settlements — Antony Loewenstein

May 25th, 2012 in Israel

Boycotting Israeli apartheid is both moral and necessary

Of course, if you’re a self-described Leftist Zionist like Philip Mendes in Australia you write for Murdoch’s Australian and tell Palestinians to grow up and embrace their occupiers:

The international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel is a by-product of the second Palestinian intifada and the collapse of the Oslo peace process. It is essentially war by other means – a non-violent, but nevertheless extremist strategy – allied with the practice of suicide bombings and rocket attacks, and intended to coerce Israel into surrendering to Palestinian demands.

The first major manifestations of the BDS occurred in April and May 2002 when academics in Europe and Australia urged a boycott of Israeli academics and academic institutions.

The campaign was formalised in July 2004 when 60 Palestinian academic and other non-government organisations called for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. It has three key aims: to end the Israeli occupation of lands occupied in the 1967 war, including East Jerusalem, and dismantle the security barrier; to achieve equality for the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel; and to support the rights of Palestinian refugees, including their demand for a right of return to Israel as implied by UN Resolution 194.

The leading Palestinian BDS advocate, Omar Barghouti, in his 2011 book BDS: the Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, opposes a bi-national state based on parity between the two national groups. He returns to the long-dated Palestine Liberation Organisation proposal for a secular democratic state that recognises Jews only as a religious, not national, community.

The BDS campaign has had limited success. Its major drawback is that it offers no strategy for promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation. Rather, it is a negative and one-sided campaign aimed at demonising Israeli Jews irrespective of their political views on the Palestinian question.

The obvious answer to the BDS is a two-state solution. The Israeli government says it wants to negotiate a two-state solution, and is waiting for a suitable Palestinian partner willing to accommodate Israeli security requirements.

Back in the real world, away from Melbourne academia where being loved by the Zionist community is your highest priority, Gideon Levy explains in Haaretz why BDS is vital:

I don’t buy merchandise that comes from the settlements and I never will. To my way of thinking, those are stolen goods and, like any other goods that have been stolen, I try not to buy them. Now perhaps the South Africans and the Danes also will not buy them; meanwhile their governments have merely requested that products from the settlements be marked so as not to deceive their customers. Just as there was no need in the past to label merchandise from the British colonies as British products, so there is no need to mark products from Israel’s colonies as Israeli. Anyone who wants to support the Israeli colonial enterprise can buy them; those who are opposed can boycott them. As simple as that, and as necessary.

Israel, which boycotts Turkey’s beaches and Hamas, should have been the first to understand that. Instead we have heard heart-rending cries and angry rebukes. Not yet to the Danes, who are nice, but to the South Africans, who are less nice in our eyes. The decision was labeled “a step with racist characteristics” by the Foreign Ministry spokesman, referring to the country that waged the most courageous war against racism in the history of mankind.

Yes, the new South Africa can teach Israel a lesson in the war against racism; and yes, Israel can teach the world a lesson in racism. It has once again been proven that Israel’s chutzpah knows no bounds: Israel, of all countries, accuses South Africa, of all countries, of being racist. Is there anything more ridiculous?

It was not by chance that the South African ambassador to Israel, Ismail Coovadia, seemed both amused and embarrassed at a reception for Cameroon’s independence day, when the foreign ministry launched a ridiculous search for him, according to reports, after he failed to respond to its summons for what was described in advance as a rebuke. It is not difficult to imagine how many such reprimands Israeli ambassadors in different parts of the world deserve to be summoned to, if labeling produce from the settlements is a reason for rebuke and accusations of racism on the part of the Israeli government, which is so purely non-racist.

Labeling products from the settlements should have been an obvious move a long time ago, as a guide to the intelligent and involved consumer. A boycott of settlement products should also have taken place a long time ago, as a compass for law-abiding citizens. We are not referring only to a political or moral position; this is a question of upholding international law. A product produced in the settlements is an illegal product, just like the settlements themselves. Just as there is a growing public of consumers in the world who will not buy products made in sweatshops in southeast Asia nor “blood diamonds” from Africa because of their source and the conditions under which they are produced, so it can be anticipated that there are consumers who will boycott products produced in occupied territory through the exploitation of cheap Palestinian manpower whose opportunities to work are in the settlements.

The self-righteous, sanctimonious protests of Israeli factory-owners and farmers in the occupied territories who say they care so much about their Palestinian workers, who claim a boycott could endanger their employees’ sources of income, are a cynical attempt to mislead people. Had the settlements and the occupying forces been removed, and the lands on which these enterprises arose been returned to their owners, they would have had much more dignified sources of income.

A boycott of goods from the settlements is a justified boycott, and there is no other way to define it. Labeling these products is the minimum demand that every government in the world should make, as a service to its citizens.

May 20th, 2012 in Israel

Zionist state committing suicide with its eyes open

A new BBC poll finds popularity of Israel at a welcome low globally.

These numbers in Australia reveal the profound disconnect between political elite opinion and the general public:

In the EU countries surveyed, views of Israeli influence have hardened in Spain (74% negative ratings, up 8 points) and in France (65%, up 9 points) — while positive ratings remain low and steady. Negative ratings from the Germans and the British remain very high and stable (69% and 68%, respectively). In other Anglo-Saxon countries, views have worsened in Australia (65% negative ratings, up 7 points) and in Canada (59%, up 7 points).

And what do most Israelis think? A new review in the New York Review of Books by David Shulman, discussing Peter Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism, argues this:

How did we reach this point? Why do Israelis cling to a policy so evidently irrational, indeed suicidal? The simple—too simple—answer is: we’re afraid. We’ve been so traumatized, first by our whole history and then by the history of this conflict, that we want at least an illusion of security, like the kind that comes from holding on to a few more rocky hills. Never mind that every inch of Israel is within range of tens of thousands of missiles currently stationed in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, not to mention Iran, and that a few more square kilometers make no difference to that threat. We’ll still take over those West Bank hills, and we’ll even put a few rickety caravans on them for anyone crazy enough to want to live there, and we’ll station a few dozen bored soldiers on top of each of them and all around them, and we’ll connect them to the Israeli electricity grid and the water system, and we’ll build a big perimeter fence to enclose the new settlement and to provide land for it to grow on (usually many times the size of the settlement itself). The land happens to belong to Palestinians, but that, clearly, is a consideration of no relevance here.

The fears of Israelis are no doubt real enough, and a generous interpretation of Israeli policy over the last four decades would give them due emphasis. As Ali Abu Awwad, one of the leaders of the new generation of Palestinian nonviolent resisters, often says: “The Jews are not my enemy; their fear is my enemy. We must help them to stop being so afraid—their whole history has terrified them—but I refuse to be a victim of Jewish fear anymore.” He’s right to refuse. But I think the reality we inhabit and have largely created by our own actions has more to do with the story we Israelis tell ourselves about who we are—a powerfully dramatic story that, like many such mythic stories, has a way of perpetuating itself, at continually escalating cost to those who tell it. This story more and more coincides with the primitive Netanyahu narrative I mentioned earlier.

To get away from it, we need to recognize certain primary facts, however uncomfortable they may be for some of us. As has been the case in the past, there are always easily available diversions and distractions that mask the true basis of the ongoing struggle; in Israel today, the main such diversion is called “Iran.” Along with such distractions we have the Israeli refusal to see the present Palestinian leadership in Ramallah for what it is, a more than adequate partner for Israel. Those who don’t agree should be thinking about men such as Marwan Barghouti, still biding his time in an Israeli jail. He’s no saint, to be sure, but he enjoys enormous authority among Palestinians, and he knows very well what is required to strike a deal. There is good reason to believe that he wants such a deal, along the lines that are by now recognized as reasonable by a majority on both sides of the conflict and, indeed, by most other nations. He has recently published a strong statement calling for mass nonviolent resistance in the territories and an end to the farce of a negotiating “process” that has allowed Israel to stall endlessly—and to hide its deeply rooted hostility to the very idea of coming to some form of agreement with the Palestinian national movement.

…

To prolong the occupation is to ensure the emergence of a single polity west of the Jordan; every passing day makes a South African trajectory more likely, including the eventual, necessary progression to a system of one person, one vote. Thus the likelihood must be faced that unless the Occupation ends, there will also, in the not so distant future, be no Jewish state.

May 14th, 2012 in Israel

Palestinian hunger strikers elicit a global yawn

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is right in the Independent:

Thaer Halahleh wrote a letter to his wife Shireen from an Israeli jail in February: “My detention has been renewed seven times and they still haven’t charged me. I can’t take it any more.” Then the 34-year-old began a hunger strike, as did Bilal Diab. That was 77 days ago. Both are Palestinians, fathers, whose young daughters are strip searched and terrified when they visit. David Rose, an exceptional investigative journalist and Jewish himself, recently publicised their stories. Eight others have been on the same, silent, self-wasting, wasted protest. Halahleh’s eyes were bleeding, blood instead of tears. He, Diab and others may well be dead by the time you read this. Last Friday, Supreme Court judges in this hubristic democracy turned down an application from civil rights groups to have the men moved to civilian hospitals. They didn’t want, perhaps, their own citizens to witness such stuff. What would that do to the image of the plucky little nation, surrounded by real and imagined threats?

The moralistic Chief Rabbi will not be on “Thought for the Day” expressing sorrow for the treatment of these prisoners. Ardent British Zionists will not be pressed to condemn those responsible for the state barbarism. You certainly won’t get a big TV hit like Homeland, (based on Hatufim, an Israeli TV series that fictionalised the capture by Palestinian militants of the IDF soldier Gilad Shalit) being made about these men. Come on, you cool, edgy TV chaps, how about a film about a handsome Palestinian held by the Israelis till he loses his mind? Do I hear a choral “No”?

Western opinion formers have been indifferent, in some cases knowingly so, about what is happening. No condemnations are heard around our Parliament. They say we must have freedom of speech, but that right is never evoked when it comes to Israel. The BNP and EDL can spread their racist poison freely, but Baroness Jenny Tonge is savaged by Zionists and her own party for saying that nation “is not going to be there forever in its present form”. She has just quit the Lib Dems. If she had uttered the same words about, say, Zimbabwe, she would have been acclaimed.

A large number of enlightened British Jews see the double standards and object to Israel’s intransigence. It must be so hard to do what they do, behave with integrity and empathise with those they are instructed to hate.

The detained Palestinians are embarked on peaceful, Gandhian protest action. They want their families to be able to visit without restrictions, decent medical treatment, not to be put into solitary confinement for years on end, to be taken to court and tried. How is that “terrorism”? With the 1981 IRA hunger strikers, of whom 10 died, even the most anti-Republican British newspapers published pictures and told us what was happening. TV too covered their journeys to the very end.

With these slowly dying inmates and the 6,000 others locked up without due process, there is nothing, nada. I never knew until this week that since 1967, 700,000 Palestinians have been detained. Not all were innocent but nor were all of them guilty. To be a Palestinian, to want equality, rights, freedom and land is not a crime. Except that for hardline Israelis, it is.

Some Israelis and Palestinians are protesting the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Like this yesterday when protesters blocked the entrance to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, metres away from one of Israel’s main interrogation centers in the West Bank. Two protesters were arrested.

May 14th, 2012 in Israel

This is what Zionist colonialism looks like

May 9th, 2012 in Israel

Legalising apartheid in Palestine

Amira Hass in Haaretz:

Let’s imagine this scene: eleven Palestinian youngsters under the age of 18 demonstrating with Palestinian flags and posters at the north-west entrance of the Ariel settlement, demanding that the old road which leads to Salfit be reopened. Let’s assume that these youngsters aren’t attacked by the Ariel residents. After all, this is not a hotheaded settlement, its zealotry is limited to land fever.

Nonetheless, under military procedures, the youth are violating security codes relating to “a prohibition of incitement activity and hostile propaganda,” which were signed by then-GOC Central Command Uzi Narkiss in August 1967. The bans apply to “a group of 10 or more people who gather at a site for a political purpose, or for a matter that can be interpreted as being political,” such as waving a flag or distributing incendiary (“incitement” ) materials. Even if they are aged 13 to 17, these imaginary demonstrators can be detained and interrogated for eight days before they are brought to a military tribunal.

What happens to Jewish youth of the same age who mutilate trees on lands belonging to Palestinian villages in the Salfit district? Even though they live in the same area as the Palestinian youth, a different law applies to them: Israeli law. Under Israeli juvenile law, should IDF soldiers or police make the effort to detain Jewish youth for mutilating trees, minors under the age of 14 can be held for up to 12 hours, and minors over the age of 14 can be detained for 24 hours. Israeli military law does not distinguish between a Palestinian minor and an adult when it comes to their primary detention, before trial. Palestinian detainees under and over the age of 18 can be held for eight days. One country, two legal codes.

For some people, this circumstance of double standards contradicts human logic, professional norms and ethics. In 2010, two petitions were lodged with the High Court of Justice disputing such structural discrimination: Attorney Lila Margalit represented the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Yesh Din-Volunteers for Human Rights and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel; attorneys Smadar Ben Natan and Avigdor Feldman represented the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs. The petitioners sought to make prearraignment detention periods for Palestinian suspects equivalent to those of Israeli suspects.

And as often happens, a rare coincidence was discovered: The state prosecutor’s January 2011 response to these High Court petitions indicated that “a decision was reached recently to institute far-ranging changes in detention periods designated under the security codes; these changes are supported by the IDF, the Israel Police and the Shin Bet security service.”

These “far-ranging” changes were incorporated in an amendment to the military codes signed by then-GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi on February 2, 2012, which are gradually being instituted between March 1 and August 1. The amendment reduces the period of detention, but does not equalize the period of detention faced by Palestinian and Israeli suspects. This disparity, explained the prosecutor, is justified in terms of the essence of “territory under belligerent occupation for a long period of years.” The inequality is substantiated via reference to the “fanaticism” of Palestinian detainees who operate on the basis of “ultra-nationalist, ideological motivations,” and so “interrogation of them is more difficult.”

May 2nd, 2012 in Israel

Desmond Tutu demands real BDS action on Palestine

Powerful piece to persuade the Methodist Church to divest from companies that support the Israeli occupation:

A quarter-century ago I barnstormed around the United States encouraging Americans, particularly students, to press for divestment from South Africa. Today, regrettably, the time has come for similar action to force an end to Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory and refusal to extend equal rights to Palestinian citizens who suffer from some 35 discriminatory laws.

I have reached this conclusion slowly and painfully. I am aware that many of our Jewish brothers and sisters who were so instrumental in the fight against South African apartheid are not yet ready to reckon with the apartheid nature of Israel and its current government. And I am enormously concerned that raising this issue will cause heartache to some in the Jewish community with whom I have worked closely and successfully for decades. But I cannot ignore the Palestinian suffering I have witnessed, nor the voices of those courageous Jews troubled by Israel’s discriminatory course.

…

If we do not achieve two states in the near future, then the day will certainly arrive when Palestinians move away from seeking a separate state of their own and insist on the right to vote for the government that controls their lives, the Israeli government, in a single, democratic state. Israel finds this option unacceptable and yet is seemingly doing everything in its power to see that it happens.

Many black South Africans have traveled to the occupied West Bank and have been appalled by Israeli roads built for Jewish settlers that West Bank Palestinians are denied access to, and by Jewish-only colonies built on Palestinian land in violation of international law.

Black South Africans and others around the world have seen the 2010 Human Rights Watch report which “describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians.” This, in my book, is apartheid. It is untenable. And we are in desperate need of more rabbis joining the brave rabbis of Jewish Voice for Peace in speaking forthrightly about the corrupting decadeslong Israeli domination over Palestinians.

These are among the hardest words I have ever written. But they are vitally important. Not only is Israel harming Palestinians, but it is harming itself. The 1,200 rabbis may not like what I have to say, but it is long past time for them to remove the blinders from their eyes and grapple with the reality that Israel becoming an apartheid state or like South Africa in its denial of equal rights is not a future danger, as three former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and David Ben Gurion — have warned, but a present-day reality. This harsh reality endured by millions of Palestinians requires people and organizations of conscience to divest from those companies — in this instance, from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard — profiting from the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.

Such action made an enormous difference in apartheid South Africa. It can make an enormous difference in creating a future of justice and equality for Palestinians and Jews in the Holy Land.

April 29th, 2012 in Israel

What standing in solidarity with Palestine means on day to day basis

Step by step, BDS grows:

Palestine human rights campaigners today welcomed news that the UK’s fifth biggest food retailer, The Co-operative Group, will “no longer engage with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements”.

The Co-op’s decision, notified to campaigners in a statement, will immediately impact four suppliers, Agrexco, Arava Export Growers, Adafresh and Mehadrin, Israel’s largest agricultural export company. Mehadrin sources produce from illegal settlements, including Beqa’ot in the Occupied Jordan Valley. During interviews with researchers, Palestinian workers in the settlement said they earn as little as €11 per day. Grapes and dates packaged in the settlement were all labelled ‘Produce of Israel’.

Mehadrin’s role in providing water to settlement farms and its relationship with Israeli state water company Mekorot makes the company additionally complicit with Israel’s discriminatory water policies. Other companies may be affected by the Co-op’s new policy if they are shown to be sourcing produce from Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories.

Hilary Smith, Co-op member and Boycott Israel Network (BIN) agricultural trade campaign co-ordinator, said “we welcome this important decision by the Co-op to take steps toward fully realising their policy of support for human rights and ethical trading. The Co-op has taken the lead internationally in this historic decision to hold corporations to account for complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights. We strongly urge other retailers to follow suit and take similar action”.

The announcement by the Co-op came just before their Regional AGMs, due to take place over the next two weeks, and where motions on this issue have been submitted for discussion. For months Co-op members have been highlighting their concerns about trade with complicit companies through co-ordinated letter-writing and discussions with local offices.

A spokesperson from the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works to improve the conditions of Palestinian agricultural communities, said:

“Israeli agricultural export companies like Mehadrin profit from and are directly involved in the ongoing colonisation of occupied Palestinian land and theft of our water. Trade with such companies constitutes a major form of support for Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people, so we warmly welcome this principled decision by the Co-Operative. Other European supermarkets must now take similar steps to end their complicity with Israeli violations of international law. The movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law is proving to be a truly effective form of action in support of Palestinian rights”.

April 23rd, 2012 in Israel

60 Minutes unafraid to tackle Israeli apartheid first-hand

The role of mainstream media in the West to shield the public from the realities of Israeli occupation is legendary. Occasionally there is a breakthrough, such as this 2010 piece on American 60 Minutes on East Jerusalem.

Yesterday the same program and the same reporter, Bob Simon, returned to the subject and covered Christians leaving the Holy Land. Israeli occupation is primarily to blame. Importantly, notes MJ Rosenberg, Israel’s Ambassador to Israel, Michael Oren, tried to censor the program, a typical Zionist tactic. But the program called him on it:

April 14th, 2012 in Israel

Palestinian Christians treated like second class citizens by Jewish state

Very few people understand the reality of life under Israeli occupation. Father Peter Bray, the Vice Chancellor of Bethlehem University, has regularly written missives about what it really means. This is his Easter message:

Easter Sunday 8 April 2012

Greetings from this holy city of Jerusalem where again I have had the opportunity to gather with others to reflect on the Easter mystery. It is indeed a privilege and an inspiration to walk the streets of the Old City and to reflect on what happened here some 2000 years ago.

I have had the opportunity to gather with locals as well as many pilgrims to reflect and pray. To see the international nature of the gatherings reminds me of how far what Jesus began here has travelled. The message of God’s love and of the need for peace and justice has been heard in the farthest ends of the earth. However, it is distressing for me to realize that some of the people with whom I work at Bethlehem University, and many others in that city, cannot join me in these ceremonies. They live some seven kilometres away but because they are Palestinian Christians they could not get permission to come into the Old City to be part of the ceremonies. In spite of the fact that many of these families trace their origins back to the earliest Christians, they cannot easily come to worship in the places where their ancestors worshipped down through the centuries.

This situation brings to mind the article by Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the USA. He claimed in the March 12 Wall Street Journal article, “Israel and the Plight of Mideast Christians,” that Israel is providing a supportive environment for Christians and that the Christians are leaving the Holy Land because of the pressure from Muslims. This contradicts what Christians are saying and experiencing. For more information on this you might like to see the link.

The Palestinian Christians along with Palestinian Muslims are treated by the Israelis as Palestinians. Thus the Palestinian Christians are restricted in all sorts of ways because they are Palestinian. If they live behind the Wall they need special permission to go into Jerusalem. Israel claims it gives thousands of permits to Christians for special feast like Christmas and Easter. However, of the estimated 50,000 Christians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories only about 3000 get these special permits, but this is arbitrary. In speaking recently with one member of staff at Bethlehem University I discovered that over the past two years she received permission to go into Jerusalem on two of the four times she applied. Her three daughters had also applied and received permission on two occasions. However, there was never an occasion when they were able to go and worship as a family, as there was always someone without permission.

Even those Christians with permits cannot always get through. On Palm Sunday groups of people trying to get to Jerusalem for the procession coming from Ramallah, Nablus, Taybeh and elsewhere in the West Bank spent over two hours at the checkpoints and so gave up and returned home because they would have missed the procession anyhow.

This restriction on travel has an impact in many ways. I was speaking with one of our second year student before Christmas and he mentioned he had never set eyes on the sea or been to Galilee because he couldn’t get permission to go through the Wall. Many of our Christian students from Bethlehem have never been to the Galilee to see Nazareth or the Sea of Galilee or Mount of Beatitudes etc. We have tried all sorts of ways to get visits there but have never been able to get permission for them. So I can go and can take visitors to all these holy places, but people whose ancestry goes back to the early Christians cannot.

Pressure on Christians who occupy land the Israelis want is intense. Israel has systematically put pressure on Palestinians who possess land that Israelis wants. Daoud Nasser, for example, is on his family land just near Bethlehem. He has had to fight the Israeli government and military in the Israeli High Court to retain his land, even though it has been clear from the beginning that he has the documentation to show that it is his ancestral land. This was a very costly exercise. When the government and military could not win in the court they tried restriction. They would not allow any water, electricity, services, building permits and so on for the property. In addition, neighbouring settlers harassed him and his family in an effort to force them off the land. They have not succeeded. Daoud has founded the “Tent of Nations” where he seeks to educate people to what is happening and talks about his approach. He refuses to regard the soldiers, settlers or government as his enemy and acts accordingly. I have been to the site a number of times and I am always impressed with the determination to resist non-violently but to act in a Christian way. This confounds the Israelis at times but is a continual challenge for Daoud to live this approach. So far he has been able to survive through some ingenious moves, but it is a constant strain for him and his family. Many people are not prepared to go to these lengths so give up and leave.

The constant pressure on Christians is evident in restrictions, abuse at checkpoints, economic pressure, unemployment, unpredictable invasion of homes by Israeli military, insecurity and being in an open air prison. All these lead many of them to seek an alternative. So to say Israel is providing a supportive environment for Christians is contradicted by the evidence of what people have to endure.

It is in the midst of this situation that Bethlehem University continues to reach out to Palestinians and particularly Palestinian Christians. In a country where less than 2% are Christian, Bethlehem University has a student population where some 30% are Christian. We are ever looking for better ways to reach out and be supportive of them. There are many challenges facing us in doing this, but the resilience of the students is amazing and inspiring and makes the efforts involved so worthwhile. During the recent visit to Bethlehem University by Brother Alvaro, the Superior General of the Brothers, I felt so proud as I watched and listened to our students engage with him and those with him in a very confident, articulate and informed way.

For almost forty years Bethlehem University has been reaching out to provide university education. Over the past year or so I have been working with people to explore additional ways Bethlehem University could more effectively respond to the needs of the Palestinian people. We have come up with several options and at present we are in negotiations to purchase a property a few hundred metres from our present campus, which is about a third the size of it. To gain this will provide Bethlehem University with an excellent base from which to develop what is needed for the next twenty years. However, finding around $19 million to purchase, renovate, landscape and set up the new programmes is a big ask in the current international economic climate. So please keep us in your prayers that many people will be generous enough to enable us to more adequately respond to the needs of the Palestinian people.

Part of this challenge, and one of the most difficult aspect, is to keep hope alive in the midst of all that people face. Bethlehem University over the years has proved to be a beacon of hope for our students and we continue to reach out to find ever better ways to keep hope alive. This hope is not so much some vague idea that things will be better. Rather at this time of Easter it is good to reflect on Jesus’ victory over death. Against this backdrop our hope is that there is a victorious meaning to what is happening, no matter what the outcome. It its this type of hope that enables us to live our lives in the midst of oppression. This hope gives us the courageous to face whatever comes with a confidence that arises from knowing that we continually live in the presence of our loving God.

It has been a great thrill for me to have a number of visitors from Australia and New Zealand pass through the Holy Land and visit Bethlehem University. For so many of them engaging with our students is the highlight of their visit to the Holy Land. It is one thing to visit churches and holy sites, to see ruins etc., but to engage with students who live in this land and whose roots go back so far is something special. So if you are intending to come to the Holy Land make sure you ask the travel agent or tour organizer to put Bethlehem University on the itinerary! I would love to welcome you on campus and have you engage with some of our students. In May it will be a great please for me to welcome to campus Bishop Owen Dolan from Palmerston North in New Zealand. He follows in the footsteps of his namesake Cardinal Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, who was with us recently on the same day we had Archbishop Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, visited us. However, Bishop Dolan will be given even more favoured treatment in coming from New Zealand!

Tomorrow I walk to Emmaus with a group from Jerusalem. It will again be an opportunity to walk the journey the disciples walked and reflect on what happened in Jerusalem. I will walk and reflect on what happened to Jesus, but also on what is happening to the Palestinian people who would love to walk with me but cannot because they cannot get permission to come through the Wall. I will remember you as I wander and become even more aware of Jesus being with me on my journey.

I pray God’s blessing on you and a deep peace as you take in the meaning of this Easter season. Please keep us in your prayers as we seek to respond to God’s call. Thank you for your interest in and support for Bethlehem University.

Best wishes as the year continues to unfold for you.

Brother Peter Bray

April 13th, 2012 in Israel

Teaching Israel a necessary and non-violent lesson

Just another average day in occupied Palestine (via Haaretz):

The state has confirmed that, acting without a court order, the army has barred Palestinian villagers from freely accessing their farmland for two years. The admission was made in the state’s response to a High Court petition filed last year by Beit Furik residents.

The plots farmed by the residents of Beit Furik, which is southeast of Nablus, border several unauthorized outposts that were built near the Itamar settlement over the past decade and are known as the Gidonim outposts. In 2010, the Israel Defense Forces began preventing villagers from accessing their fields freely. As a result they must coordinate their farmwork with the army, in accordance with deployment levels.

Such events give weight to boycotting Israel, writes Ben White in the New Statesman (and I agree):

A fortnight ago, dozens of actors, playwrights and directors called on The Globe to cancel a planned performance by Israel’s national theatre company Habima, to avoid complicity with “human rights violations and the illegal colonisation of occupied land”.

Along with Emma Thompson, Mike Leigh and Caryl Churchill, opposition to the invitation includes Mark Rylance, founding artistic director of The Globe. The letter follows on from anearlier call by ‘Boycott From Within’, a group of Israelis who support the Palestinians’ Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Since then, the letter’s critics have responded in an over the top fashion, successfully missed the point. Howard Jacobson reached for absurd clichés (“Kafkaesque”, “McCarthyism”) while Simon Callow and Louise Mensch signed a letter describing the boycott call an example of “the continued persecution of Jews”.

“Theatre ban ‘like Nazi book burning’ say West End stars” ran a headline in The Jewish Chronicle, whose editor Stephen Pollard compared pro-Palestinian protesters at the Proms to “Nazi party members” in “Weimar Germany” (as did Labour MP Denis MacShane who recentlylinked the murders in Toulouse to Palestine solidarity motions in UK trade unions).

This shameless blustering ignores the specific reasons for the Habima boycott call, namely that the company performs in illegal West Bank settlements – colonies that form a key part of Israel’s apartheid regime – and indeed promised Israel’s Minister of Culture that it would “deal with any problems hindering such performances”.

The wider context is the decision by Palestinians to call for BDS as part of their efforts to secure basic rights and freedoms. That call, endorsed by trade unions, faith groups, political factions, and civil society organisations, includes cultural boycott. Groups like the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) play a critical role in mobilising supportfor the Palestinian struggle.

Culture does not operate in some special, apolitical space – just like academic institutions in Israel are also not removed from complicity in systematic human rights abuses. As the Habima general manager put it, the invitation by The Globe is an “honourable accomplishment for the State of Israel in general”.

April 6th, 2012 in Israel

How one-state solution is inevitable now

Gideon Levy in Haaretz on how the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is long dead – thank you America, settlers, the Israeli government and the Zionist Diaspora – and there’s only one outcome now:

Even a dead body can sometimes twitch reflexively. Here we go again: The settlers have occupied another building. Their lawyer isn’t ashamed to boast about the deceptive way the property was acquired. The ministers make their pilgrimages. The defense minister pulls a surprise eviction. The right is furious, the remnants of the left utter praise, and even Europe and America seem satisfied – look, another settler real estate grab has been thwarted.

If it hadn’t involved the private property of an unfortunate Palestinian family it would have been one more laughable farce. If we weren’t talking about a hopeless rearguard battle there would be a reason for outrage.

But there’s no point in outrage now. Migron, Hebron, whatever – the war is over. The victor was declared long ago, the vanquished was defeated long ago, notwithstanding yesterday’s evacuation in Hebron. All that’s left is the reflexive twitching of the corpse: the targeted removal – a drop in the bucket – and a last gasp from the moribund left.

The part of Hebron under Israeli control, H2 under the 1997 Hebron Protocol, has for years been a ghost town, with hundreds of abandoned apartments and dozens of shuttered stores; a mute testament to the purest and most undeniable form of apartheid. But the “protest” continues: Another house on the wild prairie was saved.

But we could have given the settlers that house; it wouldn’t have changed anything. Let them have Migron, that won’t make or break anything either. Even the 50 homes in Beit El’s Ulpana neighborhood won’t change the bigger picture. The occupation is more entrenched than ever, its end more remote than ever, and the settlers have won in a stinging knockout.

It’s time to raise the white flag, to admit publicly that the two-state solution has been foiled. There’s no point in celebrating yesterday’s evacuation of Hamachpela House, because there are thousands of other buildings just like it. It doesn’t even pay to fight for the rule of law; if the state has the audacity to try to circumvent a ruling of the High Court of Justice, as it tried to with Migron, even that looks like a lost cause.

If the apartheid neighborhood in Hebron could not stir Israelis from their moral fog – and any decent person who visits there is shocked to the depths of their being – and if life goes on undisturbed, with no moral questions, even as this horror occurs in our own backyard, then what difference does another stolen house make? Let it go, let other houses go; the chance for a solution is long past.

Even the twitching of the dead are moving. The determination of organizations such as B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence and Gush Shalom not to surrender should evoke admiration here and abroad. But it’s hard to revel in them when they are fighting a final battle.

Hamachpela House was evacuated. But like its predecessor in Hebron – known variously as “Peace House,” “The Brown House or “Beit Hameriva” (“The House of Contention” ), which has stood empty for more than three years, and hundreds of abandoned homes whose sole occupants are the ghosts of justice and of Israeli democracy – its owners will presumably never be able to return to live there.

The battle for Hebron has been decided. All that remains is to ask what will replace the solution that was put to death. There will not be two states. Even a child knows the alternative: one state. There is no third option. Israel’s most radical left won. For years it said one state, even as we played with ourselves at two states. Now everyone says two states, in unison, only because they know that train has left the station, and the great train robbery was pulled off.

From now we need only take care with our definitions: The extreme left is whoever endeavors toward a single state – the plundering settlers, the establishment that embraces them and the majority of Israelis, who do not lift a finger to stop them.

The Palestinians, as everyone knows by now, aren’t going anywhere. There is even a handful of settlers that has begun talking about giving them citizenship. If this, too, is not a ruse, then this little group is openly reconciling with the great victory of Israel’s most extreme left.

The struggle? From now on it must focus on human rights. Yes, equal rights for everyone who lives in Greater Israel, just as you wanted.

April 6th, 2012 in Israel

What hardline Zionists don’t want young American Jews to think

The American Jewish community is slowly but surely becoming more willing to critically debate Israel’s brutal policies towards Palestinians. Norman Finkelstein, here interviewed by Haaretz, says occupying Israel has a problem on its hands:

“Nobody really defends Israel anymore,” he said in an interview. “If you go on college campuses, there are some Hillel faithfuls who are bringing an IDF soldier to try to explain that not all IDF soldiers are war criminals. And among the 60 to 100 people in the audience, there are Palestinian supporters who come with tape over their mouth, and when the soldier starts to speak, many people stand up and walk out.

“They’ve lost the battle for public opinion,” he says. “They claim it’s because American Jews know too little – I claim it’s because they know too much about the conflict, and young liberal Jews have difficulty defending the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon or supporting the Israeli settlements. I was bashing Israel in the past because nobody else was exposing its true record. Many people are doing it now, so I switched hats from a critic of Israel to a diplomat who wants to resolve the conflict. I have not changed, but I think the spectrum has moved.”

Finkelstein’s book is suprisingly optimistic about the chances of settling the confict, and about changing the debate, even among American Jewry. The tide of public opinion is turning against Israel, he says, and once support for Israeli policy becomes widely unacceptable in the United States, the “self-designated voices for Israel,” as he calls them, will quickly drop out. Meanwhile, American Jewish college students are having their eyes opened.

“The academic research on Israel is no longer the footnoted “Exodus,” and younger Jews, when they go to college, are walking away with very different picture of Israel,” he said. “And the American Jewish community that for a long time was a huge obstacle to resolving the conflict is breaking up. If you put forth a reasonable and principled goal, I think a resolution is possible. We might be entering the endgame, but one that might take a long time.”

Last night, Al-Jazeera’s The Stream (great show, by the way, that allows new voices to be heard in the international arena) tackled the American Jewish community and its young people not simply blinding defending Zionism:

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Antony Loewenstein