Israelis kill crops to oust beduin

February 20, 2004 2:19 PM

Israelis kill crops to oust beduin
"Nonetheless, government ministers and officials accuse the beduin of "invading state lands" by refusing to be moved from their historic villages. Sharon himself gave a speech shortly before he became prime minister in which he said: "The beduin are eating away at the last land reserve of the state."" - via american samidizat
posted by specialk420 (36 comments total)

I usually look to Al Jazeera for straightforward, unbiased reporting on Israel.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:34 PM on February 20, 2004

Yeah, umm not to attack the source, but Al Jazeera is tin foil hat central.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 2:50 PM on February 20, 2004

Now, now, let's be fair. Without Al Jazeera, we might have never found out that the Jews are hairy eight-foot baby-eating monsters with lightning from their eyes and fireballs from their arse. And they run the world, too!
posted by Krrrlson at 2:57 PM on February 20, 2004

Without Al Jazeera, we might have never found out that the Jews are hairy eight-foot baby-eating monsters

Krrrison! Don't give away my recipe for Matzoh Balls!

Well, ok, but just this one cooking secret: Just a pinch of the ground bones of gentile babies makes all the difference - old family secret that I now share with all of you mefites.
posted by jearbear at 3:01 PM on February 20, 2004

This is why I don't understand why more Jews aren't Republicans, since we both like to eat babies...
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 3:06 PM on February 20, 2004

I expect to see more of this, rather than less. Ethnic cleansing as a demographically defensive tactic. For as was pointed out in the article, the Bedouin have a "high fertility rate", and with a policy of "disengagement", *no* Israeli Arab will eventually be allowed to live in Israel. To do so would result, sooner or later, in Israeli Arabs outnumbering Jews.

Using this as an axiom, that is, "disengagement" as a "total" concept, *not* just as the establishment of new national borders, other things can be projected as possibilities:

1) The seizure of Jerusalem and the expulsion of all Arabs. This might be followed by the razing of *some* if not all of the Jerusalem mosques.

2) After some aggressive Palestinian act, the semi-permanent closing of the borders; possibly accompanied with the withdrawal of the IDF from Palestinian territories. (Foreign workers are already being used to some extent as replacements for Palestinians.)

3) A large part of the IDF becomes like a border patrol, but with sophisticated counterbattery and antimissile artillery.

4) Some agreement with Lebanon and Jordan over the return, possibly forcible, of the Palestinians living in those countries to the Palestinian territories. This could be done in several ways and for several purposes.
posted by kablam at 3:08 PM on February 20, 2004

because we all know how the media from the nation who gave Israel more than a trillion dollars since 1967 and has never even asked the many Israeli governments since then to stop -- really stop -- the settlements in the Occupied Territories, well, we all know how the media from that nation is famous for unbiased reporting regarding the Israeli/Palestinian problem

just sayin'

not to mention AlJazeera journalists scooped very often the oh-so-fawning sir-yes-sir US media during Iraq Attaq. but maybe they're must be a bunch of illiterate Osama-loving peasants waiting for their cage in Gitmo.
yeah.

they have an agenda? yeah, unlike the famously independent Disney/General Electric/NewsCorp US media, right. I must have forgot that for a second


posted by matteo at 3:10 PM on February 20, 2004

I went and googled an interesting article about the conflict and relationship between the Beduin and the Israeli government.

Oh, and just to drop a goats.com reference:
Babies are "tasty yet morally ambigious......."
posted by elwoodwiles at 3:12 PM on February 20, 2004

what matteo said.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 3:16 PM on February 20, 2004

Good grief it gets to the point of "I really must hate America" is no longer a lame joke....
posted by Elim at 3:22 PM on February 20, 2004

With that lovely little fence the Israelis are builing, their penchant for demolishing refugee camps and such, it's pretty clear that the Israeli government isn't much into neighborliness. Of course, horrific destruction has visited all sides there. But still, I wouldn't doubt that there's at least a grain of truth to this story. The Bedouin are an ancient culture that has lived off the land for thousands of years, while the nation of Israel in it's present form doesn't have a century under it's belt yet. Not that I'm anti- this or pro- that, but this situation sounds very much like America in the pioneer days; starve 'em off, push 'em back, round 'em up, fence 'em in, and finish off the angry ones.
posted by moonbird at 3:48 PM on February 20, 2004

IT would actually be a mistake, kabalm, to lump in the Bedoiun 'problem' with the great demographic 'problem' that Israel faces. On the macro level, of course, they are related because the Bedoiun are Arabs as well, but on the actual level it's quite different and has more to do with any country facing people with a totally different way of life then themselves. For example problems with Bedouins have been encountered in Arab countries as well, because of the clash in lifestyle (nomads tend to become disposable when their land is desired). Also you should remember that they're not talking about moving them outside of Israel's borders, just off the land that is coveted.

This type of crop killing, coupled with animal seizure or slaughter (the real wealth of a Bedoiun is measured in his animals) has been going on for a while now, it's part of the effort to force the Bedoiun into a new type of lifestyle. Israel as a modern state has no real interest in people who roam the land and generally live by different sets of rules.

Unlike the non-Bedouin Arabs who live in Israel, the nomads have very little interest in politics and have always had a policy of respecting whoever their rulers are, as long as they are left alone to basically do what they want. They don't feel an allegiance or consider themselves Palestinians, although they are often quite religious Muslims. Originally, Israel did leave them alone and didn't bother with them. But as the Israeli government sees itself in a demographic war with 'the other', thetrend since the late 70's has been to declare Bedouin villages illegal or unauthorized. Not necessarily because they want there to be less Bedouin, but because they want their land. The birthrates between Israeli Jews and non-Bedouin Israeli Arabs is not hugely different (the greatest disparity is between Gazans, and well, everybody. 24-hour lockdowns, povery and unemployment will do that), and the solution that would keep the state intact (mass ethnic cleansing is not a workable solution logistically, practically and of course, uh, morally) is to import more Jews. Remember that more Jews live outside Israel then do within its borders. Therefore the 'problem' is land, not people.

The major problem with resettlement is the Bedouin have no interest in living in normal towns, and the Arab residents of the towns they have been forcibly relocated to don't want them either-- they complain of the garbage they create, their odd hours, lack of respect for the difference between their property and their neighbors', etc. In Arab-Israeli towns where Bedouins have been forcibly relocated there have been numerous neighborhood squabbles, at least one that I know about that ended in serious violence. It's an issue that has been faced by many countries that have native populations living a totally foreign lifestyle, excaberated by the fact that Israel is a "race" based state and filters any issue regarding non-Jews through that prism.

If you don't trust Al Jazeera, here's a reprint from a Ha'aretz article on the same subject from last year. It was a pretty major article at the time, and opened up lots of peoples eyes to the hidden Bedouin issue, but I can't seem to find it on their site any more.
posted by cell divide at 4:00 PM on February 20, 2004

moonbird: With that lovely little fence the Israelis are builing, their penchant for demolishing refugee camps and such, it's pretty clear that the Israeli government isn't much into neighborliness.

You do realize that at the same time the Saudis are carrying on about how awful it is that the Israelis are building a fence to try to keep people from blowing up their citizens, they're quietly putting up their own fence between Saudi Arabia and Yemen because they don't trust that the Yemen government is doing enough to prevent militants from smuggling weapons and other crap over the border into Saudi Arabia? Fucking hypocrites.
posted by wrffr at 4:12 PM on February 20, 2004

This is why I don't understand why more Jews aren't Republicans, since we both like to eat babies...

...and kill Arabs.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 4:30 PM on February 20, 2004

they're quietly putting up their own fence between Saudi Arabia and Yemen because they don't trust that the Yemen government is doing enough to prevent militants from smuggling weapons and other crap over the border into Saudi Arabia? Fucking hypocrites.

Yeah, but they're not building it IN YEMEN.
posted by laz-e-boy at 4:40 PM on February 20, 2004

a note in passng: I used to post pro-Israeli stuff at that site a long time ago. I was told I was naive and did not know anyhthing about the situation. I said that if some were to post pro-Palestinian stuff, I would counter with pro-Israeli. I was told that that site always sided with the underdog. I then remarked that if such freedom loving people at that site were unwilling to let me post what I believed in then they were indeed a throwback to the good old days of the evil empire...thus for freedom of expression! I stopped posting there.
posted by Postroad at 4:53 PM on February 20, 2004

There's nothing wrong with a website that has a specific political orientation, postroad; it's not like there's any shortage of places on the web to discuss "both sides" of any given story. Sometimes it's nice to talk about the details with people who share your general viewpoint, instead of arguing about the big ideas from first principles all the time. You can always start your own web site if your viewpoint isn't getting heard - *that's* what freedom of speech is all about.
posted by Mars Saxman at 5:38 PM on February 20, 2004

postroad - 'freedom of expression' is only guaranteed by the gov't in public places. Private forums (both literal and cyber) owe nothing to anyone in terms of expression.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 5:51 PM on February 20, 2004

Figures... just a matter of time before the lovingly anti-Israeli MeFi gets on the case. You whine about the bias of the American media, yet the majority of you hypocrites treat violently biased sources like Al Jazeera as the honest truth. When Postroad posted articles that were equally biased towards Israel, you couldn't shut up about it for days. In this thread alone, we've experienced both the lunatic ravings of kablam (very apt name, my boy) to matteo's characteristic self-righteous whining and finger-pointing.

The Haaretz article shows one important thing - Israelis allow freedom of expression in their media, including opposing viewpoints. When has Al Jazeera ever published a detailed listing of Palestinian suicide attacks, along with all the horrifying, gory images (with the intent of condemnation rather than praise)?

Thank you, good people - with your incredibly "objective" influence, terrorist groups have excellent PR, anti-Semitism is peaking again, and Jews everywhere in the world are headed for the next Holocaust. Why even pretend? Your bigotry is all too transparent.
posted by Krrrlson at 6:42 PM on February 20, 2004

postroad - 'freedom of expression' is only guaranteed by the gov't in public places. Private forums (both literal and cyber) owe nothing to anyone in terms of expression.

Postroad is talking about this site, and he wasn't banned or anything people just argued rather vociferously, and I think eventually just started ignoring them (I know I certainly ignore most political posts by paris praramus and Steve_at_linwood these days).
posted by delmoi at 8:13 PM on February 20, 2004

krrlson, al jazeera shows live video from the scene of suicide attacks in the middle east, the same ones that are shown on Israeli TV and most of the Middle Eastern outlets. Their comments about it of course are usually about the suffering of the Palestinian people and their plight, blah blah blah. But they do show it and the gory images, as it's newsworthy and though they are biased, they are a news gathering outfit. As for the next holocaust I think you need to smoke some weed and relax.
posted by chaz at 9:03 PM on February 20, 2004

Krrrlson: sorry, personal invective isn't the same as a good argument in synagogue, and it isn't as good as one here.

I only stated the obvious, I didn't state approval of it. The obvious *facts* are that Israeli Jews are outnumbered by those they do not wish to integrate. Demographically, they are dying out as a people while surrounded by very "fertile", as that article put it, peoples. They have recognized this as fact for at least 30 years.

Second fact: the assumption that Arial Sharon's stated policy of "disengagement" is *limited* to building of the security wall is not necessarily correct. If not, then what other steps the state of Israel will take in carrying out that policy are more or less straightforward. You may choose to use euphemisms for expressions such as "ethnic cleansing", but they remain the same activity, and an unfortunate one. One again, I do not here endorse, but understand as a tactic, the use of such measures.

Whining about "freedom of the press" has nothing to do with the underlying issue, nor does what other people have written in other topics. Israel holds NO special moral superiority, NOR does the Palestinians or the other Arabs of the region. Each in turn have forfeited that claim, so their protestations and complaints register as stratagem, nothing more. They complain, bicker and haggle for the love of doing so. As do their supporters and apologists.

Evaluation of either the Jewish people of Israel or the Palestinians can now only be made based on their actions, NOT THEIR WORDS, by third parties, such as Europeans or Americans, who really have little care or stake in what such contentious people do, and thus can maintain an air of equanimity as they throw feces at each other.

We would prefer it if they kept their squabbles to themselves, but each in turn hopes that by involving outsiders, they may somehow gain advantage, and maybe gain a little credibility by osmosis, being unwilling to earn it themselves. They are a swinish lot, all of them.
posted by kablam at 9:07 PM on February 20, 2004

Hey specialk, it's samizdat, not what you wrote. It's a Russian word which is a combination of "self" and "publish," and it was coined in the 60s (or maybe even earlier) when political dissidents started to organize underground networks for printed material.
posted by azazello at 9:33 PM on February 20, 2004

and the link doesn't work anyway-- what's /null?
posted by chaz at 10:01 PM on February 20, 2004

kablam: Perhaps a good doze of anti-Jewish propaganda in mosque is more to your taste.

As for what you say... CLEARLY the fact that the Jews are outnumbered and Sharon is in power will INVARIABLY cause the seizing of Jerusalem and expulsion of the many thousands of Arabs therefrom. This, as you say, is OBVIOUS. I'm sorry, your logic checks out after all, forgive me for ever doubting you.

chaz: This is why I added the condemnation vs. praise qualifier. Perhaps the weed is impairing your ability to read?
posted by Krrrlson at 11:02 PM on February 20, 2004

...it's pretty clear that the Israeli government isn't much into neighborliness...

Because as you know the PA, along with the terrorist organisations it let's rule the streets almost unchecked, have been nothing but model citizens themselves and have done absolutely nothing to require a wall to be built.
posted by PenDevil at 1:04 AM on February 21, 2004

Al Jazeera = Crap
Fox News = Crap

At least we'll always have Playboy TV. Maybe.
posted by owillis at 2:04 AM on February 21, 2004

Krrrlson: When has Al Jazeera ever published a detailed listing of Palestinian suicide attacks, along with all the horrifying, gory images (with the intent of condemnation rather than praise)?

Here is a partial al-Jazeera list of suicide bombings (al-Jazeera calls them "human bombers", presumably in an effort to stay neutral and non-controversial in the Middle East) against Israel in the last couple of years. There are no terribly gory pictures on the website, but according to chaz, they do broadcast such images on TV when these bombings occur. Yes, they call the Palestinian attacks part of a resistance movement (which they are, gruesome though they may be), and never call them terrorist, but they don't call them "martyrdom operations" either, and I have yet to read an al-Jazeera article where they call Israelis terrorists, even though it's said quite a bit in the Middle East. Also, they have no problem quoting Ariel Sharon, Israeli paramedics, or the IDF to get their side of the story. I don't detect either condemnation or praise in any of those articles. So is al-Jazeera just a mouthpiece for Hamas? I leave it to the reader to decide, but let me just ask whether al-Jazeera would have quite so bad a reputation if it were an American network, rather than an Arab one.

Now, to get back on-topic, Ha'aretz wrote about this same issue last year; al-Jazeera is only confirming it, so apparently they're not full of lies this time. Care to comment on the Israeli government poisoning crops and forcing Israeli citizens off the land on which they have lived since the establishment of Israel itself?
posted by skoosh at 6:27 AM on February 21, 2004

Krrrlson: CLEARLY the fact that the Jews are outnumbered and Sharon is in power will INVARIABLY cause the seizing of Jerusalem and expulsion of the many thousands of Arabs therefrom. This, as you say, is OBVIOUS. I'm sorry, your logic checks out after all, forgive me for ever doubting you.

Perhaps this shouldn't be phrased in a future tense. "Municipal" Jerusalem was the boundaries of Jerusalem imposed by Israel in 1967, it sectored the city into "Jewish" quarters and an "Arab" quarter, which faced the Palestinian West Bank. However, since then, Israel has ringed the "Arab" part of Jerusalem with Jewish development, cutting it off from the West Bank.

The area is now part of "Greater Jerusalem." The Arab quarter still exists, but it is now wrapped up in Israeli, NOT Palestinian, territory. The security fence places these Arab properties squarely IN Israel.

So, in other words, Israel isn't going to seize Jerusalem, it has seized Jerusalem.

Granted you will not see wholesale deportations from Jerusalem, that would instantly outrage the entire Moslem, not just Arab, world; a fact of which the Jews have been long aware. However, life for an Arab in Israel, anywhere in Israel, can just be made progressively more difficult. "Don't push them out, just make it easy for them to leave."

Ironically, the economic success of Israel makes Arabs want to live there, instead of under the retched dictatorship and poverty of their fellow Arabs. So the Israelis will have to be creative to convince them of the value of leaving.

A solution would be for the Arabs to embrace secularism, as secular Jews would be willing to tolerate them. This would be strongly opposed by the Orthodox, no doubt.
posted by kablam at 6:38 AM on February 21, 2004

Because as you know the PA, along with the terrorist organisations it let's rule the streets almost unchecked, have been nothing but model citizens themselves and have done absolutely nothing to require a wall to be built.

Okay, so build the wall in Israel, not Palestine.

However, life for an Arab in Israel, anywhere in Israel, can just be made progressively more difficult. "Don't push them out, just make it easy for them to leave."

One term for what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, used by Baruch Kimmerling in his book of the same title, is politicide: a multi-leveled process of Israeli political, economic and military policies "that has, as its ultimate goal, the dissolution of the Palestinian people's existence as a legitimate social, political and economic entity."

Israel is succeeding in this, unfortunately, thanks in no small part to the near-constant diplomatic cover provided by the U.S. Many Palestinian Arabs with the means to emigrate have already done so, and much of the already small Palestinian middle class, a potentially moderating political influence, is disappearing.
posted by Ty Webb at 10:31 AM on February 21, 2004

Ignoring the metacommentary here, and enforcing Ty Webb's points: what's disturbing is the extent to which the intifada has given the Likud carte blanche to extend an ongoing policy, which is essentially that of eradicating every cultural element within Israel that does not directly enforce a fallacious model of history in which the period between 74CE and 1948 was one of 'occupation' by foreigners. Note, for instance, the itineraries at the so-called Israel Dream Tours site, which pays more attention to the supposed locations of Old Testament events and the latest Jewish settlements than nineteen centuries of history which don't fit into the fallacious narrative. (Especially not the long periods of Arab rule where Jews were tolerated better than by the Crusaders; God forbid that you mention that fact.)

However, since then, Israel has ringed the "Arab" part of Jerusalem with Jewish development, cutting it off from the West Bank.

Far more than that: the buying up of East Jerusalem goes to the heart of long-established communities, Christian and Muslim. That's why it's rather curious to see the alliance between fundamentalist Christians in the US and the radical right in Israel; in part because it has helped severely undermine the position of Christians in Israel, to the point that the holy sites will probably become mere tourist attractions in the very near future, rather than the parish churches for a vibrant community. Christians have left Israel in droves, many choosing to sacrifice political freedoms for religious freedoms by moving to Syria. Ariel Sharon, in fact, is notorious for being one of those personally responsible for the expropriation of property in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem. (Remember, too, that the reason the Armenian genocide is given historical short shrift is mainly thanks to the cult of Holocaust exceptionalism.) The lack of respect shown by the Israeli right towards the region's cultural history continues to reach new heights. Thankfully, there are sufficient numbers in Israel, particularly in academia, who oppose this; but the ineffectual political opposition to Sharon has weakened their ability to counter such things.

The slow suffocation of the Negev Bedu -- ironically, one of the groups which contributed most to the fall of Ottoman rule -- deserves much greater attention. But because every policy in Israel can be defended in the US by the usual cliches about Israelis not feeling safe in the local shopping mall or reinforced concrete encampment, the cultural diversity and multi-ethnic, multi-religious heritage within Israel is being eviscerated. Think of the destruction of the Maghareba; the sleazy occupation of St John's Hospice by the Ataret Cohanim, aided by government funding; the Ras-al-Amud settlement, etc ad infinitum. Someone like Irving Moskowitz has done as much to prevent peace as any suicide bomber.

It's rather like the colonial settlers in the New World killing off a whole bunch of Native Americans, then displacing the remainer or creating conditions where nomadic groups are stuck on reservations, etc. But, in addition, doing so in the name of a policy which implies that the Native Americans are foreign interlopers in a land that justly belonged to the ancient ancestors of those white settlers.
posted by riviera at 11:27 AM on February 21, 2004

Okay, so build the wall in Israel, not Palestine.

It is in Israel. There is no nation called Palestine.
posted by swerve at 11:28 AM on February 21, 2004

There is no nation called Palestine.

that's true, but there is a nation called Israel, whose borders, like every other nations, are internationally recognized, and they don't extend across the "Green Line". Insomuchas nations do exist, they do so as borders that are internationally agreed upon. I can say that I live in my own nation in my trans am, but if it's not recognized by anyone else, it doesn't mean much does it?

Anyway it brings up the whole point of "what is a nation?" Personally I think nations are for the birds.
posted by chaz at 11:32 AM on February 21, 2004

let's see a helluva a lot of people watch FOX news - and a helluva lot more people watch al jazheera across the mid-east ... despite their bias it seems that both need to be considered.

oxfam has plenty of the issue here, i'm sure this post will be trashed as anti-semitic propaganda by some on this forum as well.

never the less - i am amazed by the hypocrisy of those on the right and the pro-likudnik camps ... that now justify the war in iraq on humanitarian grounds, by cast a blind on on the ghettos being created and ethnic cleansing going on on our dime in the occupied territories.

apologies on that samizdat link/spelling.
posted by specialk420 at 11:44 AM on February 21, 2004

Okay, so build the wall in Israel, not Palestine.

It is in Israel. There is no nation called Palestine.

False on both points. The wall sweeps many miles outside of the internationally recognized borders of Israel, and thus is quite obviously not "in Israel". And there is a nation called Palestine, they just don't have their own state yet. Important distinction.

It's rather like the colonial settlers in the New World killing off a whole bunch of Native Americans, then displacing the remainer or creating conditions where nomadic groups are stuck on reservations, etc.

Ironically (I think irony is too weak a term here), the American method of dealing with its inconvenient native population was an inspiration to Hitler in developing his Generalplan Ost for Eastern Europe, which "stipulated that these Slav territories would be settled by Germans while the vast majority of the native populace would be gradually pushed out. Only an insignificant number was to be Germanized. In short, Generalplan Ost provided for the expulsion of millions of people, primarily Slav nations, from their homes and the settlement of Germans in their place. "

Are the situations the same? Of course not. Do they exhibit disturbing similarities? Yes, they do.
posted by Ty Webb at 1:03 PM on February 21, 2004

Explosion hits bus in Jerusalem
posted by homunculus at 11:05 PM on February 21, 2004