Sudanese Journalist Sentenced to Lashing for Wearing Pants:
There Were Tens of Thousands of Women Like Me
http://www.memritv.org/newsletter/memri/red_separator_line.png
On July 3, 2009, Sudanese journalist and activist Lubna Al-Hussein was arrested, along with 12 other women, for wearing trousers, under a law that metes out a punishment of 40 lashes for wearing "indecent clothing." Refusing to plead guilty, Al-Hussein resigned from her position in the UN and waived her diplomatic immunity, demanding to be placed on trial, in what rapidly became a cause célèbre for women's rights in Sudan.
Following are excerpts from an interview with Al-Hussein, which aired on Egypt's Al-Mihwar TV on December 17, 2009.
To view this clip on MEMRI TV,
visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2346.htm.
For more on this issue of women's rights in the Middle East,
visit http://www.memri.org/subject/en/141.htm.
http://www.memritv.org/newsletter/memri/clip2760.JPG
In Khartoum Alone, 43,000 Women Were Arrested in One Year because of Their Clothing
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "I was not the only woman to be arrested. Tens of thousands of women were arrested... In one year..."
First interviewer: "On the cover of your book there is a picture that says a lot. Your pants are wide and are covered by a long blouse. If we could just focus on the photograph..."
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "These are the clothes I was wearing when I was arrested. I should point out that this veil is heavy and large, and I usually don’t wear it. I wear a lighter veil. But that day I had washed my hair, so I wore this."
First interviewer: "So a woman could get a lashing for wearing clothes like that?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "Of course. As I told you, I am not the only one. There are tens of thousands like me. In a single year, 43,000 women were arrested because of their clothing – not in all of Sudan, but in Khartoum alone, as declared by the police general commissioner."
Second interviewer: "Lubna, you are a journalist, and journalists are a model of enlightened activity in society. What have you in Sudan done to change this law?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "This law, I’m sad to say... This clause contains both moral and physical violence. Physical violence is manifest in the punishment of lashing, which abases human dignity. Moral violence is manifest in the fact that this is called 'indecent acts,' and this is the reason that the tens of thousands of women before me did not have the courage to complain. The courts that try such cases are not regular courts. They are special courts established during the presidency of [Omar] Al-Bashir. They are called 'public order courts,' but their names keep changing. In these courts, the defendant has no right to defend himself."
Second interviewer: "Not at all?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "No."
First interviewer: "There is no lawyer?"
Second interviewer: "Then why is there even a trial?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "Excuse me?"
Second interviewer: "So what’s the point of holding a trial?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "In my case, because of the publicity and the public support I received, I took a lawyer who defended me, but the judge refused to give the defense witnesses a chance to be heard. This is what happened. It was all decided in advance, and..."
First interviewer: "Lubna, didn’t you ask [the court] what the definition of 'indecent clothing' is? What you are wearing is not... What is defined as 'indecent clothing'?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "It depends on the policeman’s mood."
http://www.memritv.org/newsletter/memri/clip2760b.JPG
"They Say This Is Islamic Law, But in Fact, This Is the Law of Al-Bashir"
First interviewer: "But if somebody wears a long blouse, long pants, and her hair is covered, what is indecent about it?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "I don’t know. The law is in the hands of the authorities."
First interviewer: "The authorities interpret [the law]."
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "Yes. [The law says]: clothing that offends public sentiment. Let me tell you, I was at a place with 400 people, and I didn’t offend anybody. The same law that requires giving a woman forty lashes for wearing pants, requires giving a man who rapes a boy, a girl, or a woman one month in prison. Nevertheless, they say that this is Islamic law, but in fact, this is the law of Al-Bashir."
Second interviewer: "Was the verdict implemented on you, Mrs. Lubna?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "No, it wasn’t, but I was the exception. I don’t know why. All the women are punished with floggings and with a fine. The entire group... We were 13 women, and 12 were sentenced to a flogging and a fine. I was fined, but when I wanted to pay, they refused to accept the money."
Second interviewer: "So they take women who wear such clothing, and without a trial, they implement the verdict?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "Immediately. On the spot. We were arrested on a Friday, so it was delayed to the following Sunday. The latest to be arrested is a 16-year-old Christian girl – not even a Muslim – from southern Sudan. She wasn’t wearing pants like me, but a skirt which they said was tight."
First interviewer: "Is a skirt considered indecent, or not?"
Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein: "They said it was indecent. It depends on the policeman’s mood."
http://memri.convio.net/site/PixelServer?j=_C4cUdkI-OOGJ5DYgMLWUw..
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N.B.IN SOME PARTS OF EUROPE THEY ARE CONSIDERING OUTLAWING THE BURKHA OR ISLAMIC COVER-UP VEILS, BUT ONLY IN PUBLIC PLACES. Will they be sentenced to lashings or jailed for refusing?
In Israel, they jailed a woman for wearing a talit or prayer shawl at the Western Wall in Jerusalem near where the men pray, because it is also outlawed to do so!MM
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
AIRPORT SECURITY: the world should copy EL AL
From racial profiling to anti-missile shields: the measures Brown should be introducing
By Christopher Walker
JANUARY 21, 2010
In the wake of the international panic caused by the Detroit underpants bomber on Christmas Day, Gordon Brown has come out with a range of new security measures. A 'no-fly' list is to be established, all flights between Britain and Yemen are canceled forthwith, and terrorist movements will be "seamlessly tracked and disrupted". Finally, the introduction of full body scanners will begin at British airports next week.
These measures will no doubt lessen the risk. But do they go far enough?
Potential airline passengers might like to know which national airline was recently named by the magazine Global Traveler as the world's most secure; which airline is so confident of the security procedures at its main hub airport that it still permits passengers to board with bottles and tubes of liquid brought from home; and which airline uses racial profiling.
The answer of course is El Al, the Hebrew phrase meaning 'To The Skies', which flew its inaugural flight in September 1948 and since the 1972 massacre at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv in which 26 people were murdered, has suffered no successful attacks. Almost all attempts which did take place were carried out on foreign soil (the 1976 Entebbe hijacking was the work of terrorists who boarded the El Al plane (the plane was Air France, not El Al) with their weapons during a stopover in Athens.)
As a non-Jew who flew it regularly during the 11 years I was based in Jerusalem as a foreign correspondent, I can vouch that this record is all the more impressive and all the more in need of copying by less rigorously guarded airlines in Europe, America and Asia because it is the most theoretically juicy target for Arab and Muslim terrorists anywhere on the globe.
Yet, such is the effectiveness of its various deterrents seen and unseen that the actual attempts against its fleet of nearly 40 aircraft on nearly 50 cargo and passenger routes are minimal.
In addition to its shameless pro-Jewish racial profiling, which involves widely different treatment for different types of passenger and individual questioning of passengers by Israeli staff (often women) trained in psychological techniques and unafraid to ask the most intrusive details of the passenger's recent movements and intentions, there are also many less obvious precautions that are constantly being modified.
Up-to-the-minute specifications of the types of weapons and explosives likely to be employed by suicide bombers and other terrorists is provided by the Israel Defence Force's secretive substance laboratory based in a nondescript cluster of prefabricated huts at the Tel Hashomer army base near Tel Aviv.
In addition, all El Al terminals around the world are patrolled by plain-clothes agents and fully armed police or military personnel who check for explosives, suspicious behaviour and other threats. No ticket without a sticker from the security interrogators will be accepted and particular note is taken of how and where it was purchased.
At passport control, passengers' names are checked against information from the FBI, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Scotland Yard, Shin Bet, Interpol and French Deuxieme Bureau data bases. All bags are routinely put through a decompression chamber simulating pressure once airborne that could trigger explosives.
Once on board, every El Al flight contains at least two, and often more plain-clothes, armed sky marshals, who sit randomly among the passengers.
All pilots are former Israeli Air Force fliers (their wartime motto in Hebrew, roughly translates as: 'Our best men for the Air Force and the best girls for the pilots') and, since an attempt in 2002 to shoot down an El Al plane, all aircraft are equipped with an Israeli-developed counter-measures system called 'Flight Guard' to defend against anti-aircraft missiles.
(This has provoked anger from the Swiss and other European governments who have complained in vain that flares dropped by the Israeli system could ignite fires in the vicinity of their airports.)
In line with the thoroughness that governs all aspects of Israel's airline security, all El Al cockpits have double doors to prevent entry by unauthorized people. A code is required to access the doors, and the second door will only be opened after the first has closed, and the person entering has been identified by the Captain or First Officer.
Many regular El Al passengers, although critical of some aspects of Israeli policy, are convinced that other countries are going to have to overcome some of their liberal sensitivities and adopt Israeli-style security measures.
As Michael Goldberg, president of the New York-based concern IDO Security Inc, which developed a device that can scan shoes while they are still on people's feet, said: "All must look to Israel and learn from them. This is not a post-9/11 thing for them. They have been doing this since 1956, the year of the Suez Crisis."
Issy Boim, a former agent for the Israeli equivalent of MI5, Shin Bet, explained that El Al's rigorous security procedures relied heavily on human intelligence. The difference between the Israeli and American systems, he said, is that the Israelis are looking primarily for the terror suspect, while the Americans are looking for weapons.
Despite the comprehensive nature of the Israeli security hardware employed by and around El Al - the first armed road block on the approach to Ben Gurion is encountered at least a mile before the main terminal entrance doors - it is the blatant racial profiling that incurs the wrath of human rights campaigners and will probably prevent any exactly similar system being introduced into the United States.
Similarly, the individual passenger interrogations would be problematical in terms of employing and training staff as there are over 400 airports in the US, compared to only half a dozen in Israel.
The matter-of-factness with which most Israelis accept racial and religious profiling was outlined in the liberal Tel Aviv daily Haaretz by leading Israeli journalist Anshel Pfeffer, who wrote: "Neither the American administration, nor its counterparts in other Western countries, are willing to contemplate a system in which Muslim citizens will be screened differently from their Christian, Jewish or atheist compatriots.
"In Israel, though, there is no question whatsoever. It all happens quite openly. To Israelis, the practice of picking people out based on racial stereotypes is so self-evident, there is not even a Hebrew term for it."
In London, Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International and managing director of Green Light Limited, an airline security company, argued that the current approach was indeed outdated.
Although he added that profiling based on race and religion was counter-productive and should be avoided, he concluded firmly: "Reluctance to distinguish travellers on other grounds such as their general appearance or their mannerisms is not only foolhardy, but dangerous."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
N.B. El Al only flies where it is allowed to employ its own security staff on the ground. Australia wouldn't allow it, so El Al will not operate in Australia.
By Christopher Walker
JANUARY 21, 2010
In the wake of the international panic caused by the Detroit underpants bomber on Christmas Day, Gordon Brown has come out with a range of new security measures. A 'no-fly' list is to be established, all flights between Britain and Yemen are canceled forthwith, and terrorist movements will be "seamlessly tracked and disrupted". Finally, the introduction of full body scanners will begin at British airports next week.
These measures will no doubt lessen the risk. But do they go far enough?
Potential airline passengers might like to know which national airline was recently named by the magazine Global Traveler as the world's most secure; which airline is so confident of the security procedures at its main hub airport that it still permits passengers to board with bottles and tubes of liquid brought from home; and which airline uses racial profiling.
The answer of course is El Al, the Hebrew phrase meaning 'To The Skies', which flew its inaugural flight in September 1948 and since the 1972 massacre at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv in which 26 people were murdered, has suffered no successful attacks. Almost all attempts which did take place were carried out on foreign soil (the 1976 Entebbe hijacking was the work of terrorists who boarded the El Al plane (the plane was Air France, not El Al) with their weapons during a stopover in Athens.)
As a non-Jew who flew it regularly during the 11 years I was based in Jerusalem as a foreign correspondent, I can vouch that this record is all the more impressive and all the more in need of copying by less rigorously guarded airlines in Europe, America and Asia because it is the most theoretically juicy target for Arab and Muslim terrorists anywhere on the globe.
Yet, such is the effectiveness of its various deterrents seen and unseen that the actual attempts against its fleet of nearly 40 aircraft on nearly 50 cargo and passenger routes are minimal.
In addition to its shameless pro-Jewish racial profiling, which involves widely different treatment for different types of passenger and individual questioning of passengers by Israeli staff (often women) trained in psychological techniques and unafraid to ask the most intrusive details of the passenger's recent movements and intentions, there are also many less obvious precautions that are constantly being modified.
Up-to-the-minute specifications of the types of weapons and explosives likely to be employed by suicide bombers and other terrorists is provided by the Israel Defence Force's secretive substance laboratory based in a nondescript cluster of prefabricated huts at the Tel Hashomer army base near Tel Aviv.
In addition, all El Al terminals around the world are patrolled by plain-clothes agents and fully armed police or military personnel who check for explosives, suspicious behaviour and other threats. No ticket without a sticker from the security interrogators will be accepted and particular note is taken of how and where it was purchased.
At passport control, passengers' names are checked against information from the FBI, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Scotland Yard, Shin Bet, Interpol and French Deuxieme Bureau data bases. All bags are routinely put through a decompression chamber simulating pressure once airborne that could trigger explosives.
Once on board, every El Al flight contains at least two, and often more plain-clothes, armed sky marshals, who sit randomly among the passengers.
All pilots are former Israeli Air Force fliers (their wartime motto in Hebrew, roughly translates as: 'Our best men for the Air Force and the best girls for the pilots') and, since an attempt in 2002 to shoot down an El Al plane, all aircraft are equipped with an Israeli-developed counter-measures system called 'Flight Guard' to defend against anti-aircraft missiles.
(This has provoked anger from the Swiss and other European governments who have complained in vain that flares dropped by the Israeli system could ignite fires in the vicinity of their airports.)
In line with the thoroughness that governs all aspects of Israel's airline security, all El Al cockpits have double doors to prevent entry by unauthorized people. A code is required to access the doors, and the second door will only be opened after the first has closed, and the person entering has been identified by the Captain or First Officer.
Many regular El Al passengers, although critical of some aspects of Israeli policy, are convinced that other countries are going to have to overcome some of their liberal sensitivities and adopt Israeli-style security measures.
As Michael Goldberg, president of the New York-based concern IDO Security Inc, which developed a device that can scan shoes while they are still on people's feet, said: "All must look to Israel and learn from them. This is not a post-9/11 thing for them. They have been doing this since 1956, the year of the Suez Crisis."
Issy Boim, a former agent for the Israeli equivalent of MI5, Shin Bet, explained that El Al's rigorous security procedures relied heavily on human intelligence. The difference between the Israeli and American systems, he said, is that the Israelis are looking primarily for the terror suspect, while the Americans are looking for weapons.
Despite the comprehensive nature of the Israeli security hardware employed by and around El Al - the first armed road block on the approach to Ben Gurion is encountered at least a mile before the main terminal entrance doors - it is the blatant racial profiling that incurs the wrath of human rights campaigners and will probably prevent any exactly similar system being introduced into the United States.
Similarly, the individual passenger interrogations would be problematical in terms of employing and training staff as there are over 400 airports in the US, compared to only half a dozen in Israel.
The matter-of-factness with which most Israelis accept racial and religious profiling was outlined in the liberal Tel Aviv daily Haaretz by leading Israeli journalist Anshel Pfeffer, who wrote: "Neither the American administration, nor its counterparts in other Western countries, are willing to contemplate a system in which Muslim citizens will be screened differently from their Christian, Jewish or atheist compatriots.
"In Israel, though, there is no question whatsoever. It all happens quite openly. To Israelis, the practice of picking people out based on racial stereotypes is so self-evident, there is not even a Hebrew term for it."
In London, Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International and managing director of Green Light Limited, an airline security company, argued that the current approach was indeed outdated.
Although he added that profiling based on race and religion was counter-productive and should be avoided, he concluded firmly: "Reluctance to distinguish travellers on other grounds such as their general appearance or their mannerisms is not only foolhardy, but dangerous."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
N.B. El Al only flies where it is allowed to employ its own security staff on the ground. Australia wouldn't allow it, so El Al will not operate in Australia.
ISRAELIS SAVING LIVES IN HAITI.
Bashing Israel for saving Haitians
By Bradley Burston
HAARETZ
____________________
I'd like to say a word of honor and thanks and, yes, pride for the Israelis, paramedics, physicians, nurses, midwives, and medical imaging technicians, who went to Haiti to save lives.
That's it.
I believe that they are people, individuals, who went there to save limbs from gangrene and amputation, stanch internal bleeding, relieve crushing pain. To deliver babies. To risk their lives, using jackhammers and hydraulics and their hands to make crawl spaces under tons of concrete and silt, going in themselves to pull children and adults to safety.
For all the time that they've been working, however, people far away, snug in the comfort of their laptops, have been furiously busy as well, people who are enraged to the boiling point by news reports of the Israeli rescue mission. People who see it as their mission to tell the world exactly what's wrong with all of this.
Over the past week, the work of the Israeli medical team has become a kind of Rorschach for how people view Israel and Israelis. Most of the comment, it must be said, is supportive. Even on the part of those who cast the humanitarian misery in Gaza in contrast.
But for a shocking number of others, the bottom line is simple: Israel,
and Israelis, can do no right.
In its most extreme form, there are those who have accused Israel of using the Haiti catastrophe as a new reservoir for harvesting organs.
But even many of those who shun blood libels, have seized on the Haiti mission to bash Israel, revealing in many cases a hatred - and a bigotry - that borders on the visceral.
"I guess giving Israel credit for good deeds in Haiti," wrote reader John Smithson on the widely read Mondoweiss site, "is like watching a serial killer or other sociopathic type mow an old woman's lawn (or some other charitable thing)."
The contention is that Israel sent aid to Haiti on purely cynical motives, harnessing public relations to divert attention from the Goldstone Report, to divert attention from Gaza, to divert attention from its never-ending, always expanding internal crises.
The implication is that Israel, and Israelis, are constitutionally incapable of doing good for its own sake. Or that whenever they appear to do good, people of conscience should recognize that the evil designs behind it render any good that may be done, complicit in wrongdoing.
True, it is willful blindness to contend that Israel can do no wrong. But it is nothing short of racism to maintain, in Haiti and in general, that Israelis can do no right.
Israel, like all countries where war is endemic, like much of the unfortunate world, and like Palestine, is a nation whose people have been ruined, distorted, permanently traumatized, emotionally stunted. Yet Israelis, like people in all countries where war is endemic, and like Palestinians, have demonstrated enormous reservoirs of humanity under inhuman stresses.
As Palestinian-American journalist Ray Hanania wrote of the Israeli aid effort this week: "200,000 Haitians died in an earthquake. They sent doctors and supplies to help. That is a good thing. Just because we are fighting with Israel doesn't mean we should sneer at that assistance to people in need. YES, I wish Israel could show the same compassion for Palestinians. But Israel and Haiti are not at war and Israelis and Palestinians (mainly Hamas and the settlers) are."
People who truly know this place as more than a moral cartoon, also know that there is no such thing as a clear conscience in the Holy Land. Either your conscience is conflicted, or it is no conscience at all.
No one knows better than Israelis - not even their worst critics abroad - how flawed and wrongheaded their country's behavior, and that of their countrymen, so often is.
No one knows better than Palestinians and their supporters, what it is to be tainted by bigotry, take missteps in conflict, and be dismissed by hatred.
I'd like to say a word of honor and thanks for the Israelis, paramedics, physicians, nurses, midwives, and medical imaging technicians, who went to Haiti to save lives.
Israelis, and Jews in the wider world, should not be forced to recite a catechism over how terrible, how flawed, how often mistaken they already know Israel to be, just in order to earn the right to feel and express their admiration, their gratitude, and yes, their pride.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above article was published in the 'Left' Israeli newspaper HAARETZ which usually is more interested in promoting Palestinian causes than their own Israeli ones. The world doesn';t like being shown-up by Jews or the one tiny Jewish State, but it is, time and time again. Once again, it was the Israelis who set up the first fully functioning, state-of-the-art hospital in a tent,- not the mighty Americans nor any of the Europeans.
If the Palestinian Arabs who continuously fight with Israel don't benefit from their Israelis' neighbours' knowhow and entrepeneurial skills, they have no one else to blame but themselves.
The world won't give Israel much credit, but no doubt they will want her expertise on how they did it!
"The presence of Magen David Adom on the ground in Haiti, along with the IDF and other Israeli groups, has given a considerable boost to Israel's image. The President and Director General of the International Federation of the Red Cross, together with a high level delegation of Directors of Red Cross National Societies, visited the site of the Red Cross hospital and they praised Magen David Adom for enlisting and coming to help and the importance they see in this act.
When the MDA team first arrived in Port-au-Prince after traveling in an overland aid convoy from the Dominican Republic arrived in the capital city they were welcomed by the President of the Red Cross in Haiti and have also been warmly received by the population and other Red Cross societies on the ground."
** Israel21C, which writes PR news features for Israel sent out a number of stories today touting Israel’s contribution to the Haitian relief effort: Israel saved one of Haiti’s top tax officials, links to videos about Israel’s field hospital in, and a story that says 2,000 people have been treated in that field hospital so far.
(MM)
By Bradley Burston
HAARETZ
____________________
I'd like to say a word of honor and thanks and, yes, pride for the Israelis, paramedics, physicians, nurses, midwives, and medical imaging technicians, who went to Haiti to save lives.
That's it.
I believe that they are people, individuals, who went there to save limbs from gangrene and amputation, stanch internal bleeding, relieve crushing pain. To deliver babies. To risk their lives, using jackhammers and hydraulics and their hands to make crawl spaces under tons of concrete and silt, going in themselves to pull children and adults to safety.
For all the time that they've been working, however, people far away, snug in the comfort of their laptops, have been furiously busy as well, people who are enraged to the boiling point by news reports of the Israeli rescue mission. People who see it as their mission to tell the world exactly what's wrong with all of this.
Over the past week, the work of the Israeli medical team has become a kind of Rorschach for how people view Israel and Israelis. Most of the comment, it must be said, is supportive. Even on the part of those who cast the humanitarian misery in Gaza in contrast.
But for a shocking number of others, the bottom line is simple: Israel,
and Israelis, can do no right.
In its most extreme form, there are those who have accused Israel of using the Haiti catastrophe as a new reservoir for harvesting organs.
But even many of those who shun blood libels, have seized on the Haiti mission to bash Israel, revealing in many cases a hatred - and a bigotry - that borders on the visceral.
"I guess giving Israel credit for good deeds in Haiti," wrote reader John Smithson on the widely read Mondoweiss site, "is like watching a serial killer or other sociopathic type mow an old woman's lawn (or some other charitable thing)."
The contention is that Israel sent aid to Haiti on purely cynical motives, harnessing public relations to divert attention from the Goldstone Report, to divert attention from Gaza, to divert attention from its never-ending, always expanding internal crises.
The implication is that Israel, and Israelis, are constitutionally incapable of doing good for its own sake. Or that whenever they appear to do good, people of conscience should recognize that the evil designs behind it render any good that may be done, complicit in wrongdoing.
True, it is willful blindness to contend that Israel can do no wrong. But it is nothing short of racism to maintain, in Haiti and in general, that Israelis can do no right.
Israel, like all countries where war is endemic, like much of the unfortunate world, and like Palestine, is a nation whose people have been ruined, distorted, permanently traumatized, emotionally stunted. Yet Israelis, like people in all countries where war is endemic, and like Palestinians, have demonstrated enormous reservoirs of humanity under inhuman stresses.
As Palestinian-American journalist Ray Hanania wrote of the Israeli aid effort this week: "200,000 Haitians died in an earthquake. They sent doctors and supplies to help. That is a good thing. Just because we are fighting with Israel doesn't mean we should sneer at that assistance to people in need. YES, I wish Israel could show the same compassion for Palestinians. But Israel and Haiti are not at war and Israelis and Palestinians (mainly Hamas and the settlers) are."
People who truly know this place as more than a moral cartoon, also know that there is no such thing as a clear conscience in the Holy Land. Either your conscience is conflicted, or it is no conscience at all.
No one knows better than Israelis - not even their worst critics abroad - how flawed and wrongheaded their country's behavior, and that of their countrymen, so often is.
No one knows better than Palestinians and their supporters, what it is to be tainted by bigotry, take missteps in conflict, and be dismissed by hatred.
I'd like to say a word of honor and thanks for the Israelis, paramedics, physicians, nurses, midwives, and medical imaging technicians, who went to Haiti to save lives.
Israelis, and Jews in the wider world, should not be forced to recite a catechism over how terrible, how flawed, how often mistaken they already know Israel to be, just in order to earn the right to feel and express their admiration, their gratitude, and yes, their pride.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above article was published in the 'Left' Israeli newspaper HAARETZ which usually is more interested in promoting Palestinian causes than their own Israeli ones. The world doesn';t like being shown-up by Jews or the one tiny Jewish State, but it is, time and time again. Once again, it was the Israelis who set up the first fully functioning, state-of-the-art hospital in a tent,- not the mighty Americans nor any of the Europeans.
If the Palestinian Arabs who continuously fight with Israel don't benefit from their Israelis' neighbours' knowhow and entrepeneurial skills, they have no one else to blame but themselves.
The world won't give Israel much credit, but no doubt they will want her expertise on how they did it!
"The presence of Magen David Adom on the ground in Haiti, along with the IDF and other Israeli groups, has given a considerable boost to Israel's image. The President and Director General of the International Federation of the Red Cross, together with a high level delegation of Directors of Red Cross National Societies, visited the site of the Red Cross hospital and they praised Magen David Adom for enlisting and coming to help and the importance they see in this act.
When the MDA team first arrived in Port-au-Prince after traveling in an overland aid convoy from the Dominican Republic arrived in the capital city they were welcomed by the President of the Red Cross in Haiti and have also been warmly received by the population and other Red Cross societies on the ground."
** Israel21C, which writes PR news features for Israel sent out a number of stories today touting Israel’s contribution to the Haitian relief effort: Israel saved one of Haiti’s top tax officials, links to videos about Israel’s field hospital in, and a story that says 2,000 people have been treated in that field hospital so far.
(MM)
Monday, January 18, 2010
Israel & lack of religious pluralism.
IT IS TIME FOR RELIGIOUS PLURALISM IN ISRAEL.
It seems that there is currently a disturbing trend by the police in Israel and particularly in Jerusalem, to restrict freedom of expression of all kinds.
Whether it is Gay rights activism, status of women issues, freedom to pray at the wall or peacefully protesting against Jewish settlements in Sheikh Jarrah, it does not matter what issue, the Jerusalem police seem bent on arresting people at whim, at the slightest provocation. In a letter from a Jerusalem-based journalist friend,she writes:
"Last Friday, 17 Israelis who were arrested at a protest against Jewish settlements in Sheikh Jarrah, were released without charges some 36 hours later by a judge who said the police had no case for arresting them in the first place.
If you read the below article from the Jerusalem Post, the police claim they were a bunch of "anarchists and leftists" holding an illegal demonstration which therefore justified their harsh response. Whatever your politics maybe, it's extremely worrying when you hear Jerusalem police openly say that merely being a "leftist" is a factor that explains a lot. As it turns out, the writer knows some of the protestors; and to be blunt they're a bunch of Tel Aviv yuppies, most likely Meretz voters, in their 30s and 40s who are very worried by what's going on in Sheikh Jarrah.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1263147914239&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
But it's also reflective of a new and disturbing trend where the city's police are aggressively pursuing a policy of arresting people on the spot for what elsewhere would be viewed as a peaceful protest. Anat Hoffman,(leader of the Women at the Wall) and others have much to say about this …" (see below).
World Jewry, the only true friends and steadfast supporters of Israel are a pluralist lot. Not all Jews are Zionist, not all are affiliated with a religious Movement, but most if not all care for their fellow Jews wherever they may be. It is time that the laws of the land of Israel reflect 21st Century reality of world-wide Judaism, within and outside Israel. It is time to break the hegemony of the ultra-religious Orthodox-political establishment on issues of personal status, so that Israel will truly reflect the Jewish national homeland, of and for all Jews. The article below explores the various methods which may have to be adopted in order to effect change.
It is time "the Jewish Left" stop dealing only with issues about 'Palestinian human rights' and start concentrating on Jewish Israeli human rights,- for women and families in particular, which I believe will only be solved by the adoption of religious pluralism in Israel.MM
-----------------------------------------------
http://www.forward.com/articles/123365/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Emailmarketingsoftware&utm_content=70954055&utm_campaign=January222010+_+ulhuo&utm_term=ReadmoreLeaders Mull Options To Protest Restrictions at Kotel
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Published January 13, 2010, issue of January 22, 2010.
Acts of civil disobedience are among the strategies that the Reform movement is weighing as it mulls how best to advocate for religious pluralism in Israel, particularly at Jerusalem’s Western Wall — the site of recent confrontations between women worshipping as a prayer group, the Orthodox rabbis who control access to the wall and the police.
Under Investigation: Israeli police interrogated Nofrat Frenkel after she defied Orthodox prayer rules at the Western Wall.
“One possible strategy is a campaign of civil disobedience,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism. “You have certain laws there. We could defy them in terms of how we pray and conduct ourselves at the wall — doing it aware of the fact that this is violating the law and could lead to prosecution. But we haven’t made that decision per se.”
In the meantime, leaders of the Israeli Reform movement and the North American Conservative movement issued statements asking Jews in the Diaspora to write to their Israeli ambassadors. Movement leaders say the objective of these letters is to protest the January 5 questioning and fingerprinting of Anat Hoffman, the chairwoman of Women of the Wall, and the November arrest of Israeli medical student Nofrat Frenkel, who was shoved and then detained by Jerusalem police during a Women of the Wall prayer service, ostensibly because she was wearing a prayer shawl and holding the group’s Torah scroll. Hoffman said that Jerusalem police have told her and Frenkel that each may be charged with a felony for “committing a religious act that offends the feelings of others.”
Hoffman, who heads the Reform-affiliated Israel Religious Action Center, told the Forward that she wants Jews around the world to engage in acts of solidarity with Women of the Wall during the Sabbath of January 15–16, which marks the start of the month of Shvat.
Hoffman asked that supporters paint their fingertips black, as if they had been fingerprinted by police, and that they wear prayer shawls around their necks like scarves. According to the religious authorities in charge of the wall, or Kotel, this is the only way that women visiting the Kotel are allowed to wear such shawls.
Leaders of the Conservative movement, with its 670 affiliated congregations, issued a statement on January 12, endorsed by most other arms of the denomination, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly. Jerusalem and Israeli government leaders should “realize the gravity of this issue and take immediate steps to promote religious pluralism, provide equitable treatment to non-Orthodox streams of Jewish life and end the harassment of women seeking to pray with dignity at the Western Wall,” the statement says. It also asks its members to write letters of protest to Israel’s U.S. ambassador Michael Oren.
Jonathan Peled, Oren’s spokesman, said that the embassy has received a few such letters. Oren is unaware of any campaigns protesting the treatment of Women of the Wall, Peled said, but noted that “everyone is free to write to the ambassador and every letter will be attended to.”
A full accounting of Frenkel’s questioning by police was requested by Oren in late December, after he misinformed an audience of Conservative Jews about what had happened to her. Oren later told the Forward that he had received “incomplete information” about the incident, and was ordering an inquiry that would be ready within days. Peled said the ambassador had received the results of this inquiry. The spokesman could offer no information on the contents of the report, and said Oren was unavailable for comment.
Rabbi Avi Shafran, the director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, which represents the interests of the fervently Orthodox community, said, in an essay distributed to the press, “Frenkel’s charge that she was unnecessarily manhandled by police should be responsibly investigated.”
But Shafran took issue with those who want to participate in “feminist religious services” at the wall. “If they choose instead to intentionally flout the law, they should honestly acknowledge that they are courting prosecution through civil disobedience — not seek to portray themselves as innocent victims wondering what they might possibly have done wrong.”
The non-Orthodox movements in America, which account for the overwhelming majority of American Jews who identify with a stream of Judaism, want to persuade the Israeli government that non-Orthodox Jews should be able to pray according to their custom at the Kotel. The site is presently run as a strictly Orthodox synagogue.
“The wall has just become an unpleasant place to be,” said Yoffie. “It’s a place where extremists reign.”
While the open plaza area in front of the Kotel used to be a place that Reform youth groups could hold services while on trips to Israel, with boys and girls singing and dancing together, Yoffie said that is no longer the case.
Shafran ridiculed the notion that the Kotel could be opened to non-Orthodox customs and practices. “Do the Freedom Chanters really want to open the Kotel plaza to all religious expressions?” he wrote in a statement. “Would the Frenkel forces be pleased with Buddhist intonations and incense-burning at the Kotel? Catholic hymns and processions? Taoist drumbeating ceremonies? Surely the activists don’t mean to limit their liberal-mindedness to services conducted by Jews alone.”
Members of Women of the Wall have been meeting at the Kotel at the start of each Jewish month since 1988. They lost their lawsuit seeking permission to read from a Torah scroll as a group in the women’s section of the Kotel in 2003, when Israel’s Supreme Court ruled against them.
According to Yoffie, additional strategies being considered by the URJ include renewing legal action or reaching out to members of the Israeli government or Israel’s parliament “to try to convince them to do something.” The Reform movement is also considering running a campaign in Israel to raise public awareness of the issue, which, Yoffie said, has been virtually absent from the press there.
“People want to know what to do about this situation. We’re working very closely with the Israelis to try and devise a strategy that we think will be effective in bringing about change,” Yoffie said. “The key issue for us now is to figure out what the best approach is so that it’s not just one more press release.”
Contact Debra Nussbaum Cohen at dnussbaumc@forward.com
It seems that there is currently a disturbing trend by the police in Israel and particularly in Jerusalem, to restrict freedom of expression of all kinds.
Whether it is Gay rights activism, status of women issues, freedom to pray at the wall or peacefully protesting against Jewish settlements in Sheikh Jarrah, it does not matter what issue, the Jerusalem police seem bent on arresting people at whim, at the slightest provocation. In a letter from a Jerusalem-based journalist friend,she writes:
"Last Friday, 17 Israelis who were arrested at a protest against Jewish settlements in Sheikh Jarrah, were released without charges some 36 hours later by a judge who said the police had no case for arresting them in the first place.
If you read the below article from the Jerusalem Post, the police claim they were a bunch of "anarchists and leftists" holding an illegal demonstration which therefore justified their harsh response. Whatever your politics maybe, it's extremely worrying when you hear Jerusalem police openly say that merely being a "leftist" is a factor that explains a lot. As it turns out, the writer knows some of the protestors; and to be blunt they're a bunch of Tel Aviv yuppies, most likely Meretz voters, in their 30s and 40s who are very worried by what's going on in Sheikh Jarrah.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1263147914239&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
But it's also reflective of a new and disturbing trend where the city's police are aggressively pursuing a policy of arresting people on the spot for what elsewhere would be viewed as a peaceful protest. Anat Hoffman,(leader of the Women at the Wall) and others have much to say about this …" (see below).
World Jewry, the only true friends and steadfast supporters of Israel are a pluralist lot. Not all Jews are Zionist, not all are affiliated with a religious Movement, but most if not all care for their fellow Jews wherever they may be. It is time that the laws of the land of Israel reflect 21st Century reality of world-wide Judaism, within and outside Israel. It is time to break the hegemony of the ultra-religious Orthodox-political establishment on issues of personal status, so that Israel will truly reflect the Jewish national homeland, of and for all Jews. The article below explores the various methods which may have to be adopted in order to effect change.
It is time "the Jewish Left" stop dealing only with issues about 'Palestinian human rights' and start concentrating on Jewish Israeli human rights,- for women and families in particular, which I believe will only be solved by the adoption of religious pluralism in Israel.MM
-----------------------------------------------
http://www.forward.com/articles/123365/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Emailmarketingsoftware&utm_content=70954055&utm_campaign=January222010+_+ulhuo&utm_term=ReadmoreLeaders Mull Options To Protest Restrictions at Kotel
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Published January 13, 2010, issue of January 22, 2010.
Acts of civil disobedience are among the strategies that the Reform movement is weighing as it mulls how best to advocate for religious pluralism in Israel, particularly at Jerusalem’s Western Wall — the site of recent confrontations between women worshipping as a prayer group, the Orthodox rabbis who control access to the wall and the police.
Under Investigation: Israeli police interrogated Nofrat Frenkel after she defied Orthodox prayer rules at the Western Wall.
“One possible strategy is a campaign of civil disobedience,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism. “You have certain laws there. We could defy them in terms of how we pray and conduct ourselves at the wall — doing it aware of the fact that this is violating the law and could lead to prosecution. But we haven’t made that decision per se.”
In the meantime, leaders of the Israeli Reform movement and the North American Conservative movement issued statements asking Jews in the Diaspora to write to their Israeli ambassadors. Movement leaders say the objective of these letters is to protest the January 5 questioning and fingerprinting of Anat Hoffman, the chairwoman of Women of the Wall, and the November arrest of Israeli medical student Nofrat Frenkel, who was shoved and then detained by Jerusalem police during a Women of the Wall prayer service, ostensibly because she was wearing a prayer shawl and holding the group’s Torah scroll. Hoffman said that Jerusalem police have told her and Frenkel that each may be charged with a felony for “committing a religious act that offends the feelings of others.”
Hoffman, who heads the Reform-affiliated Israel Religious Action Center, told the Forward that she wants Jews around the world to engage in acts of solidarity with Women of the Wall during the Sabbath of January 15–16, which marks the start of the month of Shvat.
Hoffman asked that supporters paint their fingertips black, as if they had been fingerprinted by police, and that they wear prayer shawls around their necks like scarves. According to the religious authorities in charge of the wall, or Kotel, this is the only way that women visiting the Kotel are allowed to wear such shawls.
Leaders of the Conservative movement, with its 670 affiliated congregations, issued a statement on January 12, endorsed by most other arms of the denomination, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly. Jerusalem and Israeli government leaders should “realize the gravity of this issue and take immediate steps to promote religious pluralism, provide equitable treatment to non-Orthodox streams of Jewish life and end the harassment of women seeking to pray with dignity at the Western Wall,” the statement says. It also asks its members to write letters of protest to Israel’s U.S. ambassador Michael Oren.
Jonathan Peled, Oren’s spokesman, said that the embassy has received a few such letters. Oren is unaware of any campaigns protesting the treatment of Women of the Wall, Peled said, but noted that “everyone is free to write to the ambassador and every letter will be attended to.”
A full accounting of Frenkel’s questioning by police was requested by Oren in late December, after he misinformed an audience of Conservative Jews about what had happened to her. Oren later told the Forward that he had received “incomplete information” about the incident, and was ordering an inquiry that would be ready within days. Peled said the ambassador had received the results of this inquiry. The spokesman could offer no information on the contents of the report, and said Oren was unavailable for comment.
Rabbi Avi Shafran, the director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, which represents the interests of the fervently Orthodox community, said, in an essay distributed to the press, “Frenkel’s charge that she was unnecessarily manhandled by police should be responsibly investigated.”
But Shafran took issue with those who want to participate in “feminist religious services” at the wall. “If they choose instead to intentionally flout the law, they should honestly acknowledge that they are courting prosecution through civil disobedience — not seek to portray themselves as innocent victims wondering what they might possibly have done wrong.”
The non-Orthodox movements in America, which account for the overwhelming majority of American Jews who identify with a stream of Judaism, want to persuade the Israeli government that non-Orthodox Jews should be able to pray according to their custom at the Kotel. The site is presently run as a strictly Orthodox synagogue.
“The wall has just become an unpleasant place to be,” said Yoffie. “It’s a place where extremists reign.”
While the open plaza area in front of the Kotel used to be a place that Reform youth groups could hold services while on trips to Israel, with boys and girls singing and dancing together, Yoffie said that is no longer the case.
Shafran ridiculed the notion that the Kotel could be opened to non-Orthodox customs and practices. “Do the Freedom Chanters really want to open the Kotel plaza to all religious expressions?” he wrote in a statement. “Would the Frenkel forces be pleased with Buddhist intonations and incense-burning at the Kotel? Catholic hymns and processions? Taoist drumbeating ceremonies? Surely the activists don’t mean to limit their liberal-mindedness to services conducted by Jews alone.”
Members of Women of the Wall have been meeting at the Kotel at the start of each Jewish month since 1988. They lost their lawsuit seeking permission to read from a Torah scroll as a group in the women’s section of the Kotel in 2003, when Israel’s Supreme Court ruled against them.
According to Yoffie, additional strategies being considered by the URJ include renewing legal action or reaching out to members of the Israeli government or Israel’s parliament “to try to convince them to do something.” The Reform movement is also considering running a campaign in Israel to raise public awareness of the issue, which, Yoffie said, has been virtually absent from the press there.
“People want to know what to do about this situation. We’re working very closely with the Israelis to try and devise a strategy that we think will be effective in bringing about change,” Yoffie said. “The key issue for us now is to figure out what the best approach is so that it’s not just one more press release.”
Contact Debra Nussbaum Cohen at dnussbaumc@forward.com
Pro-Hamas media bias and Gaza activists block peace
By Ray HANANIA
Jerusalem Post
12 Jan 2010
[The Australian Jewish Democratic Society's (AJDS) Stillman, Brooks and Rosenblatt wrote a Letter to the Ed. In 'The Australian', 4/1/10, claiming that "because of this ( i.e. collective punishment, siege of Gaza, illegal occupation, etc., etc.) Israel itself becomes more cocooned and devoid of any moral authority".
Really? Why does Israel have to be the only nation in the world to have to have 'moral authority' to defend itself? Who gives the AJDS the 'moral authority" in Australia to judge another country's security concerns in the ME?
As another writer, Craig Merriman, in the same paper notes: "The West carries burden of terrorists in Yemen". "The West is forced to carry the burden alone of confronting the terrorism while Islamic States who keep telling us Islam is a religion of peace, sit on the sidelines and do nothing." He concludes with "hypocrites".
No, it is Israel that carries the burden of confronting terrorism on a daily basis for the past 60+ years. But then the AJDS seem to think Hamas and their followers are also trustworthy, neighbourly, peace-loving people with the right 'moral-authority' to be granted 'the opportunity to live in two independent and viable states without permanent militarisation".
What hypocrisy!
MM]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pro-Hamas media bias and Gaza activists block peaceBy Ray HANANIA
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1263147876102&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull...
It isn't just the mainstream Arab media that is pro-Hamas, branded a "terrorist organization" by many nations, but it's also the groups that support Hamas that slowly dominate the Middle East landscape unchallenged that are threatening peace.
A good example of this is the issue of the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians complain they are under an oppressive military and economic Israeli siege and where Israelis counter that radical elements there continue to target their civilians with Katyushas and Kassam missiles.
... THE ISSUE for the Free Gaza protesters is not about bringing freedom to the 1.3 million Palestinians there or lifting Israel's "oppressive military and economic siege." It's about their long-term goals. By "freeing" Gaza, they mean declaring Hamas the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." But that's not their goal.
The purpose of many of the protesters is to strengthen Hamas.
... The Arab media are going through an internal struggle no different than the one now dominating Arab and Palestinian politics. It's one between extremists who see the media as an instrument of activism and those of us who believe the media must remain objective witnesses to the truth.
Truth means that not all of today's tragic events can be blamed on Israel, Egypt, Abbas or on the failure, so far, to achieve peace.
The writer is a Palestinian American columnist, satirist and founder of Yalla Peace.
Jerusalem Post
12 Jan 2010
[The Australian Jewish Democratic Society's (AJDS) Stillman, Brooks and Rosenblatt wrote a Letter to the Ed. In 'The Australian', 4/1/10, claiming that "because of this ( i.e. collective punishment, siege of Gaza, illegal occupation, etc., etc.) Israel itself becomes more cocooned and devoid of any moral authority".
Really? Why does Israel have to be the only nation in the world to have to have 'moral authority' to defend itself? Who gives the AJDS the 'moral authority" in Australia to judge another country's security concerns in the ME?
As another writer, Craig Merriman, in the same paper notes: "The West carries burden of terrorists in Yemen". "The West is forced to carry the burden alone of confronting the terrorism while Islamic States who keep telling us Islam is a religion of peace, sit on the sidelines and do nothing." He concludes with "hypocrites".
No, it is Israel that carries the burden of confronting terrorism on a daily basis for the past 60+ years. But then the AJDS seem to think Hamas and their followers are also trustworthy, neighbourly, peace-loving people with the right 'moral-authority' to be granted 'the opportunity to live in two independent and viable states without permanent militarisation".
What hypocrisy!
MM]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pro-Hamas media bias and Gaza activists block peaceBy Ray HANANIA
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1263147876102&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull...
It isn't just the mainstream Arab media that is pro-Hamas, branded a "terrorist organization" by many nations, but it's also the groups that support Hamas that slowly dominate the Middle East landscape unchallenged that are threatening peace.
A good example of this is the issue of the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians complain they are under an oppressive military and economic Israeli siege and where Israelis counter that radical elements there continue to target their civilians with Katyushas and Kassam missiles.
... THE ISSUE for the Free Gaza protesters is not about bringing freedom to the 1.3 million Palestinians there or lifting Israel's "oppressive military and economic siege." It's about their long-term goals. By "freeing" Gaza, they mean declaring Hamas the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." But that's not their goal.
The purpose of many of the protesters is to strengthen Hamas.
... The Arab media are going through an internal struggle no different than the one now dominating Arab and Palestinian politics. It's one between extremists who see the media as an instrument of activism and those of us who believe the media must remain objective witnesses to the truth.
Truth means that not all of today's tragic events can be blamed on Israel, Egypt, Abbas or on the failure, so far, to achieve peace.
The writer is a Palestinian American columnist, satirist and founder of Yalla Peace.
Monday, January 04, 2010
JERUSALEM ISSUES BRIEFS: AlQueda in Gaza.
Vol. 9, No. 17 4 January 2009
[The Institute for Contemporary Affairs (ICA) is dedicated
to providing a forum for Israeli policy discussion and debate]
The Expansion of Al-Qaeda-Affiliated Jihadi Groups
in Gaza: Diplomatic Implications
Dore Gold
In the West there is a growing trend to view Hamas as separate from al-Qaeda in order to open a political dialogue with Hamas, but is this view correct?
In its annual survey of terrorist threats to Israel during 2009, the Israel Security Agency noted the spread and buildup of "global jihadi" organizations in Gaza. In recent years a number of these jihadi groups have emerged that openly identify with al-Qaeda, such as Jaish al-Islam (the Army of Islam), Jaish al-Umma (the Army of the Nation), and Fatah al-Islam.
Hamas was founded in 1987 as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden was educated in Saudi Arabia by Muhammad Qutb of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Abdullah Azzam of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, came out of the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood still defines its goal as "a world Islamic state."
In February 2004, the U.S. designated Sheikh Abd al-Majid Zindani, president of Iman University in Yemen, as a "loyalist to Osama bin Laden." On March 20, 2006, Zindani, who recruited volunteers for al-Qaeda, sponsored a major fundraising event for Hamas in Yemen. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253 to Detroit, went to hear lectures on radical Islam at Iman University.
The al-Qaeda affiliate Jaysh al-Islam joined Hamas in the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. This proves that Hamas and al-Qaeda affiliates have been involved in joint operations. In 2007, the Egyptian press reported that one of the heads of al-Qaeda in Egypt had escaped and sought sanctuary in Gaza. In May 2009, Egypt charged that another al-Qaeda-linked group was using Gaza for training terrorists for attacks in Egypt.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[And some seem to think Hamas and their followers are trustworthy, neighbourly, peace-loving people with the right 'moral-authority' to be granted 'the opportunity to live in two independent and viable states without permanent militarisation" (e.g.AJDS).What naivete! What hypocrisy!]
[The Institute for Contemporary Affairs (ICA) is dedicated
to providing a forum for Israeli policy discussion and debate]
The Expansion of Al-Qaeda-Affiliated Jihadi Groups
in Gaza: Diplomatic Implications
Dore Gold
In the West there is a growing trend to view Hamas as separate from al-Qaeda in order to open a political dialogue with Hamas, but is this view correct?
In its annual survey of terrorist threats to Israel during 2009, the Israel Security Agency noted the spread and buildup of "global jihadi" organizations in Gaza. In recent years a number of these jihadi groups have emerged that openly identify with al-Qaeda, such as Jaish al-Islam (the Army of Islam), Jaish al-Umma (the Army of the Nation), and Fatah al-Islam.
Hamas was founded in 1987 as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden was educated in Saudi Arabia by Muhammad Qutb of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Abdullah Azzam of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, came out of the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood still defines its goal as "a world Islamic state."
In February 2004, the U.S. designated Sheikh Abd al-Majid Zindani, president of Iman University in Yemen, as a "loyalist to Osama bin Laden." On March 20, 2006, Zindani, who recruited volunteers for al-Qaeda, sponsored a major fundraising event for Hamas in Yemen. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253 to Detroit, went to hear lectures on radical Islam at Iman University.
The al-Qaeda affiliate Jaysh al-Islam joined Hamas in the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. This proves that Hamas and al-Qaeda affiliates have been involved in joint operations. In 2007, the Egyptian press reported that one of the heads of al-Qaeda in Egypt had escaped and sought sanctuary in Gaza. In May 2009, Egypt charged that another al-Qaeda-linked group was using Gaza for training terrorists for attacks in Egypt.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[And some seem to think Hamas and their followers are trustworthy, neighbourly, peace-loving people with the right 'moral-authority' to be granted 'the opportunity to live in two independent and viable states without permanent militarisation" (e.g.AJDS).What naivete! What hypocrisy!]
Saturday, January 02, 2010
ISRAEL: 'a light on to nations'- on SECURITY!
Readers join a discussion at Pajamas Media.com about the help Israel can offer Britain in defusing IEDS (Improvised Explosive Devices) ; British organisations and academic institutions have been spending a great deal of time organising boycotts of Israel and banning Israeli dignitaries from entering the United Kingdom on pain of arrest for war crimes, but our editor Carol Gould suggests it might be time for Britain to look to Israel for help.
Please go to:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/boycott-israel-and-british-lives-will-be-lost/Please also visit us at:
http://www.currentviewpoint.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ms. Gould focuses only on one aspect of learning from Israel re the IEDs. It is jealousy among the various Anglo/US agencies to 'learn' anything from Israel. After all,- 'who do those Jews think they are?'. Other international companies know better,- Israeli security teams ply the seas and monitor airports all over the world. The Nigerian would-be-bomber would not have got on to a flight to Israel; nor would the Afghani terrorist suicide bomber who killed the largest no. of CIA agents in 25years been trusted not to be searched.
Islam is a 'dhimmitude'religion; Christianity also believes in its supremacy; both feel successful Judaism shows them up. Israel trusts no-one but itself as a result,- this is why it survives,- but jealousy won't allow it to 'be a light on to the nations' as the bible prophesises!Eventually,with Islam taking on the rest of the world,it may throw the rest of the world into Israel's fold.
At the moment we Jews have to help Israel which has to fight a rear-guard action all the time,- as well as a frontal assault everywhere.
MM
http://dotsub.com/view/84f5c72d-b0ba-408c-ace3-8cc40995e011
British View of Saudi Arabia, and calls America to wake up before it’s too late.
Please go to:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/boycott-israel-and-british-lives-will-be-lost/Please also visit us at:
http://www.currentviewpoint.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ms. Gould focuses only on one aspect of learning from Israel re the IEDs. It is jealousy among the various Anglo/US agencies to 'learn' anything from Israel. After all,- 'who do those Jews think they are?'. Other international companies know better,- Israeli security teams ply the seas and monitor airports all over the world. The Nigerian would-be-bomber would not have got on to a flight to Israel; nor would the Afghani terrorist suicide bomber who killed the largest no. of CIA agents in 25years been trusted not to be searched.
Islam is a 'dhimmitude'religion; Christianity also believes in its supremacy; both feel successful Judaism shows them up. Israel trusts no-one but itself as a result,- this is why it survives,- but jealousy won't allow it to 'be a light on to the nations' as the bible prophesises!Eventually,with Islam taking on the rest of the world,it may throw the rest of the world into Israel's fold.
At the moment we Jews have to help Israel which has to fight a rear-guard action all the time,- as well as a frontal assault everywhere.
MM
http://dotsub.com/view/84f5c72d-b0ba-408c-ace3-8cc40995e011
British View of Saudi Arabia, and calls America to wake up before it’s too late.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Burqas and Minarets in Europe and the West?
Of minarets and burqas (
Rights or choices?
Transporting all customs from one country to another can create tensions for newcomers in a new environment.
At a recent interactive exploration of human rights issues at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia (Vic.)'s celebration of the UN-Human Rights Day on December 10, there was much discussion about the difference between 'rights' and 'choices'. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies what are 'human rights' and where there should be no discriminations, particularly on the basis of religion. Choices however are different and up for negotiation!
There is no doubt that the bans, whether in Switzerland regarding the building of minarets or in France regarding the wearing of burqas, are referring to religious customs, i.e. choices, not the practice of the Islamic religion per se. Highly visible public displays on religious buildings are their marketing tools. Are there many Church spires allowed to overshadow the minarets in Islamic countries? I doubt it, therefore the citizens of scenically beautiful Switzerland are within their rights not to want minarets to compete with their own traditional Church spires!.
Similarly, there are laws forbidding female forms of Western dress (or undress according to their standards) in Moslem countries, so why should hiding one's identity beneath a burqa be acceptable in Western democracies as a matter of ' right' on the basis of religion? The imposition of complete female cover-ups is obviously an infringement of women's rights in strict Islamic societies, but in Western countries it is always a matter of a 'customary choice' and therefore need not be acceptable at all. Quite frankly I would feel very uncomfortable to serve or be served by such an invisible person in public,-(who knows who is hiding behind the cover-up? It could be a crinminal or worse!) therefore France is within its rights to disallow it.
M.M.
Swiss Minarets and European Islamby Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem PostDecember 9, 2009
http://www.danielpipes.org/7808/swiss-minarets-european-islam
[JP title: "Resistance to Islamization"]
What importance has the recent Swiss referendum to ban the building of minarets (spires next to mosques from which the call to prayer is issued)?
Some may see the 57.5 to 42.5 percent decision endorsing a constitutional amendment as nearly meaningless. The political establishment being overwhelmingly opposed to the amendment, the ban will probably never go into effect. Only 53.4 percent of the electorate voted, so a mere 31 percent of the whole population endorses the ban. The ban does not address Islamist aspirations, much less Muslim terrorism. It has no impact on the practice of Islam. It prevents neither the building of new mosques nor requires that Switzerland's four existing minarets be demolished.
It's also possible to dismiss the vote as the quirky result of Switzerland's unique direct democracy, a tradition that goes back to 1291 and exists nowhere else in Europe. Josef Joffe, the distinguished German analyst, sees the vote as a populist backlash against the series of humiliations the Swiss have endured in recent years culminating in the seizure of two businessmen in Libya and the Swiss president's mortifying apology to win their release.
However, I see the referendum as consequential, and well so beyond Swiss borders.
Rights or choices?
Transporting all customs from one country to another can create tensions for newcomers in a new environment.
At a recent interactive exploration of human rights issues at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia (Vic.)'s celebration of the UN-Human Rights Day on December 10, there was much discussion about the difference between 'rights' and 'choices'. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies what are 'human rights' and where there should be no discriminations, particularly on the basis of religion. Choices however are different and up for negotiation!
There is no doubt that the bans, whether in Switzerland regarding the building of minarets or in France regarding the wearing of burqas, are referring to religious customs, i.e. choices, not the practice of the Islamic religion per se. Highly visible public displays on religious buildings are their marketing tools. Are there many Church spires allowed to overshadow the minarets in Islamic countries? I doubt it, therefore the citizens of scenically beautiful Switzerland are within their rights not to want minarets to compete with their own traditional Church spires!.
Similarly, there are laws forbidding female forms of Western dress (or undress according to their standards) in Moslem countries, so why should hiding one's identity beneath a burqa be acceptable in Western democracies as a matter of ' right' on the basis of religion? The imposition of complete female cover-ups is obviously an infringement of women's rights in strict Islamic societies, but in Western countries it is always a matter of a 'customary choice' and therefore need not be acceptable at all. Quite frankly I would feel very uncomfortable to serve or be served by such an invisible person in public,-(who knows who is hiding behind the cover-up? It could be a crinminal or worse!) therefore France is within its rights to disallow it.
M.M.
Swiss Minarets and European Islamby Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem PostDecember 9, 2009
http://www.danielpipes.org/7808/swiss-minarets-european-islam
[JP title: "Resistance to Islamization"]
What importance has the recent Swiss referendum to ban the building of minarets (spires next to mosques from which the call to prayer is issued)?
Some may see the 57.5 to 42.5 percent decision endorsing a constitutional amendment as nearly meaningless. The political establishment being overwhelmingly opposed to the amendment, the ban will probably never go into effect. Only 53.4 percent of the electorate voted, so a mere 31 percent of the whole population endorses the ban. The ban does not address Islamist aspirations, much less Muslim terrorism. It has no impact on the practice of Islam. It prevents neither the building of new mosques nor requires that Switzerland's four existing minarets be demolished.
It's also possible to dismiss the vote as the quirky result of Switzerland's unique direct democracy, a tradition that goes back to 1291 and exists nowhere else in Europe. Josef Joffe, the distinguished German analyst, sees the vote as a populist backlash against the series of humiliations the Swiss have endured in recent years culminating in the seizure of two businessmen in Libya and the Swiss president's mortifying apology to win their release.
However, I see the referendum as consequential, and well so beyond Swiss borders.
Niqab, the Pseudo-Islamic Face-Veilby Irfan Al-Alawi and Stephen Suleyman Schwartz
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/12/03/niqab-the-pseudo-islamic-faceDecember 3, 2009
Countries from Italy to Sweden are debating the right of women to wear the niqab. Canada is the latest country to enter the fray, with the Muslim Canadian Congress desiring to ban it. Is such a ban possible in the U.S., where its prevalence is evident in certain urban centers, like Philadelphia?
Muslim women's wearing of niqab, the veil covering everything but the eyes, and, by extension, the face-concealing mesh that is combined with a long garment to form the burqa in South Asia, has been introduced into the West as a purported religious obligation, and therefore, is put forward by ideological Islamists as a prospective civil right.
Niqab has become a matter of controversy in almost every Western country, most recently when the French government opened an inquiry into its prohibition – with the support, perhaps counter-intuitive, of that country's leading Muslim figure, Dr. Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris. France had already banned all forms of religious dress and symbolism from its state schools. In 2008, Dutch State Secretary for Education Ronald Plasterk, representing the immigrant-friendly Labor Party, called for banning niqab, as well as the burqa and abaya, from the country's primary and secondary schools, both for pupils and for visiting mothers.
The burqa, with its niqab-like eyescreen, is barred from British and some Belgian public schools. Earlier controversies include Quebec's 2007 decision that women must remove niqab if they vote, and a demand in 2006 by British Labour politician Jack Straw that women take off niqab before visiting his constituency office.
The U.S. has seen a number of bizarre attempts to establish niqab as a right. In 2001, Sultaana Freeman obtained a Florida driver's license while wearing niqab, but the license was then canceled.
Niqab is not the same as other practices often referred to generally as "veils" or "veiling" like the:
hijab, or head-covering,
the abaya, a loose full-body covering imposed on women in Saudi Arabia , although it is required in that kingdom that it be supplemented by niqab,
the chador, an Iranian cloak,
or jilbab, a loose garment covering the body except for the head, face, and hands.
Distinctions between these and various Western styles for women are difficult to make, especially in a civil-liberties environment. Head scarves and long coats or cloaks are worn by many women in cultures around the world, non-Muslim as well as Muslim. But since a hijab or head-covering may resemble a hat, it may be prohibited for all women in certain settings. Also in 2007, a Georgia judge barred a Muslim woman from entering court unless she removed her hijab, just as men and women are required to take off hats and caps when a judge is present. The radical Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) unsuccessfully challenged the judge's decision on the false claim of religious freedom. But religious claims do not override judicial practice, at least in the U.S., any more than they would justify carrying a driver's license that conceals the bearer's identity.
Niqab as a security problem encourages non-Muslim suspicion of Muslims, since it encourages Muslims toward separatism from their non-Muslim neighbors. And the security issue is real. Male terrorists in such varied countries as Pakistan, Britain, Afghanistan, and Israel have donned female coverings in attempting to escape police. Ordinary criminals have put on niqab as a disguise while committing robberies in the U.S., Britain, Canada, India, and Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Niqab is not Islamic. Covering of the face by women is nowhere mentioned in Qur'an, and the opinions of Islamic legal scholars on it are not unanimous. The Hanafi school of Islamic law, which is most widespread among Muslims, specifically rules out face covering, on the basis of women's needs while dealing normally with men, in commerce and elsewhere. In traditional Islam, men are called on to act modestly, and women are not ordered to disfigure and subordinate themselves by masking their features. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said that women making the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca should not cover their faces or wear gloves, although in their typically perverse manner, Saudi Wahhabi clerics now seek to impose it upon them even then.
Millions of Muslim women around the world do not wear so-called Islamic dress, but have retained local customary garments, which do not distort their form or personality. Many have adopted the same fashions as Western or Far-Eastern women. Women in Hejaz, the Western Arabian region in which the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located, did not, in the past, cover their faces, and increasingly protest against the imposition of this practice.
The radicals who promote niqab try to pretend that a woman becomes a "better Muslim" by covering her face. This concept is no more Islamic than niqab itself. In traditional Islam, division of Muslims between the good and the bad, aside from those who have committed terrorist or criminal acts, will be decided by God, not by men or women.
According to established Islamic guidance, Muslims who migrate to non-Muslim societies are required to accept and obey the laws and customs of the countries to which they move. Attempts to introduce niqab into Western countries represent an obvious violation of this principle.
Western nations have developed a doctrine of "reasonable accommodation" of religious beliefs and practices. But acceptance of niqab in the West would embody "unreasonable accommodation."
Appeals for an immediate ban on niqab or face-coverings in Western countries are, in the view of many moderate Muslims, correct. To rid the Muslim world of niqab will require a sustained debate and social development in each country where it is presently found, based on a pluralistic discussion leading to its recognition as a non-Islamic, and dehumanizing, practice.
Author Irfan Al-Alawi is international director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism and a contributor to Islamist Watch. Stephen Suleyman Schwartz is executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, D.C. and a contributor to Islamist Watch
Related Topics: Head Coverings / Dress | Irfan Al-Alawi
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/12/03/niqab-the-pseudo-islamic-faceDecember 3, 2009
Countries from Italy to Sweden are debating the right of women to wear the niqab. Canada is the latest country to enter the fray, with the Muslim Canadian Congress desiring to ban it. Is such a ban possible in the U.S., where its prevalence is evident in certain urban centers, like Philadelphia?
Muslim women's wearing of niqab, the veil covering everything but the eyes, and, by extension, the face-concealing mesh that is combined with a long garment to form the burqa in South Asia, has been introduced into the West as a purported religious obligation, and therefore, is put forward by ideological Islamists as a prospective civil right.
Niqab has become a matter of controversy in almost every Western country, most recently when the French government opened an inquiry into its prohibition – with the support, perhaps counter-intuitive, of that country's leading Muslim figure, Dr. Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris. France had already banned all forms of religious dress and symbolism from its state schools. In 2008, Dutch State Secretary for Education Ronald Plasterk, representing the immigrant-friendly Labor Party, called for banning niqab, as well as the burqa and abaya, from the country's primary and secondary schools, both for pupils and for visiting mothers.
The burqa, with its niqab-like eyescreen, is barred from British and some Belgian public schools. Earlier controversies include Quebec's 2007 decision that women must remove niqab if they vote, and a demand in 2006 by British Labour politician Jack Straw that women take off niqab before visiting his constituency office.
The U.S. has seen a number of bizarre attempts to establish niqab as a right. In 2001, Sultaana Freeman obtained a Florida driver's license while wearing niqab, but the license was then canceled.
Niqab is not the same as other practices often referred to generally as "veils" or "veiling" like the:
hijab, or head-covering,
the abaya, a loose full-body covering imposed on women in Saudi Arabia , although it is required in that kingdom that it be supplemented by niqab,
the chador, an Iranian cloak,
or jilbab, a loose garment covering the body except for the head, face, and hands.
Distinctions between these and various Western styles for women are difficult to make, especially in a civil-liberties environment. Head scarves and long coats or cloaks are worn by many women in cultures around the world, non-Muslim as well as Muslim. But since a hijab or head-covering may resemble a hat, it may be prohibited for all women in certain settings. Also in 2007, a Georgia judge barred a Muslim woman from entering court unless she removed her hijab, just as men and women are required to take off hats and caps when a judge is present. The radical Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) unsuccessfully challenged the judge's decision on the false claim of religious freedom. But religious claims do not override judicial practice, at least in the U.S., any more than they would justify carrying a driver's license that conceals the bearer's identity.
Niqab as a security problem encourages non-Muslim suspicion of Muslims, since it encourages Muslims toward separatism from their non-Muslim neighbors. And the security issue is real. Male terrorists in such varied countries as Pakistan, Britain, Afghanistan, and Israel have donned female coverings in attempting to escape police. Ordinary criminals have put on niqab as a disguise while committing robberies in the U.S., Britain, Canada, India, and Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Niqab is not Islamic. Covering of the face by women is nowhere mentioned in Qur'an, and the opinions of Islamic legal scholars on it are not unanimous. The Hanafi school of Islamic law, which is most widespread among Muslims, specifically rules out face covering, on the basis of women's needs while dealing normally with men, in commerce and elsewhere. In traditional Islam, men are called on to act modestly, and women are not ordered to disfigure and subordinate themselves by masking their features. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said that women making the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca should not cover their faces or wear gloves, although in their typically perverse manner, Saudi Wahhabi clerics now seek to impose it upon them even then.
Millions of Muslim women around the world do not wear so-called Islamic dress, but have retained local customary garments, which do not distort their form or personality. Many have adopted the same fashions as Western or Far-Eastern women. Women in Hejaz, the Western Arabian region in which the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located, did not, in the past, cover their faces, and increasingly protest against the imposition of this practice.
The radicals who promote niqab try to pretend that a woman becomes a "better Muslim" by covering her face. This concept is no more Islamic than niqab itself. In traditional Islam, division of Muslims between the good and the bad, aside from those who have committed terrorist or criminal acts, will be decided by God, not by men or women.
According to established Islamic guidance, Muslims who migrate to non-Muslim societies are required to accept and obey the laws and customs of the countries to which they move. Attempts to introduce niqab into Western countries represent an obvious violation of this principle.
Western nations have developed a doctrine of "reasonable accommodation" of religious beliefs and practices. But acceptance of niqab in the West would embody "unreasonable accommodation."
Appeals for an immediate ban on niqab or face-coverings in Western countries are, in the view of many moderate Muslims, correct. To rid the Muslim world of niqab will require a sustained debate and social development in each country where it is presently found, based on a pluralistic discussion leading to its recognition as a non-Islamic, and dehumanizing, practice.
Author Irfan Al-Alawi is international director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism and a contributor to Islamist Watch. Stephen Suleyman Schwartz is executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, D.C. and a contributor to Islamist Watch
Related Topics: Head Coverings / Dress | Irfan Al-Alawi
Sunday, December 13, 2009
HANUKKAH, the Jewish Festival of Lights.
The Shifting Face of Heroism in Israel
By Dr Yoram Bilu
It should not come as a surprise that Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights (Hag Ha-Ourim), looms high among the Jewish traditional holidays which the Zionist movement embraced and cultivated. For a revolutionary movement seeking to transform the powerless Jews of the Diaspora into a new breed of settlers and warriors, Hanukkah's narrative of national redemption could serve as an inspiring model for action.
Freedom and national liberation are themes strongly emphasized in Passover too, but Hanukkah is exceptional in celebrating national independence and political sovereignty achieved through a popular uprising and a subsequent sequence of military operations. Together with the zealots of the Great Revolt in the first century C.E. and the Bar Kokhba rebels some 60 years later, The Hasmonean fighters were selected as exemplary figures that the young pioneers in or on the way to the Land of Israel could and should emulate. In this heroic triad only the Hasmoneans managed to realize their national goal successfully: while the two clashes with the Roman Empire ended in catastrophic defeat, the revolt against the Hellenized Seleucians gave birth to a politically sovereign Jewish entity – fragile and short lived yet independent for the first time since the Biblical kingdoms of Judea and Israel. This historical precedent became a trailblazer in the Zionist struggle to create a national homeland for the Jews.
It is no wonder then that a direct link was stretched between the Jewish combatants of Yehuda Ha-Maccabee and soldiers fighting for the Jewish state. The recurring idiom in referring to these soldiers, Ninei Ha-Maccabeem, the great-grandchildren of the Maccabees, is illuminating not only in what it emphasizes – the direct continuity between old and contemporary fighters for independence – but in what it ignores, the mediating links of "fathers" and "grandfathers," the humiliated Jews of the Diaspora. The Zionist reading of the precariousness of Jewish existence as a defenseless minority in the Diaspora, nightmarishly substantiated in the Holocaust, and the threats posed to Israel’s existence during its formative years, gave birth to strong pressures for hardiness and heroism among Israeli men. The consensus that the IDF was an indispensable safeguard of individual and national survival has created a cultural ethos valuing stamina, toughness, self-assurance, stoicism in the face of danger, and self-sacrifice. The heroic struggle of the Maccabees was appropriated as an inspiring myth for inculcating these values.
One intriguing implication of espousing this heroic model inspired by the Maccabees has been the sweeping denial that Israeli soldiers were vulnerable to psychological problems in battle and the corollary stigmatization of those exceptional cases who did succumb to stress under fire. In the 1948 War of Independence, despite the imminent threat of destruction and high number of casualties, psychological casualties were marginalized. This was propelled by an ideologically-informed reluctance to acknowledge the possibility of a psychological breakdown among Israeli soldiers. Psychological casualties who could not be disregarded were treated in well-insulated psychiatric units, shrouded in secrecy, and were irrevocably released from service upon recovery. Those who remained traumatized found it hard to be officially recognized as handicapped war veterans.
The idealized image of IDF soldiers as resilient and invincible became all the more pronounced in the 1967 War. The dramatic trajectory of the 1967 War – an alarming waiting period followed by a blitzkrieg which ended with overwhelming victory – created a climate of national euphoria that bolstered the myth of heroism and marginalized combat stress reactions.
The myth of heroism, and with it the disregard and denial which had hidden combat stress reactions from the public eye in the preceding wars, were extensively corroded in the 1973 War. Following the utter surprise and confusion at the onset of the war, and the heavy toll of casualties, the war was inscribed in the national consciousness as a massive trauma, despite the military victory that sealed it. The ensuing sense of disillusionment and vulnerability instilled in the Israeli public a stronger readiness to face the dire psychological consequences of the fighting.
In the First Lebanon War (1982), a confluence of factors made the psychological toll of battle further visible. The heated controversy over the necessity, scope, and outcome of the war, the intensive contact with noncombatant population, and the introduction of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to psychiatric classification and public discourse, contributed to a growing awareness of psychological problems in battle and their long-term aftermath. It is no wonder that the psychic wounds of this war have found ample expression in literary and cinematic creations. The successful movie Waltzing with Bashir is perhaps the most noted example of the attempts of Israeli creative artists to cope with the delayed repercussions of the Lebanon War.
The first Palestinian Intifada in 1989 and Intifada Al-Aqsa in 2000, while not escalating into full-fledged wars, have further sensitized public opinion in Israel to security-related trauma. The factors conducive to this process included, primarily, the widening circles of Israeli civilians caught in the spiral of violence, but also the escalating controversy regarding the moral justification for military control of the territories and the violent clashes with Palestinian civilians. The psychological cost of the Intifadas became an oft-discussed subject in Israel’s public arenas, from political institutions and the media to artistic creations and professional conferences. The Second Lebanon War (2006) and the recent violent clash in the Gaza Strip (2009), have further amplified this process. Here too large civilian populations on either side were exposed to the harmful effects of war.
The growing visibility of combatants’ psychic scars resonates with the global ascent of the trauma discourse and the rising dividends yielded by the politics of suffering and victimhood. On the local level, it is related to the changes in the image of the Israeli soldier, viewed today as more dependent and emotionally vulnerable. This change in mood clearly informs much of the public debate in Israel regarding the release of Gilad Shalit, the abducted IDF soldier. Thus, the ethos of heroism and collective sacrifice in Israeli public discourse is replaced by a more psychologically oriented approach highlighting the emotional vulnerability of soldiers. Perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of this transformation in Israeli society has been the establishment in 1998 of NATAL, “The Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War.” This non government organization of mental health professionals has been propagating the notion of "national trauma" as a comprehensive category of suffering related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Implied here is the notion that no Israeli is immune from the accumulating toll of this conflict.
Contemporary Israeli society is far removed from the early models of unyielding heroism and sacrifice embodied by the Maccabees. Critics bemoan the "softening" of the once invincible soldiers, the sense of vulnerability and weakness that the hegemonic trauma discourse conveys, and the dangerous consequences of the erosion of the myth of heroism. It might well be that the pendulum has swayed too much in the direction of emotional vulnerability – so much so that now "Israeli society is supposed to protect its soldiers rather than the other way around," as one critic blatantly commented. But it could also be argued that this transformation is a timely corrective for making the face of heroism in Israeli society more humane and less idealized.
Dr Yoram Bilu is a professor of anthropology and psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently the Schusterman Visiting Professor for Israel Studies at Brandeis University in Boston. He will be visiting scholar at Encounters@Shalom in March 2010.
Comment re above:This theme was the subject of a very powerful 2007 Israeli movie called "Resisim", or fragments about the interaction of the shellshocked and fragile in a recuperation centre, and the fragments of their lives that they must bring together.
Sadly I think that, as a result of Oslo, Israel has taken on an untenable burden. The idea was a good one, that each side would teach about the issues of the other in order for future generations to acquire an understanding of the other and move the sides together. The reality is that it is Israeli schools and they alone, who teach about Palestinian history, trauma and suffering. Then we send them out as 18 year old children in an environment where they are accused of causing that suffering, where they are no longer sure of the rectitude of what they do, and we wonder at the heightened psychological damage. If our soldiers are "soft" it is because we have softened them, if they are traumatised it is because we have generated their trauma. Thanks to a string of ideologically extremely left Education Ministers, teachers and educators, Israeli education has turned into highly politicised propaganda. I think that when this changes and an accurate (not simply a more Zionist version, but a historically accurate one) history is taught in schools, Dr Yoram Bilu will have less to write about. At the very least we owe our heroes a level playing field.
Chag Sameach,
Morry
By Dr Yoram Bilu
It should not come as a surprise that Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights (Hag Ha-Ourim), looms high among the Jewish traditional holidays which the Zionist movement embraced and cultivated. For a revolutionary movement seeking to transform the powerless Jews of the Diaspora into a new breed of settlers and warriors, Hanukkah's narrative of national redemption could serve as an inspiring model for action.
Freedom and national liberation are themes strongly emphasized in Passover too, but Hanukkah is exceptional in celebrating national independence and political sovereignty achieved through a popular uprising and a subsequent sequence of military operations. Together with the zealots of the Great Revolt in the first century C.E. and the Bar Kokhba rebels some 60 years later, The Hasmonean fighters were selected as exemplary figures that the young pioneers in or on the way to the Land of Israel could and should emulate. In this heroic triad only the Hasmoneans managed to realize their national goal successfully: while the two clashes with the Roman Empire ended in catastrophic defeat, the revolt against the Hellenized Seleucians gave birth to a politically sovereign Jewish entity – fragile and short lived yet independent for the first time since the Biblical kingdoms of Judea and Israel. This historical precedent became a trailblazer in the Zionist struggle to create a national homeland for the Jews.
It is no wonder then that a direct link was stretched between the Jewish combatants of Yehuda Ha-Maccabee and soldiers fighting for the Jewish state. The recurring idiom in referring to these soldiers, Ninei Ha-Maccabeem, the great-grandchildren of the Maccabees, is illuminating not only in what it emphasizes – the direct continuity between old and contemporary fighters for independence – but in what it ignores, the mediating links of "fathers" and "grandfathers," the humiliated Jews of the Diaspora. The Zionist reading of the precariousness of Jewish existence as a defenseless minority in the Diaspora, nightmarishly substantiated in the Holocaust, and the threats posed to Israel’s existence during its formative years, gave birth to strong pressures for hardiness and heroism among Israeli men. The consensus that the IDF was an indispensable safeguard of individual and national survival has created a cultural ethos valuing stamina, toughness, self-assurance, stoicism in the face of danger, and self-sacrifice. The heroic struggle of the Maccabees was appropriated as an inspiring myth for inculcating these values.
One intriguing implication of espousing this heroic model inspired by the Maccabees has been the sweeping denial that Israeli soldiers were vulnerable to psychological problems in battle and the corollary stigmatization of those exceptional cases who did succumb to stress under fire. In the 1948 War of Independence, despite the imminent threat of destruction and high number of casualties, psychological casualties were marginalized. This was propelled by an ideologically-informed reluctance to acknowledge the possibility of a psychological breakdown among Israeli soldiers. Psychological casualties who could not be disregarded were treated in well-insulated psychiatric units, shrouded in secrecy, and were irrevocably released from service upon recovery. Those who remained traumatized found it hard to be officially recognized as handicapped war veterans.
The idealized image of IDF soldiers as resilient and invincible became all the more pronounced in the 1967 War. The dramatic trajectory of the 1967 War – an alarming waiting period followed by a blitzkrieg which ended with overwhelming victory – created a climate of national euphoria that bolstered the myth of heroism and marginalized combat stress reactions.
The myth of heroism, and with it the disregard and denial which had hidden combat stress reactions from the public eye in the preceding wars, were extensively corroded in the 1973 War. Following the utter surprise and confusion at the onset of the war, and the heavy toll of casualties, the war was inscribed in the national consciousness as a massive trauma, despite the military victory that sealed it. The ensuing sense of disillusionment and vulnerability instilled in the Israeli public a stronger readiness to face the dire psychological consequences of the fighting.
In the First Lebanon War (1982), a confluence of factors made the psychological toll of battle further visible. The heated controversy over the necessity, scope, and outcome of the war, the intensive contact with noncombatant population, and the introduction of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to psychiatric classification and public discourse, contributed to a growing awareness of psychological problems in battle and their long-term aftermath. It is no wonder that the psychic wounds of this war have found ample expression in literary and cinematic creations. The successful movie Waltzing with Bashir is perhaps the most noted example of the attempts of Israeli creative artists to cope with the delayed repercussions of the Lebanon War.
The first Palestinian Intifada in 1989 and Intifada Al-Aqsa in 2000, while not escalating into full-fledged wars, have further sensitized public opinion in Israel to security-related trauma. The factors conducive to this process included, primarily, the widening circles of Israeli civilians caught in the spiral of violence, but also the escalating controversy regarding the moral justification for military control of the territories and the violent clashes with Palestinian civilians. The psychological cost of the Intifadas became an oft-discussed subject in Israel’s public arenas, from political institutions and the media to artistic creations and professional conferences. The Second Lebanon War (2006) and the recent violent clash in the Gaza Strip (2009), have further amplified this process. Here too large civilian populations on either side were exposed to the harmful effects of war.
The growing visibility of combatants’ psychic scars resonates with the global ascent of the trauma discourse and the rising dividends yielded by the politics of suffering and victimhood. On the local level, it is related to the changes in the image of the Israeli soldier, viewed today as more dependent and emotionally vulnerable. This change in mood clearly informs much of the public debate in Israel regarding the release of Gilad Shalit, the abducted IDF soldier. Thus, the ethos of heroism and collective sacrifice in Israeli public discourse is replaced by a more psychologically oriented approach highlighting the emotional vulnerability of soldiers. Perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of this transformation in Israeli society has been the establishment in 1998 of NATAL, “The Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War.” This non government organization of mental health professionals has been propagating the notion of "national trauma" as a comprehensive category of suffering related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Implied here is the notion that no Israeli is immune from the accumulating toll of this conflict.
Contemporary Israeli society is far removed from the early models of unyielding heroism and sacrifice embodied by the Maccabees. Critics bemoan the "softening" of the once invincible soldiers, the sense of vulnerability and weakness that the hegemonic trauma discourse conveys, and the dangerous consequences of the erosion of the myth of heroism. It might well be that the pendulum has swayed too much in the direction of emotional vulnerability – so much so that now "Israeli society is supposed to protect its soldiers rather than the other way around," as one critic blatantly commented. But it could also be argued that this transformation is a timely corrective for making the face of heroism in Israeli society more humane and less idealized.
Dr Yoram Bilu is a professor of anthropology and psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently the Schusterman Visiting Professor for Israel Studies at Brandeis University in Boston. He will be visiting scholar at Encounters@Shalom in March 2010.
Comment re above:This theme was the subject of a very powerful 2007 Israeli movie called "Resisim", or fragments about the interaction of the shellshocked and fragile in a recuperation centre, and the fragments of their lives that they must bring together.
Sadly I think that, as a result of Oslo, Israel has taken on an untenable burden. The idea was a good one, that each side would teach about the issues of the other in order for future generations to acquire an understanding of the other and move the sides together. The reality is that it is Israeli schools and they alone, who teach about Palestinian history, trauma and suffering. Then we send them out as 18 year old children in an environment where they are accused of causing that suffering, where they are no longer sure of the rectitude of what they do, and we wonder at the heightened psychological damage. If our soldiers are "soft" it is because we have softened them, if they are traumatised it is because we have generated their trauma. Thanks to a string of ideologically extremely left Education Ministers, teachers and educators, Israeli education has turned into highly politicised propaganda. I think that when this changes and an accurate (not simply a more Zionist version, but a historically accurate one) history is taught in schools, Dr Yoram Bilu will have less to write about. At the very least we owe our heroes a level playing field.
Chag Sameach,
Morry
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Film: "WRONG SIDE OF THE BUS" about apartheid in South Africa.
Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Sidney Bloch returns to South Africa with his teenage son, full of personal guilt for not having done more to resist the racist apartheid regime. He emigrated immediately after completing his medical studies in Cape Town and lived with a guilty feeling of not having done more to resist apartheid and help even his few fellow coloured students in his year.
I saw the film at its world premiere at ACMI and want to cmpliment everyone involved for it.The film is beautifully shot and well edited. I also wanted to comment afterwards when the discussion and question time was organised but I did not get the chance to do so.
Having participated in one of the first international conventions in Johannesburg after Nelson Mandela was freed, but before the ANC was elected in 1991, I commented to one of our hosts at the time that I could not live in such an affluent environment while being surrounded by such massive poverty,- black or white! Her response was: "who are you to talk -is Australia better towards your natives? Are your Aborigines well off in the Centre while you live in comfort in the coastal cities? You live in a democracy. You can do something about it. We lived until recently under a virtual dictatorship,- you will see that we will change. Will you?"
I think that this film is a personal account of one man's conscience at work. I don't believe it can be extrapolated to a general educational viewpoint about being a 'bystander' versus an activist, which is its intention! All systems which are antidemocratic, be it communism, nazism, racism/apartheid, even theocracies, involve rule by force to make the population submit. The individual needs far more courage to desist and resist than we who live in democracies.
We need to protect each others' individual and minorities' human rights,- because we can do so without fear of reprisals,- at least in theory!So what excuse do we as Australians have for the terrible conditions still existing today in the aboriginal communities up North? The film Samson & Delilah portrays it most vividly (& was shown on SBS also tonight).
South Africans can look after themselves now,- I don't think the film really explores the connection to Australia at all and may not be the educational tool which it was intended to be.
As for comparing Sth. African apartheid with any other country,- as some would with Israel, which is so far removed from the truth as to be pure antisemitic and Arab propaganda,- it is only akin to the American segregation of a past era. Nor can it be compared with the Nazi Holocaust of us Jews,- the deliberate program of obliteration of a whole people!
I shall be returning for the next International Council of Jewish Women's Convention in Cape Town, next May, 2010. I am looking forward to see the changes which were portrayed in the film, but as one of the individuals in the film categorically stated,- racism is in all of us! Personally I don't see it as only racism,- I see it as humans tending to 'like the alike'!There is what may be called "snobbishness", e.g. in the level of personal wealth,or there is the "intellectual snobbishness" in the educational field,- every group will have the "in crowd" and those who will be outside it. Dr. Bloch rejected the Afrikaaners outright as being racists & pro-Nazis, until he met his old coleague who accused the Jewish groups at the University of "sticking to themselves",- a common accusation made towards us Jews!
The reality is that we all tend to "stick together" and label others in groups! It is human nature and nurture,- plus experiences!We tend to treat others the way they treat us,- or we avoid those whom we don't understand. Violence begets violence,- at present, violence throughout the world, be it criminal due to 3rd-world poverty,or anti-democratic or terrorist due to religious fanaticism,or sectarian rivalries, etc. this I am afraid is the greatest threat to democracy and the 'rule of law' in our Western world, (including Israel of course, as it is part of the Western democratic system). This is when governments enact more and more draconian laws which impinge on all our personal freedoms,- until we may wake up one day and find ourselves under a totalitarian regime! Then it may be too late to cry 'help'!
We Jews are usually the first to sense the dangers.
N.B. Dr.Bloch fled to Israel first.
There he met his wife to be, an Australian, so he ended up here!
(MM)
I saw the film at its world premiere at ACMI and want to cmpliment everyone involved for it.The film is beautifully shot and well edited. I also wanted to comment afterwards when the discussion and question time was organised but I did not get the chance to do so.
Having participated in one of the first international conventions in Johannesburg after Nelson Mandela was freed, but before the ANC was elected in 1991, I commented to one of our hosts at the time that I could not live in such an affluent environment while being surrounded by such massive poverty,- black or white! Her response was: "who are you to talk -is Australia better towards your natives? Are your Aborigines well off in the Centre while you live in comfort in the coastal cities? You live in a democracy. You can do something about it. We lived until recently under a virtual dictatorship,- you will see that we will change. Will you?"
I think that this film is a personal account of one man's conscience at work. I don't believe it can be extrapolated to a general educational viewpoint about being a 'bystander' versus an activist, which is its intention! All systems which are antidemocratic, be it communism, nazism, racism/apartheid, even theocracies, involve rule by force to make the population submit. The individual needs far more courage to desist and resist than we who live in democracies.
We need to protect each others' individual and minorities' human rights,- because we can do so without fear of reprisals,- at least in theory!So what excuse do we as Australians have for the terrible conditions still existing today in the aboriginal communities up North? The film Samson & Delilah portrays it most vividly (& was shown on SBS also tonight).
South Africans can look after themselves now,- I don't think the film really explores the connection to Australia at all and may not be the educational tool which it was intended to be.
As for comparing Sth. African apartheid with any other country,- as some would with Israel, which is so far removed from the truth as to be pure antisemitic and Arab propaganda,- it is only akin to the American segregation of a past era. Nor can it be compared with the Nazi Holocaust of us Jews,- the deliberate program of obliteration of a whole people!
I shall be returning for the next International Council of Jewish Women's Convention in Cape Town, next May, 2010. I am looking forward to see the changes which were portrayed in the film, but as one of the individuals in the film categorically stated,- racism is in all of us! Personally I don't see it as only racism,- I see it as humans tending to 'like the alike'!There is what may be called "snobbishness", e.g. in the level of personal wealth,or there is the "intellectual snobbishness" in the educational field,- every group will have the "in crowd" and those who will be outside it. Dr. Bloch rejected the Afrikaaners outright as being racists & pro-Nazis, until he met his old coleague who accused the Jewish groups at the University of "sticking to themselves",- a common accusation made towards us Jews!
The reality is that we all tend to "stick together" and label others in groups! It is human nature and nurture,- plus experiences!We tend to treat others the way they treat us,- or we avoid those whom we don't understand. Violence begets violence,- at present, violence throughout the world, be it criminal due to 3rd-world poverty,or anti-democratic or terrorist due to religious fanaticism,or sectarian rivalries, etc. this I am afraid is the greatest threat to democracy and the 'rule of law' in our Western world, (including Israel of course, as it is part of the Western democratic system). This is when governments enact more and more draconian laws which impinge on all our personal freedoms,- until we may wake up one day and find ourselves under a totalitarian regime! Then it may be too late to cry 'help'!
We Jews are usually the first to sense the dangers.
N.B. Dr.Bloch fled to Israel first.
There he met his wife to be, an Australian, so he ended up here!
(MM)
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