Haaretz Editorial: Hamas 1, Netanyahu 0

Don't expect such an honest analysis from our US media. Sadly, it is safer for newspaper editors to honestly debate and criticize Israeli policies in Israel than here in the US.

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The Gaza-bound aid flotilla achieved its goal - the hermetic blockade of Gaza has been ripped wide open and Israel has been the target of massive international criticism and demands for an investigation.

Haaretz Editorial
6/10/2010

The Gaza-bound aid flotilla has achieved its goal, albeit at the bloody price of nine dead and dozens wounded. A week after the Israel Navy intercepted the ships, the hermetic blockade of Gaza has been ripped wide open, while Israel has been the target of massive international criticism and demands for an investigation.

The blockade dissolved with Egypt's announcement on Tuesday that the Rafah border crossing will remain permanently open. Though Palestinians still cannot traverse it freely, the sweeping exit ban that Israel and Egypt had imposed for the last few years on Gaza's 1.5 million residents has ended.

As in a commercial market, the moment Israel lost its monopoly over the gateways to Gaza, the consumers benefited from competition. Amira Hass reports in today's Haaretz that the list of goods that Israel allows into the Strip has been expanded, and from now on, Gaza residents will be able to spice their food with coriander (though only the seeds, not the leaves ), which had previously been off-limits to them. All it took was an alternative entryway, through Egypt, for the Israeli gateway to Gaza to be opened wider as well.

The Israeli blockade of Gaza and all it entailed - the goods forbidden entry, the lies about how there was no humanitarian crisis there - was a form of collective punishment against an impoverished and oppressed population that cast a moral stain on Israeli democracy. Nor did this blockade achieve its promised goals. The Hamas government did not fall, Gaza residents did not rise up against it, and Gilad Shalit is still in captivity.

But even if the blockade should have been lifted, the manner in which this happened reflects a lack of understanding and faulty judgment on the part of the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. Instead of working to ease the blockade, limiting it to justified efforts to prevent arms smuggling, Israel tried to maintain a complete closure - and then lost control because of the botched raid. In attempting to show the whole world how "strong" he is, Netanyahu ended up handing victory to Hamas and its Turkish supporters.

It is not too late to minimize the damage. The government must remove the last remnants of the blockade and replace it with an inspection and enforcement regime governing maritime traffic to Gaza, with international participation, to prevent rockets and other arms from entering in the guise of humanitarian aid shipments. The situation that existed before the flotilla failure does not exist any longer, and any attempt to resuscitate it will only cause Israel additional damage.

Jew vs. Jew; Levy vs. Levy: Gideon Levy exposes Bernard-Henri Levy

Gideon Levy is one of my top living heroes and one of my favorite journalists. He is one of Israel's and possibly our world's leading commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. His courage, intelligence, and passion for justice have inspired me for so many years. Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) would be proud to see his teachings on justice applied in the writings of Gideon Levy.

Gideon, please be safe. I pray that you and Amira Hass be safe. Judaism is fortunate to have people like you.


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In response to Bernard-Henri Levy

Demonization? Perhaps, but the way to fight that is by imposing a siege on its arsenal. Were it not for the blockade on Gaza, were it not for the occupation, there would be no cause for demonization. Was it too much to expect of you, once the voice of conscience, to understand that?

By Gideon Levy
6/10/2010 - Haaretz

I deeply admire prominent intellectuals like yourself, who make a point of visiting the killing fields and speaking out. Your attempt to protect Israel, as demonstrated by your article in Haaretz on Tuesday ("It's time to stop demonizing Israel"), pleased many Israelis, who were yearning for a good word about their country, a very rare commodity these days.

I won't spoil their pleasure. But in the name of your call to end the disinformation, I wish to draw your attention to information that may have slipped your memory.

One may hazard a guess that in your younger days you would have joined the flotilla. A blockade of more than four years on 1.5 million people in those days would have awakened a moral urge driving you to join the protest. But today, as far as you and most Israelis are concerned, there is no blockade on Gaza.

Talking about it in your view is "disinformation."

By the way, since you were here already, why didn't you pop into Gaza, as your friend Mario Vargas Llosa did, to see with your own eyes whether there's a blockade? The doctors in Shifa Hospital, for example, would have told you about their dead due to the non-blockade.

True, nobody is dying of hunger. Yet the Gisha organization for freedom of movement released a report this week saying Israel today allows 97 items to be brought into Gaza, compared to 4,000 before the siege. Is that not a blockade?

A large Israeli supermarket holds 10,000-15,000 items; in Paris there are surely more. Yet Gaza is allowed 97. One would expect greater understanding for gastronomic needs from a refined bon vivant such as yourself, of all people.

You mention, as though you were the IDF spokesman, that Israel permits 100-125 trucks into Gaza a day. A hundred trucks for 1.5 million people ¬ is that not a "merciless siege" as the Liberation newspaper you castigated called it?

Eighty percent of Gaza's residents subsist on aid; 90 percent of its factories are shut down or runing below capacity. Really, Bernard-Henri, isn't that a blockade? Shouldn't a great intellectual like you, of all people, be expected to know that people, including Gazans, need more than bread and water?

Let's leave statistics alone, after all, philosophers don't deal with numbers.
You write that Israel has been named as responsible for the blockade "ad
nauseum" and that this is a blockade - suddenly even you call it a blockade imposed by both Israel and Egypt.

Correct. Egypt's participation is indeed outrageous and inexplicable, but
Egypt and Israel should not be judged in the same way. The occupation in Gaza is not over, it has merely moved, to the occupier's convenience, but Israel is still responsible.

The legal currency in Gaza is the shekel, the population registration is carried out by Israel, which also monitors anyone entering the strip. Decades
of occupation have made Gaza dependent on Israel and Israel cannot shake it off merely by "disengaging."

But let's put the blockade aside, whether you deny or justify it. How can you ignore the context? There have been 43 years of occupation and despair for millions of people, some of whom may wish to become Bernard-Henri Levy, and not just pass their lives in a battle for survival.

What are the chances a young Palestinian will achieve something in his life?
Look at the pictures of the Gazans crowding the Rafah border pass yesterday and see their expressions.

Surely you've heard of freedom. You cannot blame the occupation on anyone but us, the Israelis. There are many excuses for it, but they don't change the ultimate fact - Israel is an occupier. This is the root of all evil and this is what you have concealed. Not a word about it.

Israel may have the right to prevent arms supplies from entering Gaza, but you don't have the right to ignore what has turned Gaza into a desperate refugee region.

True, Bernard-Henri, the world demands more of Israel than of dictatorships. This is not the "confusion of an era," as you put it, but a new (and just) era, in which the world demands Israel pay a price for its conduct as a democracy.

Demonization? Perhaps, but the way to fight that is by imposing a siege on its arsenal. Were it not for the blockade on Gaza, were it not for the occupation, there would be no cause for demonization. Was it too much to expect of you, once the voice of conscience, to understand that?

Open the Gates: A Rabbinical Response to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Tragedy

The silent majority is speaking out.

This is taken from the website of "The Jewish Fast for Gaza" which is an ad hoc group of rabbis, Jews, and people of conscience who have committed to undertake a monthly daytime fast in support of the following goals:

1. To call for a lifting of the blockade that prevents the entry of civilian goods and services into Gaza;

2. To provide humanitarian and developmental aid to the people of Gaza;

3. To call upon Israel, the US, and the international community to engage in negotiations without pre-conditions with all relevant Palestinian parties - including Hamas - in order to end the blockade;

4. To encourage the American government to vigorously engage both Israelis and Palestinians toward a just and peaceful settlement of the conflict.

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Here is an open letter from so many heroic rabbis. I am proud to count many of them as personal friends and mentors who have inspired my social justice activism.

God bless them.

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Open the Gates: A Rabbinical Response to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Tragedy

Dear Friends,

In the wake of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla tragedy, we once again feel the need to raise our voices as rabbis in the Jewish community.

According to press reports, we now know that at least 9 people have been killed and many more have been injured when Israeli Navy Seals boarded a boat that held 600 people in the middle of the night – conducting a military operation against civilian activists in the midst of international waters.

We also know that the essential aim of the Freedom Flotilla was to carry humanitarian aid to those who have been severely suffering under the effects of Israel’s crushing blockade of Gaza. We call upon our community not to turn away in denial or blame those of good will and good purpose who risked their lives to relieve the beleaguered people of the Gaza strip.

We lift up our voices and call upon Israel to conduct an independent, transparent, and credible investigation of this incident. We also call upon the government of Israel to open the gates of compassion and allow these ships to dock so that they may deliver humanitarian aid to the 1.5 million citizens of Gaza. In so doing, we note the overall context of oppression in which this incident has occurred and call upon the government of Israel to turn away from the policies of occupation, siege and indifference to international law.

Our silence now is an act of betrayal to the values we purport to live by and to the words of the prophet we read every Yom Kippur:

Is this the fast I desire? A day for people to starve
their bodies? Or bow their heads like a bulrush
or wear sackcloth and smear oneself with ashes...
No! This is the fast the Lord desires:
Unlock the fetters of oppression
Untie the cords of the yoke
Let the exploited go free, break off every chain.
share your bread with the hungry,
Shelter the poor in your own house
clothe the naked and do not ignore your own kin.

As rabbis, we believe all human beings are our kin. We cannot abide the suffering inflicted upon the people of Gaza.

We lift up our voices and say: Unlock the fetters of oppression. Untie the cords of the yoke. Open the gates.

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
Rabbi Brant Rosen
Rabbi Brian Walt
Rabbi Alissa Wise
Rabbi Rebecca Alpert
Rabbi Marjorie Berman
Rabbi JB Sacks
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Rabbi David Mivasair
Rabbi Chava Bahle
Rabbi Eyal Levinson
Rabbi Nina Mandel
Rabbi Margaret Holub
Rabbi Rebecca Lillian
Rabbi Gershon Steinberg-Caudill
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman
Rabbi Mordechai Liebling
Rabbi Naomi Steinberg
Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein
Rabbi Phyllis Berman
Rabbi Linda Holtzman
Rabbi Andrew Gold
Rabbi Michael Feinberg

(List in formation)

The silent Jewish majority

By Marwan Bishara, June 2nd, 2010
Aljazeera English

Read full article

Marwan Bishara asks if those in whose name Israel commits its crimes are going to act and speak out against it.
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The Israeli military operation against the humanitarian Gaza convoy has provoked an outcry around the world and within Israel itself...

An increasing number of Jewish activists in Europe and the US are expressing their displeasure - and even anger - over the way in which Israel has evolved in recent years. Some have joined - and even led - solidarity initiatives that aim to lift the siege of Gaza and to end the occupation of Palestine.

But as Israelis begin to question, criticise and even condemn wrong headed Israeli policies, one wonders: Where is the silent Jewish majority in whose name Israel acts?

...A recent article in the New York Review of Books has shed more light on the increased detachment of the influential international Jewish community from Israel and its alienation from the unconditionally pro-Israeli Jewish establishment.

However, the majority of Jews remain silent about the "controversial" policies Israel carries out in their name as a self-declared "state of the Jewish people"...

To gain the moral high ground, Israeli leaders consistently defended their state's "humane" and "democratic" nature.

The best expression of Israel's 'surplus morality' reached the heights of chutzpah when late prime minister Golda Meir defended Israeli crimes by blaming them on the Arabs: "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children ... we cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children."

But colonial Zionism's attempt to monopolise Judaism and claim its humanism was exposed by some of the most authoritative religious Jewish voices in the country.

The most outspoken critic of Israel, its values and polices was the late Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz. A deeply religious man, he staunchly condemned the Israeli occupation and reportedly accused Israeli soldiers of possessing a Nazi-like mentality.

Avraham Burg, an observant religious Jew who was the head the Jewish Agency and the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, has also emerged as a bold critic of destructive or the "eschatological" form of Zionism, suggesting in his eye-opening book, The Holocaust Is Over, that Jews must now rise from its ashes...

Recent events in Israel/Palestine magnified the difference, even the contradiction, between Jewish intellectuals inside and outside of Israel...

Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Laureate along with his close friends Peres and Henry Kissinger, and Bernard Henri Levi, the French 'philosopher', have been vocal in expressing their "love" for Israel and "attachment" to Jerusalem.

They generally defend the practices of the Israeli military in the occupied territories as a "democratic army" who attaches great importance to "purity of arms".

Four decades of military occupation, tens of massacres and tens of thousands of killed Palestinians have done little to dissuade them.

Henri-Levi has been particularly vocal in defence of Israeli and US policies since he became the laughing stock of the Paris intellectual community for his gaffs, not to say hoax as an "impostor". His flip flops in Tel Aviv this week were quite telling.

Likewise, Wiesel, who one Israeli intellectual referred to as the "Holocauster" - the guru of the Holocaust industry - has been staunchly - some say blindly -supporting illegal and bloody Israeli practices in the occupied territories, particularly in occupied East Jerusalem.

Interestingly, the sharpest criticism of the resident New Yorker Wiesel came from Jewish residents of Jerusalem...

Diametrically opposed stand the universalists. Richard Falk is a professor of international law and the UN's special rapporteur on Palestine and eminent philosopher Noam Chomsky is considered to be one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century.

(Photo: Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor, was part of the recent Gaza flotilla)

Both have consistently stood up and spoken against war crimes everywhere, regardless of the identity of their perpetrators. And they have not shied away from taking a moral stand when that concerns Israel or the US.

They are two of the most vocal liberal humanist voices in the West, indeed the world, condemning the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, as well as Israel's wars in Lebanon and Palestine.

Wiesel and Henri-Levi have consistently emphasised their Jewish and Zionist credentials, while Falk and Chomsky uncompromisingly underline their liberal humanism and opposition to colonial Zionism.

Most interestingly, while Wiesel and Henri-Levi get the VIP treatment in Israel, Falk and Chomsky were both denied entry into the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories!

The contrast could not be sharper for the silent and not so silent Jewish majority and, indeed, Western and international public opinion.

Not in our name!

I heard a young Jewish woman activist yesterday on Al Jazeera saying that Israel should no longer be allowed to carry on with its crimes in the name of the Jewish people.

True. What about the silent and alienated Jewish majority!

Many Jews do not want their identity, politics or worldview limited to or identified strictly with their religion and rightly so, especially when they are secular or unbelievers.

But that leaves the door open for those who underline their Jewishness and Zionism as one and the same to be more vocal "representatives" of the Jewish people on Israel.

Remember, just as there is nothing Muslim about terrorism and nothing Christian about genocide, there is also nothing Jewish about colonialism. All religions and peoples should, first and foremost, stand against all crimes carried out in their name.

So once again, where is the silent Jewish majority around the world in whose name Israel commits war crimes and who have a great contribution to make to bringing peace and justice to Israel/Palestine - indeed to the Middle East region?


Also Read:
Message to Muslims and Jews: Political Debate, Yes. Bigotry, No
US progressive Jews condemn Gaza war
Why aren't Jews outraged by Israeli occupation?
Is criticism of Zionism and Israel equivalent to anti-Semitism?