MCC Palestine Prayer Request
26 May 2006
Dear Friends,
As many of you may have already heard, the U.S. House of Representatives did vote on HR 4681, the "Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act"—a bill that imposes draconian economic and diplomatic sanctions against the Palestinian people for exercising their democratic rights—this past week and overwhelmingly passed it. In particular, this bill includes:
* Restricting US humanitarian aid and potentially eliminating entire US aid projects, such as infrastructure and small business development;
* Threatening to withhold a portion of US dues to the United Nations because it maintains bodies that advocate for Palestinian human rights and seek to hold Israel accountable to international law;
* Defining territory controlled nominally by the Palestinian Authority as a "terrorist sanctuary", thereby requiring US businesses to obtain special export licenses for most goods destined for the Occupied Palestinian Territories and gutting the provisions of the US free trade agreement with the West Bank and Gaza;
* Refusing visas to members of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Palestinian Mission to the UN, even those who belong to political parties that the United States does not classify as "foreign terrorist organizations";
* Restricting the movement of PLO diplomats at the United Nations and threatening to close the PLO's office in Washington, and;
* Instructing the US representative to the World Bank to use the considerable strength of the United States in international financial institutions to vote against the continuation of humanitarian aid projects.
According to a report from Churches for Middle East Peace (http://www.cmep.org/; see their email update below), "the bill’s passage on Tuesday morning was preceded by a lively debate on Monday evening, where a number of Members spoke eloquently in opposition to the bill, citing concerns about its restrictions on NGO aid, prohibitions on diplomatic relations with Palestinian moderates and lack of flexibility for the Administration in pursuing foreign policy in the Israeli-Palestinian arena."
Though this is a sad commentary on the distance between what is actually happening in reality in other parts of the world and what gets discussed and ultimately determined on Capitol Hill, the bill is not law yet. It must first be passed by the U.S. Senate, which is now likely to take up its more moderate version of the bill, S. 2370, with further improvements possible. Even if the Senate passes their bill, then the House and Senate will still have to reach a compromise in the House-Senate conference before the President can sign it into law.
For those of you who took the time to make a phone call or send an email to your representative expressing your concern over this legislation, thank you. For those of you who brought this information to your communities for discussion and prayer, thank you.
As this legislation continues to be on the table, we would again ask you to please continue to keep the people of this land in your thoughts and prayers, even bringing this specific issue up with friends and family for prayer, and again to consider taking a few minutes to call your congressional representative and senator to express your concerns over this unfair legislation.
Attached below are three pieces. The first is a report on this House’s vote that appeared in the Israeli daily Haaretz. The second is another report discussing the concerns over this legislation. Finally, an update from Churches for Middle East Peace listing those Representatives who voted "no" on this bill and a suggested action to thank them for opposing the bill.
Thank you. And if you have any thoughts or questions you would like to share, please feel free to do so.
Peace,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee - Palestine
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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/719118.html
Last update - 02:45 24/05/2006
U.S. House votes to tighten PA sanctions
By Haaretz Correspondent and Agencies, By Shmuel Rosner
WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives yesterday voted to further choke off the flow of U.S. aid to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority, drawing the displeasure of the Bush administration, which says the legislation goes too far, and dividing the pro-Israel lobbying community.
The measure, which passed easily with 361 votes in favor and 37 opposed, makes it very difficult for non-governmental groups working in the West Bank and Gaza - with the exception of health programs - to receive funding, denies visas to members of the Palestinian Authority, bans contacts with Hamas because of its classification as a terrorist organization and limits the president's authority to waive the aid bans.
"The United States must make it ambiguously clear that we will not support such a terrorist regime, that we will not directly or indirectly allow American taxpayer funds to be used to perpetuate the leadership of an Islamic jihadist group," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a chief sponsor of the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act.
The vote comes as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meets U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House to discuss Israel's plans to impose a West Bank agreement on the Palestinians. Olmert addresses a joint session of Congress today.
The White House, which has already cut off funds for the Hamas-led government until it recognizes Israel's right to exist and renounces acts of terrorism, criticized the bill as unneeded and overreaching in its restrictions.
The measure must still be considered in the Senate, where Sentors Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden have a similar but somewhat less restrictive bill that carves out more exceptions for PA officials not affiliated to Hamas.
In the event of Senate passage, negotiations would be needed with the House to mesh the two bills before Bush could sign the law. The House bill also withholds money from the United Nations equal to sums provided to the Palestinian Authority, restricts travel by PA officials in the United States and limits direct assistance through international financial institutions.
In three hours of sometimes emotional debate on the House floor Monday night, lawmakers were unanimous in condemning Hamas, which rose to power in January elections, but differed sharply on the wisdom of the comprehensive sanctions outlined in the bill. "The issue is not Hamas," said Rep. David Price, a critic of the bill. "The issue is rather the bill's ban on aid to all nongovernmental groups, private groups and organizations, many of whom are diametrically opposed to Hamas' philosophy."
But Representative Tom DeLay said Palestinians "have made their choice" in voting Hamas into power. "American aid to the Palestinian people must be predicated on their rejection of terrorism."
Pro-Israel groups have also split on the issue, with the largest lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), pushing for its passage while other groups, including the Israel Policy Forum and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have come out against it.
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http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4737.shtml
House Passes Anti-Palestinian Legislation, Senate Fight Continues
Press Release, CNI, 23 May 2006
The House of Representatives today passed a controversial bill (H.R. 4681) that would punish all Palestinians, not just members of Hamas, for electing a Hamas-led government in January's legislative elections. The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 passed the House under suspension of the rules by a vote of 361-37 (with 9 members voting "Present"), despite nearly four months of strong opposition from the Council for the National Interest and other national organizations, including Churches for Middle East Peace, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Americans for Peace Now, and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. The Bush Administration itself deemed the bill "unnecessary" in a memo outlining its opposition.
"With the passage through the House of H.R. 4681, which divided the Israel lobby because of its harshness, the fight now moves to the Senate, where S. 2370 remains in a state of suspended animation in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obviously, the Israel lobby hoped to have a final bill in time for the appearance of Ehud Olmert at a joint session of Congress on Wednesday morning. The debate was rancorous. The Tuesday morning interview with Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) on C-SPAN was marked by a shouting match between Ackerman and the people who called in from all over the country. We hope that both Palestinian Americans and ordinary Americans will make their anger felt as the bill in the Senate is taken up," said CNI President Eugene Bird.
In a three hour floor debate on Monday evening, several representatives came to the floor to express their opposition to the bill, including Democrats Earl Blumenauer (OR), Lois Capps (CA), John Dingell (MI), Maurice Hinchey (NY), Marcy Kaptur (OH), Dennis Kucinich (OH), Betty McCollum (MN), David Price (NC), Nick Rahall (WV) and Republican Ray LaHood (IL).
Introduced by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) in February, H.R. 4681 would:
· Strictly limit assistance provided to the Palestinian Authority and NGOs working in the West Bank and Gaza to aid necessary to meet "basic human health needs," including food, water, medicine and sanitation services, unless the Palestinian Authority fulfills a long list of unrealistic and unachievable benchmarks.
· Deduct a percentage from the U.S. annual dues to the United Nations that goes to standing committees that advocate for Palestinian human rights.
· Deny visas to all members of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Legislative Council, including non-Hamas members of the PLC that support the peace process, reject violence, and recognize Israel.
· Prohibit the Palestinian Authority or PLO from having representation in the United States, including the PLO information office in Washington and the Palestinian Permanent Observer Mission to the UN.
Contact: Carlton Cobb, 202-863-2951, carlton@cnionline.org
The Council for the National Interest is a non-profit, non-partisan grassroots organization founded seventeen years ago by former Congressmen Paul Findley (R-IL) and Pete McCloskey (R-CA) to advocate a new direction for U.S. Middle East policy. CNI seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values, protects our national interests, and contributes to a just solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as to restore a political environment in America in which voters and their elected officials are free from the undue influence and pressure of a foreign country, namely Israel.
Related Links
· BY TOPIC: Cutting Aid to Palestine
· A Letter to AIPAC, Rep. Betty McCollum (23 May 2006)
· Council for the National Interest
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http://www.cmep.org/Alerts/2006May24.htm
Email Action Alert
HR 4681 Passes: Thank Reps who Opposed the Bill
~May 24, 2006~
Yesterday, Tuesday, May 23rd, Congress voted on HR 4681 and it passed overwhelmingly with 361 Yeas, 37 Neas, 9 Present and 25 Nonvoting. While the bill was expected to pass, given its 295 co-sponsors, it was disappointing that more Members did not see its glaring problems and join the opposition. The bill’s passage on Tuesday morning was preceded by a lively debate on Monday evening, where a number of Members spoke eloquently in opposition to the bill, citing concerns about its restrictions on NGO aid, prohibitions on diplomatic relations with Palestinian moderates and lack of flexibility for the Administration in pursuing foreign policy in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. CMEP, along with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Americans for Peace Now, Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom were mentioned numerous times as reputable Christian and Jewish organizations that were opposing the legislation. Your advocacy has made a difference!
Details on the vote and excerpts from the debate are included below. Keep in mind that House passage of HR 4681 does not make it law. The Senate is now likely to take up its more moderate version of the bill, S. 2370 and further improvements are possible. Even if the Senate passes their bill, then the House and Senate will still have to reach a compromise in the House-Senate conference before the President can sign it into law. The Appropriations season is also upon us. CMEP sent a letter to the House Appropriations Foreign Operations Committee last week as they prepared to mark up their bill, which included Palestinian related provisions. If there are handles for citizen advocacy related to the Appropriations bills, CMEP will provide you with guidance. Meanwhile, efforts toward the Senate and breaking developments with the Administration will be a priority in the coming weeks and months.
Take Action: Send an email or fax a short letter to your Representative if they voted no or present on HR 4681, especially if he or she spoke in opposition to the bill during the floor debate.
Your Message: Thank you for not supporting HR 4681, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, a bill that severely undermines the US’ ability to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and remain positively engaged with the Palestinian people, through aid via NGOs and diplomatic relations with moderates. This fundamentally flawed bill, which is not in the best interest of Israelis, Palestinians or the United States deserved to be defeated. Your vote on HR 4681 and your efforts on behalf of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking are very much appreciated.
Contact Info:
Email: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Fax: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt?command=congdir
Roll Call Vote on HR 4681:
Full Roll Call: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll181.xml
Voted No:
Abercrombie
Becerra
Blumenauer
Capps
Capuano
Conyers
DeFazio
Dingell
Doggett
Eshoo
Farr
Gilchrest
Grijalva
Hinchey
Jones (NC)
Kaptur
Kilpatrick (MI)
Kolbe
Kucinich
LaHood
Lee
Marshall
McCollum (MN)
McDermott
McGovern
McKinney
Miller, George
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Obey
Paul
Price (NC)
Rahall
Stark
Thornberry
Velazquez
Watt
Voted Present:
Carson
Clay
Davis (IL)
Gutierrez
Jackson (IL)
Johnson, E. B.
Payne
Rush
Watson
Spoke in Opposition:
Blumenauer
McCollum
Price (NC)
Dingell
Capps
LaHood
Kucinich
Hinchey
Kaptur
Rahall
Excerpts from the Floor Debate on HR 4681, May 22, 2006:
Read the Full Debate on HR 4681: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r109:FLD001:H52991
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR-3)
“…This bill provides no diplomatic horizon, no sunset. It is in perpetuity. It does little to prioritize on the basis of our strategic interest and provides no prospect for Palestinian reform coming through the process of negotiations. In so doing, it weakens the hands of those who advocate for peace negotiations and supports those extremists who believe in violence…
[The bill’s] lack of flexibility [on humanitarian aid] is one of the reasons why this bill is opposed by Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek, Shalom, Churches for Middle East Peace, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The bill sets permanent and inflexible limits on the United States's ability to be involved with Israel and Palestine, whether or not Hamas is in power. And that is a mistake. It goes far beyond dealing with the ramifications of January's elections, and Hamas's rise to power, essentially Palestinian moderates and institutions that have nothing to do with Hamas. Most independent observers feel that that is counterproductive and it may well end up backfiring and actually providing further strength to the extremists…”
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN-4)
“Mr. Speaker, tonight we should be working to ensure security and peace for Israel and for more hope, opportunity and peace for the Palestinian people…
Congress should be here tonight unanimously passing a bill that supports Secretary of State Rice as she leads the international community to keep firm pressure on Hamas until they agree to internationally recognized and civilized standards of conduct. At the same time, Congress should be working to support the Bush administration and the international community to avoid a serious humanitarian crisis among the Palestinian people…
It is unfortunate that the bill tonight could not have been drafted to come to the floor that would be supported by the State Department. The State Department's comment regarding H.R. 4681 is, ‘this bill is unnecessary.’…
This bill places extreme constraints on the delivery of humanitarian assistance by non-governmental organizations to the Palestinian people. This bill's unnecessary obstacles have the potential for very negative human consequences and would exacerbate a human crisis. Palestinian families and children must not be targeted. They must not be deprived of their basic human needs by this Congress. Instead, this House should assure that Palestinian families and children will be treated in a fashion that reflects our values and the belief that their lives are valuable…”
Rep. David Price (D-NC-4)
“…Nobody on this floor tonight has any tolerance for Hamas. The issue is rather the bill's ban on aid to all nongovernmental groups, private groups and organizations, many of whom are diametrically opposed to Hamas's philosophy...
Think about the kinds of aid programs that would be cut off, projects that focus on building democratic institutions and civil society, projects that promote economic development to stabilize the territories, projects that ensure that school curricula provide students with a progressive education rather than fundamentalist propaganda, curricula that teach tolerance and conflict resolution skills. Surely programs like this are in our interest…
Mr. Speaker, because of these fundamental flaws in the legislation, it is opposed by several leading voices for Israel and Middle East peace, including the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek, Americans for Peace Now, Churches for Middle East Peace - a broad coalition of churches - and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops…
If we adopt legislation that punishes the Palestinian people, instead of isolating the terrorists, we lose the moral high ground. Let us reclaim the moral high ground, signal our resolute opposition to terrorism and also our support for those Palestinian individuals and groups who are working for a peaceful and democratic future…”
Rep. John Dingell (D-MI-15)
“…Peace in the Middle East is not going to be achieved at gunpoint. It is going to be achieved by negotiations, by people working together; and that process may be ugly, dirty and slow, but it is the only process that will work. To create additional hardship and suffering for the Palestinians is simply going to guarantee more desperate, angry men who are fully determined that they will go forth to kill Israelis or Americans or anybody else. Our purpose here tonight should be to look to the well-being of the United States, craft a policy which is good for this country. And that policy can only be one which is good for Israel and for the Palestinian people, one which is fair to all, one which puts the United States as a friend and an honest broker of peace to both parties where we can be so accepted…”
Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA-23)
“…Direct aid to the Hamas-controlled P.A. has been cut off. The basic goal of this bill has already been accomplished. But H.R. 4681 goes well beyond this objective. It is a punitive measure aimed at punishing the Palestinian people. It will undermine U.S. national interests and do nothing to strengthen Israel’s security. I have two main objections with this bill. First, it places nearly insurmountable barriers to future U.S. efforts to engage Palestinians and Israel in peacemaking…
Second, except for very limited circumstances, this bill will cut off humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people at the very moment when a horrendous humanitarian disaster is looming…
Mr. Speaker, there is significant opposition to this bill in the pro-Israel community. Respected national groups like Americans for Peace Now, Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek strongly oppose it. They tell us voting no on this bill is a pro-Israel vote. And groups like Churches for Middle East Peace and the Conference of Catholic Bishops, with decades of experience providing humanitarian relief, oppose it as well…"
Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL-18)
“…I think the approach that is offered in this bill is what I would characterize as a meat-axe approach. This does not help common ordinary citizens. What it does is it hurts common ordinary citizens. There is no other way around it. You can protest as much as you want about Mrs. Capps and what she said, but she is right. Common ordinary citizens, common ordinary Palestinians are going to be hurt by this, because the funding is going to be cut off for educational services, for health services, for the services that these people need very badly. And what we have now, it looks to me like at least a couple hundred Secretaries of State, as reflected in this bill. Do you all know more than the Secretary of State? Do you know more than the President? Do you think your policy is better than the administration's policy? Yes, you do. Well, I don't happen to agree with that. I really don't…”
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH-10)
“…A two-state solution, I believe, can be achieved with our mutual, thoughtful patience and support. At a time when the U.N. is reporting a pending humanitarian disaster in the West Bank and Gaza, I believe this legislation would restrict U.S. assistance to the Palestinian people delivered through nongovernmental organizations. We know that, today, up to 80 percent of all Palestinians, particularly in parts of the Gaza strip, live at or below the poverty line. Unemployment stands at 53 percent of the total workforce. Just as I join my good friends on both sides of the aisle in speaking out against violence against Israel, I object in the strongest terms to any measure that will increase the humanitarian crisis of the Palestinian people. It is true that the recent Palestinian legislative elections have created a tense situation in the international community. It is a situation that demands thoughtful and deliberate action in pursuit of peace. Despite the best intentions of those who wrote this legislation, I do not believe this legislation will advance peace between the Palestinian and the Israeli people…”
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY-22)
“…Hamas' victory in the elections for the Palestinian legislative council was indeed regrettable, and Hamas government's failure to condemn, much less take steps to prevent acts of terrorism is abhorrent. It is appropriate that the international community, including, of course, the United States, make a concerted and coordinated effort to pressure Hamas. However, H.R. 4681 risks undermining such efforts, harming United States national security and undermining those Palestinian officials and activists who do recognize Israel, who do reject terror, and who do support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. H.R. 4681 subjugates U.S. national security interests to political grandstanding…
This proposal, unfortunately, is itself extreme, and as such, I believe, would do no good. Rather, it will strengthen the position of extremists and increase the violence and destruction which has become more prevalent as the result of the expression and implementation of policies such as those contained in H.R. 4681. I believe that we should defeat this proposed legislation and instead focus on something that would be more productive to achieve the kinds of solutions that we need to the problems that exist in the Middle East.”
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH-9)
“…I rise this evening because I have to say that this act, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, I fear will result not in less terrorism, but in more. I do not really believe it is in the interest of the United States, of Israel or the world to further radicalize elements in the Palestinian population, and I do believe this bill will do exactly that. It is not in the interest of the government of the United States nor Israel nor the world to make it impossible for Palestinians to become more educated and to learn how to govern an emerging nation….
In this bill, no one wants to support Hamas. All we are asking for is the right to amend this bill to find other non-governmental groups that we can help to support, to help educate, to help inform, to help teach, in the hope, even though we are all walking through the tunnel and we see no light at the end of the tunnel, that we give the ordinary person, the moderate, and there are some moderates, some hope, some ability to connect…”
Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV-3)
“…Reasonable, even intelligent people can, and frequently do, disagree on how best to achieve peace in the Middle East, but, peace must be the goal of our foreign policy tools, whether they be by the stick or by the carrot. Peace cannot come from punishing the Palestinian people. Even Israel's Foreign Minister knows that. He states in Reuters, that, ‘Israel is prepared to release Palestinian tax revenues into a proposed aid mechanism being set up by Middle East mediators to avert the collapse of the Palestinian health sector.....’ Instead, this legislation seeks to accomplish exactly what President Bush's Administration and the Israeli Foreign Minister realize is counterproductive. I can tell you that after 30 years in Congress, I have seen legislation succeed and fail. This legislation is rigid, and unnecessary. To put it plainly, when you take from people who already have nothing, you breed trouble, you don't combat it.
Today, our actions must be motivated only by our intense desire to achieve a just and lasting peace. The compassion and charity of the American people should be reflected in this legislation, though sadly, they are silenced…”
Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA-17)
Submitted as extension of remarks on May 23, 2006
On May 23 the House approved HR 4681, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006. If I was convinced that passage of this bill would foster peace in the Middle East, I would have voted for it. Unfortunately, I felt compelled to oppose the bill because I do not believe it will help Israel, our only democratic ally in the region, or improve grassroots efforts to reach a peace agreement. In particular, HR 4681 would make it nearly impossible to fund non-governmental organization (NGO) reconciliation programs that work to build peace. By funding NGOs that work towards reconciliation and peace we undermine the ideology of hate that Hamas perpetuates...
A secure Israel and a two-state solution are the cornerstones to achieving peace in the region, and grassroots conflict prevention is the critical first step of the foundation for peace."
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Friday, May 26
Tuesday, May 9
MCC Palestine Update #121
MCC Palestine Update #121
9 May 2006
MCC Learning Tour: “Peacebuilding in Palestine / Israel: Supporting Alternative Forms of Resistance – An Ongoing Discussion”
Last year, MCC produced a discussion paper called “Peacebuilding in Palestine / Israel: A Discussion Paper” meant to help facilitate a conversation in communities back in North America about stewardship, morally responsible investment / divestment, and economic justice. This paper (available online at http://www.mcc.org/papers/2005-05_Peacebuilding_in_Palestine-Israel.pdf) points out:
“Palestinians and Israelis working for a just resolution of the conflict lamented that decades of appeal to international law and resolutions have failed to end this story of dispossession, with Israeli power routinely trumping appeals to the power of law. Palestinian Christian partners, in particular, urged Christians in the West to take a stand for justice, peace, and reconciliation for Palestinians and Israelis alike, a stand that markedly differs from Christian Zionist theologies that deny Palestinians a secure place in the land. These trusted partner organizations urged MCC to consider ways in which Christians from Canada and the United States might invest in a future of justice and peace for both peoples and to examine ways in which our money either promotes justice, peace, and reconciliation in Palestine/Israel or contributes to the ongoing dispossession.”
As a follow-up to this paper and as an effort to further this conversation along in our communities, this past month in April MCC Palestine organized and hosted two learning tours to the region. These delegations included MCC staff from Canada and the U.S. including our offices in New York, Washington, DC and our headquarters in Winnipeg and Akron, PA as well as representatives from Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada.
These learning tours specifically intended to show participants why MCC Palestine and our partners feel that seemingly “critical” or “negative” measures such as divestment are being called for in the present context.
Throughout both tours, we met with many of MCC’s Palestinian and Israeli partners, including the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center (http://www.planet.edu/~alaslah/), the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (http://www.sabeel.org/), the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (http://www.arij.org/), the Badil Resource Center for Residency and Refugee Rights (http://www.badil.org/), the Zochrot Association (http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/), the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (http://www.icahd.org/eng/), the YMCA Rehabilitation Program (http://www.ej-ymca.org/site/Display-Doc.cfm?DocID=33), the Stop the Wall Campaign (http://www.stopthewall.org/) as well as meeting with people from Open Bethlehem (http://www.openbethlehem.org/) and Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron (http://www.cpt.org/). In these meetings, we heard their perspectives on the current realities on the ground and on how they see the role of churches in the Global North in this situation here in Palestine / Israel—particularly how it relates to the call from both Palestinians and Israelis for “morally responsible investment.”
In addition to this, we also made several field visits to see first-hand the reality on the ground, such as: the impact of the Wall and of Israeli colonization of Palestinian territory all around Jerusalem and in places like Hebron and the west Bethlehem village of Nahalin; the situation in Palestinian refugee camps; the remains of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948 and 1967, learning more about the importance of the refugee issue to a durable solution for a just and lasting peace.
An important element of both tours was to hear the voices of Palestinian Christian as it relates to these issues, such as Rev. Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Lutheran Christmas Church and director of the International Center in Bethlehem (http://www.annadwa.org/), Rev. Alex Awad, pastor of the East Jerusalem Baptist Church and Dean of Students at Bethlehem Bible College (http://www.bethlehembiblecollege.edu/), and Rev. Naim Ateek and Cedar Duaybis from Sabeel. We had the opportunity to worship with our friends at Sabeel, hear about their work and about how Sabeel is involved with the call for “morally responsible investment” (learn more at http://www.sabeel.org/documents/A%20nonviolence%20sabeel%20second%20revision.pdf).
In this update, we also wanted to share with you a reflection from Grant Rissler, one of the delegation participants and MCC East Coast peace and justice coordinator. Attached please find, in pdf format, Grant’s report.
We would ask that as you continue to keep the people of land in your thoughts and prayers that you would prayerfully discuss these important issues in your communities, reflecting on how MCC and Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches should respond in our pursuit of a peace born of justice for all, where everyone will sit securely under vine and fig tree with no one to make them afraid (Micah 4:4).
As always, if there are any thoughts or questions you might have, please feel free to share them with us.
Peace to you all,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
Attachment:
· Grant Rissler, “Jesus Wept: Are We Likewise Called?,” A Periodic E-Letter on Peace & Justice Issues from MCC East Coast.
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9 May 2006
MCC Learning Tour: “Peacebuilding in Palestine / Israel: Supporting Alternative Forms of Resistance – An Ongoing Discussion”
Last year, MCC produced a discussion paper called “Peacebuilding in Palestine / Israel: A Discussion Paper” meant to help facilitate a conversation in communities back in North America about stewardship, morally responsible investment / divestment, and economic justice. This paper (available online at http://www.mcc.org/papers/2005-05_Peacebuilding_in_Palestine-Israel.pdf) points out:
“Palestinians and Israelis working for a just resolution of the conflict lamented that decades of appeal to international law and resolutions have failed to end this story of dispossession, with Israeli power routinely trumping appeals to the power of law. Palestinian Christian partners, in particular, urged Christians in the West to take a stand for justice, peace, and reconciliation for Palestinians and Israelis alike, a stand that markedly differs from Christian Zionist theologies that deny Palestinians a secure place in the land. These trusted partner organizations urged MCC to consider ways in which Christians from Canada and the United States might invest in a future of justice and peace for both peoples and to examine ways in which our money either promotes justice, peace, and reconciliation in Palestine/Israel or contributes to the ongoing dispossession.”
As a follow-up to this paper and as an effort to further this conversation along in our communities, this past month in April MCC Palestine organized and hosted two learning tours to the region. These delegations included MCC staff from Canada and the U.S. including our offices in New York, Washington, DC and our headquarters in Winnipeg and Akron, PA as well as representatives from Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada.
These learning tours specifically intended to show participants why MCC Palestine and our partners feel that seemingly “critical” or “negative” measures such as divestment are being called for in the present context.
Throughout both tours, we met with many of MCC’s Palestinian and Israeli partners, including the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center (http://www.planet.edu/~alaslah/), the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (http://www.sabeel.org/), the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (http://www.arij.org/), the Badil Resource Center for Residency and Refugee Rights (http://www.badil.org/), the Zochrot Association (http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/), the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (http://www.icahd.org/eng/), the YMCA Rehabilitation Program (http://www.ej-ymca.org/site/Display-Doc.cfm?DocID=33), the Stop the Wall Campaign (http://www.stopthewall.org/) as well as meeting with people from Open Bethlehem (http://www.openbethlehem.org/) and Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron (http://www.cpt.org/). In these meetings, we heard their perspectives on the current realities on the ground and on how they see the role of churches in the Global North in this situation here in Palestine / Israel—particularly how it relates to the call from both Palestinians and Israelis for “morally responsible investment.”
In addition to this, we also made several field visits to see first-hand the reality on the ground, such as: the impact of the Wall and of Israeli colonization of Palestinian territory all around Jerusalem and in places like Hebron and the west Bethlehem village of Nahalin; the situation in Palestinian refugee camps; the remains of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948 and 1967, learning more about the importance of the refugee issue to a durable solution for a just and lasting peace.
An important element of both tours was to hear the voices of Palestinian Christian as it relates to these issues, such as Rev. Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Lutheran Christmas Church and director of the International Center in Bethlehem (http://www.annadwa.org/), Rev. Alex Awad, pastor of the East Jerusalem Baptist Church and Dean of Students at Bethlehem Bible College (http://www.bethlehembiblecollege.edu/), and Rev. Naim Ateek and Cedar Duaybis from Sabeel. We had the opportunity to worship with our friends at Sabeel, hear about their work and about how Sabeel is involved with the call for “morally responsible investment” (learn more at http://www.sabeel.org/documents/A%20nonviolence%20sabeel%20second%20revision.pdf).
In this update, we also wanted to share with you a reflection from Grant Rissler, one of the delegation participants and MCC East Coast peace and justice coordinator. Attached please find, in pdf format, Grant’s report.
We would ask that as you continue to keep the people of land in your thoughts and prayers that you would prayerfully discuss these important issues in your communities, reflecting on how MCC and Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches should respond in our pursuit of a peace born of justice for all, where everyone will sit securely under vine and fig tree with no one to make them afraid (Micah 4:4).
As always, if there are any thoughts or questions you might have, please feel free to share them with us.
Peace to you all,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
Attachment:
· Grant Rissler, “Jesus Wept: Are We Likewise Called?,” A Periodic E-Letter on Peace & Justice Issues from MCC East Coast.
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Wednesday, April 19
MCC Palestine Update #120
MCC Palestine Update #120
19 April 2006
In the Aftermath of Elections: Democracy, Unilateralism, and Violence…
Following both recent Palestinian and Israeli elections, discussion over the future for all of the people of this land has brought great uncertainty. One of those uncertainties that affects both Israelis and Palestinians is in the question over what does the “two-state” solution mean in the context of Israeli unilateralism?
Regardless of where one stands in the “one-state solution” vs. “two-state solution” debate, what is abundantly clear and what is important to see is what the language of “two-states” has come to actually mean, realistically, on the ground, and what its consequences will be for Palestinians. Due to the dynamics of power, etc., what matters at this point in the conversation is the meaning that the state of Israel gives to the language of “two states,” and that has been most recently articulated by new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with his “convergence plan” to unilaterally set the borders of Israel by 2010 (“Olmert: Convergence to be completed within 18 months,” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/705891.html; “Olmert: Convergence to cost USD 10 billion,” http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3239420,00.html; “Olmert to 'Post': Israel to have final borders by 2010,” http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395565931&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull )—which will also, to speak to another language problem, essentially “end the occupation” in a manner not unlike that one used to describe the situation in Gaza post-“disengagement,” described by many as the largest prison in the world (“One Big Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan,” http://www.btselem.org/english/Publications/
Summaries/200503_Gaza_Prison.asp).
In this version of the language of “two states”: “the state of Israel” essentially equals formally annexing all major colonies in the West Bank, including “greater Jerusalem” and the Jordan Valley, with control over all of historical Palestine (fulfilling the vision of Ariel Sharon, et al, of “maximum territory, minimum Arabs”) and “the state of Palestine” essentially equals several isolated islands of land on roughly 40 to 50 percent of the occupied West Bank with Palestinians confined to these “reservations,” which will be rendered “contiguous” by a network of tunnels—completely unrealistic and completely unviable. The fact that it is Israel's understanding of what “two states” means that truly matters—and that must be challenged—was emphasized by recent comments emerging from the U.S. State Department that affirmed Israeli unilateralism. Though still trying to keep the “Road Map” and its understanding of negotiations afloat, both U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. ambassador to Israel Richard Jones have already voiced acquiescence (“Rice hints at support for Israeli unilateral withdrawals,” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/700817.html; “US ‘open’ to Israel borders plan,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4860340.stm; “Envoy: U.S. supports road map but understands unilateral move,” Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/705213.html). Looking back on how the U.S. has postured itself in the past regarding moves Israel has made, even this little hint of potential support points to a trajectory that will lead to the concretizing of apartheid in this land. It is this lack of a realistic perspective of events that clouds the language of “two states.” And language is very important here to maintaining a status quo that will continue to mean “insecurity” for Israelis and dispossession and death for Palestinians.
We would encourage you to visit websites such as http://www.endtheoccupation.org/, where advocacy campaigns are being organized to challenge the attempts made to isolate and collectively punish the Palestinian people by: restricting humanitarian aid, designating Palestinian territory as a “terrorist sanctuary,” prohibiting official Palestinian diplomacy or representation in the United States, targeting the UN for supporting Palestinian human rights, and denying Palestinians the ability to receive assistance through international financial institutions. “The United States says that it is committed to promoting democracy. If that is indeed the case, it is inappropriate for Members of Congress to advance legislation that would punish and isolate people through draconian economic and diplomatic measures when the result of an election is not to the liking of the United States” (http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1188).
“Nakba in Hebrew”: Zochrot at Canada Park and Deir Yassin
This past month, MCC partner the Zochrot Association (http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/) was successful in their petition to the Israeli high court to post signs in Canada Park, an Israeli recreational area outside of Jerusalem. These signs tell the story of the Palestinian villages of ‘Imwas and Yalu that once stood in what is today a park. ‘Imwas and Yalu were just two of over 500 Palestinian villages that were destroyed and ethnically cleansed and their 3,700 residents among the 700,000 to 900,000 Palestinians expelled from their homes since 1948. Though most do not realize it, these residents, who now live either in or around the Palestinian city of Ramallah or in the country of Jordan east of Palestine, experienced their dispossession at the hands Israeli occupation forces following the war in 1967 (http://www.palestineremembered.com/al-Ramla/Imwas/index.html, http://www.palestineremembered.com/al-Ramla/Yalu/index.html).
The Israeli high court ruled that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) had to post two new signs in Canada Park marking the villages of ‘Imwas and Yalu. The signs mention the number of inhabitants in each village and where their refugees live today. These signs are the result of a long struggle between Zochrot and the civil administration of the occupation and the JNF. Zochrot sees this as a great victory in their work to educate Israeli society about the Nakba or Catastrophe of 1948. “We believe that this is a beginning for the possibility to officially mark Palestinian destroyed locations by Israeli state authorities” (for more information and pictures, see http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=408 as well as “Searching for a sign,” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/705918.html).
Also in April, Zochrot held a remembrance ceremony at the site of Deir Yassin. The Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, destroyed and depopulated in 1948, was home to about 750 Palestinians, 100 of whom were systematically killed by advancing Zionist forces, becoming an example to the rest of the Palestinian villages not yet destroyed to concede for fear of meeting a similar end (http://www.deiryassin.org/; http://www.palestineremembered.com/Jerusalem/Dayr-Yasin/index.html). This year’s ceremony and posting of signs was the fourth year in a row that Zochrot has organized such a remembrance (http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?id=411).
“Rebuilding and Resistance”
Recently the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) announced its plans for another work camp this summer, from July 15th to July 30th, to rebuild a Palestinian home in the Occupied Territories demolished by the Israeli authorities. This house, in the town of Anata right outside of Jerusalem, is the home of the Hamdan family, demolished by the Israeli authorities on December 21, 2005. ICAHD recognizes that “While the rebuilding is symbolic in terms of the need, it is a powerful statement of political resistance to the occupation. Not only is it an act of defiance, of civil disobedience, but it gets to the very heart of the conflict: the ongoing process of dispossessing and displacing the Palestinian people from its land and its patrimony.”
In their announcement, titled “Rebuilding and Resistance” (http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=292), ICAHD describes the history of home demolitions as a policy widely and systematically applied for stated reasons of deterrence or punishment, but that has been intended primarily to either drive the Palestinians from the country altogether and thus “reclaim” their land for the Jewish people, or to confine them to tiny enclaves. House demolitions, which occur frequently on both sides of the “Green Line” and have left tens of thousands of families homeless, have stood at the center of Israel’s approach to “the Arab problem” since the state’s conception.
In these acts of resistance, ICAHD states that “we, as Israelis, are acknowledging the rights of both people to share the country. We are affirming our recognition that Palestinian claims carry equal authority to our own. And when Palestinians join us in the rebuilding activities – the families whose home have been demolished, their friends and neighbors, the entire local community and activists from throughout Palestinian society – we are together proclaiming clearly and loudly: We refuse to be enemies!”
See ICAHD’s website at http://www.icahd.org/eng/ for more information on how you can help in this work as well as for more information on the stages of Israel’s demolition campaign over the years.
“Palestine Summer Encounter 2006”
MCC Palestine partner Holy Land Trust (http://www.holylandtrust.org/) has also announced another of their summer programs, “Palestine Summer Encounter 2006,” a service learning and cultural immersion program. Participants in this program will live with a local family, study Arabic and volunteer with a local church, school, hospital, nonprofit or humanitarian organization. They will also have an opportunity to visit significant organizations and sites of historic, political and religious significance such as Jerusalem, Jericho, the Galilee, Hebron, Nazareth and the Dead Sea. Participants can join the program for 1, 2 or 3 months. Additional information can be found at: www.middleeastfellowship.org/pse2006
Lent and Easter in the “Holy Land”
Il-Masiih qaam.
Haqqan qaam.
Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.
As the Orthodox Lenten season comes to an end, we cannot help but reflect with our Palestinian friends and neighbors on what it means to celebrate Easter in the midst of despair. The season of Lent always seems more appropriate than that of Easter. And yet, ours is an Easter faith. Here, it is a constant source of struggle to rediscover from where our hope comes from. Zoughbi Zoughbi, our good friend and partner at the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center (http://www.planet.edu/~alaslah/), has described it as moving along the Stations of the Cross. “We know that the end, the final station brings resurrection and the new life that conquers death. But we just do not know which station we are on right now.”
During this Easter season, would you reflect on the historical realities of this land and struggle as well with those who would seek to know how to proclaim the light and life of resurrection to those living under the darkness of oppression?
Peace to you all,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
Attachments and Links:
· Gideon Levy, “Who is a terrorist?,” Haaretz, 16 April 2006
· Jeff Halper, “Elections in Palestine and Israel: Sumud vs Apartheid,” IMEMC, 15 April 2006
· “Olmert: Convergence to be completed within 18 months,” Haaretz, 14 April 2006
· Amira Hass, “Convergence to a border of convenience,” Haaretz, 5 April 2006
· Akiva Eldar, “Coming soon: Kosovo in Gaza?,” Haaretz, 4 April 2006
· Robert Fisk, “Another brick in the wall,” The Independent, 2 April 2006
· Jeff Halper, “The Power of Saying No,” ICAHD, 20 March 2006
· Ismail Haniyeh, “A just peace or no peace,” The Guardian, 31 March 2006
· Leigh Brady, “Don't worry - it's just another Palestinian child's death,” Electronic Intifada, 31 March 2006
· Mitchell Plitnick, “The Dangerous Center: Making sense of the Israeli elections,” Jewish Voice for Peace Newsletter, Spring 2006
· John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books, 23 March 2006
· Chris McGreal, “Israel sets four year deadline to draw final borders,” The Guardian, 10 March 2006
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Haaretz
Who is a terrorist?
Gideon Levy
16 April 2006
The scenes from Gaza are heartbreaking. Heartbreaking? That's not for certain. The sight of the Aben family from Beit Lahiya mourning its 12-year-old daughter Hadil last week did not stir any particular shock in Israel. Nor did anyone take to the streets and protest over the sight of her wounded mother and little brother lying in shock on the floor of their shanty in Gaza.
On the day Hadil Aben was killed, Yedioth Aharonoth carried a story about Nelly, the dog from Kibbutz Zikim that died of heart failure from the booming noise of the Israeli artillery firing into Gaza.
Instead of expressions of sorrow at the death of children, the upper echelons of the defense establishment came out with a stream of strident statements. The defense minister said that the only thing to do was step up the pressure on the Palestinians. The deputy chief of staff spoke about a possible invasion of Gaza and the head of army operations added, "what we've seen so far are only the previews." The IDF announced it would further reduce the "safety range" that is designed to avoid shells hitting the civilian population.
It was a chilling, united chorus. Israel is dropping thousands of bombs on towns and villages, on the "the launching pads" of the Qassams - another dubious term created by the defense establishment and blindly adopted by the press - and only the Palestinians, whose Qassam rockets haven't killed anyone since the disengagement, are called "terrorists"…
Those who really want to end the Qassam launches from Gaza, should turn Israeli policy upside down. To show restraint in the face of the Qassams, to lift the siege, to immediately meet with the elected Palestinian leadership and call on the world to stop withholding the funds from the Palestinian Authority. Only a free and secure and thriving Gaza will stop launching Qassams. Have we ever tried that?
Please read more at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12755.htm
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International Middle East Media Center
Elections in Palestine and Israel: Sumud vs. Apartheid
Jeff Halper
15 April 2006
Of course, Olmert's plan was presented with a positive spin characterized by terminology to do Orwell proud. Hitkansut or 'withdrawing into oneself' in Hebrew is the operational phase of 'separation' from the Palestinians, and seems exactly what the public wanted (a full 85% of Israeli Jews support the construction of the Wall, or 'Separation Barrier'). Perhaps that is the reason it generated no public discussion, no dissent and ended up a non-issue. It does not mean, however, withdrawal of Israel back to its pre-1967 territory, but rather a 'convergence' of Israeli settlers scattered throughout the West Bank into Israel's major settlement blocs. Though the idea of leaving territories densely populated by Palestinians sounds good to Israeli Jews, it really means apartheid. And it will be imposed unilaterally because Israel has nothing to offer the Palestinians. True, they get 70-85% of the Occupied Territories, but only in truncated enclaves. Israel retains control of all the borders, Palestinian movement among the cantons, all the water and the richest agricultural land, the large settlement blocs including "greater" Jerusalem (which accounts for 40% of the Palestinian economy), the Palestinians' airspace and even their communications. Indeed, Israel retains all the developmental potential of the country, leaving the Palestinians with only barren and disconnected enclaves. Israel expands onto 85% of the entire country, leaving the Palestinians - the majority population or soon to be - with only about 15%, and that truncated, non-viable and only semi-sovereign. A Bantustan a la apartheid South Africa.
What the outside world considers important - the conflict with Palestinians, Occupation, the Wall, settlements, possibilities for peace - are non-issues in Israel. Most Israeli Jews agree that (1) the Palestinians don't want peace, (2) therefore there is no political solution to the conflict, (3) separation is the best course and thus (4) Israel must keep all of Jerusalem and its major settlements. There is simply nothing to discuss. The entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been reduced, for Israeli Jews, to one technical issue: how do we manage terrorism and secure our personal security…
Knowing that the conflict is too destabilizing for the global system to let fester, the Palestinians are saying: We will remain sumud, steadfast. Impose on us an apartheid system, blame us for the violence while ignoring Israeli State Terror, pursue your programs of American Empire or your self-righteous notion of a 'clash of civilizations' - we Palestinians will not submit. We will not cooperate. We will not play your rigged game. And in the end your power will be for naught. So costly will we make this conflict to Israel, the US and the international community that you will come to us to sue for peace. We will be ready for a just peace that respects the rights of all the peoples of the region, including the Israelis. But you will not beat us.
Please read more at http://www.imemc.org/content/view/18070/1/
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Haaretz
Olmert: Convergence to be completed within 18 months
14 April 2006
Prime Minister-designate Ehud Olmert said in an interview published this week that he intends to complete his plan to withdraw from parts of the West Bank within 18 months.
Olmert told the Wall Street Journal that he plans to complete coalition talks within two weeks and begin planning the withdrawal in detail the moment a government is formed. His first step will be to appoint a team of experts, including military, political and economic advisers, to outline the withdrawal.
Olmert added that during his first visit to Washington next month he plans to ask for the international community's help in funding the pullout, which the newspaper estimated would cost over NIS 46 billion.
Olmert declared that his plan "will change the face of the region," and vowed not to miss this opportunity. He rejected any division of Jerusalem as a move that would "not bring peace, only more fighting," but did not rule out the possibility that some Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would be under control of a future Palestinian state.
Please read more at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/705891.html
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Haaretz
Convergence to a border of convenience
Amira Hass
5 April 2006
For the "convergence" plan to be presented to the Western world as a giant concession worthy of praise, the dimensions of Jewish support for the "vision of the Greater Land of Israel" must be inflated. But if the Greater Land of Israel really were the top priority for the Jewish citizenry of Israel, then there wouldn't be fewer than 10,000 settlers in the Jordan Valley. Tens of thousands would be rushing to expand Ma'aleh Ephraim and the farming settlements, so the lights of the eastern sector of the Greater Land would shine and twinkle like the lights of the western sector of the Jordanian kingdom.
Israel made sure during the years of the Oslo negotiations, as in the preceding years, to leave that enormous area blocked to any Palestinian development and wide open to any Israeli development. The somewhat difficult living conditions (heat, distance to the center of the country) would not have deterred the masses of Israelis. If every clod of the Greater Land of Israel indeed held an impassioned emotional attraction for the Jewish citizens of Israel, they would not have needed economic incentives to live in the areas conquered in 1967. They would have gone to settle the most distant hilltops and not made do with settlements "five minutes from Kfar Sava." They would not have needed seductive advertising about one-family villas on their own plot of land. On the contrary, they would have encouraged the state and the contractors to build apartment blocs. There wouldn't be 420,000 Jewish setters (including occupied East Jerusalem) but rather 2 million.
What drew the Jewish Israelis - and turned nearly half a million of them into outlaws under international law - were not the clods of holy land but comfortable lives promised to them by Israeli military supremacy, the spacious inexpensive housing and the improved infrastructure. Those were precisely the subsidies and incentives that they didn't get inside the sovereign state. The convergence, therefore, is the borders drawn by the average Israeli Jew's aspirations for comfort and convenience.
These would be natural ambitions if they did not come at the expense of the Palestinians as individuals and as a people. But average Israelis, including those who are not settlers, are not troubled by such trifle matters like international law, basic moral values and the welfare and convenience of the Palestinians. After all it is precisely the settlement blocs and the area between the separation fence and the Green Line that cut into the West Bank, take its water and fertile farming resources, separate Palestinian communities and obstruct all natural and logical geographic and demographic contiguity. These areas, and it doesn't matter if the convergence is 28 percent of the West Bank or "only" 13.5 percent, have caused and will cause irreversible damage to Palestinian society and to individual Palestinians. But that's not what bothers average Israelis and their representatives in Kadima, Labor and the Pensioners Party. These facts slip through the consciousness and are buried, like hundreds of Palestinian villages whose names do not appear on the road signs along the settlers' highways.
Please read more at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/702535.html
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Haaretz
Coming soon: Kosovo in Gaza?
Akiva Eldar
4 April 2006
At working levels of the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry they know that the wolf is already here, at Gaza's gate. Ever since the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, international aide agency representatives have been warning of a humanitarian disaster and the world, including Israel, keeps going its merry way. A few days ago, David Shearer, the head of the office of the United Nations Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the territories, told the Foreign Ministry that in order to understand what he was talking about, they should remember the pictures of the Galaxy aircraft in the airlift to Kosovo. Shearer, like his colleagues at the World Bank and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and representatives of donor countries, formed the impression that the officials and the officers were persuaded that state leaders were behaving like the crew of the Titanic who continued to dance all the way to the bottom of the ocean.
At the bureau of Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, they also know the avian influenza is not going to wait until politicians have time to spare from the last chapter of the "celebration of democracy" and place their hands on the wheel. The people of Kerem Shalom have learned on the flesh of their own poultry that viruses do not recognize the disengagement and have not heard about the convergence. After the sick fowl, will come the dead babies. Several patients with symptoms of bird flu have shown up at the Gaza hospitals.
In an opinion published on March 24, the Stratfor institute stated there was no way of knowing the virus' next move, but if there was a risk it would undergo a mutation constituting a danger to the human race - it would happen in places like the Gaza Strip. At the moment, the great power is more frightened by the risk that the money intended for the owners of poultry will get into the hands of the Hamas government. When the United States declares a boycott of Palestinian Authority people, the banks are in no hurry to open their coffers to them. Not to mention the government of Israel. Although the World Bank has promised to raise the missing $2 million, large institutions grind slowly. Much more slowly than violent viruses.
Please read more at http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=702080
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The Independent
Another brick in the wall
Robert Fisk
2 April 2006
We have been conned again. The Israeli elections, we are told, mean that the dream of "Greater Israel" has finally been abandoned. West Bank settlements will be closed down, just as the Jewish colonies were uprooted in Gaza last year. The Zionist claim to all of Biblical Israel has withered away. Likud, the nightmare party of Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, has been smashed by the Gaullist figure of the dying Ariel Sharon, whose Kadima party now embraces Ehud Olmert and that decaying symbol of the Israeli left, Nobel prizewinner Shimon Peres. This, at least, is the narrative laid down by so many of our journalists, "analysts" and "commentators". But it is a lie.
Only in paragraph two - or three or four - of the grovelling news reports from the Middle East do we read that Olmert's not very impressive election victory will allow him to "redraw" the "frontiers" of Israel, a decision described as "controversial" - the usual get-out clause of newspapers that wish to avoid the truth: that Israel is about to grab more land and claim it to be part of the state of Israel. Yes, true, the smaller and more vulnerable Jewish colonies illegally built on Palestinian-owned land may be abandoned - stand by for more of the grief and tears which we witnessed in Gaza. But the rest - the great semi-circle of concrete that runs around east Jerusalem, for example - will not be depopulated…
If the Israelis want Hamas to acknowledge the state of Israel, then Hamas should be expected to acknowledge the state of Israel that exists within its legal frontiers - not the illegal borders now being dreamt up by Olmert. We will have to abandon the idea that Ariel Sharon - an unindicted war criminal after his involvement in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres - was really going to give up the major Jewish colonies built illegally on Arab land or the illegal annexation of Jerusalem. Certainly Olmert is not going to do that. He is going to create wider frontiers for Israel and steal - let's call a spade a spade - more Arab land in doing so. The US will go along with this next illegal land-grab. But will the EU? Will the UN? Will Russia? Will our own dear Tony Blair?
Israelis deserve peace and security as much as Palestinians. But "new" and expanded "controversial" Israeli frontiers will not bring peace or security to either.
Please read more at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12608.htm
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Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
The Power of Saying No
Jeff Halper
20 March 2006
As the new Hamas government is sworn into power in the Palestinian Authority, we might ask: What would bring a people, the most secular of Arab populations with little history of religious fundamentalism, to vote Hamas? Mere protest at Fatah ineffectualness in negotiations and internal corruption doesn't go far enough. While warning Hamas that their vote did not constitute a mandate for imposing an Iran-like theocracy on Palestine, the Palestinians took the only option left to a powerless people when all other avenues of redress have been closed to them: non-cooperation.
Gandhi put it best: "How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the master's bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has failed in getting me to do what he wanted done. Non-cooperation is directed not against the Governors, but against the system they administer. The roots of non- cooperation lie not in hatred but in justice"…
Indeed, the vote for Hamas was not a closing of the door at all, but a rational, intentional and powerful statement of non-cooperation in a political process that is only leading to Palestinian imprisonment. Hamas, if anything, stands for steadfastness, sumud, the refusal to submit. This conflict is too destabilizing to the entire global system to let fester, the Palestinians are saying. You can all impose upon us an apartheid system, blame us for the violence while ignoring Israeli State Terror, pursue your programs of American Empire or your notions of a "clash of civilizations," we the Palestinians will not submit. We will not cooperate. We will not play your rigged game. In the end, for all your power, you will come to us to sue for peace. And then we will be ready for a just peace that respects the rights of all the peoples of the region, including the Israelis. But you will not beat us.
As an Israeli Jew who sees how the Occupation has eroded the moral foundations of my society and, indeed, my entire people, and as a resident of Israel-Palestine who knows that my fate is intricately intertwined with that of the Palestinians, I pray that such an end will come sooner rather than later.
Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
Please read more at http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=2&article=251
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The Guardian
A just peace or no peace
Ismail Haniyeh
31 March 2006
Israeli unilateralism is a recipe for conflict - as is the west's racist refusal to treat Palestinians as equals
Do policymakers in Washington and Europe ever feel ashamed of their scandalous double standards? Before and since the Palestinian elections in January, they have continually insisted that Hamas comply with certain demands. They want us to recognise Israel, call off our resistance, and commit ourselves to whatever deals Israel and the Palestinian leadership reached in the past.
But we have not heard a single demand of the Israeli parties that took part in this week's elections, though some advocate the complete removal of the Palestinians from their lands. Even Ehud Olmert's Kadima party, whose Likud forebears frustrated every effort by the PLO to negotiate a peace settlement, campaigned on a programme that defies UN security council resolutions. His unilateralism is a violation of international law. Nevertheless no one, not even the Quartet - whose proposals for a settlement he continues to disregard, as his predecessor Ariel Sharon did - has dared ask anything of him.
Olmert's unilateralism is a recipe for conflict. It is a plan to impose a permanent situation in which the Palestinians end up with a homeland cut into pieces made inaccessible because of massive Jewish settlements built in contravention of international law on land seized illegally from the Palestinians. No plan will ever work without a guarantee, in exchange for an end to hostilities by both sides, of a total Israeli withdrawal from all the land occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; the release of all our prisoners; the removal of all settlers from all settlements; and recognition of the right of all refugees to return.
Please read more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1743652,00.html
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Electronic Intifada
"Don't worry - it's just another Palestinian child's death"
Leigh Brady
31 March 2006
On 18 March 2006, I visited a grieving family in Al Yamun, a town in the northern West Bank. Their 7-year old daughter had been murdered the night previously by Israeli Border Police, who had entered the town to arrest "wanted" Palestinian militants in a raid led by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Her name was Akaber Adbelrahman Zaid and she was on her way to a doctor's clinic to have stitches removed from her chin. Instead she received a barrage of bullets to the head, when an undercover Border Police unit opened fire on the car in which she was travelling with her uncle.
An IDF spokesperson said the police had thought that the wanted militants were trying to escape in the car and thus fired shots at the wheels as a deterrent. Akaber's uncle said it was obvious that the only people in the car were himself and a small child, adding that the policemen had fired at close range. A Ha'aretz reporter inspected the car afterwards and found that all four tyres were still intact. For a specially trained unit of sharpshooters to fire at the wheels of a vehicle from a short distance and miss their target completely seems a little dubious, to say the least.
Akaber joins the ranks of over 700 other Palestinian children to be killed by Israeli security forces since September 2000. Who will take responsibility for her death? Who shall be held accountable?
Please read more at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4607.shtml
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Jewish Voice for Peace Newsletter
The Dangerous Center: Making sense of the Israeli elections
Mitchell Plitnick
Spring 2006
What Kadima is planning is nothing less than the devastation of the Palestinians, on a scale only hinted at in recent years. A glimpse of what would be in store if Olmert carries out his plan was seen just last week in the Gaza Strip. Reports of a terrorist attack (how reliable, no one can say) gave Israel the excuse to close all the crossings in and out of Gaza to all goods. After weeks of being unable to bring in such basic staples as flour and grain, bakeries in the Strip closed by the hundreds, unable to bake any goods. Gazans faced starvation, not in the long term, but immediately. The international community and, most importantly, the United States stepped in to pressure Israel into opening the Karni Crossing to material goods. Complete disaster was averted, but the Strip remains hungry and unsustainable, with its access to the outside world under the absolute control of Israel. This is not an end to occupation.
The situation in Gaza is a preview of things to come if Olmert brings his West Bank plans to fruition. Palestinians there will also be completely surrounded by Israel, in isolated cantons that will be unable to sustain themselves. That’s what comes from the Israeli “centrist” party. What the right would do is barely imaginable. And unless something truly centrist can come from the tattered remains of an Israeli left, the bitterness of conflict is going to be entrenched for years to come.
What is needed from Israel, and what must be encouraged by Americans who care for the fate of all people in Israel and Palestine, is an abandonment of unilateralism and the acknowledgment that it is unrealistic to expect Palestinians, whether from Fatah, Hamas or any other party, to be partners in their own dispossession. Do not expect any Palestinian to work with Israel to support Israel keeping the Jordan Valley, or keeping the settlement blocs without fully equivalent compensation and provisions to maintain Palestinian contiguity in the West Bank. Most of all, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority must be looking for reasons to build relationships, not reasons to refuse to talk to each other.
Please read more at http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/printer_501.shtml
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London Review of Books
The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
23 March 2006
For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.
Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.
Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.
Please read more at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
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The Guardian
Israel sets four year deadline to draw final borders
Chris McGreal
10 March 2006
Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has said the country will draw its final borders within four years without consulting the Palestinians if Hamas does not recognise the Jewish state.
Mr Olmert, who is strongly favoured to win a general election in three weeks, told the Jerusalem Post that by 2010 he intended to "get to Israel's permanent borders, whereby we will completely separate from the majority of the Palestinian population and preserve a large and stable Jewish majority in Israel".
He did not specify the route of the new frontier, which he said would be decided after an "internal dialogue inside Israel" and consultations with Israel's foreign allies. But he repeated his intention to annex the main settlement blocks in the West Bank and retain control of the Jordan river area "as a security border", resulting in a Palestinian state entirely surrounded by territory under Israeli control…
The plan outlined by Mr Olmert would require the removal of about 60,000 Israelis from settlements deeper inside the West Bank but leave about 350,000 in the main blocks and East Jerusalem.
Mr Olmert said he would give Hamas a "reasonable" amount of time to meet demands to recognise the Jewish state, renounce violence and accept existing agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). "We will wait, but I don't intend to wait forever," he said. "If after a reasonable time passes it becomes clear that the PA is not willing to accept these principles, we will need to begin to act."
Please read more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1727892,00.html
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19 April 2006
In the Aftermath of Elections: Democracy, Unilateralism, and Violence…
Following both recent Palestinian and Israeli elections, discussion over the future for all of the people of this land has brought great uncertainty. One of those uncertainties that affects both Israelis and Palestinians is in the question over what does the “two-state” solution mean in the context of Israeli unilateralism?
Regardless of where one stands in the “one-state solution” vs. “two-state solution” debate, what is abundantly clear and what is important to see is what the language of “two-states” has come to actually mean, realistically, on the ground, and what its consequences will be for Palestinians. Due to the dynamics of power, etc., what matters at this point in the conversation is the meaning that the state of Israel gives to the language of “two states,” and that has been most recently articulated by new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with his “convergence plan” to unilaterally set the borders of Israel by 2010 (“Olmert: Convergence to be completed within 18 months,” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/705891.html; “Olmert: Convergence to cost USD 10 billion,” http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3239420,00.html; “Olmert to 'Post': Israel to have final borders by 2010,” http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395565931&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull )—which will also, to speak to another language problem, essentially “end the occupation” in a manner not unlike that one used to describe the situation in Gaza post-“disengagement,” described by many as the largest prison in the world (“One Big Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan,” http://www.btselem.org/english/Publications/
Summaries/200503_Gaza_Prison.asp).
In this version of the language of “two states”: “the state of Israel” essentially equals formally annexing all major colonies in the West Bank, including “greater Jerusalem” and the Jordan Valley, with control over all of historical Palestine (fulfilling the vision of Ariel Sharon, et al, of “maximum territory, minimum Arabs”) and “the state of Palestine” essentially equals several isolated islands of land on roughly 40 to 50 percent of the occupied West Bank with Palestinians confined to these “reservations,” which will be rendered “contiguous” by a network of tunnels—completely unrealistic and completely unviable. The fact that it is Israel's understanding of what “two states” means that truly matters—and that must be challenged—was emphasized by recent comments emerging from the U.S. State Department that affirmed Israeli unilateralism. Though still trying to keep the “Road Map” and its understanding of negotiations afloat, both U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. ambassador to Israel Richard Jones have already voiced acquiescence (“Rice hints at support for Israeli unilateral withdrawals,” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/700817.html; “US ‘open’ to Israel borders plan,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4860340.stm; “Envoy: U.S. supports road map but understands unilateral move,” Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/705213.html). Looking back on how the U.S. has postured itself in the past regarding moves Israel has made, even this little hint of potential support points to a trajectory that will lead to the concretizing of apartheid in this land. It is this lack of a realistic perspective of events that clouds the language of “two states.” And language is very important here to maintaining a status quo that will continue to mean “insecurity” for Israelis and dispossession and death for Palestinians.
We would encourage you to visit websites such as http://www.endtheoccupation.org/, where advocacy campaigns are being organized to challenge the attempts made to isolate and collectively punish the Palestinian people by: restricting humanitarian aid, designating Palestinian territory as a “terrorist sanctuary,” prohibiting official Palestinian diplomacy or representation in the United States, targeting the UN for supporting Palestinian human rights, and denying Palestinians the ability to receive assistance through international financial institutions. “The United States says that it is committed to promoting democracy. If that is indeed the case, it is inappropriate for Members of Congress to advance legislation that would punish and isolate people through draconian economic and diplomatic measures when the result of an election is not to the liking of the United States” (http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1188).
“Nakba in Hebrew”: Zochrot at Canada Park and Deir Yassin
This past month, MCC partner the Zochrot Association (http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/) was successful in their petition to the Israeli high court to post signs in Canada Park, an Israeli recreational area outside of Jerusalem. These signs tell the story of the Palestinian villages of ‘Imwas and Yalu that once stood in what is today a park. ‘Imwas and Yalu were just two of over 500 Palestinian villages that were destroyed and ethnically cleansed and their 3,700 residents among the 700,000 to 900,000 Palestinians expelled from their homes since 1948. Though most do not realize it, these residents, who now live either in or around the Palestinian city of Ramallah or in the country of Jordan east of Palestine, experienced their dispossession at the hands Israeli occupation forces following the war in 1967 (http://www.palestineremembered.com/al-Ramla/Imwas/index.html, http://www.palestineremembered.com/al-Ramla/Yalu/index.html).
The Israeli high court ruled that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) had to post two new signs in Canada Park marking the villages of ‘Imwas and Yalu. The signs mention the number of inhabitants in each village and where their refugees live today. These signs are the result of a long struggle between Zochrot and the civil administration of the occupation and the JNF. Zochrot sees this as a great victory in their work to educate Israeli society about the Nakba or Catastrophe of 1948. “We believe that this is a beginning for the possibility to officially mark Palestinian destroyed locations by Israeli state authorities” (for more information and pictures, see http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=408 as well as “Searching for a sign,” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/705918.html).
Also in April, Zochrot held a remembrance ceremony at the site of Deir Yassin. The Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, destroyed and depopulated in 1948, was home to about 750 Palestinians, 100 of whom were systematically killed by advancing Zionist forces, becoming an example to the rest of the Palestinian villages not yet destroyed to concede for fear of meeting a similar end (http://www.deiryassin.org/; http://www.palestineremembered.com/Jerusalem/Dayr-Yasin/index.html). This year’s ceremony and posting of signs was the fourth year in a row that Zochrot has organized such a remembrance (http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?id=411).
“Rebuilding and Resistance”
Recently the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) announced its plans for another work camp this summer, from July 15th to July 30th, to rebuild a Palestinian home in the Occupied Territories demolished by the Israeli authorities. This house, in the town of Anata right outside of Jerusalem, is the home of the Hamdan family, demolished by the Israeli authorities on December 21, 2005. ICAHD recognizes that “While the rebuilding is symbolic in terms of the need, it is a powerful statement of political resistance to the occupation. Not only is it an act of defiance, of civil disobedience, but it gets to the very heart of the conflict: the ongoing process of dispossessing and displacing the Palestinian people from its land and its patrimony.”
In their announcement, titled “Rebuilding and Resistance” (http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=292), ICAHD describes the history of home demolitions as a policy widely and systematically applied for stated reasons of deterrence or punishment, but that has been intended primarily to either drive the Palestinians from the country altogether and thus “reclaim” their land for the Jewish people, or to confine them to tiny enclaves. House demolitions, which occur frequently on both sides of the “Green Line” and have left tens of thousands of families homeless, have stood at the center of Israel’s approach to “the Arab problem” since the state’s conception.
In these acts of resistance, ICAHD states that “we, as Israelis, are acknowledging the rights of both people to share the country. We are affirming our recognition that Palestinian claims carry equal authority to our own. And when Palestinians join us in the rebuilding activities – the families whose home have been demolished, their friends and neighbors, the entire local community and activists from throughout Palestinian society – we are together proclaiming clearly and loudly: We refuse to be enemies!”
See ICAHD’s website at http://www.icahd.org/eng/ for more information on how you can help in this work as well as for more information on the stages of Israel’s demolition campaign over the years.
“Palestine Summer Encounter 2006”
MCC Palestine partner Holy Land Trust (http://www.holylandtrust.org/) has also announced another of their summer programs, “Palestine Summer Encounter 2006,” a service learning and cultural immersion program. Participants in this program will live with a local family, study Arabic and volunteer with a local church, school, hospital, nonprofit or humanitarian organization. They will also have an opportunity to visit significant organizations and sites of historic, political and religious significance such as Jerusalem, Jericho, the Galilee, Hebron, Nazareth and the Dead Sea. Participants can join the program for 1, 2 or 3 months. Additional information can be found at: www.middleeastfellowship.org/pse2006
Lent and Easter in the “Holy Land”
Il-Masiih qaam.
Haqqan qaam.
Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.
As the Orthodox Lenten season comes to an end, we cannot help but reflect with our Palestinian friends and neighbors on what it means to celebrate Easter in the midst of despair. The season of Lent always seems more appropriate than that of Easter. And yet, ours is an Easter faith. Here, it is a constant source of struggle to rediscover from where our hope comes from. Zoughbi Zoughbi, our good friend and partner at the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center (http://www.planet.edu/~alaslah/), has described it as moving along the Stations of the Cross. “We know that the end, the final station brings resurrection and the new life that conquers death. But we just do not know which station we are on right now.”
During this Easter season, would you reflect on the historical realities of this land and struggle as well with those who would seek to know how to proclaim the light and life of resurrection to those living under the darkness of oppression?
Peace to you all,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
Attachments and Links:
· Gideon Levy, “Who is a terrorist?,” Haaretz, 16 April 2006
· Jeff Halper, “Elections in Palestine and Israel: Sumud vs Apartheid,” IMEMC, 15 April 2006
· “Olmert: Convergence to be completed within 18 months,” Haaretz, 14 April 2006
· Amira Hass, “Convergence to a border of convenience,” Haaretz, 5 April 2006
· Akiva Eldar, “Coming soon: Kosovo in Gaza?,” Haaretz, 4 April 2006
· Robert Fisk, “Another brick in the wall,” The Independent, 2 April 2006
· Jeff Halper, “The Power of Saying No,” ICAHD, 20 March 2006
· Ismail Haniyeh, “A just peace or no peace,” The Guardian, 31 March 2006
· Leigh Brady, “Don't worry - it's just another Palestinian child's death,” Electronic Intifada, 31 March 2006
· Mitchell Plitnick, “The Dangerous Center: Making sense of the Israeli elections,” Jewish Voice for Peace Newsletter, Spring 2006
· John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books, 23 March 2006
· Chris McGreal, “Israel sets four year deadline to draw final borders,” The Guardian, 10 March 2006
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Haaretz
Who is a terrorist?
Gideon Levy
16 April 2006
The scenes from Gaza are heartbreaking. Heartbreaking? That's not for certain. The sight of the Aben family from Beit Lahiya mourning its 12-year-old daughter Hadil last week did not stir any particular shock in Israel. Nor did anyone take to the streets and protest over the sight of her wounded mother and little brother lying in shock on the floor of their shanty in Gaza.
On the day Hadil Aben was killed, Yedioth Aharonoth carried a story about Nelly, the dog from Kibbutz Zikim that died of heart failure from the booming noise of the Israeli artillery firing into Gaza.
Instead of expressions of sorrow at the death of children, the upper echelons of the defense establishment came out with a stream of strident statements. The defense minister said that the only thing to do was step up the pressure on the Palestinians. The deputy chief of staff spoke about a possible invasion of Gaza and the head of army operations added, "what we've seen so far are only the previews." The IDF announced it would further reduce the "safety range" that is designed to avoid shells hitting the civilian population.
It was a chilling, united chorus. Israel is dropping thousands of bombs on towns and villages, on the "the launching pads" of the Qassams - another dubious term created by the defense establishment and blindly adopted by the press - and only the Palestinians, whose Qassam rockets haven't killed anyone since the disengagement, are called "terrorists"…
Those who really want to end the Qassam launches from Gaza, should turn Israeli policy upside down. To show restraint in the face of the Qassams, to lift the siege, to immediately meet with the elected Palestinian leadership and call on the world to stop withholding the funds from the Palestinian Authority. Only a free and secure and thriving Gaza will stop launching Qassams. Have we ever tried that?
Please read more at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12755.htm
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International Middle East Media Center
Elections in Palestine and Israel: Sumud vs. Apartheid
Jeff Halper
15 April 2006
Of course, Olmert's plan was presented with a positive spin characterized by terminology to do Orwell proud. Hitkansut or 'withdrawing into oneself' in Hebrew is the operational phase of 'separation' from the Palestinians, and seems exactly what the public wanted (a full 85% of Israeli Jews support the construction of the Wall, or 'Separation Barrier'). Perhaps that is the reason it generated no public discussion, no dissent and ended up a non-issue. It does not mean, however, withdrawal of Israel back to its pre-1967 territory, but rather a 'convergence' of Israeli settlers scattered throughout the West Bank into Israel's major settlement blocs. Though the idea of leaving territories densely populated by Palestinians sounds good to Israeli Jews, it really means apartheid. And it will be imposed unilaterally because Israel has nothing to offer the Palestinians. True, they get 70-85% of the Occupied Territories, but only in truncated enclaves. Israel retains control of all the borders, Palestinian movement among the cantons, all the water and the richest agricultural land, the large settlement blocs including "greater" Jerusalem (which accounts for 40% of the Palestinian economy), the Palestinians' airspace and even their communications. Indeed, Israel retains all the developmental potential of the country, leaving the Palestinians with only barren and disconnected enclaves. Israel expands onto 85% of the entire country, leaving the Palestinians - the majority population or soon to be - with only about 15%, and that truncated, non-viable and only semi-sovereign. A Bantustan a la apartheid South Africa.
What the outside world considers important - the conflict with Palestinians, Occupation, the Wall, settlements, possibilities for peace - are non-issues in Israel. Most Israeli Jews agree that (1) the Palestinians don't want peace, (2) therefore there is no political solution to the conflict, (3) separation is the best course and thus (4) Israel must keep all of Jerusalem and its major settlements. There is simply nothing to discuss. The entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been reduced, for Israeli Jews, to one technical issue: how do we manage terrorism and secure our personal security…
Knowing that the conflict is too destabilizing for the global system to let fester, the Palestinians are saying: We will remain sumud, steadfast. Impose on us an apartheid system, blame us for the violence while ignoring Israeli State Terror, pursue your programs of American Empire or your self-righteous notion of a 'clash of civilizations' - we Palestinians will not submit. We will not cooperate. We will not play your rigged game. And in the end your power will be for naught. So costly will we make this conflict to Israel, the US and the international community that you will come to us to sue for peace. We will be ready for a just peace that respects the rights of all the peoples of the region, including the Israelis. But you will not beat us.
Please read more at http://www.imemc.org/content/view/18070/1/
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Haaretz
Olmert: Convergence to be completed within 18 months
14 April 2006
Prime Minister-designate Ehud Olmert said in an interview published this week that he intends to complete his plan to withdraw from parts of the West Bank within 18 months.
Olmert told the Wall Street Journal that he plans to complete coalition talks within two weeks and begin planning the withdrawal in detail the moment a government is formed. His first step will be to appoint a team of experts, including military, political and economic advisers, to outline the withdrawal.
Olmert added that during his first visit to Washington next month he plans to ask for the international community's help in funding the pullout, which the newspaper estimated would cost over NIS 46 billion.
Olmert declared that his plan "will change the face of the region," and vowed not to miss this opportunity. He rejected any division of Jerusalem as a move that would "not bring peace, only more fighting," but did not rule out the possibility that some Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would be under control of a future Palestinian state.
Please read more at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/705891.html
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Haaretz
Convergence to a border of convenience
Amira Hass
5 April 2006
For the "convergence" plan to be presented to the Western world as a giant concession worthy of praise, the dimensions of Jewish support for the "vision of the Greater Land of Israel" must be inflated. But if the Greater Land of Israel really were the top priority for the Jewish citizenry of Israel, then there wouldn't be fewer than 10,000 settlers in the Jordan Valley. Tens of thousands would be rushing to expand Ma'aleh Ephraim and the farming settlements, so the lights of the eastern sector of the Greater Land would shine and twinkle like the lights of the western sector of the Jordanian kingdom.
Israel made sure during the years of the Oslo negotiations, as in the preceding years, to leave that enormous area blocked to any Palestinian development and wide open to any Israeli development. The somewhat difficult living conditions (heat, distance to the center of the country) would not have deterred the masses of Israelis. If every clod of the Greater Land of Israel indeed held an impassioned emotional attraction for the Jewish citizens of Israel, they would not have needed economic incentives to live in the areas conquered in 1967. They would have gone to settle the most distant hilltops and not made do with settlements "five minutes from Kfar Sava." They would not have needed seductive advertising about one-family villas on their own plot of land. On the contrary, they would have encouraged the state and the contractors to build apartment blocs. There wouldn't be 420,000 Jewish setters (including occupied East Jerusalem) but rather 2 million.
What drew the Jewish Israelis - and turned nearly half a million of them into outlaws under international law - were not the clods of holy land but comfortable lives promised to them by Israeli military supremacy, the spacious inexpensive housing and the improved infrastructure. Those were precisely the subsidies and incentives that they didn't get inside the sovereign state. The convergence, therefore, is the borders drawn by the average Israeli Jew's aspirations for comfort and convenience.
These would be natural ambitions if they did not come at the expense of the Palestinians as individuals and as a people. But average Israelis, including those who are not settlers, are not troubled by such trifle matters like international law, basic moral values and the welfare and convenience of the Palestinians. After all it is precisely the settlement blocs and the area between the separation fence and the Green Line that cut into the West Bank, take its water and fertile farming resources, separate Palestinian communities and obstruct all natural and logical geographic and demographic contiguity. These areas, and it doesn't matter if the convergence is 28 percent of the West Bank or "only" 13.5 percent, have caused and will cause irreversible damage to Palestinian society and to individual Palestinians. But that's not what bothers average Israelis and their representatives in Kadima, Labor and the Pensioners Party. These facts slip through the consciousness and are buried, like hundreds of Palestinian villages whose names do not appear on the road signs along the settlers' highways.
Please read more at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/702535.html
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Haaretz
Coming soon: Kosovo in Gaza?
Akiva Eldar
4 April 2006
At working levels of the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry they know that the wolf is already here, at Gaza's gate. Ever since the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, international aide agency representatives have been warning of a humanitarian disaster and the world, including Israel, keeps going its merry way. A few days ago, David Shearer, the head of the office of the United Nations Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the territories, told the Foreign Ministry that in order to understand what he was talking about, they should remember the pictures of the Galaxy aircraft in the airlift to Kosovo. Shearer, like his colleagues at the World Bank and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and representatives of donor countries, formed the impression that the officials and the officers were persuaded that state leaders were behaving like the crew of the Titanic who continued to dance all the way to the bottom of the ocean.
At the bureau of Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, they also know the avian influenza is not going to wait until politicians have time to spare from the last chapter of the "celebration of democracy" and place their hands on the wheel. The people of Kerem Shalom have learned on the flesh of their own poultry that viruses do not recognize the disengagement and have not heard about the convergence. After the sick fowl, will come the dead babies. Several patients with symptoms of bird flu have shown up at the Gaza hospitals.
In an opinion published on March 24, the Stratfor institute stated there was no way of knowing the virus' next move, but if there was a risk it would undergo a mutation constituting a danger to the human race - it would happen in places like the Gaza Strip. At the moment, the great power is more frightened by the risk that the money intended for the owners of poultry will get into the hands of the Hamas government. When the United States declares a boycott of Palestinian Authority people, the banks are in no hurry to open their coffers to them. Not to mention the government of Israel. Although the World Bank has promised to raise the missing $2 million, large institutions grind slowly. Much more slowly than violent viruses.
Please read more at http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=702080
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The Independent
Another brick in the wall
Robert Fisk
2 April 2006
We have been conned again. The Israeli elections, we are told, mean that the dream of "Greater Israel" has finally been abandoned. West Bank settlements will be closed down, just as the Jewish colonies were uprooted in Gaza last year. The Zionist claim to all of Biblical Israel has withered away. Likud, the nightmare party of Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, has been smashed by the Gaullist figure of the dying Ariel Sharon, whose Kadima party now embraces Ehud Olmert and that decaying symbol of the Israeli left, Nobel prizewinner Shimon Peres. This, at least, is the narrative laid down by so many of our journalists, "analysts" and "commentators". But it is a lie.
Only in paragraph two - or three or four - of the grovelling news reports from the Middle East do we read that Olmert's not very impressive election victory will allow him to "redraw" the "frontiers" of Israel, a decision described as "controversial" - the usual get-out clause of newspapers that wish to avoid the truth: that Israel is about to grab more land and claim it to be part of the state of Israel. Yes, true, the smaller and more vulnerable Jewish colonies illegally built on Palestinian-owned land may be abandoned - stand by for more of the grief and tears which we witnessed in Gaza. But the rest - the great semi-circle of concrete that runs around east Jerusalem, for example - will not be depopulated…
If the Israelis want Hamas to acknowledge the state of Israel, then Hamas should be expected to acknowledge the state of Israel that exists within its legal frontiers - not the illegal borders now being dreamt up by Olmert. We will have to abandon the idea that Ariel Sharon - an unindicted war criminal after his involvement in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres - was really going to give up the major Jewish colonies built illegally on Arab land or the illegal annexation of Jerusalem. Certainly Olmert is not going to do that. He is going to create wider frontiers for Israel and steal - let's call a spade a spade - more Arab land in doing so. The US will go along with this next illegal land-grab. But will the EU? Will the UN? Will Russia? Will our own dear Tony Blair?
Israelis deserve peace and security as much as Palestinians. But "new" and expanded "controversial" Israeli frontiers will not bring peace or security to either.
Please read more at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12608.htm
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Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
The Power of Saying No
Jeff Halper
20 March 2006
As the new Hamas government is sworn into power in the Palestinian Authority, we might ask: What would bring a people, the most secular of Arab populations with little history of religious fundamentalism, to vote Hamas? Mere protest at Fatah ineffectualness in negotiations and internal corruption doesn't go far enough. While warning Hamas that their vote did not constitute a mandate for imposing an Iran-like theocracy on Palestine, the Palestinians took the only option left to a powerless people when all other avenues of redress have been closed to them: non-cooperation.
Gandhi put it best: "How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the master's bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has failed in getting me to do what he wanted done. Non-cooperation is directed not against the Governors, but against the system they administer. The roots of non- cooperation lie not in hatred but in justice"…
Indeed, the vote for Hamas was not a closing of the door at all, but a rational, intentional and powerful statement of non-cooperation in a political process that is only leading to Palestinian imprisonment. Hamas, if anything, stands for steadfastness, sumud, the refusal to submit. This conflict is too destabilizing to the entire global system to let fester, the Palestinians are saying. You can all impose upon us an apartheid system, blame us for the violence while ignoring Israeli State Terror, pursue your programs of American Empire or your notions of a "clash of civilizations," we the Palestinians will not submit. We will not cooperate. We will not play your rigged game. In the end, for all your power, you will come to us to sue for peace. And then we will be ready for a just peace that respects the rights of all the peoples of the region, including the Israelis. But you will not beat us.
As an Israeli Jew who sees how the Occupation has eroded the moral foundations of my society and, indeed, my entire people, and as a resident of Israel-Palestine who knows that my fate is intricately intertwined with that of the Palestinians, I pray that such an end will come sooner rather than later.
Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
Please read more at http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=2&article=251
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The Guardian
A just peace or no peace
Ismail Haniyeh
31 March 2006
Israeli unilateralism is a recipe for conflict - as is the west's racist refusal to treat Palestinians as equals
Do policymakers in Washington and Europe ever feel ashamed of their scandalous double standards? Before and since the Palestinian elections in January, they have continually insisted that Hamas comply with certain demands. They want us to recognise Israel, call off our resistance, and commit ourselves to whatever deals Israel and the Palestinian leadership reached in the past.
But we have not heard a single demand of the Israeli parties that took part in this week's elections, though some advocate the complete removal of the Palestinians from their lands. Even Ehud Olmert's Kadima party, whose Likud forebears frustrated every effort by the PLO to negotiate a peace settlement, campaigned on a programme that defies UN security council resolutions. His unilateralism is a violation of international law. Nevertheless no one, not even the Quartet - whose proposals for a settlement he continues to disregard, as his predecessor Ariel Sharon did - has dared ask anything of him.
Olmert's unilateralism is a recipe for conflict. It is a plan to impose a permanent situation in which the Palestinians end up with a homeland cut into pieces made inaccessible because of massive Jewish settlements built in contravention of international law on land seized illegally from the Palestinians. No plan will ever work without a guarantee, in exchange for an end to hostilities by both sides, of a total Israeli withdrawal from all the land occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; the release of all our prisoners; the removal of all settlers from all settlements; and recognition of the right of all refugees to return.
Please read more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1743652,00.html
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Electronic Intifada
"Don't worry - it's just another Palestinian child's death"
Leigh Brady
31 March 2006
On 18 March 2006, I visited a grieving family in Al Yamun, a town in the northern West Bank. Their 7-year old daughter had been murdered the night previously by Israeli Border Police, who had entered the town to arrest "wanted" Palestinian militants in a raid led by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Her name was Akaber Adbelrahman Zaid and she was on her way to a doctor's clinic to have stitches removed from her chin. Instead she received a barrage of bullets to the head, when an undercover Border Police unit opened fire on the car in which she was travelling with her uncle.
An IDF spokesperson said the police had thought that the wanted militants were trying to escape in the car and thus fired shots at the wheels as a deterrent. Akaber's uncle said it was obvious that the only people in the car were himself and a small child, adding that the policemen had fired at close range. A Ha'aretz reporter inspected the car afterwards and found that all four tyres were still intact. For a specially trained unit of sharpshooters to fire at the wheels of a vehicle from a short distance and miss their target completely seems a little dubious, to say the least.
Akaber joins the ranks of over 700 other Palestinian children to be killed by Israeli security forces since September 2000. Who will take responsibility for her death? Who shall be held accountable?
Please read more at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4607.shtml
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Jewish Voice for Peace Newsletter
The Dangerous Center: Making sense of the Israeli elections
Mitchell Plitnick
Spring 2006
What Kadima is planning is nothing less than the devastation of the Palestinians, on a scale only hinted at in recent years. A glimpse of what would be in store if Olmert carries out his plan was seen just last week in the Gaza Strip. Reports of a terrorist attack (how reliable, no one can say) gave Israel the excuse to close all the crossings in and out of Gaza to all goods. After weeks of being unable to bring in such basic staples as flour and grain, bakeries in the Strip closed by the hundreds, unable to bake any goods. Gazans faced starvation, not in the long term, but immediately. The international community and, most importantly, the United States stepped in to pressure Israel into opening the Karni Crossing to material goods. Complete disaster was averted, but the Strip remains hungry and unsustainable, with its access to the outside world under the absolute control of Israel. This is not an end to occupation.
The situation in Gaza is a preview of things to come if Olmert brings his West Bank plans to fruition. Palestinians there will also be completely surrounded by Israel, in isolated cantons that will be unable to sustain themselves. That’s what comes from the Israeli “centrist” party. What the right would do is barely imaginable. And unless something truly centrist can come from the tattered remains of an Israeli left, the bitterness of conflict is going to be entrenched for years to come.
What is needed from Israel, and what must be encouraged by Americans who care for the fate of all people in Israel and Palestine, is an abandonment of unilateralism and the acknowledgment that it is unrealistic to expect Palestinians, whether from Fatah, Hamas or any other party, to be partners in their own dispossession. Do not expect any Palestinian to work with Israel to support Israel keeping the Jordan Valley, or keeping the settlement blocs without fully equivalent compensation and provisions to maintain Palestinian contiguity in the West Bank. Most of all, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority must be looking for reasons to build relationships, not reasons to refuse to talk to each other.
Please read more at http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/printer_501.shtml
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London Review of Books
The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
23 March 2006
For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.
Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.
Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.
Please read more at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
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The Guardian
Israel sets four year deadline to draw final borders
Chris McGreal
10 March 2006
Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has said the country will draw its final borders within four years without consulting the Palestinians if Hamas does not recognise the Jewish state.
Mr Olmert, who is strongly favoured to win a general election in three weeks, told the Jerusalem Post that by 2010 he intended to "get to Israel's permanent borders, whereby we will completely separate from the majority of the Palestinian population and preserve a large and stable Jewish majority in Israel".
He did not specify the route of the new frontier, which he said would be decided after an "internal dialogue inside Israel" and consultations with Israel's foreign allies. But he repeated his intention to annex the main settlement blocks in the West Bank and retain control of the Jordan river area "as a security border", resulting in a Palestinian state entirely surrounded by territory under Israeli control…
The plan outlined by Mr Olmert would require the removal of about 60,000 Israelis from settlements deeper inside the West Bank but leave about 350,000 in the main blocks and East Jerusalem.
Mr Olmert said he would give Hamas a "reasonable" amount of time to meet demands to recognise the Jewish state, renounce violence and accept existing agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). "We will wait, but I don't intend to wait forever," he said. "If after a reasonable time passes it becomes clear that the PA is not willing to accept these principles, we will need to begin to act."
Please read more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1727892,00.html
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Friday, March 24
MCC Palestine Prayer Request - 24 March 2006
MCC Palestine Prayer Request
24 March 2006
Dear Friends,
As many of you have already heard, Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members Harmeet Singh Sooden, Jim Loney and Norman Kember have been freed safely in Baghdad. We rejoice and are thankful to the answer to a prayer that we know has been many of yours for the past four months.
Details are still coming in, but this is what is known so far:
*All three men are in relatively good condition.
*They were freed in an intelligence-led operation spearheaded by British troops.
*The operation to free the captives was based on information from a man captured by U.S. forces only three hours earlier.
*None of the captors were present, no shots were fired and no one was injured.
Here are the developing stories from some major news outlets:
Associated Press: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060323/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_hostages_freed;_ylt=AmrYJlNlfLdrPyYD.FIWHq2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4836218.stm
Al-Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A6EF4A10-6F22-481B-B558-A19F4D845638.htm
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/international/middleeast/23cnd-hostages.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1143176400&en=1c7c1b639dfdc5a6&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin
Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1737660,00.html
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/23/AR2006032300223.html
Below is the statement released from CPT as well as a piece written recently from a Mennonite minister from Pennsylvania responding to criticisms leveled against CPT.
Thank you all for your faithful prayers and actions. We would ask that you continue to keep James, Harmeet, and Norman, the family of Tom Fox who was found murdered earlier this month, and all those still being held or detained in Iraq or anywhere else in the world in your thoughts and prayers today.
Peace,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
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http://www.cpt.org/
CPT Statement: CPTers Freed
Doug Pritchard and Carol Rose
23 March 2006
Our hearts are filled with joy today as we heard that Harmeet Singh Sooden, Jim Loney and Norman Kember have been freed safely in Baghdad. Christian Peacemaker Teams rejoices with their families and friends at the expectation of their return to their loved ones and community. Together we have endured uncertainty, hope, fear, grief and now joy during the four months since they were abducted in Baghdad. We rejoice in the return of Harmeet Sooden. He has been willing to put his life on the line to promote justice in Iraq and Palestine as a young man newly committed to active peacemaking. We rejoice in the return of Jim Loney. He has cared for the marginalized and oppressed since childhood, and his gentle, passionate spirit has been an inspiration to people near and far. We rejoice in the return of Norman Kember. He is a faithful man, an elder and mentor to many in his 50 years of peacemaking, a man prepared to pay the cost. We remember with tears Tom Fox, whose body was found in Baghdad on March 9, 2006, after three months of captivity with his fellow peacemakers. We had longed for the day when all four men would be released together. Our gladness today is made bittersweet by the fact that Tom is not alive to join in the celebration. However, we are confident that his spirit is very much present in each reunion. Harmeet, Jim and Norman and Tom were in Iraq to learn of the struggles facing the people in that country. They went, motivated by a passion for justice and peace to live out a nonviolent alternative in a nation wracked by armed conflict. They knew that their only protection was in the power of the love of God and of their Iraqi and international co-workers. We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must end.Today, in the face of this joyful news, our faith compels us to love our enemies even when they have committed acts which caused great hardship to our friends and sorrow to their families. In the spirit of the prophetic nonviolence that motivated Jim, Norman, Harmeet and Tom to go to Iraq, we refuse to yield to a spirit of vengeance. We give thanks for the compassionate God who granted our friends courage and who sustained their spirits over the past months. We pray for strength and courage for ourselves so that, together, we can continue the nonviolent struggle for justice and peace. Throughout these difficult months, we have been heartened by messages of concern for our four colleagues from all over the world. We have been especially moved by the gracious outpouring of support from Muslim brothers and sisters in the Middle East, Europe, and North America. That support continues to come to us day after day. We pray that Christians throughout the world will, in the same spirit, call for justice and for respect for the human rights of the thousands of Iraqis who are being detained illegally by the U.S. and British forces occupying Iraq. During these past months, we have tasted of the pain that has been the daily bread of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Why have our loved ones been taken? Where are they being held? Under what conditions? How are they? Will they be released? When? With Tom’s death, we felt the grief of losing a beloved friend. Today, we rejoice that our friends Harmeet, Jim and Norman have been freed safely. We continue to pray for a swift and joyful homecoming for the many Iraqis and internationals who long to be reunited with their families. We renew our commitment to work for an end to the war and the occupation of Iraq as a way to continue the witness of Tom Fox. We trust in God’s compassionate love to show us the way.
Living through the many emotions of this day, we remain committed to the words of Jim Loney, who wrote:
"With God’s abiding kindness, we will love even our enemies.
With the love of Christ, we will resist all evil.
With God’s unending faithfulness, we will work to build the beloved community."
Addenda
23 March 2006
We have been so overwhelmed and overjoyed to have Jim, Harmeet and Norman freed, that we have not adequately thanked the people involved with freeing them, nor remembered those still in captivity. So we offer these paragraphs as the first of several addenda:
We are grateful to the soldiers who risked their lives to free Jim, Norman and Harmeet. As peacemakers who hold firm to our commitment to nonviolence, we are also deeply grateful that they fired no shots to free our colleagues. We are thankful to all the people who gave of themselves sacrificially to free Jim, Norman, Harmeet and Tom over the last four months, and those supporters who prayed and wept for our brothers in captivity, for their loved ones and for us, their co-workers. We will continue to lift Jill Carroll up in our prayers for her safe return. In addition, we will continue to advocate for the human rights of Iraqi detainees and assert their right to due process in a just legal system.
Doug Pritchard and Carol Rose are co-directors of Christian Peacemaker Teams.
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http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/14128328.htm
A Christian Peacemaker Team member sets the record straight
Rev. David B. Miller
18 March 2006
I was in the city of Hebron in the West Bank in late November, part of a 10-person delegation sponsored by Christian Peacemaker Teams, when the chilling word came that four CPT members -- Tom Fox, James Loney, Harmeet Singh Sooden and Norman Kember -- had been abducted in Baghdad by a previously unknown group, the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. The world now knows that Fox, a Quaker from Virginia serving with CPT, was executed by his captors.
Cal Thomas decided to write about Fox's tragic death and offer his assessment of Christian Peacemaker Teams in his syndicated column published Wednesday in the Centre Daily Times. The people and motivations Thomas described were alien to what I know of CPT and those who serve with the organization.
Allow me, at this moment of grief, to set the record straight.
Thomas wrote, "That the 'peace activists' believed their brand of Christianity would trump the fanatical Muslims who regarded them as infidels and worthy of death ..."
CPT has functioned in Iraq since 2002, beginning several months prior to the U.S.-led invasion. Its work and motives have been closely watched by its Iraqi neighbors.
Seeing in CPT's approach a hope for the future of Iraqi society, in January 2005 a group of Iraqi Muslims asked if CPT would be willing to meet with them and train them for similar work. This was the beginning of the Muslim Peacemaker Team (MPT), which is seeking by nonviolent means to heal the wounds and mistrust between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish Iraqis.
CPT members and MPT members work together on a number of joint projects, including rebuilding work in the devastated city of Fallujah.
Thomas wrote, "It is also tragic because the likelihood that the presence of Fox and his colleagues would change the attitude or behavior of their captors was zero to none."
CPT members are not blind idealists. They have peered more deeply and honestly into the abyss of evil and understand the cycle of violence better than most people I know. They understand the risks involved in entering a place of violent conflict.
When Margaret Hassan, head of Care International's operations in Iraq for 12 years, was kidnapped and later killed, Fox wrote a statement of conviction that included these words: "If I am ever called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice in love of enemy, I trust that God will give me the grace to do so."
Team members did not go to Iraq to be kidnapped, but to help create, by nonviolent means, conditions of trust and hope that might thwart the cycle of violence and retribution.
CPT's motto, "Reducing Violence by Getting in the Way," has a twofold meaning -- team members "get in the way" by seeking to follow the example of Christ, who followed a path of nonviolent confrontation with evil; they "get in the way" by willingly placing themselves between those who are caught in the spiral of violence.
In Iraq and elsewhere, they have had an impact far beyond their ridiculously small numbers. They have on numerous occasions been protected by their Iraqi neighbors and friends for whom they have been a source of hope.
Thomas wrote, "Peace happens when evil is vanquished."
Many Christian Peacemaker Team members might agree with this statement on the surface. They categorically reject, however, the means Thomas would employ to this end.
Evil is not vanquished by violence. The vision and mission of CPT is grounded in the life and teachings of Jesus. He taught that evil is not overcome with evil, but with good. Those who would follow him in the world are called upon to "love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them." These were not abstractions but a clear, embodied example.
Roots of today's conflict can be traced, in part, to a Christian church that, in the Middle Ages, explained away the clear instructions of its Lord, embraced the sword as a means to end, and embarked on a lethal campaign of crusades that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Jews.
Thomas wrote, "The theology of Christian Peacemaker Teams is as wrong as its politics."
If, for Thomas, commitment to obedience to the life and teachings of Jesus, even to the point of being willing to lay down one's life for another, is bad theology, he thereby judges the first 300 years of Christianity as the persistent practice of "wrong theology." It was not until gaining legal status in the Roman empire that the Christian church en masse abandoned the way of nonviolence.
Thomas appears to espouse a theology that reduces the Sermon on the Mount to nothing more than a foil to lead us to grace, one that explains away Jesus' clear instructions that his followers were called to take up the cross and follow him in the way of self-giving love, and one that reduces love of enemy to a disembodied abstraction.
Thomas wrote, "(E)vil cannot be accommodated. Evil must be defeated if peace on Earth is to exist. That Fox and his colleagues could not, or would not see this, is most tragic of all."
Thomas here serves as a propagandist for the logic of holy war. In Thomas' world view, "the other" is not someone who may carry out evil actions, but the embodiment of evil itself.
Groups (nations) that adhere to such a theology or political philosophy safeguard themselves against the "messiness" of self-criticism and easily project on their "enemy" their own motives and violence. From such a position, they easily justify whatever means they deem necessary to overcome their enemy.
Such a view corrupts the individual or nation who holds it, for it leads to the easy minimizing of such things as hundreds of dead women and children as collateral damage, to destroying a city in order to save it, and to explaining away the systematic torture and abuse of prisoners as the fault of a few bad apples.
The rule of law -- such as the Geneva Conventions -- are set aside as untenable, because the current conflict is unique. The result is a willful blindness and escalation of violence.
The question that founded Christian Peacemaker Teams in the 1980s and continues to compel those who serve with CPT is this: What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war? It is a question that takes them back to their source, not as an abstract religion, but as a way to be risked and followed in the world.
The Rev. David B. Miller is pastor of University Mennonite Church in State College. In November 2005, he traveled to Israel and the West Bank with Christian Peacemaker Teams.
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http://www.cpt.org/iraq/response/thomasresponse.htm
A CPTer Responds to Cal Thomas
Kathy Kern
20 March 2006
I am writing as a grieving colleague of Tom Fox in response to Cal Thomas' March 15 column, "Tragedy of a Peace Activist." Thomas, I believe, harbors mistaken assumptions about nonviolent movements, Christian Peacemaker Teams and Tom. 1) He says that we thought our "brand" of Christianity would "trump" fanatical Muslims. We never went into Iraq with that goal. We sought to deter violence where we could, and tell stories about ordinary Iraqi Christians and Muslims that were not making the news here. We released the report of U.S. military abuses of Iraqi detainees three months before the Abu Ghraib photos hit the media. We also worked with Iraqi human rights advocates in the development of a Muslim Peacemaker Teams. 2) Thomas' comment about peace movements rarely mobilizing to oppose dictators is historically inaccurate. Nonviolent movements in Tibet and Burma, the Philippines, Latin America and Soviet Bloc countries have courageously challenged dictatorships. CPTers and their supporters who are U.S. citizens (We have offices in Chicago and Toronto) do take a special interest in what the U.S. government is doing in the rest of the world, because it uses U.S. tax dollars to support oppressive regimes. Like Israeli and South African human rights advocates, we challenge our government when it is committing abuses that democratic societies should not tolerate; we want our government to behave as though the rest of the world is entitled to the same civil rights that U.S. citizens have. 3) Thomas' story about Charles Brown implies that CPT has had a close relationship with the Iraqi government. We intentionally work at a grassroots level on all our projects because we do not wish to be affiliated with or give allegiance to any government besides the Kingdom of God. (And many of us American CPTers were decrying Saddam Hussein’s vile dictatorship back when our government was giving him military aid.) 4) We do not believe that "evil people will be nice to us if we are nice to them." We do believe that Jesus meant what he said when he told his followers, "But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." (Luke 6:35) Christian Peacemaker Teams agrees with Cal Thomas on at least one point: "Evil cannot be accommodated. Evil must be defeated if peace on Earth is to exist." We strive with all our might to fight the Evil that says it is acceptable to bomb and torture people, that some lives are worth more than others, that we can ignore what Jesus said about treating "the least of these" as we would treat Him. In 2004, Tom wrote about confronting Evil like this: "I have visual references and written models of CPTers standing firm against the overt aggression of an army, be it regular or paramilitary. But how do you stand firm against a car-bomber or a kidnapper? Clearly the soldier disconnected from God needs to have me fight. Just as clearly the terrorist disconnected from God needs to have me flee. Both are willing to kill me using different means to achieve he same end--that end being to increase the parasitic power of Satan within God's good creation. "It seems easier somehow to confront anger within my heart than it is to confront fear. But if Jesus and Gandhi are right then I am not to give in to either. I am to stand firm against the kidnapper as I am to stand firm against the soldier. Does that mean I walk into a raging battle to confront the soldiers? Does that mean I walk the streets of Baghdad with a sign saying "American for the Taking?" No to both counts. But if Jesus and Gandhi are right, then I am asked to risk my life, and if I lose it to be as forgiving as they were when murdered by the forces of Satan. "Standing firm is a struggle, but I'm willing to keep working at it."
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http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20060314-095241-4308r.htm
Tragedy of a peace activist
Cal Thomas15 March 2006
The death of "peace activist" Tom Fox, and the threatened execution of the three others held with him in Iraq, is doubly tragic.
It is tragic whenever an innocent person is murdered. It is also tragic because the likelihood that the presence of Fox and his colleagues would change the attitude or behavior of their captors was zero to none. That the "peace activists" believed their brand of Christianity would trump the fanatical Muslims who regarded them as infidels and worthy of death meant Fox and the others would either be used for propaganda purposes by the enemies of freedom, or made to sacrifice their lives like animals on an ancient altar in the furtherance of the fanatics' dream of a theocratic state. In this instance they were used for both.
The activists' motive was exposed in a statement from Christian Peacemaker Teams, under whose auspices Fox and the others traveled to Iraq. Spokeswoman Jessica Phillips said, "We believe that the root cause of the abduction of our colleagues is the U.S.- and British-led invasion and occupation of Iraq."
Strange thing about these peace movements: they rarely mobilize to oppose the killing, torture and imprisonment practiced by dictators. It is only when their own country attempts to end the oppression that the activists become active against America, not the initiators of evil. Peace, like happiness, is a byproduct, not a goal that can be unilaterally attained. Peace happens when evil is vanquished.
The theology of Christian Peacemaker Teams is as wrong as its politics. The statement about Fox's death claimed he had a "firm opposition to all oppression and the recognition of God in everyone." Perhaps if Christian Peacemaker Teams had gone to Iraq during Saddam Hussein's murderous regime, or to China while Mao Tse-tung was slaughtering millions, or to Moscow while Josef Stalin practiced genocide on his people, or to any number of other capitals of carnage, they might be taken more seriously, though under those regimes they might have disappeared much quicker. Was God "in" these mass murderers, or was it Lucifer?
A far more credible and compelling insight about peace activism and its consequences comes from Charles M. Brown, who was 19 when he fought in Operation Desert Storm, a conflict that repelled Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. When Mr. Brown returned home, he worked in homeless shelters operated by liberal Catholic Worker activists and gravitated toward their position against U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq for failing to comply with its promises to cease hostilities.
Mr. Brown says he traveled to Iraq in 1998 to see the effects of sanctions. He says he made two speaking tours of college campuses to denounce sanctions. When he tried to return to Iraq with a Chicago group called "Voices in the Wilderness," Mr. Brown says he was told by Iraqi government officials he could not speak about Saddam's "horrendous human-rights record, [his] involvement with weapons of mass destruction [or] the dictatorial nature of the regime. We were allowed to speak only of one thing: the deprivations suffered by ordinary Iraqis under the sanctions regime."
Mr. Brown says he realized this was pure Ba'ath Party propaganda: "As I came to see this as a complicity and collaboration with one of the most abusive dictatorships in the world, I tried to get the rest of my group to acknowledge that our close relationship with the regime damaged our credibility. I failed to persuade them, so I quit." His "Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist," published in the summer 2003 issue of Middle East Quarterly, is sober reading for people who believe the United States is the problem and that evil people will be nice to us if we are nice to them.
It is too bad Tom Fox and his three colleagues did not have an epiphany similar to that of Charles Brown.
Peace "activism" may make its practitioners feel good, or validate their belief they are doing the will of God. But evil cannot be accommodated. Evil must be defeated if peace on Earth is to exist. That Fox and his colleagues could not, or would not see this, is most tragic of all. Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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24 March 2006
Dear Friends,
As many of you have already heard, Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members Harmeet Singh Sooden, Jim Loney and Norman Kember have been freed safely in Baghdad. We rejoice and are thankful to the answer to a prayer that we know has been many of yours for the past four months.
Details are still coming in, but this is what is known so far:
*All three men are in relatively good condition.
*They were freed in an intelligence-led operation spearheaded by British troops.
*The operation to free the captives was based on information from a man captured by U.S. forces only three hours earlier.
*None of the captors were present, no shots were fired and no one was injured.
Here are the developing stories from some major news outlets:
Associated Press: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060323/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_hostages_freed;_ylt=AmrYJlNlfLdrPyYD.FIWHq2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4836218.stm
Al-Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A6EF4A10-6F22-481B-B558-A19F4D845638.htm
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/international/middleeast/23cnd-hostages.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1143176400&en=1c7c1b639dfdc5a6&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin
Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1737660,00.html
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/23/AR2006032300223.html
Below is the statement released from CPT as well as a piece written recently from a Mennonite minister from Pennsylvania responding to criticisms leveled against CPT.
Thank you all for your faithful prayers and actions. We would ask that you continue to keep James, Harmeet, and Norman, the family of Tom Fox who was found murdered earlier this month, and all those still being held or detained in Iraq or anywhere else in the world in your thoughts and prayers today.
Peace,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
__________________________________
http://www.cpt.org/
CPT Statement: CPTers Freed
Doug Pritchard and Carol Rose
23 March 2006
Our hearts are filled with joy today as we heard that Harmeet Singh Sooden, Jim Loney and Norman Kember have been freed safely in Baghdad. Christian Peacemaker Teams rejoices with their families and friends at the expectation of their return to their loved ones and community. Together we have endured uncertainty, hope, fear, grief and now joy during the four months since they were abducted in Baghdad. We rejoice in the return of Harmeet Sooden. He has been willing to put his life on the line to promote justice in Iraq and Palestine as a young man newly committed to active peacemaking. We rejoice in the return of Jim Loney. He has cared for the marginalized and oppressed since childhood, and his gentle, passionate spirit has been an inspiration to people near and far. We rejoice in the return of Norman Kember. He is a faithful man, an elder and mentor to many in his 50 years of peacemaking, a man prepared to pay the cost. We remember with tears Tom Fox, whose body was found in Baghdad on March 9, 2006, after three months of captivity with his fellow peacemakers. We had longed for the day when all four men would be released together. Our gladness today is made bittersweet by the fact that Tom is not alive to join in the celebration. However, we are confident that his spirit is very much present in each reunion. Harmeet, Jim and Norman and Tom were in Iraq to learn of the struggles facing the people in that country. They went, motivated by a passion for justice and peace to live out a nonviolent alternative in a nation wracked by armed conflict. They knew that their only protection was in the power of the love of God and of their Iraqi and international co-workers. We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must end.Today, in the face of this joyful news, our faith compels us to love our enemies even when they have committed acts which caused great hardship to our friends and sorrow to their families. In the spirit of the prophetic nonviolence that motivated Jim, Norman, Harmeet and Tom to go to Iraq, we refuse to yield to a spirit of vengeance. We give thanks for the compassionate God who granted our friends courage and who sustained their spirits over the past months. We pray for strength and courage for ourselves so that, together, we can continue the nonviolent struggle for justice and peace. Throughout these difficult months, we have been heartened by messages of concern for our four colleagues from all over the world. We have been especially moved by the gracious outpouring of support from Muslim brothers and sisters in the Middle East, Europe, and North America. That support continues to come to us day after day. We pray that Christians throughout the world will, in the same spirit, call for justice and for respect for the human rights of the thousands of Iraqis who are being detained illegally by the U.S. and British forces occupying Iraq. During these past months, we have tasted of the pain that has been the daily bread of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Why have our loved ones been taken? Where are they being held? Under what conditions? How are they? Will they be released? When? With Tom’s death, we felt the grief of losing a beloved friend. Today, we rejoice that our friends Harmeet, Jim and Norman have been freed safely. We continue to pray for a swift and joyful homecoming for the many Iraqis and internationals who long to be reunited with their families. We renew our commitment to work for an end to the war and the occupation of Iraq as a way to continue the witness of Tom Fox. We trust in God’s compassionate love to show us the way.
Living through the many emotions of this day, we remain committed to the words of Jim Loney, who wrote:
"With God’s abiding kindness, we will love even our enemies.
With the love of Christ, we will resist all evil.
With God’s unending faithfulness, we will work to build the beloved community."
Addenda
23 March 2006
We have been so overwhelmed and overjoyed to have Jim, Harmeet and Norman freed, that we have not adequately thanked the people involved with freeing them, nor remembered those still in captivity. So we offer these paragraphs as the first of several addenda:
We are grateful to the soldiers who risked their lives to free Jim, Norman and Harmeet. As peacemakers who hold firm to our commitment to nonviolence, we are also deeply grateful that they fired no shots to free our colleagues. We are thankful to all the people who gave of themselves sacrificially to free Jim, Norman, Harmeet and Tom over the last four months, and those supporters who prayed and wept for our brothers in captivity, for their loved ones and for us, their co-workers. We will continue to lift Jill Carroll up in our prayers for her safe return. In addition, we will continue to advocate for the human rights of Iraqi detainees and assert their right to due process in a just legal system.
Doug Pritchard and Carol Rose are co-directors of Christian Peacemaker Teams.
__________________________________
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/14128328.htm
A Christian Peacemaker Team member sets the record straight
Rev. David B. Miller
18 March 2006
I was in the city of Hebron in the West Bank in late November, part of a 10-person delegation sponsored by Christian Peacemaker Teams, when the chilling word came that four CPT members -- Tom Fox, James Loney, Harmeet Singh Sooden and Norman Kember -- had been abducted in Baghdad by a previously unknown group, the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. The world now knows that Fox, a Quaker from Virginia serving with CPT, was executed by his captors.
Cal Thomas decided to write about Fox's tragic death and offer his assessment of Christian Peacemaker Teams in his syndicated column published Wednesday in the Centre Daily Times. The people and motivations Thomas described were alien to what I know of CPT and those who serve with the organization.
Allow me, at this moment of grief, to set the record straight.
Thomas wrote, "That the 'peace activists' believed their brand of Christianity would trump the fanatical Muslims who regarded them as infidels and worthy of death ..."
CPT has functioned in Iraq since 2002, beginning several months prior to the U.S.-led invasion. Its work and motives have been closely watched by its Iraqi neighbors.
Seeing in CPT's approach a hope for the future of Iraqi society, in January 2005 a group of Iraqi Muslims asked if CPT would be willing to meet with them and train them for similar work. This was the beginning of the Muslim Peacemaker Team (MPT), which is seeking by nonviolent means to heal the wounds and mistrust between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish Iraqis.
CPT members and MPT members work together on a number of joint projects, including rebuilding work in the devastated city of Fallujah.
Thomas wrote, "It is also tragic because the likelihood that the presence of Fox and his colleagues would change the attitude or behavior of their captors was zero to none."
CPT members are not blind idealists. They have peered more deeply and honestly into the abyss of evil and understand the cycle of violence better than most people I know. They understand the risks involved in entering a place of violent conflict.
When Margaret Hassan, head of Care International's operations in Iraq for 12 years, was kidnapped and later killed, Fox wrote a statement of conviction that included these words: "If I am ever called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice in love of enemy, I trust that God will give me the grace to do so."
Team members did not go to Iraq to be kidnapped, but to help create, by nonviolent means, conditions of trust and hope that might thwart the cycle of violence and retribution.
CPT's motto, "Reducing Violence by Getting in the Way," has a twofold meaning -- team members "get in the way" by seeking to follow the example of Christ, who followed a path of nonviolent confrontation with evil; they "get in the way" by willingly placing themselves between those who are caught in the spiral of violence.
In Iraq and elsewhere, they have had an impact far beyond their ridiculously small numbers. They have on numerous occasions been protected by their Iraqi neighbors and friends for whom they have been a source of hope.
Thomas wrote, "Peace happens when evil is vanquished."
Many Christian Peacemaker Team members might agree with this statement on the surface. They categorically reject, however, the means Thomas would employ to this end.
Evil is not vanquished by violence. The vision and mission of CPT is grounded in the life and teachings of Jesus. He taught that evil is not overcome with evil, but with good. Those who would follow him in the world are called upon to "love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them." These were not abstractions but a clear, embodied example.
Roots of today's conflict can be traced, in part, to a Christian church that, in the Middle Ages, explained away the clear instructions of its Lord, embraced the sword as a means to end, and embarked on a lethal campaign of crusades that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Jews.
Thomas wrote, "The theology of Christian Peacemaker Teams is as wrong as its politics."
If, for Thomas, commitment to obedience to the life and teachings of Jesus, even to the point of being willing to lay down one's life for another, is bad theology, he thereby judges the first 300 years of Christianity as the persistent practice of "wrong theology." It was not until gaining legal status in the Roman empire that the Christian church en masse abandoned the way of nonviolence.
Thomas appears to espouse a theology that reduces the Sermon on the Mount to nothing more than a foil to lead us to grace, one that explains away Jesus' clear instructions that his followers were called to take up the cross and follow him in the way of self-giving love, and one that reduces love of enemy to a disembodied abstraction.
Thomas wrote, "(E)vil cannot be accommodated. Evil must be defeated if peace on Earth is to exist. That Fox and his colleagues could not, or would not see this, is most tragic of all."
Thomas here serves as a propagandist for the logic of holy war. In Thomas' world view, "the other" is not someone who may carry out evil actions, but the embodiment of evil itself.
Groups (nations) that adhere to such a theology or political philosophy safeguard themselves against the "messiness" of self-criticism and easily project on their "enemy" their own motives and violence. From such a position, they easily justify whatever means they deem necessary to overcome their enemy.
Such a view corrupts the individual or nation who holds it, for it leads to the easy minimizing of such things as hundreds of dead women and children as collateral damage, to destroying a city in order to save it, and to explaining away the systematic torture and abuse of prisoners as the fault of a few bad apples.
The rule of law -- such as the Geneva Conventions -- are set aside as untenable, because the current conflict is unique. The result is a willful blindness and escalation of violence.
The question that founded Christian Peacemaker Teams in the 1980s and continues to compel those who serve with CPT is this: What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war? It is a question that takes them back to their source, not as an abstract religion, but as a way to be risked and followed in the world.
The Rev. David B. Miller is pastor of University Mennonite Church in State College. In November 2005, he traveled to Israel and the West Bank with Christian Peacemaker Teams.
__________________________________
http://www.cpt.org/iraq/response/thomasresponse.htm
A CPTer Responds to Cal Thomas
Kathy Kern
20 March 2006
I am writing as a grieving colleague of Tom Fox in response to Cal Thomas' March 15 column, "Tragedy of a Peace Activist." Thomas, I believe, harbors mistaken assumptions about nonviolent movements, Christian Peacemaker Teams and Tom. 1) He says that we thought our "brand" of Christianity would "trump" fanatical Muslims. We never went into Iraq with that goal. We sought to deter violence where we could, and tell stories about ordinary Iraqi Christians and Muslims that were not making the news here. We released the report of U.S. military abuses of Iraqi detainees three months before the Abu Ghraib photos hit the media. We also worked with Iraqi human rights advocates in the development of a Muslim Peacemaker Teams. 2) Thomas' comment about peace movements rarely mobilizing to oppose dictators is historically inaccurate. Nonviolent movements in Tibet and Burma, the Philippines, Latin America and Soviet Bloc countries have courageously challenged dictatorships. CPTers and their supporters who are U.S. citizens (We have offices in Chicago and Toronto) do take a special interest in what the U.S. government is doing in the rest of the world, because it uses U.S. tax dollars to support oppressive regimes. Like Israeli and South African human rights advocates, we challenge our government when it is committing abuses that democratic societies should not tolerate; we want our government to behave as though the rest of the world is entitled to the same civil rights that U.S. citizens have. 3) Thomas' story about Charles Brown implies that CPT has had a close relationship with the Iraqi government. We intentionally work at a grassroots level on all our projects because we do not wish to be affiliated with or give allegiance to any government besides the Kingdom of God. (And many of us American CPTers were decrying Saddam Hussein’s vile dictatorship back when our government was giving him military aid.) 4) We do not believe that "evil people will be nice to us if we are nice to them." We do believe that Jesus meant what he said when he told his followers, "But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." (Luke 6:35) Christian Peacemaker Teams agrees with Cal Thomas on at least one point: "Evil cannot be accommodated. Evil must be defeated if peace on Earth is to exist." We strive with all our might to fight the Evil that says it is acceptable to bomb and torture people, that some lives are worth more than others, that we can ignore what Jesus said about treating "the least of these" as we would treat Him. In 2004, Tom wrote about confronting Evil like this: "I have visual references and written models of CPTers standing firm against the overt aggression of an army, be it regular or paramilitary. But how do you stand firm against a car-bomber or a kidnapper? Clearly the soldier disconnected from God needs to have me fight. Just as clearly the terrorist disconnected from God needs to have me flee. Both are willing to kill me using different means to achieve he same end--that end being to increase the parasitic power of Satan within God's good creation. "It seems easier somehow to confront anger within my heart than it is to confront fear. But if Jesus and Gandhi are right then I am not to give in to either. I am to stand firm against the kidnapper as I am to stand firm against the soldier. Does that mean I walk into a raging battle to confront the soldiers? Does that mean I walk the streets of Baghdad with a sign saying "American for the Taking?" No to both counts. But if Jesus and Gandhi are right, then I am asked to risk my life, and if I lose it to be as forgiving as they were when murdered by the forces of Satan. "Standing firm is a struggle, but I'm willing to keep working at it."
__________________________________
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20060314-095241-4308r.htm
Tragedy of a peace activist
Cal Thomas15 March 2006
The death of "peace activist" Tom Fox, and the threatened execution of the three others held with him in Iraq, is doubly tragic.
It is tragic whenever an innocent person is murdered. It is also tragic because the likelihood that the presence of Fox and his colleagues would change the attitude or behavior of their captors was zero to none. That the "peace activists" believed their brand of Christianity would trump the fanatical Muslims who regarded them as infidels and worthy of death meant Fox and the others would either be used for propaganda purposes by the enemies of freedom, or made to sacrifice their lives like animals on an ancient altar in the furtherance of the fanatics' dream of a theocratic state. In this instance they were used for both.
The activists' motive was exposed in a statement from Christian Peacemaker Teams, under whose auspices Fox and the others traveled to Iraq. Spokeswoman Jessica Phillips said, "We believe that the root cause of the abduction of our colleagues is the U.S.- and British-led invasion and occupation of Iraq."
Strange thing about these peace movements: they rarely mobilize to oppose the killing, torture and imprisonment practiced by dictators. It is only when their own country attempts to end the oppression that the activists become active against America, not the initiators of evil. Peace, like happiness, is a byproduct, not a goal that can be unilaterally attained. Peace happens when evil is vanquished.
The theology of Christian Peacemaker Teams is as wrong as its politics. The statement about Fox's death claimed he had a "firm opposition to all oppression and the recognition of God in everyone." Perhaps if Christian Peacemaker Teams had gone to Iraq during Saddam Hussein's murderous regime, or to China while Mao Tse-tung was slaughtering millions, or to Moscow while Josef Stalin practiced genocide on his people, or to any number of other capitals of carnage, they might be taken more seriously, though under those regimes they might have disappeared much quicker. Was God "in" these mass murderers, or was it Lucifer?
A far more credible and compelling insight about peace activism and its consequences comes from Charles M. Brown, who was 19 when he fought in Operation Desert Storm, a conflict that repelled Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. When Mr. Brown returned home, he worked in homeless shelters operated by liberal Catholic Worker activists and gravitated toward their position against U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq for failing to comply with its promises to cease hostilities.
Mr. Brown says he traveled to Iraq in 1998 to see the effects of sanctions. He says he made two speaking tours of college campuses to denounce sanctions. When he tried to return to Iraq with a Chicago group called "Voices in the Wilderness," Mr. Brown says he was told by Iraqi government officials he could not speak about Saddam's "horrendous human-rights record, [his] involvement with weapons of mass destruction [or] the dictatorial nature of the regime. We were allowed to speak only of one thing: the deprivations suffered by ordinary Iraqis under the sanctions regime."
Mr. Brown says he realized this was pure Ba'ath Party propaganda: "As I came to see this as a complicity and collaboration with one of the most abusive dictatorships in the world, I tried to get the rest of my group to acknowledge that our close relationship with the regime damaged our credibility. I failed to persuade them, so I quit." His "Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist," published in the summer 2003 issue of Middle East Quarterly, is sober reading for people who believe the United States is the problem and that evil people will be nice to us if we are nice to them.
It is too bad Tom Fox and his three colleagues did not have an epiphany similar to that of Charles Brown.
Peace "activism" may make its practitioners feel good, or validate their belief they are doing the will of God. But evil cannot be accommodated. Evil must be defeated if peace on Earth is to exist. That Fox and his colleagues could not, or would not see this, is most tragic of all. Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.
__________________________________
Tuesday, March 14
MCC Palestine Prayer Request - 14 March 2006
MCC Palestine Prayer Request
14 March 2006
Dear Friends,
As many of you already know, the body of Tom Fox was found in Baghdad late last week. Tom was one of four Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) members abducted last November.
Tom Fox, age 54, from Clearbrook, Virginia, was a dedicated father of two children. For the past two years, Mr. Fox had worked with CPT in partnership with Iraqi human rights organizations to promote peace. Mr. Fox had been faithful in the observance of Quaker practice for 22 years. While in Iraq, he sought a more complete understanding of Islamic cultural richness. He was committed to telling the truth to U.S. citizens about the horrors of war and its effects on ordinary Iraqi civilians and families as a result of U.S. policies and practices. Mr. Fox was an accomplished musician. He played the bass clarinet and the recorder and loved to cook. He has also worked as a professional grocer. Mr. Fox devoted much of his time to working with children. He has served as an adult leader of youth programs and worked at a Quaker camp for youth. He facilitated young people's participation in opposing war and violence. Mr. Fox was a quiet and peaceful man, respectful of everyone, who believed that "there is that of God in every person" which is why work for peace was so important to him.
Below is a statement by CPT as well as CPT Iraq's statement of conviction and Tom's reflection "Why are we here?" For more information, please visit http://www.cpt.org/
Please pray for the family of Tom Fox, for James, Harmeet, and Norman, who are still being held in Iraq, and for all of those suffering as a result of occupation.
Peace,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee - Palestine
___________________________________
http://www.cpt.org/iraq/response/06-10-03statement.htm
CPT Release: We Mourn the Loss of Tom Fox
10 March 2006
In grief we tremble before God who wraps us with compassion. The death of our beloved colleague and friend pierces us with pain. Tom Fox’s body was found in Baghdad yesterday.
Christian Peacemaker Teams extends our deep and heartfelt condolences to the family and community of Tom Fox, with whom we have traveled so closely in these days of crisis.
We mourn the loss of Tom Fox who combined a lightness of spirit, a firm opposition to all oppression, and the recognition of God in everyone.
We renew our plea for the safe release of Harmeet Sooden, Jim Loney and Norman Kember. Each of our teammates has responded to Jesus’ prophetic call to live out a nonviolent alternative to the cycle of violence and revenge.
In response to Tom’s passing, we ask that everyone set aside inclinations to vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done. In Tom’s own words: "We reject violence to punish anyone. We ask that there be no retaliation on relatives or property. We forgive those who consider us their enemies. We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening nonviolently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation.”
Even as we grieve the loss of our beloved colleague, we stand in the light of his strong witness to the power of love and the courage of nonviolence. That light reveals the way out of fear and grief and war.
Through these days of crisis, Christian Peacemaker Teams has been surrounded and upheld by a great outpouring of compassion: messages of support, acts of mercy, prayers, and public actions offered by the most senior religious councils and by school children, by political leaders and by those organizing for justice and human rights, by friends in distant nations and by strangers near at hand. These words and actions sustain us. While one of our teammates is lost to us, the strength of this outpouring is not lost to God’s movement for just peace among all peoples.
At the forefront of that support are strong and courageous actions from Muslim brothers and sisters throughout the world for which we are profoundly grateful. Their graciousness inspires us to continue working for the day when Christians speak up as boldly for the human rights of thousands Iraqis still detained illegally by the United States and United Kingdom.
Such an outpouring of action for justice and peace would be a fitting memorial for Tom. Let us all join our voices on behalf of those who continue to suffer under occupation, whose loved ones have been killed or are missing. In so doing, we may hasten the day when both those who are wrongly detained and those who bear arms will return safely to their homes. In such a peace we will find solace for our grief.
Despite the tragedy of this day, we remain committed to put into practice these words of Jim Loney: “With the waging of war, we will not comply. With the help of God’s grace, we will struggle for justice. With God’s abiding kindness, we will love even our enemies.” We continue in hope for Jim, Harmeet and Norman’s safe return home safe.
Contact: Dr. Doug Pritchard, CPT Co-Director 416-423-5525 (Canada) and Rev. Carol Rose, CPT Co-Director, Kryss Chupp, 773-277-0253 (USA)
___________________________________
http://www.cpt.org/iraq/response/iraq_team_statement_of_conviction.htm
CPT in Iraq Statement of Conviction
March 2005
We, members of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in Iraq, are aware of the many risks both Iraqis and internationals currently face. However, we are convinced at this time that the risks, while significant, do not outweigh our purpose in remaining.
Many Iraqi friends and human rights workers have welcomed us as a non-violent, independent presence. During the previous year they asked us to tell their stories, since they could not easily be heard, nor could most flee to a safer country. We continue to act as a resource to connect citizens of Iraq with human rights organizations, both local and international, as well as accompanying them as they interact with multinational military personnel and Iraqi provisional government officials.
As a peacemaking team we need to cross boundaries, help soldiers and other armed actors be humane, and invite them to refuse unjust orders. We need to help preserve what is human in all of us and so offer glimpses of hope in a dark time.
We unequivocally reject kidnapping and hostage-taking. In such an event, CPT will attempt to communicate with the hostage-takers or their sponsors and work against journalists' inclination to vilify and demonize the offenders. We will try to understand the motives for these actions, and to articulate them, while maintaining a firm stance that such actions are wrong. If appropriate, CPT will work with diplomatic officials from our representative governments to avoid a violent outcome.
We reject the use of violent force to save our lives should we be kidnapped, held hostage, or caught in the middle of a violent conflict situation. We also reject violence to punish anyone who harms us. We ask for equal justice in the arrest and trial of anyone, soldier or civilian, who commits an act of violence, and we ask that there be no retaliation on their relatives or property. We forgive those who consider us their enemies. Therefore, any penalty should be in the spirit of restorative justice, rather than in the form of violent retribution.
We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening non-violently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation.
(Signed)
Tom Fox, Springfield, VA
(plus other members of the CPT Iraq team)
___________________________________
http://www.cpt.org/archives/2005/dec05/0007.html
CPTnet
2 December 2005
IRAQ: "Why are we here?"
Most recent reflection by Tom Fox,
[Note: The following reflection was written by Tom Fox the day before he was
abducted.]
The Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) Iraq team went through a discernment
process, seeking to identify aspects of our work here in Iraq that are
compelling enough to continue the project and comparing them with the costs
(financial, psychological, physical) that are also aspects of the project.
It was a healthy exercise, but it led me to a somewhat larger question: Why
are we here?
If I understand the message of God, his response to that question is that we
are to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God. Again, if I
understand the message of God, how we take part in the creation of this
realm is to love God with all our heart, our mind and our strength and to
love our neighbors and enemies as we love God and ourselves. In its
essential form, different aspects of love bring about the creation of the
realm.
I have read that the word in the Greek Bible that is translated as "love" is
the word "agape." Again, I have read that this word is best expressed as a
profound respect for all human beings simply for the fact that they are all
God's children. I would state that idea in a somewhat different way, as
"never thinking or doing anything that would dehumanize one of my fellow
human beings."
As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the
operative means of relating to each other. U.S. forces in their quest to
hunt down and kill "terrorists" are, as a result of this dehumanizing word,
not only killing "terrorists," but also killing innocent Iraqis: men, women
and children in the various towns and villages.
It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I
dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its
way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically,
structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or
her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process
that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.
"Why are we here?" We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization
that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by
oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop
people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no
matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.
___________________________________
14 March 2006
Dear Friends,
As many of you already know, the body of Tom Fox was found in Baghdad late last week. Tom was one of four Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) members abducted last November.
Tom Fox, age 54, from Clearbrook, Virginia, was a dedicated father of two children. For the past two years, Mr. Fox had worked with CPT in partnership with Iraqi human rights organizations to promote peace. Mr. Fox had been faithful in the observance of Quaker practice for 22 years. While in Iraq, he sought a more complete understanding of Islamic cultural richness. He was committed to telling the truth to U.S. citizens about the horrors of war and its effects on ordinary Iraqi civilians and families as a result of U.S. policies and practices. Mr. Fox was an accomplished musician. He played the bass clarinet and the recorder and loved to cook. He has also worked as a professional grocer. Mr. Fox devoted much of his time to working with children. He has served as an adult leader of youth programs and worked at a Quaker camp for youth. He facilitated young people's participation in opposing war and violence. Mr. Fox was a quiet and peaceful man, respectful of everyone, who believed that "there is that of God in every person" which is why work for peace was so important to him.
Below is a statement by CPT as well as CPT Iraq's statement of conviction and Tom's reflection "Why are we here?" For more information, please visit http://www.cpt.org/
Please pray for the family of Tom Fox, for James, Harmeet, and Norman, who are still being held in Iraq, and for all of those suffering as a result of occupation.
Peace,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee - Palestine
___________________________________
http://www.cpt.org/iraq/response/06-10-03statement.htm
CPT Release: We Mourn the Loss of Tom Fox
10 March 2006
In grief we tremble before God who wraps us with compassion. The death of our beloved colleague and friend pierces us with pain. Tom Fox’s body was found in Baghdad yesterday.
Christian Peacemaker Teams extends our deep and heartfelt condolences to the family and community of Tom Fox, with whom we have traveled so closely in these days of crisis.
We mourn the loss of Tom Fox who combined a lightness of spirit, a firm opposition to all oppression, and the recognition of God in everyone.
We renew our plea for the safe release of Harmeet Sooden, Jim Loney and Norman Kember. Each of our teammates has responded to Jesus’ prophetic call to live out a nonviolent alternative to the cycle of violence and revenge.
In response to Tom’s passing, we ask that everyone set aside inclinations to vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done. In Tom’s own words: "We reject violence to punish anyone. We ask that there be no retaliation on relatives or property. We forgive those who consider us their enemies. We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening nonviolently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation.”
Even as we grieve the loss of our beloved colleague, we stand in the light of his strong witness to the power of love and the courage of nonviolence. That light reveals the way out of fear and grief and war.
Through these days of crisis, Christian Peacemaker Teams has been surrounded and upheld by a great outpouring of compassion: messages of support, acts of mercy, prayers, and public actions offered by the most senior religious councils and by school children, by political leaders and by those organizing for justice and human rights, by friends in distant nations and by strangers near at hand. These words and actions sustain us. While one of our teammates is lost to us, the strength of this outpouring is not lost to God’s movement for just peace among all peoples.
At the forefront of that support are strong and courageous actions from Muslim brothers and sisters throughout the world for which we are profoundly grateful. Their graciousness inspires us to continue working for the day when Christians speak up as boldly for the human rights of thousands Iraqis still detained illegally by the United States and United Kingdom.
Such an outpouring of action for justice and peace would be a fitting memorial for Tom. Let us all join our voices on behalf of those who continue to suffer under occupation, whose loved ones have been killed or are missing. In so doing, we may hasten the day when both those who are wrongly detained and those who bear arms will return safely to their homes. In such a peace we will find solace for our grief.
Despite the tragedy of this day, we remain committed to put into practice these words of Jim Loney: “With the waging of war, we will not comply. With the help of God’s grace, we will struggle for justice. With God’s abiding kindness, we will love even our enemies.” We continue in hope for Jim, Harmeet and Norman’s safe return home safe.
Contact: Dr. Doug Pritchard, CPT Co-Director 416-423-5525 (Canada) and Rev. Carol Rose, CPT Co-Director, Kryss Chupp, 773-277-0253 (USA)
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http://www.cpt.org/iraq/response/iraq_team_statement_of_conviction.htm
CPT in Iraq Statement of Conviction
March 2005
We, members of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in Iraq, are aware of the many risks both Iraqis and internationals currently face. However, we are convinced at this time that the risks, while significant, do not outweigh our purpose in remaining.
Many Iraqi friends and human rights workers have welcomed us as a non-violent, independent presence. During the previous year they asked us to tell their stories, since they could not easily be heard, nor could most flee to a safer country. We continue to act as a resource to connect citizens of Iraq with human rights organizations, both local and international, as well as accompanying them as they interact with multinational military personnel and Iraqi provisional government officials.
As a peacemaking team we need to cross boundaries, help soldiers and other armed actors be humane, and invite them to refuse unjust orders. We need to help preserve what is human in all of us and so offer glimpses of hope in a dark time.
We unequivocally reject kidnapping and hostage-taking. In such an event, CPT will attempt to communicate with the hostage-takers or their sponsors and work against journalists' inclination to vilify and demonize the offenders. We will try to understand the motives for these actions, and to articulate them, while maintaining a firm stance that such actions are wrong. If appropriate, CPT will work with diplomatic officials from our representative governments to avoid a violent outcome.
We reject the use of violent force to save our lives should we be kidnapped, held hostage, or caught in the middle of a violent conflict situation. We also reject violence to punish anyone who harms us. We ask for equal justice in the arrest and trial of anyone, soldier or civilian, who commits an act of violence, and we ask that there be no retaliation on their relatives or property. We forgive those who consider us their enemies. Therefore, any penalty should be in the spirit of restorative justice, rather than in the form of violent retribution.
We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening non-violently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation.
(Signed)
Tom Fox, Springfield, VA
(plus other members of the CPT Iraq team)
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http://www.cpt.org/archives/2005/dec05/0007.html
CPTnet
2 December 2005
IRAQ: "Why are we here?"
Most recent reflection by Tom Fox,
[Note: The following reflection was written by Tom Fox the day before he was
abducted.]
The Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) Iraq team went through a discernment
process, seeking to identify aspects of our work here in Iraq that are
compelling enough to continue the project and comparing them with the costs
(financial, psychological, physical) that are also aspects of the project.
It was a healthy exercise, but it led me to a somewhat larger question: Why
are we here?
If I understand the message of God, his response to that question is that we
are to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God. Again, if I
understand the message of God, how we take part in the creation of this
realm is to love God with all our heart, our mind and our strength and to
love our neighbors and enemies as we love God and ourselves. In its
essential form, different aspects of love bring about the creation of the
realm.
I have read that the word in the Greek Bible that is translated as "love" is
the word "agape." Again, I have read that this word is best expressed as a
profound respect for all human beings simply for the fact that they are all
God's children. I would state that idea in a somewhat different way, as
"never thinking or doing anything that would dehumanize one of my fellow
human beings."
As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the
operative means of relating to each other. U.S. forces in their quest to
hunt down and kill "terrorists" are, as a result of this dehumanizing word,
not only killing "terrorists," but also killing innocent Iraqis: men, women
and children in the various towns and villages.
It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I
dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its
way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically,
structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or
her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process
that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.
"Why are we here?" We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization
that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by
oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop
people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no
matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.
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