Greens Engage

Although I haven’t been there for a couple of decades, Israel is a fascinating place to visit, I feel a connection with it, and it’s on the small list of far-off places I’ll be taking in before I die. So at Bank yesterday, on the Central Line east-bound platform, this promotion from Israel’s Ministry of Tourism, which you can click on for a bigger version, caught my eye:

After I’d half-written this I found out that I was not the only person to notice that the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Golan had been brazenly subsumed into Israel and in fact I was slow off the blocks and Israel’s Ministry of Tourism had admitted to a “mistake” this time last week. Transport for London received 600 complaints, the Advertising Standards Authority, 342, and these were upheld. But after a week, the posters are still there.

The strange thing is, if you look really closely at the blown-up version of this bad picture I took (there were staff close-by and you know, it’s not permitted to snap on the London Underground system so I was shooting from the hip) only then will you see faint, skinny white-on-yellow lines demarcating some borders (not the Golan). I think the graphic designer probably understood what white-on-yellow means in the mustardy light of a London Underground platform, and was showing what the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, ThinkIsrael and co-sponsors want shown.

This kind of wishful-thinking, under-carpet-sweeping, white-washing denial is very stupid and very wrong. It’s not the first time somebody played with a map for political reasons, and it won’t be the last.

Press TV, the English language station funded by the Iranian government also pretends the state of Israel doesn’t exist, in keeping with ominous calls to wipe it off the map.

Hamas likes to present a world without Israel, in keeping with its hatred of Jews.

So does (did) the RESPECT coalition, in keeping with Iran and Hamas.

Update: with shameless hypocrisy, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which took the lead in objecting to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism map, also expunges Israel from its map.

I’m not sure these are equivalent, by the way.

The Israeli Ministry of Tourism responded about the poster:

“The map in the London Underground advertisement reflects a map that gives a tourist perspective to the region. It is not to be confused with a political map, but rather the advertisement highlights those areas within Israel which are particularly attractive to the U.K. market”

“Tourism is one of the major engines for economic growth in Israel, benefiting all its residents. 2008 was a record year for tourism in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority and it is hoped that the recent pilgrimage of Pope Benedict XVI to Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority will serve to encourage pilgrimages to the Holy Land and bring economic benefits to the entire region”

So Gaza’s going great guns with the tourism then? Pun intended. The only people I know of who are going in there are Hamas supporters, by boat. And how about when BMI flew passengers to the Mediterranean with maps omitting Israel – the Israeli Transport Minister was very assertive about his country’s right to recognition:

“Doing business with Israel has its advantages and disadvantages, but we will not agree to a situation where they hide the existence of Israel but want to do business with Israel”

Along the Central Line you can find other posters promoting Morocco and Dubai as tourist destinations so warm, golden and peaceful that you could hardly imagine that the grave human rights abuses in those countries could exist, or that, for example, Morocco could be involved in an occupation of its own (its promoters wisely steer clear of maps). After all, if you want prospective visitors to forget that they will be visiting an occupying country, you leave the map out.

Of course tourism ministries like to minimise their blemishes and big up their assets. Sadly it doesn’t go without saying that the Israeli Tourism Ministry and co-sponsors are far from the only or worst culprit. But they must face up to the fact that the three smaller regions on that poster, with their vanishingly faint but critically important demarcations, are occupied and settled by ugly force, and that diverting attention from this also involves a pretence that the ongoing oppression of the people who live there does not exist.

Update: Philip Meier reviews  Mark Monmonier’s book How To Lie With Maps.

Gershon Baskin  is a former parliamentary candidate for the Israel Green Movement / Meimad and co-director and founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI). He recently revealed that he had been involved in back-channel negotiations with Hamas before Kadima opted for an Israeli incursion into Gaza. He persistently puts up political alternatives to military activity.

In this Open Democracy piece he makes the case for the Arab peace initiative, for which he is a strong advocate, and explains the intensely security-minded world view which is preventing ordinary Israelis from engaging with it.

“Since the initiative has been widely overlooked by Israeli politicians it is certainly worthwhile pointing out its primary advantages and reasons why Israel should accept it quickly before it is no longer relevant. The Arab Peace Initiative was accepted unanimously by all of the member states of the Arab League in March 2002.  On the day that it was presented thirty people were killed and 140 injured – 20 seriously – in a suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya, in the midst of a Passover holiday seder with 250 guests. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. This attack was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back that led to the ‘Defensive Shield’ Israeli offensive leading in turn to the full re-occupation of the West Bank and the placing of Palestinian President Arafat under siege in the muqata’ in Ramallah. The Israeli mindset, at that time when suicide bombing were a daily event and under the leadership of Prime Minister Sharon was hardly in any mood to consider an Arab peace initiative.

But the initiative was once again unanimously ratified at the meeting of the League of Arab States in Khartoum in May 2006 and again in 2007 in Riyadh.”

This piece is good at articulating the circumstances but is as challenged by the task of “bridging this gap in consciousness” as the peace camp is in general. From the middle of the piece:

“This [Arab peace initiative] is almost too good to be true and had it been presented 20 years ago, it might have been received much more positively in Israel. But today, there is no peace camp in Israel anymore. Israeli society has lost its faith in peace.  Israelis no longer dream of getting into their car and having humus for lunch in Damascus. Israelis do not want to visit Cairo or Amman and do not particularly care if Jordanians or Egyptians come to visit Israel. If President Mubarak and King Abdallah II don’t want to come to Jerusalem, so be it.  Israelis no longer believe that giving up territory will bring peace.  The general Israeli interpretation of the ‘territory for peace’ scheme is that we withdrew from areas in the West Bank and created the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat which then attacked us with weapons that we provided for them. In Gaza, which Israel left entirely – withdrawing both settlements and military, we got qassam rockets in exchange.  Whether this reflects what really happened and why is not relevant. This is the way that the overwhelming majority of Israelis understand that reality.  So, in this context, the Arab Peace Initiative is not particularly attractive.”

How to go about building a sense of hope and commitment to pursuing a peaceful solution in a population which perceives existential danger? Put up a different narrative of opportunity and hope.

Read Gershon Baskin’s piece.

“Pursuing peace on every front” means something different to Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s new hard-line Foreign Minister, than it does to most people, including the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has pledged to pursue peace. Lieberman, on the other hand, has pledged to continue with Bush’s roadmap but has brushed aside Annapolis on the puny grounds that it wasn’t ratified.

Israel’s Movement For Quality Government launched a petition to disqualify him from government because of an ongoing police investigation – but an ongoing investigation was insufficient reason, said the State Prosecutors Office.

On OpenDemocracy, Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal (!) has just published a security briefing which points out:

“Hamas denied any difference between the two administrations or any of the other “governments of the Zionist entity…. because all of them have killed and slaughtered our people”.

This suggests there is no Israeli government Hamas would negotiate with. Maybe it’s just talk, but Hamas love death and state that they will ethnicly cleanse Palestine of Jews. Lieberman’s type thrives on fear and to a significant extent it is Hamas who are responsible for his power. There are many reasons to suppose that the presence of Lieberman is going to strengthen the pro-war elements of Palestinian politics.  Radicalisation cuts both ways.

A short assessment, focussing on Turkey, by veteran diplomat and negotiator Shlomo Ben Ami, of Israel’s historical strategic alliances since Ben Gurion’s pessimistic assessment of the ’60s that Israel would never be permitted by its immediate members to exist in peace.

The Jerusalem International Oud Festival, of which Jazz news wrote in 2008:

Like previous Festivals, the 2008 Jerusalem International Oud Festival serves as a meeting place between Middle Eastern and other cultures, emphasizing the similarities and differences between them. This year’s Festival travels to Egypt and Iraq, Turkey, Greece and Italy, and for the first time, to Rajasthan in northern India.

It even penetrates the depths of history-to the ancient music of several Jewish communities, from the traditions of Aleppo to those of Persia, nearly forgotten and here given new life on stage; to the days of the Golden Age of Spain and to the meeting between the Christian, Muslim and Jewish cultures, which contributed so extensively to large parts of modern culture; to the forgotten traditions of the troubadours of Anatolia; and to the mysticism of Sufism.

The 2008 Jerusalem International Oud Festival continues many of the important traditions of past Festivals: a series of concerts in tribute to the great artists and composers of the Arab world that this year includes a tribute to Abd al-Halim Hafez; and the songs of beloved artists from around the Arab world, from Fairuz and Um Kalthum to Abd al-Wahab and Nazim al-Ghazali. The opening concert of the Festival also continues a tradition: a tribute to Rabbi Yehuda Halevi sung and composed by Etti Ankri, part of a series of performances that will continue in the future, constituting a tribute by contemporary Israeli rock artists to the poets of the Golden Age.

A special emphasis at this year’s Festival will be placed on female artists. Together with a tribute to the three great female vocalists Layla Mourad, Asmahan and Um Kalthum, the Festival will present an assortment of fine contemporary performers: Etti Ankri, Charlette Shulamit Ottolenghi, Maureen Nehedar, Dalal Abu Amneh and Violet Salameh. There will also be a special evening marking the publication of an anthology dealing with the tremendous revolution underway in recent years, affecting the status, the roles and the public voice of women in the Arab world.”

Writing in Dissent, Todd Gitlin outlines reasons to consider Hamas dangerous. Like Alex Stein in the previous post he demands better arguments from those who stridently demands negotiations:

If we want to argue that Israel will have to deal with Hamas, cannot pulverize it at gunpoint, cannot “eliminate” it, and indeed heightens its prestige by piling up the bodies of civilians whether they are deliberately targeted or not—and I don’t know any alternative in the real world to dealing with them as a political force—we mustn’t think we can win the argument cheaply by pretending that it will be easy. It will not be easy. It’s only necessary.

I think he is absolutely right. The Israeli people – who will soon vote in a new government – deserve good arguments, arguments which are fat on vision, evidence and practicalities. Convincing arguments which have some respect for their fears. Let’s see them.

The Israel Green Movement is a vibrant new organisation which is launching as a political party in advance of the upcoming Israeli elections.

With British Green anti-Israel strategists’ arguments in mind (and consequently with apologies for this very singular British welcome to the political scene) I sent the following questions to Daniel Orenstein, a volunteer in the Israel Green Movement. He was good enough to find the time to answer them for Greens Engage.

1) Arabic is the joint official language of Israel. How come there is a link to an English version of your site, but not Arabic?

The Israel Green Movement is launching as a political party in time for the imminent elections, so they are extremely busy. I hope to grab an interview with them in the new year.

Meanwhile we get a mention on their (unofficial) blog where you can also see profiles of some of the candidates.

Further to David Hirsh on Caroline Lucas’ Any Questions response about Mumbai, Howard Jacobson has an interesting and apposite piece in today’s Independent and see also Petra Marquardt-Bigman on Jerusalem Post Blog.

From Jacobson’s piece:

“There is no hierarchy of the dead. The slaughtered are the slaughtered. This is not always what the slaughterers think. For those who kill in the name of religion their killing answers to deserts – a casual bullet in the face if you’re a poor Hindu, a more selective punishment if you’re American or British, a slow, luxuriating torture if you happen to be a Jew. In reward for which, their religion tells them, they themselves will be arranged according to degree in heaven: the more assiduous their killing in God’s name, the closer to His right hand they will sit. They are cruelly mistaken. No rewards await them in another world. Just as no restitution according to degree of suffering awaits their victims. In death there is no hierarchy.

So I mean nothing hierarchical when I talk about the Jewish victims of the Mumbai massacre. I sorrow no more for them than I do for the impoverished Bihari migrant workers waiting to catch trains home, innocent of any involvement in the mythical cause the gunmen had been brainwashed into believing they must kill for. I allude to the Jewish aspect of this tragedy, not because I am Jewish myself and know a little about the outreach programme in which the murdered Jews were involved – the provision of kosher food and a place of prayer for Jewish tourists in Mumbai – but because it bears on the blame game which, with the usual unseemly haste and ignorance, has already begun in this country.

…

“The Chabad Centre in Mumbai was a Jewish organisation, not an Israeli one. Its occupants were tortured and killed for being Jews, not for being complicit in the “strangulation” of Gaza, unless all Jews are held to be complicit in the strangulation of Gaza, in which case Caroline Lucas must be very careful where and in what language she lays blame. If she is right that the perception of a great wrong in Palestine motivates such murders as those in Mumbai, then it behoves her, as one who influences perception, to be scrupulous in her observations.

Scrupulous, I say, not discreet. I would not wish her, in caution’s name, to speak other than the truth. But truth is hard to find. I have visited Israel several times recently, making a documentary about Jesus, travelling in the company of Israelis of all parties and persuasions. The “Green” view is that there are good Israelis and bad Israelis, the good being those who oppose the occupation. Nothing could be more simplistic. I encountered extreme left-wingers who could not bear what their government was doing, but understood its sometime necessity; I met right-wingers who had no sympathy with settlers, and could not wait to live in peace with Palestinians; all wanted change, all were frightened, all loathed the naive, ahistoric sentimentalism that paints them as brutal invaders of a foreign land, and not as fellow combatants in a long and tragic struggle for safety and self-determination.”

Nearly 200 people died in the recent terror attacks in Mumbai. They included husband and wife Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holzberg, who ran a centre where observant Jews visiting Mumbai can pray and eat kosher food, along with Leibish Teitelbaum, Bentzion Chroman, Yocheved Orpaz and another unnamed hostage. There are reports that the Jewish victims were tortured particularly severely before they were murdered. During those attacks those of us who cared to see observed how, for the terrorists and some commentators, the distinction between Jew and Israeli disappeared completely. Perhaps the most obvious illustration of this was the murder of Leibish Teitelbaum, a rabbi and kosher supervisor of an orthodox persuasion of Judaism which doesn’t recognise the state of Israel in any way.

This is confusing. That’s because it’s confusing. For a way into understanding why, listen to Michael Walzer [MP3].

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions whether extremists could ever be defeated, Caroline Lucas passed lightly over the terrorists themselves to concentrate on the causes of terror. To the disappointment (slight or in my case deep) of an unknown number of Greens, and although it was known that the terrorists in Mumbai belonged to an organisation whose stated aim was to liberate and Islamise Kashmir and had been highly trained, probably in Pakistan, Caroline Lucas omitted these things from her reckoning about the causes of extremism. She mentioned only Israel and the circumstances of the Palestinians.

Going on past experience, it is going to be difficult to persuade Greens who don’t understand what was wrong with Caroline Lucas’ response. Caroline Lucas’ deep focus on Israel caused her to neglect the issue of Kashmir and Pakistan on Any Questions. It also caused her to ignore the fact that while the jihadis obscenely punished US citizens and UK citizens for the policies of the US and UK, when it came to punishing Israel the distinction between Israel and Jew completely disappeared. It is obvious, if elementary, that “you don’t bring peace through the barrel of a gun” (Howard Jacobson observes in The Independent that – I paraphrase – it’s more than a little funny when the barrel of a gun invigorates attempts to understand the terrorists, while ignoring the victims of terror and their responses). It is also elementary that there are underlying, poorly-understood political problems which must be solved as a requirement of peace. But the news that Jews who died in Mumbai were sought out, and not as Israelis but as Jews, rocked Jews around the world with insecurity and a sense of conspicuous Jewish life as a potential target. Just one example close to home – a Jewish friend of mine went to a wedding last weekend at which the guests were asked to consider themselves fortunate that they themselves had not been targeted as Jews.

To respond, then, to a question about defeating extremism by seeking in such a singular way to concentrate listeners’ attentions on the perceived iniquities of only Israel is not only wrong, it is oblivious. Two of the central objections of Greens Engage to the dominant narrative about Israel which emanates from the Green party is this singular treatment of Israel and the long  failure to even attempt to get to grips with the complex relationship between Israel and Jews, roughly half of whose global population is Israeli.

I think there is probably a place for Israel in an explanation of the radicalisation of these young men from Pakistan, and others who share their views.  Certainly Israel is used by jihadis – who view it as a Jewish and Western outpost penetrating into what they believe should be Muslim lands – as a pretext for terror. And there is certainly popular outrage stoked both by the occupation itself  (which is often outrageous), by the blockade of Gaza, and by the media coverage of these things.

But they are certainly not the main, let alone only cause, or even cause “in particular” of the Mumbai attacks worth mentioning on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions.

Separate but related, Eamonn McDonagh on Z-Word Blog comments on William Dalrymple in The Guardian. David T is horrified by Richard Silverstein.