Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2006, pages 52-53

Southern California Chronicle

Could Aging Dimona Reactor Become an Israeli Chernobyl?

By Pat and Samir Twair

ISRAEL COULD BRING about its own demise through negligence of its Dimona nuclear reactor. This possibility was raised during the question-and-answer follow-up to a Sept. 10 talk at the Liberty Hill Foundation center by Israeli activist Aliya Strauss.

Responding to a query as to why Israel is so nonchalant about the nuclear waste accumulating around its Negev Desert plant, Strauss said: “All it would take is one long-range missile to hit that nuclear soup and the Israeli-Palestinian problem would be solved.

“The Negev isn’t Nevada,” Strauss pointed out. “Israel is about the size of New Jersey. If Dimona was hit, it would mean the end of Israel, the West Bank and Jordan.”

When the French helped build Dimona, the American-born Strauss pointed out, they built a twin reactor in France. “That reactor was closed in France 20 years ago,” she noted, “owing to its age.”

Whenever her organization, Citizens Against Nuclear Holocaust, warns about the dangers of leaks or a Chernobyl-style meltdown, Israeli government officials reply “we’re taking care of it,” Strauss said, and the matter is shelved for another year or two.

Showing the full-house audience of more than 70 people a photo of her five grandsons, who live in Jerusalem, the retired educator explained: “They are the reason I’m an activist. I want them to live in a peaceful world.”

Strauss disagrees with claims that the Israeli Left is mordant. In her opinion, it is split. The moderates who sanctioned the war on Lebanon, she said, are chiefly the Labor and Meretz parties and Peace Now.

“The progressive Left is Hadash, the Arab parties, Bat Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights, Yesh Guvul, Uri Avnery and Coalition of Women for Peace,” she stated. “We held a vigil against the war every day opposite the prime minister’s home in Jerusalem and in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.”

By the third week of the war, Strauss noted, the moderates finally were speaking against it as well.

“Where is Israel now?” she asked rhetorically. “It is soul searching. On Sept. 9, more than 30,000 demanded a commission of inquiry into the war, but the majority still is sidestepping the basic problem: occupation.”

Strauss’ grandfather and father were born in Jerusalem, then migrated to the U.S., where she grew up in a staunchly Zionist family. She moved to Israel in 1958 and met her future husband on a kibbutz.

“It was only when I arrived in Israel,” she recalled, that I discovered a heretofore invisible people, the Palestinians, lived there.”

Slowly all the myths about an empty land, draining swamps and making deserts bloom ate into Strauss’ conscience. Each Sunday, she rides with other members of Machsom Watch to the West Bank, where the mostly older women monitor Israeli soldiers manning checkpoints around the Palestinian city of Nablus.

Explaining that machsom is the Hebrew word for checkpoint, Strauss said that more than 400 Israeli women belong to the organization that twice daily, seven days a week observes more than 600 Israeli checkpoints inside the West Bank.

“I think we’ve done some good since we organized in 2001,” Strauss said. “Because of our insistence, roofs have been constructed at larger checkpoints to shelter Palestinians from the summer sun and winter rains as they wait needlessly for hours to proceed. The soldiers know we write reports on every violation and print them on our Web site, <www.machsomwatch.org>. They are aware any acts of cruelty will appear on our Web site and be read worldwide.”

Soldiers tend to tolerate the Israeli women. Palestinians respect them and tend to queue at the checkpoints when they know Machsom Watch monitors will be there. While the troops complain their presence allows Palestinians to take advantage, Strauss thinks Palestinians should receive respect at all times.

Israelis take off the kid gloves, notes the 71-year-old Jaffa resident, when she stands vigil with Women In Black every Friday afternoon, holding placards calling for the end of the occupation.

“People spit, swear at us, tell us we should be shot and call us traitors plunging a knife in the back of Israel,” she told her audience, “but we also receive thumbs up.”

Asked how the Israeli public would vote today if a referendum were held on ending the military occupation, Strauss replied, “The majority would vote in favor of it, but this could trigger fear of the right of Palestinian refugees to return. It is better to start negotiating a comprehensive solution for ending occupation with the right of return and/or compensation.”

Bizarre Demonstration at Mosque

On Sept. 10, the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City was again targeted by the United American Committee, an organization whose stated goal is to “unite all Americans against the threat of Islamic extremism” and “encourage Muslim Americans to embrace democratic ideals.”

For years the mosque’s members, who are law-abiding moderates, have had to endure demonstrations at their place of worship, particularly on Good Friday. UAC accuses the mosque of supporting 9/11 terrorists and Osama bin Laden in particular.

TV cameras were rolling Sept. 10, as more than 100 UAC supporters arrived with a mock gallows and effigy of Bin Laden, which they proceeded to burn. Then to the apparent rescue came a hundred or so members of the pro-immigrant movement to confront the UAC. Local residents held up signs reading “Support Our Muslim Neighbors,” and told the Washington Report that UAC members come to their homes asking them to sign petitions so they can use sound systems to protest the presence of the mosque.

Commented mosque spokesman Usman Madha: “If I ever confronted Osama bin Laden, I would be the first to burn him—and not in effigy.”

While Madha thinks the demonstrations may be a post-9/11 phenomenon, he wishes the UAC would get its facts straight instead of relying on the words of Islamophobe propagandists.

ACLU Garden Party Proceeds Despite Zionist Boycott

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California enjoyed one of its best-attended garden parties Sept. 10 at the Brentwood home of Betty and Stanley Scheinbaum.

Even though County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s publicist published an open letter to ACLU executive director Ramona Ripston protesting an award to Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, it was Marayati who made the first acceptance speech—and who received a standing ovation.

Journalist Robert Scheer received the third annual Stanley Scheinbaum award and Jodie Evans, co-founder of CODEPINK, was named Activist of the Year.

Antiwar March Draws 1,500

The drums and chants could be heard for several blocks in downtown Los Angeles Aug. 12, as more than 1,500 demonstrators chanted “Free, Free Palestine/Long Live Lebanon/Long Live Hezbollah.” Five black-and-white LAPD cars slowly preceded the noisy marchers parading behind a 100-square-foot Lebanese flag.

The event, which took place during the fifth week of Israel’s blitz of Lebanon, was organized by Act Now to Stop War and Racism (ANSWER), the National Council of Arab Americans and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. Hussam Ayloush of the Southern California Committee on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) urged spectators not to stop at protesting, but to call their representatives in Congress and say “enough is enough.”

Islamic Relief Raises Funds

The tragic circumstances of Gazans bombarded by Israeli missiles and of one-third of Lebanon’s population made homeless by Israeli bombs was good reason for an Aug. 20 fund-raiser staged by Islamic Relief in the Embassy Suites Hotel, Garden Grove. Guest speakers were Ambassador Edward Peck, the U.S. envoy to Iraq from 1977 to 1980, and Sheikh Suhaib William Webb.

Israel’s savage attacks on Lebanon have enabled Israel’s illegal strikes on Gaza to fall off the screen, the diplomat noted. Pictures of Lebanon taken six months earlier showed a Beirut that had been reborn, Peck recalled; now there is nothing but destruction.

Sheikh Webb, a red-haired, 6’5” native of Oklahoma City, is a student of Islamic legal theory at al-Azhar University in Cairo. Citing the lessons of the Prophet, he urged everyone in the audience to invite non-Muslims to dinner in their homes and inform them of the true message of Islam.

More than $152,000 was raised that evening, following an Islamic Relief film documenting the humanitarian crises in Palestine and Lebanon. In June, the World Food Program reported that 51 percent of Palestinians—two million people—cannot meet their food needs without aid, and that Gazans receive water two or three hours a day, and electricity only intermittently.

According to Mostafa Mahboob, Islamic Relief raised $2 million in July and August. On Aug. 1, it shipped $1.6 million of in-kind aid with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Lebanon. A second shipment of diapers, baby food and formula and medical supplies will be sent to Gaza via the United Palestinian Appeal.

After his public address, Ambassador Peck spoke briefly to the Washington Report. Asked if he thought the U.S. will attack Iran, he replied: “I hope I’m wrong, but I think Bush is going to do it.”

But surely the president is aware of Iran’s pacts with China and other nations who are recipients of Iran’s oil. The diplomat dismissed our concern with a wave of his hand. “These people [neocons] think they’re right. That’s the advantage of being paranoid,” he pointed out. “Everything fits.

“It was [Nazi Minister of Propaganda] Joseph Goebbels who said ‘keep the people frightened,’” Ambassador Peck reminded us. “The American peoples’ lack of understanding of Islam is very scary.”

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.

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