THE PRICE OF RESISTANCE
09 July 2002
Inside the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, the Californian audience had been struck silent. Dennis Bernstein, the Jewish host of KPFA Radio's Flashpoint current affairs programme, was reading some recent e-mails that he had received from Israel's supporters in America. Each one left the people in the church – Muslims, Jews, Christians – in a state of shock. "You mother-fucking-asshole-self-hating Jewish piece of shit. Hitler killed the wrong Jews. He should have killed your parents, so a piece of Jewish shit like you would not have been born. God willing, Arab terrorists will cut you to pieces Daniel Pearl-style, AMEN!!!"
Bernstein's sin was to have covered the story of Israel's invasion of Jenin in April and to have interviewed journalists who investigated the killings that took place there – including Phil Reeves and Justin Huggler of The Independent – for his Flashpoint programme. Bernstein's grandfather was a revered Orthodox Rabbi of international prominence but neither his family history nor his origins spared him. "Read this and weep, you mother-fucker self-hating Jew boy!!!" another e-mail told Bernstein. "God willing a Palestinian will murder you, rape your wife and slash your kids' throats." Yet another: "I hope that you, Barbara Lubin and all other Jewish Marxist Communist traitors anti-American cop haters will die a violent and cruel death just like the victims of suicide bombers in Israel." Lubin is also Jewish, the executive director of the Middle East Children's Alliance, a one-time committed Zionist but now one of Israel's fiercest critics. Her e-mails are even worse.
Indeed, you have to come to America to realise just how brave this small but vocal Jewish community is. Bernstein is the first to acknowledge that a combination of Israeli lobbyists and conservative Christian fundamentalists have in effect censored all free discussion of Israel and the Middle East out of the public domain in the US. "Everyone else is terrified," Bernstein says. "The only ones who begin to open their mouths are the Jews in this country. You know, as a kid, I sent money to plant trees in Israel. But now we are horrified by a government representing a country that we grew up loving and cherishing. Israel's defenders have a special vengeance for Jews who don't fall in line behind Sharon's scorched-earth policy because they give the lie to the charge that Israel's critics are simply anti-Semite."
Adam Shapiro is among those who have paid a price for their beliefs. He is a Jew engaged to an American-born Palestinian, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement who was trapped in Yasser Arafat's headquarters in the spring while administering medical aid. After telling CNN that the Sharon government was acting like "terrorists" while receiving $3bn a year in US military aid, Shapiro and his family were savaged in the New York Post. The paper slandered Shapiro as the "Jewish Taliban" and demeaned his family as "traitors". Israeli supporters publicised his family's address and his parents were forced to flee their Brooklyn home and seek police protection. Shapiro's father, a New York public high-school teacher and a part-time Yeshiva (Jewish day school) teacher, was fired from his job. His brother receives regular death threats.
Israel's supporters have no qualms about their alliance with the Christian right. Indeed, the fundamentalists can campaign on their own in Israel's favour, as I discovered for myself at Stanford recently when I was about to give a lecture on the media and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, part of a series of talks arranged largely by Jewish Americans. A right-wing Christian "Free Republic" outfit posted my name on its website, and described me as a "PLO butt-kisser" and asked its supporters to "freep" my lecture. A few demonstrators turned up outside the First United Methodist Church in Sacramento where I was to speak, waving American and Israeli flags. "Jew haters!" they screamed at the organisers, a dark irony since these were non-Jews shrieking their abuse at Jews.
They were also handing out crudely printed flyers. "Nothing to worry about, Bob," one of my Jewish hosts remarked. "They can't even spell your name right." True. But also false. "Stop the Lies!" the leaflet read. "There was no massacre in Jenin. Fiske [sic] is paid big bucks to spin [lie] for the Arabs..." But the real lie was in that last sentence. I never take any payment for lectures – so that no one can ever claim that I'm paid to give the views of others. But the truth didn't matter to these people. Nor did the content of my talk – which began, by chance, with the words "There was no massacre" – in which I described Arafat as a "corrupt, vain little despot" and suicide bombings as "a fearful, evil weapon". None of this was relevant. The aim was to shut me up.
Dennis Bernstein sums it up quite simply: "Any US journalist, columnist, editor, college professor, student-activist, public official or clergy member who dares to speak critically of Israel or accurately report the brutalities of its illegal occupation will be vilified as an anti-Semite." In fact, no sooner had Bernstein made these remarks than pro-Israeli groups initiated an extraordinary campaign against some of the most pro-Israeli newspapers in America, all claiming that The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle were biased in their coverage of the Middle-East conflict. Just how The New York Times – which boasts William Safire and Charles Krauthammer, those giants of pro-Israeli bias, among its writers – could be anti-Israeli is difficult to see, although it is just possible that, amid its reports on Israel's destruction in the West Bank and Gaza, some mildly critical comments found their way into print. The New York Times, for example, did report that Israeli soldiers used civilians as human shields – though only in the very last paragraph of a dispatch from Jenin.
None the less, the campaign of boycotts and e-mails got under way. More than 1,000 readers suspended their subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times, while a blizzard of e-mails told pro-Israeli readers to cancel their subscription to The New York Times for a day. On the East Coast, at least one local radio station has lost $1m from a Jewish philanthropist while other stations attempting to cover the Middle East with some degree of fairness are said to have lost even more. When the San Francisco Chronicle published a four-page guide to the conflict, its editors had to meet a 14-member delegation of local Jewish groups to discuss their grievances.
According to Michael Futterman, who chairs the Middle East strategy committee of 80 Bay Area synagogues, Jewish anger hit "boiling point" when the Chronicle failed to cover a pro-Israeli rally in San Francisco. Needless to say, the Chronicle's "Readers' Representative", Dick Rogers, published a grovelling, self-flagellating apology. "The paper didn't have a word on the pro-Israel rally," he wrote. "This wasn't fair and balanced coverage." Another objection came from a Jewish reader who objected to the word "terror" being placed within inverted commas in a Chronicle headline that read "Sharon says 'terror' justifies assault". The reader's point? The Chronicle's reporting "harmonises well with Palestinian propaganda, which tries to divert attention from the terrorist campaign against Israel (which enjoys almost unanimous support among Palestinians, all the way from Yasser Arafat to the 10-year-old who dreams of blowing himself up one day) and instead describes Israel's military moves as groundless, evil bullying tactics."
And so it goes on. On a radio show with me in Berkeley, the Chronicle's foreign editor, Andrew Ross, tried to laugh off the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby – "the famous lobby", he called it with that deference that is half way between acknowledgement and fear – but the Israeli Consul General Yossi Amrani had no hesitation in campaigning against the Chronicle, describing a paper largely docile in its reporting of the Middle East as "a professionally and politically biased, pro-Palestinian newspaper".
The Chronicle's four-page pull-out on the Middle East was, in fact, a soft sell. Its headline – "The Current Strife Between The Israelis And The Palestinians Is A Battle For Control Of Land" – missed the obvious point: that one of the two groups that were "battling for control of the land" – the Palestinians – had been occupied by Israel for 35 years.
The most astonishing – and least covered – story is in fact the alliance of Israeli lobbyists and Christian Zionist fundamentalists, a coalition that began in 1978 with the publication of a Likud plan to encourage fundamentalist churches to give their support to Israel. By 1980, there was an "International Christian Embassy" in Jerusalem; and in 1985, a Christian Zionist lobby emerged at a "National Prayer Breakfast for Israel" whose principal speaker was Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to become Israeli prime minister. "A sense of history, poetry and morality imbued the Christian Zionists who, more than a century ago, began to write, plan and organise for Israel's restoration," Netanyahu told his audience. The so-called National Unity Coalition for Israel became a lobbying arm of Christian Zionism with contacts in Congress and neo-conservative think-tanks in Washington.
In May this year, the Israeli embassy in Washington, no less, arranged a prayer breakfast for Christian Zionists. Present were Alonzo Short, a member of the board of "Promise Keepers", and Michael Little who is president of the "Christian Broadcasting Network". Event hosts were listed as including those dour old Christian conservatives Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who once financed a rogue television station in southern Lebanon which threatened Muslim villagers and broadcast tirades by Major Saad Haddad, Israel's stooge militia leader in Lebanon. In Tennessee, Jewish officials invited hundreds of Christians to join Jewish crowds at a pro-Israel solidarity rally in Memphis.
On the face of it, this coalition seems natural. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League felt able to run an ad that included an article by a former Christian coalition executive director Ralph Reed, headlined "We People of Faith Stand Firmly With Israel". Christians, Reed claimed, supported Israel because of "their humanitarian impulse to help and protect Jews, a shared strategic interest in democracy in the Middle East and a spiritual connection to Israel".
But, of course, a fundamental problem – fundamental in every sense of the word – lies behind this strange partnership. As Uri Avnery, the leader of Gush Shalom, the most courageous Israeli peace group, pointed out in a typically ferocious essay last month, there is a darker side to the alliance. "According to its [Christian Zionist] theological beliefs, the Jews must congregate in Palestine and establish a Jewish state on all its territory" – an idea that would obviously appeal to Ariel Sharon – "so as to make the Second Coming of Jesus Christ possible." But here comes the bad bit. As Avnery says, "the evangelists don't like to dwell openly on what comes next: before the coming [of the Messiah], the Jews must convert to Christianity. Those who don't will perish in a gigantic holocaust in the battle of Armageddon. This is basically an anti-Semitic teaching, but who cares, so long as they support Israel?"
The power of the Israeli lobby in the United States is debated far more freely in the Israeli press than in American newspapers or on US tele- vision. There is, of course, a fine and dangerous line between justified investigation – and condemnation – of the lobby's power, and the racist Arab claim that a small cabal of Zionists run the world. Those in America who share the latter view include a deeply unpleasant organisation just along the coast from San Francisco at Newport Beach known as the "Institute for Historical Research". These are the Holocaust deniers whose annual conference last month included a lecture on "death sentences imposed by German authorities against German soldiers... for killing or even mistreating Jews". Too much of this and you'd have to join the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC – to restore your sanity. But the Israeli lobby is powerful. In fact, its influence over the US Congress and Senate calls into question the degree to which the American legislature has been corrupted by lobby groups. It is to an Israeli voice – Avnery again – that Americans have to turn to hear just how mighty the lobby has become. "Its electoral and financial power casts a long shadow over both houses of the Congress," Avnery writes. "Hundreds of Senators and Congressmen were elected with the help of Jewish contributions. Resistance to the directives of the Jewish lobby is political suicide. If the AIPAC were to table a resolution abolishing the Ten Commandments, 80 Senators and 300 Congressmen would sign it at once. This lobby frightens the media, too, and assures their adherence to Israel."
Avnery could have looked no further than the Democratic primary in Alabama last month for proof of his assertion. Earl Hilliard, the five-term incumbent, had committed the one mortal sin of any American politician: he had expressed sympathy for the cause of the Palestinians. He had also visited Libya several years ago. Hilliard's opponent, Artur Davis, turned into an outspoken supporter of Israel and raised large amounts of money from the Jewish community, both in Alabama and nationwide. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz noted that among the names of the first list of contributors to Davis's campaign funds were "10 Cohens from New York and New Jersey, but before one gets to the Cohens, there were Abrams, Ackerman, Adler, Amir, Asher, Baruch, Basok, Berger, Berman, Bergman, Bernstein and Blumenthal. All from the East Coast, Chicago and Los Angeles. It's highly unlikely any of them have ever visited Alabama..." The Jewish newspaper Forward – essential reading for any serious understanding of the American Jewish community – quoted a Jewish political activist following the race: "Hilliard has been a problem in his votes and with guys like that, when there's any conceivable primary challenge, you take your shot." Hilliard, of course, lost to Davis, whose campaign funds reached $781,000.
The AIPAC concentrates on Congress while the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations (CPMAJO), made up of the heads of 51 Jewish organisations, concentrates on the executive branch of the US government. Every congressman knows the names of those critics of Israel who have been undone by the lobby. Take Senator J William Fulbright, whose 1963 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee detailed how five million tax-deductable dollars from philanthropic Americans had been sent to Israel and then recycled back to the US for distribution to organisations seeking to influence public opinion in favour of Israel; this cost him the chance of being Secretary of State. He was defeated in the 1974 Democratic primary after pro-Israeli money poured into the campaign funds of his rival, Governor Dale Bumpers, following a statement by the AIPAC that Fulbright was "consistently unkind to Israel and our supporters in this country". Paul Findley, who spent 22 years as a Republican congressman from Illinois, found his political career destroyed after he had campaigned against the Israeli lobby – although, ironically, his book on the subject, They Dare to Speak Out was nine weeks on The Washington Post bestseller list, suggesting that quite a number of Americans want to know why their congressmen are so pro-Israeli.
Just two months ago, the US House of Representatives voted 352 to 21 to express its unqualified support for Israel. The Senate voted 94 to two for the same motion. Even as they voted, Ariel Sharon's army was continuing its destructive invasion of the West Bank. "I do not recall any member of Congress asking me if I was in favour of patting Israel on the back..." James Abu Rizk, an Arab-American of Lebanese origin, told the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee afterwards. "No one else, no average American, has been asked either. But that is the state of American politics today... The votes and bows have nothing to do with the legislators' love for Israel. They have everything to do with the money that is fed into their campaigns by members of the Israeli lobby. My estimate is that $6bn flows from the American Treasury to Israel each year." Within days, 42 US governors turned up in Sacramento to sign declarations supporting Israel. California governor Gray Davis and New York governor George Pataki – California has the largest Jewish population of any state except New York – arranged the meeting.
Sometimes the support of Israel's loyalists in Congress turns into farce. Tom Delay – reacting to CNN founder Ted Turner's criticism of Israel – went so far out of his way to justify Israeli occupation of the West Bank that he blurted out on MSNBC television that the Palestinians "should become citizens" of Israel, an idea unlikely to commend itself to his friend Ariel Sharon. Texas Republican Richard Armey went the other way. "I'm content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank. I happen to believe the Palestinians should leave... to have those people who have been aggressors against Israel retired to some other area." Do the people of Texas know that their representative is supporting "ethnic cleansing" in the Middle East? Or are they silent because they prefer not to speak out?
Censorship takes many forms. When Ishai Sagi and Ram Rahat-Goodman, two Israeli reserve soldiers who refused to serve in the West Bank or Gaza, were scheduled to debate their decision at Sacramento's Congregation B'nai Israel in May, their appearance was cancelled. Steve Meinrath, who is chairman of the Israel Affairs Committee at B'nai Israel, remarked bleakly that "intimidation on the part of certain sectors of the community has deprived the entire community of hearing a point of view that is being widely debated in Israel. Some people feel it's too dangerous..."
Does President Bush? His long-awaited Middle-East speech was Israeli policy from start to finish. A group of Jewish leaders, including Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz – who said recently that the idea of executing the families of Palestinian suicide bombers was a legitimate if flawed attempt at finding a balance between preventing terrorism and preserving democracy – and the AIPAC and CPMAJO heads all sent clear word to the President that no pressure should be put on Israel. Wiesel – whose courage permeates his books on the Holocaust but who lamentably failed to condemn the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Beirut in 1982 at the hands of Israel's Lebanese allies, said he felt "sadness", but his sadness was "with Israel, not against Israel" because "after all the Israeli soldiers did not kill" – took out a full page in The New York Times. In this, he urged Bush to "please remember that Ariel Sharon, a military man who knows the ugly face of war better than anyone, is ready to make 'painful sacrifices' to end the conflict." Sharon was held "personally responsible" for the massacre by Israel's own commission of inquiry – but there was no mention of that from Wiesel, who told reporters in May that he would like to revoke Arafat's Nobel prize.
President Bush was not going to oppose these pressures. His father may well have lost his re-election because he dared to tell Israel that it must make peace with the Arabs. Bush is not going to make the same mistake – nor does brother Jeb want to lose his forthcoming governorship election. Thus Sharon's delight at the Bush speech, and it was left to a lonely and brave voice – Mitchell Plitnick of the Jewish Voice for Peace – to state that "few speeches could be considered to be as destructive as that of the American President... Few things are as blinding as unbridled arrogance."
Or as vicious as the messages that still pour in to Dennis Bernstein and Barbara Lubin, whose Middle East Children's Alliance, co-ordinating with Israeli peace groups, is trying to raise money to rebuild the Jenin refugee camp. "I got a call the other day at 5am," Bernstein told me. "This guy says to me: 'You got a lot of nerve going and eating at that Jewish deli.' What comes after that?" Before I left San Francisco, Lubin showed me her latest e-mails. "Dear Cunt," one of them begins, "When we want your opinion you fucking Nazi cunt, we will have one of your Palestinian buddies fuck it [sic] of you. I hope that in your next trip to the occupied territories you are blown to bits by one of your Palestinian buddies [sic] bombs." Another, equally obscene, adds that "you should be ashamed of yourself, a so-called Jewish woman advocating the destruction of Israel".
Less crude language, of course, greeted President Bush's speech. Pat Robertson thought the Bush address "brilliant". Senator Charles Schumer, a totally loyal pro-Israeli Democrat from New York, said that "clearly, on the politics, this is going to please supporters of Israel as well as the Christian coalition types". He could say that again. For who could be more Christian than President George W Bush?
Why Israel's 'seruvniks' say enough is enough
The lawyer representing Israeli conscripts who refuse to serve beyond the 1967 ceasefire
lines explains why a growing number of soldiers are disobeying orders, in order to protect
the basic values on which Israel was founded.
by
Michael Sfard
May 19, 2002
It is said that in the first few years of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, no one seriously thought of holding on to these territories forever. It was at the
time widely assumed, that these newly conquered lands were to be handed back to the Arabs
as part of a peace agreement. I don't remember those days.
I was raised in a different Israel. In my Israel the small fundamentalist group of Jewish
settlers has always enjoyed more political power than their relative share in the Israeli
population. In my Israel both left-wing and right-wing governments enabled the
colonialisation of these occupied Palestinian lands. My Israel paid, and is still paying,
a heavy moral price for ruling another nation by the force of the sword. My Israel, built
on the founding values of humanism, pluralism and democracy is being lost.
Three months ago an unprecedented petition by reserve soldiers was published in the
Israeli press. The signatories declared their intention to refuse to serve the Israeli
occupation and disobey any order to go, as soldiers, beyond the 1967 ceasefire lines. The
number of signatories (known as 'seruvniks' for the Hebrew word 'seruv' - refusal) has
increased rapidly from 50 in the first petition to 462 as of today. Though refusal in
Israel was not uncommon, the scale of this petition is a novelty. Most of the signatories
are hardened combat officers and soldiers, and all of them served many years in the
occupied territories. Since the launch of the petition, about forty of those who have
endorsed the petition have been sent to military prisons as a result of their refusal.
Almost all of the 462 who have signed, among them myself, are between twenty-five and
thirty-five years old. None of us can remember a non-occupying Israel. Each and every
signatory of the petition has individually reached the decision to spurn the state's
demand that they will employ immoral and inhumane means of control over civilian
population. And yet, I was amazed to discover how similar our stories are. How identical
our personal transitions from being "good" and obedient soldiers to what our
Attorney General described as "dangerous outlaws" have been.
As the legal adviser to many seruvniks - and someone who was incarcerated for three weeks
for refusing to serve in the Hebron area a few years ago - I have had the privilege of
escorting many of my fellow signatories from receipt of their call up papers, through the
trial and, finally, visiting them in prison. Given their biographies, the act of refusal
was by no means a natural decision. Rather, it was rather the product of a personal
crisis, born out of moral agonies and a sense of deep concern for our country's future.
One might expect to hear horrifying stories of atrocities that the objectors witnessed
before making their decision to no longer take part in the system. The truth of the matter
is that most of the conscientious objectors reached their decision simply from
experiencing "everyday" life in the occupied territories.
The occupation corrupted Israeli culture, it eroded our code of ethics, and it even
contaminated the Hebrew language. In the name of the fight against the murderous and
unforgivable terror that struck Israeli cities and towns, we grew accustomed to manning
check-points in which thousands of Palestinians are being detained for hours and
humiliated by young soldiers. We grew accustomed to pointing our rifles at children and
women. We became tolerant to large-scale demolition of houses ('surface uncovering' in
military jargon). Finally, we accepted a state-sponsored policy of assassinations, neatly
labelled by Israeli spokesmen as "focused prevention". We learned how to
distinguish between roads for settlers (Jews) and roads for 'locals' (Palestinians), and
we were asked to implement discriminatory laws for the sake of the illegal settlements
that have trapped our country in an endless messianic war. A war which the vast majority
of Israelis never wanted.
As soldiers who witnessed, first-hand, the corrosive effect of the occupation on ordinary
Israelis and Palestinians we could no longer bear its destructive implications for what we
were raised to believe were Israeli values - respect for human life and dignity. The
occupation chiselled out unequal relations between Palestinians and Israelis. It planted
in many a seed of racism against Arabs.
Under such circumstances, hundreds of officers and soldiers who were always in the
forefront of IDF's most prestigious units, who were used to risking their lives for the
security of the State of Israel, began questioning both the morality of our presence in
the occupied territories and the myth of its necessity. People who have no legal
background grew to acknowledge that the command that sends them beyond the borders of
democracy to rule another people inherently produces systematic human rights abuses and is
therefore neither democratic nor legal.
Entering a village and arresting every male above the age of 14 for up to 18 days, as was
done in the recent incursion to the West Bank, is inhuman, even if the mission is to find
terrorists. Stopping an ambulance that carries a sick man or a pregnant woman is immoral
even if you suspect that it also carries hidden weapons. And that is the tragedy of
serving in the occupied territories: one cannot go there without detaining suspected
ambulances and treating children in a manner that results in more hatred. The soldiers are
placed in an impossible situation, coerced by the occupation's reality to act immorally.
As a lawyer I am allowed to visit these prisoners of conscience. Some arrive in prison
filled with pride. Others are shocked by their own deed, and try to explain themselves to
their families and friends in long telephone conversations. In prison, most of them
discover how angry they are. Angry at the settlers that tangled us in a never-ending war.
Indignant at the governments of Israel that enabled them to do so. Vexed at the Israeli
Defence Force, which arrogantly took for granted that we would carry out any order.
The seruvniks come from the backbone of Israeli society. They were always seen by
themselves and by others, as Israelis from the mainstream of our civic life. "I took
seriously the values I was brought up on in this country", they tell me. We must now
ask ourselves whether this was always simply rhetoric, or whether Israel has fundamentally
changed. As seruvniks, we have chosen to speak out. To silence our voice would be to
marginalise further the basic values upon which our country was founded.
Michael Sfard is a lawyer practising human rights and criminal law in Tel-Aviv. You can
read the seruvniks' petition - Courage to refuse - here, and you can write to the author
of this piece at legal@seruv.org.il.
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,717559,00.html
OUR DAUGHTER WAS KILLED BY A SUICIDE BOMBER. BUT IT
IS THE TERROR OF ISRAEL'S OCCUPATION THAT IS TO BLAME FOR HER DEATH
By
Alexandra Williams In Jerusalem
The Mirror (London)
June 25, 2002
A BIG red "Free Palestine" sticker has a prominent place on the Elhanan family's
front door. But this is not a Palestinian house in the occupied territories.
Remarkably, this home is in an affluent Jewish area in Jerusalem and belongs to a couple
whose daughter Smadar, 14, was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber.
Rather than being motivated by revenge and hatred, Nurit Elhanan and her husband Rami,
both 52, are fighting for peace. They are campaigning for an end to the Israeli occupation
of the Palestinian territories, calling it a cancer that is feeding terror. Nurit, a
doctor of language at Israel's Hebrew University, said: "No real mother would ever
think of consoling herself with the killing of another mother's child. Israel is becoming
a graveyard of children. The Holy Land is being turned into a wasteland."
Graphic designer Rami agrees: "If an Israeli child is killed and the next day a
Palestinian child is killed, it's no solution. "Our daughter was killed because of
the terror of Israeli occupation. Every innocent victim from both sides is a victim of the
occupation. The occupation is the cancer feeding Palestinian terror."
Last week, following two suicide bombs and a shooting which killed 30 Israelis, Israel
hardened its military tactics. This resulted in the deaths of innocent Palestinians - five
children on Friday alone. Rami said: "I was devastated when the Palestinian children
were killed in Jenin, like I was the day before when a suicide bomber killed Israelis.
Palestinians grieve and cry exactly the same way as Israelis do. We all have the same
blood."
Some brand the couple apologists for suicide bombers. At a peace rally, an Israeli called
them "Leftie traitors" and shouted, "Pity you weren't blown up with your
daughter."
Smadar was killed in a double Palestinian suicide
bombing in Jerusalem in September 1997. It was 3pm and the first day back at school. She
was buying books with two of her closest friends. As terrified shoppers tried to escape
the first bomb, they fled into the path of the second terrorist, who unleashed his lethal
device Smadar was killed instantly with one of her friends. The other was in a coma for
six months.
Five years on, the pain is still too intense for the family to talk of it.
RAMI, whose father survived Auschwitz and whose grandparents, aunts and uncles died in the
Holocaust, said: "The pain of losing our beautiful daughter is unbearable, but our
house is not a house of hate. "You can sink in your misery and just wait for death or
you can try to do something meaningful. We started to look for contact with people like us
from the other side. We now have many Palestinian friends, parents who have lost children
too. We are in a position of power. We couldn't stay silent. We have to tell the world.
This power was brought to us by our disaster. Some people say we use it cynically."
Some argue that ending the occupation would fail to halt the suicide bombers. Groups
behind the killings, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have vowed to continue the campaign
until the Jews are expelled from Israel. But Rami and Nurit said terror organisations drew
their strength from a persecuted people.
Nurit said: "Hamas take power from the anger of people. If you restored people's
dignity, honour and prosperity by ending occupation, Hamas would lose power." Rami
added: "If a man who has cancer in his leg goes to the doctor and asks if it is
amputated will he be well, no doctor in the world would say, yes, you'll be fine, but no
doctor would say don't amputate. Getting out of Gaza and the West Bank will serve the good
of both Israelis and Palestinians."
The couple have three sons - Elik, 25, Guy, 23, and Yigal, 10.
Elik and Guy, who now study in Paris, were conscripts in the Israeli army. They fought in
the troubles on the Lebanese border. Nurit and Rami believe that if their sons were called
up today, they would refuse to serve in the Palestinian territories. Rami, a veteran of
the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, said: "The
refuseniks are the heroes."
The anger of Rami and his wife is vented on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and America, rather than the bomber who killed their
daughter. Nurit, whose father General Matti Peled spoke out for a two-state solution,
said: "The war is not between the Israeli people and Palestinian people, but these
life-destroying men who call themselves leaders. The US is reluctant and bored with the
situation. And the rest of the world is going on as if blood has never been shed."
The couple founded the Bereaved Family Forum with Palestinian Izzat Ghazzawi, whose son
Ramy, 16, was killed by Israeli troops. Last December, Nurit and Izzat were given the
European Parliament's freedom of speech award, The Sakharov Prize. Nurit said: "I
have been asked many times if I feel any need to avenge the murder of my little girl, who
was killed just because she was born Israeli, by a young man who felt hopeless to the
point of murder and suicide, just because he was born Palestinian.
"I quote Hebrew poet Bialik who said, 'Satan has not yet created a vengeance for the
blood of a small child'."
The Anne Franks of Palestine
By Yusuf Agha
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)
http://yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=410&mode=thread&order=0
(YellowTimes.org) "Its utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of
chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I
hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of
millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change
for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return
once more." (Anne Frank)
Some years ago, I visited the home where Anne Frank and her family concealed themselves
for fear of Nazi persecution. It was a cool but sunny afternoon in Amsterdam, with tulips
swaying gently in the breeze. And apart from the hustle and bustle of tourists ambling
down the Prinsengracht to visit the home - a veritable shrine to the innocence of a
teenage girl caught up in the madness of war - peace and tranquility had returned once
more.
Nine months after being arrested, Anne Frank died of Typhus in March of 1945 at the
concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen - she was 15 years old. It's hard to believe that the
insanity surrounding her torment happened less than sixty years ago. It is harder still to
believe that this madness continues to this day.
Also almost six decades ago, catastrophic events in 1948 resulted in thousands of
Palestinians being wrenched out of their homes, dispossessed and denied the right of
returning to their ancestral homes. They must, to paraphrase Anne Frank, have seen their
world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; they must have heard the approaching
thunder that, one day, would destroy them.
There is a difference, though. Post-Nazi Europe thrives; the Jews have found a homeland.
But for the Palestinians, the cruelty has not ended.
Meet today's Anne Frank. Suad Ghazal is seventeen years old and a prisoner in an Israeli
prison. Suad was only fifteen years when she was arrested after being accused by an adult
female settler of attempted assault. Following her arrest, she was taken to a settlement
police post where she was severely beaten by Israeli settlers.
Suad was then incarcerated in Ramle prison, where her agony continued unabated.
Those who have seen World War II movies will be familiar with Nazi- and Japanese-style
isolation cells, where "less desirable" prisoners were kept to break their
morale. In Ramle, "the isolation cells are two meters square with an open
toilet," reports the Geneva-based human rights group Defense for Children
International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS). In April 2001, Suad was repeatedly placed in
such cells for varying lengths of time, totally devastated and alone.
.... the minute I was alone I knew I was going to cry my eyes out. I slid to the floor in
my nightgown and began by saying my prayers, very fervently. Then I drew my knees to my
chest, lay my head on my arms and cried, all huddled up on the bare floor. A loud sob
brought me back down to earth... (Anne Frank) "Subsequently," continues the DCI
report, "Suad was moved to a stifling hot, rank cell that measured three meters by
one meter which she was forced to share with another prisoner. The room had one bed that
Suad slept on, while the other prisoner slept on the floor. They were given blankets that
were covered in mites, causing rashes on their skin."
Meet a second Anne Frank: fourteen year-old Sanaa Amer. Overlook, if you can, that
"her arms and legs were tied to her bed continuously for 8-hours a day over two
consecutive days." Sanaa and her sister were convicted of "intent" to stab
an Israeli settler in Hebron. An Israeli military court tried and sentenced the child to a
twelve months imprisonment term - a sentence that DCI/PS calls "shocking as it did
not take into account her age or the fact that she did not carry out any violent act
whatsoever."
Sanaa, too, was sent to Ramle. Soon after, reports the DCI, in response to the
deteriorating situation in prison, "the female Palestinian political detainees
launched a hunger strike at the end of June. The prison administration attacked the
detainees with tear gas and heavy batons. The prisoners were taken to isolation and
beaten."
"During the attack, Sanaa Amer was beaten with batons on her arms and legs. Her arms
were tied behind her back and she was kicked by police in her stomach, inducing her to
cough up blood."
Was it for Suad and Sanaa that Anne penned these lines? "I've reached the point where
I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I
can't do anything to change events anyway."
But Suad and Sanaa are not alone. DCI reports that approximately 600 Palestinian children
have been arrested by the Israeli occupation authorities since the beginning of the second
Intifada in September 2000, of whom around 160 remain incarcerated.
From Jerusalem alone, more than 100 Palestinian children under the age of eighteen have
been arrested since September, reports the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights
(JCSER). "Many of them were arrested during demonstrations for throwing stones. These
minors are jailed for an average of four to six months and held in custody at least until
his or her trial finishes. Furthermore, children have been placed in cells with those who
have been detained for criminal offences. Child detainees have been subjected to different
kinds of torture like beating, scalding with hot water."
The DCI reports that in flagrant contravention of international law, "over the last
ten months, 12 Palestinian child political prisoners have been imprisoned with Israeli
juvenile criminal prisoners in the Ofar section of Telmond. Such a practice has led to
beatings, harassment, theft of personal belongings, cutting with razors and even attempted
rape of Palestinian children."
Al-Ahram weekly quotes from a report issued by the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem.
The report exposes "the systematic torture and abuse of Palestinian minors detained
at the police station in Gush Etzion, near the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Police
arrested Palestinian children in their homes in the middle of the night and took them to
the police station in Gush Etzion, where police interrogators tortured them until the
morning to obtain confessions and information about other minors."
The report continues: "Methods of torture described in the report included forcing
the juvenile detainees to stand in painful positions for prolonged periods; beating them
severely for hours at a time with various objects; splashing cold water on the detainees
in the facility's courtyard in wintry conditions; pushing their heads into the toilet bowl
and flushing the toilet; making death threats and cursing and degrading them."
Meet Ahmad Ziad Hijazi, a Jerusalem resident and imminent threat-extraordinare to the IDF
for all of his tender fifteen years. He, too, threw stones at tanks and armored cars.
Ahmad suffers from asthma and "since his arrest," reports the JCSER, "has
spent about 40 days in isolation. It was only recently that he was transferred to a child
prison. The conditions in prison worsened his health condition enormously. Today, he needs
treatment three times a day."
The JCSER has issued a condemnation of "the conditions and treatment of Palestinian
children in Israeli prisons. Many of these prisons lack basic facilities and living
conditions, violate not only Israeli law, but also the Convention on the Rights of the
Child." Article 37 of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child reads:
"No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment..."
The Rights of the Child! What rights do brutal regimes like the Third Reich grant children
like Anne Frank? What rights do tortuous regimes like Sharon's permit the children of
Palestine?
Writing in the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, Joseph Algazy tells of the 80 Palestinian youths
imprisoned at Telmond, most of them15 and 16 years old. "They were arrested because
of their participation in protest activities of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
The youths, members of their families, their attorneys and DCI, have complained in the
past that jailed Palestinian minors have been beaten and humiliated during their detention
and interrogation, have been tortured physically and mentally, have had confessions
extorted from them, and have been sentenced by military courts to long periods of
imprisonment and payment of fines."
The Ha'aretz article recalls the harrowing statements made under oath to the Public
Committee Against Torture in Israel, by some of the minors prisoners at Telmond. They
deposed "about the types of violence used against them when they were arrested in
their homes, usually in the middle of the night; about the beatings they received during
their interrogation at police headquarters or in military prison facilities, in order to
extort confessions that would incriminate them and others; about being kept in isolation
for long periods of time, in cells without bathrooms; and about being held in the Telmond
prison with criminals who abused and attacked them."
The article also quotes the Palestine Red Crescent, according to which "154
Palestinian minors (under 18) were killed in the period between September 29, 2000 and
June 17, 2001; of these, 26 were children under the age of 12, including infants. The
number of minors injured is estimated in the thousands."
Its utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and
death. (Anne Frank) These are the camps of Ramle and Telmond, the latter ironically
located on confiscated Palestinian land, run by the Israel Prison Service. They are the
modern versions of the fearsome "Jugenverwahrlage" or "children camps"
of the Nazis, where hundreds of children and teenagers were transferred to these places -
before they were shipped to extermination centers.
But there are no exterminations, you say? Ask of the parents of Abu Mutawi.
Last Tuesday evening, June 11, Abu Mutawi, a 9-year-old Palestinian child was shot dead
when IDF forces opened fire on a residential area in Gaza. The child was struck by an
Israeli bullet in the chest in the proximity of his home. The Israeli army had no comment.
Also last Tuesday, a ten year-old Palestinian girl, Wissam Muhamed, was wounded when an
Israeli settler ran over her Tuesday, reports the Palestinian News Agency, WAFA. The
Israeli settler is an inhabitant of the illegal settlement of Dutan. No arrests have yet
been made.
In a letter to George Bush in February this year, a number of Palestinian school children
had this to ask of the U.S. President: "Like all children in the world, we just want
to live a normal and peaceful childhood, to be able to reach school safely, and to be able
to sleep at night in comfort when even our parents' comforting does not free us from the
horror we live on a daily basis, the images of funerals, humiliating checkpoints, and
injured friends, and the fear of the sounds of shelling and gun ships - Are we asking for
too much?"
Maybe at least one ten year-old child in Rafah was asking for too much.
Jennifer Loewenstein, a prolific writer who also works for the Mezan Center for Human
Rights in Gaza City, recalls events in April this year of how "Israeli soldiers shot
dead a ten year old boy in Rafah for having the audacity to play too close to the border.
The children of Rafah make good target practice for those planning their nighttime raids
into the refugee camps there and elsewhere throughout the Strip."
Golda Meir, the former Israeli Prime minister, once said: "There will be peace in the
Middle East only when the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel." What
the "gentle" Prime Minister of Israel failed to understand was that it is not
that the Palestinian mothers' love their children less, it is their incarceration, their
torture, their deaths that they despise.
It is the criminal hijack of the future of entire generations of Palestinians by
successive Israeli governments.
Like "Huriya Beni Odeh from the village of Jiftlik [who] had a miscarriage because of
delays at an Israel Defense Forces roadblock, when she was on her way from her home to the
hospital in Jericho," per a DCI report.
Or like another little ten year-old girl, Osa'ama Hamdan with her warm brown eyes and
gentle locks of hair, "who died of complications of pneumonia after her parents were
prevented [by IDF forces] from taking her to the hospital in Nablus." And yet, when
she looked up at the sky, she must somehow have felt that everything will change for the
better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.
[Yusuf Agha is a historian who also dabbles in Information Technology. He reads
extensively and has an interest in the visual and performing arts. He has resided in the
United States for over two decades, loves its people and the land, but is still trying to
figure out whom the government represents.]
Yusuf Agha encourages your comments: yagha@YellowTimes.org YellowTimes.org encourages its
material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction
must identify the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org.
Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org
are appreciated.
MASS CAMPAIGN
HELPED TO WIN RELEASE
OF PALESTINIAN ACTIVIST
JAOUDAT ABOUZZA
FROM INS CUSTODY
After 41 days of illegal detention, Palestinian activist Jaoudat Abouazza is now a free
man in Canada. Abouazza was arrested May 30 by Cambridge police as part of a national wave
of arrests targeting Palestinian activists, was held in INS custody, subjected to extreme
conditions to the point of extracting his teeth by force. Yet, he stood up for his
principles and retained his personal integrity in the face of enormous pressure.
A strong public defense campaign involving hundreds of letters to INS officials, protests
and visits and investigations has finally led to Jaoudat Abouazza's
voluntary exit to Canada, where he is a citizen.
BACKGROUND OF THE CASE
On the evening of May 30, Abouazza was stopped by the Cambridge, Massachusetts police on
the pretext of a minor traffic violation. Without being charged with a crime or read
his rights by the arresting officers, he was handcuffed and brought to the Cambridge
police station. Within hours, Abouazza would find himself in jail being interrogated by
the FBI for suspicion of "terrorism." Over that weekend he was held without bail
and interrogated 7 times at all hours of day and night without a lawyer present. The
reason cited in court was the presence in his car of leaflets for a June 9 Boston
demonstration called by A.N.S.W.E.R. protesting an "Israeli Day" festival in
Boston along with electric wire. He was then held for the INS who picked him up and
brought him to Bristol County Jail on Tuesday, June 3.
While in jail, Jaoudat was subjected to repeated beatings and arbitrary lockdowns and
solitary confinement. On Sunday, June 16, guards removed him from his cell and forcibly
held him down in a chair while several teeth were extracted from his mouth, and half of a
broken tooth was left in his mouth to continue to bleed. Members of the Jaoudat Abouazza
Defense Committee who visited that evening saw the wounds in Jaoudat's mouth. He was not
provided with antibiotics or pain killers. Two days later a delegation including the
Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the Canadian Consular
Agent, and Jaoudat's state court lawyer visited him, and demanded medical records about
the treatment Jaoudat had received. Subsequently Jaoudat's primary care physician Dr. Lana
Habash attempted to visit and examine Jaoudat but was denied access to examine him. Dr.
Habash requested all medical records, but received incomplete records from the jail which
were inconsistent with each other, with what Jaoudat has told his doctor and Defense
Committee members, and with what Defense Committee members have directly observed (for
example, the records refer to only one extraction while Defense Committee members
witnessed multiple wound sites). The supervising doctor refused to speak with Dr. Habash.
Dr. Habash sent a letter of concern to Amnesty International outlining the conditions, and
Amnesty International has sent a letter to the INS demanding an investigation.
Subsequently, the jail barred the Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Union of Mass
and Jaoudat's state court lawyer from the jail. On subsequent visits they also barred the
two Defense Committee members who had visited Jaoudat on the day the tooth extraction
occurred. They also demanded he sign forms in English that he didn't fully understand, and
when he refused, they threw him in solitary.
Jaoudat had a hearing before an immigration judge on June 27, which he attended by video
conferencing. Over 100 supporters demonstrated outside and then packed the court. The
judge ruled that Jaoudat be allowed to leave the country and return to Canada voluntarily
rather than be deported. Jaoudat is a Canadian citizen of Palestinian origin. But the
judge gave the INS 30 days to appeal, and denied bond, so Jaoudat remained at the mercy of
the continuing mistreatment in INS custody at Bristol County Jail. Sheriff Hodgson of
Bristol County Jail is well known for having tried to bring chain gangs back to
Massachusetts. A prison rebellion occurred at the jail last week in response to Sheriff
Hodgson beginning to charge inmates $5 rent a day deducted from their canteen funds, the
debt accumulating as a negative canteen balance and continued on the books even after they
get out if they return within two years.
The mass pressure on the INS and the jail resulted in antibiotics and pain killers finally
being provided, and in the INS announcement on July 3 that they would not appeal the
judge's voluntary exit order. But Jaoudat's ordeal was not over. He was removed from
Bristol County Jail to another jail and kept incommunicado in isolation in a bare cell
without furniture or clothes for 24 hours, and then in lockdown for 23 hours a day until
his departure. He was not allowed to make any calls. Members of his Defense Committee who
were accustomed to receive collect calls (the only way communication is allowed) from
Jaoudat several times a day were seriously concerned, having no information on his
condition or whereabouts from July 3 through July 8, when information was obtained from
the Canadian Consulate that he would be flown to Canada on July 9. He is indeed now safely
in Canada and has spoken by phone to many members of the Defense Committee.
But the struggle for justice for Jaoudat Abouazza is not over. While he was in INS
custody, the INS defied a habeas corpus order from District Court requiring them to
produce him for his district court trial on the original arrest, on vehicle registration
issues. Because he wasn't there, the Judge, over the defense's strenuous objections, found
Jaoudat in default and issued a warrant for his arrest. This default and warrant would
prevent Jaoudat from
entering the U.S. in the future, through no fault of his own strictly because of the INS
action barring him from his own trial even via video conferencing, which is available in
the jail. Furthermore, the Jaoudat Abouazza Defense Committee will not rest until those
responsible for the inhuman abuse of Jaoudat Abouazza are brought to account.
It is clear that the Bush and Ashcroft sweeps and detentions have created thousands of
Jaoudat Abouazzas throughout the U.S. Palestinians and political activists are being
targeted. What happened to Jaoudat Abouazza is happening to so many more behind the closed
doors without public knowledge. The Jaoudat Abouazza Defense Committee and the
A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition will continue to resist the new COINTELPRO and detentions and
U.S.A. Patriot act abuses, secret evidence and warrantless searches and destruction of
rights, until a detainees are released and full rights are restored to everyone.
International A.N.S.W.E.R.
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.internationalanswer.org
ISRAEL - PALESTINE CONFLICT 2002 INDEX
FIRE THIS TIME INDEX THE WORLD AFTER 9-11 INDEX