Ezra Nawi will be sentenced tomorrow in a Jerusalem courthouse for allegedly assaulting a police office while attempting to stop a house demolition in the occupied territories. Today, The Nation has published an aptly titled article by Nawi - "Israel's Man of Conscience":
My name is Ezra Nawi. I am a Jewish citizen of Israel.
I will be sentenced on the first of July after being found guilty of assaulting two police officers in 2007 while struggling against the demolition of a Palestinian house in Um El Hir, located in the southern part of the West Bank.
Of course the policemen who accused me of assaulting them are lying. Indeed, lying has become common within the Israeli police force, military and among the Jewish settlers.
After close to 140,000 letters were sent to Israeli officials in support of my activities in the occupied West Bank, the Ministry of Justice responded that I "provoke local residents."
This response reflects the culture of deceit that has taken over all official discourse relating to the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
After all, was I the one who poisoned and destroyed Palestinian water wells?
Was I the one who beat young Palestinian children?
Did I hit the elderly?
Did I poison the Palestinian residents' sheep?
Did I demolish homes and destroy tractors?
Did I block roads and restrict movement?
Was I the one who prevented people from connecting their homes to running water and electricity?
Did I forbid Palestinians from building homes?
Over the past eight years, I have seen with my own two eyes hundreds of abuses such as these and exposed them to the public--therefore I am considered a provocateur. I can only say that I am proud to be a provoker.
Because I am a provoker, the police together with their allies have threatened me, beaten me and arrested me on numerous occasions. And when I continued to "provoke" them, they did not hesitate to out me as a gay man; indeed, they spread rumors among the Palestinians with whom I work that I have AIDS.
One of the reasons I have been singled out has to do with who I am. It is difficult to explain, but as a Mizrahi Jew (descended from Jewish communities in the Arab and Muslim world), a gay man and a plumber, I do not belong to the elite of Israeli society and do not fit the stereotype of the Israeli peacenik--namely, an intellectual Jew of Ashkenazi decent. Actually, the police officers who constantly arrest me and I are part of the same social strata. I was programmed like them, have a similar accent, know their jargon and our historical background is comparable. And yet, in their eyes I am on and for the other side, the Palestinian side.
Read the entire article here.
Nawi is not a human rights activist, he could care less for human rights. He has created a climate of deceit.
After all did the people he interferes hijack any airliners?
Did they throw a crippled old man into the sea off a hijacked cruise liner?
Did they blow up a bus full of school children?
Did they shoot the tires out of a mothers car and proceed to execute her four daughters at point blank range, and fire into her swollen womb to murder the unborn child that was due to be born within days?
Did they rip two lost policemen apart with their bare hands and eat parts of the bodies while dancing around in the streets showing off their bloody hands for the cameras?
Did they blow up a discotheque that didn't sell alcohol because most of the clientele are under age teenagers?
Did they rampage through a public park and catch a feeble old man too slow to hobble away from the mob and hack him to death with hatchets and knives?
Did they bash the skull of a small girl in with the butt of a rifle until her brains oozed out after murdering her father in front of her?
Did they maim, wound, cripple, and MURDER thousands of ordinary people not as a defensive action to prevent violence, but as a blood thirty campaign of terror and mass murder?
Did they fete and cheer those that did those things and more?
Do they name sports teams, municipal buildings, schools, and streets after mass murderers? Or do they ban and condemn the whole political party that those amongst themselves belonged to, regardless of a connection to the party or not, that do these sorts of things?
Horowitz, I don't know how you can look yourself in the mirror knowing that you are a part of something this gruesome and sick as the cause you have chosen to support is.
Nawi goes on to say, "All the crimes committed by the state and its proxies in the territories over the past four decades were made kosher by the Israeli courts." Thus the rule of law is a sham. Nawi's simple words outline the form of a fascist state. This is the state the USA supports to the tune of eight million dollars a day with no conditions attached. And that's only the direct aid. We have chained ourselves to a monster.
RE: " Ezra Nawi will be sentenced tomorrow in a Jerusalem courthouse…" *FROM JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE: “Tell Israel not to jail Ezra Nawi” Join Naomi Klein, Neve Gordon, Noam Chomsky and thousands of others and tell Israel not to jail Ezra Nawi, one of Israel’s most courageous human rights activists. His crime? He tried to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the South Hebron region. Nawi, a Jewish Israeli of Iraqi descent, is a threat to the settlers and the Israeli government because he has brought international attention to efforts to illegally remove Palestinians from the Hebron region. *TAKE ACTION – http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/t/9462/c...
This gay man has more courage in his little finger than all those macho men in Congress, who know exactly what's going on but are too scared of AIPAC to say "peep."
Those macho men have no roots in the area; the only skin in the game they have is getting or keeping their power position over here (and at best providing well for their own family), with the actual best interests of their own country and/or simple justice not being part of their thinking except as thin purely rhetorical cover. Still, at the end of the day you are right because the gay man gives up all privilege associated with being a Jew, even though a lower class Jew, and rains harm and misery on himself out of pure empathy with the official Other. Having gained the fame he has earned the hard way, if he were like those macho men in Congress, he would turncoat and gain a very comfortable life and some modest official recognition he could live with his gay buddy if he has one. Yes, it is about courage, but also about empathy. He's a true humanist.
Hats off to Ezra Nawi, and to all the courageous Palestinians and Israelis who continue to struggle nonviolently against the insanity of military occupation.
Interesting that there are only 5 comments on this post. Of course, it shows that not all Israelis are the people the posters here imagine them to be, which would be a good reason to ignore it.
Thanks for speaking out, Ezra.