Sunday, May 7, delegation members had some free choices for the morning. A couple of people went to Saint George Anglican church. Another group went to the Lutheran Church in the old city that has service in English as well as Arabic. And a third group took taxis to Ramallah city, just north of Jerusalem, where there is a friends meeting, otherwise known as Quaker meeting House. The Friends have been an active presents for a just peace in the occupied territories for many years. 

I was in the Ramallah contingent because I wanted to visit my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, who live there. It was a delightful brunch and conversation for me, and the others enjoyed the respective worship service experiences. As far as I know, there are no Unitarian Universalist fellowships or other entities in Palestine or Israel. 

How people got to their various destinations is revealing of the apartheid and occupation that continues. The Lutheran, an Anglican churches were walking distance from the hotel and not a hassle to get to. Going to Ramallah the American Friends Service Committee have a taxi company on standby that has white (Israeli) license plates. This kind of taxi will get you through the military checkpoints more easily. Palestinian vehicles have yellow license plates. And everyone has an ID that states their nationality. The road to Ramallah is populated with several checkpoints. These tend to be located near Israeli settlements and are ostensibly for the protection of the settlers. One should bear in mind that the Israeli government carried out the occupation of the territories in 1967 making it one of the longest occupations in modern history, and according to international law, it is illegal for a country that is an occupying power to transfer its population to an occupied territory. And yet the construction of new settlements, for Jews only, has continued unabated for decades. There is a lot of racism against the Palestinians. A number of these settlers have been going on rampages for a while, burning olive groves, attacking Palestinian farmers, dragging Palestinians out of cars, harassing children on the way to school and so on.

We took the taxis from Ramallah to Bethlehem. The early afternoon was a scheduled time for visiting the Church of the Nativity, Manger Square, and some of the Palestinian owned shops nearby that sell crafts.
I asked the driver to do us the favor of passing by the Banksy Hotel, which is an anti-occupation establishment where visitors can stay and have a view of the 24 m high occupation wall.

When we got to the Manger Square, to our surprise, a patriarch of the Greek Orthodox church was paying a visit, and therefore there was to be a several hours pause in the line to get down to the lower levels of the church of the of the Nativity to see the star marking the spot that was the birthplace of Jesus. We were able to walk into the Orthodox section of the complex as well as the Roman Catholic sanctuary and took some very nice photos. Trying to get to a shop was a bit more challenging because the recommended one and several others were closed due to the musical processions that were starting to take place in honor of the patriarch visit. We did get to look at some beautiful embroidery and ceramics and other creative arts and crafts, and a special lucky experience was watching the youth, marching bands pass by there were notably at least two band groups with bagpipes and drums. It’s likely that the first bagpipes were created somewhere in the greater Mediterranean, perhaps what is known as Greece today and then possibly spread to the Roman empire who’s soldiers and followers brought the instrument to the British Isles were the Scotts developed it to its current form. Perhaps they were brought by people from Scotland or England in the 19th or 20th century and taught as part of secondary school programs for Palestinian Christians. These bands were scout groups from various churches that included more than one gender. Presumably these are all children from Christian families living in the area. The Christian population of Palestine at the turn of the 19th century was somewhere between 10 and 20% Christian Arabs but due to the occupation, and the restrictive wall that has built a ramp been built around parts of Bethlehem, which impacts economy and centers of life many Christians have left for other countries, reducing the population to perhaps one or 2% of the Palestinians. People are really grieving the shrinking of their community. Pictures are available on our Facebook and Twitter @uujme. The next step for our delegation was the YMCA on one side of Bethlehem, where we met with Rifat Kassis rep representing a Palestinian Christian ecumenical coalition called Kairos Palestine. This organization was founded using the model of the Kairos organization during the time of apartheid in South Africa, issuing a call for churches around the world to be in solidarity, with the oppressed people of South Africa, calling for freedom. The Kairos organization represents the grassroots leaders of various Palestinian Christian denominations. Refat emphasized the deep and growing concern about the continuing displacement of Palestinians from their homes and lands. May 15 is when many Israeli Jews will surprise, celebrate the declaration of the state of Israel. The same day is commemorated by Palestinians as a Nakba, or the catastrophe in which more than 700,000 were driven from or fled their homes, in fear of terrorists, Jewish militias that committed massacres. This displacement is what enabled the state of Israel to be created because suddenly there were so many homes available that have been emptied of their original inhabitants of these homes were given to Jews. The displacement has continued since 1948.  Two laws were passed in 1950 that  accelerated the displacement. The first law was the absentee law, which declared that if Palestinians were not in their homes, and on their properties, they could be taken over by the state which did happen the Palestinians that had left their homes were never permitted to return. The second law was the law of return, which allowed any Jews, anywhere in the world to immigrate to Israel, as if they were returning to their lost homeland. Palestinians have never been granted that capability with many ending up in refugee camps around the region and immigrating to other countries. There are tens of millions of Palestinians in the diaspora.

we found out later that earlier in the morning of Sunday, the Israeli authorities carried out the demolition of an elementary school near Bethlehem. This type of behavior happens on the regular, as Palestinians are not given permits for constructing the social infrastructure that they need for their population, so they take matters into their own hands as most humans would do and build their own structures without a permit inevitably the Israeli government will issue a demolition order, and it will be carried out. See this tweet by Issa Amro from the organization use against the settlements: https://twitter.com/issaamro/status/1655162183473414151?s=46. 

How was the Kairos coalition able to come together in the first place about 13 years ago and to go on to publish fhe recent Dossier on Israeli Apartheid? Rifat states that the members avoided any topic that would divide. They kept their vision toward ending the colonizing apartheid system. They are the voice of grassroots Christians, maybe not of all church leaders. They maybe influenced church leaders to speak out. But as they stated to the World Council of Churches, which has failed to say anything about the apartheid situation, saying that they’re not hearing from church leaders about it is that church leaders in the occupied territories are under a great deal of pressure from the occupation itself. In order to operate as a church they need certain permits, and they fear that if they make outspoken statements about the apartheid situation, the Israeli government will make operating a church very difficult. Rifat’s request to us was to not allow World Council of Churches and churches in the US and UK to delay solidarity by hiding behind waiting for local faith leaders to speak up.

After this important meeting, the tour bus took us back to Jerusalem, where we are staying at the National Hotel, a Palestinian owned enterprise. We met at the top floor restaurant at the hotel for a delicious shared meal. Following this, we received information from the head of Sabeel, a Palestinian Christian liberation theology center. In Arabic, sabeel means the way or path or the spring as in the body of water. This group was established a few decades ago and works hard to legitimize the concept that resisting oppression can be part of one’s theology. Omar requested that we think hard about theories of change in what faith groups do to support what Palestinians call for. His feeling is that the old model of bringing people to see and go back and tell is going to make big changes. This has been happening for a long time that faith groups will come witness what is happening to the Palestinians go back and tell their congregations and organize some phone calls and visits to elected officials, and yet Palestinians are still struggling under the same impression with worse results every week.  He cautioned us also against being the saviors and viewing Palestinians as the victims, and said that when he sees the courage and confidence of Palestinians in the face of oppressive power, he sees people that are already liberated in their minds. Indeed, it is the steadfastness of the Palestinian people in there, continuing resistance to their oppression that gives solidarity its momentum. Omar also highly recommended a book that Sabeel published last year based on a deep study of antisemitism. Now we just need to do more to draw churches onto the path of responding to the call of Palestinian churches and other organizations to take action that will ultimately get the United States to stop enabling this entirely dismal situation.

The structures and power of settler colonialism, occupation, and apartheid must be dismantled.  

Jerusalem and Environs

[Pictures will be added later - see our Twitter account in the meanwhile at https://www.twitter.com/uujme.]

May 6th was the first full day of the interfaith delegation of the Apartheid-Free Communities initiativs to Palestine and Israel, sponsored by the American from Service Committee. We did some bonding over dinner the night before after the entire group had finally arrived through the Tel Aviv airport.

In the morning we boarded a small-ish tour bus with a total of 19 people and our local tour guide staff person. Sahar talked us through an understanding of the demarcation lines around Jerusalem. She provided some very detailed maps. The driver took us to a high vantage point called big mountain, from which you can see the south side of the old city walls, the Dome of the Rock rising above that along with a few church towers and many buildings. The valley below us was pointed out, highlighting much empty space where you would imagine building should be going on with an expanding population of Palestinians; however, building is almost impossible for Palestinians to get approved through the Israel permit system. We could also see part of the separation wall in the distance and the Mount of Olives. Part of what we could see is an area called Silwan where 87 homes are under threat of eventual demolition to make room for a biblical theme park that the Israeli government wants to see happen to make the Christian tourists happy. Sahar returned our attention to the maps to show us that the Jerusalem municipality, which is controlled by the Israeli government is intent upon building more and more settlements so that the old city is pretty much surrounded by Jewish only settlements and to displace as many Palestinians as possible.

Next the driver took us around to the separation wall that we could see from a distance. We brainstormed different names for the wall with one of my favorites being architectural oppression. This wall was built to supposedly go along the green line, which was the division between Israel and the occupied territories in East Jerusalem in 1967. It actually does not stay true to that line, encroaching upon Palestinian territory. Many times the reason that the Israeli government gave for building the wall was to stop terrorist attacks by Palestinians in the occupied territories, coming into Israel, and doing suicide bombing. And while it’s true that after the wall was constructed the suicide attacks ceased, it’s also a fact that the political leadership of Hamas took a decision to discourage suicide bombing as a strategy. In any case, for an occupying power to build a wall that cuts communities in half in some cases is against international law, and just wrong. In the location that we visited, the wall does cut a neighborhood in half and what that means is for Palestinians living on the other side of the wall, they have to go through a checkpoint to get to the other side of the wall and repeat that to go back, so this has been very disruptive to livelihood and education.

We also learned that the Israelis control the Jerusalem municipality and will not build schools for the population of Palestinians, which is illegal under international law for an occupying power.  So what Palestinians have to do is have the kids attend in two shifts with half attending in the morning and a half attending in the afternoon.

There is also not reliable trash pickup for the Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, and this makes areas very messy and causes people to resort to burning their garbage.

Our next stop was the neighborhood of Silwan itself where we looked at artivism. On our way to this neighborhood we took a detour to see the spring of Silwan, which flows from the Biblical pool of Silwan, where Jesus took the water and healed a blind man.

The project we visited was called iwitness Silwan, and our guide for the first part of the tour was a Jewish American activist named Lou. She showed us many bright, cheerful and beautiful murals that she helps to design and paint with children and adults in the community to give them some hope and control over their environment despite the fact that slowly Israeli settlers take over homes from time to time and that there’s constant video surveillance in the area from the Israeli buildings. There are a number of eyes that are painted on buildings, looking back at the surveillance cameras, and serving as symbolic witness to the ethnic cleansing, displacement, violence, and unequal treatment that the Palestinians experience.

Then we had the tour next phase, led by a man who is a leader in this community, who took us past some more murals, including on the side of his house that were just gorgeous. Then he took us up to the creative center in the community were they provided a amazing lunch for us, and we sat and discuss the importance of supporting arts as a form of giving hope ans constructive outlet for the children, and a message of resistance to what is happening.

We thanked him and Lou and the lunch providers deeply and walked our way back down to where the bus picked us up again. After this, we had some time in our rooms to put our feet up and then met at a restaurant in the Sahara hotel for some dinner and bonding time with the amazing people on this trip, following this, we walked down the street to the Jerusalem Legal Aid Center and saw a presentation about the ongoing displacement of Palestinians and demolition of their homes in Jerusalem. Since the beginning of the occupation. It is quite telling. 

Tomorrow’s post will be about our trip to Bethlehem at our meeting with referred Rifaat Kassis of Kairos Palestine and our discussion with Sabeel, an organization based on Palestinian Christian liberation theology. 

Is this responsible journalism, or is it exploiting the words of a grieving person, words that fuel a jingoistic bonfire?

An NPR reporter reiterated the opinion, “Israelis and Palestinians live intertwined in Jerusalem,” and then proceeded to interview a Jewish Israeli woman who says, in halting English, “Why we don't live together like a family?" on the Morning Edition broadcast of January 30, 2023. (1)

Were both interviewer and interviewee not aware of Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem and its environs such as Sheikh Jarrah? Dispossessions. Evictions. Home demolitions. Separation walls. (2) Were they conveniently forgetting the riot by an Israeli fascist mob on April 22, 2021? The smashed shop windows. Palestinians in Jerusalem reeled "from a night of racist, anti-Arab violence that left over a hundred Palestinians wounded and dozens detained, following an ultra-right-wing Israeli demonstration in the city during which Jewish mobs chanted ‘death to Arabs.’" (3)

My sincere condolences to the interviewee, an Israeli woman who is grieving. Both her brother and sister-in-law were among “seven people that had just been just killed outside a synagogue in Jerusalem” by a Palestinian man. Her concluding wish was, "We suffer, they should suffer." The man who killed her brother had the very same wish: revenge. This might have been a good moment for the interviewer to quote Gandhi: "An eye for and eye, and soon the whole world is blind." 

The NPR reporter, Daniel Estrin, mentions “a wave of violence,” and quotes a Palestinian man briefly. In the introduction to this news report, some background was provided about recent Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attacks against Palestinians: on January 26th, “several” (it was ten) Palestinians were killed during an Israeli undercover, large-scale raid on the Jenin refugee camp, including an elderly woman. (4) If they’d been interviewed for this news story, Palestinian journalists and human rights advocates living in Israel-Palestine could have provided essential facts. For example, the month was not over and yet, in daily assaults, the IDF had killed at least 35 Palestinians in January. (5)

Will we hear an NPR report, in the near future, as 42 family members are evicted and their homes destroyed, by the IDF, in revenge for the killing of the seven Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem? (6) There is no evidence that anyone knew of the vengeful man’s plans. The IDF’s actions will be collective punishment, which is a crime under international law. This is not on the path to peace and justice. 

Between the year 2000 and September 2018, Israel killed 43 journalists in the West Bank and Gaza. (7) Last year, an IDF sniper killed Shireen Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist and an American citizen. Will NPR place, at the top of today’s news, the next IDF killing of a journalist, child, or elderly person; the next home demolition; the next IDF home invasion; and the next seizing of a Palestinian child in the middle of the night? (8)

We’ve certainly given air time to people filled with fear and hatred. Will NPR now interview the many Palestinians living in the occupied lands, in Israel itself, and all over the world, who are hard at work to end the violence by uplifting human rights for everyone in the Holy Land? That’s getting harder to do, since Israel outlawed six human rights organizations last year (9). Let's hear voices from Palestinian civil society in these NPR news reports. Please find these people and, consistently, let us know what they say. (10)

NOTES

1) The reporter repeats what the interviewee’s sister said to him (“Israelis and Palestinians live intertwined in Jerusalem.”), apparently during his interview of the family members of some of the seven Israeli victims,

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/30/1152448807/blinkens-israel-visit-comes-during-heightened-israeli-palestinian-tensions. 

2) https://electronicintifada.net/tags/sheikh-jarrah

3) https://mondoweiss.net/2021/04/israeli-mobs-chant-death-to-arabs-in-night-of-violence-in-jerusalem/

4) James Zogby, “Our Message to Secretary Blinken” (Feb. 6, 2023), https://www.aaiusa.org/library/our-message-to-secretary-blinken.  Excerpt: “On January 26th, 10 Palestinians were killed during an Israeli undercover raid into Jenin. Nightly Israeli invasions of heavily populated Palestinian communities have taken almost three dozen lives so far this year. These raids and killings coupled with a new round of mass expulsions and intensified settler violence have left Palestinians both seething in anger and despairing of any improvement in their lives.  The next day a lone Palestinian gunman murdered eight Israelis as they walked home from their synagogue in a settlement to the east of Jerusalem.  Both mass killings were deplorable and yet tragically predictable. …” See also Zogby, “Real Journalism Asks Tough Questions,” (Feb. 20, 2023), https://www.aaiusa.org/library/real-journalism-asks-tough-questions?emci=413e8198-3bb1-ed11-994d-00224832eb73&emdi=0fba22ea-1eb2-ed11-994d-00224832e1ba&ceid=2341773

5) https://www.democracynow.org/2023/1/30/israel_palestine_violence_tony_blinken; 

6) Jewish Vice for Peace Rabbinical Council’s statement, January 31, 2023,
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2023/01/statement-from-the-jewish-voice-for-peace-rabbinical-council/ Excerpt: “In the last few weeks, there has been a spike in the extra-judicial killings of Palestinians by the Israeli military. Ten people were killed by Israeli forces in Jenin (West Bank) on Thursday alone.
On Friday night, in Jerusalem, seven Jews were murdered by a lone Palestinian. The community of Neve Yaakov, an illegal East Jerusalem settlement populated by many poor, Mizrahi Jews (Jews of Color) is grieving. We share the concerns of our fellow Jews in Israel. Nothing can justify Friday’s mass murder.
The Israeli military has shown no evidence or made any claims that the Palestinian killer received any support from anybody else. He appears to have been reacting to the senseless death of a friend, killed recently by Israeli forces. The backdrop of ever present Israeli violence in his life goes back to a time before he was born. His grandfather for whom he is named was murdered by an Israeli Jew, apparently by an associate of the hoodlum who is today Israel’s Minister for National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir. The Israeli authorities do not allege that anybody else knew of the killer’s plan or aided him in any way. Nevertheless, the Israeli security services arrested his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Alqam along with 40 other members of their extended family and evicted them from the family home. This is cruel, collective punishment. This is illegal under Israeli law and international law that Israel is a signatory to. …”

7) See also https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/shireen-abu-aklehs-family-rejects-latest-israeli-cover 

8) https://mondoweiss.net/2022/12/2022-in-review-palestines-moment-of-truth/

9) https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2022/08/jewish-voice-for-peace-condemns-the-israeli-governments-latest-attack-on-human-rights-organizations/

10) Palestinian civil society (in the diaspora, the occupied lands, in Israel) includes a multitude of men and women who could be interviewed.   One could begin with the staff of the six Palestinian human rights organizations in Israel that Israel has outlawed. Contact the staff of any prominent Palestinian Human Rights organization in the United States, Israel-Palestine, or around the world. 

Steven Sellers Lapham is chair of the Legislative Working Group of the Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East.

Virginia: Resisting Two Attacks on Free Speech

Check to see whether anti-boycott legislation is impacting your state or local government at palestinelegal.org/resources. Scroll down and click on the map of the United States, then find your state.

As Palestinian people continue resisting Israel’s intensifying repression, our local work in the various United States grows more urgent. Two dangerous bills passed the Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates the week of February 6th. Virginians have until the session ends on February 25, 2023, to defeat both bills. 

HB 1606, falsely conflates criticism of Israeli human rights abuses with antisemitism, and HB 1898 is an outrageous bill trying “to coerce ordinary Virginians to give up their solidarity with the Palestinian people. It would force people who have business or work contracts with the Virginia government to commit to not participate in boycotts for justice for Palestine. These bills can, for instance, coerce Palestinian Americans into choosing between funding the Israeli oppression of their families, or losing their jobs.” (excerpt from an alert on 2/14 by Leah Muskin-Pierret, Manager of Congressional & Grassroots Advocacy, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights)

UUJME supporters are part of a Virginia coalition to oppose the legislation, and are asking UUs to take action to help defeat the bills.

The ACLU has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case with enormous implications for American’s right to boycott -- a right that the Supreme Court has previously ruled as a form of free speech. This past summer, in an alarming break from precedent, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that boycotts are not protected by the First Amendment. The focus now is on the right to boycott Israel for its abuse of Palestinian human rights, but there are now copycat bills, using nearly identical language targeting boycotts of fossil fuels, firearms and other industries. What is at stake is the very right of people in America to wield boycotts as a form of political expression.