AxisMundi Jerusalem

The Mysterious Mr. Mitchell’s MacGuffin

It’s a bit like a Hitchock thriller. Nobody knows where he is — not even the U.S. State Department — and nobody knows when he will show up in Israel. All we know is, suspense is building and it’s time to watch out for surprises.

President Barack Obama’s Middle East peace envoy Senator George Mitchell is somewhere in transit — probably – and expected in Israel and the Palestinian Territories next week –  sometime.

A State Dept. spokesman at Wednesday’s regular briefing could not say much at all about Mitchell’s movements beyond he has left Washington.  Could he be in London meeting the Syrian foreign minister? Don’t know.  Is he going to Turkey as well? We will try to find that out. When is he going to be in Israel? Can’t say exactly.

Mitchell is famous for playing his cards very close to his vest and his vest very close to his skin. He gives out very little information when he is engaged in high-stakes mediation.

There is an unmistakable aura of mystery about what is going on at this delicate stage of talks with Israel and the Palestinians to get stalled peace negotiations started again, by resolving what looks like a standoff between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and Washington’s demand that it cease.

Palestinians shoot but to celebrate

The gunfire was not a clash between Palestinian and Israeli forces, nor a violent dispute between rival Palestinian factions. It was a Palestinian celebration of students passing their high school matriculation exam — a tradition celebrated in some Arab countries.

More than 86,000 high school students in the West Bank and Gaza Strip took the exam, an entry card into college.

In lieu of any formal graduation ceremonies, celebrants fire live ammunition into the air, shoot off fireworks and hand out candy. Music echoes in the street during outdoor parties.

On Tuesday, the local mobile telephone network was jammed as parents and students spread the news on who passed and who failed.

PHOTO:Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (2nd R) visits a classroom during matriculation exams in the West Bank city of Ramallah June 11, 2007, in this picture released by the Palestinian Press Office (PPO).

One Dollar Salary Cuts to Fight Jerusalem “Judaization”?

How much is one dollar of your salary worth? It depends on how you use it.

Jehad Abu Zneid, a Fatah representative in Jerusalem for the Palestinian Legislative Council, made a rather novel bid today for a one dollar salary cut from all Palestinian Authority civil servants. The money would be used  to counter “Israeli Judaization efforts” in Jerusalem.

At a time when the financial situation of the PA is in dire straits,  Abu Zneid says her proposal is a creative way to help Palestinian families in Jerusalem who face eviction or whose homes have been demolished.

“We need to get urgent support for Jerusalem, and so we need an urgent strategy,” she said.

There are 165,000 civil servants in the PA, so that would generate 165,000 dollars–assuming everyone paid up.

The proposal comes at a time of increasing tension surrounding the issue of building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem (check out our article on that here, and  a commentary in our previous blog post by correspondent Doug Hamilton).

Insulting the intelligence

Good morning, children.

Today we are going to learn about two common rhetorical tricks that help greatly with the cynical manipulation of arguments.

First, disingenuousness. The Oxford Shorter English Dictionary defines disingenuous as “lacking in frankness, insincere, morally fraudulent”, in the sense of pretending not to know what you in fact know very well.

Second, the straw man argument.  Wikipedia defines this as misrepresentation of an opponent’s position, to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the straw man) and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original proposition.

Today, thanks to Mr Netanyahu, we have one handy slice of well-worn rhetoric to illustrate both rhetorical tricks.

Techniques and counter-techniques in anti-barrier protests

Our TV cameramen and stills photographers prefer to shoot anywhere except in the West Bank village of Bilin. That’s where Palestinians, foreign supporters and Israeli left-wing activists hold weekly protests against the barrier Israel is building in the occupied West Bank.

Seeking to quell protests in Bilin,  Israeli security forces spray a foul-smelling substance that sticks — for a long time — to skin, clothes and cameras.  Staying their ground, protesters have been trying a counter-measure: yellow plastic suits and masks.

Our cameramen don’t have those “protection suits”. So they use another technique when the spray starts to fly — they take wing, leaving the camera running as they seek cover.

Click hear to watch the full picture.

PHOTO: Friday protest in Bil’in. July 10, 2009. REUTERS/Fadi Arouri

Collective Punishment in Religious Jerusalem Neighborhoods?

Much ink has been spilled about the riots of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Jerusalem over the past several weeks (See our article on that here). Among some sources, there’s a note of disdain for this sector of Jewish population, seen as being contemptuous of the state of Israel while making up the largest portion of the country’s welfare recipients.

So I was a bit surprised to see one group rise to defend the Haredim this week –left-leaning bloggers. A few critiques were posted about Israel’s Jerusalem municipality’s reaction to Haredi riots. Philip Weiss, in his blog Mondoweiss, calls the police treatment of Haredim “bigotry.” And Jerry Haber, of the Magnes Zionist blog, began his latest entry saying, “I tend to distrust news reports about Haredim the same way I distrust news reports about Palestinians; both are hated sectors in Israeli society (though the haredim that participate in the state are much more privileged.)”

Not only bloggers took issue with police treatment of Haredi communities. Haaretz, Israel’s left-leaning daily, had an editorial condemning Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s “collective punishment against Haredim”.  They criticised his decision to halt municipal services to two ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, Mea She’arim and Geula in response to the street violence.  Barkat said this was done for safety reasons, to prevent attacks on municipal workers.

Arguing that only a slim minority out of “tens of thousands” of residents participated in rioting, the Haaretz editorial says that “for the municipality to declare war on an entire community will only further inflame passions and push Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community into a “them or us” stance toward the authorities … [Barkat] must strive to be a unifier and conciliator … Law enforcement is important, and he must insist on it. But he must not engage in populist hooliganism of his own.”

In the meantime, many of us may be wondering why all this rioting started in the first place. Recently, journalist Matt Baynon Rees wrote on just this subject, suggesting that the situation is actually a “sign of good times in Israel. Here’s why: It shows that Israelis think there’s nothing worse to worry about.” Despite difficulties on the horizon, such as the Israeli-U.S. standoff over a settlement freeze,  Rees argues that in comparison to the days of the Intifada, “these are easy times for Israel”.

Jerry Haber offers other reasons, ranging from a long-time psyche of victimisation among Haredim in Israel, to frustrations over the mayor’s decision to keep open a municipal parking lot on the Sabbath and the failure to stop Jerusalem’s gay pride parade. He also says that many Haredim don’t believe allegations by Israeli legal authorities that an ultra-Orthodox woman starved her child — accusations that touched off the urban violence (read more here).

Haber’s theory? “It’s vacation time for yeshiva bachurim [boys in religious school], and it’s hot outside. Those of us who have lived in Jerusalem for a long time … will recall that protests of this sort are a summer activity.”

Death, destruction and moral relativity

Comparing one theatre of conflict with another is always dangerous, often meaningless, unless they belong in the same timeframe and context e.g. the World War Two of Europe and that of the Far East.

This week saw publication in Israel of a report by the activist group Breaking the Silence. Featuring testimony from Israel’s own soldiers on the behaviour of troops in January’s Gaza offensive, it raised questions about the alleged “moral degeneration” of the armed forces, their alleged preference for risking civilian casualties rather than casualties in their own ranks, through hesitation or over-cautious trigger fingers. The army’s response was angry and indignant. Defence Minister Ehud Barak repeated his claim that Israel has “one of the most moral armies in the world”.

This is a slippery concept, because as armies move along the sliding scale of conflict — from robust policing or anti-guerrilla operations to total war for national survival — the notion of what is moral conduct and what is immoral is progressively lost.

Britain’s wartime “Bomber” Harris in Europe and America’s Curtis LeMay in the Pacfic were airforce generals who had no trouble with killing as many German and Japanese civilians as possible, in avowedly terroristic incendiary raids by fleets of bombers with the approval of their political leaders.

Harris, most notoriously, bombed Dresden. But it was only one of many German cities fire-bombed to hasten the collapse of the Third Reich. LeMay on 9 March 1945 sent 330 B-29s  to Toyko where in the space of a few hours their napalm incendiaries roasted to death 100,000 Japanese civilians, to the extent that pilots said they could smell burning flesh in the rising columns of smoke.  You can read about this in ”Nemesis” by British military historian Max Hastings, who quotes LeMay as saying his policy was to ”bomb and burn ‘em till they quit”.

Hastings quotes the official U.S. Army Airforce history of LeMay’s command, the Twentieth Airforce, calling its blitz on Japan “this fiery perfection, which literally burnt Japan out of the war”. “In its climactic five months of jellied fire attacks, the vaunted Twentieth killed outright 310,000 Japanese, injured 412,000 more and rendered 9,200,000 homeless. Never in the history of war had such colossal devastation been visited on an enemy at so slight a cost to the conqueror … The 1945 application of American Air Power, so destructive and concentrated as to cremate 65 Japanese cities in five months, forced an enemy’s surrender without land invasion for the first time in military history …”

Hasting quotes LeMay, who like Harris, he says, remained impenitent to the end: ”Nothing new about death, nothing new about deaths caused militarily. We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night 9-10 March than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined,” he said.

Poisonous Plans:Revealing the Truth? Or Taking Down Mahmoud Abbas?

This week, Farouq al-Qadoumi, general secretary of the Fatah party’s Central Committee, set off a firestorm in the Arab media. He released documents that he claims links Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to a plot to poison Yasser Arafat. The episode not only stoked controversy among Palestinian political factions, it led to the shutting down of the Arabic news broadcaster Al-Jazeera in the West Bank.

Al-Qadoumi has only released some parts of the document in question. According to Al-Jazeera, Al-Qadoumi says that Arafat gave him a record of the secret meeting before his death, and that a plot existed in which Abbas and security adviser Mohammed Dahlan met with former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and some US intelligence agents.

The parts released include a quote from Sharon arguing for assassinating Arafat using poison, to which Abbas replies “If Arafat dies before we’re able to gain control of the ground, and all the organization including Fatah and the Al-Aqsa Brigade, then we will face huge difficulties.” Abbas also supposedly suggests passing Israeli plans for “cleansing” Palestinian resistance leadership through Arafat himself. Al-Jazeera also quotes a part of the document where Dahlan allegedly told Sharon that he was working on penetrating the ranks of Palestinian organizations. (See AL-Jazeera’s report here. Note: this is in Arabic)

Abbas supporters in Fatah say the documents are false: “Qadoumi is trying to split Fatah and prevent the holding of the 6th Congress,” the Central Committee added in [a statement], referring to plans to hold a much delayed party assembly in the West Bank on Aug. 4, the first such congress in 20 years.” (Read the entire report here).

Al-Qadoumi, who resides in Tunis, is against holding the conference in land under Israeli occupation. Qadoumi and his supporters think the conference should be held abroad, as it was previously.

In the wake of these accusations, the Palestinian Authority closed down the Al-Jazeera news station in the West Bank, arguing that it was “spreading falsehoods” and “inciting viewers against authorities”. Many speculate that the reason has to do with Al-Jazeera’s lengthy coverage of Al-Qadoumi that day, as well as a feeling among Fatah members and the PA that Al-Jazeera is biased against them. Al-Jazeera rejected the claims, arguing that all Arabic stations were covering al-Qadoumi.

Man with a plan

Israel’s annual political exercise of passing a budget reached a successful conclusion on Wednesday, albeit a few months behind schedule given that 2009 is already more than halfway through.

Another plus for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is that he was able to make history without much diplomatic risk, but by getting Israel’s fractious parliament to back the nation’s first two-year spending plan.

The new budget totals 316.5 billion shekels ($80.7 billion) for 2009, and an additional 325.3 billion shekels ($82.9 billion) earmarked for next year, 2010.

The final budget vote (it had to pass three) took an amazingly brief amount of time — just four and a half hours – about half of what was expected. The unanticipated brevity was made possible when Kadima, the largest, centrist, opposition party obliged by lifting a series of budgetary amendments from the agenda, removing the need to hold a list of additional tedious roll-call votes.

Netanyahu had to be present for the duration of the voting, as he couldn’t afford to leave the plenum before the budget passed, without risking the possible breakdown of his carefully stitched ruling coalition that passed the measure within hours of a Cinderella deadline. Under the law, Netanyahu had to get the budget passed by Thursday or his government would have fallen – according to a Parliamentary measure of a few months ago that extended the deadline for getting the state budget passed.

So wearying was the process that some votes were done by show of hand, instead of the customary electronic push of a button, just to give lawmakers some exercise, the Ynet Web site said. Netanyahu was seen whiling away the more boring moments by busying himself with a book about Napoleon, and Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab lawmaker, perused a volume by the late Palestinian author, Mahmoud Darwish.

“Breaking the Silence” Takes on Cast Lead

After a round of reports and outside critiques of the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead were released two weeks ago, this week the criticism comes from within.

Israeli activist group “Breaking the Silence” has released a new set of testimonies from Israeli soldiers who took part in the Gaza offensive launched this winter.

You can find the entire set of testimonies translated on their website here.

As our correspondent Douglas Hamilton reports, the 30 testimonies collected say that the “Israeli army’s imperative was to minimise its own casualties to ensure Israeli public support for the operation.”

“If you’re not sure, kill. Fire power was insane. We went in and the booms were just mad,” says one testimony.

The testimomies were mostly anonymous because conscripted IDF soldiers are not supposed to speak to the media, making some of the stories hard to verify.

Some themes emerged however, such as the “Neighbor Procedure”, where Palestinian civilians were made to enter suspect buildings ahead of IDF troops or the loose interpretation of rules that require soldiers to try and distinguish between combatants and civilians.