9 feb 2019
Dozens of Israeli ministers and senior officials from the Likud political party and other right-wing parties have signed a petition to settle two million Jews across the occupied West Bank.
Israeli Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and ministers Gilad Erdan, Miri Regev, Yisrael Katz of the Likud party, Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett of New Right party, were among signatories on a petition to abandon the two-state solution and establish new Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank.
The signed petition was put forward by the Nahala Movement, an Israeli settler group, to promote an Israeli settlement plan introduced under the government of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in the early 1900s.
The main objective of the petition is to settle 2 million Jews in the West Bank.
Nahala activists have been recently protesting outside of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem, demanding the next government to work toward the settlement of all of West Bank and to abandon the idea of a two-state solution.
Among members of the Likud who have signed the declaration are Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, Environmental Protection and Jerusalem Affairs Minister Zeev Elkin, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, Culture Minister Miri Regev, Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, Communication Minister Ayoub Kara, Immigration and Absorption Minister Yoav Gallant, Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel and Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Education Minister Naftali Bennett, both of the New Right party, also signed the petition.
The Nahala Movement's declaration read, "I hereby commit to be loyal to the land of Israel, not to cede one inch of our inheritance from our forefathers. I hereby commit to act to realize the settlement plan for the settlement of 2 million Jews in Judea and Samaria in accordance with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's plan, as well as to encourage and lead the redemption of all the lands throughout Judea and Samaria. I commit to act to cancel the declaration of two states for two peoples and replace it with the stately declaration: The land of Israel: One country for one people."
The Nahala Movement said in a statement that the petition is an “ideological and ethical loyalty test.”
Between 500,000 and 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law, with recent announcements of settlement expansion provoking condemnation from the international community.
Israeli Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and ministers Gilad Erdan, Miri Regev, Yisrael Katz of the Likud party, Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett of New Right party, were among signatories on a petition to abandon the two-state solution and establish new Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank.
The signed petition was put forward by the Nahala Movement, an Israeli settler group, to promote an Israeli settlement plan introduced under the government of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in the early 1900s.
The main objective of the petition is to settle 2 million Jews in the West Bank.
Nahala activists have been recently protesting outside of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem, demanding the next government to work toward the settlement of all of West Bank and to abandon the idea of a two-state solution.
Among members of the Likud who have signed the declaration are Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, Environmental Protection and Jerusalem Affairs Minister Zeev Elkin, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, Culture Minister Miri Regev, Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, Communication Minister Ayoub Kara, Immigration and Absorption Minister Yoav Gallant, Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel and Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Education Minister Naftali Bennett, both of the New Right party, also signed the petition.
The Nahala Movement's declaration read, "I hereby commit to be loyal to the land of Israel, not to cede one inch of our inheritance from our forefathers. I hereby commit to act to realize the settlement plan for the settlement of 2 million Jews in Judea and Samaria in accordance with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's plan, as well as to encourage and lead the redemption of all the lands throughout Judea and Samaria. I commit to act to cancel the declaration of two states for two peoples and replace it with the stately declaration: The land of Israel: One country for one people."
The Nahala Movement said in a statement that the petition is an “ideological and ethical loyalty test.”
Between 500,000 and 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law, with recent announcements of settlement expansion provoking condemnation from the international community.
7 feb 2019
Despite compelling evidence of genocide against its Muslim minority, Israel continues to allow weapons sales to Myanmar's military, Haaretz daily has warned.
Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority has earned the country widespread condemnation in recent years. A United Nations investigator and the U.S. House of Representatives have warned that the Myanmar military’s recent ramping up of violence against the group constitutes genocide.
Last August, the U.S. State Department tallied atrocities in the Buddhist-majority country’s northern Rakhine State, concluding that violence there was “extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seems geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents.” Some 1.1 million Rohingya have fled Myanmar.
Despite the widespread condemnation, however, Israel remains on friendly terms with Myanmar and has remained relatively silent on what even the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has called “compelling evidence” of genocide in the country that straddles South and Southeast Asia.
According to Haaretz, Israel also allowed its arms companies to sell weapons to Myanmar’s military through the fall of 2017, long after most Western countries had banned such sales by its firms. It remains unclear if the Israeli firms are still supplying Myanmar’s military with assistance besides weapons, including surveillance technology, training and intelligence.
Most of the firms refused to clarify on their current sales. One firm, TAR Ideal Concepts, refuted reports that it had sold arms to Myanmar.
Observers say Israel’s cooperation and selective silence reflects both Israel’s closeness with Myanmar and its demonstrated foreign policy preference for prosaic diplomacy over human rights.
“A general trend of Israel’s foreign policy is to give priority to interests over values,” David Tal, an Israeli historian who chairs the University of Sussex’s Modern Israel Studies program, said. “Having good relations with Myanmar … I would assume is worth any moral price Israel accrues.”
In 2011, Yaron Mayer, then the Israeli ambassador to Myanmar, told Moment magazine that Myanmar was “one of Israel’s few, true friends.”
In December 2017, Myanmar’s ambassador to Israel, U Maung Maung Lynn, said that Israel was still selling weapons to his country. Israel promptly reprimanded and “rebuked” the ambassador, who soon apologized and retracted his statement.
Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority has earned the country widespread condemnation in recent years. A United Nations investigator and the U.S. House of Representatives have warned that the Myanmar military’s recent ramping up of violence against the group constitutes genocide.
Last August, the U.S. State Department tallied atrocities in the Buddhist-majority country’s northern Rakhine State, concluding that violence there was “extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seems geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents.” Some 1.1 million Rohingya have fled Myanmar.
Despite the widespread condemnation, however, Israel remains on friendly terms with Myanmar and has remained relatively silent on what even the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has called “compelling evidence” of genocide in the country that straddles South and Southeast Asia.
According to Haaretz, Israel also allowed its arms companies to sell weapons to Myanmar’s military through the fall of 2017, long after most Western countries had banned such sales by its firms. It remains unclear if the Israeli firms are still supplying Myanmar’s military with assistance besides weapons, including surveillance technology, training and intelligence.
Most of the firms refused to clarify on their current sales. One firm, TAR Ideal Concepts, refuted reports that it had sold arms to Myanmar.
Observers say Israel’s cooperation and selective silence reflects both Israel’s closeness with Myanmar and its demonstrated foreign policy preference for prosaic diplomacy over human rights.
“A general trend of Israel’s foreign policy is to give priority to interests over values,” David Tal, an Israeli historian who chairs the University of Sussex’s Modern Israel Studies program, said. “Having good relations with Myanmar … I would assume is worth any moral price Israel accrues.”
In 2011, Yaron Mayer, then the Israeli ambassador to Myanmar, told Moment magazine that Myanmar was “one of Israel’s few, true friends.”
In December 2017, Myanmar’s ambassador to Israel, U Maung Maung Lynn, said that Israel was still selling weapons to his country. Israel promptly reprimanded and “rebuked” the ambassador, who soon apologized and retracted his statement.
1 feb 2019
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Professor Eyal Weizman studied the philosophy that guides Aviv Kochavi, the officer who was just appointed commander of the Israeli military. It is a philosophy that objectifies Palestinians and ignores the human suffering caused by new Israeli technologies and tactics of repression.
TRNN Video & Transcript MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have you with us. Here’s a question: Can philosophy be turned into a deadly weapon? |
Well, the new commander in chief of the Israeli army, Aviv Kochavi, thinks so. The previous Israeli Minister of Defense, Avigdor Lieberman, resigned in November to protest the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but still found time to install his favorite candidate to take over as chief of staff of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been serving as the acting minister of defense, as well as being prime minister, of course approved his nomination.
The man appointed, as we said, is Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi. People know him popularly as the first vegetarian head of the Israeli Defense Forces. But that’s not what’s important. The significance runs much deeper than that. Here is a speech he gave upon being appointed.
AVIV KOCHAVI: Now, in my turn, as I have undertaken the responsibility to lead the army, I vow to to dedicate all of my efforts for a critical and demanding approach, to strengthen the protective wall and to adapt it to the challenges of the present and of the future. In focus: increasing the capacity to hit the enemy, and standing a deadlier, more efficient and innovative army, which remains true to its purpose and to its uniqueness.
MARC STEINER: Kochavi is known for his study of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. He applied their innovative concept of space to lead Israeli troops in 2002 to the walls of homes in Balata refugee camp and Nablus, avoiding possible ambushes but ruining the lives of thousands of Palestinian families–something we will explore this conversation with our guest.
And our guest is Professor Eyal Weizman, who teaches spatial and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He’s the founding director of the Center for Research Architecture and the director of research agency Forensic Architecture. His recent book is Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability, which was published in 2017 by Zone Books. And Eyal, welcome. Good to have you with us.
EYAL WEIZMAN: Good to be here.
MARC STEINER: Let’s start with this relationship, strange relationship, you have with Aviv Kochavi, who apparently sued you because of the work you were writing. Talk–tell us a bit about that background between the two of you, and how that came about, and what happened.
EYAL WEIZMAN: So, back in 2006 I published an English version of an article that exposed the existence of something like an architectural school or a theory special school for Israeli soldiers and officers, who were then at that time dealing with a relatively new field of military affair, and that is urban warfare. The military understood that in order to manage the complexities of urban warfare, the exist of many civilians, of media, the complex terrain, physically; the complex media sphere around urban warfare. They needed tools to understand action in complex environments. And that school was referred to the time as the Operational Theory Research Institute. Educated many officers reading what we were consider left-wing theories coming from urban studies and sociology, and indeed, also, art theory and philosophy like the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Guattari, mainly in the book A Thousand Plateaus.
And that work, in various of those terms, were introduced in developing various military forms of maneuver. For example, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari introduced the concept of the rhizome, rhizometric movement or manoeuvre, by which multiple independent or semi-independent actors work in perfect coordination within a swarm through space, in which the military units are not contiguous and tightly held, but operating in a sort of wide diffusal. And that led to a very famous battle in those terms that was on the attack on the refugee camp of Ballata by Nablus, in which these theories were actually manifested. One of the leader of, the commander of the paratrooper brigade that undertook that maneuver was the same man who is now the Israeli chief of staff.
And what they have developed is a way in which a wide multiplicity of small groups would enter the refugee camp from different directions simultaneously, navigating through the build fabrics more like worms are making their way through an apple. In three dimensions, cutting walls full of holes, and through ceilings and floors, and move within it.
When I have written about it, in English there was no–there was very positive response from the academic community. But the problem began when we wanted to translate that article into Hebrew. And at that moment the–one of the staple, one of the most important left-wing journal, theory journal in Israel, theory criticism, accepted it for publication. But sent this essay to the Israeli army for a response, something that I consider to be completely unacceptable. Instead of a response they have received a threat of legal action on behalf of Kohavi, the current Israeli chief of staff, for threat to withdraw that article from publication.
What they complained about was several factual things to do with numbers of casualties. Of course, I stand by my sources.
MARC STEINER: So what was at the heart, though, of why they–why would they go after an academic article? What was it at the heart of it, in short, about why they went after you? But then they also backed off and dropped it at the end, correct?
EYAL WEIZMAN: Yeah. At the end they backed off because the, I think many in the Israeli left-wing academic community understood that this is an unacceptable move. First, it was unacceptable by the journal, by Theory and Criticism, to send it to the military, and then for the military to exercise any kind of pressure. They have their own means to do it. There is military censorship. There’s all sorts of means that they have to try to silence critique in an intellectual academic debate.
As critical as it may be, and I’m extremely critical of the Israeli military human rights record and behavior in general in relation to the Israeli occupation, or colonization, of the West Bank and Gaza. They were trying to shut down this thing because it was, I think, inconvenient for them for these facts to be released. It was considered as embarrassing for them that these theories and these sources actually be used for military purposes.
MARC STEINER: So last year over 250 Palestinians were killed in Gaza by Israeli troops. Most of them are unarmed protesters. They were shot with sniper fire. And Palestinians have no army. The Israeli Army has enough ammunition to kill as many Palestinians as it wants. So what does Aviv Kochavi mean that he vows to make the Israeli military deadlier? How much deadlier can they be? And is there an implied criticism there of the former head of the military?
EYAL WEIZMAN: There is continuous debate, political debate, within the Israeli right and extreme right about who can show to the Israeli electorate, to the Israeli public, that they’re tougher with the Palestinians, as if Israel is not been tough enough. As if there is no peace because Israel shows any weakness. I mean, this is obviously ridiculous. But this is a commodity that can circulate very well within the Israeli electorate. You see here now the alternative, the big alternative to Netanyahu.
Another former chief of staff, Gantz, has yesterday made a speech. And in fact, his entire campaign he’s running, how many Arabs, or many terrorists he claimed to have killed. This is in the hundreds or thousands. I don’t have the exact number here. But that, the fact that this is a currency in the Israeli public domain is extremely disturbing. That, you know, that even the left or the alternative from the left to Benjamin Netanyahu needs to make inroads here to the public by claiming to be deadly is absolutely frustrating for us in the left and anticolonial movement in Israel.
MARC STEINER: So I’m very curious, as we close this out together, in your book Hollow Land, you kind of show that there were two factions inside the Israeli senior command, which you call kind of the more philosophical officers like Shimon Naveh and others versus more simply–the simple, straight ahead officers like Moshe Ya’alon. In recent years we’ve seen the latter becoming much more dominant in the Israeli army, calling for application of brute force rather than sophisticated colonial domination. So what do you think is at foot here. Does the appointment of Kochavi portend something really different? I mean, where does he really stand on all this? What does it all really mean, and how deep is that divide?
EYAL WEIZMAN: You see, that’s the structural problem of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. They want to control that space without being there in the heart of the Palestinian areas. They need to develop forms of surveillance, forms of attack, and forms of maneuver that allow them to go in and out very fast so that they can claim there is no occupation. We are not in Bethlehem. We are not in–in Hebron, yes. But we’re not in the other major Palestinian cities, like Nablus. Whereas effectively they exercise complete control over the lives of all Palestinian citizens between the river and the sea, whether it is through the population register, whether it is through surveillance, whether it is through their ability to strike and kill, in fact, anyone that they want to.
So the idea is how to make the occupation invisible, how to develop new forms of control, of manoeuvre. And if you need to, to enlist the new technologies and new critical theories, all the best, in order to kind of, to live with that paradox. We need to go on–they want to go on dominating the Palestinians. But they want to go out to say to the world we are, in fact, outside the population center. There is no occupation. There is some kind of situation that needs to be resolved.
MARC STEINER: This’ll be really interesting to watch how this unfolds, and I can’t help but think, just knowing a lot about him and who he is, what this could portend for the future in terms of the military and their tactics, and what’s going to happen with the Israelis and Palestinians. Eyal Weizman, it’s been a pleasure to have you with us. I appreciate your work. Appreciate your taking the time today with The Real News. I look forward to talking to you again as soon as we can.
EYAL WEIZMAN: Thank you very much.
MARC STEINER: I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Thank you all so much for being with us. Take care.
The man appointed, as we said, is Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi. People know him popularly as the first vegetarian head of the Israeli Defense Forces. But that’s not what’s important. The significance runs much deeper than that. Here is a speech he gave upon being appointed.
AVIV KOCHAVI: Now, in my turn, as I have undertaken the responsibility to lead the army, I vow to to dedicate all of my efforts for a critical and demanding approach, to strengthen the protective wall and to adapt it to the challenges of the present and of the future. In focus: increasing the capacity to hit the enemy, and standing a deadlier, more efficient and innovative army, which remains true to its purpose and to its uniqueness.
MARC STEINER: Kochavi is known for his study of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. He applied their innovative concept of space to lead Israeli troops in 2002 to the walls of homes in Balata refugee camp and Nablus, avoiding possible ambushes but ruining the lives of thousands of Palestinian families–something we will explore this conversation with our guest.
And our guest is Professor Eyal Weizman, who teaches spatial and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He’s the founding director of the Center for Research Architecture and the director of research agency Forensic Architecture. His recent book is Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability, which was published in 2017 by Zone Books. And Eyal, welcome. Good to have you with us.
EYAL WEIZMAN: Good to be here.
MARC STEINER: Let’s start with this relationship, strange relationship, you have with Aviv Kochavi, who apparently sued you because of the work you were writing. Talk–tell us a bit about that background between the two of you, and how that came about, and what happened.
EYAL WEIZMAN: So, back in 2006 I published an English version of an article that exposed the existence of something like an architectural school or a theory special school for Israeli soldiers and officers, who were then at that time dealing with a relatively new field of military affair, and that is urban warfare. The military understood that in order to manage the complexities of urban warfare, the exist of many civilians, of media, the complex terrain, physically; the complex media sphere around urban warfare. They needed tools to understand action in complex environments. And that school was referred to the time as the Operational Theory Research Institute. Educated many officers reading what we were consider left-wing theories coming from urban studies and sociology, and indeed, also, art theory and philosophy like the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Guattari, mainly in the book A Thousand Plateaus.
And that work, in various of those terms, were introduced in developing various military forms of maneuver. For example, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari introduced the concept of the rhizome, rhizometric movement or manoeuvre, by which multiple independent or semi-independent actors work in perfect coordination within a swarm through space, in which the military units are not contiguous and tightly held, but operating in a sort of wide diffusal. And that led to a very famous battle in those terms that was on the attack on the refugee camp of Ballata by Nablus, in which these theories were actually manifested. One of the leader of, the commander of the paratrooper brigade that undertook that maneuver was the same man who is now the Israeli chief of staff.
And what they have developed is a way in which a wide multiplicity of small groups would enter the refugee camp from different directions simultaneously, navigating through the build fabrics more like worms are making their way through an apple. In three dimensions, cutting walls full of holes, and through ceilings and floors, and move within it.
When I have written about it, in English there was no–there was very positive response from the academic community. But the problem began when we wanted to translate that article into Hebrew. And at that moment the–one of the staple, one of the most important left-wing journal, theory journal in Israel, theory criticism, accepted it for publication. But sent this essay to the Israeli army for a response, something that I consider to be completely unacceptable. Instead of a response they have received a threat of legal action on behalf of Kohavi, the current Israeli chief of staff, for threat to withdraw that article from publication.
What they complained about was several factual things to do with numbers of casualties. Of course, I stand by my sources.
MARC STEINER: So what was at the heart, though, of why they–why would they go after an academic article? What was it at the heart of it, in short, about why they went after you? But then they also backed off and dropped it at the end, correct?
EYAL WEIZMAN: Yeah. At the end they backed off because the, I think many in the Israeli left-wing academic community understood that this is an unacceptable move. First, it was unacceptable by the journal, by Theory and Criticism, to send it to the military, and then for the military to exercise any kind of pressure. They have their own means to do it. There is military censorship. There’s all sorts of means that they have to try to silence critique in an intellectual academic debate.
As critical as it may be, and I’m extremely critical of the Israeli military human rights record and behavior in general in relation to the Israeli occupation, or colonization, of the West Bank and Gaza. They were trying to shut down this thing because it was, I think, inconvenient for them for these facts to be released. It was considered as embarrassing for them that these theories and these sources actually be used for military purposes.
MARC STEINER: So last year over 250 Palestinians were killed in Gaza by Israeli troops. Most of them are unarmed protesters. They were shot with sniper fire. And Palestinians have no army. The Israeli Army has enough ammunition to kill as many Palestinians as it wants. So what does Aviv Kochavi mean that he vows to make the Israeli military deadlier? How much deadlier can they be? And is there an implied criticism there of the former head of the military?
EYAL WEIZMAN: There is continuous debate, political debate, within the Israeli right and extreme right about who can show to the Israeli electorate, to the Israeli public, that they’re tougher with the Palestinians, as if Israel is not been tough enough. As if there is no peace because Israel shows any weakness. I mean, this is obviously ridiculous. But this is a commodity that can circulate very well within the Israeli electorate. You see here now the alternative, the big alternative to Netanyahu.
Another former chief of staff, Gantz, has yesterday made a speech. And in fact, his entire campaign he’s running, how many Arabs, or many terrorists he claimed to have killed. This is in the hundreds or thousands. I don’t have the exact number here. But that, the fact that this is a currency in the Israeli public domain is extremely disturbing. That, you know, that even the left or the alternative from the left to Benjamin Netanyahu needs to make inroads here to the public by claiming to be deadly is absolutely frustrating for us in the left and anticolonial movement in Israel.
MARC STEINER: So I’m very curious, as we close this out together, in your book Hollow Land, you kind of show that there were two factions inside the Israeli senior command, which you call kind of the more philosophical officers like Shimon Naveh and others versus more simply–the simple, straight ahead officers like Moshe Ya’alon. In recent years we’ve seen the latter becoming much more dominant in the Israeli army, calling for application of brute force rather than sophisticated colonial domination. So what do you think is at foot here. Does the appointment of Kochavi portend something really different? I mean, where does he really stand on all this? What does it all really mean, and how deep is that divide?
EYAL WEIZMAN: You see, that’s the structural problem of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. They want to control that space without being there in the heart of the Palestinian areas. They need to develop forms of surveillance, forms of attack, and forms of maneuver that allow them to go in and out very fast so that they can claim there is no occupation. We are not in Bethlehem. We are not in–in Hebron, yes. But we’re not in the other major Palestinian cities, like Nablus. Whereas effectively they exercise complete control over the lives of all Palestinian citizens between the river and the sea, whether it is through the population register, whether it is through surveillance, whether it is through their ability to strike and kill, in fact, anyone that they want to.
So the idea is how to make the occupation invisible, how to develop new forms of control, of manoeuvre. And if you need to, to enlist the new technologies and new critical theories, all the best, in order to kind of, to live with that paradox. We need to go on–they want to go on dominating the Palestinians. But they want to go out to say to the world we are, in fact, outside the population center. There is no occupation. There is some kind of situation that needs to be resolved.
MARC STEINER: This’ll be really interesting to watch how this unfolds, and I can’t help but think, just knowing a lot about him and who he is, what this could portend for the future in terms of the military and their tactics, and what’s going to happen with the Israelis and Palestinians. Eyal Weizman, it’s been a pleasure to have you with us. I appreciate your work. Appreciate your taking the time today with The Real News. I look forward to talking to you again as soon as we can.
EYAL WEIZMAN: Thank you very much.
MARC STEINER: I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Thank you all so much for being with us. Take care.
