[pjnews] Israeli Family Questions Aid to Settlers
In Grief, Israeli Family Questions Army Aid to Settlers December 18, 2002 By IAN FISHER NY Times HADERA, Israel, Dec. 17 - She refused to cry. But there was no masking the rage that Yaffa Yaacoby aimed at the four young men, one bearing a submachine gun, who came to her house today to pay their respects to her dead daughter. Tell me, she asked the men, all members of a small settlement near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, is it worth it - the cave, the holy places - for my daughter and the other people who died? I speak from my heart. Look at me. I am only 40 years old. Today and every day after this, I have to wake up and face the fact that I buried my daughter. Do you realize there isn't a piece of land worth these lives? Settlers vehemently dispute this view, saying that the West Bank is both their biblical birthright and a buffer of security against Arab states. They argue that settlements are an investment in holding on to that land, and therefore that an army presence is necessary and justified. Today, in grief, this central argument in Israeli society played itself out in a living room here as the Yaacoby family sat shiva in mourning for their oldest daughter, Keren, 19, killed last Thursday with a fellow soldier while guarding the contentious Jewish settlement. Keren, shot by Palestinian gunmen, was the first woman in Israel's Army to die in combat since fighting broke out anew in September 2000. But her death has received intense news media coverage here, primarily because her family has been outspoken in asking why, exactly, Israeli soldiers like their daughter are guarding the settlement of only 450 religious and well-armed Jews, perched dangerously amid some 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron. Many left-leaning Israelis argue that all the Jewish settlements dotted around the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip are a block to an ultimate peace settlement, as well as an unnecessary danger to the Israeli soldiers who guard them. The settlements, they argue, also stand as a daily provocation to the Palestinians. The four settlers tried today to contest such opinions. They sought to convince Keren's family, over graciously offered cups of coffee, of their point of view. They explained that they see themselves as serving the interests of the Jewish people by expanding Israel's reach, in their case astride the cave they believe Abraham bought to entomb himself and his family. This is the land of Israel, one said. Keren's father, Yigal, 46, snapped back. So are the Euphrates and the Tigris, he said, referring to rivers that flow through modern-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Go live there. The feelings of Israelis about the settlements are complex, and no less so for this family, whose members say they do not oppose all settlements. But they are adamantly against the Israeli Army guarding the isolated Hebron settlement, where last month 12 Israeli soldiers, border police officers and security guards were killed in an ambush only yards from where Keren and her colleague, Maor Chalfon, died. Settlers have often reacted to the deaths of soldiers who guard them by demanding further restrictions on Palestinians or by expanding their settlements to memorialize the dead. But in this case, the Yaacoby family might prove to be an obstacle. Mr. Yaacoby is the local chairman of the Shinui political party, which has gained popularity in recent years with its opposition to special legal privileges, like exemption from military service, for religious Israelis, many of them settlers. I feel they sacrificed my daughter on the altar of the fanatic Jews in Hebron, Mr. Yaacoby said. I feel the army must go out of Hebron and leave the settlers to protect themselves. It may be the Holy Land, but it's a very dangerous land. Since the 12 people died last month, tensions in Hebron have been running at a high pitch. The settlers have erected new buildings on the site of that attack, and the government is also planning to raze a dozen or more Palestinian houses to build a protected walkway from there to the larger Jewish settlement of Qiryat Arba, less than half a mile away. It was near there, in a curve in the road, that Keren Yaacoby was pulling guard duty with her friend, Mr. Chalfon, in a concrete bunker near a row of Palestinian houses on Thursday night. Just after 8 p.m., the two stepped out of the bunker, according to the military, and shots rained down from the top floor of a nearby building. Mr. Chalfon died on the way to the hospital. Ms. Yaacoby died from bullet wounds to her neck. The Israeli military believes that there were two gunmen. Both escaped. Today, the Yaacoby family sat shiva in their house - in which by tradition pictures and mirrors were removed from the white walls - both celebrating Keren's short life and puzzling over it a little, too. The oldest of three girls, she grew up in a house where, the family members said, they allowed her
[pjnews] Hundreds of Arab Men Detained
Published on Thursday, December 19, 2002 by the Los Angeles Times Hundreds Are Detained After Visits to INS Thousands protest arrests of Mideast boys and men who complied with order to register. by Megan Garvey, Martha Groves and Henry Weinstein Hundreds of men and boys from Middle Eastern countries were arrested by federal immigration officials in Southern California this week when they complied with orders to appear at INS offices for a special registration program. The arrests drew thousands of people to demonstrate Wednesday in Los Angeles. Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesmen refused Wednesday to say how many people the agency had detained, what the specific charges were or how many were still being held. But officials speaking anonymously said they would not dispute estimates by lawyers for detainees that the number across Southern California was 500 to 700. In Los Angeles, up to one-fourth of those who showed up to register were jailed, lawyers said. The number of people arrested in this region appears to have been considerably larger than elsewhere in the country, perhaps because of the size of the Southland's Iranian population. Monday's registration deadline applied to males 16 and older from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. Men from 13 other nations, mostly in the Mideast and North Africa, are required to register next month. Many of those arrested, according to their lawyers, had already applied for green cards and, in some instances, had interviews scheduled in the near future. Although they had overstayed their visas, attorneys argue, their clients had already taken steps to remedy the situation and were following the regulations closely. These are the people who've voluntarily gone to the INS, said Mike S. Manesh of the Iranian American Lawyers Assn. If they had anything to do with terrorism, they wouldn't have gone. Immigration officials acknowledged Wednesday that many of those taken into custody this week have status-adjustment applications pending that have not yet been acted on. The vast majority of people who are coming forward to register are currently in legal immigration status, said local INS spokeswoman Virginia Kice. The people we have taken into custody ... are people whose non-immigrant visas have expired. The large number of Iranians among the detainees has angered many in the area's Iranian communities, who organized a demonstration Wednesday at the federal building in Westwood. At the rally, which police officials estimated drew about 3,000 protesters at its peak, signs bore such sentiments as What Next? Concentration Camps? and Detain Terrorists Not Innocent Immigrants. The arrests have generated widespread publicity, mostly unfavorable, in the Middle East, said Khaled Dawoud, a correspondent for Al Ahram, one of Egypt's largest dailies. He questioned State Department official Charlotte Beers about the detentions Wednesday after a presentation she made at the National Press Club in Washington. Egyptians are not included in the registration requirement. Beers, undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs, was presenting examples of a U.S. outreach campaign for the Middle East, which includes images of Muslims leading happy lives here. Dawoud asked how that image squared with the humiliating arrests in recent days. I don't think there is any question that the change in visa policy is going to be seen by some as difficult and, indeed -- what was the word you used? -- humiliating, Beers said. But, she added, President Bush has said repeatedly that he considers his No. 1 ... job to be the protection of the American people. Relatives and lawyers of those arrested locally challenge that rationale for the latest round of detentions. One attorney, who said he saw a 16-year-old pulled from the arms of his crying mother, called it madness to believe that the registration requirements would catch terrorists. His mother is 6 1/2 months pregnant. They told the mother he is never going to come home -- she is losing her mind, said attorney Soheila Jonoubi, who spent Wednesday amid the chaos of the downtown INS office attempting to determine the status of her clients. Jonoubi said that the mother has permanent residence status and that her husband, the boy's stepfather, is a U.S. citizen. The teenager came to the country in July on a student visa and was on track to gain permanent residence, the lawyer said. Many objected to the treatment of those who showed up for the registration. INS ads on local Persian radio stations and in other ethnic media led many to expect a routine procedure. Instead, the registration quickly became the subject of fear as word spread that large numbers of men were being arrested. Lawyers reported crowded cells with some clients forced to rest standing up, some shackled and moved to other locations in the night, frigid conditions in
