A Judicial Document

[ProgressiveMuslim]

21/03/09

Uri Avnery


THE MOST important sentence written in Israel this week was lost in the general tumult of exciting events.

Really exciting: In a final act of villainy, typical of his whole tenure as Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert abandoned the captive soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Ehud Barak decided that the Labor Party must join the ultra-right government, which includes outright fascists.

And this, too: the former President of Israel was officially indicted for rape.

In this cacophony, who would pay any attention to a sentence written by lawyers in a document submitted to the Supreme Court?

THE JUDICIAL debate concerns one of the most revolting laws ever enacted in Israel.

It says that the wife of an Israeli citizen is not allowed to join him in Israel if she is living in the occupied Palestinian territories or in a “hostile” Arab country.

The Arab citizens of Israel belong to Hamulas (clans) which extend beyond the borders of the state. Arabs generally marry within the Hamula. This is an ancient custom, deeply rooted in their culture, probably originating in the desire to keep the family property together. In the Bible, Isaac married his cousin, Rebecca.

The “Green Line”, which was fixed arbitrarily by the events of the 1948 war, divides families. One village found itself in Israel, the next remained outside the new state, the Hamula lives in both. The Nakba also created a large Palestinian Diaspora.

A male Arab citizen in Israel who desires to marry a woman of his Hamula will often find her in the West Bank or in a refugee camp in Lebanon or Syria. The woman will generally join her husband and be taken in by his family. In theory, her husband could join her in Ramallah, but the standard of living there is much lower, and all his life – family, work, studies – is centered in Israel. Because of the large difference in the standard of living, a man in the occupied territories who marries a woman in Israel will also usually join her and receive Israeli citizenship, leaving behind his former life.

It is hard to know how many Palestinians, male and female, have come to Israel during the 41 years of occupation and become Israeli citizens this way. One government office speaks of twenty thousand, another of more than a hundred thousand. Whatever the number, the Knesset has enacted an (officially “temporary”) law to put an end to this movement.

As usual with us, the pretext was security. After all, the Arabs who are naturalized in Israel could be “terrorists”. True, no statistics have ever been published about such cases – if there are any – but since when did a “security” assertion need evidence to prove it?

Behind the security argument there lurks, of course, a demographic demon. The Arabs now constitute about 20% of Israel’s citizens. If the country were to be swamped by a flood of Arab brides and bridegrooms, this percentage might rise to – God forbid! – 22%. How would the “Jewish State” look then?

The matter came before the Supreme Court, The petitioners, Jews and Arabs, argued that this measure contradicts our Basic Laws (our substitute for a nonexistent constitution) which guarantee the equality of all citizens. The answer of the Ministry of Justice lawyers let the cat out of the bag. It asserts, for the first time, in unequivocal language, that:

“The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective.

ONE SHOULD read this sentence several times to appreciate its full impact. This is not a phrase escaping from the mouth of a campaigning politician and disappearing with his breath, but a sentence written by cautious lawyers carefully weighing every letter.

If we are at war with “the Palestinian people”, this means that every Palestinian, wherever he or she may be, is an enemy. That includes the inhabitants of the occupied territories, the refugees scattered throughout the world as well as the Arab citizens of Israel proper. A mason in Taibeh, Israel, a farmer near Nablus in the West Bank, a policeman of the Palestinian Authority in Jenin, a Hamas fighter in Gaza, a girl in a school in the Mia Mia refugee camp near Sidon, Lebanon, a naturalized American shopkeeper in New York – “collective against collective”.

more...http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1237674669

[Jim Sagle]

1. Avnery's a self-hating wacko. Fuck'm.

[grassfed]

7. "Hey, I may hate myself, but not because I'm Jewish."

Woody Allen

[varelse]

2. "A river yearning for the sea does not recognize any law"

The inherent aim of the Zionist enterprise was and is to turn the country – at least up to the Jordan River – into a homogeneous Jewish state. Throughout the course of Zionist-Israeli history, this aim has not been forsaken for a moment. Every cell of the Israeli organism contains this genetic code and therefore acts accordingly, without the need for a specific directive.

In my mind I see this process as the urge of a river to reach the sea. A river yearning for the sea does not recognize any law, except for the law of gravity. If the terrain allows it, it will flow in a straight course, if not – it will cut a new riverbed, twist like a snake, turn right and left, go around obstacles. If necessary, it will split into rivulets. From time to time, new brooks will join it. And every minute it will strive to reach the sea.

The Palestinian people, of course, oppose this process. They refuse to budge, set up dams, try to push the stream back. True, for more than a hundred years they have been on the retreat, but they have never surrendered. They continue to resist with the same persistence as the advancing river.

I've never seen a better analogy for the endless war in Palestine. Sadly, if carried to the logical conclusion, it means that eventually one group of people will be entirely dispossessed and ultimately eliminated, just as most of the Native American tribes have been on this continent.

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. Some bio regarding the author of this article, Uri Avnery:

I might add on a personal note that Uri Avnery's articles regularly appear in newspapers throughout the Arab world. This certainly sends a message that their are Jewish-Israeli's who are trying hard to reach out for peaceful coexistence. Mr. Avnery's work does a great deal to create good will and understanding with Israel's Arab neighbors. I would also add that he is an uncompromising supporter of the two-state solution which he views as the only plausible way to end the conflict

Uri Avnery -- former Irgun Commando, 1948 Israeli war hero, former member of the Israeli Knesset -- Peace Activist:

born: September 10, 1923, Beckum, Germany immigration to Palestine: November1933.... member of the Irgun underground under Menachem Begin, 1938-1942. At the outbreak of the 1948 war, Avnery joined the army (Givati brigade) and later volunteered for "Samson's Foxes", a motorized commando unit on the Egyptian front which soon became legendary. He took part in dozens of engagements, became a squad leader, and was severely wounded in the last days of the war at Iraq al-Manshiyya (the present Kiryat Gat). His life was saved by four soldiers of his squad, new immigrants from Morocco, who rescued him under murderous fire and enabled him to reach hospital in time. There, a part of his intestines was cut out.

Son of a well-established German-Jewish family, originally from the Rhine area. ....

His father was a private banker in Beckum, and later on a financial adviser in Hannover, where his family lived in an upper-class neighborhood. A Zionist from an early age, his father decided, immediately upon Hitler's ascent to power in 1933, to take the family to Palestine. Avnery still experienced the first half year of the Nazi regime, as the only Jew in school, and his impressions of the last years of the Weimar republic and the beginning of the Nazi era are imprinted in his memory. He wrote a book about this (The Swastika, 1961).

He arrived with his family in Haifa in November 1933 and lived for half a year in Nahalal, the legendary Moshav, in order to "get acclimatized". Then his family moved to Tel-Aviv, where he has lived ever since......"

Uri Avnery peace activist, journalist, writer.

founding member, Gush Shalom (peace bloc), independent peace movement (1993)
former publisher and editor-in-chief, Haolam Hazeh news magazine (1950-1990)
former member of the Knesset (three terms: 1965-1969, 1969-1973, 1979-1981)
founding member, Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (1975)
columnist, Internet.

link for a more complete biography:

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/about/1177150070

-------------------------

For more article by Uri Avnery:

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery

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[Jefferson23]

4. but but he's a self hater, lol. If this assault on opinions keeps up, the DSM-IV TR is going to need

to be revised to include this "condition."

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. I was watching a Woody Allen movie last week -

Someone called him a "self-hating Jew". He answered, "I may hate myself. But its not because I'm Jewish. I have plenty of other reasons."

[Violet_Crumble]

9. Don't you know? Anyone who's Jewish and criticises the occupation...

...or dares to suggest that the Palestinian people are entitled to the same basic human rights as everyone else, or even advocates a two-state solution where two viable and independent states exist in peace, they're all self-hating whackos ;)

Of course there's such a thing as a *self-hating Jew*, but people like Uri Avnery, Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and some others the poster above has used the same knee-jerk accusation about aren't self-hating Jews at all. An example of a self-hating Jew is David Cole, who was a Holocaust denier and heavily involved with the likes of Ernst Zundl. The book I read on Holocaust deniers was more than a few years old, so I don't know what's happened since, but visiting Auschwitz on one of those 'see! we have proof that the gas chambers never existed!!' jaunts that the IHR twits did was too confronting for him, and after visiting Auschitz he recanted his earlier Holocaust denial and vanished. Don't know if he's back in the fold now, but I hope not as he clearly had some major issues going on in his head that it took physically seeing Auschwitz for it to dawn on him what he'd been doing to the victims of the Holocaust...

[Grimm]

5. Court Expected to Nix Law that Keeps Arabs from Flooding Israel

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/130413

The High Court has heard the appeal against the law in the past and struck it down by a one-vote margin. On Sunday, however, the High Court will convene in a seven-member panel headed by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch to hear the petition again, and this time it is expected to rule in favor of striking down the law.

...

The Knesset law that prevents this was passed as a temporary order in 2003 and is extended annually by the Knesset. It prevents Arabs from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, as well as citizens of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran, from receiving Israeli citizenship by marrying Israeli citizens.

Do yourself a favour and don't read the comments section *shudder*

[ProgressiveMuslim]

6. Pelsar, is this the permit the "Lem Shemmel?"