By DIAA HADID, Associated Press Writer Diaa Hadid, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM – A former Israeli soldier posted photos on Facebook of herself in uniform smiling beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners, drawing sharp criticism Monday from the Israeli military and Palestinian officials.

Israeli news websites and blogs showed two photographs of the woman. In one, she is sitting legs crossed beside a blindfolded Palestinian man who is slumped against a concrete barrier. His face is turned downwards, while she leans toward him with her face upturned. Another shows her smiling at the camera with three Palestinian men with bound hands and blindfolds behind her.

The incident was a reminder of the fraught relations between Israeli soldiers and the West Bank Palestinians under their control.

Israeli soldiers have run into trouble on the social media sites like Facebook and YouTube before. Most recently a group of combat soldiers were reprimanded for breaking into choreographed dance moves while on patrol in the West Bank town of Hebron. The dance featured prominently on YouTube.

Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib condemned the photos and said they pointed to a deeper malaise — how Israel’s 43-year-old occupation of Palestinians has affected the Israelis who enforce it.

“This shows the mentality of the occupier,” Khatib said, “to be proud of humiliating Palestinians. The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting.”

The Israeli military also criticized the young woman, who Israeli news media and bloggers identified from her Facebook page as Eden Aberjil of the southern Israeli port town of Ashdod. No official confirmed her identity.

“These are disgraceful photos,” said Capt. Barak Raz, an Israeli military spokesman. “Aside from matters of information security, we are talking about a serious violation of our morals and our ethical code and should this soldier be serving in active duty today, I would imagine that no doubt she would be court-martialed immediately,” he told Associated Press Television News.

It was not clear whether the army could punish the woman, because she has finished her compulsory military service.

The comments by the woman and her friend in an exchange below one photograph suggested how casually the picture was treated, including jokes and sexual innuendoes.

“You’re the sexiest like that,” her friend wrote.

“I wonder if he’s got Facebook!” the woman in the photograph responded. “I have to tag him in the picture!”

Aberjil did not respond to reporters’ questions Monday.

The photographs were a reminder of snapshots taken in 2003 by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that showed Iraqi detainees naked, humiliated and terrified. In that case, some soldiers went to prison after the photos came to light.

The photographs of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinians, by contrast, show no overt physical abuse or coercion of the prisoners, although they are ridiculed in the comments between the soldier and her friends.

Palestinians are routinely handcuffed and blindfolded when they are arrested to stop them from trying to flee.

By: Michael Gillespie

United for Justice and Peace, the largest peace coalition in Greater Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, met at the Friends Center in Cambridge on June 19 to explore responses to Israel’s continuing siege of Gaza in the aftermath of the massacre of peace activists taking part in a Free Gaza flotilla on May 31. About 50 activists attended.
The three-hour meeting featured a panel discussion with Ann Wright (Col. U.S. Army, Ret.), a distinguished U.S. foreign service officer who resigned in protest from the Department of State in March 2003, the day before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Husam Zomlot, a Palestinian scholar and diplomat. Zomlot served as PLO Representative to the UK from 2003 to 2008 and is currently a Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The discussion was moderated by Jeff Klein, a retired machinist, union leader, and activist with Dorchester People for Peace.
“The sequence of events has been quite remarkable in the last two years,” said Wright. “The international community is putting pressure on the Israelis and the Egyptians and the American government to end the siege of Gaza.”
“It’s taking the people of the world, it’s a citizens’ action that is forcing governments to listen to the people. We in the United States have had a particularly bad run of governments listening to us over the last 10 years. The Bush administration didn’t listen to us on anything, and, tragically, the Obama administration is not listening to us much either,” said Wright.
“I’ll tell you what: When the citizens of the world start getting together on these things, well, things happen. What happened with the Gaza Flotilla, where we had six ships that finally started sailing toward Gaza, was tragic. All were attacked in international waters 70 miles off the coast of Gaza in an act of piracy, an act of kidnapping, an act of murder, an act of theft, all crimes by anyone’s estimation.
“That’s what happened on six ships, three of which were passenger ships, two of which were cargo ships. Passengers numbered 600 on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ferry boat that was leased by a huge Turkish international NGO, the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH). If you go on their web site, www.IHH.org.tr, you’ll see that in contrast to what the Israeli government talks about this IHH as being a terrorist organization that does nothing but support Hamas, you’ll see that that organization that brought over 400 people from Turkey and over 200 people from other countries in the region, it is an organization that has world-wide reach similar to CARE, Catholic Relief Services, International Rescue Committee, all of those organizations that work internationally, IHH is one of them,” the retired U.S. Army Colonel and foreign service officer told her audience.
“[IHH] does work in Gaza, and, like virtually every organization that works in Gaza, it has to have dealings with the government, and that’s [the basis of the false Israeli charge that] IHH is an international terrorist organization.
“Actually, the U.S. government calls other people terrorists. We have three Congressmen and women now who are calling people like me, who were on the flotilla, and like you, who have been to Gaza, people like you all who support the right of Palestinians to have a life, we are called terrorists by Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Brad Sherman (D-CA-27), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY-14). Sherman demanded that we be arrested and that we be charged with crimes of terrorism for taking part in the Gaza flotilla, so, last Thursday we had a giant protest in his office, but they refused to arrest us!
“It was really good. We had media like you wouldn’t believe. They were there to see what was going to happen when a U.S. Congressman calls for the arrest of American citizens. So we said, ‘OK! Arrest us! Come on!’ We had a press conference in the hallway. The police [that] were there, said ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that,’ and we said ‘We’re going in the Congressman’s office. He wants to arrest us. We’re presenting ourselves!’
“It all goes to show that now we’ve got people on the run. We’ve got an Israeli government that, after that attack—it was a criminal attack—it was an attack that did not have to happen. If the Israeli navy wanted to stop those ships, there were other ways. As a military officer, I know there are other ways to stop ships besides boarding them forcefully and using live ammunition and killing people—killing nine unarmed people!
“There were no weapons on any of those ships. If there had been, we would have seen them. The Israeli military would have been parading them. Instead the only photos are of kitchen knives that were on the ship because they part of kitchens to feed 600 people. There was one ax that was onboard, an ax that every boat is required to carry because in case lines get tangled you have to chop them,” explained Wright.
Wright said there was violence on the Mavi Marmara after fire from the Israeli helicopters killed and wounded unarmed activists on the ship. Three masked Israeli commandos who rappelled onto the upper decks were overpowered and beaten, but the Captain of the ship and the director of IHH put a stop to all physical resistance and ordered that the three Israelis be treated by doctors onboard and promptly returned to Israeli control, said Wright.
“The tragedy on the Mavi Marmara was that the Israeli commandos killed people, shot people. They could have stopped the boat in a variety of other ways but the Israeli government chose to have a major confrontation, a confrontation that has really backfired on them, a confrontation that has governments of the world, to include by some miracle the United States government, finally saying that the blockade, the siege of Gaza is ‘unsustainable’ and that the deaths were ‘regrettable.’
“That’s in contrast to what the White House has been saying about Helen Thomas’s comments that [have been described as] ‘reprehensible.’ You would think that perhaps murdering people would be called ‘reprehensible,’ but no, that’s not quite where the U.S. government has gotten yet,” said Wright in part.
Zomlot began by offering his heartfelt thanks for all the people who have given their lives for the sake of a resolution of the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, and condolences to their families.
“The attacks on the flotilla and what happened with Ann and her group have really broken through to the core of the issue of the blockade of Gaza. These heroic acts of universalism, people coming together as civilians to break the siege, one of the most draconian sieges of modern history, are already bearing fruit. The siege, as we speak, is crumbling,” said the Palestinian scholar and diplomat.
“The moment I heard of what happened on the high seas off of Gaza I knew that it was the end of one of the most illegal, inhumane blockades of modern history. Your message has been heard. While your goods, your humanitarian supplies, your gifts for the Palestinian babies of Gaza, your pencils and tablets for schools, your medicines did not arrive, your message has arrived.
“It is a very loud and clear message. The message is that the agony and the suffering of the Palestinians is not only Palestinian. It is universal,” said the Palestinian diplomat, who noted that he was born in Gaza and lived there for many years.
Zomlot offered a brief overview of Israeli policy in Gaza, which he noted had always had two elements. One has been the effort to stifle Palestine’s economy.
“The Israeli policy has always been to ensure that Palestinians, as a political society, would not have an economy they could rely on. From 1991 onward until today, there was a policy of closure, a policy of individual deprivation and collective deprivation. … All those who wish to leave or enter Gaza, all those who wish to import or export from Gaza, would have to obtain an Israeli permit. And believe you me, that was not easy to get. It was extremely difficult. The last three or four years has only witnessed a heightening of that system of closure,” said Zomlot.
“The second goal of Israeli policy is political and geographical fragmentation. This is a classic policy of divide and rule as we all know. This policy has been in place at least since the Oslo Accords. Unfortunately, with the help of some major international actors, it has borne fruits of Palestinian political and geographic divisions,” said Zomlot, who added that rather than speak about the morality or the legality of Israel’s policies, he would address instead the practicalities.
“What is it you seek by creating a poor, deprived, leaderless, divided neighbor? What is it? Is it really to soften their position to strike a deal with them? It doesn’t work. You can always defeat an army, but you can’t defeat a nation, a society of mothers and teachers and lawyers. And even if you want to soften their position and you want to crush their will and their determination, what is the alternative you are offering? What is it that Palestinians are asked to concede? More than they have done so several years ago, conceding 70 percent of their land? It is very impractical, because we are all witnessing the backlash!” said Zomlot.
The Israeli goal was to isolate Gaza from the West Bank and divide the Palestinian people, said the Palestinian diplomat. “That’s the main policy!”
“I believe that if Israel intends to liquidate the Palestinian polity, the Palestinian society, for the sake of finishing off the job they started in 1948, then [Israeli policy] makes sense, and what is happening now makes a lot of sense. But if Israel intends to really strike a deal with its neighbor and create the two-state solution that Israel has been talking about all these years, then what is happening does not make sense,” said Zomlot.
The Palestinian scholar and diplomat told his audience he fears that Israeli leaders have no intention of striking a deal with Palestinians on any terms, that they have no intention of allowing a viable, peaceful Palestinian state.
Zomlot identified four principles as a way forward. Palestinians, he said, are moving toward national unity. “Everybody realizes that fragmentation of our polity and out land is only playing into the hands of those who do not wish us well.”
As Palestinians move toward national unity, they are adopting a policy of non-violent popular resistance, said Zomlot. “It’s a universal Palestinian conclusion that non-violent resistance that is popular and peaceful—the best example is the flotilla and what happened—is the most effective way of confronting Israel.”
Third, said Zomlot, is national institution building. “The most important thing right now is to try and empower Palestinians to continue living on their land by creating institutions for health, education, etcetera that will enable Palestinians to survive, to be steadfast where they are.”
“And last, and most important in my opinion, is you,’ said Zomlot. “All of you. That is, the International Solidarity Movement, justice groups, peace groups. This new movement, that we see everywhere in Europe, in the U.S., in Australia, in Asia, and in Africa is forming and taking a very solid shape. Believe you me, the more assertive you are, the more vocal you are, the more strong you are, the more united you are, the more Palestinians are reaching into the non-violent side of the story. Because this alliance brings strength to face the violence that Palestinians are suffering,” said Zomlot.
“This movement is growing,” declared moderator Jeff Klein, “not as big and as fast as we would like, but nevertheless it is clear that this movement is growing.”
Klein reminded his audience that it wasn’t so long ago that many activists who recognized the importance of a just resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict were reluctant to speak out and engage on the issue in the larger peace movement and at the big antiwar rallies.
“I’m happy to say I think that’s largely over with. The Palestine issue has become one of the core issues of the activist community on the Left, and that’s a big step forward,” said Klein.
One result of the solidarity movement to break the siege of Gaza its unexpected and powerful effects in the Middle East, noted Klein.
Subsequent events underscore Klein’s remarks and those of Wright and Zomlot. As counterproductive wars and a failed U.S. foreign policy driven by a bloated defense industry and the malignant influence of Tel Aviv and its pro-Israel lobby play havoc with Washington’s legitimate interests in the Middle East, Ankara’s principled policies and diplomatic initiatives are finding favor as Turkey’s influence in the region and beyond increases.
On July 8, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said during a visit to London that Israel would have to lift its blockade and be “held accountable” for its attack on the aid ships of the Gaza flotilla or face gradual stages of disengagement if it did not respond to Turkey’s demands. Ankara has closed Turkish airspace to Israeli military aircraft, withdrawn its ambassador to Israel, and said the envoy will not return until Israel meets Turkish demands.
“Time is running out for a two-state solution. It is in Israel’s interest to make sure that it is still possible,” warned British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Hague described the blockade of Gaza as “unacceptable and unsustainable,” according a report in the Guardian (UK) by Ian Black, Middle East editor.
Wise diplomats and statesmen are now working for the welfare of all humanity, even as they strive to promote the interests of their own national and racial groups. They recognize that selfish political sagacity is ultimately suicidal, destructive of all those enduring qualities that insure planetary group survival.

By: Michael Gillespie

Anthony Manousos of Culver City, CA spoke to a small but keenly interested gathering of Iowa peace and social justice activists in the basement of the Des Moines Valley Friends Meetinghouse on June 28.
Manousos, a former English teacher and editor of Fellowship and Prayer, told his audience that has been interested in other religions for many years. That interest, said the California-based activists, moved him to live and study for nine months in a Zen Buddhist center and later to become involved in a variety of interfaith activities and organizations. He serves on the boards of the South Coast Interfaith Council and Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace in the Los Angeles area and is vice-chair of the executive committee of the Southern California Committee for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. Manousos is also active in the Quaker Christian and Interfaith Relations Committee of the Friends General Conference, a national organization.
Manousos is currently touring the USA speaking about the growing interfaith movement and the Parliament of the World’s Religions.
“After 9/11, I felt led to fast during Ramadan,” said Manousos. “That was my entrée into the Muslim community. I told Muslims I was fasting and they were so excited. They invited me into their homes. I decided to continue fasting during Ramadan and have done so now for 10 years.”
“I study the Koran and I hang out with Muslims,” said Manousos with a smile that is infectious.
“When I heard about the Parliament, I knew I needed to go. The Parliament is kind of like the Olympics of interfaith. It’s held every five years and it attracts major religious leaders and spiritual leaders,” said Manousos.
Australia had not been high on his list of places he wanted to visit, said Manousos, but when he learned that the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions, the world’s largest interreligious gathering, would convene in Melbourne, he was intrigued.
“I e-mailed Quakers in Australia and got such a friendly response that I ended up staying for six weeks. I went not only to Melbourne but to Canberra, Sydney, and eventually to Adelaide where I spent a week at a national Quaker conference,” said Manousos.
Using an upside down map of the world as a visual aid, the Quaker peace activist pointed to Australia, featured at the top of the map, and noted that our world is upside down in more ways than one.
The Parliament was taking place in December and January, but that’s during the summer in Australia, said Manousos.
“Upside down meant something to me in a spiritual sense, too,” declared Manousos.
Donald Kraybill wrote a book titled The Upside Down Kingdom in which he argued that Jesus turned upside down all of the worldly values when he talked about the kingdom of Heaven. When he talked about the kingdom of Heaven, what he was talking about was a world where the meek, not the strong, were most important; where the poor, the disempowered, and the disenfranchised were important, not the powerful rich, said Manousos.
“It was turning upside down a whole set of assumptions that we live by in the world, about religion, we get the impression it’s all about sexual scandals, terrorism, suicide bombers, fanaticism. We don’t hear about the religious leaders who are trying to make the world a better place, who are working for peace and justice,” noted Manousos.
At that point, one of his listeners spoke up.
“We did hear about Martin Luther King when he was alive, of course, and Mother Theresa, but they were kind of the exceptions,” noted Sherry Hutchison, clerk of the Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting’s Peace and Social Concerns Committee.
“That’s right,” said Manousos. “When I came back from the Parliament I asked people if they’d read about it on the front page of the New York Times. You know: ‘Six thousand religious leaders come together from all over the world to find ways to end poverty and war.’ No, it didn’t get into the New York Times.”
“You know the reason why! No one took a pot shot at the Dali Lama. A bomb did not go off at the convention center. So therefore there was nothing newsworthy that took place,” said Manousos.
“So the Dali Lama was there?” asked long-time Des Moines peace activist Charlie Day.
“Oh yeah,” replied Manousos.
“How many Americans were there?” asked Day.
“I don’t know, but a significant number,” said Manousos adding that he was the only official Quaker representative from the United States.
Manousos quoted the founder of the Quaker faith tradition, George Fox, and his close friend and fellow Quaker William Penn, with regard to the spirit of interfaith conversation and cooperation.
“Walk cheerfully over the earth answering to that of God in everyone.” – George Fox
“The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion, and when death takes off the mask, they will know one another though the diverse liveries they wear here make them strangers.” – William Penn
“That’s pretty radical for the 17th century, when Christians not only weren’t talking to each other, they were killing each other. He was saying that Jews, Muslims, Christians, all of them, were of one religion, but they’d have to wait until they die [to understand that]. That’s where we’re more fortunate than William Penn–we don’t have to wait until we die. Thanks to the interfaith movement, we can see that truth right here in our own time,” said Manousos.
The Quaker peace activist treated his listeners to a brief overview of the history of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, which first convened in Chicago in 1893, the largest of several congresses convened in conjunction with an early world’s fair, the World Columbian Exposition. The Parliament of the World’s Religions did not convene again for 100 years. In 1993, the Parliament met again in Chicago, where many religious and spiritual leaders among some 8,000 people who participated endorsed the principles set out in Towards a Global Ethic: An Initial Declaration, a paper drafted primarily by Swiss Catholic priest and theologian Hans Küng. The document was instrumental in setting the tone of the Parliament’s discussions.
“Hans Kung was at the 1993 Parliament. He is very committed to interfaith dialog. He came up with what is really, I think, the slogan of the interfaith movement. He said, ‘There can be no peace in the world without peace among the religions. There can be no peace among the religions without dialog, and there can be no dialog without a common ethic.’” said Manousos.
“So, what is a common ethic that all religions share? The Golden Rule: Treat others the way you want to be treated,” said Manousos, referring to the ethic of reciprocity.
“We can construct a common ethic. We can’t construct a common theology. There are too many differences in doctrine. So, we try to find areas where we can agree. The goal of the Parliament is not unity of all religions but harmony. And, we can celebrate our differences and find areas of commonality where we can cooperate and work together,” said Manousos.
“The Parliament of 1993 was such a success that it was decided to hold it every five years in a major city. So it was held in Cape Town, South Africa and in Barcelona, Spain. Each time it drew between 7,000 and 9,000 people. Then it was held last December in Melbourne, where it drew about 6,000 people, which was very good given the [distant] location and the economy. A lot of conferences were cancelled, but this one went on because there was a lot of strong feeling, especially since 9/11, very strong feeling that this one needed to go on, a lot of passion,” said Manousos.
The theme of the Melbourne Parliament was “Helping each other, healing the earth,” said Manousos.
The Quaker peace activist, author of a pamphlet published by the Friends Bulletin and titled Islam from a Quaker Perspective and Friends and the Interfaith Movement (Updated 2008), told his Des Moines audience that he had spoken about the Israel/Palestine crisis and his experience in the Holy Land in the context of his presentation about the Listening Project at the 2009 Parliament.
The Parliament features hundreds of lectures, workshops, forums, and panel discussions by people from all the various religions. Manousos mentioned several religious leaders from the USA who attended the Parliament in Melbourne including Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and internationally renowned author and lecturer on peace and justice, spirituality, and women’s issues, and Michael Lerner, a rabbi, political activist, and editor of Tikkun magazine, a progressive Jewish and interfaith journal.
And we now have a Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions who is a Muslim, Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, said Manousos.
Manousos says he is encouraged that so many people from so many different faith traditions are interested in the rapidly expanding interfaith conversation.
“You can’t turn around the whole world overnight, but what we can do is be supportive when people are moving in the right direction,” said Manousos, paraphrasing a comment he had heard at an interfaith event.
Manousos blogs at http://LAQuaker.blogspot.com. He has published a report on his experiences at the Parliament in Melbourne in Universalist Friends, the Journal of the Quaker Universalist Fellowship, which is available on-line at http://www.universalistfriends.org/journals.html.

By Amira Hass
The IDF’s Civil Administration destroyed a Palestinian village Monday morning that had earlier been cleared out when its water supply was cut off.
The IDF demolished about 55 structures in the West Bank village of Farasiya, including tents, tin shacks, plastic and straw huts, clay ovens, sheep pens and bathrooms. These structures served the 120 farmers, hired workers and their families who lived in the Jordan Valley village.
The Civil Administration said they had declared the area a live fire zone and posted eviction orders for 10 families in tents on June 27.
“Since no appeal was filed in the following three weeks, and given the danger posed by the location of the tents, they were removed,” they said in response.
The villagers made a living by sheep farming and working land owned by families in the town of Tubas. Some of them have been living in Farasiya for decades.
A packaging warehouse that was built together with Agrexco in the late 1970s was also torn down.
Atef Abu al-Rob, a photographer for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, who arrived at the village hours after the demolition, said mattresses, pipes and broken furniture were lying on the ground in the debris.
Since 1967, Israel has prevented Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley from growing, whether by cutting off their water supply, declaring large areas as live fire zones or banning all construction.
About a year ago the IDF set up hundreds of warning signs near Palestinian farming communities, marking them closed military areas. Such a sign was set up at the entrance to Farasiya.
The families had recently been forced to leave the village when the Israeli authorities cut it off from its water sources, said the popular committees’ coordinator in the valley, Fathi Hadirat. The villagers were forbidden to use the water wells the Mekorot Water Company had dug in the area.
Hadirat said a few years ago the Civil Administration destroyed the pipe the villages had laid from a nearby stream used for drinking water and irrigation.
Since then they have been watering the sheep and fields with water unfit for human consumption, pumped from a salt water source. They received drinking water in tanks.
About four months ago the IDF confiscated their pumps. On Sunday, 10 families from Bardala, a village north of Farasiya, were given demolition notices.
A farmer who owns 300 sheep was told to leave in 24 hours or his herd would be confiscated.

Occupation of Palestinians hurts Israel

Ghassan Michel Rubeiz, June 19, 2010,

East Meredith

A festering military occupation may end up doing more harm to the occupier than to the occupied. Since 1967, Israel has held tenaciously to the occupied Palestinian territories and to the Syrian Golan Heights.

The 1967 war suddenly made Israel a regional superpower. But this sudden change occurred before Israel had matured in the process of state-building. Israel has not yet been able to integrate its Jewish character with its democratic principles; it has no formally proclaimed clear borders. Israel is too busy fighting with Arabs to pay full attention to serious unresolved issues of its identity. The recent Israeli news about Ultra-Orthodox Jews of European origin objecting fiercely to their children’s required attendance of schools with Jews of Arab descent is symptomatic of the dormant and explosive issue of Jewish identity.

The 1967 occupation changed Israel from a society that had been creatively busy in building a liberal democracy to one that tries the impossible to rationalize and secure the occupation. This occupation prevents the birth of a Palestinian state, deprives the two neighboring states of Syria and Lebanon from reclaiming lost land and provokes the entire region.

On at least seven accounts Israel is expected by the international community to modify its position: prolonging a military occupation, expanding settlements, building an intrusive wall of separation, annexing territories, maintaining the Gaza siege, launching devastating pre-emptive wars and starting the regional nuclear race. One wonders if Israel is gradually falling into perilous political self isolation through an occupation which it cannot, and should not, sustain.

Despite its highly controversial occupation of vast foreign land, Israel remains an example of a liberal democracy in a region that is largely authoritarian. But an open-ended and worsening occupation could lead Israel into a hodge-podge society with various standards of human rights.

Israel seems to forget that it is a small country surrounded by a vast Arab region. It is not well known that nearly half of the current citizens of Israel have Arab roots. A significant section of Israel’s population is composed of Arab Jews who migrated from Arab countries. And there are many Palestinians who stayed on land which became part of the state of Israel in 1948.

The Jews who migrated from the Arab world to Israel in the early stage of state formation constituted the majority of the population. In later decades, the European Ashkenazi sector of the population became the majority in Israel proper.   

Middle Eastern Jews are part of the “Sephardic” community; Jews with Western backgrounds are known as the “Ashkenazis”. Palestinian Israelis are known as “Arab Israelis”.  Cultural backgrounds have strong political relevance in many newly formed states. The Sephardic community speaks some Arabic, in addition to Hebrew, the national language. The Sephardis love Middle Eastern ethnic food and enjoy other aspects of the past, such as Arabic music. However, on the whole, many have a cultural amnesia of their Arab background. The Brooklyn-based scholar David Shasha has written extensively on Ashkenazi dominance in Israeli life and politics. Shasha explains that in seeking rapid and superficial modernity, the Sephardi Jews have suppressed their Arab cultural roots and identified too strongly with the powerful Western side of Israel.

On the other hand, Palestinian Israelis speak Arabic at home and Hebrew in school and the workplace. Combined, these two contrasting ethno-religious minorities, who are roughly equal in size, constitute more than three million citizens. Unfortunately, these two minority communities are alienated from one another and mutually suspicious.

People with Arab roots constitute the majority of the population of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, the Ashkenazi Jews have actually now become a cultural-minority in post 1967 Israel. The Ashkenazi subculture represents nearly a third of the population between the River and the Sea, three out of eleven million residents.

Israel has a problem which cannot be ignored for too long. The Arab population will increase within Israel proper and in the occupied areas.  The Palestinians have finally discovered the power of nonviolent resistance. This discovery alone will give the Palestinians what they have lacked for a long time: moral power in the face of brutal force. If only Hamas could appropriate this time-tested resistance model.

The world is increasingly questioning the occupation and its consequences. The US government is now desperate to find a way to maintain its close alliance with Israel and live up to its commitment to justice and to better relations with the Muslim world.

Even mainline Jewish writers, like Peter Beinart, the former editor of the New Republic, have recently turned critical of Israel’s current government. Beinart expressed concern that the American Jewish community has failed to pressure Israel to make peace and explained why the young generation of American Jews is gradually losing interest in Zionism. For more on this article, see The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment, in The New York Review of Books, May 18, 2010.

The current Flotilla crisis has brought additional burden unto Israel; the siege on Gaza is partially lifted; the word is out that Israel’s current government is risk-prone.

Will Israel sober up in time and terminate an occupation which degrades the occupier and hurts the occupied?

Israel’s security lies in regional peace

Ghassan Michel Rubeiz, Palm Beach Gardens, 4.24.10

On March 22 Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu defiantly declared to the world that: “there will be no freeze on construction in Jerusalem. Everyone knows it”. 

An enduring occupation requires a high level of arrogance and a poker face in rationalization of injustice.  The international community is well aware that Israel may have reached its limits in “digesting” the occupation demographically. Washington, in particular, is worried about Tel-Aviv’s denial of reality: for every Jew there is an Arab within post 1967 Israel controlled land.

The Israeli government is nervous about a serious shift in the US administration’s attitude towards an extended, worsening and hazardous occupation. The White House expects Israel to freeze illegal building of housing in occupied Palestinian territories and to come to the peace table. But Israel insists that it is not ready to stop building on “liberated” land. Tension between Tel Aviv and Washington is mounting.

The US relationship with Israel has been exceptionally close for years.  Many believe this relationship has in fact turned symbiotic; seemingly the interests of the two states are deemed to be identical.  Recently, however, the leadership of the US military and national security has voiced concerns over this level of closeness to Tel-Aviv and over Washington’s handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 Over the past six decades, Israel has partnered with the US, militarily and diplomatically, but the Zionist state has become too alienated from the region. Does Israel expect America to continue indefinitely to tolerate the occupation, offer massive aid, defend the Jewish state in the United Nations and ignore collective punishment of the Palestinians?

For their part, the Arab states have made a bad situation worse by irresponsible treatment of Palestinians, blaming Israel for all their troubles, refusal of much needed reform and counterproductive diplomacy.  But Israel’s enduring occupation cannot be rationalized as a necessity for security.

Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has been in doubt about its future.  The US has been supporting Israel unconditionally since the 1967 war, a cataclysmic event which bolstered Israel territorially but exposed it to endless risk.

Advocates of Israel interests call upon Obama to be “gentle” and “reassuring” with Israel, but advocates of Palestinian rights expect our president to be firm with a government which regards land annexation as land reclamation, sanctified by divine will. Building settlements on occupied land is illegal under the Geneva Conventions; for Palestinians, annexation is theft of their private properties.

Sentiment against Israel’s defiance of international law has been growing slowly within the US, and more so in Europe. In response, Netanyahu has been trying hard to shift world attention from Israel-Palestine to Iran. He has partially succeeded. By reviving the image of Iran as the center of the “axis of evil”, the Israeli occupation has been downplayed.  This diplomatic diversion paints Israel’s land-grab as a “tolerable” infraction, when contrasted with Iran’s nuclear threat, purportedly aimed at “vulnerable” Israel. US sanctions on Iran are tightening.

For some unclear and disturbing reason, Israel’s possession of a large stockpile of atomic bombs has been ignored in dealing with Iran’s crisis. The nuclear crisis is regional and not a recent emergency; it started in the early seventies when Israel was permitted in secret by the US to acquire the bomb. For the Middle East, there is a double standard regarding legitimacy of occupying foreign land and the possession of weapons of mass destruction.

The Arab and Muslim world see Zionism through their lens. Unconditional US support of Israel has tarnished America’s reputation in the Muslim world.  In recent months, some of Israel’s own friends have had second thoughts about the cost of the occupation and defense of settlement policy. Many wonder if Israel is risking its future in holding on to the occupation. US intelligence predicts dire demographic consequences for a state that swells in power and, yet shrinks in security.

The occupation of vast Palestinian and Syrian territory, annexation, settlements, a Berlin-wall like fence (deep inside the West Bank), endless check points and collective punishment (against a mixture of civil rebellion, military resistance and fading terrorism), all such measures erode Israel’s democracy.  Should Israel become an apartheid-like regime, as is expected in a decade or so, reverse migration of Jews may take place.  An alternative could be ethnic cleansing and expulsion of Palestinians. Both scenarios are nightmarish.

True friends of Israel should encourage the Jewish state to end the occupation by seeking peace.  Israel’s security will not improve through a new war with Iran.

Likewise, true friends of Palestinians should encourage them to unite around a platform of democracy and human rights.  Such supporters should also demand Arab political awakening to provide a climate in which a future Palestinian state could be viable and democratic.

An inclusive and comprehensive regional approach for US foreign policy should be based on treating Israel, Iran and the Arab world as equidistant stakeholders. Only such a balanced policy can help Israel to integrate within the region and relieve the US from the impossible task of securing a state with elastic borders.  

Lasting security for Israel can only be achieved through peace with neighbors.

By: Michael Gillespie

Contributing Editor

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved passage of H.R. 867, “Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora,” on November 3. Read the full story

By: Michael Gillespie

Contributing Editor

Daoud Nassar, Director of the Tent of Nations, spoke to a capacity crowd at Drake University’s Olmsted Center in Des Moines on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Read the full story

By: Michael Gillespie

Contributing Editor

Gillian Sorensen, Senior Advisor and National Advocate at the United Nations Foundation, defended Judge Richard Goldstone and the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict during a presentation in Des Moines on October 21. Read the full story

By Reuel S. Amdur, Staff Writer

Courtesy of The Canadian Charger

Richard Goldstone’s report on human rights violations in the Gaza war was too soft on Israel.  Read the full story