One Palestinian journalist’s meditation on being forced to pay for Haaretz, the only paper he can rely on, but one that also espouses a nationalist ideology he cannot accept. ‘I’m fated to be a reluctant reader — and a reluctant citizen.’

By Hakim Bishara

It’s morning and I desperately need the news. Where I live, one needs to know what awful things to expect outdoors before leaving the house. I often think of those people who have a favorite newspaper of choice. They develop an easy kinship to the paper: “Have you seen my newspaper?”, they ask around the house; “I’m here, just reading my newspaper”, they shout from the garden. They meet their favorite paper every morning expecting it to inform, enlighten and at times amuse them. True, they might be critical of some writers, alert to some trends, but in general they trust their paper. If it is a serious relationship, they subscribe. That way, mornings are never completely bleak and coffee is never lonely. And isn’t that nice? How I envy them, those people who look forward to leafing through the Sunday paper or casually entering their favorite news website during the day, just to check what’s happening.

It’s morning, and I need a source to rely on. Without much thought, I type my way into the Israeli Haartez news website. Yes, I’m a Palestinian, but I live in Israel and I need to know the inner workings of the political and social structures here. Nevertheless, the task of jigsawing a fundamental — however relative — truth falls solely on my shoulders. How can I possibly trust the Israeli news? But then again, how can I do without them? Relying only on the local Arab press, poor, bitter and disenfranchised, is below the needs of my disposition. You cannot fully perform the role of the victim while living in the belly of the beast. So, it is morning and I enter the Haaretz website, “The paper for thinking people,” as its slogan reads. But what has long become a default choice, a habitual and involuntary tapping of my fingers on the keyboard, is now blocked by an unequivocal...

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Since the founding of the State of Israel, the Ashkenazi elite has suppressed the Mizrahi culture Jews from Arab countries brought with them. But almost without us noticing, those who led the Zionist project also erased whatever was left of the Ashkenazi traditions from Eastern Europe.

By Edan Ring / Café Gibraltar

Family Day was no different from any other holiday. On this day, too, we received an assignment from our daughter’s kindergarten teacher. Only this time, we were slightly embarrassed. As part of the Family Day (formerly known as the Israeli version of Mother’s Day) celebrations, the kindergarten hosted a big meal, in which every parent was asked to bring an “ethnic dish” that is traditionally made in each home. At first thought, no “ethnic dish” came to either my nor my partner’s mind. After some more thought, we came to the conclusion that neither of us has any culinary tradition that was passed down to us from our grandparents’ homes. Of course, when I was young I ate gefilte fish, matzo breit and kugel on holidays. After my grandmother’s death, however, very little was left of this tradition, which, in any case, took place only once or twice a year. Tradition cannot be summarized only in terms of food, but also in other areas: most descendants of Eastern European Jews will have a hard time finding ways of reconnecting to their past.

I see young Mizrahim around me celebrating and reviving their ancestral cultures. Shortly after the events of Family Day at the kindergarten, I took part in the launch of the new Cafe Gibraltar website. The young Adi Keissar moved me with her words:

“My grandmother loved me with her heavy accent, with her Yemenite talk which I could never understand. As a girl I remember how I feared being alone with her, concerned that I would not understand what she was saying.”

I always understood my grandmother, but mostly because she did not talk much. She was a simple woman, the mother of my father, who, as everyone always said, “could not speak three languages.” As a young Pole, she fled Europe before the Holocaust and arrived in Montevideo,...

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Security forces are targeting Israeli activists and Palestinian shephards in new ways in the South Hebron hills. It’s as if they’d decided to circumvent the whole irksome apparatus of the courts and to resort instead to brute force. It’s much simpler, and maybe more effective. 

By David Shulman

Today we have the New Rules. In some respects they’re rather like the Old Rules. The aim and sole rationale remain the same: dispossession, expulsion, taking more land. The army has, it seems, given up on its favorite device of declaring Closed Military Zones, week after week; perhaps the outright illegality of this practice ended up causing them too many problems in court. Instead, the soldiers simply chase us — Palestinian shepherds, farmers, Israeli activists—physically away, pushing, shoving, threatening, beating. They also have decided they won’t allow us to document their crimes on film; as soon as we start filming, they rush at us and block our cameras with their cell phones. It’s as if they’d decided to circumvent the whole irksome apparatus of the courts and to resort instead to brute force. It’s much simpler, and maybe more effective.

At the same time, there’s been a wave of further annexations. The settlers are paving new roads, which become de facto boundaries, far beyond the settlements’ periphery. Plots of land that the Palestinian owners have worked for some years, or have reclaimed, often with our help, have been declared “in dispute” — which means that settlers have access to them, but the rightful owners don’t. All over South Hebron there are attempts from above and from below to roll back the gains we’ve made in recent years. Probably officers in the Civil Administration have been devising creative schemes. And there have been the usual, routine detentions, harassments, lethal threats, arrests — more, in fact much more, than before. Add to this a wave of pure nit-picking and pestering, for example by handing out tickets to activists, Israeli and Palestinian, for absurd traffic violations; several of our people have recently been fined large amounts for crossing the road while not on a marked pedestrian crossing. Remember we’re...

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By Idan Landau

A certain air of nostalgia dominated Maariv’s headline last Thursday: “Due to criticism in the world, IDF parts ways with white phosphorus”: just like the old Galil assault rifle and the old two-way radios that generations of soldiers grew familiar with. A couple of years ago we learned the IDF was giving up its cans of preserved meat (the kosher version of SPAM). Now, it’s white phosphorus that we say goodbye to.

[Twilight. The IDF and white phosphorus exchange a final gaze. A sad violin tune is heard. Curtain down.]

So the IDF is looking for a replacement for the white phosphorus bombs. A senior officer in the ground forces explained: “As we learned during Cast Lead, it [white phosphorus] doesn’t photograph well, so we are reducing the supply and we will not purchase beyond what we already have.”

“It doesn’t photograph well.” In all honesty, the man is right.

This item caught me by surprise. The IDF is giving up white phosphorus? Wait a minute; the IDF never used white phosphorus during Cast Lead. So how exactly do you give up something you never had? Chemical weapons are something the Syrians use, no?

Okay, after a while the army did remember that it had been confused, and it did use white phosphorus, but only in open territories and not against people.

Okay, then the IDF remembered that it got it wrong again and that it did use white phosphorus in urban areas. Two hundred bombs, actually. But this was only in order to create a “smoke screen,” and there is nothing wrong with that. And if there was something wrong, it’s insignificant and unintentional, and it would be thoroughly investigated, so that no stone is left unturned.

That’s all well and good, except that at least 12 Gazans met their horrific death this way, burned to death by white phosphorus. Among them were three women, six children and a 15-month-old baby girl. Dozens more suffered burns from the material which continues to burn through flesh and tissue until it reaches the bone. Doctors in Gaza were helpless in treating the unfamiliar burns. Israel didn’t give them time to prepare themselves; white phosphorus shells hit Al-Quds Hospital and completely burned the top two floors.

These facts were already known in the first days of Cast Lead. Human Rights Watch published...

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The existence of the illegal Adei Ad settlement outpost harms Palestinians not just physically but also financially, and leads to the abandonment of Palestinian villages.

By Yesh Din, written by Yossi Gurvitz

The Israeli media stopped, in recent years, paying attention to assaults of Palestinians by settlers, unless it is a particularly severe case, such as an assault on an 80-year old farmer. One of the issues which isn’t even touched upon as far as the media is concerned – and hence, the majority of Israelis – is the fact that the outposts’ very existence often constitutes theft, quite literally.

The outpost Adei Ad, which is the case study of our new report, “The Road to Dispossession,” sits on the lands of four Palestinian villages: Al Mughayer, Qaryut, Jaloud and Turmusaya. The clearest case is that of Al Mughayer.

As we’ve seen, the creation of an outpost creates several rings of damage around it. The first ring is the territory of the outpost itself, which often grows quickly. The second ring is the outpost’s perimeter, and the third is the land which Palestinian farmers may enter just twice a year, subject to military approval and coordination. The farmers of Al Mughayer are not allowed access to their own lands, and someone found a way to take advantage of that fact: on several occasions, Israelis made their way to Al Mughayer’s olive groves and pillaged them just days before the owners received permission to work the lands. The founder of Adei Ad, Boaz Melet, was convicted of trespassing in such a case, and two other settlers are still on trial for such charges.

Enraging as these thefts may be, the major financial damage is not caused by theft but by the destruction of property and preventing access to it. The residents of the four villages complain time and again about their trees being cut down, burned, and in a few rare cases poisoned. The police’s reaction – well, there’s not much to say about it, except one fantastic sentence worth quoting: “The complaints are often general, and do not point out specific suspects.”...

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Many Palestinians have despaired of complaining about violations against them. Yesh Din’s new report, “The Road to Dispossession,” shows why.

By Yesh Din, written by Yossi Gurvitz

April 14, 2011 was a special morning for the Hizme family from the village of Turmusaya: it was one of the few days they were allowed to work their land, which unfortunately for them is close to the illegal outpost Adei Ad. They received the necessary permits from the army. Even so, some 90 minutes after they started working, IDF personnel showed up and asked them to leave, so as not to “cause problems with the settlers.” A short while later, an Israeli vehicle came around and seven Israeli civilians stepped out of it. When the soldiers noticed the civilians, they broadcast a “good morning” over their jeep loudspeaker system.

As the good civilians left their vehicle, some of them hooded, they started attacking the Palestinians. The assault, which included use of clubs and tear gas, went on for several long minutes, as the soldiers in the jeep did nothing. During history lessons, we used to call an attack by a group of civilians on others as the agents of the government did nothing “pogroms”; the Israeli media prefers the term “clashes.” In the end, the soldiers fired some rounds in the air and the attackers took the hint and retreated. It’s time to say, again, that IDF soldiers are, legally, both entitled and obliged to prevent such attacks and they are empowered to detain the rioters until police show up.

One might have expected the police would crack this case relatively easily. The Palestinians photographed their attackers, and one of the wounded recognized the people assaulting him. Furthermore, given the cordial greetings by the soldiers in the jeep, it’s reasonable to assume they soldiers were familiar with the gang members. Even so, no indictments were served in this case. Police only bothered to interrogate the main suspect after three months, and then were satisfied with answers to general questions. The suspect was not, for instance, asked to supply an alibi. Neither did the police bother to find the soldiers who witnessed...

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Photos by Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org; Text by Haggai Matar and Michael Omer-Man

Runners in the first ever Bethlehem Marathon were forced to run two laps of the same course on Sunday, as Palestinians were unable to find a single stretch of free land that is 42 kilometers (26 miles) long (in Area A, where the PA has both security and civil authority). The marathon took place in spite of harsh and untypical weather conditions and the winner was Abdel Nasser Awajneh, a Palestinian man from Jericho.

Palestinians “do not have a state, and their lands are controlled by a foreign army – that army controls their movement with roadblocks, checkpoints, military zones, an illegal wall and a complex set of discriminatory laws,” the marathon organizers explained in a statement. “The EU and the U.S. talk about a two-state solution, an independent Palestine – but we cannot find the 42 kilometers needed for a marathon. Not 42 kilometers of an area, which [is] supposed to be an independent state [that is] controlled by the Palestinian themselves.”

Around half of the 500 participants were Palestinians, the rest foreigners, AFP reported. Only 100 ran the full marathon.

As reported last week on +972, 26 runners from the Gaza Strip were denied permission to enter the West Bank in order to run in the race.

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Although the racism and hatred between Israel and its neighbors seems as entrenched as ever, many Mizrahi artists are connecting to their Arab roots. Does this trend portend a brighter future for the Middle East?

By Mati Shemoelof and Ophir Toubul / Café Gibraltar

In an interview with Al Arabiya several years ago, popular Israeli singer Zehava Ben stated that she was interested in performing throughout the Arab world, and especially in Beirut and Gaza. Israel’s security system forbade her entrance into the Strip, due to the fact that Hamas rules the territory. In a later interview, she said that her dream is to perform in Cairo’s Opera House, where her favorite singer, Umm Kulthum, once regularly performed. Ben’s words express the natural desires of many Mizrahi Jews in Israel to connect to the roots of the Arab culture in which their parents lived for generations. Mizrahi music represents the longing of almost half of the state’s Jewish citizens for the elements of Arab culture that they know so well. But beyond the question of origin, history and biography, it is a question of Israel’s place in the Middle East, which affects every citizen, Mizrahi or not.

When Israeli music begins exporting Arabic culture to its neighbors, both near and far, it will be able to grow its popularity and double or even triple its sales. Mizrahi-Mediterranean culture can jump over that barrier and draw new audiences. Today, we know that many people in neighboring countries, and certainly in the occupied territories, know and love songs by Eyal Golan and are well-versed in new Mizrahi-Israeli music. It will be easier to sell Mizrahi music in the Mashriq (the geographical region between Iran and Egypt) and the Maghreb (from Egypt to Morocco) in parallel to cultural exports to the U.S. and Europe. It’s important to mention that more than a few Israeli success stories in Europe maintained their Arabic sound, such as Ofra Haza.

Maor Adri covers Syrian singer Wafik Habib’s 2012 hit “Yalla Yalla”:

Music and culture have an additional role. Should we be able to export Mizrahi culture to Arab countries, it is likely to reduce the tension and hatred against Israel. The Arab bloc will no longer see Israel as...

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‘Detained: Testimonies from Palestinian Children Imprisoned by Israel’ uncovers one of the most painful experiences that Palestinian children endure in the ongoing Israeli occupation. Through interviews with ex-detainees and mothers of minors presently in detention, the project documents their stories and aims to lend a voice to those who are silenced from fear of negative repercussions.

Text and photos by: Samar Hazboun

Over the past 11 years, according to Defence for Children International, some 7,500 children have been detained in Israeli prisons and detention facilities. Muhammad Daoud Dirbas, at the age of six, was the youngest child to have been detained by Israeli soldiers. Such practices are considered illegal under international law, as are other policies that children are subjected to, such as solitary confinement.

I started working on “Detained” about one year ago, because of the lack of visual documentation on the subject. I contacted some human rights organizations, which put me in contact with a few children. Unfortunately, those children refused to be interviewed; having been contacted several times by journalists, they were afraid of repercussions. I then decided to contact people I knew from Palestinian cities like Nablus and Hebron where child detention is most prevalent. Through these friends, I was able to find and contact additional children. Sadly, it was quite easy to find them since it is such a common phenomenon.

In most cases, I found children who suffer from various traumas. Some were not able to talk about what had happened in prison; others burst into tears, and it was sometimes hard for me to hold my own tears back as I was conducting the interviews. Many children agreed to talk to me “off the record”; I thus know their stories but was not able to officially interview them or take their pictures. In some cases, I was able to talk to the parents once the child left the room, and thus obtained more detailed information about how the children were dealing with what had happened to them.

In many cases, the children suffer from insomnia, involuntary urination, nightmares, depression, and fear of going out and facing people. “It is a very humiliating experience for my son. I pray...

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A quiet phenomenon has been taking place over the last decade: the quiet dispossession of the Palestinians from their lands, which in turn increases their despair and leads them to abandon their villages. All this is done in our name and with our funds, but the government makes certain Israelis remain ignorant of the facts.

By Yesh Din, written by Yossi Gurvitz

Yesh Din published one of most comprehensive reports, The Road to Dispossession (which has its own mini-site), dealing with the illegal outpost Adei Ad. The outpost sits between four Palestinian villages and robs them of their lands. The information we gathered shows a quiet phenomenon of the last decade: the dispossession of the Palestinians from their lands, which in turn increases their despair and leads them to abandon their villages. In other words, a quiet population transfer, paving the road to the annexation of Area C to Israel. The annexation is already in practice: Yesh Din recently received a letter saying the government intends to whitewash the outpost Derekh Avot, by declaring the Palestinian lands on which it sits to be public lands.

Yesh Din documented 96 criminal offenses carried out by Israeli civilians around Adei Ad, where 26 families reside. The number would look more impressive once one recalls that these are only the offenses the organization managed to record (Yesh Din was founded in 2005, Adei Ad in 1998 – Yesh Din’s ability to investigate events prior to 2005 is very limited). Thus, it should be stated that there are many undocumented offenses. Among these Yesh Din can track: 21 offenses deal with violence against Palestinians, 47 with property crimes, and 28 offenses of taking over land. The Israeli police closed almost all of the cases, and in 92% of the cases, the investigators failed to do their job and find the culprit.

As a result of several international obligations, the government has found it difficult to create new settlements since 1999. A government resolution from 1995 forbids the creation of new settlements. So the process of building new ones has, in effect, been privatized: a process which can be hardly considered as anything but a conspiracy between...

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‘We are progress and modernization, freedom and equality, ‘peace and love.’ And they, what are they?’ On the history of the painful relationship between the Israeli Left and Mizrahim.

By Ron Cahlili (Translated from Hebrew by Orit Friedland)

The common wisdom is that Mizrahim and the Left are like oil and water, and that the two shall never meet. This is odd, because a lot of the immigrants who came to Israel from Islamic countries in the 1950s, and from Iraq and Egypt in particular, were Communists. That is, lefties. Thanks to them, says Sami Michael [prominent Israeli writer of Iraqi descent] in the new documentary series On the Left, which I made for Channel 8, the Israeli Communist Party enjoyed around 20 percent support in some of the Ma’abarot (immigrant transit settlement camps), which is remarkable. When I ask Michael why, then, are they absent from the Communist Party ranks (Maki – Israeli Communist Party, at the time), he replies: “They [Maki] regarded us as primitives who must be taught and educated, because ‘what do they really know about communism?’ They called it ‘primitive Communism’, ‘the rags proletariat.’ This combination of Mizrahi and communist,” continues Michael, “let all the genies out of the bottle. From their point of view, this was the ultimate insolence, the absolute defilement. How can this monkey be talking about an ideology that developed in Europe? How dare he? This was ‘Salon Communism’.”

That may have been the origin of the rift. For the leaders of Israeli leftist movements, both Zionist and non-Zionist, including Ben-Gurion’s Mapai (Workers’ Party of the Land of Israel), Mapam (United Workers Party) and Maki, the Left, already – and justly –  perceived as modern and revolutionary, was incompatible with Mizrahiness, which they saw as primitive and lagging behind. Let them learn to read and write, light the stove or use the toilet, it was argued, just as it is argued today against the Ethiopian community. Only then can they be allowed to touch the Holy of Holies: Engels and Marx and their teachings. Incidentally, there was no mention of nation-building or military power; their primary focus was on mending the economic situation. The...

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Liberal Zionism has had 65 years to prove Israel can indeed be both a Jewish state and a liberal democracy. Given its track record, is it time to put the ideology to rest? 

By David Sheen

Imagine if you would, for a minute, that Liberal Zionists have been proven correct: that it is totally possible for a state that accords privileges to members of one specific ethnic group only – Jews, in this case – to be a flourishing democracy. Imagine that Israel is indeed a Light Unto the Nations, and that people from all the other nations who see the light can easily immigrate, date, mate and marry a local. Imagine that in the Holy Land, all human beings are treated equally; let’s pretend that we live in the State of “Librael.”

As in the State of Israel, the three weeks that take place during the end of March to the beginning of May (depending on the Hebrew date) are an important time here in the State of Librael. First we celebrate Passover, the holiday of redemption from slavery. Then comes Holocaust Remembrance Day, where we mourn for the victims of genocide. A week later is Memorial Day, where we honor those who fell in battle to fight for our homeland. And the next day is Independence Day, when we celebrate living in the land as free people.

Over the decades, as refugees returned and waves of immigrants ascended to Zion, peoples from all four corners of the globe have imbued these holy days with extra meaning. As the events they are meant to mark begin to recede into memory, people for whom their meanings resonate especially deeply, because of their recent histories, inject the jubilees with their renewed energy, fusing it with Jewish cultural traditions to create a uniquely Libraeli national identity.

Every Passover, when we mark the exodus from Egypt, we are joined by the African Hebrews of Dimona. At the height of the civil rights crisis of the 1960s, thousands of African-Americans left the United States to embrace a biblical way of life in the Land of Israel. The Hebrews remind us that during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, more than 50 million Africans were murdered in the Middle Passage alone, and that even today...

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A Palestinian is attacked by a famous settler. Police detain the Palestinian, but not the settler – because it’s already Shabbat.

By Yesh Din, written by Yossi Gurvitz

At the beginning of February, “I.”, a resident of Tel Rumeida, was sitting in his yard with some friends. This was a Friday, twilight was setting in, and I. was sitting with his back to a path servicing the settlers. “B.”, a famous settler with a long history of convictions and a longer list of detentions by the police, was passing by, and was identified by “I.” A small number of other settlers accompanied “B.”

As “I.” would later tell the police, he thought that “B.” would pass his house with a few curses – that he would “curse and go on his way, as usual,” as he put it. That’s life in occupied Hebron (Al Khalil) for you. Not this time. “B.” went into “I.”‘s yard, while the accompanying settlers stayed outside. “I.” Demanded “B.” leave, and in response the latter immediately punched him in the face, and kept on attacking him.

“I.” refrained from hitting the invader back: “Even though I know that by law, I may defend myself from an attacker who enters my yard,” he would say later, “I didn’t strike back because I knew B. would use it against me.” “I.” managed to push “B.” out of the yard, and shouted to the soldier in the nearby post.

As the soldier moseyed over, some of the settlers who accompanied “B.” began stoning “I.” and his friends. They knew, of course, they stood a snowball’s chance in hell of being indicted for attempted murder. They threw stones at the Palestinians with a soldier in plain sight, knowing this stalwart of the rule of law won’t do anything. They’re Jews, after all. As the incident unfolded, “I.” called the police and reported the stone-throwing.

As the soldier watched, “B.” kicked “I.”, while telling the soldier: “You see? He’s kicking me.” The soldier, naturally, arrested “I.”, and “B.” and his gang sneaked off. The detainees were suspected of throwing stones. When “I.” insisted that “B.” and the settlers must also be detained, since he reported the incident, the policemen shrugged: “It’s already Shabbat’” they told him,...

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