The Threat From Within

After reading a couple of very interesting articles in the Jerusalem Report the scale of the problems facing Israeli citizens from their own MK's is very worrying indeed.

It is easy to protect your country from foreign enemies, it's the domestic ones that make life really tough though. It's tough because they speak the words that I want to hear, they tell me that they have the answers to all of my problems and then they point to the person or group that is causing my problems and tell me that if they are taken care of everything will be fine. They go a step further, anyone who disagrees with them is of course one of the 'other' a non-patriotic enemy of their beloved country.

At the moment the Knesset is reviewing potential new legislation that will fundamentally alter the nature of the country. This new legislation covers every area of society and will impact on all Israeli citizens. This legislation comes from both the governing coalition as well as the opposition, meaning that citizens don't have many places to which they can turn in order to fight the proposed changes to the country.

In an attempt to ensure that the State of Israel remains Jewish in character, the former head of the Shin Bet and MK for Kadima, Avi Dichter, has proposed a bill intended to subordinate Israel's democracy to it's Judaism through introducing a number of new measures. One of these measures is an oath of loyalty to the "Jewish, Zionist and democratic State of Israel" for all new citizens and removing Arabic as an official language of the State of Israel. In addition to Dichter's Basic Law there is also legislation passed that has been entitled The Boycott Law. This is an attempt to, in effect, boycott the boycotter. The BBC described the law in the following way:

"Under the new law those who sponsor a "geographically based boycott" - which includes any part of the Jewish state or its settlements - could be sued for damages in a civil court by the party injured in the boycott call. The petitioner is not required to prove that "economic, cultural or academic damage" was caused, only that it could reasonably be expected from the move."

As the Executive Director of the Israeli civil rights movement in Israel, Hagai El Ad, said at the time:

"No reasoning has been suggested to explain why the boycott of settlement goods should be uniquely cherished as opposed to the right of the Israeli citizen to protest."

This pales in comparison to the measures being proposed that, if voted in, will change the nature of Israel's Supreme Court. Well known for upholding the rights of the individual in Israel be you Jew or Muslim, Israeli or Palestinian, the Supreme Court has ruled against the state numerous times. Though there are several different pieces of legislation on the cards to change the nature of the Supreme Court, by far and away the most significant is a Bill that will require Supreme Court judges to be vetted by the Knesset Constitutional Committee. The argument in favour of this being that the Supreme Court doesn't represent the people but rather the Tel Aviv elite. This would effectively end the independence of our Supreme Court and make us utterly subordinate to the whims of government without being able to challenge actions taken by the state.

There are also proposed changes to libel laws so that the newspaper could have to pay "not only for commensurate compensation for any tangible damage caused by the publication, but for an additional sum of NIS 300,000 − without having to prove damages" according to Haaretz.

Then there are the proposed restrictions on the amount of money that can be donated to NGOs here in Israel. The reason for this is the perceived (not by me) success of the de-legitimisation efforts of various groups abroad and the support that they provide to certain NGOs here in Israel. It is the activities of these particular NGOs that elements in the government want to curb.

There are a number of proposed efforts to do so. MK Ofir Akunis from Likud has proposed an amendment to the Associations Law  (the Banning Foreign Diplomatic Entities' Support of Political Associations in Israel amendment). This will limit the amount of money that a foreign government can donate to an NGO to no more than 20,000NIS per year.

Israel Beiteinu MK Fania Kirshenbaum has proposed her own piece of legislation that would force NGOs to pay 45% income tax on foreign donations. Despite approval from the ministerial committee the bills have been shelved indefinitely by the Prime Minister after both internal and foreign dissent. The fact that these bills were shelved, at least in part because of foreign dissent makes this action particularly interesting.

For a country that argues itself to be the only democracy in the Middle East these actions are incredibly worrying. I haven't covered all of the legislation being proposed and there is more and more coming making this a very worrying time to be an Israeli. I wonder what on earth I can do to change the situation when it is my own representatives who are voting in these measures in overwhelming numbers. During the summer 400,000 people took to the streets to voice their discontent and have largely been ignored.

I am starting to wonder, is it possible that the pigs have already taken over the farm? Is it too late to defend our freedom those who regard the people who cherish it as enemies of Israel?

We have already seen the thugs take their cue from the politicians in power. 

Happy Channukah

Kim Jong Il is Dead....ah well

The King is dead, what will change in Korea as a result of this happening?

Absolutely nothing!

The Best It's Ever Been!

It feels like a tough life sometimes! On the one hand Hamas are firing rockets at us in the South, on the other Hezbollah seem to be preparing the next big threat in the North and Iran is always there in the background with their ambitions to build a nuclear weapon. Add to those things the threats to our democracy coming from our own politicians and you have a real reason to feel depressed while reading your morning paper and eating your breakfast.

So allow me, if I may to put some things into perspective. This time 10 years ago the Al Aqsa Intifada was in full swing with suicide bombers seeming to come out of every corner. 20 years ago the Gulf War was going on and the first Intifada was still simmering away, not to mention Scuds falling all over Israel. 30 years ago there were deluges of Katyusha Rockets coming from the PLO based in Southern Lebanon that were destroying homes non stop in the North of the country. At the same time the international terror attacks that were causing pain and misery to Jews everywhere were continuing apace. Rewind further back to 50 years ago and roving bands of Fedayeen were attacking isolated Israeli towns and villages as well as roads and other targets ensuring that travelling around Israel could be a fatal business. Even further back to 70 years ago and you are at the dark days of the Holocaust, 100 years ago and Jews were suffering through pogroms in Eastern Europe, it was the Pogroms in Poland at exactly this time that forced my family move to London.

Every decade further back you go you see the pain that was being suffered by Jews everywhere because of who we are. Before there was a state of Israel things were worst of all for the Jews. Every year since 1948, when we literally rose from the ashes our lives have gotten a little better.

Sure there have been specific events that have bucked the upward trend but even these have become less severe than they used to be, whereas several decades ago we fought the Yom kippur war which threatened our very existence as a soveriegn nation more recently we faced the Al Aqsa Intifada which despite causing massive tragedy was never going to be an existential threat. Every year we face a weakened enemy, one that is no less determined to destroy us but that has had its ability to do so significantly diminished. Every year the lives of Israelis get ever so slightly better.

It may seem like we take a great deal of flack in the world we live in but this also isn't the case. Once there was a blow by blow attack on Jewish Societies in British universities due to them being deemed as racist for being Zionist. In the 1980's Jews were afraid of bands of Nazi thugs on the one hand and left wing supporters of the PLO on the other. Such fears today are almost unheard of and when it does seem that there may be the chance that this happened there is a strong Union of Jewish Students ready to campaign politically for the rights of Jewish students across universities across the United Kingdom and the Community Security Trust to protect them.

All of us should stand up with our heads held high. The leaps that have been made in the lives of Jews over the preceding decades are nothing short of incredible. Whereas once we were the downtrodden, the persecuted and the hated we are now the envy of the world when it comes to the sciences, agriculture, literature and our military forces. We are so quick to condemn ourselves for our failures and altogether too slow to remember our successes. At this time in the wake of bumbling advertising campaigns and inept politicians it's worth taking a good look in the mirror and remembering just how impressive our accomplishments truly are.

In Response to Ilan Pappe

It is uncontested that Sheikh Raed Salah made the following antisemitic statement:


“We have never allowed ourselves, and listen well, we have never allowed ourselves to knead the bread for the breaking of the fast during the blessed month of Ramadan with the blood the children. And if someone wants a wider explanation, you should ask what used to happen to some of the children of Europe, whose blood would be mixed in the dough of the holy bread. God Almighty, is this religion? Is this what God wants? God will confront you for what you are doing.”


It was Ilan Pappe's defence of this statement that led me to email him asking why on earth he would defend such a blatantly antisemitic outburst. Regardless of his well known anti Zionist views, antisemitism is a whole other ball game.

That first email led to an email discourse and some surprising assertions on his part. They were so surprising that I decided to sum them up in the Jewish Chronicle here.

Dr Pappe wrote a letter to the JC in the wake of my article saying that "I am surprised and disappointed that Mr Goldberg's article gives the opposite impression that my correspondence with him intended."

The truth is I don't see any other way to interpret what he said to me. The meat of Dr Pappe's assertions were that;

"The English text you sent me differs from the one I commented on. Had this been the text I might have had a different reaction."

Seeing this really piqued my interest as it is the crux of the case, it is the above statement that the court deemed to be antisemitic and if Dr Pappe were providing expert testimony it would be on this...wouldn't it? Well not according to him.

In the wake of the article published in the JC Dr Pappe wrote in to the paper saying something very different to what he said to me in our email exchange. What he said to me was the following:

"from what one can gather the Sheikh refers to a Muslim allegation at the time of the Spanish Inquisition that during the purge of the Muslims, the blood of Muslim children were used to prepare the Christian holy bread"


This also took me by surprise since it is completely different to the Sheikh's own defence, who says that he was speaking metaphorically. I was so surprised by this answer that I came straight back at Dr Pappe asking him for some help in verifying these conclusions of his, asking amongst other things, the following:

"I have done my best to find sourced claims made by Muslims of Europeans using Muslim blood to make bread during the aforementioned time period but I just can't find any, I would really appreciate it if you might be able to point me in the right direction."

He replied to me saying that:

"I was asked to comment on the Arabic text - was not given an English text. The English text you sent me differs from the one I commented on. Had this been the text I might have had a different reaction. In any case he gave the speech in Arabic. and he does mention every now and then this reference to the inquisiton. You need to be part of the Palestinian miliue in Israel, as I am, to be aware of this. Is it a valid reference, I have no idea, or interest."

That lack of certainty is in stark contrast to the statement that Dr Pappe makes in his letter to the JC where he says almost exactly the opposite;

"It is my expert view that the words used in the speech by Raed Salah were not a reference to the blood libel. They were in fact a reference to events that occurred during the Spanish inquisition to Muslim and Jewish children at the hands of Christian protagonists."


This is pretty far away from the Professor saying to me that he doesn't know or care whether it's a valid reference and it is still inconsistent with the Sheikh's own account of what he was referring to. I leave it to you to decide what it is reasonable to believe after being presented with this, I am not sure what other direction I could have gone in when informed by an expert witness in the case that he was ignorant as to the text lying at the heart of the matter and quite shocked when that expert came up with a theory at odds with the accused's own reasoning. 

Miluim

Until 2 weeks ago it had been 7 years since I had held a rifle, 7 years since I had felt the power of an M4 rifle recoil into my shoulder and 7 years since I had worn green army fatigues. All I have heard of Miluim is that there are endless cups of coffee and BBQ's but the last 2 weeks certainly weren't like that, they reminded me more of my time during the first six months of my service when I was learning how to endure hardship and misery in the freezing cold. During my regular service I turned my nose up at the fat, old reservists that I occasionally came across. Naturally now that I am one of the fat, old reservists I feel a little differently.

The moment I saw my old training base the memories came flooding back to me. I walked in with some of my comrades from my days of active service. We soon became just a couple of anonymous figures in the sea of testosterone that had walked into the same base. Soon the friends that I had walked in with were lost among the crowd of people who been called up at the same time as me. I planted myself into the long line of citizens about to become fighters for a short time, we were all there lining up for our equipment.

Every now and then I felt a tap on the shoulder from a familiar face that I hazily placed as belonging to someone that I had come into contact with during my service at the time of the Al Aqsa Intifada. All around me people were having the same conversations with one another. "Hi, how's it going? Long time no see, what have you been up to..." old friends catching up with one another while waiting for the crowd of people before them to thin out enough to make it to the delivery line of conscripts handing out all of the equipment that we would need to get through the next couple of weeks.

My turn came and I moved down the line being handed knee pads, magazines, a kit bag, combat vest and various other pieces of military equipment. At the very end of the line lay the armoury where I was handed my M4 along with the day and night scope that marked me out as the marksman I was 7 years before. Whether I still warranted the designation remained to be seen.

I was in for two weeks that would test my capacity for fighting as much as anything I had done during my regular service. Night marches with a pack on my back were the mainstay of the training and it was heartening to see these men of all ages rise to the challenges laid down by the army brass. The last night was marked by a particularly long march through the cold air.

All of the same sights, smells and hardship that I had managed to forget from my training returned in unwelcome abundance. More welcome was feeling the same camaraderie that made it possible to get through the endless months of training that I endured so long ago. All of us were going through this together, everyone enduring the same feelings of pain and discomfort and doing what we could to help one another through it.

When looking around at the vast range of guys I was serving with I saw a huge wealth of combat experience. There are men serving there from their early 20's all the way up to volunteers in their 40s. This was the real Israel Defence Force. Reservists have been the backbone of the every victory the army has ever had and that makes a lot more sense now that I have seen just how motivated these men are.

For one month a year I will be putting aside my life, my politics and my comforts in service of the State of Israel. For 11 months a year I will attend demonstrations and campaign for the direction that I feel my country should take.

This is the life of an Israeli reservist, this is the life of an Israeli.