able to live in Hebron and pray at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and a Palestinian from Ramallah will be able to serve as an ambassador and live in Tel Aviv or simply enjoy ice cream on the city’s seashore.”
It is clear beyond doubt that a coin has dropped. Some Israeli hawks have come to realise that the occupation cannot be maintained forever. They were also quick to grasp that, in the long run, the separation wall put an end to the Zionist expansionist program. They also gather that the negative exposure of Jewish lobbies in the West will eventually lead to the down scaling of Israeli political maneuvering.
However, the Zionist tribal orientation is never too difficult to trace. When Elitzur was asked “What do you say to the allegations that you have joined the radical left?” he was quick to reveal his political mantra.
“There’s a clear separation between us. I am talking about a Jewish state, the state of the Jewish people, which will contain a large Arab minority. The left is talking about an Arab state containing a Jewish minority, even if they do not explicitly think that. The leftist demonstrators in (the West Bank village of) Bil’in have totally joined the Palestinian cause.”
I guess that this what it is all about. The Israeli hawks want to counter the inevitable ‘demographic disaster’. They would offer West Bank Palestinians Israeli ID cards, and offer them to “enjoy ice cream in Tel Aviv” as long as they are kept as a minority. The Israeli hawks ignore Gaza and the right of return. In practice they dismiss the Palestinian cause for they are certain that the Jewish one is superior. In short, this is not a solution or a resolution. It is just another Zionist spin that is planted in our discourse in order to disseminate confusion.
Tonight, Bil’in was subjected to yet another Israeli Occupation Forces terror raid at 1.30 am when an unusually heavy number of IOF soldiers entered the outskirts of the village to arrest a local youth; 17 year old Ahmad Abed Al-Fatah Burnat – which unfortunately was effected. At least twelve jeeps were spotted most of which hovered as backup at the nearby Apartheid-Annexation Wall which coupled with a heavy IOF presence at last Friday’s peaceful
demonstration – peaceful that is, until the protesters were viciously deluged with salvoes of tear gas as soon as they reached the Wall which the shabab, commendably, fiercely resisted with stones – has given rise to well founded speculation that the IOF are currently blooding new recruits to occupation methods; heavy on violence, light on human rights.
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