The incident took place during the weekly demonstration against the separation fence in Bil’in on March15, 2008. At the time, demonstrations used to reach the old route of the fence – which has since been found illegal by the Israeli High Court of Justice but not yet dismantled – and the army would cross the gate in the fence and chase demonstrators back into the village. A video recording of the shooting shows the soldiers marching back towards the fence, and one of them pushing away a photographer standing nearby. At this point, Israeli activist Eran Cohen, standing less than five meters away from the road, is heard shouting, “What are you doing, soldier?! Don’t touch the journalists.” At this point, one of the soldiers, apparently an officer, slightly raises his gun and shoots Cohen in the leg with a rubber-coated bullet, even though it is clear that Cohen was in no way a threat to the soldiers, and that no fighting is taking place elsewhere in the area. The bullet penetrated Cohen’s knee, which was later removed in surgery after Cohen was rushed to the hospital.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At the request of B’Tselem, a military police investigation was launched by the end of that month, and the video was submitted for military inspection. Now, almost four years later, the army says the case is closed and no charges are to be filed. The military prosecution did not elaborate on the reasons for its decision.

A silent approval for unjustified violence

This is in no way a unique case in the history of the popular and joint struggle. According to B’Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli, it is safe to say that on the whole, soldiers and border policemen are not charged with the wounding or even the killing of demonstrators. “While we have countless reports of injuries and more than twenty deaths in demonstrations, and while many incidents are documented with footage, you almost never see investigations ending with indictments,” says Michaeli.

In the past, army regulations required that every death caused by soldiers prompt an investigation by the military police. With the start of the Second Intifada in October 2000, the army openly canceled these regulations, which were put back to force last April. This is why most deaths of demonstrators, peaceful and stone-throwing alike, have not led to investigations, except for two very rare ones: the killing of Bassem Abu-Rahme in Bil’in (caused by a tear gas canister shot directly to his chest), and that of 10-year-old Ahmad Musa in Nil’in  shot in the head with a rubber bullet by a border policeman after a demonstration). Even here, the former has yet to turn into an indictment (investigation was only launched following a long legal struggle on  the family’s part), and in the latter case, the charge is negligent manslaughter. The only demonstration-related conviction activists remember in the many years of the popular struggle was that of the two soldiers who shot the cuffed and blindfolded Ashraf Abu-Rahme in the foot.

While Palestinian and Israeli activists keep documenting attacks on demonstrations, and while NGOs keep filing complaints against the use of force, the army on the whole seems untouched. In December, B’Tselem wrote the army with great concern, reporting what seems to be a constant policy of soldiers and officers on the ground to ignore the army’s own regulations, which forbid shooting tear gas canisters at a direct angle. B’Tselem have backed up this claim with extensive footage of soldiers shooting tear gas canisters in the same illegal fashion that caused the deaths of Bassem Abu-Rahme and Mustafa Tamimi. However, just last Thursday the military authorities replied, saying that “security forces use tear gas canisters only to disperse violent rioters, and only in an arched angle.”

“They are not even willing to admit that soldiers are disobeying their own regulations”, says Michaeli, “what kind of a message do you think that gives the soldiers?”

Click here to view the embedded video.

For years we all knew he was a difficult man to work for, but the situation in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has reached new heights over the past few weeks.

Natan Eshel, Netanyahu’s bureau chief, agreed on Sunday to resign after being accused of sexually harassing an employee. As if to make things worse, reports surfaced this week that Eshel took inappropriate pictures with his phone of this employee during Netanyahu’s last speech at Congress [Heb]. You remember, the one where he got 29 standing ovations?

Furthermore, yesterday the head of the National Information Directorate at Netanyahu’s office, Yoaz Hendel, resigned from his post. Hendel, who just started the job 6 months ago, quit after claiming the PM had lost trust in him for telling the attorney general about Eshel’s behavior. Netanyahu, who is allegedly mad at his officials for turning to the AG before telling him, should actually be thankful his people didn’t let him in on this. They saved him the nasty spotlights from the media. But as usual, Bibi had to screw things up.

The icing on the cake had to be the video released last night showing Netanyahu reprimanding , in front of the cameras, his cabinet secretary Zvi Hauser, who also squealed with Hendel to the AG. He gave Hauser a lashing for… not closing the door during the cabinet meeting this Sunday. Reports say that Hauser is now also considering resigning.

Wow, someone’s losing it. Great timing, too. With Iran and all…

(I would have posted the video but YouTube has blocked it in recent hours, claiming it violates its content standards. Note: Adnan does not make an explicit call for suicide bombing in the video but he does seem to call for violence and certainly it does not show him in a “Gandhist” light)

I do not know Adnan and did not know of his existence until recently. I cannot vouch for his character and do not know what he has or has not done. He may seek to cause me harm without even knowing me. He may be a really bad guy who just wants to kill Jews.

But his behavior and possible crimes are not at issue – and have not been demonstrated. How the state treats him is. The man has been held in prison by the government to which I pay taxes without charge, due to an unethical and longstanding practice used by Israel to punish and deter all kinds of acts of resistance. And no one can argue that it is okay just because administrative detention falls under Israeli law. The documentary The Law in These Parts effectively displays the ways in which an entire system of Israeli law and justice has been built to fit a specific political agenda.

The fact is that the man went on a hunger strike that lasted over two months and severely endangered his health. He had to risk his life in order to get the state to reach the logical conclusion that the military court must release him if it cannot provide evidence against him within an allotted period of time. But this is how the practice should always be. Even in exceptional cases, in which is it acceptable under international law to detain someone without trial due to security concerns, there is a period of time by which the person must either be tried or released. Yes, even if that person is a terrorist. And if that suspect is indeed a future murderer, then the law has failed humanity – this has happened many times in the world and unfortunately will continue to happen. It is a price that is paid in societies where people are innocent till proven guilty, and not the other way around.

I wasn’t rooting for Khader Adnan the individual, and those that believe that us “radical lefties,” “so-called peace-loving progressives” are celebrating a terrorist are simply missing the issue at hand.  As Mitchell Plitnick poignantly just expressed it:

I am delighted that Khader Adnan will not starve to death. I only wish that the eyes of the world had enough scope to focus not only on his effort, but also on this abhorrent practice that is a stain on the admittedly tattered honor of not only Israel, but also the United States.

My opposition to this Israeli policy (a policy rampant in plenty other countries, east and west, more democratic and less) does not translate into cheering for Palestinians. I was not rooting for Adnan so much as I was lamenting the fact that in the country I live in, a person must starve himself in order to receive basic fair treatment. While the deal is a step in the right direction, unless it leads to fundamental revamping of policy, I fear it will have merely been a way for Israel to continue administrative detention under the guise of a morality check.

The Prime Minister’s Office reported on Tuesday that Khader Adnan, now on the 66th day of his hunger strike, will call off his protest in a deal that will see him released on April 17. The report was confirmed on Tuesday evening by Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, which has been overseeing the case.

Announcing the deal, Ofir Gendelman from the PMO tweeted, “#khaderadnan announced that he is ending his hunger strike. If there’s no new evidence against him, he will be released from custody on 17.4.”

Israel’s High Court of Justice had been set on Tuesday afternoon to hear a petition against Adnan’s administrative detention, but the hearing was canceled and the petition withdrawn in the wake of the deal. The court clarified that the deal is incumbent upon the military court’s agreement not to extend Adnan’s detention past April 17, as long as new substantial evidence against him does not come to light. The court’s announcement can be read here, in Hebrew.

An Addameer press release explained that the terms of the agreement met the conditions outlined by Adnan to call off his strike: that his detention would not be extended, and would be counted from the date of his arrest and not from January 8, the date the detention order was issued. The press release also calls into question the danger to security that Israeli authorities claim Adnan poses:

Addameer maintains that the fact that Israeli officials negotiated the duration of his detention, in addition to agreeing to an early release, reveals that there were no grounds for his administrative detention in the first place. His administrative detention order, as is the case with all other administrative detainees, is based on the alleged threat he poses to the “security of the State of Israel.” However, if Israeli officials agree that he will not be a threat on 17 April, as clear from today’s deal, he surely does not pose any threat today and his case provides further proof of Israel’s policy of arbitrary detention. Addameer reiterates its call for his immediate and unconditional release and the release of the 308 other administrative detainees.

Adnan, who is affiliated with Islamic Jihad, was arrested on December 17, after which he immediately launched his hunger strike in protest of his administrative detention. He is presently hospitalized at Ziv Medical Center in Safed, and has not been charged or notified of the suspicions against him.

Ahead of the hearing, which was originally set for Thursday but moved up last minute, hundreds demonstrated in front of the Ofer Prison in the West Bank. According to Omar Rahman, Israeli forces sprayed demonstrators with teargas and “skunk” water. Injuries and arrests were reported.

Rumors that Adnan would be released abounded on Twitter ahead of the planned hearing. Addameer, the Palestinian prisoner support organization, tweeted that they could not confirm these rumors, and activists called for caution.

On the rumors, the organization tweeted, “We know that Israelis are trying to negotiate a deal & we cannot confirm until we know the details of the deal and #KhaderAdnan‘s position,” later adding that, in order to protect his family, additional information would not be released without confirmation.

For more +972 coverage on Khader Adnan and his hunger strike, click here.

Some advocacy groups and Israeli officials have recently claimed that Khader Adnan, the 33-year-old Palestinian on a hunger strike for more than two months now, “is no saint,” and that real security concerns led to his arrest. But we can never know for sure, since Adnan is held under administrative arrest, a measure that contradicts the logic at the heart of the rule of law: it aims to put people in prisons not for what they did or conspired to do, but for what they might do. In other words, he is guilty until proven innocent. And there is no way to try and prove he is innocent, since Adnan won’t face trial.

This is the heart of the matter: at any given moment, hundreds of Palestinians are held by Israel without trial, with no charges filed against them, and without the ability to defend themselves against non-existent charges. In short, they are simply thrown into prison for a period of up to six months, which can be renewed indefinitely. Each of Khader Adnan’s many previous arrests lasted months – a fact that goes a long way to explain why he is willing to take such an extreme measure as a life-threatening hunger strike. What other hope does he have?

Israel claims that Adnan is a member of Islamic Jihad? It should take him to court and charge him with membership in a terrorist organization, with planning or taking part in illegal activities, or another item on the very long list that is often used against Palestinians. But why bother, when you can simply pick him up at his home, place him in prison and forget about the whole thing? If it wasn’t for his hunger strike, would any news organization bother to deal with those “arrests”?

The important point is that Adnan’s case is not unique. There are 309 Palestinians held under administrative arress right now, the highest number since October 2009. You can see the full statistics for the last decade here. These numbers were obtained by B’Tselem, in accordance with the new Freedom of Information Law. Without it,and without B’Tselem, there was no way to know even how many Palestinians are held by Israel without trial. (It’s therefore easy to understand why so many Israelis wish B’Tselem didn’t exist – sometimes it’s nicer not to know.)

Administrative detention exist in other countries, but is considered a unique and exceptional measure, and its implementation usually leads to a vigorous public debate. In the West Bank, it’s routine. Over the years, Israel has held thousands of Palestinians in administrative detention for periods ranging from a few months to several years. Eighty of the Palestinians held under administrative arrest – some 26 percent of the detainees – have been held for six months to one year; another 88 people (about 28.5 percent) from one to two years. Sixteen Palestinians have been in administrative detention continuously for two to four and a half years, and one man has been held for over five years. It should be noted that a few settlers have also been held in the past under administrative arrest, an act which was reported and rightly criticized in the Israeli media.

Check out +972′s full coverage of Khader Adnan’s hunger strike here

Yesterday, Pastor Chuck Kopp of the Baptist Church in West Jerusalem woke up to find his church vandalized. The Jerusalem Post reported that police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld suspects that Jewish extremists are responsible for the act. According to the Post, Rosenfeld said, “Officers are investigating a strong possibility of a (Jewish) nationalist motive, but no one has been apprehended yet.”

Cars that were parked outside the church were also vandalized, and their tires slashed.  Graffiti left on the church walls included the famous term “price tag,” which has been used by settler extremists in attacks on mosques in the last few years. Other graffiti in Hebrew reads, “Death to Christianity,” “Jesus son of Mary, the whore.”

February 20: Anti-Christian graffiti found on walls of the Baptist Narkis Street Congregation in West Jerusalem, reading, "Jesus is the son of a whore" (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler)

The church actually shares a parking lot with a synagogue, and ironically, one of the cars that had its tires slashed and was spray painted with graffiti belongs to a congregant of the synagogue.

The Baptist Church includes a number of Messianic believers, and the leadership has historically had connections to top Israeli political officials.

Jerusalem, Feburary 20: Anti-Christian graffiti found on cars, and their tires slashed at the Baptist Narkis Street congregation in West Jerusalem. (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler)

The “price tag” radicals are well known to police as products of the most extremist settlements. The irony in this case is that right-wing Christian support for settlers is a major source of income for even the most radical settlements, constituting a thorn in the side of both the American government and the Israeli military for years now:

A New York Times examination of public records in the United States and Israel identified at least 40 American groups that have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade. The money goes mostly to schools, synagogues, recreation centers and the like – legitimate expenditures under the tax law. But it has also paid for more legally questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes and vehicles to secure outposts deep in occupied areas. “I am not happy about it,” a senior military commander in the West Bank responded when asked about contributions to a radical religious academy whose director has urged soldiers to defy orders to evict settlers. Kimberly Troup, director of the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities’ American office, said that while her charity’s work is humanitarian, “the more that we build, the more that we support and encourage their right to live in the land, the harder it’s going to be for disengagement, for withdrawal.”

So now we have Christian funds from the United States that have effectively supported the misguided second and third generation settler youth who are actively attacking churches and referring to Jesus as a son of a whore. If this is what Pastor John Hagee and other radical Christians intended, then it suggests a rather bizarre theology of interfaith love and care. It seems in reality that these funds are intended to foment conflict, to promote a confrontational, apocalyptic and messianic end to the State of Israel.

Is this a pro-Israel Christian position? Are these the allies that Jews and Israelis really want? Would it not be better to stand in solidarity with a church that was attacked, which exists side by side with a synagogue in Jerusalem in respect and mutual toleration? Even better, would it not be wise to embrace and support interfaith peace and tolerance?

This is the choice that is facing Christians who love Israel, and Jews who welcome Christian support for Israel. It is the commonsense approach to the interests and values of both religious communities, Jewish and Christian, that they support only those forces on the ground that are fostering coexistence and nonviolent forms of engagement and even disagreement.

The strange culture of “price tag” Judaism is a sad stepchild of the occupation. It will ultimately hurt Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, and it will compromise the viability of any state that Jews want to live in and feel safe in. This strange new reality of Christian funds going to support attacks on Christian churches is something that should cause some real soul searching, both among Jews and Christians.

Pastor Chuck Kopp mentioned that following the attack on his church, the synagogue next door gave flowers to the congregation.  That is worth remembering. Also, the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land issued the following condemnation:

The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land condemns the acts of desecration of the Baptist Church in West Jerusalem this morning. The Council calls upon people from all faiths – Christians, Jews and Muslims – to respect all Holy Places and sites for all three religions, and strongly discourages extremists’ behaviour that exploits or involves religion in a political/territorial dispute. In the name of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, The Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs at the PA, and The Heads of the Local Churches of the Holy Land.

It is also worth recalling the parallel verses in the New Testament from Peter, and from the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Psalms.

“For whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil, and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it.” “Who is the person who desires life, who loves the days of life to see only good? Guard your mouth from evil, and your lips from deceit. Veer away from evil and do only good, seek and pursue only peace.”

The New Testament and the Hebrew Bible got it right here. When will today’s Christians and Jews get it right?

For more pictures of the church vandalization click here

Rabbi Dr. Marc Gopin is director of George Mason University’s Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, and co-owns MEJDI Tours with Aziz Abu Sarah

There are two sections to the area: the rectangular stones on top, and a museum underneath. As I approached the memorial, I noticed some bright red balloons.

I ventured into the memorial, searching for them.

A few minutes later, the young man accompanying the model and the photographer approached me and gave me his card. He asked me if I could send them the pictures I took. I said I would and asked him what the shoot was for. He said it was for Valentine’s Day.

This was on February 19th.

The card has a website link. It takes me to a site for a model named Marina Wenk.

Berlin’s a big town. I think Frau Wenk could have found a better place to promote herself.

The underground museum is, in my opinion, the most powerful Holocaust museum I have been to. It is small, not as overwhelming with information like Yad Vashem, and very painful to walk through. I found my heart pounding near the end.

In the last room of the museum, I saw the blonde German girl with the earphones in the picture above sitting on a bench and sobbing.

That’s when I started to choke up myself, rushed to the exit, opened the door, and took a deep breath of the freezing Berlin air.

——————

Read also:
Alone in Berlin: Unsuccessfully trying to forget
Naomi Chazan: “An undemocratic Israel will not last a minute”  

By Ido Liven

Rarely does my Facebook news feed keep me occupied for more than it takes to skim through it. But last week, a screenshot of a thread of comments under a headline from the popular news site Walla about the Palestinian school bus accident showed a list of loathsome comments. And it didn’t take long until that screenshot went viral.

I was bewildered. Expressing blatantly racist views (including blessings that the children were dead), using their real names runs counter to common wisdom about online hate speech. The belief that hate-comments are posted under false names is so common that legislators in a number of countries – including in Israel – have proposed bills demanding online comment-writers disclose their identities, precisely in order to prevent the abuse of anonymity in proliferating hate speech, defamation and the like.

What surprised me further were the comments on the coverage of the incident presented on Ynet, Israel’s most popular news site. When I read the item, there were over 60 comments – all anonymous – and the vast majority were sympathetic with the victims. Several even called to avoid racism.

The difference [in tone] might stem from the talkbacks on Ynet’s article being subject to moderation. Even without a law in place, Ynet maintains a policy of regulating talkbacks. And in fact, the controversial comments on the thread on Walla’s Faebook page were later removed. At the same time, another hate-filled string of comments happened to evolve the same day following the same event, this time on none other than the official Facebook page of the Prime Minister’s Office – in other words, using their names. In response to discontent expressed by some users regarding those comments, and despite Facebook’s own policy, the Office’s new media director Dr Eitan Eliram responded that the Office disapproves of extremist comments, but they also do not censor Facebook discussions.

But regulation aside, the attention this case received does not mean it is an exception. Explicit xenophobic expressions are increasingly common, and these online discussions offer a glimpse at contemporary public discourse in Israel. Anonymity is apparently a non-issue.

Many might say that talkbacks are not representative of the general – and obviously more complex – public opinion in the country. But hate-speech, racism, defamation and other supposedly socially unacceptable expressions are in practice tolerated in Israel, and talkbacks are already infamous as fertile grounds for this kind of speech.

Like some of the commenters on the counter-debate that evolved under the screenshot of the link to Walla’s article, I’m still perplexed realizing that some people see no problem with openly expressing opinions they know are not only out of the consensus, but some of them may also be illegal under laws, like amendment Nno. 20 to the Penal Code and a number of court rulings). Yet they do this using their full real name and even on the official Facebook page of the Prime Minister Office.

The pattern is not confined to this case. Xenophobic speech is strikingly evident in debates on countless current topics – from the role of the ultra-orthodox community in the greater society to the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Many arguments can be used to dismiss what might seem like an insignificant incident. One might say, that this is merely a harmless Facebook thread. Others would assert that it’s nothing but an extremist minority on the margins of society. Yet, extremist minorities are detrimental to the society as a whole, and failing to acknowledge the significance and implications of these seemingly small, random outbursts of hate means they are effectively legitimized. Moreover, these threads demonstrate that racism is no longer a phenomenon endemic only to the margins of the Israeli society, but rather on the verge of, if not already at, the mainstream public discourse.

This case surely calls for revisiting proposed legislation on online anonymity. Websites’ self-regulation, voluntary or legal, are not enough to tackle this trend. Had it been merely a PR issue for Israel abroad, as some had often suggested in the past, removing the controversial comments would not be a problem. Moreover, censoring some comments is not really a sanction – if anything, such a move (possibly motivated more by websites’ liability concerns) is more likely to provoke these commenters rather than discourage them.

If we are to accept John Stuart Mill’s approach to discovering the truth (as pronounced in his On Liberty), a diverse discourse, where different perspectives are expressed, is necessarily a better one. In this context, the internet has often been hailed for being an inclusive media platform with a democratizing effect.

It’s true that an inclusive public discourse that seeks to include also those who are intolerant toward any views different to their own is an oxymoron. But, although frustrating, I cannot see an alternative.

Facing these increasingly prevalent assertions, Israeli society should find a way not to conceal them from the public domain – we really couldn’t ask for a louder wake-up call – but rather to delegitimize them. More importantly, Israeli society must tackle the roots and the mindset leading to racism and xenophobia.

Ido Liven is an independent journalist covering mainly environmental issues and foreign affairs for Israeli and international publications. He is currently based in Amsterdam.

Naomi Chazan (photo: Ami Kaufman)

(Berlin, GERMANY) – “No self respecting democracy in the world can accept the current wave of anti-democratic legislation in Israel,” said  New Israel Fund President Naomi Chazan in Berlin this weekend. Chazan, a former Meretz MK, spoke at a conference held by the Heinrich Böll Foundation titled “Estranged Friends? Israeli and German perceptions of state, nation, force – a comparison.”
(Disclaimer: The writer was a guest of Heinrich Böll Foundation. +972 Magazine received a grant from Heinrich Böll Foundation, and is due to receive a grant through the New Israel Fund)

Chazan was one of the last speakers in a conference that meant well, but was for the most part lacking in up to date discourse. At times it seemed like it was a time travelling experience back to the 90’s, with simple and superficial statements such as “the settlements are a problem,” uttered by Colette Avital – a figure who may be well known in Europe but hasn’t been on the Israeli radar for years. The “highlight” of Avital’s speech was when she called on Europe to recognize a Palestinian state.

Colette Avital (photo: Ami Kaufman)

Another disappointing Israeli speaker was former ambassador to Germany Shimon Stein, who during the second day of the conference decided to give a 101 pre-requisite course on relations between the IDF and Israeli government. I felt like I was back at my first year in poli-sci at Tel Aviv university.

Shimon Stein (photo: Ami Kaufman)

One of the interesting issues was watching first hand how delicately German speakers deal with criticizing Israel. In factm there was one speaker who went so far as to say that because of “the past” (the word “Holocaust” was hardly uttered by the German speakers), that Germans have no right to criticize Israel.

The president of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Ralf Fücks, seemed to be the only German speaker who tried to come up with solutions, to push Israel a bit. Yet, at one point he said that if only Israel would be more prone to conducting peace talks, its standing in the world would improve so much it would even be accepted into NATO.

Ralf Fücks (photo: Ami Kaufman)

This didn’t go down very well with two of the more eloquent Israeli speakers in the conference, Prof. Yossi Yonah (Ben Gurion University) and Muhammad Jabali (The Jaffa Project). Prof. Yonah went so far as to say that the monkey on the back of the Israeli nation is Europe. “There is a desperate yearning in Israel to reconnect with Europe. It’s our wish to live inside the ‘mental borders’ of Europe – and that is why there is so much practice of exclusion in Israel today. So, I would actually give up on joining NATO. Israel must return to the Middle East!”

Prof. Yossi Yonah (photo: Ami Kaufman)

Jabali, who was also unfortunately the only Arab speaker in the conference and probably the only one below the age of 50, had an answer for Fücks as well. “Instead of joining NATO, Israel should join the Arab league. Up to now, Israel is in fact the least constructive member of the league – since it doesn’t sit at the assemblies.” Cynicism aside, Jabali makes a good point: it’s time Israel realize it lives in the Middle East and end it’s constant yearning to be part of another continent.

Muhammad Jabali (photo: Ami Kaufman)

Jabali, who I also spoke with outside of the conference hall, tends to put great emphasis on words and misconceptions that have love been ingrained in the discourse. I particularly enjoyed when he looked at his audience and said “Being European does not make you progressive. And being a Muslim does not make you conservative.”

The last speakers of the day, Chazan and MK Nitzan Horowitz, were good enough reason to wait for. Most of you who are familiar with my writing know that I particularly share Horowitz’s enthusiasm for J14. I apologize ahead of time for the quality of footage – I wasn’t planning on documenting these speeches on video. Here is Nitzan’s speech in full:

Click here to view the embedded video.

But it was Chazan who stole the show, and her fiery speech will be remembered as the pinnacle of this meet. I didn’t manage to get all of it due to some technical problems with my camera. This first segment opens with the attack of Im Tirzu and others on Chazan and the New Israel Fund. As you can see, this is an issue that Chazan is not only worried about, it has had a deep effect on her personally. She’s had some tough times because of it. Yet, I have to say, it was a pleasure to see one of my favorite former MKs take the podium and deliver the goods.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This second segment deals more with Israel-German relations. The bottom line? A true friend tells the truth. A true friend criticizes when needed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For me, this was the true lesson to be learned from this conference: Germany needs to become the true friend to Israel. The holocaust should not be an obstacle to that. Exactly the opposite is true.

—————————–

Read also:

Alone in Berlin: Unsuccessfully trying to forget

Alone in Berlin (part II) – A powerful memorial, mistreated

Last week, Haaretz’s Uri Blau had a short expose – available only in the Hebrew edition – regarding the rightwing non-profit NGO Monitor. As some readers might remember, NGO Monitor recently attacked the German Heinrich Böll Foundation for a grant of 6,000 Euros it gave +972 Magazine in 2011.

According to its website, “NGO Monitor’s objective is to end the practice used by certain self-declared ‘humanitarian NGOs’ of exploiting the label ‘universal human rights values’ to promote politically and ideologically motivated agendas.” It does so through attacking public position taken by NGO’s, questioning their motives and partners, and going after their sources of funding.

Human rights organizations in Israel are very transparent, partly because of the increasing attention their activities get (this is one, and probably the only, positive influence of the work of some conservative groups and journalists). Rightwing groups, on the other hand, seem to work under different standards. Im Tirzu, for example, submitted its list of donors only after receiving threats from the state’s NGO department. Elad, the organization leading the colonization efforts of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, has received special status from the government that allows it not to disclose any of its major donors.

NGO Monitor, it turns out, is not much better: In 2010, three of its donations came from undisclosed (though legal) sources: The first one, for the sum of NIS 570,000 ($154,000), was passed through the Jewish Federation of North America and the Jewish Agency; the second one, for NIS 100,000, was transferred through the Israeli non-profit Matan – started in 1998 by local tycoon Shari Arison, owner of Israel’s largest Bank – and the third donation came through a British fund registered in the Isle of Man, known for its favorable tax rates.

When the origin of these funds were questioned by Haaretz, the organization that promotes transparency and accountability suddenly becomes very vague. Asked about the half million NIS donation from the Jewish Agency, Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, said:

It’s the kind of thing I don’t remember by heart exactly. Sometimes I don’t deal with money… Someone who sees in our activities something worthy of donations gives us money. Unlike the organizations we write about, we don’t get money from any government”…

The Jewish Agency, which transferred the donation to NGO Monitor, is a quasi-governmental organization, operating in Israel under special status. An effort to understand the source of the donation from the chairman of NGO Monitor non-profit, attorney Yoel Golovansky, had similar results:

I am not that knowledgeable [of the source of the money]. We go through the financial report when it’s submitted, but I don’t remember… if I knew I don’t remember. Usually it’s someone that donated through the [Jewish] Agency.

Who is it?

I don’t know. I don’t know if I knew, but I surely don’t know today.

One could only imagine the press release NGO Monitor would have written if it got those kind of answers from a human rights group.

(I have contacted the Jewish Federation for its comment on the 2010 donation, which will be posted here when I get it.)

We have also learned from Haaretz that NGO Monitor had a budget of over NIS 2 million in 2010, and that it employed 27 people. Gerald Steinberg had a yearly salary of NIS 211,000, more than twice the average Israeli income. Haaretz’s piece reveled that NGO Monitor, which is so sensitive regarding foreign influence on Israeli politics, is basically an American organization, registered in Israel. Most of its donations come from the States; reporter Uri Blau was even answered in English when he called the organization’s Jerusalem office…

This is a major point: the campaign against human right groups in Israel is done under rhetoric which is all about “preventing foreign influence” and therefore “defending local democracy“, yet much of the rightwing’s work in Israel is financed from abroad – especially, but not exclusively, by American Jews and Christian Zionists – not to mention the most important element in shaping the political conversation, Sheldon Adelson’s free tabloid Israel Hayom, the most widely read paper in Israel. Israel Hayom was and still is a losing operation, intended only to manipulate public opinion in favor of the right.

To sum it up, if the people behind NGO Monitor were even remotely interested in democracy or transparency, they would have had something to say about the unknown donors and shady practices of rightwing NGOs like Elad and Im Tirzu; but NGO Monitor itself is a rightwing group, working to limit the public debate in Israel, to stop advocacy and civil rights work for the advancement of the Arab minority (see for example its latest attack on Adalah, the local version of the NAACP), and to prevent criticism of Israeli policy in the occupied territories and beyond.

The fact that NGO Monitor receives its support through the Jewish Agency and the Jewish Federation goes to show how invested in those disturbing causes Israeli and Jewish mainstream institutions have become.