Last Saturday, a B’Tselem video camera captured an incident of settler violence that began with rocks being thrown at Palestinians near the village of Asira al-Qibliya in the outskirts of Nablus, and ended with live shots fired by the settlers and a wounded Palestinian youth.

Anyone who saw the video could easily make out the IDF soldiers standing next to the settlers, doing nothing to stop them. Those watching from the sidelines may have been surprised by the useless stance of the soldiers. But anyone who understands the reality in the Occupied Territories well knows that that this is just another example of the long-entrenched paradigm that constitutes the basis of IDF activity on the ground: We are not here to protect Palestinians. Not when the settlers burn their olive trees or throw rocks at them. And not even when settlers shoot at them.

The most extreme outcome of this paradigm was the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994. When Baruch Goldstein, a settler from Kiryat Arba, entered the Tomb, there were no cameras to record the incident and no soldiers (or Border Police officers) to stand in opposition. But even if they had been there, it’s reasonable to assume that they wouldn’t have been the ones to stop the firing. The reason for this, as published in the report by the Shamgar Committee charged with investigating the incident, is that the rules of engagement given to Border Police officers serving there at the time forbade them from directing any fire of any kind at a Jewish settler. In testimony given by one of the officers to the Committee, the explicit command was described: “Arms may not be used against any Jewish settler in Hebron, along with any crowd dispersal method, even if said settler is endangering my own life or the life of an Arab near him.” Another commander from a Border Police company in Hebron testified that the rules regarding disturbance of the peace by a Jew were, “to take shelter so as not to be injured, to wait until his weapon jams or the magazine runs out, and to then try to overpower him through other means.” Baruch Goldstein was stopped when his weapon jammed; the result was 29 Palestinians killed and dozens injured.

After the Shamgar Committee investigation, the rules of engagement changed. The command to wait for a weapons jam was replaced with the direction to “instruct the shooter or person endangering life through other means to cease his actions, or to try to overpower him immediately, while using reasonable force.” In the case that the shooter is not deterred by the soldiers’ requests to cease fire, they are required, according to the IDF instructions, to carry out something similar to the “procedure for detaining a suspect”: shots in the air, shots towards the legs, and only then, shots to neutralize the danger.

This is how it is on paper. In reality, the soldier on the ground receives oral commands that preserve the order to do nothing in instances of Israeli fire towards Palestinians, and in instances of less severe violence, “to serve as a buffer.” Soldiers on the ground are well-trained to take action when a Palestinian attacks, but not when he is the victim of settler violence. Most of the testimonies given to Breaking the Silence don’t relate to the commands given in the instance of an Israeli shooting at a Palestinian because the perception is that the IDF is in the Occupied Territories in order to protect the settlers, and this is the basis for all routine IDF activity. You don’t shoot at the ones you were sent to protect.

Perhaps its because I served in Hebron, or perhaps because I’ve been exposed to many soldier testimonies that describe incidents of settler violence towards Palestinians – but I cannot understand the Israeli public’s amazement surrounding the video from Saturday. After nearly 45 years of occupation, even those Israelis who never served in the Territories should already know that this is what life looks like in the “backyard” of our own State. This is the reality created by constant discrimination and the enforcement of two separate law regimes. The soldiers who just stood there should not be the targets of disgust for their unfit behavior. It is us, the civilians at home, who continue to send them there to enforce this discriminatory occupation, who should be looking in the mirror and asking ourselves how we let this reality develop and continue.

The only democracy in the Middle  East and the most moral army in the world.

Tel Aviv University was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Muwannis. The university’s faculty lounge is the village mukhtar’s former home. At the corner of Arlosoroff and Ibn Gvirol streets, where the Century Tower skyscraper stands, a Palestinian village named Sommeil used to exist.

When activists from the Israeli group Zochrot set out into the heart of Tel Aviv’s “Independence Day” festivities to educate revelers about these facts, they were accused of engaging in criminal activities.

As soon as the activists attempted to exit an office building to place small placards on Ibn Gvirol Street memorializing Palestinian villages destroyed during the Nakba, riot police appeared surrounded them with metal gates, blocking them inside. The police informed them that they would be arrested if they attempted to interact with the crowds celebrating Israel’s birth. “We will not allow you to enter the celebrations with your pictures or your fliers,” a cop told Zochrot’s Eitan Bronstein. “We will not allow this form of protest. It might disturb the peace so we won’t allow it.” Another police officer told Bronstein his placards represented “inciting material.”

Though the police repression can hardly be excused, there is some reason to believe the Zochrot activists could have been subjected to harsh violence if they had been allowed to proceed with their action. While caged behind the metal gates, passersby surrounded the activists and held forth. “You’re lucky the police is here. You should thank them,” said a bald, beefy man who had to be led away.

Another hulking character who identified himself as a member of Unit 51 from the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade paratrooper corps barked at the activists, “The only thing you are is a bunch of traitors. Every day people here are fighting… This is unbelievable. You are traitors and if we had the chance we would shoot you one by one. One by one we would shoot you…”

The demonstration concluded with police violently arresting three participants including one man for the crime of reading aloud the names of destroyed Palestinian villages.

Lia Tarachansky of the Real News Network filmed the melee. Watch her shocking footage here.

The repression of Zochrot’s educational action was only part of a broader campaign the Israeli government has enacted to mute discussion of the Nakba and punish those who violate the code of silence. Last year, the government passed a law that allows the denial of state funding to NGO’s that participate in Nakba commemorations. In 2009, it banned the use of the term “Nakba” in school textbooks. Limor Livnat, a right-wing Knesset member who co-sponsored the so-called Nakba Law and banned textbooks using the word during her term as Israel’s Education Minister, declared that merely allowing students to learn about the mass expulsion of Palestinians during 1947 and 1948 would encourage them to work against the Jewish state.

The images of brawny riot cops — literal thought police — roughing up the small band of Zochrot members for publicly reading “inciting” facts recalled a passage from a widely publicized book about the importance of promoting democracy around the globe. “If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm,” the book read, “then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society.”

The book is called “The Case For Democracy.” One of its authors, Natan Sharansky, was a former Soviet dissident who currently heads the Jewish Agency, a key arm of Israel’s settlement enterprise. The other author is Ron Dermer, an advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu known as “Bibi’s brain.” Together, the two called for overthrowing repressive regimes around the world, inspiring former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to quote their so-called “Town Square Test,” while they actively guided Israel’s descent into authoritarianism.

How could Sharansky and Dermer fail to see the irony in their actions? As the scenes from Zochrot’s demonstration illustrated, reflection is never an option in a fear society.

A recent report by CBS show 60 Minutes on “Christians of the Holy Land” has received a lot of attention, not least for the embarrassing contribution by Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren.

It is interesting that Israel (and its advocates) have been so concerned about the impact of a short segment regarding the challenges faced by Christian Palestinians under Israeli military occupation. In fact, Ambassador Oren himself only recently tried to exploit Christians for propaganda purposes - only to find that they objected to his cynicism.

The Israeli government has long tried to suggest that the emigration of Christian Palestinians is the result of a “jihad” being waged by “terrorists” or “fundamentalists”. There are obvious advantages to this strategy, particularly its dependence on pre-existing prejudices and stereotypes in the West. But it also seeks to neutralise a potentially damaging threat: that people around the world will see Christian Palestinians leaving their historic homeland due to Israeli colonisation and occupation.

In 1948, Christian Palestinians were not spared the devastation of the Nakba, when Israel destroyed hundreds of villages, and expelled up to 90 per cent of the Palestinians who would have been inside the new state. The hundreds of thousands prevented from returning home included35 per cent of all Christians in pre-1948 Mandate Palestine. Haifa’s Christian population, for example, was reduced by 85 per cent. Some Christian Palestinians became citizens, but their land remains confiscated.

Since 1967, Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza have been subject to Israel’s military occupation, and on both sides of the Green Line, Christian Palestinians face the same conditions of systematic racial discrimination as Muslims - on the basis that they’re not Jews.

Israeli colonisation has fragmented and splintered the traditional Christian heartland of Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Jerusalem - home to around 80 per cent of the Occupied Territories’ Christians - through land confiscation, illegal settlements, the Separation Wall, and the regime of travel “permits”.

The isolation of Bethlehem has hit Palestinian Christians particularly hard, where unemployment and poverty levels remain high. The illegal Separation Wall takes in approximately 10 per cent of the Bethlehem region, or governorate, including some of the most fertile land. Overall, through a combination of Israeli policies (including 19 illegal Jewish settlements), the UN estimates that only 13 per cent of the Bethlehem region is available for Palestinian use.

The only democracy in the Middle East.

Air France demanded to know the religion of a passenger on a flight from Nice to Tel Aviv and removed her because she is not a Jew.

The 15 April incident, confirmed by an Air France official, may violate international and European law by subjecting prospective passengers to illegal religious discrimination.

Over the past few days, Israeli authorities have reacted to an effort by hundreds of European travelers to visit the occupied West Bank at the invitation of Palestinians by stationing hundreds of armed police and soldiers at the main international airport at Lydd, detaining and expelling travelers, and ordering European airlines to prevent boarding of travelers that Israel has placed on a political blacklist.

Several European airlines meekly complied with these Israeli orders, canceling tickets of those arbitrarily blacklisted by Israel.

The revelation that passengers are being subjected to religious tests takes this complicity with Israel’s apartheid policies to shocking new levels.

“Are you Jewish?”

The passenger’s account was published by the website of CAPJPO-Euro-Palestine and I have translated the following passage:

A young woman, Horia A., was allowed to check-in normally and then board the aircraft. But a few minutes before take off, a flight attendant arrived at Horia’s seat and asked Horia to come with her. Isolated in a corner of the aircraft, the embarrassed flight attendant asked her a first question:

“Madame, do you have an Israeli passport?”

Horia: “No.”

“She said no,” said the flight attendant into her walkie-talkie to the ground crew.

Flight attendant: “And now, are you of Israe.. um, are you Jewish?”

Horia: “no.”

Flight attendant into walkie-talkie: “Also, no”

During the next few minutes, Horia could see interactions and comings and goings among Air France personnel, before the flight attendant confirmed to her that she was forbidden to fly, citing “a very complex situation.”

Horia had the presence of mind to ask for a written statement, signed by the Air France employee, who was an accomplice despite herself in her bosses’ dirty tricks.

Air France documents religious interrogation in writing

CAPJPO-Euro-Palestine provided a copy of the document on its website, noting that it had redacted the family name of the passenger and the name of the Air France employee.

In hand-writing, the form states (in French):

Customer boarded and then subjected to questioning on demand of Israeli authorities and then disembarked because not admissable to Israel.

questions:
Do you have an Israeli passport?
Are you Jewish?
Answers: no to the 2 questions.

Blatant discrimination

Alain Gresh, renowned journalist for Le Monde Diplomatiquepicked up the story on his French-language blog (my translation):

Let’s leave aside the political and diplomatic aspects of this affair to address another point: if Air France is applying the Chicago Convention [on Civil Aviation], can it do it while violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and French law?

It is forbidden in effect to discriminate against a person because of his color or religion. But that is what happened in particular in Nice, where the company refused to board a passenger arguing that the person was neither Israeli nor Jewish!

Air France confirms discrimination policy

The note presented to Horia A. is signed “CEP AF” which appears to stand for “Chef d’Escale de Permanence - Air France” or Air France station chief. Air France has confirmed the incident described in Horia A.’s account, as Gresh writes:

This is no mere blunder, because Jean Charles Tréan, General Manager for Corporate Communications [at Air France], specifies in response to a question I asked him: “It is in this context that the station chief in Nice for Air France flight 4384 of 15 April 2012, did, on demand from Israeli authorities and in their name, ask the two questions cited. This allowed the identification of the fact that the passenger concerned was not permitted on Israeli terroritory.” We are in the presence of a case of flagrant discrimination that ought to be brought before the courts.

Gresh could not be more right. Just imagine if a country demanded that Air France question passengers about their religion in order to exclude Jews. And imagine if Air France willingly complied.

The only democracy in the Middle East.

In April 2003, for example, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) announced plans to introduce legislation that would cut off federal funding to American colleges and universities that were deemed to be permitting faculty, students and student organizations to openly criticize Israel, since Santorum seems to regard all such criticism as inherently anti-Semitic.

Another reason that Santorum is an asshole.