By Jeff Halper

Rachel Corrie’s parents in press conference after verdict Tuesday (Leehee Rothschild)

For those who hoped for a just verdict on the death of Rachel Corrie, the American student and ISM activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 as she was defending a Palestinian home about to be demolished, this is a sad day. Not surprising, but still sad and bitter. The judge who decided the case, Oded Gershon, absolved the army of all blame, despite massive and internally contradictory testimony to the contrary. Moreover, he essentially blamed Rachel for her own death, commenting that a “normal person” would have run away from the bulldozer rather than confront it.

Palestinians and Israel human rights activists have learned that justice cannot be obtained through the Israeli judicial system. The Haifa District Court, in which the trial was held, could not have ruled other than how the state wanted. For the past 45 years of Israeli occupation, the Supreme Court has excluded from its rulings all reference to international humanitarian law and to the Fourth Geneva Convention in particular, which protects civilians living in conflict situations and under occupation. Only Israeli law applies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – military law and orders – and the courts have restricted even that form of law by declaring that in instances of “security,” they defer to the military. As in Rachel’s case, the IDF thus has carte blanche to commit war crimes with impunity, with no fear of accountability or punishment.

Sending IDF American-made Caterpillar bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes in Gaza or anywhere in the Occupied Territories is a war crime. To what degree Israel ignores, violates and distorts international law was particularly evident in the testimony of Pinhas “Pinky” Zuaretz, the brigade commander who supervised the illegal “clearing” of Palestinian homes from that area of Gaza. “There are no civilians in military conflicts,” he testified, directly contradicting one of the most fundamental principles of international law, the duty to protect non-combatants.

When justice and law become separated as they have in Israel, the law is demeaned and becomes merely another tool of oppression. As a human rights defender, a status articulated and defended by the UN, Rachel Corrie had every right – even a responsibility – to intervene in the violation of universal human rights. It is incumbent on governments, courts and concerned individuals alike to ensure that human rights are enforced, especially when those being oppressed have no power to defend themselves. The attempt of this Israeli court to present Rachel’s death as the consequence of the irresponsible actions of a person who should not have been defending Palestinian human rights in the first place denies both the culpability of a state engaged in illegal activities and the duty of citizens to work for universal justice.

While we all would have hoped that Rachel and her family could have received justice from the Israeli legal system – something also denied to the other human rights defenders, including Israelis, who have been killed and injured in their battle against the Israeli occupation – the issue at stake is even larger: holding Israel accountable for its actions. But eliminating any reference to international law, the Israeli judiciary, all the way up to the Supreme Court, has helped construct a legal system in which justice is impossible.

Universal jurisdiction requires that state courts enforce the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The International Criminal Court could be an appropriate venue to try Israeli military officials and their civilian superiors, including the defense minister at the time of Rachel’s death, Shaul Mofaz; the Chief of Staff, Moshe Ya’alon (now Israel’s deputy premier); the commander who presided over Gaza, Doron Almog; “Pinky” and the driver of the bulldozer. But since Israel (like the United States and China) is not a party to the ICC, that will not happen.

Until such a time that international law, human rights and justice are genuinely incorporated into national legal systems, in Israel and internationally, the rights and lives of all of us, “normative” citizens as well as the oppressed, are in jeopardy. This is what Rachel and her family have shown us so clearly. This is their genuine contribution, even if justice has been denied them. It is up to all of us to join with the Corries to carry on Rachel’s struggle for a just peace between Palestinians and Israelis – and for a world based on human rights and universal principles of justice.

Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached here. 

By Naftali Kaminski and Michael Zigmond

Undoubtedly, when Peter Beinart wrote his groundbreaking essay in 2010, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” he did not foresee the events around this year’s 220th General Assembly in Pittsburgh of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), but his analysis was proven right again.  For months the entire Jewish establishment, both nationally and here in Pittsburgh, shifted their attention from the real concerns of American Jews  and dedicated itself to a topic  most American Jews were not even aware of – how to prevent the Presbyterians from following their ethical principles when making financial decisions.

The issue of divestment was first raised by the Presbyterian Church in 2004, and at this year’s assembly, two resolutions on this matter were put up for a vote: the boycott of products produced in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the divestment from corporations whose products are used in the ongoing maintenance of occupation.

Despite the campaign against divestment, virtually nobody at the General Assembly of PCUSA suggested that the occupation was justified or that Israeli settlements were not an obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the end, the General Assembly approved a call to boycott products such as the popular Ahava cosmetics and a resolution to divest from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions was defeated by only 2 votes out of 664 through a parliamentary motion that prevented a vote on the divestment proposal itself. Importantly, a resolution to create a personal divestment option for pension holders (reversed on a procedural technicality), received significant majority support suggesting that Church-wide divestment is likely to happen in the future, if there is no end to the occupation, perhaps as soon the next General Assembly in 2014.

While the knee-jerk opposition to the Presbyterian resolutions and the usual kitchen sink assembly of implications of anti-Semitisms, recollection of Jewish suffering across the centuries, and a hint that these resolutions would support terrorism was predictable, what was new was the positioning of groups considered progressive or moderate at the forefront of the Jewish establishment campaign. In Pittsburgh, a local newspaper highlighted the role of “progressive” groups such as the Pittsburgh Area Jewish Committee and the local chapter of J Street in the opposition to the PCUSA resolutions. James Gibson, a Rabbi respected here for his progressive leadership, moderate views on Israel-Palestine and interfaith work, called on the Presbyterians not to “disinherit Israel.”

And on the national level, one may argue that, despite the heavy-handed campaigning by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the groups that actually prevented approval of the divestment resolution were two prominent “pro-Israel, pro-peace” groups, J Street and Americans for Peace Now  (APN) who instead of simply pointing out that they did not support targeted divestment and/or boycott, actively called on Presbyterian to reject the measures. Their opposition was particularly influential because, unlike the other anti-divestment lobbyists, both groups are known to be vociferous critics of the settlements.

In what may be a telling analogy, much of the moderate Jewish establishment public pronouncements in Pittsburgh in 2012 bore an eerie resemblance to those of white ‘moderates’ in Alabama in 1963. In that year, eight white clergymen issued a public statement titled A Call for Unity in which they claimed nonviolent civil disobedience to segregation was “unwise and untimely” and suggested it would “incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be.” They acknowledged the “natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized,” but insisted that the only way forward “should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations” and “not in the streets.”

As if inspired 49 years later by this letter, J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami, in an essay published just before the Presbyterian divestment vote, stated with regard to the Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance movement that “pursuit of these tactics has promoted little more than debate and division,” and that despite the fact that “frustration is rising over diplomatic stagnation,” the only way forward is through a full-on pursuit of diplomatic efforts.  Yet, during 20 years of diplomatic efforts the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories has nearly doubled – and has risen 18 percent during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s three-plus years in office – and the Palestinians are still under Israeli control and no closer to an independent state that they were when talks began in fall 1991.  It may be argued that J Street’s position is a logical extension of its position as a lobbying group seeking to impact lawmakers and a direct continuation of its realignment with Jewish Establishment policies as was evidenced by its support of a US veto on the Palestinian UN bid and the recent dismissal of the call by Peter Beinart, earlier celebrated as J Street’s Troubadour, for a boycott of settlement products.

More striking was the response by Americans for Peace Now (APN), a group admired by many for its consistent anti-occupation stance and its support of boycotting goods made in illegal Israeli settlements. Widely misrepresenting the carefully crafted Presbyterian position which only focused on three companies profiting from the suppression of Palestinian human rights in the occupied territories, the APN President Debra DeLee, said that the proposal targeted “Israel rather than the occupation” and raised worries of “global anti-Semitism.”  Oddly, in her rush to vilify the Presbyterian deliberations, she neglected to mention that the Presbyterians’ overture to boycott products made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank perfectly echoed APN positions.  In fact, her complete disregard for the actual text of the Presbyterian resolutions was disturbing, because it suggested a deep paternalistic attitude:  As if Palestinians or their Presbyterian supporters had no say in the design of their nonviolent resistance strategy, as if they needed to defer to Ms. Delee for approval.  Not unlike the moderate preachers in Alabama, She and APN seemingly consider Palestinian nonviolent resistance a distraction.

In 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr. responded to the white moderate preachers with his now famous Letter from Birmingham Jail:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.

The Palestinians who have been living under a brutal occupation for 45 years, and who have only seen a deterioration of their conditions under negotiations, and are now asking for international support for a nonviolent strategy to finally change the status quo, must feel the same way -  that moderate Jewish groups like J Street and APN have become the  “largest stumbling block” in their stride for freedom and independent statehood.  In their vocal opposition to the Presbyterian limited divestment and settlement boycott resolutions, J Street and APN challenged the legitimacy of Palestinian nonviolent resistance, an attitude reminiscent of the white moderate preachers who preached patience and obedience to the leaders of the Civil Rights movement. The white moderate preachers ended up on the wrong side of history.  Where will J Street and Americans for Peace Now end up?

Michael Zigmond is an American scientist and long-time member of the Pittsburgh Jewish community with strong ties to Israel. Naftali Kaminski is an Israeli Physician-Scientist now living in Pittsburgh. Both were past supporters of J Street and contributors to APN and are members of the Middle East Peace Forum of Pittsburgh.They blogged their impressions from the boycott and divestment deliberations at the Presbyterian General Assembly  at the Pittsburgh Middle-East Peace Blog at www.pittmep.com.

By Philip Farah | Originally published in the Huffington Post on May 1, 2012

In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren claimed that Christians in Israel are better off than their brethren anywhere else in the Middle East. Two Sundays ago, “60 Minutes” made clear he attempted to intimidate Bob Simon by going over Simon’s head to speak to Jeff Fager, the head of CBS News and executive producer of “60 Minutes,” to complain that Simon’s story on Christian Palestinians was “a hatchet job” against Israel. In fact, it was a hard-hitting, but honest piece in which Simon helped to expose the terrible harm the Israeli occupation — not Muslim Palestinians as the ambassador claimed — is doing to Christian Palestinians in the Holy Land.

I am a Palestinian Christian, now a U.S. citizen, and my own experience and that of my family attest to the falsity of Ambassador Oren’s assertion. I was born in East Jerusalem, Jordan in 1952, only a few years after my family and the majority of Palestinians fled from their homes when the newly established Jewish state took over three-quarters of historical Palestine. My family, like almost all the other Palestinians who fled — Christians and Muslims alike — became refugees, losing their fields, orchards, homes and practically everything else, to Israel. Israel defied the international consensus and a U.N. resolution calling on it to allow the Palestinian refugees to return.

Had Israel allowed the Palestinians to return, it would not have become a majority Jewish state. Israel’s fear of a Palestinian presence within its borders continues to drive its brutal policies of occupation, which victimize Palestinian Christians as well as Muslims. Israel occupied the rest of historical Palestine in 1967, gaining control over a large Palestinian Arab population which many Israelis view as a threat to the “Jewish character” of their country.

There is a simple test of Ambassador Oren’s claims: I say to him, “Mr. Ambassador: If your country is so good to Christians, why don’t you allow me, my family and thousands of Palestinian Christians to return to our homes in the part of Jerusalem which Israel occupied in 1967 or the western part of the city from which Palestinians were forced out in 1948? Why is it that any Jew from any country in the world can claim full rights of citizenship as soon as he or she sets foot in Jerusalem, while I, whose family roots in Jerusalem go back many centuries, am barred from living with full human rights in my hometown?”

Ask Ambassador Oren about the Palestinians who hail from the predominantly Christian villages of Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im which, like the majority of Palestinian Arab villages, were razed to the ground after 1948. Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im are only two of many such Christian villages, but well known because of the long — but unfortunately failed — campaign waged on their behalf by courageous Israeli human rights advocates.

There is no doubt that Arab Christians face problems in the Middle East. The worst examples were during the Lebanese civil war and in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, when political and economic stability collapsed. Israel’s attacks on Lebanon played a major role in destabilizing that country, and Israeli hawks cheered the loudest for the U.S. invasion which destabilized Iraq.

Palestinian Christians are, indeed, worried about the militancy of extremists who cloak themselves in distorted Islamic rhetoric. Yet, the majority of Palestinian Muslims and Christians have chosen peaceful resistance. To say that Hamas is the cause of the declining Christian population in the occupied Palestinian territories is standing the truth on its head.

Our people are fleeing their homeland because the Israelis are confiscating the land of Palestinians — Muslims and Christians alike — to build Jewish-only settlements and the Apartheid Wall which is ghettoizing many Palestinian communities. Palestinian Christians are leaving because of Israeli checkpoints and barriers that severely restrict the freedom of movement of Palestinians, destroying their economy and preventing their access to their holy places in Jerusalem. They are leaving because Israel diverts Palestinian water resources in a way that gives illegal Jewish settlements the right to enjoy swimming pools while the fields of Palestinian farmers next door go fallow for lack of water.

But Palestinian Christians are speaking for themselves through the Kairos Palestine Document:

“We, a group of Christian Palestinians, after prayer, reflection and an exchange of opinion, cry out from within the suffering in our country, under the Israeli occupation. … Today, we bear the strength of love rather than that of revenge, a culture of life rather than a culture of death. … [We] endorse nonviolent resistance based on hope and love that puts an end to evil by walking in the ways of justice.”

There is no difference at all in the degree of suffering that Palestinian Christians and Muslims are experiencing under Israel’s long military occupation. To suggest that Palestinian Christians are doing well under Israeli domination couldn’t be further from the truth.

American Methodists and Presbyterians are increasingly troubled by Israel’s ongoing subjugation of Palestinians — Christians and Muslims alike. Though they have long-standing concerns for the welfare of Israelis, many Methodists and Presbyterians believe the time has come to move beyond words and into actively demonstrating to this right-wing Israeli government that they will not stand aside silently as Israel oppresses generation after generation of Palestinians.

In the days and weeks ahead, both the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) will consider resolutions to divest themselves from companies — Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard — profiting from Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories.

If they do so, they will be alerting the Israeli government that the occupation will no longer be tolerated as business as usual. Palestinians have the right to live free of Israeli domination. Methodists and Presbyterians alike could send a very strong message to the Israeli and American governments if they move ahead with these sensible resolutions to divest from companies that shamefully benefit from the repression of Palestinians.

Philip Farah is the co-founder of Palestinian American Christians for Peace and of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace, www.wiamep.org. This post was originally published in the Huffington Post on May 1, 2012. 

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