AFSC among human rights orgs barred from Israel

PUBLISHED: JANUARY 8, 2018

Yesterday the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was included on a list of 20 organizations whose staff may be denied entry to Israel because of their support for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Motivated by Quaker belief in the worth and dignity of all people, AFSC has supported and joined in nonviolent resistance for over 100 years. We answered the call for divestment from apartheid in South Africa, and we have done the same with the call for BDS from Palestinians who have faced decades of human rights violations.

Throughout our history, we have stood with communities facing oppression and violence around the world. In 1947 we were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in part for our support for Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. We will continue our legacy of speaking truth to power and standing for peace and justice without exception in Israel, occupied Palestine, and around the world.

All people, including Palestinians, have a right to live in safety and peace and have their human rights respected. For 51 years, Israel has denied Palestinians in the occupied territories their fundamental human rights, in defiance of international law. While Israeli Jews enjoy full civil and political rights, prosperity, and relative security, Palestinians under Israeli control enjoy few or none of those rights or privileges.

The Palestinian BDS call aims at changing this situation, asking the international community to use proven nonviolent social change tactics until equality, freedom from occupation, and recognition of refugees’ right to return are realized. AFSC’s Principles for a Just and Lasting Peace in Palestine and Israel affirm each of these rights. Thus, we have joined others around the world in responding to the Palestinian-led BDS call.  As Palestinians seek to realize their rights and end Israeli oppression, what are the alternatives left to them if we deny them such options?

Quakers pioneered the use of boycotts when they helped lead the “Free Produce Movement,” a boycott of goods produced using slave labor during the 1800s. AFSC has a long history of supporting economic activism, which we view as an appeal to conscience, aimed at raising awareness among those complicit in harmful practices, and as an effective tactic for removing structural support for oppression.

The 17th century Quaker abolitionist John Woolman spoke to the spiritual foundation of this work when he said, “May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.”

The ban on entry to Israel for activists who support the Palestinian-led BDS movement is part of a larger effort by the Israeli government to silence and constrain human rights and anti-occupation activists. In recent months, more Palestinian activists have faced arrest, death threats, and imprisonment without charge or trial in response to nonviolent activism for human rights.  In addition, organizations inside Israel have been denied funding and access to event venues and have faced threats of trial and imprisonment.

At a time when the Israeli government is moving to expand settlements, redefine Jerusalem, and annex portions of the West Bank, support for nonviolent activism that seeks freedom, equality, and justice is critical.

Therefore, as long as these and other human rights violations persist, we will continue to support Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions efforts as effective nonviolent tools for realizing political and social change.  We hope one day to see Israelis and Palestinians live together in peace. This will only happen when the human rights of all are recognized and respected.

ORIGINAL STATEMENT HERE (JAN 8, 2018)

AFSC: Boycott, divestment and sanctions explained

Other organizations banned because of BDS advocacy

What is BDS?

Gaza’s airport, once a symbol of statehood, is now a wasteland

Gaza airport (Photo: Mohammed Asad)

By Ahmad Kabariti in Mondoweiss on 

At 8:50 a.m., I stopped a taxi in western Gaza City and asked the driver to go to the airport. The driver gazed at me as I sat next to him. He said: “Which airport? Do you mean the Cairo one?” I replied: “To the Gaza airport. Go to Rafah now, please.”

Muhsin al-Balawi, the 23-year-old driver, may have been right to be extremely perplexed over my query. He had never been an airplane passenger. He was born three years before the airport opened in 1998.

After 40 minutes of driving south on Salah al-Din Road, the main thoroughfare in the Strip, we hit the end of the asphalt road. Hundreds of yards further stood the departures terminal, which was surrounded by hills made of household waste. 

Bombed runway, 2008, photo by NASA

Everything across this 690 acres stretch of semi-desert field was lifeless. A stench from a ripped apart donkey’s corpse filled the air​​. I was sure I will never visit this place after dark.

This arid zone was once the first airport for Palestinians in Gaza, a step towards a dream of independent state. In 2000, during the events of the Intifada, Israel bombed the control tower, then the runway, and finally the elegant Moroccan-inspired terminals. In 2001, Israeli army bulldozers flattened what remained….

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

Dashed dreams: How Gaza’s short-lived airport never took off” 

In a historic December 1998 trip, President Bill Clinton cut the ribbon at a ceremony for the Gaza’s International Airport alongside Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Stephen Jaffe/Getty

What were the top BDS victories of 2017?

The movement for Palestinian rights continues to grow across the world. (Alisdare Hickson/Flickr)

Written by Nora Barrows-Friedman  in The Electronic Intifada, December 28, 2017

It took just four days for a world famous singer to cancel her Tel Aviv show in response to her fans’ urging her to respect the international picket line.

Lorde’s decision on Christmas Eve to pull the Tel Aviv show from her world tour – remarking that booking the gig in the first place “wasn’t the right call” – completed a successful year for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

2017 saw artists, performers, athletes, politicians, cultural workers, faith-based organizations, students, academics, unions and activists grow the movement for Palestinian rights.

Israel has been taking notice, of course.

Early on in the year, key Israel lobby groups admitted in a secret report – obtained and published in full by The Electronic Intifada – that they had failed to counter the Palestine solidarity movement, despite vastly increasing their spending.

The report outlined Israel’s failure to stem the “impressive growth” and “significant successes” of the BDS movement and set out strategies, endorsed by the Israeli government, aimed at reversing the deterioration in Israel’s position.

Similarly, in March, Israel’s top anti-BDS strategist conceded that the boycott Israel movement is winning – despite the Israeli government’s allocation of tens of millions of dollars and the formation of an entire governmental ministry whose sole focus is to combat BDS.

Speaking at an anti-BDS conference in New York, Israeli ambassador Danny Danon stated that “the BDS movement is still active and still strong. Every day, academic and religious groups, student unions and investment firms are all falling prey to boycott calls.”…

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Israel indicts Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi

By , in Aljzeera, Jan 2, 2018

Palestinian activist Ahed with her mother Nariman [Al Jazeera]

(This reminds me strongly of the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 during the Freedom Struggle in the US —Skip Schiel’s note)


Israeli authorities are seeking 12 charges against Ahed Tamimi, a prominent 16-year-old Palestinian activist filmed slapping and kicking two Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank. Continue reading “Israel indicts Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi”

The Challenges We Face and Community We Forge: An interview with Sa’ed Atshan

Sa’ed Atshan at Ramallah Meeting in Palestine. Photo courtesy of Sa’ed Atshan.

In February 2017 Friends Central High School in Philadelphia had fired two teacher-advisors to a student group which had invited a Palestinian Quaker, Sa’ed Atshan, to discuss the situation in Palestine-Israel. In this interview, after a long discernment, Sa’ed speaks about what happened and how he approaches what some feel is censorship by a quaker school.

READ THE ARTICLE HERE Continue reading “The Challenges We Face and Community We Forge: An interview with Sa’ed Atshan”

Jerusalem: Why the World Doesn’t Recognize It as Israel’s Capital

For original article, click the image above. Full text of the article is below.
For original article, click the image above. Full text of the article is below.

By David B. Green December 6, 2017 in Haaretz

Jerusalem is holy to three religions. Jerusalem is a powder keg, and the smallest wrong move there could set off a religious war. The Arab-Israeli conflict will never be solved until the Jerusalem question is resolved. Continue reading “Jerusalem: Why the World Doesn’t Recognize It as Israel’s Capital”

Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the Future of Radicalism


Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin,
on
Literary Hub website,  Sept 1, 2017

A telling excerpt:

GTJ & AL: Your most recent scholarship is focused on the question of Palestine, and its connection to the Black freedom movement. When did this connection become obvious to you and what circumstances, or conjunctures, made this insight possible? Continue reading “Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the Future of Radicalism”

Israel’s settlements: 50 years of land theft explained

To the casual visitor or tourist driving through the occupied West Bank or Jerusalem, Israeli settlements may appear as just another set of houses on a hill.

The middle-class suburban style townhouses, built fast and locked in a grid of uniform units, stand like fortified compounds, in direct contrast to the sprawling limestone Palestinian homes below.

Settlement homes, mostly constructed of cement with a cosmetic limestone cladding, tend to fashion a similar look: American-style villas topped by red-tiled roofs and surrounded by lush, neatly trimmed green lawns.

The largest settlement, Modi’in Illit, houses more than 64,000 Israeli Jews in the occupied West Bank. The mega-settlement has its own mayor, as well as schools, shopping malls and medical centres.

Some settlements even have their own universities.

 

On the 35th Anniversary of Sabra and Shatila: The Forgotten Refugees

Dr. Ang Swee Chai

By Dr. Swee Chai Ang, September 13, 2017

This September will be the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre in West Beirut. Three thousand unarmed refugees were killed from 15-18 September 1982.

I was then a young orthopedic trainee who had resigned from St Thomas Hospital to join the Christian Aid Lebanon medical team to help those wounded by Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. That invasion, named “Peace for Galilee”, and launched on 6 June 1982, mercilessly bombarded Lebanon by air, sea, and land. Water, food, electricity, and medicines were blockaded. This resulted in untold wounded and deaths, with 100,000 made suddenly homeless.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

“The Occupation of the American Mind” on Democracy Now

The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States, a documentary movie rarely shown publicly in the United States, reveals the PR campaign by the Israeli government to obfuscate and falsify realities of the occupation and blockade of Palestine. Interviewed on Democracy Now, Roger Waters, founding member of the iconic rock band Pink Floyd, and Sut Jhally, professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts and founder and executive director of the Media Education Foundation which produced the documentary, discuss the film’s meaning and reception.

Click for interview on September 14, 2017

Sa’ed Atshan Speaks Out on Disinvitation

(click here) Palestinian professor speaks out on cancellation of Friends’ Central speech, stands with fired teachers

NEYM unites on a statement about Palestine-Israel

(Dating back to late 2014, after a summer of unprecedented violence over Gaza and inspired by a statement from Britain Yearly Meeting in August 2014, Friends Meeting at Cambridge, followed by Salem Quarterly Meeting, and finally the Yearly Meeting itself unites on the following statement.)

Minute 2017-46 Annual Sessions at Castleton, Vermont, August 8, 2017

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) testimony on peace, justice, and nonviolence is based in our experience of the divine in all of creation and within all persons. Thus, we are deeply troubled by the suffering and injustice caused by the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and we are concerned that our government perpetuates that violence by continuing to send billions of dollars of military aid to the region. Continue reading “NEYM unites on a statement about Palestine-Israel”

Plans for NEYM Annual Sessions 2017

The New England Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions takes place August 5–10, 2017 at Castleton University, Vermont. Our team is currently planning programs.

WORKSHOPS

Israel, Palestine and New England Yearly Meeting — a two part workshop with Jennifer Bing of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Chicago office — Tuesday & Wednesday, 3:30-5pm

Israel/Palestine flares into the headlines periodically but intense work to resolve issues continues in the background with little notice.  This workshop with share some of that work and help move NEYM to finding its voice on the problem. Day One will focus on two AFSC campaigns. “No Way To Treat a Child” has been tracking child detentions and raising these concerns with Congressional leaders and the State Department. “Gaza Unlocked” seeks to draw attention to the ongoing trauma in Gaza as well as the beautiful resilience of the people.  Day Two will continue talking about that work as well as explore ways for Meetings and NEYM to have a voice in work for peace with justice. Jennifer Bing from the AFSC will be a resource for this workshop. Continue reading “Plans for NEYM Annual Sessions 2017”

Teachers fired for supporting students

Layla Helwa (left) and Ariel Eure (right)

Layla Helwa and Ariel Eure supervised a Palestinian peace club that had invited Sa’ed Atshan, a Palestinian Quaker professor, to speak in February, but the talk was canceled at the last minute after some Jewish parents and students and others complained. The teachers were fired for supporting their students’ protest over the cancelled talk.

Read more in article from the Philadelphia Inquirer, updated May 9, 2017…

Findings from Visits in Salem Quarter

Temple Mount Jerusalem

During March and April 2017, with their minute on the US Role in Israel-Palestine, Friends Meeting at Cambridge (FMC) members, who had participated in the minute-writing process, visited local meetings in Salem Quarterly Meeting. The Quarterly Meeting heard FMC’s minute at its October 2016 meeting and sent the minute back to local meetings for their consideration. Continue reading “Findings from Visits in Salem Quarter”

Friends Central disinvites Sa’ed Atshan

Sa'ed Atshan
Sa’ed Atshan, Palestinian Quaker, academic and activist barred from speaking at Quaker School