Israeli Knesset approves investigation of Israeli human rights groups

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Written by Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem

Published: 05 January 2011 05 January 2011

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Commission of inquiry into groups monitoring activities of the Israeli military in occupied West Bank denounced as 'McCarthyite'

Avigdor Lieberman Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party brought the bill proposing the commission of inquiry. Photograph: Ferenc Isza/AFP/Getty Images

The funding of Israeli human and civil rights groups is to be investigated amid claims they are acting against the country's interests, members of the Israeli parliament decided today – a move described by opponents as "McCarthyite".

A bill brought by members of the rightwing Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose leader is the controversial foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, proposed a parliamentary commission of inquiry into groups monitoring the activities of the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank.

Lieberman claimed their work was "delegitimising" Israel and was funded by anti-Israeli international bodies.

The bill was approved by 47 votes to 16 following a heated debate in the Knesset, during which security guards were present.

The vote was immediately condemned by rights organisations expecting to be investigated. They claimed the bill was part of a larger campaign to intimidate groups and individuals who speak out against the actions of the Israeli state.

"Israeli democracy took a severe blow today," Hagai el-Ad, the director of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), said.

"The goal is to eventually weaken human rights groups and make them less effective in exposing, questioning and affecting government policies.

"Time and again, members of the current Knesset have shown, that instead of dealing with the content of the criticism voiced, they prefer to silence and vilify those who voice such opinions."

The commission of inquiry – which ACRI and two members of the Knesset compared to the 1950s McCarthyite witchhunts in the US – is of symbolic importance rather than a body with real power. It has no authority to compel individuals to give evidence or documents to be submitted.

Its supporters claimed the targeted groups are backed by "international groups ... with the goal of damaging the legitimacy of the activities of IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] soldiers, encouraging draft-dodging and branding IDF soldiers and commanders as war criminals".

They said the purpose of the commission was to investigate the funding of the groups, rather than their activities. The panel will examine suggestions that some rights organisations are funded by bodies with links to terrorist activities.

However, more than a dozen Israeli organisations expecting to be targeted issued a joint statement saying they had nothing to hide and that comprehensive lists of donors were available on their websites and in annual reports.

ACRI, B'tselem, Physicians for Human Rights, Breaking the Silence and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel are among the groups expected to be investigated.

B'Tselem said the move was an attempt "to hinder our work through smears and incitement".

Its work, it added, was "conducted legally and with complete transparency. Persecution and attempts at silencing will not stop us. In a democracy, criticism of the government is not only legitimate – it is essential".

Fania Kirshenbaum, who proposed the bill, told the Knesset the groups were "behind the indictments lodged against Israeli officers and officials around the world ... these organisations are responsible for branding IDF soldiers as war criminals and encourage defamations".

Before the debate, Nitzan Horowitz, of the leftwing Meretz party, described the proposal as a "shame on the Knesset". "All to whom Israeli democracy is dear must oppose this committee of persecution," he said.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) described the move as "an affront to democratic values".

"No human rights organisation has succeeded in harming Israel in the way those Israeli politicians who introduce and support such despotic initiatives damage Israeli society," Ishai Menuchin, PCATI's executive director, said.

"If [Kirshenbaum] is worried about what the world will think about Israel, then she should introduce legislation that would end impunity and force all complaints of human rights violations to be independently and impartially investigated."

The bill will be considered by a parliamentary committee before being returned to the full Knesset for a further vote.

Civil and human rights organisations in Israel are concerned about other bills that have been presented to MPs, including moves to impose heavy fines on Israeli citizens backing boycotts of the country, a call for greater transparency on the foreign funding of rights groups and the demand that new non-Jewish citizens must pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state.

Meanwhile, Israeli police are to investigate two Facebook groups calling for "death to Arabs" and urging acts of violence.

Petition: Demand that Israel end its illegal siege of the Gaza Strip

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Written by US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

Published: 05 January 2011 05 January 2011

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http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/641/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5424

Two years after "Operation Cast Lead"--Israel’s horrific 22-day all-out assault of the besieged Palestinian Gaza Strip--which killed approximately 1,400 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians, Israel continues to collectively punish 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip through an illegal blockade, and to avoid accountability for its actions.

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation will collect 22,000 signatures in the next 22 days, on the petition at the link above. This petition calls upon the Obama Administration to:

1. Demand that Israel end its illegal siege of the Gaza Strip, and
2. 2Stop blocking the international community from holding Israel accountable for its actions.

Help us reach that goal by signing this petition. After doing so, you can help us spread the word about this petition by alerting your friends. Thanks for taking action!

 

Breaking the Israel-Palestine Deadlock

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Written by Noam Chomsky, Op-Ed Noam Chomsky, Op-Ed

Published: 04 January 2011 04 January 2011

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While intensively engaged in illegal settlement expansion, the government of Israel is also seeking to deal with two problems: a global campaign of what it perceives as “delegitimation” – that is, objections to its crimes and withdrawal of participation in them – and a parallel campaign of legitimation of Palestine.

The “delegitimation,” which is progressing rapidly, was carried forward in December by a Human Rights Watch call on the U.S. “to suspend financing to Israel in an amount equivalent to the costs of Israel’s spending in support of settlements,” and to monitor contributions to Israel from tax-exempt U.S. organizations that violate international law, “including prohibitions against discrimination” – which would cast a wide net. Amnesty International had already called for an arms embargo on Israel. The legitimation process also took a long step forward in December, when Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil recognized the State of Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank), bringing the number of supporting nations to more than 100.

International lawyer John Whitbeck estimates that 80-90 percent of the world’s population live in states that recognize Palestine, while 10-20 percent recognize the Republic of Kosovo. The U.S. recognizes Kosovo but not Palestine. Accordingly, as Whitbeck writes in Counterpunch, media “act as though Kosovo’s independence were an accomplished fact while Palestine’s independence is only an aspiration which can never be realized without Israeli-American consent,” reflecting the normal workings of power in the international arena.

Given the scale of Israeli settlement of the West Bank, it has been argued for more a decade that the international consensus on a two-state settlement is dead, or mistaken (though evidently most of the world does not agree). Therefore those concerned with Palestinian rights should call for Israeli takeover of the entire West Bank, followed by an anti-apartheid struggle of the South African variety that would lead to full citizenship for the Arab population there.

The argument assumes that Israel would agree to the takeover. It is far more likely that Israel will instead continue the programs leading to annexation of the parts of the West Bank that it is developing, roughly half the area, and take no responsibility for the rest, thus defending itself from the “demographic problem” – too many non-Jews in a Jewish state – and meanwhile severing besieged Gaza from the rest of Palestine.

One analogy between Israel and South Africa merits attention. Once apartheid was implemented, South African nationalists recognized they were becoming international pariahs because of it. In 1958, however, the foreign minister informed the U.S. ambassador that U.N. condemnations and other protests were of little concern as long as South Africa was supported by the global hegemon – the United States. By the 1970s, the U.N. declared an arms embargo, soon followed by boycott campaigns and divestment. South Africa reacted in ways calculated to enrage international opinion. In a gesture of contempt for the U.N. and President Jimmy Carter – who failed to react so as not to disrupt worthless negotiations – South Africa launched a murderous raid on the Cassinga refugee camp in Angola just as the Carter-led “contact group” was to present a settlement for Namibia. The similarity to Israel’s behavior today is striking – for example, the attack on Gaza in January 2009 and on the Gaza freedom flotilla in May 2010.

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When President Reagan took office in 1981, he lent full support to South Africa’s domestic crimes and its murderous depredations in neighboring countries. The policies were justified in the framework of the war on terror that Reagan had declared on coming into office. In 1988, Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress was designated one of the world’s “more notorious terrorist groups” (Mandela himself was only removed from Washington’s “terrorist list” in 2008). South Africa was defiant, and even triumphant, with its internal enemies crushed, and enjoying solid support from the one state that mattered in the global system.

Shortly after, U.S. policy shifted. U.S. and South African business interests very likely realized they would be better off by ending the apartheid burden. And apartheid soon collapsed. South Africa is not the only recent case where ending U.S. support for crimes has led to significant progress. Can such a transformative shift happen in Israel’s case, clearing the way to a diplomatic settlement? Among the barriers firmly in place are the very close military and intelligence ties between the U.S. and Israel.

The most outspoken support for Israeli crimes comes from the business world. U.S. high-tech industry is closely integrated with its Israeli counterpart. To cite just one example, the world’s largest chip manufacturer, Intel, is establishing its most advanced production unit in Israel.

A U.S. cable released by WikiLeaks reveals that Rafael military industries in Haifa is one of the sites considered vital to U.S. interests due to its production of cluster bombs; Rafael had already moved some operations to the U.S. to gain better access to U.S. aid and markets. There is also a powerful Israel lobby, though of course dwarfed by the business and military lobbies.

Critical cultural facts apply, too. Christian Zionism long precedes Jewish Zionism, and is not restricted to the one-third of the U.S. population that believes in the literal truth of the Bible. When British Gen. Edmund Allenby conquered Jerusalem in 1917, the national press declared him to be Richard the Lionhearted, finally rescuing the Holy Land from the infidels.

Next, Jews must return to the homeland promised to them by the Lord. Articulating a common elite view, Harold Ickes, Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, described Jewish colonization of Palestine as an achievement “without comparison in the history of the human race.”

There is also an instinctive sympathy for a settler-colonial society that is seen to be retracing the history of the U.S. itself, bringing civilization to the lands that the undeserving natives had misused – doctrines deeply rooted in centuries of imperialism.

To break the logjam it will be necessary to dismantle the reigning illusion that the U.S. is an “honest broker” desperately seeking to reconcile recalcitrant adversaries, and to recognize that serious negotiations would be between the U^.S.-Israel and the rest of the world.

If U.S. power centers can be compelled by popular opinion to abandon decades-old rejectionism, many prospects that seem remote might become suddenly possible.

(Noam Chomsky’s most recent book, with co-author Ilan Pappe, is "Gaza in Crisis." Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)

© 2011 Noam Chomsky

Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

Gaza Two Years Later: From beneath

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Written by Rawan Yaghi Rawan Yaghi

Published: 03 January 2011 03 January 2011

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I didn't even know if my eyes were open.

After a big mess everything seemed so calm I could sense the dust covering my face, the only part I could feel. I could feel my breath hitting one of the bricks of my room's floor. Air found its way through everything surrounding my body. Silence was all I could hear.

My arms trapped somewhere under the wooden edges of my bed, my toes, my legs, my hair, they all were jailed and penalized not to move. I was afraid. I waited and waited trying to recall all the joyful events in my life, as my mother once advised me to do so when I'm afraid, though they were few: My elder brother's big wedding, my grandmother coming from Hajj and bringing me a doll singing, the last Eid when I got my biggest Edeyya ever, my mother bringing us home a new baby after me. I wonder if that was a happy event for me, but I could certainly see the joy my parents had looking at that little thing.

My breath firmly came back to my face touching it as to comfort me and tell me that everything will be ok. A minute later I started crying, though. And only then I realized that my eyes were closed, for I could feel my wet eyelashes. It did not matter; opening them and closing them were thoroughly the same. I cried so much that my tears mixed with the dust on my face felt like mud at the edges of my face. I must have been bleeding, since a killing pain started growing in my chest with the growing of my weeping. I tried to move in order to stop the pain. Only one muscle, I found out that something very sharp, extremely strong, calmly was standing through my skin. I stopped crying. I waited. I bled.

Rawan Yaghi, 17, is a secondary school student in Gaza. She blogs at http://rawan-hp.blogspot.com. Gaza Two Years Later is a series of posts by Gazan bloggers and writers reflecting on the two-year anniversary of the Israeli attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008/09. You can read the entire series here.