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From Gaza to Obama: An open letter

16 November 2009

Barack and Michelle Obama dine with Edward and Mariam Said at a 1998 Arab community event in Chicago

Dear Mr President,

You will probably not read this letter due to your busy schedule and the huge number of messages you receive from presidents, kings, princes, sheiks, and prime ministers. Who is a Palestinian academic from Gaza, after all, to have the guts and write an open letter to the president of the United States of America?

What has triggered this letter is a picture of your excellency sitting with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. That, of course, happened before 2004, i.e. before you underwent a process of metamorphosis which I personally think is unprecedented in history. Seeing you with Edward Said, I must say, surprised me. Said, a true public intellectual must have said something to you about the suffering of the Palestinian people. In the picture, you and your wife seem to be listening attentively, and admiringly, to him. But the point remains; did you really understand his eloquent, passionate defense of the rights of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine? Judging from your recent policy shifts, I very much doubt it. It is precisely the incongruity between the photograph and these policy shifts that has prompted this letter.

Mr President,

The whole world celebrated your election as the first African-American president of the US. I did not. Neither did the inhabitants of the concentration camp where I live. Your sympathetic visit to Sderot—an Israeli town which was the Palestinian village of Najd until 1948 when its people were ethnically cleansed—three years after your first visit to a Kibbutz in northern Israel in support of its residents, and after your pledge to be committed to the security of the State of Israel and its “right” to retain unified Jerusalem as the capital city of the Jewish people—to give but few examples—were all clear indications of where your heart lies.

Another reason for the writing of this letter is shock at the indifference and arrogance with which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed Palestinian concerns about Israel’s illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank. Only a few weeks ago you made the admirable statement that all Jewish settlement must halt, and you made it clear that this included expansion of existing settlements as well as the construction of new settlements. However, when Netanyahu let it be known that he had no intention of stopping settlements, you missed an historic opportunity to draw a line: no more billions and no more weapons for Israel unless and until this condition is met. Now Clinton has the Herculean task of pretending that your position on Jewish settlements has not changed, although it is clear you have chosen not to use the very real power at your disposal to bring Israeli policy into line.

About six months after your election, you gave a speech in Cairo, addressed to the Arab and Islamic worlds; which some people found impressive. I found it impressive in form, but not in substance because your actions have not matched your rhetoric. Why did I not buy the new language of the new American administration? Because while you were giving your speech, we were burying my neighbor, a terminally ill patient, who needed treatment in a hospital abroad, since, thanks to the siege imposed by your own administration and Israel on the Gaza Strip, the facilities that would have saved his life are not available in Gaza. Like more than 400 terminally ill people in Gaza, my neighbor lost his life. In spite of the fine Arabic words of peace, “salaam aleikum,” you made it crystal clear that the point of reference in any negotiations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israel’s security. By doing that, Mr President, you are effectively marginalizing the whole issue of Palestine, and unfortunately setting the stage for renewed Israeli assaults against a starving Gaza, an entity that has, thanks to your “unbreakable” ties with Israel, been transformed into the largest concentration camp on earth.

Your failure to support the Goldstone report, your indifference, not to say your contribution, to Palestinian suffering and the process of “politicide” against the Palestinian people of Gaza is, to say the least, unfathomable, coming from a man who listened so earnestly to Edward Said. Your advisors must have told you about the cutting off of medicine, food and fuel to the concentration camp where I live. Patients in need of dialysis and other urgent medical treatment are dying every single day. A majority of our children, many the same age as your two beautiful daughters, are badly undernourished.

You must have skimmed through the executive summary of the Goldstone report detailing the horror inflicted on 1.5 million civilians for 22 days, horror caused by F16s, Apache helicopters, and phosphorus bombs made in American factories. Hundreds of children were burnt to death by phosphorus bombs; pregnant women were brutally targeted in what Israeli soldiers boasted of on their T-Shirts: “One bullet, Two kills.” And yet, not a single word of sympathy, Mr President! Edward Said had this to say upon his first visit to Gaza: “It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in… it’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa.” This was back in 1993, Mr President, before conditions dramatically deteriorated. Gaza has now become, as the leading Israeli human rights organization B’tselem describes it, “the largest prison on Earth.”

Mr Obama,

Unlike your predecessor, you seem to be a smart man. You must have realized that a two-state solution has been rendered impossible by Israeli colonization of the West Bank, by the war on Gaza, by the construction of the apartheid wall, by the expansion of so-called Greater Jerusalem, and by the increase in the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. You must have realized also that there are six million refugees, most of whom live in miserable conditions waiting for courageous, visionary leaders committed to true democracy, human rights and international law to implement UN resolution 194. And yet, you and your secretary of state, like every US president since 1967, have decided to support Israel in creating conditions that made the two-state solution impossible, impractical and unjust.

Were you a supporter of the bantustan system in South Africa under the apartheid system? Are you opposed to equal rights and the transformation of Israel/Palestine into a state for all its citizens? The two-state solution means the bantustanization of Palestine, a solution you, to our knowledge, never supported for South Africa. Are you, Mr President, opposed to civic democracy, which is the demand of most Palestinian civil society and grassroots organizations? This is what your role models, Martin Luther King Jr and Steve Biko, died for. Was Nelson Mandela wrong to spend 27 years of his life in pursuit of justice by demanding equality for the indigenous people of South Africa? Do you realize that what you are supporting in the Middle East is a racist solution par excellence? A solution based on ethnic nationalism. Your secretary of state and envoy to the Middle East, unashamedly, stood with beaming smiles next to Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who not only defends openly the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but also calls for a new genocide in Gaza. Do you realize, Mr President, that this Hitlerite fascist might become Israel’s next prime minister, thanks to your administration’s complacency and support?

Our only immediate demand is that your administration ensures that Israel fulfills its obligations in terms of international law. Is that too much to ask?

Mr President Barack Hussein Obama,

We, the Palestinian people, are fed up!

Sincerely,

Professor Haidar Eid
Gaza, Palestine

The author is an independent political commentator and professor in the Department of English Literature at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza.

Baseball team urged to cut ties with Israeli group

Eli Clifton | IPS News

14 November 2009

A coalition of 11 U.S., Israeli and Palestinian groups are calling on the New York Mets baseball team to cancel a fundraiser by the “violent and racist” Israeli Hebron Fund which is scheduled to be held at the Mets’ stadium, Citi Field, on Nov. 21.

The Hebron Fund participates in “the raising of capital for the improvement of daily life for the residents of Hebron, Israel”, a city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to its website, but the Fund has been accused of encouraging violence towards Palestinians and participating in illegal settlement expansion.

The coalition urges the Mets to reconsider their decision to rent space at the Casesar’s Club, an event space in Citi Field, on the basis that, “The New York Mets will be facilitating activities that directly violate international law and the [Barack] Obama administration’s call for a freeze in settlement construction, and that actively promote racial discrimination, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in Hebron.”

“By allowing the Hebron Fund to fundraise on its premises, the New York Mets will be directly aiding Hebron’s Jewish settlers, who are regularly described, both worldwide and among Israelis, as violent racists,” said a letter from Adalah-NY, on behalf of the coalition.

It was addressed to Fred Wilpon, chair of the board of the New York Mets and copied to Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Special Envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell; and Rachel Robinson, chair of the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Adalah-NY has also been involved in the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanction” campaign to bring indirect pressure on Israel to work towards a viable Palestinian state.

“[The Mets] can do the right thing very easily. I’m not blaming them for where they are now,” Sydney Levy, director of campaigns and chapters at Jewish Voice For Peace, one of the members of the coalition, told IPS. “[The Mets’] situation is totally reversible but this is not an issue which is going to die quietly.”

“Citi Field hosts a wide range of events that reflect the diversity of our hometown and the differing views and opinions of New Yorkers. The beliefs of organizations holding events at Citi Field do not necessarily reflect those of the New York Mets,” the Mets said in a prepared statement.

The occupation of Hebron has been an ongoing source of concern for human rights groups as the Israeli military has taken increasingly aggressive actions to secure the 700 Jewish settlers living among 150,000 Palestinians.

The U.S. State Department called for a freeze in settlement expansion but has recently made clear that it should not be a precondition for a resumption of peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Statements made by Hebron Fund Executive Director Yossi Baumol suggest the group supports the expansion of settlements even in areas where the Israeli government has evacuated settlers in accordance with international law.

In a December radio interview, Baumol said, “In the end we will come back to this building,” in reaction to the Israeli army’s evacuation of settlers from the Hebron settlement of Beit Hashalom.

Shortly after the evacuation, settlers went on a violent rampage in Hebron, leading to the shooting of three Palestinians and damaging and burning Palestinian property.

“As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at innocent Arabs in Hebron. There is no other definition than the term ‘pogrom’ [a riot organised against a specific group] to describe what I have seen,” said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after the violence erupted.

And in 2006 the Hebron Fund and the Jewish Community of Hebron called for the reestablishment of a settlement in the centrally located Palestinian market in Hebron from which the Israeli army had previously removed settlers.

“Help us move families back into the Shuk [market] and into other new areas!” said the Hebron Fund in a report.”

“Please redouble your support of the Hebron Fund at this crucial time so you can be a partner in…The purchase and renovation of ancient Jewish homes, Construction of new housing,” the report went on to say.

“The Hebron Fund should not be eligible for tax-exempt status in the U.S. because it is not organized and operated exclusively for charitable purposes, but rather promotes the anti-charitable values of violence, racism, and opposition to human rights. The settlement activity that the Hebron Fund supports is racially exclusive, discriminatory, contrary to United States policy and contrary to international law,” read the letter from the coalition calling for the Mets to cancel the event at Citi Field.

The letter goes on to document numerous other cases of settlement expansion, settler violence and Israeli military violence and closures in the center of Hebron which have lead to the closure of 76.6-percent of businesses and 41.9-percent of homes to go vacant.

“There are certain red lines that have to do with racism and sponsoring violence that you do not cross,” said Levy.

“The Hebron fund is there to support Jewish only settlements in Hebron. When you sponsor organisations that are involved in these sorts of activities you have to question what’s going on. At the end of the day this is a matter of people being aware of what’s happening there and what’s our responsibility is here,” Levy concluded.

The campaign also emphasises that, “Allowing the Hebron Fund to fundraise at Citi Field contradicts New York Mets and Major League Baseball’s commitment to equal opportunity and non-discrimination, and is an insult to the legacy of Jackie Robinson.”

Jackie Robinson was the first African American Major League Baseball player and is honored at the Mets’ Citi Field stadium in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda.

The coalition of groups calling for the Mets to cancel the Hebron Fund event includes: Adalah-NY, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Brooklyn For Peace, Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel), CODEPINK Women for Peace, Gush Shalom (Israel), Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Jews Say No!, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (Palestine), U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and the WESPAC Foundation.

Eleven organizations demand that Mets cancel Citi Field fundraiser for Israeli settlers

Adalah NY

4 November 2009

Eleven organizations from the US, Palestine and Israel have called on baseball’s New York Mets to cancel a November 21st dinner at the Caesars Club at Citi Field for the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund. The dinner is a fundraiser for Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank City of Hebron. In a letter sent to the Mets on November 3rd, the groups said, “The New York Mets will be facilitating activities that directly violate international law and the Obama administration’s call for a freeze in settlement construction, and that actively promote racial discrimination, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in Hebron.” Seven hundred Israeli settlers, living amidst 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron, are expanding their hold on the historic old city by driving out the Palestinian residents.

The groups added that “It would be a tragic irony for an event funding Israeli settlers’ violent actions and discriminatory policies against Palestinians to be held at Caesars Club which, according to the Mets, “sits directly on top of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda,” which was named “in honor of Jackie Robinson, the… great American who broke baseball’s color barrier.” The Mets and Major League Baseball promote Robinson’s legacy, including Robinson’s value of “Justice: Treating all people fairly, no matter who they are.” Mets owner Fred Wilpon has explained in the past that, as a 16 year-old, meeting Jackie Robinson was an experience that never left him. “As a kid, a nothing, he treated me with all of that dignity that he treated everyone else in his life.”

On the Hebron Fund webpage, clicking on the symbol which says “Give to Hebron” leads to a donations page on the website for the Jewish Community of Hebron which says, among other things, “keep Hebron Jewish for the Jewish people.” In a report on Hebron, the Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem and ACRI have labeled the demands of Hebron’s settlers as “racist.” Hebron settlement leader Moshe Levinger, praised in a Hebron Fund dinner video, has been quoted saying,“The Arabs know to behave like good boys around us.” Hebron Fund Executive Director Yossi Baumol also made very derogatory comments about Arabs in a 2007 interview.

The signers of the letter include Adalah-NY, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Brooklyn For Peace, Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel), CODEPINK Women for Peace, Gush Shalom (Israel), Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (Palestine), US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and WESPAC Foundation. The letter was cced and sent to Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Middle East Envoy George Mitchell, who has a history of involvement with Major League Baseball, and Rachel Robinson, Jackie Robinson’s wife.

The letter explains that reviewing last year’s and this year’s Hebron Fund dinner shows that some dinner honorees support violence and terrorizing Palestinians. In 1990, Noam Arnon, who is to be honored at the dinner, called three Israelis who were convicted of killing three Arabs and maiming two Palestinian mayors in car bombings “heroes.” In a video on the Hebron Fund website, 2008 dinner honoree Myrna Zisman pays tribute to Hebron settler Yifat Alkoby. Alkoby became famous worldwide in 2006 when she was videotaped in Hebron terrorizing and calling a Palestinian woman and girl “whores” who were caged inside their own home as protection from settler attacks. In another video featuring 2008 dinner honorees, three children who appear to be the honorees’ children are briefly shown holding guns and smiling.

All Israeli settlements violate international law, according to a broad international consensus. The Hebron Fund’s dinner invitation says, “Join us in support of Hebron and in protest of today’s building freeze in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].” In a September, 2008 radio interview, the Hebron Fund’s Yossi Baumol explained, “There are real facts on the ground that are created by people helping the Hebron Fund and coming to our dinners.”

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius recently highlighted the Hebron Fund and noted that, “critics of Israeli settlements question why American taxpayers are supporting indirectly, through the exempt contributions, a process that the government condemns. A search of IRS records identified 28 U.S. charitable groups that made a total of $33.4 million in tax-exempt contributions to settlements and related organizations between 2004 and 2007.” The Hebron Fund has been the subject of complaints to the I.R.S. regarding its tax-exempt status. The complaints request investigations of allegations that it raises funds for the development of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli organization Gush Shalom recently urged the National Lawyers Guild, an American organization, to encourage American tax authorities to strip US non-profits that support Israeli settlements of their tax-exempt status.

EU court: No customs breaks for Israeli goods from settlements

Ora Coren | Haaretz

3 November 2009

Israeli goods produced in West Bank settlements are not eligible for customs benefits in the European Union, stated an advocate general of the European Court of Justice last week.

Israel and the EU have a free-trade agreement that gives Israeli exports substantial customs breaks.

The advocate general’s non-binding opinion, if followed, could mean that goods produced in the territories may be saddled with full customs duties.

The opinion, submitted in a case in Germany brought by water purification firm Brita in 2002, could serve as a precedent in the EU. The company was ordered to pay 19,155 euros in customs for equipment it imported from the Israeli firm Soda Club, whose factory is in the West Bank.

German customs authorities asked Israeli authorities whether the goods were produced in the territories, and when no answer was received, Brita was ordered to pay customs duties.

Brita then appealed the decision to the German court system, and the Finance Court in Hamburg requested advice on the matter from European Union legal authorities.

In the past, EU authorities have ruled that the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem are also part of the “occupied territories,” but in this case, the advocate general said his opinion referred only to the West Bank and Gaza.

Currently, for goods from the territories to receive customs breaks, they must bear a certificate issued by the Palestinian Authority.

The disagreement with the EU over Israeli exports from the territories has been going on for a long time. At one point, the EU threatened sanctions against all Israeli exports if an agreement was not reached. However, Israel refused to label or otherwise differentiate products from the settlements.

Five years ago, Israel and the EU agreed that all exports would be labeled with the place of manufacture, or the factory’s zip code, and the EU customs authorities would then decide whether to levy customs.

Israeli exports to the EU totalled $17.8 million in 2008, of which only a tiny fraction were from the territories. However, Der Spiegel recently reported that a third of Israeli exports to Europe are made in part or in full in the territories.

Palestinians behind bars with no recourse to justice

Christoph Schult | Der Spiegel

23 October 2009

Hundreds of Palestinians are kept behind bars in Israel without charges having been filed and with no access to a fair trial. Not even their lawyers are allowed to look at the evidence. Some governments in the West have expressed their concern, but the Israelis haven’t budged.

The cell is only a few square meters in size and there are no windows. A mattress lies on the floor; a hole in the floor for prisoners’ needs, cynically called a “Turkish toilet” is next to it.

Mohammed Othman has been held in Kishon Detention Center in northern Israel for almost a month. But neither he nor his lawyer knows exactly what he is being accused of. Othman is locked up as an administrative detainee — called Maazar Minhali in Hebrew — and is one of around 335 Palestinians currently in the same position.

According to a report from the human rights organization B’Tselem, more than a third of such administrative detainees remain behind bars for longer than six months, a further third longer than a year. Eight percent stay locked up for at least two years. The Israeli army has confirmed the numbers, but emphasizes that they have been dropping in recent years.

Allegedly Incriminating Evidence

Nevertheless, the practice is problematic for a democracy such as Israel’s. Military judges decide if the detention will be prolonged — and for the most part they merely rubberstamp the motions filed by the military attorneys, who, for their part, received information from Shabak, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency. The allegedly incriminating evidence is not shared with the detainees or with their legal representation.

The material is secret and cannot be shared with the accused due to “security concerns,” an Israeli army spokesperson said. He acknowledged, however, that such military hearings “are without a doubt subject to error.” In other words, one cannot speak of a fair trial.

The Salem military court in the northern part of the West Bank has already extended Mohammed Othman’s detention three times. According to Israeli law, it is possible to imprison a Palestinian for 90 days without charge. And a judge in a military court of appeal can extend that period of detention for another 90 days.

The latest hearing in the Othman case was on Monday of this week. While Judge Eliahu Nimni did not give the intelligence agents the 23 days they had asked for to interrogate their prisoner, he did rule that the detention be extended by 10 days. After hearing Othman’s lawyer’s testimony, Judge Nimni said that these 10 days were necessary to clarify the “suspicions” against the Palestinian. Letting Othman go would be a security risk, he said.

Terrible Conditions

The organization Addameer arranged for Othman to have a lawyer represent him. The 33-year-old complained to his attorney about the terrible conditions in prison, and said he was interrogated for hours at a time. On one occasion, Oct. 15, he was grilled from 1:45 p.m. until 1:20 a.m. When Othman fell asleep on his chair out of exhaustion, his interrogators poured water over his head, he says.

Othman still doesn’t know what he is being accused of. He told his lawyer that he has not been confronted with any concrete dates, names or events. What do they have on him? SPIEGEL ONLINE tried to find out from the domestic intelligence agency. “We cannot fulfil your request,” came the written reply. A telephone enquiry to ask how this lack of transparency could be compatible with the rule of law met with the reply by a spokeswoman: “It is all going according to law and order. Trust us!”

A number of Western embassies have had similar experiences. Sweden, which currently holds the six-month rotating president of the European Union, wasn’t even able to obtain a reason for the arrest. Sweden and other countries filed a protest.

The Israeli army stated that administrative arrests target terror suspects. But in the Othman case, that is highly doubtful. He was arrested on Sept. 22 as he attempted to travel over the Allenby Bridge from Jordan into the West Bank. He was returning from a visit to Norway where, among others, he met with Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen.

‘Doesn’t Respect Peaceful Protests’

Several Western diplomats have vouched for his innocence. Othman is known for his strict policies of non-violence. In his hometown of Jayyous, he has organized protests against the construction of the security fence with which Israel is attempting to protect itself from terrorists. Othman and other activists have focused their protests against the route of the security fence, for which the Israelis have expropriated land that belongs to the Palestinians in Jayyous.

The fact that the Israelis have nabbed a supporter of non-violent protests has enraged some Western diplomats. “Many Palestinians are interpreting this as a sign that Israel doesn’t even respect peaceful protests,” a foreign observer said.

The government in Jerusalem has shrugged off the allegations. It isn’t even clear who has political responsibility for the policy of “administrative arrests.” After SPIEGEL ONLINE submitted questions to the Defense Ministry, it was referred to the prime minister’s office, which in turn told the reporter to ask the Justice Ministry, which then sent the reporter back to the Defense Ministry. In the end, the Defense Ministry provided no response.