Access Denied

 

Bethlehem University Student Not Allowed To Complete Her Studies December 9th, 2009

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, December 9, 2009 Israel’s High Court Decides: Berlanty Azzam Not Allowed to Finish Her BA at Bethlehem University  Despite the fact that the State did not produce the requested documents, Israel’s High Court of Justice accepted the State’s refusal to allow Berlanty to complete her degree.  Israel admits that it has no security concerns about Berlanty and that she was removed only because the address on her identity card is in Gaza. Since 2000, Israel has enforced a ban preventing Palestinian students from Gaza from studying at Palestinian universities in the West Bank. Some 25,000 people in the West Bank are at risk of being removed from their homes and separated from their families, jobs and studies. Wednesday, December 9, 2009 – Israel’s High Court of Justice today decided not to allow Berlanty Azzam, a 22-year-old student who was forcibly removed to the Gaza Strip six weeks ago, to return to Bethlehem University to complete the final two months of her BA in Business Administration.  In doing so, the High Court upheld the State’s and the army’s position, despite the fact that they repeatedly failed to provide any real evidence for their claims regarding Berlanty’s status in the West Bank. The State insisted that Berlanty be denied permission to complete her studies, even though she was supposed to finish her degree at the end of the month and despite the fact that there are no security allegations against her.  The State’s only claim against Berlanty, an allegation that was not supported by any evidence, is that she was present in the West Bank “illegally”. However, Berlanty herself clarified in her military hearing that she traveled from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank in full compliance with the law – using an entry permit to Israel issued to her by the army after she passed a rigorous security investigation. The State admits that at the time that Berlanty applied for a permit to travel to the West Bank via Israel in 2005, there was only one kind of permit available –an entry permit to Israel. Nevertheless, in its response before the High Court, the State claimed that this permit was insufficient and that Berlanty should have obtained some other permit – even though the State admits that none other existed in 2005. The Court accepted the State’s claim that Berlanty entered the West Bank illegally, even though at the time of her arrest, State representatives took from Berlanty the permit upon which the verdict was based and never produced it to the Court.  Moreover, after she entered the West Bank, Berlanty did everything she could to change her address as listed on her identity card to her new place of residence, Bethlehem. Over the past four years, she and her parents submitted numerous applications to change her address but all were summarily rejected – they were told that Israel, which controls the Palestinian population registry, refuses to register changes in address from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.  Following the decision, Berlanty Azzam said: “I am very disappointed, and I don’t understand why Israel is preventing me from continuing my studies. They don’t claim that my return to Bethlehem University poses a security risk, and studying at a Palestinian university is my right and the right of every Palestinian student.” According to Gisha Attorney Yadin Elam: It is unfortunate that the Court, which in its interim decision asked State officials to permit Berlanty to return to Bethlehem to complete her degree, refrained from ordering them to do so when they refused. I cannot imagine why the State of Israel is so insistent on preventing Palestinian young people, against whom it makes no security claims whatsoever, from accessing higher education.”  Since 2000, Israel has enforced a sweeping ban preventing young Palestinians from Gaza from studying at Palestinian universities in the West Bank. A 2007 High Court decision determined that students from Gaza wishing to study in the West Bank should be allowed to do so “in cases that would have positive humanitarian implications”. However, to the best of Gisha’s knowledge, since this judgment was handed down in 2007, Israel has not issued a single entry permit for the purpose of traveling to study in the West Bank to a student from Gaza. Just last summer, Israel refused to allow 12 students from Gaza to study at Bethlehem University. In the late 1990s, about 1,000 students from Gaza studied in the West Bank, most of them in disciplines that are not offered in the Gaza Strip.  Like Berlanty, an estimated 25,000 people currently living in the West Bank have been declared “illegal” by Israel solely because the address listed on their identity cards is in the Gaza Strip. These people, some of whom have lived in the West Bank for decades, are extremely limited in their daily movements due to the fear that they will be detained and deported. This is due to the fact that Israel does not recognize their right to live in the West Bank and, since 2000, has refused to allow addresses to be changed from Gaza to the West Bank. As a result, they have very limited opportunities for employment, business and studies. These policies are not only a breach of Israel’s obligations under international accords to treat the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a “single territorial entity” but they also inhibit the healthy development of Palestinian society.  The High Court’s decision was made following two hearings during which the Court ordered the State to search again for Berlanty’s original application and permit, to conduct a military hearing for her, and to grant her rights that were originally denied to her – the opportunity to state her claims and appeal her deportation, and exercise her right to legal representation.  Berlanty was detained on October 28, 2009, on her way back from Ramallah to Bethlehem, where she has studied and lived for the past four years. She was handcuffed, blindfolded and removed to Gaza on that very same night – despite an explicit promise to her attorney that she would be able to meet with him. The High Court previously determined that this was a violation of her right to a hearing.  To read a position paper addressing Israeli policies regarding Gaza Strip residents residing in the West Bank, click here . To read the court decision (in Hebrew), click here .

 

 

 

For further details and to arrange interviews: Keren Tamir, Gisha Spokesperson: +972-3-6244120, +972-52-8919190, keren@gisha.org or Sari Bashi, Gisha Director: +972-54-8172103.

No Prosperity, NO Development, No Humanitarian Crisis

From Al Jazeera - Gaza in Ruins

From Al Jazeera - Of the 22,000 buildings destroyed in the Israeli offensive, 4,000 of them were residential buildings

The vulnerability of the first photo is so startling.  I just spent the last five minutes staring at the boy and the person in the background trying to clean up the rubble with their hands and the bunny in the boy’s arms.  This is Gaza after the Israeli massacre – absurd, isolated, on the edge of survival, in a constant state of exception.

The New Yorker has an article on Gaza by Lawrence Wright.  Lets talk about it.  I was surprised to see the New York discuss this as its coverage on Palestine is fairly limited (excluding the peripheral coverage exhibited by amazing Seymour Hersch).  Wright is detailed, though I think some of his reporting is inaccurate.  He does make a point of listing several crucial examples of the tragedy in the aftermath of the Israeli massacre as well as the ongoing imprisonment of 1.5 million Gazans.  Unlike most mainstream writers he discusses the physical isolation and destruction imposed on Palestinians by the Israeli siege.

- Twenty million gallons of raw and partially treated sewage flows from Gaza into the Mediterranean.  The water treatment facility is broken the Israeli will not allow the necessary parts into Gaza to fix it.

- Two children burned to death when Israeli forces bombed the Beit Lehia elementary school with white phosphorus.  But Israel, which refused to cooperate with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN Goldstone Report, found that they used white phosphorus in accordance with international law.  If Israel truly believe this and has nothing to hide, why not cooperate with international investigations?

- In 1994 the Gaza poverty rate was 16%, now it is close to 70% as a direct result of Israeli actions.  Only thirty-seven trucks of aid are allowed into Gaza each day, while it is estimated that 106 trucks daily are necessary to sustain life in the Strip.  Yet Israeli government officials ha ben said that their aims are, “no prosperity, no development and no humanitarian crisis”.  Never mind that lack of prosperity and development results in a humanitarian crisis. For me this is a dire echo of Ariella Azoulay’s brilliant piece Hunger in Palestine: The Event that Never Was from 2003.  If Israel names it, it must be so.

- 14% of the buildings in Gaza were partially or completely destroyed, including 21,000 homes, 700 factories and businesses, 16 hospitals, 38 primary health-care centers, and 280 schools. 250 wells were destroyed, 300,000 trees were uprooted and large swaths of agricultural land were made unarable.

- This massive destruction was geared to what Israel calls the “infrastructure of terrorism”.  Yet the list above reflects the infrastructure of democracy and food security.  To this day, according to the UN’s John Ging, not a single bag of cement or a single pane of glass has been allowed by Israel to enter Gaza.  How does a place recover from such brutalization without rebuilding?  With institutions of democracy in tatters, Gaza will only be more isolated and more provincial.  I know there are Gazans struggling against this, but their voices are consistently sounded out.

What Wright doesn’t state also speaks volumes.  In talking about the founding of Hamas in 1987, he never mentions the well documented support for Hamas by the Israeli state.  Hamas was viewed as a way to destabilize Palestinian support for the then secular Palestinian Liberation Organization engaged in a well articulated struggle against Israeli occupation.

In a priceless documentation of hypocritical blindness, an Israeli colonel expresses his rage when three home-made rockets from Gaza struck Sderot in the morning.  When children are at school and could have been injured.  It is true that the carelessness of this rocket fire should be condemned.  But this colonel is one of the strategists behind the 27 December  attack on Gaza.  As F-16s dropped bombs, it was also morning in Gaza.  Children were just getting out of school. Many of these children died and were injured by shards of glass flying through the air.  Does this colonel also condemn the vulnerability of these children?  No.  Because one group, based on ethnicity and citizenship, is deemed to be human and another group is not.  Anyone reading the description of this colonel cannot escape this monstrous logic, which forms the basis of the attack on Gaza.

The timing as well is monstrous – two days after Christmas and on a Saturday.  Saturday, in which devout Israelis are shunned for driving and listening to the radio.  But apparently bombing is acceptable.

Image of Gaza from Google Earth

Israeli soldiers were told

“God protects you, everything you do is sanctified, this is a holy war”.

The expectation and entitlement is evidenced by this T-shirt as well:

In a recent Al Jazeera article an Israeli filmmaker took a very different take on this idea of Israel’s justified holy war.

“There army is not something holy.  In war there are no good guys and bad guys.  The war is the bad guy”

My largest issue with Wright’s article is less specific.  Underlying the piece is the idea that Israeli and Palestinian armed forces are intractable, that each commits atrocities and each shares equal blame.  This rhetoric of equalization is incredibly misleading because only one side has all the F-16s, white phosphorous, unmanned drones and free U.S. dollars it so desires.  This destroys the equation and makes one side inherently unequal.  As long as Israel controls the entire space and geography of Palestine, it will have to take more of the blame.

American advocates of a militant Israel know this and, in direct conflict with many Israeli critical voices, are strategizing to alter the direction of the conversation. In an Israel Project report leaked to Newsweek and written by a Republican operative it is stated:

Never talk about “giving” the Palestinians something.  It reminds people that you’re in a stronger position.

Harper’s Magazine printed this memo next to the testimonies of Palestinian children illegally arrested by the Israeli military.

A soldier ordered me to stop and said, “I saw you throwing stones.” I replied, “I wasn’t. Look, my left hand is broken and in a cast.” My uncles intervened to persuade the soldier that I did not throw stones and that my hand was broken. About ten other soldiers then got out of the jeep and approached us. Two of the soldiers grabbed me, and the others tried to chase away my uncles. The soldiers beat my broken hand with their rifles. They placed me in a jeep. As soon as the jeep started, a soldier kicked my broken hand and beat my shoulders with his rifle. A short time later, the soldiers tied my hands and feet and blindfolded me, while still beating me. The beating continued for about an hour.

Movement Research

MR where I interned in NYC finally has a new website.  It is always heartening to see them producing new work, even as they always struggle financially.  I’ll never forget walking to the Soho studio, a beautiful wood floored room in a woman’s apartment.  Walking through the street level abyss of overpriced and trendy shops, I would smile thinking of all the dance created just a few floors above.

On Adequacy

Driving in the U.S. today and listening to National Public Radio.  I have a love-hate relationship with different NPR programs for various reasons.  So I was listening half-heartedly to Lourdes Garcia Navarro reporting from Palestine.  She managed to say something along the lines of Israel allowing “adequate” amounts of “food and medicine” into Gaza.  I do not have the exact quote but I know adaquet was used as was food and medicine.  She then when onto to say that limitations were placed on other goods.  As if Gazans have everything they need, but it is real difficult to purchase flat screen televisions.

It is this kind of factually incorrect reporting that is so damaged.  Many people in the U.S. believe that NPR can be taken seriously, but it just as politically manipulated as other media outlets.  Sara Roy, one of the leading U.S. scholars on Gaza, wrote in June:

According to the World Food Programme, the Gaza Strip requires a minimum of 400 trucks of food every day just to meet the basic nutritional needs of the population.  Yet, despite a 22 March decision by the Israeli cabinet to lift all restrictions on foodstuffs entering Gaza, only 653 trucks of food and other supplies were allowed entry during the week of May 10, at best meeting 23 percent of required need.

This is not adequate.

Notional Tomatoes

It is tomato season.  And as I enjoy all the fresh local heirlooms – Cherokee Purples, Dixie Yellow Giants, – I am haunted by Michael Pollan’s words in the great documentary Food Inc.  He described the standard supermarket tomatoes, you know them – available all year with skin as thick as plastic, as the idea of a tomato.  They aren’t real – grown with pesticides and fertilizers and picked so early they must be ripened with ethylene gas.

So how to feel, then about Michael Pollan’s decision to ignore the Whole Foods boycott?  Pollan is a well reasoned and researched author who manages to be both accessible and theoretical in his work on our U.S. food system.  So to hear him so lazily fall back on some kind of categorization between the Local Food Movement and the Health Care Movement is absurd.  He knows that both movements have their parallels and that “political opinions” of the Whole Foods CEO are incredibly important to their practices.  Sure, they carry produce from some organic farmers, but they did this due to economic pressure.  How better to ensure change in Whole Foods’ health care agenda then through the economic pressure of a boycott?

Anyway, there are better places to shop for food.  If you can’t be part of a community garden or go to the farmer’s market, there are many smaller local organic grocers that also buy from farmers.  Think local first, not Whole Food first.

Not A Wear

Bodyontheline is absolutely right – Seeds of Peace should more aptly be titled Seeds of Discord.  So, it seems important to say no to this apparel option…

Just found about a great T-Shirt company in Chapel Hill.  They have a couple of different designs, but my favorite is “Not A Terrorist”.  The founder is an interesting Palestinian – American who was recently interviewed with his amazing Mother on The Story. I really would love to purchase a shirt from him.  However, I saw that they donate some proceeds to the organization Seeds of Peace.  I have heard Seeds of Peace critized as part of the “peace industry” that has sprung up around the struggle for Palestine.  A recent Electronic Intifada piece covered this very well.  While not mentioning Seeds of Peace directly, it does discuss the problematic nature of groups of groups that ignore the larger colonial context of the situation.  So to buy the T-shirt or not?

The Cooking Animal – 80% of the cost of food eaten in the U.S. goes to someone other then the farmer…

When we don’t have to cook meals, we eat more of them: as the amount of time Americans spend cooking has dropped by about a half, the number of meals Americans eat in a day has climbed; since 1977 we’ve added approximately half a meal to our daily intake…The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. The amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity more reliably then female participation in the labor force or income.

From Micheal Pollen’s newest NY Times piece Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch. While I often wish that other writers on the intersections of food, behavior and politics received as much exposure as Michael Pollen, I have to admit that he deserves a blackberry bush full of credit. (Blackberries are in season and delicious at the moment). This article is accessibly written and while first appearing to be an obvious indictment of televised cooking duel programs like “Top Chef”, he includes fascinating research angles and ideas that re-frame the movement for food system change in the U.S.

It is not just about how fat we are in the United States or about how much time we watch TV. But how this trend is major signifier of our de-evolution (my word not Pollen’s – he doesn’t quite go that far). Cooking, as he explains, is basically the discovery that allowed us to evolve to our current form of small digestive systems and large brains. Cooking allowed us to digest more energy in a more energy-dense format then a raw diet. Cooking also gave us the formation of a culture – with certain times of the days devoted to the social aspect of eating with our friends and family. There is a direct line between cooking and the making of culture. Yet the current U.S. diet (also exported to much of the world) of consistent snacking or “grazing” on heavily processed and packaged foods while skipping meal times has more in common with the style of constant eating we all evolved from.

This changed the way I’ve been thinking about food systems. I tend to think in terms of advocating for land reform, traditional and artisinal food preparation, organic agriculture, environmental and urban planning and farmer support. But Pollen points that none of these changes and goals will be possible if people stop cooking. We can’t reform the current system if nobody desires the food. It also challenges current assumptions about “civilization” – a word often used in conjunction with the all-powerful democracy of the U.S. But we are in the leaders in this trend of increasingly consuming televised cooking shows but not cooking ourselves. This makes us less civilized then “developing” countries who have yet to totally abandon their food cultures.

So the question is how to reclaim cooking (with forcing a gendering of the cookies duties in a family) as well as how to save endangered cooking cultures from complete destruction. I think and have written of Palestine as a food culture especially endangered and colonized by Israeli occupation and land theft as well as by Israeli and international processed foods. The colonization through food control in Palestine is explicit. Baladi varieties are becoming more and more scarce as olive harvests become more dangerous – carried out under the M16s of Israeli settlers and soldiers. Sheppards grazing their flocks – local sources of meat, yogurt and cheese – are attacks by Israeli settlers wielding axes. Palestinian land is occupied and tastes are colonized.

Yet the food culture in Palestine is stronger then that of the United States. Our tastes have also been colonized, perhaps not as explicitly, but certainly recognizably so. Our food dollars don’t go to farmers, they go to Or-Ida and the Food Network.

Touring the Occupation

This great short video from Al Jazeera illustrates the hypocrisy of the organized tours for pro-Israeli Occupation visitors of West Bank colonies.  The funniest moment comes at the end – the tourists stop to take in a beautiful view. Of Nablus.  The Palestinian city they won’t visit.  Settlers desire to gaze at the fruits of Palestinian labor – the terraced olive groves and ancient cities – while working to annihilate Palestine.

The New Class of American/Israeli Hawks?

I haven’t posted in over one month, but I have no intention of sending Mapping The Margins to the digital wasteland of dead blogs.  Perhaps just decayed a bit.  I’m back in Amrika and have avoided all media outlets for the past week.   But on my email today was this video posted on the blog Mondoweiss.  Made by Max Blumenthal and Joesph Dana, two Americans living in Occupied Jerusalem.  They asked young Israelis (most of whom seem also to be American) drinking in bars for their reactions to Obama visiting Cairo.

What is so shocking is not simply their crass language and blind chauvinism or their apparent stupidity at speaking into any available microphone.  What shocked me was the undercurrent of malicious racism in speaking about Obama.  There was the obvious “white power” moment which was nauseating, followed by the subtler but just as offensive, “I’m gonna eat watermelon with Obama”.  I wondered if that kid had any idea where he learned that racial stereotype?  Judging by the comments on the original blog post, many readers were upset that this was essentially a film of drunk people who could not control themselves.  I’m not sure about all of you, but a drunken racist is usally a racist when sober.  I haven’t met many people who suddenly turn from thoughtful individuals into offensive vulgar ranters (without a hint of irony) after a few drinks.  As for the self-proclaimed political science student who didn’t know who “Benjamin Yahoo” was?  What does that say about U.S. political science departments?

Here is a response from one the filmmakers, Joesph Danna:

It’s about entitlement, stupid.

Max and I went on to the streets of Jerusalem at ten o’clock on a Wednesday to ascertain the feelings of the young population about Obama’s upcoming speech in Cairo. As is often the case, the streets of central Jerusalem were not filled with native Israelis but American Jews. Doubtlessly anyone who has visited Jerusalem has encountered the droves of American Jewish kids that are sent to Israel to study for a period of time from Teaneck or Westchester. We asked people a simple question, “What do you think of Obama and Israel?” Most of the people that we talked to were dual American Israeli citizens. The answers in this video reflect the education and worrisome perspectives that many American Jews harbor towards Israeli politics. The sense of entitlement that the American Jewish community has when it comes to Israeli policy is on full raw display in the words of these young adults.

Based on our interviews these people were from high socio economic backgrounds and had developed thoughts about current Israeli politics. The question is why more journalists are not covering this story. All you have to do is walk the streets of Jerusalem and you will find dozens of people that harbor the same beliefs. As a resident of Jerusalem, I can say that the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city. These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against.

Obama’s speech seemed to be the status quo dressed up in more attractive rhetoric.  But I have to say that this video leaves me thinking that Obama should take extra security with him on his next trip to visit Israeli “leaders”.

COLA-NIZATION

I wish I had thought of that, but it was Marwan Bishara on an excellent Empire from last week that I saw last night.  It is a long video but at 17:49 you will hear a fascinating segment on the new Coke bottling plant in Afghanistan.  As horrific as Coke has behaved in Columbia and India, I should not be surprised.  This is the perfect addition to Afghanistan’s ne0-liberal trajectory.  The 25 million USD factory stands in stark contrast to the 3.5 million Afghans subsisting on food rations as well as the 78% of the population living without clean water.  Yet another reason, as if we needed more, to boycott Coke.