In honor of Israeli Apartheid Week

March 1-7 marks the 6th annual Israel Apartheid Week. It's a week recognized across the globe to talk about the issues surrounding the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, specifically the one of apartheid. There is a special emphasis on the BDS movement (boycotts, divestments, and sanctions) which has spawned from a 2005 call from Palestinian civil society to begin a nonviolent BDS movement to call Israel to accountability for it's violation of human rights against the Palestinian people.

Here is a great video from Al Jazeera English on the topic of Israel apartheid. There three guests are an Israel against BDS, an Israel for BDS, and a Palestinian organizer of Israeli Apartheid Week. Enjoy.

Scary Christian Zionists

This rhetoric is sad, sick, and twisted; but I still think it is worth knowing about. I haven't written too much about Christian Zionism on this blog. So by way of introduction, Christian Zionism is "a belief among some Christians that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is in accordance with Biblical prophecy (wikipedia).

John Hagee, the founder and pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, TX, is the head of a Christian Zionist organization called Christian United for Israel (CUFI).


CUFI is pretty scary and makes the connection between biblical prophecies and the modern nation state of Israel. I came across Eileen Flemming's blog We are Wide Awake which had an interesting report from CUFI's 2007 annual conference which was held in Florida.

[Miami, Fl. November 6, 2007] The James L. Knight Center was packed to the rafters with John Hagee's tribe of Christian Zionists and south Florida's right wing Jewish community. Zion's Fire Banners, dancers, singers and a band whipped the crowd into a frenzy of spinning, jumping, clapping, twirling and moved the rotund Hagee to link arms with men in skull caps and dance the Hora-not to Hava Nagila, but to repeated choruses of:

Shout for joy and victory! Bat Yerushalyim

From one end of the stage to the other, the largest American and Israeli flags I have ever seen were draped side by side and by the end of the evening I imagined every star on the red-white-and blue had morphed into the Star of David.

Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez pointed to the flags and exclaimed: "Isn't that beautiful up there together? I get goose bumps! All nations have been created by an act of man, except Israel was created by an act of God."



Rabbi Freedman delivered the Invocation, "We are all friends of the only democracy in the Middle East."

I immediately recalled what American Israeli, Jeff Halper, the Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions told me during one of my five journeys to Jerusalem:

"Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control.”

Rabbi Freedman continued on, "From Mount Sinai to Mount Zion to Mount Vernon we are all Zionists! Israel is second to America in how many immigrants we have absorbed."

Immigrant absorption in Israel comes with perks and is called Aliyah, ["go up"] and is a fundamental concept of Zionism enshrined in Israel's Law of Return, which permits any Jew from any where in the world the legal right to government assisted immigration and settlement in Israel, automatic Israeli citizenship, unemployment benefits, free medical, and subsidized housing. Young adult immigrants receive free room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months and 100 percent of their tuition is paid by the government.

Hagee's mastery of manipulating the fears of his audience garnered him a standing ovation as the shofars blew, "Israel was re-born by an act of God and Israel lives! The Jews have suffered great persecution and survived slavery and the Final Solution! God Jehovah will bury Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran! The flag of Israel will fly over the undivided Jerusalem and be the praise of all the earth! It's 1938 again and the new Hitler is Ahmadinejad! Radical Islamisicts are threatening to develop nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel and then the USA! But we are indivisible and we are both here forever!"

Hold your children close to you tonight, give them a kiss, and tell them that loving people is the most important thing, and tell them that nationalism is evil. ;)

Helicopter, Bombs, and Occupation: Paid for by U.S. Taxpayers

It's pretty well known and undisputed that the United States provides lots of money to Israel. In the 2011FY, the United States has budgeted to give $3 billion in military aid to Israel. This budget was part of a 1997 agreement to provide 30$ billion in military aid to Israel over a span of 10 years.

Josh Ruebner, of US Campaign to End the Occupation, provides some critical analysis on this expenditure of money by the U.S. Government:

If U.S. weapons were going to Israel for a good purpose, then perhaps a coherent guns versus butter debate would be appropriate. However, Israel repeatedly misuses U.S. weapons to commit grave human rights abuses against Palestinians who are forced to live under its illegal 42-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

During the Bush Administration, Israel killed at least 3,107 innocent Palestinian civilians, according to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. Israel also injured thousands more innocent Palestinians and destroyed billions of dollars of Palestinian civilian infrastructure including homes, schools, factories, government buildings, and even Palestine's only airport. The severity and scale of this killing and destruction were made possible by hi-tech U.S. weapons provided to Israel at taxpayer expense.

And during Obama's first year in office, Israel continued to misuse its stock of U.S. weapons to entrench its apartheid policies toward Palestinians by maintaining its illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip -- collectively punishing its 1.5 million Palestinian residents by severely restricting the flow of humanitarian relief -- and building illegal Israeli-only colonies on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

So to personalize this a bit, I'll bring you back At-Tuwani, in occupied Palestine. Just yesterday, I was sitting on a hillside with a shepherd when we saw a large gathering of Israeli soldiers on an adjacent hill. There were close to 15 soldiers which is large gathering, especially when they seem to be sitting on a hill without a purpose. The shepherd began to speculate that the soldiers were going to conduct a training exercise. Sure enough, after about 20 minutes, the soldiers put a big orange triangle (similar to what you see behind a semi-truck that has pulled off to the side of the road) on the apex of the hill. A growing buzz came from the southwest and we saw two large helicopters coming towards us.

They slowed as they reached the hillside, hovering 10 meters above the ground and remaining perfectly still. It was a bit too far away for me to see well, but the shepherd told me there were soldiers repelling down and also soldiers getting pulled back up in the choppers.

After another round of choppers came and performed the same maneuver, the choppers left the scene, probably to go wreck sound and visual havoc on another peaceful area in rural Palestine.

The United States is providing Israel with $30 billion over a 10-year span to buy stuff like this, and the United States is providing helicopters to Israel so they can do stuff like this (and far worse stuff, see Operation Cast Lead - Winter 2008/2009 where hundreds of children were killed & see the Occupation at large).

After the helicopters left, the shepherd I was with asked me an unassuming question, seemingly without a motive. "Sammy, where does Israel get those helicopters from?"

"Well, actually, they get them from us in America."

The shepherd laughs and smirks, "yeah I know, Sam. I just wanted to see if you knew."

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In order to provide a little perspective on what $30 million could provide (other than lots of freaking helicopters and other war toys), I will point you to some data from the U.S. Campaign's website Aid to Israel.

The $3 billion that is earmarked for the Israeli military in 2011 could have:

• Provided more than 364,000 low-income households with affordable housing vouchers OR
• Retrained 498,000 workers for green jobs OR
• Provided early reading programs to 887,000 at-risk students OR
• Provided access to primary health care services for more than 24 million uninsured Americans.

To be even more regionally specific, from 2009-2018 Sacramento city taxpayers will pay $79,518,669.79 to the Israeli military. Yes, that is nearly 80 million dollars. This money could have been spent instead to:

• Provide 966 households per year w/affordable housing grants OR
• Provide 1,320 job seekers per year w/green jobs training OR
• Provide 2,351 children per year w/early reading education OR
• Provide 64,398 people per year w/primary health care.

Over the same span of time, San Diego city taxpayers will put out $283,363,861.67 in military aid to Israel. This money could have been spent instead to:

• Provide 3,441 households per year w/affordable housing grants OR
• Provide 4,704 job seekers per year w/green jobs training OR
• Provide 8,378 children per year w/early reading education OR
• Provide 229,482 people per year w/primary health care.

See the Aid to Israel map to search by your own state, city, congressional district, or county. And also, if after reading this you say, but yeah the United States has the right to give money to Israel (I mean it is the only democracy in the middle east, right?), I mean, it's America's prerogative...think again.

Congress passed the Arms Export Control Act in 1976, Ruebner explains that this act:

strictly limits foreign countries from employing U.S. weapons for any purpose other than "internal security" or "legitimate self-defense." Building apartheid walls and colonies to maintain a foreign military occupation, enforcing a medieval blockade, and killing and injuring innocent civilians by the thousands certainly cannot be considered legitimate and is self-evidently not for domestic security.

The Arms Export Control Act also states that consideration must be given to whether the arms provided could "increase the possibility of outbreak or escalation of conflict." I assure you that funding the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands increases the possibility of escalating the conflict, in fact, that is putting it lightly. The continuation of the occupation is a 100% money-back guarantee that the middle east will be a royal mess and lots of people's lives will be a living hell.

Click here to tell Congress that you oppose this expenditure of money.

Ongoing collusion of soldiers-settlers to abuse Palestinian shepherds

Happened a couple weeks ago, but we are getting the video out now. Hope you are appalled.

AT-TUWANI -- On Friday afternoon, 19 February, 2010, Israeli settlers, soldiers and police detained for two hours a 14-year-old boy from the Palestinian village of Saadet Tha'lah, located near the Israeli settlement* of Karmel in the South Hebron Hills. Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has published a six-minute video documenting the incident in detail (see link below).

The boy had been alone with his family's flock in their regular grazing area, just above Umm Zeituna Valley, on the south side of the large Israeli dairy belonging to the Israeli settlement of Ma'on.

When CPTers** arrived, Israeli occupation authorities were also holding two of the boy's goats, which especially worried him because one goat was pregnant and could miscarry. Another shepherd from the nearby village of Tuba told the CPTers that he had been in the area and heard the boy's shouts of panic as the Israelis grabbed him.

The boy reported seeing two Israeli settlers outside the dairy barns, who summoned and directed the soldiers to go after him. The soldiers walked downhill from the dairy barns, grabbed his two goats, and told him, “If you want your goats back, you better come here.” The boy complied. The other shepherd then reported seeing both a settler and a soldier together grab the boy and physically restrain him. The boy also said he had been struck violently.

Israeli police held the boy and his two goats for about two hours, telling CPT that he had criminally trespassed on Ma'on settlement land. The boy reported having no idea the land was not open to everyone. The police refused to produce a map defining which land was private, and after two hours released him and his goats.

View the six-minute documentary here:

*According to the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and numerous United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are illegal. Most settlement outposts are considered illegal under Israeli law.

**Together based in At-Tuwani Village, CPT and Operation Dove maintain a continuous international witness in the South Hebron Hills.

Another claim that Palestinian Nonviolent Resistance is Ignored

Edith Garwood at Amnesty International asks the world (read Bono, Kristof, and Obama) to recognize Palestinian NV resistance. Read the full article, see an excerpt here:

The presumption that the Palestinian struggle is mainly violent is disturbing. And the dismissal of the people who have sacrificed time, money and even their lives to fight injustice with nonviolence is callous.
...
Navigating children through militarized checkpoints, attempting to harvest crops while being attacked by Israeli settlers and living in a tent near the home recently taken over by settlers are all forms of nonviolence resistance or as the Palestinians call it "sumoud" or "steadfastness".

Bono, Kristof and President Obama should not discount the millions of Palestinians who are struggling against daily obstacles peacefully. Nonviolence resistance in addition to protests includes blogging, boycotts, and creating youtube videos.

It would benefit Bono, Kristof and President Obama to take the time to learn about Palestinian history and meet some of the living Palestinian and Israeli Gandhi's, MLK's and Aung San Suu Kyi's active today.

Update on Khalil Ibrahim

Khalil was arrested on February 23.

On February 24, we heard that Khalil had formally been charged with assaulting a soldier. A ridiculous charge. Khalil was certainly angry as he was being arrested, but given that he had been chased off his family's grazing land by the Israeli army and that the soldiers refused to provide ANY semblance of a reason for his arrest, and the fact that a soldier headbutted his brother, and given that he was being grabbed by the throat as he was being arrested....

...well given all that, I think he handled himself quite well. And no, he did not assault a soldier.

On February 25, my colleague and I went to Kiryat Arba Police Station to present the video documentation and to give our testimony of the incident. A big thanks to an Israeli lawyer to helped us out pro-bono to set this up. I watched the videotape with a police officer, who seemed to believe that Khalil must have hit the soldier before I started videotaping (this is an odd claim, because the tape begins with the soldiers about 300 meters away from the shepherds, and the soldiers are clearly chasing the shepherds...so unless Khalil was Stretch Armstrong or Inspector Gadget, then he wouldn't be able to assault a soldiers from 300 meters away). I did my best to narrate the tape as it was going down, to provide the officer with some context. As background, we also gave the video to a lawyer on the 24th, so that she could watch the tape before we took it to the Police. Why did we do this? Well, it's not unheard of for the Police to see video evidence and add additional charges to the existing charges. For example, the officer might say, "well we don't see him assaulting a soldier in this video so he must have done that before, but we do see him resisting arrest, so we will add that charge." At this point I usually start going crazy because any human being in their right mind would resist arrest if she/he were being arrested for shepherding their flock of sheep and the arresting authorities refused to provide any reason for the arrest. But thankfully additional charges weren't added, but I digress.

So then I provided my testimony to an officer who spoke better English than the first officer. He was translating (out loud) from English to Hebrew as I spoke, and was typing with one finger. I got out about 7 sentences before he was tired of my testimony, so I just tried to get across the important point, "Khalil did NOT hit a soldier."

On February 25 an Israeli activist went to the prison to try to bail Khalil out. The original fee was said to be 2,000 shekels (500 dollars), then it dropped to 1,500 shekels (375 dollars) after some negotiation. The amount was paid ( I guess this is more like ransom than bail...it's just an amount paid so Khalil can leave the prison, so apparently they aren't to convinced he is actually a criminal or a dangerous person). Then this activist was told that Khalil wasn't at the police station, that he had been transfered to Ofer Military Prison near Ramallah. Then we heard he was at Gush Etzion Police Station. News kept swiraling around and changing. We didn't hear solid news until the morning of February 26, when we heard Khalil had been released from Gush Etzion Police Station. Khalil had no money nor ID. But in the true Arab spirit, he was given a free ride from Bethlehem to Hebron and then from Hebron to Yatta (where he has relatives).

Khalil is currently with relatives and should be coming home soon. We don't know if he was beaten by soldiers, all we know is he was grabbed by the throat for sometime and then blindfolded and forced to walk more than a kilometer before he dissapeared out of sight.

I spoke with his family more than a dozen times over the course of those days, providing them with every shred of new news. Every conversation ended so sad, with me saying something like, "sorry, that's all I know." The last conversation I had with them was great when I was able to tell them that Khalil was out for sure, which was followed by a chorus of, "Praise be to God," in the background.

Last night I was with the family and Khalil was still with relatives. Khalil called to say hi to his family and his brother answered the phone and told Khalil, "Hey man, we were really concerned about you, but now that you are home safely stop bugging me by calling me, I'll see you when I see you. You aren't the center of attention anymore."

I was glad to see all is back to normal, well except for that whole being-arrested-for-nothing-thing.

Denying Peaceful Protest is Problematic

I saw this article by Bill Fletcher Jr. a while back, and finally got around to passing it along. Fletcher responds to those recently in the media who are making calls for Palestinians to use nonviolence. Fletcher's article is poignant and so apropos for the current climate as Israel cracks down on nonviolent protest. See the article here, below is an excerpt:

While it is certainly true that some of the protests by Palestinians are violent, the same could be said of the anti-colonial protests that took place on the Indian subcontinent against the British at the time of Gandhi. Gandhi certainly preached nonviolent direct action, yet there were others within the independence movement that advocated forceful courses of action.

Nevertheless, smearing or repressing all protests in the name of moving against those who use violence is disingenuous, a point well understood when viewing other freedom struggles, whether the Indian independence movement or the black freedom struggle in the United States. In fact, this repression becomes a means not of suppressing violence, but of suppressing all resistance to injustice. This is experienced today by the Palestinian movement.