Southern California Chronicle, Pages 40-41

Amira Hass Views Gaza Onslaught as Israel’s Latest Effort to Cut It off From West Bank

By Pat and Samir Twair

UCLA Professor Gabriel Piterberg (l) with Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass. (Staff photo S. Twair)

WHEN WE WENT to UCLA Nov. 2 to hear Amira Hass discuss Israel’s last winter onslaught on Gaza, we wondered how the Haaretz correspondent could present a new perspective on Operation Cast Lead that killed 1,400 Palestinians and wounded more than 5,000.

Hass did just that, however, by giving us her eye witness analysis of Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza and introducing us to a new word: “Panopticon,” which translates as a way to control prisoners through isolation and constant surveillance.

The Panopticon Model, which gathers total information on a captive population without communicating with it, is thriving in Gaza, Hass stated. No one in the media, she emphasized, has mentioned that Israel has collected detailed data on every Palestinian living in the West Bank and Gaza in censuses it has conducted since 1967, when it first occupied the Palestinian territories following the Six-Day War. All this information is contained in Israel’s population registry computer, Hass said.

Thus, when Israeli troops entered Gaza in January 2009, they were equipped with aerial photos, maps and other data listing the names, ages, jobs, education and movements of each Palestinian in any given neighborhood. Additional photos were provided from balloons and drones flying overhead so that troops could even distinguish chicken coops and vegetable gardens between residences.

After occupying Gaza homes as military quarters, Israeli troops systematically desecrated them by leaving garbage and human excrement on clothing and blankets, jars of urine in refrigerators, and writing insulting graffiti on walls.

“This deliberate contamination of property indicates there were no limits on troop conduct and that it was official policy,” said Hass. She recalled a retired British army officer who concluded after viewing IDF filth in home after home: “This is not how a professional army behaves. Officers should not have permitted this.”

But, of course, they did. Hass said she was struck by the contrast between the Israeli troops’ primitive mentality and their advanced 21st century weapons.

“What’s more,” she pointed out, “the IDF was not embarrassed by these vulgar acts which later were eclipsed by the testimonies of Palestinian victims. It was as if Gaza was a huge playground for soldiers to test new armaments on live people. I would liken it to a battle between American Indians versus space aliens with science fiction weapons.”

Until 1991, said Hass—the only Israeli journalist, as of 2003, to live fulltime among Palestinians, in both Gaza and Ramallah—Palestinians had relatively free movement. Since then, however, Israeli policymakers have heightened restrictions in a move to separate Gaza from the West Bank.

Israel portrays Gaza as an independent, aggressive state, Hass explained, and forbids Gazans from living, working or studying in the West Bank. A case in point is that of Berlanty Azzam, 21, a senior at Bethlehem University, who was arrested by Israeli forces Nov. 3 and deported to her family in Gaza on the grounds she was illegally living in the West Bank. Azzam was two months short of receiving her bachelor’s degree.

Hass noted that in 1996 Shimon Peres tried to persuade the Palestine Authority’s Yasser Arafat to proclaim Gaza as a Palestinian state, but the PA leader didn’t “swallow the bait.”

According to Hass, “Hamas and Fatah are following the Israeli script of disconnecting Gaza and the West Bank.” Egypt has been castigated for not opening the Rafah border for Gazans to escape Israel’s three-week attack. However, Hass speculated that Hosni Mubarak’s regime kept the Rafah gate closed because if Israel refused to open the Eretz or Karem Shalom crossings, Egypt would be furthering Gaza’s disconnect with the West Bank.

During her presentation, sponsored by UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies, Hass observed that Israeli attitudes have hardened against Palestinians.

“Israelis live with the conviction everything is normal,” she stated. “It’s normal for Israelis to deprive Palestinians of water, to occupy their land, to restrict their movements. Fifteen years ago when I wrote about a family prevented from uniting in Gaza or the West Bank, there was an outcry from readers. Today there is silence.”

While some pundits rationalize Operation Cast Lead as a means of repairing Israel’s trauma of failing to cripple south Lebanon in 2006, Hass viewed it as “a training exercise for future wars.”

“This is not how a neighbor behaves,” Gazans told her—causing Hass to conclude: “I don’t think Israel wants to be a neighbor.”

CAIR-LA Spotlights Zeitoun

(l-r): Dave Eggers with Kathy and Abdulrahman Zeitoun. (Staff photo S. Twair)

More than 2,000 guests gathered Nov. 7 at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel for the 13th annual banquet of the Council on American Islamic Affairs-Los Angeles (CAIR-LA), and the festive evening was full of surprises.

Ameena Qazi, CAIR-LA’s dynamic new deputy executive director, who also serves as staff attorney, was the emcee. She introduced two readings of excerpts from Dave Eggers’ 1997 best-seller, Zeitoun. The book deals with the actual experience of Syrian-American Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who stayed in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and vanished.

American readers have been fascinated with the abduction of Zeitoun, and of his American wife Kathy’s determination to find him when it looked like he was another anonymous victim of the worst natural disaster in modern American history. Zeitoun’s ordeal will be retold in an animated feature film by Jonathan Demme.

When the Pulitzer Prize-winning Eggers came to the podium to receive CAIR’s Courage in Media Award, it was announced that Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun wereon hand. The audience gave a standing ovation as Eggers and the Zeitouns shared the spotlight.

In accepting his award, the multi-talented Eggers expressed his gratitude that the Muslim community has embraced Zeitoun, into which he invested nearly three years of research.

“I visited the Zeitoun family and witnessed the lively chaos of a home filled with young children and knew I needed to learn more about how this man fell into cracks in a broken judicial system,” Eggers said.

“I asked, what does ”˜All-American’ mean?” he explained. “It’s hard work and having concern for your neighbors—and where did Zeitoun learn these values? In Syria, where he grew up, and I went to visit the people who instilled these qualities in him. I saw the house Zeitoun grew up in, and it was there I savored the best lamb I ever tasted. And I decided to tell the truth about this Syrian-American hero.”

Sheikh Alauddin al-Bakri, who co-founded IMAN (Inner City Muslim Action Network) in Chicago, established Badr Islamic school in Fresno and currently delivers the Friday prayer at the masjid in Saratoga, CA, received numerous rounds of applause, particularly when he said Muslims must stand up to fanatics. Even though his two young children had been diagnosed with swine flu, the sheikh traveled the nearly 400 miles to Anaheim to fulfill his commitment to CAIR-LA.

Stressing that Muslims have no hidden agenda, Sheikh al-Bakri said Muslims stand for justice, education, faith, values and principles.

Omar Barghouti on BDS

BDS proponent Omar Barghouti. (Staff photo S. Twair)

More than 250 activists who heard Omar Barghouti (see p. 35) discuss the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement Nov. 1 at Loyola University Law School learned about the city of Los Angeles’ complicity with Mekorot, the Israeli National Water Company.

A Nov. 21 strategy session was scheduled to voice public objections to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (DWP) Memorandum of Understanding with Mekorot which gives Israeli firms access to DWP facilities for pilot projects, foresees installation of Israeli technology in DWP projects, and legitimizes Israel’s 60 years of usurping Palestinian resources.

Barghouti, who holds a master’s degree in engineering from Columbia University, explained that Palestinians are restricted to less than one-quarter the amount of water that Israelis consume. In Gaza, 95 percent of its coastal aquifer, its main water source, is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Settlers poison Palestinian wells and the Israeli military denies Palestinians permits to dig wells on their own land.

“Since the international community refuses to stop Israeli oppression, the only solution is BDS,” Barghouti argued. He went on to describe the goals of BDS as ending Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land, ending racial discrimination, and ending the denial of Palestinian refugee rights.

Can BDS work? “It did in South Africa,” he replied. “Since July 2005, major trade unions and faith-based organizations in Canada, Britain, Norway, Belgium and France have come on board.”

Challenging those critics who argue that BDS is too radical, Barghouti asked: “Is doing away with inequality too radical?”

Focus on Afghanistan War

Tom Hayden and “Zoya,” a representative of the Revolutionary Afghan Women’s Association (see December 2009 Washington Report, p. 48), were featured speakers at an Oct. 21 program on “Resisting the U.S. Occupation of Afghanistan” presented by the Afghan Women’s Mission in the Eagle Rock Center for Arts.

Analyzing the Afghan conundrum, Hayden, a former California state senator and leader of the 1960s Students for a Democratic Society, stated: ”President Obama knows he is trapped—if he withdraws, he’ll be accused of military failure and surrender by the Republicans; if he stays, he’ll be called a liar.”

Furthermore, he added, “We should be ashamed of [President Hamid] Karzai, who passed a law that wives should submit to rape by their husbands.”

KPFK radio host Sonali Kolhatkar introduced Zoya, a 28-year-old Afghan whose parents were killed when she was 14 and she fled to Pakistan to live with her grandmother.

“Ninety percent of Afghan women are victims of domestic violence,” stated Zoya. “Schools may be open to girls, but their parents keep them home to protect them from being kidnapped or raped on their way to school.”

Hayden concluded the program by identifying the solution to halting a long war as setting a timetable for withdrawal, establishing a power-sharing arrangement among warring tribes, locating an area for insurgents and installing international peacekeepers.

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.