The Realities of West Bank Settlements

As part of my quest to try to explain the complicated situation of Jewish Israelis who settle in the West Bank, I urge you to read Seth Freedman's article about Bayit Echad in the Guardian. He touches on a very important aspect of the settler experience and reminds us that there are very real and human reasons that they continue to live there. We cannot ask anyone to change without first addressing their concerns.

"If we don't make peace, the Middle East will explode", he warns. "We can't live by the sword forever; if we don't deal with the Palestinians [over a negotiating table], they'll return to terror, and no army can beat terror; only diplomacy can." Raz is, by definition, a settler – albeit an incredibly reluctant one. He is desperate to relocate his family west of the Green Line, but economic conditions make such a move financially unviable, and he wants the government to enact legislation to help him.

Read the rest here.

Lieberman Makes Me Sad

Prime Minister Netanyahu, who began his official premiership today, appointed Avigdor Lieberman, of the Yisrael Beitanu party as foreign minister.

Can we just take a minute to examine what this means?

Lieberman is the very same politician who advocates forced expulsions of Israel's Arabs and who, at the very least, has been pushing for this population to face a tough choice: swear their loyalty to the Zionist state or have their citizenship revoked. To the outsider, this may seem natural. After all, why should defectors get to live in a state they oppose? However, it is possible to oppose Zionism and still support Israel.

Have we not many American citizens who love this country but oppose capitalism? Wanting to change some aspects of your government is not the same thing as wishing the whole state to disappear.

But Lieberman and his cronies, thinking as they do, are motivated by fear. And in a world where everyone is out to get you, you have to do whatever you can to stay on top. In Lieberman's view, the only way to be safe is to be the most powerful, or alternately, for everyone around you to be just like you.

Despite Netanyahu's mumblings about peace, his government is likely to take a hard line approach to peace efforts. Which basically means he will try to bully the Palestinians into submission. Like Operation Cast Lead, Bibi will apply pressure in all the most sensitive places so that giving Israel whatever it wants seems like the only option.

There is virtually no way peace will be made between Israel and Palestine without dismantlement of the settlements, and peace talks cannot even be taken seriously until Israel stops expanding existing settlements.

But this won't happen with Lieberman as foreign minister. He rabidly supports the settlement of the West Bank by Jewish Israelis.

It seems like what I wrote back in August is coming to fruition. Palestinian Authority officials said peace talks with anyone but Tzipi Livni would fail.

This Week's Dose of Moral Turpitude

I have been ignoring this story since it started circulating around the blogosphere, and then onto local news sites, and then political commentators who are in the know. Now that it has finally reached the AP, I feel I would be remiss in my duty to you if I did not take note of it.

The long and short of it is that Israeli soldiers have been printing tshirts with slogans like "1 shot, 2 kills" paired with the image of a pregnant Muslim woman. An army spokesperson says the soldiers involved in printing the shirts and handing them out to graduates of basic training have been penalized.

The shirts "are not in accordance with IDF values and are simply tasteless," the military said in a statement. "This type of humor is unbecoming and should be condemned." The army said it would not tolerate such behavior and would take disciplinary action against the soldiers involved.

A small number of the shirts (probably several dozen) were printed for specific army training units.

Another story making the same laps is the one about misconduct during Operation Cast Lead. Ha'aretz has printed several stories about IDF soldiers saying they were ordered to shoot unarmed women and children, and that they followed those orders. Some within the blogosphere have called into question the validity of such statements, saying that the stories are only heresay and that even if they are true, each case resulted in tragedy because of Palestinian error, not Israeli malice.

Relevant to both stories, the AP has the following to say:

On Monday, the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, defended his troops.

"I tell you that this is a moral and ideological army. I have no doubt that exceptional events will be dealt with," Ashkenazi told new recruits. Gaza "is a complex atmosphere that includes civilians, and we took every measure possible to reduce harm to the innocent."

Palestinians too have glorified attacks on Israelis in the past. In the Gaza Strip, Hamas-controlled media consistently send messages that Jews cannot be trusted and that Israel is a bloodthirsty, militaristic state eager to seize Palestinian land and slaughter Palestinian children.

Pro-Israel Counter Protesters Speak Up

Here is my latest video for San Francisco IAM. The recent protests against the Israeli invasion of Gaza, among other things, have been met with a small but determined force of pro-Israel counter protesters, who have an entirely different story to tell. Listen to their story here.

In a Break From Your Regularly Scheduled Program

Why I love San Francisco:





I found these miniature items attached to the building across the street from my house. My 10 pound poodle gives you the scale.

Bulldozer Dude's Family Soon to be Homeless

In July of last year, Palestinian construction worker Hussam Duwiyat took the bulldozer from the construction site where he was working and took it on a rampage through Jerusalem streets, in what would be the first incident of its kind, to be followed by several other copycat construction workers. Duwiyat killed three people and indured dozens before he was shot and killed by an off-duty soldier, on camera.

[Link to my post about it.]

At the time, there was talk about demolishing his parent's home, as a method of collective punishment that had been discontinued but then reinstated several months previously. At various times, the Israeli government has decided that home demolition is not an effective deterrent for would-be terrorist and, alternately, that it should be done anyway. It seems they are out of ideas.

The debate about whether the Duwiyat home should be demolished was based on his family's argument that, firstly, he was not a terrorist, but rather, simply a disturbed individual and secondly, that he did not have rights to his parents' home anyway.

High Court Justice Edmond Levy ruled today that there were no grounds to reverse the decision made by defense officials to raze the family home, which is a multi-story dwelling housing Duwiyat's entire extended family.

Motivational Speech from America to Iraq

This thing kind of speaks for itself, but I have to say a few things. Firstly, I never had a drill sargeant talk that nice to me when I was in the army. Drill sargeants are generally meaner than snakes and they have a captive audience. Secondly, the Arabic translator is sugar-coating everything the guy is saying. For example, when the American soldier called the Iraqi soldiers pussies, the translator instead said, "You didn't do it."

4:00:

American: Any questions?

Iraqi soldier: When we heard something is happening in the factory, we went there and the Americans said 'you're crazy and you're in the militia and you're Iranis.' And everybody got killed in the factory and we went there to check it out. And when we tried to intervene, Americans came and said we were terrorists and took our IDs. And they said it's not your duty to intervene. The Americans even arrested our sargeant. And then everybody called us Iranis and terrorists.

American: You want to erase that image...you want to fix your image? Fuck your stupid checkpoints, they're worthless. Get together, get all your weapons and start marching South, towards the river. I guaruntee you'll get in a gun fight and I guaruntee you'll fuck some people up. Get down there and kick some ass.

Iraqi soldier: Ok, so give us some trucks to go.

American: Fuck, you don't need trucks. Take some water, take some food, and walk.

Iraqi: How can we go there when the airplanes are on top of us? And they call us terrorists and Iranis? The last time it happened, the airplanes and hummers surrounded us and arrested us.

American: Hey, quit making excuses...until you man up, shut the fuck up.

Iraqi: We cannot do anything because American snipers are everywhere.