Horrifying failure of 'carry on occupying' policy

Comments / accounts from Larry Derfner, +972, Ma’an news and Al Monitor.

Police outside the synagogue where five were killed by two Palestinian cousins.Photo by Reuters.

Atrocities part of EVERY revolt against unjust rule

Larry Derfner, Facebook
November 22, 2013

Every Palestinian terror attack is presented as justification for Israeli rule over the Palestinians, past, present and future. And the more horrible the attack, the more justification it provides. By that argument, apartheid was 100% justified and should have continued forever. What many S.A. blacks did to each other in the name of the anti-apartheid struggle – “necklacing” enemies by lighting them afire with gasoline-filled tires as crowds laughed and cheered, turning their victims into “Kentucky Fried Chickens” – was beyond anything we’ve seen from Palestinians. The attacks on white farmers were horrific; “Shoot the Boer” was a popular song and still is among many radicals. If the terror of the population being ruled justifies that rule, then centuries of European colonialism in Africa and Asia was wonderful and should have gone on forever – think of the Mau Maus in Kenya, the FLN in Algeria, think of any subjugated population you like. A lot of the Jews subjugated by the British were far from being decent chaps. The attack in Har Nof was vile beyond words and the two Palestinians who committed it were monsters. And those other Palestinians who cheered are fucked up human beings. But this is not a popularity contest – the issue is not how good or bad the Palestinians are. The issue is the right or wrong of Israeli rule over them. It’s wrong, and no Palestinian atrocity makes it right. Throughout history, atrocities have been part of EVERY revolt against unjust rule.

Welcome to Netanyahu’s ‘resolution’ to the conflict

Netanyahu, Bennett and Lieberman all promised Israelis quiet and prosperity without having to end the occupation. This is what we got instead.

By Noam Sheizaf, +972
November 18, 2014

Following this morning’s horrifying terror attack, it’s not so difficult to imagine how Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Liberman or Benjamin Netanyahu might describe the current government if they weren’t its leaders. You can almost see them showing up at the scene of the attack and screaming into the microphones denouncing the “wicked government,” recalling every last pogrom in Jewish history.

But no dice. Netanyahu has been prime minister for five years now and Liberman and the settlers, his partners in it. This is all taking place on their watch. If they think that Mahmoud Abbas is the problem — as their public statements declared this morning — then they should deal with him. We all know that’s not going to happen. This government needs Abbas much more than the Palestinians need him. The Palestinian leader has a dual role: he maintains quiet in the West Bank, and is also the punching bag the Israeli Right uses to explain away its reverberating failures.

Netanyahu promised Israelis prosperity and quiet without having to solve the Palestinian conflict. That has been his promise since the 1990s. To Netanyahu, terrorism is just card we’ve been dealt, and only military force can resolve it. There is no problem with continuing to build in the settlements, including inside the Palestinian neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, because there is no connection between the settlements and the actions of the Palestinians. That’s what Netanyahu has been saying for decades already — both to the world and to Israelis. There’s no reason to give Palestinians their rights because that endangers Israel: they can make due with “economic peace.” It’s okay to discriminate and legislate against Israel’s Arab citizens. Hell, they should be saying thank you that we even let them live here; things are much worse in every other country in the Middle East. The government is here to serve the Jews, and the Jews only. And if we continue to act this way, aggressively and determinedly, we’ll enjoy stability, security and economic prosperity. That’s Netanyahu’s theory, and the Israeli public bought it because the price was so low and the payoff sky high. We’re not responsible for anything that happens and we don’t have to make any compromises on anything.

At this point any reasonable person should realize what nonsense Bibi has been selling. In recent years Netanyahu has benefited from mere coincidence: Palestinians were tired from the intifada; Abbas decided to try the diplomatic track; the Arab world imploded; and Israel’s high-tech economy was booming. It seems as if Netanyahu has been delivering, but none of those things had anything to do with him. It was all an illusion, an ongoing deception. Since this June we have woken up to the true meaning of Netanyahu’s vision, in which Israel rules over 6 million Palestinians — Israeli citizens, East Jerusalem residents, the subjects of military rule in the West Bank and those besieged in Gaza — and the only thing he’s offering them is more of the same: the cruel hand of the military law, discrimination, violence, land expropriation, home demolitions, mass arrests and bombs from the sky.

For half a decade Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat have been selling us lies about Israel’s unified and prosperous capital, all while 40 percent of its residents live in impoverished neighbourhoods and are not represented politically, aren’t given building permits or even full municipal services. Some of those neighbourhoods have been shoved eastward into a strange no-man’s land on the other side of the wall, an area into which neither the police nor the municipality dares to venture. At the same time, with the encouragement of the city and under the protection and cover of the police, settlers are being put into the hearts of the Jerusalem’s Arab neighbourhoods, and right-wing members of Knesset are marking new targets for their projects — the Temple Mount, Silwan and Mount of Olives. After all that, is anybody really surprised that Palestinians have no trust in the police? That they view the municipality as their enemy?

An Israeli police officer stands outside the Jerusalem synagogue where two Palestinians killed four worshippers and seriously wounded seven others, November 18, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Nothing can justify the murder of worshippers in a synagogue. The murders should be condemned, and Jerusalem’s residents, Jews and Arabs alike, deserve absolute personal security. But it’s no time to be sanctimonious: the overall responsibility is the government’s. Netanyahu, Bennett and Liberman’s vision — the same vision that is being put into action with the help of Livni and Lapid’s acquiescence — is one of civil war between Jews and Arabs; a war that sometimes crawls under the carpet and sometimes explodes with violence. Nothing beyond that. Not two states and not one state, not warm peace and not cold peace — simply nothing. Just stricter laws against stone throwers, laws against the “release of terrorists,” laws against the Arabic language, new prisons to hold all of the new arrestees, gradual annexation, and ensuring the Palestinian population remains relegated to a status as second-, third- or fourth-class citizens.

That’s the plan. That’s how they think they’ll quiet can be attained. That’s how they think “the Arabs will learn to accept us,” even though history and all logic prove exactly the opposite. Oppression begets violence, which begets more and harsher oppression, which begets even more terrible violence. “Holding onto the occupied territories will make us a nation of murderers and murder-victims,” read an advertisement by the lefty political movement Matzpen, three months after the Six Day War in which Israel conquered East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

There is a simple truth here that needs to be reiterated: it’s entirely possible that a just political resolution with the Palestinians won’t guarantee peace and quiet, certainly not in its first stages. But only in such a deal, and in such a deal alone, lies the potential for a better future.

Instead, we are caught in the implementation phase of the Israeli Right’s political plan — both in Gaza and in Jerusalem. This is what Netanyahu and Bennett’s “solution” looks like. They might blame the PA and the Israeli Left and the High Court and the world for their inability to deliver, but this is their doing. Or more accurately, this is what the beginning of their doing looks like. The rest will be much worse — for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Four Israelis killed in Jerusalem synagogue attack

By Ma’an news
November 18, 2014

JERUSALEM — Two Palestinians armed with a gun and axes attacked a Jerusalem synagogue on Tuesday killing four Israelis, police said.

“There are four dead and six injured, among them two policemen,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

The attack struck during morning prayers at a synagogue in the Har Nof neighbourhood in the southwest of the city.

The two assailants were shot dead, she said.

The synagogue killers were shot dead at the site. They were cousins Ghasan Abu Jamal, 27, and Uday, Abu Jamal, 22 who lived in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Jabal Mukkaber.

“Two terrorists, apparently from East Jerusalem, entered a yeshiva (Jewish seminary) in Har Nof and attacked worshippers with axes and a pistol,” she said.

“The two terrorists were neutralized,” she added, using a police euphemism for killed.

Israeli media identified the Palestinian suspects in the attack as Ghassan Abu Jamal and his cousin Uday from Jabal al-Mukabbir neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.

Palestinian sources also confirmed the identity of the two men.

Israeli TV station Channel 1 reported that the two were affiliated to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement that the attack was a response to the “ongoing Israeli crimes against the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” and urged Palestinians to carry out similar attacks.

“The operation in Jerusalem came in response to the execution of the martyr (Yousuf Hasan) al-Ramouni,” Abu Zuhri added, referring to the Monday hanging death of a Palestinian Jerusalemite bus driver whose family says was murdered by right-wing Israelis while police say the death was a suicide.

The Islamic Jihad movement also commented on Tuesday’s attack.

“The operation in Jerusalem was a natural reaction to the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation and its settlers,” a statement said.

The attacks come as tensions boiled in Jerusalem, amid various Israeli limitations and threats on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in addition to police killings of Palestinian suspects in deadly stabbing and vehicle attacks in recent weeks.

Netanyahu blames Abbas

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin said the attack was the result of “incitement” by President Mahmoud Abbas as well as Hamas.

“This is the direct result of incitement by Hamas and Abu Mazen (Abbas), incitement that the international community ignores in an irresponsible manner,” the premier said in a statement.

It said he would meet security chiefs during the afternoon.

Netanyahu has repeatedly accused Abbas of encouraging deadly attacks after the Palestinian leader called for people to take action following restrictions on entry for Palestinian worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews.

Jerusalem terror attack shatters brief remission

This morning’s terror attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem indicates that the latest measures of lifting age restrictions for Muslim prayers at the Temple Mount failed at preventing further escalation.

By Ben Caspit, trans Sandy Bloom, Al Monitor
November 18, 2014

The Kehillat Yaakov synagogue, in the center of Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighbourhood, was drenched in blood. Slain worshippers were scattered about in large pools of blood. Worshippers who had been wounded in various degrees of severity were also scattered on the floor, moaning in pain. Two Jerusalem paramedics arrived quickly at the scene even before the security forces and started to treat the wounded. But when they, too, were attacked by two Palestinian terrorists who shot at them, the paramedics fled. Shouts of “Allahu Akbar” were heard from inside the synagogue.

The attack lasted less than half an hour. By the end of it, the two terrorists, cousins from the East Jerusalem Jabel Mukaber village, lay dead. Surrounding them were also the bodies of four Jewish worshippers, including the head of a Jerusalem rabbinical college, Rabbi Moshe Twersky. An Israeli policeman was in critical condition, another policeman was moderately wounded and additional worshippers suffered very severe wounds. Three out of the four murdered Israelis were also American citizens. The fourth was born in Great Britain. The attack left 24 sons and daughters fatherless.

The sun returned to Jerusalem on Tuesday morning after two rainy days. The air was clear and cold, as is customary for Jerusalem fall weather. A thin layer of optimism covered Jerusalem. Violent events were in decline, even the tension surrounding the Temple Mount began to abate following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Amman on Nov. 13. It seemed as if the evil winds that blew throughout the entire region in recent months had started to die down. Yehuda Glick, one of the Jewish activists for freedom of worship on the Temple Mount, who had been shot by a Palestinian assassin two weeks earlier, on Oct. 29, had recuperated enough to give his first interview from the hospital, the evening before. And then, a little bit before 7 a.m., madness returned to wreak havoc.

Rassan, 27, and Uday Abu Jamal, 22, cousins from Jabel Mukaber, are the Palestinians who committed the massacre. Jabel Mukaber, in East Jerusalem, is a Palestinian neighbourhood. As opposed to residents of the West Bank, Jabel Mukaber’s residents enjoy the rights of Israeli citizens, including national insurance payments, the right to vote in Jerusalem’s municipal elections and blue (Israeli) identity cards. One of the two murderers recently worked in a grocery shop near the synagogue. “They knew exactly where they were headed,” I was told during the day by an Israeli security source in Jerusalem. “They went to a synagogue in a neighborhood in the western section of the city, far from the crowds and tumult, because they knew that there was no protection here and murder would be easier here. To our great sorrow, they were right.”

A day earlier, I had conversed with Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitz, in the Knesset building in Jerusalem. Aharonovitz told me about the efforts to lower the level of tension. After long weeks during which Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount was restricted to adults over the age of 50, the minister decided to gradually ease up on the restrictions. “I instructed the police to lower the cut-off age to 45,” the minister said, “and afterward, to remove the restriction completely. They were not happy about that in the Shin Bet, but it worked. The weekend was relatively quiet, the Mount was calm, and it seemed to me that we were getting back on track.”

But Aharonovitz’s prophecy was premature. The carnage in the synagogue turned the clock back several rounds in the whole region. To the Israelis, it evoked memories of the horrific attack on the Merkaz Harav rabbinical college on March 6, 2008, in which a Palestinian terrorist shot and murdered eight college students. Following the attack today, Netanyahu announced that Israel will “respond with a heavy hand” against the perpetrators and those responsible for it. But Netanyahu’s statement is purely symbolic and lacking any operational value. In cases like these, there is no enemy player for Israel to target. In cases like this, there is no leadership, no planning, no institutionalized and organized intifada, in short, no “terror infrastructure.” What we do see are localized and improvised attacks of raging Palestinians, brainwashed and full of hatred. The fuel that feeds this machine is the tension surrounding the Temple Mount, and raging Palestinian incitement. Under such circumstances, options for an appropriate response are limited.

“It is the Temple Mount that drives the wheels of these kinds of events,” said a high-level Israeli security official in Jerusalem. “The discourse on the Temple Mount has hijacked the public discourse and the overall atmosphere.” He said, “The Palestinian Authority also has a share in this incitement and President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to play a double game. With one hand he condemns terror and thwarts it in the West Bank territories; with the other hand he cries out to ‘defend the Temple Mount with every possible means,’ thus becoming part of the incitement.”

This argument is true. The Palestinian media does not pass up an opportunity to pour fuel on Jerusalem’s glowing embers. For example, on Nov. 16, a Palestinian bus driver — Hassan Yousef Ramoni — was found dead, hanging from a cord in the center of his bus in Jerusalem. The Palestinian media immediately called for revenge. According to the Palestinians, Ramoni was eliminated. But the investigation came to totally different conclusions, as did the forensic pathology results. No signs of violence were found, no evidence was found of a criminal event. Ramoni committed suicide, but the facts were not able to change the Palestinian narrative. Hamas celebrates incidents like this, that’s clear. The problem is that Abbas can’t allow himself to stay behind either. He, too, has to placate his electorate. Thus, the flames intensify, each time anew. It is altogether possible that the Abu Jamal cousins from Jabel Mukaber invaded the synagogue to avenge the death of an Arab bus driver — one who actually committed suicide. These are the chronicles of Jerusalem insanity foretold.

A short while after the attack, Shin Bet chief Yoarm Cohen arrived at a meeting of the Foreign and Security Affairs Knesset Committee, scheduled beforehand. Surprisingly, Cohen confirmed the spirit of what was published here last week, citing a security source who said that Abbas does not encourage terror, not openly and not under the table. These statements are perceived as contradicting what Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and the rest of the right-wing leadership are saying, accusing Abbas of the incitement that brought about the attack.

“We are no longer looking at random incidents by isolated individuals,” said a high-placed Jerusalem police source. “Because these cousins planned the massacre, got hold of a gun, collected intelligence information, knew exactly where they were going and at exactly what time,” said the source. “On the other hand, this act cannot be attributed to an institutionalized terror organization, to training or infrastructure. These are ‘atmosphere’ attacks, local attacks committed by local people influenced by the general atmosphere, by state of mind.”

Tuesday morning was a time of great misfortune in Jerusalem. Knesset members and ministers on the right of the political map in Tel Aviv immediately began to disseminate combative declarations. Netanyahu convened a security consultation. US Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that Abbas condemn the event and within minutes, the Palestinian Chairman Bureau released a weak reproof. Later during the day, Kerry personally called Abbas, demanding that he condemn the attack. In reaction, and following the weak reproof published by his office, Abbas spoke in his own voice, severely condemning the killing of the worshippers at the Jerusalem synagogue.

So, what do we do now? Unfortunately, there is not even a “diplomatic process” that we can try to renew. The mutual antipathy between Abbas and Netanyahu breaks records every day. Netanyahu smells elections in the air, his coalition is running aground, the Israeli public is turning right wing in the wake of the violence and there is no “responsible adult” on the scene. With regard to Abbas, it’s all the same, only a bit worse than before. A hot winter awaits us.