Israelism, Upcoming Documentary On The Strange Relationship Of American Jews And Israel

Last night I had the rare good fortune to be part of a group in Skowhegan, Maine premiering clips from Eric Axelman's upcoming documentary, Israelism. The film's working title used to be 70 Years Across the Sea: American Jews and 21st Century Zionism and its facebook page still is for the time being.

As a half Jewish man raised as a Jew, Axelman is fascinated by how devotion to Israel replaced devotion to Judaic teachings for so many of his and his parents' generations.

To kick off his documentary, Axelman took a free trip from the Zionist organization Birthright Israel, bringing along camera and recording equipment. He was amazed at the extent of apartheid in Israel, and returned even more fired up to continue the project.

Then, he scored an interview with Noam Chomsky early on that helped immensely with fundraising. Clips of the interview are incorporated into the first trailer for the film, which you can see here.

A salient Chomsky quote from the interview:

Loyalty to Israel simply meant whatever they do, we support it -- even if we don't know what it is.




Other notable interviews already in the can include one with Cornel West on "the battle for public opinion" so that "AIPAC doesn't take up all the air in the room." 

Also activist Issa Amro of occupied Hebron in the West Bank. A new trailer shows Amro  blindfolded and arrested for the umpteenth time for nonviolent resistance to settlements crowding out Palestinian families in what the UN said in 1948 was supposed to be Palestine.

Also Rabbi Alissa Wise, the first rabbi banned from entry to Israel because of her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to support Palestinian rights in the occupied territories.

Also Simone Zimmerman, a Jewish outreach coordinator who was fired quickly by Bernie Sanders' campaign for a social media post where she called the Israeli PM (Bibi) Netanyahu an "arrogant, deceptive, cynical asshole" and wrote, "Fuck you, Bibi...

He does not speak for me as a Jew, an American, and as a thinking person."

In the clips I saw last night, Zimmerman in particular details how the ugly truth of Israel's human rights abuses was hidden from her as she was growing up. "My questions about Israel were met with radio silence," she told another interviewer. Not surprisingly, Zimmerman began to wonder what was so awful that it had to be so carefully hidden.

All great stuff, and I cannot wait to see the finished film in a year or so.

Pushed Learning and Media is producing the film,  a non-profit that Axelman co-founded while a student at Brown University. Their stated mission: We use performance and multimedia to start conversations about privilege, identity, and oppression.

Donate at www.gofundme.com/70years to help finish post-production on Israelism.

Maine BDS Coalition Win As RE/MAX Announces End To Illegal Land Sales

BDS actions outside Maine have included disruptions at RE/MAX events, most recently at the annual shareholders meeting
at RE/MAX LLC headquarters in Denver in May.

Activists in Maine and around the globe were cautiously optimistic at news delivered by RE/MAX real estate CEO Dave Liniger this week. Liniger, a co-founder of the company, sent a letter stating that RE/MAX had “recently taken action to ensure that RE/MAX, LLC will no longer receive any income from the sale of Jewish settlement properties in the West Bank.”

Maine BDS Coalition member and former candidate for the U.S. Senate Bill Slavick responded, “It remains to be seen what ‘receives no income’ means and whether RE/MAX will continue real estate activities in the Occupied Territories.”

RE/MAX agents and franchise holders in Maine have been the recipients of hundreds of letters and emails asking them to bring pressure on their head office to divest from the sale of property and homes stolen from Palestinian families living under Israeli occupation. RE/MAX franchises in Portland and Ellsworth have also seen actions outside their offices with activists displaying banners and “settlements” to call attention to the unethical business practice. Letters to the editor and op-eds published in several Maine newspapers have also been part of the campaign.

Other companies which have responded to international BDS pressure to divest from doing business in occupied territories include Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories, SodaStream, Veolia, and G4S.

Aside from these successes, a further indication of the perceived power of BDS is the backlash against it. New York Governor Mario Cuomo recently issued an executive order prohibiting state agencies from doing business with organizations engaged in BDS targeting Israel’s human rights violations. While probably unconstitutional, the order nevertheless indicates that the pressure of groups like the Presbyterian Church, which received Mr. Liniger’s letter, is having an effect. Likewise, the state of Israel has made BDS a criminal offense, and several nations, including the U.S., have attempted to pass legislation outlawing BDS.

Boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) is a nonviolent campaign initiated by Palestinian civil society to bring pressure on Israel to end the occupation of Palestinian territories left for a Palestinian state when hostilities ended in 1948 but were occupied by Israel during the 1967 Israeli war on Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.

Under international law, Israel was obliged to reach a peace settlement and, in the interim take possession of no land or natural resources and assure the wellbeing of residents of the Occupied Territories.  

Instead, Israel has confiscated much of the land, 8o% of the water and engaged in myriad forms of repression and harassment of the population, from arbitrary killings and maimings to home demolitions, destruction of over a million olive trees, poisoning of farm animals, military checkpoints, indiscriminate searches, arbitrary imprisonments, torture of prisoners, and construction of walls and fences separating farmers from their land and West Bank residents from mosques, hospitals, and schools.

The BDS strategy is patterned after a tactic used successfully in the international effort to  end apartheid in South Africa.

Maine’s BDS Coalition will meet this summer to consider further actions for continued pressure on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. Airbnb is another company doing business in both Maine and the Occupied Territories. As it profits from the renting of homes stolen from Palestinian families, Airbnb has been the recipient of attention from BDS activists and may become a focus for the Maine BDS Coalition if RE/MAX does, indeed, divest from selling real estate in the West Bank and East Jerusalem per Mr. Liniger's statement.

Violent Patriarchy On The March Toward Its Own Doom

With people in the U.S. reeling from the mass murder of openly gay men in Orlando this week, very few even noticed the creep of the latest "defense" spending bill through Congress. Instead they focused on the ethnicity and alleged beliefs of the latest in a string of military weapon-wielding men who enter public spaces and shoot everyone in sight. The argument that access to such weapons must be curtailed in order to achieve the low death by gun rates of other rich countries falls on deaf, NRA cash stuffed ears in Washington DC. Anyway, your "representatives" are busy funding their campaign contributors via the next gargantuan budget for weapons of mass destruction.

Does violence breed violence? Let's look at some of the amendments to the Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to see what might be growing there.

Both the House and the Senate added amendments requiring women to register for the draft, but only the Senate's version passed thus far. In light of the fact that a woman in the military runs a one in three chance of being sexually assaulted by a man serving alongside her -- and a nearly 100% chance of having her case stonewalled by the senior command if she has the guts to report her rapist -- this is a giant leap forward for violence aimed at women.

Joint Chiefs of Staff from Pentagon at congressional hearing on military law.

On the other hand, if more troops in Okinawa were female, perhaps the local women would be safer. 

(If you know me at all you know that I oppose U.S. military bases in Japan or anywhere else on the planet. But I am following the logical outcomes of drafting women into the military.)

Codepink protesting the governor of NY's anti-BDS order in Albany this week.

Another NDAA amendment that reeks is the attempt to render the non-violent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement illegal if it targets the human rights abuser Israel. BDS has been gaining traction internationally and Israel is feeling the pressure, as evidenced by New York state's governor issuing an executive order that creates a black list of companies and organizations engaging in BDS.

How does Israel control members of Congress or the governor of a vast state like New York? The same way defense contractors control those who allegedly represent us -- campaign contributions and other piles of cash, often funneled through shell entities like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Then there was the amendment to legalize discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans-sexual (LGBT) persons by the federal government's contractors. This amendment was offered under the guise of "religious liberty" which makes about as much sense as claiming that Islam is a religion that promotes violence.

Systems of oppression and a jobs program that is almost entirely dependent on manufacturing weapons are what promote violence, extremists of any religious persuasion and their claims to purity via murder notwithstanding.

It is increasingly clear to the people around the planet that the U.S. brand of violent patriarchy contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

What to do as patriarchy descends into climate chaos and endless war whether led by violent men or violent women? Lift up your voice. Rattle your chains. If you're in Maine on June 18, join us at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard for civil disobedience to protest the "christening" of a $4 billion Zumwalt destroyer warship. It's the epitome of what Rep. Barbara Lee called out when explaining why she will not support the NDAA: "We can no longer afford 'pet project' weapons systems that re unnecessary or the Pentagon's unchecked levels of waste, fraud and abuse."

"We Don't Get Into Politics" Say Empire's Citizens Choosing To Ignore The Dangerous Path They Travel

Boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) are efforts to bring pressure on the state of Israel to stop occupying Palestinian land, stop bulldozing Palestinian homes, and stop building apartheid walls and roads that cut Palestinians off from their agricultural land.

Here in Maine a coalition of activists -- most of whom have visited occupied Palestine and observed these human rights violations in person -- joined an international effort to put pressure on the real estate company RE/MAX LLC.   Below you can read the letter and information currently going out to many RE/MAX offices and agents around our state. 

Our assumption was that it would be unfair to target RE/MAX in Maine without giving agents information they may be lacking. 

Here is the response we received from one of the RE/MAX agents in Maine:

"We make people happy selling houses and do not get into politics."

One can only imagine the happiness of a Palestinian family evicted from their home watching it be sold to ultra-right Zionist settlers.  

The agent's response exemplifies the know-nothing mentality of today's citizens of the empire that rules the globe. In the information blackout masquerading as 24/7 "news," most hard working business women and men are indeed ignorant of the violence and human rights violations they fund as taxpayers. 

Source: Electronic Intifada, "Why Obama's military aid to Israel is breaking all records" by Ali Abunimah

They "do not get into politics" as their government sends the very wealthy state of Israel $3 billion a year in military aid. 

They "do not get into politics" as their government maintains more than 800 military bases in other people's countries, and drops tens of thousands of bombs per year on civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. 

Image source: Organizing Notes, "My View from Ukraine" by Bruce Gagnon

They "do not get into politics as the U.S. (and NATO) menace Russia by supporting neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine and installing missiles aimed directly at Moscow from sites in Europe.

Real estate agents may not have studied much history when they were in school. Or maybe they did and then forgot most of it in the subsequent barrage of messaging about how exceptional "Americans" and their global empire are. 

Really, we are not that exceptional. We are just the latest in a long list of empires that overspent on their military, over reached in their expansion, and crumbled into dust after a bloody period of disintegration. 

Think Ottoman Empire here if you don't want to go any further back in history than the 20th century. 

Ok, so not everyone thinks about the big picture. Here, then, are the nitty gritty details of RE/MAX's Palestine problem:

Dear Maine RE/MAX realtor,

RE/MAX’s good name is at risk, but you can take action to protect it. Here's how.

You may not be aware that RE/MAX profits from the sale of homes in illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. While we recognize that your office promotes the sale of local homes here in Maine, we ask that you, as a RE/MAX agent, consider the effect of being associated with a brand that participates in apartheid and human rights violations. RE/MAX is facing scrutiny from the United Nations and human rights groups around the world. For example, a recent report from Human Rights Watch entitled “Occupation, Inc.: How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights” directly indicts RE/MAX LLC. Many world leaders, including Secretary of State Kerry, have named the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements as a serious obstacle to peace in the region.

Please consider sending a message to your corporate headquarters letting them know that you do not wish to be associated with RE/MAX Israel’s illegal activities. Pasted in below is the text of a “realtor of conscience” letter you may use for this purpose.

If you have questions about this matter or would like to discuss it, we would be glad to speak with you or meet with you in person.

Sincerely,

Maine BDS Coalition

Attachments:

"The Humanitarian Impact of Israeli Settlement Colonies" United Nations report
"The Occupation of the American Mind, Documented" Mondoweiss article
"Israeli Settlements Explained" video, Institute for Middle East Understanding 

SAMPLE LETTER OF CONSCIENCE

Dear RE/MAX International,

As agents currently employed by a RE/MAX franchise, we have recently had it drawn to our attention that several national organizations are organizing a boycott campaign against RE/MAX. We are deeply concerned about RE/MAX operations in Israel/Palestine and how a boycott of this scale could impact our business and thus our livelihood.

RE/MAX is a corporate leader in the real estate market with a presence in over ninety countries totaling more than 7,000 offices and 100,000 agents. With its status as a corporate leader, RE/MAX is in a unique position to set an example of ethical business practices worldwide. Yet our current operations in the occupied territories of the West Bank violate fundamental human rights and international law.

RE/MAX Israel has a commanding presence in the Israeli real estate market, referring to itself as “the number one company in Israel.” Disturbingly, RE/MAX is also the leader in selling land in the occupied Palestinian West Bank to Israeli settlers and operating in settlements condemned by international law and human rights organizations. As licensed realtors employed by RE/MAX, we have found that our customers are deeply opposed to these operations. We ask you to address the issues brought up by the boycott campaign before it grows and impacts our business.

We urge you to take action to demonstrate RE/MAX’s commitment to ethical business practices worldwide by ending RE/MAX Israel’s illegal and unethical practices in Israel/Palestine.

Sincerely,

(Your name here)

Information Control, Part 3: Covering Up Violence

Educational publisher McGraw-Hill announced recall and destruction of college textbooks with a truthful map of the steady encroachment of Israel's land theft from Palestine. Teachers like me have been using versions of this map for years, but I guarantee you that most secondary or post-secondary students in the U.S. have never seen anything like it. And they never will if Zionist controllers of the narrative get their way. What kind of pressure did they bring on McGraw-Hill that resulted in abrupt recall of their  text? 

With a title like Global Politics, the textbook editors should have kept the map and added a chapter on information control with Israel's constant policing of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign as a case study. 

Just last week police arrested a woman at a Paris International Women's Day march wearing a "Boycott Apartheid Israel" shirt. France is not alone in passing legislation that criminalizes the increasingly successful BDS campaign  -- Israel itself has done so, and the U.S. House of Representatives has tried on more than one occasion.

Then there is the case study of how corporate media portray frequent violent attacks on protesters brave enough to show up at rallies for the demagogue with the bad hair.

Photo credit: HUSclub Rich on Facebook

The most notorious event took place at the University of Illinois in Chicago this week: thousands of student protesters diverse in race, ethnicity and religion shut a rally down. The man who cancelled claimed Chicago police told him to do so, but police denied it. 

Many of us feel encouraged by the example of young people coming together to say "oh hell, no!" to race-baiting and threatened oppression if the demagogue actually gains office. (So far he is just a media celebrity with no experience in governing, which is powerful enough to be taken seriously in this day and age I guess.) It's no surprise that corporate media outlets like CNN falsely portrayed the protesters as violent, selling the U.S. public on the notion that white privilege is under attack and that it is time to be scared, very scared.

There's a history here, too.

Racial justice blogger Shay Stewart-Bouley in a post to BlackgirlinMaine observed that the demagogue,

...trades in dog-whistles and has been richly rewarded for his bombast by now being on a speeding train headed directly for the GOP nomination, much to the dismay of the establishment GOP who must now grapple with the house they allowed to be built on the foundation of hate after the 2008 elections.

Here's a good, short video making the connection between dog-whistles, racism, and why the white working class in the U.S. is so panicky right now. Also the history of using that fear to control government policies.

Guess what? Economic discrimination over generations is a form of violence, too. It results in malnourished children living in sub-standard housing that is bad for their health. It results in broken families who can't afford to stay together. It results in missed educational opportunities, and chronic unemployment. Mental stress, substance abuse, and addiction. Lack of health care. Homelessness and despair.

Information Control Takes On Boycott, Divestment And Sanctions #BDS

History reminds us that lots of nasty practices were -- or still are -- legal. 

Apartheid was once legal in South Africa and is becoming increasingly so in Israel. Slavery was once legal in the U.S. and remains so in countries where consumer products are created for the U.S. market. Segregated access to public transportation was once legal in Montgomery, Alabama but it was successfully opposed by a boycott that spread like wildfire under the leadership of Rosa Park and her coalition partners. The second time Parks was arrested, it wasn't for refusing to get to the back of the bus; it was because boycotting was illegal.

Following the UK's lead, the U.S. Congress took a giant step toward protecting the state of Israel from boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) aimed at ending the violent occupation of Palestine. But you will not likely read about the special status of Israel in the corporate "news" about the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015.

Nor did the public hear much about the anti-BDS provisions included in the bill signed by President Obama last summer. As reported July 2 by Josh Ruebner for Electronic Intifiada:

This provision, tucked into the Trade Promotion Authority bill — more commonly known as “fast track” authority — makes it a “principal negotiating objective” of the United States “to discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel” in current negotiations with the European Union over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. 

The law also specifically extends this US discouragement of BDS to include “Israeli-controlled territories,” a transparent ploy to put pressure on the EU to reverse nascent steps to label products from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Nor, for that matter, has the public heard much about the highly toxic TTIP in any of its aspects. But that's the topic for another post.

Why is the U.S. government specifically aiming to squelch the BDS movement? 1) Because it has such a special relationship with Israel; and 2) because BDS is working.

The fizzy drink maker with the factory in occupied Palestine shut down their plant after international pressure on the SodaStream brand. That was after the actress who is the face of the brand's ad campaign was asked to resign from her Global Ambassador position with international humanitarian aid organization Oxfam. (Full disclosure: I've been boycotting her films ever since).

Source: US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation facebook posted on February 24 with the comment, "Look what's in today's LA Times after we were censored by Variety! We need to continue pushing on this campaign to urge Oscar nominees to#SkipTheTrip so please find resources and actions to take here: http://bit.ly/1Tm04Gb."

And, as long as we're in Hollywood, let's note the lawsuit brought by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences against the purveyor of the "swag bag" given to Oscar nominees in certain big categories. Responding to a voucher in the bag for a free trip to Israel worth $55,000, Palestinian activists have called on Oscar nominees to "reject Israel propaganda trip" because of Israel's apartheid policies. The Academy is distancing itself from the company that distributed the bags and assembled their contents, using court filings to say loudly and clearly that the swag bags and their contents have no official relationship with the Oscars. 

Did the marijuana vaporizer or the trip to Israel inspire the lawsuit? We may never know. It's very doubtful that a journalist working for a major media corporation will delve into it.

Institutions of higher learning with active divestment campaigns include Tufts, the University of Mississippi, Harvard and MIT, Columbia/Barnard, Kansas State, Evergreen State College and Stanford among others. There are ongoing attempts to silence campus groups that criticize Israel or punish them for even debating the issues. Heard about any of that on the evening news?

Ok, then, have you heard about this? Sarah Lazare reporting in AlterNet on February 22:

The Israeli government is planning to pour $26 million this year alone into a covert cyber operation to attack and sabotage the global human rights movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), earmarking large sums for technology companies to spy on Muslim activists in the United States and Europe.

Didn't think so.

#RaiseYourVoice About The Ethnic Cleansing Of #Palestine

Occupying the narrative about Palestine and its people has been the chief triumph of Zionists since establishing the state of Israel. As a baby boomer growing up in the U.S. I was told -- and for years I believed -- that Israel had taken uninhabited, barren land and "made the desert bloom." Also that it was the only democracy in the region, besieged by hostile Arab neighbors simply for the fact of being a Jewish state.

I was also told that the Zionists represented all Jewish people -- probably the biggest falsehood of all. Nowadays, my Jewish friends who raise their voices against Israel's violent occupation are attacked verbally, called "self-hating" and sometimes attacked physically for speaking up. Those of us who aren't Jewish are accused of being"anti-Semitic" if we criticize Israel.

Today I join Blog Action Day 2016 with its theme of #RaiseYourVoice in support of everyone with the courage to speak the truth about Israel. As soon as I press Publish, my computer will likely alert me to an attempted cyberattack. So be it.

A student at my alma mater told me that, while she has taken some heat for pressuring Bowdoin College to divest from fossil fuels, the campus group that works to promote BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) has drawn "vicious" attacks including threats of violent reprisal. She said that her friends in the BDS group are frightened. This is consistent with Israel's ongoing campaign to silence campus debate about Israel's occupation of Palestine. Exercising academic freedom can be dangerous if you challenge the accepted narrative. Open discussion in pursuit of the truth is unwelcome.

The U.S. corporate press continues pushing Zionist myths right up to the present day. 

In the past several weeks, Netanyahu's "live fire" policy for the Israeli military has resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries, many of them to children. According to the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, 

Just this month, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been gravely wounded, more than 500 arrested (many held without charge) and at least 30 killed -- many of them children -- while 8 Israelis have been killed.

Settlers who burn families to death in their homes or attack Palestinian villagers harvesting olives on ancestral land are protected by soldiers as they do so. Settlers driving cars that hit and kill children are not prosecuted for the crime. Shannon Ebrahim reported in The Star:

Hit-and-run attacks against Palestinian children by Israeli settlers are well documented across East Jerusalem and the West Bank. A few examples are: a 5-year- old run over by settlers in the West Bank on January 24, 5-year-old Zakariya Umour run over in the West Bank on April 28, a 10-year-old in Hebron on June 22, a 12-year-old in Jenin on August 7, and 10-year-old Mohammed Najjar on August 16 in Nablus. 

In this disturbing viral video, reportedly filmed by an Israeli soldier, Ahmad Manasra, age 13, bleeds on the ground after being shot; no one goes to assist him for a long time or admonishes the Israeli man screaming curse words at him.

Typical corporate news coverage of Israel and Palestine looks like this:

The greatest power of propaganda lies in its ability to focus our attention on only a fragment of the truth, leading us to believe that the tiny spot we're viewing is the whole picture. If you can see more than you're intended to see, #RaiseYourVoice.

Dr. Mads Gilbert In Maine: #BDS Supports Palestinian Struggle To End Israeli Occupation

Maybe you remember the Norwegian doctor whose shocking reports from a hospital in Gaza City this past summer detailed the hundreds of children being wounded and killed in Israel's so-called "Operation Protective Edge" bombings. Dr. Mads Gilbert has been on a tour in the U.S. speaking to those he addressed as "you good people" concerned about human rights abuses in occupied Palestine, and I was lucky enough to be in the audience in Portland, Maine last night to hear him.

Lucky to hear one of the most difficult presentations I have ever sobbed through. Gilbert is a skillful presenter who speaks excellent English, and he eased us into his difficult material by presenting data and historical context. He has been a firsthand witness of the series of air wars on Gaza's trapped civilians because Tromsø, his hometown in Norway, is sister city to Gaza City, and his government subsidizes the work of medical caregivers who travel to Gaza.

Gaza, August, 2014  photo by Dr. Mads Gilbert

Gilbert described the samoud or steadfastness/resilience of his Palestinian colleagues at the hospital with great respect. Similarly, he shared his own photos of Gazans picking through the rubble of their homes, medical clinics and factories as evidence of the samoud that he observes characterizing Palestinian culture.

Only then did he show us the worst of the images he recorded during July and August, 2014. Photos of little children with ghastly shrapnel wounds, burned and panicked; Gilbert included the audio track of a child screaming in fright while doctors and nurses work on intubating him over a background of constant drone noise and massive explosions.

It was his third appearance of the day, having already come from Cambridge where he spoke at Harvard. He noted the sea change in public opinion turning against Israeli aggression: not a single Zionist screamed at him from the audience, and he was able to move around on the Harvard campus without police security protecting him. Unthinkable two years ago, he said. Things are changing. Keep contacting your government officials.

Meanwhile, not uncoincidentally, Gilbert has been banned from entering Gaza -- despite a valid visa and years of humanitarian work as an anesthesiologist and emergency room doctor at Al-Shifa Hospital. At his last attempt to cross into besieged Gaza from the Erez crossing in Israel, he was turned back; yet another blow to the health and well being of Gazan children and their families. He has also been turned back from Rafah, the only other entry point to Gaza, now controlled by the Sisi regime in Egypt.

Gilbert seriously objected to the narrative of Israel's "self-defense" in its repeated attacks on Gaza. If you missed him on his speaking tour, you can watch his testimony from Norway. 



A quote from the above video recorded back in Norway at the end of July, 2014 sums up what I heard Gilbert say in Portland last night:

"This is not a battle between terrorism and democracy. Hamas is not the enemy Israel is fighting. Israel is waging a war against the Palestinian people’s will to resist. The unbending determination not to submit to the occupation."

He also recommended we read the Gaza Initial Rapid Assessment  published August 27, 2014 by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Israel's fatalities during "Operation Protective Edge"

Gaza's fatalities during "Operation Protective Edge"

Gilbert ended by urging those of us living in the wealth and relative security of the U.S. to support the Palestinian struggle by contacting our government officials to stop enabling Israel's violence, and by engaging in boycott, divestment and sanctions work (BDS) to bring economic pressure on Israel. 

I note several BDS wins in recent weeks: blocking Zim ships from coming into port to unload in California; getting SodaStream to announce the closure of their factory located in a West Bank settlement; and getting online retailer GILT to drop Ahava cosmetics, which are made of pillaged materials taken from the occupied territory around the Dead Sea.

To find out more about BDS and how to get involved, go here. If you're in Maine, join us in the Maine BDS Coalition here. You can also like the Maine BDS Coalition on Facebook.

And starting this week, check out Codepink's latest campaign targeting RE/MAX realtors a company which brokers the sale of property confiscated from Palestinians. Send a message to Dave Liniger, Chairman of the Board of Directors of RE/MAX International, and tell him to stop RE/MAX Israel's illegal sales of Jewish-only settlement homes on Palestinian land. 

Zionists Are Grasping At Straws These Days

So I spent last evening and this morning asking people on the street for the First Friday Art Walk and at the Farmer's Market to sign a petition calling on Maine's congressional delegation to hold Israel accountable for its bombing of civilians in Gaza, and to halt military aid until the blockade of Gaza and the occupation of Palestine come to an end. (Note that 1,000 acres of land owned by Palestinians in the West Bank were annexed by Israel just last week.)

It has been extremely illuminating to open a public space for conversations with all kinds of people.

For one thing, it is only slightly possible to predict who will sign the petition based on their appearance.

Wealthy older white couples appear to be hermetically sealed into a bubble that prevents them from even considering the option.

Hipsters don't usually consider it either, or even acknowledge that you asked them, "Do you want to sign our petition?"A 20-something family member once said disparagingly of Portland hipsters: "They think they are cool because they are vaguely artsy, but they don't believe in anything."

Portland's many immigrants appear to mostly consider our poster, but mostly do not sign the petition. Exceptions were a man from Congo who said he had lived with "war all my life" and a woman from Iran who worries about being targeted for being, well, Iranian.

Baby boomers wearing -- ok, I'll admit it -- "artsy" type clothing are the most likely to sign. They are also likely to have background knowledge. They are among several groups including young parents and art student types who appear to have a pent up desire to do something about their tax support of Israel's aggression.

Everyone else is about 50% likely to say, "I don't know enough about it to sign a petition." A good percentage of these people are interested in taking literature with more information. We had many good conversations with people who took a few minutes to share their views, their dilemmas and their questions.

Older white males and females are the most likely to repeat corporate media sound bites about Hamas, tunnels, rockets and that the conflict is a war where the two sides are evenly matched.

One interesting response from a woman of about 60 was, "Don't even ask me!" I said thank you, which I say to everyone who responds to me whether they sign or not. Her reply: "Well, you're taking that chance when you come out here!" As she walked away she turned and added, "They want to kill everyone."

As an English teacher I reflected on how using an indefinite pronoun (they) without a clear reference led to a murky message. As she was standing next to a poster that said HOLD ISRAEL ACCOUNTABLE at the time, passersby might have been excused for thinking she was referring to Israel. Also a bit confusing was "that chance" -- that someone might disagree with me in public? It kind of seemed as if she was actually talking to herself

A middle aged man who told us his grandfather had been in the Warsaw ghetto said he thought Israel was violating many, many scriptures and began crying. This made my Codepink associate Pat tear up also. He was immaculately dressed in all white and a Panama hat.

A young Jewish mother with two small children in a stroller stopped and expressed relief at being able to sign something. We invited her to a talk that night by Dr. Alice Rothchild and she looked wistful. Just about then the littlest child got bonked by the sun shade of the double stroller and started crying so she moved on.

And then there were the Zionists. There are fewer and fewer of them. I'd say of people who spoke up enough to be identified as such, they were less than 5% of total people we interacted with.

They were by far the most aggressive in terms of hostile language, body posture and challenging our right to disseminate information. Here is a sampling of their responses:

"How dare you ask me that? See this beak?" demanded an older man pointing to his large, prominent nose.

Many people told us we should be ashamed of ourselves.

"Hamas is firing rockets. Where's your petition to stop that?" If they were still listening and not just walking away after straightening us out I would point out that the U.S. isn't sending $3.1 billion a year to buy those rockets. (In light of the U.S. -- along with Israel -- helping to create and fund ISIS, though, do I really know that?)

"What if you lived in Rhode Island and people from Maine started shooting rockets into your yard? What would you do?" Pat pointed out that this was not a useful analogy since she does not live in an open air prison. "What if I cut your head off?" he escalated. At this point I said that his language was getting too violent and asked him to leave us alone. As he walked away he asked, "Do you even have a permit to be here?"

Me: "Yes, the Bill of Rights, first amendment." A teenager who was selling wooden craft products on the art walk and listening to every word of this exchange got a kick out of that.

Education work is interesting to me. When people are shifting their paradigm it's emotionally stressful for them. They have been exposed to hundreds of hours of misinformation based on the false dichotomy of either you support everything Israel does or else you're supporting "terrorists."

Sometimes you can see their cognitive dissonance as a facial expression or body posture. Sometimes it comes out in words that seem to reject new information.

What I could have been doing today was working on promised drafts of educational materials on BDS targeting SodaStream for the upcoming gigantic annual event, the Common Ground Fair. There I'll be helping to table in a venue that reaches tens of thousands of mostly liberal, poorly informed citizens.

But background education about the map of Israel and what's left of Palestine is really an important foundation to understand BDS, its necessity and its immense potential.

I love doing this work. I don't mind if Zionist believers get mad at me. I am challenging their world view, and they are grasping at straws to hold onto it these days.