Haaretz Publishes Fraudulent Ad Supporting Settler Price Tag Attacks with Forged Peace Activist Names

There is a brewing media scandal in Israel that has received scant attention.  Let’s try to change that.  Earlier this week, a fictitious settler group published an ad in Haaretz supporting price tag attacks.  One point they made in their support was the claim that price tag attacks are civil disobedience in the same sense that Ilana Hammerman’s group, We Do Not Obey, is.  She is the activist who began a protest movement by driving Palestinian mothers and children from the West Bank into Israel in order to take them to the beach, amusement parks, zoos, etc.  For her efforts, she’s been rewarded by three police summonses for questioning including a warning of criminal prosecution.  It is illegal both for Palestinians to enter Israel without proper permits and it is illegal for Israeli citizens to bring such individuals into Israel.

We Do Not Obey acts in ways that are totally non-violent and designed to promote tolerance and peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians while price tag is a violent, abusive and illegal form, not of civil disobedience, but of hooliganism and even terror.  The very comparison of the two is an act of outrageous chutzpah.

What is even more shocking about the ad than the bogus logic of the argument offered in it, is the fact that the ad purported to be signed by settler women who support the price tag acts of vandalism and defacement of Palestinian mosques, cemeteries, etc.  It also listed the purported settlements in which each endorser lived.  In reality, every woman’s name included in the ad is a member of Ilana Hammerman’s group of peace activists.  In other words, the individual who created the ad engaged in an act of fraud and Haaretz abetted the fraud by accepting the ad and asking no questions to verify the authenticity of those names.  Nor did it verify the authenticity of the fake group which purported to sponsor the ad.

Further, after Haaretz discovered it had been duped, it notified Hammerman that it would no longer accept any op-ed pieces by her about her work with We Do Not Obey (as it had in the past).  It appears that Haaretz, instead of blaming the person who perpetrated the fraud, is washing its hands of Hammerman and her entire movement.  A clear case if there ever was one of blaming the victim.  Instead of showing respect for fairness and freedom of speech, and apologizing for their error in helping defame these women, Haaretz takes a typically liberal approach and absconds from the entire controversy.

We now know who is the author of the fraud.  He is Benny Katzover, a notorious settler activist.  Here is the audio transcript of the interview in which he took credit for the ad.  Among his recent claims to fame (or better yet, infamy) is an interview he published in a Chabad journal, claiming the Israeli democracy had outlived its usefulness and should give way to a state governed by Jewish law (“We didn’t come here to establish a democratic state”).  Does anyone besides me find it ironic (or possibly sociopathic) that a radical settler who rejects Israeli democracy defends price tag attacks as legitimate forms of civil disobedience?

We don’t know who paid for the $1,000-1,500 cost of the ad.  Haaretz knows, but I doubt they’re going to tell.  A source I’ve consulted who is knowledgeable about the story believes that the funding came from either a settlement or a settler agency, which may mean that the State itself paid for the ad (either directly or indirectly).  In fact, a statement on the group’s Facebook page declares the ad was likely paid for through public funds.  This would mean that this act of fraud was actually endorsed and paid for by a government entity and the taxpayers of Israel.  Further, it would mean that public funds were used to endorse the acts of hooliganism and lawlessness represented by the price tag movement.  In the event that this claim is true, it would mean that while Israel’s leaders are publicly decrying price tag pogromism, other parts of the Israeli government or its public agencies are actually endorsing it.  Does this surprise anyone?

It also shouldn’t surprise anyone the government would smear Hammerman since her activism is considered a prime example of delegitimization, the right-wing concept du jour.  Yuli Edelstein’s Hasbara ministry is charged with combatting delegitimization and Edelstein himself is a prominent settler leader.  It wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility that his agency could’ve played some role in the attack, though I’m still exploring this angle of the story.

The women of We Do Not Obey have been consulting an attorney to decide how to proceed.  It’s ironic that the draconian proposed defamation law that may shortly pass the Knesset and become law would greatly aid these women in their pursuit of justice.  It would allow them to personally win substantial financial compensation of up to $75,000 each (for 40 women) from Katzover without having to prove any financial damage to them.  The Israeli far-right devised this cockamamie law to use against the Israeli NGO and peace activist community.  It never occurred to them that it could be used against them as well by the Israeli left.  That’s how smart these dullards are.

Source: http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2012/01/16/haaretz-publishes-fraudulent-ad-supporting-settler-price-tag-attacks-signs-names-of-peace-activists/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+richardsilverstein%2FZOfh+%28+Tikun+Olam-%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%9F+%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9D%3A+Make+the+World+a+Better+Place%29

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

1. Settlements are illegal under international law as they violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of the occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory. This illegality has been confirmed by the International Court of Justice, the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention and the United Nations Security Council.

2. Seizure of land for settlement building and future expansion has resulted in the shrinking of space available for Palestinians to sustain their livelihoods and develop adequate housing, basic infrastructure and services. Settlement expansion plans have led to extensive demolitions of Palestinian homes and the forcible displacement of people.

3. The failure to respect international law, along with the lack of adequate law enforcement vis-à-vis settler violence and takeover of land has led to a state of impunity, which encourages further violence and undermines the physical security and livelihoods of Palestinians. Those protesting settlement expansion or access restrictions imposed for the benefit of settlements (including the Barrier) are regularly exposed to injury and arrest by Israeli forces.

4. Israeli civil law is de facto applied to all settlers and settlements across the occupied West Bank, while Israeli military law is applied to Palestinians, except in East Jerusalem, which was officially annexed to Israel. As a result, two separate legal systems and sets of rights are applied by the same authority in the same area, depending on the national origin of the persons, discriminating against Palestinians.

5. Continuing settlement construction, expansion and encroachment on Palestinian land is an integral part of the ongoing fragmentation of the West Bank, including the isolation of East Jerusalem. This fragmentation undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, which is to be realized with the creation of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state alongside Israel.

AT THIS POINT I WAS ORDERED TO STOP SPEAKING

TALK FOR THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES, DECEMBER 7, 2011 - SUNY Nassau Community College on Long Island

Mr. Chair, Mr. President, Members of the Board:

My name is Barry and I am addicted to the truth. I am a professor of English and coordinator of Jewish Studies.

I was raised in an atmosphere which had zero tolerance for lies and hypocrisy and maximum distrust of power.   You see, we lived in a period of great tension in which J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, told us school children that there were communists among us and they looked just like you and me.  But the message was redundant and unnecessary since we already knew that: they were our friends and relatives.  And they suffered for their beliefs.

What, you may ask, would create this atmosphere of vigilance on all sides, those who tenaciously supported the existing order as well as those who tenaciously clung to the vision that that order would be overthrown to be replaced by pure economic and social democracy, a classless society?

The answer is that we took two different messages from the war which had ended just before our childhood, WWII.  Those on the right gathered that the threat from Hitler had been the general threat of totalitarianism everywhere, of Big Brother, and that we were therefore obligated to eternal vigilance against the totalitarianism of our day, no matter what the cost.  But those on the left ascertained that Hitler had come to power in the traditional capitalist manner:  manipulating the buying public, buying cheap and selling dear.  They focused on his method of using nationalism, ‚Äúservice,‚Äù and ‚Äúduty‚Äù to the Homeland to justify setting classes against one another and sparking a crusade against ‚Äúracial inferiors‚Äù which ultimately led to the genocide known as the Holocaust.

Hitler became the paradigm for all monstrous evil.  But one thing all of us caught the gist of:  Hitler demanded and got total control over the means of communication. [NOTE: AT THIS POINT I WAS ORDERED TO STOP SPEAKING AND SIT DOWN.]  In his regime the media were reduced to puppetry; they were tamed parrots of the state, of the SS, of the Nazi Party.  As for those who disagreed, they were quickly eliminated first by being objectified and then by being executed.  The first step was the muzzling of free speech; all else followed.  As Heinrich Heine had said a century earlier, ‚Äúwhere they burn books now they will someday burn people.‚Äù  And so it was!

Members of the Board, we see the same first step being taken by the administration you have hired and rehired,the muzzling of today‚Äôs organ of free speech, email.  Pres. Astrab tells us that the argumentative and unreasonable interchanges on the campus intranet are somehow connected with threatening and even criminal activity.  Alas, absent any substantive proof, we can only view this explanation as an excuse for shutting us down, as the Reichstag fire was an excuse, as the staged Polish attack on the German border post was an excuse.  And most of us now know that the ‚ÄúSaint‚Äù Oskar Schindler was the businessman who provided the props for the ‚ÄúPolish attack‚Äù escapade, which led immediately to the greatest war in history.  Corporate greed, unless and until put aside in favor of humanity, can lead to this!

But threats to our basic liberties do not have to pass through Hollywood central casting.   Those who seek to muzzle free and open discussion of the issues vital to our professional, personal, and civic lives do not have to dress in black or brown and wear swastika armbands.    They can wear suits and speak the language of American corporate business.  But when they act to cut our tongues out, the result is the same as if they had been wearing the swastika and giving the stiff-arm salute!

Thank you,  Members of the Board.  You saluted the American flag before starting your session, the flag that stands for freedom of thought, speech, press, and peaceful assembly.  I know you will agree that these sacredrights should be upheld, by any means necessary!    I salute them!  I hope that you do too! 

Barry Fruchter

No freedom in the land of false prophets

I ask, how can the Jewish state find freedom as occupier?

Two occupations have eaten Israel where mosques burn and a faux Museum

Sits on desecrated Muslim tombs. They call it Museum of Tolerance, I call it

Muslim cleansing, killer of those deemed inferior.

False prophets, destroyer of 800.000 olive and citrus plants, subjugation.

Collective abuse, fishermen attacked likes vermin by Israeli killer boats.

Apartheid! Word we dare not whisper, write or speak.

Condemned by true believers, the Zionist story makes one shudder.

I’ve heard the racist words before, when Jews were driven from their homes and vilified.

Now I hear it all again from a big Rabbi contender for The Jewish Heroes competition.

Asked how Jews should treat their neighbors he said:

“The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way. Destroy the holy sites,

Kill men, women children and cattle.”

I remember another time, “No Jews Allowed.” Germany nearly succeeded.

Now false prophets decree Arabs not allowed, a Zionist story.

No Palestinians to live life with dignity for “We” are the chosen people.

It’s written in the Old Testament.

Lillian Rosengarten 11/29/11

The necessary elimination of Israeli democracy

Haaretz  

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/the-necessary-elimination-of-israeli-democracy-1.397625

Published 08:20 25.11.11 Latest update 08:20 25.11.11

The necessary elimination of Israeli democracy

Haaretz publisher and owner Amos Schocken says there is a difference between the apartheid of South Africa and what is happening in Israel and in the territories, but there are also similarities.

By Amos Schocken

Speaking in the Knesset in January 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, "Iran is in the initial stages of an effort to acquire nonconventional capability in general, and nuclear capability in particular. Our assessment is that Iran today has the appropriate manpower and sufficient resources to acquire nuclear arms within 10 years. Together with others in the international community, we are monitoring Iran's nuclear activity. They are not concealing the fact that the possibility that Iran will possess nuclear weapons is worrisome, and this is one of the reasons that we must take advantage of the window of opportunity and advance toward peace."

At that time, Israel had a strategy - which began to be implemented in the Oslo accords, put an end to the priority granted the settlement project and aimed to improve the treatment of Israel's Arab citizens.

If things had gone differently, the Iran issue might look different today. However, as it turned out, the Oslo strategy collided with another, stronger ideology: the ideology of Gush Emunim [Bloc of the Faithful*], which since the 1970s, apart from the Oslo period and the time of the withdrawal from Gaza, has established the concrete basis for the actions of Israel's governments. Even governments that were ostensibly far removed from the Gush Emunim strategy implemented it in practice. Ehud Barak boasted that, in contrast to other prime ministers, he did not return territory to the Palestinians - and there's no need to point out once again the increase in the number of settlers during his tenure. The government of Ehud Olmert, which declared its intention to move toward a policy of hitkansut (or "convergence," another name for what Ariel Sharon termed "disengagement" ) in Judea and Samaria, held talks with senior Palestinians on an agreement but did not stop the settlement enterprise, which conflicts with the possibility of any agreement.

The strategy that follows from the ideology of Gush Emunim is clear and simple: It perceives of the Six-Day War as the continuation of the War of Independence, both in terms of seizure of territory, and in its impact on the Palestinian population. According to this strategy, the occupation boundaries of the Six-Day War are the borders that Israel must set for itself. And with regard to the Palestinians living in that territory - those who did not flee or were not expelled - they must be subjected to a harsh regime that will encourage their flight, eventuate in their expulsion, deprive them of their rights, and bring about a situation in which those who remain will not be even second-class citizens, and their fate will be of interest to no one. They will be like the Palestinian refugees of the War of Independence; that is their desired status. As for those who are not refugees, an attempt should be made to turn them into "absentees." Unlike the Palestinians who remained in Israel after the War of Independence, the Palestinians in the territories should not receive Israeli citizenship, owing to their large number, but then this, too, should be of interest to no one.

The ideology of Gush Emunim springs from religious, not political motivations. It holds that Israel is for the Jews, and it is not only the Palestinians in the territories who are irrelevant: Israel's Palestinian citizens are also exposed to discrimination with regard to their civil rights and the revocation of their citizenship.

This is a strategy of territorial seizure and apartheid. It ignores judicial aspects of territorial ownership and shuns human rights and the guarantees of equality enshrined in Israel's Declaration of Independence. It is a strategy of unlimited patience; what is important is the unrelenting progress toward the goal. At the same time, it is a strategy that does not pass up any opportunity that comes its way, such as the composition of the present Knesset and the unclear positions of the prime minister.

The term "apartheid" refers to the undemocratic system of discriminating between the rights of the whites and the blacks, which once existed in South Africa. Even though there is a difference between the apartheid that was practiced there and what is happening in the territories, there are also some points of resemblance. There are two population groups in one region, one of which possesses all the rights and protections, while the other is deprived of rights and is ruled by the first group. This is a flagrantly undemocratic situation.

Since the Six-Day War, there has been no other group in Israel with the ideological resilience of Gush Emunim, and it is not surprising that many politicians have viewed that ideology as a means for realizing personal political ambitions. Zevulun Hammer, who identified this ideology as the way to capture the leadership of the National Religious Party, and Ariel Sharon, who identified this ideology as the way to capture the leadership of Likud, were only two of many. Now Avigdor Lieberman, too, is following this path, but there were and are others, such as the late Hanan Porat, for whom the realization of this ideology was and remains the purpose of their political activity.

This ideology views the creation of an Israeli apartheid regime as a necessary tool for its realization. It has no difficulty with illegal actions and with outright criminality, because it rests on mega-laws that it has adopted and that have no connection with the laws of the state, and because it rests on a perverted interpretation of Judaism. It has scored crucial successes. Even when actions inspired by the Gush Emunim ideology conflict with the will of the government, they still quickly win the backing of the government. The fact that the government is effectively a tool of Gush Emunim and its successors is apparent to everyone who has dealings with the settlers, creating a situation of force multiplication.

This ideology has enjoyed immense success in the United States, of all places. President George H.W. Bush was able to block financial guarantees to Israel because of the settlements established by the government of Yitzhak Shamir (who said lying was permissible to realize the Gush Emunim ideology. Was Benjamin Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan University speech a lie of this kind? ). Now, though, candidates for the Republican Party's presidential nomination are competing among themselves over which of them supports Israel and the occupation more forcefully. Any of them who adopt the approach of the first President Bush will likely put an end to their candidacy.

Whatever the reason for this state of affairs - the large number of evangelicals affiliated with the Republican party, the problematic nature of the West's relations with Islam, or the power of the Jewish lobby, which is totally addicted to the Gush Emunim ideology - the result is clear: It is not easy, and may be impossible, for an American president to adopt an activist policy against Israeli apartheid.

Legalizing the illegal

Because of its inherent illegality, at least in democratic terms, an apartheid regime cannot allow opposition and criticism. The Gush Emunim ideology is obliged to eliminate the latter, and to prevent every effort to block its activity, even if that activity is illegal and even criminal, meant to maintain apartheid. The illegal activity needs to be made legal, whether by amending laws or by changing their judicial interpretation - such things have occurred before, in other places and at other times.

Against this background, we are now seeing the campaign of legislation against, and the unbridled slandering of the Supreme Court, against human rights organizations and against the press, as well as the so-called boycott law, which is aimed at preventing the possibility of dealing with Israeli apartheid in the way South African apartheid was dealt with. It is against this same background that legislation has been submitted that is directed against the Arab citizens in Israel, such as the Loyalty Law and the proposal for a "Basic Law of Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People." It is against this background that a campaign of incitement and intimidation is being waged against the necessary and justified critique being voiced by members of academia.

The Supreme Court, which permitted the settlement project and effectively collaborated with the Gush Emunim ideology, has now become an obstacle that needs to be removed - in the eyes of those who still adhere to that ideology - primarily because the court refuses to recognize the possibility of settling on privately owned Palestinian land and did not overturn the government decision to evacuate the settlements in the Gaza Strip. Because the land belongs to the Jews by divine decree and history (from this perspective, there are similarities between Gush Emunim and Hamas ), there is no choice but to elect to the Supreme Court justices who live on Palestinian land, possibly private land, and those who understand that there is no such thing as "land under private Palestinian ownership."

Similarly, this line of thinking goes, the Supreme Court's interpretation of human rights laws also requires its elimination in its present format. Judgments such as those relating to the Kaadan family (allowing an Arab family to build a home in a Jewish community ); the selling of Jewish National Fund land to Arab citizens of Israel; the amendment to the Citizenship Law (no ruling has yet been handed down, but there seems to be a possibility that a majority of justices will rule it illegal ); the opening of a highway to Palestinian traffic - all these rulings conflict with essential elements in Gush Emunim ideology: the discrimination between Jews and Palestinians (in Israel and the territories ) and the deprivation of the Palestinians' rights, which transform them into second-class people, absentees or, best of all, refugees.

Does an Israel of this kind have a future? Over and beyond the question of whether Jewish morality and the Jewish experience allow such circumstances to exist, it is clear that this is a flagrantly unstable and even dangerous situation. It is a situation that will prevent Israel from fully realizing its vast potential, a situation of living by the sword - a sword that could be a third intifada, the collapse of peace with Egypt and a confrontation with a nuclear Iran. Yitzhak Rabin understood that.

    

(*)Gush Emunim

Gush Emunim ( Block [of the] faithful) is an Israeli messianic and political movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank (biblical Judea and Samaria). The movement sprang out of the conquests of the Six-Day War in 1967, though it was not formally established as an organization until 1974, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. It encouraged Jewish settlement of the land Judaism maintains God gave to the Jewish people, according to the Torah.

To the Editor:

Are the Jewish State of Israel and the American Jews who blindly support Israel contributing to the rise in anti-semitism (recently reported by the Anti-Defamation League)? It is sometimes difficult, even for those of us who are Jewish, to make a clear distinction between Israel and Jewishness. It is, after all, not simply Israel, but it is the "Jewish" State of Israel. Israel's behavior is brutal; engaging in land theft, assassination, torture, and human rights violations. Israel's behavior is belligerent; establishing aggressive, illegal settlements, and refusing to negotiate. Israel's behavior is bellicose; threatening to attack Iran (while Israel maintains 200--400 nuclear warheads in it's own arsenal). Clearly, world opinion expressed through the UN rejects and condemns Israel's illegal and immoral behavior. Unfortunately, many American Jews and organizations continue to support Israel's self-destructive path towards delegitimization, isolation, and potential extinction. With American Jews cheerleading Israel's flagrant violations of human rights and thuggish suppression of Palestinians and those who would help Palestinians (like the Freedom Boats to Gaza) is it any wonder that the specter of ugly and dangerous anti-semitism and anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise?

Eli Kassirer

Letter to a friend

I absolutely saw no antisemitism in the Freedom Plaza "Stop the Machine" occupation and actions in Washington DC or in the Occupy Wall Street actions Saturday in NYC. I certainly would have been appalled had I witnessed any.  I have absolutely zero tolerance for that kind of shit, as do my friends and colleagues in progressive causes.

I became aware yesterday, however, of a conservative link http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/wall-street-protests-antisemitism/2011/10/18/id/414817?s=al&promo_code=D48A-1 documenting some instances of antisemitism with the Occupy movements around the country. Some of the instances featured in that link are indeed troublesome--even disgusting (harassing a Jewish person, for example), but I personally saw nothing of the sort.

I will say that a couple of the instances on that link that are labeled antisemitism I would not label such: support for Palestinians in the West Bank or in Gaza, support for the flotillas to Gaza, denunciations of aggressive, expansionistic Israeli Zionist policies (such as the expanded Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and/or the demolition of Palestinian homes). I believe it is possible to denounce such inhuman policies, to be very critical of the Zionist project, without being antisemitic. (I refer you to an interview with a former Israeli Minister of Education for insights about the glib accusations of antisemitism in http://flagindistress.com/2011/09/former-israeli-minister-of-education-shulamit-aloni-discusses-how-to-use-the-charge-of-antisemitism/>http://flagindistress.com/2011/09/former-israeli-minister-of-education-shulamit-aloni-discusses-how-to-use-the-charge-of-antisemitism

I am deeply troubled by the clearly antisemitic instances featured in the conservative newsmax link in my second paragraph, and I would like to know more about it. What have you seen that led you to write your note about the "number of anti-Semites"? Though I have not seen such ugly things myself, I do not doubt their possibility. That said, I have my suspicions when or if the source of these accusations are Fox News or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or other such.

I was part of an action at the Air and Space Museum in DC where a provocateur stirred up trouble (pushing a museum guard), making it seem that we are not as nonviolent as we claim. I've heard of several other cases of provocateurs (a la Andrew Breitbart) infiltrating us. I would not be surprised (and, of course, would be relieved) if the truly antisemitic instances were actually acts of provocateurs.

That said, I acknowledge that we Wall Street Occupation protestors might very well attract ugly "allies" in our ranks. I recently unfriended a Facebook "friend" in Egypt (whose comments about the plight of the Palestinians I had liked) after I learned that a "book" he called his inspiration was the fraudulent and forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The original clip of the Minister of Education interview had comments that were disgusting (such as that Hitler didn't finish the job), and I had to find a way to put the very valid interview on my blog without attaching those comments. If ever I encounter any such an "ally," I will be sure to confront him or her.

I lend my support to a local group dedicated to inform people about the Palestinian plight and to counter the overly weighted support our country gives to Israeli policies right-or-wrong: the Middle East Crisis Response http://www.mideastcrisis.org, and I hope you don't mind that I have copied our correspondence with some of my friends in that group. Perhaps they have some insights into this problem of attracting ugly "allies" or of the complete story behind reports of antisemitism.

Thanks for your note and for your valid concerns, Annie. Please keep me posted with documentation about incidents that truly besmirch our good cause.

Your friend,
Allan