Monday-Friday mid-day reports from Israel by Robert Rosenberg
Images by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted)
The new anti-Semitism
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Scanned silver leaves digital image by Robert Rosenberg
The arrest of four Israeli Arab students recruited by the Hamas in Mecca overshadowed reports of stepped up contacts between Israeli and Palestinian officials preparing for meetings between Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ahmed Qurei, after next week’s trip to Italy by Sharon.
Qurei’ was holding the first meeting of his new government in Ramallah this morning, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was meeting with U.S. officials in Washington, and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was saying that the meeting between Sharon and Qurei’ would take place in ten days. Shalom plans to meet with Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Sha’ath right after the Sharon-Qurei meeting. On the agenda at both sessions will be the enormous gap in expectations between the sides and the recognition on both sides that the status quo has reached a dead end and needs to be changed. Whether either side has the political courage and will to take the first step – the Palestinians finally cracking down on any violations of the cease-fire Qurei’ says he can reach with the armed factions, the Israelis taking substantive rather than merely cosmetic steps to improve living conditions in the territories and halting settlement expansion under way full steam in the West Bank – remains to be seen.
Both sides are very skeptical, and with the Americans busy with Iraq and the national election campaign, they can’t even just play to the Americans as a way of pressuring the other side.
Mofaz told Israeli reporters in Washington after a lengthy meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and a half-hour meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell that the Americans see eye to eye with him on practically everything. But the reports said that Powell emphasized the need for dramatically easing conditions for the Palestinians, as well as the need for the Palestinian Authority to do more than arrange a new hudna ceasefire, it it wants American cooperation. Mofaz was to see NSC chief Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney today. The American position, said the Israeli press, is that Qurei’ will only get help from Washington if the U.S. sees him take real action against terror.
Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was also in Washington, pitching to the U.S. administration a plan to build a rail link fromm the Mediterranean to Eilat, via the Dead Sea – but Rice was reportedly planning to tell him that the U.S. is deducting on a dollar for dollar basis Israel’s civilian investments – meaning security fence and settlement construction expenses -- in the West Bank and Gaza from the loan guarantees. Netanyahu shrugged off Israeli reporters’ questions about those deductions, saying the amount of money involved was ‘neglgible.’
Locally, a fire – apparently set by arson – broke out at the Declaration of Independence Museum on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, where the Declaration of Independence was signed in May 1948. There was only slight damage reported, and police have yet to determine what might be the motive.
In another development, the Israel Broadcasting Authority, which theoretically is an independent entity but is heavily influenced by the political considerations of whatever government is in power disqualified an advertising campaign for the Geneva Accords, the draft peace agreement hammered out between Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabo at the heads of Israeli and Palestinian delegations. In the Knesseta Likud MK submitted a bill that would make it illegal for any Israeli not officially authorized by the government to do so, to engage in any political negotiations with anyone from a foreign country.
Other developments included yesterday afternoon’s predictable military court conviction of Yonatan Ben-Artzi for refusing orders to enlist in the army as a conscript – and the same court’s surprising statement that it recognizes Ben-Artzi as a pacifist and believes he is sincere in his commitment to conscientious objection to serving in any armed force. The military court called on the army’s conscientious objectors board to reconsider its decision to reject Ben-Artzi’s request for alternative service. Ben-Artzi, the finance minister’s nephew (Sarah Netanyahu is Ben-Artzi’s father’s sister), has been fighting his draft for the last two years, arguing he has no objection to national service in a hospital or some other civilian capacity, but for reasons of conscience refuses to become a member of the armed forces.
Other developments included the outrage over Greek composer Theodorakis’ comments this week that ‘Jews are the source of all evil in the world,’ which was immediately registered in Israel as further proof of a rising tide of anti-Semitism worldwide but particularly in Europe. When the usually highly respected historian Prof. Michael Harsegrove went on Israel Radio this morning to say that most of what Israelis now refer to as European anti-Semitism is what he called ‘anti-Sharonism,’ meaning objections to Israel’s current policies, the interviewers turned nearly rude in their skepticism. Later in the morning, Diaspora Affairs Minister Natan Sharansky told the radio station that ‘it is tragic and sad and unbelievable that there are still those in Israel who cannot understand that anti-Israeli statements are simply a new form of anti-Semitism.’ Prime Minister Sharon leapt into the fray as well, telling a group of Canadian Jews that those who opposed Israel’s use of force against Palestinian terrorism are ‘guilty of modern anti-Semitism.’
On other developments, Ron Arad’s family was filing a petition with the High Court against the government decision to include Mustafa Dirani in a prisoner exchange with the Hezbollah. The Arad petition says Dirani must be prosecuted for ‘criminal treatment’ of Arad while Dirani held him during the first two years of Arad’s capture in south Lebanon. Dirani has denied the accusations. The Arad petition included documentation and personal testimony by Mustafa Abbas, a south Lebanese man who was kidnapped by Dirani and later handed over to Syria, where he was held prisoner for a decade. He claimed to have been extensively tortured by Dirani. ‘Dirani is a beast and it’s high time the state of Israel prosecute him and convict him of his deeds,” the lawyer representing the Arad family in the petition told Israel Radio.
And while the United Nations Relief Works Agency announced it was curtailing activities in Gaza for lack of funding, Israelis learned the BBC had appointed a special Middle East affairs editor to work with the Jerusalem bureau. A foreign ministry spokesman interpreted that as an attempt by the venerable British news service to balance its coverage after years of accusations by Israel that the BBC is anti-Israel, a charge the BBC denies.
Ariga Recommends
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There have been very few people in the last decade -- and perhaps longer -- who
managed to be heroic for all or almost all Israelis, religious, secular, Right,
Left, Jewish, Arab, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, new immigrant or fifth generation.
Too many issues divide too many people here. But Ilan Ramon, the somewhat baby-faced
air force colonel selected as the first Israeli to go into space on board the
American shuttle craft, was one of those heroes whose deed fired the imagination
of Israelis across every spectrum. Even the most cynical and skeptical had to admire
not only his ascension to that vaunted gallery of people who had the 'right stuff' to
go into space, but the grace with which he did so, the alomost childlike joy he
so generously gave of himself during those live broadcasts from space on board the shuttle,
and the faith in science and humanity that he expressed during his broadcasts.
And then the shuttle crashed, and with it, another hero was gone.
So much hope was pinned on Ramon's trip and in a way, the shuttle disaster tragedy
was more than the loss of an Israeli hero, but like the Rabin assassination,
the loss of the hope for heroes. Get the book. It's short, concise, informative and moving. (RBR)
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