Debunking Israel’s imagined ‘Christian awakening’

Dr. Reem Khamis-Dakwar 

Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a piece entitled “Israel’s Christians Awakening,” by Adi Schwartz, arguing that Palestinian Christians in Israel are undergoing a change, separating their identity from the Palestinian minority and enlisting in the Israeli army as a sign of close cooperation with the Israeli Jewish society. It may be true that there is some ‘Christian awakening’ in Nazareth, but it is an awakening regarding the Israeli government’s attempts to recruit Palestinian Christians to serve in the Israeli military as part of their divide and rule policy.
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‘NYT’ changes ‘Palestinians’ to ‘Arabs’ and removes Israeli responsibility for Gaza shortages

(Via Mondoweiss)
Two weeks ago the New York Times ran an enthusiastic review of Gazan songbird Mohammed Assaf’s American tour, by Lindsay Crouse, with Reem Makhoul.
The story included these points (as Yousef Munayyer reports):

And the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, included in a message to Secretary of State John Kerry a YouTube video [above] of Mr. Assaf singing longingly about cities in Israel that were once Palestinian. Mr. Netanyahu wrote, “Incitement and peace cannot coexist.”

And:

Mr. Assaf grew up in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, an area that often has shortages of water, gas and electricity because of restrictions imposed by Israel.

The Times has now changed the article and appended this long correction.

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to cities in Israel Mr. Assaf sings about. While they had largely Arab populations before Israel became a state in 1948, they were not “Palestinian” in the sense of being part of a Palestinian political entity. The article also referred incorrectly to shortages of water, gas and electricity in Gaza. While Israel places restrictions on some goods coming into Gaza, and many Palestinians blame Israel for shortages, they were worsened by Egypt’s closure of smuggling tunnels and by a tax dispute between the militant Hamas faction, which governs Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority.

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Are Israeli Universities Critics of or Collaborators with the Israeli Government?

Why not endorsing an academic boycott is a betrayal of our Palestinian colleagues: 
Corey Robin
Critics of the ASA academic boycott often claim that the boycott is illegitimate because it targets Israeli universities, which are the site of some of the greatest criticism of the Israeli government and support for the Palestinian cause. As prominent scholar and former ASA president Shelley Fisher Fishkin said:

Israeli universities are often at the forefront of fostering dialogue between Arabs and Jews, of educating the future leaders of Arab universities, and of providing the next generation with the tools of critical thinking that can allow them to construct a society more equitable and just than that of their parents.

It’s a little more complicated.
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Arab League rejects U.S. proposal in Mideast deal

A general view shows the meeting of the Arab League Foreign ministers in the Egyptian capital Cairo on December 21, 2013. AFP PHOTO / HASSAN MOHAMED

CAIRO: The Arab League says it rejects a continued Israeli troop presence on the eastern border of a future state of Palestine, a proposal Palestinians say was floated by the U.S. earlier this month.
Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby said Saturday no peace deal would work with Israeli presence in a Palestinian state.
Palestinian officials said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry proposed Israel control Palestine's future border with Jordan for at least 10 years to address Israeli concerns about a potential influx of militants and weapons.

John Kerry’s framework proposal sets the stage for the ‘Gazafication’ of the West Bank / Jonathan Cook

Mondoweiss 19 Dec — …In recent days PA spokesmen have accused Kerry of “appeasement” and of failing to be “a neutral mediator”. The criticism looks more than justified. Under cover of a vision for peace, the US secretary of state is offering an Israeli security plan at the expense of meaningful Palestinian statehood.That is not entirely surprising given that the plan was drafted by John Allen, a general formerly in command of US forces in Afghanistan, who has spent months quietly liaising with Israeli counterparts. The main sticking point is the Jordan Valley, an area that was expected to comprise nearly a quarter of a future Palestinian state. Allen has indulged an Israeli demand that it be allowed to continue a long-term “military presence” in the Jordan Valley, of at least 10 years. Not only this but, according to a memo sent by Abbas to Obama, which the Haaretz newspaper revealed this week, the US plan would condition an eventual Israeli withdrawal on the Palestinians meeting a “test of implementation.” Abbas rightfully believes that this would give Israel an effective veto on ever leaving the Jordan Valley. That is a big retreat from Washington’s earlier commitment, made at the Annapolis talks of 2007, that no Israeli soldiers would be stationed in the West Bank following an agreement. Security guarantees were to be provided instead by Nato troops, under US command. The new proposal should be a deal-breaker. The valley is a vital resource for the Palestinians, one they have been effectively stripped of for decades by Israel’s exaggerated “security needs”. The Jordan Valley offers the only land border in the West Bank that would be potentially under Palestinian control. It is one of the few remaining undeveloped areas, making it a possible site to which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees could return. And its lands are fertile and warm all year round, making it highly productive and a likely engine for the Palestinian economy. According to Allen’s plan, Israel’s security also requires that Palestinian security forces be only lightly armed, that Israel has control over the airspace and all borders, and that the US install spying technology – euphemistically called “early warning systems” – throughout the West Bank. In other words, the US vision of a Palestinian state looks remarkably like the model Israel has already implemented in Gaza.
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Pope’s plans for Bethlehem (instead of Jerusalem) Mass disappoint Israel

Ynet 19 Dec by Itamar Eichner — Catholic pontiff’s truncated trip dashes hope of believers expecting papal-led Mass in Jerusalem. Israeli officials ask Vatican to reconsider holding service only in Bethlehem
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PA ready for reconciliation with Hamas ‘at any price’

BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) — A senior PLO official said Thursday that the Palestinian Authority was ready for reconciliation with Hamas “at any price,” signaling a new openness to engage with its rival party amid deadlocked peace talks with Israel. “We are ready for reconciliation tomorrow,”
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We refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, says ex-Palestinian negotiator (as you should)

Haaretz 20 Dec by Amira Hass — Shtayyeh stated that the Israeli insistence on Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a new demand that was not raised in the initial talks and interim agreements between the Palestinians and the Israelis. According to Shtayyeh the declaration of Israel as a Jewish state implies the prevention of Palestinian refugees from returning to their homeland, opening the door to the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homes and the imposition of the Jewish narrative on the history of this country, thereby rejecting the Christian and Muslim narratives. Shtayyeh told Haaretz that there is a fundamental difference between “a state for the Jews” and a “Jewish state.”
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Native American Studies group joins Israel boycott

Inside Higher Ed 18 Dec — The elected council for the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association has unanimously opted to support the academic boycott of Israel, making it the third U.S.-based scholarly association, after the Association for Asian American Studies and the American Studies Association, to do so.
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Israeli soldiers raid Qalqiliya, kill Palestinian ‘in cold blood’

QALQILIYA (Ma‘an)— In the second killing of its kind in less than 24 hours early Thursday, Israeli forces raided a northern West Bank neighborhood and shot a Palestinian man dead. Witnesses said Israeli soldiers raided a neighborhood in the center of Qalqiliya and opened fire at 28-year-old Saleh Samir Abd al-Rahman Yasin, leaving him to bleed to death. The soldiers shot Yasin “in cold blood,” locals said.
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Israel rejects American request to freeze settlement activities

IMEMC —. The White House stated that the issue is of a great concern to the Palestinians, and could lead to toppling direct political talks between Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Talking to the Likud party conference on Wednesday evening, Netanyahu said that his administration is “committed to building and expanding settlements”, and that Tel Aviv “will not be pressured into halting its settlement activities”. “We are building, and working in full gear”, he stated, “We will build and develop, everywhere, including in the settlements.
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Revealed from archive: Israel’s secret plan to resettle Arab refugees in foreign countries

Haaretz 19 Dec by Arik Ariel — Plans drawn up during the 1950s and ’60s had one overriding goal: to preserve the demographic status quo by resettling the 1948 Arab refugees far away from the country — …In the summer of 1961, the skies above Jerusalem darkened when it emerged that the Kennedy administration was determined to find a solution for the approximately one million refugees who were crowded into camps from Syria and Lebanon in the north, as far as Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the south. ‏(The exact number of refugees, and the question of who should be classified as a refugee, remained a constant subject of controversy.) It would be a mistake, though, to think that the catalyst for Washington’s new initiative was the refugees’ wretched and pitiful condition, the Middle East conflict or the Cold War. It was, in fact, Congress that set the initiative in motion by urging the State Department to find a solution for the problem. What provoked Congress to become involved was the burgeoning amount of aid provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, in the form of food, education and health − and the fact that the American taxpayer was underwriting 70 percent of UNRWA’s budget…
The largest and most comprehensive plan, involving the transfer of thousands of Christian Arabs from Galilee to Argentina and Brazil, was given the secret codename “Operation Yohanan,” … In the spring of 1950, the director of the Foreign Ministry’s international institutions department, Yehezkel Gordon, suggested that Israel consider settling Arab refugees in Somalia and Libya, to take the place of the 17,000 to 18,000 Jews who had immigrated to Israel from Cyrenaica and Tripoli … In the first half of the 1960s, the Foreign Ministry continued to examine plans to encourage the emigration of Arab refugees from the Middle East to Europe, particularly to France and Germany … Israel’s efforts to find overseas locations in which to settle Arab refugees continued even after the Six-Day War of 1967. In the end, though, these efforts failed.
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"Damn Hippie!"

Pope Marx

Boycott momentum rattles Israel By Ramzy Baroud

"The intellectual dishonesty of Israel's supporters is appalling. But in some odd way, also understandable. How else could they respond to the massively growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign?

When a non-violent campaign - empowered by thousands of committed civil society activists from South Africa to Sweden and most countries in between - leads a moral campaign to isolate and hold into account an Apartheid country like Israel, all that the supporters of the latter can do is spread lies and misinformation."

Reflections of an Arab Jew / Ella Habiba Shohat

Bint Jbeil — I am an Arab Jew. Or, more specifically, an Iraqi Israeli woman living, writing and teaching in the U.S. Most members of my family were born and raised in Baghdad, and now live in Iraq, Israel, the U.S., England, and Holland. When my grandmother first encountered Israeli society in the '50s, she was convinced that the people who looked, spoke and ate so differently--the European Jews--were actually European Christians. Jewishness for her generation was inextricably associated with Middle Easterness. My grandmother, who still lives in Israel and still communicates largely in Arabic, had to be taught to speak of "us" as Jews and "them" as Arabs. For Middle Easterners, the operating distinction had always been "Muslim," "Jew," and "Christian," not Arab versus Jew. The assumption was that "Arabness" referred to a common shared culture and language, albeit with religious differences.
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Congress triples budget request to Israel

If Americans Knew 13 Dec by Alison Weir
"It’s been a great week for Israel in the US Congress this week. But not for the American taxpayer. While many Americans are gearing up for the Christmas holidays and trying to earn the money to buy their children presents, and while the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits surged, Congress voted yet more money to Israel. It also passed two other measures pushed by the Israel lobby. Almost none of this was reported by US mainstream media. The budget committees of both the Senate and the House released a budget on December 10th included $284 million for U.S.-Israeli “joint defense” — in fact, primarily for defense systems in Israel. These defense systems are aimed at shielding Israel from perceived threats in the region. For context, rockets from Gaza have killed some 29 Israelis in just over a decade, during which time Israeli forces killed approximately 4,000 Gazans. Congress is virtually assured to pass the budget. This money is on top of the $3.1 billion in military aid the U.S. gives Israel every year. It is also triple the already-generous $96 million the Obama administration had requested for the programs."
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Boycott activists celebrate as Ahava quits South Africa

Electronic Intifada 13 Dec by Asa Winstanley — An Israeli cosmetics company based in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank has been forced out of South Africa after a sustained boycott campaign. The news about Ahava was revealed yesterday by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.”
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Video: A Palestinian family lives in a cave after the occupation demolished his house

“As you see since the occupation demolished my house I live in this cave, I do not have another place to live. I have renovated as much as I can but the rain goes through. Today in the morning there was a huge collapse out of the cave. Because it is very dangerous I had to send my daughters to my father and brother. Every moment could collapse here….”
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