the unequal Gilat Shalit swap

No, I don't mean unequal in exchanging one person for many.

On the front page of the NY Times for Wednesday there was a picture of relatives and friends rejoicing at the release of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in return for the release of a group of Palestinian prisoners.

This sounds like a good deal all around but let's consider it more deeply. Of course in the U.S. it isn't surprising that Shalid is almost a hometown boy while the Palestinians are just another bunch of terrorists. Attention has been focused on Shalit being held by HAMAS while no attention is given to the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Shalit was abducted while on duty with the IDF. As a member of an occupying army, it's not hard to understand that he was taken prisoner. An interesting point about the Palestinian prisoners is that most of them might as well have been kidnapped for the lack of legal process accompanying their imprisonment. Since there is no law except Israeli military law in the occupied territories, any Palestinian can be grabbed and put in prison if some officer in the IDF decides it should be done...whether on the spur of the moment or as a result of planned 3AM raids that the IDF conducts nightly. May a lawyer be called? Maybe. Will the family be told where the prisoner will be taken? Maybe. May the family visit the prisoner? Maybe but probably not if the prisoner is taken into Israel itself because Palestinians may not go there without permission.

This brings up another difference in this case. Gilad Shalit will be warmly welcomed to a secure home that any American would find familiar. Shalit will never again be subject to the Palestinians and will live in the same security as any other Israeli for the rest of his life protected by an army, an air force, a navy, a undercover police force, the border guard and the plain old ordinary police - backed up by the civil laws of Israel.

Those Palestinians released in the exchange will go home to the same lives dominated by Israel that they knew from the past. They will have no laws to protect them that cannot be flouted at will by the IDF. They will have no police force other than that of the Palestinian Authority which is a creature of Israel that stands aside upon the appearance of any Israeli military or police units. If Israel wanted it, every one of these Palestinians could be back in prison next week. (update: This has come true)

There is another difference. The Shalit family and supporters put on a demonstration to demand the release of Gilad. They had tents and had been actively calling for the government to do something for some time. They were not molested by the police and had plenty of support as one might expect.

But Palestinian demonstrations of any kind are barely tolerated and usually bring barrages of tear gas and stun grenades. Leaders of non-violent protests such as Bassem Tamimi are arrested in order to disable the organization of protests.

The Shalit family can safely put the episode in the past. For every Palestinian, Israel looms menacingly over every day and night into the indefinite future. In a very real sense, every single Palestinian lives on probation.

Yousef Munayyer on target re the US

Yousef Munayyer of the The Jerusalem Fund in Washington DC describes the position of the United States regarding Israel and the Palestinians concisely and in doing so explains why the US is no longer considered a mediator (if it ever was) in the Middle East.

"The Palestinians came to the United Nations in the hopes of putting forward a membership application because they had come to understand that domestic dynamics in the United States made it impossible for Washington to be an even-handed broker. If the Obama administration can't get Netanyahu's right-wing government to halt settlement expansion - an Israeli obligation under international law and the US-initiated Road Map for Peace - how could they possibly press Netanyahu to dismantle settlements, divide Jerusalem and admit refugees when the time came to get serious?

The United States is an exceptional place and it is a country that believes in its exceptionalism. Washington likes to believe it can do anything, and it can do and has done many things. But there is one thing it simply cannot do and that is even-handedly broker a deal between Israel and Palestinians. This has to do almost entirely with US domestic politics. Whether you blame the Israel lobby or accept the narrative that Americans en masse have a special connection with Israel, there is no doubt that America is solidly in Israel's corner.

The Israelis have long since recognised this; that is why they insist no other state or alliance of states mediates this conflict. Most Palestinians have long since recognised this and now, after 20 years of failed negotiations, even those among the Palestinians which have behttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifen most committed to a US-led peace process have come to the same conclusion.

If there was any doubt about how Washington's domestic politics handicaps its ability to broker, it was erased by President Obama's speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Without even a modicum of recognition of Palestinians' suffering and without one word of condemnation for Israeli colonialism, President Obama rang in the US election season."

This is a very short excerpt from his article Five Lessons Learned from Palestinian UN Bid. Munayyer moderates the excellent video presentations of The Palestine Center where one can always find intelligent conversations regarding Palestine.

Kristof in the NYT speaks up

Nicholas Kristof, a man whose work I've always thought showed good sense had a piece in the NYT today, Thursday, called Is Israel it's Own Worst Enemy?

In it he says, accurately...

"Palestinian radicals antagonized the West, and, when militant leaders turned to hijackings and rockets, they undermined the Palestinian cause around the world. They empowered Israeli settlers and hard-liners, while eviscerating Israeli doves.

These days, the world has been turned upside down. Now it is Israel that is endangered most by its leaders and maximalist stance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is isolating his country, and, to be blunt, his hard line on settlements seems like a national suicide policy."

The whole article is worth a read.

shooting and crying

People don't understand. When you're in the military you'll blame everything on yourself and not the system. The system has to be right for you to just go about doing your daily thing. So I was sure that it was only me or my company or my platoon that was not behaving properly and it had nothing to do with the system of occupation...but it was really bizarre for me to understand that my story was pretty much the same as everybody else. It's not about a systematic problem, it's about a problematic system.
-Mikhael Manekin

The military cannot make me a nice occupier.
-Yehuda Shaul

Tolstoy wrote a book called "The Kingdom of God is Within You" in which he made the case that it is only because individuals will not refuse to obey that war is possible. But it doesn't take belief in a god to know this is true. Insights that are so powerful in those who have served are not easily conveyed to the recruit. You have to take the damage to gain the wisdom. They who will destroy on command must at least in part destroy themselves. The machine damages the gears on which it runs.

A new film from members of Breaking the Silence -

foreign aid must be cut - but not for Israel

Today in the New York Times there is a front page story, FOREIGN AID FACES MAJOR CUTBACKS IN BUDGET CRISIS that says it all in very few words about the iron grip of the Israel lobby on Congress.

After many paragraphs speaking of "deep cuts for food and medicine for Africa and relief for disaster-affected places like Pakistan and Japan", the number one recipient of US foreign aid and most of that in weaponry, Israel finally gets mentioned as follows...my words in parentheses

However, one of the largest portions of foreign aid — more than $3 billion for Israel (in fact Israel is the #1 recipient of US aid by far) — is left untouched in both the House and Senate versions, showing that, even in times of austerity, some spending is inviolable.

Remember, Israel is not a poor country. Americans, how long will you be played the fool?

From Russia, of all places

American media have produced some outstanding stories over the years but when it comes to Israel and the occupation, the silence is deafening.

So it's ironic that RT, the Russian satellite TV service in English, has produced an excellent overview of the situation in the occupied territories of Palestine. Featuring some of the Israeli human rights groups that I have dedicated this blog to, such as Machsom Watch and Breaking the Silence, in two parts the viewer will be given an excellent if incomplete picture of the daily oppression suffered by the Palestinians. I say incomplete because there is nothing in this video about the lack of civil law, the theft of resources, the total control of imports and exports and the constant surveillance by drones that the Palestinians know so well.

But for what is covered, the story is well told. If you can only watch one of the two parts, watch the second since it shows the worst situation - that of Hebron - where a tiny number of Israeli settlers torment the overwhelming number of Palestinians protected by the might of the Israeli armed forces - screaming and shouting insults as the soldiers stand idly by.






Thanks to the blog Jews sans frontieres for making me aware of this video.

four 20-somethings

In this video we have four Palestinians, each around 20 years old sitting around a table discussing the situation face by their fellow men and women on the occasion of the application for statehood by Mahmoud Abbas in the United Nations.

This reminds me of the kind of discussion that went on among young Americans during the Vietnam War. It's important that Americans see Palestinians as they really are and not behind the uniform Israeli label of "terrorist"

So sit down at the table and listen to these four. The woman in the blue headscarf if Jehan Alfarra who writes a blog called Palinoia