Netanyahu in Congress assembled

Upon hearing that Israel PM Netanyahu will speak to Congress next month, I composed the following letter to my two senators and representative.

Next month Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu will address Congress. When he does, please keep in mind that Congress has never listened to any representative of the people who have been and are being evicted from their homeland by the state PM Netanyahu represents.

Palestinian leaders are in Israeli prisons, Palestinians are under a never ending occupation by Israel, Palestinians have no law but what the Israel Defense Forces allow them, Palestinians may not travel on the roads that armed settlers travel. The United States values only the viewpoint of the one who evicts and dispossesses, not the victims of over 60 years of colonization. You will hear Netanyahu speak in comforting words of perfect American English of some offer to allow Palestinians to have a small fraction of a fraction of the land that was once theirs and you will hear great applause for it.

Remember that our country stands for liberty and justice for all and has rejected the idea of "whites only" as clapping resounds for a man who is dedicated to "Jews only". Consider that to criticize Israel in Congress is political suicide and ask yourself how this has come to be. Palestinians seek justice for a historical wrong of epic proportions while in the land of the free and the home of the brave only the voice of their oppressor is honored as the rest of the world watches astonished and dismayed.

the "right to defend itself"

Recently, there was an uproar due to the publication of an opinion piece by Judge Goldstone in the Washington Post. Goldstone was the head of the UN commission that looked at Israel's assault on Gaza in 2009, Operation Cast Lead.

Israel jumped to the conclusion that the article was a complete vindication of its behavior during Operation Cast Lead.

I've read the article and it's no such thing, but merely an acknowledgment that Israel has at least done something to investigate what happened while HAMAS has done nothing. It also clears Israel, in Goldstone's view, of the charge of deliberately targeting civilians as a military policy.

But what I want to look at is contained in this paragraph from Goldstone's opinion piece (boldface mine)

The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel. I have always been clear that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens against attacks from abroad and within. Something that has not been recognized often enough is the fact that our report marked the first time illegal acts of terrorism from Hamas were being investigated and condemned by the United Nations. I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.

I'm not about to discuss the history of the UN Human Rights Council, because I'm not familiar with it. Rather I want to speak of how one sided is the phrase "Israel's right to defend itself". I've heard this innumerable times but not once have I heard it said that the Palestinians, whose homeland has been systematically taken from them and is still being taken today, have a right to self-defense.

To hear the talk in the US, there is only one moral party, Israel, and the other side is a collection of hate-filled terrorists with nothing but the blood of Jews on their minds.

Those who founded Israel moved in with the expectation of moving out the natives, the Palestinian Arabs, who inconveniently stood in the way of a mythic vision of a homeland for Jews that would be for them alone. For most Zionist leaders, the resident Arabs were no more than bothersome flies that needed to be swept from an otherwise appealing piece of fruit.

Just as Native-Americans had every right to resist the European/American taking of the New World, so also did/do the Palestinians have the right to resist Israel. The fact that the Palestinians have been denied an official state in no way gives Israel the moral high ground because it is a recognized state. Goldstone's words about the recognized right of states to self-defense is a red herring, attempting to give weight to a technicality while the decades-long ethnic cleansing project that is the absolute bedrock of the problem is put aside.

So also, the indignant demand of Israel that the Palestinians declare Israel's "right to exist" is outrageous. Who would ever willingly respect the right of a party to come from outside and take one's homeland, not just take it but erase it as far as possible?

In fact, Israel's "right to defend itself" has covered for a tremendous arms build-up and continual taking of Palestinian lands that not only allows no effective means of military resistance to takeover but expedites the ethic cleansing by making the Palestinians helpless. The rockets of HAMAS are not a sign of awful power as Israel would like us to believe, but of pathetic helplessness against the awesome killing machine called the IDF.

Zionism was never a legitimate project because it assumed/assumes injustice and tries to make invisible the people who had to be wronged for it to be created. This is never more clear than in the lopsided use of "the right to defend itself".

The one and only way for Israel to be a legitimate state, morally, is with the one-state solution, where Palestinians are allowed to have the citizenship they have been denied and the state for Jews only is voluntarily dissolved. Until this happens, Israel will writhe on a bed of nails - the immorality of its foundation.

Israel, right or wrong?

A major reason I became involved in discussing the relationship of the United States and Israel is it is not simply a matter for Jews.

The national security of the U.S. is directly related to its unconditional support of Israel - inversely proportional to it. The blind, resolute way that Congress toes the line for Israel should be a concern of every American. There is no other issue before our nation that is so little subject to debate by our politicians and that is extremely dangerous.

It's undeniable, however, that the matter of Israel is a particular problem for American Jews. To gain some perspective on this and to draw some hope from the fact that dissent over Israel within American Jewry is growing, I can't recommend too highly an article published in Haaretz, Our Brothers, Ourselves

American Jews are on the spot because Israel claims to represent them, going to the point of denying that there is anything that can be defined as an Israeli distinct from a Jew. If you are a Jew and you do not express an opinion about Israel, Israel will express one in your name. To anyone who values their right to self-expression, to individuality, this should be infuriating because it is an attempt by a collective to claim power by default. Americans, resolute individualists that we are, should have nothing to do with that. The Jewish group Not In My Name chose their name wisely.

It is because of the special place in recent history of Jews that Israel exists and can act the way it does in a manner that pays little heed to world opinion. Israel has a unique license, though one that appears to be nearing expiration.

Whether you are Jewish our not, you should read the Haaretz article to deepen your understanding of the difficult path that American Jews must walk and the positions that various American Jewish organizations have taken regarding Israel.

Bassem Tamimi - ML King would understand

Thanks to Israeli activist Jonathan Pollard from whom I received the news that Bassem Tamimi (shown), the leader of non-violent protests in the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh has had his detention extended. He was arrested, held for seven days and now it will be for eleven more.

This by order of an Israeli military judge.

Here are the charges against him

• incitement
• organizing marches without a permit
• solicitation to throw stones
• disobeying the duty to report to questioning
• giving youth advice on how to respond to interrogation if they are arrested

This goes right back to the bad old days of civil rights protests in the United States where black protesters were arrested, charged with absurd "crimes", put before a white judge and convicted. Martin Luther King, Jr. would immediately recognize Tamimi's predicament.

This is what we Americans are making possible with our support of Israel and we should be ashamed our ourselves for doing so, particularly in light of our own national history. Even in the worst days of segregation in America, there was at least the pretense that blacks were under the civil laws of the land. With Israel, all Palestinians in the occupied territories are under Israeli military law - the laws of the occupying army. Some justice.

UPDATE: Having been held in prison awaiting trial (Palestinians don't have any right to bail under Israeli military law), Tamimi's trial is to begin on June 4, 2011. You should read this account of Tamimi's history - he has lived his entire life under Israeli occupation and has spent 3 years in Israeli prisons though he has never been convicted of anything.

UPDATE (December 2011): The Foreign Minister of France weighs in on the side of Tamimi, still undergoing the purposefully lengthy procedure of a "trial" under Israeli military law.

A Chief Rabbinate? It's un-American

Of the many things that differ between Israel and the United States, none is more glaring than the maintenance of a state supported religious hierarchy, the Chief Rabbinate.

Can you imagine a debate in Congress over who can be called a Christian, a Jew or Muslim? Can you imagine anyone having to be declared a legitimate member of a religious group before being allowed to become a U.S. citizen?

The founding fathers made sure that would never happen. Thank goodness. But "the only democracy in the Middle East" engages in such nonsense.

To let you read how far this goes, I'll excerpt from an article that appeared in the Jerusalem Post, What are We Celebrating? a critique of the Chief Rabbinate. If you feel you are reading a description of something that has no place in government, I understand the feeling! But this is the country that has "no daylight" between it and the U.S. according to our vice-president Joe Biden.

Last Tuesday, the Knesset celebrated the 90th anniversary of the Chief
Rabbinate, as if the institution was a positive factor in Israeli life...

Confronted with the urgent problem of the massive non-Jewish immigration
from the former Soviet Union, in which over 300,000 non-Jews became
Israeli citizens, the Rabbinate did nothing to encourage conversion or
even to make it a viable option.

When presented with a possible solution suggested by the Neeman
Commission involving the creation of a joint institute for the study of
Judaism which would lead to conversion under the Chief Rabbinate’s
auspices, the Chief Rabbinate responded with a vicious attack on the
Conservative and Reform movements – which bordered on the libelous – and
refused to cooperate with it...

...
Rivlin dismissed the possibility of replacing the Chief Rabbinate with
“another one, Reform or Conservative – a move that could compromise the
unity of the Jewish people” and praised halacha [Jewish law] which, he
opined, “we must safeguard.”

It appears that Rivlin continues the tradition of those secular leaders
of Israel who do not go to a synagogue, but want the synagogue they do
not attend to be Orthodox.

RIVLIN ALSO warned against what he called the “privatization of
conversion.” What exactly is the Knesset speaker talking about? Does he
not know that, currently, there are conversions in Israel and throughout
the world conducted by Conservative and Reform rabbis that are
recognized by the State of Israel? Does he not know that even if Israel
were not to recognize them, they would continue to be performed? Is he
totally unaware that, like it or not, the Jewish world is pluralistic?
Does he not know that there are large sections of the Jewish world – the
ultra-Orthodox (haredim) for example – who do not even accept the
conversions of the Chief Rabbinate?

...Even the Orthodox in America are appalled by the efforts of the
Rabbinate to attain total hegemony over conversion throughout the world
and to be the sole authority deciding which American rabbis can convert
and which cannot.

...The celebration of the Chief Rabbinate is a celebration of a backward
march, one in which Israel becomes more like a religious autocracy than
a modern, democratic state. It is a march into darkness which leads not
to Jewish unity but to a situation in which Israel finds itself on one
side and the rest of the Jewish world on the other; in which any support
of Israel by American Jewry would not be because of Israel’s attitude
toward religion, but in spite of it.

It sounds like something from extremist Islam, or Christian fundamentalism at it's worst - the religious dictating to the rest of society. Sad to say, the religious in Israel have been on the ascendant for some time and make up a good portion of the settlers, living on land that God has given them.

What does the United States have in common with this? Nothing, no more than it shares the ideas of religion in government of Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Most outrageous of all, this Chief Rabbinate is the organization that determines who is a Jew and, as such, who is entitled to take away the land of the Palestinians! Do you begin to understand the view the Palestinians would have as they see their homes demolished and their fields bulldozed for settlement expansion? Wouldn't you be upset?

how Associated Press works (for Israel)

Here's a very interesting bit of information I've received from the Council for the National Interest about venerable AP.

How AP works

Since most newspapers don't have their own reporters in Israel or the Palestinian Territories, they obtain their news on this region from wire services. AP is usually the only global wire service taken by U.S. newspapers.

Although AP is a cooperative, which means that it is "owned" by all the news organizations that use its news, in reality there is almost no oversight of its work. Editors around the country simply accept its reporting at face value.

The trouble is, however, that its reporting is consistently Israeli-centric.

The "control bureau" for the region, through which all news reports are funneled, is located in Israel. Its editors are living in Israel, their families are frequently Israeli, and quite often they themselves are Israeli citizens.

Even when an AP report carries a Palestinian dateline and even a Palestinian byline, in the large majority of cases the article was actually written in Israel, frequently by an Israeli editor.

A study of AP's reporting found that it had reported on Israeli children's deaths at a rate seven times greater than they reported on Palestinian children's deaths – even though Palestinian children were killed first and in far greater numbers.

Because of this bias, CNI is starting a blog that will be deconstructing AP reports from Israel and the occupied territories. A great idea, I'm subscribing.

constructing the prototypical terrorist

To look at the actions of Congress, one could be forgiven for thinking Israel is the 51st state.

Noura Erekat is a Palestinian human rights attorney and activist who is an adjunct professor of international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University, among other things.

She has written an outstanding article titled "Constructing the Prototypical Terrorist in America: Arab, Muslim and Palestinian" that I highly recommend. You may find her use of the word "other" as a verb unusual. By that she means the making into "the other", or outsider, of certain groups of people.

To whet your appetite, here is an excerpt...(boldface mine)

Congress’s response to the settlement row in Spring 2010 exemplifies Israel’s status as “insider,” as opposed to political ally. In the aftermath of Vice President Biden’s embarrassing visit to the Middle East where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuffed the US’s calls to halt settlement expansion scores of Congressional members from both sides of the aisle lined up to chastise the Obama Administration for its public handling of the affair. Despite being the source of US foreign policy, no less than twenty-three members expressed terse disapproval either in press statements or from the House floor. Several dozen other members sent four open letters to the Obama Administration as well. Significantly, the lawmakers’ choice of language mirrors an AIPAC press release dated March 14, 2010 and therefore nearly every member echoed the sentiment that Israel should not be treated like any other country but rather with heightened sensitivity and special treatment. Representative Todd Tiahart described President Obama’s public position as “disrespectful,” and characterized Secretary Clinton’s decision to “openly question” Israeli policies as “inappropriate” as the US has a “moral and strategic obligation to support this beacon of democracy in the Middle East.” (March 13, 2010) No other member better captured the centrality of Israel within the US national identity as did Representive Mike Pence who explained that “[t]he American people consider Israel our most cherished ally and we her closest friend and guardian…[a]s I just told the Prime Minister, I never thought I'd live to see the day that an American administration would denounce the State of Israel for rebuilding Jerusalem…[t]he American people and the American Congress in both parties support the State of Israel.” (March 23, 2010)

The lawmakers’ choice of language and tone both reflects Israel’s insider status and works to construct its critics as threats to US national security. While the description of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, works to distinguish Israel from its authoritarian counterparts, it also acts as a marker that others Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbors. Their written and oral statements condemn the US President in defense of a foreign state; describe their relationship to Israel as moral; describe the US as Israel’s guardian; and affirm the immutability of the US’s relationship to Israel irrespective of circumstances. This behavior is more reflective of a family dispute than a diplomatic affair and works to reify the boundaries circumscribing American national identity wherein Israel enjoys the privileges of inclusion.

read the whole article. Erekat makes the case that Congress has created a legal situation where entire groups of people that Israel has determined are not to its liking are easily attacked and convicted in the United States by prejudicial laws the pre-dispose judges/juries to convict simply for defendants being members of one of the groups.