Road 443: The Facade of Human Rights

by

Gershom Gorenberg

Road 443 from Modi’in to Jerusalem through the West Bank has supposedly reopened today for use of the Palestinians who live along it. My new piece in The American Prospect explains what has actually happened.

Arriving home in Israel after a semester teaching in New York, I got in a taxi at Ben-Gurion Airport and asked the cabbie to drive me to Jerusalem. “Take the main road, not Route 443,” I said. Route 443 runs through the West Bank. When it was transformed from a country road to a highway in the 1980s, Palestinian land was expropriated under the legal fiction that the project’s main purpose was to serve Palestinian residents of the area. Since 2002, however, the Israeli army has barred Palestinians from using it. I take 443 only when I must to cover a story.

“I don’t like 443 either,” the cabbie said. ” It’s dangerous now that the Supreme Court made them let Arabs use it. ” He pronounced “Supreme Court” like a curse. Such antipathy is common among Israeli right-wingers, who regard the Court as a club of bleeding hearts. I prefer a calm driver, especially on a road into the mountains, so I didn’t argue politics with him.

Nor did I point out his factual errors: The army hadn’t yet opened the road to Palestinians. That’s planned for today. Even then, the military will allow so little access to the villagers living near the road that they will have scant reason to use it. All this is in keeping with the Supreme Court’s ruling last year, which affirmed Palestinian rights under international law — and then rendered that affirmation nearly meaningless by allowing the military a free hand in setting new “security arrangements” for the highway.

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How To Jump Off A Cliff — “Necessary Stories” column from The Jerusalem Report

by

Haim Watzman

illustration by Avi Katz
I trail behind my son on the steep descent into the Amiam canyon in the central Golan. He’s in sandals and I’m in hiking boots, but he skips down like a mountain goat as I lumber like the cows that observe us inscrutably from the opposite slope. While I count myself a good hiker, age and intensive use have taken their toll on my joints; my knees work on manual shift rather than automatic, and my right ankle is stiff and unyielding. But I take the positive view—instead of being frustrated that I can’t keep up with my nineteen-year old progeny on his precipitous plunge toward the spring that is our goal, I commend myself for just coming along.

And middle age has its advantages. Going slowly, planning out each step, I take in more. The rains have ended, the squills are desiccated. I wonder whether the whorled stumps that dot our path are the bulbs of these autumn flowers, the remains of trampled or eaten plants. I ponder the Naftali highlands over the Hula Valley on the western horizon and point out the peak of Mt. Meron to my companion, who has gone this way dozens of times and never parsed the view.

Sixty years ago, I tell my son, the valley below was a huge swamp. Reeds and bulrushes grew in clumps an expanse just a couple meters deep, fed by the Jordan and its tributaries. Otters played and fat fish and frogs of breeds that lived nowhere else plied its gentle currents. And huge swarms of mosquitoes hovered over the shallows, in hunt of warm blood. One of the mosquito tribes was the dreaded anopheles, which injected virulent plasmodia into the bodies of the emaciated marsh Arabs, the only humans who dared live on the shores of the lake at the mire’s southern end. That is, until the Zionists came to the valley and built Yesod HaMa’ala and Rosh Pina, there to shiver and sweat with malaria.

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Appraising God: Reading Psalm 146

by

Haim Watzman

A preview of a conversation I’ll be leading at an all-night Shavu’ot study session this evening—happy holiday to all.

Ostensibly simple, theologically maddening, Psalm 146 is one of my favorite biblical poems—precisely, perhaps, because its ostensible simplicity is so maddening. And since it gets recited each day in the morning service, where it appears just after “Ashrei” and as the beginning of the hymns of praise that precede the prayer service proper, it’s hard to avoid.

The problem at the heart of this poem, and its daily recitation, is that it isn’t true. But before I get to that, let’s look at the structure.

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OK, Some Truths About Jerualem (for Elie Wiesel and others)

by

Gershom Gorenberg

My latest piece for the American Prospect:

Lest it be said that I never agree with anything that Benjamin Netanyahu says, I actually concur with one clause — not a whole sentence — in the speech he gave Tuesday evening. “The struggle for Jerusalem is a struggle for the truth,” the prime minister of my country said.

The rest of his speech consisted of the usual quarter-truths and myths that make up most statements about “eternally united” Jerusalem — by Netanyahu himself, by other Israeli officials, and by often-naive American supporters. Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel’s open letter, published as a full-page ad last month in The New York Times and other U.S. papers, is a good example of the art form.

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Bibiology 101: For Each Zig, There is a Zag

by

Gershom Gorenberg

From the American Prospect, how to understand what Bibi says, and what the State Department doesn’t say:

A worldly colleague of mine once complained that with the demise of the Soviet-era Pravda, the intellectual joy went out of newspaper reading — the satisfaction of examining photos for who wasn’t on the dais, of studying statements for what wasn’t said, in order to reason out the real news. He was too quick to mourn. Reading the text of the State Department’s daily press briefing provides nearly the same pleasure and even sheds some light on what Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is up to.

At [two recent] sessions, Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley emphatically refused to comment on reports that Netanyahu has imposed a de facto freeze on building in annexed East Jerusalem. “I’ll refer to the Israeli government to enunciate its own policy,” Crowley said. Of course, the policy that Netanyahu has publicly enunciated is that Israel will continue to build anywhere it wants in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat denies there’s a freeze. Crowley wouldn’t comment on that either. As the reporter grilling him pointed out, the Obama administration commented clearly and loudly in March when Israeli officials approved new construction of 1,600 new units in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood in annexed East Jerusalem.

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The Whistleblower’s Story and the Spiegel Report

by

Gershom Gorenberg

Even if cyberspace has no “here” or “there,” I found it difficult to blog at SouthJerusalem when I was physically far from Jerusalem. Now I’m catching up – first by posting what I’ve written for the American Prospect.

Here’s my piece on the Anat Kam controversy. Please pay attention to an important detail: The documents that Kam leaked included the Spiegel Report, the army data base detailing the land theft and lawbreaking in the building of settlements. Despite freedom-of-information requests, the army had refused to release this data. The information itself proves that there’s no security justification for keeping it secret.The information was simply a political embarrassment.

Now that the Tel Aviv District Court has lifted its gag order on the Anat Kam affair, Israelis don’t need foreign news sites to learn about the ex-soldier who allegedly leaked digitalized reams of classified documents to a reporter. That makes life easier for those whose English is weak, but the difference in public awareness probably isn’t significant. The gag order had already insured intense curiosity. What the increased access should do is stir a serious debate about balancing freedom of the press and whistleblowing with secrecy and security — a debate every democracy needs regularly. This kind of thing isn’t a problem in places like the states, where they have stringent whistleblowing laws so that people who want to speak out against corruption are able to protect themselves with a whistleblower lawyer. If only more countries were as progressive… With this being said, as laws tend to change, it wouldn’t hurt to stay on top of the news in the world of legal news. It could be as simple as researching attorneys and law for example to do just that. Plus, the more you know, the better this may be for you when it comes to understanding the law a little better.

What’s reliably known is this: Kam is 23. (In news photos, she looks 15 and terribly innocent — possibly an image designed by her lawyers.) During her required army service, she worked as a clerk in the office of Gen. Yair Naveh, then-head of the Israel Defense Force’s Central Command. When she completed her service, she took home CDs to which she had copied many classified documents. Later she passed information to Uri Blau, an investigative reporter for Ha’aretz, the Israeli daily that has been most ready to criticize government policy in the occupied territories. In November 2008, using some of Kam’s material, Blau published a long article titled “License to Kill.” It alleged that the IDF had deliberately ignored an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that barred targeted killing of suspected terrorists when it was possible to arrest them. A source whom I consider quite reliable tells me that far more people have read Blau’s article online in recent days than when it was originally published.

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Profound Esophagus –“Necessary Stories” column from The Jerusalem Report

by

Haim Watzman

My dearest Ms. Profound Esophagus,

My heart has been racing and my mind churning since our meeting last night on level minus 4 of the Jerusalem municipality parking garage. Since my All The President’s Men-inspired leap into journalism when I was just out of college three decades ago I have long imagined of meeting someone like you. It was one of those fantasies that I always assumed only came true for other guys, never for me. But the minute I saw you standing between Deputy Mayor Yehoshua Pollack’s pair of specially-engineered Fiat 500s (one for his left side, one for his right) I knew that Herzl was right: If you gullet, it is no dream.

It wasn’t just the slender, shapely legs in those sheer dark stockings, although I could not help but notice them. It was not just the knee-length, businesslike, but tantalizingly tight black skirt or the matching, perfectly-tailored jacket. No, what really caught my eye at the first glance was what I saw bulging under the jacket, as if they were desperately trying to break free—two large compact discs that I knew could change my life forever.

Certainly the manner in which you contacted me only added to the fascination. You must have observed me carefully to know that I always use the rightmost urinal in the Jerusalem Malha train station. So imagine how stunned I was when I saw the pencil scrawl there last week: “Good time, top secret documents,” and your cell phone number. I knew right away that it was meant just for me.

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Secret Agents and the Rule of Law

by

Haim Watzman

Doing press for even the nicest Western secret internal security agency would be a job from hell. Even the best-intentioned, humanist secret security agents must do a lot of unpalatable things to keep the citizens of their countries safe and happy. So when I, an Israeli citizen, criticize the Israel Security Agency (which is what the organization otherwise known as the Shin Bet, Shabak, or General Security Service calls itself on its website) I do so with due gratitude for the benefits I derive from their work.

But when the ISA publishes, on its Hebrew home page, an accusation equating document-leaking with espionage, and making out like it, unlike (ick!) newspaper reporters, is concerned only with the security of the state, then it’s time to say, hey guys, your horse ain’t as high as you think.

Yes, ISA agents are self-sacrificing patriots. But the agency’s record is certainly not pure white innocence. Most famously, in the “Bus 300 Affair” the agency was caught covering up an illegal, immoral extrajudicial murder. Yes, the terrorist (who was subdued and presented no danger to the agents) deserved to die, but no, in a democracy we can’t have security personnel deciding who deserves to live and who to die.

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Rabbi Lau’s Religion Problem

by

Haim Watzman

When Rabbi Benny Lau began his Shabbat HaGadol talk at south Jerusalem’s Ramban synagogue last Saturday afternoon, he said his lesson originated in anger and frustration. The climax came when he said, “If I were a young person today, I would abandon religion.”

Shabbat HaGadol, the Great Sabbath that precedes Pesach, is traditionally a time for community rabbis to teach their congregations the fine points of the laws of Pesach and to offer some pointers for the coming Seder ceremony. Rabbi Lau barely spoke about Pesach; instead he offered—in traditional Jewish fashion, via a discussion of Talmudic passages—a call for greater openness and tolerance within the religious community. His particular target was the abrogation of personal responsibility religious Jews. Blind obedience to rabbinical authority used to be a defining trait of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, one of the things that divided it from the modern Orthodox community. But over the last couple decades more and more Jews brought up and educated in Zionist religious institutions have increasingly sought to avoid thinking for themselves, on halachic, political, and social matters. The result has been a desecration of God’s name, as rabbis claiming to speak for Israel’s religious Jews have revoked conversions, demanded the relocation of a hospital emergency room, and committed a series of other political and religious acts that are an embarrassment to their heritage and a real danger to Israeli society as a whole.

This sort of religious community can only repel thinking young people who are unwilling to abandon their freedom to think for themselves, he declared.

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Alla fiera dell’est

by

Gershom Gorenberg

Why sing Had Gadya at Seder tonight in pseudo-Aramaic when the version in real Italian is so gorgeous?

I first heard it my first time from an Italian-speaking Swiss guest at a Seder at a teacher’s home 30 years ago, and have bringing the lyrics to Seder ever since.

You can learn the melody from Angelo Branduardi’s  video clip below, but you don’t need the violin and drums to sing it at your table.

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Here are the lyrics (posted purely for personal, non-commercial use):

Alla fiera dell’est

Alla fiera dell’est, per due soldi, un topolino mio padre comprò
Alla fiera dell’est, per due soldi, un topolino mio padre comprò

E venne il gatto, che si mangiò il topo, che al mercato mio padre comprò
E venne il gatto, che si mangiò il topo, che al mercato mio padre comprò

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And Your Friends, Bibi, They Treat You Like a Pest

by

Gershom Gorenberg

My new article on our prime minister’s disastrous trip to Washington is up at The American Prospect.

Mr. Netanyahu wanted badly to go to Washington. He wanted to warm himself in the worship of thousands of delegates at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual convention, far from the cacophony of his unruly ruling coalition. He knew that if he didn’t get White House time during his visit, the media back home would report, chorally, that he’d caused a rift in relations with Israel’s essential ally. To end the spat with the administration over Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, he made some half-publicized promises to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and got his invite to meet President Barack Obama.

And perhaps during this meeting he learned (if Benjamin Netanyahu ever learns) that you should be terribly careful what you wish for.

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Witch-Hunting Season, Under Government License

by

Gershom Gorenberg

Rimon is a fantastic caterer. She has turned her talent at Kurdish-style cooking into a business through the help of Ahoti (My Sister), an organization that works with Israeli women from mizrahi (Middle Eastern) backgrounds to develop their economic potential. Ahoti is a grantee of the New Israel Fund.

I mention this because a couple of days after I enjoyed Rimon’s cuisine, Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke at the convention of Im Tirtzu. Prime Minister Netanyahu couldn’t make it because he was on his way to humiliate himself in Washington, but he sent his written greetings to be read to the crowd.

Im Tirtzu, you may remember, is the organization that recently launched a smear campaign against the New Israel Fund.  A so-called study by Im Tirtzu alleged that the NIF-backed organizations provided an overwhelming share of the material from Israeli sources that was cited in the Goldstone Report on the fighting in Gaza the winter before last. 

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