House Demolitions

Let us remember the number: 24,000 house demolitions by Israel. He was not a Zionist. In 2011 he calls himself an anti-war “revolutionist,” from the '60's generation. He avoided the draft, allowing others to serve, get maimed and die. He believed he was something greater, something different. He deserved better than his fellow Americans. Apparently, the rules that applied to everyone else did not apply to him. First he escaped to rabbinical school, although he was not religious (he does claim to be Jewish), thus getting a deferment. Then he left for Israel, where he lives to this day.

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He describes his experience moving to Israel as “a feeling of being at home.” How regrettable it is a home he actively works to destroy. He created “The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions” and is currently on a fundraising tour in the United States. Like other American expats living in Israel, he still sounds as if he never left the United States, and calling himself “an Israeli,” he brings a greater weight to the claims that Israel is bad. “The Occupation Must End,” he advocates, and Israel has to become a country of all her people, Christians, Muslim, Jewish, Druze and others. The Israel in which “he feels at home,” the one he is working to destroy one block at a time, is the source of the building blocks for the people he cares most about: his people – the PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. He dedicates his time to a global campaign that has proven very effective: “BDS,” Boycott, Divest, Sanction. “Are your retirement funds earning a return from the destruction of Palestinian homes?” his supporters ask. “Caterpillar profits from the sale to Israel of giant bulldozers that are equipped with armor plating and weapons and are used to destroy Palestinian homes and orchards.” Caterpillar, for those who do not understand, is just one of many “companies that profit from the 43-year-long Israeli occupation of Palestine.” What can you do? Ask to “stop investing your retirement funds in these companies.” Just a glance at the “Occupation Portfolio” shows:

• Northrop Grumman, “provides Israel with many of the parts that were essential in targeting civilians during the Gaza bombing campaign;”
• Caterpillar’s machines are “an essential part of the IDF arsenal, used to tear up roads, destroy water and sewage networks, and demolish villages and homes;”
• Veolia is “exploiting Palestinians natural resources.” Veolia “also offers bus services on an Apartheid Road serving only Jews in the occupied West Bank;”
• Elbit Systems “contributes directly to two of the most insidious facets of the occupation: regular attacks on civilian populations and the ever-tightening ghetto-ization of the West Bank;”
• Motorola “profits from many aspects of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

With friends like this, goes the saying, who needs enemies? But the American-turned-Israeli still feels “at home” in what he feels is a revolting country. Israel, he says, is “warehousing” the Palestinians. “A Palestinian State Turned Into a Prison,” keeping “the Palestinian ‘inmates’ locked up. Until it is dismantled, we are faced with the spectre of a new apartheid arising before our eyes.” Thus, he goes from one Islamic Center in the USA to another, an American-turned-Israeli, blasts Israel and calls believing Muslims to act against the evils of the Jewish State. He spoke before some 200 people in Los Angeles, at the Iranian Muslim Association of North America. Possibly this, in and of itself, should serve as a call for action to Beverly Hills Mayor Jimmy Delshad, a “Jewish-American-Iranian” who heads a city acting as the home for some 11,000 Iranians, many, but not all, Jewish. Except that I came to hear about the 24,000 house demolitions in Israel. So let us get the facts straight: While the pamphlet states “over 12,000” and the website “over 18,000,” the number is now “over 24,000” house demolitions by Israel. Simply put, a new magical number that is easy to remember: ISRAEL = 24,000 House Demolitions. Added to the mix are other elements, but the main ingredient, the dominant influence on the taste that will remain, is the number 24,000. Since 1967 and the beginning of the Occupation, now in its 40th year, the Israeli government has demolished over 18,000 houses belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. These demolitions are part of a web of policies designed to force Palestinians off their own land to make room for expanding Israeli settlements, construct a 26-foot high “separation barrier” that cuts deep into Palestinian territory, create a network of Israeli-only bypass roads, and generally “thin” Jerusalem of its Palestinian inhabitants. Ninety-five percent of these houses belong to innocent people and families and have nothing to do with terrorism or security; they are not charged with crimes nor detained as security risks. In 2005, the Israeli military admitted that their policy of punitive house demolitions was harmful to Israel’s interests and abandoned that practice. The number resonates so well within the anti-Israel community, that I have heard it several times already, with quite an accusing tone, without any further knowledge. So I tried to find out information myself, but first I responded:

1) Israel is a country of law and order. The authorities do not just go to demolish homes because they belong to (Israeli) Arabs; 2) Israel does demolish illegally built buildings, whether they belong to Jewish or non-Jewish citizens of Israel within Israel proper; 3) When a demolition occurs, a court order would have been issued, signaling a long process has been exhausted; 4) Israel has engaged in past years in demolitions of houses of terrorists who were engaged in terror attacks against her citizens. This, and at the time “exile” to Gaza, proved to be effective deterrents; 5) Israel does not demolish homes in Area “A,” which is completely under Palestinian control. [The audience laughed at the usage of “Israeli Arabs.” Today, all Arabs are “Palestinians,” only a right wing extremist would not know to differentiate the two.]

The very basic premise of the accusation stands contrary to a country of law and order, or to the very idea that justice in Israel is applied equally, irrespective if the person being judged is Jewish or Gentile. In fact, if the accusation had any semblance to or hold on reality, then the numerous lawsuits against demolitions would not have been heard by Israeli courts, including all those in front of the Supreme Court. The number sounds so overwhelmingly evil, that one looks neither to the merits of the statement nor to facts. Pronouncing it out loud already amounts to an indictment. I was immediately confronted with the story of the Bedouin village in the Negev that has been demolished now possibly half a dozen times, every time rebuilt immediately with foreign funding and volunteers. How dare Israel demolish their homes, time after time, I was told. Like the Turkish Terrorist Flotilla that brought expired, unneeded and unwanted “humanitarian help” to Gaza, so here the intention is not the rebuilding but to inconvenience Israel and help delegitimize her. Imagine, I responded, that someone decided to occupy the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards in Beverly Hills. There is a city park there, with a famous water fountain. Destroy the fountain and build a building. “You cannot do that,” my discussion partner responded, “this is public land.” Exactly my point, I retorted. Likewise the Bedouin have decided to take public lands and make them theirs. The claim: “We said so (‘this land is our land’). You are occupiers. This land is not yours.” In Israel, though, the legal process would have been fully exhausted first. The international “human rights organizations,” well funded by foreign governments, Arab money and money from ill wishers of the Jewish state, many themselves Jewish, would have utilized the Israeli Supreme Court to fight each and every threat of demolition. They have done so for years. Since the anti-Israel effort has been meticulously documented, one would assign a level of comfort with a figure by a NGO whose motto is “Resisting Occupation, Constructing Peace” or “Peace Now.” Except that the inflation I found, jumps of 50% and 100% from a pamphlet to a website to a presentation before a crowd, tells a different story. How unlikely is the number? From 1948 to 2011, 63 years have passed. In Jerusalem, since 1992 to 2008, the highest number of buildings demolished was in 2004 (124) and then in 2008 (85) and 2007 (69). Why Jerusalem? Since the focus on Israel’s capital encourages resistance, provocations, establishing facts on the ground and scrutiny more than any other city in Israel. If one were to take the 17 year average or the total of about 1,200 and extrapolate it to the rest of Israel, if the numbers were to add up to the claim of “over 24,000” a special line item in the country’s budget would have had to be designated. Money, after all, leaves a trail. But there is none. I asked several Israeli bodies, both Governmental and non-Governmental, for any compiled information. Such information must exist, as the Jerusalem Mayor has presented statistics of house demolitions in the Holy City comparing “East” and “West,” “Jewish” and “non-Jewish” ownership. Having received an astounding absence of any response from the plethora of bodies I approached, I turned to the Israeli Knesset to see if members there might provide information. The Israeli Parliament has a department whose function is to provide information to the elected members and their staffs (Research and Information Center). One would expect that a country concerned with a process of delegitimization would be fighting it. BDS, Apartheid Week and major campaigns of “Water—Thirsting the Palestinians” and “Against Home Demolitions” clearly have managed to penetrate the Israeli psyche, as protected by arrogance, infested by corruption and distracted by misguided goals as it may be. Anywhere I go, says our speaker, the issue of Israeli unjust treatment of the Palestinians resonates very well. In Seoul, Korea, 50,000 students and other demonstrators listened to him propagating lies. Israel against the Palestinians is a sexy, lucrative topic. To fight it properly, issues must be addressed one at a time, meticulously, methodologically. One would then expect that a question about a burning topic like House Demolitions would be answered with a compilation of data and analysis at one’s fingertips. Instead, I had to search, beg and spend hours reading different materials to try and ascertain if the number 24,000 has any hold in reality. A friend at the Israeli Knesset did the same. Here is what he found. “I could not find any data base that centralizes all the house demolitions. There is also no place that has an accurate count of the number of buildings already demolished and the number of pending demolition orders. “On its surface, the number of buildings demolished in Israel is close to the number mentioned, but it talks about ALL buildings demolished, including those of Jews, Druze and Christians that exceeded building allowances or were built without any permit whatsoever. “It is important to point out that demolition orders against buildings of Jews and Druze are carried out without any delay and their cost is minimal, whereas demolition orders against Arabs are not often carried out. “For instance, in Lod and Ramle (two Israeli cities with Arab populations), 85% of the demolition orders have not been executed and 90% of the construction by Arabs in these cities is illegal, with a predominant part resting on State lands. “It is to be pointed out that a demolition of a building of an Arab costs the country’s coffers more than a million NIS (about a quarter of a million USD) due to the need to secure the force carrying out the demolition order, since at every demolition the forces are met with common resistance organized most often by Israeli Arab Members of the Knesset and by the heads of the Islamic Movement. “The extreme-Left organizations work side-by-side along the Arab Members of the Knesset and provide funding for a very lengthy and tedious legal procedure and to interim orders against demolitions. Further, they help and encourage Arabs to break the law and build without permits, and raise funds to rebuild houses of Arabs that were demolished. “All these organizations disappear when it comes to a house of a Jew or a Druze, and they even call those who built without a permit ‘criminals.’” As one looks at the flow of money, the claims raised by my friend in the Knesset indicate that House Demolitions is (a) an area of great interest to non-profit, “human rights” organizations acting against the legitimacy of the Jewish State. The speaker in Los Angeles made the very same assertion. (b) It is not an area of interest to the Government of Israel, which does not even enforce the existing judgments against illegally built Arab buildings. The lack of response to media inquiries serves a supporting role to this assertion. For Israel to withstand the attacks against her, she must respond. Truth is on her side, so are the facts and the laws. Even if very few are interested in listening to the facts, when a vacuum is created by Israel’s noticeable absence from the public diplomacy front, one must go by the only information with which they are presented. What good are the various ministries of Israel, when they are so visibly absent from the warfront? To whom is the work of defending the Jewish state left? To those on the front line while the Israelis party and enjoy?