MuzzleWatch

Chanukah has ended. As Rabbi Brian Walt reminded us, one year ago

on Shabbat Hannukah (Saturday December 27, 2008), Israel launched Operation Cast Lead. On that day, Saturday December 27, 2008, at 11:30 in the morning, a time when schoolchildren were still in school, 88 Israeli aircraft simultaneously attacked 100 preplanned targets in Gaza within a span of 4 minutes. This initial attack was followed by another attack and by the end of that Sabbath day, at least 230 Palestinians were killed and more than 700 injured. Shabbat Hannukah last year, was the day with the highest one-day death toll in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

By its end, nearly 1,400 Gazans and 13 Israelis were dead, thousands more Gazans injured and left homeless.

Vicious character assassination, event cancellations, social isolation, and the infrequent lost job (or more frequent lost funding) all take their toll on our collective search for full equality for Palestinians and Israelis. Countless people remain silent when we could speak, bury our heads precisely at the moment we must raise them.

While we understand why this works, the truth is that there’s simply no excuse, not now, to allow ourselves to be silenced. Not when we know the price we pay is nothing compared to the price paid by millions of mostly Palestinians but also Israelis, all of whom love their children as much as we love ours. Not when we all know our silence will only lead to another Operation Cast Lead, another Jenin, another Sderot, another Mohammad Othman, another Rachel Corrie, another suicide bombing, another leg of the wall, another Yitzhak Rabin.

ABOVE: VIDEO From the vaults of Jewish Voice for Peace, B’Tselem’s Anat Biletzki poses the question, “What do we do with our voice?” She says, “Words don’t fail, it’s people who fail…We fail in using words: we misuse them, we abuse words, we do terrible things with words, but the worst thing that we do is we don’t use words at all. That we keep silent, that we don’t give voice to things that must be given voice.”

Every time you are silenced or allow yourself to be silenced, you must come back stronger and louder than ever. On this, the anniversay of the attack on Gaza, I hope you too will make a promise to speak the truth you know, to stand for full equality and humanity and against repression in all its forms, to assertively challenge someone who puts forth lies or hatred. It’s not just the humanity of Palestinians that is at stake, it’s the humanity of Israelis, and indeed, we Jews and Americans.

-Cecilie Surasky

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Since March of this year, The Berkeley Daily Planet (BDP) has been struggling against a campaign by three long-time critics to scare away advertisers and shut the paper down, based on accusations that its publication of letters to the editor and op-eds critical of Israel constitute an anti-semitic bias.

On November 27th, the local controversy came to national attention when the New York Times published an article in its Business Section – “In a Home to Free Speech, a Paper is Accused of Anti-Semitism”

Jim Sinkinson, who has led the campaign against the BDP, is quoted as saying: “We think that [publisher Becky O’Malley] is addicted to anti-Israel expression…If she wants to serve and please the East Bay Jewish community, she would be safe avoiding the subject entirely.” Ms. O’Malley denies any personal or editorial bias, and says “I think that is unusual to say the least that anybody would think that they could dictate a whole area of the world that is simply off limits for discussion….” She points out that the Planet has always had an open-forum policy of printing all letters from local readers that are not obscene or defamatory.

Not covered in the New York Times article was the community response to the censorship campaign. Although many advertisers have been frightened away, readers have spoken out to protect free speech in their town and to keep the BDP alive. Scores of people have weighed in with supportive letters to the editor, and many Jewish residents signed petitions letting it be known that Mr. Sinkinson and his two allies in no way speak for the Jewish community. In addition, a coalition of local peace and justice groups — including Jewish Voice for Peace-Bay Area — took out a series of ads to expose the facts of Palestinian life under Occupation, to support the BDP free-speech policy, and to provide desperately needed advertising revenue to the paper.

–www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/pdfs/07-02-09.pdf: See Jewish Voice for Peace ad in page 14
–www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/pdfs/07-09-09.pdf: See statement of Jews who support the Daily Planet in page 28
–www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/pdfs/07-30-09.pdf: See Bay Area Friends of Sabeel ad in page 28

Now, in immediate response to publication of the New York Times article, people from around the country have been moved to write to the BDP. Of some 20 letters to the BDP editor generated by the article, all but two supported the Planet and deplored the cynical use of charges of anti-semitism as a censorship tactic.

Notwithstanding reader support, BDP advertising revenue has been drastically reduced as a result of the campaign against it, together with the impact of the economic recession. To support the BDP’s commitment to free speech, you can write to the editor using this email: opinion at berkeleydailyplanet.com. Consider also contributing to the paper’s Fund for Local Reporting.

– Carol Sanders

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Back in April, after gaining approval for text and design, anti-occupation activists in New Mexico signed a contract with Lamar Advertising to display 10 billboards (pictured at left) for 8 weeks. But after only 3 weeks, and a pressure campaign on Lamar that included personal threats, the billboards all came down. Billboard critics did not like the call for no military aid, and some said that the “Stop Killing Children” message, which referred to the death of some 300 children in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, was evocative of anti-Semitic blood libel myths. Yet, repeated efforts to alter the text and design to meet the changing standards of Lamar were unsuccessful.

The Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious coalition working to “end to the ten year commitment of $30 billion in U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid pledged to Israel in 2007 by the Bush administration,” reports they have a new set of billboards (below) with a new company and slightly altered message. Seventy-five percent of US military aid to Israel is, by law, given to US arms manufacturers.

watch?v=BI57Z67PyBo

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The proxy war between Israel and its critics is growing more intense, more desperate, more anti-democratic, more comically absurd.

Just a few weeks ago, and with a straight face, professional defender-of-Israeli-human-rights-violations Hillel Neuer of UN Watch happily compared Naomi Klein to Goebbels and said she was “today’s leading opponent of Israel in the Western world.”

The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves. If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all. But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents–as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed.

Yglesias points out, “the Goldstone Report just doesn’t say anything remotely like this.”

But these uncommonly vicious, nasty and unintentionally campy attacks are no coincidence.

In The Nation, Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss have a very important article detailing the range of human rights groups that are being targeted by Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

“For the first time the Israeli government is taking an active role in the smearing of human rights groups,” says Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch workers had long been a target of Gerald Steinberg’s NGO Monitor, which seeks to gut the international law enforcement infrastructure because they believe it is a threat to the Israeli status quo- which of course it is. (They call journalists, diplomats and human rights workers part of the ‘axis of evil.’)  Steinberg has been busily scanning the internet to build extensive dossiers on anyone who has worked in the Middle East division at HRW, and is also part of the campaign to defund human rights groups in Israel that get EU funds. But there’s more:

The Israeli government has also sought to quash domestic dissent. In April it targeted the anti-militarism organization New Profile, seizing computers and detaining activists. In July, when a group of Israeli veterans called Breaking the Silence released dozens of anonymous soldiers’ testimonies from the Gaza assault describing indifference to civilian targets, the Israeli government went, well, ballistic. It threatened to cut off the financial support the group receives from the Dutch, Spanish and British governments and warned those governments that their support was illegal. Israel indicated that it would look into foreign support that Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Machsom Watch receive as well.

Ron Dermer, a Netanyahu adviser who was raised in Florida, struck a fearsome tone: “We are going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups. We are not going to be sitting ducks in a pond for the human rights groups to shoot at us with impunity.”

Meanwhile, Isi Leibler, writing in the Jerusalem Post, ominously wants to “exorcise the [Jewish] renegades from our midst,” through some form of excommunication.

In Toronto, Jews were at the forefront of a campaign to boycott Israeli films at a film festival because the anniversary of Tel Aviv - ‘built on the destroyed villages of Palestinians’ - was being celebrated; two Israeli women who evaded national service are conducting a North American campus tour under the auspices of ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ to persuade students to intensify their role in the “resistance movement”; in San Francisco the local Jewish Federation is providing funds for a film festival which promotes the vilest anti-Israel films; radical Rabbi Michael Lerner invited a woman who justifies suicide bombings to address his synagogue on Yom Kippur; and so on.

IM EIN ani li mi li? If we are not for ourselves, who will be? We are engaged in a battle against fiendish enemies committed to our destruction. The Israeli government must now take steps to neutralize the impact of renegade Jews who present themselves as legitimate alternative Jewish viewpoints. Such an initiative by a country which provides genuine democratic rights to all its citizens, including Arabs, could hardly be categorized as eradicating freedom of expression. It would rather represent a highly overdue effort to exorcise such odious groups from the mainstream and expose them as unrepresentative fringe groups with no standing.

The heightened discourse of nastiness is matched on the ground by what many observers believe is an  intentional effort by Netanyahu to trigger a third intifada.

Cecilie Surasky

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Are Israeli youth allowed to speak about their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Not always.

Some believe that the ideals of Israeli democracy and free speech stop at the border. Take the example of the young Israeli conscientious objectors — the Shministm — currently in speaking tours both in the United States and in South Africa.

Here’s Dan Klein, the North America campus director for StandWithUs, speaking to the JPost on the issue:

I definitely understand that Israelis have the right not to agree with their government. That`s fine. Every citizen in a democracy has that right. But you take that up in your country. Once you take that abroad, what does that gain you?

I do not understand the distinction he makes. Maybe Dan believes that news and information stop at the border, at any border. Or maybe he ignores the fact that the Shministim have already gathered a great deal of international attention while they were still in Israel: over 60,000 letters of support and counting, over 53,000 hits on their short film in Youtube, and a great deal of media attention in a good number of countries around the world.

Here’s Dan again,

I definitely do not agree with what they`re trying to do because I think they`re misguided.

Misguided? Now, that’s a bit patronizing, isn’t it? These young Israelis do not need ‘guidance.’ They have been smart enough to develop their own political analysis of the Israeli occupation (you can read their letter here) and brave enough to go to jail for their convictions.

The Shministim have been greeted with interest in many campuses throughout the United States (UC Berkeley, University of Arizona-Tucson, University of Southern California, Cornell University, Hunter College, Brown University, Clark University, Vassar College, and Brandeis University to name a few.)

Why the interest? Many people are past the StandWithUs propaganda, either you are with us or against us kind of thinking. The Shministim offer a view of the Israeli occupation that is both critical of the human rights abuses and compassionate towards Palestinians and Israelis. And they’ve been extraordinarily open to dialog with those that disagree with them. I’ve been to a number of their talks in the Bay Area. They opened each presentation inviting people to share their ideas — whether in agreement or disagreement — and they answered all questions with care and respect.

Not everyone sees it that way, of course. Jerusalem Post columnist Isi Leibler referred to them as ‘renegade Jews.’ He called them,

‘non-Jewish Jews,” many with no prior involvement in Jewish life, [who] exploited their Jewish origins or Israeli nationality to defame Israel.

In hysterical terms, he starts by calling for their excommunication and ends by calling for their exorcism.

Lucky for them, they are not alone. Dr. Neve Gordon, Naomi Klein, Eve Ensler, and many others — including me! — join them in that grey space between the excommunicated Baruch Spinoza and the exorcised dybbuk.

Some South African Jews may be victims of Leibler’s hysteria. Reportedly, some Jews in Cape Town are concerned that a visit by three Shministim could fuel anti-Semitism.

Here’s National Vice Chairman of the South African Zionist Federation David Hirsch,

They are speaking out to the greater South African population, that does not really know or understand the complex issues of the conflict in Israel.

You see, only us Jews really understand it.

Hold the presses… not even Jews can be exposed to the Shministim heresy!

They have been refused a chance to give a talk in Cape Town’s largest Jewish day school. One talk. This says a lot about the level of dialog and openness in Jewish communities around the world to be able to talk about what is going on in Israel from all points of view.

The Shministim are coming to talk about the Israeli occupation, about its effects on Palestinians and Israelis, and about the nonviolent path they have chosen for themselves. In other words, the Shministim are coming to present a more complex picture of the situation, not a simpler one. This should have been a welcome development.

I leave you with Ilan Strauss, of Open Shuhada Street (one of the groups sponsoring the Shministim’s South Africa tour),

…it is important that South Africans are exposed to these courageous, non-violent perspectives, which adhere to human rights for both parties and aim to ensure a just resolution to the ongoing violence.

If you are in South Africa, you should go hear them yourself.

– Sydney Levy

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As I thought, Ben Gurion University cannot legally fire Dr. Neve Gordon. So the campaign to fire him, without firing him continues, this time in the pages of the LA Times.

Ben Gurion University President Rivka Carmi published her own op-ed there, in order to explain why she is so upset at Dr. Neve Gordon’s op-ed in the same paper calling for international pressure to end the Israeli occupation–including boycott, divestment, and sanctions.

Oh, she’s not only upset. She also explains why he should leave BGU, of course.

She starts, as you would expect, establishing her credentials as a defender of academic freedom,

As president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, I have always remained open and impartial to the wide diversity of opinions within our academic faculty and their right to free speech, no matter how controversial their views or writings may be.

But things go downhill from then on.
(more…)

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The words of condemnation against Ben Gurion University’s President, Prof. Rivka Carmi, for her incendiary attack against Dr. Neve Gordon continue to pour in. You may recall that in response to the op-ed he printed in the Los Angeles Times endorsing boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel, Prof. Carmi issued the following statement,

“We are shocked and outraged by his remarks, which are both irresponsible and morally reprehensible. We strongly disassociate BGU from Gordon’s destructive views that abuse the freedom of speech prevailing in Israel and at BGU.”

She added that,

BGU is a Zionist institution that is fulfilling David Ben-Gurion’s vision on a daily basis, promoting the development of the Negev and Israel and reiterated its commitment to advancing research and activities that benefit all of the residents of the region. This kind of Israel-bashing detracts from the wonderful work that is being done at BGU and at all Israeli universities. Academics who entertain such resentment towards their country are welcome to consider another professional and personal home.”

In a period of 48 hours, Prof. Carmi received over 4,000 emails of protest.

Over 180 Israeli professors — many from BGU — have signed a petition in defense of Dr. Gordon.
(more…)

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What happens when an Israeli professor speaks his mind about the Israeli occupation? Let’s find out.

Take a look at Ben Gurion University Prof. Neve Gordon, who by the way, is a member of the Committee to Support Ezra Nawi.

He published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, titled Boycott Israel: An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it’s the only way to save his country.

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country’s future.

His opinion supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that was launched by Palestinian activists in July 2005 and the 2008 10-point Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign has been met with the kinds of criticism that test the boundaries of freedom of expression and academic freedom in Israel.
(more…)

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The J just published a candid op-ed by Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan that attempts to bring the Jewish community in the Bay Area together — to heal the wounds — caused by the controversy surrounding the San Francisco Film Festival’s screening of the movie Rachel.

Here at home in the Bay Area, we, too, are throwing stones at each other.

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival showed the movie “Rachel,” co-presented by Jewish Voice for Peace. Before and after the showing, I saw copies of letters from Jewish community funders accusing Peter Stein, the festival’s executive director, of horrible things, including, but not limited to, equating him with Holocaust deniers.

I have seen e-mails calling for the banishment of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival from community funding.

I have heard Jews who question house demolitions by Israel (not including the “Rachel” story) called names and ridiculed. And those who support the current Israeli government castigated as neo-colonialist.

I have heard supporters of AIPAC set against supporters of J Street, and back again.

I have seen e-mails from self-appointed protectors of Israel assaulting Hillel professionals as “haters of Israel” for allowing Jewish students on college campuses to voice a spectrum of opinions.

I have seen the placards carried by Jews equating Israel with Germany.

The issue is not the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. The problem is what the showing of “Rachel” revealed. Before, during and after the festival, we have been throwing stones at each other.

(more…)

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Netanyahu has asked Spain, Britain and The Netherlands to stop directly funding the Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence (BTS).  BTS has been releasing IDF soldier testimony on the invasion/massacre in Gaza.  The accounts by the soldiers are harrowing and document war crimes.  The Israeli government claims that governmental support of “politicized” NGOs undermines democracy in the Jewish state.  Netanyahu is    “contemplating legislation that would ban foreign government funding for groups such as Breaking the Silence.”   The main argument is that foreign governmental funding of non-governmental institutions that are ostensibly working “against” the interests of the duly elected government are undemocratic.  Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s senior political adviser, was quoted as saying that funding from foreign embassies for the group amounted to “blatant and unacceptable” intervention in Israel’s internal affairs.

But Don Futterman (program director, Israel, of the Moriah Fund, a private American foundation working in Israel to support civil society and democracy, immigrant absorption and education.) has a different take,

“If our defense minister (Avigor Lieberman) wants us to live up to the claim that the IDF is “the most moral army on earth,” he should welcome soldiers who speak out about illegal acts that they have witnessed or were asked to perform. In our post-war rush to elections, we unfortunately - and perhaps, conveniently - skipped over any discussion concerning the morality of what the army has done. But even our fears of one-sided international condemnation of our actions in Gaza cannot justify official attempts to silence the messenger, especially when that messenger is us.”

(more…)

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