Supporting Palestinian Rights Is Not Anti-Semitic!

 Supporting Palestinian Rights Is Not Anti-Semitic!

Dear Editor,

New Paltz Women in Black holds a vigil every Saturday on Main Street in front of Elting Library, from 12:45 to 1:30. We stand for an end to all kinds of racism, including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and white nationalism; for protection of the environment;  for women’s equal rights, including the right to choose abortion; for LBGTQI equality; against U.S. militarism and bullying of countries around the world (and our 800 bases in 70 countries); and for human rights over private profit everywhere.

This includes Palestine and Israel, where the indigenous Palestinian population has been and still is being driven from its homes and lands, subjected to second-class citizenship, and oppressed by a brutal, degrading occupation that has lasted 73 years, not to mention Israel’s criminal blockade of Gaza, now in its 13^th year.

International law recognizes the right of an occupied people to resist—if the Palestinians stopped resisting they would disappear as a people overnight.  It does not recognize the right of the occupying force—Israel—to steal Palestinian lands and homes and resources, build Jews-only settlements on occupied land, refuse to vaccinate the occupied population against Covid-19—in effect, to try to eradicate the Palestinian people. 

Were you shocked by the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, which wiped out an African-American neighborhood? Israel carried out such massacres on 500 villages in Palestine in 1948, killing thousands and expelling 750,000 people from their homes; and it continues to destroy Palestinian villages and neighborhoods throughout the region. 

Do you think redlining and discriminatory mortgage practices to prevent racial integration in the U.S. were deplorable?  In Israel and in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli government builds homes that can only be occupied by Jews. Because of these settlements, the dream of a two-state solution is dead. If you read the daily newspapers you can see that the current unrest was ignited by Israel’s evictions of Palestinians from homes in Jerusalem where their families have lived for generations, turning those homes over to Jews from Brooklyn. 

Do you believe in religious freedom and separation of church and state? Israel invades mosques and other holy sites at will. 

Do you believe that all people should have equal rights? In Israel, the law guarantees the right of self-determination only to Jews.

Israel’s right to exist is not being threatened. It has accords with all the major Arab countries, and enjoys a lively trade with them and with the rest of the world, giving Israelis the highest standard of living in the region. 

But the right to exist of the Palestinians is at serious risk. Should they just shut up and submit to another 73 years of occupation, ethnic cleansing, and degradation?

Until Palestinian refugees have the right to return to the land of their birth, there can never be peace. The refugees of 1948 and 1967, and their descendants, still living in squalid refugee camps throughout the region, must be allowed to go home. 

Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian human rights must be called by the correct name—apartheid. The whole world can see this. Israel claims to speak for all Jews everywhere, but it does not speak for us, or for the increasing number of American Jews who reject Israeli human rights abuses and stand up for the rights of Palestinians. 

Naomi Allen

We Will Stop Criticizing Israel When Israel Stops Oppressing Palestinians

 We Will Stop Criticizing Israel When Israel Stops Oppressing Palestinians

Why do we “single out” Israel for its abuses of Palestinian human rights? Shouldn’t we look at China’s abuses, or Myanmar’s, or the way Saudi Arabia treats women? All of those things are terrible, but as Americans, our focus is on demanding changes from our government. Only Israel gets $4 billion a year (plus special supplements) from Americans’ tax money to commit these atrocities. The U.S. government has “singled out” Israel for this benefit. Our money buys the bombs and bullets that destroy homes and families in Gaza. Our money buys the Caterpillars and surveillance equipment that destroy homes and families in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Jewish National Fund, which will only sell or lease land to Jews, is a tax-exempt fund under American law. 

When someone tells us to avert our eyes from these atrocities and look at the atrocities elsewhere, they don’t want to have to answer—do you support these acts or not? If you oppose racism and white supremacy in the U.S., why would you want to hush up the same acts, the same thinking, the same privilege, that protect one ethnic group—Jews—at the expense of all others? Palestinians deserve equal human rights, and it is not anti-Semitic to say so. Not only have Jews all over the world spoken up for Palestinian rights, but Israeli Jews are beginning to speak up also—1000 Israeli Jews just began circulating a letter “Stop Israel’s Apartheid!: An open letter to the international community,” which you can read here: https://jews4decolonization.wordpress.com

A poll of American Jews by the Jewish Electorate Institute and published in Ha’aretz, the N.Y. Times of Israel, on July 13, showed that one-quarter of American Jews agree that Israel is an apartheid state, and 22% believe that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. 

58% said we should cut aid to Israel so it couldn’t spend more U.S. money supporting the Jews-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Not to mention the 16,000 artists from all countries who have called for an end to Israeli apartheid: https://mondoweiss.net/2021/06/this-is-not-a-conflict-this-is-apartheid-over-16000-artists-sign-letter-in-solidarity-with-palestine

Are they all anti-Semites?

The charge of anti-Semitism, when it is used to silence critics of the Israeli government, is just a cloak that supporters of Israel’s policies use to cover the naked shame of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. It also discredits criticism of genuine anti-Semitism, which is on the rise in the U.S. mainly thanks to Trumpism and its open support of white supremacy. 

In the meantime, here are some books you can read that will help clarify the history of the region:

“The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe;

“The General’s Son,” by Miko Peled, grandson of an Israeli hero of 1948 and 1967;

“The Iron Wall,” by Israeli historian Avi Schlaim.

Naomi Allen

Wars protecting profiteers, not our freedoms

 Dear Editor,

Instead of offering an opportunity to mourn those whose lives have been taken by war, Memorial Day all too often brings with it sales at the malls, barbecues ... and the predictable platitudes from members of Congress – only 17% of whom ever have been in the military – asking us to thank our troops for sacrificing their lives to "protect our freedoms.” 

As a veteran myself, I would remind them that every single war waged by the U.S. since World War II and every single onebefore that has been about protecting the interests of the war profiteers, not about protecting our freedoms. Our freedoms are protected by our Constitution, and they would be just fine if elected politicians stopped trying to take them away from us by passing laws that criminalize dissent and make it harder to vote. I will also add, that the massive funding of the military-industrial complex drains a huge portion of our tax dollars that could go instead to much more needed human and social services.  

This Memorial Day, let us grieve for the millions of lives needlessly taken by the foolish notion that our bombs will keep us safe and free. They do nothing except cause massive suffering and make the war profiteers obscenely rich. Our safety and our freedoms depend, instead, on all citizens putting public pressure on those politicians whose militaristic policies make us less free and safe.  

Tarak Kauff
NYC Veterans For Peace

Never uttering the word apartheid

For anyone familiar with Israel's treatment of Palestinians, there isn't really much new. The Israeli Army is bulldozing houses in the West Bank so that more Jewish settlers can move in. This "ethnic cleansing" is done so that new immigrants from Brooklyn with the right religion can replace Palestinians.

Then there are the attacks on mosques using teargas and rubber bullets. There are the shootings and crippling of protesters determined to save their farms and homes. Or the beating and incarceration of children. We have seen it all before, like an old documentary film on Kristallnacht.

The people of Gaza have endured much more: the genocidal attack on their schools, hospitals, power plants, and sewage systems. Israeli military assaults on Gaza always kill lots of children, hundreds in fact. The ultimate aim of the Israeli Army is extermination, and each new bloodbath tests the boundaries of what Israel can get away with.

What is new about Israel's murderous behavior is that more Americans are finally becoming aware of our country's role in perpetuating this carnage. The US protects Israel from the condemnation of the rest of the world at the UN. When it comes to more bombs, missiles and planes, the US is always there to arm and fund the monstrous Israeli war machine. And most of our Congress is simply paid off by the Israel Lobby. Our "progressive" Rep. Delgado, for example, rakes in $30,000 per year from the Lobby and has never uttered the word apartheid.

Fred Nagel

To the Panel on WAMC

 Dear Friends,

In 2017 I went along with a small team of U.S. veterans and Miko Peled, a Veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to the West Bank to see for ourselves the reality on the ground. Four of us on that trip were Jewish. We traveled all over the West Bank. Wherever we went we were treated with Palestinian hospitality. Not so the IDF and armed Israeli settlers, who we saw teargassing and oppressing Palestinians in their own villages. We saw the huge walls constructed by Israel that broke apart Palestinian villages,  farmland and even families. The arrogance and cruelty was appalling. We also got teargassed and shot at with rubber bullets as we joined nonviolent Palestinian protests. We were physically attacked by armed settlers in Nabi Saleh. 

I listened to the roundtable today (May 17th) as the tragedy in Palestine was discussed. How interesting that no one refers to the house demolitions and expulsions of Palestinian families in Jerusalem that basically started this current bloodletting. One of your panelists commented on the history back in 1948. I would suggest you educate yourselves a bit deeper to get to the roots of this ongoing tragedy. I’m a Jew and I took the time and trouble years ago to educate myself as to the history beyond the mythology promoted by Israeli Zionists and also here in the U.S. by many in the media and government.  

As a veteran, I have a number of close friends who served in the IDF, like Miko, who will give a story that differs from the superficial official public narrative, a view from the inside, as many Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan vets also give us about their wars.

Meanwhile our country supports a globally recognized apartheid state of Israel with more than $10 million every day ($3.8 billion/year) and political/diplomatic cover in the United Nations and other international forums.

I suggest you read the General’s Son by Miko Peled. 

If you would like to have Miko as a guest to get another perspective, it could probably be arranged. Here’s a video of Miko exposing some myths on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhNf__kYviY 

Thanks for everything you do. I’ll be interested in a response.  

Tarak

Tarak Kauff
NYC Veterans For Peace
Peace & Planet News

In solidarity with rallies around the world

Dear Editor

Israel's insatiable quest for "lebensraum" at the expense of the native Palestinians evicted from their homes in E. Jerusalem hearkens back to the expulsions of Cherokee Indians by Donald Trump's favorite dead president, Andrew Jackson. Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, 16,000 Cherokees, most of whom were fully "civilized" (they even had their own newspaper), were evicted from their homes and farms in NC, TN, and Al , and force marched 1000 miles to Oklahoma. At least 4000 died along the way. Most of those stolen lands were appropriated by slave owners.

The creation of Israel in 1947 by western powers, eager to dump Jewish refugees from WW 2, led to the immediate expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their long time family homes, millions more displaced in intervening years, forced into permanent refugee camps in ever diminishing lands. Some 500 villages were demolished.  Periodic wars and bombings by Israel's massive U.S. funded military, one of the world's largest, keep the "untermenschen" in line. Regular demolitions of Palestinian homes, olive groves and villages, barely make the news. Occasionally Palestinians fight back with stones or crude rockets, reminiscent of native Americans defending against heavily armed cavalries with tomahawks.

We forget that Arabs are also Semitic peoples.  Protesting the atrocities of the far right Netanyahu regime is no more "anti-Semitic" than protesting U.S. endless wars is "anti-American". Contact your politicians and demand that our tax money is withheld from Israel's military until the occupation and Jihad against Palestinians is ended. Join Jewish Voices for Peace, Mid East Crisis Response, and Women in Black at the Elting Library in New Paltz Saturday at 12:45 p.m., in solidarity with rallies around the world. 

Edmund Haffmans

Comment to NPR's "All Things Considered"

 To All Things Considered, weekend:

"Israeli police and Palestinians clashed…." That was the NPR brief report yesterday, neutral as ever. When it comes to Israel/Palestine, what ATC leaves out is always most notable. Did Palestinians suddenly rise up from prayers at their holiest mosque on the holiest day of the Muslim calendar to attack Israeli police? It snuck very briefly into one of your previous reports that the Israeli police had started a riot with Palestinians as they were leaving the mosque. That fact was never mentioned by NPR again. From then on the story begins wherever Israel wants it to, with unruly Palestinians who, for no reason whatsoever, at least none given by ATC, rise up to strike at armed Israeli police. 
 
NPR claims the mantle of "most trusted name in news”. On the subject of Israel/Palestine it is rare to hear an unbiased or fair report. Palestinian necks have been under the knee of Israel far longer than the 50 years that NPR is now celebrating. The time is long overdue to tell the truth.

Judith Simon