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Challenging Haaretz’s Moshe Arens: Israeli settlers do not compare to Japanese internment camp victims

May 1, 2012 By 1 Comment

Moshe Arens argues that it is “wrong to push out Israeli settlers”, relating this “gross miscarriage of justice” to the expulsion of Japanese citizens of the United States from their homes during World War II.

Moreover, Arens fails to make any mention of the Palestinians forced from their homes. He also fails to discuss international law, claiming that the legal status of the Palestinian territories is “ill-defined”.

All in all, Arens’s opinion piece, published in Haaretz on May 1, is truly one of the most backwards things I’ve read. I challenge Arens to respond.

It is blaringly obvious that Aren’s analogy between Israeli settlers and U.S. citizens of Japanese descents just doesn’t make sense. We’re dealing with two entirely different situations. During World War II, Japanese Americans were forced from their homes and, in most cases, caged in internment camps. These individuals held U.S. citizenship and lived within U.S. borders. It was a time of egregious chaos in which the rights of American citizens were viciously denied. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , , , ,

When the clashes erupt, who is to blame?

March 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By the looks of it, yesterday’s Land Day commemoration will go down in history as yet another bloody day of protest. Mirroring the events that unfolded exactly thirty-six years ago in 1976, Palestinian protestors faced both the front end and the butt end of the gun. Tear gas flooded their eyes and burning rubber flooded their lungs. One protestor was shot and killed and dozens more were injured, arrested, or both.

And on the other side, Palestinians battled the rubber bullets, the gas canisters, and the excessive use of force with rocks and Molotov cocktails.

There was violence from both sides today, and as journalist Joseph Dana notes, “this is . . . the reality of this conflict”. When asked who is to blame, each side will undoubtedly point the finger towards the other, and with the news convoluting itself with politicized semantics, it’s virtually impossible to determine, with evidence, who struck the first blow and what the term “first blow” even entails.

But one thing is for certain: no occupation, no Land Day. If Israel didn’t maintain a military presence in the West Bank, if it respected international rulings and dismantled its wall, if it applied itself to the human rights standards it demands from the world, there would be no reason to ask who struck the first blow because there likely wouldn’t be any reason to clash, as the news puts it, in the first place. [Read more...]

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Obama crosses the line: A list of US ‘pressures’ on Israel

November 9, 2011 By 1 Comment

The U.S. Speaker of the House has had enough. According to Haaretz, Republican John Boehner, a staunch supporter of everything Israeli, declared his disapproval of the current administration’s policies, stating that Barack Obama’s pressure on Israel crosses the line.

To better understand Boehner’s mindset, I decided to compile a non-comprehensive list of pressures Obama is allegedly directing towards Israel.

In 2011, under the policies implemented by the Obama Administration, each American taxpayer will have paid $21.59 in military aid to Israel.

By the end of the 2011 fiscal year, Obama will have given Israel $3 billion in foreign military financing. By the end of Obama’s four years as President, he will have given Israel between $11.41 and $12 billion in military aid alone. This is enough to provide over 9.2 million Americans with guaranteed primary care for ten years.

Since 2007, military aid to Israel has increased by roughly $150 million every year, and the Obama administration has yet to alter this policy in any way.

In March 2010, Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met for a private meeting. Obama proposed a plan to Netanyahu that involved halting settlement building. Netanyahu responded with a flowchart diagram demonstrating that permission for settlement expansion does not go directly through him and that, as a result, he lacks knowledge of these plans and is unable to adequately intervene. Settlement building continues today.

In 2009, Obama ordered a 10-month settlement freeze during which he allowed Israel to immediately construct 3,000 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem and to further expand illegal settlements and outposts in the West Bank. By the end of the freeze, Israel had begun construction on 1,600 more housing units in Jerusalem. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Analysis, Commentary, News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Netanyahu’s response to Obama’s speech reveals Israel’s unconditional defiance of international law

May 19, 2011 By 2 Comments

In response to President Barack Obama’s statements concerning American strategy and outlook in Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Obama’s stance on the conflict with the most illogical of arguments. Haaretz published a short article outlining his general response. Provided is the Haaretz article in full, supplemented by the reality that Netanyahu’s administration chooses to ignore.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday Israel would object to any withdrawal to “indefensible” borders, adding he expected Washington to allow it to keep major settlement blocs in any peace deal.

The first sentence of this article reveals Israel’s true role in the ‘peace process’. While the anti-Palestinian narrative involves blaming Hamas’ existence for the repeated failures of the most recent peace talks, it has purposely ignored Israel’s continued defiance of both humanitarian law as well as American policy. The United States has repeatedly called on Israel to end all settlement building within the West Bank on the basis that it directly contradicts humanitarian and international law. Striking up a peace deal does not elevate Israel above the law. Settlement building is illegal and it is clear that it remains a source for continued conflict. Even if peace talks continue to fall through, Israel should comply with the law and Netanyahu’s administration should not expect to keep any settlement blocs.

In a statement after President Barack Obama’s speech outlining Middle East strategy, Netanyahu said before heading to Washington that “the viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of Israel’s existence”.

Establishing a formally-recognized Palestinian state does nothing to Israel’s existence, especially if relegated to the 1967 borders. However, unless Israel’s existence is predicated on occupation, illegal land grabs, and the destruction of a Palestinian identity, than yes, a Palestinian state will come at the expense of Israel’s existence because the occupation, the land grabbing, and the destruction of Palestinian culture and identity will be forced to end, most likely under threat of UN-regulated sanctions. [Read more...]

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Netanyahu’s pro-occupation propaganda during a live YouTube interview

March 30, 2011 By 1 Comment

“They [the Palestinians] deserve better,” says Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu to a live YouTube audience. But I don’t buy it. After all, his political agenda proves that he thinks otherwise.

World View is a unique YouTube campaign featuring monthly interviews of the world’s most recognized leaders using questions asked by online viewers. Netanyahu served as the high profile guest for the month of March and as expected, his interview fell nothing short of openly racist propaganda in which he repetitively promoted the normalization of the occupation while altering reality to shed an artificial favorable light on Israeli policy. Needless to say, my blood pressure peaked at least a dozen times.

Virtually everything Netanyahu said contradicted the reality of the political quagmire into which his administration continues to sink. His responses were both deceptive and illogical. The most prominent example of this happened during his response to a question about settlements.

[Read more...]

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A Dark Moment for ‘Liberal’ Zionism

March 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Guest contribution by Chase M.

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Imagine, for a brief moment, that Israel treated the settlements in and around Hebron the same way it treats the Gaza Strip. After all, Kiryat Arba, like Gaza, has its share of dangerous, gun-toting extremists mingling amidst the civilian population. On a single day in 1994, the Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein mowed down twenty-nine civilians in Hebron during what became known as the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre; this is equal to the total number of fatalities to date from Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks since they commenced in 2001. So what would a Gaza policy imposed on Hebron look like?

First, a fence would be built around the settlements – not to keep Palestinians out, as with the current separation fence, but to keep settlers in. Near the fence, inside the settlements, a free-fire “buffer zone” would be unilaterally declared by the IDF, cutting right through residential neighborhoods and farmland. Armed IDF units patrolling the perimeter of the fence would be authorized to shoot at any Jewish settlers caught inside the buffer zone. Unmanned aerial drones carrying AGM-114 Hellfire anti-tank missiles would occasionally conduct sorties over the city, destroying any buildings that the IDF suspects contain weapons caches or assassinating high-profile figures who organize violence against the city’s Palestinian residents. Collateral damage would be unavoidable when operations are conducted in urban terrain. [Read more...]

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Rethinking Itamar: Eliminating the ‘Palestinian threat’ won’t legitimize Israeli settlements

March 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

[Updated] On the 11th of March, much of the international community expressed outrage after learning about an assault that left five Israeli family members dead in Itamar, an Israeli settlement 5 kilometers southeast of Nablus. Just days after, the international community experienced another shock when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized another round of settlement expansions in the West Bank.

The murders in Itamar have since become a main line of argument against settlement growth. There can no justification for the attacks that left five unarmed individuals dead, but the way in which Itamar is used to frame the settlement problem evades both justice for the immediate victims and justice for the region’s inhabitants as a whole. This strategy ignores the root of the conflict and instead perpetuates the intolerance and hatred existing within the region’s racial and religious divides. Logic, in its most objective form, is the only remedy.

‘Do we need another Itamar?’
Conversation with a pro-Israel critic of Netanyahu’s settlement fetish normally begins with any variation of the following sentences: ‘The government just approved 700 new settlement units. Can’t Netanyahu see that more Jewish lives will be lost? Do we need another Itamar?’

It is this ideological thought process that harms any future of peace and further instigates the oppression of Palestinians — albeit in a subtle manner. Not only does the critic refuse to recognize the role of settlements within the context of international law but he or she also chooses to ignore Palestinians’ right to safety and security. The only concern, it seems, is for the safety of the settlers — just the settlers. This transcends semantics and petty discourse; it’s a representation of the racism inherent within Israel’s sociopolitíc. [Read more...]

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