Stop Israel’s campaign against Negev Bedouin!
JSG | 27.05.2003 15:49
“Recognition Forum”, a coalition of human rights organizations and peace organizations which includes the following:
The Association of Forty,
The Union of Unrecognized Villages’ Councils,
Bustan HaShalom,
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions,
The Negev Coexistence Forum,
New Profile,
Rabbis for Human Rights,
Village committees of various Unrecognized Villages
and
Ta’ayush,
request your support in a letter campaign through electronic mail, fax and mail, against house demolitions and field destruction in Unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev. Lately, house demolitions and poisoning of fields by the government have increased to an alarming degree.
Background
The Bedouin are a unique community that has lived in the Negev for centuries. In 1948, they constituted the vast majority of the population of the Negev, numbering about 60, 000 people. After the war there were only about 10, 000 Bedouin left in the Negev, the rest having left or been expelled to Jordan and Egypt (the Gaza strip and the Sinai). In the early 50’s, the Bedouin were concentrated in a tight geographical area (about 1, 500 square kilometers) in the eastern Negev, called the “Seyag”, and were subject to military rule until 1966. The western, northern and southern parts of the Negev are now almost devoid of any Bedouin residents. Lands in the western and northern Negev were given to new kibbutzim and moshavim (Jewish agricultural forms of settlement) for cultivation. Transfer of the Bedouin population to the eastern Negev has deprived tribes of their land and concentrated them on lands not their own, under harsh and increasingly crowded conditions.
In the late 60’s, Tel Sheva was founded as the Bedouins’ first permanent settlement, with the intent of concentrating the essentially rural-agrarian community in extremely crowded urban settlements lacking employment and proper infrastructure. Since then, six more such settlements have been created: Rahat, Kseife, Aro’er, Laqiya, Segev-shalom and Hura. At present, half the Bedouin population, about 70, 000 inhabitants, live in these towns, whereas another 70, 000 Bedouins live in dozens of “unrecognized villages” without water, electricity, sanitation, roads, health and education services, etc.
Denying recognition to dozens of villages, withholding basic services from tens of thousands of citizens, issuing home demolition orders, poisoning the fields by spraying chemicals from the air, and repeated harassment by the “Green Patrol” of the Ministry of the Interior, all serve one single purpose - to make this population abandon its land and force it into the towns. Even so, in recent years, the residents have held on to their land much more persistently, and some young families are even leaving the towns and returning to their own land.
After several years of relative quiet during which houses were not demolished, the policy of house demolition has been resumed in unrecognized villages in the Negev. The Green Patrol has been reinforced, the police presence has been greatly augmented, greater resources have been allocated to “take care” of what the authorities call illegal construction, and special courts for land matters have even been proposed. In addition a new form of coercion - poisoning the fields - has been used several times over crops that are grown on lands that are under legal dispute.
The Sharon Plan for the Negev Bedouins
Last month [April 2003] the Six-Year Sharon Plan for the Bedouins passed in the ministry committee. This plan is for the concentration of the remaining rural Bedouins into the existing seven towns, and seven new towns of the same character. There are two major flaws with this plan. First - it was made with no consultation with the community it is created for. The overwhelming majority of the rural Bedouin community does not wish to be transferred into a poverty-stricken urban environment. The second flaw is that the funds allocated for this plan are concentrated heavily on enforcement: more police for house demolitions, more money for the “Green Police”, money set aside for more poisoning of fields, and funds set for the judicial system in order to “settle” the land disputes. In effect this new Sharon plan is a continuation and a worsening of the government’s policy until now.
For a detailed “Analysis Of The $200 Million Sharon Plan for the Negev”, see:
“Bedouin in the Negev Face New ‘Transfer’”
Jonathan Cook
12th May 2003
http://www.arabhra.org/articles/JCookBedouin.htm
Journal:
In October 2001, two houses were demolished in Qatamat village, on the claim that they were built within a firing-zone. The El-Gawweini family’s houses have stood in this location for decades. After the houses were rebuilt, demolition orders were re-issued and one of the house owners was forced, under pressure of fines and criminal charges, to demolish his own newly built house.
In February 2002, six houses were demolished in Mazraa-Leshaba. Six shacks were rebuilt.
In February 2002, about 12, 000 dunam of a wheat crop that had benefited from an exceptionally rainy winter were sprayed with herbicides from the air and the crop was destroyed.
In May 2002, on two separate occasions, Ministry of the Interior personnel and Green Patrolmen demolished the temporary houses of the Al Touri family who, after their fields had been sprayed, returned to live on their land in El Araqib, close to the town of Rahat. All their possessions inside the houses were confiscated.
In June 2002, Ministry of the Interior personnel demolished the houses of six families of El Rebidi family, who had built shacks near the town of Laqiya, not having obtained plots inside the town. The houses were demolished with all their possessions inside.
On June 27th, 2002, the Green Patrol demolished three houses: one next to Beer Sheva prison, belonging to the Abu Aiyade family, another at Bir Hadaj belonging to the Abu Lakima family, and a third in Bir Asluj, belonging to the Abu Issa family.
On July 3rd, 2002, four houses were demolished in Wadi El Na’am, belonging to the Zanun family.
On July 9th, 2002, Ministry of the Interior personnel demolished the two-story house of El Sayed Abd el Razek, backed up by large police and border guard forces while it was still under judiciary proceedings. The forces came to the spot at 4:30 a. m., ordered the family to leave without being able to take anything with them except the clothes they were wearing. There were 16 persons living in this house.
On December 29th, 2002, the Ministry of Interior personnel once more destroyed two houses that had been rebuilt after they were destroyed by the government in July, one belonging to the Zanon family in Wadi Naam, and the other to Abu-Ayada family. In addition a building used for the Al-Nabari family business by Hura was destroyed.
On February 5th, 2003, on the eve of the Moslem Holiday of the Sacrifice, a mosque was destroyed in Tel el-Malach. This mosque was built in October 2002 in order to serve residents of the area that live at a large distance from other mosques. This the first time that a mosque was destroyed in the Negev, and a status quo between the Bedouins and the government was destroyed.
On February 24th, 2003, a number of businesses on the Beer-Sheva - Dimona road were destroyed. These businesses supplied employment to scores of people who provide for hundreds of their family members, and are now without a source of income.
On March 4th 2003, hundreds of dunams of wheat crops were sprayed with herbicides from the air. The entire crop of the residents of three villages by Ovdat was destroyed. This wheat is used to make bread, the major food source of these subsistence farmers. Together with the crops, also a number of children that were playing in the fields were sprayed.
On April 2nd 2003, the Bureau for Land Management ordered another several hundreds of dunams of wheat fields to be sprayed, this time mostly belonging to the Al-Tori family (again). Again a few children and some livestock were in the fields, and were sprayed from the air together with the crops.
On April 13th 2003, the government destroyed a family’s residence, and a business that was destroyed on February was re-destroyed, along with another business. All of these belong to the Al-Assam family, located between Beer-Sheva and Dimona.
This policy waves the whip of destruction and expulsion over the heads of 70, 000 residents of the unrecognized villages - Israeli citizens - who cannot build their houses legally, lacking any government planning policy in their villages. House demolitions are a part of the government’s attempt to forcibly “concentrate” all Bedouins of the Negev in poor, segregated townships, in order to vacate lands for Jewish settlement. This is a shamelessly racist policy that destroys the original fabric of life in the Negev.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sample letter:
To Mr. Avraham Poraz
Minister of the Interior
Jerusalem
Dear Sir,
Re: Demolition of houses and poisoning of fields of Bedouins who are citizens of Israel, residing in unrecognized villages
Since the founding of the State of Israel, Negev Bedouins have been victimized by a policy that is a breach of their most fundamental human rights.
In the early 50’s they were crowded into the Seyag zone (between Beer Sheva, Dimona, Arad and Beit Kama Junction), thus preventing many of them from living on their land and maintaining their traditional life-style.
Since the 60’s they have been crowded into towns without proper infrastructure, removing them from the remaining land in their possession. This policy has denied them official recognition of their villages - in which they were forced to reside when pushed in to the Seyag zone. This means that most of their houses are now considered by the government to be illegally constructed. These villages are therefore denied any basic services such as running water, electricity, health clinics, schools, approach roads, sewage systems etc.
The policy of the Israeli government turns an entire population of people who build houses to shelter their families into “lawbreakers”. Any Bedouin newborn becomes a lawbreaker the moment it enters its home. The Israeli government policy contradicts human rights conventions that Israel has signed. This is a policy that denies the Bedouins their right to maintain their traditional life-style, does not enable Bedouins in unrecognized villages to have proper housing, and denies them the most basic facilities.
The government is now poisoning the crops in the fields, in areas where holding of the land has not yet been settled in court. The Bedouins have been growing their crops on these lands for scores, and at times, hundreds of years. These crops are the basic staple food of these people, where most of them live under the poverty line.
When you issue an order to demolish Bedouin houses, you bring the world down on entire families. When you destroy their crops, you bring about hunger. Israel becomes a state that does not respect the basic right of its Bedouin citizens to live according to their tradition, and you turn Israel into an essentially racist state!
I appeal to your sense of honor to put a halt to the policy of house demolitions in the Bedouin sector, and begin to respect their basic human rights.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Addresses for mailing letters:
Mr. Ariel Sharon - Prime Minister.
Fax:... 972-2-566-4838
e-mail:
webmaster@pmo.gov.il
The Office of Prime Minister,
Kaplan 3,
Jerusalem,
Israel.
Mr. Avraham Poraz - Minister of the Interior.
Fax:.. 972-2-566-6376.
e-mail: sar@moin.gov.il
Ministery of Interior,
Kiryat Ben Gurion,
Kaplan 2,
Jerusalem,
Israel.
Mr. Tsahi Hanegbi - Minister of Internal Security.
Fax:.. 972-2-581-1832.
e-mail: sar@mops.gov.il
POB 18182,
East Jerusalem
91181
[Under control of Israel]
Mr. Silvan Shalom - Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Fax:... 972-2-530-3506
e-mail: sar@mofa.gov.il
Mr. Ehud Olmert - Minister of Commerce and Industry.
Fax: ...972-2-624-3738
e-mail: sar@moit.gov.il
Agron 30,
Jerusalem
91002
Israel
Ambassador of Israel in your country
You can find addresses, fax numbers, etc. of Israeli embassies and consulates abroad on the Internet, at
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfh/Eng/Ntz/Ntz_Israel.asp
Your own parliamentary representative.
Your country’s representative in the European Union
The Foreign Minister of your country
Mr. Kofi Anan - UN General Secretary
Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello -
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
He can be contacted as indicated on this web page: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/hchr/contact.htm
The Association of Forty,
The Union of Unrecognized Villages’ Councils,
Bustan HaShalom,
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions,
The Negev Coexistence Forum,
New Profile,
Rabbis for Human Rights,
Village committees of various Unrecognized Villages
and
Ta’ayush,
request your support in a letter campaign through electronic mail, fax and mail, against house demolitions and field destruction in Unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev. Lately, house demolitions and poisoning of fields by the government have increased to an alarming degree.
Background
The Bedouin are a unique community that has lived in the Negev for centuries. In 1948, they constituted the vast majority of the population of the Negev, numbering about 60, 000 people. After the war there were only about 10, 000 Bedouin left in the Negev, the rest having left or been expelled to Jordan and Egypt (the Gaza strip and the Sinai). In the early 50’s, the Bedouin were concentrated in a tight geographical area (about 1, 500 square kilometers) in the eastern Negev, called the “Seyag”, and were subject to military rule until 1966. The western, northern and southern parts of the Negev are now almost devoid of any Bedouin residents. Lands in the western and northern Negev were given to new kibbutzim and moshavim (Jewish agricultural forms of settlement) for cultivation. Transfer of the Bedouin population to the eastern Negev has deprived tribes of their land and concentrated them on lands not their own, under harsh and increasingly crowded conditions.
In the late 60’s, Tel Sheva was founded as the Bedouins’ first permanent settlement, with the intent of concentrating the essentially rural-agrarian community in extremely crowded urban settlements lacking employment and proper infrastructure. Since then, six more such settlements have been created: Rahat, Kseife, Aro’er, Laqiya, Segev-shalom and Hura. At present, half the Bedouin population, about 70, 000 inhabitants, live in these towns, whereas another 70, 000 Bedouins live in dozens of “unrecognized villages” without water, electricity, sanitation, roads, health and education services, etc.
Denying recognition to dozens of villages, withholding basic services from tens of thousands of citizens, issuing home demolition orders, poisoning the fields by spraying chemicals from the air, and repeated harassment by the “Green Patrol” of the Ministry of the Interior, all serve one single purpose - to make this population abandon its land and force it into the towns. Even so, in recent years, the residents have held on to their land much more persistently, and some young families are even leaving the towns and returning to their own land.
After several years of relative quiet during which houses were not demolished, the policy of house demolition has been resumed in unrecognized villages in the Negev. The Green Patrol has been reinforced, the police presence has been greatly augmented, greater resources have been allocated to “take care” of what the authorities call illegal construction, and special courts for land matters have even been proposed. In addition a new form of coercion - poisoning the fields - has been used several times over crops that are grown on lands that are under legal dispute.
The Sharon Plan for the Negev Bedouins
Last month [April 2003] the Six-Year Sharon Plan for the Bedouins passed in the ministry committee. This plan is for the concentration of the remaining rural Bedouins into the existing seven towns, and seven new towns of the same character. There are two major flaws with this plan. First - it was made with no consultation with the community it is created for. The overwhelming majority of the rural Bedouin community does not wish to be transferred into a poverty-stricken urban environment. The second flaw is that the funds allocated for this plan are concentrated heavily on enforcement: more police for house demolitions, more money for the “Green Police”, money set aside for more poisoning of fields, and funds set for the judicial system in order to “settle” the land disputes. In effect this new Sharon plan is a continuation and a worsening of the government’s policy until now.
For a detailed “Analysis Of The $200 Million Sharon Plan for the Negev”, see:
“Bedouin in the Negev Face New ‘Transfer’”
Jonathan Cook
12th May 2003
http://www.arabhra.org/articles/JCookBedouin.htm Journal:
In October 2001, two houses were demolished in Qatamat village, on the claim that they were built within a firing-zone. The El-Gawweini family’s houses have stood in this location for decades. After the houses were rebuilt, demolition orders were re-issued and one of the house owners was forced, under pressure of fines and criminal charges, to demolish his own newly built house.
In February 2002, six houses were demolished in Mazraa-Leshaba. Six shacks were rebuilt.
In February 2002, about 12, 000 dunam of a wheat crop that had benefited from an exceptionally rainy winter were sprayed with herbicides from the air and the crop was destroyed.
In May 2002, on two separate occasions, Ministry of the Interior personnel and Green Patrolmen demolished the temporary houses of the Al Touri family who, after their fields had been sprayed, returned to live on their land in El Araqib, close to the town of Rahat. All their possessions inside the houses were confiscated.
In June 2002, Ministry of the Interior personnel demolished the houses of six families of El Rebidi family, who had built shacks near the town of Laqiya, not having obtained plots inside the town. The houses were demolished with all their possessions inside.
On June 27th, 2002, the Green Patrol demolished three houses: one next to Beer Sheva prison, belonging to the Abu Aiyade family, another at Bir Hadaj belonging to the Abu Lakima family, and a third in Bir Asluj, belonging to the Abu Issa family.
On July 3rd, 2002, four houses were demolished in Wadi El Na’am, belonging to the Zanun family.
On July 9th, 2002, Ministry of the Interior personnel demolished the two-story house of El Sayed Abd el Razek, backed up by large police and border guard forces while it was still under judiciary proceedings. The forces came to the spot at 4:30 a. m., ordered the family to leave without being able to take anything with them except the clothes they were wearing. There were 16 persons living in this house.
On December 29th, 2002, the Ministry of Interior personnel once more destroyed two houses that had been rebuilt after they were destroyed by the government in July, one belonging to the Zanon family in Wadi Naam, and the other to Abu-Ayada family. In addition a building used for the Al-Nabari family business by Hura was destroyed.
On February 5th, 2003, on the eve of the Moslem Holiday of the Sacrifice, a mosque was destroyed in Tel el-Malach. This mosque was built in October 2002 in order to serve residents of the area that live at a large distance from other mosques. This the first time that a mosque was destroyed in the Negev, and a status quo between the Bedouins and the government was destroyed.
On February 24th, 2003, a number of businesses on the Beer-Sheva - Dimona road were destroyed. These businesses supplied employment to scores of people who provide for hundreds of their family members, and are now without a source of income.
On March 4th 2003, hundreds of dunams of wheat crops were sprayed with herbicides from the air. The entire crop of the residents of three villages by Ovdat was destroyed. This wheat is used to make bread, the major food source of these subsistence farmers. Together with the crops, also a number of children that were playing in the fields were sprayed.
On April 2nd 2003, the Bureau for Land Management ordered another several hundreds of dunams of wheat fields to be sprayed, this time mostly belonging to the Al-Tori family (again). Again a few children and some livestock were in the fields, and were sprayed from the air together with the crops.
On April 13th 2003, the government destroyed a family’s residence, and a business that was destroyed on February was re-destroyed, along with another business. All of these belong to the Al-Assam family, located between Beer-Sheva and Dimona.
This policy waves the whip of destruction and expulsion over the heads of 70, 000 residents of the unrecognized villages - Israeli citizens - who cannot build their houses legally, lacking any government planning policy in their villages. House demolitions are a part of the government’s attempt to forcibly “concentrate” all Bedouins of the Negev in poor, segregated townships, in order to vacate lands for Jewish settlement. This is a shamelessly racist policy that destroys the original fabric of life in the Negev.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sample letter:
To Mr. Avraham Poraz
Minister of the Interior
Jerusalem
Dear Sir,
Re: Demolition of houses and poisoning of fields of Bedouins who are citizens of Israel, residing in unrecognized villages
Since the founding of the State of Israel, Negev Bedouins have been victimized by a policy that is a breach of their most fundamental human rights.
In the early 50’s they were crowded into the Seyag zone (between Beer Sheva, Dimona, Arad and Beit Kama Junction), thus preventing many of them from living on their land and maintaining their traditional life-style.
Since the 60’s they have been crowded into towns without proper infrastructure, removing them from the remaining land in their possession. This policy has denied them official recognition of their villages - in which they were forced to reside when pushed in to the Seyag zone. This means that most of their houses are now considered by the government to be illegally constructed. These villages are therefore denied any basic services such as running water, electricity, health clinics, schools, approach roads, sewage systems etc.
The policy of the Israeli government turns an entire population of people who build houses to shelter their families into “lawbreakers”. Any Bedouin newborn becomes a lawbreaker the moment it enters its home. The Israeli government policy contradicts human rights conventions that Israel has signed. This is a policy that denies the Bedouins their right to maintain their traditional life-style, does not enable Bedouins in unrecognized villages to have proper housing, and denies them the most basic facilities.
The government is now poisoning the crops in the fields, in areas where holding of the land has not yet been settled in court. The Bedouins have been growing their crops on these lands for scores, and at times, hundreds of years. These crops are the basic staple food of these people, where most of them live under the poverty line.
When you issue an order to demolish Bedouin houses, you bring the world down on entire families. When you destroy their crops, you bring about hunger. Israel becomes a state that does not respect the basic right of its Bedouin citizens to live according to their tradition, and you turn Israel into an essentially racist state!
I appeal to your sense of honor to put a halt to the policy of house demolitions in the Bedouin sector, and begin to respect their basic human rights.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Addresses for mailing letters:
Mr. Ariel Sharon - Prime Minister.
Fax:... 972-2-566-4838
e-mail:
webmaster@pmo.gov.il The Office of Prime Minister,
Kaplan 3,
Jerusalem,
Israel.
Mr. Avraham Poraz - Minister of the Interior.
Fax:.. 972-2-566-6376.
e-mail:
sar@moin.gov.il Ministery of Interior,
Kiryat Ben Gurion,
Kaplan 2,
Jerusalem,
Israel.
Mr. Tsahi Hanegbi - Minister of Internal Security.
Fax:.. 972-2-581-1832.
e-mail:
sar@mops.gov.il POB 18182,
East Jerusalem
91181
[Under control of Israel]
Mr. Silvan Shalom - Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Fax:... 972-2-530-3506
e-mail:
sar@mofa.gov.il Mr. Ehud Olmert - Minister of Commerce and Industry.
Fax: ...972-2-624-3738
e-mail:
sar@moit.gov.il Agron 30,
Jerusalem
91002
Israel
Ambassador of Israel in your country
You can find addresses, fax numbers, etc. of Israeli embassies and consulates abroad on the Internet, at
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfh/Eng/Ntz/Ntz_Israel.asp Your own parliamentary representative.
Your country’s representative in the European Union
The Foreign Minister of your country
Mr. Kofi Anan - UN General Secretary
Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello -
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
He can be contacted as indicated on this web page:
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/hchr/contact.htm
JSG
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
Bedouin are true Israelis
27.05.2003 17:40
But the Israeli Bedouin who live in the Negev all serve in the army for the usual three years + reserves, and many stay on for special assignments, especially tracking: they are some of the best that the IDF has. They participate in all the IDF's activities and operations. Why are you not complaining about them?
(Don't get me wrong, what's happening to them now is terrible, and the 'villages' should be recognised and given the same resources other cities get. But for this campaign to be run by the same groups that always criticise the IDF's activities is a bit hypocritical.)
bedwii
Usual distorted Israeli truths
28.05.2003 09:23
What "millenia of living there..."????
What schmaltz talk is this - "...because they are Jews, oppressors, occupiers..."???? This is the usual "exclusive victimhood" status that zioNazis always want to sole right for. The monopoly of victimhood. There are plenty of Jewish people who oppose occupation, are against the zioNazis and still there are those who do not fall into the "universal" category of "Jew" that you use - those who simply do not think like certain "types" of Jews and have no time for those who go round playing the victim each time Israel and the zioNazis are criticised (and they should be).
And what "Jews", again....????
Many "Jews" are simply not "Jews" either because they are plainly genocide artists or thieves who are against the wish of G*d (and therefore not Jewish) or they are actually Khazars. people who converted to Judaism, and therefore not Jewish, anyway...
Bedouin are discriminate badly against in Israel (like Jews who are not white). In so far as serving as Apaches or Cherokees in the IDF is concerned, they are ok. But elsewhere in Israeli society, they are about as tolerated as the other non-white Jews - ok for use as dustmen, street-sweepers, and the like but not ok for anything else....
I don't think they even fit into the "goyim" classification.
Trying to sell the untruth that they are ok (accepted) is an untruth. They are about as ok and noticeable when you want your rubbish dumped or used as a shield when the IDF cannot find kids and elderly women to use against those who object to Israeli occupation.
Now find me three nice Bedouin who can use the internet to support your schmaltzy codswallop that Bedouins are so happy with their land being nicked and houses demolished.
Delighted victims of Occupation
Obliteration Inc
28.05.2003 09:35
Don't worry.
Given Israel record for wiping out opposition among the "natives" or those who dare criticise it for just about anything, no group to its liking would exist in due course - again, given the IDF's record of genocidal expedience.
And this is also conducted abroad with people assasinated.
I am not from the "same groups".
And it is hypocritical if Israel choses those it thinks should be allowed to make any opinion about it. It would look somewhat crass - like Hitler choosing Nazis to tell him he is not a good enough mass murderer.
For your approval (some "Jews" do appoint themselves for the task) I am Jewish.
I should be more ashamed than anybody else about Israel's cevastatingly poor record in the human world.
And if you are Jewish or "Jewish", I am thoroughly ashamed of you too.
Torah not Talmud
"Israelis" are not true Bedouins
28.05.2003 09:38
The son is the father of the son????
Yeshiva Rationale
Almost all of you are idiots
29.05.2003 06:44
The fact is, for decades now israel could have just booted 100% of muslims out of israel just like arab countries did to their jews, and for decades now israel had the power to just kill thousands of palestinians at a time, instead of just hunting specific terrorist organizations, and israel has never done those things. Instead, they've tried to maintain a democracy, a flawed one, but a perfect democracy is hard to pull off when 20% of the citizens (israeli muslims) would prefer that israel not actually be "israel."
You anti-israel nuts ruin valid political discussions by making anti-israel comments that aren't based in reality, and CERTAINLY absurd when considering the behavior of the enemies of israel are taken into account.
Hi
Why is Israel always singled out?
29.05.2003 17:51
That nation would not be Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Russia or Iran. It would be Israel. There are currently petitions circulating on most North American university campuses that would seek to have universities terminate all investments in companies that do business in or with Israel. There are also petitions asking individual faculty members to boycott scientists and scholars who happen to be Israeli Jews, regardless of their personal views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. There have been efforts, some successful, to prevent Israeli speakers from appearing on college campuses, as recently occurred at Concordia University. There are no comparable petitions seeking any action against other countries that enslave minorities, imprison dissidents, murder political opponents and torture suspected terrorists. Nor are there any comparable efforts to silence speakers from other countries.
The intergalactic visitor would wonder what this pariah nation, Israel, must have done to deserve this unique form of economic capital punishment. If he then went to the library and began to read books and articles about this planet, he would discover that Israel was a vibrant democracy, with freedom of speech, press and religion, that was surrounded by a group of tyrannical and undemocratic regimes, many of which are actively seeking its destruction.
He would learn that in Egypt, homosexuals are routinely imprisoned and threatened with execution; that in Jordan suspected terrorists and other opponents of the government are tortured, and that if individualized torture does not work, their relatives are called in and threatened with torture as well; that in Saudi Arabia, women who engage in sex outside of marriage are beheaded; that in Iraq, political opponents are routinely murdered en masse and no dissent is permitted; that in Iran members of religious minorities, such as Baha'is and Jews, are imprisoned and sometimes executed; that in all of these surrounding nations, anti-Semitic material is frequently broadcast on state-sponsored television and radio programs; in Saudi Arabia apartheid is practised against non-Muslims, with signs indicating that Muslims must go to certain areas and non-Muslims to others; that China has occupied Tibet for half a century; that in several African countries women are stoned to death for violating sexual mores; that slavery still exists in some parts of the world; and that genocide has been committed by a number of countries in recent memory.
Our curious visitor would wonder why there are no petitions circulating with regard to these human rights violators.Are the tactics used to combat terrorism by Israel worse than those used by the Russians against Chechen terrorists? Are Arab and Muslim states more democratic than Israel? Is there any comparable institution in any Arab or Muslim state to the Israeli Supreme Court, which frequently rules in favour of Palestinian claims against the Israeli government and military? Does the absence of the death penalty in Israel alone, among Middle East nations, make it more barbaric than the countries which behead, hang and shoot political dissidents? Is Israel's settlement policy, which 78% of Israelis want to end in exchange for peace, worse than the Chinese attempt at cultural genocide in Tibet? Is Israel's policy of full equality for openly gay soldiers and members of the Knesset somehow worse than the policy of Muslim states to persecute those who have a different sexual orientation than the majority? Is Israel's commitment to equality for women worse than the gender apartheid practised in Saudi Arabia?
Our visitor would be perplexed to hear the excuses made by university professors and students for why they are prepared to delegitimate Israel while remaining silent about the far worse abuses committed by other countries. If he were to ask a student about the abuses committed by other countries, he would be told (as I have been): "You're changing the subject. We're talking about Israel now." This reminds me of an incident from the 1920s involving then-Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell. Lowell decided that the number of Jews admitted to Harvard should be reduced because "Jews cheat." When a distinguished alumnus, Judge Learned Hand, pointed out that Protestants also cheat, Lowell responded, "You're changing the subject; we're talking about Jews."
It is not surprising, therefore, that as responsible and cautious a writer as Andrew Sullivan has concluded that "fanatical anti-Semitism, as bad or even worse than Hitler's, is now a cultural norm across much of the Middle East and beyond. It's the acrid glue that unites Saddam, Arafat, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran and the Saudis. They all hate the Jews and want to see them destroyed."
Our intergalactic traveller, after learning all of these facts, would wonder what kind of a planet he had landed on. Do we have everything backwards? Do we know the difference between right and wrong? Do our universities teach the truth?
These are questions that need asking, lest we become the kind of world the visitor would have experienced had he arrived in Europe during the late 1930s and early 1940s
Daniel