Israeli peace activist faces jail over homes demolition protest

| 1 July 2009 | Human Rights, Israeli Politics and One/Two State Question. Closed
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Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Guardian (UK), 30 June 2009

A prominent Israeli peace activist is expected to be sentenced to several months in jail tomorrow in a high-profile prosecution which began after he tried to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes near a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Although activists who challenge the Israeli occupation are often arrested or detained for short periods, Ezra Nawi, a plumber from Jerusalem, is expecting a sentence of up to 18 months. He said he would lodge an immediate appeal, which may keep him out of prison initially, but it is likely he will be jailed within weeks.

In March he was convicted by a judge at a Jerusalem court of taking part in a riot and assaulting a police officer, charges he denies. The incident happened when the Israeli military sent bulldozers to demolish Palestinian shacks near the settlement of Carmel, close to Hebron, in February 2007.

Nawi, who is in his 50s, has worked with vulnerable Palestinian families in the hills around Hebron for at least eight years. But he is an unusual figure, even among Israel’s shrinking circle of leftwing activists.

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Zochrot: Raising Awareness Within Israeli Society About the Nakba

| 1 July 2009 | Human Rights, Israeli Politics, One/Two State Question and Palestinian Politics. Closed

Zochrot (Remembering) is a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. The following interview was conducted by the Alternative Information Centre and is with the Eitan Bronstein, the director of Zochrot.

Sir Winston Peres

| 15 May 2009 | Human Rights, International, Israeli Politics and Palestinian Politics. Closed

By Uri Avnery, Gush-Shalom, 9 May 2009

First of all, I want to apologize to all the good women who are engaged in the world’s oldest profession.

I recently described Shimon Peres as a political prostitute. One of my female readers has protested vigorously. Prostitutes, she pointed out, earn their money honestly. They deliver what they promise.

Our president, on the other hand, only tells the truth by accident. He is a political impostor and a political sham. To him, too, apply Winston Churchill’s words about a former Prime Minister: “The Right Honorable gentleman sometimes stumbles upon the truth, but he always hurries on as if nothing has happened.” Or the words of former minister Amnon Rubinstein about Ariel Sharon: “He blushes when he tells the truth.”

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Diaspora Jewry needs to let go of idealised Israel

| 12 April 2009 | Australia, International, Israeli Politics and One/Two State Question. Closed

By Jeff Halper, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 April 2009

A funny thing happened to me on my way to synagogue in Sydney; my scheduled talk was cancelled.

Granted, I am very critical of Israel’s policies of occupation and doubt whether a two-state solution is still possible given the extent of Israel’s settlements. But this hardly warrants the demonisation to which I was subjected for weeks in the pages of the otherwise respectable Australian Jewish News.

The uproar caused by the prospect of my speaking to the Jewish community in Australia is truly startling to an Israeli. After all, opinions similar to mine are readily available in the mainstream Israeli media. Indeed, I write frequently for the Israeli press and appear regularly on Israeli TV and radio.

Why, then, the hysteria? Why was I banned from Temple Emanuel in Sydney, a self-proclaimed progressive synagogue. Why did I, an Israeli, have to address the Jewish community from a church? Why was I invited to speak in every university in eastern Australia, yet at Monash University I was forced to hold a secret meeting with Jewish faculty in a darkened room far from the halls of intellectual discourse?

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Calls for a boycott not motivated by antisemitism

| 20 March 2009 | Human Rights, International and One/Two State Question. Closed

By Dror Etkes, Haaretz (Hebrew original), 15 March 2009

The demand to change Israel’s ethnocentric regime is a consequence of its 40-year long policy, which included the cultivation of the settlements.

“Durban 2″, scheduled for April in Geneva, of all places, again places the issue of boycotting Israel and the international community’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist, or lack thereof, on the agenda.

In the prevalent Israeli discourse, which is bolstered by the political establishment as well as by local media, initiatives for a partial or full boycott of Israel are perceived as a clear expression of antisemitism. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that some supporters of such a boycott are motivated in part by antisemitic sentiments. Antisemitism is a product of modern European culture, and despite the changes Europe has undergone over the twentieth century, it is plausible that certain norms and modes of thinking that originated in antisemitic ideology also affected parts of the European Left, whether consciously or not.

Nonetheless, the conclusion that most or all the supporters of a boycott of the Israeli state, or even those who negate Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish national home, are antisemitic, is self-righteous and unfounded. There are various reasons unrelated to antisemitism, leading different people, including many decent ones, to the conclusion that the idea of a Jewish state in the heart of the Arab Middle East is unjust, or at least, unfeasible.

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Sydney Morning Herald Editorial: With friends like these …

| 13 March 2009 | Australia, International, Israeli Politics and Palestinian Politics. Closed

The text below appeared as an editorial in the largest selling newspaper in Sydney, Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 March 2009.  JAO-Sydney places the text here, not necessarily because we agree with it, but rather to demonstrate that actions attempting to stifle and censor debate on issues related to the Israel/Palestine conflict can only harm.

Israel is a democracy. It contains many political parties with a wide spectrum of views about how to approach the great issue of an eventual Palestinian settlement, as well as many more mundane policies. It has human rights groups which put the Israeli security forces under as intense and critical a scrutiny as any overseas counterpart. It has law professors who debate the legality of Israeli settlements and military operations in the West Bank and Gaza. But sometimes you wouldn’t suspect this from the actions and attitudes of its most prominent defenders abroad.

Here in Australia, we’ve just learnt that the respected Australian Jewish News has rejected advertisements that promote a speaking tour by Israeli professor Jeffrey Halper, who campaigns against the bulldozing of Palestinian homes. Sydney’s progressive Emanuel Synagogue has also cancelled a talk by the professor, because some people objected to what he would have said.

The newspaper’s publisher, Robert Magid, said he pulled the ads because he “doesn’t like” the promoters, three local groups called Jews Against the Occupation, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, and the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine. According to Mr Magid, they “use their Judaism to bash other Jews and issues associated with the Jewish community”. Maybe it’s because criticism that can’t be easily shrugged off as ill-informed or even as anti-Semitic is harder to answer.

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JAO-Sydney Statement: Noxious culture of silence in the Jewish community

| 13 March 2009 | Australia and JAOS Viewpoints. Closed

The Emanuel Synagogue Woollahra has rescinded its invitation to Israeli peace activist, Professor Jeff Halper, to speak at the synagogue on 23rd March. This follows the axing by the Australian Jewish News of an advertisement for Professor Halper’s other meetings in Sydney.

Professor Halper is Coordinator of the Israeli Committee against Housing Demolitions (ICAHD).

Vivienne Porzsolt, a spokesperson for Jews Against the Occupation – Sydney said: “It is regrettable that yet once again the power brokers of the Jewish community are seeking to block open discussion about Israel.”

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Academic’s visit divides Jewish groups

| 12 March 2009 | Australia, Israeli Politics and Palestinian Politics. Closed

Andrew West, 12 March 2009
Sydney Morning Herald

A leading Jewish publication stands accused of censorship after cancelling an advertisement for a series of lectures to be delivered by a visiting Israeli human rights campaigner.

The publisher of The Australian Jewish News, Robert Magid, confirmed that he had pulled an ad promoting the speaking tour of Jeffrey Halper, a Jewish Israeli professor who campaigns against the bulldozing of Palestinian homes.

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JAO-Sydney Statement: Australian Jewish News axes advertisement for Israeli peace activist

| 12 March 2009 | Australia, Israeli Politics and JAOS Viewpoints. Closed

The Australian Jewish News has axed advertisements for the Australian lecture tour by Professor Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions. The National Editor of the Australian Jewish News, Ashley Browne said: “at the request of the publisher we will not accept the advertisements from Jews Against the Occupation.”

Jews Against the Occupation – Sydney is one of a number of groups in Australia supporting Professor Halper’s tour. Vivienne Porzsolt, a spokesperson for the group says: “We are very concerned that the one press medium for the whole Australian Jewish community has taken this action.  Yet again, a Jewish leader is seen to be stifling debate on Israel.”

“This is in contrast to the vigorous debate on these issues in Israel.”

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Gaza: the mean, mean neighbour

| 17 February 2009 | Human Rights, International, Israeli Politics, One/Two State Question and Palestinian Politics. Closed

by Rolf Verleger, University of Lübeck
Source: Occupation Magazine

What would you do – the Israeli historian Prof. Fania Oz-Salzberger wrote in the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) – if your neighbor constantly threw stones and Molotov cocktails at your apartment? Wouldn’t you at some time pick up a gun and put an end to the doings? And if this neighbor surrounded himself with his children, so you couldn’t hit him, wouldn’t you then even take a gun with a telescopic sight? Indeed, did not Hamas behave in Gaza just like this neighbor when it shot at Israeli cities with their explosive rockets? Therefore, Prof. Oz-Salzberger wrote, Israel’s current war against Gaza was a just war.

With this beautiful example of the reader and his neighbor one can indeed get across a lot of things vividly. For simplicity let us call you and the family that is terrorized by the mean neighbor the landlord and let us now look at the curious circumstances in the apartment house. The neighbor’s apartment is Gaza.

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