Independent Australian Jewish Voices

New documentary: Some 70,000 books were seized from homes left empty by Palestinians who fled in 1948

iajv99 — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:16:31 +0000

New documentary

“Chronicles of a cultural destruction: The story of 70,000 “collected” books.”

“The film will reconstruct in a multifaceted approach the systematic “collecting” – by the newly born State of Israel – of 70,000 Palestinian books during the 1948 war.

This documentary is in post-production phase, but we continue seeking pictorial material concerning the plunder affair, eye witnesses, and people who know something about this historical episode.”

More here: thegreatbookrobbery.org

And here’s a recent article on the documentary from +972 Magazine: http://972mag.com/documenting-scores-of-palestinian-books-nakbas-lesser-known-victims/34169/

Action request from APAN as SBS rules in favour of The Promise

iajv99 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:38:00 +0000

If you haven’t already, APAN invites you to join us in writing to SBS in support of their screening of The Promise.

The Promise is a four-part political thriller written and directed by Peter Kosminsky. It depicts a young British woman travelling in modern day Israel and Palestine, and parallels her story with her grandfather’s experience as a British soldier in the same places in the 1940′s. It includes depictions of a number of historical and current injustices against the Palestinian people. The Promise won Best Drama of the year at the One World Media Awards in London last year and was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for the Best Drama Serial. The Promise was screened in Australia over four consecutive Sunday nights by SBS TV in November and December 2011.

Following the screening last year, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry made a formal complaint to SBS about this mini-series, comparing it to Nazi propaganda films in its depiction of Jewish people. Click here for the full text of their complaint. They also released their complaint to the media. Last week, SBS considered the complaint and did not uphold any aspect of it. Click here for SBS’s response.

While the complaint process has been completed at SBS, the political process continues. We expect that the matter will be raised at the Senate Estimates Committee on the 13-14 February. If and when and if that occurs, it will be important for SBS to know the strength of public opinion supporting material that is able to reflect injustices that Palestinian people face. It is also reasonable, given public interest in this documentary, for the mini-series to be aired again.

We ask you therefore to write to SBS and indicate:
* Your congratulations for showing such high quality drama regarding Palestine
* Your thoughts about the depictions of the conflict represented here
* Your request for it to be shown again.

Letters should be sent to Mr Michael Ebeid, Managing Director, SBS, Locked Bag 028, Crows Nest, 1585.

We invite you to read APAN’s letter to SBS

We would also encourage you to order your copy of The Promise as a useful educational tool.

We wish to acknowledge the great work of Australians For Palestine for their extensive work on this campaign already.

SBS Ombudsman Response to Complaints about The Promise

iajv99 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:33:42 +0000

The following response from the SBS ombudsman to complaints about The Promise was sent to a reader of Galus Australis (original here):

I write in relation to your formal complaint to SBS about The Promise, a four part series broadcast by SBS on four consecutive Sunday evenings from 27 November 2011. Your complaint was among a number of complaints investigated, then reviewed and determined by the SBS Complaints Committee, chaired by the Managing Director, Michael Ebeid, which met on 17 January, 2012.

The SBS Complaints Committee is constituted under Code 8.9 of the SBS Code of Practice (see annexure 1) and was convened in light of the number of complaints that the broadcast of the 4 part series The Promise breached the SBS Codes of Practice.

The SBS Complaints Committee investigated, reviewed and determined each of the complaints about each and all of the 4 episodes of the series The Promise, including your complaint by email received on 28 November 2011.

This letter is to advise that your complaint was not upheld and the reasons for SBS’s decision.

Your complaint was investigated against Code 1.3 of the SBS Codes of Practice (see annexure 2 below). Some of the complaints investigated also raised the issue of accuracy and balance, perhaps seeking to invoke Code 2.2 of the SBS Codes of Practice (see annexure 3 below). Code 2.2 has no application to this drama, being limited to programs produced by SBS’s News and Current Affairs division. The Promise was not produced by SBS’s News and Current Affairs division.

Your complaint specifically included concerns that The Promise:

presented one-sided Palestinian propaganda;
was anti-Semitic; and
characterised Jews as liars, untrustworthy and wealthy while Palestinians are portrayed as poor, loving and considerate.

That complaint was investigated and reviewed specifically. In addition, the Complaints Committee investigated and reviewed all complaints in respect of three over-arching Code-related issues raised across all the complaints taken as a whole, which, in summary, were that the program:

was anti-Semitic;
promoted, endorsed, or reinforced inaccurate, demeaning or discriminatory stereotypes (relevantly of Jews and/or Israelis); or
condoned, tolerated or encouraged discrimination or prejudice against Israel and/or Jews as a people or a religious group.

Allegations of historically inaccuracy were investigated and reviewed insofar as they related to the above issues. But, as noted earlier, accuracy per se is not a Code requirement in respect of a drama such as The Promise.

Some complaints alleged that the broadcast of The Promise (either in a particular episode or collectively the series) amounted to racial vilification. These allegations have been investigated and reviewed against the Code provisions precluding condoning, tolerating or encouraging discrimination or prejudice. The advice of SBS Legal department also was taken into account in this respect.

In assessing against The Promise against Code 1.3, the Complaints Committee had regard to Australian Communication Media Authority’s test of the ordinary, reasonable viewer as defined by the ACMA’s Investigation Report No. 2537 of 2 March 2011. It states:

“In assessing the content against the Codes, the delegate considers the meaning conveyed by the relevant broadcast material. This is assessed according to the understanding of an ‘ordinary, reasonable’ viewer.

Australian Courts have considered an ‘ordinary, reasonable’ viewer to be:

A person of fair average intelligence, who is neither perverse, nor morbid or suspicious of mind, nor avid for scandal. That person does not live in an ivory tower, but can and does read between the lines in the light of that person’s general knowledge and experience of worldly affairs.[1]

The delegate asks, what would the ordinary, reasonable viewer have understood the program to have conveyed and, in so doing, the natural, ordinary meaning of the language, context, tenor, tone, and inferences that may be drawn.

Once this has been ascertained, it is for the delegate to determine whether the material has breached the Codes.”

The Complaints Committee’s investigation and findings

The Complaints Committee noted that The Promise is a high quality drama series that was written and directed by Peter Kosminsky and produced by DayBreak Pictures in association with Stonehenge films, Canal+ and Arte France. It was produced in association with SBS TV although SBS had no editorial control over the production. It was first broadcast on Channel 4 (UK) in February 2011. It was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for the Best Drama Serial. Apart from the United Kingdom and Australia, the drama has been sold to SVT Sweden, YLE Finland, DR Denmark, RUV Iceland, RTV Slovenia, Globosat Brazil, TVO Canada.

The Promise is a four part work of fiction. Its dramatic narrative makes reference to some political or policy debates between the Jewish/Israeli and Palestinian communities and, at different times, to the political status of the area. But these references are incidental to the purpose of the series, namely, the dramatisation of the personal experiences of two related people, a grand-daughter and her grandfather, visiting the same region six decades apart.

On the Channel 4 website Peter Kominsky describes the series this way:

This is first and foremost a drama. I wanted to take two characters on a journey – starting pro-Jewish but then becoming less certain, in keeping with the thrust of our research. There are no caricatures – all the characters are based on people we met, read about or interviewed. One character is a soldier who was in Belsen, another is an Arab thrown out of his village in 1948. It would do an immense disservice to a complex situation to attempt to over-simplify it. I’m not attempting to be definitive. It’s not a comment piece. It would short-change the viewer to tell them what to think in a simplistic way.

The series is detailed and the characters portrayed are complex in the interwoven storylines which show a range of political and personal positions. As Mr Kominsky says, the film did not claim to be historically accurate, nor to be a documentary. However, it is fair to conclude that by the end of the series the sympathy of audience is more likely to be with the Palestinians than with the Israelis.

The SBS Codes of Practice do not limit the subject matter of fictional dramas, nor do they restrict the range of political views presented. Consistent with the general principles of freedom of expression, Code 1 (General Programming) of the SBS Codes of Practice acknowledges that SBS will broadcast a broad range of program material:

SBS’s programming can be controversial and provocative and may at times be distasteful or offensive to some. Not all viewpoints presented will be shared by all audience members.

Allegations of anti-Semitism

The Complaints Committee found that the series was neither anti-Semitic nor racist. While many characters in the series display increasing antipathy towards Israel, Israelis and Jews at different times, this is merely part of the dramatic narrative, creating the conflict that provides the momentum of the storyline. As you know, it is quite common to portray individuals, groups or even nations in a negative light as a part of a dramatic work.

The central character is a young English girl, Erin, who appears in the contemporary storyline, and provides the dramatic relief for the historical storyline, whose central character is her English grandfather, a British soldier Len. These two characters are brought together by being shown to make similar journeys, driven by their respective relationships with people who happen to be Jewish, a lover in Len’s case; and a school friend in Erin’s case.

The changing political perspectives of the central characters across the narrative, is a matter of politics, not race or religion. As the characters develop, the series traverses issues of betrayal, trust, love and loyalty. These highly emotional issues are the standard structures of drama on television, stage and film.

It was the view of the Complaints Committee that the series does not, demonise Jews either individually or as a collective, nor deny their individual and collective right to selfdetermination and therefore does not vilify Jews or Israelis.

Further the Complaints Committee does not accept that the program simply made the Jews look bad and by contrast made the Palestinians look unproblematic. True, some Palestinian characters criticise Jews as being “greedy” or having “stolen” land or homes but the Palestinian “suicide” bombers are obvious negative characters among the Palestinians, where the drama finds it colour in actions rather than words.

In addition Erin is critical of Omar’s suggestion that it is disrespectful to leave the home of the of the “suicide” bomber in Gaza she says “…. I didn’t respect his daughter, she murdered three people. I’ve been blown up by a suicide bomber. OK. I know what I am taking about”. In a similar vein, in the contemporary storyline, the principal Palestinian character Omar, is threatened with a gun by a Hamas supporter at the home of the “suicide bomber”, and tells Erin they have to go because “the son is Hamas and he will not have me here”.

The drama presents a range of views and perspectives, and the characterisation of the main Jewish characters, including Paul and Clara are nuanced. The same is true of the Meyer family, who are shown as complex characters. The point is underlined as the Meyer family, individually and as a whole, continues to show Erin respect and provide her with support and hospitality although she challenges and criticises them at almost every level.

Although The Promise has two interwoven stories set in different times, it is about the drama of various human relationships, which happen to involve characters from different cultural and political groups who are brought into conflict. It is the differences and tension that is critical to the drama, not the identity of the players.

Discrimination or prejudice against Israel and/or Jews as a people or a religious group

The Complaints Committee reached the conclusion that the various political or policy debates between the Jewish/Israeli characters on the one hand, and the Arab/Palestinian characters on the other hand were incidental to the main purpose of the storyline in the drama series as a whole; namely the dramatisation of two personal journeys made some 60 years apart as a young girl becomes obsessed with her grandfather’s diary.

Like all drama, there is tendency towards a binary play of “good guys” and “bad guys”. That characterises all drama, to a greater or lesser extent, and is almost inevitable given the need to hold the viewer’s interest. It is an oversimplification to cast the drama as being bad Jews versus good Palestinians.

After a careful investigation and review of each of the episodes individually and the four part series as a whole, the Complaints Committee is of the view that the film does not breach Code.1.3.

Inaccurate demeaning or discriminatory stereotypes

The Complaints Committee noted that many complaints specifically referred to stereotyping of Jews, including allegations that Jews are stereotyped as liars, untrustworthy, wealthy, conspiratorial, cruel, hateful and violent. The Complaints Committee considered that this was an incorrect reading of complex characters, which ignored their individual and collective positive characteristics.

Some complaints alleged that this perspective was reinforced by a contrast with the depiction of other (non-Jewish) characters in a favourable light. Some complaints focused upon the disparity of wealth. For example, in the contemporary storyline, The Promise depicts the Meyers as being rich family. These are Jewish characters, but their wealth has a dramatic function in the narrative, about the effects of political turmoil reaching every Israeli. The drama is set in one Jewish family’s home, almost in isolation.

The Complaints Committee rejects the allegation that the use of one family involves any stereotyping, positive or negative. It is simply a family around whom a drama is hung. There is no suggestion that the Meyer family is a typical Israeli family, they are clearly affluent. However they can be contrasted against the settler family who appear to be only moderately comfortable. The Complaints Committee found that as only two Jewish families are shown, the ordinary reasonable viewer would not conclude that these families typify Jewish or Israeli society.

Conclusion

This is a complex drama, that is obviously presented as a work of fiction. Each of the main characters has many facets. Obviously, some viewers will focus upon particular facets of each character. But in any drama as densely layered as The Promise, characters are depicted at different time in different ways; the loving father may also be a stern taskmaster, the reckless teenager may be a loving daughter too. The portrayals vary with the narrative and the development of the drama. This is typical of all drama.

The Complaints Committee is satisfied that the ordinary reasonable viewer fully appreciated that The Promise was a fictional drama and nothing more than that. The Complaints Committee found that that the characterisations in The Promise did not cross the threshold into racism, and in particular that it did not promote, endorse, or reinforce inaccurate, demeaning or discriminatory stereotypes.

In the light of some early representations after the first episode of the series was broadcast, SBS prefaced the broadcast of each subsequent episode with a reminder that the film was a drama to negate any suggestion it was a historical or documentary film. SBS considers that the disclaimers highlighted what is obvious from the content of the film, that it is a work of a fiction.

If you consider that this response is inadequate you are entitled to take your concerns to the Australian Communications and Media Authority for external review. SBS appreciates you raising your concerns with us, and would like to assure you that SBS presents a wide range of factual and fictional program material on the Middle East.

Yours sincerely

Sally Begbie

SBS Ombudsman

Israel is shaming Australian Jews

iajv99 — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:15:26 +0000

(Image from here.)

By Akiva Eldar in Haaretz.

SYDNEY, Australia – The smiling young man waiting his turn near the delicatessen counter at a supermarket in the affluent Double Bay neighborhood, where many Jews live, struck up a conversation with me in sabra-accented Hebrew. He had come here eight years ago and will soon be going home to Israel. Life in Sydney is wonderful. The weather is mild and it is easy to make a living. He knows that young people like him in Israel find it hard to get a foothold. “So maybe you can tell me why the hell I decided to go back,” was his surprising question.

I responded that Israelis have trouble relating to the troubles of others, including those of the rich.

To judge by the front pages of the newspapers in the midst of the rainy summer Christmas holiday, the selection of Australian troubles is rather limited. Last week, the Sydney Morning Herald daily devoted a good deal of space to an interview with a fellow who got in the way of an Olympic swimmer in a local pool. The next day, a photo of a tennis player shared the front page with a report about a breakthrough in legislation to set a legal limit on the amount of money that can be bet in Internet poker.

Not that 22 million Australians don’t have economic troubles, a problematic coalition and even poor neighborhoods. But most of the 100,000-strong Jewish community lives well. Their percentage among the country’s billionaires is much higher than their number in the overall population; nevertheless, this small group of Jews at the other end of the world are not hiding their heads in their private pools.

Although Middle Eastern affairs are at the bottom rung of priorities for Australian politicians and there is nothing for Jewish lobbyists to do, Israel figures centrally in Jewish life. You won’t find an Australian Jew who has not visited Israel at least once, and many families have branches in Israel. In the neighborhood pharmacy, there is a Jewish National Fund blue box for donations to redeem the soil of Israel.

Here, Israel is still considered a tiny country surrounded by enemies. The use of the term “occupied territories” is considered “delegitimization” of Israel.

And then, six months ago, in the midst of the ugly campaign by the Im Tirtzu right-wing group against the New Israel Fund, following the Goldstone Report, a new branch of the New Israel Fund was established in Australia. Eight hundred Jewish lovers of Israel have already become members of the group, and have welcomed its chairwoman, Prof. Naomi Chazan, the same person whose picture Im Tirtzu put up in the streets in Israel showing a horn coming out of her head.

“I frequently find myself skipping reports in the newspaper about ‘price tag’ [attacks against Arabs and Israelis opposed to the settlements] or segregation of women, the list is getting longer and longer,” a young Jewish woman told me. “The work of the New Israel Fund is the only way left for people like me to support our dear brothers and sisters in Israel.”

This, if you will, is the contribution of the criminals of the hilltops, of Zeev Elkin and Ofir Akunis, to the New Israel Fund. Israel 2012 is forcing more and more Jews overseas to choose between loyalty to the Jewish state and loyalty to their humanistic and universal values.

A Jewish minority in enlightened countries cannot identify with a country that passes racist laws, persecutes human rights groups and besmirches the press. Some lovers of Israel have found a way to preserve their connection to the country by supporting groups that defend Israeli democracy.

Most of them, especially the younger generation, prefer to cut their ties. They are ashamed of us.

If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman and their ilk remain in power for a few more years, Israel will remain with only a handful of spineless lobbyists who make their living lobbying, along with power-drunk American Jewish billionaires who are ready to fight for Joseph’s Tomb to the last drop of our sons’ and grandsons’ blood.

When our troubles stop being those of our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora, we can close down the Zionist store and hang up a sign: “Going-out-of-business sale.”

Reframing non-violent resistance: An act of moral piracy

iajv99 — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:22:17 +0000

(From +972 Magazine)

Tuesday, January 10 2012|Omar Rahman

Reframing non-violent resistance: An act of moral piracy

When we allow non-violence to be distorted as illegitimate, we fail to uphold our most cherished principles.

It is not a strange phenomenon for morality to be the object of contestation. Competing groups often battle for the moral high ground when presenting their case to the outside world in a customary appeal for support. Far from being an exception to this rule, Israelis and Palestinians are its standard bearers, constantly providing their accounts for the entire world to see, hear, and sympathize. The tragedy is that this game has been played for so long, with arguments crafted in such minute detail, that reality has been reduced to the level of “competing narratives,”—each given its equal weight and legitimacy—as if that is what the conflict is all about. Still worse is when a traditional bulwark of morality in the arena of conflict, such as non-violent resistance, is reinterpreted, reframed, and demonized.

Growing up in the United States, I can remember yearly school lessons about the African-American Civil Rights Movement that took place between the mid-1950s and 60s. From a young age we were taught the moral superiority of the tactics employed by those courageous men and women who staged sit-ins in White-only restaurants, boycotted the Montgomery, Alabama bus system and held marches and non-violent demonstrations throughout the American South, often to the response of naked racism and brutal repression. This type of resistance model was idealized as the most moral and effective way of bringing about change to an unacceptable system of inequality.

Several years later, after having graduated from university and starting a career as a journalist, I moved to Palestine. For maybe the first time in my life, I encountered meaningful non-violent resistance first hand when I went to report on Palestinian villages that were being dispossessed by the steady growth of Israeli settlements and the construction of Israel’s Wall. Every Friday, activists from Palestine, Israel, and countries abroad would flock to these locales to offer up some form of counter to the unmitigated pace of colonization and apartheid that are taking place on a daily basis. Although often futile, they were full of symbolism, as if only to declare that some people oppose what is being done with more than the hollow words and empty sentiments of politicians. Above all else, though, it was designed to raise awareness and highlight the case for moral superiority.

Despite the Palestinians having a long and proud history of non-violence and civil disobedience dating back to the earliest years of the conflict, these forms of resistance have unfortunately played second-fiddle to the much more sensationalized episodes of armed fighting, suicide-bombings, and high-level diplomatic negotiations.

For decades those dramas played themselves out in the media headlines, leaving observers to question where was the Palestinian Gandhi or King. Now, in the absence of widespread violence or negotiations, the steady reemergence of non-violence is poking its head above water once again—and this time with a vengeance. Readers may be familiar with the development of an international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign modeled on the successful South-African crusade against apartheid. Others will have surely heard of the flotillasand flytilla—attempts by sea and air to break Israel’s siege of Gaza and the West Bank—that were aimed at raising the profile of Israeli policies toward Palestinians. The most recent example was the campaign to reinvent theFreedom Rides—when Civil Rights activists rode the segregated bus system in the American South—by traveling on the buses in the occupied territories that are intended for Jewish use only and exposing the practice of racism and restriction of Palestinian access to Jerusalem.

For their efforts at non-violence and civil disobedience, the mainstream media has often, and unquestioningly, adopted the Israeli narrative, which seeks to portray these forms of resistance as illegitimate. Peaceful demonstrations are labeled riots, justifying the use of over-zealous crowd control maneuvers that have led to the deaths of several activists from live and rubber bullets, toxic smoke inhalation, and the blunt trauma of direct hitsfrom tear gas canisters to the chest and head.

Demonstrators are dehumanized as hooligans, thugs, and sometimes as terrorists. The latter label was used liberally when referring to the people that sailed on the first flotilla to the Gaza Strip, which was boarded by armed Israeli soldiers in international waters and led to the death of nine activists. Maybe the most fascinating of all, however, is the use of the term ‘de-legitimization’ to describe the campaign to boycott Israel.

Boycott has always stood out to me, sin qua non, as the archetype of civil disobedience. What is boycott but the voluntary act of refusing to use, buy, or deal with any person or organization as an expression of protest? The act can be personal or collective, private or public, and has a rich and moral history around the globe. Israelis, in fact, just finished boycotting the manufacturers of cottage cheese over the exorbitant rise in the price of this staple of their diet. But when it comes to Palestinians the use of boycott becomes a reprehensible act that should be demonized. Israel has gone as far as to put in place legislation that makes boycotting—even of the settlements—illegal, punishable by fines and jail time. In a real sense, Palestinians are prohibited from initiating a boycott against products made in the very Jewish settlements that are stealing their land and resources in contravention of international law. Israelis that want to protest the actions of their government and society—like the Boycott from Within campaign—are not only subject to cries of treachery, but fiscal and punitive measures from the state.

The howl of “de-legitimization” has reached such a fever-pitch, that the American president used it in his latest speech at the United Nations to condemn the acts of all those who would oppose Israel in a non-violent manner and put pressure on it to reach more equitable terms at the “holy” negotiating table.

But in the end, was de-legitimization not the point? Were not those heroes of the Civil Rights movement trying to de-legitimize the system of racial superiority in the South where a white man was worth more than a black one? For Palestinians and their supporters, “de-legitimizing” Israeli occupation and the unequal treatment of Palestinians based on their ethnicity would appear to be a moral task.

It is clear that this type of struggle is not a battle that Israel is prepared to fight—maybe nobody is and that is why it can be so effective. Yet the attempt to portray these tactics in a negative light creates a potentially dangerous historical dilemma because of the legitimacy and moral superiority often conferred to them. One can side with the Israelis or the Palestinians—that after all is the prerogative of the individual. But letting Israel’s PR machine tarnish the time-honored tactics used by Gandhi and King, that is something we should all raise our voices about.

Hasn’t the Anti-Semitism Charge Been Trivialized Enough?

iajv99 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:39:12 +0000

By Jerry Haber at The Magnes Zionist.

Is calling somebody an “Israel Firster” anti-Semitic? Is accusing somebody of “dual loyalty” anti-Semitic? Does it smack of anti-Semitism.to refer to Israeli “apartheid”?

Of course not, unless you want to trivialize anti-Semitism beyond belief, or unless you want to put very reasonable and widely held beliefs beyond the pale of discussion. Heck, I know personally a lot of supporters of Israel who are “Israel first”-ers. I know them; I pray with them; I have them in my classes. In fact, I know a lot of “Israel only”-ers,” I certainly have had students who are US citizens, who would never consider volunteering for the US army, but who have served in the Israel army, even without being an Israeli citizen. (Full disclosure: I have dual loyalty to the US and to Israel because I have dual-citizenship.) I have prayed in modern orthodox synagogues where the prayer for the welfare of the State of Israel has been said, but not the prayer for the welfare of the United States; or where congregants stand for the former and sit for (or mumble) the latter. I don’t agree with this practice, and I criticize such synagogues, but pointing that out doesn’t make you an anti-Semite. And by the way, if you ask people why they are more concerned with Israel than with America, they often answer that Israel is more threatened than America. Or that they love Israel more because they are Jewish. Is it anti-Semitic to point that out?

If you think that using these terms make somebody an anti-Semite or a bigot – a charge that Zionist-leaning organizations like the ADL or the AJC or members of the Zionist rightwing blogosphere (for links, see here) have recently leveled against some bloggers at the Center for American Progress, then perhaps you yourself are an anti-Semite – or at least a bigot.

You see, when somebody says what a Jew can or cannot say, when somebody says that certain discourse is considered to be hateful or insensitive and, as a result, censors or chills that speech – and when that speech is not conceptually connected with anti-Semitism — then the person who is making that discrimination is anti-Semitic, if a Jew is involved, and bigoted if a non-Jew is involved. Because the same terms said with the same intent cannot be considered anti-Semitic only when a non-Jew says them. I don’t deny that certain terms are more inappropriately said by outsider groups – the N-word comes to mind. But “inappropriately said” is a far cry from anti-Semitic.

Who decides what speech is anti-Semitic? Is there a Pope of anti-Semitism? Who are the experts? According to Commentary’s Alana Goodman, the Anti-Defamation League is “considered by many media outlets to be the final word in all things anti-Semitism” – which, by the way, is the sort of grandiose and unsubstantiated assertion that readers ofCommentary may be used to, but I certainly am not. Who appointed the ADL? And do they consider Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, and a host of Israeli commentators anti-Semitic, when they refer to Israeli apartheid? Perhaps Israeli politicians are allowed to be bigoted? And even if the term is inaccurate, what does that have to do with anti-Semitism?

Nobody can beat Prof. Robert Wistrich’s credentials, both as a rightwing student of the so-called “new anti-Semitism,” and as a Zionist historian of anti-Semitism.I mean, I can adduce other scholars of anti-Semitism who are not as rightwing as he is, such as the most careful writer on anti-Semitism and its various shades of meaning today, the philosopher Brian Klug of Oxford. Klug runs rings around not only the ADL but most of the rightwing historians of anti-Semitism because, as an analytically-trained philosopher, he zeroes in on the nuances of conceptual distinctions much better than most historians. But let’s leave Klug aside – even Wistrich admits that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism, although he goes on argue for “continuity” or “convergence” between radical anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism (using arguments that I believe Klug and others have answered quite well.) According to Wistrich,

…[A]nti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two distinct ideologies that over time (especially since 1948) have tended to converge, generally without undergoing a full merger. There have always been Bundists, Jewish communists, Reform Jews, and ultra-Orthodox Jews who strongly opposed Zionism without being Judeophobes. So, too, there are conservatives, liberals, and leftists in the West today who are pro-Palestinian, antagonistic toward Israel, and deeply distrustful of Zionism without crossing the line into anti- Semitism. There are also Israeli “post-Zionists” who object to the definition of Israel as an exclusively or even a predominantly “Jewish” state without feeling hostile toward Jews as such. There are others, too, who question whether Jews are really a nation; or who reject Zionism because they believe its accomplishment inevitably resulted in uprooting many Palestinians. None of these positions is intrinsically anti-Semitic in the sense of expressing opposition or hatred toward Jews as Jews.

(By the way, there were many Jewish opponents of Zionism who did not fit the categories above, not to mention the majority of Jews outside of Eastern Europe who were neither anti-Zionists nor Zionists.)

But of course, the CAP bloggers did not write anti-Zionist tracts. Let’s face it. The anti-Semitism charge is the first refuge of rightwing Zionists today – many of whom are themselves “Israel firsters” — who want to squelch debate over Israel’s policies by demonizing and delegitimizing their opponents’s discourse. It is nauseating, and it is past time to call them on it.

Goodman, who criticizes the Truman Project for cutting ties with the lobbyist Josh Block who first raised the “anti-Semitic” canard against the CAP bloggers, ends her article by asking, what would President Truman think? The question is a good one. May I frame it slightly differently: what would the the author of the quote below say of somebody who plays the “anti-Semitic” card when criticizing a critic of Israel?

The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I’ve found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.

I don’t know whether Goodman considers the author of the quote, President Harry Truman, to be an anti-Semite or not. I do know that Abe Foxman did:

While President Truman’s personal thoughts about Jews are in some sense a reflection of those times, it is shocking to learn that this great American leader and statesman was afflicted with the same disease of anti-Semitism that was mirrored by larger society

But what I find more shocking is Foxman’s next paragraph:

Nothing in his statements, however, changes Truman’s steadfast resolve to aid in the resettlement of Jews and other refugees in the aftermath of the war and the Holocaust. Regardless of his personal beliefs, President Truman will be remembered for his support and recognition of the homeland of the Jews, the State of Israel.

For Abe Foxman, one can forgive or overlook – or not remember – Truman’s anti-Semitism because of what he did for the State of Israel. So an anti-Semite who helps the State of Israel is better than a decent person who is a critic of the State of Israel and calls its policies on the West Bank apartheid.

Should we add another sin to the Israel-right-or-wrongers the trivialization of anti-Semitism?

Thank goodness that Nahum Barnea, Israel’s most popular commentator, has criticized Elliot Abrams on his reckless and pernicious use of the “A-word” against Joe Klein and Tom Friedman.

2012: The year democracy ends

iajv99 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:36:46 +0000

Original here: http://972mag.com/2012-the-year-democracy-ends/31935/

A not-so-crazy speculation for the new year: A date for new elections will be set; at least one major Arab party won’t be allowed to participate in them, resulting in a call for boycott in the Palestinian public and the Jewish left. With the Arabs out of the Knesset, the right will enjoy a much bigger majority, forever. Game, set, match

MK Haneen Zoabi of Balad (photo: ActiveStills)

Sunday, January 1 2012|Noam Sheizaf

If you leave out the West Bank, Israel is still a functioning democracy. New bills are threatening freedom of speech, minorities’ rights are not defended and specific laws targeting non-Jews effectively make them second class-citizens.

But still, the core elements of a functioning democracy – most notably political representation of all citizens – are still there.

Yet even this somewhat flawed system could disappear this year.

The common wisdom in the Israeli political system is that a new date for early elections – later this year or in the first half of 2013 – will be set in the coming months. Some claim that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like to hold general elections in Israel before November 2012, because the prospect of Barack Obama winning another term might hurt the Israeli premier in the polls. Others cite the police investigation against Avigdor Lieberman as a reason.

According to the Israeli system, the Central Elections Committee has the right to forbid parties who support terrorism, racism or oppose democracy from participating in the elections. But the committee is a political body, composed of Members of Knesset, and is currently controlled by the right. In the past, it has tried to use this article in the law for political purposes, but has failed. This time it may succeed.

It is very likely that the Central Elections Committee may ban the two major Arab parties, Balad and Raam-Taal, from participating in the elections. Given the public hostility to Balad, and especially to its MK Hanin Zoabi, letting Balad participate would be a huge surprise.

The Central Elections Committee has already disqualified Balad and Raam-Taal from participating in the last elections, when the public sphere was much more tolerant. In Balad’s case, even representatives of Labor supported the decision.

As expected, the Supreme Court overruled the Central Election Committee’s decision and allowed the two Arab parties to take part in the 2009 elections that brought Netanyahu into power (same thing happened in 2003). Balad won three seats and Raam-Taal four. One could even argue that members of the Knesset knew in advance what the Court’s ruling would be.

The public atmosphere in Israel has changed, and so has the Supreme Court, which is more conservative than it has been in the last couple of decades. If faced with a similar scenario in the next elections, I believe that is very likely that the court will not overrule a Knesset decision to disqualify Balad and perhaps even Raam-Taal.

The result would almost certainly be a call for all Palestinian citizens to boycott the elections. And to be honest, I am not sure that any Jewish progressive should participate in an election in which the ruling coalition bans opposition parties. Arab parties that would be allowed to run – if there are such – would be faced with a major problem, as would Jewish democrats – the few that are left.

Historically, the dilemma whether to boycott elections or leave the parliament in protest of anti-democratic laws has always been a major crossroad on the way to authoritarian regimes.

Low Arab turnout, and perhaps even full non-participation, would hand the right a landslide victory in the elections (the left has not won a majority in the Jewish public since 1973, and currently it is far from it, even with the Arab vote). Such events would surely benefit Avigdor Lieberman, by framing the elections around the Palestinian citizens. Lieberman’s racist proposals surrounding the issue could attract many new voters to his party.

The 19th Knesset will be much more rightwing then the current one. More importantly, Israel won’t be able to go on claiming that it respects minority rights after forcing their representatives out of the Knesset. The left will be torn apart and the Palestinian minority will be forever alienated.

And from there it will all go downhill.

Israel wanted a humanitarian crisis

iajv99 — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 09:27:14 +0000

On 20 January 2009, Ben White wrote in The Guardian the following. It is a rare honest report in the media of the events that took place in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in late 2008/early 2009.

Israel wanted a humanitarian crisis

The scale of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip, and the almost daily reports of war crimes over the last three weeks, has drawn criticism from even longstanding friends and sympathisers. Despite the Israeli government’s long-planned and comprehensive PR campaign, hundreds of dead children is a hard sell. As a former Israeli government press adviser put it, in a wonderful bit of unintentional irony, “When you have a Palestinian kid facing an Israeli tank, how do you explain that the tank is actually David and the kid is Goliath?”

Despite a mass of evidence that includes Israel’s targets in Operation Cast Lead, public remarks by Israeli leaders over some time, and the ceasefire manoeuvring of this last weekend, much of the analysis offered by politicians or commentators has been disappointingly limited, and characterised by false assumptions, or misplaced emphases, about Israel’s motivations.

First, to what this war on Gaza is not about: it’s not about the rockets. During the truce last year, rocket fire from the Gaza Strip was reduced by 97%, with the few projectiles that were fired coming from non-Hamas groups opposed to the agreement. Despite this success in vastly improving the security of Israelis in the south, Israel did everything it could to undermine the calm, and provoke Hamas into a conflict.

Israel broke the ceasefire on 4 November, with an attack in the Gaza Strip that killed six Hamas members, and the following day severely tightened its siege of the territory. Imports were reduced to 16 trucks a day, down from 123 daily just the previous month (and 475 in May 2007). Following the unsurprising surge in Palestinian attacks, Israeli officials claimed that an all-out war was unavoidable; without mentioning that an operation had been planned for some months already.

Second, the current operation is only in a limited sense related to both the upcoming Israeli elections and restoring the IDF’s so-called deterrence. While it has been pointed out that a hardline approach to Palestinian “terrorism” can play well with the Israeli public, wars are not necessarily Israeli politicians’ tactic of choice – the Lebanon war was fought a few months after one.

Israel is also supposed to be restoring the reputation and “deterrence factor” of its armed forces, after their humiliation in Lebanon in 2006. Suffice to say that until this weekend’s unilateral ceasefire, in an aid-dependent enclave defended by an almost entirely isolated militia, Israel’s operation had already lasted three times longer than the 1967 war when Israel defeated its Arab neighbours and occupied the rest of Mandate Palestine.

These three suggested motivations have sometimes reached the level of assumed knowledge, providing the background for further comment and reporting. Based on this kind of analysis, then, criticism of Palestinian civilian casualties is framed as “disproportionate” or “heavy-handed”, but fundamentally a case of self-defence. It is understood that any democratic nation would have to respond to terrorist rocket fire, but Israel has gone a bit too far.

There is, however, no shortage of evidence available that points to rather different Israeli aims. Estimates for the proportion of civilian deaths among the 1,360 Palestinians killed range from more than half to two-thirds. Politicians, diplomats and journalists are by and large shying away from the obvious, namely that Israel has been deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians and the very infrastructure of normal life, in order to – in the best colonial style – teach the natives a lesson.

Given the enormous scale of what Palestinians have described as a “war of extermination” – it appears that some 15%of all buildings in the Gaza Strip were completely destroyed or collapsed and there is an estimated $1.4bn worth of destruction to vital civil infrastructure – it is impossible to list every atrocity. Israel has repeatedly hit ambulances,medics, clinics, and hospitals, while last week, aid volunteers who tried to douse a fire in a Red Crescent warehouse (attacked by Israel) were then shot at by Israeli forces.

UNRWA facilities have also been attacked, including several schools sheltering civilians – just this last weekend, a civilian refuge was repeatedly shelled. Last week, the UN headquarters was also shelled, hitting a vocational centre, a workshop, food warehouse, and fuel depot. Like the massacre of 6 January, Israeli officials quickly began to produce a confusing fog of denials, apologies, promised enquiries and contradictions.

Those are just some of the more shocking examples from a military operation that has targeted everything from schools, money-changers and a bird farm, to entire apartment blocks, harbours, and a market. Palestinians have beenkilled when Israeli tanks fired shells at residential neighbourhoods. Every day has brought fresh horrors; last Wednesday, for example, 70 unarmed civilians including 18 children were killed by the Israeli military. This week’s Observer carried a story alleging Israel bulldozed homes with civilians inside (not for the first time) and shot those waving white flags. Little wonder that Israeli officials predicted with concern that “negative sentiment” towards the state would “only grow as the full picture of destruction emerges”.

Much of this is widely known, and easily accessible; yet still the analytical emphasis has remained on Palestinian rockets, Israeli elections, and deterrence. I would like to suggest three alternative purposes for Israel’s Operation Cast Lead that go beyond the usual perspectives, and presuming with Yale professor David Bromwich that “if Israel in 2009 reduces to rubble a large portion of the Gaza Strip and leaves tens of thousands homeless, there is a strong chance that this was what it intended to do”.

The first aim is to humiliate and weaken Hamas. On the one hand, this seems obvious, but contrary to how the goal is often understood, this is not primarily to protect the Israeli public – as pointed out previously, ceasefires and negotiations are far more likely to deliver security for Israeli citizens – but rather it is a political goal. Hamas had withstood isolation, a siege, mass arrests, and an attempted western-backed coup. Moreover, cracks were appearing in the international community’s resolve to parrot Israel’s line on Hamas. The group, with its resilience and ability to deliver on negotiated ceasefires, was threatening the chance to make a deal with the Ramallah “moderates”, and so:

A hammer blow that shattered the movement, launching some of the resulting splinters in directions that once again put all of them beyond the pale, was the most effective way to keep at bay those third parties reaching the conclusion that engaging rather than excluding Hamas could enhance the prospects of peace.

Back in December, before both the end of the six-month truce and the start of Operation Cast Lead, foreign minister Tzipi Livni stated that an extended truce “harms the Israel strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement”. By the end of the month, Livni would be telling a press conference that “Hamas wants to gain legitimacy from the international community” and stressing that it is “important to keep Hamas from becoming a legitimate organisation” (apparently winning a democratic election isn’t enough to confer legitimacy).

Just as Israel chose “blood over diplomacy” in order to avoid enhancing “Hamas’s image as a responsible interlocutor”, so this weekend, Israel chose a unilateral ceasefire for the same reason, “hoping to send the message that Hamas is not a legitimate actor”. A war begun in order to delegitimise Hamas would not make way for a ceasefire in which Hamas was a partner at the negotiating table.

Hence Israel decided to shortcut the Egyptian-driven efforts at securing a ceasefire, and opt for a unilateral approach that allows Israel, the US, Egypt, Mahmoud Abbas, Britain – in fact, every interested party, except the Gaza Strip authorities – to work together on an apparent solution. It is also worth pointing out that the unilateral nature of the ceasefire frees Israel to define an infringement or collapse on its own terms.

The second aim of Israel’s war is to teach a lesson to the Palestinians in Gaza, and elsewhere, that the only way to avoid the wrath of the Israeli military is to accept Israel’s idea of a two-state solution, a generous concession to be gratefully received by Abbas and fellow moderates. It is a reflection of the approach outlined by the IDF chief of staff, Moshe Ya’alon, in 2002 that “the Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people”.

On 4 January, Israeli President Shimon Peres said that Hamas needed “a real and serious lesson”; days later, he was more explicit, reportedly declaring Israel’s aim to be “to provide a strong blow to the people of Gaza so that they would lose their appetite for shooting at Israel”. The next day, the Washington Post also described how Israeli officials were hoping that the attacks would mean “that Gazans become disgusted with Hamas and drive the group from power”.

This Israeli strategy was previously deployed in Lebanon in 2006, when senior military commanders redefined civilian villages as “military bases” which would be subjected to “disproportionate force” causing “great damage and destruction”. As I previously noted, the lessons learned in Lebanon were not just wrong, but criminal: a retired IDF major general and former adviser to the prime minister, Giora Eiland, reflected in a paper that “the destruction of homes and infrastructure and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hezbollah’s behaviour more than anything else”.

Ironically, the same Peres who now justifies collective punishment, in 2002 chastised Avigdor Lieberman for suggesting that the IDF should bomb civilian targets, warning the minister that such a tactic would be a war crime. The last three weeks show that proposals made by Israel’s political extremists and originally considered outlandish, do not take long to become normal policy.

Deliberately targeting civilians and vital infrastructure for political purposes links smoothly, into the post-conflict phase, with the Israeli and US plan to try and rescue the deeply discredited image of the Palestinian Authority through a politicised reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. As US state department spokesman Sean McCormack coyly put it, the “military solution” must be followed up by investing in infrastructure and helping the population “so that they can make a different kind of political decision”.

The third aim of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip is to further “catastrophise” the territory, reducing the capacity for continued existence to the barest of minimums – perhaps to bring about “an end to the persistence of Gaza’s ordinary people in wanting the chance of a peaceful and dignified life”. One obvious benefit to Israel of pulverising “civilian Palestinian infrastructure” is that “people who lack collective institutions and are reduced to scrabbling for their very survival are easier to dominate”.

Yet, there is more going on here. Israel seeks to turn the Gaza Strip into a depoliticised humanitarian crisis, always on the brink of catastrophe, always dependent; its population reduced to ration-receiving clients of international aid. Yitzhak Rabin famously wished that Gaza “would just sink into the sea”, but perhaps the best Israel can do is to share the problem with the international community, possibly to the extent of troops on the ground.

Increasingly focusing on Egyptian responsibility is also part of this, whether in terms of arms smuggling, aid supplies, or for some, direct rule.

In all of this, the Gaza Strip has become a laboratory for future possible scenarios in the West Bank (where a process of “development-isation” and NGO-funded occupation is well established). All three of these Israeli aims – to delegitimise and sideline Hamas, to persuade Palestinians to give up their resistance and to shirk responsibility for a shattered Gaza Strip – require the deliberate commission of war crimes and gross human rights abuses. As time will tell, they are also doomed to fail.

Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer specialising in Palestine/Israel. He also writes on the broader Middle East, Islam and Christianity, and the “war on terror”. He lives in the UK and his book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide is published by Pluto Press. His website is benwhite.org.uk

MK Danon proposes outlawing sex between “Arabs,” young Jewish girls

iajv99 — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 09:18:07 +0000

Original here: http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/12/28/mk-danon-proposes-outlawing-sex-between-arabs-young-jewish-girls/

By Richard Silverstein

In a development that harkens back to the Nuremberg Laws and the old racialist broadsides of Rabbi Meir Kahane, MK Danny Danon has proposed a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist: he’s claimed that over 1,000 Jewish women have complained about being kidnapped by Palestinians and forced to become sex slaves. The settler internet portal Arutz 7 reports on a Knesset hearing at which Danon deliberated on this imaginary social cataclysm (if you know Hebrew you really must watch the video documenting the drivel and ranting of the MKs and witnesses). A member of the committee, Danny Simon, asked a policewoman testifying whether she was aware of any such problems. The officer said she knew of none. Nevertheless, Danon insisted on persevering.

The racist pandering tenor of his comments was instructive:

The kidnapping of young [Jewish] women and turning them into sex slaves is the sign of a third world country and not of Israel in 2011. We must act immediately to save these women and prevent their being introduced into this vicious cycle.

Danon called for offering greater authority to government officials to deal with the problem, while another witness called for official legislation outlawing “seducing” or having sex with a minor. The director of another NGO claimed that [Jewish] girls aged 11 were raped and were now residing in Bedouin villages. Another that Jewish girls were “bought” by Arabs “with money.” Yet another complained of crafty Arab men who tempted girls by posing as Jews. Those who described the “phenomenon” said it affected girls who were immigrants from Ethiopia and Russia and those from poor backgrounds.

One crusading solon, Nissim Zeev regaled the panel with the “true” story of a girl from Beitar Illit who was enslaved in the nearby [Palestinian] village of Hussan. The “Arabs” allegedly published a claim that they’d “taken” a settler girl and converted her [to Islam]. He suggested a law that would prohibit the conversion of anyone under age 21. Of course, Zeev provided no proof of his claim.

The hearing featured videos purporting to document Arab men flirting and seducing Jewish women and bragging “like roosters” (I kid you not–that’s what the Hebrew says) of their romantic conquests. Another MK said these were grave criminal acts and having sex with a minor should be outlawed immediately (I’m certain it already is, but why should we stand in the way of such pandering?). Another Knesset member suggested setting up a cross-ministerial database which would list the name of every “endangered” girl so that all the various relevant authorities could endeavor to “protect” her. Yet another reminded his listeners of Golda Meir’s saying that every Jew who assimilated was added to the toll of the six million murdered in the Holocaust. MK Anastassia Michaeli touchingly remembered herself at the age of 13 or 14 in Russia along with fellow girl students who were tempted by boys to drink cola and eat pizza. It’s clear that such deviltry led immediately to the defilement of these poor girls.

Where do you begin with crap like this? It’s beyond McCarthyism. At least he only claimed there were imaginary Communists on the government payroll. These idiots have added the even more lurid claim of interracial sex between Jews and Arabs, which ups the ante for their Jewish constituents. You may certainly say that this merely attests to the idiocy of a few Knesset members, and not the racist convictions of an entire population. But anyone who doubts that large numbers of Jews share these unfounded fears, doesn’t know the tone of discourse inside Israel now. The hysterical racism highlighted by the statements above is a perfect symptom of the sickness currently afflicting Israel.

I’ve always been shocked and fascinated by the obsession of the far-right (Jewish and non-Jewish) with sex and race and the intermingling of the two. There is enough fear and hatred of such things to fuel entire political movements. And such fears have characterized movements like Nazism and Jewish ones like Kahanism and far-right Israeli nationalism. I don’t normally like to make such comparisons unless they are apt and precise. In this case, there’s no escaping the direct echoes of Nuremberg and this Knesset hearing.

Israel’s New House Rules: Deepening Authoritarianism

iajv99 — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 09:03:04 +0000

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during his Likud Party conference on 15 December 2011, in Tel Aviv. (Photo: AP – Oded Balilty)

By: Jonathan Cook

Published Friday, December 23, 2011

Al-Akhbar English

Nazareth - As the Arab world rids itself of autocrats one after the other, a series of legal and political moves by Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing government to stifle criticism of its policies have prompted warnings that Israel is rapidly heading towards a system of authoritarian rule.

In recent weeks, the Israeli government has put forward measures to muzzle the media, shut down human rights groups, and seize control of appointments to the supreme court to fill it with rightwing judges.

The concerted push against bodies traditionally regarded as the chief watchdogs of executive power comes amid wider concerns that the political climate in Israel – traditionally hostile to Palestinians under occupation and inside Israel – is now also turning against leftwing opponents of the government among the Jewish population.

Last week an Israeli commentator compared Netanyahu to Valdimir Putin, the Russian leader widely criticised for being a strongman, while another analyst warned: “The fears [in Israel] unleashed by the Arab Spring have brought Netanyahu closer than ever to perpetuating his rule and to crushing Israel’s ‘old elites’.”

Dov Khenin, a leftwing member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, has raised similar concerns: “The government has launched a comprehensive assault on democracy, led not by Knesset members from the margins of the right wing but by the prime minister himself. …[Netanyahu] is changing the fundamental rules of democracy.”

Most at risk from the planned changes are Palestinians under Israeli occupation and the 1.5 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Critics warn that with democratic controls removed, and monitoring bodies silenced, Israel will have a free hand to intensify abuses in the occupied territories and entrench its discriminatory policies inside Israel.

The new political atmosphere in Israel has prompted additional concerns that the government is further straining already tense relations with Washington – a fear heightened by remarks reportedly made by Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, this month during a closed meeting of the Saban Forum in Washington.

She is said both to have decried Israel’s threats to hamper the work of human rights groups by ending foreign donations and to have expressed concern at the growing power of fundamentalist Jewish religious groups that seek to enforce strict “modesty” rules on women and gender segregation in public.

Haaretz, Israel’s liberal daily, warned in response that the changes in Israel’s political and social landscape were becoming a “strategic threat…endangering Israel’s relations with its supporters in the West, and especially the American political establishment and Jewish community.”

The latest target has been the Israeli media, selected for new restrictions and intimidation in part, say critics, because Netanyahu and many of his political allies have been the subject of reports of improper and illegal behaviour.

Last year a survey by Haifa University found that 70 percent of Israelis thought Netanyahu’s government was either highly or moderately corrupt, placing it only slightly behind the previous government of Ehud Olmert. A series of scandals forced Olmert to resign in 2008, leading to his being charged with fraud, breach of trust, forgery and tax evasion.

Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, have been accused of accepting trips abroad paid for by private business interests while he was serving as a legislator and then a government minister.

Netanyahu came under similar suspicions during his first term as prime minister in the late 1990s, though prosecutors did not seek a conviction. The allegations, however, forced him to withdraw from politics for two years.

But even more serious for Netanyahu is a growing consensus that corruption has become endemic among Israel’s political class.

A large number of respondents in the Haifa University poll disapproved especially strongly of the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman to the position of foreign minister while he is under criminal investigation. Earlier this year state prosecutors recommended Lieberman be charged with fraud, money-laundering, breach of trust and witness tampering.

However, media coverage of such investigations is likely to be severely curtailed by a bill announced by the government last week. Already nicknamed the “Concealment Law,” it threatens journalists, law officers and public officials with up to three years imprisonment for publicising a criminal investigation.

The bill bans the reporting of all documents related to an investigation, and the restrictions remain in place even after an indictment has been filed unless a senior official overturns them.

Dalia Dorner, a former supreme court judge who now heads the Israel Press Council, accused the government last week of “trying to gag the media.” The Haaretznewspaper warned that blacking out coverage would “assist mainly suspects in high office.”

The bill follows close on the heels of Netanyahu’s decision effectively to shut down Channel 10, one of Israel’s two main commercial television stations, which has earned a reputation for its relatively independent news coverage.

Officials at Channel 10 claimed last month that Netanyahu had threatened to call in a debt of US$11 million immediately unless the management removed a senior journalist, Raviv Drucker, who brought to light the most recent allegations against Netanyahu.

The government’s demand for immediate repayment of a sum considered small given that the channel has lost its shareholders more than US$340 million over the past decade – and a decision that is expected to put 2,500 employees out of work – was characterised by one political analyst as “transparent vengeance.”

It was designed, said Yossi Verter, to send a message from Netanyahu that “Anyone who dares cross the line, publicly criticize, or broadcast a lethal investigative report will meet a bitter fate.”

In a similar vein last month, Netanyahu promoted an amendment to widen the scope of Israel’s defamation law and expose the Israeli media, including bloggers, to a sixfold increase in financial penalties. Those suing would not need to prove that they had suffered damage.

Denying accusations that he was creating a “thought police,” Netanyahu told the parliament he was establishing instead the “publication of truth law.”

But even allies of the prime minister have criticised the measure. Tzipi Hotovely of the ruling Likud party called the legislation “draconian,” saying it was “like using a hammer to kill a fly.”

All these measures follow the government’s success over summer in passing the boycott law, which has limited free speech and opposition to the occupation. Anyone promoting a boycott of Israel or the illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including journalists, can be sued for large damages.

Equally troubling have been moves to curb the work of Israel’s human rights groups. Pressure in the government to clamp down on the organizations has been building since Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza in winter 2008, which killed some 1,400 Palestinians.

The human rights community in Israel is widely seen as having assisted in what the government and its supporters term “lawfare” – or efforts to hold Israel to account for its actions under international law – and international “delegitimization” campaigns.

Netanyahu and his officials were particularly concerned about the involvement of Israeli human rights groups in helping a United Nations team of legal experts, led by Judge Richard Goldstone, to draft a report into the Gaza attack that accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes.

Netanyahu has quietly supported two private bills aimed at curtailing foreign funding to Israel’s human rights groups, particularly those monitoring abuses committed against Palestinians by the Israeli security services.

One would end the main source of income for many of the groups by effectively banning donations from the European Union. The other would subject private donations to a crippling 45 percent tax.

The author of the first bill, Ofir Akunis, a Likud legislator and Netanyahu’s former spokesman, defended the funding restrictions by extolling Joseph McCarthy, whose name is indelibly associated with the witchhunts he carried out in the US in the 1950s to define political opponents as subversives.

The two bills are currently being reviewed by Netanyahu after his attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, warned that he would not be able to defend them before the supreme court. The US and Europe have also issued stiff rebukes to Netanyahu over the measures.

But human rights group fear that Netanyahu is waiting to revive the bills at a time when they will face less public scrutiny. The stakes are particularly high for Palestinians, as Yitzhak Laor observed in Haaretz: “This bill truly intends to create a democracy for Jews only. If it were passed, no Arab – whether resident of the territories or Israeli citizen – would have access to the law.”

As Laor notes, the human rights community has made its mark not only in international advocacy but also in embarrassing the government through court actions, particularly in relation to the occupation.

This, say critics, explains other moves by Netanyahu’s government to increase its control of the country’s supreme court. The court has become a key battleground because several judges are due to retire in the next few months, opening up an opportunity for the right to appoint a batch of like-minded judges.

The most significant measure is a bill – backed by the justice minister, Yaacov Neeman – that would skew the composition of the judicial appointments committee to ensure a rightwing majority on the bench.

Yariv Levin, of Netanyahu’s Likud party, who sponsored the bill, said: “We want to fundamentally change the Supreme Court and to get it away from the control of the leftist radical elite that is controlling it and return it to the people.”

The right’s favored candidate for the court is Noam Sohlberg, a district court judge and resident of a West Bank settlement who has repeatedly ruled against human rights groups.

His decision to deny residency to 15-year-old twin boys whose parents and siblings are Israeli residents and live in Jerusalem – thereby threatening to split the family – made headlines last month.

At the same time, 51 high-profile Israelis, including a handful of laureates of the Israel Prize, Israel’s top honour, petitioned Dorit Beinisch, the head of the supreme court, to oppose the government’s plans for the selection committee.

Beinisch, who retires in February, belatedly responded, castigating Israel’s politicians for creating a “poisonous” atmosphere of “open incitement” to undermine and weaken the court.

The Haaretz newspaper quoted a close associate of Beinisch’s saying: “This is a very slippery slope that could lead to Germany of the 1930s, when the majority rode roughshod over the rights of minorities.”