Category: In the Media

Jane Fonda joins boycott of Toronto film festival over homage to Israel

Ha’aretz

5 September 2009

Jane Fonda, Danny Glover and Eve Ensler have joined the growing list of artists who are boycotting the Toronto film festival over a program honoring Tel Aviv’s 100th anniversary, gossip blogger Perez Hilton reported on Friday.

The three have added their names to a letter aimed at festival officials claiming that Tel Aviv was built on violence, ignoring the “suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants,” Hilton reported.

Several Israeli films are being screened at the festival’s new City to City event, which this year celebrates Tel Aviv’s centennial.

Culture critic Naomi Klein and director John Greyson are among those who had already announced their protest over the homage to Tel Aviv.

Two-time Oscar winner Rabbi Marvin Hier, who founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called the boycott “an attack on the heart and soul of Israel.”

“People who support letters like this are people who do not support a two-state solution,” he was quoted as saying on Hilton’s blog.

“By calling into question the legitimacy of Tel Aviv, they are supporting a one-state solution, which means the destruction of the State of Israel. I applaud the organizers of the festival for celebrating on the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv. If every city in the Middle East would be as culturally diverse, as open to freedom of expression as Tel Aviv is, then peace would long have come to the Middle East.”

Fonda, 72, rose to fame as an actress in the 1960s, but has since become known for her political activism, including her opposition to the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

Glover, who is probably best known for co-starring with Mel Gibson in the four Lethal Weapon movies, has also been politically active since his student days. He made headlines in 2006 when he traveled to Venezuela with a group of celebrities to show solidarity with president Hugo Chavez.

Ensler, whose father is reportedly Jewish, is an American playwright and activist who wrote The Vagina Monologues.

East Jerusalem: the indignity and illegality of eviction

Mary Robinson | The Elders

2 September 2009

As our visit to the Middle East was ending, one of the most poignant encounters we had was with Maher Hanoun and his family in East Jerusalem. For several nights three generations of Hanouns have been sleeping in the street – the women and children in cars and the men encamped on the pavement. They were evicted from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem on 2 August 2009 following an Israeli court ruling.

We brought the family food and drink for Iftar, a special time for Muslims during the month of Ramadan as it is the evening meal at which their daily fast is broken. The moment was rendered even more moving as we heard of the difficulties that the Hanouns have experienced since their eviction.

The family are refugees who have lived in their home in Sheik Jarrah since 1948. Now they have not only been evicted, but have watched Jewish families being shown the property and encouraged to move into a home that for generations they called their own.

These houses are situated in occupied East Jerusalem. The Palestinian families that lived in these buildings did so legally, and their presence is supported by international law. This is encapsulated in UN Security Council resolutions 446 and 478 which call upon Israel not to transfer members of its civilian population into occupied Arab territories or to change the character and status of Jerusalem.

To its discredit, the Israeli legal system – to which Palestinians have limited and unequal access – has been used by some settler groups to claim ownership of property purportedly belonging to Jews prior to 1948. The decisions taken by the Israeli courts have sustained the claims of settlers and offer Palestinians no recourse to reclaim their rights to lost land or property.

My fellow Elder Jimmy Carter was unambiguous in his statement that the eviction of Palestinians such as the Hanouns from East Jerusalem “is a political issue… It’s an attempt by Israel to take over East Jerusalem, which is part of Palestine”. I wholeheartedly agree, and was encouraged to know that several Israeli human rights groups and advocates also agree.

Such enforced evictions are utterly unacceptable; it is no exaggeration to state that this kind of action could be a serious obstacle to a successful negotiation of a two-state solution. The Hanoun family do not have fair and equal access to the Israeli legal system – nor are they the only ones to have been treated this way. The international community and all those in Israel and Palestine who believe in the importance of the rule of law should support their cause and speak out against this infringement of Palestinians’ fundamental human rights.

Israelis destroy boats, and lives

Eva Bartlett | Inter Press Service

3 September 2009

Until Monday, Omar and Khaled Al-Habil were the owners of a 20m fishing trawler staffed by five or six fishermen at a time, but employing around 18 in cycles. But that morning the vessel came under heavy Israeli navy machine-gun fire, and then shelling. The trawler caught fire.

“It’s destroyed, completely destroyed,” says Al-Habil.

“They had left early in the morning and headed north,” Al-Habil said, of the crew of five fishermen that morning, including his son Adham Al-Habil. He says the boat was well within a three-mile limit set by Israel.

“There were other fishing boats with them. The boat was about a kilometre out off Gaza’s coast, and was at the southern end of Sudaniya (a coastal region of Beit Lahia, northern Gaza).”

An Israeli navy spokesperson reportedly said the boat “violated security boundaries off the coast of the Gaza Strip” and was “out of the permitted fishing zone.” She said the boats failed to respond to warning shots.

Khaled Al-Habil recalls differently.

“An Israeli navy boat approached them and opened fire. It was chaos. The firing was intense; it lasted 15 or 20 minutes. The fishing boat stopped, but the Israelis kept shooting. Finally, the Israelis shot a mortar at the boat. All the fishermen jumped into the water.”

His son Adham Al-Habil sustained burns from the fire, which broke out most likely as a result of the mortar shelling.

A charred hole on the front right-hand side of the boat marks where the mortar hit and exited. From that point down, the deck is blackened with soot. The metal steering wheel is all that remains of the cabin.

“Other fishermen came to help. They towed my boat back to Gaza port,” said Al-Habil. Once there, it took fire-fighters more than 20 minutes to put out the fires.

Palestinian fishers have the right to fish as far as 20 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza, but Israeli authorities have over the years unilaterally reduced that limit to three miles. The more abundant catches are found past six miles.

The Palestinian fishing industry, employing more than 3,500, has been devastated by Israeli attacks on fishing boats, confiscation of boats and equipment, and the abduction of Palestinian fishers.

Under the Israeli-led siege, with the complicity of Egypt, Gaza is starved of basic goods to enable a functioning economy and society. This includes replacement parts for missing or broken fishing equipment.

While a reported 95 percent of Gaza’s industries have shut down due to the siege, many unemployed Palestinians have turned to fishing, unviable as it is.

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) August 2009 report details the devolution of the fishing industry.

OCHA cites the fishing catch for the month of April for the past three years. In 2007, fishers hauled in 292 tons. In 2008, the catch was 154 tons, and in 2009 it was reduced to 79 tons.

Reduced to fishing along the coast, many of the fish are caught in waters contaminated by the 80 million litres of raw or partially-treated sewage pumped daily into the sea “as a result of lack of maintenance and upgrading of the wastewater infrastructure,” OCHA notes.

And now Al-Habil does not have a fishing vessel at all.

This was not the first problem for his now destroyed boat. On Jun. 4, Israeli gunboats abducted six fishers and seized Al-Habil’s boat three miles off the northern coast of Gaza, holding it for 45 days before returning it. Al-Habil found equipment missing and significant damage done to the engine and cables.

On Nov. 18, 2008, Israeli gunboats surrounded three Palestinian fishing boats, including Al-Habil’s boat, seven miles off the coast of central Gaza, and took all 15 fishers on board, as well as three international solidarity activists. The Israelis kept the boats until Nov. 27.

“It’s not just my boat. Every day the Israelis are attacking us: if not a trawler, then a small boat, or on land.”

Palestinian fisher Muhammed Al-Attar was killed by Israeli shelling off northern Gaza Aug. 27. Head of emergency services Dr Mu’awiyah Hassanein said Al-Attar was decapitated by the blast.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reports that 12-year-old Mohammed Bassam ‘Aashour was seriously injured by a gunshot to his head Aug. 14 when Israeli gunboats fired on Palestinian fishing boats near Rafah coast.

Khaled Al-Habil is just one among many Palestinian fishers whose livelihoods have been wrecked. The father of 13 children lives with his family in a cramped 400 square metre apartment. His only source of income has been destroyed.

“I want a good lawyer,” he says, “and I want to take this to court.”

Did Leviev’s empire succumb to boycott?

Alternative Information Center (AIC)

2 September 2009

On 31 August 2009, Lev Leviev, the sixth richest Israeli according to Forbes Magazine, convened a press conference and announced that his company Africa Israel will be unable to meet its financial obligations and repay its debts on time. Leviev’s debt is estimated at nearly Euro 1.4 billion. While this tycoon said in August 2008 that “I will meet all of my obligations, to the last penny,” he admitted in the latest press conference, one year later, that he made serious investment mistakes.

Though Leviev originally made his fortune in the diamond industry, Africa Israel is the flagship of his business empire. The company is well known for its widespread real-estate investments, but also for the fact that it builds in Israeli settlements, or colonies, in the West Bank. The company’s construction projects in areas such as Ma’ale Adumim, Har Homa, Adam and Modi’in Ilit contribute to the ongoing efforts to dispossess Palestinians from their lands, to expand illegal Jewish settlements, entrench Israeli control, and place obstacles to ending the occupation and achieving peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

As a result of these construction projects, Leviev’s business empire came under a massive and well-coordinated worldwide boycott campaign. Although it is difficult to organize a consumer boycott on a real-estate company, because that would amount to convincing people not to live in certain areas, supporters of the Palestinian cause for justice and freedom found creative ways to apply pressure on Africa Israel.

As the crimes of Africa Israel became infamous throughout the world, international pressure on the company began to mount. Demonstrations took place in New York City, including in front of Leviev’s store on Madison Avenue. UNICEF refused a donation from him, saying “We are aware of the controversy surrounding Mr. Leviev because of his reported involvement in construction work in the occupied Palestinian territory.” The UK embassy in Tel Aviv decided not to buy its office from Africa Israel while on 23 August 2009, it was revealed that Blackrock Inc., a large British investment firm, decided to divest from Africa Israel. Eight days later, Leviev convened the press conference in which he announced his inability to repay his debts.

The question that naturally arises is whether the efforts of the boycott campaign were what eventually toppled one of Israel’s biggest tycoons. There is no way to answer this question based solely on financial data. Company financial reports do not include a clause for “losses because of boycott.” Also, it is unrealistic to assume that the massive losses of Africa Israel result solely from the boycott—it is clear from company reports that the primary reason for debt is the depreciation of real-estate assets, which the company bought at tremendous leveraging. The international capitalist crisis impacted the value of the company’s assets, making the huge company seem like a sinkhole of debt.

While it would be irresponsible to contend that Africa Israel accumulated a significant amount of its Euro 1.4 billion debt as a result of the boycott movement, this does not mean that the boycott movement did not play a key role in toppling the company. After all, a company doesn’t go into crisis because of heavy debts, but only when it cannot refinance its debts and borrow money to cover previous commitments.

The “big five” Israeli tycoons include Eliezer Fischman with debts estimated at Euro 4.2 billion, Israel Corp of the Ofer family, with debts worth Euro 7.5 billion, Delek Group of Yitzhak Tshuva, with debts amounting to about Euro 8.1 billion and I.D.B of Nochi Dankner, with debts estimated at Euro 14.9 billion. Africa Israel has the least amount of debt amongst these tycoons, but was the first to fall, partially because its image was destroyed along with its fortunes, and because investors were wary of lending money to a company beset by protests, and facing possible litigation for crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories. The other Israeli tycoons are not subject to widespread boycott campaigns, and are so far able to obtain sufficient credit from investors to keep doing business, despite the international crisis.

In fact, the impact of boycott cannot be directly measured in numerical terms. The educational, mobilizing and psychological impacts are always more powerful than the direct economic impact. What can be measured, however, are the decisions of companies that clearly state their decisions to withdraw from illegal projects, like the statements of Blackrock regarding Leviev, or Veolia regarding the illegal light rail in Jerusalem, or companies that succumb to economic pressure faster than companies in similar financial dire straits, such as Africa Israel succumbing before Israel’s more indebted tycoons.

It is too early to say what the consequences of Leviev’s fall could be. His creditors are mostly Israelis, and many were invested in his companies through their pension funds. The fall could be painful for tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some of them might dedicate a moment of thought, as a result of losing money, to the reasons behind the boycott campaign, and to the fact that the crimes committed by their government and complicit corporations can affect them personally. Some may realize the occupation of Palestine is not free.

One thing is certain: the brave people who took to the streets to demand boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and Israeli companies received a clear message that their efforts are not in vain. Private companies that seek to make easy profits in Palestine while ignoring the injustices and illegality of Israel’s crimes there, will have to think twice about their investments. They may be required to pay a price in actual money for the moral deficit in their accounts.

Back to Warsaw 1968

Michael Sfard | Ha’aretz

3 September 2009

When my father was 21, he was arrested. Secret service agents tailed him everywhere for a few weeks, and the stress over whether and when he’d be shackled ate at him. Above all, it killed his aged parents. Many members of the student union were arrested with him. Each time the heavy iron door of his cell opened everyone’s heart skipped a beat. Who would they summon for interrogation now? Who would be spending the next 10 hours with the good interrogator and the bad interrogator?

During his many interrogations he wasn’t beaten or tortured, it was just the same questions, over and over: “Who are the leaders behind the riots?,” “Admit that you planned attacks on the security forces!,” “Who are your contacts abroad?,” “Who funds your subversive activities?” He ate well. He was never cold. But in the three months he was held his parents aged, from worry, and my mother cried rivers of tears. Warsaw, 1968.

That little village that was previously barely known even in Palestine became synonymous with the nonviolent Palestinian civil struggle and a place where Israeli and Palestinians demonstrate shoulder-to-shoulder. And now, two years after the High Court of Justice ruled that the separation fence built by the IDF there is illegal and ordered the state to redraw its route – two years in which the IDF has not carried out the ruling – the two generals concluded this was the time to smash this wonderful solidarity, to crush the Friday demonstrations in Bil’in.

But the special teargas grenades, with the increased range and the force of a small missile, represent an escalation even for Bil’in. In the neighboring village of Nil’in they caused critical head injuries to Tristan Anderson, an American demonstrator who has been lying in Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, for the past five months. Shortly after their introduction in Bil’in they killed Bassem Abu Rahme, a young man who never hurt a fly and became the first fatality of the demonstrations there.

After the special grenades came the nighttime raids. Their purpose was to arrest those who the army or the Shin Bet security services believed to be members of the village’s Popular Committee against the Wall, which organizes the demonstrations. For the past two months every few nights the children of Bil’in awaken to the screech of army Jeeps and stun grenades. Companies of soldiers under the command of the GOC Central Command, Gadi Shamni, and the commander of the IDF forces in the West Bank, Noam Tivon, break into homes, usually at 3 A.M., and arrest whoever they can grab: men, teens and children. Some are released a few hours later, others after a few days and still others remain under arrest on ridiculous accusations. No one touches the Israelis: even the major general and the brigadier general have their limits.

One of the detainees in these raids is among the leaders of the village’s organized protest, and anyone who believes in peace and coexistence can only hope he will eventually be one of the leaders of Palestine: Mohammed Khatib. In his early thirties, with youthful charm and charisma, Khatib is one of the architects of the Bil’in protests, the man who, with his friends, engineered the idea of the joint, nonviolent struggle. The Palestinian Martin Luther King, Jr. His creative mind has not rested during the past five years, every week coming up with a new exhibit, slogan, legal maneuver that will embarrass the regime, or for an article that will expose its lies and wickedness.

He is the one who coined the phrase, in reference to the settlers’ neighborhood that was built illegally on village land, “It’s not East Matityahu, it’s West Bil’in”: He came up with the idea of erecting, across from the illegal Israeli building project, the first Palestinian outpost – a seven-square-meter trailer home that within 24 hours was evacuated by a battalion of Israeli soldiers. (Who says no West Bank outposts are being evacuated?)

Khatib’s wife, Lamia, and their children remained alone in their home on the night that Mohammed was arrested. A few nights later the Jeeps returned, turned the family out of their beds and summoned Mohammed’s father for questioning. Maybe they thought that whatever they couldn’t get out of Mohammed before he’d tell them after learning that his elderly father was also interrogated.

After Khatib was released – with a prohibition against taking part in the Bil’in demonstrations – the Jeeps returned to the village once again and arrested Mohammed Abu Rahme, 48 (“Abu Nizar”), the vice president of the village council. Bil’in 2009.

The people who ordered the arrests of Khatib, Abu Nizar and dozens of their colleagues, some of whom are still in custody (such as the taxi driver Adib Abu Rahme, who has been rotting in jail for two months already, accused only of being a member of the Popular Committee), are ignoramuses who have not learned a single lesson from the human history of liberation struggles. They believed that this was the way to break the Bil’in protest movement – which, judging by the most recent demonstrations, has only grown greater in the wake of their actions.

I had the opportunity to peek into Khatib’s remand hearing in military court. (He was not present, because the Israel Prison Service forgot to bring him to the session…) I saw the military prosecutor speaking with pathos about the need to keep him in custody, about his being a “security risk.” Just like my father and his friends in Warsaw in 1968, when they organized demonstrations against the regime and for democracy. There, too, the authorities arrested the leaders of the protest in an effort to make them disappear. There, too, the arrests were made in the predawn hours. There, too, there were police officers who made the arrests, secret service agents who carried out the interrogations, prosecutors who prosecuted and judges who judged. And there, too, each one was a small but essential cog in a huge machine whose purpose was the control and oppression of millions.

Many good Israelis oppose the occupation but are disgusted by any attempt to compare the government we shaped in the West Bank with history’s detestable totalitarian regimes. Indeed, historical comparisons are dangerous. Warsaw circa 1968 does not resemble Bil’in circa 2009. The conflict is different, the struggle is different, the world is different. But there is something common to all attempts to oppress human beings. And as time passes, what they have in common outweighs the differences.

Michael Sfard is the lawyer representing the village of Bili’in in its struggle against the West Bank separation fence, which was erected on its land.