Over the next three weeks I won't be able to contribute much to IAS as I'm going to be away on a business trip (with some much-needed leisure time strapped on the side). It's been a very difficult year for me personally and the amount of time I've been able to devote to Israel related issues via this blog or any other medium has been sparse.
To those who continue to read what we have to say, and who continue to further the discussion via the comments, we thank you.
Forget the crime, this looks a little more ominous…
http://www.thestar.co.za/?fSectionId=3268&fArticleId=vn20091012114847309C896372
Did any one stop to think what our previous minister of intelligence had been doing with his time, other than run around the world flaunting his hatred of Israel?
Posted by: Shaun | October 12, 2009 at 13:14
just as a matter of interest this new website offers a comprehensive debunking of the Goldstone Report, scholarly and sober in-depth analysis from a number of sources. A thorough debunking and shredding of Goldstone's disgraceful report
http://www.goldstonereport.org/
Posted by: Lawrence | October 13, 2009 at 12:24
The new ministry of intelligence is a bigger joke than it was before ,with the recent appointment of Mo Shaik ,brother of Shabir as it,s chief .Another job for friends from friends(comrades) episode .
Posted by: the Hebrew prophet | October 13, 2009 at 13:07
the Ministry of Intelligence is like Monty Python meets George Orwell.
Posted by: Lawrence | October 14, 2009 at 18:46
Our very own chief rabbi Warren Goldstein had an article the other day in the JPost ripping the Goldstone Report to shreds, it's very good. read the whole thing http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1255450652253&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Way to go Warren.
Posted by: Lawrence | October 16, 2009 at 10:28
Arab Jews
By Adam Hanieh
The official ideology of Israel, Zionism, has always portrayed itself as a liberation movement for all Jews. But although Zionism claims to offer a home for all Jews, that home has never been offered equally.
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jews-not-for-Judaism/Arab_Jews.htm
The question of Arab Jews strikes at the heart of the Zionist contradiction -- an attempt to build an anti- Arab, exclusively Jewish state on Arab lands.
From the early days of the Zionist project, large numbers of Jews from neighbouring Arab countries were brought to Palestine. Ostensibly they were “returning home”, but in reality they came as cheap labour for their European counterparts (Ashkenazi Jews).
These Arab Jews were given the name Mizrahim (the eastern ones).
Official Israeli history presents the emigration of Mizrahi as a result of anti-Semitism within the countries where they lived or a religious devotion to the land of Palestine. This account forgets the economic interests of the Ashkenazi Zionists and the long and largely untroubled relationship between Mizrahi Jews and the other Arabs with whom they lived.
Mizrahim had lived in North Africa and the Middle East for millennia, and the vast majority were opposed to creating a Jewish state in Palestine. The Iraqi Jewish leadership, for example, cooperated with the Iraqi government to stop Zionist activity in Iraq; the chief rabbi published an open letter denouncing Zionism.
In 1920, Palestinian Jews signed anti-Zionist petitions denouncing Ashkenazi rule.
It is now well documented that Zionist underground cells planted bombs in Jewish centres to create hysteria amongst Iraqi Jews, hoping to encourage a mass exodus to Israel. On January 14, 1951, a bomb was thrown into an Iraqi synagogue, killing four people.
Of course these acts of terror by the Zionist movement did not happen in isolation from the corrupt Arab governments of the time, most of which were supported by the British, who had overtly backed the Zionist movement with the Balfour declaration of 1917.
Exploitation
The Mizrahim who arrived in Israel landed in corrugated iron transit camps where Israeli officials attempted to strip them of their “Arabness” by getting rid of their “unpronounceable” Arab names and replacing them with good “Jewish” names.
Most ended up in agricultural work, 10-12 hours a day in conditions of disease and squalor. Their high death rate was explained by one Zionist official as a “common and natural thing”.
One particularly damning example of the European approach to Mizrahim was the infamous “kidnapped children of Yemen” affair. Doctors, social workers and nurses worked together to kidnap 600 Yemeni-Jewish babies, telling their parents they had died and giving them to childless Ashkenazi couples.
A massive protest rally was held in 1986 to demand the truth, but it was ignored by the Israeli media. A few months later, Israeli television produced a documentary which blamed a bureaucratic system for spreading rumours and perpetuated the myth of Mizrahim as careless parents.
Today Mizrahim constitute around 50% of the Israeli population. Palestinian Arabs make up another 20%, so the total non-European population is about 70%. This rises to 90% with the inclusion of Palestinians from the occupied territories, making clear the colonial nature of Israel.
Mizrahim and Palestinian Arabs make up the vast majority of the Israeli working class, concentrated in lower paid sectors and largely ignored by the official trade union movement, the Histadrut.
Early protests
Such experiences have naturally led to protest. In 1959 a widespread rebellion began in a neighbourhood of Haifa called Wadi-Salib. It was crushed by the Israeli military.
A significant stage of the Mizrahi movement arose in the '70s with the Black Panther movement. The Panthers took a revolutionary outlook from the black struggle in the US and Marxist movements in Latin America. They called for the destruction of the regime and a state that did not discriminate on the basis of religion, origin or nationality.
In May 1971 a demonstration of tens of thousands was organised by the Panthers against police repression. Some 170 activists were arrested and 35 were hospitalised through clashes with the police.
The Panthers were the first Mizrahim to make links with the Palestinian movement, even conducting talks with the then outlawed PLO.
Another Mizrahi movement known as the Tents movement developed. These activists protested against the squalid housing conditions of Mizrahim by squatting in vacant apartments in wealthy Ashkenazi suburbs and erecting large tent camps.
They drew links between the billions spent in the occupied territories to build settlements and the underprivileged neighbourhoods in which Mizrahim were forced to live.
The Zionist left in Israel, which consists mostly of western educated Ashkenazi, likes to portray Mizrahim as right wing, uncritical and easily swayed by populist demagogues.
The leaders of Peace Now, whose membership is almost exclusively Ashkenazi, scapegoat Mizrahim for “supporting the occupation”, “turning Israel into an anti-democratic state” and being “obstacles to peace”. These attitudes obscure important points.
Firstly, the policies of occupation and war have been designed and implemented by Ashkenazi, who have until recently dominated Israeli politics.
Secondly, the leaders of all the right-wing parties are Ashkenazim. It is true that a relatively large proportion of Mizrahim vote for Likud, but this has less to do with Likud's policies towards Palestinians and more to do with the social devastation caused by years of rule by the Labour Party, the traditional party of Ashkenazi Zionism.
Thirdly, significant acts of solidarity with Palestinians initiated by Mizrahi have been erased from the history books.
Mizrahi and Likud
In the 1981 elections, Likud came to victory because of its image as the party of Mizrahim which would end Labour Party rule.
The leader of Likud, ex-paramilitary thug and Ashkenazi Zionist Menachem Begin, cultivated this image through cooption of many of the leaders of the Black Panthers and Tents movement.
Begin's second in command was David Levi, a Mizrahi who knew how to use the Panthers' rhetoric, but emptied of content. Levi ever since has used Mizrahi protests while preventing them from going too far.
During the Likud period in power, 1977-92, the social gap between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi did not narrow. Today David Levi continues as leader of his own party, Gesher, in the coalition government of Benyamin Netanyahu.
During the mid-'80s another reflection of Mizrahi discontent arose with the creation of the Shas party. Shas arose as a rebellion by ultra-orthodox Mizrahim who were studying in the Ashkenazi rabbinical schools.
Ultra-orthodox society is openly racist against Mizrahim, and Shas wanted to change this through establishing its own party and education system. Shas now wields important political power and currently has 10 seats in parliament.
It represents a false attempt to solve Mizrahi oppression by focusing solely on religion. However, it does reflect Mizrahi discontent with both Labour and Likud politics; one estimate puts four out of 10 Shas seats as due to the support of non-orthodox Mizrahi.
A new generation
Recently some developments in Mizrahi politics identify the root cause of Mizrahi oppression as the Zionist state and stress the need to build links with Palestinians.
One section of this movement is the Democratic Rainbow Movement, which is beginning a struggle over public lands.
Some 93% of Israeli territory is classified as state land, most of which was stolen from Palestinians who were expelled in 1948. Since the early '90s, Labour and Likud have been attempting to privatise this land and public housing.
Most Mizrahi, who tend to live in the lowest standard public housing, will have no chance of owning their own apartments. However, the Kibbutz and Moshav communities (dominated by Ashkenazi) are being provided with free apartments under the legislation.
In the past, Mizrahim were often forced to live in development towns and settlements near the Israeli border or often within the occupied territories. As Israeli control has expanded, these areas have become prime real estate, leading to the eviction of Mizrahi and an influx of Ashkenazi.
This is particularly true of Jerusalem, where Israeli yuppies are now moving into settlements once populated by Mizrahi.
The Mizrahi movement inevitably comes up against the question of Palestinian rights. Rather than seeing their struggle as one for a “bigger slice of the Zionist pie” many Mizrahi believe the struggle must be a joint one.
Another Mizrahi movement is HILA, the Public Committee for Education in the Underprivileged Neighbourhoods. HILA works with activist parents in an attempt to reveal the distortions about Mizrahi history taught in Israeli schools.
Other groups have been established on universities and high schools that bring together Palestinian and Mizrahi youth. One of these groups, Tzah, organised a protest in April against a racist textbook used in the Hebrew University.
A founder of Tzah and a current leader of Hila, Shiko Behar, has written extensively on the real Mizrahi history, including opposition to Zionism and in support of Palestinian rights.
These activists also reject the attempt by Likud and Shas to speak for the Mizrahim. As one Mizrahi activist told Green Left, “We need to liberate Mizrahi and Arab-Jewish identity from the Zionist framework -- and that means the framework of Likud and Shas as well”.
Posted by: J | October 25, 2009 at 00:32
Not only is J's article irrelevant to the post, it's only about 25% fact.
And it further bothers me, that once again we have a poster without the courtesy to post the link only.
The post is the sefardi/mizrahi equivalent of a Jews for J post (see the link provided) and a little knowledge, or for that matter, maybe a week's touring Israel would demonstrate conclusively that it is bunk.
Maybe you don't want to censor posts, but I'm in favour of a 3 strikes rule, or similar where irrelevant, discourteous or just plain factually incorrect posters get banned based on their IP.
Posted by: Religious Fundamentalist 1 | October 25, 2009 at 10:34
I've noticed a creepy trope emerging from enemies of Israel, particularly in the Arab media, and the article posted above is an instance of it. This involves demonizing Israeli Jews of European origin, while exculpating those of Middle Eastern origin. I do not entirely understand the phenomenon. Perhaps it is designed to pretend that not all Jews are hated, i.e. that the critics aren't anti-Semitic? I'd be interested in other suggestions.
The above-posted article is not a very bad instance of this, rollicking nonsense as it is. Usually, the propaganda includes a less implicitly racist subtext, popularly a claim that Ashkenazi Jews aren't really Jewish, or at any rate aren't racially Jewish, descending in part or in whole from non-Semitic Khazars.
This allows for misrepresenting Zionism as another form of European colonialism. These days European colonialism is considered more culpable than other forms of colonialism, including that of the Arab variety, and receives a very sympathetic audience. I propose this as another explanation for the singling out of Ashkenazi Jews.
They've used the propaganda about the Khazars for a while, trying to weaken the Jewish claims to Israel. I suspect that some in the Arab world might even believe it, but realize that this won't even begin to work against Mizrachi Jews, and so this may also be a source of increased sympathy with these Jews.
I even recall an article a few years ago in a prominent South African newspaper by an important South African muslim cleric promoting this propaganda. Does anyone else recall this? The claim that all or most Ashkenazi Jews descend from Khazars is based on the speculations of Arthur Koestler, designed, ironically, against those who hate Jews on the grounds of their Semitic origin. Of course, the historical and genetic evidence is solidly against it - placing the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews along with the Mizrachi Jews in Israel.
Posted by: SZ | October 25, 2009 at 12:14
J truly is a moron. And as RF1 states, an impolite one at that.
If this twit actually thinks that the "Mizrachi" population of Israel would like to be grouped together with Israeli Arabs and Palestinians then he clearly has no concept of reality. I'd like to see this einstein tell a bunch of locals in Katamonim that they are more like Arabs than Isaelis. There would be a lynching!
Posted by: RF2 | October 25, 2009 at 12:19
I mean, the evidence is against their being descendent wholly or in large part or even in a big part from a Turkish tribe. I know that according to Jewish legend the aristocracy was converted to Judaism, and I suppose almost everyone has some ancestors from everywhere by now. But the DNA evidence has their contribution as not very significant.
I'll anticipate the criticism that Israel is a racist state here - you can never win against those who hate Israel: either the Jews have no claim to a state because they aren't a common people or their state is racist! Of course, this does not mean that Israel is a racist state. First, despite their largely common origin, Jews still have ancestors from many places, including many significant converts, as noted in the Hebrew Bible. And, secondly, Israel is a perfectly free state for all religions, cultures, etc; indeed, it's one of the most diverse places in the world. Contrary to the article, it is not an exclusively Jewish state - just read the Israeli declaration of independence.
Posted by: SZ | October 25, 2009 at 12:40
So the Arab propaganda continues with it,s lies and distortions.In 1988 ,the Sunni madman Saddam Hussein ,used mustard gas ,banned after the 1st World War ,to exterminate the Kurds of Iraq ,who want their own independent homeland ,incorporating Mosul and Kirkuk in the north ,major oil fields also.The Mirachi Jews have been through these petty ,insane tribal/feudal Arab conflicts for millenia and are Jews ,full stop .The 1948 mandate was for two states
side by side ,living in peace and prosperity,a legal
and binding mandate with no bias either way ,yet the Arab hero or conman ,sought to portray himself as the great Arab liberator (Arafat)at huge cost to his own brethren,no state of their own,no unity amongst the rank and file ,but huge stashes of stolen taxpayers dollars in Swiss banks for the Fatah elite,s monthly payments while the peasants still wallow in misey ,squalor ,selfpity ,hatred ,canon fodder for Haniyeh and Meshaals evil killing machines .
Posted by: the Hebrew prophet | October 27, 2009 at 13:50
The same thumbsucking logic can equally apply to the Shiites and Sunis ,who believe that their respective
stream of Islam is the right one.So how does one explain the Imam Hussein ,grandson of Allah who disappeared down a deep ,dark ,damp well more than a 1000 years ago in the Shiite holy city of Qum in Iran
and will return soon ,well how long is soon as it must be awfully cold ,dark and unpleasant down there for so long ?
Posted by: the Hebrew prophet | October 27, 2009 at 13:59
What about the 1970 massacre of more than 20-000 Arabs/Palestinians in Jordan by the then King Hussein ,the purpose ,to rid the Hashemite Kingdom of it,s rightful occupants (Palestinians )?The century long myth of refugees is a result of this incident ,which covers up the lies and distortions of propagandists ,who can,t accept the facts ,Jordan
the Palestinian state .Many of these people also fled to Lebanon ,far away from the troubles in Jordan
where they settled in refugee camps Sabra and Shatila
against the wishes of the locals ,leading to feudal/tribal conflicts ,the formation of Amal (Hez
bollah)and various Arab nationalistic/criminal gangs ,intent on formenting strife for their own personal gains.
Posted by: the Hebrew prophet | October 27, 2009 at 14:14
Now that the butcher of Sudan has been invited to Nigeria ,will the authorities there arrest the butcher as requested by the ICC in the Hague,or will the inept Nigerians let him be ?Let,s see what the equally inept AU does in this respect or maybe Nicole can enlighten us with some news .
Posted by: the Hebrew prophet | October 27, 2009 at 14:23
In lastnight,s interview between Christiane Amanpour and Minister of Disinformation for Palestine Saeb Erekat ,the same old worn out hackneyed Arab propaganda was reguritated .It,s 2009 ,yet still no Palestinian state (Jordan)ruled by the original mandated inhabitants,Palestinians,instead the Hashemites under their King Abdullah are in power.The PLO/Fatah elite don,t have the stomach for a fight over their legitimate territory ,to busy living the good life in Ramallah and elsewhere with the monthly payments from Arafat,s Swiss accounts ,while the peasants suffer in poverty and squalor.
Posted by: the Hebrew prophet | November 04, 2009 at 13:38
I am an ex S African follower of your blog, and a contributor to Harry's Place blog in the UK. We are currently campaigning to have Achmed Cassiem refused entry to the UK. He is now here, so too late for this time, but we are still writing to our MPs etc with a view to having him excluded in the future. This has worked with another Islamist extremist who was excluded second time round after our campaign. I wonder if you could update me as to his current activities and status in SA? I could not find anything current in a search of your blog. To read about our campaign see
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/11/04/achmad-cassiem-and-the-ihrc/
Posted by: amie | November 06, 2009 at 15:51
Hi Amie,
I am a big fan of Harry's Place. Keep up the good work.
I guess Cassiem got entry?
http://www.aimislam.com/activities/events/1394-event-a-conversation-with-achmad-cassiem.html
Posted by: Steve | November 12, 2009 at 22:05
Thanks Steve. Yes Cassiem did get entry, and I got a bland letter from the minister from the Home Office Phil Woolas that they take expressions of concern such as mine very seriously.
Posted by: amie | November 23, 2009 at 12:26