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Vol. 79/No. 39 November 2, 2015
(front page)
Attacks on Jews, Israeli gov’t brutal
response deal blow to working class
BY SETH GALINSKY
The spate of stabbings and other attacks on Jews in East Jerusalem, the
West Bank and Israel — encouraged by Hamas and with the acquiescence of
Palestinian Authority leaders — has struck a blow against working-class
solidarity and set back the fight for Palestinian national rights. It
has handed the Israeli government a pretext to close political space and
respond with brutal and disproportionate force, including carrying out
“collective punishment” against the Palestinian population and
destroying homes of Palestinian families.
From mid-September to Oct. 19 nine Jews were killed and dozens wounded
in more than 30 attacks, most carried out by permanent residents of East
Jerusalem. Many of the attackers were shot dead.
At the same time, Israeli troops have killed at least 17 Palestinian
demonstrators and wounded hundreds during protests in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip over the last several weeks.
The Israeli government’s response to the terror attacks has inflamed
tensions and encouraged vigilantism against Arabs. In a widely viewed
video Basaraa Abad, a 30-year-old Arab citizen of Israel, is holding a
knife after attempting an attack in the Afula bus station, near
Nazareth. Although she makes no move toward the police who surrounded
her, they open fire, shooting her a half dozen times.
Hamas, the reactionary Islamist group that governs the Gaza Strip and is
the main competitor to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank,
lauded the attacks. “We are proud of you, the heroes of the knives,”
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Oct. 9, calling the attacks a new
intifada or uprising
The first intifada — which began in 1987 and lasted four years — was a
mass uprising in Gaza and the West Bank, led by a young generation of
fighters. It reaffirmed that Palestinians would not stop fighting as
long as they face national oppression and discrimination. It won support
among large numbers of Israelis, but did not succeed in forging a new
leadership that could provide a revolutionary alternative to groups like
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and
reactionary Islamist forces.
The knife attacks are the opposite, a consequence of the political
bankruptcy of these organizations that claim to speak for the
Palestinian people.
On Oct. 18, Habtom Zarhum, an Eritrean refugee, was shot by a security
guard who allegedly thought he was part of a terrorist attack at the
Beersheba bus station. While Zarhum lay bleeding, he was beaten by a mob
and later died. Israeli authorities say they will investigate his death
but have ruled out charging any of the vigilantes with homicide.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered checkpoints placed
around Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, a form of collective
punishment, despite widespread acknowledgement that most Palestinians
have nothing to do with the terror attacks.
“It’s not good,” car wash worker Ahmed Rajabi, a Palestinian in East
Jerusalem, told the New York Times, referring to a terror attack on a
nearby bus Oct. 13. “We don’t agree with those things.”
In addition to demolishing the houses of alleged terrorists — leaving
their families homeless — no new construction will be allowed at the
sites. Netanyahu’s cabinet called for accelerating the construction of
the separation wall, which cuts through large swaths of the West Bank,
making it hard for Palestinians to get to their farms and neighboring
towns.
Seven Palestinians were killed and 50 wounded in Gaza Oct. 9 when
Israeli soldiers fired across the border into a crowd that was throwing
stones and rolling burning tires toward a guard post. The Israel
military later announced it would no longer break up “riots” on the Gaza
border with live ammunition, but would instead use more rubber bullets
and tear gas.
Dispute over Al-Aqsa mosque
The attacks on Jews accelerated after Abbas addressed the United Nations
General Assembly Sept. 30.
He accused Netanyahu of scheming to undo the arrangement where the
Jordanian government and the Waqf Muslim religious authority administer
East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque — one of the holiest sites in Islam —
known to Jews as the Temple Mount. The agreement dates to the 1967 Six
Day War, when the Israeli army captured the West Bank and East
Jerusalem. As part of the deal, Jews visit the site only at designated
times.
Netanyahu says the government has no intention of changing the status
quo. But he has often looked the other way as rightist groups, including
members of his cabinet, have organized provocative visits. Israeli
authorities have increasingly imposed bans on Muslim worshipers under
age 40, supposedly to lower the chances of violence. To ease tensions
Netanyahu recently banned all members of the Knesset, Israel’s
parliament, from visiting the site.
In the U.N. speech Abbas listed violations by the Israeli government of
the rights of Palestinians, including continued building of Israeli
settlements in the West Bank and incarceration of 6,000 Palestinian
political prisoners.
But instead of presenting a road to mobilize the Palestinian masses,
take the moral high ground, and win support from working people and
others inside Israel, Abbas said the Palestinian Authority would no
longer be bound by previous “agreements and that Israel must assume all
of its responsibilities as an occupying power, because the status quo
cannot continue.”
When the recent bloody attacks on Jews began, Abbas refused to condemn
them. Instead, he and most Palestinian-owned media have referred to the
attacks as “alleged,” or denied that they even took place.
The terror attacks have created an atmosphere of fear among many Jews
and Arabs in Israel. Shops in the Arab town of Nazareth that cater to
Jewish customers as well as tourists have been deserted. The same is
true in many restaurants and stores in Jerusalem, Haifa and elsewhere.
In revenge some Israeli Jews have attacked Arabs. Uri Rezken, a Jewish
worker, was stabbed Oct. 13 in a suburb of Haifa. “I’m working, and
suddenly I feel four knife stabs in my back,” he told Israel’s Army
Radio. “I heard a shout, ‘You deserve it, you deserve it, Arab
bastards!’ When I turn around I see a Haredi [ultra-orthodox Jewish] man.”
“If I were Arab, it still wouldn’t have been OK,” Rezken said. “We are
all human beings, we are all equal.”
Increased Arab-Jewish relations
There are more ties and relations between Jewish and Arab citizens of
Israel than any time since the country’s foundation. It is not unusual
for Jews and Arabs to work side by side in the same factories or
businesses, to belong to the same labor unions and at times to socialize.
East Jerusalem, where the majority of the knife attacks have occurred,
is home to 300,000 Palestinians. While they are entitled to become
Israeli citizens, most have refused; instead they are permanent
residents with the right to travel throughout Israel.
Nearly 80 percent of Arab families in Jerusalem live below the official
Israeli poverty line, compared to 21 percent of Jewish families. Arab
neighborhoods have potholed streets and inadequate water, sewage and
garbage collection. Every year municipal authorities demolish dozens of
Arab homes that they allege are illegally built, while allowing right
wing Israeli groups to buy up property in the Muslim Quarter and the
Silwan neighborhood. There are now more than 1,000 Jewish settlers there.
The West Bank, ostensibly under control of the Palestinian Authority, is
more like a honeycomb of cantons, with 60 percent of the territory under
direct Israeli control, 22 percent under Palestinian civil control but
with Israeli cops doing the policing and 18 percent under the rule of
Abbas’ Palestinian Authority. According to an Israeli army official
interviewed by the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, West Bank settlers “have
ripped out hundreds of olive trees belonging to Arabs, ruined houses,
smashed cars,” while Israeli authorities turn a blind eye.
Related articles:
End attacks on Jews, brutal Israeli response
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