In addition to taking advantage of the Council General's e-mail contact info Fred provided, please consider -- after reviewing the information at http://www.hebronorphans.blogspot.com -- sending a fax (1-202-364-5423) to Jeremy Issacharoff, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in DC, protesting the Israeli Army's campaign against ICS schools and orphanages in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Please also send a fax (011-972-3-569-9400) to the Israeli Defense Force's Public Appeals Officer, urging that the GOC rescind the closure orders issued against Hebron school and orphanage related properties and return all properties confiscated subsequent to those orders or -- where that's not possible -- fully compensate the Islamic Charitable Society for property confiscated or destroyed.
If you'd like to phone Israel's political leaders and register complaints or suggestions with their offices, here are three to dial:
President Peres 011-972-2-670-7211 Prime Minister Olmert 011-972-670-5555 Deputy Prime Minister Barak 011-972-3-569-2010
For whatever contacts you are able to make, on behalf of the orphans and students, thank you. Paul and Katja
It's such a shame by JIMMY CARTER
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3057635,prtpage-1.cms
Printed from
The Times of India -Breaking news, views. reviews, cricket from across India
It's such a shame
21 May 2008, 0155 hrs IST,
JIMMY CARTER
ATLANTA: The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air or land. An entire population is being brutally punished.
This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.
Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank are now imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional 10 who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.
Regardless of one's choice in the partisan struggle between Fatah and Hamas within occupied Palestine, we must remember that economic sanctions and restrictions in delivering water, food, electricity and fuel are causing extreme hardship among the innocent people in Gaza, about one million of whom are refugees. Israeli bombs and missiles periodically strike the encapsulated area, causing high casualties among both militants and innocent women and children.
I attempted to gain a better understanding of the crisis on a recent trip through the Middle East. One of my visits was to Sderot, a community of about 20,000 in southern Israel that is frequently struck by rudimentary rockets fired from nearby Gaza. I condemned these attacks as abominable and an act of terrorism, since most of the 13 victims during the past seven years have been non-combatants.
I subsequently met with leaders of Hamas, both a delegation from Gaza and the top officials in Damascus, Syria. I made the same condemnation to them, and urged that they declare a unilateral ceasefire or orchestrate with Israel a mutual agreement to terminate all military action in and around Gaza for an extended period.
They responded that such previous action by them had not been reciprocated, and they reminded me that Hamas had previously insisted on a ceasefire throughout Palestine including both Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel had refused. Hamas then made a public proposal of a mutual ceasefire restricted to Gaza, which the Israelis considered and also rejected.
There are fervent arguments heard on both sides concerning blame for a lack of peace in the Holy Land. Israel has occupied and colonised the Palestinian West Bank, which is approximately one-fourth (28.5 per cent) the size of the nation of Israel as recognised by the international community. Some Israeli religious factions claim a right to the land on both sides of the Jordan River, and others aver that their 205 settlements with some 500,000 people are necessary for "security".
All Arab nations have agreed to full recognition of Israel if it will comply with key United Nations resolutions. Hamas has agreed to accept any negotiated peace settlement between Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, provided it is approved in a referendum among the Palestinian people.
This holds promise of progress, but despite the brief fanfare and positive statements at the peace conference last November in Annapolis, Maryland, a retrogression has occurred in the process. Nine thousand new Israeli settlement housing units have been announced in Palestine, the number of roadblocks within the West bank has increased, and the stranglehold on Gaza has been tightened.
It is one thing for other leaders to defer to the US on the crucial peace negotiations, but the world must not stand idle while innocent people are treated cruelly. It is time for strong voices in Europe, the US, Israel, and elsewhere to speak out and condemn this human rights tragedy among the Palestinian people.
(The writer is a former US president. Copyright: Project Syndicate.)
Printed from
The Times of India -Breaking news, views. reviews, cricket from across India
It's such a shame
21 May 2008, 0155 hrs IST,
JIMMY CARTER
ATLANTA: The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air or land. An entire population is being brutally punished.
This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.
Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank are now imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional 10 who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.
Regardless of one's choice in the partisan struggle between Fatah and Hamas within occupied Palestine, we must remember that economic sanctions and restrictions in delivering water, food, electricity and fuel are causing extreme hardship among the innocent people in Gaza, about one million of whom are refugees. Israeli bombs and missiles periodically strike the encapsulated area, causing high casualties among both militants and innocent women and children.
I attempted to gain a better understanding of the crisis on a recent trip through the Middle East. One of my visits was to Sderot, a community of about 20,000 in southern Israel that is frequently struck by rudimentary rockets fired from nearby Gaza. I condemned these attacks as abominable and an act of terrorism, since most of the 13 victims during the past seven years have been non-combatants.
I subsequently met with leaders of Hamas, both a delegation from Gaza and the top officials in Damascus, Syria. I made the same condemnation to them, and urged that they declare a unilateral ceasefire or orchestrate with Israel a mutual agreement to terminate all military action in and around Gaza for an extended period.
They responded that such previous action by them had not been reciprocated, and they reminded me that Hamas had previously insisted on a ceasefire throughout Palestine including both Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel had refused. Hamas then made a public proposal of a mutual ceasefire restricted to Gaza, which the Israelis considered and also rejected.
There are fervent arguments heard on both sides concerning blame for a lack of peace in the Holy Land. Israel has occupied and colonised the Palestinian West Bank, which is approximately one-fourth (28.5 per cent) the size of the nation of Israel as recognised by the international community. Some Israeli religious factions claim a right to the land on both sides of the Jordan River, and others aver that their 205 settlements with some 500,000 people are necessary for "security".
All Arab nations have agreed to full recognition of Israel if it will comply with key United Nations resolutions. Hamas has agreed to accept any negotiated peace settlement between Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, provided it is approved in a referendum among the Palestinian people.
This holds promise of progress, but despite the brief fanfare and positive statements at the peace conference last November in Annapolis, Maryland, a retrogression has occurred in the process. Nine thousand new Israeli settlement housing units have been announced in Palestine, the number of roadblocks within the West bank has increased, and the stranglehold on Gaza has been tightened.
It is one thing for other leaders to defer to the US on the crucial peace negotiations, but the world must not stand idle while innocent people are treated cruelly. It is time for strong voices in Europe, the US, Israel, and elsewhere to speak out and condemn this human rights tragedy among the Palestinian people.
(The writer is a former US president. Copyright: Project Syndicate.)
Terror and the trash heap
Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 22:51:43 EDT
Subject: Terror and the trash heap
They come in the middle of the night, some with blackened faces, all with automatic weapons. But the dark of night yields always to the light of day. The morning sun will expose another night of shame...another night of terror.
Who are they, these men and women who steal food and clothing meant for students, orphans and needy families in Hebron, who raid and destroy bakeries that make the bread for the orphans' breakfast? They're Israeli soldiers who came in a rumbling convoy of jeeps and trucks during the early morning hours of the last day of April. They came to Al-Salam Street to raid the sewing workshop in the Islamic Charitable Society girls' orphanage. They're the soldiers who couldn't find words to answer a CPTer's challenge, "Is this the way you fight terror...stealing clothing and sewing machines from a girls' orphanage? Look at yourselves. Now tell me who the terrorists are."
Within three hours after they forced their way inside, the Israeli Occupation Forces had taken sewing machines, finished garments, rolls of fabric and office equipment valued at more than $45,000, loaded everything on two flat bed tractor trailers and disappeared back into the darkness whence they'd come.
Left behind were the orphans, awakened and frightened by the soldiers, wondering if they were next. Had they been terrorized? The calls we received in those dark hours left little doubt.
Why, I wonder, did the General in command not wait 24 hours before sending in his soldiers. It would then have been Friday morning and the girls would have been in the homes of extended family members for the weekend. Could it be the General feels about the Palestinian orphans the same way he feels about the looted sewing machines and clothing he ordered thrown in the city dump?
Salaam/Shalom Paul
Subject: Terror and the trash heap
They come in the middle of the night, some with blackened faces, all with automatic weapons. But the dark of night yields always to the light of day. The morning sun will expose another night of shame...another night of terror.
Who are they, these men and women who steal food and clothing meant for students, orphans and needy families in Hebron, who raid and destroy bakeries that make the bread for the orphans' breakfast? They're Israeli soldiers who came in a rumbling convoy of jeeps and trucks during the early morning hours of the last day of April. They came to Al-Salam Street to raid the sewing workshop in the Islamic Charitable Society girls' orphanage. They're the soldiers who couldn't find words to answer a CPTer's challenge, "Is this the way you fight terror...stealing clothing and sewing machines from a girls' orphanage? Look at yourselves. Now tell me who the terrorists are."
Within three hours after they forced their way inside, the Israeli Occupation Forces had taken sewing machines, finished garments, rolls of fabric and office equipment valued at more than $45,000, loaded everything on two flat bed tractor trailers and disappeared back into the darkness whence they'd come.
Left behind were the orphans, awakened and frightened by the soldiers, wondering if they were next. Had they been terrorized? The calls we received in those dark hours left little doubt.
Why, I wonder, did the General in command not wait 24 hours before sending in his soldiers. It would then have been Friday morning and the girls would have been in the homes of extended family members for the weekend. Could it be the General feels about the Palestinian orphans the same way he feels about the looted sewing machines and clothing he ordered thrown in the city dump?
Salaam/Shalom Paul
Forget the Two-State Solution
Published on Sunday, May 11, 2008
by the Los Angeles Times
Forget the Two-State Solution
Israelis and Palestinians Must Share the Land. Equally.
By Saree Makdisi
There is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forget the endless arguments about who offered what and who spurned whom and whether the Oslo peace process died when Yasser Arafat walked away from the bargaining table or whether it was Ariel Sharon’s stroll through the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that did it in.
All that matters are the facts on the ground, of which the most important is that — after four decades of intensive Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories it occupied during the 1967 war — Israel has irreversibly cemented its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state might have been created.
Sixty years after Israel was created and Palestine was destroyed, then, we are back to where we started: Two populations inhabiting one piece of land. And if the land cannot be divided, it must be shared. Equally.
This is a position, I realize, which may take many Americans by surprise. After years of pursuing a two-state solution, and feeling perhaps that the conflict had nearly been solved, it’s hard to give up the idea as unworkable.
But unworkable it is. A report published last summer by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that almost 40% of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure — roads, settlements, military bases and so on — largely off-limits to Palestinians. Israel has methodically broken the remainder of the territory into dozens of enclaves separated from each other and the outside world by zones that it alone controls (including, at last count, 612 checkpoints and roadblocks).
Moreover, according to the report, the Jewish settler population in the occupied territories, already approaching half a million, not only continues to grow but is growing at a rate three times greater than the rate of Israel’s population increase. If the current rate continues, the settler population will double to almost 1 million people in just 12 years. Many are heavily armed and ideologically driven, unlikely to walk away voluntarily from the land they have declared to be their God-given home.
These facts alone render the status of the peace process academic.
At no time since the negotiations began in the early 1990s has Israel significantly suspended the settlement process in the occupied Palestinian territories, in stark violation of international law. It preceded last November’s Annapolis summit by announcing the fresh expropriation of Palestinian property in the West Bank; it followed the summit by announcing the expansion of its Har Homa settlement by an additional 307 housing units; and it has announced plans for hundreds more in other settlements since then.
The Israelis are not settling the occupied territories because they lack space in Israel itself. They are settling the land because of a long-standing belief that Jews are entitled to it simply by virtue of being Jewish. “The land of Israel belongs to the nation of Israel and only to the nation of Israel,” declares Moledet, one of the parties in the National Union bloc, which has a significant presence in the Israeli parliament.
Moledet’s position is not as far removed from that of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as some Israelis claim. Although Olmert says he believes in theory that Israel should give up those parts of the West Bank and Gaza densely inhabited by Palestinians, he also said in 2006 that “every hill in Samaria and every valley in Judea is part of our historic homeland” and that “we firmly stand by the historic right of the people of Israel to the entire land of Israel.”
Judea and Samaria: These ancient biblical terms are still used by Israeli officials to refer to the West Bank. More than 10 years after the initiation of the Oslo peace process, which was supposed to lead to a two-state solution, maps in Israeli textbooks continued to show not the West Bank but Judea and Samaria — and not as occupied territories but as integral parts of Israel.
What room is there for the Palestinians in this vision of Jewish entitlement to the land? None. They are regarded, at best, as a demographic “problem.”
The idea of Palestinians as a “problem” is hardly new. Israel was created as a Jewish state in 1948 only by the premeditated and forcible removal of as much of the indigenous Palestinian population as possible, in what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, which they commemorate this week.
A Jewish state, says Israeli historian Benny Morris, “would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. … There was no choice but to expel that population.” For Morris, this was one of those “circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.”
Thinking of Palestinians as a “problem” to be removed predates 1948. It was there from the moment the Zionist movement set into motion the project to make a Jewish state in a land that, in 1917 — when the British empire officially endorsed Zionism — had an overwhelmingly non-Jewish population. The only Jewish member of the British government at the time, Edwin Montagu, vehemently opposed the Zionist project as unjust. Henry King and Charles Crane, dispatched on a fact-finding mission to Palestine by President Wilson, concurred: Such a project would require enormous violence, they warned: “Decisions, requiring armies to carry out, are sometimes necessary, but they are surely not gratuitously to be taken in the interests of a serious injustice.”
But they were. This is a conflict driven from its origins by Zionism’s exclusive sense of entitlement to the land. Has there been Palestinian violence as well? Yes. Is it always justified? No. But what would you do if someone told you that there was no room for you on your own land, that your very existence is a “problem”? No people in history has ever gone away just because another people wanted them to, and the sentiments of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull live on among Palestinians to this day.
The violence will end, and a just peace will come, only when each side realizes that the other is there to stay. Many Palestinians have accepted this premise, and an increasing number are willing to give up on the idea of an independent Palestinian state and embrace instead the concept of a single democratic, secular and multicultural state, which they would share equally with Israeli Jews.
Most Israelis are not yet reconciled this position. Some, no doubt, are reluctant to give up on the idea of a “Jewish state,” to acknowledge the reality that Israel has never been exclusively Jewish, and that, from the start, the idea of privileging members of one group over all other citizens has been fundamentally undemocratic and unfair.
Yet that is exactly what Israel does. Even among its citizens, Israeli law grants rights to Jews that it denies to non-Jews. By no stretch of the imagination is Israel a genuine democracy: It is an ethno-religiously exclusive state that has tried to defy the multicultural history of the land on which it was founded.
To resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, Israeli Jews will have to relinquish their exclusive privileges and acknowledge the right of return of Palestinians expelled from their homes. What they would get in return is the ability to live securely and to prosper with — rather than continuing to battle against — the Palestinians.
They may not have a choice. As Olmert himself warned recently, more Palestinians are shifting their struggle from one for an independent state to a South African-style struggle that demands equal rights for all citizens, irrespective of religion, in a single state. “That is, of course,” he noted, “a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle — and ultimately a much more powerful one.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA and the author of “Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation,” out this month from W.W. Norton.
© 2008 Los Angeles Times
by the Los Angeles Times
Forget the Two-State Solution
Israelis and Palestinians Must Share the Land. Equally.
By Saree Makdisi
There is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forget the endless arguments about who offered what and who spurned whom and whether the Oslo peace process died when Yasser Arafat walked away from the bargaining table or whether it was Ariel Sharon’s stroll through the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that did it in.
All that matters are the facts on the ground, of which the most important is that — after four decades of intensive Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories it occupied during the 1967 war — Israel has irreversibly cemented its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state might have been created.
Sixty years after Israel was created and Palestine was destroyed, then, we are back to where we started: Two populations inhabiting one piece of land. And if the land cannot be divided, it must be shared. Equally.
This is a position, I realize, which may take many Americans by surprise. After years of pursuing a two-state solution, and feeling perhaps that the conflict had nearly been solved, it’s hard to give up the idea as unworkable.
But unworkable it is. A report published last summer by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that almost 40% of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure — roads, settlements, military bases and so on — largely off-limits to Palestinians. Israel has methodically broken the remainder of the territory into dozens of enclaves separated from each other and the outside world by zones that it alone controls (including, at last count, 612 checkpoints and roadblocks).
Moreover, according to the report, the Jewish settler population in the occupied territories, already approaching half a million, not only continues to grow but is growing at a rate three times greater than the rate of Israel’s population increase. If the current rate continues, the settler population will double to almost 1 million people in just 12 years. Many are heavily armed and ideologically driven, unlikely to walk away voluntarily from the land they have declared to be their God-given home.
These facts alone render the status of the peace process academic.
At no time since the negotiations began in the early 1990s has Israel significantly suspended the settlement process in the occupied Palestinian territories, in stark violation of international law. It preceded last November’s Annapolis summit by announcing the fresh expropriation of Palestinian property in the West Bank; it followed the summit by announcing the expansion of its Har Homa settlement by an additional 307 housing units; and it has announced plans for hundreds more in other settlements since then.
The Israelis are not settling the occupied territories because they lack space in Israel itself. They are settling the land because of a long-standing belief that Jews are entitled to it simply by virtue of being Jewish. “The land of Israel belongs to the nation of Israel and only to the nation of Israel,” declares Moledet, one of the parties in the National Union bloc, which has a significant presence in the Israeli parliament.
Moledet’s position is not as far removed from that of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as some Israelis claim. Although Olmert says he believes in theory that Israel should give up those parts of the West Bank and Gaza densely inhabited by Palestinians, he also said in 2006 that “every hill in Samaria and every valley in Judea is part of our historic homeland” and that “we firmly stand by the historic right of the people of Israel to the entire land of Israel.”
Judea and Samaria: These ancient biblical terms are still used by Israeli officials to refer to the West Bank. More than 10 years after the initiation of the Oslo peace process, which was supposed to lead to a two-state solution, maps in Israeli textbooks continued to show not the West Bank but Judea and Samaria — and not as occupied territories but as integral parts of Israel.
What room is there for the Palestinians in this vision of Jewish entitlement to the land? None. They are regarded, at best, as a demographic “problem.”
The idea of Palestinians as a “problem” is hardly new. Israel was created as a Jewish state in 1948 only by the premeditated and forcible removal of as much of the indigenous Palestinian population as possible, in what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, which they commemorate this week.
A Jewish state, says Israeli historian Benny Morris, “would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. … There was no choice but to expel that population.” For Morris, this was one of those “circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.”
Thinking of Palestinians as a “problem” to be removed predates 1948. It was there from the moment the Zionist movement set into motion the project to make a Jewish state in a land that, in 1917 — when the British empire officially endorsed Zionism — had an overwhelmingly non-Jewish population. The only Jewish member of the British government at the time, Edwin Montagu, vehemently opposed the Zionist project as unjust. Henry King and Charles Crane, dispatched on a fact-finding mission to Palestine by President Wilson, concurred: Such a project would require enormous violence, they warned: “Decisions, requiring armies to carry out, are sometimes necessary, but they are surely not gratuitously to be taken in the interests of a serious injustice.”
But they were. This is a conflict driven from its origins by Zionism’s exclusive sense of entitlement to the land. Has there been Palestinian violence as well? Yes. Is it always justified? No. But what would you do if someone told you that there was no room for you on your own land, that your very existence is a “problem”? No people in history has ever gone away just because another people wanted them to, and the sentiments of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull live on among Palestinians to this day.
The violence will end, and a just peace will come, only when each side realizes that the other is there to stay. Many Palestinians have accepted this premise, and an increasing number are willing to give up on the idea of an independent Palestinian state and embrace instead the concept of a single democratic, secular and multicultural state, which they would share equally with Israeli Jews.
Most Israelis are not yet reconciled this position. Some, no doubt, are reluctant to give up on the idea of a “Jewish state,” to acknowledge the reality that Israel has never been exclusively Jewish, and that, from the start, the idea of privileging members of one group over all other citizens has been fundamentally undemocratic and unfair.
Yet that is exactly what Israel does. Even among its citizens, Israeli law grants rights to Jews that it denies to non-Jews. By no stretch of the imagination is Israel a genuine democracy: It is an ethno-religiously exclusive state that has tried to defy the multicultural history of the land on which it was founded.
To resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, Israeli Jews will have to relinquish their exclusive privileges and acknowledge the right of return of Palestinians expelled from their homes. What they would get in return is the ability to live securely and to prosper with — rather than continuing to battle against — the Palestinians.
They may not have a choice. As Olmert himself warned recently, more Palestinians are shifting their struggle from one for an independent state to a South African-style struggle that demands equal rights for all citizens, irrespective of religion, in a single state. “That is, of course,” he noted, “a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle — and ultimately a much more powerful one.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA and the author of “Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation,” out this month from W.W. Norton.
© 2008 Los Angeles Times
Let's be done with all the Talanskys
Last update - 02:30 11/05/2008
Let's be done with all the Talanskys
By Gideon Levy
Revealing the identity of the primary witness, Morris Talansky, in the lastest Ehud Olmert affair raises questions that go beyond the prime minister. Serious questions need to be asked about the relationship between American Jewry and Israel.
Granted, Talansky is a mere individual, but he is not the only one. Jerusalem is full of wheeler-dealers, functionaries, lobbyists, donors and philanthropists. There are rich men and middlemen, envoys and delegations, many of them with good intentions, but some without.
They wheedle and schnorr and contribute to various causes. It's the kind of schnorring that begins with Shaare Zedek Medical Center and could end in court. The question here is why did Talansky, or any other Jewish American, invest, allegedly, in Olmert? What do they receive in exchange for this pot stirring?
It's time to reorganize the system, to air out the relationship between the world's largest and second-largest Jewish community - a relationship that has long become distorted and even harmful. It is time to say to the American Jews directly, as is customary among relatives: Leave us alone. Take your hands off Israel. Stop using your money to buy influence in Israel. Stop "contributing" to advance your interests and views, some of which are at times delusionary and extremely dangerous to the future of the country you're supposedly trying to protect.
No thank you, we're doing all right. No thank you, some of you are causing us great damage. If you want to wield influence, do it in your own country. You have a lot of power and influence there. Perhaps too much; it's none of our business. You are American, not Israeli citizens, and no amount of money can or should change this fact. War and peace, social justice and government, education and religion in Israel are a matter for its citizens alone.
Our door should of course remain open to visits, immigration and displays of interest. But the extent of American Jewry's intervention in our affairs has long become intolerable. It's time to show them the door - the one that separates them from us.
Israeli politicians from all parties engage in an overly close rapport with American Jews, and of course, their money. The American Jewish establishment may support all Israeli governments blindly and automatically - this, too, is inexplicable and raises weighty questions. But under the official countenance of not intervening in our internal affairs, they have a thumb in every pie.
Sixty years old, economically sound, enjoying the great superpower's massive support, which is unequalled worldwide - Israel is strong and mature enough to manage without the interference of American Jewry.
The name of the game, of course, is money. Everything is about money, even if it is concealed under a pile of cliches and promises. From the prime minister to the mayor of a remote town, from hospital director to community center manager - all look to Jewish-American money. That's a guarantee for unhealthy relations. If it could be justified in the state's early days, when everything was still new, it no longer has place in a 60-year-old state that can and should build its own community centers and avoid the price it will be charged for schnorring. We are dealing with an impatient, aggressive Jewish community, whose aggression is reflected in its relations with Israel.
In many areas the damage is direct and considerable. The settlements in the territories, for example, would not have thrived and grown had it not been for the big money flowing from American Jews. A Ynet investigation released around two years ago found that American Jews sent $100 million to the settlements in the past decade.
Dozens of Jewish associations foster and finance the most nefarious project we've ever had here, from the One Israel Fund to the Hebron Fund, from American Friends of Ateret Cohanim to Shuvu Banim. They are all fattening the settlements, some openly and others under the table.
By so doing the Jews are helping to shape and mutilate another state. It's not only money: The loud, blatant Jewish right wing, which crushes any display of a different opinion in America, is trying to do the same in Israel. Camera, a McCarthyist group that persecutes journalists in the United States, is directing its absurd persecution and slander campaigns against the Israeli media as well. That is also part of the distorted relationship.
The contribution of American Jewry to Israel may on balance be positive. They financed and built for us quite heavily; we in turn offered them a safe haven and a source of pride. Neither side of this equation is relevant any longer. We no longer need their money, certainly not at the price of their interference, and it is doubtful we can still offer them that haven or pride. Let's part as friends, then. Let American Jews attend to their own business, and us to ours. And let's be done with any more Talanskys.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/982102.html
Let's be done with all the Talanskys
By Gideon Levy
Revealing the identity of the primary witness, Morris Talansky, in the lastest Ehud Olmert affair raises questions that go beyond the prime minister. Serious questions need to be asked about the relationship between American Jewry and Israel.
Granted, Talansky is a mere individual, but he is not the only one. Jerusalem is full of wheeler-dealers, functionaries, lobbyists, donors and philanthropists. There are rich men and middlemen, envoys and delegations, many of them with good intentions, but some without.
They wheedle and schnorr and contribute to various causes. It's the kind of schnorring that begins with Shaare Zedek Medical Center and could end in court. The question here is why did Talansky, or any other Jewish American, invest, allegedly, in Olmert? What do they receive in exchange for this pot stirring?
It's time to reorganize the system, to air out the relationship between the world's largest and second-largest Jewish community - a relationship that has long become distorted and even harmful. It is time to say to the American Jews directly, as is customary among relatives: Leave us alone. Take your hands off Israel. Stop using your money to buy influence in Israel. Stop "contributing" to advance your interests and views, some of which are at times delusionary and extremely dangerous to the future of the country you're supposedly trying to protect.
No thank you, we're doing all right. No thank you, some of you are causing us great damage. If you want to wield influence, do it in your own country. You have a lot of power and influence there. Perhaps too much; it's none of our business. You are American, not Israeli citizens, and no amount of money can or should change this fact. War and peace, social justice and government, education and religion in Israel are a matter for its citizens alone.
Our door should of course remain open to visits, immigration and displays of interest. But the extent of American Jewry's intervention in our affairs has long become intolerable. It's time to show them the door - the one that separates them from us.
Israeli politicians from all parties engage in an overly close rapport with American Jews, and of course, their money. The American Jewish establishment may support all Israeli governments blindly and automatically - this, too, is inexplicable and raises weighty questions. But under the official countenance of not intervening in our internal affairs, they have a thumb in every pie.
Sixty years old, economically sound, enjoying the great superpower's massive support, which is unequalled worldwide - Israel is strong and mature enough to manage without the interference of American Jewry.
The name of the game, of course, is money. Everything is about money, even if it is concealed under a pile of cliches and promises. From the prime minister to the mayor of a remote town, from hospital director to community center manager - all look to Jewish-American money. That's a guarantee for unhealthy relations. If it could be justified in the state's early days, when everything was still new, it no longer has place in a 60-year-old state that can and should build its own community centers and avoid the price it will be charged for schnorring. We are dealing with an impatient, aggressive Jewish community, whose aggression is reflected in its relations with Israel.
In many areas the damage is direct and considerable. The settlements in the territories, for example, would not have thrived and grown had it not been for the big money flowing from American Jews. A Ynet investigation released around two years ago found that American Jews sent $100 million to the settlements in the past decade.
Dozens of Jewish associations foster and finance the most nefarious project we've ever had here, from the One Israel Fund to the Hebron Fund, from American Friends of Ateret Cohanim to Shuvu Banim. They are all fattening the settlements, some openly and others under the table.
By so doing the Jews are helping to shape and mutilate another state. It's not only money: The loud, blatant Jewish right wing, which crushes any display of a different opinion in America, is trying to do the same in Israel. Camera, a McCarthyist group that persecutes journalists in the United States, is directing its absurd persecution and slander campaigns against the Israeli media as well. That is also part of the distorted relationship.
The contribution of American Jewry to Israel may on balance be positive. They financed and built for us quite heavily; we in turn offered them a safe haven and a source of pride. Neither side of this equation is relevant any longer. We no longer need their money, certainly not at the price of their interference, and it is doubtful we can still offer them that haven or pride. Let's part as friends, then. Let American Jews attend to their own business, and us to ours. And let's be done with any more Talanskys.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/982102.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)