In August last year Israel withdrew its settlers and armed forces from Gaza, claiming that this brought to an end 38 years of military occupation. Of course, it did nothing of the sort. Israel retained power over Gaza by controlling its air space, sea space and external borders. Sporadic shelling continued, as did the targeted assassination of militants. Despite this, there was at least an appearance of disengagement, which Israel could claim as a major step towards the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On 25 June 2006, a group of Palestinian militants attacked an Israeli military base near the Israeli-Egyptian border, which left two Palestinians and two Israelis dead. In retreating, the Palestinians took Cpl Gilad Shalit hostage and demanded the release of women and children in Israeli jails in return for his release. This act, together with the continued firing of Qassam rockets into Israel, unleashed a savage response, which continues to this day.
In July, international attention was diverted from Gaza by Israel’s attack on Hizbollah’s bases in Lebanon. Sadly, despite the ending of these hostilities, Israel’s war in Gaza has disappeared from the radar of international concern. Yet it is as important as the conflict in Lebanon. It highlights the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and reveals, yet again, the brutality of Israel’s occupation.
Israel’s attack on Gaza has taken several forms. On the military front, it has made repeated incursions in which both militants and civilians have been killed. Targeted assassinations have continued, accompanied by “collateral damage” – the name Israel gives to the indiscriminate killing of civilians who happen to be in the proximity.
The Israeli Air Force has bombed all six transformers of the only domestic power plant in Gaza. Since then, the power supply has been substantially reduced. Generators are used to operate X-ray departments and operating theatres. Perishable food cannot be preserved.
Poverty in Gaza stands at 75 per cent. Food prices have inflated and sugar, dairy products and milk are low as commercial supplies from Israel are limited. Fish is no longer available as a result of Israel’s sea blockade.
Gaza’s border crossings, for persons to Egypt, and for goods to Israel, have been mostly closed since 25 June. This has brought to a virtual end the export of produce; and drastically limited the import of foodstuffs and other goods.
Israel justifies its actions as a security operation designed to put an end to the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel and as pressure aimed at securing the release of Cpl Shalit. Israel’s actions, in these circumstances, have been excessive.
In short, the people of Gaza have been subjected to collective punishment in clear violation of article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. For what? Surely not for sporadic Qassam rocket fire and the capture of Cpl Shalit? Instead, it seems the people of Gaza are being punished for having elected a Hamas government earlier this year.
Regime change, rather than security, probably explains Israel’s punishment of Gaza. Whatever the reason, Gaza deserves more attention from the international community.
John Dugard is special rapporteur to the Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights in occupied Palestinian territory
Today, the 5th of October 2006, US magazine Mother Jones reposted on their website a slanderous article from 2003 by reporter Joshua Hammer called “The Death of Rachel Corrie”. The article contains numerous factual errors, misleading statements as well as outright plagiarism from various sources, including some of dubious journalistic value. For example, Hammer merges a memorial for Rachel Corrie held by the Palestinian Fatah party in Rafah that was “attended by representatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as well as ordinary Palestinians” with an entirely separate memorial held by ISM at the site of her killing that was attacked by the Israeli military. He did this because his paragraph describing this was plagiarised from an article in the UK Observer, which he had obviously only skim-read. In their Nov/Dec 2003 issue Mother Jones corrected this particular factual error. They also acknowledged that their fact-checking should have been more vigilant. The article reposted to the Mother Jones site today is the original published in the print version, and full of the original errors.
At the time of the original publication, Phan Nguyen wrote the following article refuting Hammer’s smears (Nguyen later even debated Hammer on the radio who conceded that most of Nguyen’s points were true, he simply disputed how much this mattered). See also this Palestine Media Watch article on the same subject. Since Mother Jones has chosen to once again lie about Rachel Corrie and the events surrounding her death, we are republishing Nguyen’s article. The text of the article is unchanged, but some of the links now broken in the Counterpunch original have been updated.
The above text was updated and corrected: 6th October.
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie: Specious Journalism in Defense of Killers
Mother Jones demonstrated how low it could set its standards for investigative journalism when it hired Newsweek reporter Joshua Hammer to surf the web and write a 7000-word feature story on Rachel Corrie and the International Solidarity Movement (“The Death of Rachel Corrie”, Sept/Oct 2003). It appears that fact-checking and verification was not a priority in the production of this article. Before I had even finished reading the Hammer’s smear job I had already discovered that the writer had no shame in culling information from indiscriminate websurfing and no compunction against committing plagiarism. Take, for instance, Hammer’s description of a memorial service held for Corrie in Rafah soon after she was killed:
Days after Corrie’s death, Arafat’s Fatah Party sponsored a memorial service for her in Rafah, attended by representatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as well as ordinary Palestinians. Midway through the service, an Israeli tank pulled up beside the mourners and sprayed them with tear gas. Peace activists chased the tank and tossed flowers, and the Israeli soldiers inside threatened, in return, to run them down. After 15 minutes of cat and mouse, Israeli bulldozers and APCs rolled in, firing guns and percussion bombs and putting a quick end to the memorial.
In Rafah, Arafat’s political party Fatah held a wake for “Retchell Corie”, attended by representatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade, among others. These are the militant Islamic fronts condemned by Rachel’s government as terrorists. Their people mingled with secular organisations and droves of ordinary Palestinians who came to pay their respects…
Later in the article, Jordan writes about another memorial service:
As the memorial service got under way, the Israeli army sent its own representative. A tank pulled up beside the mourners and sprayed them with tear gas. A bizarre game of cat-and-mouse began as the peace activists chased the tank around to throw flowers on it, and the Israeli soldiers inside threatened, in return, to run them down. The game ended when the Israeli bulldozers came out, accompanied by more APCs, firing guns and percussion bombs. The insult was as clear as the danger of the situation and the people went home, the service halted.
We can break down the sentences to reveal how Hammer slightly restructured Jordan’s words. Selections from Jordan’s article (in italics) are followed by Hammer’s sentences in his own chronology.
In Rafah, Arafat’s political party Fatah held a wake…attended by representatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade, among others… Their people mingled with secular organisations and droves of ordinary Palestinians…
Days after Corrie’s death, Arafat’s Fatah Party sponsored a memorial service for her in Rafah, attended by representatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as well as ordinary Palestinians.
As the memorial service got under way…A tank pulled up beside the mourners and sprayed them with tear gas.
Midway through the service, an Israeli tank pulled up beside the mourners and sprayed them with tear gas.
…the peace activists chased the tank around to throw flowers on it, and the Israeli soldiers inside threatened, in return, to run them down.
Peace activists chased the tank and tossed flowers, and the Israeli soldiers inside threatened, in return, to run them down.
A bizarre game of cat-and-mouse began…
After 15 minutes of cat and mouse…
The game ended when the Israeli bulldozers came out, accompanied by more APCs, firing guns and percussion bombs.
…Israeli bulldozers and APCs rolled in, firing guns and percussion bombs and putting a quick end to the memorial.
Hammer produced an exemplary model of plagiarism, but with one major flaw. Because he had so casually swiped three paragraphs from the Observer and subtly restructured it, he incorrectly combined the “Fatah-sponsored wake” with the separate memorial service that was held at the site of her killing. Sandra Jordan did not make it clear in her article that the two were separate, and so Hammer misinterprets the article as he steals from it, thus presenting us not only with a clear case of plagiarism, but also misinformation. Once we realize this, it is not surprising to find other discrepancies in Hammer’s article. Such is the case in Hammer’s description of the International Solidarity Movement. According to Hammer,
the ISM upholds the right of Palestinians to carry out “armed struggle” and seeks “to establish divestment campaigns in the U.S. and Europe to put economic pressure on Israel the same way the international community put pressure [on] South Africa during the apartheid regimes.”
And curiously, according to Myles Kantor in an article written for David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine last April:
ISM refers to a “right” of Palestinian “armed struggle” and seeks “to establish divestment campaigns in the US and Europe to put economic pressure on Israel the same way the international community put pressure [on] South Africa during the apartheid regimes.”
Somehow, Hammer managed to selectively extract and distort the exact same 32 words from ISM’s 900-word mission statement as did an extreme right-wing website. Indeed both articles selected the least significant aspects from the mission statement, which least described ISM’s activities. The mission statement had been drafted in the early days of ISM (as it is clearly dated “December 2001”), when ISM’s focus was envisioned to be broader than it currently is. Thus the reference to divestment campaigns is obsolete, as there are no ISM-coordinated divestment campaigns. Yet Hammer still felt it was significant enough to single out as a definitive aspect of ISM, simply because his right-wing web source had already done so. The other portion of ISM’s mission statement which Hammer cites is the reference to “armed struggle.”
However, if Hammer will ever decide to read ISM’s mission statement, he will learn that it refers to armed struggle only in the context of clearing the misperceptions that such is the only method of resistance and that all Palestinians engage in it. In contrast, the mission statement declares that ISM exclusively engages in “the proactive tactics of non-violent direct action epitomized by Gandhi, Archbishop Tutu, Dr. Martin Luther King, and other practitioners of creative non-violent resistance.” If Hammer reads further, he will find that while armed struggle is mentioned only once–and only in the context just described–the bulk of the mission statement refers to nonviolent resistance–that is, the only form of resistance practiced by ISM.
Ironically while Kantor’s article stated that “ISM refers to a ‘right’ of Palestinian ‘armed struggle,'” Hammer altered it to read that ISM “upholds” the right, which is even more misleading. He does not explain how ISM “upholds” this right. ISM explicitly states that it acknowledges the right of Palestinians to resist occupation in accordance with international laws. This is not a blanket “uphold[ing]” of “armed struggle,” as Hammer seems to claim.
And of all the right-wing articles Hammer could choose to swipe from, he chose to swipe from Kantor’s article, which is full of false statements, such as the outrageous allegation that ISM activist Susan Barclay was working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Kantor even falsely attributes a quote to Rachel Corrie: “More Martyrs are ready to defend the honor of Palestine.” None of this seems to trouble Hammer, who still finds Kantor credible enough to sample.
While Hammer doesn’t mind flat-out plagiarism, he is just as capable of misleading when he does mention his sources. In describing The Evergreen State College, the school that Rachel Corrie attended, Hammer references only one quote:
“The radical ideologies espoused every day at Evergreen State College are of every nasty branch of extremism,” one columnist recently wrote. “Anti-Americanism. Anti-God. Anti-life. Anti-Israel. Anti-capitalism. Anti-tradition.”
And yet who is this single “columnist” that Hammer chooses to quote? Hammer doesn’t say, but a simple Google search reveals his source: A young ultraconservative named Hans Zeiger. Zeiger, who is 18 years old, has never attended The Evergreen State College. In fact, in the article from which Hammer quoted, Zeiger cites only two visits to Evergreen–one of which was when he was in the seventh grade!
Interestingly Hammer does not bother to quote Zeiger’s homophobic statement in the same article. Nor does Hammer note Zeiger’s suggestion that Evergreen may have connections to “terrorist organizations,” or his ridiculous claim that Corrie “had stood guard outside of Yasser Arafat’s compound”, when in fact she had never even set foot in Ramallah. Hammer conveniently ignores all these revelatory tidbits because that would destroy the credibility of the man whom Hammer selectively quotes and refers to simply as a “columnist.”
Of course credibility is something that Hammer has trouble judging. He finds contradiction in the testimony of Joe “Smith,” who witnessed Corrie’s killing. “Smith” insists that the bulldozer driver saw Corrie as he approached her, and saw her when she climbed atop the dirt pile that he was pushing, while elsewhere “Smith” “acknowledged that the bulldozer operator could well have lost sight of Corrie after she tumbled down the dirt pile” that he was pushing–that is, the driver eventually lost sight of her as he was driving over her. That would seem to be common sense, and Hammer fails to explain where the contradiction lay.
Hammer also implies that ISM activists intentionally misrepresented the photos taken during the day of Corrie’s killing, that the activists merely “claimed” that the news wires had miscaptioned the photos. His baseless conclusion is that the activists were “probably just too young and inexperienced to know” not to “burn” the media. Of course he merely speculates when he says “probably,” but that seems to be good enough for his style of journalism. Instead of seeking the truth, Hammer is satisfied with his own speculation and moves on.
This type of shallow skepticism is reserved for the activists, while Israeli military claims are treated with respect by Hammer and often go unquestioned, even when the statements are clearly disputable and even laughable. While ISM activists “claimed” their versions of the story, Hammer trusts IDF spokesperson Sharon Feingold as having “assured” and “explained” to him the facts. Feingold “assured” him that the IDF “do[es] not target civilians,” that Tom Hurndall was shot in the head simply because he was too close to a Palestinian gunman. Feingold “explained” that reporter James Miller was killed because he was caught in some crossfire. Hammer questions neither of Feingold’s claims, despite numerous witnesses to both killings who all contradict the claims. In the case of James Miller, the Israeli military even evolved its explanation, since the autopsy report contradicted the earlier IDF claims that Miller was killed by Palestinians. Indeed, video footage of the Miller shooting, filmed by a fellow journalist and also clearly contradicting IDF claims, is publicly available.
Hammer gives no indication that he has viewed the footage of his fellow Middle East journalists. However he admits to having viewed an Israeli propaganda video that was produced specifically to absolve the military of any responsiblity in Rachel Corrie’s death. The video, along with a PowerPoint slideshow that was distributed to US Congress members, was produced prior to the conclusion of the Israeli investigation.
This does not keep Hammer from finding that the propaganda video–which featured the inside of a D9 bulldozer–made “a credible case” of innocence for the Israelis. Nor does he wonder why the Israeli investigation, which he states was supposed to be “transparent,” has not been made public. And nor does he mention that according to the Israeli investigation, at no point did the bulldozer even drive over Corrie’s body, clearly contradicting the tread marks that appear in the photo reproduced in the Mother Jones article, not to mention contradicting the Israeli autopsy report and all the eyewitnesses who were interviewed for the investigation.
And when Feingold informs Hammer that “Palestinian terrorists are using the [Palestinian] civilians to hide behind,” he finds it worthy to quote but not to question, despite the fact that there is no clear documentation to corroborate Feingold’s accusation. Conversely, there is a wealth of documentation of Israeli soldiers using Palestinian civilians as human shields–what the IDF refers to as the “neighbor procedure”–as can be found in the mainstream Israeli press, in accounts of ISM activists, and in the work of several human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch. In fact Hammer extensively interviewed and quoted Miranda Sissons, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, but somehow failed to ask her about this use of human shields, as if Feingold’s “assurances” were adequate enough.
As well, Hammer informs us that when the Israeli military conducts home demolitions, “residents can gather their belongings; and each house is searched for occupants before it is demolished.” There have been numerous cases that prove otherwise. We can read one such Human Rights Watch report from Rafah in late 2002: “At least 20 people were injured, nine of them children, when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) prevented residents from evacuating their home while the IDF was demolishing the next-door house…” Just two weeks before Corrie was killed, a pregnant Palestinian woman, Nuha Sweidan, was killed in the process of an Israeli-conducted house demolition. And in the cases where residents are actually allowed to “gather their belongings,” Hammer fails to mention that such accomodations are often afforded fifteen minutes or less. Again, Hammer saw fit to print the Israeli claims and felt no need to question them in the face of documented facts.
But Hammer already proves that he is too willing to document and judge things he knows nothing about. For example, he revealed that “some of [Rachel Corrie’s] causes verged on New Age parody.” But he provided only one example–one that reveals his own ignorance: “She paraded through Olympia dressed as a dove in the ‘Procession of the Species,’ billed as an ‘environmentally aware celebration of the earth and life.'” Rather than being “New Age parody,” the Procession of the Species is actually a large annual family event in Corrie’s hometown that attracts tens of thousands of locals of all backgrounds. Last year Corrie organized scores of Olympia residents, young and old, to participate as doves for the event. Hammer does not bother to research the event before dismissing it as “New Age parody.” Based on this single false assumption, Hammer concluded that “some of her causes verged on New Age parody.” Was this Hammer’s attempt to make his story more colorful?
This kind of generalization also enables him to mysteriously state that the photo of Corrie burning a paper American flag “prompted anti-war protesters and other likely allies to distance themselves from her.” Once again, he makes a generalization and provides no elaboration. Just how many “anti-war protesters and other likely allies” did he find before he was satisfied enough to make a generalization? (Incidentally, the caption of the photo of Corrie with the burning paper flag incorrectly states that it occurred during a mock trial of the Bush administration. Actually it occurred during the worldwide protests against a pending US war on Iraq on February 15, in which Corrie was one of over 10 million protesters. The mock trial happened a few weeks later. There are several minor errors such as this throughout the article.)
He extends his generalizations with misleading accusations about the nature of ISM. In addition to misquoting ISM’s mission statement via Front Page Magazine, Hammer stereotypes ISM as “a motley collection of anti-globalization and animal-rights activists, self-described anarchists and seekers, most in their 20s.” The truth is ISM activists range in age from 18 to 77, and they come from all backgrounds, from college students to soccer moms to white collar professionals, and they have come from all over the world. Hammer merely demonstrates his limited experience and knowledge of ISM by applying a cliche. Out of the hundreds of internationals who have participated in ISM campaigns, how many ISM activists has Hammer met personally?
He goes on to falsely claim that ISM “embrac[es] Palestinian militants, even suicide bombers, as freedom fighters,” a baseless accusation commonly alleged and left unsubstantiated by right-wing pundits. As usual he proclaims and elaborates no further. Perhaps next time he should provide us with the website link.
In a move to show he prefers the Israeli military’s point of view, he claims that ISM “has adopted a risky policy of ‘direct action’–entering military zones…” What Hammer refers to as “military zones” are actually Palestinian cities and villages, residential neighborhoods where ISM is invited by the inhabitants. Only the Israeli military refers to them as military zones. Hamas may regard Tel Aviv as a “military zone,” but I doubt Hammer would consequently label Tel Aviv as such. Indeed, quite often the Israeli military declares a city to be a “military zone” after ISM activists have settled in.
What’s amazing is that in Hammer’s 7000-word article, he spends very little time explaining what ISM really is. He makes no mention of its purely nonviolent tactics or even its most basic activities, such as accompanying ambulances, assisting farmers in reaching their crops, clearing roadblocks, and walking children to school, perhaps because they’re not sensationalist enough to merit his attention. He does not even explain ISM’s goal, except for the misleading claim that ISM “upholds” the right to “armed resistance.” In truth ISM’s goal is to nonviolently resist the Israeli occupation. That simple objective is mentioned nowhere in his article. Instead, if we are to envision ISM according to Hammer’s description, we would have to imagine that it is a group of animal-rights activists in their 20s who enter military zones and establish divestment campaigns.
Hammer’s article freely quotes IDF spokesperson Sharon Feingold as she excuses the actions of the Israeli military. But when Hammer wishes to explain ISM, he selectively quotes from third parties who have limited experience with ISM, such as an anonymous “human-rights observer in Jerusalem” and Miranda Sissons, and he does so blatantly out-of-context. The anonymous human-rights observer is quoted immediately after Hammer incorrectly recounts two sensationalized ISM actions, while Sissons criticizes ISM in the context of what she admits are “unsubstantiated allegations.”
Hammer himself describes the “recklessness” of ISM but in the process once again exposes his own recklessness and low standard of journalism. He attempts to recount the case of a young Palestinian, Shadi Sukiya, who was captured by Israeli forces in the ISM office in Jenin. According to Hammer, “ISM insists he was an innocent, terrified teenager who’d asked for refuge during an Israeli sweep.” Here, Hammer resorts to fabrication. ISM issued a press release soon after Sukiya’s capture, which shows the extent of ISM’s “insistence”:
One of the volunteers went into the hallway to see what was happening and met a young man coming up the stairs. He looked terrified, was soaking wet and appeared to be in pain. Concerned about his welfare–under Israeli military curfew, Palestinians spotted in the streets are shot on site–he was brought into the apartment. He spoke only Arabic, which none of the ISM volunteers present understood. He was given a change of clothes, a hot drink and a blanket… Eventually the military knocked on the ISM door and 30 soldiers entered with their machine guns trained. They arrested the young man, claiming he was “wanted.” The two women were not able to prevent the soldiers from taking the young man, whose name they did not even know, but requested that he be treated humanely.
ISM reported only the events as they happened. ISM “insisted” nothing else. The question, as always, is where did Hammer come up with his claim? And where was the “recklessness?” Hammer appropriately recounts the IDF’s claim that Sukiya “was a ‘senior militant’ who’d sent four suicide attackers into Israel.” And yet he doesn’t follow up to reveal that Sukiya was subsequently held under administrative detention–that is, he was held indefinitely without charges. Hammer made no attempt to verify the IDF’s accusations. Hammer also doesn’t bother to note that the IDF additionally claimed they found either a pistol or two rifles in the ISM Jenin office when they apprehended Sukiya, a blatant lie which both the IDF and consequently the Associated Press were forced to retract.
Apparently Hammer didn’t feel too “burned” by the IDF lies. (Incidentally, one of Hammer’s valued sources, Front Page Magazine, has not retracted its own claim that “a pistol and a cache of Kalashnikov rifles” were found in the Jenin office, and they have twice claimed that ISM volunteer Susan Barclay was hiding Sukiya in the Jenin office. In reality Barclay was in the United States at the time of the Sukiya “incident.”) It is revealing that Hammer would apparently concoct an ISM claim that undermines the actual testimony of the activists, while he conveniently omits the proven lies of the IDF and his right-wing sources, which would reasonably undermine their own claims.
The other instance of supposed “recklessness” occurred when two Britons briefly visited the ISM Rafah office. One of the Britons later committed a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Hammer claims that they were “posing as activists,” although he doesn’t bother to mention exactly how they posed as activists, because his allegation is false.
Shortly before noon on Friday, the 25th of April, about 15 people came to the ISM apartment in Rafah, the Gaza Strip. They were in three groups: 4 British citizens from London who were looking to prepare a summer camp in Gaza in conjunction with local Palestinians from Rafah; three Italians and two Britons. The last two have been accused of perpetrating the attack in Tel Aviv early last Wednesday morning.
Our group of 5 offered all of them tea. I asked them general questions like who they were? were they with any group? and what they were doing in Rafah? The two accused Britons answered that they weren’t with any particular organization but that they came with “alternative tourism”…We stayed in the apartment for approximately 15 minutes, before we went down to the place where Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli Occupation Force bulldozer on March 16. Owing to the presence and approach of an Israeli army tank, we were only able to spend a few minutes at the site where Rachel was killed. We placed a flower on the place in the dirt where Rachel was run over. Our ISM group then went to the house of Dr. Samir Nasrallah, the house that Rachel died defending, while everybody else, including the group that had visited us, went their own way.
ISM neither harbored nor provided any assistance to the two. When the bombing happended, ISM activists stated upfront that they had briefly met the two. Again, Hammer fails to explain exactly what ISM did that was reckless–only that it was. He is always willing to list the charges, but as a journalist is unwilling to investigate them.
What’s more, even if the two Britons had posed as activists, it is unclear how that would make ISM in any way responsible. Last May, a man disguised as an observant Jew boarded a bus in the French Hill settlement and detonated the explosives strapped to his body. Would that make observant Jews reckless? Would that make the bus driver who allowed him to board reckless?
However, that is enough for Hammer to label the ISM “reckless.” Hammer goes on to write, “Still, the perception has lingered that the group is a sympathizer–and even a harborer–of terrorists.” Hammer doesn’t say among whom this “perception has lingered,” only that it has. Nor does he investigate the validity of his unattributed claim. For Hammer, reporting hearsay is enough. Such unsubstantiated allegations are best left to the gossip columns, if left anywhere at all–not in writing that purports to be investigative journalism.
But Hammer is too caught up in artistic license to report accurately, as when he claims, “Corrie had come to Rafah a paper radical, primed for outrage, but with little real-world experience. That changed immediately.” The truth is that Rachel was not “primed for outrage.” Her primary interest was in establishing a sister city relationship, so she was more “primed” for exchanging pen pal letters. That didn’t sound too exciting to Hammer, who took the opportunity to read Corrie’s mind.
Hammer concludes the article with his thesis that Rachel Corrie died for nothing. He claims that “momentum has faded for a U.S. congressional investigation,” which is incorrect. House Concurrent Resolution 111 started out with 11 sponsors and has grown to 49 sponsors in the House, with the latest two having signed on September 3 (Congress was out of session in August), so the resolution is still gaining sponsors. And on September 9, the Berkeley City Council voted to endorse Resolution 111. The reason the resolution has not moved is not because “momentum has faded,” but because action is required by the House Committee on International Relations, which, under control of Henry Hyde, is failing to address it.
Hammer continues: “Corrie herself has faded into obscurity, a subject of debate in Internet chat rooms and practically nowhere else.” Once again, reality contradicts Hammer’s world-view. Her letters from Rafah have now been published in mainstream English-language media such as Harper’s and The Guardian. They have been translated into numerous other languages and have been reprinted in publications throughout the world. In the Arab world, her name continues to resonate as a reminder that not all Americans support the policies of their president. Documentaries have been made about her in the US, Japan, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Around the world, including in Israel, songs and poems have been written about her. Participation in ISM has risen as a reaction to her killing. Memorials, scholarship funds, and humanitarian centers are being established in her name and in her honor. ISM has even been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, with special recognition of Corrie, Brian Avery, and Tom Hurndall. Arab parents are naming their children after her. Veterans for Peace has awarded her with a posthumous membership. Susan Sontag recognized her as she presented the Rothko Chapel Oscar Romero Award to Ishai Menuchin of Yesh Gvul, and Israeli conscientious objectors have evoked her name when they explain their refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories.
But perhaps Hammer is too busy debating on Internet chat rooms to notice. Or worse, Hammer merely wanted to add some melodrama to his story: “And that, perhaps, is what is saddest.”
The article is littered with other errors, many are of peripheral significance, but taken together, along with all of Hammer’s proclivities as described above, add up to a shoddy piece of work: Corrie did not “propose an independent-study program in which she would travel to Gaza”, she did not fly to Israel from Seattle, the friend who returned from five months in Gaza was not involved in ISM and thus did not “talk enthusiasically to Corrie about the International Solidarity Movement,” the Red Cross did not ask ISM to vacate its Jenin office, the Arabic sentence in the article was translated to English incorrectly, and the list goes on.
Hammer’s style of investigative reporting utilizes plagiarism, indiscriminate surfing of right-wing websites, unquestioning reliance on hearsay and authority figures, skimpy fact-checking, misinformed speculation, artistic license, and a contrived melodramatic thesis. What’s most amazing is how he is able to consolidate all these flaws into a single article. Ironically the cover story of this Mother Jones issue deals with environmental protection. Perhaps Mother Jones could have spared a few trees by omitting the Joshua Hammer article, and instead providing us with links to the websites where Hammer took his information from. Then we could judge the credibility of his sources ourselves.
Phan Nguyen lives in Olympia, Washington and can be reached at: nguyenp@evergreen.edu
[Please take the time to write to Mother Jones and express your outrage at Hammer’s shoddy reporting. Send your letters to Backtalk, Mother Jones, 731 Market Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94103; fax: (415) 665-6696; or email backtalk@motherjones.com ]
Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court revealed Tuesday that police officers lied while testifying against 11 left-wing activists accused of violent acts during anti-fence demonstrations in the West Bank village of Bil’in. The court acquitted the activists.
The presiding judge viewed video footage filmed by both police officers and members of the group “Anarchists Against the Fence” that did not bear evidence of violent acts.
Judge Muki Landman harshly criticized the police’s behavior in his ruling.
“A feeling of serious discomfort has arisen from the mighty gap between the officers’ testimony and what is seen in the video tapes,” Landman wrote. “I cannot rule out the possibility that had it not been for the videotapes, I would have reached a different result regarding the defendants.”
The 11 activists were indicted following a demonstration in February 2004, on the day the International Court of Justice in The Hague began deliberations on the West Bank separation fence.
The activists sought to protest against the fence in the West Bank but later moved their demonstration to a location opposite the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. The activists sat on the road, causing severe traffic snarls.
The prosecution filed serious charges against the activists that included charges of violent unruliness and of interfering with police officers. An additional indictment of attacking a police officer was erased from the charge sheet before a verdict was issued.
Landman rejected the majority of the prosecution’s claims but also rejected claims made by the activists that police officers acted violently when breaking up the protest. Landman also rejected the defendants’ claims that their behavior was protected by international law as a legitimate means of opposing the occupation and the separation fence.
The judge convicted nine of the 11 activists on a minor charge of illegal congregation. Two others were convicted of vandalism after spray painting graffiti on the walls of the Kirya defense compound in central Tel Aviv.
Sentencing is scheduled for February 2007.
[The following final paragraph is from the orginal Hebrew but was omitted by the Ha’aretz translation. Translated by Rann Bar-On:]
Yonatan Pollack, an activist in the organization [Anarchists Against the Wall], said that for him the acquittal is merely technical, and expressed disappointment from the fact that the court did not address the topics they [the activists] tried to bring up, such as the occupation and the wall. “The essence of the trial was not the accusations against us but rather the conduct of the state of Israel in the Occupied Territories. The court chose to ignore the fact that the construction of a wall is not just a political issue but also a legal one.”
Your new book, Roadmap to Nowhere, covers the history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in the last three years, a period dominated by Ariel Sharon’s leadership. You argue that during this period it became evident that in Israel, decisions are taken by the military, rather than the political echelons. Can you elaborate?
Israeli military and political systems have always been closely intertwined, with generals moving from the army straight to the government, but the army’s political status was further solidified during Sharon’s ascendancy. Senior military officers brief the press (they capture at least half of the news space in the Israeli media), and brief and shape the views of foreign diplomats; they go abroad on diplomatic missions, outline political plans for the government, and express their political views on any occasion.
In contrast to the military stability, the Israeli political system is in a gradual process of crumbling. In a World Bank report of April 2005, Israel is found one of the most corrupt and least efficient in the Western world, second only to Italy in the government corruption index, and lowest in the index of political stability. Sharon personally was associated, together with his sons, with severe bribery charges, that have never reached the court. The new party that Sharon founded, Kadima, and which now heads the government, with Olmert as Sharon’s successor, is a hierarchical agglomeration of individuals with no party institutions or local branches. Its guidelines, published in November 22 2005, enable its leader to bypass all standard democratic processes and appoint the list of the party’s candidates to the parliament without voting or approval of any party body.
The Labor party has not been able to offer an alternative. In the last two Israeli elections, Labor elected dovish candidates for prime ministry–Amram Mitzna in 2003, and Amir Peretz in 2006. Both were initially received with enormous enthusiasm, but were immediately silenced by their party and campaign advisors and by self imposed censorship, aiming to situate themselves “at the center of the political map”. Soon, their program became indistinguishable from that of Sharon. Peretz even declared that on “foreign and security” matters he will do exactly as Sharon (but he will also bring a social change). Thus these candidates helped convince the Israeli voters that Sharon’s way is the right way. In the last years, there has never been a substantial left-wing opposition to the rule of Sharon and the generals, since after the elections, Labor would always join the government, providing the dovish image that the generals need for international show.
With the collapse of the political system, the army remains the body that shapes and executes Israel’s policies. During the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon (not covered in the book), it became common knowledge in Israel that the military is leading the government, with Peretz, now Defense minister, often appearing on tv looking like a puppet operated by the generals surrounding him.
Sharon is widely viewed in Israeli and Western discourse as a leader who has undergone a transformation from a philosophy of eternal war to moderation and concession. This is not quite the picture that emerges from your book.
One of the questions in the book is how it happened that Sharon, the most brutal, cynical, racist and manipulative leader Israel has ever had, ended his political career as a legendary peace hero? The answer, I argue, is that Sharon has never changed. Rather, the birth of the Sharon myth reflects the present omnipotence of the propaganda system in manufacturing consciousness.
During his four years in office, Sharon stalled any chance of negotiations with the Palestinians. In 2003 – the road map period -the Palestinians accepted the plan and declared a cease fire, but while the Western world was celebrating the new era of peace, the Israeli army, under Sharon, intensified its policy of assassinations, maintained the daily harassment of the occupied Palestinians, and eventually declared an all-out-war on Hamas, killing all its first rank of military and political leaders. Later, as the Western world was holding its breath again, in a year and a half of waiting for the planned Gaza pullout, Sharon did everything possible to fail the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected in January 2005. Sharon declared that Abbas is not a suitable partner (because he does not fight terror) and turned down all his offers of renewed negotiations.
The daily reality of the Palestinians in the occupied territories was never as grim as in the period of Sharon. In the West Bank, Sharon started a massive project of ethnic cleansing in the areas bordering with Israel. His wall project robs the land of the Palestinian villages in these areas, imprisons whole towns, and leaves their residents with no means of sustenance. If the project continues, many of the 400.000 Palestinians affected by it will have to leave and seek their livelihood in the outskirts of cities in the center of the West Bank, as happened already in northern West Bank town of Qalqilia. The Israeli settlements were evacuated from the Gaza Strip, but the Strip remains a big prison, completely sealed from the outside world, nearing starvation and terrorized from land, sea and air by the Israeli army.
Sharon’s legacy, as it unfolds in the period covered in this book, is eternal war, not just with the Palestinians, but with what the Israeli army views as their potential network of support, be it Lebanon now, or Iran and Syria tomorrow. At the same time, what Sharon’s legacy has brought to perfection is that war can be always marketed as the tireless pursuit of peace. Sharon proved that Israel can imprison the Palestinians, bombard them from the air, steal their land in the West Bank, stall any chance for peace, and still be hailed by the Western world as the peaceful side in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Did the Road Map plan of 2003, with which your book opens, offer any real prospect for peace?
To answer this question, it is necessary first to refresh our memory regarding what the conflict is about. From Israeli discourse one might get the impression that it is about Israel’s right to exist. On this view, the Palestinians are trying to undermine the mere existence of the state of Israel with the demand to allow their refugees to return, and they are trying to achieve that with terror. It seems that it has been forgotten that in practice this is a simple and classical conflict over Palestinian land and resources (water) that Israel has been occupying since 1967. The Road Map document as well manifests complete absence of any territorial dimension. In the final, third phase, of the plan the occupation should end. But the plan’s document doesn’t put any demands on Israel at this third phase. Most Israelis understand that there is no way to end the occupation and the conflict without the Israeli army leaving the territories and the dismantlement of settlements. But these basic concepts are not even hinted at in the document, which only mentions freezing settlements expansion and dismantling new outposts, already at the first phase of the plan.
Nevertheless, the road map plan is substantial and important because of what it determines should happen in its first phase. This phase repeats the cease-fire plan proposed by then CIA head George Tenet, in June 2001. The essence of this phase is that to restore calm, a cease-fire should be declared, to which both sides should have to contribute. The Palestinians should cease all terror and armed activity, and Israel should pull its forces back to the positions they held before the Palestinian uprising, in September 2000. This is a substantial demand of Israel, because in September 2000, there were large areas of the West Bank that were under Palestinian autonomous control. Implementing the demand to restore the conditions that existed then, should mean also lifting the many road blocks and army posts that Israel has placed in these areas since that time.
There is no doubt that fulfilment of this demand would contribute greatly to establishing some calm, and creating, at least, conditions for negotiations. But, as I mentioned, Israel refused to accept even that much, and stalled the road map in the same way that it had stalled the Tenet plan before.
A central event that you cover in the book is the Gaza pullout and the evacuation of the Gaza settlements. But your analysis of what went on behind the scenes of the pullout is quite different than the way it was perceived even in critical circles.
A prevailing view in critical circles is that Sharon decided to evacuate the Gaza settlements because maintaining them was too costly, and he preferred to focus efforts on his central goal of keeping the West Bank and expanding its settlements. There is no doubt that Sharon openly used the disengagement plan to expand and strengthen Israel’s grip of the West Bank. But I argue that there is no evidence that he decided to give Gaza up because keeping it proved too costly.
Of course, the occupation of Gaza has always been costly, and even from the perspective of the most committed Israeli expansionists, Israel does not need this piece of land, one of the most densely populated in the world, and lacking any natural resources. The problem is that one cannot let Gaza free, if one wants to keep the West Bank. A third of the occupied Palestinians live in the Gaza strip. If they are given freedom, they would become the center of Palestinian struggle for liberation, with free access to the Western and Arab world. To control the West Bank, Israel had to stick to Gaza. From this perspective, the previous model of occupation was the optimal choice. The Strip was controlled from the inside by the army, and the settlements provided the support system for the army, and the moral justification for the soldiers’ brutal job of occupation. It makes their presence there a mission of protecting the homeland. Control from the outside may be cheaper, but in the long run, it has no guarantee of success.
Furthermore, since the Oslo years, the settlements were conceived both locally and internationally as a tragic problem that, despite Israel’s good intentions to end the occupation, cannot be solved. This useful myth was broken with the evacuation of the Gaza settlements, which showed how easy it is, in fact, to evacuate settlements, and how big the support is in Israeli society for doing that.
I argue that Sharon did not evacuate the Gaza settlements out of his own will, but rather, that he was forced to do so. Sharon cooked up his disengagement plan as a means to gain time, at the peak of international pressure that followed Israel’s sabotaging of the road map and its construction of the West Bank wall. Even then, there are some indications that he was looking for ways to sneak out of this commitment, as he did with all his commitments before. But this time he was forced to actually carry it out by the Bush administration. Though it was kept fully behind the scenes, the pressure was quite massive, including military sanctions. The official pretext for the sanctions was Israel’s arm sale to China, but in previous occasions, the crisis was over as soon as Israel agreed to cancel the deal. This time, the sanctions were unprecedented, and lasted until the signing of the crossing agreement in November 2005.
But currently there is no sign of any U.S. pressure on Israel?
Yes, U.S. pressure ended right with the evacuation of the settlements, and Israel was given a free hand to violate all the agreements signed ceremonially in November 2005, under the supervision of Condoleezza Rice. Since then, the U.S. has given full backing to Israel, as it turned the Gaza strip into an open-air prison, and began to starve and bombard the besieged Palestinians. We should note that at no stage, did Sharon take a commitment to actually give up the full Israeli control of the Gaza strip. From its outset, the disengagement plan, as published in Israeli media in April 16, 2004 determined that Israel would maintain full military control of the strip from the outside, as before the pullout.
From the U.S. perspective, its goal was achieved with the evacuation of the settlements. As long as international calm is maintained, Palestinian suffering plays no role in US calculations. To maintain the Iraq occupation, while preparing its next steps in the “war on terror”, It was important for the U.S. to appease the world’s sentiment that something should be done to end the Israeli occupation. This goal was achieved for the time being. The Western world, or at least its leaders and media, were euphoric with the new turn in the Middle East. The dominant world-view in the Western media is still that Israel has done its part, and now it is the Palestinians’ turn to show their peaceful intentions. With the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections, this view has even strengthened. Israel’s eternal claim that it has no partner for peace is now having a renewed impact. Those who have accepted for years Israel’s claim that Arafat was not a partner, and then that Abbas was not, are certainly willing to hear also that Hamas is not.
Since the end of 2005, the Bush administration has seemed determined to move its planned “Iranian campaign” into high gear, so Israel’s stocks have been rising again. In its concerted campaign to prevent international recognition of the new Hamas administration, and to impose tough sanctions on the Palestinians, Israel has been exploiting the Islamophobic atmosphere that resurfaced in the US. Israeli security officials flooded the West with reports on the dangers of Hamas’ future ties with Iran and Syria, painting a disturbing picture of a global fundamentalist Islamic threat. The conditions were ripe for such propaganda. On February 3, the Pentagon released its 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), where it lays out its vision for what it describes as a long war: “Currently, Iraq and Afghanistan are crucial battlegrounds, but the struggle extends far beyond their borders. With its allies and partners, the United States must be prepared to wage this war in many locations simultaneously and for some years to come”.
With the drums of the long war banging, Israel’s line on Hamas has been well received. The US administration urged European and Arab countries to freeze direct aid to the Palestinian Authority,and on February 15, the U.S. congress started moves in the same direction. Israeli security officials had been involved for quite some time before in urging the U.S. Administration to increase its operations in Iran, including covert acts of regime change – efforts that were yielding their fruits in 2006. As was disclosed by Seymour Hersh and others, during Israel’s recent war on Lebanon, the U.S. administration has viewed this as preparation, and a “test” for the option of an attack on Iran.
What has been the role of the Pro-Israel lobby in shaping U.S. policies?
Interestingly, in 2005, during the whole period of U.S. heavy pressure on Israel, AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and other lobby groups were completely silent. As I detail in the book, this compliance was helped by the investigation, and later the indictment of two AIPAC officials – its policy director, Steven Rosen, and Iran specialist Keith Weissman. It transpired that the powerful Pro-Israel lobby could be silenced easily, if the White House so desired. This confirms what Chomsky and others have been arguing for years – that the Pro-Israel lobbies are powerful only as long as their pressure is in line with U.S. policies.
But the renewed wave of Islamophobia has also bolstered AIPAC’s newfound self-confidence. Its annual policy conference in March 2006 was held in an atmosphere of neocon celebration, with star appearance of several of the most hard-line administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. The Jewish newspaper Forward noted at the time that AIPAC “appears to be out of step with the American Jewish community on Iraq. 70% of American Jews oppose the Iraq war, according to a poll commission by the American Jewish Committee at the end of 2005.” But regardless of the opinions of the Jewish community they are supposed to represent, the leaders of the Pro-Israel lobby “are optimistic that, paradoxically, the drop in Bush’s approval ratings in American public opinion will force him to adopt the hard line advocated by AIPAC and Israel”.
Despite the grim events described in the book, the overall feeling that comes through is that of hope. Why?
I argue that the reason that the U.S. exerted even limited pressure on Israel, for the first time in recent history, was because at that moment in history it was no longer possible to ignore world discontent over its policy of blind support of Israel. This shows that persistent struggle can have an effect, and can lead governments to act. Such struggle begins with the Palestinian people, who have withstood years of brutal oppression, and who, through their spirit of zumud -sticking to their land- and daily endurance, organizing and resistance, have managed to keep the Palestinian cause alive, something that not all oppressed nations have managed to do. It continues with international struggle–solidarity movements that send their people to the occupied territories and stand in vigils at home, professors signing boycott petitions, subjecting themselves to daily harassment, a few courageous journalists that insist on covering the truth, against the pressure of acquiescent media and pro-Israel lobbies. Often this struggle for justice seems futile. Nevertheless, it has penetrated global consciousness. It is this collective consciousness that eventually forced the U.S. to pressure Israel into some, albeit limited, concessions. The Palestinian cause can be silenced for a while, as is happening now, but it will resurface.
You note that since 2003, a new form of struggle has been formed along the route of the West Bank wall?
Largely unreported, there is a growing non-violent popular struggle aimed at stopping, or at least slowing down, Israel’s massive work of destruction that, once completed, will disconnect 400,000 Palestinians from their land and means of sustenance. In the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, 730,000 Palestinians were driven out of their villages. But rather than waiting for the history books to tell the story of the second Palestinian Nakba, the Palestinians along the wall are struggling to save their land. Armed only with the marvelous spirit of people who have held to their land one generation after the other, they stand in front of one of the most brutal military machines of the world. An amazing development of the last three years is that Israelis have joined the Palestinian struggle. For the first time in the history of the occupation, we are witnessing joint Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
For almost two years now, the center of struggle has been the village Bil’in, in the center of the West Bank, whose lands are being transferred to the Israeli settlement of upper Modi’in. Every Friday there is a central demonstration that gathers the whole village as well as Israelis and internationals. The army has used brutal force to try to stop the protest, but the demonstrations continue. Along with Israel of the army and the settlers, a new Israel-Palestine is forming along the route of the wall. In the last chapter of the book I survey in detail the development of this joint struggle–the history of the people, which emerged along the history of the powerful.
Tanya Reinhart is a Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University and the author of Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 and The Roadmap to Nowhere. She can be reached through her website: http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart
A mistake too often made by those examining Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories — or when analysing its treatment of Arabs in general, or interpreting its view of Iran — is to assume that Israel is acting in good faith. Even its most trenchant critics can fall into this trap.
Such a reluctance to attribute bad faith was demonstrated this week by Israel’s foremost human rights group, B’Tselem, when it published a report into the bombing by the Israeli air force of Gaza’s power plant in late June. The horrifying consequences of this act of collective punishment — a war crime, as B’Tselem rightly notes — are clearly laid out in the report.
The group warns that electricity is available to most of Gaza’s 1.4 million inhabitants for a few hours a day, and running water for a similar period. The sewerage system has all but collapsed, with the resulting risk of the spread of dangerous infectious disease.
In their daily lives, Gazans can no longer rely on the basic features of modern existence. Their fridges are as good as useless, threatening outbreaks of food poisoning. The elderly and infirm living in apartments can no longer leave their homes because elevators don’t work, or are unpredictable. Hospitals and doctors’ clinics struggle to offer essential medical services. Small businesses, most of which rely on the power and water supplies, from food shops and laundry services to factories and workshops, are being forced to close.
Rapidly approaching, says B’Tselem, is the moment when Gaza’s economy — already under an internationally backed siege to penalise the Palestinians for democratically electing a Hamas government — will simply expire under the strain.
Unfortunately, however, B’Tselem loses the plot when it comes to explaining why Israel would choose to inflict such terrible punishment on the people of Gaza. Apparently, it was out of a thirst for revenge: the group’s report is even entitled “Act of Vengeance”. Israel, it seems, wanted revenge for the capture a few days earlier of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, from a border tank position used to fire artillery into Gaza.
The problem with the “revenge” theory is that, however much a rebuke it is, it presupposes a degree of good faith on the part of the vengeance-seeker. You steal my toy in the playground, and I lash out and hit you. I have acted badly — even disproportionately to use a vogue word B’Tselem also adopts — but no one would deny that my emotions were honest. There was no subterfuge or deception in my anger. I incur blame only because I failed to control my impulses. There is even the implication that, though my action was unwarranted, my fury was justified.
But why should we think Israel is acting in good faith, even if in bad temper, in destroying Gaza’s power station? Why should we assume it was a hot-headed over-reaction rather than a coldly calculated deed?
In other words, why believe Israel is simply lashing out when it commits a war crime rather than committing it after careful advance planning? Is it not possible that such war crimes, rather than being spontaneous and random, are actually all pushing in the same direction?
More especially, why should we give Israel the benefit of the doubt when its war crimes contribute, as the bombing of the power station in Gaza surely does, to easily deciphered objectives? Why not think of the bombing instead as one instalment in a long-running and slowly unfolding plan?
The occupation of Gaza did not begin this year, after Hamas was elected, nor did it end with the disengagement a year ago. The occupation is four decades old and still going strong in both the West Bank and Gaza. In that time Israel has followed a consistent policy of subjugating the Palestinian population, imprisoning it inside ever-shrinking ghettos, sealing it off from contact with the outside world, and destroying its chances of ever developing an independent economy.
Since the outbreak six years ago of the second intifada — the Palestinians’ uprising against the occupation — Israel has tightened its system of controls. It has sought to do so through two parallel, reinforcing approaches.
First, it has imposed forms of collective punishment to weaken Palestinian resolve to resist the occupation, and encourage factionalism and civil war. Second, it has “domesticated” suffering inside the ghettos, ensuring each Palestinian finds himself isolated from his neighbours, his concerns reduced to the domestic level: how to receive a house permit, or get past the wall to school or university, or visit a relative illegally imprisoned in Israel, or stop yet more family land being stolen, or reach his olive groves.
The goals of both sets of policies, however, are the same: the erosion of Palestinian society’s cohesiveness, the disruption of efforts at solidarity and resistance, and ultimately the slow drift of Palestinians away from vulnerable rural areas into the relative safety of urban centres — and eventually, as the pressure continues to mount, on into neighbouring Arab states, such as Jordan and Egypt.
Seen in this light, the bombing of the Gaza power station fits neatly into Israel’s long-standing plans for the Palestinians. Vengeance has nothing to do with it.
Another recent, more predictable, example was an email exchange published on the Media Lens forum website involving the BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen. Bowen was questioned about why the BBC had failed to report on an important peace initiative begun this summer jointly by a small group of Israeli rabbis and Hamas politicians. A public meeting where the two sides would have unveiled their initiative was foiled when Israel’s Shin Bet secret service, presumably with the approval of the Israeli government, blocked the Hamas MPs from entering Jerusalem.
Bowen, though implicitly critical of Israel’s behaviour, believes the initiative was of only marginal significance. He doubts that the Shin Bet or the government were overly worried by the meeting — in his words, it was seen as no more than a “minor irritant” — because the Israeli peace camp has shown a great reluctance to get involved with the Palestinians since the outbreak of the intifada in 2000. The Israeli government would not want Hamas looking “more respectable”, he admits, but adds that that is because “they believe that it is a terrorist organisation out to kill Jews and to destroy their country”.
In short, the Israeli government cracked down on the initiative because they believed Hamas was not a genuine partner for peace. Again, at least apparently in Bowen’s view, Israel was acting in good faith: when it warns that it cannot talk with Hamas because it is a terrorist organisation, it means what it says.
But what if, for a second, we abandon the assumption of good faith?
Hamas comprises a militant wing, a political wing and a network of welfare charities. Israel chooses to characterise all these activities as terrorist in nature, refusing to discriminate between the group’s different wings. It denies that Hamas could have multiple identities in the same way the Irish Republican Army, which included a political wing called Sinn Fein, clearly did.
Some of Israel’s recent actions might fit with such a simplistic view of Hamas. Israel tried to prevent Hamas from standing in the Palestinian elections, only backing down after the Americans insisted on the group’s participation. Israel now appears to be destroying the Palestinians’ governing institutions, claiming that once in Hamas’ hands they will be used to promote terror.
The Israeli government, it could be argued, acts in these ways because it is genuinely persuaded that even the political wing of Hamas is cover for terrorist activity.
But most other measures suggest that in reality Israel has a different agenda. Since the Palestinian elections six months ago, Israel’s policies towards Hamas have succeeded in achieving one end: the weakening of the group’s moderates, especially the newly elected politicians, and the strengthening of the militants. In the debate inside Hamas about whether to move towards politics, diplomacy and dialogue, or concentrate on military resistance, we can guess which side is currently winning.
The moderates not the militants have been damaged by the isolation of the elected Hamas government, imposed by the international community at Israel’s instigation. The moderates not the militants have been weakened by Israel rounding up and imprisoning the group’s MPs. The moderates not the militants have been harmed by the failure, encouraged by Israel, of Fatah and Hamas politicians to create a national unity government. And the approach of the moderates not the militants has been discredited by Israel’s success in blocking the summer peace initiative between Hamas MPs and the rabbis.
In other words, Israeli policies are encouraging the extremist and militant elements inside Hamas rather the political and moderate ones. So why not assume that is their aim?
Why not assume that rather than wanting a dialogue, a real peace process and an eventual agreement with the Palestinians that might lead to Palestinian statehood, Israel wants an excuse to carry on with its four-decade occupation — even if it has to reinvent it through sleights of hand like the disengagement and convergence plans?
Why not assume that Israel blocked the meeting between the rabbis and the Hamas MPs because it fears that such a dialogue might suggest to Israeli voters and the world that there are strong voices in Hamas prepared to consider an agreement with Israel, and that given a chance their strength and influence might grow?
Why not assume that the Israeli government wanted to disrupt the contacts between Hamas and the rabbis for exactly the same reasons that it has repeatedly used violence to break up joint demonstrations in Palestinian villages like Bilin staged by Israeli and Palestinian peace actvists opposed to the wall that is annexing Palestinian farm land to Israel?
And why, unlike Bowen, not take seriously opinion polls like the one published this week that show 67 per cent of Israelis support negotiations with a Palestinian national unity government (that is, one including Hamas), and that 56 per cent favour talks with a Palestinian government whoever is leading it? Could it be that faced with these kinds of statistics Israel’s leaders are terrified that, if Hamas were given the chance to engage in a peace process, Israeli voters might start putting more pressure on their own government to make meaningful concessions?
In other words, why not consider for a moment that Israel’s stated view of Hamas may be a self-serving charade, that the Israeli government has invested its energies in discrediting Hamas, and before it secular Palestinian leaders, because it has no interest in peace and never has done? Its goal is the maintenance of the occupation on the best terms it can find for itself.
On much the same grounds, we should treat equally sceptically another recent Israeli policy: the refusal by the Israeli Interior Ministry to renew the tourist visas of Palestinians with foreign passports, thereby forcing them to leave their homes and families inside the occupied territories. Many of these Palestinians, who were originally stripped by Israel of their residency rights in violation of international law, often when they left to work or study abroad, have been living on renewable three-month visas for years, even decades.
Amazingly, this compounding of the original violation of these Palestinian families’ rights has received almost no media coverage and so far provoked not a peep of outrage from the big international human rights organisations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
I can hazard a guess why. Unusually Israel has made no serious attempt to justify this measure. Furthermore, unlike the two examples cited above, it is difficult to put forward even a superficially plausible reason why Israel needs to pursue this policy, except for the obvious motive: that Israel believes it has found another bureaucratic wheeze to deny a few more thousand Palestinians their birthright. It is another small measure designed to ethnically cleanse these Palestinians from what might have been their state, were Israel interested in peace.
Unlike the other two examples, it is impossible to assume any good faith on Israel’s part in this story: the measure has no security value, not even of the improbable variety, nor can it be sold as an over-reaction, vengeance, to a provocation by the group affected.
Palestinians with foreign passports are among the richest, best educated and possibly among the most willing to engage in dialogue with Israel. Many have large business investments in the occupied territories they wish to protect from further military confrontation, and most speak fluently the language of the international community — English. In other words, they might have been a bridgehead to a peace process were Israel genuinely interested in one.
But as we have seen, Israel isn’t. If only our media and human rights organisations could bring themselves to admit as much. But because they can’t, the transparently bad faith underpinning Israel’s administrative attempt at ethnic cleansing may be allowed to pass without any censure at all.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State” published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
