Changing the Map
Here’s an interesting change. Ha’aretz reports that Yuli Tamir, the Education Minister, has ordered that Israeli school books display the Green Line.
Tamir said Israel could not demand of its Arab neighbors to mark the June 4, 1967 borders, while the Israeli education system erased them from its textbooks and from children’s awareness.
Funny. The argument seems straightforward and reasonable, yet it has taken the Israeli government 13 years to do something about it.
Inspectors catch Palestinians cutting olive trees
Cutting trees and blaming the settlers?
Inspector caught Palestinian youths in the act as they were cutting olive trees, claiming they did it at the request of the owner of the grove. The police suspect that he did it for compensation. Now additional Palestinian complaints will be investigated.
Originally published by the Ma’ariv daily website and translated by IMRA:
Tal Yamin-Walbowitz Maariv website (Maariv NRG) 22 November 2006 [Translation by IMRA]
Are the settlers hurting the Palestinians or are the Palestinians hurting themselves?
Frequently Palestinians farmers complain that settlers cut their trees and hurt them and their livelihoods. At times even IDF soldiers and police had to protect the Palestinians farmers in the territories during the olive harvest season. But the police suspect now that in some cases the Palestinians themselves are those cutting the trees and then blamed the settlers and demanded compensation from the Civil Authority.
Foresters of the JNF patrolling the Shaar Efraim area today noticed to their surprise a number of Palestinians cutting olive trees in violation of the law as they were damaging scores of olive trees. The foresters hurried to call the police who arrived and held four of them for questioning.
The four were transferred to the police station in Kedumim and in their interrogation they said that the owner of the property invited them to cut the trees for firewood. A police spokesman for the Judea-Samaria District, Superintendent Pintzi Mor, told Maariv NRG that the owner of the area would be called in for questioning.
Sources in the police said that over the years the police have experienced a phenomenon of the filing of complaints to the Civil Authority regarding the destruction of olive trees, along with a claim for financial compensation. In the last year alone the Palestinians in the area of Judea and Samaria filed claims for 350 thousand shekels for the destruction of olive trees.
The police now intend to check the complaints in detail. A senior source in the police told Maariv NRG that “most of the complaints for damage to olive trees were filed in recent years at the end of the harvest season or towards the end, something that increase the suspicion that this is a cooked deal.â€
Mobius, how could it be OK to use the comments to post completely different articles?
Amit –
The point of my post was that the Palis are already running circles around us in the PR department, manufacturing their own victimhood – and Yuli Tamir’s handwringing stance plays right into it.
And here’s another article – whose relevance will be much clearer to those who know where Acco and Ramle are on a map:
Rabbi in Acco: ´What is This, Nazi Germany Here?´
16:02 Dec 04, ’06 / 13 Kislev 5767
by Hillel Fendel
Arab marauders smashed up a Talmud Torah in the northern city of Acco (Acre) over the Sabbath, painting Arabic graffiti and swastikas on the walls, destroying furniture, and scattering holy books.
The latest and gravest escalation in the struggle between Jews and Arabs in the mixed city of Acco, between Haifa and the Lebanese border on the Mediterranean coast, occurred this past Friday night. Rabbi Avraham Shushan, a rabbi at the school at which the vandalism occurred, told Arutz-7’s Shimon Cohen that a worshiper who arrived for early Sabbath morning prayers was the first to discover the destruction:
“He saw the lights on and the windows broken. He went in and the sight shocked him. All the walls had swastikas, and the Arabic words ‘Hamas’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’ [Allah is great]. Destruction all over – it looked like Sodom and Gomorrah. The vandals went into the classrooms, dumped out the equipment, turned over the principal’s office, and threw the Torah books in all directions. They took expensive equipment worth thousands of shekels. The worshiper went by foot to the police and called them to come, which they did… He told me about it on Saturday night, and I called Rabbi Yashar, the rabbi of Akko. He came and cried out, ‘What is this, Nazi Germany here?'”
Rabbi Shushan said that in his 30 years in the city, he had “never experienced an Arab pogrom like this one… I don’t know what’s going on here.”
Several days ago, a band of Arab youths attacked and cruelly beat a Jewish girl. Six months ago, local Arabs burned trees standing at the entrance to the Talmud Torah, and during the recent Simchat Torah holiday, Arabs surrounded students from the local Yeshivat Hesder [who combine Torah study and army service] and threatened them, until one student was forced to fire in the air to disperse them.
Knesset Members of the National Religious Party-National Union visited Acco a month ago, warning of the deterioration in the city. The police claimed at the time that the violence and clashes were of a criminal, not nationalistic nature.
“When we toured the city a month ago,” MK Uri Ariel said today, “it was claimed that we are provocateurs and looking for trouble. This pogrom in the Talmud Torah proves that the bitter reality is that in the year 2006, anti-Semitic pogroms take place in sovereign Israel. The police in Acco must give an accounting as to how it is that Arab rioters feel free enough to carry out such a despicable act. We won’t allow the police to evade its responsibility.”
“We have no illusions,” Ariel said. “We know what the Arabs are trying to do. They have composed a new Declaration of Independence, and they want to change the [Israeli] flag and anthem. The Arab citizens understand the trend, and they go out and paint swastikas in yeshivot.”
In another city with a large Arab population, Ramle (near Tel Aviv), an Arab organization is renewing its activities for more say in city affairs – and is hoping to similarly encourage Arab populations in other mixed cities such as Jaffa and Lod as well.
Just this past Friday, the Israeli-Arab organization Mossawa presented a position paper demanding recognition as a Palestinian-Arab national minority and the right to return to Arab villages abandoned during the 1948 War of Independence. In what some view as a drive to turn Israel into a bi-national state, Mossawa also demands:
* Allotments for immigration and citizenship
* Educational and religious autonomy
* Changes to the Israeli flag and national anthem
* Appropriate representation in national bodies
* Special division of national resources
* Ties with other Arab countries
Yuli Tamir is dangerous to Israel.
Yuli Tamir is dangerous to your notion of Israel but to my notion of Israel thinking that the Jews are the victims here is the death of Israel. The blind defense of Israel is leading to the demise of the Jewish people.
I would like to point out that the motion has not passed and is being met with fierce resistance. It is unbelievable to me to think that in Israel the text books do not have the Green line. What is Israel so scared of?
I would also argue with Olmert and say that the public consensus IS to return to the 1967 border.
Green Line? That’s so… 80s.
The Palis have already moved to the next stage – although they want their Palestinian state to be Judenrein, they want Israel to become a “neutral” entity with no Jewish character.
Why not – they’ve (correctly) read liberal Jewish breast-beating as cultural self-effacement, and will keep pushing until the Jews push back.
As reported in this article from Ha’aretz – no doubt many self-hating liberal Jews will find a way to agree even with this nonsense, find a way to jigger reality so that It’s All Our Fault:
Israeli Arabs seek autonomy and veto on government decisions
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
Israeli Arabs are demanding cultural, religious and educational autonomy, and the right to veto government decisions on national issues that affect them.
The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee Tuesday released a document entitled “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.” It stipulates that Israeli Arabs will demand that during the next two decades Israel become a binational state alongside an independent Palestinian state.
The document demands that Israel recognize the Arab community as a national minority with the right to be represented in international forums. Jewish Israelis need not see it as a threat, Hatib said.
The chapter about relations with the state does not say that Israeli Arabs recognize Israel’s Jewishness, but that they are willing to see it as a “joint homeland” for the two nations.
“This means we recognize the Jewish nation’s rights in Israel as individuals and a group. But not at the Arabs’ expense. We will respect each other if they respect our rights,” said Dr. Asad Ghanem, a political scientist, who wrote the chapter.
The chapter presents Israel as a state created by colonialism, which grew strong due to the increased Jewish migration to Palestine in the wake of World War II’s consequences and the Holocaust. It says Israel imposed a colonial policy on its Arab citizens, including confiscation of their land and redefining the culture as Jewish.
The document demands changing the state’s symbols. “After 60 years we must grow up and speak the truth. This state must contain both groups on all levels. Let the Jews have Zionist symbols in their space. I support that. But why impose those symbols on me?” asked Ghanem.
The chapter about the Palestinian state says the Israeli Arabs support the establishment of a Palestinian state adjacent to Israel. It would belong to the Palestinian people, while Israel would be a binational state, as it has a Jewish majority and a large Arab minority. It calls for setting up a democracy constituting a coalition of Jews and Arabs in Israel. Each side would run its own affairs and each would have a right to veto the other’s decisions.
The document says the Arab public does not see Israel’s present government system as a democracy, and says Israel is an ethnocracy, like Turkey, Sri Lanka, Latvia and others.
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These are the bitter fruits of “understanding the roots of terror” and “acknowledging the greivances” of the imaginary “Palestinian people.