For the first time in 24 years, Israel Police protected nearly 500 Women of the Wall members Friday morning as they gathered at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem for their monthly prayer service. The women were confronted by thousands of ultra-Orthodox protesters, both young girls who watched from the side and men of all ages, who acted violently towards the group of women.

Protesters reportedly threw stones, water bottlers, garbage and whatever else they could in their direction, and a few were reportedly arrested. The police managed to enable a small group of 20-30 women to actually reach the women’s section at the Wall. According to Haaretz, the women planned to bring a Torah scroll, but decided not to at the last minute due to Naftali Bennett’s request. Haredi community leaders, including Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef urged young women to go out in mass to pray Friday to push Women of the Wall members aside.

According to the Haredi community, women are not allowed to wear prayer shawls or phylacteries, or read from the Torah at the site. However on April 25 the Jerusalem District Court ruled that a 2003 Supreme Court decision that such practices disturb the Orthodox character of the site did not warrant arrests by police. Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein decided not to appeal the decision, making Friday’s prayer service the first time in 24 years that Women of the Wall were offered legal protection and some form of official legitimacy.

According to a Women of the Wall representative, the group is greatly appreciative of the Israel Police’s protection, and calls on ultra-Orthodox leadership to denounce all forms of violence against women. Here is a video the group released:

For nearly 25 years, Women of the Wall members have gone every Rosh Hodesh (first of the Hebrew month) to pray on the women’s side of the barricade at the Kotel plaza– but are often harassed and prevented from doing so – and have on several occasions been arrested. The group’s mission is to achieve the social and legal recognition of the right of...

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On Sunday, three Palestinian boys were detained by the IDF in Hebron, along with a Swedish activist who seems to have tried to calmly prevent their arrests. (Footage of the arrest is below, and highly disturbing to watch). According to the International Solidarity Movement, who put out a report on Sunday and has since been updating, the children were released a few hours later, but the Swede is still being held and attempts are being made to deport him.

According to sources from Youth Against Settlements and B’Tselem with whom I spoke, the children were detained because settlers from the extremist Beit Hadassah settlement inside Hebron complained to the IDF that they had thrown stones. One of the children is only 10, the others 11 and 12 (the age of criminal responsibility is 12).

Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist with Youth Against Settlements who has been arrested countless times for organizing and engaging in peaceful protests in Hebron’s Tul Rumeida area where he lives, told me that the arrest of children by the IDF has become a regular “phenomenon” in Hebron. He says the IDF is “pro-settler,” often arresting Palestinian residents, whether children or adults, simply because settlers tell them to – regardless of whether there is any evidence against them. He also points out that settlers are almost never detained after they throw stones, even when the soldiers are standing right there. Issa added: “These arrests do not stop violence, on the contrary, they feed violence more and more in the long term.”

According to Ynet, the Swedish activist was arrested because he tried to steal a soldier’s weapon and resisted arrest – however the first video below makes both those accusations appear false, although he clearly made an effort to stop the soldiers from taking the children. (It is also well known that the IDF tries to deport foreign citizens living and documenting life in the West Bank). I contacted the IDF Spokesperson several times in recent days to hear its side of the story, but have yet to receive a response.

According to B’Tselem, the children were investigated at the Kiryat Arba police station with an adult present, and released 3-4 hours later. The Swedish activist is reportedly still in Israeli custody and trying to avoid deportation.

The first video below, published by Youth Against Settlement, shows one of the children and the Swede being...

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When murder and violence flash in the West Bank, Israelis should remember that on the other days they don’t hear about terror, lots of violence is taking place. Those who choose to live in an illusion of calm and stability should consider themselves both privileged and lucky. And neither of those things can last forever. 

Days like today, ones that start out with a Palestinian stabbing an Israeli to death and end with Israeli settlers rampaging around, starting fires and hurling stones at innocent Palestinian bystanders – many of them children: days like today are a cruel expression of the dire situation we all live in here – but more specifically, illuminate the illusion of stability that Israelis live with.

A few months ago, the IDF was proud to announce that there were no fatal terror attacks in the West Bank at all in 2012, and it really is a feat. In fact, Evyatar Burovsky was the first Israeli victim of a fatal attack committed by a Palestinian in the West Bank since September 2011.

During this “calm” period, most Israelis continue going about their lives. They aren’t affected by the violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on a daily basis. But days like today, when the phrase “terror attack” is back in the news, Israelis suddenly remember that we are in a violent conflict. The government, of course, does a good job of reminding us we are the victims.

But on all those days when there is no violence against Israelis in the news, on all those days when Israelis can go about their business, the situation is actually not at all stable or calm. It’s definitely not calm for the Palestinian population, specifically in the West Bank where life under occupation is anything but free of violence.

Slavoj Zizek said it poignantly in an essay in the book The Case for Sanctions Against Israel:

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Israeli Ta’ayush activists who were accompanying Palestinian shepherds in the southern West Bank village Umm al Amad on Saturday were confronted by a soldier who lost his cool, to say the least.

According to Guy, the Israeli activist who filmed the video below, this is private Palestinian land (the Otniel settlement is nearby) that the IDF and settlers routinely try and keep the Palestinian residents out of.  In the video below, the soldier can be seen first approaching the Palestinian shepherd, screaming in his face in Arabic: “You better watch it!”  Then Guy tells the soldier not to scream at him and to leave him alone, to which the soldier turns to Guy, screaming: “Get out of here you Israel haters, I’ll kick the crap out of you. You are worse than the Arabs.”

He then turned to one of the female Israeli activists and said: “Shut up, Israel hater who goes to bed with Arabs.”

In a statement responding to the incident in Hebrew media, the IDF Spokesperson said the matter would be investigated as this is not the “kind of behavior that security forces should be engaging in.”

A Facebook post expressing shock and dismay about the occupation by new MK Adi Koll of the ‘centrist’ Yesh Atid party went viral over the weekend. Has segregation between Israelis and Palestinians become so entrenched in Israeli society that expressing empathy for Palestinians is a shocking aberration?

After reading MK Adi Koll’s Facebook status that Noam Sheizaf translated and posted, which has gone viral in both Hebrew and English since it came out Sunday, I paused and thought to myself: Why is this getting so much attention? What’s the big deal? Okay, a Knesset member posted a comment about how awful the situation is for a Palestinian friend of hers whom she visited in Ramallah, and how no photograph she posted could relay the dismal reality. But what’s so special about that? After all, isn’t it obvious there is an occupation here?

Obviously, the fact that Adi Koll is a member of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, which, despite being considered centrist, is essentially a pro-settlement, anti-two-state solution party, is significant. When MK Dov Khenin from the left-wing Arab-Jewish party Hadash points out the occupation, no one really cares.  When Amira Hass repeatedly reports on atrocities against Palestinians, she, along with Haaretz, is written off as spewing pro-Palestinian propaganda.

So my first instinct was that this MK is young and naive (she is 37), exposing on her official Facebook page that only now, after nearly a century of occupation and 65 years of institutionalized colonialism, is she realizing what the Israeli government is capable of. That she sounds like someone who just read David Grossman’s Yellow Wind for the first time (His 1988 Israeli best seller chronicling his travels in the West Bank every day for 40 days during the First Intifada). But I don’t know Adi Koll, have no idea what her experiences are, how long she has known her friend Amjad from Ramallah, or really anything about beyond this one Facebook status. And besides, the fact that her Facebook status got so much attention reflects less on her than the current atmosphere in Israeli society.

Many people, including several lefty friends on...

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Israeli conscientious objector Natan Blanc, 19, was sentenced to prison for the ninth time on Thursday, tying the record number of times an Israeli who has refused to serve in the Israel Defense Forces has been put on trial.

According to Amira Hass’ last report on Blanc a few weeks ago in Haaretz:

In 2003, +972′s Haggai Matar was one of the five refuseniks who made headlines for publicly refusing to serve in the IDF. As far as I am aware, Haggai holds the record for the Israeli who spent the most time in jail for conscientious objection: a total of two years (not consecutively, but in and out, like Blanc).

With this ninth sentencing, Blanc has reportedly met the record for having been through the most trials.

Blanc, who first refused to serve in the IDF last November 2012, was sentenced to 20 days in prison this time around, after having just spent 14 days in prison for his last sentencing on April 2. That brings the total number of days he will have spent in jail to 150.

You can read Blanc’s statement on his refusal here.

Related:
Draft resister sent back to prison: Eight sentences, 130 days
Lesson from Israeli who chose jail, solidarity over segregation
Are Israel’s refusers modern day heroes?

Most Jewish Israelis will admit the ‘occupation’ is bad, but few have ever gotten a taste of what it feels like to be anywhere near the receiving end of it. No matter how liberal an Israeli you are, if you have not experienced it in some way, first hand, the concept of Israeli occupation has an entirely different meaning to you than someone who has.

This article was originally published in The Forward on April 15, 2013.

Veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass stirred up a controversy in the media here with an op-ed in Haaretz on April 3 that opens: “Throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule.” Hass, who has been living and reporting from the occupied Palestinian territories for 20 years, goes on to suggest that Palestinians should develop an educational curriculum on resistance to Israeli occupation that, for example, teaches to distinguish between soldiers as legitimate targets vs. civilians.

It was published just days after an Israeli court convicted a Palestinian of murder for throwing stones at a car in 2011, resulting in the death of the driver and his baby – and was the main argument of those who condemned her and the paper. Some went as far as to accuse her of inciting to violence.

Regardless of what one concludes about the article, or one’s stance on what constitutes (if at all) legitimate resistance to Israel’s violent and protracted occupation, Hass is an example — albeit somewhat extreme — of an Israeli who has “crossed the line.” She has chosen to be exposed to life under occupation first hand, and thus capable of empathy with the Palestinians. Empathy doesn’t necessarily mean agreement or support, but it does mean having the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This is something practically impossible for the average Israeli to do, whose only experience in the West Bank, if at all, is either as a soldier, a settler, or maybe a tourist to a historical site.

Most Jewish Israelis will admit the “occupation” is bad, but few have ever gotten a taste of what it feels like to be anywhere near the receiving end of it. To do that you’d have to choose to experience it as a civilian alongside the Palestinian population, confronted with Israeli soldiers or settlers, which almost no Israelis do. No matter how liberal an Israeli you are, if you...

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Survey finds that majority of Jewish Israelis think the country should unilaterally determine its borders along the route of the West Bank separation barrier. One-third support either annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians civil rights, or perpetuating the status quo — both of which are apartheid.

According to a poll* released Sunday, a majority of Jewish Israelis (57 percent) believe Israel should determine its borders unilaterally according to the current route of the separation wall, which cuts deep into the West Bank, winding through Palestinian land well east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (Green Line).

This confirms that 1) Israelis are admitting the country does not have defined and recognized borders 2) Israelis are perfectly happy (including 87 percent of Meretz voters) pushing forward unilaterally despite repeated claims by both the Israeli and U.S. governments that no unilateral steps should be taken by either side in the conflict, and  3) Israelis don’t care that the bantustans created by the separation wall and the settlements are unacceptable to Palestinians or the international community, thus ignoring the impracticality of this option as a long-term solution – not to mention an unjust one.

But what is even more telling and interesting about the poll is that while 61 percent support a two-state solution (39 percent oppose), a substantial 23 percent said they support a bi-national state “without giving Palestinians full civil rights” (up substantially from last year’s 13 percent). In other words, this can be understood to mean that 23 percent of Jewish Israelis want to live under an Israeli apartheid regime where Palestinians are institutionally disenfranchised – though the poll does not mention the word apartheid anywhere.

The poll also mentions that 13 percent think the situation should remain as it is (“de facto Israeli control of Palestinians without annexation of Judea and Samaria”), which means maintaining the status quo. The situation we live in right now is de facto a bi-national state (or ‘one state’), in which every person between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean lives under varying degrees of Israeli rule, so I think it is fair to add this 13 percent to the 23 percent  - which essentially means that a whopping 36 percent of Jewish Israelis support Israeli...

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Amira Hass, who drew heavy criticism from Israeli media about her op-ed in Haaretz last week defending the right of Palestinians to throw stones, and was accused of incitement to violence by the Yesha Council (of West Bank settlements), appeared on Democracy Now this week to discuss her article. I have embedded the interview below, which is in two parts, and highly recommend watching it.

Hass speaks so directly and cooly about the situation as she sees it – saying plainly that Israel has become a foreign ruler in this place and cannot expect to survive this way. You can understand from her answers that she is portraying what she has been witness to as a reporter in the occupied Palestinian territories for 20 years.

Here are some choice quotes from her interview I want to highlight:

In the video below (filmed by an Israeli Ta’ayush activist on Monday April 1 and subtitled quickly by yours truly) a policeman approaches Israeli activists who regularly go to the South Hebron Hills (he knows all their names already) and informs them they are being detained.

For what? For filming illegal construction at an illegal outpost in the area called Avigayil on a different day. That’s right. This was not an April Fool’s joke, but the way the law is actually being enforced by Israeli authorities in the West Bank.

They ended up being held for over 5 hours and questioned about the claim against them that they were “disturbing public order.”

According to Guy, an Israeli Ta’ayush activist and documentarian of occupation in the South Hebron Hills area of the West Bank – there has been an increase in incidents over the last month in which Israel Defense Forces soldiers have been preventing him and other Israelis from filming what goes on.

In this 7-minute video, edited together from footage taken just over the last few weeks, between February 23 and March 9, IDF soldiers – as well as high-ranking officers – are seen blocking camera lenses over and over by shoving their own smart phones in front of them. This is not only petty and immature, but also illegal, according to Israeli military law and High Court rulings. Any IDF soldier is permitted to be filmed while on duty and there is no legal restriction on filming whatsoever.

So what does the “most moral army in the world” have to hide? Well for one thing, all this footage is used to build legal cases against the IDF, which systematically abuses the use of “closed military zone” orders in these parts, kicking out Palestinians from their agricultural lands along with Israeli activists, instead of dealing with the belligerent settlers who are the ones initiating the confrontations. But also, because occupation is very ugly, so who would want it getting out?

I guess these soldiers are just trying to implement the “self-censorship” that Culture Minister Limor Livnat urged all Israeli filmmakers to take part in, following Oscar nominations for two films critical of Israeli policies. It is admittedly hard to make Israel look good when it does such bad things.

As I reported a few days ago, students from the recently-accredited Ariel University in the occupied West Bank are angry they were not invited to attend U.S. President Obama’s speech in Jerusalem this coming Thursday. The U.S. Embassy denies claims Obama is boycotting the students, and stated that it simply invited students from those institutions it has partnerships or programs with. Ariel University students are nonetheless livid, and plan to hold protest what they are calling Obama’s blatant political discrimination.

Ariel University’s Student Union posted a banner on its Facebook page Sunday and requested people make it their Facebook cover page. Here is how it looked originally on Sunday evening:

Yes, that’s right. It says “No We Cen’t!” Below that in Hebrew it says, “We will not let Obama discriminate against us: A student in Ariel is a student in Israel.”

After I noticed it on my Facebook feed, I had a hard time believing whoever made it really doesn’t know how to spell such a simple word in English – and figured it must be some joke or word game. But sure enough, a few minutes later, I returned to their page and they had corrected it:

I guess Ariel students should invest a bit more in polishing their English before taking on Obama.

There are already a few memes. Just saying:

 

Ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel on Wednesday, the embassy here is reportedly sending out around 2,000 invitations to Israeli student representatives from universities across the country to attend his speech in Jerusalem on March 21. All except one: Ariel University in the West Bank settlement of the same name (upgraded from a college to an accredited university last year).

According to several reports in Israeli media, the Ariel Student Union is shocked and upset that the embassy contacted all seven accredited universities within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, but left out Ariel’s students. Student Union head Shai Shachaf called the move “discrimination” and the Jewish Home party has already responded to what it’s calling Obama’s “exclusionary” and “political” move.

MK Yoni Chetboun (Jewish Home) reportedly sent a letter to U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro on behalf of Ariel students, in which he accused the Obama Administration of “boycotting its students,” adding, “Ariel University has been recognized by the Israeli government. By banning its students, your government is taking a specific, unilateral stance, while seemingly saying it isn’t.”

The response I received from the U.S. Embassy: “Not all students from all academic institutions are invited, only those we specifically have partnerships with.” There was no reference to the MK’s letter to Ambassador Shapiro and the allegation that Obama is boycotting the settlement university.

Putting aside how ironic it is for a member of Israeli government to accuse President Obama of a “unilateral stance” when Israel’s policies vis-a-vis the West Bank  as well as U.S. politics are well rooted in unilateralism, if Obama’s people really are intentionally excluding the university in Ariel from the Jerusalem speech, this would be a very interesting move.

It would be a message of the administration’s disapproval of Israel’s settlements (which is its stated policy!) – but would also be directly undermining the Israeli government’s sovereign decisions by excluding a recognized national institution because of its location in a large settlement which most Israelis believe should remain part of Israel in any future resolution with the Palestinians. This could certainly be construed as a form of academic/cultural boycott by Obama, under Israel’s boycott law passed in July 2011.

The law, which makes it a...

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