By Ilan Manor

Abraham Lincoln (Photo: Mathew Brady)

It was Ernst Lubitsch, an American filmmaker of Jewish decent, who used his 1942 classic comedy To Be or Not to Be to remark on the fate of dictators saying that “if they named a brandy after Napoleon and a herring after Bismarck, what’s Hitler going to be? A piece of cheese?” While dictators do often end up in one’s kitchen cabinet, great leaders share a different fate altogether being memorialized by great urban landmarks such as New York City’s Lincoln Tunnel or Rain Square in Tel Aviv. However, unlike the late Israeli prime minister, Abraham Lincoln has recently been revived by another American Jewish filmmaker, Steven Spielberg.

Nearly 70 years after Lubitsch’s masterpiece first opened, Spielberg has returned to the issue of the legacy of leaders in his film Lincoln. Interestingly, there is no other American filmmaker so engulfed in the task of shaping America’s collective memory as Steven Spielberg. In a series of productions, ranging from Saving Private Ryan to the mini-series Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Spielberg has defined what World War Two meant to America while adopting Ronald Reagan’s famous words “these are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”

Now Spielberg has turned to defining what Lincoln meant to America, and perhaps to the world. While the film Lincoln focuses on a short period of two weeks leading to the passing of the 13th amendment to the Constitution and the abolishment of slavery, it aims to make a broader statement regarding the nature of Abraham Lincoln. Spielberg portrays Lincoln as a pure man, one who sees slavery as a stain on America worthy of a civil war. Yet Lincoln is also a pragmatic man, one willing to use the shortcomings of democracy in order to preserve and protect the American democracy. Fittingly, the film ends with the quote “the greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.”

As an Israeli who grew up in the United States, I couldn’t help but make an analogy between Spielberg’s Lincoln and the late Yitzhak Rabin. After all, both men came from humble beginnings, both rose to hold the highest office in the land, both dared to make history rather than succumb to its flow and both were murdered in an attempt to ensure that their vision would not become a reality. Much like Lincoln’s 13th amendment, Rabin’s 1993 Oslo peace accord was passed in the Israeli Knesset by a narrow majority of just two votes procured by political wheeling and dealing.

Perhaps the greatest similarity between the two leaders is that both men’s assassins succeeded in altering history. Following Lincoln’s death the reconstruction of the American south was abandoned and the Supreme Court accepted the notion of “separate yet equal,” a notion that would live on for a century. Following Rabin’s assassination, the occupation of the West Bank and the Palestinian people has deepened as Israeli settlements continue to grow. Much like the American Supreme Court, Israeli society has accepted a notion of “separate yet unequal” surrounding itself with concrete walls and settling under an Iron Dome of indifference.

Yet there is also a vast difference between Lincoln and Rabin. Most importantly, Lincoln’s vision of America would ultimately be realized. Beginning in the 1960s with the marches in Selma and Birmingham, and ending with the election of Barack Obama, America has nearly cured itself of the ills of slavery and segregation. In the American collective memory Lincoln lives on as the founding father of modern day America, the man who brought about the vision of the founding fathers of 1776.

With the swearing in of Benjamin Netanyahu’s third government, and the prominent role of the Jewish Home party in it, Rabin’s vision of peace with the Palestinians and the end of the Occupation seems to be fading away. In the Israeli collective memory Rabin remains a controversial figure; to some he symbolizes hope to others he remains a traitor. To some he is a courageous man, to others a naïve one.

Lastly, unlike Spielberg’s Lincoln, Rabin’s motivation for seeking peace with the Palestinians is still somewhat unknown. Was it a strategic decision? Was it because he feared Israel would lose the demographic war with the Palestinians? Was it because he had tired of war and bloodshed? Or was it, as in Lincoln’s case, because of a moral imperative? Because occupying another people is morally reprehensible and corrupting?

Whatever the reason, like his American counterpart, Rabin attempted to change Israel. One can only hope that both Israelis and Palestinians will not have to wait a century until his vision is also realized.

Ilan Manor is working on his MA in mass media at Tel Aviv University. He has previously contributed to The Jerusalem Post, +972 Magazine and The Jewish Daily Forward. His Hebrew-language blog has been featured several times in the Israeli press.

By Amjad Iraqi

Palestinian workers with Israeli work permit stand in a line to broad a Israel bus line only for Palestinians, after they crossed the Eyal checkpoint, near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, March 4, 2012.

The announcement that Israel’s Ministry of Transportation would begin a “Palestinian-only” bus service from the Eyal checkpoint in the West Bank might appear to be a harmless policy. Indeed, many Palestinians working in Israel may be inclined to use the new service. If the advertisements are correct, Palestinians might avoid overcrowded buses, save hundreds of shekels from cheaper tickets, and even avoid unnecessary scuffles with Jewish settlers on the bus.

The catch is that these messages are being used by Israel to force Palestinians to conform to a rather twisted agenda. Despite the Ministry’s attempts to sugar-coat the initiative as a policy to help the workers, neither Palestinians nor Israelis should be fooled into thinking otherwise: the government is incentivizing segregation. In this case, the segregation is born out of the desire to keep the occupied population at a distance, away from the state’s infrastructure and its settlers.

The new bus service is an institutionalization of this racist agenda, adding another feature to a system described at best as a segregationist society, and at worst an apartheid regime. Fears that Palestinians will be forced off the original bus lines and required to use the Palestinian-only buses are a disturbingly real prospect; disturbing for its moral reprehensibility and for the social-economic dynamics it shapes.

This is certainly not the worst case of state-sanctioned discrimination in the Occupied Territories, and it won’t be the last. What makes the bus case notable, however, is that it starkly presents the pervasiveness of the state’s segregationist mentality by evoking the memory of the infamous buses under the Jim Crow laws of the southern United States, when black Americans had to sit at the back of public vehicles, or were forced to give up their seats for white passengers.

It is in the spirit of that memory that this writer, alongside many other activists and citizens, would appeal to the Palestinian population to emulate the Montgomery Bus Boycott of the Civil Rights Movement against Israel’s new bus service – a “Qalqilya Bus Boycott”. Palestinians should instead continue to use the original bus lines, in defiance of the attempt to separate passengers by their nationality. It not only sets a principled stance against the idea of segregation, but also condemns the Israeli state for bowing to the wishes of the settler population – and for entrenching the occupation’s policies ever further.

Such a boycott demands sacrifices and steadfastness from the Palestinian workers. But these are the same costs that were endured by black American boycotters in Montgomery, Alabama, whose nonviolent struggle succeeded in abolishing racial segregation on public transportation, a significant step forward in the movement for freedom and equality.

It is that same foresight and dedication that Palestinians must employ against Israel’s separate bus services at the Eyal checkpoint. It is not the most important issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nor will it create drastic changes. But it is a symbolic battle that Palestinians should confront to reveal to Israelis just how far the occupation’s racism goes, and to show that Palestinians refuse to accept Israel’s incentives to make them tolerate that racism.

Amjad Iraqi is an International Advocacy intern at Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author’s and do not represent the views of Adalah or +972 Magazine.

Related:
Photos: Israel’s new ‘Palestinian only’ segregated bus lines

Photos by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org

Palestinian workers with Israeli work permits attempt to board a new Israeli bus line for Palestinians only, after crossing the Eyal checkpoint near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, March 4, 2012.

Early this morning, Palestinians from the West Bank with permits to work inside the state of Israel crammed onto bus lines specially created for “Palestinians only” — instead of using the same public buses used by Israelis. The Israeli Transportation Ministry launched the new bus lines today, for travel from the Eyal checkpoint to Tel Aviv and Kfar Saba and back to the checkpoint, after settlers complained about Palestinians using the same buses as Israelis on their way to and from work inside Israel.

Such measures may be shocking to those unaware that in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, separate-but-unequal bus lines already exist, as detailed by Mya Guarnieri. But, as with the many forms of de facto discrimination in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, these buses are not legally segregated. So predictably, Israel’s transportation minister insists that, even with the new bus lines, “Palestinians entering Israel will able to ride on every public transportation line, including existing lines in Judea and Samaria [Israeli terms for the West Bank occupied Palestinian territories]“. Additional new lines for Palestinians only are also planned.

Palestinian workers with Israeli work permits wait to be picked up for work after they cross the Eyal checkpoint.

However, ”several bus drivers told Ynet that Palestinians who choose to travel on the so-called ‘mixed’ lines, will be asked to leave them.” The same article goes on to report that:

While officially the new lines are considered “general bus lines,” Ynet learned Saturday that their existence has been made public only in Palestinian villages in the West Bank, via flyers in Arabic urging Palestinians to arrive at Eyal crossing and use the designated lines.

The Transportation Ministry defended the plan, saying it was the result of reports and complaints saying that the buses traveling in the area were overcrowded and rife with tensions between the Jewishand Arab passengers.

A ministry source said that many complaints expressed concern that the Palestinian passengers may pose a security risk, while other complaints said that the overcrowded buses cause the drivers to skip stations.

The ministry has also gotten reports of scuffles between Jews and Arab passengers, as well as between Palestinians and drivers who refused to allow them to board their bus.

Workers try to keep warm near a campfire while awaiting transportation in the early morning cold near Eyal checkpoint.

This latest example is but one of many where segregation is not explicitly spelled out in official Israeli policy (though sometimes it is), but is otherwise glaringly obvious in practice (emphasis added):

Legally, however, there is no way to stop Palestinians from boarding “regular” lines: “We are not allowed to refuse service and we will not order anyone to get off the bus, but from what we were told, starting next week, there will be checks at the checkpoint, and Palestinians will be asked to board their own buses,” a driver with Afikim – the company that holds the routes franchise for the area – told Ynet.

And the racism underlying such measures is hardly concealed:

Another driver said that, “Driving a bus full of only Palestinians might turn out to be tricky. It could be unnerving and it might also create other problems. It could be a scary thing.”

Palestinian workers wait in line to board an Israeli bus line only for Palestinians, after crossing the Eyal checkpoint.

A Haaretz report (which displays a cropped, uncredited Activestills photo as its illustration — they’ll be hearing from our lawyer) also confirms that while official policy may prohibit discrimination, incidents are commonplace:

Officials at the Samaria and Judea District Police have said there is no change in the operation of the rest of the buses, nor is there any intention to remove Palestinians from other bus lines. But Haaretz has in the past reported incidents when Palestinians were taken off of buses, and witnesses at checkpoints say that such incidents are ongoing.

Palestinian workers with Israeli work permits wait to board a new Israeli bus line for Palestinians only, after crossing the Eyal checkpoint.

Also reporting on routine harassment faced by Palestinian passengers on Israeli buses, Haggai Matar gets to the heart of the matter:

The official state bodies – ministry, police and army – all stick to the dry question of whether or not Palestinians are allowed on the bus in Tel Aviv. The answer here is indeed yes. But the people who have to live daily with the reality of occupation – Palestinians and the settlers (including the bus company, which has its headquarters in Ariel) – expose the deeper layers of Apartheid: the separate checkpoints for different people, the racial profiling security system, the permit regime, and the route of the bus which is planned only for Israelis.

While new buses may remove the latter layer from Matar’s list, the question asked by Mairav Zonszein while the Transportation Ministry was still considering this measure late last year stands: “[I]n order to solve the problem of overcrowding, why not simply add more bus lines for everyone? Why the need to specify who they are for?” And her conclusion is more relevant than ever:

While the Transportation Ministry, the police, the bus company heads and the settler council leaders have or will claim that this is not racist, that it does not constitute the formal institutionalization of ethnic segregation, it makes no difference, because that is exactly what it is. Clear as day. And considering it is no secret that most Israeli Jews prefer ethnic segregation, no one should be surprised. When military control and occupation is the norm, it is only “natural” that a de facto reality becomes a de jure one.

The reference is to the three non-Zionist and mostly Palestinian Knesset parties: Ra’am-Ta’al, Balad and Hadash, which were nowhere to be found in the charts Haaretz published. Together, they have 11 Knesset seats, including one held by a Jewish member of Hadash. Some polls published in the Israeli media tend to group those parties into one entry, titled “Arab parties.” At other times, they ignore them completely. Often pollsters do include Palestinian citizens in their surveys but the media organization that publishes the results groups or ignores them.

There are objective problems with surveys of the Palestinian population in Israel. The interviews need to be conducted in Arabic, and the response rates are relatively low. Results could be inaccurate, so pollsters need to conduct special polls of the Palestinians to verify their samples and results from time to time.

More important, however, is the wider context. Voting patterns is but another area in which Jews and Palestinians are separated in Israel. “The Arab parties” were never included in any Israeli government, and the consensus tends to ignore them in the decision-making process. Grouping the Palestinians together, or completely failing to mention them, strengthens those trends. It does so at the very time – election season – when the politics of segregation should be discussed and criticized.

Furthermore, by treating Arab parties as one bloc, pollsters and media organizations ignore the variety, richness of opinions and often harsh controversies that exist in Palestinian society; they contribute to ignorance and prejudice among Israelis; and they marginalize and delegitimize a growing number of Jews who take part in or vote for joint political organizations and parties.

Polling problems exist everywhere. The ultra-Orthodox population tends not to trust pollsters or media, and requires special adjustments as well when surveyed. Yet nobody seriously considers not including that population in the polls, or grouping  the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism party with the Sephardi Shas – and rightly so. The same rules should apply to the Palestinian population.

Political blogger Tal Schneider, who collects the polls for the +972 Knesset poll tracking page, recently announced that she won’t promote on her Hebrew blog any poll that aggregates the non-Jewish parties into one bloc, let alone those polls that ignore them. Her decision reflects a deep recognition of the responsibilities in journalism that we are all but too pleased to share. +972 will also not present in our poll tracking page any poll that doesn’t survey or present full results for the Palestinian population. Ignoring some of the data out there might hurt our elections coverage, but ignoring people is worse.

Related:
+972′s Knesset poll tracking page
It’s all about the blocs: Understanding Israeli election polls
Understanding Israeli election polls, part II

Thousands of Palestinians travel from the West Bank to work in Israel every day using Israeli public transportation. The buses are overcrowded. At times there are tensions and confrontations between Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli settlers can’t stand the sight of Palestinians anyway. So why not create a separate bus line for them? This is the logic behind a new proposal being considered by the Ministry of Transportation:  Additional bus lines exclusively for Palestinians that go between checkpoints in the West Bank and central Israel, as Walla reported on Monday (Hebrew).

Last August, Haggai Matar reported about an Israeli bus driver on his way from Tel Aviv to the settlement of Ariel who refused to take Palestinians on board, was then instructed by police that he had to by law, but ultimately kicked them off later on anyway. At the time, Haggai reported that Ben-Hur Akhvat, CEO of the Afikim bus company, which serves the settlements, said that the company regularly receives complaints from Jewish passengers who don’t wish to see Palestinians on the bus. “We are in ongoing negotiations with authorities regarding a possible alternative solution to the problem,” Akhvat told Haggai at the time.

Apparently they have found the solution, and authorities claim this is a win-win situation for all involved: For Israeli settlers, it is ideal since they won’t have to come into contact at all with Palestinians (the same Palestinians they have chosen to live next to/on top of).  For Palestinians who have work permits, it will ease their travel time by eliminating the need to transfer buses at the various checkpoints where they must undergo security checks.

Herzl Ben-Ari, head of the Karnei Shomron regional council in the West Bank, told Walla the proposal is not racial segregation, but rather a practical solution to an problem of overcrowding. According to the report, the Transportation Ministry insists that no decision has been taken to allocate buses exclusively for Palestinians, and that Palestinians with work permits won’t be legally barred from continuing to ride whatever public transportation is at their disposal.

That may be so, but in order to solve the problem of overcrowding, why not simply add more bus lines for everyone? Why the need to specify who they are for?  And according to Haaretz, the nearly 30,000 Palestinians from the West Bank who come to work in Israel every day are increasingly being forced off the buses by police, who say it is due to complaints by Israelis that they are a “security risk.” The police claim they must ensure Palestinian workers who enter Israel in the morning also exit in the evening and go back where they came from.

This is similar to the controversy regarding ultra-Orthodox Israeli men who try to force women to sit in the back of buses, I think the answer is the same: If you don’t want to see women, don’t ride the bus. If Israeli settlers don’t want to see Palestinians, then they not only shouldn’t be riding the buses, but shouldn’t be living in a settlement in the first place – shouldn’t actually be living in this region at all.

But lucky for them, Israel has gone to great lengths to build separate roads, separate water and sewage system, separate legal system, separate everything so settlers can live in total denial.  Settlers even build their houses with no windows, so as not to have to see their “enemy;” so as not to face the people on whose human rights they are trampling all over.  So at this point, separate buses really doesn’t seem that far-fetched a move, does it?

Carmel settlement near Um el-Hir, southern West Bank (Mairav Zonszein)

While the Transportation Ministry, the police, the bus company heads and the settler council leaders have or will claim that this is not racist, that it does not constitute the formal institutionalization of ethnic segregation, it makes no difference, because that is exactly what it is. Clear as day. And considering it is no secret that most Israeli Jews prefer ethnic segregation, no one should be surprised. When military control and occupation is the norm, it is only “natural” that a de facto reality becomes a de jure one.

Related:
Bus company backs driver who refused Palestinian passengers on board

By Noa Shaindlinger

A group of Israeli and international female activists joined Palestinian women on Wednesday in a direct action in Hebron to protest the ongoing ban on Palestinian freedom of movement on Shuhada street. The street, which was once the lively commercial centre of Hebron, was closed off to Palestinian vehicular traffic after the 1994 massacre of 29 Muslims in the Ibrahimi Mosque by Baruch Goldstein. Since 2001, Palestinian pedestrians were barred from the street, turning it into a Jewish-only zone.

We arrived to Hebron just before 2pm, to be led to a previously undisclosed location, which would be our gathering point. We ended up at an apartment facing Shuhada Street, whose residents are forced to use a side entrance from an alley off the old city’s market.

Already waiting there was another (female) coordinator, who laid out the plan for us: we were to dress up in traditional Palestinian women’s garb and walk out to Shuhada street through the (forbidden) front door. While she was drawing an impromptu map of the area for us, figuring out the best escape routes from potential violence from either the settlers or the soldiers. A few of us exchanged meaningful glances. We understood the danger lurking for us outside. We were aware we could get arrested or even injured.

Annual “Open Shuhada Street” demonstrations have been met with excessive violence by the Israeli military, as I witnessed myself this past February. In light of recent successful women-only actions in Nabi Saleh and the growing visibility of women in protests throughout the West Bank, local activists decided to test the ground and see how the army reacts to an all female-direct action. Since any action in Shuhada street necessarily involves the risk of brutal arrests, which are much more complicated for Palestinians, they decided to invite Israeli and international solidarity activists for this symbolic – but important – act.

Our attempt was to walk to Beit Hadassah and back, and try and walk “slowly, like Palestinian women walk.” We dressed up in the familiar embroidered black garb identified as traditionally Palestinian, and our gracious host helped us don the hijabs – which for most of us were kuffiyehs, not a traditional female headdress by any account. We were instructed to exit quickly through the front door into the street and stick together.

The first thing I saw when I stepped outside was a white civilian jeep stopping right in front of us, nearly running us over and trying to block our way. A stocky man stepped out angrily. The man was a settler, and he immediately alerted his friends, a few of them approaching us quickly, trying to block our path as we proceeded along the street. The soldiers, fully armed, were quick to follow.  A scuffle erupted as we were slowly making our way up the street towards our destination. For a while, the soldiers were forcibly attempting to block us, then they changed tactics, moved behind and among us, and brutally pushed us towards the nearest checkpoint.

Later on, as some of us mused that they were probably confused by our actions. We were women, unarmed, Israeli and international citizens, which made our presence there perfectly legal. Their confusion becomes even more obvious when one considers they were pushing us towards the Palestinian-controlled area, which is legally forbidden for Israeli citizens.

The settlers, on their part, screamed at us, provoking us into verbal confrontations (“Have you no heart? Hebron is for all the Jews, you as well!”) and cursing us (“Traitors. You are worse than those Arabs”). The soldiers pushed us hard using their guns, knocking a few of the activists to the ground. When male ISM activists came to our aid, they were violently arrested.

Then they pushed a few of the women to the ground and started hitting them. One sat on top of a skinny girl, another one was choked by a soldier, crying in pain. Her glasses were smashed by one of the soldiers as she lay on the asphalt. I was still nursing a leg injury, which severely limits my movements. Nonetheless, the soldiers kept shoving me hard, even after I told them I am injured and cannot walk any faster.

Then, at some point, the soldiers apparently decided to make arrests, probably to scare us all so we hurry up towards the checkpoint. They arbitrarily arrested three more of the female activists, two Israelis and one journalist, six altogether. Finally, they forced us all to go through the checkpoint to the Palestinian-controlled part of the city.

We then went to a local woman’s house and the soldiers entered just as several of us were changing back into our street clothes and demanded to speak with the “owner of the house.” When someone pointed them to the elderly woman, they ignored her and instead asked for “the man who owns this place.” “There isn’t one,” they were told, “it’s just her and her daughter.” Then the soldiers split up: some remained with us and even tried to climb up to the roof, others kicked doors of other apartments, making an unbelievable racket.

We all snapped pictures of them, which did not exactly please them. The soldiers demanded we don’t photograph them. We continued anyway. Then they separated us from the group of photographers that accompanied us throughout the day, forced them out to the street and attempted to lock us in. Our host courageously confronted them the whole time, berating them for their rude behavior and for the intrusion.  They finally let us go, but shortly after returned to the area in search of someone. We later learned they were looking for the son of our host, and once they found him, he was arrested and taken away.

Since we parked the car near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, we had no choice but to exit the though the checkpoint. The soldiers were baffled; we were both Israelis, yet we just emerged from an area legally forbidden to us. They made us wait around while they checked our IDs. As we were walking away, I heard one of them telling the other: “No use talking to them. They are leftists. They hate you.” The day ended with us waiting long hours outside the gates of the Kiryat Arba police station waiting to hear from (and hopefully pick up) our incarcerated friends. By 11pm, two activists – one Israeli, one international – along with one journalist – were released, but the rest were to spend the night in jail and get a court hearing the next morning in Jerusalem. The Palestinian man who was arrested remained in custody until 4 am and then released as well.

Some of us had expressed doubts about this action. A few said that the dress-up part reminded them of oriental lore; others were critical about the prominent role of men in organizing and “defending” us. But after we exited the checkpoint, spirits were up. The general sense was that this action was successful – we did, after all, achieve our goal of walking up Shuhada street to the checkpoint, as planned, embarrassing the soldiers and the settlers while we were at it. As one Israeli activist from Jerusalem explained to me: the idea to dress up originated from Palestinians as a strategy, and therefore she no longer construes it as “orientalist” or problematic in any way. She thought the action was successful, but qualified it can only be claimed as a success if news of it is widely disseminated to affect people’s realization of the absurdity of the situation here.

While the Israeli activists were more familiar with the hardships of Palestinians in Hebron and have visited the city before (whether in tours organized by “Breaking the Silence” or for protests), I was curious to hear the perspective of the internationals that participated in the action. One young woman from Washington state who has been volunteering in Bethlehem explained to me that her passion for the Palestinian cause and the uniqueness of the action brought her to Hebron today, and that she is particularly inspired by the role Palestinian women have taken on in protests. The action, which to her as well was a success, was both peaceful and pointed, a powerful show of solidarity with the plight of Hebronites.

Noa Shaindlinger is a PhD student at the University of Toronto, a human rights activist and citizen journalist. 

Briefly, Burston claims that “Apartheid Week” is both a political failure and a moral abomination, since it is organized by the BDS movement that aims to destroy Israel. Mixing the moral issue – whether Apartheid Week is justified – with the question of effectiveness (is it working?) tends to blur the debate. To make things simple, I won’t address BDS’ and Apartheid Week’s success – I think the jury is still out on this one – and instead talk about the moral position Burston is taking.

Burston writes:

It’s Israeli Apartheid Week. You can tell the truth. About BDS. And about Israel as well. It’s not the robust and vibrant democracy that’s hailed by the right, even as the right works to curb freedoms. It is a troubled democracy, a compromised democracy, under threat from within, under threat from its own government, eroded by war and internal strife and external threat and the human and moral costs of the religion of manifest destiny.

I could agree with almost everything Burston wrote, if his post wasn’t about the Palestinian issue. When it comes to the question of Palestinians rights, Israel isn’t a democracy. There isn’t a lot to debate here.

The Palestinian population under Israeli sovereignty is divided into at least three groups: more than one million citizens, 300,000 residents (in East Jerusalem) with selective rights and 2.5 million without any rights, living in the West Bank. Some people include Gaza in this picture as well – but this is a different debate. Regardless, most Palestinians are not part of the Israeli democratic game. They are also unable to work as a collective, because each sub-group has its own set of tools and problems.

From the Palestinian perspective, Israeli democracy is all but meaningless. When non-citizens fight for their rights, they do it outside the democratic game, because they don’t have any other option. It is in this context that we should examine Palestinian strategic and tactical choices, such as the BDS or Apartheid Week.

It might all seem very banal, but it’s not. Here is an example that might illustrate this point: Suppose the Israeli public decides, with an absolute majority, not to ever give Palestinians equal rights. Should the international community, or any solidarity activist, respect this decision just because it was made in a democratic way? Of course not. Jews debating among themselves what to do with the Palestinians under their control have nothing to do with democracy; it’s a case more similar to the South African apartheid or to the segregation in the American South – an example Burston himself uses.

Again, it’s not about the fact that Palestinians are not independent, or even the issue of the occupied land. There are people who think that the Basques are under Spanish occupation as well, or that the Kurds should have their independence from Turkey. But in all those cases, the occupied nation was incorporated into the occupying country, and at least in theory, has equal rights. This is not the case in Israel – the Palestinians are both under our control and outside our system. They don’t see hope in democracy because they are not part of it, and they don’t need to respect it.

———————–

Burston goes on to recognize “a change” happening in the Israeli debate. After a long, undemocratic push by the right, he sees signs of hope:

It’s Israeli Apartheid Week. You can tell the truth. There is something in the air here, something distinctly unfamiliar. Something good. A whiff of democracy. A dim horizon of light. The stirrings of hope. And all from the most unlikely of places.

This week alone, in an extraordinary expression of the power of non-violence, a 68-day hunger strike by one jailed Palestinian forced Israelis, for the first time, to truly face and begin to debate the carefully hidden practice of administrative detention, imprisoning Palestinians without trial, criminal indictment or other due process. This week, under threat of a possible High Court order, and with an international media spotlight on the case, officials struck a deal under which the prisoner, Khader Adnan, will be freed in April.

This was a week in which Israeli society as a whole began to re-examine itself. In the Prime Minister’s Office, the unthinkable occurred: an untouchable, Netanyahu-bosom, backroom boss actually resigned in response to harassment allegations brought by colleagues. In Tel Aviv, the decades-old ban on public transportation on the Sabbath was overturned, in what may prove to be a step of more symbolism than substance – but this in a country where symbol be more weighty by far than substance.

And, in a move that could have profound implications for Israeli democracy, the High Court quashed the law which exempts the ultra-Orthodox from universal military service…

I don’t share Burston’s optimism, but this is besides the point. What’s important is that he is interpreting internal developments within Jewish society as something related to the status of Palestinians, and as a direct consequence, with their desired political behavior.

To be clear, what many – including myself – perceive as undemocratic developments happening recently in Israel are an internal issue of the Jewish public (and perhaps the Palestinian citizens). They have nothing to do directly with the Palestinians non-citizens, because they weren’t part of democracy to begin with. More than anything, we are experiencing a power struggle  in Jewish society between two elites, in which “protecting democracy” serves as the battle cry for one side, and nationalism is the driving force for the other. In this game, Burston and me are on the same side – but we should be aware that by “fighting for democracy” we are protecting our own rights, and not the Palestinians’.

The Palestinians are addressing their rights through Apartheid Week. The examples Burston cites above have nothing to do with the Palestinians. Note that even the case of Khader Adnan is mentioned in the context of Jews debating “the carefully hidden practice of administrative detention.” The practice was only hidden to some Israelis. From Adnan’s point of view, he couldn’t care less about the Jewish “debate” over administrative arrests. He simply wanted to get himself, and other prisoners, free from this imprisonment without due process.

In other words, “the battle over Israeli democracy” is not about the occupation. At best, it’s about the ability of Jews to discuss the occupation. Like many Jewish Israelis, Burston is mixing the two. And while there are some positive developments regarding the democracy issue, there are absolutely none regarding the occupation, as even “dovish” parties today prefer to deal with other issues. There is no end in sight. We are getting further away from a two-state solution with each passing day, and nowhere near a different kind of solution. The Israeli strategic choice is the status quo.

———————–

Here comes the most problematic part of the text, when Burston compares Israeli occupation to American segregation, but draws the wrong conclusions:

In the democracy that was the United States in the year 1840, there were those who said that slavery was essential, irreversible, eternal, God’s will. And that people of color and women of all races should not, and therefore would not, be granted the freedoms and rights of full citizenship, that the only good Native American was a dead one.

(…)

All Americans deserve democracy and self-determination. So do both of the native peoples of the Holy Land, Palestinians and Israelis alike. Just as in 1840 America, in this Holy Land there are people working on both sides, quietly, continually, toward that goal. Not freedom for one people at the expense of the other, but freedom and independence for both.

If anything, this analogy should serve as support for Apartheid Week. If the world in 1840 was anything like today’s, wouldn’t it be any honest person’s duty to oppose segregation by all means necessary? If slavery existed in America today, wouldn’t we all have supported “Alabama Apartheid Week” on our campuses? One should of course remember that slavery didn’t end by “people working on both sides, quietly, continually, toward that goal,” but with a national disaster. I would take BDS any day of the week if the alternative is the American Civil War.

Also, I really hope that Burston’s message for the Palestinians was not that they need to wait another 115 years to get equal rights under the Israeli law, and an extra fifty for some equal opportunities. The Israeli occupation will soon celebrate its 45th birthday. That’s a long time as it is. Apartheid legislation in South Africa officially began in 1950 and ended after four decades. We already left this milestone behind us. Why shouldn’t the Palestinians have their rights today? Isn’t this what the word “rights” is all about?

For us Jews, Israel still is a democracy, and we should use the opportunities it gives us to oppose the occupation. Often, things we see on the Palestinian side will make us uncomfortable, but we should remember that Palestinians are living in different political circumstances, whether it is in Israel proper, the West Bank and Gaza, or the diaspora. We can show solidarity when we find it suiting, and avoid it on other occasions. But as a rule, I think Israeli progressives – and no doubt Burston is one – should be very careful when criticizing Palestinian tactics of opposition to our occupation, especially when those are non-violent ones.

An anonymous group that identified itself only as “artists for Israel tomorrow” has distributed hundreds of copies of a “utopian” version of Israel Hayom ["Israel Today"], with a cover story announcing the end of the limitations of freedom of movement for Palestinians in occupied Hebron.

Israel Hayom is the most widely read paper in Israel. It is distributed for free, and at considerable losses, at the expense of gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a conservative American Jew and a personal friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The paper is known for its blunt support of the government. Recently, it was revealed that the top political pundit for the paper is also employed on a yearly contract of NIS 50,000 by the Prime Minister’s Office.

The artists printed a double spread and placed it in a way that replaced the first and last pages of hundreds of copies of Israel Hayom, which are distributed in train stations and other central locations. They used the exact same logo, outline and color scheme as the original paper. The top headline reads “End of Separation.” It then follows:

Exclusive: Defense Minister has ordered to stop the separation in the streets of Hebron. [President] Obama: “we didn’t fight ethnic segregation in the United States only to have it brought back by Israel.”

As I reported here in the past, there are increasing limitations on the freedom of movement for Palestinians in the part of Hebron (el-Khalil) where settlers live. Settler houses are scattered among those belonging to Palestinians, and as consequence, the army presence in this part of the city is the heaviest in the West Bank. You can see a picture of the central Shuhada street, segregated between Jews and Arabs, here.

A protest against colonization and segregation in Hebron will take place this Friday.

Other items on the front page of the fake paper “announced” the renewal of affordable housing projects in Israel, limits on salaries for executives, and the signing of an Arab soccer star in Beitar Jerusalem, a team known for its racist fans.

The weather forecast was “partly cloudy.”

Here are the pages which replaced the front and last pages of Israel Hayom today. It has a lot of surprises; if you read Hebrew, make sure to look carefully.

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This picture was taken on Monday on the Shuhada street in Hebron:

Segrageted Shuhada street in Hebron, February 2012 (photo: Hithabrut-Tarabut)

Note who gets the bigger part of the road… well, nobody in Hebron ever claimed that separate is equal.

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A day of international solidarity with the Palestinian people of Hebron will take place on February 24. A protest march is planned, details [Hebrew] here.

And yes, while it’s cute to see these women cutting-lose … err, so to speak … I find the dance to be both antagonistic and counter-productive.

The Jerusalem Post, which covered the event, appeals to young, Jewish Orthodox-lite Anglos, many of whom immigrated in recent years to Israel and wanted to live in observant communities, as well as many non-observant politically center-of-right English-speakers.  Its bread-and-butter is its English publication, unlike the widely popular and editorially left-of-center Haaretz newspaper, which has an English-language version available online and published in-print in conjunction with the International Herald Tribune but makes its biggest traction in Hebrew.  The JPost (it’s shortened moniker) is the choice of publication for most people who support, endorse and promote the very policies that many +972 readers disavow.  That’s a pretty blanket statement, I realize, but a near accurate one.  And for those who don’t read it frequently, it is worth noting that it does nearly as much “Jewish” news as it does Israel-related news.  That Jewish news is written with the audience in mind, and thus appeals to this Orthodox-light view of Judaism, Israel and the world.  Its editorials, for example, have promoted strikes on Iran, alongside accusations of U.S. President Barack Obama’s disconnect from (and distrust by) American Jews.  Many of the JPost’s writers wear knitted scull-caps/yarmulkes, themselves Orthodox-lite.   One of the writers of this particular JPost article, Niv Elis, is himself an American Jew (though non-religious), who recently emigrated to Israel.  So naturally this is the audience that they are targeting, and the message is clear: Israel – it’s still the place for you American Orthodox-light (or modern-Orthodox, as many call themselves) Jews to come.

But I want to make a distinction that was lost both in the JPost article and in Ami’s post on it.  It is important to note that there is nothing religiously verboten (forbidden) about women dancing with other women.  That’s why at Jewish weddings, one sees a mehitza (divide) separating the men and women during the dancing. That’s also why Shalem created the disco nights in RBS without much controversy.  And that’s also why all across the country one can find special women-only sessions for Rikudey-am (Israeli folk dancing).  They appeal to these very women.  But why has no one spoken up about this reverse-segregation?  Because these women — the same sort who are dancing in this flashmob video — support that.  They segregate themselves, they promote separation when it suits them.

What really would have made a statement in Beit Shemesh would have been mixed-gender dancing in the square.  That would have been genuinely provocative, though perhaps catastrophically confrontational and counter-productive (and thus, not a move I would have supported).  But that would have really been a statement of defiance.  But here is the irony: these women, who are happy to antagonize the ultra-Orthodox black-hat extremists (yes, extremists!) of Beit Shemesh, would themselves feel less comfortable (and perhaps equally unwelcoming) to a group of progressive and/or secular Jews coming and having a mixed-gender “flash mob” in the middle of their public square.

So yes, it’s easy to make someone else uneasy (especially when it is done in such a “heart-warming” way).  But it’s harder to accept that unease for yourself.   These women (and their husbands) should embrace Oliver Wendell Holmes’ view on freedom, namely that “the right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”  They should should become advocates against the segregation of women in a secular, progressive dialogue, rather than when it is convenient – and permitted – for them to do so.

Thus, I predict this video will do less good — i.e. bring about change — than it will bad, namely revealing these women’s hypocrisy.