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In Washington, D.C. on June 10-11, 2007, 40 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem will be the subject of teach-ins, lobbying, and demonstrations. Under the same banner, “The World Says NO To Israeli Occupation”, commemorative actions will be taking place around the world.
On 21 March 2007, in an introduction to an article by Uri Avnery, Rabbi Michael Lerner denounced the event and U.S. organisers – US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and United for Peace and Justice – for uniting around a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He revealed that although his group, Tikkun, belongs to both US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and UFPJ, he has not joined Jewish Voice for Peace (whilst not an organiser of the June 10-11 events invites ‘all Jews to march in their contingent“) because it “keeps alive” the option of a one-state solution, an idea that he characterises as a call for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Now, don’t get us wrong. We are not pro-states at all, and at Tikkun we are working for a 21st century in which nation states are supplanted by regional and global arrangements and nationalism and nationalist wars disappear.
I insist on getting Lerner right; to the devil with his lame equivocation. He is venomously pro-state when it comes to Israel, for as many centuries as the Jewish people desire one “for security’s sake.” Demographic manoeuvring to secure the state’s future may violate international law and mock humanitarian ideals but Zionists are not oppressors; they are defenders of World Jewry from an ever present danger.
Lerner lamented that Jewish groups opposed to the occupation are fractured, blaming disunity on the one-stater demons in their midst. Unity around what, he asked, the dissolution of the state of Israel? Never! How does he reconcile “working for a 21st century in which nation states are supplanted by regional and global arrangements and nationalism and nationalist wars disappear” with the absolute censorship of ideas which promote exactly that concept?
But as long as the world does have states, we think the Jewish people have one of the better cases in the history of the modern world for having the protections that a state entails.
Lerner claims to believe that the roots of war are nationalistic. Yet in Israel’s case, rather than acting as a protagonist, only the state can protect Jews from global enemies and extinction. The antithesis of repentance is the qualification of egregious actions with excuse making – when they stop I will – and Lerner’s self-serving reasoning, couched in religious terms, is an insult to those who practice what he preaches.
That’s one reason why we are strongly critical of Israeli policy, but not in favor of destroying or politely eliminating a Jewish state. But our other reasons for opposing a one-state solution have to do with the well-being of the Palestinian people.
Michael Lerner is a blatant bigot who champions Zionism over the basic human rights of others; his pretentious defence of Israel’s apartheid of Palestinians, for their well-being, is a tragic statement on the bearings of progressive pols in America. Lerner concluded by asking readers to sign the ad, “An Ethical Way to End the War in Iraq”, and to donate for publication.
I. The War is Wrong: Repentance Is Necessary
It is not a sign of weakness to confess wrong-doing. We believe that it is only the spiritually strong who are able to do this. Such a confession will go far to restore the stature of America as a truly moral nation. And in repenting on behalf of all Americans, including those who are not religious, the president (or Congress) should acknowledge that this entire society has mistakenly adhered to the view that safety and security can be achieved through domination or control of others, but that a better path to safety and security is to treat others with generosity, kindness and genuine concern for their well being.
The Rabbi should change Iraq to Palestine but he would need to get in touch with a little virtue called humility first.
On 30 April, US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and UFPJ responded to his attack. Apparently Rabbi Lerner was sent the points of unity in December ’06 but declined to provide feedback at that time.
According to an e-mail that Jewish Voice for Peace sent to subscribers recently, “JVP Deeply Appreciates Rabbi Lerner’s Apology”, Lerner issued an “apology” on 10 May for “suggesting that this was the intention of the organizers of the June 10 event in Washington, D.C.” He reiterated that he will not endorse an event that coddles those who “delegitimise” the state of Israel. JVP is perplexed by Lerner’s negative attention and do him a disservice by elevating his thinly veiled threat to the status of an apology.
 Poster inspires racist counter-ads |
ETO and UFPJ, with the generous assistance of Cultures of Resistance, posted 46×60 posters of the graphic on the right in 20 downtown D.C. Metro stations. The full version can be viewed here. It lists the same points of unity sent to and ignored by Michael Lerner last December.
*An end to U.S. military, economic, diplomatic and corporate support for Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
*A new U.S. policy that supports a just peace between Palestinians and Israelis based on equality, human rights and international law, and the full implementation of all relevant United Nations resolutions.
Pro-Israel group fights back with ads
StandWithUs counters anti-Israel poster campaign on Washington DC subway with its own posters
By Yaakov Lappin, YNet, 15 May 2007
The subway system in America’s capital city is set to be the scene of a poster campaign war between a pro-Palestinian organization seeking to harm Israel’s image and a pro-Israel group which has decided to fight back. Last month, the ‘US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation’ (ETO) placed 20 poster ads showing “an imposing tank pointing its main firing turret at a child with a schoolbag walking along a dirt road,” the Canadian Jewish News (CJN) reported.
“‘Imagine if this were your child’s path to school. Palestinians don’t have to imagine,’ the poster states, before continuing to call for an end to US aid for ‘Israel’s brutal military occupation” paid for by US taxpayers like you,'” the report added.
But a response to the anti-Israel campaign was not long in coming, after the Los Angeles-based StandWithUs (SWU) decided to launch its own pro-Israel poster ads.
The YNet report doesn’t mention this ad, which according to ETO, is sponsored by Amcha and Washington Rabbis for Israel. It declares that, “They target Israel, because Israel shares America’s values -” and “By supporting Israel…you are helping defend the cause of freedom” because “Israel is the front line of the free world.”
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The “counter ads” do not challenge the brutalities faced daily by Palestinian children enduring endless occupation depicted in the ETO/UFPJ ad (not some ‘grand atrocity’ – the ‘normal’). Rather, they declare that all Palestinian children are terrorists who deserve to be targeted by the IOF.
“Like most Americans and most people with Jewishness in their family, I didn’t have a real understanding of what was going on over there. I was a little bit scared of Arabs and thought they were these mindless, soulless terrorists who don’t care about life or send their children to do a bombing. The more I learned the more I thought, Wow, this goes against everything I was ever taught…
The kids all want to go to university. They all want to study. They all want to be rid of the occupation. That’s any Palestinian’s hope. They just want to have an opportunity. That’s why they embrace a project like this it’s giving them a way to express themselves and say, ‘Look, I’m here. We’re trying to live.'”
– Matthew Cassel
“Teach the Children to Shoot”
In April this year, three children from the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank toured several U.S. cities. Picture Balata cofounder, Matthew Cassel, is a 25-year-old photographer from Chicago who has been travelling to and working in the Occupied Territories since 2003. In 2005, after being asked repeatedly, “What’s it like to be a Palestinian, what do they feel?” by people viewing his gallery exhibit in America, he thought who better to answer the questions than Palestinians? At least half of Balata’s 22,000 residents are under the age of 18, “and apart from school and a couple community centers, ‘there’s nothing for them,'” Cassel told Stacey Dugan for the Chicago Reader, “‘They’re just running around the street, throwing stones at each other, playing soccer, whatever.'”
When Cassel returned to the Occupied Territories last July, he moved in with Picture Balata cofounder, 29-year-old Mohammed Farraj, who is a founding member of the Balata Film Collective, which enables young Palestinians to produce short documentaries in English, German and Arabic that are uploaded to the Internet. Together they taught “the basics of photojournalism to neighborhood teens who shared a single digital point-and-shoot camera.”
Picture Balata isn’t an official nonprofit, so the group relies almost exclusively on donations from individuals. (Travel expenses are usually covered by honoraria from universities and galleries.) So far Cassel and Farraj have raised enough money to provide six digital cameras, and they may soon be able to put a computer in each kid’s home, but they still don’t have a central meeting place.
Cassel says his goal now is to enable Palestinians to sustain Picture Balata by themselves. He helped lay the groundwork last summer, bringing in professional Palestinian journalists, filmmakers, and photographers to lead workshops. For kids who have dreams of pursuing careers at a place like Al Jazeera, he says, those sorts of role models are crucial. He’d like to start a media school for Palestinians someday, but in the meantime he’s setting up college funds so the students in Balata can further their education in nearby Nablus.
Cassel informed newsletter subscribers on 30 April that the tour exhibit had “received an incredible amount of positive feedback from all kinds of people who came out to see the photography and hear Hadil, Taha and Sabreen speak about their lives.” However, Shai Bronshtein, writing for the Harvard Crimson, was not so inclined. He declared that the exhibit distorted “the facts through reprehensible propaganda which will never produce peace and progress.” The Crimson refused to publish Picture Balata’s response to the article claiming “last-minute space constraints.” (It was eventually published on 4 May) Bronshtein called the children liars who’d been inculcated with untruths; they didn’t live in a camp – Balata is a 60-year old community with “shops, schools, and many other amenities which make this area a town.” Israel’s apologists build careers on devising semantic tricks for denying refugee status to Palestinians. They hone their skills on privileged perches writing regular columns in ivy league papers. Their views are challenged on the back pages when attention has moved on to other news.
He called his hit piece, “Politicizing the Playground“.
It most certainly is politicised, and Mr. Bronshtein and his colleagues benefit exponentially.