Dr. King Can Help Build the Palestinian Nonviolent Resistance Movement

BBC journalist Jihad Masharawi carries body of 11-month old son Omar in Gaza. (Reuters)

BlackCommentator.com:

There is a straight line linking the human rights struggles around the globe, and the movements of the past with the movements of today. And those who have lived through theU.S. civil rights movement, the teachings of King and Gandhi, and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa believe they have much to teach Palestinian civil society and their nonviolent resistance movement in the occupied territories.

Just weeks before the recent violent conflict in Gaza that left 166 Palestinians and six Israelis dead-and more than 1,230 Palestinians injured, mostly women and children - a group of civil rights veterans and a new generation of human rights leaders led a delegation to the West Bank. The delegation came from the Dorothy Cotton Institute in Ithaca, New York, named after the colleague of Dr. King and education director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The institute trains leaders for a global human rights movement, and is building a network of civil and human rights leaders. And it was the first group of civil rights leaders to meet with leaders of the Palestinian movement.

Their goals are to increase the visibility of a nonviolent Palestinian movement that is unknown to many in the U.S., share lessons between the Palestinian and American movements, connect Palestinian leaders with their Israeli allies, and educate the American public about this movement and the need for social justice and change in the region.

In the U.S., the human suffering experienced by the Palestinian people is rarely acknowledged and often ignored, with the victims often dehumanized and scapegoated.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking via Skype with Kirby Edmonds, one of the members of the delegation in Ramallah. Mr. Edmonds, program director of the Dorothy Cotton Institute, shared what he was witnessing and experiencing in theWest Bank.

“One of the things I’ve been impressed by is their analysis of the situation,” he told me of the sophistication of those he met, also noting the Palestinians have learned lessons from the struggle against Jim Crow and apartheid. “They have made adaptations,” he added.

“They’ve landed on BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] as a most promising strategy. The mistake they’ve made is not shaping the narrative of who they are, and how important it is they have rights. The idea that they’re thugs and terrorists is just wrong,” Edmonds noted. “Humiliation provokes a violent response.”

Edmonds views the Israeli occupation as a global human rights issue. “The Dorothy Cotton Institute sees the need to put our shoulders to the wheel for a global human rights movement. Because the state involved in it defines itself as democratic, and so there is a great deal of moral ground on which to stand,” he said.

“The other issue is the place is important to two-thirds of the human population.” He concluded that resolving the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis will help resolve conflicts around the world, making the implications much larger than the people who live there.”

And Edmonds characterized the Israeli policy of occupation as a humiliating one, with laws promulgated to justify certain things. And Palestinians are sick and tired, echoing the days of the Jim Crow South or South African apartheid.

“Palestinians are barred from building in certain areas, their houses are demolished,”Edmonds told me from Ramallah. “All the Palestinians in a certain area get an order saying their houses will be demolished and they don’t know when. 2:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning, and they blow the house down. It is clearly a violation of international conventions. And clearly a violation of human rights,” he said.

“The situation in East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem, what exists is a caste system that is more discriminatory than what happened in South African apartheid,”Edmonds noted of the Israeli system of class distinctions. A Palestinian’s citizenship status can be lost when traveling abroad, perhaps if they are studying in the U.S. for 4 years. They have to be able to prove Jerusalem is the center of their lives.

“People in the West bank are barred from entering Israel and East Jerusalem unless they get permits to do so. They have to pass through checkpoints to show their papers,” Edmonds said. “It is an example of policies that seem designed to provoke violent responses. Depending on what checkpoint it might be another 2 or 3 hours to get back home. It is extremely humiliating.”

Even more serious and problematic are administrative detentions, in which Palestinians have no access to lawyers, and are not told why they were arrested - a practice which can be imposed for up to 14 times without charges ever being made.

Then there are the arrests of children, particularly in areas in the West Bank where nonviolent demonstrations take place every week to protest the occupation. “The Israeli army will show up, enter the house and say who they’re after, take the teen out of house, blindfolded, put them in a Humvee, take them to an interrogation facility, and keep them for 4 days,” described Edmonds. “They will do things, they may say they have a right to an attorney, and after the course of hours intimidate the child into a confession. As a result, adult leaders end up arrested. This is a violation of the International Convention of Rights of the Child.”

Moreover, the policies of the occupation are changing the demographics of the area, with the goal of substantially reducing the Palestinian population in certain places. “The goal is reducing the Palestinian population from 30 percent to 12 percent”Edmonds argued.

“The task becomes making life so uncomfortable for people that they just leave, not just in Jerusalem but also in the West Bank. Herd them into four areas so that if there is some closure on the issue, Palestinians are unable to manage their own state. That is the policy behind creating Bantustans. The goal is to make Palestinian life so unbearable they can only live in certain places,” he offered.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians have nearly a century of nonviolent resistance to oppression. “The people we’ve been meeting with are not saying Jews shouldn’t be there,” Edmonds told me. “What the Palestinians are calling for is for people of conscience to put pressure on Israel so that this does not continue. ...It is what gives people hope,” he said.

Ultimately, according to Edmonds, the Palestinian people lack the political strength to do it alone. The Israeli government, he said, is able to behave as it does because it is a client of the U.S. “It is unlikely we can persuade the U.S.government to shift its policy because of civil society. It was civil society in South Africa that made change happen, it was not U.S. policy.”

Through their journey to the occupied territories, Kirby Edmonds and his colleagues are acting in the proudest tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, stayed true to the fight for civil rights at home and spoke out against the war in Vietnam. He railed against the triple, interrelated evils of militarism, racism and economic exploitation, and understood the linkages between violence and oppression in America and our promotion of war abroad.

And just as King condemned the billions spent on burgeoning defense budgets to mutilate and incinerate Vietnamese children - all at the expense of the war on poverty - then surely those who act in the spirit of King today can decry the billions spent on America’s militarization of Israel, the occupation, and the killing of innocent babies.

Of war and violence, King said “The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows. One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. How much longer must we play at deadly war games before we heed the plaintive pleas of the unnumbered dead and maimed of past wars?”

Meanwhile, in Israel and Palestine, a nonviolent resistance movement seeks peace-and justice. Part of that process includes tearing down the walls that separate people, and building bridges instead.

“Israeli society can no longer see what is happening on the other side of the wall,” Kirby Edmonds said of the current state of affairs. “The narrative that this is a land without people is easy to perpetuate.”

Miral Defies Racial Stereotypes of Arabs In the Media

Over the weekend I saw the new film Miral by director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). I'll start off by saying that overall, it was well done. What was perhaps most noteworthy about the film is that it told a story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the point of view of a Palestinian girl coming of age, a voice we rarely hear. And to top it off, the film is based on a semi-autobiographical book by author-screenwriter Rula Jebreal, Schnabel's girlfriend.

In reality, Miral is the story of four women: Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass), who opens an orphanage and girls' school for 55 displaced and wandering Palestinian children in Jerusalem in the midst of the Arab-Israeli War; Nadia (Yasmine Al Massri), a woman who faces alcoholism, abuse and imprisonment after punching a Jewish woman on a bus for insulting her; Fatima (Ruba Blal), a former nurse who received three life sentences after attempting but failing to explode a bomb in a movie theater, and Miral (Freida Pinto), Nadia's daughter. Miral is torn between her conservative and peaceful father Jamal (Alexander Siddig), and her love interest Hani (Omar Metwally), a PLO activist.

Unlike most media portrayals of Arab people in the U.S., this film presents Palestinians as everyday human beings, in all their complexities. For example, the children in the film demonstrated the full range of Palestinian diversity, from fair-haired blond to Mediterranean olive to black African. Palestinians and Israelis are known to fall in love with each other and become couples. And sometimes people and their actions are not so cut-and-dried. It is easy to label someone a terrorist, and terrorist acts were committed in Miral. At the same time, such labels become blurred, as they are subject to nuance within the context of a military occupation. For example, it was easy for the main character to teeter on the edge between schoolgirl and terrorist. Those who are oppressed and displaced under occupation view their struggle as one for liberation and self-determination. Some may seek peace and reconciliation -- and land -- in furtherance of their struggle. Others who view the occupier as a military adversary who stole their land may find their answer through the barrel of a gun and act accordingly. That is not to justify violence, it is simply to provide the context for understanding what human beings do when their back is against the wall.

Through its depiction of the Israeli occupation, Miral provided a public service to viewers who are unexposed to it, unaffected and unaware. The daily regimen of humiliating checkpoints, soldiers demanding to see identification, and hostile religious settlers backed by troops are a reality for Palestinians.

Critics have blasted the film as being one-sided, as if that is a bad thing. One heavy-handed critic even called Miral a "slanderous and shameful piece of propaganda." Everyone has a point of view. And people deserve the space to tell their own stories from their own point of view. Each day, media interpret the experiences of groups of people through distorted cultural lenses, without the input or consent of their subjects. Stereotypes result.

When they are not depicted as the hired help, African-Americans and Latinos, not unlike Arabs, are stereotyped as terrorists -- urban terrorists and gangbangers who are a danger to society. Additionally, blacks are depicted as welfare queens, and Latinos are cast in the role of "illegal aliens" who cross the border from Mexico to steal good paying jobs picking oranges and busing tables. Asians become the model minority, or human computers, with Asian women stereotyped as the submissive China doll or hyper-sexualized Dragon Lady.

And rightwing media in the U.S. reduce Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans to shadowy figures, the "other" who would infiltrate society and defile Christian values with their mosques, not to mention blow up our cities. Did I mention that the President might be one of them?

"The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press," as Malcolm X once said. "If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."

America needs exposure to more media images of Arabs and others that are self-depictions, and yes, one-sided representations of their reality. How do we start a dialogue and transform ourselves and our condition when we constantly hear only one side of the story?

I highly recommend Miral, but that is not to say the movie is perfect. For instance, casting Indian actress Freida Pinto of Slumdog Millionaire fame in the role of Miral was at times a mismatch. Moreover, surely an Arab actress was available. Further, the viewer is left wanting to know more, more about what happened to Miral. And although they are capable artists, Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe seem to serve no substantial role other than the perfunctory Westerners in a film about people of color.

Given the paucity of positive images of Arabs out there, no single film can be all things to all people. And no film by itself can articulate the full breadth of the occupation or the Mideast conflict. But this is a good start.

The International Movement That Would Bring Peace to the Mideast

Recent talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians point to a seemingly dysfunctional and hopelessly intractable process. The construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank has not abated, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls by defense minister Ehud Barak to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, recent news reports demonstrate that the occupation is both unsustainable and incompatible with democratic principles. For example, Israeli police are arresting Palestinian children as young as five for stone throwing. This, as Al Jazeera and The Guardian just started to release over 1,600 documents on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And recent Wikileaks cables revealed that Israeli officials took bribes to allow U.S. goods into Gaza, requiring American companies to pay up to 75 times more than the usual cost. Wikileaks also learned that Israel has intended to keep Gaza near collapse, just as the Israeli government plans to wage a full-scale war on the territory and Lebanon.

This year, the Palestinians hope to build upon the wave of nations recognizing a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. There is a strong and ever-growing peace movement that is joined from within Israeli society and the international community. Ultimately, the leaders of this movement want to bring about positive change in the Mideast, and they hope to succeed where the politicians and diplomats have fallen short. And in many ways, they are a nonviolent movement on the lines of the U.S. civil rights and South African anti-apartheid movements. They seek dignity and a respect for human rights for both sides of the conflict, and seek to liberate Israelis and Palestinians from a system that has hopelessly oppressed each.

Two human rights leaders from two different conflicts in different parts of the world found themselves participating in the recent flotillas to break the blockade of Gaza: Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who lost family members to sectarian violence and fought for nonviolent reconciliation in Northern Ireland, and Yonatan Shapira, a former elite Israeli pilot who decided he could no longer participate in the occupation of the Palestinian people. This unlikely pair of shipmates had a conversation recently, which was hosted and facilitated by Jewish Fast For Gaza, a group founded by Rabbis Brant Rosen and Brian Walt.

Maguire was transformed by a world of violence in Northern Ireland when her niece and two nephews were killed - all little children - and her sister injured on a Belfast street in 1976. “When that happened, myself and two others…we came out for peace, our message was that violence isn’t going to solve our problems, and there’s got to be another way to use nonviolence,” said Maguire.

At that point she cofounded the Community of the Peace People in 1976, and organized weekly marches and demonstrations that attracted over half a million people from across Northern Ireland, Ireland and the UK. “I think we recognized that we had a deep ethnic conflict, but it wasn’t going to be solved through militarism and paramilitarism, and we had to begin to sit down with each other and dialogue and to find a way through our problems.” Along with a colleague, Maguire received the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize for their peace efforts, and she would later broaden her work from Northern Ireland to other places.

Ten years ago, Maguire went with a delegation to Israel. She was invited by a group of rabbis who were fighting for human rights in the territories and against the demolition of Palestinian homes. Relating to her own experiences back at home, she was moved by the suffering on both sides, and inspired to see Israelis and Palestinians finding a way to working together and seek justice.

More recently, Maguire has decided to focus her efforts on Gaza, and has sailed on three humanitarian boats to the territory. Two of the boats were intercepted by the Israeli Navy, and one of them was a part of the Freedom Flotilla that was attacked by Israelis, claiming nine lives on the MV Mavi Mamara. “1.5 million people are living in a prison, cut off from the world, literally,” she said of the conditions in Gaza, of the tremendous suffering she witnessed. “The Palestinian people are really living in a prison and the Israelis are holding all the keys. This is not happening in any other part of the world, and yet we see Israel and the international community remaining silent on it.”

With its ports closed for 40 years, and bombed-out infrastructure, the Gazan population, half of which is under the age of 18, is the victim of a collective punishment, according to Maguire. Her words were echoed by Judge Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who issued a UN report on Israeli human rights violations during Operation Cast Lead, the military campaign in Gaza that claimed 1,400 Palestinian lives. According to the Goldstone report, “houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed.” Around 240 of the Gazan deaths were police officers. And the Palestinian Legislative Council and a prison were bombed as well. The report called on Israel to do an independent investigation into Operation Cast Lead, and punish those elements of the IDF who were responsible.

The severity of the Gaza blockade - imposed by Israel following the Hamas victory and takeover - was brought home for Maguire when she appeared in court following her arrest. “When I was at the Supreme Court for the hearing, there was a case up just before me, and the case was a mother and father who had been visiting on the West Bank when the border was closed to Gaza and their young child was in Gaza. They were appearing at the court to ask if after four years they would be allowed to travel from the West Bank to Gaza to see their little boy who hadn’t seen them since the border had closed.”

And while Maguire condemns what she views as violation of international law against the Palestinians, the pacifist condemns all violence, including Palestinian acts of violence on Israeli cities. And yet, the Nobel laureate was hopeful at what she saw in the people in Gaza. “There is a passion among the people of Gaza for peace. They just want to have peace because they suffered so much. So we were hopeful because it reminded me of Northern Ireland when the Peace People started.” When Israel began bombing Gaza in Operation Cast Lead, however, there was a setback in the hopes of peace between Fattah and Hamas, and hopes the Palestinians would have a united voice that could reach out and dialogue with Israel.

Meanwhile, Yonatan Shapira’s introduction to the Mideast conflict came as a member of the Israeli Air Force, an elite Blackhawk helicopter pilot who had flown hundreds of missions over the occupied territories. Upon first glance, this seasoned, eleven-year veteran would appear to be the least likely candidate for a peace activist. But then again, no one knows how he or will she will react after becoming a firsthand witness to suffering and the effects of violence, on the Israeli side in Shapira’s case. “During this time I volunteered with victims of suicide attacks, mostly new immigrants, people who are poor and with less family support in the country. And I got to know Israeli suffering through my military service as a rescue pilot bringing children and soldiers and people to hospital after they were injured and killed, and as a volunteer meeting with the children and families of survivors, and trying to bring them back to society to try to overcome their trauma,” Shapira said.

Then there was a targeted bomb assassination attempt on Hamas leaders that left fourteen civilians dead in Gaza.

“And at some point along this process, I started to realize I am, there is a cycle of violence and I am just a part of this cycle, even if I am not killing anyone directly myself, I am part of a system that is causing huge suffering for people,” he added. Speaking of the Palestinians, he said “For many years I didn’t know their story, their narrative, the way I’ve been brought here up in Israeli society, to just know half side of the history. The first time I knew the word Nakba, the disaster for the Palestinians of what happened in ‘48 was when I was 30-something. And when you realize that you were blind to such a huge part of the history and the present, and there is a circle of violence and you are part of it, it’s a very strong emotional step to overcome, and I think at that point you can decide whether to ignore it, suppress it and continue to fight anyone that brings these issues up, or try to learn more and take responsibility and try to change the situation. And that’s what happened to me and to many of my friends.”

When Shapira found his moment of truth and chose to deal with the “dark side” of his existence, he decided to write a petition of air force pilots who declared they were no longer willing to fly missions over the territories. They would no longer be a part of “illegal and immoral attacks” on the Palestinians. In 2003 - on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year - the pilots placed the declaration on the desk of the commander of the air force. “I think that was the beginning of a new life for me in many, many ways,” Shapira noted.

Shapira founded Combatants for Peace on the assertion that it is not merely enough to say what you are not willing to be a part of. “It’s important to reach out to the other side you’re fighting against, and find people and work together - Palestinians who are rejecting violence and are refusing to be a part of this cycle of violence,” he said.

This IDF pilot made a transition from leader among soldiers to a solidarity leader with the Palestinians. He and other Israelis participate in the call by nonviolent Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS. Shapira sees this as a struggle for Palestinian liberation, a process that will also liberate Israelis from being oppressors of a horrible, decades-long occupation. “We don’t wait anymore for Lieberman and Bibi and Barak and other people to bring the solution today. We are calling on the international community, we call on Jews…, and we call on governments all around the world to understand the situation is disastrous, and there is no time to wait for a peace process that is being used just to delay and build more settlements.”

Shapira - who is disheartened by Mairead Maguire’s arrest in Israel - noted that it was his own squadron that dropped commandos on the Mavi Mamara. “It was a double shock because I know the organizers of the flotilla…and to see what the navy and the Israeli army did on the boats and especially this whole ordeal of not showing the whole video, just showing a few seconds of that and manipulating the whole world media. …And the same Blackhawk helicopter that Israel gets for free in billions of aid from the United States, that’s the same helicopter I flew on years back. So it was also very personal for me to decide I need to be on the side of the people trying to symbolically break the siege.”

And so this veteran pilot decided to participate in a flotilla to Gaza, alongside Israeli activists and a holocaust survivor. Shapira said it was sad to see 8 or 10 warships approaching them and violently attacking them, when the only weapons they were carrying to Gaza were harmonicas, musical instruments for the children. “I guess that was too dangerous for the Israeli army to let into Gaza,” he said.

Shapira, who had once been involved in logistics for the Navy, was arrested by the Navy. When the soldiers boarded the ship, they shot him with a stun gun, an electrical shock close to his heart. “My whole body convulsed. Now I also have accusations of attacking the soldiers because my legs were jumping form the shock in my heart, so they also accuse me of attacking the soldiers,” he said. “It is important to understand that if we were Palestinian fisherman, they’d just kill us from a far distance, and maybe Turkish activists we would be shot to death, so it is important to put this in proportion.”

Activists such as Shapira are touching a nerve in Israeli society regarding the occupation, and they are a thorn in the side of Israeli authorities. He sees hope in the Israeli resistance movement, noting that he sees more people attending demonstrations these days, types of people he hadn’t seen in the past. “Maybe with this tendency of this country becoming more and more fascist, and the laws are coming one after another, it may be able to penetrate this thick skin that many people have developed over here. There is a little bit of optimism that when things become so bad and brutal, maybe it helps people to wake up.” Shapira speaks of the ultra-right-Orthodox coalition that currently controls the Israeli government, and the oppressive and racist laws that have come down the pike. Examples include a law requiring non-Jewish Israeli citizens to proclaim allegiance to a Jewish state, a rabbinic ruling forbidding leasing property to non-Jews, attempts to bar Jewish women from the wailing wall, gender segregation in public areas, determining who is not a Jew, and laws forbidding a Jew to marry a non-Jew in Israel.

At the same time, Shapira realizes that his movement is a minority of a minority, albeit with an important role in helping to wake up world Jewry. “It is important not to exaggerate how effective we are here. We are very much hated within the Israeli mainstream, especially when we mention things like international pressure and BDS, it is almost like cursing God in a synagogue or something like that.” Shapira believes the change will come from international pressure, as was the case with South African apartheid. “It is important to remember that no struggle for liberation for equality and for freedom around the world nonviolently succeeded without the mass participation of people around the world. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, all of these heroes would never succeed without huge international pressure.”

Ultimately, Israel must find security through some other means outside of militarism, say these two human rights fighters. “Israel has a right to self-defense, and therefore the first thing for defending ourselves is to stop torturing and killing Palestinians,” said Shapira, who compares Israel to the participant in a gang rape who complains that the victim is fighting back. “When you imprison a million and a half people in a huge ghetto like Gaza, bombing them, what do you expect to happen?” he said. “Since we are committed to nonviolent principles we believe more killing of the other side will just cause you more suffering.”

“We have to move from culturally sanctioned violence wherever we live into building communities based on respect for each other and nonviolence,” said Maguire. She believes the best security the Jewish people can have is to make plans with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, make friends, and begin to build policies based on human rights and justice. “We’ve got to move away from the idea - and really all of us not just Israelis - this idea that militarism provides our security. We have to move to human based and ecological based security. That’s a huge challenge for the whole human family, and particularly a challenge now in Israel and Palestine to move on to a different kind of security.”

A Campaign To Divest From Mideast Apartheid

People around the world are mourning the loss of life that resulted from the Israeli Navy commando raid on a flotilla of ships bringing humanitarian aid to a blockaded Gaza. Nine activists were killed. Prosecutors have characterized the incident, which occurred in international waters, as an act of piracy and a violation of international law. And top-ranking Israeli Navy reserves officers denounced the attack and slammed the Israeli government for blaming the activists for what transpired. "We do not accept claims that this was a 'public relations failure' and we think that the plan was doomed to failure from the beginning," the officers wrote in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In many ways, the handling of the flotilla tragedy mirrors Israel's policy of Occupation of the Palestinian territories: inhumane treatment and a disproportionate use of force against those who have been labeled as terrorists. This is a response born of arrogance and hubris, and a disregard for international public opinion. Add to that the confiscation of news cameras and media censorship, and a propaganda campaign perpetuating the notion of perpetual victimhood-- that the Israeli government can do no wrong.

Israel is a prominent nation in the region, but that does not justify apartheid. The nation's historical origins do not give it a pass in acting ethically or in compliance with human rights law. The Occupation must end if democracy is to flourish in Israel, and public pressure can bring about a just and equitable resolution to the conflict. Some Jews of conscience believe that economic divestment--taking the profit out of violations of human rights and of international law- is the way to make it happen.

The group Jewish Voice for Peace just kicked off a divestment campaign. Their focus is on TIAA-CREF, a Fortune 100 financial services company and insurance giant. The company serves 3.6 million people and manages more than 27,000 retirement plans and over $400 billion in combined assets. TIAA-CREF's motto is "Financial Services for the Greater Good," and it proudly calls itself "a global leader in socially responsible investing." And earlier this year, the company divested from four petrochemical companies that refused to stop doing business with Sudan.

JVP seeks to persuade TIAA-CREF to stop investing in companies that profit from the Occupation, such as Caterpillar and Motorola. The former manufactures bulldozing equipment for destroying Palestinian homes, while the latter supplies cell phones to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) for use in the Occupied Territories.

Occupation means profits. A settlement industry of hundreds of companies has been built around the servicing of 562,000 Israelis living in 135 settlements and outposts in the West Bank, Arab Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. These companies enjoy special government support, including tax breaks, lower environmental and labor standards and low rents. And they exploit Palestinian workers, land and resources as they maintain an infrastructure of buildings, walls and checkpoints to keep Palestinians separated and out of the settlements. Many of the companies serve the Jewish settlers, while others exploit the captive nature of the Palestinian population and charge them exorbitant rates. Meanwhile, Palestinians who work in these industrial zones face labor violations and severe restrictions on their movement and right to organize.

Divestment is a time-tested tool to bring about nonviolent social change. The divestment movement against South African apartheid is perhaps the most poignant example of such a strategy. Similarly, a U.S.-led campaign hopes to bring an end to Israeli-Palestinian apartheid.

Israel considers itself a member of the "First World" and the only democracy in the Mideast, as it maintains a forty-three year military occupation. "To maintain the Occupation, Israel uses harsh and often brutal controls that are widely perceived around the world, if not in the U.S., as an apartheid system. The truth is that even within Israel, only Israeli Jews have enjoyed democratic government and equal rights," says Barbara Harvey of Jewish Voice for Peace. "Every person who values democratic freedoms and equality has a personal stake in ending Israeli apartheid, because its continuance threatens to redefine democracy in ways that none of us who live outside Israel accept for ourselves."

Harvey also suggests that Israeli policing practices are having a bad influence in the U.S.: "How many Americans realize that many of our local police forces and even private security forces receive training in Israel, where the Israel Defense Force is taught to dehumanize Palestinians? If the world pretends that Israel's free society for Jews only is a democracy, the unacceptable will inexorably become acceptable beyond Israel's borders, threatening every one of us."

The West Bank consists of a multitude of fragmented enclaves, many of which are connected to adjacent towns only through checkpoints. Settlements, outposts and Israeli military infrastructure place nearly 40 percent of the land out of the reach of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Gaza is a prison. As Amnesty International has reported, the blockade of Gaza has left nearly 1.5 million men, women and children trapped in a strip of land only 40 km (25 mi) long and 9.5 km (6 mi) wide. The situation in Gaza is one of collective punishment, where poverty, unemployment and food shortages have left four in five people dependent on humanitarian assistance. "Ghetto" is a word associated with pain and deep historical symbolism for both black and Jewish folks. The ghetto is a place where people are packed in and stacked up, by design, and where dreams die and people suffer. Well, Gaza is the ghetto, and one shouldn't have to live in Gaza or be a Gazan to appreciate that suffering. As one Israeli official stated plainly, "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."

Further, Arab Israelis are racially profiled, treated as second or third class citizens, and regarded as a fifth column that cannot be trusted. The efforts to strip an Arab Israeli Knesset member of her citizenship because she participated in the humanitarian flotilla (along with Holocaust survivors, European lawmakers and Nobel laureates) is a prime example of the discrimination Arabs face.

So, this is what the divestment campaign wants to change, so that democracy can come to Israel. Business practices must change, but old mindsets must change as well. Jews who are unhappy with the current state of affairs in Israel should be able to, as a courageous progressive rabbi once said, set limits with the ones they love. They should be able to speak up for Palestinian rights without being branded as self-hating Jews, terrorists or enablers of terrorists. Likewise, non-Jews who come to the table with a love for human rights and a sincere desire to help the situation should not fear accusations of anti-semitism. Displeasure with specific policies of the Israeli government does not equate with hatred towards Judaism or Jewish people. And the rights of Palestinians and Israelis are not mutually exclusive, nor should they be.

Let Us Expand the Definition of Terrorism

I begin this commentary by looking up the word terrorism.

One dictionary defines terrorism as follows:

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

Similarly, the U.S. military says terrorism is:

The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

Practically speaking, however, terrorism is defined differently in everyday American life. Terrorism is synonymous with Muslim and Arab extremism, and affiliated persons, organizations and nations. The threats they pose are either real, perceived, or purely conjured up. The terrorist-as-enemy-of-America is like the bogeyman of Red Scare fame, ubiquitous yet elusive, and you can't quite put your finger on them because they're tricky. The definition of terrorism itself can serve as a political weapon--a form of terrorism itself, dare I say. Call someone a terrorist, or a communist or socialist or supporter thereof, and you delegitimize everything that person has to say. You marginalize everything that person represents.

In these days of extremism at home, we cling to a narrow, selective definition of terrorism, while ignoring blatant forms of terrorism in our own midst. In doing so, we can't see the forest for the trees.

A progressive voice for peace, Rabbi Michael Lerner, was almost certainly a victim of terrorism on the night of May 2 and early morning of May 3. Right-wing Zionists attacked his home and threatened his life. The attackers attached posters to his door and property with a strong glue. And the posters attacked Lerner personally, as well as liberals and progressives as being supporters of terrorism and "Islamo-fascism." They posted a bumper sticker which read "fight terror--support Israel" next to a caricature of Judge Goldstone, the South African jurist who issued a UN report on Israeli human rights violations during the military campaign in Gaza. The Goldstone report called on Israel to do an independent investigation into Operation Cast Lead, and punish those elements of the IDF who were responsible. The report was denounced by rightists in the U.S. and Israel as "anti-Semitic" and "pro-terror."

The crime against Rabbi Lerner came after a week of Lerner and his staff at Tikkun magazine receiving hate mail. These acts stemmed from Tikkun's announcement that if South African Zionists made good on their threat to prevent Judge Goldstone from attending his grandson's bar mitzvah, Lerner would hold the bar mitzvah in the Bay Area instead. Tikkun is presenting an award to Goldstone next year for his commitment to human rights in Israel, and apparently some people don't like that.

Although Lerner has received death threats and hate mail over the years, this recent attack is troubling because they targeted his home. "By linking Lerner to alleged terrorism, they provide for themselves and other extremists a 'right-wing justification' to use violence against Lerner, even though Lerner has been a prominent advocate of non-violence", Tikkun said in an official statement. Lerner speaks out against violence everywhere around the world, including Palestinian acts against Israelis. But when he and groups such as J Street advocate a pro-peace solution, they are branded as anti-Israel. This comes as a group of over 3,000 European Jews signed a petition criticizing Israeli settlement policies, and warning of the dangers of systematic support for the Israeli government.

Turning the page a bit, we are witnessing state-sponsored terrorism within our borders, most prominently coming from the state of Arizona. Arizona's legislature passed--and the governor signed into law--a bill which makes it a crime under state law to be in the U.S. illegally. The law allows police to stop anyone with a "reasonable suspicion" of being undocumented, and demand proof of citizenship. Those who cannot produce the documentation face arrest, a $2,500 fine, and 6 months in jail.

I submit that Arizona's anti-immigrant law is nothing more than Juan Crow racism, a codification of xenophobia, specifically designed to intimidate Latinos regardless of their citizenship status. Although its proponents will tell us it does not racially profile, the law is part of the mix that makes people with Spanish surnames feel unwelcome and unsafe, in an environment of heightened anti-Latino violence and discrimination. After all, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a hate group with ties to the eugenics movement and white supremacists, assisted in drafting the bill. An honest, vigorous debate on immigration and border security is one thing. Bad people passing a law with cruel intentions is another.

But Arizona did not stop there. They are banning ethnic studies in the schools, characterizing such programs as "ethnic chauvinism" and "high treason." Under the policy, schools will lose state funding if they offer courses that "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." And the Arizona Department of Education is removing teachers with heavy accents.

Ethnic Studies were part of the civil rights movement--born in the late 1960s and early 1970s at a time of increased cultural awareness among people of color--to counter a Eurocentric perspective of history. State governments in Arizona and Texas feed into white extremist antipathy towards diversity by denigrating and eliminating people of color in their school curricula, "taking the country back" so to speak, via the textbooks.

A vibrant democracy should allow for differences of opinion, free from demonization and threats of violence against those who disagree. We may have differences of opinion with people, even those within our own family, but we don't resort to terrorist attacks against them.

Obama's New Path To Mideast Peace?

Sometimes, desperate and difficult circumstances require that we change the game a little bit, shake things up, if you will. If recent reports are true, then President Obama plans to mint his own Mideast peace plan in an attempt to loosen up the gridlock the parties are experiencing in that troubled region of the world.

And this is precisely the type of leadership for which people voted in the 2008 election. Tired of being hated when they traveled abroad -- due to the misguided cowboy diplomacy practiced by George W. Bush for eight long years -- Americans wanted a president that would once again make their country a place that was respected among the community of nations. And with his historic Mideast speech, Obama clearly laid out a new vision for Israel, the Palestinians and the greater Arab world.

"The truth is, in some of these conflicts, the United States can't impose solutions unless the participants in these conflicts are willing to break out of the old patterns of antagonism," the President said last week. A U.S. led plan would address Iran, a big concern of Israel, and involve Arab neighbors as well. "We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000-feet level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region," in addition to the Palestinians and Israelis. The President knows that incrementalism hasn't worked.

All parties involved in a solution to the problem can afford to look at things in a different way. Israel is led by a right-wing government that has been a thorn in the side of the Obama administration. And realpolitik dictates that empires cannot allow their satellite nations to chump them out. Allowing the construction of additional housing units in East Jerusalem, the presumptive capital of a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Netanyahu does not come to the negotiating table as an honest partner. Self-determination and nationhood are a must for the Palestinians, and actions which show contempt for this reality certainly will not bring anyone peace and security, most of all Israel. True leadership comes when so-called leaders do the unpopular, though it is best for their people. Cowardice is doing the expedient, that which may yield short-term votes, yet fails to address the long-term crisis and only exacerbates it. So, for the purposes of this analysis, Netanyahu is a coward.

For Palestinians, suicide bombers will not bring peace, and a culture of violence will not build a nation. Although Israel has erred in characterizing what is primarily a liberation struggle as terrorism, the Palestinians have been mistaken in believing that killing innocent people will accomplish anything other than continuing the cycle of violence. The people in the occupied territories are suffering plenty, to be sure. The blockade of Gaza is a human rights violation and a humanitarian crisis, part of the greater outrage that is the occupation itself, with its apartheid system of checkpoints, passes and Bantustans. People of all faiths and backgrounds -- including progressive Jews -- choose to protest an unjust Gaza policy by fasting and other peaceful means.

As if to learn a lesson from the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South, many Palestinians are realizing that nonviolent resistance is the path to freedom. They are staging peaceful protests and boycotting goods made in the settlements. The Palestinian prime minister traveled to the West Bank to plant trees and declared that land, not presently under his authority, as part of a future Palestinian state. Gandhi and King surely would be proud.

As far as the U.S. is concerned, a laissez-faire policy of shoulder shrugging has not worked in the Mideast, and neither has the appearance of siding with one party over another. Obama realizes that if there is any hope for stability in the region, he must deal with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hotheads and peddlers of extremism have a vested interest in the status quo, and would like nothing more than to derail any attempts to transform today's sad state of affairs.

As an aside, somehow, the legendary African-American poet Gil Scott-Heron is caught in the crosshairs of the Mideast conflict. He was involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s. And now he is being criticized for his plans to perform in Tel Aviv, which, critics say, would violate the unified call among Palestinian civil society for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, a call which is "directed particularly towards international activists, artists, and academics of conscience."

Whether Gil Scott-Heron is compromising his ideals by performing in Israel is a question that goes far beyond the scope of this commentary. However, I am reminded of the title of one of his songs, "Home Is Where the Hatred Is." And for people living in Israel and the occupied territories, home definitely is where the hatred is. It is what South African Justice Richard Goldstone called "a situation where young people grow up in a culture of hatred and violence, with little hope for change in the future. Finally, the teaching of hate and dehumanization by each side against the other contributes to the destabilization of the whole region."

Jewish Voices of Color Must Be Heard

Original links from BlackCommentator.com and Huffington Post

As we enter this holiday season, Jews around the world will celebrate Hanukah. And the global Jewish community is a diverse one, a multicultural and multiracial assemblage, by no means monolithic, representing millions of people throughout the world. Jews in China look like other Chinese, while Jews in India resemble other Indians, as is the case with the Igbo Jews of Nigeria and the Lemba of Southern Africa, and so on. They differ in their religious and cultural expression. For example, some may not know about glatt kosher, but still observe traditional dietary laws. And in some places only women can become a mohel (the person who performs circumcisions on baby boys).

But like a faulty census that leaves out people and portrays an inaccurate picture of what is happening, the Jewish Diaspora is not counting all of its members. Part of the reason is that Jews of color are often held in suspicion, not viewed as real or authentic. The reality is that black and brown Jews always existed, and for thousands of years. Given the places where the stories in the ancient scriptures took place, what else could you expect? Yet, media images - including Charlton Heston’s portrayal of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Moses in The Ten Commandments - only serve to create confusion concerning race and Judaism.

“Jews of color have been like Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, a bird trying to reintegrate itself into its flock, but looks so different that the flock would turn itself on the painted bird, pecking on the painted bird until it falls to the ground,” said Rabbi Capers Funnye, head rabbi of the predominantly African-American Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago. The congregation was founded in 1918 by a rabbi from Bombay, India.

Rabbi Funnye converted to Judaism, but his introduction to Judaism was through the lens of Africa. His congregation combines the usual Jewish prayers with gospel music and the beat of the drum. But that is ok, because that is what culture is all about. “Jewish practices are based on cultural adaptations, where people found themselves,” the rabbi notes. Although he is a rabbi with extensive knowledge and undeniable passion, Rabbi Funnye is asked if he is really a Jew. “For a Jew who don’t look like you, that question is offensive,” he responds.

Rabbi Funnye - who is also a member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis, and the cousin of First Lady Michelle Obama - recently gave the keynote speech at a symposium on race and Judaism at Temple University. The symposium was convened by Professor Lewis Gordon of Temple’s Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, and had participation from the Institute for Jewish and Community Research and Be’chol Lashon, a San Francisco-based group which encourages ethnic, racial and cultural inclusion in the Jewish community.

The conference was refreshing in that it invited a discussion on subjects usually not covered in academia or the mainstream Jewish community. For example, there was a discussion on Rabbi Alysa Stanton, the first African-American woman ordained as a rabbi, and the first black rabbi to lead a majority white congregation. Stanton, whose congregation is in Greenville, NC, received death threats and required a police escort the day she was installed as rabbi.

Another topic of discussion was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, that mythic symbol of black-Jewish cooperation who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King. Rabbi Heschel is a great source of pride for the Jewish community, yet he was marginalized during his life, and regarded as an oddball. Other rabbis advised him to stay away from the rabble-rouser King. And today, Heschel’s anti-racist, social justice message is defanged.

Further, there was an examination of black-Jewish relations and the civil rights coalition, and the manner in which Jews benefited from civil rights in ways blacks could not; the focus by organizations such as the ADL on issues of Jewish authenticity and Minister Louis Farrakhan, when there are genocides taking place around the world; concepts of whiteness and blackness, and the ways in which the Jewish communities have negotiated race. Participants also tackled such weighty issues as black power, and the attempts to equate it with anti-Semitism; the disproportionate representation of neoconservative Jewish voices in American political discourse, and the use of white Ashkenazi Jewish voices as the authoritative voice against affirmative action.

Included in the symposium was the inevitable discussion of Israel, and the ways in which some immigrants become “white” when they arrive in Israel, although they were not considered as such in their home countries. And of course, there is Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Rabbi Funnye, who works with the Palestinian-American community in Chicago, believes that Israel must do a better job of showing its own diversity. He also shed some light on African-American perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Black people don’t say anything because they see the Palestinians as David, and Israel as Goliath,” Funnye concluded. “They don’t want to be called anti-Semites.”

These are tough issues, to be sure, and the conversations must continue at Temple University and throughout the country and the world. A culture benefits when its diverse voices are allowed to express themselves. This is how a culture sustains itself and grows. Jews of color have much to contribute, and much to say. And they must be heard.

A Fast For Human Rights In Gaza

There are many opinions on the Mideast conflict, but one thing is certain: the situation in Gaza is a humanitarian and human rights disaster, and it cannot continue.

Under the Israeli blockade, the following items are not allowed into Gaza: cars, refrigerators, computers, cement, concrete, wood, glass, light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee, fruit juice, chocolate, nuts, shampoo, conditioner, and toilet paper. And it takes 85 days to deliver shelter kits into Gaza, and 68 days to send health and pediatric hygiene kits.

Rabbi Linda Holtzman of congregation Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia has taken a stand on Israel’s policies in Gaza. In a recent Rosh Hashanah sermon, she discussed the need for people to set limits, and to challenge ourselves to set limits with those we love. “The men and women who have formed the settlements on the West Bank love Israel. All of those who have built barriers, set up roadblocks, and stopped humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, love Israel,” Rabbi Linda said. “I too love Israel, but under no circumstances can I condone these actions, and my understanding of love and the limits love demands will not let me sit quietly by while this is taking place.”

Rabbi Linda is a part of Jewish Fast For Gaza (Ta’anit Tzedek), an ad hoc group of Jewish, Muslim and Christian clergy, as well as other concerned individuals, who have undertaken a monthly daytime fast for Gaza. Founded by activist Rabbis Brant Rosen and Brian Walt, this association grew out of the Jewish tradition of communal fasting in times of crisis, as a form of mourning and repentance. “As Jews and people of conscience,” the group declares, “we can no longer stand idly by Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Their efforts have been endorsed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

Jewish Fast For Gaza seeks several goals, including: lifting the blockade that prevents civilian goods and services from entering Gaza; calling for the delivery of humanitarian and developmental aid to the people of Gaza; calling on Israel, the U.S. and the world community to negotiate without pre-conditions with all relevant Palestinian parties, including Hamas, to end the blockade, and calling on the U.S. government to engage Israelis and Palestinians toward a just and peaceful settlement of the conflict. Participants are asked to donate the money they save on food to the American Near Eastern Refugee Aid (ANERA), a relief agency combating Gazan preschool malnutrition.

Israeli and international human rights groups alike were shocked by the most recent Israeli military operation in Gaza— the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force against a civilian population, the massive civilian deaths, and the level of destruction of property and infrastructure it created. As a result of Operation Cast Lead—which was conducted between December 27, 2008 and January 3, 2009—over 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Of these, 773 were non-combatants (over 60%), including 320 children. These statistics fly in the face of the official narrative that the operation was part of the war on terror, and that those who were killed were the terrorists.

Civilians could not flee the combat, and there was no safe place to hide, as Fred Abrahams, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, noted. In a recent report on Operation Cast Lead, Human Rights Watch documented the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF’s) illegal use of white phosphorous artillery shells in densely populated areas, and the shooting of unarmed Palestinian civilians—including women and children— waving white flags. Warnings the IDF sent to Gaza residents in the form of fliers and phone calls fell short of international humanitarian law standards. Further, according to a UN report recently issued by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, “houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed.” Around 240 of the Gazan deaths were police officers. And the Palestinian Legislative Council and a prison were bombed as well.

Further, the Gaza population suffers significant trauma, including insomnia, depression, childhood bed-wetting, and other medium- and long-term mental health problems.

As Jessica Montell, Executive Director of the Jerusalem-based human rights group B'Tselem recently said, “when there is wrongdoing, there must be a remedy." For Montell, justice is to be done at home. This includes not only the individual behavior of Israeli soldiers, but people throughout the chain of command, both military and government, who dictated policy and decided what to target. B’Tselem and all 11 Israeli human rights organizations are calling for a nonpartisan body to examine Israel’s conduct in Operation Cast Lead.

After Hamas’ electoral win in January 2006, Israel imposed the crippling blockade on Gaza, turning the territory into the functional equivalent of a prison. The blockade severely limits Gaza's ability to import essentials such as food and fuel, and to export finished products. The result has been a complete devastation of Gaza’s economy, and the closing of most of its industrial plants. Increased unemployment, poverty and childhood malnutrition now plague an already economically crippled and depressed region.

Wherever human rights abuses are committed throughout the world, someone must be held to account. And no longer can we turn our backs and close our eyes when injustices occur. Depriving human beings of basic necessities, food, water, employment, and freedom of movement in their own land cannot and will not make Israelis more secure. Maintaining a culture of impunity in the region, and denying people their basic rights and sense of dignity will not bring peace to anyone. It will only result in what Justice Goldstone calls “a situation where young people grow up in a culture of hatred and violence, with little hope for change in the future. Finally, the teaching of hate and dehumanization by each side against the other contributes to the destabilization of the whole region.”

Indeed, Gaza is a walled prison, seemingly out of sight and out of mind for some. But the Jewish Fast For Gaza is committed to tearing down the walls that separate us, and allowing justice to flow.

Cross-posted from Huffington Post and Black Commentator.

Will Obama Save the Mideast from Itself?

By David A. Love, BlackCommentator.com

With his speech at Cairo University, President Obama has laid the groundwork, potentially, for a new era of peace in the Mideast. Israeli officials are now realizing that they will have to accept a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Meanwhile, there is an indication that the President’s speech is paving the way for waning animosity towards America in the Muslim world, which would undercut the activities of extremist groups that benefit from continued violence, hostility and death in that region of the world.

Well, it is about time. The past administration, whose name I dare not utter for fear it will reappear, paid nothing but lip service to the Mideast. The former president gave a rubber stamp to the status quo, and endorsed Israeli incursions and military strong-arming in the name of the war on terror. That rightwing faux fundamentalist Christian occupant of the White House from 2001 until this past January—and his constituency for that matter—really cared very little about Jewish people. Little that is, except under the fundamentalist concept of the so-called rapture, or end times, in which Jesus returns and Jews who don’t convert to Christianity will supposedly perish, or so the mythology goes. And that is the nonsense that governed Mideast policy for a decade. But I digress…

The Obama speech was a game changer because he accomplished a number of things: he presented a humbler and more contrite America, one which comes to the Muslim world with respect. With that respect, however, came a stern message. Obama discussed the long history of persecution of the Jewish people. Centuries of anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust, including the network of death camps—including Buchenwald, which Obama recently visited—that murdered 6 million Jews. “Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve,” the President emphasized. 

Addressing Israel, Obama declared that the growth of the settlements in the West Bank must end. To the Palestinians, he acknowledged their “intolerable” suffering, but suggested that violence will not work. Borrowing from the African American and South African experience, he noted that things changed for Black people not through violence, but fighting for and demanding their rights:  

"Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered."

Now, Obama is what some folks would call a real mensch, which is Yiddish for a man of integrity and honor. He laid it out on the table, seemingly without attachments to the way things were done in the past. Surely, he realizes that U.S. policy towards the Mideast must change, and the country must exert some positive leadership. (Whether Obama decides to resist the urge for a Bush-lite policy with empire building in Afghanistan and Pakistan remains to be seen.)  

Palestinians cannot sustain any more of an occupation that crushes the spirit and any sense of civil society, and Israelis can no longer pretend that they will ever feel safe, secure and free as long as they subjugate another people with Bantustans, checkpoints and identity cards. The hardliners, the base of Netanyahu’s coalition government, want nothing less than to keep building the settlements. Will the parties come to their senses and come to the table? Time will tell. “Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed,” as Obama said. “All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear.”  

I decided to take a survey of some of the voices in the U.S. and the Mideast in response to Obama’s Cairo visit. There are many thoughtful voices out there, to be sure, and some not so much. For example, 130 protestors protested at the American consulate in Jerusalem, chanting “20 new 'settlements' by 2010 - Yes We Can!” A rightwing group plans to disseminate a poster around Israel depicting Obama wearing a kaffiyeh, with the caption reading “Barak (sic) Hussein Obama, Anti-Semitic Jew-Hater.” 

Meanwhile, progressive journalists Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana decided to go through the streets of Jerusalem and interview young Israelis and American Jews on their feelings about the President. They were met with racist invective and violently offensive language from these young people in their twenties, many of whom are Americans studying in Israel. Their statements, caught on video, drip with a sense of visceral hatred and entitlement. And Blumenthal is concerned that many American Jews harbor such troubling views about Israeli politics:

• “He’s an asshole and deserves to get shot,” said one young man.
• “White power, f*ck the n*ggers!” said another.  
• “Oh he’s a Muslim for sure! And who even knows if he was born in the United States?” said one young woman, a political science major, who admitted she did not know who Benjamin Netanyahu is. “We haven’t seen his birth certificate yet. Bullsh*t. He’s not from the U.S. He’s like a terrorist. Just what is he doing for this country so far?”  
• Another man put it bluntly: “I just want to smoke a blunt and eat some watermelon with Obama, he’s just another n*gger.”
  

But there have been far more constructive and thoughtful critiques of Obama’s speech, particularly from progressive voices who seek justice in the Mideast. There is a vibrant Israeli peace movement out there, and a network of Jewish American peace organizations that are fighting for change. But they receive little attention in the press, particularly the U.S. media, and they must compete for airtime with the rightwing, pro-war hardliners.  

Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Chicago-based Jewish Alliance For Justice and Peace, has an online pledge to support Obama’s two-state solution. According to the organization,

"No previous U.S. administration has been so forthright. President Obama has been firm in his endeavor to facilitate negotiation towards a two state solution. He hopes to leave the Bush Administration's legacy of empty words and no action behind."

Debra DeLee, head of Americans For Peace Now, said 

"This bold speech demands bold action. The President is demonstrating determined, praiseworthy leadership on Mideast peacemaking. He is offering an historic opportunity for Israel and its neighbors. Israeli and Arab leaders must seize the moment. If they fail to so, they will be responsible for blood shed in the future in the region. For Americans who support Israel, this is also an important moment in which to stand squarely with a President who is doing his utmost to bring peace to Israel." 

On the issue of putting a stop to settlements, J Street, the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement, responded with the following:

"Amen. A freeze means a freeze. This is exactly the sort of leadership we need from the President and Secretary of State if we are going to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - the only way to truly secure Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic homeland.

You can bet the Obama Administration is already hearing from hawkish voices on Israel - urging him to make exceptions, allow for more settlement growth, and to go slow. We've got to make sure the President knows pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans. support his strong line on settlements, for both Israel's and America's sake and security."

Uri Avnery of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom called the President’s speech revolutionary and historic: 

"This world needs a world law, a world order, a world democracy. That’s why this speech really was historic: Obama outlined the basic contours of a world constitution.

WHILE OBAMA proclaims the 21st century, the government of Israel is returning to the 19th.

That was the century when a narrow, egocentric, aggressive nationalism took root in many countries. A century that sanctified the belligerent nation which oppresses minorities and subdues neighbors." 

Tikkun magazine characterized Obama’s address as “an important step in a process of changing consciousness both in the Arab world, Israel and the U.S.” adding that 

"While expansion through natural growth is one of the issues, we recognize that even if Israel were to agree to no further settlements that the lives of Palestinians would not dramatically improve and their suffering would not be diminished by this alone. So there is legitimate concern if this becomes the only or major focus of the U.S. role in the conflict." 

Electronic Intifada provided some poignant commentary as usual, including co-founder Ali Abunimah, who fears that Obama may prove to be a “Bush in sheep’s clothing,” offering an elusive two-state solution that does not safeguard Palestinian rights:

"He lectured Palestinians that "resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed." He warned them that "It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Fair enough, but did Obama really imagine that such words would impress an Arab public that watched in horror as Israel slaughtered 1,400 people in Gaza last winter, including hundreds of sleeping, fleeing or terrified children, with American-supplied weapons? …Amnesty International recently confirmed what Palestinians long knew: Israel broke the negotiated ceasefire when it attacked Gaza last 4 November, prompting retaliatory rockets that killed no Israelis until after Israel launched its much bigger attack on Gaza. That he continues to remain silent about what happened in Gaza, and refuses to hold Israel accountable demonstrates anything but a commitment to full truth-telling."

And Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women of Peace, echoed Abunimah’s concern over the carnage in Gaza, urging Obama to visit the Palestinian territory:

"But the issue that is really at the crux of the tensions with the United States is the intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine, and what many perceive as a one-sided US policy in support of Israel.

The Obama administration has taken a positive stand on the Israeli settlements, calling for a complete freeze. "[Obama] wants to see a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not 'natural growth' exceptions," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told reporters.

But the administration has said almost nothing about the devastating Israeli invasion of Gaza that left more than 1,400 dead, including some 400 children. To many in the Middle East, this is an unfortunate continuation of past policies that condemn the loss of innocent Israeli lives, but refuse to speak out against the disproportionately greater loss of Palestinian lives at the hands of the Israeli military."

In a commentary two years ago, I discussed the importance of the Mideast peace movement— not tanks, helicopters or rifles from the U.S.—in helping to bring about change in that troubled holy land where love and even God often cannot be found. And such voices should be sought in playing an instrumental role in a new Palestine and a new Israel, one in which peace and human rights reign supreme.  

Obama made the call, but will they follow? Hopefully they will, because there is no other choice.