Survey: Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel.

A disturbing article was published in the 10.24.12 edition of the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz – Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel. We should note that this was sent to us by one of the people who works at Sabeel, human rights attorney Gerard Horton, who works on the issue of the treatment of children in Israel's military "justice" system. 

Arab MKs: Israeli Jews' support of apartheid is not surprising

Arab lawmaker Jamal Zahalka says the survey symbolizes 'the end of hypocrisy' and that the 'Israeli regime isn't a carbon copy of South Africa's apartheid, but it is certainly from the same family.'

By Jack Khoury and Jonathan Lis | 20:05 24.10.12 | 5

Arab Knesset members and organizations operating in Israel's Arab community were not surprised by the survey results showing that most Israeli Jews favor denying Palestinians the right to vote if Israel were to annex the West Bank, or by the backing for discrimination against Israel's Arab citizens.

The article was reporting on a recent survey of 503 Israelis which included the following results:
·        74% favour separate roads for Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
·        69% objects to giving 2.5 million Palestinians the right to vote if Israel annexes the West Bank.
·         58% of the Jewish public already believes Israel practices apartheid against the Palestinians.

·         49% want the state to treat Jews better than Palestinians.

·         47% want part of Israel’s Palestinian population transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

·         42% don’t want to live in the same building as Palestinians.

·         42% don’t want their children in the same class as Palestinians.

·    33% wants a law barring Israeli Palestinians (20% of Israel’s population) from voting in the Knesset.

These attitudes will soon lead to disaster for both Palestinians and Israeli Jews if left unchecked. These attitudes also help to explain why the Israeli state believes it is appropriate to prosecute Palestinian children from the West Bank in military courts, whilst Israeli settler children are processed through civilian juvenile courts, with far greater rights and protections, for the same offense.

I believe the situation is critical and urgent action is required if disaster is to be averted.

Gerard Horton
International Advocacy Officer - Lawyer
Defence for Children International – Palestine Section

Bil’in: Hozon (Sadness) and Farah (Happiness)

Alice Rothchild

The last time I went to Bil’in was in January 2011 for a frightening, exhilarating tear gas filled Friday demonstration against the wall. This time, not only did we arrive on a Wednesday, (no demonstrations), but conditions have changed dramatically, though not barely enough. From Birzeit we headed southwest, past the infamous Ofer Prison in the distance, through stunning rugged, rocky landscape, terraced with silvery olive trees, contrasting dark green figs, up and down ear popping hills, winding through tiny towns with tall thin minarets, lush fuscia colored bougainvillea, mansions built by wealthy US Palestinians erupting from the hillsides. As we approach the tiny town of Bil’in, the Jewish settlement of Modi’in Illit appears like a mirage in the distance, a haze of tall apartment buildings dominating miles of hilltops. This is as close to a pilgrimage as I get.

We are met by Iyad Burnat, the brother of the man featured in the recently released film, Five Broken Cameras. Smart, focused, handsome, and deeply committed to nonviolent civil disobedience, he takes us through the area of the previous demonstrations, now littered with tear gas canisters and other military detritus. His young daughter gradually warms up to her latest guests, smiling for photos, and holding onto her father. Ironically Caterpillar bulldozers are rebuilding the terraces and farming areas that were destroyed by the previous wall, ie, the high security fence, sensors, and military roads. This was built to separate the town of Bil’in from the rapidly expanding settlement of Modi’in Illit, simultaneously stealing much of the land belonging to the village.

In some strange way this feels like sacred space, where unarmed men and women, local villagers and internationals, famous leaders and unknown teenagers, people chanting, singing, yelling, beating drums, waving flags, faced down one of the most powerful, aggressive military powers in the world and won a small significant victory. Now that the wall has been taken down, I see a playground with brightly colored slides and climbing structures, near completion by the side of the road.  Such dangerous terrorists these villagers! Imagine building a playground. What will they think of next? What a strange mix of bizarre and extreme. What an immense tragedy for the Palestinians fighting this battle and for the soldiers so brutalized that they are able to fire and beat and tear gas and violate unarmed civilians: just following orders.

While Iyad described the popular struggle, the violent response from the Israeli military, the horrific cost to the villagers and their families, I walked along the current wall, this one concrete with double rows of wide loops of barbed wire beside the off limits military road. The cranes from Modi’in were easily visible over the wall, the struggle is far from over, the land grab continues all over the West Bank.

Filled with emotion, horror, encouragement, we gather in Iyad’s living room, meet his four friendly children and gracious wife serving thick Arabic coffee followed by painfully sweet tea. They have spent seven years building this house and recently moved in. He turns on the VCR and we find ourselves watching Five Broken Cameras, reliving the stories, the violated landscape, the spirited villagers, the brutality of the soldiers.  It is surreal and almost too painful to bear.

The conversation afterwards, however, is powerful and inspiring. Iyad is focused on teaching and building a nonviolent movement for civil action throughout the territories. Other villages are joining the struggle. He will be touring with the film in the US shortly. He is absolutely clear that he is not fighting the Jews, he is not fighting for a few more dunams of farm land, he is fighting the occupation. He is not only doing this for himself, but for his four children who have grown up tasting tear gas and fearing Israelis. He is determined to create a better life for all of them.

For more of Alice Rothchild's blogs from the delegation see:

http://mondoweiss.net/author/alice-rothchild

---

You need to have a dream, veteran U.S. civil rights activist tells Obama after visiting West Bank

By Amira Hass | Oct.22, 2012

From Ha'aretz newspaper

 original article: 

www.haaretz.com/news/features/you-need-to-have-a-dream-veteran-u-s-civil-rights-activist-tells-obama-after-visiting-west-bank.premium-1.471422

Vincent Harding, a friend and associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, says Washington should reexamine its relationship with Israel in light of its 'official policy toward the indigenous Palestinian populace.'

Harding in A-Nabi Saleh, in the Tamimi home. Photo by Amira Hass

"In one of my letters to my brother and son, Obama, I suggested to him that what he needed was the courage of his mother and the willingness to take chances that she represented in her life." The writer, Dr. Vincent Harding, is familiar to U.S. President Barack Obama, and we can assume that he also arouses feelings of affection, admiration and gratitude in him.

To Americans his name is immediately connected with Dr. Martin Luther King, because Harding was a close friend and partner of this leader of the struggle for equal rights in the United States, who was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The 80-year-old historian and theologian, a native of Harlem and a believing Christian, wrote (and says ) in polite words that Obama's problem is that he was not sufficiently daring.

"I quoted somebody [in the letter] who mentioned Franklin D. Roosevelt. One of the ways he developed to serve the nation was that he was willing to go outside the traditional borders in search of advisors. He sought out advisors that nobody ever heard of, because he was willing to go out of the expected respectable ways.

"Obama was not able, was not free maybe to make those kinds of choices. Because, cautious man that he so often is, he probably didn't want to bring in too visible associates with him, too many people that would simply be counted as African Americans. I think he has continued to suffer from the paucity of creative inventiveness that deviate from the accepted norms."

Harding does not conceal the warm place in his heart for the black president: He formulated his opinions based on a reading of Obama's memoirs, which were written before Obama thought of running for the presidency. He saw Obama as a man of "deep integrity, intelligence and deep concern for those who were in trouble in this society and around the world," and in his opinion "he probably came into the presidency not recognizing all of the mechanism of American presidential power and responsibilities that he should take on and work with. I think he did think he was going to change much and did hope, but didn't know what a fight it would require.

"He still has a magnificent heart. What is happening to that heart, when he allows himself to be the keeper of the hit list of the CIA drones, is another deep and difficult question that I would not try to go into very much, but I often wonder what is the nature of the conversation that he has when, thank God, he tries as often as he can to sit at the dining room table with his daughters and wife and mother-in-law, because his girls are going to a Quaker school [belonging to a Christian denomination that is committed to social equality and an anti-militaristic approach, which supported King and his friends] and I wonder what kind of questions are coming up about what their father is doing, in the light of what I hope the school is teaching them."

Those remarks about Obama were given three days ago in the village of Nabi Saleh, in the home of Neriman and Bassem Tamimi, among the leaders of the popular struggle in their village.

Harding is a member of a delegation that is currently visiting the West Bank, composed of American social and political activists including several veterans of the struggle for equal rights in the United States, such as Harding and Dorothy Cotton, an educator and a dedicated activist since the 1950s who worked alongside King. The initiative for the visit came from the eponymous Dorothy Cotton Institute, an education and resource center that trains leaders for a global human rights movement.

Harding wrote King's speech against continuing the war in Vietnam, which was delivered to a huge audience at a New York church exactly a year before King's murder. Harding reassures us that King usually wrote his speeches by himself, but "at the time he apparently assumed that college professors had more time than freedom leaders."

They formulated their views against the war together. Harding and King told the skeptics within the black community that "we have been very glad whenever voices came from outside the U.S., especially from the Third World, to stand in solidarity with us."

For the same reason it is natural for Harding and his friends to come now and listen to the Palestinians and Israelis who are actively fighting the occupation: In Jerusalem and Bil'in, Ramallah, Hebron, the Deheisheh refugee camp and the village of Walaja. One of the things that he learned immediately in the first two days was "how ignorant I was about what is really happening in this part of the world, how little I know and how little I have thought about how little I know - which is not characteristic of me. I come to this situation not simply as somebody who has been involved with non-violent actions of various kinds over many years, but as someone who for some known and unknown reasons, ever since I was in high school, was deeply concerned about learning about the Holocaust.

"Part of it was inspired by the Jewish teachers that I had in high school, a number of whom loved me deeply and inspired me to take my own possibilities very seriously, and then going on to the City College of New York. When I went there in 1948 it was still about 96 percent Jewish in the student body, I was surrounded by the world of the children of the Holocaust and survivors themselves, and that was all part of my reality.

"I also was closely related to some of the many Jewish people who had come to join us in the freedom movement in the South, and some gave their lives for that. So I came to this situation with all kinds of sensibilities. That's part of the large space that I have, to be deeply hurt by what I have seen and felt.

"I come from an American situation in which apartheid has been in one shape or another the reality of the country from its beginning up to the 1950s and 1960s, and then a struggle with how to get rid of it. As I have listened to my sisters and brothers here I felt familiarity and identification. I could identify on both levels - it's important to emphasize I came here as someone deeply in love with specific Jewish people, and deeply concerned by the great tragedy of the Holocaust experience. I came here as someone who experienced and fought against racial segregation and racial domination for half a century or more. So all this was very fresh and painful to me and very recognizable."

And what will you do now with what you've learned?

"I have been gifted with a great network of acquaintances, friends and colleagues, and I see a great responsibility right now to disseminate this knowledge and information in writing and by word. I will meet with lawmakers."

And with Obama?

"If I could I would, if people I know, who have some access [arrange a meeting]. I believe deeply in participatory democracy, so that my focus is not simply on Obama but on the people who must push Obama for a reexamination of what our relationship to Israel is all about, in the light of the official Israeli policy toward its indigenous Palestinian populace."

But this is American policy no less than it is Israeli policy, which people in America also want.

"People wanted segregation until a major movement against it created a change." .

How are the children?

by Laura Branca, DCI Senior Fellow

“How are the children?” is an African greeting that expresses what it is that should be uppermost in the minds of adults when we meet each other.  Each day of our pilgrimage here has increasingly brought us into awareness of the intolerable impact of the occupation on the children and youth in this region.

On October 14 and 15, the Dorothy Cotton Institute’s delegation met with human rights attorneys and counselors who provide legal aid and support to Palestinians and members of the resistance movement. Gaby Lasky and Gerard Horton devote their practices to the defense of people who have been unjustly arrested, detained and imprisoned under the discriminatory justice system operating in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

On Sunday we met with Gaby Lasky, a fiercely outspoken Israeli Jew born in Mexico and a human rights lawyer who represents Palestinians in the Israeli courts. The majority of these cases involve the denial of freedom of speech and freedom of demonstration, and we were struck by her descriptions of two different sets of laws and practices governing Israelis and Palestinians charged with the same offenses. 

On Monday we met Gerard Horton, International Advocacy Lawyer for the Defense of Children International – Palestine Section whose focus is on children and young people who are prosecuted in the Israeli Military court, which has jurisdiction over the Palestinian people.  We learned that 730,000 Palestinians have been prosecuted under military law and one in four Palestinian men has been detained. There are about 80 university students who have been arrested and detained without charge, and may be held for between six weeks and six years without their lawyers being allowed to review their clients’ files and determine why they are being held. What is happening to Palestinian minor children is even more disturbing.

Every year between five hundred and seven hundred Palestinian children are prosecuted in the military courts; the majority are 16-17 years old, but some are as young as twelve. 60% of these children are accused of throwing stones. Children under Israeli occupation are being denied their most basic human rights and are traumatized by violations of their human dignity under a system that renders their parents helpless to protect them.

We heard from both Gaby and Gerard that Palestinian and Israeli children accused of the same offense are treated quite differently. Israeli children are asked to come in for questioning during the daytime, accompanied by their parents, and if charged, are brought before a judge in civil court within 24 hours. Israeli soldiers frequently come in the middle of the night to arrest Palestinian children and youth, hand-cuffing and blindfolding them, and detaining them without access to their parents or a lawyer for up to four days before being brought before a judge. In the occupied territories, a child doesn’t have the right to have a parent or a lawyer present during interrogation by military personnel. Children are not informed of their right to remain silent, are sleep deprived, intimidated and are persuaded to sign statements written in Hebrew, a language few of them can read--statements implicating adult family members or neighbors. The immediate and long-term impacts of mistreatment under this system are devastating on many levels—to the children, to their families and to their villages. 

We are deeply concerned and troubled, but are grateful to Gaby and Gerard for presenting this critically important information on injustice being done to young people. Gerard sent us some links which we hope you will find very useful:

Defense for Children International (DCI) website

DCI Monthly Detention Bulletin

Breaking the Silence – Soldiers’ Testimonies: Children and Youth (2005-2011) – see testimony 1

The Guardian – The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel’s Al Jalame jail

The Australian – Stone Cold Justice

Please note that while Gerard’s organization bears the same acronym “DCI” as the Dorothy Cotton Institute, it is not affiliated with us in any way.

For further information contact:

Gerard Horton

International Advocacy Officer - Lawyer

Defense for Children International – Palestine Section

Tel: +972 2 242 75 30 ext. 103

Fax: +972 2 242 70 18

Mobile: + 972 0599 087 290

Email: gerard@dci-pal.org Twitter and Facebook 

Meeting with Sabeel: Women's Voices

by Laura Branca

On Monday, October 15, the DCI Delegation met with leaders of Sabeel: Ms Cedar Duaibis, who is one of the distinguished contributors to the Kairos Palestine document (the Christian Palestinians' word to the world about what is happening in Palestine) Ms. Salwa Duaibis, a passionate advocate at the Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), and attorney Gerard Horton, whose focus is on children prosecuted in the Israeli Military Court.

Sabeel is "an ecumenical grassroots liberation theology center and movement among Palestinian Christians started in 1993. Sabeel strives to develop a spirituality based on justice, peace, non-violence, liberation, and reconciliation for the different national and faith communities. The word 'Sabeel" is Arabic for 'the way' and also a 'channel' or 'spring' of life-giving water. Sabeel also works to promote a more accurate international awareness regarding the identity, presence, and witness of Palestinian Christians as well as their contemporary concerns."

Cedar Duaibis gave us a truly riveting introduction to Sabeel's liberation theology and an analysis of the catastrophic impacts of the occupation on Palestinians in terms of the material loss of their property, the loss of their identity as a people connected to their land, a theological loss which has necessitated a new understanding of the scriptures through the eyes of the Palestinian people, and the renewal of a faith that supports their work for justice and their refusal to accept the disasters they are experiencing as their fate.

Salwa Duaibis is working tirelessly on behalf of Palestinian women who bear an unusually heavy burden under occupation. She wrote to us, following up on some of the most poignant and sobering information she shared with us during our conversation with Sabeel. Here, with deep appreciation, is her letter:

Dear All,

It was a real pleasure meeting you all at Sabeel yesterday afternoon. Thank you so much for listening so passionately and for taking the time to find out the truth about this troubled part of the world. It means a lot to us to have people like you. Please keep us in your prayers, we badly need it.

Yesterday I talked a little bit about the work I do with Palestinian women. I am pleased to let you know that today the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC) released a new report - Women's Voices: Glimpses of Life Under Occupation.  The report seeks to illustrate some of the day-to-day challenges faced by Palestinians living under prolonged military occupation through the eyes of ordinary women who struggle, on a daily basis, to cope with an extraordinary situation. The report includes 14 testimonies from women who describe the sense of intimidation felt by their families due to repeated night-time raids in which soldiers break into their houses, and even their bedrooms, simply because they dare to assert their legitimate rights to self-determination.   The women also describe the sense of fear and insecurity they experience as a result of attacks by armed Israeli civilians who live in illegal settlements throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Other women describe how Palestinian society living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip is coming under increasing pressure in the form of severe building restrictions and property destruction, an economic blockade and freedom of movement limitations which affect everything from where they can live, where they can study, and even who they can marry.

Also included in the report are two testimonies from Israeli soldiers, provided by the Israeli organisation, Breaking the Silence, that graphically illustrate the corrosive nature of Israel’s prolonged military occupation on everybody who comes in contact with it.  These are the stories that rarely make the headlines, but are nonetheless noteworthy because they are part-and-parcel of everyday life, and illustrate the practices and policies that have been implemented by the Israeli military and civilian authorities for nearly a half-century in a relentless effort to squeeze the Palestinian people into an ever shrinking space, whilst denying them their basic civil and political rights. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Salwa Duaibis
Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC)
International Advocacy Programme
www.wclac.org

Who Are the Delegates?

We have been asked to share who is on this important delegation.  Following are bios of the participants:

Dorothy Cotton Institute
Civil Rights Leaders Delegation to the West Bank

Dorothy Cotton: One of the most important unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and close associate and colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a member of his executive staff and of his entourage to Oslo, Norway where he received the Nobel Peace Prize. For 12 years, she served as the Education Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, providing leadership for the Education Progam, a critical component of the SCLC 's overall strategy that helped ordinary people, learn their civil rights and craft courageous strategies for organizing communities and speaking truth to power. Ms. Cotton’s lifework based on the philosophy and practices of nonviolence, reconciliation and restoration, and leadership development, offers models for human rights education and transformative practice, upon which the Dorothy Cotton Institute builds.

Vincent Harding: Historian, activist, author, friend and colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Harding was a leader in the Civil Rights movement. He and his wife founded Mennonite House, an interracial community service center and retreat space for Civil Rights activists. They traveled throughout the South, working with organizations including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Congress of Racial Equality. He taught nonviolence, mentored activists, seeking pathways to racial reconciliation, justice and hope. Dr. Harding drafted several of Dr. King’s speeches including the groundbreaking Anti-Vietnam War speech, "A Time to Break Silence," which Dr. King delivered on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City, exactly a year before he was assassinated.

Dr. Clayborne Carson: Professor of History and Director, Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. In 1985, the late Coretta Scott King selected Dr. Carson to edit and publish the papers of Martin Luther King Jr. He has devoted his life to studying the life and teachings of Dr. King and the movements he inspired, producing six volumes of a definitive edition of King’s speeches, sermons, correspondence, publications and unpublished writings. Dr. Carson has written a play about Dr. King that has been translated into several languages. In 2010, Dr. Carson’s play about Dr. King was performed in Arabic in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank.

Richard Deats: A United Methodist Minister, worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) from 1972 until his retirement in 2005 serving the organization in different capacities: executive secretary, director of interfaith activities, editor of Fellowship magazine and coordinator of communications.  He has taught nonviolence in over a dozen countries and has participated in peace efforts in several countries, including Iraq, Palestine, Burma, and the Philippines. Since his college days he has been active in the Civil Rights Movement.  He is the author of several books including Martin Luther King Jr. Spirit Led Prophet.

Jeff Furman: Chair of the Ben & Jerry’s Corporate Board and trustee of the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation.  In these capacities he has led many of the company’s social mission initiatives. He is a long time community activist on issues of justice including workers rights, educational equity and environmental justice.  He is also on the Oakland Institute and Funders Network on Transforming the Global Economy boards.

Alan Gilbert: is a longstanding anti-war and anti-racist activist. He is a John Evans Professor of International Studies at the University of Denver, teaches seminars about non-violence and Socrates as a pioneer of civil disobedience.  He has written Marx's Politics:Communists and Citizens, Democratic Individuality, Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy?, and most recently, Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War of Independence, He also writes a blog. He lives with his wife Paula Bard and his son Sage in the mountains near Denver.

Robert L. Harris, Jr.: Vice Provost Emeritus, Director of the Africana Studies and Research Center, and Professor of African American History at Cornell University. Dr. Harris has been a Rockefeller Humanities Fellow at the State University of New York – Buffalo; W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Fellow at Harvard University; Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow; Rockefeller Research Fellow, and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. He is a nationally renowned scholar of African American History and author of more than sixty published articles, book chapters, and dictionary entries.

Sara Hess: Social worker in non-profit and government services for children and family support for over 30 years, teacher, currently community activist working to prevent shale gas extraction (fracking) in NY. Lives in Ithaca, NY with partner, Jeff Furman.

Aljosie Aldrich Knight: A native of the African American community of Salisbury, N. C, has spent the past half century working in Africa and America on the vital tasks of bringing individuals and communities together across racial, cultural and national lines. She began her career  as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, West Africa in  1962.  Later she served  on the staff of the Institute of the Black World in Atlanta, GA,  and then worked for more than 25 years as a community activist  in  rural north Georgia communities.   She now travels across the country engaging  in conversations around the issue  of how we develop children and young people who can make significant contributions to the creation of a spiritually-grounded, compassionate  and just multicultural America.   Her passion for peace, justice, and building “a more perfect Union”  are fueled by her concerns for children throughout the world  as well as her own eight grandchildren.

Reverend Carolyn McKinstry: Life-long member of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Reverend McKinstry was present on September 15 1963, when white racists bombed the church killing four of her friends. As a teenager, she participated in mass meetings and rallies and was among thousands of students hosed by firemen during the 1963 marches. Rev. McKinstry has devoted her life to community service, serves on many community boards and is President of the Board of the Sixteenth Street Foundation.

Paula M. Rayman: Director of the Middle East Center for Peace, Development and Culture and Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at University of Massachusetts Lowell where she is also a Full Professor of Sociology.  She is a Senior Fulbright Scholar focusing on the project “Beyond Coexistence" examining social and economic requirements for sustainable peace in the Israel/Palestine region.  Professor Rayman is an internationally recognized scholar on issues of nonviolence and social change, advancing women in Science and Technology arenas, and creation of healthy workplaces. Her numerous published works include, " Beyond the Bottom Line: The Search for Dignity at Work", “The Equity Equation", and " Nonviolent Action and Social Change"  She resides in Watertown, Massachusetts with her husband  and is a mother of two daughters and grandmother of two.

Alice Rothchild: Physician, Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates; Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rothchild co-founded and co-chairs American Jews for a Just Peace (AJJP) – Boston and co-organized the AJJP Health and Human Rights Project. She is the author of Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience, is active in the Boston Workmen’s Circle and sings in its Yiddish chorus, A Besere Velt (A Better World).

Dr. James Turner: Founder/Director of the Africana Studies and Research Center, Professor (Emeritus) of African and African American Studies at Cornell University since 1969. He has been engaged in international social justice issues for more than 30 years as chairperson of the North American delegation to the 6th Pan African Conference, national organizer of the anti-apartheid campaign, founding member of the board of directors of TransAfrica-African foreign policy lobby, co-convenor of the International Consortium for Peace in the Middle East.

Young Human Rights Leaders:

Rabbi Joseph Berman was ordained by the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in 2010. An alumni of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, he serves an unaffiliated congregation outside of Boston. Rabbi Berman has spent a number of years living in Israel/Palestine, studying and working alongside the Palestinian and Israeli movement for peace, justice, and equality. He is currently the Chair of the Boston chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Rev. Lucas Johnson lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. He serves on the National Council of the U.S. Fellowship of Reconciliation, the International Committee of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the board of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou: author, documentary filmmaker, public intellectual, organizer, pastor and theologian. Considered one of the foremost religious leaders of his generation, Rev. Sekou is the founding Senior Minister of The Freedom Church of New York City. As an "International Ambassador" for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Rev. Sekou is a statesman for peace and justice throughout world. Recognizing his distinguished work as public scholar and intellectual, the Institute for Policy Studies, the nation's oldest multi-issue progressive think tank in Washington, D.C., appointed Rev. Sekou as the first Associate Fellow in Religion and Justice. nation's oldest multi-issue progressive think tank in Washington, D.C., appointed Rev. Sekou as the first Associate Fellow in Religion and Justice.

DCI Fellows:

Kirby Edmonds: Director of the Dorothy Cotton Institute and  managing partner of TFC Associates, a human relations training and consulting firm based in Ithaca, New York. Kirby is a management consultant, mediator and trainer with experience in the areas of team-building, supervisory issues, building and valuing diversity in the workplace, cultural competence as well as managing conflict and stress in the work environment. He helped design and facilitates “Talking Circles on Race and Racism” for the Multicultural Resource Center in Ithaca, and trained over thirty-five volunteer Talking Circle facilitators. Talking Circles promote racial understanding, healing and reconciliation.

Laura Ward Branca is a managing partner of Training for Change, With her partner, Kirby Edmonds, TFC provides consulting and customized interactive training to local, national and international organizations–business, unions, government, educational, not-for-profits and grassroots groups. Laura is the Board President of Moosewood, Inc. and has been a co-owner since 1980. She has co-authored nine of their twelve cookbooks. Bon Apetit Magazine named Moosewood “one of the thirteen most influential restaurants of the 20th Century.” Moosewood has a long history of supporting organizations committed to community service, health, education, social change and the arts.  Laura designs and leads the Multicultural Resource Center’s Talking Circles on Race and Racism and other safe, respectful dialogues on diversity and inclusion for the community, Cornell, Ithaca City School District, Tompkins County and City of Ithaca governments.

Margo Hittleman: Co-founder and Senior Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute, and co-founder and coordinator, Natural Leaders Initiative. Margo is an educator, writer, and community-builder who designs and leads programs on grassroots/civic leadership and leadership development; diversity and inclusion; human rights; social and organizational change; alliance-building, university-community and school-community partnerships, participatory action research; and evaluation. She is involved with many of DCI’s educational programs and  coordinates the DCI Research and Documentation Team. She grew up on Long Island, lived in Israel from 1979-1980, moved to Ithaca, N.Y. to go to college, and has lived there ever since. When she’s not working in the community, she and her partner grow most of their own fruit & vegetables on their “micro-farm” 10 miles outside Ithaca and dance as often as they can.
 
Trip Leaders:

Rabbi Brian Walt: DCI Palestinian/Israeli Nonviolence Project Fellow. Former executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights - North America. Rabbi, Congregation Tikkun v’Or, Ithaca, N.Y. Rabbi Walt is a life-long advocate of justice and peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He is Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia, PA, an activist synagogue founded in 1988. He has lived in Israel and has led several groups on trips to Israel and the West Bank.  He is the co-founder of Taanit Tzedek –Jewish Fast for Gaza.  Born in Cape Town, South Africa, he was a student activist in the anti Apartheid movement. He has also been involved in the Sanctuary movement, the National Religious Campaign against Torture, and campaigns for economic justice. 

Allie Perry: Board member Interfaith Peace Builders Project, Allie is the IFPB leader for the trip.  Allie is an ordained United Church of Christ minister, living in New Haven. Currently she is a lecturer in Pastoral Care and Psychology at Yale Divinity School and also a pastoral counselor with the Milford Pastoral Counseling Center.  Allie is the worship coordinator for Shalom United Church of Christ very small, low-budget, congregation committed to non-violence and peace and justice.  She serves on the board of the National Religious Campaign against Torture and the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty. Over the years she has been active in Central America solidarity work and disarmament.  She lives with her spouse, Charlie Pillsbury, and has four young adult step-children, one step-grandchild, and a dog. 

Documentary Filmmaker
 
donnie I. betts:  Over20 years of experience in theatre, film, radio and video.  He is the founding member of two theatre companies in Denver, has performed on Broadway and in many regional theatre productions and has directed over 25 stage productions.  Betts is an award winning filmmaker who directed, co-produced and acted in the documentary, “Dearfield, A Road Less Traveled, a film about an African-American town in Colorado. Betts has won numerous film and theatre directing awards.

Delegate Support
 
Marne O'Shae: Family medicine physician who will be accompanying the delegation. She graduated from Upstate Medical College and completed a family medicine residency at Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington, VT. She has been a practicing family medicine physician in Ithaca since 2003, where she met Dorothy Cotton and became her friend. She celebrates Dorothy's vision of the transformative power of community, especially through shared stories and song.

VIDEO: Do What the Spirit tells Me

Dorothy Cotton sings with Irene Nasser, Sahar Vardi, Suhad Baba'a, and others:

see below for description of the meeting.

(video by Reverend Osagyefo Sekou)