Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India.

The General Secretaries of the four Left political parties in India addressed the following letter to the Prime Minister regarding the corruption involved in the Israeli arms deal.

Dear Shri Manmohan Singhji,

We have been noting with growing concern  the manner in which arms deals with Israel are being conducted. Israel is already the second largest supplier to India. It is now clear that Israeli arms  manufacturers, including government-owned entities, have been blatantly violating Indian laws by using middle-men and by giving kickbacks to officials involved in the decision-making process.

The scam surrounding India’s acquisition of the Israeli Barak missile systems manufactured by the state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and Rafael corporations is the latest case in point. The original deal for ship-mounted Barak systems worth about Rs.1300 crore struck in 2000 during the NDA regime was rife with procedural violations and outright corruption as emerged during the Tehelka expose. CBI’s FIR of October 2006 names IAI as an accused, besides naming Delhi-based arms dealer Suresh Nanda and other family members as agents of the Israeli firms. The recent CBI raids and consequent arrests of the Nandas and their associates seem to have added more hard evidence.

Yoel Lavi, the Mayor of Ramle with Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. Lavi, who has a long history of racist statments and actions against Palestinian citizens of Israel, was named to the position of Director of the Israel Land Administration (ILA).

On 10 March 2008, human rights and social change organizations sent an urgent letter to  Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Minister of Construction and Housing Ze’ev Boim and the Attorney General Menachem Mazuz demanding the cancellation of the candidacy of Yoel Lavi to the position of Director of the Israel Land Administration (ILA) on the grounds that, as the mayor of the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Ramle for the last fifteen years, he has made racist statements on numerous occasions against Arab citizens of Israel. Lavi’s statements and racist opinions against Arabs have been met with protests, and the Hebrew and Arabic-language press have published articles and reports condemning his statements and declaring a lack of trust in him.

The organizations, which include Shatil’s mixed cities project, al-Dar, Adalah, The Association for Distributive Justice, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, argued that Lavi’s nomination as Director of the ILA is irrational and illogical and listed the problems associated with his nomination. The ILA is a governmental body, established under the law. Among its various responsibilities it the management of what are known as “state lands”, with honesty, integrity and sincerity, while abiding to the principle of just distribution.

An Israeli soldier inspecting a shiptment of wheat at the Karni crossing before it can be tranferred into the Gaza Strip.

Numerous reports by the World Bank and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, amongst others, detail the need to lift restrictions on the movement of goods and people placed by Israel on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) (for references, see end of document). All indicators show that these obstacles are stifling the Palestinian economy, with trade and labor flows being the chief casualties, resulting in widespread poverty and dependence on humanitarian aid. 

Poverty afflicted 30.8% of Palestinian households in 2006, with 18.5% in deep poverty. At the same time, the number of checkpoints and other barriers in the West Bank doubled in 2006 as compared to 2005, reaching 541 in July 2007, with a further 524 “flying” (mobile and irregular) checkpoints. The Gaza Strip has been under blockade since June 2006, when an Israeli soldier was abducted, and even more so since the Hamas takeover of June 2007. Exports from the West Bank declined by some 16% in 2006, and trade has almost completely been halted in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 4.2% in the first quarter of 2007, after a shrinking by over 8% in 2006. Donors paid a record USD 1.4 billion in the same to the OPT. There is a correlation in these figures. This is an expensive solution for the international community that donates aid, an unsustainable one in the medium and long term (though the crisis is indeed already “prolonged” in the words of the UN Relief and Works Agency), and is moreover anomalous, since historically the OPT have not been a recipient of humanitarian aid. In this policy statement, the Alternative Information Center contends that these distortions can only be rectified under full Palestinian sovereignty.

With the increasing privitazation of the Israeli educational system, the educational gap between the weak and strong socioeconomic sectors is increasing.

In wake of the court petition of Israeli upper class parents, the District Court in Tel Aviv ruled last month that the Petah Tikvah Municipality and the Ministry of Education must publish the success rates in matriculation exams for the city’s schools. 

On the surface, it seems reasonable in a democratic society for  parents to receive reliable information about the academic achievements of their children in school. However, while this decision could have encouraged the schools, the parents and the pupils to work and improve the level of education, in reality, this decision represents just one more stage in the ongoing process of destroying the principle of public education. It is also a component of the ratings war among schools attempting to attract children of the elite.

This is one of the most sophisticated mechanisms created so far, in order to classify pupils by schools and to label schools as being weak or strong—a mechanism that will contribute towards privatization and the destruction of the public basis for equal education.