Lilly here. The following is from the "Strenger Than Fiction" column of Carlo Strenger in Ha'aretz. It is an open letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu following his address at a memorial service marking 15 years since Yitzhak Rabin's assassination; in this speech, he claimed to be Rabin's "partner" for peace:
.... Rabin took risks for peace. He knew that he would make many enemies by signing an agreement with the Palestinians and by renouncing the greater Land of Israel. He did not play games; he said what he wanted to do and he did it. In fact he took so many risks that he paid with his life.
You, Mr. Netanyahu, say one thing and do another. Nobody really knows what you want, and there are many commentators who think that even you don’t know. Of course we all know your excuse: even though Israel has the best opportunity ever to arrive at a final status agreement with the Palestinians, you say you can’t move ahead, because your coalition will fall apart. In doing so, you imply that this coalition is a fact of nature; you conveniently forget that you chose to create this coalition.
Rabin took risks. You don’t even run the risk of a coalition with Tzipi Livni and Kadima, because you are afraid that she will not support you if you are not serious in the peace process. That is not being Rabin’s partner in the vision for peace.
.... You claim that Israel is in better shape than ever: "Now we are less divided within ourselves." "We now hear less screams, people listen to each other more, and social gaps are narrowing."
I don’t know whether you seriously believe what you said. Israel has never been as divided by hatred between the religious and the secular, between left and right, Jews and Arabs as it is now. ....
Rabin also did a lot to narrow social gaps. But what do you mean when you say that “social gaps are narrowing”? Do you mean that Israel has reached a degree of concentration of economic power unparalleled in the Free World? Or do you mean that the income gaps between rich and poor have reached unheard of levels?
.... you failed to mention that the Salaam Fayyad has created a security force in the West Bank that both the IDF and the Palestinian population trust? ....
Read the rest online.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Bicycling from Jerusalem to Eilat
This is a human interest story sent to me by a friend whose rabbi (Rabbi Jonathan Kligler) heads the Woodstock Jewish Congregation and is doing a bicycle trip from Jerusalem to Eilat. It is an emotionally "up" story.--Lilly
.... On Friday as we departed Ashkelon we rode past an enormous coal-fired power plant, one of the major sources of electricity in Israel. Israeli companies have recently discovered enormous reserves of natural gas in Israeli waters in the Mediterranean, so it is possible that within a few years Israel’s reliance on foreign coal will diminish, replaced by its own sources of cleaner-burning natural gas. Israel also has an ideal climate for harnessing solar power; we will be touring a solar installation later tomorrow.
A bit south of the power plant we paused at a holding reservoir for a kibbutz. We had by now entered the arid northern Negev, and the JNF (Jewish National Fund) has made a huge investment in hundreds of reservoirs for these southern communities. The very clean and potable water we were looking at is treated wastewater. Alon Tal explained to us that fully 50% of Israel’s agricultural water use is treated wastewater, and the goal is to continue to increase that ratio. As I bike through the desert and consume quarts of water a day, my appreciation for carefully managing water resources becomes especially acute.
Spread out beyond the reservoir, stretching north and south, was the entire Gaza Strip. There are approximately 1.8 million people essentially trapped in an area about twice the size of Washington, D.C.---people lacking citizenship, people that no one in the Arab world, let alone Israel, has ever wanted to claim as their own. Only the tiniest percentage of Gazans can currently, with much diplomatic effort, even get out of Gaza, whether to Israel or to Egypt. Ashkelon, where we had just spent the night, was a frequent target of Hamas missile attacks from Gaza. In 2009, Israel launched a massive military campaign against Gaza, and since then the missile attacks have almost entirely ceased.
Now Gaza languishes in political stalemate and semi-ruins, under an Israeli blockade and under its own repressive and corrupt Hamas leadership. It is a historically complex and humanly tragic situation that I will not attempt to analyze in this posting. As we bicycled southward parallel to the Gaza border, it was eerie and troubling to stare across the quiet open fields toward the urban clusters beyond.
The remainder of the day my attention was mainly focused on pacing myself and making sure my pedals were moving. As we headed south the landscape became more and more barren. In the late afternoon we arrived at Nitzana, on the Egyptian border. Nitzana is a fairly new community, founded 24 years ago by Lova Eliav, one of the unsung heroes and visionaries of Zionism. Eliav just passed away this May. Among many accomplishments in his long career, he championed human rights and immigrants’ rights. I became familiar with Lova Eliav through his book “New Heart, New Spirit: Biblical Humanism for Modern Israel.” Looking out on a bare desert landscape, Eliav envisioned Nitzana as a new oasis, an educational community in the desert on the border with Egypt. Today there are groves of trees, reservoir ponds, an educational center, and greenhouses producing sweet fruits and vegetables. It turns out that there is a huge aquifer of brackish water under that part of the Negev that has never been tapped, and is suitable for agriculture. And there is a gorgeous swimming pool, in which I rested my weary muscles.
Nitzana sits on a rise a short distance from the Nitzana Crossing. This is the main commercial border crossing between Egypt and Israel. When Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace agreement at the Camp David Accords, the Nitzana border crossing was created. The crossing is well used; an average of 200 trucks pass through a day, I was told.
Early Friday morning we headed out on our ride. We were permitted to ride on a road the military uses to patrol the border. This was a particular treat for a biker, as we encountered no cars for better than 30 miles, and cruised through wide-open desert landscapes. The border patrol is mostly occupied these days interdicting drug smugglers. Across the barbed wire fence bored Egyptian sentries perked up at our convoy, sometimes waving. We then climbed into the more mountainous southern region of the Negev. After a particularly brutal hill (I walked much of it!) we reached an overlook of the wilderness of Kadesh Barnea. The Torah states that this is where the Children of Israel camped for many years, where Miriam passed away, and where Moses struck the rock and water streamed forth.
Around the next bend my attention was jolted from the mythic past to the exigencies of the present. Six African men sat on the ground in front of a small military station. Our guide was David Palmach, the head of Nitzana and an avid biker. He explained that the Africans had walked across the border from Egypt during the night, and were looking for refuge. I had just been looking at the place where the Children of Israel, a band of escaping refugees from Pharaoh’s Egypt, had camped, and here I was looking at new refugees probably from the Darfur region in Sudan. You are likely to be familiar with the chaotic and shockingly brutal degradation and slow genocide that is being perpetrated against the Darfurians.... I learned that an average of 30 Africans a day make their way across the border into Israel every night. Ironically, the word is out in East Africa that Israel is the safest place to go. According to David Palmach, the refugees make their way across Egypt at great risk – the Egyptians deport them or kill them. The refugees pay Sinai Bedouin to guide them to the border. Once here, if the individuals are from Kenya or other East African countries from which asylum is not considered a life-or-death matter, they are sent back to their home countries. But if they are from Darfur or Eritrea, the Israelis give them asylum. They are taken to a nearby camp where they receive free food, shelter and medical and dental care. If I understood correctly, there are several thousand Darfurians currently being given safe asylum by Israel.
We biked on through the day and rolled into Mitzpeh Ramon in plenty of time for Shabbat. Mitzpeh Ramon is a town created in the 1950’s as part of David Ben-Gurion’s plan to settle the Negev. The town is perched on the edge of a stunning view of the Ramon Crater, a huge, deep gash into the Negev highlands. The first residents were new immigrants from North Africa, basically dumped in the middle of nowhere. When I first started visiting Mitzpeh Ramon 15 years ago with groups from our synagogue, the town was a depressed backwater. Today Mitzpeh Ramon has been discovered. As the center of Israel has become more congested, more affluent Israelis have spread out to the periphery, and Mitzpeh Ramon has grown into a very pleasant town.
.... One more experience before I close for today: this afternoon we listened to a panel of graduates from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. They were a beautiful group of young adults primarily from Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories. It was simply inspiring to listen to them. Barak, a mechanical engineer from Jordan with a charming sense of humor, spoke about spotting an advertisement in the Amman newspaper for an environmental scholarship. The ad didn’t say where the scholarship would take you, and that was intentional. Even though there is a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, for Jordanians Israelis are simply “the enemy.” Fraternizing with them is simply not done.
When Barak learned he was going to Israel, he almost bagged the entire idea. But he had relatives in Jerusalem whom he had never met, and he decided to come for a week, stay long enough to meet his relatives, and then leave. After the first weekend at the Arava Institute, Barak decided to stay. He is now working on his Masters degree in environmental engineering at Ben-Gurion University, working on creating viable hydrogen fueled engines. Each story was equally moving, as idealistic young people have found a place where they can pursue both repairing the world and repairing, or should I say, creating relationships with “the other side.”
One reason for the Arava Institute’s documented success in creating relationships among its students that continue as personal friendships and professional colleagues is the required PELS seminar that is part of the curriculum: the Peace-building and Environmental Leadership Seminar. This is the “encounter group” of the program, and the participants are encouraged to express themselves freely. Obviously discussions become very heated at times. But these students are together for a minimum of 4 months, rooming and eating together on a kibbutz in the middle of nowhere, and so they must continue to deal with one another. The result is many lasting friendships, based on hard-won honest encounters. These friendships then extend into family visits, which are almost unheard of between Israeli Jews and Palestinians or Jordanians, and shared environmental projects, all supported in thoughtful ways by the Arava Institute. Wow. You can learn more about the Arava Institute at www.arava.org.
.... On Friday as we departed Ashkelon we rode past an enormous coal-fired power plant, one of the major sources of electricity in Israel. Israeli companies have recently discovered enormous reserves of natural gas in Israeli waters in the Mediterranean, so it is possible that within a few years Israel’s reliance on foreign coal will diminish, replaced by its own sources of cleaner-burning natural gas. Israel also has an ideal climate for harnessing solar power; we will be touring a solar installation later tomorrow.
A bit south of the power plant we paused at a holding reservoir for a kibbutz. We had by now entered the arid northern Negev, and the JNF (Jewish National Fund) has made a huge investment in hundreds of reservoirs for these southern communities. The very clean and potable water we were looking at is treated wastewater. Alon Tal explained to us that fully 50% of Israel’s agricultural water use is treated wastewater, and the goal is to continue to increase that ratio. As I bike through the desert and consume quarts of water a day, my appreciation for carefully managing water resources becomes especially acute.
Spread out beyond the reservoir, stretching north and south, was the entire Gaza Strip. There are approximately 1.8 million people essentially trapped in an area about twice the size of Washington, D.C.---people lacking citizenship, people that no one in the Arab world, let alone Israel, has ever wanted to claim as their own. Only the tiniest percentage of Gazans can currently, with much diplomatic effort, even get out of Gaza, whether to Israel or to Egypt. Ashkelon, where we had just spent the night, was a frequent target of Hamas missile attacks from Gaza. In 2009, Israel launched a massive military campaign against Gaza, and since then the missile attacks have almost entirely ceased.
Now Gaza languishes in political stalemate and semi-ruins, under an Israeli blockade and under its own repressive and corrupt Hamas leadership. It is a historically complex and humanly tragic situation that I will not attempt to analyze in this posting. As we bicycled southward parallel to the Gaza border, it was eerie and troubling to stare across the quiet open fields toward the urban clusters beyond.
The remainder of the day my attention was mainly focused on pacing myself and making sure my pedals were moving. As we headed south the landscape became more and more barren. In the late afternoon we arrived at Nitzana, on the Egyptian border. Nitzana is a fairly new community, founded 24 years ago by Lova Eliav, one of the unsung heroes and visionaries of Zionism. Eliav just passed away this May. Among many accomplishments in his long career, he championed human rights and immigrants’ rights. I became familiar with Lova Eliav through his book “New Heart, New Spirit: Biblical Humanism for Modern Israel.” Looking out on a bare desert landscape, Eliav envisioned Nitzana as a new oasis, an educational community in the desert on the border with Egypt. Today there are groves of trees, reservoir ponds, an educational center, and greenhouses producing sweet fruits and vegetables. It turns out that there is a huge aquifer of brackish water under that part of the Negev that has never been tapped, and is suitable for agriculture. And there is a gorgeous swimming pool, in which I rested my weary muscles.
Nitzana sits on a rise a short distance from the Nitzana Crossing. This is the main commercial border crossing between Egypt and Israel. When Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace agreement at the Camp David Accords, the Nitzana border crossing was created. The crossing is well used; an average of 200 trucks pass through a day, I was told.
Early Friday morning we headed out on our ride. We were permitted to ride on a road the military uses to patrol the border. This was a particular treat for a biker, as we encountered no cars for better than 30 miles, and cruised through wide-open desert landscapes. The border patrol is mostly occupied these days interdicting drug smugglers. Across the barbed wire fence bored Egyptian sentries perked up at our convoy, sometimes waving. We then climbed into the more mountainous southern region of the Negev. After a particularly brutal hill (I walked much of it!) we reached an overlook of the wilderness of Kadesh Barnea. The Torah states that this is where the Children of Israel camped for many years, where Miriam passed away, and where Moses struck the rock and water streamed forth.
Around the next bend my attention was jolted from the mythic past to the exigencies of the present. Six African men sat on the ground in front of a small military station. Our guide was David Palmach, the head of Nitzana and an avid biker. He explained that the Africans had walked across the border from Egypt during the night, and were looking for refuge. I had just been looking at the place where the Children of Israel, a band of escaping refugees from Pharaoh’s Egypt, had camped, and here I was looking at new refugees probably from the Darfur region in Sudan. You are likely to be familiar with the chaotic and shockingly brutal degradation and slow genocide that is being perpetrated against the Darfurians.... I learned that an average of 30 Africans a day make their way across the border into Israel every night. Ironically, the word is out in East Africa that Israel is the safest place to go. According to David Palmach, the refugees make their way across Egypt at great risk – the Egyptians deport them or kill them. The refugees pay Sinai Bedouin to guide them to the border. Once here, if the individuals are from Kenya or other East African countries from which asylum is not considered a life-or-death matter, they are sent back to their home countries. But if they are from Darfur or Eritrea, the Israelis give them asylum. They are taken to a nearby camp where they receive free food, shelter and medical and dental care. If I understood correctly, there are several thousand Darfurians currently being given safe asylum by Israel.
We biked on through the day and rolled into Mitzpeh Ramon in plenty of time for Shabbat. Mitzpeh Ramon is a town created in the 1950’s as part of David Ben-Gurion’s plan to settle the Negev. The town is perched on the edge of a stunning view of the Ramon Crater, a huge, deep gash into the Negev highlands. The first residents were new immigrants from North Africa, basically dumped in the middle of nowhere. When I first started visiting Mitzpeh Ramon 15 years ago with groups from our synagogue, the town was a depressed backwater. Today Mitzpeh Ramon has been discovered. As the center of Israel has become more congested, more affluent Israelis have spread out to the periphery, and Mitzpeh Ramon has grown into a very pleasant town.
.... One more experience before I close for today: this afternoon we listened to a panel of graduates from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. They were a beautiful group of young adults primarily from Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories. It was simply inspiring to listen to them. Barak, a mechanical engineer from Jordan with a charming sense of humor, spoke about spotting an advertisement in the Amman newspaper for an environmental scholarship. The ad didn’t say where the scholarship would take you, and that was intentional. Even though there is a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, for Jordanians Israelis are simply “the enemy.” Fraternizing with them is simply not done.
When Barak learned he was going to Israel, he almost bagged the entire idea. But he had relatives in Jerusalem whom he had never met, and he decided to come for a week, stay long enough to meet his relatives, and then leave. After the first weekend at the Arava Institute, Barak decided to stay. He is now working on his Masters degree in environmental engineering at Ben-Gurion University, working on creating viable hydrogen fueled engines. Each story was equally moving, as idealistic young people have found a place where they can pursue both repairing the world and repairing, or should I say, creating relationships with “the other side.”
One reason for the Arava Institute’s documented success in creating relationships among its students that continue as personal friendships and professional colleagues is the required PELS seminar that is part of the curriculum: the Peace-building and Environmental Leadership Seminar. This is the “encounter group” of the program, and the participants are encouraged to express themselves freely. Obviously discussions become very heated at times. But these students are together for a minimum of 4 months, rooming and eating together on a kibbutz in the middle of nowhere, and so they must continue to deal with one another. The result is many lasting friendships, based on hard-won honest encounters. These friendships then extend into family visits, which are almost unheard of between Israeli Jews and Palestinians or Jordanians, and shared environmental projects, all supported in thoughtful ways by the Arava Institute. Wow. You can learn more about the Arava Institute at www.arava.org.
Monday, October 25, 2010
The Politics of Israeli Soccer: A Guide for the Perplexed
Politics and sports? In America, most sports loyalties seem to be based on local loyalties – go Knicks, Rangers, etc., if you live in New York (sorry, as an old Brooklyn Dodgers fan I can't include the Yankees in this list). Or the anti-fans – beat LA, or in the latest version – anti-Miami Heat/LeBron James, particularly in Cleveland.
However, in much of the rest of the world, politics and sports are very much tied together. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi owns the A.C. Milan football (soccer) team, while Lazio (one of the two Rome teams) was Mussolini's favorite, and some of its fans are still neo-fascists. When I went to see a Lazio game with my son Adi at the famed Olimpico Stadium in Rome, he warned me that we shouldn't speak Hebrew in the stands so that we wouldn't be identified as Jews and Israelis. The fans of other Italian clubs, such as Livorno and Perugia, wave red flags and Che Guevera shirts.
In Spain, Real Madrid was Generalissimo Franco's team, while FC (Futbol Club) Barcelona is a bastion of Catalan culture and nationalism, and some of the players participated in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. The president of the club was even murdered by the Falangists.
In Israel, which began as a highly politicized society, the origin of most sports teams was also political. There were two major sports associations – Hapoel and Maccabi. Hapoel was founded by and associated with the Histadrut Labor Federation and the Socialist-Zionist movements, while Maccabi was associated with mainstream (centrist) Zionism.
In general, a cultivation of sports and physical activity was part of the Zionist philosophy of creating a new, modern Jew, who could both work the land and defend himself when necessary. Members of Hapoel teams actually marched in the annual May 1st parades, and Knesset Speaker MK Reuven Rivlin recently related that when he played as a youth for Hapoel Rishon L'tzion (because there were no Maccabi or Beitar teams in the area), his father arranged a special contract that exempted his son (a member of the right-wing Revisionist Beitar youth group) from having to march on May Day.
There was a much smaller Beitar sports association, associated with the Irgun and the Revisionists, and independent sports associations like the famed Hakoah Vienna football club, which actually won the national Austrian soccer championship in the pre-Nazi period (today a remnant exists in the Hakoah Ramat Gan football club).
In recent years, in the age of privatization, the associations have weakened, and most Israeli teams now have private owners. However, elements of the old allegiances still exist. The Maccabi teams today are associated with bourgeois elements, while the Hapoel teams and their fan base tend to be associated with the left. Many teams have also dropped the Hapoel and Maccabi tie, and are simply identified by their local city names and owners.
Maccabi Tel Aviv, particularly in basketball, likes to claim that it is "the national team", a claim which angers many of the fans of the other teams. While the Hapoel Tel Aviv fans, particular in soccer – a team which has been very successful in the past decade and is the current national champion and Israeli representative in the European Champions League – refuses to accept the national mantel. "We represent Hapoel Tel Aviv, and not the nation", the fans declare. The color red dominates at Hapoel games – particularly those of Hapoel Tel Aviv (soccer and basketball) and Hapoel Jerusalem (basketball), whose fans seem to believe that Che Guevera once played for the team.
The antithesis of Hapoel Tel Aviv is not their bitter rival Maccabi Tel Aviv, but Beitar Jerusalem, the only team in the top league which has never had an Arab player (due to the opposition of its right-wing, racist fan-base). Some of Beitar's recent owners said they were ready to sign a worthy Arab player, but backed down when fans threatened to boycott the team if they did. Given that context, and the racist taunts that Beitar fans throw at Arab players, Hapoel Tel Aviv fans like myself gained particular pleasure last June when Hapoel won the championship (beating out Maccabi Haifa) with a goal in the last minute of the season, at Beitar's home grounds, Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem, and the championship cup was raised by Hapoel team captain Walid Badir, a Palestinian-Israel from the town of Kfar Kassim. Of course, the fact that Beitar Jerusalem plays in a stadium named after the historically famous Jerusalem mayor, Labor movement stalwart and Ben-Gurion aide Teddy Kollek is a delicious irony in itself.
Another very interesting phenomenon in Israeli soccer is the success of Bnei Sakhnin from the Lower-Galilean town of Sakhnin during the past decade. Sakhnin is the town where six Palestinian-Israeli citizens were killed in 1976, protesting against Israeli land confiscation, which is the origin of the annual Land Day commemoration ceremonies in the Israeli-Arab sector. The team is owned by local Palestinian-Israeli businessmen from the town of Sakhnin, and half of the players are Arab and half Jewish and international. As a counterpoint to the situation at Hapoel Tel Aviv, the longtime captain is the veteran Jewish goal-keeper Meir Cohen from the nearby town of Beit Shean. The team won the Israeli National Cup in 2004, and former owner Mazen Genaim is now mayor of the town.
My colleague at the Palestine-Israel Journal, development officer Pierre Klochendler, and his filmmaking partner Jerold Kessel (former longtime CNN Middle East correspondent) made a fascinating documentary about the Bnei Sakhnin club called "We Too Have No Other Country", a paraphrase of a famous song by the late Ehud Manor "We Have No Other Country" (Ein Lanu Eretz Acheret), which the right tried to "nationalize", but which Manor himself stressed was actually a protest song against the first Lebanon War. The film is really about the status and aspirations of Palestinian Israelis, and as Klochendler notes, is "a film about soccer in which you never see a soccer ball."
Today there are many leftists who support Maccabi, definitely in basketball, but also in soccer, though Hapoel Tel Aviv is clearly the preferred team of the left and the liberal artists and intellectuals, as well as of the Arabs and Jews who live in the Jaffa-Tel Aviv-Bat-Yam area. Many of the team's homegrown players come from the poorer neighborhoods of Jaffa and nearby Bat-Yam. The Arabs in the north tend to root for Maccabi Haifa, which has featured many star Arab players from nearby Shfaram and the Galilee in recent years, beginning with scoring champion Zahi Armeli, continuing with Biram Kiyal who now plays for Celtic in Scotland, and on to today's regulars Mohammad Ghadir and Ali Otman.
Incidentally, when they tried to check the political preference of all the soccer players before the last elections, the only one who openly declared he was voting for Meretz was Dor Malul of Maccabi Tel Aviv. Michael Zandberg, last year with Hapoel Tel Aviv who in the past had said he supports Meretz, was only willing to say that he "leans toward the left." His sister Tammy Zandberg is a member of the Tel Aviv City Council on behalf of Meretz.
However, in much of the rest of the world, politics and sports are very much tied together. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi owns the A.C. Milan football (soccer) team, while Lazio (one of the two Rome teams) was Mussolini's favorite, and some of its fans are still neo-fascists. When I went to see a Lazio game with my son Adi at the famed Olimpico Stadium in Rome, he warned me that we shouldn't speak Hebrew in the stands so that we wouldn't be identified as Jews and Israelis. The fans of other Italian clubs, such as Livorno and Perugia, wave red flags and Che Guevera shirts.
In Spain, Real Madrid was Generalissimo Franco's team, while FC (Futbol Club) Barcelona is a bastion of Catalan culture and nationalism, and some of the players participated in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. The president of the club was even murdered by the Falangists.
In Israel, which began as a highly politicized society, the origin of most sports teams was also political. There were two major sports associations – Hapoel and Maccabi. Hapoel was founded by and associated with the Histadrut Labor Federation and the Socialist-Zionist movements, while Maccabi was associated with mainstream (centrist) Zionism.
In general, a cultivation of sports and physical activity was part of the Zionist philosophy of creating a new, modern Jew, who could both work the land and defend himself when necessary. Members of Hapoel teams actually marched in the annual May 1st parades, and Knesset Speaker MK Reuven Rivlin recently related that when he played as a youth for Hapoel Rishon L'tzion (because there were no Maccabi or Beitar teams in the area), his father arranged a special contract that exempted his son (a member of the right-wing Revisionist Beitar youth group) from having to march on May Day.
There was a much smaller Beitar sports association, associated with the Irgun and the Revisionists, and independent sports associations like the famed Hakoah Vienna football club, which actually won the national Austrian soccer championship in the pre-Nazi period (today a remnant exists in the Hakoah Ramat Gan football club).
In recent years, in the age of privatization, the associations have weakened, and most Israeli teams now have private owners. However, elements of the old allegiances still exist. The Maccabi teams today are associated with bourgeois elements, while the Hapoel teams and their fan base tend to be associated with the left. Many teams have also dropped the Hapoel and Maccabi tie, and are simply identified by their local city names and owners.
Maccabi Tel Aviv, particularly in basketball, likes to claim that it is "the national team", a claim which angers many of the fans of the other teams. While the Hapoel Tel Aviv fans, particular in soccer – a team which has been very successful in the past decade and is the current national champion and Israeli representative in the European Champions League – refuses to accept the national mantel. "We represent Hapoel Tel Aviv, and not the nation", the fans declare. The color red dominates at Hapoel games – particularly those of Hapoel Tel Aviv (soccer and basketball) and Hapoel Jerusalem (basketball), whose fans seem to believe that Che Guevera once played for the team.
The antithesis of Hapoel Tel Aviv is not their bitter rival Maccabi Tel Aviv, but Beitar Jerusalem, the only team in the top league which has never had an Arab player (due to the opposition of its right-wing, racist fan-base). Some of Beitar's recent owners said they were ready to sign a worthy Arab player, but backed down when fans threatened to boycott the team if they did. Given that context, and the racist taunts that Beitar fans throw at Arab players, Hapoel Tel Aviv fans like myself gained particular pleasure last June when Hapoel won the championship (beating out Maccabi Haifa) with a goal in the last minute of the season, at Beitar's home grounds, Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem, and the championship cup was raised by Hapoel team captain Walid Badir, a Palestinian-Israel from the town of Kfar Kassim. Of course, the fact that Beitar Jerusalem plays in a stadium named after the historically famous Jerusalem mayor, Labor movement stalwart and Ben-Gurion aide Teddy Kollek is a delicious irony in itself.
Another very interesting phenomenon in Israeli soccer is the success of Bnei Sakhnin from the Lower-Galilean town of Sakhnin during the past decade. Sakhnin is the town where six Palestinian-Israeli citizens were killed in 1976, protesting against Israeli land confiscation, which is the origin of the annual Land Day commemoration ceremonies in the Israeli-Arab sector. The team is owned by local Palestinian-Israeli businessmen from the town of Sakhnin, and half of the players are Arab and half Jewish and international. As a counterpoint to the situation at Hapoel Tel Aviv, the longtime captain is the veteran Jewish goal-keeper Meir Cohen from the nearby town of Beit Shean. The team won the Israeli National Cup in 2004, and former owner Mazen Genaim is now mayor of the town.
My colleague at the Palestine-Israel Journal, development officer Pierre Klochendler, and his filmmaking partner Jerold Kessel (former longtime CNN Middle East correspondent) made a fascinating documentary about the Bnei Sakhnin club called "We Too Have No Other Country", a paraphrase of a famous song by the late Ehud Manor "We Have No Other Country" (Ein Lanu Eretz Acheret), which the right tried to "nationalize", but which Manor himself stressed was actually a protest song against the first Lebanon War. The film is really about the status and aspirations of Palestinian Israelis, and as Klochendler notes, is "a film about soccer in which you never see a soccer ball."
Today there are many leftists who support Maccabi, definitely in basketball, but also in soccer, though Hapoel Tel Aviv is clearly the preferred team of the left and the liberal artists and intellectuals, as well as of the Arabs and Jews who live in the Jaffa-Tel Aviv-Bat-Yam area. Many of the team's homegrown players come from the poorer neighborhoods of Jaffa and nearby Bat-Yam. The Arabs in the north tend to root for Maccabi Haifa, which has featured many star Arab players from nearby Shfaram and the Galilee in recent years, beginning with scoring champion Zahi Armeli, continuing with Biram Kiyal who now plays for Celtic in Scotland, and on to today's regulars Mohammad Ghadir and Ali Otman.
Incidentally, when they tried to check the political preference of all the soccer players before the last elections, the only one who openly declared he was voting for Meretz was Dor Malul of Maccabi Tel Aviv. Michael Zandberg, last year with Hapoel Tel Aviv who in the past had said he supports Meretz, was only willing to say that he "leans toward the left." His sister Tammy Zandberg is a member of the Tel Aviv City Council on behalf of Meretz.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Soccer, Sedaka and loyalty oaths
Last Saturday night, I was faced with a dilemma: Should I go to my Brooklyn landsman Neil Sedaka's concert at the Nokia Arena (Yad Eliyahu) or watch the Hapoel Tel Aviv-Maccabi Tel Aviv derby soccer match? Maccabi was favored by all the commentators.
Instead, I expressed solidarity with the thousands who went to the impressive joint Jewish-Arab solidarity demonstration against the proposed loyalty oath law--held under the slogan, "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies" (Yehudim v'Aravim msarvim lihiyot oivim, it rhymes in Hebrew), which conveniently began in my neighborhood at the entrance to Gan Meir--while busloads of people had to come from as far away as Haifa, Jerusalem, Um El Fahm, Nazareth etc. Prof. Galia Golan even came straight from a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian women held earlier in the afternoon in Jericho.
The issue of the loyalty oath is not about loyalty to the laws of the State of Israel--no problem with that--but to a Jewish state, which is interpreted to mean either Jewish religiously or nationally. The American pledge of allegiance asks for "allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands...." If that was all that Lieberman and Bibi wanted, there would be no problem. I have no doubt that the opposition to the law expressed by Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin, and ministers Benny Begin and Dan Meridor (all Likudniks), reflects what both Menachem Begin and Zev Jabotinsky would have thought about the law.
At the demonstration I met musicologist Oded Assaf who exclaimed "how could I even consider going to see Neil Sedaka?" The truth is that I had already made up my mind not to go, an approach that was reinforced by the inane interviews given by Sedeka on Israeli TV. He is clearly not "the genius of his generation" (gaon hador), neither intellectually nor musically.
Bottom line--despite all the butterflies before the game began--another glorious victory for Hapoel (a team historically associated with the Zionist left), which overwhelmed Maccabi on the pitch by a much greater margin than the 1-0 victory.
One of the pro-Maccabi commentators in the press even viewed the loss with a sense of resigned humor: "At least we [Maccabi] didn't lose at Nokiya Arena [where Maccabi basketball normally plays], since the only opponent on the pitch was Neil Sedaka."
Instead, I expressed solidarity with the thousands who went to the impressive joint Jewish-Arab solidarity demonstration against the proposed loyalty oath law--held under the slogan, "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies" (Yehudim v'Aravim msarvim lihiyot oivim, it rhymes in Hebrew), which conveniently began in my neighborhood at the entrance to Gan Meir--while busloads of people had to come from as far away as Haifa, Jerusalem, Um El Fahm, Nazareth etc. Prof. Galia Golan even came straight from a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian women held earlier in the afternoon in Jericho.
The issue of the loyalty oath is not about loyalty to the laws of the State of Israel--no problem with that--but to a Jewish state, which is interpreted to mean either Jewish religiously or nationally. The American pledge of allegiance asks for "allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands...." If that was all that Lieberman and Bibi wanted, there would be no problem. I have no doubt that the opposition to the law expressed by Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin, and ministers Benny Begin and Dan Meridor (all Likudniks), reflects what both Menachem Begin and Zev Jabotinsky would have thought about the law.
At the demonstration I met musicologist Oded Assaf who exclaimed "how could I even consider going to see Neil Sedaka?" The truth is that I had already made up my mind not to go, an approach that was reinforced by the inane interviews given by Sedeka on Israeli TV. He is clearly not "the genius of his generation" (gaon hador), neither intellectually nor musically.
Bottom line--despite all the butterflies before the game began--another glorious victory for Hapoel (a team historically associated with the Zionist left), which overwhelmed Maccabi on the pitch by a much greater margin than the 1-0 victory.
One of the pro-Maccabi commentators in the press even viewed the loss with a sense of resigned humor: "At least we [Maccabi] didn't lose at Nokiya Arena [where Maccabi basketball normally plays], since the only opponent on the pitch was Neil Sedaka."
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Dissent on 'Jewish State' controversy
Apparently, I'm in the minority as a peace activist who sees some merit in Prime Minister Netanyahu's offer to extend Israel's settlements freeze in exchange for Palestinian President Abbas declaring his acknowledgment of Israel as a "Jewish state." What liberal/left critics are missing is that Netanyahu may not simply be throwing a grenade into the peace process (which would be deplorable if that's his entire intent); he may be engaged in horse trading, which is part & parcel of political negotiations.
They are also overlooking that--because of the second intifada launched in late 2000, and then the Hamas electoral victory and the on-again/off-again attacks on Israel even after its complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005--most Israelis have lost confidence in the Palestinians' willingness to live in peace. A clear Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people would help rebuild this confidence.
But more importantly, there is no two-state solution without a recognition by both sides that Israel is the Jewish state (allowing also for equal rights for non-Jewish Israeli citizens) and that a new sovereign Palestine is the Arab state which the United Nations General Assembly voted for in November 1947. It was the violent Arab rejection of this UN decision that extended the Arab-Jewish conflict beyond Israel's independence in 1948. How does this conflict end without such a clear mutual understanding of two states for two peoples?
Naomi Chazan is correct that Israel does not absolutely need this outside confirmation. But she's neglecting the psychological element that Anwar Sadat understood so keenly when he addressed the Knesset in 1977 and explicitly indicated that Israel is now welcomed as part of the Middle East.
I understand why Hussein Ibish and others in the pro-Palestinian camp see Netanyahu's offer as a non-starter. It's reasonable that the quid pro quo for recognizing Israel as a Jewish state or the Jewish homeland should be a long-term settlements freeze, for at least as long as negotiations continue, rather than a mere two months. Dr. Ibish sees this as a "final status" matter that should be decided in conjunction with the refugees issue. But this would only keep alive the suspicion of many Israelis, or even most, that the Palestinians still envision a full-scale "right of return" for the refugees of 1948 to what is now Israel. There can be no meaningful two-state solution if this were true. A declaration on this would clear the air for Israelis and help engender the trust needed for meaningful negotiations.
Ibish's position is reminiscent of the mistake that Prime Minister Rabin made in 1994 after Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron. Rabin's government came close to forcibly removing extremist settlers from Hebron and/or Kiryat Arba---the latter being the hard-line settlement community where Goldstein lived. This would have been a concrete sign of atonement by Israel for Goldstein's crime; instead, Rabin decided that he would not touch settlements at that point because it was a "final status" issue.
Sadly, Israel is still saddled with the cancer of extremist settlers in Hebron and Kiryat Arba. Moreover, Israel's official apology for Goldstein, without compensatory action at that time, rang hollow and helped trigger the waves of terrorist attacks in retaliation. It's even thought that Yiyah Ayyash was inspired by the Goldstein atrocity to become the Hamas master bomb-maker known as "the engineer." We can only imagine what might have happened if Israel had acted forcibly against extremist settlers back then.
The similarity is not in the moral weight of these issues but that each side--Israel in the Goldstein case and the Palestinians regarding the Jewish state--has needed to reassure the other of its good faith.
They are also overlooking that--because of the second intifada launched in late 2000, and then the Hamas electoral victory and the on-again/off-again attacks on Israel even after its complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005--most Israelis have lost confidence in the Palestinians' willingness to live in peace. A clear Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people would help rebuild this confidence.
But more importantly, there is no two-state solution without a recognition by both sides that Israel is the Jewish state (allowing also for equal rights for non-Jewish Israeli citizens) and that a new sovereign Palestine is the Arab state which the United Nations General Assembly voted for in November 1947. It was the violent Arab rejection of this UN decision that extended the Arab-Jewish conflict beyond Israel's independence in 1948. How does this conflict end without such a clear mutual understanding of two states for two peoples?
Naomi Chazan is correct that Israel does not absolutely need this outside confirmation. But she's neglecting the psychological element that Anwar Sadat understood so keenly when he addressed the Knesset in 1977 and explicitly indicated that Israel is now welcomed as part of the Middle East.
I understand why Hussein Ibish and others in the pro-Palestinian camp see Netanyahu's offer as a non-starter. It's reasonable that the quid pro quo for recognizing Israel as a Jewish state or the Jewish homeland should be a long-term settlements freeze, for at least as long as negotiations continue, rather than a mere two months. Dr. Ibish sees this as a "final status" matter that should be decided in conjunction with the refugees issue. But this would only keep alive the suspicion of many Israelis, or even most, that the Palestinians still envision a full-scale "right of return" for the refugees of 1948 to what is now Israel. There can be no meaningful two-state solution if this were true. A declaration on this would clear the air for Israelis and help engender the trust needed for meaningful negotiations.
Ibish's position is reminiscent of the mistake that Prime Minister Rabin made in 1994 after Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron. Rabin's government came close to forcibly removing extremist settlers from Hebron and/or Kiryat Arba---the latter being the hard-line settlement community where Goldstein lived. This would have been a concrete sign of atonement by Israel for Goldstein's crime; instead, Rabin decided that he would not touch settlements at that point because it was a "final status" issue.
Sadly, Israel is still saddled with the cancer of extremist settlers in Hebron and Kiryat Arba. Moreover, Israel's official apology for Goldstein, without compensatory action at that time, rang hollow and helped trigger the waves of terrorist attacks in retaliation. It's even thought that Yiyah Ayyash was inspired by the Goldstein atrocity to become the Hamas master bomb-maker known as "the engineer." We can only imagine what might have happened if Israel had acted forcibly against extremist settlers back then.
The similarity is not in the moral weight of these issues but that each side--Israel in the Goldstein case and the Palestinians regarding the Jewish state--has needed to reassure the other of its good faith.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Foxman vs Peace Groups
The contemptible Abraham Foxman is at it again, demonizing people working for peace while promoting right-wing fanaticism under the guise of defending Jews against anti-Semitism.
Foxman’s ADL bestows honors on a notorious right-wing billionaire, Rupert Murdoch. Through outlets like, first, the New York Post and then, as his empire grew, the much more influential Fox News Channel, Murdoch has sold a far-right distortion of news coverage as “fair and balanced,” and is responsible for some of the most hateful and scandalous events in the history of news reporting.
While Foxman honors the man who gave us Sean Hannity and Glen Beck, he disparages groups that support Palestinian rights. I understand that anyone who is passionately (not to say myopically) pro-Israel, in what is thought of as the “mainstream” will consider any group that places Palestinian human rights in the middle of their concerns the opposition, the sort of mud-slinging the ADL engages in here is nothing short of contemptible.
We can start with ADL’s lack of nuance, being unable to distinguish between groups like ANSWER, CAIR, Friends of Sabeel and the US Campaign to End the Occupation. These groups have very different ideologies, strategies and political approaches. Some on the list are certainly “anti-Israel” others merely strongly critical.
But I’ll focus on the group that I know best on their preposterous list, Jewish Voice for Peace.
I am no longer with that group, and if I agreed with JVP on their approach, especially as it concerns the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, I probably would still be working for them. But the way ADL characterizes them here is nothing short of absurd.
JVP is, to begin with, distinctly NOT an anti-Zionist group. It has, to be sure, anti-Zionist members, but what Foxman does not, with his limited knowledge of not only this group but the Israel-Palestine issue more generally, understand is that it also has Zionist members. And many of its non-Zionist members consider their work as being very much on Israel’s behalf and in Israel’s interest.
Foxman’s problem with JVP is that they engage in economic action against settlements and the occupation. They also state that, while they themselves do not support boycotts against Israel they reject and oppose characterizing such actions as necessarily being anti-Semitic.
Horrors.
Foxman is also worried that JVP wants “…an end to the ‘Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem,’ a peaceful resolution for Palestinian refugees, and the cessation of Israeli ‘land seizures; destruction of homes, infrastructure, orchards and farms; arbitrary arrests and imprisonment; torture; assassinations; expulsions; curfews; travel restrictions; abuse at checkpoints; raids; collective punishment; and other violations of human rights.’
Gasp.
Anyone who wants such things must be anti-Israel, bordering on anti-Semitic, in the mind of Abe Foxman. And to make matters worse in that troubled mind, “In stark contrast to these detailed requirements, the only stipulation for Palestinians is the cessation of ‘suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians.’ (The mission statement does not mention, for example, that Palestinians should recognize Israel as a Jewish state.)”
Right, all JVP wants from the Palestinians is…peace. Gee, how unreasonable. They must be Israel-haters. Especially if they don’t endorse a ridiculous demand that Israel only even figured out it wanted about three years ago and which no country in the world has ever asked of another, let alone of a people it is holding under occupation.
Abe Foxman has trivialized anti-Semitism by throwing the accusation around spuriously to serve his agenda. He has opened the Jewish community to the very real criticism that ADL embodies, that they will criticize anyone for discrimination unless it’s Israel. He has trivialized the real bias that does exist in the world against Israel by lumping any but the mildest critics of Israeli policies into one basket.
Meanwhile, Israel has moved farther along its own anti-democratic path, while Foxman has kept nearly silent. JVP, while I may sometimes disagree with them, has taken that on. In fact, it’s Foxman, not JVP, who is jeopardizing Israel’s future and who certainly stands in the way of peace.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
More on 'loyalty oath' issue
An editorial in the New York Jewish Week, entitled "An Empty Loyalty Oath," sensibly questions its usefulness:
"We will not be citizens of a fascist state purporting to be Israel" say hundreds of Israeli academics and public figures.
A protest rally against the government's "Loyalty Oath Bill" was held outside the Tel Aviv house. There [in 1948] Ben-Gurion read ... the Declaration of Independence. There, today, the "Declaration of Independence from Fascism" was signed.
"We are citizens of the Israel which was depicted in the Declaration of Independence, a peace-seeking country based on the principles of equality and civil liberties. We do not intend to be the citizens of a state purporting to be Israel which stops being democratic and enbarks on becoming a fascist state," proclaimed intellectuals, public figures, and Israel Prize laureates who gathered this afternoon for a protest rally against the "Loyalty Oath Bill" approved by the government. A protest rally was held on Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard, in front of the museum building where David Ben Gurion had read the Declaration of Independence in 1948.
Beneath the statue of Meir Dizengoff, first mayor of Tel Aviv, actress Hanna Meron read out from that Declaration of Independence: "The State of Israel will be based on based on Liberty, Justice and Peace, as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or gender; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations." She noted that, sixty-two years later, the reality of Israel is very different than what the country's Declaration of Independence envisaged. At the end of the rally, a "Declaration of Independence from Fascism" was signed (see full text below).
Among participants in the initiative were Shulamit Aloni, Uri Avnery, Alex Ansky, Shery Ansky, Menachem Brinker, Ran Cohen, Ruth Cohen, Yaron Ezrachi, Galia Golan, Haim Guri, Sna'it Gisis, Yoram Kaniuk, Dani Karavan, Yehoshua Knaz, Elia Leibowitz, Alex Libak, Hanna Meron, Sammy Michael, Merav Michaeli, Sefi Rachlevsky, Gabi Solomon, David Tartakower, Micha Ullman, and many others.
Following is the full text of the Declaration of Independence from Fascism:
A state which forcibly invades the hallowed realm of the individual citizen's conscience, and which imposes punishment on those whose opinions and beliefs do not fit the authorities' opinions and the prescribed "character" of the state, stops being a democracy and embarks on becoming a fascist state. Behind these stairs where we stand, the state of Israel was proclaimed. The state which increasingly takes Israel's place – a state which fills the country with a variety of racist legislation, promoted by the Knesset and the cabinet – is excluding itself from the family of democratic nations. Therefore we, citizens of the Israel envisaged in the Declaration of Independence, hereby declare that will not be citizens of a country purporting to be Israel and which violates its basic commitment to the principles of equality, civil liberty and sincere aspiration for peace – principles upon which the State of Israel was founded.
.... Why give political ammunition to those who seek to delegitimize Israel, allowing them to make the case that the state’s democracy is narrowly defined, confined to certain segments of the population? And at a time when significant numbers of young American Jews are increasingly ambivalent about identifying with Israel, why create holes in the image and substance of a democratic society?
The country’s Declaration of Independence is sufficient in describing it as a Jewish state, and to press the point now is to risk alienating the few allies Israel has, creating another public relations black eye for itself. ...The following is a press release, dated Oct. 10, of left-wing Israelis protesting its morality; among others, I recognize the names of Shulamit Aloni, Ran Cohen and Galia Golan as prominent figures associated with Meretz. While calling it "fascist" may be a bit overblown, they are correct in denouncing this measure as a departure from the values proclaimed in Israel's Declaration of Independence:
"We will not be citizens of a fascist state purporting to be Israel" say hundreds of Israeli academics and public figures.
A protest rally against the government's "Loyalty Oath Bill" was held outside the Tel Aviv house. There [in 1948] Ben-Gurion read ... the Declaration of Independence. There, today, the "Declaration of Independence from Fascism" was signed.
"We are citizens of the Israel which was depicted in the Declaration of Independence, a peace-seeking country based on the principles of equality and civil liberties. We do not intend to be the citizens of a state purporting to be Israel which stops being democratic and enbarks on becoming a fascist state," proclaimed intellectuals, public figures, and Israel Prize laureates who gathered this afternoon for a protest rally against the "Loyalty Oath Bill" approved by the government. A protest rally was held on Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard, in front of the museum building where David Ben Gurion had read the Declaration of Independence in 1948.
Beneath the statue of Meir Dizengoff, first mayor of Tel Aviv, actress Hanna Meron read out from that Declaration of Independence: "The State of Israel will be based on based on Liberty, Justice and Peace, as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or gender; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations." She noted that, sixty-two years later, the reality of Israel is very different than what the country's Declaration of Independence envisaged. At the end of the rally, a "Declaration of Independence from Fascism" was signed (see full text below).
Among participants in the initiative were Shulamit Aloni, Uri Avnery, Alex Ansky, Shery Ansky, Menachem Brinker, Ran Cohen, Ruth Cohen, Yaron Ezrachi, Galia Golan, Haim Guri, Sna'it Gisis, Yoram Kaniuk, Dani Karavan, Yehoshua Knaz, Elia Leibowitz, Alex Libak, Hanna Meron, Sammy Michael, Merav Michaeli, Sefi Rachlevsky, Gabi Solomon, David Tartakower, Micha Ullman, and many others.
Following is the full text of the Declaration of Independence from Fascism:
A state which forcibly invades the hallowed realm of the individual citizen's conscience, and which imposes punishment on those whose opinions and beliefs do not fit the authorities' opinions and the prescribed "character" of the state, stops being a democracy and embarks on becoming a fascist state. Behind these stairs where we stand, the state of Israel was proclaimed. The state which increasingly takes Israel's place – a state which fills the country with a variety of racist legislation, promoted by the Knesset and the cabinet – is excluding itself from the family of democratic nations. Therefore we, citizens of the Israel envisaged in the Declaration of Independence, hereby declare that will not be citizens of a country purporting to be Israel and which violates its basic commitment to the principles of equality, civil liberty and sincere aspiration for peace – principles upon which the State of Israel was founded.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Rabbi's debt to a Muslim clergyman
Marc Gopin is a rabbi and a professor of conflict resolution at George Mason University. I highly recommend a lovely piece he posted last week at the Huffington Post: "Thanks to the Imam, My Little Son Got Serious About Synagogue."
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Meretz deplores Cabinet approval of loyalty oath
Following the Netanyahu Cabinet's vote in favor of the Citizenship Law amendment, which would require an oath of loyalty from new non-Jewish citizens only (!!!), Meretz party chair, Haim Oron, issued the following statement:
"The [amendment to the] Citizenship Law takes the word 'citizenship' in vain, and is diametrically opposed to any civic or democratic approach. Time after time, it becomes clear that [Avigdor] Lieberman's agenda has become the guidelines and contour of action of the entire government. It seems as if there is no moral or political abyss that this government won't dive into, and it is now apparent that nothing will dislodge the Labor Party from the government."
The original (in Hebrew) is at the Meretz page on Facebook, here.
"The [amendment to the] Citizenship Law takes the word 'citizenship' in vain, and is diametrically opposed to any civic or democratic approach. Time after time, it becomes clear that [Avigdor] Lieberman's agenda has become the guidelines and contour of action of the entire government. It seems as if there is no moral or political abyss that this government won't dive into, and it is now apparent that nothing will dislodge the Labor Party from the government."
The original (in Hebrew) is at the Meretz page on Facebook, here.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Is The Proposed Citizenship Oath Discriminatory?
Today, Primer Minister Benyamin Netanyahu approved a proposal to amend the Citizenship Law to include a mandatory "loyalty oath," which would require every new Israeli citizen to swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. (Netanyahu had previously urged a "less divisive" oath.) Labor ministers in the government are grumbling and Defense Minister Barak has submitted his own version, worded in a more "liberal spirit."
On its face, a loyalty oath may seem fairly reasonable. After all, many Western democracies have oaths of allegiance. And in the case of Israel, since 1948, the declaration of independence has made it clear that Israel is a Jewish state and a state for the Jewish People in the land of Israel. Therefore, a loyalty oath in which citizens are required to declare that Israel is a Jewish state should not be surprising.
However, there are a number of problems with such an oath. First, even though the declaration of independence does state that Israel is a Jewish state, the declaration has no formal legal value. This is due to the fact that it was ratified before the formal end of the British Mandate in Palestine and therefore before the Israeli parliament (Knesset in Hebrew) had the legal standing to pass laws. Subsequently, Israel failed to adopt a formal constitution and instead enacted a series of Basic Laws. Of those, the Law of Return came closest to declaring the Jewish character of Israel, by stating that every Jew has "the right of return" to Israel.
But it was not until 1992, 44 years after independence, that the Knesset passed the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom, which finally stated overtly that Israel is a Jewish state: "the purpose of this Basic Law is to protect human dignity and liberty, in order to establish in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."
Even then the issue of Israel as Jewish was controversial. But a law mandating allegiance to a Jewish state is even more troublesome. Requiring an oath of loyalty to a Jewish state, when 20% of the population is not only Israeli-Arab, but is actually feeling disfranchised by the Israeli establishment and is continuously subject to prejudice and stereotypes, is not only unwise, it is a foolish affront that skims the line of racism. Moreover, passing such an amendment while there is a small hope that peace negotiations will continue, sabotages any hope of success.
Prime Minister Netanyahu showed courage and leadership by enacting a 10-month building freeze in the Occupied Territories, and by agreeing to meet the Palestinians in direct peace talks. But he has failed to follow through by standing up to his rightist coalition in the name of peace.
On its face, a loyalty oath may seem fairly reasonable. After all, many Western democracies have oaths of allegiance. And in the case of Israel, since 1948, the declaration of independence has made it clear that Israel is a Jewish state and a state for the Jewish People in the land of Israel. Therefore, a loyalty oath in which citizens are required to declare that Israel is a Jewish state should not be surprising.
However, there are a number of problems with such an oath. First, even though the declaration of independence does state that Israel is a Jewish state, the declaration has no formal legal value. This is due to the fact that it was ratified before the formal end of the British Mandate in Palestine and therefore before the Israeli parliament (Knesset in Hebrew) had the legal standing to pass laws. Subsequently, Israel failed to adopt a formal constitution and instead enacted a series of Basic Laws. Of those, the Law of Return came closest to declaring the Jewish character of Israel, by stating that every Jew has "the right of return" to Israel.
But it was not until 1992, 44 years after independence, that the Knesset passed the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom, which finally stated overtly that Israel is a Jewish state: "the purpose of this Basic Law is to protect human dignity and liberty, in order to establish in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."
Even then the issue of Israel as Jewish was controversial. But a law mandating allegiance to a Jewish state is even more troublesome. Requiring an oath of loyalty to a Jewish state, when 20% of the population is not only Israeli-Arab, but is actually feeling disfranchised by the Israeli establishment and is continuously subject to prejudice and stereotypes, is not only unwise, it is a foolish affront that skims the line of racism. Moreover, passing such an amendment while there is a small hope that peace negotiations will continue, sabotages any hope of success.
Prime Minister Netanyahu showed courage and leadership by enacting a 10-month building freeze in the Occupied Territories, and by agreeing to meet the Palestinians in direct peace talks. But he has failed to follow through by standing up to his rightist coalition in the name of peace.
A Jewish view from Jordan
I send out Jonah's emails. I do this because he is fresh, smart, and energized.--Lilly
I am young. I am Jewish. I live and work in Jordan, where for a year and a half I have worked as a newsman, watching the events of the region unfold day-by-day and picking up bits and pieces of gossip and political lore from my little slice of the Arab intelligentsia. In this context, Lilly asks me: "What's your take on the negotiations?"
I could write a book about "my take on the negotiations", and revise it a hundred times and never quite get at what I want to say. So, here's a shot at being concise: it will fail.
Let's begin with Netanyahu, since it all ends with Netanyahu. People talk about him as though he were some kind of enigma: does he want peace? Doesn't he? Could he be Nixon in China? No. Not now and not ever. He is not and has never been interested in being Nixon in China. Nixon in Cambodia, perhaps, but not in China. Sometimes the things we want to be very complicated and hard to measure are really simple. Netanyahu is one of those things: he has always had the option of dropping YB and Shas and taking Kadima into his coalition in order to have a government that could stand in the face of a peace agreement. Tzipi Livni, for all her faults, would have been happy to make such an arrangement at any time, probably swapping jobs with Avigdor Lieberman.
But Bibi has not done that. Instead, he has allowed the unhinged Lieberman to go around talking about population transfers and appeased the hardline settlers at every turn. This indicates to me one of two things: either (1) he agrees with the racial and religious politics of the settlers, or (2) he is too afraid of them to stand up to them. Given his track record, I'm leaning towards option #1, but #2 is also a real possibility since there is ample and clear evidence that these people wield disproportionate power in Israeli politics today.
That said, I have a hard time believing Obama and Mitchell and Abbas when they so scriptedly lavish Netanyahu with platitudinous labels as a "serious partner for peace". He has done absolutely nothing to earn that title. Meanwhile, Abbas is weak, lacks a mandate and has no way of convincing the Palestinians that he is able to negotiate any kind of fair deal, so Bashar Assad is, frankly, correct when he says that these peace talks are little more than a way for Obama to look like he's doing something important.
I say all this despite wishing fervently that it were not true. Did you see King Abdullah on the Daily Show during the UN summit? His spiel about the two-state solution and the urgency of international peace efforts, etc, was boilerplate, but he was unusually candid about just how fucked everyone is if these negotiations go the way of their predecessors, which I fear is at this point a foregone conclusion. Looking at everything--the Hamas-Fateh split, the shuttle diplomacy, the largely meaningless settlement freeze that ends just as talks begin--it all seems somehow farcical, but I see and hear and read things that terrify me to think of what a round of demonization the Jews have coming once the Israeli government is rightly blamed for screwing it up again, and blame is wrongly cast upon us all.
The trouble with this whole situation is that the loudest voices on both sides of the argument are those whose positions are fundamentally racist, religionist and incurably violent. Sadly, little remains to be found between these complete lunatics and the lame apologists who try to overlook the fact that this conflict is damning--not to mention damaging--to Zionists, Jews, Arabs and Muslims alike when viewed through eyes unclouded by longing. Yes, blind hatred of Jews has motivated the Arabs' opposition to Israel, but yes, Zionism is a reflection of colonialism. Yes, Israel grants its Arab citizens rights they could never hope to have in any Arab country, but yes, Israel has also committed atrocities against the Palestinians. Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself from terrorism, but yes, the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves from aggression. As a friend likes to put it: they're all assholes, all of them.
The fact that everyone comes out badly in the final analysis makes it very hard for anyone to approach this conflict objectively and constructively. Motivated by collective insecurity, everyone wants to score points and make the other guy look bad. I don't see how anyone can make peace under such conditions. What is needed is for an Israeli and a Palestinian, both of them entirely aware of the faults of their own people and leaders, to sit down and have a good laugh and a good cry about how tragically ridiculous this all is, then work out the nuts and bolts of what everyone already sort of knows needs to be done. Sadly, nobody with that level of circumspection and capacity for self-criticism will ever obtain a position of power, anywhere, ever.
So that's my take. Fundamental and necessary acknowledgments of poor choices have yet to take place, and the negotiating parties are both hampered (one willingly, perhaps) by the overwhelming power of their more extreme counterparts. I'm not holding my breath for an agreement anytime soon, but I hope against all reason that something good transpires. The alternative is really much worse than Bibi, Avi, and company seem to realize.
I am young. I am Jewish. I live and work in Jordan, where for a year and a half I have worked as a newsman, watching the events of the region unfold day-by-day and picking up bits and pieces of gossip and political lore from my little slice of the Arab intelligentsia. In this context, Lilly asks me: "What's your take on the negotiations?"
I could write a book about "my take on the negotiations", and revise it a hundred times and never quite get at what I want to say. So, here's a shot at being concise: it will fail.
Let's begin with Netanyahu, since it all ends with Netanyahu. People talk about him as though he were some kind of enigma: does he want peace? Doesn't he? Could he be Nixon in China? No. Not now and not ever. He is not and has never been interested in being Nixon in China. Nixon in Cambodia, perhaps, but not in China. Sometimes the things we want to be very complicated and hard to measure are really simple. Netanyahu is one of those things: he has always had the option of dropping YB and Shas and taking Kadima into his coalition in order to have a government that could stand in the face of a peace agreement. Tzipi Livni, for all her faults, would have been happy to make such an arrangement at any time, probably swapping jobs with Avigdor Lieberman.
But Bibi has not done that. Instead, he has allowed the unhinged Lieberman to go around talking about population transfers and appeased the hardline settlers at every turn. This indicates to me one of two things: either (1) he agrees with the racial and religious politics of the settlers, or (2) he is too afraid of them to stand up to them. Given his track record, I'm leaning towards option #1, but #2 is also a real possibility since there is ample and clear evidence that these people wield disproportionate power in Israeli politics today.
That said, I have a hard time believing Obama and Mitchell and Abbas when they so scriptedly lavish Netanyahu with platitudinous labels as a "serious partner for peace". He has done absolutely nothing to earn that title. Meanwhile, Abbas is weak, lacks a mandate and has no way of convincing the Palestinians that he is able to negotiate any kind of fair deal, so Bashar Assad is, frankly, correct when he says that these peace talks are little more than a way for Obama to look like he's doing something important.
I say all this despite wishing fervently that it were not true. Did you see King Abdullah on the Daily Show during the UN summit? His spiel about the two-state solution and the urgency of international peace efforts, etc, was boilerplate, but he was unusually candid about just how fucked everyone is if these negotiations go the way of their predecessors, which I fear is at this point a foregone conclusion. Looking at everything--the Hamas-Fateh split, the shuttle diplomacy, the largely meaningless settlement freeze that ends just as talks begin--it all seems somehow farcical, but I see and hear and read things that terrify me to think of what a round of demonization the Jews have coming once the Israeli government is rightly blamed for screwing it up again, and blame is wrongly cast upon us all.
The trouble with this whole situation is that the loudest voices on both sides of the argument are those whose positions are fundamentally racist, religionist and incurably violent. Sadly, little remains to be found between these complete lunatics and the lame apologists who try to overlook the fact that this conflict is damning--not to mention damaging--to Zionists, Jews, Arabs and Muslims alike when viewed through eyes unclouded by longing. Yes, blind hatred of Jews has motivated the Arabs' opposition to Israel, but yes, Zionism is a reflection of colonialism. Yes, Israel grants its Arab citizens rights they could never hope to have in any Arab country, but yes, Israel has also committed atrocities against the Palestinians. Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself from terrorism, but yes, the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves from aggression. As a friend likes to put it: they're all assholes, all of them.
The fact that everyone comes out badly in the final analysis makes it very hard for anyone to approach this conflict objectively and constructively. Motivated by collective insecurity, everyone wants to score points and make the other guy look bad. I don't see how anyone can make peace under such conditions. What is needed is for an Israeli and a Palestinian, both of them entirely aware of the faults of their own people and leaders, to sit down and have a good laugh and a good cry about how tragically ridiculous this all is, then work out the nuts and bolts of what everyone already sort of knows needs to be done. Sadly, nobody with that level of circumspection and capacity for self-criticism will ever obtain a position of power, anywhere, ever.
So that's my take. Fundamental and necessary acknowledgments of poor choices have yet to take place, and the negotiating parties are both hampered (one willingly, perhaps) by the overwhelming power of their more extreme counterparts. I'm not holding my breath for an agreement anytime soon, but I hope against all reason that something good transpires. The alternative is really much worse than Bibi, Avi, and company seem to realize.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Is Lieberman's idea for 2 states 'racist'?
The distaste expressed overwhelmingly by liberal opinion for Avigdor Lieberman's long-standing notion that "the triangle" of Israeli-Arab towns and villages, including Umm al-Fahm and Tayibe, be transferred to the new Palestinian state in exchange for Israel annexing the blocs of settlements contiguous with Israel, may have more to do with our disdain for the proposer than the proposal. Still, there is a moral flaw in this idea: the Palestinian-Israelis (as they increasingly call themselves) who inhabit this area, reportedly prefer to continue living in Israel, as Israeli citizens.
Michael Lame, a blogger on Middle East issues whom I occasionally refer to, has posted a somewhat sympathetic treatment of Lieberman's conception. Lame is especially worth reading for his comparison of Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party with Hamas. Commenting immediately below his posting, another writer I sometimes feature, Thomas Mitchell, responds much as I would have:
Michael Lame, a blogger on Middle East issues whom I occasionally refer to, has posted a somewhat sympathetic treatment of Lieberman's conception. Lame is especially worth reading for his comparison of Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party with Hamas. Commenting immediately below his posting, another writer I sometimes feature, Thomas Mitchell, responds much as I would have:
Precisely because it isn’t voluntary on the part of Israeli Arabs, any change of borders should be for the sole purpose of territorially compensating Palestine for territory lost by incorporating settlement blocs into Israel. It should not be done for the purpose of ridding Israel of Arabs. And the Arab citizens that are put out of the state should retain their citizenship and be given the option of moving elsewhere. ...
Israeli Arabs should understand that if they want to remain as citizens of Israel they will be remaining as citizens of a Jewish state, although at least in theory with equal rights. They should struggle to actualize that potential equality. Struggling to turn the state into something other than a Jewish state will only delay their acceptance as equal citizens. The UN Partition called for two states, one Arab and one Jewish. ...I would add that if this were a real option considered in negotiations--an unlikely "if"--that Arab citizens of Israel in the triangle, even if they chose to remain where they are as citizens of Palestine, should be permitted to commute to whatever jobs they may have in sovereign Israel and to retain the social insurance benefits they've earned as Israelis.
Monday, October 04, 2010
Belly Dancing Soldier a Symbol of the Corruption of Occupation
A short while back, IDF reservist Eden Abergil caused a controversy by celebrating her IDF service by posting a happy picture of herself on Facebook with bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners.
Today, a barbaric video showed up on YouTube, going Abergil one better. A male IDF soldier belly dances around a bound and blindfolded Palestinian woman.
The video is appalling. As with Abergil, the IDF has launched an investigation, though unlike the Abergil case, these soldiers appear to be on active duty and, thus, are subject to disciplinary measures by the army.
Whatever comes of such an investigation may mollify the critics, particularly the Israeli ones (and there are many, not only from the left, who are revolted by such behavior), but it will not solve the problem. There’s really no way it can.
In my work I’ve come to meet and get to know many soldiers, from several countries (most, of course, either Israeli or American), both active ones and veterans. I know that most soldiers do not behave this way. But it is clear, from every war, conflict, police action and occupation that there are always some soldiers who do.
Israelis are no different, but there is something that is different about this dynamic. It is that these soldiers are the products of a militarized society which has been holding millions of people under military occupation, with no rights of citizenship, for over 43 years. That has a long term effect on both occupier and occupied.
These soldiers are young men and women, who are the second or even third generation of occupiers. They have been raised in a culture that, as is natural for an occupying power, both dominates the Palestinians and also fears them. That fear is not limited to terrorists, but extends to the very existence of the Palestinians, and their legacy of dispossession.
Of course, the belly-dancing soldier and Eden Abergil are not typical (though they are also certainly not the most extreme, as you can see here, for example). But just read the testimonies gathered by the group called Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence), made up entirely of Israeli reservists who served in the Occupied Territories. Or read B’Tselem’s reports. Or take a walk through Hebron, near the closed off Shuhada Street. Or just go through a checkpoint.
It’s not that Israelis are any different than anyone else, nor are soldiers different from other people. Rather, this is the effect of holding another people under occupation. It is what happens when you train young men and women who are barely out of high school to be soldiers who must learn how to risk their lives and use violence to obtain military objectives or to defend themselves.
Some number of those young people get drunk with their power over others and act like this soldier and Abergil. But all are affected by being part of an army whose main activity is not defense but policing an occupation.
I am not going to argue that Israel should end its occupation for its own sake. That argument has been made, and it’s valid and important.
But it also has a downside. It glosses over the most important reason Israel needs to end its occupation of millions of Palestinians; it’s the same reason that continuing the occupation has such a corrupting influence on Israelis and Israeli society.
The occupation is simply wrong. There is no way around the fact that depriving millions of people of their freedom is unethical.
Israel, of course, has very real security needs, and those needs can justify actions that would otherwise be immoral or illegal. One may argue, as I certainly would, that freeing the Palestinians from occupation would dramatically reduce, rather than enhance, such security threats. But that, like the counter-argument, is purely speculative at this point.
The trouble is that after 43 years Israel has become accustomed to addressing its security needs through the occupation, and, despite the fact that most of its citizens want the occupation to end, the government is far from zealous in trying to make that happen.
The settlement enterprise surely makes ending the occupation much more difficult politically for Israel. But meanwhile, those same settlements make the occupation -- which would need to be oppressive in any case as any occupation must be -- all the more restrictive and, yes, violent.
A conscientious Israeli leader should say that the occupation should end because it is harming Israel. It harms Israel’s standing in the world; the cost of occupation and settlements is a serious drain on the Israeli economy; it creates diplomatic problems. But we need to ask why does it have those effects?
Because it is fundamentally wrong to deprive millions of people of their freedom, and ultimately, that is why Israel must end the occupation. As long as it doesn’t, the sort of corruption taking root in Israel, and manifesting itself in the xenophobia of Avigdor Lieberman and the abusive behavior of the soldier in the latest video, will spread—because ongoing immoral actions breed more and more shocking immediate ones.
Friday, October 01, 2010
Brouhaha over Soros and J Street
The revelation that George Soros has donated $750,000 to J Street over the last three years, about 7% of its $11 million total, has caused an uproar. For example, New York's Jewish Week newspaper reports on the story with the front page headline, "J Street Reeling After Soros Money Revelation."
Jeremy Ben-Ami had indicated truthfully at J Street's start that Soros had withdrawn himself from the original planning, but he did not reveal that Soros had subsequently become a major donor. Ben-Ami was under no legal obligation to do so; it is debatable whether this was an ethical breach.
Still, a number of politicians friendly toward J Street reportedly feel betrayed. And this has made J Street backing into fodder for Republicans opposing Democrats who have such funding.
Soros originally withdrew his public backing for J Street because he knew that his name is radioactive in some circles. His association with human rights groups, including some critical of Israel, is part of the reason for the controversy. But such activism by Soros does not make him anti-Israel. This notion is unfortunate and reminds us that public discourse has little tolerance for nuanced or complex points of view.
The best coverage of this matter that I've seen so far is in today's new Forward, both the article by Nathan Gutman and its editorial. The Forward's editorial sums up the Soros controversy nicely:
Jeremy Ben-Ami had indicated truthfully at J Street's start that Soros had withdrawn himself from the original planning, but he did not reveal that Soros had subsequently become a major donor. Ben-Ami was under no legal obligation to do so; it is debatable whether this was an ethical breach.
Still, a number of politicians friendly toward J Street reportedly feel betrayed. And this has made J Street backing into fodder for Republicans opposing Democrats who have such funding.
Soros originally withdrew his public backing for J Street because he knew that his name is radioactive in some circles. His association with human rights groups, including some critical of Israel, is part of the reason for the controversy. But such activism by Soros does not make him anti-Israel. This notion is unfortunate and reminds us that public discourse has little tolerance for nuanced or complex points of view.
The best coverage of this matter that I've seen so far is in today's new Forward, both the article by Nathan Gutman and its editorial. The Forward's editorial sums up the Soros controversy nicely:
In a now infamous 2007 essay, he wrote: “I am not a Zionist, nor am I am a practicing Jew,” and then added immediately, “I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a deep concern for the survival of Israel.” Expressing sympathy and concern may not be the same as donating millions to a university in Israel, or a soup kitchen in Brooklyn, but neither is it cause for excommunication.
Meanwhile, his other oft-maligned statement — in which critics accuse him of blaming Israel and Jews for anti-Semitism — hardly seems so incendiary when read in context: “Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel’s policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism,” he wrote in 2003. “At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel’s policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby’s success in suppressing divergent views.”
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