Kerry's Frustration

John Kerry is frustrated. So reports my local newspaper.[i]  He has worked all year trying to bring about a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.  I am also frustrated. My frustration is not so much with Israel or Palestine, whose actions are totally predictable. It is with John Kerry.

Kerry is smart enough to know that the barrier to peace in the Israel/Palestinian conflict is the OCCUPATION.  The problem is that he does not have the integrity and courage to admit what he surely must know.  Throughout its history, Israel has shown little interest in meeting any conditions for peace with the Palestinians which might put its agenda for expanding into all of Palestine in jeopardy. 

Back in 1940, Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department, could have explained it to Kerry:

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.[ii]

David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, established Israel’s strategy in clear terms.

After we become strong as the results of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”[iii]

Immediately following the Six Day War, Menachem Begin began referring to the West Bank only by its ancient Biblical names, Samaria and Judea, giving a “God endorsement” to Israel’s goal of expansion:

The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked to security and peace. Therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed over to any foreign administration. Between the sea and the Jordan River there will be only Israeli sovereignty. Relinquishing parts of the Western Land of Israel undermines our right to the country, jeopardizes the security of the Jewish population, endangers the security of the State of Israel and frustrates any prospect of peace.[iv]

Raphael Eytan, IDF Chief of Staff, known for his part in the massacre of 762 to 3,500 mostly women, children and old people at Sabra and Shatila 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.[v]

Matthew Taylor sums it up:

For the past 66 years, Israel’s primary mission – no matter which party was in power – has been to steal land from Palestinians and give this stolen land to Israeli Jews.  In the words of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. “We will expel the Arabs and take their places,”[vi]

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

As Kerry talks borders, Israel announces plans to destroy 2,000 more Arab homes in order to construct 828 Jewish only homes in East Jerusalem plus 20,000 more in the West Bank.[vii]   .

The issue, Mr. Kerry, is the OCCUPATION and its history. Israel’s separation wall has turned Palestinian towns and villages into prisons. Gaza continues to live in inhumane conditions, under permanent blockade. Settlements gobble up homes and land. Military checkpoints and road blocks by the hundreds, humiliate Palestinians trying to get to work or home and hundreds of thousands of refugees still live in camps.

Hamas has declared that it will recognize Israel within its '67 borders, but as long as Israel refuses to define borders, given Israel’s stated goals and track record, undefined recognition would leave nothing for the Palestinians.  

The news article lamenting Kerry’s frustration concludes:

The final breakdown was set in motion when Israel moved ahead with plans to build settlement units in the area of East Jerusalem that Palestinians consider their territory.”  

“Consider” their territory! And why shouldn’t they?  They have title deeds to the land, have lived and worked on the land for centuries and have never considered any other place their home.  Why would they not consider it their territory?  

Come on Mr. Kerry, turn the lights on. A thief loves the darkness and Israel loves your frustration.  My question is why would you be frustrated, and why, after 44 years of the same story,  would the Associated Press think this is news?

                                                                                    Thomas Are

                                                                                    January 1, 2015

[i] Laura Jakes, Associated Press, Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts Foiled, The Atlanta-Journal-Constitution,  December 22, 2014.

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

[iii] Ben Gurion in a 1938 speech . Cited in Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism, (Veritas Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1988) p.33.

[iv] Cited in Zionism the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land, Edited by Don Wagner and Walter Davis, (Pickwick Publications, 2014) p.38. oly Land, Edited by Don Wagner and Walter Davis, Holy

[v] Reported in New York Times,  April 14, 1983.  Google Wikipedia. 

[vi] Matthew Taylor, Roger Cohen recites Livni talking points in ‘NYT’ column to blame Palestinians for peace process failure.  Mondoweiss, December 24, 2014

[vii] Rachelle Marshall, Kerry faces Down Israel and its Lobby to Achieve Agreement with Iran,  The Washington Report on Middle east Affairs. January 2014. p. 9.

What is a Proper Theology?

I sometimes think there is an unwritten agreement for church membership.  We are to put our brains out of gear at the beginning of Advent. We are to sing and listen to selected readings from scripture, but no theological inquiry is allowed until the decorations are safely packed away.  It is during Advent and Christmas, the most celebrated season of the year, that we seem to substitute a theology about Jesus for the theology of Jesus.  We talk more about who he was than what he said and did. This leaves me wondering, What is a proper theology?

I used to think theology was something stored away in my books. Week by week, I would take one off the shelf and look for something fresh and interesting. I would dust it off and preach it to my congregation. I knew I was successful when people filed out after church saying, “Thank you Reverend, That was fresh and interesting.”

I know better now.  Theology is not in my books. Theology is in you, whoever you are.  It is known in how you live and how you relate to your fellow human beings.  You don’t learn theology in church, you discover it as you live in the world.

I used to think “church” was something we did up front in the sanctuary.  I know better now.  You don’t come to church, you bring church with you when you come.

I think it was John Calvin who said something like, theology is the spectacles though which we see God.  Maybe so. But I don’t believe that any more.  Theology is the spectacles through which we see the world as God intends it to be.

My fear is that what I learned in seminary was a fixed theology. I studied until I got it right, went out as a young pastor and dished “it” out one spoonful at a time until my sharper church members also got it right. I invited the world to come and get it. I had it and the world needed it.

I now believe such thinking is short sighted.  Theology is not something we have, or get or even something we believe. It is something we do.  It is something learned by following the teachings of Jesus and if we don’t do our theology, it makes little  difference what we believe.  

If we want the world to take us seriously, then we must show Jesus to be relevant and that we are faithful.  Jesus teaches such things as “love you enemies, turn the other cheek, go the second mile, feed the hungry, defend the weak and set at liberty those who are oppressed.”  When the world sees us doing these kinds of things, we might then claim a proper theology.

Now, what does all this have to do with a blog dedicated to justice and peace for the Palestinians? Just this. We go to church week after week  while our brothers and sisters in Palestine are persecuted, and we hear very little, if anything, about it.

Our theologians tell us that we must present “both sides” in the name of fairness. I confess;  when families are driven out of their homes in the middle of the night, I cannot see another side.  When  children are deliberately frightened by soldiers with guns and clubs until they cannot sleep, I cannot see another side. When people are denied access to a doctor or hospital at checkpoints, I cannot see another side. When water is confiscated and shipped out of Palestine and into Israel, when settlers are allowed to shoot holes into rooftop cisterns, I cannot see another side.

What I can see is that until the church speaks up, in a loud and clear voice to defend the oppressed and humiliated, we have no theology worth sharing.

“But the church is doing so many things right,” I am told.  This is true.  However, if all parts of my body function just right and only one tiny clot forms on my brain,  I am not 99% healthy, I am 100% sick.  If the church does everything else just right, but fails to defend the weak and oppressed, we are not almost healthy, we are totally sick.

So, what is a proper theology? Jesus got it right.  “Love God and neighbor.“ And who is my neighbor? The one who needs my help.  He said nothing about taking someone else’s home so he might come again (Christian Zionists) or that Yahweh might fulfill a promise to one set of chosen people, (Jewish Zionists) over any other people.

A proper theology is not just saluting the “General", and admiring his medals, It is following the General’s orders. It means looking at our world through the spectacles of God’s love. If the church doesn’t speak up, somebody else will and as soon as that happens, the church will become irrelevant.

                                                                                                Thomas Are

                                                                                                December 20, 2014

Not My Leaders

Several people have asked if I had seen the full page ad in the New York Times purchased by 121 self identified “leaders” of the Presbyterian Church.  The ad, Presbyterians: We Can do Better than Divestment, denounced  last summer’s vote by the General Assembly to divest from three companies making profits from Israel’s occupation.  I do not know if my friends hoped I had seen it or hoped I had not seen it. But for what it’s worth, I found it disturbing.

I agree with much of what the “leaders” said in their ad. They claim a “deep commitment to a just and lasting peace between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.” I certainly agree with that. They review the atrocities of this past summer and “long for justice for both peoples.” They hope to find the “true path” to a just and lasting peace for both sides.” Then, they denounce divestment as polarizing and declare that we can do better than that.

I agree. We can do better than divestment, but I doubt that we have in mind the same “better.”  Their better is:

To reaffirm boldly the church’s commitment to a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace, each with secure borders, territorial integrity and a fair share of natural resources. We also restate our profound condemnation of the threats to a two-state solution, including: violence and terrorism, the Israeli settlements, and any denial of the legitimate aspirations of either party – including their rights to a viable and secure homeland. [1]

All of that sounds wonderful. However it ignores the history, the facts on the ground and 66 years of Israel’s oppression.

The state of Israel in 1948 came into being through acts of terror, murder of unarmed Palestinians and the expulsion of 750,000 from their homes, creating the largest and longest refugee  problem in history.  Arnold J. Toynbee said, “The treatment of the Palestinian Arabs in 1947 and 1948 was as morally indefensible as the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis...though not comparable in quantity to the crimes of the Nazis, it was comparable in quality.” [2]

These refugees, many of whom have lived in camps their entire lives, yearn to return home.   I hear nothing in the leaders aspirations for a “deep and relational work that models peace and reconciliation with justice and compassion,” that even hints at including the millions of Palestinian refugees. All Israel hopes for is that the church in the US will join them in pushing the refugees into miserable little separated camps where they can be forgotten.

Since 1967, when Israel invaded Egypt and the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and East  Jerusalem, Israel has consistently squeezed Palestinians into smaller and smaller  isolated bantustans. Palestine has been over run by settlements, Jewish only roads and an apartheid wall which leaves little possibility of a state living side by side with Israel. Right now, West Bank has no side. It is split up into little enclaves surrounded by Israeli  military while Netanyahu does everything possible to make sure Israel’s permanent domination will never change. He is delighted to have American church leaders parrot his “peace talk.”  as long as our leaders don’t create any real opposition to his program. Even to make public his actions through such nonviolent gestures as divestment, would be labeled “polarizing.”

Consider the history:

So, again, I agree. We can do better than divestment, But, the “better” I have in mind is that in addition to divestment the church could do a better job of speaking out for justice and speaking up for the oppressed.

These kind of things seem quite Christ like.  In his first sermon, Jesus defined his mission as freedom to the oppressed and release to the captives. In his last sermon he said, “I was hungry and you did not feed me, thirsty and you did not give me water, in prison and you did not see me.  When, Lord did we see you in need and fail to minister to you?”  Remember what he said, “When you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.”

I can’t think of any people who are presently among the “least of these” more than the Palestinians.  Israel destroys their crops until they are hungry. Israel steals their water.  Their children are sick because Israel bombed their hospitals and clinics and blockades the import of medicines. Palestinians are not occupied because they are “the least,” they are the least because they are occupied.

The two state solution to which the Presbyterian “leaders” commit themselves is no more than a cover up for continuing the theft of more Palestinian land and shutting Palestinians up in little enclaves, isolated from each other. It is a massive movement to ghettorize millions of people so that Israel might prevail as a nation for Jews with privileges for Jews only, such as Jewish only roads, buses and schools.  The question which never seems to be addressed is, what would a two state solution look like for a Palestinian state?

I would challenge my fellow Presbyterians to name just one policy or military action carried out by Israel, in the 66 years of its existence, which took seriously steps toward a viable two state solution, with secure borders.   I wish the leaders would ask themselves why Israel, to this day, has never declared its borders nor adopted a constitution granting liberty and justice for all.

The leaders talk about “shared resources” while Israel pumps 80% of the water out of Palestine for Israeli use and builds a wall around Qulqiliya, which sits on the largest aquifer in the West Bank.

Israel is yet to show good faith, respect or acceptance of Palestinian human rights and promises no indication of doing so in the future.

I would challenge the 121 signers of the NYT ad to go to Palestine and see for themselves.  If that is not feasible, at least read about what is happening there before making commitments to a centralist position based on the assumption that both sides are equally guilty, vulnerable, or able to defend themselves. As Desmond Tutu says, “When you are neutral in a situation of oppression, you have taken the side of the oppressor.”

The “leaders” may be Presbyterians. I am also Presbyterian, but they are not my leaders.  When it comes to working for peace with justice for the Palestinians, those who support divestment are way ahead of them.


Thomas Are
November 26, 2014


[1]  Ndew York Times, November 20, 2014
[2] .Na’im Ateek, Justice and Only Justice, Orbis Press, Maryknoll, New York, 1989.) p.32.

Harassment and Beyond

The question is, why does Israel constantly create sonic booms over Gaza, rip up olive trees, shut down entrance crossings and go out of its way to frighten children?  The answer is simple; to harass, to make life for the Palestinian as intolerable as possible.

As soon as Israel moved its settlers out in 2005, Palestinians, in Gaza were blasted day and night with sonic booms.  When American made F-16s break through the sound barrier at low altitude, it creates an earth rattling explosion feeling like a mega ton bomb. Windows shatter, walls crack and every object in the house rattles. These “sound bombs”  strike without warning, like a sledge hammer. They cause fear in men, miscarriages in women, and traumatize children. Even teenagers suffer anxiety attacks, experience muscle spasms, nose bleeds, loss of hearing and have difficulty breathing. Three or four times a night, these low level shock waves blast the nervous system , especially of infants and old people.  .  

One Gaza Mother asked:

Why punish all of Gaza’s Palestinians? Is it to make us all so afraid we can’t close our eyes? To make us beg for mercy? To make us want it to stop at any expense?  It is cruel. It is inhumane. It is collective punishment. It is psychological torture in its rawest, most disturbing form. And so the war on Gaza continues. Terror and torture[1]

This kind of intimidation has nothing to do with security, When our president says that Israel has a right to defend itself he chooses to ignore Israel’s sonic boom program which has no purpose other than to harass.  Could you imagine a surgeon operating on a loved one when suddenly… BOOM!  

And, how does the Israeli Defense Force ripping up newly planted olive trees defend Israel?  Since the second intifada in 2000, about 465,000 olive trees have been destroyed by the Israeli military. My friend, Bert Weaver, volunteered to go with a team to the West Bank and re-plant olive trees.  They worked for ten days, planting thousands of little seedlings while the IDF sat on a hill and watched. On the last day of their work, soldiers came down, announced that the field had been confiscated for 24 hours for “security reasons.”  As soon as Bert and his friends got out of the way, bulldozers came in and ripped up ever tree.  Why? The answer is not security.  That may be the excuse, but the real reason is harassment.

Bert wrote, “For our group it was a vivid experience of the gross injustice Palestinians live with every day. It is one thing to hear and read about injustice, but when you experience it first hand it carries a very different weight.”[2]

Another kind of harassment was expressed by Eran Efrats.  Some call him a traitor. Others say he is an enemy of Israel.  I think of him as simple a person of conscience.  He is one of the hundreds of Israeli soldiers who are now called “refusenics”. He refuses to continue serving in the Israeli military because of its record in the occupied territories.

Efrats tells of being ordered to enter a Palestinian home at 2 o’clock in the morning for “mapping”.  Mapping meant to arouse the family, rough them up a bit and draw a floor plan, showing rooms, closets, windows and doors.  This takes a few hours. In the meantime the family stands aside frightened and hoping no harm will come to their children.  When Sergeant Efrats turned his map into his superior officer, he was told to throw it away.  “We have mapped that home a hundred times.”  It was then the Efrats joined an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers working to raise awareness about the daily reality in the Occupied Territories.  He asked, what was the purpose of the mapping?   It was not security. It was harassment.[3]

Worse than having your home “mapped” is having your home destroyed..

Salim Shawamreh applied for a building permit every year for four years at the cost of $5,000 per application and had been turned down every time. So, facing the needs of his expanding family, he built on his own land, without Israel’s permission.  Then it happened. Salim responded to the banging on his door. There stood a Civil Administration inspector with an automatic weapon strapped across his chest looking more like a gangster than a government official, “Is this your house?”

            “Yes,” Salim answered, “It’s my house.”

            “No, now it is our house.”

In the next hour, Salim was beaten, handcuffed and forced to watch his home destroyed.  He had no permit. But, as Jeff Halper says, “Everyone knows that Israel does not give building permits to Palestinians.”[4]  Since 1967, more than 27,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed.  Salim had just joined 160,000 other Palestinians who had seen their home, life investment and dignity stripped from them. 

When a man cannot provide a home for the safety and security of his family, he is emasculated. He looses not only his pride but his sense of worth. When a woman looses her home, she has no context in which to feel like a wife and mother. She either strives to survive on the streets or she bunks in with another family,  where some other women is keeper of the home  By the way, only 2% of homes  demolished are related to punishment for acts against Israel.   All the rest are for stealing land to give to Jews or for no more purpose than pure harassment.

A major form of harassment ignored by the world and supported by the U.S. is the hassle of waiting at crossing gates to enter or leave the Occupied Territories.

Americans going to see Dr. Yassine in Baltimore for medical treatment have no idea that he is not allowed to visit his wife in Gaza.  She has a Palestinian passport. He, on the other hand, born to parents living in a refugee camp in Beirut, is classified simply as a stateless “refugee.” His wife, Leila El-Haddad, can be with her husband only when she can get through the crossing point and visit him in America.  After which, she had to return to Gaza

On November 21, 2006, Leila found herself with her 2 year old son lined up with thousands of penniless Palestinians waiting to cross the Rafah gate. Hoping to get close to the head of the line, she arose predawn, packed her belongings, picked up her son and lined up for the crossing to open.  All day long, she waited, cared for a toddler while fighting to keep her place in line. From 4 AM until sunset, she waits. The gate did not open. So, she rushed back to the overnight ghetto seeking a room for another night. She tries again to enter Gaza the next morning. “It is hard not to believe that Israel “takes pleasure as we languish in uncertainty.”[5]  This went on every day for 15 days. Finally on December 6^th, she and her son found themselves among the few who managed to make it through the Rafah crossing. She writes

I think the most disturbing and overwhelming feeling of all is having to come to grips with the realization that your life and how you live that life continue to be controlled wholly and absolutely by an Occupier and that its ability to deny you entry to your own home so abruptly, so arbitrarily, and yet so methodically – largely because of the acquiescence and complicity of the world—has become so accepted… You cannot fly. You cannot fish, you cannot move, you cannot breath, you cannot live. If you meet all these “cannots,” then you know you are from Gaza… Yet, the rest of the world goes on uninterrupted.[6]

Some actions of Israel go far beyond harassment in showing the Palestinians and the world just who has the upper hand.  I would put the killing of Hamas leaders in the category.  On December 14, 2006, Israel’s high court of justice ruled unanimously to legalize assassinations by Israeli forces against Palestinians.  “According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 339 Palestinians have been extra-judicially killed over the past six years, almost half of them bystanders.[7]

One can only imagine how out of control our media and congress would be if Hamas had established a program of targeted killings of 339 Jews in Israel simply because Gaza did not like them.

And sometimes, just sometimes, harassment takes the form of humiliation.  Such as when a ten year old Palestinian girl is taken into a room by herself and ordered by Israeli soldiers, probably female soldiers, to remove her clothes. When she was down to nothing but panties and a tee shirt, she was forced to take them off also as though she could be carrying an automatic gun or grenade beneath her underwear.  The fourth Geneva Convention says, “No child shall be subject to … degrading treatment or punishment.”   It also says, “Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour.”

When an old woman, a holocaust survivor, who had become critical of Israel’s humiliating policies toward those who were not Jews, is taken aside and cavity searched because she is suddenly classified an a terrorist, that is a pure violation of the Geneva Convention’s standards for any civilized nation. Never the less, it gets worse.  

I don’t know what to call it when a young woman, with cerebral palsy, while being strip searched in the Ben Gurion airport before a long flight to the U.S. is forced to give up her maxi pad. According to IfAmeicansKnew.org, that is exactly what happened to Maysoon Zayad  on July 31, 2006. She was not allowed to buy sanitary products as she waited for hours. She said:

Nothing, can be more embarrassing for a woman than to be forced to sit there in a wheelchair and bleed all over herself.”[8]

Add to Israel’s list of harrassments a few things such as building more settlements, cutting off Palestinian freedom to move from one place to another within their own country by an apartheid wall and Jewish only roads, cutting off access to electricity,  water and even education, denying trade by disallowing exports, and denying such imports as medicines, sugar, coffee, shoes, blankets, diapers, toys and the list goes on and on, you will have a nation of frustrated and hopeless people. Over time, someone will pick up any weapon they can find and push back.  A people will endure only so much humiliation and neglect. Then something is bound to happen and it probably will not be good, not for Palestine, nor Israel or the United States.

            Thomas Are

            November 20, 2014.

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[1] Laila El-Haddad Gaza Mom  (Just Word Books, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2013) p.96.

[2] From Bert’s written personal report of his trip to the West Bank,  February, 2009.

[3] Lecture delivered by Eran Efrats,  December 17, 2013 at Oakhurst Baptist Church, Decatur, Georgia.

[4] The story of  Salim Shawamreh  is found in Jeff  Halper’s book, An Israeli in Palestine,  (Pluto Press, 2012)  in association with The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

[5] Laila El-Haddad, Gaza Mom, (Best World Books, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2013) p. 186.

[6] Ibid.,  p. 188-198.

[7] Ibid.,  p.204

[8] All three of these strip search stories come from a video Behind the Barbed Wire, on what we aren’t being told about Israel-Palestine but need to know, produced by IfAmericansKnew.org.

I Had Twenty-Nine

I had just finished sharing a meal with a friend when he said, “What you don’t realize is that there are not two people in this whole town that give a rat’s-ass about what happens to the Palestinians.” Right away, I caught on that he did not care about what was happening to the Palestinians, but I could not accept that he was right about the more than 5000 other people who  lived in  our small community. It was not that I needed to prove him wrong. It was more like I felt that I had to try and do something to make known the pain and suffering of those living under occupation.

I drove up to a state park, met with the banquet manager and signed up for a one day rental on their largest conference room. I came home and planned a six hour seminar on Israel/Palestine and sent out invitations.  I called on a lot of friends for leadership, especially those who had been there and had seen first hand the violence of Israel’s occupation.  Much to my delight, we had 82 to come, including 29 college students.

Why bring this up now? That was seven years ago. So, let me say it again, out of eighty-two people who attended our seminar, twenty-nine of them were college students.  I was thrilled. Young people are more sensitive to justice issues than most of us old birds.  Many expressed surprise at what they had learned. Some announced that it was an “eye opening experience.”   I thought to myself.  Wow, now we are on our way. I just knew that with so many new peace activists things would soon change for the human rights of the suffering people of Palestine, most of whom are also young people.  What I did not know was that my twenty-nine would be going back to college campuses and encountering “Birthright kids”.  I had never heard of Birthright Israel.

According to Wikipedia, Israel has, since 1999, invested $660 million in a program to bring young Jews on a free ten day trip to see Israel from the inside.  Since that time, more than 400,000 kids from 64 countries, 80% from U.S. and Canada, have been treated to a very sanitized view of their “birthright home.”  They never travel into the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem. They are not allowed to visit and talk with the Israelis on their own.  One Birthright participant wrote:

Can blind support of a nation that has disobeyed international law ensure and strengthen your Jewish identity? Not necessarily. Does being Israeli mean to be Jewish? Not necessarily… Modern Zionism is a political movement that calls for a “Jewish” state, not a nation for all its citizens. .. If we take a closer look at Zionism’s goals, it is a movement of ethnic cleansing of an indigenous people. .. On my free trip to Israel, I did not find my long lost Judaism. What I did find was a hotbed of racial discrimination and a skewed view of Palestine.[1]

It is clear that Israel is panicked.  More Jews are leaving Israel than are moving to Israel.  No wonder they are courting young people even to the point of trying to entice them with erotic advertisement and the promise of a “Sexual Playground.” Jonathan Katz, referring to Birthright ads featuring smiling, shirtless, muscular Jewish men, writes:

The goals of these ads are to present Israel as a sexual playground… If this voyage is one intended to arouse all the senses, then it makes sense to speak of beach beauties of Tel Aviv and Eilat.  And if one goal is to prevent young Jewish men and women from shacking up with those goyim, then it is thus a natural progression that Israel is marketed as a romantic dreamland. A sexual playground.  Two messages surface: firstly, “You will have fun on this trip”; secondly, “you will meet some really hot people that make you happy in that very special way.”[2]  

Lawrence Davidson, history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania writes:

There have been studies originating both in Israel and abroad that show “as many as half of the Jews living in Israel will consider leaving…if in the next few years the current political and social trends continue.” This finding is in addition to the fact that yerida or emigration out of Israel, has long been running at higher numbers than iliyah, or immigration into the country.[3]

I am convinced that there is more Bible based Judaism in Atlanta than there is in Tel Aviv.  Why? because suddenly younger American Jews are learning about Israel’s history and ambitions and are finding Israel in huge conflict with their values.  Norman Finkelstein wrote, “The current Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has become a source of embarrassment to many liberal American Jews.”

If Israel brings Birthright kids over to learn to love the state of Israel, in many cases, it is clearly not working  American Jews are not turning their backs on Israel because they don’t know enough of what Israel stands for, but, according to Finkelstein,  “If the romance of American Jews with Israel is coming to an end, it is because they now know too much.”[4]

Birthright kids are backed by Israel’s most powerful propaganda machines. My twenty-nine can’t even count on being backed by the U.S. media, their own political leaders or even their church.  All they have is a small group of dedicated people who do give a rat’s ass about what is happening to the Palestinians. Standing up for justice is worth standing up for even if you are in a vast minority. I’ll bet on my twenty-nine.

                                                                                    Thomas Are

                                                                                    November 5, 2014

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[1] Hannah Friedstein, An Open Letter to Birthright Participants Past, Present and Future.  Mondoweiss, October 22, 2014.

[2] Jonathan Katz, Is My Birthright a Sexual Playground? Newvoices.org.  March 4, 2014.

[3] Lawrence Davidson, Israel’s Jewish Exodus. Consortiumnews.com,  June 15, 2014

[4] Norman Finkelstein, Knowing Too Much,  Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End. (OR Books, New York., 2012) p. 15,17.

Israel is a Run Away Truck

To more and more people watching the carnage of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza last summer, it seemed that Israel is like a run away truck; picking up speed, engine red hot,  exhaust spewing out poisonous gas, racing downhill, no one at the wheel and heading for a crash. The question is, will we, the U.S., crash with it?

It seems that our congressional leadership is determined to keep its blinders on even as more people around the world see that we are on the wrong side of history.  

Last month, the Swedish Prime Minister announced that his country would become the first in the European Union to recognize Palestine as a state. A week later, the British Parliament voted 274 to 12 to do the same, saying that the British public is fed up with Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestinian land. Last month’s war against Gaza was the last straw.  Some of the moral concerns expressed by the parliamentarians sounded like a foreign language to our congress:

One lawmaker says that the occupation is “much worse” than apartheid in South Africa. Another says that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 now seems like a “sick joke,” because it never guaranteed freedom to Palestinians. Many members offer frank descriptions of Israeli detention of children and unending settlement expansion. Several describe Israeli actions in Gaza as war crimes. One mentions the use of terrorism by Mandela and Begin long before Palestinians used the tactic. Labor and Conservative members alike speak of the role of the Israel lobby in the United States.[1]

Of course, recognition does not solve much. In fact, it hardly solves anything. Recognition without rights is next to meaningless.  After a cease fire and recognition, Gaza will still need food and medicine, water and electricity. More than 450,000 people have been run over. According to the United Nations:

At least 2,168 Palestinians were killed, 519 children and 77 % were civilians.[2]  11,321 Palestinians were injured, 108,000 are currently homeless and over 1000 children will be permanently disabled.  142 families lost three or more family members in the same incident.  At least 220 schools were damaged, with 22 completely destroyed.  62 hospitals were damaged, 278 mosques (73 completely demolished).  Some of the mosques were historical sites that dated back to the 7th century.  The Gaza power plant remains inoperable - with electricity outages for 18 hours a day in most areas.

                       

George Galloway,  member of Parliament, identified himself as a life time friend of Israel, abstained from voting on the Parliament’s recognition of Palestinian as a state because he said that such an act will not solve the major problems facing Gaza:

I cannot support this motion as it accepts recognition of the state of Israel, does not define borders of either state or address the central question of the right of return of the millions of Palestinians who have been forced to live outside Palestine. Israel was a state born in 1948 out of the blood of the Palestinians who were hounded from their land. Since then it has grabbed ever more land from the Palestinian people. In the last five years it has twice launched murderous assaults on the Palestinian people of Gaza, some 1.8 million people crammed into what is in effect a prison camp. In the wake of the most recent war on Gaza, Israel has announced its biggest land grab in the Occupied West Bank so far. Israel has defied UN resolution after UN resolution with impunity…[3].

Richard Ottaway, long time supporter of Israel said that Israel has made him “look like a fool. I have to say to the government of Israel that if they are losing people like me, they will be losing a lot of people.”[4]

Of course, it’s hard for the United States government to condemn Israel for its barbaric bombing of innocent unarmed people when we are providing the bombs to do it.

Marc Ellis asks:

What is to be thought of world leaders who know the score in private and continually lie in public? They are little better than the Israelis gathered on the border of Gaza who cheer each Israeli bomb strike.

            Maybe those Israeli bomb cheerleaders are not far off. Israel was born through violence. Israel has expanded through violence. Israel makes sure that there won’t be a Palestinian state through violence.[5]

What recognition does do is send a message to the world and especially to the U.S. Congress that Palestine has not yet been pushed under the rug.  It also sends a message to the people of Palestine that they have not been forgotten in spite of all the efforts of self-serving politicians, irresponsible media and silent pulpits. The British Parliament, along with Sweden and 130  other countries have said, we have not forgotten you.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said that the church (synagogue and Mosque) has three obligations to the State. First, to ask the State if its actions are legitimate. Second, to aid the victims of State despotism. And third, to jam the wheels of State when it runs over people.  When a mad man drives down a crowed street, we must put spikes in the spokes of the truck.[6]

Of course, the Israeli government never heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and couldn’t care less about the British Parliament. But, an increasing number of people both in the U.S. and around the world watched the news from Israel/Gaza and are saying, there is something wrong with this picture. And that angers Israel, which in itself makes me feel that we may be clogging the wheels of the Zionist truck.

                                                                                                    Thomas Are

                                                                                                    October 22, 2014

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[1] Mondoweiss,  British Parliament Sends a Message to Obama:  The People see Israel as a “Bully., Oct. 15, 2014

[2] Palestinian Center for Human Rights

[3] George Galloway, Why I Cannot Support This Motion on Palestine,  Information Clearing House,  Oct.  14, 2014.

[4] Philip Weiss, British Parliament Votes Overwhelmingly to Recognize Palestinian State,  Mondoweiss, Oct. 14, 2014

[5] Marc H. Ellis, Burning Children, A Jewish View of the War in Gaza, (New Disapora Books, 2014) p.51

[6] Eric Metaxas,  Bonhoeffer, (Thomas Nelson, 2010) p.153-4. 

War with Iran ... Foolish and Immoral

For years, we have heard Benjamin Netanyahu try to push America into a war with Iran. Just last month, while at the United Nations, Netanyahu:

Declared Iran the “gravest threat” to the world, saying that defeating ISIS without also defeating Iran “is to win the battle and lose the war.”  

          He said that he did not believe Iran is actually opposed to ISIS even though Iran has had troops in Iraq fighting ISIS for months.[1]

Again, the next day, meeting with President Obama, it is reported that his main agenda was to “not let up on sanctions against Iran.” Referring to what he called a “global concern” about Iran’s nuclear program, he declared that in order for diplomacy to work, those pressures must be kept in place.”[2]

I remember John McCain, when running for president, responding to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about Iran.  Glibly, McCain referred to a popular singing group, and with a smile said, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”

The same people who were so eager for us to attack Iraq several years ago, saying that it would be a “cake walk,” that our troops would be greeted with flowers,” are at it again. They assured us then that a war with Iraq would cost us nothing. It would pay for itself.  Yet, two decades later, we are still stuck in Iraq and paying an enormous price.  It is amazing that none of the war-hawks who are now saying, “no friendly relations with Iran.” are willing to admit that invading Iraq was a mistake.  Forget Iraq, they say. Attack Iran.

I think an attack on Iran would be foolish.  Iran is much stronger than Iraq. Some say, twenty times stronger. If there would ever be a case of smacking the tar baby, bombing Iran is it. Some problems do not have a military solution. Attacking Iran could very well cause more problems than it solves.

The problem is not Iran, it is salafism. Salifism is a radical Islamic fundamentalism which rejects everything modern and everything Western. The salafist are not Shia nor Sunni. They hold no loyalty to any denomination or nation.  Their goal is to force a society based on the seventh century world of Mohammad and sharia law. Salafism is dangerous and a threat to many people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. But, it is an idea. You just can’t stop an idea with a bomb.[3]

The analogy is often used that we must cut off the head of the snake.  Sounds easy, but salafism is not a snake.  Recent history shows that salafism is more like a star fish. Cut off the leg of a star fish and it just grows another leg, and the leg you cut off becomes another star fish.   When Osama bin Laden and his salafist cohorts flew planes into the towers in New York and crashed into the pentagon, it was estimated that less than one percent of the world’s Muslims would call themselves salafist.  Today, nobody knows how many there are. Some estimate as many as 10 percent.  But this much is certain.  Every time we pull off an Abu Ghraib,  a Guantanamo Bay,  or bomb another Muslim nation, the salafist groups around the world go into a recruiting mode.

It would be foolish to attack Iran, but not only that, it would be immoral.

We have often heard that Ahmadinejad threatened to destroy the State of Israel and annihilate the Jews.  But, the quote referred to by Israel’s Prime Ministers did not say that Ahmadinejad threatened  to drive Jews into sea. Reading his words in the Farci language, what he actually said was, “This regime occupying Jerusalem must disappear from the pages of time.”[4]  This sounds more like a moral condemnation, that a physical threat.

Another consideration when casually talking about a war with Iran is that back in 1982, when Iraq attacked Iran, even after more than 200,000 Iranians had been killed, “20,000 by poison gas launched by Iraq, 100,000 severely injured by nerve agents, even after the war, 55,000 people were being treated for illness from chemical weapons,”[5] Iran did not retaliate:

The real reason for Iran’s failure to use chemical weapons was not the inability to formulate the necessary mix of chemicals but the fact that Ayatollah Khomeini had forbidden it on the grounds of Islamic jurisprudence.[6]

Chemical weapons violate Islamic morality.  Now here is the point.  The same Islamic restriction against killing innocent people that applied to chemical weapons also  applies to nuclear weapons:

Khomeini’s wartime fatwa prohibiting Iran from manufacturing or using chemical weapons and Khamenei’s 2003 fatwa against the manufacture, possession, or use of nuclear weapons – provided concrete evidence that religious prohibitions on WMD by the supreme leader have not been mere propaganda but have played a decisive role in determining Iran’s policy on both chemical and nuclear weapons issues.[7]

           

For what it’s worth, there has never been an Iranian suicide bomber and in the past two hundred and fifty years, Iran has attacked no one.

In 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airline killing all 290 people.  President Reagan announced that the Vincennes was under attack, that the airliner was not in its assigned corridor, that it was descending, that its transponder made erroneous signals. Yet, when all of these excuses proved to be false, Iran launched no retaliation.

I wish our media would give fair press to Iran.  In the days after 9/11, thousands of Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran to hold candlelight vigils for the victims in America:

Tehran asked nothing in return from the Bush administration for its help, which included putting the Northern Alliance at the United States disposal as the primary ground force component in the campaign to topple the Taliban. … Khatami asked to visit Ground Zero that he might offer prayers and light a candle in memory of the 9/11 victim … Tehran also offered to send terrorism experts to open an American-Iranian counter-terrorism dialogue. Bush rejected both proposals and condemned Iran as an “axis of evil” in his next State of the Union Address.[8]

In the meantime, Israel assassinates Iranian scientist and threatens to bomb its people.

Again, It would be foolish and immoral for the U.S. to allow Israel to pull us into a war with Iran. For peace in the Middle East, it would be far more just and wise for the US to make a serious effort to bring about a fair and moral solution toward the rights of the Palestinians still under Israeli occupation.

  

                                                                                    Thomas Are

                                                                                    October 12, 2014

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[1] Jason Ditz, Netanyahu: Iran Worse Than ISIS, ISIS Equal to Hamas,  Antiwar.com,  September 29, 2014

[2] Huffington Post, Israel’s Netanyahu Meets With Obama. September 30, 2014.

[3] See The Good Fight, by Peter Beinard, and The Battle for God, by Karen Armstrong.

[4] See Flint and Hillary Mann Leverett, Going to Tahran, (Metropolitan Books,  New York, 2013.) .p. 19.

Their research is backed up by The Guardian, The Washington Post and the New York Times.

[5] Gareth Porte Manufactured Crisis, (Just Word Books,, 2014)   p. 59.

[6] Ibid.  p.63.

[7] Ibid., p.75.

[8] Leverett, Going to Tehran, p,118-119.