MARCH 2004

Tu B'Shevat Promotion
(Tu B'Shevat marks the beginning of spring in Israel. ... )

On Tu B'Shevat we celebrate a New Year for the Trees, rejoicing in the fruit of the tree and the fruit of the vine, celebrating the splendid, abundant gifts of the natural world which give our senses delight and our bodies life.

Tu B'Shevat marks the beginning of spring in Israel. Sustaining rains are at the peak of their power and the world responds, brimming with buds of fragrant life. To mark this moment, school children plant trees. Often these trees have been provided by the contributions of Jewish students abroad through the good offices of the Jewish National Fund.

For Jews outside of Israel, Tu B'Shevat is a celebration of the renewal of vision and awareness, a celebration of connections and connectedness--to our own inner-selves, to the social world of human beings, and to the natural world and its Source.

In celebration of Tu B'Shevat you can plant 2 trees and receive a 3rd tree for free! Or, purchase 4 trees and JNF will make it a circle of 5 for free! This offer is valid through March 1, 2004. To purchase another certificate or other merchandise available from JNF, visit .......




Much of the natural vegetation in the Holy Land disappeared or was destroyed when reforestation efforts began.  The Bible, the source of knowledge of species native to the Holy Land, tells us that God originally planted olive, pine, cypress, tamarisk, acacia and carob trees.  These are the trees we plant to replenish and nurture the land.  Memorialize your loved one with a living memorial in Israel in the Holy Land.  There is no more meaningful way to express your sympathy than by planting a tree in the Holy Land.


The Childrens Forest certificate features a patchwork quilt of children planting trees in Israel.  Send this certificate to someone special for a birth or Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration.

3 for $36 or 5 for $72.......or to order at the normal price of $18

Ha'aretz editors HAVE put THis Tu B'Shivat
ADVERTISEMENT HOVERING OVER THE following TEXT BY GIDEON LEVY .....

..Hitting the wall
BY GIDEON LEVY©FEBRUARY 2004
Along the route of the mighty `Jerusalem envelope,' just before itscompletion.

"A column of olive trees alongside the route awaits the day when it will be uprooted from this land. Their time is past. Another few days and they will have to be cut down. A cold wind whips through them, rustling the leaves in their final days. They have been here for decades. Maybe they'll be uprooted on Tu Bishvat? Maybe they'll bring groups of schoolchildren dressed in blue and white, and show them how to cut down olive trees, just like we once used to go out and excitedly plant trees on this holiday, the Jewish Arbor Day."

Before long, the gate will be locked. This one, too. One giant slab will be connected to another, like Lego blocks, and the concrete will close off everything. Here there is no debate: This is a wall - not a separation fence. A wall. A mighty structure, twice as high as its historic sister, the Berlin Wall.

  Why this height - over eight meters? Is it due to the contractors' megalomania? An insatiable desire to humiliate? To put them in their place, like tiny insects before this colossal wall? To remove them from our sight and thus realize the ultimate Israeli dream of "separation"? To believe that if we don't see them anymore, hidden behind the wall, they'll cease to exist? A wall in the middle of the town, cutting Abu Dis in two. No one asks why - why here of all places, right in the middle of the town; and why at such an inhuman height? No one is interested, no one bothers to explain. The "Jerusalem envelope." Another pleasant, soothing name for another horror of the occupation.

Before long, the gate will be locked, after the last of the Palestinian laborers finishes installing the bars of their cage. Us here and them there - and we're also there, of course: quarrying, uprooting, demolishing, paving, digging, pouring concrete, raising, straightening, tightening, connecting, protecting - until we have a wall, an apartheid wall.

Perhaps the day will come when this wall will be sold in little pieces in souvenir shops in Jerusalem's Old City, in the Jenin refugee camp and in the casbah of Nablus. This week, that day seemed very far off. In the meantime, the golden Dome of the Rock glints in the sun, overlooking the activity; soon it, too, will be hidden from the eyes of the residents of Abu Dis, who have been so accustomed to seeing it. Jerusalem's beauty is becoming ever more obscured.

A Palestinian driver shifts a crane with huge, tank-like treads into reverse, slowly lifting the concrete slabs, gradually caging in his own people. Slab after slab is lifted up and placed on the scarred ground to build the wall. Another bar in the cage and then another, 24 hours a day, working as quickly as possible, around the clock. Have to finish it all before the hearing in The Hague. Dense, gray, smooth concrete - the great victory over terror. Separation between Palestinians and Palestinians, the "good" from the "bad" - though no one can say just why these are good and those are not, just what the criteria are. What did the free ones do to deserve their freedom and what sin did their caged-in brethren commit to deserve their fate?

Separation between a farmer and his field, between a teacher and his students, between a patient and his doctor, between brother and brother. Neighborhoods will be torn apart, families will be divided - and they're all part of the same village, Abu Dis. Meter after meter, the wall wends its way up the mountain and down into the valley. What began with the "conquest of work" and the "stockade and tower" is turning into the conquest of a people and a stockade without a tower. But not to worry: The towers will sprout up here, too, right after the first terror attack on the wall. And after them will come the smuggling tunnels, like in Rafah and Sarajevo, like in every place that is bisected by a wall. And that will be followed by the razing of homes and the leveling of trees and, of course, by blood. Blood is always spilled on concrete walls that provoke and imprison.

The houses right next to the wall, that practically abut the wall, won't last long. Once their occupants have had all they can take of the Border Police in the yard and soldiers at the gate, the houses will "be abandoned" and then suddenly be considered "abandoned property" that we can do with as we please. "This morning, the Israel Defense Forces demolished another row of abandoned buildings in Abu Dis," the laconic news report will say, just like the almost-daily reports we hear from the forgotten killing fields in Rafah.

Land of walls

So we ought to take a last, farewell look at these houses while they're still standing - with the laundry swaying in the breeze and the people living in them. These are their last days at home. And we were always told that a city with a wall is a bad thing, that Jerusalem will be eternally united.

A country that is erecting more and more walls cannot be headed for good things. After all, the wall is not only here - there's a wall alongside the Trans-Israel highway and a separation wall between Caesarea and Jisr al-Zarqa. This is fast becoming the land of walls. The Promised Land is being dressed in concrete, huddling behind thick concrete walls like Ze'ev Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall." Imprisoning a people behind them, scarring the land and its inhabitants, building a bad fence that will create even worse neighbors, built almost entirely on land that is not ours.

A column of olive trees alongside the route awaits the day when it will be uprooted from this land. Their time is past. Another few days and they will have to be cut down. A cold wind whips through them, rustling the leaves in their final days. They have been here for decades. Maybe they'll be uprooted on Tu Bishvat? Maybe they'll bring groups of schoolchildren dressed in blue and white, and show them how to cut down olive trees, just like we once used to go out and excitedly plant trees on this holiday, the Jewish Arbor Day.

Abu Dis residents quickly cross over the ditch where the concrete slabs will soon be placed, as if to get the most they can out of the last days in which they'll be able to freely traverse their town. The last moments of freedom, before the gate is locked. No prayers will be able to reach over this high wall, this wall of fear and hate. The day will come when these residents will tell their children about the time when this monstrosity wasn't here and they could move freely wherever they wanted to in the town, and the children will find it hard to believe. What - Abu Dis without a wall? Being able to go straight from home to school? There has never been anything like this - this Maginot Line in Abu Dis, this Berlin Wall of united Jerusalem. First we'll take Abu Dis and then Al-Ram, the security envelope's next stop.

How many Israelis have seen it? And how many will see it? How many understand what we are doing here to a people that we have been suffocating - there is no other word for it - for 37 years now, by adding this wall on top of everything else? This is where Israeli schoolchildren should be brought on their class trips - so they will see. The closer you get to the wall, the smaller you feel; stand next to it and you are reduced to a human speck.

The wall twists and turns and we follow it. A truck from "Ackerman Industries, Logistics and Installations" is parked on the side - the kind that used to build roads in the suburbs and is now building this wall. Instead of the old Hebrew work brigades, we have the work brigades from Yata and Gaza. A first bit of graffiti etched into the concrete: "Arafat will screw Sharon."

Almost defiant minaret

A water well, said to be about 300 years old. The bulldozers have turned its mouth into a gaping hole. The stones that cascade make faint slash marks below. This is the well of the Erekat family, whose house is right near the wall. The house is on one side of the wall, the family's 14 dunams (3.5 acres) of land are on the other, and the well is in between, between the house and the wall. An elderly woman hoses off the steps at the entrance of the house, cleaning off the dust stuck to them from the quarrying work in the yard.

Half of the house is in the occupied territories and the other half is in united Jerusalem. Residents of the rooms on the side closest to Jerusalem pay municipal taxes - though it's very unclear for what services, maybe for the right to freely enter their city - and those on the further side are exempt, but they are forbidden to enter the city; and they're all members of one family. The tiny garden is well tended. It belongs to the whole house, and stretches from the territories to the capital. The white house across the way was slated for demolition until the court intervened and blocked that, for now.

"What can we do?" asks the old woman - Fatma Erekat, 74. Human rights activist Bassam Eid, who is accompanying us, says with a smile that all the women of her generation are either named Fatma or Maryam. Fatma smiles; her sister is named Maryam. She has eight daughters and four sons, and many more grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she can't remember exactly how many. "I don't read or write," she says, "but the whole world knows what happened in 1948. Also in 1967, there were some who fled, but we stayed."

The concrete slabs lean on each other. A television set sits on the Erekat family's stone balcony, perhaps as a substitute for the magnificent view that has vanished. From now on, instead of watching Al-Aqsa Mosque, they'll watch Al Jazeera. From both sides of the wall, the cries of muezzins are heard. The driver of the orange semi-trailer that is hauling the concrete slabs stops his truck, spreads a yellow mat on the muddy ground and recites the noon prayer in the direction of the wall, which is also the direction of holy Mecca. The minaret of the local mosque still looms higher than the wall, seemingly in defiance.

The workers from Gaza left their homes at 11 P.M. in order to be here at 7 A.M. At 4 P.M., they'll finish their workday, be back in Gaza at 7 in the evening, and then leave again 4 hours later. Day after day, night after night, for the sake of Israel's security. One of them wears an U.S. Navy cap and asks that we don't take their picture. They are embarrassed about their work. "Palestinian determination will destroy a thousand fences," it says on a sheet of paper that has been stuck on the Abu Dis side of the wall. A thousand fences and as of now, only in the middle of town is there still a breach in the wall, and residents climb on the concrete blocks to get from home to the grocery store. It's all relative: Soon they'll be nostalgic for these days.

The Al-Razali carpentry shop, whose doors opened right onto the wall, has already shut down.

JOHN E MILLAIS 1849-50

Who would come here anymore to order a counter for the living room? "Who would close people in this way?" asks a passerby. "Close a dog in this way and he'll become a lion."

Cameras from all over the world are documenting it. "Abu Dis Ghetto" is already written in red on the concrete.
GIDEON LEVY

DO uproot that which is planted!
 
By Shulamit Aloni
 
First we settled on occupied territory in the mostly densely populated place in the world. Then we expropriated the best plots of land for ourselves. We killed them and were killed by them. We destroyed the last vestiges of infrastructure required for a normal life in the Gaza strip. We uprooted orchards, vineyards and whole boulevards of ancient shade trees. We smashed the glasshouses.  On those beautiful nights, we gathered together to sing “Do not uproot that which is planted” while we kept on uprooting and stealing the land and water. Thus, using their cheap labour, we built proud “Zionist” settlements. And now finally it’s time for disengagement. Laid in ruins, injured, crammed with refugees, devastated by unemployment and hunger, full of wrath, hatred and rebellion, it’s the Gaza Strip’s turn for us to disengage from it.
 
Yes, it’s true that it was the late [Labour Zionist politician] Yisrael Galili who decreed that settling the Gaza strip is the highest form of Zionism. But since then a lot of blood has been spilled, and so much has been put to wrack and ruin.  Both the Palestinians and we have paid a high price. We may have fallen in love with the beautiful coastline, the stunning views and the land that wasn’t ours. But it has been proved beyond doubt that the price is simply too high.
 
The Prime Minster has announced that we should get out of Gaza. Of course we are yet to hear of his comprehensive peace plan. In Israel’s peculiar democracy, the PM keeps such plans from his Cabinet (and maybe even from himself). One way or  the other, it is unclear whether or not he really means it. If he is genuine, would he demand that in return Israel be allowed to annex parts of the West Bank? In fact it’s part of a process of shifting the border and stealing the land with walls and mounds and trenches and other bright ideas emanating from the IDF, the Security Service and of course, the settlers.
 
What is really interesting is the brainwashing on a grand scale, as if we were relinquishing something and deserve recompense. It’s truly amazing. When the British left this land, and they were no occupiers, did they get recompense for being pushed out by the terror of our resistance movements and international public opinion?  When they departed did they destroy the buildings, institutions and roads which they left behind? Did the French get recompense for leaving Algeria following a cruel war to liberate that country from the presence of the French and the settlers who had lived there for generations?
 
The whole project of settlement in the territories was born in sin and expanded in deceit, underhand planning and shady organising that by-passed the Knesset and Budget allocations.  And now we told by the “Israeli Democracy Institute” that the evacuation would necessitate an “explicit special” majority. Whose “special majority”? The Knesset’s, where any three-member faction can bring down the government?  Maybe it’s a special majority in a referendum which is to be put to people? But which people? “Jewish Democratic” People? Would the racist narrative rule here so that only “Jewish citizens” could vote? And anyhow, why a referendum all of a sudden? Under which law? Who will frame the questions? Who will sneak in some questions in regard to transfer of populations? There are wise guys who want to move entire villages of Arab citizens, who have been residing in them for generations, across the border. They don’t need for a reason -- just for the heck of it: on this festive occasion, let’s be more Jewish
 
Again the moral and ethical dilemma raises its head. The Gaza Strip is full of refugees who left behind houses in Jaffa and Ashkelon and Ashdod and Jerusalem and Ramle and Lod and throughout the entire land. Their houses were taken over by tens of thousands of immigrants, and the fancy ones were given to Yishuv [pre-independence Jewish community] veterans and functionaries.  But what do we hear from the settlers, the salt of the earth, the “pioneers”, the ones “who turned the desert green”? We’ll raze every building and garden when we withdraw! We’ll leave scorched earth. Hooray! This is the new Jewish morality. That’s our new image presented to the world with the backing of fundamentalist Christians who believe that if [Tourism Minister and settlers’ leader] Benny Elon and his friends would raze the Mosques on the Temple Mount and rebuild the Jewish Temple, then the real Messiah, Jesus, will return.
 
In the meantime, the religious scholars and rabbis among the settlers go out to raise funds and support from those same Christians.  Displaying the cynicism which is typical of such arrogant and conceited groupings, they have decided that the Gentiles should first of all give us political and financial support -- and then we’ll see whose Messiah appears!  For there is no doubt that Benny Elon and the Rabbis of Gush Emunim [Bloc of the faithful -- the ideological messianic settler group] are already hanging on to the coat tails of our Messiah.
 
When we listen to those who raise not only God’s name in vain, but that of the state of Israel and Jerusalem as well, then that’s when I start believing that God, for his own sake and honour, ought to save us from them.
09.02.04, 09:37))
 
[Translated by Sol Salbe from Ynet- the web site associated with Yediot Acharonot Israel’s largest circulating daily. Hebrew original at http://www.ynet.co.il/home/0,7340,L-392-2872135,00.html]