The Cost of the Occupation to Israeli Society, Polity and Economy
By Shlomo Swirski, the Adva Center – Updated Nov 2008 (full report)
Israel-Palestine
Shlomo Swirski: It can be said that the American administration allowed Israel to conduct its military operations against the Palestinian Authority under highly favorable domestic political conditions. The government was not forced to strain the local capital market or to raise taxes, steps that would have distressed Israel’s more affluent stratum.
A survey of the Israeli general public and Israeli settlers taken in early March shows three-fifths of the Israeli public (60%) support “dismantling most of the settlements in the territories as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.” This is eleven points higher than the previous reading (49%) taken in December, 2009, and is the highest level recorded since 2005, during the debate over evacuating the Gaza Strip.
If it depended on public opinion, Kamm and Blau would be executed and Haaretz would be shut down on the spot. The general who gave the assassination orders revealed by Kamm and Blau has come out of the affair unscathed, while the journalist and his source are enemies of the people.
IOA Editor: While certain American Liberals – often, self-declared “Left Zionists” – are having a terrible time searching for Israel’s “Jewish Conscience,” and not finding it, Israeli-Jewish conscience remains crystal clear: Execute the traitors and continue with the mission. High walls separate Us from Them; let the military authorities run the Occupation and win the war against Palestine, without the traitors, the Goldstones, and the global Delegitimizers.
Noam Chomsky: “The evil scourge of terrorism”: reality, construction, remedy – Erich Fromm Lecture 2010 by Noam Chomsky
According to the 2010 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion, conducted by the American Jewish Committee, 73 percent of American Jews characterize relations between Israel and the U.S. today as “very positive” or “positive.” In addition to this, 55 percent of American Jews approve of the way the Obama administration is handling U.S.-Israel relations.
Implementing this new military order is not only likely to spark a new conflagration in the territories, it is liable to give the world clear-cut proof that Israel’s aim is a mass deportation of Palestinians from the West Bank.
IOA Editor: Indeed. Is there any reasonable explanation for this move other than ethnic cleansing?
Amira Hass: A new military order aimed at preventing infiltration will come into force this week, enabling the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, or their indictment on charges carrying prison terms of up to seven years. When the order comes into effect, tens of thousands of Palestinians will automatically become criminal offenders liable to be severely punished.
IOA Editor: “Infiltration,” an Orwellian term invented by the Occupier, is designed to treat certain Palestinians as having no rights to be present at a given area without special permission that is unlikely to be granted by the IDF. Reminiscent of the Present Absentees (internally displaced Palestinians – IDPs), a post-1948 Israeli classification, this, too, is an attempt to segregate and dispose of elements of the Palestinian people that the Occupation authorities wish to remove — based on political, geographic, or any other criteria, however arbitrary. This newly-formalized authority serves as yet another tool at the hands of the IDF in the long-term process of ethnic cleansing — the removal of the Palestinian people from their land — that Israel has been carrying out since 1948.
But this is Israel. Here… there is almost no public sympathy for Kamm or even Blau. The pair are already being described, both by officials and in chat forums and talkback columns, as traitors who should be jailed, disappeared or executed for the crime of endangering the state. The telling comparison being made is to Mordechai Vanunu, the former technician at the Dimona nuclear plant who exposed Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal. Inside Israel, he is universally reviled to this day, having spent nearly two decades in harsh confinement.
UPDATE: Haaretz… revealed that, in a highly unusual move shortly before Israel’s attack on Gaza, it agreed to pull a printed edition after the army demanded at the last minute that one of Mr Blau’s stories not be published. His report had already passed the military censor, which checks that articles do not endanger national security. Lawyers and human rights groups fear that the army and Shin Bet are trying to silence investigative journalists and send a warning to other correspondents not to follow in Mr Blau’s path. (13 April 2010)
MORE in Jonathan Cook’s
Mossad Operation Threatened Against Reporter
Lia Tarachansky interviews Israeli economists Shir Hever and Shlomo Swirski. The OECD finds Israel has the highest poverty rate in the developed world; the economists blame neo-liberal reforms.
Are Israelis entitled to know that the IDF’s highest ranking officers gave advanced written permission to fire at innocent people during “targeted assassinations?” Isn’t the media’s supreme duty, not only its right, to report this? Are Israel’s citizens entitled to know that IDF commanders approved killing people even when it was possible to apprehend them, in blatant violation of the High Court’s ruling?
In the summer of 1967, Yeshayahu Leibowitz prophesied that Israel’s occupation would corrupt the country and turn it into “a Shin Bet state.” As early as the first intifada, we understood there is no such thing as an enlightened occupation. One nation cannot rule over another for 43 years without behaving cruelly toward the helpless, without executing people without trial, without embittering the lives of women and children, the sick and elderly.
At first glance, this ‘affair’ has to do with the transfer of classified material to Haaretz correspondent Uri Blau, the very act of which was supposedly “harmful to national security.” In reality, however, the crime in question is far more severe – the one committed by the security apparatus (GOC Central Command in particular) in ignoring a High Court order and approving the targeted assassination of wanted men who could otherwise have been detained, in strikes that claimed the lives of innocent civilians.
The Anat Kamm affair raises serious suspicions that the law enforcement agencies in question – the Israel Defense Force’s information security unit, the Shin Bet, Israel Police and the State Prosecutor’s Office – are good at coming down hard on the powerless, while overlooking similar suspicions when attributed to senior officials. It’s the “sentinel syndrome”: the weak are persecuted and dealt with a heavy hand, while the deeds of the strong are slighted.
IOA Editor: Melman is the primary reporter covering the Israeli secret service agencies for Haaretz. As always, his is an Israeli-centered focus. This article is important because it covers the mode of operation of Israel’s various “security” agencies, and how they deal with those Israeli-Jews they deem to be their enemies.
Anat Kam, the journalist and ex-soldier suspected of “serious espionage” for allegedly giving classified information to a reporter from Haaretz regarding the IDF’s rules of engagement has been made a scapegoat, her defense attorney told Army Radio Thursday. “Where’s the intent to undermine state security? The fact that she handed the information over to a journalist for him to publish,” Avidgor Feldman told Army Radio.
IOA Editor: While the story of the whistleblower — an innocent, well-meaning, and very naive young woman — is important, it is far more important not to forget the message while focusing on the fate of the messengers. The original news story was about senior IDF generals, including Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, knowingly violating Israeli Supreme Court ruling by ordering the assassinations of West Bank Palestinians who could have been captured alive. Much as it is important to cover Israel’s censorship practices and the limits to its democracy (which are both profound and numerous), the important story behind the current expose is the ongoing story of the Occupation: Israel’s 43-year long Occupation has been fraught with assassinations — “targeted,” mass-produced, or just random and wanton, the distinctions largely depend on circumstances, media vogue, or the commentator.
Liberal circles in the US and Israel, that are particularly critical of the current Israeli government, focus on this latest story as though it were the most important issue of the day. It is not. Important as it is to expose the IDF’s plans to act in contravention of Israeli Supreme Court decisions — as if these are the only legal matters the IDF routinely contravenes — it is the Occupation that looms large, and is consistently ignored or minimized by, among others, the very same critics who now cry foul about IDF violations of freedom of speech. The IDF record of violations is far, far worse than violating the right of publishing reports of its own planned crimes. Much as this is obvious to some of us, it appears many others conveniently overlook the most significant crime involved here: the Occupation itself.
Rest assured that Israel’s penal system will deal with the offending messengers as it knows best: Ms. Kam is likely to spend many years in jail (a-la Mr. Vanunu), and Mr. Blau, should he return to Israel from his self-imposed exile, will face a similar fate. The arch-criminals are not about to surrender their empire on account of a whistleblower. Thus, even as we focus on the journalists, let’s be sure to keep a steady eye on the actual criminals, and on their empire.
RELATED: Shin Bet chief Diskin: “Enemy states dream about getting their hands on such documents” (pdf)
B’Tselem: “B’Tselem would like to reiterate that this case deals with documents which indicate that the military has been conducting assassinations in the West Bank in the guise of arrest operations, thus contradicting Israel’s official statements and in violation of a High Court ruling…. B’Tselem research has shown that in many cases soldiers have been conducting themselves in the territories as if they were on a hit mission, as opposed to arrest operations.”
I understand the need to keep details of a court case quiet. That’s a gag I can respect. But blacking out news of Kam’s arrest itself is a strike against free speech and freedom of the press. As Kam’s lawyer put it when I interviewed him, “these are the foundations of democracy.”
“I cannot imagine what my factory has to do with the ongoing situation,” Dalloul said. “Can you see a homemade rocket? Can you see a single bullet? Can you see a gun? Why did they attack my dairy?”
IOA Editor: Indeed, the factory has a great deal to do with the “ongoing situation:” As Richard Goldstone commented in some detail, Israel has consistently targeted Gaza food production centers. Israel’s war is not with the few Palestinians launching primitive rockets; rather, it is with Palestine – the future State of Palestine, however theoretical a concept it is today – and its people. Dairy and other food plants nourish the people of Palestine, especially the children who are the future of Palestine. The less nourishing, the lesser is the future of Palestine.
The policy of closing the country’s doors to visitors based on their political ideology is foreign to democratic countries. The fact that the group’s Jewish members were ultimately allowed to stay while the Swedes of Palestinian origin were not colors the affair with more than a tinge of race-based discrimination.
IOA Editor: This is part of a broad Israeli campaign against resistance to the Occupation – including the most peaceful and non-violent resistance. As noted here already, the threat of peace is Israel’s greatest fear. Any opportunity, however small, which supports a dialog is therefore promptly crushed. Equal treatment under the law cannot be expected from a state that runs a 43-year long Occupation — which is entirely racially-based, as is the state itself — and the term “democracy” simply doesn’t apply.
Richard Silverstein: “In what kind of country does a journalist simply disappear with other journalists and news outlets having no recourse to publish about it? China? Cuba? Vietnam? Iran? North Korea? Is that what Israel is aiming for? To be no better than countries ruled by despots?”
IOA Editor: When even neoconservative darling Judith Miller runs a story on Israeli censorship, you know Israel is in trouble. The media interest in Israeli censorship is legitimate, and almost commendable. However, what is glaringly missing is a direct condemnation of Israel’s assassination practices, as revealed in this only-most-recent example – both “domestically,” in the Occupied Territories, and abroad where it is an essential “foreign policy” component: murder as an alternative to peacemaking, which is entirely possible but would involve “painful sacrifices” — e.g., compliance with international law and UN resolutions — that no Israeli leader (“Left” or “Right”) is prepared to accept.
MORE: Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam blog story
UPDATE: The IOA welcomes the many new readers from “The Only Democracy in the Middle East” who cannot read this story in local media due to Israeli censorship. Please come back to read more about the Occupation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (6 April 2010)
Mr. Wahdan: “This particular class of the bourgeoisie exploited the people who fought the struggle. We did this for their benefit. They were the ones who got something out of it.” Wahdan’s 15-year-old grandson: “They wanted us, with no weapons, to [make the] sacrifice. Their kids have cars and villas, they own phone companies. There’s no equality between someone like that and someone like me, who lives in a house that’s falling apart, and whose father may or may not have enough money to bring bread or have clothes.”
Recent poll reveals steep rise in racist views against Arabs in Israel; many participants feel hatred, fear when overhearing Arabic, 75 percent don’t approve of shared apartment buildings. Over half of the Jewish population in Israel believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason, according to a recent survey by the Geocartography Institute.
Netanyahu mixed together Romantic-nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.
The biggest Swedish pension fund said Monday it had barred Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems from its investment portfolios… “The Ethical Council recommended that Elbit Systems Ltd should be excluded from each portfolio because it deems that the company can be linked to violations of fundamental conventions and norms.”
Commander of the United States Military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) Gen. David Petraeus telephoned IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi on Wednesday night to reassure Israel that comments attributed to him regarding supposed Israeli intransigence were spun out of context.
Even more interesting is the possibility… that Iron Dome was designed first and foremost for the benefit of Singapore – not for the protection of Sderot and the southern communities in Israel that suffered from Qassam rocket attacks and mortar fire… [T]he Defense Ministry may have given Rafael a development budget as a way of positioning the project as an Israeli military system that is ostensibly being used by the IDF but is really aimed at improving Israel’s chances of selling it to Singapore and other countries.
IOA Editor: Another case of Israel co-mingling “defense” budget and military armament development funds – a reflection of how war is good for Israel’s national business, the export of military systems to some of the worst regimes on earth.
See also Amira Hass: Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay
Scandar Copti: “Successive Israeli governments that prevent the most basic things, such as self-definition, in every way possible, whether through racist laws, the naming of streets, the way the state handles social welfare situations. Racism and discrimination is employed at all levels. I can talk to you about 500 families in Jaffa, in my area, who have received eviction and demolition orders for their homes and are living under an existential threat”
The detection of phosphorus in the tissue of bomb victims in Gaza Jørgen L.Thomsen, DMSc, FRCPath, DMJ(Path)* Martin Worm-Leonhard, MSc, Forensic Toxicologist*
TORTURE Volume 20, Number 1, 2010
The foreign secretary confirmed that Britain had demanded the withdrawal of an Israeli diplomat following the “intolerable” use of 12 forged British passports by a hit squad that killed the founder of Hamas’s military wing in Dubai. Miliband attacked the “profound disregard” for UK sovereignty and said the apparent involvement of a friendly nation “added insult to injury”.
The majority of Jewish Israelis are complicit in the perpetuation of the current state of affairs. When growing groups of conscientious people refuse to play the game of building a fictitious democratic sand castle on the shores of the Mediterranean, the Israeli Jew behaves like a spoiled rich brat, who would rather destroy his own castle than see natives share his world and his dreams.
The current Knesset is the most racist Israeli parliament since the country’s founding, according to a report published Sunday by the Coalition Against Racism and the Mossawa Center, which works to promote equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Jonathan Cook: Israel has nationalised 93 per cent of the country’s territory, confining most of its 1.3 million Arab citizens, one-fifth of the population, to 120 or so communities that existed at the time of the state’s creation in 1948. Meanwhile, more than 700 rural communities, including Nevatim, have remained exclusively Jewish by requiring that anyone who wants to buy a home applies to local vetting committees, which have been used to weed out Arab applicants.
Jonathan Cook: An Arab-owned restaurant in the Israeli city of Haifa has been caught in a whirlwind of legal action and threats of violence after staff refused to serve a soldier in military uniform, an incident that is rapidly tarnishing the city’s reputation as a model of good Jewish-Arabs relations.
Edward [Said] was a visionary and constructive critic who spoke truth to power. He was a courageous and original thinker who was not afraid of taking risks and going against the grain, who always thought in alternative ways that led to opening roads and building bridges. The only thing he most abhorred was criticism that was destructive.
Israel’s insistence on building new settlements in disputed Palestinian territory has heightened tensions with the United States. Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters think Israel should be required to stop those settlements as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.
