Purim in East Jerusalem: How Can We Sing Baruch Goldstein's Song in Sheikh Jarrah?
By J.J. Goldberg
Israel’s environmental protection minister, Likudnik Gilad Erdan, went hiking on Friday in Nahal Kaneh, a wadi in the northern West Bank, near Nablus. He was accompanied by several hundred settlers, according to Maariv’s nrg.co.il Web site. The wadi was the scene of fighting several years ago between local Palestinians and the nearby settlement of Karnei Shomron, and has deteriorated since then, Maariv reported. Erdan’s jaunt was meant to kick off a restoration project cosponsored by the Karnei Shomron local council and the Environmental Protection Ministry.
Erdan was quoted saying it was “important to strengthen the connection between Israelis and their environment. At times like these, when people are talking about disengagement, we’re talking about connection.”
Earlier in the week, Jerusalem deputy mayor David Adari visited the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, where a small group of settlers has moved into a home from which a Palestinian family was evicted after the property was reclaimed by a Jewish trust that had owned it before in 1948. Adari vowed that more Jewish families would be moved into the neighborhood, according to Yediot Ahronot’s Ynet.co.il Web site.
Here’s a clip of the house from last week, as the settlers inside were celebrating Purim. The song they are heard singing on the clip, described as coming from Ynet, is “Dr. Goldstein, Dr. Goldstein, there is none like you in the world / Dr. Goldstein, Dr. Goldstein, everyone loves you.” Listen for the line where he “shot bullets and shot bullets and shot and shot bullets…”
Israel Demolishes Illegal Structures in Post-1967 Areas, But Not the Ones You Think
By J.J. Goldberg
Pressure continues to mount on Israel to honor its commitments on West Bank settlement construction by dismantling illegally-built structures and halting new ones. It’s not going smoothly.
The latest critic to pile on the Jewish state is Dorit Beinisch, chief justice of Israel’s Supreme Court. Beinisch ripped into the Israeli Defense Ministry during an October 28 hearing for repeatedly failing to carry out existing demolition orders and offering a shifting array of excuses. The court was hearing initial arguments in a suit filed by human rights groups over nine homes built in Ofra, a settlement near Ramallah, on privately-owned Palestinian property.
According to a Ynet report on the hearing, government representatives acknowledged that the homes were built illegally on private Palestinian property and are under court order for demolition. The government representatives told the justices that the decision to delay carrying out court orders had been made by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, because of the delicacy of the timing. Barak, alert readers will recall, is the embattled Labor Party leader who brought his party into the Netanyahu coalition, over the objections of most of his Knesset caucus, in order to protect the peace process.
“The court is aware, I’m sure, of the ongoing political process,” Barak’s adviser on settlement affairs, Eitan Broshi, told the justices, according to Ynet. “The defense minister has been wracking his brain with this question and we ask the court’s understanding on the matter.”
Beinisch’s reply: “You say ‘priorities,’ but there is no implementation of priorities. Illegality is being ignored. Ofra isn’t the first instance. There are so many cases up in the air. The impression is that you changed your position about your willingness to demolish.”
Associate Justice Ayala Procaccia added her own criticism of the government’s inaction, saying that “When there are allegations of stolen land, that has to be at the top of the list.”
Happily, the Forward can report that Israel is not entirely ignoring illegal construction in the areas captured in 1967. This week alone authorities demolished at least six illegal structures, a record five of them on a single day, October 27. It must be said that the added alacrity shown in this week’s demolitions might be connected to the fact that they involved Arab homes in traditionally Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. The homes were demolished because they had been built “without proper construction permits,” in the words of municipal officials quoted in the Jerusalem Post.
The demolitions are part of a growing trend that could threaten the stability not only of Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, but of Jewish homes in West Jerusalem and throughout Israel, as we’ll explain after the jump.
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