www.benwhite.org.uk: the blog

Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev shows that not only is he shameless, but he also has a rather shaky grip on the meaning of the word “consensus”, as well as the basics of international law. Though he does at least reveal Israeli assumptions when it comes to ‘negotiating’:

“‘When you get into serious negotiations, does anyone really think that areas like Pisgat Zeev or Modiin Illit or Maale Adumim are not going to remain under Israeli control? It’s almost an international consensus‘”

This is a follow up to a story that appeared back in February, and which I wrote about for the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ here. I don’t want to go into all the details, but there was just one part that caught my eye:

“Anti-Israel activity on the Google Earth application has been stepped up this week, with the message “Nakba - The Palestinian Catastrophe” now appearing when users scroll over the orange dots that speckle locations across the entire map of Israel…

“Google needs to review their policy for the community content layer, perhaps dividing it up or further restricting it to content about current significant locations and landmarks,” [Andre] Oboler said.”

Ah yes, if only Israel could just rewrite history, with all those annoying irrelevancies between King David and 1948 wiped out.

Benjamin Netanyahu claimed today that Israeli governments “can relinquish land with unbearable ease“. That of course would be news to anyone else with a map that included the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In fact, everything would seem to point to the opposite; that Israeli governments find it unbearably easy to confiscate land.

Surely some mistake then.

“Mohammed Omer, Gaza correspondent for Inter Press Service (IPS) and joint winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused by Israeli security officials at the Allenby border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank on Thursday as he tried to return home to Gaza…

The Gazan journalist was repeatedly asked why he was returning to “the hell of Gaza after we allowed you to leave.” To this he responded that he wanted to be a voice for the voiceless. He was told he was a “troublemaker.”

The security men also demanded he show all the money he had on him, and particular attention was paid to the British pounds he was carrying. His Gellhorn Prize money had been awarded in British pounds, but he was not carrying the entire sum on his person, something the investigators refused to believe.

After being unable to produce the prize money, he was ordered to strip naked.

“At first I refused, but then I had an M-16 pointed in my face and my clothes were forcibly removed, even my underwear,” Omer said.

At this point Omer broke down and pleaded for an end to such treatment. He said he was told “you haven’t seen anything yet.” Every cavity of his body was searched as one of the investigators pinned him down on the floor, placing his boot on Omer’s neck. Omer began vomiting, then fainted.

When he came to, his eyelids were being forcibly opened and his eardrums probed by an Israeli military doctor, who was also armed. He was then dragged along the floor by his feet by the Shin Bet officials, with his head repeatedly banging on the floor, to a Palestinian ambulance which had been called.”

“When the law was first passed in 2003, supposedly as a temporary one-year measure, it was accompanied by security reasoning - the risk of implanting terrorists in Israel via marriage. The reasoning was faulty even at that time: Every Palestinian who wishes to enter Israel must be addressed individually. It is the Shin Bet security service’s task to do this and thus carry out its mission - protecting the security of Israel’s citizens such that the country remains democratic, with equal rights for all. However, as the years go by, it becomes clear that the security argument and the term “temporary measure” are merely a deception aimed at “koshering” discriminatory legislation for demographic reasons.

The claim that there are indications of an apartheid state in Israel is widely heard in the Western world. The word apartheid is catchy and understood in many parts of the world, which makes it useful to send a message that we resent and which we claim has no connection with reality in Israel. However, we do not have to identify the characteristics of South African apartheid in the civil rights discrimination in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. The amendment to the Citizenship Law is exactly the kind of practice that leads to the use of such a term, and it is best that we not try to evade the truth: Its existence in the law books turns Israel into an apartheid state.”