December 6, 2023
Online: How does Israel get away with it?

War Industry Resisters Network presents:
How does Israel get away with it? with Jeff Halper
3-4 pm CT

The level of impunity for Israel is striking. How does Israel get away with it? Is it because it is protected as a client state by the world hegemon, the United States? Or because of the collective guilt of humanity for the holocaust? Or because of its carefully managed narrative of defending itself against anti-Semitism?
 
While all of this matters, Jeff Halper argues in his book War Against the People that Israel has carved out a niche in the global military-industrial complex. It has become expert at population control using what Jeff refers to as its MISSILE system: Military, Internal Security, Surveillance, Intelligence, and Law Enforcement, all field-tested in Palestine.
 

More information and registration

The Zionist Cossacks Have Been Released on the Palestinians

What are we – anti-colonial Israelis, Jews of conscience and international supporters of Palestinian rights – going to do about it?


Jeff Halper, ICAHD, 16 December 2022

Benjamin Netanyahu, due to return as Israel’s prime minister within the next few days, has one overriding concern: evading conviction and possible imprisonment in the three corruption cases for which he is currently being tried. After last month’s election in which the fascist settler party Religious Zionism won 15 seats – absolutely critical if Netanyahu is to set up a coalition government – he entered into a Devil’s Deal that has shaken even members of his own Likud party. In return for helping to pass legislation to “reform” the judicial system, including legislation that would annul Netanyahu’s trial and invalidate the ability of the Supreme Court to override the overtly illegal reforms Netanyahu needs, he has agreed to give virtually unchecked power to the settlers to complete their eviction of the Palestinians from Area C, the 62% of the West Bank controlled by Israel in which the settlements are located, and to employ the army, police, militias and the prison service to violently repress any Palestinian resistance.

To save his own skin, Netanyahu has done exactly what Russian Czar Alexander III did in the 1880s. Just as the Czar handed over his country’s Jewish population to the murderous and antisemitic Cossacks, which initiated 20 years of pogroms that killed thousands and drove millions of Jews westward, so too has Netanyahu done so by handing over the fate of the Palestinians to murderous settlers dedicated to driving them out of the Land of Israel, taking their lands – and not hesitating for a second to kill as many as necessary in the process.

Not that the settlers have a monopoly over murderous ethnic cleansing. Benny Ganz, the “moderate” outgoing Defense Minister, opened his electoral campaign bragging of many thousands of “terrorists” he killed in Gaza. When he became Ganz’s Chief of Staff, Aviv Kokhavi promised a more “lethal” IDF – and delivered. Besides repeated assaults on Gaza, 2022 saw over 150 Palestinians killed, including 33 innocent children, the highest in many years.

In preparing for his incoming government, Netanyahu has dismantled the Ministry of Defense in order to pass control of the Palestinians to the Religious Zionist Party This party is headed by Bezalel Smotrich, a known racist, who founded Regavim, a pro-settler organization that lobbies the government to demolish Palestinian homes (registered as a charity in New York state). He will now be in charge of the Civil Administration, the actual government of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). It will have several key functions including the demolition of Palestinian homes that have not been granted building permits by the Israeli authorities. So far, some 60,000 homes, schools, mosques, businesses and farm structures have been demolished in the OPT since 1967 and now no obstacles will exist to ethnically clearing Area C, confining three million Palestinians of the West Bank to tiny bantustans, until they are expelled (or “induced” to leave).

Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, has been appointed “Minister of National Security” in Netanyahu’s new government. He is a fascist Kahanist living in Hebron whose hero is Barukh Goldstein, his neighbor who murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. That means Ben Gvir will have augmented authority over the Israeli police – the only force that until now gave (minimal) protection to Palestinians – plus control over the Border Police, a combined army/police militia which will now be his private army in the OPT.

The most immediate response to the pogroms to which the Palestinians are now facing must be a demand for the UN to urgently deploy a Protection Force in the OPT, something that the Palestinian Authority has formally called for. Israel opposes that, of course, wanting a free hand to Judaize the West Bank. And, indeed, every time a resolution to establish such a force has been brought before the Security Council, the US has vetoed it.

This is the time, in my view, that every Palestinian support group in the world should set aside the important campaigns they are pursuing in order to focus on this most urgent need: establishing a UN Protection Force for a Palestinian population whose very existence is in immediate peril.

Longer range, we must get political, focusing our efforts on dismantling Israeli apartheid so that we can move on to a new post-colonial reality.

Whatever, Zionism’s final push to cleanse Palestine of its Arab population and transform it from an Arab to a Jewish country is being launched. What are we – anti-colonial Israelis, Jews of conscience and international supporters of Palestinian rights – going to do about it?

 

Jeff Halper on Israel Lawfare group

Jeff Halper, Facebook, June 25, 2016

This is an important piece by Ali Abunimah, posted on the The Electronic Intifada. It exposes a dark, little-known campaign by the Israel government, Israeli “human rights” lawyers and their allies in the US and elsewhere to pursue a campaign of what they call “Lawfare.” The goal is not only the usual one of “reframing” Israel as an icon of human rights, delegitimizing BDS and demonizing Arabs and Islam, but something far more subversive and dangerous: to actually change international law so that states (like Israel and the US) can kill non-combatants at will (as long as they are classified as “terrorists”) and can unleash their mighty armies against people merely resisting occupation, neocolonialism and exploitation (as Israel has done in its last three assaults on Gaza, or the US is doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere it is fighting “insurgencies”).

They define “lawfare” as when “terrorists” (who can be whoever you want them to be) use international laws of human rights as weapons against democracies — those same good democracies that impoverish, conquer and exploit them — thus rendering illegitimate all resistance and permitting uncontrolled attacks by the dominant powers. In fact, just as Brooke Goldstein, the head of the Lawfare Project, explains how Israeli propaganda must appropriate the language of human rights, so, too, does it appropriate the protections international law affords innocent civilians, turning their attempts to constrain military attacks on them by appealing to the recognized Principles of Distinction (between civilians and combatants) and of Proportionality into illegitimate forms of “terrorism.” Its about as Orwellian as you can get, and the video Ali’s post contains provides a glimpse into this twisted world where everything is reduced to PR/Hasbara/Newspeak, and all in the end to justify and sell Israeli repression.

One of the people in the video that you’ve never head of — in fact, which 98% of American Jews have never heard of — is Malcolm Honlein, the Executive Vice-President of an organization called the Conference of Presidents (of Jewish organizations, an exclusive “club” that even J Street was not allowed to join). Honlein is probably the most influential Jew in the US. He appears in Congress and in the Oval Office as the “official” leader of the Jewish community, its “official” voice even though he’s never been elected and American Jews have never heard him. He is also religious, as against the vast majority of American Jews, is probably a Republican and certainly does not represent the views of American Jews, still the most liberal community in the US and increasingly critical of Israel themselves. If the vast majority of American Jews knew that their “voice” had been appropriated by the lies of Honlein, and that racist Islamophobes and apologists for right-wing Israeli governments like Goldstein are well-funded to undermine human rights, perhaps the most cherished value of American Jews, they would be outraged. Its time for a mainstream Jewish intifada against these marginal types who are dragging the name of the Jewish community into extremely dark places.

Israel’s Global War Web and a One-State Solution

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick, The Progressive, May 10, 2016

Jeff Halper, anthropologist and Israeli peace activist, does not shy from unconventional positions. In his latest book, “War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification,” he argues that nations around the world allow Israel to continue its repression of Palestinians because they benefit from Israeli technology and security support to pacify their own people.

Halper lays out how Israel provides military and security technology across the globe and has developed an international military and security web that has engendered often unexpected support from around the world, including from China and India. He argues that Israel has used the Palestinian territories as a laboratory for this military and security technology, which it now proffers worldwide.

Halper still sees a way forward to peace.

Co-founder and Director of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition (ICAHD), Halper was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, engaged in anti-Vietnam war protests, and then emigrated to Israel in 1973, where he has lived and engaged in peace activism ever since. He is currently on a book tour, which included a stop in Madison, Wisconsin.

Until about five years ago, Halper believed that the much-touted two-state solution, through which an independent Palestine would be created out of the West Bank and Gaza, was the pathway to a just and peaceful resolution. But he now believes Israel has intentionally made this solution impossible with its ever-expanding settlements in the West Bank.

At the time of the Oslo accords in 1993, he notes, there were 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank. That number doubled by the year 2000, and currently there are 600,000 settlers there. Israeli building plans project a settler population of about 1 million in the foreseeable future.

In Halper’s view, the current state of affairs amounts to the warehousing of Palestinians, and that most Israelis do not approve of the radical settlers (90 percent of settlers are not political, but merely seeking cheap subsidized housing). His proposed solution for the future of IsraelPalestine (he combines the name into one word): a bi-national democratic state that would recognize the importance and viability of both the Jewish and Palestinian people. He proposes that citizens would get two votes for members of a bicameral legislature, one vote for a democratically elected house, and the other vote for a house whose purpose would be to protect the rights of each people from a possible tyranny of the majority.

Israel does not currently have a constitution, so Halper believes that to make a bi-national state work, a constitution would need to be adopted to protect the integrity and rights of both peoples.

Of course, the real question is what needs to change to make such a binational state a reality. Halper sees the current leadership of both Israel and Palestine as incapable or unwilling to come to any resolution of their conflict. Noting President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas’s poor health and the lack of widespread support for him among his people, Halper sees the PA as verging on collapse. Halper believes that collapse will create sufficient chaos to shake up the status quo. Halper is quick to admit that a binational state cannot come into being without strong popular Palestinian support, which is currently not there.

As for the role of progressives in the United States, Halper argues that they cannot force a solution on Israelis and Palestinians. He supports what he calls “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” of Israel, and has coined the phrase, “BDS 4 BDS,” or “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for a Bi-national Democratic State.” He is concerned that the current BDS movement must become connected to an end game, because as only a protest movement it is unlikely to accomplish anything meaningful.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick is a civil rights attorney in Madison, Wisconsin. He blogs at systemschangeconsulting.wordpress.com.

May 4, 2016
An Evening with Jeff Halper


Wednesday, May 4, 2016
7:00 pm
DeLuca Forum, Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery
330 N. Orchard Street, Madison
Book Signing to Follow

In his new book, War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification, Jeff Halper argues that Israel’s need to continuously suppress and dispossess the Palestinians has led to the militarization of everyday life, and that systems like database tracking, automated targeting, and unmanned drones have become a “seamless” part of it. He points to the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a “veritable laboratory” for this effort and explores how the approach is rapidly globalizing as major powers and corporations transform military, security, and police forces into instruments of global pacification.

A leading figure in the Israeli peace movement, Jeff Halper is a co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), an anthropologist, and former professor at Haifa and Ben-Gurion Universities. His previous books include An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel; and Obstacles to Peace: A Reframing of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Halper travels and lectures widely on the Israeli/Palestinian issue. In 2006, the American Friends Service Committee nominated him along with Palestinian Ghassan Andoni for a Nobel Peace Prize.

This free event is sponsored by The Wisconsin Union Directorate Distinguished Lecture Series and is co-sponsored by: the American Friends Service Committee of the Madison Friends’ Meeting; Amnesty International Local Group 139; Bright Stars of Bethlehem; Jewish Voice for Peace – Madison; Madison-Rafah Sister City Project; Playgrounds for Palestine-Madison; Students for Justice in Palestine – UW Madison; The Crossing; and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom – Madison Branch. Welcomed by WORT Radio.

For more information, visit

  • https://www.facebook.com/WUDDLS;
  • https://union.wisc.edu/get-involved/wud/dls/,
  • or e-mail rafahsistercity at yahoo.com
  •  
    Note: You can also hear Jeff Halper live on WORT Radio (89.9 FM or listen live on line) at 12 noon on Wednesday, May 4 with A Public Affair host Karma Chavez.

                

    For a short preview of Jeff’s talk, see the book trailer:

  • Richard Falk Review of “The War Against The People”
  • WORT A PUBLIC AFFAIR audio: Jeff Halper And “The War Against The People”, MAY 4, 2016
  •  

    Israeli army orders confiscation of Palestinian land in West Bank

    · Seizure would allow huge expansion of settlements
    · Move seen as rush to make changes before US summit

    Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem
    Wednesday October 10, 2007
    The Guardian

    Construction workers in the West Bank
    Construction workers in the West Bank. Photograph: Sebastian Scheiner/AP
     

    The Israeli army has ordered the seizure of Palestinian land surrounding four West Bank villages apparently in order to hugely expand settlements around Jerusalem, it emerged yesterday.

    The confiscation happened as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met to prepare the ground for a meeting hosted by President George Bush in the United States aimed at reviving a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

    However, critics said the confiscation of land suggested that Israel was imposing its own solution on the Palestinians through building roads, barriers and settlements that would render a Palestinian state unviable.

    The land seized forms a corridor from East Jerusalem to Jericho and is intended to be used for a road that would be for Palestinians only. Analysts said the road would run on one side of the Israeli security barrier, while the existing Jerusalem-Jericho road would be reserved for Israelis.

    A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said it was necessary to build a road to link Bethlehem and the Judea region with Jericho and the Jordan valley area in order to “improve the quality of life” for Palestinians.

    She said the road would be nearly 10 miles long and would be built on 145 hectares (357 acres) of state land and 23 hectares of private land that had been confiscated. She added that the army had designed the route to minimise losses to private landowners.

    Adam Keller of the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, said the confiscation of land belonging to the villages of Abu Dis, Arab al-Sawahra, Nebi Musa and Talhin Alhamar would “rob many villagers of their sole livelihood” but would also “facilitate the big annexation plan known as E-1, which is aimed at linking the settlement of Ma’aleh Adummim with Jerusalem and cutting the West Bank in two.”

    He said the confiscations were aimed at constructing a “Palestinian bypass road” that would “push the Palestinian traffic between Bethlehem and Ramallah deep into the desert and effectively bar them from the central part of the West Bank”.

    The E-1 area has been marked out on Israeli government maps for years but the state has refrained from large scale development of the area. The only building to be completed is the proposed headquarters of the Israeli police in the West Bank.

    The plan for the area envisages 3,500 housing units and dozens of businesses which have yet to be started, although infrastructure such as roads and drainage is being constructed.

    Jeff Halper, an Israeli geographer who specialises in Israel’s development of the West Bank, said it appeared that there was a rush to carry out as much work as possible before the US-sponsored meeting between Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, in Annapolis, Maryland, in November.

    Apartheid Reigns In Israel, Activist-author Says


    He Claims Nation Is Hurting Self With Its Policies

    SAMARA KALK DERBY, The Capital Times, October 8, 2007

    Israeli human rights activist and author Jeff Halper argues that in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the two-state solution is dead, and apartheid has taken over.

    Jimmy Carter let the genie out of the bottle with his recent book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” but Halper has been using the same language for years.

    “We use apartheid in a very precise way. We don’t use it as a slogan. We have been very careful about it. Apartheid is a system that can’t be exported,” Halper told a group of about 40 people during a talk Sunday at Memorial United Church of Christ in Fitchburg.

    An apartheid system is one of separation in which one segment of the population separates itself from the others, Halper said. “And that’s what Israel calls its policy,” he added.

    The other element of apartheid is domination, he explained. “One population separates itself from the others and then dominate them,” he said. “Permanently and institutionally.”

    Israel’s offer to withdraw from 95 percent of the West Bank will create not peace, but rather a Palestinian prison state, said Halper, who has been called “a Jewish anti-Semite.”

    Halper is a Minnesota native who has lived in Israel for 35 years. Formerly an anthropology professor at Haifa and Ben-Gurion Universities, he co-founded the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions to challenge and resist the Israeli policy of demolishing Palestinian homes. The organization was founded in 1997 after Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister on a right wing, security-heavy platform.

    Israelis have been moving into the occupied Palestinian territories – which includes the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem – through settlement construction and land confiscation. At the same time, Palestinian population growth has been confined to small “islands” within those territories.

    The natural development of Palestinian towns has been curtailed by discrimination in building permits and zoning policies and the demolition of Palestinian homes, Halper said.

    According to Halper, Israel has destroyed more than 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967.

    Halper has organized and led nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience against Israel’s occupation policies. He has faced down bulldozers in front of Palestinian homes and confronted Israeli soldiers. He also organizes Israelis, Palestinians, and others to help rebuild demolished Palestinian homes. He estimates that they’ve built more than 100 homes in the last 10 years.

    In addition to opposing home demolitions, Halper is equally critical of Israel’s construction of the 26-foot tall West Bank separation barrier, which is more than twice as high as the Berlin Wall and five times as long. The Israeli government and its supporters say the wall has reduced terrorism. Critics charge it is laying the groundwork for a unilateral border.

    In the past 40 years, Israel has laid a “Matrix of Control” over the occupied territories, including 300 settlements, which eliminates the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, Halper said.

    Cancelled Event Hoax

    This e-mail was sent to the UW Middle East Studies listserver today, cancelling the Jeff Halper event tonight at Grainger Hall. The only problem is, the event was not cancelled, and no one knows who sent the e-mail. The Middle East Studies Program is investigating.

    Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:22:48 -0700
    From: “U. Wisconsin Middle East Studies Program” cmes@mailplus.wisc.edu
    Subject: [Cancelled Event] TODAY – JEFF HALPER -ISRAEL/PALESTINE: COUNTDOWN TO APART… @ Mon Oct 8 7:30pm – 9:30pm ()
    To: mes-events@lists.services.wisc.edu
    HTML Attachment

    U. Wisconsin Middle East Studies Program cancelled the following event:
    TODAY – JEFF HALPER -ISRAEL/PALESTINE: COUNTDOWN TO APARTHEID?
    Mon Oct 8 7:30pm – 9:30pm
    (Central Time)
    2080 Grainger Hall; 975 University Ave. corner of Brooks and University; UW Madison Campus (map)
    Calendar:

    JEFF HALPER, founder of the ISRAELI COMMITTEE AGAINST HOME DEMOLITIONS and Anthropology Professor at HEBREW UNIVERSITY will discuss whether President Bush’s upcoming Middle East Summit offers hope for peace or a continuation of the process of transforming the occupied Palestinian territories into a permanent political reality similar to what was in place during Apartheid South Africa. Where is the Israel-Palestine conflict headed? Halper, an Israeli citizen who has lived and worked in Israel as an academic and an activist since 1973, discusses what he has termed the “Matrix of Control” in shaping options for peace on the ground. He will also discuss the “CONSTRUCTING PEACE CAMPAIGN” to rebuild all Palestinian homes demolished this year by the Israel Army.Can Israel be described as an Apartheid regime? Why are some arguing that it is? Debate on this and other Israel-Palestine issues is increasingly important as the region descends into greater and greater turmoil.

    This lecture is FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

    Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin’s MIDDLE EAST STUDIES PROGRAM and the University of Wisconsin’s HAVENS CENTER; Local organizations groups supporting this talk include the Fitchburg Memorial United Church of Christ, the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Jewish Voice for Peace/Madison and ICAHD-USA.

    This event was removed from your calendar.

    You are receiving this courtesy email at the account mes-events@lists.services.wisc.edu because you are an attendee of this event.

    October 6 – 9, 2007
    New Madison Events with Jeff Halper of ICAHD

    Saturday, October 6, 7:30 – 10:00 pm
    Middleton
    Houseparty Fundraiser with Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Goal to raise $5000 to rebuild one Palestinian house. At a private home in Middleton — please contact rafahsistercity (at) yahoo.com for info and directions.

    Sunday, October 7, 2:00 pm
    Memorial United Church of Christ, 5705 Lacy Road, Fitchburg
    Build Peace, Build Houses, Stop Home Demolitions: Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) will speak on where the Israeli “Matrix of Control” is taking the Israel/Palestine conflict. Find out how you can help ICAHD-USA “Construct Peace” by rebuilding all Palestinian homes demolished this year by the Israeli army. Co-sponsors: Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Jewish Voice for Peace/Madison, Memorial UCC, UW Middle East Studies Dept, Havens Center. More info at madisonrafah.org or 215-9157.

    Sunday, Oct. 7, 7:00 pm
    Jeff is scheduled to be interviewed live on Forward Forum, Madison 1670 The Pulse. Call in at 321-1670. You can listen live to streaming audio at WTDY.com, and outside the Madison area the toll free number is 877-867-1670. The program will be available starting Monday on podcast.

    Monday, October 8, 12:00 pm
    Jeff will appear live on WORT Radio’s A Public Affair with Allen Ruff from 12 noon to 1 pm (89.9 FM, call in at 256-2001).

    Monday, October 8, 7:30 pm
    UW-Madison Campus, 2120 Grainger Hall, 975 University Ave. (corner of Brooks and University)
    Israel/Palestine: Countdown to Apartheid? Jeff Halper of ICAHD will discuss whether Bush’s planned November DC “summit” on Israel/Palestine offers hope for peace, or will further consolidate Israel’s occupation into a permanent political reality similar to apartheid South Africa. Co-sponsors: Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Jewish Voice for Peace/Madison, Memorial UCC, UW Middle East Studies Dept, Havens Center. See mideast.wisc.edu or call 265-6583 for location.

    Tuesday, October 9, 12:00 pm
    Foreign Policy Action Summit, Washburn Heritage Room, Regina Hall, Edgewood College
    Jeff will join Tom Melville and George Mische to discuss the disastrous effects and connections between US foreign policy in Central America and the Middle East. Members of the Catonsville 9, who burned draft records in 1968, Melville and Mische have dedicated their lives to peace work in Central America and the U.S. Melville, a cultural anthropologist and ex-Maryknoll priest in Guatemala, is also the author of Through a Glass Darkly: US Holocaust in Central America. For more information, call 233-7004.

    Tuesday, October 9, 7:00 pm
    Wilmar Neighborhood Center, 953 Jenifer St., Madison
    Jeff will be participating in a discussion at the regular meeting of the Madison Area Peace Coalition (MAPC). He will present material on Israel’s role in the global weapons trade and in U.S. power projection around the world. This will cover new material in a participatory session with all interested activists.