Did you see Ethan Bronner's analysis of the tent protests in the New York Times today? It's not what it says, it's what it doesn't say. Not until the last paragraph does he tentatively raise the connection between Israel's construction of settlements/colonies and the housing shortages and other economic problems in Israel itself.
And when Bronner does raise the issue, he does it in a roundabout way, quoting a rightwing columnist who says that the solution to Israel's housing crisis is still more West Bank colonies:
Martin Sherman, a right-wing columnist for The Jerusalem Post, argued on Friday that the easy way to solve Israel’s housing crisis was to build more West Bank settlements because the settlement construction freeze last year caused the crisis.
The protesters tend to argue the opposite: the investment in West Bank settlements has reduced building in Israel proper and a shift is needed. That view, Mr. Sherman argued, exposed the movement’s real nature. “Genuine nonpolitical social protest?” he concluded. “Give me a break!”
Apparently Bronner doesn't read his own op-ed page, where Dimi Reider and Aziz Abu Sarah of +972 made the connection between occupation and housing shortage in calm, persuasive detail.
the settlement construction freeze last year caused the crisis.
Israel never observed its so-called settlement freeze in the first place. BTW, here is a much better article on the subject of affordable housing and the Green Line:
No housing shortage over the Green Line
9% of GDP beyond the Green Line comes from construction, compared with 4.7% of GDP within the Green Line.
28 July 11 16:14, Avi Temkin
Who says that the Israeli government does not recognize the 1967 border, known as the Green Line? Who says that the Israeli government opposes increased spending on social services? Who says that too few apartments are under construction in Israel of 2011?
A new OECD report, released this week, written with the full cooperation of the Israeli government, reveals that the government fully recognizes the 1967 border, spends heavily on settlements and that there is no housing shortage in them.
Before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands before a Knesset investigative committee, or is charged under a clause of the Boycott Law, it should be pointed out that the government was compelled to cooperate with the OECD in conducting the research, which examines Israel’s statistical procedures regarding the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and eastern Jerusalem. The final result is a quite accurate picture of both Israel within the Green Line and economic and social activity beyond it.
It should also be pointed out that the all the data on economic activity, construction, and government spending are for 2007; in other words, covering activity by the previous government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
It is worthwhile to highlight the economic data beyond the Green Line because, for the first time, they quantify the differences between the two sides of the border that existed before June 1967. First, government spending cuts do not apply to the settlements, or the Golan, or eastern Jerusalem. Government spending accounts for 20% of Israeli economic activity in the territories, and it adds 11% to total public sector spending. For the sake of comparison, Israeli activity beyond the Green Line accounts for just 3.9% of Israel’s GDP. Part of the difference is due to security operations in the territories, but civilian spending adds 7% to GDP.
Anyone who asserts that there is no construction in Israel should peruse OECD data on building beyond the Green Line. 9% of GDP beyond the Green Line comes from construction, compared with 4.7% of GDP within the Green Line. The difference is even greater for residential construction: within the Green Line, residential construction accounts for just over a fifth of investment; beyond the Green Line, it accounts for almost 45%.
It is necessary to add that the increased construction and higher government spending on civilian public services, including education, has persuaded many Israelis to move to the territories. According to the OECD, the number of Israelis living in the territories nearly doubled between 1997 and 2009.
Has never ever been a freeze. Never ever
james, on july 28th in his article No housing shortage over the Green Line Avi Temkin first pointed out something obvious to me and yet I had not heard anything about it in the msm up to that point. i recorded it here, there was so much going on it was never published as a post. it is in globes, israel’s business ‘arena’ news publication.
there’s more on business data in there. this is a no brainer. one would think the protestors would be all over this like flies on shit.
lol! i just posted that before seeing hostages comment. oh well, it’s true. i actually did put it up in draft.
lol! i just posted that before seeing hostages comment.
The facts exposed by Avi Temkin regarding the priorities assigned to housing construction and social services in areas located beyond the Green line bear repeating. Israeli bureaucrats care more about colonizing the occupied territories than domestic territory.
Another interesting story is the fact that the call for a boycott by the local Rabbis against the Rami Levi Jewish supermarket chain violates the new anti-boycott law. When those clever folks at Al Jazeera pinned-down the bill’s author about that situation, he said the supermarket chain would have to prove it had suffered damages, despite the fact that the law stipulates that no evidence of actual damages is required.
link to english.aljazeera.net
wow, i just finished listening to your link/interview. he doesn’t believe in a 2 state solution. this reminds me of something i just read from reut Policy Paper: Reut’s Broad Tent and Red-Lines Approach
notice the ‘red lines’ is also the dkos team shalom lingo. int e paper they also link to ‘Restoring Sanity to the Israel Discourse: Red Lines against De-legitimization; Blue-&-White Lines for Fair Play.’
iow, they are placing the lines. one being people who do not support the 2 state solution as being on the other side of the line. so why doesn’t reut go after danny dannon?
why do these ‘big tent’ people give a pass to the likud?
etc, there are many more of course.
notice the bolded section. this reminds me of clencher’s positioning. he was from the left and he kept complaining our tent wasn’t big enough for him but what i couldn’t help noticing was all his criticsims were directed to the left of him. and i talked about this in my article ‘the trap’ (i’m not going to link to it again because i’ve done it so often), that these people who position themselves as ‘reasonable’ are focusing their energy on us when they should be going after very powerful people, the ones who have the power in israel, the ones who are in fact preventing 2 states. it is hypocritical. reut calls us the deligitimizers but who is deligitimizing israel the most? people like danny dannon. but are they woried about danny? it sure as heck doesn’t look like it to me.
hypocrites.
hypocrites
Of course. The Reut Institute report doesn’t address the backlash against Israel’s failure to address the decades-long flagrant violations of international law and human rights identified by the international community of states through the Security Council, General Assembly, International Court of Justice, and a host of humanitarian and religious organizations. So, they have to launch a propaganda campaign to brand everyone as members of “fringe’ groups” – “particularly because of their ideological proximity to the (false) pretention of delegitimizers to serve peace, human rights and international law.”
By the middle of the 20th Century, the International Law Commission had already dealt with, and disposed of, the key issues surrounding the rights of states to defend their existence. The Commission cited Article 1 of the Declaration of Rights and Duties of Nations drawn up by the American Institute of International Law. It consisted of two parts: the first part stated that every Nation had a right to exist and the right to protect and preserve its existence. The second part said this right does not, however, imply that a Nation is entitled to commit, or is justified in committing, unjust acts towards others in order to protect and preserve its existence. A key principle of American society is that Nations have the right to dissolve states and governments whenever they abuse the rights of the governed.
The laws of nations reflected in the US Constitution don’t permit our elected officials to assist in the creation of ethnic or religious states here in the US or anywhere else in the world. The Reut plan to aggressively out, name and shame delegitimizers won’t work, because Israeli apartheid simply had no legitimacy in the first place.
RE: “Not until the last paragraph does he [Bronner] tentatively raise the connection between Israel’s construction of settlements/colonies and the housing shortages…” ~ North
COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE ‘NYT’ WITH REAL JOURNALISM: Settlers a familiar source of conflict in Israel’s summer of discontent ~ By Sheera Frenkel, McClatchy Newspapers, 8/05/11
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to mcclatchydc.com
P.S. But hey, the New York Times has that big, new skyscraper designed by Renzo Piano to pay for. Consequently, they can’t afford real journalism!
Good point, James. There has been a considerable of amount of celebrating on the routine left in Israel on how the Israelis are finally waking up, they’re coming together at last, the youth are leading the way, etc. But what are they coming together over: the demand for cheaper housing and other such matters FOR THEMSELVES. I have no reason to doubt that they have a good case, but you hardly get much moral credit for finally becoming politically and socially active on behalf of your own economic self-interest.
Contrast this mass protest–if that’s what it is–with the protest movement and the birth of the Peace Now movement over Israel’s complicity in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres twenty years ago.
Maybe this is unfair–some admirable Israelis have said that this should be regarded as a prelude to a model for, at long last, a mass protest movement on behalf of justice to the Palestinians. Maybe–but I’m skeptical.
Ditto.
Jerry: Thanks for a characteristically thoughtful and valuable comment. I would be delighted to see your own longer analysis of Israel’s tent protest on your own blog, on Mondoweiss, or in both locations.
My aim is this post was much more modest. I simply wanted to show that what purports to be a New York Times “analysis” almost left out an indispensable part of the story — one which the newspaper of record had just actually carried on its own op-ed page. This is just one more example of the NYT, along with other members of the mainstream media, not living up to their own stated policies of fairness and balance when the subject is Israel/Palestine.
I believe it was that great anarchist/feminist Emma Goldman who said, ‘We have to teach the ruling class to live up to their own values before we even try and teach them ours.’ (I can just picture Emma Goldman today, standing in the prow of one of the Freedom Flotilla ships steaming toward Gaza, yelling — in Yiddish — to defend Palestinian human rights as the Israeli warships close in.)
I think that insisting that the demonstrators regard their own experience and understanding as unimportant, off, is itself off.
The demonstration is NOT an assertion of racism, but of liberation. It is NOT a right-wing demonstration expressing ANY contempt for Palestinian life.
That it is a demonstration of community should be celebrated.
That this site ONLY whines “they’re not talking about what I think is important” is a regressive approach.
This site whined that Israeli’s were not as overtly supportive of the Tunisian Arab Spring which was similarly economic, and that the Egyptian Arab Spring which was primarily political.
Celebrate it, don’t pooh pooh it.
huh?
Annie, no offense intended, but I think the meaning of “off, is itself off”, is intuitively obvious. That is to say, off is not, in fact on. That is why we refer to it as off. No?
thank you don, why didn’t i think of that? it’s now crystalline internal.
>> Annie, no offense intended, but I think the meaning of “off, is itself off”, is intuitively obvious. That is to say, off is not, in fact on. That is why we refer to it as off. No?
So…RW was saying “I think that insisting that the demonstrators regard their own experience and understanding as unimportant, not on“?
I’m with annie on this one: It’s more of RW’s garbled/tortured prose. If he meant to say “…as unimportant is unjust / inappropriate / wrong”, he could simply have said that.
“The demonstration is NOT an assertion of racism, but of liberation”
Oh dear…Israeli’s are not liberated in the state especially carved out of Palestine as a sanctuary from everything it has since visited on the people of Palestine so that Jewish folk could be liberated? AMAZING!!