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May 1, 2008 JVP E-Newsletter
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JVP Church Campaign: Methodists vote overwhelmingly to keep divestment from the occupation as an option
 (From left: Danielle Strandburg-Peshkin, Beth Corrie, JVP-Chicago's Lynn Pollack in the back holding separate banner, and JVP's Liat Weingart vigil at Methodist conference in Fort Worth this week.)
Delegates did not get to directly consider a range of selective divestment proposals at the United Methodist Church's General Conference in Fort Worth TX this week. Nonetheless, in a stunning rebuke to anti-divestment groups, Methodist delegates voted by 763-38 to keep divestment from Israel's occupation on the table as an option. (As of press time, a JVP-supported resolution put forth by the Methodist Federation for Social Action may still reach the floor before the conference ends tomorrow.)
See how beautiful you are!
Go to investinpeace.org to see the faces of people of conscience like you who support selective divestment. It's not too late to send a message to the Presbyterians. Send your photo and message here.
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Further, a proposal to divest from Caterpillar was shelved prior to the conference in favor of open talks with the company, marking one of the first times since JVP started our Caterpillar campaign that the company has agreed to talk directly with groups about their role in human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories.
Finally, the Methodists voted to create a socially responsible investment committee that will focus on Darfur, China and the Middle East, linking church investments and human rights abuses. It is expected that the committee will seriously examine further selective divestment initiatives as a way to bring about an end to the occupation.
The Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), a conservative group critics charge with trying to split the church, created further controversy when they gave international delegates free cell phones which included directions for voting against a range of politically progressive proposals. It was their anti-divestment resolution called "Oppose Divestment from Israel" which was soundly defeated, thus illustrating how groups lobbying against selective divestment have won few hearts and minds.
"This is an important step forward for a major US church that has a longstanding history of opposition to the Israeli occupation, and is now moving towards one of the only nonviolent actions that can lead to real peace in the region. Each day Israel's occupation and settlement expansion continues unabated, the divestment and sanctions movement will grow," said Sydney Levy, Director of Campaigns for Jewish Voice for Peace, who has been leading JVP's church outreach.
"As a United Methodist, and as a person directly affected by the violence of the Occupation, I am so grateful for the support that Jewish Voice for Peace has given us as we have worked on divestment resolutions," said Elizabeth Corrie, cousin of Rachel Corrie and member of the United Methodist Church. "It cannot be overstated how important it is to have the supportive presence of our Jewish brothers and sisters. It strengthens us and empowers us to act. To me, this is the inter-faith work that needs to grow."
JVP builds momentum for campaign that is strengthening the movement
 Since January, JVP's Church campaign has been in full force. Sydney Levy, Director of Campaigns and Chapters, and Liat Weingart, Campaign Coordinator, have been working on many levels to build a community of organizers that includes literally dozens of members and supporters. (Click on photo to see Israeli-American Liat Weingart's moving speech to Methodists this week.)
JVP created and distributed a booklet on divesting from the occupation to all 1,600 delegates who are voting on resolutions in the Methodist and Presbyterian Church USA General Assembly this year. The booklets already sent arrived in the mail with a letter signed by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, JVP Advisory Board Member.
While the opponents were calling delegates, many JVP members were also calling Methodist delegates to emphasize the importance of divesting from US companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestinians. National training for all callers/organizers occurred in person in December and through teleconferencing again in February. JVP formed a working group of members throughout the country who worked daily for months to meet with delegates in their local aresa and make presentations at churches.
Tsela Barr designed beautiful buttons and postcards distributed to delegates, while Lynn Pollack, Karen Platt, Michael Batchelder, Jim Haber, Roger Kallenberg and Mark Braverman, in addition to Sydney Levy and Liat Weingart, all traveled to Fort Worth to talk to Methodist delegates and attendees. Countless more volunteered to make calls.
JVP also presented at the Methodist's Pre-Conference in Texas in January and is working with Rabbi Haim Beliak (Jewsonfirst.org) on the campaign and to organize progressive rabbis in the L.A area. JVP board member Jean Entine, who lives in Boston, showed up in our offices for the month of April coordinating on-site conference logistics and travel for JVP members "working" the conference.
Our Methodist partners, the Methodist Federation for Social Action were in daily communication with us as we laid out a joint strategy. Many people worked on this campaign and brought a new and deeper level of organizing-one that is long term and is building our movement one day, one year at a time. The Presbyterian General Assembly is coming in June and our organizing with the Methodists has taught us much that we can immediately put to use. After June, we begin working with the long list of churches that have not heard from us before.
Click Here To View Liat's Presentation
Prof. Joel Beinin From Jerusalem:
Preparing for War with Iran?
 This is the fourth of Professor Joel Beinin's monthly analyses of the current state of affairs in Israel, Palestine and beyond. Beinin is currently Director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo while he is on temporary leave from his position as History Professor at Stanford University. Beinin is also a past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
As Israel prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary, the weak and internally divided government of Ehud Olmert persists in pursuing counterproductive policies detached from all regional and global realities except the guaranteed support of the United States. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice soldiers on in her starring role keeping the theatrical performance known as "the peace process" from closing before President Bush leaves office. But the chances that any meaningful Palestinian-Israeli agreement will be reached are nearly nonexistent.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with President Bush on April 24 and walked away with only a promise of $50 million dollars, many compliments, and more verbal proclamations from official Washington that Israel should stop settlement expansion and dismantle "illegal" settlement outposts (as if all the other settlements were legal). Bush's and Rice's words on the settlement issue were more forceful than usual. But they are no cause for optimism.
Israel responded by reminding President Bush of his joint press conference with former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in April 2004. On that occasion Bush made public a letter in which he wrote to Sharon, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers [i.e., settlements], it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." This commitment was made without consulting any Palestinian party, thereby reversing previous U.S. policy that the boundaries of a Palestinian state should be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians. Israel also revealed previously secret commitments by Bush and Rice giving Israel permission to expand settlements that it expects to retain in a final status agreement despite the fact that this would violate provisions of the roadmap.
White House spokespersons denied that Bush had given the go ahead for settlement expansion. Nonetheless, Israel continues to announce new housing starts in the Jerusalem area as well as large settlements like the Jerusalem suburb of Ma‚alei Adumim, which it expects to annex. In Jerusalem, the Bush administration's verbal admonishments on settlement expansion are treated as tactics to placate (or deceive) the Arabs, but not more.
Abbas ended his Washington visit by telling the Associated Press, "Frankly, so far nothing has been achieved. But we are still conducting direct work to have a solution." Having no resources of his own, Abbas has apparently decided that he has no choice but to put his entire stakes on the Bush administration. This is not a high percentage bet.
Back in the real world, as Abbas was returning from Washington, Israel proudly announced the removal of one more of the approximately 500 roadblocks and checkpoints that dot the West Bank and obstruct the conduct of daily life. (On the eve of Condoleezza Rice's last visit some sixty dirt roadblocks and two unmanned checkpoints were removed; but thirty of those roadblocks had been put in place only a month before, and several of the others had already been flattened by Palestinian farmers with bulldozers.) Several days later a team sponsored by the Peres Center for Peace, The Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies and the Danish government submitted a report proposing that Israel remove ten roadblocks in the West Bank which have little security value and unnecessarily disrupt commerce. Although the team includes two retired Israeli generals, the Israeli government's initial reaction was skeptical. Olmert's inability to remove a substantial number of checkpoints, foot-dragging on compiling the list of Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was captured near the Gaza Strip nearly two years ago, and periodic provocative announcements of new housing starts in the Jerusalem area exemplify his weakness and lack of a mandate for peace.
Meanwhile, with full support from Washington, Israel continues to besiege the Gaza Strip, imposing a severe collective punishment on its 1.5 million people who are becoming ever more deeply mired in poverty and deprivation. At the same time, the Israeli army launches regular assaults on military and political leaders of Hamas and other armed Palestinian organizations using aircraft and tanks nearly indiscriminately, almost guaranteeing that innocent civilians will be killed and wounded.
On April 28 Israeli forces attacked the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanun. Eyewitnesses claimed that a missile fired by an Israeli aircraft killed seven Palestinians, including a mother and four of her children aged one to five who were inside their home eating breakfast. An Israeli army investigation, not a procedure likely to incriminate soldiers, was prompted by the international media attention. Although admittedly basing its conclusion on limited evidence, the army insisted that the family was killed because "it is likely" that two militants standing near their home were carrying explosives which were detonated by the blast of the missile. One way or another, Israeli military sources do not dispute that a missile was fired close enough to a civilian residence to cause, directly or indirectly, the deaths of five innocent people.
Nonetheless, Israel has failed to obtain its objectives in the Gaza Strip. A report by the International Crisis Group (no. 73, March 19, 2008) concludes: "The policy of isolating Hamas and sanctioning Gaza is bankrupt and, by all conceivable measures, has backfired. Violence is rising, harming both Gazans and Israelis. Economic conditions are ruinous, generating anger and despair. The credibility of President Mahmoud Abbas and other pragmatists has been further damaged. The peace process is at a standstill. Meanwhile, Hamas' hold on Gaza, purportedly the policy's principal target, has been consolidated."
The Beit Hanun incident also highlighted divisions within Olmert's government. Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, who ousted Amir Peretz from the leadership of the Labor Party ten months ago, proclaimed that the army would not apologize for the civilian deaths and that "Hamas is responsible for the violence in the Gaza Strip [because] the way it operates endangers innocent civilians." This is certainly true. But it did not prevent Prime Minister Olmert from expressing "regret" over their deaths (along with regret for the deaths of Israeli civilians) even if his words fell short of a full apology.
Behind these verbal differences, many observers believe that the army, and Barak in particular, are pressing for a full scale reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, which they call "mowing the grass." Unlike Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, they do not believe in diplomacy. Given the failure of the policy of isolating and sanctioning Hamas, this is the only alternative. Barak apparently believes that a victorious campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip is also his best ticket to becoming a credible candidate for prime minister in the next election. His legendary arrogance does not permit him to consider the costs of failure.
This grim prospect, whether or not it is not realized, is consistent with the Bush administration's policy, which is to pursue a confrontation with what it perceives as a Middle Eastern axis of evil comprised of Iran, Syria, Hizbollah, and Hamas while trying to construct a countervailing axis of righteousness consisting of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Mahmoud Abbas. Such a policy could only succeed if Israel offered Abbas a two-state territorial deal so sweet that it would win broad Palestinian legitimacy. In that case, even many of those who no longer support his Fatah organization would likely accept it.
The Bush administration has not pressed Olmert to do this. Moreover, despite many recent indications that Syria is prepared for a deal with Israel on the Golan Heights and that Hamas is willing to negotiate with Israel, Washington also opposes exploring these diplomatic options. Even if the Bush administration finds itself unable to launch a war against Iran before retiring to the dustbin of history, it is making every effort to make such a war a live policy option for the next president. Hillary Clinton has obliged by declaring her willingness to "obliterate" Iran should it launch an attack on Israel.
Joel Beinin
Jerusalem
May 1, 2008
Chapter work
While members are always working on national campaigns, JVP chapters continue to blaze new paths in their own communities. This is just a sampling of their critical work.
Philly-JVP's workshop at the Philadelphia Sabeel Conference on April 25-26 was a huge success. Members presented to two large and enthusiastic groups about Jewish anti-Occupation organizing efforts, focusing on the tradition of dissent from Israeli government policy among Jews of conscience over the past hundred years, the importance of a Jewish voice in the broader movement, and the nuts-and-bolts of activism among U.S. Jews by putting JVP's Trees of Reconciliation campaign under a magnifying glass.
In March, JVP's Bay Area chapter sponsored IDF (Israeli army) veteran and Breaking the Silence member Oded Na'aman at Congregation Sha'ar Zahav in San Francisco and Kehilla Community Synagogue in the East Bay. Na'aman, who was quoted in Northern California's Jewish newspaper, the j, said "We feel that we're pointing out an existential threat to the nature of Israeli society - to our morals...What we found out is that while defending our country, we also betrayed it in a sense. We betrayed the values we were brought up on."
On March 30, the South Bay Chapter (San Jose Area) sponsored a screening of the film "Encounter Point" as part of their Cries for Peace film series, which chronicles members of the Parents Circle and Bereaved Families Forum. They'll conclude the film series on May 4, showing "Knowledge is the Beginning", about a joint Daniel Berenboim-Edward Said project to promote peace through the creation of a Middle Eastern youth orchestra.
JVP Chicago welcomes JVP Boston member Alice Rothchild for a series of speaking events about her book "Broken Promises, Broken Dreams" and book signings at six different events beginning with a buffet dinner co-sponsored by JVP-Chicago, Tikkun and Lincoln Park Neighbors United for Peace.
The Detroit Jewish Film Festival, the largest film festival in Michigan, runs for 10 days in May. JVP Detroit will co-sponsor the Daniel Barenboim film, Knowledge is the Beginning at 3 screenings, May 5, 12 and 14. Over 1000 people are expected to attend the 3 film dates; the chapter is planning introductory receptions after each screening.
JVP Boston has been busy with a number of events. They sponsored a talk by Ra'ed Al Mickawi, Director of BUSTAN on April 29, where they raised funds and awareness. They are organizing a demo against AIPAC at their meeting in Boston on May 4 at 5 pm at the Boston Westin Copley Hotel; a benefit for the Children of Gaza April 30, and a fundraiser on June 1 at the Farrar Center to raise money for the PMRS Rehabilitation Center.
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