Land Day, March 30, 2012.

Land Day 2012, East Jerusalem
(Photograph: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)

March 30 is Land Day in Palestine.  This year tens of thousands of Palestinians demonstrated against the theft and military occupation of their land, and the murder of non-violent protestors by Israeli forces on this day 36 years ago.  On Land Day 2012, at least one protestor was killed, hundreds injured.

Why do Palestinians keep risking their lives in non-violent protest?

Listen to Sarah Ali on the deep meaning of Land Day.  Sarah is 20, a student of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.  She blogs at sarahmali.wordpress.com and you can find her on twitter at twitter.com/Saritah_91.

The story of the land
by Sarah Ali, March 30, 2012  (published on Mondoweiss.)

To Dad…

I looked at his teary eyes, and, beholding something akin to happiness, I smiled.  The man I have always known to be my father was back.  He did not look like that unfamiliar block whom I could not really recognize during the last three years.  He was no longer that absent-minded, silent figure gazing at walls all the time and uninterestedly nodding whenever addressed by anyone at home.  He was there.  He was present.  He was actually listening as I went on bragging about a high grade of mine.  A phone call and a piece of paper signed by some Turkish-sponsored institution brought me back my father.  It didn’t matter what brought him back.  He was back; that was all that mattered.  I looked at his eyes again, this time more carefully lest my first glance should be false.  I saw that absolute happiness in my father’s eyes.  A big smile leaped my heart and made it to my face.  Again.

Olive grove, Palestine (Photo: Abed Othman)

As we now commemorate Land Day, we honor the people who stood up for their land back in 1976 when Israel announced that thousands of Palestinian dunams would be confiscated.  During marches held to protest against that declaration of Israel, six people were killed.

The 30th of March brings back a memory of our Land, my father’s Land.  A couple of weeks ago we got a phone call informing us that my father’s name has been selected for a reconstruction program funded by Turkey. The program aims at helping Gazan farmers whose lands were damaged during the Israeli offensive in 2008-2009 to replant their trees.  It provides farmers with all types of facilitating materials like fences, tree seeds, and irrigation systems.  My father declined to apply for those organizations that gave financial compensations to farmers.  Unlike any other aid program, this program gives no money to farmers.  It instead helps them stand on their own.

‏My father was not born a farmer, nor was he naturally brought up to plant trees.   Continue reading →

Adrienne Rich has died, at 82, on Tuesday March 27.

(Photo: Democracy Now)

A sublime poet and essayist, gifted teacher, outspoken feminist and lesbian, Adrienne Rich was active on many fronts, including Israel/Palestine.

In February 2009, she joined the call for academic and cultural boycott of Israel.  With characteristic passion and precision, she wrote:

Why Support the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel?
by Adrienne Rich, MRzine

Dear All,

Last week, with initial hesitation but finally strong conviction, I endorsed the Call for a U.S. Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel.   I’d like to offer my reasons to friends, family and comrades.  I have tried in fullest conscience to think this through.

My hesitation: I profoundly believe in the visible/invisible liberatory social power of creative and intellectual boundary-crossings.  I’ve been educated by these all my life, and by centuries-long cross-conversations about human freedom, justice and power — also, the forces that try to silence them.

As an American Jew, over almost 30 years, I’ve joined with other concerned Jews in various kinds of coalition-building and anti-Occupation work.  I’ve seen the kinds of organized efforts to stifle — in the US and elsewhere — critiques of Israel’s policies, the Occupation’s denial of Palestinian humanity, destruction of Palestinian lives and livelihoods, the “settlements,” the state’s physical and psychological walls against dialogue, and the efforts to condemn any critiques as anti-Semitism.  Along with other activists and writers I’ve been named on right-wing “shit-lists” as “Israel-hating” or “Jew-hating.”  [MR: Shit-list = an online listing of “Self-hating, Israel-Threatening Jews.” The obsessive work of an extreme right-wing Jewish entity, it now identifies more than 8000 Jews worldwide who dare to challenge Israeli policies and actions.]

I have also seen attacks within American academia and media on Arab American, Muslim, Jewish scholars and teachers whose work critically explores the foundations and practices of Israeli state and society.

Until now, as a believer in boundary-crossings, I would not have endorsed a cultural and academic boycott.  But Israel’s continuing, annihilative assaults in Gaza and the one-sided rationalizations for them have driven me to re-examine my thoughts about cultural exchanges.  Israel’s blockading of information, compassionate aid, international witness and free cultural and scholarly expression has become extreme and morally stone-blind.  Israeli Arab parties have been banned from the elections, Israeli Jewish dissidents arrested, Israeli youth imprisoned for conscientious refusal of military service.  Academic institutions are surely only relative sites of power.  But they are, in their funding and governance, implicated with state economic and military power.  And US media, institutions and official policy have gone along with all this.

To boycott a repressive military state should not mean backing away from individuals struggling against the policies of that state.  So, in continued solidarity with the Palestinian people’s long resistance, and also with those Israeli activists, teachers, students, artists, writers, intellectuals, journalists, refusers, feminists and others who oppose the means and ends of the Occupation, I have signed my name to this call.

Adrienne Rich.

The voices of war-pushers start very loud, then they’re hugely amplified by compliant media until they fill and poison the air.

But they are not the only voices.

This beautiful initiative started as an impulse, and it is growing rapidly into – well, who knows where it might lead?  Go see for yourself: http://www.indiegogo.com/israeliran.

“As a South African who has lived and suffered under apartheid and spent nearly thirty years of my adult life in its jails for resisting it, I can and do humbly claim to know something about the meaning of apartheid.”  Ahmed Kathrada, Cape Town, South Africa.

Graffiti artist in Johannesburg, South Africa.  (Photo: Minhaj Jeenah/BDS South Africa)

Adri Nieuwhof, consultant and human rights advocate, reports on the recent Israeli Apartheid Week in South Africa, for The Electronic Intifada:

This year’s Israeli Apartheid Week in South Africa created a stir nationwide.  BDS South Africa and other Palestine solidarity groups teamed up with trade unionists, political parties, student bodies, churches, youth organizations and activists in Gaza to reach a wide audience.

Huge billboards announced Israeli Apartheid Week.  Durban-based GangsOfGraffiti inspired fellow street and graffiti writers to create works with “Free Palestine” as the theme.  On walls in several cities, artwork appeared in support of IAW and boycott activism.  The film Roadmap to Apartheid was screened in cities and towns across the country.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli “Public Diplomacy Ministry” had sent a delegation to South Africa to “battle the apartheid label,” but Israel’s messengers failed to change the perception of many South Africans that Israeli apartheid is very similar to apartheid in South Africa.

Fatima Gabru of the Palestine Solidarity Forum described the Israeli public relations exercise as “a stalling technique so that they [Israel] can continue with what they are doing: throwing Palestinians off their land, building walls, continuing human rights abuses.”

Broad support

The Israeli Apartheid Week events in South Africa were part of a global effort to bring attention to Israel’s apartheid policies.  Last year, Palestinian students called on students around the world to “put BDS at the forefront of your campaigns and join together for Israeli Apartheid Week, the pinnacle of action across universities worldwide.”

Israeli Apartheid Week received broad support across a diverse range of political groups and national organizations in South Africa, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Students’ Congress, the African National Congress, the Young Communist League of South Africa, the South African Council of Churches, Kairos Southern Africa, Kaleidoscope LGBTIA Youth Network and South African Artists Against Apartheid.

The South African Council of Churches called on all South Africans to participate in Israeli Apartheid Week.  In a press statement, SACC reminded church leaders that “Israel remained the single supporter of apartheid when the rest of the world implemented economic sanctions, boycotts and divestment to force change in South Africa.”  The statement added that Israel continues to “share a similarity with the old South Africa in implementing apartheid where all non-Jews of Palestine are discriminated against, displaced of their land and homes, and subjected to refugee camps and a permanent state of violent military rule.”

The South African Students Congress, the biggest student body in South Africa, commented: “Israel is an apartheid state that daily tramples on the rights and dignity of Palestinians.”  SASCO has officially endorsed the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. “History has taught us that boycotts were instrumental in the defeat of the murderous and oppressive apartheid regime in South Africa and we believe that boycotting apartheid Israel is key to overthrowing the oppression of Palestinians.”

SASCO branches initiated a range of activities and called on students not to accept scholarships and “opportunities” for cultural exchanges of young and promising black South Africans to study in Israel, just as students rejected the tactics of co-option by the South African apartheid regime.

On an Israeli Apartheid Week speaking tour in Europe, SASCO member and BDS South Africa board member Mbuyiseni Ndlozi told European audiences about the striking parallels between apartheid in South Africa and Israel-Palestine.   He called on Palestine solidarity activists to apply similar BDS tactics to Israel until it respects the rights of the Palestinian people.

From complicity to resistance

Muammed Desai, spokesperson of BDS South Africa and co-organizer of Israeli Apartheid Week, told The Electronic Intifada that he was “thrilled, really impressed, there was such a sense of energy.”

He added: “In Port Elizabeth they packed a room of 300 people.  The mayor of Port Elizabeth, Zanoxolo Wayile, attended the event.  It is unheard of in the Eastern Cape.  Students at Stellenbosch University held a rally on Palestine — it is a step forward.”

In the past, Stellenbosch University was a bastion of support for apartheid in South Africa.  Last year the vice-rector for research acknowledged the university’s “complicity with the injustices of apartheid.”

During IAW at Stellenbosch, students organized a peace march and set up a checkpoint at the main gate of the faculty of theology.  A copy of “The Bethlehem Call” in Afrikaans was handed over to the Beyers Naudé Centre. The Bethlehem Call is an urgent appeal to take action against Israeli apartheid and support BDS activism.

The ANC and Palestine

During Israeli Apartheid Week, ANC officials spoke out against the oppression of the Palestinian people.  The African National Congress played a leading role in overthrowing apartheid in South Africa.

Ebrahim Ebrahim, deputy minister of international relations and an ANC National Executive Committee member, spoke about “Palestine and South Africa: Partners in a struggle for a better world” at an event in Cape Town.

On the occasion of the ANC’s 100th year, two ANC veterans spoke in a panel discussion on the parallels between the ANC’s history and South African solidarity with Palestinians resisting Israeli apartheid.  Speakers included Dennis Goldberg, veteran of the military wing of the ANC, and Ahmed Kathrada, former political prisoner who spent nearly thirty years in detention.

Kathrada told the audience: “As a South African who has lived and suffered under apartheid and spent nearly thirty years of my adult life in its jails for resisting it, I can and do humbly claim to know something about the meaning of apartheid.  You do not get to journey as far and as long as I have with the ANC and leaders such as Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela and not recognize apartheid when you see and experience it.”

At the Russell Tribunal on Palestine session in Cape Town last year, Kathrada said that Palestinians are “experiencing life akin to — and in many respects far worse — than what we had under apartheid in South Africa.”  He called on the ANC to further its support for the Palestinian struggle for justice and self- determination.

“We are saying that if you [Israel] continue along the road of apartheid and we cannot stop you, at the very least you will do so without our consent, our investments, economic and cultural, and without our political agreement.”

In dark times, exhilarating news from Seattle, Washington.

Stephanie Fox, Director of Grassroots Organizing at Jewish Voice for Peace:

I have been an activist since I was 13 years old, and last night is one of the most powerful moments I’ve ever experienced.  I will never forget the feeling of jumping up and down and shouting for joy outside Seattle City Hall.  [MR: I know such moments.  They are rare, often fleeting, and so all the more thrilling.]

Rainbow flag over Seattle.  Source: Dan Con/Flickr

Last night, 6 brave members of Seattle, Washington’s LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) Commission did the simple, honest and right thing.  And it took my breath away.

And because the backlash is sure to be fierce, if you feel as I do, then I want you and everyone you know who is part of or ally to the LGBT community to thank them.  Today.  This very moment.

What happened?

In my region of the United States, the Israeli Consulate and militant pro-Israel group Stand With Us partnered to promote a tour of Israeli LGBT activists—not to advance gay rights, but to divert attention from Israel’s occupation and abuses of human rights.  Their well-documented strategy to rebrand Israel as a “safe haven” of tolerance, even as millions of Palestinians live under Israeli control without the right to vote, as second-class citizens inside Israel or as refugees—is called Pinkwashing.

People throughout the northwest had been organizing for weeks.  Groups were hosting teach-ins, organizing protests, writing letters, and making phone calls, and it was working.  Activists had already mobilized to successfully cancel events in Olympia and Tacoma earlier in the week. Change was in the air.  But the City of Seattle LGBT Commission event was the headline of the whole tour, and in spite of all the organizing, we knew it would be hard for the Commission to stand up for what was right.

And then, at an open hearing last night, Seattle LGBT commissioners heard several hours of ground-breaking testimony — from queer Jews who cleared away the debris of anti-semitism accusations, and queer Palestinians who brilliantly detailed the racist and violent effects of Israeli policy in their own lives, and the way that Pinkwashing has furthered that violence by invisibilizing their lives, identities, and communities.

At one point, Selma, Palestinian-American and LGBTQ rights activist explained:

My life and upbringing in Washington State isn’t a coincidence.  My family settled here after my father’s ancestral home was ethnically cleansed in 1948 Palestine.  He became a refugee as a young person, and it is by this very truth, and the trajectories that follow, that have led me to settling in Washington state and Seattle.  My queer identity is steeped in and inextricably linked to the dispossession of my family and community by the state of Israel…Events like this have become part of a strategic campaign where LGBT culture is exploited and manipulated to promote the idea that Israel  is a great place for all LGBT people.  This strategy has come to be called pinkwashing by those who oppose it. It directly hurts queer people like me, and our entire community.

Local Jewish Voice for Peace activist, Wendy Elisheva Somerson, pointed out that we are not against dialogue, and would be happy to hear stories from Israeli LGBT activists, were they not funded by the Israeli government and Stand With Us:

Any true dialogue on queer issues in the Middle East has to address the Occupation and include queer Palestinian voices.

It was clear that the room was moved by Selma’s and every else’s remarks, but at first it seemed like the event would go on as planned. The chair thanked everyone for coming and informed us that the event would happen anyway.

But then something happened that I could never have imagined.

One of the commissioners, his voice full of emotion and tears in his eyes, told us if it was up to him he wouldn’t let this event happen.  He said it pained him to be invisibilizing the most marginalized LGBT folks in our community.  And then another commissioner said he felt sick to his stomach about going ahead with the event, knowing now that it was not just LGBT individuals but state-funded propaganda.  Then another said this was one of the most difficult weeks of his life – realizing how little he had known and how much harm he was unintentionally doing.  Then another said she didn’t want us to feel silenced.

And then someone made a motion for a vote, and all at once, it had happened: this group of courageous and humble public representatives voted with a clear answer:  No to Pinkwashing, not in this town.  It is not easy to stand up for what is right, and we can’t thank them enough.

You can be sure that the LGBT commission will be hearing an enormous amount of criticism for their brave stand.  Right now, they are already being flooded by emails telling them they are wrong for refusing to spread government-funded propaganda.  Let’s show them that we don’t just protest, we also celebrate.  That we have their back, as they’ve had ours.

Please join me in thanking them for choosing what was hard, and what was right.