Human rights and human fights. There are such chasms of difference between the secular, humanistic, far left and the religious, Biblical based interpretation that mixes prophecy, land and god, that there seems to be an impossibility of exit from an impasse. Very much a world of conflicting idealisms and a sense of purpose and destiny at odds with one another leading to civil disobedience, a breaking of the law based on moral right one with the tradition of secular humanism and for the most part legal international opinion. It’s a denationalized worldview, the one world of Rousseau’s discarding the yoke of national prejudices and Zionism’s “to be free” from the anthem of Hatikva.
One even has to consider that the far left peace movement may even be an agent of anti-semitism, reinforcing it through new disguises of anti-Zionism and promoting the old streotypes of hatred under new guises, whilst being unaware of being wrapped in these larger more destructives forces, nihilistic forces that manifest itself in the recycled scribblings of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger; the truly obscene like Icarus and an encounter with the minotaur at the center of the labyrinth. That exit story, at the heart of Auschwitz and what it symbolized, the bubbling cauldron of anxiety and trauma cannot be assuaged by international law and legislative wrangling over human rights with surgical precision. Jerusalem, and Israel itself is at the heart of another labyrinth, the opposite of the Greek tradition and one that encompasses all the hopes and fears of messianism and the future of the world:
The labyrinth, Benjamin said, has many entrances leading into the interior through what he calls primal acquaintances. Again and again throughout our lives we are guided through passageways to certain types of people until everything contracts to a figure, a symbol.Read More:http://cafeirreal.alicewhittenburg.com/review10.htm
( see link at end) …I knew it was coming. For years I’ve been active in the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and involved in rebuilding homes that the state demolishes. The number of buildings that we’ve helped rebuild is countless, both inside Israel’s borders and in the Occupied Territories.
What’s certain is that in the 15 years of ICAHD’s existence the number of buildings exceeds a thousand. We never concealed our activities, or acted like an “underground” movement….
Chaim Soutine. Village. ---Margalit:During our conversation he told us he feels that the Israelis are gradually becoming more convinced of the need for two states and for creatively dividing the city of Jerusalem: two capitals within the city of Jerusalem divided functionally rather than geographically. He added that many of the problems are due to people's lack of information, which is hidden by the power groups.Read More:http://pressenza.com/npermalink/meeting-with-meir-margalitx-jerusalem-councilmanx
Nor did we hide behind false presentations like Gush Emunim’s “archaeological camp.”
We always acted openly, uprightly, and not for philanthropic reasons.
We are motivated by a combination of political, conscience- led considerations to express our civil disobedience against a phenomenon we consider an act of oppression, and our absolute denial of Israel’s right to demolish homes in the Occupied Territories.
A succession of Israeli governments have pushed the peace camp to the margins, and now moral people must make conscience- driven decisions. Seeing the massive and daily trampling of human rights in the Occupied Territories, we needed more than demonstrations which, while permitted, are devoid of power, and largely became efforts to let off steam but not much more….
---This duality comes across in the masterful and perplexing “Landscape with Figures” (c.1922), from Soutine’s watershed three year period in Ceret, when his work reached its most “abstract expressionist” intensity (he destroyed many of the fruits of this creative outpouring in disgust at its extremity.). A seated group of women are on a village terrace overlooking a ravine. There are violent flashes of color—red chairs, the orange tiles of the surrounding houses, the blue of distant hills, and the near black of the steep wall disappearing beneath the figures—which somehow survive a tendency towards chromatic mush. Similarly, close scrutiny of what could come across as a formless, expressive swirl, reveals
nts of careful observation.---Read More:http://www.artcritical.com/DavidCohen/SUN152.htmThe state crosses red lines daily, having lost the little shame it once had, ever since pathetic figures like Liberman and his ilk came to power. In the current patently immoral situation, people of conscience must take an active position. As the saying goes: “when people disappear, you must be a human being,” and we try to stay human in circumstances when humanity is becoming a rare item.
At this time when a black flag flies over us, civil disobedience is the only option available to people of conscience, anywhere and in whatever sphere.
Each and every one must do their best to stand up and say “no more.” There are things that a decent person must refuse to do, and rules that moral individuals must break even when they’re liable to pay the price.
Indeed, civil disobedience actions are performed every day – activists who enter areas of the Palestinian Authority that Israelis are forbidden to enter and meet Palestinian peace activists; youngsters who refuse military service on grounds of conscience; women who bring Palestinian girls to Israel to see for once in their lives what “the sea really looks like”; former combatants who break their silence and report on the army’s violence in the Territories; and a range of actions designed to erode the occupation’s foundations from within.
In his book The Colonizer and the Colonized, Albert Memmi writes – “Some are surprised by the occupiers’ violence against those who endanger the occupation because opponents of the occupation threaten all the values it purports to represent.”
And that explains exactly what underlies the McCarthyist campaign now being waged against us.Read More:http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=269054
ADDENDUM:
( see link at end) ….No wall divides the city, but Palestinian residents of the east say they are living under much worse conditions than their Israeli neighbors.
In the west, the public buses run by Egged, with their electronic ticketing system, drive along well-kept roads. There are tended green spaces and public benches, recycling bins and regular rubbish collections.
In the east, residents burn the rubbish that builds up at communal dumpsters to ward off the pests and smells that come with rotting waste.
“If anyone just goes for a walk for 10 minutes in east Jerusalem and 10 minutes in west Jerusalem, or 10 minutes in these settlements in Jerusalem, you can see the difference,” says Ziad Hammouri, a lawyer and head of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights.
…Life is also far more crowded, with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) saying Palestinians are allowed to build on just 17 percent of the land in east Jerusalem, where vast tracts are set aside for national parks and settlements.
…There are now an estimated 20,000 homes in east Jerusalem built without a permit, which creates additional infrastructure and service problems, says ACRI’s Ronit Sela.
“They are at risk of demolition, many of them are not connected to the sewage system, so they use septic tanks that are dangerous. Many do not have legal electricity connections.”
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat acknowledges the problems, and says his administration is the first which is trying to address the situation. His deputy Naomi Tsur touts a program to spend some 500 million shekels ($130 million/103 million euros) on roads in east Jerusalem, and on the new light rail system, which serves both Arab and Jewish neighborhoods.
…But Tsur says the city council has faced problems in trying to better the situation, with residents of the east accusing them of trying to extend Israeli control over the Arab east. “Here you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” she says. And she points out that Jerusalem’s Arab residents boycott municipal elections.
“Where a population doesn’t get onboard and get itself represented, it’s liable not to do well in the budget distribution.”
But Meir Margalit, a city council member from the left-wing Meretz party, dismisses that argument as an “excuse,” and accuses the municipality of discrimination, pointing to continuing disparities in the budget.
“The total amount of money the municipality invested in east Jerusalem last year is 477 million shekels ($124 million, 98 million euros),” he told AFP. “It’s a huge amount, but when you put it in the right context, the total budget is 4.7 billion shekels ($1.2 billion, 965 million euros), meaning the municipality invests around 10 percent of the budget in east Jerusalem. “This is a policy of discrimination,” he charged.
“The municipality tries to make Palestinian life so hard so that they will decide voluntarily to leave the city.”
“The answer is very easy, the answer is to divide the city. It’s something we’ve been saying for more than 45 years,” he told AFP. Read More:http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/05/19/215017.html
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( Gershon Mesika, Speech to European Parliament) ….The prophets of Israel predicted that before the Messiah comes there will be a time of confusion, when good is turned into evil and evil is turned into good.
We see this clearly today.
The Shomron, or Samaria, which I am honored to represent in this distinguished place, the European Parliament, is a region that is in the center of international attention, since it is a sizable part of the territory that is in dispute between the Jewish nation and its neighbors in the Middle East.
But this area, which for many in the world is nothing but “disputed land,” is a homeland for us, the place that characterizes and determines our national and religious identity, the scene of the great events described in the Book of Books, the Bible.
The Middle Eastern confrontation and the Islamic terror campaign against the citizens of Israel are attempts by reactionary forces to oppose the historic process of the Return to Zion: our return to our historic homeland after nearly 2,000 years, during which we were scattered all over the world – weak, humiliated, trampled, rejected, but strong in our spirit and faith.
During all those years, we did not cease for a moment to remain faithful to our homeland and to maintain a living, continuous, day-to-day connection with it. This bond was expressed in prayers and in the most important religious ceremonies, thanks to which it was only natural for us to realize the dream when opportunity came.
The connection also manifested itself in the continuous existence of Jewish settlement on the Land throughout the long years of exile. Jews always lived in the Land of Israel, throughout the years of Roman, Persian, Greek, Christian and Muslim occupation.
And indeed, even after 2,000 years of exile, the nations of the world recognized the Jewish people’s right to its homeland. In the course of the First World War and immediately after it, the victorious powers made a series of decisions that culminated in the historic decision in 1922 by the League of Nations, to establish a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.
It is interesting and important to look at the words used in the mandate that was given to Britain to implement this project.
“Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their National Home in that country…”
The justification that the League of Nations gave as the grounds for establishing the Jewish national home in the Land of Israel was the historical connection between the nation and the Land. What caused this? It was the power of the Bible and the Jewish insistence on maintaining the connection to the Land of Israel.
In 1945, with the establishment of the United Nations after World War II, the organization’s founding charter included the recognition of the Jewish people’s legal rights to the Land of Israel as eternal ones that cannot be revoked without the consent of the Jewish people.
Article 80, known as the “Land of Israel article,” determines that “nothing in the Charter shall be construed . . . to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or peoples or the terms of existing international instruments.” In other words, the continued legal rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel are anchored in the binding UN Charter.
These include the rights of the Jewish people to Judea and Samaria, which the UN has no right to take away from it….Read More:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11678#.T7tuKcVb76M
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