How Bad is Ha-Ha-Haaretz, You Ask?

How bad, you ask?

Very bad.

For example, here's a snap of the English edition from October 7 (story text here):

What interested me was the caption:

"Traitor"?

The Hebrew word in the photograph is an abbreviation as notated by the double apostrophe and it is the abbreviation for "High Court of Justice", Beit HaDin HaGavoah L'Tzedek, pronounced Bagatz - bet, gimmel, tzaddi.

The story is about the Court's decision, after all:

Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Monday he would not accept the High Court of Justice’s overturning of legislation that allowed asylum seekers who entered Israel illegally to be incarcerated without trial for up to a year.  He also criticized a second component of the court’s overturning of an amendment to the Prevention of Infiltration Law: the closure of the Holot detention facility in the south.

That word, Bagatz, is heard maybe a half-dozen times in Israel over the radio every week and sometimes in conversations.  It appears in all the newspapers. You hear it every week on the television, too.  You really need to be special to make an error like that.

I think it also hilarious that the story's second headline is about a translator denied to an assylum-seeker. If anyone requires a translator, its the English edition of Ha-Ha-Haretz.

But, on second thought, it seems that the editors, reporters and caption-writers are so ideologically perverted in their world-view that it probably never occured to anyone of responsibility to re-read that or perhaps they did and the text so fit into their political outlook that no one could even perceive the mistake, or maybe they think they commit no errors.

That's how bad a newspaper HaAretz is.

And the Ha-Ha is on its readers, but reflects on all who love israel and are ill-served by that broadsheet.

This is dedicated to my friend RA.

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High Court Stoops Low for Shiloh

Reported:

High Court orders Shiloh construction investigation

The High Court of Justice ordered the state on Tuesday to notify the court within 60 days regarding its intention to open a criminal investigation into unauthorized construction in the West Bank settlement of Shiloh.

The panel of three justices – Miriam Naor, Esther Hayut and Neal Handel – also ordered the state to update the court regarding the issue of continued construction plans in Shiloh.

The ruling came after the court heard a petition on Monday filed by Peace Now regarding unauthorized construction of residential housing units in the settlement, northeast of Ramallah.

Peace Now claims the construction, on three areas of designated state land, is illegal because the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council has not received appropriate planning permits from the Defense Ministry.

The state informed the High Court on Sunday that the Defense Ministry decided to retroactively approve building plans in Shiloh, a move that will legalize 119 residential units in the settlement.

However,

Attorney Akiva Sylvetsky, the Binyamin Local Authority's legal representative, showed the court precedents it has set itself, which determined that the court shall not force authorities to take enforcement measures in places where the state declares an intention to legalize the construction.

The motion by Peace Now is therefore superfluous, he said.

Sylvetsky also said that Peace Now never filed any kind of complaint with the Binyamin Local Authority.

In the course of the session, the judges expressed puzzlement at the attempt by Peace Now to involve the court in matters of construction on state land within communities. The court said it would give a decision in the coming days.

Check my previous post for some explanations of what's going on but bureaucratic delay is not an unknow problem, even in Shiloh...Southwest Illinois:-

Police contract negotiations cost Shiloh $30,000

It took 17 months for the Village of Shiloh and the Fraternal Order of Police to come to terms on a new contract, which gave full-time police officers on average a 3 percent raise last year, this year and next year.

In addition to pay increases, the lengthy contract negotations cost the village $30,000 in legal fees.

And I finally received from Dani Dayan his op-ed on the subject from January 2008: Legal, and then some which provides some insight into related problems.

Excerpts:

...The decision to form Bruchin came from the ministerial committee on settlement in 1983. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin approved the decision in 1988. Former defense minister Moshe Arens also gave his approval to Bruchin's construction several years later. The area designated for Bruchin was all state-owned.

The state approved the development of infrastructures for the town. The non-governmental pacifist organization Peace Now argues the state invested over $3 million in the town. Bruchin is now home to some 80 families, who most ly reside in permanent homes.

The government, following Sasson's lead and the media, claims that Bruchin is unauthorized and illegal.

Bruchin was authorized by the appropriate state authorities. The land it occupies is state land, and it has a detailed municipal outline. But since its formal approval process isn't completed, Sasson calls Bruchin an illegal outpost. And so, the Israel Electric Corporation does not upgrade the town's infrastructure.

On the western side of the Green Line lies Lehavot Haviva, a veteran kibbutz belonging to the Hashomer Hatzair movement. I do not know whether in 1949, when the kibbutz was established, or in 1951 when it was moved to its current locale, it was done as a government resolution. What is certain is that the kibbutz was set up on lands that did not belong to the state.

Before it was moved to its current location, the authorities evicted the people of the Arab village Jalameh, in the framework of a plan by the Prime Minister's Office to "remove small Arab shanties and move their inhabitants to larger villages." The residents of the land were transferred to neighboring Arab villages.

Sasson is troubled by municipal blueprints that have been lawfully approved. Well, Lehavot Haviva has a blueprint which was approved in 1980 - 31 years (!) after the kibbutz was formed. For 31 years, the kibbutz had been, according to Sasson philosophy, an illegal outpost. And yet, no one demanded it be removed.

...That used to be the procedure through which town and settlements were approved, and it was law. Compared to what went on in those years, the procedure for setting up the "outposts" is a temple of decorum and of justice. No one had been evicted from their homes for the formation of a Jewish settlement.

...The issue of the outposts is not a legal one, but a matter of foreign policy. Otherwise, the pledge to evacuate them would have been made to the president of the Supreme Court instead of the U.S. Secretary of State...

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Peace Now Takes the Criminalize Route

As I noted previously, construction at Shiloh, the object of a Peace Now High Court appeal which failed, is a simple matter of administration and bureaucracy, of parcelization and zoning (see what is on the books in the UK).  The ownership, as if it is "stolen privately-owned land", is not the issue but if land originally set aside for agriculture can be used for building homes.

Trust me, living here, no real agriculture can be developed there where the building is.  The original designation was simple an off-hand decision at the time.

There is nothing criminal in the procedure but our Peace Now Zionists won't give up.

Read on from a JPost report: Shiloh construction may bring criminal probe

The State Attorney’s office is weighing the possibility of ordering a criminal investigation into illegal construction [it isn't illegal] in the West Bank settlement of Shiloh, even as the Defense Ministry has said it plans to legalize the building.

...The panel of three justices – Miriam Naor, Esther Hayut and Neal Handel – heard a petition filed by Peace Now over alleged illegal construction of residential housing units in Shiloh, northeast of Ramallah.  Peace Now claims the construction, on three areas of designated state land, is unlawful because the Binyamin Regional Council has not received appropriate planning permits from the Defense Ministry.

Monday’s hearing came after the state informed the High Court on Sunday that the Defense Ministry has decided to retroactively approve building plans in Shiloh, a move that will legalize 119 residential units in the settlement. [a move that happens all the time all over Israel as well as in kibbutzim]

...Peace Now had asked the court to order the Defense Ministry to explain why it had not taken all necessary actions to prevent the houses’ construction and to investigate and to prosecute those members of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council responsible for the building.

...The petition relates to three different areas in Shiloh, one of which was officially zoned as agricultural lands, and which cannot be used for residential building. [well, if you change that status, the land can be used.  is Peace Now asserting that the government can't change its mind?]

In order to legalize building on that land, the state must now undertake a public process, during which members of the public will be allowed 60 days to voice any opposition to the zoning changes.  The other two areas are already zoned as residential, but Peace Now argues that the houses built on that land were constructed without a proper permit. [Peace Now turns here, turns there and wants us to get dizzy]

...Peace Now had contacted the Judea and Samaria regional police and the deputy attorney-general asking for a criminal investigation into alleged illegal construction by the Binyamin Regional Council.  However, the state said in its written response that such an investigation was “not a simple matter.”

In Monday’s High Court hearing, attorney Michal Friedlander, for the state, said that that a decision has not yet been made regarding the criminal investigation...Friedlander said that a decision would be made on the matter within several weeks.

...After the hearing, attorney Akiva Sylzetsky, for the Binyamin Regional Council, told The Jerusalem Post he was optimistic the court would decide not to intervene in the matter of the housing construction.  Regarding the police investigation, Sylzetsky said it would be “difficult to start an investigation in a place where the process of legalization has already started,” and that any investigation would not necessarily result in indictments being filed.

According to Sylzetsky, the state’s move to legalize housing construction in Shiloh is part of a trend that has developed over the past year and-a-half in reaction to petitions like this one, filed against building on state (public) lands in the West Bank.  The petitions have given the state the impetus to legalize settlement construction on state lands, which lacks the necessary permits. The land is considered public and there are no Palestinian private land claims against it, Sylzetsky says, because the High Court has forced the state to give an answer about the land.

“Peace Now’s petitions have been having the opposite affect to that intended,” he added. “In several places, the state has legalized construction because of petitions, whereas if the settlers themselves had asked for legalization it would never have happened.”...The state can legalize the houses because they are built not on private Palestinian land but on so-called “state lands,” land considered public property under Ottoman law. [not only that, sir, but the League of Nagtions Mandate decision specifically charged that state and waste lands were to be used for "close Jewish settlment", Article 6]

According to that law, which was in force when Israel took the area from Jordan in 1967, land in the West Bank is considered state land unless an individual has occupied, cultivated and paid taxes on it for at least 10 years.

Meanwhile, also on Monday, the High Court of Justice decided to postpone a hearing of a petition by civil rights watchdog Yesh Din into alleged illegal construction on private Palestinian land in the Kochav Ya’acov settlement.  The decision came after the state agreed to carry out a land ownership survey. Lawyers Michael Sfard, Shlomy Zecharya and Avissar Lev filed the petition on behalf of Ali Barakat, head of the village council of Akeb, whose constituents allegedly own the land.

One day, the real criminals will get their comeuppance.

That is not a threat but an expectation and observation.

P.S.  What to buy some property?

P.P.S.  Did you know that as of May 1968 a land survey was done by the Israel Lands Administration, the General Staff's Settlement Department and the Department of Agriculture. These were its findings: 50,000 dunums were in private Palestinian lands.
(see: Shlomo Gazit, The Carrot and the Stick: Israel's Policy in Judea and Samaria, 1967-68, B'nai B'rith Books, Washington, D.C., 1995) and that by November 1992, one year after the Madrid Peace Conference and the start of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, land held by Israel potentially for the use of Israeli settlers constituted more than 60 percent of the total area of Judea and Samaria and 35 percent of the total area of the Gaza Strip. Prior to 1948, Jews bought lands in the Judea and Samaria and when the Jordanian government took over, it passed the Custodian of Enemy Property Law and established the office of a Custodian of Enemy Property under whose administration the lands that had been bought by Jews were placed. These amounted to some 30,000 dunums out of the total area of 5.5 million dunums (see: Gazit, op. cit., p. 126).

As this pro-Arab source explains, land ownership is complicated and compounded by refusals to register such.


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On the Language of the High Court of Justice

In a March High Court of Justice decision rendered by the President of the Supreme Court, Dorit Beinisch, and signed on by Judeges Gronis and Fogelman, the conclusion permitted the security barrier's location near and/or on Walaja village land and here is a key phrase:

בבית המשפט העליון בשבתו כבית משפט גבוה לצדק
בג"ץ 146/11

5.

 בנסיבות אלה, ובשים לב לקביעותינו בפסק הדין בעניין הכפר וולג'ה באשר לתוואי המעודכן, נחה דעתנו כי המפקד הצבאי נתן דעתו למכלול השיקולים הרלוונטיים לקביעת תוואי גדר הביטחון נשוא העתירה, תוך שהוא מאזן באופן סביר ומידתי בין שלושת אלה: שיקולי ביטחון; החובה לשמור על זכויותיה וצרכיה של האוכלוסייה הפלסטינית; וכן שיקולים שעניינם הגנה

על זכויותיה הנטענות של העותרת

In translation:

"In these circumstances, and with our fixtures regarding the updated route as regards Walaja village, our mind is at ease that the Military Commander has paid proper attention to the varied relevant considerations in connection with fixing the route of the security barrier the subject of this appeal, in that he has balanced within a reasonable and measured manner between these three: the concerns of overall security; the obligation to protect the rights and needs of the Palestinian populace; as well as the protection of the [private and personal] rights claimed by the appellant...

I have a major semantic problem with that.

a)  who are the "Palestinian people"? 

Does the Court recognize a "people" or "persons" who refer to themselves as "Palestinians"?

The fundamental legal documents that promote the reconstitution of the Jewish national home never referred to the "Palestinians" but either to "non-Jews" or "Arabs" - and I would suggest the Court follow suit.

b)  the Mandate, in specifying rights of persons not Jews, defined as the "rights and position of other sections of the population",  includes the

safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.

Not even "Arabs" as a definition of the "inhabitants" is mentioned.

Moreover, Article 5, actually demands that

The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power.

The territory of Palestine included, at the very least, all of what is Israel today between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.  And so the High Court for Justice should begin to act as a Zionist court, a Jewish court and one that does not renege on international legal principles as regards the Jewish national home.

Crossposted here at Arutz 7.

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The Real 'Final Word'

In the NYTimes report on the law case loss of Walajeh village claims, they being rejected by Israel's High Court of Justice and so the security barrier route nearby will not be radically altered, Mazin Qumsiyeh, a leader of the anti-barrier protests, said

...the access points [to be provided] wouldn't help because only landowners, and not farmhands, would be allowed through.   "This is the kind of thing that comes from Israeli courts," Qumsiyeh said. "They usually try to find some sort of compromise, so to speak, but the end result is that the military establishment has the final word."

Actually, Mazin, the 'final word' has been given by you and others amoung you who attempted and attempt to finish what was supposedy the Final Solution.

You allowed terrorists to represent you, from 1920 on and to murder defenceless Jews.

You allowed the Mufti to represent you, even when he was in Berlin, broadcasting pro-Hitler messages during World War II.

You allowed his memory and heritage to drive you and you parents' and grnadparents' generations to slaughter Jews in Hebron, Jerusalem, Hulda, Tiberias, Tel Hai and too many other places until 1947 and continued with the terror fedayeen campaign in the 1950s and then followed the path of PLO resistance since 1964.

We kept offering you to alter that 'final word' but you wouldn't, even after peace agreements and arrangements and negotiations were conducted.  When solutions were discussed.  When compromise was on the table.  When a Nobel Peace Prize was won (but not earned).

No, your 'final word' was terror, then and now, and incitement and hatred in school books and summer camps.

Maysin, we have heard and comprehended your 'final word'.

You were not asking for justice and we will not yield on security and existence.

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