Normalising injustice

[cali]

Beneath the pretty flowers of Israel's propaganda machine lie some ugly facts on the ground in Jaffa.
Arthur Neslen

The desire to become a nation like any other is strong among war-weary Israelis. The problem for Palestinians is that normalising relations with Israel also means normalising an ongoing occupation, the circumstances which led up to it, and the racism that engendered within Israel. And that's before negotiations even start.

For secular Zionists though, the dream of becoming an ordinary nation with its own Jewish football hooligans and Jewish riot squads has deep roots. Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, believed that attaining statehood would be a guarantor of acceptance by gentile society. He may have been right, but it came at a price. In mandate Palestine, Jews constituted little more than 30% of the population and owned just 6% of its land. The statehood endeavour involved the brutal dispossession of another people.

It may have been the harshness of this reality that fostered a strain of naivety among secular Ashkenazi halutzim (pioneers). In Altneuland, Herzl himself imagined a future state where a proud Ottoman Muslim called Rashid Bey would embrace the Zionist enterprise and join his Jewish friends on sightseeing tours.

During one visit to the Valley of Jezreel, Herzl had Bey point out flourishing Arab villages and exclaim that they were impoverished hamlets before the advent of the Jews. "Would you call a man a robber who takes nothing from you, but brings you something instead?" Bey asks. "The Jews have enriched us."

<snip>

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/arthur_neslen/2007/03/normalising_injustice.html

[pelsar]

1. the article is taking a local problem...

and attempting to make it into some kind proof that israelis/zionism is built upon racism.....


for instance, he complains about some apt being built on christian church land
Local residents complain that Andromeda Hill was built on land which was formerly owned by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate "so that rich Jews can enjoy the magic of the sunset in Jaffa without seeing Arabs".



..and then neglects:

That was when Canadian businessman Murray Goldman and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Israel came to an agreement whereby Goldman was to receive rights to 16.7 dunams owned by the church in Jaffa, in exchange for 34 percent of the income from the Andromeda apartments.


perhaps his complaint should be directed against the greedy church and not against the state of israel or the "rich jews."

other parts are also about the municpality and the way it operates.....little to do with racists zionism and more to do with dollars.

[Violet_Crumble]

2. Did you miss seeing these bits of the article?

'While they are there, perhaps they will incidentally record what could be the final days of the 497 residential properties that are slated for demolition in Ajami, Jaffa's last predominantly Arab district. According to Fady Shbita of the Arab-Jewish Sadaka-Reut ("Friendship") organisation, as many as 2,000 people could be affected.

"There will be a serious struggle over this because it will change the whole structure of Jaffa if it succeeds," he told me. "I would characterise it as a combination of ethnic cleansing or transfer and gentrification."

The Palestinian-Israelis who live in Ajami will not be re-housed in Tel Aviv. Even if they could afford the rents here, it's all but unheard of for Arabs to live in most parts of the city. They won't receive compensation either, as they have technically been living in Ajami 'illegally' for decades. Before 1948, more than 70,000 Palestinians lived in Jaffa. During the Naqba, the majority fled and were not allowed to return. Under the Absentee Property Act of 1950, their abandoned houses were seized by the new Israeli state and rented to Jews. The few Arabs who remained were concentrated behind a fence in Ajami.

But times change. The fence came down and, in the 1970s, when beachfront property prices began to rise, Tel Aviv's Mayor, Shlomo "Cheech" Lahat, announced a policy of "Judaising" Jaffa. Building permits in Ajami were frozen and ongoing demolitions funnelled residents into the slums of Lyd and Ramle. Many of the 15,000-20,000 Palestinian-Israelis who stayed in Jaffa were forced to build extensions to their family houses without permits. This practice is now being used as the excuse for a new wave of the sort of soulless gentrification and transfer that has hollowed out Jaffa's old town.'

That appears to have a fair bit to do with discriminatory practices aimed at Arabs, and I doubt very much that Jaffa is the only part of Israel where Arab populations are that these sorts of things happen...

[pelsar]

4. i read the whole article

when a church sells land to the jews it then becomes racist jews against the arabs.

do you agree with his definition?


Since that is what he wrote....and he was clear about it, i then suspect everything else he wrote as well....he muddled one set of facts for sure, who knows how much more he did with the rest.

[Violet_Crumble]

7. Then I have to wonder why you ignored a large part of it...

It's impossible to read the entire article and come away from it making a claim that there isn't discrimination against Arabs....

[pelsar]

8. because its all suspect...

whereas much of it involves far more information that the article writes about (land costs, history, etc)...and it may very well be discrimintory...perhaps against "poor people on expensive land" perhaps against arabs (poor jews also live in jaffa, do they count?). Urban changes cause upheavels.

What is simpler to check, about the single complex sold by the church, its was easy to check.
and what i found was, if not blatant lies, a massive twisting of the truth.

i then conclude the rest of the article is probably the same.

and of couse you skipped my question...not even "loaded"

_____

so the other question is do you believe the complete article (including the rich jews part) or just part?...and if just part how do you differentiate fact from fiction?

and that was precisly his goal:
it's impossible to read the entire article and come away from it making a claim that there isn't discrimination against Arabs.... a little critical reading is required to read his stuff.

[Violet_Crumble]

10. The discriminatory practices against Israel Arabs are well documented...

Groups like Btselem have got a lot of information about the discriminatory policies that lead to the things described in the article happening, and it's in no way confined to Jaffa. So how on earth is it suspect when it's so well documented?

[pelsar]

12. the article?...

i'm writing about the specific article..no more and no less...and the way the auther has presented his "findings"

the question i put to you remains unanswered.....both of them

[Violet_Crumble]

14. I agree with what bemildred said in this thread about the article...

Now, if you want to try to deny that Israel has some discriminatory policies when it comes to Israeli Arabs (eg the demolition of their homes as happens in East Jerusalem), then yr going to have a very difficult time supporting that particular argument...

Yr questions aren't relevent to anything I'm particularly interested in, so I'm not particularly interested in answering them....

[Shaktimaan]

15. How many Israeli Arabs live in E. Jerusalem?

[Violet_Crumble]

16. There's this great new invention called a search engine...

http://www.google.com.au

I've been told it'll even tell you how many people can be crammed into a Smart car ;)

[breakaleg]

5. A "local problem"? Is that what it's called when they enact laws, use technicalities to expel Arabs

from their homes?

[pelsar]

6. so its the greek orthadox church...

that is now part of the conspiracy.....and of course when rents got raised in areas of TA and forced out the sephardic jews..it was probably an askinazi plot.....maybe when TA moved the market place...that too was some sneaky ethnic cleansing plan to get those dirty vegi dealers to move out so they can build some proper hotels.....

[breakaleg]

11. How is denying building permits to Arabs, and then raising their homes a local problem?

---
While they are there, perhaps they will incidentally record what could be the final days of the 497 residential properties that are slated for demolition in Ajami, Jaffa's last predominantly Arab district. According to Fady Shbita of the Arab-Jewish Sadaka-Reut ("Friendship") organisation, as many as 2,000 people could be affected.

"There will be a serious struggle over this because it will change the whole structure of Jaffa if it succeeds," he told me. "I would characterise it as a combination of ethnic cleansing or transfer and gentrification."
-snip-
Building permits in Ajami were frozen and ongoing demolitions funnelled residents into the slums of Lyd and Ramle. Many of the 15,000-20,000 Palestinian-Israelis who stayed in Jaffa were forced to build extensions to their family houses without permits. This practice is now being used as the excuse for a new wave of the sort of soulless gentrification and transfer that has hollowed out Jaffa's old town.
----

[pelsar]

13. urban renewal...

"clearing out the poor" for hi rise expensive housing happens around the world.....i dont recall much intl outcry when the poor blacks were moved out of Detroits riverfront to make way for the yuppie style housing units.

i could do a bit of research on it, if you would like more examples but its really a pattern that is seen in cities around the world....

andi in fact i know little of the actual details involved in what the municipality is doing in this case, but i've already seen that the author plays very loose with his facts to the point of having no credibility as far as i'm concerned.

[bemildred]

9. I disagree.

He weaves a lot of threads together, and I don't feel he is out to "prove" anything. You can find similar stories about gentrification and it's "homogenizing" effects anywhere there is lots of money and lots of people. It is far from being a polemic.

[Englander]

3. An article about the author from last year;

"Anti-Zionist, pro-Israeli"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=132595