Hagada Hasmalit

Shalit, For Example

I AM composing these lines while looking through the window at the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and thinking about the young man who is being held not far from this sea, a few dozen kilometers from here.

Can Gilad Shalit look out on the same sea through his window? Does he even have a window? How is he? How is he being treated?

He has been in captivity for four years and one day today, with no end in sight.

Gilad Shalit has become a living symbol � a symbol of Israeli reality, of the inability of our leaders to make decisions, of their moral and political cowardice, of their inability to analyze a situation and draw conclusions.

IF THERE had been an opportunity to free Shalit through military action, the Israeli government would have seized it eagerly.

Unlimited liability unlimited stpidity

It appears that the limits of stupidity and carelessness are historically-concretely determined. Meaning that, in normal conditions, any organism which rushed blindly, stupidly and carelessly into one catastrophe after another would simply disappear as the result of its folly. It is a tough world out there and the stern lessons of history are that most s mortals have to pay dearly for their mistakes.

The Neyanyahu-Barak leadership is apparently not subject to this norm. Its political stupidity, infantile grasp of reality and its criminal negligence will in no way endanger or even impair its status where it counts for them. The Israeli military-political cabal has an unlimited insurance policy issued by the United States. It can perform with impunity risky, outlandish operations, e.g., the assassination in Dubai, which would cause any almost any government to suffer clear international condemnation and sanctions. The secret of Netanayahu-Barak not having to pay for the consequences of their actions either internationally or domestically is that the United States will cover for them and prevent them from facing up to the consequences of their policies and decisions. It is not that they can do no wrong. It is simply that they do not have to pay for their mistakes.

�According to the best values of the IDF�

When the commander of the Israeli navy, Admiral Eli Marom, announced at a press conference that the navy was about to intercept the flotilla of humanitarian aid ships to besieged Gaza �according to the best values and morality of the IDF,� it was clear to me that there was going to be trouble.

On 5 June this year we mark 43 years of Occupation. The army that has ruled over another people for decades now, its foot on its neck, killing its children and civilians and imposing an apartheid regime on the Occupation zone, is an army that has gone from being a defence army to an army of war criminals with corrupt values.

And indeed the fears turned out to be justified. The sea commandoes, soldiers of Shayetet 13 [1], who are known in Israel as the best of the best and the elite of the elite, showed themselves as to be a gang of murderers when they hijacked the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara, which in addition to its humanitarian cargo was carrying over 600 people on its decks, people of various nationalities including women, all of them unarmed civilians who wanted only to protest against the Israeli siege of Gaza.

Martin Buber and the Conquest of the Land

On Israel�s 62nd birthday there is no reconciliation and no peace.

Originally posted in the Hebrew website.

After sixty-two years of the existence of the State of Israel, we must ask: is there is any chance whatsoever for peace and reconciliation with the Palestinian people? As things appear at the moment (and as they have appeared throughout all the years of the state�s existence), the chances are very slim indeed. One important factor is the complete hegemony of the Zionist ideology in the public consciousness. That ideology is inculcated in Israelis from their earliest years up to the end of university. It is disseminated by all the media � both public and private, from the lips of leaders, official spokespeople, and select representatives of the army, entertainment world and general public. For all practical purposes there is no way for the average Israeli to escape the influence of Zionism.

Hypocrisy: Israel, Apartheid South Africa and Goldstone

An investigation conducted by industrious journalists from (the Israeli daily newspaper) Yedioth Ahronot revealed that South African Judge Richard Goldstone served the polluted and racist Apartheid regime (1948 until 1994, although it was essentially annulled in 1990) in his country, and even sent black defendants to the gallows when he enforced the abhorrent racist laws of the white establishment. It must be recalled that Apartheid was grounded in a long list of racist laws that excluded the black population from the political and economic processes, revoked citizenship from many and reminded the enlightened world of Adolf Hitler�s Nuremburg Laws. The association with Nuremburg is not simply rhetorical in this context. Amongst the laws of the apartheid regime, which did not bother people such as Shimon Peres from cultivating particularly close relations with South Africa, included a law prohibiting �mixed marriages,� a �morality law� which prohibited sexual relations between blacks and whites, and laws of citizenship and movement which excluded the black majority and deprived them of a life of dignity.

The Rand and Rachel Show

American politics continue their plunge into ritual farce. Last week we had the spectacle of progressives rallying to the right-wing Elena Kagan, largely on the grounds that it�s improper of dirty minded Republicans, not to mention Glenn Greenwald, to suggest that sexual identity might be a relevant element in assessing a candidate for the US Supreme Court. In other words, 41 years after Stonewall, long live the closet!

Now we have the uproar over Rand Paul, the libertarian Tea Bagger who just won the Republican primary in Kentucky. His grilling by Rachel Maddow of MSNBC on his lack of commitment to every Title of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is being cast as a political encounter as momentous as that between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in the Monkey Trial. Turn on the radio and you�ll hear howls about Rand on every liberal and leftist frequency. Because Paul had deprecated the ADA, on Democracy Now! on Friday morning Amy Goodman even fished some spavined old nag from that dismal body to join her in execration of the Slouching Beast that is Rand. David Corn herded him into the 9/11 nutball corral, because Paul had gone on the Alex Jones Show (though he�s never endorsed 9/11 conspiracies). By the same token he�s a liberal for having gone on the Maddow Show.

A Cloud over Jerusalem

EVERYONE HAS the right to change his or her mind. Even Danny Tirzeh.

Colonel Tirzeh was responsible for planning the wall that �envelopes� Jerusalem � the one that cuts the city off from the West Bank in order to turn it into the United Capital Of Israel For All Eternity.

And now, suddenly, Tirzeh pops up as the main opponent of the wall he himself planned. He wants to move it, so as to leave the lands of al-Walaja village on the �Israeli� side.

The Colonel has ceased acting on behalf of the Israeli army and now represents private entrepreneurs who want to build 14 thousand housing units for 45 thousand Jewish souls. All this, of course, for the greater good of Zionism, the Jewish people, Israel�s Eternal Capital, and many tens of millions of shekels.

The Big Gamble

I MET Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister, two weeks ago, and was again impressed by the calm and modesty he radiates.

Generally, I meet him at demonstrations, such as those at the Bil�in fence. This time, too, there was no opportunity for more than a perfunctory handshake and a few polite words.

We appeared together at the Land Day event in a small village near Qalqilyah, whose name is known only to a few: Izbat al-Tabib. The village was established in 1920, and the occupation authorities do not recognize its existence. They want to demolish it and transfer its extensive lands to the nearby Alfei Menashe settlement.

Against An Imposed Peace

Two important voices for peace have come out openly in support of an imposed solution to the conflict: Uri Avnery and Professor Ze�ev Shternhal. Their logic is that such a development, an imposed peace, is preferable to another war. However, this kind of argumentation has a number of serious drawbacks.

Firstly, the fact that peace must be imposed enables the diehard warmongers to claim that they are acting on the basis of democratic principles and that they enjoy the support of the people.

Secondly, public opinion in Israel may be faced in the wrong direction, but this is in large part due to the fact that the United States has been in the past and is still locked into an unholy alliance with the leaders of Israel. Public opinion forms its �rational mistakes� on the basis of the assumption that Obama and Washington are really not serious about changing their policies.

In Search of the Jewish People, part II

In my previous article ("In Search of the Jewish People, Part I"), I discussed the legend according to which Jewish prayers that express a longing for Zion are proof of the existence of a Jewish people with a national consciousness.

The classic Zionist claim is that the Jews are �a people without a country,� expelled from their land 2000 years ago, ever since which it has lived in exile. The purpose of Zionism was to restore them to the �land without a people,� the Land of their Fathers, the ancient Land of Israel. Nowadays, Israeli politicians declare Israel to be the state of the Jewish people. What they mean is that Israel is in fact the state of all the Jews in the world who are, subsequently, obliged to rally round the flag at times of crisis.

Zionist historians like Prof. Anita Shapira, one of Israel's elite establishment historians, clothe this assumption in theoretical and historical apparel. In an article recently published against Shlomo Sand�s book (The Invention of the Jewish People), Prof. Shapira begins with the claim that there is a �special tie between religion and nationality in Judaism.� Again the Jewish religion is invoked to prove the existence of a Jewish people.

On the Danger of Wrong Reasons to do the Right Thing

Peace is a long time coming. Moderates constantly looked for ways to unblock frozen convictions and to convince the public to give peace a chance. This is one of the reasons that have led some sincere, but desperate doves to resort to all sorts of dubious arguments designed to move public opinion in our direction. The most prevalent example of this kind of argument designed to convince people to do the right thing for the wrong reason is the employment of the demographic threat argument for making peace.

You can hear, otherwise rational peaceniks, arguing that Israel must accept a two-state solution or else we must face the fact that there is an Arab majority in the area under Israeli control and we consequently will end up in one non-Jewish state. This is fear mongering which is designed to exploit racist anxieties among the Israeli public. The idea is that people will support a peace initiative out of racist motivation, hoping to avoid the spectre of life in an Arab society . However, the whole idea of winning over people based on their racist bias actually reinforces racism in society at large. It doesn�t work. It is an ugly idea from the beginning, and also counter-productive.

On The Road To Canossa

In January 1077, King Henry IV walked to Canossa. He crossed the snow-covered Alps barefoot, wearing a penitent monk�s hair shirt, and reached the North-Italian fortress in which the Vicar of God had found refuge.

Pope Gregory VII had excommunicated him after a conflict over the right to invest bishops throughout the German Reich. The excommunication endangered the position of the king, and he decided to do everything possible to get it lifted.

The king waited for three days outside the gates of Canossa, fasting and wearing the hair shirt, until the pope agreed to open the gate. After the king knelt before the pope, the ban was lifted and the conflict came to an end � at least for the time being.

THIS WEEK, the Netanyahu went to Canossa in the United States, in order to prevent Pope Obama I from putting a ban on him.

Land Day Without Quotation Marks

Thirty-four years have passed since the first Land Day and nothing has changed. The system has just become more sophisticated, that�s all. Even today, as the Zionist construction in Sheikh Jarakh is at its peak, we should not delude ourselves that even if it is halted (with International pressure, of course), that the theft of Palestinian Arab land will stop. Putting an end to construction in East Jerusalem will shift the illusion of land theft for the purpose of expanding �land development� to areas within the �Green Line� - the Galilee, Arab areas in the center of Israel, and the Negev. Thirty-four years ago a cry of protest was raised against the Zionist �salami� method, a method that started to gain theoretical momentum at the first Zionist Congress in Basel. It gained practical momentum when the British entered Israel and further intensified with the establishment of the Zionist State. This land theft was (and still is) called different names such as �Judification of the Galilee�, �pioneering�, �settlement�, and of course � �Zionism�. The 1976 protest is commemorated annually, but it�s just the dog�s bark, as the larceny bandwagon proceeds with a cynical smile.

The Doomsday Weapon

IT IS already a commonplace to say that people who don�t learn from history are condemned to repeat their mistakes.

Some 1942 years ago, the Jews in the province called Palaestina launved a revolt against the Roman Empire. In retrospect, this looks like an act of madness. Palestine was a small and insignificant part of the world-wide empire which had just won a crushing victory against the rival power � the Parthian Empire (Persia) � and put down a major rebellion in Britain. What chances could the Jewish revolt have?

God knows what was going on in the mind of the �Zealots�. They eliminated the moderate leaders, who warned against provoking the empire, and gained sway over the Jewish population of the country. They relied on God. Perhaps they also relied on the Jews in Rome and believed that their influence over the Senate would restrain the Emperor, Nero. Perhaps they had heard that Nero was weak and about to fall.

Red Rag Column - Olei ha-gardom

On 9 March 2010 the Knesset held a special session in memory of 12 Jewish terrorists, members of the Etzel and Lehi [1] underground organizations, who were hanged by the authorities of the British Empire. They have received the description `olei ha-gardom`[2] and are also sometimes called �harugei malchut�. [3] Terrorists? God forbid! Only in the eyes of the British Empire. According to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who gave a speech at the session, they were freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives for their people�s liberty and therefore, he said, `today we salute the heroism of the 12 members of the underground.`