Month: February 2011

Israel preparing to deport star of Oscar winning documentary “Strangers No More”

by adminin Israel, Writing

dsc00193 Mondoweiss, February 28, 2011

The Huffington Post, February 28, 2011

It’s big news here in Israel that “Strangers No More“– a documentary film that focuses on a South Tel Aviv school attended by zarim, Hebrew for foreigners or strangers–has won an Oscar.

“Thank you most of all to the exceptional immigrant and refugee children from 48 countries at Tel Aviv’s remarkable Bialik Rogozin school,” Karen Goodman, co-producer and co-director said in her acceptance speech. “You’ve shown us that through education, understanding, and tolerance, peace really is possible.”

So what is the Israeli government showing us by planning a mass expulsion of such children? Understanding and tolerance won’t be found here. (And you’d better look somewhere else for peace, too).

After a five month delay (the expulsion was scheduled to begin in October 2010), which followed a year-long battle over the matter, the deportation of 400 children and their parents is scheduled to begin on Sunday–just a week after “Strangers No More” won an Oscar. Just a week after a crowd in the US applauded the touching story of foreigners who find a home here in Israel. Just a week after the Israeli media runs its hip-hip-hooray! reports of the win, the Oz Unit will start rounding such kids up.

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Golan residents recall their Tahrir

by adminin Lead Story, Writing

dsc03220Al Jazeera English, February 25, 2011

Siham Monder was 14 when Syrian residents of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights took to the streets for a strike and protests that spanned six solid months of 1982.

“Now I’m 43,” Monder says. “And I remember that every day in that period there was a conflict with the [Israeli army]. There were more soldiers here than residents.”

While the Israeli military occupation of the Golan began after the 1967 war, the strike and protests started on February 14, 1982, two months after the Israeli Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law, legislation that effectively annexed the territory.

The Israeli move was condemned by both the United States and the United Nations—the latter has issued multiple resolutions against the annexation—and it remains unrecognized by the international community.

Here, in the Golan, the annexation was embodied by the army’s effort to distribute blue Israeli identity cards. In 1982, some 15,000 soldiers came to deliver the IDs to Syrian residents, a group that numbered less than 10,000 at the time.

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The death of Israeli democracy

by adminin Politics, Writing

dsc03139Al Jazeera English, February 6, 2011

As Egyptians take to the streets to demand their freedom, I ask a Muslim in Yafo if we’ll see the same in Israel. “I don’t think so,” he answers. “Even with all the mess here, we have democracy.”

Do we? And for how much longer?

As we speak, the Knesset is debating one of a slew of anti-democratic bills. Some of the legislation targets Palestinian citizens of Israel—people like this man and his wife, a petite woman who is quick to offer me coffee and her opinions.

If the Admissions Committee law passes, for example, this young couple and their three children could find themselves barred from living in certain communities and villages, even those built on public land.

If the Nakba Bill is approved, organizations that commemorate the 1948 expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will be ineligible for public funds. This is a “watered down” version of the bill. The original version sought to imprison anyone who publicly marked the Nakba Day.

Other legislation aims to silence individuals and groups that criticize the government.

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