Archive for April, 2005

PA to Issue Citations for Kassam Rockets

Published by
April 29, 2005 in Palestinian Politics and Peace Process. 3 Comments

This makes no sense to me whatsoever. Here are IDF sources, in Arutz Sheva, complaining that the militants are getting stronger in Gaza…

Security sources have expressed concern over a significant increase in terrorist attacks against Israeli communities and soldiers inside and outside the Gaza region in recent weeks.

This increase - including rocket fire, mortar shellings, shootings, infiltrations and mines - constitutes a blatant contravention of the ceasefire agreement, IDF sources note. In addition, a senior military officer said yesterday that the Gaza-area terrorist organizations have become impressively organized in their purchase and smuggling of weapons from Egypt and other unnamed sources.

Israel has actually violated the ceasefire by killing several unarmed Palestinians, but that’s not what I’m talking about now. Here’s Mahmoud Abbas quoted in Haaretz:

Whoever violates this general consensus… must be hit by an iron fist… Whoever wants to sabotage (the truce) with rocket fire or shooting must be stopped by us even if that requires using force.

So far so good. Israel has an obvious interest in ending missile attacks, and Abbas seems entirely willing to crack down on renegade militant groups in order to accomplish this. You would think Israel would want to support the PA in this effort. But also in today’s Haaretz, Aluf Ben reports:

Israel has rejected a proposal by the United States to supply the Palestinian police officers in the West Bank with weapons that would assist them in performing their duties.

American officials have told their Israeli interlocutors over the past few days that the Palestinian security forces need weapons to help them maintain order in the territories. In response, the U.S. officials heard a negative reply from Israeli officials: "Let them first take the weapons from the terrorists."

Now, I don’t mean to be negative or anything, but Israel, in fighting these same terrorists, found it necessary to send tanks and helicopters into crowded cities and refugee camps, fire mortars into crowds and bomb buildings, killing and wounding dozens of perfectly innocent people who happened to be nearby - and they’re saying the PA should disarm them without even carrying guns? Sorry, but that’s insane.

I know - the IDF is afraid any arms it gives to the PA will be used against Israel if the situation changes. But how on earth is Abbas supposed to reign in armed militants without using military force? What is he going to do, issue fines for shooting Kassams into Gush Katif?

Israel doesn’t necessarily need to trust Abbas’ good intentions. But recognize, at least, that there is a common interest here: if the PA is going to become the government of a state, it needs to have the power of a state to enforce the law. In Gaza, where well-armed, well-funded militant groups operate according to their own rules and cooperate with the PA only if they choose, this is not going to happen if the PA does not have military force at its disposal.

The real issue, I think, is that Israel does not want to take the first steps on the road to recognizing the PA as a legitimate government of a state-to-be. I fear that Sharon - or, if not Sharon, than many in the military establishment - would like to see Abbas fail, and the militant groups assume power. Israel - with its settlements expanding, the wall underway, and an effective counterinsurgency operation in place in the West Bank - feels it has the upper hand. If it can just delay final status negotiations long enough it can draw its own borders without taking Palestinian concerns into consideration. From this viewpoint, the longer Israel can maintain that it has no partner for peace, the better.

Both sides understand this strategy. It is no coincidence that jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti re-appeared on the scene today, warning that "If the situation remains as it is, it will not bring peace and stability". The implicit warning is of a resurgence of armed violence if a negotiated peace cannot be accomplished.

By the way, Dennis Fox links today to an Infoshop report of a non-violent demonstation against the wall at Bil’in. According to a participant’s account, Israeli intelligence operatives infiltrated the group and started throwing stones at police, in an attempt to provoke a confrontation. If the account is true it would suggest that the military is going to some lengths to subvert the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, the Rand Corporation has released a report on the necessary conditions for Palestinian statehood. It’s about 450 pages, with tons of maps, tables and statistics. Here’s a snippet from the summary:

Our analysis identified three crosscutting issues that will strongly influence prospects
for the success of a Palestinian state:

  • How freely people can move between Israel and an independent Palestinian state,
    which we refer to as "permeability" of borders.
  • Whether the state’s territory (apart from the separation of Gaza from the West
    Bank) is contiguous.
  • The degree to which security is achieved.

You can be sure I’ll be working my way through the whole report this weekend, and posting a synopsis here when I’m done.

Live web: ,

Here is my Powerpoint Presentation on the West Bank Trip

Published by
April 26, 2005 in Conditions of the Occupation, Israel-Palestine Trip and The Settlements. 0 Comments

I was in the West Bank in February with the Jewish American Medical Project to lecture at Al Quds Medical School. While I was there, I spoke with a lot of people and took tons of pictures. I’ve finally put it all together as a powerpoint presentation. I’m posting it here for readers to view. You can click here to look at it it online in your browser. If it doesn’t open properly in Firefox, you might need to (choke) use Internet Explorer. If you want to download the presentation in powerpoint format, click here.

Readers who have never been to the occupied territories might get a sense of what it looks and feels like by flipping through the slides. I’ve commented most of them. From those who are old hands there, I’d appreciate any feedback and corrections.

Although this is perceived as a time of hope because of the Disengagement and the end of the Intifada, Israel has created tremendous obstacles to peace by the settlements, the wall, the checkpoints, and its other actions in the West Bank. I hope some of this comes across in the presentation.

P.S. - feel free to copy any of the photos and slides if you can use them.

Live web:

A Word from King Abdullah, 1947

Published by
April 22, 2005 in Zionism and Israel History. 14 Comments

What a heavy morning. I was up most of the night with the baby, and by 4:30 a.m. I figured I wasn’t going to get much sleep before I had to leave for the hospital. So I did some browsing online, and found a very interesting historical document. Haitham Sabbah has posted a speech that Jordan’s King Abdullah gave in the United States in 1947, about the Arab perspective on Jewish immigration to Palestine. Abdullah’s main point was that the U.S. should not expect Arab Palestine to absorb all the Jewish refugees from Germany, especially when they were being denied entry to the U.S. I’ll excerpt a few paragraphs…

Our case is quite simple: For nearly 2,000 years Palestine has been
almost 100 per cent Arab. It is still preponderantly Arab today, in
spite of enormous Jewish immigration. But if this immigration continues
we shall soon be outnumbered - a minority in our home.

Does that sound at all familiar? Think Disengagement…

King Abdullah counterargued the Jewish historical claim to Palestine, thus:

In 63 BC the Jews were conquered by Roman Pompey, and never again had even the vestige of independence. The Roman Emperor Hadrian finally wiped them out about 135 AD… A handful of Jews remained in Palestine but the vast majority were killed or scattered to other countries… From that time Palestine ceased to be a Jewish country, in any conceivable sense.

This was 1,815 years ago, and yet the Jews solemnly pretend they still own Palestine! If such fantasy were allowed, how the map of the world would dance about!

Italians might claim England, which the Romans held so long. England might claim France, "homeland" of the conquering Normans. And the French Normans might claim Norway, where their ancestors originated. And incidentally, we Arabs might claim Spain, which we held for 700 years…

In any event, the great Moslem expansion about 650 AD finally settled things. It dominated Palestine completely. From that day on, Palestine was solidly Arabic in population, language, and religion. When British armies entered the country during the last war, they found 500,000 Arabs and only 65,000 Jews.

As far as the post-World War II migration, Abdullah contended that the German Jews were not asked where they wanted to settle, but simply shunted off to Palestine - a claim which is fairly well supported by current historical research. This policy served the interests of Western nations that did not want to increase their own Jewish population.

He referred to well-publicized terrorist acts committed by radical Jewish groups such as the Stern Gang against the British:

The illegal immigration from Europe is arranged by the Jewish Agency, supported almost entirely by American funds. It is American dollars which support the terrorists, which buy the bullets and pistols that kill British soldiers - your allies - and Arab citizens - your friends.

We in the Arab world were stunned to hear that you permit open advertisements in newspapers asking for money to finance these terrorists, to arm them openly and deliberately for murder.

The whole speech, linked above, is well worth reading. It offers plenty of ammunition to both pro-Zionists and anti-Zionists. As much as anything, it underlines how the balance of power has shifted. At one time it was the Jews whose fate was debated and decided by other nations. We ourselves, lacking a state, used militant tactics to advance our national interest.

My ambivalence deepened when I read more of Sabbah’s blog. It’s very smart, and makes the Palestinian case very effectively. I agree with a lot of what he writes. But then I come to a critique of Jews in the entertainment industry:

Significantly, Jewish activists played a decisive role in the anti-apartheid movement. Yet Israel suffers no comparable level of opprobrium. Pressures on the Jewish state to abandon its commitment to legally sanctioned segregation are meager compared to the pressure leveled on South Africa. Israel is in a class by itself.

Further, it is no accident that Israeli "security" is now the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.

How are the highly placed "friends of Israel" able to bamboozle so much of the world? Through a complicated but interconnected array of propaganda, political pressure, complex legalisms, victim identity (see: The Holocaust) and raw political muscle.

Now, as readers here know, I complain all the time about right-wingers who label critics of Israel as anti-Semites. Being anti-Zionist is not the same thing as being anti-Jewish. But the stuff above is anti-Semitic. In fact, it is exactly the kind of drivel that was spouted by people who wanted to keep Holocaust survivors out of the U.S. in the 1940’s.

Unfortunately, the post plows forward in the general direction of Holocaust-denial - or, at least, the argument that the memory of the Holocaust is perpetuated in order to advance Jewish political and economic interests.

Indeed, the Holocaust is sometimes used this way. But to deny that it happened - that it was every bit as unthinkable as the books and documents tell - that six milliion Jews really could be exterminated - is to deny the tremendous power of the modern state, and the crucial importance of individual moral judgement and resistance.

The Jews have not been the only victims of attempted genocide. Think of the Armenians, the Bosnian Muslims, the Rwandan Tutsi. In all cases, the basis for these collective crimes was an ideology of ethnic purity, with resultant demonization and destruction of the designated "other." This, in fact, is why the notion of ethnic separatism inherent in Zionism is so disturbing.

Racism is a pernicious, dangerous practice, whether it is taken up by Europeans, Israelis, Arabs or anyone else. I hate to see it in someone like Sabbah, who seems so clear-minded in every other way.

With regard to the Palestinian take on the Holocaust, I think Joseph Massad explained it well in an article he published last year called Semites and anti-Semites, that is the Question:

It is often pointed out by Zionists and their supporters that holocaust denial in the Arab world is the major evidence for "Arab anti-Semitism". I have written elsewhere how any Arab or Palestinian who denies the Jewish holocaust falls into the Zionist logic.

While holocaust denial in the West is indeed one of the strongest manifestations of anti-Semitism, most Arabs who deny the holocaust deny it for political not racist reasons. This point is even conceded by the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim Orientalist Bernard Lewis. Their denial is based on the false Zionist claim that the holocaust justifies Zionist colonialism. The Zionist claim is as follows: Since Jews were the victims of the holocaust, then they have the right to colonise Palestine and establish a Jewish colonial-settler state there. Those Arabs who deny the holocaust accept the Zionist logic as correct. Since these deniers reject the right of Zionists to colonise Palestine, the only argument left to them is to deny that the holocaust ever took place, which, to their thinking, robs Zionism of its allegedly "moral" argument. But the fact that Jews were massacred does not give Zionists the right to steal someone else’s homeland and to massacre the Palestinian people. The oppression of a people does not endow it with rights to oppress others. If those Arab deniers refuse to accept the criminal Zionist logic that justifies the murder and oppression of the Palestinians by appealing to the holocaust, then these deniers would no longer need to make such spurious arguments. All those in the Arab world who deny the Jewish holocaust are in my opinion Zionists.

Oi. I can’t wait to get back to bed.

 

Caterpillar Leaves Its Cocoon

Published by
April 20, 2005 in Activism. 1 Comment

Speaking of activism…I just got this communication from Jewish Voice for Peace, via JAMP’s Alice Rothchild. Jewish Voice, along with several Catholic and Presbyterian organizations, has undertaken the quixotic mission of buying up enough Caterpillar stock to introduce a shareholder resolution to stop sales to Israel. Against all odds, they scored a big success at the Caterpillar annual meeting on April 13!

Caterpillar’s machinery is used by Israel for home demolitions, constructing the separation wall, and digging trenches and other barriers in Palestinina territory. The protest began after American activist Rachel Corrie was killed by a Caterpillar tractor while she tried to prevent a home demolition.

Cecilie Surasky of Jewish Voice for Peace wrote :

The issue of home demolitions of Palestinian homes dominated the entire meeting, ensuring that the staff and board of directors of CAT will be dealing with this issue for a long time to come. CAT CEO Jim Owens spent the majority of the meeting asking, "Does anyone have anything else to talk about, anything related to business?" Of course the only business that most people attending wanted to talk about was home demolitions and sales to the Israeli military.

Three people from the American Jewish Congress and Stand With Us also attended the meeting. JVP Co-Director Liat Weingart spoke to Rosz Rothstein, the representative from Stand With Us, who shockingly told Weingart that Palestinians do not own their land. "What do they expect will happen if they build a house in Yosemite? If you build on land that isn’t yours, how can you expect that it won’t be demolished?" We took heart in the knowledge that AJCongress and Stand With Us are out of touch with both the US administration’s understanding of the conflict and with mainstream American Jewish opinion, which is much more peace-minded and respectful of human rights.

JVP board member Sara Norman gave a stunning speech to introduce our shareholder resolution, saying that investigating CAT bulldozers’ role in destroying civilian homes is "responsible corporate decision-making." Our resolution got 3% of the vote, meaning we won the support of investors holding close to 3/4 billion dollars of CAT stock, including CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the world.

Finally, we achieved feature coverage in dozens of media outlets throughout the world including the LA Times, the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, the Associated Press, and Reuters. One of America’s most respected business programs, NPR’s Marketplace, also featured the campaign as the second story on their evening program on April 13. As the Chicago Tribune reported, CAT suffered a "punishing public relations campaign" this past year.

The campaign is starting to have a clear financial impact on the company. Whereas in 2001, only 3 stories ran in major media connecting CAT bulldozers with human rights abuses, already in the first quarter of 2005, 275 similar stories have run in major English language publications. One commentator documented that CAT stock went down by 8.5% on the week of the shareholder vote, as compared to a 6% decrease for competitor John Deere. On the week of an annual meeting, it’s very unusual that a company’s stock decrease, rather than increase, given that the focus of an annual meeting is to highlight the strengths and accomplishments of the company.

The LA Times covered it as Jewish groups protesting the resolution - burying the fact that a major Jewish group is actually leading the push against Caterpillar.

Haaretz was neutral, but led with the fact that the resolution didn’t pass. The fairest coverage, suprisingly, was in the Jerusalem Post.

You can follow the campaign at the Stop Caterpillar web site.  This is how the South Africa divestment campaign began…

AIPAC: Everyone Has a Role to Play … But Us

Published by
Andrew Schamess
April 20, 2005 in Religion, Activism and The Jewish Right. 0 Comments

Gathering with family and friends to celebrate Passover
often leads to discussion and consideration of the place of Israel and the
Jewish community in the world. Through
the prism of slavery and exodus, we learn how far we have traveled since
leaving Egypt, how far we still have to go, and what our individual roles can
be in getting us all where we would like to be. But, it seems, not everyone learns the same lessons. ..

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Talking About the West Bank Trip to a Jewish Audience

Published by
April 20, 2005 in Activism, Jewish Culture and Israel-Palestine Trip. 0 Comments

I know my own activity on this site have been a bit sparse recently. Thank goodness Brad has taken up the slack. Check out his posts, which are terrific, if you haven’t already. I’ve been busy with the aftermath of my trip to the West Bank with the Jewish American Medical Project (JAMP). I gave my first presentation on Monday, along with my mom and Howard Lenow, who were also on the trip…

The group was mixed, Jewish and non-Jewish - mostly pretty progressive -and sympathetic to what we were saying. They asked if we planned to make this presentation to more specifically Jewish audiences. The answer is, "if they’ll let us."

After the last JAMP trip, Howard contacted almost every synagogue in Boston. Only one, out of perhaps twenty, allowed JAMP members to give a talk - and the Rabbi was reportedly fired because of it. Several people on Monday night avowed that talking to the Jewish community on this issue was a lost cause - American Jews are not willing to hear criticism of Israel.

I refuse to believe that this is true. A lot of Jews are concerned and disturbed by Israel’s actions in the territories. I know this from emails I get about the site, and from people I meet.

Here’s an example. To my delight, I ran into an old friend from high school at the presentation. She had gone back to school as an adult and earned an undergraduate degree - from Smith College, no less. She studied Islamic history. Somehow in the process she became quite interested in Judaism. She married a Jewish man and converted.

She feels Judaism is a beautiful religion - but can’t understand how other Jews who embrace it can support the sort of discrimination and violence that is directed at the Palestinians.

I’ve heard the same things from Jews who were raised in the tradition and attended yeshiva. And surveys confirm that there is a diversity of opinion in the Jewish community on this issue. It’s especially true for Jews under 40. They find meaning in the religion, want to be a more active part of the community, but find themselves locked out if they express dissenting views on Israel.

So why the do we hit a wall when we approach the synagogues? My sense it that this policy is coming from above, not from below. The organization leaders are more conservative than the congregants and the general Jewish population. The message is coming down that local Jewish entities should not give a platform to groups that criticize the occupation.

I also believe this wall can be broken if we keep at it. We will not be disengaged. I am active in my synagogue; and I will not be quiet about Palestinians’ right to self-determination and a viable independent state. If enough of us refuse to be ignored - if we keep recruiting others - we will eventually reach a tipping point, and the position of the American Jewish community will have to change.

Thats what I believe. I’m very curious to hear what readers think. Experiences? Strategies? Suggestions?

I’ll post my power point on this site as soon as I’ve had time to annotate it, in case anyone out there can make use of the slides.

The AJCongress Anti-Divestment Campaign

Published by
Andrew Schamess
April 12, 2005 in Activism and The Jewish Right. 2 Comments

A couple weeks ago, the leadership of the American Jewish
community outdid itself. Not an easy
feat to achieve these days, but the American Jewish Congress
managed to announce an initiative more damaging, more insensitive and, in many
ways, more un-Jewish than just about any in recent memory. And just in time for the Seder.

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