Revisiting Lydda: A Passover/Easter Story!

Dear Friend,

My 102 1/2 year old mother died on Thursday. I'm reflecting on family values to speak at her funeral this coming Monday, April 14, 2014.

A friend from I/P (Salim Munayer, from MUSALAHA), shares the attached story about his father, Yacoub, who was visited by Joseph Ben-Eliezer, part of the military detachment in 1948 that drove out the Palestinians who were living there, to make way for the State of Israel.

I'm attaching two things:

1) Salim Munayer's introduction to a 12 minute MUST SEE video of Joseph Ben-Eliezer's visit to Salim's father Yacoub, in Lydda (Lod) with the link to the YouTube video; and,

2) My review of Ari Shavit's chapter on Lydda in his book, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel. (For a copy, ask me for it at The man who reached out to bless my father: The story of Joseph Ben-Eliezer

I recently wrote the forward to a book, which was translated into Arabic, about the life of Joseph Ben-Eliezer. This is a story that I have been asked to share many times. It is a story about an act of forgiveness and reconciliation. In his book, Ben-Eliezer, a Jewish follower of Jesus shares about his suffering at the hands of the Nazis during the horrifying events of World War II, his journey to the land and fighting in the war of 1948. His unit served in Lydda, where many atrocities were committed against the people of this town. Years later, Ben-Eliezer returned to the land to seek forgiveness from my father, Yacoub Munayer, a Palestinian from Lydda. These two men are no longer living with us today, but they are examples and role models for all of us. Their stories are not easy to tell because it speaks of the painful histories of our peoples in this land. Yet, at the same time their stories give a vision for the future, and hope and encouragement to those of us working in reconciliation.


I would like to honor both Joseph Ben-Eliezer and my father Yacoub Munayer by sharing with you the video Crossroads at Lod that Joseph Ben-Eliezer’s family has provided. May it be a blessing to all this coming Passover and Easter! [Salim Munayer, from MUSALAHA]

To view the short video clip about Joseph Ben-Eliezer and Yacoub Munayer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQHyKY_Z-T4 (Don't forget my review of Shavit's take on Lydda, in the attachment below, to which the video is an illustration!)

John Kleinheksel for FPI (There is no PEACE without JUSTICE; there is no justice without LOVE).

Beware of Taking Pity on the Enemy!

Beware of Taking Pity on the Enemy!

Israelis have experienced a new Exodus in the 20th century. Palestinians are still seeking their Moses for the 21st century.

There are many ways to frame an Exodus from oppression to freedom. Reading the lectionary for today (April 4, 2014) brought to my mind one way of seeing how Moses emerged as a leader for the Israelites of old. (Will it happen for today’s Palestinians?)

Pharaoh’s Empire dictated the elimination of alien Hebrews from the land. (Besides, the Hebrews were a demographic bomb waiting to go off – Ex.1:8-10) Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you [midwives] shall throw into the Nile (Ex. 1:22).

Turns out Pharaoh’s daughter acts against Empire rules! She is bathing in the Nile, spies a basket in the bulrushes, hears the cries of what is surely a Hebrew baby, and tragedy of tragedies, takes pity on him. A crying, vulnerable, abandoned baby boy, obviously in peril, comes right “in her face”.


She immediately knew it “must be one of the Hebrews’ children” (Ex. 2:6b). Was there a crisis of conscience for her? Did she agonize over what she should do? Did she know the official position of the Empire?

She subverts Dad’s stated policy. Instead of destroying the threat, she takes the enemy into her own home! An enemy with access to the levers of power. Bad mistake!

Compassion is the beginning of the End of Empire domination! Compassion overturns oppression. (Is there a Palestinian insider, now outsider, poised to confront Empire? Israelis are keeping someone like Marwan Barghouti in prison for a reason. Why did the Afrikaners ever let Nelson Mandela out of prison? Like Barghouti, Moses was guilty of killing someone in the oppressor class. He was surely a persona non grata if and when operating in Egypt. Yet Moses was a “freedom-fighter”. Although he was not invited back, he went back to where his violent past haunted him, seeking a different, nonviolent way, just as Mr. Barghouti, Fatah and the younger leadership has renounced violence and want to return to help their people).

There is much debate over acts of compassion vs. judicial acts to overturn systemic injustice. I maintain both are needed. This episode shows that the beginning of the journey from oppression to freedom begins in an act of compassion. Pharaoh’s daughter, disobeying Empire’s edict by giving in to mercy, begins Empire’s downfall. Moses matures from seeking violent overthrow of injustice to nonviolent resistance to his people’s oppression. But it all started when he was brought into the heart of Empire by Pharaoh’s daughter’s act of rebellion. She disobeyed the sign that read: “Don’t go there. Let them rot in a watery grave. This is our land. There is no room for aliens, strangers, undesirables who will eventually overwhelm us”.

She should have known better. Foolish girl! She should have known there is no room in the Empire for compassion. When you show any mercy, it is the beginning of the End. Shame on you, daughter!

Israel Attacks Anti-Christian Zionists!

Dear Friend,

Today, an even greater and more successful anti-Christian Zionist conference comes to a close at Bethlehem Bible College.

The "Christ at the Crossroads" has had many iterations (the most recent in Philadelphia just before last Christmas).

The new thing is that it has caught the attention of Israeli authorities, who fear it will cut into one of their staunchest sources of support: Christian Zionists in the US.

A Christian Palestinian, Daoud Kattub, discusses the brouhaha in the attached link I'm sending. Check it out.

I'm also attaching a piece I did for a class I taught at "my congregation" a few years ago. It is a summation of Gary Burge's book debunking Christian Zionism. (Those not on my listserv, please request a copy at "friendsforpeace8atgmail.com")

To say (with Christian Zionists) that the present State of Israel has all the land deeded to them by God is a gross misreading of the Old and New Testament scriptures and must be exposed as heretical at every crossroads imaginable. Thank you, friends "At the Crossroads" for what you are doing! JRK

Here is the link:

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/christ-conference-evangelical-christian-palestine.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=09102cc0bc-January_9_20141_8_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-09102cc0bc-102307945

An Open Letter to Pope Francis

Dear Friend,
This May 2014, the Pope will visit Israel/Palestine.

SABEEL (a center of liberation theology with headquarters in Jerusalem) and FOSNA (Friends of Sabeel, North America) have joined in petitioning the Pope to advocate for the rights of the children and youth of Israel/Palestine.

You may read the Letter by going to the FOSNA site.

You may sign the petition/letter by following the prompt/link below.

Here is the press release that came out (yesterday) on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2014


Ash Wednesday Letter to Pope Francis: Speak out against Targeting of Palestinian Children

In anticipation of the Pope’s May visit to the Holy Land, an Open Letter signed by over 200 bishops, clerics, members of religious orders and theologians from several faith traditions, was delivered today to Pope Francis. The letter asks the Pope to speak out against the Israeli army’s program of kidnapping, detention, and systematic abuse of Palestinian children and to call for an end to the occupation and colonization of Palestine.

The letter, whose signers include over 20 bishops, cites a recent UNICEF report that documents nighttime arrests, blindfolding and shackling of children between 12 and 18 years of age. Based on over 400 sworn testimonies, UNICEF concluded that the “ill-treatment of children who come into contact with the system appears to be widespread, systematic, and institutionalized throughout the process.”

“With this letter, we are raising the profile of the well-documented systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children,” said Rev. Don Wagner. “The Israeli government is purposefully going after children, who are clearly vulnerable, to deeply scare and traumatize them.”

Wagner is the National Program Director of Friends of Sabeel-North America (FOSNA.org), which initiated the letter. FOSNA supports the work of Sabeel, a Jerusalem-based peace and justice organization founded by Palestinian Christians.

The letter notes that similar concerns about the mistreatment of Palestinian children have been raised by Save the Children, the United Nations Commission Against Torture, Military Court Watch, Defense of Children International, and B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization.

“The enthusiastic response to our request for signers to the letter indicates the urgency of these concerns,” Wagner said. “Now that the letter has been delivered, we would like to invite people worldwide to join this appeal to Pope Francis and raise this issue with their media, human rights organizations, and governments until this targeting of children and the occupation are ended."

The petition to support the letter is hosted at www.endtheoccupation.org/Letter2Pope

Wagner said that FOSNA initiated the letter in the hope that Pope Francis would speak out for the people of Palestine as he has boldly spoken for the poor and oppressed elsewhere.

“During his upcoming May visit, we want the Pope to publicly call upon the Israeli government to end its intentional mistreatment of Palestinian children,” Wagner said, “as well as to end its prolonged military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip and its punitive and illegal blockade of Gaza, where 51 percent of the 1.8 million residents are under the age of 18.”

The letter is the first step, Wagner said, in a larger campaign to educate and mobilize faith and other communities in an effort to end the abuse of Palestinian children and the occupation that oppresses them and their families.

BDS (Boycotts, Disinvestment, Sanctions)

Many of us have long felt BDS is one of the few nonviolent ways of getting the attention of the Israeli government in re their systemic treatment of the native Arabs.

Finally, this discussion is coming out into the open (no more hidden or forbidden). I'm enclosing several letters in response to a NY Times piece by Jodi Rudoren about BDS. One from the highly regarded Hanan Ashrawi. There are others. Faithfully, JRK

Is a Boycott of Israel Just?

FEB. 18, 2014

Regarding “In boycott, a political act or prejudice?” (Page 2, Feb. 12): It’s galling that in a piece on the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.) movement, launched in 2005 by Palestinian civil society in response to Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights, Jodi Rudoren frames her story in terms of B.D.S. echoing the anti-Semitic boycotts of Nazi Germany, quoting several Israelis harshly critical of B.D.S. and just one Palestinian supporter. Ms. Rudoren even seems to endorse allegations that B.D.S. is anti-Semitic and directed at Jews rather than Israel and Israelis, writing, “Avoiding a coffee shop because you don’t like the way the boss treats his employees is voting with your wallet; doing so because the boss is Jewish — or black or female or gay — is discrimination.” Contrary to what Ms. Rudoren and the quoted B.D.S. critics suggest, the movement does not target Jews, individually or collectively, and rejects all forms of bigotry and discrimination, including anti-Semitism. B.D.S. is, in fact, a legal, moral and inclusive movement struggling against the discriminatory policies of a country that defines itself in religiously exclusive terms, and that seeks to deny Palestinians the most basic rights simply because we are not Jewish.

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, Ramallah, West Bank

The writer is a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and head of the P.L.O. Department of Culture and Information.



The B.D.S. movement has nothing to do with animus toward Jews. Many American Jews, myself included, are vigorously working in support of B.D.S. — and there are more and more of us with every passing month. We target Israel for boycott not because we believe Israel is the worst human rights violator (we don’t), but because Israel is the single largest recipient of American foreign aid, more than $3 billion a year. As Jews, as taxpayers, as people of conscience, we have not only the right but the moral obligation to use boycott and divestment as strategies of nonviolent resistance to Israel’s systematic, racist mistreatment of Palestinians being done on our nickel and in our names.

Hannah Schwarzschild Arlington, Mass.

The Palestinian boycott call was initiated in 2005, decades after Zionists evicted Palestinians from the lands of the future Israeli state, after all of Palestine came under Israeli control and occupation, and after thousands of Palestinians had been tortured, detained or killed. International institutions have pointed to Israel’s violations of international law. Yet the United States and Western countries have ignored the harsh realities of Palestinian life and the widening system of superior privilege for Jews in Palestine. From the Israeli-Jewish cocoon it looks like an attack on Israel and the Jewish nation when the criticism of Israeli actions against Palestinians grows after decades of singular support for Israel and total silence on the Palestinian issues. Israel needs to learn to follow international law. The boycott is a teaching tool, nothing more.

Martina Lauer Chesterville, Ontario

Ms. Rudoren notes that Mark Regev, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman, believes the B.D.S. movement is holding Israel to a higher standard than any other country in the world. Actually, the opposite is true. Israel itself likes to portray itself as having higher standards than most, while at the same time violating these standards with apparent impunity. Israel is a signatory to the Declaration of Human Rights, yet has violated almost all of its articles. Israel, in its Declaration of Independence, promised to provide equal rights and justice to all residents of Palestine-Israel, but apparently never had any intention of doing so. Israel promised, as a provision of the United Nations recognition of their state, to adopt a Constitution, but has never done so.

In view of the massive unquestioned support of Israel by the American government, one might assume that Israel would be more cooperative in the search for peace and justice. This has obviously not happened. Resorting to proclaiming anti-Semitism every time there are questions as to the policies of the Israeli government is the fallback position when all else fails. This should not be allowed.

Doris Rausch, Columbia, Md.

Everybody Hates Us!

Dear Friend,

A few weeks ago I attached a Buzzfeed January 21 article to my 47 I/Ps "on the ground in I/P".

It was about a feud between Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) one of my information sources and Ali Abunimah, another Palestinian here in the US among the Palestinian Diaspora. Ibish wants to champion the Two State solution (two states side by side in peace and security)and Abunimah wants to champion the One (pluralistic, democratic) State.

If you Google Buzzfeed, it will take you right to the article, an amazingly informative op-ed giving background few Americans are aware of. It is a microscopic glimpse into the divisions that hamper any progress in negotiations with the Israelis, who want to colonize all the land of their fore-bearers, at the expense of the natives of the land.

Two of the heavy hitters on my list got back in the discussion I invited, claiming that the ATFP was bought and paid for by the US government, implying that the One (pluralistic, democratic) State is the true goal of Palestinians.

I was prompted to compose this reply to my many friends in the I/P region where I visited in June, 2013:

Dear Friends "On the Ground",

AS you can see, only Mazin Qumsiyeh and Jonathan Cook responded to the article.
There is division among the ranks, it's true. I found great sympathy for a truly Palestinian State alongside Israel, among people I got to know on the ground (in June of last year).

This was surprising to me since there is great sympathy for one, democratic, pluralistic State among the Jews and Palestinians I have gotten to know in the US Diaspora (Miko Peled, THE GENERAL'S SON, e.g.).

Mazin and Jonathan strongly imply the "Two State" solution has been dead for a long time. It's hard to argue against that.

My sense is that one of the underlying I/P realities is that distrust of "the outside world" ("The World Will Always Hate Us and Want to Destroy Us), is part and parcel of the Israeli DNA. Some things don't change through the centuries. This is intractable, unyielding and truly disheartening to me (others?). "We are separate, different from you". The Holocaust reinforced 2,000 years of history. We will (finally) be in charge. This land fulfills "God's" promises to us from 3,500 years ago! (For example, see Genesis 21:8 - 10).

Military force, imposing my will against yours is the world's way of dealing with issues. I firmly disagree. There is a better way. Resisting unjust laws is part of it. Helping the helpless, caring for the abandoned and abused, working to heal brokenness, is the better way. Rebuilding destroyed homes (ICAHD). Working for BDS (Jewish Voices for Peace in the US).

For persons of faith (this is I), HOPE is part and parcel of our DNA. We never give up HOPE. We believe in what we do not see, cannot see. We live, act and believe against all the evidence to the contrary. We never give up, doing the right things, even though it goes against official policies. The villagers of Le Chambon in France during the Nazi era are a good example. Check it out.

In the final chapter of (Malcolm Gladwell's new book, DAVID AND GOLIATH, he tells the story of Le Chambon, France. When France fell to the Nazis in World War II, the local Huguenot pastor and his flock determined that if the Germans told them to do anything “contrary to the Gospel,” they would refuse.

The refusals included everything from signing loyalty oaths and giving fascist salutes to hiding Jews. What’s more, they told the Germans that they intended to resist.

What happened in Winnipeg (a mother named Denken offered someday, to forgive her daughter's murderer) and Le Chambon were examples of what Gladwell, borrowing a phrase from filmmaker Pierre Sauvage, whose family was protected by the people of Le Chambon, calls “weapons of the spirit.” It’s “the peculiar and inexplicable power that comes from within” (taken from Breakpoint, January 27, 2013).

Many of us are working to change the whole attitude of the US Congress toward Israeli injustices. Please keep up the nonviolent resistance to policies that violate human dignity and mutual self-respect. JRK for FPI

Insight Leading to Action!

Dear Friends,
Dear Friend,

As you can see, I'm sending fewer things out. Saving my powder for musket shots that capture the truth about the realities in I/P and show the way forward.

Ilan Pappe, a Jewish historian, self-exiled to the UK, is interviewed on Electronic Intifada, bringing to Americans truth that is not permitted in the US media. It is perceived as Anti-Semitic. Sentiments such as these, even though written by Jews, will not be found in any of our newspapers. Some of you (like me), may want to dare the editor of your local newspaper, to print it as a guest editorial. Ilan Pappe is widely respected all over the world, although he is no longer welcomed to teach in his own country, Israel. Truth hurts, especially if you can't stand it.

I want to thank my friends in the Israeli/Palestinian Mission Network of the PC(USA) for passing along this insightful interview.

It's not too long, but gives important, brief, historical perspective and answers questions people are asking. This is a good piece to send to people in your world who might be open to hearing "the other side of the story". (And John Kerry is trying so hard to do the impossible. When will we ever learn?)

The world celebrates the life and example of Nelson Mandela! Many of us are hopeful that the model exemplified by him in overcoming our Dutch brothers' and sisters' Apartheid administration, will be successfully used in overcoming an even worse kind of ethno-centric "Jewish State" that systemically discriminates against the native inhabitants (to say nothing about all the nasty details which I have fed you ad nauseam). Faithfully yours, JRK



“We don’t have the luxury to wait” for Israel to change on its own, says Ilan Pappe
Brussels

8 December 2013

Few, if any, historians have done more to unearth the truth about Israel than Ilan Pappe.

His 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine documented how the uprooting of more than 750,000 Palestinians was the direct consequence of a plan drawn up by Zionist leaders in 1947. It arguably remains the most serious study published yet of the Nakba (catastrophe), the violent expulsion of Palestinians leading to Israel’s formation the following year.

Pappe’s outspoken criticisms of Israel have resulted in him being isolated by many of his Israeli peers. When he supported a Palestinian-led campaign for an academic boycott of Israel in 2005, the president of Haifa University called on Pappe to resign his teaching post at that college. Since moving to the UK, Pappe has remained a prolific writer on both Israel’s past and present.

He spoke to The Electronic Intifada contributor Frank Barat. A longer version of this interview can be seen in the video [on their website].

Frank Barat: You have written about how the first Palestinian intifada took place in the 1930s. Can you explain its significance?

Ilan Pappe: I think it is important to go back to even earlier than 1936 in order to understand it. You have to go back to the late nineteenth century when Zionism appeared as a movement. It had two noble objectives, one was to find a safe place for Jews who felt insecure in a growing atmosphere of anti-Semitism, and the other was that some Jews wanted to redefine themselves in a national group, not just as a religion.

The problem started when they chose Palestine as a territory in which to implement these two impulses. It was clear — because the land was inhabited — that you would have to do it by force and you had to contemplate the depopulation of the indigenous people. It took time for the Palestinian community to realize that this was the plan.

By 1936, you could already see the beginning of the real result of this strategy: Palestinians were evicted from land purchased by the Zionist movement; Palestinians lost their jobs because of Zionist strategy to take over the labor market. It was very clear that the European Jewish problem was going to be solved in Palestine.

All these three factors pushed Palestinians for the first time to say “we are going to do something about it,” and they tried to revolt. You needed the all might of the British Empire to crush that revolt as it did happen. It took them three years; they used the repertoire of actions against the Palestinians that were as bad as those that would be used later on by the Israelis to quell the Palestinian intifadas of 1987 and 2000.

FB: This revolt of 1936 was a very popular revolt; it was the peasants that took up arms.

IP: Absolutely. The Palestinian political elite lived in cities of Palestine, but the main victims of Zionism up to the 1930s were in the countryside. That’s why the revolt started there — but there were sections of the urban elite that joined them.

I pointed out in one of my books that the British killed or imprisoned most of those who belonged to the Palestinian political elite and military or potential military elite.

They created a Palestinian society that was quite defenseless in 1947 when the first Zionist actions — with the knowledge that the British Mandate came to an end — had commenced. I think it had an impact on the inability of the Palestinians to resist a year later, in 1948, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

FB: You moved to Exeter in the UK in 2007, but still go back to Israel very often. How has the situation evolved in Israel over the last few years?

IP: The task of changing Jewish society from within is formidable. This society seems to be more and more entrenched on its positions.

If you compare Israel today with the Israel I left, or the Israel I grew up in, the trend is to become more chauvinistic, ethnocentric, intransigent — which makes us all feel that peace and reconciliation are very far away if we only rely on our hope that Jewish society will change from within.

FB: Should we, therefore, put all our energy on applying pressure from the outside or should we still try to make Israelis change their views?

IP: The reason why we are all debating this is because on the ground the machine of destruction does not stop for one day. We therefore don’t have the luxury to wait any longer. Time is not on our side.

We know that while we wait, many terrible things are happening. We also know there is a correlation between those terrible things happening and the realization of the Israelis that there is a price tag attached to what they are doing.

If they pay no price for what they are doing, they will even accelerate the strategy of ethnic cleansing. It’s therefore a mixture.

We urgently need to find a system by which you stop what is being done now, on the ground, and to also prevent what is about to happen. You need a powerful model of pressure from the outside.

As far as people from the outside are concerned, international civil society, I think the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] movement is as good as it gets. Still, it can’t be the only model or factor.

There are two additional factors to make it a successful process. One is on the Palestinian side. The question of representation needs to be sorted [out]. You need a good solution.

Secondly, you need to have a kind of educational system, inside, that takes the time to educate the Israeli Jews about a different reality and the benefit it will bring to them.

If those factors all work well together, and we have a more holistic approach to the question of reconciliation, things could change.

FB: The two-state solution seems to be the only one that powerful governments are taking seriously. Why do you think they are refusing to entertain the idea of a one-state solution?

IL: I think two things are taking place. One is the issue of Palestinian representation.

The people that claim to represent the Palestinians from the West Bank became the representatives of the whole Palestinian people. As far as the West Bank is concerned, you see why a two-state solution is attractive. It could mean the end of military control. One can understand this.

But this disregards the other Palestinians: the refugees, the ones from Gaza and the ones that live inside Israel.

That’s one of the difficulties. You have certain groups of Palestinians that, in my opinion, wrongly, believe that this is the quickest way to end the occupation. I don’t think it is.

The second reason is that the two-state solution has a logical ring to it. It’s a very Western idea, a colonialist invention that was applied in India and Africa, this idea of partition.

It became a kind of religion to the extent that you do not question it anymore. You work out how best to get there. That is surprising. To my mind it makes very intelligent people take this as a religion of logic. If you question the rationality of it, you are criticized.

This is why a lot of people in the West stick to it. Nothing on the ground would ever change their mind.

Five minutes on the ground shows you that the one state is already there.

It’s a non-democratic regime, an apartheid regime. So you just need to think about how to change this regime. You do not need to think about a two-state solution. You need to think about how to change the relations between the communities, how to affect the power structure in place.

FB: The Palestinian intellectual Edward Said died ten years ago. You knew him well. Can you say why Palestinians looked up to him so much?

IP: We miss him very much. I don’t think only Palestinians looked up to him for inspiration. He was one of the greatest intellectuals of the second half of the 20th century. We all looked at him for inspiration on questions of knowledge, morality, activism, not only on Palestine. We are missing his holistic approach, his ability to see things from above in a more wholesome way.

When you lose someone like that, you have people that are taking the fragmentation that Israel imposes on the Palestinians and act as if this is a reality itself. What we need is to overcome the intellectual, physical and the cultural fragmentation that Israel imposes on us, Palestinians and Jews, and to strive to come back to something far more organic and integrated so that the third generation of Jewish settlers and indigenous native people of Palestine could have a future together.

Frank Barat presents Le Mur a des Oreilles, a monthly radio show focused on Palestine.