Hundreds of women – including MKs Tamar Zandberg (Meretz), Stav Shaffir (Labor) and Michal Rozin (Meretz) –  gathered at Jerusalem’s Western Wall in honor of Rosh Hodesh (first of the Hebrew calendar month, today, Nissan) Tuesday morning. They joined the usual group of women from the Women of the Wall movement, who go every month at 7 a.m. to pray there on the other side of the barricade separating them from the men – but are often harassed and prevented from doing so – and even at times, arrested.

Hundreds of women at the Western Wall, March 12, 2013 (Tomer Persico)

According to the regulations at the Western Wall, as determined by its chief rabbi, and backed by the state authorities (the legal issues are a bit more complex and nuanced –  to read more, click here)  women are prohibited from wearing tefillin (phylacteries) or tallitot (prayer shawl) or reading from a Torah scroll at the Western Wall. Women of the Wall have been protesting this practice for over two decades.

Anat Hoffman, who launched the movement in 1988, and heads the Israel Religious Action Center, has been arrested more than once for wearing a prayer shawl or reading from the Torah scroll at the Wall. While police often stand back and allow them to proceed, 10 women from the group were arrested, making headlines.

Tuesday morning, several female MKs joined hundreds of women at the wall, in a show of support, bringing with them their parliamentary immunity. MK Tamar Zandberg: “I am a secular woman, this is the first time I have worn a prayer shawl, but I came in solidarity with this feminist struggle.”  No one was arrested, but Zandberg said police tried to stop her from entering the area with a prayer shawl. “I just forced my way in,” she said. The large number of women, and the fact that several MKs were among them, likely prevented arrests today.

Women of the Wall chairwoman Anat Hoffman, MK Stav Shafir (Labor), MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) (left to right)...

Violence against Palestinians is no longer reserved for Israeli soldiers or settlers, who still justify their actions with “security.” The young Israelis who have been attacking Palestinians, unprovoked, on the streets of Western, educated, democratic Israel, have no such excuse.

In the last week or so, the number of images of Palestinians laying in hospital beds or being carried away in coffins that has appeared in my news cycle is astonishing. It is not necessarily that there are more incidents of violence (it’s certainly plausible though I have not seen any statistical reports yet), but the media is certainly giving it more attention, and it certainly feels like there are more.

A resident of Jaffa beaten viciously by Jews by the Tel Aviv beach, a young Palestinian woman attacked while waiting for the Jerusalem light rail, a man assaulted by the Sea of Galilee, a waiter in Tel Aviv, the list goes on and on. All of these Palestinians are victims of hate crimes and racist violence committed by Jewish Israelis across Israel.

But there is also a woman in East Jerusalem, Ruba Odeh, who suffered a serious injury to her jaw after being shot by a Border Policeman on the roof of her own home in Silwan with a foam-tipped plastic bullet. Or 13-year old Mohammed al-Kurdi, wounded by IDF fire in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem. Or 23-year old Mohammed Asfour, who died Thursday from his wounds after being shot in the head two weeks ago during a West Bank demonstration in solidarity with the 4,593 Palestinian prisoners currently held in Israeli jails.

Asfour is the sixth Palestinian to be fatally shot by the IDF since 2013 began. From B’Tselem:

Where are the official condemnations? Where is...

The photo below was taken by an Israeli Ta’ayush activist on Saturday March 2 at 10:30a.m, in Umm al Amad, a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills close to the Otniel settlement. Shepherds from the village were trying to graze their sheep when according to the activist, Border Police officers showed up and simply expelled them. Masked settlers then came around to join in the intimidation and harassment. They were not questioned by the security forces or asked to identify themselves, but rather made nice.

Border Police officer shaking hands with Israeli settler, South Hebron Hills. 10:30a.m. March 2, 2013 (Guy, Ta’ayush activist)

Although the settlers did not attack anyone in this incident, just a week and a half ago, settlers accompanied by IDF soldiers shot two Palestinians in Qusra. And not all of them even bothered covering their faces.

A settler (in white shirt) pointing a gun at Palestinians on the plantations of Qusra, February 23 2013 (photo: Saad Al-Wadi)

The top photograph is a simple, visual manifestation of the fact that Israel’s security establishment is not simply colluding with settler harassment and violence but is leading the way when it comes to violations of Palestinian human rights, and breaking Israel’s own laws.

Why is a Border Police officer shaking hands with a citizen whose face is covered? And more importantly, why is that settler’s face covered in the first place?

A picture is worth a thousands words. In this specific case, the single snapshot captures daily reality in the West Bank. As I have reported many times in the past, Palestinian farmers in the South Hebron Hills are often prevented from grazing their cattle or accessing their water cisterns not only because of settler intimidation, harassment and violence, but also due to IDF collusion and at times active enagement by the IDF and Border Police in preventing Palestinians from accessing their lands and going about their lives.

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Beit Safafa is a Palestinian neighborhood just south of West Jerusalem, inside annexed and occupied East Jerusalem, all within the boundaries of Israel’s vast Jerusalem municipality. It is situated between the Green Line to its northern perimeter, and the Israeli settlement of Gilo on its southern perimeter. (To find Beit Safafa on Ir Amim’s map below, move your eyes directly down from “West Jerusalem” and you will see it, just below the Green Line.)

Greater Jerusalem Map (Ir Amim)

Until 1967, Beit Safafa was divided between Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem and the Jordanian-controlled West Bank. Train tracks ran through it along the 1949 Armistice Lines. When Israel occupied East Jerusalem, Beit Safafa came entirely under Israeli rule and despite what Israeli governments will tell you, it was not united, but rather torn apart once again: most of its residents became permanent residents, but a minority in the northern part received Israeli citizenship, instantly giving the same neighborhood’s population very different political rights.

Beit Safafa, which has a population of just under 10,000, is now facing it’s third major bisection, this time by a highway being constructed by Israel that will literally cut through the neighborhood. Highway 4, or the Begin Highway, is a Jerusalem ring road intended to create one continuous stretch of highway from the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of the city to the Givat Ze’ev settlement bloc in the north.

It would ultimately link the West Bank’s two most controversial highways: the Tunnel Road connecting Gush Etzion to Jerusalem in the south and Road 443, a.k.a. the Apartheid Highway, which routes settler traffic north of the city to Tel Aviv while denying access to Palestinians. The width of the road planned to cut through the neighborhood ranges from 33 to 78 meters. Part of it will exist as a six-lane highway and other parts could have as many as 10-11 lanes.

According to Ir Amim, which has published an excellent fact sheet on the issue, the municipality has found a way to bypass the necessary procedures that require public inclusion, making it impossible for Beit Safafa residents to formally object to the plans. As Nir Hasson recently reported for Haaretz:

On December 12, 2012, 15 Beit Safafa residents filed an administrative petition against the Jerusalem Municipality and its construction company, Moriah, which was rejected...

The IDF long ago banned the use of .22 caliber bullets for crowd control, but appears to have been used to shoot at a 13-year-old Palestinian boy earlier this week. The doctor treating him claims it was a dum-dum bullet, an expanding bullet illegal under international law.

Mohammad al-Kurdi, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy from the Aida refugee camp just outside Bethlehem, is lying in the intensive care unit of a Beit Jala hospital due to internal injuries he suffered from IDF fire on Monday.

13 year-old Mohammad al-Kurdi from Aida refugee camp, in hospital suffering injuries from IDF fire

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit would not confirm the exact incident in which Mohammad was shot, but did state that soldiers used “crowd dispersal methods” in response to Molotov cocktails and stones being thrown from the Aida camp, which is adjacent to Rachel’s Tomb. The IDF spokesperson told me that they proceeded to shoot what they define as live ammunition (as distinct from accepted crowd dispersal methods, which include sometimes lethal rubber-coated bullets) at the Palestinian “main inciters” only after “makeshift grenades” were hurled at them; standard IDF rules of engagement.

According to an eyewitness on the ground I spoke to, Mohammad and other children who were in the line of fire did not throw any “makeshift grenades” of any kind, but were rather playing with fireworks. “I absolutely saw at least two fireworks that exploded well short of entering the Rachel’s Tomb compound,” he said, adding that he did see Molotov cocktails burning on the outside of the wall of Rachel’s Tomb.

The exact circumstances of the incident require further investigation, but the doctor who performed surgery on Mohammad says that he believes he was wounded from shrapnel that entered his body, emanating from what he claimed were “dum-dum bullets,” or expanding bullets, that were shot at the ground right next to him. Activestills photographer Anne Paq, who was at the hospital and spoke to the doctor on Tuesday, took photographs of the X-rays. Here is one of his torso:

Both Oscar-nominated documentaries from this region are important documents of Israeli occupation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in their own right. But if ‘The Gatekeepers’ wins, it will whitewash occupation by presenting Israeli guilt in a redeeming light. If ‘Five Broken Cameras’ wins, it will go beyond the message that what Israel is doing is wrong and show the world exactly what wrong looks like – and just how ugly it is.

Adeeb Abu Rahme, one of the residents of Bil’in who appears in 5 Broken Cameras, confronts the IDF during a protest in 2007 (Activestills)

The Gatekeepers and 5 Broken Cameras have already succeeded in breaking one of Israel’s biggest taboos: airing out its dirty laundry on the big screen, for the whole world to see. Now the two films are both heading to the biggest stage of all: the Academy Awards.

If either one of the films from Israel/Palestine wins in the Best Documentary category, it will be a symbolic achievement for all those who believe Israeli government policies and the occupation are untenable and want to see it held accountable for the violent cycle Israelis and Palestinians continue to be in.

But there are salient and important differences between the films. Most obviously, The Gatekeepers provides the perspective of the privileged and powerful occupier, while 5 Broken Cameras speaks for the powerless and debilitated occupied. While each film exposes Israel’s systematically unethical treatment of Palestinians, if either one is chosen by the Academy as the winner, it will mean very different things.

The Gatekeepers, directed by Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh, who previously made a movie about Ariel Sharon and his decision to withdraw from Gaza in 2005, brings together six former Shin Bet agents to expose the moral and tactical failures in the country’s secret internal security infrastructure. 5 Broken Cameras is a documentary jointly directed by Palestinian Emad Burnat and Israeli Guy Davidi, chronicling the West Bank village Bil’in’s response to Israel’s construction of the separation wall and routine IDF harassment and raids.

To make the $1.5 million-film, Moreh had to gain access to some of Israel’s most elite and authoritative figures on national security. It was filmed in...

As if it wasn’t enough to offer Jews around the world a trip to Israel totally free of charge, the Birthright industry is now marketing “the only skateboarding trip to Israel” and a “hip hop” trip. This is in addition to the already popular “niche” tours that include those catering to the LGBT community, food enthusiasts and wheelchair-bound Jews.

The American Zionist youth movement Young Judea hosting these flyers on its website explains the skateboarding trip as “Based on the core Israel Now itinerary,  this program is specially offered to people who board. No posers. No pushers. Go to explore and to skate. Sessions in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem!”

Birthright flyer

The hip hop trip is defined as “specifically offered to hip-hop heads. Ciphers and Passports – it can’t get better. What does that mean? It is entirely unclear what these trips actually entail, but they are sponsored by Artists 4 Israel, an organization that describes its mission thusly: “We are the security fence against cultural terrorism.”

If you ask me, these flyers are committing some cultural crime. But anyway, why are these trips being offered? Is there a shortage of Jews going on Birthright trips? According to the website, Birthright has taken “over 340,000 young Jewish people from 62 countries.” Is there a specific demand by skateboards and hip hoppers?

The settler media outlet Arutz Sheva reported (Hebrew) a highly “irregular” occurrence on Wednesday morning, in which a Palestinian stood next to Jewish Israelis at a hitchhiking stop near the West Bank settlement of Beit El. Avigdor Shatz, the Binyamin Regional Council’s chief security officer in the area, was quoted as saying:

Shatz admitted that the law does not actually bar Palestinians from standing at the Givat Asaf hitchhiking stop, named after the illegal outpost nearby. “It is not defined as Israeli territory since it is outside the settlement.” However, he said it was an “irregular” and “strange” incident, and warned Israelis to keep their distance and to call the police and report such incidents. “We will get forces there to examine the suspect. Usually it is nothing.”

I guess in apartheid Israel, it’s news when a Palestinian dares to stand next to Jews.

After Alan Dershowitz started a campaign against a BDS panel at Brooklyn College, the institution’s funding was threatened by ‘pro-Israel’ officials. The college stuck to its guns, but the entire fiasco is an excellent example of the double standard ailing the debate on Israel in the U.S.

Israel is once again at the center of a heated debate in the U.S., pitting the so-called “pro-Israel” types against the so-called “anti-Israel” types. This time it’s not Obama, it’s not Chuck Hagel – it’s Brooklyn College.

An event scheduled to take place at the institution tomorrow (Thursday) will feature UC Berkeley professor and Jewish Voice for Peace board member Judith Butler and Palestinian human rights activist Omar Barghouti. Both will discuss the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), whose goal is to apply pressure on Israel with non-violent economic tools, into ending its violations of Palestinian human rights and to abide by international law. Supreme Israel cheerleader Alan Dershowitz, who created the controversy, claims that the problem is not about the event itself but about the fact that it is being co-sponsored by the college’s political science department, which he says amounts to a formal endorsement of BDS. As Dershowitz wrote in the Huffington Post last Friday, “Of course, the event should go forward, but it should be sponsored by students and outside groups, not by a department of the college. The same should be true of pro-Israel events.”

Following his argument, several public officials in New York, among them N.Y. Congressman Jerrold Nadler,*  threatened to pull funds from Brooklyn College if it goes ahead with the event. This of course implicates those opposing the BDS panel in suppressing academic freedom and generally acting like McCarthyesque watchdogs – a trait which has become all too common among so-called Israel supporters in the U.S.

Brooklyn College President Karen Gould wrote a letter stating the event will continue as planned and explaining why she stands behind the decision:

Glenn Greenwald has also already explained poignantly and exhaustively why Dershowitz’s argument is unfounded, demonstrating that there are plenty of instances in which departments in various institutions have sponsored controversial events – and they did so without providing a counter panel to “balance” the topic.

For more details on the story, I recommend reading Greenwald’s coverage. The New York Times has also been covering the story.

As far as I, and others who...

It is not considered racist in Israel to discriminate against 20 percent of the population and the millions more living in the occupied West Bank. It is considered the self-determination of the Jewish people.

The few words Yair Lapid said to the press the day after the election that made his Yesh Atid party the second largest in Israel, are still troubling me. Ami Kaufman mentioned it in his post, but I think it merits a bit more attention, since while we in Israel may be desensitized and no longer shocked, it really is quite disturbing. Those following news here should know that his statement, in a nutshell, exposes not only what kind of politician he is going to be, but what is so rotten in the State of Israel.

Watch the video and read my paraphrased translation of what he said:

It doesn’t feel good or empowering to give up my right to vote. It feels mostly shitty, and maybe that is how it is supposed to feel. But as long as it is not an inalienable right for those who live under the same governmental roof, it is absolutely alienable to me.

I just returned from the voting booth in Tel Aviv. Voting is such a private matter, and at the end of the day, nobody except the person voting knows who he/she voted for.

My voting experience today, however, wasn’t a private matter. And it wasn’t an enjoyable or empowering one either, because I decided to give up my right and privilege to vote in an act of protest, frustration and guilt. I let Riman Barakat, a Palestinian woman from East Jerusalem, decide who I should vote for. And she chose Balad, an Arab nationalist party, a party I would not have voted for and have no specific affinity to (below is a text from Riman on why she chose Balad and what she thinks about me giving up my vote).

ILLUSTRATION (Protest against a new Jewish settlement in Ras Al Amud, East Jerusalem, 27.05.2011 photo: Activestills)

I’ve only met Riman once before in Ramallah, because we have a mutual friend. But I do not really know her, or her political views,  and cannot say she is my friend. But I turned to her because I preferred not to give my vote to a total stranger on Facebook randomly, but do it personally, talk to her first – and because she is a woman, and from East Jerusalem specifically.

I did it because today, I live in a one-state reality I do not want to live in, and regardless of the term one chooses to use, it is a reality of systematic inequality, discrimination and violent oppression towards the Palestinian minority. When Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 it had to by definition apply (de jure) all the same laws and duties on the Palestinian population – and with them, there are supposed to be rights. However Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, while able to travel freely in Israel and entitled to public education and national healthcare and pay the same...

The Israeli army arrested 10 Palestinians and five Israelis in the South Hebron Hills today (Saturday) while they were trying to reach Palestinian-owned land next to the illegal outpost called Mitzpeh Yair, in the southern West Bank.

Palestinian resident of West Bank being arrested with her 1.5 year old child (Ta’ayush activist)

Palestinians being arrested in South Hebron Hills, January 19, 2013 (Ta’ayush activist)

According to Guy, an Israeli Ta’ayush activist who filmed the video below, the Awwad family from Umm al Ara’is was accompanied by Palestinians from Susya and Israeli activists to try and reach their land, since in recent months the army has been increasingly preventing them from doing so.

As soon as they got there, the IDF soldiers declared it a “closed military zone” for reasons that are unclear and require no explanation. Before giving the dozens of people there even five minutes to evacuate, they simply began making arrests. A Palestinian woman carrying her child who approached her husband while he was getting arrested was immediately arrested as well:

According to reports from Israeli activists, most of the 15 arrested were released a few hours later without being questioned or charged with anything. The mother, (whose child is already back with the released father) and an Israeli activist, are both still in custody and apparently being held on accusations they resisted arrest and/or assaulted an officer.

The settlers who live in this illegal outpost often harass Palestinians in this area while they try to cultivate their crops and graze their sheep. It has been going on for years. However, it is not just the settlers but the army, who not only doesn’t usually stop them, but closes off the whole area on a regular basis – in direct contradiction of High Court rulings that the army must both act to allow Palestinians access to their land and protect them from settler violence.

The IDF’s Civil Administration seems to have targeted this area as a “disputed territory,” systematically issuing “closed military...

While the mainstream debate over Israel in the U.S. is changing as more people challenge the traditional ‘pro-Israel’ paradigm, it must also be accompanied by a shift in rhetoric.

U.S. and Israeli flags (flickr/Josh.ev9/CC by SA 2.0)

Roger Cohen, one of the New York Times writers I like most, wrote an op-ed this week called “Israel’s True Friends.” In the piece, which is centered around the Chuck Hagel nomination, Cohen argues, as I and many have, that those opposing Obama’s nomination of Hagel may consider themselves “true friends” of Israel, but in fact can only be accurately defined as friends of the Israeli right - those who, among other things, are dismissive of a two-state solution, Palestinian national aspirations, the need to end occupation and who consistently “propel Israel into repetitive miniwars of dubious strategic value.”

He clearly distinguishes them from another camp he calls the “quiet strong friend of Israel” type, comprised of Hagel, Obama and others – those who are “unwaveringly committed to Israel’s security within its 1967 borders,” and who understand that settlements are on obstacle to a solution, etc.

While I don’t disagree with the general assessment, the controversy surrounding Chuck Hagel’s nomination shouldn’t just “provoke a serious debate on what constitutes real friendship toward Israel,” as Cohen writes, but on why the term “friendship” is being used at all. After four years of Obama vs. Netanyahu, I think it is safe to say that neither these men nor their respective governments are pals, for the simple reason that they don’t share the same political values or goals.

Netanyahu has clearly aligned himself – and by extension Israel – with the right in America, from “pro-Israel” neocons like Elliot Abrams and Bill Kristol (who both made the baseless and outraging accusation that Chuck Hagel is an anti-Semite, throwing the label around like a hot potato) to Christian right-wing “pro-Israel” fanatics like Glenn Beck and Pastor Hagee (whose evangelical understanding of this region is hostile to both Jews and Arabs).

While Cohen obviously uses the term “true friends” to convey the problem with the conception of support for Israel in the U.S. and challenge the notion that ”the only mark of friendship is uncritical embrace of a friend,” using...