Welcome to another excursion to the edge of the volcano. This is the Weekend Holyland Update, flight number 071810, touching down at mask-shed peak, arbitrary valley and de river nial. Please fasten your seatbelts, the captain has turned on the no shame sign.

Israel's Knesset has passed a law (preliminary call) levying a 30K shekel (about $8K) fine on anyone calling for a boycott of Israel or any business in it - including in the occupied territories. Anyone potentially hurt by the advocated boycott can bring a suit and won't even have to prove damages. This still has to get through committees and withstand court challenges, but this gives you an idea of where the sad state of Israel is headed.

Another idea can be gleaned from the decision to deprive Arab nationalist MK Hanin Zouabi of her parliamentary privileges because of her participation in the Turkish-sponsored Gaza-aid flotilla - this despite the finding by the Attorney General that she broke no laws by doing so. So basically they revoked her privileges for "pissing us off", which is of course what democratic legislators do all the time. What, no? Oh well.

The big news in Lebanon is the Israeli electronic surveillance operation that was uncovered and apparently encompassed the country's entire communications grid, land-lines as wel as mobile phone networks. People keep getting arrested daily and others keep fleeing the country. Hizballah chairman Hassan Nasrallah admitted that the country has been completely exposed to Israeli intelligence and is demanding the death penalty for anyone convicted in the affair. One of his lieutenants sarcastically suggested that Israel be appointed in charge of communications in the country, as that way it would be conducting its espionage in the open. In Israel barely a word is spoken of the entire issue, a testament to the still extant power of military censorship.

Back in Israel, the hot political issue is the wrangling over the budget. Racist FM Yvette Lieberman is miffed that his party's pork got short shrift in the proposed budget and is threatening to break up the coalition (update:  Now he's saying he won't quit, but also won't give up his demands. So what if they're not met? Stay with us...).

Mixed into the whole business is the proposed conversion law, which states that only orthodox conversions will be recognized by the state. Why is this important? Because a recognized conversion confers citizenship. Now the proposed law includes a clause severing conversion from automatic citizenship, but in Israel, where religious affiliation defines the nationality written in your ID card, it remains to be seen how that disconnect will work. In any event, the proposed law is threatening to create a rift between Israel and Jews around the world, most of whom are not, in fact, orthodox. PM Bibi Netanyahu is opposed to the law, and curiously Lieberman is in favor of it, in fact his party is the one that proposed it, despite the fact that it would discriminate against many of his voters. Only thisweek he threw a tantrum when he discovered that his home settlement of Nokdim issued a regulation against accepting residents who aren't Jews according to orthodox halacha.

More Lieberman: he's floating a proposal to radically change Israel's Gaza policy, abandoning the blockade and so on, in hopes of the world finally giving Israel the stamp of approval on ending the occupation of the strip. No, Lieberman hasn't suddenly seen the light - he just wants to lighten the pressure and focus on the occupation of the West Bank. Not surprisingly, nobody else is buying it.

Speaking of Jews and non-Jews, Israel's justice department sponsored a seminar on the biblical commandment of "Lo Ta-chanam". This is a three-pronged injunction against mixing with gentiles:

1. lo ta-cha-nam - "thou shalt not give them a hold on the land" - a  prohibition on selling or renting the land of Eretz Yisraetl to nonJews. 
2. lo teh-chi-nam - "thou shalt not give them free gifts" - a  prohibition against giving gifts to non-Jews. 
3. lo teh-cha-nem - "thou shall not give them grace" - a prohibition on  praising non-Jews.

This is not terribly surprising, seeing as Yaacov Neeman, the Minister of Justice, was recently seen speaking at a halachic law conference calling for the "piece by piece" implementation of religious law in Israel. This is apparently the first piece.

The Israeli secret police, aka Shin Bet, arrested a settler on suspicion of murdering several Palestinians back in the late 90's. Problem is the guy had recorded a Shin Bet agent trying to entrap him by suggesting that he kill Islamic leader Raed Salah. Many people smelled the scent of the Rabin murder, which was also facilitated by a Shin Bet provacateur. The guy is being held without counsel, as is another guy who was arrested on charges of aiding and abetting him. This "no lawyer" crap is getting very prevalent around here. See: divesting of democracy.

Another big story is the growing number of right-wingers, including some pretty radical ones, who are voicing support for the one state model - sort of. The settlers are beginning to realize that their epic land grab is facing a fed-up world, so they start talking of annexing the West Bank (but not Gaza), and giving the Palestinians Israeli citizenship - but only provided they swear allegiance to a "Jewish State". These people think they can change the way simple demographics work, and also pretend that they would be willing to have Arabs living in their precious settlements and going to school with their kids, to say nothing of having a say in how their lands are used, but at least they are waking up to the fact that the current state of affairs is untenable. Uri Elitzur, one of the founders of settler group "Gush Emunim", correctly points out that Israel's rapidly diminished international standing is due to the world being sick and tured with the occupation, which was supposed to be a temporary thing. His solution, however, is eerily reminiscent of the attempt to keep Lebanon under Christian domination, regardless of actual numbers. It won't work. However, this is clear proof that BDS is working. More reading on the subject.

Another story was the video, from 2001, showing Bibi at a meeting with settlers boasting about how he gutted the Oslo process, saying among other things that "I know the America - America is a thing that is very easily moved."

 (Read transcript)

Israel dodged a bullet when a Lybian ship headed for Gaza with aid backed off and agreed to dock at the Egyptian port of Al-Arish, thereby preventing a reprise of the Marmara fiasco - or even worse, since this ship agreed to be boarded for inspection, or even towed to Ashdod port for inspection, provided it be allowed afterwards to proceed to Gaza. The aid it carried entered Gaza by land yesterday. 

Remember the colonel who ordered a grunt to shoot a handcuffed Palestinian, and how they were charged with "conduct unbecoming", and how that was decreed to be too light a charge? Well, that's all fixed now - the colonel has now been found guilty of an "attempted threat" in addition to the unbecoming conduct. Attempted. This ludicrous saga just keeps on giving.

An Arab guy who told a gal he was Jewish and got her to have sex with him on a rooftop was convicted of rape and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. The judges said that the "rapist" mislead the woman, who was looking for a serious relationship. By screwing a guy she had just met on a rooftop.

In flotilla blowback, tens of thousands of Israelis had their facebook and email accounts hijacked by Turkish hackers, who in some cases posted mocking messages on their pages, offering to return control of the accounts if they asked nicely, or some such.

And in Congo, Israeli physicians who arrived to participate in an aid mission encountered hostility due to their government's policies.

A couple of videos for you:

Well, this is getting long and has been delayed for thee days now, so lets end on a positive note:

The plan to ruin the last beach with real sand dunes, at Palmahim, by way of a "hotel development" plan that was really a cover for a plan to build condos for the rich, has been defeated following a long activist battle. Concurrently, the plan to destroy the unrecognized village of Dahamsh, five minutes from the Ben Gurion airport, has been put on hold. Dahamsh is a village that has existed since before the establishment of Israel, but Israel has decided to designate the village as "agricultural land" which means that all the buildings there are illegal. The village is not connected to power or water, and the only playground there was destroyed by the state in 1997. Agricultural land all around the village has been thawed for construction in the past decade, but this one village is apparently sacrosanct - at least until the residents can be evicted, at which point a highway interchange is planned to be built there. Last week a judge issued an injunction staying the destruction until November, also following a long, joint Jewish-Arab activist struggle. Also in successful activism, the village of A-Thwana, in "area C" of the occupied West Bank (full Israeli control under the defunct Oslo accords) will finally be connected to electricity.

And on that Power to the People _{(which, as you may recall, does not come with a standard plug)} note, the pilot will bring her in for landing. returning you to your local brands of crazy and stupid, which should be looking immensely preferable in comparison or you should seriously consider relocation (or revolution). WHU airlines is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your luggage and check your comments and thumbs. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.