PALISTINIAN CHRISTIANS , ISRAELI ALLIES, AND NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE from SOJO 23FEB10

A very interesting article, with links to more, on peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Click the header for the story and links.

National Catholic Reporter has an important article about the Kairos Palestine Document endorsed last month by the leaders of 13 Christian communities in the Palestinian territories. The article raises several key realities that subvert common misconceptions about the Middle East conflict:

1) Palestinian Christians exist, and have much to teach the global church — especially the U.S. church.

2) There is an active movement within Palestinian society that advocates nonviolence.

3) These movements have support from Israeli and American Jewish activists who also oppose policies of the Israeli government which they see as counterproductive to the cause of lasting peace and security for Israel.

The Kairos Document declares that:

[T]he Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity because it deprives the Palestinians of their basic human rights, bestowed by God. It distorts the image of God in the Israeli who has become an occupier just as it distorts this image in the Palestinian living under occupation. We declare that any theology, seemingly based on the Bible or on faith or on history, that legitimizes the occupation, is far from Christian teachings, because it calls for violence and holy war in the name of God Almighty, subordinating God to temporary human interests, and distorting the divine image in the human beings living under both political and theological injustice.

It is important to listen to such voices, even if we do not agree with every nuance of the 16-page document, such as the assertion that “Yes, there is Palestinian resistance to the occupation. However, if there were no occupation, there would be no resistance, no fear and no insecurity.”

Injustice does indeed fuel violence. But even without the occupation, I have little doubt that extremists from both sides would likely continue to commit sporadic acts of violence against the other, however diminished in frequency or popular support — just as splinter groups have struck as recently as last year in spite of the overall peace in Northern Ireland, followed by massive protests by both sides against the violence.

While I had hoped for a more direct and prophetic denouncement of terrorist violence, the document does so indirectly by strongly and repeatedly advocating the opposite:

[W]e bear the strength of love rather than that of revenge, a culture of life rather than a culture of death. …

Christ our Lord has left us an example we must imitate. We must resist evil but he taught us that we cannot resist evil with evil. …

We can resist through civil disobedience. We do not resist with death but rather through respect of life. …

Resistance is a right and a duty for the Christian. But it is resistance with love as its logic. …

Our message to the Muslims is a message of love and of living together and a call to reject fanaticism and extremism. …

Perhaps most controversial is the document’s endorsement of boycotts and divestment campaigns “of everything produced by the occupation.” NCR quotes Msgr. Dennis Mikulanis of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East, a pro-Israel, ecumenical organization based in New York city, as saying, “I understand that it comes from a place of deep Palestinian suffering. But we will not advance peace by placing all the blame on Israel’s shoulders, or by promoting the false idea that boycotting Israel will solve this conflict.”

Because of the complexity of boycotts and divestment as a means of nonviolent protest against the Israeli occupation, Sojourners has not supported them, but been careful to present several sides (there are more than two!) of the issue in our coverage, as evidenced by these commentaries by Don Wagner, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, and Haim Dov Beliak which ran simultaneously in our magazine a few years back.

But the Kairos Document is clear in its distinction between being anti-occupation — not anti-Israel or anti-Jewish — and intentionally reaches out to Jewish allies in the cause of peace:

Jewish and Israeli voices, advocating peace and justice, are raised in support of this with the approval of the international community. …

Our message to the Jews tells them: Even though we have fought one another in the recent past and still struggle today, we are able to love and live together.

These affirmations are not abstract, but based on existing relationships. As NCR notes:

Among the religious leaders who spoke at the Bethlehem launch of the Kairos document were American Rabbi Brian Walt, a member of Rabbis for Human Rights and co-founder of the Jewish Fast for Gaza, and Dr. Mark Braverman, executive director of the Holy Land Peace Project. Both praised the Palestinian statement for its call to action. Braverman likened it to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

“The bold claim in the document that action for justice for the Palestinian people will also bring liberation for the Jewish people struck me as particularly important,” Walt said.

But while it’s important to raise awareness of Palestinian nonviolence movements as an alternative to broadly held stereotypes, it’s also important to demonstrate that such movements have the potential for success. In the West Bank village of Bilin, largely nonviolent protests and legal battles have finally resulted in a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court that led to a re-routing of the Israeli separation barrier that cut through their land in order to enlarge an Israeli settlement. The barrier’s current route belies its justification as a security measure, as much of it is constructed well within Palestinian land and not on the internationally recognized border with Israel. According to the Los Angeles Times:

After the barrier is shifted, expected to be completed this year, about 170 acres of vineyards, olive and almond trees and other agricultural land will be accessible again to Palestinian owners. But villagers say the barrier and nearby Jewish settlements still occupy about 400 acres of land they once held.

“Even getting back one inch is an accomplishment,” said Iyad Burnat, a resident of Bilin and a member of the Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. “But the wall is still being built on our land, and even the new route will cut down more of our trees. We are going to continue our fight against the wall until we move it all the way back to the 1967 line” that marked Israel’s border before it occupied the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War.

The LA Times also cites the director of the Settlement Watch project of the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now, Hagit Ofran, as saying “Bilin’s victory would serve as an encouragement to other nonviolent Palestinian protesters.” They need all the encouragement they can get, as their protests have often been met with pre-emptive arrests and at times lethally violent responses by Israeli security forces. As an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz states:

The fact that there are still civilians prepared to invest time and energy in nonviolent protest and popular action carried out by two peoples should be lauded, not suppressed.

It’s encouraging to see some of this coverage popping up in the mainstream media — one hopes it will encourage nonviolent movements and their supporters, as well as begin to subvert widely held assumptions about either side’s desire for peace.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the Web Editor for Sojourners and a photographer whose work can be seen at www.ryanrodrickbeiler.com.


Published on National Catholic Reporter (http://ncronline.org)

Home > Palestinian Christians urge nonviolent resistance
Palestinian Christians urge nonviolent resistance
Article Details
Israeli occupation must end, Christian leaders say
The leaders of the thirteen Christian communities serving in the Palestinian territories -- including Latin and Orthodox patriarchs -- have declared the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories a “sin against God and humanity” and urged Christians everywhere to nonviolently intervene to end its injustices.
By Claire Schaeffer-Duffy
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Kairos-Palestine-Document.jpg [1]
Israeli soldiers scuffle with a protester during a protest against the controversial Israeli barrier in the West Bank village of Bilin near Ramallah Sept. 25. (CNS/Darren Whiteside, Reuters)

The leaders of the thirteen Christian communities serving in the Palestinian territories -- including Latin and Orthodox patriarchs -- have declared the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories a “sin against God and humanity” and urged Christians everywhere to nonviolently intervene to end its injustices.

“Today, we have reached a dead end in the tragedy of the Palestinian people,” wrote the authors of the Kairos Palestine Document, which was issued last month.

“The decision-makers content themselves with managing the crisis rather than committing themselves to the serious task of resolving it," the document says. "The problem is not just a political one. It is a policy in which human beings are destroyed, and this must be of concern to the church.”

The prelates of all thirteen Christian communities in the Palestinian territories endorsed the document. The co-authors of the statement include Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Lutheran Bishop of Jerusalem Munib Younan, and Archbishop Theodosius Attallah Hannah of Sebastian from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The 12-page call-to-action details the consequences of the Israeli occupation for Palestinians and advocates for a Christian response that reflects the church’s universal mission “to bear witness to God and the dignity of human beings.” Such a response, the authors wrote, includes civil disobedience, boycotts, and divestment campaigns.

“Resistance is a right and duty for Christians. But it is resistance with love as its logic,” they said.

A year and a half in the making, “Kairos Palestine” represents “an unprecedented collaboration” among Palestinian Christians, said Rifat Kassis, a Palestinian Christian who coordinated the “Kairos” initiative. While church leaders have issued ecumenical statements on the future of Jerusalem, this marks the first time they have written on the occupation, “so thoroughly and with such wide representation,” he said.

The statement is primarily intended to encourage and motivate Palestinian Christians. A small minority in the region, many are emigrating because of the hardships of the Israeli occupation.

But Kassis said the document is also addressed to the universal church, encouraging its members “to not be passive but to look with compassion on the conflict, to help the two nations. They should exercise as much intervention and pressure in order to bring a just peace.”

“Kairos Palestine” opens with a bleak assessment of the Palestinian experience under Israeli occupation. The separation wall, the expansion of settlements and their acquisition of natural resources, the closure of Gaza, the imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians, and the emptying of Jerusalem of its Palestinian residents impede fair political solutions and contradict “the will of God for this land,” the authors wrote.

In contrast to the sectionalism that plagues the region, the statement emphasizes the land’s “universal mission” to be a place of “reconciliation, peace, and love” and the church’s prophetic mission to stand with the oppressed. Pointed words of criticism are levied at western theologians who give “theological legitimacy to the infringement” of Palestinian rights.

Publicly launched Dec. 11 at a gathering of religious leaders in Bethlehem, “Kairos Palestine” received coverage in the Arab media but scant attention, so far, in the Western press. The document did, however, evoke commentary from Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East, a pro-Israel, ecumenical organization based in New York city.

A member of that group's executive committee, Msgr. Dennis Mikulanis, said the Palestinian appeal failed to “acknowledge some fundamental truths.”

“I understand that it comes from a place of deep Palestinian suffering. But we will not advance peace by placing all the blame on Israel’s shoulders, or by promoting the false idea that boycotting Israel will solve this conflict,” said Mikulanis, who is also vicar for ecumenical and interreligious affairs for the San Diego, Calif., diocese.

Others have lauded the Christian statement for championing specific action. The national committee for the Palestinian Boycott and Divestment and Sanctions campaign said it “saluted the moral clarity, courage, and principled position conveyed in this new document which emphasizes that resisting injustice should ‘concern the church.’ ”

Several mainline Protestant churches have already begun to consider divestment from companies directly involved in the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

In 2004, the Presbyterian Church USA passed a resolution calling for “phased divestment” from companies profiting from the occupation. In 2007, the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church identified 20 such companies and recommended individuals divest from them. Included in the list were Lockheed Martin, the biggest overseas supplier for Israel’s armament industry, General Electric, provider of parts for Israel’s AH-64 Apache Assault Helicopter, and Caterpillar, manufacturer of militarized bulldozers and mining equipment used to demolish Palestinian homes.

David Hosey, media coordinator for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and a missionary with the United Methodist Church, said members of the New England conference of that church are in correspondence with the targeted companies, the first step in “phased divestment.” The Methodists adopted a resolution in 2004 opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories. Various regional conferences are now debating whether or not to express that opposition with divestment campaigns.

In December 2008, the Church of England divested 3.3 million dollars from Caterpillar. Church officials said the withdrawal was purely for economic reasons. But it was not publicly announced until February 2009, a month after the Israeli invasion of Gaza and a day before the British newspaper The Guardian was scheduled to publish a letter signed by twenty-three Anglican clergy condemning the Church’s “unethical” investment policy.

As for action from the Roman Catholic Church, Hosey said members of the Sisters of Loretto, a U.S. order of Catholic women religious, were pushing for shareholder resolutions urging Caterpillar to stop its sale of militarized bulldozers to Israel.

Christian calls for divestment have sparked criticism from various Jewish organizations and, at times, strained inter-religious dialogue. But Hosey thinks that could change as more Jewish and Israeli groups endorse using economic pressure to change Israeli action in the Occupied Territories.

Among the religious leaders who spoke at the Bethlehem launch of the Kairos document were American Rabbi Brian Walt, a member of Rabbis for Human Rights and co-founder of the Jewish Fast for Gaza, and Dr. Mark Braverman, executive director of the Holy Land Peace Project. Both praised the Palestinian statement for its call to action. Braverman likened it to Martin Luther King Jr’s, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

“The bold claim in the document that action for justice for the Palestinian people will also bring liberation for the Jewish people struck me as particularly important,” Walt said.

Kassis has created a Web site for the ongoing collection of endorsements. He said the document is being circulated among the member churches of the World Council of Churches, and has also been sent to regional ecumenical bodies, Pax Christi, and Caritas International.

“Soon we are going to ask them about action,” Kassis said.

To read the entire document, please see: http://www.kairospalestine.ps/?q=node/1 [2]

FROM HAARETZ 23FEB10

A duty to protest


Some 1,000 people took part in last Friday's demonstration against the separation fence in the village of Bil'in west of Ramallah, marking the fifth anniversary of weekly protests at the site.

Just as on previous Fridays, the police tried to prevent demonstrators from reaching Bil'in, either by detaining them on their way out of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem - a practice that is nothing less than scandalous - or by following them along the route, and then trying to block them from entering the village.

The conduct of the police has been deplorable, as has the recent spate of arrests by the army in Bil'in, during which many of the leaders of the popular committee behind the protests have been detained. Some of them are still in prison - and they don't belong there.

The protest in Bil'in, and in neighboring Na'alin, is an example of civic, usually nonviolent activity undertaken by Palestinians, Israelis and internationals alike, who are protesting a barrier that has severed villagers from most of their lands. Some of the lands have even been expropriated for the use of a nearby settlement.

Bil'in has become a symbol of a civic struggle devoid of terrorism. Such persistent, ongoing protest action is remarkable. It has even prompted the Supreme Court to rule that the route of the fence should be moved, and that some 170 acres of land be returned to the villagers. Astonishingly, this ruling has yet to be implemented by the state, which is thus displaying brazen contempt of court.

The fact that there are still civilians prepared to invest time and energy in nonviolent protest and popular action carried out by two peoples should be lauded, not suppressed.

Actually, last Friday's rally was relatively peaceful: The presence of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and numerous journalists made the Israel Defense Forces and Border Police behave less violently than usual.

Only when the protesters began causing damage to the barrier itself did the security forces react, but even then they used riot-control measures rather than firearms. This is how it ought to be, every Friday.

The protests in Bil'in are legitimate. They must be allowed. Protesters must be permitted unobstructed access to the site, and so should security forces, as long as they act with restraint. Shooting at demonstrators - as has happened in Bil'in all too often - is an act perpetrated by only the most nefarious regimes.

Protesting in Bil'in is not just a right. It is a duty.