Israel and the Middle East News Update

Wednesday, January 13

Headlines:  Israeli Officials React Strongly to Swedish Foreign Minister  EU Funding Dead Sea Road to Help Annex Area C to Palestinian Authority  Rivlin, Netanyahu Welcome New German-Made Submarine  U.S. Church Puts 5 Banks from on a Blacklist  Unusual Israeli Airstrike Targets Terror Cell Near Gaza Border  General: If UN Posts on Syria Border Fall, Israel Will Respond  Four Israelis Charged for Lynching Eritrean Mistaken for Terrorist  Iran Releases U.S. Sailors After Standoff

Commentary:  Tablet: “A Jewish ISIS Rises in the ”  By Hillel Gershuni, Journalist and Doctoral Candidate, Hebrew University  Ha’aretz: “Crime in Israeli Arab Districts Follows Shameful Police Neglect”  By Moshe Arens, Former Israeli Foreign and Defense Minister

S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20004 www.centerpeace.org ● Yoni Komorov, Editor ● David Abreu, Associate Editor

News Excerpts January 13, 2015

Ma’ariv Israeli Officials React Strongly to Swedish Foreign Minister Foreign Ministry officials said the irresponsible statements made by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom about the need to investigate the killing of terrorists in Israel buoyed terror and encouraged violence. Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman, a former foreign minister, reacted fiercely to the Swedish foreign minister’s call to investigate whether Israel had executed without trial in the recent wave of violence. He said the only thing the Swedish foreign minister had not yet done was physically join Palestinian terrorists and stab Jews. Opposition Chairman Yitzhak Herzog condemned Swedish foreign minister’s remarks saying she gave a tailwind to terror and such statements distanced the chances of separation between Israelis and Palestinians. See also, “Israel Blasts Swedish FM for ‘Supporting Terrorism, Encouraging Violence’” (Jerusalem Post)

Jerusalem Post EU Funding Dead Sea Road to Help Annex Area C to PA The EU must stop funding illegal Palestinian building in the West Bank, Likud MK Yoav Kisch said on Sunday during a tour of Judea and Samaria sponsored by the Knesset’s Land of Israel Caucus. “A war is being waged over Area C,” Kisch said. He spoke after politicians, led by the non-governmental group Regavim, had visited a number of areas where the EU has funded one room modular homes for Palestinian Beduin around the Ma’aleh Adumim area. Politicians could see that on each structure the EU had placed a sign with a logo, so it was clear that they had supported the new housing. See also, “Palestinians Illegally Paving Road Passing Through Area C” (Ynet News)

BICOM Rivlin, Netanyahu Welcome New German-Made Submarine Israel’s President , Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other dignitaries yesterday unveiled Israel’s newest Dolphin-class submarine, believed capable of delivering a nuclear payload boosting Israel’s so-called “second strike” capability. At a ceremony in Haifa Port, the INS Rahav completed its journey from Kiel, Germany. In his comments, Netanyahu thanked “the German government, Chancellor Merkel and President Gauck, for your great contribution to building up our naval strength by supplying this submarine and other important means that we are discussing.”

The New York Times U.S. Church Puts 5 Banks from Israel on a Blacklist The pension board of the United Methodist Church — one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States, with more than seven million members — has placed five Israeli banks on a list of companies that it will not invest in for human rights reasons, the board said in a statement on Tuesday. It appeared to be the first time that a pension fund of a large American church had taken such a step regarding the Israeli banks, which help finance settlement construction in what most of the world considers illegally occupied Palestinian territories. See also, “U.S. Church Puts Five Israeli Banks on Investment Blacklist” (Ha'aretz) 2

Ha’aretz Unusual Israeli Airstrike Targets Terror Cell Near Gaza Border The Israel Air Force struck a cell that was planting explosives in the northern Gaza Strip, near the border fence, on Wednesday morning. Officials in Gaza reported that one person was killed and three were wounded in the attack. Media outlets in Gaza identified the man killed in the strike as Moussa Zeitar, 23. This is an unusual operation, considering the normally carries out air strikes only in response to rocket fire. Following the attack, the IDF instructed farmers in the area to stay away from the border fence. See also, “Israel Air Force Strikes Gaza Cell Attempting to Target Soldiers with Explosive Device” (Jerusalem Post)

Jerusalem Post General: If UN Posts on Syria Border Fall, Israel Will Respond The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force must retain control of its positions on Mount Hermon on the Syria-Israel border since their capture by Sunni terrorist factions or by elements from the radical Shi’ite axis would form a “severe threat to IDF posts” in the area, a former senior military official warned. In a paper published in recent days at the Institute for National Security Studies, where he is a senior research fellow, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Assaf Orion said the IDF would have to “respond accordingly” if UNDOF’s border posts on Mount Hermon in Syria fall to radical elements.

CNN Four Israelis Charged Lynching Eritrean Mistaken for Terrorist Four Israelis, including an Israel Defense Forces soldier, have been charged in connection with the lynching of an Eritrean migrant who was mistaken for a terrorist during an attack in October. Haftom Zarhum, a 29-year-old Eritrean who worked at the Beersheva central bus station, was shot by a security guard, then set upon by an angry mob who wrongly believed he had just shot a soldier at the scene. Zarhum later died of his injuries, according to Israel's Southern District Attorney's office. The district attorney's office said in a statement that four people had been charged with causing grave bodily harm for their roles in last year's assault, which it described as a "lynching."

Times of Israel Iran Releases U.S. Sailors After Standoff Tehran released 10 US Navy sailors who were arrested Tuesday after their boats entered Iranian territorial waters. The US Navy said the American crewmembers were returned safely and there were no indications they had been harmed while in custody. The nine men and one woman had been held at an Iranian base on Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf after being detained nearby on Tuesday. The tiny outpost has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats as far back as the 1980s. See also, “Iran Releases 10 U.S. Navy Sailors It Detained” (Ynet News)

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Tablet – January 11, 2016 A Jewish ISIS Rises in the West Bank By Hillel Gershuni  To be a is to first disaffiliate with all establishments in Israel. Especially the settlements. These young Hasidic-looking men and women make their homes out of trucks, cars, trailers, caves—anything suitable for a makeshift shelter—atop the hills of Judea and Samaria. They see themselves as connected to the Land of Israel, not to any of the institutions of the Israeli state. The very violent group among them consists of no more than a few dozen core members and a few hundred more who support them in public demonstrations and on social media. Some in Israel refer to them in disgust and horror as “Jewish ISIS,” and while there’s a great distance between Al Baghdadi’s practice of beheading, burning alive, and massacring thousands of people and the violence of extreme members of Hilltop Youth, there is indeed a deep connection between the two phenomena.  ISIS is not just a state—it’s an idea, and a powerful one: throwing away modern norms and acting to revive the golden age of the Islamic Caliphate. And just like the Caliphate, the methods to achieve it are pre-modern: “Din Muhammad Bissayf,” the religion of Muhammad is [enforced, spread] by the sword. The success of such cruel methods within the blurry borders of Iraq and Syria has drawn young enthusiastic Muslims from around the world to Syria. Similarly, ideas of reviving the thousands-of-years-old Kingdom of Judea draw young enthusiastic men and women to the hilltops, where the leaders and idea-men of the Hilltop Youth promise their followers a sense of authenticity in a post-modern world. As with ISIS, this authenticity is predicated on destroying all institutions of the State of Israel, which is undeserving of recognition.  Hilltop Youth abandon the communities in which they were raised to live in trucks in uninhabited regions of the Judean Hills. In their nativist ideology, they are the real Jews upholding the “true” Jewish way, and they encourage each other to strive with violence and terror against non-Jews in order to retaliate against Arab terrorism and to establish a pure Jewish existence on the land of Israel. The State of Israel is evil, and the religious communities and ideologies that support it are misguided, they believe. Their nativism perceives the State of Israel and its supporters as “Erev Rav,” a Kabbalistic term that refers to people who look like Jews but have the souls of enemy gentiles.  The first inclination of many observers is to label young people who seek out nativist causes like ISIS or the Hilltop Youth as “crazy,” “lunatics,” or “hormone-laden kids.” But behind this perceived lunacy is a certain philosophy, or a general tendency, that we can trace back to leaders who either taught fundamentalist and nativist philosophies or whose teachings have been interpreted to support violence and terror.  One such leader affiliates with the Chabad movement in Israel. His name is Rabbi , and many Hilltop Youth attended the yeshiva where he serves as president in the settlement of , a community that is home to some of Israel’s most extremist settlers. In a famous lecture during his protest of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza and removal of the Gush Katif community on its banks, Rabbi Ginsburgh poetically interwove Chabad and Kabbalistic writings to promote the delegitimizing of the State institutions. 4

 Known as “The shell and the fruit,” Ginsburgh’s speech used mystical metaphors to encourage the destruction of “shells” around the Jewish people. The sages compared the people of Israel, said Rabbi Ginsburgh, to a nut, and the nut has three shells. The shells, according to him, are , the Israeli courts, and the government. Now, said Rabbi Ginsburgh, the time has come to break the shells, overthrow Zionism, disobey the courts, and oppose the government—every government—until a true Jewish regime is reborn.  Although now shunned by Rabbi Ginsburgh himself, his pupils started and continue to carry out “Price Tag” terrorism, or as they called it initially, “Mutual Responsibility,” or Arvut Hadadit in Hebrew. They burn Palestinian fields or mosques out of revenge for terror attacks, or just for spite. Outlaws attacked IDF vehicles to disrupt state-mandated evacuations of illegally built communities and to deter Israeli forces from policing Jewish terrorists on hilltops. A few of them took it one step further. A key figure here is , a grandson of Rabbi , who has been in by the State of Israel for six months, and who is a disciple of Rabbi Ginsburgh. He was even once a member of Rabbi Ginsburgh’s “Derech Chayim” movement, but abandoned it for its non-violent approach and adopted the “rebellion manifesto,” which called for violent acts in order to shake the foundations of the State of Israel.  Another player in this scene is Rabbi Shmuel Tal, whose disciples are probably not in the core of the violent group, but who share the same hatred toward the State and its establishment. Rabbi Tal changed his view regarding the State of Israel during the disengagement from Gaza Strip, saying that it’s no longer a part of the Redemption process but it disrupts it. One of Rabbi Tal’s students published a manifesto after the alleged torture of suspects in the Duma murders, stating that the is doing this because it is afraid of these young men, who intend to establish what they see as a real Jewish state in place of the current corrupted one. Rabbi Tal himself, like Rabbi Ginsburgh, does not encourage violent acts and in fact preaches against them, focusing on building alternatives to the secular institutes of the state instead. Nevertheless, understanding these rabbis’ philosophy is crucial to understanding the few who do not follow their pragmatic non-violent line.  The main characteristics of these different perceptions of sovereignty are the same: longing to go “back to the roots” and resenting the current State of Israel. This view is also shared by many ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, people in Israel, but with one crucial difference: Whereas the ultra-Orthodox do not believe that the Jewish people is in the middle of a positive ongoing process of geula (national redemption), the rabbis behind the Hilltop Youth do—and also believe, significantly, that it is a religious duty to “act with God” and help advance geula by earthly acts, not just by committing good deeds and waiting for the Messiah to come.  Combining the two ideas—that we should help the process of geula and that the Israel is not a part of that process, but rather an enemy—can be very volatile. The good news here is that unlike ISIS, we are dealing here with a very small group—not tens of thousands of enthusiasts, but a few activists and a few hundred supporters. But the main rabbinic authorities have no influence on them, since their theological understanding of the role of the Israeli State is so radically different. And as the history of ISIS shows, fevered doctrines that preach a literal return to an ancient and glorious past do not seem to strike their adherents as crazy. Hillel Gershuni is a journalist and a doctoral student in Talmud at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 5

Ha’aretz – January 12, 2016 Crime in Israeli Arab Districts Follows Shameful Police Neglect

The suspicion arises that the government is simply indifferent to violations of the law as long as they seem to affect only Arab citizens of Israel.

By Moshe Arens  It is most unfortunate that it took the recent terror act by an Israeli Arab to bring to the attention of the wider Israeli public the acute problem of large quantities of weapons in Israel’s Arab communities. Not only were these weapons obtained illegally, but many of their owners make frequent use of them not only at celebrations but also to settle scores among themselves and with local inhabitants.  This is a problem that has existed for many years. Anyone with friends or acquaintances in these areas has heard of this scourge, which makes life intolerable for the ordinary residents of Israel’s Arab towns. The police, the security services and even Israeli cabinet ministers must have been aware of this situation, of course, but nothing has been done about it all these years.  Now, finally, after the terror act on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street on January 1 in which Alon Bakal and Shimon Ruimi were murdered and six others wounded, the government is determined to do something about this problem. But it should be clear that whereas these weapons can be used in acts of terror that are occasionally committed against Jewish citizens, those who have suffered for years on a daily basis from these weapons have not been Israeli Jews but the Arab citizens living in these towns whose life has been made a hell by frequent acts of violence committed near their homes and not far from their children’s schools by criminal elements using these weapons.  It is the government’s responsibility to assure the safety of Israel’s citizens, to protect them not only from violence at the hands of Israel’s enemies but also from violence at the hands of criminal gangs. To make sure that Israelis can walk in peace not only in the streets of Tel Aviv, but also in the streets of Taibeh and of Tira. What has been happening in Taibeh, Tira and many other Arab communities is the result of shameful neglect by the . They have been meeting their duties to Israel’s Jewish citizens, but have abandoned Israel’s Arab citizens to be terrorized by criminal gangs in their hometowns.  One is tempted to assume that this neglect stems from a feeling in government circles that the daily problems of Israel’s Arab citizens are of no particular concern.  The murders perpetrated by Nashat Milhem brought to light another aspect of the government’s indifference to criminal offenses by Israel’s Arab citizens that damage this community. It has come to light that Amin Shaaban, the taxi driver from Ramle who was murdered by Milhem shortly after the Dizengoff attack, had three wives. This is an example of marital conduct that is illegal in Israel but nonetheless practiced by some of the country’s Muslims. It is widespread among Bedouin in the Negev, where women are brought — and sometimes bought — from the Gaza Strip or from Hebron to create families with over 30 and even 40 children. 6

 Talab Abu Arar, a Bedouin Knesset member from the Joint Arab List, has two wives. This practice is not only illegal but also detrimental to the Bedouin community. The women are being abused and the children cannot possibly be given proper care and education. And yet these acts of polygamy go unnoticed and unpunished. The law is not enforced. The suspicion arises that the government is simply indifferent to violations of the law as long as they seem to affect only Arab citizens of Israel.  Equality before the law, a guiding principle of Israeli democracy, requires that the law be enforced everywhere, among Jews and Arabs alike. If integration of Israel’s Arab citizens into Israeli society is to be given top priority, then no exceptions should be permitted Moshe Arens became the Israeli ambassador to the United States for one year, before returning to Israel to become Defense Minister. Arens served as Foreign Minister from 1988 to 1990 and became defense minister again between 1990 and 1992, when he retired from politics, only to return in 1999 to the same portfolio.

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