Dear friends and supporters of Indiana Center for Middle East Peace,
I’ve just returned from the “Global Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine” in Johannesburg followed by co-leading the tour, “In the Footsteps of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela” with Tutu colleague and leader of Kairos South Africa, Rev. Edwin Arrison. Finally, this past weekend, I tuned in to some of the presentations from the “People’s Conference on Palestine,” held in Detroit.
The following are some initial thoughts from these three experiences:
1. We are at a “Kairos moment.” Something is changing, and millennials and Gen Z’ers are leading the way. They are demanding change, mobilizing for change. They are embracing what their elders deemed impossible and changing the conversation, changing expectations, building broad coalitions.
2. Each individual, each organization has a role to play. Whether it’s church resolutions, strikes, first learnings, solidarity tours, protest rallies big and small, boycotts of goods and services, sit-ins and encampments, and more – each is important, each makes a difference, each one matters, each one adds to the wave of change.
3. We in the US have a very myopic view of the anti-Zionist movement and the struggle for Palestinian liberation. South Africa is leading the way globally. Just last week, Ireland, Norway, and Spain recognized a Palestinian state, three of some 140 countries, more than two-thirds of the United Nations. Yes, the US is the major problem (Sam Bahour says, “This is a US war!”). But the world – the world – is mobilizing together for Palestine.
4. The United States, the UK, and Israel are pariahs throughout the world. US and UK support for Israel simply confirms – as if it needed confirming – their settler-colonial origins, pasts, and current policies. In South Africa, we could see clearly the connection between apartheid there with the attempted extermination of the indigenous peoples of the United States and our ongoing racism, and the genocidal ethnic cleansing Zionist project in Israel. With each new day – most recently, the bombing of Rafah’s tent city, the very place Israel ordered the Gazan refugees to relocate – Israel shows the true, brutal face of Zionism.
5. What’s happening on university campuses and throughout the West, Millennials and Gen Z’ers mobilizing together for Palestine – they’re the latest in the ongoing liberation struggle of the Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter, carrying on the tradition of those of us who participated in the anti-war movement during Vietnam. Their goal – not simply a permanent ceasefire, although that’s important. And not simply Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, although that’s important. And not even a “solution” to Israel’s war on Palestine, recognizing full civil, political, and human rights for Palestinians, although that would be a very welcome and a great leap forward.
No, they want and demand nothing less than the dismantling of the global capitalist settler-colonial state, manifested in places and policies of the US, UK, and Israel.
6. Accusations of anti-semitism ring hollow spoken by all-in Israel sycophants. Anti=Semitism, we need to remind them, is very real, a scourge. Yet it is Israel, its apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal actions and all those who cry, “anti-semitism” with every criticism of Israel who are the greatest enablers and creators of anti-semitism. Like the child who cried, “Wolf!” these facetious accusations of anti-semitism take our eyes off of real anti-semitic language and behavior.
7. I was asked on the “In the Footsteps” tour about why the US gives such absolutist support to Israel. I listed the usual culprits – AIPAC, Western guilt, Israeli hasbara (including pink-washing, sports-washing, faith-washing, green-washing, etc.), Christian Zionism on the right and the left, and racism. But the other, much more pervasive reason, and one that Edwin Arrison, reminded us, is the multi-national military-industrial arms cabal that is part and parcel of the economic foundation of the global capitalist settler-colonial state. Israel “battle-tests” its weapons and military technology on Gazans.
8. South Africa is holding its elections on May 29, one month after it celebrated its 30th anniversary of its democracy with Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994. They will be the first to admit that the transition from apartheid to democracy has been messy, that there’s unfinished business, more work to be done. Yet, we heard from more than one person that, even given all the above, they still look to the US for democracy at home and how it is unfathomable to South Africans the toxicity of American politics, that the only two real choices for president in our upcoming elections are a sociopath and an enabler of genocide.
9. Finally, the role of progressive churches and Christian Palestine-solidarity organizations and their message of non-violent resistance. A number of things:
- Even while holding to their message of non-violent resistance, they must recognize that oppressed peoples have the right according to international law to resist their occupiers by any means possible, including armed struggle.
- And it really is the height of imperial racism for those of us in the West, sitting comfortably in our living rooms and in our churches to preach to people whose homes have been destroyed, whose livelihoods have been taken away, whose children and parents and spouses and siblings and entire families have been murdered … it’s the height of colonial condescension to preach to them about how they should resist.
- The Global Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine was initiated by civil society and the invitees were members within the civil society of their respective countries. American – Western – Christians must remember that the church, that religion is merely one part of civil society. Trade unions, social service organizations, educational systems, peace & justice organizations, research institutes, faith-based organizations, and others make up civil society, and each will have their own strategies for combatting Israeli injustice.
- The church and other faith-based organizations cannot merely assume that everyone understands or accepts non-violent methods of resistance. It’s up to them to “make their case” both for the morality and the long-term efficacy of non-violent resistance.
- When all avenues of non-violent resistance become closed, when non-violent means of resistance are rejected out-of-hand, then it is understandable when those who are being bombed into oblivion – and their families, and their children – that they might erupt in acts of violence. Frankly, after 76 years of ethnic cleansing, it’s commendable that the Palestinians have restrained themselves for this long.
- But it’s also essential that resistance doesn’t occur in a vacuum and that an acceptance of reality demands that in the face of 40,000 dead Gazans, two-thirds of them children, in the face of 20,000 orphaned children, other means of resistance than non-violent means might be necessary. There is no morally neutral or morally righteous place to stand in the confrontation of genocide, no matter how much church people might wish there was such a place.