Right after Jimmy Carter’s April, 2008 meeting with representatives of Hamas in Syria, Ari Fleischer, former Press Secretary for George W. Bush said, “I just don’t know where that man’s moral compass is set.”[1] It’s a legitimate question, it’s just aimed in the wrong direction. Since the massacre in Gaza, millions around the globe are asking that very same question not of Carter, but of Israel.
More than 1300 killed, many of them women and children. Thousands injured, many of them permanently with arms, legs and faces blown off or burned beyond recognition by internationally condemned white phosphorous bombs, 22,000 buildings destroyed, Gazans are left without electricity, medicines, food and very little water for drinking or sanitation needs.
Keep in mind that it was Israel, not Gaza, that broke the truce. Admittedly, some crude, home made rockets were launched into Israel in response to Israel’s brutal siege of Gaza, one of the poorest and most densely populated areas of the world, blocking off the necessities of life. Then, suddenly, November 4th, while all Americans were watching the results of our presidential elections, Israeli troops reentered Gaza and killed five Palestinians. It was then that Hamas refused to renew the truce. Israel invaded, dropping one hundred tons of bombs on the first day.[2]
“You can’t believe everything you hear,” is a common comment from friends and politicians. But, given Israel’s history of overwhelming force, you can’t just ignore it either.
“Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Shitila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians.”[3]
writes Robert Fisk, described by the New York Times as “probably the most famous correspondent in Britain.”
It is hard to believe that the massacre of Gaza is any different. It seems that the most dangerous place in the world to live today is close to Israel.
How is, “not believing” today any different than not believing the stories and pictures of the Nazi atrocities in the 30s and 40s when no one wanted to question the moral compass of “Christian” Germany?
There are at least two reasons why we cannot ignore what we are hearing and seeing from Gaza. One is that the planes, ships, gunboats and rockets fired into Gaza were paid for by billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Like it or not, our hands are in that dish. Second, we have allowed, unchallenged, the Christian right to distort the teachings of Judaism and Christianity to justify anything done by Israel’s military.
Someone has to challenge Israel’s Holocaust theology,[4] which says, “We have suffered, therefore we are innocent,” and “we are empowered, therefore we are entitled,” with or without moral compass.
Thomas Are
February 6, 2009
[1] Ari Fleischer, Larry King Live, April 28, 2008.
[2] Rachelle Marshall, Israel’s War on Gaza Arouses Rage Throughout the Middle East and Beyond, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2009, p.7.
[3] Robert Fisk, Why Do They Hate the West So Much, We will Ask, The Independent, January 7, 2009
[4] A term I first heard when used by Marc Ellis, Jewish scholar and author of Beyond Occupation.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Free Gaza
I actually met Angela Godfrey-Goldstein a few years ago in Big Canoe. We talked about the conditions in Gaza and like every one else, I kept asking her, “What can we do?” About all I do is talk. But Angela has devoted much of her life to helping the world to understand the plight of the Palestinian people. Today, she is part of FREE GAZA, a volunteer group of concerned humanitarian leaders who began last August chartering unarmed ships to take medicines and food to Gaza. So far, they have made six such trips. These were the first international ships allowed into Gaza by Israel since 1967. Until December 30th, their efforts went without incident.
However, suddenly, at five a.m., 90 miles off the coast of Gaza and well within international waters, Angela said, Israeli gunboats rammed their boat three times and fired machine guns into the water stopping them from providing badly needed relief to the wounded in Gaza. On board the DIGNITY were 16 passengers, including surgeons with three tons of medical supplies, journalists, my friend Angela, and Cynthia McKinney, former congresswoman from Georgia. The attack left the DIGNITY taking on water and struggling to make its way to a port in Lebanon.
Israeli officials claimed that the attack was an accident. Very little of this incident was reported in the U.S. press. In fact, the only comment I remember hearing was, “Cynthia McKinney never misses an opportunity to make herself the center of controversy.” But I was thinking that McKinney was risking her life to bring relief to suffering people. I don’t care what you think about her politics, you have to admire her courage and compassion.
Today, as I write, another Free Gaza ship, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY is making its way toward Gaza. The government of Israel has been notified of the route, schedule, and passenger list. The government of Israel knows that the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY's declared mission is to bring doctors, medicines and diplomats to the destitute citizens of Gaza.
Angela sent me a press report this week which included:
Fouad Ahidar, a Belgian parliamentarian sailing to Gaza aboard SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, responded to concerns Israel may attack the unarmed mercy ship: “I have five children very worried about me, but I told them, you can sit on your sofa and watch these atrocities on TV, or you can choose to take action to make them stop.’”
Mr. Ahidar’s children have reason to be concerned. Perhaps they remember another “accident,” when Israel attacked the USS LIBERTY, an unarmed intelligence gathering ship sailing in international waters. On June 5, 1967, at 2:00 pm, Israeli jets hit the LIBERTY with rockets, dropped napalm on the bridge and for 20 minutes strafed its decks with machine gun fire. When Captain McGonagal ordered, “Abandon ship, Israeli torpedo boats moved in and fired upon the life boats. All in all, the LIBERTY sustained 821 holes in her side, including a 40 foot hole in the hull, 34 sailors killed and 174 wounded. Israeli officials said that it was an “accident.”
Admiral Thomas Moorer, retired Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, said the attack was “absolutely deliberate.” Then he added, “The American people would be goddamn mad if they knew what goes on.” Twenty years later he still charged a cover-up. When asked why the attack? He said, “Well, I think the motive seems to be very apparent, namely the Israelis were preparing to attack in the Golan Heights and they did not want the United States Government to know that this attack was pending.”[1] When asked about the reason for the cover-up, Moorer was blunt, “President Johnson was worried about the reaction of Jewish voters.”
For the sake of those wounded in Gaza and those on board the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY who seek to help them, we can only hope that they do not become victims of another Israeli "accident.”
Thomas Are
January 15, 2009
[1] Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out. (Lawrence Hill Books, New York, 1989.) p.76, and Thomas Moorer, Interviewed at the Twentieth Anniversary Memorial Service and Reunion, Washington, D.C. Video, U.S.S. Liberty Survivors: Our Story, (Sligo Productions, 1991).
However, suddenly, at five a.m., 90 miles off the coast of Gaza and well within international waters, Angela said, Israeli gunboats rammed their boat three times and fired machine guns into the water stopping them from providing badly needed relief to the wounded in Gaza. On board the DIGNITY were 16 passengers, including surgeons with three tons of medical supplies, journalists, my friend Angela, and Cynthia McKinney, former congresswoman from Georgia. The attack left the DIGNITY taking on water and struggling to make its way to a port in Lebanon.
Israeli officials claimed that the attack was an accident. Very little of this incident was reported in the U.S. press. In fact, the only comment I remember hearing was, “Cynthia McKinney never misses an opportunity to make herself the center of controversy.” But I was thinking that McKinney was risking her life to bring relief to suffering people. I don’t care what you think about her politics, you have to admire her courage and compassion.
Today, as I write, another Free Gaza ship, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY is making its way toward Gaza. The government of Israel has been notified of the route, schedule, and passenger list. The government of Israel knows that the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY's declared mission is to bring doctors, medicines and diplomats to the destitute citizens of Gaza.
Angela sent me a press report this week which included:
Fouad Ahidar, a Belgian parliamentarian sailing to Gaza aboard SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, responded to concerns Israel may attack the unarmed mercy ship: “I have five children very worried about me, but I told them, you can sit on your sofa and watch these atrocities on TV, or you can choose to take action to make them stop.’”
Mr. Ahidar’s children have reason to be concerned. Perhaps they remember another “accident,” when Israel attacked the USS LIBERTY, an unarmed intelligence gathering ship sailing in international waters. On June 5, 1967, at 2:00 pm, Israeli jets hit the LIBERTY with rockets, dropped napalm on the bridge and for 20 minutes strafed its decks with machine gun fire. When Captain McGonagal ordered, “Abandon ship, Israeli torpedo boats moved in and fired upon the life boats. All in all, the LIBERTY sustained 821 holes in her side, including a 40 foot hole in the hull, 34 sailors killed and 174 wounded. Israeli officials said that it was an “accident.”
Admiral Thomas Moorer, retired Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, said the attack was “absolutely deliberate.” Then he added, “The American people would be goddamn mad if they knew what goes on.” Twenty years later he still charged a cover-up. When asked why the attack? He said, “Well, I think the motive seems to be very apparent, namely the Israelis were preparing to attack in the Golan Heights and they did not want the United States Government to know that this attack was pending.”[1] When asked about the reason for the cover-up, Moorer was blunt, “President Johnson was worried about the reaction of Jewish voters.”
For the sake of those wounded in Gaza and those on board the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY who seek to help them, we can only hope that they do not become victims of another Israeli "accident.”
Thomas Are
January 15, 2009
[1] Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out. (Lawrence Hill Books, New York, 1989.) p.76, and Thomas Moorer, Interviewed at the Twentieth Anniversary Memorial Service and Reunion, Washington, D.C. Video, U.S.S. Liberty Survivors: Our Story, (Sligo Productions, 1991).
Monday, January 12, 2009
Israel's Right to Exist
It seems so simple, doesn’t it? All Hamas has to do is recognize Israel’s right to exist. After all, Israel is here and is not going anywhere. Why not accept it?
But it is not quite so simple. John V. Whitbeck, writing for the Christian Science Monitor explains:
“There is an enormous difference between ‘recognizing Israel’s existence’ and ‘recognizing Israel’s right to exist.’ The difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified.”[1]
Sounds simple, but for a people who have been treated as subhuman contaminators of God’s holy land, it’s like saying that they have no right to exist, that the 750,000 Palestinians forcefully driven out of their homes had no moral right to have been there, that the destruction of approximately 450 Palestinian villages and the massacre of many of its citizens was the moral thing to do, that Golda Meir was right when she said, “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people and we came in and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”[2]
Even so, back in 1988, Yasser Arafat in a famous and very public statement in Stockholm accepted “Israel’s right to exist in peace and security.” But that was not good enough for the Zionist. This simply acknowledged the conditions of Israel’s existence, not its moral righteousness. So the expansions into West Bank and Gaza intensified.
Another question left unaddressed is: Which Israel? Israel has never declared its borders, so are we talking about the Israel given to the Jews by the United Nations in 1947, which took 55 percent of historical Palestine, or the 78 percent controlled by Israel after the “War of Independence” in 1948? That is quite a difference. Or are we talking about the 100 percent occupied and controlled by Israel since 1967?
The Zionist goals have been clear from the beginning:
In 1940, Joseph Weitz, head of Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department said:
Between ourselves, it must be clear that there is no room for both people together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small 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]
The Koenig Report of 1976 sounds like the playbook for Israel’s current policies toward the occupied territories.
We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.[4]
David Ben Gurion, who became Israel’s first Prime Minister, announced Israel’s strategy in uncertain terms. “After we become strong as the results of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”[5]
Immediately following the Six Day War, Israel’s Prime Minister, Manachem Begin referred to the West Bank only by its ancient Biblical names, Samaria and Judaea, giving a “God endorsement” to Israel’s goal of expansion.
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. No people have ever been morally required to commit suicide.
Of course, our government says that if Hamas would just be like Mahmoud Abbas and cooperate with Israel, everything would be better for all Palestinians. But, under Abbas’s U.S. supported leadership, Israel has increased the building of settlements and the construction of a wall which separates Palestinians from their fields, schools, hospitals and water. Life in the West Bank has not improved by cooperating with Israel’s demands.
It seems that Israel’s right to exist means Israel’s right to sovereignty over the lives of all Palestinians. The one thing Israel has never acknowledged is the Palestinian’s sovereign right to exist in peace and security.
Thomas Are
January 12, 2009
[1] John V. Whitbeck, What Israel’s ‘Right to exist’ Means for Palestinians, Christian Science Monitor, February 2, 2007.
[2] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: the Roots of Violence in the Middle East. (Thunders Mouth Press/Nations Books, New York, 2003) p.39.
[3] Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism, (Veritas Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1988) p.31.
[4] Yisrael Koenig, The Koenig Report, a 1976 confidential and internal government document outlining strategies for reducing the number of Arab citizens in the Galilee. Cited in Schoenman, p.35.
[5] Ben Gurion in a 1938 speech . Cited in Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism, (Veritas Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1988) p.33.
But it is not quite so simple. John V. Whitbeck, writing for the Christian Science Monitor explains:
“There is an enormous difference between ‘recognizing Israel’s existence’ and ‘recognizing Israel’s right to exist.’ The difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified.”[1]
Sounds simple, but for a people who have been treated as subhuman contaminators of God’s holy land, it’s like saying that they have no right to exist, that the 750,000 Palestinians forcefully driven out of their homes had no moral right to have been there, that the destruction of approximately 450 Palestinian villages and the massacre of many of its citizens was the moral thing to do, that Golda Meir was right when she said, “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people and we came in and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”[2]
Even so, back in 1988, Yasser Arafat in a famous and very public statement in Stockholm accepted “Israel’s right to exist in peace and security.” But that was not good enough for the Zionist. This simply acknowledged the conditions of Israel’s existence, not its moral righteousness. So the expansions into West Bank and Gaza intensified.
Another question left unaddressed is: Which Israel? Israel has never declared its borders, so are we talking about the Israel given to the Jews by the United Nations in 1947, which took 55 percent of historical Palestine, or the 78 percent controlled by Israel after the “War of Independence” in 1948? That is quite a difference. Or are we talking about the 100 percent occupied and controlled by Israel since 1967?
The Zionist goals have been clear from the beginning:
In 1940, Joseph Weitz, head of Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department said:
Between ourselves, it must be clear that there is no room for both people together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small 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]
The Koenig Report of 1976 sounds like the playbook for Israel’s current policies toward the occupied territories.
We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.[4]
David Ben Gurion, who became Israel’s first Prime Minister, announced Israel’s strategy in uncertain terms. “After we become strong as the results of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”[5]
Immediately following the Six Day War, Israel’s Prime Minister, Manachem Begin referred to the West Bank only by its ancient Biblical names, Samaria and Judaea, giving a “God endorsement” to Israel’s goal of expansion.
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. No people have ever been morally required to commit suicide.
Of course, our government says that if Hamas would just be like Mahmoud Abbas and cooperate with Israel, everything would be better for all Palestinians. But, under Abbas’s U.S. supported leadership, Israel has increased the building of settlements and the construction of a wall which separates Palestinians from their fields, schools, hospitals and water. Life in the West Bank has not improved by cooperating with Israel’s demands.
It seems that Israel’s right to exist means Israel’s right to sovereignty over the lives of all Palestinians. The one thing Israel has never acknowledged is the Palestinian’s sovereign right to exist in peace and security.
Thomas Are
January 12, 2009
[1] John V. Whitbeck, What Israel’s ‘Right to exist’ Means for Palestinians, Christian Science Monitor, February 2, 2007.
[2] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: the Roots of Violence in the Middle East. (Thunders Mouth Press/Nations Books, New York, 2003) p.39.
[3] Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism, (Veritas Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1988) p.31.
[4] Yisrael Koenig, The Koenig Report, a 1976 confidential and internal government document outlining strategies for reducing the number of Arab citizens in the Galilee. Cited in Schoenman, p.35.
[5] Ben Gurion in a 1938 speech . Cited in Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism, (Veritas Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1988) p.33.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Rockets, Rockets, Rockets
“Rockets, rockets, rockets, and don’t forget those Palestinian rockets.” That’s about all you can hear from the news media and political leaders and pundits. If those stupid Palestinians would not have chosen to fire rockets at Israel they would now be living high and happy. After all, Israel left them with factories, farms and freedom to have everything they ever wanted and look what they did. Fired rockets. Listen to the evening news and you would think rockets were the first chapter. No consideration of history.
But, rockets were not the first chapter. Long before rockets or suicide bombers, Palestinians were abused, tormented, gunned down and starved by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Back in August 2002, the late Edward Said, Columbia University Professor and Jerusalem born Christian, wrote of life in Gaza:
“Every Palestinian has become a prisoner. Gaza is surrounded by an electrified fence on three sides: imprisoned like animals, Gazans are unable to work, unable to sell their vegetables or fruit, unable to go to school. They are exposed from the air to Israeli planes and helicopters and are gunned down like turkeys on the ground by tanks and machine guns. Impoverished and starved, Gaza is a human nightmare. Hope has been eliminated from the Palestinian vocabulary so that only raw defiance remains. Palestinians must die a slow death so that Israel can have security, which is just around the corner but cannot be realized because of special Israeli “insecurity.” The whole world must sympathize, while the cries of Palestinian orphans, sick old women, bereaved communities, and tortured prisoners simply go unheard and unrecorded.”*
Before rockets, Palestinians had endured among other things:
Zionist terrorism, such as the Hagannah, Stern gang and Palmach. Palestinians can remember the King David Hotel, Deir Yassin and Count Bernadette.
1948 Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of 1947-49 and Plan Dalet
Almost 800,000 Palestinians driven out of their homes and from their land and water, sixty years ago, many of them to live in Gaza behind cement barrels and barbed wire for the rest of their lives, many are still there.
1967 Six Day War with more occupation of Palestine and more refugees driven onto West Bank and Gaza.
Confiscation of Palestinian lands, warrentless arrests and torture, with 9,000 still in Israeli prisons.
Suppression of Palestinian industry to create a cheap labor pool for Israel.
Sabra and Shatila.
West Bank with 450,000 settlers with guns and Jewish only roads and over 600 check points, accompanied by closures and curfews and a wall shutting out Palestinians from their aquifers, farms, schools and hospitals.
Gaza has become an open air prison with Israel cutting off access to food, electricity and medicine.
Israel controls most of the US media, but we can still Google any of these subjects and find much that explains, not excuses, but helps us to understand the frustration behind rockets. But do it soon. Israel has declared the blogosphere an enemy. You can start by Googling anything by antiwar.com, or Jennifer Loewanstine, IF HAMAS DID NOT EXIST. She says it better than I ever could and with much more authority.
Thomas Are
January 7, 2009
* Edward Said, The Politics of Anti-Semitism, Cited in Dignity, Solidarity and the Penal Colony, Counterpunch, Sept. 25, 2003
But, rockets were not the first chapter. Long before rockets or suicide bombers, Palestinians were abused, tormented, gunned down and starved by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Back in August 2002, the late Edward Said, Columbia University Professor and Jerusalem born Christian, wrote of life in Gaza:
“Every Palestinian has become a prisoner. Gaza is surrounded by an electrified fence on three sides: imprisoned like animals, Gazans are unable to work, unable to sell their vegetables or fruit, unable to go to school. They are exposed from the air to Israeli planes and helicopters and are gunned down like turkeys on the ground by tanks and machine guns. Impoverished and starved, Gaza is a human nightmare. Hope has been eliminated from the Palestinian vocabulary so that only raw defiance remains. Palestinians must die a slow death so that Israel can have security, which is just around the corner but cannot be realized because of special Israeli “insecurity.” The whole world must sympathize, while the cries of Palestinian orphans, sick old women, bereaved communities, and tortured prisoners simply go unheard and unrecorded.”*
Before rockets, Palestinians had endured among other things:
Zionist terrorism, such as the Hagannah, Stern gang and Palmach. Palestinians can remember the King David Hotel, Deir Yassin and Count Bernadette.
1948 Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of 1947-49 and Plan Dalet
Almost 800,000 Palestinians driven out of their homes and from their land and water, sixty years ago, many of them to live in Gaza behind cement barrels and barbed wire for the rest of their lives, many are still there.
1967 Six Day War with more occupation of Palestine and more refugees driven onto West Bank and Gaza.
Confiscation of Palestinian lands, warrentless arrests and torture, with 9,000 still in Israeli prisons.
Suppression of Palestinian industry to create a cheap labor pool for Israel.
Sabra and Shatila.
West Bank with 450,000 settlers with guns and Jewish only roads and over 600 check points, accompanied by closures and curfews and a wall shutting out Palestinians from their aquifers, farms, schools and hospitals.
Gaza has become an open air prison with Israel cutting off access to food, electricity and medicine.
Israel controls most of the US media, but we can still Google any of these subjects and find much that explains, not excuses, but helps us to understand the frustration behind rockets. But do it soon. Israel has declared the blogosphere an enemy. You can start by Googling anything by antiwar.com, or Jennifer Loewanstine, IF HAMAS DID NOT EXIST. She says it better than I ever could and with much more authority.
Thomas Are
January 7, 2009
* Edward Said, The Politics of Anti-Semitism, Cited in Dignity, Solidarity and the Penal Colony, Counterpunch, Sept. 25, 2003
Thursday, January 1, 2009
What Else Could Israel Do?
I mean, after all, Israel pulled out of Gaza and look what happened. Hamas began launching rockets against innocent Israeli citizens living in Sderot. They must be crazy. Israel has a right to defend itself. Listen to the evening news and it’s pretty clear who is to blame for this “all out war,” against Hamas in Gaza. (Of course, only one of the sides has planes and tanks or a standing army. On the other side, until Israel’s attack this week, all the Hamas rockets launched during the truce had not killed anyone.) Even President- elect Barack Obama has been shown over and over on television saying, “ If someone fires a rocket onto my house where my daughters sleep at night, I am going to everything in my power to stop them.” So, go, Israel, go. Bomb those Palestinians who don’t want you to control their land, labor and resources. Just like you killed hundreds in Lebanon, and displaced thousands more two summers ago. You have enough congress people in the pocket of AIPAC, enough God approval from the “Christian right,” and you have an American public ignorant of your actions in the Middle East, so you can do anything you wish and our taxpayers will foot the bill. No criticism of Israel allowed. Under the present circumstances, it’s guaranteed.
Of course, rockets, even those rudimentary home made types, though not causing much damage, certainly disrupted everyday life, cannot be tolerated. But could you not find a better way to deal with Gaza’s frustration? Americans think that when you pulled your illegal settlers out of Gaza in 2005, that you were concerned for the Palestinians whose land you had been occupying for 38 years. They are unaware that as soon as you had your people out that you encircled Gaza with a blockade. Although the truce deal required you to open up border terminals, you locked them down, and cut humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza from 400 a day to about 40 per day, leaving impoverished Palestinians starving for food, fuel, and medicines. Americans do not know that there are actually Palestinian families forced to eat grass in order to survive.[1] Americans do not know that you, Israel, were the first to violate the truce agreement and that during the “truce” the Israeli army killed 22 Palestinians, including many children, wounded 62 and kidnapped 38 residents in the Gaza Strip,” that prior to the latest bombing, you had in fact bombed the supply tunnels into Egypt which were used mainly to smuggle in food and medicine to a sick and hungry people. According to Saed Bannoura, of the International Middle East Media Center, you, Israel, carried out 193 violations before December 18th. But, what else could Israel do?
Well, there are some who wonder why Israel could not consider one of the many plans and offers of peace. “At least ten times since 2006, Hamas has offered peace with Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders.” In fact, shortly after being elected Prime Minister of Hamas in 2006, Ismail Haniyah wrote George W. Bush offering a truce and recognition of Israel. Bush did not reply.[2]
Some wonder why Israel barred news reporters from entering Gaza if Israel was so righteous and had nothing to hide. The Palestinians have been begging for international observers for years.
President-elect Obama says that he would do what he could to stop a rocket launcher from threatening his home where his children sleep. Some wonder what he would do if a powerful neighbor built a fence around his house and caused his children to go hungry. Would he seek relief or would he just tell his children to eat grass?
Thomas Are
January 1, 2009
[1] Marie Colvin, Gaza Families eat grass as Israel Locks Border., The Sunday Times, December 14, 2008,
[2] Rachelle Marshall, Middle East Leaders Hold Open Door to Peace. (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January 2009) p.7.
Of course, rockets, even those rudimentary home made types, though not causing much damage, certainly disrupted everyday life, cannot be tolerated. But could you not find a better way to deal with Gaza’s frustration? Americans think that when you pulled your illegal settlers out of Gaza in 2005, that you were concerned for the Palestinians whose land you had been occupying for 38 years. They are unaware that as soon as you had your people out that you encircled Gaza with a blockade. Although the truce deal required you to open up border terminals, you locked them down, and cut humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza from 400 a day to about 40 per day, leaving impoverished Palestinians starving for food, fuel, and medicines. Americans do not know that there are actually Palestinian families forced to eat grass in order to survive.[1] Americans do not know that you, Israel, were the first to violate the truce agreement and that during the “truce” the Israeli army killed 22 Palestinians, including many children, wounded 62 and kidnapped 38 residents in the Gaza Strip,” that prior to the latest bombing, you had in fact bombed the supply tunnels into Egypt which were used mainly to smuggle in food and medicine to a sick and hungry people. According to Saed Bannoura, of the International Middle East Media Center, you, Israel, carried out 193 violations before December 18th. But, what else could Israel do?
Well, there are some who wonder why Israel could not consider one of the many plans and offers of peace. “At least ten times since 2006, Hamas has offered peace with Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders.” In fact, shortly after being elected Prime Minister of Hamas in 2006, Ismail Haniyah wrote George W. Bush offering a truce and recognition of Israel. Bush did not reply.[2]
Some wonder why Israel barred news reporters from entering Gaza if Israel was so righteous and had nothing to hide. The Palestinians have been begging for international observers for years.
President-elect Obama says that he would do what he could to stop a rocket launcher from threatening his home where his children sleep. Some wonder what he would do if a powerful neighbor built a fence around his house and caused his children to go hungry. Would he seek relief or would he just tell his children to eat grass?
Thomas Are
January 1, 2009
[1] Marie Colvin, Gaza Families eat grass as Israel Locks Border., The Sunday Times, December 14, 2008,
[2] Rachelle Marshall, Middle East Leaders Hold Open Door to Peace. (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January 2009) p.7.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Neibuhr is Right
In 1832, Reinhold Neibuhr wrote:
“Individuals are never as immoral as the social situations in which they are involved and which they symbolize. If opposition to a system leads to personal insults of its representatives, it is always felt as an unjust accusation… Mr. Gandhi never tires of making a distinction between individual Englishmen and the system of imperialism which they maintained.”[1]
My parents were good people, kind and generous. Had anyone accused them of being evil, they would have objected and screamed “unfair.” Those who knew them best, including me, would have defended them as being good people. But they participated in, supported and benefited from an evil system. It was called segregation. Now what does that have to do with anything?
I detest Zionism and will declare in every way I know how that it is an evil system. But let me be clear. Neibuhr is right. We cannot blame nor assume that individual Jews support brutality, even though many are caught up in an evil system. Jews are good people. In fact, when I started ministry in Mississippi during the height of the Civil Rights movement, the most outspoken defenders of black people in my county were Jews as were two of the three Civil Rights worker murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. I repeat, Jews are good people and we cloud the issue if we think or act otherwise.
My friend Marc Ellis, conservative Jewish scholar, walked out on the porch with me at Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian Conference Center in New Mexico, after giving a lecture on the Israeli/Palestinian situation. His eyes filled with tears. I felt a little insensitive invading his thoughts but I asked him what in particular had brought such emotion. He responded, “Judaism, my faith, the faith that I love, is right now at the same point you Christians were in the fourth century. You had to choose between the integrity of your faith and the power of Constantine. Jews today are being forced to choose between the integrity of our faith and the power of the State of Israel. You made the wrong choice and you have never recovered. It looks like we are making the same mistake.”
Michael Lerner, editor of the very popular Jewish magazine Tikkun, wrote during the first intifada, “Israel’s attempt to regain control by denying food to hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, by raiding homes and dragging out their occupants in the middle of the night to stand for hours in the cold, by savagely beating a civilian population and breaking its bones — these activities are deplorable in any civilized human being.” He goes on to plead, “Stop the beatings, stop the breaking of bones, the late night raids on people’s homes, stop using food as a weapon of war, stop pretending that you can respond to an entire people’s agony with guns and blows and power. Publicly acknowledge that the Palestinians have the same right to national self-determination that we Jews have...”[2]
Alexander Schinder, President of America Hebrew Congregations back in 1988 sent a telegram to the president of Israel saying, “The indiscriminate beatings of Arabs, enunciated and implemented as Israel’s new policy to quell the riots in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, is an offence to the Jewish spirit. It violates every principal of human decence, and it betrays the Zionist dream”[3]
This year, Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for Atlantic magazine, writing of the softening of Ehud Olmert explains that his shift to the left did not occur in a vacuum. “His wife, Aliza, has been a sympathizer of Peace Now, and his children have been left-wing activists. One daughter, Diana, is a prominent gay-rights advocate in Tel Aviv, and has associated herself with groups opposed to her father’s politics. During the 2006 Israeli incursions into Gaza, she took part in a demonstration that denounced the army chief of staff as a “child-killer.” One of Olmert’s sons has refused to serve his army-reserve duty in the occupied territories, and another son managed to avoid the draft altogether. Olmert’s family is not entirely unusual…”[4]
These Jewish leaders and hundreds of thousands more like them, are doing every thing they can to challenge Israel’s occupation policies and brutal treatment of the Palestinians. They deserve our respect and need our support.
At the same time, I must say that suicide bombers and Kassam rockets do not help. There is no way that terrorism is going to bring down the Israeli defense forces. The most that such bombings can do is to cause the average Israeli to feel insecure. There are many, many Israelis willing to reach across the border with a hand of peace, but they, like any one else, can only do so when feeling secure. Palestinian terror does not help.
But neither does state terrorism, such as firing a 500 pound bomb from an F-16 into an apartment building in the middle of the night, killing 15 Palestinians, mostly children.
We cannot cease to be a compassionate voice for the victims of Zionism even when running the risk of offending some Jewish friends who may not know or do not care what is happening every day in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Nor can we delay investing the energy required to be informed. This issue is far too serious for silence and our own sense of justice requires that we challenge an evil system.
Thomas Are
December 22, 2008
[1] Reinhold Neibuhr, Moral man and Immoral Society. (Continuum Press, New York, 1932) p.163.
[2].Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marc Ellis, Beyond Occupation, (Beacon Press, Boston., 1990) p. 99-100.
[3].Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marc Ellis, Beyond Occupation, (Beacon Press, Boston., 1990) p. 17.
[4] Jeffrey Goldberg, Unforgiven, (The Atlantic, May 2008,) p.51
“Individuals are never as immoral as the social situations in which they are involved and which they symbolize. If opposition to a system leads to personal insults of its representatives, it is always felt as an unjust accusation… Mr. Gandhi never tires of making a distinction between individual Englishmen and the system of imperialism which they maintained.”[1]
My parents were good people, kind and generous. Had anyone accused them of being evil, they would have objected and screamed “unfair.” Those who knew them best, including me, would have defended them as being good people. But they participated in, supported and benefited from an evil system. It was called segregation. Now what does that have to do with anything?
I detest Zionism and will declare in every way I know how that it is an evil system. But let me be clear. Neibuhr is right. We cannot blame nor assume that individual Jews support brutality, even though many are caught up in an evil system. Jews are good people. In fact, when I started ministry in Mississippi during the height of the Civil Rights movement, the most outspoken defenders of black people in my county were Jews as were two of the three Civil Rights worker murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. I repeat, Jews are good people and we cloud the issue if we think or act otherwise.
My friend Marc Ellis, conservative Jewish scholar, walked out on the porch with me at Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian Conference Center in New Mexico, after giving a lecture on the Israeli/Palestinian situation. His eyes filled with tears. I felt a little insensitive invading his thoughts but I asked him what in particular had brought such emotion. He responded, “Judaism, my faith, the faith that I love, is right now at the same point you Christians were in the fourth century. You had to choose between the integrity of your faith and the power of Constantine. Jews today are being forced to choose between the integrity of our faith and the power of the State of Israel. You made the wrong choice and you have never recovered. It looks like we are making the same mistake.”
Michael Lerner, editor of the very popular Jewish magazine Tikkun, wrote during the first intifada, “Israel’s attempt to regain control by denying food to hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, by raiding homes and dragging out their occupants in the middle of the night to stand for hours in the cold, by savagely beating a civilian population and breaking its bones — these activities are deplorable in any civilized human being.” He goes on to plead, “Stop the beatings, stop the breaking of bones, the late night raids on people’s homes, stop using food as a weapon of war, stop pretending that you can respond to an entire people’s agony with guns and blows and power. Publicly acknowledge that the Palestinians have the same right to national self-determination that we Jews have...”[2]
Alexander Schinder, President of America Hebrew Congregations back in 1988 sent a telegram to the president of Israel saying, “The indiscriminate beatings of Arabs, enunciated and implemented as Israel’s new policy to quell the riots in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, is an offence to the Jewish spirit. It violates every principal of human decence, and it betrays the Zionist dream”[3]
This year, Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for Atlantic magazine, writing of the softening of Ehud Olmert explains that his shift to the left did not occur in a vacuum. “His wife, Aliza, has been a sympathizer of Peace Now, and his children have been left-wing activists. One daughter, Diana, is a prominent gay-rights advocate in Tel Aviv, and has associated herself with groups opposed to her father’s politics. During the 2006 Israeli incursions into Gaza, she took part in a demonstration that denounced the army chief of staff as a “child-killer.” One of Olmert’s sons has refused to serve his army-reserve duty in the occupied territories, and another son managed to avoid the draft altogether. Olmert’s family is not entirely unusual…”[4]
These Jewish leaders and hundreds of thousands more like them, are doing every thing they can to challenge Israel’s occupation policies and brutal treatment of the Palestinians. They deserve our respect and need our support.
At the same time, I must say that suicide bombers and Kassam rockets do not help. There is no way that terrorism is going to bring down the Israeli defense forces. The most that such bombings can do is to cause the average Israeli to feel insecure. There are many, many Israelis willing to reach across the border with a hand of peace, but they, like any one else, can only do so when feeling secure. Palestinian terror does not help.
But neither does state terrorism, such as firing a 500 pound bomb from an F-16 into an apartment building in the middle of the night, killing 15 Palestinians, mostly children.
We cannot cease to be a compassionate voice for the victims of Zionism even when running the risk of offending some Jewish friends who may not know or do not care what is happening every day in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Nor can we delay investing the energy required to be informed. This issue is far too serious for silence and our own sense of justice requires that we challenge an evil system.
Thomas Are
December 22, 2008
[1] Reinhold Neibuhr, Moral man and Immoral Society. (Continuum Press, New York, 1932) p.163.
[2].Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marc Ellis, Beyond Occupation, (Beacon Press, Boston., 1990) p. 99-100.
[3].Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marc Ellis, Beyond Occupation, (Beacon Press, Boston., 1990) p. 17.
[4] Jeffrey Goldberg, Unforgiven, (The Atlantic, May 2008,) p.51
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Can't We Talk
Jimmy Carter wrote a book simply describing Israel’s apartheid policies in the occupied territories and he was immediately condemned as anti-Semitic. Richard Falk, a United Nations investigator of human rights in the occupied territories, declared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as a “crime against humanity,” and he was sent home, “expelled by Israel.” Miguel D’Escoto, head of the U.N. General Assembly compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the former South Africa’s apartheid racial segregation policies and just last Monday, December 15th, received written death threats.
Can’t we even talk about a foreign policy that generates so much international hatred for Israel and the United States? We need to ask ourselves, “Who is occupying whose land?” And exactly who is driving who into the sea (desert)? Who admits to torture, collective punishment and assassinations. Do they never wonder why three of Israel’s Prime Ministers have been labeled by the International Community as terrorists; Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon.
Are we not bothered by the fact that Israel has destroyed over 18,000 Palestinian homes and uprooted probably a million olive and fruit trees since 1967? In spite of the Oslo Agreements and in violation of international law, Israel continues to confiscate land and build settlements. To date, 450,000 settlers cover 30 percent of the West Bank while native born Palestinians are confined to 70 small “Bantustans” separated by by-pass roads and “Jews Only” highways. Do we not consider a 26 foot concrete wall snaking throughout the West Bank, separating families from their places of worship, children from their schools, the sick and injured from medical facilities and farmers from their crops a bit like apartheid? West Bank now has 50% unemployment, Gaza has 80%. Most Palestinians live on less than $2 a day. Do we not consider the control of Palestinian movement by hundreds of checkpoints and Israel’s “generous offer” of self control which left Israel expropriating Palestine’s richest agricultural land and in control of all water, like the abusive domination of apartheid? Israel now occupies 85-90 percent of the land of Palestine. Surely no one has pointed out that following the removal of settlers from Gaza, with no Israeli exposure, Israel launched thousands of artillery shells and missiles into Gaza. Israel has dammed off water supplies, cut off fuel and most International aid leaving 1.2 million people without drinking water, sewage treatment, electricity, or even enough to eat.
Do we not know who blatantly violates Article 43 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to which Israel is a signatory, which states that, “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its population into the territory it occupies.” and who thumbs its nose at more than 57 United Nations Resolutions, including 242 requiring Israel to leave the occupied lands of Palestine?
Unfortunately for any hope of peace in the Middle East, as long as our government treats Israel like the 51st state there will be serious threats to peace. The critics are right. “Israel has a right to defend herself.” But, blowing up bridges, electric plants, water systems and even a school in Gaza is not “defending.”
Of course, most of us don’t know this side of the story because the Jewish lobby and the Christian right just don’t want Americans talking about it.
Thomas Are
December 18, 2008
Can’t we even talk about a foreign policy that generates so much international hatred for Israel and the United States? We need to ask ourselves, “Who is occupying whose land?” And exactly who is driving who into the sea (desert)? Who admits to torture, collective punishment and assassinations. Do they never wonder why three of Israel’s Prime Ministers have been labeled by the International Community as terrorists; Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon.
Are we not bothered by the fact that Israel has destroyed over 18,000 Palestinian homes and uprooted probably a million olive and fruit trees since 1967? In spite of the Oslo Agreements and in violation of international law, Israel continues to confiscate land and build settlements. To date, 450,000 settlers cover 30 percent of the West Bank while native born Palestinians are confined to 70 small “Bantustans” separated by by-pass roads and “Jews Only” highways. Do we not consider a 26 foot concrete wall snaking throughout the West Bank, separating families from their places of worship, children from their schools, the sick and injured from medical facilities and farmers from their crops a bit like apartheid? West Bank now has 50% unemployment, Gaza has 80%. Most Palestinians live on less than $2 a day. Do we not consider the control of Palestinian movement by hundreds of checkpoints and Israel’s “generous offer” of self control which left Israel expropriating Palestine’s richest agricultural land and in control of all water, like the abusive domination of apartheid? Israel now occupies 85-90 percent of the land of Palestine. Surely no one has pointed out that following the removal of settlers from Gaza, with no Israeli exposure, Israel launched thousands of artillery shells and missiles into Gaza. Israel has dammed off water supplies, cut off fuel and most International aid leaving 1.2 million people without drinking water, sewage treatment, electricity, or even enough to eat.
Do we not know who blatantly violates Article 43 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to which Israel is a signatory, which states that, “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its population into the territory it occupies.” and who thumbs its nose at more than 57 United Nations Resolutions, including 242 requiring Israel to leave the occupied lands of Palestine?
Unfortunately for any hope of peace in the Middle East, as long as our government treats Israel like the 51st state there will be serious threats to peace. The critics are right. “Israel has a right to defend herself.” But, blowing up bridges, electric plants, water systems and even a school in Gaza is not “defending.”
Of course, most of us don’t know this side of the story because the Jewish lobby and the Christian right just don’t want Americans talking about it.
Thomas Are
December 18, 2008
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