TONY BADRAN

Israel backpedals, while Hezbollah grows bolder.
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A Lebanese army soldier, at left, in Kfar Shouba in southern Lebanon looks on from his side of the border as Israeli soldiers stand opposite, in background, in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on July 20, 2023
ALI DIA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s discussion on Sunday with senior IDF officials about Hezbollah provocations on the northern border was preceded by a flurry of press reports claiming that the IDF intelligence division had issued no less than four warnings about eroding Israeli deterrence. Military intelligence officials, we were told, have been warning Netanyahu about how the political crisis at home and fraying ties with the Americans were undermining deterrence of enemies like Hezbollah.

People might differ on how to read such assessments of the impact of Israel’s political crisis on the country’s deterrence posture. One could choose to read it as earnest analysis, or as political messaging whose point was to paint Netanyahu’s judicial reform as harming Israel’s security—a talking point of the prime minister’s opponents. However, in order to weigh the claim that fraying U.S.-Israeli ties are weakening Israel’s deterrence on the northern front, one would first need to examine the assumption that the United States and Israel share the same interests when it comes to Lebanon, and that this common front is being undermined by Israel’s reckless domestic politics. A sound assessment should begin by questioning the premise of U.S.-Israeli alignment in Lebanon—an alignment that demonstrably does not exist.

A year ago, leveraging a mock drone attack by the terror group Hezbollah against an Israeli offshore gas rig at the beginning of July, the Biden administration went to the caretaker Israeli government with an urgent demand: It must sign a maritime boundary delineation agreement with Lebanon within a couple of months, before the parliamentary elections in Israel, giving potentially valuable gas fields to Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon and signaling Israeli willingness to retreat in the face of Hezbollah’s aggressive threats and actions. This matter was a top priority of the president of the United States, the administration made public. Sure enough, the Biden team got its deal.

In the process, the Biden administration broadcast a new American posture in Lebanon. The U.S. now positioned itself between Israel and Hezbollah, taking on the role of protector of and advocate for Lebanon, which now figured in the imagination of U.S. policymakers and diplomats, if not in reality, as an independent country in need of buttressing. The maritime deal, a senior U.S. official explained last year, would serve as a security guarantee not just for Israel, but also for Lebanon—a territory now transformed in the language of U.S. diplomacy from an Iranian satrapy under the political and military control of the terror group Hezbollah to a sovereign state that might be the deserving recipient of nearly a billion dollars a year in U.S. aid.

As it turned out, the maritime deal did not, in fact, enhance Israel’s security, as U.S. negotiator Amos Hochstein and his echo chamber validators in the U.S. and Israeli press all claimed it would. In reality Israel’s security and deterrence has badly deteriorated on multiple fronts since the Biden administration came to office. The deal did enhance Hezbollah’s security, though, and consequently increased the group’s confidence to press its advantage against Israel.

Over the past few months, the terrorist group that rules Lebanon has conducted, in tandem with its auxiliary force the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), a series of border provocations and incursions into Israeli territory. Hezbollah’s moves were part of a larger, concerted campaign. As with the maritime border episode, Hezbollah is now locked in a dance with the Biden team to advance shared objectives and impose them on Israel.

Each time Hezbollah provokes, the U.S. reliably steps in to “mediate” between the terror group and Israel, with the goal of “stabilizing Lebanon.” Needless to say, the Israeli role is strictly to make concessions in the framework of a U.S.-brokered agreement, at the risk of displeasing its American patron. Hezbollah, meanwhile, knows that the structure of this Kabuki performance prohibits Israel from retaliating, making its provocations more or less risk-free—especially given the fact that the “Lebanese state” is a fiction.

In a speech marking the 17th anniversary of the 2006 war, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, explained exactly how the terror group’s dance with Team Obama-Biden and its emissaries works. Pointedly, his elucidation began with the maritime deal. The way Lebanon got everything it demanded, Nasrallah explained, was when “the resistance” threatened the Karish offshore platform, and when the official and popular supporting cast played their part. That’s when the Americans and Hochstein came and delivered the Israelis.

Having internalized that precedent, Hezbollah then decided it was time to press its advantage on land, where again, Nasrallah’s reading of the American posture had proven correct. The day before the terror leader’s speech, Amos Hochstein, the Biden administration’s special presidential coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security, who got the lame duck government of Yair Lapid to concede to all of Hezbollah’s demands in its last days in office, arrived in Israel to discuss tensions along the land border with Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s provocations on Israel’s northern border had begun months prior to Hochstein’s arrival. On June 21, Israeli media reported that Hezbollah operatives had entered Israeli territory several weeks earlier—the exact date was later said to have been April 8—and set up an outpost in the Mount Dov area, several meters inside Israel. Needless to say, this was months before the passage of Netanyahu’s judicial reform bill.

That Hezbollah’s actions took so long to surface in the Israeli press in part likely reflects the Israeli government’s reluctance to advertise its own weakness. Instead, the government vainly hoped that this sign of its impotence might be quietly resolved through diplomatic channels and UNIFIL. Israel filed a letter of complaint with the U.N. Security Council and then threatened to remove the tents by force after an unspecified deadline—a threat which, as more time passes, appears increasingly hollow.

Israel’s weak response to Hezbollah’s symbolic invasion of sovereign Israeli territory suggests a failure to recognize that Hezbollah’s cross-border encampment is, as Nasrallah explained, part of a systematic campaign. In turn, this failure appears to be embedded in an even larger refusal to comprehend America’s new posture in Lebanon. As a result, Israel is responding piecemeal to a coherent Hezbollah strategy aimed at forcing Israel to make additional concessions, this time on land, while using the new constraints forced on Israel by the new American posture to establish new operational dynamics at the border.

The oddity of this situation, then, is that both Israel and Hezbollah appear to be acting under the assumption that they have U.S. backing. In the case of Israel, however, this assumption is in part a mistake, and in part a bit of public posturing which has failed to convince their enemies to the north, who in fact know better.

Weeks before the story of the Hezbollah encampment came to light in Israel, the pro-Hezbollah press in Lebanon had already documented an episode in late May where Hezbollah had set up an additional outpost in the same region, in the outskirts of Kfar Shouba near the pond of Ba’athael (long a site of tensions involving Lebanese shepherds crossing into the area). Although Nasrallah would later claim that the second encampment was on the Lebanese side of the border, the ambiguity is deliberate. The episode in Kfar Shouba continued a few days later in June when so-called “locals” disrupted IDF fence construction and earthworks, which are aimed at fending off infiltration and livestock entering from the Lebanese side. A person identified as a local farmer who had blocked the IDF excavator in Kfar Shouba went on Hezbollah TV and declared that his actions were an example of Hezbollah’s whole-of-society doctrine, which it dubs the “army, people, resistance” triad.

A couple of days later, the LAF once again crossed the border fence into Israel. The LAF—whose salaries the Biden administration underwrites—posed for pro-Hezbollah TV cameras, and took positions pointing their weapons at IDF soldiers.

As with the farmer in Kfar Shouba, the choreographed LAF deployment was intended to showcase Hezbollah’s doctrine of synergy between the terror group, government institutions, and the citizenry. It underscored that Hezbollah was the spearhead of a position endorsed by the government and the country as a whole. The latter point was showcased further with trips to the outskirts of Kfar Shouba by members of the Lebanese parliament who expressed support for the liberation of “occupied Lebanese lands.” The LAF would participate in another such stunt alongside Hezbollah operatives in the area opposite Menara, west of Kiryat Shmona, where they crossed into Israeli territory to block IDF activity before being pushed back by the IDF.

The choice of the locations is not random. In 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanon to the border line, known as the Blue Line, which was set by the U.N. based on historical maps. Aside from the northern part of the village of Ghajar, which the Blue Line cuts through, and leaving aside the Shebaa Farms and the Kfar Shouba hills, which are part of the Golan and which no one recognizes as Lebanese, there are a few points along the Blue Line that Lebanon contests.The Hezbollah stunts took place at some of these points along the security barrier in the area between Metula and Zar’it farther west. This is precisely the area where, in 2018, the IDF uncovered multiple Hezbollah cross-border tunnels.

In one instance near Metula in early July, Hezbollah operatives removed a security camera off the smart fence. In recent years, sabotaging surveillance equipment has been routine activity for Hezbollah, often assisted by the LAF. Hezbollah uses the cover of its so-called “environmental NGO” Green Without Borders both to plant trees that obstruct Israeli security cameras and to erect observation towers a few meters from the barrier. This past year, the group has erected 27 outposts along the Blue Line. Of course, Hezbollah also has its LAF auxiliary regularly disrupt the IDF from clearing the trees. In 2010, the LAF shot and killed an Israeli officer in the area west of Metula, as an IDF crew was removing trees.

To block Hezbollah operational plans of entering northern Israel in a future conflict, over the past several years the IDF has been building a concrete barrier and upgrading fortifications along the border with Lebanon, on the Israeli side. This effort has reached the Mount Dov region, opposite Kfar Shouba.

Some in Israel have assessed that Hezbollah’s current campaign is aimed at disrupting the building of this barrier and of the IDF’s security measures altogether. While that’s true, it falls well short of capturing the full picture. In fact, Nasrallah openly clarified the purpose of this choreography when he spoke of the complementary and cooperative roles of the group and the government to obtain territorial concessions from Israel, “as with the maritime deal.”

Hezbollah has been rather open about what it’s looking to achieve. First on the list is the village of Ghajar. The Blue Line cuts through the village located in the Golan, leaving the northern part of it in Lebanon. With Israel having committed to the Blue Line, the U.N. considers the northern section of Ghajar, that’s on the Lebanese side, occupied and the Security Council routinely urges Israel to complete its withdrawal from that part of the village.

In the period following Israel’s withdrawal in 2000 and leading up to the 2006 war, Ghajar and the Mount Dov area were targets of regular Hezbollah attacks, infiltration, and abduction attempts. Most notable was the November 2005 operation that simultaneously targeted an IDF post in nearby Mount Dov, around the spot where Hezbollah pitched its tent, and a post in Ghajar, in a failed attempt to abduct soldiers—in which they used motorcycles and ATV’s, much like what they featured in their recent military display in May and in the video they released in July simulating a cross-border attack by the Radwan special forces. Less than a year after the 2005 attack, a successful abduction operation near Zar’it sparked the July 2006 war. Clearly, Hezbollah is signaling a readiness to reestablish an updated version of the pre-2006 reality at the border.

Right before the maritime deal was signed last year, the local council of Ghajar began constructing a high fence with cameras and sensors along the northern part of the town. Israel then began allowing unrestricted movement and touristic activity in what had formerly been a closed military zone. What existed before the fence was a stretch of barbed wire that made the village a security vulnerability, in addition to being a location of drugs and weapons smuggling from Lebanon.

A picture taken from the southern Lebanese village of Wazzani shows the northern part of the border village of Ghajar recently walled by Israel, on July 21, 2023. Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry on July 11 said the country would file a complaint with the U.N. Security Council over Israel’s ‘annexation’ of the north of Ghajar. The so-called Blue Line cuts through Ghajar, formally placing its northern part in Lebanon and its southern part in the Israeli-occupied and annexed Golan Heights. / JOSEPH EID/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The decision to build the new security fence has turned out to be a boobytrap for the current government. After waiting almost a year, Hezbollah decided to take advantage of this opening, and set in motion the same play it ran with the maritime deal. “What we did with the oil, gas and maritime border delineation, today also, through complementarity and cooperation between the state and the resistance and with support from the Lebanese people and the political forces in Lebanon, we can recover our occupied land in the town of Ghajar,” Nasrallah explained.

First, Hezbollah fired an antitank missile near the village and a few days later Hezbollah media published footage of Israeli military vehicles at the fence and declared it a “reoccupation” and “annexation” of the Lebanese part of Ghajar. Then it delegated the government to hand a proposal to the Americans: you need to force the Israelis to take down the fence and to withdraw from the northern part of Ghajar. Sure enough, the U.S. appears to have acted on cue as Hezbollah’s messenger.

The reason Hezbollah decided to focus on Ghajar is because it is the spot where it enjoys the strongest footing with the U.S. and the U.N., who have long been fielding proposals to Israel concerning the status of the northern part of the village. If the U.S. pressures Netanyahu to concede, that would be an easy victory for Hezbollah—achieved without the need even for negotiations. If Israel does not agree, but at the same time opts, with U.S. encouragement, not to remove the Hezbollah tents by force, that would also be a win for Hezbollah—an affirmation of the perception that Israel is deterred. The latter point was the central refrain of Nasrallah’s speech: Israel’s hesitation is the direct result of the deterrence that Hezbollah has imposed.

Building on this perception of deterrence, one Hezbollah objective in the Kfar Shouba hills and the Shebaa Farms pertains to deployment and operations. Over the past decade, Hezbollah has been using the Mount Dov region as a theater for retaliation against Israeli strikes in Syria (and, rarely, in Lebanon) that the group deems to be violate the rules of engagement and the deterrence equation. Now it intends to turn the eastern sector of the Shebaa Farms/Kfar Shouba hills into an arena of regular active and visible deployment, much like in border points to the west.

After gauging Israel’s reaction to its activities in June, and especially after Hochstein’s July visit, Hezbollah has doubled down on its activities outside of Kfar Shouba. On July 20, it brought an excavator, removed IDF concrete obstacles, and proceeded to level the ground in front of the border fence. The same intrepid local farmer featured in the previous episodes helpfully explained on Hezbollah TV that the plan was to create a road along the fence that links to the Ba’athael region, so as to “be at the nearest point to the fence with the Zionist enemy.”

Nasrallah added more detail in his speech. The area where Hezbollah set up the tents is Lebanese land, Nasrallah said, indicating he had no intention to take them down. We have the freedom to do and build whatever we wish there, he added. As he mockingly went through the various things Hezbollah might wish to construct there, he included “a tower” in the list. It remains to be seen if we will soon witness new Green Without Borders observation towers go up along the fence in the area, as is the case farther to the west.

To drive home the normalization of the overt presence of Hezbollah operatives along the entire length of the border line, the IDF filmed masked Hezbollah operatives in full gear patrolling openly along the fence near Moshav Dovev in the upper Galilee, and pointedly looking straight at the camera.

It’s worth placing the campaign at the border in the broader context of Hezbollah’s operations against Israel. If the tent was set up in early April, it was in March that Nasrallah set in motion the action by “locals” and the LAF obstructing Israeli “expansion beyond the Blue Line,” namely near Houla, west of Metula. March was also the month when Hezbollah sent a bomber from Lebanon deep into Israel in an attempted attack at the Megiddo Junction, as part of linking the Lebanese front with the Palestinian front backed by Iran. On April 6, Hezbollah orchestrated the launching of 34 rockets from Lebanon. Two days later, according to Israeli sources, the Hezbollah encampment was set up inside Israeli territory.

The signals Hezbollah is sending with its campaign in the Shebaa Farms/Kfar Shouba hills are of a return to a modified pre-2006 status quo in the area. What the 2006 war did was to upend the rules of engagement that had governed the battle with Hezbollah in the previous decade, especially after the 2000 withdrawal. The pre-2006 rules had allowed south Lebanon to be an arena for low intensity warfare with Israel without Hezbollah suffering major consequences.

Ever since the Biden administration came into office, Hezbollah has steadily raised the temperature in south Lebanon: From the rocket salvos of summer of 2021 through the mock drone attack on the Karish offshore rig in July 2022, to the Megiddo Junction bomber and the April 2023 increased rocket launchings, Hezbollah has been slowly normalizing the Lebanese front as an arena from which to poke at Israel, albeit at a much lower level than that of the pre-2006 period.

The bottom line here is still that whatever deterrence Israel had established with the 2006 war has now largely eroded.

The bottom line here is still that whatever deterrence Israel had established with the 2006 war has now largely eroded. As Nasrallah underscored in his speech, Hezbollah does not believe Israel is willing to upend the new-old rules of engagement with another major war, certainly not over a tent. What’s more, he has seen, most clearly with the maritime deal, that the Americans oppose Israeli escalation in Lebanon and are actively constraining the Israelis. That is explicitly the way the maritime deal was designed to work. Team Biden was clear about how it viewed the maritime deal: It guaranteed Lebanon’s security and economic prosperity and precluded action that could destabilize it. In other words, it extended a protective umbrella to Lebanon and therefore to Hezbollah, by openly opposing Israeli kinetic action in Lebanon.

Sure enough, Nasrallah linked the American role and Israel’s deterrence in his remarks: “The situation is different now … That’s why the Israelis did not dare to make a kinetic move against the tent. Why? … Because the Israelis understand [that Hezbollah would retaliate]. And because they understand, they brought in mediation.” In other words, Nasrallah recognized that the function of American mediation is to constrain Israel’s actions in Lebanon while delivering wins that supposedly enhance the country’s “stability” by rewarding the terror group.

At the time of the maritime deal last year, most observers, if they even noted it at all, dismissed the notion that Hezbollah could piggyback on the maritime deal and leverage it on land, or that the two issues were intertwined. However, Nasrallah highlighted an additional linkage between the current campaign on the land border and Hochstein’s maritime deal. In laying out Lebanon’s territorial claims in the sector west of Ghajar, Nasrallah made sure to include Point B1 at Naqoura on the coast, as the terminus point of the Lebanese land border. During the maritime negotiations, the Lebanese insisted on Point B1 as the starting point on land from which the line at sea would begin.

Meanwhile, the Lapid caretaker government and its validators touted as a “key” win the maritime agreement’s supposed recognition of Israel’s so-called “buoy line” which extends out to sea from Rosh Hanikra. An anonymous Lapid government official fed reporters the following spin at the time: “The line of buoys is an important Israeli security line, that was never approved by any outside actor … This will allow Israel to treat it as its northern territorial border.”

In fact, the agreement does no such thing and leaves the situation unchanged, “without prejudice” to Lebanon’s claim to the area, which, the agreement says “remains undelimited.” The text further states: “the maritime boundary landward of the easternmost point of the [Maritime Boundary Line] is expected to be delimited in the context of, or in a timely manner after, the Parties’ demarcation of the land boundary.” (Emphasis added.)

As a matter of fact, coupling the maritime border with their claims on land was the Lebanese demand from the outset on which they conditioned their participation in the maritime negotiations. The State Department under Mike Pompeo, in one of its mind-boggling displays of bad judgment, conceded and included a paragraph in the Framework Agreement about the U.S. “looking forward” to separate talks on “unresolved issues related to the Blue Line.” In other words, the current situation on the land border is baked into the maritime deal—and that’s how the Lebanese are treating it.

Echoing what Nasrallah would announce the day after, Lebanese Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally and U.S. interlocutor, bundled all of Lebanon’s claims on land and told his Western partners that “what is required of the international community is to oblige Israel … to withdraw from the northern part of the village of Ghajar, the Shebaa Farms, the Kfar Shouba hills, and point B1.” An article in the pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar newspaper, which coincided with Hochstein’s visit to Israel and was echoed elsewhere in the Lebanese press, claimed that “Western countries informed Lebanon that Israel was willing to enter into talks about land border demarcation, despite previously opposing it, and to limit the discussion to the [13] points of dispute [along the Blue Line].” The article then claimed, citing anonymous diplomatic sources, that “the American administration sees in this development an opportunity to complete the land border demarcation which it has been in a rush to achieve ever since it finished the maritime delineation.”

Are these claims true? Who knows. What can be said with some certainty, however, is that the Biden administration has every incentive to try and lock Israel into such processes, as a continuation of the maritime agreement and the overall policy of “de-escalation” it is predicated on. The net result of such a course of action would be a win for Hezbollah: It escalated, Israel balked, the Americans stepped in the middle and discouraged the Israelis from taking forceful action, and instead encouraged them to enter into another process to entertain Hezbollah’s claims. Moreover, Nasrallah never once said anything about taking down the tents, even should Israel withdraw from Ghajar.

Of course, Hezbollah’s demands hardly stop in Ghajar and the 13 points along the Blue Line. Hezbollah is also looking to use the Blue Line to secure additional objectives in the Golan region. “What is the value of the tents? The value of the tents is that they have put the spotlight again on the whole situation on the border,” Nasrallah clarified. “You have seen what the value of the tent is, the value of the tent now is to open this discussion wide. We are a group with a goal.”

Ever since the U.N. and the U.S. began peddling initiatives to resolve the status of northern Ghajar, the Lebanese have been open about that process being the springboard to addressing the status of the Shebaa Farms and Kfar Shouba hills—the Lebanese claim to which is a fiction invented at the time of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.

Curiously, al-Akhbar framed Israel’s fence construction in Mount Dov as an attempt “to take advantage of the American recognition, during the Trump presidency, of Israel’s total sovereignty over the Golan Heights.” The current U.S. position does not recognize the Lebanese claim to the Shebaa Farms and the Kfar Shouba hills. It regards them as part of the Golan Heights. However, Hezbollah is well aware of Team Obama’s support for UNSCR 2334 and its adoption of the 1967 lines, a policy which the Biden administration has followed faithfully in the context of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories.

Obama administration officials, most of whom are now in the Biden administration, were never supportive of the recognition of Israeli sovereignty on the Golan. If Hezbollah can manage to induce a comment or introduce the slightest modification in the American position on the Shebaa Farms and Kfar Shouba hills, that would be another significant win.

How Netanyahu will decide to proceed remains to be seen. More than three weeks after Hochstein’s visit, and after months of protestation and appeals through third parties, Israel has largely gone silent on the issue of the tents. Even as it advertised its military preparedness for any scenario, following the security cabinet meeting on Sunday, the IDF continued to send signals of its preference for de-escalation and for avoiding any confrontation with Hezbollah, and that the encampment situation will be resolved “at a place and time of our choosing.”

It is unclear now whether Netanyahu will make good on the threat to use force, with the understanding of the likelihood of conflict with Hezbollah, however limited, or whether he will play along with Team Biden’s initiatives and wind up trapped in a new process in which Washington acts as Hezbollah’s lawyer, like it did with the maritime deal.

What Israel must realize is that the U.S. is not aligned with it on Lebanon. Washington’s policy in Lebanon makes it an amplifier, not a constrainer, of Hezbollah. Israel cannot rely on silly soundbites like demanding the LAF or UNIFIL take action or asking the U.S. to pressure the Lebanese government. All these soundbites advertise is a dated understanding of Lebanon’s reality, and of the actual U.S. posture. The American impulse is to keep Israel off of Lebanon and to promote the latter’s protection and prosperity—as a Hezbollah state.

However the Israeli government decides to deal with the tents—to take them out by force, or simply to do nothing—it therefore needs to stay far away from any U.S. initiative that further enshrines the precedent of the maritime deal that has positioned Washington as a broker between Israel and Hezbollah, and not as Israel’s ally.

Tony Badran is Tablet magazine’s Levant analyst and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He tweets @AcrossTheBay.

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Iranian Weightlifter Receives Lifetime Ban for Shaking Hands With Israeli Competitor

Sep23

Iranian Weightlifter Receives Lifetime Ban for Shaking Hands With Israeli Competitor

Shiryn Ghermezian

An Israeli flag is burned by protesters at the 2019 “Quds Day” demonstration in Tehran. Photo: Reuters/Meghdad Madali.

An Iranian weightlifter was given a lifetime ban by authorities inside Iran for shaking hands with an Israeli competitor at the Masters World Weightlifting Championships in Wieliczka, Poland, which concluded on Saturday.

“The Weightlifting Federation bans the athlete Mostafa Rajai for life from accessing all sports facilities in the country, and dismisses the head of the delegation for the competition, Hamid Salehinia,” the federation said in a statement cited by the Iranian state news agency IRNA.

Rajai, who previously represented Iran at the 2015 Asian Championships, finished second in his category at the competition in Poland and stood on a podium with an Iranian flag wrapped around him on Saturday. He then shook hands and took a photo with Israeli weightlifter Maksim Svirsky, who finished third, while they both stood on the podium together.

The athlete “crossed the red lines of the Islamic Republic” as the Iranian delegation “was sent with the support of the federation,” according to IRNA.

“In addition to apologizing to the leader of the revolution, the families of martyrs and all the people of Iran, I promise we will certainly never witness incidents like this in the weightlifting family,” the federation’s chief, Sajad Anoushiravani, reportedly said in a statement quoted by Al Jazeera.

The federation added that a committee representing veteran weightlifters has also been disbanded.

Iran does not recognize Israel and forbids its athletes from competing against Israelis. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei repeated the country’s policy in a 2021 speech, saying, “Any Iranian athlete worthy of the name cannot shake hands with a representative of the criminal regime in order to win a medal.”

Iranian athletes have mostly avoided going head-t0-head against Israeli opponents in international events by pulling themselves out of competitions.

In 2019, Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei fled Iran after being forced to forfeit a match in order to avoid potentially competing against Israeli judoka Sagi Muki. After the ordeal, Iran was given a four-year ban on participating in all international judo competitions for its refusal to let its athletes square off against Israelis. Mollaei now competes for Mongolia.

Also in 2019, Iranian chess champion Alireza Firouzja renounced his nationality and said he would no longer play for his home country due to Iran’s ban against Israeli athletes.

Drohobycz – Historia społeczności

Sep22

Drohobycz Historia społeczności

Drohobycz

Województwo: Львівська область (obwód lwowski) / Lwowskie (przed 1939)
Powiat: Drohobycz (Дрогобич) / drohobycki (przed 1939)
Gmina: Drohobycz (Дрогобич) / Drohobycz (przed 1939)
Inne nazwy: Дрогобич [j. urzędowy]; Drohobych [j. angielski]; Drohobytsch / Дрогобыч [niemiecki / rosyjski]; דראָהוביטש [j. jidysz]; דרוהוביץ [j. hebrajski]
GPS: 49.3432° N / 23.5038° E, 49°20’35” N / 23°30’13” E

GALERIADrohobycz. Szlomo Rothman – firma przewozowa na pokazie przedsiębiorstw (1937)

Pierwsze wzmianki o Żydach w Drohobyczu pochodzą z 1404 roku. Mieszkali wówczas w mieście Żydzi, którzy byli dzierżawcami kopalni soli; inni mogli zamieszkiwać tylko na przedmieściach. Żydom zezwolono osiedlać się koło kopalń, jednak odmówiono im prawa do oddzielnego cmentarza. Długo uniemożliwiało to założenie odrębnej gminy w Drohobyczu.

Król Władysław Jagiełło powierzył Żydowi Wołczkowi kopalnie soli w Drohobyczu[1.1]. Stał się on również królewskim rzeczoznawcą przy opisach Drohobycza. Natomiast inny Żyd, o imieniu Detko albo Dziatko, który również dzierżawił kopalnię soli w Drohobyczu, w 1425 r. uzyskał od króla pozwolenie na dostarczanie soli na dwór królewski oraz na handel z Turcją i Kijowem.

W 1500 r. drohobycka rada miejska otrzymała prawo do opodatkowania wydobycia soli i produkcji napojów (m. in. wódki i piwa). Został stworzony system podatków i zezwoleń, które zaczął regulować żydowską przedsiębiorczość. W tym okresie zaistniała już w Drohobyczu gmina żydowska, reprezentowana podczas zjazdów samorządu żydowskiego w Rzeszowie. W 1554 r. dzierżawca kopalń soli Jakub Juditz także otrzymał prawo do ściągania podatków od producentów wódki w Drohobyczu. Dlatego w 1569 r. dwaj Żydzi z Drohobycza: Szmuel Markowicz i Icchak Jakuzow rozpoczęli spór sądowy, apelując aż do króla Zygmunta Augusta o rozstrzygnięcie, kto z nich będzie ściągać podatek od propinacji. Ostatecznie wygrało miasto.

W 1578 r. w Drohobyczu mieszkało już 3,6 tys. Żydów. W tym samym roku król Stefan Batory jednak przywilej de non tolerandis Judaeis, zabraniający Żydom nie tylko mieszkać w Drohobyczu i okolicy, ale nawet prowadzić handel w czasie jarmarków.

W 1618 r. Drohobycz zburzyli Tatarzy. Miasto podupadło. Wówczas dwaj lwowscy Żydzi, Icchak Nachmanowicz i Icchak ben Mordechaj Markowicz, którzy były dzierżawcami królewskich majątków w pobliżu Drohobycza, użyli swoich wpływów, aby gmina powróciła do miasta. W 1635 r. wojewoda ruski Jan Daniłowicz wydzielił 30 mórg z ziem królewskich, aby postawić na nich osadę żydowską. Dzielnica żydowska w Drohobyczu otrzymała nazwę „Na Łanie”. Daniłowicz pozwolił też na założenie cmentarza. Miasto odbudowywało się powoli. W 1645 r. król nawet zwolnił je z podatków.

W latach 50. XVII w. na Ukrainie wybuchło powstanie Chmielnickiego, które znów negatywnie oddziałało na życie Żydów Drohobycza. W 1659 r. król Władysław IV potwierdził im prawo do zamieszkania Na Łanie. Jednak spis z 1663 r. odnotowuje tylko 15 Żydów – właścicieli domów Na Łanie (przy ulicy Żydowskiej). Handlowali głównie likierem, piwem i wódką. Na Łanie została zbudowana pierwsza drewniana synagoga, która spaliła się w 1713 roku. Natomiast nową synagogę zbudowano w tym miejscu dopiero za panowania Austrii. Po ostatnim pożarze, do dzisiaj stoi ona pusta.

Najdawniejsze dokumenty drohobyckiego kahału żydowskiego są datowane na 1664 rok. Jest to akt, dotyczący stosunków drohobyckich cechów z Żydami, kiedy ci ostatni zawarli z nimi na siedem lat kontrakt dotyczący prawa do karczmarstwa i posiadania sklepów w granicach miasta, za co musieli płacić z góry 200 złotych. Później ten bardzo istotny dla Żydów kontrakt został wznowiony w 1672 i 1678 roku. W 1683 r. wznowienie kontraktu kosztowało już 300 złotych. Żydowska przedsiębiorczość szczególnie rozkwitła za Jana ІІІ Sobieskiego – głównie w dziedzinie wytwarzania wódki, browarnictwa i arendowania. Niekiedy rada miejska skarżyła się królowi na żydowskich dzierżawców; rozpoczynało to śledztwo. W ten sposób w 1690 r. król podjął decyzję, która zabraniała żydowskiemu dzierżawcy Lebermanowi sprzedaży wódki w pobliżu kościoła.

Z 1670 r. mamy informacje o pierwszym drohobyckim rabinie. Został nim Jekutiel Zalmon Siegel, syn rabina z Przemyśla. W 1680 r. do Drohobycza z Kołomyi przybył jego następca Cwi Hirsz. W 1696 r. rabinem Drohobycza został Jehuda ben Jaakow.

Drohobycz rozwijał się jako centrum regionu. Na początku XVIII w. praktycznie całą sferą handlową, włącznie z eksportem, zarządzali w mieście Żydzi. Zajmowali się również wydobywaniem i warzeniem soli, zarówno jako dzierżawcy, jak i prości rzemieślnicy. Kupcy ze Lwowa i Drohobycza dominowali na rynku soli w regionie. Z czasem przedstawiciele tych rzemiosł utworzyli w Drohobyczu żydowską klasę średnią, która z powodzeniem rozwijała się tam przez następne dwa stulecia. Rozwijał się również eksport bydła na Śląsk, handel odzieżą i bankowość. Ze względu na to, że Drohobycz znajdował się niedaleko od granicy węgierskiej, zamożni kupcy żydowscy obsługiwali podróżnych, jadących na południe.

Żydowscy rzemieślnicy z powodzeniem konkurowali z rzemieślnikami-chrześcijanami. Umożliwiło to w 1711 r. odnowienie synagogi i cmentarza. Żydzi stopniowo zaczęli się osiedlać również w wioskach dookoła miasta, rozszerzając tym samym zasięg drohobyckiego kahału. Spis z 1716 r. wykazał, że w Drohobyczu jest 3 żydowskich krawców, 3 bankierów, 2 jubilerów, rusznikarz, lekarz, kuśnierz, introligator i garbarz.

Nie zawsze w stosunkach Żydów z chrześcijanami w Drohobyczu układały się spokojnie. W 1718 r. w mieście zostało znalezione zabite dziecko. O zabójstwo w celach rytualnych oskarżono Żydów. Podejrzenie padło na Żydówkę Adelę, służacą. Przedstawiciele kościoła upierali się przy jej winie. Wysunięto oficjalne oskarżenie, została wtrącona do więzienia. Ponoć usiłowano nawrócić ją na chrześcijaństwo, jednak odmówiła i została ukarana.

W 1720 r., po wielu naleganiach, drohobyckim Żydom udało się otrzymać pozwolenie na odbudowę spalonej uprzednio synagogi. Zażądano jednak, by była nie większa i nie bardziej ozdobna, niż wcześniej. Ażeby uzyskać pozwolenie na budowę ogrodzenia wokół swego cmentarza, Żydzi zobowiązali się pomóc w remoncie kościoła. W tym czasie w Drohobyczu mieszka znany uczony i kabalista Icchak Hior, przeciwnik Sabataja Cwi; został on pochowany na tutejszym cmentarzu.

W XVIII w. kahał w Drohobyczu znowu rozkwitł. Miał aż siedem ciał administracyjnych i dwa sądy. Stanowił jedną z najważniejszych wspólnot żydowskich województwa ruskiego. Pomimo to, w latach 50. XVIII w. wybuchł skandal. Zalman ben Zeew Wolfmanowicz, niepopularny, uznawany za nieuczciwego, został jednym z przewodniczących gminy w Drohobyczu. Złożono na niego skargę do rady żydowskiej województwa ruskiego do Lwowa, jednak wskutek jego stosunków nie została rozpatrzona. Żydzi z Drohobycza i okolicznych wspólnot spotkali się więc w Stryju. Postanowiono uzyskać wsparcie szlachty przeciwko Zalmanowi. W efekcie komisarze królewscy aresztowali Zalmana i jego rodzinę, uznając za winnych. Majątek obwinionego został skonfiskowany. W ostatniej chwili Zalman zaproponował olbrzymi wykup; karę śmierci przez powieszenie zamieniono mu na dożywocie. W więzieniu przyjął chrześcijaństwo i wstąpił do klasztoru, gdzie po dwóch latach zmarł. Dla gminy drohobyckiej rządy Zalmana miały negatywne następstwa w postaci ogromnych długów. Z kolei w 1770 r. z kahału został wykluczony Awigdor Herszkowicz – za to, że podburzał Żydów przeciwko władzom kahalnym. Nałożono na niego cherem, czyli klątwę.

Wspólnota stopniowo rosła. W 1765 r. do drohobyckiego kahału wchodzili również jeszcze Żydzi z okolicznych wsi. Spis z tego okresu wykazał 1923 członków gminy. Wśród nich było 16 krawców, 4 kuśnierzy, 3 garbarzy, rusznikarz, introligator, 2 jubilerów i wielu muzyków. W samym Drohobyczu Żydów było 979. Należało do nich 200 domów. W 1769 r. w Drohobyczu kwaterowało wojsko. Zatrzymało się głównie w żydowskich domach, co było dla wielu Żydów obciążeniem ponad siły.

W tym okresie w Drohobyczu pojawili się pierwsi chasydzi. Pierwszymi przedstawicielami nurtu w mieści byli rabin Icchak Drubyczer, którego wspierał sam Baal Szem Tow, Izrael ben Eliezer, Josef Drubyczer Aszkenazi i jego syn Izrael Nachman Drubyczer, który potem odwiedził Włochy, po czym prawdopodobnie zamieszkał w Palestynie.

W 1772 r. Drohobycz znalazł się w imperium austriackim. Nie było w nim samorządu żydowskiego, takiego jak w Rzeczypospolitej, ale funkcjonowały autonomiczne gminy. Pomimo to, Austriacy nie zapomnieli o długu gminy wobec państwa jeszcze z okresu Rzeczypospolitej, wynoszącym 26 968 złotych.

W 1776 r. cesarzowa Maria Teresa usankcjonowała status galicyjskich Żydów jako oddzielnej społeczności. Było ich wówczas 144 tysiące. Cyrkułom drohobyckiemu i samborskiemu (jednostki administracyjne w imperium austriackim) nakazano wybrać siedmioosobową radę parnasów (starszych).

W latach 80. XVIII w. wobec Żydów Drohobycza zastosowano przywilej de non tolerandis Judaeis. Żydowskie domy zostały skonfiskowane, odnowione i sprzedane chrześcijanom. Austriacka administracja przejęła również kopalnie soli, które przynosiły główne zyski żydowskiej wspólnocie. Nałożyła wreszcie ogromne podatki na Żydów – producentów i sprzedawców piwa. Pretekstem do tych działań był wspomniany dług z okresu Rzeczypospolitej. Wspólnota jednak przetrwała. W okresie panowania Józefa II rada parnasów została rozwiązana. Gminą odtąd kierowali trzej starsi, którzy bezpośrednio odpowiadali przed władzą cyrkułu. Mieli oni reprezentować wspólnotę, opiekować się biednymi, rejestrować zgony, śluby i urodzenia. Zniesiono natomiast odrębność sądową i podatkową. Odtąd zatem Żydzi byli dla Austriaków tylko wspólnotą o charakterze religijnym.

W 1788 r. spis wykazał, że w Drohobyczu, Samborze, Turce i Komarnie mieszka 1812 rodzin żydowskich, łącznie 8690 osób. Herz Homberg, inspektor szkół żydowskich w Galicji, założył w tym okresie szkołę żydowską (Judische Normalschule). Jednak przedsięwzięcie to nie odniosło początkowo sukcesu, a galicyjscy Żydzi prosili cesarza o zniesienie obowiązku edukacji świeckiej. W 1789 r. odbył się kolejny spis ludności. Wszyscy Żydzi otrzymali wówczas zgermanizowane, dziedziczne nazwiska. Dokumenty i publikacje miały być wyłącznie w języku niemieckim. W 1793 r. nauczyciel drohobyckiej Judische Normalschule, gorący zwolennik haskali – żydowskiego oświecenia, Mosze Tzekendorf, złożył petycję do Wiednia z prośbą o poprawę duchowego i intelektualnego położenia galicyjskich Żydów. Prosił austriacki rząd o wyegzekwowanie od Żydów zamiany tradycyjnej odzieży na niemiecką, wprowadzenie zakazu zaręczyn nieletnich, handlu wódką, jak również o popieranie osadnictwa Żydów na wsi i ich asymilacji.

Większość Żydów, którzy mieszkali Na Łanie, niezmiennie ledwo wiązało koniec z końcem, żyjąc ze sprzedaży piwa, wódki i obwoźnego handlu detalicznego. Wędrujących drobnych sklepikarzy nazywano tutaj handełesy. Były jednak próby modernizacji. Lejb Josefsberg uzyskał zezwolenie na otwarcie w Drohobyczu fabryki obuwia. Jego potomkowie prowadzili zakład aż do 1939 roku. Niefortunnym pomysłem okazała się nauka Żydów uprawy roli. Na wieś z Drohobycza przeniesiono 25 rodzin. Eksperyment rozbił się jednak o niemożność zapłacenia przez Żydów tzw. podatku tolerancyjnego.

W okresie 1810–1817 praski Żyd, geolog Josef Hecker jako pierwszy rozpoczął wydobycie i przeróbkę drohobyckiej ropy naftowej. Niebawem Hecker i Johann Mitis odkryli kolejne złoża pod Truskawcem. W 1835 r. otworzyli w Borysławiu ponad 20 kopalń ropy naftowej. Równolegle eksperymentami z przeróbką ropy naftowej zajmował się borysławski Żyd Abraham Schreiner.

W latach 20. XIX w. uregulowano sytuację odebranych na poczet długu żydowskich nieruchomości. Domy za niewielką opłatą wróciły do dawnych właścicieli, nie zrezygnowano natomiast z konfiskaty karczm. W latach 30. XIX w. oburzenie wywołały wysokie podatki, nałożone przez cesarza Franciszka ІІ na koszerne mięso i świece szabasowe. Jeszcze więcej trzeba było płacić za świece zapalane na Jom Kipur oraz za pogrzeby i śluby.

W życiu religijnym Drohobycza okres 1822–1848 stanowił prawdziwą epokę pokoju i zgody. Stało się tak za sprawą rabina Elijahu Horszowskiego, który umiejętnie łagodził spory pomiędzy ortodoksami, chasydami i zwolennikami haskali. W 1840 r. miejscowi maskіle położyli kamień węgielny pod Wielką Synagogę, zwaną Grojse Szil.

W 1848 r. przez całą Europę przeszła fala rewolucyjna „wiosna ludów”. W jej duchu w Austrii cesarz Ferdynand I zlikwidował getta, zniósł podatki od świec i koszernego mięsa, usunął narzucane Żydom ograniczenia w handlu, rzemiośle i wykonywaniu wolnych zawodów. Żydzi otrzymali pełne prawo własności oraz prawa wyborcze. Zmieniło się również samo żydowskie życie społeczne, widoczne stały się nurty postępowe. W 1849 r. drohobycka Chewra Kadisza zakupiła katafalk; wywołał on oburzenie tradycjonalistów, w Brodach miały nawet miejsce protesty masowe. Z drugiej strony, w tym samym 1849 r. do Drohobycza zjechał rabin Eliezer Nissan Teitelbaum, reprezentant znanego rodu chasydzkiego z Węgier. Jego obecność wzmocniła nurt chasydzki wśród miejscowych Żydów. Jego następcą został w 1854 r. Elijahu Horszowski, który stał się głównym rabinem miasta na 27 lat. Horszowski balansował pomiędzy ortodoksami i maskilami. Szeregi tych ostatnich rosły wraz z napływem kolejnych kupców i fabrykantów – właścicieli kopalń naftowych.

W 1854 r. w pobliżu sąsiadujacego z Drohobyczem Borysławia zostały odkryte duże pokłady wosku ziemnego, czyli ozokerytu. W 1856 r. biznes naftowy wreszcie zaczął przynosić istotne zyski. Zewsząd zjeżdżali się przedsiębiorcy. Za przysłowiowe grosze kupowali od miejscowych chłopów działki ziemi, i rozpoczynali wydobycie ropy naftowej, ozokerytu, a następnie ich przetwórstwo. W 1859 r. otwarto kopalnie w pobliskich Tustanowicach. Do 1860 r. znacznie wzrosła liczba ludności żydowskiej w Borysławiu, który także przynależał do kahału drohobyckiego. Wynosiła ona 1 tys. osób, przeważnie biedaków poszukujących pracy. Dlatego w Borysławiu założono pierwszą kasę chorych.

W latach 60. XIX w. maskіlowie otworzyli pierwsze w Drohobyczu prywatne gimnazjum żydowskie z 12 uczniami, którzy uczyli się hebrajskiego, niemieckiego, polskiego, matematyki oraz Talmudu. Chasydzi z początku otworzyli własną szkołę, ale potem, po pewnych wahaniach, uznali gimnazjum i posłali tam swoich nauczycieli religii. Kontakty z Żydami z innych miast oraz nie-Żydami modernizowały żydowski świat Drohobycza. Dotyczyło to zwłaszcza zamożnych rodzin drohobyckich kupców i fabrykantów, aspirujących do elity Galicji i całego imperium.

Jeszcze w 1864 r. pełnoprawnymi obywatelami miasta Drohobycza byli tylko czterej Żydzi. Skargę w tej sprawie złożył wówczas wielki hurtownik Jakub Segel, powodując w tej sprawie interwencję ministerstwa spraw wewnętrznych w Wiedniu. Ostatecznie, w okresie 1867–1868, polityczne ograniczenia dla Żydów zostały ostatecznie zniesione.

W 1862 r. po prostu eksplodował biznes ozokerytowy. W Borysławiu i Wolance pracowało ponad 1500 ozokerytowych kopalń, gdzie pracowało tysiące robotników, których nazywano lebakami. Zajęli całe dzielnice przylegających do Drohobycza miast.

W 1863 r. skończyła się wreszcie budowa Grojse Szil, czyli Wielkiej Synagogi. Odtąd Drohobycz posiadał dwie synagogi. Działały także 24 prywatne bet mіdrasze oraz szpital, założony w tym okresie przez bractwo dobroczynne „Osei Chesed”. Wielką rolę w społeczności odgrywał w tym okresie zamożny przedsiębiorca Aszer Zelig Lauterbach, wybitny uczony, maskil, wspaniale zorientowany zarówno w tradycji hebrajskiej, jak i osiągnięciach nauki, publikujący w języku hebrajskim. Lauterbach ufundował szpital, bibliotekę, czytelnię oraz oddział Israelitische Allianz, pomagający ofiarom pogromów w Rosji. Innymi wpływowymi maskіlami byli: Szmuel Abraham Apfel, przewodniczący rady nadzorczej fabryki Gartenberg-Lauterbach-Goldhammer; Aleksander Schor, handlowiec oraz Leon Sternbach, absolwent lingwistyki we Wiedniu i Lipsku, od 1892 r. profesor Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Z kręgów maskilów wywodzili się też znakomici malarze, bracia Maurycy i Leopold Gottliebowie.

Do końca XIX w. społeczność postępowa zdominowała gminę w Drohobyczu. Równocześnie trwał proces asymilacji Żydów, w którym germanizację zastąpiła polonizacja. Na początku XX w. gmina przybrała kurs zdecydowanie asymilatorski[1.2].

W 1869 r. w Drohobyczu mieszkało 4 tys. Polaków, 5 tys. Ukraińców oraz 8 tys. Żydów. Było to trzecie, po Lwowie i Krakowie, pod względem wielkości miasto Galicji. W 1874 r. do drohobyckiej rady miejskiej zostało wybranych 8 Polaków, 12 Ukraińców oraz 17 Żydów. Utarła się odtąd zasada, obowiązująca aż do 1939 r., że zastępcą burmistrza Drohobycza jest Żyd. Polacy wspierali też żydowskiego kandydata do Sejmu galicyjskiego, w zamian za głosy Żydów ze wsi, spływające na kandydata Polaków. W drugiej połowie XIX w. zastępcą burmistrza Drohobycza został Jakub Feuerstein. Nazwano później na jego cześć jedną z ulic miasta, bowiem był zwolennikiem autonomii Galicji, a także umiejętnie godził interesy rozmaitych grup etnicznych i społecznych. W 1914 r. Feuerstein wyjechał do Wiednia, a zmarł w Karlsbadzie (Karlowych Warach) w 1927 roku.

W ostatniej ćwierci XIX w. pojawili się w Drohobyczu zwolennicy syjonizmu. W latach 80. XIX w. otworzyli oni tzw. Volkshalle (czytelnię społeczną), pełniącą rolę klubu żydowskiego. Uformowała się grupa syjonistyczna pod nazwą Einigkeit, potem dołączyło do niej stowarzyszenie pod nazwą Ha-Iwri. W 1883 r. syjonista Aharon Hirsz Zupnik zaczął wydawać gazetę „Drohobitzer Zeitung”. Na przełomie XIX i XX w. duży wkład w rozwój żydowskiego szkolnictwa w Drohobyczu wniósł dr Leon Reich. Absolwent Szkoły Nauk Politycznych w Paryżu, był znanym pisarzem i wykładowcą, a także liderem ruchu syjonistycznego w Galicji. Reich powołał pierwszy żydowski związek studencki, kandydował też w wyborach do parlamentu austriackiego w 1911 roku. Aktywność syjonistów nie była w smak dominującym asymilatorom. Podczas wspomnianych wyborów w 1911 r. doszło do zamieszek, które zakończyła dopiero krwawa interwencja armii austriackiej (26 ofiar!).

Żydzi mieli ogromny udział we własności przedsiębiorstw zagłębia wydobywczego Drohobycz – Borysław – Tustanowice. W 1880 r. Goldhammer, Maurer i Schreier założyli też w mieście browar. Ale nie wszystkim się szczęściło. Zubożali Żydzi często wybierali emigrację, głównie do Stanów Zjednoczonych. W 1910 r. w Drohobyczu mieszkało 34,7 tys. osób. Blisko połowę z nich stanowili Żydzi – 15,3 tysiąca osób. W Borysławiu byli natomiast większością.

W 1914 r. rozpoczęła się pierwsza wojna światowa. W lipcu 1915 r. do Drohobycza wkroczyły wojska rosyjskie. Doszło do ekcesów antyżydowskich, zwłaszcza ze strony kozaków dońskich. Jednak w lipcu 1916 r. Rosjanie zostali wyparci z Drohobycza. Życie miasta powróciło do normy, chociaż wiele domów zostało zniszczonych.

Od 1919 r. Drohobycz należał do Polski. W międzywojniu Żydów było tu ok. 12 tys. – 44% ludności. Rozwijało się życie polityczne (różne nurty syjonizmu, organizacje młodzieżowe, WIZO). Popularyzacji syjonizmu sprzyjał fakt, że sprzyjał mu stojący na czele sądu rabinackiego w Drohobyczu rabin Chaim Jechiel Szapira, należący do cieszącej się wielkim szacunkiem dynastii Rużyn-Sadagora. Działało szkolnictwo religijne, oparte na placówkach typu Talmud-Tora. 120 dziewcząt uczyło się w szkole Bet Jaakow. Rozwijało się życie kulturalne, którego symbolem stał się – nieznany jednak tak szeroko za życia – genialny polski pisarz i grafik pochodzenia żydowskiego Bruno Schulz (1892–1942)[1.3]. Dochodziło jednak do wystąpień antysemickich, w tym atakowania żydowskich handlarzy przez miejscowych Ukraińców[1.1.2].

Po wybuchu drugiej wojny światowej we wrześniu 1939 r. Drohobycz znalazł się najpierw pod okupacją niemiecką. Ten krótki okres przyniósł akty przemocy o charakterze antysemickim, ze strony niemieckich żołnierzy i ukraińskich chłopów[1.1.2]. 22 września 1939 r. Drohobycz został zajęty przez Sowietów. Nowi okupanci przeprowadzili nacjonalizację tutejszego przemysłu i handlu, pozbawiając społeczność żydowską fundamentów egzystencji. Wielu Żydów zostało wywiezionych na wschód, a wraz z nimi liczni uchodźcy przybyli z głębi ziem polskich.

Po wybuchu wojny sowiecko-niemieckiej, 30 czerwca 1941 r., Drohobycz został zajęty przez Niemców. Bezpośrednio po zajęciu miasta doszło do brutalnego pogromu, w którym zginęło ponad 400 ofiar. W lipcu 1941 r. Niemcy powołali Judenrat. 30 listopada 1941 r. rozstrzelano 300 Żydów w Lesie Bronickim. Setki zmarły zimą 1941–1942 r. z głodu i chorób. Judenrat starał się przeciwdziałać, organizując warsztaty, pozwalające na osiągnięcie zysków z działalności produkcyjnej. 1,3 tys. Żydów znalazło zatrudnienie w przemyśle wydobycia ropy naftowej. Pomimo to w marcu 1942 r. 2 tys. Żydów wywieziono do niemieckiego nazistowskiego obozu zagłady w Bełżcu. 8 sierpnia 1942 r. Niemcy i policja ukraińska zamordowali 600 Żydów, a kolejne 2,5 tys. wysłali do Bełżca. Dopiero wówczas postanowiono stworzyć getto, dla pozostających jeszcze przy życiu 9 tys. osób. 23–24 października 1942 r. kolejne 2,3 tys. Żydów załadowano w transport śmierci do Bełżca, a 200 pacjentów szpitala zamordowano na miejscu. Wywózki kontynuowano w listopadzie 1942 r., a 15 lutego 1943 r. 450 osób, w tym 300 kobiet, zgładzono w Lesie Bronickim. Niemcy pozostawili przy życiu jedynie zatrudnionych w reżimie obozu pracy. W marcu 1943 r. 800 z nich zamordowali w Lesie Bronickim. Wskutek kolejnych mordów i wywózek, pozostałości getta przestały istnieć ostatecznie w kwietniu 1944 roku.

Społeczność żydowska w liczbie 400 osób pojawiła się na krótko po zajęciu miasta przez Armię Radziecką w sierpniu 1944 roku. W krótkim czasie niemal wszyscy wyemigrowali.

NOTA BIBLIOGRAFICZNA

Drohobycz, [w:] The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, red. S. Spector, G. Wigoder, t. I, New York 2001, ss. 333–334.
Sefer zikaron le-Drohobycz, Boryslaw ve-ha-seviva, red. N. M. Gelber, Tel Awiw 1959.
Wozniak T., Sztetły Hałyczyny, Lwiw 2010.

How NGOs Fabricate the Legal Definition of Apartheid to Attack Israel

Sep22

How NGOs Fabricate the Legal Definition of Apartheid to Attack Israel

Salo Aizenberg

Photo by Alex Chis via Flickr. Used under licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

INTRODUCTION

The charge that Israel is an apartheid regime has become one of the central elements of the lawfare campaigns against the Jewish state. The apartheid label has been falsely applied to Israel for decades, beginning with anti-Zionist propaganda emanating from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. The label was advanced in 1975 when a U.N. General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism included the apartheid term. Another step forward took place at the UN Durban Conference in 2001 when NGOs promoted the demonisation of Israel as apartheid. The final declaration of the conference referenced ‘Israel’s brand of apartheid’ with the stated goal of isolating Israel. The most recent and aggressive effort was initiated by a group of NGOs who coordinated to issue a series of detailed reports that they claimed proved Israeli apartheid. The first reports, which can be considered warm-ups to the main events, were issued by Israeli based Yesh Din in July 2020 and B’Tselem in January 2021. These reports were soon followed by prominent NGOs Human Rights Watch (HRW) in April 2021 (A Threshold Crossed, Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution) and Amnesty International in February 2022 (Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians). A close read of these reports shows significant sharing of methodologies and information, all relying on the same manipulations to falsify the legal definition of apartheid so that it fits the parameters of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

A key goal of these NGOs is to normalise the characterisation of Israel as apartheid so that it becomes part of the accepted discourse. Anti-Israel groups are aware of the potency of the label compared to merely saying for example that ‘Israel commits crimes against humanity’ or operates a ‘brutal occupation.’ Since everyone knows what must to happen to apartheid states – they must be dismantled – these groups intend for the apartheid label to lead to greater international pressure that results in boycotts and sanctions and eventually Israel’s dissolution. The effort is gaining traction. UN officials have begun to adopt the term and media reports now regularly associate Israel with apartheid. A group of over 1,000 Jewish academics and activists recently issued a letter agreeing that Israel is an apartheid regime. While the letter was mainly intended to provide support for the movement against changes in the Israeli judiciary and not as part of a campaign to end Israel as the Jewish state, the signatories were nevertheless comfortable describing Israel as apartheid. As will be demonstrated below, these academics negligently bought into the falsification of the meaning of apartheid by NGOs.

A core contention of these NGOs is that they strictly adhere to international law in branding Israel as apartheid. For example, the Yesh Din report is presented as a ‘legal opinion’ written by lawyer and self-described expert on international law Michael Sfard. As will be proven below it is clear that the legal definition of apartheid cannot be applied to the Israel-Palestine conflict and therefore the NGOs deliberately distort the plain language of international legal documents to fabricate a new definition of apartheid. This article will focus on three key falsifications of the legal definition and application of apartheid.[1] There are hundreds of other errors, lies and misrepresentations disseminated by NGOs regarding the details of Israel’s alleged crimes that underpin apartheid that have been exposed in several detailed rebuttals.[2]

FABRICATION 1: REDEFINE THE MEANING OF ‘RACIAL’

As acknowledged by NGOs, apartheid is defined by international law in two documents: (1) The ‘Apartheid Convention’ which refers to a 1973 resolution by the UN General Assembly International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid; and (2) The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which was issued in 1998 and entered into force in 2002 with 123 state signatories.

The Apartheid Convention defines apartheid as follows and continues by listing specific crimes:

For the purpose of the present Convention, the term ‘the crime of apartheid,’ which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.

The Rome Statute defines apartheid as follows:

‘The crime of apartheid’ means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;

In both definitions apartheid is specifically a racial crime committed by one racial group against another. The plain dictionary meaning of race is ‘any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry.’ In South Africa the regime segregated the ‘white race’ from the ‘black race’, and it is this model of discrimination that informed the definition of apartheid. It is clear that the racial aspect of apartheid does not match the groups that are party to the Israel-Palestine conflict as neither Palestinians nor Jews are races. Each of these identity groups include people of different races (e.g. more than 50 per cent of Israeli Jews are of Arab origin). This fact should have eliminated the application of apartheid under international law to Israel’s alleged crimes towards Palestinians, but the NGOs came upon a solution: redefine the meaning of ‘racial’ to expand the application of apartheid to any identity group.

The NGOs first step in the redefinition of racial is to claim that neither the Apartheid Convention nor the Rome Statute defined the term even though this is a gross misrepresentation. HRW states: ‘Both the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute use the term “racial group,” but neither defines it’ and Amnesty writes: ‘the term “racial group” has not been defined in either of these instruments.’ With this assumption in hand, the NGOs then look to a third international statute known as ICERD or the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1965. ICERD offers a more expansive definition of ‘racial discrimination’:

In this Convention, the term ‘racial discrimination’ shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

By including descent, national and ethnic based identity in the meaning of ‘racial’ for the purposes of defining apartheid it conveniently becomes applicable to the Israel-Palestine conflict. All the NGO reports therefore assert that they are using the ICERD definition of racial for purposes of defining apartheid. For example, Amnesty writes: ‘It is this subjective understanding of “racial groups” that is applied by Amnesty International in this report with regard to the crime against humanity of apartheid.’ The use of ICERD’s definition might seem reasonable on the surface but the NGOs deliberately obscure how the Rome Statute actually treats the meaning of ‘racial’ and dishonestly cherry-picks one clause from ICERD to override the language in the Rome Statute.

Is it true, as these NGOs contend, that ‘racial’ is undefined in both the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute and therefore it is reasonable to look to a document issued more than 30 years prior to Rome for the definition? While these documents do not technically provide a formal definition for racial, the Rome Statute quite explicitly distinguishes race from all the other commonly accepted elements of identity including political, national, ethnic, cultural, religious and gender differences. Thus, while ICERD includes some of these other identity groups in its definition of racial, the Rome Statute specifically excludes them thus isolating the meaning of racial to its literal and classical definition. Copied below is Article 7.1 of the Rome Statute. Clause (h) lists the various identity groups that could suffer the crime of persecution: political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious and gender. Thus while the Rome Statute does not define racial (or any of these terms), no honest reading of the statute could claim that the authors intended for racial to include things like nationality and ethnicity.

The Rome Statute also specifically separates racial from other identity groups in Article 6 where genocide is defined. Genocide is defined as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.’ Once again it is evident that the statute intentionally separates racial from these other identity groups. In this case three identity groups that could be subject to the Crime against Humanity of Persecution, cultural, gender, and political, are excluded from genocide.

There is additional evidence for how the Rome Statute considered the word racial as a unique identifier. Article 7.1(j) lists ‘The crime of apartheid’ as one of eleven crimes against humanity, and then further clarifies the meaning of apartheid in the next section. Copied below are clauses (g) and (h) from Article 7.2 that are relevant to this analysis:

The ‘crime of apartheid’ is exclusively defined as a racial crime. The authors were certainly aware of all the other types of group identities – political, national, ethnic, cultural, religious and gender – but deliberately did not include them in the definition of apartheid. The prior clause (g) which further defines ‘Persecution’ is expansive and applies this crime to ‘the identity of the group or collectivity’, referring back to the seven separate group identity types listed in Article 7.1(h). Persecution can be committed against all seven identity groups, including racial, but apartheid can only be committed against a racial group and none of the others. As noted earlier, ‘Genocide’ can be perpetrated against national, ethnic, racial or religious groups, but excludes three other identity groups. Surely if the Rome Statute intended for apartheid in clause (h) to include identities other than race it would have used the same language as clause (g) to describe the crime or listed other specific identity groups that could be subject to apartheid as it did in defining genocide. There is no doubt that the Rome Statute defined race as unique from all other identity groups and there is no doubt that it meant for apartheid to be a unique crime against humanity that was racial only, differentiated by those that could be subject to ‘persecution’ and ‘genocide.’ It is therefore a fraudulent manipulation by the NGOs to insert the ICERD definition of racial from more than 30 years earlier and apply it to the Rome Statute definition of apartheid.

Surely Yesh Din’s 58-page ‘Legal Opinion’ by Michael Sfard, who is cited as an expert in international human rights law, closely addressed Article 7.1.(h) of the Rome Statute and its apparent contradiction with the ICERD definition of racial discrimination? Surely the long reports by HRW and Amnesty, which were each written over several years and claim to rigorously apply international law addressed the fact that the Rome Statute separated racial from all other identity groups? Surely the NGO’s legal experts explained why it is proper to rely on ICERD to define racial even though the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute written many years later did not cite this definition? The answer is the same for all the reports – none even mention the treatment of racial in the Rome Statute or how ‘persecution’ applies to seven identity groups but ‘apartheid’ only to racial groups in Article 7.1(h), let alone offer a legal analysis of the clause. Of course not, as an honest reading of the statute would make clear that the Israel-Palestine conflict can be many things, but it cannot be apartheid under the international legal definition of the term. HRW doubles down on the lie with the following comment that distorts reality:

While discussion of the meaning of ‘racial group’ during the drafting of the Rome Statute appears to have been minimal, its inclusion in the definition of apartheid, after the end of apartheid in South Africa and when international human rights law had clearly defined racial discrimination to include differences of ethnicity, descent, and national origin, indicates that ‘racial group’ within the Rome Statute reflects, and would likely be interpreted by courts to reflect, a broader conception of race.

FABRICATION 2: CLAIMING THAT THE DEFINITION OF APARTHEID IS NO LONGER BASED ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN MODEL

The second fabrication of international law by NGOs is their contention that apartheid is no longer based on the South African model. The 1973 Apartheid Convention, which was written when apartheid remained in force in South Africa, noted that apartheid included ‘similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa.’ The clear association of apartheid under international law with South Africa, as well as this nation being the only confirmed apartheid regime in history, is problematic for those who seek to label Israel as apartheid. Even Israel’s harshest critics cannot and do not claim that Israeli-Arabs and Palestinians suffer from the same type of segregation in every aspect of life that Black people suffered under apartheid South Africa. While this fact would seem to deal a serious blow to claiming Israeli is an apartheid regime, NGOs came upon an easy solution. HRW explains:

The international community has over the years detached the term apartheid from its original South African context, developed a universal legal prohibition against its practice, and recognized it as a crime against humanity with definitions provided in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (‘Apartheid Convention’) and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Despite 865 footnotes in a 217-page report, HRW does not cite any evidence of the detachment of apartheid from its South African context and what specific ‘years’ this took place. Certainly no international law – which HRW insists it strictly adheres to – supports the claim that South Africa is no longer the model for apartheid.

HRW published a follow up in July 2021 in response to criticism of its definition of apartheid and the claimed disconnection to South Africa stating: ‘And crucially, the 1998 Rome Statute, drafted after the end of apartheid in South Africa, defines apartheid as a distinct crime against humanity and removed any reference to Southern Africa from its definition.’ It is true that the Rome Statute did not reference South Africa but neither did it negate it and NGOs do not suggest that the Apartheid Convention is no longer valid. Note the selective use by HRW of later editions of international law to supersede prior statutes. In the case of South Africa the 1998 Rome Statute is more relevant and up to date than the 1973 Apartheid Convention; but when it comes to defining ‘racial’ the 1965 ICERD is more informative than the Rome Statute.

The fact is that the Rome Statute further emphasised the unique connection of apartheid to race as literally defined, similar to the Apartheid Convention. With South Africa no longer an apartheid regime as of 1994 it made sense not to invoke this nation in the 1998 definition of apartheid. There is also the matter of legal precedent, a universal and critical element of all legal analysis. Since South Africa is the only nation in history universally acknowledged as apartheid, surely an analysis charging another nation with apartheid for the only the second time in history would include this comparison in their legal analysis. But no NGO bothers to compare Israel to apartheid South Africa. These NGOs know that the South African comparison to Israel is a glaring weakness in its argument, so they have emphasised its aversion to this comparison. For example, Omar Shakir, the author of the HRW report, scoffed at critics who ‘build strawmen, try to say it’s [Israel’s] not like South Africa, that’s not what we’re arguing.’

FABRICATION 3: CHERRY-PICKING ONE CLAUSE OF ICERD AND IGNORING ANOTHER

As described above, NGOs mix and match international law by cherry-picking one clause of ICERD, the one that defines ‘racial discrimination,’ in a fraudulent attempt to override the treatment of ‘racial’ in the Rome Statute. Compounding the dishonesty, NGOs conveniently only cite Article 1.1 of ICERD (shown previously) but ignore the very next clause 1.2 which reads as follows:

This Convention shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or references made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens.

According to ICERD’s definition of ‘racial discrimination,’ differences in how non-citizens are treated, even if excluded and subject to restrictions, are not considered racial discrimination. Therefore, even if one were to assume ICERD’s definition of racial discrimination is the accurate one to use in defining apartheid, actions taken against non-citizens is excluded and thus cannot be a crime of apartheid. In the context of Israel-Palestine, this exclusion effectively negates the case for Israeli apartheid. Large sections of the crimes NGOs allege Israel commits are related to its treatment of Palestinians who by a large majority are non-citizens of Israel. While it is still possible for non-citizens to be subject to crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute (which refers to ‘any civilian population’), the millions of Palestinians who are non-citizens of Israel are not legally victims of racial discrimination under ICERD. Once excluded from racial discrimination it necessarily follows that Palestinians are not victims of apartheid.

CONCLUSION

The first fabrication highlighted is the ‘smoking gun’ evidence that demonstrates that the Israel-Palestine conflict can be many things, but cannot be apartheid. Under both the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute apartheid is exclusively a racial crime as strictly and literally defined. There are ten other crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute which could legally apply to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Assuming one believes Israel commits the crimes against Palestinians that NGOs allege (we do not), it would be legally accurate under the Rome Statute to state: ‘Israel commits the crime against humanity of persecution against the national and ethnic group known as Palestinians under Article 7.1(h).’ Of course this does not carry the rhetorical weaponisation like the word apartheid.

The typical response by anti-Israel activists and their supporters when exposing the falsification of the definition of apartheid for its unique application to Israel is: ‘Israel is committing grave crimes against humanity and your best response and defense is to discuss the technical definition of apartheid?’ The answer is two-fold. First, the alleged crimes committed by Israel are grossly fabricated, exaggerated and misrepresented as well, all of which has been documented in detail in several lengthy rebuttals. Second, if the terminology is secondary and not important compared to Israel’s supposed crimes, then why do NGOs care what term is used to describe Israeli actions? Why not move away from this one-word label that invites accusations of antisemitism by international officials? If not technically accurate why not simply say Israel commits crimes against humanity against Palestinians? It is of course disingenuous for Israel’s critics to claim that combatting the use of the apartheid label is besides the point since Israel is criminal anyhow. They know that apartheid commands special attention and seriousness that demands aggressive international action. They know that Israel is the only nation on earth that is routinely branded as apartheid and they strive to keep it that way in hopes of permanently isolating Israel. Shame on academics and the media for blindly following the fabrications of the NGOs, allowing international law to be determined by a popularity contest.

[1] There are other aspect of the definition of apartheid which are also incorrectly applied by NGOs, such as the meaning of ‘inhumane acts’ and ‘domination’ that are not covered in this article. See https://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/apartheid-report/ for a further analysis of the apartheid definition.

[2] https://www.bicom.org.uk/analysis/the-apartheid-smear-2022/; https://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/amnesty-internationals-cruel-assault-on-israel/; https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-element-cse&cx=010323966898720032183:9pwegkotst0&q=https://ngo-monitor.org/pdf/ThresholdCrossed_2022.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi4kKD04-GAAxWNElkFHYEGBcUQFnoECAgQAg&usg=AOvVaw0s8tcmgkSCAQLi_t5Qtvrn

Salo Aizenberg is the author of Amnesty International’s Cruel Assault on Israel: Systematic Lies, Errors, Omissions, and Double Standards (2022) and A Threshold Crossed: Documenting HRW’s ‘Apartheid’ Fabrication (2022). In this essay he explains why, when NGOs extend the term ‘apartheid’ to Israel, they commit ‘three key falsifications of the legal definition and application’ of the term.

Speech at rally for judicial reform

Sep22

Speech at rally for judicial reform

Caroline Glick

On September 7, I spoke outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem at a mass rally in favor of judicial reform. The event was held on the eve of the Supreme Court hearing last week on a petition from a U.S.-funded far left group asking it to abrogate an amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary. The Supreme Court has no power to adjudicate Basic Laws. It certainly has no power to adjudicate Basic Laws that relate to its own powers.

Here is the video of my speech with English subtitles.

Reunion 68

Oficjalny Blog Reunion 68

In Lebanon, Israel and America Are on Opposite Sides

In Lebanon, Israel and America Are on Opposite Sides

Israel backpedals, while Hezbollah grows bolder.
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Iranian Weightlifter Receives Lifetime Ban for Shaking Hands With Israeli Competitor

Iranian Weightlifter Receives Lifetime Ban for Shaking Hands With Israeli Competitor