IN BRIEF: The Israeli Electoral Process

A 2009 election poster of Benjamin Netanyahu

The upcoming elections for Israel’s House of Representatives, the Knesset, will be taking place this year on 17 March, 2015. Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party is currently vying for his fourth term as Prime Minister, which would prolong his involvement in Israeli politics to nearly two decades.¹ But before we lay out the specific parties and their candidates, it is important to understand the process of these elections and how it marginalizes Palestinian parties and the right to vote for Palestinians citizens of Israel. In Israel, there is a parliamentary system that exists which is very different from the electoral system in the United States. Israel uses a system of proportional representation where voters elect the nationally registered political parties instead of local candidates.² It is also important to understand how this system dates back to the original political system of the Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine, before Israel’s establishment as a state in 1948.

History of the Yishuv

In the early 1920s, during the time when the British Mandate of Palestine was the legal commission for the administration of the territory, a newly formed Yishuv had become the national liberation movement to establish an independent Jewish state in Palestine.³ At this point in time, less than one percent of Jews inhabited Palestine, but waves of immigration largely increased before and after World War II. 

The Yishuv, or organized Jewish community, functioned as a parliamentary democracy with three formal branches of government comprised of the parliament Asefat ha-Nivharim (the National Assembly), the executive branch ha‑Va'ad ha-Le'umi (the National Council) and the judicial system Beit Mishpat ha-Shalom ha-Ivri (the Hebrew Court of Peace).⁴ The first elections to the National Assembly were held in 1920, establishing a protocol that elections be held every four years. The Yishuv were very politically oriented and eventually formed different parties. Therefore, after 1935, there were actually three main groups of Jews in Palestine, which consisted of the "Organized Yishuv" (the labor Zionists, the General Zionists and the religious Zionists), the "Porshim" (the Revisionists) and the Ultra-Orthodox.⁵ In the summer of 1947, when the United Nations’ Special Committee on Palestine arrived in the region, they had seen the internal organization of the Yishuv, with elected political leadership, as sustainable, and the international committee was convinced that British supervision was no longer needed. In 1948, the official transformation of the Yishuv into a sovereign independent state of Israel was completed.

How Do the Elections Work?

Elections are held every four years. Every citizen of Israel above the age of eighteen is eligible to vote.⁶ The members of the Knesset are elected by party vote - the voters cast one ballot for a specific party (who list their candidates in preferential order) to represent them.

            In these elections, voters also vote by direct vote. There is no “body of electors,”⁷ but rather, the entire country counts as one district so all votes are counted together, contrasting the American Electoral College system where Americans do not cast a direct vote for the President. In contrast to the American winner-take-all voting system, the Knesset follows proportional representation. Of the 120 seats in the Knesset, each party has a chance to hold a seat provided they receive two percent of the total votes proportional to the percentage of votes they received, providing an opportunity for every party to represent their voters’ interest.

            Once elections are held, results are published eight days later. The first session of the Knesset is held two weeks later and elected members declare their allegiance to Israel.⁸ The President is elected by the Knesset by majority vote, and the President appoints the Prime Minister.

            This information is defined in Article 4 of the Basic Law of Israel which states, “The Knesset shall be elected by general, national, direct, equal, secret and proportional elections, in accordance with the Knesset Elections Law.”⁹

What About Palestinians Living in Israel?

            According to the Basic Law, the Central Elections Committee (those who oversee and make rules regarding elections) are able to prevent a party from participating in the elections if “its objective or actions, expressly or by implication” include “1) negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people; 2) negation of the democratic character of the State; and 3) incitement to racism.”¹⁰ This is able to be interpreted in any way the Central Elections Committee deems fit. 

             
           A large issue surrounding the elections is the question of “citizenship.” While a minority of Palestinians are citizens of Israel, the systematic discrimination enacted by Israeli policy keep the majority as residents of Israel which prohibits them from voting in elections, affecting a vast majority of Palestinians living in Jerusalem. The Knesset Members (MK’s) must swear allegiance to the State of Israel as the home of the Jewish people, which can act as a deterrent to Palestinians as the Knesset “emphasizes the exclusive connection of the state to the Jewish people.”¹¹

 

            Amendment 39 of 7A (Candidate who Visited a Hostile State Illegally) states a candidate or party can be denied an election campaign if that party/candidate visited an Arab or Muslim country defined as an “enemy state” – this includes Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.¹²

            Overall, a poll conducted by the Abraham Fund Initiatives reflects that Arabs are “frustrated with pervasive inequality in Israeli society and feel that voting in the past has not translated into influence over government policy.”¹³ This is most apparent given that the Arab turnout for voting barely averages around 50 percent.¹⁴

Implications and Predictions

This year’s elections are particularly important given that they have been pushed early as a result of a fractured Israeli government. In an attempt to gain unity on key agenda setting issues, Netanyahu decided to fire top officials within his government. This led parliament to vote on dissolving the coalition and moving the elections earlier than they would have normally been.¹⁵ The results of this election are predicted to be close, with a center-left alliance threatening to unseat Netanyahu's government.¹⁶  

Numbers Breakdown

            All numbers are taken from +972 Magazine translated from Hebrew to English from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics of December 2012:

• 255,000 Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem have no voting rights for the Knesset.

• 1,855,115 Palestinians living in the West Bank (Areas A, B & C) have no voting rights.

• 1,710,257 Palestinians living in Gaza have no voting rights.

 “2,128,115 people have no voting rights. Altogether, one in every 4.5 people is denied political representation; this one person is almost always Palestinian. If the people of Gaza are included, the number of the unrepresented climbs to 3,820,372, or roughly one in every three people.”¹⁷

External Links

Basic Law: The Knesset http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic2_eng.htm

The Central Bureau of Statistics http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/cw_usr_view_Folder?ID=141

The Knesset Website http://www.knesset.gov.il/main/eng/home.asp

---

^[1] JStreet. "Candidates." Election 2015. Accessed January 29, 2015.

^[2] "The Electoral System in Israel." The Knesset in the Governing System. Accessed January 28, 2015.

^[3] Halamish, Aviva. "Israel Studies An Anthology: The Yishuv: The Jewish Community in Mandatory Palestine." Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed January 28, 2015.

^[4] Ibid

^[5] Ibid

^[6] "Legal Voting Age around the World." ChartsBin. Accessed February 6, 2015. http://chartsbin.com/view/re6.

^[7] “Israel Elections: Overview and Explanations”. Jewish Virtual Library. 2015. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Politics/elections.html

^[8] Hellman, Ziv. "Israeli Electoral System." My Jewish Learning. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/israel/Contemporary_Life/Politics/Electoral_System.shtml

^[9] Basic Law: The Knesset - 1958 http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic2_eng.htm

^[10] Garofalo, Elise. "Israeli Election Primer – What You Should Know." PBS. 21 Jan. 2013. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/israel-election-primer/

^[11] Lowrance, Sherry. “Being Palestinian in Israel” Project Muse: Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Vol. 25, No. 2. 2005. (pg. 490)

^[12]  Law of Political Parties - Adalah. 2015.http://www.adalah.org/en/law/view/512

^[13] Thrope, Samuel. “How Israel’s Arab Citizens Vote.”The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 27 Dec. 2012.. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/27/how-israel-s-arab-citizens-vote.html

^[14] Garofalo, Elise. "Israeli Election Primer – What You Should Know." PBS. 21 Jan. 2013. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/israel-election-primer

^[15] Kershner, Isabel. “Netanyahu Fires Ministers and Calls for Elections”. The New York Times, 2 December, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-cabinet-elections.html?_r=0

^[16] Heller, Aron. “Israeli Center-Left Alliance Looks to Unseat Netanyahu” Associated Press, 29 January, 2015. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_ISRAEL_ALTERNATIVE_ALLIANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

^[17] Sheizaf, Noam. "Who Gets to Vote in Israel's Democracy?" +972 Magazine, 30 Oct. 2012. http://972mag.com/who-gets-to-vote-in-israels-democracy/58756/

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Gaza Cease-Fire Dynamics Explained: What Cease-Fire will Work?

After nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip over the past week, there is finally increased discussion of attaining a cease-fire. The truth is, everyone knew it would have to end with a cease-fire, the only questions were how many more Palestinians would be killed, when would it happen and on what terms. Much of the discourse on this issue to tragically misinformed about the dynamics or fire between Israel and Gaza both during and outside of cease-fire agreements. Using data that ranges nearly ten years and with a closer focus on a subsection that was the 2012 cease-fire period, we explain below how these dynamics work in an effort to inform a way forward.

This first chart below depicts the number of launches from Gaza of projectiles from September of 2004 through this May. That is nearly a decade. It starts at September because that's how far back our data set goes on this issue, but this significant span of time gives you a very clear picture of the ebbs and flows. Launches can involve one projectile (which is often the case) or more. I've highlighted some key events.

[Click Image to Enlarge]

Two things become very clear when looking at this chart. The single most effective way to bring projectile fire from Gaza to a halt is through a cease-fire agreement. Military campaigns have only had the effect of increasing the number of projectiles fired. The June 2008 agreement brought projectile fire from Gaza to near zero until the Israelis broke the truce on Nov. 4th, 2008 sparking the escalation that culminated in the massive attack that was "Operation Cast Lead". What's clear from this is that the military operation generated far more rockets than the absence of it. Keep in mind the context which this is taking place, prior to "Operation Cast Lead", according to B'Tselem's statistics, over 392 Palestinians were killed on average in each year from 2004-2008in Gaza alone. That's more than one a day for 4 years.

A similar story plays out in 2012. We covered the lead up to this escalation and dynamics of fire earlier in 2012 showing how the vast majority of projectiles from Gaza were provoked by Israeli strikes causing Palestinian casualties. The most significant event that lead to Hamas' participation in the eight-day bombardment in 2012 was the assassination of Ahmad Jaabari who was killed by Israel as he was negotiating a longer term truce. Again, a military campaign by Israel generated more projectile fire than the absence of it, proving once more that there was no military solution to this problem for Israel.

After the eight-day bombing campaign in 2012, a cease-fire agreement was reached through Egypt and US mediation. We began watching adherence to the terms of that agreement closely. The terms of the agreement included both sides halting attacks and Israel easing restrictions as well. This meant:

Israel shall stop all hostilities in the Gaza Strip land, sea and air, including incursions and targeting of individuals.  

All Palestinian factions shall stop all hostilities from the Gaza Strip against Israel, including rocket attacks and all attacks along the border.  

Opening the crossings and facilitating the movement of people and transfer of goods and refraining from restricting residents' free movements and targeting residents in border areas. Procedures of implementation shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the ceasefire.

So what did adherence to these terms look like? Well, we graphed it out below. Numbers here for attacks from Gaza come from Israel's Shabak, so it is unlikely they are understated. Numbers for Palestinian injuries, deaths, Israeli incursions and attacks on fishermen come from UN OCHA.

[Click Image to Enlarge]

In the immediate aftermath of the cease-fire agreement no projectiles were launched from Gaza into Israel. Rather Israel continued to fire into Gaza, killing one Palestinian, injuring 42 others, committing four incursions and firing at or detaining 48 Palestinian fishermen off the coast. It was not until after most of these violations that the first projectile from Gaza post-ceasefire was launched on Dec. 24, 2012.

What the chart above clearly depicts is that even when rocket fire comes to a halt as called for by the cease-fire agreement, Israel continues its violations with total impunity. When the rockets stop, the siege, occupation and colonization of Palestine does not. I think we can draw from this some keys to a sustainable cease-fire agreement:

1. An agreement must be clear in terms of what constitutes a violation so that the actors will have to consider the ramifications of public condemnation before committing a violation.

2. An agreement must take into consideration the dramatic imbalance of power between the sides. If there is a Palestinian violation, Israel retains the capacity to hold them accountable independently and at will, often inflicting disproportionate causalities leading to escalation. But when Israel violates the cease-fire, Palestinians cannot hold them accountable. The absence of any mechanism for monitoring Israeli violations and holding them to account creates incentives for Palestinians to do so in other ways, like firing projectiles.

3. An agreement must ensure that Israel does not use its position of power to unilaterally change the terms. The previous cease-fire included an easing of restrictions as part of the detailed understanding between the parties negotiated through Egypt. This meant fisherman could fish up to six nautical miles from the coast instead of the previously imposed three nautical mile mark. It also meant Palestinians could access farm land up to 300 meters from the fence, previously Israel had fired at Palestinians as far as 1500 meters away. But during the course of the cease-fire, Israel unilaterally changed those terms, reinforcing the three nautical mile mark and going back to shooting Palestinians near the fence even as far away as 1500 meters.

4. An agreement must take into account the devastating human rights crisis and humanitarian situation in Gaza that lies at the foundation of discontent there. As mentioned above, when it came to "easing restrictions" the previous agreement was mostly about determining what would be the dimensions of the prison cell that is the Gaza Strip. For real progress, an agreement must challenge the very notion that Palestinians should be stuck in this prison at all and move toward ending the collective punishment that is Israel's siege on the Strip.

Of course there are bigger problems here as well, including the ongoing denial of Palestinian self-determination and repatriation which all people who care about justice should continue to struggle for, but an agreement that followed the points above would be a marked improvement over previous ones and undoubtedly be more durable that its predecessors given the reasons they have failed. Chances are however, given the power dynamics in Israel, Egypt and the US, it's more likely that the type of agreement that will be imposed on Palestinians will likely only fall apart. The only question is how many months it will last and how many Palestinians will be killed during this "cease-fire."

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A Tale of Two Articles: Wonderwater vs Watergate

In the daily universe of what is opinion writing and reporting on Israel/Palestine in the English language press, today offered an interesting juxtaposition. Both the New York Times and an Israeli daily ran stories about water and its availability in the region.

One piece lauded Israel for its ingenuity, mentioned nothing about occupation and the theft of Palestinian water resources and depicted Israel as the generous benefactor of Palestinian water. Here is an excerpt:

Because of geography and hydrology, the Palestinians’ water future is closely tied to Israel’s. In just the few years of Hamas control of Gaza, the water supply there has been polluted, and though no solution to its coming water crisis is likely without an Israeli role, Hamas has refused to cooperate with Israel. 

The Palestinians in the West Bank already receive much of their water from Israel’s national water utility and, sovereignty and symbolism aside, neither a two-state solution nor a continuation of the status quo will change that. Given their proximity to Israel, the Palestinians are likely to be among the few Arab winners in the water race. 

The other piece was far more critical of Israel and accurately described the way in which Israel exploits Palestinian water resources properly contextualizing the situation in Occupation. The author writes:

So here are the facts:  

 * Israel doesn’t give water to the Palestinians. Rather, it sells it to them at full price.  

 * The Palestinians would not have been forced to buy water from Israel if it were not an occupying power which controls their natural resource, and if it were not for the Oslo II Accords, which limit the volume of water they can produce, as well as the development and maintenance of their water infrastructure.  

 * This 1995 interim agreement was supposed to lead to a permanent arrangement after five years. The Palestinian negotiators deluded themselves that they would gain sovereignty and thus control over their water resources. The Palestinians were the weak, desperate, easily tempted side and sloppy when it came to details. Therefore, in that agreement Israel imposed a scandalously uneven, humiliating and infuriating division of the water resources of the West Bank.  

 * The division is based on the volume of water Palestinians produced and consumed on the eve of the deal. The Palestinians were allotted 118 million cubic meters (mcm) per year from three aquifers via drilling, agricultural wells, springs and precipitation. Pay attention, Rino Tzror: the same deal allotted Israel 483 mcm annually from the same resources (and it has also exceeded this limit in some years). In other words, some 20 percent goes to the Palestinians living in the West Bank, and about 80 percent goes to Israelis – on both sides of the Green Line – who also enjoy resources from the rest of the country.  

 Why should Palestinians agree to pay for desalinated water from Israel, which constantly robs them of the water flowing under their feet?

Now, can you guess which appeared in the New York Times and which in the Israeli daily?


UPDATE*: It seems Seth Siegel, the author of the NY Times puff piece on Israel and water scarcity who was identified in the article as "a founder of Beanstalk, a brand-licensing agency, and of Sixpoint Partners, an investment bank" is also....drum-roll.....an AIPAC board member. Why did the NYT omit this very relevant part of his bio in the author description?

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Israel/Gaza Cease-Fire Dynamics Breakdown

For months we have been tracking Israeli cease-fire violations in Gaza. In November of 2012, a cease-fire agreement was brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Previous cease-fire agreements, like the one brokered by Egypt in June of 2008 were shattered by extrajudicial assassinations carried out by Israel. The biggest question after the cease-fire agreement, as I made clear here, was who would hold Israel to account for cease-fire violations? Egypt was not going to play this role. The U.S. was not going to play this role. So effectively, Israel could fire into Gaza without accountability, provoke a reaction and then claim self-defense. Of course this has been similar to what we have seen in the past as we displayed here, here, and here.

So what has been happening since the cease-fire? In anticipation of similar trends, we began tracking Israeli cease-fire violations shortly after the agreement was reached. We have an ongoing list here. The media predictably continued to ignore Israeli cease-fire violations, which is why it was even more important to catalog them. If another massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza began, Israel would surely use the pretext of "self-defense" to fend off any international criticism and the mainstream media's failure to cover these cease-fire violations would have provided and supported the Israeli narrative needed to make war. Thus, we not only tracked Israeli cease-fire violations, but we also tracked if and how these violations were being covered in the mainstream. More on that later.

The chart below depicts a few things; Israeli cease-fire violations, Palestinian projectile launches and Palestinian casualties that resulted from Israeli cease-fire violations week by week of the cease-fire through January 2014. A few notes on the data; first, we refer to "projectiles" because there are different types of projectiles that are deployed, not all are "rockets" and thus "rockets" alone, the preferred parlance of the Israeli state, isn't an accurate descriptor. Additionally, we are not focusing on each individual piece of ordinance but rather on events. So if one projectile is launched or two are launched together, these are the same event. Likewise, we don't count each individual piece of ordinance Israel deploys in an airstrike wherein it routinely drops several bombs in a singular event. If we did, the number of Israeli violations would surely be much, much higher. For example, the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, citing the Israeli Shin Bet, notes that nearly 14,000 projectiles were fired from Gaza from 2005 to 2013. UN OCHA noted that Israel fired about the same number of artillery shells into Gaza......in 2006 alone. Lastly, the Shin Bet keeps numbers on Palestinian fire from Gaza but does not differentiate between fire at Israeli targets that have entered Gaza vs. those outside it. Also, it does not have data available at the week level, only the month level. Even using their numbers for Palestinian fire though, Israeli violations outnumber them nearly two to one.

There really is no comparison between Israel's capacity to destroy and the combined capacity of all the factions in Gaza. The point here is to understand how the events relate to each other, what leads to escalation, and how this effects the durability of the cease-fire agreement.

[Click to Enlarge]

As you can see from the chart, Israeli cease-fire violations have been persistent throughout and have routinely resulted in Palestinian injuries and deaths. Palestinian launches have been rare and sporadic and occurred almost always after successive instances of Israeli cease-fire violations. You can see a steady escalation from around week 48 and onward. This corresponds with mid-December during which Israel committed several cease-fire violations resulting in multiple Palestinian casualties. There was no Palestinian projectile fire in the two weeks prior to these Israeli violations which inflicted high causalities. This means that this week was the escalation point and it was Israel doing the escalating. You can see that the following weeks continue to feature exchanges that included high Palestinian casualties. You may wonder why you don't see Israeli casualties from Palestinian projectile fire depicted on this chart, that is because as afar as I can tell, there weren't any during this period.

So how have these cease-fire dynamics been covered? We've tracked New York Times coverage of the cease-fire during this period. The New York Times is representative of the mainstream and extremely important for shaping public discourse on events and thus an important window into broader mainstream coverage. The Times also has multiple reporters covering these events including a bureau in Jerusalem and a correspondent in Gaza. Finally, we simply can't track everything so the Times, with its easily searchable history, is an effective example to use.

Of the nearly 120 Israeli cease-fire violations during this period the New York Times reported on 17 of them. Additionally, most of these stories (eleven) came either during the first week of the cease-fire, when the issue was still fresh in readers' minds, or since the escalation on December 20th. That means for the bulk of this period, during which Israel committed 87 cease-fire violations and causing some 91 Palestinian casualties over nearly a one year period there were only six stories on the topic. This represents a systematic failure to cover Israeli cease-fire violations.

Making matters worse is the way events are covered in the rare instances they are covered. In most cases, Israeli actions are described as a response to Palestinian actions. So while most Israeli cease-fire violations are not covered at all, those that are are explained as justified retaliation. Thus the reader is completely misled about the dynamics of fire, why the cease-fire is threatened and exactly what is going on in and around Gaza.

The biggest challenge to the cease-fire agreement is persistent Israeli violation and the lack of any accountability for them. The politics of the Gaza Strip are complex. Israel says it wants Hamas to control projectile fire from other factions and yet it persistently violates the truce putting Hamas in a position of having to defend Israel's violations. By targeting groups other than Hamas and by expecting Hamas to crack down on their responses, Israel is playing a dangerous and deadly game of divide and conquer in Gaza that will likely lead to the unraveling of the cease-fire. Once again, Israel has proven security is not its aim, subjugation is.

For more on this topic, I highly recommend a new report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) on Israeli fire into Gaza.

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Yes, the UN is clearly biased when it comes to Israel

You've heard the refrain time and again. The UN is biased against Israel.

Israel is guilty of a wide range of violations of international law and human rights. Many stem from its ongoing military occupation and and colonization of Palestinian territory in the West Bank and Gaza, but many also go back to 1948. You'd think that the UN would have, given its supposed bias against Israel and Israel's long track-record of breaking international law, long ago placed sanctions on Israel.

Well, here is a list of countries that are currently facing UN Sanctions (some more detail here):

Congo (2004): Preventing arms flow into militia groups in eastern parts of the DRC, particularly in North and South Kivu and in Ituri.  

Ivory Coast (2004):Sanction issued as a way to pressure the parties of the civil war to honor ceasefire agreements and cooperate with the UN.  

North Korea (2006): Sanctions over development of the North Korea nuclear program. A sanction on luxury items was issued in 2009 as well.  

Eritrea (2009): Sanctions over Eritrea's ties with armed groups in Somalia 

Iran (2006): Sanctions over Iranian nuclear program development  

Iraq (2003): UN determines that the situation in Iraq, although improved, still poses a threat to international stability.  

Lebanon (2006): Preventing arms flow into Lebanese militia groups such as the Hezbollah  

Liberia (2003): Proliferation of arms in the region threatens regional stability as well as to enforce the ceasefire agreement signed.  

Libya (2010): UN determines that Libyan authorities were violating human rights and targeting civilian population.  

Somalia (1992): Preventing arms flow to the various rebel groups operating against the transitional government.  

Sudan (2005): Sanctions over the conflict in Darfur and to enforce the ceasefire agreement.

We often hear about how the Arab and Islamic bloc in the UN force it to be biased against Israel and yet 6 countries on the UN sanctions list above are part of the Arab and Islamic bloc.  Interestingly, Israel is not on the list. How come? It isn't because there isn't general agreement about Israel's violations of international law or a lack of consensus on the urgent need to do something about it. Rather, it is because the United States uses its veto at the UN Security Council to prevent the UN from taking any kind of action. The idea of using sanctions against Israel is considered blasphemous inside the Beltway.

Consider this: in Ukraine, on-again off-again protests which have become known as Euromaidan began on November 21st, 2013. Protesters have been met by government repression, as is often the case, and some have been killed while many more were injured. On December 11th, 2013, a whole 20 days - 20 DAYS - later the State Department announced it was considering sanctions against Ukraine for the use of violence against protesters.

Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has persisted for decades and Israel's often bloody repression of Palestinian dissent has drawn international outrage over the course of that time. How has the US responded? By being the SINGLE, SOLITARY, no vote and veto on 42 United Nations Security Council Resolutions concerning Israel.

So yes, effectively the UN is clearly biased when it comes to Israel. If it wasn't, it would have slapped sanctions on Israel long ago. 

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Epic Israel Headline Fail at the NY Times

We've written recently on some of the biased reporting at the NY Times, especially by Isabel Kershner, but this episode may well just take the cake. This week the state of Israel passed new legislation relating to the detention of African asylum seekers and migrants. Israel's treatment of this population is particularly harsh and violently racist reactions to this population have been documented and discussed in the recently released book by Max Blumenthal, Goliath.


This new law allows Israel to detain African migrants without trial for an entire year. Human rights groups voiced thier objections to the law. Prior to the passage of this law, the Israeli Supreme Court even shot down a similar law that allowed detention without trial for 3 years. Of course,  numerous media outlets covered passage of this law and almost all got the story right in the headline.

Here is Reuters' headline, Israel approves detention without charges for African migrants

Here is the Israeli newspaper Haaretz's headline, Knesset Okays Dentention of Migrants without Trial 

Here is the LA Times' headline, Israel passes law aimed at deterring African migrants 

Here is the AFP's headline, Israel passes law to detain illegal African migrants

And now......drum-roll............

Here is the NY Times' headline, Israel: Law Reduces Migrant Detention

Yup, that's right. Despite other news outlets getting the story right, and, if you click through the links you will see most dedicated much more space to it than the NYT, the NYT decided that the story here was not that the Israeli state was imposing the harsh, rights-curtailing laws on African migrants but rather that it was treating them with leniency. You can't make this stuff up. Well, I guess Isabel Kershner can.

To be fair, it may not have been Kershner who wrote the headline, but her name does appear on the story, a whole 4 sentences long. Kershner writes that the bill "amended previous legislation" to make it sound like the action by Knesset was actually in a lenient direction, but immediately after that she notes that the Supreme Court struck down that previous legislation. So what the Knesset passed was actually new legislation, because the previous legislation was invalidated. You can't amended a law that has been invalidated.

So what we have here is yet another conscious misrepresentation of the reality in NYT reporting on Israel where various other news outlets get the story right, including other US, International and Israeli media sources.

Is anyone at the NYT paying attention?

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Relative failures at the NY Times

Readers of this blog know we look carefully at the New York Times and its reporting of issues in Israel and Palestine. Its been a while since I've done one of these posts, largely because of other commitments, but stories in the last two days have been impossible to ignore.

Yesterday, the Israeli government announced massive settlement expansion plans before apparently putting them on hold due to uproar. When the news first broke, every major Israeli paper reported on the massive number of housing units involved 20-24 thousand. This would make it the largest single announcement in recent memory. Along with the plans for the housing units that would move forward, Netanyahu apparently put a stop to plans for 1,200 or so units in the E-1 area which would connect the Israeli settlement of Maale Addumim with Occupied Jerusalem.

Here is how different Israeli papers chose to lead their stories on this news:

Haaretz: "The Housing Ministry has issued a tender to hire an architect to plan the construction of 1,200 housing units in the E1 area, which links Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim in the West Bank, as part of a larger wave of tenders to construct some 20,000 housing units in the West Bank at a cost of nearly $13 million ([NIS 45 million)."

Yideot Ahranot: "The State of Israel has issued a tender for 20,000 new housing units in the territories, including in the disputed E1 area near Ma'aleh Adumim, but the Prime Minister's Office canceled the tender pertaining to E1, stating on Tuesday that "there is no need to pay international prices for a process that does not have great significance."

Jerusalem Post:"The Housing Ministry last week made plans to build nearly 24,000 new homes in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, Israeli media reported Tuesday."

Now, here is how the New York Times (which is an American newspaper by the way) decided to lead their story on this yesterday:

"With relations between Israel and the United States in distress over deep disagreements on Iranian nuclear negotiations and construction in West Bank settlements, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday froze plans for building in a particularly contentious area outside Jerusalem known as E1."

The story here was the massive number of units (20,000!) slated for development. Every Israeli newspaper managed to prioritize that part of the story correctly. Yet for the New York Times the story, written by Jodi Rudoren, was not that 20,000 new settlements units were closer to being built but rather that Netanyahu put a stop to some settlements.

It is absolutely dumbfounding that Israeli papers continue to report more critically of their government than papers in the United States. In fact, the headline of the NYT story yesterday was "Netanyahu halts some settlement plants, but others to proceed." It would make you think that the majority were initially halted and the minority were to proceed but in fact it was the other way around, twenty-fold!

To their credit, the NYT has since changed the headline and the first paragraph in the online version of the story. It is unclear what version appeared in print. You can see the old headline in the URL. But how on earth any responsible journalist or editor could pen or approve the first version at all is beyond me.

That brings us to today's story, this one is by Isabel Kershner. Questions have been raised in the past about Kershner's ability to report accurately given the apparent conflict of interest she has due to the work her husband does. Her story is about the stabbing death of an Israeli soldier.

It opens:

"A Palestinian teenager fatally stabbed a 19-year-old Israeli soldier on a bus in northern Israel on Wednesday, according to the police, stirring outrage in Israel and injecting another element of uncertainty into a peace process already in deep crisis over Israeli settlement plans in the West Bank."

So a Palestinian kills and Israeli soldier and we are told about how that might impact the peace process. OK, go on. Here is the meat of the story (emphasis mine):

The stabbing Wednesday, the first such deadly attack inside Israel recently, took place when the bus, traveling from Nazareth to Tel Aviv, pulled into the station in the northern town of Afula. 

 The Israeli military said that the soldier, Eden Atias, 19. was in uniform at the time of the attack and had been on his way to an army base. He was stabbed several times in the upper body, according to Micky Rosenfeld, spokesman for the police. Mr. Rosenfeld said a 16-year-old Palestinian from Jenin, West Bank, was apprehended at the scene and had told security personnel under questioning that he had acted to avenge one or more relatives serving time in Israeli prison. Israeli news media identified the suspect as Hussein Jawadra. 

The attack came after a string of violent incidents in the West Bank in recent months that ended a period of relative calm, leading to calls from rightist Israeli politicians to re-examine Israel’s agreement to release 104 long-serving Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons in four batches as part of an American-brokered deal to resume peace negotiations. Two of the four groups have already been released. 

Since September, an Israeli soldier was killed in Hebron, apparently by a Palestinian sniper, an off-duty soldier was killed by a Palestinian acquaintance who had lured him to the West Bank, and a retired colonel was bludgeoned to death outside his home in the Jordan Valley. Israeli security officials have attributed the rise in attacks to unrelated individuals rather than an orchestrated campaign backed by militant groups.

So after we are told about the details of this incident from an Israeli military source, we are provided a particular context of violence in which this incident occurred. The notorious "period of relative calm" rears its ugly head again. We've explained how misleading this term is in the past here and here. Then the author enumerates every Israeli death since September. But what about violence against Palestinians?

Way down in the penultimate paragraph, number 11 of 12 to be precise, Palestinian casualties get a mention; a whole fraction of a sentence, just before we are reminded of the Israeli casualty again:

A number of Palestinians have also been killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers in recent months, and the stabbing on Wednesday is likely only to widen the gulf between the two sides.

A number? What number? What circumstances? When? What are their names? What are their stories?

For some actual context that more closely mirrors reality, here are some numbers:

5 - The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since September

516 - The number of Palestinians injured by Israeli forces since September

736 - The number of arrest operations carried out by Israeli forces against Palestinians

2,368 - The number of fruit trees (olive or otherwise) destroyed by Israeli forces or Israeli settlers since September

123- The number of structures demolished by Israeli forces since September

176- The number of Palestinians displaced or made homeless as a result of demolitions since September

16,962 - The number of days the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has persisted for


These numbers, compiled from weekly UN OCHA reports during this period, do not even include much of the routine Israeli settler violence that has spiked during this season. Yesterday, for example, Israeli settlers dropped a large stone from a high point above a Palestinian walking in an alleyway below them, cracking his ribs, vertebrae and rupturing an artery leaving him in a coma.

For Kershner and the NYT, this entire system of violence, from the killings to the injuries to the systematic destruction of property, is summed up as an unidentified number, in half a sentence, in the second to last paragraph, in a story mostly dedicated to Israeli victims.

Readers deserve a better contextualization of the violence occurring in Israel/Palestine than what the NYT has been offering.

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Settler Violence Happens, On Camera and Off

Earlier this week, an unarmed Palestinian was shot in the head by an Israeli from the settlement of Yitzhar in Nablus when a group of settlers, accompanied by soldiers from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), attacked the village of Asira al-Qibliya. Though horrific, it’s actually nothing new. B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group who released the video and who regularly records incidents of violence in the Palestinian territories, said the occurrence itself was not unusual; what was unusual was actually having cameras there this time to record it.

The news story spread like wildfire. Although settler attacks on Palestinians occur nearly every day (and many accompanied by the IDF), they rarely make it to international headlines, let alone with this ferocity.  Why the difference with this story? News sites state it’s because of the direct video evidence of the attack and the apparent audacity “that the soldiers present did not act to prevent the settlers from throwing stones and firing live ammunition at the Palestinians.”

This explanation holds no ground. Just three days later, another video was released showing a settler, with IDF soldiers standing by idly, violently confronting Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. Unsurprisingly, this story was not caught on by high-profile international media, despite its similarities to the video released Saturday.

The Palestine Center released a report on settler violence in February with data from 2004 – 2011 which makes Saturday’s incident that much easier to understand in the perspective of years of perpetual attacks by aggressive Israeli settlers.

In the report, we see that the extent and frequency with which settler violence is perpetrated intensifies with every passing year. Not only has the total amount of incidents per year increased, but settler violence particularly in Nablus (home to the shooter in this week’s incident) has escalated in the past two years to such a degree that now the most attacks per year occur in Nablus, two or three times that of any other governorate.* Indeed, Yitzhar perpetrated more attacks against Palestinian villagers than any other Israeli settlement in our data, making it the most violent settlement in the occupied territories.

According to B’Tselem, the attack on Asira al-Qibliya on Saturday began with settlers from Yitzhar lighting fields on fire and throwing stones at houses and residents. Stone throwing and arson are two of the top tactics chosen by violent settlers, as shown in our report. Even when this particular event escalated to live fire, the settlers were using a tactic employed by five percent of other attackers in 2011.

As for the rationalization behind this particular incident, the spokesperson for the Yitzhar settlement said that the settlers had traveled to Asira al-Qibliya to put out fires he said were started by Palestinians, and then had only fired shots from their M-16s when their lives and those of the soldiers ‘guarding’ them were threatened by young Palestinian stone-throwers. Though the videos of the incident from two different angles reveal a different narrative, our report also indicates that most incidents of settler violence are NOT positively tied to incidents of Palestinian violence.

And with the international community up in arms over the recorded passivity and complied consent of the IDF in this one incident of settler violence against Palestinians, we remind the world that over 90 percent of all villages facing multiple instances of settler violence are located in areas under Israeli security jurisdiction. Settlers perpetrating violence against Palestinians and their property know they are not likely to face any punitive action from the Israeli authorities for their crimes, so they choose to attack villages under Israeli authority. In this case, the settlers chose to fire at unarmed Palestinians in full view of soldiers from the IDF with complete faith that there would be no interventions or repercussions for their actions. Not only does the IDF fail to protect Palestinians from violent settlers, but it also offers complicity by accompanying settlers on their violent hateful tirades. It is Israeli government inaction and not actions that allowed this and other acts of settler violence to occur.

The IDF and the Israeli government must protect Palestinian civilians in the territories it occupies, must act to prevent settler violence as it occurs, and must immediately, thoroughly and credibly investigate this and other instances of Israeli settler violence with appropriate sentences adjudicated. If not, the news media will only see more and more cases of extreme settler violence against unarmed Palestinians.

Let’s see if the next time a Palestinian is shot on camera if it will even make the news ticker, let alone headlines.

*except for Hebron, which it surpasses by 25 percent

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Did #Israel Provoke #Gaza Escalation to Test 'Iron Dome'?

When the Israeli military extra-judicially assassinated the Popular Resistance Committee leader Zuhair Qaisi they provoked a barrage of rockets. I knew this would happen. They also knew very well that this would happen. Anyone looking at the numbers and the dynamics of violence in and out of Gaza would know this would happen. The Israelis claim that Qaisi was planning an attack through Sinai. Of course, they provide no evidence of this. We are just supposed to take them at their word. Reports also indicate that the Israelis were monitoring Qaisi's every move for some time.

Qaisi's predecessor was killed by an Israeli assassination last August in an Israeli strike which left 6 dead, including a 3 year old child. The Israelis claimed an attack that came from Sinai on Eilat had originated in Gaza. This seemed suspicious at the time. The Eilat attack was well coordinated and beyond what anyone estimated to be the operational capabilities of a small faction like the PRC. Sure enough, we later learned the IDF acknowledged that Egyptian Beduin perpetrated the attack. It was easier and less politically costly for the Israelis to retaliate against Gaza since nobody seems to ask questions when Israelis kill Palestinians in Gaza - its become routine. Had they struck at Egypt however, they would have to calculate the unknown variable of a revolutionary Egypt's reaction. Gaza was the more convenient place to go for revenge. Israeli journalist Amira Hass noted at the time how no signs in Gaza pointed to local responsibility for the attacks.

Let us grant for the sake of argument that Qaisi was planning an attack, the timing of the Israeli assassination was still elected and not forced since, as the Israelis admit, Qaisi was not an imminent threat.

This begs the question; Why would the Israeli government take an action which they know would immediately provoke a response putting more Israelis at risk than if they would not have. The Israelis claim to have had detailed intelligence to justify the assassination of Qaisi so wouldn't it make more sense to use that information to defend Israeli interests without provoking a response that would bring a barrage of projectile file? Of course it would, but that is not the course of action the Israelis chose.

It seems as though they wanted to provoke a response. But why? Why would the Israeli government put Israelis at risk when this was entirely avoidably? (Of course, they ultimately put Palestinians at risk the most but the Israeli government has never been all too concerned about that anyway)

It may be because something happened on the way to AIPAC. While Netanyahu and his Israel Lobby friends have done a very good job of convincing members of Congress to support an Israeli strike on Iran, there is one audience that is significantly less convinced and less gung-ho; Israelis.

From a poll that was released immediately before the AIPAC conference (obviously intentional timing) we learned that the Israeli public and their Prime Minister are not on the same page. Shibley Telhami writes about the poll conducted with the Israeli Dahaf Institute at the end of February 2012:

Only 19 percent of Israelis polled expressed support for an attack without U.S. backing, according to a poll I conducted — fielded by Israel’s Dahaf Institute Feb. 22-26 — while 42 percent endorsed a strike only if there is at least U.S. support, and 32 percent opposed an attack regardless.

This does not appear to be because of Israeli worries about potential American punishment. In fact, Israelis remain confident the U.S. would support them, at least diplomatically (38 percent), or join the war on Israel’s behalf (27 percent) — even if Israel struck Iran without Washington’s approval. Only 15 percent expect reduced American support. What seems behind these attitudes is an assessment of the consequences of an Israeli attack.

A majority of Israelis polled, roughly 51 percent, said the war would last months (29 percent) or years (22 percent), while only 18 percent said it would last days. About as many Israelis, 44 percent, think that an Israeli strike would actually strengthen Iran’s government as think it would weaken it (45 percent).

Two-thirds of Israelis, meanwhile, believe Hezbollah would most likely join Iran in retaliation against Israel — even if Israel did not strike Hezbollah forces. An additional 27 percent believe Hezbollah would join only if attacked.

So here is Netanyahu, putting all his effort and focus toward saber rattling, and his public isn't going along. Netanyahu would not likely carry out an attack that his public is against and Iran and the US know that electoral constraints would mean even the most belligerent rhetoric isn't likely to be backed up with action if it will cost a leader his office. The greatest obstacle to Israeli public support for a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran is the belief that the consequences of the attack from Iran, Hezbollah and other factions like Islamic Jihad, would be too high a cost to bear.

What could the Israeli government do to change this perception? Well, a successful large scale live action test of the US funded Iron Dome would probably help, and assassinating a PRC militant would provoke the projectiles to trigger one.

As the 'Iron Dome' (which can also refer to Israel's hard-headed policy toward Gaza) was put into use, Israeli right wing publications openly favoring belligerency toward Iran happily reported on the success of the system. Israeli publications that have been less hawkish on Iran took a different approach.

Haaretz's Aluf Benn picks up on on how Netanyahu is "preparing Israeli public opinion for war on Iran" yet somehow fails to even mention Gaza in his piece, let alone ask the obvious question about whether shaping Israeli public opinion toward war could explain the inexplicable Israeli decision making behind provoking projectile fire from Gaza.

27 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and 80 more injured from Israeli fire after the assassination of Qaisi.

Are these mere sacrificial guinea pigs for Netanyahu's experiment?

Mourners in Gaza are not waiting for Haaretz to ask that question.

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