New book about Gaza by the American Friends Service Committee

Gaza, home to two million people, continues to face suffocating conditions imposed by Israel. For sixteen years Palestinians in Gaza have lived under a brutal blockade, isolated from the rest of historic Palestine and the world.

AFSCs new anthology, Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, imagines the future of Gaza beyond the cruelties of occupation and Apartheid.  It imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and liberation.

Light in Gaza is a wide-ranging anthology that includes new works by eleven Palestinian writers and poets. It constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle for liberation and justice. It explores the central question: can a better future for Gaza be imagined as a part of a broader vision for ending the Nakba through return, restoration of rights, and achieving justice?

We hope that Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire will serve as a powerful intervention at an important political moment.

Light in Gaza is available for purchase from Haymarket Books.

Press release announcement of our new publication is here.

More info here.

Strategies and actions to bring a just peace to Palestine- Israel with Leila Farsakh and Jeff Halper

Leila Farsakh and Jeff Halper in conversation across the globe, on strategies and actions for a just peace in Palestine/Israel.

THIS EVENT HAS PASSED. TO WATCH THE RECORDING, CLICK HERE

WATCH FOR MORE WEBINARS FROM QAJP AND THE COMMUNITY CHURCH OF BOSTON

Please register for this FREE program. We encourage you to donate through a ticket purchase, at whatever price you choose. All proceeds benefit the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions  (www.icahd.org) and The Gaza Mental Health Foundation ( www.gazamentalhealth.org) 

Join us on YouTube or on Zoom

Leila Farsakh, a Palestinian born in Jordan, is a political economist, associate professor, and chair of the political science department at University of Massachusetts.

Jeff Halper, co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) is a Jewish Israeli anthropologist.

They will discuss their 2021 publications: Leila Farsakh, editor, Rethinking Palestine Statehood, and Jeff Halper, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine.

Skip Schiel, photographer, videographer, and Palestinian rights activist will introduce and moderate the conversation. He publishes online at teeksaphoto.org and skipschiel.wordpress.org.

Dean Stevens, activist, musician, and the administrator and music director at the Community Church of Boston, will host the session.

More info about Leila and Jeff:

Organized by:

  • The Peace and Social Justice Committee of Friends Meeting at Cambridge
  • Quakers Advocating Justice for Palestine
  • Community Church of Boston

Co-sponsored by:

  • Jewish Voice for Peace-Boston
  • Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
  • Cambridge Bethlehem People to People Project
  • Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East – MA Chapter
  • GRALTA Foundation
  • The Israel-Palestine Working Group of New England Yearly Meeting (Quaker)
  • (For a complete list, write skipschiel@gmail.com)

Downloadable flyer

By banning six Palestinian NGOs, Israel has entered a new era of impunity

By Raja Shehadeh, October 28, 2021

Shawan Jabarin, director of Al-Haq, at the organisation’s offices in Ramallah in the West Bank, October 2021. Photograph: Majdi Mohammed/AP

I was one of the founders of the human rights organisation Al-Haq in 1979 and remain proud of its work over the past four decades in defending human rights in the Israeli occupied territories. I was horrified when it was declared to be a terrorist organisation by the Israeli defence minister on 19 October, along with five other Palestinian NGOs.

During the many years of direct Israeli occupation, from 1967 to 1995, there was a long and expanding list of proscribed groups issued by the Israeli military commander under “emergency” regulations first put in place by the British in 1945. Al-Haq was never on this list.

In 1980, an Israeli army patrol passing by Al-Haq’s small office in Ramallah late at night became suspicious of the cars parked nearby and stormed the meeting, roughing up some of the staff. At the time a representative of Amnesty International was attending the meeting. When we lodged a complaint the army began an interminable investigation of the incident, which after many years was still not concluded. Yet the storming of the organisation’s office was never repeated – not even during the reinvasion of the West Bank in 2002, when offices of a large number of organisations in Ramallah were trashed.

Israel’s charge against the six NGOs, which include groups that offer legal support to prisoners and a women’s rights organisation, is based on a supposed connection to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Over the years, this claim has been used by Israeli officials to justify their refusal to permit travel for Al-Haq staff. The claim was that Al-Haq was not a genuine human rights organisation, but a PFLP front. Yet this unfounded and patently untrue accusation was never followed by issuing such a devastating order as happened last Tuesday.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation that Al-Haq often collaborates with, has described the Israeli government’s declaration as “an act characteristic of totalitarian regimes, with the clear purpose of shutting down these organisations”. The policy change is evidence of how far Israel has gained confidence in feeling immune from the consequences of its actions, in this case interfering with civil society organisations that do tremendous work in the West Bank.

The declaration was made by the Israeli minister of defence and was issued under Israeli law. Where the West Bank has not been annexed, Israeli law does not apply, so it will probably be followed by an order from the military commander of the West Bank, adding Al-Haq to the list of proscribed organisations. Even if this action is not taken, Al-Haq could be paralysed by the order of the defence minister. Under counter-terrorism law, Israel can use its extensive powers over organisations and residents of the occupied territories. These include preventing funds from reaching Al-Haq. Israel can also detain anyone working for the organisation, providing professional services or expressing support for it.

Condemnations of the Israeli action has been extensive, including from the US state department, which sought clarification from its strategic partner. Yet statements alone will not suffice. Stronger measures will need to be taken if Israel is to reverse this declaration.

Al-Haq’s standing over the past 40 years proves its significance as a major defender of human rights. Its most important work during the past year has been the assistance it has given to the international criminal court in The Hague in its investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes. That the ICC might end up charging any Israelis with such crimes greatly worries Israel. For us Palestinians, it would herald an end to Israeli immunity from prosecution for its grave breaches of international law.

The defence minister’s statement will not convince anyone who has worked with Al-Haq and benefited from its extensive coverage of the human rights violations committed by Israel over the years. It is time for those concerned around the world to take a strong stance and work at convincing their governments to stop obstructing the ICC in its efforts at bringing to justice any Israeli official who has committed war crimes.

  • Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian writer and lawyer. His most recent book, Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation, won the 2020 Moore prize

The webinar (above) with leaders of the 6 banned Palestinian organizations (October 29, 2021): Israel’s Designation of Six Palestinian NGOs as “Terrorist”: Costs and Consequences—recorded

(Betty) McCollum and progressives call on Biden to condemn Israel’s ‘authoritarian and antidemocratic’ repression of Palestinian rights groups (Adam Horowitz, October 28, 2021, Mondoweiss)

A series of short video talks about why advocate for justice for Palestine

Jewish, Palestinian, and Quaker voices come together to explore the question “Why do Quakers care about Israel Palestine?” A QuakerSpeak video with a Quaker call to action on Israel-Palestine: Jennifer Bing, AFSC Middle East Program Director; Rabbi Brant Rosen, former AFSC Midwest Education Director; Ayah Bashir in Gaza; and Tamara Tamimi, Jerusalem

Jean Zaru is a Palestinian Quaker from Ramallah Friends Meeting. In 2019, she sent this video message to Annual Sessions.

Chris Jorgenson traveled twice to the region, most recently in early 2020 to volunteer at the Ramallah Friends School

Carole Rein explored the region in 2018 and has spoken about her experiences to numerous Quaker meetings in New England.

Seeing in Palestine, an article by Carole Rein about her 2018 journey to the Holy Land

Skip Schiel has photographed in the region since 2003 and currently concentrates on his project, “The Ongoing and Relentless Nakba.”



More coming from activists, stay tuned to this channel

Palestine Israel Action Group (Ann Arbor Quakers)



Ann Arbor (Michigan) Quakers promoting peace in Israel Palestine

Why PIAG protests Israel’s Occupation
From its earliest inception the Religious Society of Friends has placed rejection of war as basic to our understanding of God’s will.  We believe that human beings are capable of solving conflicts through reason, an empathetic understanding of the other’s point of view, and the courage to take principled, nonviolent action in the face of injustice.  In this spirit, the Palestine Israel Action Group of Ann Arbor Friends Meeting protests the Israeli government’s military repression of the Palestinian people and occupation of their lands, a process of control that contravenes international law, the Geneva Convention, and United Nations mandates. Domination through violence engenders further violence in a tragic cycle that causes suffering to Israelis as well as Palestinians. Such repression cannot assure a nation’s security.

What we have to share
PIAG has produced Educational Resources and Tools for Activists that can be used by religious and secular organizations locally, nationally, and internationally. We invite readers to adapt these materials for use in their own communities and Contact Us with additional ideas or suggestions. Besides our educational materials, PIAG’s Recommended Actions suggest a variety of ways to engage in economic pressure against Israel’s Occupation.  Individuals and groups can also support positive economic engagement by purchasing Palestinian olive oil and handcrafts and selling them at public events.

Should Quakers endorse divestment?
For decades, Friends have called for independence, security, and a just peace for Israelis and Palestinians. This call has been voiced widely by others working for peace, including Israelis, Palestinians, and Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and secular peace groups in the United States and worldwide. This call, however, has gone unheeded.  Our own government in fact continues to fund and support much of the Israeli repression.  The Occupation and suffering continue.

 As a result, religious and secular peace groups are using economic leverage to make a stronger moral and political statement.  They are engaging with U.S. corporations that sell arms, bulldozers, and other products sustaining Israel’s occupation. They are refraining from economic support for such companies and avoiding exports from illegal West Bank settlements. These measures are not meant to bankrupt or destroy Israel, but to pressure Israel’s right-wing government to respect international law, ease its stranglehold on Palestinians, and begin to bargain in good faith.

 PIAG believes that economic engagement is one of many non-violent ways to express a commitment to justice. We are inspired by an earlier Quaker activist, John Woolman, who refused to use the postal service because of the suffering of young post-boys who rode the pony express, and who counseled Friends to avoid supporting the evils of economic exploitation and slavery.   Heeding George Fox’s message to “let your life speak,” we encourage Friends and others to actively oppose Israel’s occupation through a variety of economic measures ranging from dialogue with corporations that supply military equipment to Israel, to shareholder resolutions, to institutional and personal divestment from U.S. and Israeli companies that support the Occupation.

Please see PIAG’s Recommended Actions to support a just and viable peace in Israel/Palestine.

This site was last updated 01/24/2013

Gaza’s Deadly Night: How Israeli Airstrikes Killed 44 People

A video analysis by New York Times staff, June 24, 2021

On May 16, Israeli airstrikes destroyed three apartment buildings, decimating several families. We visited the scene, interviewed survivors and analyzed videos, photos and satellite images to find out what happened.

By Evan Hill, Ainara Tiefenthäler, John Ismay, Christiaan Triebert, Soliman Hijjy, Phil Robibero, Drew Jordan, Yousur Al-Hlou, Christoph Koettl and Patrick Kingsley

Human Rights Watch: Israel is an apartheid state

A Threshold Crossed

Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution by Human Rights Watch (April 27, 2021)

202104mena_israelpalestine_separatingpalestinians

Summary:

About 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians live today between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, an area encompassing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the latter made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Throughout most of this area, Israel is the sole governing power; in the remainder, it exercises primary authority alongside limited Palestinian self-rule. Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

Waiting for permission to enter their village of Salfit in the West Bank. Photograph- Raneen Sawafta/Reuters

Several widely held assumptions, including that the occupation is temporary, that the “peace process” will soon bring an end to Israeli abuses, that Palestinians have meaningful control over their lives in the West Bank and Gaza, and that Israel is an egalitarian democracy inside its borders, have obscured the reality of Israel’s entrenched discriminatory rule over Palestinians. Israel has maintained military rule over some portion of the Palestinian population for all but six months of its 73-year history. It did so over the vast majority of Palestinians inside Israel from 1948 and until 1966. From 1967 until the present, it has militarily ruled over Palestinians in the OPT, excluding East Jerusalem. By contrast, it has since its founding governed all Jewish Israelis, including settlers in the OPT since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, under its more rights-respecting civil law….

READ THE ENTIRE REPORT

We are Israel’s largest human rights group – and we are calling this apartheid, by Hagai El-Ad, executive director of B’Tselem (January 2021)

Jimmy Carter Defends [his book, published in 2006] ‘Peace Not Apartheid’, interview on NPR by Steve Inskeep (2007)

Expanded Minute For Palestinian Children Spurs Quakers To Further Action Here At Home

Israeli border police arrest a Palestinian youth for throwing stones at their checkpoint in Ras al-Amud neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Friday Sept. 23, 2011, just hours before their president, Mahmoud Abbas, was to deliver his widely anticipated request to the UN. Photo by Mahfouz Abu Turk

Northwest Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, March 7, 2021: No Way to Treat a Child

Minute 2021-03-10

We recognize our own involvement in the incarceration of children and youth, most of them black and brown, here in the United States. Whether in prisons or cages for recent immigrants, this is no way to treat children. We ask New England Yearly Meeting to begin to join in this work.

Spirit leads Northwest Quarterly Meeting to ask New England Yearly Meeting to engage wholeheartedly with American Friends Service Committee’s No Way to Treat a Child campaign “which seeks to challenge and end Israel’s prolonged military occupation of Palestinians by exposing widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system.”  This rights-based effort to halt ongoing infringement of children’s human rights stems from Friends’ belief that no child should be denied due process or tortured.

NEYM Minute 2019-36 urged monthly and quarterly meetings to live into Minute 2017-46, particularly as it applies to Gaza and the West Bank. Consequently, Northwest Quarter requests that New England Yearly Meeting embrace No Way to Treat a Child by calling upon Friends everywhere to endeavor to end these violations of children’s human rights by:

  • Learning how placing children in military prisons violates international law and impedes the right to a childhood;
  • Talking with members of Congress to co-sponsor the bill that replaces H.R. 2407 “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under the Israeli Military;
  • Writing letters in local newspapers as one of many ways of How Quakers can join No Way to Treat a Child;
  • Accompanying  American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—as led locally, nationally, and internationally—in that Quaker organization’s effort to end “the Israeli occupation of Palestinians by exposing the systematic ill treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention;”
  • Connecting what Friends learn about settler colonialism, here in the States, transnationally with Israel Palestine.

—Approved Northwest Quarterly Meeting March 7, 2021

Background information:

While urging Friends everywhere to engage wholeheartedly with American Friends Service Committee’s No Way To Treat A Child program, Quakers in northwestern New England—originally Abenaki/Pennacook land—committed themselves to address systemic racism within our own meetings and communities in Vermont and western New Hampshire: “We recognize our own involvement in the incarceration of children and youth, most of them black and brown, here in the United States.”

The March 7th decision followed earlier approval that Northwest Quarterly Meeting had given No Way To Treat a Child when it convened in Middlebury on December 8, 2019 and again in Burlington on March 8, 2020. This month’s expanded endorsement was an essential and courteous “assist” to New England Yearly Meeting’s presiding clerk who is preparing for Quaker’s upcoming annual meeting in August 2021.

Friends recognized that it is important work that could not wait for three months until their next Quarterly Meeting to continue. The path to their March 2021 decision began 15 months earlier when Northeast Kingdom Quaker Meeting urged Northwest Quarterly Meeting to endorse AFSC’s rights-based campaign, No Way to Treat a Child—“which seeks to challenge and end Israel’s prolonged military occupation of Palestinians by exposing widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system.”

Consequently, Friends acknowledged the enlargement of what we had already approved a year ago by including five action steps. One of these urges local Quakers to apply what they are learning about settler colonialism here in the States, transnationally with Israel Palestine.

Earlier the yearly meeting’s presiding clerk, Bruce Neumann, had urged Northwest Quarter Friends to be as specific as possible—while waiting for the new House Resolution that replaces HR 2407— about naming steps that describe how Friends can “endeavor to end these violations of children’s human rights” as AFSC has urged for a number of years.

Original article on No Way to Treat a Child minute March 2021

Israel must release all Palestinian child detainees amid COVID-19 pandemic (Defence for Children International (April 2020)

Israeli border guards detain a Palestinian boy during a demonstration outside the Lions Gate, a main entrance to Al-Aqsa mosque compound on 17 July 2017 (AFP)

The Database of Military and Israeli Security Export

The Database of Israeli Military and Security Export (DIMSE) provides data on trade and use of Israeli military, security and police weapons and equipment as well as other services from the year 2000. The Database support searches by Country and by weapons and aims to be a resource for civil society actors seeking information about this industry.

Israel ranks annually among the 10 biggest arms exporters in the world, but does not report regularly to the UN registry on conventional arms, and has not ratifies the Arms Trade Treaty – the international treaty regulating international arms trade. The Israeli domestic legal system does not require transparency on issues on arms trade, and there are currently no legislated human right restrictions on Israeli arms export beyond obeying by UN security council arm embargos.

Due to this public information about Israel’s arms export is extremely limited. While this database does not include all of Israel’s arms exports globally, its aim is to collect and make accessible publicly published information about Israel’s arms export.

DIMSE is provided by The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization that promotes lasting peace with justice, as a practical expression of faith in action since 1917.

MORE ABOUT AND TO REACH THE DATA BASE

Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons, says Desmond Tutu

The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians (December 31, 2020)

  • Desmond Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, is a former archbishop of Cape Town and, from 1996 to 2003, was chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘a sense of power and impunity’. Photograph courtesy of Reuters
Image: Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu attends the unveiling ceremony of a statue of Nelson Mandela at the City Hall in Cape Town
Desmond Tutu, former archbishop of South Africa, pictured in 2018. Photo by Sumaya Hisham / Reuters file

Every recent US administration has performed a perverse ritual as it has come into office. All have agreed to undermine US law by signing secret letters stipulating they will not acknowledge something everyone knows: that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal.

Part of the reason for this is to stop people focusing on Israel’s capacity to turn dozens of cities to dust. This failure to face up to the threat posed by Israel’s horrific arsenal gives its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a sense of power and impunity, allowing Israel to dictate terms to others.

But one other effect of the US administration’s ostrich approach is that it avoids invoking the US’s own laws, which call for an end to taxpayer largesse for nuclear weapons proliferators.

Israel in fact is a multiple nuclear weapons proliferator. There is overwhelming evidence that it offered to sell the apartheid regime in South Africa nuclear weapons in the 1970s and even conducted a joint nuclear test. The US government tried to cover up these facts. Additionally, it has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Yet the US and Israeli governments pushed for the invasion of Iraq based on lies about coming mushroom clouds. As Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu said: the nuclear weapons were not in Iraq – they are in Israel.

Amendments by former Senators Stuart Symington and John Glenn to the Foreign Assistance Act ban US economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that acquire nuclear weapons. While president, Jimmy Carter invoked such provisions against India and Pakistan.

But no president has done so with regard to Israel. Quite the contrary. There has been an oral agreement since President Richard Nixon to accept Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity” – effectively to allow Israel the power that comes with nuclear weapons without the responsibility. And since President Bill Clinton, according to the New Yorker magazine, there have been these secret letters.

US presidents and politicians have refused to acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons even though the law offers an exemption that would allow the funding to continue if the president certified to Congress that aid to a proliferator would be a vital US interest.

Israel’s per capita gross domestic product is comparable with that of Britain. Nevertheless, US taxpayer funds to Israel exceed that to any other country. Adjusted for inflation, the publicly known amount over the years is now approaching $300bn.

This farce should end. The US government should uphold its laws and cut off funding to Israel because of its acquisition and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The incoming Biden administration should forthrightly acknowledge Israel as a leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and properly implement US law. Other governments – in particular South Africa’s – should insist on the rule of law and for meaningful disarmament, and immediately urge the US government in the strongest possible terms to act.

Apartheid was horrible in South Africa and it’s horrible when Israel practises its own form of apartheid against the Palestinians, with checkpoints and a system of oppressive policies. Indeed another US statute, the Leahy law, prohibits US military aid to governments that systematically violate human rights.

It’s quite possible that one of the reasons that Israel’s version of apartheid has outlived South Africa’s is that Israel has managed to maintain its oppressive system using not just the guns of soldiers, but also by keeping this nuclear gun pointed at the heads of millions. The solution for this is not for Palestinians and other Arabs to try to attain such weapons. The solution is peace, justice and disarmament.

South Africa learned that it could only have real peace and justice by having truth that would lead to reconciliation. But none of those will come unless truth is faced squarely – and there are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.

Original article in The Guardian

Fact Sheet: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal

Faith organizations urge Biden administration to work for peace in Israel and Palestine (AFSC)

On Dec. 14, 2020, 17 U.S. churches and Christian agencies, including the American Friends Service Committee, sent a letter to the incoming Biden administration outlining areas of hope and concern regarding the situation in Israel/Palestine, and urging the Biden administration to take steps to work toward peace and justice.

The letter notes that, “Over the last four years U.S. policy has moved in directions that have alienated the U.S. from many of its international partners and supported the deepening of Israel’s occupation while undermining long term efforts to realize a just and lasting peace. If the U.S. remains committed to realizing peace with justice in Israel and Palestine there is a need for an immediate change in policy and approach when your administration enters office.”

Specifically, the letter asks the incoming Biden administration to work in six areas to:
1.    Ensure that all parties are respected and included in negotiations towards a just and lasting peace based on international law;
2.    Restate the U.S. position that settlements are illegal under international law and take action to ensure that any further Israeli settlement construction and growth results in political consequences;
3.    Resume funding to the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and other U.N. and humanitarian actors working in the West Bank and Gaza;
4.    Ensure accountability;
5.    Reiterate the U.S. position that territory controlled by Israel as a result of the 1967 war, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, are occupied territories subject to international law and are not recognized parts of Israel; and
6.    Make clear that criticism of Israel, including support for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions actions, is protected and legitimate speech.

The full content of the letter can be read HERE.

Views of Joe Biden about Palestine-Israel (Jewish Virtual Library)

By a American Friends Service Committee staff member in Jerusalem: Protesters demand democracy for all in Israel

By Sahar Vardi (August 14, 2020)

Sahar, the author, getting shot by a water cannon at a protest on July 14th
Sahar, the author, getting shot by a water cannon at a protest on July 14th, 2020 Photo: / AFSC

July 14th is the Bastille day–the day in which the Bastille fell, and that has come to symbolize the French revolution. This year, on this highly symbolic day, a steady, years old anti-corruption movement in Israel morphed itself into something else completely. By the end of that night, more than 50 protesters –including myself–were led to a police station soaking wet after hours of water cannons trying to disperse the hundreds of protesters blocking roads all around Jerusalem.

The background to these protests is a combination of a prime minister who has been indicted and currently stands on trial on multiple charges of corruption, an “emergency coalition government” formed to respond to the COVID crisis after three elections in which Israeli politics were at a complete deadlock, a complete failure of the government to address the spread of the “second wave” of COVID in the country, and the failed economic response to COVID giving symbolic blanket payouts on the one hand while failing to actually address the needs of those who lost their jobs and incomes….

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

Protesters holding a "Democracy for all" sign in Arabic and Hebrew
Protesters holding a “Democracy for all” sign in Arabic and Hebrew
Israelis protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside the Prime Minister’s official residence in Jerusalem on July 24, 2020. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi

Israel-Palestine Working Group of NEYM 2019-2020 Report

Join AFSC in memorializing the 521 Palestinian children killed in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge (2008-2009) while demanding change.

“Great openings” appear as this spring’s massive protests make visible the many connections among oppressed communities seeking justice. The Israel Palestine Working Group (IPWG)—activists nurturing comprehension of shifting realities—asks Friends during 2020 sessions to affirm that the Equality Testimony is universal. Let us embrace our awareness of unity among all who seek justice both nationally and globally.

Can we unite, now, when asked to accompany the oppressed? There was no discussion last year when Friends heard internationally renowned Palestinian Quaker lecturer and author Jean Zaru challenge NEYM to make a decision about whom we are accompanying—the oppressor or the oppressed?

IPWG’s major emphasis this year is AFSC’s No Way To Treat A Child campaign. Northwest Quarterly Meeting’s Minute 202038 asks Friends, at 2020 sessions, to support HR 2407: Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under the Israeli Military Occupation Act. This national effort invites us all to 1) Educate folks about Palestinian children incarcerated in Israeli military prisons and H.R. 2407; 2) Write an op-ed in support of H.R. 2407; 3) Lobby Congress on behalf of H.R. 2407, as an individual or group.

IPWG coordinated an endorsement of AFSC’s call for Israel to release all children from military prisons with the Racial Social Economic Justice Committee; together with RSEJ, we also asked Friends to work for the release of those most vulnerable to Covid-19 in U.S. prisons.

One of our 2019 lunchtime discussions focused on the paucity of Monthly Meeting and Yearly Meeting connections with AFSC’s efforts to achieve justice in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Another looked at Jewish Voice for Peace’s Deadly Exchange campaign to end Israeli military training of police across the United States. More HERE.

Theme-organized informal lunch conversations, this one about the Deadly Exchange campaign of Jewish Voice for Peace about Israel training US security officers, including police

In another 2019 business meeting, the presiding clerk asked Skip Schiel to speak about his 17 years of activism in Palestine: a witness that was visible in an exhibit of Skip’s photographs from his two-month journey last spring. He answered questions about “The Ongoing Nakba” during a dinner presentation.

IPWG makes available The Promised Land Exhibit, a set of traveling panels from The Jewish Museum of the Palestinian Experience. Monthly meetings find it to be helpful as they search for the meaning of antisemitism, colonization, Islamophobia, racism, and Zionism.

The Promised Land Exhibit by the Jewish Museum of the Palestinian Experience

In other developments this year: Cliff Bennett attended the Third Conference of Scientists for Palestine at MIT; Northeast Kingdom MM approved a travel minute for Scott and Susan Rhodewalt; and Palestine Museum in Woodbridge, Connecticut featured Skip Schiel’s The Ongoing Nakba photographic project exhibit.

Exhibit by Skip Schiel, The Ongoing Nakba, internally expelled Palestinian refugees in the West Bank

Our WEBSITE is a resource for Friends to discern who to accompany in seeking justice. Knowing that “an injury to one is an injury to all” we remember “there is no justice until there is justice for all.”

*George Fox used the phrase “Great Openings“ many times in his journal to refer to revelations and discoveries of the spirit, as in this passage, “great openings concerning the things written in the Revelations.”

Skip Schiel, Clerk
Scott Rhodewalt, Recording Clerk

NEYM 2020 sessions will be ONLINE. Our working group’s plans include two webinars, The Promised Land Exhibit with Steve Feldman, its founder, and Max Carter, former faculty member of Guilford College, and long time activist for Palestinian rights; and discussion of the annexation of major portions of the West Bank and Jordan Valley, possibly with four American Friends Service Committee staff, Dilit Baum, Sahar Vardi, and Mike Merryman-Lotz, Dawood Hammoudeh, and Jehad Abusalim.

Last summer’s Palestine-Israel program at sessions in Castleton Vermont

Israel-Palestine Working Group 2020 Annual Report

Photographs by Skip Schiel of New England Yearly Meeting sessions, 2019:

Quakers gather in New England

Provoke one another to love and to good works

United Church of Christ Palestine Israel Network

 

Who We Are
At a Glance: Events at UCC’s 2005 General Synod convinced a few activists of the need for a grass-roots organization to promote justice for Palestinians and to support Global Ministries partners in Palestine and Israel. This concern led to the founding of the UCC Palestine/Israel Network in 2012. The effort was supported by staff from UCC’s Wider Church Ministries as well as Justice and Witness Ministries.

 

What We Do
At a Glance: Our work is aligned with our mission statement. We initiate resolutions of witness for consideration by various settings of the UCC; support implementation of adopted resolutions; develop educational materials for use throughout the UCC; publicly state, support and endorse pro-justice positions; and cooperate with allied groups working toward a just peace and recognition of Palestinian human rights.

 

Recent and current violence in and around Gaza (May 6, 2019)

The Occupation is a Crime of Aggression: Gazans React After 25 Palestinians, 4 Israelis Die

Palestinian leaders in Gaza report that they’ve agreed to a cease-fire with Israel to end a deadly two-day escalation of violence. Here, a Palestinian girl stands in front of a building on Monday that was destroyed during Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City over the weekend.

Leaders in Israel and Gaza have reportedly reached a ceasefire agreement after an intense three days of fighting left 25 Palestinians and four Israelis dead. Palestinian authorities said the dead in Gaza included two pregnant women, a 14-month-old girl and a 12-year-old boy. The latest round of violence began on Friday. According to the Washington Post, Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian protesters taking part in the weekly Great March of Return which began 13 months ago. Palestinians then reportedly shot and wounded two Israeli soldiers near the border. In response, Israel carried out an airstrike on a refugee camp killing two Palestinian militants. The heaviest combat took place on Saturday and Sunday as militants in Gaza fired about 700 rockets into Israel while Israel launched airstrikes on over 350 targets inside Gaza. The weekend has been described as the heaviest combat in the region since the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza. Residents in Gaza fear the ceasefire will not last. We go to Gaza City to speak with Raji Sourani, award-winning human rights lawyer and the director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. We also speak with Jehad Abusalim, a scholar and policy analyst from Gaza who works for the American Friends Service Committee’s Gaza Unlocked Campaign….

Ashdod, Israel, May 6, 2019

READ THE FULL REPORT ON DEMOCRACY NOW

From Susan Rhodewalt, member of Northwest Quarterly Meeting in Vermont, a note she sent to her Monthly Meeting after discernment about a minute about violence in Gaza.

Friends Fiduciary Corporation divests from companies working in Israel

Old news but worth repeating so many know. From The Times of Israel (October 2012)

JTA – A Quaker group has removed a French and an American company from its financial portfolio due to what it calls the companies’ involvement in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.

Friends Fiduciary Corporation will drop the French multinational corporation Veolia Environment and the US-based Hewlett-Packard from its portfolio following requests from Quakers concerned about the companies’ involvement in the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands.

FFC has investments of more than $250,000 in HP and more than $140,000 in Veolia, according to the We Divest Campaign. The money is part of an overall $200 million in assets and investments for more than 250 Quaker meetings, schools, organizations, trusts and endowments around the US.

The Quaker group does not issue public announcements about such moves, but did send a letter confirming the information, according to Anna Baltzer, a spokesperson for the We Divest Campaign.

“It’s not private; it’s public information and they’ve written a letter to the Friends Meeting in Ann Arbor, Mich. that raised the issue,” she said. The Ann Arbor group did not return JTA’s call for this article.

However, Jeffrey W. Perkins, the FFC’s executive director, said in a press release issued by We Divest that HP provides information technology consulting services to the Israeli Navy, and Veolia Environment is involved in “environmental and social concerns” with the Israeli military,

This decision comes a few months after the FFC dropped shares in Caterpillar Inc. because Caterpillar “would neither confirm nor deny the extent or type of modifications to equipment sold to the Israeli military,” according to the release.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE

 

 

 

Friends Fiduciary Trust investment screen

 

 

 

American Friends Service Committee investment screen

In The Jewish Times:

Space to Play

West Bank refugee camps are facing a crisis of safety and square feet.

Play is a human right for children under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), essential to healthy brain and body development. But how can children in Arroub play when all the spaces available to them, public or private, put them at risk of becoming witness or victim to damaging events?

Despite Israel being a signatory to the CRC, many refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza are examples of how Israel has failed to protect the rights of Palestinian children that it is obliged to ensure as an occupying power.

Palestinian children play soccer in the streets of Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on May 11, 2017. (Photo: DCIP / Ahmad al-Bazz)

READ MORE

Gaza march leader, Ahmed Abu Artema, to [Israeli] conscientious objectors: ‘Turn your words into weapons’

The leader of Gaza’s Great Return March holds a rare conversation with Israelis who refuse to serve in the army because of the occupation. ‘Those who refuse to take part in the attacks on the demonstrators in Gaza — they stand on the right side of history.’

By Edo Konrad and Oren Ziv (January 2, 2019)

Israeli activists, including past and soon-to-be conscientious objectors hold a phone conversation with Gaza Return March leader Ahmed Abu Artema at the Hagada Hasmalit political space, Tel Aviv, December 19, 2018. (Oren Ziv)
Israeli activists, including past and soon-to-be conscientious objectors hold a phone conversation with Gaza Return March leader Ahmed Abu Artema at the Hagada Hasmalit, Tel Aviv, December 19, 2018. (Oren Ziv)

It is difficult to imagine today, but meetings between Palestinian and Israeli activists used to be routine. The younger generation of Palestinian and Israelis, however, were born into a world of walls, fences, and segregation, where even a simple conversation can be complicated, and at times, impossible.

That stark reality was on display two weeks ago when dozens of Israeli activists, including past and soon-to-be conscientious objectors held a rare conversation with Ahmed Abu Artema, one of the main organizers behind Gaza’s Great Return March. For many of the younger conscientious objectors, the Great Return March served as an inspiration for their personal reasons to refuse enlistment in the Israeli army….

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN +972

2019 New England tour

On February 26, 2019 at 7:15 pm, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School’s Starr Auditorium at 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge Massachusetts 02138.  

Quakers will not profit from the occupation of Palestine (in Britain)

Quakers in Britain has today become the first church in the UK to announce it will not invest any of its centrally-held funds in companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine. (November 19, 2018)

sunset through coils of barbed wire
Sunset in Hebron. (Photo: Quakers in Britain)

The decision, made by the church’s trustees in consultation with Meeting for Sufferings – the national representative body of Quakers – fits into a long Quaker history of pursuing ethical investments. It follows decisions not to invest funds in, among others, the fossil fuel industry, arms companies, Apartheid South Africa, and – going even further back – the transatlantic slave trade.

Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said:

“Our long history of working for a just peace in Palestine and Israel has opened our eyes to the many injustices and violations of international law arising from the military occupation of Palestine by the Israeli government.

“With the occupation now in its 51styear, and with no end in near sight, we believe we have a moral duty to state publicly that we will not invest in any company profiting from the occupation.

“We know this decision will be hard for some to hear. We hope they will understand that our beliefs compel us to speak out about injustices wherever we see them in the world, and not to shy away from difficult conversations.

“As Quakers, we seek to live out our faith through everyday actions, including the choices we make about where to put our money.

“We believe strongly in the power of legitimate, nonviolent, democratic tools such as morally responsible investment to realise positive change in the world. We want to make sure our money and energies are instead put into places which support our commitments to peace, equality and justice.

“We hope that by announcing our refusal to profit from these companies it will encourage others to think about their own investments, and help challenge the legality and practices of the ongoing military occupation.

Ingrid Greenhow, clerk of Quakers in Britain trustees, said:

“While we do not believe we currently hold investments in any company profiting from the occupation, we will now amend our investment policy to ensure this remains the case in future.

“This includes companies – whichever country they are based in – involved for example in the illegal exploitation of natural resources in occupied Palestine, and the construction and servicing of the separation barrier and Israeli settlements.

“We look forward to the publication of the UN Business and Human Rights Database which will list companies involved in settlement-related activities in occupied Palestine. We recognise the help this – and others including the Investigate database compiled by the American Friends Service Committee – will give our investment managers in implementing this new policy.”

In their minute, the trustees said, “We hope this policy might be useful to [Quaker] area meetings interested in adopting a similar approach”.

In their minute, Meeting for Sufferings reaffirmed their 2011 decision to boycott goods produced in Israeli settlements built in occupied Palestine “until such time as the Israeli occupation of Palestine is ended.”

Meeting for Sufferings added that, “[W]e continually pray for both Israelis and Palestinians, keeping them together in our hearts, and looking forward to a future of loving and generous co-operation.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Britain Yearly Meeting minute of 2014 in response to the violence in Gaza

“What does justice look like? Moving towards a Just Peace in Palestine and Israel,” a conference Dec. 14 to 16, 2018

From Mike Merryman Lotz of the AFSC

The Old City of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

Join the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker Palestine Israel Network, and Pendle Hill for a weekend of exploring what it will take to realize a just and lasting peace in Palestine and Israel.

From Dec.14 to 16, we’re holding a conference titled “What does justice look like? Moving towards a Just Peace in Palestine and Israel.” We invite you to join us for this exciting opportunity to learn more about Israel and Palestine and what you can do to bring change.

Find more details and register on the Pendle Hill website. Scholarships are available to offset costs.

AFSC and Quakers have engaged in Palestine for over a century and worked for peace with justice since 1948. After decades without change, we want to open up a conversation about what’s needed for a just future.

It has been 70 years since the 1948 war, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced and the State of Israel was born. It has been over 50 years since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, gaining control of all of historic Palestine. And it has been 25 years since Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn at the start of the Oslo Peace Process.

But 25 years after the start of what was intended to be a five-year peace process, we must question that framework. Why hasn’t peace yet been achieved? What paradigm shifts are needed to bring change? What are the historic injustices that need to be righted, and what might it look like to address these issues today? What actions can people outside of the conflict take to promote change?

Join us for an interactive weekend of panels and workshops to:

  • Find out what is needed to support change in Israel and Palestine.
  • Gain skills for taking action and building intersectional work toward change.
  • Connect with others interested in building toward a different future.
  • Give and receive support as you continue to work toward change after the conference.

Register for the conference today.

I hope that you can join us at Pendle Hill.

In peace,

Mike Merryman-Lotze
Middle East Program Director

Palestine-Israel at a Large Quaker Gathering in New England, Summer 2018

As international attention on Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians—occupation and blockade—increases, our Israel-Palestine Working Group produced the following program at our annual five-day New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM) Sessions:

  • Outdoor displays: photos from Gaza and a pin wheel display memorializing the recent dead in Gaza
  • WorkshopsBuilding a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel  with John Reuwer and Laurie Gagne, plus Moving our Meetings to Take Action on Israel-Palestine with Minga Claggett-Borne and Jonathan Vogel-Borne
  • Informal lunch chats
  • Photographic exhibition: Gaza Awaken by Skip Schiel
  • A special visit and presentation by a colleague from Gaza, Dr. Mustafa El-Hawi

(Click here for more info and here for photographs of Sessions)

However, we failed to bring our annual report to meeting for worship with the intention of business, a staple of this Yearly Meeting. Click Talking Points (Word) for our report’s talking points, with illustrations.

Meeting for worship with the intention of business

The March of Folly by Uri Avnery

ONE CAN look at events in Gaza through the left or through the right eye. One can condemn them as inhuman, cruel and mistaken, or justify them as necessary and unavoidable.

But there is one adjective that is beyond question: They are stupid.

Uri Avnery

If the late Barbara Tuchman were still alive, she might be tempted to add another chapter to her groundbreaking opus “The March of Folly”: a chapter titled “Eyeless in Gaza”.

THE LATEST episode in this epic started a few months ago, when independent activists in the Gaza Strip called for a march to the Israeli border, which Hamas supported. It was called “The Great March of Return”, a symbolic gesture for the more than a million Arab residents who fled or were evicted from their homes in the land that became the State of Israel.

The Israeli authorities pretended to take this seriously. A frightening picture was painted for the Israeli public: 1.8 million Arabs, men, women and children, would throw themselves on the border fence, break through in many places, and storm Israel’s cities and villages. Terrifying.

Israeli sharpshooters were posted along the border and ordered to shoot anyone who looked like a “ringleader”. On several succeeding Fridays (the weekly Muslim holy day) more than 150 unarmed protesters, including many children, were shot dead, and many hundreds more severely wounded by gunfire, apart from those hurt by tear gas.

The Israeli argument was that the victims were shot while trying to “storm the fences”. Actually, not a single such attempt was photographed, though hundreds of photographers were posted on both sides of the fence.

Facing a world-wide protest, the army changed its orders and now only rarely kills unarmed protesters. The Palestinians also changed their tactics: the main effort now is to fly children’s kites with burning tails and set Israeli fields near the Strip on fire.

Since the wind almost always blows from the West to the East, that is an easy way to hurt Israel. Children can do it, and do. Now the Minister of Education demands that the air force bomb the children. The Chief of Staff refuses, arguing that this is “against the values of the Israeli army”.

At present, half of our newspapers and TV newscasts are concerned with Gaza. Everybody seems to agree that sooner or later a full-fledged war will break out there.

THE MAIN feature of this exercise is its utter stupidity.

Every military action must have a political aim. As the German military thinker, Carl von Clausewitz, famously said: “War is but a continuation of politics by other means.”

The Strip is 41 km long and 6 to 12 km wide. It is one of the most overcrowded places on earth. Nominally it belongs to the largely theoretical State of Palestine, like the West Bank, which is Israeli occupied. The Strip is in fact governed by the radical Muslim Hamas party.

In the past, masses of Palestinian workers from Gaza streamed into Israel every day. But since Hamas assumed power in the Strip, the Israeli government has imposed an almost total blockade on land and sea. The Egyptian dictatorship, a close ally of Israel and a deadly enemy of radical Islam, cooperates with Israel.

So what does Israel want? The preferred solution is to sink the entire strip and its population into the sea. Failing that, what can be done?

The last thing Israel wants is to annex the Strip with its huge population, which cannot be driven out. Also, Israel does not want to put up settlements in the Strip (the few which were set up were withdrawn by Ariel Sharon, who thought that it was not worthwhile to keep and defend them).

The real policy is to make life in Gaza so miserable, that the Gazans themselves will rise and throw the Hamas authorities out. With this in mind, the water supply is reduced to two hours a day, electricity the same. Employment hovers around 50%, wages beneath the minimum. It is a picture of total misery.

Since everything that reaches Gaza must come through Israel (or Egypt), supplies are often cut off completely for days as “punishment”.

Alas, history shows that such methods seldom succeed. They only deepen the enmity. So what can be done?

THE ANSWER is incredibly simple: sit down, talk and come to an agreement.

Yes, but how can you sit down with a mortal enemy, whose official ideology totally rejects a Jewish State?

Islam, which (like every religion) has an answer to everything, recognizes something called a “Hudna”, which is a lasting armistice. This can go on for many decades and is (religiously) kept.

For several years now, Hamas has been almost openly hinting that it is ready for a long Hudna. Egypt has volunteered to mediate. Our government has totally ignored the offer. A Hudna with the enemy? Out of the question! God forbid! Would be terribly unpopular politically!

But it would be the sensible thing to do. Stop all hostile acts from both sides, say for 50 years. Abolish the blockade. Build a real harbor in Gaza city. Allow free trade under some kind of military inspection. Same for an airport. Allow workers to find employment in Israel, instead of importing workers from China and Romania. Turn Gaza into a second Singapore. Allow free travel between Gaza and the West Bank by a bridge or an exterritorial highway. Help to restore unity between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

WHY NOT? The very idea is rejected by an ordinary Israeli on sight.

A deal with Hamas? Impossible!!! Hamas wants to destroy Israel. Everybody knows that.

I hear this many times, and always wonder about the stupidity of people who repeat this.

How does a group of a few hundred thousand “destroy” one of the worlds most heavily armed states, a state that possesses nuclear bombs and submarines to deliver them? How? With kites?

Both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin pay us homage, the world’s fascist dictators and liberal presidents come to visit. How can Hamas pose a mortal danger?

Why doesn’t Hamas stop hostilities by itself? Hamas has competitors, which are even more radical. It does not dare to show any sign of weakness.

SOME DECADES ago the Arab world, on the initiative of Saudi Arabia, offered Israel peace under several conditions, all of them acceptable. Successive Israel governments have not only not accepted it, they have ignored it altogether.

There was some logic in this. The Israeli government wants to annex the West Bank. It wants to get the Arab population out, and replace them with Jewish settlers. It conducts this policy slowly, cautiously, but consistently.

It is a cruel policy, a detestable policy, yet it has some logic in it. If you really want to achieve this abominable aim, the methods may be adequate. But this does not apply to the Gaza Strip, which no one wants to annex. There, the methods are sheer folly.

THIS DOES not mean that the overall Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is any more wise. It is not.

Binyamin Netanyahu and his hand-picked stupid ministers have no policy. Or so it seems. In fact they do have an undeclared one: creeping annexation of the West Bank.

This is now going on at a quicker pace than before. The daily news gives the impression that the entire government machine is now concentrating on this project.

This will lead directly to an apartheid-style state, where a large Jewish minority will dominate an Arab majority.

For how long? One generation? Two? Three?

It has been said that a clever person is able to extricate himself from a trap into which a wise person would not have fallen in the first place.

Stupid people do not extricate themselves. They are not even aware of the trap.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON GUSH SHALOM

Video: Israeli activists join Gaza protesters on other side of the fence

(The speaker in this video is Neta Golan, a noted, long-time Israeli fighter for Palestinian justice. And three of the participants are from New England, two of them Quaker.)

Who is Uri Avnery? (At 90 in 2014)

Minute of Concern for Palestinians in Gaza

UPDATED CASUALTY FIGURES (MARCH 30-AUGUST 9, 2018):
KILLED: PALESTINIANS, 172; ISRAELIS, 1
INJURED: PALESTINIANS, 15,504; ISRAELIS, 20
HOSPITALIZED: PALESTINIANS, 8,598; ISRAELIS, UNKNOWN

(Source: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August 9, 2018)

FROM BURLINGTON FRIENDS MEETING, BURLINGTON, VERMONT, JUNE 10, 2018

Friends’ concern for the sufferings of all peoples leads us to oppose the recent escalation of violence by the Israeli political establishment against the Palestinians of Gaza. How should we as Quakers respond to this tragedy still taking place along the border of the Gaza Strip? [which began in late March, 2018, and continues thru this posting, July 4, 2018]

Gaza contains nearly 2 million residents in an area of 141 sq. miles. Israel imposes an economic cordon sanitaire around the region with the result that its economy is nearly destroyed and 80 percent of residents rely on international assistance. Travel in and out is sharply restricted by Israel and Egypt.

Since March 30, 2018, thousands of residents of Gaza, more than 80 percent of whom are refugees or the descendants of those displaced during the establishment of Israel in 1947, began marching toward the barriers that keep them from work, travel, foreign markets, and their ancestral lands. While still within Gaza, they were met by Israeli snipers who shot into Gaza from embankments across the line. On May 14 alone, 58 demonstrators were shot dead and 1,360 wounded with fragmentation rounds that often lead to amputations and permanent crippling. The dead include 6 children.

As a response to this unarmed, non-violent civilian protest, these premeditated and systematic shootings are a clear violation of international norms which forbid targeting noncombatants and require proportionality in the use of force, even in wartime. Clearly marked members of the press and the Red Crescent have been among the victims.

The United States is deeply complicit in these events. Since 1946, the U.S. has given Israel $134.7 billion in military and missile defense aid, $3.775 billion in 2017 alone. The weapons purchased are used to kill Palestinians. On April 6, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution supporting the right of Palestinians to “demonstrate peacefully” and endorsing Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for an independent investigation into these events.

On the day when 58 Gaza residents were shot dead by Israeli snipers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was welcoming U.S. Middle East Advisor Jared Kushner, his wife Ivanka Trump, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and four U.S. Senators on the occasion of the symbolic opening of a planned United States Embassy in Jerusalem. The embassy will be on land declared neutral in the 1949 armistice agreement and considered by the United Nations to be in occupied Palestine.

Friends are witnesses to these horrific events. Unless we speak out forcefully in protest, we will also be complicit. Removal of people from their land, their confinement in what amounts to a concentration camp, denying them sanitation, adequate health services, and employment, and then systematically killing them when their despair boils over into nonviolent protests all work against the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Quakers must protest this occupation by demanding that the U.S. government end all military aid to Israel and support international efforts to immediately end the illegal blockade of Gaza. We urge each Monthly Meeting to address this crisis through internal discernment and public activism.

Palestinians stage a protest within the ‘Great March of Return’ demonstrations near Israel-Gaza border in Gaza City, Gaza. Getty Images

The plea of refugees in Gaza to return to their ancestral villages now in Israel is the central focus of the Great March to Return . It began on April 2, 2018, was planned to end on May 15, but currently (August 15, 2018) is ongoing. These dates mark two important historical events, Land Day when 6 Palestinians were killed as they attempted to return to their villages in 1976, and Nakba Day marking the beginning of The Catastrophe, or the Grand Dispossession in 1948. The violence of this effort—as of August 9, 2018, Israeli army snipers have killed 172 mostly unarmed Palestinians, with 17,504 wounded (more than 1000 of them children), many with life-threatening injuries, overwhelming the already stressed medical system—led to this minute.

We attempted to bring this minute to New England Yearly Meeting (Quaker) Sessions this summer (2018) but because of our working group’s slip up and a packed business agenda,  we failed. However, Burlington Monthly Meeting may bring it to its Quarter, “seasoning” it for next year’s NEYM Sessions. We’re also working on a revision  (Minute inspired by Burlington Friends’ minute), not yet official from us.

Palestine-Israel programs at NEYM Sessions-August 2018

WORKSHOPS

A two-day workshop organized by the NEYM Working Group on Israel-Palestine (With reference to NEYM’s minute on Palestine-Israel passed last summer)

Building a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel

 Tuesday, 3:30-5, Leavenworth

John Reuwer and Laurie Gagne (Burlington, VT, MM); Working Group on Israel-Palestine

John and Laurie will have just returned from a month in the West Bank where they deployed with Meta Peace Teams to advance MPT’s vision of seeking “a just world grounded in nonviolence and respect for the sacred interconnectedness of all life.” Their mission is “to pursue peace through active nonviolence” amidst the conflict in occupied Palestine, as part of a growing field of work known as Unarmed Civilian Protection, or Third Party Nonviolent Intervention. (Jeffords 213)

They will report on:

  • Current conditions of living for Palestinians and interactions with Israeli soldiers.
  • Prospects for improvements in the social and political situation from the local perspective, including that of Ramallah Friends.
  • How UCP and TPNI work in theory and in real life, and the potential it may hold for reducing militarism in human affairs.

Their blog: West Bank Peace Team: Summer 2018

Moving our Meetings to Take Action on Israel-Palestine

Wednesday, 3:30-5, Leavenworth

Minga Claggett-Borne and Jonathan Vogel-Borne (Cambridge, MA, MM); Working Group on Israel-Palestine

How do we talk to one another about the issue? How do we engage our meetings? Given the urgency of the situation, particularly for the people of Gaza, what do we need in order to take faithful and effective action? What do those actions look like?  (Jeffords 213)

Minga’s blog, Pedals and Seeds

A REPORT AT BUSINESS MEETING

Monday, 7-9 pm, probably near the end of the evening

A proposed Minute of Concern for Palestinians in Gaza from Burlington (VT) Monthly Meeting and a report about our two presentations at Living Faith in April, 2018, about anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and privilege; and Quakers and Antisemitism.

PRESENTATION BY LAURIE GAGNE AND JOHN REUWER ABOUT THEIR RECENT TRIP TO PALESTINE-ISRAEL

Tuesday, side room in dining hall, exact place and time to be determined

Please scroll up to their workshop info for more details.

PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION BY SKIP SCHIEL

Gaza Awaken

Fine Arts Center lobby

Photographs of children at the Qattan Center for the Child in Gaza

Website: Teeksa Photography

LAWN DISPLAYS ABOUT GAZA

(To be announced)

By the American Friends Service Committee (2017)

INFORMAL LUNCH MEETINGS

(to be announced)

Image by Jeremiah Dickinson

NEYM Israel Palestine Opportunities poster-2018—Click here for a copy

To register for New England Yearly Meeting Sessions, August 4-9, 2018, Castleton VT

Last year’s Palestine-Israel program

Contact Skip Schiel for latest info.

The One-State Solution

By Daniel Lazare October 16, 2003

Is Zionism a failed ideology? This question will strike many people as absurd on its face. Israel, after all, is a nation with an advanced standard of living, a high-tech economy and one of the most formidable militaries on earth. In a little over half a century, it has taken in millions of people from far-flung corners of the globe, taught them a new language and incorporated them into a political culture that is nothing if not vigorous. If this is failure, there are a lot of countries wishing for their share of it.

But consider the things Israel has not accomplished. In his 1896 manifesto The Jewish State, Zionism’s founding document, the Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl predicted that such a country would be at peace with its neighbors and would require no more than a small professional army. In fact, Zionist settlers have clashed repeatedly with the Arabs from nearly the moment they began arriving in significant numbers in the early twentieth century, a Hundred Years’ War that grows more dangerous by the month. Herzl envisioned a normal state no different from France or Germany. Yet with its peculiar ethno-religious policies elevating one group above all others, Israel is increasingly abnormal at a time when almost all other political democracies have been putting such distinctions behind them. Herzl envisioned a state that would draw Jews like a magnet, yet more than half a century after Israel’s birth, most Jews continue to vote with their feet to remain in the Diaspora, and an increasing number of Israelis prefer to live abroad. Israel was supposed to serve as a safe haven, yet it is in fact one of the more dangerous places on earth in which to be Jewish….

…Under normal conditions, Israeli secularists would forge alliances not only with like-minded Palestinians but with others farther afield. But Zionism interferes not only by plunging society into a permanent state of war but by imposing a kind of conceptual prison. If not forbidden, contacts across religious lines grow very complicated in a “faith-driven ethno-state.” “You don’t understand,” educated, secular Israelis say when European and American friends criticize the latest Israeli outrage. “You don’t know what it’s like to live in a society where a bomb could go off any minute. You don’t know.” But that is exactly the point. The purpose of Zionism, and of nationalism in general, is to impose a barrier between one group and another, to limit contact and impede understanding. By emphasizing one aspect of human experience, the ethno-religious in the case of Israel, at the expense of all others, it hobbles communication with those outside the fold. The personality is truncated, and political options are reduced. Instead of freely deciding what is to be done, people are forced to follow the logic imposed on them by the state. Hounded by rabbis, terrorized by suicide bombers, hemmed in by nationalism, Israelis see no alternative but to throw in their lot with a strongman like Sharon. The logic is irresistible but suicidal–unless someone can figure a way out of the ideological cage.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN THE NATION

Another view: “The One State Solution” by Mazin Qumsiyeh

And another: “In memory of Edward Said: the one-state solution” by Ibrahim Halawi (2014)

And one more,  “The ‘Two-state Solution’ Only Ever Meant a Big Israel Ruling Over a Palestinian Bantustan. Let It Go,” Opinion by Jeff Halper (2018)

Birthright: Not Just a Free Trip (From If Not Now)

We can no longer allow a free trip that hides the truth be synonymous with being a young Jew in America. Today we’re launching a new campaign, Birthright: #NotJustAFreeTrip

Take action by adding your name to our petition demanding Taglit-Birthright Israel tell the truth about the Occupation >> http://bit.ly/DemandBirthrightTellTheTr…
Learn more about our campaign: www.NotJustAFreeTrip.com

Targeting the most vulnerable: children in detention in the US and Palestine

Palestinian children arrested in Jerusalem, from the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association site

More than 15,000 children have been detained when they tried to cross the southern border of the United States unaccompanied

 on 

When kids are brown does anyone care?

Americans are grappling with the incarceration of 10-year-olds and the concept of “tender age detention centers” while morally bankrupt politicians wring their bloodied hands. As courts begin to respond, many folks across the political spectrum are wondering, “What happens to the children caught in this catastrophe?” Interestingly, there is much we can learn from research in the US and from the Israeli experience with regard to children and prisons. The US and Israel both perceive themselves as enlightened “western democracies,” yet both have high incarceration rates, particularly for children of color, sometimes involving the same global prison industries.  In both countries, these kinds of children are perceived as the “other,” the “enemy,” the “invading hordes ready to destroy America,” the “Muslim terrorists seeking to kill Israelis.” They are presented as less human and less deserving than white and/or Jewish children and less likely to evoke an empathic reaction….

….The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children should not be deprived of liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily and that arrest, detention, or imprisonment should only be used in extreme circumstances for the shortest period of time.  Ironically, the US is the only country in the world that has not signed the treaty as reported by the ACLU.

But signing the treaty is clearly not enough. According to Defense of Children International-Palestine, last year an average of 310 Palestinian children were imprisoned for “security offenses” each month, with 60 children 12 to 15 years of age. An estimated 700 children are prosecuted each year in military courts with a 99+% conviction rate. The most common charge is stone throwing which can result in up to 20 years in prison. There have been multiple reports of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse during arrest and interrogation, with 74.5% of children reporting physical violence during arrest and 62% reporting verbal abuse, intimidation and humiliation. Solitary confinement during interrogation has been documented, with an average period of 12 days. The Israeli military courts also put children in administrative detention for months, basically imprisoning them without charges or trial.

To be absolutely clear on this, if a Jewish Israeli child was caught throwing stones at a PA security officer or a Palestinian farmer harvesting his olives, he would not end up in detention.  Indeed, if he was from certain Jewish settlements, he would be celebrated as a hero. Such is the justice under military occupation. Jewish children live under civil law and of course are not viewed as the enemy….

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

We Live Near The Border With Gaza, And We Want The Violence To End (Other Voice)

An Open Letter to Israeli Leadership

Dear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman,

We, members of Other Voice — residents of the Western Negev who live close to the border with the Gaza Strip — are writing to you, yet again, in our call for a long-term political program to end the hostilities with Gaza.

Pnina and Micha Ben Hillel live in kibbutz Nir Am

The situation in our region and in the Gaza Strip is unthinkable, unbearable and unacceptable. The deep hostility, the never-ending rounds of violence, the mortar and rocket attacks, the tunnels, the kites — all of these have made our lives a living hell. And on the other side of the border, the people live with 3-4 hours of electricity a day; they have no potable water; the sewage runs in the streets and into the sea; their health system is collapsing and they have soaring numbers of unemployment. Two million people are living without hope that they will have a sustainable future.

The government is trying to persuade us — the Israeli public, and mainly the residents of the region surrounding Gaza — that the Gazans are our enemies. We see them, however, not as our enemies, but as our neighbors.

The Hamas regime is tyrannical and has caused great harm, mainly to its own people. We neither justify nor legitimate its behaviors and its decisions. Nevertheless, it is the authority in Gaza — whether we like it or not — and so we have to find a way to speak to its members.

We call upon you to change direction. Instead of more rounds of violence, instead of another war, we need to reach a long-term ceasefire. We need to put into place a political program that will promise the people in Gaza electricity for 24 hours a day, potable water, employment, freedom of movement, air to breathe and removal of the blockade.

Israel is the strong side in this equation. We have the power and the ability to reverse this unacceptable and unbearable situation, and to create a situation in which life and hope blossom on both sides of the border. The disaster that has been going on for too long is not a natural — it is human-made. We created it and we can change it. We want to live in peace with our neighbors in Gaza. We need to live in peace with them.

Sincerely,

Members of Other Voice

An Open Letter to Hamas’ Leadership

Dear Yahya Sanwar and Ismail Haniyeh,

We are your neighbors to the east; we live in Israeli communities that share the border with the Gaza Strip. Our peoples have been at war for decades, and as the years go by, the hostilities and hatred have deepened — on both sides. This state is toxic both for your people and for ours.

Ye’ela Raanan on her bike in kibbtuz Kissufim, her home

We have been, and remain, enemies. But this can, and must, change. We are also neighbors — we live just a few kilometers away from one another. This tragedy that has befallen both of our peoples is not a natural disaster — it is a human-made one. We created it and we can change it.

Enough hatred. Enough revenge. Enough showing strength through rockets, mortars, tunnels and arson kites.

We have written Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin – the leaders on the Israeli side. We have written them what we have written you. Our message to them is that it is time to reach a long-term ceasefire, make and implement a political plan, end the blockade, help rehabilitate the Gaza Strip, help make sure that every person in Gaza has full access to electricity, clean water, enough medicine, air to breath and freedom of movement and rights.

We do not know if you will read this letter, or toss it into the waste basket. We are writing in hopes that you will read it and think about what an opportunity this is — to completely change what has been, and to bring hope to your people. Hope and a good life for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip also means hope and a good life for Israelis, on our side of the border.

We are not your enemies. We are your neighbors. We want to live as neighbors, at the very least, in co-existence.

We know that we can do this. We can make this happen. You have the power to make a huge difference on your side. We have also demanded from our leaders to do the same here.

We are not your enemies. We are your neighbors, and we want a life of dignity and peace for all people – in the Gaza Strip and in the Western Negev.

Sincerely,

Members of Other Voice

Original article

Other Voice website

Other Voice Facebook page

Photographs by Skip Schiel

Killed for Protesting (in Gaza): 6 Things to Know about the #GREATRETURNMARCH

From our Staff and Members/Gaza (Jewish Voice for Peace) April 5, 2018

Palestinian protesters in Khan Yunis, Gaza (SkyNews)

On March 30th, 2018 tens of thousands of Palestinians marched peacefully in Gaza in the Great Return March, beginning a six-week tent city protest along the Gaza/Israel border from Land Day, March 30th, to Nakba Day, May 15th.

The Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic) refers to the forced displacement of approximately 750,000 Palestinians that began with Israel’s establishment in 1948, and that continues to this day.

The #GreatReturnMarch, organized by civil society and grassroots activists, called for an end to the siege of Gaza and the right of return for Palestinian refugees according to international law.

On the first day of the march, the Israeli military killed 19 Palestinians and wounded over 1,400. No Israeli soldiers were harmed. Videos show Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed Palestinians as they ran away from the gunfire and even as they prayed.

No one should be killed for taking part in a peaceful protest, and Jewish Voice for Peace and our members will not sit quietly while the Israeli military kills Palestinians for demanding their rights.

Here’s what you need to know about the what happened in Gaza during the #GreatReturnMarch and how you can support Palestinian protesters.

The Great Return March is an ongoing mobilization and we will be updating this page as the demonstrations in Gaza continue. Update, June 14th, 2018: Since March 30th, the Israeli military has killed at least 135 Palestinians and wounded more than 14,600 others.

Download this resource as a PDF.

READ MORE

Mother of shot Gaza medic: ‘She thought the white coat would protect her’

A martyr forever caught on camera

El-Fattah, photo by Mahmoud Abu Salama

By Haneed Abed Elnaby

It is estimated that as many as 250,000 Palestinians in Gaza have participated in the Great Return March since the nonviolent border protest launched March 30. Many are from a new generations of Palestinian refugees who are rediscovering the spirit of resistance manifested during the first and second intifadas.  One of them was Abed El-Fattah Abed Elnaby, 18. He was my second cousin.

He was among the first martyrs—a number that since has grown to 49. One of nine shot and killed by Israeli snipers that first day, Abed El-Fattah achieved a kind of posthumous fame when what has now become an iconic photograph, taken moments before he was shot by Gaza photographer Mahmoud Abu Salama—appeared on the front page of the Washington Post. Here is the story behind that photo:

Abed El-Fattah was both the tallest and the youngest among the four sons in the family. (He also had five sisters!) He was known as a joker, but was a quick learner in school with a special aptitude for math.  However, the boy left school when he was just 16 to help support his family. He trained as a plumber and put in additional hours at a baker, helping to pay one of his sister’s university tuition.  Abed El-Fattah even bought his own clothes with his earnings.

Why did he decide to risk his life, meager as it was, to not only participate in the protest but approach the front lines? His family members tell me Abed El-Fattah yearned to see his family’s original village of Simsim (سمسم), located just 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) northeast of Gaza. On May 12, 1948, pre-state Israeli forces ran the villagers out of their town. The concept of a daily march to the border to call for Palestinians’ right to return to their ancestral homes captured his imagination, and he had been listening to the news every day.

On March 30, Abed El-Fattah woke up at 8 a.m. and worked at his brother’s falafel restaurant until around 2.p.m. Then he went home for his mother’s lunch, but didn’t eat much. Instead, he began preparing himself for the march, putting on new clothes he had purchased the day before. It was as if he wanted to look like a gentleman for what would become the day of his death. Dressed, he left home in a taxi. His friends next door (Zyed Abu Oukar and Yousef Masoud) and his brother Muhammad, with whom he was very close, followed shortly after.

Many of the protesters carried tires, which had become a symbol of the first and second intifadas. Tires were used at that time to block the vans driven by Zionist soldiers. But this time, many among the thousands gathered along the border began burning the tires to obscure the view of the Israeli snipers, who were targeting them with live ammunition.

According to Muhammad, Abed El-Fattah did not join them. However, when snipers began shooting at a younger boy carrying a tire close to the border fence, he darted toward and grabbed it from him so the teen could run faster. Both were running back toward the crowd of demonstrators when the Israeli snipers shot five bullets: One hit Muhammad, who was close by; he was spared only because the bullet was deflected by the mobile phone in his front shirt pocket. Another hit Abed El-Fattah in the head. He was rushed to a hospital, but he could not be saved.

“My soul was taken from me,” his father says.

How do you begin to describe such a loss? I could write about his grieving family and friends, who are haunted by his memory. Or I could describe the community mosque and his sister’s house he had helped build. Or I could interview Fadwa, an elderly woman in the neighborhood who can’t walk so is confined to a wheelchair. Abed El-Fattah knew she had no children to look after her, so became her surrogate son, bringing her food and helping her with chores almost every day. Now, she moans about how deeply she misses him.

“He is still with us, though, because he is in our hearts,” says his mother with tears in her eyes.

And despite their bottomless grief, his brothers continue to participate in the march with their father, in the hope that change will come, and that maybe, just maybe, they can see Simsim.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Another view of the execution

Mubarak Awad, Palestinian Mentor of Nonviolent Resistance

Israeli military vehicles are seen next to the border on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, as Palestinians demonstrate on the Gaza side of the border on Friday. Amir Cohen/Reuters

The strategy of The Great March of Return, Palestinians in Gaza demanding their right of return to their villages and towns, curiously parallels the nonviolent resistance methods taught by Mubarak Awad before Israel exiled him in 1988. (Posted two days before Memorial Day in the United States, a day dedicated to participants in violence, honorable people no doubt but perhaps misguided.)

Mubarak Awad (photo courtesy of Meir Amor)

Here’s part of an interview conducted in 2000:

An old man came to me whose land the Israelis had taken. He wanted it back. So I told him to get 300 or 400 people from his village—children, young people, old people—anybody who wanted to come.

The settlers had put a fence around the land. We could take the fence down and just sit there and if the Israeli military wanted to kill us, let them kill us. I told him, on one condition: Not a single person should throw a stone.

If we are all going to be massacred, let it be. And we did that; we took the land back from the settlers. That created an echo with a lot of Palestinians, who started coming to me at the Center instead of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Taking fear away from people and replacing it with courage is the essence of nonviolence.

The full interview in Peace Magazine, “Nonviolence in the Middle East: A talk with Mubarak Awad”

Mubarak Awad is the founder of Nonviolence International. Meir Amor, an Israeli peace activist living in Canada, interviewed him.

In May 1988, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir ordered Awad arrested and expelled. Officials charged that Awad broke Israeli law by inciting “civil uprising” and helping to write leaflets that advocated civil disobedience that were distributed by the leadership of the First Intifada. No evidence was provided to support the charge and Awad appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. The court ruled that he had forfeited his right to residence status in Israel when he became a U.S. citizen and he was deported in June 1988. (Wikipedia)

MORE INFORMATION

Why Are Palestinians Protesting in Gaza?

 

A wounded Palestinian demonstrator is evacuated during a protest against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem and ahead of the 70th anniversary of Nakba, at the Israel-Gaza border in the southern Gaza Strip May 14, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Once again, the Israeli military has turned its guns on Gaza — this time on unarmed protestors, in a series of shootings over the last few weeks. Gaza’s already under-resourced hospitals are straining to care for the 1,600 protesters who have been injured, on top of 40 killed.

According to a group of United Nations experts, “there is no available evidence to suggest that the lives of heavily armed security forces were threatened” by the unarmed demonstrators they fired on.

The violence is getting some coverage in the news. But the conditions in Gaza that have pushed so many to protest remain largely invisible. So do their actual demands.

The Great Return March was organized by grassroots groups in Gaza as a peaceful action with three key demands: respect for refugees’ right to return to their homes, an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, and an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Seventy years ago, Palestinians were expelled from their homes en masse when their land was seized for the state of Israel. Many became refugees, with millions of people grouped into shrinking areas like Gaza. Fifty years ago, the rest of historic Palestine came under Israeli military occupation.

While these refugees’ right of return has been recognized by the international community, no action has been taken to uphold that right. Meanwhile, the occupation has become further and further entrenched.

For over a decade, the people of Gaza have lived under a military-imposed blockade that severely limits travel, trade, and everyday life for its 2 million residents. The blockade effectively bans nearly all exports, limits imports, and severely restricts passage in and out.

In over 20 visits to Gaza over the last 10 years, I’ve watched infrastructure degrade under both the blockade and a series of Israeli bombings.

Beautiful beaches are marred by raw sewage, which flows into the sea in amounts equivalent to 43 Olympic swimming pools every day. Access to water and electricity continually decreases, hospitals close, school hours are limited, and people are left thirsty and in the dark.

These problems can only be fixed by ending the blockade.

As Americans, we bear direct responsibility for the horrific reality in Gaza. Using our tax money, the U.S. continues to fund the Israeli military through $3.8 billion in aid annually.

A group of U.S.-based faith organizations has called out U.S. silence in a statement supporting protesters and condemning the killings: “The United States stood by and allowed Israel to carry out these attacks without any public criticism or challenge,” they said. “Such U.S. complicity is a continuation of the historical policy of active support for Israel’s occupation and U.S. disregard for Palestinian rights.”

The signatories include the American Friends Service Committee, where I work, an organization that started providing humanitarian aid to refugees in Gaza as far back as 1948.

While the U.S. does give money to the United Nations and international aid groups working in Gaza, it’s barely a drop in the bucket compared to our support of the military laying siege to the territory.

As my colleagues in Gaza have made clear, what they need isn’t more aid. That humanitarian aid is needed because of the blockade. What they need is freedom from the conditions that make life unlivable — like the blockade itself — and a long-term political solution.

Ignoring the reasons Gaza is in crisis only hurts our chances to address this manmade humanitarian horror.

Mike Merryman-Lotze has worked with the American Friends Service Committee as the Palestine-Israel Program Director since 2010.

 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

We forget where we came from. Our Jewish
names from the Exile give us away,
bring back the memory of flower and fruit, medieval cities,
metals, knights who turned to stone, roses,
spices whose scent drifted away, precious stones, lots of red,
handicrafts long gone from the world
(the hands are gone too).

—Yehuda Amichai (from Jews in the Land of Israel)

Other perspectives, the first with photos:

Israeli forces kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza ‘massacre’ (May 14, 2018)

With the Great Return March, Palestinians Are Demanding a Life of Dignity (April 6, 2018)

‘We want to return to our lands without bloodshed or bombs’ (March 30, 2018)

Bloody Monday, Every Day of the Week,  

Why Palestine Matters, The Struggle To End Colonialism (book & website)

Why Palestine Matters, The Struggle To End Colonialism, contextualizes the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people within other global justice struggles. With a foreword by Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, the book is grounded in international law and brings Palestine into focus through a lens of intersectionality, calling all those who struggle for justice against oppression to consider the challenge of seeing Palestinians in the context of other justice struggles. Why Palestine Matters demonstrates that the project of human emancipation is not limited to Palestine, but it also cannot proceed without Palestine. The book is a 108-page, full-color publication with visuals on every page, a discussion guide, and maps. A companion website features enhanced resources for study, including video clips and discussion guide: WhyPalestineMatters.org. Published by the IPMN.org, The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) whose General Assembly mandate engages them “toward specific mission goals that will create currents of wider and deeper involvement with Israel/Palestine.”

Two programs about anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and privilege, Saturday, April 14, 2018

Image by Katherine Eckenfels

JOURNEYS TO ENGAGEMENT: a panel discussion organized by the NEYM Israel-Palestine Working Group, “Living into NEYM’s Israel/Palestine Minute: Understanding the Interplay of Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Racism.” Our interactive panel—Steve Chase (author of Pendle Hill Pamphlet #445 BDS? A Quaker Zionist Rethinks Palestinian Rights); Salaam Odeh (mother raised in Jordan, with family in Nablus, Occupied Palestinian West Bank),  and her daughter, Samah Deek; and Steve and Barbara Low (active members of Jewish Voice for Peace, much traveled to Palestine Israel, founder and directors of the GRALTA Foundation)—will examine how anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and privilege affect our understanding of Israel/Palestine today. By sharing their insights & experiences the panel will 1) address ways to overcome feeling the fear, which exists among Quakers, about having this conversation; and 2) suggest how Friends can imagine living more boldly into last summer’s NEYM minute on Israel and Palestine.

Martha Yager, Salaam Odeh, Samah Deek, Barbara Low, Steve Low, Steve Chase (L to R)

Our Israel­Palestine Working Group of New England Yearly Meeting has been meeting since 2015. Each year during NEYM we have organized and facilitated programs including slideshows and movies about the region, workshops, speakers, a Gaza pinwheel display from American Friends Service Committee, photographic displays, and informal lunch sessions. Most recently we have concentrated on helping write and distribute minutes from monthly and quarterly meetings. We are a small, self-­appointed interest group from different sections of New England. Most of us have visited Palestine and Israel numerous times and have been active on related issues for more than one decade. Our website is neym­ip.org. You will find quite a bit of background information and links on the site.

Other religious denominations have devoted substantial time and resources to deepening their understanding of Israel/Palestine, the role of the United States in that dynamic, and in discerning what, if anything, they feel called to contribute to the situation. Many have asked why Quakers are not engaged in these discussions, as our voice as a traditional “peace church” is often looked to for guidance.

Samah Deek

At Sessions last August we passed a minute that ended a long period of paralysis and began to engage us in these issues. We have begun to talk. We are facing our fears. And the minute did something more ­ though it barely mentions Israel/Palestine, it does spotlight the problem of US arms trade and foreign policy in the region as something perhaps we can focus on. Also, it commits us to growing in understanding of anti­Semitism and Islamophobia. This actually gives us quite a bit of space to work in.

We engage in this work with a few assumptions that we want to put on the table. Perhaps the most important is that there is no one Jewish voice or narrative. And there is no one Palestinian voice or narrative. People enter this story from a variety of experiences and histories. A younger generation of Israelis, American Jews and Palestinians and Palestinian diaspora has a different lived experience and they are beginning to shape the dialogue in new ways. We want for people at NEYM to listen deeply to this variety of voices and experiences.

Steve Chase

The other assumption we should name is that we draw from our own experiences challenging our own government ­ we hold that governments are something different from a people. Many of us are fierce critics of US government policies and practices, but many of us also will say that we do so out of love. And that criticizing our government does not necessarily mean criticizing all people who call themselves US citizens. Israel makes criticizing the government more complex by insisting that it is a Jewish state, but we believe that as with any government, its policies are something that can be discussed without impugning all Jews or such criticism being anti­Semitic.

We come to this day asking you to engage in deep listening not political debate. We have five panelists: Steve Chase, who will talk about his journey to overcome the perspectives he had been taught as he listened to new voices and educated himself more; Steve and Barbara Low, both members of Jewish Voice for Peace who likewise have had an evolution in their thinking; and Salaam Odeh and her daughter, Palestinian American activists.

QUESTIONS FOR THE PANELISTS
(from the organizers)

  • What has been your journey in coming to understand Israel/Palestine—both the dream and the reality?
  • What has been your journey in coming to understand the intersections of anti­Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism?
  • How do you differentiate between anti­Semitism and anti­Zionism?
  • What have you had to do to find your voice within your core community?
  • What do people who are most directly impacted by these issues want or need from us as allies?

As we enter this discussion, we ask you to think about the words of a British peace activist as she engaged with the Irish man who murdered her father:

In that moment of empathy, there is nothing to forgive, just understanding. We are all born into sides, into different narratives, into communities with their own stories but when we hear each other’s stories then we are connected through our shared humanity.

Let us listen deeply, with empathy for the hearts holding other stories, other sides, that we may grow in understanding and wisdom, and find our own voices, individually and collectively, for a just peace.

QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE
(overflowing, some one-third of all those attending the retreat, a good sign of interest; we passed out cards and didn’t have time to answer more than a few questions; we anticipate answering and encourage readers of this post to send in their own answers, using the reply panel at the bottom of this page.)

  • How do we initiate conversations with our Jewish Friends? Some have family in Israel; others are Holocaust survivors
  • Talk about the future – what will this Middle East area look like in ten years? Paint the future, please!
  • What use is NEYM making of AFSC’s programs and initiatives with regard to Israel-Palestine?
  • What is the benefit of looking at how racism affects both Jewish people and Palestinians in Israel? Especially with regard to Ethiopian Jews and other Jews of color? (police brutality, sterilization, socioeconomic marginalization) Does invoking this intersectionality help complicate the suggestion that criticizing the Netanyahu administration/neoliberalism/settler colonialism in Israel is inherently antisemitic?
  • The word “Holocaust” I was cautioned should not be used after I came home from AFSC-sponsored study tour to Guatemala/Central America in 1985. I was struck that I had spent days walking in an occupied land in front of Uzi guns and Reagan was visiting the Bitburg Cemetery – so many connections. I was surprised and appalled when I saw photos of the “settlements” – in my mind, I was imagining a refugee camp w/ tents vs high-rise apartments – these visuals I think would help raise the questions we need to be asking to gain understanding.
  • (NB – Bitburg was a cemetery for German military war dead; he had visited Bergen-Belsen earlier “in an effort to honor all victims of World War II, including German soldiers.” (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reagan-visits-concentration-camp-and-war-cemetery)
  • Tell us more about “Jews for Peace” (presumably JVP – Jewish Voice for Peace? unless this person meant Americans for Peace Now? – but I suspect it is JVP)
  • What are the most reliable news sources on Israel-Palestine? al Jazeera? Other?
  • Where is the prophetic voice today? What Jewish prophets are talking to Palestinians? What Palestinian prophets are talking (kvetching) with Jews?
  • How much do the victim stories of the Jews who survived Nazism (and who now live in Israel) impact Israel’s policies?
  • Talk about the perspective that Israelis have that they “won” the land from Palestinian land during the Intifada (sic) – (NOTE – some historical confusion in this question; can’t tell if they mean 1948 or 1967; but neither way do the Intifadas seem to apply to the question)
  • Why do you say a two-state solution is not possible? Is it more possible to have a one state solution that provides for equity and equal justice and equal opportunity
  • What do you think will happen with the confrontations at the Gaza border?
  • I’d like to know the experience of typical middle-aged Palestinian Arabs. Have their families lost their homes, their lands? How do they feel about occupation by Israelis and about checkpoints?

QUAKERS AND ANTI-SEMITISM:a workshop organized by Jonathan Vogel-Borne and Allan Korhman

Part of NEYM’s 2017 minute on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (#2017-46), states that we “call upon all individuals and communities to examine how anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and privilege affect our understanding of the conflict.” In this interactive workshop we will explore our stories and perhaps find more understanding about where and how we participate in the personal and systemic evil of antisemitism. We will look at how antisemitism has operated in our Quaker heritage and especially how it affects us today as we struggle to address our nation’s complicity in the continued suffering. Jonathan Vogel-Borne and Allan Kohrman have been engaged in conversation on the topic of Israel-Palestine, Quakers and Jews, for almost 30 years. While not fully agreeing with all of Allan’s position—but because he felt Allan’s voice needed to be heard—Jonathan helped to edited Allan’s pamphlet, “Quakers and Jews” (2004).

ADDITIONAL REPORT BY MINGA CLAGGETT-BORNE

BACKGROUND ON LIVING FAITH

WHAT: Living into New England Yearly Meeting’s Israel/Palestine Minute/statement: Understanding Interplay of Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Racism (as part of an all day gathering, Living Faith

WHEN: April 14, Saturday; the panel is from 10:45 to 11:45 with the option of informal conversations during lunch, and attendance at a related afternoon workshop.

WHERE: Portland Maine, Cheverus High School, 267 Ocean Ave, 04103

“LIVING FAITH”—WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT?

Living Faith is a day-long gathering of Friends from throughout New England. The event is a chance for Friends to worship together, get to know each other, share the different ways we experience and live our faith, and build community.

MORE INFO:

The Great March of Return (of Gazans to their villages and towns)—Israel Threatens More Force After Gaza Protests Leave Nearly 135 Dead, 14,600 Wounded

Palestinians participate in a tent city protest commemorating Land Day, with Israeli soldiers seen below in the foreground on. March 30. Photographer- Jack Guez/AFP

FROM UN’S OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS (MAY 16, 2018)

Friday’s protests [March 30, 2018], which Israel estimated drew 40,000 people, were the first of six weeks of planned anti-Israel actions meant to dramatize the Palestinians’ plight as refugees. Israel said Sunday that Gaza militants used civilian demonstrators as cover as they fired at soldiers and tried to lay explosives near the border fence. Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the militant Hamas group that rules Gaza and sponsored the protests, called the killings a “massacre.”

Palestinians martyrs (to date, April 1, 2018)

Israel threatened to use greater force to quell violent Palestinian protests along the Gaza Strip border, rejecting allegations it used excessive firepower against demonstrations that left at least 16 Palestinians dead….

READ MORE

TOPSHOT – Palestinian protestors wave their national flag and gesture during a demonstration commemorating Land Day near the border with Israel, east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on March 30, 2018. Clashes erupted as thousands of Gazans marched near the Israeli border in a major protest dubbed “The Great March of Return”. / AFP / SAID KHATIB

A young Palestinian looks at a poster listing the villages that demonstrators at the Great March of Return plan to return to once the Palestinian right of return is honored. (Photo- Mohammed Asad)

CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS

Reading Maimonides in Gaza, by Marilyn Garson (2018)
From 2011 to 2015, experience in Gaza’s economic sector

This is How We Fought in Gaza, Soldiers׳ testimonies and photographs from “Operation Protective Edge,” by Breaking the Silence (2014)

Book suggestion: Night in Gaza, by Mads Gilbert (2015)
A participant’s view by a Norwegian medical doctor in hospitals during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014, Operation Protective Edge, with excellent photographs by the author. Israel has now banned him from entering the region for life.

Night in Gaza 2

B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

 

B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

works to end Israel’s occupation in acknowledgment of the fact that ending the occupation regime is the only way to forge a future in which human rights, democracy, liberty and equality are ensured to all persons living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. While it is not B’Tselem’s role to choose between the various political options that can bring about this future, one thing is clear: none of them include continuation of the occupation.

The name B’Tselem, bestowed upon the organization by former Member of Knesset Yossi Sarid, literally means “in the image of” in Hebrew. It is taken from Genesis 1:27: “And God created humans in his image. In the image of God did He create him” and is also used as a synonym for human dignity. The name expresses the Jewish and universal moral edict to respect and protect the human rights of all people.

B’Tselem was founded in 1989 and until recently devoted most of its efforts to documenting human rights violations that come under Israel’s purview as occupying power. This included publishing statistics, testimonies, video footage and reports concerning human rights violations and their implications, in order to promote better living conditions for the occupied population – with the understanding that the occupation was to be a passing matter.

Yet after almost half a century of occupation, during which Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories have created profound changes that indicate long-term intentions, it is clear that this reality cannot be viewed as temporary. Therefore, B’Tselem continues to document and publicize human rights violations while also exposing the injustice, violence and dispossession that lie at the very core of this regime of occupation, challenging its legitimacy in Israel and abroad and helping to expedite its end.

B’Tselem has established a strong reputation among human rights organizations in Israel and around the world. It has received various awards, including the Carter-Menil Award for Human Rights, together with Al-Haq (1989), the Danish PL Foundation Human Rights Award, together with Al-Haq (2011), and the Stockholm Human Rights Award (2014). B’Tselem’s video project was granted the British One World Media Award (2009) and the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum Award (2012), among others.

 

B’Tselem is an independent, non-partisan organization. It is funded by donations alone, from foundations in Europe and North America that support human rights activity worldwide and from private individuals in Israel and abroad.

Receive and distribute our materials

B’Tselem distributes all its material free of charge. If you would like to receive our publications on a regular basis, send us your address via mail or e-mail. Please specify if you would prefer to receive reports in English or Hebrew.

Once a month, B’Tselem sends a newsletter to its e-mail subscribers. The newsletter includes information on individual cases and larger policies concerning human rights, as well as calls for action. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter.

(November 11, 2017)

A conference: THE  ISRAEL LOBBY & AMERICAN POLICY 2018, March 2, 2018, DC and online

THE ISRAEL LOBBY & AMERICAN POLICY 2018

Just before the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference and mass congressional lobbying day in Washington, DC, the “Israel Lobby and American Policy 2018” conference will be held on Friday, March 2, 2018 at the National Press Club.

This educational event is open to the public and will examine the strategies, tactics and policies of Israel and its U.S. lobby. Key questions to be addressed by invited experts are:

  • What is the current estimated cost and trajectory of major Israel lobby initiatives such as the Israel Anti-Boycott Act law that seek to fine and jail American organizations and individuals engaged in boycotts of Israel over systematic human rights abuses?
  • What impact could other major Israel lobby initiatives—including precipitating U.S. attacks on Iran, renewed U.S. attacks on Syria, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and formal U.S. recognition of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, Golan Heights and West Bank—have on America’s global standing?
  • How is American public opinion shifting on key issues such as unconditional military aid to Israel, the influence of Israel on U.S. policymakers, and trust in coverage of Israel by the mainstream news media?
  • What is the current level of Israel lobby “capture” of major U.S. institutions, especially government agencies, think tanks, academia and news outlets?
  • What is Israel’s long-term regional strategy and how does it attempt to engage the U.S. in achieving its objectives through the Israel lobby?
  • How are peace and human rights activists pushing back against the lobby in courtrooms and at the grassroots level?
  • What new roles are artists taking on to challenge Israel lobby initiatives? What is the pushback?
  • How do Israel lobby “gatekeepers” influence campus debate, academic appointments and curriculum?
  • What are the current challenges to liberal Zionist beliefs, public perception of Israel as being interested in peace, and the notion of universal American Jewish support for Israel?
  • Which country has a quantitatively larger influence on U.S. electoral politics, Russia or Israel?
  • Will Israel likely break its agreement not to seek more than $38 billion in U.S. military aid over the next decade? What amount of secret intelligence aid is Israel also receiving, and why are U.S. intelligence agencies fighting to keep it secret?

So what explains the special relationship if there is no strategic or moral imperative and if most Americans do not favor it? Our answer, of course, is the lobby.

– John Mearsheimer

(This video site will provide live coverage, and probably a recording for later viewing.)

The Israel Lobby and American Policy conference is solely sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). 

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

Mondoweiss—News & Opinion About Palestine, Israel & the United States

Mondoweiss is an independent website devoted to informing readers about developments in Israel/Palestine and related US foreign policy. We provide news and analysis unavailable through the mainstream media regarding the struggle for Palestinian human rights.

According to the editors, Mondoweiss is “a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective”. Its founder describes himself as progressive and anti-Zionist. (Wikipedia)

Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice

Rachel Corrie

Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer on 16 March 2003, while undertaking nonviolent direct action to protect the home of a Palestinian family from demolition.

Since her killing, an enormous amount of solidarity activities have been carried out in her name around the world.

The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice is a grassroots, 501(c)3 non-profit organization that conducts and supports programs that foster connections between people, that build understanding, respect, and appreciation for differences, and that promote cooperation within and between local and global communities. The foundation encourages and supports grassroots efforts in pursuit of human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice, which we view as pre-requisites for world peace. Continuing the work begun and envisioned by our daughter, Rachel Corrie, our initial emphasis has been on Israel/Palestine.

Cindy & Craig Corrie (Photo by Scott Weinstien)

What is BDS?

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.

Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.

BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. Eleven years since its launch, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION

Jewish Voice for Peace Fighting Antisemitism

Jewish Voice for Peace is dedicated to working toward justice, dignity, and equality for all people, and to actively opposing all forms of oppression. Fighting antisemitism is an important part of our work for a more just world.

As a community rooted in Jewish traditions, we understand antisemitism as discrimination against, violence towards, or stereotypes of Jews for being Jewish. Antisemitism has manifested itself in structural inequality, dispossession, expulsion, and genocide, with the most well-known examples being in Europe, with the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, and the Nazi Holocaust in the 1940s. Antisemitism does not impact all of us who identify as Jewish in the same way. The experiences and histories of Jews of color and/or Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews are distinct from those of white, Ashkenazi Jews. Jewish communities around the world have had different experiences with discrimination, bigotry, and violence. In this statement, we will be focusing on two forms of antisemitism that resonate in the United States today: Christian antisemitism and racial antisemitism….

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

Palestine Israel Tool Kit from the Palestine Israel Network of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship

The holy land where Jesus was born, ministered, crucified and resurrected is today one of the most contentious places on earth. Conflict in the modern state of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories is always near the headlines in our media-driven world, but mythology and tradition, injustices and grievances, and competing geopolitical interests in the region make it difficult to separate fact from fiction, truth from propaganda. 

Here we have compiled various resources to help readers learn the basics, broaden knowledge, dispel misunderstandings, and find out ways to join with others to work toward peace with justice in this sacred but troubled place.  

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE AND FOR THE TOOL KIT

“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

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”

Tree of Life Educational Fund

The Tree of Life Educational Fund (TOL) a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation was established by The First Congregational Church of Old Lyme to provide cross-cultural and transnational travel experiences, interfaith conferences and educational opportunities to help participants to become more enlightened and more engaged in making this a more just and peaceful world in which to live.

The American Friends Service Committee work in Palestine-Israel

 

 

 

Campaigns and news

Among their issues: ending discrimination, building peace, defending immigrant rights, ending mass incarceration, and building economic justice.

Founded in the aftermath of World War I to serve conscientious objectors and provide humanitarian aid to those suffering the war’s results, the AFSC is a quasi-Quaker organization, meaning it operates along Quaker principles, has a largely Quaker board, and functions with a mixture of staff, some of whom are Quaker.

The AFSC shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 with the British Friends Service Council on behalf of Quakers worldwide for its humanitarian and advocacy work. Currently it takes a leading role in bringing peace, justice, and security to all parties in the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Their website

Suggested Reading (books and articles)

Compiled by Skip Schiel, 2018 (with suggestions from many others) Revised September 15, 2022

Books on the Israel Palestine Conflict suggested by Listopia on Goodreads

Those preceded by an asterisk (*) we highly recommend.

 

Apeirogon follows two characters based on real people, Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan
SARAH LEE/EYEVINE

 

 

 

 

 


* Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire

AFSCs new anthology imagines the future of Gaza beyond the cruelties of occupation and Apartheid.  It imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and liberation. (AFSC)

 

* Apeirogon, by Colum McCann

Like the The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan, this book which the author calls a “hybrid novel” presents two overlapping views of two true-life incidents, the death of a young Israeli girl thru a suicide Palestinian operation and of a Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers.  The respective fathers, serving as the main characters, became close friends. Review by the Guardian. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020)

Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks: Jean Zaru

* Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks, by Jean Zaru
Jean Zaru is the anchor of Quakerism in the Occupied Territories. Long clerk of Ramallah Friends Meeting, world traveler speaking for Quakers in the Holy Land, and friend and mentor to many attempting to understand the dynamics of occupation and siege, the author presents a perspective blending resistance, nonviolence, Christianity, and Quakerism that has influenced many who have read her book, heard her speak, met her, and seek her guidance. (Fortress Press, 2008)

                     

The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East—Videography, Aesthetics, and Politics in Israel and Palestine, by Liat Berdugo, 2021
Drawing on the vast video archive of the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, Berdugo analyses how Palestinians working for justice, Israelis for domination, and international activists for disclosure use the video camera.

Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the United ...

*Against Our Better Judgement, the hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Israel, by Alison Weir, 2014
A well-documented, encyclopedic, detailed account of often obscured or erased facts of history (IfAmericansKnew.org)

*The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe, 2006
Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe’s groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. (Amazon)

*War Against the People, Israel, the Palestinians, and Global Pacification, by Jeff Halper, 2015
Long-awaited, War Against the People is a powerful indictment of the Israeli state’s “securocratic” war in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Anthropologist and activist Jeff Halper draws on firsthand research to show the pernicious effects of the subliminal form of unending warfare conducted by Israel, an approach that relies on sustaining fear among the populace, fear that is stoked by suggestions that the enemy is inside the city limits, leaving no place truly safe and justifying the intensification of military action and militarization in everyday life. Eventually, Halper shows, the integration of militarized systems—including databases tracking civilian activity, automated targeting systems, unmanned drones, and more—becomes seamless with everyday life. And the Occupied Territories, Halper argues, is a veritable laboratory for that approach. (University of Chicago Press) Interview with Halper about the book and his idea of Global Palestine, 2016, by David Kettenburg

*Mornings in Jenin (novel), by Susan Abulhawa, 2010
Mornings in Jenin is a multi-generational story about a Palestinian family. Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history. Amidst the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts, there is always the waiting, waiting to return to a lost home. (Amazon)

Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians, by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, 2010
Described by a UN fact-finding mission as “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population,” Israel’s Operation Cast Lead thrust the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip into the center of the debate about the Israel/Palestine conflict. In Gaza in Crisis, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé, two of the issue’s most insightful and prominent critical voices, survey the fallout from Israel’s conduct in Gaza and place it into the context of Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestine. (Amazon)

*Palestine (graphic novel), by Joe Sacco, 2001
A graphic novel written and drawn by Joe Sacco about his experiences in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in December 1991 and January 1992. Sacco gives a portrayal which emphasizes the history and plight of the Palestinian people, as a group and as individuals. (Wikipedia)

*Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, by Omar Barghouti, 2011
International boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) efforts helped topple South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime. In this urgent book, Omar Barghouti makes the case for a rights-based BDS campaign to stop Israel’s rapacious occupation, colonization, and apartheid against the Palestinian people. This considered, convincing collection contributes to the growing debate on Israel’s violations of international law and points the way forward to a united global civil society movement for freedom, justice, self-determination, and equality for all. (Haymarket Books)

*The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan, 2007
In 1967, Bashir Al-Khayri, a Palestinian twenty-five-year-old, journeyed to Israel, with the goal of seeing the beloved old stone house, with the lemon tree behind it, that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation. (Goodreads)

*The Question of Palestine, by Edward Said, 1992 (first published 1979)
Still a basic and indispensable account of the Palestinian question, updated to include the most recent developments in the Middle East- from the intifada to the Gulf war to the historic peace conference in Madrid. (Goodreads)

Wrestling in the Daylight, by Brant Rosen
In 2006, Rabbi Brant Rosen, who served a Jewish Reconstructionist congregation in Evanston, Illinois, launched a blog called Shalom Rav, in which he explored a broad range of social-justice issues. The focus of his writing—and his activism—changed dramatically in December 2008, when Israel launched a wide, 23-day military attack against Gaza, causing him to deeply question his lifelong liberal Zionism. Unlike the biblical Jacob, who wrestled in the dark of night at a crucial turning point in his life, Rabbi Rosen chose to make his struggle public: to wrestle in the daylight. Over the two years that followed, Shalom Rav became a public and always highly readable record of his journey from liberal Zionist to active and visionary Palestinian solidarity activist. Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi’s Path to Palestinian Solidarity is Rosen’s self-curated compilation of these blog posts. (Just World Books)

Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land, by Sandy Tolan, 2015 by Bloomsbury USA
It is an unlikely story. Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a child from a Palestinian refugee camp, confronts an occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then, through his charisma and persistence, inspires scores of others to work with him to make that dream real. The dream: a school to transform the lives of thousands of children–as Ramzi’s life was transformed–through music. (Bloomsbury Publishing)

*The Adam of Two Edens: Selected Poems, by Mahmoud Darwish, 2000
“They never left. They never returned. Their hearts were almonds in the streets,” writes Darwish (Mural) in “The Tragedy of Narcissus, the Comedy of Silver.” A revered Palestinian poet—recipient of France’s Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal and the Lotus Prize, and author of 20 poetry collections among other works—Darwish was six at time of the Israeli occupations of 1948; his father was killed and his family fled to Lebanon. As a young man, he was repeatedly imprisoned for reading his poetry and not carrying the proper papers. He has since lived all over the world, and advised the PLO Executive Committee between 1982 and 1993, when he resigned in protest of the Oslo accords. (Publishers Weekly)

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, by Sarah Schulman, 2012
In this chronicle of political awakening and queer solidarity, the activist and novelist Sarah Schulman describes her dawning consciousness of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Invited to Israel to give the keynote address at an LGBT studies conference at Tel Aviv University, Schulman declines, joining other artists and academics honoring the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Anti-occupation activists in the United States, Canada, Israel, and Palestine come together to help organize an alternative solidarity visit for the American activist. Schulman takes us to an anarchist, vegan café in Tel Aviv, where she meets anti-occupation queer Israelis, and through border checkpoints into the West Bank, where queer Palestinian activists welcome her into their spaces for conversations that will change the course of her life. She describes the dusty roads through the West Bank, where Palestinians are cut off from water and subjected to endless restrictions while Israeli settler neighborhoods have full freedoms and resources. (Duke University Press)

*The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, by Miko Peled, 2016
In 1997, a tragedy struck the family of Israeli-American Miko Peled. His beloved niece Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. That tragedy propelled Peled onto a journey of discovery. It pushed him to re-examine many of the beliefs he had grown up with, as the son and grandson of leading figures in Israel’s political-military elite, and transformed him into a courageous and visionary activist in the struggle for human rights and a hopeful, lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. (Goodreads)

*Activestills—Photography as Protest in Palestine/Israel, edited by Vered Maimon and Shiraz Grinbaum, 2016
Using the twin acts of making and presenting photographs, Israeli, Palestinian, and international photographers offer a new reality, often distorted by mainstream media. (PlutoPress)

*On Antisemitism—Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice, by various writers compiled by Jewish Voice for Peace, 2017
An array of views about antisemitism, especially when used as a charge against criticism of Israel. (Haymarket Books)

*Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions? A Quaker Zionist Rethinks Palestinian Rights, by Steve Chase, 2017 (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #445)

“Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors,” by Sara Roy, 2002 (Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 32, no. 1)

The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development (Expanded Third Edition) by Sara Roy, 2016 (Institute for Palestine Studies)

The Hundred-Year Struggle for Israel and Palestine : An Analytic History and Reader (Revised Edition), edited by Victor Lieberman , 2012
The book opens with a general history of the conflict, which is followed by secondary readings that illustrate and enrich that preliminary survey. Readings have been carefully chosen to express a variety of interpretive and political viewpoints. (Cognella Academic Publishing) Sample

Gaza, an Inquest into its Martyrdom by Norman Finkelstein, 2018, an exhaustive and carefully documented analysis of Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), the Goldstone report (about Cast Lead, 2009), the Mavi Marmara (2010), and Operation Protective Edge (2014). His central thesis is Israel’s policies are intended to punish the people of Gaza and make their land uninhabitable. (University of California Press) Review by Marilyn Garson, 2018.

Reading Maimonides in Gaza, by Marilyn Garson (2018)
From 2011 to 2015, experience in Gaza’s economic sector

This is How We Fought in Gaza, Soldiers׳ testimonies and photographs from “Operation Protective Edge,” by Breaking the Silence (2014)

Night in Gaza, by Mads Gilbert (2015)
A participant’s view by a Norwegian medical doctor in hospitals during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014, Operation Protective Edge, with excellent photographs by the author. Israel has now banned him from entering the region for life.

Night in Gaza 2

*Faith & Fratricide, the Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, by Rosemary Radford Ruether (1974)
Since the Nazi holocaust took the lives of a third of the Jewish people of the world, the Christian Church has been engaged in a self-examination of its own historical role in the creation of anti-semitism. In this major contribution to that search, theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether explores the roots of Anti-Semitism from new perspectives.

A History of the Jews, by Paul Johnson (1988)

This historical magnum opus covers 4,000 years of the extraordinary history of the Jews as a people, a culture, and a nation, showing the impact of Jewish character and imagination upon the world.


Constantine’s Sword: the Church & the Jews,  a History, by James Carroll (2001)
A former priest, Carroll documents the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the long European history of Anti-Semitism. The primary source of anti-Jewish violence is the perennial obsession with converting the Jews to Christianity; an event which some theologians believed would usher in the Second Coming.

My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit (2013)
“My Promised Land” startles in many ways, not least in its relative lack of interest in providing its readers with a handy politics. Shavit, a columnist who serves on the editorial board of Haaretz, has an undoctrinaire mind. He comes not to praise or to blame, though along the way he does both, with erudition and with eloquence; he comes instead to observe and to reflect. (Leon Wieseltier, New York Times)

The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, by Walter Laqueur (2006)
A history of antisemitism, is no exception: although it begins with the ancient world and provides a brisk survey of the history of antisemitism through the era of the Holocaust, half of its chapters deal with aspects of “the new antisemitism,” the surprising mutations of the old virus that have occurred in the post-Holocaust era. As Laqueur wryly notes, the Nazis made the term “antisemitism” disreputable, and most antisemites now masquerade under other names: “A spade is no longer a spade but an agricultural implement.” (Bruce Thompson)

Why Palestine Matters, The Struggle To End Colonialismby IPMN.org, The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Contextualizes the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people within other global justice struggles. With a foreword by Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, the book is grounded in international law and brings Palestine into focus through a lens of intersectionality.

Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine, by David Shulman (2007), published by the University of Chicago Press
Shulman’s chronicle of Palestinian and other Israeli activists struggling for justice, featuring his work with Ta’ayush, a joint Palestinian Israeli grassroots organization.
One of the most fascinating and moving accounts of Israeli-Palestinian attempts to help, indeed to save, human beings suffering under the burden of occupation and terror. Anyone who is pained and troubled by what is happening in the Holy Land should read this human document, which indeed offers a certain dark hope. (A. B. Yehoshua)

Dark Hope

Eyewitness Gaza, photographs by Skip Schiel & Teeksa Photography (2012)
Photographed mostly between 2008 and 2010, Schiel depicts his multiple experiences in the Gaza Strip thru his astute lens.

 

 

 

 

 

*J’accuse (Poetry by a leading radical progressive Jewish Israeli) / Aharon Shabtai ; translated by Peter Cole.

*So what : new & selected poems (by a Palestinian, partly about the Nakba and his destroyed village, with a story), 1971-2005 / Taha Muhammad Ali ; translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, Gabriel Levin.*My happiness bears no relation to happiness : a poet’s life in the Palestinian century (about the author, story teller and, Nazarine shop owner, Taha Muhammad Ali) / Adina Hoffman. 

*In search of Fatima : a Palestinian story (the Nakba from the point of view of a Jewish Israeli)/ Ghada Karmi.

*Khirbet Khizeh (expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba from this particular village)/ S. Yizhar ; translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange and Yaacob Dweck ; afterword by David Shulman.

*Gaza : life in a cage / text by Hervé Kempf ; photographs by Jérôme Equer.

Catastrophe remembered : Palestine, Israel and the internal refugees : essays in memory of Edward W. Said (1935-2003) / edited by Nur Masalha.

Drawing the Kafr Qasem massacre / by Samia Halaby ; foreword by Raja Shehadeh ; historical perspective by Salman Abu Sitta.

*The words of my father : love and pain in Palestine (living in Gaza, shot by an Israeli soldier, medically treated by Israeli, this man learn to overcome hate)/ Yousef Bashir.

The innocents abroad (his dour and highly prejudiced account of Palestine in the mid 1800s)/ Mark Twain ; edited and with an introduction by Tom Quirk and notes by Guy Cardwell.

Palestine and the Palestinians : a social and political history / Samih K. Farsoun, Naseer H. Aruri.

*Palestinian walks : forays into a vanishing landscape (intimate accounts of vanishing Palestine landscape, with attempts to reverse that)/ Raja Shehadeh.

*Erased from space and consciousness : Israel and the depopulated Palestinian villages of 1948 (how Israeli erasure works)/ Noga Kadman ; foreword by Oren Yiftachel ; translation from Hebrew, Dimi Reider ; translation consultant, Ofer Neiman.

Before their diaspora : a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876-1948 (breathtaking, monumental, tear-evoking, and nearly impossible to find)/ with an introduction and commentary by Walid Khalidi.

*Transformed landscapes : essays on Palestine and the Middle East in honor of Walid Khalidi / edited by Camille Mansour, Leila Fawaz.

Auschwitz : a history in photographs / compiled and edited by Teresa Świebocka ; English edition prepared by Jonathan Webber and Connie Wilsack.

Ordinary lives / (photos from a refugee camp in Lebanon) Rania Matar ; essay by Anthony Shadid.

The Northern Ireland peace process : ending the troubles? (with some insights relevant to ending “The Troubles” in Palestine-Israel) / Thomas Hennessey.

“From Ramallah to New York, Tel Aviv to Porto Alegre, people around the world celebrate a formidable, transnational Palestinian LGBTQ social movement. Solidarity with Palestinians has become a salient domain of global queer politics. Yet LGBTQ Palestinians, even as they fight patriarchy and imperialism, are themselves subjected to an “empire of critique” from Israeli and Palestinian institutions, Western academics, journalists and filmmakers, and even fellow activists. Such global criticism has limited growth and led to an emphasis within the movement on anti-imperialism over the struggle against homophobia.” (2020)

We Begin Here, Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, edited by Kamal Boullata and Kathy Engel, 2007

A massive compilation of poetry in many styles and points of view. Often heartbreaking, often heartening.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
27774750Concentrating mostly on the Tamimi family and their leadership of resistance to the occupation in Nabi Saleh, Ehrenreich portrays a spectrum of approaches, including that of youth. “Even tho I have fairly extensive experience in Palestine-Israel, Ehrenreich, by being so embedded (in the best manner, close to the people, suffering and celebrating with them) reveals many new insights.” (Skip Schiel)
© 2014-2023 Quakers Advocating Justice for Palestine
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