Dear Friends of Tent of Nations all over the world,
Our Lawyer appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to stop the demolishing of our renovations which is planned to take place this coming Sunday or Monday. I believe, because of all the pressure and the reactions from all of you through writing letters to your governments and to the Israeli officers, the Supreme Court of Israel granted an injunction to stop the military from taking any demolishing actions until the Supreme Court takes a decision. The military authority was given 60 days time to send their objection to the Supreme Court. This means that we will have to go for a trial in the Supreme Court.
We, and with all your prayers and support and with the help of your advocacy letters, managed to freeze the demolishing orders and to bring this case to the Supreme Court. It is a victory for justice even if it is a small one for now but it is a victory.
I want to thank you for all your prayers, for the many E-mails we received from you and for the solidarity visits. I will keep you updated about the development of this case in front of the Supreme court.
Dear Friends of Tent of Nations all over the world,
Two hours ago, I received a phone call from our Lawyers Mr. Sani Khoury and Mr. Jonathan Kuttab. they received a Fax from the Israeli Military Authority says that our Appeal against the demolishing orders of our renovations has been refused . They wanted to come today to demolish the renovations, but they gave us “because of their generosity” another five days time, before coming to demolish those renovations. What can we do with five days time?!
At this moment, we have two options: the first one is to accept the situation as it is and just wait for the Israeli Military to come and destroy the place OR to continue the legal battle by bringing this case in front of the Supreme Court in Israel which might rule to freeze the demolishing orders until it takes a decision. Usually court cases like this will take a year or two, if the Supreme Court decides to freeze the demolishing orders.
Bringing this case to the Supreme Court will cost us a lot of money and this will increase our financial burden.We are defending our land from being confiscated for more than twenty years, we paid a lot for legal expenses, BUT without getting tired.
We are people who believe in Justice, we will continue our just struggle and will bring this case in front of the Israeli Supreme Court challenging the injustice we are facing. In the meanwhile we ask you to keep us in your prayers, to keep writing advocacy letters and to inform as many people as you can about our story.
I am sure that our efforts together will make a difference. Thank you so much for this support and solidarity.
“But those who wait on the LORD, shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31).
Please find below the letter I received today from our Lawyer Mr. Sani Khoury.
Here’s an alert from Friends of Tent of Nations North America (see my previous post). Please sign the petition and look for a variety of additional action opportunities after the jump.
Dear Friends of Tent of Nations,
The Nassar Family Farm/Tent of Nations Project is in immediate jeopardy because of actions taken by Israeli authorities on Thursday afternoon, May 27, when two officers from the Israeli Civil Administration, guarded by Israeli soldiers, came to the farm and gave the family nine demolition orders for structures built without a permit from the Israeli Military Authority during the last two years. The orders are set for execution this Sunday, May 30. The Nassars’s attorney has initiated emergency legal action to stave off disaster.
We are asking you to be prepared to take every possible action, if conditions worsen, demanding that the orders not be executed. In the meantime, please sign this petition with your phone and email and forward this E-mail to your friends asking that they do likewise. We will post updates at the website www.fotonna.org.
Thank you for your solidarity.
Steering Committee
Friends of Tent of Nations North America
I’ve just received a horribly upsetting email from Daoud Nassar, a Palestinian farmer who lives and works in the Palestinian territory just south of Bethlehem. The Nassar’s farm, known to many as “Tent of Nations” has just received nine demolition orders for essential structures on their property.
Some background: Daoud’s farm has been in his family for four generations; his ancestor registered his land with the ruling Ottoman Empire and the Nassar’s still have the original deed. In 1991 – one quarter-century later – the Israeli military initiated proceedings to expropriate the Nasser family farm, which happens to be located between two Jewish settlements in the Gush Etzion Block.
Despite Daoud’s irrefutable proof of his family’s ownership of the land, the legal battle over it has stretched on for well over two decades – and the Nassar family has spent over $140,000 in legal fees to date. Up until now, their case has been essentially stuck in Israeli legal bureaucratic limbo.
In the meantime, the Nassar family has used their land to establish “The Tent of Nations” an inspirational center that provides arts, drama, and education to the children of the villages and refugee camps of the region. Daoud and his family have also established a Women’s Educational Center offering classes in computer literacy, English, and leadership training. (Many rabbis and rabbinical students are familiar with Tent of Nations as a primary destination for Encounter – a well-known educational program that promotes coexistence by introducing Jewish Diaspora leaders to Palestinian life.)
Those of us who know Daoud know him to be a gentle, honorable man, thoroughly dedicated to the cause of a just coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. (On a stone next to the front gate of the Nassar farm are the words “We Will Not Be Enemies.”) Given his personal circumstance, his innate compassion is truly inspirational – and that’s what makes his email all the more heartbreaking.
Please, please read it, send it to friends, and be prepared to act as soon as more news is available. I will provide regular updates.
Let us hope, pray and work to ensure that these unjust demolition orders are overturned.
Dear Friends of Tent of Nations all over the world
Today at 2.00 pm in the afternoon, 2 officers form the Israeli Civil Administration guarded by Israeli soldiers came to our farm and gave us NINE demolishing orders for nine (structures) we built in the last years without a building permit from the Israeli Military Authority. The demolishing orders are for: tents, animals shelters, metal roof in front of both old houses, the restrooms (Shelters) , a water cistern, a metal container and 2 underground renovated cave structures. One officer was writing the demolishing orders and the other was taking pictures with two cameras, Israeli soldiers were following them everywhere and pointing their guns on us.
The demolishing orders were written in Hebrew and I refused to sign receiving them. We have 3 days only to react against those demolishing orders. The timing for delivering the demolishing orders was plant properly and purposely on Thursday, in order to make it difficult for us to try to stop those orders by the Israeli court within 3 days, because of the Jewish weekend (Friday and Saturday). The idea is to make it impossible for us to act quickly. I contacted our Lawyer and he will write an opposition and send it to the military court on Sunday morning. We hope to get a paper from the court through our Lawyer on Sunday morning to stop the demolishing orders.
We would like to ask you to be prepared and alert for actions, if anything might happen. We will keep you updated and will guide you for actions but please forward this E-mail to your friends.
PLEASE be prepared for actions. Thank you for all your solidarity and support.
They are trying to destroy our spirit, but we are determined to resist and overcome the Evil with GOOD and justice will prevail.
Last January I participated in a panel discussion on Jewish blogging sponsored by the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine. I was honored to join two of my favorite bloggers in the world, Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss and Cecilie Surasky of Muzzlewatch, for what turned out to be an extensive and incredibly thought-provoking conversation.
CJPIP has just uploaded a video of the program to their website. Click here to watch.
Jewish settlement in Silwan, East Jerusalem (photo from Activestills)
The words “Next Year in Jerusalem” seriously stuck in my throat at seder this year.
I know that these words are largely a spiritual metaphor. I know that for centuries of Jewish history these words referred to a messianic vision of the future and not literal immigration. Still, given the political realities of the day, it’s just so very to difficult to separate spiritual metaphor from literal facts on the ground.
Many will claim that Jews have a right to build houses anywhere that they please. That is not the issue. This issue, of course, is that Palestinians in Israel do not. Others will say that the government is only building in parts of Jerusalem that “everyone knows” will be always be part of Israel anyway. This is, in fact, exactly what Netanyahu claimed in his address at the recent AIPAC Policy Conference:
Everyone knows that these neighborhoods will be part of Israel in any peace settlement. Therefore, building them in no way precludes the possibility of a two-state solution.
This claim is hogwash. If you would like to know why, please read this article by Danny Seidemann and Lara Friedman, who understand the recent history and politics of Jerusalem better than just about anyone:
What Netanyahu really means is that East Jerusalem land falls into two categories: areas that “everybody knows” Israel will keep and where it can therefore act with impunity, and areas that Israel hopes it can keep, by dint of changing so many facts on the ground before a peace agreement is reached that they move into the first category.
It is an approach that can be summed up as: “what’s mine is mine, and what you think is yours will hopefully be mine, too.” It discloses with stark clarity the underlying principle of Netanyahu’s Jerusalem policies: the status of Jerusalem and its borders will be determined by Israeli deeds rather than by negotiations. More bluntly, who needs agreement with Palestinians or recognition of the international community when “everybody knows”?
And it is an approach that we see today on the ground, where Israel is doing its best — through construction, demolitions, changes in the public domain — to transform areas of East Jerusalem that have always been overwhelmingly Palestinian into areas that everybody will soon recognize as Israeli, now and forever. This is happening in the area surrounding the Old City, in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods like Ras al Amud and Jebel Mukabber, and it is now starting to target areas like Shuafat and Beit Hanina.
The notion that a peace process can survive such an Israeli approach in Jerusalem is not rational. The notion that Israel can be taken seriously as a peace partner while acting this way is farcical. And the notion that the United States can be a credible steward of peace efforts while tolerating such behavior is laughable.
The Passover 2010 seder supplements are arriving fast and furious. In my last post I shared my JVP supplement – here are a few more you can download and use to spice up your seder meal:
– The “Moral Voices” initiative of Penn Hillel has published “From Chains to Change” – a supplement that connects the lessons of Pesach to the contemporary scourge of human trafficking;
– Workingman’s Circle’s “10 Modern Plagues” demonstrates how our contemporary bounty is diminished by the suffering of others;
– J Street’s supplement asks “Four More Questions” about the prospects for the peace process in the coming year;
The Israeli government’s blindsiding of Joe Biden last week seems to have given rise to the crisis that won’t go away. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it has uncovered fault lines between the US and Israel that have apparently been simmering now for some time.
Amid the myriad of press reports on the disastrous Biden visit, for me the most eye-opening were the Israeli press reports of Biden’s private excoriation of his hosts:
People who heard what Biden said were stunned. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”
The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.
If that report wasn’t sobering enough, now there’s word that CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus feels the same way. Mark Perry, posting on Foreign Policy, has reported that Gen. Petraeus briefed Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back in January:
The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region…
The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.” But Petraeus wasn’t finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command — or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus’s reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region’s most troublesome conflict.
Wow. “Stunning” and “unprecedented” are the right words. When was the last time we heard the US military claim that Israeli policy was putting their troops in danger?
It’s much too early to tell where all this will lead, but I think its safe to say that the “special relationship” between the US and Israel is currently under serious reevaluation. It’s particularly mind-boggling to contemplate that Petraeus seems to share the same conclusion as the much-maligned Walt and Mersheimer: that Israel’s policies represent a strategic liability to US interests in the Mideast. Who would have thought?
Perry concludes:
There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers — and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military. While commentators and pundits might reflect that Joe Biden’s trip to Israel has forever shifted America’s relationship with its erstwhile ally in the region, the real break came in January, when David Petraeus sent a briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark warning: America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now.
I’m not particularly a fan of US military adventures in the Middle East – but if it takes the US military to convey the message that Israel has to turn from its disastrous settlement policies, I’m all for it.
Here’s one I’ve been meaning to get to for a few weeks now: a great point/counterpoint between Rabbi Daniel Gordis and journalist Charles London (above).
Back in February, Gordis wrote a Jerusalem Post column in which he addressed Im Tirtzu’s nasty campaign against the New Israel Fund and its President, Naomi Chazan. His conclusion: while Im Tirtzu may have gone a bit overboard in its rhetoric, folks need to understand that the Jewish people are at war with those who would “delegitimize Israel.” And when you are fighting a war, you can ill-afford luxuries such as civil liberties:
Commitment to our democracy must not come at the cost of commitment to our survival. No country at war maintains the same freedoms of speech or action that countries not facing existential threat can permit themselves. Since the Jewish people is at war, it must think as a people at war must think.
In my experience around the world, the Jewish people are not at war. There are Bosnian Jews building institutions in cooperation with their Muslim and Christian neighbors; there are Ugandan Jews who are at war with Malaria, HIV, and poverty, but not with some eternal anti-Jewish enemy. There are Iranian Jews struggling alongside Sunni, Shiite, Christian, and Baha’i for the very “liberties” their government denies all Iranians. There are Israeli Jews who are trying to build democratic institutions, multi-ethnic schools, and interfaith understanding, all of whom should take serious umbrage at his characterization of the Jews as a people at war.
Bravo: London’s response to Gordis’s Jewish siege mentality is spot on.
Yes, the Jewish people face challenges today, but we have faced daunting challenges throughout our history. And through them all, we have resolutely rejected the notion that physical might can ensure our survival. Mighty empires have come and gone, but the Jewish people have remained not by compromising our values (as Gordis counsels) but by affirming them. By connecting our survival to a more transcendent truth. By asserting that there is a Power far greater than physical power.
On this point, the young journalist eloquently reminds the rabbi:
I fear that arguments like Gordis’s war without end and war that values cannot endure undermines the spiritual genius of our culture. Jews have not survived for 2500 years because of nation-states, nor because they were not willing to risk life and limb for higher values. They have not survived merely to survive.
If this Jewish vision is your cup of tea, check out London’s recent book “Far from Zion: In Search of Global Jewish Community.” (I far preferred it to Gordis’s “Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End.”)
The Israeli government’s blindsiding of Joe Biden
Shalom Rav 