Is there law in Israel? -- הלכו לתרבות הרעה

Two examples of disregard of the law in Jerusalem that I just encountered tonight, and about which I'm still fuming:

I was walking in Gan Sacher [a big public park where people play soccer, run, ride bicycles, etc.] with friends, and we sat down to watch a soccer game. Suddenly, behind us flames shot up in the air. It turned out to be a group of young, irresponsible men from a yeshiva, who were building a bonfire inside a ring of trees, without any circle of stones to indicate that this was a legitimate place to build a fire. It's the middle of the hot, dry summer in Israel and very dangerous to light a fire anywhere near possible tinder. My friend went and called the police and the fire department, but the fire kept burning higher as the yeshiva guys put more kindling on it.

I went over and started to talk to them. Another woman had preceded me, one of the people who was involved in the soccer game. I heard that they were speaking English (they were Americans) and started to talk to them in English to tell them that it was illegal and dangerous to make a fire in this place. One of the younger, even more irresponsible yeshiva kids said, "there is no law in Israel!" I yelled at him and told him that of course there is law in Israel. His friends got involved in the argument. Finally, one of the supposedly adult staff came over, and conceded that they should not continue to feed the fire. He said that they would go and get water bottles to put it out.

I continued to yell and ask them what did they learn in their yeshiva - didn't the Talmud talk about "loving your neighbor as yourself" and "be careful for your lives"? One of the adult staff said to me - "Don't start talking about the Talmud."Apparently, the Torah and Talmud only belong to the haredim, and not to any other Jews. As of when we left, no one was bringing water bottles, and neither the fire department nor the police had arrived.

My friends and I hailed a taxi to get home (from Panorama Taxis) - it dropped them off first, and then came to my street. I was looking at the meter, and suddenly in was 4.5 shekels more than it had been. I protested and the cab driver said - "this is for the third passenger." I protested that I had never heard of such a thing. He called his dispatcher and said - "Isn't it true that it's more for the third passenger?" The dispatcher said yes. I then looked at the receipt, and it didn't say anything about a third passenger - instead it said "telephone" - as if we had ordered the taxi by telephone (which does in fact cost more). The driver said, "Oh, it's the same amount of money." I paid him and then got out and told him that he and his company were thieves. He drove off. I just looked it up and saw nothing on the official site of the Jerusalem municipality about a special extra fare for three passengers.

Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey

The New York Times has just published a good investigative report on the IHH - the Turkish charity behind the Gaza flotilla that included the Mavi Marmara - Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey.

Apparently the IHH and the ruling party in Turkey, the AK (Justice and Development Party) are very close, and the Turkish government was closely following events on the flotilla. The Turkish government could have ordered the flotilla not to go to Gaza, but did not.

ISTANBUL — The Turkish charity that led the flotilla involved in a deadly Israeli raid has extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite, and the group’s efforts to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza received support at the top levels of the governing party, Turkish diplomats and government officials said.

The charity, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, often called I.H.H., has come under attack in Israel and the West for offering financial support to groups accused of terrorism. But in Turkey the group has helped Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan shore up support from conservative Muslims ahead of critical elections next year and improve Turkey’s standing and influence in the Arab world.

According to a senior Turkish official close to the government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the issue, as many as 10 Parliament members from Mr. Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party were considering boarding the Mavi Marmara, the ship where the deadly raid occurred, but were warned off at the last minute by senior Foreign Ministry officials concerned that their presence might escalate tensions too much.

When leaders of the charity returned home after nine Turks died in the Israeli raid, they were warmly embraced by top Turkish officials, said Huseyin Oruc, deputy director of the charity, who was aboard the flotilla.

“When we flew back to Turkey, I was afraid we would be in trouble for what happened, but the first thing we saw when the plane’s door opened in Istanbul was Bulent Arinc, the deputy prime minister, in tears,” he said in an interview. “We have good coordination with Mr. Erdogan,” he added. “But I am not sure he is happy with us now.”

The raid has caused a rupture between Turkey and Israel, and heightened alarm in the United States and Europe that Turkey, a large Muslim country and a major NATO member, is shifting allegiance toward the Arab world. Turkey has warned that its cooperative ties to Israel could be irreparably damaged unless the Israelis apologize and accept an international investigation, steps Israel has so far refused to take.

The charity’s mission, political analysts said, has advanced Mr. Erdogan’s aim of shifting Turkey’s focus to the Muslim east when its prospects for joining the European Union are dim.

The government “could have stopped the ship if it wanted to, but the mission to Gaza served both the I.H.H. and the government by making both heroes at home and in the Arab world,” said Ercan Citlioglu, a terrorism expert at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul....

“How can such a large country as Turkey, with interests in four continents, and with an export- and investment-driven economy requiring extra caution all around the globe, be dragged to the brink of war by a nongovernmental organization?” asked Semih Idiz, a columnist for the Hurriyet Daily News in Turkey, in a June 7 editorial. The answer, he added, is that the charity is a “GNGO” — a “governmental-nongovernmental-organization.”

Many of the 21 people listed on the charity’s board have or had close links to the AK Party. In January, Murat Mercan, chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior party official, joined an overland aid convoy to Gaza organized by the charity that tried to force its way through the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza.

A trustee of the charity, Ali Yandir, is a senior manager at the Istanbul City Municipality Transportation Corporation. The corporation controls Istanbul Fast Ferries, which sold the Mavi Marmara, with a capacity for 1,090 passengers, to the charity for about $1.8 million. In 2004, Mr. Yandir was an AK Party candidate for the mayor’s office in Istanbul’s Esenler District.

The charity’s board includes Zeyid Aslan, an AK Party member of Parliament and the acting head of the Turkey-Palestine Interparliamentary Friendship Group; Ahmet Faruk Unsal, an AK Party member of Parliament from 2002 to 2007; and Mehmet Emin Sen, a former AK Party mayor in the central Anatolian township of Mihalgazi.

Those ties partly reflect the common agenda of the party and the charity. Both are involved in relief work among the poor and are bound by a common Islamic ideology. Many of the 60,000 people the charity claims as members come from the religious merchant class that helped Mr. Erdogan sweep to power....

Israeli warning to Libyan ship

According to the New York Times,Israel Sends Warning to Gaza-Bound Libyan Vessel:

The Israeli Navy radioed a warning to a Libyan ship steaming toward Gaza on Tuesday to change course, an Israeli military spokesman said.

“We hope they will go back or to El Arish,” the spokesman said, referring to an Egyptian port. “We made radio contact with them when they were about 100 miles off shore in the past couple hours. We will take over the boat if necessary. What I can tell you is that it will not reach Gaza.”

I hope that there isn't another violent confrontation on the ship. Israel doesn't need a military clash with a ship sent by the son of the Libyan dictator.

It sounds from the NY Times article that there is disagreement between the crew of the ship and the fifteen "activists" on board, who are sponsored by Seif Al Islam Gaddafi's Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation.

Haaretz reports that the captain told the Israeli Navy that they will be sailing to El-Arish, in Egypt, and not to Gaza.

Speaking with Israeli authorities by radio, the captain of the Al-Amal assured them that he is in charge of the vessel and that the activists aboard will obey his orders. One of the activists' leaders, a Libyan national, also said that, despite the group's desire to sail to Gaza, it will accept their captain's decision.

Israel Navy officials continue to track the aid ship, saying they will only know the Al-Amal's true course at around 4 A.M. when it nears the coast.

The Israeli navy earlier Tuesday made radio contact with the Libyan-sponsored ship sailing for Gaza, a military spokeswoman said.

"The navy just began its process of trying to stop the ship," she said. "At this time the process of communicating with them has begun."

Israel, however, has denied it gave the activists an ultimatum to change course and sail to El-Arish by midnight or face a forceful takeover.

Israel warned the Moldovan-flagged, Greek-registered Al-Amal that it was entering a closed military zone.

I hope they do sail peacefully to Egypt.

Arrests in Jerusalem

As it happens, people whom I know here in Jerusalem have been affected by the arbitrariness and partiality of the police in two recent instances. On Friday, July 9, during the weekly demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah against the establishment of Jewish settlers in houses formerly occupied by Palestinians (who have been evicted from their homes of several decades), eight people were arrested by the police for attempting to leave the usual place where the police permit them to demonstrate and go to the houses from which the Palestinian families have been evicted. As far as I know, no one whom I knew was arrested there, but several people I know were roughed up by the police in the course of their pushing back the demonstrators. People whom I trust who are involved in these demonstrations have told me of the partiality that the police show towards the demonstrators - they refuse to interact with them in any way (for example, by talking to them), they do not obey court orders which permit the demonstrators to go to the houses that have been occupied by the settlers (and in front of which the evicted Palestinian families have set up tents to live in), and they act roughly and sometimes quite violently towards peaceful protesters. The police appear to have taken the side of the settlers.

Then, today, a friend of mine, Anat Hoffman, was arrested at the Western Wall (Kotel) when she was participating in the monthly prayer service by the Women of the Wall (נשות הכותל). This is a group that has existed for over twenty years, since 1988, with the goal of leading a normal morning prayer service in the women's section of the Western Wall - including the wearing of tallitot (prayer shawls) and reading from the Torah, which is normally done on Rosh Hodesh (the first day of a Jewish month, which is today). Over the years the group has been attacked physically by Haredim - I remember times when I was in Israel from 1988-89 that they threw chairs at the women, cursed them, threw bags of garbage at him, physically pushed them, etc. (At one prayer service that I attended I was knocked down twice because I was wearing a tallit). Eventually, the Israeli supreme court ruled that the group could pray at the Kotel (Western Wall), but without wearing tallitot and reading from the Torah. To do that, they have to go outside the Western Wall plaza to an area under what is called Robinson's Arch (after the archaeologist who discovered it) - it is a continuation of the western wall of the Temple Mount but it has not been turned into an open-air ultra-Orthodox synagogue, which the Kotel area has been. The police have forbidden the women, for the last several months, from taking the Torah scroll out of its container while they are still in the Western Wall plaza. Today, apparently, Anat did take the scroll out before they arrived at Robinson's Arch, and the police arrested her. She spent several hours in a police station in the Old City and was ordered not to return to the Kotel area for the next 30 days.
Update: She's also apparently being fined 5000 NIS!

Both of these incidents are testimony to the ascendancy of right-wing religious forces in Israel. The settlements in Sheikh Jarrah are funded by a rich American Jewish businessman, Irving Moskowitz, and the people who live in them are right-wing religious Zionists. The fact that the Women of the Wall even need police protection is because of the violence of the Haredim, right-wing religious Jews who are usually anti-Zionist. If Israel is to survive as a democratic state, both of these kinds of religious right-wing forces need to be defeated.

Palestinian rights in Lebanon

I just found a rather astonishing article (to me) on the Ma'an news agency web site (Ma'an is a Palestinian news agency). This is a report on a new law being presented on the rights of Palestinians in Lebanon (there are 425,000 Palestinians in Lebanon). "According to UNRWA, the UN body set up to assist Palestinian refugees, officially registered Palestine refugees born in Lebanon were allowed by law to work in the clerical and administrative sectors for the first time in 2005. However, refugees remain unable to work in some professions, for example, as doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, or accountants." Read the article for the various other rights that Palestinians in Lebanon do not possess. I note this article not in an attempt to excuse Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and Gaza or discrimination against Arab Israelis, but simply to point out that Palestinians are mistreated across the Middle East. (I believe that of the Arab countries with Palestinian refugees, only Jordan has granted them citizenship).

Lebanese coalition to present bill on Palestinian rights

Bethlehem – Ma’an/Agencies – A coalition of Lebanese political parties will soon resent a two-part draft law on Palestinian refugees’ rights to work and buy health insurance, the Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat reports.

The March 14 coalition’s draft bill will not tackle the issue of Palestinian ownership of property rights, as the issue is being discussed by Lebanon’s parliamentary administration and justice committee, the daily reported.

The bill calls for helping Palestinian refugees attain work permits, as many are currently barred from several professions under Lebanese law. Lebanon’s parliament was divided last month over a bill granting Palestinian refugees civil rights, put forward by MP Walid Jumblatt.

On 15 June, parliament speaker Nabih Berri adjourned an extraordinary parliament session in which Jumblatt proposed the draft law.

According to Lebanese news site Now Lebanon, Hezbollah and Amal voted in favor of the bill while deputies from the Kataeb, Lebanese Forces and Free Patriotic Movement voted against.

Jumblatt, in turn, addressed the parliament following the vote, saying, “If you want to postpone dealing with the problem, then do so. But the problem will still be [unresolved],” the news site quoted him as saying.

He also slammed the right-wing parties in the parliament and said, “I have not seen anyone dumber than [those parties].”

Shortly after, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri called for national unity on the conferring of civil rights to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

“There are humanitarian, social and ethical duties, and the Lebanese state should assume the responsibility of providing them to the Palestinian brothers,” Hariri was quoted as saying in the Lebanese Daily Star. “Lebanon will not dodge these duties, which must be crystal-clear, and not be subject to any misinterpretation.”

The premier said he was committed to obtaining a cross-party agreement in exchange for security cooperation from various Palestinian factions, responsible for upholding law and order in the country’s 12 refugee camps.

Following the bill’s proposal, PLO representative to Lebanon Abdallah Abdallah said there was no intent for Palestinians to ask for political rights or access to state social services. “What the Palestinians want is the right to work like any other foreign nationals,” he said at the time.

Approximately 425,000 refugees are registered with UNRWA in Lebanon, with many living in the country’s 12 refugee camps. According to UNRWA, the UN body set up to assist Palestinian refugees, officially registered Palestine refugees born in Lebanon were allowed by law to work in the clerical and administrative sectors for the first time in 2005.

However, refugees remain unable to work in some professions, for example, as doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, or accountants.

In February, Fatah's Secretary-General in Lebanon, Sultan Abul Enayn, publicly confirmed his resignation from his post over a failure of the Palestinian leadership to heed his warnings of increasingly grim circumstances faced by Palestinian refugees.

Another ship to Gaza

Conflicting reports on whether the Libyan ship going to Gaza will try to land there or in Al Arish, Egypt.

Gaza aid ship to dock in Egypt after Israel pressure (BBC)

Israeli Arab MIK: Libyan aid ship won't change course, headed for Gaza (Haaretz)

Hopefully, it will land in Egypt, and there won't be another debacle at sea.

Sheikh Jarrah demonstration

Last Friday afternoon I went to the weekly demonstration at Sheikh Jarrah - an Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem where Jewish settlers have taken over houses where Palestinians have been living for decades. The demonstration last week was peaceful, but that was not true yesterday, as I heard from several people who were there, who got shoved and elbowed by the Border Police. According to my friends, the police are openly on the side of the settlers and are uniformly hostile to the leftist demonstrators.

See this report in Haaretz: 'Unprecedented police brutality' at East Jerusalem protest.

Some 300 left-wing activists clashed with police on Friday during the weekly protest at the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Ten activists were detained and held for questioning over blocking roadways and failing to comply with police instructions. Every weekend, Israeli protesters demonstrate alongside the Arab locals against settler activity in the Arab neighborhood. The demonstrators decry the settlers' takeover of several homes in the area.

Participating in Friday's protest were renowned Israeli author David Grossman and former Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On.
The clash erupted when demonstrators tried to make their way to the contested homes in the neighborhood. Gal-On and Grossman said that they were pushed aggressively by police officers. Gal-On said that "it was one of the more violent events. We wanted to enter the neighborhood, but the police brutality was unprecedented." "They pushed, and I too got hit," Gal-On went on to say. "They just kicked the young people who were lying on the ground."

Gal-On added that former attorney general Michael Ben-Yair pleaded with the police to calm the situation, but they were uncooperative.

Some six weeks ago, several hundred Hebrew University students and lecturers marched from the Mount Scopus campus in Jerusalem to Sheikh Jarrah in protest over the settlers' takeover of local residents' homes. The protest march included such prominent professors as Ze'ev Sternhell, Yaron Ezrahi, Ariel Hirschfeld and others.

The protesters carried signs calling for and end to settlements in East Jerusalem. "Democracy stops at Sheikh Jarrah," some signs said, while others read "stop ethnic cleansing."

Update tonight from Ynet:

8 Sheikh Jarrah protesters ordered to keep away for 2 weeks

Eight Sheikh Jarrah protesters arrested Friday during demonstrations have been ordered to stay away from the neighborhood for two weeks. Police said indictments against the eight would be submitted. Protesters complained Friday that even though their demonstration was passive, police used violent means against them when they tried to approach the Shimon HaTzadik compound. (Shmulik Grossman)

See also the report in Ynet from yesterday: Leftists Clash with Police in Sheikh Jarrah