New York, March 11, 2010—OneVoice Israel staff and youth leaders urged hundreds of people attending United States Vice President Joe Biden’s speech at Tel Aviv University on Thursday not to let the extremists on either side seize the peace process.

Eight youth leaders joined OneVoice Israel Interim Director Tal Harris and Coordinator Guy Lupo in distributing nearly 1,000 flyers to attendees in support of the renewal of talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.

“The agenda in Israel is being hijacked by extremists who work to undermine our government's strategy for peace,” said Harris. “Today, we witnessed 700 students at Tel Aviv University eager for change, who disagree with the appeasement of extreme settlers.”

OneVoice Israel’s staff and youth leaders wearing the movement’s t-shirts stood out from the audience during Biden’s talk. Noticing their presence, the vice president gave the first question to our youth leader Danny Shaket.

Shaket asked Biden for his opinion on what the U.S. administration, the Israeli government, and the Palestinian Authority would need from the moderate majority in order to reach an agreement.

“The United States cannot want peace more than the Palestinians want it or more than the Israelis want it,” Biden said. “You have got to get to the point where the leaders are actually able to sit and hopefully what we can do in these proximity talks, being available to both parties, we can be a bridging mechanism.”

Throughout his speech, Biden voiced his commitment to end the conflict through a two-state solution.

“For Israel, then, this is about both preserving your identity and achieving the security you deserve, lasting security,” Biden said. “For Palestinians, statehood will not just fulfill a legitimate and long-sought aspiration common to all peoples; it will restore the fundamental dignity and self-respect that their current predicament denies them.”

Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 Jewish homes in the Ramat Shlomo settlement in Arab East Jerusalem marred Biden’s visit and was condemned by the United States.

“[T]hat decision, in my view, undermined the trust required for productive negotiations,” Biden said on Thursday. “I — and at the request of President Obama condemned it immediately and unequivocally.”

The vice president’s comments were met with applause from the mainly Israeli audience, many of whom were students at Tel Aviv University.

“It's unfortunate and dangerous that the Israeli government’s actions are not in sync with their two-state strategy,” said Tal Harris of OneVoice Israel.

Click here to listen to Danny Shaket’s question and U.S. Vice President’s Joe Biden’s response, starting at 37 minutes and 35 seconds.

Click here to listen to BBC World Service interview with OneVoice Israel’s Interim Director Tal Harris and youth leader Daniella Shlomo.

Interim Director Tal Harris engages crowd before U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's talk at Tel Aviv University.

Mika Vies handing out OneVoice Israel flyers outside Tel Aviv University.

Our guides were Hamed from Hebron and Ezra from Taayush. As you may remember from a previous report, the Massafer villages have been under heavy pressure from the Israeli military:

• Pressure from a lot of dirt barriers along the main passageways between the Massafer villages;
• likewise from the unceasing pursuit of military vehicles after Palestinian employment seekers who come from the Hebron area and who move along these paths in hope of finding work in the towns of south Israel.

During our tour, the military surprisingly showed no sign of their presence, seemingly honoring  the first appearance of women from MachsomWatch in the area. This fact was well exploited by the continuous movement of employment seekers’ Subaru cars – a phenomenon that is presently a burden for the permanent residents of Massafer.

The barriers themselves were open – a sign that  the struggle led by attorney Limor Yehuda from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel to keep them open is meanwhile yielding fruit. However, the dirt road used as a main passage way in this area is in rather a bad state and in some places (as can be seen in the attached photographs) is almost impassable even in a jeep.

During the tour we arrived at a primary school (grades 1-4, 42 students), that opened this year at the cave dwellers village of Fachit in the heart of the Masafer area. The photographs we took tell it all: Over and above the good intentions of the aid organizations that enabled the opening of this school (two major International organizations – Care International and the Red Cross, and a local one – Health Work Committees), the infrastructure they established: several tents, chairs and blackboards and toilets – are extremely  minimal and lacking. At the moment, about five months after the opening, weather conditions have made the place completely  unusable.

It is not an exaggeration to say that no other school in our region (i.e. the entire Middle East) operates under such difficult conditions.

And, nonetheless, students continue to arrive (although not when we were there) by means of the vehicle recently bought with donations we managed to get.

We thank Michal and Nurit from Machsom Watch South who came on the tour and hope that from now on the Massafer area will remain permanently on the map for the monitoring tours by this important organization.

Ehud Krinis

Child at Demolished home in Silwan

On Tuesday a shocking article on the front page of HaAretz about the arrest of Palestinian children in the middle of the night and their abuse in custody, reminded me of a transformative moment on a trip to Israel in November 2009.

First, the article:

“Several children in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan were arrested and taken from their homes in handcuffs in the middle of the night over the past few months, as part of a police crackdown on suspected stone-throwers, several teenage residents told B’Tselem and Haaretz.

Haaretz and B’Tselem, the Israel Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, collected testimonies from several teens that suggest the police are treating them violently and violating their rights.

“They told me to get down on my knees and slapped and kicked me, one from behind and one from the front,” a 15-year-old told B’Tselem.

A large Border Police force has been raiding Palestinian homes at night, targeting mostly children aged 12 to 15.

Most of the children and teenagers living near near the two controversial residential buildings inhabited by Jewish settlers in Silwan – Beit Yonatan and Beit Hadvash – have been arrested at least once.

The police and Border Police activity follows complaints by the Jewish residents of the two buildings and by the guards hired by the Housing Ministry to protect them.

They say there has been an increase in children throwing stones at their houses and cars.

“The interrogator kept asking me the same question for an hour and every time I denied it, he swore. He swore at my mother and sister. He slapped me and wouldn’t let me go to the toilet or have a drink of water,” a 14-year-old told B’Tselem.

Another child said he was seated facing the wall and was beaten every time he turned his head.

Parents who try to argue or block their children’s arrest are treated harshly or attacked, said Jaballah Rajabi, many of whose family members have been arrested.

“I tried to talk to them and they hit me, sprayed me with gas. Fifty of them come for every child. This isn’t police, it’s a mafia,” he said. “

This shocking report of the arrest of children responding to the attempts by Israeli authorities to change their neighborhood, reminded me of a moment on a Rabbis for Human Rights trip in November 2008.  We visited a home in Silwan that had been demolished a few days earlier.  We stood together on the rubble of what had been two days earlier the home of a family.  A resident told us that he had just returned from the prison where he tried to secure the release of children from the neighborhood who had been arrested in the middle of the night.  When the house was demolished, some kids threw stones at the bulldozers and were filmed by the army.  In the middle of the night soldiers came to their houses, pulled them out of their beds and arrested them.  Exactly the same procedure that is described in this B’Tzelem and Haaretz report!

Child at Demolished home in Silwan

When I heard the resident tell us this story a little more than a year ago, I was overwhelmed with sadness and anger.  What were the Israeli authorities thinking? First, they demolish the home of a family so as to build a parking lot for the new City of David tourist area that they are building in the heart of Silwan, a densely populated Palestinian area.   Then they arrest children in the middle of the night because they thew stones at the bulldozers and hold them in jail.  How much hatred will be generated as a result of this demolition and all the other actions come in its wake?   Has Israel lost it’s mind, it’s soul?

At that moment I couldn’t stay there anymore and approached Rabbi Yehiel Greniman, a courageous Israeli rabbinic colleague  who sees many home demolitions.  I told him that I couldn’t bear to stay there another minute.  I have to leave.  ”You see this all the time?  How do you deal with it?”

Rabbi Yehiel Greniman and Palestinian resident in Silwan

Yehiel looked me in the eye and said,  ”What do you mean, how do I deal with it?  How do you deal with it?  You pay for it!”  He then told me that a representative of the American consulate witnessed the demolition and pleaded with the Israeli commander not to destroy the house.

Yehiel taught me a lesson that day.  Yes, we Americans, pay for it.  We pay for the abuse of these children, we pay for the settlement of Jews in Sheikh Jarah, in Silwan and in other Palestinian neighborhoods, and we will pay for the new settlement construction that Israel announced yesterday during vice-President Biden’s visit to the country to initiate the new “peace negotiations.”   Will we do anything beyond the polite reprimand that Biden issued yesterday?  When will America actually tell Israel that unless these unjust actions that violate core American values must end immediately, we will withhold our support and aid.   How long will our leaders make nice statements but in reality just turn a blind eye to the disaster that is unfolding in Jerusalem?

And we, the Jewish people, what has become of us that we dispossess another people and that we arrest children in the middle of the night.  Last week a 13-year-old child in Hebron who was arrested for stone throwing was held in prison for 9 days because his father couldn’t afford to pay the bail.

In the book of Lamentations, the author wails about the destruction of Jerusalem: “For these things do I weep, my eyes flow with tears.”  ”Remember O God what has befallen us, Behold and see our disgrace.” (Chapter 1:18 and 5:1)  These ancient words come to my mind as we all watch the tragedy unfold in this holy city.

Radars and Fences 3 Program
Event Time
Friday, March 12, 2010
9:30 AM – 5:00 PM

Location
Institute for Public Knowledge
20, Cooper Square – 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

Please RSVP at Council for Media and Culture Events’ page

Description

A symposium with Ricardo Dominguez & Amy Carroll, Teddy Cruz, Helga Tawil Souri, Laila el Haddad & Mushon Zer-Aviv.

Radars and Fences 2010 will explore the production of the Israel/Palestine and Mexico/US borders, examining how they engage affects, bodies, and spatial scales. Despite their seemingly confounding specificities, it is our intention to open up a dialogue between these borders in order to enable new terms of practical and political engagement. By bringing this plurality of perspectives into dialogue around the themes of affect and space, we hope to reinvigorate critical analysis of the border in all of its (im)materialities and locations.

More at the Radars & Fences website

It doesn’t seem to realise it, but Israel cannot afford to keep on behaving in this disobliging manner towards its friends. Whether it is blatant disregard for …

The following is a guest post by Professor James Ron of
Carleton University. I
should say
that I’m not fully persuaded by Ron’s suggestion that foreign funders
of NGOs
in Israel and elsewhere should spend less money in order to encourage a
more
robust and indigenously-funded civil society, although I agree that
helping such organizations develop more robust funding strategies makes
eminently good sense. As long as the settlement enterprise continues, and
especially as long as tax-exempt monies of various sorts keep flowing into the
settlement enterprise-then foreign governments, foundations, and individuals
have a legitimate interest in supporting various civil society groups in
Israel (and elsewhere) — including human rights groups and other law-abiding organizations that
seek to document or oppose these policies. One could make similar arguments about other countries whose
behavior is contrary to accepted human rights principles. That said, Ron’s argument does
raise some interesting issues and I thought FP
readers might find it intriguing and useful.

Guest Post by James
Ron

In the 1990s, American experts heralded the global spread of
liberal civil society, arguing that political power had fundamentally shifted
in favor of an organized citizenry. States were no longer in charge, and NGOs
such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace, coupled with thousands of smaller
NGOs worldwide, were spreading liberal ideas such as democracy, human rights,
and environmentalism.

Boosted by scholarly evidence and policymaker enthusiasm,
Western donors began pouring money into NGOs across Latin America, Africa,
Asia, and the Middle East.

At first, the results seemed promising. Small NGOS popped up
everywhere, and in many places, developed a powerful voice. Transparency,
progressive advocacy, and human rights seemed destined to carry the day.

That tide has now turned, and the wave of Western-funded,
liberal NGOs has produced a backlash from conservatives everywhere, from Canada
to Russia. Increasingly, legislators, backlash activists and government officials
are attacking NGOs where it hurts most: their foreign-funded wallets.

[[BREAK]]

The problem, it turns out, is that most NGOs draw a very slender
geographic base for their funding: Europe and North America. Locally generated
NGO revenue in the developing world, by contrast, is miniscule.

The problem is not developing-world poverty; there are
plenty of charitable donors in countries like India, Brazil, Indonesia, Egypt,
and Russia, and virtually every society has some form of charitable
accumulation. In much of the non-Western world, however, most such funds go to
traditional charitable activities, such as local religious institutions or orphanages.
Liberal, human rights-oriented advocacy groups have limited capacity to tap
into these monies, and thus spend most of their fund-raising efforts learning
how best to apply to the European Union, U.S. AID, Ford Foundation, and other
major Western donors.

External funding for NGOs has thus been both a boon and a
liability. On the one hand, foreign funding has given local NGOs the
wherewithal to grow and make a difference, propelling them to the centre of many
local debates. Those same funds, however, present a tempting target to
conservatives in times of crisis.

As a result, liberal NGOs in non-Western lands are exposed,
vulnerable, and potentially broke.

The latest chapter in this global struggle is now unfolding
in Israel, until now viewed by many as a major NGO hub.

In recent weeks, conservative parliamentarians have begun
pushing a new anti-NGO law through the Knesset, Israel’s legislature. Goaded by
Western condemnation of Israel’s Gaza war, the lawmakers are accusing Israeli
NGOs of serving foreign masters.

The Jewish-Israeli nationalists are explicitly targeting
well known Jewish groups such as B’Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in
Israel, and the New Israel Fund, all led by respected, mainstream,
liberal-Zionist figures.

The campaign was initially spearheaded by conservative
student groups such as Im Tirtzu (If
You Want, a fragment of a famous Zionist slogan), coupled with support from the
backlash group "NGO Monitor." The campaign has turned ugly, with liberal figures
such as Naomi Chazan — an historian and former legislator — depicted as a
horned animal on public billboards.

The last time something like this happened, an Israeli prime
minister — war hero and liberal politician Yitzhak Rabin — was gunned down by a
right wing gunman.

To be sure, the Israeli campaign is surprising only because
the country has, until now, been tolerant of internal dissent, even when
directed at the military, Israel’s most revered institution.

Although Israel’s democracy has always been challenged by
its relations with Palestinians, officials have, until now, tacitly recognized
local NGOs’ right to receive Western funds and speak out.

The rules of the game are now changing, and the gloves are
coming off. If successful, the new law will force Israeli NGOs to pay taxes on
foreign donations, effectively driving them out of business. Israeli NGO
workers, moreover, will also have to begin all statements by acknowledging that
they are funded by "foreign political entities."

Without swift protests by the Obama administration and its
European allies, Israel may soon go the way of Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia,
where recent campaigns against foreign funded NGOs have undermined civil
society.  

The long term solution, however, is quite different. In the
years to come, Western donors will have to spend their money more sparingly and
wisely when it comes to civil society. Foreign funding has created a prominent
but vulnerable network of NGOS with little internal credibility in the
non-Western world, and few local resources.

To build a locally sustainable and legitimate NGO sector,
Western donors will have to provide smaller grants, and will have to condition
their funds, whenever possible, on matching local monies. They will also have
to spend money on boosting NGOs’ capacity to raise funds locally, connect with
local stakeholders, and adjust their message accordingly.

If donors don’t smarten up, they’ll do little more than make
things worse.

Happily, there are excellent examples of self-sufficient,
non-Western NGOs out there. In Bangladesh, for example, BRAC, an NGO
powerhouse, has become one of the world’s largest and most self-sufficient
civil society organizations, combining income-generating activities with advocacy
work for rights, gender equity, and democracy.

Christian Churches in Africa are another example. Until
Western funds stopped flowing after independence, many local churches were
poorly staffed and struggling. Once foreign funding ended, however, many began
to thrive, learning how best to compete in the local marketplace of resources,
converts, and spirituality.

A two-track strategy is thus necessary. In the short term,
Western governments should stand up to conservative lawmakers in Israel and
elsewhere, arguing that restrictive laws on foreign funds should be rescinded.

In the long term, Western donors should temper their generosity
by spending less money more wisely. Otherwise, non-Western NGOs will never
learn how to unlock the charitable potential embedded in all societies.

If donors and NGOs don’t break their unhealthy co-dependence,
civil society outside of the West will never be sustainable.

James Ron is an Associate Professor at the Norman Paterson
School for International Affairs, Canada’s oldest graduate program for
international public policy. He is an Israeli, Canadian and American citizen. He
is currently studying global rights-based NGOs with Canadian and National
Science Foundation funding. For more details, visit www.carleton.ca/~jron

When contending with BDS, Israel’s adherents usually tick off dry, abstract political arguments to show why Israel is not comparable to South Africa under apartheid. But these arguments don’t matter to people toying with the BDS movement, because most of them are motivated by a sincere, urgent desire to end Palestinian suffering. They see that the experience of Palestinians under occupation is as bad as the experience of South African blacks. They also know that the Palestinian citizens of Israel are treated as –and feel like they are– second-class citizens. No long list of the rights enjoyed by Israeli Arabs can make a dent in that perception. Nor do they care if BDS is a veiled effort to “delegitimize” Israel. What matters to them is changing the Palestinians’ plight as quickly as possible.

There are arguments, however, that take potential BDS sympathizers on their own terms:

1) It will take much too long for the world to get behind an effective boycott of Israel. So even if BDS were the right thing to do (and I don’t think it is), it is thoroughly impractical.

There is a human rights emergency in the occupied territories and Palestinians need relief now. To be sure, diplomacy might not create a two-state solution or any other arrangement that might work, but at least it has a very slim chance to succeed in the next few years. There is no feasible way to garner enough support for BDS in the near future to have a tangible impact on Israel.

2) Boycotts almost never work. One could engage in a spirited, complicated debate about whether the South Africa boycott had a major impact on the Afrikaner establishment (some say it did, some say it didn’t), but even if it did, that would be the exception that would prove the rule. Boycotts didn’t change any policies in Cuba, Iraq or, for that matter, the Gaza Strip.

3) If you decide to back BDS, you will be taking sides in a bitter internal struggle within the Palestinian community. Are you really so certain of the merits of this cause that you are willing to insert yourself into this argument ?

On one side are those led by the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas and Salem Fayyad, who are trying to build the institutions of a state in preparation for an end to the occupation. This has involved hundreds of community development projects, the first steps towards creating a central bank and the work of internal Palestinian security services. Much of this progress requires working cooperatively with the Israelis. The Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization have not called for a boycott of Israel, although the PA actively supports a boycott of products made in Israeli settlements.

On the other side are those who think that cooperation is collaboration, that the Palestinian Authority is selling its people down the river by settling for small bandages on the wounds of occupation. Much of the BDS movement is made up of this faction.

While the African National Congress clearly spoke in the name of the majority of black South Africans when it called for a boycott, the BDS movement does not have the same authority to speak for Palestinians. Even Hamas has not called for a boycott.

Referring to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), one of the most important BDS groups, David Hirsh of ENGAGE UK notes:

“PACBI was formed in order to manufacture a `call from the oppressed’ along the model of the ANC’s call. Far from wanting to boycott Israel, the PLO has, since the 1980s, wanted to normalize relations with Israel, and has encouraged links between Palestinians and Israelis, within civil society, academia, in trade and on a governmental level….

… Pacbi pretends that `the oppressed’ call for BDS with one voice. This is not true. In Palestine, as anywhere else, there are different opinions and different arguments – there is politics, there is disagreement and there are different ideas about the way forward.

4) The BDS movement has no use for promising, stirring joint cultural and economic projects in which ordinary Arabs and Jews are trying to figure out how to live together. For example, there is the cooperative work being done by people in the West Bank Palestinian town of Jenin and the Israeli region of Gilboa, which includes an industrial zone that will produce olive oil and other agricultural goods. The BDSers, presumably, would boycott those products.

PACBI hasn’t just called for a boycott of Israeli academics and cultural figures. As noted in a previous post, it also wants to quash efforts of Israeli Jews and Arabs to sit down, talk and find ways to bridge –or work together in spite of– the yawning gaps in their narratives.

So the BDS movement puts those Palestinians who want to cooperate with Israelis in a bad spot. That, in turn, takes away an important tool to persuade the Israeli electorate that its neighbors want peace, according to Ken Bob, president of Ameinu. He told me “You know how small Israel is. All of a sudden, people in your neighborhood know a kid who is part of the joint call center company in Jerusalem-Ramallah. People in the Gilboa Region tell their relatives about their joint project with Jenin…If there is a more successful BDS movement, Palestinians will perhaps feel like `OK, that tactic might work,’ let’s abandon the joint projects.’ I don’t think that will help the progress towards peace.”

Some diehard BDS supporters are quite willing to play favorites in this internal Palestinian debate. I suspect that many checking out this movement don’t even realize that they are being asked to take sides. That realization should give them pause.

J Street joins Vice President Biden in condemning Israel’s announcement of new East Jerusalem construction that only serves to hinder Middle East peace efforts, particularly as the Israelis and Palestinians begin proximity talks. As Vice President Biden said, this is “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”

Continued construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank only diminishes the chances of achieving a viable two-state solution to the conflict.

Yesterday’s announcement of proximity talks marked an important step forward, following a concerted American effort to engage the parties. Today’s announcement therefore marks a disappointing inflaming of tensions and undermining of trust – and is particularly surprising given Vice President Biden’s present visit to Israel aimed at underscoring the US-Israel relationship and the American commitment to a two-state resolution of the conflict.

We echo Vice President Biden’s call for all parties to refrain from unilateral actions that may inflame tensions and prejudice the outcome of peace talks. If we are to achieve a true resolution to the conflict – and secure Israel’s future as a Jewish, democratic homeland – all sides must demonstrate their commitment to the diplomatic and constructive engagement needed to succeed.

We have lost a truly great man. David is entirely irreplaceable. He was a real leader, both through his work in the intelligence community and his unshakeable, realistic, and forward-thinking commitment to promoting peace between Israel and its neighbors.

David’s memory will always be a blessing for the J Street community and an inspiration for our ongoing efforts to achieve real peace and security for Israel through a two-state solution.