Organize the South

Israel's Fear of Jewish Girls Dating Arabs; Team of Psychologists to "Rescue" Women

By Jonathan Cook, AlterNet
Posted on September 25, 2009, Printed on September 29, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142900/

A local authority in Israel has announced that it is establishing a special team of youth counselors and psychologists whose job it will be to identify young Jewish women who are dating Arab men and "rescue" them.

The move by the municipality of Petah Tikva, a city close to Tel Aviv, is the latest in a series of separate -- and little discussed -- initiatives from official bodies, rabbis, private organisations and groups of Israeli residents to try to prevent interracial dating and marriage.

In a related development, the Israeli media reported this month that residents of Pisgat Zeev, a large Jewish settlement in the midst of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, had formed a vigilante-style patrol to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls.

Hostility to intimate relationships developing across Israel's ethnic divide is shared by many Israeli Jews, who regard such behaviour as a threat to the state's Jewishness. One of the few polls on the subject, in 2007, found that more than half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage should be equated with "national treason."

Since the state's founding in 1948, analysts have noted, a series of legal and administrative measures have been taken by Israel to limit the possibilities of close links developing between Jewish and Arab citizens, the latter comprising a fifth of the population.

Largely segregated communities and separate education systems mean that there are few opportunities for young Arabs and Jews to get to know each other. Even in the handful of "mixed cities", Arab residents are usually confined to separate neighborhoods.

In addition, civil marriage is banned in Israel, meaning that in the small number of cases where Jews and Arabs want to wed, they can do so only by leaving the country for a ceremony abroad. The marriage is recognized on the couple's return.

Yuval Yonay, a sociologist at Haifa University, said the number of interracial marriages was "too small to be studied." "Separation between Jews and Arabs is so ingrained in Israeli society, it is surprising that anyone manages to escape these central controls."

The team in Petah Tikva, a Jewish city of 200,000 residents, was created in direct response to news that two Jewish girls, aged 17 and 19, were accompanying a group of young Arab men when they allegedly beat a Jewish man, Leonard Karp, to death last month on a Tel Aviv beach. The older girl was from Petah Tikva.

The girls' involvement with the Arab youths has revived general concern that a once-firm taboo against interracial dating is beginning to erode among some young people.

In sentiments widely shared, Hezi Hakak, a spokesman for Petah Tikva municipality, said "Russian girls" -- young Jewish women whose parents arrived in Israel over the past two decades, since the collapse of the former Soviet Union -- were particularly vulnerable to the attention of Arab men.

Dr Yonay said Russian women were less closed to the idea of relationships with Arab men because they "did not undergo the religious and Zionist education" to which more established Israeli Jews were subject.

Mr Hakak said the municipality had created a hotline that parents and friends of the Jewish women could use to inform on them.

"We can't tell the girls what to do but we can send a psychologist to their home to offer them and their parents advice," he said.

Motti Zaft, the deputy mayor, told the Ynet website that the municipality was also cracking down on city homeowners who illegally subdivide apartments to rent them cheaply to single Arab men looking for work in the Tel Aviv area. He estimated that several hundred Arab men had moved into the city as a result.

Petah Tikva's hostility to Arab men mixing with local Jewish women is shared by other communities.

In Pisgat Zeev, a settlement of 40,000 Jews, some 35 Jewish men are reported to belong to a patrol known as "Fire for Judaism" that tries to stop interracial dating.

One member, who identified himself as Moshe to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, said: "Our goal is to be in contact with these girls and try to explain to them the dangers of what they're getting themselves into. In the last 10 years, 60 girls from Pisgat Zeev have gone into [Palestinian] villages [in the West Bank]. And most of them aren't heard from after that."

He denied that violence or threats were used against Arab men.

Last year, the municipality of Kiryat Gat, a town of 50,000 Jews in southern Israel, launched a programme in schools to warn Jewish girls of the dangers of dating local Bedouin men. The girls were shown a video titled Sleeping with the Enemy, which describes mixed couples as an "unnatural phenomenon."

Haim Shalom, head of the municipality's welfare department, is filmed saying: "The girls, in their innocence, go with the exploitative Arab." A police representative also warns that the Bedouin men's "goal is to take advantage of the girls. There is no element of love or an innocent friendly relationship here."

In 2004, posters sprang up all over the northern town of Safed warning Jewish women that dating Arab men would lead to "beatings, hard drugs, prostitution and crime."

Safed's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, told a local newspaper that the "seducing" of Jewish girls was "another form of war" by Arab men.

Both Kiryat Gat and Safed's campaigns were supported by a religious organisation called Yad L'achim, which runs an anti-assimilation team publicly dedicated to "saving" Jewish women.

According to its website, the organisation receives more than 100 calls a month about Jewish women living with Arab men, both in Israel and the West Bank. It launches "military-like rescues [of the women] from hostile Arab villages" in co-ordination with the police and army.

"The Jewish soul is a precious, all-too-rare resource, and we are not prepared to give up on even a single one," says the website.

Yad L'achim's founder, Rabbi Shlomo Dov Lifschitz, is quoted on the site saying: "People must understand that Jewish-Arab marriages are part of the larger Israeli-Arab conflict. They [Arab men] see it as their goal to marry them [Jewish women] and ensure that their childen aren't raised as Jews. This is their revenge against the Jewish people. They feel that if they can't defeat us in war, they can wipe us out this way."

The degree of general opposition in Israel to interracial marriage was suggested by a government-backed television ad campaign earlier this month that urged Israeli Jews to inform on relatives abroad who were in danger of marrying a non-Jew. The ads were hastily withdrawn by surprised Israeli officials after many US Jews took offence.

In her book Birthing the Nation, Rhoda Kanaaneh, a Middle East scholar at New York University, points out that "politicians frequently attack 'peace' or 'dialogue' programs for promoting miscegenation" in fear that it will lead to Jewish assimilation.

She also notes that Israel's adoption and surrogacy laws require that adoptive parents be of the same ethnic group as the biological mother.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

The Wall Street Journal defended, even applauded, the step backwards towards dictatorship that the coup represents. They did it all while defending democracy. Somehow, through a combination of serious yoga practice and 1000 level philosophizing, I'm sure the editorial board will spin this authoritarian as a blow for freedom.


Soldiers raid Honduran media outlets
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAkMGKIUDg_ngUiZboxQbYj5_DPwD9B0D6P80

By MARK STEVENSON (AP) – 1 hour ago

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras' coup-installed government silenced two key dissident broadcasters on Monday just hours after it suspended civil liberties to prevent an uprising by backers of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Dozens of soldiers raided the offices of Radio Globo. Officials also shut down Channel 36 television station, leaving it broadcasting only a test pattern.

Rene Zepeda, a spokesman for the interim government, said the two outlets had been taken off the air in accordance with a government emergency decree announced late Sunday that limits civil liberties and allows authorities to close news media that "attack peace and public order."

Supporters of the deposed leftist president vowed to march in the streets Monday in defiance of the emergency order and carry out what Zelaya calls a "final offensive" against his ouster on the three-month anniversary of the coup.

"They took away all the equipment. This is the death of the station," said Radio Globo owner Alejandro Villatoro, describing the dawn raid on the station.

Station employees scrambled out of an emergency exit to escape the raid that Villatoro said involved as many as 200 soldiers.

He said the office remained surrounded by soldiers. It was the second time soldiers have barged into the station — the first was June 28, the same day Zelaya was ousted.

The interim government has long argued it is trying to preserve democracy in Honduras, and even cited the fact that pro-Zelaya media such as Channel 36 were operating freely as proof.

But the emergency decree showed a tough new stance domestically and internationally, a reversal from last week, when interim President Roberto Micheletti indicated his administration was willing to hold talks with Zelaya, who has taken shelter at the Brazilian Embassy after sneaking into the country a week ago.

The Organization of American States in Washington called a high-level emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the Honduras crisis after the interim government expelled at most members of an OAS advance team that had arrived Sunday to try to restart negotiations.

Micheletti's Foreign Minister Carlos Lopez said the team had not given advance warning of its arrival and said it did not come "at the right time ... because we are in the middle of internal conversations."

Officials also issued an ultimatum to Brazil on Sunday, giving the South American country 10 days to turn Zelaya over for arrest or grant him asylum and, presumably, take him out of Honduras.

Lopez said Brazil had broken relations by withdrawing its ambassador and said if it does not restore ties, the diplomatic mission would become a private office — implying it could be raided by police.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva responded, saying that his government "doesn't accept ultimatums from coup-plotters."

Micheletti has pledged not to raid the embassy where Zelaya has been holed up with more than 60 supporters.

The building is surrounded by armed police and soldiers, who have been there since baton-wielding troops used tear gas and water cannons to chase away thousands of his backers when he returned to the country Sept. 21.

Protesters say at least 10 people have been killed since the coup, while the government puts the toll at three.

The government's suspension of civil liberties limits rights guaranteed in the Honduran Constitution: The decree prohibits unauthorized gatherings and allows police to arrest without a warrant "any person who poses a danger to his own life or those of others." It also allows officials to shut down media outlets for "statements that attack peace and the public order, or which offend the human dignity of public officials, or attack the law."

The Honduran Constitution forbids arrests without warrants except when a criminal is caught in the act.

In a nationally broadcast announcement, the government explained it took the steps it did "due to the calls for insurrection that Mr. Zelaya has publicly made."

Zelaya is demanding to be reinstated and has said that Micheletti's government "has to fall."

While many nations have announced they would send diplomatic representatives back to Honduras to support negotiations, the interim government said Sunday that it would not automatically accept ambassadors back from some nations that withdrew their envoys.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

This was sent out by GSU Progressive Student Alliance (PSA). I don't know if it was previously published though.

Not quite Stonewall: 40 years later the cops haven't changed, but we have
By Giselda

"Hey, Red Dog: Bored with Grandmothers?" Those words, scribbled with marker on a makeshift sign, lingered above a crowd mostly confused by their meaning. Who was Red Dog and what grandmother? In other communities in Atlanta, away from the gentrifying "gayborhoods" of Midtown, that sign could probably escape any need for clarification. This wasn't southwest Atlanta, though. The rally was gathered behind a leather gay bar, the crowd predominately middle-aged gay white men.

The circumstances behind the rally shouldn't have been a shock to the attendees. Nights before, officers of the Atlanta Police Department, with participation from the particularly brutal Red Dog Narcotics Unit, entered The Atlanta Eagle bar, apparently tipped off by complaints ranging from drug use to public or solicited sex. Around 62 patrons and staff were forced on the ground for an hour, many handcuffed, and searched by cops freely uttering homophobic and racist remarks. Unfortunately for the APD, no weapons or drugs were found on anybody, forcing them to resort to Plan B - confiscating IDs and running a background check for potential outstanding warrants. Here, also, the APD struck out, so the patrol cars and paddy wagons left mostly empty, with the exception of The Eagle's staff, who were arrested for only wearing underwear. The officers charged the employees with stripping unlicensed (it was "underwear" night at the bar, but the act of actually stripping seems like a desperate stretch by the APD).

Fortunately, a reporter from Atlanta Progressive News was on scene to break the story, and by afternoon time the next day many Atlanta area queers (at least in the limited demographic world of facebook) opened up various internet accounts to find some sort of reference to the raid and growing outrage. It was Stonewall all over again, many cried. The national publication The Advocate ran the story alongside constant coverage from Atlanta's smaller news outlets (the major Atlanta paper, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, was skittish), and solidarity actions in Atlanta were quickly planned, the largest being the rally behind the bar which was attended by hundreds.

For many of us, especially queer radicals, the story and immediate growing reaction was full of promise. This could be a chance to realize a queer agenda beyond marriage, and one that could help build unity between the queer community and other communities that traditionally face police brutality (in Atlanta, those communities are overwhelmingly black and poor). It would also be a chance to build unity, or at least secure an acknowledgment, to those within the queer community to which these events aren't at all shocking but rather routine - queers of color, transgendered people (particularly homeless), even men in the leather scene. Those that do not look like, or share the vision of, the gay movers and shakers who attend the banquets of The Human Rights Campaign or Georgia Equality (both, not surprisingly, missing from the rally). Those queers whose reality more closely parallels straight black men indiscriminately stopped, searched and even shot unarmed by officers of the APD and their most uncontrollable unit, Red Dog, than the reality of gays rushing out of an expensive Midtown townhouse to catch the neighborhood association meeting and help decide how many more "undesirable" crime committing elements should be removed to help make the neighborhood safer and more profitable for its white newcomers.

The story had a lot of other political promise, as well. Atlanta's electoral atmosphere leading up to November's elections has basically boiled down to two things - I love the cops and can bring more into the city and I love the cops and can bring even more than your more. Public safety is on everyone's lips. The grandmother the sign at the rally was referring to, Kathryn Johnston - a 92 year old woman gunned down by Red Dog Narcotic Unit cops - was all but forgotten by white Atlanta as publications and neighborhood groups rushed to secure more cops, now, at any price. Ironically, the man at the head of this movement of white panic, Kyle Keyser, is gay, and was the only mayoral candidate to address the crowd at the rally, shedding his usual rhetoric of more cops with little oversight - instead timidly asking for answers from the force for this one event. The raid on The Eagle suddenly became a useful tool, not only to funnel a new, angry crowd into a movement for police accountability but also to put local political candidates in a position where they may have to condemn police conduct instead of lavishing praise on the force and promising hundreds more on our streets if they're elected. Considering the growing influence of mostly white, middle-class gay Atlanta from gentrifying neighborhoods local candidates may find themselves in a bit of a dilemma - condemn the raid and risk having an anti-police quote used by competitors in the pro-police frenzy that is white, middle/upper class Atlanta voting or stay as neutral as possible on the subject and risk the fury of gay voters?

Hopes for an unleashed queer fury, not quite Stonewall but not quite HRC, were quickly dimmed by the organizers of the rally, however. Messages were sent out on facebook reminding potential attendees that this was not a protest against the APD - in which we supposedly have queer allies - but rather one in support of gay establishments. Any suggestion that the protest actually happen at the police department was scuttled. People spread solidarity messages around facebook, referencing how similar this felt to being gay in '69 rather than black in '09. This shouldn't happen to us, this hasn't happened to us lately. An eery, subtle message being relayed through many such expressions was on display more explicitly by signs at the rally - how dare you treat us like THEM. Signs that kept asking the PD why they would target The Eagle rather than gangs, drug-pushers and muggers. "Who made this call?", one sign asked, placing The Eagle on one side of a seesaw and various street crimes piled up on the other. We're law-abiding citizens, many said, and I never thought I'd see this again.

Where are we looking that we don't see it, exactly? Not in the overcrowded jails of the APD, where arrests are brought in mass after a Red Dog Unit raid or traffic block. We're not looking, apparently, in the face of Tremaine Miller and hundreds like him, shot unarmed by Atlanta cops throughout the years with little protest or rallies. In the signs of the rally that asked for an apology, the speakers who assured the crowds most cops are good and this is an oddity, all who came out once this year and maybe once in a decade to ask why this happened and how do we get answers to this one event the message was unintentionally, unknowingly chilling - this doesn't happen all the time.

But it does, and will continue to. The question now is what sort of reaction should the Atlanta queer community have? Should it be one that seeks answers to one event, maybe even forces some empty political statements and press release apology? Should it be a movement to solely stand in solidarity with gay establishments? Or should we consider longer term accountability for cops, not just when they attack our community but when they attack all, and work towards strengthening the Citizen Review Board and fighting for any oversight and justice we can for the Atlanta PD? Should we consider that sign, referencing Kathryn Johnston, almost out of place at the rally - "Hey Red Dog: Bored with (African-American) Grandmothers?" Perhaps in that sign there was an ability to make a connection and more wisdom than any commentary from the self-appointed, bourgeois heads of gay advocacy and their white, middle-class allies can actualize.

I liked this article from Left Palate about what the left should do about ACORN. It isn't a full-blown position, but it's a start. As someone who's posted not flattering things about ACORN, I thought this would be a good addition.

ACORN gets Teabagged

I just found out that Crystal Lee Sutton, the inspiration for the movie Norma Rae, died on September 14. Below is a cut & paste of the full article from Crooks & Liars. I've seen that movie I don't know how many times. I wish you peace, sister. Thank you.

'Norma Rae' Dead at 68 After Struggle With Her Insurance Company to Get Chemo

It's the death of an American icon, a working-class woman who stood up for her rights and unionized her workplace. And wouldn't you know it? She fought the mills, but she couldn't make her insurance company do the decent thing until it was too late:

The woman whose life inspired the 1979 film Norma Rae has died of cancer after struggling with her health insurance company, which had delayed her treatment.

Crystal Lee Sutton was 68. She had struggled for several years with meningioma, a form of brain cancer.

She became a hero to the labor movement in the 1970s, when she took on her employer, a North Carolina textile plant, and unionized the factory floor. Her story became famous nationwide in 1975 after New York Times reporter Hank Leiferman wrote Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance.

In 1979, her story was turned into the movie Norma Rae, a thinly-veiled fictional adaptation of Sutton’s struggle to unionize the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Sally Field won an Oscar for her portrayal of the character inspired by Sutton.

As Daily Kos blogger hissyspit points out, last year Sutton gave an interview to the press where she described a struggle with her health insurer over treatment. The Times-News in Burlington, North Carolina, wrote in 2008:

[Sutton] went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn’t cover it, another example of abusing the working poor, she said.

“How in the world can it take so long to find out (whether they would cover the medicine or not) when it could be a matter of life or death,” she said. “It is almost like, in a way, committing murder.”

She eventually received the medication, but the cancer is taking a toll on her strong will and solid frame.

In 2008, the North Carolina branch of the AFL-CIO urged supporters to donate money to Sutton’s medical fund. On its Web site, the union had stated that “after initially being denied coverage by her insurance company for life saving treatment, Sutton is now on drug and chemo therapies and has undergone two surgeries.”

In its obituary the Greensboro News-Record describes her now-legendary struggle to unionize the J.P. Stevens plant:

In 1973, a 33-year-old Sutton was working at the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, where she was making $2.65 an hour folding towels. The poor working conditions she and her fellow employees endured compelled her to join forces with Eli Zivkovich, a mill worker turned union organizer, and attempt to unionize the plant employees.

Sutton eventually lost her job, but the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) won the right to represent the workers at the plant and Sutton briefly became an organizer for the union.

In 1977, she was awarded back wages and her job was reinstated by court order, although she chose to return to work for just two days.