Ira
Glunts, who used to live in Israel and now lives in upstate New York, has been tracking the Israeli response to the Arab cultural festival. Read his account and weep. It is about profound disrespect for the other.
The Israeli authorities have prevented all events associated with al-Quds Arab Culture Capital 2009 celebration from occurring in what they consider to be Israeli sovereign territory. The harsh suppression of the cultural expression of Palestinians of which this action is indicative, reflects the very grim reality of the Israeli relationship to the Palestinian people, especially those with whom they live in close proximity. The Arab Culture Capital festival, which is celebrated in a different Arab city each year, hosts artists, officials and tourists from all over the Arabic-speaking world. The Israeli refusal to allow these cultural events to take place in Jerusalem and within Israel's borders sends a blunt and clear message, not only to Palestinians, but to all Arabs. The message is: We do not intend to acknowledge your rights or your presence here, ever.
This year's al-Quds celebration was scheduled to include events in Jerusalem (al-Quds), Gaza, Nazareth, Ramallah and a refugee camp in Lebanon. According to the Israeli newspaper web site YNet, Interior Minister Avi Dichter ordered the police "to forcefully suppress" any attempt by the Palestinian Authority to stage any event in or around Jerusalem or the rest of Israel, which is connected to the festival. Israeli authorities view all external demonstrations of what they consider expressions of Arab sovereignty to be illegal within what they consider to be their borders.
On Saturday morning, March 21, 1000 Israeli police were deployed in the Old City of Jerusalem to stop all events associated with the festival. Most of the originally scheduled events had either been moved or cancelled as a result of the Israeli orders. However, according to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, eight different smaller events were closed down by the authorities during the day. In addition, there were 20 arrests of either organizers or participants.
Events associated with the festival which were shut down by police included a football game, a meeting of youths inside a club building and an attempt by schoolchildren carrying Palestinian flags to enter the area around the al-Aqsa mosque. Hundreds of young students accompanied by their teachers who attempted to stage some modest artistic events in the Old City of Jerusalem were prevented from doing so by police. The authorities also arrested two employees of al-Quds University who were distributing T-shirts commemorating the festival.
In Ras al-Amud, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, police shut down an event in which there were hundreds of participants, according to the Israeli daily, Ma'ariv. In a separate incident, a ceremonial torch which was brought from Damascus the site of last year's festival was confiscated by police. In addition to the closings in and around Jerusalem, a conference associated with the Al-Quds Capital of Arab Culture celebration which was scheduled in the Palestinian-Israeli city of Nazareth, was prohibited by police order.
The official opening event, which was supposed to take place in East Jerusalem, was relocated to Bethlehem, where on Saturday evening Palestinian officials appeared live and via a television hook-up which was broadcast, apparently illegally, from East Jerusalem. President Mahmoud Abbas was present and addressed those gathered in Bethlehem for the opening ceremony. The International Middle East Media Center web site reported Saturday that Hamas had refused to host the scheduled events associated with the festival in Gaza.
Member of the Israeli Parliament Haim Oron, in remarks pointedly critical of his government, said, "Israel must encourage cultural pluralism both Israeli and Palestinian." He added that "East Jerusalem is the cultural capital of the Palestinians and that does not constitute any threat to Israel,... Jerusalem is the cultural capital of Israel and also that of Palestine."
In relation to the horrors of the Gaza War and the recent revelations about the conduct of the Israeli army in that war, all this may seem insignificant. But it is hard to envision a peace between Israelis and Palestinians when 1000 Israel police are being deployed to grab flags out of the hands of children and stop teenagers from playing football in a event organized by the Palestinian Authority.
Here's an idea: Israel agrees to let the Arabs hold their festival wherever they went (ignore the fact that violent protests and riots may result when these "festivals" inevitably turn political), and the Arabs agree to allow non-Muslims to hold a festival in Mecca and Medina because, you know, Christians, Jews, pagans, and others did live there at one point before they were banished on account of their kuffar status. I say that's a fair trade. Do you think the Arabs would agree?
Question: Up until 1967, were Jews from any part of the world allowed to worship at the Temple Mount or Western Wall, the most holiest site in Judaism?
Answer: No.
Yes, I'm weeping. Thanks, Ira and Phil, for reporting on this new assault on humanity, culture, and life. So much for allowing the people of Palestine to exist, let alone celebrate, in peace.
"There were 20 arrests of either organizers or participants."
"The authorities also arrested two employees of al-Quds University who were distributing T-shirts commemorating the festival."
Shocking–just when I thought the depths of "horror" had been plumbed. Yes, Phil, you're right that "In relation to the horrors of the Gaza War and the recent revelations about the conduct of the Israeli army in that war, all this may seem insignificant." This smashing by the Israeli government of Palestinians' commemorations is less than the merciless slaughter of a helpless, imprisoned populace. Buth it is the merciless stomping out of harmless joy for a helpless, imprisoned people by a vengeful tyranny. How else can we describe such unreasoning destruction of others' mere public happiness?
Attempts to suppress cultural awareness will only increase: the 'forbidden fruit' phenomena, plus when it's forbidden to them by Israelis, Palestinians know they fear it.
Shirazi Sophist is not an Iranian Jew. Another hasbara troll. I can smell south asians, arabs, Iranians and Muslims even through the virtual world of the world wide web.
Nice try. And nice use of the Arabic/Persian words, you did well in your Middle Eastern Studies class.
I once went to a local AIPAC meeting for congressional interns. Before the meeting started there was small chit/chat about good ethnic food among other things. One girl said such and such Israeli restaurant has good food.
I love food. Hate cooking but love eating. I asked her what is Israeli food like. One of the things she mentioned was hummus/tahini/falafel.I blurted "but that's Arabic food!" I just got a smile but no answer.
The Israelis have "stolen" Arabic food and made it Israeli. How about calling it Middle Eastern food if you don't want to give Arabs credit for it? They call the adorning of the Kaffieya as hate clothing. Yet others have gone and mad a "Jewish kaffiyah." (Incidentally is prettier than the Palestinian Kaffiya with the blue and white colors, but I won't be buying one anytime soon though. I wrote about it on my blog: link to saleemasinkpot.blogspot.com
They stole the land and made it Israel. Next thing they will be claiming belly dancing too. Israelis are quite clear with their intentions. They will suppress and annihilate Palestinina culture from "their" land. Anything they won't be able to suppress and annihilate will become Israeli from culture symbols to food and everything in between the earth and high heaven.
Israel
Arabs
ignore
violent protests and riots
"festivals"
political
Arabs
non-Muslims
a festival
Mecca
Medina
Christians
Jews
pagans
banished
kuffar
Arabs
1967
Jews
worship
Temple Mount
Western Wall
the most holiest site in Judaism
No
Posted by: Shirazi Sophist
While Operation Cast Lead was horrific, I don't feel this is less significant. This is the type of activity that preceded Kristalnacht.
Israel agrees to let the Arabs hold their festival wherever they want, and the Arabs agree to allow non-Muslims to hold a festival in Mecca and Medina… Posted by: Shirazi Sophist | March 21, 2009 at 10:57 PM
If I could be bothered to play the hasbara mirroring game, I could contrive some absurd mirroring exercise whereby the supposed US anti-Semites only allow the US Jews to go to synagogue as and when they (the supposed anti-Semites that is) are allowed to hold Nazi rallies outside. You can generate any sort of mirroring scenario if you apply enough ingenuity. And after a while, you don't even need ingenuity, obviously, it becomes a routine learned reaction, as we see with this geek, who is a sophist if not a Shirazi one.
Mirroring, that's a good term for it. Israel is like one big two-way mirror. We can see in, but they can't see out, ha ha.
Sophist has confused Muslim with Arab and forgotten that many Muslims are not Arab and that many Arabs are not Muslims. He also ignores the fact that Israel is likewise suppressing any Arab cultural activities in Nazareth, a city in Israel with little significance for Jews, but much significance for Christians, and a city with a large Palestinian population.
Also, his answer to this question is INCORRECT:
My great aunt, an American Jew and iterant traveler, visited Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall in the mid 1960's, when it was under Jordanian control. Since I had a clear memory of her description of her visit when I first heard the hasbara tale that my great aunt could not have possibly done what she clearly did, I looked into the question more fully. Jews from other lands were NOT restricted from Old Jerusalem or the Wailing Wall. Only Israelis were prohibited. And that included ALL Israelis, including Muslims and Christians. I suspect that prohibition was the result of the shaky terms of coexistence that existed between Israel and Jordan at the time.
Of course, my aunt didn't visit the Temple Mount, but back in those days, there were Rabbinical dictates against ordinary Jews setting foot on what might be the location of the Holy of Holies. Apparently that's gone by the wayside now, in the interest of sticking it to the Muslims in lieu of observing ancient Jewish religious tradition…. Hmm, I guess you could say that about a lot of what Israel does today.
Sorry,MX, but to the extent that they have mastered this mirroring tactic, it's the reverse; they can routinely fend off all criticism by creating a mirror scenario and throwing that back at us, which we have never even bothered to identify as a tactic, until now. It is in fact their second commonest tactic, after the ad hominem.
It's just as well, since Zionists cast no reflection.
Shirazi Sophist employs the standard ZioPuke hasbara line of dismissing the shittiness of his/her own country by comparing it to some random Arab country.
So Palestinians are not their own people despite the fact that 40+ years of continued oppression/etc. would easily be enough to meld them into a distinct entity even in the eyes of the most racist/supremecist Jew.
Lets keep bunching all arabs together. palestinians are iraqis! they are saudis!
and this stupid bastard called me a lunatic because i called SUZANNE a troll.
Shirazi Sophist: "Here's an idea: Israel agrees to let the Arabs hold their festival wherever they went (ignore the fact that violent protests and riots may result when these "festivals" inevitably turn political), and the Arabs agree to allow non-Muslims to hold a festival in Mecca and Medina because, you know, Christians, Jews, pagans, and others did live there at one point before they were banished on account of their kuffar status. I say that's a fair trade. Do you think the Arabs would agree?"
If I understand you correctly, your argument runs like this. Since the Arab states are not western style democracies, no one should blame Israel for not behaving like a western style democracy either. But I always thought the argument of the Israeli apologists here was that Israel was "the only democracy in the Middle East." And furthermore it had a "special relationship" with the United States based on "shared values."
You can criticize the United States for many things but, unlike Israel apparently, one of the things it does do is allow diverse peoples to celebrate their culture (and their politics too).
Palestinians used violence to prevent Jewish demonstrations of religious faith at the Western Wall under the British administration in 1921 and 1921, the State of Israel is returning the favor of prohibiting cultural manifestations that are an attempt to assert Muslim (as opposed to Palestinian) sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Western Wall and operations whose intent is to contest Israeli sovereignty over the secular life of Israel's capital. It is usual for a civil power in disputed territory to prohibit deliberate incitement to riot and disruption of the civil peace, and since Israeli civil law was extended to the Jerusalem municipality in 1980, the Palestinians have not managed to recognize Israel and successfully acquire sovereignty in Jerusalem by a final, post-93 peace settlement. While regrettable, this is an attempt to deal with a situation that inevitably, inevitably leads to mass riots against the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Israeli Arab organizations should be allowed to faciliate purely cultural demonstrations with Palestinian NGOs in potentially Palestinian-sovereign areas of the municipality if possible, but such manifestations have rarely if ever occurred without violence and rioting in the context of Orient House and Fateh/Hamas cultural organizations to date.
I suspect they are the same person.
The Israeli authorities have prevented…
Eurosabra is here, must switch to Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Check out this great site:
Phil – You're doing it right!
Nothing like censorship to emphasize what's important.
Poor Eurosabra – outdated, like "the Jewish lobby."
Margaret,
What happens when Israel prevails again after the embargo, the seizure of American Jewish assets held as investments in Israeli firms, the stonings and burnings of shops in Brooklyn as in Le Marais and Golders Green, as it did after comparable embargos and seizures by the British in '48 and the French in '67? What happens when everyone knows you hate American Jews as well, just for being Jews, and Israel is still there? French Jews now know Israel is their only PERSONAL retreat, after forty years of significant French embargos and investment in Arab weapons. Do you really want to push American Jews to the same realization?
Eurosabra –
AS LONG AS ANY MAN IS IN CHAINS, I AM NOT FREE!
Jewish – hey, aren't they Americans, just like me?
Kill a "jew", kill me. That's where it starts and ends.
Oh, about racism:
@ Eurosabra
"Palestinians used violence to prevent Jewish demonstrations of religious faith at the Western Wall under the British administration in 1921 and 1921, the State of Israel is returning the favor of prohibiting cultural manifestations that are an attempt to assert Muslim (as opposed to Palestinian) sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Western Wall and operations whose intent is to contest Israeli sovereignty over the secular life of Israel's capital."
Oh, but Israel is so much better. Civilised amongst a sea of heathens. Upholding democracy in a sea of darkness. I didn't know democratic countries were petty enough to "return" favors of intolarence back at people who did them harm. Oh, wait. That's not democracy. That's the eye for an eye of the old Biblical tradition.
"Palestinian activists called for Saturday's celebrations to mark the Arab League's designation of Jerusalem as the capital of Arab culture for 2009. The 23-nation group chooses a different city for the honor each year.
But Israel said the events violated a ban on Palestinian political activity in Jerusalem. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas criticized the crackdown.
Announcing the ban on Saturday's events, Israel's internal security minister, Avi Dichter, accused Abbas' Palestinian Authority of being behind the activities. Israel does not allow the Palestinian government to have a presence in Jerusalem, saying it undercuts Israel's claim to the city.
At one event, teenage girls at an east Jerusalem Catholic school released a few dozen balloons in the red, white, green and black colors of the Palestinian flag over the walled Old City. Israeli military police and soldiers quickly moved into the schoolyard and popped the remaining balloons, students said.
Zein, an 18-year-old student, said the police popped them with their hands and told them they weren't allowed to release them into the air. She asked not to use her last name, fearing further problems with the police.
An Israeli intelligence official at the school who refused to give his name said the balloons were burst "because they are Palestinian."
Associated Press 14 hours ago
Funny how whenever human rights in "the only democracy in the Middle East" are criticised, its defenders immediately draw comparisons with… Saudi Arabia.
Nice going.
Saleema wrote:
"They stole the land and made it Israel. Next thing they will be claiming belly dancing too."
Now this is where I draw the line: You got something against Bar Rafaeli belly dancing? Against *any* attractive woman belly dancing? Belly dancing belongs to the world!
Eurosabra, I love Le Marais, I always stay there when I am in Paris. But I also like the Turkish quarters and their shops here in Cologne. And I find it somehow hard to fathom that a Jewish German survivor, a respected artist and writer, surfaced as a rabid "Muslimophobe" demanding that the planned mosque shouldn't be built here in Cologne, with strong support from a Jewish journalist a "leftist" Bush admirer. I find these sentiments very hard to fathom, given our and your history in Germany. Turkish people, that's the main Muslim community over here, have been the target from the extreme right and their hate propaganda for quite some time now. Arson. Explain me what is happening.
What's happening, Fritz, is that Jews in Germany, and throughout Europe, rationally fear the millions of disgutingly ignorant Muslims.
"Belly dancing belongs to the world!"
Indian/South Asian dancing is much more artistic. But I am biased.
I once saw a belly dancer. She had a bulging flappy stomach at a persian resturaunt. ick. I have seen some nice one on youtube.
Zionists are always the ones to make the most "disgusting" (that's how you spell it, moron), vulgar, and racist remarks.
Did anyone here disparage Jews? No. In fact, look at this blog on a whole, and it's the Zionists who are saying the most fanatically racist things about Arabs and by extension, Muslims.
Makes sense too. None of this is very complicated. It all comes back to Israel and institutionalized hate towards Arabs/Palestinians/Islam via the Zionist project. In-built and intrinsic to the movement.
Read Teddy Roosevelt's memoirs. The things he says about those 'savages' is no different from what Jews and their sheep say about Arabs.
Militarism/radical nationalism/ethnic exclusivity and tribalism/etc. = all components of Zionism. And the result is no surprise.
the national socialist zionists are running amuck.
Yes, amuck indeed. Here's a good indication"
“The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective.”
The enemy is not Palestinians or Jews, but racist tribalists who fear that they might actually learn something from another culture if they don't destroy it in time.
Shirazi Sophist = Hasbara troll.
ZIONISM IS FASCISM
I'm sure in 1921 the Muslim community was already seeing the signs of the coming Nabka as zionist colonists from outside Palestine were then starting to immigrate there in significant numbers, I'm pretty sure.
And all though it isn't something I would agree with at the time, you can't argue that they weren't right about the nature of the zionist threat….
"What's happening, Fritz, is that Jews in Germany, and throughout Europe, rationally fear the millions of disgutingly ignorant Muslims."
If that were true, you could definitely thank zionism for putting them there….
To be a bit more accurate, I probably should include American and European imperialism as well.
Thanks for the link asiswhen.
This war must be ended. The river must be channeled into a different bed, so that its waters will make the earth fertile – before we become irreversibly bestialized in our own eyes, and in the eyes of the world. Uri Avnery
I admire Mr. Avnery's persistence, and call me an optimist, but I think it is still far from too late.
test to see if i can down-post bold propagation
err, … stop down-post bold propagation…, and it didn't work :(
This is just sad on so many levels. So much for the great egalitarian society that Israelis (or Jews blindly supporting Israel) crow about.
Israeli cultural suppression efforts look like a finger in a dike that is about to collapse when Palestinian, Arab, Iranian, Turkic, and Islamic culture becomes part of the American melting pot: Islam Comes to Bones.
I'm confused here.
If Palestinians shouldn't use a festival, a football game, flags, T-shirts and balloons as voices for their existence then what should they use? Rockets?
Another attempt.
BAH!
good point nina–Witty?
I think I can answer for Richard:
Nina, its LIVE and LET LIVE.
Palestinian Israeli should LIVE in cellars and sewage canals and not disturb the daylight and LET Jewish Israelis LIVE in glorious, undivided and eternal Jewish capital, Jerusalem.
Well done, Eva. You really captured Witty's mindless use of all-cap-emphasis.
Um, yeah, stevieb, I'm sure you know nothing. In 1921, the Jewish communities attacked were the pietistic, quietist traditional Palestinian-Jewish religious communities, aside from a sprinkling of artists/writers in a colony on the outskirts of Jaffa.
The strange thing is that Israeli-Palestinian cultural manifestations even in occupied East Jerusalem take place unhindered, even when they are explicitly Islamist-oriented populist displays, while UNRWA is unhindered in its cultural activities, although they are Palestinian-statist, such as public singings of "Biladi", the Palestinian anthem. It seems Israel only puts the brakes on PA/Hamas/Fateh-sponsored Palestinian cultural activity, because that represents an alternate sovereign claim.