Take me out of the colonists’ game

by on November 18, 2009 19
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This afternoon, Jews Say No! and several other cool orgs will be leading a demonstration outside the baseball commissioner’s office in New York to protest the fact that later this week, the Mets are planning to host a fundraiser for the illegal colonists of Hebron at Citi Field. Demonstration: 12:30-1:30, 245 Park Avenue, between 46/47th. Code Pink is sure to have some imaginative signs.

The colonists "have the funding, the families, and the guns," says Micha Kurz of Grassroots Jerusalem. Evidently they even have Obama. And the Law of Return, too. What do we have? We have Americans of common sense, and over 40 years of U.N. resolutions, and our president’s best wishes, if not his willpower.

I went to the Hebron Fund dinner last year. The supporters tend to be religious Jews who think the bible gives them a deed to the Hebron hills. Here are folks you can call to complain about American complicity in the landgrab.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Settlers/Colonists, US Politics

{ 19 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Chaos4700 says:
    November 18, 2009 at 9:50 am

    Good work and good luck, guys. This stuff’s important. I keep saying this but I think it bears repeating — these colonists aren’t going to stop at the Jordan River.

  2. potsherd says:
    November 18, 2009 at 9:59 am

    How many US Jews are going to accept this? How many are this extreme? For many US Jews, this woman could be their rabbi. The idea of Israel as a center of Judaism doesn’t work if it isn’t for all Jews, just a minority of extreme cultists.

    Police on Wednesday arrested a woman who was praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, due to the fact that she was wrapped in a prayer shawl (tallit).

    The woman was visiting the site with the religious women’s group “Women of the Wall” to take part in the monthly Rosh Hodesh prayer.

    Police were called to the area after the group asked to read aloud from a Torah scroll.

    Chairman of the women’s group, Anat Hoffman, said that this is the first time in the history of Israel that a woman has been arrested because she wrapped herself in a tallit and read from the Torah.

    Rabbi Gilad Kariv, associate director of Israel’s reform movement, said that all over the world women are entitled to wear the tallit, and only in the land of the Jews are they excluded from the social custom and even arrested for praying.

    link to haaretz.com

  3. potsherd says:
    November 18, 2009 at 11:10 am

    The Mets rep wasn’t happy to hear from me and says that the event “is going through” regardless.

    I pointed out that the Hebron Fund is a supporter of terrorism, which makes the Mets org likewise as terrorist supporter.

  4. potsherd says:
    November 18, 2009 at 11:14 am

    I would add that groups like the Hebron Fund ought to be investigated as terrorist supporters. If anything would cut down on the contributors to these organizations, that would be it.

  5. Colin Murray says:
    November 18, 2009 at 11:45 am

    Meir Turgeman a Jerusalem council member and chairman of the Gilo neighborhood (CPM: actually it is the post-1967 colony called ‘Ofrah’) board during the intifada, blames the situation on what he called “collaborators who went and leaked it out.”

    Gilo outraged at US demands to halt construction, Ynet News
    *****************************************************

    The more stringent will note that unlike the Hamas government, our government does not pay the salaries of rabbis who advocate the killing of babies. Is that so? Not really.

    Who is funding the rabbi who endorses killing gentile babies?, Haaretz
    *****************************************************

    …it is unclear whether her remarks are made intentionally or are really slips of the tongue.

    White House baffled by Clinton’s gaffes, Ynet News

  6. Mooser says:
    November 18, 2009 at 11:55 am

    “The supporters tend to be religious Jews who think the bible gives them a deed to the Hebron hills.”

    You would call the sentiments which give rise to that religious feelings? Jewish religious?
    C’mon Phil, try to have a little higher opinion of your own religion. If you don’t (and who would blame you) at least don’t offer them that rhetorical advantage.

  7. Dan Kelly says:
    November 18, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    WFAN is the AM radio station (660 on the dial) in New York that broadcasts the Mets games. It is a 24-hour sports talk radio station that reaches an enormous audience, via the strength of its signal (I’ve picked up 660 as far south as North Carolina and as far north as New Hampsire), its internet broadcast, and the TV simulcast of its number one afternoon show, The Mike Francesa Show, which is, interestingly enough, simulcast across the world on the New York Yankees TV station, the YES network.

    I bring this up because the radio station is known for its listener call-ins, and in order to bring more attention to this issue to people who would not otherwise hear about it, calls to the stations’ various hosts would be effective.

    The station’s call-in number is: 877-337-6666.

    Calls are pre-screened, and if you tell the call screener that you want to talk about the Hebron fund supporting Israeli atrocities, you are not likely to be allowed on air. Tell the screener that you’d like to suggest a Mets trade to the on-air host, then when you get on air switch gears and say that before you bring up the trade, you’d like to call attention to something else Mets-related, and go into the Hebron fund.

    This is probably something best left to those reading this site who have at least some exposure to sports radio, particularly WFAN in New York City.

  8. potsherd says:
    November 18, 2009 at 5:48 pm

    The Hebron Fund:

    To this day, extremist settlers continue to venerate [terrorist Baruch] Goldstein as a Jewish saint. His grave site is kept as a shrine and pilgrimage destination. And in a deeply offensive bit of souveniring, the Hebron Fund Web site sells T-shirts with the slogan “Uzi Does It.” Just as settlers justify violence against Palestinians by invoking “1929,” many Palestinians justify violence against Israelis by invoking the 1994 shootings. (It was in response to Goldstein’s act of indiscriminate mass murder that Hamas first employed suicide bombing against civilians inside Israel.)

    So what is the role of an organization like the Hebron Fund in supporting this extremism? Hebron Fund Executive Director Yossi Baumol insists that the organization funds only “tours, pilgrimage, and religious study.” Israeli journalist Seth Freedman, who has gone on Hebron Fund-sponsored tours in the city, suggests that it’s difficult “to explicitly link the Hebron Fund and its activities to settler violence per se, since there is no formal process for funding terror in the same way that, say, the Palestinian militants raise funds.” But as Freedman points out, that’s because settler violence doesn’t require much money. Instead, the violence is more impromptu and more random. “It could be a group of settler women screaming abuse at Palestinian school kids, settler kids smashing shop windows, or a settler group marauding their way through an olive grove pointing guns, or even shooting at the farmers — none of which requires formal training or funding.”

    In Freedman’s view, the Hebron Fund clearly bears some responsibility for violence against Palestinians in the settlement. “By virtue of providing financial and emotional support to the settler community in Hebron,” Freedman says, “the Hebron Fund are tacitly supporting and approving of the activities of the settlers.”

    As to whether the Hebron Fund’s American supporters understand what’s going on in Hebron, Freedman suggests that the answer is two-layered. “There are those who … see the tour as a historical, educational trip, and [then] you get those who back Israel to the hilt and want to come on the tour to express their unwavering solidarity with the settlers — and who then go on to fund the settler activities when they get home and write out their checks.” Freedman suggests that this latter group is fully aware of the situation in Hebron. “They [know] what goes on in the area and are proud to play a part in its continuation, since they feel that by doing so they are doing their bit for the country, even though they aren’t living there themselves.”

    I contacted several Hebron Fund donors, but none were willing to speak on the record about the settlement or about their support for the Hebron Fund. I found out later that, after hearing from me, one donor had immediately notified the group that a journalist was making calls. All of my questions for the Hebron Fund itself were directed to Baumol.

    Baumol, who lives in Hebron, is quite clear about the reality there. Asked if he supports a two-state solution, Baumol responded with a question of his own: “Do you support the two-state solution for America? Should you give America back to the Indians?” After informing me that he was “very good” at these sorts of arguments, Baumol launched into a racist tirade against Arabs that blew my hair back. “Democracy is poison to Arabs,” Baumol said. “Look at Iraq. Saddam Hussein was the best they could have had.” Baumol stated his belief that Israel should annex all of the West Bank and Gaza but that the Arabs (he refused to use the word “Palestinians”) must not be made citizens. “Israel must not give Arabs a say in how the country is run,” Baumol insisted. “You’ll never get the truth out of an Arab. Israel should give the Arabs social rights but not give them a say in how the country is governed.”

    Such stridently racist attitudes are borne out in numerous videos (many of them available on YouTube) taken by peacemaker teams in Hebron, in which leering, taunting settler youths shove, hit, and throw stones at Palestinian civilians, including elderly people and children on their way to school, all under the watchful eyes of Israeli troops. In one particularly disturbing video, a teenage girl of no more than 13 repeatedly strikes an elderly Palestinian woman, while a soldier stands behind her, intervening only to make sure the woman does not retaliate.

    Somehow I don’t think that the old lady I met at the Grand Hyatt would approve of this, nor would many of the attendees of the Hebron Fund’s banquet. But it is the inescapable reality of what their charity supports. “This is actually fundraising for illegality,” Barghouti says. “Americans are paying money for things which are considered to be criminal acts by international law. I don’t know if they are really aware of the consequences of what they are doing.”

    link to prospect.org

  9. Pingback: Protesters to baseball commish: “Don’t rent to racists, it’s an error, Just say no to settler terror.”

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