[News] God-TV Helps Israel Oust Bedouins

[Anti-Imperialist News]

December 28, 2010


Jesus Recruited to Help Ethnic Cleanse Forest


God-TV Helps Israel Oust Bedouins

By JONATHAN COOK
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook12282010.html
Nazareth.

A sign posted a few kilometres north of 
Beersheba, the Negev's main city, announces plans 
to plant a total of a million trees over a large 
area of desert that has already been designated "God-TV Forest".

The Jewish National Fund, an international 
non-profit organisation in charge of forestation 
and developing Jewish settlements in Israel, 
received $500,000 from God-TV to plant some of 
the trees, according to the channel's filings to US tax authorities last year.

A coalition of Jewish and Bedouin human rights 
groups have denounced the project, accusing 
God-TV and the JNF of teaming up to force the 
Bedouin out of the area to make way for Jewish-only communities.

No one from God-TV was available for comment, but 
in a video posted on its website, Rory Alec, the 
channel's co-founder, said he had begun 
fundraising for the forest after receiving "an 
instruction from God" a few years ago. He said 
God had told him: "Prepare the land for the return of my Son."

Standing next to the "God-TV Forest" sign, Alec 
thanked thousands of viewers for making donations 
to "sow a seed for God", adding: "I tell you Jesus is coming back soon!"

Part of the forest has been planted on land 
claimed by the Aturi tribe, whose village, al-Araqib, is nearby.

Al-Araqib has been demolished eight times in 
recent months by the Israeli police as officials 
increase the pressure on the 350 inhabitants to 
move to Rahat, an under-funded, government-planned township nearby.

Earlier this year, Joe Stork, the deputy director 
of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North 
Africa division, criticised the repeated attempts 
by Israeli authorities to eradicate the village and displace its residents.

"Tearing down an entire village and leaving its 
inhabitants homeless without exhausting all other 
options for settling long-standing land claims is outrageous," he said.

Human Rights Watch and other international human 
rights groups have criticised Israel for harsh 
measures taken against the people of al-Araqib 
and the other 90,000 Bedouin who live in Negev 
villages that the Israel refuses to recognise. 
They accuse the government of trying to pre-empt 
a court case moving through Israeli courts aimed 
at settling the Bedouin ownership claims.

God-TV's involvement in the dispute has prompted fresh concern.

Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion 
University in Beersheba, said the JNF, which has 
semi-governmental status in Israel, had set a 
"dangerous precedent" in accepting money from God-TV.

"The Israeli authorities are playing with fire," 
he said. "This dispute between the Israeli 
government and the Bedouin is a long one that 
until now focused on the question of land rights. 
But the involvement of extremist Christian groups 
like God-TV is likely to turn this into a 
religious confrontation, and that will be much harder to resolve."

The JNF did not respond to questions about its 
involvement with God-TV or the Negev forest.

Gordon said it was particularly worrying that 
Alec was using the language of Biblical prophecy 
in justifying his decision to finance the forest.

The channel, which has become one of the most 
popular global evangelical stations since its 
founding in Britain 15 years ago, claims a 
potential audience of up to a half-billion 
viewers, including 20 million in the United States.

Stephen Sizer, a British vicar and prominent 
critic of Christian Zionist groups, described 
God-TV as part of an evangelical movement that 
believes Israel's establishment and expansion are 
bringing nearer the "end times" – or the moment 
when, according to Christians, Jesus will return for the second time.

Its followers, he added, believed that, by 
dispossessing Palestinians of their land and 
replacing them with Jews, Jesus's return could be expedited.

"Funding aliyah [Jewish immigration] and planting 
trees in the desert may look innocuous but it's 
actually their way to side with the Israeli 
right's hardline policies towards the Palestinian population."

Sizer said there was increasing co-operation 
between Israeli institutions and Christian 
evangelical groups, which have begun basing their operations in Israel.

God-TV has proclaimed itself the only television 
channel to broadcast globally from Jerusalem, 
following its relocation there from the UK in 2007.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the Union of 
Reform Judaism in the US, has repeatedly called 
on Israel to sever contacts with Christian 
Zionist and evangelical groups, describing them 
as opposed to "territorial compromise under any and all circumstances".

God-TV has close ties to Christians United for 
Israel (Cufi), an umbrella group founded in 2006 
by John Hagee, a Texan pastor, that lobbies on behalf of Israel in Congress.

Hagee, a frequent preacher on the TV channel, has 
regularly courted controversy with comments seen 
as anti-Semitic. Most notoriously, in a sermon in 
the late 1990s, he called Adolf Hitler "a hunter" 
who carried out God's plan for the Jews to return 
to Israel by leaving them "no place to hide" in Europe.

Cufi and the other evangelical groups have 
lobbied strenuously in Washington on behalf of 
the illegal settlements in the West Bank and for 
Israeli control over the holy sites in East Jerusalem, said Sizer.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has 
been especially keen to seek out support from 
Christian evangelical groups, according to Shalom 
Goldman, a professor at Atlanta's Emory 
University, who recently published a book on the Christian Zionist movement.

Last year Cufi announced a $38 million marketing 
drive to bring more Christian tourists to Israel, 
including the establishment of a "task force on 
global Christian relations" jointly overseen by Hagee and Netanyahu.

Haia Noach, the director of the Negev Coexistence 
Forum, which campaigns for Bedouin rights, said 
her organisation feared more of God-TV's trees 
would be planted on Bedouin lands in the coming 
weeks. A depot has recently been established 
close to al-Araqib to store four bulldozers.

"The villagers refuse to abandon al-Araqib, even 
though it has been destroyed many times. But once 
a forest is planted there, there will be no chance to go back," she said.

She said she feared the goal was to build Jewish 
communities on Bedouin land. She cited the case 
of Givat Bar, which was secretly established by 
the government on part of al-Araqib's lands in 2003.

Repeated letters to the JNF for information about 
their forestation programme had gone unanswered, she said.

Awad Abu Freih, a community leader at al-Araqib, 
said the house demolitions and forest-planting 
were only the latest measures by the government to remove the villagers.

Repeated destruction of al-Araqib's crops by 
spraying them with herbicides was ruled illegal 
by Israel's Supreme Court in 2004.

Efforts to move 90,000 Bedouin off their lands 
close to Beersheba have been intensifying since 
2003, when the Israeli government announced plans 
to move them into a handful of townships.

The Bedouin have resisted, complaining that the 
official communities are little more than urban 
reservations that languish at the bottom of the 
country's social and economic tables.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in 
Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are 
“<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/counterpunchmaga>Israel 
and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and 
the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) 
and 
“<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/counterpunchmaga>Disappearing 
Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” 
(Zed Books). His website is <http://www.jkcook.net>www.jkcook.net.




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