AxisMundi Jerusalem
Inside Israel and the Palestinian Territories
“Big Brother” bumbles into West Bank
It’s a reality television show whose contestants are isolated from the outside world, but “Big Brother” in Israel has managed to set off yet another controversy over Palestine policies.
Cameras at the studio-cum-commune outside Jerusalem caught Edna Canetti, a 54-year-old liberal activist, telling fellow residents over the weekend she wanted to see a peaceful popular campaign against Israel’s West Bank occupation.
“It bothers me that you’re silent. What’s needed is a revolt,” she declared after refusing to play along with a challenge in which contestants were divided into two groups — “rich” versus “poor” — with a plexiglass barrier between them.
Shifting to Middle East politics, Canetti said Palestinians should similarly tell Israel: “Shove your laws … We’re not going through that checkpoint and we’re not showing you IDs … This is our land.”
The remarks were in themselves unremarkable for Big Brother, an international franchise whose dramatic formula is based on the premise that very different people, cooped up together for weeks, will grow fractious. Yet while Canetti’s assertions met with bored or exasperated shrugs inside the Big Brother house, they found a far angrier audience on the Israeli far-right.
Michael Ben-Ari, a lawmaker from the National Union party who has himself been the subject of public censure after urging Israeli military conscripts to refuse orders to evacuate Jewish settlers from the West Bank, accused Canetti of sedition.
“Mrs. Canetti is, in effect, encouraging Arabs to rise up against the State of Israel, the violation of Israel Defence Force (IDF) troops’ orders, and even open insurrection,” Ben-Ari wrote in a complaint that his spokesman said had been mailed to the Justice Ministry along with a demand for a criminal investigation.
Internal Investigation
As we reported here Israel’s army gave itself a clean bill of health today for its conduct in the recent offensive in Gaza – saying a series of internal investigations had found no evidence of serious misconduct by its soldiers during the campaign.
Human rights groups have cast doubt on these internal investigations and have demanded that the IDF opens itself up to independent investigators to probe numerous allegations of serious misconduct and war crimes that stemmed from the 22-day offensive that Israel launched to counter cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza.
While there might be doubts in some quarters about the seriousness or the effort that went in to the IDF internal investigations – there can be no doubt that a lot of time and effort went in to the making of the video below, shown to journalists at a press conference and now posted on YouTube, which the IDF says explains how Hamas, the Islamist group that rules in Gaza, operates.
hmm, so the IDF gave itself a clean bill of health in its investigation of…itself??, is this for real? that’s like asking the saudis if their puritanical brand of islam is moderate, and they give a resounding, YES. oh and if Iran should be “ostracized” for supplying weapons to hamas, then shouldn’t american be “ostracized” for supplying weapons of all sorts to israel? let’s get real here, everyone knows there are numerous guilty parties in this conflict, its foolish to think this is a one sided issue.
Breaking Ranks
Its been two months since Israel ended its 22-day offensive in Gaza – two months during which Israel has been weighing up the costs and the benefits of what was achieved in the fierce fighting.
Strong international condemnation of the offensive – and the slew of boycotts, bans and blunt dioplomacy that have followed – has been met with a mix of incredulity, anger and resignation in Israel.
Much of the condemnation of the offensive has been attributed in Israel to the standard leftist, anti-Israeli, anti-semitic rabble-rousing from the usual quarters along with a failure elsewhere in the world to understand the gravity of the rocket fire from Gaza on southern Israel which Israelis feel forced the army into action.
Within that narrow prism – Israel has, in large part, dismissed the criticism and a large tranche of public opinion is still supportive of the war despite questions about the achievements of a campaign which left Hamas in power, rockets still falling on southern Israel and Sgt Gilad Shalit still a captive somewhere in Gaza, 1,000 days after he was captured in 2006.
But internal criticism, from the very heart of Israel’s most venerated institution, is another matter entirely.
The publication of transcripts of conversations with soldiers who served in Gaza has whipped up a storm of controversy in Israel far beyond anything the international outcry stirred up.
Thanks for your comment, Hassan. It’s important to note, in the sentence you cite, the following words: “…has been attributed in Israel…”. We are not, in Reuters, characterising those who criticise Israel’s offensive. We are reporting how they are characterised by many people in Israel.
Send in the drones
Israel’s economy is, in large part, mirroring what is happening elsewhere in the world – with job losses, factory closures and all the other symptoms of the global financial meltdown.
One sector though is defying all the odds.
Elbit Systems – an Israeli company that makes electro-optics, airborne systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and command and control systems – announced this week a record 4th quarter with profits rising 32.6 percent and strong forecasts for continued growth in the year ahead.
Their results presentation gave the company a chance to show off some of its latest technologies as you can see from the video below.
While the credit crunch is forcing governments, companies and individuals around the world to rethink spending across a huge range of goods and services, defence spending seems to be immune.
A ‘pop-psychologist’ would probably have a field day interpreting this trend, in an uncertain world where many of the basic pillars of our society seem to be tottering and the natural instinct to protect and defend comes to the fore.
actually if you would hav read your history properly, jews were actually killed even more by the romans, it was under muhammed they found refuge and saftey although there were still persecuted by other arab tribes who not only opposed but also muhammed himself. so it might suit you better if you learned the intrecacies of history and not generalize people as one. which is why there the world seperates judaisim from zionism, it is an insult to blend the two together. and u say that americans have accepted their wrong doings? really, how so? by moving the indians onto unhabitiable land, where they can’t grow anything, don’t have proper access to water and medical and educational needs, much like how the zionists are doing to the palestinains. fundamentalist muslism hate everyone including other muslims, much how like fundamentalist jews hate everyone else, christians, arabs, and even other moderate jews (it was a jew who assasinated yitzak rabbin). let’s also not forget how israeli forces have bombed and killed thousands of women and children in palstine and lebanon because they refuse their right to exist. why should pakistan have a need to have any diplomatic ties with israel? what purpose will it serve them? none what so ever, every country has a right to choose who it is they speak with, u know kinda like how the U.S and israel refuse to talk to iran, or the democratically elected Hamas in palestine. israel openly talks about bombing other countries and has done so and now with the israeli version of the taliban taking over the government in israel, they openly talk about ethnic cleansing of the arabs. so who really is the extremist and terrorist?? i am including a link to a documentary which interviews many israeli jewish human rights workers exposing the truth for the crimes israel commits, perhaps you should find the truth about your own country before trying to tell someone else what to do.
http://www.occupation101.com
Here’s the scoop on bulldozers
In the Middle East, a region bristling with weapons of the most sophisticated kind, the bulldozer has become a symbol of simple, crude violence, causing fear and anxiety among people on both sides of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Yesterday’s attack in Jerusalem by a Palestinian construction worker who used a bulldozer to try and ram a police car into an empty bus was the third time in less than a year that Palestinians have employed bulldozers as weapons.
The video below is from a traffic control camera above the intersection where yesterday’s attack took place.
This video, from Israel’s Channel 10 News, shows a bulldozer attack last July where the Palestinian driver killed three Israelis before he was shot dead. Some of the pictures are of a graphic nature.
After the wave of Palestinian suicide bombings on buses that rocked Jerusalem a few years back during the height of the second Intifada, Jerusalemites began to eye buses with suspicion. The same is now happening with bulldozers.
Thanks for your comments EastWest. The presence of the Koran in the cab of the bulldozer was mentioned by police in their initial conclusions on the motivation of the driver and thus was considered by our reporters and editors as worthy of mention.
In relation to your second point – we reported extensively on the controversy surrounding a booklet distributed by Israel’s chief military rabbi to Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza that called on them to show ‘no mercy’ toward a ‘cruel enemy’.
Here’s one of the stories:
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews /idUSTRE50P2SZ20090126
Army disappoints Bibi, the battle goes on
“When the soldiers’ votes come in, we will be way ahead.” So forecast a senior aide to Israeli right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu just after shock exit poll findings on Tuesday showing his Likud party trailing the centrist Kadima of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni by one seat. But that result, which overturned months of opinion polls in Netanyahu’s favour, turned out to be bang on the money. Throughout Thursday, Likud supporters were banking on votes from army barracks. These were being counted a day after those of civilians and Likud had hoped that a traditional right-wing bias in the military would be enough to turn the election around and give Netanyahu the advantage – a crucial one in terms of persuading President Shimon Peres that Netanyahu, not Livni, should be invited to form a government coalition.
It wasn’t to be. As the elections committee in parliament finally faced the media, over an hour late, and then flustered through their notes on live television to declare the result, it turned out the initial result still stood. Kadima on 28 votes, Likud on 27 in the 120-seat Knesset. So, it’s all over? Not by a long way. The result isn’t absolutely final until it’s published in the official gazette next Wednesday. And from that point Peres has a week to designate someone to form a government. Livni tried and failed in November, triggering this election. Netanyahu, popularly known by his nickname ’Bibi’, says there has been a general rightward shift in the election. That has included a surge for the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu (Our Home is Israel) of Avigdor Lieberman, which elbowed past Labour into third place on 15 seats. That, Netanyahu says, gives him a better chance of forming a stable administration. Perhaps. But in 60 years, Israel’s largely ceremonial president has never passed over the leader of the party that has topped the polls. Cue more intensive negotiation. Watch this space.
from Global News Journal:
Twittering from the front-lines
Who remembers the Google Wars website that was doing the viral rounds a few years back – a mildly amusing, non-scientific snapshot of the search-driven, internet world we live in?
It lives on at www.googlebattle.com where you can enter two search terms, say ‘Lennon vs. McCartney’ or ‘Left vs. Right’, and let the internet pick a winner by the number of search hits each word gets.
As we reported here – the virtual world has become a real battleground in the ongoing Gaza conflict – with all sides deploying significant resources.
For Israel – where hasbara or PR has often been frowned upon as unnecessary pandering to international opinion that never turns in Israel’s favour anyway – the second Lebanon war underlined the need for a coherent media and PR strategy coordinated at the centre of government.
The post-mortem of the month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006 - known as the Winograd Commission - recommended a centralised approach to hasbara to avoid spokesmen from different ministries, the army or the police telling different or conflicting stories to a voracious local and international media.
Notwithstanding the fact that the head of the new National Information Directorate did not make it to a scheduled interview with our reporter on the story above – as my colleague Dan Williams reported here the strategy certainly seems to be working for domestic consumption.
Sources inside the Israeli government have said they are generally happy with the way the strategy has worked internationally as well despite growing international calls for a ceasefire and increasingly angry protests around the world.
Joe the plumber is right. Journalists are incapable of being unbiased always having some political bias. Apart from that, what soldier wants to rescue journalists who get themselves captured risking their own lives?
lolol, gotta love that “only symbol of freedom and liberty in the middle east” israel. what a “great” shinning light of democracy. all paid for by the american tax payer.