Bob Simon narrated an excellent segment on settlements as an obstacle to a two-state solution on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009. You can see it at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml.
Bernard Avishai Dot Com: Hebron Agonistes: Too Much For Israel, Dec. 22, 2008
It has been common for educated Israelis to think, and Israeli diplomats and American Jewish leaders to present, the settler community of Hebron as a kind of radical nuisance. Presumably, the settlers are a side-show of a defensive strategic policy, a touch of hubris gone wrong, a little understandible selfishness after centuries of self-effacement-anyway, a line that can be moved when the time is right, certainly not a country within a country that has grown, SimCity-like, into something the size of the Jewish colony in Palestine in 1946.
In this view-not entirely wrong-the settlers were post-1967 Israelis only more so: people who took classical Zionist ideas about settling the Land of Israel a little too seriously, or took the Jews’ election a little too literally, or accepted cheap mortgages from the Jewish Agency a little too opportunistically; people who have randomly scattered themselves in the occupied territory in a now obviously failed effort to annex the holy land, or just to show that Jews can live everywhere in it.
The settlers, presumably, have settled under the nose of a forbearing, once vaguely sympathetic Israeli government, otherwise preoccupied by encirclement and terror. But they are people whom the Israeli government-if it ever had a real peace partner in the Palestinians, and not jihadist terrorists firing missiles, or sending in suicide bombers-would clear out in a great show of sovereign will. The recent clearing of the “House of Contention” by the Israeli Army is proof, so the argument goes, of the Israeli army’s residual power. The more recent breakdown of the cease fire with Hamas is proof of how Israel faces an existential threat, and dares not be distracted by the settlers.
Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s picked up the scent of power, is defining a new centrism by triangulating these poles. He knows that Israelis have lost patience with Judeans, or at least the disquieting ones. He’s made a show of purging one of the most fanatic of the settlers, Moshe Feiglin, from the 20th. position in the Likud list for the Knesset (though many more remain in the top 30); and he is simultaneously telling us that both the peace talks Olmert conducted with the Palestinian Authority, and the “time of retreat” in Gaza, are over. No two-state solution will compromise the existence of Kiryat Arba (no more than the unity of Jerusalem), he says. But neither settler zealots nor Palestinian terrorists, presumably, will be allowed to challenge the existence of the state. Each side-some now, some later-will be forced to change their behavior by Israeli state force.
I WENT TO Hebron a couple of weeks ago, as part of a delegation of Israelis hoping to show a measure of solidarity with an Arab family who’s patriarch, Abed el-Hai, had been shot at point blank range defending his home from one Kiryat Arba settler as the House of Contention was being cleared. There is no need to sentimentalize this gruff, stolid man-whose many barefooted grandchildren, sticky from holiday candy and twittering over our cell phones, will be run over by global forces if peace should ever come. But let’s just say that a day in Hebron focuses the mind.
You think out from Hebron, and the holes in the common wisdom become obvious, well, certainly less abstract. A different pattern takes shape, and virtually every premise of the common wisdom falls away.
1. Kiryat Arba, with surrounding settlements, is a solid town of about 10,000 people and growing. Many of its youth were born there, marinating in a peculiar and vicious righteousness. But there can be no Palestinian state if Kiryat Arba remains; to keep its residents under Israeli sovereignty, you would have to cut the southern West Bank in half, and keep checkpoints all along the route from Gush Etzion. Kiryat Arba’s residents would never accept Palestinian citizenship, even if this were offered. Imagine offering Klansmen rule by Stokely Carmichael, or Martin Luther King, for that matter.
2. According to army intelligence, and demonstrated precedent, a substantial number of Kiryat Arba residents would be willing to violently resist the Israeli army. Reserve army units-young men from Herzliya or Netanya-will tell you the settlers are out of their minds. But this is not the only army. An increasing number of junior officers conducting the occupation come from the movements and homes of the settlers. The army is there, soldiers say, to keep the peace. But in any case, this means enforcing the status quo, in which settlements naturally expand.
3. There is nothing random about what the settlers are doing. In Hebron, the idea is to create a land bridge from Kiryat Arab to the Tomb of the Patriarchs. It is Abed el-Hai’s bad luck that is home is in the way, in the wadi below Kiryat Arba, which the settlers want to turn “Jewish.” Most nights, Kiryat Arba residents throw rocks, garbage, and bags of urine into his yard.
In the area known as H-2, where the settlers have rights under the Wye Agreement (you know, the agreement then-prime minster Netanyahu negotiated in 1998), the Arab population has declined from about 35,000 to 18,000.
The road from Kiryat Arba to the Tomb has a yellow (that’s right, yellow) line on it, indicating that no Arab is allowed to walk on it; the settlers push their baby-strollers freely, while army jeeps patrol up and down, and Arab kids watch from third floor windows, many of them with iron screens to protect them from rocks, etc.
The settlers have set up a synagogue on the land of Ja’abri family-another family in the way-which the Israeli High Court has declared illegal, and the army has taken down over 30 times, only to have the “minyan” rebuild it. During prayers, their children often throw rocks, etc., onto the homes of the Ja’abris. A stone’s throw in the other direction is the grave of, and monument to, Baruch Goldstein.
4. Multiply the Hebron problem by twenty, and you have the real, grotesque problem that occupation has engendered. Jerusalem is the radioactive core of it. Try to evacuate Kiryat Arba by force and tens of thousands will stream down from yeshivot in Jerusalem to stand with them.
No Israeli leader wants to deal with facing down the new Judeans-or can, without destroying Israeli social solidarity. I have written here before about how all fanatics live within concentric circles of support. No matter who wins a majority in the next election, about half of Israeli Knesset members will be from circles which the settlers count on-National Orthodox, Shas, Leiberman’s Russians, Haredi-people concentrated in and around Jerusalem, whom the settlers will tell you would be in settlements themselves if they had the guts; people who will nevertheless apply the “values” the settlers stand for to Jerusalem.
Again, Netanyahu has demoted Feiglin. But the government he will form will rest on this Judean coalition. And if Livni-Barak win, they will face an opposition nearly the size of their own, with many sympathetic members, and a fear of resting their coalition (as they will have to) on the Arab parties.
5. Hamas is growing in power-in the West Bank, too-directly as a result of this grotesquery. It is absurd to think of Gaza as a separate matter. Nor will the Hamas leadership be intimidated by shows of force. Actually, they thrive on it-precisely because eruptions of violence allow them to be seen as the steadfast opposition to the inertial expansion of Israeli occupation. An Israeli attack on Gaza, which must be bloody, will be play right into Hamas’s hands.
6. True, Israelis on the coastal plain are increasingly appalled by the settlers, and will tell you so. Livni’s biggest applause line at the Globes business conference last week was her insistence that, under her leadership, peace talks with the Palestinians will continue. But taking on the settlers is another matter. It is more politic to talk about smashing Hamas, whose missile attacks on Shderot truly are insufferable.
7. Netanyahu speaks of “economic peace” as alternative to the peace process. This is also absurd. Palestinians cannot build businesses with 500 checkpoints across the West Bank. Those checkpoints are mainly to protect the settlers.
WHERE DOES THIS leave us? The simple fact is, this problem is too big for Israel. We will need the world’s involvement; anyone who tells you different is either covering for the settlers, or afraid for electoral reasons to appear squishy about Israeli autonomy, or arrogant, or ignorant, or thick, or all of these at once. This post is not the place to describe what involvement means, though the contours of a two-state deal have been obvious for many years. The point is, what Hebron represents cannot be solved by this deal in a few decisive months, like the evacuation of the Sinai was. New changes to the landscape will take years. Or the landscape will look like Bosnia.
Perhaps the saddest part of all of this is that first patriarch of Hebron, Abraham, never turned promised land holy. When faced with contention, as his herdsmen quarreled with Lot, he said something unforgettable but forgotten: “Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.”
B’Tselem – Settler violence – 10 Dec. ‘08: Hebron: Willful abandonment by security forces
On 4 December, immediately after the settlement in Hebron’s a-Ras neighborhood (“the House in Dispute”) was evicted, B’Tselem issued a public call to security forces to protect the Palestinian residents of the city, and Palestinians throughout the West Bank, from expected acts of revenge by settlers.
In the weeks that preceded the eviction, settlers attacked Palestinians and damaged Palestinian property daily in Hebron. Although these attacks were extensive and prolonged, Israel’s security forces failed to prevent them. In one of the incidents that B’Tselem documented, on 30 November, about 50 settlers entered a Palestinian neighborhood at 2:00 A.M., accompanied by an army jeep. The settlers threw stones that shattered windowpanes of houses and of some 25 cars, and punctured the tires of the cars. They then threw stones at houses in the neighborhood and shattered windowpanes.
Despite B’Tselem’s warning, and despite the high probability that attacks of this kind would occur, the security forces failed to properly protect the city’s Palestinian residents also after the eviction, when settlers invaded Palestinian neighborhoods in the city, torched houses and cars, threw stones, shattered windowpanes, and damaged solar-heated water tanks, satellite dishes, and water containers.
A particularly severe attack occurred in Hebron’s Wadi al-Hussein neighborhood, by the house of the al-Matariyeh and Abu Sa’ifan families. Jamal Abu-Sa’ifan, a participant in B’Tselem’s camera distribution project, filmed the event. A settler fired at three members of the al-Matariyeh family from close range, wounding them. A second settler fired into the air and towards the photographer, trying also to grab the camera from him. A third settler fired into the air and towards the house. B’Tselem handed over the video to the police the same day. Two of the suspects surrendered themselves to the police two days later and have since been released.
IN PICTURES / The evacuation of ‘House of Contention’ in Hebron, Haaretz, Dec. 5, 2008
Last update – 21:23 04/12/2008
By Haaretz Service
Swiftly and without immediate warning, Israeli security forces on Thursday removed dozens of settlers from the site of a house in Hebron, to which the settlers claim ownership, but whose evacuation has been ordered by the Israeli High Court of Justice.
The evacuation itself was completed within about an hour, but irate settlers later rampaged through the West Bank city, some setting Palestinian property alight and opening fire on local residents.
A fire in a Palestinian area started by settlers following the evacuation of the house in Hebron, AP, Haaretz 125.08
A border policeman removing two young settlers from the the disputed house in Hebron. AP. Haaretz 125.08
A settler talking to a member of the security forces during the evacuation in Hebron, Jini, H 125.08
Avi Issacharoff, Hebron settler riots can only be called ‘pogrom’ Haaretz, Dec. 5, 2008
An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn’t a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, “Allahu Akhbar.” Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there.
The cries rain down, much like the hail of stones the masked men hurled at the Abu Sa’afan family in the house. A few seconds tick by before a group of journalists, long accustomed to witnessing these difficult moments, decide not to stand on the sidelines. They break into the home and save the lives of the people inside. The brain requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place. Women and children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most effective way to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the army.
Gideon Levy: Despite everything, Hebron is still Palestinian, Haaretz, Nov. 23, 2008
The Pachao family was out Saturday for a Sabbath walk. Sarah and Yosef pushed the baby carriage, and the little ones, Ahuva, Gershon, Hananel and Noah, crowded into the carriage or walked behind it. Why did you come to live here, I asked? “Because of the good air.” The Pachaos, who are members of the Bnei Menashe, immigrated from India, near the Myanmar border, 10 years ago.
They were returning from Sabbath prayers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, along with thousands of other Jews, who walked through the car-free street. This week’s portion was “Life of Sarah.” The Pachaos’ Asian appearance was not the only outstanding thing along the road connecting Kiryat Arba with Hebron, and its “House of Contention.”
A stranger coming to Hebron Saturday would be confused. Border Policemen speaking Amharic with settlers; their Druze friends chattering in Arabic; police, soldiers and settlers praying together in the Abraham hall; American and French Jews armed with machine guns; a sea of tents on the grass in front of the tomb structure. Above all, the surreal look of an abandoned Palestinian quarter, emptied of its inhabitants, a ghost town.
Through the protective wire fence erected to block settlers’ stones, occasionally the face of a terrified old woman, a frightened child or an embittered man would appear, shut up in their cage. It is not difficult to imagine what they felt Saturday on “Life of Sarah” Sabbath, which tells how Abraham purchased the cave for 400 pieces of silver.
The ridiculous visored cap I wore, which covered half my face to prevent the settlers from identifying me, failed in its duty. It is not good to be Gideon Levy on “Life of Sarah” Sabbath in Hebron. “Take your garbage and get out of here now,” thugs threatened here and there. But generally the Jewish quarter was very tranquil, and a “holiday atmosphere” prevailed, as they say. Only toward evening did menacing knots of young boys in their Sabbath white shirts begin to gather.
Tali Farkash, Who is a haredi? Ynetnews, Nov. 7, 2008
Meretz MK Tzvia Greenfield cannot call herself a haredi and at the same time support her party’s platform.
“Say, is she really haredi?” a non-religious colleague asked me yesterday. “The one from Meretz, the one who said Shulamit Aloni was a great Torah scholar, you know, the one who’s a member of B’Tselem and everything, it says that she’s haredi. Is it true?”
I gave her a lame excuse to avoid answering the question, because the truth was I wasn’t certain myself. The question of “Who is a haredi” once again occupies the ultra-Orthodox public these days. The swearing-in of Tzvia Greenfield to the Knesset this week as Meretz’s sixth MK brought back to life an ancient debate. The “Tzvia Phenomenon” (there’s no other way to put this), has already baffled quite a few Israeli citizens, haredim and seculars alike. The incomprehensible combination of a heretical agenda and a God-fearing haredi is hard to digest.
Many people, including me, fail to understand how it is possible to bridge the gap between the views shared by Meretz voters, who believe that the Bible is a collection of folklore tales, and haredim who believe it is the divine word of God.
But on the brink of the abyss between the two sides stands Tzvia, one foot here and the other there, and with impressive skill manages to feel like she is part of both sides at the same time.
It appears that a PhD in philosophy, like Greenfield has, is necessary in order to bridge this impossible gap.
To be honest, I do not presume to be able to put together complex sociological tests and determine the criteria for being a haredi. So, what was it that bothered me so much about Greenfield and made me label her a stranger to the haredi camp?
Well, I could live with the fact that sheowns a dog as a pet, although with us fish and birds are more popular. I can also forgive the television set at her house. Many good haredim own one, although I will never let one cross my doorstep. I can live with her definition of the Zaka organization as “necrophilia lovers.” Why be petty? Even her impression that haredi women are “ignorant creatures, baby-making machines” is insulting but not impossible to swallow.
Not this
But neither I nor you, Tzvia, can sanction, in the name of God almighty, the desecration of the Shabbat, bringing illegitimate children into the world, homosexuality, abortions, and any other bone of contention between believers and heretics. Issues that are an inseparable part of your party’s platform, and let me give you a little hint, Tzvia – they don’t quite adhere to the Torah’s views on these matters.
Prof. Sternhell: Supporters of occupation are not Zionist – Haaretz, September 29, 2008
By Akiva Eldar
Professor Zeev Sternhell’s house on Jerusalem’s Agnon Street is easily located by the iron gate with the broken glass. Sternhell says the bombing could have ended with him having to have both legs amputated.
Fortunately, last Thursday night he and his wife Ziva had returned from abroad and their suitcases, left in the narrow hallway, separated him and the pipe bomb that had been attached to the door.
The living room is filled with flowers and the telephone doesn’t stop ringing. The news is quoting ministers’ statements from the cabinet meeting.
Sternhell, while still in the hospital, drew a direct line between the state’s surrender to the extreme right rampaging in the territories and the terrorist or organization that tried to kill him.
“What are those ministers talking about,” he asks, when Vice Premier Haim Ramon blasts the government on the television news for fearing “those hooligans,” as Ramon called them.
Sternhell: “Who has to deal with the outposts? Me? You? Who’s to blame for the semi-autonomous state in the territories? Groups of settlers do whatever they feel like. Police officers and reserve soldiers go home with broken arms. How did they let things deteriorate to this lack of control in the West Bank? I told my students that not intervening for a weak child who needs help against a strong child is intervening for the strong child. Whoever fails to enforce the law and protect the Palestinians from the settlers who attack them is cooperating with the hooligans and lawbreakers.”
Carlo Strenger, I accuse, Haaretz, September 28, 2008
I accuse
By Carlo Strenger
On the night between September 24 and 25, it happened again. Prof. Zeev Sternhell, an internationally acclaimed political scientist and historian, recipient of this year’s Israel Prize for political science, was wounded by explosives put at his doorstep. As yet, we do not know who the perpetrators were, but whoever they will turn out to be, there are those who should wonder what is their part of the responsibility for this despicable act.
I accuse those Jews, inside Israel and outside, who run websites that track “dangerous left-wing intellectuals” in Israel. They call people like Zeev Sternhell “anti-Semitic,” “self-hating Jews” and “enemies of Israel.”
I accuse those in the Israeli right who turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to those among them who say that the law does not apply to them; to the settlers who break Israeli and international law and moral values on a daily basis, who harass Palestinians, beat them and sometimes murder them. The right-wing establishment is forgiving toward them. “Aren’t they idealists? Don’t they do what they do because of lofty ideals, because of the holiness of the Land of Israel?”
I accuse not only those who performed religious rituals condemning Yitzhak Rabin to death; not only those who carried posters of Rabin clad in SS uniform at demonstrations. I also accuse those who created the atmosphere that allowed for it, continued to speak at the demonstrations, and after Rabin was killed said they hadn’t seen the posters.
I accuse those who claim that they – and they alone – represent Israel, its true interests and the Jewish-Israeli soul; who claim that anybody who has a different view of what is good for Israel are enemies who endanger Israel. To them applies the verse from Deuteronomy 33:9: “Who said of his father, and of his mother: ‘I have not seen him;’ neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew he his own children; for they have observed Thy word, and keep Thy covenant.”
This verse attacks the fanaticism of the tribe of Levi, that like its mythical forefather, thought it could kill in the name of ideals that it had given absolute validity.
I accuse those who implicitly condone the acts of extremists by not saying that they are out of the question. They create the atmosphere that leads people like Yona Avrushmi and Yigal Amir to their murderous acts, and the perpetrators of last week’s terror act to attack Zeev Sternhell.
Israel is a young democracy torn apart by conflicting values, by conflicting views about religion, a country that has yet to find its identity. Trenchant disputes, searching discussion and hard criticism of those on the opposing side are part and parcel of a liberal democracy.
Hate-speech that legitimizes blood-feud and rituals that condemn to death those who think differently are neither part of legitimate democratic discourse, nor part of a civilization that we want to belong to (never mind whether the prime minister or an academic who voices his views).
Let us not forget that Israel, rightly, demands of the Palestinians to stop its schools from inculcating hatred for Israel. The West, rightly, demands that Islamic authorities condemn the hate speeches of Imams who call for the extinction of Israel and conquest of the infidel world. We demand this, because we know that words create reality; injunctions to violence in the end find their ways into the hearts of fanatics who will put these words into practice.
So why should we apply a different standard to Jews who do the same thing? Why should we accept that Jews who call for violence, Jews who in the name of their ideals allow for the blood of their ideological opponents to be shed?
For too long the Israeli Right has taken a forgiving attitude toward its ‘wild weeds.’ For too long it has used extremists to present its own views as acceptable mainstream.
Who is Zeev Sternhell? He is a holocaust survivor who called himself a ’super-Zionist’ in a recent interview; an IDF officer who fought in three of Israel’s wars. Yes, he thinks that the occupation is a cancer that eats the soul of Israel; yes, he said that Palestinians should only attack Israelis who live in the West Bank and not inside the Green Line. He has said, time and again, that he is afraid Israel will not survive because of the occupation, and that he is worried for his children and grandchildren, because he wants them to be able to live in Israel. And he expressed empathy for the Palestinian struggle. That’s why he was attacked.
It has happened again; I wish Professor Sternhell quick recovery and a happy New Year. But I may not be able to express such wishes to the next victim.
I accuse!
Prof. Carlo Strenger, a philosopher and psychoanalyst, teaches at the psychology department of Tel Aviv University and is a member of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism of the World Federation of Scientists.
Dichter: Prof attack takes us back to days of Rabin assassination – Haaretz, September 26, 2008
By Shahar Ilan and Roni Singer-Heruti, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter joined senior political officials on Thursday in condemning a pipe bomb attack on the home of left-wing activist and Haaretz columnist Professor Ze’ev Sternhell, saying that the incident called to mind the days of the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Dichter described the event, which left Sternhell lightly wounded, an “assassination attempt” and a “nationalistic terror attack perpetrated, in all likelihood, by Jews, which pushes our society many years backward.”
Speaking at a police ceremony in Netanya, Dichter added that “the pipe bomb that was planted yesterday should be viewed as a bomb meant to kill. The law enforcement authorities will not rest until the terrorists are put where they belong ? [sic] in prison.”
Police suspect Jewish extremists of having carried out the pipe bomb attack earlier in the day. Sternhell walked out of his home in a quiet Jerusalem neighborhood shortly after midnight to shut a courtyard gate when the bomb went off, lightly wounding him in one of his legs, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
“We believe the background is ideological,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Sternhell, an internationally renowned expert on the history of fascism, was awarded the country’s highest honor, the Israel Prize, earlier this year. The award drew fire from West Bank settlers and their supporters, who unsuccessfully petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to try to block it.
Gershom Gorenberg, School opens, minds close – Haaretz, August 29, 2008
At the gates of the state religious schools, in many places in Israel, two cultures meet. One, religious and modern, turns over its sons and daughters to the other, more insular, to educate them in its stead. The parents live with their children alongside secular families in mixed neighborhoods. A quick glance at a list of the teachers’ phone numbers reveals that many live in settlements or in neighborhoods known as Haredi or Hardali – religiously ultra-Orthodox, politically ultra-nationalist.
The geographic gap reflects a rift in attitudes toward religion and toward the wider world. It expresses itself in how each side relates to secular culture, to non-Jews, to the limits of rabbinic authority, and to the manner of thinking about politics. The parents are often unaware of the gap. Most lean rightward politically. But their views are based on pragmatic and nationalist considerations – in contrast to the messianic politics of many of the teachers. And the minority of parents who lean leftward? If they pay attention to the right-wing atmosphere in the schools, they accept it as the price of religious education.
My eldest child will be drafted soon. Since he entered kindergarten, I’ve kept a mental list of the “educational” messages he and his sisters have been given in school as if it were impossible to teach someone to be religious without them: The kindergarten teacher who devoted a morning to teaching that “the Tomb of the Patriarchs belongs only to Jews”; the homeroom teacher who spoke daily of approaching redemption and of the new dress she kept in her closet to wear when the messiah comes; the teacher who added psalms to morning prayers to entreat God to stop the “expulsion” of the Gush Katif settlers, and who didn’t understand my complaint that she had injected politics into the classroom. In Shabbat conversations with friends, I sometimes shout, “This isn’t my religion.”
Rabbi Aviner: Women must not wear pants even when alone, Ynetnews, May 2, 2008
One of Religious Zionism’s most prominent leaders defines trousers as a ’self-prohibition,’ says women ‘must dress modestly also when alone and in the dark’
Women must not wear pants even when they are home alone, Rabbi Shlomi Aviner has ruled.
Aviner, Beit El’s rabbi and one of Religious Zionism’s most prominent leaders, was asked in a cellular Q&A session published in the “Small World” bulletin, “When a girl goes to relieve herself at night, is she allowed to say the ‘Asher Yatzar’ (’he who formed’) prayer while wearing a short-sleeved shirt and trousers?”
The rabbi replied that it is permitted to say the prayer in such a case, but added that “in general, a woman must always wear modest clothes even when she is alone and in the dark, because the Holy one blessed be he is everywhere. And yes, trousers are a self-prohibition even when a woman is alone.”
Gershom Gorenberg, The Extremists of Your Own City Come First, southjerusalem.com, July 24, 2008
This week Nadav Shragai – the Ha’aretz reporter who often writes like a spokesman for the Council of Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza – provided a feature on Ze’ev Hever, a.k.a. Zambish. Hever, a convicted member of the 1980s Jewish terror underground, is the head of Amana, the organizational child of Gush Emunim. Amana builds settlements. Hever worked closely with Ariel Sharon to expand the settlement map. Outside of Sharon himself, he may have done more than anyone else to move Israelis in the West Bank – though admittedly there’s lots of competition.
Now Hever is thinking of moving out of Kiryat Arba, Shragai reports. Young fanatics are slashing his tires and posting posters denouncing him for negotiating on the outposts. The young fanatics believe the old fanatic isn’t fanatical enough.
Yesterday the army did make a minor gesture toward controlling the outpost settlers: It removed a bus being used as an ersatz mobile home from Adei Ad, an outpost near Shilo, between Ramallah and Nablus. Settler extremists reportedly retaliated with a series of violent incidents. Settlers from Yitzhar, near Nablus, tossed stones at Palestinian cars on a main road. Ha’aretz reported:
Regarding the trailer’s removal, a Yitzhar resident said: “The police and the Civil Administration think they can come and evacuate like a ‘hit and run.’ So we decided that for every attempt to evacuate, we would exact a price throughout the area. The tiniest evacuation will result in incidents all day long, so it will be clear we don’t give up easily.”
Meanwhile, also at Yitzhar, the army has dismissed the settlement security coordinator. According to Ma’ariv (dead tree edition), the man had advance knowledge that a member of the settlement had built a home-made rocket and were going to fire it, apparently emulating Hamas et al in Gaza. The security coordinator did nothing about it, and refused to help in the investigation. The settlement doesn’t accept the dismissal, and has retaliated by throwing out the soldiers there to protect them….
Anne Paq: Photostory, Breaking the Silence’s tour disrupted, EI, July 14, 2008
On 27 June, I took part in one of the regular tours of the West Bank city of Hebron and its settlements organized by the organization Breaking the Silence. Breaking the Silence is a group of Israeli army soldiers and veterans who work to expose the injustice of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Once more, the tour was disrupted because of the settlers.
Before the start of the tour, organizer Yehuda Shaul — one of the founders of Breaking the Silence and a former Israeli soldier who served 14 months in Hebron — warned the group that it was uncertain if the tour would proceed as planned. During the previous tour of Hebron, on 17 June, Israeli settlers attacked the tour group and threw boiling liquid at them, injuring a Spanish photographer. Nevertheless, Yehuda asked that we not answer answer to the settlers’ provocations no matter what happened.
At the first stop in Kiryat Arba settlement next to Hebron, a group of settlers, including children, were already waiting for the bus to arrive. As soon as we exited the bus, they quickly surrounded us and started to shout and prevented Yehuda from moving and talking about the settlement. Israeli police intervened but let the settlers continue their disruption.
One of the settlers was speaking through a loudspeaker so loud that it made it impossible to hear Yehuda. The tour was also prevented from visiting the grave of Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Israeli settler who massacred 29 worshipping Palestinians and injured many more when he attacked Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994. He is seen by many settlers as a hero and his gravestone celebrating the massacre has become a site of pilgrimage.
After the group returned to the bus to leave for the Old City of Hebron, the settlers sat on the road and stood in front of the bus to prevent it from moving. They blatantly disrupted public order and the police who stood nearby had no intention to fine them or intervene to allow the tour to proceed. In Hebron, there seems to be no law enforcement to keep the settlers in order, despite the impressively large number of soldiers and police available in the streets, greatly outnumbering the settlers.
I read Haaretz because of people like Akiva Eldar, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Danny Rubinstein, Tom Segev–and Daniel Ben-Simon. No one has described Israel’s “development towns” and the everyday lives of poor Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern origin) more eloquently than he has.
Daniel Ben-Simon: Why I’m leaving journalism for politics – Haaretz, June 13, 2008
I don’t know when it happened. Maybe on that day when the composition teacher was handing back eighth-grade essays. He went from student to student, making comments and returning graded papers. He skipped only me. We sat straight and tense, as befitted students at the Ecole Normale Hebraique boarding school in Casablanca, Morocco, considered the country’s best.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. Was the teacher about to humiliate me? And then he stood up and read my entire essay out loud to the class. It was about a classmate who had disappeared secretly from school, as if the earth had swallowed him, until I found out he had gone to the Holy Land with his family.
“I don’t know what you want to be when you grow up,” Solly Levy told me after reading my essay, “but if you’ll pardon me, I suggest you become a journalist or an author.” The idea had never before occurred to me, but after that, nothing could deter me.
Immigrating to Israel, and particularly the absorption experience, shaped my journalism, positioning me on the underside of Israeli society. I spent my first years here in the company of students whose choppy Hebrew attested to their incomplete integration. They were sent to agricultural boarding schools to acquire vocational skills. They studied welding, mechanics and farming. Only a few got to study academic subjects.