In Palestine, Everything is Relative: The settler violence you won’t hear about

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Written by Yousef Munayyer Yousef Munayyer

Published: 14 March 2011 14 March 2011

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When I heard the horrific news last night that 5 Israeli settlers were murdered in their home in the settlement of Itamar, I knew it would only be a matter of hours before a shoddy piece of journalism describes the murders as the end of a "lull in the violence" or the end of "relative calm" since 4 Israeli settlers were killed in an attack near Hebron last summer. At that time, the Washington Post ran an editorial saying that the attacks then ended "three years of peace" in the region which we posted about.

So I suppose it should come as no surprise that the Washington Post's own Janine Zacharia leads the way this morning by displaying a complete ignorance of the situation she is supposedly covering or an overt pro-Israel bias (or both). Here's Zacharia's story and the critical excerpt:

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz, citing a preliminary investigation, reported that the children killed were ages 11, 3 and a 3-month-old baby. The newspaper also said that another 12-year-old daughter and two of her younger brothers managed to escape.
The attack shattered a relative calm that had prevailed in the West Bank in recent months as Palestinian security forces assert greater control in the territories where they are allowed by Israel to operate and as Israeli and Palestinians forces coordinate security efforts.
Last August, four Jewish settlers were killed in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank.

Zacharia's chronology is likely representative of the broader mainstream media's coverage of these events, sadly. American readers or consumers of mainstream media (MSM) are delivered a simple, straightforward message: Israelis are killed about 6 months apart and in between everything was calm.

The problem is that for Zacharia and much of the MSM "relative calm" means no Israelis were attacked, injured or killed and ignores the ongoing occupation and violence against Palestinians.

(read the rest on MondoWeiss  . .. )

Israel approves West Bank homes after murder of settler family

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Written by Harriet Sherwood and agencies Harriet Sherwood and agencies

Published: 13 March 2011 13 March 2011

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Binyamin Netanyahu approves hundreds of settler homes in West Bank after Palestinian militants kill family

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu at the weekly cabinet meeting said Israel would build several hundred homes for settlers in the occupied West Bank Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/AFP/Getty Images

Israel has approved hundreds of settler homes after five members of an Israeli family - including three children - were knifed to death as they slept in a West Bank settlement over the weekend.

The attack and the government's response threatens to drive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking even further out of reach.

The settlement construction, approved on Saturday night by the cabinet's ministerial team on settlements, would take place in West Bank settlement blocks that Israel expects to hold on to in any final peace deal, the prime minister's office said in a text message to reporters.

Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under domestic pressure to respond harshly to the killings, is a member of that team. On Saturday, Netanyahu demanded international condemnation of the murders, that Palestinian militants said was in reprisal for Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli soldiers mounted a massive search in the West Bank after a mother, father and three children, aged between three months and 11, were attacked with knives in their house in the settlement of Itamar, near the Palestinian city of Nablus. It was believed that two of the dead had their throats cut.

The alarm was raised by the couple's 12-year-old daughter who returned home from a youth event on the settlement to find the bloodstained scene. Two other children asleep in a separate room at the time of the attack were unharmed. The surviving children were being cared for by grandparents.

The area was sealed off by Israeli police and soldiers. The army launched an operation in the nearby Palestinian village of Awata, arresting about two dozen young men.

The dead were named as Udi Fogel, 36, his wife Ruth, 35, and children Yoav, 11, Elad, four, and Hadas, three months. The family previously lived in the Gush Katif settlement in the Gaza Strip, which was evacuated in 2005, and recently moved to Itamar.

Rabbi Yaakov Cohen, a neighbour who entered the house with the 12-year-old girl, told the Ynet website that her two-year-old brother "was lying next to his bleeding parents, shaking them with his hands and trying to get them to wake up, while crying … the sight in the house was shocking."

According to an Israeli settlement security official who visited the scene of the attack, one or two intruders scaled the security fence surrounding Itamar and entered the family's home through a window. The father, said the official, who did not want to be named, was a teacher in a religious school.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of Fatah, the dominant political faction in the West Bank, said it had carried out the "heroic operation … in response to the fascist occupation against our people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip".

Netanyahu said: "I expect the international community to sharply and unequivocally condemn this murder, the murder of children. I have noticed that several countries that always hasten to the UN security council in order to condemn Israel, the state of the Jews, for planning a house in some locality … have been dilatory in sharply condemning the murder of Jewish infants. I expect them to issue such condemnations immediately, without balances, without understandings, without justifications. There is no justification and there can be neither excuse nor forgiveness for the murder of children."

He said he was disappointed in the reaction from the Palestinian Authority. Earlier he had blamed its "incitement against Israel" for the attack.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, telephoned Netanyahu to condemn the attack. "Violence will only bring more violence," he said, urging a comprehensive agreement to end the conflict. Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, said that "violence does not justify violence … whoever does it and whoever the victims are".

A statement from the White House said there was "no possible justification for the killings of parents and children in their home". Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, denounced the attack as "an act of incomprehensible cruelty".

It was the first killing of settlers since four adults were shot dead near Hebron on the eve of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians last September. The talks stalled following Israel's refusal to extend a freeze on new settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The West Bank has seen few militant operations in recent years as the Palestinian Authority has stepped up security as part of its efforts to build the basis of a future state. Last month, Israel removed the Hawara checkpoint near Itamar. But there has been continued tension between Palestinian villagers and hardline settlers, with regular clashes over the destruction of olive trees.

In the nearby Palestinian village of Awata, Khalil Shurrab said that "many, many soldiers" had come in the early hours, going house to house to round up people. Residents showed visitors rooms in houses that they said had been trashed by soldiers and spent tear gas canisters.

Hilary Minch, a volunteer with a Christian monitoring group based near Nablus, said the army had used live ammunition and stun grenades. "The next 24 hours will be very tense," she said. "The villagers fear retribution by the settlers."

Avnery on Israel's Leadership: The Dwarfs

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Written by Uri Avnery Uri Avnery

Published: 12 March 2011 12 March 2011

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Uri Avnery
March 12, 2011

The Dwarfs

JERUSALEM IS abuzz with brilliant new ideas. The brightest minds of our political establishment are grappling with the problems created by the ongoing Arab revolution that is reshaping the landscape around us.

Here is the latest crop of mind-bogglingly innovative ideas:

Minister of Defense Ehud Barak has announced that he is going to ask the US for a grant of another 20 billion dollars for more state-of-the-art fighter planes, missile boats, a submarine, troop carriers and so on .

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had his picture taken surrounded by female soldiers – like Muammar Qaddafi in the good old days – looking beyond the Jordan River and announcing that the Israeli army would never ever leave the Jordan valley. According to him, this occupied strip of land is Israel’s vital “security border”.

This slogan is as old as the occupation itself. It was part of the celebrated Allon Plan, which was designed to surround the West Bank with Israeli territory. Incidentally, the father of the plan, Yigal Allon, was also a leader of the Kibbutz movement, and the Jordan valley looked to him like an ideal area for new Kibbutzim – it is flat, well watered and was sparsely populated.

However, times have changed. When Allon was a legendary commander in the 1948 war, he did not even dream of missiles. Today, missiles launched from beyond the Jordan can easily reach my home in Tel Aviv. When Netanyahu declares that we need the Jordan valley in order to stop the Arabs from smuggling missiles into the West Bank, he is, well, a little bit behind the times.

When the politicians bravely face the new world, the army dares not lag behind. This week, several division commanders announced that they were preparing for Tahrir-style “non-violent mass uprisings” in the West Bank. Troops are trained, riot control means are stocked. Our glorious army is being prepared for yet another colonial police job.

To reinforce the mental vigor of the leadership, Netanyahu has now mobilized an awesome intellect: he has appointed General Yaakov Amidror as Chief of the National Security Council. Amidror, the highest ranking kippa-wearing officer in the army, has never hidden his ultra-ultra nationalist views, including his total opposition to a Palestinian state and peace in general. He is, by the way, the officer who recently mentioned approvingly that some armies put “a bullet into the heads” of soldiers who don’t rise to storm an enemy position.

It is only fitting that Netanyahu invited the National Front party, which includes openly fascist elements, to join his government this week. They refused, because Netanyahu is not extreme enough for them.

In the meantime, a dozen top politicians, from Avigdor Lieberman down, have been dusting off moribund plans for “interim agreements” – old merchandise sitting sadly on the shelves, with no buyers in sight.

All in all: political dwarfs, confronted with a revolutionary new reality which they can neither understand nor cope with. (This is not to insult real-life dwarfs, who are, of course, as intelligent as anyone else.)


WITH THIS bunch of leaders, it is almost utopian to ask what we could and should do to attune ourselves to the new geopolitical reality.

Assuming that the Arab world, or a large part of it, is on the road to democracy and social progress, how will this affect our future?

Can we build bridges to such progressive, multi-party societies? Can we persuade them to accept us as a legitimate part of the region? Can we participate in the political and economic emergence of a “New Middle East”?

I believe we can. But the absolute, unalterable precondition is that we make peace with the Palestinian people.

It is the unshakable – and self-fulfilling - conviction of the entire Israeli establishment that this is impossible. They are quite right – as long as they are in charge, it is indeed impossible. But with another leadership, will things be different?

If both sides – and this depends heavily on Israel, the incomparably stronger side - really want peace, peace is there for the asking. All the requirements are lying plainly on the table. They have been discussed endlessly. The points for compromise are clearly marked. It would need no more than a few weeks to work out the details. Borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, water, security – we all know by now what the solutions are. (I and others have enumerated them several times.) What is lacking is the political will.

A peace agreement – signed by the PLO, ratified in a popular referendum, accepted by Hamas – will radically change the attitude of the Arab peoples in general towards Israel.

This is not simply a matter of form – it goes deep into the bedrock of national consciousness. Not one of the ongoing uprisings in the various Arab countries is anti-Israeli by nature. Nowhere do the Arab masses cry out for war. Indeed, the idea of war contradicts their basic aspirations: social progress, freedom, a standard of living which allows a life in dignity.

However, as long as the occupation of Palestinian territory goes on, the Arab masses will reject conciliation with Israel. Whatever the feelings of any particular Arab people towards the Palestinians – all Arabs feel profoundly obligated to help in the liberation of their fellow-Arabs. As an Egyptian leader once told me: “They are our poor relatives, and our tradition does not allow us to forsake a poor relative. It is a matter of honor.”

Therefore, Israel will crop up in every free election campaign in the Arab countries, and every party will feel obliged to condemn Israel.


ONE ARGUMENT against peace, endlessly repeated by our official propaganda, is that Hamas will never accept it. The specter of Islamist movements in other countries winning democratic elections – as Hamas did in Palestine – is painted on the wall as a mortal danger.

It may be worthwhile remembering that Hamas was effectively created by Israel in the first place.

During the first decades of the occupation, the military governors forbade any kind of Palestinian political activity, even by those who were advocating peace with Israel. Activists were sent to prison. There was only one exception: Islamists. Not only was it impossible to prevent them from assembling in the mosques – the only public space left open – but the military governors were told to encourage Islamist organizations, as a counterforce to the PLO, which was considered the main enemy. The PLO was and remains non-religious, and many Christians have played a significant role in it.

That was, of course, a stupid idea, typical of the short-sightedness of our political and military leaders, as far as Arab affairs are concerned. On the outbreak of the first intifada, the Islamist movement constituted itself as Hamas (“Islamic Resistance Movement”) and took up the fight.

The emergence of Hizbollah was also a result of Israeli actions. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in order to destroy the PLO mini-state in the South of the country, it created a vacuum that was soon filled by the newly founded Shiite Party of God, Hizbollah.

Both Hamas and Hizbollah aspire to power in their respective countries. That is their main aim. For both, the fight against Israel is more a means than an end. Once peace is achieved, their energies will be directed to the struggle for power in their own countries.

Will Hamas accept peace? It has declared as much in a roundabout way: if the Palestinian Authority makes peace, they have declared, and if the peace agreement is ratified by a Palestinian referendum, Hamas will accept it as an expression of the people’s will. The same goes for all the Islamic movements in the various Arab countries, with the exception of al-Qaeda and the likes, which are not nationally-based political parties but international conspiratorial organizations.

With a peace treaty freely accepted by the Palestinians as the satisfaction of their national aspirations, any intervention by other Arab countries will become redundant, if not downright ridiculous. Hizbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and similar national religious organizations will concentrate their efforts on gaining power within the new democratic structures.

With this obstacle removed, Israel will be judged by the Arab masses for what it is, at that time. We shall have the historic chance to take part in the reshaping of the entire region. Our deeds will speak.


MORE THAN 50 years ago, the then Crown Prince of Morocco, Moulai Hassan - the later king Hassan II - made a historic proposal: to invite Israel to join the Arab League. At the time, the idea sounded outlandish and was soon forgotten. (Except by the king himself, who reminded me of it when he received me secretly in 1981.)

Today, with a new Arab world in sight, this utopian vision is suddenly looking more realistic. Yes, after peace, with the free and sovereign State of Palestine becoming a full member of the UN, a reformed regional structure , including Israel, perhaps Turkey and, in due course, Iran, will move into the realm of reality.

A region with open borders, with commercial activity and economic cooperation flourishing from Marrakesh to Mosul, from Haifa to Aden, within a generation or two – yes, that is one of the possibilities opened by the current earth-shaking events.


SUCH A development would need, of course, a total change in our basic concepts, some of which are at least as old as Zionism itself.

It will not happen as long as our political and intellectual life is dominated by Netanyahu, Lieberman, Barak, Eli Yishai, Tzipi Livni, Shimon Peres and their ilk. The stage must be cleared of this whole crop of dwarfs.

Can this happen? Will it happen? “Realists” will shake their heads - as they did before the Germans tore down their wall, before Boris Yeltsin climbed on that tank and before the Americans elected an Afro-American president whose middle name is Hussein.

American Methodist Church Calls for End to Settlements

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Written by Palestine Network News (PNN) Palestine Network News (PNN)

Published: 10 March 2011 10 March 2011

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Bethlehem – PNN- The American Methodist church called on Tuesday for an end to illegal Israeli settlement activity and American support of them, part of a “series of unprecedented steps” from the largest Christian denomination in the United States.

The move is just the latest from the Methodist church, which decided in July 2010 to boycott Israeli settlement goods.

Boasting nearly 8 million members in the United States, it may yield influence to pressure President Obama’s foreign policies—notably his use of the veto against a United Nations Security Council condemning Israeli settlements supported by the remaining 14 council members, nearly two weeks ago.

The resolution, the result of discussions held in a 40-member special church council tasked with following the humanitarian situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, calls for the end of all violence Israeli or Palestinian and the beginning of “true negotiations to end the Middle East conflict” on the basis of the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

The statement also called for an immediate freeze of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land and confiscation of Palestinian property in East Jerusalem and the cutting off of American support for such activities.

Rev. Danny Awad, assistant dean of students at the Bethlehem Bible College, said the decision signaled that the Methodist church “stood on its principles on the side of truth, fighting against injustice wherever in the world it occurs.”

The Methodist church in Bethlehem will celebrate 60 years since its founding this coming April. It was bombed during Israel’s 2002 invasion of the city.