The senator, his pastor and the Israel lobby
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 31 March 2008

Senator Barack Obama addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) forum on Foreign Policy in Chicago, March 2007. (Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images)

US senator Barack Obama was widely hailed for his 18 March speech calming the media furor about the sermons of his pastor for twenty years Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright's remarks, Obama said, "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

It might seem odd for Obama to mention Israel and "radical Islam" in a speech focused on US race relations, especially since Wright's most widely reported comments were about America's historic and ongoing oppression of its black citizens.

But for months, even before most Americans had heard of Wright, prominent pro-Israel activists were hounding Obama over Wright's views on Israel and ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In January, Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), demanded that Obama denounce Farrakhan as an anti-Semite. The senator duly did so, but that was not enough. "[Obama has] distanced himself from his pastor's decision to honor Farrakhan," Foxman said, but "He has not distanced himself from his pastor. I think that's the next step." Foxman labeled Wright "a black racist," adding in the same breath, "Certainly he has very strong anti-Israel views" (Larry Cohler-Esses, "ADL Chief To Obama: 'Confront Your Pastor' On Minister Farrakhan," The Jewish Week, 16 January 2008). Criticism of Israel, one suspects, is Wright's truly unforgivable crime and Foxman's vitriol has echoed through dozens of pro-Israel blogs.

Since his early political life in Chicago, Barack Obama was well-informed about the Middle East and had expressed nuanced views conveying an understanding that justice and fairness, not blinkered support for Israel, are the keys to peace and the right way to combat extremism. Yet for months he has been fighting the charge that he is less rabidly pro-Israel than other candidates -- which means now adhering to the same simplistic formulas and unconditional support for Israeli policies that have helped to escalate conflict and worsen America's standing in the Middle East. Hence Obama's assertion at his 26 February debate with Senator Hillary Clinton that he is "a stalwart friend of Israel."

But Obama stressed that his appeal to Jewish voters also stems from his desire "to rebuild what I consider to be a historic relationship between the African American community and the Jewish community."

Obama has not addressed to a national audience why that relationship might have frayed. He was much more candid when speaking to Jewish leaders in Cleveland just one day before the debate. In a little-noticed comment, reported on 25 February by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Obama tried to contextualize Wright's critical views of Israel. Wright, Obama explained, "was very active in the South Africa divestment movement and you will recall that there was a tension that arose between the African American and the Jewish communities during that period when we were dealing with apartheid in South Africa, because Israel and South Africa had a relationship at that time. And that cause -- that was a source of tension."

Obama implicitly admitted that Wright's views were rooted in opposition to Israel's deep ties to apartheid South Africa, and thus entirely reasonable even if Obama himself did "not necessarily," as he put it, share them. Israel supplied South Africa with hundreds of millions of dollars of weaponry despite an international embargo. Even the water cannons that South African forces used to attack anti-apartheid demonstrators in the townships were manufactured at Kibbutz Beit Alfa, a "socialist" settlement in northern Israel. Until the late 1980s, South Africa often relied on Israel to lobby Western governments not to impose sanctions.

And the relationship was durable. As The Washington Post reported in 1987, "When it comes to Israel and South Africa, breaking up is hard to do." Israeli officials, the newspaper said, "face conflicting imperatives: their desire to get in line with the West, which has adopted a policy of mild but symbolic sanctions, versus Israel's longstanding friendship with the Pretoria government, a relationship that has been important for strategic, economic and, at times, sentimental reasons" ("An Israeli Dilemma: S. African Ties; Moves to Cut Links Are Slowed by Economic Pressures, Sentiment," The Washington Post, 20 September 1987).

In 1987, Jesse Jackson, then the world's most prominent African American politician, angered some Jewish American leaders for insisting that "Whoever is doing business with South Africa is wrong, but Israel is ... subsidized by America, which includes black Americans' tax money, and then it subsidizes South Africa" ("Jackson Draws New Criticism From Jewish Leaders Over Interview," Associated Press, 16 October 1987). As a presidential candidate, Jackson raised the same concerns in a high profile meeting with the Israeli ambassador, as did a delegation of black civil rights and religious leaders, including the nephew of Martin Luther King Jr, on a visit to Israel. For many African Americans, it was intolerable hypocrisy that so many Jewish leaders who staunchly supported Civil Rights and the anti-apartheid movement would be tolerant of Israel's complicity.

Thus, Reverend Wright, who has sought a broader understanding of the Middle East than one that blames Islam and Arabs for all the region's problems or endorses unconditional support for Israel, stood in the mainstream of African American opinion, not on some extremist fringe.

That is not to say that Jewish concerns about anti-Semitic sentiments among some African Americans should simply be dismissed. Racism in any community should be confronted. But as they have done with other communities, hard-line pro-Israel activists like Foxman have too often tried to tar any African American critic of Israel with the brush of anti-Semitism. Why must every black candidate to a major office go through the ritual of denouncing Farrakhan, a marginal figure in national politics who likely gets most of his notoriety from the ADL? Surely if anti-Semitism were such an endemic problem among African Americans, there would be someone other than Farrakhan for the ADL to have focused its ire on all these decades.

By contrast, neither Senator Joe Lieberman (Al Gore's running mate in 2000 and the first Jewish candidate on a major party presidential ticket), nor Senator John McCain have been required so publicly and so repeatedly to repudiate extremist and racist comments by Israeli leaders or some well-known radical Christian leaders supporting the Republican party. Foxman, whose organization devotes enormous resources to burnishing Israel's image, has rarely spoken out about the escalating anti-Arab racism and incitement to violence by prominent Israeli politicians and rabbis.

That is no surprise. African Americans, Arab Americans and Muslims all share some things in common: individuals are held collectively responsible for the words and actions of others in their community whether they had anything to do with them or not. And the price of admission to the political mainstream is to abandon any foreign policy goals that diverge from those of the pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian lobby.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

Going home, again

The high road to freedom
Ziyaad Lunat, The Electronic Intifada, 28 March 2008

People power: Palestinians the fallen border wall between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, 30 January 2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

Last week, Fatah and Hamas officials held direct talks for the first time since Hamas' June takeover of Gaza. Mediated by Yemeni officials in the capital, the talks led to the recently announced "Sana'a Declaration." However, it is unclear whether these talks, like those that preceded the Gaza takeover, will result in reconciliation and national unity. While there is general consensus among Palestinians that national unity is a matter of great urgency there are doubts whether a return to the troubled past is the only viable option. What guarantee do the majority of the Palestinian people have that the shameful spiral of violence will not return?

The prospect for Palestinian unity, under joint Fatah and Hamas leadership, is unfeasible due to a basic ideological gap between both movements and a US-backed framework that is overtly favorable to Israel. True unity and progress for the Palestinian cause can only be achieved when the US-backed Road Map and the Oslo Accords, designed to bypass international law and Palestinian rights, are replaced by a unified civil rights movement, motivated by universal values and free from party politics and exclusionary nationalist or religious rhetoric.

Both Hamas and Fatah have shown to act in detriment of Palestinian interests when power-seeking is in question. This is particularly true for corrupt Fatah, unabashedly colluding with Israel and the US to supplant Palestinian democracy. In light of this evidence a joint Fatah-Hamas leadership has little prospects to benefit the Palestinian people, and their quest for freedom, for two main reasons.

First, the ideological gap between Fatah and Hamas: Fatah favors unconditional talks with Israel under US-backed parameters whilst Israel refuses to talk to Hamas if it doesn't meet the so-called international Quartet for Middle East peace's demands. Hamas has shown pragmatism, having previously talked through third parties with Israel regarding recognition and cease-fire. Obvious tensions will emerge on a potential Hamas-Fatah partnership as Israel will refuse to negotiate with a coalition government that includes Hamas. Both Fatah and Hamas have different visions for Palestine, with Hamas committed to historical Palestine, an aspiration dropped by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1988. The premise is simple; for Hamas, the PLO's support for a two-state solution 20 years ago has done nothing for Palestinian aspirations. It was during the illusory "peace process" that the biggest atrocities against the Palestinians were committed, with the further colonization of the West Bank undermining the Palestinian state the peace process was ostensibly working towards.

Second, Palestine does not need a multi-party system. We were reminded in January 2006 when Hamas swept the legislative elections that Palestine is not a free democracy. The Palestinian Authority is not a state, but a service provision entity and a subcontractor for the occupation, and the post of Prime Minister is not a real post. Likewise, Mahmoud Abbas' presidential headquarters, the Muqata'a, is not the office a sovereign leader. Indeed, Palestine is under occupation. A multi-party system is a precondition of a democracy for a future Palestinian state, but until Palestine is free, sovereign and independent, the Palestinian people should focus on resisting the occupation through insistence on achieving their legitimate, internationally-recognized and universal rights. Israel will continue to thrive as long as there are factions rallying for power in the make-believe political system created by Oslo.

An alternative vision to the despotic enclaves of Fatah patronage or to Hamas' ideology that some fear excludes the true diversity of the Palestinian people is the emergence of a united nonviolent Palestinian civil rights movement. As the post-Annapolis peace process is yielding little results, with Abbas complaining that not enough progress has been made and the Israelis downplaying Bush's calls for a Palestinian state before year end, there is an emerging window of opportunity in which both Fatah and Hamas could become important players in a renewed Palestinian movement, albeit not dominant ones.

There have been signs of pragmatism within the ranks of Hamas and Fatah, perhaps in anticipation of what is to come. Hamas' breaking of the Gaza-Egypt border was the best example for many years of "people power." In the simple tearing down of the wall, Palestinians claimed their right to life and unashamedly crossed the border into Egypt. The nonviolent act provoked embarrassment to Israel, the US and Egypt and brought greater international attention to the plight of the Palestinians, albeit temporarily. Despite attempts by the US and Israeli press to undermine this achievement, they were unable to negatively spin the images of thousands of desperate Palestinians, showing to an international audience the reality of life under Israeli siege and occupation.

For Fatah's part, Ziad Abu Ein, Deputy Minister for Prisoners' Affairs in the Abbas-appointed cabinet has drawn a plan to mark the 60th anniversary of the Nakba. The plan calls on all Palestinians living abroad to converge on Israel by land, sea and air. According to him, the Palestinians have decided to implement UN Resolution 194 regarding the refugees (http://www.return08.com). The plan is called "The Initiative of Return and Coexistence," referring to Article 11 of the resolution that states "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible." The plan also calls on the Arab nations to facilitate the return by opening their borders and letting the refugees march towards Israel. One can only imagine the international impact of thousands of refugees from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and those in the West Bank and Gaza peacefully converging on their homeland, claiming their right to return.

The next few months will be crucial for the formation of a new movement. If Israel and the international community fail to grant the Palestinians their legitimate rights in the current round of negotiations, a new popular uprising will emerge, a nonviolent movement that will draw from the regular demonstrations against the wall at Bil'in village, the subverting of the Gaza-Egypt border, or from the "Initiative of Return and Coexistence." It is then that Fatah and Hamas will have the chance to start anew, leaving behind their power struggle, and working together for the benefit of the Palestinian people by taking the high road towards Palestinian freedom.

Ziyaad Lunat is a postgraduate student of the Government Department at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Political Science, the President of LSE Student Union Palestine Society and a broadcast journalist. He is currently on the organizing committee of the Nakba60-London, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Palestinian dispossession. He can be reached at z.lunat A T lse D O T ac D O T uk.

When did it become okay?

A familiar scenario takes place in front of me. A little boy, no more than four years old, is laughing as he runs back and forth between the line of adults' feet, feet twice the size of his. Typically, with a combination of innocence and courage only found in children's eyes, he is testing how far he can go before his mother will call him back. The reason why this ordinary scene remains in my consciousness is that it is took place at Huwwara military checkpoint, one of the manned posts restricting the movement of people and goods in and out of the West Bank town of Nablus. Although the boy is laughing, making some of us waiting in the line smile, he is also about to be checked by young armed soldiers before he is let out on the other side where dozens of yellow taxis are waiting to take people traveling from Nablus to Huwwara, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Qalandia, and the elsewhere in the West Bank.

Unsettling combinations of familiarity and unfamiliarity seem to manifest themselves in every aspect of life here in the West Bank. Recalling the first time I passed through Huwwara checkpoint, I remember that my physical and psychological reaction revealed fear. As I and two colleagues moved slowly forward in the line of other women, children and elderly, the unbalanced and disturbing power relationship between us in the line and the soldiers was mercilessly perceptible. The young men and women, dressed in olive green uniforms, wearing helmets and carrying weapons, have the authority to deny anyone to pass. The people who live here in the West Bank have green permit cards that are checked by the soldiers.

I remember that my heartbeat increased and I felt that I had done something wrong that was about to be exposed. One minute I felt cold, the next warm. I felt like shouting to the soldiers, "Can't you see what you are doing here?" but instead took some deep breaths while trying not to look at the people around me. I pretended that I could not feel the little boy squeezed between me and the elderly lady next to me. I smiled at the grimace my colleague made as she struggled not to be pushed off-balance by the woman. This was just a normal day. We were just going for a weekend trip to Ramallah, a trip which should take only about 40 minutes if there were no checkpoints. The sun was shining, everyone seemed to know what to do. I remember thinking, "what am I afraid of?" Now as I go though checkpoints, the initial fear I felt the first time has been transformed into a sense of injustice and frustration.

When I ask students who have to pass through checkpoints everyday to get to their university if they feel afraid, most of them will answer that no, they are usually not afraid. Going through the procedures of waiting in line with hundreds of other people in order to be let through to the other side, only a few meters away, has become normal, a necessary routine for many. They have had to go through it so many times. But not being afraid does not mean that you do not feel humiliated, angry, sad and tired. It does not keep you from feeling the biting cold wind or protect you from shivering in your coat. Neither does it make you feel any better as you hand over your shekels to the taxi driver, knowing how little money most families have to spare these days.

As someone who came here hoping to bring clarity to the hazy and media-influenced image I had of the life and people in Palestine, the contrasts visible everywhere still continue to astonish me even after four months. No matter how trivial and shallow some of the traces of the military occupation might seem at first, their marks are everywhere, forcing themselves onto the landscape and people's lives, hinting to the many layers and the depths of the effects of the occupation.

It is the feeling of sunshine on one's face and Arabic music on the radio as one waits in line and looks at the long line of cars held up at Za'atara checkpoint on the road from Huwwara to Ramallah. It is in the guitar music played by students at the university, as my friend who is an ambulance driver told me about the night before when he had been covered in blood while carrying a young man who had been killed in the Balata refugee camp. It is in the eyes of the teacher at a school in Huwwara who tells us how he has to protect his students by confronting the Israeli forces who invade the school, interrupting the education of over 500 students, several times a month. It is the beautiful view, spring blossoms from the almond trees and rolling hills, marred by a settlement, illegal under international law, perched strategically on a hill top. It is the taxi-driver who tells you how difficult it is to support his three girls at university. It is the children who lie awake as soldiers invade Nablus every night and the parents who worry about their children going to and from school. It is the mixed feeling of despair and surprise when one finds oneslef on the bus driving next to the imposing West Bank barrier in East Jerusalem, cutting off Jerusalem from the population in the rest of the West Bank. It is the hundreds of men one will find at Gilo checkpoint between Bethlehem from Jerusalem, from 4am in the morning, running and jumping the queue as they are desperate to get to their work in Israel on time. It is one's friend telling one how their father was arrested last week, another friend explaining her brother's imprisonment, it is one's student who apologizes for not being able to come to class because he was held in prison for a month. It is the hairdresser in Ramallah who says he used to love going to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv every night before they built the separation wall.

It is the constant reminder that every aspect of people's lives here is affected by the occupation. My Palestinian friends who have lived their whole lives in this context tell me that one of the worst things of existing under such conditions is that after a while it becomes normal. One comes to expect everything. One has to endure everything. One has to remain hopeful that life will become easier one day. But when I ask how they understand the situation, they tell me that it is just getting worse; although they want to remain hopeful for future improvements, reality has shown them too many times that hope can be deceiving. Imagine yourself living in conditions of constant oppression, discrimination and insecurity I tell my friends back home, and I know they cannot. I cannot even imagine it myself. My little red passport, always kept in my pocket, feels somehow like a protective shield.

Maria Urkedal York is from Norway and currently lives in Nablus where she works with the Right to Education Campaign at An-Najah University.

Barack O'bomb'a

How Barack Obama learned to love Israel
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2007

(EI Illustration)

I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking 'if only a man of this calibre could become president one day.'

On Friday Obama gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Chicago. It had been much anticipated in American Jewish political circles which buzzed about his intensive efforts to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors who up to now have generally leaned towards his main rival Senator Hillary Clinton.

Reviewing the speech, Ha'aretz Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded that Obama "sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period."

Israel is "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy," Obama said, assuring his audience that "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs." Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted, would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians.

There was no comfort for the hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who live in the dark, or the patients who cannot get dialysis, because of what Israeli human rights group B'Tselem termed "one cold, calculated decision, made by Israel's prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff" last summer to bomb the only power plant in Gaza," a decision that "had nothing to do with the attempts to achieve [the] release [of a captured soldier] nor any other military need." It was a gratuitous war crime, one of many condemned by human rights organizations, against an occupied civilian population who under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel is obligated to protect.

From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah)

While constantly emphasizing his concern about the threat Israelis face from Palestinians, Obama said nothing about the exponentially more lethal threat Israelis present to Palestinians. In 2006, according to B'Tselem, Israeli occupation forces killed 660 Palestinians of whom 141 were children -- triple the death toll for 2005. In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, half the number of 2005 (by contrast, 500 Israelis die each year in road accidents).

But Obama was not entirely insensitive to ordinary lives. He recalled a January 2006 visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that resembled an ordinary American suburb where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at "joyful play just like my own daughters." He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).

Six months later, Obama said, "Hizbullah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli service members."

Obama's phrasing suggests that Hizbullah launched thousands of rockets in an unprovoked attack, but it's a complete distortion. Throughout his speech he showed a worrying propensity to present discredited propaganda as fact. As anyone who checks the chronology of last summer's Lebanon war will easily discover, Hizbullah only launched lethal barrages of rockets against Israeli towns and cities after Israel had heavily bombed civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians, many fleeing the Israeli onslaught.

Obama excoriated Hizbullah for using "innocent people as shields." Indeed, after dozens of civilians were massacred in an Israeli air attack on Qana on July 30, Israel "initially claimed that the military targeted the house because Hezbollah fighters had fired rockets from the area," according to an August 2 statement from Human Rights Watch.

The statement added: "Human Rights Watch researchers who visited Qana on July 31, the day after the attack, did not find any destroyed military equipment in or near the home. Similarly, none of the dozens of international journalists, rescue workers and international observers who visited Qana on July 30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah military presence in or around the home. Rescue workers recovered no bodies of apparent Hezbollah fighters from inside or near the building." The Israelis subsequently changed their story, and neither in Qana, nor anywhere else did Israel ever present, or international investigators ever find evidence to support the claim Hizbullah had a policy of using civilians as human shields.

In total, forty-three Israeli civilians were killed by Hizbullah rockets during the thirty-four day war. For every Israeli civilian who died, over twenty-five Lebanese civilians were killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing -- over one thousand in total, a third of them children. Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israel's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians. But Obama defended Israel's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its "legitimate right to defend itself."

There was absolutely nothing in Obama's speech that deviated from the hardline consensus underpinning US policy in the region. Echoing the sort of exaggeration and alarmism that got the United States into the Iraq war, he called Iran "one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace." While advocating "tough" diplomacy with Iran he confirmed that "we should take no option, including military action, off the table." He opposed a Palestinian unity government between Hamas and Fatah and insisted "we must maintain the isolation of Hamas" until it meets the Quartet's one-sided conditions. He said Hizbullah, which represents millions of Lebanon's disenfranchised and excluded, "threatened the fledgling movement for democracy" and blamed it for "engulf[ing] that entire nation in violence and conflict."

Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency." He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his early backers was Penny Pritzker -- now his national campaign finance chair -- scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors.

Michelle Obama and Barack Obama listen to Professor Edward Said give the keynote address at an Arab community event in Chicago, May 1998. (Photo: Ali Abunimah)

Obama has also been close to some prominent Arab Americans, and has received their best advice. His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will have little impact. (For what it's worth, I did my part. I recently met with Obama's legislative aide, and wrote to Obama urging a more balanced policy towards Palestine.)

If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.

Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.

Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse

Bless the Beasts and...us all

So, as I am wrapping up the many jewels that Gordene and I created for the people of Palestine...do they really need 29 pairs of earrings? Am I going to meet 29 women? Savannah comes into my bedroom. She asks what I am doing and I explain Gordene's genorosity and need to help and feel a part of what I am doing.

I am wrapping up the jewels in a silk scarf...Savannah brings a scarf from her own bedroom and asks if she can contribute. She asks what 'the children' might need. I told her it was hard to say when fresh water was a challenge for these kids...and shots. She grimaced and began to bring in toys. 'Everyone", she said, 'needs toys'. She filled up her own bandanna...it will go with me to Palestine.

From small acorns, great oaks grow.

Peace be to the world,

Elena

Should the World Talk to Hamas?

By Howard LaFranchi Tue Mar 25, 4:00 AM ET

Washington - After Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006, the international community's reaction was swift, clear, and virtually unanimous: The extremist Islamist political party would be isolated and barred from international negotiations until it recognized Israel, renounced violence, and agreed to respect earlier accords in the Middle East peace process.

More than two years later, cracks are beginning to show in the wall of resistance to Hamas, with some Western officials (and even a few Israelis) wondering publicly if it isn't time to engage an organization that continues to lead a large part of the Palestinian people. The question is even being posed in Washington.

The hand-wringing over talking to Hamas reflects a shift away from the black-and-white diplomatic approach of President Bush's first term to a more realist and results-oriented tendency in the second. If the US can talk to archenemy Iran to get something it wants in Iraq, the reasoning goes, then why not explore what might be gained from someone sitting down with Hamas?

So far, the Bush administration is not officially weakening its ban on talking to Hamas. On Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was in Jerusalem for meetings with Israeli leaders and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, showed no signs of softening the US stance in any way. He accused Hamas of "doing everything they can to torpedo the peace process" and nixed the idea of a Palestinian reconciliation between Hamas and the moderate Fatah prior to Hamas giving up control of the Gaza Strip.

Still, a different approach can already be seen in the American effort to encourage Egypt's go-between role in delivering an Israel-Hamas cease-fire, in growing European support for contacts with Hamas, and even in the "I'll talk to our enemies" position of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

"We're seeing the doubts about the wisdom of isolating Hamas – not because anyone suddenly loves them or agrees with them, but because they hold what Israel wants, which is peace and security, and because of a dawning realization that if there is going to be a Mideast peace deal, it is going to have to include ... talking to Hamas," says John Hulsman, a scholar in residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. "It's a return to that idea that diplomacy is fundamentally about talking to your enemies."

Intent of the original strategy
The main reason for the growing doubts about the isolation strategy is that it has not worked as planned. It was designed to weaken Hamas politically by turning Palestinian voters against it – notably by thwarting its ability to deliver services to the Palestinians of Gaza, which it controls. On the contrary, the plan seems to have largely enhanced Hamas in stature.

The idea of boosting moderate President Abbas among the Palestinian people while encouraging their estrangement from Hamas leaders like Ismail Haniyeh has also failed.

Recent surveys back up that conclusion. Palestinians in the West Bank show a growing preference for Hamas over Fatah, the organization of Abbas, according to a poll by the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. The poll – which showed backing for the shooting attack at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem this month – suggests that support is increasing for Hamas's rocket attacks and other aggressive means of responding to Israeli attacks.

The poll also shows that two-thirds of Palestinians support a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel. But it indicates that Palestinians would now elect Mr. Haniyeh as president over Abbas – a reversal from a December poll by the Palestinian Center.

This last finding suggests how much the international approach to Hamas has "backfired," Mr. Hulsman says. "This for Europeans was really the wake-up call."

The evolving European thinking was expressed publicly this month by Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema, who noted a survey of Israelis showing support for talks with Hamas. "Hamas controls a very important part of the Palestinian territory, and if we want peace, we will have to involve them," he added.

In response, Israel's ambassador to Italy, Gideon Meir, told the Italian press agency ANSA, "Whoever invites us to negotiate with Hamas is actually inviting us to negotiate on the size of our coffin and on the number of flowers we want on it."

That "whoever" might now be construed to include the United States – which is encouraging Egypt to act as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas in an effort to foster negotiations that would lead to a cease-fire between the two. Also this month, the State Department posted on its Dipnote blog a "question of the week" that asked, "Should [the US] engage Hamas in the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians?"

Growing buzz in Washington
That reflects the growing buzz in Washington about the need for a new approach to Hamas. Last week, the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based organization advocating a robust US diplomatic effort to promote a two-state solution, sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice concluding that reaching a settlement to the conflict – in particular by year's end, as Mr. Bush wants – "requires finding a way to bring Hamas into the process."

Some in Washington who oppose any opening up to an unchanged Hamas worry that it is indeed the Bush administration's goal of reaching an accord by the end of Bush's term that is encouraging a new approach. They see it as an unwise weakening of standards that had been placed on an organization that the US lists as a sponsor of terrorism.

The setting of a deadline is a "mistake" that is causing some in Washington and in other capitals to overlook "what kind of organization Hamas is," says Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). The international community should remember how long it took to divorce the Palestine Liberation Organization from violence, he says.

"We saw this movie in the '80s," Mr. Satloff told a WINEP forum last week.

The argument that Hamas "can't be wished away" and therefore must be dealt with "reflects a certain recognition of Hamas's ... barbarity," Satloff says, and it leads to the conclusion that "they must be accommodated."

But others say the debate over talking to Hamas is less about accommodation than about a growing realization that isolation is not a particularly effective diplomatic tool. The idea that nonengagement "is the ultimate pain we can inflict upon our enemies" is just as much "mythology" as the thinking that "engagement is the ultimate prize," which, once bestowed, will lead "the enemy [to] change," says Robert Malley, director of the Middle East program for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-headquartered conflict-prevention organization. Mr. Malley also spoke at the WINEP forum.

"We have to be modest about this issue," Malley says, who predicts that the debate doesn't mean the US will enter negotiations with Hamas anytime soon.

The "bottom line" right now, Malley adds, should be "what works, what doesn't work, and what are the alternative strategies?" In the case of the international community's approach to Hamas, he says, "The current strategy has not worked."

Remember what the Dormouse said...

The ink of the scholar and the blood of the martyr are of equal value in heaven - the Koran

Many years ago, I read "Occidentalism" by Edward Said. That was my first introduction to what became an intense interest of mine. The similarities between indigenous people worldwide. Heretofore, the separation had always been one of West vs. East. I would rethink that distinction.

Western cultures are driven by history: a sense of linear, irreversible time. By unique events, piled upon by competing ideologies. Rather, tribal peoples, indigenous people including many Arabs, tend to be people of place, not of time. People of tradition, not history. And a culture based upon cycles rather than linear constructs. Colonist vs. indigenous. The Occident versus the Orient.

Our languages reflect this separation. It is crucial to note that linguistic criticism plays an important role in any analysis because the hierarchical structure of Western societies - therefore of their languages - is antagonistic toward any display of wholesomeness.

”Man” named himself by an act of separation from and power over nature, animals and women as illustrated tidily in the Book of Genesis. Exorcising the distortions propagated by such language is required for they corrupt our very souls. The importance of language can hardly be overrated since, as one acquires a language, one acquires the mental dispositions implicit in it. Humans construct language based upon their need to illuminate their surroundings, give them consciousness. And, as we construct language, it begins to define us.

There are many similarities between the Arab Nations and Native American peoples.

Arabs have been persecuted for centuries. Their religious beliefs are vilified by the Judeo-Christian world powers. Their men are hunted as terrorists while the women are accorded two well-fostered stereotypes: that of the grenade-laden Leila Khaled (the first female Palestinian hijacker) or the illiterate refugee willingly producing sons for the revolution.

Need I say that there were not nationwide attacks against white Christian males after Timothy McVeigh was apprehended for the Oklahoma City bombing?

Consider the plight of Native Americans from the 16th century to the early 20th centuries. The banning of religious ceremonies by the Spanish in the Southwest, the massacres at Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears and the Long Walk. And then the stereotypes fostered by Hollywood ever since. Consider the FBI's persecution of the American Indian Movement, a group considered to be domestic terrorists in the '60;s and '70's. The takeovers of both the BIA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and Alcatraz in the early 1970's. Here in North America, the level of and manner in which we are persecuted has evolved. But we are still occupied.

Unlike most Americans who exist in the safety of a world run by people whose beliefs match their own, who know only what AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) and Rupert Murdoch wants them to know about the situation in Palestine, I have come to understand the history. The history of Zionism, The Balfour Declaration. The abandonment of European Jews by the West during the Holocaust and after World War II. I also understand the history of Palestine and the abandonment of Palestinians by the East and the West. The founding constitution of the PLO. The Great Powers’ creation of Lebanon and fabrication of Jordan, impositions of a Western-State format on lands charged with ethnic differences and tribal enmities. The 1967 Six-Day War. The 1973 Yom Kippur War. Meron Benvenisti’s in-depth West Bank Data Base project reports.

For Native American women and Palestinian women, the issues and challenges of occupation are similar as well. The vast and infinite struggle to maintain cultural integrity under the most adverse of conditions with little or no support from within or without your own communities.

Women constitute the real government of the Palestinian people, not in the visible sense, like Fatah and Hamas, but in that these women are preparing the substructure of what they trust will be their people’s future: training the workers and technicians, teachers, professionals, artists and politicians. They do this against insurmountable odds. As women they face sexism-as-usual inside and outside their respective agencies.

What happens under crises like the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza is that the enemy is so atrocious and the danger so immediate that this helps in suppressing these internal contradictions, turning the nation into an imaginary reality that is not necessarily just or equal. The IOF (Israeli Occupation Force) attacks do not distinguish between poor and rich, between women and men and children, or between Muslims and Christians. These ‘blind’ attacks create a generalized feeling that expresses itself in a similarly ‘blind ‘response. And there was always Yasser Arafat, and the Palestinian National Authority that he headed. The Authority had major problems in its structure, performance and vision and there have always been allegations of corruption and nepotism since the very beginning of its establishment in 1994 up until right now. Amid the frustrations of the national leadership -the enemy from within -and the Israeli occupier -the enemy from without -the only way to say ‘enough suffering ‘and ‘enough humiliation’ was through speaking up and resisting, thus the Intifadas of 1986 and 2000.

The response from the Israeli government, especially when Ariel Sharon became president, instead of crystallizing the voices against the internal rule, ended up making Palestinians concerned overwhelmingly with the ‘external enemy’ only. The painful result of this has been the suppression of all these different voices. Suicide bombs were historically associated with fringe terrorist groups like the Islamic Jihad and Al-Quds Brigades. And at the beginning, most Palestinians were against bombings in Israel. Intellectuals, writers and many ordinary people were against violence that targeted civilians. This is a human position. This must be differentiated from the Intifada and from armed resistance within the Occupied Territories, which are legitimate forms of resistance. As stated by United Nations.

I not only support Hamas because of the clear personal connection I have to the movement, but because they are the legitimate ruling party in the OT as elected freely by the Palestinian people.

Hamas had been seen by many Palestinians and particularly women as a politicizing of Islam with an adverse social impact on women. It was not seen as a political move that was going to be helpful or positive in building civil society. Many women were against Hamas because their dream had been to build a secular state and not a state that would suppress women in the name of religion. Hamas, to a large extent, was a creation of Israel, in a way similar to the Taliban being largely a product of the US.

The Israeli State supported Hamas at the very beginning and used it, especially during the first Intifada, as a counterbalance or preventative rod to the secular PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) stronghold in the OT (Occupied Territories). Unfortunately for them, after the second year of the first Intifada, Hamas began to muster more support among disparate Palestinians. While Hamas has declared an open public strategy of resistance to Israeli occupation, its fundamental social vision has always been one of equality towards women. Many Palestinian women worried needlessly about forced veilings and being pushed back into the domestic-private domain. This has not happened.

With ripe economic and political conditions at the time; high unemployment, absence of clear leadership -Hamas began to infiltrate many refugee camps, built schools, healthcare and daycare centers, and provided employment to some of the unemployed. The combination of people’s frustration and
desperation, along with their provision of vitally needed services,and the appeal for religion at such difficult times, made Hamas appear as a viable, and popular force.

Also, the issue of Palestinian violence must be clearly contextualized - much of the world seems to have historical amnesia when it comes to Palestinians using violence against the Israeli military occupation. Violence as a form of resistance to settler colonialism is not historically new, nor is it an illegitimate force of resistance. Violence as a form of resistance against fundamentally violent forms of rule such as colonialism and occupation has historically been validated and internationally acknowledged in various examples, including the Algerian and South African struggles.

Fundamentally, the conflict is not a Jewish/Arab conflict or a Palestinian/Jewish conflict. It is definitely not a Muslim/Jewish conflict. The conflict is between occupied and occupier, between colonizer and colonized, although the Israeli government tries to present the conflict as Arab and Muslim fanatics against the survival of the Jews. Using the terms ‘Jewish ‘and ‘the State’ interchangeably is dangerous. It intends to block the minds of so many Jews and non-Jews all over the world by equating Zionism, which is racist in its ideology, policies and practices with all individual Jews.

Criticizing the state of Israel is as legitimate as criticizing any other state. It must not be equated with anti-Semitism. The struggle for Palestine in the 21st century is a struggle against settler colonialism: it is a struggle for justice and freedom. Yes, the Holocaust was perpetrated against many peoples, including the Jews, but the perpetrators were not the Palestinians. Remember that genocidal policies against the Palestinians have been committed since the Nakba of 1948, which resulted in the forced expulsion of about 80 percent of the Palestinians from their homeland. ‘Transfer ‘is genocide. Cultural genocide is also genocide.

You Go, Bill

Richardson Plans Obama Endorsement

By JEFF ZELENY and PATRICK HEALY

Published: March 21, 2008

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who sought to become the nation’s first Hispanic president this year, plans to endorse Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination on Friday at a campaign event in Oregon.

Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico called Senator Barack Obama at a debate in Des Moines, Iowa, in Dec. 2007.

Mr. Richardson, a former congressman and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, dropped out of the Democratic race in January after finishing behind Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the first nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Since then, he has been aggressively courted by his former rivals.

Mr. Obama’s address on race in Philadelphia on Tuesday appeared to sway Mr. Richardson, who sent word to the senator that he was inspired and impressed by the speech, in which Mr. Obama called for an end to the “racial stalemate” that has divided Americans for decades. Aides said the endorsement was locked down over the following two days.

In a statement, Mr. Richardson hailed Mr. Obama’s judgment and ability to be commander-in-chief — qualities that Mrs. Clinton has called into question in recent weeks on the campaign trail.

“I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America’s moral leadership in the world,” Mr. Richardson said in the statement, provided by the Obama campaign early Friday morning.

“As a presidential candidate, I know full well Senator Obama’s unique moral ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation.”

Mr. Obama and Mr. Richardson are set to appear on stage together Friday at the Memorial Coliseum in downtown Portland, according to Democratic officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. An adviser to Mr. Obama also confirmed the endorsement.

The endorsement offers a timely boost for Mr. Obama, who has weathered the most tumultuous two weeks of a 15-month campaign. He has been seeking to reassure superdelegates that his efforts have not been thrown off course by a series of controversies, including inflammatory statements about the government and race in America made by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his longtime spiritual adviser and former pastor.

As the nation’s only Hispanic governor, Mr. Richardson could become a champion for Mr. Obama among Hispanic voters, who have been a key voting bloc for Mrs. Clinton in the primaries thus far. And his endorsement is also notable because he is a friend and admirer of Mrs. Clinton, and was widely viewed as a possible running mate for both her and for Mr. Obama.

At several debates last year, Mr. Richardson often came to Mrs. Clinton’s defense as other Democratic rivals criticized her. Since leaving the race, he has spoken frequently with Mrs. Clinton as well as her husband Bill Clinton, the former president, to whom he is particularly close. (They watched the Super Bowl together at the New Mexico governor’s mansion in Santa Fe.)

When Mr. Obama learned about the game-watching party, he called the governor. “You know, I’d be good company, too,” Mr. Obama told him, Mr. Richardson recalled in a recent interview.

Mr. Obama did not mention the endorsement as he flew from West Virginia to Oregon on Thursday night.

As a governor, Mr. Richardson is a superdelegate who would have a vote in the nominating contest if neither Mr. Obama nor Mrs. Clinton ends the primary season in June with a lead in delegates amassed during the 2008 primaries and caucuses. Mr. Obama now has an overall lead of 148.5 delegates, according to an analysis by The New York Times; a candidate needs 2,024 to win the Democratic nomination.

In his statement, Mr. Richardson, who served as ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Clinton, said “there is no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama has the judgment and courage we need in a commander in chief when our nation’s security is on the line. He showed this judgment by opposing the Iraq war from the start, and he has shown it during this campaign by standing up for a new era in American leadership internationally.”

In a prepared statement, Mr. Obama said:

“Whether it’s fighting to end the Iraq war or stop the genocide in Darfur or prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, Gov. Richardson has been a powerful voice on issues of global security, peace and justice, earning five Nobel Peace Prize nominations.”

Living in the Future

I started this blog to be a record of my trip to Jordan, Israel and Palestine in early 2008. But, as more and more people began asking me questions about why I was going, why the politics of the region were so important to me and why now...I started posting news and information pertinent to the present situation in Palestine.

The content of this blog is biased, of course. But well it should be. Dante Alighieri said that 'the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, elect to remain neutral.' The situation in Palestine constitutes one of the great moral crises of our times. Neutrality is not an option.

So, I am going to Palestine as a volunteer for the International Women's Peace Service. I will be living in Haris, a small village in the Salfit Governate in the West Bank . What my responsibilities will be, I am not certain. But one of them is to observe and document IOF abuses in the West Bank and most especially, around the Apartheid Wall. The village of Haris stands directly in the path of the wall.

I think that many of the questions people have posed to me can be answered by simply looking at the articles I have posted. The question of 'why now' is more difficult to answer. There are many different ways to answer that, many layers of thought.

I have always been skeptical of the nature of altruism and the people who profess to do things out of purely altruistic motives. People who want to change the world really just want to see if they can. It is an ego-driven goal best left to presidential candidates and petty dictators (or do I repeat myself?).

I lean more towards the Gandhian 'be the change you want to see in the world'. And the understanding that the personal is political. So I go not to change the world or make a difference in the lives of others, but to see what I could only have imagined and understand what I could not grasp. I don't expect to come back a better mother or writer or friend, but a better Elena. And that is all I can ask for.

The intrinsic value of knowledge is that you act upon it (Iman Ali)

For years I have ranted and raved, lamented, wept and screamed about the Palestinians and Israelis. I have editorialized, boycotted, debated and petitioned. I have come to a place right now in my life where the truth on the ground is more important than the words...for me a radical shift.

It is time to show up or shut up.

IOF snipers can shoot Palestinian protestors "lawfully"

[ 20/03/2008 - 01:05 AM ]

An American anti-wall demonstrator wounded by an IOF rubber coated bullet at Bilin 22 Feb. 2008

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- IOF soldiers can now lawfully fire at Palestinian demonstrators protesting at the apartheid-wall being built by the Israeli occupation according to a report in Maariv. A Justice Ministry official stated on Wednesday that the Israeli attorney general has relaxed the rules of engagement for the IOF allowing the boarder guard snipers to fire at the legs of demonstrators. However, the IOF troops are not allowed to shoot at Israeli or foreign citizens. Over the past month, 13 Palestinians have been wounded in the legs, by IOF snipers taking advantage of the new rules, in the Jerusalem area, according to the paper.

The Mayor of Hamastan speaks the truth

Hamas: No excuse for Fatah following Yemeni initiative

[ 19/03/2008 - 06:26 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Hamas Movement on Wednesday reiterated its readiness to start dialogue with Fatah faction to end the inter-Palestinian rift on the basis of the Yemeni initiative. Dr. Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, said that his Movement was ready to discuss all issues at the dialogue table, hoping that the PA presidency would reciprocate. He said that Yemeni foreign minister Abu Bakr Al-Kurbi's statement that there was no difference between Hamas and Fatah over the Yemeni initiative meant that there was no "excuse" for Fatah to continue refusing dialogue with Hamas. The spokesman expressed his Movement's regret that PA chief Mahmoud Abbas and his entourage continue to issue "disappointing" statements that affirm their non-seriousness in dialogue. He quoted the latest such statement for Nabil Amre, the PA chief's advisor, that Abbas was still insisting on his conditions for starting any dialogue with Hamas. The Hamas Movement called on Fatah to immediately sit at the dialogue table on the basis of the Yemeni initiative and to discuss all its points away from pre conditions and slogans.

More of the same

McCain Backs Israeli Reprisals in Gaza

• AP foreign
• , Wednesday March 19 2008

By IAN DEITCH

Associated Press Writer

SDEROT, Israel (AP) - Touring a war-battered town, Sen. John McCain said Wednesday he understands Israel's tough response to Palestinian rocket fire, adding that there is no point in negotiating with the Gaza Strip's Islamic Hamas regime.

The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting also praised the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, saying he is committed to reaching a peace deal with Israel - though McCain is not meeting Palestinians this time.

McCain's visit to Israel is part of a weeklong trip through the Middle East and Europe. After a day of meetings with Israeli leaders, he visited Sderot, the southern Israeli border town that has been the target of thousands of crude Palestinian rockets in recent years.

``That is not a way for people to live,'' McCain said. ``No nation in the world can be attacked incessantly and have its population killed and intimidated without responding. That's one of the first obligations of government, to provide security for its citizens.'' Israel has been widely criticized for military operations aimed at stopping the rocket attacks, as well as its blockade of Gaza.

While billed as routine congressional business, the visit appeared to be aimed at burnishing McCain's leadership credentials and courting Jewish voters for next fall's election. Jews make up large voting blocs in several key swing states, including Florida and Michigan, and could help influence the outcome of the election.

Though McCain did not visit Palestinian areas, Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said the senator has always been accessible to the Palestinians and is ``committed to peace.'' But he suggested McCain's visit was aimed more at attracting Jewish voters than promoting negotiations. ``Maybe one day Palestinians will have money for your campaigns in the United States,'' he said.

McCain told reporters that because he was on a congressional fact-finding tour, it was not the time to discuss his campaign.

Still, in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post, McCain said he would ``personally be engaged'' in peace talks if elected and ``give it my highest priority.''

Speaking to reporters in Sderot, McCain gave strong indications that he would follow the policies of President Bush, who has promoted peace talks between Israel and the moderate Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, while working to isolate the Hamas government in Gaza.

Hamas seized Gaza from Abbas' forces last June, and Abbas now rules from the West Bank.

McCain did not meet with Abbas during his two-day visit, but said he spoke to the Palestinian leader by telephone. McCain said the Palestinian leader is committed to reaching a peace deal with Israel, though he questioned whether a target of an agreement this year is realistic.

``I hope that he can deliver. I think he is sincere,'' McCain said. ``I think the Palestinian people desire peace. I believe they deserve peace, and I think President Abbas is capable of conducting those negotiations.''

Discussing the U.S. role, McCain said there has to be ``an environment of reconciliation between parties,'' but that ``there also has to be an outside party that is willing to bring the parties to the table and facilitate that process.'' He said a peace agreement is a key U.S. interest.

Israel and the Palestinians launched peace talks at a U.S.-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland, last November. The sides have made little visible progress. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned that even if a deal is reached this year, it cannot be carried out until Abbas regains control of Gaza.

The Palestinians seek an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - territories that lie on opposite sides of Israel. Hamas is committed to Israel's destruction and opposes the peace talks.

Israel frequently conducts military operations in Gaza in response to rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups. A recent Israeli offensive killed more than 120 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians, drawing heavy international criticism. Since ending the operation, there has been a relative lull, and Israeli defense officials have confirmed they are working through Egyptian mediators to reach a truce with Hamas.

McCain said he would respect any Israeli decision but questioned the wisdom of negotiating with the Islamic militants.

``The Palestinian authority in Gaza is committed to the extermination of the state of Israel. It is very difficult to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extermination,'' he said.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said McCain's comments shows ``there isn't the faintest hope'' for a change in American policies. He called on the Arab world to reconsider its ties with the U.S.

From Jew to Jew...Voices of reason

From Jew to Jew:
Why We Should Oppose the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza

A Jewish Voice For Peace Publication
Download in PDF format

Introduction

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, A JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE is the oldest and largest of a growing number of Jewish groups that are convinced that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory must end. There are two compelling reasons for this. First, we wish to preserve the best part of our Jewish heritage—a deeply-ingrained sense of morality—and pass it on to the next generation, unsullied by the mistreatment of another people. We were brought up to believe that, as Jews, we are obligated to always take the moral high road and we can’t imagine letting this proud ethical tradition die now.

Second, as we will show in this paper, we are convinced that the only way to ensure the security of the people of Israel is for their government to conclude a just peace with the Palestinians. Without some reasonable version of justice being done, there will never be peace, and so we oppose any Israeli government policy that denies the Palestinians their legitimate rights. What those are will be examined shortly.

Is this position “anti-Jewish”? No, it is not (any more than criticizing U.S. government policies is anti-American.) Even as we love all of humanity, we have a special love for the Jewish people and for the warm and compassionate side of Jewish culture. We share with all Jews the trauma of the genocide of our people by the Nazis and our long history of periodic persecution. We understand the instinct to “circle the wagons” when our people face danger, and we long for the day when Jews in Israel, as everywhere, will be able to lead normal, secure, productive lives. The question is how will that happy day come about? By blindly supporting the Israeli government’s self-destructive path to war and more war? We don’t think so.

We feel that these crucial issues need more discussion within the American Jewish community, not less. They certainly are debated at length in Israel itself, as evidenced by a recent Ma’ariv poll showing that 52% of Israelis support the 2002 Saudi peace plan calling for full Israeli withdrawal from all occupied territories in exchange for peace with the Arab world—in total opposition to the Israeli government’s policy. It’s time for us to join the debate as well, and help formulate a more reasonable solution to the conflict.

Unfortunately, the ongoing violence in Palestine and Israel has led too many people, on both sides, to adopt blanket stereotypes of one another, turning them into something “less-than-human”. This process of dehumanization then allows people to justify the violence committed by their own side, starting the cycle all over again. This is a classic “lose-lose” situation that can continue on forever.

Is there a way out of this mess? Yes, we think so, but only if we suspend our understandable reaction of automatically blaming the other side. Only then can we objectively assess the root causes of the conflict and the realistic choices there are for resolving it. So, in the interest of peace, and with an open heart and mind, please consider the following facts.

1. THE OCCUPATION

The international community, through the United Nations and other forums, has made it clear that virtually the entire world considers the Israeli occupation of territories it captured in the 1967 war to be wrong and contrary to basic principles of international law. Every year since 1967 (up until the Oslo Process started), the UN General Assembly passed the same resolution (usually by lopsided votes like 150-2), stating that Israel is obligated to vacate the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, in exchange for security guaranteed by the international community, in accordance with UN Resolution 242.

While the circumstances were much different, the legal basis of these resolutions is the same principle used to force Iraq out of Kuwait—i.e., a country cannot annex or indefinitely occupy territory gained by force of arms. The only reason that Israel is able to maintain its occupation of Palestinian land is that the US routinely vetoes every Security Council resolution that would insist that Israel live up to its obligations under international law.

One of the original goals of Zionism was to create a Jewish state that would be just another normal country. If that is what Israel wants (and that is a reasonable goal), then it must be held to the same standards as any other country, including the prohibition against annexing territory captured by force of arms.

2. THE SETTLEMENTS

Similarly, all Jewish settlements, every single one, in territories outside Israel’s 1967 boundaries, are a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed and is obligated to abide by, as well as UN Security Council Resolutions 446 and 465. As John Quigley, a professor of international law at Ohio State has written, “The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the existing order as little as possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there. It may not bring its own people to populate the country. This prohibition is found in the convention’s Article 49 which states, ‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’ ”

Here’s what former President Jimmy Carter wrote in the Washington Post at the beginning of the current intifada, “An underlying reason that years of US diplomacy have failed and violence in the Middle East persists is that some Israeli leaders continue to create facts by building settlements in occupied territory. . . It is unlikely that real progress can be made...as long as Israel insists on its settlement policy, illegal under international laws that are supported by the United States and all other nations.”

In fact, on December 5, 2001, Switzerland convened a conference of 114 nations that have signed the Fourth Geneva Convention (a conference boycotted by the US and Israel). The assembled nations decided unanimously that the Convention did indeed apply to the occupied territories, that Israel was in gross violation of their obligations under that Convention, that Jewish-only settlements in those territories were illegal under the rules of the Convention, and that it was the responsibility of the other contracting parties to stop these violations of international law.

To be in such flagrant violation of the norms of international behavior is bad for Israel’s standing in the world, bad for the Jewish people as a whole and, as we shall see, totally unnecessary.

3. ISRAEL’S SECURITY

It is sometimes argued that the settlements are necessary for Israel’s security, to protect Israel from terrorism and the threat of violence. But the reality is that the settlements are a major cause of Israel’s current security problems, not the cure for them. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis pointed out the aggressive nature of the settlements as follows, “It is false to see the settlements as ordinary villages or towns where Israelis only want to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors. They are in fact imposed by force—superior Israeli military force—on Palestinian territory. Many have been built precisely to assert Israeli power and ownership. They are not peaceful villages but militarized encampments. . .The settlement policy is not just a political but a moral danger to the character of the state.”

“But wouldn’t the Palestinians use their own state as a base for even more attacks against Israel?”, it might be asked. For one, the Palestinians have long agreed that their future state would be non-militarized, no foreign forces hostile to Israel would be allowed in, and international monitors could be stationed on Palestinian land in order to verify these conditions.

As for individual acts of terrorism, there is an historical precedent that gives a realistic answer to this question. During the first years after the Oslo agreements were signed, Hamas tried to disrupt the peace process but, because of the prevailing optimism, their influence in Palestinian society diminished and their armed attacks fell off sharply. What that means for the future is that if the Palestinian people feel that even a rough version of justice has been done, they will not support the more extreme elements in their political spectrum. This is not just guesswork; it already happened with just the hope of justice being done.

Another aspect of this is that if Israel had internationally recognized borders, then they could be defended much more easily than the current situation where every hill in Palestine is a potential bone of contention because of Jewish settlements encroaching on Palestinian land. If they and their settlers and the military apparatus they require were gone, and the Palestinians were given enough aid by the international community to create a viable economy in their own state, they would naturally be overjoyed and a positive turn of events would be the inevitable result.

4. “BUT DON’T THEY JUST WANT TO DRIVE THE JEWS INTO THE SEA?”

Officially since 1988, and unofficially for years before that, the Palestinian position has been that they recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace and security within their 1967 borders. Period. At the same time, they expect to be allowed to establish a truly independent, viable, contiguous, non-militarized state in all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. This is what UN Resolution 242 says: “Land for Peace”—and the Palestinian Authority has stated repeatedly that UN Resolution 242 has to be the basis for any long-lasting solution to the conflict.

It is true that some Palestinians advocate that all of historic Palestine should be under Arab control, but there is no support for this position, either in the international community, nor among most Palestinians. Statements to that effect are just hyperbole and do not represent the official Palestinian position. Similarly, statements by some Palestinians inciting people to violence against Israelis can easily be matched by statements from Orthodox rabbis and fundamentalist settlers calling for death to the Arabs. There are meshuganahs aplenty on both sides.

But since the Palestinians’ official position is clear, why shouldn’t Israel take the Palestinians up on this offer and withdraw from the occupied territories? Israel is far stronger militarily than all the Arab armies combined and would face no credible military threat from a Palestinian state. And the threat of individual terrorist acts would, of necessity, be much less once the Palestinians felt that they had received a modicum of justice.

What would Israel lose by this obvious solution of just ending the occupation, which they could do tomorrow if they wanted to (or if the US insisted that they do so)? The only thing it would “lose” is the dream of some of its citizens for a “Greater Israel”, where Israel’s boundaries are expanded to its biblical borders. The problem with that dream is that it totally ignores the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, and the will of virtually the entire international community. As long as the right-wing settlers and their supporters in the Israeli government insist on pursuing this dream, there will be nothing but bloodshed forever. The Palestinian people have lived in Palestine for thousands of years and they are not going away. Israel must conclude a just peace with them or innocent blood will continue to be shed indefinitely.

5. NEGOTIATIONS LEADING UP TO THE CURRENT INTIFADA

It has often been asked, “But didn’t Barak offer 95% of the Occupied Territories to Arafat at Camp David and doesn’t his rejection of that offer mean that they don’t want peace?” There are several crucial things to understand here. First, prisoners may occupy 95% of a prison’s space, but it is the other 5% that determines who is in control. Similarly, the offer Barak made at Camp David II would have left the main settlement blocks and their Jewish-only bypass roads in place. Along with the extensive areas Israel planned on retaining indefinately for its military use, this would have dissected Palestinian territory into separate bantustans (“native reservations”), isolated from each other, each surrounded by Israeli- controlled territory, having no common borders with each other or other Arab nations, with no control over their own air-space, with their main water aquifers (underneath the settlement blocs) taken by Israel, and with the Israeli military able to surround and blockade each enclave at will.

Map courtesy of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (Click map to enlarge.)

Jerusalem would have been similarly dissected so that each Palestinian island would be surrounded by an Israeli sea. This wouldn’t be an acceptable “end of the conflict” to you if you were Palestinian, would it? Please see the map on the cover of this paper and see for yourself what this “most generous” offer actually looked like. (Israel actually presented no maps at Camp David itself, but this was their offer of two months previous, and only marginal additional territory was theoretically offered at Camp David.)

The other important question here is 95% of what? “Greater Jerusalem” was unilaterally annexed by Israel after the 1967 war and so it was not included as West Bank territory in Barak’s offer, even though it takes up a large chunk of the West Bank, most of it having no municipal connection with the actual city of Jerusalem. The international community has never recognized Israeli sovereignty over “Greater Jerusalem” and has repeatedly declared that Israel should withdraw from this and all territories it conquered by force of arms in 1967. Barak’s offer also excluded large swaths of the Jordan Valley which the Israeli military would control indefinately. Thus the Foundation for Middle East Peace estimates that the actual percentage of occupied land offered to the Palestinians was more like 80%, not 95%.

After the Camp David talks ended without an agreement, did Arafat refuse to negotiate? In a word, no. At the end of Camp David it was Barak who said that his offers there would not be the basis for further discussions, that they were now “null and void”, that Camp David was an “all or nothing” summit. The Palestinians were willing to continue serious negotiations, and did at Taba, even after the current intifada had started. According to Ron Pundak, an Israeli diplomat who was a key architect of the Oslo Accords, “The negotiations in Taba, which took place moments before Barak’s government lost the elections, proved that a permanent status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians was within reach. (It) led to dramatic progress on all issues on the agenda.”

But meanwhile, Sharon had gone to the Temple Mount with 1000 Israeli soldiers in tow, followed the next day by a demonstration of Palestinians (who had no firearms), which was met with totally unnecessary lethal force by the Israeli police, resulting in at least four Palestinians being shot and killed. This demonstration, which could have been contained by nonlethal means if the Israeli government had wanted to, was the beginning of the current cycle of violence.

6. LOOKING AT CAUSE AND EFFECT

“What about Palestinian crimes? Why don’t you lay equal blame on them?” Certainly, Palestinians have committed grave crimes, and in any process of reconciliation, both sides will have much to answer for. But as Jews, we are responsible to look at Israel objectively, and not just when Israelis are victims of violence.

In order to understand why there is the level of violence we see today, it is necessary to understand how we got to this point.

a) Before the 1967 war. Before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, there was little organized Palestinian resistance. The majority of the tension was between Israel and the neighboring states. For the most part, violence between Israel and the Palestinians was limited to isolated Palestinian “infiltrations”, as Israel generally referred to them.

The Israeli population may certainly have believed that they were in mortal danger from the armies of their Arab neighbors. But by the mid-1960s, Israeli leaders had a good deal of confidence that they could defeat a combination of Arab forces similar to that which they acomplished in 1948, and with greater ease. History, of course, proved them correct, which calls into question the myth that Israel was fighting a selfdefensive war for its very existence in 1967.

b) The 1967 war itself. The myth that the 1967 war was a purely defensive one is further weakened by statements of Israeli leaders themselves. For example, the New York Times published an article on May 11, 1997 quoting Moshe Dayan’s own diaries, in which he admits that the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights in 1967 did so less for security than for the farmland. “They didn’t even try to hide their greed for that land. . . The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us”, Dayan wrote.

Or again from Prof. John Quigley’s landmark book, “Palestine And Israel”, “Mordecai Bentov, a cabinet minister who attended the June 4 (1967) cabinet meeting and supported the decision to invade Egypt, said Israel’s ‘entire story’ about ‘the danger of extermination’ was ‘invented of whole cloth and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories’.”

Even Menachem Begin said, “The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” In short, the argument of self-defense does not stand up to a close examination of the historical record.

c) Peace Proposals after the 1967 war. In 1969, Nixon’s Secretary of State, William Rogers, proposed a peace plan based on UN Resolution 242, which would have guaranteed Israel’s security within her pre-1967 borders. Israel rejected it out-of-hand. In 1971, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat offered Israel a similar proposal (which did not mention Palestinian rights at all). This was also rejected by Israel.

In 1976, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the PLO supported a resolution in the UN Security Council affirming Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, as in UN Resolution 242, but with a Palestinian state created alongside Israel. Israel opposed it and the US vetoed it. Arafat personally reaffirmed his support of a two-state solution in statements made to Senator Adlai Stevenson in 1976, and Rep. Paul Findley and New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis in 1978. The Saudis made similar proposals in 1979 and 1981, which were reiterated in their 2002 peace proposal, adopted by the entire Arab League.

Yet Israel rejected all these peace proposals, and more, even though Israel’s security was guaranteed in each one of them. Why? The historical record is clear that Israel’s desire for additional land has been the single most important factor behind its expansionist policies. As David Ben-Gurion said in 1938, “I favor partition of the country because when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine.”

In sum, the 1967 war was not a purely defensive war on Israel’s part, as Begin told us. The Israeli army met very little Palestinian resistance during the early years of the occupation. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, most Palestinian violence came from groups outside of the Occupied Territories. It is the Israeli desire to retain control over the West Bank, its expanding settlements and land appropriations that have sown the seeds of the situation we have today.

d) The Israeli occupation as the root cause of the violence. The main hallmark of the Israeli occupation has been the forcible expropriation of over half of the West Bank and Gaza for Jewish-only settlements, Jewish-only by-pass roads and Israeli closed military areas. These expropriations are possible only because of overwhelming Israeli military might and are, in and of themselves, acts of violence—just as armed robbery is an act of violence, even if no one is hurt. Can we really expect that no violent reaction to it would have occured?

Israel’s former Attorney General, Michael Ben-Yair stated point-blank in Ha’aretz (3/3/02) that, “We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. . . In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.”

e) How did the current level of violence come about? Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians are well documented in our own media. And, while major Israeli incursions have gotten a good deal of attention, day-to-day excesses of the Israeli military have not been so widely reported. To get an accurate picture of the chain of events, let’s look at the reports issued by human rights groups near the beginning of the current intifada.

Human Rights Watch, for example, stated that, “Israeli security forces have committed by far the most serious and systematic violations. We documented excessive and indiscriminate use of lethal force, arbitrary killings, and collective punishment, including willful destruction of property and severe restrictions on movement that far exceed any possible military necessity.”

B’Tselem is Israel’s leading human rights group and their detailed analyses of the current intifada can be found at www.btselem.org. They concluded early on that, “In spite of claims to the contrary, Israel has not adopted a policy of restraint in its response to events in the Occupied Territories...Israel uses excessive and disproportionate force in dispersing demonstrations of unarmed Palestinians. . .Collective punishment, in the form of Israel’s severe restrictions on Palestinians’ movement in the Occupied Territories, makes life unbearable for hundreds of thousands with no justification.” Collective punishment is illegal under international law.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights reported the following, “There is considerable evidence of indiscriminate firing at civilians in the proximity of demonstrations and elsewhere (by Israeli troops). . .The live ammunition employed includes high-velocity bullets which splinter on impact and cause the maximum harm. Equally disturbing is the evidence that many of the deaths and injuries inflicted were the result of head wounds and wounds to the upper body, which suggests an intention to cause serious bodily injury rather than restrain demonstrations. . . The measures of closure, curfew or destruction of property constitute violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and human rights obligations binding upon Israel.”

Amnesty International has also made numerous statements on the current intifada, including the following: “Amnesty International reiterated its long-standing calls to Israel to end its policy of liquidations and other arbitrary killings and urged the international community to send international observers . . . In these state assassinations the Israeli authorities offer no proof of guilt, no right to defense. Extrajudicial executions are absolutely prohibited by international law.”

This attitude of the disposability of Palestinian life has now filtered down to the ordinary soldier. An IDF reservist interviewed on prime-time First Channel Israeli TV (12/14/01) stated, “Nowadays, there is much less of a dilemma. We more or less got a clearance from both the military and the political echelons. Nowadays, we shoot them in the head and no questions asked.” Is this what we want our Jewish legacy to be?

The overwhelming consensus of these reports means that Israeli demands for the Palestinians to “stop the violence” turns reality on its head. The Palestinians have suffered almost four times the fatalities that Israel has in the current fighting, as well as tens of thousands of serious injuries. Furthermore, answering stone throwing with M-16 military weapons designed for battlefield use, or ineffective Molotov cocktails with very effective armored tanks and attack helicopters is simply not morally justifiable.

It is also important to keep in mind that many of Israel’s current actions have been going on, in various degrees, for the last 35 years—systematic torture of Palestinians in Israeli jails, the forcible and illegal appropriation of over half the West Bank and Gaza by Israel for Jewish-only uses, daily humiliations and abuse at Israeli military checkpoints all over Palestinian land—these have combined to bring Palestinian anger to a boiling point.

In sum, we have seen that Israeli actions have served to seriously escalate the violence, and that Israel’s stubborn refusal to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even to the extent of just stopping its settlement activity, has been a major obstacle to any progress towards peace.

To be sure, Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians have also been major obstacles towards such progress. Occupation and repression can never justify terrorism against civilians, but neither do terrorist acts by a few negate the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

The best way to address these crimes is to end the occupation which inspires the Palestinians to commit them. Recent history has demonstrated clearly that support for such crimes, and the number of Palestinians willing to commit them, drops precipitously when the Palestinians have had hope for independence, and risen sharply in response to the intensifying occupation and expansion of settlements.

We must also bear in mind that we are not morally responsible for Palestinian crimes, although we must work to prevent them. But we are morally responsible for Israeli actions taken in our name and with our tax dollars.

7. THE JEWISH PEACE MOVEMENT

One’s opinion on the Israel/Palestine conflict need not be a black or white question; you can support the Israeli people but still criticize their government’s illegal and ultimately selfdestructive policies.

We believe that the Jewish peace movement, both in Israel and around the world, has a far better plan to ensure Israel’s security. That plan is to create real peace as a consequence of real justice being done, not a “peace” of victor and vanquished. We recommend that you go to www.gush-shalom.org, www.btselem.org and www.batshalom.org to read for yourself what thinking Israelis demand of their own government.

Thousands of Israelis, including hundreds of Israel’s top university professors, are convinced their government is committing unpardonable acts and have taken public stands against them. For example, over 400 reserve combat officers and soldiers in the IDF have publicly stated their moral opposition to Sharon’s increasingly brutal use of force during the current intifada. These “refuseniks” have the sympathy of a growing portion of the Israeli public, now up to 26% of those surveyed in a February 2002 poll. Their statement reads, in part:

“We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country. . .hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight in this War of the Settlements. We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people. We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense. The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose—and we shall take no part in them.”

Even Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet (Israel’s equivalent to the FBI), recently stated in Le Monde, “I favor unconditional withdrawal from the Territories, preferably in the context of an agreement, but not necessarily. What needs to be done, urgently, is to withdraw from the Territories, a true withdrawal which gives the Palestinians territorial continuity.”

So if disagreement with the Israeli government is kosher in Israel, shouldn’t it also be a topic of discussion among American Jews? For just one example, a recent survey of American Jewish attitudes showed that 35% of us think that sharing Jerusalem would be an acceptable outcome of peace talks, in total contradiction to the views expressed by the major American Jewish organizations that claim to speak in our name. Our community does not, and should not, have just one opinion on these questions. What is needed is more discussion, not less, on these crucial matters.

The intifada is not primarily the result of Arab religious fanaticism or blind anti-Semitism or “inherent violent tendencies”. Rather, in our view, it is the inevitable result of the most basic human emotions—their need to be free and to live with dignity in the land of their ancestors. A Palestinian child who is awakened at dawn by Israeli soldiers demolishing his home and uprooting the family’s olive grove does not need anyone to tell him to hate.

The Israeli Occupation has seriously eroded the Jewish people’s proud moral heritage, developed over the centuries; and, in any case, we are convinced it will never work, even in the most pragmatic terms. The Palestinians will always resist being under military occupation, and have the right, under international law, to do so. As a result, there will never be real security for Israel until there is a reasonable version of justice for the Palestinians. How could it be otherwise?

8. ISRAEL’S SECURITY - Continued

“But doesn’t Israel have to do something to stop the suicide bombers?” A reasonable question, and here is a most reasonable answer from Gush Shalom’s founder, Uri Avnery:

“When tanks run amok in the center of a town, crushing cars and destroying walls, tearing up roads, shooting indiscriminately in all directions, causing panic to a whole population —it induces helpless rage.

“When soldiers crush through a wall into the living room of a family, causing shock to children and adults, ransacking their belongings, destroying the fruits of a life of hard work, and then break the wall to the next apartment to wreck havoc there—it induces helpless rage.

“When officers order to shoot at ambulances, killing doctors and paramedics engaged in saving the lives of the wounded, bleeding to death—it induces helpless rage.

“And then it appears that the rage is not helpless after all. The suicide bombers go forward to avenge...

“Anyone who believes that Arafat can push a button and stop this is living in a dream world. . . At best, the pressurecooker can cool off slowly, if the majority of the people are persuaded that their honor has been restored and their liberation guaranteed. Then public support for the ‘terrorists’ will diminish, they will be isolated and wither away. That was what happened in the past.”

9. SOURCES OF INFORMATION

A major cause of misunderstanding between the Jewish peace movement and other American Jews is that we rely on different sources of information. If what you know about Israel and Palestine comes from the corporate press, TV news &/or the mainstream Jewish press, then your perception of events will be determined by their world-view. As Jewish media critic Normon Solomon wrote in 2001, “Searching the Nexis database of U.S. media coverage during the first 100 days of this year, I found several dozen stories using the phrase ‘Israeli retaliation’ or ‘Israel retaliated.’ During the same period, how many stories used the phrase ‘Palestinian relatiation’ or ‘Palestinians retaliated’? One. Both sides of the conflict, of course, describe their violence as retaliatory. But only one side routinely benefits from having its violent moves depicted that way by major American media.”

If, however, you supplement your information by reading the Israeli press, progressive magazines like Tikkun or The Nation, internet sites like www.commondreams.org and radio stations of the Pacifica network, then a very different picture of what is going on emerges. In particular, we suggest that you sign up for our free email news service, the Jewish Peace News, which gives you the latest news and most cogent analyses of Middle East events, much of it from the Israeli press. You can subscribe by sending an e-mail to jewishpeacenews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

10. SHARON’S CURRENT POLICIES

Ariel Sharon has always opposed real negotiations with the Palestinians, preferring instead to try to defeat them militarily. He has vehemently opposed all Palestinian/Israel agreements and has repeatedly stated that he has no intention of returning a single settlement to Palestinian rule.

Even the editors of the Washington Post (2/22/02) wrote that, “During lulls in the conflict, Mr. Sharon frequently has been the first to renew the fight; during three weeks in December (2001) and early January (2002) when the Palestinians responded to a call from Mr. Arafat and stopped almost all attacks, Israeli forces killed a dozen Palestinians.” The obvious conclusion to draw is that Sharon does not want peace or real negotiations, just a vanquishing of his sworn enemies.

Indeed, if Sharon really wanted Arafat to arrest Palestinian militants, then why has he systematically destroyed the Palestinian Authority’s ability to do so? According to the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, “The Palestinian police and security services have hardly any premises or prisons left in which to put terrorists, even if the decision was taken to arrest them; the bombardments were all too thorough.”

Most crucially, in the spring of 2002, Israel commenced its most severe armed attacks yet in the West Bank, involving the following “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions— some of them rising to the level of war crimes, according to Human Rights Watch and other monitoring groups.

• Israeli snipers on the tops of buildings, shooting anything that moves.
• Ambulances shot at, medical personnel unable to evacuate the wounded, who have then died needlessly from their wounds.
• Civilian neighborhoods bombed by U.S.-supplied helicopter gunships, F-16 fighter jets and Israeli tanks, causing widespread devastation and, inevitably, many civilian causalties.
• Palestinian homes crushed by military bulldozers—sometimes, as in Jenin, with the occupants still inside.
• Wanton destruction of the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society—water pipes and pumping stations, electrical power poles and plants, medical facilities, schools, hospitals, mosques and churches, public buildings, etc., in addition to massive looting and gratiuitous vandalization of homes, businesses and governmental offices.
• The use of “human shields” for Israeli military actions.
• Journalists shot at who try to document the above gross violations of international law.

And Israel is now constructing a “buffer zone” that will de facto annex about 15% of the West Bank to Israel and break it up into 8 separate bantustans, each surrounded by concrete barricades, hi-tech barbed-wire and electric fences, canals, guard towers, etc. In other words, 8 big open-air prisons, which Palestinians cannot get out of, except at the whim of the Israeli authorities. Again, this kind of collective punishment is specifically outlawed by the Fourth Geneva Convention.

A joint statement by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists (4/07/02) stated, “We strongly deplore actions by the state of Israel that harm persons protected by international humanitarian law. . . Such actions violate international standards and transcend any justification of military necessity.”

Even in practical terms, these Israeli actions are counterproductive. As Gush Shalom writes, “The retaliatory and punitive raids by the army do manage to intercept some potential suicide bombers—but the very same raids and incursions, by demonstrating the brutality of the Occupation, also increase on the Palestinian side, the motivation for retribution, and help the recruitment of new suicide bombers. Only an end to the Occupation by political means, allowing a fair expression of the basic Palestinian aspirations, can dry up the suicide bombing phenomenon at its source, and provide new hope to the desperate young Palestinians from whose ranks the bombers are recruited.”

The recent upsurge in anti-semitism worldwide is clearly connected with escalated Israeli aggression. As Israel has succeeded in convincing many people that it represents world Jewry, many supporters of Palestinians have directed their anger at Israeli actions against Jewish institutions in their own countries. Right-wing white supremacist forces have also seized this opportunity to give their anti-semitic venom legitimacy. Thus all Jews have a stake in seeing the sorts of human rights violations we have just described stopped.

CONCLUSION

Any country has the right and the responsibility to protect its citizens, and Israel is no exception. But its policies for the last 35 years, and especially during the current intifada, have been based on the old adage, “the best defense is a good offense”. While that’s OK in football, in Israel that has translated into systematic torture or ill-treatment of literally hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, according to B’Tselem and other reputable groups. It means wanton cruelty being inflicted every day at military checkpoints, wanton destruction of Palestinian homes, and illegal strangling of Palestinian economic life, leading to extreme deprivation. And there is no other phrase than “war crimes” to accurately describe many of the actions of the IDF during the attacks against the Palestinian civilian population in the spring of 2002. In short, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is simply wrong—brutal, illegal and unnecessary.

We do agree that both sides have done poorly in advancing the cause of peace. As Jews, however, it is incumbant upon us to put our own house in order, above all else. As Americans, our responsibility is doubled. Our government has, through unprecedented financial and political support, allowed Israel to maintain its occupation and commit human rights violations with complete impunity. Thus, we are both responsible for the escalation and in a unique position to do something about it.

In the long-run, the only hope for a normal, peaceful life for the people of Israel is for their government to end their occupation of Palestinian land, allow the creation of a viable Palestinian state, and live and let live. The only other alternative is the current situation of endless bloodshed, which our silence, among other things, makes possible.

HOW TO DO YOUR PART FOR PEACE

If you have found this paper enlightening, please join A JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE and help us in our work. We have been organizing and educating people about the real causes of the unrest in Israel and Palestine since 1996. Among our many useful projects, we make available to people, free of charge, an e-news service that delivers daily to its readers the best articles on the current conflict, largely from the Israeli press. To sign up for the Jewish Peace News, simply send an e-mail to jewishpeacenewssubscribe@ yahoogroups.com. A JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE has made great strides in the past year. In order for us to continue to grow and expand our services and our reach, we need your help. Your donations will make it possible for us to hire new staff members, increase our educational services and vastly expand our media reach. All contributions are tax-deductible. To get in touch with us, write us at P.O. Box 13286, Berkeley, CA 94712, or email us at info@jewishvoiceforpeace.org. Our website is full of up-to-date information and is located at www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org. Only by joining with others who agree that the Occupation must end can we make a real difference. The U.S. government must come to understand that a good part of the American Jewish community does not condone Israel’s illegal and excessive actions. Only then will it be able to reverse its position of unqualified support for whatever the Israeli government does. And that is the key to ending the nightmare of the Occupation once and for all. From JVP: We will be happy to send you copies of this paper for 30¢ each (our cost) for you to give to your friends and family. If you can give more to help support us in our work, it will be greatly appreciated. Your efforts for peace are crucial. Shalom. Published by: A Jewish Voice For Peace P.O. Box 13286, Berkeley, CA 94712 www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org info@jewishvoiceforpeace.org