Zionism’s Lost Shine

[seemslikeadream]

Israel's International Conspiracy
Nearly every western country has an Israel lobby
PHILIP GIRALDI • FEBRUARY 9, 2016

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom recently suggested an inquiry into a surge in Israel’s reported extra-judicial killing of Palestinian demonstrators after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a harsh response and told his police and soldiers that those opposed to the continued occupation of the West Bank were “terrorists.” Almost immediately, the Israeli government denounced Wallstrom as engaging in “political stupidity,” banning her from travel to Israel, while one newspaper close to the government suggested that she might be assassinated, as fellow Swede Count Folke Bernadotte was by Jewish militants in 1948, because anti-Semitism appears to be in the Swedish DNA.

All of that outrage and personal ridicule is pro forma for an Israeli government that reflexively smears and denigrates any and all critics, but the more interesting epilogue was the unanticipated discovery by the Swedish and international media that Wallstrom has not been paying the full rent on the subsidized government apartment that she occupies. The revelation follows a familiar pattern, where critics of Israel suddenly find themselves being discredited for something completely unrelated to the Middle East. President George H. W. Bush (the good Bush) suffered a similar come to Jesus moment in 1991 when he went on national television to denounce the pressure tactics of the Israel lobby. The Israeli government was demanding U.S. Treasury backed loans to construct illegal settlements. President Bush, who was running for reelection and far ahead in the opinion polls, suddenly was confronted by a well-funded and organized opposition raising doubts about him and his record. And President Bush was not reelected, presumably learning along the way that one does not trifle with the Israel Lobby, to be replaced by the enthusiastically Zionist Bill Clinton.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is also wondering about Israel’s alleged commitment to peace. On Tuesday he said “it was human nature to react to occupation,” following up with a comment on Wednesday regarding Israel’s “stifling” occupation of Palestine. Netanyahu reacted with his usual over the top rhetoric, stating that Ban “was encouraging terror.” One might also anticipate, as in the case of Wallstrom, a well-orchestrated media blitz questioning Ban’s motives or explaining how he has always been a closet anti-Semite. It is par for the course and fully expected when one criticizes Israel.

Indeed, it is a global phenomenon. Wherever one goes – Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States – there is a well-organized and funded lobby ready, willing and able to go to war to protect Israel. Most of the organizations involved take at least some direction from officials in Tel Aviv. Many of them even cooperate fully with the Israeli government, its parastatal organizations and faux-NGOs like the lawfare center Shurat HaDin. Their goal is to spread propaganda and influence the public in their respective countries of residence to either hew to the line coming out of Tel Aviv or to confuse the narrative and stifle debate when potential Israeli crimes are being discussed.

Israel’s diaspora allies are backed up by a formidable government organized machine that spews out disinformation and muddies the waters whenever critics surface. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has a corps of paid “volunteers” who monitor websites worldwide and take remedial action and there is a similar group working out of the Prime Minister’s office. That is why any negative story appearing in the U.S. about Israel is immediately inundated with pro-Israel comments, many of which make exactly the same coordinated points while exhibiting the same somewhat less than perfect English. On sites like Yahoo they are actually able to suppress unwelcome comments by flooding the site with “Dislike” responses. If a comment receives a large number of dislikes, it is automatically blocked or removed.

The sayanim, local Jews in their countries of residence, are essential to this process, having been alerted by emails from the Israeli Foreign Ministry about what to do and say. The reality is that Israel has lost the war of public opinion based on its own actions, which are becoming more and more repressive and even inhumane and so are difficult to explain. That means that the narrative has to be shifted by Israel’s friends through subterfuge and the corruption of the information process in each country. In some places the key media and political players who are engaged in the process can simply be bought. In other places they can be intimidated or pressured into taking positions that are neither in their own countries’ interests nor morally acceptable. In large countries like the United States, Britain and France a combination of friendly suasion and coercive elements often come together.

In all cases, the objective is the same: to repress or misrepresent any criticism of Israel and to block any initiatives that might be taken that would do damage either to the Israeli economy or to the country’s perceived standing in the world. In some countries Israel’s advocates work right out in the open and are highly successful in implementing policies that often remain largely hidden but that can be discerned as long as one knows what to look for.

Recent Israel Lobby activity in the United States has included legislation at state levels to make illegal divestment from Israel or to promote boycott of Israeli products. A trade pact with Europe will reportedly include language requiring the United States to take retaliatory action if any European country tries to boycott Israel, to include the West Bank settlements, which the empowering legislation regards as part of Israel proper.

Israel is also working to create a mechanism for global censorship of the internet to ban “incitement,” which clearly is a euphemism for material that is critical of its policies. Recently Facebook has begun to delete from its site any “hate speech” and “terrorism” related material but what has not been widely noted is that the apparent restrictions also have involved sites critical of Israel including Christians United for Peace.

Many prominent critics of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) are unaware that AIPAC exists in various forms in a number of other countries. BICOM , the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, is located in London. The French equivalent is the Conseil Representatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF). In Canada there is a Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) , in Australia a Zionist Federation of Australia and in New Zealand a Zionist Federation of New Zealand .

While AIPAC is specifically focused on the U.S.-Israel relationship, its counterparts in Europe often deal with a whole range of issues that they define as Jewish, but protecting Israel is always part of their agenda, particularly for those groups that label themselves as Zionist. The political power and financial muscle of the groups gives them access to government far beyond the actual numbers of their supporters. In France this has led to the legislation of hate crimes that de facto exist to protect Jews that have been also been interpreted as limitations on one’s ability to criticize Israel. In its most recent test, a French court declared that a peaceful protest promoting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) directed against Israel was illegal.

Many believe that France now has less free speech than any other European country. Recently, the alleged humor magazine Charlie Hebdo, ran a revolting cartoon showing the little Syrian boy Alan Kurdi who drowned in Turkey last summer as all grown up and sexually assaulting a woman in Germany. There was considerable outrage throughout the world but no sign that the French government will do anything to prosecute the magazines since it was Muslims who were being ridiculed. Charlie Hebdo frequently insults Muslims (and also Christians) but rarely lampoons Jews.

In Britain, Jewish organizations uniquely are allowed to patrol heavily Jewish neighborhoods in police-like uniforms while driving police type vehicles and there have been reports of their threatening Muslims who enter the areas. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government, which is responsive to a Conservative Friends of Israel lobbying group, has also done its part to create official barriers to any spread of the BDS movement. It is proposing legislation that will enable it to overrule decisions by local government councils that seek to cut business or investment ties with Israel and, more particularly, Israeli settlements, under the pretext that such action interferes with the conduct of foreign affairs. The British government is also considering its own brand of hate speech legislation, banning from social media any commentary that is considered to be anti-Semitic, which will almost certainly extend to criticism of Israel.

Canada’s government has also threatened to use hate speech laws to block criticism of Israel and forbid BDS related activity. Australia meanwhile, has ceased referring to east Jerusalem as “occupied” and is apparently leaning towards similar “non-pejorative” language relating to the militarized occupation of the West Bank, preferring the neocon favored dodge “disputed.” New Zealand has proposed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that specifically demands that participants “refrain from referring a situation…to the International Criminal Court,” which would effectively decriminalize war crimes committed by both sides during the two recent invasions of Gaza. As a United Nations investigation determined that Israel was disproportionately responsible for what did occur, the proposal eliminates accountability and is effectively a get out of jail free card for some Israeli government officials.

And so it goes. Criticize Israel and there will be a comeuppance by virtue of a highly developed international system that relies on government direction as well as volunteer supporters who are able to shape both the media message and the political response. Accepting that as a given, I suppose one should be proud of being called an anti-Semite every time the label is misapplied to stifle dissent, but it all sadly reflects a lowering of the discussion to a dirt level. This might just be because there is no justification for Israeli behavior. The fact is that in terms of systematic human rights violations Israel is something beyond an apartheid state, frequently engaging in open racism and, in the opinion of many observers, crimes against humanity. It is furthermore a persistent source of instability in the Middle East and even beyond.

Israel is a liability to the United States and to the European nations that it has successfully manipulated into acquiescence regarding its bad behavior. When AIPAC and its overseas clones act for Israel the host nations in which these organizations exist should recognize exactly what is taking place. If Israel is truly first in their hearts and minds that is perfectly acceptable but its advocates should perhaps consider moving there and letting the rest of us be. Would that be too much to ask?

[seemslikeadream]

Civility? Professor Proposes Israel “flatten” a City of 1 million
By contributors | Feb. 19, 2016 |

By Belén Fernández | ( TeleSur ) | – –
No, Israel Should Not Flatten Beirut: A debate over whether Israel should commit war crimes and wipe out a city of at least 1 million people is somehow acceptable.
This week, the prominent Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran an opinion piece by Amitai Etzioni, titled “Should Israel Flatten Beirut to Destroy Hezbollah’s Missiles?”
The short answer is yes — but we’ll get to that in a minute.
The fact that Israel has already flattened large sections of Lebanon, in Beirut and beyond, would seem to make the article’s title a bit redundant.
Who, you may ask, is the fellow who has taken it upon himself to ponder this important matter? As it turns out, Etzioni is . . . a professor at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., having formerly taught at other prestigious U.S. universities including Columbia and Harvard. Also on his CV are stints of service in the Palmach militia, which fought for Israeli “independence” until 1948, and the Israeli military.
Etzioni begins his philosophy session with a claim from an anonymous “Israeli representative” in D.C. that Hezbollah’s alleged stockpile of “100,000 missiles [is] now Israel’s number two security threat,” second only to a nuclear-armed Iran.
He then jumps across the ocean to a previous conference in Herzliya, Israel, where he says the Israeli chief of staff “revealed that most of these missiles are placed in private homes,” raising another question on top of the to-flatten-or-not-to-flatten one: “If Hezbollah starts raining them down on Israel, how can these missiles be eliminated without causing massive civilian casualties?”
Never mind that Hezbollah has never started raining anything on Israel without serious provocation — or that civilian casualties generally haven’t been at the top of that country’s list of concerns.
According to Etzioni, some of the participants at the Herzliya conference were invited to an Israeli military base near Haifa, the amenities of which include a model Lebanese village. There the guests were “treated to a demonstration of the way Israel plans to clear these missiles — by Israeli soldiers dashing from building to building to find them.”
To Etzioni’s dismay, a “minor breeze” arrived mid-performance and blew away the grenade smoke intended to conceal the troops’ movements, leaving them exposed to hypothetical snipers.
Given the time-consuming and likely casualty-heavy nature of the house-to-house strategy, Etzioni reasons that there must be superior option. In debating “what else could be done,” he mentions a recollection by someone in the visiting group that, in the 2006 war on Lebanon, “Israel was charged with bombing Shia neighborhoods in Beirut in order to pressure Hezbollah to stop firing missiles.”
He goes on to caution, however, that “many studies have shown that such bombing … do not (sic) have the expected effect, nor did it in 2006 (assuming that such bombing actually occurred).” Indeed, when I myself visited Shia and other varieties of Lebanese neighborhood a month after this particular war, it still wasn’t clear from the ubiquitous rubble—and craters in the ground where buildings had once stood—whether “such bombing” had actually transpired.

More to the point, the fact that Israel has already flattened large sections of Lebanon, in Beirut and beyond, would seem to make the article’s title a bit redundant.
Upon returning to the U.S. from Israel, Etzioni says that he “asked two American military officers what other options Israel has” for missile eradication. And what do you know: “They both pointed to Fuel-Air Explosives [FAE].”
These bombs, Etzioni explains, “disperse an aerosol cloud of fuel which is ignited by a detonator, producing massive explosions.” And that’s not all: “The resulting rapidly expanding wave flattens all buildings within a considerable range.”
Lest we devote too much thought to the fact that this professor at a prestigious American institution of higher learning has literally just advocated for the total destruction of a “considerable” piece of territory, Etzioni stages a slight retreat: “Such weapons obviously would be used only after the population was given a chance to evacuate the area.” But this obviously fails to account for the Israeli military habit of ordering civilians to evacuate areas and then bombing them en route.
And it may be news to Etzioni, but the intentional targeting of civilian areas and civilian infrastructure happens to be a war crime.
Etzioni himself acknowledges that, “still, as we saw in Gaza, there are going to be civilian casualties.” Of course, we’ve also seen plenty of civilian casualties in Lebanon, where in 2006 the majority of the estimated 1,200 fatalities were not Hezbollah.
During my own recent visit to south Lebanon, I spoke with a young man from a village near the Israeli border who was 13 at the time of the war and who remained in his village for the duration of the 34-day assault. He described the pain in 2006 of encountering detached heads and other body parts belonging to former neighbors, blasted apart by bombs or crushed in collapsed homes.
But forget sympathy. The moral of the FAE story in Etzioni’s view is that, because there will inevitably be FAE-induced casualties, “the time to raise this issue is long before Israel may be forced to use” them — presumably so that the international community can warm up to the idea of a flattened Beirut. He writes:
“One way this can be achieved is by inviting foreign military experts and public intellectuals, who are not known to be hostile to Israel, to participate in war games in which they would be charged with fashioning a response to massive missile attacks on Israeli high rise buildings, schools, hospitals, and air bases.”
There are various problems with this reasoning. For one thing, Israel takes the cake when it comes to “massive” attacks. For another, the obsessive portrayal of the Israelis as forever engaged in legitimate and retaliatory self-defense severely obscures reality. If you invent a country on land that doesn’t belong to you and begin regularly slaughtering and otherwise harassing people, you’re pretty much permanently denied the whole “victim” alibi.
Regarding his proposed FAE public relations strategy, Etzioni concludes: “In this way, one hopes, that there be [sic] a greater understanding, if not outright acceptance, of the use of these powerful weapons, given that nothing else will do.”
A better hope might be that such warmongering ravings were not permitted to pass as civilized analysis.
Belén Fernández is the author of “The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work,” published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine.
Via TeleSur
—–
Image added by Juan Cole:
Beirut before and after Israeli indiscriminate bombing in 2006:

[seemslikeadream]

GRAYZONE PROJECT
Israel Announces $26 Million Cyberattack on BDS Movement and Muslim Social Media Users in the West
In coordination with the Israeli tech industry, government unleashes a new spy and sabotage plan.
By Sarah Lazare / AlterNet February 22, 2016

Israel's covert plan to spy on BDS activists is raising civil rights concerns.


The Israeli government is planning to pour $26 million this year alone into a covert cyber operation to attack and sabotage the global human rights movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), earmarking large sums for technology companies to spy on Muslim activists in the United States and Europe.

The initiative was reported last week by Associated Press journalist Daniel Estrin, who told AlterNet he was personally invited to cover a private cyber technology forum for Israeli developers last month.

BDS is an international movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel until it abides by international legal conventions. Sparked by Palestinian civil society organizations’ call in 2005 for global tactics similar to those levied to topple apartheid in South Africa, BDS has attracted international support from artists, scholars, students, and human rights campaigners. The Boycott National Committee recently argued that the massive resources that Israel is devoting to countering the movement shows that “our ‘soft’ power is having a real impact," and with good reason: Even presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has publicly attacked BDS and pledged to fight it.

Estrin’s reporting on the costly initiative to counter the growing movement included in this year’s Israeli government budget is hazy on details. He describes a scheme hatched by “some of Israel's top secret-keepers, including Sima Shine, a former top official in the Mossad spy agency, and Vaknin-Gil, who recently retired as the chief military censor responsible for gag orders on state secrets.” Israel’s Ministry for Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy, which Vaknin-Gil now heads, as well as its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, are involved in the effort.

Among the orchestrators of the anti-BDS spying initiative is Elad Ratson, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official not exactly known for his diplomatic style. Ratson has been given to outbursts on social media, including threatening imagery of a bomb attack sent to at least one French website that has battled Islamophobia.

According to Estrin's report in AP, Ratson identified Muslim social media users on foreign soil as key targets of the spying plan:

Many online activists driving anti-Israeli campaigns on social media are tech-savvy, second- and third-generation Muslims in Europe and the U.S. who have grievances against the West and also lead online campaigns against European and U.S. governments, said Elad Ratson, who tracks the issue for Israel's Foreign Ministry and spoke at last month's cybersecurity forum.

He said they often create code that allows activists to blast thousands of messages from social media accounts — creating the illusion that many protesters are sharing the same anti-Israel or anti-West message online.

Reached by email, the AP's Estrin said the covert Israeli plan to sabotage BDS was unveiled at a conference at which "other journalists were also present," but declined to answer whether it was open to all members of the press. He referred many of AlterNet's questions to Ratson, whom he described as "a nice guy."

Ratson did not immediately respond to a question submitted over social media about who exactly will fall under the spying dragnet and for what reasons.

Amid a time of heightened alert for Muslims in Europe and the US, the Israeli plan is already raising alarm. “These efforts are a cynical attempt by Israel to exploit the anti-Muslim environment in the United States to further its widespread agenda to silence criticism of Israel, on whatever platform it appears,” Rahul Saksena, staff attorney for advocacy organization Palestine Legal, told AlterNet. “We have already seen students, and Muslim students in particular, targeted by Israel advocacy groups for exercising their legal right to advocate for Palestinian human rights. This initiative will be sure to heighten the surveillance regime against them in chilling ways.”

Estrin, for his part, did not raise civil rights concerns in his article over the targeting of Muslims. What's more, the reporter invoked the spectre of the "Islamic State" seemingly out of the blue, conflating the global terror organization with Muslims who criticize Western foreign policy.

Estrin wrote in the article:

Ratson said social media giants are beginning to close inciting users' accounts. Twitter said in a statement this month that since mid-2015, it has closed more than 125,000 accounts that were "threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS," the Islamic State group. But he said Islamist activists are simply moving to "Darknet" sites not visible on the open internet.

However flawed his framing might have been, Estrin's reporting makes one thing clear: The Israeli crackdown is poised to escalate its campaign to unprecedented levels. An unknown number of Israeli tech companies are threatening to unleash a wave of cyber-attacks, including “sly algorithms to restrict these online activists' circle of influence” as well as “forensic intelligence gathering, such as detecting digital or semantic signatures buried in activists' coding so they are able to track and restrict their online activity.”

Those acts of sabotage will take place alongside a flood of “content that puts a positive face on Israel.”

The non-profit Firewall Israel, sponsored by a government-linked think tank known as the Reut Institute, is "building an online platform to help pro-Israel activists around the world communicate about anti-Israel activism in their communities,” the article states.

As journalist Ali Abunimah pointed out in 2010, the Reut institute aggressively pressed the Israeli government six years ago to embrace a strategy of sabotaging what it referred to as the “Delegitimation Network,” which is “made up of the broad, decentralized and informal movement of peace and justice, human rights, and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) activists all over the world." According to the think tank's argument, paraphrased by Abunimah, “Its manifestations include protests against Israeli officials visiting universities, Israeli Apartheid Week, faith-based and trade union-based activism, and ‘lawfare’ — the use of universal jurisdiction to bring legal accountability for alleged Israeli war criminals.”

Reut materials from as recently as June of 2015 show that the think tank is calling for surveillance of Muslim communities specifically. The institute says that the “delegitimization of Israel” has been “primarily driven by the so-called 'red-green alliance' between the radical left-wing and Muslim groups, which has been effectively building coalitions with mainstream groups.” Disturbingly, Reut goes on to argue that the very presence of Muslims in Europe poses a demographic threat to Israel, writing that “in Europe, the demographic rise of the Muslim community is transforming the public sphere against Israel and the Jews.”

[Sounder]

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/major-ame ... out-israel
David M. Gordis

While reading Ethan Bronner’s review of a new biography of Abba Eban, I was reminded of a time when in a rare moment I had the better of a verbal encounter with Eban. It happened about thirty years ago at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which brought together leaders of American Jewish organizations, sometimes to hear from a visiting dignitary, in this case Eban, Israel’s eloquent voice for many years. I was attending as Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Committee. Eban had a sharp wit as well as a sharp tongue. He began his remarks with a mildly cynical remark: “I’m pleased, as always, to meet with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, though I wonder where the presidents of minor American Jewish organizations might be.” I piped up from the audience: “They are busy meeting with minor Israeli government officials.” A mild amused reaction followed and Eban proceeded with his remarks.
Looking back on Israel oriented meetings from those days, I attended a monthly meeting, alternating between Washington and New York, with my counterparts at the Anti-Defamation League, Nathan Perlmutter and the American Jewish Congress, Henry Siegman, along with Tom Dine of the America Israel Public Affairs Commission (AIPAC). Though the atmosphere was cordial, a clear fault line separated Perlmutter and Dine from Siegman and me. AIPAC and ADL were on the ideological and political right, particularly when it came to Israel, the American Jewish Congress was on the left and the American Jewish Committee straddled a centrist position, with its lay leadership tending center-right and its professional staff clearly center left. A policy adopted by all four public policy organization was honored inconsistently. The policy was: support whatever government was in power in Israel, right or left, and avoid criticism of its policies. This was honored when a right wing government was in power. However, the agreement dissolved when a left wing Labor government was in control because neither ADL nor AIPAC hesitated to criticize Labor government policies. At our meetings Dine and Perlmutter agreed that a Labor government in control in Israel was a problem for them. So it was Perlmutter and Dine on one side of the divide, and Siegman and me on the other......

more at link

.....Present day Israel has discarded the rational, the universal and the visionary. These values have been subordinated to a cruel and oppressive occupation, an emphatic materialism, severe inequalities rivaling the worst in the western world and distorted by a fanatic, obscurantist and fundamentalist religion which encourages the worst behaviors rather than the best.
And most depressing of all for me, is that I see no way out, no way forward which will reverse the current reality. Right wing control in Israel is stronger and more entrenched than ever. The establishment leadership in the American Jewish community is silent in the face of this dismal situation, and there are no recognizable trends that can move Israel out of this quagmire. So, sadly, after a life and career devoted to Jewish community and Israel, I conclude that in every important way Israel has failed to realize its promise for me. A noble experiment, but a failure.

[AlicetheKurious]

A noble experiment, but a failure.

There's nothing in the least noble about it, and never was. That someone ever believed such a thing, in the face of mountains of evidence from even before the cursed colony was ever established until the present day, shows just how successful it's been.

[Sounder]

Woah, I did not write that, Gordis is his name.

Of course it was never a 'noble experiment', but it's understandable that Jewish folk may think of it that way.

[seemslikeadream]

EXCLUSIVE: ADL’s “Anti-Israel” List
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by Eli Clifton

An internal Anti-Defamation League (ADL) document acquired by LobeLog shows the 103-year-old group, founded “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all,” grouping “U.S. Civil Rights Organizations” under broad, and seemingly misleading, labels.

The presentation, prepared last summer by a research assistant to the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt before Greenblatt took over as CEO of the group, offers an overview of the social media outreach of 73 organizations and breaks them into five categories: “Jewish organizations,” “special interest groups,” “broader civil rights organizations,” “anti-Israel groups,” and “human rights organizations.”

Surprisingly, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group that defines itself as opposing “anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab bigotry and oppression,” and “inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, and human rights” isn’t included in the list of “Jewish organizations,” a group defined in the presentation as “committed to servicing the Jewish people and/or a cause related to Judaism.” Instead, JVP is listed as an “anti-Israel group,” which the presentation describes as supporting “anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and/or pro-Palestinian efforts.”

Indeed, the ADL labeled JVP as “anti-Israel” in the past, citing as evidence the group’s efforts to end U.S. aid for Israel and its support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

When presented with the document, JVP Media Coordinator Naomi Dann told LobeLog:

This is a classic example of the ADL’s attempt to define what is in the interest of the Jewish people, in an effort to maintain control over a narrative about Israel that is out of touch with reality. Jewish Voice For Peace is one of the fastest growing Jewish organizations. The fact that the ADL refuses to see human rights for Palestinians as in the interest of the Jewish people is a clear indication of their disconnect from reality and a betrayal of the values they claim to represent. If working for dignity, freedom, and equality for Palestinians is “anti-Israel” then perhaps the ADL has some self-reflection to do.
Even more surprisingly, the presentation placed the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) in the “anti-Israel” section, despite NIAC never taking a position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. NIAC’s only possible overlap with the ADL’s areas of interest was its work supporting the P5+1’s negotiated agreement with Iran to constrain the country’s nuclear program, an agreement that the ADL encouraged Congress to vote against.

According to the ADL’s Director of Communications Todd Glutnick, the document was “not produced or vetted by [the ADL’s] staff, and as a volunteer student research project was never intended for public dissemination.”

But Glutnick defended the positions taken by the document, telling LobeLog:

Having said that, we would not disagree with the characterization here of Jewish Voices [sic] for Peace or the National American Iranian Council [sic] as anti-Israel. We have publicly identified JVP as such in previous reports, and, if asked, would put NAIC [sic] in that category as well.
UPDATE

Several readers requested that we publish the presentation. A copy can be viewed here. We have redacted the name of the author, an undergraduate student.


National Iranian American Council
Act Now To Stop War & End Racism
Al-Awda The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
American Muslims for Palestine
Friends of Sabeel-North America (Friends of Peace and Justice in The Holy Land Inc.
If Americans Knew/Council for the National Interest
Jewish Voice for Peace
Muslim Public Affairs Council
Congregation Neturei Karta International Inc.
Students for Justice in Palestine
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (aka Education for Just Peace in the Middle East)

[conniption]

Axis of Logic

Israel issues New Directive to its ‘Free Press’: ‘Censorship: The freedom to speak responsibly!’

By Richard Silverstein
Mint Press News
Friday, Feb 26, 2016

As Israel expands the scope of what might be considered a ‘security matter,’ the country’s bloggers and social media activists must now seek approval to publish almost anything any self-respecting journalist would hope to cover in a true democratic state.


Israeli’s read the morning paper on Ben Yehuda Street. Israel’s new military censor, Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, has mandated expanded monitoring and censorship of Israeli media, requiring social media activists and bloggers to have ‘security related content’ vetted by the government.

Israel’s new military censor, Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, has greatly expanded the scope of her brief in monitoring Israeli media by requiring social media activists and bloggers to submit “security-related material” for approval prior to posting.

In the past, the Israeli Defense Forces censors have confined themselves to overseeing Israeli mainstream media — TV, radio, and print, conceding the digital realm as a “Wild West” too big and too chaotic to tame. But in order to prove her bona fides as a censor, Col. Ben Avraham has declared far more ambitious plans.

The censor has notified at least 32 Israeli bloggers and social media activists that they must submit to her any material they publish either in their blogs or social media accounts when they deal with a wide variety of security-related subjects. She submitted a list of relevant subjects to those targeted, but they may not disclose its contents. (Ironically, this directive comes from the same government touted as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” and, as we all know, a free press is critical to a democracy.)

While the bloggers can not reveal it, Ynet has already published the list (Hebrew).

This is the English translation of the flier distributed to Israeli media listing subjects which must be submitted to the censor for pre-approval:

The State of Israel­­ Censorship for Print & Media

List of subjects which obligate you to present [material] for prior­ approval to the Censor

General Directive

This list is an aid for your use and includes chapter headings only. The full detailed list which is attached is the one to be used in determining what material to present [to the Censor]

For the sake of removing any doubts, it should be noted that:

A. The obligation to present material for prior review applies both to the written format, which may include maps, diagrams/charts, photographs and other publications.

B. Along with photocopies of the materials, you must provide any accompanying explanation, headlines or notes which accompany the photographs or maps.

C. You must provide for review materials which had previously been approved [for publication], including photographs approved at an earlier time, with the Censor’s signature imprinted [on them]

D. The source of a news item does not automatically satisfy us from the Censor’s perspective. Also foreign sources which are quoted or material provided [to you] by official or military sources, to the extent that they touch on the subjects listed here, require prior review.

E. The Censor will treat news which is presented as a quotation of a foreign source (news agency or world press) as a quotation which is considered intrinsically correct. Such news will be approved for publication, but if subsequently it turns out that the quotation is not precise or even non­existent, responsibility for security damage caused as a result of such publication will be upon the editor.

F. [You] may not leave blank spaces or any other signs that testify to the deletion of censored material.

List of Censored Topics

IDF and Security Forces:

1.The structure or identity of units


2. States of readiness and calling up of reserve units


3. Preparations for [military] operations


4. Locations of [military] bases


5. Military exercises and work projects


6. Special units [Special Forces, Intelligence units, etc.]


7. War Materiel:: Development, production of weapons, experiments


8. Cooperation with foreign militaries


9. Manpower: appointments, resignations, firings, rumors about activities of IDF and its commanders


10. Announcements concerning casualties from operations, training, accidents, and illnesses


11. Letters to the editor on military or security matters

The Enemy: Arab Armies and Terror Groups:

1. News about what is happening within enemy armies and terror groups like: weapons, methods of operation, and preparedness.

Ministry of Defense and Military Industries: Rafael, Elbit, Israel Aircraft Industries, civilian research institutes working on behalf of the defense/security apparatus:

1. Security budget

2. Development, experimentation, production and maintenance of war materiel 
within civilian and military companies.

3. Contacts with foreign countries including agreements to import gasoline.

4. Anything connected with nuclear [issue]

5. Location of operations of the defense ministry and civilian operations and 
identification of secret employees.

6. The means of transportation by civilian [bus] companies when drafted in time of emergency [war]. 


Security Arrangements:

1. Security of ministry employees within Israel and abroad

2. Official delegations abroad

3. The movements and residences of VIPs

4. Security of strategic facilities: oil, electricity, water, ports, railways, buses, 
ministry facilities, and structures considered likely targets for attack

5. Information security within the security apparatus

6. Aerial reconnaissance photos and maps. 


The Intelligence Communities: AMAN, Shabak, Mossad, MALMAB, Research Department of Foreign Ministry:

1. The structure of operations inside Israel and abroad

2. Location of bases

3. Identities and photos of employees, agents, work methods.

4. The detention of those suspected of security offenses. 


Captives and the Missing:

1. Personal details

2. Details concerning negotiations for their return

3. Any material whose publication constitutes a danger to peoples’ lives

Courts


1. Deliberations about security matters

Government Decrees

1. Deliberations of the ministerial committee for security.

2. Immigration from endangered nations

3. Eilat­Ashkelon Oil Pipeline

4. Movement of gas to and from Israel

5. Loans from external sources to Israel and Israeli institutions. 


Censorship: the Freedom to Speak Responsibly!

Censor Unit/ Beit Yachin 2 Kaplan St.
Tel Aviv
Telephone: 03­7605800/1 Fax: 03­7605879/90

The State of Israel — Censorship for Print & Media
The censorship directive lists just about every subject any self-respecting military or intelligence journalist or blogger would wish to cover. Taken literally, these writers and activists would have to submit virtually anything they want to report to the censor, or simply ignore most of the rules and only submit material that would be certain to draw harsh rebuke from the censor if published without prior review.

This also brings up the issue of self-censorship, which is rife in Israeli reporting. There are scores of stories I’ve tried to interest Israeli reporters in covering and their first response is: “Isn’t that under censorship?” or, “Isn’t that under a gag order?” They know they can’t touch these stories with a ten-foot pole.

There are other stories which are neither censored nor under security gag, but the media still will not report them. The two most prominent examples of self-censorship involve stories I broke about sex scandals involving Israeli diplomats abroad. In one case, Israeli media never reported the story at all. In the other, Israeli media reported the identity of the diplomat, but not the sexual nature of the charges against him, even though British media and I did.

‘1984’: War is peace, freedom is slavery, and censorship is … responsibility.
The closing slogan of the censor’s recent directive is also astonishingly ironic: “Censorship: The Freedom to Speak Responsibly.” This statement would be right at home in George Orwell’s “1984,” in which everything is the opposite of what it really is. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” And, in Israel, censorship is responsibility.

Just as patriotism is the hobgoblin of little minds, “responsibility” is the hobgoblin of the Israeli national security state. The citizen owes his allegiance to the collective. Neither the state nor the collective owe the individual much of anything. That is why whistleblowers like Anat Kamm are arrested and imprisoned instead of supported, and why journalists like Uri Blau are exiled for years and sentenced for the “crime” of journalism.

It’s also clear from the directive that censorship covers not just security matters, but economic and political ones as well. Indeed, in the Israeli national security state almost all matters critical to the state are security matters. So, for example, any major loan from a foreign government comes under censorship as a “security matter”? And a major scandal involving a potential billion-dollar lawsuit by the government of Iran against Israel regarding the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company falls under censorship as well. This is certainly not a security matter; it’s a matter involving a deeply embarrassing scandal in which Israel stole oil that was part of an Israeli-Iranian partnership and refused to pay for it — for decades.

This is what happens when a society permits a censor to replace common sense in determining what is fit for the average citizen to know or read. It turns adults into children and the state into a nanny. You, the citizen, may not be the judge of what you should know. The state, like the father in the popular 1950s American TV show, “knows best.”

I translated an August 2015 interview with the outgoing military censor, Brig. Gen. Sima Vaknin-Gil, in which she reviews much of the structure, thinking and operations of censorship for Israel’s media advocacy publication, 7th Eye. It is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the mind of a censor or a nation afflicted with censorship.

Among what will be most eye-opening for average Israelis who know little about the inner-workings of censorship is that an individual petty bureaucrat censor sits in every newsroom and TV news studio, and reviews all headlines and copy before publication or airing. The first names mentioned below are those of prominent Israeli TV newscasters:

[Vaknin-Gil] “I want you to read a newspaper, watch the news and listen to radio without knowing that beforehand Razi took direction [from the censor], Ilana went over Uvdah [Israel’s equivalent of “60 Minutes”] with me, and Ron Ben-Yishai sent me the report before publication.”

[Interviewer] “Or that a representative of the censor sits in the offices of the news channel?”

[Vaknin–Gil] “Yes, when you watch the 8 o’clock TV news, the censor’s already been there since 6 and managed to go through the whole [news] line-up. OK? We don’t want you [the viewer] to know that.”

This blows to hell the image of Israel as a state which values a free press. It also explains why Israel’s ranking on international surveys of press freedom is so low (101 out of 170 in the most recent ranking).

It’s no accident that Vaknin-Gil, after leaving her IDF post as chief censor, transferred directly to the Ministry of Public Diplomacy (which uses the term “hasbara” in its Hebrew title), where she became director general or chief of staff to Minister Gil Erdan. Here’s how she described the Global Coalition for Israel, the $26-million initiative to fight the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement:

“Some of the funds are earmarked for Israeli tech companies, many of them headed by former military intelligence officers, for digital initiatives aimed at gathering intelligence on activist groups and countering their efforts.

‘I want to create a community of fighters,’ said Sima Vaknin-Gil … to Israeli tech developers at a forum last month dedicated to the topic.

Initiatives are largely being kept covert. Participants at the invite-only forum, held on the sidelines of a cyber technology conference, repeatedly stood up to remind people that journalists were in the room.”

Frank Luntz’s magical “sentence that will defeat BDS.” Perhaps a bit of wishful thinking…

In effect, this is a nation-state seeking to smear and suppress legitimate political activism not just in its own country, but around the world. To accomplish this task, Vaknin-Gil recruited (Hebrew) none other than the GOP’s leading brand consultant, Frank Luntz. Just as he did in his infamous “Hasbara Handbook,” Luntz trained the 150 specially-invited guests in the political language of combatting BDS. Among other things, the golden boy of GOP-messaging attacked the ministry of tourism’s failed attempts at branding Israel as “a cool destination.” “Girls and bikinis,” he warned, just don’t cut it anymore.

The hypocrisy of Luntz’s enterprise may be seen in one of his suggested slogans: “Solutions come from engagement, not silence.” This is his way of saying that the attempt by the BDS movement to boycott Israel and silence its supporters is illegitimate. In truth, it is the Israel lobby, with its massive campaign to pass legislation throughout the Western world outlawing BDS that is engaged in silencing.

Indeed, The Associated Press reported:

“Vaknin-Gil said her ministry is encouraging initiatives to expose the funding and curb the activities of anti-Israel activists, as well as campaigns to ‘flood the Internet’ with content that puts a positive face on Israel. She said some of these actions will not be publicly identified with the government, but that the ministry will not fund unethical or illegal digital initiatives.”

In perhaps the most ominous characterization of the government program, two former military intelligence agents described their anti-BDS work as akin to a covert military attack on Israel’s enemies. From the AP’s report:

“Inspiration, an Israeli intelligence analysis company founded by Ronen Cohen and Haim Pinto, former military intelligence officers, launched a technological initiative some months ago to collect intelligence on BDS organizations in Europe, particularly Scandinavian countries, the U.S., and South America, Cohen said. He said the initiative aims to dismantle the infrastructure of groups he said were responsible for incitement and anti-Semitism against Israel. He declined to give specifics.

‘It’s no different than an operation, which you sometimes read about in the newspaper, in Syria or Lebanon,’ Cohen said. ‘It’s the kind of thing that, if you want to do it in the future … you can’t work in the open.’”

The impulse to militarize political discourse and designate critics as not just political, but mortal enemies is troubling. It is also deeply anti-democratic. The world should take notice of this development and take it into account when Israel demands that foreign states suppress these critics with the same vehemence used to do so inside Israel.

Conflicting responses by Israeli Jewish bloggers, digital media to censor’s demands
The new, expanded censorship rules mentioned above target subjects who are left-wing Jews (I don’t know of any Palestinians contacted about the directive) and deeply critical of the Israeli security apparatus. But Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, the chief censor, didn’t confine herself to those who are anti-Zionist or most extreme; she even targeted +972 Magazine and its Hebrew sister outlet, Sicha Mekomit, which are largely liberal Zionist in their political orientation.


Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, Israel's chief military censor and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon on August 30, 2015 (Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry)

The responses from those designated for monitoring has moved from one pole to the other. Yossi Gurvitz is one of the worst thorns in the side of the security forces, and has been interrogated by the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet, before. He writes the Friends of George [Orwell] blog and refused outright to have anything to do with the demand.

+972, on the other hand, “reluctantly” agreed to cooperate. A senior staff member explained to me that the publication did so on advice of counsel and because it desperately wants to obtain official designation as an approved media source. According to him, this would open up +972’s reporting to a broader range of official government sources who will not talk to them now.

+972’s managing editor, Jonathan Omer Man, explained the implicit and explicit muzzling effect that the Government Press Office has on the diversity of reporting in Israel. He also explained that despite all this, +972 felt it was important to accept the terms of the directive because of the benefits government accreditation offers:

“In a number of ways the state is able to influence what information is reported, how it is reported, and who can report it through the Government Press Office (GPO). …

Carrying a GPO card gives journalists access to official events, the scenes of newsworthy incidents, is often a condition for cooperation from official spokespeople, and offers protection from arrest while covering protests. In other words, government accreditation makes reporting much safer and more effective. (Foreign journalists must have the GPO’s endorsement in order to even receive a visa to work in Israel.)

But by giving itself the power to decide who is a legitimate journalist, the GPO (which operates as part of the Prime Minister’s Office) also inherently gets to decide who is not a legitimate journalist. And as with any decision made by government bureaucrats subordinate to politicians such decisions can at times be driven by political considerations. …

That has been true in the past and under the current government.”

He also noted: “+972 Magazine is currently engaged in a years-long battle to be accredited by the GPO as a recognized, and therefore legitimate, news organization.”

Over years of reporting about Israeli national security issues I’ve learned that the closer one cooperates with the government the more likely one is to be co-opted. Co-optation takes many forms and it can creep up on a journalist without his or her awareness.

On the heels of the censor’s crackdown, Israeli police arrested the bureau chief of the Washington Post near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. William Booth and his Palestinian stringer were interviewing Palestinian youth when police told him to stop. Booth refused and moved farther away from the officers. Annoyed at his refusal to comply with their demand, they arrested him and held him at a police station for one hour.

Israeli police offered this brazenly false justification of the arrest: An unnamed “passerby” claimed to have witnessed Booth offering the Palestinians money to stage a protest so he could cover it. It’s also no accident that Michael Oren, a Knesset member and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., recently claimed that Palestinian protests were “staged and orchestrated” solely for the press’ benefit, as if they otherwise would have no legitimate reason for such demonstrations.

The foreign ministry has made a big show of protesting Booth’s treatment, calling it “heavy-handed.” But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s press officer, Ofir Gendelman, rejected any criticism. He tweeted that it was much ado about nothing and that Israel remains a country in which the press is completely free. (However, the facts tell a different story, as does Gregg Carlstrom in this eye-opening Columbia Journalism article about the Netanyahu government’s unprecedented assault on a free press.)

Israel’s suppression of Palestinian free speech even more brutal
Of course, Booth and his colleague received far milder treatment than what’s accorded to Palestinian journalists and media outlets, who are often violently assaulted and even killed by Israeli security forces. In fact, by the time this is published Palestinian reporter Mohammed al-Qeeq may be dead of a hunger strike. He is protesting his administrative detention without charge or trial by Israeli security forces.


An emaciated Mohammed al-Qeeq, 33, who has been on hunger strike for more than 70 days to protest at his administrative detention in an Israeli jail, is seen at Haemek hospital in the northern Israeli city of Afula February 5, 2016. (Photo: Ammar Awad/Reuters)**

Further, unlike the military censor, who demands prior approval for social media publication by Israeli Jewish bloggers and activists, the Shin Bet arrests Palestinian non-journalists, even teenagers like Asmaa Hamdan, for publishing poems to Facebook. Several have been arrested under administrative detention, held without charge, access to attorney, or trial.

These detainees never got an “invitation” from the censor to submit their posts. They were summarily arrested, after which the Shin Bet threw away the key. In yet another form of state censorship, it secured a gag order prohibiting Israeli media from reporting Hamdan’s arrest or name. Hamdan and her expressions of defiance and resistance have been erased before they could enter the consciousness of the Israeli public. This, too, is a means of exercising control over not just Israeli Palestinian citizens but Jews as well.

Breathtaking scope of new censor’s mandate
The scope of Col. Ben Avraham’s mandate (as she defines it) is breathtaking. She presumes to demand that the most effective and hard-hitting independent Israeli bloggers and social media activists muzzle themselves unless they receive her prior approval. A new 7th Eye article (Hebrew) by respected Hebrew University law professor Moshe Negbi equates the Israeli military censor’s new directives to Internet censorship in China:

“The attempt to preemptively deny someone freedom of expression and the right to disseminate information and opinions on security matters, and to censor social media, is without precedent in the democratic world. It is typical of totalitarian regimes like China.“

Imagine if the repressive Arab regimes had been able to impose such a regime of draconian censorship on the young Arab Spring activists. Their revolution would’ve died aborning. As it is, the military and oligarchic elites in many of these countries managed to counter-attack and overthrow the democratic impulses of the Arab Spring. But think if the regimes had been monitoring and suppressing social media even before the protests occurred, how much more effective their repression would’ve been.

In the ever-widening dissolution of democratic impulses within Israel, figures like Col. Ben Avraham step forward seeking to impose their definition of homogeneity and acceptable thought. Because there are few remaining normative stable values or democratic institutions, they strive desperately to fill the vacuum. Because they do not have legitimacy, they must fail in these efforts — but not before doing enormous harm to the society they purport to defend.

Draconian state censorship indicates a nation in decline
Israel today is a nation in a rapid state of decline. Racist, ultra-nationalist forces reign supreme. Those institutions and values which characterize democratic societies like free press, free speech, academic freedom and cultural expression are all under threat. By this, I do not mean that the state is merely nibbling away at these freedoms; it is taking bite-sized chunks out of them, rendering them more toothless each day.

The result will be a country in which everyone is taught to think within an extremely narrow range. Those who diverge from the norm will be ridiculed at best and exiled or silenced at worst. In fact, Israel has already passed laws which would punish those who refer to the Nakba. It plans to pass similar legislation which permit citizens or businesses to sue anyone who supports BDS. It also seeks to force Israeli human rights NGOs seeking to lobby the Israeli Knesset on behalf of their mission to wear the equivalent of a Jewish star, a badge that would indicate they accept money from anti-Israel foreign governments and betray the state.

This will drive the most educated, creative and entrepreneurial individuals into the Diaspora, where they can express themselves more freely. Even more importantly, it will protect their children from serving in the army of the permanent-war state.

Though Israel has recently trumpeted the gains in aliyah from France, purportedly in the aftermath of Islamist terror attacks, these numbers are temporary and short-term. The longer term trend, as Israel becomes more and more authoritarian, theocratic and racist, is to drive away those who are most needed for a diverse, innovative, cosmopolitan population.

Israeli censorship spreads outward, infects international debate on Israel-Palestine
Israel’s widening attack on speech, thought and activism will ripple outward into the broader world. Glenn Greenwald recently catalogued the legislation either passed or proposed in France, Germany, Britain and the U.S. which would criminalize support of BDS. Various states in this country are considering legislation that would punish schools, businesses or individuals who advocate BDS or fulfill its principles.


The advertisement sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace which was rejected by Variety after being deemed ‘ been deemed “too sensitive” a topic.

The advertisement sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace which was rejected by Variety after being deemed ‘ been deemed “too sensitive” a topic.A broad human rights coalition, including Jewish Voice for Peace, recently sought to purchase an ad in Hollywood Variety advising Oscar nominees to #SkipTheTrip, a free junket to Israel offered by the government of Israel valued at $55,000. The Hollywood media outlet refused to accept the ad unless it adopted “a softer tone.” Meanwhile, Variety has run numerous pro-Israel ads which were not changed or censored in any way. One sponsored by the right-wing Emergency Committee for Israel, even accused President Obama of using Israel “like a punching bag.” (On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times ran the ad Variety rejected.)

Israeli ministers have met with executives from both Google and Facebook, seeking to pressure the U.S.-based Internet giants to censor material deemed anti-Semitic for being critical of Israel. So far, the efforts have been rejected by the U.S. firms. But Israel has only just begun these efforts and they will become more intense as time goes on.

These are examples of the state and its domestic agent, the Israel lobby, amplifying the reach of Israeli censorship and inducing major domestic political, cultural and media institutions to impose limits on their own speech concerning Israel-Palestine.

It is one thing if Israeli rightists wish to impose their values within their own borders, but quite another when they attempt to impose the same values on the rest of the world. Must we become accomplices to Israeli injustice? Must we, too, muzzle ourselves because criticism and activism offends Israel’s far-right leadership? Since when are we not permitted to think our own thoughts on such matters? Since when does a foreign state tell us what we can or cannot say or think?


Source URL

~~~~

**10:54 GMT
Palestinian journalist ends 94-day hunger strike in Israel jail – reports

Mohammed al-Qiq, a Palestinian journalist jailed without trial in Israel, agreed on Friday to end his 94-day hunger strike under a deal for his release in May, AFP reported. “An agreement has been reached under which his administrative detention will end on May 21 and will not be renewed,” the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an NGO, said. Israeli authorities did not immediately confirm the agreement. The 33-year-old television reporter started his hunger strike on November 25 in protest at the “torture and ill treatment that he was subjected to during interrogation,” according to Addameer, a Palestinian rights organization. The Supreme Court officially suspended the internment order against al-Qiq on February 4, but refused his demand for transfer to a hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Israel’s administrative detention law allows the state to hold suspects without trial for periods of six months, renewable indefinitely.

[tapitsbo]

The tension between the unfaltering grip on Western political establishments and domestic institutional fatigue could not be more fascinating.

[backtoiam]

tapitsbo:
The tension between the unfaltering grip on Western political establishments and domestic institutional fatigue could not be more fascinating.

That ain't no joke.

[seemslikeadream]

Israel's New Line of Propaganda Puts Orwell to Shame
Israel is resorting to lies and deceit about the occupation and its treatment of the Palestinians to fill the void left by the death of the peace process.

Gideon Levy Feb 27, 2016 7:37 PM

Screen shot from anti-BDS video by HaYovel: BDS or the Bible - Don't Boycott GodScreen capture
In Israeli government's parallel universe, Jerusalem is united, there is no occupation
Barkat to Cameron: East Jerusalem much better off than under British Mandate
Netanyahu is actually a great manager... of quashing the two-state solution
An all-American youngster – fair-haired, regular churchgoer – returns from his morning run and decides to join the boycott against Israel. He has heard of the BDS movement and about the oppression and occupation, so he collects everything in his home that was made in Israel or by companies trading with it – just about everything he has – and starts shooting the products. Suddenly, another young man appears and suggests he shoot the Bible, since that too was made in Israel. The shooter recoils. He gets the message that appears at the end of the video: “Don’t boycott God. Buy Israeli products.”
This video was produced by HaYovel, an organization founded by Tennessee couple Tommy and Sherri Waller. He once worked with Federal Express, she is a passionate restoration advocate – of families and “the nation of Israel,” as their website says. Their mission is to bring volunteers from America to help “the Israeli farmers,” i.e. the settlers. The organization’s website enables donations and even to pray for the settlers. Another video on the site shows U.S. veterans volunteering in the vineyard of the West Bank settlement of Har Bracha.
There are plenty of wacky rightist organizations. But the youngster who persuaded his friend not to boycott Israel said something else. “Most Palestinians aren’t oppressed. Those who are – are oppressed by their own government. Israel provides them with work, free electricity, health care and loads of humanitarian aid. I was there and saw it.”
Tons of aid or not, it is not only HaYovel that spreads these absurd falsehoods. And these tainted goods now have much more serious sellers: the Israeli government. It is doubtful whether it has more serious buyers than the grotesque U.S. veterans at Har Bracha.
The propagandist in the video says the same things Israel’s prime minister is saying. Addressing his British counterpart David Cameron, who let slip a rare word of criticism of the occupation in Jerusalem, Benjamin Netanyahu preached, “Only Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem guarantees the city’s Arab residents’ roads, clinics, workplaces and other means of normal life that Arabs across the Middle East don’t enjoy.” He said it as an insult to Cameron’s intelligence.
One may, of course, suspect that Israel’s propagandists are guiding HaYovel and similar groups. Or perhaps great minds think alike. But it’s impossible to ignore the embarrassing change that has occurred in Israel’s propaganda.
Nobody in the world speaks seriously about the peace process anymore. No one believes that the Israeli government is interested in peace, while the two-state solution is nothing but a monument. At a time like this, propaganda must reinvent itself. Israel can’t say “There’s no partner,” because it’s clear it doesn’t want to talk to the Palestinians. Israel can’t say “two states,” because it’s clear it doesn’t mean it.
But Israel must say something, so it is now resorting to the Orwellian propaganda of lies and deceit, the likes of which even George Orwell himself couldn’t have imagined; he didn’t even go so far in “1984.”
The new Israeli “public diplomacy” (hasbara) consists of three principles, at least two of which are outright lies: there is no occupation; the Palestinians are living contented lives; God giveth.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely has drafted the new line, following Netanyahu. “The occupation is not an occupation,” she said in all seriousness to Yossi Verter this weekend, adding something about a biblical right. Naturally, this is good news. According to Israel’s spokespeople, the Palestinians’ situation is wonderful, they’re neither oppressed nor occupied – joyful tidings! And there’s more: the world is stupid, and so are the Israelis. So the government finds it easy to sell them anything.
And the best news is that official Israel is pulling its rusty day-of-judgement weapon of yore out of the attic: there’s a God, so there’s no occupation. In the early days of the occupation, a few wackos used to wander around trying to sell us this merchandise. Not many were convinced. Dredging up this weapon again confirms that Israel has run out of arguments. We’re left only with the delusion and lies.

[seemslikeadream]

Brian Eno: 'Oscars’ Swag Bag is Part of Israel’s Cultural Propaganda Campaign'
Israel is using artists, again, to obscure its dismal human rights record.
By Brian Eno / Salon February 26, 2016

It has become customary for Oscar nominees to receive a “swag bag” of gifts and favors from various companies. This year, alongside the usual random bits and pieces — a “Vampire” breast lift, a sex-toy, and a lifetime supply of Lizora skin creams — there is an unusual contribution: A five-star luxury trip to Israel for every nominee in the main acting and directing categories. The trip is sponsored by the Israeli government.

Israel is hailed as a great country for at least half its inhabitants – those who are Jewish. They can receive automatic citizenship, subsidized housing and many other perks. For Palestinians – whether living in Israel, under Israeli military occupation, or in exile – it’s a very different reality.

For decades, the UN has been condemning the forcible takeover of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers who, backed by an enormous army, government subsidies and the United States, have flooded in from Moscow, London, Brooklyn, Cape Town and elsewhere. It’s a familiar story: The Europeans who settled America did the same to the Native Americans, and the British did it to the Aboriginal Australians. In both cases we turned the victims into the problem: America had a redskin problem. Australia had an abbo problem. But what they both had, in reality, was a settlerproblem. And what Israel has is a settler problem.

What’s more, during Israel’s creation, more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in fear and made refugees to make space for a Jewish state. After the horrors of World War II, it’s understandable that many Jews saw Israel as a place of safety in a hostile world. But what about those 750,000 refugees and their families? Nearly seven decades later, they still aren’t allowed back to their homes. In the midst of Europe’s greatest refugee crisis ever, it’s worth remembering that Palestinians still make up the largest refugee population in the world.

The Israeli government has attempted to detract from this harsh reality over the years through its “Brand Israel” campaign, which is aimed at using artists, among others, to obscure its human rights violations — whether by paying performers handsomely to play in Israel or by otherwise associating our “brands” with brand Israel.

When expressing his hopes for the Oscar nominees’ swag bag trips, Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said: “These are the most senior people in the film industry in Hollywood and leading opinion-formers who we are interested in hosting.” This is the same government official who supports the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and opposes the creation of a Palestinian state.

But there’s a “peace process” going on, isn’t there? The problem is it doesn’t resolve anything and it isn’t intended to resolve anything. It provides cover for the Israeli government to continue annexing land, fragmenting the remaining territory further so that a Palestinian state — the purported aim of the process — becomes unattainable. Every day, whether there’s a “peace process” going on or not, the Palestinians are having their land taken from them.

Yet, why pick on Israel, when there are so many awful things going on in the world? Well, our taxes directly support Israel. Without U.S. and European backing, Israeli policies of occupation and apartheid couldn’t survive.

It’s not a contradiction to sympathize with Israelis and their dreams of a homeland — and yet to condemn the actions of the state of Israel — the ethnic cleansing of that homeland.

Our support shouldn’t be unconditional: If Israel wants it, it must also be ready to accept our criticism.

One effective form this criticism is taking is BDS: the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality. Part of this movement is a cultural boycott, where artists and musicians choose not to take part in Israeli government-sponsored events. BDS seeks to draw attention to the cultural propaganda campaign that Israel conducts to make us all look the other way when the Palestinian question comes up.

I have joined many others, including Oscar nominees Mark Rylance and Asif Kapadia, five-time Oscar nominee Mike Leigh, and director Ken Loach in pledging to accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. Our hope is that other artists will follow suit and take a stand for Palestinian human rights, as so many cultural figures did in the struggle against South African apartheid.

The Oscars’ swag bag is part of Israel’s cultural propaganda campaign. So sure — take their offer, if you must, but ask if you might also be allowed to visit Susiya, where Palestinians live in caves while the settlers who stole their land are building a nice new town on it behind Israeli machine gun posts. Or check out Hebron, where Palestinian children on their way to school are regularly stoned by Israeli settler kids with the encouragement of their parents. Or go to Gaza, where families are still living in tents on heaps of broken concrete two years after their homes were bombed by F16 fighter jets.

Visit the Holy Land. But not just the bits the government wants you to see.

Here’s our invitation:

HOLYLAND TOURS PRESENTS

10 DAYS IN PALESTINE

Enjoy a tear-gas filled weekend in an East Jerusalem ghetto!

Watch a baby being born in the back of a taxi as checkpoint guards look on!

Queue for hours in the baking sun – because you have to!

Be pushed around by angry soldiers!

Lots of fun activities for the kiddies too, including a fabulous no-expense-spared ALL-NIGHT SHIN BET INTERROGATION SESSION!

And take home the wonderful ‘Occupied Territories Swagbag’ containing a handy first aid kit for settler-inflicted beatings; a lovingly crafted section of an uprooted olive tree; and a genuine souvenir rubber bullet.

We’ll make it a Holiday you’ll never forget!!!

[seemslikeadream]

Israel Unleashes an Onslaught on Human-Rights NGOs, Artists, and Writers


The new wave of McCarthyite smears and repressive laws is unprecedented.


By David Palumbo-LiuFEBRUARY 26, 2016

Avner Gvaryahu, former Israeli soldier and current member of the NGO Breaking the Silence, depicted in a video by the right-wing extremist group Im Tirtzu as an anti-Israel “agent” belonging to Germany. (YouTube)

Israel has long fought against its most vocal critics. But what we see unfolding now both in terms of repressive laws and also of strategic attacks coming from the far right is unprecedented in recent history, and thus warrants our close attention. In particular, both the state and the ultra-right are targeting Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israel Defense Forces members who step forward to offer testimony about and graphic evidence of the nature of the occupation.

Breaking the Silence (BtS) asserts, “Of the vast injustices of occupation, high ranking among them is its sole means of implementation: through force and violence. In order to control the civilian population in Palestinian territory, the IDF is compelled—like every other military ruler—to use force in order to foment an atmosphere of constant fear, which ensures that the subjects remain submissive and docile. During our military service in the occupied territories, we became intimately familiar with the profuse mechanisms of control Israel employs on the Palestinian civilian population.… We want a moral Israel and a moral army. That is why we want the IDF to cease being an occupying army.” For this it has been called “the most hated group in Israel” and has been attacked by “the country’s national police department, the defense minister, the education minister, and even the president himself.”

The EU said the bill cracking down on human rights groups “was reminiscent of totalitarian regimes.”
The Knesset is now debating a law targeting the group, one that calls it “a subversive organization acting to change Israel’s policy by ways that are not part of the acceptable rules of a democracy and by exerting international pressure that causes Israel damage.” It is not clear how speaking out and giving witness are “not part of the acceptable rules of a democracy,” but it is clear that what some Israeli politicians fear is that BtS is both challenging Israel’s strange brand of “democracy” and appealing in powerful ways to the international community to bring justice to Israel where Israel has failed.

The Guardian reports reports on the law and makes the key distinction:

Israeli ministers have voted in favour of a bill that will crack down on human rights groups receiving funds from abroad, a move EU officials said was reminiscent of totalitarian regimes…. Opponents say the bill unfairly targets leftwing organisations critical of government policy, leaving rightwing pro-settlement groups immune from the same scrutiny, as those tend to rely on private donors—who are exempt from the measures.

The reaction outside Israel has been one of dismay and concern. Haaretz reports that “The ambassadors of Germany, Britain, France, Holland and the European Union…made their displeasure known to both Shaked [Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, a sponsor of the bill] and the Prime Minister’s Office,” and the US embassy noted the “chilling effect” the bill would have on NGO activity.

Coupled with official state power are ultra-right groups that seem to act with the tacit approval of the state to smear BtS. As The New York Times reports, these groups accuse human rights NGOs of being foreign agents, or moles, obviously attempting to paint Israel as besieged by nefarious foreign influence. For instance, Im Tirtzu, an extremist Zionist group, recently released an inflammatory video titled “The Foreign Agents— Revealed!” It shows a Palestinian man starting to attack the viewer with a knife and then cuts to the photographs and names of actual Israeli human rights workers receiving aid from abroad, suggesting that they aid and abet such attacks.

Those being targeted as “foreign agents” include prominent artists and writers such as David Grossman and Amos Oz and leading actress Gila Almagor because they serve on the public advisory board of the human-rights group B’Tselem, which monitors Israeli abuses in the occupied territories. To date, more than 100 artists are on the blacklist. The American Prospect calls these “attacks against Israel’s progressive community” the face of a “new McCarthyism.” The denunciation of human-rights workers Ezra Nawi and Guy Butavia of the group Ta’ayush led to their arrests; media campaigns that smear the reputations of rights workers and their supporters do the work the courts fail to do in intimidating and silencing opposition.

Remarkably, the reaction to being called a McCarthyite has been one of pride and even pleasure. We see this in a February follow-up article in The American Prospect:

“In most cases, it turned out he was right,” Ronen Shoval tweeted in Hebrew a few days ago. The “he” in that sentence refers to Joseph McCarthy. Shoval, founder of the attack-dog organization Im Tirtzu, was responding to critics who charge his organization and its allies in government with McCarthyism, as described here in Peter Dreier’s article this week.

Shoval’s answer was to happily accept the label. He’s not alone. Knesset Member Ofir Akunis of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party once responded to the same charge on a TV talk show with, “Every word [McCarthy] said was correct.”

To get a better sense of what is happening in Israel, I sat down with Oded Naaman, a member of Breaking the Silence (he adds that his opinions here are not necessarily those of the organization). Here are portions of our extensive interview:

David Palumbo-Liu: How do you read this new repression of human rights organizations and of Breaking the Silence in particular?

Oded Naaman: The atmosphere within Israeli society has gotten worse. I’m struck by how much more friction there is between Palestinian Arabs in Israel and Jews. It’s often a sign of integration that there’s a lot of friction. The two people are intermingling more in their everyday lives. The dichotomy between Arabs and Jews is constantly reasserted precisely because it is fading away. Now, I’m not sure—this reading is anecdotal—but it would support the perception that now we’re already within the era of one state. The pre-1967 border is disappearing from the reality of Israel-Palestine. This does not mean that a two-states solution is no longer possible, only that the problem for which a solution is sought is a “one-state problem.”

“Israel is controlling millions of people by sheer force, denying them basic civil rights.”
DP-L: What do you think is causing the pressure bringing these people together?

ON: People have argued for years over whether Jewish democracy is conceivable or possible. Regardless of whether a Jewish democratic state is conceptually possible, it seems like it’s been a burden on many Israelis. It’s been a burden to try to pull that off. Whether this burden is because of some kind of philosophical mistake on their part or some particular understanding of Zionism or Judaism that chains them to a certain kind of anti-democratic vision, I don’t know. The fact is that it’s been a burden, and one of its most striking expressions is the tension between the occupation of the territories and the rule in Israel proper.

This tension is the embodiment of the tension between a Jewish and a democratic state. If you want to understand it, look at the fact that Israel is controlling millions of people by sheer force, denying them basic civil rights, while at the same time Israel wants to have, or has had, institutions that purport to serve all the residents of this country.

This tension can be resolved in either one of two directions: toward the Jewish pole or toward the democratic pole. Again, this is not because a Jewish democratic state is in principle impossible, but because it is experienced by most residents of Israel as impossible. Obviously, the one-state talk is ambiguous—will it be a democratic one state or an apartheid state? This is why I called it the one-state problem. It’s almost as if Israel has exhausted itself maintaining the pretense of a liberal democracy and wants to deposit itself in the hands of religious, ethnic zeal. At the same time, of course, there are many Israelis who are deeply committed to liberal democracy. Hence the attack on the left, which is seen as a self-righteous, nagging angel that whispers condemnations in Israel’s ear.

“This tension can be resolved in either one of two directions: toward the Jewish pole or toward the democratic pole.”
DP-L: Why is Breaking the Silence a particular target?

ON: Breaking the Silence was targeted together with B’Tselem and a couple of others. These are some of the main NGOs on the left. There are two narratives about this. One narrative—which some NGOs and various people who might be called part of the radical left in Israel have endorsed—is a story that says, “We thought we were being ignored and have no influence of Israel society, but these attacks show how much of a threat we are. We’re so much of a threat that we’re targeted in this extreme way. And insofar as we are a threat, we are relevant. We matter.” That narrative has some appeal; it has a lot of truth to it. However, there’s another narrative that says the right is very strategic about what it does. The organization that was responsible for the initial propaganda attack and the release of the video presented itself as acting independently, but it is well known that it is supported by donors who are also supporting Netanyahu in various relations.

The video shows what is supposed to be a Palestinian terrorist coming at the camera with a knife. The voiceover says, “Next time there’s a terror attack, know who’s standing behind the terrorist. There are foreign agents sent by other countries.” Then it shows specific individuals, real individuals, from these human-rights organizations. It shows their faces, distorted just slightly—really like a propaganda film.

It was really shocking—it signaled the beginning of a real attack on dissent. I think legislation was proposed before to attack human rights NGOs, but now the Knesset is passing a law in the context of these attacks.

The video came out in December. Since then, Breaking the Silence has been in the news all the time—people attacking the video, others defending it. In particular there has been a proliferation of attacks on people for supposedly being foreign agents, or “moles.” They had blacklists of Amos Oz and David Grossman and other people who are considered very establishment figures. These individuals were attacked for sitting on the boards of various human rights organizations. They are accused of working as moles for foreign governments, in order to discredit them and cast suspicion on the entire organization. To some people on the center and right, this was distasteful. But there was also this opportunity to condemn these kinds of videos and advertisements and at the same time attack the leftist organizations.


Now, the second narrative associates the mainstream left, like the Labor Party, with the radical left. The right is calling the radical left traitors and forcing the center left to either join the so-called “traitors” or denounce them as traitors themselves. This is a way of implicating all of the left as either traitors or as a lesser version of the right. That’s the political strategy. If you understand it in these terms, it has nothing to do really with Breaking the Silence; it’s just an opportunity to scapegoat, to portray these NGOs as traitors and thereby also implicate those who defend these NGOs.

DP-L: What is your view of this law, and how will it actually affect Breaking the Silence?

ON: Actually, two laws have been proposed. One says that representatives of an NGO whose budget comes from foreign governments (rather than private donors) would be required to wear a badge in the Knesset and to write explicitly on any report or document addressed to Members of the Knesset which foreign country funds them. But as far as I understand, Breaking the Silence actually doesn’t fall under this law. Everybody is really talking about it in connection to us, but it really doesn’t apply to us. Then, in January, a second law was proposed to outlaw Breaking the Silence specifically.

Now, at least one positive thing has come about since this story started. Some people who would not have previously supported Breaking the Silence suddenly became very public in their support for the organization—former military generals who were very establishment, for example, along with people who generally were not public figures but who saw themselves as part of the liberal mainstream. Before, Breaking the Silence seemed very radical to them. But once these attacks started, these people found themselves defending the radical left, because suddenly there was no longer any middle ground to stick to. So that was a good thing for us, for Breaking the Silence, and the left in general. People are forced to choose, to stick their necks out.

One other very interesting thing happened in response to the video that I described, and here Breaking the Silence did something very smart: Rather than accept the attempt to marginalize them, they asserted themselves as patriotic Israelis fighting for their country. A day or two after the video against them was released, they started publishing on Facebook photos of members of Breaking the Silence from when they were soldiers, in very patriotic postures. Each of them said, “Who are you to call me a mole? Where did you serve? You served in some office or some supermarket in the military. I served in the war. We’re proud Israelis. We’re soldiers. We’re defending Israel. Who are you to call us moles?” This language might have been off-putting to those who are averse to Israeli militarism, but it appealed to core Israeli symbols and tried to reclaim them rather than reject them wholesale.

The result was fascinating. People who were not members of Breaking the Silence and who had never given testimonies to Breaking the Silence started posting pictures of themselves from their military service and adding stories that were basically testimonies of their own—posting on Facebook things that happened to them 10, 20 years ago. This just added more weight and substance to our own archives.

So there was this wave of spontaneous testimony that people put forward as a way of supporting Breaking the Silence, but also in a very personal manner, without saying anything about politics, simply describing reality as they experienced it, as they remember it. That was deeply moving and surprising.

[seemslikeadream]

GRAYZONE PROJECT
Israeli Minister Calls for Even More Refugee Detention Camps? 5 of the Most Dangerous Incitements to Come out of Israel This Week

The status of Palestinians, Africans and other minority groups in Israel continues to deteriorate.
By David Sheen / AlterNet March 6, 2016

Another week, another series of outrages and inciteful acts and statements coming out of Israel:

1. Minister calls for building new detention camp for Africans.

On Wednesday, Interior Minister Arye Deri announced that if the country’s courts continue to stymie the government’s efforts to expel non-Jewish refugees back to Africa, Israel will undertake the construction of an additional desert detention center for the refugees. Dery told the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee that deporting the refugees against their will was “an effective tool” and that if the judiciary denies him this tool, “the Holot facility [where Israel currently detains 3000 refugees] will not suffice. We will have to build another big facility with infrastructure.”

According to the United Nations, there are about 50 million refugees in the world at present, the highest tally since World War II. Less than 0.1% of these, about 45,000, live in Israel, and almost all of these arrived in the country in the last decade. At the beginning of the current decade, top Israeli political and religious figures launched a public campaign to rid the country of these immigrants because they were non-white non-Jews, though they constituted no physical threat and amounted to less than a single percent of the population.

Hundreds of chief rabbis on the public payroll issued religious edicts forbidding Jews from renting apartments to the non-Jewish Africans. Government ministers publicly associated the asylum-seekers with diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS, cancer and ebola. State-sponsored incitement against the asylum-seekers gave racists a green light to attack Africans in the streets of Tel Aviv and across the country.

The legislator who led the most vicious attacks was Eli Yishai, then Interior Minister and chair of the Shas Party. Yishai took from the United Nations the power to decide who Israel considers a refugee and transferred it to his own advisory panel, which has since denied refugee rights to over 99% of applicants. Yishai also initiated Israel’s policy of rounding up African asylum-seekers into camps so as to “make their lives miserable” and persuade them to self-deport.

When Arye Deri took back the helm of the Shas Party in 2012, some pundits naively hoped the party would pursue a more humane policy toward African asylum-seekers. In January 2016, Deri was returned to the office of Interior Minister and granted the opportunity to make up for some of Yishai’s worst excesses. Instead, Dery has continued the work of his predecessors, rounding up non-Jewish African asylum-seekers into camps until they can be deported.

On Wednesday, Israel’s Deputy Attorney General admitted that Israel has failed to process the refugee status applications of African asylum-seekers, and that there was “no justification” for this holdup.

2. Israeli officer coerced Palestinians into sex for entry permits.

Israel’s half-century-long military occupation of Palestinian people produces new outrages daily, but an incident reported this week revealed that in addition to all the well-documented indignities, other types of abuse are being swept under the rug.

This week, a military court cleared for publication that an Israeli army officer was arrested three months ago and now faces serious charges for granting Palestinian non-citizens of Israel permits to enter the country, in exchange for sexual favors.

Although Palestinians in the occupied territories have some small measure of self-rule, Israel effectively controls all of the territories’ international border crossings, giving individual Israeli civil administration officers potent powers over Palestinians who wish to travel for any reason.

The details of the investigation have been put under a gag order, because Israel fears that if they were to be made known publicly, they could evoke enough anger among Palestinians to potentially spark violent riots.

Abusing one’s position of power in order to exploit the vulnerable for sex is an all-too-common phenomenon in the Israeli army. Also this week, it was revealed that a brigadier general due to be promoted to an even higher position in the IDF was being investigated on several sex crimes, including the rape of a subordinate soldier.

3. Israelis see no contradiction between occupation and democracy.

Sadly, the prospects for a change for the better to come from within Israeli society seem to be slim. The most recently released edition of the Israeli Democracy Institute’s Peace Index demonstrated significant Israeli opposition to the belief that democracy is dependent upon equal rights and opportunities.

Survey results showed that just over half of Israeli Jews, 50.1%, believe that the unequal treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank is justified. Nearly a third of Israeli Jews, 66.3%, believe Israel’s military occupation does not prevent it from being a “real democracy."

4. With racial tensions high, police ditch multi-culti training.

Israeli police are charged with enforcing civil law for all of the country’s citizens, Jewish, Palestinian and otherwise. For them to do their jobs effectively, they must earn the trust of the various populations that make up Israeli society. When the national police chief announces that Palestinians “sanctify death” and that for Palestinians “there is no importance whatsoever to life”—as he did the week before last—it does nothing to restore the confidence of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the institution he represents.

As racial tensions rise across the country, it would be better if Israeli public figures attempted to quell them, instead of stoking the fires of fear. Instead, it was revealed this week that the Israeli police have discontinued officer training courses that sensitize them to the challenges of working with minority communities.

The co-executive director of the group that has facilitated these training courses in the past told Ha’aretz that he has tried to reach Police Chief Roni Alsheikh in order to convince him of the merits of continuing the program, but that Alsheikh has not responded to his request.

5. Education Ministry promotes ABCs of racism and theocracy.

This week, Education Minister Naftali Bennett continued his attempts to inculcate into the next generation of Israelis the sectarian supremacist values held dear by his own political faction, the Jewish Home party. For a program designed to increase literacy among high school students, Bennett’s ministry recommended a tract calling for racial-religious segregation and turning the state of Israel into a total theocracy.

According to Ha’aretz, the book Adventures in the Rimonim Library: On a Rightward Pillard, by Rabbi Yikhat Rozen, promotes the idea that Jews want their living environments to be free of Arabs and that “more holiness has to be brought into the State of Israel… until we reach a Torah state.”

Israel Incitement Watch #6 -- March 1 - March 7

[NeonLX]

Do Israel + the U.S. + City of London Corporation = The Great Satan?