By Elinor Sidi

“In Israel, LGBT rights is not an issue that divides us, it is a vision that unites us,” said Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, in Philadelphia two weeks ago. In his keynote, Oren took pride in the achievements of the LGBT community in Israel and claimed them as achievements of the Israeli government. “The pressures to cancel the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem were immense, but the authorities held firm,” continued the ambassador, sailing in his imagination. “Protected by police and security guards, the parade was held and was hugely successful”. The heroic fairy tale about the only gay paradise in the Middle East, the liberal state rushing to embrace its gays and protect them from their harm seekers, moved me. That is, until I remembered the harsh reality.

The rigid firmness of the Israeli authorities – as experienced in the real Jerusalem, the one outside Oren’s fairy tale – took shape in the headstrong and cruel struggle against, and not for, the LGBT community. It was not rare to hear ministers and Knesset members articulating horrific homophobia. Not only Shas Knesset members made statements about gay people being more toxic than bird flu, but also figures such as President Shimon Peres, whose assertion that “the gays crossed the line” decorated the city streets in giant wall posters inciting against the Jerusalemite LGBT community. To the de-legitimation of the Jerusalem Pride added former Jerusalem mayor, Uri Lopolianski’s quotes against it, and also wild incitement to murder in the shape of a bounty on the heads of gays and lesbians in Jerusalem.

It was the determination of the LGBT Jerusalemite community alone that stood for gay rights in a hostile environment. The security guards Ambassador Oren spoke of were not supplied by the authorities, but rather hired and funded by the Jerusalem Open House (the city’s grassroots LGBT organization). The police officers who protected Pride did not do so out of the kindness of their hearts but did so only after repeated petitions submitted by JOH to the Supreme Court. No less than 10 petitions were submitted in the last decade, on average- one court case per year. Petitions were not only submitted against the un-willing Jerusalem Municipality, but also against the Israeli Police and Minister of Interior. It was neither the Israeli government nor the Knesset who stood to our protection, but our determination and successful work done in Supreme Court. To this very day JOH is forced to provide ushers for Pride, who are the community members themselves who volunteer year after year in order to prevent Pride from being canceled.

This Sunday (May 20) Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz will propose to the Ministerial Committee of Legislation an amendment to the Interpretation Act. The Interpretation Act is a law that tells us how to read and “interpret” other laws in cases of lack of clarity. What MK Horowitz is suggesting is that whenever there is a law that prohibits discrimination of any kind  (for example, prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity in cases of job interviews, apartment hunting or even nightclub selection) – that law will be interpreted as providing the same protection in cases of sexual orientation or gender identity. Thus, instead of amending one law at a time to improve the lives of LGBT people (i.e. adding sexual orientation and gender identity to each and every law that prohibits one of these kinds of discrimination), this bill offers one single amendment that will affect them all. Therefore, in every case where a law provides protection against discrimination, it will now offer the same protection in cases of sexual orientation and gender identity. With just one amendment it will  be able to apply many protections, in more than one law, against many kinds of discrimination. A kind of an Iron Dome, if you will, but in rainbow colors.

This proposal was raised before and tossed away. Its resubmission this Sunday will be the real test of the Israeli claim that it is a “gay paradise in the Middle East.” The government’s ability (and willingness) to rally behind it will be tested. There is extensive significance to a law being supported by the government, obligated to by the coalition, as opposed to being pushed by a single dedicated Knesset member. Apart from having a better chance of passing, there is  a declarative significance to the fact the government is interested in promoting this agenda.

On Sunday the LGBT community, in Israel and abroad, will see if the Israeli government is serious about the “vision that unites us all” or is it just using us for propaganda; if there are actions behinds declarations or whether they are just PR fairy tales. I call for our community members to write letters to the members of Ministerial Committee of Legislation, to use this weekend to write emails to Prime Minister Netanyahu or simply do what experience tells us will be more useful then all of the above: Volunteer to usher at the next Jerusalem Pride this August.

Elinor Sidi is the Executive Director of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, local grassroots organization for LGBT Jerusalemites. To volunteer, contact JOH at community@JOH.org.il.

Related:
Ambassador Oren boasts Israel’s record on gay rights – but gets facts wrong
Controversy over Israeli envoy’s address at gay rights forum

Michael Oren, the American Jew turned Israeli ambassador to the US, is apparently not content with embarrassing himself about Israel’s record regarding its Christian citizens. In an interview with the Philadelphia newspaper Metro, Oren said that “Israel was fighting for gay rights before the 1967 war. Even when terrorists were blowing up our buses and cafes, there was equality for gays.”

Leaving aside the second and particularly ignorant part of this statement – what the hell is the connection between terror attacks and gay rights? Does Oren consider the gay community responsible for those attacks, such that Israel ought to consider withholding some of their rights? – the real problem is with the first part, which is simply false.

Israeli law, much of which is based on Mandatory British law which was endorsed pretty much en bloc, considered homosexuality to be a felony since the country’s inception in 1948. The Knesset re-asserted the law in 1977, but after a long battle simply abolished it in 1988. Until the early 1990s, homosexuality was considered by the IDF to be grounds for denying security clearances and the IDF considered homosexuality to be a mental illness until the late 1980s (Hebrew). By contrast, England and Wales – on which Israeli law is based – abolished their anti-gay laws in 1967, i.e 20 years and more before Israel did.

Admittedly, while homosexuality was considered a felony, one of the first Government’s Counsels, the most humane jurist Haim Cohen (later a Supreme Court judge) ordered the prosecution in the early 1950s to cease prosecution for homosexuality. So criminal prosecution was not a problem – but harassment by the police certainly was, and for several years after the law was abolished in 1988, gays were often arrested for acts such as kissing in public.

Israel is so much on the frontier of gay rights, they cannot marry in it – but, then again, neither can a Jew and a non-Jew. Its police is so vigilant in protecting their rights, it frequently tries to cancel (sometimes successfully) the Jerusalem gay pride marches. The public sector shows its support for them by employing at public expense rabbis who call, directly or indirectly, for either classifying homosexuality as a mental illness or for simply killing them.

Is Oren so blind to all this? Maybe he is. After all, he is an immigrant who doesn’t know the country well. Then again, he may simply be pulling the wool over the eyes of Americans. This, after all, is what “hasbara” is all about.

Related posts:
Ambassador Oren speaks at gay rights forum featuring Israel
Israel’s ‘pinkwash’ makes cynical use of gays and gay rights
Omissions, half truths and lies: Review of Ambassador Oren’s foreign policy piece

By Philip Farah | Originally published in the Huffington Post on May 1, 2012

In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren claimed that Christians in Israel are better off than their brethren anywhere else in the Middle East. Two Sundays ago, “60 Minutes” made clear he attempted to intimidate Bob Simon by going over Simon’s head to speak to Jeff Fager, the head of CBS News and executive producer of “60 Minutes,” to complain that Simon’s story on Christian Palestinians was “a hatchet job” against Israel. In fact, it was a hard-hitting, but honest piece in which Simon helped to expose the terrible harm the Israeli occupation — not Muslim Palestinians as the ambassador claimed — is doing to Christian Palestinians in the Holy Land.

I am a Palestinian Christian, now a U.S. citizen, and my own experience and that of my family attest to the falsity of Ambassador Oren’s assertion. I was born in East Jerusalem, Jordan in 1952, only a few years after my family and the majority of Palestinians fled from their homes when the newly established Jewish state took over three-quarters of historical Palestine. My family, like almost all the other Palestinians who fled — Christians and Muslims alike — became refugees, losing their fields, orchards, homes and practically everything else, to Israel. Israel defied the international consensus and a U.N. resolution calling on it to allow the Palestinian refugees to return.

Had Israel allowed the Palestinians to return, it would not have become a majority Jewish state. Israel’s fear of a Palestinian presence within its borders continues to drive its brutal policies of occupation, which victimize Palestinian Christians as well as Muslims. Israel occupied the rest of historical Palestine in 1967, gaining control over a large Palestinian Arab population which many Israelis view as a threat to the “Jewish character” of their country.

There is a simple test of Ambassador Oren’s claims: I say to him, “Mr. Ambassador: If your country is so good to Christians, why don’t you allow me, my family and thousands of Palestinian Christians to return to our homes in the part of Jerusalem which Israel occupied in 1967 or the western part of the city from which Palestinians were forced out in 1948? Why is it that any Jew from any country in the world can claim full rights of citizenship as soon as he or she sets foot in Jerusalem, while I, whose family roots in Jerusalem go back many centuries, am barred from living with full human rights in my hometown?”

Ask Ambassador Oren about the Palestinians who hail from the predominantly Christian villages of Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im which, like the majority of Palestinian Arab villages, were razed to the ground after 1948. Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im are only two of many such Christian villages, but well known because of the long — but unfortunately failed — campaign waged on their behalf by courageous Israeli human rights advocates.

There is no doubt that Arab Christians face problems in the Middle East. The worst examples were during the Lebanese civil war and in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, when political and economic stability collapsed. Israel’s attacks on Lebanon played a major role in destabilizing that country, and Israeli hawks cheered the loudest for the U.S. invasion which destabilized Iraq.

Palestinian Christians are, indeed, worried about the militancy of extremists who cloak themselves in distorted Islamic rhetoric. Yet, the majority of Palestinian Muslims and Christians have chosen peaceful resistance. To say that Hamas is the cause of the declining Christian population in the occupied Palestinian territories is standing the truth on its head.

Our people are fleeing their homeland because the Israelis are confiscating the land of Palestinians — Muslims and Christians alike — to build Jewish-only settlements and the Apartheid Wall which is ghettoizing many Palestinian communities. Palestinian Christians are leaving because of Israeli checkpoints and barriers that severely restrict the freedom of movement of Palestinians, destroying their economy and preventing their access to their holy places in Jerusalem. They are leaving because Israel diverts Palestinian water resources in a way that gives illegal Jewish settlements the right to enjoy swimming pools while the fields of Palestinian farmers next door go fallow for lack of water.

But Palestinian Christians are speaking for themselves through the Kairos Palestine Document:

“We, a group of Christian Palestinians, after prayer, reflection and an exchange of opinion, cry out from within the suffering in our country, under the Israeli occupation. … Today, we bear the strength of love rather than that of revenge, a culture of life rather than a culture of death. … [We] endorse nonviolent resistance based on hope and love that puts an end to evil by walking in the ways of justice.”

There is no difference at all in the degree of suffering that Palestinian Christians and Muslims are experiencing under Israel’s long military occupation. To suggest that Palestinian Christians are doing well under Israeli domination couldn’t be further from the truth.

American Methodists and Presbyterians are increasingly troubled by Israel’s ongoing subjugation of Palestinians — Christians and Muslims alike. Though they have long-standing concerns for the welfare of Israelis, many Methodists and Presbyterians believe the time has come to move beyond words and into actively demonstrating to this right-wing Israeli government that they will not stand aside silently as Israel oppresses generation after generation of Palestinians.

In the days and weeks ahead, both the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) will consider resolutions to divest themselves from companies — Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard — profiting from Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories.

If they do so, they will be alerting the Israeli government that the occupation will no longer be tolerated as business as usual. Palestinians have the right to live free of Israeli domination. Methodists and Presbyterians alike could send a very strong message to the Israeli and American governments if they move ahead with these sensible resolutions to divest from companies that shamefully benefit from the repression of Palestinians.

Philip Farah is the co-founder of Palestinian American Christians for Peace and of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace, www.wiamep.org. This post was originally published in the Huffington Post on May 1, 2012. 

Read also:
60 Minutes report on Christians gets it wrong
Israeli PR machine in frenzy over CBS report

There have already been a number of articles written in response to CBS’s 60 Minutes report about Christians in the Holy Land. The sexy story in all this appears to be Michael Oren’s interview with Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, and the attempt by Israel, its embassy in the United States and syndicate of lobbying groups to prevent the report in some capacity from airing.

The real story told in this piece has been to some degree overshadowed by the Michael Oren story, but also lacks appeal because it does not ultimately stray too far from the accepted argument about why Palestinian Christians are leaving the Holy Land—only enough to make the Israeli government sweat and overreact in characteristic fashion.

While the report makes some good points and does counter the argument that Palestinian Christians are fleeing solely as a response to Muslim fanaticism and persecution, I still feel that the overall message of this piece is that Palestinian Christendom is being squeezed out of Palestine because of a religious conflict between Jews and Muslims—which is altogether false.

The piece does not properly identify Christians as a seamless part of the Palestinian population, which faces persecution from Israel without prejudice to religion—rather Christians are portrayed as the “collateral damage” of this inter-religious conflict between Muslims and Jews.

Contrary to this portrayal, Palestinian Christians are an integral part of the Palestinian people and have been at the forefront of the movement for national liberation. From the earliest days until now, Palestinian Christians have comprised many of Palestinian nationalism’s intellectual pioneers, advocates and political leaders—not the hapless minority caught up in a struggle in which they have no part, as this piece portrays them as being.

Taking a closer look at the meat and bones of Bob Simon’s report, we see that even though every Palestinian Christians interviewed in the piece point to Israeli occupation and not Islamic extremism as the root of the exodus, Simon still insists on drawing the conclusion that Islam is at play in the flight of Christians.

Truly there are historical tensions between religious communities in Palestine, as there are in countries throughout the world. Some of the worst of these tensions are actually between different Christian denominations inside Jerusalem. But the true culprit in this tragic phenomenon that is emptying the birthplace of Christianity from its indigenous adherents is a political battle being waged on all Palestinians alike, irrespective of religion.

Both Palestinian Muslims and Christians must go through the same arduous procedures to obtain permits to visit their holy sites in Jerusalem. Both suffer the endless growth of Jewish settlements, home evictions and demolitions, mass imprisonment, the circuitous route of the wall and the daily torment of living under occupation–not to mention the Nakba.

Yet Simon continues to frame the Christians as “squeezed between a growing Muslim majority and Israeli settlements.”

Even those elements of the occupation that put pressure on Christians to leave the country, such as the separation barrier, are portrayed as byproducts of that conflict and an outcome of Israel’s need to protect its citizens from Islamic terrorism.

Juxtaposed with Ambassador Oren’s statement that although the checkpoints are inconvenient for Palestinians, Israel needs to do what it must to survive (“it’s their inconvenience, it’s our survival”)—Simon posits the endangering of Palestinian Christian culture, the threat to which is the growing Muslim majority. “The veil is replacing the cross,” he narrates ironically as a Christian nun with a veil walks by in the following shot. In other words, while Israelis face a threat to their livelihood, Palestinian Christians face a threat to their culture brought on by the Muslim majority, as if it is Israelis that have the exponentially higher death toll as a result of this conflict and not Palestinians.

It is difficult to understand where Bob Simon gets his conclusion, given that every one he interviews except for Ari Shavit (and obviously Michael Oren), would counter this claim. Yet even Sharit’s second comment to Simon says, “Israel is not persecuting Christians as Christians. The Christians in the Holy Land suffer from Israeli policies that are a result of the overall tragic situation.”

Palestinians of all stripes face the Israeli occupation and colonial enterprise together. Some are leaving. Others remain steadfast.

Apparently, Oren took it even further during the interview. After much persuading, I got Simon to give me the unedited segment of him grilling the Israeli ambassador in D.C.

You gotta see it to believe it.

Lo and behold: at the same time Oren was biting his nails, an American Hasbara organization, The Jewish Federations of North America, sent an APB to its activists, calling upon them to prepare for a blitz against CBS. It sent that message before the show was aired. May we now openly voice the suspicion that the Israeli embassy is activating Jewish organizations in the United States in order to manipulate the press there? That would be perfectly legitimate, as far as the embassy is concerned – that’s what it’s there for. But it’s much more problematic, when it comes to organizations composed of American citizens.

The Federations were trying to argue that Christians abandoning the West Bank due to the Israeli occupation do not do so because of their being Christians, but because of the occupation (which they refer to under the euphemism of “Israeli security policy”). They are correct. If someone wants to see truly anti-Christian Israeli policy, he’d better look at Israel proper.

The 2010 State Department report on religious freedom in Israel and the occupied territories found that the Israeli Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is harassing Christian priests by demanding they renew their visas time and time again. It limits the number of visas Christian religious workers receive, and makes onerous demands on them. The visa application process, when successful, takes months. During 2010, the MOI refused to renew the Jerusalem Anglican bishop’s residency permit, claiming that he was involved in forgery. The bishop denies the claim, and it is noteworthy that he was not indicted.

The MOI further refuses to grant recognized legal status to several old churches in Israel, all of them Protestant. Four Christian churches are waiting years for recognition of their legal status: the Ethiopian-Orthodox Church, the Coptic-Orthodox Church, the Evangelic Lutheran Church, and the United Christian Council.

The MOI, left for many years to the Orthodox parties, is collaborating with a hate organization, “Yad Le’Achim,” which has a clear anti-Christian agenda (Hebrew). The MOI sends “queries” about Israeli citizens and tourists to Yad Le’Achim, for it to decide whether they are suspected of “missionary activity.” Now, Israeli law does not forbid religious preaching: it merely prohibits a conversion made in exchange for goods, and the conversion of minors without the permission of their parents. Yet, when your country is officially termed Jewish and your Minister of the Interior is an Orthodox Jew, the law matters little. In 2009, according to the State Department report cited above, 30 percent of the tourists who were stopped for questioning in Ben Gurion Airport were questioned about their religious beliefs, at the instructions of the MOI. This was probably an attempt to intimidate them from proselytizing.

Possibly the most fantastic event in the relations of the Jewish state with a Christian church is the controversy surrounding the appointment of the Greek Orthodox patriarch. During the Sharon and Olmert governments, in a scene seemingly taken from a medieval chronicle, the government delayed its recognition (Hebrew) of Theophilius as Patriarch until the latter would give his consent to some shady land deals of the radical ultra-Orthodox Jewish right. Minister Tzachi Hanegbi admitted he demanded Theophilius refrain from torpedoing a deal with the extremist yeshiva Ateret Cohanim as a condition to his appointment. Hanegbi’s successor in dealing with the church, minister Raffi Eitan, was suspected of coercing the patriarch into agreeing the church would suspend a lawsuit against Himnuta, the JNF’s dirty-tricks department, which buys lands for settlements. Himnuta would later demand Theophilius fulfill his part of the deal – which he quickly denied making. Bear that in mind the next time they tell you Israelis enjoy freedom of religion.

The situation of the Messianic Jews, a sect of Jews who accept a version of Christianity – ironically, re-creating the most ancient Christian community – is even worse. They suffer from endless molestations, both by the MOI (aided, again, by Yad Le’Achim) and by the general Jewish Orthodox population. In 2008, one such family suffered a terrorist attack  – a real one, Ambassador Oren, bomb and all (Hebrew) – and Jewish terrorist suspect Jack Teitel is suspected of carrying it out. Unlike other Jewish families which fall victim to terrorist attacks, this family did not become the focus of media or official attention.

During the same year, Yad Le’Achim managed to prevent a Messianic Jewish girl, Bat El Levi, 17, from participating in the International Bible Quiz, even though she won her way fair and square through the quizzes in the secular school system (Hebrew). The words of Martin Luther King – ” when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people”  – come to mind. Reportedly, the Minister of Education – Labor’s Yuli Tamir – publicly boasted that all of the participants in the quiz were checked and found to be Jews.

The spitting by yeshiva boys on priests has become a Jerusalem phenomenon, recognized by the courts (Hebrew), who deplored the police’s inaction. The police hotly denied this claim: it proudly replied it deported from Israel priests who refused to turn the other cheek and slapped those who spat at them. Should you happen to speak with priests in Jerusalem, you’re likely to hear of another lovely habit of our ultra-Orthodox brethren: urinating and defecating on churches. From time to time, a church is set on fire: the last noted case was some 18 months ago (and cited in the State Department report above). The police reacts to this with even more than usual indolence.

Christian clergy in Jerusalem are often spat at by yeshiva boys (Photo: Yossi Gurvitz)

Usually, when Jewish violence  and discrimination against non-Jews is reported, the defenders of Israel often argue this is the result of the conflict. But Israel is not in conflict with the Christian world: it couldn’t survive without it. This hatred, this violence, is the result of thousands of years of anti-Christian hatred by a radical stream within Orthodox Judaism that wishes to create a theocratic state based on Jewish law (which crept into its daily liturgy – the infamous “informers’ blessing”).  It blows up not because of some cause, but because it can, and the weak response of the authorities is the result of their understanding that a large segment of the population supports such acts. The evangelists who signed a devil’s pact with radical ultra-Orthodox Jews fail to understand that those extremists are their preferred target; that they don’t hate the Palestinians merely because the latter happen to live here, but their hatred of Christianity is the real thing, which sometimes bursts to surface.

And then everyone pretends it never happened.

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CBS Report on Christians and Israel propels Ambassador Oren into damage control mode

Israeli activist Michal Vexler arrested at Ben Gurion airport while demonstrating in favor of the 'Welcome to Palestine' fly-in on April 15, 2012 (photo: Activestills.org)

Last week I posted here a criticism of Ambassador Michal Oren’s Foreign Policy piece, titled “Israel’s Resilient Democracy.” One of Ambassador Oren’s claims was that the fact that Palestinians in the West Bank are deprived of voting rights is not enough to question the nature of Israel as a democracy.

The existence of partially democratic enclaves within a democratic system does not necessarily discredit it. Residents of Washington, D.C., are taxed without representation, while those in the U.S. territories — Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands — cannot vote in presidential elections. Anomalies exist in every democracy, and Israel’s is not voided by the situation in the West Bank.

But voting is only part of the story; voting is a means, not an end in itself. Palestinians differ from American citizens in the U.S. territories in many ways: For example, they are tried in military courts, before of uniformed judges, and without the legal rights that defendants enjoy in Israel’s civilian courts. They are deprived of access to resources, of physical protection against violence and harassments, and much more.

Freedom – or lack – of travel is another major issue. Since the mid-90s, Palestinians have been unable to travel beyond the Green Line and into “Israel proper.” Nor can they travel abroad, unless they get a special permit from the military authorities. At times, they are even prevented from traveling between towns and villages in the West Bank.

People are also prevented from traveling into the West Bank: Israelis are prohibited by a military order from entering area A, and tourists, business travelers and diplomats must go through Israel’s international airport or through land crossings – all controlled by Israel – before entering the West Bank. Stating that your destination is a Palestinian town or village might lead to a refusal of a tourist visa by the Israeli authorities, so many visitors simply lie. This is the way most activists enter the West Bank today. The irony is that for some people it’s easier to enter to Gaza – which is officially still under blockade – than to reach “free” Ramallah, because Gaza has one land border that Israel doesn’t control.

The West Bank has become the Palestinian prison, and the PA is not much more than its guard. It’s very far from the reality that Ambassador Oren and other advocates of Israeli policy portray. Yet strangely enough, misconceptions regarding the real state of affairs are widespread, even in Israel. Yesterday, as the local media was reporting on the effort of international activists to travel to the West Bank without lying about their destination – the so-called “flytilla” – I came across several comments on Israeli news sites wondering why “those provocateurs” don’t travel from Jordan through the “Palestinian-controlled” Allenby crossing. I heard the same remarks last year; there was even a comment on this site justifying Israel’s refusal to have the internationals enter by commenting that a tourist to Palestine shouldn’t try to pass through Israel.

But there is no independent Palestine. The “Palestinian Authority” has no authority over any significant matter. Control over borders is considered among the important measures of sovereignty. The Palestinians are not sovereign, nor do they have any citizenship rights in Israel. They are neither here nor there, but prisoners of a system that views them as enemies and doesn’t offer them any future or hope.

By refusing to allow members of the flytilla entry into the West Bank, Israel actually proved right their original claim: that the level of control Israel exercises over the Palestinian population in the occupied territories for nearly half a century makes the occupation is a unique phenomenon, well deserving of the world’s attention.

Related news:
Activists reach Israel in new ‘flytilla’ bid; dozens refused entry
Who are the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ activists?
The first draft of the Flytilla letter

Oren takes issue with the article’s “insinuation” that Israel interferes in American politics and stresses its appreciation of “wide bipartisan support.” But the article makes no such insinuation, and it is common knowledge that Netanyahu is well-aligned with the Republican party (i.e. Sheldon Adelson via Newt Gingrich), and that he has directly confronted and challenged President Obama on several occasions regarding Israeli settlement policies and conditions for negotiations.

The article discusses the development of Romney’s and Netanyahu’s friendship, their similar visions on running an economy, and focuses primarily on Romney’s admiration for Netanyahu.

“He was a strong personality with a distinct point of view,” Mr. Romney said. “I aspired to the same kind of perspective.”

Oren takes issue with the article’s mention of a phone call the two had on Super Tuesday where Netanyahu briefed Romney on the situation in Iran, pointing out that in fact Netanyahu was in Washington for the AIPAC conference and had spoken earlier to President Obama for “more than four hours.” So what if Netanyahu was in D.C. for AIPAC? The article isn’t trying to claim he went to D.C. especially to speak to Romney on the phone. Furthermore, since Romney and Netanyahu are in fact old colleagues, this article is standard fare considering Romney is now indeed the Republican hopeful for president.

If anything, the article demonstrates how much Israel has become a wedge issue in American politics, and about Mitt Romney’s questionable approach to foreign policy and obvious lack of understanding of the implications on America’s standing in the Middle East if it continues to support Israeli policies.

Mr. Romney has suggested that he would not make any significant policy decisions about Israel without consulting Mr. Netanyahu.

The fact that Oren felt the need to write such a letter to the editor and specifically assert that Israel does not interfere in American politics – when there was really no such indication in the article – only reveals just how much Oren and the Israeli leadership are aware of Israel’s invasive role in American politics.

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Omissions, half-truths and lies: Ambassador Oren in Foreign Policy 

Of all the factual errors, omissions and half-truths in Ambassador Michael Oren’s piece at Foreign Policy, titled “Israel’s Resilient Democracy,” perhaps the most troubling was this paragraph, which regurgitates a long-debunked lie about the Deputy Speaker of Oren’s own parliament, MK Ahmad Tibi (Raam-Taal / United Arab List):

…In fact, Israel has tolerated acts that would be deemed treasonous in virtually any other democracy. Ahmed Tibi, who once advised PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat and recently praised Palestinian “martyrs” — a well-known euphemism for suicide bombers — serves as a member and deputy speaker of the Knesset.

As I wrote in my review of Ambassador Oren’s piece, the accusations against Tibi resulted from an edited video distributed by a rightwing watchdog group. Reporters in the Israeli daily papers that broke the story later retracted and apologized before Tibi; yet Ambassador Oren had no problem repeating those lies against his own deputy Knesset speaker. The irony is that Oren was trying to prove how well Israel treats its Palestinian citizens, but ended up doing just the opposite.

Today, Tibi sent a letter of complaint to the director general of the Foreign Ministry, Rafi Barak, demanding that Ambassador Oren retract the accusations. “Mr. Oren attacked me, distorted my words, and claims that I support suicide attacks against Israeli citizen, which is the absolute opposite of my position,” Tibi wrote. Oren’s response is yet to come.

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren Visits Annapolis. Oren enjoys high credibility among Jewish elites and the Washington establishment (photo: Jay Baker / CC BY 2.0)

When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed Professor Michael Oren – a historian and researcher at the conservative Shalem institute, author of a popular book on the 1967 war – as his ambassador to Washington, he was probably hoping to capitalize on the latter’s name-recognition and credibility, especially with the political establishment and the Jewish elites. And indeed, as criticism of the occupation and of various Knesset legislative initiatives intensified, Prof. Oren has published numerous articles in leading publications, defending his government policies. In doing so, he has enjoyed the credibility of the scholar, while doing pure political advocacy work.

Ambassador Oren’s latest’s piece, titled “Israel’s Resilient Democracy,” is a good example of this fact. I decided to review some of the main problems with this text, due to the considerable attention it received, as well as the credibility people give to Professor Oren’s work.

Prof. Oren opens by citing some of the criticism over his government and its policies, before declaring his intention in writing this piece in an academic-like tone:

…are the allegations justified? Is Israeli democracy truly in jeopardy? Are basic liberties and gender equality — the cornerstones of an open society — imperiled? Will Israel retain its character as both a Jewish and a democratic state — a redoubt of stability in the Middle East and of shared values with the United States?

These questions will be examined in depth, citing comparative, historical, and contemporary examples. The answers will show that, in the face of innumerable obstacles, Israeli democracy remains remarkable, resilient, and stable.

So let’s go in depth.

_______________

One of Ambassador Oren’s major points is that democratic principles were upheld in Israel and minority rights were respected even in times of war. He writes:

Israeli democracy is distinguished not only by its receptiveness to public opinion but, perhaps most singularly, by its ability to thrive during conflict. Whether by suspending habeas corpus or imprisoning a suspected ethnic community, as the United States did in its Civil War and World War II, embattled democracies frequently take measures that depart from peacetime norms.

What Michael Oren doesn’t say is that Israel didn’t have to change its laws in wartime because it adopted upon inception – and still retains – the British Mandate’s emergency regulations, which allow the state to shut down newspapers, detain people in secrecy and/or without trial and much more at any given moment. The state of emergency was never lifted.

Furthermore, in the last 45 years (amounting to two-thirds of the country’s history), the Palestinian population in the occupied territories has been under military law, which grants the state even more power.

Israeli legal scholars I consulted on this matter tended to agree that habeas corpus, mentioned above, does exist under military occupation (due to the Supreme Court’s extended jurisdiction), but they also said that in the military court system, this fact is all but meaningless. Over the years, Israel has held between hundreds and thousands Palestinians under administrative detention at any moment (the current number is roughly 300), without trial. Detainees under administrative detention are brought before a military judge – an officer in uniform – only after seven days; the evidence against them is confidential and the hearing takes place behind closed doors. They are not tried, so they have no real way to defend themselves. At times, Israel also held Palestinians as “enemy combatants,” with even fewer rights. There is one person held with this status even now.

Even when Palestinians are brought to trial, the burden of proof resting on the prosecution in Israel’s military courts is extremely low, and the result is an astonishing 99.7 conviction rate. (It should be noted that the conviction rate in the Israeli criminal system is also in the high 90s; that’s not an excuse, but rather a different problem.) Again, these are not temporary measures, but the permanent system under which all Palestinians – including hundreds of minors – are tried. Their Jewish neighbors living in the settlements are tried in Israeli courts, where they enjoy full rights as citizens.

Professor Oren knows all this. He also knows, but somehow fails to mention, that upon its creation in 1948, Israel placed all of its Palestinian citizens under military rule, which was lifted only in December 1966. The six-month period that lasted from that date to the Six Day War comprises the only time in Israel’s history when a majority of the Arab population under its control was not subject to military rule.

“The litmus test for any democracy is its ability to protect the rights of its minorities,” writes Oren. But does subjecting millions of people – the largest minority under the state’s control – to the arbitrary and often abusive control of the army, and be that “the most moral army in the world,” constitute a success in this test?

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The following paragraph is probably the most upsetting for me as an Israeli. Ambassador Oren writes:

In fact, Israel has tolerated acts that would be deemed treasonous in virtually any other democracy. Ahmed Tibi, who once advised PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat and recently praised Palestinian “martyrs” — a well-known euphemism for suicide bombers — serves as a member and deputy speaker of the Knesset.

Context: Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi (Raam-Taal / United Arab List) was recently accused by a rightwing watchdog group of giving a speech more than a year ago in which he praised suicide attacks on Israeli civilians. When the full video of the speech was released, it turned out that Tibi was referring to Palestinians who were killed in protests and to civilians who lost their lives. The version released by the watchdog group was heavily edited to create a false impression.

As a result, journalist Ben-Dror Yemini of Maariv and The Jerusalem Post, a well-known critic of the Arab Knesset members and one of those who broke the shahid (martyr) story, retracted his accusation both on his blog and in the printed paper. Yemini even went on Israeli public radio, saying: “I admit I was wrong. We owe an apology to [MK] Tibi.” The leading Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth also published an apology for running this story in its printed edition. (correction/update: Yedioth apologized for the same accusation but on a different occasion, not the affair mentioned here. Mr. Tibi claimed that Dan Margalit, senior pundit for Israel Hayom, also backed down from these accusations, but I wasn’t able to find a link ) 

Not only did MK Tibi never praise suicide bombing, he is extremely consistent in denouncing the killing of Israeli civilians. Tibi is also a passionate critic of Holocaust denial in the Arab world, and can often be heard saying that “there is nothing more immoral than Holocaust denial.” There are two options here: Either Prof. Oren knowingly repeated a blood libel against the deputy speaker of his own Knesset, or he failed to fact check the issue before repeating those accusations. Both cases say something of the nature of Prof. Oren’s work, and demonstrate how easy it is to demonize Palestinians in Israel today.

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In the very same paragraph, Oren writes:

Israeli Arab parties routinely call for dismantling the Jewish state, yet only one party was ever barred from Israeli elections: Kach, a Jewish party that preached hatred of Arabs.

So many problems in one sentence: Israeli Arab parties call for a “state for all its citizens,” meaning equal rights for everyone; “dismantling the Jewish state” is not on the platform, to the best of my knowledge. And there is a difference between the two positions. Second, an Arab party called Al-Arth was in fact prohibited from participating in the elections to the 6th Knesset (a famous case and a strange factual omission, coming from a historian). It is also worth noting that Israel’s Central Elections Committee disqualified Arab parties Balad and Raam-Taal from participating in the last elections; the decision had to be overruled by the High Court. At the same time, the committee has stopped disqualifying former Kach members from participating in the elections, and one of them – Michael Ben Ari – is even serving in the current Knesset. These facts are omitted from Ambassador Oren’s article.

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The main rhetorical method Ambassador Oren uses is citing one or two pieces of criticism against Israel – usually placing them out of context, ignoring the heart of the matter – and then responding, preferably by citing praise Israeli democracy won in the past.

Take, for example, the part in the piece is titled “Democracy’s Litmus.” Oren deals here with two issues, and briefly touches on a third. He writes about (a) the NGO bill intended to heavily tax the support of foreign governments to local human rights organizations, (b) the issue of sexual equality in Israel and (c) the infamous boycott law.

Issue B is a red herring. Its sole intent is to divert attention from more structural faults. Nobody seriously argues that the (very real) problem of sexual inequality, evident especially in ultra-religious circles, is what lies behind the recent criticism against Israel. The question marks around Israel’s democracy have to do with the occupation and the status of the Palestinian minority. By “answering” the criticism regarding sexual equality, Ambassador Orem tries to blur the center of the debate, and makes the people voicing concerns – or criticism – look less serious, if not completely ignorant.

Regarding the NGO bill, Oren writes:

European governments contribute more to NGOs in Israel than to similar groups in all other Middle Eastern states combined. Eighty percent of those funds are directed toward political organizations that often oppose the government’s policies or, as in the case of Adalah and Badil, deny Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state.

The first figure Ambassador Oren cites is an oral estimate given to a journalist by rightwing professor Gerald Steinberg, head of the highly politicized group NGO Monitor. The second number – the 80 percent allegedly directed at opposition organizations – simply does not appear in the text Ambassador Oren is linking to, so there is no way of verifying it. Even so, Ambassador Oren conveniently forgets the important part: European support for government-sponsored Israeli institutions, such as universities, exceeds the support for human rights NGOs. The support for several NGOs is part of an engagement with Israeli civil society, from which all Israelis benefit.

In all likelihood, this – and not “the keen debate” regarding the law Oren mentions – was the reason Netanyahu froze the bill. According to some sources who were involved in the behind-the-scenes discussion, foreign diplomats made it clear to the prime minister that if the bill was to pass, support for all civil society in Israel, and not just the human rights NGOs, would likely suffer.

As for the  third issue – the boycott law – Ambassador Oren abandons the attempt to find equivalents in other Western democracies. After all, even the Knesset’s own research institute didn’t come up with any. He concludes the debate with a remark (hope?) that “the Supreme Court may yet pass judgment on the bill.”

Ambassador Oren also writes:

To call Israeli democracy into question because of one suggested bill that never made it into law is unjust. Democracies consider many laws, some of them imperfect, without compromising their democratic character. In Israel, as in America, legislation is tabled, deliberated, and often rejected without impugning the democratic process. In fact, that is the democratic process.

It’s not “one bill.” The erosion of democratic rights of Israeli citizens (Palestinian residents, it should be remembered, never had any) has to do with many recent and not-so-recent initiatives: The boycott law, mentioned above, which limits effective political opposition to the occupation; the Nakba law, intended to prevent Palestinians and Palestinian institutions from remembering their national catastrophe; the segregated communities law, allowing small municipalities to reject applicants based on race and religion; the legislation in process regarding the Supreme Court, meant to limit juridical supervision of government actions and Knesset legislation; and the Citizenship Law, forbidding Arab citizens from bringing Palestinian spouses to live with them in Israel, and ultimately breaking up families.

This partial list is mostly from the recent Knesset. It doesn’t include the structural discrimination of the Arab minority in citizenship procedures or in acquisition of land – for example the fact that the JNF, a quasi-government agency, controls 13 percent of the land in Israel and leases it only to Jews.

Regardless of all of Ambassador Oren’s mistakes and omissions, by discussing one law, one bill, and one unrelated issue, he is not engaged in an effort to answer real concerns over Israeli policies, but quite the opposite: He is part of an effort to hide, dismiss or blur them.

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“Anomaly or Non-Democracy” is the title of the part in Oren’s piece dealing with the occupation. Israel’s ambassador to Washington opens with a quote from Peter Beinart, before moving on to his response (the fact that Beinart got the Jewish and Israeli mainstream to discuss the occupation again is perhaps his greatest achievement):

“Israel,” argues Peter Beinart, “is forging … an entity of dubious democratic legitimacy” that bars “West Bank Palestinians … from citizenship and the right to vote in the state that controls their lives.” Beinart’s reasoning is based on the assumption that the West Bank Palestinians are denied democratic rights, legal recourse, or any say in their future, and that Israel has taken no serious measures to facilitate Palestinian statehood.

In reality, the majority of the Palestinians in the West Bank reside in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority. Together with the Palestinians living under direct Israeli control, they vote in the Palestinian elections. These were scheduled for January 2010, but have been delayed by the Palestinian leadership — not by Israel. The Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem, for their part, have also voted in the Palestinian elections.

Similarly, the legal situation in the West Bank cannot simply be reduced to democracy or non-democracy. Palestinian law applies to those Palestinians living under Palestinian Authority auspices. In Israeli-controlled areas and for Palestinians arrested for security offenses, Israeli military law, based on British and Jordanian precedents, is enforced. Such a patchwork might confound any democracy…

The denial of citizenship and all subsequent rights to Palestinians is not an “assumption” but a reality. Had Oren provided the entire story for his examples, this would have been clear.

As Oren says, Palestinians did get to vote for their elected council. International monitors stated that the procedures were fair and clean, but Israel didn’t recognize Hamas’ victory and imprisoned its elected officials. This is the reason elections weren’t held again – Israel will not let one of the two major parties participate. Regardless of what we might think of Hamas and the way to deal with it, the elections that took place and those that didn’t were the proof that Israel has the final – one might say only – word in the procedure. If this is a democracy, Ambassador Oren and the rest of the world have very different views of the word.

Furthermore, the president of the Palestinian Authority holds the title of an international leader but not the authority of so much as a United States mayor. Israel collects taxes for him (and keeps the money when it doesn’t like his attitude); Israel controls the territory between and around Palestinian cities and has the final word on every road that Palestinians want to built; Israel invades  Palestinian towns and villages and carries out arrests; Israel controls the resources, and even electromagnetic frequencies. The PA was established under the Oslo Accords as a temporary body for the duration of the negotiations on the final agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, which were supposed to end in 1999. The sole sovereign in the West Bank is Israel. Palestinians have no say over their future. Correction: They have no say over their present.

Yet Ambassador Oren writes:

The existence of partially democratic enclaves within a democratic system does not necessarily discredit it. Residents of Washington, D.C., are taxed without representation, while those in the U.S. territories — Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands — cannot vote in presidential elections. Anomalies exist in every democracy, and Israel’s is not voided by the situation in the West Bank.

I am not very fond of comparing countries to one another, let alone Israel and the United States – which are different in almost every way, from political culture to legal system to civil society tradition – but this is the analogy that lies at the heart of Ambassador’s Oren’s text, which intends to portray Israel as a tiny America, a bastion of civil rights in a hostile and strange environment.

So, following the ambassador’s suggestion, let’s imagine the Palestinians as the equivalent of American citizens living in Washington DC or in U.S. territories. But let’s take this analogy all the way: Imagine that those citizens are under military control, where no warrant is needed to invade their houses at night and arrest them. Let’s imagine that 7 percent of all prisoners are currently held without trial for months and years. That everyone, including children, are tried by military tribunals. That complaints of torture – there have been more than 700 of these in the previous decade – could be sealed at the order of an internal security officer.

Let’s imagine those citizens surrounded by walls and fences and a system of dozens of roadblocks, some of them permanent with many appearing and disappearing every day, between the various suburbs and towns, so a route that could take 10 minute to drive regularly turns into a journey of hours. Let’s imagine them unable to relocate or travel abroad without a special permit, notoriously hard to obtain, from the military authorities.

And on top of this, they can’t vote.

And now let’s imagine this unique situation applied to a third of the population under the United State’s control – say 100 million – for two-thirds of the country’s history, meaning over 150 years. This would be the proper analogy, if we were to follow Ambassador Oren’s logic. It doesn’t sound very democratic.

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There are many other problems, half-truths and misrepresentations in Ambassador’s Oren text. I didn’t touch here on his interpretation of the collapse of the diplomatic process (“Prime Minister Netanyahu has made the two-state solution the cornerstone of his diplomatic platform” – seriously?), nor his claims regarding the state of the Christian minority under Israeli control (see more here). In one of my future posts I might touch on the implications of some of the deeper arguments he makes – for example Israel being a unique historic case and at the same time a “classic” Western democracy.

Except for the story involving MK Tibi, in which the ambassador to Washington helped spread a slanderous lie about his own parliament’s deputy speaker, one could argue that Ambassador Michael Oren is simply doing the job he was hired to do. Yet this much should be clear: Professor Michael Oren would not have dared to submit his Foreign Policy article to a proper academic review. It is a propaganda piece in the service of the occupation – not “analysis”  - and it should be treated as such.