Supporters of BDS rally in Ireland in February 2010. / Photo Courtesy of BDSMovement.Net

The story so far…

So, the Palestinians have failed in their attempt to gain full statehood recognition through the UN Security Council. Even if they had achieved the nine votes required, we know that the United States would have used its veto to turn the win into only a moral victory. The General Assembly can now have its say but can only vote on a lesser status than full statehood for the Palestinians.

Of course, even if the statehood bid had been successful it would have done little to change the reality on the ground for Palestinians. In fact, it could have made things worse, depending on how punitive Israel wished to be. A General Assembly vote to enhance Palestinian status at the UN could yet cause more problems. Look at Israel’s reaction to the UNESCO admittance vote last month. Palestinian funds withheld, settlement building speeded up in the West Bank, and further expansion of the ‘eternal’ and ‘unified’ Jerusalem announced. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu administration seems determined to undermine Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority President, despite him being the most moderate Palestinian leader currently on the stage. No wonder Obama and Sarkozy were caught on mic swapping frustrations about the intransigence of Bibi Netanyahu.

However, the UN vote strategy has not been without its critics among Palestinians. For a start, it puts to one side other critical issues such as the status of Palestinian refugees living outside of the Israeli Occupied Territories and the condition of Palestinians living within the State of Israel. Overall though, the strategy has been a useful one. Israel and the United States have found themselves on the back foot and out of step with the majority of governments around the world. For the first time in years, the Palestinians have taken the initiative with a bold, peaceful move to secure international acceptance for their cause.

A Palestinian child in Gaza City sits beside the wreckage of a building destroyed in Israel's 2008/2009 assault on Gaza. / Photo Courtesy of Andreas Lunde

Former Judge Richard Goldstone has recently published in the New York Times a very disappointing apology to the Israeli regime titled “Israel and the Apartheid Slander.” His famous report on the Gaza events made him a genuine hero in the eyes of many Jews including myself. His devotion to truth and justice and his courage to confront power resonated with all the values that I believe are the spirit of Judaism. In his article my Jewish hero vanished: no truth, no justice, and reverence to those in power.

I must begin with a clear statement. I don’t think the Israeli regime is Apartheid, and I strongly believe that the comparison to Apartheid is a factual and political mistake. However, in his apologetic article, Goldstone not only states that Israel is not like the South African Apartheid regime, but presents Israel as a democracy and neglects the military occupation. Goldstone makes an appropriate distinction between the Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the “West Bank and Gaza areas,” but the words “military” and “occupation” are not part of his vocabulary.

While I was reporting from Gaza for five months in 2010, I met a 67-year-old filmmaker who produced a riveting video tour of Gaza called Inshallah. Maurice is now working on a courageous new film called Mohammed’s Cry. Please read his reflections, spread the word, and (if you can), help him raise the funds he needs to draw attention to the ongoing suffering of Gazan civilians.

What’s the connection between the “Occupy” movement and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What positions are Jewish activists in particular taking on this issue? In this video report, activists from “Occupy Oakland” – a rabbi, a queer Muslim, a Palestinian refugee, a Gaza Freedom March participant, and others – share their stories and perspectives.

With the Knesset set to reconvene, and with the Occupy Wall Street protests reverberating from America, tens of thousands of protesters marched in cities across Israel, reigniting their struggle for social and economic justice.

Over 20,000 gathered in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square to demand social and economic justice, with many echoing refrains now heard at Occupy Wall Street protests.

Protesters railed against a host of social and economic injustices, including the growing gap between the rich and poor in Israel, with many protesters echoing refrains now heard at Occupy Wall Street protests in America. Many held signs that read “We are the 99 percent,” and several protesters mirrored the occupation language that has become synonymous with Occupy Wall Street. One particularly poignant sign read “Occupy Tel Aviv, Not Palestine.”

The rallies across Israel were held against the backdrop of tragic escalations of violence in the southern portion of the country. Rockets fired by Islamic Jihad in Gaza struck several southern cities, killing one Israeli civilian, and an Israeli bombing raid in Gaza killed at least seven Palestinians. In spite of the intense security situation, remarkably, approximately 20,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv, another 5,000 in Jerusalem and thousands more in locations across the country.

In the midst of such a tragic and emotional security event, these types of numbers would not have showed up for a protest of this nature in the past. The security situation – rockets falling in southern Israel – would have likely trumped all else. However, as is the case in countries throughout the world, difficult economic conditions precipitated by government corruption and corporate greed are changing the game.

Gilad Shalit reunites with his father after five years in Hamas captivity. / Photo Courtesy of Israeli Defense Forces

What are the lessons to be learned from the deal to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for more than one thousand Palestinian prisoners?

It took only a few days for the Palestinian and Israeli role players and tactic leaders to get into their costumes and (depending on their assigned parts) either beat the justification or criticism drums. Self-reflection on the timing was as missing as Shalit was for five years. Why not just put away the talking points and revel in the fact that, after a heart-wrenching absence, a son of Israel’s extended family was finally coming home?

Here are some of the most frequently cited lessons, along with some of my thoughts on the teachers and their resource materials:

Rusty Stewart/Flickr

Here are some responses to the UN Recognition of Palestine discussion, including an article by The Israel Project strongly against the Tikkun position–part of our function to provide peace-oriented people with an understanding of some of the views we don’t normally encounter and that we need to understand. Our views are set forward in the petition to recognize Palestine and re-affirm Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with ironclad guarantees for both Israel and Palestine to grant equal rights to all the minorities living within their boundaries without any imposition of religion and with full human rights to all of the residents living within those states. Click here to view and sign the petition.

Obama’s Unique Opportunity
by Gideon Levy

What is the American president going to say to his citizens? What will he say to the citizens of the world? How will he rationalize his country’s opposition to recognizing a Palestinian state? How will he explain his position, which runs counter to the position of the enlightened – and less enlightened – world?

And above all, what will Barack Obama say to himself before he goes to bed? That the Palestinians don’t deserve a state? That they have a chance to get it through negotiations with Israel? That they do not have equal rights in the new world that we thought he was going to establish? Will he admit to himself that, because of opportunistic election considerations – yes, Obama is now being exposed as quite an opportunist – he is also harming his country’s interests as well as the (real ) interests of Israel, and is acting against his own conscience too?

A protester holds a sign reading "In Solidarity with the South (Israel) & Gaza."

On Saturday evening, with rockets falling upon southern Israel and bombs falling on Gaza – with the innocent dying on both sides – approximately 10,000 social justice protesters convened in Tel Aviv for a silent march. The gathering, which intended to both recognize the violence occurring and to remind government officials that social justice reforms cannot be jettisoned with the security situation intensifying, was mostly silent at first, with thousands carrying signs and torches while marching to the sea.

However, not long into the march, an Arab-Jewish group (Hadash) began chanting, “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.” The chant was picked up by a large contingent, but it was also met with heated rhetoric, particularly from a group Ami Kaufman in 972 Magazine described as “right-wing racists.” The situation was tense, particularly in the shadow of the tragedy that occurred that afternoon, in which a rocket fired from Gaza hit a home in Beer Sheva, killing one Israeli citizen and injuring many more.

Mahfouz Kabariti sits inside his former fishing boat, which he's converting into a tour boat. The Israeli naval blockade made it impossible for him to earn a profit.

Dozens of Gazan fishermen went to retrieve boats this week that had been confiscated by the Israeli Navy over the last 18 months. Their excitement quickly turned to sorrow as they found empty boat shells stripped of all equipment and supplies. According to an August 4 press release from Adalah and Al-Meezan Center for Human Rights, Israel also charged the fishermen with the transportation costs of confiscation. The fishermen refused to take their boats, and returned home without them.

We are honoring six spiritual progressive leaders at our 25th Anniversary celebration on March 14:

Of these six the most controversial is surely Justice Richard Goldstone.

Richard Goldstone first got involved in politics as a college student in South Africa where he was an outspoken opponent of Apartheid. He became a close associate of Nelson Mandela in the early 1990s and served on South Africa’s Supreme Court. He was then picked by the UN to head their inquiries into human rights violations in Bosnia, Rwanda, and then most recently in Gaza.

Justice Goldstone approached the Gaza assignment with some trepidation. He refused the assignment until the UN had changed its charge to be one that would include human rights violations by Hamas as well. He had been a noted Zionist in South Africa and had been the international chair of the Jewish ORT — organization for rehabilitation and training — and had been chosen to be a member of the Board of the Hebrew University. He had expected that Israel would fully cooperate in this investigation, and when it did not and he had no recourse but to collect the facts as presented to him by the Palestinian victims of the Israeli army’s assault on Gaza, he made clear that he felt that his report only provided a prima facie reason for a fuller investigation by the UN and the World Court.

By Edward Cherlin

Sharing in Gaza
For my 64th birthday last year, I played Beatles Rock Band with my family- I played drums while we sang, appropriately enough, “When I’m 64.” What made this birthday infinitely more memorable were the thousands of presents from a multitude of people I don’t even know– Palestinians, international charities, the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), and the government of Israel. These presents were XO education laptops. On this birthday, April 29th, after ten months of delays, the UNRWA’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) celebrated the beginning of its program in Gaza. The UNRWA’s core team of administrators, parents and the children of Rafah Co-Ed Elementary School D joined OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte and UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi for the donation.

A classroom of Palestinian children with their XO laptops, courtesy of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Photo by Nicholas Negroponte.

Giving education laptops to Palestinian children is one of my favorite projects and a mitzvah for not just these Palestinian children, but the entire world. Israel also grudgingly played its part, eventually allowing the computers in as humanitarian goods. Even a not-entirely-willing mitzvah is still a mitzvah.

Our editor Rabbi Lerner wrote these prophetic words in early September for the Nov/Dec issue of Tikkun. Now that they have come true, it’s worth reading this article and paying especial attention to his recommendations in the last part of the editorial.

Middle East Peace Negotiations?

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

Until the populations of Israel and Palestine really want peace, the peace negotiations will be nothing but a slightly sad sideshow, unless the Obama administration, momentarily freed from its own electoral concerns, is prepared to put forward a substantive peace plan of its own.

It used to be that the elites in both societies would tell you that once they worked out a deal, their relatively excitable populations would embrace it. Perhaps. But what has become clear in recent years is that neither side has sufficient stability based on popular support to actually make the compromises necessary to negotiate a peace agreement with terms that could actually work.

So, instead of playing to each side’s elites, those who seek peace must now launch a broad educational campaign to reach ordinary citizens (if necessary, over the heads of those elites) with a message that is convincing — a message that says, here are the terms of a fair peace agreement and here is why we believe that if each side makes the necessary compromises, it will work to meet your best interests.

by Wendy Elisheva Somerson

The five young Jewish activists who disrupted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech in New Orleans earlier this week shouted familiar criticisms of the Occupation. What was unexpected and new was the way the U.S. and Israeli media portrayed the protest, seeming to hear the critiques with fresh ears and unusual sympathy.

The five activists from the Young Leadership Institute of Jewish Voice for Peace disrupted Netanyahu’s speech at the Jewish Federation’s General Assembly on Monday, November 8, five separate times. The first activist unfurled a banner that read, “The Loyalty Oath delegitimizes Israel” and yelled the same message until she was escorted out of the hall by security. Separated by pauses of a few minutes, the four remaining protesters each unfurled banners and yelled similar messages while they were escorted out: “Silencing dissent delegitimizes Israel,” “Occupation delegitimizes Israel,” “The siege on Gaza delegitimizes Israel,” and finally, “The settlements betray Jewish values.”

With each additional disruption, some members of the crowd grew increasingly agitated, and attacked the protesters before security was able to lead them out. Appearing uncomfortable, Netanyahu was forced to respond to the protesters at least twice. At one point, he remarked, “Israel is guilty until proven guilty,” and “the greatest success of our detractors is when Jews start believing that themselves. We’ve seen that today.”

As an anti-Occupation activist (I helped found Jewish Voice for Peace’s Seattle chapter), I have been pleasantly surprised by how much press the youth activists’ action is receiving and even more surprised by how much of it is positive. Anti-Occupation activists are often depicted negatively or completely ignored by the press; however, I believe there are at least three reasons for this newly sympathetic coverage:

In my exploration of the BDS movement a week ago here, I talked about Margaret Atwood, who had chosen to not boycott the Dan David prize of which she was co-winner. She’s written a piece for Haaretz about her experience of Israel, that is a profound and eloquent exegesis of her Israeli experience. She admits that going into the issue she had “strayed into the Middle-eastern neighbourhood with a mind as open as it could be without being totally vacant”, and says, not unfairly, “The whole experience was like learning about cooking by being thrown into the soup pot.”

So what does she conclude about Israel?

The Israelis I met could not have been more welcoming. I saw many impressive accomplishments and creative projects, and talked with many different people. The sun was shining, the waves waving, the flowers were in bloom. Tourists jogged along the beach at Tel Aviv as if everything was normal. But… there was the Shadow. Why was everything trembling a little, like a mirage? Was it like that moment before a tsunami when the birds fly to the treetops and the animals head for the hills because they can feel it coming?

I’d been told ahead of time that Israelis would try to cover up the Shadow, but instead they talked about it non-stop. Two minutes into any conversation, the Shadow would appear. It’s not called the Shadow, it’s called “the situation.” It haunts everything.

The Shadow is not the Palestinians. The Shadow is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, linked with Israeli’s own fears. The worse the Palestinians are treated in the name of those fears, the bigger the Shadow grows, and then the fears grow with them; and the justifications for the treatment multiply.

Revised version, June 1:

We regret and deplore the killings which took place as Israeli troops, in defiance of international law, boarded and assaulted, wounded many and killed some of the participants in a flotilla seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza (itself a morally outrageous policy) to bring humanitarian aid. We ask all people of peace to participate in memorials for those peace activists who have been killed (and we call upon all synagogues around the world to say Kaddish for those people at their Shabbat services this coming weekend), and for prayer for the speedy recovery of all those wounded in this attack (mostly peace activists, but also the Israeli soldiers who boarded the boats with violence).

We invite all peace-loving people to attend a public memorial for those who died in this assault in Lafayette Park opposite the White House on Sunday, June 13, at 11 am – 2 pm, sponsored by Tikkun, the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and many other groups, and which will include a larger consideration of U.S. policies. Memorial prayers and prayers for healing will be said at 1 pm.

BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) is the increasing popular weapon of choice amongst many of us who oppose the actions and positions of the current Israeli government. It is also the Israeli weapon of choice against Gaza, though if pushed they resort to more direct weapons. At the heart of the debate over BDS lies the question of whether it is right to call for a boycott of Israel of when so many other countries do so many worse things. Some BDS opponents claim that call is the demon of anti-Semitism rearing its subtly disguised head. But as Hamlet noted, “Use every man after his dessert, and who should ‘scape whipping?” If I were to boycott every country that committed human rights abuses, I fear I’d have to walk naked for lack of a source of moral clothing. So do I then boycott none? How do I decide?

UC Berkeley’s student senate is set to vote once more this Wednesday, April 28, on a bill to divest from two companies that materially and militarily support the Israeli government’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Yesterday Michael Lerner posted on the diversity of opinion among peace activists on this issue. Today I want to share a piece submitted to Tikkun Daily by Matthew A. Taylor, a Peace and Conflict Studies student and member of Jewish Voice for Peace who is currently on leave from UC Berkeley. As a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, the group that is promoting the bill on campus, Taylor argues with urgency and deep emotion for the bill and explains what those in support of the divestment effort can do to help before the vote tomorrow evening.

When Will the University of California Stop Funding War Crimes Against Palestinian Civilians?

by Matthew A. Taylor

When will the University of California stop funding war crimes against Palestinian civilians and the occupation of Palestinian land? How much longer will grieving mothers have to wait for justice?

Zinad Samouni is still waiting. She is a 35-year-old Palestinian mother of eight who lost 48 of her family members in Israel’s assault on Gaza in January 2009, including her four-year-old son Ahmed.

“The soldiers came early on the morning of Sunday January 4th. [My husband] Atiyeh went to the door with his hands raised holding his ID but they shot him in the doorway,” said Zinad. “I shouted ‘children, children’ in Hebrew but they started shooting,” said Zinad’s nephew Faraj.

After the massacre, Israeli soldiers left messages for the dead Samounis on the walls of a neighbor’s house. The graffiti read: “Arabs need 2 die,” “Arabs are pieces of shit,” and “1 is DOWN 999,999 TO GO.”

A Palestinian woman cries in Gaza City's al-Zeitoun neighborhood (AFP).

Israel’s attack on civilians was a “deliberate policy” designed to inflict “humiliation and dehumanization of the Palestinian population,” according to a United Nations report.

Tomorrow UC Berkeley’s student senate will cast a final vote on a divestment bill that targets Israel’s war crimes and occupation. Fourteen votes out of 20 are needed to override the student president’s veto of the bill. Last time, 13 voted yes.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Israel of increasing its arbitrary repression of Palestinian non-violent activism lately. Abdullah Abu Rahma’s arrest — which I reported on in the second segment of my interview with Starhawk — is part of this crack-down in Bil’in, Nil’in, and Ramallah, where grassroots demonstrations have begun to mobilize Palestinians, Israelis, and international solidarity against the wall being built between the occupied territories and Israel. According to HRW,

Israel is building most of the barrier inside the West Bank rather than along the Green Line, in violation of international humanitarian law. In recent months, Israeli military authorities have arbitrarily arrested and denied due process rights to several dozen Palestinian anti-wall protesters.

Starhawk believes that the Israeli government fears this non-violent resistance more than the violent action they’ve contended with for years. Why? Because the government knows the movement’s power to shift public opinion and mobilize people against Israeli injustice. These grassroots efforts undermine several pillars of Israeli control in the occupied territories, according to Starhawk, and start to shatter the story that Palestinians are all evil terrorists.

Like most Jewish kids in postwar America, Starhawk grew up believing that Israel was the salvation of the Jewish people. She collected pennnies to plant trees in the Holy Land, learned Israeli folk songs and Israeli dances, and dreamed of going to Israel. At 15 she finally attended a Zionist program in Israel.

Star believes that she was raised with a compelling story — that Jews were kicked around for 2,000 years, almost exterminated in the Holocaust, and out of those ashes, finally got their own land again. “And by God,” she adds, “nobody’s going to take an inch of it away from us.” This is a persuasive story for many people, according to Starhawk. But unfortunately, the Palestinians aren’t in it.

For Starhawk, as for many American Jews of her age, it was painful to face the injustice that Israel was carrying out against the Palestinian people. Star senses that much of this injustice stems on a deep psychological level from an inability to see the Palestinian people as people — with their own humanity, their own rights, their own desires and flaws. Denying Palestinians that full range of humanity — and acknowledging that their ranks include the good, the bad, the vicious, the kind, the compassionate — is at the root of the unjust treatment they receive. Seeing every Palestinian as a suicide bomber who wants to kill an Israeli will not resolve this conflict. Nor will denying the existence of the Palestinians.

Starhawk hopes that another compelling narrative will begin to take the place of the one that she grew up with. This is a tale that’s very familiar to readers of Tikkun. It’s the story that Judaism stands for justice, for the regneration of the world, for tikkun olam. This, too, is a powerful story. And Star believes that if we can call people back to that story — as painful as it is to face the truth of what Israel has done to Palestine — then we can actually stop this injustice.

For those of you who don’t know her, Starhawk is the best-known Wiccan author alive today. She’s published eleven books, including The Spiral Dance, which introduced many of us to Wicca. And from the beginning of her career, she’s been very involved as an activist, most recently supporting Palestinians in the occupied territories.

After spending last week with Starhawk, I realized that she’s a “meta-activist,” a node of many different types of activism, and a font of knowledge about how to act most effectively when demonstrating, educating, and building a new world. She’s been active in the women’s movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-globalization movement, in creating greater sustainability and a permaculture for the Earth, as well as in supporting Palestinian non-violence for the creation of a Palestinian state. Fortunately for all of us, as an active workshop presenter, Star has been passing along what she’s learned in all these areas. I interviewed her about two of those movements, the two p’s: Palestine and permaculture, and want to share those interviews over the next few days, beginning with her thoughts about Palestine.

This past December, Star planned to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, a demonstration of 1,400 people from 38 different countries that included a large contingent from France. The purpose of this gathering was to bring in much-needed humanitarian supplies as well as to call attention to the inhumane conditions in Gaza after the yearlong Israeli blockade that followed their bombing of Gaza.

As you may recall, Israel attacked about a year ago in response to rockets that Hamas shot into Israeli settlements. As Star reiterated in her comments, the international demonstrators came to support Palestinian non-violent resistance to Israel, and in no way condoned Hamas’ hostility. But Israeli aggression a year ago worsened an already difficult situation in Gaza, killing 1400 people, destroying 4,000 homes and 88 public buildings. Since then the Israeli blockade has kept needed supplies from reaching Palestinians in Gaza, resulting in abject poverty, malnutrition, and bad drinking water, as well as a lack of building materials and equipment to rebuild the devastated area. The state of affairs has deteriorated to the point where Gaza has become essentially an open-air prison with little to keep it going.