Yonatan Shapira, profile in courage

Yonatan Shapira is a former Israeli Air Force helicopter pilot who decided along with several fellow pilots that he could not continue to serve on missions into the occupied territories. He was dismissed from the air force as a result but has continued to work toward justice for the Palestinians.

Recently, he captained the boat carrying about a dozen Jews who attempted to reach Gaza. The boat was taken by Israeli forces before it could reach its destination.

Shapira kept a log of the time he spent on the boat to Gaza. Here is an excerpt I found powerful, particularly in his account of his friend Arik...

Seven years ago on the eve of Rosh Hashana we published what the media called “the pilots’ letter.” In that declaration we announced to the whole nation (yes, we wore flight-suits and were interviewed in the press and on television) that we would refuse to take part in the crimes of the Occupation.

Ten days after that, on the eve of Yom Kippur, we were invited for a talk with the Commander of the Air Force. After he outlined to me his racial theory (in the form of a scale of value of blood, from the Israelis on the top down to the Palestinians at the bottom) he informed me that I was dismissed and that I was no longer a pilot in the Israeli Air Force. Many things have happened since then. Many boats have crossed the Corinthian Canal, many demonstrations and arrests, but mainly, many children have been murdered in Gaza. I remember Arik, a close childhood friend and a combat pilot, who hesitated over whether to sign and to refuse but in the end sincerely informed me that he did not want to give up his wonderful toy, the F-16. At first he still had a little shame about the comfortable choice he had made. Secretly he supported me and admitted that he did not have courage. Seven years passed and today he is still an operational pilot in the reserves, a leader of attack formations in his combat wing and on his hands or wings is the boiling blood of tens of innocent Palestinians and Lebanese, maybe more. The traces of morality that he had are gone now and today Arik will bomb any place at any time, wherever they tell him. That is the beauty of routine. In the end everything looks normal to you: an ordinary man, kind and polite and a good father to his daughters, turns into a mass murderer. I was not a bomber pilot. I flew Blackhawks that are used mainly for rescue missions and to transport personnel. One argument we heard from those who disagreed with us, and especially people from my wing, three members of which signed the letter, was that none of us was asked personally to shoot or to bomb or to assassinate. We replied to that argument by saying that it was not necessary to commit murder in order to say that it is forbidden to commit murder, and that it is easy to say “I just held the stick while the other pilot launched the missile.

Here is the "pilots letter" that Shapira and his fellow refuseniks wrote...

We, Air Force pilots who were raised on the values of Zionism, sacrifice, and contributing to the state of Israel, have always served on the front lines, and were always willing to carry out any mission to defend and strengthen the state of Israel.

We, veteran and active pilots alike, who have served and still serve the state of Israel for long weeks every year, are opposed to carrying out attack orders that are illegal and immoral of the type the state of Israel has been conducting in the territories.

We, who were raised to love the state of Israel and contribute to the Zionist enterprise, refuse to take part in Air Force attacks on civilian population centers. We, for whom the Israel Defense Forces and the Air Force are an inalienable part of ourselves, refuse to continue to harm innocent civilians.

These actions are illegal and immoral, and are a direct result of the ongoing occupation which is corrupting the Israeli society. Perpetuation of the occupation is fatally harming the security of the state of Israel and its moral strength.

"We who serve as active pilots - fighters, leaders, and instructors of the next generation of pilots -- hereby declare that we shall continue to serve in the Israel Defense Forces and the Air Force on every mission in defense of the State of Israel.

There is a YouTube video of Shapira speaking of his decision to refuse military service in the occupied territories.

An audio interview with Shapira about his experience on the recent Gaza blockade running attempt has been done by the Palestinian News Network

American murdered, U.S. silent

Furkan Dorgan, pictured, an American citizen, was 19 years old when he was shot while aboard the Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza Flotilla. My thanks to TruthOut for the following information from the U.N. Fact Finding Mission report on the flotilla.

A few excerpts from TruthOut...boldface mine

The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.

The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground...

...The Turkish government gave the autopsy report on Dogan to the US Embassy in July and it was then passed on to the Department of Justice, according to a US government source who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the administration's policy of silence on the matter. The source said the purpose of obtaining the report was to determine whether an investigation of the killing by the Justice Department (DOJ) was appropriate...

...The administration has not volunteered any comment on the fact-finding mission report and was not asked to do so by any news organization. In response to a query from Truthout, a State Department official, who could not speak on the record, read a statement that did not explicitly acknowledge the report's conclusion about the Israeli executions...

...Although the report's revelations and conclusions about the killing of Dogan and the five other victims were widely reported in the Turkish media last week, not a single story on the report has appeared in US news media.

The administration has made it clear through its inaction and its explicit public posture that it has no intention of pressing the issue of the murder of a US citizen in cold blood by Israeli commandos.

On June 13, two weeks after the Mavi Marmara attack, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying that Israel "should be allowed to undertake an investigation into events that involve its national security" and that Israel's military justice system "meets international standards and is capable of conducting a serious and credible investigation."

So there we have it, another example of the U.S. buttoning up in the same way it did when Israel attacked and attempted to sink the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967. For the U.S. government when it comes to Israel, American lives are expendable.

The first loss, more has followed

Israel above all

One of the remarkable things about Israel in the realm of U.S. foreign policy is that it stands above the rest of the international terrain. The Zionist project is supreme and comes before all other considerations and contenders for U.S. attention. This has remained a constant since 1970 and regardless of the actions of a particular Israeli government.

The investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, wrote a book in 1991 about the development of atomic weapons by Israel, The Samson Option. Well worth reading and bursting with little known facts, this book describes the deliberate effort by each U.S. administration to look the other way in spite of information that would have allowed the U.S. to insist on a stop to nuclear weapons development by Israel. Then, with the nuclear weapons developed, Israel was able to force the United States to send it conventional weapons during the 1973 war by threatening to use those nuclear weapons against the Arabs if the U.S. did not come through. Did this change U.S. policy toward Israel? No.

The reason for this is, as always, the political might of the Israel lobby in the United States and the influence of wealthy donors at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Hersh's story of Abe Feinberg is a perfect example of a fund-raiser so powerful that he is called in before political decisions are made to see if a possible policy change would be acceptable to the lobby.

Also in the book is a detailed account of the espionage of Jonathan Pollard, an American who sent over 500,000 pages of classified U.S. intelligence material to Israel and with the knowledge by Israeli leadership that it was taking place and should continue. Most incredible is that Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir turned over some of the information to the USSR in an attempt to thaw relations between Israel and Russia.

This kind of double dealing is to be expected between nations. What makes the Pollard/Israel case exceptional is that there were no consequences for Israel. Though Pollard was given life in prison, it was still possible to mount a "free Pollard" movement in the U.S. that continues today. At one time, some synagogues had signs up demanding Pollard be freed - U.S. citizens asking that a traitor to the United States be freed! Were Americans in general upset by this? No.

The very idea that the U.S. would even consider freeing a person caught undermining the country with determination for years (Pollard sent everything he could get his hands on) is evidence that Israel is not just another country, but an exception for which the U.S. will jump through hoops. But we know that. And we know it continues to this day, as we see President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton virtually beg Israeli PM Netanyahu to stop settlements - then stand by helplessly when he doesn't.

blogging for change in U.S. policy

There is an excellent new video available at the Palestine Center, an interview/discussion recorded last Thursday in Washington DC called The New Media and the Palestine Question. There are two sessions (morning and afternoon) with two guests each.

Though all of it is worth watching, I realize you likely will not want to devote 3 hours of your time to it. The must see portion runs from 32 minutes in on the second session to the end of the session and features author/blogger Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby and blogger MJ Rosenberg. Both of these men know their subject and are passionate about it. I promise you won't be bored and will be enlightened on the political process that is so difficult and frustrating to re-direct.

The second session can be found by scrolling down to the second Flash player screen

destruction of facts on the ground

I have watched many videos from Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank. It is apparent that Israelis do not consider the Palestinians as equals. This is backed up by the story of a friend, an Irish-American who, while visiting Jerusalem, noticed a female member of the IDF give a gratuitous shove to an elderly Palestinian woman who had passed in front of the soldier.

Shocked at this casual abuse, my friend turned to her fellow tourists and said "did you see that?" They had, but showed little interest. My friend was outraged and followed the soldier to ask her why she had shoved the old woman aside. The soldier answered, "she's just an Arab". Slaveholders in the American Old South would understand.

Israel has been in existence for over 60 years, plenty of time for the indoctrination of several generations. In Israeli schools a national mythology is taught, a story thoroughly refuted by Shlomo Sand as related in a previous post. But mythology, if placed in the head and reinforced, is taken as fact - the very reason that education is so important to nationalism. The principle fact imparted to young Israelis by the national mythology is that they are the only legitimate possessors of the land and the Palestinians are implants to be removed.

This explains much Israeli behavior that, to those of us outside the area, appears antithetical to Judaism. The thing to remember is that Zionism is not Judaism and Israel is a Zionist project. This is why many Jews are at least as appalled by what is being done to the Palestinians by Israelis as I am.

With this deeply implanted contempt of the Palestinians as a theme, consider the outrageous act of cultural destruction that is the demolition of the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem. Could anything be more insulting to a people than to destroy a shrine to their dead? Could anything more powerfully indicate the worthlessness of one people to another than bringing in earth-movers to uproot and dump human remains as so much trash?

But that's not all. To be erected on the same site is the "Simon Wiesenthal Center for Human Dignity and Museum of Tolerance". The word for the situation is Orwellian. From Wikipedia - boldface mine

"Orwellian" describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society. It connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past, including the "unperson" — a person whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practiced by modern repressive governments.

Can't believe it? Read the report on the destruction and don't miss the video included. There is a simple fact sheet and, should you feel inclined to object, a petition against the destruction of the cemetery that you can sign here.

For how little this means to the Jerusalem Post, see this article about the project in that newspaper. The destruction of the cemetery merits a single sentence in passing. It's the kind of ho-hum treatment (at best) Palestinians have learned to expect. A reader of the article could easily miss the cemetery mention entirely.

law that means nothing

The law is a farce in the occupied territories, whether it is military law or Israeli civil law that is supposed to apply to the Israelis who live in the settlements.

• laws that exist can be interpreted so broadly as to exercise no restraint on the IDF
• rulings of the Israeli High Court can be disregarded repeatedly by the military, as one would expect of a militarized state such as Israel where power lies with force rather than legislation.
  
• laws can be passed specifically to discriminate against Palestinians, in fact the founding law of the State of Israel does so by declaring Israel a Jewish state.
• settlers can disregard law entirely when harassing or stealing land or destroying property of the Palestinians. In fact, IDF soldiers will often stand by or even assist settlers against Palestinians.
  

There's a good example of the meaninglessness of law provided by what has happened at the Derekh Ha’avot outpost, near the Elazar settlement, in the Etzion Bloc. The Etzion bloc is the southernmost of the four settlement blocks shown on the following map, all of them illegally established in occupied territory.


The Israeli High Court of Justice ruled nine years ago that the Derekh Ha’avot outpost was illegal and ordered it stopped and demolished. Neither action happened. Instead, settlers continued to build.

The Israeli group Peace Now petitioned the court, demanding the law be enforced. In 2008 this petition was denied. The reason? The High Court deferred to the military, though Israeli citizens are involved. This, of course, is a green light to all manner of behavior by the settlers in the occupied territories since the Israeli military has shown itself unwilling to restrain them.

Law restraining the Palestinians, however, such as the one forbidding them to build new structures or additions on their own land, is rigorously enforced.

I ask all Americans - would we accept a ruling by the Supreme Court that is not enforced? As you know, the Supreme Court ruled on judicial matters at Guantanamo, outside of the United States, and there was no question that the ruling would be obeyed by the U.S. Army.

In Israel, though, American money continues to flow in regardless of the flagrant disregard of the law. What would Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis have said, what would current Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg say?

Frustrated Palestinians who are driven to extremes, to violence, by this outrageous lawlessness are dubbed terrorists - but who is it that truly is stopping at nothing, at no law?

Summarizing the situation at the Derekh Ha’avot outpost, Israeli human rights group B'Tselem in it's report says...

The High Court’s decision, which adopts the state’s position with respect to the Derekh Ha’avot outpost, legitimizes the looting of land and ongoing contravention of the building laws, in this outpost and in all the other settlements, and exempts the law-enforcement authorities from enforcing the law on criminal settlers and lawbreakers. Given the illegality of the settlements in the first place, B'Tselem demands that the government of Israel dismantle the outpost along with the rest of the settlements and immediately enforce the law on the settlers.

Justice for all? Good luck on that!

P.S. This just in - the prohibition on using .22 bullets on protesters is ignored by the IDF