Tikun Olam: Make the World a Better Place

Shin Bet Secretly Detains Reporter for Leaking Top-Secret IDF Memos

March 18th, 2010

Shin bet logo

NOTE: On March 14th, I was the first blogger or journalist to report this story outside Israel. Subsequently, an Israeli peace activist informed me that Anat Kam’s attorney and friends have asked others not to publicize her case. In honor of that, I decided to take down this post as I did not wish to harm her defense. I wrote to Kam’s attorney, Avigdor Feldman, and asked him to confirm that he did not wish any public discussion of her case. He has not replied. For that reason, I have decided to repost this story with some amplifications and editing to reflect new information I’ve learned.

* * *

We’re going to be getting into deep territory tonight regarding Israeli military intelligence, the Shin Bet, and their ability to make a mockery of alleged Israeli democracy and freedom of the press.

Anat Kam: 'Disappeared' Israeli journalist

An Israeli friend brought me word that Anat Kam, an entertainment writer for the popular Israeli internet portal, Walla, was secretly arrested and imprisoned, after which she was placed under house arrest by Israeli authorities. Needless to say, this is a highly unusual development. In fact, I can’t remember the last time this happened to an Israel journalist. I apologize that most of the material I’ll be linking to is still in Hebrew and not yet translated. If that situation changes I’ll be adding English language links or sources.

Though Kam denies this, Israeli sources maintain she has been fingered by the Shin Bet as the source of a highly damaging 2008 Haaretz report that noted that a number of Palestinian militants who, the IDF claimed in separate media reports, were killed during firefights were actually assassinated in cold blood. This of course wouldn’t be news since it has happened many times before. What was news was that in 2006 the Supreme Court laid down specific and limited procedures under which targeted assassinations may be pursued. Haaretz revealed that the IDF was ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling and essentially killing militants in cold-blood and covering up the fact. It approved killings even if civilians were also likely to be killed. It approved killing suspects who were not “ticking-bombs,” another contravention of the Supreme Court. In fact, as recently as 2009 the IDF killed Palestinians under suspicious circumstances which Palestinians have labelled murder in cold blood, leading one to believe that targeted assassinations continue.

The Haaretz report, which presumably and inexplicably passed military censorship, displayed two IDF top-secret documents drawn up by the military senior command, which laid out the provisions for the killings and proved that they were ignoring the Supreme Court ruling.

A former intelligence agent, Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, working as a researcher for Dore Gold’s Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, examined the documents in detail attempting to trace the source. While he didn’t specifically identify Kam, he did make clear that he believed the “Deep Throat” served in a position in military intelligence which allowed access to such documents.

Dahoah Halevi fed the story to ShalomLife, a Canadian Israeli news portal which published this rather sloppy right-wing slant on the Kam case. Dahoah Halevi was the editor of Shalom Toronto, listed as a sponsor of ShalomLife. The publisher of ShalomLife, Yossi Arbel, is also the publisher of Shalom Toronto. Some speculate that it may be an attempt by the Jerusalem Center to smoke out an Israeli journalist who will break the gag order by reporting on a story previously reported outside Israel.

On a rather humorous personal note, the author of the ShalomLife article confuses this blog with an “internet forum belonging to the Israeli left” by misattributing a quotation from this post to such an entity:

Internet forums belonging to the Israeli left have expressed support for the leak by Anat Kam, and have called it “a moral act” and “a civil duty”. One of the messages stated: “We must fight for Israeli democracy even if Anat Kam cannot or will not do it herself, and even if the Israeli press cannot or does not want to do it itself.”

There is one especially salient, disturbing passage in the ShalomLife story, which speculates on Kam’s motives in leaking the documents:

It is safe to say that the leaker wished to advance a political agenda and arouse wider public criticism in Israel and the world towards the IDF’s focused and deliberate policies against agents of terror.

First, it is convenient for an Israeli rightist to focus on Kam’s alleged political agenda and neglect that she undoubtedly had a moral and democratic agenda as well. Second, since the author of the Jerusalem Affairs analysis was himself a former intelligence officer and because Gold is a Likud loyalist, we can safely assume that this reflects the Shin Bet’s own views in the matter. Which is all the more reason to fight this detention tooth and nail. The far-right can natter all they wish about opposition to its policies being political, but the truth is that opposing targeted assassination and leaking material that documents violations of the law is a MORAL act and a the democratic duty of a citizen. We must fight for Israeli democracy even if Anat Kam cannot or will not do so herself. And even if the Israeli press cannot or will not do so itself. On that note, Haaretz, who used Kam’s materials for its scoop, has so far written nothing about her predicament. That seems to me an unfortunate editorial decision.

The Israeli sources who have written about this note that there is a military gag under preventing reporting not only about the alleged leak, but that Kam was arrested at all. I call this censorship of infinite regress. Which may explain why Haaretz has been silent. One hopes the Israeli press will find their voice and do their duty as journalists regardless of the strictures of the national security state.

Those who believe in Israeli democracy should explain how a citizen can disappear without a trace. Is this China, where the government denies it even is detaining a troublesome dissident who has disappeared? Is this the face Israel wants the world to see? Does the security apparatus have the right to run roughshod over whatever civil liberties citizens retain? I should add that this isn’t quite as bad as China. Some people now know what happened to Anat Kam. She is safe although under detention. But other than that, there are a lot of what Don Rumsfeld was fond of calling, in that inimitable way he had with the English language, “known unknowns.”

Apparently, it took over a year, but they have finally closed in on Kam as the culprit. They have really put the fear of God into her. As Israeli bloggers and activists have become aware of this incident and written about it publicly, associates of Kam have approached them asking that they desist. Each individual has to consult their conscience in situations like this. But I personally can see no benefit to Israeli democracy or even Kam herself by keeping silent. Undoubtedly, intelligence agencies have threatened her with horrible punishments if she doesn’t maintain absolute muteness. As a 23-year-old relatively unfamiliar with the school of hard knocks that is the Shin Bet or military intelligence (where she presumably worked and which presumably investigated the leak), she’s quaking in her boots. Who could blame her?

But I think that others need to have different priorities. Even if Kam doesn’t want to, or can’t fight for herself we must do so ourselves. And again, we do this for the sake of Israeli democracy. We do this to attempt to draw red lines and prevent the intelligence services from crossing them. For we know that the Israeli national security state puts little stock in the rights of its citizens–witness the trampling of the rights of those whose passports and identities were stolen by the Mossad in carrying out the Dubai assassination.

We must make common cause with those Israelis and human rights NGOs who fight against such outrages. As such, a measure of thanks is due the Israel Democracy Institute and its ejournal, The Seventh Eye, which has featured fine reporting on this matter. Sol Salbe has directed me to an excellent archive of linked online articles about Kam’s situation. Indymedia Israel also wrote up the story (web page now taken down) providing additional information. Maariv published a highly allusive piece by Kam’s apparent boss, which reminds me of samizdat of decades past, which satirized the political culture of authoritarian regimes through allegory, indirection and oblique allusion. Here is the first sentence:

How can a journalist be detained for over a month and everyone stays silent? The journalists in Shoo-Shoo-land must be nonentities, otherwise it would be impossible to explain how in the past month not a single one of them wrote a single word on the journalist’s detention.

Let’s not forget that we’re talking about the Only Democracy in the Middle East™ here. And lest we forget how the Shin Bet has dealt in the past with similarly damaging incidents, we need only remind ourselves of the Kav 300 Affair.

I wonder why the spooks did not target Kam sooner since she leaked the documents over a year ago. Possibly, she was working on a current story they didn’t want to see the light of day and this prevented her from reporting it. Or perhaps, the current political climate in which the far-right is running roughshod over the rights of peace and human rights activists with the approval of the government has emboldened the intelligence establishment to light out after practicing journalists. It may also be possible that Kam is part of a larger constellation and the investigation includes her, but goes beyond her as well.

We must fight back. We must help Israeli democrats turn back this assault on freedom of the press, free speech, and democracy.

Tags: anat kam house arrest, civil-liberties, freedom of press under attack, Israel Defense Forces, national-security, national-security-state, palestinian militants, shabak, shin-bet, targeted-assassination
Posted in Mideast Peace | 10 Comments »

Supreme Court: Corporations Are People Too

March 17th, 2010

Citizens United v. FEC has to be one of the dumbest Supreme Court decisions since Dred Scott (if you exclude the ruling sanctioning the theft of the 2000 presidential election). In this spirit, NPR featured probably the funniest news story of the day covering a campaign for Congress–by a corporation! That wacky notion begins with this quote from Justice Stevens dissent in that case:

Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech.

Murray Hill, Inc. is taking that one step farther, it’s going to run for Congress in Maryland. The satiric possibilities here are endless and I’ll quote a few of the choicer lines from Eric Hensal who’s running the company’s campaign. Here he notes his intent to run in the Republican primary and his frustration that Maryland election officials have refused to register his company as a voter:

…We need to be a registered voter to run in the Republican primary, which is the place we feel would be most hospitable to a corporate candidate. At least initially, but I guess down the road, you know, the logic of the decision again plays out, and the parties really won’t be so relevant.

Hensal here bemoans the fact that politicians have bid up the price of political influence. Instead, he urges voters to save money by installing a company directly in Congress and so avoiding the middleman:

Well, we just believe that we should take the middleman out of politics. If you’re going to let the ability to have unlimited money flow from corporations, you know, into campaigns, well, you’ll just have greedy politicians sort of bidding up the price to do politics.

…The consumer would suffer over time, you know, paying a politics tax. So we’re just advocating taking the middleman out and directly electing corporations…

I love this killer campaign slogan:

…Clearly our one of our campaign themes is to put people second or even third, but we do, for now, need to make sure we have some votes.

Murray Hill, Inc., who Robert Siegel affectionately refers to as “Murray” throughout the interview, also has its own Facebook page with this slogan:

Corporations are people, too…I think the Supreme Court majority’s decision really brings that home. I think they set aside this whole old-fashioned notion that we are somehow endowed by a creator with inalienable rights, and it’s a superstition that they just put aside and really focused on what speech is for them, which is a product.So for us, why not run for Congress? I mean, we’re challenging a political system that’s, frankly, sort of biased towards bodied people.

Here, Hensal explores the brilliant notion that corporations suffer discrimination just like ethnic minorities and are deserving of protection under the Civil Rights Act:

…We’re fighting an uphill battle, but we need to challenge these things just like civil rights movements have challenged boundaries for, you know, generations.

Political satire can provide such delicious revenge for right-wing stupidity!

Murray Hill PR Firm Plans (Satirical) Run For Maryland Congressional Seat (huffingtonpost.com)

Tags: citizens united v fec, eric hensal, murray hill inc, Supreme Court of the United States
Posted in Politics & Society | 3 Comments »

U.S.-Israel Row Intensifies

March 15th, 2010

Newspaper headline with Bibi's image: We're Building in Jerusalem. Ahmadinejad: Enough talking, Mr. Obama. The time's come for sanctions (against Israel)

Folks, I’m about to let you in on a dirty, little secret: I actually agree with Tom Friedman’s N.Y. Times column today, because it contains an uncharacteristically blunt attack on the latest scandal in Israel’s relations with the U.S.:

…On his recent trip to Israel…the vice president missed a chance to send a powerful public signal: He should have snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left the following scribbled note behind: “Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”

That’s what I said to myself when I first heard about the housing construction. This is classic Israeli blunderbuss tactics. They’ve done precisely this many times in the past. That the Obama administration didn’t anticipate such a provocation as this and immediately act in the sort of strong and deliberate manner, depressed and disappointed me. That a usually pro-Israel supporter like Friedman had almost precisely my point of view frankly amazed me.

But the fact of the matter is that Obama didn’t act when he should have. He steamed and the anger and resentment grew. Though it doesn’t matter that much when the U.S. got angry, it would’ve made a far stronger and more effective statement to have acted immediately. I hate to say this but it’s like disciplining your pet. If he eats the Thanksgiving turkey (as my dog has done) and you come home to find a carcass sitting on the floor, whacking him on the nose with a newspaper will be a lot less effective than if you catch him in the act and make sure that all hell breaks loose. Then he knows precisely what he did wrong and not to do it again.

This goes to the ongoing weakness and equivocation of the administration in so many areas. You simply can’t beat a poker player like Bibi (or virtually any Israeli PM) by vacillating. And that’s what Obama has done. He stakes out a position and gradually whittles it down so that after a few months you hardly remember what the opening position was.

Friends of mine I respect like M.J. Rosenberg and Sol Salbe are practically breaking out their Obama buttons again. I’m not so sure it’s that time yet. The president’s got a long way to go.

Let’s start by seeing how he handles Aipac’s upcoming national policy conference at which virtually every DC political player is expected to pay their obeisance to the Lobby. I read one blogger wag say he expected Biden to come on all fours–perhaps a bit harsh but not terribly so. Aipac has made its deep displeasure known regarding the Obama meltdown on the housing controversy. Joe Lieberman reacted with typically annoying dismissiveness:

“Let’s cut the family fighting. It’s unnecessary; it’s destructive of our shared national interest. It’s time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interests but our enemies.”

Notice how Lieberman ellides our enemies and Israel’s and they become one, as if there is no difference between our national interests and Israel’s. And who might that “enemy” be? Well, since the row concerns the theft of Palestinian land and building illegal settlements on it, we can safely assume that Lieberman includes the Palestinians among Israel’s and the U.S.’ enemies. Perhaps he might’ve been alluding to Iran, but that nation is a lot less interested in the issue of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem than the Palestinians are. So I think it’s interesting just whose side Joe is on and whose side he’s not on. And frankly, Joe Lieberman is on Israeli’s side and not on America’s side. Of course, as I wrote above he sees them as being one and the same. But they’re not.

Speaking of provocations, Israel has dropped another bomb on the Palestinians with the rededication of the gleaming Hurva Synagogue in the contested Jewish Quarter of the Old City. This follows an earlier provocation by which Bibi named two religious sites in Hebron as “national heritage sites.” After he did so, Palestinians began streaming to the Temple Mount in the hundreds and thousands to protest. Israel then closed off the area to Muslim worshipers and protesters. Now Israel has added insult to injury in such a way that it is meant either as a deliberate poke in the eye or the height of cluelessness (and what’s the difference ultimately?). Hamas has reacted by calling for a “day of rage,” which has brought out protesters in full force. This tit for tat could easily escalate into a Third Intifada if Israel isn’t careful (and when has it been?).

The Jewish Quarter government development authority has the nerve to proclaim that there is no political subtext to the rededication. Of course there is a political subtext. There always is when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. Precisely when one sides claims it is acting without premeditation is when the other side suspects their motives most (and often rightly so).

Then there is this further gobbledygook from Bibi himself in his speech marking the synagogue ceremony:

“I know many are moved by this moment, and rightly so. But we’re not the only ones moved by our faith. We have enabled adherents of other religions to restore their places of worship as well. We proudly uphold our heritage, we have returned to our cities, and we also give the same freedom of worship to other religions. The people of Israel maintain their heritage and through that maintain the heritage of others.”

The PM really doesn’t give a crap about the Palestinians. This statement was intended for an international audience, especially Christians. It was meant to reassure them that even though we’re sticking it to the Muslims in Jerusalem, we remember with affection those of other religions who know there place in the Israeli scheme of things.

Posted in Mideast Peace | 27 Comments »

‘Moral Politics’ TV Interview on Mossad Dubai Assassination

March 15th, 2010

Watch Mossad Assassination in Dubai.

Yesterday, I filmed a 30 minute interview with Bill Alford for his Moral Politics TV show about the Mossad assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabouh in Dubai. It’s a handy introduction to the many posts I’ve written on the subject and roves over territory like targeted assassinations, the Mossad’s trampling on the identities and rights of its own citizens, the U.S. connection to the crime, the impact of the Holocaust on Israel’s psychic and political life, and much more.

Tags: Dubai, hamas, mossad, targeted-assassination, United-Arab-Emirates
Posted in Mideast Peace | 1 Comment »

IDF Violates Israeli Supreme Court Constraints on Targeted Assassinations

March 15th, 2010

NOTE: Yesterday, I published a post about an Israeli journalist secretly detained and placed under house arrest by the Shin Bet for allegedly leaking top-secret IDF memos detailing planned targeted assassinations against specific Palestinian militants. The memos made clear that the IDF was flouting a Supreme Court ruling which permitted such attacks, but only under a limited set of conditions.

I have changed the status of this post to private, thus removing it from public access out of respect for Israeli peace activists who inform me that the alleged leaker is negotiating with the authorities over a plea deal and that publication of the details of the case could jeopardize this process. I have grave concerns about whether I did the right thing, since it appears to me that silence only furthers the interests of the intelligence agencies prosecuting her and the IDF, which wishes the whole embarrassing episode would just go away.

To thwart this goal, I’d like here to review the original Haaretz story (English translation here–a cursory reading indicates to me the original is much more comprehensive and damning than the translation) which utilized the leaks about targeted assassinations. First, let’s go back to 2006 when the Israeli Supreme Court refused to outlaw this tactic, which Israeli human rights NGOs argued persuasively was a violation of international law. As a compromise, the Supreme Court said it would continue to allow such extrajudicial killings as long as they observed certain criteria. First, the victim had to be a ticking-bomb, that is someone imminently planning a terror attack. Second, he or she could only be killed if there was no other way of apprehending them short of death. Third, there could be no danger of killing innocent civilians in such an attack.

The leaked IDF memos proved that the IDF, after the Supreme Court ruling, had liquidated terrorists included on the list, but had publicly released information on their killing which made it appear as if they had been killed during a normal military operation in which they posed a threat to IDF soldiers. In reality, they were killed in cold blood.

In the memo, the army senior staff explicitly permit killing the victims even if civilians might be killed. It also made no provision for capturing the wanted person alive. The mission’s goal was death. In another memo, the chief of staff specifically postpones a killing timed for the visit of a U.S. secretary of state. In other words, the victim was not a “ticking bomb” and postponement of his death was a matter of political expediency as it would embarrass the government for it to happen during a U.S. diplomatic visit.

Haaretz published its story in 2008 thus embarrassing the IDF. But as far as I know, the Supreme Court was not embarrassed enough to take any remedial action to ensure its ruling was respected. Further, another part of the ruling directed the establishment of a committee to review these assassination and ensure they comply with the Supreme Court directive. To this day, such a committee has not been established.

As late as 2009, the IDF announced it had killed wanted militants on the West Bank. The army claimed they were armed and thus posed a threat, but even it admitted they had not fired a shot. Palestinian witnesses claimed they were executed in cold blood. As far as the Israeli military is concerned, impunity–but not the truth–goes marching on.

The Israeli who leaked these documents did a great service to Israeli democracy, even if she potentially violated a law. What was worse–the IDF treating the highest court in the land with impunity while engaging in acts of savagery violating international law? Or a young person who saw an evil and attempted to expose it?

Someone please tell me what kind of democracy allows its intelligence and military to run roughshod over the rule of law. What kind of country allows its domestic intelligence service to arrest a journalist secretly and maintain her in detention secretly. In what kind of country does a journalist simply disappear with other journalists and news outlets having no recourse to publish about it? China? Cuba? Vietnam? Iran? North Korea? Is that what Israel is aiming for? To be no better than countries ruled by despots?

I say to the Shin Bet and IDF: remove the gag order. Allow your allegedly free press to report this story. Don’t treat someone doing their duty as a citizen as an enemy of the state. I look forward to the time when I can make my original post accessible once again.

There are several Hebrew sources which have reported on this story. Here is a wonderful fable about an imaginary place called Shoo-Shoo land which disappears a journalist without a trace. The ejournal of the Israel Democracy Institute, The Seventh Eye, has also written a tough critique of this incident, It Can’t Happen Here. Unfortunately, there is almost nothing about this in English yet.

Tags: civilian collateral damage, counter-terror, idf senior command, israeli-supreme-court, shin-bet, targeted assassinations, ticking bomb
Posted in Mideast Peace | 1 Comment »

EEOC Finds Bias in NYC Firing Arab School Principal, Almontaser

March 13th, 2010

Debbie Almontaser pictured in 2007, before her removal as Khalil Gribran Academy principal (Liz O. Baylen/NYT)

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that the New York City Department of Education (DOC) discriminated against Debbie Almontaser, founding principal of the Khalil Gibran Academy, the City’s first Arab-language public school, when they removed her from her position. Readers of this blog may recall a ferocious campaign waged by Jewish neocons and Islamophobes like Daniel Pipes, David Yerushalmi, the N.Y. Post, and Stop the Madrasa against the school and Almontaser personally.

Matters came to a head when Almontaser was smeared over a T-shirt displaying the word “Intifada.” Her opponents made her out to be a supporter of Islamism and armed resistance because she explained the Arabic meaning of the word to a reporter, while not denouncing it sufficiently. When Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein dropped her like a hot potato, her days were numbered. After her forced resignation, she sued and lost. Then she filed a claim with EEOC for discrimination. The N.Y. Times reports on the finding:

A federal commission has determined that New York City’s Department of Education discriminated against the founding principal of an Arabic-language public school by forcing her to resign in 2007 following a storm of controversy driven by opponents of the school.

Acting on a complaint filed last year by the principal, Debbie Almontaser, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that the department “succumbed to the very bias that creation of the school was intended to dispel and a small segment of the public succeeded in imposing its prejudices on D.O.E. as an employer,” according to a letter issued by the commission on Tuesday.

The commission said that the department had discriminated against Ms. Almontaser, a Muslim of Yemeni descent, “on account of her race, religion and national origin.”

This is a great deal for civil rights in New York and in America. It is a day that Arab-Americans can be proud. It is a day when all Americans should be proud. Debbie Almontaser turned to the federal government for redress and it did what it could to make her whole.

This is a day when Muslim-haters like Norman Podhoretz and his friends I mentioned above should hide their heads in shame (though they will shake their fists in defiance instead). Their bullying has been shown for what it is: un-American, unfair, unjust. We are better than the haters in Stop the Madrasa. The democratic system worked.

My chief regret is that the political leadership of New York and the Jewish communal leadership were cowards and turned tail at the first sign of trouble. Instead of standing up to the ranters, Bloomberg folded at the earliest opportunity. The New York Jewish federation, after allowing Rabbi Michael Paley to represent it in the fight on behalf of the Academy, forced him to shut up. I was never able to determine who specifically made this decision–whether it was an executive decision by CEO Jon Ruskay or a lay decision influenced by a wealthy neocon board member like James Tisch. Whoever made the decision betrayed the courage necessary for true leadership. Instead of speaking out and doing the right thing, they let Daniel Pipes present the Jewish community’s position by default.

The EEOC called on New York City to do the right thing:

The commission asked the Department of Education to reach a “just resolution” with Ms. Almontaser and to consider her demands, which include reinstatement to her old job, back pay, damages of $300,000 and legal fees. Should the two sides fail to reach an agreement, the dispute will end up in court, her lawyer said.

Instead of hearing the message, the City’s attorney said his client would fight Ms. Almontaser every step of the way. They still haven’t gotten the message. I only hope that cooler heads will prevail. The former principal was wronged and deserves her job back and the chance to lead this school. That’s what’s fair. That’s what’s American.

I do take issue with one statement in this report:

Despite Ms. Almontaser’s longstanding reputation as a moderate Muslim, her critics succeeded in recasting her as a “9/11 denier” and a “jihadist.”

This is very sloppy writing and editing. Her critics did NOT succeed in recasting her as any of those things. But the mud flung by the Islamophobes resonated in certain quarters (like the pages of the Post) and her employer hung her out to dry. There was never ANY truth to any of the claims against Almontaser. They were all lies. So in that sense her critics could not have succeeded in any objective sense in labeling her. But they waged a vitriolic racist campaign which the DOE and city refused to counteract. Rather than fight, they folded.

In its criticism of the City’s actions, the Commission found that Almontaser had said nor done anything related to the T-shirt incident that warranted her removal:

It was The Post’s article, the commission wrote in its letter this week, that prompted the Department of Education to force Ms. Almontaser to resign. (City officials have said that she resigned voluntarily.)

“Significantly, it was not her actual remarks, but their elaboration by the reporter — creating waves of explicit anti-Muslim bias from several extremist sources — that caused D.O.E. to act,” the commission’s letter said.

I’m delighted that the EEOC pointedly noted the nasty role playing by Pipes and STM and labelled them “extremist.”

E.E.O.C. Sees Bias in Almontaser Ouster at Khalil Gibran School (nytimes.com)

Tags: arab charter school, chancellor joel klein, debbie-almontaser, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, islamophobia, khalil-gibran-academy, mayor-bloomberg, New York City Education Department
Posted in Mideast Peace | 11 Comments »

Martin Van Creveld Victim of Web Fraud

March 12th, 2010

Martin Van Creveld victim of right-wing fraud

Someone in the far-right anti-Zionist blog world has attempted to pull a fast one at Israel’s expense and utilized distinguished Hebrew University professor Martin Van Creveld as the patsy. This article is circulating in right-wing sites like Stormfront which allegedly quotes Van Creveld as endorsing “deportation” of all Israeli Palestinians and the notion that Israel should avenge the Holocaust by pointing its nuclear weapons at European cities:

An Israeli professor and military historian hinted that Israel could avenge the holocaust by annihilating millions of Germans and other Europeans.Speaking during an interview which was published in Jerusalem Friday, Professor Martin Van Crevel [sic] said Israel had the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons.

“We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force.”

Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, pointed out that “collective deportation” was Israel’s only meaningful strategy towards the Palestinian people.

“The Palestinians should all be deported. The people who strive for this (the Israeli government) are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 per cent, and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent.”

Creveld said he was sure that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to deport the Palestinians.

“I think it’s quite possible that he wants to do that. He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed.”

Asked if he was worried about Israel becoming a rogue state if it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians, Creveld quoted former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who said “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”

Creveld argued that Israel wouldn’t care much about becoming a rogue state.

“Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that [sic] this will happen before Israel goes under.”

After reading this I said to myself: “Huh, I thought I knew Van Creveld’s views better than that. But I guess it’s possible he did another Benny Morris and turned into a right-wing lunatic.” But what sent up a red flag for me was the claim that Van Creveld was interviewed in “Jerusalem on Friday,” which made a claim for recency. Yet the rather lame smear job made the stupid mistake of retaining the reference of Ariel Sharon as the current prime minister. I was hoping this indicated fraud, but I wasn’t sure.

On the off-chance that this might, I circulated the article to some of my more learned blog colleagues and the trusty Paul Woodward penetrated the fog. He found the original article from which the fraud was sprung. Needless to say, Van Creveld was arguing neither of the points it is claimed above. In 2003, the Guardian published an extract of the updated edition of David Hirst’s The Gun and the Olive Branch. This article is absolutely prescient in its predictions of what would come to pass in Iraq, Iran and Israel over the following years. I recommend it highly. But the salient passage dealing with Van Creveld’s views reads:

Iran can never be threatened in its very existence. Israel can. Indeed, such a threat could even grow out of the current intifada. That, at least, is the pessimistic opinion of Martin van Creveld, professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. ‘If it went on much longer,’ he said, ‘the Israeli government [would] lose control of the people. In campaigns like this, the anti-terror forces lose, because they don’t win, and the rebels win by not losing. I regard a total Israeli defeat as unavoidable. That will mean the collapse of the Israeli state and society. We’ll destroy ourselves.’

In this situation, he went on, more and more Israelis were coming to regard the ‘transfer’ of the Palestinians as the only salvation; resort to it was growing ‘more probable’ with each passing day. Sharon ‘wants to escalate the conflict and knows that nothing else will succeed’.

But would the world permit such ethnic cleansing? ‘That depends on who does it and how quickly it happens. We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.” I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.’

Thank God, Prof. Van Creveld’s reputation is intact. He retains his stature as one of the most lucid commentators on the Israel-Iran and Israel-Palestinian conflict. It would’ve been a shame to allow some idiots to push their anti-Israel agenda at Van Creveld’s expense. Let’s be clear, Israel is in a mess. Its policy towards Iran threatens a military assault if not regional war. Peace with the Palestinians is as remote as ever. There is much to criticize. But anyone who would circulate such muck does their cause a disservice. If we want to criticize Israel we must do it in a principled way, not this way. In fact, this scumminess plays right the hands of the most right-wing of Israeli political leaders. No doubt, we’ll see an article from Alan Dershowitz or some other Jerusalem Post columnist featuring this as Exhibit A in the smear Israel campaign.

Tags: david hirst, intifada, Martin van Creveld, right wing anti israel fraud, the gun and the olive branch
Posted in Mideast Peace | 15 Comments »

Will Someone Tell the NY Times What is a ‘Mainstream Israeli?’

March 11th, 2010

Why does the NYT call this man 'mainstream?'

In an otherwise fairly balanced article about the growing movement of progressive Israelis against the Sheikh Jarrah evictions, Isabel Kershner writes this astonishingly ill-informed passage:

The case of Sheikh Jarrah also presents a predicament for some mainstream Israelis.

Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a research institution in West Jerusalem, said he opposed a Jewish “right of return” to properties lost in the 1948 war. But he noted that more and more Arabs were buying apartments in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood where he lives.

“It cannot go one way in Jerusalem,” Mr. Klein Halevi said. “I am deeply torn.”

OK, let’s parse this. First, you’ll note that Yossi Klein Halevi has become a “mainstream Israeli.” This despite the fact that earlier in his life he was a leader of the Jewish Defense League, wrote Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, and currently is a fellow of the Shalem Center, a Likudist think-tank funded by Sheldon Adelson and affiliated with such right-wing ideologues as Natan Sharansky. Once again, this just shows how hopelessly biased and politically out of touch Times reporters in Israel are. They are attuned to the group think fed to them by the government and its journalistic acolytes like Halevi. But they cannot provide a nuanced account of many political issues. Usually Kershner does better than Ethan Bronner. But in this passage, she falls prey to his sloppiness.

Note also that the Shalem Center is given the honorific “research institution” without noting its Likudist orientation.

Kershner accepts at face value the preposterous claim advanced by hard-right supporters of the Palestinian evictions that Arabs can live in West Jerusalem and are buying apartments there (which is patently false). In order to test Halevy’s claim you would have to know where he lives in Jerusalem. If he lives within the Green Line his claim would be bogus. If he lives beyond it there is some faint possibility that an Arab might be able to buy an apartment in a predominantly Arab Jerusalem neighborhood. Overall, I find Halevy’s claim preposterous.

But even more than that, we’re talking about the Israeli government ‘legally’ stealing the property of Sheikh Jarrah Palestinians and replacing them with settlers who have even less claim to the property than the Palestinians. Even if Halevy’s claim of Arabs buying apartments in Jerusalem were true, they would be BUYING them, not stealing them. So if Halevy does believe in Israel being a democracy, any Arab should have the right to buy property anywhere in Israel including his neighborhood (in fact, they don’t). The fact that he uses this supposed phenomenon to justify naked theft of Palestinian homes indicates how weak his attachment is to democracy when it comes to his Arab fellow citizens.

I also find it interesting that unlike most N.Y. Times reporters, Isabel Kershner’s name has no e-mail link so you cannot communicate with her directly through her published report. It seems to me that this is a deliberate attempt to isolate this particular reporter from any readers who may wish to comment on her work. Behavior I would expect from the Times’ Israel correspondents who prefer to maintain distance between themselves and readers.

In a separate comment on the Sheikh Jarrah protests, it’s interesting that they have re-energized the long dormant Israeli left. Israelis liberals like David Grossman and Moshe Halbertal, who haven’t demonstrated on behalf of a Palestinian in years I imagine, are mentioned as supporters of this movement. I know that some of my fellow progressive bloggers like Jerry Haber, Brant Rosen and Phil Weiss have been documenting the wonderful work done there. I applaud this too.

The only reason that I’ve held back is that there is a tendency among progressives to read too much into a single political phenomenon. We all would like to see a viable Israeli left. But there simply isn’t one and no matter how wonderful the work supporting the Palestinian evictees is, this alone will not revive the left. There are deep structural problems with the Israeli political system that cannot be fixed without radical change. And Sheikh Jarrah, while it may lay the groundwork, cannot do it alone. The left died for a reason and it will not come back to life unless it fixes or vanquishes what killed it in the first place.

Liberals like Halbertal and Grossman have a record of fleeing from solidarity movements with Palestinians at the first opportunity. So I wonder whether, when they inevitably do, Sheikh Jarrah can maintain its momentum.