Amira Uses Nazi Analogies - With Guardian Approval!

Now let me see if I've got this right. The Guardian's Comment is Free censors, or ‘moderators’ as they like to call themselves, search diligently for any sign or evidence of a comparison between Zionism and Nazi Germany, as such comparisons are, by definition 'anti-Semitic' or at least not acceptable to their liberal establishment friends.

But with typical liberal inconsistency, they then quote from Amira Hass, quite correctly, when speaking of her parents she says: "They knew what it meant to close people behind barbed-wire fences in a small area."

Only a Jew can invert the "never again" logic of the Holocaust that is used to justify Israel's least justifiable actions. It is that very experience, Hass argues, that should teach Israel to behave differently." Perhaps, instead of demonstrating such abject cowardice, Comment is Free could take a leaf out of Amira Hass's book?

Tony Greenstein

In praise of… Amira Hass

Editorial, The Guardian, Saturday 24 October 2009

Only Amira Hass could have received the International Women's Media Foundation lifetime achievement award by saying her life as a journalist had been a failure. By her standards maybe, but then she sets them high. If her aim is to stop successive Israeli governments lying about what they do in the occupied territories, then it is true that the language laundromat, as she once put it, keeps on turning.

But make no mistake, the Haaretz columnist fully deserves this award. She is the only Israeli journalist to have lived in and reported from Gaza and Ramallah for much of the last two decades. In describing the effects of the occupation on the lives of Palestinians, she has been pilloried by Israelis and fallen foul of Hamas. Her moral anchor is firmly rooted in painful collective memories. Her mother survived a concentration camp and her father the ghettos of Romania and Ukraine. "What luck my parents are dead," Hass wrote at the height of the Gaza operation in January. Her parents could not stand the noise of Israeli jet fighters flying over the Palestinian refugee camps in 1982, and nor could they have tolerated going about their daily chores in Tel Aviv with the knowledge of what was going on in their name in Gaza:

"They knew what it meant to close people behind barbed-wire fences in a small area." Only a Jew can invert the "never again" logic of the Holocaust that is used to justify Israel's least justifiable actions. It is that very experience, Hass argues, that should teach Israel to behave differently.

Lucky my parents aren't alive to see this
By Amira Hass 26.1.09.

What luck my parents are dead. Back in 1982 they could not stand the noise of the Israeli jet fighters flying over the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The shriek of a plane horrified them in their house in Tel Aviv. We don't have to see it to know, they said.

That's how it was then. And what now, when from me they would have learned about 2-year-old Sham, who climbs nimbly onto the table to look at her sister drawing in her notebook; 5-year-old Tayyib with the space between his front teeth that shows when he smiles; or 6-year-old Carmel with the picture books she loves. The world is exploding around these children, again and again, just five or 10 meters away. For 10 days now, every minute is a minute of fear. Every minute of fear is a minute of death. Multiply that by a million and a half.

My parents despised all their everyday activities - stirring sugar into coffee, washing the dishes, standing at a crosswalk - when in their mind's eye they saw, based on their personal experience, the terror in the eyes of children, the desperation of mothers who could not protect their young ones, the moment when a huge explosion dropped a house on top of its inhabitants and a smart bomb struck down entire families. Salmeh's mother says: "When I wake up [from a restless sleep] I am surprised. I know it's only by chance that I am alive."

How would they have been able to stand their daily routine now, when they would hear from me about 70-year-old Umm Khaled. A bomb fell on the closed concrete room on the square in the Shabura refugee camp. Two civilians were killed. Dozens of houses made out of hollow concrete were severely damaged. An asbestos roof fell centimeters from Umm Khaled's head. Only that persuaded her to "be evacuated" to her daughter's house, half a kilometer away, under the illusion that a new house would be safer. "All I hope is that I die before I see something happen to you," she repeatedly tells her children.

Even before the language laundromat developed to its current sophistication, my parents were nauseated by phrases like the "the war for peace in the Galilee" or "disturbances of public order" when the public order was the occupation and the disturbance was resistance to it. When order is preventing the Palestinians from having what the Jews have a right to and demand. What luck that they are not alive to hear Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni explaining that we have nothing against the Palestinian people, and the cabinet secretary explaining that there is no humanitarian crisis and this is just Hamas propaganda. To recognize lies, they did not need to know the names of the people who had not had running water for five days or more. Forget the bombardments, forget the electricity, food, even sleep. But no water? Because of the bombardments by sea, land and air, people cannot even go out to get drinking water from the city faucets. And when someone does have running water at home, it's undrinkable.

Because of my parents' history they knew what it meant to close people behind barbed-wire fences in a small area. A year, five years, 10 years. From 1991. How lucky it is that they are not alive to see how how these incarcerated people are bombarded with all the glorious military technology of Israel and the United States. "We urgently invite Mohamed ElBaradei to come here and prove we do not have nuclear weapons," says Iyad - a well-known comic, even under bombardment. But Saturday night he only said "difficult, difficult," and hung up the phone.

My parents' personal history led them to despise the relaxed way the news anchors reported on a curfew. How lucky they are not here and cannot hear the crowd roaring in the colosseum.

John Hagee – Hitler’s was god’s servant

Christian Zionism – Ally of both Zionism and anti-semitism

Too little attention has been paid to the Christian Zionists in the United States.

A lobby 30 million strong they represent, with god's blessing of course, the most atavistic, corrupt and barbaric section of the US body politic. And no one better represents them than Hitler supporter John Hagee, who is at one and the same time, a darling of the Zionist Right. Hitler was apparently endowed with the stamp of approval by the Almighty himself!

Such are the strange alliances and fruitcakes that Zionism and its supporters make common cause with. The US’s Evangelicals and Baptists have in practice always operated to legitimise ideologically, via god, the imperial depradations of the USA. Hagee has called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez and the Protestant fundamentalists imposed Rioss Montt on the largely Catholic nation of Guatemala in the 1970’s and 1980’s when over a hundred thousands of indigenous Indians were massacred by the military (with Israeli help – even the USA was forced to impose an arms embargo on the military).

Hagee and the Zionists of Aipac deserve each other!

Tony Greenstein

John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.

Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: "'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews. 'From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that."

He goes on: "Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said 'I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.' So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust.

"Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel." (Listen to the audio)

The sermon, which was first posted by Bruce Wilson on his site, Talk To Action, adds another element to Hagee's controversial stance on the state and history of Israel. It also may provide a new round of political headaches for McCain who has admitted that seeking out Hagee's endorsement was a mistake, but still declared himself "glad to have" it.

A spokesman for Hagee confirmed the authenticity of the remark, which can be found at around the 1:08 mark of his sermon "Battle For Jerusalem."

Since McCain secured the endorsement, both his campaign and Hagee have been pressed to explain a series of derogatory remarks the Reverend made about the Catholic Church, including his reference to the institution as "the Great Whore."

Hagee has since apologized for those remarks. But his interpretation of the role of the Nazis could be harder to dismiss, in part because McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are expected to compete heavily over the Jewish vote come the general election, in part because McCain has said he admires Hagee's commitment to Israel, but mainly because similar theories have found their way into much of the Reverend's writings.

As Wilson notes, in his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown", Hagee proposed the theory that "anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves -- the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive." He also wrote that "Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews."

Hagee is considered, in many political circles, to be one of the most passionate and strident supporters of Israel. He has spoken at AIPAC conferences and leads the evangelical group Christians United for Israel. But his views of the country, while possibly shared by others in the evangelical community, can be, at times, startling. Holding to the belief that Armageddon will come to earth following the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel, Hagee has advocated an aggressive war against Iran and has opposed any Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank.

McCain, at least in the public record, has sought to thread the needle with the Hagee association: distancing himself from the controversial comment while reaping the political benefits of the Reverend's endorsement. Appearing on ABC's "'This Week" in late April 2008, McCain criticized Hagee's past remarks on the Catholic Church, but said that, "I admire and appreciate his advocacy for the state of Israel, the independence of the state of Israel."

The Triumph of Humanity

The only moral from this story is that even in the direst situation, where the moral pressure to use torture from one's fellows is overwhelming, that human feelings and considerations can operate to counteract the pressure the military will bring to bear.

As the following story demonstrates, torture in interrogation was the norm amongst the US Army. Bush signed off on waterboarding justifying it in his execrable biography and its detention facilities, Guantanamo camp, became torture and abuse centres. The really serious torture was subcontracted out to states like Jordan and Morocco.

We should salute the soldier who upheld her own humanity and refused to go along with the 'war for freedom' and all the other lying and trite slogans beloved of Tony Blair and his fellow war criminals.

Tony Greenstein

By Greg Mitchell September 14, 2010 "The Nation" –

The US Soldier Who Committed Suicide After She Refused To Take Part in Torture

With each revelation, or court decision, on US torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo -- or the airing this month of The Tillman Story and Lawrence Wright's My Trip to Al-Qaeda -- I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson, who died seven years ago this week. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what most would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, on September 15, 2003.
Of course, we now know from the torture memos and the US Senate committee probe and various press reports, that the "Gitmo-izing" of Iraq was happening just at the time Alyssa got swept up in it.

Spc. Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female soldiers who died in Iraq. Her death under these circumstances should have drawn wide attention. It's not exactly the Tillman case, but a cover-up, naturally, followed.

Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. She was a valuable Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian." And that might have ended it right there.

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told me in late 2006. He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations.

Here's what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston worked, reported: "Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."

The official probe of her death would later note that earlier she had been "reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of the report, in fact, is this: "She said that she did not know how to be two people; she ... could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire."
She was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. "But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle," the documents disclose.
The official report revealed that a notebook she had written in was found next to her body, but blacked out its contents.

The Army talked to some of Peterson's colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told me: "The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were."

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, which suggested that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note. It did not emerge.

Peterson, a devout Mormon -- her mother Bobbi claims she always stuck up for "the underdog"-- had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and was sent to the Middle East in 2003, reportedly going in place of another soldier who did not wish to go.

A report in The Arizona Daily Sun of Flagstaff -- three years after Alyssa's death -- revealed that Spc. Peterson's mother, reached at her home in northern Arizona, said that neither she nor her husband Richard had received any official documents that contained information outlined in Elston's report.

In other words: Like the press and the public, even the parents had been kept in the dark.
Kayla Williams (left), an Army sergeant who served with Alyssa, told me me that she talked to her about her problems shortly before she killed herself. Williams also was forced to take part in torture interrogations, where she saw detainees punched. Another favorite technique: strip the prisoners and then remove their blindfolds so that the first thing they saw was Kayla Williams.
She also opted out, but survived, and is haunted years later. She wrote a book about her experience in the military, Love My Rifle More Than You.

Here's what Williams told Soledad O'Brien of CNN :

"I was asked to assist. And what I saw was that individuals who were doing interrogations had slipped over a line and were really doing things that were inappropriate. There were prisoners that were burned with lit cigarettes."

When I wrote a piece about Peterson last year, her brother, Spencer Peterson, left a comment:
Alyssa is my little sister. I usually don't comment on boards like this, and I don't speak for the rest of my family (especially my folks), but I think she probably did kill herself over this. She was extremely sensitive and empathetic to others, and cared a lot more about the welfare and well-being of the people around her than she cared about herself..... Thank you to everyone for your continued support of our troops and our family. Alyssa's death was a tremendous loss to everyone who knew her, and we miss her sweet and sensitive spirit. No one is happier than I am that (many of) our troops are coming home from Iraq, and I pray that the rest of our brave soldiers return home safely as soon as possible. Support our troops - bring them home!

Kayla Williams told me me she spoke with Alyssa Peterson about the young woman's troubles a week before she died -- and afterward, attended her memorial service.

So what, in Williams' view, caused Alyssa Peterson to put a bullet in her head in September 2003 after just a few weeks in Iraq? And why were the press and the public not told about it? Much more from Kayla and another woman who served with her, in Part II of this article tomorrow. Here's [1] a moving slide show with narration by Alyssa's mom.

Part II: The Soldier Who Chose Suicide After She Refused to Go Along With Torture

Tomorrow marks the seventh anniversary of the death of Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson in Iraq. Yesterday, in Part I of this article [1], I described how, appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that likely involved what most would call torture, Spc. Peterson, 27, refused, then killed herself a few days later, on September 15, 2003, with her own rifle.

Of course, we now know from the torture memos and the U.S. Senate committee probe and various press reports, that the "Gitmo-izing" of Iraq was happening just at the time Alyssa, a valuable Arabic-speaking interpreter, got swept up in it. When she objected, she was reprimanded, according to the official report. Then she chose suicide.

Yesterday's article concluded with a comment from Peterson's brother, and a few quotes from former Sgt. Kayla Williams, another Arabic-speaking interpreter who Peterson sought out for advice shortly before her death. But because Alyssa's suicide note and contents from her journal have not been released, we can't say for certain what factor or factors led directly to her death.
Chelsea Russell, who studied Arabic with Peterson at a military facility in Monterrey, Ca., told me that she found Alyssa to be an especially "sincere and kind person" but she had come to question her Mormon faith a few months before getting shipped to Iraq. "I believe that Alyssa was at a crossroads at the time of her death," Russell added. " I don't know if she had strong emotional support in Iraq. Questioning her own religious beliefs, her military colleagues, and her part in the war may have been too much for her."

Arabic-speaking Kayla Williams, now out of the Army, described how she had been recruited to briefly take part in over-the-line interrogations. Like Peterson, she protested torture techniques -- such as throwing lit cigarettes at prisoners -- and was quickly shifted away. But she told me that she is still haunted by the experience and wonders if she objected strongly enough.

Williams and Peterson were both interpreters -- but only the latter was in "human intelligence," that is, trained to take part in interrogations. They met by chance when Williams, who had been on a mission, came back to the base in Tal Afar in September 2003 before heading off again. A civilian interpreter asked her to speak to Peterson, who seemed troubled. Like others, Williams found her to be a "sweet girl." Williams asked if she wanted to go to dinner, but Peterson was not free -- maybe next time, she said, but then time ran out.

Their one conversation, Williams told me, centered on personal, not military, problems, and it's hard to tell where it fit in the suicide timeline. According to records of the Army probe, Peterson had protested, and asked out of, interrogations after just two days in what was known as "the cage" -- and killed herself shortly after that. This might have all transpired just after her encounter with Williams, or it might have happened before and she did not mention it at that time -- they did not really know each other.

Peterson's suicide on Sept. 15, 2003-- reported to the press and public as death by "non-hostile gunshot," usually meaning an accident -- was the only fatality suffered by the battalion during their entire time in Iraq, Williams reports. At the memorial service, everyone knew the cause of her death.

Shortly after that, Williams (a three-year Army vet at the time) was sent to the 2nd Brigade's Support Area in Mosul, and she described what happened next in her book. Brought into the "cage" one day on a special mission, she saw fellow soldiers hitting a naked prisoner in the face. "It's one thing to make fun of someone and attempt to humiliate him. With words. That's one thing. But flicking lit cigarettes at somebody -- like burning him -- that's illegal," Williams writes. Soldiers later told her that "the old rules no longer applied because this was a different world. This was a new kind of war."

Here's what she told Soledad O'Brien of CNN: "I was asked to assist. And what I saw was that individuals who were doing interrogations had slipped over a line and were really doing things that were inappropriate. There were prisoners that were burned with lit cigarettes.

"They stripped prisoners naked and then removed their blindfolds so that I was the first thing they saw. And then we were supposed to mock them and degrade their manhood. And it really didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. I didn't know if this was standard. But it did not seem to work. And it really made me feel like we were losing that crucial moral higher ground, and we weren't behaving in the way that Americans are supposed to behave."
As soon as that day ended, she told a superior she would never do it again.

In another CNN interview, on Oct. 8, 2005, she explained: "I sat through it at the time. But after it was over I did approach the non-commissioned officer in charge and told him I think you may be violating the Geneva Conventions. . . . He said he knew and I said I wouldn't participate again and he respected that, but I was really, really stunned. . . ."

So, given all this, what does Williams think pushed Alyssa Peterson to shoot herself one week after their only meeting? The great unknown, of course, is what Peterson was asked to witness or do in interrogations. We do know that she refused to have anything more to do with that after two days -- or one day longer than it took for Williams to reach her breaking point.

Properly, Williams (left) points out that it's rarely one factor that leads to suicide, and Peterson had some personal problems. "It's always a bunch of things coming together to the point you feel so overwhelmed that there's no way out," Williams says. "I witnessed abuse, I felt uncomfortable with it, but I didn't kill myself, because I could see the bigger context. I felt a lot of angst about whether I had an obligation to report it, and had any way to report it. Was it classified? Who should I turn to?" Perhaps Alyssa Peterson felt in the same box.

"It also made me think," Williams says, "what are we as humans, that we do this to each other? It made me question my humanity and the humanity of all Americans. It was difficult, and to this day I can no longer think I am a really good person and will do the right thing in the right situation." Such an experience might have been truly shattering to Peterson, a once-devout Mormon.

Referring to that day in Mosul, Williams says, "I did protest but only to the person in charge and I did not file a report up the chain of command." Yet, after recounting her experience there, she asks: "Can that lead to suicide? That's such an act of desperation, helplessness, it has to be more than that." She concludes, "In general, interrogation is not fun, even if you follow the rules. And I didn't see any good intelligence being gained. The other problem is that, in situations like that, you have people that are not terrorists being picked up, and being questioned. And, if you treat an innocent person like that, they walk out a terrorist."

Or, maybe in this case, if an innocent person witnesses such a thing, some may walk out as a likely suicide.

Greg Mitchell, former editor of Editor & Publisher, has written nine books, including "So Wrong for So Long" on Iraq and the media, which includes several chapters on soldier suicides in Iraq. Email: epic1934@aol.com

Israel's Racist Teens Plague Poland

As readers of this blog will know, this summer I and my son, Tom, visited Krakow, which under Nazi occupation was the capital of the General Government of Hans Frank, the Nazi overlord hanged at Nuremberg. The General Government was that part of Poland that hadn’t been annexed by Germany itself or by the Eastern Territories controlled by Alfred Rosenberg another Nazi war criminal hanged at Nuremberg. Krakow was the scene of horrific massacres of its Jews, symbolised by the high wooden chairs in its town square. It is also perhaps as famous today for the controversial figure of Oscar Schindler whose employment of Jewish labour in his factories undoubtedly saved many lives.

It is also the nearest city, about 30 km from Auschwitz and Birkenau. The story below is interesting in terms of the attitude of Israeli teenagers to the native Poles. Israel’s official holocaust historiography, led by the Yad Vashem propaganda institute and museum, lays the blame for anti-semitism at the doors of Poles per se. Without a doubt anti-semitism was a terrible phenomenon in pre-war Poland. This is demonstrated most clearly by the massacre in Jedwabne of several hundred Jews in 1941 by Poles, when the Jews were burnt alive in sheds. It is arguable though that this was a Nazi inspired and effectively organised pogrom. In 2001 the Polish President Kwasniewski apologised on behalf of the Polish people for the massacre. Ironically Israel’s best friend in the European Parliament today, Michal Kaminski of the Polish Justice and Freedom Party opposed a state apology for Jedwabne.

The Kielce pogrom of July 1946 demonstrated that Polish anti-semitism, originating primarily from the peasantry and utilised by the military and conservatives, had not disappeared.

But there is another side of the story. A story not told by Claude Lanzmann in his 9 hour Shoah film, which deliberately distorted and lied about the Polish contribution to saving its Jewish population. Lanzmann promised that Polish rescue would me a major theme of the film. ‘Yet the only topic covered during that time was what Karski witnessed in the Warsaw Ghetto. Lanzmann eited out most of Karski’s reminiscences about his efforts to alert the world to the Jewish catastrophe. In fact, the entire documentary made almost no mention of efforts by Poles to aid Jews. [Karski – How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust – E. Thomas Wood/Stanislaw M Jankowski p.254. John Wiley & Sons, 1993]

Jan Karski, a Polish underground leader, had secretly entered a satellite camp of the death camp, Belzec at the request of the underground in order to definitely prove that the holocaust was indeed taking place. Bearing in mind that up to 3 million Poles had also been murdered, that the Polish intelligentsia was exterminated at the beginning of the Nazi invasion, it also ignores that whereas it takes a hundred brave souls to help rescue one or two Jews, it only took one collaborator to undo that work.

Research such as that done by Gunnar Paulsson in his book ‘Secret City – The hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940-1945 which detailed how over 20,000 Jews were hidden on the ‘Aryan’ side of the city have helped to dispel this one sided picture of Polish anti-semitism. But of course this kind of education isn’t given to the hooligans and chauvinist yobs of Israel in their teenage glory.

Although the article doesn’t mention it, these ‘educational’ visits, which are in reality intended to reinforce a hatred of the non-Jews that the Jews lived with and by conflation the Jewish diaspora, are funded by monies that were intended by the German state for the holocaust survivors. This money was embezzled by the Jewish Claims Conference and the various Zionist organisations. Today the survivors of the camps live in penury whilst Israeli teenage spoilt brats are funded with the money intended for the victims of Nazism, not those who exploit their legacy.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli teenagers are a nuisance in Poland
11 05 2007

Source: Przekrój weekly of May the 10th 2007
Author: Anna Szulc
English translation: MoPoPressReview

The list of losses Israeli teenagers’ visits leave behind is long and costly. It begins with burned carpets in Polish hotels, and ends with Jewish teenagers’ trauma. But more and more often with local residents’ trauma too.

Roberto Lucchesini, originally from Tuscany, for several years now a resident of Krakow, hasn’t been sleeping well recently. Before he will be able to move his arms normally again, he will have to go through long rehab. All this because of how he was treated, in broad daylight in front of passers-by and several teenagers who were hermetically closed in their coach-buses. Israeli bodyguards, equipped with firearms, binded his arms behind his back over his head with handcuffs. In Krakow, in the middle of the street. A moment before, the Italian was trying to make coach drivers parking in front of his house turn their engines off. - ‘Israelis handcuffed me, threw me on the ground, my face landed in dog excrement, and then they were kicking me’. After that the perpetrators were gone. Italian had to be freed by the Polish police.

Lucchesini moved to Kazimierz, a district of Kraków, that used to be a Jewish commune of which the only things left now are synagogues and memories, often painful. He found an apartment with a view on the synagogue. – ‘Back then I had thought this was the most beautiful place on Earth’ – he says – ‘after some time I understood that the place is indeed beautiful, but not for its today’s residents’.

Kicking instead of answers

Another resident of Kazimierz, Beata W., office worker, is of similar opinion. Israeli security searched her handbag on one of the streets, without telling her why.

- ‘When I asked what was this all about, they told me to shut up. I listened, I stopped talking, I was afraid they’d tell me to get undressed next’ – she says annoyed.

A young polish Jew, who as usual in Sabbath, went to pray in his synagogue couple months ago, also didn’t get his answer. He only asked, why can’t he enter the temple. Instead of an answer, he got kicked.

- ‘I saw this with my own eyes’ - says Mike Urbaniak, the editor of Forum Of Polish Jews and correspondent of European Jewish Press in Poland. – ‘I saw how my friend is being brutally attacked by security agents from Israel, without any reason.’

All this apparently in sake of Israeli childrens’ safety.

- ‘For Poles it may be difficult to understand, but security agents accompany Israelis at all times, both in Israel and abroad’ – explains Michał Sobelman, a spokesman for Israeli embassy in Poland. – ‘This is a parents’ demand, otherwise they wouldn’t agree for any kind of trip. Poland is no exception.’

But it was in Poland, as Mike Urbaniak reports, where Jews from Israel brutally kicked a Polish Jew in front of a synagogue, and then threatened him with prison. In plain view of the Israeli teenagers.

- ‘We are very sorry when we hear about such incidents’ – Sobelman admits – ‘Detailed analysis is carried out in each case. We will do everything we can, to prevent such situations in the future. Maybe we will have to change training methods of our security agents, so that they would know Poland is not like Israel, that the scale of threats here is insignificant?'

Professor Moshe Zimmermann, head of German History Institute at Hebrew University in Jerusalem thinks however, that the problem is not only in the security agents’ behaviour. He thinks Israelis basically think that Poles aren’t equal partners for them. And it’s not only that they think Poles can’t ensure their children’s safety.

- ‘They are not equal partners to any kind of discussion. It applies also to our common history, contemporary history and politics. In result Israeli youth see Poles as second category people, as potential enemies’ – he explains bluntly.

An instruction on conduct with the local inhabitants given away to Israeli teenagers coming to Poland couple years ago may confirm professor’s opinion. It contained such a paragraph: ‘Everywhere we will be surrounded by Poles. We will hate them because of their participation in Holocaust’.
- ‘Agendas of our teenagers’ trips to Poland are set in advance by the Israeli government, and are not flexible’ – says Ilona Dworak-Cousin, the chairwoman of the Polish-Israeli Friendship Association in Israel. - ‘Those trips basically come down to visiting, one by one, the places of extermination of Jews. From that perspective Poland is just a huge Jewish graveyard. And nothing more. Meeting living people, for those who organise these trips, is meaningless.’

A resident of Kraków’s Kazimierz district, who is of Jewish descent, says that there is nothing wrong with that: – ‘Israelis don’t come to Poland for holiday. Their aim is to see the sites of Shoah and listen to the terrifying history of their families, history that often is not told to them by their grandparents, because of its emotional weight. Often young people who are leaving, cry, phone their parents and say “why didn’t you tell me it was that horrible?”. To be frank, I am not surprised they have no interest in talking about Lajkonik'.

However according to Ilona Dworak-Cousin the lack of contact with Poles, causes Israeli youth to confuse victims with the perpetrators. – ‘They start to think it were the Poles who created concentration camps for Jews, that it is the Polish who were and still are the biggest anti-Semites in the world’ – adds Dworak-Cousin, who is Jewish herself.

The above mentioned Kraków resident has a different opinion. – ‘I don’t believe anyone was telling them that the Poles had been doing this. That’s why there is no need for discussing anything with the Poles’.

Teenagers behaving badly

However, many Israelis say that although the instruction was eventually changed, the attitude to Poles has not changed at all.

- ‘Someone in Israel some day decided, that our children going to Poland have to be hermetically surrounded by security’ – says Lili Haber president of Cracovians Association in Israel. – ‘Someone decided that young Israelis cannot meet young Poles, and cannot walk the streets. Basically these visits aren’t anything else but a several-day-long voluntary prison.’

Voluntary, but also very expensive: 1400 USD per person. Not every Israeli parent can afford such a trip.

- ‘Moreover, as it turns out, the children are too young, to visit sites of mass murders’ - adds Dr Ilona Dworak-Cousin. Traumatic experiences that accompany visits in death camps have its consequences. Kids become aggressive. And instead of getting to know the country of their ancestors, in which Jews and Poles lived in symbiosis for over 1000 years, Israeli teenagers cause one scandal after another.

It happens sometimes, that somewhere between Majdanek and Treblinka, young Israelis spend their time on striptease ordered via the hotel telephone. It happens sometimes, that the hotel service has to collect human excrement from hotel beds and washbasins. It happens sometimes, that hotels have to give money back to other tourists, who cannot sleep because Israeli kids decided to play football in hotel corridor. In the middle of the night.

6-year-old Krzys from Kazimierz played football too. On Sunday night on 15th April, after shooting two goals, he wanted to go home, as usual. He lives near a synagogue, in front of which hundreds of young Israelis have gathered on celebrations preceding March of Living. Just before Szeroka street he was stopped by some not-so-nice men. – ‘This is a semi-private area today. There is no entry’ – he was told. It didn’t help, when he told them, his mum will get upset if he won’t be home on time.

Security officers, which is interesting, were Polish this time and accompanied by the Polish police. They also denied access to the area to a Dutch couple, who had reserved a table at one of the restaurants on Szeroka street six months ago. – ‘Is this a free country?’ – One of the tourists tried to make sure.

On a normal day you can access Szeroka street from several sides. That evening from none. I tried to get through myself, without any success. Only eventually, the police helped me to pass the security line.

- ‘There are no official restrictions here’ – they were convincing me a moment later, although the “unofficial practice” was different.

- ‘We have only set certain restrictions in movement’ – Sylvia Bober-Jasnoch, a spokeswoman for Malopolska Region Police press service, explained to me later.

The police cannot say anything else. Polish law does not allow residents to be denied access to the streets they live at. Even during the so called mass events (however the celebrations on Szeroka did not have that status) residents have the right to go back to their homes and tourists have the right to dine in a restaurant. Also Israeli security agents have no right to stop or search passers-by.

I tried to find out more on the rights of Israeli security agents in Poland. First at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from where my question was sent to…. the Ministry of Education. I have also sent questions to the Home Office. Although I was promised, I received no answer. Only person eager to talk on that matter was Maciej Kozłowski, former ambassador in Israel, currently the Plenipotentiary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Polish-Israeli relations.

- ‘Regulations are imprecise’ – admits Kozłowski. ‘Basically bodyguards from a foreign country should not move around Poland armed. However for the government of Israel security matters are a priority. Any convincing that their citizens should use the services of Polish security turned unsuccessful’.

Airplane like battle field

The Polish-Italian couple, Robert Lucchesini, his wife Anna, and their two-year-old daughter, cannot understand Polish government’s attitude. Which contrary to the Israeli government, is not able to ensure the safety of its citizens. Safety is not the only thing among the pair’s priorities, but also peace and quietness. They are however being woken up every morning by the loud noises of engines, of the Polish coach-buses with groups of Israeli youth. Their Polish drivers breake driving regulations all the time. They’re allowed to park at the square near the synagogue (in front of Robert’s house) only for up to 10 minutes. They stay there much longer, even hours. With their engines turned on. Reason? Youth’s safety – they would be able to leave quicker in case of a threat. And because Israeli kids need to be served coffee. Because even though Kazimierz is full of cafes, Israeli teenagers don’t go there. They are being told: no contacts with environment, no talking to passers-by, no smiles nor gestures.

This has been going for years. Israeli groups contact with Poles only there where they have to. First in airplanes.

- ‘A plane after such group has landed, looks like a battle field’ – admits a worker of LOT Polish Airlines asking for his name not to be published. – ‘The worst thing is these kids’ attitude to Polish staff. Recently a stewardess was slapped by a teenager in her face. Because he had been waiting for his coca-cola too long’.

Leszek Chorzewski, LOT spokesman, admits that Israeli youth is a difficult customer. – ‘They demand not only more attention then other passengers, but also more security precautions’ – he adds. These precautions are long aircraft and airport controls conducted by Israeli services. These are also the high demands of the teenagers’ security agents.

Katarzyna Łazuga, student from Poznań, could see that first hand. She participated in a tourist guides’ training on one of Polish airports. ‘Young people from Israel entered the room we were in’, she recalls. – ‘Our group was then made to stop classes and rushed out of the room. Israeli security officers told us to go out, right now and without any talking. Because… we were “staring” at their clients. Yes, we were looking at them. They were catching attention, they were good looking.’

Young Israelis see Poles also there, where they board – in Polish hotels. If any of them still wants to have them. Most of those in Kraków don’t want to any more.

- ‘We have resigned from admitting Israeli youth once and for all’ – admits Agnieszka Tomczyk, assistant manageress in a chain of hotels called System. ‘We could not afford to refund the loses after their stays any more’.

These loses being: demolished rooms, broken chairs and tables, human excrements in washbasins or trash bins, or like in Astoria, other hotel in Kraków, burned carpet. Astoria also backs out from having Israeli groups. One of the reasons is that the teenagers’ security agents were ordering other guests, whom they didn’t like, to leave.

- ‘I understand that Israeli security agents are over-sensitive to any disturbing signals. They are coming from a country where bombs explode almost daily, and young people die in terrorist attacks’ – ensures Mike Urbaniak. – ‘But Poland is one of the safest countries in Europe. Here, excluding tiny number of incidents, Jews are not being attacked, and Jewish institutions don’t need security, which is very unusual on a world scale’.

Huge business

Chasidim, travelling in great numbers from Israel, also (surprisingly) don’t need security agents. Including for example many Orthodox Jews, who came to visit our country recently, as they wanted to pray at Tzadik of Lelów’s grave. They came to the market square in Kazimierz without any security assistance and without any fear.

- ‘They chatted eagerly with tourists interested in their outfits, with passers-by who don’t see Jews with side curls every day’ – adds Urbaniak.

In Kazimierz chasidim are nothing unusual. Like groups of Israeli teenagers. This year 30,000 Israeli teenagers are coming to Poland, and they will have 800 security agents to protect them.

Roberto Lucchesini reported to the Polish police that he got beaten by Israeli security. Krakow Prosecution Office is investigating the case, and so is its counterpart in Israel.

- ‘Results of this investigation are of medium importance’ – thinks Ilona Dworak-Cousin. – ‘What matters is if the youth that visits Poland, will still treat it as hostile and completely alien country’.
Polish-Israeli Friendship Association in Israel and Cracovians Association in Israel both try to convince the government of their country, not to send any more teenagers to see only the death camps in Poland. Chances are slim.

- ‘These trips are mostly a huge business for people who organise them’ – says Lili Haber – ‘including Israeli bodyguards’.

Yitzhak Laor & the Reality Behind the Image

Guide for the Holiday Traveller

Published 00:50 14.09.10

Israel does not want to recognize the Palestinian minority within its borders because it seeks to continue to grant privileges to Israeli Jews and to Diaspora Jews, at the expense of the cheap labor, land and water of its Palestinian citizens. By Yitzhak Laor

The spread of ignorance is nothing new and is not limited to those who haven't studied the core curriculum. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demands that the Palestinians first recognize Israel as a Jewish state, or as the nation-state of the Jewish people, he is relying on ignorance that has been widespread among Israelis for years. Even the difference between these two phrases, which he freely alternates in his statements with a kind of sacred innocence, depends not on the fine print in the insurance policy he seeks, but on ignorance about everything connected to the national character of the State of Israel.

In English, the term "nation" relates to the entirety of the citizens of a given English-speaking country. And the adjective "national" can refer to something that is nationwide, like a "national conference." But this is the simple, semantic issue.

The more disturbing matter of Israeli ignorance - consistently disseminated in all media outlets and the school system, and also reflected in the tendency to feel good (even when doing so is accompanied by mild guilt feelings ) - is connected to the images we don't see when we travel around the country. Forget about the ruins, the fig trees that appear out of nowhere (there are no fig trees, or olive or almond trees, for that matter, that grow on their own ). Instead, take a look at the proximity between Jisr al-Zarqa, the poorest village in Israel, and Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael, one of the richest kibbutzim in the country (if not the richest ). And that's just one example.

Jisr al-Zarqa is a remnant of Kabara, a village that was destroyed in 1948 and its inhabitants expelled. It is the only Palestinian community left on the Mediterranean shore from Gaza to Acre (in Jaffa, the Palestinians were moved off the beach to Ajami ). It was said that the Jisr al-Zarqa residents were immune to malaria, and to their good fortune, like that of the residents of Fureidis, the farmers of Zichron Yaakov needed their cheap labor for draining the swamps, and so they were not expelled.

Most of the land went to kibbutzim in the area, mainly to Ma'agan Michael. Therein lies the importance of this example, even if one looks not at the past and its wounds, but at the increasingly ugly present that gives rise to the boast that might makes right. After all, a bus filled with cleaning ladies sets out from Jisr al-Zarqa every morning, headed for Haifa's Rambam Medical Center.

This is not about the injustices of the past, like the missing inhabitants of neighboring Tantura, where Haifa University geographers have managed to erase what happened there and in many nearby villages. It's not about the past but about the present: Jisr al-Zarqa is trapped, without land and between fences. Its children cannot even run to retrieve a ball that flies over the fence dividing the village from the nature reserve that was once part of the village; they would have to go a very long way, to the other side of the separation fence via the beach and back.

And on its other side, the village is shut off by Israel's richest suburb, Caesarea. Poverty and overcrowding beget violence, which is mounting in Jisr al-Zarqa, a ghetto without hope that no one notices except as a foreign Arab entity amid the surrounding wealth, beauty, landscape and sea.

Recognition of an exclusive Jewish nationality for our country, which Netanyahu is demanding from the Palestinians now, is nothing but a demand to recognize the legitimacy of racist discrimination against the Arab minority in Israel. If this minority had been awarded equal rights, including water rights for agriculture, equality in education and health care, and equal employment opportunities, there would be no need to go back to the Nakba. It would become a wound like other past wounds, like the partial extinction of other national minorities (and after all, there is room to provide compensation for disasters, as per tort law. )

But the State of Israel does not want to recognize the Palestinian minority within its borders because it seeks to continue to grant privileges to Israeli Jews and to Diaspora Jews, at the expense of the cheap labor, land and water of its Palestinian citizens. All this is in order to say that recognition of Israel will come only if we recognize the equality of the minority in our midst. They are not settlers. They were living here before we were.

How ‘President’ Abbas and ‘Prime Minister’ Fayyad Became Complicit in the Oppression of the Palestinians

The Reality of the Alliance Between the United States and the Quisling Palestinian Authority

One of the tragedies of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is that there is no ANC. No liberation movement of the Palestinians. In reality the PLO long since ceased to exist. It is necessary to understand and debunk the myths if we are ever to move beyond the present weak position of the Palestinians. There is a relatively strong international solidarity movement but all it can do is rail and organise against the latest Israeli injustice and try to enforce a Boycott of the Zionist monstrosity that goes by the name Israel. The review below sheds light on a little known fact, the training of Palestinian Security by the American General Dayton in Jordan. These security forces have been no co-operative that they have been given ‘permission’ by their Israeli patrons to patrol between midnight and 5 am. A time which the Israeli military reserved to itself to attack and seize activists in early morning raids. It is impossible to say whether the allegations made below, about the virtual disappearance of the Al Aqsa Fateh brigades and the neutralisation of Hamas militarily are true or not on the West Bank. What is true is the normalisation proposed by the unelected Fayyad fits like a glove into Netanyahu’s scenario, of an ‘economic peace’. A device for eliminating political goals, such as independence of all but a fragment, whilst buying off Palestinian aspirations economically. Given the state of the world we can confidently predict that this is a non-starter, leaving aside the adjacent presence of a military and economic behemoth, Israel, which will squeeze any normalised entity whenever it deems necessary.

Fayyad is of course unelected, other than by Abbas and the World Bank. But in the words of Shimon Peres he is the Palestinian 'Ben-Gurion'. But then Abbas's democratic mandate ran out in January 2010 but don't hold your breath waiting for new elections. Elections would not serve the Israeli/US position, given the debacle last time around when Hamas won. The other part of the tragedy is the political impotence of Hamas. It should dawn upon most people by now that Hamas has nothing to say because repeating the Quoran doesn’t exactly bring political enlightenment. For a start the document was written over 1,300 years ago and is unlikely to have predicted the State of Israel! Those with received wisdom rarely need to look forward. In any event a group based on sectarian allegiances, Islam is such a phenomenon, is unlikely to united with Christians and non-believers into a viable national movement. Those who are soft on Hamas are hard on the Palestinians. Anyway read it for yourself! Tony Greenstein

The New York Review of Books

Our Man in Palestine

By Nathan Thrall

Lieutenant General Keith Dayton (right), the US security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with Brigadier General Munir al-Zoubi, commander of the Palestinian Presidential Guard, the elite force that protects top officials and guests,

On August 31, the night before President Obama’s dinner inaugurating direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Hamas gunmen shot and killed four Jewish settlers in Hebron, the West Bank’s largest and most populous governorate. The attack—the deadliest against Israeli citizens in more than two years—was condemned by Palestinian and Israeli officials, who said that it was meant to thwart the upcoming negotiations. According to a Hamas spokesman, however, the shooting had a more specific purpose: to demonstrate the futility of the recent cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces. This cooperation has reached unprecedented levels under the quiet direction of a three-star US Army general, Keith Dayton, who has been commanding a little-publicized American mission to build up Palestinian security forces in the West Bank.1


Referred to by Hamas as “the Dayton forces,” the Palestinian security services are formally under the authority of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and chairman of Hamas’s rival, Fatah; but they are, in practice, controlled by Salam Fayyad, the unelected prime minister, a diminutive, mild-mannered technocrat. Abbas appointed Fayyad following Hamas’s grim takeover of Gaza in June 2007—which occurred seventeen months after the Islamist party won the January 2006 parliamentary elections—and entrusted him with preventing Hamas from also seizing the West Bank.

Fayyad received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin and held positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the World Bank, and the IMF before becoming finance minister under President Yasser Arafat. His reputation as a fiscally responsible and trustworthy manager ensures the steady supply of international aid on which the Palestinian economy depends. Though he has neither a popular following nor backing from a large political party (his Third Way list received a mere 2.4 percent of the votes in the 2006 legislative elections), today he is responsible for nearly every aspect of Palestinian governance. Yet he is not participating in the negotiations over a settlement with Israel, which are the province of the PLO (of whose leadership Fayyad is not a member) and are handled by its chairman, the seventy-five-year-old Abbas.

Fayyad is criticized at home for many of the same reasons he is lauded abroad. He has condemned violence against Israel as antithetical to his people’s national aspirations, stated that Palestinian refugees could be resettled not in Israel but in a future Palestinian state, and suggested that this state would offer citizenship to Jews.2 He is praised in the opinion pages of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, and has good relations with foreign leaders unpopular in Palestine: on Fayyad’s first visit to the Oval Office, in 2003, George W. Bush greeted him with index and pinky fingers extended to display UT Austin’s “Hook ‘em Horns” sign. When the daughter of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s chief of staff was married several years ago, Fayyad sat next to Sharon at the wedding and talked with him at length.3

In February, Fayyad spoke before Israel’s security establishment at the annual Herzliya Conference, where he was compared by Israeli President Shimon Peres to David Ben-Gurion.4 Much of Fayyad’s speech concerned his ambitious plan, made public in late August 2009, to establish unilaterally a de facto Palestinian state by August 2011. By that time, according to Fayyad, “the reality of [a Palestinian] state will impose itself on the world.”5 Fayyad’s plan to “build” a state—he does not say he will declare one—has been endorsed by the Quartet (the US, EU, UN, and Russian Federation) and supported eagerly by international donors.

Some Palestinians have rejected it as too closely resembling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s notion of “economic peace,” which proposes that development precede independence. And a number of Israelis have expressed suspicions that Palestine will seek UN recognition of its statehood when the plan is complete. Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, has warned that any unilateral steps Fayyad takes toward a state could prompt Israel to annul past agreements and annex parts of the West Bank.6

Fayyad has said that his plan to build a new state “is intended to generate pressure” on Israeli–Palestinian negotiations, and the direct talks recently started by the two parties have a late summer 2011 deadline that coincides with Fayyad’s.7 Mike Herzog, former chief of staff to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, told me, “Ultimately, I think Fayyad calculates that political negotiations will not succeed and his plan [to establish a state] will be the only game in town.” The danger, for Israel and the Palestinian Authority alike, is what will happen if negotiations fail and Fayyad’s plan does not produce significant concessions from Israel. “We are not going to withdraw from certain areas just because there was a declaration or a UN resolution,” Herzog said. In that event Hamas will be able to present a persuasive argument that violence is the only means of achieving national liberation. “Fayyad sets an arbitrary date and says, ‘Okay, now all of you break your heads if you want to avoid a catastrophe,’” Herzog said. “What he did is very risky but also very smart.”

So far, Fayyad’s strategy is succeeding. His administration has started more than one thousand development projects, which include paving roads, planting trees, digging wells, and constructing new buildings, most prominently in the twin cities of Ramallah and al-Bireh.8 He has reduced dependence on foreign aid and started to carry out plans to build new hospitals, classrooms, courthouses, industrial parks, housing, and even a new city, Rawabi, between Ramallah and Nablus. But “reforming the security forces,” Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, told me, “is the main and integral part of the Fayyad plan. Many of the government’s other successes, such as economic growth, came as a result.”

To its citizens, Fayyad’s government has presented reform of the police and other security forces as principally a matter of providing law and order—apprehending criminal gangs, consolidating competing security services, forbidding public displays of weapons, and locating stolen cars. But its program for “counterterrorism”—which is directed mainly against Hamas and viewed by many Palestinians as collaboration with Israel—is its most important element: targeting Hamas members and suspected sympathizers is intended to reduce the likelihood of a West Bank takeover and, as important, helps Fayyad make a plausible case that he is in control and that Israel can safely withdraw from the territory.

In 2009, Palestinian and Israeli forces took part in 1,297 coordinated activities, many of them against militant Palestinian groups, a 72 percent increase over the previous year.9 Together they have largely disbanded the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a principal Fatah militia; attacked Islamic Jihad cells; and all but eliminated Hamas’s social institutions, financial arrangements, and military activities in the West Bank.

According to the latest annual report of the Shin Bet, Israel’s FBI, “continuous [counterterrorist] activity conducted by Israel and the Palestinian security apparatuses” reduced Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to their lowest numbers since 2000.10 Today’s level of cooperation, Herzog said, “is better than before the second intifada even—it’s excellent.” Mouna Mansour, a Hamas legislator in the Palestinian Parliament and widow of an assassinated senior leader of the movement, told me, “The PA has succeeded more than the Israelis in crushing Hamas in the West Bank.”

At the center of the Palestinian government’s security reforms are several “special battalions” of the National Security Forces (NSF), an eight-thousand-member gendarmerie that makes up the largest unit of the 25,000-strong Palestinian armed forces in the West Bank.11 The officer in charge of the vetting, training, equipping, and strategic planning of these special battalions is Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, the United States security coordinator (USSC) for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

In a desert town sixteen miles southeast of Amman, more than three thousand Palestinians have completed nineteen-week military courses under Dayton’s supervision at the Jordan International Police Training Center, built with American funds in 2003 for the instruction of Iraqi police. In Hebron, Jenin, Jericho, and Ramallah, the Dayton mission is organizing the construction and renovation of garrisons, training colleges, facilities for the Interior Ministry, and security headquarters—some of which, like the one I visited on a hilltop in central Hebron, were destroyed by Israel during the second intifada. The office of the USSC plans to build new camps in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Tubas, and Tulkarm. It offers two-month leadership courses to senior PA officers, and has created and appointed advisers to a Strategic Planning Directorate in the Ministry of Interior.12 Over the past three years, the State Department has allocated $392 million to the Dayton mission, with another $150 million requested for 2011.13

At its headquarters in a nineteenth-century stone building at the US consulate in West Jerusalem, the USSC has a forty-five-person core staff composed primarily of American and Canadian but also British and Turkish military officers. In addition, it employs twenty-eight private contractors from the Virginia-based DynCorp International.14 State Department rules require the mission’s US government staff to travel only in large, heavily armored convoys, though these restrictions do not apply to its private security contractors and foreign military officers, some of whom are based in Ramallah. By late 2011—a date that dovetails with Fayyad’s deadline—the USSC plans to have supervised the training of ten NSF battalions, one for every West Bank governorate except Jerusalem.15

General Dayton reports to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He advises George Mitchell, special envoy for Middle East peace, and has been praised by influential senators, congressmen, and Middle East analysts, who view the work of the USSC as a singular achievement.16 Israel has granted greater responsibility to Palestinian security forces, expanding their geographical areas of operation, sharing higher-quality intelligence with them, and lifting their midnight-to-five-AM curfews in several of the largest West Bank cities.17 According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel has also reduced the travel time between most urban centers in the West Bank by opening roads, relaxing controls at checkpoints, lifting vehicle permit requirements, and removing physical obstacles, which are expected to be reduced in the near future to their lowest number since 2005.18

Colonel Philip J. Dermer, a former member of the USSC, wrote in a March 2010 report circulated among senior White House and military staff that “the USSC mission has arguably achieved more progress on the ground than any other US effort in Israeli- Palestinian peacemaking”19 Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, has said, “You can send George Mitchell back and forth to the Middle East as much as you like, but expanding what [General] Dayton is doing in the security realm to other sectors of Palestinian governance and society is really the only viable model for progress.”20

The first United States security coordinator, Lieutenant General William “Kip” Ward, arrived in Jerusalem in March 2005. Elliott Abrams, formerly the deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush, told me that Ward’s mission was organized in response to three closely coinciding events: the reelection, in November 2004, of Bush, who wanted to rebuild Palestinian security forces as a part of his 2003 road map to Middle East peace; the death, nine days later, of Yasser Arafat, who had resisted American attempts to reform the Palestinian security services; and the victory of America’s favored candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, in the January 2005 presidential election.

1. For an excellent report on Palestinian security reform, see " Squaring the Circle: Palestinian Security Reform Under Occupation ," International Crisis Group, September 7, 2010. ↩

2. "Fayyad: Jews Can Be Equal Citizens in a Palestinian State," Haaretz , July 5, 2009. ↩

3. For an example of the sort of approbation Fayyad receives, see several recent columns by Roger Cohen, who has called Fayyad "the most important phenomenon in the Middle East," and Thomas Friedman, who has coined a term for the prime minister's brand of "transparent, accountable administration and services"—"Fayyadism"—which he thinks "the most exciting new idea in Arab governance ever." Roger Cohen, "Beating the Mideast's Black Hole," The International Herald Tribune , April 27, 2010; Thomas Friedman, "Green Shoots in Palestine," The New York Times , August 4, 2009. ↩

4. Akiva Eldar, "A Day in the Life of the Palestinian Ben-Gurion," Haaretz , February 11, 2010. ↩

5. Fadi Elsalameen, " Fayyad: ‘Build, Build Despite the Occupation ,'" The Palestine Note , July 30, 2010. ↩

6. Merav Michaeli, "Lieberman: Israel's Gestures to Palestinians Met with ‘Slaps in the Face,'" Haaretz , May 13, 2010. ↩

7. Fadi Elsalameen, "Fayyad: ‘Build, Build Despite the Occupation.'" ↩

8. Much has been made of a report by the International Monetary Fund stating that real GDP in the West Bank grew by 8.5 percent in 2009. For a source arguing that the IMF's report of West Bank economic growth is greatly exaggerated, see Bassim S. Khoury, " Putting the Palestinian ‘Carriage Behind the Horse ,'" ForeignPolicy.com, July 1, 2010. ↩

9. " Measures Taken by Israel in Support of Developing the Palestinian Economy, the Socio-Economic Structure, and the Security Reforms ," Report of the Government of Israel to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, April 13, 2010. ↩

10. "2009 Annual Summary—Data and Trends in Palestinian Terrorism," Israeli Security Agency, 2009. See also previous Israeli Security Agency reports and " Four Years of Conflict: Israel's War Against Terrorism ," Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, October 3, 2004. ↩

11. On the size of the NSF, see the estimates made in "Palestinian Authority: US Assistance Is Training and Equipping Security Forces, but the Program Needs to Measure Progress and Faces Logistical Constraints," Government Accountability Office, May 2010; and "Squaring the Circle: Palestinian Security Reform Under Occupation." The number used in this piece falls between the figures provided in those two reports and represents a slight adjustment, presented to me by a spokesman for EUPOL COPPS (the European Union Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories) in April 2010, of a previous estimate made by US officials. See " West Bank: Palestinian Security Forces ," US Security Coordination Road Warrior Team, June 2008. ↩

12. These courses are open to members of each of the seven security services: the National Security Forces, Presidential Guard, Civil Police, Civil Defense, and three intelligence services—Military Intelligence, General Intelligence, and Preventive Security. ↩

13. "Palestinian Authority: US Assistance Is Training and Equipping Security Forces, but the Program Needs to Measure Progress and Faces Logistical Constraints." ↩

14. "Palestinian Authority: US Assistance Is Training and Equipping Security Forces, but the Program Needs to Measure Progress and Faces Logistical Constraints." ↩

15. The State Department, however, expects the forces to be deployed in only nine governorates, with one battalion as a reserve force. (The PA security sector treats the governorates of Jenin and Tubas as a single unit.) See "US Security Assistance to the Palestinian Authority," Congressional Research Service, January 8, 2010; and "Squaring the Circle," International Crisis Group, September 7, 2010, p. 11. ↩

16. Dayton served alongside the national security adviser, General James Jones, who was special envoy for Middle East security in 2007–2008; wrote a glowing blurb for a recent book coauthored by Dennis Ross, a senior director at the National Security Council and special adviser to the President; and has given presentations to influential senators, congressmen, and interest groups visiting Israel. ↩

17. "Squaring the Circle: Palestinian Security Reform Under Occupation." ↩

18. " West Bank Movement and Access Update ," United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Occupied Palestinian Territory, June 2010. ↩

19. Colonel Philip J. Dermer, "Trip Notes on a Return to Israel and the West Bank: Reflections on US Peacemaking, the Security Mission, and What Should Be Done," Journal of Palestine Studies , Vol. 39, No. 3 (Spring 2010). ↩

20. James Kitfield, "United They Fall; Divided They Stand," National Journal , March 28, 2009.

Jewish Town of Carmiel Employs Militia to Keep Arabs Out

If you want to know why Israel is a racist apartheid state, then what happens in practice on the ground is more important than the self-serving justifications of Israel's media and politicians.

The town of Carmiel in the north of Israel is a Jewish only town and like their white counterparts in Apartheid South Africa they want to keep it that way.

Tony Greenstein

Racist militia active in Carmiel, supported by the municipality and with the approval of the police

12/10/10
In a letter to the Attorney General, the Gush Shalom movement asked to disband immediately the so-called "City Guard" at Carmiel in the Galilee, which is actually a racist extreme right militia, and to launch an investigation against Deputy Mayor Oren Milstein who founded this body, as well as against police officials who helped in its establishment and operation.

The "City Guard" includes about 150 "volunteers" who turn up daily from 20.00 to 24.00 at the entrances to Carmiel and "check" incomers. The official site of the Carmiel Municipality defines the City Guard's objectives as "increasing awareness, prevention of crime, apprehending drunk drivers, searching for drugs" and other legitimate and praiseworthy aims. However, Carmiel Deputy Mayor Oren Milstein, who was elected to the municipal council on the basis of a fiery anti-Arab campaign, candidly revealed the City Guard's true aims.

Milstein has recently published an interview in the ultra-right-wing publication "Be'Sheva", where he said: "Carmiel is a Jewish city, plain and simple. It was founded for the purpose of Judaizing the Galilee. In my opinion it is not proper for Arab families to live here. In recent years, there are attempts by our [Arab] neighbors in the Western Galilee villages to migrate into Carmiel, and we must not ignore this phenomenon. "

According to Milstein, since being appointed deputy mayor two years ago, he had been striving "to do something real in order to change the situation". To this end he founded the City Guard, in cooperation with the Carmiel police. Milstein proudly told the extreme right paper that members of the " City Guard" are "monitoring every evening the entrances to the city and demand the I.D. of anyone seeking to enter the city. Thus, they reduce the number of neighbors seeking to just enter the city for no special reason."

Link to full interview (in Hebrew):

In their letter to Attorney General Weinstein, Uri Avnery and Adam Keller wrote on behalf of Gush Shalom that "the aims and activities of the Carmiel City Guard, as described candidly by its founder, are manifestly racist and illegal. There is no doubt that all citizens of Israel - regardless of religion, race or nationality - have the inalienable right to move freely all over the country, enter any city and village, any public place, as they see fit and, and "for no special reason". They need not ask permission nor give an account of themselves to anyone - certainly not to a militia of despicable racists in Carmiel."

Gush Shalom said that the fact of this abominable body being established by an Israeli deputy mayor, with the full support of the police, is yet another serious warning sign in the growing list of blatant racist manifestations in the Israeli public life. The racists' aim – in the government, in the municipality of Carmiel and throughout the country - is to drive out the Arabs, because they are Arabs. In practice, the immediate and direct result of their activities is to drive the state of Israel out of the community of democratic peoples and turn it into a pariah and outcast country. "
Contact: Uri Avnery 0505-306440, Adam Keller 054-2340749

Aaron Porter, Scab NUS President, Obstructs Black Student Conference

What to Do To Avoid Arrest

You won't get much help from the scab below or an Executive that supports Israel's murder of humanitarian activists last May. But there are things that you can do and we details them below the story of NUS's scab President.

You may remember the name Aaron Porter. It belongs to the scab who is President of the National Union of Students. He comes in a long line except he has even less charisma than most of his predecessors. And what a line of inheritance!

There is Charles 'deport them back to be tortured' Clarke (who used to be a civil libertarian protesting outside the Hope Office when Meryln Rees deported ex-CIA agent Phil Agree and Mark Hosenball, David Aaronovitch ex-Communist Party renegade and Zionist of The Times, Laura Fitzimmons a nonentity who lost Rochdale for Labour and ended up working for the pro-Israel propaganda organisation Bicom, Stephen Twigg whose only claim to fame is being gay, Trevor Phillips, the uncle Tom who heads the EHRC and who Ken Livingstone described as being to the right of the BNP!, Vicky Phillips, the incompetent head of law at Thompsons who once advised me not to appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, which I ignored and won!, Jack Straw of course, Sue Slipman, the Communist who got paid lots of dosh by Camelot, owners of the National Lottery but has otherwise disappeared into obscurity and of course Phil Woollas, whose career ended trying to get White people angry enough to save his seat.

So Porter comes from a distinguished crowd and what he lacks in personality and charisma he makes up for by shouting. Hence when the students occupied Tory Party HQ did he go on TV to explain that this kind of thing will happen when you start starving people and burdening them down with impossible burdens of debt. Did he warn of things to come? No the little scab for once sounded sincere in his anger, directed at fellow students of course.

No help whatsoever has been extended by NUS to those arrested. I have had to find decent solicitors for my daughter and arrange legal aid etc. because NUS has simply abandoned them. If NUS was sincere then regardless of its views on the small amounts of damage caused at Millbank Towers it would have arranged for the legal defence of those arrested and gone on to the offensive. The Police strained every muscle to find the person, as it turns out an under 18 Classics student, who foolishly hurled down from the roof an empty gas cannister (which could easily have injured a fellow student). Porter could have contrasted the police's determination to arrest the person concerned compared with their obstruction, lies and disinterest in the members of the police force who murdered Ian Tomlison, the newspaper vendor, at last year's G20 demonstration. Now that was a crime.

But Porter of course has ambitions. Not to represent his members more effectively but how best to abandon them for a ministerial career.

I wrote to Aaron Porter yesterday about his attempts to obstruct the National Conference of Black Students, on the pretext of there not being enough disabled access. This is the correspondence:

I wrote to Aaron Porter about this and he responded so I include the whole correspondence.

Dear Aaron Porter,

You are not responding to a naive 19 year old at her/his first NUS Conference. I was a member of NUS’s Polytechnic’s Committee for 2 years and a delegate to 13 NUS Conferences. I saw the Charles Clarkes, Aaronovitches and Sue Slipman’s, as well as creatures like Phil Woollas. You come from exactly the same political stable. The idea that your obstruction of the Black Students Conference is on account of your concern for Disabled Students, whilst a rhetorical debating trick, convinces no one. After all, where there is a will there is a way.

You predecessors are notable for only one thing - the consistent pursuit of power and flexibility of principle. That is how we have Clarke trying to deport asylum seekers back to torture and Woollas talking about getting ‘white people angry’.

I am the proud father of a daughter who was arrested at Millband. You have done fuck all to support her and her fellow students. Absolutely shite. Instead you vented your anger on students who weren’t content merely with words but took action. Instead of condemning them, someone with a slightly larger brain would have pointed to the catastrophic effects of government policy in making normally law abiding students do this type of thing and then warned it was but a harbinger of things to come.

But you were more concerned about proving your loyalty to the system. That was the same reason that under your scab leadership NUS alone amongst all unions failed to condemn Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and its murder of 9 humanitarian activists. Your professed concern about violence will therefore be taken with a pinch of salt and your concern for disabled students likewise

Tony Greenstein

From: Aaron Porter
To: tony greenstein
Sent: Fri, 19 November, 2010 17:58:08
Subject: RE: Reopen Registration for Black Student Conference

Setting the record straight

Hello Tony,

Thanks for your email, and I wanted to reply personally - whilst also including a more detailed response I have included below.

In order for the NUS staff to meet all the requirements with regard to accessibility (special needs of disabled students’ etc), this takes just under 2 weeks. And this rule applies to every single NUS event - the Black Students’ Conference is exactly the same as every other event, and I had infact already accepted 2 deadline extensions.

I hope that you can understand that contrary to Joshi’s email, I’ve actually done everything I can to support the Black Students’ campaign - but I can’t compromise when it comes to access, particularly for disabled students’.

Best wishes,

Aaron

More detailed email below:

Dear all,

As you will all know, the issues that students are facing right now – with cuts, the scrapping of EMA, the AimHigher programme the trebling of tuition fees make this the most serious period for students and NUS in over a generation.

This is why, I was so dismayed to read the misleading and largely inaccurate email distributed on behalf of our Black Students’ Officer, Kanja Sesay earlier this week. It was misleading, deceptive and incredibly disingenuous.

I want to take this opportunity to set the record straight, and correct the misinformation and lies in the email that was circulated earlier in the week.

The email sent by Anil Joshi Sachdeo (on Kanja’s behalf) failed to mention that I had already granted 2 extensions to the registration deadline, and indeed offered all the support I could to help maximise attendance at the conference.

However, when I was approached for a third extension I was not able to accommodate this. It’s not because I don’t want black students’ to organise – infact quite the reverse. The reason I wasn’t able to accommodate this, is because the NUS staff can not guarantee that all students accessibility needs will be met, unless they have a 2 week period to ensure that all delegates have their access needs met. This applies to every single NUS event.

Under no circumstances can I allow an NUS event to go ahead with the needs of disabled students’ and others are put at risk.

Every single NUS residential event, without exception, adheres to this 2 week period to ensure the access needs of disabled students’ and others are met. Infact many other events, have a period much longer than 2 weeks, but I wanted to make sure the Black Students’ Campaign had as much time as possible to mobilise.

I am deeply troubled that I am being asked to jeopardise the accessibility of disabled students’ and others with access needs. This is the only reason why the third extension was not granted, and not for any other reason.

I have no problem with legitimate political criticism. But when I am publically criticised, in a way which is incredibly misleading, unfair and insulting, I had to take this opportunity to respond myself.

More broadly, I would hope that the black students’ campaign would focus it’s attentions on joining the rest of the student movement in fighting the cuts, the scrapping EMA, AimHigher and the proposed trebling of tuition fees.

For that reason, as a member of the Black Students’ campaign, I am utterly appalled that once again the Black Students’ Campaign seems to be more concerned creating an artificial fight with NUS, rather than focussing on the challenges black students face.

I want to use this opportunity to reiterate the fact, that despite Kanja’s email, I do want to work with Kanja, but I am disappointed that he has resorted to playground tactics. But it is so important for us to pull together and actually ensure that the black students’ campaign is focussing on the real issues that black students face – rather than making false allegations about it’s own organisation.

My door is always open, and I hope that the campaign can begin to focus on the key issues that black students face.

In unity,

Aaron

From: tony greenstein [mailto:tonygreenstein@yahoo.com]
Sent: 19 November 2010 14:53
To: Aaron Porter
Subject: Reopen Registration for Black Student Conference

why are you trying to shut down the voice of Black students in NUS. Afraid of something, such as your future career as a New Labour MP being in jeopardy.

You really are the pits. My daughter was arrested fighting for free education. All you do is calculate whether something will benefit your miserable, Phil Woolas style career ahead.

Tony Greenstein

What to Do To Avoid Arrest

The remarkable and brilliant student action at Millbank has produced some predictable frothing at the mouth from the establishment and right wing press. Cameron has called for the `full weight of the law' to fall on those who had caused tens of thousands of pounds of damage to the expensive decor at Tory party HQ. Responsibility is being placed on `a violent faction', after the march was `infiltrated' by anarchists.

There are an encouraging number of intiatives to show solidarity with the arrested students – something that is vital if they are to avoid the sort of punitive `deterrent' sentences handed out to the Gaza demonstrators. A legal support group has been established and the National Campaign against Cuts and Fees has started a support campaign. Goldsmiths lecturers union has publicly commended the students for a `magnificent demonstration' .

This is all much needed, as the establishment is clearly on the march with this one. The Torygraph has published an irresponsible and frenzied `shop-a-student' piece and the Met are clearly under pressure to produce `results' after what they have admitted was a policing `embarrassment' .

51 people have been arrested so far, and the police have claimed they took the details of a further 250 people in the kettle using powers under the Police Reform Act. There may be more arrests to come.

Students who are worried should consider taking the following actions:

If you have been arrested, or had your details taken – contact the legal support campaign. As a group you can support each other, and mount a coherent campaign.

If you fear you may be arrested as a result of identification by CCTV, FIT or press photography;

DONT panic. Press photos are not necessarily conclusive evidence, and just because the police have a photo of you doesn't mean they know who you are.

DONT hand yourself in. The police often use the psychological pressure of knowing they have your picture to persuade you to `come forward'. Unless you have a very pressing reason to do otherwise, let them come and find you, if they know who you are.

DO get rid of your clothes. There is no chance of suggesting the bloke in the video is not you if the clothes he is wearing have been found in your wardrobe. Get rid of ALL clothes you were wearing at the demo, including YOUR SHOES, your bag, and any distinctive jewellery you were wearing at the time. Yes, this is difficult, especially if it is your only warm coat or decent pair of boots. But it will be harder still if finding these clothes in your flat gets you convicted of violent disorder.

DONT assume that because you can identify yourself in a video, a judge will be able to as well. `That isn't me' has got many a person off before now.

DO keep away from other demos for a while. The police will be on the look-out at other demos, especially student ones, for people they have put on their `wanted' list. Keep a low profile.

DO think about changing your appearance. Perhaps now is a good time for a make-over. Get a haircut and colour, grow a beard, wear glasses. It isn't a guarantee, but may help throw them off the scent.

DO keep your house clean. Get rid of spray cans, demo related stuff, and dodgy texts / photos on your phone. Don't make life easy for them by having drugs, weapons or anything illegal in the house.

DO get the name and number of a good lawyer you can call if things go badly. The support group has the names of recommended lawyers on their site. Take a bit of time to read up on your rights in custody, especially the benefits of not commenting in interview.

DO be careful who you speak about this to. Admit your involvement in criminal damage / disorder ONLY to people you really trust.

DO try and control the nerves and panic. Waiting for a knock on the door is stressful in the extreme, but you need to find a way to get on with business as normal. Otherwise you'll be serving the sentence before you are even arrested.