Save the Children

While the world and especially the US is trying to negotiate a quick fix with Iran to get help  in containing the violent attack of ISIS into Iraq and when Israel is seen more and more on the wrong side of peace, suddenly three Israeli teenagers disappear. I would never approve of kidnapping, but I can’t help but think, how convenient for Netanyahu.  Of course, Netanyahu blames Hamas and he may be right. But why would Hamas do such a stupid thing, especially right now?  They certainly have not forgotten the disproportionate military poundings by Israel any time there is a Palestinian response to Israel’s occupation.  Hamas well remembers the “war” on Gaza five years ago which killed over 1400 men, women and children, destroyed 22,000 buildings, including, mosques, schools, hospitals, public works and homes. The death ratio was over a hundred to one.  So why would Hamas risk such atrocities again?  But, maybe out of decades of frustration, they did abduct three kids.

Regardless of what happened, Netanyahu is milking it for every drop of “victimism” he can squeeze out of it.

Marc Ellis, Jewish author and long time activist for peace and justice writes:

Here we go again. Israel has launched –yet another – full-scale invasion of the West Bank.   This in response to the kidnapping of three Israelis. Or is this cover for – yet another – collective punishment because the Palestinians declared – yet another – a Palestinian state?[1]

Three teenagers disappeared while hiking from their illegal settlement homes. Hopefully they are being treated humanely. They certainly have the sympathy of the US media.  We know their names, have seen their pictures on our television screens and in our newspapers. We have watched their mothers cry and plead for their return every day since June 12^th. What we do not see is the more than 200  Palestinians who have disappeared from their homes or the killing of twenty year old Ahmad Sabarin or the injury of an eight year old little boy in the name of Israel’s “search.”  

What we don’t hear is the pain of the hundreds of Palestinian children kidnapped by Israeli soldiers and being held God knows where for God knows how long.  But, one thing for sure, they are not being treated humanely.

Ziad Abbas wrote:

Although I have been living far from Palestine for years and I am now in my forties, I still have nightmares about the Israeli army invading my house when I was a child and about the first times I was tortured. That is the reality most Palestinians former prisoners live with for the rest of our lives.[2]

It seems that Israel has always been threatened by children.  According to the Washington Post, in the first 30 months of the 1987 intifada, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 159 children. Thousands were beaten. More than 50,000 children were treated for injuries, including 6,500 wounded by gun fire. “The average age of children killed was ten,”  What was their crime? What had they done to provoke such punishment? Heaving stones, scribbling slogans on walls, or displaying Palestinian flags. Save the Children concluded that one-third of beaten children were under ten years old, and one fifth under the age of five. Nearly a third of the children beaten suffered broken bones.[3]

Ellis says, “Missing Jews are a terrible price to pay. But, then, the Israeli jails are filled with “missing” Palestinians.[4]

It is hard for me to imagine. I have a warm and comfortable bed in which to lie down. I have a safe place to sleep. I am reasonably free of pain, fear and anxiety.  However, none of this would be true if I were a Palestinian living under Israel’s boot.  On any night, for any reason, Israeli troops may break into my home, at any time, usually around 3 o’clock in the morning, tie my children’s hands behind their backs and deliver them blindfolded, beaten, frightened  and crying to be locked up in solitary confinement. According to Defense for Children International-Palestine, about 500 to 700  children are arrested by Israel every year. They are immediately separated from other children, allowed no visits from parents, pastors or even a lawyer. Soiling themselves when not allowed to go to a bath room simply adds to their humiliation and fear.  

How long before we speak out to save the children?

                                                                                                Thomas Are

                                                                                                June 20, 2014

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[1] Marc H. Ellis,  Hunting for Missing Justice, June 19, 2014, Mondoweiss, June 20, 2014.

[2] Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,  Zaid Abbas, Torturing and Jailing Palestinian Children, Other Voices,  December 2013, p. 2.

[3] “Rights Group Accuses Israel of Violence Against Children in Palestinian Uprising,”  Washington Post, May 17, 1990

[4] Marc H. Ellis,  Hunting for Missing Justice, June 19, 2014, Mondoweiss, June 20, 2014.

Its the Same Story

May 15, 1948 is a day to remember. To the Jew, it is a day to celebrate the Declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel. To the Arab, it is a day to lament as “The Nakba”, the greatest catastrophe in Palestinian history.  To Israel, it was a time when God finally stepped in and declared Jews as his favorite people, perhaps his only people. And gave them, yet again, someone else’s land

This Thursday, May 15, synagogues, movie houses, newspapers and TV screens will be filled with ceremonies and celebrations of the goodness of God to the Jews and the bravery of those first pioneers who established the State of Israel, the “only democracy in the Middle East.”

At the same time, very little will be mentioned concerning the plight of the Palestinians who lost their land and freedom. More than 750,000 driven from their homes, many raped, robbed and massacred to make room for a Jewish state.  Over 500 Arab villages destroyed, bulldozed down and covered up, creating the largest refugee problem in modern history.  

Someone said, “Kill one person and it’s a crime. Kill a thousand and it just a statistic.”

However, the Nakba has flesh on it. I received a reply to one of my earlier blogs:

Tom, this is when my wife Aida and her family fled Palestine with only the clothes on their backs, leaving their three story home and her father’s two stores. They lost it all.  For the first 25-30 years of her life, she would wake up screaming, 4-5 times a month, that the Jews were after her to kill her and her family When I met Aida in 1956, she and her three brothers, her mom and dad, were living in one room, with a small cooking area and a bathroom. There were four small beds around the room which were used to sit on in the day time and for them to sleep on at night. This room was about 12 X 16!!!   Your Friend, TONY

Multiply that story by a thousand times and it is easy to understand why Israel’s Declaration of Statehood is so difficult to be seen as something to celebrate.

I think of Elias Chacour, whom I met about 30 years ago.

When Elias Chacour was about nine years old, his father called the family together. “There was a monster up in Europe who persecuted and killed Jews.  He is dead now, but the Jews still do not feel safe there.  So, they are going to come and live with us for a while.”  Chacour remembers being excited to move out of his bedroom to make room for their guests. After all, Jews were also the children of Abraham. They were blood brothers. 

Only they did not come as guests. They came with guns.  In one day Chacour and his  family were driven from the home up into the hills at gun point “ One soldier growled, “This land is ours. Get out now. Move.”

What they did not know was that all over the Galilee, Palestinians were being driven from their homes. In the struggle, parents were separated from their children, some never saw them again.  Some older folks did not make it. Little Elias and the other people of Biram tried to climb up to a little cross road village called Gish. Surely their neighbors would help them. But, the strangest thing. When they finally arrived in Gish, there was no one there.  The homes and shops were empty. Everyone wondered what had happened to the people of Gish.

Several days later, the children of Biram were playing in a near-by field. Their ball rolled down a ravine. Elias went to retrieve it. As he reached down he saw the hand of a small child sticking up out of the sand.  He had just discovered what had happened to the people of Gish.  They had been rounded up and executed. [1]

This was not an isolated case. It reflected the official goals of Zionism. Historians list at least 33 massacres of Palestinians villages. Israeli historian Tom Segev writes:

Israel was born: of terror, war and revolution and its creation required a measure of fanaticism and  cruelty.[2]

In 1940, Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department,  said:

Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries – all of them. Not one village, not one tribe, should be left.[3]

Raphael Eytan, IDF Chief of Staff said:

We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel… Force is all they do or ever will understand… When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.[4]

It is amazing that Israel has managed to sell to the Western world, (meaning the US,) the smoke and mirrors that, in spite of the facts, Israel really is the victim that needs an enormous amount of money to be protected from the bad Arabs.

I have known Elias Chacour for almost three decades and in spite of having been savagely beaten by Jewish soldiers who accused him of being a nine year old terrorist, he says only, “I cannot hate them. They are my blood brothers. Perhaps confused and afraid. but never the less, my brothers.”

So, this Thursday, May 15^th, as Israel celebrates its day with pride, I will fly a Palestinian flag in the front of my house to declare solidarity with Elias Chacour, Tony Rukab and many others who have suffered 64 years of Nakba.   I cannot fathom anyone looking back over Israel’s history of military domination of a weaker people and find anything of which to be proud.

I am an American and there is much about my country of which I can be proud, but our celebration of Israeli atrocities is not one of them.

Thomas Are

May 14, 2014

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[1] Read Elias Chacour, Blood Brothers, (Fleming Revell Company. 1984) p 20, 36-53.

[2] Cited by Alison Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, (If Americans Knew.org, 1914) p.58

[3] Alan Hart, Zionism, The Real Enemy of the Jews.  Volume One.,  (Clarity Press, 2009) p. 122.

[4] Idid.,  p.123.

Apartheid is Apartheid

I grew up in an apartheid system. My small South Carolina town was surrounded by African Americans in the 1930s and 40s, and I never knew them.  I had no black friends. Where would I have ever met one?  We were citizens of the same country but we lived in separate communities.  I went to the new high school on the highway while “they” attended class in a fire trap out of sight.  It was apartheid, only we did not call it that.  The appropriate term was “segregation,” or “Our way of life.”

It wasn’t even total segregation. Whites and blacks worked in the same mill, spent our money in the same stores and took the same drivers license test.  It was more like “sitting down segregation.”  We stood in the same lines in the bank, the Post Office and checking out at the grocers.   All that was OK, but our version of apartheid forbid our sitting down together in the same room. Doctors had separate waiting rooms. Restaurants served either blacks or whites, but never both. And never would “they” have come to “our” church.  Race separated us far more than our faith united us.

Apartheid has many faces.  We did not have twenty five foot walls or white only roads, but the people with power did create legal and social systems that favored the powerful and discriminated against those who were under our control.

Today, Israel screams when any hint of the word apartheid is mentioned, pointing out  small differences between its apartheid practice and that of South Carolina in the 30s and South Africa in  the 80s. However, Israel destroys Palestinian homes to build Jewish only homes in their place. They have Jewish only schools and spend $1,100 a year to educate a Jewish child and $190 for each Palestinian.[1]  Israel builds Jewish only roads on which a Palestinian is not allowed to drive or even cross and builds Jewish only cities that shrive on water taken from Palestinian aquifers.  So, what do you call it when a state strips a vast number of its population of their human rights solely on the basis that they are not Jewish?

Jimmy Carter called it apartheid.  Former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak    called it apartheid as did Israel’s chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni  Even John Kerry used the “A” word, until the Jewish lobby put the squeeze on him.  In fact, probably only those responsible for apartheid and benefiting from it refuse to call it what it is and they will punish anyone who does.

Still, the most charitable word to describe what is happening to the Palestinians under Israeli control today is apartheid.

Thomas Are

May 5, 2014

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[1] Nada Elia, The Brian of the Monster, Cited in, The Case for Sanctions Against Israel, Edited by Audrea Lim  p. 58.

Don't Talk About It and It Doesn't Exist

It’s OK to talk about the weather but do not mention climate change, seems to be the program of many politicians. Just don’t talk about it and it won’t exist, in spite of the evidence.

Keep the poor out of sight and there are no consequences to balancing the budget on their backs. Never mind that there are five applicants for every job.  Cut their safety net and they no longer exist on the welfare rolls. Never admit that, except for when, where and to whom we were born, any one of us could very well be one of those homeless men lined up for a hand out on main street. Don’t talk about it and we never have to think about it.

Millions now, for the first time, have health insurance due to what is called Obamacare.  But, don’t talk about the benefit to them. Rather focus on one part of the budget which may be strained by universal compassion. After all, it’s not my dad waiting in pain until someone gets him to an emergency room.

And most blatant of all, don’t refer to the occupied territories as “occupied territories.”   Israel’s ruthless military moves into Palestine with brutal force, plants over half a million settlers in West Bank, steals land, labor and resources for the benefit of Jews only, forces local inhabitants through hundreds of checkpoints, imprisons thousands without charge or trial, humiliates and even tortures children. But if it’s not talked about, it doesn’t exist. Israeli leaders and their supporters can walk around as though they are proud of who they are and what they are doing. 

When Chris Christie “slips up” and refers to the West Bank as “Occupied territory,” he immediately apologizes to Jewish money saying that he misspoke. What he really meant to talk about was the “disputed territory.”  Of course, that which is disputed sounds like  two legitimate claims to the same land. The only people who see this as a dispute are Israeli occupiers, those who think the writers of the early part of the Jewish Bible speak for God and a few million Christian Zionist who choose not to talk about the rest of the Old Testament which speaks of love, justice and compassion. The requirement of being a blessing to others is not binding if you don’t talk about it.

Columbia College Professor, Lymen Chehade,  had his class canceled by the school administration because he did talk about it. He showed the Oscar nominated film 5 Broken Cameras which focused on the peaceful demonstrations of Arab Christians and Muslims against the pain of Israel’s apartheid wall cutting through their village. The most frightening part for Israel was the pictures showing violence, terrorism and settler brutality.  It’s hard to keep actions invisible when there are pictures.

And heaven forbid that Mahmoud Abbas, representing the Palestinian people, would apply for recognition as a state by the United Nations. That which strikes fear in the heart of Benjamin Netanyahu, is not the word “state,” or even “United Nations,” but, the thought of “recognition.”  When your legitimacy depends upon your actions being unrecognized, any little crack in the door threatens to being down the whole house. So, to hell with academic freedom, an independent media and the open debate among politicians.  Such things just cannot be talked about or they might very well be seen to exist and need addressing.

                                                                                    Thomas Are    

                                                                                    April, 5, 2014

Christie's Bridge, Netanyahu's diet

It’s been a half a year and Chris Christie is still in the news. At least his administration is in trouble because they shut down two of three access lanes to the George Washington Bridge. Last August, a deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, emailed David Wildstein, the governor’s appointee to the Port Authority, saying, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”  Wildstein responded, “Got it.” And, “it” caused a huge traffic jam for days and the question remains, “Did Christie know about it?” 

Americans just won’t put up with dirty tricks like deliberately causing people to wait in lines for hours to get to New York and if Christie knew about it, he is not fit to be president of the United States.  We have high standards.

On the other hand, people in Gaza wait in their cars all day, every day, or stand in line for six to twelve hours, holding a jug, hoping to get enough fuel oil to cook supper for their children.  Standing in line is a deliberate tactic in Gaza and everyone, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, and Barack Obama, President of the United States knows who is responsible. We just don’t care enough to discuss it.  Our standards for Israel are pretty low.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs tells us:

Fuel shortages are a chronic problem for Gaza’s 1.7 million imprisoned residents. Israel controls the entry of all fuel supplies into the Gaza strip. Israelis living just a few miles away enjoy plentiful supplies and easy access to fuel, while in Gaza fuel for heating, emergency generators, vehicles and cooking are dependent on infrequent deliveries.  Often only smuggled fuel is available --- and fuel coming through Israel is unaffordable.[1]

While every necessity in Gaza requires waiting in long lines, whether for fuel, getting to school or trying to see a doctor, the worst of it is seeking food.

Food shortage is a policy of Israel and it has been for years.  Not unlike the administrative powers of the Christie administration, five years ago, the administrative powers of Israel described Israel’s plan for Gaza.  “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”[2]  Of course, Israel puts the spin on it that its goal is to prevent starvation.  But cutting food trucks allowed into Gaza from 400 trucks a day to 67 exposes its true purpose. Netanyahu’s health ministry has determined that Gazans need only 2,276 calories a day to keep from starving. Thus, that is all they get, except of course, when Israel closed the crossing completely for ten days to celebrate Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), when no trucks were allowed in. Israel’s “diet” program simply does not express benevolence to anyone … except those who deliberately choose to be blind to the everyday crimes against the people of Gaza.

Targeting fertilizer plants and chicken farms in the bombing of 2008-09 caused massive food insecurity, but raised little ire in the US media, our halls of government or even in our churches.

On the first day of the Gaza offensive, Yoav Galant, the commander in charge, explained the aim succinctly: it was to “send Gaza decades into the past.” Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai may have been thinking in similar terms when months before Operation Cast Lead, he warned that Israel was preparing in inflict on Gaza a Holocaust.”[3]

Eighteen year olds with machine guns holding trucks at crossing points until milk, fruit and vegetables spoil in the hot sun has little to do with security.  The International Committee of the Red Cross reports: “Chronic malnutrition in Gaza.” No surprise.  What is surprising is that good Americans who would not tolerate the government of New Jersey shutting down two lanes of a bridge, which caused a traffic jam, will sit by silently while the government of Israel shuts down Gaza’s only supply of fuel, food, seed, water, medicines and electricity and has done so for years. Christie gets boos at the Super Bowl and Netanyahu gets standing ovations at the joint meeting of congress.

Like the people of Jersey waiting to get across the bridge, the people of Gaza wait. They have been waiting for 65 years.

                                                                                                Thomas Are

                                                                                                March 3  2014

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[1] Mohammed Omar, Gaza’s Paralysis of Lines, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December , 2013, p.14.

[2] Dov Weisglass, advisor to Ehud Olmart,  Reported in  Israel’s Starvation Diet for Gaza. The Electronic Intifada, January 12, 2014.

[3] Israel’s Starvation Diet for Gaza. The Electronic Intifada, January 12, 2014.

Ecumenical Deal in Action

This is not the blog I had hoped to be writing tonight. I attended a Presbytery

meeting today.  The Presbytery was asked to concur in an overture to our General

Assembly requesting that the Presbyterian Church divest from Caterpillar, Motorola and
Hewlett-Packard, all companies making a profit by selling equipment for Israel’s brutal
military occupation of Palestine  The motion lost by one vote; 105 to 104. The good
news is that in all of the debate, no one sought to justify Israel’s conduct. The most
passionate argument seems to be,  “We must not offend our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

Jewish scholar Marc Ellis calls this the “ecumenical deal.”  In order for Christians to have dialogue with Jews, we must first agree to never put the conduct of Israel on the table.  To criticize Israel is offensive and anti-Semitic.  Nevertheless, speaker after speaker placed his or her friendship with the Jewish community above taking steps to call Israel into accountability.  (If my neighbor is abusing his children, it might be time for me to re-evaluate my relationship with my neighbor).

We heard, I don’t like what Israel is doing but this is not the way to address it.  Of course, divestment worked in 1985 in South Africa. That government cleaned up its act without a shot being fired.  The value of divestment is not to make Caterpillar or Israel go broke, but exposure.  Most Americans and most Christians sitting in our pews don’t have the foggiest idea of what is happening in Israel/Palestine, not only in our name but with our money. Boycott and divestment is publicity.

Some insisted on a “better way”.  I kept waiting for that better way to be suggested but after defeating the motion to divest, the better way no longer seemed important.  The message we sent to the Palestinians today was,  Sorry about your pain, wish we could do something to help, but you must understand that we do not want to offend our Jewish neighbors.

I remember the story of someone asking a mother if she loved all her children the same.  “Oh no,” she cried. “I love most the one who is sick until she gets well, the one who is injured until he is healed, the one who is afraid until she feels secure and the one who is hungry until he has been fed. Sounds more like Jesus than our presbytery.

Our Jewish neighbors are no longer suffering. They live in comfortable houses, are well fed and enjoy the benefits of civilized life.

On the other hand, Palestinians are suffering. They are sick and injured, afraid and hungry. I venture that none of the objections to divestment would have made sense if presented before a child whose father had been killed by an Israeli sniper or his brother locked up in an Israeli prison or his home demolished by a Caterpillar bulldozer, his school and hospital locked up on the other side of a wall and whose baby brother died at a check point because his mother was forced to give birth in the back seat of a car.  

So, what do we say to our Christian brothers and sisters of Palestinian who are asking for divestment? Possibly we want to send them a message that, “We know better what is good for you than you do.” Or, “You just don’t understand how important our comfort is to us.”  “We do not like what those bull dozers do to you, but we have a church in Peoria that depend upon the money donated by Caterpillar employees. After all, we have to look out for the church.”  

One debater said, “The timing is off.  John Kerry is in the midst of peace talks.”   I want to say,   My God, we have been in peace talks for decades. As long as the US supports building settlements, walls and check points, talking will not produce peace.  The two state solution is dead. It is buried beneath deceptions, broken agreements, and a one sided “honest broker.” Israel has sworn against any state of Palestine unless Israel controls its borders, freedom of movement, water and labor.  As it stands now, what Israel wants is impossible and what is possible is unacceptable to Israel or the Palestinians Someone has to take a stand.  I wish it had been our Presbytery.

Thomas Are

February 8, 2014