Lessons from the 2022 Knesset elections

05 Saturday Nov 2022

Posted by freehaifa in Boycott the Knesset, Israeli Politics, Zionist Fascists

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2022 Knesset Elections, Balad, BenGvir, Bennet, Bibi, Meretz, Yair Lapid

The racist mobs who lynched Palestinians in May 2021 are now a major political force in Israel. The mask is off for Israeli apartheid.

(The following article appeared today in Mondoweiss)

Four consecutive election campaigns in Israel had been fiercely waged around a single issue – for and against the grotesquely corrupt “King Bibi,” a reference to Benjamin Netanyahu. These elections failed to produce a clear verdict among the divided Israeli Apartheid electorate. Though Palestinians constitute the majority of the population under Israel’s rule, they are prevented from any opportunity to democratically influence their fate. While the pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps quarrelled, the fate of the Palestinians was completely excluded from the discussion. Even the word “peace”, that used to be mentioned regularly (without any meaning) in previous Israeli elections, is now completely out of fashion.

But it turns out that Netanyahu’s year outside of the government did succeed in changing the agenda for the November 1, 2022 elections. The opposition led by Netanyahu’s Likud party concentrated all its rhetorical firepower into racist incitement against the idea of a government supported by Arab parties. In return, the outgoing government coalition led by Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz tried to make the public forget the experience of their awkward time at the helm which collapsed into endless internal stifle by frightening the public with the rising power of Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the openly fascist ultra-right. This reciprocal campaign of hate and fear succeeded in waking up the public from the election fatigue and raised participation levels among both the Jewish Israeli public and the “48 Palestinians” that have the right to vote.

The results, as most of the world noticed, was that the proudly thuggish Ben-Gvir was the hero of the day, with his Religious Zionist List emerging as the third largest party, and Netanyahu received his long-dreamed of majority. Netanyahu can now ride on the back of the racist puma to escape the prison gates that threatened to close on him. In the 80s the late racist rabbi Meir Kahane used to say to Israelis: “I say what you think”. Now it is Israel’s coming out party. It is time to throw away the masks and declare itself the Apartheid state – based on racism, settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing – that it always was.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU RIDES ITAMAR BEN-GVIR, AND THE GHOST OF MEIR KAHANE, BACK TO POWER IN ISRAEL’S RECENT ELECTIONS. (CARTOON: CARLOS LATUFF)

What actually happened in the elections?

The Israeli electorate continued a long one-way journey to the religious racist right. It is a combination of several long-term trends:

The growing orthodox Jewish religious communities and the alliance between the orthodox leadership and the secular right;
The growing number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, where the conflict with the Palestinians is much more violent;
The hijacking of the army and state apparatus by the politically-dynamic settler community with the quiet consent of the apathetic old elites;
And finally, the illusion about the existence of a Zionist-left is slowly but steadily fading.

There was actually no big shift from the voters in this election. In May 2021, one ultra-right party, Yamina (Hebrew for “to the right”), agreed to join the anti-Bibi camp, in return for the appointment of its leader, Naftali Bennett, as prime minister, and the ability to dictate the government’s racist and neo-liberal, anti-social agenda. Now that that government dissolved, Yamina’s voters have returned to their natural place. All the rest of the shifts in the results are due to the self-inflicted injuries from the leaders of the “alternative” camp.

It is all the same old Israeli racist politics, where the Palestinians are not considered a legitimate part of the political game – no thinking about a political solution is allowed, and no Arab can share any shade of power. It is a colossal repeat of the fiasco in 2020, when general Benny Gantz ran away from the prospect of leading a government supported by Arab Knesset members and agreed to support a Netanyahu government which he had promised to prevent. Now in this election, the whole Lapid government ran away from its own shadow in an effort to avoid the accusation of “leftism” or “relying on Arabs”, to the point of self-destruction.

After Bennett’s party members deserted him one after the other, he finally toppled his own government leaving the helm to Lapid. Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, both aspiring to lead the anti-Bibi block, focused their election campaigns on discrediting each other. Each of them tried to burnish his credentials by killing more Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Merav Michaeli, from the disintegrating old Zionist Labor Party, refused to form even a technical block with the similarly decaying Meretz, fearing that her party, that boasts of the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 occupation, would be painted as too leftist. And, finally, Balad claims Lapid conspired with the leaders of the Arab Joint List to throw Balad off the list at the last minute in an attempt to make the list more palatable as partners for a future Zionist coalition. To do this they needed to remove from the Knesset the only voice that dared to speak (in a low voice) about “transforming Israel to a state of all its citizens”. These last two decisions alone, throwing out Meretz and Balad, are directly responsible for the fact that Netanyahu now has a majority and can build his fully right-wing government.

In the ashes after their self-made defeat, all the leaders of this “alternative camp” are blaming each other and destroying whatever remains of their chances to return to power anytime soon.

How dangerous is the new government?

On November 3, as I write this, Israel’s occupation forces killed four Palestinians in the West Bank, one of them a 14-year-old child. According to a report that was published by the UN on the day of the elections, 2022 witnessed more killings of Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces and settlers than in any other year since the UN started to monitor such killings in 2005. And this took place under a government fiercely supported by the fake “Israeli Left” of Meretz, and that could exist only thanks to the support of an opportunistic Palestinian politician like Mansour Abbas.

Will Netanyahu’s new far-right government kill more? Sure, they might. But it was never Israeli public opinion that limited atrocities against the Palestinians. The basic fact is that Israel needs the support of the United States (and, to a lesser degree, Western Europe) militarily, economically, and politically to ensure its continuing impunity for performing crimes against humanity. The main power that may restrain Israeli war crimes is pressure by western powers, motivated by the fear of backlash by the Arab masses. One encouraging signal is that there were already some warning signals from Israel’s international backers following the election results.

However, me and many others also have personal reasons to be concerned. If Ben-Gvir were to become Minister of Internal Security, as has been reported, he might send the police knocking on my door. This is the additional threat of the fascists, not only the military occupation, but also targeting political opponents. Thinking about this direct threat, I can’t help but remember that the last time they came to take me for Shabak interrogation, in April 2021, they didn’t knock on my gate but literally knocked it down. So, political oppression is nothing new either. Maybe under the new government more people will finally understand that “Israeli Democracy” doesn’t exist, and hence can’t be defended or saved.

The real struggle

The struggles for democracy, for human rights, for Palestinian liberation, for the right of return, for the establishment of a free, secular, democratic state in Palestine – all these essential struggles can’t take place within the framework of the Knesset – the Legislative Assembly of Apartheid Israel. The Palestinian struggle was not part of these elections – but the elections happened in the shadow of this struggle.

With the ascendance of the Religious Zionism camp, the settlers and racist mobs who were attacking and lynching Palestinians in the mixed cities in May 2021 gained their recognition and place as a major political force in Israel.

Another echo of May 2021 can be seen in these elections. It is the success of Balad as an independent party. The party, which had just a single deputy in the last Knesset, gained 3% of the vote and could have 3 or 4 members if it was not for the 3.25% minimum barrier for representation. Balad received most of its votes from the young Palestinians that defended their neighborhoods against Ben-Gvir’s thugs (and the Israeli police and border guard) in May 2021. Most of the radical youth would not naturally vote in Knesset elections. And now Balad, in spite of all the support it received, is out of the Knesset also. Could it open the road for the development of a new Palestinian alternative, independent of the Israeli-dictated frameworks?

And finally, a personal word again… In the grassroots movements that I’m a member of, Herak Haifa and Abna elBalad, we have no illusion that any real change can be achieved through the Knesset. We boycotted the elections as we always do. In these last elections everybody expected that there would be historic gains for the election boycott, with as many as 60% of those Palestinians that are allowed to vote refusing to take part. But the horror campaign had its effect, and Palestinians voted in higher-than-expected numbers, maybe 54%. The boycott movement stayed unusually low-profile. The leaders of the Arab Knesset parties and the fake Zionist “left” turned hysterically to the Palestinian voters to save us all from the fascists. If they ever believed their own words, they wouldn’t have destroyed their election chances by their own actions.

The long battle to save the largest Palestinian cemetery in Haifa

08 Saturday Jan 2022

Posted by freehaifa in Abna elBalad Movement, Haifa, Israeli Apartheid, Popular Struggle

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Absentees' Property Law, Balad al-Sheikh, Haifa Cemetery, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, Kerur Akhzakot, Protest Tent, Suheil Shukri, Waqf al-Istiqlal

The struggle to save the al-Qassam cemetery is one of the major issues that unites the Palestinian community in Haifa. It is an effort to defend the community’s rights, and reconnect with its pre-Nakba past.

(The following report was published in “Mondoweiss”. You can also read about the struggle to save the cemetery in Free Haifa in Arabic and Hebrew.)

The Muslim cemetery in Balad a-Sheikh reminds us of the days before the 1948 Nakba, when Haifa was a major Palestinian city. Since 1948, the state of Israel and private companies have been trying to destroy the cemetery and convert it to commercial property. The Palestinian community succeeded, so far, to prevent its destruction. Now, facing new plans to build on the cemetery, the struggle is entering a new phase.

The Historic Significance of “Al-Qassam Cemetery”

In the beginning of the twentieth century Haifa was a rising city on the Mediterranean shore, with its port, new rail lines that stretched to Damascus and Amman, and developing industry and commerce. This development accelerated under the British occupation (since 1918) with a deep-water port, an airport and the petrol refineries. People from all over the region were emigrating to Haifa to look for work and opportunities. Haifa developed as a center of Arab cultural and political activities. Many Palestinian trade unions, clubs, associations and parties were established or expanded in the city.

An old picture of the entrance to the Balad a-Sheikh cemetery – before 752 street was built (image from the facebook page of the Istiqlal Waqf trustees)

As the city was full of people, its old cemeteries became overcrowded. So, in the thirties, a new Muslim cemetery was established in Balad a-Sheikh, a few kilometers South-East of the city. It was a big cemetery, spanning over 44 dunam (dunam is a thousand square meters), and it served people from Haifa and the surrounding villages and shanty towns.

A central figure in Haifa’s public life at the time was Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, the Imam of the Istiqlal mosque and head of the Young Men’s Muslim Association. In the beginning of the thirties, he tried to organized the Palestinian population to wage a war of liberation against the British occupation and against Zionist colonization. In November 1935 his group of rebels was surrounded by the British army near Jenin, and he fought them back until he fell martyr. His funeral in Haifa is described by some historians as the biggest political protest in Palestine under the British occupation. Al-Qassam and two of his comrades in arms were buried in the new cemetery in Balad a-Sheikh, giving it its popular name as “Al-Qassam Cemetery”.

The cemetery bears evidence to the turbulent historical period. You can find there the graves of the revolutionaries from the great Palestinian revolution of 1936-39, as well as the graves of Palestinians civilians killed by indiscriminate British reprisals. You can also find there the graves of the victims of massacres that were performed by the Zionist settlers’ militias, Hagana, Etzel and Lehi, in the run-up to the 1948 Nakba. Sami Taha, the secretary general of the Association of Arab Palestinian Workers, was also buried there.

Zionist attempts to take control of the cemetery

In 1948 the vast majority of the Arab Palestinian population in Haifa was expelled: more than seventy thousand were expelled, and less than two thousand succeeded to escape the ethnic cleansing. The whole population of Balad a-Sheikh, which suffered two massacres before the final military assault, was forced into exile, like the residents of all the other Arab villages and shanty towns around Haifa. The houses of Balad a-Sheikh were given to new Jewish immigrants and the town was renamed “Tel Hanan” (Hanan’s Hill) after the name of a Hagana officer who was killed there while performing a massacre against civilian population in the town.

Israel’s expropriation of the native Arab Palestinian population was not limited to their houses and personal property, but extended also to holy places like mosques and cemeteries.

Confiscation order for 15 dunam of the cemetery’s land, signed in 1954 by Eshkol

In 1954, Israel’s then finance minister, Levi Eshkol, issued an order confiscating 15 dunam of the new Balad a-Sheikh cemetery. The order decreed that, as these lands “were not held by their rightful owners as of April 1, 1952”, and as they “were allocated to vital needs of settlement and development”, they will be passed to the ownership of “the development authority”. The only truthful phrase here is “April 1”, as this is the day for telling lies. The rightful inhabitants of the cemetery didn’t leave it for a single day. And the “needs” for the place were so urgent that today, almost 70 years on, the usurpers, which prevent the cemetery’s guardians from maintaining it properly, haven’t even presented a plan for any other usage.

Soon after confiscating the land, the state’s representative sold 13 dunam out of the confiscated land to a big commercial firm, named “Kerur Akhzakot”. Later on, this firm will play a central role in the attempts to demolish the cemetery.

Dubious deals

The main tool of the Israeli government to expropriate Arab homes and lands is the “Absentees’ Property Law” from 1950. By this law the property of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced people was confiscated. Concerning the holy places, most of them are defined as belonging to some “waqf” (endowment). After some legal wriggling and a new law from 1965, the Israeli “legal” robbery system verified that “god is also an absentee” (or at least the Palestinian Muslim Waqf), and hence took control of most holy places.

The Balad a-Sheikh cemetery was different, as it officially belongs to a local Haifa Waqf named “Waqf al-Istiqlal” – or “Independence Waqf” – after The Istiqlal Mosque whose imam was al-Qassam. As there continued to exist a diminished Muslim community in Haifa, in spite of the Nakba, they could not claim its local waqf was absentee, like they did in hundred of villages and towns that were completely destroyed or ethnically cleansed. So, they had to invent other ways to take control of the cemetery’s land. They did it by appointing a “waqf trustee”, named Suhail Shukri, who was doing his master’s dirty work by betraying the waqf and its community.

The 1970 agreement to exchange 31 dunam of the cemetery’s land – signe on behalf of the waqf by “Oved Yom Tov” from the Israeli land authority

In 1970 the Israeli lands’ authority signed an agreement to “exchange” 31 dunam of the Balad a-Sheikh cemetery (including the 15 dunam that were confiscated before), giving the waqf in their stead a section for Muslim burial in the new Kafr Samir cemetery to the South-West of Haifa. The first question raised by this “exchange” is why should the Muslim community “pay” by giving up land in an existing cemetery for their right for a section in the new cemetery, while all other religious communities in Haifa received their (much bigger) sections free of charge?

The “exchange deal” itself was not signed by Shukri himself. The person that signed in Shukri’s name (in accordance with a power of attorney on behalf of Shukri from 1968) was one named “Oved Yom Tov”, who happened to negotiate the deal (with himself) in the name of the Israeli lands’ authority. The same Shukri also received the sum of 4,000 lira as payment for his effort to transfer 25 graves (an insignificant part of the graves in the cemetery) to the new cemetery – an action that he apparently didn’t bother to perform.

Shukri’s masters knew that, as a “trustee”, he is not empowered to sell, exchange or demolish the cemetery. In order to get more legal pretense to their dubious deal, they appealed for the Muslim Shari’a court in Akka (Acre), which is also subordinated to the state’s authority. The verdict from the court decreed that land from the cemetery can be exchanged, but only land that have no graves in it. The agreement between the authorities and Shukri to transfer graves from the cemetery proves that they knew well enough that the land contained graves, and, by implication, the endorsement of the Shari’a court to the agreement is void.

Suheil Shukri asked for 6150 lira to transfer 25 graves. Finaly he received 4000.

The struggle for recognition of the cemetery

After the “deal” about al-Qassam cemetery, and other similar dubious deals, were exposed, Shukri had to leave the country. After a long struggle by the Haifa Muslim community, new, faithful, trustees were appointed to take care of the “Istiqlal Waqf”, and they have taken on themselves to save what may be saved of the Waqf’s mosques, cemeteries and property. Meanwhile, Haifa is resuming gradually its natural role as a central city for the Arab Palestinian community. The struggle to save the al-Qassam cemetery is one of the major issues that unite the community in defending its rights and reconnecting with its pre-Nakba past.

View of the cemetery and the protest tent – December 2021 (Photo: Rashad Omari, al-Madina)

In 1989, the Abna al-Balad movement organized a volunteer work-day to clean the cemetery, which was hidden in a tangle of tall thorns, and for the re-marking of the graves. In the beginning of the 2000s, there was a big struggle against the intention to path a multi-lane street through the cemetery’s land. For several months there was a protest tent in the cemetery and local youth from the Islamic Movement stayed guarding the ground day and night. Finally, this struggle culminated in a symbolic victory, when a massive bridge was built to allow the street pass above the cemetery without affecting the graves.

In 2014, the “Kerur Akhzakot” company (which claims ownership of the 13 dunam confiscated in the fifties) filed a civil lawsuit in the Krayot magistrate’s court against the trustees of the “Istiqlal Waqf”. The company asked the court to declare that the plot on which it claims ownership has no graves. Alternatively, it sought to oblige the Waqf trustees to vacate any graves. The demand for the evacuation of the graves provoked public protest. Contact was made with many families whose loved ones are buried in the cemetery. At all court hearings there was a mass presence in the courtroom and there were demonstrations and protest vigils around the building, with participants carrying pictures of their buried family members. At the end of the hearings, Judge Shlomo Ardman ruled that there are graves in the plot that is the subject of the lawsuit. He refused to issue an order to evacuate the graves on the grounds that it is “too early at this stage”, until a specific construction plan is submitted that requires evacuation.

A delegation from Herak Haifa visiting the protest tent on Decemebr 17, 2021 (Photo: Rashad Omari, al-Madina)

As the families of the buried organized, they decided to apply together to the Supreme Court to re-recognize the cemetery in its entirety. But in a preliminary hearing the Supreme Court judges proposed to the plaintiffs to withdraw their petition, while threatening them in a judgment that would have serious consequences to their detriment. Some of the plaintiffs concluded their impressions from the hearing by saying that “the judges refused to dig in old papers, and think it is better to dig even older graves.”

Meanwhile, news is gathering of new plans for commercial construction on the cemetery grounds and of a new developer entering the picture. In early December 2021, the Waqf trustees, in collaboration with the families of the buried and under the auspices of the High Follow Up Committee of the Arab Public, erected a protest tent in the cemetery’s area. The frustration with the “legal route” has brought back to the center the public struggle to repel the plans for expropriation and destruction. The demands are simple: recognize the cemetery and allow the dead to rest in peace.

Six unprecedented days of resistance and oppression in Haifa

15 Saturday May 2021

Posted by freehaifa in Haifa, Herak Haifa, Palestine 48, Popular Struggle, Zionist Fascists

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Haifa Police, Haifa Protest, May 2021, Popular Resistance, Racist Police, Sheikh Jarrakh, Solidarity with Gaza, Tal3at

Israeli police joined fascist mobs in attacking Palestinian neighborhoods, but this didn’t stop Palestinians in Haifa from joining the uprising taking place across Palestine

(This article was initially published in Mondoweiss)

Since Sunday, May 9, events in Haifa are moving so fast that I couldn’t write fast enough to describe them. Every night there are mass detention of Palestinians – activists and other residents that happened to pass in the police’s trail. Every morning dozens of relatives, friends and comrades gather in front of the Haifa court, hoping to see their dear ones released, or at least to know what is going to happen with them. Every night local hospitals accept groups of detainees and other citizens that were hurt by stun grenades, tear gas, police beatings or attacks by fascist Zionist mobs. Every evening everybody is tuning to social media or patrolling the streets to find where the next attack may come from.

I wanted to write a learned article, explaining the background and giving a political perspective, but I’m exhausted. We spent the day before the courthouse, where we heard that, in addition to 38 people that were arrested in Haifa’s streets last night, there are at list 7 more that were arrested in raids on their homes in the early morning. But there were also more than 50 political detainees from the nearby Palestinian towns that were brought for remand before the Haifa court, and the hearing of the Haifa detainees didn’t start until 3pm, even though it is Friday and the court was supposed to close by 2pm. We were sitting on the pavement before the court house, which we were not allowed to enter (only one from each detainee’s family was allowed in), discussing the next steps in the struggle. Luckily, in the best of Arab tradition, some good people brought us water, cold drinks and Falafel, so we didn’t all starve.

Families, friends and comrades gather daily before the occupation court in Haifa (here May 14, 2021)

As we came back to our poor Arab neighborhood, we went to check what happened last night in Hussein St., where the police shot tear gas at residential buildings. In these days the neighbors were supposed to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, at the end of the month-long Ramadan. But the neighborhood is quiet and there is no Eid. We find the house of the Bushkar family, and they tell us how a police unit that were stationed in the main street, on the other side of the garden, shoot without any provocation tear gas canisters toward the row of four-story residential buildings. One canister exploded in the stairway just in front of their door and another entered a room from the window. It is illegal to shoot teargas at people at closed spaces, as it becomes even more dangerous, but the police wanted to take revenge from the neighborhood at large after a police car was burned in the main street in the previous night. Everybody in the house has suffocated and the pregnant mother lost consciousness. They called an ambulance, but the police stopped it and didn’t let it enter the neighborhood. Only after a log delay, when more neighbors intervened and shouted at the police, they let a neighbor escort the ambulance in and the women was taken to the hospital. The neighbors, in the spirit of crowd-media, filmed their argument with the police and published it on Facebook.

The two gas canisters that were shot into the Bushkar family house in Halisa – Photo by Amir Bushkar, FB

Later we walked around the neighborhood to see what was going on. There was one group of police on the main entrance to the neighborhood. People told us that a patrol of the border guards just entered our street. There was hardly anyone braving to get out.

So, in short, what happened this week in Haifa?

Sunday, May 9

Five Palestinian movements called for a demonstration against ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrakh. The invitation included Herak Haifa, Tal’at (Palestinian Feminist initiative), The Student’s National Democratic Alliance (Tajamou), The Haifa Youth Movement and The Alternative Palestinian Path. A few hundred people, mostly youth, gathered in “Prisoners Square” in the German Colony, Haifa’s touristic center. The police didn’t wait long before it attacked the participants with a barrage of stun grenades and started to chase protesters and detain them.

Monday, May 10

Some un-organized youth called on Facebook for another demonstration in Prisoner’s Square. I was not there but heard different estimations of the number of participants, between a few dozens and the hundreds. Police wanted to disperse them and there were clashes all over the area.

Tuesday, May 11

The five movements that organized Sunday’s demonstration called for a new protest at 20:30 in Prisoner’s Square, now also against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. More Palestinian movements promise to join. Women in Black (which organize vigils against the occupation) called for a protest in the Bahai (UNESCO) Circle for 7:30, with big participation, and some of them join the Palestinian protesters. Some fascists organize a counter-demo in the German Colony, which is attended by only a few dozens, under heavy police protection.

As the Palestinian protest start, not even moving from the original gathering site, mounted police ride into the crowd, followed by a barrage of stun grenades. There are more protesters now and they hold their ground, disperse and gather again all along the main section of the German Colony. Clashes with sporadic detention continue in the main street for some two hours as the side streets are blocked with burning barricades.

Extremist Zionist groups were openly calling for violent attacks on the Arab population

The presence of the fascists, which chant “Death to the Arabs” and cheer the police when they attack the demonstrators is heating the atmosphere farther. After long time a big police force that was chasing the Palestinian protesters turn to the junction where they were located. To say the truth, I thought they might instruct them to disperse, to lower the tension. But, instead, the police organized the fascist in a small column and marched them through the main street of the German Colony, all with their Israeli Flags and their enthusiastic “Death to the Arab” chants. Some of them threw stones at Arab passers-by from behind the thick police wall defending them. If any Arab try to oppose them, he was chased by the police, like you can see in this video.

So, if I initially thought that the police came to prevent demonstrations or limit the freedom of expression, I proved wrong. They came to promote the right kind of un-licensed demonstrations. In fact, the police proved itself in the most open way to be the uniformed and armed vanguard of the fascist mob.

After their demonstration the fascist mob went on to attack random Arab civilians in the area. The police were defending them but at the same time there was an unprecedented popular uprising as hundreds or even thousands of Arab Palestinian youths took control of the streets, raised barricades and defended their homes and neighborhoods.

Wednesday, May 12

There was another Palestinian demonstration planned, this one by The Democratic Front, but it was abolished due to the tension. All the day we followed new in social media about a planned fascist attack on Arab neighborhoods. Toward the evening the youths took control of the streets again.

The fascists gathered in “Kiryat Eliezer” – a mostly Jewish neighborhood to the West of the German Colony (on its East is Wadi Nisnas, the center of the Palestinian population in Haifa). The police attacked the youth gathering in Wadi Nisnas and at the same time allowed the fascists to attack isolated Arab families and Arab businesses in Kiryat Eliezer and the German Colony. They chased and arrested any Arab that tried to come to the help of the attacked.

Luay shouted at the police as they were attacking his sister in the May 11 demo. He was detained and badly beaten. This image was taken on May 12, as he was released.

The Catholic Sun reports that “about 30 Jewish men attacked the three daughters of Wadie Abunassar, honorary Spanish consul and spokesman for the Assembly of Catholic Bishops in the Holy Land. The men beat the young adults with flag poles flying the Israeli flag and threw stones at their cars.”

The fascists didn’t come close to the Arab concentrations, but the police attacked there, also with violence and detentions.

Thursday, May 13

After last night’s events the Arab population was more tense than ever, everybody discussing what to do to defend against fascist attacks. At 17:00 there was an open-air meeting in the middle of the Wadi Nisnas market, with activists from the Arab parties and some maybe a hundred of the youth that were leading the action. They felt that the Arab neighborhoods are more or less safe, but the problem was how to defend Arab homes where Arabs are a minority in mixed neighborhoods. It was decided to gather in Kiryat Eliezer before the fascists come again, not in a demonstration, just stand quietly on the street side, in order to defend the residents.

The peaceful defensive gathering was promptly attacked with extra force by the police, which brought big reinforcement from the military “border guards”, trained on brutal oppression in the West Bank. Hundreds of youths dispersed all the way East to Wadi Nisnas and Hadar, and clashes erupted in many streets and alleys.

Throughout the evening the police and the soldiers were actively terrorizing the civilian population in their neighborhoods, streets and homes. Many soldiers were moving in the streets in civilian cars just to suddenly stop in the middle of the street, stopping the traffic, pointing their guns at the drivers and bystanders, pulling people out of their cars and searching them and the cars and performing random detentions. Walking patrols entered the streets, seeking violent “contact” and shooting teargas randomly at residents. You can see one such patrol, which I succeeded to film just as they shoot gas randomly in Wadi Nisnas, in this video. Later I heard how someone that was filming the soldiers nearby was shot by a rubber bullet in the chest and had three ribs broken.

Police and burning barricades in the German Colony, May 11

This night the fascist continued their rioting in Kiryat Eliezer. Later they went to another neighborhood, Wadi Jamal, and shot live bullets at Arab homes.

Friday, May 14

The police and the army still concentrate forces to terrorize the Arab population. Now they invade houses and arrest people, day and night. The fascists are planning for a new demonstration in the German Colony for tomorrow

Occupied Haifa

When I was in Barcelona in 2019, I’ve seen a writing on the wall: “When you don’t move, you don’t feel the chains”. Now that Palestinian Arabs in Haifa moved, the real nature of the Zionist state is crystal clear. Palestinian Haifa is an occupied city and its police is basically a hateful Jewish supremacist militia. The situation in other “mixed” occupied cities, al-Lid, Ramlah, Yaffa and Akka, is even much worse than in Haifa.

But when you struggle for your rights, for your freedom, you are also full of pride, solidarity, love and hope. These are historic moments and the people of Haifa moved like never before since the Nakba of 1948. And, more than ever since 1948, they are part of a united Palestinian struggle against their oppressors.

It is already 3am and I finish this report for now.

Israel’s Elections Reveal its Racist Nature

27 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by freehaifa in Boycott the Knesset, ODS, Palestine 48, Zionism

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Bibi, Election Boycott, Gantz, Joint List, Knesset Elections, Knesset Elections 2021, Mansour Abbas

But fail to solve the state’s political crisis

(The following article appeared in “The Left Berlin”)

On March 23, Israel’s citizens elected a new Knesset, the fourth such election in just two years. The most painful issue under Israel’s control— the fate of Palestinians deprived of their most basic human and national rights— was not even discussed in the campaign. Millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which has been under Israel’s military rule for the last 54 years, don’t have the vote. For many Israelis, their fate is a “non-issue.”

In fact, the Israeli media constantly attacks Arab Palestinian Knesset members for caring too much about the fate of their voteless brothers and sisters. According to Israel’s mainstream media, by defending the rights of the disenfranchised, Arab MKs (and not the racist state) are somehow responsible for the continued systematic discrimination against their voters, Palestinians in the areas occupied by Israel since 1948 who have formal Israeli citizenship.

Open racist wounds

Though the Palestinian issue was not discussed, it is still the invisible force that played havoc with Israeli politics and caused the unprecedented anomaly of four subsequent elections. The central issue of contention, as everybody knows, is the fate of Binyamin Netanyahu (AKA “BiBi”), Israel’s longest serving prime minister, who is standing trial for multiple cases of corruption.

In previous elections, Bibi succeeded to distract Zionist public opinion from his corruption by inciting against the “danger” of Arab voters. In the last previous round, in March 2, 2020, the anti-Bibi forces united around General Gantz, the “hero” who, as Israel’s chief of staff, commanded over the massacre of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in 2014. They thought that the general’s war credentials would protect them from Bibi’s description of his opponents as “leftists” and “weak on the Palestinians.”

The Arab parties also united in those 2020 Knesset elections and brought unprecedented representation of 15 seats, raising the traditionally low voting percentage between disillusioned Arab Palestinian voters by promising that with their unity they could gain real influence in Israeli politics. In an attempt to materialize the promised influence, they joined the Zionist opposition in recommending Gantz for the post of prime-minister. That caused panic in the Gantz camp, as the “hero” himself and many of his supporters preferred to join a government led by Bibi, the same person they promised never to support, rather than form a government supported by Arab parties.

Finally, it was Bibi himself who caused the collapse of his own coalition government, trying to utilize his success in rolling out anti-Corona vaccines (but not vaccinating Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza) before any other country, in order to form a government of true believers that would, hopefully, abolish his corruption trials.

Bibi’s true believers, in addition to Likud enthusiasts, are mostly religious nationalists.

The two Haredi (Religious Orthodox) parties, one for Jews of European descent and one for Jews from the Arab countries, are hooked on monetary transfers from the state, and adopted extreme anti-Arab positions just as they skilfully defend the right of their youth not to serve in the army.

In addition, Bibi personally worked hard to unite all sorts of “national religious” elements to a single election list named “Religious Zionism,” which includes the most extreme far-right “Jewish Power” (Otzma Yehudit) party, the new home of the followers of Kahana after their original party was declared a terrorist organization. Likud, at Bibi’s insistence, even gave a slot in his own list to a member of “Religious Zionism” in order to make sure that Itamar Ben-Gvir from “Otzma” will be in the Knesset.

Political Chaos

The collapse of the anti-Bibi camp after the last election and the crawl to join his government, followed by Bibi’s reversal of all his promises, left the “camp” in disarray. There are hardly any real parties, as candidates’ lists change in each election like the colored plastic in a kaleidoscope. Most lists are popularly, or even officially, called by the name of their current leader. In many such lists, “the leader” personally positions his servile followers in the rest of the slots.

The media often describes Bibi as a magician, in an attempt to explain his prolonged control over Israeli politics. A much more honest explanation is the total impotence of the opposition. He was exposed in an endless array of small and big corruption cases, from begging for cigars and champagne from friendly tycoons, through taking his family’s dirty laundry (literally) on visits to the white house to be washed for free at the expense of USA hospitality, to big bribes paid by German submarine producers to his close aides for their effort to sell the Israeli army expensive hardware it doesn’t need.

The value of his political shares inflated as his admirer Donald Trump was elected for the job of US president, but his staunch support for Trump undermined the bi-partisan support for Israel in the US and damaged Israel’s relations with its Jewish community. Meanwhile he filled his Likud party with noisy henchmen and continued to lose the party’s “more serious” politicians, the latest of them, Gideon Sa’ar, led another Anti-Bibi list composed of ex-Likudniks, which prevented the pro-Bibi camp from gaining outright majority in this election.

The general political chaos didn’t spare the Arab “Joint List.” In its unanimous recommendation for Gantz, it crossed all the red lines of Palestinian solidarity without showing any tangible achievement for its voters. This led one component of the Joint List to try to go one step farther.

MK Mansour Abbas, the leader of the Islamic Movement’s “Southern” faction, started engaging in a series of courtship steps with Bibi himself, explaining that he is ready to cooperate with any side that can deliver real advantage to his voters. (The “Northern” faction of the Islamic Movement, where most of the mass movement is, was outlawed by Israel and its leaders were thrown into jail.)

This division led to a split in the Joint List. Abbas is now leading “The United List” with his Islamic Movement and some more traditional local leaders. As I write these lines, according to the current (not final) election results, Abbas and his list are considered “the wild card” between the pro-Bibi and anti-Bibi camps. But as Israeli politics go, racism is the most prevalent common denominator, and it is unlikely that either camp will be ready to build a government based on Arab parties.

Thus, by the delegitimization of the Arab Palestinian voters, the two Zionist camps would find it hard to command the “Jewish majority” that they aspire to for building a “legitimate” Zionist government. Many commentators assume that the most likely result of the election would be yet another election sometime soon.

The Case for Boycott

It was symbolic that at the time of the Knesset election campaign, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were preparing to vote for the “Legislative Council” of the Palestinian Authority. The ethno-geography of the elections clearly explains the failure of the Palestinians to gain their rights on both stages.

All Jews, everywhere in Palestine, from the river to the sea, are privileged citizens of the state of Israel and take part in deciding not only their own fate but also the fate of the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Palestinians are divided. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza vote for the PA, which has no real control under the occupation. Any Palestinian, including elected MPs, that engage in political activity that is regarded “hostile” by the occupation, is arrested by Israel.

A poster produced by South Africa’s United Democratic Front (UDF) resistance movement calling on white, coloured and Indian people to boycott elections held by the apartheid regime.

Palestinians in the areas that were occupied in 1948 are formally citizens, but they are subject to systemic discrimination, including land confiscation and house demolition that amount to ethnic cleansing. Palestinian MKs have no real influence, and they are subject to constant demonization in the Israeli media. On the other side, the Israeli propaganda machine uses the presence of Palestinian MKs in the Knesset as a “proof” of the false claim that Israel is a proper democracy.

The majority of the Palestinian population was expelled from their homes, villages and cities in 1948 and in the 73 years that lapsed since. Actually, their expulsion was the essential condition for creating the “Jewish Majority” in 1948. Thus, the claim that Israel is a “democratic state” is based on the endorsement of ethnic cleansing. No wonder that this “Jewish Majority” is voting again and again to deny the right of return of millions of Palestinians.

Over the last decades, especially since the Oslo agreement, Israel and its Western and Arab supporters succeeded not only to divide the Palestinian people physically but also to divide them politically. Each part of the Palestinian people is directed to look for his special rights within some special enclave. In each part there is a local leadership that adjusted to these conditions and grew to benefit from them.

Over the last years, we have witnessed the development of new Palestinian protest movements, mostly among the younger generation. Many of them call for boycott of the Knesset elections as well as the elections of the Palestinian Authority. They aspire for the rebuilding of a united Palestinian movement, in all parts of Palestine and throughout the diaspora, as the first step toward liberation and the establishment of real democracy in a free, united Palestine.

Israel’s Medical Apartheid begins with the numbers

18 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by freehaifa in Corona Pandemic, Israeli Apartheid

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Tags

Corona Vaccination, Discrimination, Gaza Siege, Human Rights Organizations, Israeli Statistics, Medical Apartheid, Netanyahu, Pfizer Covid Vaccine, World Apartheid

(The following article was published in “The Left Berlin” website.)

The Covid-19 pandemic posed a harsh “surprise test” for many states as well as local and global organizations and human societies in general. The arrival of the vaccine, though it was long expected, posed another harsh test for our ‘one-but-unequal’ worldwide society.

The first weeks of the distribution of the newly available vaccines exposed the incompetence or indifference of many states in caring for their citizens. But, above all, they exposed the international system of apartheid, where all the supposedly “premium” vaccines from western manufacturers are divided between the western capitalist states. One striking example is the case of Ukraine, that tried to buy vaccine from manufacturers like Pfizer, only to be blocked by an executive order from the USA administration banning its export.

Israel was late to contact Pfizer, which happened to be the first producer to succeed to license its Covid-19 vaccine in the EU and the USA. Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu boasted that he talked 17 times on the phone with Pfizer’s president Bourla over the past weeks. Netanyahu secured enough vaccine for all Israel’s citizens above the age of 16 before the end of March. Needless to say, this bargain, one that puts Israel’s citizens before those of the vaccine’s inventors and producers in Germany and the USA, was not blocked by Trump.

This came just in time for embattled Netanyahu’s personal ambitions, as he tries to avoid a pending trial on several counts of corruption. He caused his divided government to fall by preventing the adoption of a budget, and set elections for March 23. He is hoping to ride the vaccine wave and get a majority in the Knesset that will provide him with legal immunity.

But Israel not only gets top priority in the world-wide apartheid order. It also has its internal deeply established apartheid system. When Israel speaks of vaccinating “all its citizens”, it completely ignores millions of Palestinians who live under its rule as subjects with no rights. Actually, the whole world is adopting this racist Israeli approach. When, for example, we read in the papers that “25% of Israel’s population was already vaccinated”, this percentage is computed out of the some 9 million “citizens” – leaving aside more than 5 million Palestinians that Israel didn’t even think about their need for the vaccine.

Even independent data providers like “ourworldindata.org” (see figure below), buy into this Israeli Apartheid statistics. The excuse, of course, is the artificial division between the territories that Israel occupied in 1948, performing ethnic cleansing of most of the native population, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip that Israel occupied in 1967. The first, 1948 occupied areas, are regarded by many as a legitimate and “democratic” Israel, as the ethnic cleansing and the prevention of the return of the Palestinian refugees ensured Jewish majority in those areas. The 1967 occupation is regarded as “temporary” – even as most of the population there is a second generation to live under this “temporary” rule that deny them all basic human rights.

Vaccination rate as of 15 Jan 2021, from ourworldindata.org –
The statistics for Israel ignores millions of Palestinians that till now are not planned to be vaccinated.

The reality on the ground has no connection to this illusionary view, in all aspects of life, healthcare and vaccination included. Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and there are more than half a million of them, of course get the Covid-19 vaccine like any other citizen and are part of the official Israeli statistics. So, the denial of rights, and the wiping out from the statistics, is just in case you happened to be Palestinian.

On December 23, 2020, as Israel started its vaccination campaign, 20 human rights organizations published a call to the Israel government to respect its obligation under the international law to take responsibility for the health of the population under its occupation. They wrote: “The Israeli Ministry of Health has not yet publicly formulated an allocation policy that includes reserving specific amounts for Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), nor has it established a timeline for the transfer of these vaccines. However, Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention specifically provides that an occupier has the duty of ensuring “the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics”. This duty includes providing support for the purchase and distribution of vaccines to the Palestinian population under its control.”

The situation in the Gaza Strip, a densely populated area with 2 million people, most of them refugees from the 1948 ethnic cleansing, is even much worse than in the West Bank. After the bloody oppression of the second intifada (2000-2005) failed to break the resistance, Israel changed tactics and withdrew from within the strip, converting it to a huge open-air prison, controlled from outside by snipers, artillery and drones. This enabled the only semi-democratic elections in the history of the Palestinian Authority in 2006, which was won by Hamas. Under strict siege by Israel and Egypt, the pandemic was late to invade the strip, but lately it flared there, where there is hardly any space for social distancing and the health services are deprived of resources due to poverty and the siege.

Israel is cynically trying to use the pandemic to press the Hamas government in Gaza to agree to its terms for a prisoners’ exchange deal. Hamas captured two Israeli soldiers during the invasion of the strip in a bloody massacres campaign in 2014 and two Israeli citizens that entered the strip. Israel claims that both soldiers are dead, after doing its utmost to make sure it is true. Hamas wants the prisoners’ exchange to release as many as possible of the some 5000 Palestinian prisoners that are held by Israel. Now Israel is seeing the pandemic as “an opportunity” to lower the number of Palestinians to be released.

The family of one of the soldiers appealed to the Israeli “high court” to prevent any supply of the Covid-19 vaccine to the Gaza strip until the soldiers are released. In their reply, the Israeli state representatives promised the court that there is no intention to let vaccine to the strip anytime soon. They even claimed initially that the whole Palestine Authority (PA) has no vaccine, but on January 13 “admitted” that Israel passed to the PA 100 doses(!) “for humanitarian reasons”.

It is worth noting that the lawyer that is demanding in court, in the name of the soldier’s family, to prevent vaccination from 2 million people in Gaza is the Dean of Sha’arei Mishpat Law School, Professor Aviad Ha’cohen. He is doing it as part of his university’s “pro-bono” program.

Another especially vulnerable population are the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, many of them old (as Israel imprisons Palestinian to ultra-log periods, with no proportion to what they were accused of) and many of them already suffering from other diseases due to harsh conditions and systematic medical neglect. Israel’s minister of internal security, Amir Ohana, which is responsible to the Prisons’ Authority, is a former Shabak operator. He tries to gain popularity with racist public opinion by loudly refusing to vaccinate Palestinian prisoners. He was told by official legal and health experts that public health policies (like vaccinating all people over 60) should be applied also to all prisoners. Lately he seems to have hardened his stance and now objects to the inoculation of all prisoners. The fate of the prisoners is still hung in court while the pandemic is spreading in the prisons.

While Israel’s advanced health services (for those that are entitled to receive them) rely heavily of Palestinian doctors and nurses, the service itself is not equally administered in the Arab Palestinian communities (within the green line) from with most of these doctors and nurses come. Human rights organizations complained of lack of explanatory materials in Arabic, lack of vaccination centers, etc., this on top of the chronic problems of poverty, bad infrastructure, lack of public transport and the situation in dozens of unrecognized villages that are not receiving services at all.

All this is a stark demonstration of the nature of the Israeli regime, which B’Tselem recently declared to be a proper Apartheid State. The Covid-19 pandemic exposes this regime in its most ugly manifestations. The struggle for equality and social justice will probably stay with us long after the virus will be defeated.

Israel’s Annexation Plan Ends with a Fiasco

10 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by freehaifa in Zionism

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Annexation, Deal of the Century, Gantz, Palestinians, US Imperialism, West Bank

(This article is also available in Spanish. It appeared originally on The Left Berlin site.)

The first wave of the Corona virus came at a very good timing for Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister. Just as his trial for three severe charges of corruption had to begin, and with all parties exhausted from three consecutive inconclusive elections, the virus caused a sense of emergency. This enabled him to postpone his trial and convince most of the Zionist opposition to join his government. The second COVID wave, with daily infection counts soaring for the first time above the thousand, came as a useful distraction from the failure of his new government to fulfill one of its central election promises: to annex sections of the West Bank, occupied since 1967, starting in July 1^st.

It is a rare victory for the Palestinians, who struggle for more than a century to stay on their ancestral land, under constant attacks from Zionist expropriation and colonization campaigns. House demolition, land confiscation and the building of Jewish-exclusive settlements on stolen land continue to be the core policy of all Israeli governments. They are applied in different ways both against Palestinians in the areas that Israel occupied and annexed in 1948-9 (and are formally citizens of Israel) and in the West Bank that, since its occupation in 1967, is held under direct military rule.

Israel, hypocritically, doesn’t recognize any Palestinian land as “occupied” and denies the Palestinian population even the few rights that are reserved for civilians under occupation according to international law. But it is aware of the fact that much of the world, including its imperialist allies, consider those of its settlements that were built under military occupation as illegal. The annexation plan was designed to “normalize” the existing settlements, and to give the occupiers more legal tools to continue with the expropriation and ethnic cleansing of the original Palestinian population.

Under constant attack, the Palestinians this time united in rejection of the Israeli-USA plan. For a long time, Fatah, the traditional leadership of the PLO, built its strategy on negotiations with Israel in the framework of USA “mediation”. It hoped to get at least some form of Palestinian independence in the 22% of Palestine that Israel occupied in 1967. But this bleak hope was fading even before the new annexation plan was announced.

Hamas, the main Islamist resistance movement and party, won the rare semi-free elections to the Palestinian legislature on 2006. It attracted votes through a platform that combined resistance to the occupation with rejection of the corruption of the Fatah leadership and building grass-root social organizations. But it could actually take control only in the besieged Gaza Strip, from which Israel, under the pressure of the resistance, had withdrawn its army and settlements a year before. This added a new level of division of the Palestinian people – between Gaza and the West Bank. It came on top of the attempts of Israel to distance the millions of Palestinian refugees outside of the country from any perspective of political solution and to prevent the Palestinian national institutions from representing Palestinians in the 1948 occupied territories. Another special status was given to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, which was split off from the rest of the West Bank and annexed shortly after its occupation: they are considered “residents” but not “citizens”.

Now Israel is busy digesting the West Bank into its sophisticated apartheid system. The method, as always, is to strangle and divide the Palestinian people, geographically and politically, under different precarious statuses and racist laws, while uniting all the Jewish settler population under a single civil citizenship.

The conservative Palestinian leadership’s readiness to cooperate with the fake “peace process” came under farther strain as the Trump administration took ever more steps to make life harder for the Palestinian people, undermine all Palestinian institutions and encourage Israeli aggression. After Trump celebrated with Netanyahu the USA “gifting” the whole of Jerusalem to Israel, even Mahmoud Abbas, the most compliant Palestinian leader and president of the Palestine Authority (under occupation) in Ramallah, refused to negotiate about Trump’s “deal of the century”. Hamas, on its side, hinted at another armed conflict if Israel will go on in its annexation plan.

As July 1^st approached, General Gants, who is supposed to be Netanyahu’s “reasonable” coalition partner, declared that, as the Palestinians are not ready to discuss Israel’s annexation, they will “remain in their deep shit” and Israel will move on with annexation alone. But pressure on Israel has mounted with the European Union, Britain and US Democratic Party presidential candidate Biden all warning it of severe consequences.

Meanwhile the Trump administration itself was divided. David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, pressed for a wide annexation, while Kushner, the president’s son in law, asked for a smaller plan. Netanyahu and Gantz waited for a final word from the president, which didn’t come. Finally, on July 1^st, Israel did nothing. On the next day Fatah and Hamas held together an unprecedented press conference declaring unity in struggle against Israel’s continuing occupation.

Yes, the Palestinian are still deep in the shit – but it is not theirs. The shit is Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, occupation and racism. The fiasco of the July 1^st annexation might give some hope that the tide of shit is beginning to turn.

Israel succeeded not by its own power but by the unlimited support it always received from Western imperialism, militarily, economically and politically. At the time of the cold war Israel was a bulwark of US hegemony against leftist and nationalist Arab regimes in countries like Egypt and Syria.

As the cold war was over and the West dropped it support for Apartheid in South Africa, Israel succeeded to position itself at the middle of the crusade against “Islamic terrorism”. It fanned the fire of Islamophobia and had an important role in dragging the USA into a bloody and costly war in Iraq. As the enthusiasm for military adventures has faded in the West, Israel found a new brand to champion. Its cocktail of colonialism, white supremacy and disdain for the rights of the oppressed put it at the vanguard of a new type of conservative populists that emerged from the degeneration of the Western hegemony, the likes of Trump and Boris Johnson.

At every twist and turn Israel turned more belligerent, more racist, and received more praise and material “prizes” at the expense of the Palestinians from its imperialist masters. It become completely spoiled on the personal and national level. Now, as the world is engulfed with a new mass movement against racism, we can hope that Israel’s regime, where racism is the basis of everything, will at last go out of fashion.

Fighting Zionism is NOT Anti-Semitism

27 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by freehaifa in International, Uncategorized, Zionism

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Argentine Left, Definition of Anti Semitism, International Solidarity, Israels' crimes against humanity, Right of Self Determination

An Open Letter to my comrades in the Argentine Left

(This letter is also available en español)

My dear comrades in the Argentine Left,

While people all over the world struggle today to fight the heritage of colonialism, slavery and white supremacy that is deep rooted in Western Capitalist societies and institutions, our people in Palestine are still facing the cruelest forms of active colonization, with all its brutality and blatant injustices.

We are used to the mobilization of all the imperialist forces to support Israel, militarily, economically and politically, in its constant drive to deprive all Palestinians of the most basic human rights. For the likes of Trump and Bolsonaro, their support to Israel is a natural extension of their racist and anti-democratic policies everywhere. But we naturally expect those fighting against racism and for social justice in their own countries to oppose Israeli colonialism and Apartheid and support the just struggle of Palestinians to live as free people in their own homeland.

For this reason, I was shocked to hear of the support of leftist parties in the Buenos Aires parliament to a declaration which is supposed to be against anti-Semitism, but in fact plays into the hands of the Zionist campaign to stigmatize and delegitimize criticism of Israel’s crimes.

In the “definition”, the first censored manifestation of “anti-Semitism” is “targeting of the state of Israel”. The carefully worded text goes on to allow “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country”. We should ask ourselves:

Which other country expelled the majority of the native population just 72 years ago, destroyed most of the villages and towns all over the country, and prevents the refugees till this day from returning?
Which other countries hold the majority of the native population under direct military rule with no right of self-determination?
Which other country, till this day, demolish houses, confiscate land and evacuate whole villages of the native population (all over the country, both citizens of Israel and under military occupation, just because they do not have the right religion) in order to give their property and build settlement on their land for people from the state’s religion?
Which other country holds 2 million people (many of them refugees) in the biggest prison on earth, surrounded by tanks and snipers, on the verge of starvation, with electricity supplied for a few hours a day, and bombing them regularly?

Sorry, comrades. From the “definition of anti-Semitism” that you adopted I may understand that if I don’t criticize Denmark for doing all these, then blaming Israel with such outrageous accusations is dangerously out of the mark.

The same definition goes on to denounce “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” How could you call a state that is based on systematic ethnic cleansing, expropriation, oppression and discrimination of the native population on the basis of race and religion other than “racist”? In what political lexicon does the “right of self-determination” imply the right to colonize other countries and expel the original population? And, yes, colonialism, racism and white supremacy are not “flaws” in the development of Zionism. They are at the basis of Zionist colonization, like other settler-colonialist movements. The difference is that Israel is still in the most brutal stage of expansionism and expropriation while most of the rest of the world is trying to move to a more civilized stage in the development of humanity.

In another hypocritical defense of Israel, the “definition” denounces “double standards” and demands that Israel would be treated like “any other democratic nation”. What does it mean for million of Palestinians under Israeli occupation that have no right to speak, protest or vote? Would you expect the world to treat Videla and his Junta “like any other democratic regime”?

Defending the crimes against humanity that are systematically performed by Israel in the name of fighting anti-Semitism is doing a disastrous damage to the fight against anti-Semitism, against racism in general and to the cause of the Left internationally. We should not forget the position of the Soviet Union and the Stalinists parties that supported the establishment of the colonialist state of Israel in 1948 and supplied much of the arms which was used to massacre and ethnically cleanse the native Palestinian population. This shameful position, preferring the interests of an European settler minority over the native majority, discredited the cause of Socialism in a very important period in the strategic battle for the future of the world.

We can’t allow ourselves to repeat this kind of prejudice in the 21st century.

I would like to believe that you just didn’t think out well your position. I hope that you would have the political courage and responsibility to reconsider your position and stand out clearly against Zionism, for the rights of the Palestinian people, for the return of the refugees and for one democratic state in all of Palestine.

Comradely Greetings,

Yoav Haifawi

June 27, 2020

Response from the Buenos Aires leftist deputies

After publishing the open letter above, I received the following response in my Facebook inbox:

ALWAYS WITH THE PALESTINE CAUSE AGAINST THE ZIONIST STATE

We rectify a mistake made in the CABA Legislature Always with the Palestinian cause against the Zionist state.

Statement by Buenos Aires deputies of the Left Front Myriam Bregman, Gabriel Solano and Alejandrina Barry.

The Left Front has been denouncing the prostration to Zionism of the national government as stated in Alberto Fernández’s first trip to Israel to meet with the genocidal Netanyahu, who these days is advancing with his policy of finishing annexing the Zionist state to the Palestinian West Bank.

In light of the aforementioned, it is clear that for the Left Front the table should be voted negatively.

We have always carried out our fight to the death against anti-Semitism on the basis of denouncing Zionism and the State of Israel, built on the basis of genocide and the occupation and theft of land and property from the Palestinian people.

We have made our principled position on this point clear by actively participating in the demonstrations taking place in our country at the Israeli Embassy and denouncing the permanent arrangements of all governments with Zionism.

We are in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their cause. We demand the release of all political prisoners by the Israeli state and all Palestinian demands in the face of an exponential increase in their hardships since the emergence of the pandemic.

To make our position clear, we will send this text to the Parliamentary Secretariat of the Legislature to inform you count our vote in a negative way.

Myriam Bregman, Gabriel Solano, Alejandrina Barry, CABA Deputies for the Left Front (Argentina)

The original corrective statement (in Spanish) was published here.

Apartheid in the time of corona

13 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by freehaifa in Palestine 48, Zionism

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Tags

Administrative Detention, Corona Virus, Israeli Apartheid, Jaffa, Mossad, Police Violence, Shabak, Turkey, Yaffa

(The following article appeared today in Mondoweiss)

I have to disagree with Dr. Azmi Bishara. Trying to defend the disastrously late response of western capitalist states to the pandemic, he claimed in Arab 48, that governments should not be assessed by their conduct at emergencies. I find just the opposite to be the case. We have seen, in many cases, that in normal times a country can just about manage itself without a functioning government. But a major crisis exposes abruptly many things about the nature of each regime, exactly at the time that we desperately need a good government to protect us, and everybody is taking note.

“The Economist” reports that in the United States, lifesaving PPE (personal protective equipment) that is imported by the government (through FEMA) is given to private distributers to make a buck at the expense of the lives of medical staff on the frontline. We have seen all rich countries stop exporting essential medical goods and outbidding everybody else to get whatever is on the market. When Italy was at the worst of the crisis, Germany banned export of medical supply, but when China sent needed life-saving equipment EU leaders warned that China was doing so “for propaganda purposes”.

Reading the local Corona news in Israel is yet a very different story. Israel’s Apartheid regime is showing itself to be absurdly abnormal even in the most abnormal of times. Here are some heart-breaking examples of what Apartheid looks like at the time of Corona.

Ready to die like Samson

There are many stories how each state and each medical institution is looking today for any opportunity to buy PPE. Turkey is one of the biggest producers worldwide and one of the few that is still ready to sell, in spite of a worsening epidemic on its home front. Bloomberg reported that Turkey was supplying personal protective equipment to Israel, including surgical masks, overalls and sterile gloves.

On Thursday, April 9, 3 Israeli planes had to collect medical supplies from a Turkish military airport. But then it was reported that Turkey requested that Israel would reciprocate by allowing the passage of similar amount of Turkish anti-corona aid contributed to the Palestinians.

As of Friday, April 10, according to both “Times of Israel” and “Arab 48”, it seems that Israel refused to surrender to Turkish “terror” and the equipment was not supplied. As the hero “Samson” said: “Let me die with the Palestinians” …

Then yesterday, April 12, Haaretz reported about new negotiations between Israel and Hamas concerning steps toward prisoners’ exchanges. Hamas signaled that it is ready to compromise on its previous conditions in order to protect old and sick Palestinian prisoners from the danger of succumbing to corona while in prison. What is significant for our subject is that, according to Haaretz, the Palestinians implied that part of the deal is that Israel will supply to the Gaza strip, which is under siege, an unspecified number of ventilators to treat corona patients. What is even more significant is that, according to the same report, Israeli sources denied (out of all the reported details about the planned deal) that ventilators would be allowed into Gaza!

Does Mossad steal PPE?

Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned long time ago that Israel would become “A Shabak State” – referring to Israel’s all-powerful “general security service” (General Security Service, Shabak). An article in Maariv from July 27, 2019, estimates that the Shabak and the Mossad (its twin responsible for operations out of the state’s borders) each employs about 7,000 people and has a budget exceeding a billion dollars. While Israel investment on health is low relatively to other OECD countries, it has these two monsters, and it decided to utilize them to fight the pandemic.

Start with Mossad. It was assigned the task of acquiring medical equipment. According to “the Marker” it requested a budget of 7 billion shekels but was given 2.5 billion to start with (about 700 million $US). But it had no professional knowledge of the medical field, not any special experience or the infrastructure to perform large scale purchases and import operations.

The Mossad soon boasted of bringing in 100,000 virus tests from an unspecified source, only to be rebuked by an Ministry of Health official who commented that these were not the tests that were needed. After the remark was published the official hurried to apologize, and the Mossad promised to check again what is needed and continue the hunt.

On April 6 Haaretz reported that Israel’s “defense” minister Naftali Bennett failed to deny, and actually implied, that the Mossad stole medical equipment from other countries. When asked during an interview on the army radio if the Mossad stole medical equipment related to the coronavirus pandemic, Bennett answered: “I will not answer this question. We are all acting in an aggressive and smart ways.” (It was reported also in English in Middle East Eye.)

It is not surprising that the Mossad, which specializes in assassinations, espionage and all sorts of under-cover activities, will resort to illegal means in its new role. But you could expect from Mr. Bennett, who is supposed to be a respected businessman, to be, at least, smart enough to deny it. However, he might have a good reason to make his Israeli audience believe that the Mossad is stealing for them. Some commentators in the Israeli press mentioned that giving billions of shekels to a secret organization like Mossad means that there is no supervision about how the money is spent. Now, when questions would be asked, Bennet might whisper “Shhh…” and wink: “you would not want to disclose the state’s secrets”.

(After the initial publication I found a more direct self-evidence of stealing medical equipment from other states in a TV interview in Israeli TV from a senior “security” official. Here in Hebrew and Arabic.)

Besides, Israel is used to being above international law for all its war crimes, so why should it fear stealing medical equipment from around the world?

On the receiving end of Shabak

On the home front, Shabak was assigned the task of identifying the routes of people infected by the Corona virus and instructing those who were in their proximity to be in self-isolation. For the first time it became public knowledge that Shabak can follow (now it is officially doing so) the whereabouts of each person, at least as long as people are moving around with their smartphones.

For the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and inside the green line, constant inspection by Shabak is nothing new. Even in Haifa, the most peaceful place under Israeli Apartheid, any Palestinian youth may be invited to intrusive “conversations” with Shabak officers for no reason at all. For political activists the military governor (yes, there are military governors on both sides of the green line) may issue an administrative detention order, based on Shabak secret “evidence”, so that the detainee or his lawyer are not allowed even to know what he is accused of. Shabak officers appear in courts under false names and the defense is not allowed even to see their faces. Their words in court are regarded as undisputable.

As soon as Shabak started to target Jewish Israelis, admittedly not sending them to prison, only to self-isolation, suddenly the press was full of reports about its errors.

One woman arranged for her husband to be in self isolation in their home after he came from abroad, and stayed with her parents so she could continue to work. But after she passed in the street near her house to wave hello to her husband, who stayed on the balcony at a safe distance, she was sent to self-isolate also. Another women prepared a cake for a neighbour under isolation and left it for him near a closed door. She also fell in the Shabak net. Others complained that they could not understand why they were instructed to isolate, as they were not told with whom they supposedly met and when.

People whose lives were suddenly disrupted for no reason called the Ministry of Health and were answered that they don’t know a thing about it, it is Shabak’s work. They were told that “Shabak never makes mistakes”.

Some tried to call the Shabak directly and found that there is no way to reach the secretive organization and no way to appeal its decrees.

One case that was reported in detail is that of a medical doctor who had some symptoms and was tested for corona. The test returned negative results (no virus), but apparently the result that was typed into the system was wrong. Soon his relatives, neighbours’ and medics that worked with him where all ordered by SMS to isolate themselves. Even he, with connections to the medical establishment and the certificate of the negative test in his possession, found it hard to get the authorities to reconsider. Only after the media exposed the absurdity of the situation the MOH admitted the error.

Will it make any Israeli judge think twice before relying on secret Shabak “evidence” while sending Palestinians to jail? Unlikely.

Police attack Palestinian residents in Yaffa

For Israel’s regular police force the declaration of country-wide lockdown was another opportunity to abuse Palestinians. I can’t cover here abuse of all types in the West Bank, where widespread attacks on Palestinians by settlers and soldiers were already reported here on April 6. What is less known is the severe attack on Palestinians in Yaffa, an Arab town that was annexed by Tel Aviv, and is now under intense pressure for “Judaization/Gentrification”, that took place on the 1st and 2nd of April.

Yaffa’s Arab population is mostly poor and marginalized, and relations with the police were tense even before the pandemic. As the lockdown was declared the Tel Aviv police found an opportunity to make a show of force in Yaffa in a way that wasn’t practiced in any other neighbourhood. It provoked two days of widespread clashes that continued late into the night.

I couldn’t go to Yaffa but I talked on the phone with a local activist and heard a first-hand report about how it all developed. On the first day, in what was supposed to be enforcement of the lockdown, police started arresting local youth. From what I heard, what provoked the residents most was the fact that the police themselves didn’t show any intention of following the anti-infection instructions. They moved in dense groups, without masks, and beat people with their bare hands. A woman who tried to protect her son was thrown to the ground, her head hit the pavement and she started bleeding. People all over the neighbourhood erupted in anger, not ready to take it anymore.

On the second evening activists initiated a quiet vigil against police violence, trying to keep the social distancing standards, staying apart. Even though the lockdown order specifically allows demonstrations, the police demanded from the protesters to disperse and soon attacked them. Then the road was closed and clashes resumed.

On the 3rd day it was the local Palestinian leadership itself that worked hard to convince the activists and the population at wide to stay at home. The danger of infection was too big; and police violence and the protest against it would probably be with us long after the pandemic.

* * *

Apartheid has poisoned our lives for so many years. It is even more dangerous at these hard times.

The Furniture Salesman and The General

10 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by freehaifa in Boycott the Knesset, Zionism

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Tags

Apartheid, Bibi, Ehud Barak, Gantz, Israel's Occupation Army, Israeli Elections, Netanyahu

(The following piece was published today in Mondoweiss)

When I was a student (in the late seventies) I had an odd job assembling wardrobes and kitchen cabinets in the customers’ homes. The cabinets came from different producers, and I don’t remember any of their names, except for one. It was one of the largest furniture manufacturing companies at the time, called “Rim”. When I had a “Rim” cabinet to assemble, I had to take special care. The plywood panels were likely to be hollow, or the filler between the two sides might be crumbling. Sticking a nail into the board to put the back of the closet was a complicated gamble.

Ma’ariv 5 March 1980, mentioning Bibi in his old role marketing furniture

At about the same time the sales manager for this “Rim” was a guy named “Binyamin Netanyahu”. Looking at the biography of Israel’s longest serving prime minister, his (short) time at Rim is about the only time he spent in the “real” economy. A short search in the web implies that the company went bankrupt a few years later.

Now the same Netanyahu is the “Big Man” of Israeli politics, trying to pose as “a close friend” of the likes of Trump and Putin.

Even as I hate Netanyahu for all that Israel is doing to the Palestinians, I must say I find some joy to watch how he kicks the shit out of Israel’s self-serving elites. Nothing in his long career of black magic is more hilarious than the way he vanished Israel’s top Politician-General Gantz.

Just a few weeks ago, after the March 2^nd Knesset elections, Netanyahu was facing a trial for multiple severe cases of corruption. Gantz had the recommendation of 61 of the new Knesset’s 120 members and was appointed to compose a new government. The general, who started his political campaign by lively TV ads boasting how many Palestinians he slaughtered in Gaza in 2014, got cold legs from the thought that he might be Israel’s prime minister with the support of Arab Knesset members, and preferred to split his party and join Netanyahu instead. Now, after Gantz betrayed his supporters and comrades in arm and has no options left, Netanyahu is in no hurry to share with the general’s dwindling bunch the fruits of his reconquered power.

The Israeli army is considered to be one of the strongest in the world. But looking at what happens with Israel’s generals after they come out of this army raises big questions about the internal qualities of this mighty oppressive machine. Generals are supposed to be experts in tactics and strategy, preparing for the worst and building strong teams. Without the authority of military uniform general Gantz finds it hard to put two sentences together, not to say a plan for the next day.

I once met a wise Yugoslav communist who insisted that Israel doesn’t have any army at all. “Armed man that run after kids to arrest them are no soldiers, I can only call them police”, he used to say.

Another example of the same fall from a military height to civil uselessness is general Ehud Barak. While in the Army he was regarded (mostly by himself) as the wisest and most sophisticated Israeli soldier ever. The top of his military career was to dress as a woman in order to carry assassinations against Palestinian intellectuals in Beirut. In his short period as Israel’s prime minister (1999-2001) he succeeded to destroy the Oslo (fake) “peace process”, to provoke the eruption of the second intifada and to cause Palestinians with Israeli citizenship to prefer letting the arch-war-criminal Sharon become prime minister rather than voting for him again. In the last series of 3 consecutive Knesset elections he was instrumental in destroying both the labor party (which he once led) and the pseudo left-Zionist Meretz.

Just like selling Rim’s flawed cupboards, Netanyahu may continue marketing for a while Israel’s flawed and completely evil Apartheid regime. But the product itself is hollow from within and crumbling. And Israel’s occupation institutions, its army, police, courts, Knesset, media – they are all part of this same dirty game. They are unable to produce any alternative. Apartheid can’t be reformed – it must fall!

Will the Yaffa theatre be the next martyr on the road to freedom?

22 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by freehaifa in Dareen Tatour, Human Rights, Zionism

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Arabic Hebrew Theater, Dareen Tatour, Freedom of Expression, Miri Regev, Nakba Law, Sharren Haskal, Yaffa

Persecution against Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour is expanding to her defenders

In July 2014, when 16 years old Palestinian boy from East Jerusalem, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, was kidnapped and burned alive, it was a shock for the Arab Palestinian public. People felt that the atrocity was a result of constant anti-Arab incitement by Israel’s top politicians and mainstream media. They also felt that the Israeli police and courts are not very concerned to prevent or punish violence when the perpetrators are Jew and the victims are Arab. Arabs were protesting all over the country. Hundreds of Arab activists shared a profile picture on Facebook, designed like obituary, saying “I’m the next

“I am the next martyr” – protesting the killing of the innocents

martyr”. Its meaning was clear for everybody: while children are randomly kidnapped from their streets and murdered, any of us can be the next victim.

More than a year later, in October 2015, this very same profile picture on the Facebook page of poet Dareen Tatour was wrongly interpreted by Israeli stupid “intelligence” as a declaration that she is going to make a suicide attack. Her house was surrounded at a pre-dawn raid by a big force of Israeli police and border guards and she was arrested. In the first interrogation they told her that she wrote that she wants to be a martyr (“Shahida” in Arabic). Soon they understood their mistake, but they wouldn’t apologize and let their victim go free. They started digging deeper in her Facebook page and found a poem and some posts that they also maliciously misinterpreted, this time as “incitement”. So started the saga of “The Jewish State against Poet Dareen Tatour”, which is now a world famous example of Israel’s unjust persecution of Palestinian arts and the freedom of political protest.

From protesters to victims

Just like Dareen Tatour protested the fate of other victims and became a victim herself, now the state of Israel is turning against those people that protest the persecution of the poet.

A group of Jewish and Palestinian artists plan to stage a protest event in solidarity with Tatour in the Yaffa (Jaffa) “Arab-Hebrew Theater” on August 30^th, before her trial is going to resume. They prepared a rich artistic program including reading from Tatour’s poetry and original works by other poets, and staged reading from the trial’s minutes. The full text of the invitation with the program is cited below as the last section of this post.

Today, Monday, August 21, Haaretz published (in Hebrew) a long news item titled “The Ministry of Culture requested the treasury to examine whether the Jaffa Theater violated the Nakba Law”. This is the beginning of a process, directly centered against the hosting of the solidarity event on August 30^th. It aims to cut the budget of the theater and might even end with the theater having to pay destructive high fine of up to 3 million shekel.

The tail wagging the dog

The whole process shows how extremist elements are now driving “mainstream” Israeli politics and government institutions are mobilized by populist-racist politicians like Miri Regev to serve their anti-democratic agenda.

It all started with one “Shai Glick”, that is sometimes mentioned as CEO of an organization called “Bezalmo – Jewish human rights organization”. This organization calls for a demonstration in front of the Yaffa event, which it describes as “calling for the release of a terrorist” (using the Hebrew degrading word “Mehabelet”). The picture that

Bloody Caricature inciting against the Yaffa Theater: “stop financing terror”

was selected for the event page (copied here) is an example of the worst kind of bloody propaganda. Till now the Facebook event of this counter-demonstration has 5 people signed as “attending” (and 15 “interested”), compared to 136 “going” (and 239 “interested”) for the solidarity event.

But Shai Glick is not alone. If he doesn’t have the public, he can mobilize the whole power of the state. On August 7 Israeli “mainstream” site “Maariv” reported (in Hebrew) that as a result of a complaint by Mr. Glick, a little known Knesset member from the governing Likud, Sharren Haskel, sent a concerned letter to Ms. Regev, the Culture minister, reporting the solidarity event, repeating Glick’ accusations and requesting the minister to “handle it”.

Hence comes the current initiative by minister Regev, demanding investigation by the ministry of finance which is responsible for the financing of theaters and has the authority to reduce or abolish funding or imposing fines.

The Nakba law

Everybody is somewhat perplexed by the whole process, as it is a new attempt to use new laws and procedures to squeeze freedom of expression. The common knowledge in Israel is that even as Palestinians are persecuted for anything or nothing, the freedom of expression for the Jewish population was more or less secure. Now the event in Yaffa may become a test case of the new laws and the old assumptions.

Regev and Mandelblit, changing the rules of the play to shut up theaters

The Knesset seems to be always busy passing new racist and anti-democratic laws, so much so that people relate to the “status quo” and tend to ignore these new laws, hoping that they will not be implemented. Specifically, the new “Nakba law”, which is the legal base of the investigation against the Yaffa theater, was almost ignored, as it mostly speaks about the denial of government funding. People were wondering are there any government funded institutions that actually commemorate the Palestinian Nakba?

But the so-called “Nakba law” is not only about commemorating the Nakba. It counts many possible offences that deserve denial of funds, including questioning the “Jewish democratic” nature of the state – i.e. opposing Jewish supremacy. And lately, in a new twist to the plot, the government’s attorney general agreed with Ms. Regev to hold theaters responsible not only to their own plays and programs but also to the contents of any event held in their premises.

In a detailed report in Haaretz (August 16, in Hebrew) about the consultations between Regev and Mandelblit, the attorney general, about the strengthening of political supervision of theaters, she is cited as saying: “Hear me well. I’m not ready to be laughed at. I have 20 complaints about the Yaffa Theater. They say that in the Yaffa Theater there are extreme organizations that call for boycott of Israel”. So all that Mr. Glick and his likes should do is write 20 letters, and they become the Ten Commandments for the minister.

“Al-Midan”, the Arabic theater from Haifa, was persecuted for similar reasons over the last two years and as of now is still closed. Now, with the new law, the Yaffa Theater might be the next martyr.

The invitation for the August 30^th solidarity event

Here is the full text of the invitation, with the detailed program, taken for the event’s Facebook page:

A poetry and theater event for the immediate release of the poet Dareen Tatour
On the stage
Reading from the minutes of Dareen’s trial. Actors: Doron Tavori and Liora Rivlin. Director: Einat Weitzman
Music and Spoken Word: Tamer Nafar
Reading original poetry and translations of Dareen’s poems: Tal Nitzan, Rachel Peretz, Yonit Naaman, Sheikha Hlewe, Mahmoud Abu Arisha, Michal Ben Naftali and Dana Amir
Facilitator: Orly Noy
Selling books >>>> Limited edition of social and political literature:
The Independent Bookshop “Sipur Pashut”. Percentage of sales will be contributed to Dareen’s legal defense.

(This article appeared also in Mondoweiss)

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Persecution against Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour is expanding to her defenders

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The invitation for the August 30th solidarity event

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The invitation for the August 30^th solidarity event