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America happy to share raw intel with fellow occupier Israel

Posted: 12 Sep 2013 11:13 PM PDT

A killer story (and yet more evidence that the revelations from Edward Snowden are undeniably in the public interest).

This is by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill in The Guardian:

The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data withIsrael without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacyof US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process “minimization”, but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.

The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.

The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies “pertaining to the protection of US persons”, repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.

But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive “raw Sigint” – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: “Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadataand content.”

According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. “NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection”, it says.

Although the memorandum is explicit in saying the material had to be handled in accordance with US law, and that the Israelis agreed not to deliberately target Americans identified in the data, these rules are not backed up by legal obligations.

“This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law,” the document says.

In a statement to the Guardian, an NSA spokesperson did not deny that personal data about Americans was included in raw intelligence data shared with the Israelis. But the agency insisted that the shared intelligence complied with all rules governing privacy.

“Any US person information that is acquired as a result of NSA’ssurveillance activities is handled under procedures that are designed to protect privacy rights,” the spokesperson said.

The NSA declined to answer specific questions about the agreement, including whether permission had been sought from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court for handing over such material.

The memorandum of understanding, which the Guardian is publishing in full, allows Israel to retain “any files containing the identities of US persons” for up to a year. The agreement requests only that the Israelis should consult the NSA’s special liaison adviser when such data is found.

Notably, a much stricter rule was set for US government communications found in the raw intelligence. The Israelis were required to “destroy upon recognition” any communication “that is either to or from an official of the US government”. Such communications included those of “officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)”.

It is not clear whether any communications involving members of US Congress or the federal courts have been included in the raw data provided by the NSA, nor is it clear how or why the NSA would be in possession of such communications. In 2009, however, the New York Times reported on “the agency’s attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip”.

The NSA is required by law to target only non-US persons without an individual warrant, but it can collect the content and metadata of Americans’ emails and calls without a warrant when such communication is with a foreign target. US persons are defined in surveillance legislation as US citizens, permanent residents and anyone located on US soil at the time of the interception, unless it has been positively established that they are not a citizen or permanent resident.

Moreover, with much of the world’s internet traffic passing through US networks, large numbers of purely domestic communications also get scooped up incidentally by the agency’s surveillance programs.

The document mentions only one check carried out by the NSA on the raw intelligence, saying the agency will “regularly review a sample of files transferred to ISNU to validate the absence of US persons’ identities”. It also requests that the Israelis limit access only to personnel with a “strict need to know”.

Israeli intelligence is allowed “to disseminate foreign intelligence information concerning US persons derived from raw Sigint by NSA” on condition that it does so “in a manner that does not identify the US person”. The agreement also allows Israel to release US person identities to “outside parties, including all INSU customers” with the NSA’s written permission.

Although Israel is one of America’s closest allies, it is not one of the inner core of countries involved in surveillance sharing with the US – Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This group is collectively known as Five Eyes.

The relationship between the US and Israel has been strained at times, both diplomatically and in terms of intelligence. In the top-secret 2013 intelligence community budget request, details of which were disclosed by the Washington Post, Israel is identified alongside Iran and China as a target for US cyberattacks.

While NSA documents tout the mutually beneficial relationship of Sigint sharing, another report, marked top secret and dated September 2007, states that the relationship, while central to US strategy, has become overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of Israel.

“Balancing the Sigint exchange equally between US and Israeli needs has been a constant challenge,” states the report, titled ‘History of the US – Israel Sigint Relationship, Post-1992′. “In the last decade, it arguably tilted heavily in favor of Israeli security concerns. 9/11 came, and went, with NSA’s only true Third Party [counter-terrorism] relationship being driven almost totally by the needs of the partner.”

source

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Rx for the Palestinians, and the region: managed conflict

 on August 25, 2013 48

You may have noticed that John Kerry’s peace process, by excluding Hamas among other measures, is aimed at managing the conflict. Not resolving the basic justice issues, because they seem too overwhelming, but putting the conflict on the back burner so it doesn’t boil up. Trying to sustain the unsustainable status quo by making it more sustainable.

In the New York Times, Edward N. Luttwak has the very same prescription for Syria. “In Syria, America loses if either side wins.” Luttwak wants endless bloodshed– “four of Washington’s enemies” tied down in neverending war. It seems like these include Israel’s enemies, Hezbollah and Iran.

His chief concern seems to be Syria’s troubles pouring into Israel:

At this point, a prolonged stalemate is the only outcome that would not be damaging to American interests.”

…Mr. Assad’s triumph would dramatically affirm the power and prestige of Shiite Iran and Hezbollah, its Lebanon-based proxy — posing a direct threat both to the Sunni Arab states and to Israel….

Israel could not expect tranquillity on its northern border if the jihadis were to triumph in Syria…

By tying down Mr. Assad’s army and its Iranian and Hezbollah allies in a war against Al Qaeda-aligned extremist fighters, four of Washington’s enemies will be engaged in war among themselves and prevented from attacking Americans or America’s allies.

That this is now the best option is unfortunate, indeed tragic, but favoring it is not a cruel imposition on the people of Syria, because a great majority of them are facing exactly the same predicament.

This reminds me of the vision laid out to me when I first visited Israel: They don’t want us here so there must be one war after another after another till they accept us. It in turn reminds me that many years ago the “Arabists” in the State Department warned the White House that Israel could only be established by force, and preserved by force.

That is how things have worked out. Now that force seems to include Managed Conflict in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon too.

Speaking of a lack of vision, here is Luttwak on Gaza back in early 2009, during Cast Lead. “Yes, Israel can win in Gaza.” More justification of conflict management, forever. And treating a slaughter as a victory.

Consider: According to Gaza sources, until the ground fighting started some 25% of the 500 dead were innocent civilians. The Israelis claimed that 20% of the casualties from the aerial attack were civilians. Either way, this was an extremely accurate bombing campaign….

So how did Israel do it? The only possible explanation is that people in Gaza have been informing the Israelis exactly where Hamas fighters and leaders are hiding, and where weapons are stored. No doubt some informers are merely corrupt, paid agents earning a living. But others must choose to provide intelligence because they oppose Hamas… Hamas completely disregards the day-to-day welfare of all Gazans in order to pursue its millenarian vision of an Islamic Palestine.

Some in Gaza must also resent Iran’s role in instigating the barrage of rockets fired on Israel. And all must know that the longer-range rockets are supplied by Iran along with money for Hamas leaders, while ordinary Palestinians languish in poverty….

source

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BBC to censor violinist Nigel Kennedy’s statement about Israeli apartheid from TV broadcast

Aug 16, 2013 04:16 pm | Tom Suarez

nigelkennedy
Nigel Kennedy  (photo: Chris Christodoulou/BBC)

The BBC has confirmed that it will censor a statement made by violinist Nigel Kennedy from its television broadcast of his performance with the Palestine Strings at a prestigious music festival last week. The BBC made the censorship move because he used the word “apartheid” to describe the world in which his Palestinian colleagues live while performing at the BBC Proms.

Click here for a recording of the actual statement the BBC is excising from its broadcast[1]. The following is a transcript:

“It’s a bit facile to say it, but we all know from the experience of this night of music, that giving equality and getting rid of apartheid gives a beautiful chance for things to happen.”

According to The Jewish Chronicle[2], BBC governor Baroness Deech called for an apology from Mr. Kennedy and said that “the remark was offensive and untrue. There is no apartheid in Israel.” Not only is there no apartheid in Israel, she claimed, but nor is there any in Gaza or the West Bank. (She made no mention of East Jerusalem.)

In fact, nearly all aspects of Apartheid, as defined by the UN, apply to Israel in all four of its guises: domestically, its military occupation of the West Bank, its military ‘annexation’ of East Jerusalem, and its siege of Gaza.

This legal definition includes [3]:

• Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, theprohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;

• Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognised trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;

• Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person;

• The infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;

• Arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;

• Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;

• Inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

1. The volume of Mr. Kennedy’s voice has been raised slightly for clarity.

2. Marcus Dysch, “BBC to cut Kennedy slur from Proms broadcast“, The Jerusalem Chronicle Online, August 16, 2013.

3. Source: UN, International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Bold emphasis added.

source

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Israel army publishes fake image of huge “Gaza shopping mall”

      Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Wed, 08/14/2013 – 20:41

idf_blog.jpg

   

An enormous shopping mall the Israeli army claims is in the Gaza Strip. (Source: IDF Blog)

In one of its periodic efforts to deny the devastating effects of its siege of Gaza, the Israeli occupation army published a blog post on 12 August claiming that Palestinians in Gaza are “out in force, enjoying themselves in sparkling new malls, beautiful beaches and hotels, and doing their shopping in pristine grocery stores and markets heaving with fresh produce.”

The “IDF blog” includes the impressive photo above of a shopping mall where Palestinians in Gaza are supposedly shopping for the latest imported fashions.

I showed the photo to The Electronic Intifada’s correspondent in Gaza, Rami Almeghari. His reaction: “I can assure you that there is no such mall in Gaza.” Rami is quite right.

Fake image

If you do a Google Image search using the image from the “IDF” blog post, the same image turns up associated with the Metro Plaza shopping mall in Kolkata, India as well as several other places.

kolkata.jpg

   

A Google image search turned up many examples, like this one, of the image associated with other malls.

Where is it really?

But the “Gaza mall” photo published by the Israeli army is actually an image of the Suria KLCC Mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as numerous user-generated photographs on the travel review site TripAdvisor.com attest.

You can also see many people shopping at the mall – in Malaysia – in this video:

Israeli army sources: anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic blogs

Before publishing it on 12 August on its English-language website, the Israeli army published the same post in French on 4 August.

It was then published by the anti-Palestinian website Tribune Juive the same day.

But some of the material had already circulated on many other Islamophobic websites long before.

For example, the same Kuala Lumpur mall photo, purportedly in Gaza, appeared on a virulently Islamophobic blog called “Barenaked Islam” in April 2012, and was disseminated on Facebook by “Geert Wilders supporters,” a page dedicated to the Islamophobic Dutch politician.

It also appeared on “Religion of Peace,” another anti-Muslim hate site.

It would appear that the Israeli army gets its information about Gaza from Islamophobic hate sites.

Forced dependency

The Kuala Lumpur shopping mall is vastly bigger than any commercial facility anywhere in Gaza.

But another image, the supermarket shown on the “IDF” blog, appears to be the Metro supermarket in Gaza. I didn’t visit it, but I did visit the Abu Dallal supermarket in Nuseirat refugee camp.

I was told that Abu Dallal is one of largest supermarkets in Gaza. By American, European, or Jordanian standards it is not very big, smaller than an average CVS or Boots drugstore.

More important than its size, however, is that like other stores in Gaza, it is packed full of Israeli goods.

That’s one of the ways the Israeli blockade creates dependency: While Gaza industry and agriculture are devastated by the siege, Israel is happy enough to see its own companies profiting from people in Gaza, siphoning off what little income they have, whether from work, humanitarian aid or remittances abroad, by selling them Israeli goods.

Poverty and dependency are the real effects of siege

But Israel is much more restrictive when it comes to supplies that meet basic needs and could allow Gaza to move out of dependency. There is, for example, a shortage of 250 schools for Gaza’s children, which cannot be built due to the lack of building supplies.

And the reality is that while there is food in Gaza, “severe poverty has increased over years of closure and because of travel restrictions,” Gisha, an Israeli nongovermental organization that monitors the siege, noted in a recent factsheet.

More than 70 percent of the Gaza population receives some form of humanitarian aid, compared with one third in the year 2000.

For imports of raw materials and many basic goods, Gaza’s economy remains heavily dependent on underground tunnels to Egypt, as I saw myself during my visit, and as Gisha also documents.

Since the Egyptian military coup on 3 July, the Egyptian army, which works closely with Israel, has been instensifying its effort to destroy the tunnels.

Exports crushed

Israel continues to crush Gaza’s export industries. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel has allowed a total of 94 trucks out of Gaza in 2013 – that’s about a dozen a month from a population of almost 1.7 million people. Insignificant.

By contrast, in 2007, the year before the siege began to bite, more than 5,000 trucks were allowed out of Gaza. In 2001 it was 15,000.

Cynical propaganda

The Israeli army’s cynical propaganda is supposed to distract people from the fact that the vast majority of people in Gaza live in deep poverty and a very precarious economic situation, without electricity for 8-12 hours per day, and depend on humanitarian aid, due to Israel.

Gaza’s per capita annual GDP is just over $1,000 dollars. Compare that with $32,800 for Israel.

The lesson: learn the facts and don’t be taken in by Israeli army fabrications.

Update: 15 August

Following the publication of this post, the Israeli army removed the photo and told Israel’s Haaretz that it had been a mistake made in “good faith.”

It also tweeted out an acknowledgment that the photo was “incorrectly sourced” – though without noting that its source was an Islamophobic hate site peddling fabrications and anti-Palestinian propaganda.

Here is a screenshot of the entire “IDF blog” post before the Israeli army altered it.

With thanks to Twitter user @sallyidwedar who initially spotted “IDF” fakery, and Omar Ghraieb for answering my queries about Gaza’s supermarkets.

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SodaStream A Case Study for Corporate Activity

read full report here

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Israeli soldiers have depraved “fun” making “Rachel Corrie pancakes”

   

      Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Fri, 07/19/2013 – 14:26

   

Israeli soldiers had a “fun” time making what they called “Rachel Corrie pancakes.”

Photos of the event were posted on the Facebook page of the “Heritage House,” a settlement in occupied East Jerusalem that houses so-called “lone soldiers,” men recruited from overseas to join the Israeli occupation forces.

   

Nesim Pesarel, one of the “Heritage House” residents, seen in a photo from his personal Facebook page.

Above the photos of young men, some in Israeli army fatigues or apparently carrying guns, is the caption “Afternoon of ‘rachel corrie’ Pancakes and fun!”

Rachel Corrie is the young American woman murdered by an Israeli soldier who crushed her to death with a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian family home in the occupied Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003.

The depraved joke that these men were presumably making is a play on the English idiom “flat as a pancake.” Their celebration and joking about Rachel Corrie’s death is utterly vile and reflects the culture of dehumanization inculcated into Israeli soldiers.

Ben Packer, the director and rabbi of “Heritage House,” hit back at some negative comments about the images, posting this response:

In honor of the all the hate messages from the anti-Israel/Jewish crowd, one of our supporters has pledged $5 towards Israeli settlements (maybe for additional bulldozers) for each additional comment. keep’em coming anti-semites! We love our Israeli soldiers and will not back down in the face of those who attempt to endanger them!

Packer added, “Anti-Israel activists are all in a tizzy about these pictures! makes them even funnier!!!”

The page also appeals for donations “to support our guests and ‘lone soldiers.’” Residents of the “Heritage House” settlement also take part in colonization activities in other parts of the occupied West Bank, including Hebron.

   

Alex Winston is the “den mother” of The Heritage House men’s dormitory. Alex Winston is a member of the Israeli army’s Givati Brigade.

   

Nesim Pasarel (right with weapon) and Jonathan Leibovits (seated)

   

(Update: The gallery was removed shortly after the publication of this post.)

The true face of the “IDF”

In recent months, The Electronic Intifada has highlighted incidents of Israeli soldiers using social media to advocate brutal violence, and acts of sadistic torture and murder of children.

The Electronic Intifada also revealed images soldiers posted on the photo-sharing site Instagram of nudity, drug use and violence and most notoriously of a Palestinian child seen through the scope of a sniper’s rifle.

This week, the army began investigating a video posted online of Israeli soldiers frying a small bird alive, an act that had no purpose but gratuitous animal cruelty.

Israeli army attempts to halt social media scandals

The “Rachel Corrie pancakes” photos provide yet another window into the Israeli army’s culture of violence and come just as the occupation forces have tried to staunch the flow of embarrassing incidents on social media that have hurt its propaganda efforts.

The campaign, which includes this YouTube video, urges soldiers to “improve their image online.”

The voiceover in the video commands:

Soldier! Improve your appearance! Always remember: You are the face of the IDF. So improve your appearance – online!

The IDF is glad to invite you to get connected, share, love, tweet, respond, and show the pretty face of the IDF.

So go into the official pages and send us pictures, videoclips, and stories. The IDF on the Internet. One army, everybody’s face.

The “lone soldiers” at the Heritage House settler-colony have clearly not got the message.

With thanks to Dena Shunra for assistance with research and translation and Benjamin Doherty for assistance with research.

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A Gift from Europe

Uri Avnery
July 20, 2013

ON MY 70th birthday, I received a gift from Yitzhak Rabin: he signed
the document recognizing the existence of the Palestinian people, after
many decades of denial. He also recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as its representative. I had demanded this, almost alone, for many years.

Three days later, the Oslo agreement was signed on the White House lawn.

This week I received another gift of similar magnitude, obviously in
anticipation of my 90th birthday, which is due in less than two months.

No less an institution than the European Union has declared what
practically amounts to a total boycott of the settlements, 15 years
after Gush Shalom, the peace organization to which I belong, had issued a
call for such a boycott.

The European decision says that no
Israeli institution or corporation which has any direct or indirect
connection with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or
the Golan Heights will receive any contract, grant, prize or suchlike
from the EU or any  member state. To assure compliance, every contract
between Israelis and the EU will contain a paragraph stating that the
settlements are not part of Israel.

A friend of mine sent me a message consisting of one word: Mabrouk (Congratulations, in Arabic).

If all this sounds a bit megalomaniac, please make allowances. I am just happy.

WHEN WE decided to organize our boycott in 1998, we had several interconnected aims in mind.

A boycott is an eminently democratic instrument, a form of non-violent resistance.

Every single individual can decide for himself or herself whether to join the boycott or not.

Also, every individual can decide whether to boycott all the
enterprises on the recommended list, or exclude some. Some of our
supporters refused to boycott the Golan settlements, which they
considered different from the others, some refused to boycott the East
Jerusalemites. A famous artist declared that he was quite unable to live
without the excellent Golan wines.

Many enterprises in the
settlements did not go there for ideological reasons – capitalists are
not generally known for their ideological fervor – but because the
Israeli government gave them (stolen) land for free, as well as all
kinds of grants, exemption from taxes and other incentives. It made
economic sense for a corporation to sell their very high-priced site in
Tel Aviv and get free land in Ariel. A boycott may counterbalance these
gains.

Contrary to getting out into the streets and joining a
demonstration, not buying something in the supermarket is a private
affair. In a demonstration, one may get tear-gassed, water-cannoned or
clubbed. One exposes oneself and may be put on a list somewhere or even
dismissed from a government job.

Everybody can boycott. One
doesn’t need to join an organization, sign a petition, identify oneself.
Yet one has the satisfaction of doing something useful, in accordance
with one’s convictions.

But our main purpose was conceptual.
For decades, successive Israeli governments have striven to eradicate
the Green Line from the map and the minds of the people. The main aim of
the boycott was to reinstitute the real borders of Israel in the public
mind.

We distributed many thousands of copies of the list of settlement enterprises, all on request.

The Israeli government paid us the unique compliment of enacting a
special law that penalizes all calls for a boycott of the settlers’
products. Every person who feels harmed by such a call can demand
unlimited compensation, without having to prove any actual damage. This
could amount to millions of dollars.

We asked the Supreme Court
to strike down this law, but the court has been dragging its feet for
several years already, obviously afraid of passing judgment.

YET WHILE we were doing this, the European Union did the opposite.
It practically helped to finance the settlements – the very settlements it declared illegal.

Actually, the new measures are not new at all. The agreement between
the EU and Israel exempts Israeli products from European customs, as if
Israel were a European country. Israel is already a participant in the
European football league, the Eurovision Song Contest and other events
and organizations. Israeli universities receive huge research grants
from Europe and take part in European scientific projects.

All
these agreements are in principle restricted to Israel proper and do not
apply to the settlements. Yet for decades, the Brussels
super-government had consciously closed both its eyes.

I
know, because I myself traveled to Brussels years ago, to protest
against this practice, explaining to commissioners, officials and
parliamentarians that they are in practice encouraging the settlements
and inducing companies to relocate there. I was given to understand that
they sympathize with our stand but are powerless, because several
European countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, block all
attempts in the Union to act against apparent Israeli interests.

It seems that this obstacle has now been overcome. So I am happy.

IN ISRAEL, the government received the news with consternation. Just a
few days earlier, they could not have dreamed that this was possible.

In Israel, the European Union is an object of ridicule. Secure in the
knowledge that we have absolute control of US policy, we could treat the
EU with contempt, though it is our major trading partner. A large share
of Israeli exports, including military equipment, goes there.

Government leaders are now sputtering with rage. Not one single
politician has dared to speak in favor of the European decision. Right
and Left are united in condemning it. Binyamin Netanyahu declared that
only Israel would decide where its borders were, and this only in direct
negotiations. Never mind that he has obstructed significant direct
negotiations for years.

Naftali Bennett, the Minister of
Economy, who also happens to be the chief representative of the
settlers, rejected the decision out of hand.  Only a few days before,
this political genius (and self-declared “brother” of Ya’ir Lapid) had
announced that there was absolutely no pressure on Israel.

Lapid himself voiced his opinion that the European step was a “miserable decision”.

Bennett now proposes to punish Europe by stopping all EU humanitarian
projects in the West Bank. (Recalling the joke about the Polish nobleman
whose Jew had been beaten up by another nobleman and who threatened:
“If you don’t stop beating my Jew, I shall beat your Jew!”)

But
the most telling argument marshalled by  Israeli leaders was that the
European decision was undermining the valiant efforts of John Kerry to
start negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

This is the height of chutzpah. For months now, Netanyahu and his
government has been doing everything possible to prevent the hapless
Kerry from achieving his goal. Now they use his fruitless efforts as a
fig leaf for the settlements.

The Labor Party’s Shelly
Yachimovich, the official “Leader of the Opposition”, contented herself
with repeating the call for negotiations. No hint of criticizing the
settlers, for whom she has publicly declared her sympathy.

AS USUAL in such situations, Israeli public opinion started a search for those to blame.  But there is no one around.

Israel has no Foreign Minister, only a deputy, who happens to be one of
the most extreme right-wingers in the Knesset. The last minister,
Avigdor Lieberman, is facing trial for corruption, and the job is being
kept open for him. Netanyahu obviously believes that no judge would dare
to convict the fearful Lieberman, after the Attorney General has
already shrunk back from indicting him on the most severe charges.

With no minister (officially, the Prime Minister is filling the vacuum)
and a demoralized foreign service, there could be no prior warning.

Some people claim that the European decision was actually a pro-Israeli
gesture, since it forestalls a general boycott of Israel, which is
advocated by a growing number of personalities and NGOs around the
world. A boycott of the settlements is the minimum.

In this respect too, the Europeans have also adopted a stance that my friends and I have advocated for years.

Contrary to several Israeli leftists, I believe that a general boycott
of Israel is counter-productive. While our boycott is designed to
isolate the settlers and drive a wedge between them and the bulk of the
Israeli population, a general boycott (called BDS) would drive almost
all Israelis into the arms of the settlers, under the venerable Jewish
slogan “The whole world is against us!”  It would strengthen the
argument that the real aim is not to change Israeli policy, but to wipe
out Israel altogether.

True, there are some good reasons for a
general boycott, including the historic example of the boycott of
Apartheid South Africa. But the Israeli situation is quite different.

THE TERM “boycott” was coined in 1888 in a situation not dissimilar
from ours now. It was about foreign domination, land and settlers.

In Ireland, then under British occupation, there was a famine. Charles
Boycott, the agent of an absentee English landlord, evicted local
tenants who were unable to pay the rent. An Irish nationalist leader
called on his countrymen not to attack Boycott physically, but to shun
him. All his neighbors stopped all dealings with him, working for him or
speaking with him. Boycott became the word for ostracizing.

The EU boycott of the settlements and their supporters will have a major
economic impact. No one knows yet how much. But the moral effect is
even more significant.

Even if massive Israeli-American
pressure thwarts or at least postpones the European action, the moral
blow is already devastating.

It tells us: The settlements are
illegal. They are immoral. They inflict a huge injustice on the
Palestinian people. They prevent peace. They endanger the very future of
Israel.

Thank you, Europe!

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The Yemenite Baby Affair: What if this was your child?

One of Israel’s most well known journalists casts doubt on one of the most tragic affairs in the country’s history. His conclusion, reached despite self-admitted ignorance on the topic, aligns perfectly with the way the Israeli media handled of Yemenite Baby Affair from day one – glossing over evidence and unquestioningly towing the state line.

By Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber

In a 2011 interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show,” award winning American journalist Bill Moyers paraphrased George Orwell: “Journalism is about what people want to keep hidden, everything else is publicity.” Case in point: famed Israeli television journalist Yaron London’s recent article in Haaretz, “Maybe the kids didn’t disappear?” [Hebrew].

London’s tone and perspective perfectly illustrate Moyers’ assertion; it is a textbook example of how the Zionist hegemonic machine constructs a public discourse to maintain the status quo. At the same time, opposing claims, however legitimate, are silenced. London has considerable influence on the public discourse. But like his colleagues in the Israeli press, instead of using his power to expose the hidden, to ask worthy investigative questions, he chose to defend the state. As Ilana Dayan told Yarin Kimor on Israel’s version of “Meet the Press” in 1996: “the state doesn’t need you… If you think nothing happened, move on to a different topic!”

London admits to having limited knowledge about one of the most tragic affairs in Israel’s history. But his lack of knowledge, and apparent inability to comprehend the magnitude of the tragedy, doesn’t prevent him from forming a conclusion. To no one’s surprise, it aligns perfectly with the state’s efforts to obfuscate and conceal the issue by saying: most of them died; this is really just a one big misunderstanding. This, despite hundreds of testimonies of parents to the contrary, including mothers testifying that their babies were physically kidnapped from their hands, such as Naomi Gavra and Miriyam Ovadia. And despite clear cases such as Miriam Shuker [Hebrew], who was kidnapped and given for adoption, all while her father, David, was looking for her all over the country.

This is the same conclusion all state-appointed commissions reached. And not investigative bodies, by the way – the first two commissions were only inquiry commissions with no subpoena power and no intention to investigate; all commissions, including the last, were exceptional only in how slowly they worked and how little new information they could discover[i].

At the same time, the press showed a remarkable lack of interest in the state’s obvious conflict with a clamor of Yemenite and other Mizrahi voices. With the exception of Haolam Haze in 1967, and a few articles in Haaretz and Ha’ir in the mid 1990s, inquiry into public outcry was nearly non-existent. From the 1960s until the last commission’s findings were published in November 2001, state press releases and media reporting show incredible consistency with each other.

When I examined the media narrative for my book, based on my Ph.D. dissertation, Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: the Yemenite Babies Affair (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), I found a discourse that was overwhelmingly supportive of state efforts to quash discussion of the affair. Starting with the first articles in the 1960s, writers were eager to dismiss claims of kidnapping. “Don’t you think that if these accusations were true the police would have opened some files to investigate these matters” (Maariv, October 9, 1966). In other words, if there was no investigation, there was no crime in the first place. Others dismissed all calls for an investigation, saying, “all people working in the camps, with no exception, were honest people” (Maariv April, 1, 1966), or, “no child was ever released from the hospital without identification” (Tel-Aviv, December 20, 1985).

Reinforcement of negative racial stereotypes was the other major theme when the media bothered to mention the affair. New Yemenite immigrants were shown as primitive, at best incapable of caring for themselves properly, and at worst, not even caring if a child lived or died. One article in Davar (February 24, 1966) describes the Yemenite immigrants as “peeking through the window and seeing for the first time how to bathe a baby and how to change a baby’s diaper.” Another quoted a nurse as saying Yemenite parents had a cavalier attitude towards the death of a child. “If a child died in the tent they would say, ‘God gives and God takes’” (Davar, February 26, 1966). From this perception, the road to thinking they were unfit parents was very short. Moreover, these racist sentiments, as Naama Katii rightly noted [Hebrew], were echoed years later during nurses’ testimonies to the commission and the press. “Maybe we did them a favor,” said 92-year-old Ahuva Goldfarb, former head nurse in the absorption camps in an interview with me back in 1995. Another head nurse, Sonia Milshtein, told the commission the Yemenite parents “were not interested in their children.” This same nurse shocked even the sleepy Judge Cohen when, during her testimony, she called the babies “carcasses” and “packages.” And further, she added, “oh, after 40 years, I would just be happy that my child got a good education.”

The biggest issue here is not that the commission supposedly disproved an institutional conspiracy. Sanjero’s main contribution is the complete discrediting of this commission’s work. As he writes, “the commission was lacking the most central tool for any investigation: an epistemology of suspicion.” (Page 48, Hebrew) If any journalist bothered to read the last commission’s report, it would have been crystal clear that referring to any conclusion made by this commission using the term “determined with great certainty” is, how should I put it… embarrassing.

But, more importantly, we must realize that in the absence of an honest discussion about the past, the same racist attitudes continue to dictate the present and future. The same racist attitude that likely led to these terrible acts are also motivating the years-long silencing, and the rejection of a legitimate cry for answers. Both the government and the media legitimize this sentiment. This is where London should have focused his deconstruction efforts. There was a massive cover up; this is a fact. And this should have gotten any qualified reporter asking, “why?”

The Kedmi commission’s report, just like the previous commissions, is full of contradictions and factual errors; too many to detail in this short space. Important lines of inquiry were dropped, including an important investigation in the U.S., crucial testimony was given behind closed doors and remains classified for the next 70 years. Source files, hospital archives and burial records were mysteriously lost and even burned.[ii] Birth files requested by the commission from Hillel Yaffe Hospital, for instance, were “accidently burned,” not in the 1950s, but in the late 1990s and during the so called investigative work. Rather than flagging the event, or investigating who corrupted these records, the commission merely dismissed it as an “administrative failure.” I ask, as Sanjero did, how, during a working investigation, could such an overt flouting of procedure remain uninvestigated? I think that even the Hasamba boy would have known what to do here.

The state’s efforts to silence discussion of this perspective has only been possible with the media’s full cooperation over a long period of time. As Claris Harbon noted, in her review of my book[iii], this affair is also part of a larger system of oppression that is consciously maintained and back up by the legal system. What Harbon is offering is a new way to examine the law breaking, “perceiving it as a viable language, as a legitimate form of resistance, invoking greater principles of justice… and aimed at correcting past/present injustices.” It’s important to understand in this context that Rabbi Meshulam’s vilification and ridicule by the media, and his ultimate demise was deliberate and complete, in an effort to delegitimize his protest. In the public eye, the issue at hand was his “insanity,” not the moral obligation of the media and public to demand answers to the question  – why and how hundreds if not thousands of babies were forcefully removed from their parents to never be seen again?

Ignorance fuels racism. Not knowing isn’t the weapon for conspiracy theorists, as London wishes us to believe, less than it is a weapon for those who were actively squelching and preventing a legitimate demand for proper investigation. Kidnapping, or the forcible transfer of babies/children from one group to another, is not only a violent act, it is defined by the UN as genocide. This fact alone should have gotten not only the media going, but also the whole country out in protest.

But instead of being motivated by a healthy dose of suspicion, the media eagerly helped by recycling the lame “immigration mess” excuse. Which, by the way, paradoxically didn’t prevent the Kedmi Commission from producing the definitive conclusion that all documentation from that time is accurate. So which is it? Messy or accurate? But why bother with little unimportant terminology when it is so easy to blame the victim. And this is just what the Kedmi Commission did. As Sanjero noted: “throughout the report the commission detailed a dry description of severe actions without the slightest bit of criticism… in the whole entire report the commission doesn’t name even one person, flesh and blood, responsible… but blaming the parents they did…”

What any citizen of Israel, including reporters, should ask him or herself is why as a society we sympathize with one pain, and not another? Why in the case of Yosale Schumer, the Haredi boy who was kidnapped by his grandparent in 1962, the entire state, government and the Mossad got involved until he was brought back to his parents. No effort was too big to get one boy, while hundreds of Yemenite parents were not worthy of a fraction of this sympathy or willingness to fight?

So “what’s between Shmita to Mount Sinai?”, you ask – compassion and humanity. A true fight against injustice should put on its agenda all systems of oppression, for they are interconnected. As Martin Luther King said in 1963: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” When the Israeli Left will fight against intra-Jewish injustices and racism with the same enthusiasm and passion often used to protest the occupation, we might have a chance at a better future here.

Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber is an associate professor of communications and journalism at Suffolk University in Boston.

This article was first published in Hebrew on Haokets, a non-profit, independent, progressive Israeli web magazine that hosts critical discussion where hundreds of writers publish professional and original pieces on socioeconomic, cultural and philosophical issues, human rights activism, feminism, and Mizrahi politics. Visit their English-language blog.

[i]
The constant usage of the inaccurate phrase “three investigative commissions have investigated this affair…” only made the Yemenite look like nudniks who are standing in the way of closing this story, instead of criticizing the lack of investigation.

[ii]
For detailed examples read Shoshi Zaid’s book And The Child id Gone, Geffen (2001) and Rfai Shubeli’s many articles in the journal Afikim, as well as my book.

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Believe the hype, BDS against Israel is growing and feared

To all the politi­cians, jour­nal­ists, Zion­ist lob­by­ists and hacks who con­tin­u­ally claim that BDS is ir­rel­e­vant, the fact that it’s being fought at the high­est lev­els of the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment proves oth­er­wise. Alex Kane in Mon­doweiss re­ports:

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu is di­rectly in­volved in grow­ing ef­forts to com­bat the boy­cott, di­vest­ment and sanc­tions (BDS) move­ment, ac­cord­ing to a re­port on the web­site of Is­raeli news­pa­per Yedioth Ahronoth.

Nahum Barnea, a lead­ing Is­raeli com­men­ta­tor,re­ported June 25 that Ne­tanyahu met with a small group of un­named “Jew­ish mil­lion­aires” at the Is­raeli Pres­i­den­tial Con­fer­ence last week in Jerusalem. Ne­tanyahu “sought to raise their money and use their con­nec­tions for the war against the anti-Is­rael boy­cott move­ment”–a move­ment Barnea says is “arous­ing great in­ter­est in West­ern coun­tries, leav­ing its mark on the aca­d­e­mic sys­tem, on eco­nomic de­ci­sions made by busi­ness and po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions and on the media.”

The de­tails from Barnea are yet an­other in­di­ca­tion of how se­ri­ously the Is­raeli es­tab­lish­ment is tak­ing the BDS move­ment. Ne­tanyahu’s de­sire to com­bat BDS comes about a month after Is­raeli busi­ness­men warned the prime min­is­ter that with­out progress to­wards a two-state so­lu­tion, for­eign in­vest­ments would be with­held and “no one” would “buy goods” from Is­rael. And in a speech this week, Ne­tanyahu “promised to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions of [the Jew­ish Peo­ple Pol­icy In­sti­tute] with re­gards to coun­ter­ing in­ter­na­tional ‘dele­git­imiza­tion’ and boy­cott ini­tia­tives,” as the Elec­tronic In­tifada’s Ben White noted.

Barnea’s story was pub­lished a day after Haaretz’s Judy Maltz broke the news that the Con­fer­ence of Pres­i­dents of Major Amer­i­can Jew­ish Or­ga­ni­za­tions was plan­ning to launch a new cam­paign tar­get­ing BDS on col­lege cam­puses. The cam­paign was an­nounced by Mal­colm Hoen­lein, the ex­ec­u­tive vice-chair­man of the Con­fer­ence of Pres­i­dents group.

Is there a con­nec­tion be­tween Hoen­lein’s an­nounce­ment and Ne­tayahu’s meet­ing with a small group of Jew­ish mil­lion­aires on the BDS move­ment? The meet­ing took place at the Is­raeli Pres­i­den­tial Con­fer­ence; Hoen­lein was there, and it’s where he told Maltz the news of the new anti-BDS cam­paign. It’s pure spec­u­la­tion at this point. (I’ve put in an e-mail in­quiry to the Con­fer­ence of Pres­i­dents of Major Amer­i­can Jew­ish Or­ga­ni­za­tions, but they have not re­sponded.)

Hoen­lein and Ne­tanyahu are con­sid­ered to be “very close,” as Haaretz’s Barak Ravid put it in 2011 in a re­port on Hoen­lein’s meet­ing with Syr­ian pres­i­dent Bashar al-As­sad. Hoen­lein re­port­edly de­liv­ered a mes­sage from Ne­tanyahu to Assad, though Hoen­lein de­nied he did so for Ne­tanyahu.

What­ever the case, the re­port­edly di­rect in­volve­ment of Ne­tanyahu in anti-BDS ef­forts rep­re­sents the lat­est ef­fort by the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment to en­list Jews out­side the gov­ern­ment to take on the move­ment. In 2010, the anti-BDS Is­rael Ac­tion Net­work was formed by the Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tions of North Amer­ica and the Jew­ish Coun­cil for Pub­lic Af­fairs at the urg­ing of the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment, ac­cord­ing to the­Jew­ish Tele­graphic Agency’s Jacob Berk­man.

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