Only Arabs are Terrorists

‘Dwayat’s actions were heinous and murderous, but was he a terrorist?’

By Kim Bullimore – The West Bank

On 2 July, Husam Taysir Dwayat, aged 30, took the bulldozer he was driving and rampaged through West Jerusalem’s Jaffa St, killing 3 people and injuring at least 66 others. Dwayat, a Palestinian Arab, who had worked for a number of years as a part of a construction team, held a Jerusalemite ID, which gave him Israeli residential rights but not Israeli citizenship. Dwayat’s murderous rampage eventually came to an end when he was shot and killed by an off duty Israeli soldier, who is now being hailed a hero. Dwayat’s actions were heinous and murderous, but was he a terrorist? Israel’s media quickly labeled him one and continues to do so, as have the majority of Israel’s political establishment including the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, the Defense Minister, Ehud Barak and the Vice Premier Haim Ramon.

In 2007, the US State Department annual Country Reports on Terrorism defined terrorism as being the “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub national groups or clandestine agents”[1]. For the past 6 years, this is the definition that has been consistently used by the US State Department, with the key point being that “terrorism” is politically motivate, thus distinguishing it from murder or other aggressive acts.

According to the Israeli police, however, Dwayat had no record of being involved in political activity and that the announcements by a number of previously unknown political groups claiming that Dwayat was a member were false [2]. According to the Israeli police, his family, neighbours and his Jewish ex-girlfriend, however, Dwayat did have a criminal record, including charges and arrests for drug felonies, theft and physical assault.

Dwayat’s Jewish girlfriend of six and half years, with whom he had a child, informed the Israeli media that far from hating Jews, he had never shown any ill will to Jews and had no political affiliations. In an interview with Haaretz TV online, Dwayat’s ex-girlfriend said that he “didn’t have any problems with Jews”, going on to say “I don’t think the attack had any nationalist motivations” [3]

So if Dwayat’s murderous act was not politically motivated, if he was not acting as part of a “sub national groups or clandestine agents”, why is he being labeled by the Israeli media, politicians and other state officials “a terrorist”? Why if he acted alone, in what Israeli security forces and police believe to be an unpremeditated act, is Dwayat being marked as a terrorist?

The answer is, of course, simple. Dwayat was a Palestinian Arab, so quid pro quo, he must be a terrorist. This fact and this fact alone is the reason for him being labeled a terrorist.

The anti-Arab racism in this labeling of Dwayat is clearly evident when you ask two simple questions:

(a) If the person who had carried out the bulldozer attack had been identified as Jewish would he have been automatically deemed a terrorist? The answer is almost certainly no.

(b) If the person had been a non-Jewish but also non-Arab, would he have been labeled automatically a terrorist. Again, the likely answer again would have been no.

But Dwayat was a Palestinian Arab, and a Muslim to boot. So of course, he must be a terrorist.

In the days after the murderous act, all three Israeli political leaders, raised the flags of demagoguery and popularism, attempting to out do each other calling for the collective punishment of not only Dwayat’s family but also all the Palestinian people.

On Friday, July 4, Barak ordered the Israeli security forces to issue injunctions calling for the demolition of not only Dwayat’s family home but also the family home of Alaa Abu Dhaim who carried out the attack which killed 8 students studying at Mercaz Haray Yeshiva which conducted a joint religious and military training program.

The day before, on July 3, Olmert had reiterated his call to demolish Dwayat’s family home in East Jerusalem saying “This attack which came from within Israel, into Israel. It creates a string of scenarios we never thought we would have to deal with in the past. We have invested thousands in the construction of the security fence. While it has been effective, it turns out that a fence cannot give us the answer to the problem of terror which comes from our side” [4].

Olmert went on to say that Dwayat’s family should also be stripped of any social security benefits, saying “I think we need to be tougher in some of the means we use against perpetrators of terror… If we have to destroy houses, then we must do so, if we have to stop their social benefits then we must do so. There cannot be a case where they massacre us and at the same time they get all the privileges that our society provides”

However, far from destroying the family homes of all apparent terrorists with Israeli citizenship or residency and stripping their families of Israeli social security benefits, such punitive actions are only being directed at one ethnic group – Palestinian Arabs - revealing once again both the strident anti-Arab racism of the Israeli Zionist state and its apartheid nature.

This is starkly revealed when considering the Israeli state reaction to the terrorist attack carried out three years earlier, by Eden Natan-Zada, a 19 year old Jewish soldier.

On August 4, 2005, Natan-Zada, carried out a pre-mediated terrorist attack in Shfaram in Northern Israel. The attack resulted in the murder of 4 Israeli citizens and the wounding of at least 10 others before the terrorist was killed.

Natan-Zada, who was politically opposed to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan from Gaza, was an army deserter who had sought sanctuary in the illegal Israeli settlement of Tappauch in the Occupied West Bank. Natan-Zada was a member of the illegal Israeli settler group, Kach, who are followers of the anti-Arab racist, Rabbi Meir Kahane [5]. Kach, along with Kahane Chai founded by Kahane’s son, are the only two Jewish groups listed as terrorist organisations by both the US and Israeli governments. In Israel, Kach and Kahane Chai were outlawed in 1994 after another of Kach’s members, Baruch Goldstein, massacred 29 Palestinian men, women and children at prayer in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Occupied Hebron.

While at the time Ariel Sharon acknowledge Natan-Zada’s act as one of terrorism, there was never any call by Sharon or Olmert or Barak (who were elected politicians at the time) or any other Israeli politician for the demolition of Natan-Zada’s family home or for his family to be stripped of any of their social security benefits, despite the young soldier’s pre-mediated and politically motivated massacre of four Israeli citizens.

One of the reasons for this can be found in the simple fact that the Israelis killed by Natan-Zada were not (European) Jews but Palestinian Arabs who held Israeli citizenship. A little over three weeks after Sharon publicly stated that Natan-Zada was a terrorist, an Israeli inter-ministerial committee in the Department of defense declared that Natan-Zada’s murderous attack was not “terrorist” because he was a serving soldier (this was despite the fact that he was an army deserter)[6]. As a result, those killed by Natan-Zada were denied not only recognition of being victims of terrorism but also their families were denied the right to ongoing state compensation, which the families of Israeli Jews killed in terror attacks receive.

Nazia Hayek, the brother of one of the four people killed by Natan-Zada said at the time that financial compensation was not their main interest as it would not bring back his brother. Instead, according to Hayek, the ruling which stated that Natan-Zada’s act was “neither terror or an act of hostility” sent a message to all extremists that “it was permissible to kill Arabs and [it] does not count as terror”[7]

Like Baruch Goldstein, Natan-Zada far from being reviled as the terrorist he clearly was, instead like Goldstein before him, he was cannonised by the Israeli right wing. While Israeli police moved quickly to remove the mourning tent erect for Dwayat by his family in the wake of the Jerusalem bulldozer attack, in the wake of Natan Zada’s murderous attack it was reported that the illegal settlement of Tappauch built a library in his honour. Similarly, Goldstein was also honoured with celebrations in his names and shrines was built in his honour (which took the Israeli police more than 6 years to remove).

In addition, unlike the solider who shot and killed Dwayat, the Palestinian Arab Israelis who neutralised Natan-Zada, killing him in order to prevent him from killing more innocent people, were not hailed heroes by the Israeli state. Instead, they have been persecuted and hounded.

In June 2008, the Israeli Haifa District Prosecution subpoenaed 12 Shfraram residents to attend a pre-trailing hearing about the 2005 killing of Natan-Zada [8]. Previously in 2006, six Palestinians with Israeli citizenship had also been arrested for the murder of Natan-Zada and held under house arrest. It was only with threats of mass rioting by the residents of Shfraram and surrounding villages and towns that they were they eventually released.

Over the past decade, numerous studies conducted by Israeli organisations have revealed increasing levels of discrimination and racism against so-called Israeli Arabs by both the Israeli state and by Jewish Israeli citizens.

In 2007, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) released a report which revealed that the incidents of anti-Arab racist attacks had increased by 26% and that the expression of anti-Arab views had doubled in the last couple of years. The poll conducted by ACRI revealed that 50% of Jewish Israelis did not believe Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel should have equal rights and that the Israeli government should encourage “emigration” of Palestinian Arabs from Israel. According to the poll, almost 75% of Jewish Israeli youth also believed that Palestinians and Arabs were less intelligent and less clean than Jews [9]. ACRI noted that media played a significant role in “intensifying the Arab image as negative and terrorising”. At the time of the report, Arab Knesset member, Mohammed Barakeh, from Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) said the poll was “the natural outcome” of the anti-Arab policies held by successive Israeli governments

A similar poll conducted by Geocartography Institute.in March of 2007, revealed that 75% of the 500 Jewish men and women who participated in the poll would not live in the same building as an Arab, while 60% would not allow an Arab into their home and 50% believed marrying an Arab was “national treason” [10].

The automatic declaration of Dwayat as a terrorist by Olmert, Barak and the Israeli media, simply because he was a Palestinian Arab rather then because he carried out a politically motivated act reveals that the “us” that Olmert spoke about on July 3 does not include the Palestinian Arab citizens or residents of Israel. This along with Olmert and Barak’s immediate call to conduct punitive collective punishment (which is illegal under international law) against Dwayat’s family reveals starkly the apartheid nature of the Israeli state.

If Palestinian Arabs were part of Olmert’s Israeli “us” and Israel was not engaging in widespread apartheid policies, then Dwayat would not have been automatically labeled a terrorist and the punitive policy against his family would also not been enacted, just as such punitive punishment was never enacted against the Jewish family of Eden Natan-Zada.

It seems in Israel, however, only Palestinian Arabs can be terrorists in the eyes of the Israeli Zionist state and many of its Jewish citizens.

-Kim Bullimore is currently living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where she is a human rights volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (www.iwps.info). She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit her blog: www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com.

Notes

[1] 2007 Country Reports on Terrorism, US State Department
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2007/103715.htm

[2] Haaretz service (2 July, 2008) Barak: Israel must respond immediately to Jerusalem attack, Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998330.html

[3] and [4] Haaretz, Barak orders demolition of Jerusalem, yeshiva terrorist’s homes, 4 July, 2008, Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998668.html

[5] Cook,J., (14 June, 2006) For Arabs only: Israeli law and order http://www.counterpunch.org/cook06142006.html

[6] and [7] Khoury, J., Eldar A., and Sinai, R., (30 August, 2005) MK submits bill to include Jewish attacks under terror law, Haaretz, http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=7659

[8] Raved, A., (15 July, 2008)  Haifa prosecution considering new indictments in the death of Eden Natan Zada, YNet http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3555829,00.html

[9] Israeli anti-Arab racism ‘rises’ (10 December, 2007, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7136068.stm
and
Zino,A., (8 December, 2007) Racism in Israel on the rise, YNET
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3480345,00.html

[10]Nahmais, R., (27 March 2007) Marriage to an Arab is national treason.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3381978,00.html

tarboush tip to Mazinx

Forbidden Love

Kiryat Gat tells its school girls: No romancing with Bedouin

By Haaretz Staff and Channel 10 
A new program launched in Kiryat Gat schools has the expressed purpose of preventing Jewish girls from becoming romantically involved with Israeli Bedouin.

The program enjoys the support of the municipality and the police, and is headed by Kiryat Gat’s welfare representative, who goes to schools to warn girls of the “exploitative Arabs.”

The program uses a video entitled “Sleeping with the Enemy,” which features a local police officer and a woman from the Anti-Assimilation Department, a wing of the religious organization Yad L’ahim, which works to prevent Jewish girls from dating Muslim men

Israel, a land of intolerance

MSNBC

Safety pins and screws are still lodged in 15-year-old Ami Ortiz’s body three months after he opened a booby-trapped gift basket sent to his family. The explosion severed two toes, damaged his hearing and harmed a promising basketball career.

Police say they are still searching for the assailants. But to the Ortiz family the motive of the attackers is clear: The Ortizes are Jews who believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

Israel’s tiny community of Messianic Jews, a mixed group of 10,000 people who include the California-based Jews for Jesus, complains of threats, harassment and police indifference.

The March 20 bombing was the worst incident so far. In October, a mysterious fire damaged a Jerusalem church used by Messianic Jews, and last month ultra-Orthodox Jews torched a stack of Christian holy books distributed by missionaries.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry and two chief rabbis were quick to condemn the burning, but the Ortiz family says vigorous police action is needed.

“I believe that it will happen again, if not to us, then to other Messianic believers,” said Ami’s mother, Leah Ortiz, a 54-year-old native of South Orange, N.J.

Proselytizing is strongly discouraged in Israel, a state that was established for a people that suffered centuries of persecution for not accepting Jesus and has little tolerance for missionary work.

Mormons refrain from missions
At the same time, Israel has warm relations with U.S. evangelical groups, which strongly support its cause, but these generally refrain from proselytizing inside Israel. Even the Mormon church, which has mission work at its core worldwide, agreed when it opened a campus in Jerusalem to refrain from missionary activity.

“Historically the core of Christianity … was ‘convert or die,’ so it was seen and is still seen as an assault on Jewish existence itself,” said Rabbi David Rosen, who oversees interfaith affairs for the American Jewish Committee. “When you are called to join another religion, you are being called on to betray your people.”

Messianic Jews consider themselves Jewish, observing the holy days and reciting many of the same prayers. The Ortiz family lights candles on the Jewish Sabbath, shuns pork and eats matzoth on Passover.

Ami Ortiz, interviewed at the Tel Aviv hospital where he is being treated, comes across as no different from any Jewish Israeli his age. He’s a sabra, or native-born Israeli, who speaks English with a Hebrew accent, has an older brother in an elite Israeli army unit and was hoping to join the youth squad of Maccabi Tel Aviv, a league-topping basketball team.

But his religion also holds that one can embrace Jesus — Ami calls him by his Hebrew name, Yeshua — as the Messiah and remain Jewish. Orthodox Jews, on the other hand, believe that the Messiah has yet to come, that he will do so only when he chooses, and that any attempt to pre-empt his coming is a grievous sin.

Rabbi Sholom Dov Lifschitz, head of the ultra-Orthodox Yad Leahim organization that campaigns against missionary activity in Israel, says Messianic Jews give him “great pain.”

“They are provoking … it’s a miracle that worse things don’t happen,” he said.

Messianic activists appear to have had some success among couples with one non-Jewish spouse, as well as immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union who have loose ties to Judaism.

Did official encourage book-burning?
Or Yehuda, a town in central Israel with many immigrants as well as ultra-Orthodox Jews including a deputy mayor, Uri Aharon, was the scene of the May 15 book-burning.

Ami Dahan, a local police official, says hundreds of Christian religious books were burned on May 15 in an empty lot in town. He said Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon, has been questioned on suspicion that he instructed youths to collect the books from homes where they had been distributed and told them to burn them.

Aharon denies ordering the burning. He says the books were collected from a neighborhood of mostly Ethiopian immigrants who are easily persuaded by missionaries.

“There are three missionaries who live and work in the town, and every Saturday they take people to worship and try to brainwash them,” Aharon said.

Many Messianic Jews say they recognize the sensitivities involved and do not distribute religious material or conduct high-profile campaigns. But Aharon noted a recent “Jews for Jesus” campaign with signs on buses that equated two similar Hebrew words — “Jesus” and “salvation.” Public outrage quickly forced the bus company to remove the signs.

 

Lawyer Dan Yakir of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel says the law allows missionaries to preach provided they don’t offer gifts or money or go after minors.

“It is their right according to freedom of religion to maintain their religious lifestyle and disseminate their beliefs, including through literature,” he said.

But the obstacles are evident, raised not just from religious activists but by the state.

Calev Myers, a lawyer who represents Messianic Jews, said he has fought 200 legal cases in the past two years. Most involve authorities’ attempts to close down houses of worship, revoke the citizenship of believers or refuse to register their children as Israelis. In one case, Israel has accused a German religion student of missionary activity and has tried — so far unsuccessfully — to deport her.

In incidents of violence, police are reluctant to press charges, Myers said.

The book-burning caused shock among U.S. evangelicals.

Dave Parsons, spokesman of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, which represents evangelical Christian communities, said the test would be how vigorously authorities pursued the case.

“We believe there is a link to a series of incidents here in the land that involve harassment, intimidation and physical violence,” he said.

Family immigrated in 1985
The Ortiz family moved from the United States to Israel in 1985, qualifying as immigrants under Israel’s Law of Return because Leah, the mother, is Jewish. In 1989 they moved into Ariel, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, and established a small Messianic group which now numbers 60, most of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union, according to David Ortiz, the pastor and Ami’s father.

He said that he built the community through conversations with friends and neighbors, but did not actually go door-to-door distributing religious material to strangers in the traditional sense of missionary work. David Ortiz says he has also proselytized in the Palestinian areas — prompting Islamic leaders there to warn against contact with him. Ortiz said he had “no problem” if Messianic Jews discuss their religious views with others and persuade them to believe in Jesus.

When the family began holding study sessions, a rabbi warned Ortiz not to speak about Jesus outside the home.

In 2005, fliers were distributed in Ariel warning that there were believers of Jesus in the community. One day, two men wearing the black skullcaps of Orthodox Jews knocked on the door and photographed Ortiz when he answered. Recently the photo turned up on a flier with the family’s address.

When the basket was left at the door Ami wasn’t surprised, since it was Purim, a holiday when Jews exchange gifts.

“I opened it up and I heard it and then I was on the floor and I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t see anything,” the lanky boy recalls.

Ami was in critical condition, with severe gashes in his legs and feet and one that just missed his jugular vein. His tryout for the Maccabi team was canceled.

Palestinians suspected at first
His family initially suspected Palestinians; Ariel is in the heart of the West Bank and surrounded by Palestinian towns and villages and, like most Jewish settlements, has been the target of Palestinian attacks. But police immediately told him the bomb was more sophisticated than those made by Palestinians since it contained plastic explosives.

“Nobody ever suspected that a Jewish group would do such a thing, that they would put a bomb in somebody else’s house,” David Ortiz said.

Police have since told the family that Palestinians were not behind the bombing. The family has footage from a security camera of a man delivering the package, according to a person close to the family who spoke on condition of anonymity because police say disclosing details could harm the investigation.

Police spokesman Danny Poleg would not discuss the case, saying only that no arrests have been made.

Meanwhile, the Messianic Jewish believers are taking no chances. These days they worship under the protection of an armed guard.

 

Settlers in the West Bank don’t honor truces

Israeli security officials said Friday that students from a far-right Jewish theological seminary at a West Bank settlement recently built a crude rocket and fired it at a nearby Palestinian village, although it failed to reach its target.

The officials said troops in the area heard a loud explosion and initially thought Palestinians were attacking the settlement of Yitzhar, where the seminary is situated. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident, which occurred about two weeks ago, is still being investigated by police and agents of the Shin Bet security agency.

Police spokesman Danny Poleg said detectives searched the settlement Thursday and questioned residents but made no arrests and found no explosives. He would not comment further.

The Israeli daily Maariv, which reported the incident Friday, said police believe the perpetrator probably found rocket-making instructions on the Intern

Yitzhar is a known hotbed of ultranationalist Israelis who believe that the West Bank is part of the biblical land of Israel promised to the Jewish people by God. They oppose any concessions to the Palestinians.

An instructor at the seminary was arrested in 2006 on suspicion of inciting violence against Arabs.

Yitzhar residents have repeatedly fought farmers from the Palestinian villages that surround their hilltop settlement and have clashed with police sent to supervise demolition of unlicensed buildings in the area.

In 2006, the Israeli army withdrew troops stationed at Yitzhar for its protection, citing repeated settler attacks on soldiers and destruction of military equipment.

In other news from Yitzhar

LIVELIHOOD GOES UP IN SMOKE

Palestinian olive trees burn after being set ablaze by Israeli settlers from the Yitzhar settlement on Thursday June 19 , in the West Bank village of Burin (AFP/Getty Images)

The Neo-Nazi Israeli Thugs(settlers)

Israeli settlers from the Yitzhar settlement watch after a Palestinian olive tree field was set ablaze by a group of Jewish settlers on June 19, 2008 in the West Bank village of Burin.(AFP)

A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli settlers (unseen) from the nearby Yitzhar Jewish settlement try to set ablaze her olive tree field on June 19, 2008 in the West Bank village of Burin.(AFP)

Locals celebrate genocide

This is a photo from the Ithaca Festival. Mind you this is a celebration of Ithaca, a time for people to get together and have fun, not a time to celebrate genocide.

I love free speech, I enjoy my freedoms. People though, need to exhibit some form of social responsibility. The Turkish members of our community do not celebrate the anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Im quite sure we don’t have any German nationals celebrating the holocaust. So why is it acceptable to celebrate somethings that has caused more heartache and death than it has good?

Perhaps a better questions is such: Do Americans celebrate their foundation when they become expatriats? How often do we see American flags and “I love America” parades in Japan? Brazil? Spain? Nigeria? (i hit the main continents) India? Do we celebrate our creation on Indian (Native American) reservations? Would be it socially acceptable for me to walk over to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) land and start setting off fireworks and grilling hotdogs?

The blind patriotism of some parts of society is sickening. The inability to see the faults in ones government is irresponsible and ignorant. The Canadians have apologized to their native population for its transgressions, the Australians have apologized for the stolen generations. Would it not be fitting and in the spirit of democracy and human rights for America and Israel to admit their genocidal and racist pasts? Be honest with yourselves, do you really think that the Native American population accounts for 1.2% out of some fault of their own?

60 years ago “Israel was over 80% Arab, now its 20%. Explain how this occurs without:

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

The simple answer is: It doesn’t. Natives were massacred, they were forcefully moved from their homes and children were taken away to become “more civilized” in America, Canada and Australia. Only two have acknowledged this only they have apologized. In Israel 700,000 people were forced from their homes, countless others killed so the “civilized” could make it the newest colonial wing.

According to the United Nations denial is the seventh stage of completing a genocide.

Queen Rania seperating fact from fiction

They pay taxes but see no services

Citizens of Israel who live in the recently blocked off parts of Jerusalem are being denied basic services. It also happens that these citizens are Arab.

“We are residents of Jerusalem. We pay all the taxes, but since they surrounded us with a fence, no one is willing to come here any more. There are 40,000 people living here, and they do not receive any services - not from the city and not from the Palestinian Authority. When a house here caught fire a few days ago, we called the East Jerusalem fire department but they told us that for security reasons they cannot enter the neighborhood. If municipal employees are not willing to come the city must hire a private contractor to do the work, but no one is doing even that,”

Taxation without representation, or in this case: basic governmental services. How is it this democracy, how is this allowed. Well, Israelis responded to an article in Haaretz by calling the residents terrorists and claiming that it was the fault of the residents. This is the racism that permeates Israeli culture.

Israeli lawmakers show their true colors

The Basic Law on the Knesset is meant to be a law that is not touched, changed or suited to the spirit of the moment or the changing desires of Knesset members. It is the Basic Law that ensures the fundamental right to vote and to be elected.

But restraint is not a hallmark of the members of the present House, which is not overflowing with real parliamentarians. It is no surprise that MKs Zevulun Orlev and Esterina Tartman are the ones whose names are on this proposed amendment.

The bill, which is to be presented to the legislature for its second and third readings in the coming days, would amend the Basic Law on the Knesset so that a person who has visited an enemy country would not be able to stand for election to the Knesset. Such a visit would be considered “supporting the armed struggle against the State of Israel.” The prohibition would be retroactive for seven years, starting from when the amendment is passed. The law refers to all citizens of Israel, but is intended to prevent Arab citizens from visiting Arab countries. The prohibition is a sweeping one; it does not matter what the purpose of the visit has been.

It may be assumed that the bill reflects a longing for some of the Arab Knesset members of the old school, the kind who assimilated obediently into the large parties and tried to quietly promote the interests of their sector. But the Arab sector, which has been suffering for years from inequality, has developed another type of MK, who views the Arab world as an audience for its message. They try to promote the interests of Arab Israelis through their diasporas, just as Israeli Jews promote their interests in the Jewish Diaspora. The Arab MKs (not all of them) have entered enemy countries using their essential parliamentary immunity, because they see these trips as part of their job.

Clearly, the proposed change in the law does not add to the security of the country, but only to the public relations efforts of the lawmakers who initiated it. These trips have for some reason become like a red flag to other Knesset members who have never made a special effort at coexistence or breaking down the barriers of hatred between Israel and Arabs.

It is especially disturbing that the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, which should be acting to block harmful, hyperactive legislation, found it proper to vote for the bill. Accordingly, and unfortunately, it will probably pass this week.

Clause 7 of the Basic Law on the Knesset already states that an individual who denies the existence of Israel as a Jewish and a democratic state, incites to racism, or supports the armed struggle of enemy countries or a terror organization against the State of Israel, cannot stand for election to the Knesset. Another unnecessary, insulting and damaging limitation should not be added.

It is doubtful that the visit of a Syrian legislator to Israel would be received here as an act of support for war rather than as a breakthrough to peace. Visits of MKs to countries with which Israel has no diplomatic relations, like visits to the Soviet Union in the 1950s, or by U.S. congressmen to Vietnam during the war between those two countries, are part and parcel of the work of elected public officials.

Israeli Kills Arabs, Arabs put on trial.

Eden Natan-Zada, 19, a Jewish extremist who was AWOL from the Israel Defense Forces, opened fire on Israeli Arabs in a bus in the Galilee town of Shfaram in August 2005, killing four. He was subsequently lynched by an Arab Israeli mob.The incident occured several days prior to Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip. 

12 survivors were instructed yesterday to appear before the Haifa District Court on July 13, where they will be indicted for attempted murder. Israeli’s believe that the court and prosecutor are going easy and should be trying the 12 Israeli Arabs for murder.  Most of those suspected of involvement in the attack against Natan-Zada will be charged with aggravated assault

A senior source in the State Prosecutor’s Office said yesterday that the case involves 600 testimonies from eye witnesses, and that some 60 suspects were questioned under caution. Moreover, the source said that that 12 suspects were very carefully identified as a result of the evidence.

Natan-Zada, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Tapuah and affiliated with members of the extreme right and outlawed Kach movement, had been disarmed by civilians and held on the bus.

The source at the State Prosecutor’s Office said that notwithstanding the gravity of Natan-Zada’s actions, the prosecution believes the killing was a serious violation of the rule of law.

Man kills civilians, civilians stop larger massacre, civilians become criminals. Does this logic only apply if the civilians are Arab Israelis? Let us be serious for a moment. If a man were to break into your home and kill your children and you kill this criminal before he gets to your wife are you guilty? Should you be put on trial?

A scathing condemnation of the prosecution’s decision was issued by Faiza Turki, whose daughters Dina and Hazar were killed in the shooting attack. She said that the Israeli government and the IDF should be the ones to stand trial for allowing Natan-Zada to move around freely

Hadash chairman MK Mohammed Barakeh, slammed the court’s decision to charge the suspects with any sort of crime. “The whole world knows that the citizens of Shfaram were the victims and targets of an abominable massacre,” Barakeh said. “I emphasize the need to indict those same military officials that knew of the danger of the terrorist as well those who allowed him a warm home as a army deserter.”

Balad MK Jamal Zekhelaka accused the government of blaming Israeli Arabs for their own tragedy.” Again they are blaming the victim… the police did not invest the effort to investigate what help that criminal Natan-Zada received, and is harassing those who protected themselves and prevented mass murder. If they do try these people, we won’t let it happen quietly. There will be a huge protest.”

And now a word from the Israeli public:

Eden Natan-Zada reacted to understandable frustration with the continuing Arab occupation of the Jewish homeland

What we need is to train our terrorists to have better aim

These pigs would never get convicted for murder, so the best that can be done is to put them on trial

Imprison these Arab murderers!!!

Of course the arabs would never think of a trial…to civil for them…they head right for the knife and if that is not available a rope will do. Savages behave like that….the murders were terrible and he should have been tried….the response was that of people acting like animals in the jungle…but then what can you expect.That is the difference between civility and barbarism

Those Arab lynchers are murderers plain and simple and deserve the death penalty. Shame on *newspaper name* for calling this poor Israeli a terrorist when he was a hero

 

 I guess its time for this savage to get back to his barbaric work. How uncivilized of me.

Kidnapping Couples : Israels attempt at forced segregation

The Israeli army invaded the village of Hussan located near Bethlehem city in the southern par