479 Zionists capture leadership of Palestine Solidarity, turn it against Gilad Atzmon

Zionists capture leadership of Palestine Solidarity, turn it against
Gilad Atzmon

(1) Zionists capture leadership of Palestine Solidarity, turn it against
Gilad Atzmon
(2) Angry Jews: Victimhood is their story of their past, but the trauma
is a taught memory
(3) Arab citizens of Israel ineligible to live in Settlements
(4) Palestinians protest segregated buses
(5) Israel arrests Freedom Riders challenging segregated buses
(6) Holocaust reparations -> free Subs, but Germany rebels over Israeli
settlement policy
(7) Palestinian Church protests Israeli seizure of lands in the
Bethlehem district
(8) Richard Goldstone defends Israel from Apartheid charge
(9) Replies to Goldstone on Apartheid
(10) Assimilation & Intermarriage: The Threat of Jewish affection for
the non-Jew - JDL
(11) Israeli Municipality to demolish Moorish entrance Gate to
Jerusalem’s Old City
(12) Moroccans' Gate to the Old City

(1) Zionists capture leadership of Palestine Solidarity, turn it against
Gilad Atzmon

From: Israel Shamir <adam@israelshamir.net> Date: 27 November 2011

Palestine Solidarity Movement (in its many faces) has been infiltrated
by various Jewish gatekeepers and crypto-Zionists for a long time. This
is not a news: I remember being ostracised by them years ago. When I was
pushed out, there was not much of response from others - they were happy
they were not singled out like I was. Some of my friends even approached
me and asked not to refer to them as "friends" anymore. However, in
fullness of time, they also were hit by the same blunt instrument of
Jewish manipulation in the pro-Palestine movements. Here is an
interesting piece on Palestine Solidarity in the UK and their bending
for Zionists:

http://www.redress.cc/palestine/lbooth20111127

Palestine Solidarity Campaign in unholy alliance with Israeli mouthpiece
and UK Zionist website

By Lauren Booth

27 November 2011

Lauren Booth looks at how the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in
particular its national director Sarah Colborne, appear to have put
appeasement of some of the UK’s vilest Zionist bodies, such as the
Jewish Chronicle weekly and the website Harry’s Place, ahead of genuine
opposition to Israeli racism and solidarity with the Palestinian people.

This week, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) revealed itself to be
ethically compromised at the highest level.

In recent months it has become clear that the central office of the PSC
is increasingly pandering to the whims of Israeli hasbara – or
propaganda – activists, joining with the likes of the rabid Zionist site
Harry’s Place in efforts to silence some of this movement’s most
outspoken and popular thinkers.Sarah Colborne dives into the Zionist sewer

This week, Sarah Colborne, the director of PSC, was quoted in the pro
Israeli paper, the Jewish Chronicle, as supporting a boycott of the
highly renowned musician and writer Gilad Atzmon.

Atzmon was booked to perform in his professional capacity as a
saxophonist at an event celebrating political song in Bradford, called
“Raise your Banners”. The musician/author has recently published a best
selling treatise on Jewish cultural identity called The Wandering Who?
Unlike Sarah Colborne, I have actually read this book and can highly
recommend it as it pulls no punches when asking to what degree the
racist ideology – Zionism – when mixed with the Jewish sense of
“Chosenness”, is to blame for the existence of todays apartheid Israel.
It has been endorsed by some of the finest thinkers and writers on
Israel/Palestine of our age.

But the subject matter alone predictably proved more than enough to have
Atzmon once again falsely branded as an anti-Semite by sections of the
Jewish diaspora that are committed to stopping debate into their awkward
yet staunch support for Israeli war crimes.

The Jewish Chronicle has spearheaded the campaign to put pressure on the
organizers of the Bradford event to drop Gilad Atzmon from the bill.

Now, Atzmon is well liked in the PSC branches nationwide, both as a
radical and brilliant speech maker and as a musician and fundraiser for
Palestinian causes.

Yet, this is what Sarah Colborne of the PSC had to say when asked about
Atzmon by the Jewish Chronicle:

I am very concerned at what appears to be an attempt by “Raise Your
Banners” to misrepresent the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. PSC has made
clear to “Raise Your Banners” that we have no links with Gilad Atzmon,
and that Palestine Solidarity Campaign does not work with him. When a
representative from “Raise Your Banners” contacted the PSC office some
months ago, they were urged to take seriously the concerns of those who
had raised this issue.What PSC activists must ask Sarah Colborne

Her words raise several questions that need to be addressed by the PSC
at both national and regional levels. Foremost of these is whether
members of the PSC had been asked if they support Colborne in what
amounts to a cultural boycott of any staunchly anti Zionist campaigners.

Let's take a closer look at her last sentence.

Colborne says: “When a representative from “Raise Your Banners”
contacted the PSC office some months ago, they were urged to take
seriously the concerns of those who had raised this issue.”

Colborne reveals that she is apparently supported by other PSC officials
in this effort to ostracize Atzmon.

So, here's another question. Hasn’t Colborne overstepped her official
remit as Director of the PSC? After all, this is a body whose name (if
little else at national level) suggests an inclusive movement, one that
is open to all voices that actively speak out against Israeli apartheid
with the aim of supporting the Palestinian right to a free state.

She has certainly set a very foolish precedent by bending over to
hasbara activists.Bending over to Israeli propagandists

The problem for Sarah Colborne is that this is not the first but the
most recent in a shameful spate of expulsions and harassment of
pro-Palestinian activists by the national office of the PSC.

“The fact that Palestinians involved in an anti-Zionist campaign are
being kicked out of their committees and local groups proves they [the
Palestine Solidarity Campaign] have no right to represent the
Palestinian cause.”

Sami Ibrahim, Palestinian activist

Last month, I interviewed Sami Ibrahim. A Palestinian, Ibrahim was
chairman of a regional PSC group in 2010. After six months in the post,
he was ignominiously removed following a campaign of harassment and
innuendo from inside the PSC. The pressure on Sami began when a man
named Anthony Cooper noted that he runs a website called Shoah – the
Palestinian Holocaust.

And who is Anthony Cooper, this informer on ethics to the PSC?

Well, he introduces himself in online debates as follows:

I am a Jewish supporter of Israel. Whilst surrounded by enemies bent on
her destruction she has gathered and absorbed people from different
parts of the world with different cultures and in so doing developed one
of her own. Her people are resourceful and resilient. She has problems
but her achievements are remarkable and perhaps unparalleled.

Cooper claims he has been “researching” the background of many local PSC
groups. He has pointed out numerous websites which he considers (as a
“Jewish supporter of Israel”) to contain “Holocaust denial” material.
Some of these have been “linked to” PSC members’ own websites.

Let us note the words “linked to” here. Not even written. But merely
“linked to”. Links which, after pressure from PSC, its members (those
who still care about remaining members) have had to remove.

Ibrahim does indeed write for the website Shoah – the Palestinian
Holocaust. It carries strongly worded material and stories from
Palestinian sources on Israeli racism and, significantly, makes no
concessions to Jewish sensibilities.

Is writing for such a website a problem for a Palestinian member of the
PSC? Apparently so.

Ibrahim told me: “Somebody in the Birmingham PSC with links to the
Zionist movement began to take action against me. They asked me to be
investigated about my links to Shoah.org.”

Ibrahim disputed the propriety of an investigation, one that he
suspected was being set in motion by the very Zionists who occupy his
people’s land, the very people that the PSC is supposed to be in
“solidarity” with!

He continued: “I refused to attend the meeting and be questioned by a
bunch of thugs. So, I was removed by vote as the chairman there and then.”

Nothing official was processed or put to the national membership of the
PSC, many of whom doubtless would have opposed the intimidation and
harassment of a Palestinian member.

“I feel they [the PSC] have no right to represent the Palestinians,” he
said, adding:

Their policies are pro the “two-state” solution. But such a decision is
up to the Palestinians to decide, not a foreign campaign group. The fact
that Palestinians involved in an anti-Zionist campaign are being kicked
out of their committees and local groups proves they [PSC] have no right
to represent the Palestinian cause.

“Today the PSC is attempting to perform a trick that is both impossible
and, let's be frank, pointless. They are attempting to create a
pro-Palestinian organization that does not hurt Zionist sensibilities.”

Mr Ibrahim’s experience with the PSC reveals a weakness at the
organizations heart.

Today the PSC is attempting to perform a trick that is both impossible
and, let's be frank, pointless. They are attempting to create a
pro-Palestinian organization that does not hurt Zionist sensibilities.In
bed with the Islamophobic Zionist Harry’s Place

And what of the PSC’s rather too cosy relationship with the Zionist blog
Harry’s Place?

Ibrahim’s woes with the PSC did not stop when he was vaulted from the
local chairmanship. The harassment continued in other arenas. Following
a campaign by the Zionists of the website Harry’s Place, he was
suspended from the weekly radio show, “Face the Nation”, broadcast in
Birmingham on Unity FM, because of his links with the website Shoah –
the Palestinian Holocaust and for broadcasting an interview with Gilad
Atzmon!

Ibrahim said: “The letter that was used to accuse me of anti-Semitism
came from Harry’s Place. But it included an email from the recent chair
of the Birmingham PSC, Naim Malik. It seems to me that Birmingham PSC
has links to Harry’s Place somehow.”

“A Palestine Solidarity Campaign should be working to END Zionism. Not
ease it a little or work alongside it. To be in solidarity with the
people of Palestine means fighting Zionism.”

This is disturbing. For it appears that it’s not only the London office
of the PSC that is taking tacit (or explicit) guidance from the enemies
of our movement, but some of its regional offices as well. ...

The rejection of Gilad Atzmon's voice by the PSC is more significant
than it may at first appear. For it cuts to the very heart of where the
movement to end Zionism (not merely to oppose it, but to end it) should
be heading from now.

It is their mistake not to engage with Gilad Atzmon’s writing. His blog
on Zionism-related issues is even more popular than that of the
Electronic Intifada (presumably by dint of its name far too radical for
PSC too).

“The Jewish state’s sayanim target those they see as effective, painting
us all as radicals and extremists, in the hope that the media, our
places of work and even the pro-Palestinian movement itself will shun
us.” ...

Meanwhile, the Jewish Chronicle, Harry's Place and the PSC central
office, should take note of the following news. Last night’s “Raise Your
Banner” event in Bradford, in which Gilad Atzmon performed, was sold
out. Not a single ticket remained. And no protest against the artist and
author took place.

When Atzmon asked the audience if they thought that the Board of
Deputies of British Jews had a right to control artistic freedom in
Britain, the crowd of some hundreds yelled a hearty “No!”

They would answer the same to Sarah Colborne.

(2) Angry Jews: Victimhood is their story of their past, but the trauma
is a taught memory

From: "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)"
<sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2011

Why Are They So Angry?

Gershom Gorenberg, November 25, 2011

http://prospect.org/article/why-are-they-so-angry

"He's lying! He's lying!" the man at the back of the hall shouted, in a
tone as desperate as it was angry.
"He hasn't read the Geneva Conventions. You haven't read them, so you
don't know he's lying."

The primary object of his rage was me. The secondary object, it seemed,
was his fellow congregants, who'd allowed me to lecture at his New
York-area synagogue.

I'd spoken about threats to Israel's democracy, including those posed by
ongoing expansion of West Bank settlements. This was the first time, I'd
been told, that the congregation had hosted a speaker on Israel from
outside a spectrum running from right-wing to very right-wing. During
the question-and-answer period, I was asked about my statement that the
legal counsel of Israel's Foreign Ministry had warned before the first
West Bank settlement was established that it would violate the agreement
of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

That's when the man in the back came unstuck. The congregation's rabbi,
who was moderating the Q&A session with the trained calm of a
psychologist running group therapy for fractured families, slipped to
the back of the room and talked him down.

The incident stayed with me, demanding to be decoded.

True, the particular synagogue was Orthodox, and more Orthodox Jews
espouse hawkish views than do members of other Jewish denominations. But
I've been lecturing around North America for three weeks, and the
experience fit a pattern. I've been told repeatedly that it's a
breakthrough for a congregation to invite someone with my views, which
back home in Israel register as well within the political mainstream. On
previous trips to America, I've faced similar outbursts in non-Orthodox
synagogues and on college campuses.

High-pitched as Israeli political disputes are-and as eager as the
Israeli parliamentary right is to restrict dissent, an Israeli dove
visiting Jewish North America can still feel that he's stumbled into a
constricted, out-of-joint alternate universe. The moderate Israeli
left's argument that West Bank settlements undermine democracy and peace
efforts is sometimes greeted in the U.S. as treasonous, sometimes as
daringly unconventional. Ideas that have gone extinct in Israel still
wander the American landscape, as if it were a Jurassic Park of the
mind. What's going on?

Part of the answer is that Jewish politics reflect general American
politics, where conservatives hurl forged-in-Fox, counterfactual
cannonballs rather than discuss ideas. And the minority of American Jews
who are devoted to the single issue of defending Israeli policy, and who
can dominate discussion within the Jewish community, inhabit an echo
chamber that may be even better sealed than the conservative separate
universe in domestic politics. Golda Meir-remembered in Israel as the
prime minister who failed to see signs of oncoming war in 1973-is still
regarded as a hero in America. (Imagine visiting some distant
"pro-American" island where people put up busts of James Buchanan and
Herbert
Hoover.)

Inside the echo chamber, advocacy groups provide "facts" on key issues.
Press reports or historical accounts that tell a different story are
seen not only as mistaken, but as deliberately false. So, for instance,
the tiny minority of scholars of international law who defend the
legality of Israeli settlements-especially Reagan Democrat Eugene
Rostow-are endlessly quoted on advocacy websites. This half-explains the
despairing anger of the man in the back of the room when I quoted a top
Israeli official saying the opposite.

Of course, there are many American Jews whose liberal views on domestic
issues are matched by their support of a two-state solution between
Israel and the Palestinians. Some feel constrained in speaking as
clearly as they'd like about Israel for fear of being identified with
another rigidly ideological contingent:
Diaspora Palestinians with their own overdone nationalism, and a small
coterie of Jews whose express their disappointment with Zionism through
mirror-image anti-Zionism-as if denying Jewish rights to national
self-determination were somehow more progressive than denying
Palestinian rights. But realistic, moderate progressives always face the
challenge of portraying a more complex reality than extremists recognize.

And a third factor-besides the echo-chamber effect and concern about
extreme anti-Israel positions-is at work in the sudden hostility of some
American Jews at criticism of Israel. It has to do with the place that
Israel often fills in Jewish identity in America. An incident my son
recounted after a visit to the United States as a teen alluded to the
issue: He'd come to take part in an international interfaith camp, and
one day the campers were brought to a nearby city to visit a church,
synagogue, and mosque. At the synagogue, he was surprised to see an
Israeli and an American flag in the sanctuary. He couldn't recall seeing
an Israeli flag in an Israeli synagogue, and asked the executive
director of the congregation why it was there. "The Holocaust is very
present in our hearts," came the response.

At first glance, that's a non sequitur. Unpacked, the comment means that
victimhood is part of the story that Jews tell about their past. In that
story, a besieged, endangered Israel is the sequel to the Holocaust.
Like most narratives, this one contains pieces of truth alongside
distortions and anachronisms. The victimhood was very real. But for most
Jews living today in America, the trauma is a taught memory, passed on
by previous generations, out of sync with their current condition. And
seeing Israel as the symbol of victimhood is discordant: Zionism was a
rebellion against Jewish powerlessness, and present-day Israel testifies
to the rebellion's success.

One of the first rules of conflict resolution, though, is that when you
challenge a group's narrative, some members will take that as a denial
of their identity.
They'll get angry. They will repeat their story more loudly. They may
accuse you of telling falsehoods.

This is not a reason for a journalist, historian or activist to be
silent. It does make sense of the fury with which people sometimes
defend the old story. It explains why changing the story takes time. I
needed to tell the facts as best I know them. I'm glad someone else was
there to calm the guy at the back of the room.

(3) Arab citizens of Israel ineligible to live in Settlements

From: "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)"
<sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/opinion/sunday/israels-other-occupation.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Israel's Other Occupation

By GERSHOM GORENBERG, November 25, 2011

Jerusalem

"CLEARLY, there's a war here, sometimes even worse than the one in
Samaria," the yeshiva student said. "It's not a war with guns. It's a
war of light against darkness."

We were sitting in the mixed Jewish-Arab town of Acre in Israel. The war
he described was another front in the struggle he knew from growing up
in a settlement in the northern West Bank, or Samaria: the daily contest
between Jews and Palestinians for control of the land between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
The explicit reason that his yeshiva had been established in Acre was to
serve as a bridgehead in that struggle, just as West Bank settlements
are built to bolster the Jewish hold on land there.

Israeli politicians and pundits labeled the Oct. 3 burning of a mosque
in Tuba Zangaria, an Arab community in northern Israel, and the
subsequent desecration of Arab graves in Jaffa as a sudden escalation.
But they were mistaken.

For several years, extremist West Bank settlers have conducted a
campaign of low-level violence against their Palestinian neighbors -
destroying property, vandalizing mosques and occasionally injuring
people. Such "price tag" attacks, intended to intimidate Palestinians
and make Israeli leaders pay a price for enforcing the law against
settlers, have become part of the routine of conflict in occupied territory.
Now that conflict is coming home. The words "price tag" spray-painted in
Hebrew on the wall of a burned mosque inside Israel's pre-1967 borders
transformed Israel's Arab citizens into targets and tore at the
all-too-delicate fabric of a shared democracy.

Indeed, the mosque burning represented the violent, visible edge of a
larger change: the ethnic conflict in the West Bank is metastasizing
into Israel, threatening its democracy and unraveling its society.
The agents of this change include veterans of West Bank settlements
seeking to establish a presence in shared Jewish-Arab cities in Israel
and politicians backing a wave of legislation intended to reduce the
rights of Arab citizens.

JEWS began settling in occupied territory weeks after the Israeli
conquest of 1967. The strategy of settlement was born before Israeli
independence in 1948, when Jews and Arabs fought for ethnic dominance
over all of British-ruled Palestine. By settling the land, Jews sought
to set the borders of the future Jewish state, one acre at a time.
Post-1967 settlers, though they saw themselves as a vanguard, were
really re-enacting the past, reviving an ethnic wrestling match - this
time backed by an existing Jewish state.
Now, the attitudes and methods of West Bank settlement are inevitably
leaking back across a border that Israel does not even show on its maps.

In 1996, the former Israeli chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and his son
Shmuel Eliyahu established a project to place "core groups" of their
followers in depressed Jewish towns. The Eliyahus assigned their first
core group to Acre.

Their goal was to bolster religious education and build faith-based
charities. The elder Eliyahu, now deceased, was a pre-eminent teacher of
the pro-settlement religious right. His son recently gained notoriety
for issuing a religious ruling forbidding Jews to rent or sell real
estate to non-Jews anywhere in Israel.

The group's rabbi, Nachshon Cohen, was an alumnus of a yeshiva in the
Palestinian city of Hebron. The reason to start the religious project in
Acre was "the demographic problem," Rabbi Cohen explained to me. The
mixed city had about 45,000 residents. But Jews were leaving because
"people didn't want to live next to Arabs." The energy of the new core
group, Rabbi Cohen hoped, would keep the town Jewish.

A key part of the settlement project in Acre was the establishment of a
hesder yeshiva - a seminary mixing religious study and army service. It,
too, would help draw Jews who were both "ideological" and "on a high
socio-economic level" into the town, the yeshiva's director, Boaz Amir,
told me. While moving back into Israel and speaking of helping poor
Israelis, the settlers were reimporting the message of Jewish-Arab
struggle. It was gentrification with a hard ethnonationalist edge.

Acre is just one of the mixed Jewish-Arab cities that religious
nationalists have set out to "save." The Acre core group has grown to
110 families, roughly one percent of the town's population. Drawing this
number of potential settlers to live inside Israel has an insignificant
effect on settlement growth in the West Bank.

Yet it broadcasts a message that Israel's Arab citizens are strangers
and opponents rather than members of a shared polity. Rabbi Yossi Stern,
the yeshiva's dean, described the transformation of Acre's Wolfson
neighborhood - a set of Soviet-style apartment blocks built in the 1960s
- from a Jewish to a majority-Arab area as "a national sin." He argued
forcefully that Jews should move back into such shifting areas. For
Arabs and Jews "to be in the same neighborhood, in the same building ...
that's not good," Rabbi Stern said. Coexistence was clearly not his goal.

Segregation, though, is intrinsically a denial of rights. The
countryside throughout the Galilee region of northern Israel is dotted
with a form of segregated exurb, the "community settlement." In each of
these exclusive communities, a membership committee vets prospective
residents before they can buy homes.
The concept, born in the mid-1970s, originally allowed West Bank
settlers to ensure that their neighbors shared their "ideological-social
background," including the same shade of religious commitment. The Likud
government that came to power in 1977 applied the model to create
Jewish-only bedroom communities in the Galilee and in the Negev.

In 1995, Adel and Iman Ka'adan, an Israeli Arab couple, tried to buy a
lot in the community settlement of Katzir. As educated professionals
eager to live in a place with good schools for their daughters, they fit
the community's profile. But as Arabs they were ineligible. Their legal
battle led to an Israeli Supreme Court decision in 2000 that rejected
discrimination against Arab citizens, stressing, "equality is one of the
foundational principles of the State of Israel."

Katzir's membership committee proceeded to turn the Ka'adans down again
on the grounds that they would not fit in socially. It took five more
years in court before they were they allowed to buy land there. But last
April, the legislature overrode the judiciary, when the Knesset passed a
law authorizing community settlements in the Galilee and Negev to reject
candidates who did not fit their "social-cultural fabric." The new law
may not hurt the Ka'adans, but other Israeli Arabs will not be able to
benefit from their Supreme Court victory.

That law is not an isolated incident. In its current term, the Knesset
has sought to turn parliamentary power against democratic principles and
Israel's Arab minority. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's far-right
Yisrael Beiteinu party has led the offensive, but other legislators have
joined it. Members of Tzipi Livni's Kadima party co-wrote the community
settlements law.

Another law makes it illegal to call for consumer boycotts of products
from settlements. Other bills would require loyalty oaths to Israel as a
Jewish and democratic state and to its flag and national anthem. They
may never pass but they serve as political theater, labeling the Arab
minority as disloyal.

Israel's courts, human rights groups and large parts of the public have
fought back, seeking to preserve the principle of equality and the
fragile sense of a shared society. The problem they face is that Israel
remains tied to the West Bank and the settlement enterprise. And the
ethnic struggle cannot be kept on one side of an unmarked border.

If and when Israel finally leaves the West Bank quagmire behind, it will
face a further challenge: the settlers need to be brought home. But
allowing them to apply their ideology inside Israel, or to transplant
whole communities from the West Bank to the Galilee, will only make the
situation worse in Israel proper.
The reason for Israel to reach a two-state solution and withdraw from
the West Bank is not only to reach peace with the Palestinians living in
what is now occupied territory. It is to ensure that Israel itself
remains a democracy - one with a Jewish majority and a guarantee of
equality for its Arab minority.

Israel does not need to bring the war from Samaria home. It needs to
leave that war in the past.
Gershom Gorenberg is an Israeli journalist and historian and the author
of "The Unmaking of Israel."

(4) Palestinians protest segregated buses

Palestinians protest 'racist' bus policy

Monday, November 21, 2011 , The Guardian on 15 November 2011.

By Phoebe Greenwood

Six Palestinian activists calling themselves "freedom riders" after the
campaigners of the American civil rights movement have been arrested
while attempting to enter Jerusalem on an Israeli bus carrying settlers
through the occupied West Bank.

The activists said they aimed to demonstrate that Israel's occupation of
the West Bank had resulted in a community segregated on racial lines,
comparable to those of the American south in the 1960s, where African
Americans defied segregation by using buses reserved for "whites only".

It is not illegal for Palestinians to travel on Israeli buses in the
West Bank, but Israel has prohibited their entry to the Jewish-only
communities serviced on the routes without an Israeli permit because of
security concerns. Palestinians with West Bank IDs – held by all six
protesters – face arrest if they are found in Jerusalem without an
Israeli permit to work.

Activist Fedi Qura, 23, said Palestinians were routinely refused entry
on these buses because of their race. "Our goal is not just to get on a
bus. Our goal is for a complete Israeli disengagement from the West
Bank. We want to get rid of the settlements, not just the buses that
come with them," he said.

After several buses refused to stop, the six activists succeeded in
boarding one amid a scrum of Israeli border police and journalists – and
to the astonishment of the bus driver and his settler passengers.

The bus travelled a short distance to Hizma checkpoint into Jerusalem,
where frustrated Israeli passengers were allowed to disembark and police
boarded the bus to negotiate with the activists.

Huwaida Arraf, 35, challenged one young Israeli passenger who complained
about the delay the protest had caused to her journey: "Your soldiers
hold us up 10 times longer than this every day at checkpoints across the
West Bank."

After a two-hour standoff with Israeli police, all six activists were
arrested.

An Israeli security official told Associated Press there were proper
channels to get permits, and that the restrictions were imposed due to
security concerns.

The Independent on 21 November 2011.

(5) Israel arrests Freedom Riders challenging segregated buses

From: "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)"
<sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011

http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-arrests-freedom-riders-challenging-apartheid-road-system/10595

Israel arrests "Freedom Riders" challenging apartheid road system

Monday, November 21, 2011 , Electronic Intifada, 15 November 2011.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

“I’m a Freedom Rider! I’m just trying to go to Jerusalem!” shouted
Palestinian activist Huwaida Arraf Tuesday evening as a live Internet
video feed showed Israeli police officers dragging her off a bus linking
Israeli settlements in the West Bank to Jerusalem.

Arraf and five other Palestinian activists boarded segregated Israeli
public bus number 148 — which connects the illegal Israeli settlement of
Ariel to Jerusalem — on Tuesday in an act of civil disobedience aimed to
draw attention to Israeli colonial and apartheid policies and the lack
of basic human rights Palestinians are afforded under this system.

After sitting peacefully on the bus at Israel’s Hizma checkpoint, just
outside the northern entrance to Jerusalem, and nonviolently resisting
attempts by the Israeli authorities to get them off the bus, all six
“Freedom Riders” were eventually removed by force and arrested for
illegally entering Israel without permits.

Another Palestinian Freedom Rider was also arrested while attempting to
ride the segregated buses, and according to a Freedom Riders press
release, was taken with the six other activists to Atarot police station
(“Palestinian Freedom Riders On Their Way to Jerusalem Violently
Arrested on Israeli Settler Bus”). ...

While Palestinians are not explicitly barred from boarding Israeli
public transportation in the West Bank, since most buses pass through
Israeli settlements that are off-limits to Palestinians, the system is
de facto segregated.

“Our challenge is going to be on the ground dealing with the settlers,
but on the other hand, we’re waiting for the peoples’ reactions and the
world’s reactions. Enough talk; we need real action on the ground and
for people to take a side, taking a rightful side against Israeli
discrimination,” Ziada said.

Tense hours at the checkpoint

The Freedom Riders left Ramallah Tuesday afternoon and headed to a bus
stop in the occupied West Bank, which serves Israeli settlers near the
Israeli settlement of Psagot. After a few buses drove past the
Palestinian activists without stopping, six Freedom Riders, and a large
group of journalists, managed to board a bus.

The bus was reportedly followed along its route by Israeli soldiers and
police, and was stopped shortly after arriving at the Hizma checkpoint.
Once there, Israeli settlers who had been on the bus got off, and
Israeli soldiers and police officers boarded to check passengers’ IDs,
according to images broadcast on the Freedom Waves live Internet video
feed. ...

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based
in Jerusalem.

(6) Holocaust reparations -> free Subs, but Germany rebels over Israeli
settlement policy

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@gmail.com> Date: 1 November
2011 13:25

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/10/31/3090034/newspaper-germany-threatens-submarine-delivery-over-settlement-policy

Germany confirms threat to stop sub sale over Israeli settlement policy

October 31, 2011

BERLIN (JTA) – The German government has threatened to halt delivery of
a Dolphin submarine to Israel in protest of its settlements policy, a
German newspaper has confirmed.

In a report published Sunday, German officials confirmed to Der Spiegel
magazine that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel is making the
threat to protest the recent Israeli government-approved construction of
1,100 apartments in the Gilo neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem.

Israel already has three Dolphin-class submarines, which are nuclear
capable, with two more under construction in Kiel, in northern Germany.
Last summer, Germany approved a $189 million discount for the purchase
of a sixth submarine, which costs about $1 billion.

The first two submarines were paid for by the German government, and the
following three were heavily subsidized, according to Der Spiegel. The
newspaper has reported, based on a WikiLeaks cable, that the submarine
subsidies were a response to Israeli demands for Holocaust reparations
from Germany.

(7) Palestinian Church protests Israeli seizure of lands in the
Bethlehem district

From: israel shamir <israel.shamir@gmail.com> Date: 6 November 2011 00:06
 From Fr. Ibrahim Shomali via Fr Labib in San Francisco

Stephen Sizer

Saturday, 5 November 2011

http://stephensizer.blogspot.com/2011/11/palestinian-christians-call-for-open.html

Palestinian Christians call for an open air mass to pray for the end of
the Israeli occupation days after Israel announces a major confiscation
of lands in the town of Beit Jala

Israeli occupation forces have once again attack our town. They have
announced the confiscation of the last green area left for Beit Jala,
and the Bethlehem district. And we refuse to accept the dictation of the
illegal Israeli occupation.

We denounce this new Israeli action as a step towards the consolidation
of injustice and their Apartheid regime; we denounce the annexation of
the most beautiful lands of the Bethlehem district as a direct attack
against the Palestinian people, and particularly against Palestinian
Christians.

We call upon the Quartet members and the rest of the international
community to act in order to stop the Israeli colonial enterprise, and
particularly in the most affected areas such as in and around occupied
East Jerusalem and the Bethlehem district; the fact that confiscation
orders were given a day after Palestine’s admission to UNESCO unveils
the heavily political nature of the Israeli colonial enterprise.

We trust that all our relevant authorities, including our government
leaded by President Mahmoud Abbas, the Latin Patriarchate and civil
society will do everything possible to keep the land in the hands of its
rightful owners, the Palestinian people.

According to the Holy Synod conducted last year in support of the
Christian presence in the Holy Land, it is a must for the church to
support our presence. Accordingly, we call upon the upon the Holy See
and Pope Benedict XVI to act immediately, using all possible ways, to
help protecting our people.

As members of the heroic Palestinian people as well as the oldest
Christian community in the world, we remain attached to the hope for
peace and justice. Jesus Christ was born in Palestine, lived in
Palestine, was crucified in Palestine and resurrected in Palestine. We,
the descendents of his earliest followers, are still waiting for our own
resurrection as a free nation.

We invite all of you to join us in an open air Holy Mass to take place
at the entrance of the Cremisan valley tomorrow Friday 4th of November
at 15:50. The service will be conducted by Father Ibrahim Shomali and
Father Mario Cornoli.

(8) Richard Goldstone defends Israel from Apartheid charge

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/opinion/israel-and-the-apartheid-slander.html

Israel and the Apartheid Slander

By Richard J. Goldstone

Published: October 31, 2011

THE Palestinian Authority’s request for full United Nations membership
has put hope for any two-state solution under increasing pressure. The
need for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians has never been
greater. So it is important to separate legitimate criticism of Israel
from assaults that aim to isolate, demonize and delegitimize it.

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again
is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies. In Cape Town starting on
Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell
Tribunal on Palestine will hold a “hearing” on whether Israel is guilty
of the crime of apartheid. It is not a “tribunal.” The “evidence” is
going to be one-sided and the members of the “jury” are critics whose
harsh views of Israel are well known.

While “apartheid” can have broader meaning, its use is meant to evoke
the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and inaccurate
slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace
negotiations.

I know all too well the cruelty of South Africa’s abhorrent apartheid
system, under which human beings characterized as black had no rights to
vote, hold political office, use “white” toilets or beaches, marry
whites, live in whites-only areas or even be there without a “pass.”
Blacks critically injured in car accidents were left to bleed to death
if there was no “black” ambulance to rush them to a “black” hospital.
“White” hospitals were prohibited from saving their lives.

In assessing the accusation that Israel pursues apartheid policies,
which are by definition primarily about race or ethnicity, it is
important first to distinguish between the situations in Israel, where
Arabs are citizens, and in West Bank areas that remain under Israeli
control in the absence of a peace agreement.

In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the
definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane acts ...
committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic
oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial
group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that
regime.” Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of Israel’s population — vote, have
political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy
positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie
alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical
treatment.

To be sure, there is more de facto separation between Jewish and Arab
populations than Israelis should accept. Much of it is chosen by the
communities themselves. Some results from discrimination. But it is not
apartheid, which consciously enshrines separation as an ideal. In
Israel, equal rights are the law, the aspiration and the ideal;
inequities are often successfully challenged in court.

The situation in the West Bank is more complex. But here too there is no
intent to maintain “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression
and domination by one racial group.” This is a critical distinction,
even if Israel acts oppressively toward Palestinians there. South
Africa’s enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit
the white minority, to the detriment of other races. By contrast, Israel
has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza
and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to
negotiate the parameters.

But until there is a two-state peace, or at least as long as Israel’s
citizens remain under threat of attacks from the West Bank and Gaza,
Israel will see roadblocks and similar measures as necessary for
self-defense, even as Palestinians feel oppressed. As things stand,
attacks from one side are met by counterattacks from the other. And the
deep disputes, claims and counterclaims are only hardened when the
offensive analogy of “apartheid” is invoked.

Those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid often point to
clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing
Palestinians in the West Bank, or the building of what they call an
“apartheid wall” and disparate treatment on West Bank roads. While such
images may appear to invite a superficial comparison, it is disingenuous
to use them to distort the reality. The security barrier was built to
stop unrelenting terrorist attacks; while it has inflicted great
hardship in places, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the state in
many cases to reroute it to minimize unreasonable hardship. Road
restrictions get more intrusive after violent attacks and are
ameliorated when the threat is reduced.

Of course, the Palestinian people have national aspirations and human
rights that all must respect. But those who conflate the situations in
Israel and the West Bank and liken both to the old South Africa do a
disservice to all who hope for justice and peace.

Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and the West Bank cannot be simplified
to a narrative of Jewish discrimination. There is hostility and
suspicion on both sides. Israel, unique among democracies, has been in a
state of war with many of its neighbors who refuse to accept its
existence. Even some Israeli Arabs, because they are citizens of Israel,
have at times come under suspicion from other Arabs as a result of that
longstanding enmity.

The mutual recognition and protection of the human dignity of all people
is indispensable to bringing an end to hatred and anger. The charge that
Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that
precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony.

Richard J. Goldstone, a former justice of the South African
Constitutional Court, led the United Nations fact-finding mission on the
Gaza conflict of 2008-9.

(9) Replies to Goldstone on Apartheid

From: "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)"
<sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/opinion/israel-and-the-lightning-rod-word.html

NYT Letters To the Editor

Israel and the Lightning-Rod Word

Published: November 3, 2011

Re “Israel and the Apartheid Slander,” by Richard J. Goldstone (Op-Ed,
Nov. 1):

Mr. Goldstone and I knew apartheid in South Africa. We knew apartheid as
a discriminatory, repressive system accompanied by the seizure of land
belonging to blacks for the use of whites.

We know something about Gaza, as we investigated Israel’s actions there
in 2009 and concluded that Israel had committed war crimes. I know the
West Bank better than Mr. Goldstone, as from 2001 to 2008, I was special
rapporteur to the Human Rights Council, a United Nations body, on human
rights in the Palestinian territories and visited there regularly.

There are distinctive similarities between apartheid in South Africa and
Israel’s practices in the West Bank. Israel discriminates against
Palestinians in favor of settlers. Its restrictions on freedom of
movement resemble the pass laws of apartheid South Africa.

Israeli practices in the Palestinian territories are repressive. Torture
of Palestinians is rife; houses are destroyed, and there are more
political prisoners in Israeli jails than there were in South Africa
under apartheid. Israel seizes Palestinian land for settlements and for
the construction of the wall.

There are sufficient similarities between the two systems to justify an
investigation into whether or not Israel commits the crime of apartheid
in the Palestinian territories.

Israel refuses to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal
Court. In these circumstances, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine should
examine the question of whether or not Israel should be held accountable
for the crime of apartheid.

JOHN DUGARD
Cape Town, Nov. 2, 2011

The writer is a jury member in the London session of the Russell
Tribunal on Palestine and a witness for the South African session.

To the Editor:

Richard J. Goldstone’s rebuttal of the charges of apartheid against the
Israelis did not mention one crucial point: repeated statements by
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority that Israelis
(meaning Jews) will not be allowed to live in a Palestinian state. If
anything smacks of apartheid, it is this.

Peace between Israel and Palestine will occur only when the Palestinians
put aside these provocative statements and instead sit down at a
negotiating table.

(Rabbi) CHAIM CASPER
North Miami Beach, Nov. 1, 2011

To the Editor:

Richard J. Goldstone’s article splits hairs to rob us of language that
accurately describes the Palestinians’ repression.

Why is it “important first to distinguish between the situations in
Israel ... and in West Bank areas”?

If Alabama had segregated in Montgomery but not in Birmingham, would it
have been responsible for discrimination or not?

But the most appalling insult to logic is the claim that there can be no
apartheid because Israel has no “intention of maintaining” its regime of
“domination by one racial group.”

It’s a fact on the ground, but we can’t call it by its name because
Israel means well?

DAVID MARKOWITZ
Pound Ridge, N.Y., Nov. 1, 2011

To the Editor:

Thank you to Richard J. Goldstone for telling the facts clearly and
objectively. I hope that it will cause at least some people to realize
that their condemnation of Israel as an apartheid state is misplaced.

Using the word “apartheid” in relation to Israel’s policies and actions
is also doing a great disservice to the black South Africans who
suffered so terribly under actual apartheid.

MARCIA SANDLER
Teaneck, N.J., Nov. 1, 2011

(10) Assimilation & Intermarriage: The Threat of Jewish affection for
the non-Jew - JDL

http://www.jdl.org/index.php/threats-adversaries/assimilation-intermarriage/

Assimilation & Intermarriage

Among the Biggest Threats to Jewish Survival

There is perhaps no greater threat to the well-being of Am Yisrael, the
Jewish nation, than assimilation and its all too natural consequence,
intermarriage. The Jewish Defense League seeks to combat not only the
multifarious physical and spiritual forms of Jew-hatred but also the
spiritual malaise of Jewish indifference and ignorance, and the threat
of Jewish affection for the non-Jew.

As if we face too few external threats, an alarming number of Jews
willingly flee from Judaism into melting pots, secular "culture" and
morality, and often most devastatingly the arms of non-Jewish spouses.
The unfortunate reality of the situation is that assimilation and
intermarriage have done more to destroy Jewish souls than most every
form of persecution and act of genocide we have suffered as a people
throughout time immemorial.

Only through Jewish pride and education will Jews be protected from
these insidious, corrupting forces. While we believe with eternal faith
that Ha-Shem's chosen people will ultimately be saved from all perils
and dwell securely in our land, until those prophecies are fulfilled we
exist in a troubled world, and we must therefore guard ourselves against
these veiled dangers. The future of our children, and our children's
children, depend on whether we choose the Torah and life (since the
Torah is called by G-d the Tree of Life for the Jew), or assimilation,
intermarriage and death.

This section of our new site will be expanded in the coming weeks beyond
this initial content.

(11) Israeli Municipality to demolish Moorish entrance Gate to
Jerusalem’s Old City

From: Kristoffer Larsson <krislarsson@comhem.se> Date: 30 October 2011
21:28

http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17864

Israeli Municipality to Demolish Dung Gate Bridge

Date : 25/10/2011 Time : 13:50

JERUSALEM, October 25, 2011 (WAFA) - Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem
said Tuesday that Bab El-Magharbeh (Dung Gate) bridge in Jerusalem’s Old
City is in danger of collapse or fire and must be demolished within 30 days.

Israeli authorities issued, five months ago, a permit to demolish the
Dung Gate bridge and build another one in accordance with Israeli plans
which aim to Judaize the area, but the police postponed the demolition
for fear of the outbreak of protests by Palestinians.

Israeli authorities are working to change the character of Jerusalem’s
Old City, including the demolition of the Dung Gate bridge, which is
used by Israeli police and security as well as the Jews when entering
Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyards.

The engineer in charge of the Western (Wailing) Wall said that if the
bridge is not demolished, the Israeli municipality will seek legal action.

T.R./F.J. ==

(12) Moroccans' Gate to the Old City

Moroccans' Gate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_of_the_Temple_Mount

The Moroccans' Gate, Mugrabi Gate or Gate of the Moors, (Arabic: Bab
al-Magharbeh; Hebrew: Shaar HaMughrabim), is located on the western
flank. Over the years, the external façade of Barclay's Gate was covered
and the ground outside the Temple Mount was raised many meters above the
lintel of the gate. At some stage, probably in the 12th century and
maybe even later, a new gate called Bab al-Magharbeh was installed in
the Western Wall above the level of the Barclay Gate. It was named after
the residents of the adjacent neighborhood, who had come to Jerusalem
from Morocco in the days of Saladin. This gate is open to this day and
is the only entrance to the Temple Mount for non-Muslims.

In 2007, after a landslide two years earlier made the earthen ramp
leading to the Mugrabi Gate unsafe and in danger of collapse, the Israel
Antiquities Authority started work on the construction of a temporary
wooden pedestrian pathway to the Temple Mount.

This page was last modified on 16 August 2011 at 14:47.