Post No. 15 to On the Ground category, by Bill Templer
David (Ashan) of Anarchists Against the Wall has a posting June 21, summer solstice, about the CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) decision to call for a boycott against Israel. [tao.ca/~CUPE3903/web/?q=node/372 ] I think he says something that needs to be heard. About struggling against capitalism in the backyards closest to you.
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Ashan: It feels good to get support from an international organization for the cause with which we are involved, specifically, in this case, tear down the wall. However, as someone who has spent most of my life in occupied First Nations land (KKKanada), I can tell you that the Canadian genocide of the Aboriginal peoples of Turtle Island (North Amerikkka) is of Holocaust proportions. First Nations people are still fighting till this day to reclaim their land, their rights, and the dignity. Even right now, there is a standoff in Ontario between evil capitalist land developers (and their evil capitalist government allies) and the Mohawk peoples of Caledonia. You can read more about their on-going struggle at: http://sisis.nativeweb.org/
Today is Summer Solstice — the longest day of the year, a pagan holiday — and also National Aboriginal Day in KKKanada. On today of all days, I ask of you; before blindly supporting an organization that calls for a boycott of the Israhelli government, remember: the enemy of our enemy is not always our friend! It’s all very nice that CUPE is condemning the stealing of Palestinian land, suppression of Palestinian rights, and squashing of Palestinian dignity, but why are they not doing the same for Mohawk peoples right in their own backyard? Where is the anti-KKKanadian colonialism resolution on the CUPE website? Plainly, it does not exist; because as people of European origin, they *benefit* from it.
In summary, I would like to say something that may not be popular in Israeli (A)narchist circles, but I feel needs to be expressed nonetheless: In my mind, anti-Zionist activity by non-Middle Eastern peoples is legitimate if it is coupled with anti-colonial and anti-capitalist activity, as well. But anti-zionism without anti-capitalism IS antisemitism, plain and simple. Please do not allow these people to wash their hands clean and walk away feeling holier-than-thou because they’ve pointed out *our* problems. They cannot be allowed to have a clean conscience, while the First Nations peoples of Turtle Island continue to be genocided with the help of CUPE’s active participation of in the KKKanadian colonial capitalist economy.
In our rush to crush the wall, let us not abandon our First Nations Canadian cousins who are fighting for freedom, by supporting CUPE’s racist hypocritical stance. I say, boycott every capitalist country, starting with the one closest to you.
In the spirit of what Ashan reminds us, “anti-Zionist activity by non-Middle Eastern peoples is legitimate if it is coupled with anti-colonial and anti-capitalist activity” is a good watchword, maybe a yardstick. From a guy risking his body on a nearly daily basis in struggle on a dangerous front against the Israeli state. I don’t know if you can agree with xoxo’s “But anti-zionism without anti-capitalism IS antisemitism, plain and simple.” But keep in mind the principle behind it: “I say, boycott every capitalist country, starting with the one closest to you.” Maybe pass that on to the Presbyterian Church AmeriKKKa. Go into CUPE’s web site and you’ll learn that their Anti-Racism Working Group is “currently inactive” ….
Many stimulating articles, including David Solnit’s “A
People Power Strategy to End the War,” George Lakey’s classic “Strategy for a Living Revolution” and some others.
This ensemble of concrete strategy and revolutionary vision is feeding into discussion in the new SDS/Movement for a Democratic Society and will bear fruit there.
Part of what is missing in discussion of transforming Israel/Palestine is this vision of how to build a movement for truly radical change among Israelis, and radical democratic synergy between them and Palestinians. A movement of resistance that projects wildly, with radical compassion for people, beyond the intolerable status quo.
Read Lakey and wonder how it might be applied from the street up, the Israeli street, the Palestinian. Not through daydreams of economic sanctions, a politics of multiplying misery for working Israelis, many already in dire poverty, to such an extreme point that their children begin to die of hunger, their medical systems collapse, they are driven en masse to the point of emigration. Is that a scenario of ‘left populist politics’?! Maybe its travesty.
It should be about building popular movements for radical change, anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, radically inclusive — not strangling simple people to some fanciful point of desperation. Which is precisely what the ruling class in Israel is doing to the Palestinians at every imaginable scale of existence.
Posting 13. to On the Ground category, by Bill Templer
Here a journal INCENDIO well worth connecting with as reader or writer: http://anti-politics.net/incendio/index2.htm , a journal of Latin American theory and solidarity, inspired in part by the anarchist journal ABOLISHING BORDERS FROM BELOW
Posting 12. to the On the Ground category, by George Salzman, 1 June 2006
The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and divestment from Israel
Oaxaca, Sunday 28 May 2006
Friends,
The single focus of this note is my support for a request from Dorothy Naor, a compassionate and wonderful Jewish Israeli woman, who writes, in part
. . . poverty in Israel has increased sharply. Over 1/4 of Israelis now live under the poverty line. A staggering 34.1 percent of them are children. Last year 1 of every 5 children lived under the poverty line; now 1 of every 3 children goes to bed hungry. And every 4th elderly person is poor. No wonder, then, that Israel’s elderly are “Suicidal,” as Yedioth Ahronot revealed in a report showing that over 50 percent of suicides in Israel every year are committed by people aged 65 and more. There are additional worrying trends. Not only are the few rich getting richer and the numerous poor getting poorer, but also many in the middle class who have jobs are sliding into poverty due to low wages.
I ask you to take the few moments needed to read her letter, frightening in its candor, and to then support the request to the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. to begin divestment from Israel.
Here is Dorothy’s letter, on behalf of the feminist peace group New Profile.
Rick Ufford-Chase, Moderator
Stated Clerk
Office of the General Assembly
100 Witherspoon Street
Louisville, Kentucky, 40202-1396
USA
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
New Profile, an Israeli organization, wishes to express appreciation to PCUSA for contemplating adopting a policy of selective divestment as a means of bringing peace to Palestinians and Israelis. We fervently support such an endeavor, and hope that PCUSA will indeed adopt divestment as a non-violent means of ending Israel’s Occupation of Palestinians and their lands.
We wish to assure PCUSA that it is no more anti-Semitic to criticize and oppose Israeli government policies than it was anti-American to oppose the Vietnam war.
Indeed, ending the Occupation can only benefit Israelis. For, the Occupation exacts a price from Israelis as well as from Palestinians. In addition to loss of life and increased militarism, Israelis have witnessed these past years a steady devaluation of human life, as is evident from the socio-economic sphere and the affliction of post-traumatic distress. It also seems clear that without outside help, Israel’s Occupation of Palestinians and their lands is unlikely to end.
Successive Israeli governments have spent enormous amounts of money on expansion, to the detriment of social benefits for the Israeli population. While it is true that had their been no Occupation, Israeli governments might not have spent the money on social benefits, the fact that expansion continues a pace reveals Israel’s intent to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state and to rid the West Bank of as many Palestinians as possible.
To this end, money is spent on maintaining a large military presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, on erecting the apartheid wall at 4 million dollars a mile, with 400 miles planned (twice the length had it been built on the ‘green line’), constructing 6,000 more units in highly subsidized settlements (this past year alone, some 12,000 new settlers moved into the West Bank, 4,000 more than were evicted from the Gaza Strip). Much money goes also for constructing super-highways for Israelis-only in the Occupied Territories, as well as for new lookout towers (that can double as sniper towers), and checkpoints galore (mainly separating Palestinian communities).
While all this is taking place at considerable economic cost, poverty in Israel has increased sharply. Over 1/4 of Israelis now live under the poverty line. A staggering 34.1 percent of them are children. Last year 1 of every 5 children lived under the poverty line; now 1 of every 3 children goes to bed hungry. And every 4th elderly person is poor. No wonder, then, that Israel’s elderly are “Suicidal,” as Yedioth Ahronot revealed in a report showing that over 50 percent of suicides in Israel every year are committed by people aged 65 and more. There are additional worrying trends. Not only are the few rich getting richer and the numerous poor getting poorer, but also many in the middle class who have jobs are sliding into poverty due to low wages.
One result of the increased poverty is that now 25% of Israelis forego medical care because they cannot afford it. 75% of the poor cannot afford medication. But of all the sad statistics, one of the more shocking is that 40% of Holocaust survivors now live in desperate straits. It is shameful that of all places in the world, in Israel, Holocaust survivors live in dire poverty and misery.
The worsening economic conditions contribute, in turn, to escalation of stress and violence. Thus one of every five elderly Israelis is subject to abuse, mainly by spouses or children. Additionally, the Israeli police recorded a 36 percent increase in violence among minors in 2004, a 24% increase in violence among them the first months of 2006, and a 55% increase of violence against children these past 10 years.
A direct cost of Occupation and a threat to Israel’s welfare is post-traumatic stress, which can result in addiction to drugs and alcohol, and can also contribute to violence.
A rehabilitation center that opened in 2001 with capacity for 25-30 addicts, soon discovered that most of the problems resulted from experiences the addicts had had while in the military. The center, Kfar Izun, then publicized itself, and was shocked to receive 900 requests for help in a single week.
A counselor at a rehabilitation center terms the malady “a ticking bomb,” Help, he relates, is unavailable for many soldiers who have gone “into terrible distress of drugs, beatings, violence, impatience, … soldiers who clashed with a civilian population, and when they were discharged understood that they had been wrong.” Hundreds, he reveals, “are roaming about with the feeling that there is no point to living, and the path to suicide and drugs is very easy. We are afraid that former soldiers will commit criminal acts as a result of their distress.”
One young woman, having succumbed to drugs after her discharge, blames the drug phenomenon on the “sick Israeli society”- a “society of war.” The soldier who killed “a man or a child” or “entered the home of an Arab family at night, beat a child, a mother and took the father into detention” upon release takes drugs “to try to forget the pictures that are with him all the time since then.” She said that drugs are “an expression of the strong desire of young Israelis to escape from the insanity that has been forced on them.”
Yehuda Shaul, a former conscript, caps it all: “It’s a situation that screws up everyone. … People start out at different points and end up at different points, but everyone goes through this process. No one returns from the territories without it leaving a deep imprint, messing up his head.”
I apologize for the length of this letter, but hope that the above data will help PCUSA realize that every non-violent endeavor to end Israel’s Occupation would be a humane act to Israelis as well as to Palestinians.
Below [Dorothy’s personal note] is New Profile’s policy statement on Selective Divestment.
Sincerely,
Dorothy Naor,
for New Profile
Dorothy’s personal note:
I would very much appreciate your forwarding as widely as possible New Profile’s recent letter to the Presbyterian Church USA, which will decide in June whether to adopt divestment or not. The letter endeavors to furnish the PCUSA with arguments to counter accusations of anti-Semitism. The New Profile policy statement on divestment that follows … was drafted in February 2005 and at that time was sent to PCUSA to encourage its initiative to divest from companies that contribute to Israel’s occupation of Palestinians and their lands. True, the letter and policy statement refer merely to selective divestment, whereas much more is needed. But both the letter and the policy statement were drafted with an eye to encouraging existing initiatives in selective divestment. Let’s get those going, then work for stronger sanctions (which I personally support). Thanks, Dorothy
PS … for those of you unfamiliar with New Profile, I strongly recommend that you scan our website www.newprofile.org
Here is the New Profile Policy statement on Divestment
“We, a group of feminist women and men, are convinced that we need not live in a soldiers’ state. Today, Israel is capable of a determined peace politics. It need not be a militarized society. We are convinced that we ourselves, our children, our partners, need not go on being endlessly mobilized, need not go on living as warriors. We understand that the state of war in Israel is maintained by decisions made by politicians-not by external forces to which we are passively subject. While taught to believe that the country is faced by threats beyond its control, we now realize that the words “national security” have often masked calculated decisions to choose military action for the achievement of political goals.”
New Profile aims to transform Israel from a highly militaristic society to a civilian society dedicated to equality of gender and ethnicity and firmly based on universal human rights.
One of several characteristics of militarism is the use of force to obtain political objectives. New Profile deems Israel’s Occupation of the Palestinians to be a use of force to obtain the political objective of creating the ‘greater Israel.’
New Profile opposes the Occupation on three counts:
1. Its destruction of Palestinian life, society, land, and property.
2. Its role in maintaining militarism in Israel.
3. Its erosion of Israel’s socio-economic and moral fabric
We therefore seek non-violent means of ending this catastrophic Occupation. One such means is using economic sanctions to pressure the government to change its policy. To this end New Profile welcomes and supports selective divestment aimed at divesting from companies that contribute to the continuation of the Occupation by supplying arms, other equipment, or staff.
We welcome all such endeavors, believing firmly that ending the Occupation is not only to the benefit of the Palestinians but also necessary for the welfare of Israel, its youth, and future generations. Over 22,000 Israeli soldiers have died in its wars since 1948. Enough. It is time to beat our swords into ploughshares, to bring security to Israel by giving the Palestinians their freedom and recognizing their absolute right to exist, and to build a future for today’s Israeli youth and generations to come by creating a civilian society whose underpinnings are equality of gender and ethnicity and universal human rights.
I will simply mail a personal endorsement of the letter from Dorothy to the address she provided, with perhaps a few words identifying myself and a few comments.
Sincerely, and with best wishes,
George
All comments and criticisms are welcome <>
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e-mail distribution list, please let me know.
The message I sent was:
29 May 2006
Dear Mr. Ufford-Chase,
I am writing in support of the contemplated divestment policy by The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. as a move towards ending the conquest of the Palestinians by Israel. In particular I endorse the statement from the feminist Israeli organization New Profile, which follows my own note. Dorothy Naor, who wrote that letter, is a good friend, a trusted and well informed Jewish Israeli woman.
As an 80-year old Jewish American veteran of World War II, I well remember my wife’s and my enthusiasm in 1947-48 as the state of Israel came into being, and our initial material support for the nascent Jewish state. Over the years that early, uninformed view gradually changed, and long before my wife’s death 25 years ago, we had divested ourselves of our Israeli Bonds. Now I am appalled at the Nazi-like behavior towards Palestinian Arabs, treated as undesirable, unwanted human beings by their conquerors. The blatant anti-semitism of the ruling semites towards the oppressed semites is totally inhumane and inexcusable. That they carry it out under the banner of the Nazi Holocaust is obscene. The truly good Jews of Israel, as those of America, will welcome all efforts by The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. to help end the apartheid rule in Israel-Palestine.