By Sahar Vardi

The month of May brought tidings of the Military Police opening its “hunting season.” In recent days the IDF has been tracking down hundreds of the 4,500 deserters and “draft dodgers” it has identified. Temporary detention facilities have been erected for this purpose, other prisoners released from military jails to make room. The press has made threats that detainees will be tainted with criminal records for the rest of their lives, and hundreds of military policemen will raid civilian homes throughout the country to haul in their prey.

The question that remains unasked is: Who are they? Who are these “deserters” and “service shirkers” (a relatively new term for what used to be called “draft dodgers” – people who were not exempt from military service and still did not report for conscription on their due date), to be hunted all over the country? And also, perhaps, who benefits?

In my young life I have run into quite a few “deserters” of various types, some of them during my time in military prison for refusing to serve in the army, others in my ongoing activity in New Profile (a feminist organization that supports the demilitarization of Israeli society). I have met amazing people and heard shocking stories that taught me more about our society than any class at school or university and all my volunteering in the community combined.

So who are these “deserters?” Here are a few examples:

The “deserter” is the young woman who, throughout her military term, would spend one month on the base, then several months at home to help her family make ends meet, then some months in the army jail, and so on and so forth. She and many others like her.

The “deserter” is the fellow who tried to commit suicide twice, and whose commanders still refused to take him seriously, so he went home instead of trying to kill himself again. He and many others like him.

The “deserter” is the combat soldier stationed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories whose commander did not let him see an army psychiatrist (mental health officer) to cope with what he’d seen there, so he went AWOL in order to get sent to jail, in order to see a psychiatrist there and have someone to talk to. He and many others like him.

The ‘”deserter” is the new immigrant who did not fit in, left the country, and when she came back to visit her family, discovered she was a “draft dodger.” She and many others like her.

The “deserter” is the soldier whose military service circumstances were fine, but did not manage to get a work permit. And when his mother called to tell him the confiscators were at the door, he went home and back to work, as he had done since the age of fifteen. He and many others like him.

The “deserter” is the young woman who was sexually abused by her commander, and when she was refused an assignment-transfer, went AWOL in order to be thrown out of her unit. She and many others like her.

The “deserter” is the Druze who completed his full three-year term in the army just to realize that Israeli society still considers him an “Arab”, a second-class citizen who does not even have a street name and address where he lives to receive his reserves call-up orders, and twenty years later a policeman arrested and informed him that he has been a reserves-dodger for 20 years. He and many others like him.

A ‘”deserter” is one of your daughter’s girlfriends, or a distant relative. The “deserter” is your kid brother, or the son of your friends. A “deserter” could be anyone who cannot cope with the military system, and especially the kind that this military system does not know how to handle.

And now I ask who profits from this “hunting” season? Whose interests does it serve? Certainly not all those 4,500 “deserters” who live in fear of arrest, or who have already become used to arrest as part of reality, and will be hunted down and incarcerated. It certainly does not benefit their parents, their families, and their friends when military police raid their homes and comb room after room in the attempt to catch someone.

Is it in the interests of the army to now invest extensive manpower just to hunt down these people? Does it benefit an army that in any case exempts 56% of the population prior to their conscription or at some point during their term of duty? Is it in the army’s interest in spite of the fact that a military committee created to examine the conscription pattern, has recommended transforming the army into a professional one, but its conclusions have never been implemented?

There is one single “social” advantage in this waste of resources and harassment of these youngsters, and it is made quite obvious in the campaigns advocating universal draft: those who have served in the army do not want to be “the suckers.” What they cannot understand is that they already are. The superfluous law of mandatory conscription for everyone is that which harms them, their rights, their freedom. Not the people who cannot afford to obey it.

So here is an original idea: Instead of the Israeli army spying on girls on Facebook, instead of hundreds of (wo)man-hunters spreading their nets all over the country and setting up new incarceration facilities, instead of youngsters being forced to choose between their lives and families and military service, instead of governments rising and falling and rising again while wheeling and dealing to draft the (until now exempt) ultra-Orthodox, and instead of those who do serve feeling like suckers – perhaps the time has come to admit that the “people’s army” is dead, and to abolish the law of mandatory conscription. For everyone.

Sahar Vardi is an active member of New Profile – a feminist organization for the demilitarization of Israeli society. She refused her military service in 2008. This piece was originally published in Hebrew on Haokets.org and translated into English by Tal Haran.

Jerusalem Day is meant to be a celebration of the city’s ‘reunification’ following Israel’s victory in the 1967 war. In practice, it is a day for Israeli nationalists, draped in flags, dancing in circles, singing and chanting (including the popular Israeli nationalist chant, ‘death to Arabs’) as they march through the streets of East Jerusalem and the Old City. Many of the Jewish demonstrators are bused in from right-wing yeshivas in Israel and the West Bank.

Marching toward the old city on Jerusalem Day (photo: Activestills)

East Jerusalem resident Aziz Abu Sarah writes that the Israeli police ‘suggest’ to the Palestinian merchants that they close their shops early on Jerusalem Day, in order to ‘reduce tension’; in previous years, the yeshiva students attacked Palestinians in the Old City and vandalized their property. The police issue an outright order to Palestinian merchants to clear away any merchandise that is displayed outside the shop. In the same post, Aziz describes the year he was prevented by a police officer from returning to his own home on Jerusalem Day, even though his identity card showed he was a resident, because his presence – in his own neighbourhood – might disturb the celebrations.

In recent years, a few Israeli left-wing activists have staged small counter-demonstrations outside the old city’s gates, as the celebratory marchers stream past. Generally, the counter-demonstrators hold small signs with slogans like “East Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory,” and the like. A few Palestinians hold a vigil, too, usually with Palestinian flags in their hands.

This year, an Orthodox Jewish man grabbed the Palestinian flag from the hands of a 10 year-old boy and refused to return it. The boy, enraged, tried to prise it out of the Jewish man’s hands. A Border Police officer, seeing the struggle between a 10 year-old Palestinian boy and a fully grown Jewish man, chased the Palestinian boy rather than ordering the Jewish man to return the flag. Someone made a montage of the incident and posted it on Facebook, with commentary. Note the expression of rage in the Border Police officer’s eyes, as seen in the second photo.

Montage posted on pro-Palestinian Facebook page (photo: facebook.com/welcometopalestine)

Border Police officer chasing Palestinian boy on Jerusalem Day (photo: Activestills)

In the end the boy got away, due  to the intervention of a 22 year-old Israeli activist from Jerusalem named Sahar Vardi, who threw herself in front of the Border Police officer just as he was about to grab the child. Photojournalist Haim Schwarczenberg caught the incident.

Israeli activist Sahar Vardi intervenes to stop Border Police officer from arresting Palestinian child (photos: Haim Schwarczenberg)

The incident was also filmed and the clip posted on Youtube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Meanwhile, there are some violent reactions on Facebook to the image of the enraged Border Police officer chasing the frightened Palestinian boy. Some of the comments are a bit funny, in a sad way – like the comment from Geffen Cnaani, a woman in her 20s who works for a medical care provider, who writes (my translation from the Hebrew):

Stinking leftists instead of saying thank you to the soldier who did e-x-a-c-t-l-y what he was supposed to do, you’re trying to change the story?! It’s simply a disgrace that willfully ignorant people live in our country… You should appreciate a soldier like that who acts bravely in the face of the cruelest enemy we have, may the names of all Arabs be wiped out!! And respect to the dedicated soldier..!

Yehuda Daniel, an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva student, writes (with a few spelling mistakes in the holy tongue):

In my opinion at every event there should be a group of people who break cameras. If you see a camera, break it at some point so that the leftists will stop bringing expensive cameras – and then they’ll photograph more general shots (because of the lack of technology) – every camera costs tens of thousands of shekels – I doubt that journalists will be happy if someone breaks their camera every time. (Daniel’s idea received two thumbs up – LG).

Asaf Cohen, a 27 year-old who is studying to be a car mechanic, writes:

They should’ve broken his legs so he couldn’t walk anymore, and after that they should’ve broken all the leftists’ cameras

Raz Melamed, who seems to be in his 20s, writes:

I’m not a leftist, I also don’t agree with “burning leftists and Arabs,” but it’s funny that you curse the Arabs and say they should be killed while using [Arabic] words like ‘yalla,’ ‘kus umak,’ and ‘in’al.’

As of this writing, the last response belongs to Amitai Ben-Abba:

200 comments, most calling for IDF soldiers to kill children. Congratulations, you’re a light unto the nations.

And so you have it: A day of celebrating the ‘victory’ and ‘reunification’ of the holy city of Jerusalem.

The directive, signed by the airport’s transportation director Shuki Shemer, quite simply bans the company from employing “drivers from minorities, including all routes.” Palestinian citizens of Israel  are commonly referred to as “minorities”, a euphemism comparable in sophistication to using “coloureds” instead of “blacks” in American discourse.  The letter (Hebrew, .pdf) is so refreshingly blunt in its unmitigated racism it merits a full translation, with loving preservation of the officious clumsiness of the original:

30 April 2012

To: Moni Siton Transportation LTD

RE: Employee transportation 

Complaints have been recently received from members of the security and border control staff concerning the employment of drivers from minorities along the Jerusalem route, Malcha Cabs and Yisrael Cabs.

According to a decision by the director of the security department, you should not employ drivers from minorities, including all routes.

Regards,

Shuki Shemer

ACRI’s attorney Tal Hassin stressed (Hebrew) that the directive is illegal, being in explicit violation the Basic (constitutional) Law on Freedom of Occupation and the law on equality of opportunity in employment. I can only add to that that the IAA and Ben Gurion Airport are not private companies but state authorities. As Noam often says, if you don’t like the word “apartheid”, you’re welcome come up with a new term that will describe our situation with all its precious exceptionality – and nefariousness – thrown in.

The Jerusalem Post has published an op-ed titled, “Yes, all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic!” As any philosophy student can recognize, it’s one of those arguments that makes the entire debate meaningless – if something is everything then it’s also nothing – but the piece is worth reading (and responding to) nonetheless. The author captures – unintentionally – the zeitgeist in Israeli politics, and also in large parts of the Jewish world. Both have ceased to differentiate between diplomacy, politics, and anti-Semitism as a special form of racism. In this exercise, evidence is meaningless. The author, Benjamin Kerstein, writes:

All criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic because of the specific historical circumstances under which we currently live. That is to say, the historical circumstances under which Israel and the Jews exist in the world today render any non-anti-Semitic criticism of Israel impossible. And, ironically, these are circumstances that Israel’s opponents have themselves created.

This perfect circle melts collective and personal identity, political institutions and individuals, into one being, in the tradition of – oh well – some of history’s worst anti-Semites.

The first – but not only – sign of racism (including anti-Semitism) is that it doesn’t allow its victim a space to change: Jews/blacks/Muslims are inherently A, and therefore they deserve B, goes the racist argument (it could even be a positive one – Jews are “good with money” is a racist declaration, because it presumes something that is inherent to all Jews). A critical argument, on the other hand, targets behavior and choices: An institution/group/person/state does A, and therefore deserves B. Criticism of political choices is not racism. It is simply politics. Recognizing the state that a certain group of Jews has formed – not even a majority – as representing every Jew on earth (and perhaps every Jew in history) is actually closer to old anti-Semite thinking.

It gets worse. The author of the JPost piece, and many like him, doesn’t bother to explain – and it’s no accident – what is exactly “criticism of Israel.” Is it criticism of the government? Of the government’s political behavior? Of the army? Of the state as a structure? Is arguing for an ethnicity-blind state (“a state for all its citizens”) anti-Semitism, as it seeks to change Israel, and in the process, criticize it? Is arguing for the one-state solution a form of anti-Semitism? Is arguing against the occupation anti-Semitism, as it is an Israeli project, carried out by almost all Israelis?

Dwelling on these questions would necessarily label many Israelis, including Members of Knesset and prominent institutions, along with half the world, inherently anti-Semitic.

Naturally, some readers would accept this, and answer that yes! Those groups and people, even if they are Jewish or Israeli, are in fact anti-Semitic. I urge them to reconsider. The effect of such a claim would not be the delegitimization of anti-Semitism, but quite the opposite: Many real anti-Semites would be seen as partners in a large and rational community that deserves to be heard. If everyone is equal to the Nazis, then maybe Nazism wasn’t that bad after all.

Moreover: The terms Zionism, Israeli and Judaism were never meant to overlap. A person can identify with two out of three of those descriptions, or even just one out of three. The current ideological shift in Israel has a lot to do with the integration of different aspects of identity into one. The state (Israel) equals the Jewish people equals the ideology (Zionism), and everyone not abiding with this model is necessarily a traitor – or an anti-Semite.

I am not a big fan of Israeli romanticism – the longing for the lost democratic and liberal past, which I do not believe ever really existed – but I would say this: Israeli politics in the past had the ability to be relaxed enough, focused enough on consensus-building, for it to hold together a structure with many internal contradictions: Judaism and democracy, socialism and free market, Zionists and anti-Zionists. The new Israeli right would like the center of the political system and the public sphere, the former place of fragile consensus, to be ideologically and ethnically pure, and labeling any challenge as an existential danger is an important part of this process. The idea of across-the-board purity was popular in Europe in the late 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century. I’ll stop here.

In the face of such a threat, old truths must be repeated: Criticism of the Israeli government is important, and it’s important most of all for Israelis, because power needs always to be criticized. The right to challenge the political structure – even to change the country (Americans would have called it amending the Constitution) – should be the right of every living human being, including Israelis.

Israel is currently engaged in the longest-lasting military occupation on earth, a racist colonial project, which involves violence and human rights abuses on a structural, large-scale basis. Perhaps it’s not the worst regime on earth and it’s certainly not the worst in history, but it’s bad enough to deserve all the attention it gets, and more. Fighting it is not anti-Semitism. It’s called having a conscience.

Every year, Jerusalem Day brings a depressing shadow over East Jerusalem. While Israelis celebrate the “liberation” of the city, Palestinians mourn the beginning of a long journey of oppression and occupation. On Jerusalem Day, tens of thousands of Israelis right-wing activists are allowed to parade in the streets, Palestinians are told close their shops, remain in their homes and not bother the celebration.

An announcement distributed by the police in East Jerusalem requested that shop keepers (voluntarily) close down their shops by 5 pm on Sunday. The same document requires that all products viewed outside the shop be removed by 4 pm. The justification for these requests is justified by an attempt to “reduce potential tension” between the shop keepers and people “celebrating.” However as usual, the cost of reducing tension is paid for by the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.

Every year’s celebration of Jerusalem Day is full of provocation and attacks on the local Palestinian population. In the video below, you can see an example of what happens. First comes the famous slogan “Mavet Le’Aravim” (Death to Arabs), then physical attacks such as stone throwing. The police often tries to calm things down but Palestinians are often arrested even if beaten by the extremist marchers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Imagine for a moment that Palestinians decide to celebrate their heritage in West Jerusalem and march through Jaffa and Ben Yehuda streets! Would they be given full police protection? Would the police dare to ask shops in West Jerusalem to close their doors to reduce tension?

I remember a few years ago I was in West Jerusalem when the “celebration” of Jerusalem Day started. Somehow, I forgot that I was supposed to return home early on that day to avoid harassment. Everyone knows you shouldn’t be on the streets on this day if you are a Palestinian, but I screwed up. The streets were closed to cars so I had to walk towards East Jerusalem only to be stopped by a policeman. After he checked my ID, frisked me, and asked a few questions he told me that I cannot walk to East Jerusalem. How pathetic, I thought. You are celebrating the unification of Jerusalem but you are stopping me from crossing the street to my home?

“There is a celebration and you are not allowed there,” he told me and then tried to convince me that it was for my own safety that he is preventing me from walking home.  So, I had to spend my evening sitting on the road in West Jerusalem unable to go home because this is the day that Israel celebrates Jerusalem as its “undivided” capital. Yet, I am being told to believe that I have equal rights, to believe that there is no difference between me and a Jewish resident of Jerusalem.

This is the reality for East Jerusalem, a poor and desperate place where its Palestinian residents find it harder and harder to make a living or travel freely.  In a recent report from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI),  78 percent of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and 84 percent of children are living below the poverty level. This is a deterioration from 2006 when 64 percent of Palestinians and 73 protest of children lived below the poverty level.

Jerusalem Day is not about a unified city but is about a show of power. It is a reminder for the Palestinians that Jerusalem is an occupied city where non-Jewish residents don’t count. Jerusalem Day is a sad day because Jerusalem ought to be a city of peace and not of conflict. Perhaps it is appropriate to end this post with this Psalm for the peace of Jerusalem:  “May those who love you be secure.”

According to B’Tselem, the incident started at around 16:30 Saturday, when a group of settlers descended from the extremist settlement Itzhar towards the Palestinian village (as seen in the first video below). According to eye witnesses the settlers – some of them masked and some armed – started fires in the fields near the village and threw stones at Palestinians who moved towards them, who also started throwing stones at the settlers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Videos shot by residents of Asira al-Qibliya and B’Tselem show a fire in the fields, settlers and Palestinians in confrontation, and soldiers standing near the settlers, yet mostly uninvolved. Amongst the settlers are three people armed with two rifles and one hand-gun, one of them wearing what seems to be a police hat. According to B’Tselem, one of the rifles is a Tavor – commonly seen in the hands of Israeli soldiers.

At one point (between 0:40-0:55 in the video below) one of the settlers is seen aiming his rifle at something, then Palestinians start throwing stones at him, and then he and his partner open intensive fire towards the stone throwers. A soldier nearing the settlers is seen running away back to the direction he and other soldiers were coming from, not preventing the shooting in any way. After a man in a green shirt is hit the soldiers pull back, Palestinians evict the man, and the woman with the camera is heard saying the man was shot in the head (Arabic). It would later be found out that the man is 24 year-old Fathi Asira, who is now in a hospital in Nablus. His condition is defined as stable.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is worth mentioning that throughout the video soldiers are not seen trying to stop the settlers, nor disperse the two crowds in any way, although their intervention could have prevented the injury. It is unclear from the videos who exactly started the fire, as one can see several settlers trying to put it out, and also a Palestinian fire truck. However, the fire is destroying Palestinian fields very close to the village, and did not appear in the first video showing the settlers’ approach – two facts that might support the Palestinians’ claim that it was started by settlers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The settlement of Itzhar is notorious for its radical extremism, as well as for the many attacks carried by settlers against Palestinians in neighboring villages. The settlement was also attacked itself by Palestinians, including residents of Asira al-Qibilya.

On Friday, with the headlines screaming of Eritreans raping a 15-year-old Israeli girl,  I went with a photographer friend to the Hatikva neighborhood in South Tel Aviv to get a sense of how the Jewish residents were feeling toward the Africans, and vice versa. I was surprised to see no hatred on the faces of the Israelis nor fear on the faces of the Africans. Everyone looked calm, doing their Friday afternoon shopping, selling and running around.

But this, of course, was just on the surface. An Israeli woman standing outside her front door, in her 30′s, of Yemenite background, asked what we were doing, and when we said we were doing a story about the situation with the Africans, she came down, unasked, and started taking us around the neighborhood. She pointed out the little grocery stalls run by Africans, and complained that they open them without business licenses and nobody stops them. “Can an Israeli do that?” she demanded. “They’re taking over.”

On the walls along Ha’etzel Street were posters for the anti-”infiltrator” protests planned for this Tuesday and Wednesday evening, and for the one that had just taken place. ”We are the country – don’t mess with us,” warned one. ”Move them to North Tel Aviv,” read another.

This is not new; the anti-refugee movement has been building for a couple of years. I’ve heard “black peril” talk from several people I’ve interviewed in Hatikva, and there are very, very few dissenting voices. The difference is that now there are headlines about a rape by Eritreans, which came about a week after the headlines about a rape by Sudanese.

The night before, when I read about the terrible attack on the 15-year-old girl near the central bus station, the “capital” of Israel’s foreign worker and African refugee population, I felt “my side” had not only lost, my side had been proven guilty. I felt that as insanely racist, hateful and mendacious as they are, the xenophobes, the Eli Yishais and the Kachniks, had been right on the basic point all along. The refugees have become an intolerable presence in the neighborhoods where they’ve settled, and if something isn’t done to reduce their numbers and stop more of them from coming, this won’t be just a local problem in South Tel Aviv and a handful of other neighborhoods, it’ll be a national problem, an intolerable one.

Starting in 2006, when there were fewer than 200 African refugees in the country, I wrote dozens of op-eds and features in The Jerusalem Post saying Israel has to take in these horribly victimized people, to let them live freely, to allow them the opportunity to work, start families and remain here.

Private citizens distributing food to refugees in Levinsky Park (photo: Oren Ziv / Activestills)

That was when there were a few hundred, then a thousand, then a few thousand, then several thousand refugees – before the complaints from Israelis in South Tel Aviv , Eilat, Arad, Ashdod and Ashkelon began surfacing, when it was possible to write such complaints off as a few people’s irrational reaction to black people. I heard plenty of warnings, and not just from right-wingers, that an open-door policy to the refugees would encourage huge numbers of others to follow, but I didn’t want to take those warnings seriously, and my sense is that pro-refugee activists, lawyers and other journalists didn’t want to take them seriously, either, or they told themselves things would work out.

But those warnings have come true. There are at least 60,000 African refugees, mostly from Eritrea, in the country now. The head of the UN refugee office in Israel, William Tall, told me in late March that 2,000 to 3,000 more are crossing from Sinai into Israel every month – double last year’s rate.

These people come here with heavy, heavy “baggage”: many were robbed and tortured and many women raped by their Bedouin smugglers en route through Sinai to the Israeli border. They’re all escaping unimaginable hell in their home countries, with the Sudanese having been subject to harsh racism and at times violence during their years-long stopover in Egypt.

Some are mentally ill from the ordeal. Some sleep in Levinsky Park near the central bus station. With the refugees now barred en masse from working legally, a Skid Row scene has developed among them. The refugees are overwhelmingly young men, and include very few unattached young women. Most of them live two or three to a room in absurdly cramped apartments.  There’s a lot of drinking and fighting.

The refugees are no longer a relative handful of people whom Israel could assimilate. Their numbers, rate of increase and concentrated presence have turned them into a subculture of pariahs in Israeli eyes, unassimilable anywhere in this country, with nowhere else to go. They’ve settled massively in the midst of poor, mainly Mizrahi, right-wing Jews in South Tel Aviv and Eilat, who are not used to living among black people, who see them hanging around with nothing to do, sometimes drunk, and who typically refer to them as kushim – “niggers.”

The awful rape that came to light on Thursday – three Eritreans were arrested and police say their DNA matches the DNA left on the girl – raises a very hard question: Are the local residents right when they accuse the Africans of habitually committing violent crime, or is it just their fear of young black men, especially young black men at night, that’s talking?

As long-time activist Sigal Rozen wrote, the police statistics used to say the refugees were actually much more law-abiding than Israelis in general; now they say the opposite. Like Rozen, I suspect the police are doctoring the statistics now because that’s the way the political wind is blowing. (In years past, police said they didn’t keep separate crime stats for foreign nationals; now they’ve got separate categories for Eritreans and Sudanese.)

But if you look at the refugee community’s profile, they’re destitute; barred from legal work; traumatized; alien in a fearful, hostile land; with very few families and top-heavy with young men, many of whom drink excessively – it would be something of a sociological miracle if they didn’t show a high rate of crime, including violent crime.

As for rape - again, this is a community with lots of young men and few single women. They come from one of the extremely poor, desolate, war-torn countries of Africa, a continent where sexual violence is a widespread plague.

_____________________________

Add all this up, and what do you get? Not that all African refugees in Israel are criminals or rapists, nor that most of them are, nor that a lot of them are, certainly not if we’re talking about serious violent crime like rape or aggravated assault or murder. No one except a psychotic racist would deny that the overwhelming majority of Africans here are law-abiding.

But if you take the crime rate, including the violent crime rate, including the rape rate, among 10,000 random African refugees here and compare it to the rate among 10,000 random Israelis, would it be higher? Given the community’s profile, I would be surprised if it wasn’t, despite the past police statistics Rozen quotes that showed it to be actually much lower.

No, I think the Israelis in South Tel Aviv have more than just a “subjective” reason to be afraid of refugees. On one hand, I have no doubt they exagerrate the danger greatly; I’ve heard loads of generalities from a couple of dozen residents, but no personal experiences of being assaulted by refugees, nor even second-hand accounts. (Again, though, I’ve only talked to a couple dozen people about this.)

On the other hand, I don’t think the people in South Tel Aviv, Eilat, Arad, Ashdod and Ashkelon have made the whole thing up out of nothing but color prejudice; I don’t think the police’s latest statistics are completely made up, either; and if African refugees in Israel have a relatively high rate of violent crime, including sexual violence, I would find it the most natural thing in the world, given where they come from, what they’ve lived through and the way they’re living now.

If there were only thousands of them here, they could be treated strictly as humanitarian cases and “adopted” by kibbutzim and moshavim like many were in the beginning; they could work and go to school and be assimilated and get married and have families and become Israelis. But with at least 60,000 here and 2,000 to 3,000 more arriving monthly, all of them crowding into a few neighborhoods of poor, conservative, frightened Jews, they are a threat to the fabric of this society. Given their numbers, there’s a limit to how much compassion Israel can show them. At this point, we have to worry about our own first.

The “Greater Jerusalem” area we see today has 800,000 residents, 38% of which are Palestinian. The city suffers from high levels of segregation in all walks of life between religious and secular and between Palestinians and Israelis, a 78% poverty rate among Palestinians; and the separation wall cutting through its villages and landscapes.

While the government, mainstream media and many Israelis celebrate this day, others of us lament the city’s state. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Poem by Moriel Rothman, a Jerusalem activist

By Riman Barakat

Today marks the 45th anniversary of what Palestinians and the international community refer to as the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, and what some Israelis refer to as the unification of Jerusalem. It is a good opportunity to examine one recent example of how unification or illegal annexation is changing the identity and political future of the Palestinian residents of the city.

As an East Jerusalem resident, I am struck by a recent trend:  many of my friends and acquaintances who hold Jerusalem identification cards – documents of permanent residency rather than Israeli citizenship – are quietly applying for and obtaining Israeli passports.

It’s not immediately clear why. Current residents of East Jerusalem – numbering over 350,000, or 38% of the city’s total population – already go about their daily lives, shop at Israeli malls, use Israeli services, frequent Israeli restaurants and bars, send their children to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and receive Israeli social and health benefits. What does “upgrading their status” from East Jerusalem residents to citizens of Israel add?  Why did East Jerusalem residents refuse the Israeli offer of citizenship in 1967, and why are they actively seeking to obtain it now, especially given that citizenship requires them to pledge the controversial oath of allegiance to the Israeli state?

I believe the trend is the result of a well-planned and consistently applied Israeli strategy to pressure the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. In 1996, Israel developed the “Center of Life Policy,” under which residents must continuously prove that they reside and work in Jerusalem, as a condition for continued residency status. Palestinian Jerusalemites slowly began to recognize the imminent threat of losing their Jerusalem residency status. Documentation such as landline phone bills, electricity bills, and proof of payment of municipal property tax bills are frequently requested by the Israeli Ministry of Interior upon renewal of identity cards or request for travel documents. Failure to produce those documents may ultimately result in the revocation of the Jerusalem ID.

In addition, East Jerusalem Palestinians face arbitrary threats of home demolition orders in Silwan and other neighborhoods, the continued infiltration of settlers, harassment at Ben Gurion Airport, the difficulty of obtaining building permits, a deteriorating infrastructure in Palestinian neighborhoods, and unequal distribution and allocation of budget and resources in developing Palestinian areas. These factors have led people to feel that an Israeli passport may provide some measure of improvement in their lives. Most of all, they hope  it will safeguard them against displacement from property, from the land and from the city that they call home. As I wrote in the Palestine-Israel Journal in 2008:

The Palestinian Jerusalemites today live in an ever-changing environment that necessitates a constant revision of upcoming threats. For many Jerusalemites, a daily exercise of “redefining home,” “flight from danger,” and “fear of displacement,” “fear of home demolitions” “fear of losing their IDs” govern their thinking. Unlike the 1948 and 1967 Palestinian experiences, which occurred more or less in a moment of declared war and, simultaneously, created populations that fit the legal definitions of refugees, the current political situation and the slower process of displacement has created a permanent refugee mode of behavior. It is one that contains all the psychological components of refugee behavior and is much more internalized, yet does not figure in the legal definition of refugees.

It’s only logical that people hoping to improve the quality of life for their children view Israeli citizenship as one way to escape the insecurity. With citizenship status, they are allowed to live anywhere in Israel, rather than suffer the threat of forced displacement in East Jerusalem, and relocation. Instead of having to apply for visas every time they travel abroad, they can just hop on a plane, without having to explain to border officials why they don’t have passports, and that they are stateless.

This is a logical conclusion for individual Palestinians but what does it mean for the Palestinian and Israeli governments? What does it mean for Palestinian identity?

Palestinian political representation of East Jerusalem has weakened both physically and virtually since the death of the PLO representative in Jerusalem Faisal al-Husseini, and the closing of the Orient House. If we ever see the day when the issue of Jerusalem is actually negotiated, will the PA act surprised that the number of Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency status – potential citizens of the Palestinian state – will be negligible?

As the PA turns a blind eye to the phenomenon of East Jerusalemites becoming Israelis, I wonder: does the PA still adhere to the vision of East Jerusalem as the future capital of Palestine? If not, the PA should start discussing the possibility of an Open City immediately, both internally and publicly.

Further, why does Israel actively grant citizenship to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem? Is it hoping that they will become a negotiating card for the Israeli government in its attempt to keep East Jerusalem? Is this another Israeli action to undermine the viability of a two-state solution? Are they assuming that since most East Jerusalemites do not vote in municipal elections that they will similarly refrain from exercising their right to vote in national elections? Does Israel believe that the current oath of allegiance declaring loyalty to the state guarantees that Palestinian East Jerusalemites will show greater compliance and less dissidence towards Israel?

Finally, what does it mean for Palestinian identity? If there are fewer Palestinians to vote in a future Palestinian national election, does this weaken the connection between identity and active citizenship? Will dual citizenship be possible if the long awaited peace agreement is reached?

Though we continue to believe the dream of a unified Palestinian identity, the reality is that this identity has become fragmented among the different statuses that each one of us holds. Gaza residents are trapped in a fortified prison. They view the West Bank as freedom, but in reality it is just another prison. For a West Bank resident, Jerusalemites appear to have many privileges, and Jerusalemites with an Israeli passport seem to have reached the ultimate level of freedom. But it’s all relative. Those new Palestinian citizens of Israel will soon realize that their pledge of allegiance could seal their lips from criticizing the unfulfilling oath that they have just taken, namely that a state cannot reconcile the value of democracy it claims, with its exclusivist Jewishness.

Will the day ever come when we are not divided according to a barometer of suffering and restrictions on freedom? When peaceful and dignified life is enjoyed equally by Palestinians from refugee camps, Gazans, West Bank residents, East Jerusalem residents and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and they can feel equally secure that their basic individual rights and freedoms are not threatened daily and systematically? For that we require democracies that advance beyond the free and fair elections to recognizing individual freedoms, and the right to be different.

Riman Barakat is the Co-Director of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI)

I caught a glimpse of a picture on Facebook yesterday that sent chills down my spine. It was uploaded by Tal Rabinowsky, who in the caption and comments of the picture said that he saw the following text while helping his cousin do his bible homework.

His cousin is in second grade.

The textbook that Tal's kid was reading (photo: Tal Rabinovsky)

My translation:

3. Why was it important for Abraham to buy his own cemetery plot to bury Sarah? Read the following story, it may help you answer the question:

Jacqueline made aliyah (immigrated) from France. She has been living in Jerusalem for 30 years now.

Her son, Elad, was killed in the Lebanon War. After her son was buried, Jacqueline said that only after her son was buried in Israeli soil, did she begin to feel that she belonged to our country and connected to her land.

(Tal’s photo will be discussed tonight on Channel 10′s “Zinor Laila”)