[Socialist] Israel[is] to bill Bedouins for razing their homes

7-28-2011

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israeli authorities are suing residents of a makeshift Bedouin village for the cost of repeatedly evicting them and razing “illegal structures” where they live, an official said on Wednesday.

“They built about 40 structures there for which they have no [building] rights,” Israel Land Administration spokeswoman Ortal Tzabar told AFP.

“They have already invaded the site more than 20 times, putting up huts and buildings and it costs us, for policemen and bulldozers and manpower, a huge amount.”

“We added it up and found that the cost of evictions so far is 1.8 million shekels [$529,400],” she said.

A lawsuit for that amount was filed on Tuesday in a court in Beersheba, the capital of southern Israel’s Negev desert region, where the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib, which is not recognized by Israeli authorities, regularly rises and falls.

An Israeli non-governmental group, Bedouin-Jewish Justice, reported in March that the homes there had been destroyed and rebuilt 21 times since July 2010. – More here

For the Sake of the Desert

This is not a prophecy God have given to me to speak, but I imagine, if God were to tell me to say something to Israel at this time, that it would be this:

You complain to your leaders about the price of your housing while your kin complain about having no housing at all. So then, if you pray to be able to afford your houses, should I listen? Did I not tell you to treat strangers as you want to be treated, to love your neighbor as yourself? To not forget how the Egyptians oppressed you, oppressed you in that fiery furnace, making bricks for their houses? Did I not tell you to treat strangers with kindness because you know what it was like to be oppressed as strangers in a strange land? But what have you done to your kin in the desert, a dry place with hot and cold extremes, and little to eat and drink?: You’ve watched your neighbors, your kin, the Bedouins, ground into the dust and removed from a home which was no home. Your rulers, whom you elected, would not begrudge these homeless wanderers a life in a tent, in the desert, their goats feeding on weeds. And after they drove them to the edge of the desert, they again took away their homes and oppressed the poor, the orphan and the widow. They would not even begrudge them a poor home, while enjoy their pleasant and comfortable ones. They would not even begrudge them gardens. And why? “For the sake of the desert,” they said. If for the sake of the desert, why destroy their gardens? Why destroy their farms? So then, should you complain when you cannot afford your good houses or gardens? Go and beg other countries for money, who will help you? How much longer will you get money from Americans? Beg them since they themselves are becoming poorer and poorer. You will beg them since they will begrudge you homes. Since you have said to your own kin who were at peace with you and doing you no harm, “for the sake of the desert we drove you and your goats out from it,” only to relentlessly destroy their homes and gardens and diminish their goats to a remnant; I too will raise your homes to the ground for the sake of the desert and give you no peace even when beg for it. And as a vineyard is gone over many times, so that only a few grapes are left on the vine, so I will go over my vineyard Israel many times, so that only a remnant of my sheep remain. For the sake of my promise to Abraham and the sake of desert, I will do this, and deprive you of the pools of water and forests I will make, in my wilderness, the Negev.

Related Information:

Culture of the Egyptian Bedouins

Egypt’s Bedouins begin to demand equal citizenship rights

Bedouins Allege Oppression from the Egyptian Government Against Them (Video)

Israel’s Housing Crisis

Why Israeli’s Can’t Afford Houses

Deuteronomy 15:9-11

Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to Yahweh against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this Yahweh your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.

2 Chronicles 6:32-34

“As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.”

Exodus 22:21

“Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”

Exodus 23:9

“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”

Leviticus 19:34

“The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am Yahweh your God.”

Leviticus 25:23

“The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.”

Leviticus 26:3-6, 14-45, NIV

“If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. 5 Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. …

But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and sap your strength. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you.

If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze. Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of your land yield their fruit.

If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve. I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will be deserted.

If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me, I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins seven times over. And I will bring the sword on you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands. When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven, and they will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied.

If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. I myself will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.

As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing them. They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword, even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their ancestors’ sins they will waste away.

But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors—their unfaithfulness and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43 For the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am Yahweh their God. But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am Yahweh.”