Use of Children During the Intifada

In May this year, a few weeks before the terror attack at the Dolphinarium, Assi Sharabi, a student of social psychology at the London School of Economics arrived in Israel with a great idea for a thesis.

The last year of Sharabi’s life was one of political upheavals that he viewed in shock through the BBC. (In August 2000 the prime minister, Ehud Barak, spoke of an “end to the conflict,” in August 2001, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon speaks of a “policy of assassinations,” etc.)

Sharabi, a former officer in the counter-terrorism unit, did his army service, as he puts it, “with a knife between his teeth,” teaching combat units to “make surgical operations.” […] A year after arriving in London, Sharabi removed his Zionist fighter’s glasses, and replaced them with those of a European intellectual. What he found alarmed, angered and shook him.

To understand Sharabi’s research, and his disturbing findings, we have to first understand the theoretical basis of his work. This is something known as “social tokens.”

The idea is simple: Our social reality, the theory goes, is a function of our social activity. Every society creates for itself a system of values that allows it to comprehend the reality around it, no matter how crazy this reality is.

Take a prison, for example, a place that is illogical in terms of free people, where the most important commodity (if we are to believe American gangster movies) is cigarettes. The cigarette takes the place of money, of which there is none, and gives rise to a value system where people are judged more or less according to their access to cigarettes. The cigarettes are the “social token.” They enable the prisoner to get by, to remain sane.

That is the idea Sharabi brought to Israel. His goal: to find out how Jewish children in Israel aged eight and nine years old, in three types of communities (city, kibbutz, settlement) grasp the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how they survive it on a daily basis.

Sharabi, in other words, went to see what kind of cigarettes our children deal in to survive the psychological prison of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The Israeli reality,” Sharabi says, “is a tough one. I don’t think anyone will disagree with that. How can a mother send her child on a bus thinking there is a chance they may blow up? When you live here, you know that something is wrong, but you live in this wrong way and you make sense of it by the social tokens you give your surroundings, until it appears logical to you. You lose your best friend in Lebanon and it makes sense – ‘yes, people lose their friends in war.’ That is what I studied.

“I went to Israeli children to see how they grow up completely normal in the eyes of their surroundings, which I see as abnormal. I wanted to see how they feel, how they explain, how they experience the reality of the conflict.”

Sharabi spoke to 84 children a few days after the Dolphinarium terror attack. He submitted his findings last week to the University in London. His conclusions, simply put, are this: the social token that enables Israeli children to exist in the harsh reality around them is burning, blazing, sometimes monstrous hatred of the Palestinians. Children see eight-year-old Arab children as deformed, with sharp bristles and teeth, who should hopefully die of AIDs and who are sentenced to burn in the fires of hell to the very last man.

On the other hand, all the children want peace. This peace (to quote Sharabi) is a “hollow peace.” For the children, the fact that there should be peace does not mean that shouldn’t kill them, down to the last man. […]

“Wherever I went, the kibbutz, the city and the settlement, I explained to the children that I’d come from London to ask them about the fighting with the Arabs, and asked them to write to a Palestinian their own age, and after that, on the other side of the paper, to draw him or her. The children immediately asked two questions. The first question was: ‘draw a good Arab or a bad Arab?'”

Question: And the second question?

“If they could use curse words.”

In contrast to what one might expect, the most hate-filled letters were not from the settlement children (a secular settlement not far from Rosh Haayin) but from the city (in central Israel). The settlement children were angry and used stereotypes. The city children genuinely hated. For them, at the young age of eight, a good Arab was a dead Arab.

Following are a few examples:

“Shalom,” an Israeli girl wrote, “I hope you die and are sick. I’m waiting for you to die, I hope your whole family dies.”

“Stinking Arab, shalom,” wrote another girl. “I really really really don’t like what you’re doing to us and we will pay you back even if there is a cease-fire. I hope you die!”

“Shalom girl from a bad people,” wrote another. “I want to ask you to tell your father that he should stop the bombs and then there will be peace. I also hope you die and that you get old quickly.”

“Disgusting Mohammed,” wrote a boy who drew an 8-year-old Palestinian with a beard and sharp teeth. “I wish you’d die and that you don’t have a good life. I don’t like you and I hate you because of all the attacks you do to us and I hope you burn. Sincerely.”

“Ugly Yasser shalom,” wrote a boy. “If you think you’ll win, you’re making a big mistake. Here’s my advice: take an ugly knife and stick it in yourself and in your ugly mother and father and sister and blow yourself up with a grenade.”

Another girl: “I hope you die and are sick. I am waiting for you to die and for your whole family to die.”

Settlement children also wrote pointed letters, blind with rage. They wrote, as did the city and kibbutz children, what they picked up that week from their nearby environment: parents, teachers, the media. Settlement children, unlike city children, explained their blazing hatred in political terms, and some, unlike city children, expressed a sincere wish for a solution.

“There are no flowers here, only Intifada,” one writes. “You really really really love wars, that means you hate your brothers. After all, we are all human beings, and you are not important to me. Barbarians, fools, retards, we will blow you up until you have no strength left, you like the terror attacks you make on us, you like our dead. Okay, no problem. We’ll bomb you and you asked for it because we offered you a lot. So please, eat what you cooked.”

“Palestinian boy,” wrote another boy. “Why do you have to throw stones and make explosions if we can solve this without violence. When you throw stones you just look like retards and dopes, especially Arafat.”

“I know,” a sensitive boy wrote, “that it’s hard to live without a state. The people who are closest to you could die, like your father, or your mother, or your brother or sister and you too could also die. I don’t like it that your people fights my people and that we fight you and I want there to be peace.”

Another boy: “The thing I hate most is you, Arabs, the men, the women, the children, each and every one, I hate all of you. You’ll see, we’ll beat you, we’ll bomb you and kill you.”

“Stinky Mohammed!!!,” wrote his friend, “I hope you die by an Israeli who shoots you and that your whole family burns in hell (and you too). I hope you have AIDS and die. Live to 21 and then die. I hope all Arabs die, signed, someone who hates Arabs!!!”

Again and again the children’s letters express their inability to comprehend the violent reality in which they live. […] The ones filled with hate make you bite your lips in embarrassment. The ones filled with despair cause you to tear your hair.

“This is how I start my letter,” a kibbutz girl wrote. “Why? Why? Why? Tell me, why? Why? Why can’t you write to your government a letter and say things about peace. Why do they send you, the children, to war? That not how it’s like with us, I feel sorry for you, the children, I see you selling band-aids in the streets and I want to know if they make you do that, but really — why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?”

Another kibbutz girl: “I see what is going on, how we fight each other with violence and every time decide to try without violence, and then with violence, I think it’s time to make a break.”

Like children in the city and the settlement, some of the kibbutz children drew the Palestinian child throwing stones, as violent, wearing a keffiya. The contents, however, were more moderate.

One girl: “I hope you have a good life, without violence and without war. I hope this comes true.”

Another: “We want peace and maybe you do too, at least I want peace, because people die. So maybe you will at least agree to make peace.”

Sharabi: “However pessimistic my study is, and it is definitely pessimistic, there were also buds of something else, and that was among the kibbutz children. None of these children said they liked Arafat, not at all. But there was some approximation of understanding that there are different ways to understand the reality of the conflict and it was amazing to see the independent way they rose to the challenge to decipher the dramatic, sometimes horrific, articles they saw in the papers or what they heard from around them.”

“Only in the kibbutz did I find an eight and a half boy who told me: ‘You know, there are prejudices in Israel too and we think that all the Arabs want to kill us and that every Arab is a terrorist, but that’s not true.’ There is less hate and less fear there.”

Sharabi: “All the children, wherever they lived, have become equal partners in the discourse that says that the Jews are good and the Arabs bad, that Jews want peace and Arabs want war, that the Jews are human beings and the Arabs not. Even before the children understand the factual aspect of the conflict, they are immersed in the ideological contents of the conflict, the ‘us against them,’ the ‘we are the victims and they are the aggressor.’

“The difference between city children, who had very specific and clear wishes for death, and settler children, I explain by the fact that the settler children have some interaction with Arab population, even if they don’t like them too much. They see the Arab, on their way to school, on the way home, and so are aware that the Arabs are people. In the city there is true dehumanization of the Arab, because there is no interaction with them.”

One of the topics Sharabi addressed in his study was the seeming contradiction between the fact that all the children said they wanted peace, but still the overwhelming majority wanted to bomb the Arabs. […]

Sharabi: “There is a yearning for peace. Let it not be understood that these children, or their parents, don’t want peace. But in psychological terms, it’s very easy to see this yearning for peace as some sort of tranquilizer pill, some sort of theoretical light at the end of the tunnel that helps them have a positive perception of themselves — ‘see, I want peace, that means I’m a moral person.’ But as I see it, this is meaningless. When you ask these children what ‘peace’ is, they don’t know what to say.

“One child told me: ‘Peace is when we leave and they stay, or when they leave and we stay.’ If that’s the case, the yearning for peace is offset by the inability to see the Arabs as anything except as people who don’t want us here.”

This article ran on August 24, 2001 in Maariv

Interview with Egyptian Acting Ambassador to Israel

When they say that the war in our region is bad for tourism, they don’t mean the Intifada’s negative effect on India. And still, for over a year, there are some officials in the Prime Minister’s Office in New Delhi who are waiting for a phone call from Tel Aviv, waiting for travel author Dr. Ihab el-Sharif to say that he has completed the introduction to his book on India. Thus he will complete his work, more than two years after the Indian government supplied him with a private plane to travel the length and breadth of the country and to document his impressions for the Arabic reader.

The problem is that the good doctor is also a full-time diplomat, today serving as Egypt’s most senior representative in Israel. The eruption of the Intifada and his boss’ recall have burdened him with tasks that delay his writing introductory chapters to travel books.

“Since Mohammed Bassiouny left, I haven’t had a free minute,” Ihab el-Sharif complains. “I can’t just sit down and write. I need to be inspired and in the proper mood. Today I’m busy writing political reports.”

El-Sharif, 47, who has been here over two years, is energetic and thirsty to learn about Israeli society as well as matters he does not need for his diplomatic work. In a first interview to an Israeli newspaper, the head of the Egyptian delegation has words of appreciation for Ariel Sharon, reveals some of the details about working with Bassiouny and speaks openly of the hostility toward Egypt in the Israeli street.

He elegantly sidesteps sensitive questions such as that of Azzam Azzam and the acerbic language of the Egyptian press, but on the other hand also provides a look at Israel as it appears from the closed Egyptian compound on Basel Street in Tel Aviv.

The interview with Dr. el-Sharif is a rare display of openness for Egyptian diplomats, who usually speak in repetitive slogans. After years of getting the cold shoulder from Cairo, a senior Egyptian comes along and speaks to the Israeli street in its own language.

His cooperation with the media can be explained mainly by his open personality, but also by the new strategy of his employers. After 18 years of chill winds from Bassiouny, Egypt apparently came to realize that it would be beneficial for the Egyptian administration if their senior delegate spoke directly to the people in Israel. Osama el-Baz epitomized this well. “There is a public opinion in Israel and we must open its eyes in several matters” he told the Arabic-language newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, last week. El-Sharif is indeed full of statements and declarations, but no chance remark will escape his lips. He demands that if we quote him mentioning Syria and Israel, that Syria not be mentioned second, and if quoted using the sacred name “Mubarak,” that we not forget to preface it with the title “President.”

Question: What impressed you most about Israelis? “Israel has a reputation in Arab states of having great capabilities, but when you come here you see that a lot of it is for show. You speak a lot of your superiority as a condition for preserving your security.

That’s a big mistake. The Mossad and GSS make three-four elite operations a year to impress the world, but that doesn’t cover up for its mistakes. We are full of mistakes, you are full of mistakes. I find nothing to make me feel inferior to you. I’m not saying I’m better, but don’t give me the impression that you are better.”

Question: You thought we were superman before you came?

“I had a more perfect image of Israelis. Of people who did not have the privilege of making mistakes, so they invested more in perfection. After two years I must say that you are normal people, just like the Egyptians and Syrians. Along with that, I am very appreciative of the fact that your leaders do not stand on formality, like ties for examples. This says they are very practical people.”

Question: We say that a lack of prudence leads to negligence. That is what apparently what led to Israel’s biggest fiasco, that we were surprised in 1973.

“The same culture prevailed in 1967. I wonder if this is a Jewish legacy or American influence, I still don’t know.”

Question: Speaking of the 1973 war, many of us don’t understand why Egypt claims victory. After all, Sinai remained in Israel’s hands and you lost 10,000 soldiers.

“The results of war are not measured by what you gain in battle. The determining factor is ultimately what you obtained in the diplomacy that accompanied the battle. From ’67 to ’73 we tried vainly to get Sinai back and never received an affirmative answer. The end of the war was the return of Sinai and Taba. That was a victory. And don’t say that you would have signed a peace agreement without a war.”

Among Ihab el-Sharif’s acquaintances are Likud members, left wing activists, secular people, Haredim, Christians and Moslems. He did not hesitate to go to Ghajar after a resident he did not know phoned and invited him; another time he took a trip to Halutza, after it was mentioned as possibly being swapped with the Palestinians (“a piece of desert I wouldn’t take even if you paid me 10,000 dollars”). The Israelis he admires most are Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin, Ron Pundak and deputy foreign minister Michael Melchior, whom he recently met.

He says he recently enjoyed attending a Jewish wedding in Jerusalem and expressed an interest in watching a circumcision ceremony. “I don’t believe there is any sector in Israel closed to me, except for the radical Right, which is of course not my fault. I even have good ties with army generals. They treat me very nicely.”

Question: The average Israeli dislikes Egypt, sometimes to the point of hostility. Do you feel this?

“Rarely, but it’s true. I don’t expect to be welcomed with open arms. After all, we have a history of problems.”

Question: Have you encountered any unpleasantness?

“I went to buy a radio on Ibn Gvirol Street in Tel Aviv. The salesman was a very nice guy. He gave me all the details I needed. In general, you Jews are good salesmen. At the end he asked me where I was from. I replied and in an instant, his attitude changed. As if he was facing a monster. He took two or three steps back, and it looked as if he couldn’t understand how it was he was even talking to me. I think the press plays a destructive role and makes people like him recoil from me the way he did.” Official Egypt has not yet calmed down from Avigdor Lieberman’s election statements, who spoke of bombing the Aswan dam if Egypt advanced forces in Sinai. Many Egyptians have since said often that the “defeat of 1967 will not be repeated.”

“A general has the right to speak of bombardments, but not a tourism or infrastructure minister,’ el-Sharif says. “If I were Lieberman or Ze’evi, I would ask the Egyptian embassy for a visa, go to Sinai and find a few answers to do something for tourism. For 20 years the Egyptians made Sinai a peaceful area drawing millions of tourists. Why do you think you have nothing to learn from us? Again it’s your sense of superiority. Instead of learning, you threaten us with bombing the dam.”

Question: How did you perceive Israel as a child?

“It was the enemy, the reason for all our economic and social ills. I was raised on the dream of Arab unity, which is, incidentally, our right, just as is American or European unity. It was Israel who got in the way and was stuck in the middle of our territorial contiguity.”

Question: Is it different today?

“Yes, because there is a reality that must be accepted. There is no reason to continue the state of war. But Arab unity has remained a dream.”

Question: From here it sometimes looks like your ideas of peace are not different essentially than those of your childhood.

“You look at the Egyptian press and say to yourselves, look, they’re raising their children to hate, but you don’t hear remarks like those of Avigdor Lieberman and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. To a large degree, the Egyptian press is a reaction to your statements. I am sorry that you only see what it is written there and not the root of the matter on your part.”

El-Sharif has a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, is an expert in political Islam, and a travel writer, who also did the photography for his four books. His pride is “Germany Today,” a travel book that two years ago won him a prize from the German government.

Question: Why is there such frequent use of Nazi symbols against Israel?

“This is a very complicated issue. There are certain people in Egypt who don’t understand exactly what happened there. They only know that it infuriates the Israelis. If people in Arab countries have no respect for the victims of the Holocaust, it’s not because of denial, but because they have no idea of the dimensions. They wants to aggravate the Israelis and know that if they draw Peres in Nazi uniform, they’ll achieve that.”

Question: In other words, it’s a matter of education.

“Correct. And it will take time. You can’t ask a simple man in the street in Asyut or Aleppo or Akaba to understand history the way intellectuals understand it. Europeans know about the Holocaust because they were responsible for it, but for us, it was certainly not our responsibility.”

Question: Why don’t Egyptian intellectuals or leaders not go to their people and say, “leave out the Holocaust.”

“We have a free press, it began back in Sadat’s time, and every day there is some sort of exaggerated statement or another.”

Question: You claim to have a free press, but in the last two years you’ve closed two newspapers because they crossed a political red line.

“Every regime has red lines, more or less. You outlawed the Kach movement and you would obviously not let neo-Nazis be active among Israeli Arabs. Don’t forget the issue of MKs Azmi Bishara and Assam Mahoul.”

Question: But your silence is encouragement.

“The government cannot take steps against a newspaper for anti-Israeli ads in such a difficult times. Everyday people see on television horrible acts against the Palestinians. If a journalist who attacked the Holocaust were arrested, he’d say: ‘Look what goes on in the territories, am I to blame? Go take action against those who are killing Palestinians.” […]

Question: Is there any possibility that Azzam Azzam will be released in exchange for Egyptian security prisoners in Israeli prisons?

“Israel must be the one to raise this proposal, not us. So far it hasn’t. If it does, I will relay it to Cairo. The impression in Israel, that we are not fair and that we fabricated the Azzam Azzam issue, is completely erroneous. I’m not at all certain that Azzam did not commit what he is accused of. After all, he is a regular person, not a senior public figure. Egypt has no reason to accuse a simple Israeli Druze citizen, unless he actually did what he is said to have done.” […]

Mohammed Bassiouny’s recall in November was one of the lowest points in Israel’s relations with Egypt. Symbolically, this was a blow to Israel, but the Egyptians too lost a precious asset. In his quiet way, Bassiouny, from his home in Herzliya Pituah and his office in Tel Aviv, developed a web of contacts built up in 18 years that made him an Egyptian expert on Israel.

Since his recall, Dr. el-Sharif heads the Egyptian delegation. He does the ambassador’s work, just without the title. Most of his work is meeting with different Israelis, a lot of them Israeli Arabs. Every day he sends a report to Cairo on what he’s learned. “The meetings are not just collecting information, but building trust and mutual appreciation,” he says.” […]

Question: Do you believe there will be an ambassador here in the next few months?

“Am ambassador could arrive within two weeks. You must withdraw your army from the illegal positions it has seized, renew the peace process and violence between the two sides must stop.”

Of life in Bassiouny’s shadow, el-Sharif says: “I was number two to an ambassador who never had a number two. No one but him had any contact with Israelis, since the Israelis always said ‘only Bassiouny.’ No one knows that every day we had team meetings of three to five hours. Every day. He never hid a thing from the team. Every word he sent to Cairo, he showed me. After every important meeting we’d meet and he’d update us on the details. That is why, 24 hours after he left, I could take matters into my hands without feeling lost. For ten months I was with him every moment.”

El-Sharif was born in Cairo to a family originally from the Asyut area. His father was a deputy minister and still writes and translates at age 87. He is married to Asma, who lives with him in Ramat Aviv. Their two daughters, one’s who finished high school and the other, aged five, remain in Cairo.

He has a Masters degree from Paris University, where he specialized in the Iranian revolution. In addition to his doctorate, he has a French degree in public administration, a diploma in crisis management from Upsala University in Sweden and another diploma in diplomacy from Paris University. He was second secretary in Damascus in 1994.

“I am one of the few here who’ve had the chance to be here and there [Syria],” he says. “Among both sides I had the same feeling: great curiosity to know what’s on the other side. Both sides find it mysterious.

It’s important for you to know that the distance is not as great as you think. The gap between Syria and Israel is smaller than that between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Question: So where is the problem?

“You have to understand the Syrian mentality. It’s not a question of negotiations. Their land is conquered and they want back exactly what they lost. What do you prefer, to keep the Golan by force and continue with the policy of closed borders, or understand that Israel will be stronger without the Golan, thanks to its relations with Syria?”

Question: How would it benefit Israel to have peace with Syria?

“It is nine time larger than Israel so it has a lot to give you. Water, for example. Or the option of a land passage to Europe. Believe me, they don’t want to destroy the State of Israel. That was a slogan for many in the past who are gone today. On the other hand, you won’t have an instant love story. We have a problem with extremists on one side and dreamers on the other. I am not referring to Shimon Peres, who is a practical man.” […]

Question: If you had information that the Hamas agents who were killed at the Nablus headquarters were planning a terror attack, what would you have done in Sharon’s place?

“The question is whether you are a civilized country or not. Are you an underground or a guerrilla, or a state of institutions and laws? The moment you are a state, and of course you are, the responsibility is on your shoulders. You must not be like those organizations. No judge in the world would find it acceptable that an army with a chief of staff and a defense minister and a government decides to kill people on the basis of secret GSS reports. For a country, that is not sufficient proof.”

Question: What’s the solution?

“First, to realize that killing these people may placate Sharon supporters, but is a bad recipe for shaping your image. In my opinion, the tactical answer is responsible restraint and true enforcement using security means. If someone gets through all the barriers with a bomb, that means the means are insufficient. If these people are guilty, you must arrest them, bring them to trial and furnish proof. They are still not a state yet. Your approach is that of a war of gangs. For that reason the international community does not support you.”

Question: What should the Palestinians do?

“I’m not suggesting that they carry out terror attacks and I don’t think Arafat is pushing for that. But these area acts by people who’ve lost hope.”

Question: What should Arafat do?

“Return to negotiations. The problem is that the other side needs help.

He has no promises from your side. If you don’t give him the tools, he cannot demand of anyone to lay down their arms. Sharon accedes to his extremists, and he is a head of state. Why should Arafat not have the same right? You’re asking him for the impossible. He has to make a 100% effort, but he cannot ensure 100% results. And if you expect this of him, you will have a new Greek tragedy here.”

Question: Is a solution within reach?

“Absolutely. It’s not a dream. We are not lacking people of courage, people who made decisions like Begin and Sadat.”

Question: What is Egypt’s red line that it won’t be able to ignore in the present conflict?

“I have no idea. That is the president’s decision and I am here to follow his orders.”

Question: Are you optimistic?

“Yes, certainly. I’ve met regular people from the most distant villages in various countries. I’ve seen coins from all sides, not by sitting in offices behind a guard. And I say there is good foundation for being optimistic. That is the spirit of the Sorbonne.”

This interview ran in Maariv on August 24, 2001

Rabbis for Human Rights Slam Israel in Durban and Raise Funds for the PLO

While more than twenty Jewish organizations organized a lobby to support Israel at the special UN Anti-Racism conference that had been convened in Durban, South Africa in Durban, the Ford Foundation financed one Jewish group, The Rabbis for Human Rights, to join forces with the PLO to support the idea that Israel, was indeed, an apartheid, racist regime. (The Rabbis for Human Rights is generally funded through the Shefa Fund in Philadelphia and the New Israel Fund in Washington.)

The Rabbis for Human Rights delegate to the Durban conference, Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, field director for the Rabbis for Human Rights, confirmed in a taped interview that he had participated in the preparatory conference to Durban in Geneva, together with an organization known as LAW, the Palestinian legal lobby which takes the position that the UN must have Israel declared as a racist State. LAW is also helping to prepare the legal case in Belgium for the indictment of Ariel Sharon as a war criminal.

According to the “LAW” charter, there is an “institutionalized system of racism” in Israel.

Yet Rabbi Milgrom stated in a taped interview prior to his departure for Durban that”if you ask any Israeli who has been here for a while,people will admit there is racism in the policies of the State of Israel”.

Reached by telephone during the Durban conference, Rabbi Milgrom confirmed that he appeared on a panel discussion in Durban with LAW and that the Rabbi had he appeared before a throng of more than 1,000 Moslems in the main mosque of Durban. At the mosque, Milgrom appeared together with the well known Israeli anti-Zionist Dr. Uri Davis, the author of a new book “Israel An Apartheid State”.

In Durban, the Rabbis for Human Rights provided therefore provided Jewish credibillity to the LAW organization and to Dr. Uri Davis.

Prior to the Rabbis for Human Rights participation in the Durban conference, these Rabbis raised more than $70,000 to distribute to Arab farmers, claiming that the Jewish communities have upooted 30,000 olive trees from Arab farming villages in the Samaria region, thereby depriving the Arab villagers of a way of to make a living.

The Rabbis for Human Rights have launched a campaign to replant new olive trees for Palestinians, to “support Palestinian Families who have been suffering income losses for the duration of up to 9 years till the young olive trees reach maturity”, and “to market olive oil bought from Palestinians, who often cannot sell their oil due to closures”.

To promote this “Olive Tree campaign” the Rabbis For Human Rights placed included a full page ad in April in the New York Times which was signed by more than 300 people from around the world.

In a taped interview, Rabbi Ascherman, said the costs of the ad were covered by the ECF, the Economic Cooperation Foundation that was founded by Dr. Yose Beilin. The Shefa Fund in Philadelphia,however, has contradicted Ascherman and instead reported that the cost of the ad in the Times was raised entirely by the Shefa Fund itself.

The Rabbis for Human Rights have been hard pressed to provide documentation for their claim that Jews in nearby towns have made it a policy to raid Arab villages to chop down thousands of their olive trees.

The Rabbis for Human Rights cannot provide even one eyewitness or even one police complaint, let alone 30,000 police complaints.

Interesting to note that the 30,000 figure is the identical figure of uprooted trees that is provided by the PLO.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the director of the Rabbis for Human Rights, says that he relies on Palestinian reports of mass olive tree uprooting.

In a taped interview, Ascherman mentioned that monies raised to plant trees will not go to plant trees at this time, since the planting season starts in December.

When Ascherman was asked about how the “Rabbis for Human Rights” determine which Palestinian families should get the money for the loss that they have incurred from the losses of their olive trees, Ascherman had a clear answer The Rabbis for Human Rights rely on “Palestinian partner” organizations to figure out which families should receive their support.

One of the Palestinian partner organizations stated on the record that monies that they receive from the Rabbis for Human Rights are allocated to families of “martyrs” who have been killed over the past ten months..

Ascherman also indicated that when PA representatives come to RHR and ask for money for families, that he doles it out to them because he trusts them.

Like any other non-profit organization, the Rabbis for Human Rights will be required to hand over detailed reports of its expenditure of funds to Israel’s “registrar of non-profit organizations”.

It will be instructive to review the list of Arab families who receive funding from these Rabbis to see which families are indeed peaceful farmers and which families are active combatants against Israel.

The Olive Tree Campaign is not the first time that the Rabbis for Human Rights have relied upon questionable Palestinian Arab sources to provide exacerbated figures of human rights abuse to the public.

In 1999, these same Rabbis convened a press conference to announce that Israel intended to demolish 6,000 homes.

When the Rabbis were asked to produce their source for such a claim, they mentioned Jerusalem city councilman Meir Margolit and the PLO-affiliated Land Defence Committee.

While Margolit claimed that he was referring to the number of illegal Arab homes in the Jerusalem region and NOT to the number of homes that Israel was going to demolish, the Land Defence Committee stuck by its story. The Rabbis for Human Rights reaffirmed that Israel had indeed intended to destroy 6,000 homes. The RHR reaffirming the 6,000 figure appears on the September 14, 1999 issue of Israel Resource Review.

Ascherman now claims that he reduced the figure to 2,000 home demolition orders. Yet the record shows Ascherman never reduced his claim and that Israel never issued 2,000 home demolition orders. Meanwhile the Washington Post and Amnesty International gave credence to the claim of the Rabbis for Human Rights that Israel indeed intended to destroy 6,000 homes.

By claiming that Israelis have destroyed 30,000 Arab owned olive trees and that Israel intends to demolish 6,000 homes, the Rabbis for Human Rights have knowingly borne false witness against the state, land and people of Israel.

Is the Temple Mount in Danger of Collapse?

Israel fears that Temple Mount retaining wall will collapse and that the region will burn. The problem: Aerial photographs of Temple Mount have proven that al-Aqsa Mosque’s southern wall is inclined to one side. The reasons: Wear-and-tear over time, ground shifting and renovations being carried out by Waqf. The proposal: Israel proposed to assist in renovating wall but Waqf has yet to respond. Waqf: “If wall collapses, there will be general war.” The municipality: “We are helpless.”

Experts from Israel and other countries around the world have recently determined that one of Al-Aqsa Mosque’s retaining walls is in danger of collapse. They claim that if renovations are not carried out immediately at the site, the wall is liable to collapse. Such an event, if it happens, has a vast potential for destruction and would even be liable – beyond direct losses to life that would be caused by a collapse – to ignite the Middle East. The Arab world would likely claim that the wall’s collapse was the result of a religious-Israeli plot to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount and build the Third Temple in their place.

The experts’ determination was made on the basis of a precise study of aerial photographs of the Temple Mount. The experts were asked by the municipality and the police to examine the aerial photographs and render an opinion in wake of the construction and renovations which Islamic Waqf personnel have carried out in the Temple Mount area. While they were examining the maps, the experts were astounded to discover that Al-Aqsa Mosque’s southern wall was bulging outwards, toward the south. The Mosque’s southern wall is part of the Old City wall and overlooks the village of Silwan and David’s City. Israeli archaeologists have been carrying out excavations at the foot of the several-dozen-meter long wall since 1967. In Israel, it is claimed that there is no connection between the excavations – which are being carried out at a reasonable distance from the wall itself – and the inclination of the wall. However, Israel fears that the Palestinians are liable to exploit the affair in order to claim that it is the archaeological excavations which are damaging the wall and threatening to bring about its collapse.

Since 1967, the Palestinians have been accusing Israel of excavating under the Temple Mount with the goal of undermining the foundations of the mosques and bringing about their collapse; this coming, in their words, in the framework of a plot by Jewish extremists to destroy the mosques and rebuild the Temple in their place. The Palestinian mufti of eastern Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrema Sabri recently warned that any attempt to infringe on the status quo on the Temple Mount would lead to all-out war in the Middle East.

The experts’ opinion was recently passed on to the Islamic Waqf in eastern Jerusalem and the Jordanian government. The Waqf administration – which is subordinate to the Jordanian government – reported the matter to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Israel offered to assist the Waqf in renovating the wall in order to prevent its collapse but has not, as of yet, met with any response to its offer. Apparently, the Waqf would prefer to carry out the renovations without Israeli involvement. One of the possibilities is Jordanian, Egyptian and Moroccan experts will soon tour the Temple Mount in order to study the issue and recommend ways to deal with the problem.

At this stage, it is not clear what exactly has caused the Mosque’s wall to bulge. One assessment is that it is due to wear-and-tear over time and various ground movements which have occurred over the centuries. The experts do not rule out the possibility the extensive construction being carried out by the Islamic Waqf on the Temple Mount, including the establishment of a new underground mosque – El Marwani (which Jews call Solomon’s Stables) – have also contributed to the wall’s inclination. They claim that the presence of tens of thousands of worshippers in the Mosque, mainly during Ramadan, is pressing on the wall’s stones and causing them to deviate. Shalom Goldstein, the municipality’s adviser on Arab affairs, says that, “It is known to the municipality that the wall has a ‘belly’ which attests to the fact that it is indeed inclining to one side. However the municipality is helpless and cannot deal with the situation since it lacks a statutory position on the Temple Mount. Police officers go there. We can only watch from outside and sound warnings but beyond that, we have no authority.”

This article ran in Yediot Aharonot on 17th August

Remembering Hillel Kook: A Giant of 20th century Jewish history

One of the drawbacks of longevity is that when that person dies, his impact on history may be lost on a new generation who did not know who he was. Such is the case with Hillel Kook, who died on August 18, 2001, at the age of 87.

On my 37th birthday, on August 31st, 1987, the day that I initiated a news agency, “Israel Resource”, I interviewed and consulted with Hillel Kook, an older maverick who had made an imprint on Jewish and Zionist history. Hillel was introduced to me by the Jerusalem Post’s late Louis Rappaport, whose book, published posthumously, “Shake Heaven and Earth: Peter Bergson and The Struggle to Rescue The Jews of Europe”, by Gefen Publishers in Jerusalem, chronciled the amazing feats of this man.

At a time when so many books and museums have emerged of late concerning the destruction of European Jewry and its aftermath, Hillel Kook was one person which epitomized the question of that era: Could more have been done to save Jewry from the inferno of the death camps?

Hillel was the scion of the great Rabbinic Kook family. He made his mark on history when he arrived in the US in the late 1930’s, to eventually assume the name of Peter Bergson, with the initial task of organizing a Jewish army for Palestine, in coordination with Z’ev Jabotinsky.

With the outbreak of the war and the gradual strangulation of the Jews under Nazi conquest in Europe, Kook/Bergson changed his goal to galvanzing a rescue and relief operation for Jews, to use any means possible to save Jews from Hitler’s clutches.

The late Louis Rapaport, a journalist who spent more than 18 years with the Jerusalem Post until his untimely passing in 1991, spent many years chronicalling the untold efforts made by Bergson, whom Rapaport rightfully descibed as a man of with tremendous organizational agility, who operated under the worst of hostile circumstances.

The strains on Bergson were not only because of Hitler and the reports that streamed across the Atlantic about the mass murder of Jews. ( Bergson never liked to use the term “holocaust”, which connoted a Greek perception of sacrfice on an alter. Bergson preferred to simple describe what happened as “mass murder”)

In his book, Rapaport published previously unseen documentation which showed how Bergson’s self-appointed task of organizing rescue efforts for Jews in Europe were hampered and almost crippled by Jewish organizations in the US, by Jewish officials in the US government and even in the Zionist leadership of the time. US titular leader Rabbi Stephen Wise and the pre-eminent Zionist of the time, Nahum Goldman, joined forces with US congressman Sol Bloom and FDR confidante Felix Frankfurter to carry out a campaign to besmirch and denigrade Bergson’s efforts, which all four thought to be counterproductive to the two goals at hand: the defeat of Nazi Germany and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Rapaport obtained previously classified testimony which Bergson gave to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by New York Jewish congressman Sol Bloom, in which Bloom grilled Bergson and intimated that Bergson’s activities were both un-American and anti-Zionist.

Undaunted, Bergson’s tenacity of purpose led him to form an effective non-Jewish coalition in the US Congress that kept the issue of the Jewish plight in Europe on the agenda of the US media and constantly in front of world opinion.

The concrete accomplishment of what came to be known as the “Bergsonite lobby” in the US congress was the creation, in 1944, of the WRB, the War Refugee Board, which was credited with saving thousands of Jews in the waning days of World War II.

In a special citation from the US congress that Rapaport uncovered, both houses of congress gave direct and deserved credit to the activities of Peter Bergson which resulted in the creation of the War Refugee Board.

The work of Hillel Kook, operating under the name of Peter Bergson, remained virtually unknown and unrecognized for a full generation.

Jewish and Zionist organizations who had turned their backs on his efforts never wanted to admit that they had made an error in judgment.

Yet when I met Hillel he felt vindicated, with a good sense of humor.

It turned out that the late former US justice Arthur Goldberg and the eminent Zionist leader, Prof. Arthur Hertzberg, established a commission of inquiry in the early 1980’s to determine if Jews in the US could have done more to rescue European Jewry. Their conclusion was yes. Goldberg and Hertzberg took the opportunity to specifically cite the efforts of Hillel Kook, alias Peter Bergson.

The question that Goldberg and Hertzberg posed and the question that those who take a moment to remember Hillel Kook will ask:

How many more Jews could have been rescued if a War Refugee Board had been established in 1942, instead of 1944. After all, Jewish organizations and the US state department had already been officially informed by mid-1942 that two million Jews had already been murdered.

In my last conversation with Louis Rapaport, shortly before his untimely death in 1991, Rapaport emotionally expressed to me his worry that his chronicle of Hillel Kook’s life would not come out during Kook’s lifetime, and may never ever be published, leaving another generation with little knowledge of the exploits of Peter Bergson.

Well, the book came out during Kook’s lifetime, but not during the life of Rapaport.

Hillel Kook had a message: learn from history and what one man can do to affect it. He had specific advice about the attitude of Jewish organizations to issues of consequence and crisis in the Jewish people: Basically, not to trust them, because their survival as organizations always comes before the survival of far-away Jews.

The Economic Cooperation Foundation and Dr. Yossi Beilin

The ECF was founded ten years ago by Yossi Beilin, and initially registered at the address of Dr. Yair Hirschberg. The ECF charter states that its purpose is to facilitate the intervention of the EU in any future peace process between Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians. Not assistance. Intervention.

The ECF, working with the funding of the EU, was the initiator of the Oslo peace talks, as well as the informal understanding that was reached between Yossi Beilin and Abu Mazen.

Yossi Beilin, who has left the Israeli government and Knesset, now introduces himself as a senior researcher within the ECF.

That is despite the fact that ECF records show that Beilin resigned from the ECF back in 1995.

Perhaps that is why Beilin opened a second ECF office, not far from the registered ECF office.

It may soon be the job of the Israel Register of Non-Profit Organizations to determine if Beilin is keeping a system of double-book keeping.

The ECF coordinates a forum for about forty NGO’s that are involved with any and all aspects of the negotiating process with the PLO. ECF provides these 35 to 40 NGO’s with technical support and fund-raising services, according to Aviv Is-Am, the Project Director of the ECF. Under Beilin’s direction and guidance, these NGO’s have been meeting all through the current intifada and to work with Palestinian counterparts.

Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, field director for “Rabbis for Human Rights” and liaison between the “Rabbis for Human Rights” and the ECF, stated that that these meetings have provided a “moral boost for the peace activists”

Beilin uses this forum as a way to consolidate EU funding for NGO’s. From documents that we have examined, we learn that the EU uses Beilin as a referent for funding.

Not surprisingly, the ECF “Forum for Peace NGO’s” are not on the PNGO (Palestinian NGO) black list of banned Israeli NGO’s.

According to Avivit Ish-Am, the ECF is supported by donations world wide, With donations coming in from Belgium, Denmark, Britain, Holland and Italy.

One of the groups supporting the ECF is the “Christian foundation of Holland”, which also sponsors “LAW”, the virulent lobby of the PLO.

Avivit Ish-Am reports that foundations often give money to the ECF destined for Palestinian causes, because they trust that the ECF to hand over the money to the right people. This is a transparent move designed to prevent money from winding up in questionable P.A. accounts.

In this respect, Beilin actually plays a role that the P.A. was supposed to play for the areas under P.A. control.

The ECF also receives money from foundations in Europe, the United States and Canada. Among the foundations sponsoring the ECF are the Ford Foundation, which maintains close contact with the US state department, and with the Kahanoff Foundation, which is associated with the Hertzog family in Canada.

While ECF is registered as an Israeli organization and doesn’t have offices outside of Israel, the ECF works closely with the Israel office of the Ebert Foundation, the political foundation of the SPD leftwing political party in Germany.

The ECF works on four general issues. The first is policy planning and policy Implementation. This section is concerned with issues respective to a permanent status with the Palestinians. They work on a long term basis. They deal with planning matters concerning refugees, security, settlements, border, economy and Jerusalem.

The second issue is crisis management and crisis prevention. In this respect, the ECF acts as a go-between with leaders of both sides and act as messengers between Israel and the Palestinians. [At a time of open war and conflict, one wonders whether a private foundation should play such a role.]

In this context, the ECF was actively involved in wording the Mitchell Report, which places the blame for the outbreak of rioting entirely on the shoulders on the state of Israel, even if the Mitchell report did not specifically note that Arik Sharon’s Temple Mount visit did not spark the violence. It should be noted that the Mitchell Report was written while Beilin was the Israel Minister of Justice, and submitted after the Barak defeat to the Sharon administration.

The third issue is permanent status planning, designed to build a structure to build and maintain a peace after agreements are signed between Israel and the Palestinians.

The ECF is adapting European models of cross country cooperation for Israel and the Palestinians. One example is the 1999 “Cooperation North” between the municipalities of 70 towns in the Haifa and Jenin area. This aspect of the ECF program is funded by the German government.

The fourth issue that the ECF deals with is the already mentioned internal issue of Israeli Arabs. In working with Palestinians and Jordanians, they are working on a long term plan on how fully include Israeli Arabs into Israeli society. The ECF works as an advisor to the head of the municipal organization of the Arabs in Israel, the mayor of Jaffa and head of the monitoring group of Arabs in Israel.

Asked if there was talk about resuming peace talks within Palestinian society, Yossi Beilin acknowledged that he was instigating negotiations on all levels, while admitting that there was no talk about peace in Arab society and that no mirror image in Palestinian society exists to parallel Israeli peace activism.

Beilin blamed this on the kind of is conscious that peace as a subject can not develop with the kind of political system that the Palestinians have. Nevertheless he thinks that it is possible to simply ignore the fact that there is no corresponding political discourse in the Palestinian society and still no push for peace.

Beilin said that this does not prevent him from working on these peace initiatives, together with Avraham Burg, who was a founding and still active member of ECF, and with Shimon Peres. Burg is the leading candidate to win the race for Labor Party leadership on September 4th.

Sometimes, Beilin says, the work is done in a bilateral fashion between Burg and Beilin, sometimes among the three of them, with Burg, Beilin and Peres making decisions.

Yossi Beilin’s assessment is that it is unrealistic to wait for a cease fire to start talks. Beilin openly states that he does not want the Israel Labor Party to wait for a cease fire and that he will continue to negotiate, even though terror attacks may continue

Yossi Beilin’s perspective is that while negotiations may be halted for some time, getting them back on the negotiating table is the most important thing to achieve for him at the moment. And Beilin says that the politics of an Israeli government policy that there should be no negotiation under fire, are not relevant to him.

Asked about what will happen if Yassir Arafat builds a unity government with Hamas and Jihad, Beilin simply states that such a government is artificial and may make things a bit difficult, but that this would certainly not prevent him from continuing his cooperation with the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.

Tenacity is the middle name of Yossi Beilin.

While violence rages back home, Canada may host Mideast lawmakers

Unable to stop the drift toward war in their native land, Israeli and Palestinian legislators hope to be more successful in the quieter atmosphere of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

A Canadian parliamentary committee is making arrangements for the Halifax Peace Forum, which is expected to bring together six representatives each from the Israeli Knesset, the Palestinian legislative council and the Canadian Parliament for talks in the Nova Scotian capital from October 14 to 16.

The initiative was launched last January by Bill Casey, a member of Canada’s Parliament from the Conservative Party, shortly after he approached Israeli and Palestinian diplomats stationed in Canada.

Both representatives told him that Canada should do more to promote peace in the Middle East.

“Both sides said the same thing, and that really impressed me,” Casey told JTA. “They said that Canada could help facilitate and help build bridges that could lead to peace. They said that Canada was in a unique position, that Canada could do something that other countries couldn’t do.”

Casey discussed the idea of a forum with Liberal Party Parliament member Bill Graham, chair of a parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, and quickly won his support.

Then Casey, from Nova Scotia, approached House Speaker Peter Milliken, who wrote to his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts asking for their support and help in coordinating invitations to legislators from each side.

Accompanying Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley on a diplomatic tour of the Middle East in May, Casey delivered the letters to Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg and Ahmed Karia, speaker of the Palestinian legislative council. Both responded enthusiastically.

Casey also met with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, winning their support for the initiative.

Both sides have confirmed their desire to meet in Halifax in October despite the escalating Mideast violence, said Mark Entwistle, the veteran Canadian diplomat who is the forum’s executive director.

“So far we have full green lights from the Israelis and the Palestinians in terms of wanting to have this opportunity kept open,” he said. “So that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

Entwistle, who was press secretary to former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, said the steering committee is attempting to formulate a “smart agenda” to meet the needs of both sides.

He said the forum would have two main objectives: to build a new line of communication between Israelis and Palestinians and to discuss how Canada can play a more constructive role in the region.

“What makes this interesting is that it’s a political meeting between elected legislators,” Entwistle said. “But it’s important to mention that it’s not meant as a negotiating session. There are negotiators elsewhere.”

“Our goals are very modest,” Casey said. “We want to establish a dialogue. We want to learn from them what the issues are and what the best role for Canada might be.”

David Cooper, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Ottawa, expressed support for the Canadian initiative.

“We believe in dialogue, and we feel it’s something that won’t hurt,” he said. “Also, it will give Canadian parliamentarians some insight into the complex problems of the Middle East.”

Egyptian and Jordanian ambassadors have praised the idea, Casey said.

“The Canadian people, much more than the government, are getting behind this. They’re volunteering to help in so many ways,” Casey said. “We’ve received offers from the Jewish community, the Arab community and many others.”

Among the offers of hospitality is one from Nova Scotia’s Jewish Lieutenant Governor Myra Freeman, who is planning to hold a reception for the visitors at Government House in Halifax.

“From the Canadian side, we’re delighted to offer a safe and neutral venue,” Entwistle said. “We’ll take it one day at a time as we organize it.”

This ran on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wire on August 6, 2001

After They Have Destroyed Everything We Built”

President Arafat addressing the Arab Foreign Ministers in Cairo:ilt”

“We need a more firm stand confronting the Israelis after they have destroyed every thing we built”

Cairo, August 23rd, WAFA (Official Palestine news agency), President Yasser Arafat called, yesterday, for a more firm stand confronting the Israeli aggression after they have destroyed every thing the Palestinians have built over the years.

Addressing the Arab Foreign Ministers, with the participation of Sheikh Hamad Ben Jasim, the chairman of the current urgent summit, Mr. Amro Musa the Secretary General of the Arab League, Abdulelah Alkhatib the head of the Arab Follow up Committee, and several Arab Foreign Ministers, H.E. emphasized the importance of setting united Arab strategic plans in every direction, in order to oblige the UN Security Council, the International Community and the UN General Assembly to carry out their duties and liabilities, towards this region, stressing the need for them to fulfill their duties before it is too late.

He added that we are peace seekers and we seek a permanent, just, right and acceptable peace, which can be achieved by the Israeli withdrawal to the June 4th 1967 borders, and recognizing truly the Palestinian rights.

He also said that the breaches committed by Israel are bold violations to the agreements signed between us in Oslo, emphasizing that our nation will not be defeated no matter how much the Israeli war machine is powerful, for we will struggle until we achieve our national goals and internationally approved and recognized rights, of establishing our independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

We thank “IMRA” for calling this to our attention

Liberating Jerusalem Again . . . And Doing it Right

A number of years ago during the early months of the first Intifada, David Krause, who was then police commissioner, briefed the commanders of police units deployed throughout Jerusalem. He ended the briefing with a sentence that has remained engraved in the memories of all who were there – “We are now going to liberate Jerusalem once again.”

In the decade since that assertion was issued, Israel did not liberate Jerusalem “once again.” In fact the Palestinians succeeded in creating in the city’s Arab districts their own special reality – a reality seen by many as trappings of sovereignty. Orient House, which was shut down over the weekend, was only the flagship of this reality. Alongside Orient House, there were security agencies and various civilian institutions covering a wide range of fields – education, housing, culture, transport, mortgage banking, propaganda, and media. All of these agencies and institutions were directly or indirectly linked to the Palestinian Authority, which openly declined to acknowledge the commitments it had made, under the terms of the Oslo accords, to avoid any activities in Jerusalem.

All Israeli governments from 1967 onward have allowed the continued existence of this “black market” of sovereignty – a form that Ehud Barak’s government was prepared to “launder.” This conveyed a clear message to the residents of East Jerusalem – “Israeli sovereignty and rule in East Jerusalem are temporary. Israel’s presence in the eastern part of the city is nearing its end and will soon be replaced by a new regime.”

The measures that the Israeli government adopted last Thursday are intended, for the first time in 12 years, to send an entirely different message. The measures were meant to teach PA Chairman Yasser Arafat a lesson and to demonstrate graphically to the Palestinians that they might end up losing a great deal.

Furthermore, the actions of the government caught the Palestinians completely off guard and they were implemented without any clashes or injuries. The measures were widely supported by the Israeli public and drew only token protests from the international community.

However, the chief significance of these actions is that they have the potential to initiate a major change in Jerusalem and establish the groundwork that will ensure, to the satisfaction of both the State of Israel and the Jewish people, that Jerusalem will remain a united city under Israeli sovereignty. For the first time in years, instead of asking whether Jerusalem will be divided, and if so by whom, one can now turn that question inside out and ask something that sounds far more sensible: “Will Jerusalem be reunited, and if so when and by whom?” However, the golden opportunity now on Israel’s doorstep could be missed if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon satisfies himself with merely closing down Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem. If he probes the Jerusalem issue deeply, Sharon will discover that for years, many government ministries have treated the eastern section of the city as if it were truly foreign territory.

One can cite, for example, the routine monitoring activities of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (in its efforts to protect consumers) or of the Israel Police’s traffic department. These two agencies operate these activities throughout Israel, but not in East Jerusalem. One could also cite the horrendous shortages in East Jerusalem in the fields of health care, education, transport and other services, and especially infrastructure. Granted, the independent Palestinian institutions established in East Jerusalem were created against the backdrop of Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty in Jerusalem too.

Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that the emergence of these institutions must also be attributed to the vacuum produced in the wake of the withdrawal of parallel Israeli services – services that should be restored to East Jerusalem now. There are a number of individuals who will very quickly discover that the independent Palestinian institutions will return to East Jerusalem through the back door. There are those, for example, who think it sufficient to distance the personnel of Jibril Rajoub, the PA’s head of preventive security on the West Bank, from Jerusalem, without seeing to it that the Israeli police step up their efforts to serve the citizens of the city better.

There are those who think it enough to shut off the cash faucets of Palestinian housing foundations without seeing to it that housing projects are built for the Arabs of East Jerusalem. There are those who think it sufficient to shut down the social services department in Orient House without seeing to it that mother and infant care clinics, health maintenance organization clinics, centres for the care of the elderly, youth clubs and schools in the Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem are set up.

There is a two-fold justification for extensive investment in East Jerusalem. First, every Israeli government has been committed to the principle of such investment although it has avoided implementing it as a principle. Those who want to exercise sovereignty over Jerusalem cannot settle for a limited demonstration of muscle-flexing in front of Orient House and for an exclusive concern with only one segment of Jerusalem’s population. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot argue that Israel’s sovereignty and responsibility extend to all of East Jerusalem and at the same time refuse to recognize – and refusing to do anything about – the enormous gap between East and West Jerusalem in terms of services and investment in those services. Investment in East Jerusalem is first and foremost a moral commitment.

Yet there is another side to the coin. In the past decade, Israel’s governments have failed to acknowledge their obligation to remove every trace of the PA and its branches from East Jerusalem. Those who are sincerely bent on attaining this goal must provide an alternative to the various services that the PA and its institutions have been delivering over the last few years to East Jerusalemites.

The negotiations that the Barak government conducted over a final status arrangement for Jerusalem fell through – however, those negotiations did establish the starting point for all future negotiations with the Palestinians. There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Palestinians would definitely prefer to use the partition plan that was proposed by former American president Bill Clinton, and which was accepted by the Barak government as the basis for future talks with Israel over Jerusalem. Sharon’s recent actions are an attempt to establish a new starting point for the negotiations over Jerusalem. This is a step in the right direction but it must be accompanied by other measures as well.

This article ran on August 16, 2001 in HaAretz

Zionist Patriotism Revived

The recent Palestinian violence has produced at least one positive result: the reawakening of Jewish patriotism, namely, Zionism. Whereas until recently people gave voice here to post-Zionist and global village ideas and said that Zionism had become obsolete, the recent incidents in the territories and among the Israeli Arabs have revived Zionism, rendering it once again relevant to our day and age as well. Zionism has been taken out of the civics classroom and has returned to being a relevant political position. It is difficult not to discern this in our daily lives: the overwhelming support for the national unity government and of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a dramatic cooling of the religious, ethnic and social rifts, the impressive fortitude displayed in the face of the frequent suicide bombing attacks, the top TV ratings that the broadcasts of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Maccabiah games commanded, citizens demanding to perform reserve military duty, and even an attack by the pillars of the establishment, such as Professor Shlomo Avineri, against Ha’aretz for being post-Zionist

This is classic Zionism, a Zionism of tenacity, a long-term self-perception based on a sense of having no other choice and a willingness for self-sacrifice.

In light of the circumstances, Zionism has come once again to be a means of self-definition for Israelis and Jews who, until a year ago, considered themselves to be citizens of the world.

The attacks from without, particularly from the direction of Europe, have also contributed to the reawakening of Zionism. The intention to revive the equation of Zionism with racism and the nefarious attacks against Israel have produced the opposite effect from the one desired by Europe: pushed into the corner, an increased spirit of davka [“in your face,” despite everything – INT], and the bolstering of Jewish patriotism have arisen. Just as in the past the hatred of Jews was a major catalyst for Zionism, the same has happened now when Palestinian patriotism is legitimate in Europe while Jewish patriotism is perceived as colonialism, condescension and an absurdity.

Patriotism, as opposed to nationalism, is immensely important for strengthening the solidarity of any society. But in the last decade in Israel there has been the feeling that Jewish patriotism is something that had become obsolete, a dark and even embarrassing phenomenon. The result was the collapse of the solidarity of the collective in our society, and a prevailing sense of “what do I care.” Now, when Islamic suicide bombers reach everywhere and the threat is the same to everyone, the sense that we are all in the same boat is bolstered, hence the weakening of individualistic motifs in social discourse and a return to collective patterns.

This sociological process is deeper than we may think. Even a return to negotiations will not change it, since it is now clear to us that neither the return of territories nor any other magical solution will be sufficient to reach a peaceful arrangement.

This is an interesting paradox: Jewish patriotism is what created and fired Palestinian patriotism throughout the entire 20th century, it challenged it and forced it to respond. Now the picture is inverted: it is actually the Palestinian patriotism that is fueling and rebuilding Jewish patriotism. Ahmed Yassin and Yasser Arafat may not like it, but they have indirectly made a significant contribution to the fortitude of the State of Israel’s society in the future, which should be of more interest to us than security considerations.

An awakening of this sort is liable to bear with it some disadvantages, such as a single opinion and an aversion to the other, but it is reasonable to believe that the democratic Israeli consciousness will not allow that to happen. In any event, being aware of this sociological change taking place before our very eyes could help produce a new and original cohesive to heal the rifts that were created in our society in the last number of years. These bitter times may ultimately come to produce a positive result.

This article ran on Friday, August 10 in Yediot Aharonot