Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

My hometown paper, the Evanston Roundtable, has just published a thorough feature on “Untold Stories,” a program initiated by my congregation’s Peace Dialogue Task Force that features Palestinians sharing their personal stories of their lives under occupation.

“Untold Stories” was initiated after we invited two Chicago-area Palestinians  – a man from Gaza and a woman from the West Bank – two speak about their lives during our Rosh Hashanah discussion groups. The presentation was so successful and well-received, the Peace Dialogue decided to make it an ongoing program – and eventually invite other faith communities in Evanston to participate as well.

From the article:

This fall, St. Nicholas Church will host another chapter of “Untold Stories,” knowing the narratives lend themselves to surprise endings. They allow (Palestinian presenter) Daniel Bannoura to learn that in Chicago, some of his best friends can be Jewish. And (JRC’s Peace Dialogue chairperson) Sallie Gratch can discover that her involvement with Palestinians and their stories “sticks closer to my Jewish values than anything I’ve ever done.”

Now that the NATO Summit has swept out of my city, the local press can’t stop fawning over the performance of the Chicago police – and gloating over how silly and meaningless the mass demonstrations turned out to be in the end.

Mission accomplished. With all of the focus on the Chicago streets, I guess we were successfully distracted from the truly meaningless demonstration that was the NATO Summit.

As for me, I’m in full agreement with Stephen Walt, who has correctly pointed out that this massive, fancy, expensive, city-paralyzing event was little more than a “fig-leaf” for NATO – a pageant designed to put a happy face on an Afghanistan war that is hugely unpopular and has suffered from ever-changing objectives from the very beginning.

Actually, Obama’s summit pledge “to responsibly wind down the war” by the summer of 2014 is worse than a fig leaf – it’s simply not true. Earlier this month, Obama visited Afghanistan and signed a pact with Afghan president Hamid Karzai that will ensure a US military presence in Afghanistan until at least 2024. (This agreement was first made in secret, then when the news leaked out, the administration vehemently denied it. Later they conceded it was true, making no attempt to explain why they lied in the first place.)

And please don’t be fooled by the explanation that NATO will be ending “combat operations” by 2014.  Officials have openly stated that these post-2014 “non-combat” troops will continue to launch “anti-terror” raids – which is simply just another way of saying they will continue to do what they’ve been doing all along.

But for the most powerful rejoinder to the farce that was NATO in Chicago, I strongly encourage you to read this important piece by Gary Younge, who pointed out the irony (or if you prefer, the utter hypocrisy) of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s boast that the summit was “an opportunity to showcase what is great about the greatest city in the greatest country.”

The murder rate in Chicago in the first three months of this year increased by more than 50% compared with the same period last year, giving it almost twice the murder rate of New York. And the manner in which the city is policed gives many as great a reason to fear those charged with protecting them as the criminals. By the end of July last year police were shooting people at the rate of six a month and killing one person a fortnight.

This violence, be it at the hands of the state or gangs, is both compounded and underpinned by racial and economic disadvantage. The poorer the neighbourhood the more violent, the wealthier the safer. This is no coincidence. Much like the NATO summit – and the G8 summit that preceded it – the system is set up not to spread wealth but to preserve and protect it, not to relieve chaos but to contain and punish it…

The paradox inherent in a city like Chicago hosting a summit like this not only lays bare the brutal nature in which these inequalities are maintained at a global level, but it lends us an opportunity to understand how those inequalities are replicated locally.

Chicago illustrates how the developing world is everywhere, not least in the heart of the developed. The mortality rate for black infants in the city is on a par with the West Bank; black life expectancy in Illinois is just below Egypt and just above Uzbekistan. More than a quarter of Chicagoans have no health insurance, one in five black male Chicagoans are unemployed and one in three live in poverty. Latinos do not fare much better. Chicago may be extreme in this regard, but it is by no means unique. While the ethnic composition of poverty may change depending on the country, its dynamics will doubtless be familiar to pretty much all of the G8 participants and most of the NATO delegates too.

The gated communities – like the one in which Trayvon Martin was killed – have been erected on a global scale to protect those fleeing the mayhem wrought by our economic and military policies. This was exemplified last March when a boat with 72 African refugees fled the NATO-led war in Libya. When the boat found itself stranded it sent out a distress signal that was passed on to NATO which had “declared the region a military zone under its control”, and then promptly ignored it, as did an Italian ship. The boat bobbed around in the Mediterranean for two weeks. All but nine on board were left to die from starvation, thirst or in storms, including two babies.

A meaningless demonstration indeed…

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed on WBAI radio’s “Beyond the Pale” to discuss Peter Beinart’s (much-discussed) new book “The Crisis of Zionism” with hosts Lizzy Ratner and Adam Horowitz.

Here’s a description of the program:

We spend the hour discussing Peter Beinart’s controversial and much-discussed new book about the struggle at the heart of contemporary zionism: the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. We begin with a lengthy interview with Beinart himself, who argues that the only way to save Zionism is to end the Occupation and recommit to the ideals of “democratic” Israel. From there we head to Israel-Palestine for a fascinating discussion with Abir Kopty, a human rights activist and Palestinian citizen of Israel, who tells of the ugly discrimination faced by Palestinians within the Jewish state and questions the notion that a “democratic” Israel ever has or ever can exist. Finally, we conclude with an interview with Rabbi Brant Rosen, a Reconstructionist rabbi and Palestinian solidarity activist, who hails The Crisis of Zionism as a passionate effort that came twenty years too late.

Click here to give it a listen.

Photo: AFP

From the Palestinian NGO, Adameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association:

After nearly a full month of fasting, around 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners ended last night their mass hunger strike upon reaching an agreement with the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to attain certain core demands…

The written agreement contained five main provisions: the prisoners would end their hunger strike following the signing of the agreement; there will be an end to the use of long-term isolation of prisoners for “security” reasons, and the 19 prisoners will be moved out of isolation within 72 hours; family visits for first degree relatives to prisoners from the Gaza Strip and for families from the West Bank who have been denied visits based on vague “security reasons” will be reinstated within one month; the Israeli intelligence agency guarantees that there will be a committee formed to facilitate meetings between the IPS and prisoners in order to improve their daily conditions; there will be no new administrative detention orders or renewals of administrative detention orders for the 308 Palestinians currently in administrative detention, unless the secret files, upon which administrative detention is based, contain “very serious” information.

This is heartening news to be sure, particularly for the families of the strikers.  But on an even deeper level, this deal is a testimony to the astonishing moral/political power of fasting in response to oppression.  As my colleague Rabbi Alissa Wise recently wrote:

I can not even begin to fathom the pain, the discomfort, the anguish of starving yourself to protest injustice. Their decision to take up this action surely was not taken up lightly, and neither, I imagine, (was) their decision each and every day to continue with the fast.

Nor can I think of any more basic or courageous form of resistance than the simple act of refusing food. For an eloquent, heartbreaking expression of this principle, look no farther than the widely published letter written by hunger striker Thaer Halahleh to his two year old daughter Lamar. (Halahleh hovered between life and death for weeks before ending his strike at 77 days):

When you grow up you will understand how injustice was brought upon your father and upon thousands of Palestinians whom the occupation has put in prisons and jail cells, shattering their lives and future for no reason other then their pursuit of freedom, dignity and independence. You will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission, and that he would never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves without any rights or patriotic dignity.

Hunger striking is, of course, is an ancient time-honored form of protest. And as a Jew, I’m particularly mindful that the Book of Isaiah passionately connects the act of fasting to the pursuit of justice:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Indeed, it is critical that we understand that the Palestinians’ “Battle of the Empty Stomachs” as part of this long and honorable tradition of nonviolent resistance. As we have seen from the events of the past several months, it has lasted so long largely because it is a tactic that works.

At the same time, however, it is imperative to bear in mind what has been accomplished and what has not.  While several specific demands regarding prison conditions have been met, Israel’s overall policy of administrative detention essentially remains in place. Adameer’s press release rightly noted this point:

Addameer is concerned that these provisions of the agreement will not explicitly solve Israel’s lenient and problematic application of administrative detention, which as it stands is in stark violation of international law.

In a recent blog post for +972mag, Palestinian journalist Omar Rahman also viewed this agreement in context of the overall Israeli/Palestinian power dynamic:

We must also remember that Israel holds all the chips. These hunger strikers have managed to pressure Israel into a level of accommodation, but only while people are focused on the issue. As soon as that attention dissipates, Israel is free to take back what it has offered. In the relationship between the occupier and the occupied, Israel is the Lord who giveth and taketh away. What will the Palestinians do? Stage another collective hunger strike only to repeat the process of give and take? The costs are simply too high to stage such a strike every time the need arises to challenge the system.

In the meantime, it seems to me, the most important outcome of the hunger strike campaign is the way in which it powerfully frames the ethical stakes of Israel’s occupation. As a recent Guardian editorial stated plainly, “Israel cannot claim the moral high ground while it is holding Palestinians without charge.”

For Jews, the “Battle of the Empty Stomachs” thus represents a profoundly critical challenge. Will we, who are the bearers of a tradition that bids us to call out oppression, find the wherewithal to stand with those who fast in response to their oppression by the Jewish state?

I don’t know how to say it any better than my colleague Rabbi Rachel Barenblat:

When I read anything which speaks ill of Israel and of Judaism, my heart aches. I do not want to hear these things about my coreligionists. But the answer is not to silence or ignore those who are speaking out. The answer is for my fellow Jews to live up to what is best in our tradition. Detaining people without trial, without informing them or their lawyers of the charges against them, is wrong. When the only Jewish government in the world makes those choices, we are all diminished.

Protest tent, Nablus, May 11, 2012. (Photo: Ahmad Al-Bazz/ActiveStills)

Did you know that two thousand plus imprisoned Palestinians have been on an hunger strike for months demanding basic human rights and an end to detention without trial?  Did you know that two of them have not eaten since February 28 and are hovering between life and death? Did you know that thousands of Palestinians have been protesting in support of the strikers in growing demonstrations throughout the West Bank?

Alas, while it’s been reported fairly regularly via the world media, there’s been a near-total silence from the American government on the matter.  Actually, that’s not quite correct – at a recent press briefing, spokesperson Victoria Nuland remarked that the State Department doesn’t “have anything to say (about it) one way or the other.”

As journalist Robert Naiman recently observed, the State Department did manage to speak out in support of Bahrainian Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, also on hunger strike to oppose his unjust detention. Yet 2,000 Palestinian hunger strikers do not rate even an official acknowledgement?

At present, Egypt is attempting to broker a solution – and as Naiman rightly points out, “a few words from the State Department could help tip the balance toward a more positive resolution.”  I encourage you to join me in signing this petition urging Hilary Clinton to end her silence and use her good offices to help save the lives of these nonviolent Palestinian protesters.

For a deeply moving meditation on the hunger strikers campaign, I commend to you this post by Vicky at Bethlehem Blogger:

Through the hunger strike, the prisoners have demonstrated that there are some things that can never be taken from them – dignity first of all. Maher Halahleh, whose brother Thaer is in a critical condition after seventy-four days without food, said today, “This is a new weapon that is stronger than a nuclear bomb. Israel is fighting people who have no weapons, only their will.”

If you haven’t heard about the documentary “5 Broken Cameras,” you will very soon. It was the talk of the 2012 Sundance Festival (winning the World Cinema Directing Award) and it’s going to be hitting theaters this summer.

Click here for a NY Times feature on the film. Here’s a description, according to the distributor’s website:

An extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism, 5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil’in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was later given to Israeli co-director Guy Davidi to edit. Structured around the violent destruction of each one of Burnat’s cameras, the filmmakers’ collaboration follows one family’s evolution over five years of village turmoil. Burnat watches from behind the lens as olive trees are bulldozed, protests intensify, and lives are lost. “I feel like the camera protects me,” he says, “but it’s an illusion.”

Jewish activists at the 2012 UMGC in Tampa, from left to right: Rebecca Vilkomerson (Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace), Anna Baltzer, (National Organizer, US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation), Dalit Baum (Founder, “Who Profits?”), Rae Abileah (Co-director, CODEPINK Women for Peace), Sydney Levy, (Director of Advocacy, JVP), Rabbi Brant Rosen, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb (Founder, Shomer Shalom Center for Jewish Nonviolence), Ariel Vegosen (Fair Trade and Media Social Justice Activist)

After the United Methodist divestment resolution was voted down at the UM General Conference last week, I’ve received my fair share of gloating responses from divestment opponents.  (Award for the most colorful goes to “Tzahal,” who sent in this attention-grabber: “BDS Fail, you f***ing KAPO”).

Actually, while many of us were disappointed by the final vote, I don’t view this as a fail. Not by a long shot.

First of all, as I reported from Tampa, I was deeply inspired to meet so many remarkable activists – Christians, Muslims, Palestinians, Israelis and American Jews – who constitute a new community of conscience working for justice in Israel/Palestine. This new interfaith/inter-ethnic coalition is growing rapidly and we are most certainly succeeding in raising conscience and awareness each time these kinds of resolutions are brought forth.

Beyond the final vote on this one specific resolution, we should consider it a success that these issues are increasingly being publicly discussed by our religious communities. My fellow activists and I had numerous conversations with delegates in the convention hall and we were heartened to engage so many people so honestly on this difficult issue. I was particularly gratified to speak with the numerous African delegates (who constituted 40% of the convention) who immediately understood the very real parallels to the legacy of colonialism in their own countries.

In addition, as my fellow activist Anna Baltzer recently pointed out, while the divestment resolution did not ultimately pass, the UM General Conference did adopt a resolution that among other things urged the US government to “end all military aid to the region,” called on all nations “to prohibit… any financial support by individuals or organizations for the construction and maintenance of settlements,” and “to prohibit… the import of products made by companies in Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.”

In BDS terms, this means that while the United Methodists did not affirm D (“Divestment”), they did support B and the S (“Boycott” and “Sanctions”).  No small statement, this.

I am coming away from this experience more convinced than ever that divestment is a critical tool in our quest for a just peace in I/P.  Over and over I’ve heard that divestment is an unduly harsh and polarizing tactic – and that the emphasis should be on positive engagement and investment. This, despite the fact that decades of political engagement by our government have failed miserably. This despite almost a decades worth of failed attempts by church groups to engage companies such as Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett/Packard – companies that literally profit from an oppressive, illegal occupation.

Add to this the testimonials of numerous Palestinian leaders who addressed “positive investment” by telling us it wasn’t charity they needed, but real, actual justice. In the words of Zahi Khouri, a prominent Palestinian Christian businessman and CEO of Coca-Cola Palestine:

It may shock you, but whenever there is a viable project identified in Palestine, we can raise the funds. We don’t need your financial help, your charity. What we need is to be able to operate freely. Divestment is the best, most immediate way that you can help us achieve that. We have been waiting for more than 40 years; we need action now.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was so correct when he urged support of the divestment resolution by invoking MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Then, as now, those who sought justice were counseled by religious leaders to “be patient” and to address the issue of oppression through engagement and non-confrontational tactics. Then, as now, there was an assumption that those who wielded corrupt power could somehow be “convinced” to give up their power voluntarily. Then, as now, this kind of patronizing counsel rings hollow and false in the ears of those who continue to suffer daily from ongoing injustice and persecution.

No, this was not a fail. There is a movement is building and this was only the beginning. Stay tuned. Similar resolutions will soon be considered in Pittsburgh at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Indianapolis.

My new colleagues and I look forward to continuing this sacred work together.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has just written a powerful op-ed in support of United Methodist church divestment.

I have no doubt that he will once again incur the wrath of the Jewish establishment – especially since he criticizes the 1,200 rabbis who recently signed a public letter opposing church divestment:

While they are no doubt well-meaning, I believe that the rabbis and other opponents of divestment are sadly misguided. My voice will always be raised in support of Christian-Jewish ties and against the anti-Semitism that all sensible people fear and detest. But this cannot be an excuse for doing nothing and for standing aside as successive Israeli governments colonize the West Bank and advance racist laws.

I recall well the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he confesses to his “Christian and Jewish brothers” that he has been “gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom. …”

King’s words describe almost precisely the shortcomings of the 1,200 rabbis who are not joining the brave Palestinians, Jews and internationals in isolated West Bank communities to protest nonviolently against Israel’s theft of Palestinian land to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements and the separation wall. We cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand as relentless settlement activity forecloses on the possibility of the two-state solution.

Hear, hear. His invocation of MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is apt and spot on.

I’m particularly appreciative of the Archbishop’s shout out to “the brave rabbis of Jewish Voice for Peace.”  It’s wonderful to see our letter of support garnering such widespread acclaim from so many quarters.  And it’s especially gratifying to be showing a decidedly different face of the Jewish community to our brothers and sisters in the Christian community over this issue.

The divestment resolution is scheduled to voted on by the UM Conference plenum tomorrow. Stay tuned.

I’m sure there are many who watch Israel’s Jewish settlement policy unfold in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and ask themselves: is there actually a method to this madness?  Among the most compelling answers to this question comes from veteran Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper, co-founder and coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

One of the truly great Israeli peace organizations, ICAHD has been indefatigably tracking the demolition of homes and evictions of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 2007.  Even more critically, Halper and Co. have been exposing Israel’s institutionalized displacement of Palestinians and their resettlement in concentrated areas throughout the West Bank.

In an interview last week, Halper offered a detailed – and profoundly troubling – picture of Israel’s resettlement of Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories:

(Area C of the West Bank) contains less than 5 per cent of the Palestinian population. In 1967 the Jordan valley contained about 250,000 people. Today it’s less than 50,000. So the Palestinians have either been driven out of the country, especially the middle class, or they have been driven to areas A and B. That’s where 96 or 97 per cent of them are. The Palestinian population has been brought down low enough, there is probably somewhere around 125,000 Palestinians in area C, so Israel could annex area C and give them full citizenship.

Basically, Israel can absorb 125,000 Palestinians without upsetting the demographic balance. And then, what is the world going to say? It’s not apartheid, Israel has given them full citizenship. So I think Israel feels it could get away with that. No one cares about what’s happening in areas A and B. If they want to declare a state, they can…

In other words, we’re finished. Israel is now from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, the Palestinians have been confined in areas A and B or in small enclaves in East Jerusalem, and that’s it.

To better understand Halper’s point, look carefully at the map on the top right of this post. Areas A, B and C refer to regions that were created through the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords.  According to the agreement, Palestinians are responsible for security and for the civil administration of Area A; Area B is under Israeli military control and Palestinian civil authority; and Area C is under total Israeli military and civil control. (In reality, however, the Israeli military has ultimate control over all three areas – for over a decade the IDF regularly has made incursions into Areas A and B with impunity).

According to the terms of the Oslo Accords, these three regions were intended to be temporary until 1998; today they have become permanent facts on the ground. As you can see from white portions of the map, Area C comprises the strong majority of the West Bank. It contains nearly all Israeli settlements; it is crisscrossed by Israeli-only access roads that connect the settlements to each other and to Israel proper; it includes large buffer zones and almost all of the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert (the large swath of white on the east).

As Halper points out, Israel is pursing policies that are systematically driving Palestinians out of Area C, to the extent that these regions now contain less than 5% of the population. The overwhelming majority of West Bank Palestinians now live in Areas A and B (on the map, grey and black) – which are essentially concentrated, disconnected cantons separated by checkpoints and choked off from Israel by the Separation Wall.

Bottom line? Israel has succeeded extending its control over the majority of the West Bank by moving Palestinian residents into what amount to “legal” open-air prisons – or as Halper calls it,”warehousing.”

(Warehousing) captures what’s going on better than apartheid. Warehousing is permanent. Apartheid recognizes that there is another side. With warehousing it’s like prison. There is no other side. There is us, and then there are these people that we control, they have no rights, they have no identity, they’re inmates. It’s not political, it’s permanent, static. Apartheid you can resist. The whole brilliance of warehousing is that you can’t resist because you’re a prisoner.

Prisoners can rise up in the prison yards but prison guards have all the rights in the world to put them down. That’s what Israel has come to. They are terrorists and we have the right to put them down. In a sense Israel has succeeded with the international community, and the US especially, in taking out of this situation the political. It’s now solely an issue of security, just like in prisons.

Halper actually predicted the warehousing phenomenon as long ago as 2008, in an important piece that offered an in depth analysis of Israel’s practices throughout the West Bank. Among other things, he compared Israel’s practice to South Africa’s creation of Bantustans, in which 3.5 million black South Africans were forced from their homes from the 1960s through the 1980s:

Warehousing…is in many ways worse than the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa. The ten non-viable “homelands” established by South Africa for the black African majority on only 11% of the country’s land were, to be sure, a type of warehouse. They were intended to supply South Africa with cheap labor while relieving it of its black population, thus making possible a European dominated “democracy.” This is precisely what Israel is intending – its Palestinian Bantustan encompassing around 15% of historic Palestine – but with a crucial caveat: Palestinian workers will not be allowed into Israel. Having discovered a cheaper source of labor, some 300,000 foreign workers imported from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Rumania and West Africa, augmented by its own Arab, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Russian and Eastern European citizens, Israel can afford to lock them out even while withholding from them a viable economy of their own with unfettered ties to the surrounding Arab countries. From every point of view, historically, culturally, politically and economically, the Palestinians have been defined as “surplus humanity;” nothing remains to do with them except warehousing, which the concerned international community appears willing to allow Israel to do.

Perhaps most crucially, Halper places Israel’s policies and practices within a larger global context.  He refers to a “Global Palestine”: a new 21st century reality in which political considerations and human rights are jettisoned in favor of a corporate-military model that seeks to control, manage, contain (and profit from) “surplus populations.”

Again, from last week’s interview:

(Warehousing) does not have any legal reference today but we’d like to put that in because warehousing is not only in Israel. Warehousing exists all over the capitalist world. Two-thirds of the people have been warehoused. That’s why I’m writing about Global Palestine. I’m saying that Palestine is a microcosm of what’s happening around the world.

Even though Jeff Halper may be a secular Israeli anthropologist, I believe him to be a prophetic figure of the highest order. He has long been speaking hard truths on the wages of corrupt power in his country. Do we have the courage to listen to his message?

It was my honor to attend the opening of the 2012 General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Tampa, where they will be considering a resolution to divest church funds from three companies – Motorola Solutions, Hewlett-Packard and Caterpillar – that profit from Israel’s oppressive occupation.

I’ve been so inspired by the amazing people I’ve met in Tampa – Methodists from around the country, Palestinians, and many Jews – who constitute a new community of conscience on this profoundly important issue. This coming-together has been particularly important for me, because many quarters of the United Methodist Church have been unfairly demonized by the Jewish establishment over the issue of church divestment.

The resolution will be considered in committee some time over the next few days – and may possibly be voted on in plenary next week. If you, like me, stand with our Methodist brothers and sisters in our desire for justice in Israel/Palestine, please sign our Rabbi’s Letter that supports “conscientious nonviolent strategies, such as phased selective divestment, to end the occupation.”

You can read a thorough report about our efforts here on Tampa Community Radio. The clip above: my statements at a press conference yesterday which was convened by my friends at United Methodist Kairos Response – the primary sponsors of the UM divestment resolution.

My good friend and colleague Rabbi Mordechai Liebling has just written one of the most eloquent and thoughtful statements in support of church divestment I have yet read. Mordechai’s voice on this subject is particularly noteworthy becuase he has long been an important Jewish community leader on the issue of ethical investing.

Mordechai has previously served as the director of the “Torah of Money” initiative at The Shefa Fund and later became the Executive Vice President of Jewish Funds for Justice. He currently serves as the director of the newly created Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.  His statement is all the more powerful because in 2004 he wrote a public article questioning the effectiveness of divestment as a strategy – and as late as two years ago, he still viewed divestment as counterproductive.

As he wrote in his statement, he has reconsidered his position for compelling reasons:

What happened that made me change my views? I changed a little, and the reality on the ground changed even more.

At the time I wrote the article I was organizing the Jewish Shareholder Action Network in my capacity as the Torah of Money Director at the ShefaFund. I was very involved in the world of faith-based socially responsible investments and learned a lot about shareholder activism.

When Protestant churches started considering selective divestment from corporations profiting from the occupation back in the mid-2000?s, I knew many of the socially responsible investment staff people in those denominations. I did not think divestment was a good strategy and said so to my colleagues. But things have changed since.

I was concerned about the potential that divestment measures would have in undermining the Israeli political center. I was concerned about Israelis feeling more isolated than ever and adopting a circle-the-wagons mentality that would make peace harder to attain. These concerns are valid and real. But in the last number of years, the Israel political center has moved to the right–even without divestment. The Israeli government has become more intransigent in its position; the settlers more aggressive. The Netanyahu government has already circled the wagons.

Given this reality, we need to take a look at new approaches. We cannot rule out options that are rooted in non-violence, promote non-violence and call for an end to unjust practices. Divestment is one such option. Palestinian nonviolent direct action is another.

If the reality on the ground in Israel and in the West Bank has changed, so have the attitudes of Israeli Jews and Jews abroad towards the use of tools such as divestments and boycotts. Previously very few Jewish groups would have supported such initiatives. Now we see a lively discussion inside our Jewish communities about the appropriateness of using these tactics to end the occupation and oppose settlement expansion. Countless Israeli artists refuse to perform in the Cultural Center of the settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. Boycotting settlement goods is now discussed in Israel, in the pages of the New York Times, and inside our very own Jewish communities. Symptomatic of its move to the right, the Israeli government has outlawed this practice, and the brave Israelis that speak about it, risk heavy court-mandated fines for expressing their views. But inevitably, the more intransigent the Israeli government, the more popular this and other nonviolent measures will become.

Now to be sure, boycott and selective divestment are not the same thing. The former is carried out by consumers; the latter by investors. Divestment from a corporation does not come in a vacuum. It is the logical step that follows after shareholders try to negotiate with a company to address their concerns and after shareholder activism fails. Back when I opposed divestment, I was concerned that divestment was being invoked when the first two steps had not been tried yet, or at least pursued to its completion. This is not the case today. To their credit, the churches have gathered a full record of failed corporate engagement and have experienced years of frustrated shareholder resolutions that do not achieve the desired change in corporate behavior. Now that step one and step two have failed, it is time to move to the inevitable step three, and that is divestment. Not doing so puts at risk the integrity of the whole socially responsible investment model.

I want to make clear that I would not support divestment or boycotts from Israel as a whole. I do not support turning Israel into a pariah state. And it is precisely because of this that I support the churches’ measure approach to selective divestment. The resolutions under consideration–divesting from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett-Packard–do not single out Israel, and they certainly do not single out Jews either. They single out specific corporate complicity with the occupation. Churches hold tobacco companies in their no-buy list, not because they believe that smokers are bad people. They do not single out smokers for criticism. They do so because smoking is wrong. In the same way, bulldozing civilian homes and making people homeless is wrong too. It does not matter whether this happens in Israel or elsewhere. The problem is not with the place or with the people, but with the action. This bulldozing is taking place in Jerusalem, where Palestinian homes are being bulldozed to make room for more Jewish settlements. Not condemning wrongdoing simply because it happens in Israel is singling out Israel. Israel does not need affirmative action; it needs to be treated exactly the same as every other state, not better, and not worse. This means acknowledging when it does things right, but also taking corrective action when it does not.

I’m thrilled that Mordechai has now signed on to our Rabbi’s Letter campaign in advance of the United Methodist Conference in Tampa this week, where the divestment resolution will be presented once again.

There will be much more to report on this important story – please stay tuned.

In recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day, please read these words of Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of Knesset, who offered the following words before the Israeli Parliament in 2010:

This is the place and the time to cry out the cries of all of those who were and are no longer with us, the cries of those who have remained and who are struggling, justifiably so, to unburden themselves from the scenes of death and horror. I will once again repeat that I am full of empathy for the families of the victims of the Holocaust wherever they may be around the world, including those with whom I live on the same land, in the same country.

This is the moment in which every individual must relieve oneself of all of his nationalist or religious hats, relieve oneself of the otherness and wear just one robe: the robe of humanity. One must look at himself, look around him, and be human. Only human.

Full speech here.

photo: Ma'an News Agency

Anyone who doubts the power of nonviolent resistance should study the case of Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan, who was imprisoned by Israel without charge or trial, fasted in protest for 66 days, lost almost 70 pounds, hovered painfully between life and death – and is now a free man.

From Ma’an News Agency:

Israeli authorities released former hunger-striking administrative detainee Khader Adnan late Tuesday … Adnan arrived at his home in Araba in the northern West Bank to meet his family before returning to a tent reception where he spoke to well-wishers and officials in the village.

Hundreds of Palestinians chanted slogans in solidarity with prisoners as they welcomed the former detainee, whose 66-day hunger strike inspired others to protest administrative detention.

In the meantime, the majority of the 4,699 Palestinians currently held in Israeli prisons refused meals on Prisoners’ Day – and 1,200 of them vow to hunger strike indefinitely to protest unfair conditions.

I’m particularly struck by Israel’s official response:

The Israeli Prisons Authority has coped with hunger strikes in the past and is prepared to cope with it now.

Ever the victim, they still don’t get it.

Palestinian nonviolent resistance is providing Israel with a very real moment of truth. Do they think that releasing Adnan will pacify their resolve? Trust me, this is only the very beginning…

Click here to read Khader Adnan’s remarks upon returning home to his family.

There’s been a great deal of analysis written about German writer Gunther Grass’ now-infamous new poem, “What Must Be Said” (in which Grass criticized Israel’s nuclear program as endangering an “already fragile world peace.”)  For me, the most astute response by far comes from Mideast historian Mark LeVine, writing in Al-Jazeera.

LeVine skillfully parses the psychology and the politics behind the uproar – but it is his identification of the larger context of the issue that resonates most powerfully for me. Here’s a long excerpt from a much longer article. The entire piece is well worth reading:

Israel has always sought to portray itself as a “normal” country, yet goes out of its way to ensure no one “names it” - to use Grass’ words – as what it is, a colonial state that every day intensifies its occupation of another people’s land. And so Grass has taken it upon himself to “say what must be said”, to name Israel as what it is, a “nuclear power” that “endangers the already fragile world peace”. It’s worth noting he doesn’t even mention the occupation, which is the far greater threat to world peace.

I have no idea if Grass really believed himself to be “bound” to Israel; if he did, we can imagine the bond is broken today, at least by Israel, now that he’s banned from returning. But Grass’ feelings are not what’s interesting or important. What’s important is the larger context, all the other “facts” which refuse to be accepted as “pronounced truths”.

These facts are that Israel, however egregious its crimes – and anyone who denies them is either completely ignorant or a moral idiot – is but one cog in a much larger global machine, one that includes too many other cases of occupation, exploitation, and wanton violence to list comprehensively here (we can name a few – Syria, China, Russia, India, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bahrain, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, the Congo, and of course, NATO and the United States – whose oppression, exploitation, and murder of their own or other peoples is a far more concrete “fact” than the potential for mass destruction caused by Israel’s nuclear programme)…

The larger fact is that the global economy is addicted to war, to militarism, oil and the rape of the planet for the minerals and resources that fuel the now globalised culture of hyperconsumption that will doom our descendants to a fate we dare not contemplate. Israel’s gluttony for Palestinian territory, and its willingness to encourage a regional nuclear arms race to keep it, is ultimately no different than the the gluttony for the 60-inch TV, the iPhone/Pad, the cavernous homes and cars, the ability to live at levels of consumption that are only sustainable if most of the world lives in poverty that increasingly defines all our cultures.

Israel has gotten Palestine on the cheap, and it costs relatively little to continue the occupation. Far less than it would cost to end it. So why bother? Especially when everyone else is doing, more or less, the same thing and, it’s clear, no one really cares anymore. Germany, whose remarkable economic stability in the recent global financial crisis is in good measure due to its central role in this global economy of hyper-consumption (think of all the energy and resources that go into making and driving all those fancy German cars), is certainly playing its role all too well.

If Grass is right that we must talk about the threat to world peace posed by Israel’s nuclear programme – and far more by its ongoing occupation – then we must also talk about the threat to global peace posed by the sick global system of which Israel is merely one of the more easily identifiable symptoms. Unlike my parents, I’m happy that Germans finally feel secure enough publicly to speak critically about Israel. But if they want their words to have a chance of bringing about a change in its behaviour, they, and everyone else, needs to broaden the discourse to include their own role in enabling and profiting from the system that Israel’s actions so benefits, and the global scope of the victims it daily produces.

Of course, this discourse would require a much longer and more complex poem, written by an even better poet than Grass. If someone manages to write it, I hope it will get the same publicity as “What Must Be Said”.

Please, please take 30 minutes of your time to watch this presentation by Israeli peace activist, Miko Peled, author of the recently published book, “The General’s Son.”

Among other things, Peled’s ideas and convictions carry a profound sense of moral authority because he comes with impeccable Zionist credentials. His grandfather, Avraham Katznelson, was a prominent Zionist leader and signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His father Matti Peled was a major Israeli military leader who fought in the 1948 War of Independence and was an Aluf (“Major-General”) during the 1967 Six-Day War. He later became a scholar of Arabic literature, a leftist politician, and a prominent Israeli advocate of peace talks with the PLO.

Miko is following in his father’s footsteps in more ways than one. In reading his book, it is so clear to me that he is an Israeli through and through and very much a product of his family’s remarkable history. At the same time, he has carried his father’s work of moral witness firmly into the 21st century.

In the video above, he addresses what he considers the fundamental myths of Israeli society: the “Land Without a People for a People Without a Land” myth of 1948, the “War of Survival” myth of 1967, and the myth of “Israeli democracy.” He also speaks eloquently about the moral outrage of the war in Gaza and the issue of Palestinian terror.  (Tragically, Peled’s family has first-hand experience with the latter subject: his niece Smadar was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in Jerusalem in 1997).

Please watch the clip and send the link on. Moral heroes such as Miko Peled deserve the widest possible audience.

PS: I’m thrilled to be able to say that the publisher of “The General’s Son,” Just World Books, will be soon publishing my book – a curated anthology of “Shalom Rav” posts and comments from 2008-2010.  Much more on this soon – stay tuned!

This Pesach I’m thinking about the exceedingly radical message at the heart of the story we’ll retell around the seder table tonight.

I’m thinking in particular about what the story tells us about power, about the ways the powerful wield their power against the less powerful, and about the inevitability of corrupt power’s eventual fall. And I’m thinking about what is possibly the most radical message of all: that there is a Power greater, yes even greater than human power.

Woe betide the empire that fails to heed this message. Powerful empires have come and gone, but the Power that Makes for Liberation still manages to live to fight another day. Will the Pharoahs among us ever learn?

There’s no getting around the fact that our seder story is not a neat, tidy or particularly pleasant story. That’s because – as we all know too well – the powerful never give up their power without a fight. No one ever made this point better or more eloquently than Frederick Douglass when he said in 1857:

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Read that one around the seder table tonight. And for good measure, throw in this sentence from MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail:”

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

It is my fervent hope that this Pesach, we American Jews, who rank among the most privileged and powerful citizens on earth, will talk openly and honestly about the wages of our power when we gather yet again to tell the story. What would it mean if we truly took to heart our tradition’s most challenging teachings: that God hears the cries of the enslaved, that God is a God of Liberation, that God stands with the oppressed, not the oppressor and demands that we do as well?

Conversely (and much more painfully), are we, as Americans and as Jews, ready to confront the ways we regularly wield our own power and privilege in any number of oppressive ways at home and abroad? Might we possibly be willing to contemplate this truth: that the power that we chronically take for granted, will eventually, inevitably go the way of history as well?

Indeed, if there is any message we learn at seder table tonight, it’s that, to paraphrase the words of poet Kevin Coval, all Pharoahs must eventually fall:

wake in this new day
we will all die soon
let us live while we have the chance
while we have this day
to build and plot and devise
to create and make the world
just
this time for us
this time for all
this time the pharaohs must fall

Read that one around the seder table too.

I’m so proud to be part of a tradition, a people, a spiritual nation that has survived to outlast far mightier nations because it has affirmed a Power even greater. Greater than Pharaoh, greater than Babylon, even greater than the Roman empire that exiled us and dispersed our people throughout the diaspora, where this sacred vision was sown, took root and eventually blossomed forth.

May the story we tell tonight inspire us to be bearers of that vision in our lives and in our world.

All the best for a challenging and liberating Pesach.

JewishReconFed: Chag Sameach! We hope you have a Sweet Pesach!

JewishReconFed: Order your Haggadah! Deadline to order: Wed April 4. #reconstructionistpress #passover #haggadah #anightofquestions http://t.co/B6zQISEl

I’m already on record as fully supporting the Presbyterian Church (USA) divestment resolution that is being brought to the PC (USA) General Assembly this summer. Now I’m thrilled to report that my colleagues on the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council have released a letter in support of both the Presbyterian and the Methodist Church’s efforts to divest from three companies (Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett-Packard) that profit from the Israeli occupation.

Here’s an excerpt of our letter:

Every day Jewish leaders are building alliances with our interfaith partners to oppose all forms of oppression and to express our outrage over the confiscation of Palestinian land, the destruction of Palestinian farms, groves and homes, and to work to end the daily harassment and violence against Palestinian people.

Several Christian denominations are making brave, constructive decisions to investigate whether their churches’ investments contribute to this violence and oppression in Israel and Palestine.

We believe that to invest your own resources in corporations which pursue your vision of a just and peaceful world, and to withdraw your resources from those which contradict this vision, is the best way to support Muslims, Christians, Jews, Israelis, Palestinians –truly all people.

We can think of no greater act of friendship than to work with us, side by side to bring justice, equality and self-determination to all people. This selective divestment process is one of the strongest tools we have.

In making this decision, we are together, Jews and Christians, living up to the biblical promise to pursue justice.

I encourage you to visit rabbisletter.org for a plethora of resources, including FAQs, additional Jewish expressions of support – and the opportunity to sign on to our letter.

You can also click here to directly support the Methodist resolution (which will be considered at the United Methodist Church General Conference in Tampa on April 24-May 4)  and here to support the Presbyterian initiative (which will brought before the PC USA General Assembly in Pittsburgh, June 30-July 7).

ReconPress: JRF & The Recon Press will be closed 4/6-4/13 for Pesach. Last Day to order your Haggadah will be Wed April 4! http://t.co/2wyvItpa