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So it’s that time of year again, when Gerald Steinberg writes an article about us. Steinberg, the head of a right-wing organization called NGO Monitor, has been using +972 (along with a few of other organizations) as tools in his efforts to demonize the New Israel Fund (following its decsion to add us to their donor-advised list). This is what he has to say:

A number of +972’s bloggers have invoked the immoral and false “apartheid” analogy, and in a February 2012 interview in The Nation, Noam Sheizaf, +972’s editor-in-chief, referred to Jerusalem as an “apartheid city.” In May 2012, +972 published a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raping President Barack Obama and eating his limbs. And in September, Sheizaf used his twitter account to refer to critics as “the Jewish KKK” and “fascist”—reinforcing the image of the NIF network as exploiting a “progressive” and “liberal” façade for extreme polarization and hate speech.

If Steinberg wants to analyze works of satire or scan my Twitter feed for expressions that might sound shocking, that’s his own business.  Yes – I linked to a site full of hate talks against liberals, Muslims and Israeli leftists, which included comments wishing for their death – and called them “Jewish KKK.” I have also used the same expression to describe their moral equivalents here – those gangs that roam the West Bank, torching mosques and olive trees and beating or shooting at Palestinian farmers. I use blunt language sometimes, because I think we should wake up to the realities of our days.

Steinberg’s obsession with +972 is not the problem, nor are death wishes (“criticism,” in his words) on right-wing blogs. The problem is the rise of his agenda, both here and in Jewish communities in the United States. For some years now, organizations like NGO Monitor have been forming blacklists of Israelis suspected of “radical” or “anti-Zionist” positions. In academia alone, dozens have been targeted, with various degree of success. But as I reported yesterday, this practice is now becoming state policy, with the committee in charge of monitoring and financing academia now threatening to shut down the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Be’er Sheva – the same department that has been the target of increasing attacks and threats.

In the last three or four years, something new and disturbing has been taking place. An effort to limit the conversation, to police the debate, to shut down criticism, and to take over every platform available in our communities for the most vulgar advocacy work in the service of Israel’s current right-wing policies.

Here is an item that might seem unrelated, but for me it’s part of the same story: right after I read Steinberg’s post, I came across this piece, regarding a new campaign, designed to help American rabbis use the holidays for Israel advocacy in their communities. Examples:

The letter asks rabbis throughout the High Holidays and Sukkot to learn about the goals and strategies of those seeking to delegitimize Israel so they are best able to talk to their congregants about the difference between legitimate criticism and what is happening within some anti-Israel movements.

(…)

During Yom Kippur, the themes of self-awareness and praying for “our whole people” can be used as a segue into a discussion on Israel.

When such blunt indoctrination is at work, there is very little room left for real conversation. When the debate is policed by all sort of watchdog groups – NGO Monitor had no less than 27 paid employees in 2010, and they are but one organization – the space for challenging (and at times – unpleasant) political activism is shrinking. This is a problem that is felt more and more in Israel.

What really troubles me is the  fact that every other day there is a new “rule” about what can or can’t be said about Israel (apartheid, occupation, segregation vs. “legitimate criticism”). We do not intend to obey such rules on this site.

I am troubled by the tendency to shut ourselves in a ghetto of self-righteousness and self-pity. The fact that a site that has it in its mission statement a goal to present “an unconventional and unique stand on politics and the social and cultural life of the American and international Jewish community,” but ends up giving prime real estate to a McCarthyist, is, I think, a sign of our times.

I am troubled by what seems to me like a decision we took a while back to stop dealing with the problems we face – especially with the elephant in the room – and instead put so much effort in monitoring the way we are allowed to talk, or rather not talk, about those same problems. (If you don’t like the term apartheid in reference to Jerusalem, I urge you come up with another word to describe a city in which one-third of the population has so few legal rights, including limited voting rights and limits on their ability to purchase real-estate. Or let’s just drop the discussion on words altogether, and talk issues instead?)

I am troubled by what seems to be the emergence of a tight alliance between the dominant political powers in my country, and the most radical flank of a decaying and corrupt Republican party – to the point where you don’t know who is who and which is which. I am troubled by the growing Islamophobia in certain Jewish communities, not to mention in my country, and by the willingness of Israelis and Jews to cooperate with the worst of racists – some of them the spiritual descendants of those very same forces who persecuted our people – just because they now have a common enemy. And perhaps most of all, I am troubled by the fact that many of those who were supposed to be my allies within the Jewish communities are too confused, heartbroken or bewildered to take a public stand.

This, and not NGO Monitor, is the real problem.

This is where I urge the reader who has gotten this far to take a stand with us against the Steinbergs of this world. When it comes to supporting this site, you can do it in the usual ways: Share an article you find thought-provoking with a friend, even if he or she might disagree with it (actually, especially if he might disagree). Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Write a comment every now and then. Drop a line (our email: info@972mag.com), even if it’s not a compliment. Writers love feedback, any feedback. Donations go a long way in helping us sustain this project – after all, the goal of NGO Monitor is to dry our very limited resources.

And most important, don’t let your Rabbi segue from the shofar into the Likud’s talking points.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, U.S. president Bill Clinton, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat at the signing of the Oslo Accord (photo: Vince Musi / The White House)

Today, 19 years ago, hours before the Oslo agreement was signed in Washington, I set foot for the first time in Gaza. Our unit was sent for a week of foot patrols and flying checkpoints. Our commanders, who had been to the West Bank and Gaza in the past, were shocked to see the PLO flags that marked the signing of the agreement hanging in the streets. Until that day, flying a Palestinian flag was forbidden. It was a sign – an important one – that the occupation was ending.

The night before our deployment was tense – we had many leftists in our ranks, and at least one considered refusing to serve in the occupied territories. He was met with fierce pressure and threats from our commanders; but no argument had as strong an effect as the feeling that the entire occupation was about to end anyway. It made sense for us to help bring this temporary situation to an end, many in our ranks rationalized.

A couple of years later, I was back in Gaza. This time, my unit was in charge of the busy road between Khan Yunis and Gaza City. At a moment’s notice, we could cut the Strip in two. We often did. The pretext for our deployment there was the existence of – how surprising – a settlement. Unlike in the days before the Israeli withdrawal from Gazan cities under Oslo, Palestinians couldn’t enter Israel anymore, so the effect of the entire agreement on the local population was essentially a siege. So much for peace.

The same cycle of hope and disillusionment happened to me a year later in Hebron, after my unit transferred control over parts of the city to the Palestinian Authority. Since then, things have gotten much worse for the local population. Settlements in and around the city have expanded, and the IDF’s Civil Administration began pushing the Palestinians in the areas under Israeli control, especially south of the Hebron, into the cities, and declaring their lands natural reserves, archaeological sites or military training zones. Israel didn’t evacuate one settlement under this peace treaty. Instead, it began evacuating Palestinians.

A favourite intellectual exercise in progressive circles is the argument over the intentions behind the Oslo process. Some say it was an Israeli-American plot to deepen Israeli control of the Palestinian Territories; others view it as a noble effort gone wrong. Personally, I believe in the good intentions of Rabin, less so of Peres. It’s also clear that the pro-Israel bias of the Americans allowed Jerusalem to avoid the removal of the settlements, which meant that the agreement was bound to fail from the start. Not for the first time, peace fell victim to the “special relationship.” But regardless of the things Oslo was meant to be, it’s clear – and way more important – what it has become: the primary legal tool serving the occupation.

The agreement over the division of the land – handing the large urban areas to the Palestinians, the rural villages to Palestinian “administrative control,” and the rest to Israel – is now being treated by Israel as the de-facto annexation of 60 percent of the West Bank, also known as Area C. (The situation of the Palestinians in areas A and B is not much better: they need Israel’s approval to travel outside the West Bank and sometimes even within it, and they suffer from what has become the tiny tyranny of the Palestinian Authority.)

In Area C, Israel is building new settlements, universities and cultural centers; excavating natural resources and using them on the Israeli market; and displacing thousands of Palestinians living there – a massive human and civil rights violation that is condemned by the international community but at the same time accepted and even enabled by the insistence on keeping the Oslo Accords as the main diplomatic and legal framework on the ground. All those nice diplomats working so hard to save Oslo and the peace process are really saving the occupation.

The financial agreement which accompanied Oslo – the Paris Protocol – is keeping the Palestinian economy as a captive market for Israeli decision-makers and capitalists. Israel is collecting taxes for the Palestinians – and using them for diplomatic leverage. Under the Paris Protocol, the Palestinians are not allowed to have a central bank or use their own currency. In short, it is an agreement that was designed to make sure that regardless of other developments, the Palestinian economy will remain occupied.

It is no surprising then that Israel is doing whatever it can to prevent the Palestinians from walking away from Oslo or the Paris Protocol. The Palestinian Authority is exactly where Israel wants it – too weak and dependent on Israel and foreign donors to present a serious challenge to the occupier, but strong enough to oppress its own people (and it is treated by Israel with the same contempt all occupiers have for their collaborators). This is the reason for the financial aid Israel recently transferred to the Palestinians at the first sign of unrest. 250 million NIS is a tiny sum compared to the diplomatic meltdown and the financial costs that would accompany a move to the old model of direct occupation.

As Oslo – signed as an interim accord for six years – enters its twentieth year, it’s becoming clear that the only thing that the Palestinians got from the agreement was the right to raise their flag, given to them on day one. Today, Oslo is the occupation. The sooner we get rid of it, the better.

Read also:
No end in sight: Occupation marks 45th anniversary

Following a German verdict against circumcision, Larry Derfner writes:

I am somewhat ashamed that I was willing to put my infant boys at risk, that I was willing to put them through such severe pain, for fear that if I didn’t, it would mean they weren’t Jewish and it would be my responsibility.

I admit that I haven’t given circumcision much thought. If I did, perhaps I would have reached the conclusion that my friends reached. But here are my two cents: I am not sure that this is an issue of “being Jewish,” as Larry writes, but more of a public norm. Almost every Jewish boy in Israel is circumcised. The first thought that comes to my mind when dealing with this question has to do with all the explaining my boy would have to do regarding my decision, if indeed I had chosen to avoid the Brith. Would he decide to avoid public changing rooms? Would he skip the pool? Would it make him feel too different?

Curiously, among the friends at the beach today, the ones that decided against circumcision was also the only married couple. In my social circles, marriage is no big deal, and people my age don’t even bother to fly to Cyprus to avoid religious weddings, as many Israelis do. A decade ago it might have been different, but the norm has changed. The same goes for circumcision. I am pretty sure that if thirty percent of Israeli Jews weren’t circumcising their sons, a larger group would follow suit – including in more conservative circles (though maybe not in religious ones).

It’s no secret that we value social norms more than we value our bodies, especially in a society as intimate and conformist as Israel’s. The fear of isolating our sons is greater than the fear of what – I can’t deny – is a pretty barbaric ritual.

Today, June 5, Israel marks a double anniversary: 45 years since the Six-Day War and 30 years since the first Lebanon War. The name of the latter is misleading – the war took place in Lebanon, but it was yet another attempt to solve our “Palestinian problem” by force. Israel conquered most of its neighbor to the north (including the capital), installed a puppet leader as president, and forced the PLO to sail all the way to Tunis. But the plan failed. Five years later, a popular unarmed revolt broke out in Gaza and spread to the West Bank. A little over a decade after the occupation of Beirut, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat entered Gaza.

Last weekend, Israeli newspapers devoted most of their pages to the Lebanon war. Yet its obvious lesson – that the Palestinian issue cannot be resolved by force, nor can it be made to disappear – was hardly discussed. Nor was any reference made to the Six-Day War’s anniversary. Israelis have all but forgotten the Palestinians. The longest military occupation in the world is entering its 46th year amidst a deafening silence.

A segregated street in Hebron. Palestinian are allowed only on the left side (photo: activestills.org)

The Palestinians are not the only people in the world who lack an independent state. Yet there is one fundamental difference between the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and, let’s say, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, not to mention the situation of the Basques in Spain or the Kurds in Turkey (both examples are often cited as comparisons by the Israeli right). In all of those cases, the “occupying” country annexed the territory at hand and turned the people living in it – sometimes against their will – into its citizens. Israel never did that. It let the army run the occupied territory. The Israeli occupation is also different from the American occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, because Israel has a claim to the land it conquered, because it is using the natural resources of this land, and because it moves the Jewish population into the occupied territory.

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is therefore a unique phenomenon. Between one-quarter and one half of the population under Israeli control (the exact number depends on how you estimate of the size of Palestinian population, and whether you count Gaza or not) does not enjoy the most basic of civil rights or any political representation within the regime that controls it. Israel is a decent democracy for its Jewish citizens. For Palestinians, it’s a brutal dictatorship.

PM Shamir's motorcade driving through one of the streets of Gaza City, 1988 (photo: Ayalon Maggai /GPO)

I was born in 1974, seven and a half years after Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza. I remember the day workers from the Territories standing in street corners early in the morning, waiting to be picked up. Later, Israeli singer Ehud Banai wrote a popular song about the Palestinians who are building Tel Aviv. Today, Palestinians are not allowed west of the Green Line. Instead, they are building houses for Jews in the settlements.

In one of my grandfather’s visit to Israel, he rented a car (we didn’t own one) and took us on a trip to the West Bank. I was fascinated  by the Jordanian products in the local groceries, including cans of 7up, which wasn’t sold in Israel. With time, as Israel took control of the Palestinian economy, they were replaced by products of the large Israeli manufacturers.

My first time in the Territories as a soldier was on the day the Oslo Accord was signed. During my mandatory service, I was stationed in and around Gaza, Nablus, Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem and especially Hebron (in between, there were also a couple of tours in south Lebanon). When I look back at my experiences, I feel that most people don’t understand the occupation. You need to actually be there in order to feel it. And once you do, it stays with you, one way or another.

The regime Israel has imposed on the Palestinians is not the most murderous in the world, and certainly not in history (a recent exception being the war in Gaza). The most striking element is not the level of violence Israel employs against the Palestinians, but the level of control it exercises.

The life of every Palestinian in the West Bank is at the mercy of any soldier he or she meets. We are talking millions of people, who haven’t got the most basic protections that civilians everywhere enjoy. All Palestinians are tried by military tribunals, where the prosecution and the judges wear the same uniform – that of the IDF. Palestinians are not allowed to travel outside the West Bank without an army permit. They are subject to long lines at checkpoints and to arbitrary searches whenever they meet a soldier. Soldiers enter Palestinian homes at any time – day or night – without a warrant. When a Palestinian is wronged by a soldier, there is little point in filing a complaint, as the army doesn’t have the checks and balances a civilian authority has. Palestinians are not just Israelis with lesser rights; they are more like the prisoners of Israelis. I know this, because I have seen the occupation in action and I have been directly involved in it.

And the worst thought of all: A Palestinian man my age has not been free for a single day in his life.

Palestinian children, Hebron 1997. The fact that I was in uniform when I took this picture is evident in the children's eyes (photo: Noam Sheizaf)

If that’s not enough, there are the settlements. The first one was born less than a year after the Six-Day War, with the blessing of most of the Zionist left. Contrary to popular belief, there was never a real argument in Israel over the settlements, only over the location, the nature and the size of them. In the eyes of the consensus, colonizing East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza was fair game. The result: there are over half a million Jews east of the Green Line today.

Israel’s democratic institutions took part in the decision. At some point in the late 70s, Israel decided that all the state land in the Territories is available for it to use. Government offices facilitated construction of homes for Jews in the West Bank, the Supreme Court approved confiscation of land and the widespread use of Palestinian natural resources – at times, it even approved confiscating privately owned land – and the Knesset voted overwhelmingly in support on the rare occasions such matters even reached the Knesset.

The worst turn of events took place under the Oslo Accord. The agreement divided the West Bank into three areas, the largest being under full Israeli control. The idea was that a permanent agreement under which the occupation would be terminated would be signed in six years, but it never was. So instead of letting Oslo expire, Israel made another brilliant move – it began acting as if Area C (the one under Israeli control) was officially handed to it. Today Israel builds roads, even new neighborhoods, commercial spaces and culture centers in the West Bank, while pushing the Palestinian population from those areas to the crowded cities and villages (a good graphic of the land allocation can be found here). Hundreds of “illegal” Palestinian homes are being destroyed every year, and no permits for new ones are given. This systematic displacement and confiscation has been taking place for almost half a century. The problem with the settlements is not the settlers. It’s the state.

An IDF post inside a Palestinian home (photo: Breaking the Silence)

In recent years, the occupation has reached its most sophisticated level. It is the greatest national project Israel has launched. The best and the brightest take part in it: the high-tech industry invents new means of control and supervision over the local population (the army has become so good at this job, that Israel has exported much of the knowledge it gained in the West Bank and Gaza to other occupying countries); the best legal scholars come up with loopholes to allow the ongoing confiscation of assets and deprivation of rights; and the most skilled diplomats are taking part in a propaganda war meant to convince the world that the Palestinians are to blame for the occupation. Astonishingly, the international community is buying this nonsense, treating what is basically a massive-scale human rights violation as if it was a remote border dispute between two sovereign nations.

____________

Recently, I attended a meeting with a group of scholars and elected officials from a European country. They were genuinely full of good will, upset by the deadlock, concerned for both sides and asking what could be done, suggesting joint civil society projects and other trust-building measures which could “bring Israelis and Palestinians together.” But such efforts are bound to fail on every level, and lately, I have begun to think that they do more to maintain the occupation than to help end it. Meetings between Israelis and Palestinians might look promising to an outsider, but they continue to feel awkward and staged, because the two sides are unequal, one possessing all the privileges and the other not having even basic human rights. The prisoners should not be expected to make friends with their guards, even if those are the nicest prisoners, and the best-intentioned of guards.

There is another, more fundamental problem: The status quo is good for Israelis and bad for Palestinians. I say that as an Israeli who wants to continue enjoying the great life this country can offer to (some of) its citizens. With both solutions – one state or two states – being so costly and dangerous, keeping things as they are seems like the best option for Israeli decision-makers. As long as the Israeli government has the power to maintain the status quo, it will. Most of the Israeli public agrees, and the international community is not willing to spend any political capital on changing its mind. Rightwing politicians here and in the United States are selling the public fantasies, as if it’s possible to keep the West Bank forever or give the Palestinian the right to vote for the Jordanian parliament or “an enhanced autonomy,” or other similar ideas which are just code names for Apartheid. Under such circumstances, debates on solutions are a meaningless intellectual exercise. There is truly no end in sight.

West Bank checkpoint, November 2007 (photo: Chris Yunker / flickr)

I lived in France in 2003, and I still remember grafitti on the Metro walls linking Israel, the Jews and the conflict in one big anti-Semitic mess. There is no denying that relations worldwide between Jews and Muslims are affected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (they are also influenced by local socio-economical factors, and other issues); yet I don’t like those who try to establish their arguments regarding the conflict in those terms. It takes really sick logic to even hold Israel partly responsible for hate crimes against Jews.

It was therefore encouraging to see prominent Arab voices denounce the killing clearly and unequivocally. For example, in an op-ed in the important Arab paper Dar-al-Hayat:

Is it a violent Islam that kills children and innocents and claims to be Islamic? Such barbaric acts are against religion, and human values. Those who commit such crimes in the name of Islam are murderous infidels… No normal person could commit such a crime. If the murderer is an Islamic extremist, he wants to see discord in a country that has secular laws, and respects all religions.

And here is Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad:

It is time for these criminals to stop marketing their terrorist acts in the name of Palestine and to stop pretending to stand up for the rights of Palestinian children who only ask for a decent life.

Such messages – natural and expected as they should be – bring hope in a sad week.

————

I also didn’t appreciate the political use of the Toulouse murder by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who tried again to delegitimize any criticism of Israel because it may influence distorted minds like that of the French killer. Norway’s Anders Breivik, who killed 78 people, mostly kids, quoted neo-conservative and Zionist writers. Does that fact in and of itself prove anything about Zionism or about neo-conservatism?

————

When I lived in Paris, my grandfather, a French citizen all his life, had already passed away, but his 80-year-old brother was still alive. The family lived in Argenteuil, a working class suburb that saw many North African families move in over the years. They felt threatened. I didn’t. Ten years earlier, when I visited my grandfather on my own, I took the wrong bus to his house on the way back from Paris one night and lost my way. I was 17. By the time my grandfather found me and picked me up, from a pay phone near a supermarket 10 miles away, he was totally panicked. I thought he was overreacting.

Having lived all my life in Israel, I don’t think I have much sense of the existential fear that Jews carry with them, which is different from Israeli anxiety over security issues. I am shocked and angered by the murder in Toulouse just like everyone else, but I have learned that such events don’t shake my world the way they do that of my Jewish friends and relatives abroad (especially the French ones). For me, this was another reminder of my need to be more sensitive to the unique circumstances of Jewish life in the diaspora.

It’s been a bit more than a year since we started working on +972 Magazine, and the site was officially launched last summer. To mark this event, we gathered for a toast in the presence of friends and colleagues on the rooftop of the space belonging to the HaYarkon 70 collective in Tel Aviv (overlooking the US embassy…).

This anniversary is a great opportunity to thank all our readers and followers: Those who commented, sent emails, corrected us, shared our work, argued or supported us – you are the reason we are doing all of this. We write because we care, and we are happy that our voices reach so many people who are just as passionate and engaged as we are.

A special thanks to all the kind people who contributed to our fundraising campaign, which is intended to help us take care of some urgent maintenance and bureaucratic issues (if you want to donate, click on the Paypal icon on the right, or go to this page to read more).

Noam Sheizaf read the following remarks at the toast, on behalf of the entire team:

We’d like to thank all of our friends, colleagues, readers and contributors who have joined us today for our site’s 1st anniversary. Big thanks to the people of the Hayarkon 70 collective, who hosted this event.

+972 was born out of two needs:

The first was the will to sound a new (and mostly young) voice, which will take part in the international debate regarding Israel and Palestine.

The second reason we started the site was professional: Some of us were independent journalists, some of us were working full time in existing media outlets, some of us were in other related professional fields, but we all wanted our own “home” – a place to express ourselves freely, where we control the editorial line, where we could be as controversial, personal, creative, and free as we wish to be.

To achieve this, we came up with a unique model – a Web Magazine that is based entirely on blogs, owned and operated by its writers.

It was clear that the Magazine would have a unique political voice.

Perhaps one of the differences between journalism and blogging is not the field work or professionalism, but the level of personal engagement with the issues one writes about.

+972 writers are politically engaged. Although we have differences within the group on almost every issue, I think I’m not wrong in saying that we all write in support of democracy, freedom of speech, and human rights, and perhaps most importantly, we are committed to political justice and to bringing an end to the occupation, which enters today its 45th year.

In less than a year, +972 Magazine has achieved considerable success – actually, more than we could have dreamed of. Each one of us has thousands of new readers every day, and the site has been mentioned and cited by major news outlets in the US and Europe. It is our pleasure to thank all those who took part in these achievements, maintaining the site on a daily basis, and doing it all completely voluntarily.

We started with a group of six bloggers – right now we are a community of 17 people: writers, editors, a developer, a designer and a legal advisor, who recently joined us.

Before naming them all, I’d like to tell you about the fundraising campaign we started, meant to enable us to support the maintenance costs of the magazine, and to expand its reach. I’d like to thank all those who already donated – many are present here – and if you want to help, check the site for more details.

And now, to the people behind this project:

Our editors: Shir Harel, Noa Yachot and Mairav Zonszein (who is also one of our bloggers)

Our developer and product manager: Ofer Luft

Our designer: Idit Frenkel, who is responsible for the site’s unique look, and cartoonist Eran Mendel for the sketches

Our legal adviser: Jonathan Klinger

Our bloggers (in addition to Mairav, who I mentioned): Ami Kaufman and Dahlia Scheindlin, who are also our op-ed editors; Joseph Dana who spent the day breathing tear gas in Qalandia; Dimi Reider; Yossi Gurvitz; Aziz Abu-Sarah; Lisa Goldman; Roi Maor; Yuval Ben Ami; and Roee Ruttenberg

We would also like to thank all the op-ed writers, those who have supplied translation services, and the Activestills photo agency, which has granted us permission to use its work.

Most importantly – thanks to all our friends here for reading; sharing our work; providing us with feedback, insight and information; and encouraging us to keep going. Without each and every one of you, we couldn’t have made it.

See you all next year!