January 6, 2024

A Jewish-Arab Partnership Is Building a Young New Peace Camp in Israel

From Haaretz. A little bit of hope — this newly formed organization hopefully is the future for Israel and Palestine. I’ve posted about them before and continue to be impressed with their outreach. Sometimes I need a ray of hope.

It is a very long article filled with many stories. It is so worth reading (IMHO)

Amid the war in Gaza, Standing Together is on a roll: It has 5,000 dues-paying members, the number of its student chapters has doubled, and new groups of Jews and Arabs are working to preserve solidarity – and to instill hope for shared life in Israel

"You're not alone," said the Jewish woman to the Arab woman. Shedding tears, the two Israelis, who were meeting for the first time, embraced. The scene played out in the modest Lod apartment of the Arab woman, Isra Abou Laban Oudi. She's a single mother, and her 3-year-old son, Tareq, scampered merrily among the 14 strangers, Jews and Arabs, who were guests in his home.

From the beginning of the school year, Oudi says, her son, who speaks only Arabic, had attended a municipal Hebrew-speaking preschool. After October 7, when the children returned to school, Tareq too was happy to reunite with his friends after what had been a two-week break. However, Oudi says, when she heard him speaking Arabic, his teacher hit him and demanded he not use "that language."

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The whole situation left Oudi feeling helpless and very much alone. That is, until the solidarity encounter that took place in her home, when members of Standing Together – an Arab-Jewish social movement that seeks to advance a beneficent, egalitarian society in Israel through joint grassroots activity – came to show their support.

Three days after that visit, Oudi and her toddler son attended an event organized by the movement in the nearby city of Ramle which, like Lod, has a mixed population. There, in a banquet hall that had no banquets to host, Arabs and Jews were working side by side to prepare food packages for Jewish, Muslim and Christian families whose source of livelihood had been truncated because of the war.

Oudi and her son did not join in the activity of Standing Together ("Omdim Beyahad" in Hebrew) by chance. It's part of the "recovery plan" that the movement recommends for people who have been hurt by racism: to transform the affront into constructive activity. "It gives people the strength to translate the hurt into joint activity, restores a renewed sense of control and also brings us new and highly motivated members," explains Omri Goren, 24, who oversees the movement's activity in the Ramle-Lod area and also heads its student division.

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[link:https://archive.is/1c3Kl|]. Free Link

[link:https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-05/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/a-jewish-arab-partnership-is-building-a-young-new-peace-camp-in-israel/0000018c-daa9-d751-ad8d-ffadd6e00000|]. Haaretz Link if you have subscription

January 4, 2024

Explainer: Charging Israel w/Genocide at the ICJ: The Petition, the Precedents and the Punishment. Questions & Answers

From Haaretz:

Free Link
[link:https://archive.is/P9T3t|]

Haaretz Direct Link
[link:https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-04/ty-article/.premium/charging-israel-with-genocide-at-the-icj-petition-precedents-and-punishment/0000018c-d449-ddba-abad-d6e91a480000|]

This Explainer is a great primer on the ICJ and answers many questions some people may have.

Why did South Africa file the petition against Israel for its conduct in Gaza at the International Court of Justice in The Hague? Why is Israel interested in cooperating with the proceedings? What are the possible outcomes?

Among some of the questions:

What is the International Court of Justice and how is it different from the International Criminal Court?

As distinct from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which conducts trials against individuals, the International Court of Justice in The Hague deals with legal disputes between states, and it has the authority to deliberate on certain issues, such as genocide, by virtue of international covenants.

Israel does not recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court, which is conducting an investigation into suspicions of war crimes committed by Israel and the Palestinians, including in the war currently being waged. However, Israel is a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, from which the International Court of Justice derives its authority to hear the complaint filed by South Africa.

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What are South Africa's complaints against Israel and what is the redress it is requesting?

South Africa is claiming that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and that it is not taking action to punish inciters to genocide. It is accusing Israel of "indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants" and claims that among the actions Israel is reported to have taken are "crimes against humanity and war crimes," as well as acts that fulfill the criteria for definition as genocide.

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How will the proceedings be conducted at the court, who are the judges and what is the timetable?

At the ICJ there are 15 judges from 15 countries. Israel and South Africa are entitled to appoint judges on their behalf, one from each of the countries. Joan Donoghue of the United States is currently the president of the court, and serving alongside her are three former court presidents, representing Slovakia, France and Somalia. Donoghue's deputy is Judge Kirill Gevorgian of Russia. In Israel it is said that the judges' rulings sometimes reflect the political positions of the countries they represent.

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Why is Israel interested in cooperating with the proceedings and what will be its line of defense?

First, the ICJ has international status and prestige. Second, the Convention on Genocide from which the court derives its authority to deliberate on South Africa's complaint was established following the Holocaust, and Israel is a signatory to it. Therefore, it cannot claim that the court has no authority, as it does with regard to the International Criminal Court.

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What are the possible outcomes of the proceedings?

First, as noted, the court can order Israel to stop the fighting in Gaza. Though it does not have enforcement powers, the court's proceedings are liable to establish that Israel has committed genocide, thereby causing its isolation and a boycott, sanctions against it or against Israeli companies and other sanctions in the international arena.

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What will the consequences be if Israel does not do what the court orders?

In such a case, countries would be liable to take measures of their own against Israel, at the international level. As noted, a declaration that Israel is committing acts that constitute genocide could materially affect its status in the world and the attitude towards it in the international arena, as well as towards Israeli companies, Israelis in academia and more.

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Recommend reading the whole article for more detailed answers to these questions plus additional questions.

January 4, 2024

'Much Harder for Children': Severe Hunger Is Spreading in Gaza. Four Voices From a Human Catastrophe

From Haaretz:

The impossible reality of Gaza: Mothers who are too malnourished to breastfeed, searches for food under the threat of bombings and aid organizations collapsing under the strain

"There is fear in the children's eyes that we see," said Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, after his visit to the Gaza Strip last month. "They don't know where to go, they have nowhere to stay, and we have no answers for them, and that's the most frustrating part, really." Families in Gaza are now living in the daily reality of a hunger crisis, he said.

Reports from the United Nations and independent aid organizations paint a very grim picture of the hunger situation in the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people. Throughout the war, bakeries have been bombed, many stockpiles have run dry, and there is no electricity and fuel that would allow food production. The commercial entry of food has been discontinued, and the entry of humanitarian assistance is limited. Aid organizations have a hard time transferring even what does arrive to the needy.

'We’re dying slowly. I haven’t eaten for two days, and I’m thirsty all the time'

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Four Gazans spoke with Haaretz and explained how hunger was affecting their lives – from secondary consequences to the daily struggle to get some food, as little as it may be. One comment came up repeatedly in conversations with them and reflects the feeling of many in Gaza: If death doesn't come in an airstrike, they say, hunger will bring it.

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'We got two cans of preserved food. We're 22 people'
Maha
Age: 26
Family situation: single
Present location: Rafah
Pre-war residence: Gaza City
————
"It's not ordinary hunger, when you can eat very soon and then the feeling disappears. I feel hungry all the time. My stomach rumbles. I suffer from weakness, headaches, [and] sometimes dizziness. I eat very small amounts because you have to share the food with those who are with you.

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It's physically hard for me to get up and to stand'
Alham
Age: 38
Family situation: married with three children
Present location: Rafah
Pre-war location: Gaza City

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'I didn't tell the children where we got the food'
Noel
Age: 43
Family situation: married with four children
Present location: Rafah
Pre-war residence: Beit Lahia

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'A man who arrived with children begged to eat. I gave them what I had'
Alaa
Age: 28
Family situation: single
Present location: Rafah
Pre-war residence: Rafah

Each story is long and painful to read but it is worth reading these stories (at least for me):

Free link: [link:https://archive.is/8e1X8#selection-3119.0-3163.6|]

Haaretz link for subscribers: [link:https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2024-01-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/severe-hunger-is-spreading-in-gaza-four-voices-from-a-human-catastrophe/0000018c-d3da-d4e1-ad8f-fffbf0800000|]

January 2, 2024

Why is Gaza so central to the Palestinian struggle? From Israeli +972 Magazine

Absolutely fascinating but very long and detailed article by Dr. Anne Irfan, Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Race, Gender and Postcolonial Studies at University College London.

The history of Gaza illuminates why the tiny enclave has long embodied Palestinian identity — and is now the focal point of a major regional crisis.

More than half a century after beginning its occupation of the Gaza Strip, there are mounting signs that Israel is using its current military offensive to remake the territory completely.

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While defending its actions in Gaza as necessary and denying accusations of war crimes, the Israeli government is describing its war in existential terms. Hamas’ raid on October 7 was one of the deadliest attacks on Israel in the state’s history. For the first time since 1948, Israeli forces temporarily lost control of territory within the Green Line, as Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis, injured more than 5,000, and kidnapped about 240 people, the majority of them civilians. The impact on the Israeli psyche, and the resulting collective trauma, has been profound.

Capitalizing on such feelings, the Israeli government, with the wide support of the public, has framed the attack on Gaza as a battle for survival. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has said “it’s either them or us,” and described the air-and-ground assault as “a war for Israel’s existence as a prosperous Jewish state in the Middle East.” Netanyahu has dubbed it “the second war of independence.”

Yet these bombastic statements jar with the fact that Gaza, at least on the surface, appears as little more than a tiny speck on the globe. How has such a small piece of territory — comprising less than 1.5 percent of historic Palestine, and smaller than most U.S. cities — become the focal point of a major national, regional, and global struggle?

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The article details the long history from the beginnings through 1947 and 1948

The events of the Nakba produced the modern-day Strip in both territorial and demographic terms. Egypt, which had joined other Arab states in declaring war on Israel in 1948, signed an armistice agreement with its new northern neighbor in February 1949. The armistice established the Gaza Strip with its current borders — a significantly smaller stretch of land than that designated by the UN in 1947 — under Egyptian administration.

At the same time, the creation of the Israeli state forcibly expelled and displaced at least three quarters of the Palestinian population, creating 750,000 Palestinian refugees. While this exodus transformed the demographics of the entire Levant, nowhere received more refugees per head than the Gaza Strip. Home to around 80,000 residents prior to the Nakba, by the end of the 1940s it had absorbed more than 200,000 refugees, tripling the area’s population. The Strip’s dense population in the 21st century, two-thirds of whom descend from those first refugees, can be traced directly to the impact of the Nakba.

It continues through the 50s and early 60s

Despite its severance from the rest of Palestine, though, Gaza remained closely intertwined with the rest of the world in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was integrated into the Global South’s anti-colonial solidarity politics, especially after Gamal Abdel Nasser took the Egyptian Presidency in 1954, regularly citing the Palestinian cause as key to his pan-Arab leadership.

Accordingly, this period saw leading anti-colonial figures visit the Strip, including Che Guevera in 1959, Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960, and Malcolm X in 1964. All three of them visited refugee camps during their time there, highlighting the significance of the Palestinian refugees to the Strip’s politics and national aspirations.

Nonetheless, this period was not one of liberation for Palestinians. They were still living as a stateless people under Egyptian rule — first under a British-backed autocratic monarch until 1952, and then under the Free Officers’ regime that would come to be dominated by Nasser.

history to 1967

While 1967 is usually cited as the starting point of the Israeli occupation, the Gaza Strip had already experienced an interlude of what was to come a decade earlier. In late October 1956, Israel invaded and occupied the Strip as part of its joint attack on Egypt with Britain and France, following Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. The Israeli army took over the Strip, coming face-to-face with many of the Palestinian refugees it had expelled just a few years earlier.

While that first Israeli occupation only lasted 4 months — ending at the command of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who threatened to sanction Israel if it refused to withdraw — researchers have uncovered evidence of Israeli plans from that time for a longer-term presence in the Strip, and even the construction of Jewish settlements. When the Israeli army re-conquered Gaza a decade later, in June 1967, such plans were resumed, initiating the longest-running military occupation in modern history.

The 80s

Twenty years into the Israeli occupation, an entire Palestinian generation had grown up knowing nothing else. By the late 1980s, Israeli settlements were expanding and even prospering while Palestinians remained stateless and impoverished. Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and siege of Beirut, the Sabra and Shatila massacre that year, the failures of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the rightward shift of Israeli politics following Likud’s rise to power in 1977, all added to Palestinian anger.

Experiencing the most acute forms of dispossession and military rule, Gaza became the birthplace to perhaps the most significant Palestinian uprising of the past century: the First Intifada.

The spark came in December 1987, when an Israeli army vehicle crashed into a Palestinian car in the Gaza Strip, killing four people; three of them lived in Jabalia camp, home to refugees who had been expelled from villages in southern Palestine during the Nakba. While Israeli authorities insisted the crash was accidental, many Palestinians were skeptical given the widespread experience of brutality and disinformation by the army.

The 90s and on.

I really recommend anyone who wants an in depth history with fascinating details and context - read this long magazine article. I pulled out tiny amount to give sense of how it is written but can’t follow DU rules and give the scope of the piece. It really is only for those interested in the complex details.

Link [link:https://www.972mag.com/history-gaza-strip-palestinian-struggle/|]

January 1, 2024

The Woman Who Saved Israel's Fragile Democracy - for Now

Ex-Supreme Court President Esther Hayut did Israeli society a huge favor on Monday by presiding over the ruling to effectively kill off the government's judicial overhaul. But Israel remains as divided as ever, and will still be when the war ends

The High Court of Justice's ruling Monday to nullify the law passed by the governing coalition last July, which eliminated the reasonableness standard clause, extends to 738 pages of dense reasoning for and against the decision. It will be studied by legal experts and taught in courses on constitutional law for decades to come. But beyond the issues of jurisprudence, it has immediate political and social implications.

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The first and most important conclusion from the ruling is that the Netanyahu government's judicial overhaul is over. Just before the first anniversary of Justice Minister Yariv Levin's unveiling of his "legal reform" program last January 4, and after the most turbulent 362 days in Israel's history, the plot to eviscerate Israel's Supreme Court and hobble its democracy has failed.

This government will not have the power or the credibility with the public – or most likely the time – to try it again. That doesn't mean a future right-wing government won't make another attempt at weakening the judiciary, but it must be hoped that any future constitutional changes will be made in a more consensual manner.

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Hayut is now a target for condemnation from the right, and shamefully even some centrists – not only for having led the ruling against the reasonableness clause (which gave the top court the power to disqualify certain executive branch decisions it deemed as unreasonable), but for having published the ruling at a time of war.

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Read the whole article in free link to Haaretz: [link:https://archive.is/SIdLU|]

Thank You Esther Hayut and your 7 brave colleagues who stood up against Netanyahu’s attempt to thwart democracy.

December 30, 2023

One of the best actors, Tom Wilkinson, died at 75. Too soon. You may not know his name but you

definitely know his films - brilliant in Michael Clayton and In The Bedroom. But most beloved for The Full Monty. Damn. I loved him I everything.

Let’s all dance to Hot Stuff in his honor.

[link:https://twitter.com/realemirhan/status/1741162347836637570?s=61&t=_R0eaN5XDTx3hnl2jyXBTA|]

RIP

December 29, 2023

South Africa institutes proceedings against Israel before International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention

[link:https://twitter.com/CraigMokhiber/status/1740786012476117266?s=20|]

December 29, 2023

"Absolutely Unimaginable": Children in Gaza Face Amputations Without Anesthesia, Death & Disease

[link:https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/28/palestinian_children_gaza|]

Watched this interview yesterday with Steve Sosebee, founder of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which provides medical and humanitarian aid to Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank.

Sosebee shares the stories of Izzeddin Nawasra and Mohammed Al-Ajouri, two young men who were shot by Israeli snipers during the Great March of Return protests in 2018 and received medical care in the U.S. from PCRF. Both were killed alongside their families by Israeli airstrikes on and after Christmas Day. Sosebee also describes the state of medical care in Gaza, where patients are being forced to undergo amputations without anesthesia and forgo life-saving medications amid Israel’s ongoing blockade.

It is so heartbreaking. There is so much suffering. Israelis and Palestinians. All wanting a life for their children.

Transcript is in the link above but I encourage those with compassion in their hearts to listen to Sosebee's words.

For me - Every day I wake up with the hope that a ceasefire will be in place, hostages returned, and a negotiations begin towards a peace process. When even ex-PM Ehud Olmert, who refused to agree to a deal that was offered to him when he was prime minister that would have led to the release of Gilad Shalit is writing an opinion piece saying "What should we do? I believe that the time has come for Israel to express its readiness to end the fighting. Yes, end the fighting. Not a pause and not a temporary cessation of two, three or four days. An end to the hostility – period. At that time, Israel will need to bring back the hostages, those who are alive and those who are dead. If we wait, it won't be long before the only ones we can bring back will be the dead, because there won't be any living ones. A cessation of hostilities must be conditioned on the release of all the hostages, every last one of them, the soldiers and the bodies of all those who have been held by Hamas for years. All of them." - someone needs to listen.

To read Olmert's whole piece in Haaretz (which was quite an eye opener for me) - here's a free link: [link:https://archive.is/6iSKm#selection-1027.0-1031.557|]

December 28, 2023

Opinion Sanctifying the Indiscriminate Killing in Gaza Is Israel's Second Defeat

An opinion piece by Israeli journalist Uri Misgav in Haaretz

Friends from Kibbutz Or Haner sought to pay a shivah call to Iris Haim, whose son Yotam was one of three hostages shot dead by Israeli soldiers after escaping from Hamas captivity. Haim lived in the settlement of Masua before moving to the kibbutz in the past year; she sat shivah in Moshav Shoeva. To the kibbutzniks' surprise, they were met at the door by an employee of the Mateh Yehuda Regional Council, who served as bouncer. Behind her, the house was packed with men in kippot and women in headscarves. Since October 7, Haim has become a strategic weapon for the messianic-settler right.

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The hostages have also been sacrificed. The hero of the messianic camp is Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram, who admitted without blinking an eye that on October 7 he ordered a tank to fire on a house in Kibbutz Be'eri inside which terrorists held 14 hostages. All but two were killed in the shelling. A division commander who gave such an order should sit in jail. There is a direct line from Iris Haim's frequent media interviews to Hiram's approach. Hiram, by the way, gave a comfortable interview to Ilana Dayan after Black Saturday. With a gleam in his eye, he waxed poetic about a vision of occupying the Gaza Strip and said that, from his perspective, it's not about the army, "but something way beyond that, the Jewish people."

The New York Times published the incident, as part of a comprehensive investigation of the terrorist rampage in Be'eri. In the Israeli media, apart from Haaretz, there is no room for criticism of the army. Nor for consideration of and challenge to sinking into a guerilla war in the Gaza mud, without a diplomatic horizon and under an unfit leader.

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But this is the spirit of the time and the place. Journalist Zvi Yehezkeli keeps repeating on Channel 13 News that 100,000 Gazans should have been killed in the opening blow of the war, and that every single one of the Gaza Strip's 2 million residents is connected to Hamas. This is a call for genocide, and Yehezkeli is currently the most popular speaker in the Israeli media (lecture fee: 20,000 shekels, or $5,523).

A society that sanctifies indiscriminate death and killing loses its moral superiority and the justification for its existence. This is the second massive blow that Hamas is on the way to landing on us, and it is even more terrible than the first.

Read whole piece here for those who aren’t able to articulate the complex feelings about this war - reading this you might not feel quite so alone. [link:https://archive.is/6as6m|]

December 26, 2023

"Christ in the Rubble": Watch Palestinian Pastor Deliver Powerful Christmas Sermon from Bethlehem

Reverend Munther Isaac at the landmark Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem

[link:https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/26/christ_in_the_rubble_christmas_sermon|]

If interested, please watch. It moved me to tears, but I know others will not be. For those that might — this is beautiful, powerful and painful.


His interview is also important and can be viewed on Democracy Now as well.