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1. Mayor Arrested, Police Violence in Freeze Clashes
by Hillel Fendel
More clashes and violence were the order of the day between construction freeze inspectors and residents in Jewish towns on Wednesday. The mayor of Beit Aryeh, Avi Naim, was both hurt and arrested, and police detained him even after an ambulance was called for him. Police finally allowed the ambulance to rush him to a hospital after the mayor asked his legal counsel to intervene.
The clashes took place when the inspectors, accompanied by army forces and special Yassam police units for protection, attempted to enter the towns to distribute stop-work orders. Mayor Naim was arrested when he tried, together with dozens of his townsmen, to prevent the inspectors from entering. The town's security officer was also hurt, and said he never had seen such police violence.
Residents said they were told that the inspectors had received instructions to use force and not to compromise.
Beit Aryeh is in the western Shomron just 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of Tel Aviv and is not defined as a religious community. It began in 1981 with 60 families, and together with nearby Ofarim, with which it shares a local municipality, now numbers 900 families and 4,000 people.
Clashes at Elon Moreh and Brachah
Similar clashes also broke out on Wednesday in Elon Moreh, deep in the heart of Samaria. Some 150 people came out in three groups to greet the inspectors, and reported “partial success.” Some of the inspectors managed to give out stop-work orders, one resident told Arutz-7, but the others did not. Asked if there was violence, he said, “In one group, the forces used moderate violence…”
At nearby Har Brachah, residents blocked the access road – though freeze officials were not reported to be on their way in. Border Guardsmen chased the blockers and made some arrests, using violence. Nearby roads at the Brachah junction and Hawara were also blocked intermittently, and arrests were made.
War Hero's Home Frozen
Aryeh Rotmensh, father of First Sgt. Alon Rotmensh who received the Medal of Valor for rescuing fellow fighters under fire during a Second Lebanon War battle, told Arutz-7 that building on his son’s house is being stopped by the new freeze orders. “How can it be that they stop such a hero who risked his life for the People of Israel from building his home?” his father asked.
Ministers Gilad Erdan (Environmental Affairs) and Eli Yishai (Interior) refused a request by the Defense Ministry to allocate inspectors to help the Civil Administration enforce the construction freeze in the Jewish settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria.
The freeze inspectors were unsuccessful on Tuesday in their bid to enter the hard-core eastern Shomron communities: Elon Moreh, Itamar and Yitzhar. Clashes between residents and inspectors broke out in several places, including Kiryat Arba, Karnei Shomron and Revavah.
2. Pre-Military Students: Shalit - Not at Any Price
by Hillel Fendel
Students at six of the country’s largest pre-military academies – three religious and three not-religious – have asked the government not to release terrorists for Gilad Shalit.
In an open letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the students wrote, “The confidence we have in the government is not contingent upon the release of Gilad Shalit in exchange for terrorists.” This was their response to the theme oft-stated by Barak and others, that soldiers need to know when they enlist in the army that the country would do everything possible in order to achieve their release from enemy hands.
The students wrote that “the rising outburst of feelings” in favor of a deal for Shalit is “sometimes that is likely to be a bad advisor… Though this is a painful issue, we believe that a country that loves life must not give in to the worst terrorists and bow before them in response to the brutal emotional blackmail they are using against us."
The students at Bnei David in Eli, the oldest of the pre-military yeshiva academies, took a vote, and only five out of 200 students were against writing the letter.
3. Reservists will 'Freeze' Service Until Freeze Ends
by Gil Ronen
Reservist officers and non-commissioned soldiers have begun circulating a letter in which they declare that they will cease going on reserve duty stints for the duration of the freeze on construction in Judea and Samaria.
The letter, which organizers say has been signed by several dozen soldiers, reads thus:On Thursday, 9 Kislev, November 26 2009, the Cabinet decided to freeze construction in the settlements, to strip all of the local authorities in Judea and Samaria of the authority to grant construction permits to hundreds of thousands of tax-paying citizens, who serve in the reserves and see themselves as an integral part of the State of Israel. We see this as a racist decision that infringes on our human rights and our rights as citizens, contradicts the rights of the Jewish nation to its land, and goes against morality and justice.
There is reason to fear that the freeze decree also involves the destruction, demolition and expulsion of residents from 23 new communities known as 'outposts'. In view of the cold shoulder which the government and the institutions of state have turned to hundreds of thousands of their citizens; in view of the hardheartedness of the High Court in all matters pertaining to the rights of Jews to their land and country, we have no choice but to take a unilateral step: to freeze our active reserve duty for the duration of the 'freeze.' Once construction is thawed again, and we go back to being citizens with equal rights, we will return to seeing ourselves as citizens with equal duties as well.
This is not an easy step; it is a painful one, and we take it out of wide national considerations, in order to preserve Jewish sovereignty on the territory of the Land of Israel.
Signed,
Officers and soldiers in active reserve duty, lovers of the Land of Israel
4. MKs Freeze IDF Money Pending for Yeshivot and Bus Protection
by Malkah Fleisher
MKs Uri Ariel (National Union), Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) and Uri Orbach (Jewish Home) filed an appeal to the Knesset Finance Committee's decision Tuesday to approve the transfer of three billion shekels ($750 million) to the Israel Defense Forces. The practical implication is that the budget will be frozen until the appeal's hearing or until the MKs remove their opposition.
The Knesset members argued that since the security establishment did not agree to transfer the budget for the hesder army/yeshiva units or for the protection of public buses in Judea and Samaria – even though they ordered the protection of buses in the first place - it would be necessary to halt the budgetary transfers until a solution is found. Committee Chairman MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) ordered the army and the Defense Department to respond to the requests and to reach an agreement with MKs.
"The defense establishment is hindering the funding of the yeshivas just because the heads of the yeshivas did not toe up to the line drawn for them by the IDF, to publicly say they oppose the refusal [of soldiers to take part i the expulsion of Jews. There is more here than the bad appearance of collective punishment that can not be turned into an agenda," said MK Ariel.
"In addition, a lack of consent to transfer funds to protect buses which transport children in Judea and Samaria is strange, to speak gently, especially after the defense establishment requires local councils to use protected vehicles," he said.
"I hope that the defense establishment will understand that these demands are more than legitimate and will reach an agreement with us quickly," concluded MK Ariel.
5. Barak’s Self-Hatred Behind Building Freeze, Says Hebrew U. Prof.
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Defense Minister Ehud Barak engineered the building freeze in Judea and Samaria, and self-hatred and Labor party politics are behind the move that endangers the country, according to Professor Shalom Rosenberg, who teaches Jewish Thought at Hebrew University.
He explained that the real danger to Israel is that “internal objectives change foreign policy.” Prof. Rosenberg recalled that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said that Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic policy.
“Barak is behind the building freeze because he wants to protect his position in the Labor party and in the coalition government, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lets him do what he wants,” the professor told Arutz 7.
“You don’t have to be a genius to understand the connection between Barak’s political crisis and the building freeze,” Prof. Rosenberg asserted. “It is dangerous when internal politics are involved with external political policies, and it is liable to turn into a catastrophe. The building freeze decision might become a tragedy and seriously damage our standing.”
Several America political analysts have written that U.S. President Barack Obama was mistaken in pressuring Israel to halt building for Jews in Judea and Samaria, and Prof. Rosenberg says that the Netanyahu government is similarly mistaken. Israel’s expulsion of Jews from Gaza and parts of northern Samaria four years ago proved that “we are not land robbers,” he explained.
He estimates that Labor party chairman Barak is driven by inexplicable self-hatred in his anti-settlement actions. He compared his move with the psychological reaction of kidnap victims who identify with their abductors.
“This is a form or psychological robbery,” he explained. “If the Europeans look at someone as if he is the devil, then he wants to look acceptable in their eyes. This is what has happened with Ehud Barak."
6. 'Practice What You Preach,' Watchdog Tells EU
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The European Union is riding a Trojan Horse in Israel by funding anti-Zionist groups while not disclosing its financial subsidies, NGO Monitor chairman Prof. Gerald Steinberg told a Knesset conference Wednesday.
Officials from Israeli NGOs, including B’Tselem, Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the pro-Arab Adalah group, were invited to speak at the event but declined to participate.
A graduate of Cornell University and now chairman of the Political Studies Department of Bar-Ilan University, Prof. Steinberg charged that "European governments have, for over a decade, been manipulating Israeli politics and promoting demonization by funding a narrow group of favored non-governmental organizations." He asked the Knesset to enact legislation to require full transparency, “a principle that European officials preach, but when it comes to Israel, do not practice."
Although the EU claims to fund projects and not organizations, "Project funding inevitably is used to promote the overall organization and its activities,” he said at the conference. “In several cases, EU funding comprises 50, 60, or even 75 percent of an NGO recipient’s entire budget.”
NGO Monitor reported that the European community funded 16 Israeli NGOs with more than $8 million since 2006, half of it going to B’Tselem and Yesh Din. “The EU claims to fund projects that advance human rights, peace, tolerance, and confidence building measures, but the activities of many NGO grantees are inconsistent with these goals,” according to NGO Monitor. It said that a grant was given to Conflicts Forum, “which encourages and engages in ‘encounters with political Islam - with both non-violent and armed resistance groups,’ including Hamas and Hizbullah.”
Concerning the transparency that NGO Monitor requested from the EU, Prof. Steinberg stated, “The EU provided NGO Monitor with a CD of about 50 documents, from which most of the relevant information was deleted, including the names of NGO partner organizations and the evaluation criteria. It was impossible to decipher the few fragments and numbers that remained.
"EU funding for projects [implicitl supports the political activities and campaigns of the NGOs, including boycotts and the rejection of normalization," he concluded.
7. Knesset Members Disabled For a Day
by Malkah Fleisher
For the first time in the Knesset, many Members of Knesset – including Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin – experienced first-hand the issue of accessibility for disabled persons.
They walked with guide dogs, went up ramps in wheelchairs and tried to speak sign language as part of International Disabled Persons Day that was observed Tuesday.
The event took place under the auspices of a special project conducted by "Access Israel" to increase awareness of accessibility issues, using experiential stations to subject the Knesset Members to the challenges faced by thousands of Israelis. "The idea behind the project is to allow Knesset Members to sense, learn and feel, if only for a few minutes, what people with disabilities feel every day their whole lives," said a representative of the organization.
The organization stressed that "a lack of access to so many places causes 720,000 people with disabilities and their families a lot of suffering, and often prevents them from leaving their homes and taking part in society as citizens with equal rights in a democratic country."
"Access Israel" hopes that the day of experiencing the challenges of life with disabilities will encouraged Knesset Members to pass more legislation and regulations in favor of people affected by the challenges.
Other organizations involved in the experiential day were the Association of Guide Dogs, Tower of Light, an organization assisting the blind, as well as the Golan Winery, which provided wine for a blind wine-and-ice-cream taste test.
