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29 dec 2015
The new bill is sponsored by the Israeli justice minister, Ayelet Shaked.
Iraeli ministers have voted in favour of a bill that will crack down on human rights groups receiving funds from abroad, a move EU officials have said is reminiscent of totalitarian regimes.
Opponents say the bill unfairly targets leftwing organizations critical of government policy, leaving rightwing pro-settlement groups immune from the same scrutiny, as those tend to rely on private donors – who are exempt from the measures. The so-called transparency bill, sponsored by the justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, according to The Guardian/Al Ray, requires organizations to provide details of the countries funding their activities in any communication with elected officials, imposing a 29,000 shekel (£5,000) fine on any who fail to do so. Employees would also be required to wear special tags when working in Israel’s parliament.
The measures passed the first major legislative hurdle Sunday, when government ministers agreed to it in principal, making it almost certain to pass into law. The legislation is expected to receive support, from all the coalition factions within the Israeli government, when it is put to a final vote. It was part of a coalition agreement made by Shaked’s Hayabit Hayehudi party and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Opposition leaders have put pressure on the Israeli prime minister and coalition members to try to prevent the vote.
The EU ambassador to Israel recently met Shaked, to warn that the bill would undermine Israeli’s image as “a democratic and pluralistic country”, Israeli media reported. EU officials were quoted as saying that “Israel should be very careful about reigning in its prosperous democratic society with laws that are reminiscent of totalitarian regimes”.
Ayman Odeh, the leader of the united front of Israel’s Arab parties in the Knesset, accused the government of trying to silence criticism. “The government led by Benjamin Netanyahu is chipping away at what is left of the democratic space in Israel,” he said. “Human rights organizations fill an essential role in any society which aspires to be democratic, which is why they are constantly targeted as enemies of Israeli sovereignty.”
Zehava Galon, head of Meretz opposition party, described the bill as incredibly dangerous. “Beyond the fact that this is a bill that ostensibly seeks to increase transparency, it seeks to label human beings,” she said.
The organization Breaking the Silence, comprised of former soldiers who oppose Israel’s actions in the occupied territories, said the timing of the bill was intended to distract attention from the charging of suspects arrested in connection with the arson attack on a Palestinian family in the West Bank village of Douma.
“The reason the bill has come to discussion today is simple: it’s a smokescreen to keep the silence going,” said former soldier Yehuda Shaul. “Last week we saw images from the wedding [in which settlers stabbed a picture of a Palestinian baby killed in the attack]. We know that this week will be surrounded with talk about Douma and the lack of law enforcement in the occupied territories.
Breaking the Silence already reports on its funding every quarter - it receives 55% of its funding from European governments with a budget of 4.5m shekels this year. Shaul said: “Transparency laws are already advanced here: we need to report in our annual report every single donor over 20,000 shekels, including all private donors.”
In comparison, the pro-settlement group El Ad receives estimated funding of 60m shekels a year. Many right-wing non-profit groups received exemptions from the Israeli NGO authority, meaning they did not have to reveal who their private donors were. “This law is another attempt to politically persecute the left,” Shaul said.
Iraeli ministers have voted in favour of a bill that will crack down on human rights groups receiving funds from abroad, a move EU officials have said is reminiscent of totalitarian regimes.
Opponents say the bill unfairly targets leftwing organizations critical of government policy, leaving rightwing pro-settlement groups immune from the same scrutiny, as those tend to rely on private donors – who are exempt from the measures. The so-called transparency bill, sponsored by the justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, according to The Guardian/Al Ray, requires organizations to provide details of the countries funding their activities in any communication with elected officials, imposing a 29,000 shekel (£5,000) fine on any who fail to do so. Employees would also be required to wear special tags when working in Israel’s parliament.
The measures passed the first major legislative hurdle Sunday, when government ministers agreed to it in principal, making it almost certain to pass into law. The legislation is expected to receive support, from all the coalition factions within the Israeli government, when it is put to a final vote. It was part of a coalition agreement made by Shaked’s Hayabit Hayehudi party and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Opposition leaders have put pressure on the Israeli prime minister and coalition members to try to prevent the vote.
The EU ambassador to Israel recently met Shaked, to warn that the bill would undermine Israeli’s image as “a democratic and pluralistic country”, Israeli media reported. EU officials were quoted as saying that “Israel should be very careful about reigning in its prosperous democratic society with laws that are reminiscent of totalitarian regimes”.
Ayman Odeh, the leader of the united front of Israel’s Arab parties in the Knesset, accused the government of trying to silence criticism. “The government led by Benjamin Netanyahu is chipping away at what is left of the democratic space in Israel,” he said. “Human rights organizations fill an essential role in any society which aspires to be democratic, which is why they are constantly targeted as enemies of Israeli sovereignty.”
Zehava Galon, head of Meretz opposition party, described the bill as incredibly dangerous. “Beyond the fact that this is a bill that ostensibly seeks to increase transparency, it seeks to label human beings,” she said.
The organization Breaking the Silence, comprised of former soldiers who oppose Israel’s actions in the occupied territories, said the timing of the bill was intended to distract attention from the charging of suspects arrested in connection with the arson attack on a Palestinian family in the West Bank village of Douma.
“The reason the bill has come to discussion today is simple: it’s a smokescreen to keep the silence going,” said former soldier Yehuda Shaul. “Last week we saw images from the wedding [in which settlers stabbed a picture of a Palestinian baby killed in the attack]. We know that this week will be surrounded with talk about Douma and the lack of law enforcement in the occupied territories.
Breaking the Silence already reports on its funding every quarter - it receives 55% of its funding from European governments with a budget of 4.5m shekels this year. Shaul said: “Transparency laws are already advanced here: we need to report in our annual report every single donor over 20,000 shekels, including all private donors.”
In comparison, the pro-settlement group El Ad receives estimated funding of 60m shekels a year. Many right-wing non-profit groups received exemptions from the Israeli NGO authority, meaning they did not have to reveal who their private donors were. “This law is another attempt to politically persecute the left,” Shaul said.
15 dec 2015
Group Breaking the Silence giving a tour in the Old City of Hebron
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said, on Tuesday, that he had banned Israeli veteran group Breaking the Silence from participating in any official activities with Israeli forces, Israeli media reported.
Ya'alon's statement was made on social media, where he called the left-wing veteran group hypocrites spreading "false propaganda" against Israeli forces and the state of Israel in attempt to "delegitimize" them, according to Ma'an.
Breaking the Silence responded to the comment on social media, saying that the group has been under attack for the past several months, "through a pre-meditated campaign, in which members of the extreme right-wing, including Israeli parliamentarians and elected officials, along with public figures and right-wing organizations, are trying to silence both us and every debate related to the 48-year-long occupation."
Breaking the Silence is an organization comprised of Israeli veterans who served in combat "and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territor(y)."
The group produces videos, collects testimonies and gives lectures -- mostly within Israel, but sometimes abroad -- on war crimes committed by Israeli leadership through its military since 1967.
The heated debate follows the brief detainment of an Israeli soldier as he entered the UK, last week, for alleged war crimes committed against Palestinians during Israel's 2014 Gaza offensive.
Pro-Palestinian groups across the world have collected names of those involved in the 50-day offensive, which resulted in the death of over 2,100 Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom were civilians, as well as 64 Israeli soldiers and six Israeli civilians. The names were reported to various international justice systems as war criminals under international law.
Following the offensive, international groups such as the United Nations and Amnesty International conducted investigations into the campaign dubbed "Operation Protective Edge" and found that the Israeli military and Palestinian militant groups were both responsible for war crimes.
Following the UK's detainment of the soldier, who has not been identified, Israel's Defense Ministry and leaders within the Israeli forces contacted the UK government and arranged his release.
Earlier this month, right-wing Knesset members from the Likud party proposed a bill that would limit foreign-backed NGOs from working within Israel. The purpose of the bill is reportedly an attempt to curb the influence of left-wing NGOs on Israeli policy and public opinion, both domestically and abroad.
The proposal is one of several bills which have been criticized by Israeli rights' groups such as Breaking the Silence, B'Tselem and Peace Now.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said, on Tuesday, that he had banned Israeli veteran group Breaking the Silence from participating in any official activities with Israeli forces, Israeli media reported.
Ya'alon's statement was made on social media, where he called the left-wing veteran group hypocrites spreading "false propaganda" against Israeli forces and the state of Israel in attempt to "delegitimize" them, according to Ma'an.
Breaking the Silence responded to the comment on social media, saying that the group has been under attack for the past several months, "through a pre-meditated campaign, in which members of the extreme right-wing, including Israeli parliamentarians and elected officials, along with public figures and right-wing organizations, are trying to silence both us and every debate related to the 48-year-long occupation."
Breaking the Silence is an organization comprised of Israeli veterans who served in combat "and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territor(y)."
The group produces videos, collects testimonies and gives lectures -- mostly within Israel, but sometimes abroad -- on war crimes committed by Israeli leadership through its military since 1967.
The heated debate follows the brief detainment of an Israeli soldier as he entered the UK, last week, for alleged war crimes committed against Palestinians during Israel's 2014 Gaza offensive.
Pro-Palestinian groups across the world have collected names of those involved in the 50-day offensive, which resulted in the death of over 2,100 Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom were civilians, as well as 64 Israeli soldiers and six Israeli civilians. The names were reported to various international justice systems as war criminals under international law.
Following the offensive, international groups such as the United Nations and Amnesty International conducted investigations into the campaign dubbed "Operation Protective Edge" and found that the Israeli military and Palestinian militant groups were both responsible for war crimes.
Following the UK's detainment of the soldier, who has not been identified, Israel's Defense Ministry and leaders within the Israeli forces contacted the UK government and arranged his release.
Earlier this month, right-wing Knesset members from the Likud party proposed a bill that would limit foreign-backed NGOs from working within Israel. The purpose of the bill is reportedly an attempt to curb the influence of left-wing NGOs on Israeli policy and public opinion, both domestically and abroad.
The proposal is one of several bills which have been criticized by Israeli rights' groups such as Breaking the Silence, B'Tselem and Peace Now.
2 dec 2015
By Hasan Afif El-Hasan
For outsiders, it is hard to sense the real character of Israel through all the artificial identity that has been imposed on it by its supporters without serious discussion about the Palestinians’ tragedy. Israel has imposed and tightened the harshest blockade and the brutal assaults and incursions on top of accumulated injustices against the Palestinian refugees in Gaza where thousands of civilians including children perished and many were injured, while the survivors are starved and their homes destroyed.
Israel builds settlements on confiscated Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Jerusalem, enacted Jewish law of return for world-wide Jews, but it would not allow even one refugee from the Palestinian villages it had destroyed after 1948 to return to his/her home. And according to members of the Israeli military, the occupation soldiers practice torture and killing of the Palestinian civilians who do not threaten them just for fun and entertainment.
The Israeli governments and their Western supporters like the outsiders to believe that the Israeli military in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza is essentially aimed at safeguarding the country from terror. And the notion in Israeli society is that the control of occupied lands is aimed at protecting its citizens from Palestinian terrorism. But human rights organizations and Israeli peace advocates and Israeli soldiers who had been stationed in the occupied lands tell completely different stories about how they treat the civilian Palestinians. They all report killings, arrests, raiding homes, demolishing houses, punishing the people collectively, and interrupting their daily life. They describe barbaric actions that do not seem to serve military needs or promote hope for peace.
A little known organization called “Breaking the Silence” compiled testimonies of more than a hundred ex-military members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) who had served in the occupied lands. In its published book, “Our Harsh Logic,” the ex-soldiers describe in their own words and personal memoir a broad Israeli policy that is extremely inhumane and offensive against the civilians. The soldiers reveal the ugliness of Israel’s rule over the Palestinians, and offer a gripping and immediate record of oppression, brutality and hatred. These are a few examples of their testimonies in their own words:
A soldier who served in 2003 stated: “We went into the town of Tubas at three in the morning in a Safari and threw stun grenades in the street, for no reason except just to wake people up. This happened every day- a different force of my company did it each time, it was just part of the routine, part of our lives.” Another soldier said about his experience when serving in 2004, “We called it ‘happy Purim’, to stop people from sleeping.
It means going into a village in the middle of the night, going around throwing stun grenades and making noise to demonstrate the presence of the military.” The rationale behind that kind of operation: “If the village initiates an operation, then we are going to initiate a lack of sleep. In general, maybe this creates the impression that the IDF is in the village at night, without having to do too much.”
Another soldier said one of the many things that shocked him during his service in the territories in 2009 was the midnight searches. He described a search he participated in, in a small village called Hares at two after midnight. “They [the military battalion commander] said there are sixty houses that have to be searched. We spread out over the whole village, took control of the school, smashed the door locks of the classrooms. One room was used as the investigation room for the Shin Bet, one room for detainees, and one room for the soldiers to rest. We went house by house, knocking on the families’ doors.
They were scared to death, girls peeing in their pants with fear. We went into the house and turned everything upside down. We gathered the family in one room, put a guard there, the guard was told to keep his gun on them, and then we searched the whole house. We received another order that everyone born after 1980, doesn’t matter who, bring him in cuffed and blindfolded. We yelled at old people, one of them had an epileptic seizure. He did not speak Hebrew and they [soldiers] continued yelling at him. We did the rounds.
Every house we went into, they took everyone between sixteen and twenty-nine and brought them to the school. They [detainees] sat tied up in the schoolyard. The commander told us the purpose of all this was to locate weapons. But we did not find any weapons in the end. We confiscated kitchen knives.”
“What shocked me the most was that there was also stealing. One soldier took twenty shekels. This was a very poor village. At one point, soldiers were saying, ‘What a bummer, there is nothing to steal.’ That was said in a conversation among the soldiers, after the action. There was a lot of joy among the soldiers at people’s misery; they were happy talking about it. There was a moment where a Palestinian they knew was mentally ill, yelled at us, but one soldier decided to beat him up anyway, so he smashed him. Then he hit him in the head with the butt of a gun, he was bleeding, and he was brought to the school along with everyone else.
There were a pile of arrest orders signed by the battalion commander, ready, with one area left blank. They’d fill in that the name of the person was detained on suspicion of disturbing the peace. They just filled in the name and the reason for arrest. They smash the floor, turn over sofas, throw plants and pictures, turn over beds, break the closets, the tiles. And after all that, we left them for hours tied up and blindfolded in the school. The order came to free them at four in the afternoon. So that was more than twelve hours.”
Another soldier described the murder of a Palestinian who was not armed and had not posed a threat in 2002. He said, “We took over a central house, set up position, and one of the sharp shooters identified a man on a roof, two roofs away, I think he was fifty and seventy meters away, not armed. I looked at the man through the night vision-he was not armed. It was two in the morning. A man without arms [weapon], walking on the roof, just walking slowly around, perhaps meditating or praying. The company commander said: ‘Take him down [kill him].’ The sharpshooter fired, took him down. The company commander,–, ordered via radio, the death sentence for this man! A man who was not armed. The man was no threat to us, and the commander gave the order to shoot him. We’d laugh about it, we had code names for this incident: ‘the lookout,’ ‘the drummer,’ ‘the woman,’ ‘the old man,’ ‘the boy,’ and other ones.”
Another ex-soldier described his experience at a check point in 2005: “It was in Elkana, at a fence that separates the Jewish and Palestinian houses, and there’s still one Palestinian house on the Jewish side. They [the Israeli fence builders] made a mistake with the fence there, and because there’s a checkpoint, their whole family access was through the checkpoint. It was forbidden to cross if they don’t have this document or that permit. There was someone coming from the other side, we did not allow him to go in. He had a bag of grocery and documents and did not know why he could not go into his home. He really annoyed us by keep asking us to go to his family, and we decided to punish him, so we put him in a corner, with his bags, blindfolded and handcuffed as he sat there for four or five hours, just like that. When I was released from the army, I feel ashamed; I’m ashamed when I think about it.”
Another soldier talked about his experience while serving at a checkpoint in the West Bank in 2006: “We were four guys, three privates and a young commander, who’d never been at a checkpoint. You stand there, in the middle of the night between a village … it was north of Ramallah-Anata, I think. A checkpoint which all the students went through to Birzeit and whatever. I didn’t really understand why we were checking them, because they were crossing from a Palestinian side to a Palestinian side. They’re not going to Israel. They put me at a small guard post nearby and I see lot of students going to university and I am pointing my weapon at them. They are late to work but they had to wait until we allow them to go. What frightens me isn’t that we’d really do things like that to them, but we never treated them with respect and they no longer have the same worth to us as other human beings.”
Another soldier from Nahal Brigade unit stationed in Hebron in 2004 said, “Our battalion was there to uphold a certain status. One of the most frustrating things in Hebron is that the settlers don’t care, they do whatever they want, even if they are just a meter away from you [the soldiers]. We put up partitions in the middle of the road, the Palestinians crossed on one side and the Jews on the other. Now, the number of the Palestinians crossing the road was ten times more than the number of Jews who crossed them. I am talking about hundreds, every morning and went on their side. There was one Palestinian woman who tried to cross the road on the Jewish side.
I came and said to her, ‘Madam, lf you cross I will shoot you, and I had my weapon pointed at her.’ The other Palestinians shouted at her stop stop come back. She got quiet and went back. On the same day, there was a family of something like ten or fifteen Jews and they walked in the road, like free style on both of the crossings. And I go there and say to one of the Jews, ‘Listen, sir, we partitioned the road for some reason, I’m asking you to wait.’ He [the Jewish man] said’ Who do you think you are? This is my road, this is my town. I do whatever I want’.”
“That one, and another situation in the same place where a Palestinian father on the Palestinian side of the road with his son at his side, and then four settler children showed up. They picked up a rock, threw it at the Palestinian boy. I yelled at them, but I cannot lift a hand against settler children. I cannot threaten them with my weapon. If the situation was the reverse and an Arab boy picked up a rock against a Jewish boy, then we’d have to handcuff him, blindfold him, send him wherever, follow the orders. If a Palestinian boy started not doing what I told him, like the Jewish guy who said, ‘who do you think you are,’ I ‘d have to start shooting in the air, then at his feet, all kinds of things like that. There were incidents like that in Hebron.”
After choosing to stay in endless wars and turning into a militaristic chauvinist state, the threat to Israel is not the Palestinians or the Arab states; it is the moral threat of denying the Palestinians’ elementary rights and eradicating their history and existence. The desire for peace never existed even on the fringes of Israeli society. The ongoing occupation and the fear of the growing Palestinian population that has created xenophobia, racism and savagery has taken its moral toll on the Israelis.
The fascist ideas that attracted many right-wing Europeans in the 1930s and victimized Jews in Europe are being endorsed by most leading politicians in the ruling Israeli circles. Israel’s claims to democracy are not supported by its terror actions. Its policy toward the vulnerable occupied Palestinians casts a dark shadow over Israel’s democracy and history.
– Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Ph.D. is a political analyst. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
For outsiders, it is hard to sense the real character of Israel through all the artificial identity that has been imposed on it by its supporters without serious discussion about the Palestinians’ tragedy. Israel has imposed and tightened the harshest blockade and the brutal assaults and incursions on top of accumulated injustices against the Palestinian refugees in Gaza where thousands of civilians including children perished and many were injured, while the survivors are starved and their homes destroyed.
Israel builds settlements on confiscated Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Jerusalem, enacted Jewish law of return for world-wide Jews, but it would not allow even one refugee from the Palestinian villages it had destroyed after 1948 to return to his/her home. And according to members of the Israeli military, the occupation soldiers practice torture and killing of the Palestinian civilians who do not threaten them just for fun and entertainment.
The Israeli governments and their Western supporters like the outsiders to believe that the Israeli military in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza is essentially aimed at safeguarding the country from terror. And the notion in Israeli society is that the control of occupied lands is aimed at protecting its citizens from Palestinian terrorism. But human rights organizations and Israeli peace advocates and Israeli soldiers who had been stationed in the occupied lands tell completely different stories about how they treat the civilian Palestinians. They all report killings, arrests, raiding homes, demolishing houses, punishing the people collectively, and interrupting their daily life. They describe barbaric actions that do not seem to serve military needs or promote hope for peace.
A little known organization called “Breaking the Silence” compiled testimonies of more than a hundred ex-military members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) who had served in the occupied lands. In its published book, “Our Harsh Logic,” the ex-soldiers describe in their own words and personal memoir a broad Israeli policy that is extremely inhumane and offensive against the civilians. The soldiers reveal the ugliness of Israel’s rule over the Palestinians, and offer a gripping and immediate record of oppression, brutality and hatred. These are a few examples of their testimonies in their own words:
A soldier who served in 2003 stated: “We went into the town of Tubas at three in the morning in a Safari and threw stun grenades in the street, for no reason except just to wake people up. This happened every day- a different force of my company did it each time, it was just part of the routine, part of our lives.” Another soldier said about his experience when serving in 2004, “We called it ‘happy Purim’, to stop people from sleeping.
It means going into a village in the middle of the night, going around throwing stun grenades and making noise to demonstrate the presence of the military.” The rationale behind that kind of operation: “If the village initiates an operation, then we are going to initiate a lack of sleep. In general, maybe this creates the impression that the IDF is in the village at night, without having to do too much.”
Another soldier said one of the many things that shocked him during his service in the territories in 2009 was the midnight searches. He described a search he participated in, in a small village called Hares at two after midnight. “They [the military battalion commander] said there are sixty houses that have to be searched. We spread out over the whole village, took control of the school, smashed the door locks of the classrooms. One room was used as the investigation room for the Shin Bet, one room for detainees, and one room for the soldiers to rest. We went house by house, knocking on the families’ doors.
They were scared to death, girls peeing in their pants with fear. We went into the house and turned everything upside down. We gathered the family in one room, put a guard there, the guard was told to keep his gun on them, and then we searched the whole house. We received another order that everyone born after 1980, doesn’t matter who, bring him in cuffed and blindfolded. We yelled at old people, one of them had an epileptic seizure. He did not speak Hebrew and they [soldiers] continued yelling at him. We did the rounds.
Every house we went into, they took everyone between sixteen and twenty-nine and brought them to the school. They [detainees] sat tied up in the schoolyard. The commander told us the purpose of all this was to locate weapons. But we did not find any weapons in the end. We confiscated kitchen knives.”
“What shocked me the most was that there was also stealing. One soldier took twenty shekels. This was a very poor village. At one point, soldiers were saying, ‘What a bummer, there is nothing to steal.’ That was said in a conversation among the soldiers, after the action. There was a lot of joy among the soldiers at people’s misery; they were happy talking about it. There was a moment where a Palestinian they knew was mentally ill, yelled at us, but one soldier decided to beat him up anyway, so he smashed him. Then he hit him in the head with the butt of a gun, he was bleeding, and he was brought to the school along with everyone else.
There were a pile of arrest orders signed by the battalion commander, ready, with one area left blank. They’d fill in that the name of the person was detained on suspicion of disturbing the peace. They just filled in the name and the reason for arrest. They smash the floor, turn over sofas, throw plants and pictures, turn over beds, break the closets, the tiles. And after all that, we left them for hours tied up and blindfolded in the school. The order came to free them at four in the afternoon. So that was more than twelve hours.”
Another soldier described the murder of a Palestinian who was not armed and had not posed a threat in 2002. He said, “We took over a central house, set up position, and one of the sharp shooters identified a man on a roof, two roofs away, I think he was fifty and seventy meters away, not armed. I looked at the man through the night vision-he was not armed. It was two in the morning. A man without arms [weapon], walking on the roof, just walking slowly around, perhaps meditating or praying. The company commander said: ‘Take him down [kill him].’ The sharpshooter fired, took him down. The company commander,–, ordered via radio, the death sentence for this man! A man who was not armed. The man was no threat to us, and the commander gave the order to shoot him. We’d laugh about it, we had code names for this incident: ‘the lookout,’ ‘the drummer,’ ‘the woman,’ ‘the old man,’ ‘the boy,’ and other ones.”
Another ex-soldier described his experience at a check point in 2005: “It was in Elkana, at a fence that separates the Jewish and Palestinian houses, and there’s still one Palestinian house on the Jewish side. They [the Israeli fence builders] made a mistake with the fence there, and because there’s a checkpoint, their whole family access was through the checkpoint. It was forbidden to cross if they don’t have this document or that permit. There was someone coming from the other side, we did not allow him to go in. He had a bag of grocery and documents and did not know why he could not go into his home. He really annoyed us by keep asking us to go to his family, and we decided to punish him, so we put him in a corner, with his bags, blindfolded and handcuffed as he sat there for four or five hours, just like that. When I was released from the army, I feel ashamed; I’m ashamed when I think about it.”
Another soldier talked about his experience while serving at a checkpoint in the West Bank in 2006: “We were four guys, three privates and a young commander, who’d never been at a checkpoint. You stand there, in the middle of the night between a village … it was north of Ramallah-Anata, I think. A checkpoint which all the students went through to Birzeit and whatever. I didn’t really understand why we were checking them, because they were crossing from a Palestinian side to a Palestinian side. They’re not going to Israel. They put me at a small guard post nearby and I see lot of students going to university and I am pointing my weapon at them. They are late to work but they had to wait until we allow them to go. What frightens me isn’t that we’d really do things like that to them, but we never treated them with respect and they no longer have the same worth to us as other human beings.”
Another soldier from Nahal Brigade unit stationed in Hebron in 2004 said, “Our battalion was there to uphold a certain status. One of the most frustrating things in Hebron is that the settlers don’t care, they do whatever they want, even if they are just a meter away from you [the soldiers]. We put up partitions in the middle of the road, the Palestinians crossed on one side and the Jews on the other. Now, the number of the Palestinians crossing the road was ten times more than the number of Jews who crossed them. I am talking about hundreds, every morning and went on their side. There was one Palestinian woman who tried to cross the road on the Jewish side.
I came and said to her, ‘Madam, lf you cross I will shoot you, and I had my weapon pointed at her.’ The other Palestinians shouted at her stop stop come back. She got quiet and went back. On the same day, there was a family of something like ten or fifteen Jews and they walked in the road, like free style on both of the crossings. And I go there and say to one of the Jews, ‘Listen, sir, we partitioned the road for some reason, I’m asking you to wait.’ He [the Jewish man] said’ Who do you think you are? This is my road, this is my town. I do whatever I want’.”
“That one, and another situation in the same place where a Palestinian father on the Palestinian side of the road with his son at his side, and then four settler children showed up. They picked up a rock, threw it at the Palestinian boy. I yelled at them, but I cannot lift a hand against settler children. I cannot threaten them with my weapon. If the situation was the reverse and an Arab boy picked up a rock against a Jewish boy, then we’d have to handcuff him, blindfold him, send him wherever, follow the orders. If a Palestinian boy started not doing what I told him, like the Jewish guy who said, ‘who do you think you are,’ I ‘d have to start shooting in the air, then at his feet, all kinds of things like that. There were incidents like that in Hebron.”
After choosing to stay in endless wars and turning into a militaristic chauvinist state, the threat to Israel is not the Palestinians or the Arab states; it is the moral threat of denying the Palestinians’ elementary rights and eradicating their history and existence. The desire for peace never existed even on the fringes of Israeli society. The ongoing occupation and the fear of the growing Palestinian population that has created xenophobia, racism and savagery has taken its moral toll on the Israelis.
The fascist ideas that attracted many right-wing Europeans in the 1930s and victimized Jews in Europe are being endorsed by most leading politicians in the ruling Israeli circles. Israel’s claims to democracy are not supported by its terror actions. Its policy toward the vulnerable occupied Palestinians casts a dark shadow over Israel’s democracy and history.
– Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Ph.D. is a political analyst. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
21 july 2015
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely
Deputy Foreign Minister Hotovely meets European officials to demand governments stop providing cash to allegedly anti-Israel organizations.
Israel is demanding that European Union member states halt funding to non-governmental organizations allegedly working to delegitimize the Jewish state. The Foreign Ministry claims that European governments provide 100-200 million euros annually to said groups.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely has begun a series of consultations with European foreign ministers, their deputies, and ambassadors of several European countries, in which she is presenting evidence that their governments provide financial assistance to organizations that support boycotts against Israel, "blacken its face around the world, accuse it of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and war crimes; deprive the Jewish people of their right to self-determination, call to prosecute Israel in the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and support the right of return".
Hotovely claimed that some of these organizations are associated with and actively support terror groups.
Hotovely has met withthe Dutch foreign minister, the Spanish deputy foreign minister, and the ambassadors of Sweden, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Switzerland.
According to Hotovely, the diplomats were presented with detailed documents collected by the Foreign Ministry and the NGO Monitor organization that prove the "problematic" funding. She emphasized that Israel sees support for organizations opposing its right to exist as crossing a red line.
Hotovely has instructed Israeli ambassadors in Europe to demand that ministries increase thier overview of funds given to such groups, warning that if her premptive diplomatic move fails, Israel will be forced to adopt legislation forbidding foreign countries from backing organizations with a clear anti-Israel bent.
According to Deputy Minister Hotovely, these are some of the European investments in such organizations in recent years:
The Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat, managed by the Institute of Law at Birzeit University in the West Bank, which received $10.5 million from the governments of Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The funds were to go to 24 political organizations over three years.
In 2014, the governments of Germany, Sweden, Norway, and the EU provided NIS 415,741 to the Coalition of Women for Peace, an organization that supports aspects of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
The Netherlands provided NIS 13 million in the last three years to numerous NGOs, including Who Profits, Al-Haq, the Coalition of Women for Peace, and Al-Mezan.
Denmark provided NIS 23 million in the last three years to several NGOs, including Breaking the Silence, BADIL, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and other Palestinian organizations.
Switzerland provided NIS 5 million over the last three years to organizations like the Alternative Information Center, Zochrot, the Applied Research Institute, and Terrestrial Jerusalem.
Spain gave NIS 3.8 million in the last three years to groups including Breaking the Silence, the Coalition of Women for Peace, the Alternative Information Center, and NOVA, a Spanish BDS organization.
The United Kingdom provided NIS 12 million in 2008-2011 to Breaking the Silence, Yesh Din, Gisha, Bimkom, Terrestrial Jerusalem, and No Legal Frontiers.
Deputy Foreign Minister Hotovely meets European officials to demand governments stop providing cash to allegedly anti-Israel organizations.
Israel is demanding that European Union member states halt funding to non-governmental organizations allegedly working to delegitimize the Jewish state. The Foreign Ministry claims that European governments provide 100-200 million euros annually to said groups.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely has begun a series of consultations with European foreign ministers, their deputies, and ambassadors of several European countries, in which she is presenting evidence that their governments provide financial assistance to organizations that support boycotts against Israel, "blacken its face around the world, accuse it of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and war crimes; deprive the Jewish people of their right to self-determination, call to prosecute Israel in the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and support the right of return".
Hotovely claimed that some of these organizations are associated with and actively support terror groups.
Hotovely has met withthe Dutch foreign minister, the Spanish deputy foreign minister, and the ambassadors of Sweden, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Switzerland.
According to Hotovely, the diplomats were presented with detailed documents collected by the Foreign Ministry and the NGO Monitor organization that prove the "problematic" funding. She emphasized that Israel sees support for organizations opposing its right to exist as crossing a red line.
Hotovely has instructed Israeli ambassadors in Europe to demand that ministries increase thier overview of funds given to such groups, warning that if her premptive diplomatic move fails, Israel will be forced to adopt legislation forbidding foreign countries from backing organizations with a clear anti-Israel bent.
According to Deputy Minister Hotovely, these are some of the European investments in such organizations in recent years:
The Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat, managed by the Institute of Law at Birzeit University in the West Bank, which received $10.5 million from the governments of Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The funds were to go to 24 political organizations over three years.
In 2014, the governments of Germany, Sweden, Norway, and the EU provided NIS 415,741 to the Coalition of Women for Peace, an organization that supports aspects of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
The Netherlands provided NIS 13 million in the last three years to numerous NGOs, including Who Profits, Al-Haq, the Coalition of Women for Peace, and Al-Mezan.
Denmark provided NIS 23 million in the last three years to several NGOs, including Breaking the Silence, BADIL, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and other Palestinian organizations.
Switzerland provided NIS 5 million over the last three years to organizations like the Alternative Information Center, Zochrot, the Applied Research Institute, and Terrestrial Jerusalem.
Spain gave NIS 3.8 million in the last three years to groups including Breaking the Silence, the Coalition of Women for Peace, the Alternative Information Center, and NOVA, a Spanish BDS organization.
The United Kingdom provided NIS 12 million in 2008-2011 to Breaking the Silence, Yesh Din, Gisha, Bimkom, Terrestrial Jerusalem, and No Legal Frontiers.
11 june 2015
At a Breaking the Silence exhibition in Switzerland
Israeli Embassy in Germany succeeded in having the exhibition cancelled claiming it had no connection with the celebration of the jubilee anniversary of Israeli-German relations.
The Israeli Embassy in Germany succeeded in thwarting an exhibition by a left-wing NGO that was supposed to take place in Cologne as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of relations between Israel and Germany.
Breaking the Silence is an organization that has been collecting testimony from IDF soldiers serving in Palestinian territories since the Second Intifada. In line with the organization's highly publicized actions, they tried, among other things, to stage an exhibition of photographs taken by soldiers during their service in Palestinian territories, which do not always paint Israel in a positive light.
The Israeli Embassy in Berlin was surprised to find out that a Breaking the Silence exhibition was scheduled among the events marking the anniversary, as well as other events unrelated to the anniversary, such as "a discussion on peace movements in Israel and Palestine," a lecture on "Palestinian Christians," a lecture on Israel and Palestine, among others.
The Embassy decided to intervene, and asked the German Foreign Ministry to remove these lectures from the schedule. The Embassy also sent a harsh letter to the city of Cologne, stating that "as long as there is no clear distinction made between legitimate projects about Israeli-German relations and this issue, we do not want to take part in all the events."
As a result of the Israeli pressure, the Breaking the Silence exhibition in Cologne was canceled. The other events related to Palestinian issues were also removed from the jubilee year program and will be held in a separate framework.
The director of the embassy's public relations said: "Our activity has proven itself and we have succeeded in canceling the exhibition. We did it with the help of various parties who expressed their resentment at such an event taking place during this special year. The embassy is marking the jubilee anniversary of Israeli-German relations in various events across the country, and it is of great importance to counter attempts to add events that have no connection with the jubilee."
Recently, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs tried to cancel a similar Breaking the Silence exhibition in Switzerland, but the Swiss rejected the Israeli request and argued that they would not harm freedom of expression.
Israeli Embassy in Germany succeeded in having the exhibition cancelled claiming it had no connection with the celebration of the jubilee anniversary of Israeli-German relations.
The Israeli Embassy in Germany succeeded in thwarting an exhibition by a left-wing NGO that was supposed to take place in Cologne as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of relations between Israel and Germany.
Breaking the Silence is an organization that has been collecting testimony from IDF soldiers serving in Palestinian territories since the Second Intifada. In line with the organization's highly publicized actions, they tried, among other things, to stage an exhibition of photographs taken by soldiers during their service in Palestinian territories, which do not always paint Israel in a positive light.
The Israeli Embassy in Berlin was surprised to find out that a Breaking the Silence exhibition was scheduled among the events marking the anniversary, as well as other events unrelated to the anniversary, such as "a discussion on peace movements in Israel and Palestine," a lecture on "Palestinian Christians," a lecture on Israel and Palestine, among others.
The Embassy decided to intervene, and asked the German Foreign Ministry to remove these lectures from the schedule. The Embassy also sent a harsh letter to the city of Cologne, stating that "as long as there is no clear distinction made between legitimate projects about Israeli-German relations and this issue, we do not want to take part in all the events."
As a result of the Israeli pressure, the Breaking the Silence exhibition in Cologne was canceled. The other events related to Palestinian issues were also removed from the jubilee year program and will be held in a separate framework.
The director of the embassy's public relations said: "Our activity has proven itself and we have succeeded in canceling the exhibition. We did it with the help of various parties who expressed their resentment at such an event taking place during this special year. The embassy is marking the jubilee anniversary of Israeli-German relations in various events across the country, and it is of great importance to counter attempts to add events that have no connection with the jubilee."
Recently, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs tried to cancel a similar Breaking the Silence exhibition in Switzerland, but the Swiss rejected the Israeli request and argued that they would not harm freedom of expression.
