Tag: israel

For Gaza, again

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Ronit Lentin

ronit-at-gaza-demoOn 9 August I spoke at the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign National demonstration for Palestine. As an Israeli Jew, born in Palestine prior to the birth of the State of Israel, I am aching for Gaza and for the ease with which many Israelis and their supporters throughout the world excuse the killing of so many Gazans. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 2,100 people were killed, while the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem had put the figure at 1,767, of whom 431 are minors and 200 women. Both agree that 70-80 per cent of the killed are non-combatants, all in full view of the world.

I made three points in my speech. Firstly, the impetus for the massacre was not Hamas’s tunnels or rockets, but rather the eliminatory logic that aims to kill as many Palestinians as possible, gaining as much land as possible. It was horrible to hear Israeli member of Knesset Ayelet Shaked advocating the killing of all Palestinian mothers, and Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin proposing the killing all Hamas fighters and their supporters, and deporting all ‘hostile Palestinian families’ after first concentrating them in tent encampments near the Egyptian border.

The massacre also aimed to support Israel’s armament industry. Think of it, after each assault on Gaza, every two years, potential buyers are told about the effectiveness of the weapons, be it house smashing robots or the ‘Iron Dome’, in killing humans: children, women, elders, men. According to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Israel is the fourth largest arms producer, with 150 companies employing 150,000 workers. In 2012 Israel’s armament exports were worth 7.37 billion dollars, exporting mainly to the US, Europe, Latin America and India. However, using humans as guinea pigs is morally unacceptable. Continue reading “For Gaza, again”

The absurdity of asylum in Israel

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Ronit Lentin

asylum-seekers-marchLast December some 200 African asylum seekers started a march from the open detention centre Holot in the south of the country towards the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem. ‘We are not afraid to march, sun, rain or snow. We’ll march to Jerusalem to ask the government for our rights. We can no longer stay in this prison’, said Masala, a young Eritrean marcher. After two days of marching in rough weather conditions, supported by Israeli human rights groups, they were all arrested and returned to the Saharonim jail, where the conditions are harsher.

Altogether some 53,000 asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, live in Israel. Most have reached Israel through Egypt after a harrowing journey. Most have arrived from areas where massacres, murders, civil wars and political persecution are daily occurrences. In Israel, however, they are not called asylum seekers, but rather ‘infiltrators’ – a term harking back to the 1950s when Palestinian refugees, expelled from Israel during and after the 1948 war, attempted to get back to their homes and lands and were prevented from doing so. Continue reading “The absurdity of asylum in Israel”

Israel-Palestine: Banal Apartheid

Ronit Lentin

palestinian-busesOn 28 February, an Israeli activist with Checkpoint Watch, a movement of Israeli women peace activists who oppose the Israeli occupation and the denial of Palestinians’ rights to move freely in their land, and who conduct daily observations of Israeli army checkpoints in the occupied West Bank, was at the bus terminal in Oraniot on highway number 5. At 5 pm, she writes, two police vehicles and two army trucks arrived at the terminal, and a sergeant ordered all the Palestinians to get off bus number 286, on its way to the Jewish settlement of Ariel. The soldiers collected identity documents and permits from all the Palestinian workers on the bus; the workers were told to get off, sit on the cold floor and wait. At first some of them managed to catch another bus (although they have to pay double fares), but the soldiers found out and made them march on foot for the Azoun-Othma checkpoint two and a half kilometres away.


It was cold, the sun had set. Most of these Palestinian workers had got up at three AM to catch their transportation to work inside Israel. Most live within a few kilometres and all they wanted was to be allowed to stay on the bus for a stop or two. They had paid the bus fare and 8,000 Israeli shekels (€1,670) for the permit. You have to work very hard before you can cover such expense and earn your first shekel.

Continue reading “Israel-Palestine: Banal Apartheid”