A couple weeks ago, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior released a series of advertisements and billboards in American communities with large Israeli ex-pat populations. The ads touted taglines that included, “You will always be Israeli, but your children won’t.” Or “Before “aba” becomes Daddy, bring him back.” One ad portrays an American-Jewish man, with an Israeli woman coming home together. When they walk in to their apartment candles are lit but she seems sad and solemn. Her boyfriend/husband mistakenly thinks that she is setting the mood for a romantic night in, when in reality she is commemorating Israel’s memorial day. “They will always be Israeli, but their (foreign) partners won’t understand. Help to bring them back,” says the deep, voice over.
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The issue of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Naqab desert of Israel is one that I’ve written a lot about, and one that <a href="htt

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back to Ottoman times. Recent developments have pushed the situation to the brink, with the Israeli government’s passage of a plan to forcibly urbanize some 30-40,000 Bedouin citizens. The plan will force them off of their ancestral lands (or lands to which the Israeli army forcibly moved them in 1952) and into overcrowded towns with no jobs or infrastructure or pastural land.

The Bedouin have been fighting in the courts for their land rights for decades, with minimum progress and maximum frustration. In the last several years, the government has increased the pace of home demolitions, in some case razing entire villages to the ground.

But today, finally, some good news. A judge in southern Israel ruled Continue reading →