Israel is still alive. Here's a wonderful piece by David Shulman of Ta'ayush in Haaretz, imploring a judge not to sentence old activist/plumber/immigrant Ezra Nawi to jail for attempting to prevent Bedouin house demolitions–actually shanty demolitions– in the occupied West Bank.
Jewish Voice for Peace is coordinating a campaign for Nawi here, led by Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Neve Gordon. There is a video of the incident for which Nawi was convicted of raising his hand to a soldier.
"All that will be left here is hatred," Nawi prophetically warns the soldiers. Shulman has a related warning:
There is something ludicrous, even shameful, about
sending bulldozers to tear down these Bedouin shanties, especially with
the settlers [colonists] of Carmel building modern villas right next door, on the
historical grazing grounds of Umm al-Kheir.
So when the bulldozers showed up, Ezra tried to stop them, in the
classic mode of non-violent resistance associated with Mahatma Gandhi
and Martin Luther King, Jr. He lay down in front of the bulldozers, and
the soldiers removed him. And when the bulldozers headed for one of the
houses, home to a large family, he rushed inside. Two policemen went in
after him. All this is documented on film and can be viewed at the Web
site www.supportezra.net. The policemen dragged him out. What is not
recorded in the video is what happened in the 20 seconds or so inside
the hut. The policemen claimed Nawi raised his hand against one of
them; Ezra denies this, and anyone who knows him believes him. He is a
man committed, in every fiber of his being, to non-violent protest
against the inequities of the occupation.Of course Ezra was arrested, and on the video you can see the
soldiers laughing at him, mocking him for his sympathy with the
victims…
You have here the whole misery and cruelty of the
occupation in a nutshell. Israel, inside the Green Line, is a modern,
more or less (less and less?) democratic state, with a functioning
legal system, freedom of the press, and all the other elements we
regard as minimal requirements for civilized existence. But inside the
occupied Palestinian territories is a shadow state where the only real
law is the law of the gun, where land is being taken away from its
rightful owners every day, and where the very few who stand up to
protest, without violence, like Ezra Nawi, are sent to prison.
RE: "…imploring a judge not to sentence old activist/plumber/immigrant Ezra Nawi to jail for attempting to prevent house demolitions…" *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. He will be sentenced in July. *TAKE ACTION – http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/t/9462/c...
Ze'ev Braude was aquitted despite being filmed shooting a Palestinian, yet Ezra Nawi is prosecuted?
A powerful video, and one more reason I'm a loyal follower of Mondoweiss. Where is the mainstream American press? Where are the "liberal" American commentators who upbraid the Palestinians and their supporters for not resisting the occupation non-violently?
testing
off topic: Six members of the Iranian football team have worn green armbands during a World Cup qualifying match against South Korea in Seoul. An Homage to Iran's National Football Team http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/homage...
The IDF soldiers laughing at him when he tells them he was a soldier too (in Russia) but he didn't demolish homes, and that they think it's funny children will have no place to sleep. Reminds me off film you can see off and on on various History and Military cable channels, showing the young Germans and German troops laughing at what was being done to the Jews. Must be great to think you are invincible as well as superior by birth. At least the Germans got their temporary power position solely on their own–even despite the fact they had been robbed of their gold, so they had to barter for funding, when in comparison, where would the great IDF be without constant free funds and weapons from the USA and Germany? The cheap know-it-all-punk IDF giggling is disgusting.
Here's a Jew comparing the subject video to an old photo of Jews being made to clean the streets of Vienna with tea spoons, while the crowd laughs: http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/06/sick-nazi-styl... The ultimate culprit is the government of Israel and its USA supporter. Nice to know I support humiliation of an entire people, although I always write my congress people to protest and never vote for those status quo pricks. I prefer Nader, Kucinich, Paul–real Americans who are not hypocritical supporters of organized hate. I hate that I am forced to pay taxes for such abuse of human beings. A lot is resting on Obama's shoulders. Please support his thrust for a better way; he cannot do it alone.
A president with a shred of integrity would act immediately by declaring Israel a terrorist entity, freezing its assets and jailing or deporting its US supporters. We do this with Arab organizations engaged in legitimate charity work, we can certainly do it with Israel. America needs to be ethnically cleansed of Israelis. Let them return to their hebraic vomit state, they have no right to be here. They have no rights, period. They're terrorists.
you're a good citizen, citizen!
bleh.
I think in reality the occupiers need a place they can really truely forever call home, there are those earth like planet only 22 years away let them colonize and write some fairytales of that place and be fine with whomever they see fit to live with..and leave the fun loving people here alone. But do not give them weapons to create havoc in the universe either. Seriously has anyone thought of that…or the reparations and sale of property.
I just sent the Brit the same message: Subject: not a spoon – a toothbrush That's what it reminded me of. If you ever read about it or saw it on photos or on film, you simply never forget. But it weren't spoons. That wouldn't be such an elaborate "joke". Look, what do you use to sweep the sideway, you use a road sweeper. It has to be bigger than the broom you use in your house. It take less time to finish. Now to let the Jews clean the sidewalks with a brush would have forced them to bend down and had taken them much longer. But that wasn't funny enough, to make it really funny it had to be a toothbrush.
Poor guy. If I was in trouble with the Israeli authorities, the absolute last thing I would want is Noam Chomsky's endorsement. And having Naomi "boycott Israel" Klein in there? Ouch.
MORE INFO – http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/10-7
THe Triumverate of Israel, the USA and the UK are the new Third Reich!
Middle Eastern Sharia legal codes were filled with crap like that for 1400 years: Jews not to walk the streets in the rain, for fear of their contamination of Muslims. What changed is that the Jews, for the most part, have been subtracted from that jurisdiction. And you want to retun Israel to it.
Your point is obvious: Many Jews in Israel (and outside) have mentalities that flourished 1400 years ago. "Wrongs" committed against them 1400 years ago must be avenged today and many times over.
Not really. This is a government asserting control over wildcat building in a part of the West Bank that is essentially lawless, has been lawless under every previous government. The fact that it culminates in a stupid act of brutality against powerless people is not the point, from the government's point of view. The humiliation itself is an Israeli-Israeli problem, in that the Bedouin are simply left there, while Nawi is subject to state custody. It would be more humane to regularize the illegal building, but no government, not even the PA, ever has.
Eurobabe, you are an expert at pilpullistic reasoning. Did anyone here understand why them poor zios were forced to destroy the Bedouin shacks (hardly the first instance) while allowing a next-door colony exclusively for Jews "Carmel" to flourish and expand? Certainly don't remember the PA ever bulldozning any Palestinian homes. Remember those state-of-the-art toilet facilities that were built with European money in a Bedouin settlement a year or so ago? Them altruistic and law-abiding zios bulldozed those also.
Pilpul, the refrain of the Nazi Anti-Semite. Hamas destroys the homes of Fateh supporters by military assault all the time, and vice-versa. But rockets, not bulldozers, you are right. Pilpul. The State, whether Israel or PA, should have the welfare of marginalized people like the Bedouin as a major concern, but the South Hebron hills are the wild west, such that the state must reassert its power. Sadly, it has chosen to do so by oppression rather than development.