I am organizing a conference this week here in Seattle that will focus on all the issues surrounding the Gaza flotilla attack and siege, as they relate to U.S. policy and its magnificent failure (so far).  I’ve joined together with SABEEL of Puget Sound to produce the event.  We’ll have Prof. Steve Nivas of Evergreen College, who will speak to U.S. policy towards Gaza and Hamas.  I will address the current meltdown within Israel of its democratic values and how this impacts the possibility for progress on the peace front.  Dave Schermerhorn was a passenger on and survivor of the Mavi Marmara attack and he will speak about his experience.  Finally, Hazim Shafi, who lives and works here in the Seattle area will speak about current reality in Gaza on the ground.  His father and brother have lived there for some time and Hazim’s larger family hails from there, though many have left since conditions worsened substantially over the past few years.  Hazim’s uncle, Haider Abdul Shafi was a senior PLO negotiator at the Madrid conference.

If you live in or near Seattle or know people who do, please join us for an informative evening dealing with an especially nettlesome U.S. foreign policy issue.

Other co-sponsors include Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and American Friends Service Committee.

Friends of Sabeel will host a conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here in Seattle February 19-20th at St. Mark’s Cathedral.  Among the speakers will be Neve Gordon, professor at Ben Gurion University, whose Los Angeles Times op ed supporting the BDS movement was hailed and derided around the world, leading to denunciation by his own university president and an attempt to sack him.

I’ve organized the following media panel on Saturday, February 20th at 3:15 PM:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Media

Richard Silverstein, author of Tikun Olam, Israeli-Palestinian peace blog
Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times editorial writer
Larry Johnson former foreign editor, Seattle Post Intelligencer and author, Looking for Trouble, foreign affairs blog

The panel will examine the nature and quality of reporting on the conflict in both the U.S.:

1. Getting more & better coverage into the media
2. Making coverage more accessible to the average American
3. the collapse of print media: how does it alter the landscape for coverage
4. Where do people get their coverage of the conflict?
5. Critique of media coverage of I-P conflict: why is so much, so bad?
6. Political issues that should be covered and aren’t?
7. Improving communications between Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. media and peace activists
8. Role of digital media, social networking in expanding access to news about the conflict

If you live in or near Seattle, I hope you can make it.

Canon Naim Ateek

July 18-20, 2009

Canon Naim Ateek is an Episcopalian priest, and often referred to as “The Desmond Tutu of Palestine”.  He was born in the Palestinian village of Beisan, south of the Sea of Galilee, and grew up in Nazareth. Ateek established the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem in 1991. Before that, he served as Canon of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem and as a parish priest in Haifa and Nazareth.  www.sabeel.org

He is scheduled to speak on:

SATURDAY, JULY 18^th

Kadima House, 10:00 to noon - 12353 8th Ave. NE, Seattle 98125

This service will be the first time that Ateek has been a guest at an American Jewish congregation

Ascension Episcopal Church, 6:30 PM – 2330 Viewmont Way West,  Seattle
Reservations: $50 at Brown Paper Tickets (800) 838-3006
www.brownpapertickets.com

SUNDAY, JULY 19^th

Saint Marks Cathedral – 1245 Tenth Ave. East, Canon Naim Ateek will preach at the regular 9 and 11 am services.

MONDAY, JULY 20^th

First Presbyterian Church, – 2936 Rockefeller Avenue, Everett, lunch with Canon Naim Ateek featured speaker.  12 noon to 2:00 PM   Reservations by calling 425-259-7139.  Leave name and number attending.

Ateek’s newest book is A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation, which will be available on his July tour in Western Washington.

Muzzlewatch has a big scoop about the cancellation of a speaking invitation issued by a Minnesota Catholic university to Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

Rumors have been circulating for some time that Archbishop Desmond Tutu was banned by the University of St Thomas in Minnesota because of statements he made that some consider anti-Semitic. Now it’s official: winning the Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t protect you from charges of anti-Semitism if you criticize Israeli human rights practices. Neither, apparently, does being one of the most compelling voices for social justice in the world today…

Members of the University’s Peace and Justice Program invited Tutu to speak and he accepted. Some administrators must’ve gotten a case of the heebie jeebies because Minneapolis’ City Pages reports they turned to the local Jewish communal leadership for their opinion:

…In a move that still has faculty members shaking their heads in disbelief, St. Thomas administrators—concerned that Tutu’s appearance might offend local Jews—told organizers that a visit from the archbishop was out of the question.

“We had heard some things he said that some people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy,” says Doug Hennes, St. Thomas’s vice president for university and government relations. “We’re not saying he’s anti-Semitic. But he’s compared the state of Israel to Hitler and our feeling was that making moral equivalencies like that are hurtful to some members of the Jewish community.”

St. Thomas officials made this inference after Hennes talked to Julie Swiler, a spokeswoman for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.

“I told him that I’d run across some statements that were of concern to me,” says Swiler. “In a 2002 speech in Boston, he made some comments that were especially hurtful. I think there’s a consensus in the Jewish community that his words were offensive.”

Consensus? Let’s see if we have a consensus. These are the “hurtful words” she refers to from a speech Tutu delivered to a 2002 Boston Sabeel conference. Keep in mind that this is one paragraph from an entire speech which clearly states, as Muzzlewatch correctly notes, Tutu’s profound sense of philo-semitism and respect for the prophetic values on which the State of Israel was originally founded:

People are scared in this country [the U.S.] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? This is God’s world. For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.

Where in this speech does Tutu compare Israel to Hitler? You’d have to stretch this passage beyond the breaking point to get there. One can quarrel with Tutu’s use of the term “Jewish lobby.” But to say that this passage is even remotely anti-Semitic is beyond ridiculous and the University should be profoundly ashamed of its misguided decision. If it has an ounce of Jewish seychel it will reverse itself immediately and apologize profusely to the Archbishop.

Minneapolis is the home of an AIPAC leader who once likened Congressmember Betty McCollum to a “supporter of terrorism” because she refused to vote for an AIPAC-sponsored bill. This entire incident has the whiff of AIPAC about it. I always had the impression Minneapolis was a kinder, gentler kind of place. I guess that’s not true–at least in the local Jewish community. They seem to play hard ball even with Nobel laureates.

Send a message via Jewish Voice for Peace to the university’s president asking him to reconsider his unfortunate decision.

Lately, I have not found much in the progressive media about the Israel divestment debate being waged largely within the mainline Protestant denominations, especially focussing on the Presbyterian Church. Thankfully, The Nation has weighed in with a comprehensive, subtle and balanced analysis of the issue, The Israel Divestment Debate. I’ve used a non-Nation (Agence Global) site since you can’t access the full article from The Nation site unless you are a subscriber.

What astonishes me is the rabidly hostile reaction of otherwise “progressive” Jewish groups (at least regarding their approach to the Israel-Palestine conflcit) to divestment. You’d think the Presbyterians had just called for Israel to be thrown into the sea. Here’s Rabbis for Human Rights:

IDF-operated Caterpillar armored tractor bears down on lone Palestinian protester (credit: Stop U.S. Military Aid to Israel)

Rabbis for Human Rights — a participant in EAPPI [the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel recruits church members to "accompany Palestinians and Israelis in non-violent actions and concerted advocacy efforts to end the occupation] that has engaged in civil disobedience to prevent Israeli authorities from demolishing Palestinian homes and orchards — excoriated the Presbyterians for singling out Israel while ignoring “the homicidal ideologies that have so sadly taken hold among some of our Palestinian neighbors” and the “attempts to destroy our country that transcend the Occupation and precede it by decades.”

And here’s Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Reform Movement:

“What we saw emerge very dramatically following the divestment decision of the Presbyterians is a certain mentality that says the occupation is the root of all evil,” says Yoffie. “We just don’t agree with that.” More fundamentally, says Yoffie, that mindset often minimizes terrorism. “They are very quick to use the word ‘evil’ when they apply it to the occupation, but they didn’t apply the word ‘evil’ to terror…. There’s simply no moral calculus that could reasonably lead to that conclusion.”

Yoffie should know better. The Occupation IS the root of all evil in the I-P conflict. If he wasn’t so ticked off by Christians assaulting Israel (at least in his own mind) he’d recognize that. And how can it possibly be that the Protestants don’t “apply the word ‘evil’ to terrorism.” That seems a preposterous assertion & I’m certain it is false. Just goes to show you that even erstwhile progressives like Reform Jews are bellowing like a gored ox.

Two progressive groups I otherwise believe in & admire–American Friends of Peace Now & Brit Tzedek–apparently turned thumbs down on divestment. I’m sure they did so because they’re frightened that it will entirely destroy their credibility to lobby within the mainstream Jewish community.

That being said, I do have some problems w. pro-divestment Jews quoted in the article:

For Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and an American-born Israeli Jew…even liberal Jews like Yoffie and groups like Americans for Peace Now are obstacles to peace, he says. “Both the liberals and the super-pro-Israel people see themselves as the gatekeepers of Israel. They resist criticism of Israel and of course criticism from Christians, even progressive Christians…. Liberal Jews are critical of Israel in a general way, but when it comes to taking a real stand, for example with divestment — saying, ‘Look, this occupation is evil’ — they tend not to go there.”

While I’m certainly critical of progressive Jewish responses to divestment–to say that they are “obstacles to peace” is ridiculous overstatement. They are certainly wrongheaded, but there’s a difference bet. being wrongheaded & being an obstacle to peace.

I do however, agree with the mainstream Jewish community’s criticism of the Palestinian allies of the Presbyterian church:

Sabeel‘s “Principles for a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel” does state that “the ideal and best solution has always been to envisage ultimately a bi-national state in Palestine-Israel.” PC(USA) Middle East liaison Victor Makari shares this vision, telling the Jerusalem Report that his “preferred solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a shared democratic state.”

Divestment proponents say that for Jewish leaders to cry foul over alliances with Palestinian Christians who allegedly reject Israel’s legitimacy and a two-state solution is hypocritical, given their own alliance with Christian Zionists who reject the legitimacy of Palestinian claims to any part of what they consider Jewish land. “The institutional alliances with groups both Jewish and Christian, from the Zionist Organization of America to Pat Robertson, that reject out of hand the right of Palestinians to have their own state, are simply never questioned,” says Surasky.

It does the Presbyterians’ cause no good to be affiliated w. any Palestinians who do not support a 2-state solution. Neither the Jewish community nor most of the rest of the world support a one-state, or bi-national solution to the conflict. And trying to throw back in the Jewish community’s face that it makes alliances w. evangelicals who detest Palestinians just muddies the waters.

Take me for example, I support divestment. I oppose the Zionist alliance w. Christian Zionist evangelicals. I also support a 2 state solution. So what do the Presbyterians have to say to me on this score? Nothing, it appears.