This is why Israel, 70 years after 'independence' is a settler-colonial state

A Beginner’s Guide to the Unrecognized Villages of Israel

If there is one thing Israel fears more than anything it is delegitimisation. That is why Israel hates BDS because it challenges the legitimacy of the Israeli state.  All political parties in Israel know that, despite pretensions and its claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East, it is an outpost of the West in the Orient.

Hotel Cliff, occupied East Jerusalem. Confiscated from its Palestinian owners under the Absentees' Property Law, the State now recommends to return a small portion, i.e. the parts owned by Palestinian residents living in the West Bank. (Photo: Mahmoud Illean)

Israel is different from any ‘normal’ bourgeois democratic state in the West because it is a state based not on all of its inhabitants but on the Jewish part.  It is an ethno-nationalist state.  That is why the Jewish State Bill is so important to Netanyahu because he wants to make it explicit in the Israeli equivalent of a constitution, a Basic Law. 

When states recognise Israel as a Jewish state they are automatically recognising that it is an Apartheid state, a state not of all its citizens but its Jewish citizens.

Most states in the West like the UK have some form of equalities legislation.  Indeed equalities is written into European law.  But in Israel the whole state is based on ethnic discrimination.  Being Jewish is not a religious identification so much as a national/racial one.  In the Israeli ID card you can be Jewish on the basis of both nationality and religion.

Of course within the Jewish tribe there are numerous differences, not least because the definers of who is Jewish, the Chief Rabbinate, will not accept anyone who is converted by non-Orthodox rabbis.  So you can immigrate to Israel under one definition of being Jewish but once there you will not be recognised as Jewish by those who define personal matters, the Chief Rabbinate for purposes of birth, marriage and death.

There is therefore in Israel, just like in Nazi Germany, which was based on the Aryan race, a mixed race – Jewish bastards, mamzerim, half Jews or in Nazi Germany, Mishlinge.  Israel has come to resemble nothing so much as the State that was responsible for the decimation of some third of world Jewry. 

Despite claiming its legitimacy from the Holocaust Israel uncannily resembles Nazi Germany’s racial structures.  It was this observation by Hannah Arendt, in her seminal book Eichmann in Jerusalem – the Banality of Evil which led to her ostracisation and demonization by the Zionist movement.  She noted, amongst other things that the condemnation of the Nazis’ Nuremburg Laws during the Eichmann Trial, which prevented marriage between Jews and non-Jews was ironic in view of the fact that Jews and non-Jews couldn’t marry in Israel too.

Israel has to keep up pretensions which was why it passed a Law against racial discrimination when the Jewish Nazi Rabbi Meir Kahane was elected to the Knesset in 1984.  However the law had to exempt discrimination on the grounds of religion which meant that racism, in effect was legalised in Israel.  As a result Kahane voted for it!

The unrecognised villages of Israel are the living proof that Israel, even today, sees its Zionist role as the colonisation and settlement of the land with Jews and the uprooting and dispossession of Arabs.  In those Arab villages and towns which are recognised, planning laws prevent their development.  No extra land, because 93% of Israel is ‘Jewish’ land is allocated to the expansion of Arab lands.  Despite their population having increased over 10 fold since the Israeli State was founded, the land allocated to Israel’s 20% Arabs has not increased.  If anything it has been subject to further confiscation.  That was the purpose of the Absentee Property Law which was passed by the Israeli Labour Party government in 1950.

Despite the wilful refusal of western leaders to recognise it, Israel is the world’s last apartheid state.

Tony Greenstein 

Thousands of Arab Bedouins in Israel's Negev desert are denied power, water, sewage, and roads by the state. And their villages are under constant threat of demolition.

Photo: Aniqa Raihan

 December 25, 2017 Aniqa Raihan Foreign Policy in Focus

It’s no secret that there is an occupation happening in and around Israel.

Most people agree that the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been occupied since 1967. Much less thought and literature is dedicated to the treatment of Palestinians living inside modern-day Israel proper. I decided to head over there and see for myself.

It is commonly believed that Palestinian citizens of Israel — officially known as Arab Israelis — enjoy full equality in the Jewish State. There are Arab members of parliament, the Arab population in Israel has been growing steadily for decades, and the Arab cultural scene is thriving in places like Haifa. While all of these statements are true, Palestinians insist that occupation still exists inside the state of Israel, and nowhere is that fact more apparent than in the unrecognized Bedouin villages of the Negev desert.

Before the creation of modern Israel, the Negev desert, which constitutes the southern half of the country, was almost entirely populated by Arab Bedouins. Nearly 90 percent fled during the Nakba of 1948. 11,000 Bedouins remained, a population which has now grown to over 200,000.

Of the Bedouins still living in the Negev, half live in government-designated towns and cities, much like Native reservations in the United States, and the other half live in unrecognized villages. The Bedouin are Israeli citizens, but because their villages aren’t formally recognized by the state, they have no access to state services including water, electricity, telephones, sewage systems, and roads.

Today, the unrecognized villages of the Negev desert have the highest unemployment and poverty rates in Israel. I visited three villages to understand the effect of occupation.

Be’er Sheva, Israel (Photo: Aniqa Raihan)

Be’er Sheva is the largest city in the Negev desert. It is home to 205,000 people, about 10 percent of whom are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Originally founded in 4,000 BCE, Be’er Sheva has been at times a Bedouin encampment, part of the Ottoman Empire, and now, the fourth most populous metropolitan center in Israel. It is a thriving college town, a growing tech hub, and interestingly, the chess capital of the world.

Less than 5 miles away are unrecognized villages where people live in tents and tin shacks.

Wadi an-Na’am, an unregistered Bedouin encampment outside Be’er Sheva, Israel (Photo: Aniqa Raihan)

The largest of the unrecognized villages is Wadi an-Na’am. It was established in the 1950s by internally displaced Bedouins from surrounding villages who’d been forcibly removed from their homes and lands, but it’s never been officially recognized.

In the 1970s, Israel built Neot Hovav, the country’s primary toxic waste disposal facility, in Wadi an-Na’am. Since its establishment, the facility has experienced frequent accidents, fires, explosions, and leaks, resulting in birth defects and long-term health problems in the Bedouin community.

The village is also surrounded by military firing zones, where the Israeli Defense Forces carry out military drills and trainings using live ammunition. Unexploded shells are often left behind from these exercises. The last accident killed two children aged 8 and 10.

A power plant outside Wadi an-Na’am, a Bedouin village that gets no electricity from the state. (Photo: Aniqa Raihan)

An electric power plant is clearly visible from the village.

This plant generates electricity for Be’er Sheva and surrounding localities, but not for Wadi an-Na’am or the 45 other unrecognized villages like it. People in the villages depend instead on an inconsistent combination of solar panels and generators. Adalah, a human rights and legal organization, currently has three open cases regarding elementary schools in Wadi an-Na’am that lack electricity.

Israel recently announced its intention to relocate the residents of Wadi an-Na’am to the nearby town of Segev Shalom. The villagers oppose this plan because it would destroy their agrarian lifestyle. In 2015 the Association for Civil Rights in Israel presented two alternative options, both of which would allow the villagers to maintain their way of life, but the relocation will move forward as originally proposed.

Umm al-Hiran, a Bedouin village on the verge of demolition by Israeli authorities. (Photo: Aniqa Raihan)

I also visited Umm al-Hiran,  an unrecognized village on the verge of demolition. Like Wadi an-Na’am, Umm al-Hiran was established in the 1950s by order of the Israeli military governor as part of a state-sanctioned effort to relocate and concentrate the Bedouin. Half of the village was briefly granted recognition in 2008, but the decision was reversed two years later.

The state has marked Umm al-Hiran as the site of a future Jewish development to be called Hiran, a project that necessitates the demolition of the entire village. Residents filed appeals and fought back in court, but in 2015, the Supreme Court of Israel rejected a petition to prevent demolition of the village. Construction was briefly halted following protests led by Adalah, but is expected to continue soon.

A memorial to a Bedouin man shot and killed by Israeli police as he fled home demolitions in Umm al-Hiran. (Photo: Aniqa Raihan)

At 3 a.m. on January 18 of this year, Israeli police arrived at Umm al-Hiran to conduct home demolitions. A local teacher named Yacoub Abu Al-Qia’an got in his car and began to drive away, but was shot at by the police.

One of the bullets hit his right knee, causing him to lose control of his vehicle and accelerate into a group of officers. One officer was killed, as was Yacoub. Israeli authorities initially declared him a terrorist connected to ISIS, but retracted when video evidence surfaced proving that he was shot before his car accelerated.

A memorial stands at the scene of the shooting.

A tribal cemetary is most of what remains of al-Araqib, a Bedouin village that Israeli authorities have demolished over 100 times. (Photo: Aniqa Raihan)

And finally, I visited the most notorious of the unrecognized villages, al-Araqib. This village, which was once home to 600 people, has been demolished 119 times. Now, only 5 tents and a tribal cemetery remain. There are more graves than villagers.

Amazingly, the demolitions aren’t even the worst past: Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of this years long tragedy is the government’s demand that the residents of al-Araqib pay for the cost of demolishing their homes.

I have been part of the movement for Palestinian justice for a year and a half now. I have spent hundreds of hours reading about the blockade of Gaza, the murders of Mahmoud Shaalan and Rachel Corrie, the intifadas, the checkpoints, the BDS movement, and more, but I was still shocked by what I saw in the Negev desert. The Bedouin are continually displaced and disenfranchised by the state — and too often, they are also erased from the mainstream Palestinian narrative.

This is occupation, pure and simple, and it is 70 years past time the world recognizes it.

Aniqa Raihan is a former Next Leader at the Institute for Policy Studies and a past member of Students for Justice in Palestine at George Washington University. She’s currently traveling in Israel-Palestine. 

Only in Israel’s ‘democracy’ could the Prime Minister urge a pardon for a cold-blooded racist murderer

Elor Azaria, Israel’s killer hero is unlikely to do any gaol time

Imagine, if you will, a Palestinian who had shot in the head, cold bloodedly, a severely wounded Israeli lying prostrate on the ground.  Imagine Benjamin Netanyahu urging clemency.  This is a fantasy scenario.  Palestinians guilty of resistance, who kill Israeli combat soldiers, which they are entitled to do under international law, because a people living under occupation is entitled to resist the occupiers, would receive life sentences of 30 years and more. 

Only in the past month Balad member of the Knesset Basel Ghattas of Balad was arrested on suspicion of passing phones and intelligence information to Walid Daka, one of two prisoners whom Ghattas allegedly met with during a visit to Ketziot prison.  In most civilised countries, prisoners have access to mobile phones.  As to 'intelligence information' the mind boggles.

Walid Daka has not been the recipient of a pardon.  On the contrary he is serving a 37-year sentence for the 1984 abduction and murder of 19-year-old soldier Moshe Tamam.  Daka is not a hero in Israel because, of course, he is not Jewish.  On the contrary he was guilty of killing a soldier in the Jewish state’s army.  He should count himself lucky to be alive. 

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog said in a statement that the verdict must be respected. He added, however, that “it cannot be ignored that Azaria was, to some degree, a victim of the situation, but the ruling strengthens the IDF, since you cannot ignore the circumstances of the incident, which reflect an impossible reality in a field that is complicated, which IDF soldiers deal with daily, hourly.”

Quite how a cold-blooded killer is 'a victim of the situation' defies explanation.  Perhaps the Yorkshire Ripper was also a 'victim of the situation'.  Totally absurd legitimation of Azaria.

Israeli Labour's former leader calls for a pardon for Elor Azaria

However The Times of Israel reported that, 

‘In a surprise development, coalition ministers were joined in their call for a pardon by Zionist Union’s Shelly Yachimovich, former head of the Labour Party.

Yachimovich praised the court for burnishing the ethical standard expected of IDF soldiers, but said the entire trial was a symptom of the deep division within Israeli society, “and Azaria’s shoulders are not broad enough to bear the weight of that rift. Therefore,” she tweeted, “at the conclusion of the trial and after the sentencing, we must carefully consider the possibility of pardoning him.”

Another demonstration of how the Israeli Labour Party is not an opposition but a partner in the crimes committed against the Palestinians.

Can you imagine Herzog or Netanyahu pointing out the circumstances that led a Palestinian to shoot dead an IDF soldier who was harassing his family or raiding a house?  Unimaginable.  Palestinians in such a situation have their ‘blood on their hands’.  The only debate in Israel is whether to execute Palestinians who kill soldiers after a trial or whether to simply dispense with a trial, as Elor Azaria did.  That is why Azaria is a hero.  What he did was nothing exceptional.

It should be pointed out that Azaria is a supporter of the late Jewish Nazi politician and ex-Knesset member Rabbi Meir Kahane.  He is a thorough going racist.

Joint (Arab) List chair MK Ayman Odeh charged that 

“Netanyahu chose to stand together with the supporters of the soldier and their joyous calls of death to the Arabs, and so made it clear the he is responsible for the moral decline that these groups are leading in Israeli society,”  “Azaria is guilty,” he added, “but it is the government that is responsible, which for 50 years has been sending young men and women to become thugs whose task is to uphold military rule over a population deprived of rights.”

Joint (Arab) List chairman Ayman Odeh addresses a question to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the assembly hall of the parliament, July 18, 2016. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

In a statement, Odeh implied that hundreds of extrajudicial killings were being carried out by the IDF in the West Bank.

“The difference between this incident and hundreds of others is the presence of the B’Tselem camera that recorded the cruel reality of the occupation and revealed the inflammatory pus that the occupation creates in the heart of Israeli society,” he said.

The banner that sums up the campaign to pardon Elor Azaria

Two weeks ago I criticised an article by Yakov Hirsch Azaria’s conviction will end a totalitarian ideology for wishful thinking and back in April in THIS IS Israel – Call to Kill All Arabs at Tel Aviv Rally in Support for Killer Soldier I described a demonstration called in support of Azaria in Tel Aviv where a banner ‘Kill them all’ (i.e. kill all Arabs) was displayed at a demonstration  called in solidarity with Azaria.

But above all else, what this case shows above anything else is the moral and political degeneration of the Israeli settler state.  Is there another country on this planet where a cold-blooded racist killer could be named man of the year by the main TV Channel 10 and by Makor Rishon, a publication owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson?

Tony Greenstein

Israeli soldier convicted for revenge killing

Charlotte Silver Rights and Accountability 4 January 2017

Palestinians hold posters showing Israeli army medic Elor Azarya, at a protest in Hebron on 4 January, the day Azarya was convicted of manslaughter for killing injured Palestinian Abdul Fattah al-Sharif in March 2016. Wisam Hashlamoun APA images

An Israeli military court has convicted Elor Azarya, the 20-year-old army medic who was caught on video executing an injured Palestinian man lying in the street last year, for manslaughter.

During the trial, Azarya’s lawyers argued that the soldier had fired at Abd al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron because he felt he was in danger.

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But in their ruling on Wednesday, the judges found “beyond all reasonable doubt” that Azarya had acted in revenge.

Within hours, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for Azarya, who is seen as a national hero by many in Israel, to be pardoned.

Al-Sharif was shot dead along with Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, both 21 years old, on 24 March last year. Israel alleges that they stabbed a soldier near the Tel Rumeida settlement in Hebron.

The killing of al-Qasrawi was not caught on video.

The verdict came shortly after Human Rights Watch said that senior Israeli officials have been 

“encouraging Israeli soldiers and police to kill Palestinians they suspect of attacking Israelis even when they are no longer a threat.”

“Perversion of justice”

Following the verdict, Azarya’s supporters staged protests, blocking traffic, clashing with police and shouting racist abuse at Palestinian workers.

Some of the protesters carried banners in support of US President-elect Donald Trump:

Lawmakers from Israel’s far-right and centrist political parties are calling for Azarya to be pardoned, a power that lies with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.

Backing the calls, Netanyahu said, “This is a difficult and painful day for all of us – and first and foremost for Elor and his family, for [Israeli army] soldiers, for many soldiers and for the parents of our soldiers, and me among them.”

In Hebron, the family of al-Sharif expressed dissatisfaction that Azarya was only charged with manslaughter.

Relatives told Palestinians gathered at a vigil in Hebron on Wednesday that they would bring Israel to the International Criminal Court for what they see as cold-blooded murder.

“The fact that the soldier is convicted of manslaughter isn’t such an important development from our standpoint,” Fathi al-Sharif, an uncle of the slain man, told the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz. “From the beginning, we stated that he had committed murder and needed to be convicted of murder. The fact that they changed the count of the indictment to manslaughter from our standpoint is a perversion of justice.”

Videotaped killing

Emad Abu Shamsiyya, the Palestinian field researcher with the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem who filmed the killing, has received hundreds of death threats.

He said members of Azarya’s family broke into his home and asked him to change his testimony to the court.

On the day of the shooting, Azarya was called onto the scene after al-Sharif and al-Qasrawi were shot and incapacitated, to give the moderately injured soldier medical assistance.

Video footage released by B’Tselem shows al-Sharif lying on the ground, slightly moving his head, while Israeli soldiers and medics work around him and load the injured soldier onto an ambulance.

The video shows no attempt to provide medical treatment to al-Sharif.

Settlers on the scene are heard shouting, “the terrorist is still alive,” and the “the dog is still alive.”

Azarya then aims his weapon, takes a few steps towards al-Sharif, and shoots him in the head. A stream of blood pours from the man’s head.

After the video was released, some Israeli politicians and military leaders condemned the shooting and the military announced it would charge the shooter with murder. But almost immediately Israeli leaders began to backtrack as they saw the swelling of popular support for Azarya.

Azarya was eventually indicted on the lesser manslaughter charge.

At the trial, Azarya claimed he had shot the incapacitated al-Sharif out of fear for his safety.

But Azarya’s company commander testified that al-Sharif posed no danger.

The judges’ verdict states that the reason Azarya shot al-Sharif “was not rooted in a sense of danger, but rather in the explanation he provided immediately upon completion of the shooting to the effect that ‘the terrorist deserved to die’ because he had stabbed a friend of his prior to that.”

Two months after the shooting, more video emerged suggesting the army tampered with evidence. The footage shows a person kicking a knife closer to the body of the slain man.

Shoot to kill policy

Azarya’s indictment is exceptional: scores of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces over the last year, many in apparent extrajudicial executions, with impunity for their killers.

Last September, Amnesty International detailed 20 cases of killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces. In 15 of those cases, Amnesty said, “Palestinians were deliberately shot dead, despite posing no imminent threat to life, in what appear to be extrajudicial executions.”

Also in September, Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq found that “Since 1987, no Israeli soldier or commander has been convicted of willfully causing the death of a Palestinian in the [occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip].”

According to Haaretz, since 2000, in only a handful of cases were soldiers prosecuted for manslaughter for the killing of Palestinians. Of those, only one soldier was convicted. He received an eight-year sentence, though this was later reduced.

Human rights defenders are stressing that the killing of al-Sharif highlights a much broader problem.

“It’s not just about potentially rogue soldiers, but also about senior Israeli officials who publicly tell security forces to unlawfully shoot to kill,” Sari Bashi, Israel advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said.

Human Rights Watch says that since October 2015, when an escalation in confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli occupation forces began, it has documented numerous statements “by senior Israeli politicians, including the police minister and defense minister, calling on police and soldiers to shoot to kill suspected attackers, irrespective of whether lethal force is actually strictly necessary to protect life.”

Indeed, one witness called by Azarya’s defense, a settler security chief, told the court that shooting at the heads of incapacitated alleged Palestinian attackers is a common practice by Israeli occupation forces.

In October, Azarya was named man of the year by Israel’s Channel 10 and by Makor Rishon, a publication owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

He is expected to be sentenced in coming weeks.

See also Jonathan Cook's Elor Azaria case: ‘No hope of equality before the law’ 

Israeli Police Obtain Gagging Order Preventing the Naming of Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg Arrested Fleeing an Accusation of Rape

Rabbi Shenburg is accused of raping fellow Jewish Israelis.  He is of the far-right, even in terms of the Israeli rabbinate.  He was ordained by Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, who was Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel for 10 years and a follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Zionist Nazi Kach movement.

Usually it’s the practice to protect the names of the victims of rapists.  But in this case Israeli Police have acted to prevent the naming of the perpetrator.  A gag order even prevents Israeli papers from knowing of the existence of such an order.

Orthodox Rabbi Accused of Rape Arrested Fleeing Israel, His Identity Under Police Gag Order (Except Here)

by Richard Silverstein on July 3, 2015

Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg, deposed after accusations of rape among married female followers

Israeli Orthodox Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg, until recently head of a yeshiva and other institutions in the northern city of Kiryat Shmona, was arrested by Israeli police at Ben Gurion Airport as he attempted to flee the country.  His name may not be reported in Israel according to a judicial gag order obtained by the police.  He stands accused by married women among his followers of engaging in sexual acts and rape.  He was removed from his state-funded post after the investigation began.

Sheinberg was ordained by Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, then the chief rabbi of Tzfat.  The former founded a pre-military yeshiva in Tzfat in 1999.  This phenomenon has contributed markedly to the massive increases in settler officers and a rightist slant among the IDF officer corps.  He also led 3,000 settlers in prayer at Joseph’s Tomb a holy site in Nablus under contention between radical settlers and Muslims.

Rabbi Berland on his way to court in full religious regalia (EPA)

Sheinberg has cultivated relationships with the Israeli Orthodox women’s community.  This rebbetzin even boasts of taking spiritual and halachic supervision from him.  I imagine this passage may disappear from her website soon (unless she is one of his victims).

The yeshiva he founded, Yeshivat Ha’Ari, has removed his biographical page, which is preserved here (in Hebrew).

In a similar development, Rabbi Eliezer Berland is resisting deportation from Holland to Israel, where he stands accused of similar sexual crimes.  Berland has taken to donning his full religious regalia in court hearings, including tallit and tefillin.  This is certainly not just an exploitation, but a perversion of Judaism in order to save the neck of an accused sex abuser.  It would make Moses roll over in his grave and should make most Jews sick to their stomach.