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Talking to Israelis is so useless

Details: Written by Noam Sheizaf Noam Sheizaf; Published: 14 October 2009 14 October 2009; Hits: 3065 3065

Posted: October 13th, 2009 | Author: noam | Filed under: The Left, The Right, The Settlements | Tags: Being critical of Israel and being anti-Semitic is not the same thing, Camp David, palestinians, peace process | 20 Comments »

Being part of the lefty ultra-minority in Israel – and obsessed with politics at the same time – I get mixed up regularly in political debates (fights?) with friends, family members, coworkers, writers and readers of pro-Israeli blogs, and basically, whoever is around. But lately, I have to admit, I’m getting tired of this habit. I feel that no matter what the issue at hand is, Israelis and their supporters fall back to the same argument:

The Palestinians want to destroy us, and therefore, whatever we do to them is justified.

It doesn’t matter that A doesn’t necessarily leads to B (even in war not everything is justified), it doesn’t even matter we are talking about something else completely, say racism towards Arab Israeli citizens or the future of Jerusalem. Whatever I say, wherever we go, we end up at the same station. The Palestinians want to destroy us, and therefore, whatever we do to them is justified.

I try to speak about Gaza, and say, the illegal use of phosphorus bombs against civilians.

“How do you know the IDF did that?” the answer comes. “Don’t say you believe that self-hating Jew, Goldstone?”

-    Well, there are pictures of the bombs exploding, there are people with phosphorus-like burns, and I know that every combat unit in the IDF carries standard phosphorus ammunition, because I’ve been there and I even used it in training.

-    You don’t get it, do you? The Palestinians want to destroy us all. What we did in Gaza was self-defense, like everyone else would have done. We didn’t want to kill those children. We did what’s necessary. It was justified.

And that’s basically it. You can’t ask about war crimes, you can’t discuss the phosphorus. Everything becomes irrelevant.

So I forget about the Goldstone report, just like the Israeli media did, and I try to write about Obama’s effort to re-ignite the peace process, or about the fact that from an Israeli perspective, there is no real alternative to the two-state solution. I ask, for example, why Israel can’t stop building settlements, even for a limited time.

-    Because settlements are not the issue. They are not the obstacle for peace. We can evacuate them whenever we want.

-    If it’s no big deal, what’s preventing us from stopping, even as a favor to Obama?

-    The whole demand is a trick to divert us, and the rest of the world, from the real issue: that the Palestinians want to destroy us. Therefore, building settlements is justified.

-    I fail to see the connection. The Hamas is indeed a problem, but surly, Abu-Mazen… I mean, look at his efforts to keep the West Bank quiet…

-    If everything is quiet, what’s the rush to hand back land?

-    Because if we don’t, we will have another Intifada.

-    And in this case, we will give them nothing! We don’t deal with terrorists!

-    So, when do we get the point where we do give them something?

-    It’s simple: When they don’t want to destroy us anymore.

-    And how do we know that?

-    We can’t. Look at what happened in Gaza. We withdrew and what did we get in return? The Hamas with its rockets. Imagine us withdrawing from the West Bank, and five years later we get the Hamas there as well, 15 minutes from Tel Aviv! You can never trust the Palestinians. All they want is to destroy us.

And so it goes on and on. The Israelis found the perfect argument. It’s the reason and the outcome of everything. It’s the way to understand the past, behave in the present and foresee the future. It’s the full circle, the ying and the yang, and there is no way to break it, since Israelis seem to know what’s in the Palestinians’ hearts. And this is something you can’t debate.

The only possible solution is to surrender. “OK,” I say. “I’ll go along with your logic. We can’t leave the West Bank, and we can’t deport 2 million Palestinians by force…”

-    No way! This is a democracy!

-    Yeh, I know… and the one-state solution is out of the question…

-    Out of the question! We will have an Arab majority! This will be the end of everything!

-    So what do you basically suggest we do?

(Silence, followed by a long speech)

-    Look. What are you getting at? Are you trying to say we don’t want peace? Don’t you remember the Camp David summit? We offered them almost everything, everything! Not to mention Oslo! And Gaza! And Madrid! It’s not that we don’t want peace! We love peace! It’s the first word in Hebrew! Show me another nation where peace means also Hello!

-    Well, in Arabic…

-    …The point is that we want peace. Do you think we enjoy all these wars? Remember what Golda Meir said? “We will forgive the Arabs for what they did to us, but we will never forgive them for what they made us do to them.” Beautiful, isn’t it? Captures the whole thing… I mean, look at the people we are dealing with. This is no Europe. It’s the Middle East. The Arabs, they never accepted us here. Remember the second Intifada? The first Intifada? Lebanon? Yom Kippur war? Remember the PLO convention in 64′? That was before we took the territories! Do you remember the partition offer in 47′? Why didn’t they take it? Did you know the Gran Moufti supported Hitler? Hitler! Remember the riots in 36′? There wasn’t even a state of Israel back then! And what about the pogroms in 29′? The Tel-Chai incident in 1920?

-    I’m trying to think about the future. This leads us nowhere, the Palestinians have their own list of pogroms, lets take the Nakba for instance…

-    The Nakba? What’s that has to do with it? Why are they always so obsessed with the Nakba, those Palestinians? They should look forward, settle the refugees where they are, build their nation… and you, why do you criticize Israel all the time? Can’t you write about them for a change?

-    Like what?

-    For example, about the incitement in the Palestinian society. They really don’t like us, you know.

-    They want to destroy us.

-    I see you are learning something after all.

Israel's Shas Party: Deporting foreign children preserves Israel's Jewish identity

Details: Written by Yair Ettinger Yair Ettinger; Published: 14 October 2009 14 October 2009; Hits: 3008 3008

Yishai: Deporting foreign children preserves Israel's Jewish identity
By Yair Ettinger
Tags: Shas, Jewish, migrant workers
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1120966.html

Interior Minister and Shas Party chairman Eli Yishai plans "to muster all of Shas' political power on the issue of the foreign workers," he told Haaretz on Tuesday.

During a conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Yishai warned that if the cabinet rejects his demand that children of foreign workers not be given residency or citizenship in Israel, he will abdicate responsibility for the Immigration Authority, which is currently in his ministry's purview, to the Prime Minister's Office, and foment a coalition crisis to boot.

He also reminded Netanyahu of a similar case in 1986, when then-Shas chairman and interior minister Yitzhak Peretz resigned from the cabinet after the High Court of Justice ordered the ministry to register people who underwent Reform conversions overseas as Jews.

Yishai does not object to Monday's decision to postpone deporting the children and their parents until the end of the school year, saying this was for "humanitarian reasons." But he stressed that he will not agree to any further postponements and will vehemently oppose granting the children citizenship or residency.

Allowing these children to stay in Israel "is liable to damage the state's Jewish identity, constitute a demographic threat and increase the danger of assimilation," he said.

Palestinian faith in Obama 'evaporates'

Details: Written by Rory McCarthy Jerusalem Rory McCarthy Jerusalem; Published: 13 October 2009 13 October 2009; Hits: 2892 2892

Palestinian faith in Obama 'evaporates'

Leaked memo from President Mahmoud Abbas accuses White House of buckling under pressure from Israel

    * Rory McCarthy Jerusalem
    * guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 October 2009 18.37 BST
    * http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/13/palestinians-israel-obama-abbas

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas shake hands while Barack Obama looks on at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP

Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas shake hands while Barack Obama looks on at in New York last month. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP

Palestinian political leaders have expressed acute disappointment in the Obama administration, saying their hopes that it could bring peace to the Middle East have "evaporated" and accusing the White House of giving in to Israeli pressure.

The unusually frank comments come in an internal memo from the Fatah party, led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, but reflect a broader frustration among Palestinian politicians that Washington's very public push for peace in the Middle East has yet to produce even a restarting of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

"All hopes placed in the new US administration and President Obama have evaporated," said the document, which was leaked to the Associated Press news agency.

It said Barack Obama "couldn't withstand the pressure of the Zionist lobby, which led to a retreat from his previous positions on halting settlement construction and defining an agenda for the negotiations and peace".

The document, dated Monday, came from an office led by Mohammed Ghneim, a Fatah hardliner and the party's number two, who returned to the West Bank only this year after many years in exile. He was long a critic of the Oslo accords of the mid-1990s, arguing they gave too much to the Israelis.

Other Palestinian figures share the frustrations. Mohammad Dahlan was reported as saying this week that he felt "very disappointed and worried by the US administration retreat".

For many months now, the Palestinians have kept to their position that talks cannot restart without an end to construction in Israeli settlements and a guarantee that a full agreement is on the table, based on the borders before the 1967 war, in which Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

"The Israelis need to acknowledge that the 1967 borders are the borders between the two states, and this is the foundation of any negotiations," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior aide to Abbas.

George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, was in Jerusalem again at the weekend for another round of apparently fruitless talks between the two sides.

After Obama met with Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in New York last month he said he wanted negotiations to restart soon. But even with the president's newlyawarded Noble peace prize, that still seems harder than first expected.

Washington has notably toned down its language on Israeli settlement-building, and no longer calls for a full freeze to construction, talking instead of "restraint."

But this Palestinian disenchantment also comes at a time when Abbas has seen his personal credibility badly damaged among his own people, and it may be partly an effort to deflect criticism. There was disquiet when he agreed at the last minute to go to New York last month for the Netanyahu meeting, even though the Israelis had not agreed to the full halt to settlement building that Abbas had demanded.

The criticism worsened dramatically when 10 days ago he decided against supporting a vote at the UN human rights council to endorse a critical UN report on the Gaza war, written by the South African judge Richard Goldstone.

The report, hailed by human rights groups, accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and recommended that international prosecutions be considered.

Although it appeared that the Palestinians had enough support at the council to endorse the report, Abbas backed away at the last minute, apparently under intense US diplomatic pressure. He faced bitter criticism from his political rival, Hamas. It said he was unfit to lead and pulled out of a crucial reconciliation agreement due to have been signed later this month.

Abbas has since reversed his decision. Now the report will once again be considered at the human rights council in Geneva at a special session starting on Thursday. In New York tomorrow the UN security council will hold a debate on the Middle East, brought forward after Libya, a current council member, said the Goldstone report should be discussed.

It is not only the Palestinians who see little chance of peace: last week, Israel's often outspoken foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said there was no chance of a full peace deal with the Palestinians until a "much later stage."

"There are many conflicts in the world that haven't reached a comprehensive solution, and people learned to live with it," he said.

Dozens of 12th graders tell Netanyahu: We refuse to serve in IDF

Details: Written by Ofri Ilani, Haaretz Correspondent Ofri Ilani, Haaretz Correspondent; Published: 12 October 2009 12 October 2009; Hits: 3159 3159

Dozens of graduating high school seniors signed a letter on Monday declaring their refusal to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces.

The missive, which was addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, stated that the reason for their refusal to serve stems from the belief that "there is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"We hereby announce our refusal to take part in the military apparatus," read the letter which was signed by 88 youths. "We do not see a military solution as the proper solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"We are not evading the duty to contribute to society and we are not breaking Israeli law, but rather it is our war for human rights which is an act of preserving Israel's democratic character," the high school seniors wrote.

The four youths who presented the letter to the press said they intend to refuse military conscription and that they are ready to serve time in military prison.

The youths said other signatories chose to gain an exemption from the army through other means without refusing.

My Name is Rachel Corrie at Oregon State University – Corvallis – Oct. 21-25

Details: Written by AUPHR AUPHR; Published: 12 October 2009 12 October 2009; Hits: 2354 2354

My Name is Rachel Corrie at Oregon State University – Corvallis – Oct. 21-25

The Department of Anthropology, the office of the Vice President for Student Affairs, the Center for the Humanities, and the University Theatre of Oregon State University will present Alan Rickman’s and Katherine Viner’s My Name is Rachel Corrie, October 21-24, 7:30 PM, and October 25 at 2:00 PM in the Lab Theatre of Withycombe Hall, 30th and Campus Way. There will be free pre-show lectures (listed below) in the Green Room of the theatre at 6:30 PM exploring the events that formed some of the background of the play (Sunday talk begins at 1PM). There will be post-show discussions following every performance. Tickets are available at the door. A two dollar donation is suggested.

The play relates the story of Rachel Corrie, a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, who went to Gaza to work for Palestinian human rights and was tragically killed there on March 16, 2003. Rachel was a vital young woman driven by her need to make a positive difference in the world. Inspired by her story, and with permission from her family, Rickman and Viner edited Rachel’s diaries, journals, and e-mails to create this fascinating and moving portrait of this dynamic young woman. Newsweek said the play is “theater that not only stirs our hearts but sticks in our heads.” Time Out (London) said of the original production that it had “extraordinary power” and was funny, passionate, bristling with idealism, and luminously intelligent. The London Guardian reported that when theater is as “good as this,” it will “send us out enriched by other people’s passionate concerns.” USA Today noted that the play was “deeply, authentically human.” Rachel Corrie's story has moved audiences around the world and there have been productions throughout the United States.

The role of Rachel will be performed by Elizabeth Helman, director of the 2009 Bard in the Quad’s Twelfth Night and faculty member in Theatre Arts at Oregon State. The play is directed by Charlotte Headrick and design is by George Caldwell. Cassandra Kornman is stage manager for the production.

Due to the design of the Lab Theatre, latecomers cannot be admitted. The play is performed without intermission. Box office opens at 6:15 PM on nights of performance and at 1:30 PM for the Sunday matinee. This play contains language and situations that are not suitable for young audiences.

For further information on the production, contact the director at cheadrick@oregonstate.edu or 737-4918 or David McMurray of the Department of Anthropology mcmurrad@oregonstate.edu at 737-4515.

Pre-show talks are in Withycombe Hall 62 (the Green Room) and are listed below:

Wednesday, October 21st, 6:30 PM

Theresa May, Theatre Arts, University of Oregon

Radical Theater versus Theater about Radicals:

Thoughts on My Name Is Rachel Corrie