Suddenly, It's a New World In US/Isr/Pal relationships

I suppose it is almost too much to ask, that we are finally seeing a crack in the wall that has prevented criticism of the Jewish state. The flood gates appear to be opening. Instead of toning down the "rhetoric" as many in Congress request, more of the "truth" must come out into the open. Here is a summary of recent events (with thanks to Noushin Framke, of the Isr/Pal Mission Network (PCUSA), for bringing it to our attention. JRK

Suddenly the ’special relationship’ is… embarrassing
by PHILIP WEISS on MARCH 15, 2010

My initial joy over the Biden insult was not misplaced. The Israeli blunder has catalyzed a new moment in the US-Israel special relationship and maybe, just maybe the beginning of the end. The lead thinktank of the Israel lobby today proclaims that US-Israel relations are "perilous." AIPAC panicked last night. Michael Oren is alarmed.

The Obama administration seemed to relish the opportunity to distance itself from Israel almost as if it had been rehearsing for a break and was only waiting for the provocation. Everyone piled on. Hillary was sharply critical, Joe Biden was critical to Netanyahu’s face, on Saturday there is the General Petraeus leak, and on Sunday David Axelrod is critical on the Sunday talk shows.

Of course, the conditions that the Obama administration is criticizing have been there for years: four decades of Israeli expansion and American passivity. And of course, the criticism has been murmured even in Washington for four decades. The difference this time is that high level political people are willing to express it openly.

That hypocrisy is cracking because politicians sense that they can get away with being halfway honest. The Obama administration senses what we all sense, and that even Tom Friedman senses when he goes on Meet the Press and talks about how much money we give Israel: word is getting out about the special relationship, and Americans are beginning to ask questions.

When both Joe Biden and General David Petraeus are reported to say that the special relationship is endangering American soldiers, they are only saying what Walt and Mearsheimer said in their historic paper four years ago, and what Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, described as the blinding flash of the obvious. But remember, Walt and Mearsheimer could not publish their paper in the United States, and when their book came out, the joke was that a lot of people in D.C. were reading it in brown paper covers, lest they be called anti-Semites.

You could not say that Israel was hurting our interests because Abrams, Libby, Wurmser, Feith, Frum, and Wolfowitz were helping guide the ship of state through the seas of Islamophobia. And intellectuals were just as afraid of the policers of official understanding, of Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Goldberg, Larry Summers, Richard Haass, and David Remnick and Bob Silvers too–Silvers who has never run a review of The Israel Lobby.

Now that atmosphere is changing, even in power circles. Of course, the best reflection of the change is Andrew Sullivan’s remarkable shift. Sullivan was not deterred by Leon Wieseltier’s calling him an anti-Semite, because he knows, the issue is just too important to world peace not to keep talking.

I don’t think you can say enough about Gaza, Goldstone, and the grassroots. Gaza vindicated those of us on the left who said that Israel was treating Palestinians like animals; and instead of understanding the moment and engaging the critics honestly, Israel hunkered down and smeared the critics, thereby discrediting itself in Europe and among young American peace types. I can point to many important moments over the last year: we have thecrazy video from Judaized East Jerusalem to thank, the young bloggers of the Gaza war, the suppressed Max Blumenthal video from Jerusalem, and the silent demonstration outside the Waldorf last week with its swarming pro-Israel loonies. BDS has played a role, too. It has upped the pressure and elicited more looniness: the Reut Institute’s bizarre allegation that BDS is working in tandem with Hizbullah.

Jeffrey Goldberg and Ethan Bronner have struggled to hide that looniness from Americans, still western awareness of Israeli looniness has grown. It has been fed by the Dubai hit captured on surveillance tapes and Netanyahu’s crude crackdown on dissent, and his ministers railing against intermarriage and assimilation. It has been fed by the hubris of Israel’s refusal to meet five congressmen sponsored by J Street; Politico runs Bob Filner’s piece on that diplomatic idiocy today, and Ahmed Tibi warned last week,"Through astonishing ineptness, rather than principled policy, Israel is risking the anger of its bankroller."

And today Netanyahu has exhibited more looniness,insisting on Israel’s right to East Jerusalem.

When the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs declares war on our president and then says his policy is "to make Israel cough up Palestine," any sensible person says I want nothing to do with these people. And when you remember that it was this very same thinktank that in Colin Powell’s view hatched the idea for the Iraq war, you say, Please get out of my life, now.

Suddenly the special relationship is embarrassing. Israel is like a bad party guest. We enabled its drunken behavior for years, now people are starting to talk.

It is only a matter of time before this new mood is reflected in the modern American ceremonies of scrutiny: investigative newspaper stories (catching up with Grant Smith), grandstanding op-eds that discover the existence of the Israel lobby, and more and more Congresspeople who dare to speak out. I’m optimistic. The high beams are on the special relationship, because it has done the unforgivable, it has damaged our pride.

Active Nonviolence is alive and well in Palestine/Israel

Dear Friend,
David Hartsough (3/12/2010) details the many places where active nonviolence is alive and well in Pal/Isr.
He concludes his lengthy remarks with these suggestions for right now in the struggle for security and justice for both sides: (with thanks to TIKKUN for bringing it to our attention, JRK).

MEND Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy
Another important part of the Palestinian Nonviolent movement is MEND (Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy) which is offering nonviolent training to hundreds of young Palestinians throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Their goal is to help educate and nurture a new generation of Palestinians with a deeper understanding of nonviolence and nonviolent action. (www.mendonline.org )

Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center
The Wi’am Center is working to support active nonviolence among Palestinians. They aim to improve the quality of relationships by addressing injustices rather than avenging them; dignifying persons on both sides of the conflict; promoting human rights and advocating for peace among all people. (www.alaslah.org )


Israeli Peace Movement
There are many hundreds of Israelis who are refusing to serve in the Israeli armed forces in the occupied territories and/or are total conscientious objectors. Many of them have served time, or are currently in prison, for taking this position.

We were deeply moved by the Israelis and Palestinians who have formed Bereaved Families for Peace (http://www.cjre.net/bereavedfamilies.htm) and Combatants for Peace (http://www.combatantsforpeace.org/).. Recognizing that their shared pain unites them, they are speaking together in schools and community groups. “We refuse to let our grief harden into hatred and actions of retaliation. Instead, we are turning, in compassion and reconciliation, to each other - Palestinians and Israelis - with the hearts of parents who want to join our voices and hands so that there will be no more bloodshed and no more lives of children wasted..”.

We had not known how many Israelis are also working for the peaceful, and nonviolent resolution of the Occupation. These include:

· 4,000 Refusers-- Israeli military who are refusing orders to serve in the illegally Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and hundreds of high school students who are being jailed for defying Israel’s compulsory military service. (Israeli law says that once you leave high school you are technically required to serve in the army. For men that can be up for three years, for women it’s 18 months.)

73 Israeli pilots are known to have refused to fly military missions over the Occupied Territories.

Other courageous groups of Israelis working for peace and justice include New Profile (www.newprofile.org/english/), Rabbis for Human Rights (www.rhr.org ), The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (http://www.icahd.org) and Women in Black (http://coalitionofwomen.org/home/english) who have been demonstrating every week for twenty-two years.

Conclusion/What Can We Do?
Throughout our time in Palestine, and later in Gaza it became very clear that the security of the Palestinians and the Israelis is inextricably linked. There is such significant interdependence between these two peoples, in an ancient and Holy Land, that they must work together to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Peace in the region can only be achieved through nonviolence, not more rockets and bombing and killing one another..

Unfortunately, in the short time since we were in Palestine and Israel, the harassment at these nonviolent demonstrations, and especially of the leaders of the Popular Committees in the villages, has significantly increased. The Israeli soldiers are using live ammunition more frequently, and are coming into the villages in the middle of the night, raiding the homes of the leaders and taking them off to jail for indefinite detention. Some have even been killed.

As former President John F. Kennedy once said, “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.” We in the peace and justice movement need to strengthen our support of this powerful nonviolent movement in Palestine, and help make peaceful change possible.


We can:

1. Keep the courageous Palestinians and Israelis resisting the Israeli occupation and Apartheid state in our thoughts and prayers.

2. Help get the word out, to our friends and the broader public, about these weekly nonviolent demonstrations and this amazing nonviolent movement in Palestine

http://www.internationalpopularstruggle.org/

3. Join an Interfaith Peace Builders,or a Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation. going to Israel and Palestine to meet peace and human rights workers working for a peaceful and just resolution to this tragic conflict. (www.ifpb.org) and , www.cpt.org I encourage you to join Scott Kennedy, of the Resource Center for Nonviolence, who co-led the delegation with me in December of 2009. He will be co-leading a IFPB delegation October 31-November 13, 2010 during the Palestinian Olive Harvest.

4. Send people to accompany the Palestinians in these nonviolent demonstrations and when requested, stay in their villages to help offer nonviolent protection. The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) (www.palsolidarity.org), Christian Peacemaker Teams (www.cpt.org), and the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program (www.eappi.org) have long-term delegates in the region.

5. Get moral, practical and financial support to this nonviolent movement –for legal support of those arrested, and for minimal support of some of the leaders of this movement who can no longer get to their fields to grow their crops and tend their animals. (Financial support for this movement can be sent to Peaceworkers at 721 Shrader St., San Francisco, CA 94117 and 100% of your contributions will be forwarded to the nonviolent movement in Palestine.)

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (


6. Promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli occupation of Palestine, and companies that profit from the occupation and apartheid policies, being called for by over 200 Palestinian and Israeli organizations. The goal of this campaign is to boycott companies that profit from the occupation and apartheid policies; this action will help bring economic and political pressure on the Israeli government to end the occupation of the West Bank, end the Siege of Gaza and end the Apartheid system in Palestine and Israel. (www.bdsmovement.net)


7. Work to help end the American blank check to the Israeli government of over $3 billion a year in military aid to the Israeli government. It condones the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine, subsidizes the building of the Apartheid wall between Israel and the West Bank , perpetuates the Siege of Gaza, and supports the violence being used against nonviolent demonstrators in the West Bank. Please contact your Congressional representatives and the President to voice your concern..

For more information on the nonviolent movement in Palestine and Israel, check the following links:

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

International network for the Palestinian Popular Nonviolent Resistance http://www.internationalpopularstruggle.org

American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights (http://www.aaper.org)

International Middle East Media Center http://imemc.org

Friends of Freedom and Justice, Bil’in www.bilin-ffj.org

Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
Highly recommended work:

Refusing To Be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeali Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation, by Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta. , (Ithaca Press, UK -2010, ISBN13: 9780863723421,)


David Hartsough is a Member of San Francisco Friends Meeting. He is married, is a father and grandfather, Director of PEACEWORKERS, Co-founder of the Nonviolent Peaceforce, and recently spent a month in Palestine and Israel co-leading an interfaith peace-building delegation.

I am grateful to Sherri Maurin, Jan Hartsough, Ken Butigan and Scott Kennedy for their invaluable assistance in writing/editing this article.

--
John Kleinheksel Sr
jandskleinheksel@gmail.com
www.friendsofpalestiniansandisraelis.blogspot.com

THE ESSENCE OF THE ISSUE

Is it true that the Obama Administration is finally standing up to the Israeli state (VP Biden) and the wretched settlement policy?

Isabel Kershner, in the March 9, 2010 issue of the NY Times, illumines the issue. She subtly unmasks Israeli policy:

1. Kick the Palestinians out of their homes, their land, and olive orchards.
2. Pass a law that if a home or building is not occupied for a period of time, its ownership reverts to Jewish state (and "citizens").
3. Then demand that the Palestinians to accept this policy, that is, not be "terrorists" (and remain permanent refugees).
4. Refuse to discuss the underlying issue, but agree to "negotiations" as long as nothing of substance is discussed.

That is the strategy. The US (and others) have long opposed such measures, but have not known what to do about it, since Israel is "friend".

By the way, go to www.pres-outlook.com for the (PCUSA) "Middle East study group report" (that will go to the July Gen. Ass. this year. The middle section (Part II), is a carefully reasoned theological treatment of Zion, the land, justice and (Part III) recommendations, due out 3.10.10). Truly yours, JRK

An Eviction Stirs Old Ghosts in a Contested City
By ISABEL KERSHNER
JERUSALEM — Having been removed in favor of Israeli nationalist Jews, members of the Palestinian Ghawi family have been sheltering this winter in a tent on the sidewalk opposite their home of more than five decades in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

For those who want to see a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the eviction of the Ghawis has touched on two sensitive nerves: the fate of East Jerusalem, where Israel and the Palestinians vie for control, and the abiding grievances of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war.

The circumstances of the Palestinians’ removal and the old ghosts it stirred have managed to arouse even Israel’s long-dormant peace camp. About 2,500 Israelis and Palestinians attended a demonstration here on Saturday night. Young Israeli and foreign activists have rallied around the cause. Increasingly, veteran members of Israel’s leftist establishment are also appearing at the weekly vigils held in Sheikh Jarrah every Friday afternoon.

“We are here to shout,” said David Grossman, a prominent Israeli author and peace advocate, while attending a vigil near the disputed houses on a recent Friday in the pouring rain. The settlers, he said, are doing everything they can to preclude any future deal for a Palestinian state.

Being close to the Old City and its holy sites, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood is coveted by both sides.

Last summer, 38 members of the Ghawi family were evicted by Israel from a two-story stone house in the mostly Palestinian neighborhood just north of the Old City walls. They were immediately replaced by a group of fervent Israeli nationalists after the Israeli courts, including the Supreme Court, upheld a 1970s ruling that the property had originally belonged to Jews.

Two other Sheikh Jarrah families have been removed by similar means in the past 16 months.

The Israeli government and municipal authorities say that they cannot intervene in the workings of the court and that they support the rights of Jews, like Muslims and Christians, to live in any part of the city they want.

For those who advocate dividing sovereignty over Jerusalem, however, the trickle of Jewish nationalists moving into predominantly Arab neighborhoods that were seized from Jordan in 1967 complicates the map. Moreover, reclaiming properties owned by Jews before 1948 in these areas, critics argue, invites counterclaims from Palestinian refugees who lost property in what is now Israel and undermines Israel’s rejection of their demand for a right of return.

The Friday protests have been attended by Israeli-Arab lawmakers, legislators from the leftist Meretz party and some high-profile intellectuals like Moshe Halbertal, a professor of Jewish law and philosophy.

Mr. Halbertal said he supported Israel’s policy against the right of return for Palestinian refugees — a position meant to ensure a Jewish majority in the Israeli state. But when it comes to Sheikh Jarrah, he added, Israel cannot have it both ways. He added that “the fabric of coexistence” in the city was delicate. Like others, he said he feared it could explode.

Heavy-handed police action against the demonstrators has only brought them more support. In January, 17 protesters were held for 36 hours after the police declared a rally illegal; a Jerusalem court later ruled that there was no basis for their arrest.

Accessibility is another draw. Unlike the relatively remote Palestinian villages where young Israeli leftists and anarchists join local residents and foreigners in protests against Israel’s West Bank barrier, Sheikh Jarrah is a few minutes’ drive from downtown Jerusalem.

Because of both the humanitarian and political aspects of the case, Israeli advocacy groups like Rabbis for Human Rights and Ir Amim, which focuses on Israeli-Palestinian relations in the city, have campaigned to bring it into the public eye.

Orly Noy, a spokeswoman for Ir Amim, said that by opening up the 1948 files, the Israeli authorities had crossed “a very dangerous red line.”

Israel claims sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, including the annexed eastern part that it captured in the 1967 war. The Palestinians demand the eastern section, including Sheikh Jarrah, as the capital of a future state. They see the Jewish settlement there as part of a larger plan to cement Israeli control.

At the heart of the neighborhood lies a shrine held by Jews to be the ancient tomb of Shimon Hatzadik, or Simeon the Just, a Jewish high priest from the days of the Second Temple. A small Jewish community lived in the compound around the tomb from the late 19th century; the last remnants left during the hostilities leading up to the establishment of Israel in 1948, after which the area fell under Jordanian control.

In the 1950s, Jordan and the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees gave 28 refugee families homes there. The families say that Jordan promised them full ownership, but the houses were never formally registered in their names.

In the early 1970s, the Israeli courts awarded two Jewish associations ownership of the compound based on land deeds that were a century old. The Palestinian residents were allowed to stay on as protected tenants on the condition that they paid rent to the Jewish groups.

Rejecting the court ruling, many of the Palestinian families refused to pay rent, making them eligible for eviction. Their lawyer claimed that the Jewish land deeds were forged but was not able to convince the Israeli courts.

Now Maysoun and Nasser Ghawi and their five children, the youngest 2 years old, spend their days in a protest tent on the sidewalk. The Palestinian Authority has rented them a small apartment in the northeast of the city, but Ms. Ghawi says they have been sleeping there only to escape the bitter cold.

“We have to be planted here,” Ms. Ghawi said one recent weekday, shortly after the protest tent had been confiscated by the Israeli police and rebuilt by neighbors and activists, as has happened several times. “I never thought we would be on the street,” she added. “We have been living here for 53 years.”

The Ghawis came to Jerusalem as refugees from the village of Sarafind, now Tzrifin, in central Israel. But they, like other Palestinians across the 1967 lines, cannot go to court to reclaim lost property because of what some describe as an asymmetry in the Israeli law.

In 1950, to protect the new Jewish state from the claims of the Palestinian refugees, Israel enacted the Absentees’ Property Law. It essentially strips Palestinians of any rights to property left behind in what is now Israel if they were in enemy territory, including East Jerusalem, between November 1947 and May 1948.

Yossi Sarid, a former Meretz leader and minister, recently wrote in the newspaper Haaretz that when Nasser Ghawi sits in his tent with his family, “Sarafind calls to them.”

The case of Sheikh Jarrah also presents a predicament for some mainstream Israelis.

Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a research institution in West Jerusalem, said he opposed a Jewish “right of return” to properties lost in the 1948 war. But he noted that more and more Arabs were buying apartments in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood where he lives.

“It cannot go one way in Jerusalem,” Mr. Klein Halevi said. “I am deeply torn.”

The Power of Active, Nonviolent Resistance

Ziad Abu Zayyad
Haaretz (Opinion)
March 5, 2010 - 12:00am
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1154402.html


There are signs of mounting distress among the Israeli police and other security forces in the way they are dealing with the Palestinians who stage weekly demonstrations in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. These protests, in which Palestinians are joined by foreign sympathizers and activists of the Israeli left, are intended to express opposition to the eviction of Palestinians from their homes, which are then inhabited by Jewish families.

The edginess of the security personnel has spilled over beyond Sheikh Jarrah and become particularly noticeable in a number of villages where protests are held regularly against the separation fence, land confiscations and restrictions on residents? freedom of movement, as is the case in Bil'in, Na'alin, Nabi Saleh and Deir Nitham, in the Ramallah Governorate, and al-Ma'sara, in the Bethlehem Governorate.

What appears to be turning into a source of worry for the Israeli side is the fact that these protest activities are crystallizing into a weekly tradition, and are bound to draw increasingly larger numbers of participants - especially Palestinians who have become fed up, and who see the demonstrations as an opportunity to express their rejection of Israel's policies of discrimination, persecution and abuse.
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In addition to the steady increase in the numbers of protesters, there is also a "qualitative" rise. Among the prominent Israeli figures who joined the Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations in recent weeks were MK Haim Oron, the chairman of New Movement-Meretz. In a statement made at the site, Oron strongly criticized the policy pursued by the Israeli government and the Jerusalem Municipality against Arab residents of the city holding blue ID cards. Another figure is the respected writer and intellectual David Grossman.

As the number of participants in these peaceful demonstrations grows - whether in East Jerusalem or in West Bank villages threatened by the separation fence or settlement activity - Israel's reaction is becoming increasingly tougher. After all, the Israel Defense Forces has long been used to countering Palestinian violence with even harsher and fiercer measures, which it has justified to itself and to the world by saying they were a response to violence. Today, however, with the widespread adoption by Palestinians of peaceful means of protest, the task of repression has become more difficult, with the use of excessive force unjustified and subject to Israeli and international condemnation.

There is a lesson to be learned here by us Palestinians: We cannot quash the Israeli repression machine with violence, because our violence will be used to justify and legitimize the brutality of the strong against the weak. Furthermore, Palestinians need to take into account the fact that they have allies on the Israeli side who share their rejection of the occupation and of discrimination; it is crucial to reinforce and nurture this relationship with them.

Disseminating a culture of passive resistance against the oppression and atrocities of the occupation is the most efficacious method for fighting it: It should be promulgated and its circle expanded. It must not remain restricted to pockets of protest here and there, but should become a generalized modus operandi that encompasses all points of contact with the occupation and the settlements, which are trying to gobble up the land and obliterate all features of Palestinian identity. It must be clearly said that nonviolence is morally superior to force.

Spreading such a culture is not an easy matter: Palestinians have grown accustomed to opting for force in all its forms in opposing the occupation. Some of their actions allowed the occupation to use this violence to tarnish Palestinians' image as civilized and humane people and to portray them as bloodthirsty and given to indiscriminate killings of children, women and the elderly. This eventually turned local and international public opinion against them. Being victims of the occupation and having the legitimate right to resist should not mean compromising on moral values.

In their asymmetric battle with the occupation, Palestinians must turn to peaceful resistance. It is the only way to tilt the balance of power in their favor, by neutralizing the arms of the occupation and its military and technological capacities, while at the same time gaining the respect, sympathy and support of the world for their battle against racial discrimination, the subjugation of peoples and the denial of their freedoms.

Comment on the KAIROS Document

Palestinian Christians, Israeli Allies, and Nonviolent Resistance
by Ryan Rodrick Beiler 02-23-2010

National Catholic Reporter has an important article about the Kairos Palestine Document endorsed last month by the leaders of 13 Christian communities in the Palestinian territories. The article raises several key realities that subvert common misconceptions about the Middle East conflict:

1) Palestinian Christians exist, and have much to teach the global church — especially the U.S. church.

2) There is an active movement within Palestinian society that advocates nonviolence.

3) These movements have support from Israeli and American Jewish activists who also oppose policies of the Israeli government which they see as counterproductive to the cause of lasting peace and security for Israel.

The Kairos Document declares that:

[T]he Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity because it deprives the Palestinians of their basic human rights, bestowed by God. It distorts the image of God in the Israeli who has become an occupier just as it distorts this image in the Palestinian living under occupation. We declare that any theology, seemingly based on the Bible or on faith or on history, that legitimizes the occupation, is far from Christian teachings, because it calls for violence and holy war in the name of God Almighty, subordinating God to temporary human interests, and distorting the divine image in the human beings living under both political and theological injustice.

It is important to listen to such voices, even if we do not agree with every nuance of the 16-page document, such as the assertion that “Yes, there is Palestinian resistance to the occupation. However, if there were no occupation, there would be no resistance, no fear and no insecurity.”

Injustice does indeed fuel violence. But even without the occupation, I have little doubt that extremists from both sides would likely continue to commit sporadic acts of violence against the other, however diminished in frequency or popular support — just as splinter groups have struck as recently as last year in spite of the overall peace in Northern Ireland, followed by massive protests by both sides against the violence.

While I had hoped for a more direct and prophetic denouncement of terrorist violence, the document does so indirectly by strongly and repeatedly advocating the opposite:

[W]e bear the strength of love rather than that of revenge, a culture of life rather than a culture of death. …

Christ our Lord has left us an example we must imitate. We must resist evil but he taught us that we cannot resist evil with evil. …

We can resist through civil disobedience. We do not resist with death but rather through respect of life. …

Resistance is a right and a duty for the Christian. But it is resistance with love as its logic. …

Our message to the Muslims is a message of love and of living together and a call to reject fanaticism and extremism. …

Perhaps most controversial is the document’s endorsement of boycotts and divestment campaigns “of everything produced by the occupation.” NCR quotes Msgr. Dennis Mikulanis of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East, a pro-Israel, ecumenical organization based in New York city, as saying, “I understand that it comes from a place of deep Palestinian suffering. But we will not advance peace by placing all the blame on Israel’s shoulders, or by promoting the false idea that boycotting Israel will solve this conflict.”

Because of the complexity of boycotts and divestment as a means of nonviolent protest against the Israeli occupation, Sojourners has not supported them, but been careful to present several sides (there are more than two!) of the issue in our coverage, as evidenced by these commentaries by Don Wagner, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, and Haim Dov Beliak which ran simultaneously in our magazine a few years back.

But the Kairos Document is clear in its distinction between being anti-occupation — not anti-Israel or anti-Jewish — and intentionally reaches out to Jewish allies in the cause of peace:

Jewish and Israeli voices, advocating peace and justice, are raised in support of this with the approval of the international community. …

Our message to the Jews tells them: Even though we have fought one another in the recent past and still struggle today, we are able to love and live together.

These affirmations are not abstract, but based on existing relationships. As NCR notes:

Among the religious leaders who spoke at the Bethlehem launch of the Kairos document were American Rabbi Brian Walt, a member of Rabbis for Human Rights and co-founder of the Jewish Fast for Gaza, and Dr. Mark Braverman, executive director of the Holy Land Peace Project. Both praised the Palestinian statement for its call to action. Braverman likened it to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

“The bold claim in the document that action for justice for the Palestinian people will also bring liberation for the Jewish people struck me as particularly important,” Walt said.

But while it’s important to raise awareness of Palestinian nonviolence movements as an alternative to broadly held stereotypes, it’s also important to demonstrate that such movements have the potential for success. In the West Bank village of Bilin, largely nonviolent protests and legal battles have finally resulted in a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court that led to a re-routing of the Israeli separation barrier that cut through their land in order to enlarge an Israeli settlement. The barrier’s current route belies its justification as a security measure, as much of it is constructed well within Palestinian land and not on the internationally recognized border with Israel. According to the Los Angeles Times:

After the barrier is shifted, expected to be completed this year, about 170 acres of vineyards, olive and almond trees and other agricultural land will be accessible again to Palestinian owners. But villagers say the barrier and nearby Jewish settlements still occupy about 400 acres of land they once held.

“Even getting back one inch is an accomplishment,” said Iyad Burnat, a resident of Bilin and a member of the Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. “But the wall is still being built on our land, and even the new route will cut down more of our trees. We are going to continue our fight against the wall until we move it all the way back to the 1967 line” that marked Israel’s border before it occupied the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War.

The LA Times also cites the director of the Settlement Watch project of the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now, Hagit Ofran, as saying “Bilin’s victory would serve as an encouragement to other nonviolent Palestinian protesters.” They need all the encouragement they can get, as their protests have often been met with pre-emptive arrests and at times lethally violent responses by Israeli security forces. As an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz states:

The fact that there are still civilians prepared to invest time and energy in nonviolent protest and popular action carried out by two peoples should be lauded, not suppressed.

It’s encouraging to see some of this coverage popping up in the mainstream media — one hopes it will encourage nonviolent movements and their supporters, as well as begin to subvert widely held assumptions about either side’s desire for peace.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the Web Editor for Sojourners and a photographer whose work can be seen at www.ryanrodrickbeiler.com.

Moving Beyond the Extremes, Please!

Yours truly looks for opinions / positions that attempt to bridge the chasm between (unacceptable) extremes. The latest consistent voice "on the ground" in Isr/Pal is Bradley Burston, now writing in / for Haaretz.

It is criminal that a voice like his is trashed, discounted as being hopelessly out of touch with "reality". What has long been the case in Isr/Pal is now gripping our Congress. Moderates are not welcome. Persons interested in working for Common Good are trashed, chewed up and spit out for not being "on the right side".

Pass this around to your friends who may be on the fence about what is "happening" in Isr/Pal. Applaud the 54 House members who put their names on the line for a different approach by the American government. Help make it possible for Pres. Obama to make decisions that will change the situation instead of maintaining the (untenable) "status quo". JRK

Pro-Mideast in America: Getting past 'Pro-Israel' and 'Pro-Palestine'
Bradley Burston
Haaretz (Opinion)
February 17, 2010 - 12:00am
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150311.html


Let's face it. Viewed from North America, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a dismal read.

Seen in full context, the confrontation is suffocatingly complex. As literature, it is paralytic, sullenly wordy. The plot, for all its spasms and blood, goes nowhere. As drama, the Israel-Palestine morass is the geopolitical equivalent of James Cameron's 1997 film "Titanic": interminable, exorbitant, unwieldy, dumb without just cause. Titanic-like, it tempts the observer to bail out in mid-course, seething under the breath "Sink, already! Just #*%&-ing sink!"

This may explain why it often seems that the only participants left standing - that is to say, still interested - in the debate over the future of Israel and Palestine, are extremists. These are the evangelists of the zero-sum. They are the activists for the One State Solution, that is, One State for My Side Alone. They are the misers of spirit who believe that this land cannot be big enough for the both of us.

They are the Jews for whom compromise is spelled Auschwitz, for whom pro-Israel is the same as anti-Palestinian, for whom pro-Israel also means there is no Palestine, there never was, nor will there be. For this brand of pro-Israeli, there are no Palestinians, and these Palestinians - who do not, in fact, exist, and who all came from somewhere else - lack all claims to morality, compassion, and historical legitimacy.

They are, as well, the Palestinians for whom accommodation is spelled collaboration, for whom pro-Palestinian also means There is no Israel, there never was, nor will there be. For this brand of pro-Palestinian , the Jews of today are not real Jews, descended from people who were once here, and these Jews - who are not, in fact, Jews, and who in any case all came from somewhere else - lack all claims to morality, compassion, and historical legitimacy.

[We interrupt this essay, for a Talkback:]

For God's sake, Burston. What part of Victory Or Death do you not understand?

Both parts.

There is no such thing as victory here. Neither does death solve a single thing.

There may, however, be another approach. One that could help foster peace efforts rather than acting to thwart them.

It will require a radical redefinition of what it means to be an American who is pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. It will require a conscious decision to get past the idea that Israel must lose if Palestine is to win, and vice versa. It will require a willingness to consider a more nuanced, much less digestible reality. One in which your side is no longer obviously, indisputably, unfailingly in the moral right, and the other cast as the perp, the unredeemable murderer, the plague of both houses - in short, the problem.

If this is to work, it will require an excruciating decision: letting go of one's self-definition as either pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. It will require a conscious effort to become pro-Mideast.

One striking example is a recent effort by members of Congress to work toward easing the Israeli and Egyptian embargo on goods entering Gaza.

A total of 54 Democratic representatives signed the letter to President Obama. The text, a model of a fresh approach toward the Mideast, opens with an expression of recognition for the suffering of the people of Gaza, then goes on to state:

"We also sympathize deeply with the people of southern Israel who have suffered from abhorrent rocket and mortar attacks. We recognize that the Israeli government has imposed restrictions on Gaza out of a legitimate and keenly felt fear of continued terrorist action by Hamas and other militant groups. This concern must be addressed without resulting in the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip. Truly, fulfilling the needs of civilians in Israel and Gaza are mutually reinforcing goals."

The letter sparked a range of responses. One of the more refreshing was that of Washington-based commentator James Besser, who came to the defense of Representative Keith Ellison, a prominent signatory. Ellison, a Muslim, is a frequent target of the pro-Israel hardliners who cite his faith as evidence of a supposed anti-Israel posture.

Writing in the New York Jewish Week, Besser noted that Ellison has repeatedly "stressed his belief that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need to do more to live up to past commitments and take greater chances for peace. He's spoken clearly about Israel's need for security as part of any ultimate settlement. He speaks the language of compromise - for both sides."

"In short, he sounds pro-Palestinian without sounding anti-Israel."

The Republican Jewish Coalition, meanwhile, assailed the Congressional letter as "dangerous." the RJC posted an online petition

urging the 54 signatories to recant. The lawmakers had shown "indifference to the lives of innocent Israelis, the RJC wrote, "and had "expressed no concern whatsoever about the consequences [their] ideas might have for Israelis living under the threat of terrorism from Gaza!"

In the spirit of the times, the discourse soon degenerated. JTA commentator Ron Kampeas sharply criticized the RJC as having misrepresented the letter, drawing a response from Noah Silverman, the Republican Jewish Coalition's Congressional Affairs Director, that sent the discussion to the bottom. Pointing to Besser and Kampeas, Silverman issued this message on the RJC Headquarters Twitter circuit:

"Ever feel like Jewish 'journalists' are just leftist propagandists and weasels? It's not your imagination."

Someday far in the future, we may look back on this time with both wisdom and contempt, wondering why, in the extremists' obsession with victory, all we ever reaped from the hardliners was death.

Someday far in the future, we may look back on this time and wonder why, plowing an open sea of possibility, we manage to hit every single iceberg in our path.

Or someday, far in the future, we may find ourselves grateful for those who finally decided to navigate with their eyes and minds open, and steered an unfamiliar course, a route as yet uncharted, that took them to a Holy Land that, for once, was big enough for the two peoples that deserve to be there.

At root, the struggle for peace in the Middle East is the fight of the Israelis and Palestinians against the extremists in their own midst.

We know this much, if nothing else. If we allow the extremists their victory, everyone will have lost.

Nonviolent Resistance Prevails

Bethlehem, West Bank
Ben White,
Christian Science Monitor

For many, the idea of Palestinian resistance is synonymous with terrorism, conjuring up images of suicide bombings and rockets. This is a distortion shaped by the media and our politicians.

Today, in rural villages from Bilin and Jayyous to Nilin and Beit Ommar, this kind of Palestinian persistence against Israel’s separation barrier and illegal settlements is paying off – and attracting the participation of international supporters and Jewish Israelis.

Palestinians have been using classic nonviolent strategies such as strikes, demonstrations, and civil disobedience since before the modern state of Israel came into being in 1948. But recently, new momentum, fresh media attention, and an increasingly harsh crackdown by Israeli occupation forces have thrust these strategies into the spotlight.

This newfound attention, however, comes with a danger of double standards, and a distortion of the root causes of the conflict.

For example, Western media and politicians cheer the rise of nonviolent Palestinian resistance, but why do they not urge Israel to adopt the same nonviolent standards? Why is it only Israel that is repeatedly granted the “right of self-defense”? The hypocrisy is heightened because it is the Palestinians who are fighting to secure basic rights such as self-determination.

The core of the conflict is not Israel’s “security” but rather decades-old Israeli policies designed to ensure the domination of one group at the expense of another. So it is a critical error to think that by renouncing armed struggle, the Palestinians could change Israel’s fundamental goals.

But that’s not stopping the protesters from challenging the occupation. Israel’s escalating crackdown suggests that the movement is not only already considered a threat to Israel’s apartheid-style rule, but also has the potential to develop into something more important. In recent months, Israel has targeted leaders such as Jamal Juma, Mohammed Khatib, Mohammad Othman, and Abdullah Abu Rahme with detention without trial and trumped-up charges.

Mr. Othman, who was snatched by Israeli troops and kept in prison for 106 days without charges, says that the strength of the popular resistance – “an initiative from every farmer, every Palestinian who can’t access their land, and not belonging to any political party” – has shaken the Israeli military into launching this wave of raids and abductions.

Israel, which markets itself as the region’s only democracy, has also snatched dozens of villagers in night raids over the past 18 months. Since 2005, 18 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,500 have been injured in antiwall protests.

These popular protests have also begun to draw attention from senior Fatah and Palestinian Authority (PA) figures. Some of these leaders speak highly of peaceful resistance but have directed only limited funds to support it. Indeed, during Israel’s criminal attack on Gaza last year, PA forces suppressed demonstrations.

It is important that this resistance avoid being co-opted for political purposes, especially since it’s the antithesis of the PA: non-elitist, democratically accountable, and challenging the occupation’s control – as opposed to be being part of it.

Perhaps the main challenge of this movement, however, is in becoming genuinely popular. Weekly demonstrations by committed activists are one thing; the need is for organized, mass actions involving Palestinians from diverse backgrounds.

The need for “collective political action on a sustained level” was highlighted recently by Palestine Solidarity Project co-founders Mousa Abu Maria and Bekah Wolf on the popular Mondoweiss website. They pointed out the lack of “spadework” in getting “people from all social classes and walks of Palestinian life” involved.

Sami Awad, head of the Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust, says that nonviolent resistance needs to be understood as being more than just marches. “It’s about practical noncompliance with the occupation,” he says.

While Israel does its best to quash the struggle against its antidemocratic regime, the movement’s potential hinges on key choices and strategies from Palestinians themselves – as well as the international response to a 21st-century anti-colonial fight for equality and basic rights against a thus-far unaccountable international law-breaker.

• Ben White, a freelance journalist, is the author of "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide